Monday, August 31, 2009

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Michael Huttner: 50 Ways to Help Obama Top
By Michael Huttner and Jason Salzman It's felt like election season again this past summer, with progressives under familiar attack at every turn. There's no better time to fight back than now, with Congress reconvening next week. So, today ProgressNow is kicking off a Help Obama Change America campaign to inspire people everywhere to help Obama pass health care reform, enact other core campaign promises, and move the country forward. Our campaign has a couple components. The first is our book book titled 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America, which is being released this week and is available in bookstores across the country. It covers not just policy-oriented actions, but an array of service and community-building activities for people who want to make a difference. There's something for everyone. The second component of our campaign is a Help-Obama-Change-America contest. ProgressNow and its state partners, which are hosting the contest, are emailing over two million invitations to the public to submit ideas and stories on how help Obama change America, from home, in their community, across the country or even around the world. It never hurts to offer a little incentive, especially if your incentive has the potential to drive extreme right wingers crazy, so among our prizes is a grand-prize of a trip for two to Honolulu, Hawaii for a private tour of the hospital where President Obama was born, followed by an opportunity to take part in a community service project there on MLK Day of Service, January 18, 2010. Submit stories and ideas on how people can help Obama change America for the better. Anyone is welcome to enter by sending us their stories by September 30. The winners will be announced on November 4, 2009 - one year to the day that Obama gave his memorable victory speech in Chicago. See more details on www.50WaysYouCanHelpObama.com. The contest and book are designed to inspire more people to help--at a time when progressive values are under serious attack in Washington and across the nation. We're honored that the late Sen. Edward Kennedy graces the cover of 50 Ways: "In 50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America, Michael Huttner and Jason Salzman have given us a practical handbook on how every American can do something for our country," wrote Kennedy. "This should be required reading for anyone interested in making a difference and helping President Obama get our nation back on track." In its small way, we hope our book and contest will advance Kennedy's vision of progressive reform in America. And we also hope it contributes to changing the dialogue in this country, at a time when it's beginning to look a little too much like the Bush era with books by right-wingers Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly topping this week's national bestsellers list. Something in the air tells us that in the next few months, progressives will make their voices heard even louder than they did during the campaign. Let's get fired up, ready to go. More on Health Care
 
Study: 1 In 10 New Yorkers Have Had Swine Flu Top
One in 10 New Yorkers were infected with swine flu earlier this year, according to a study due out this week. More on Swine Flu
 
Los Angeles Wildfire: Live Twitter Updates Top
See the module below for the latest Twitter posts about the wildfires that have raged around California. More on Twitter
 
Michail Sorodsky Hit With $33 Million Bail Bond, Highest In New York Top
An allegedly phony Brooklyn doctor accused of sexually abusing patients while they were under anesthesia has the dubious distinction of having the highest bail in the land: either $11 million cash or a virtually impossible $33 million bail bond.
 
Mohammed Khan Tumani Identifieb By U.S. As Guantanamo Detainee Released To Portugal Top
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A Guantanamo inmate who said the prison's harsh conditions drove him to attempt suicide has been sent to Portugal, the U.S. said in court documents. Mohammed Khan Tumani, 26, was one of two Syrian prisoners at Guantanamo transferred to "the control of the government of Portugal," U.S. officials said in documents filed Sunday in Washington. The other was Moammar Badawi Dokhan. The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Friday that the prisoners had been transferred but did not reveal their names. A spokesman, Dean Boyd, said they were not identified for security and privacy reasons at Portugal's request. Portuguese officials said the men did not face charges and would not be subject to any travel restrictions once they obtain permanent visas. Khan Tumani's lawyer, Pardiss Kebriaei, said in February that the isolation and harsh conditions at Guantanamo Bay had driven him to repeatedly bang his head against the wall and show other signs of "mental deterioration," including smearing the walls of his cell with excrement. They said he slashed one of his wrists in December. Kebriaei sought improvements in Khan Tumani's living conditions and asked that he be permitted contact with a prisoner he identified as his father. The military denied any mistreatment, described the suicide attempt as a "minor cut on his arm," and said DNA tests showed the other prisoner was his uncle, not his father. Kebriaei declined to comment on the case Monday. Both Khan Tumani and Dohkan, 37, had been held at Guantanamo as enemy combatants since February 2002, but were never charged. More on Syria
 
Beware of Federer Fatigue Top
Last year, when Roger Federer came to Queens without a Slam, New Yorkers did everything they could to pick him up. He became a sentimental favorite. He excited the crowd. Then he won the Open. More on Sports
 
Dean Baker: Irresponsibly Following the Congressional Budget Office Top
Suppose that a prominent member of Congress were to press for spending an additional $450 billion a year over the next three years on infrastructure projects. Suppose that they did this at a time when the unemployment rate was near 4.5 percent, the definition of full employment used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and in most econometric models. The CBO modeling of this proposal would show that infrastructure spending would lead to almost no increase in employment. It would show that the effect of the additional spending would be higher interest rates, which would crowd out investment and other forms of expenditures. The spending would also raise the deficit and lead to larger interest rate burdens on our children. This prominent member of Congress would undoubtedly be denounced as irresponsible on the editorial pages of the Washington Post and by other respectable pillars of the Washington establishment. However, if it was the winter of 2007, this prominent member of Congress would have been performing an extremely valuable public service, especially if she was able to push her plan through Congress. The reality is that the U.S. economy was about to fall off a cliff in the winter of 2007, but CBO and most other economic forecasters were completely oblivious to the problems that stood in front of their face. They either did not see the housing bubble that was collapsing around them or somehow thought that its collapse would not have any major impact on the economy. As we all now know, CBO was hugely wrong. This is not the only time that CBO has been wrong in a really big way. They often miss major economic turning points. For example, in January 2001, the projections showed a respectable 2.4 growth rate for 2001 and a 3.4 percent growth rate for 2002. The unemployment rate was projected to average 4.4 percent in 2001 and 4.5 percent in 2002. There was no hint of the recession that began just two months later. CBO did not even recognize that the collapse of the stock market bubble, which was already in progress, would affect capital gains tax revenue. This caused it to overestimate capital gains tax revenue by more than $300 billion over its 10-year projection period, an amount equal to approximately 1 percent of the budget and 10 percent of the deficit. It's not just economic turning points that CBO tends to miss. They sometimes badly misjudge the impact of specific programs. Last summer Congress funded a program to keep homeowners facing foreclosure in their homes. CBO projected that 400,000 loans would be modified under this program by 2011. Through April of 2009 there had been fewer than 1000 applications, and only 51 completed modifications. A column in the New York Times last week noted how CBO had repeatedly underestimated the cost savings that resulted from various efforts to restrain medical care costs. Jon Gabel, a researcher at the University of Chicago, argued that CBO assumes zero cost-savings for any legislated changes where the benefits are not known. As Gable argues, the issue is not that the CBO is partisan or biased in any obvious way; there is no basis for questioning its integrity. Nor is it a lack competence; CBO is staffed by hard-working professionals. However, they are nonetheless fallible. CBO does make mistakes, and often they are large and important mistakes. The failure to recognize the housing bubble, and that its collapse would have a devastating impact on the economy (and the budget deficit) was an enormous error. The economists at CBO may take solace in the fact that most of the economics profession made the same mistake, but this fact provides little consolation to the tens of millions of workers who are unemployed or underemployed as a result of the failure of CBO and others to warn of this impending disaster. The fact that CBO is fallible is important for how members of Congress view its analysis and projections. Members of Congress would be foolish to ignore the projections provided by CBO, however they would be irresponsible if they treated this analysis as the final word. Members of Congress are responsible for getting the policy right, not doing what CBO tells them. This means that if they have reason to believe that a CBO projection in a specific area is wrong, they should act based on their judgment, not on the CBO projection. Constituents have every right to hold their representatives in contempt if they try to blame their mistaken judgments on CBO projections. Members of Congress get paid for getting the policy right, not listening to CBO. To take the specific example mentioned at the start of this column, members of Congress should have been pushing large infrastructure projects at the beginning of 2007. These projects would have kicked in just when the collapsing bubble was sucking the life out of the economy. Pushing for major infrastructure spending at the start of 2007 would have caused members of Congress to be denounced as irresponsible, by the Washington Post and the rest of the Washington establishment. But it is much better to be denounced as irresponsible than to actually be so -- and blindly listening to CBO is incredibly irresponsible. More on Health Care
 
Chuck Grassley Fundraises Against Health Care Reform Top
Chuck Grassley is facing a potentially difficult primary challenge in 2010. As such, he's been working hard to cover his right flank. That would all be fine except for one thing: As ranking member of the Finance Committee, Grassley is responsible for developing a workable compromise on health-care reform. But as this fundraising letter (pdf) shows, Grassley is running against health-care reform back in Iowa. Here's how the missive begins:
 
