Friday, August 28, 2009

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David Dayen: NYT's Insurance Industry Tearjerker Tries To Change The Subject From Industry Practices Top
The New York Times published a very nice press release from the desk of Humana, one of the nation's largest health insurance companies. The reporter interviewed a bunch of employees at Humana, all of whom were horrified to see themselves depicted as "villains" in the health care debate. I agree with Yves Smith , this is an absurd angle for a story, an extreme example of selection bias. The people who work at Humana probably have a sense that their employer, um, pays their salary, and thusly, what's good for the employer is probably good for them. Similarly, most people hold a favorable opinion of themselves just as a matter of getting through the day. Not to mention the fact that their understanding of the functioning of Humana is limited to their job description. It is not possible to gain much of a perspective on the health care debate or industry practices by asking a midlevel manager "Do you think you're the worst person alive?" Since when is it legitimate, much the less newsworthy, to get a company's perception on its embattled status, at least without introducing either some contrary opinion or better yet, facts, to counter the views of people who will inevitably see what they are doing as right? I hate to draw an extreme comparison to make the point, but staff in Nazi concentration camps also thought they were good people. It is well documented that for all save the depressed, people's assessments of their own behavior is biased in their favor. There is some revelatory stuff in the article, however. David Sirota flags one employee saying that Humana believes in keeping down costs by "controlling utilization": Now, I know we're supposed to think that private for-profit health care companies don't ration care, while government-run programs like Medicare do - but as the insurance industry admits right here for all to see, that's just not the case. The obvious truth is that the health insurance industry works hard to "control utilization" - that is, it works hard to make sure that when you need a costly medical service, you are "controlled" (read: prevented) from getting it. Sure, we're all against excessive testing - and there are good ways to deal with those inefficiencies. But that's not what the insurance industry is talking about. It is talking about its practice of rationing care - and now that reality is right there in black and white for all to see. The truth of the matter is that many of the charges that insurance companies like WellPoint level at the public option and regulatory changes sought in the health reform bill mirror accepted industry practices. WellPoint, which emailed its own customers yesterday attacking the Democratic plan, claimed that health reform will "increase the premiums of those with private coverage." Yet WellPoint routinely hikes their own premium prices by close to double digits annually, leading to ever-increasing profits. The email stated that millions of Americans would lose their private coverage and be forced onto a government-run option if the Democratic bill passed (nothing could be further from the truth); yet WellPoint routinely uses the practice of rescission to drop their own customers from coverage if they ever try to use it, and they've admitted they would continue doing so unless forced to stop by law. The email is an example of the astroturf practices from the industry , including, no doubt, pitching to the New York Times a story putting the human face on insurers. Many of these astroturf efforts spring from the same sources as the corporate lobby groups activating the tea party protests at town hall meetings throughout the country this August. They're trying to change the subject, away from facts, like how they're spending less of their premium revenue on medical care over the years, from 90% in the early 1990s to around 80% today. Or how they use rescission and pre-existing condition to make profits off cherry-picking the healthy and denying everyone else care. House and Senate leaders have requested more and more information about insurance company practices; Dennis Kucinich has joined that effort . But the insurance industry, while nominally siding with reform, wants to keep the focus on efforts against it, in service to de-fanging it. More on Health Care
 
Majority Of Pakistan Swat IDPs Back Home Top
ISLAMABAD: Around 90 per cent displaced people, out of the total, due to the operation in Swat, have so far returned to their homes. More on Pakistan
 
RJ Eskow: Redemption Song: Ted Kennedy Through Allen Ginsberg's Eyes Top
I didn't write or talk much about the death of Ted Kennedy for a couple of days. I didn't even watch any TV coverage. When I finally did watch the testimonials, I remembered seeing Allen Ginsberg on the Tonight Show many years ago. It was either in early 1969 - before Chappaquiddick - or a couple of years after that incident, when Teddy was once again being discussed as a Presidential contender. Johnny Carson asked Ginsberg what he thought of Ted Kennedy. Carson clearly thought that the grubby beatnik/hippie sitting before him would go on a tirade about rich suit-and-tie wearing squares and their bummer/ego/death trips and bringdown wars, or words to that effect. While I don't remember the exact words of Ginsberg's reply, the gist of it was: Well, sure, he's part of the system as it currently exists, and yeah, he's working within a mindset that needs to change, but he kinda represents hope and inspiration, and he's really trying to help people, so I sorta love him. I sorta love him . The comment was striking, both for its casual delivery and the open-hearted generosity of the sentiment. Carson's eyebrows went up in surprise and the conversation went on to something else. To my fourteen or sixteen or seventeen year old self it was a revelation. The false polarity between the world of "straight" engagement and the world of "hipster" art and literature had been stripped away, negated by a simple declaration of love. Ted Kennedy was a Catholic, not a Buddhist, but the remainder of his life reads like a Bodhisattvic exercise. (In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, a"bodhisattva" is an enlightened being who refuses Nirvana and stays in this world to help others.) His brothers flashed across the national stage like shooting stars, brief and brilliant. Teddy's was a slower fire, like the hearth around which a family could gather. He was the one who stayed behind to do the hard work. The dilettante younger brother, the drinker and partier from whom little was expected and less was delivered, the guy who cheated on his exams at Harvard because he couldn't be bothered to study ... he was the brother who spent five decades poring tirelessly over endless pages of legislation and policy briefings. He stayed behind to take care of everyone's children, to fight for the powerless, to do what needed to be done on a daily basis. His personal struggles were well-known. He "struggled with his demons," people said, using a phrase that might have come straight from Tibetan symbolism. He was forced to expose his human weaknesses in a public way, a way that his brothers did not. I remember seeing him on Boston Common once during those dark days. It was a shocking sight, the once-beautiful scion reduced to an ashen specter. His skin seemed to be the same shade as his gray hair and suit, its surface the puffy texture of warts. I don't know what tools he used to escape those demons, but people say he found meaning, purpose, and joy in the hard work of the Senate. He accepted his fate - as a Kennedy, as the Kennedy who survived, as a hard-working solon - with what appeared to be joy and grace. He grew into the shape laid down for him by time and events. With the brush of years he colored in the silhouette that inspired Allen Ginsberg, of all people, to cherish him so many years ago. He kept the vow. He stayed behind. He relished the prosaic tasks of human existence. Draw wood, carry water - pass legislation. He carried on the essential work of the human spirit. We sorta loved him. RJ Eskow blogs: A Night Light The Sentinel Effect: Healthcare Blog More on Ted Kennedy
 
Kristin Maschka: The Day I Was Miffed That No One Thought I Was a Boy Top
Over breakfast yesterday, and again today, I read in the LA Times about Caster Semenya, the South African runner accused of being a man, Runner Caster Semenya has heard the gender comments all her life. And even in the midst of our family morning rush, I have to admit to being more than a little emotional about the story, and with good reason. Just a few weeks ago, I was back home in Minnesota for my youngest sister's wedding. After the reception, I stayed up late into the night with a few of my friends, my middle sister and my parents and we found ourselves reminiscing about our days of playing fastpitch softball all summer with my dad coaching. My friends and I marveled at my father's memory of it all. He could tell us things like who we were playing, the name of the other team's pitcher, where we were, and what the score and count was when my best friend hit the homer that won the game that won that tournament that year. We didn't remember all that. But one memory that was vivid for all of us and replayed together that night came flooding back once again these past two days as I read about Caster. One summer, playing in a national softball tournament, a team we beat accused of us of being boys because we were too good. It was 1984. We were 14 and 15 year old nobodies from a small town in Minnesota in our first national tournament in Salt Lake City, Utah. The other team was powerhouse from Kansas, a regular in the tournament, with sharp uniforms and looking like they belonged there. But we were winning. We were good, really good. Looking back, I'm still amazed at how much talent we had in our small town at that particular point in time. Our catcher and third baseperson in particular had been playing ball together for years. Together they were wicked good, and as the other team's runners tried to take their standard lead off third base after each pitch, they would pick them off. So fast no one could see it coming. Much to the other team's surprise and dismay, we won the game. After the game, there was some commotion, but I don't remember much until someone told us the other coach was accusing us of cheating, that some of our players were too good to be girls and must be boys. He didn't like losing. Kept saying we all had boy's names and looked like boys. Well, we did have a lot of nicknames like Pete and Kenny and hardly anyone was called by their first names on the field, and yes most of us had short hair. And while my daughter today plays softball with ribbons in her hair, you wouldn't have caught any of us dead playing softball with ribbons in our hair back then. There were rumors of having a nurse examine some of our players. The next thing I remember is standing with our whole team in a dank concrete room in the back of the center stadium building. Several of my teammates were visibly upset. At 14, the idea that we might have to "strip" in front of a stranger to prove we were girls was pretty scary. I can guarantee you we all remember those few moments of anxiety when we didn't know what was going to happen next. I was miffed, but for different reasons. I was pretty sure I wasn't on their list of suspects because I wasn't good enough. It was like the opposite of being told "You throw like a girl." Especially in 1984, it was sort of a back-handed compliment to be accused of "throwing like a boy." So for all of us I think, we were a bundle of conflicted feelings - secretly proud at being so good, horrified to think we might have to submit to an exam, hurt deeply that someone was questioning who we were - our identity as a girl. My dad, an attorney, wouldn't let them single any of us out. We would all be in the room to hear the accusation. And all of us remember watching as my dad took them to task, verbally outmaneuvering them at every turn. Just like Caster's supporters, my dad and our parents were "outraged by the questions and request for testing." We all had submitted birth certificates as part of the registration. My dad told them in no uncertain terms that they had no good reason to question us, short hair and superior softball skills weren't evidence of gender. No one would be singled out, he made clear. If there were to be any exams at all, then every girl would have an exam, and if that happened then they could count on a lawsuit as well. We watched in awe as my dad defended us, defended our right to be that good at softball and be girls at the same time. The tournament commissioner apologized, there were no exams, and we were back on the field for another game thirty minutes later. That one experience contained lessons in so many things it is still hard to unpack them all even years later. It was a lesson in standing up for yourself, for each other, and for what's right and fair. It was a lesson in bouncing back, we had to play again right away. But we lost, and who knows how much of that loss can be attributed to being rattled by it all. It was a reminder that much of what we learn from playing sports has nothing to do with the sport itself. And it was a hard lesson in how deep-rooted and combustible the assumptions about girls and boys, men and women are. Gender is still something people want to be black and white. Anything gray, any behavior or appearance just outside the prescribed lines, is tinder waiting for a spark. This morning, Caster Semenya's story flashed a spark on the tinder of my own bottled up emotions. Plus, her story is overlaid with the issue of race too. Some claiming that it is also "another example of demeaning Western attitudes toward black Africans, particularly women." So to Caster and her family and friends, I share your outrage regardless of the details, I hope your story gives us another chance to challenge everyone's assumptions about gender and race and make some progress, and I have one piece of advice... You might want to hire my dad. More on South Africa
 
Project Runway's Kenley Collins: "Jail Inspired Me!" Top
Then in March 2008, the budding designer landed in jail for two days after allegedly assaulting her fiance by throwing things at him-- including a cat and a laptop. But, Kenley made the best of her situation. "Jail inspired me!" she says. "It made me appreciate freedom. As soon as I got out I made a kick-ass line and did a photo shoot with 10 of my pieces.
 
Polling Our Way To Confusion Top
[additional reporting by Sam Stein] FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver and Pollster's Mark Blumenthal are engaged in a fascinating debate about how pollsters can best frame questions about health care reform, and specifically, the public option. Their back-and-forth reveals dramatic differences in polling philosophy, well worth pondering. It also lays bare a depressing reality: That constantly changing poll results are the desired product of a media that would vastly prefer serving as the narrator to a murky storyline -- replete with shifting winds, sturm und drang, and the endless saga of Who Is Up and Who Is Down --than incisively and aggressively penetrating an issue on behalf of the public interest. Silver's position is that there is a "silver bullet" poll out there, and that by carefully considering the ingredients that go into the ask, a pollster can limit ambiguities and derive results that are precise. He lists five "essential ingredients" for a public option poll : 1. Make clear that the 'public option' refers unambiguously to a type of health insurance, and not the actual provision of health care services by the government. 2. Make clear that by "public", you mean "government". 3. Avoid using the term 'Medicare' when referring to the public option. 4. Make clear that the public option is, in fact, an option, and that private insurance is also an option. 5. Ask in clear and unambiguous terms whether the respondent supports the public option -- not how important they think it is. What a concept: don't conflate, don't confuse, level with people, and be complete. Silver is confident that pollsters can, with the right approach and the willingness to craft precise language, ask the right question. Blumenthal (who, full disclosure, is a frequent contributor on these pages), by contrast, isn't much a fan of the notion that there's a perfect poll : While I agree with some of Nate's observations, I have to disagree with his underlying premise. When it comes to testing reactions to complex policy proposals, I would rather have 10 pollsters asking slightly different questions and allowing us to compare and contrast their results than trying to settle on a single "perfect question" that somehow captures the "truth" of public opinion. On an issue as complicated and poorly understood as "public option," that sort of polling perfection is neither attainable nor desirable. In this case, public opinion does not boil down to a single number. And yet neither Silver nor Blumenthal seem to desire the current state of coverage, where the media reports on a slaloming storyline, careering back and forth between daily winners and losers. Both assert that a "bottom line" exists. The debate here boils down between a statistical idealist (Silver) and a statistical skeptic (Blumenthal). The Huffington Post recently got deep in the weeds on the issue of public option polling after an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll went out with an alteration in its own language: Instead of asking whether people should be given a choice between a public and private plan -- as NBC/WSJ had done in its June 2009 survey -- the pollsters dropped the word "choice" in their July and August polls. In its place they asked whether people favored or opposed creating a public plan to compete with private insurers. Whereas two months ago, 76 percent of respondents said they felt it was either extremely or quite important to have a public option, in August that number was down to 43 percent. "I think it's a very big deal to drop the word," said Wendell Potter, a former vice president at the insurance giant CIGNA. "This has been a strategy the industry has had for many years. They ask questions in many ways, knowing the way they are asking the questions will skew the result. Dropping the word choice is very important. It plays into some of the fears some of the people have been hearing lately, that the government would leave them without an option." In subsequent email exchanges with the Huffington Post, Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who along with Democratic pollster Peter Hart coordinates the NBC polls, insisted that the use of the word "choice," prejudiced the survey and needed to be dropped. "There is a substantial difference between asking Americans whether they support having a choice of plans to asking what is a very different question, which is whether they support/oppose the concept," he wrote. He also noted that pollsters for ABC and Washington Post had asked the same question about the public plan over a multiple-month period - which may be the most honest way to determine how opinion of the provision has evolved. Whereas in July 62 percent of respondents said they supported "having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans," by August that number had dipped to 52 percent. "The NBC findings and the ABC/Post findings continue to suggest a closely divided electorate on this question which is of course much more in keeping with the significant emotions generated about this proposal on both sides of the issue," McInturff concluded. But, for proponents of the public option, the sticking point is not whether respondents favor or oppose a government-run program, it is quite literally whether they want the "choice." The public option, as it's been drawn up, would only ever be an option . Then again, "choice," as NBC's Chuck Todd noted to the Huffington Post , is a "trigger" word that few people oppose. Moreover, given the mess of messaging coming from the White House, it's very hard to get clarity on the issue. President Barack Obama has always been more forthright and more consistent in his insistence that nobody would be forced out of a private health care option that they currently have and which they prefer. He's been far less clear on his support for the public option. This sows confusion: if the public option isn't an essential ingredient, where's the need to remind people that they won't be forced out of the private insurance that they may prefer? More consistent messaging from the White House might have a beneficial effect on the way polls are conducted. To Silver, the idealist, the clarity would provide the means by which an exacting poll question could be crafted. To McInturff, it might allay the fear that central ideas were nothing more than semantic "triggers." Nevertheless, you will still have empiricists, like Blumenthal, who will shy away from anything that looks like they are taking a side in the debate, and who will seek out additional statistical yields to sift through, in search of a perfect objectivity to stand alongside subjective opinion. The problem here is, policies have measurable merits and definable flaws, and while the Nate Silvers of the world will say that elucidating either will yield an exacting measure of public opinion, a Mark Blumenthal will tell you that this work is outside their jurisdiction. That would be for the best, if we had a press that was geared toward informing the public of policy merits, and that actually wanted to courageously render judgment on which side of a given issue enjoyed the greater share of truth. Unfortunately, the press, too, is geared toward keeping both sides in the game in order to craft a melodramatic political narrative. Pollsters who seek out a perfect objectivity over a precise truth feed that beast. In short, this relationship between pollster and media yields an abundance of information about what people think, on any given day, at the expense of what can be known. [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 .]
 