Eugene Michael Santiago: No Love for Eli Top
Philip Rivers, the Giants' first-round draft pick in the '04 draft, signed a six-year contract extension earlier this week worth $93 million, with at least $38 million guaranteed. Yet again, Eli Manning's turn came first. The two Quarterbacks who were swapped during draft day between the Chargers (who drafted Eli 1st overall) and the Giants (who drafted Phillip 4th overall) would forever be linked. Eli Manning became the highest-paid player in football earlier this month, signing a six-year contract extension of his own. But here is what I don't understand: Even though Eli has won a Super Bowl (he was the MVP in that game) and Rivers has yet to make it to Super Sunday, Eli caught exponentially more guff than Rivers. Reactions to the official agreement of Eli Manning's contract extension to the New York Giants were trumped by the news that the Philadelphia Eagles had signed Michael Vick to a one-year contract that same weekend. But, news following the initial announcement of a monetary agreement between Manning and the Giants the week prior to the official signing brought high criticism from analysts and journalists alike. Eli, unlike Rivers, has always been the Little Brother of the NFL, thanks to big brother Peyton's celebrity. Rivers has had the opportunity to make his own name, where Eli came into a name and had to live with high expectations. Vick, on the other hand, has recently been the face of villainy/reform for the NFL, after serving almost two years in prison for orchestrating a dog fighting ring. In a time when athletes and their actions are larger than life, we pay more attention to off-the-field antics and press conference video clips than the performance on the field. The sporting world lacks great, hardworking athletes who play the game right. The way as children we are taught to play the game: play hard, play fair, always put the team before the individual, don't boast, don't argue calls, don't be a sore loser, and always have fun playing the game (because it is just a game). In an age where athletes have reality shows, and openly lie about taking performance-enhancing drugs, why do the media and an entire fan base knock the highest paid NFL athlete for being a team player? Eli Manning is a player who came into New York as a first-round pick! That's like being told "you are the messiah, make it happen or else the lions [I mean the media] will get you." Watch Marc Sanchez this season, and see how he handles aforementioned lions. Manning started his rookie year behind the then-washed-up Kurt Warner (who led Arizona to the Super Bowl last year). In the 10th game of Eli's rookie season his pedigree would be put to the test. He failed miserably, going 1-5 in his rookie campaign, winning his first game in the final game of a rebuilding year for the Giants. The New York papers railed into Eli; the little brother of Peyton was a bust. Eli handled the abuse like a professional, never backing down, never challenging the media. He preached he would have to put in the work, and over time the team would get there. The Giants have made the playoffs the last four years since his rookie season. Eli has thrown for 3,000 yards and 20 touchdowns in each of those four seasons -- he is the only Giant to accomplish such a feet. He engineered a playoff run not replicated by any Quarterback in my lifetime in the '07-'08 march to the Super Bowl. Eli went into Tampa, Dallas, Greenbay, and then to Arizona for the Super Bowl, engineering a final possession drive winning score in each of the final three games to propel the Giants to their third franchise Super Bowl victory. Oh, Eli also started the last 71 games for the Giants, the third-longest streak of consecutive games started for active QBs behind only big bro, and that guy who won't quit. One may argue he is not a top five Quarterback based on his stats, unlike draft-mates Rivers and Roethlisberger. What happened to on-the-field results? The Giants as an NFL program have never been a throw first team, they are a run-it-down-your-throat, smash-mouth, defensive-minded franchise. Can Eli throw? Yes. But his real job is as a field general on offense that calls out the middle linebacker, and checks down calls on the line before every snap. He is a leader who moves his team down the field, capable of making plays when necessary. When he fails, he stands in the pocket (he has slow feet) and takes the boo's of the fans, and jeers of the media. Mind you he plays in New York, how would Tony Romo, Tom Brady, Philip Rivers, or even big brother Peyton deal with such intense scrutiny? Let us also not forget the kind words he received from former teammates Jeremy Shockey, and Tiki "my foot is down my throat/I messed up so bad" Barber. Maybe statistically he is not the best Quarterback but he has more Super Bowl victories (one -- it's hard to win) than Dan Marino who held all QB statistics until that other Quarterback who also recently just signed a contract (ugh) with the Vikings broke them. As a fan, I'd rather have a Quarterback who brings me opportunities to win multiple Lombardi trophies than a player with great stats. Players with great statistical numbers haven't worked for the Yankees this decade, haven't worked for the Redskins, and certainly didn't work for the Jets last year. I want a professional leader who is focused on promoting the success of his team year round. That's what the Giants signed until 2015 for 97.5 million (35 million guaranteed). If you are a Yankee fan or hater that is five more than what A-Rod makes annually (30 Million). In an age where few professional athletes play the game the way we teach our children to play, we get upset that a good guy got the biggest bucks? A guy who worked hard, took his lumps, and proved he was a winner by posting winning seasons in all of his full seasons and throwing 98 career touchdowns to his 74 career interceptions. Eli in the eye of the media and public will always be an underdog if not a runt. Give the kid a chance, get off the statistical data, and be happy that someone who actually worked hard in an era of cheaters, and egomaniacs actually got the money he and all the players like him deserve. For those of you who still disagree with me -- this is temporary. Your Tom, Peyton, and Tony will get their money like Philip. Eli is just the one who set the precedent.
 
Marshall Fine: Interview: Talking Obsessions with the Big Fan Guys Top
There's obsessive and then there's obsessive, as comedian Patton Oswalt admits, sitting in the atrium of a Park City, Utah, hotel, where his film Big Fan was having its debut at the Sundance Film Festival. "Obsessive?" he says with a hearty chuckle. "Hey, I just met Paul Giamatti and I was like a girl meeting the Jonas Brothers." Actor Kevin Corrigan, who plays Oswalt's best friend in the film, admits that he has trouble talking to actors he obsesses about. "Nine times out of 10, when I've met them, it's gone horribly," Corrigan says. "I say something stupid or I get as tongue-tied as I hoped I wouldn't get. I do well with people if I don't know who they are. Like I had a good conversation with Eddie Vedder one time, but I didn't know who he was. He was talking about his own music and I said, 'Oh, are you in a band?'" In Big Fan, which opened in limited release last week, Oswalt and Corrigan play a pair of Staten Island buddies who are obsessed with the New York Giants. Oswalt's character, Paul Aufiero, still lives with his mom, works a dead-end job and has a bedroom with an NFL comforter on the bed and a poster of his favorite player over the bed. But his life turns upside down when he approaches that player one night in a Manhattan strip club -- and the guy beats the crap out of him, putting him into the hospital. The film was written and directed by Robert Siegel, who spent 10 years as editor of The Onion and wrote The Wrestler. To Siegel, it's the obsession that makes Paul a character interesting enough to build a whole movie around. "What interests me are people who are really into something specific -- something that 99 percent of the rest of the population doesn't give a crap about," Siegel says. Not that Siegel ever had a fixation himself: "My hero as a kid was Terry Bradshaw, when I was 12 or 13. But I wouldn't say I ever had an unhealthy obsession." His interest in Paul's character, however, is pure; Siegel is quick to point out that he had no intention of making Paul the butt of the film's jokes. For the rest of this story, click HERE to reach my website: www.hollywoodandfine.com. More on The Onion
 
When Reporters Are Attacked...By Animals (VIDEO) Top
In light of this local reporter getting stung by a bee and losing his shit as a result, we here at HuffPost Comedy thought we'd bring you a collection of other animal attacks caught on camera. Enjoy! More on Photo Galleries
 
New Orleans' Green Makeover Top
Sustainable development groups that range from the international nonprofit Global Green to earth-friendly celebrities like Brad Pitt descended on New Orleans, determined not just to build the city back, but to build it back green. "It's going to come back," says Matt Petersen, the president of Global Green USA. "But we want to build it better than it was before."
 
Robert David Jaffee: Baseball Before the Fall Top
The recent induction of Rickey Henderson into the National Baseball Hall of Fame coincided with rumors that Commissioner Bud Selig might be considering reinstating Pete Rose, who was banished 20 years ago by then-Commissioner Bart Giamatti for betting on baseball. Giamatti had compared baseball to an epic poem, and that season marked baseball's fall from grace when Rose, a charismatic rogue like Satan in "Paradise Lost," rebelled against the game's Yahweh, only to be exiled forever. Sometimes, it seems that Rose took the game with him to purgatory, if not hell. Though baseball has set attendance records in recent years, the two decades since 1989 have brought us the steroid era, a cancelled World Series, a tied All-Star Game, a dearth of African-American players and spiraling salaries that have made a mockery of the sport, which was once known for its working-class appeal. That is not to say that there weren't scandals in baseball before 1989, such as the 1919 Black Sox or even collusion and rampant cocaine use in the 1980s. And lest we forget, Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire, the bash brothers on the A's 1989 championship squad, took performance-enhancing drugs in their careers. Still, 1989 remains sublime, if tragic. Giamatti, whose tenure as commissioner ended on September 1 of that year when he suffered a fatal heart attack, just days after banning Rose, was the rarest of baseball officials, a true Renaissance Man. The former Yale president was as comfortable in the ivory tower as he was in a dugout, and his eloquence and love for the game couldn't help but inspire fans and reporters alike. The A's proved worthy of Giamatti by dominating the postseason as few other ballclubs have. Leading the way was Henderson, as fleet and wily as Odysseus, who stole eight bases in eight attempts, a record for a postseason series, as the A's trounced the Toronto Blue Jays 4 games to 1 in the AL playoffs. The A's then romped past the San Francisco Giants 4 games to none in what came to be known as the Earthquake Series. But that sobriquet wasn't fair to the A's. It masked the historic nature of the club's dominance. The A's equaled the 1932 Yankees by having the greatest run differential in a World Series (though the 2007 Boston Red Sox later eclipsed that record by one run). On defense, the A's made only one error in the series. And their top two starters, Dave Stewart and Mike Moore, and Hall of Fame closer Dennis Eckersley shut down the Giants. But nothing demonstrated the A's invincibility more than the fact that for one of the first times ever in a World Series, the winning team never trailed. That was a testament to the brilliance of Henderson, who got on base in the first inning of nearly every game, so it seemed, including a leadoff home run, one of his specialties, in game 4. The A's scored in the first inning in three of the games, and in the second inning in the fourth, while Henderson hit .474 in the series and stole three bases. Stewart, who was named MVP of the World Series, and Henderson had known each other since they were kids. Both had been raised in Oakland. The image of two African-American baseball players starring in a World Series for their hometown team, a ballclub whose starting lineup was roughly half black, and pitching in at earthquake relief efforts, grows fainter every year. The 1989 season also had a personal highlight for me. On August 4, as a young waterfront planner for the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, I gave the keynote address at Pier 11 for the opening of the Baseball Ferry, a mode of transportation I had conceptualized the year before. The ferry took fans from Pier 11, East 34th Street and Glen Cove, Long Island, to the World's Fair Marina for New York Mets games. I had also written and spoken of the possibility of a ferry to Yankee Stadium, but at the time the state's Department of Transportation had invested millions of dollars in the Oak Point Link, a proposed full-freight access line that would cut a swath across the Harlem River slips by Yankee Stadium. Some years later, others would start the Yankee Clipper. The Baseball Ferry had grown out of my boyhood memory of leaving Yankee games in the 7th inning to beat traffic home to Connecticut on the Major Deegan Expressway. As I studied the riparian terrain in the five boroughs, I recalled that both Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium were located right by water bodies. It occurred to me that we could have a ferry to the ballparks, but it wouldn't be any ordinary ferry; it would be the Baseball Ferry, a vessel that would bring a taste of the ballpark to the sea, with hot dogs and Crackerjack on board and an accordionist playing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." With the support of my supervisor, Ann L. Buttenwieser, and then-Parks Commissioner, Henry Stern, I was able to transmute this idea into a reality. Twenty years later, I live in Los Angeles, where the possibility of a Baseball Ferry on the concrete shell of the L.A. River seems remote. But then I think of Rickey Henderson and Bart Giamatti, and I realize that baseball is about memory and imagination and the dreams we once had, dreams that will never die. More on Baseball
 