John McQuaid: Still Fiddling While New Orleans Drowns Top
The fourth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is upon us, and New Orleans continues to slowly rebound, with a smaller footprint than before but abundant community spirit. But, alarmingly, its long-term predicament remains unchanged, and the opportunity the nation had to confront it has been mostly squandered. I refer, of course, to the challenge of protecting the city and surrounding coastlines from hurricanes. Three centuries of experience have proven time after time this is a deadly serious risk. And time after time, various government agencies - from New Orleans's earliest colonial administrations to the Obama White House - have responded in a haphazard fashion, doing just enough to make people feel safe again, but not enough to prevent the next big disaster. Barge in Lower 9th Ward, December 2005 The Katrina disaster was deeply ironic. Turns out America, the nation that tamed rivers and the continent, won World War II and emerged as the globe's lone superpower, couldn't build a floodwall. America, the nation of the mass media and instantaneous communication, couldn't figure out where the New Orleans Convention Center was, or deliver food and water a few blocks to the thousands of people gathered there. Post-K, there was reason to believe these outrages might force a reassessment of how the nation handles not just emergency response - what you do after disaster strikes - but prevention. The rapidly-eroding Louisiana coast seems like an outlier, but this is deceptive - climate change is going to raise the risks not just for coastlines (higher sea levels and - possibly - stronger storms) but for any area where rapid environmental shifts take place and communities built for yesterday's conditions suddenly find themselves under water, consumed by fire or afflicted by drought or other problems. New Orleans is, in this sense, an important test case. But no such reassessment took place. Instead, the same institution that screwed this up the first time - the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, was put in charge of the effort to protect New Orleans and the surrounding coastline. This was crazy and irresponsible, and the results were predictable. The Corps is building a $14 billion stopgap levee system, an upgrade to the old one that is certainly better than what was there before, but not nearly enough to protect the city from a Category 5 hurricane storm surge. The Corps has been studying the options for bigger and better protection, and how to integrate it with efforts to restore the rapidly-eroding marshlands of south Louisiana, for four years. This is an ambitious project, and (in my view) an essential one. It should have been fast-tracked. It should have gotten some stimulus money. Instead it bogged down. . But there's nobody really calling the shots at the upper levels of government. It's not a national priority. President Obama says it is , and is creating a task force that may cut through some of the seemingly hopeless skein of red tape. So, we'll see. But given the fiscal and political pressures on the Obama administration and the severe bureaucratic inertia holding this thing back (which results from basic power arrangements between Congress, the Corps, and successive administrations) I'm skeptical. This is human nature, you might say, the way government institutions work. We're always preparing for the last disaster. We don't anticipate the "black swans." But that's no longer an adequate excuse given what's at stake - not just a unique American city and cultural treasure, but the shape and structure of the American community in an era of change. Do shrug off these challenges - about which we know a great deal - and consign the vulnerable parts of the country to a slow attrition by disaster? Or do we learn from history, and science, and our own mistakes? More on Barack Obama
 
UAE Seizes N Korea Arms Cargo Headed For Iran Top
The United Arab Emirates has seized a ship illegally carrying North Korean weapons bound for Iran, diplomatic sources at the UN have said. More on North Korea
 