Wall Street Tax: AFL-CIO, Democrats Want To Impose Stock-Trading Fees Top
The nation's largest labor union and some allied Democrats are pushing a new tax that would hit big investment firms such as Goldman Sachs reaping billions of dollars in profits while the rest of the economy sputters. The AFL-CIO, one of the Democratic Party's most powerful allies, would like to assess a small tax -- about a tenth of a percent -- on every stock transaction. More on Financial Crisis
 
Tom Vander Ark: Who owns Washington? Top
In Washington State the answer is clear--the Washington Education Association. They've been dragging their feet in hundreds of districts and called strikes in a couple districts last night just to screw up the first day of school. In Kent, a Seattle suburb, the WEA welcomed a great new superintendent, Dr. Vargas, to town with a strike. Kent is a well run district where the previous superintendent served with distinction for a decade. Unfortunately, Vargas is receiving familiar treatment; it happened on my first day as superintendent 15 years ago. My kids asked me why they weren't going to school and why there were people with signs in our driveway. Even though strikes by public employees are illegal, the WEA picks a few districts in key media markets and runs strikes every year just to remind local and state officials who's really in charge. The Kent strike is supposedly because teachers don't want to meet with their principal more than once a week; they're trying to spin this as 'more time with the children'--please. They also mention class size, but that's a red herring in a state with equalized funding and big budget deficits. This isn't about issues; it's about power. It's a little less clear who owns Washington DC this week. The Republicans beat back the health care plan with a good dose of targeted demagoguery. We may get a weaker bill, but it's clear that most of the 46 million people without insurance are still screwed. Without Kennedy's leadership, it's not at all clear who will lead Senate education efforts. EdWeek speculates about Dodd and Harkin as possible leaders, but both would need to give up coveted chairs to do it. They mention Michael Bennet--the best Senator on education--but he's not even on the committee and needs to worry about getting elected first time after serving out Salazar's term. However, it is clear that the NEA has far less influence in DC than under any previous democratic administration in recent history. Even left leaning publications like the NYTimes and WaPo are supporting the president's efforts to expand school choice and use data to improve instruction. These are common sense reforms; it's time for the NEA and AFT to play a constructive role rather than launching political strikes. Washington State has avoided charter schools and will skip participation in federal grant programs, but at least pragmatic leadership has come to DC. In the mean time, there are thousands of parents wondering when their kids will go back to school. More on Barack Obama
 
The Media Consortium: Tired of Bad Reporting About Health Care? Break Out Your Cameras to Change the Debate Top
When it comes to the debate around health care, you've heard the same voices of pundits and politicians repeated on the morning and evening news. You've seen a small group dominate the airwaves by shouting and spreading lies at town hall events. You've even seen guns at presidential events enter the fray . But have you seen your personal health care story told? Or that of your friends, families, co-workers, or neighbors? Your story is getting lost in the shouting and political posturing. But it's these stories that can make the difference in how health care is covered in the national media and how politicians will vote. We're asking you to join us in this exciting citizen journalism project to help uncover the the health care stories of real people, including your own. At MyRapidReport.com, it's easy to become a citizen journalist. We've broken this down into three simple options. You can do one or all! 1 ) Videotape the proceedings of a health care town hall - try to interview speakers or other attendees. 2) Conduct interviews around your community and gather personal healthcare stories. We've even provided some helpful starting questions for you. 3) Tell your own personal healthcare story. (Ideas on how to structure your personal story are here . Upload your captured video by going to MyRapidReport.com and click UPLOAD VIDEO . It's just that simple. So what will happen with your stories? Like YouTube, they will be open for the public to view. But you will also have a captured audience of reporters, editors, organizers and more who will be combing over these stories during the next month. Your videos will help identify the needs and hopes of everyday citizens around the future of our healthcare as they continue to monitor, report and organize around this critical issue. For guidelines on how to capture a successful video story, click here. If you're passionate about shaping the future of your health care - and American's health care - participate in this critical storytelling project. By the way, if you happen to live in New York City, GRITtv has generously offered their studio space for you to come in and tape your own personal story starting on Sep. 11 and every Friday afterward. Email gritv@grittv.org to get more information and reserve your time to tell your healthcare story! Feel free to spread the word about this opportunity to your family, friends, neighbors, and local community groups. If you're on Twitter, you can use the #mrrhealth. And one last note, starting on September 1, Lindsay Beyerstein, The Media Consortium's own health care blogger , will start doing daily posts on the most current debates and round-up of reporting around health care for the next month. You can check out the Daily Pulse on this site every day or at http://www.themediaconsortium.org/consortium-report/. More on Health Care
 
Bruce Feiler: Which Kennedy Was Moses? John or Ted? Top
In The Making of the President 1964 , Theodore White compared the death of John F. Kennedy to the death of Moses on Mount Nebo. Moses had led the Israelites out of slavery into freedom, put up with their kvetching and complaining for 40 years, only to be stopped short of the Promised Land. With Kennedy stopped short of his dream, Johnson would be his Joshua. "It was as if Kennedy, a younger Moses, had led an elder Joshua to the heights of Mount Nebo and there shown him the promised land which he himself would never enter but which Joshua would make his own." This week a similar analogy was tossed about following the death of John's younger brother. Ted Kennedy was called the Moses of Health Care. "Sen. Ted Kennedy and Moses had a shared destiny," wrote the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette . "Like the flawed patriarch who led his people to the Promised Land but never set foot inside it, Mr. Kennedy died last week having led the nation toward universal health-care coverage that he would not live to see." The Kennedys were not alone. This analogy with Moses was used frequently on the death of George Washington in 1799, in which two-thirds of the eulogies compared the "first conductor of the Jewish nation" to the "leader and father of the American nation." It was the single-most commonly cited comparison on the death of Abraham Lincoln in 1865. As Henry Ward Beecher said, "Again a great leader of the people has passed through toil, sorrow, battle, and war, and come near to the promised land of peace, into which he might not pass over." And of course Martin Luther King, Jr., quoted the same passage in his speech the night before he was assassinated. "I've been to the mountaintop. And I've looked over. I've seen the promised land. And I may not get there with you, but I want you to know that we as a people will get to the promised land." For Barack Obama, who has compared himself to Joshua, the consistency of this analogy from Washington to Bush is a stark reminder that he picks up the fight that Ted Kennedy pioneered that failure is, indeed, an option. Even the greatest leaders often fall short of their dreams. More on Barack Obama
 
Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater: Living with Fire: Lessons from a Tragedy Top
When I was a rookie rabbi, a decade ago, I wrote a spontaneous, emotion-driven piece about my watching Flight 801 crash into the ocean on CNN, following it from the time it disappeared off radar until they found it three hours later in the ocean. I questioned the morality of flying and whether we should be putting ourselves at risk to die such horrible deaths, or is that just too much technology to justify? I put out the piece to the 2000 family congregation, Congregation Bnai Jeshurun in Manhattan, where I was serving as a Marshall T. Meyer Rabbinic Fellow. I was overwhelmed with fear and spewed my thoughts down, not recognizing that what I was really scared of was my own mortality, not dying in a horrible plane crash, and I shouted out that this must stop, we mustn't fly, it is abnormal. I got a slew of responses, mostly negative, calling me childish, naive, silly. I was told to take some valium and relax! There were complaints to the senior rabbis about this nonsense that I wrote, asking where my compassion was for the victims. Needless to say, it was not a highlight moment in my career! It does, however, remain a hugely laughable legend in the history of this fellowship! But it also taught me a lesson that remains with me. I tell you this because as I sit to write about the horrible fires burning around me in Pasadena, CA, I have some of the same feelings of fear that engulfed me a decade ago. Yet, today, I understand that the message is one of compassion, and acknowledgement that life is so precious. In the moment of true danger, all of the stuff we have becomes mostly inconsequential. When we are threatened, as members of my community are, along many other residents in the fire zone destroying huge sways of the San Gabriel Valley and beyond, the priorities of life come into full focus. People pack the most important papers, usually just a few, maybe some photos, a favorite memento, and they leave with their lives. Returning to find a home burned to the ground is an unimaginably horrible thing to experience. There is devastation, despair and fear; and yet, most people that I have heard who are survivors of this kind of tragedy, often speak of the gratitude they feel for their lives, and thankfulness they feel for the firefighters who risk their own lives to save others. The tenacity of the human race is always exhibited most profoundly in these moments of adversity and tragedy. Especially since it is usually another human being who causes the destruction in the first place. I see it as a tribute to our capacity for compassion and our ability to see most deeply, when pushed, the holiness and amazement in just being alive. Unlike ten years ago, when my own fear blinded me to the deeper message of the moment, I understand now what this moment can teach. It is so simple, yet so allusive. Each day is a gift, each breath is an opportunity to reach for goodness, appreciate one another, and spread kindness. Our stuff, while important, is not crucial to our existence. Homes can be rebuilt, cars can be replaced, stuff can be bought again. There is sadness and pain, to be sure, but nobody ever wishes, in that moment, that the stuff survived and they didn't. Of course not! But, what about tomorrow and the next day? We shouldn't need horrible brush fires, hurricanes, plane crashes or illness, to feel grateful we are alive. We shouldn't need them to recognize that stuff is stuff. Why are we blinded to that most of the time? That is the challenge we all face. When we meet it, which I suspect we probably won't this time either, our world will be a remarkably different place. May God bless, and may we bless, the firefighters battling the blazes and all those affected.
 
Lauren Cahn: Why I Failed As an Aethist Top
I tried to believe in nothing. And I failed. It was simply too difficult for me to let go of a belief in God that is as innate to me as the English language. I was born into a secular Jewish family. We observed the holidays as cultural events. The existence of God was implicit, even as I went to public school and studied science and learned about evolution. No one forced me to believe in God. No one even told me to believe in God. No one told me to pray or taught me to pray. I don't remember the first time I talked to God, but I think that it was around the time that I read Judy Blume's " Are You There God, It's Me Margaret? ", which puts my age then at around 10. A pre-adolescent with lots of confusing thoughts going round in my head, I liked how the main character seemed to get something emotionally satisfying out of talking to God. And so I did the same. I liken it to when having read " The Diary of Anne Frank, " and taking note of how Anne framed her diary entries as letters to her imaginary friend, Kitty, I decided that I too would frame my diary entries as letters to a friend. Essentially, I gave myself a friend to talk to, when I was, in essence, talking to myself. It was totally unrelated to any real belief in God's existence. But it felt good. My first and possibly only brush with the "dogma" of my religion was when I asked my parents about Jesus Christ. They told me there was no such thing. I asked them to clarify. Did they mean that there was no such deity, or no such man? They answered that Jews were "supposed to" not believe that Jesus Christ had ever existed. This didn't make sense to me. Why would it matter if Jesus Christ was a man? And why should anyone be telling me what I should and shouldn't believe? I put that aside though. It seemed like a minor flaw in an otherwise satisfactory religion. Not that I participated much in my religion. My family never went to synagogue, didn't even belong to one. It was more that being "a Jew" defined me culturally. It gave me brisket and bagels and some holidays to celebrate around the dinner table. As an adult, I did not join a congregation until my firstborn son was ready to enroll in preschool, and then, it was only because we were required to do so by his preschool, which was part of Park Avenue Synagogue. For years, we drifted along as barely-participating members of this congregation, drifting anemically into enrolling our sons in the Hebrew School, then leaving Park Avenue Synagogue for a less rigorous Hebrew School, then leaving the city and joining a synagogue with a Hebrew School that was so lacking in rigor that it doesn't even call itself "Hebrew School", but rather "Jewish Identity Education." Finally, this past year, we have found ourselves drifting rather lacksidasically towards my older son's Bar Mitzvah. It wasn't until we attended a training session for parents of Bar Mitzvah age children that I was jarred out of my trance. It was at this training session that our rabbi basically summarized the Torah (the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) in an hour's time. He started with the Garden of Eden and he ended with the death of Moses. As a lover of literature, I expected to be delighted with by the stories that are told over and over again throughout literature, drama and music, whether directly or as metaphor. Instead, all I heard was this: "God built, God destroyed what he built, God rebuilt, God destroyed it again. God was angry, God was proud, plague of this, plague of that, flood, fire, destruction, war, slaves, more death, my way or the highway. The end." I walked out of that lecture traumatized. This God that the rabbi spoke of, that the Bible spoke of, could not be benevolent. He certainly couldn't be my imaginary friend. This God was vindictive, arbitrary and capricious, like a child, building towers out of Legos and then smashing them to bits. And if God were not really anything like that, the Bible was still glorifying a God that could kill entire races because they displeased him. That night, I couldn't sleep. It dawned on me that using the Bible as a reference, one might suppose that the Holocaust was evidence that the Jews had displeased God, and that God was simply cleaning house. My mind reeled: Hurricane Katrina as God's will? Children with cancer? Orphans? Plane crashes? Of course, intellectually, I understood that the Bible was written by people who witnessed, or were told of, terrible events, and were simply trying to make sense of it. So, either , I couldn't believe in this God, or I couldn't tolerate the Bible as anything more than the rantings of scared, primitive people who needed to believe that there was a reason for all of the things that frightened and displeased them. I decided to reject the Bible. And that was no small feat given that the Jewish religion is based on the Torah, on celebrating the Torah, on revering the Torah (for God 's sake, we KISS the Torah, as if it were a living being). But I decided that no one could tell me how to be a Jew. And I decided that I could tolerate my son having a Bar Mitzvah, so long as I told him that he doesn't have to "believe" in the Torah to participate in the ritual (he had already expressed his own doubts in the existence of God, which makes him vaguely agnostic, but still a Jew). Not long after this, I was talking to my brother-in-law, who I like to refer to as an "Extremist Atheist" because of his efforts to convert the entire world to atheism, and his epic intolerance for anyone who believes in God, about my decision to reject the bible. I told him that my feeling was that the Bible is the problem, as opposed to God, that I could believe in God but not believe that he was single-handedly responsible for every bad thing that has ever happened in the history of the world. My brother-in-law's reply was to ask me this: " What evidence to you have that God exists? " I thought about it. And I thought about it some more. But I had no answer beyond, "How could this world exist without intelligent design?" And even I knew that that was not "evidence". You might call it "faith" of sorts, because "faith" cannot exist except in the face of a LACK of evidence. But still, it wasn't evidence, and I knew that. And for lack of a better answer, I decided, " Yep, I'm an atheist." Except I couldn't stop talking to my imaginary friend, God. And I felt weird trying to not use the word "God" in sentences like, "God knows..." and "God help us" and "Oh my God!" But mostly, I couldn't stand the idea that there is no greater power out there, and I couldn't tolerate my own hubris at denying the existence of something that might be beyond my comprehension. I don't understand a word of what Stephen Hawking writes, but that doesn't mean he's a raving lunatic. I don't know if there is life on other planets, and I certainly have no evidence of it, but wouldn't it be a bit short-sighted to refuse to believe that there could be? And so, as quickly as I made the decision to reject God, I made the decision to stop rejecting God. I know that isn't saying a lot. But it's enough for me. Sure, I'm still not a fan of the way God is presented in the Bible. Sure, I don't understand why bad things happen to good people or otherwise. Sure, I don't like the fact that religion has been and continues to be the root of so much violence. But having that "imaginary friend" is a comfort to me in my life. And I don't presume to know anything more than that. Which is kind of the point, I think. Isn't it? Lauren Cahn blogs about spirituality on Yoga Chickie: Chicken Soup for The Navel Gazing Soul . More on Religion
 
Gay Browne: Does Higher Learning Mean Greener Learning? Top
Greenopia is happy to announce its environmental ratings for the 100 largest schools in the US . We were not satisfied with the rigorousness of other green college lists that were presently available and wanted to lend our expertise in impact analysis to the mix. We used a comprehensive set of criteria to determine our ratings. These included the green building design policies, waste program, food selection, campus vehicle fleet, water conservation measures, climate performance, renewable energy usage, and the overall environmental transparency of the school. At the top of the list, receiving 4 out of a possible 4 leafs were the University of Washington and the University of California at Santa Barbara . Rounding out the top 10 greenest schools were the University of Oregon, the University of California at Davis, Colorado State, Stanford, Harvard, Penn State, the University of California at San Diego, and Duke. With environmental awareness increasing daily, it is not surprising that the environment is becoming a crucial part of education. While most universities offer some sort of environmental program, there is little comprehensive information pertaining to their actual environmental performance relative to other schools. "Rating the environmental performance of a university is a daunting task", said Doug Mazeffa, Greenopia's Research Director. "There are many different criteria that must be considered before any conclusions can be drawn." We used a comprehensive set of criteria to determine its college ratings. Data was collected from the university itself or from other credible sources pertaining to the green building design, waste program, food selection, campus vehicle fleet, water conservation measures, climate performance, renewable energy usage, and the overall environmental transparency of the school. It was fascinating to see the variability in the environmental performance of each university Some schools have made a tremendous effort, while others really have yet to make any significant changes to their policies. See the ratings here. Greenopia employs its award-winning eco-analysis method to deliver actionable green-assessments to the rapidly growing green consumer market. Green businesses and merchants use Greenopia's targeted marketing methods to effectively reach consumers making greener choices.
 