Brad Balfour: Q&A: Actor Jonathan Groff's Charmed, Provocative Life On Stage and In Film Top
For such a young actor, Jonathan Groff has had this charmed life . First, he lands one the highest profile roles in a musical, Spring Awakening , one that's meant to confront Broadway conventions. Right after he leaves the show--with a Tony and Drama Desk Lead Actor nomination in hand for his performance as Melchior Gabor--he goes on to play Claude in The Public Theater summer Theater in the Park 2008 revival of the '60s revolutionary classic Hair . In both roles, the sweet-faced Groff challenges authority with a smile and triumphs theatrically if nothing else. And this is all accomplished before his 24th birthday, as a newcomer to New York City, making his way here from Ronks, a town near Lancaster, PA going from high school theater geek to Broadway contender in very short order. But of course with these two achievements under his belt, getting tapped to play the part of Woodstock organizer Michael Lang, Taking Woodstock seemed a natural progression from "Hair." Though he has limited screen time, he so effectively slipped into the role that he physically seemed to mutate into Lang. Now, besides his illustrious cinematic debut playing a historically resonate figure on the heels of the 40th anniversary of the actual Festival, Groff adds further heat to this summer's boil playing Dionysus in The Public Theater's out-of-doors Central Park presentation of Euripides' The Bacchae . And despite some mixed reviews for The Bacchae the show provided him with another way to provoke through a sort of primordial counter-cultural figure. Groff has had an uncanny instinct for landing provocative parts in great shows, created by well-recognized artists such as the legendary Greek tragedist, the Oscar-winning Ang Lee, or the award-winning playwright Craig Lucas. Q: Seeing you in The Bacchae , it's clear there's a connection between lots of the things you've done so far. Though Dionysus is a dark figure in this context, the idea of him unleashing sexual tension fits with your other projects. You embrace that kind of role. In Spring Awakening you are part of a generation that would have been hippies if they'd been in the 1960s. So you've experienced this cultural phenomenon being expressed in all these different vehicles. JG: That's so true. It's funny; I've never even thought about it until you were talking about that. Yeah, I feel really lucky to get to play these revolutionary guys that are working for a cause and leading and it's a really exciting thing. As we were rehearsing for The Bacchae we were doing the press for this movie, and I was on the phone with my dad a couple of weeks ago. I literally said to my dad, "I can't believe it but there is a lot of Michael Lang in Dionysus." Everyone talks about Michael's smile and how certain people view it as an angelic smile and certain people view it as a devil's smile covering up something. And it's the same thing with Dionysus; in the mythology, when they originally performed it in Greece, the mask for Dionysus was a smile. And he was doing all of these evil things with a smile on his face. Q: Wine was the intoxicant of the time but it could have just as well been psychedelics. You've got him going to the women and saying, "It's okay to be yourselves, to leave your husbands. It's okay to frolic nude in the woods with other women." Using intoxicants, unleashing women... JG: Totally. And the gender-bending; seeing a man dressed up as a woman, which was a clichéd thing for some people and still is to this day. Anthony Mackie, who plays Pentheus, was telling me about how people from his life, his neighborhood, are like, "Dude, I can't see you in a dress." They won't come see the play, they're like, "It freaks me out, it makes me feel weird," and he's like, "Really?" They know me, they've seen me in a bunch of stuff and it still freaks them out." It's mind boggling. Q: I guess they liked you at the Public after you did Hair ; I assume that led you to The Bacchae ... JG: I did a Craig Lucas play at Playwrights Horizons, Prayer for My Enemy , and then I did a Craig Lucas play at the Public, The Singing Forest and was playing these characters that were incredibly moral, searching, confused and heart-breaking. I was talking with Craig one day and he was like, "What do you want to do next?" and I was like, "I think I want to do a classic play because I've never done a classic play. And I'd love to play a character that's not so moral, that's not so upstanding." Even in Hair and Spring Awakening, they were rebels but they were really good people. But [Dionysus] is very revengeful; Cadmus, the old man, at the end of the play I ruin his entire life but he didn't do anything wrong. Q: When I look at the metaphor, I don't find him all that bad--at least not in you. JG: And it's interesting because there are a lot of parallels between Jesus and Dionysus. I mean, a new religious figure coming in out of nowhere and people starting to worship him. Q: When you look at the values of the time there was the male dominance and women were supposed to follow orders--he attacked the values of the time. JG: Totally. The son of god, the son of Zeus; a mortal mother, a sort of immaculate conception sort of a thing that some people believed, some people didn't believe. Spreading a new way; Jesus did "Here's my body and here's my blood," that's all in there. It's really fascinating. I literally have so much fun doing this play I go to bed at night thinking about how I get to do it the next day and I wake up in the morning and I want it to be 8 o'clock. Q: How do you do this in all the heat we've had? JG: We rehearsed in that heat. We we're there all day rehearsing, which is a lot. But the park is the most incredible space in New York; it's just magic. A) because it's outside, and it's the middle of Central Park which is my favorite place in all of New York. B) because everyone, most everyone, that comes has waited in line all day to see the show so it's an audience like no other because these people are hungry to see this play. People have to work, or know someone, or find a way in, and so when you get there and you're in the audience, when I go and see shows there, it feels very special and of the moment. The other night, for example, there was that huge storm that came so we finished just in time before it started raining but there were huge cracks of thunder and lightening. And they keep calling the god whose voice is thunder, and I was standing at the end, I revealed myself as the god in the end, I was standing at the top in my sparkle thing, and there were literally strikes of lightening coming down from the thing and we were like, "Whoa, this is so cool!" We had those moments in Hair too; suddenly a breeze will come through and it changes the entire meaning of everything. It's like you're standing there and suddenly a wind catches you. One night in Hair we were so hot, literally, that our bodies were steaming, and just the energy of it, it's just an amazing space. Q: You played the one character who is the link to the real Woodstock experience, Michael Lang. You're at the right age, and getting to see this experience filtered through meeting him... How was that whole experience for you? JG: Now Woodstock is obviously such a huge part of my life and I know so much about it, but when I try to think back to what I knew before this movie, and before even I did Hair and before my life was consumed with the late '60s, I remember knowing that Woodstock was a very famous concert in the late '60s and I remember knowing that Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Richie Havens and The Who were all there. It was a movement in some way and that's pretty much all that I knew about it. Now I know so much more about it and have been learning a lot about it, so being a part of it and really living in it for that summer was really inspiring. Michael Lang was 24-years-old when he did that and it's mind-blowing. I'm 24 years old and to think that someone had the vision and that drive and that idea at 24 and actually saw it through is completely inspiring. Q: And the fact that he wasn't intimidated. JG: He's just this chill dude. I asked him, "450,000 people, a disaster area, not enough food, not enough bathrooms, people threatening not to play, rain--why were you so chill? Or even building up to that; what made you so relaxed the whole time? Is it just who you are?" And his answer to me was that he saw it, he said he was the only one; he knew exactly what it was going to look like, what it was going to feel like, what it was going to be like, what the movement was going to be, what a beautiful thing it was going to be. He saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Everyone else was sort of throwing their arms up and screaming and running around and doubting and not knowing and he said, "I just knew that it would work and so I had complete confidence." It's just also who he is. Q: How much are you like that or not? JG: He and I have a lot in common; I think that we share a similar quality. Like when I spent the weekend with him I learned just as much about playing him as a character as I did about a way in which you should live your life. I felt like what a cool thing, beyond finding a mannerism or talking to him about the experience and getting information, it was just cool to spend time with this guy that knows how to live his life with such ease and passion and confidence. And I think that he has a lot of faith in people and I think he's incredibly positive, and I think that we sort of share that. And it takes a lot to ruffle his feathers and I'm sort of the same way. Q: Sometimes it's not good to meet the person you're playing and there are other times when it's essential. This was an essential moment because you were one person who plays a character who has to give authenticity to the film. JG: That was one thing that when I sat down with Ang for the first time and he put the research in front of me, he was like Michael Lang, people not only know what he looked like and what he did, and they know his name, but they also know how he interacts with people, how he smiles, his look on his face, his vibe. Michael's vibe is very specific and people that really know Woodstock really know him. He's also an important part in the movie because he represents all the business stuff like finding a location and doing the press conference and changing the hotel and making it offices and all of that stuff. But Ang said to me, "When you come off that helicopter in that scene, in that moment I want to see Woodstock. Like Woodstock is landing in his front yard. Like this is the start of the whole thing." And so he was very very intent on that and that day when he shot that he kept saying that to me, he's like "I really need that vibe, I really need to get that vibe." Q: Had you ridden horses before? JG: My dad trains and races horses for a living, but he does harness racing so I had never been on the back of a horse; I didn't know how to ride a horse. A huge part of the joy of shooting the movie was that for two weeks I got to go horseback riding in upstate New York. That amazing horse that I ride at the end, which is the horse that they use in Hidalgo , RJ, this beautiful white chocolate horse, and it was literally the most beautiful fields and trees and forests and it was incredible; it was so much fun. Q: And in Spring Awakening you're the character that sort of leads the charge in a sense, right? JG: Yeah, Melchior's an atheist. It's a society in 1891 Germany where the kids are completely repressed, sex is obviously completely taboo; the very first scene of the play this young 14 girl asks her mom where babies come from and she says the stork. And my character is the only one in the whole play who was raised with liberal parents who taught me about sex. My best friend in the play, Moritz, who ends up committing suicide because his body is so out of control, I end up educating him and I write him a sex essay which gets me then kicked out of school. I have sex with that girl and get her pregnant; she has an abortion and dies. So he's the rebel, he's the revolutionary, he's the open-minded guy that's going to lead. The final lyric that I sing in the show is "One day all will know," because he's going to go out and change the world. Q: I really like the songwriter. Duncan Sheik. His pop music sounded a little bit like he is an heir to David Bowie for that post-Bowie generation. ? JG: Duncan can't write a bad song. I'm a fan of his music as well; I listen to it all the time, I have his anthology. But it's so stunning. It's totally his own voice and it's completely unique. Q: Then you do Hair --they came to you for that? JG: At that point I had an agent so they submitted me for it, then I had an audition, a call-back for that and then got it. Q: Though it's very much an ensemble, the one or two of the characters that anybody remembers is yours, the nominal leader of the Tribe. Did you actually grow your hair for that part or was it a wig? JG: A wig. Q: You were never tempted to really grow it out? JG: I totally would have if I could have but I didn't have enough time. It was incredible though to go from Spring Awakening where we were in these buttoned-up, 1891 costumes, and yes, we got to let loose in the songs but the teachers were hitting us, we were on wooden chairs. But then in Hair I got to literally release physically. The whole show is about freedom and it's like as if the kids in 1891 could have had rock 'n roll, that was the whole point of Spring Awakening . Q: So when you get into Hair , the actual cast really is experiencing the idea of Hair --the idea of the moment. And, except for yourself, everybody else gets that moment of nudity on the stage. I'm sure they didn't do that before on stage. The fact that it's still provocative is even interesting. JG: It is, it's fascinating. You know they say that moment of nudity in Hair, it's always optional, it's always been optional, like since '68 you could do it if you wanted to. They said that moment is about feeling free, whatever that means to you. Q: You're the only one that isn't supposed to get naked. JG: Yeah because I don't burn my draft card, so I'm not free. And so I sing a song about it and get completely upstaged by all the naked people. Literally, I've never been more upstaged than at the end of act one of Hair, when you're singing this ballad and you're crying and singing the song called "Where Do I Go?" It's this beautiful song, and people are literally in the audience craning their necks to look around you to see the naked people. It was hilarious. But that show, when we started rehearsals, it forces you, you're right, to experience the vibe of the time, and if you're really going to do Hair and you're really going to go there, you live it. It's pretty much all music with some scenes here and there, everyone's on stage the whole time, when we were doing it we were outside in Central Park under the stars, the stage was made of grass. It was
 
Lisa P. Jackson: Why We Need to Sell the Environment Top
One of my colleagues at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently met with a leader from a national African-American advocacy organization, and spoke about raising the profile of environmental challenges in minority communities. The response he got was that, though the group shared his concerns, they didn't think they could "sell" environmentalism to their members. Cynical as that sounds, they were probably right. Over the years, environmentalism has largely been seen as an enclave of the privileged. The term "environmentalism" brings to mind pristine wilderness and wide-open landscapes. What doesn't come to mind is an apartment building, a city block, or an inner city kid who has trouble breathing on hot days. Even issues like climate change are distant concerns for poor and minority citizens (and their advocates) who are struggling daily for equality in education, health care and economic opportunity. It's the environmental movement's own inconvenient truth, and it has tragic consequences. Blacks die from asthma twice as often as whites, and have higher cancer mortality rates than any other group. Nearly 30 million Latinos -- 72 percent of the US Latino population -- live in places that don't meet US air pollution standards. Native American homes lack clean water at almost 10 times the national rate. As a chilling reminder, this week marks the fourth year since Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast, leaving behind it a path of destruction that decimated poor and minority neighborhoods. Many Americans bore witness to the sad truth that the people hit hardest in my hometown of New Orleans were from the city's poorest neighborhoods, and it remains a tragic example of how our most vulnerable populations often bear the burden of our worst environmental threats. We must also understand the role environmental threats play in what some consider more immediate issues, like the daily struggles on education, health care and the economy. We need better education to help children reach their full potential. But we can't build schools in the shadow of polluters that will make our kids sick, and cause them to miss days of class with asthma or other health problems. In the debate on health care, we have to talk about how heavy pollution is linked to respiratory illness, cancer, and heart disease -- three of the top four deadliest threats in America today. We must also recognize that the poor -- who get sick more often because they live in polluted neighborhoods -- are the same people who often go to the emergency room for treatment, driving up health care costs for everyone. Struggling communities need jobs and economic opportunities. But businesses aren't going to invest in a place where pollution runs rampant. Poison in the ground means poison in the economy, a weak environment means a weak consumer base, and unhealthy air means an unhealthy atmosphere for investments. We must talk about crime as well. When businesses won't invest and economic possibilities are limited, crime, violence, and drug use often increase, and the vicious cycle continues. But what have we taught our young people to value, to aspire to, or take pride in when they see that their communities are unclean, unhealthy and unsafe, and that the people around them seem unconcerned? We have a chance to expand the conversation on environmentalism, and welcome new voices and new ideas to the environmental movement. The inauguration of the first African American president, and my confirmation as the first African American Administrator of this Agency, has begun the process of changing the face of environmentalism in our country. People are seeing more and more that environmentalism doesn't come in one shape, size, color, or income bracket. Those of us who identify as environmentalists today must make room in this movement for the environmentalists of tomorrow. If we don't meet people where they are -- if we can't "sell" environmentalism to poor and minority communities -- then the individuals and groups opposing action on climate change, clean energy and other critical issues will. To confront the urgent environmental challenges of the 21st century, we need to make sure that every community sees their stake in this movement. More on Climate Change
 
GOP Rep: I Came Within Three Days Of Launching An Obama Citizenship Lawsuit Top
After a week of unwanted attention that seemed to end with him signing on to Rep. Bill Posey's (R-Fla.) bill to demand birth certificates from future presidential candidates, Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) has released the audio and transcript from the town hall where, according to the Mohave Daily News, he had talked about suing for proof of the president's citizenship. The real story on what Franks revealed at the town hall? He was "terrified" of Obama and "willing to go into a lawsuit," and "did all kinds of research" that, at first, did nothing to calm him. He only saw 1961 newspaper reports of Obama's birth "about three days before we were going to launch a lawsuit." According to the congressman's spokeswoman, Bethany Haley, this period of investigation and decision came before the election.
 
Weekend Subway Service Advisories Top
As people in Riverdale wonder what took so long for the MTA to fix known problems at 181st St. and bemoan the impact altered 1 train service has on their way of life, Upper Manhattan is again the focus of this weekend's service changes. For the second weekend, both 181 St. and 168th St. will be closed for, respectively, repairs and inspection. More on Moving America
 
Miles Mogulescu: Ted Kennedy's Life is Living Proof of Liberal Ideal that Government Can Help Make People's Lives Better Top
So many words have already been written about Ted Kennedy in the few days since his death--some profound, many filled with cliché--that despite my sadness at his passing, I initially saw no need to add my own words. But as I've watched and read, one observation crystallized in my mind that seems worth articulating through the clutter. It's true that Ted Kennedy could be a great orator, articulating with passion and eloquence the heart of the liberal ideal, as he did in his 1980 Democratic Convention concession speech and again at the 2008 Democratic Convention in support of Barack Obama. But it's not primarily Senator Kennedy's words that make him one of the great defenders of modern liberalism. His life itself is living proof of the central liberal idea that government can help make people's lives better. The government action that has resulted from legislation he has championed has concretely improved the lives of tens of millions of people in America and around the world. He accomplished much of this during an increasingly conservative era during which politicians and media figures denigrated the role of government and worshipped at the altar of the so-called "free" market. In his first Inaugural Address in 1981, President Reagan proclaimed, "Government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem." After 15 years of conservative propaganda, the refrain was taken up by many so-called New Democrats, most famously by Bill Clinton in his 1996 State of the Union address in which he proclaimed, "The era of big government is over". Ted Kennedy almost certainly disagreed (and this disagreement with Bill Clinton's easy acquiescence to conservative rhetoric may have been part of what influenced him to support Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton for Democratic Presidential nomination). Kennedy was likely influenced by liberal thinkers like John Kenneth Galbraith (an advisor to his brother JFK) who argued that it was necessary for government regulation, trade unions, and consumer organizations to form a countervailing power against the monopolist power of big business. Sen. Kennedy's life as a legislator encapsulated this fundamental liberal idea (although he wasn't doctrinaire about it either; he also championed the reregulation of the airline and trucking industries). In hundreds of pieces of legislation that he championed, he used the power of the government to offset the power of big business and to working and middle class people in American and around the world. A synopsis of Sen. Kennedy's legislative achievements runs 54-pages long--During his 47-year Senate career, he authored more than 2500 bills, hundreds of which became law. Some highlights: • The Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made segregation in public facilities illegal was proposed by JFK and championed after his death by Lyndon Johnson. The bill was filibustered for 57-days by southern segregationists in the Senate. Still recovering from serious injuries sustained in a devastating plane crash, Ted Kennedy returned to the Senate floor to give an impassioned speech which helped break the filibuster and lead to the bill's passage. • In 1970, Ted Kennedy led the fight for the Voting Rights Extension Act which lowered the voting age to 18. • Kennedy championed the successful floor fight to pass the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 which abolished the quota system limiting immigration from Asia. The results literally changed the demographic make-up of America. Millions of Asian-Americans who contribute so much to our economy and our educational system literally wouldn't be here without Sen. Kennedy's efforts. • Kennedy co-sponsored the National Cancer Act which established a federal cancer research program and quadrupled the amount spent on cancer research. • Kennedy played a key role in passing Title IX, requiring colleges to provide equal funding for men's and women's sports. Without it, hundreds of thousands of female athletes would never have had the opportunities which they achieved. • In 1986 Sen. Kennedy led the bipartisan fight in Congress which overrode President Reagan's veto of economic sanctions against the apartheid government of South Africa. The resulting economic isolation helped pressure white South Africans into accepting that the days of apartheid were numbered, and along with the resistance of black South Africans, helped bring about the release a few years later of Nelson Mandela and the advent of majority rule. • Sen. Kennedy co-sponsored the Family and Medical Leave Act which required business to provide unpaid leave for family emergencies and the birth of a child. • Sen. Kennedy co-sponsored the COBRA act which allows employees to keep their health insurance after losing their jobs. • Kennedy led the fight to raise the minimum wage from $4.25 to $5.15 an hour in 1996, and again in 2007 led the fight to increase it to $7.25. • Kennedy was a leader in the fight to establish the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) which today insures over 10 million children. In these and countless other measures, Ted Kennedy helped mobilize the power of the government to offset the power of big business and to improve the lives of millions. Even among conservatives who falsely rail against a "government takeover of healthcare", how many would argue for repealing such government actions that Ted Kennedy helped achieve? After decades of the very word "liberal" being turned into an insult by the right-wing, Ted Kennedy's life itself is living proof of the power of the liberal ideal. More on Ted Kennedy
 