Ed Martin: Daytime Emmys 2009: The Beginning of the End? Top
Watching the 36th annual Daytime Emmy Awards on The CW during the dog days of August confirmed what I already knew: These are dark days indeed for the daypart overall and for soap operas in particular. It's not that the telecast was all bad: I actually prefer smaller venues for the Daytime Emmy celebration (the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles for last night's show, ballrooms at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan during the ceremony's glory years) and I always enjoy an entertaining opening number at any awards event. (Vanessa Williams' reworked-for-daytime rendition of Can't Take My Eyes Off of You was almost as much fun as Neil Patrick Harris' surprise closing song at this year's Tony Awards.) Best of all, in the soap categories the awards were spread over a number of different shows. Only As the World Turns went totally unrewarded during the telecast. (On Saturday it picked up a couple of Creative Arts Emmys, so no soap went home empty handed.) In fact, I was pleased with most of the winners in the daytime drama categories, from the tie for Outstanding Supporting Actor between the long overdue Vincent Irizarry of All My Children and the very deserving Jeff Branson of Guiding Light to the surprise Outstanding Lead Actress win for Susan Haskell of One Life to Live . (Her portrayal of repeat rape victim Marty Singer in the year's most controversial soap story was consistently riveting.) Even though it would have been nice to see Days of Our Lives named Outstanding Drama Series for the first time in its more than 30 years it was equally exciting to watch The Bold and the Beautiful take the top honor. (Like Days , B&B had never won in this category.) Days at least took home two high-profile acting awards: Tamara Braun for Outstanding Supporting Actress and Darin Brooks for Outstanding Younger Actor. (Brooks stupidly saw fit to curse during his acceptance speech.) But, damn, what a depressing experience overall for fans of daytime drama, those devout enthusiasts at whom the Daytime Emmy telecast is supposedly targeted. (Let's face it: Talk shows, news shows and children's programming basically come along for the ride. Viewers tune in to see soap stars.) The soaps are already contending with questionable audience measurement, ever-increasing media competition, industry executives who seem to be not particularly invested in ensuring their survival, threats of impending cancellation and, most egregiously, a pool of writing talent that can best be described as stagnant. (As my friend Michael Logan over at TV Guide likes to say, the main reason soaps are losing viewers these days is that they aren't fun to watch. That may sound deceptively simple, but it's true, as anyone fortunate enough to have watched virtually any soap opera during the Eighties will tell you. Where is the humor? Where are the eccentric characters? Where are the zany stories that brought millions of new young viewers to the show? Why are they all so effing dark and depressing?) And now this! The genre's biggest night of the year, once a sparkling showcase for the hardest working people in entertainment television, compromised by a hurried, poorly directed show, telecast on a network that carries no daytime dramas during one of the lowest rated weekends of the year. Even the talent in the audience seemed to have been made uneasy by it all. In several decades of award-show watching I have never seen so many sloppy presenters and nervous winners. So many of them were so shaky it was uncomfortable to watch. The biggest disgrace, though, was the rushed tribute to the soon-to-be-terminated Guiding Light , which has already completed production and will have its last telecast in two weeks. It's bad enough that this historic show, which has been broadcast almost every weekday since 1937 on radio and television, was unceremoniously put to death by its handlers at Procter & Gamble Productions and CBS. Couldn't the folks at the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences find it in their hearts to put together a longer, grander farewell to a show that can only be described as a national treasure, albeit one that has been inexcusably beaten down in recent years? The selection of another long-running television treasure, Betty White, to introduce the tribute was genius. ("I have been watching Guiding Light ever since it first went on the air in 1776," White quipped at the start. "As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end.") After a quick clip reel, the cast took the stage for a few bows, but nobody was allowed to speak, and The CW abruptly cut to a commercial while the actors were still receiving their last applause. It all seemed so wrong. From the days of radio thru the digital era, and without ever ceasing production, GL brought compelling entertainment to its fans. It was there during the Great Depression, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, the assassination of a president, years of riots in our cities and calamitous protests on our campuses, Watergate, the resignation of a president, multiple recessions and energy crises and natural disasters, the Gulf War, 9/11 and the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, among other national and international hardships and challenges. After that titanic trajectory, the circumstances under which GL was made to take its final bow were insulting to all of the people who ever worked on the show and all who ever listened to and/or watched it. The other big bad of the night was the brush-off to The Bold and the Beautiful at night's end. For the first time in its 22-year history B&B was named Outstanding Daytime Drama, but as its cast and producers moved toward the stage the end credits began to roll and there was a jarring cut to a camera in the back of the balcony, where people were dashing from their seats to the exits hoping to bolt the theater before the crowd. As the credits continued there was finally a shift to a camera down by the stage, but instead of an acceptance speech all viewers got were shots of B&B actors congratulating each other. It was an undignified mess. This may have been the first award show ever that did not run too long because of endless acceptance speeches. Rather, the excess was in the content: A second song from host Vanessa Williams at the 90-minute mark, which also included a brief turn with Dancing with the S tars stud Gilles Marini and had absolutely nothing to do with daytime; a frivolous fashion show that allowed many pretty young soap stars who were neither nominees or presenters to take the stage and shake their stuff; an over-long tribute to Sesame Street on the occasion of its 40th anniversary that was much more lovingly executed than the Guiding Light brush off. A segment honoring Feed the Children also took up a lot of time but I'm not going to complain about it. I think every entertainment industry awards show should take a few minutes to call attention to a deserving charity. There is always time for that. Seriously, Williams' second song or the fashion show could have been cut and there wouldn't have been a squawk in the land. And that would have allowed plenty of time for a more fitting farewell for GL and a few words from B&B executive producer Bradley Bell, who deserves a moment in the spotlight for producing a first-class program. It is not for nothing that B&B remains the most popular soap opera in the world. I like to think that the producers of the Daytime Emmys might learn from their mistakes and put on a better show next year. But at this dark time I wonder if there will even be a Daytime Emmy telecast in 2010. If they do endure, I think it's time to move them back to New York and back into the daypart they celebrate and promote. Still, that would involve the support of the Big Three. Is this really so insurmountable a challenge that CBS Corp., Disney and NBC Universal combined can't find a way to make it work?
 
Michael Wolff: Does the World Need Another Murdoch? Top
There is something excruciatingly little-boyish about Rupert Murdoch's 37-year-old son, James, who runs his father's companies in Europe and Asia. Seldom have I seen an adult so intently trying to mimic his father. On top of that, it's competitive--he doesn't just want to please, he wants to outdo. If it's something James thinks Rupert would say, he says it in even more absolute terms (and his father is nothing if not an absolutist). The other day, Murdoch the younger delivered the McTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival. The speech, in which a media heavy lays down a new position or thesis or view of the world, is always a significant event in the British media year. It also marks James's coming of age. His father gave the McTaggart Lecture a decade ago. James, shortly after he became his father's Internet adviser during the dotcom boom, had given what's called the "alternative" McTaggart, a speech delivered by a media business curiosity (I gave the speech the year after James). James himself pointed out in his talk last week that this was the first time in the history of the McTaggart that an alternative had stepped up to be the main deal. He had, he wanted the world to know, arrived. Continue reading on newser.com
 
Dr. Susan Corso: Healthcare Despair Top
Anybody else hit the despair wall on the health care front? I hadn't until I watched Bill Maher's Friday night in-depth interview of the resplendent Bill Moyers, journalist of journalists. Here's a piece of it on YouTube , if you're curious. The gentlemen were discussing metaphor and Mr. Maher asked Mr. Moyers for a true metaphor for the unforgiving health care downslide we seem to be choosing. Mr. Moyers, in his genius, answered immediately, "We're all in the same boat." Simple. Clear. Elegant. Moyers said it is "a moral message." It is that, and it's the absolute truth as well. We are all in the same boat, dear one. Every one of us. What I don't get is why we can't see that or won't see that or don't see that! Until everyone has health care (and that is health care , not health insurance), none of us really do. Those of us with insurance are already paying for those who don't have health coverage in sky-rocketing costs for tests and procedures we don't need so that insurers can line their own and physicians' pockets. Don't you get it?! How much plainer does it have to be? The thing Mr. Moyers said that sent my sweetie and me even more toward the abyss of despair is that "we have two corporate political parties" and "a corporate president." Whoa. Do we? I'm afraid we do. President Obama has already given his word to Big Pharma that he won't allow folks to import less expensive drugs from Canada, and that's just the start of it. Mr. Moyers: "I think if Obama fought rather than finessed so much ...." I'm afraid I have to agree with Mr. Moyers. Oh, I like that Obama is cool, don't we all, but is that cool m.o. getting it done? I don't think so. When he gave the eulogy at Senator Edward Kennedy's funeral, there was no mention of the core issue of Senator Kennedy's career: healthcare. Why? Because Team Obama argued it out and decided that politicizing a cause at the funeral was in poor taste. They're right, it would have been, and it smacks just a little too much of an eye toward reelection to sit well with me. My Jewish grandmother would say: "One mention would have killed him?" Mr. Moyers says Mr. Obama ought to say, "We need this [universal healthcare] because we're a decent country." It's shocking to me how the miniscule minority of the right has become the perpetually irritating squeaky wheel that's getting not the grease, but the news cycle. Stop! Enough already! Bill Maher has been saying for months that Americans don't understand the healthcare debate enough to have an opinion about it. I agree with him, and I count myself among that number. If I had to, I'd even cop to the fact that I don't really want to understand it. I just want it done, so Team Obama can get us out of Iraq, into greening our economy, and a host of other things they promised if we'd elect them. Yes, we did, and so now, yes, they must. Moyers says toward the end, "We are a very crippled giant, suffering from self-inflicted wounds that if we do not treat and heal will, in fact, bring us to our knees and, ultimately, to our doom." Despair some? Oh yeah. "We wait so long. ... We wait a long time, until, almost, the ship has sunk, and the rivets of the ship of state, I think, are in fragile shape right now. ... We're close to losing the moral, financial and economic muscle, and the wisdom that makes a huge nation a great nation, but it's never too late." Despair much? Yep, but with a glint of hope. Anne Lamott wrote a swell Op-Ed piece about healthcare and campaign promises to Mr. Obama in the Los Angeles Times recently. She finishes with this: "Do it for Teddy Kennedy, boss. Do it for the other Kennedys too, for Dr. King, for Big Mama, for the poorest kids you met on the trail, the kids who go to emergency rooms for their health care, do it for their mothers and for Michelle. Just do it. "Trusting you, Mr. Obama." I'm with Anne Lamott. Years ago, I wrote a little book called God's Dictionary , which uses what the reviewers called "folk etymology" to give deeper meanings to everyday words. One of the words in that book was despair . It comes from Latin roots meaning a reversal of hope . C'mon, Team Obama, get crackin'. For spiritual nourishment, go to www.susancorso.com . More on Bill Maher
 
Mark Miller: Proving Workplace Age Bias Isn't Easy, But the Case Is Strong Top
It's illegal for employers to discriminate based on age. But age bias is widely acknowledged to be a key factor in job loss and hiring practices -- something that should be painfully obvious to even a casual reader of newspapers, which routinely run articles about laid-off midlife workers. In 2008, layoff-related age discrimination claims filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission were at a record high, and they were up 29 percent compared with 2007. Discrimination in hiring is much harder to prove -- in fact, it's nearly impossible. But older workers don't doubt that it exists. A new Civic Ventures survey of older workers found most employees reporting strong anecdotal evidence of ageism in job searches. Survey respondents spoke of being weeded out of applicant pools. Many reported "getting the green light" during a phone interview, then watching the interviewer's face fall when the applicant arrived for an in-person meeting. "No one called until I took the dates off my resume," one job seeker said. "Then, their eyes grew wide when I met with them, making their surprise hard to miss." "Applicants told of interviewers using telltale phrases such as seeking someone who was 'the right fit' or 'fit the culture,' and rejecting them as 'overqualified' or 'too experienced,'" reported Terry Nagel, a Civic Ventures spokesperson. Some were asked questions about their stamina and plans for retirement. "Respondents reported that one common practice is asking applicants the date they graduated from high school," she said. "Another way of trying to elicit an applicant's age was asking if the applicant knew a person at their college who attended during a certain time frame. Some were asked their age point-blank." Several years ago, a researcher from the National Bureau of Economic Research set out to document ageism in hiring practices by measuring the response of employers to applicants of varying ages who responded to job postings. Read about the results of that research and other studies at RetirementRevised.com . More on Careers
 
Isha Judd: Is Marriage a Remedy for Insecurity? Top
Meet somebody, fall in love, get married. That's how it goes, right? Hmm. Then what? We hear of divorce rates, couple therapy and affairs, but we also hear of the picture-perfect 50 year happy marriages. What is this need to get married, and why do we think it will fulfill us? If I was going to be cynical, I could say that the institution of marriage needs to be protected with contracts and promises, because it is a man-made constraint that comes from fear, and thus, is fragile. We feel the need to make the other commit so we can control them, so we can be sure they will stay by our side and make us feel safe. Often, it is a need to receive the public approval associated with marriage, or to fulfill a childhood fairy-tale fantasy that we have had pushed down our throats, like the chicken soup we were told could cure a cold. But I don't wish to make it all appear so bleak. In a marriage between two people who love each other unconditionally, there is no need to tie the other person down or try to control them in any way; unconditional love gives the other the freedom of expression that we all wish for -- the freedom to be ourselves. What greater love is there than that? If you really love someone, how could you want them to be anyone else? This type of marriage flourishes and blossoms into two individuals supporting each other in achieving their own potential. Our need to make the love of another eternal comes from our own desperate need to be loved. This need will continue unsated until we come to love ourselves. The impulse to control others comes from our lack of self-love. We have learned to reject ourselves so much that we have become slaves of outside approval; our sense of worth depends almost entirely on the opinion of those around us. This is so for even seemingly successful, powerful people; if their confidence lies in their success or public standing, where will it go if those things are taken away? This is why loss can often be such a great teacher, for in loss, we are faced with our own feelings of emptiness. No longer filled with our distractions or addictions of choice, the hole inside is left open and visible, impossible to ignore any longer. We then have two choices: We can try to hide it again -- by rebuilding that which we have lost or replacing it with some other form of distraction -- or we can finally decide to take responsibility for our own inadequacy, and begin to do the necessary work to find completion within. Marriage isn't a remedy for insecurity. The only true remedy for insecurity is self-love -- going beyond the fears and doubts of the mind and developing an awareness of the underlying security that is our very being, what I call love-consciousness . True love, unconditional love, breaks all boundaries, boxes and ideas. It is the unlimited nature of being; it is life itself. How to move from conditional love to unconditional love So how can we tell if our personal relationships are based on need or something deeper? Here I share some common indicators of codependency. Ask yourself if you do these things in your relationships, and then read my suggestions of how to change these behaviors into a more loving way of interacting. Scenario: Do you lie to your partner? Lies may range from little things (yes honey, I love your chicken casserole) to more important ones (I'll be late back home from work tonight) , but lies are a sign of a relationship based in need; the need to receive the approval of the other. Solution: Be honest. Love is always truthful. Lying comes from fear. If you want a loving relationship, the truth is the only option. Always. Scenario: Do you try to control and change your partner? The need to modify them comes from your own expectations of how you think they should behave in order for you to feel supported and loved. This comes from not taking responsibility for your own security. Solution: Let go. When you see yourself manipulating or being overbearing, stop. Bring yourself into the moment and think to yourself, "oh, I can let that go." Go inwards and focus on loving yourself. Then the need to control your partner will fall away. Scenario: do your conversations always turn into arguments? Solution: Listen. When your partner is talking to you, really listen to what they are saying, especially if you don't agree or if it makes you angry. You will find that the things you least want to hear can help you grow the most. You don't have to agree in order to listen, and by listening you are not automatically making the other person right, but you are opening up to receive what they have to show you. When you listen, you learn more about the other person, but most importantly, you learn more about yourself. Scenario: Do you feel resented? If you do not express your feelings openly with your partner, resentment will begin to grow within you. This resentment will then be triggered by the silliest little things. If you find that during an argument, you whip out the list of everything you feel resented about, you are not expressing enough what you are feeling. Solution: Be vulnerable. A truly loving relationship will bear the test of the truth. Be honest about what you are feeling and you will soon see the true nature of your relationship. Tell your partner how you feel. Don't try to change them; express with the goal of being totally transparent, of showing yourself exactly as you are. Recognize the fear and allow yourself to feel it. By doing so, you will begin to release the emotional charge that causes resentment and replace it with love. The wonderful thing about these recommendations is that they only take one person to work! Don't fall into the trap of thinking, I can't share my feelings with him because he never listens... or I'll be honest with her if she is honest with me.... Once you make the decision to put honesty and transparency above the need for approval or the need to manipulate your partner, everything will begin to change. If your relationship is based in two people who really love each other, it will become more intimate, more fulfilling. And if the love really has gone, then it will probably soon be over. But ask yourself this: when faced with the truth, would you really want to spend your life with someone who doesn't love you? The truth is, once you start being honest enough to confront that reality, you will already be well on the way to loving yourself. And you will find that this more than compensates the loss of an ultimately unfulfilling relationship. You can receive notice of this blog every week by clicking on "Become a Fan" at the top of this page. Isha's latest book and movie, Why Walk When You Can Fly? explains her system for self-love and the expansion of consciousness. Her website is www.whywalkwhenyoucanfly.com . More on Marriage
 
US Fined $295 Million Over Illegal Subsidies To Cotton Growers Top
GENEVA — American goods will face around $295 million in annual sanctions as a result of the United States' failure to eliminate illegal subsidies to U.S. cotton growers, the World Trade Organization ruled Monday. The result was disappointing for Brazil, which has won a series of rulings against the U.S. over the last seven years. The Latin American country had sought to target American goods and drug patents for $2.5 billion worth of economic retaliation. The WTO ruled that the sanctions should vary depending on U.S. payments each year. Arbitrators used 2006 as a base year for the ruling, and said U.S. payments would have to increase significantly for Brazil to be allowed to punish American drug patents. "The cumulated amount of countermeasures to which Brazil is entitled to is $294.7 million," the WTO said in a two-part ruling totaling 269 pages. Washington had argued that the award should not exceed $30 million. "While we remain disappointed with the outcome of this dispute, we are pleased that the arbitrators awarded Brazil far below the amount of countermeasures it asked for," said Carol Guthrie, spokeswoman for U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Guthrie said the U.S. was also pleased that the WTO rejected Brazil's request for "unlimited" sanctions on U.S. patents and trademarks, and for a one-time award of $350 million in penalties for a subsidy Washington has already repealed. Monday's ruling was the fifth major decision since the Brazilian government brought the case to the WTO in 2002, alleging that the U.S. was able to retain its place as the world's second-largest cotton producer by paying out some $3 billion to American farmers each year. China is the largest exporter of cotton, while Brazil is fifth. The WTO's condemnation of the U.S. in September 2004 was seen as a victory for Brazil and for West African countries that claimed to have been harmed by the subsidies. Three decisions since have confirmed that U.S. support programs unfairly help U.S. producers undersell foreign competitors and depress world market prices, dealing a double blow to cotton growers in Brazil and elsewhere. In response to the legal defeats, the U.S. Congress has scrapped some export credits and in 2006 repealed the "Step-2" cotton-marketing program that made payments to exporters and domestic mill users as compensation for buying higher-priced American cotton. But last year it approved a new farm bill worth nearly $300 billion that left a number of other contentious cotton programs intact. "Few WTO disputes have been as difficult – or as politicized – as the fight over U.S. cotton subsidies," says Brendan McGivern, a partner at White & Case law firm in Geneva who represented cotton-growing nations Benin and Chad in the case at no charge until 2004. "The subsidies paid by the United States to its 25,000 cotton farmers exceed the entire gross national income of virtually every cotton-exporting country in West and Central Africa," McGivern said. "Despite several rounds of litigation and ministerial-level negotiations, this issue remains unresolved." The United States has consistently argued that cotton should be dealt with as part of a world trade deal among the WTO's 153 members. Those talks have been going on since 2001 and are far from completion. Brazil and the U.S. have often clashed in the negotiations, which have largely divided rich and developing nations over how to open up farm trade in the industrialized world while easing access for manufacturers and service providers in emerging markets such as China and India. Critics of the cotton subsidies say they drive down prices, making it impossible for small farms to compete in international markets and more difficult for poorer countries to develop their economies by selling their agricultural produce abroad. A WTO-proposed draft released two years ago calls on the U.S. to make an 82 percent cut in trade-distorting handouts to American cotton farmers as part of the trade accord. Washington has rejected the cuts, but never proposed an alternative. The cotton case was the first agricultural case launched by a developing country in the WTO's history. More on Brazil
 
Lockerbie Bomber In Hospital, Libya Says Top
TRIPOLI, Libya — A Libyan official said the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has been hospitalized and television footage showed him breathing through an oxygen mask, signs his illness from cancer may be worsening shortly after his early prison release sparked international outrage. The Libyan Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Mohammed Siala, said Monday that Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was in the hospital and described him as a "dying man." "He is in the hospital, he is a dying man, it is normal than he came to spend his last few days in Libya," Siala told The Associated Press. His comments came after Britain's Channel 4 television Sunday night showed footage of the 57-year-old al-Megrahi in a Tripoli hospital bed propped up by pillows and wearing an oxygen mask while some members of his family stood nearby. A reporter can be heard asking al-Megrahi a question about his case but al-Megrahi appears too weak to answer. Al-Megrahi was convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, killing 259 people on the plane and 11 on the ground. Scotland released him Aug. 20 on compassionate grounds because doctors said he was dying of prostate cancer. His release and return to Libya where he was greeted warmly at the airport by hundreds of cheering supporters has led to outrage from many of the Lockerbie victims and questions about whether his release was secured in order to facilitate lucrative oil trade with Libya. Both Britain and Scotland have denied that business had anything to do with allowing al-Megrahi to leave prison after completing only eight years of his life sentence. There was no way to independently verify al-Megrahi's condition, and the Libyan official offered no further details. Al-Megrahi underwent extensive medical testing before Scottish officials confirmed his cancer diagnosis, but questions have been raised about the seriousness of his condition. The London-based Asharq Al-Awssat newspaper last Wednesday quoted al-Megrahi's father as saying that the former Libyan inmate was not dying. "It is not that serious as some news media have been portraying," Ali al-Megrahi told the newspaper. "I see he is improving day by day, and he is better than the day he returned." More on Africa
 