Alter-Egos: 10 Comedy Characters Who Have Had A Life Of Their Own Top
Comedians have created and pulled off countless characters over the years (just think of your favorite sketch groups or shows, such as Saturday Night Live, Monty Python or Kids in the Hall, for plenty of examples). But every once in a while, a comedian creates a character so memorable that the alter-ego takes on a life of his/her own, so much so that the comedian's ego is fed by the alter-ego. Here are 9 more comedy acts, who, for better or worse, are known for being someone else.
 
Animal Ceremonies From Around The Globe (PHOTOS) Top
From Spain's animal lovers' festival, the Feast of San Anton, to China's lunar celebration to honor snakes to Australia's ecumenical Buddhist blessing of baby elephant Luk Chai, people celebrate with animals in elaborate ways. Check out our slideshow of animal ceremonies from around the world. Don't forget to vote on your favorite image from the festivities. More on Photo Galleries
 
Susan Benesch: Daring Guatemalan publisher convicted on trumped-up charge Top
A courageous Guatemalan publisher risks spending a year in jail for printing a photograph of a dog - such a trivial, dubious charge that it seems meant to interfere with his work of printing pathbreaking books. It's not as if judges have nothing better to do in Guatemala, which has one of the world's highest homicide rates and a drug trade so rampant that cocaine gets confiscated by the ton . Impunity reigns for assassins and narcos. But Raul Figueroa Sarti, who has become well-known and respected throughout the Americas for publishing Memorias del Silencio , the devastating report of the Guatemalan truth commission, and other books critical of past and present governments, was prosecuted because he failed to get written permission before printing a photo. The UN Special Rapporteur for freedom of expression (who is now the Guatemalan human rights advocate Frank LaRue, fortuitously) concluded that Figueroa Sarti's right to freedom of expression was violated. "It is surprising that such a groundless case occasions so much activity and human resources from the public prosecutor and the Seventh Court of Criminal Jurisdiction when at the same time, so many violent cases end in impunity," LaRue wrote , in refreshingly crisp language for a U.N. official. "The only conclusion we can draw is that the photograph is an excuse, and this criminal proceeding is in fact a mechanism of intimidation against a publishing house that has maintained a critical publishing trajectory and has published materials about human rights violations." The case was suspect in several ways. F&G Editores, Figueroa Sarti's imprint, published a novel by Mardo Escobar, whose day job is at the same Seventh Court that tried the case. Escobar later asked that F&G print a series of his photographs, according to Figueroa Sarti, who said he offered to print one of them , on the cover of another writer's forthcoming book. Escobar denied giving verbal permission, and told the court that he was shocked when he stumbled on the book, bearing his photo of a howling dog, in a store. F&G contradicted this with evidence - a receipt showing that Escobar had accepted its offer of free copies of the book - but the judges apparently ignored it, and handed down a sentence quite out of proportion to the offense (even if Figueroa Sarti had committed it). Pending his appeal, Figueroa Sarti was put under house arrest and then, after petitions from many writers and human rights groups, he was permitted to leave the country this week. Whether confined to his home or taking temporary refuge abroad, however, he will be restricted in carrying out his work as a publisher. I hope this miscarriage of justice, and human rights violation, will be corrected speedily so that Figueroa Sarti can get back to work, fully and safely, soon.
 
Huff TV: HuffPost's Roy Sekoff Discusses Politicization Of Ted Kennedy's Memorial (VIDEO) Top
As the nation mourns the death of one of America's greatest Senators, Huffington Post Editor Roy Sekoff joined Maria Teresa, of "Voto Latinos," and Ron Christie, former special assistant to President George W. Bush, on MSNBC's "The Ed Show" to discuss the legacy of Ted Kennedy and his memorial tonight. WATCH: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Video
 
Paul Szep: The Daily Szep-Senator Ted Kennedy Top
 
Jon Chattman: Meet the Mess: Time for the Wilpons to Sell Top
Blame it on the unbelievable injuries, the underachievers, the management, Bernie Madoff, Wayne Hagan, or the rain. It doesn't matter who you point a finger at. When this season finally ends, 2009 will go down as the worst year ever in New York Mets history. That's a bold statement no doubt when you factor in the 1962 season and the entire Vince Coleman firecracker era. But it's true at least when you combine the high hopes for the team before the season started and the fact their new ballpark Citifield just opened. In 1962, nothing was expected and nothing was delivered. In the early 1990s, has-been burnouts took the field, and to no one's surprise, came up Pat Tabler lame. This year, however, with the acquisitions of top relievers Frankie Rodriguez and J.J. Putz, everyone picked the Mets to -- at the very least -- compete. Sports Illustrated even picked them to go all the way on their cover -- nice to see their personal kiss of death is intact. No doubt the far-from-Amazins have had an unfair and obscene amount of injuries from stars Jose Reyes, Carlos Delgado and Carlos Beltran to starter John Maine and the aforementioned Putz. But while some teams refuse to lick their wounds, and are motivated to play the game - the Mets decided to phone in each game -- coming to the ballpark defeated long before the umpire shouted "play ball." Sadly, coming to the ballpark with little spark is nothing new for this team. Since 2006 -- a year they should've went all the way -- this team has had no moxie or fire, and little heart. Aside from a David Wright or Alex Cora this year, this team extinguished any fires before they started them. To make matters worse, the organization has publicly embarrassed itself by misdiagnosing or mistreating injured players and firing staff in the oddest ways. In short, they create problems on their own to match the problems they have little control over like say, a pulled hamstring. Look, I have been an avid Mets fan since birth, and I don't mean to kick the team while they're down but they've kicked us around enough to justify this rant. Since this season is lingering like the longest fart in the history of gas, it's time for us all to look forward to 2010 and beyond. In order to really move in the right direction, this team needs a total overhaul, and it needs to start with the Wilpons. The way in which Fred and his sons run this team has become a walking punchline. They simply must go, and I felt this way long before Madoff cheated them out of millions. They have no identity when given their history, they should. Next, General Manager Omar Minaya needs to go the way of dodo. He should've lost his job after the Tony Bernazard/Adam Rubin incident alone or for the past two season collapses. It's a shame too because when you look at the acquisitions he's made from Johan Santana to Rodriguez to even Pedro Martinez -- Minaya has come thisclose (on paper anyway) to building a winner. Each year, however, since 2006 he's failed to find the final piece of the puzzle to take them to the promised land. Jerry Manuel has to go, too. Sure this season's not entirely his fault, but no fan will actually feel a fresh start next year if remnants of '09 remain. Plus Manuel's low-key approach is the antithesis of what this team actually needs. Bring back Bobby Valentine, hire Buck Showalter or Larry Bowa, or pray that Lou Pinella gets canned in Chicago - because they have the backbone needed to light a fire under these guys. Next, the entire coaching staff needs to go. The Mets don't hit, can't pitch with any consistency, and make too many base running mistakes and defensive errors for a Major League club. The Bad News Bears was a funny movie, because - well - it wasn't real. The Mets can start the healing process by forgiving Wally Backman for any of his past wrongdoings and give him a coaching job. That guy's got the gritty attitude they need. From a player perspective, the Mets should try to find takers for Beltran, Reyes, Pelfrey, and even Wright. It pains me to write any of this, but in all honesty, it's time to restock and retool. Wright would net you at least three quality prospects. Ditto for Reyes and Beltran even though they rode the DL the whole year. The bottomline -- the Mets need a Ty Pennington Extreme Makeover to make them worthy of playing at such a beautiful stadium -- which now actually has some team signage around it (Zing! That's another story). It starts at the top, and then needs to trickle down to the bottom (all Met minor league affliates have been an abomination as well). They have to start somewhere. Even Mr. Met's smile seems to be fake these days and he's plastic.
 