David Brooks' Barack Obama Bromance: Inside The Unlikely Situation Top
These days, the center-right Brooks frequently seems more sympathetic toward Obama than the liberal Paul Krugman. He has written columns praising Obama's Afghanistan policy, education proposals, and economic team. Even on broad areas of disagreement--deficit spending, the sprawling stimulus bill, health care reform--Brooks tends to treat Obama and his administration with respect. "My overall view," Brooks told me, "is ninety-five percent of the decisions they make are good and intelligent. Whether I agree with them specifically, I think they're very serious and very good at what they do." It is an odd situation to say the least: David Brooks, prominent conservative, has become the most visible journalistic ally of arguably the most liberal president of his lifetime. More on Barack Obama
 
Huckabee Doubles Down On Controversial Kennedy Comments Top
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee doubled down Sunday on controversial remarks he made last week , in which he declared that Ted Kennedy would have been told to go home and die under ObamaCare. "What did I say that wasn't true?" asked the one-time presidential candidate on his Fox News show "Huckabee." Huckabee accused "George Stephanopoulos, Time Magazine, the Huffington Post, and scores of liberal bloggers," of going "berserk" over his suggestion that Kennedy would have been told to take a pain pill for his brain cancer, "I pointed out that when Senator Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal cancer he chose to fight with all that was within him and to do that for life, instead of choosing the pain pill that President Obama spoke of," said Huckabee. "In fact, listen to what I said. It was actually a tribute to Senator Kennedy and an observation that he did what Americans would want to do: follow the best health care advice that they can find. And we don't want the government telling us to go home and take a pain pill and die," he added. "When diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at age 77, Senator Kennedy didn't do as President Obama suggested and take a pain pill and ride it home. He did what most of us would do or want to do. He went to the very best medical facilities in the world, had surgery, and sought to live as long and as strong as possible." These latest remarks seem likely to further stir the debate over which side of the political aisle is attempting to reap the greatest political gain from Kennedy's death. Earlier in his Sunday show, the former governor accused Democrats of trying to "capitalize on [Kennedy's passing] with calls for hurriedly enacting government run health care as a tribute to him." As for Huckabee's question regarding what he said that wasn't true, the fact-checking organization, Politifact, tackled the supposed "pain pill" charge when Rep. Dan Lungren, (R-Cali.) jumped on it in late July. We went to the transcript of the event and found that Lungren is distorting Obama's words. While Obama did bring up the example of patients and their families possibly having to choose between a pill and a pacemaker at some point, he did it as a hypothetical example while emphasizing that the government's role should be to provide background information so that patients and doctors can better sort through thorny, end-of-life issues. [snip] Looking at the full transcript, it's clear that Obama voluntarily brought up the example of having to choose between a surgery and a pill. But he did so as a hypothetical example of difficult decisions about medical treatment for older patients. He was not advocating, much less requiring, bureaucrats to make a potentially life-ending decision for a centenarian. "I don't want bureaucracies making those decisions," Obama said. One can be skeptical about whether Obama's promises to keep the government out of doctor-patient decisionmaking will hold if health care legislation becomes a reality. But Lungren goes beyond that to distort what the president actually said. We rate Lungren's claim False. Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Is Alt Comedy The New Mainstream? Top
Indeed, this darkly ironic, scathing, scatological and subversive humor actually disguises a more pragmatic point of view: Comedy is a savvy career move. And though serious comics have always been creatures of New York and Los Angeles, more and more of them end up here for the work. Yes, success is still a longshot and demands slavish devotion, but the opportunities -- and the ethnicities of the comics themselves -- are far more diverse than they've ever been.
 
Alabama NBC Affiliate Reports On Mysterious Broom Top
An Alabama NBC station is reporting that a broom is standing on its own, "unsupported," inside a consignment shop. Yes. That is what is going on in this clip: actual news resources expended to get to the bottom of what is causing this broom to stand on its own. Naturally, I have no idea what any of this means, except that this pretty much nicely caps off the month of August, when the media traditionally runs out of news. This Alabama NBC station is lucky , actually. Think of all the affiliates that did not have mystery brooms to report on this weekend! More important, however, is what this broom symbolizes to me. It's been a long summer of watching the health care reform debate deteriorate, crazy people yelling at lawmakers for daring to try to explain a piece of legislation to them, and wave after wave of cultural icons dying . To me, this broom represents a turn of the tide. It announces the change of a season. It suggests a renewal. And more than anything else, it reminds me that I should really clean the kitchen floor today. Also, maybe this is " The Broom Of The System ," an implicit reference to David Foster Wallace which reminds us that we only have a few weeks to finish Infinite Jest . Anyway, thank you, heroic and magical Alabama broom, for all that you have endeavored to teach us. [ Via News1News ] [Would you like to follow me on Twitter ? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here .] More on Video
 
Newsday Rejects Verizon Ads After Cablevision Deal Top
Verizon Communications bought full-page ads in Newsday several times a month for its FiOS Internet and television service until a few months ago, when the paper said it would no longer take them, according to a Verizon executive and ad buyers who work with the company. More on Newspapers
 
Russel Honore Dismisses Talk Of Senate Run Against Vitter Top
The general who led military relief efforts in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is denying a report that he may challenge Louisiana Sen. David Vitter in 2010, calling it "speculation and rumors" Sunday.
 
Ponyo Is On A Boat (NSFW VIDEO) Top
An inventive YouTuber has taken the Lonely Island hit "I'm on a Boat" and mashed it up with video from the new anime movie "Ponyo." It fits disturbingly well but we're still partial to Bert & Ernie . WATCH: Get HuffPost Comedy On Facebook and Twitter! More on Funny Videos
 
Tom Delay Rehearses For 'Dancing With The Stars' Top
As you may have heard, former Republican House Majority Leader Tom "The Hammer" Delay has decided to take up dancing while waiting for his charges of money laundering to play out. Yes, Delay has joined the cast of 'Dancing With The Stars.' (Or Dancing With The Creeps , as one writer put it.) Delay is 62, has had no formal dance training, and according to a Fox News report , his favorite dance is the Texas Two-Step. Now, ABC has released promotional photos of Delay and his 'Dancing With The Stars' partner Cheryl Burke practicing for their hot September debut. Delay looks cheerful in the pictures, and they certainly hint of interesting things to come. As Executive Producer Conrad Green, of the show said in a recent interview: "We wanted someone sort of iconic and who the audience would have strong feelings about." More on Photo Galleries
 
Mary Cheney Gave $1,000 To Anti-Gay Senate Hopeful Top
Mary Cheney, the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney and onetime gay outreach director for Coors Brewing Company, gave $1,000 to a Republican Senate hopeful who voted against same-sex marriage and allowing gay couples to adopt children in the District of Columbia.
 
Joe Barton: Republicans Will Repeal Health Care Reform If It Passes Top
On a conference call last month, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) hedged a little bit on the question of whether Republicans, if they won a congressional majority in 2010, would repeal a health care bill passed by the 111th Congress. Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) is not hedging.
 