Home Sweet Home: Where The Presidents Lived Before (And After) The White House Top
Living in the White House is one of the top perks of being commander-in-chief. With 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 28 fireplaces, three elevators, five full-time chefs, a tennis court, a movie theater, a swimming pool, a bowling alley and a putting green, it's not a bad place to call home. But where did the nation's presidents live in their pre-D.C. days? And what residences were worthy of their post-White House years? From Mount Vernon and Monticello to Midland and Chicago, here's a run down of various presidential pads. Follow HuffPost Style on Twitter and become a fan of HuffPost Style on Facebook ! More on Photo Galleries
 
Stuck Bear Climbs To Safety On Ladder (PHOTOS) Top
This bear wasn't caught with his paws in the honey jar but close to it. He was trapped in a skateboarding park in Colorado. After spending the night in the skateboard park, the ensnared bear climbed to safety on a ladder which was lowered into the skating bowl by the Snowmass Colorado Parks and Recreation Department. Check out our slideshow of the event. More on Photo Galleries
 
Terry Humphrey: Why isn't health care an American right? Top
It's because the Senate has never ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 1966 (ICESCR). In 1948 the United Nations General Assembly ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). 1 The problem was that declarations by the General Assembly are not binding on member nations. They amount to powerful suggestions and nothing more. 2 Eventually, member nations wanted to make the UDHR international law. International law is establish by treaties and maybe to a lessor degree UN Security Council resolutions. Therefore, the UDHR was divided into two international covenants, theICESCR and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), that could be ratified by member nations and thereby become international law. According to the University of Minnesota Human Rights Library , the United States signed both documents on 5 October 1977. The Senate has only ratified the ICCPR. I would imagine one of the reasons the ICESCR has never been ratified is because of Article 12. Auricle 12 of the ICESCR states: 1. The States Parties to the present Covenant recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. 2. The steps to be taken by the States Parties to the present Covenant to achieve the full realization of this right shall include those necessary for: (a) The provision for the reduction of the stillbirth-rate and of infant mortality and for the healthy development of the child; (b) The improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene; (c) The prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic, occupational and other diseases; (d) The creation of conditions which would assure to all medical service and medical attention in the event of sickness. Americans are under the illusion that we are the champions of human right in the world. We might have woken up a bit since we learned we'd been torturing prisoners of war, but lots of us don't really count that. Funny thing is that most of the people who wanted John McCain for president partly because of his war-hero status, are the same people who don't have a problem with the fact that we've been torturing terrorists. We are a strange bunch. For what it's worth the human-rights-trampling China has agreed as part of it's treaty with Great Britain, the Joint Declaration of the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and North Ireland and the Government of the People's Republic of China on the Question of Hong Kong signed on 19 December 1984, to honor the ICESCR in Hong Kong. ( Bilateral Treaties in Force as of January 1, 2009 ) According to Anup Shah of NPR, "The idea of universal health insurance isn't the brainchild of the Obama or Clinton administrations. It started in 1912 when a presidential candidate running under the Bull Moose Party called for insurance for all workers. It was Teddy Roosevelt, trying to regain the presidency. Since then, steps have been made toward universal coverage (along with many other medical innovations), but each president, Democrat or Republican, has either hit roadblocks -- or created them." There is an excellent time line on the Health care debate at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111089777 For more information on Human Rights go to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights website . More on China
 
John David Lewis: Listen to Mr. David Walker Top
A person who is in the pay of the government is not always free to speak publicly about the most pressing issues he confronts. Administrators who are appointed to perform specific tasks are generally not free to contradict or even to challenge policies. They often cannot advocate for specific proposals, even if they think that such proposals will be needed to prevent catastrophe. When Dr. Alan Carlin, a federal Environmental Protection Agency official, wrote a report in March, 2009 that criticized the EPA's process of formulating regulations, the report was squashed. Emails from EPA officials state that "a very negative impact on our office" made use of the report impossible. To protect the bureaucracy, Dr. Carlin was told to cease such criticisms. Such officials must often make a choice: to remain silent and keep their jobs, or to resign and speak the truth. Faced with this dilemma, on March 12, 2008, David Walker chose to resign. David Walker is the former Comptroller General of the United States, and former head of the Government Accountability Office. As the nation's chief accountant he was appointed by President Clinton, and resigned near the end of George W. Bush's second term. He had no authority to decide how a single penny of government funds should be collected or distributed. His job was to count those funds. Mr. Walker's enormous range of mind reaches far beyond a single budget year. His is a long-range perspective, one that requires him to project fiscal trends decades into the future, and to assess, through simulations, the impacts of policy decisions beyond the particular effects promoted by their advocates. He truly understands the economic maxim, most widely promoted by Henry Hazlitt, to look beyond the visible effects of any given policy, and to consider its unseen effects. When Walker plotted these trends and considered demographics among many other factors, what he found was "chilling." If fundamental reforms are not begun now, he concluded, the United States will remain on a path to a financial and political collapse comparable to the fall of Rome. In report presented to the National Press Foundation, January 17, 2008, Mr. Walker brought forth the following facts that were fundamental to his conclusions: 1. From 1966 to 2006, the percentage of federal funds spent on Medicare rose from 1% to 19%. This trend will grow exponentially as millions of "baby boomers" enter the entitlement pool. 2. For the same period, spending for mandated government commitments rose from 26% to 53% of the total budget. The budget is increasingly out of the control of government officials. 3. As of 2007, Medicare has run in arrears. In 2017 Social Security will be in deficit. By the year 2040, Medicare and Social Security will be running annual deficits of nearly 900 billion dollars. 4. By 2040, Medicare will be spending about 10% of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, and the annual deficits of the United States will total some 20% of the total Gross Domestic Product. The bottom line is this: the largest mandated fiscal exposures now, projected into the future, are over 52,000 billion dollars. That will amount to 90% of all household wealth in the U.S., and will place a burden of over 450 thousand dollars on every household in the land. This is almost ten times the present median household income level. Mr. Walker concludes that "We face large and growing structural deficits largely due to known demographic trends and rising health care costs." Further, "GAO's simulations show that balancing the budget in 2040 could require actions as large as cutting total federal spending by 60 percent, or raising federal taxes to two times today's level." By Walker's calculations, Medicare spending from now until 2032 will be 235% of economic growth. To close the revenue gap through growth, the United States economy would need to expand in the double-digit range for the next seventy-five years. During the boom years of the 1990s, the economy grew at an average rate of 3.2%. As a result, Walker reports, "we cannot simply grow our way out of this problem." Of course Mr. Walker's analysis is far more complex than this. Health care is certainly not all of it--but health care entitlements constitute by far the largest single piece. Those who think that creating thousands of billions of dollars in new government entitlements--in a health care bill that adds tens of millions of Americans to government programs--will do anything except hasten the coming bankruptcy bear the burden of proof to show why. Mr. Walker has taken his show on the road, in an attempt to educate Americans about the nature of the financial disaster they are creating. He was accompanied by both the Brookings Institute on the left, and the Heritage Foundation on the right. He stresses that this coming financial meltdown is known by everyone in Washington--but no one wants to acknowledge it. The Rasmussen poll shows that almost twice as many Americans think that cutting the deficit, rather than health care reform, should be the president's top priority. Twice as many think that the reform legislation will drive up costs than think it will lower costs. Perhaps these Americans grasp Mr. Walker's point better than their elected representatives do. Sources: Dr. Alan Carlin: http://www.openmarket.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/Carlin-Final-Report.pdf EPA emails: http://cei.org/cei_files/fm/active/0/Endangerment%20Comments%206-23-09.pdf David Walker's Presentation: http://www.gao.gov/cghome/d08446cg.pdf Health Care Polls: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/budget_priorities http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/healthcare/july_2009/just_23_believe_health_care_costs_will_go_down_if_reform_passes_congress
 