Len Levitt: Police Commissioner Gets His Very Own Mouthpiece Top
Apparently unhappy with the legal advice he has been getting, Ray Kelly has hired himself a new $165,000 attorney and you, the taxpayers, will be paying for her. She is Katherine Ann Lemire, who was a prosecutor in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney office. She worked in the Public Corruption Unit. Police sources say Lemire will be handling Kelly's most important cases. "The question her appointment raises," says Chris Dunn, Associate Legal Director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, "is whether Commissioner Kelly is unhappy with the legal representation he has gotten in high-profile cases from the police department and the law department." It is not known what specifically caused Kelly to seek his own private counsel. Some note that he got beaten up pretty badly a year or so ago in a deposition by attorneys for Critical Mass, the bicycle-riding group that the department has long targeted. Kelly was also embarrassed by Manhattan District Court Judge Charles Haight, following the arrests of 274 anti-Iraq war protesters in 2003. Haight mocked Kelly's claims of ignorance about the wide-ranging and potentially unconstitutional questioning of protesters in their jail cells, where detectives asked them such questions as who their friends were, what colleges they attended, their political associations and their feelings about Israel and Palestine. While Kelly, a non-practicing lawyer, defended the questioning as "debriefings," Haight said: "A pilot who returns from a mission is debriefed. A defector is debriefed by agents." Referring to the Iraq protesters, Haight said, "Those persons were in police custody." Haight further mocked Kelly's professed ignorance of the questioning, comparing it to a famous line in the classic movie Casablanca, spoken by Claude Raines. Playing a corrupt French official, Raines succumbs to pressure from the Nazis and closes his favorite nightspot with the trumped up excuse, "I'm shocked, shocked to find gambling going on," just as a croupier gives him his winnings. Two high-profile police cases appear on the horizon that may also have Kelly worried. One involves the department's controversial "stop-and-frisk" policy that apparently targets young black males. The other is the Intelligence Division's controversial spying on political groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York. What may have upset Kelly in the latter was an apparent last-minute decision by Deputy Police Commissioner for Legal Maters Andrew Schaffer and Corporation Counsel Peter Farrell to make public the Intelligence Division's secret spying. That decision stemmed from a Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit asserting that many of the 1,800 protesters arrested at the RNC had been illegally arrested, detained and fingerprinted. Then in December 2006, after two years of litigation, the department notified the plaintiffs on the eve of discovery that Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence David Cohen would be a witness and that the department would produce Intelligence Division documents that justified the arrests. "We had litigated the case for over two years," said New York Civil Liberties Union's Dunn. "Three days before discovery was set to close, they notified us for the first time that Cohen would be a witness. Someone high up would have had to make the decision to insert Cohen into case. He had been conspicuously absent until then." The department subsequently maintained that the detentions stemmed from what Intelligence Division detectives had learned from the political surveillance operation. But when the NYCLU asked exactly what it was they had learned and sought to see the documents the department claimed had justified the arrests, the department refused to reveal them. Said Dunn: "We asked them, 'OK, what did you learn?' They said, 'We don't want to tell you.'" Since then, federal Magistrate James Francis has twice ordered the NYPD to produce these documents. But the department has refused, saying the information was too sensitive. In what came to be called the "Cohen Declaration," Cohen argued that making public any "raw data" from the Intelligence Division could lead to the naming of undercover detectives or confidential informants, whose identities, he said, were "the most protected personnel information in the NYPD." He maintained the information was so sensitive that even his declaration could not be made public. Francis rejected that notion as well. Plaintiffs' lawyers have maintained they do not seek the names of informants or detectives - only the names of the political groups spied on and what the NYPD learned about their activities. Instead of turning over the documents, city lawyers have appealed Francis' decisions. The case is now before District Judge Richard Sullivan. Schaffer was said by his office to be on vacation. Lemire, Kelly's new hire, could not be reached for comment. Yusil Scribner, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office, did not respond to e-mails and telephone calls. ROCCO TO THE NEWS : Newday's veteran police reporter Rocco Parascandola is becoming police bureau chief of the Daily News. He succeeds Alison Gendar, who is moving to federal court after a 4 ½ year run in which she broke the story of the NYPD's secret plan to take over security at Ground Zero; nabbed Assistant Chief John Colgan for sleeping in the Brooklyn counter -terrorism headquarters to hide the fact that he lived way upstate, violating the NYPD's legal residency requirement; and nailed the department's highest ranked black officer, Douglas Zeigler, revealing he had been parked outside his girlfriend's home when he was stopped by a white cop whom Zeigler accused of racism. She also had a hand in a recent Daily News survey that found that it was virtually impossible to reach half the city's precincts by telephone. [And you wonder why crime is down.] Parascandola, who reported for Newday for 8 ½ years after 12 years at the Post, had discovered a similar phenomenon in 2003, writing a series of articles, based on statements from the patrolmen's and sergeant's unions, indicating that the department systemically reduced felonies to misdemeanors to lower the crime rate. When Mark Pomerantz, the former head of the Mayor's Commission on Police Corruption, sought police documents on the matter, Kelly refused to turn them over. When Bloomberg backed Kelly by saying and doing nothing, Pomerantz resigned. With the loss of Parascandola, Newsday goes into further oblivion. The street-smart Parascandola joins an elite, although shrinking, fraternity, that now includes the the hardworking, decent Al Baker at the Times and the canny Murray Weiss at the Post
 
Miles J. Zaremski: Yogi Berra and Ted Kennedy: Strange Bedfellows? Top
Now that Teddy Kennedy has gone to meet his Maker, I reflected on what his loss really means to the country. But the more I thought about it, the more I started to think about Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame, Bronx Bomber catcher of days past. I then thought about the words spoken at Kennedy's funeral service by his grandchildren, particularly by one Max Allen. This youngster reiterated what Teddy said about health care being a right and not a privilege. (We have heard this viewpoint before over the last year or so, including from this blogger). Then at Arlington National Cemetary, we heard once more what Teddy said about the cause must endure,etc., his courage, and sticking to his principles even in the face of strong opposition. Then I recalled that famous "Yogiism" -- "it ain't over 'till its over." A light bulb went on within me. Yogi and Ted Kennedy arrive at the same end point, though coming from completely and utterly different backgrounds: though they may not be/have been the most intellectually skilled, the most worthy, and though certainly not infallible, both stand for very same thing: stick to principles, stay the course, and have goals in mind to achieve. Keep at it, and then some and when you are tired and discouraged, keep at it some more... until your goal is reached. The metaphor for this is when Teddy, Jr. spoke at the funeral about being so discouraged by not being able to walk up a slippery hill as a youngster in the wintertime due to the loss of a leg from cancer and his father said that they both would do it -- even if it took them all day to achieve. Many pundits are now talking about the value of Kennedy and in what ways he will be missed. I leave that to them to discuss and regurgitate. One thing is certain, however, and this was confirmed in death when a letter Kennedy wrote in recent days to the Pope was read at his burial: achieving health care reform was the sine qua non of his political existence on earth as a legislator in the Senate. While I doubt it will come about solely because he is no longer here, perhaps many of his colleagues who are presently riding the fence of indecision will reflect on Kennedy's wlll and determination to do what is right for all Americans, regardless of the next election cycle. And hopefully, such legislators will rely on facts and not distortions; not on lies; and certainly not on statements knowingly put forth that are dishonest. (For example, we have all heard that the public option is not good for any of us because it will allow the government to interfere with the doctor making the decisions on how to treat us. Everyone should know (if they don't already) that interference by third party bureaucrats from the insurance industry ALREADY occurs. Just look at three United States Supreme Court decisions decided since 2000: Pegram v. Herdrich , Aetna v. Davila , and Cigna v. Calad .) So, rest well Senator Kennedy. But all those in the Congress who will now return from their August recess to debate health care reform will realize that you and Yogi Berra are linked forever -- it ain't over 'till its over. More on Ted Kennedy
 
Ridge: Waterboarding Was "Wrong"; America Shouldn't Have Done It Top
Looks like Tom Ridge has joined the ranks of terrorist-sympathizers. In a throwaway comment in this interview with ABC News earlier today, the former homeland security chief said he thought the decision to waterboard was "wrong." While Ridge also strongly took issue with Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to probe rogue CIA interrogators, Ridge's declaration about waterboarding is significant, and here's why: More on Harsh Interrogations
 
Arizona Pastor Spreads Hateful "Sermon" Against President Obama Top
Maybe you've heard about this "sermon" or maybe you haven't. But before we go any further let me just say one thing: this guy is absolutely nuts. Steve Anderson, the "Pastor" at Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe Arizona is out of control and the Secret Service is on to him. More on Barack Obama
 
John Kerry: We Can't Ignore The Security Threat From Climate Change Top
On August 6, 2001, President George W. Bush famously received an intelligence briefing entitled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Thirty-six days later, al Qaeda terrorists did just that. Scientists tell us we have a 10-year window -- if even that -- before catastrophic climate change becomes inevitable and irreversible. The threat is real, and time is not on our side. Facts, as John Adams said, are stubborn things. Here are a few you need to know: Atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels have risen 38% in the industrial era, from 280 to 385 parts per million (ppm). Scientists have warned that anything above 450 ppm -- a warming of 2 degrees Celsius -- will result in an unacceptable risk of catastrophic climate change. The truth is that the threat we face is not an abstract concern for the future. It is already upon us and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now. Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013. Not in 2050, but four years from now. Make no mistake: catastrophic climate change represents a threat to human security, global stability, and -- yes -- even to American national security. Climate change injects a major new source of chaos, tension, and human insecurity into an already volatile world. It threatens to bring more famine and drought, worse pandemics, more natural disasters, more resource scarcity, and human displacement on a staggering scale. We risk fanning the flames of failed-statism, and offering glaring opportunities to the worst actors in our international system. In an interconnected world, that endangers all of us. The individual data points may sometimes be murky. But the pattern they create is irrefutably clear: We don't know if Hurricane Katrina was caused by climate change, but we do know that we are rapidly heading for a world where climate change causes worse Katrinas. We don't know with certainty whether climate change pushed Darfur over the edge, but we do know that it will cause more tension just like we've seen in Darfur. Once you accept the science, it's clear that such massive environmental change will create dislocation, destruction, chaos, and conflict. And history teaches us that we are deluding ourselves if we think that we are insulated from world events. The people of the tiny coastal village of Newtok, Alaska offer a harbinger of the challenges ahead. Citizens there recently voted to move their village nine miles inland because melting ice shelves made their old home too dangerous. But don't take my word for it. Anyone who doubts the reality of climate change should go to Alaska and see the melting permafrost for themselves, or listen to the state's two U.S. senators tell worrisome stories about climate change's current -- not future -- impact on their state. Anyone who doubts the threat should talk to the 11 retired American admirals and generals who warned in 2007 that "Climate change can act as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world, and it presents significant national-security challenges for the United States." You can even ask the security planners in the Bush Administration, whose final national-defense strategy document recognized climate change among key trends that will shape U.S. defense policy in the coming years. Or ask the National Intelligence Council -- the U.S. intelligence community's think-tank -- has concluded "global climate change will have wide-ranging implications for U.S. national-security interests over the next 20 years." Former CENTCOM Commander Anthony Zinni, no radical tree-hugger, put it simply: "We will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or, we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll." Nowhere is the connection between climate and security more direct than in South Asia -- home to al Qaeda. Scientists now warn that the Himalayan glaciers which supply fresh water to a billion people in the region could disappear completely by 2035. Think about what this means: Water from the Himalayans flows through India and Pakistan. India's rivers are not only vital to its agriculture but are also critical to its religious practice. Pakistan, for its part, is heavily dependent on irrigated farming to avoid famine. At a moment when the U.S. government is scrambling to ratchet down tensions and preparing to invest billions of dollars to strengthen Pakistan's capacity to deliver for its people -- climate change could work so powerfully in the opposite direction. Worldwide, climate change risks making the most volatile places even more combustible. The bottom line is that failure to tackle climate change risks much more than a ravaged environment: It risks a much more dangerous world, and a gravely threatened America. Unfortunately, not everyone in Washington appreciates the stakes. It's tragic that we live at a time when if one were to dismiss the threat of terrorism, you'd be sent home in the next election. But there are no similar political consequences if you dismiss the science or the threat of climate change. This winter, delegates from 192 nations will gather in Copenhagen to create a new global climate treaty. Between now and then, the United States Congress is expected to act on climate legislation. The decisions we make in coming months will determine whether we meet this challenge head-on and prevail or if we are to suffer the worst consequences of a warming planet. This time we have to connect the dots before we face catastrophe. More on Climate Change
 

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