Rep. Charlie Melancon: Why I'm Challenging David Vitter Top
Yesterday, I made an important announcement: I am running for the United States Senate against Republican incumbent David Vitter. My wife Peachy and I are going to run a campaign that starts from the ground up -- around kitchen tables, fence posts and barbershops -- not out of Washington with all the slick mumbo-jumbo that ends up dividing us. We've seen enough division out of Washington. What we haven't seen nearly enough of is problem-solving -- and that's why I'm running. I hope you'll visit CharlieMelancon.com to watch a special announcement video we just released, and to learn how you can get involved in our campaign. I think too many of the politicians in Washington have forgotten simple ideals like solving problems and helping neighbors. The Washington game is more about scoring points or sticking it to the other guy. Well, that's not a game I'm interested in playing. And it's a game my state of Louisiana -- and our country -- can no longer afford. I believe we need a different approach in Washington -- an approach that is more bipartisan, more disciplined, more honest and with a whole lot more common sense than we're getting from David Vitter. I will work with anyone or stand up to anyone if it's the right thing to do for my state and my country. As a businessman, my background has been about demanding accountability, getting results and solving problems, and I know government in Washington can do a lot better with the money it already has. I want to bring diverse perspectives together to solve problems relating to health care, energy security, economic revitalization, deficit control, and the myriad other issues that Americans care about. I'm a proud fighter for the little guy and the people of my state who are struggling to make ends meet. That's what Louisiana values are about. Yet when David Vitter walks onto the floor of the U.S. Senate, he seems to be checking those values at the door. He told us he was going to take care of the deficit. The truth is that he packed the stimulus bill with $250 million in pork barrel projects, then voted against it so it would look like he was keeping his promise. David Vitter told Louisiana he was going to clean up politics. Then he went to Washington and voted against important ethics reform. It's a story we've heard over and over -- David Vitter talks one way at home, then walks another way in Washington. And that kind of politics is a luxury we just can't afford -- not at a time when we have so many tough problems to solve together. But there's one thing Senator Vitter can afford -- in fact, he can afford just as much of it as he pleases: a campaign of negativity and attacks designed to distract voters, courtesy of contributions from the very same special interests he told us he was going to Washington to fight. I'm going to do my very best to compete with this, but it won't be easy. That's why I need the support of each and every person who wants a Senator who cares more about solving problems than scoring points. I hope that you will take a moment to visit my new campaign website, CharlieMelancon.com , and watch my announcement video detailing why I am running to represent the great people of Louisiana in the United States Senate. I pledge that I will be a Senator that you all can be proud of -- and that is something that will never change. More on Senate Races
 
Dr. Robert A. Kornfeld: 5 Ways To Reduce Inflammation Naturally Top
What happened the last time you felt pain in your body? Did you reach for an ibuprofen or go to your doctor for a prescription drug? If so, you may have suppressed your single most essential bodily function for healing. Too often we think of inflammation as something to get rid of and instead choose to medicate our pain, swelling, or stiffness with drugs like Advil or Celebrex in an attempt to relieve the discomfort. However, what you might not know is that inflammation is, in fact, a critically important defense mechanism. It's our natural siren to alert us that a body part needs attention -- much like the call from the firehouse, which moves firefighters to action. Inflammation works in two main ways: primary and chronic. The primary pathway works on detoxification and repair. This is a symptom-less pathway when it is efficient. Every day when you walk, exercise, eat, or breathe the body needs to cleanse and eliminate the build up of toxins and repair any cellular injury that has occurred. When primary inflammation is hard at work, you will not experience any pain or even be aware it is occurring. When the primary pathway of inflammation falls short, then the secondary pathway steps in. Secondary inflammation, or what you may know as chronic inflammation, is a pathway of protection. It protects your cells from rapid destruction by allowing the tissue to change and adapt to the on-going stress in the area and can cause pain, swelling, stiffness and loss of function that signals to us that there is a problem that needs to be addressed. This is when most patients will self-medicate or come to the doctor for help. Unfortunately, when chronic inflammation remains for long periods of time and is not addressed adequately, it will cause the expression of genes that lead to degenerative conditions such as coronary artery disease, arthritis, cancer and others. While in many cases, anti-inflammatory medications are prudent and potentially life saving in patients with certain conditions such as cardiovascular disease (for example aspirin has been shown to prevent heart attacks) and auto-immune inflammations (when treated with anti-inflammatory medications, these patients can experience improved quality of life), it is still very common for doctors and patients to take a rather cavalier attitude toward prescribing and consuming these medications. It is important to note that anti-inflammatory medication is not without side effects. One problem is that in suppressing inflammation, the medicine is disabling the body's ability to detoxify, repair, and protect itself. In addition, the medication itself is a toxin that needs to be eliminated through the pathway of primary inflammation, when that pathway would be better spent taking care of the body's natural needs. Anybody on a prescription anti-inflammatory medication is required by their physician to take periodic liver function blood tests. Why? Because the drugs are suppressing not only the chronic inflammation which causes pain, but also the primary pathway of inflammation, which, as you know is responsible for detoxifying our cells. When the liver is unable to detoxify expediently, then the cells of the liver will become damaged. The result? Liver toxicity. Other common side effects such as internal bleeding and drug interactions must be closely looked for. It's not that I am suggesting that you live your life in pain. But you can now see, every time we use a medication that suppresses inflammation, we are effectively suppressing detoxification, repair of the cells, and protection of injured tissues. What I am suggesting is that you become a responsible advocate for your own good health. Relying on a lifetime of medication alone will not improve your health. Optimizing your health depends on understanding the mechanisms that are responsible for your body's need to maintain a chronic inflammatory approach. Often, an integrative physician who combines traditional and holistic principles to treat patients can identify these reasons. By ordering certain lab tests as well as examining the patient's diet, lifestyle and environmental influences on health, many mechanisms can be uncovered and addressed. So what can we do to help our bodies heal without suppressing inflammation? The answer is to decrease the need for chronic inflammation in our bodies. *Here are just a few suggestions for reducing chronic inflammation: 1. The primary pathway of inflammation is built primarily from Omega 3 fatty acids. Taking supplements rich in these natural nutrients assists the body in having a more profound primary inflammatory response and at the same time, it minimizes the chronic inflammation responsible for pain and suffering. ( Nordic Naturals - 1000 mg 3x a day containing a minimum of 300 mg EPA and 200 mg DHA) 2. Taking supplements rich in plant enzymes such as bromelain assist the body as catalysts for the repair of our cells. Taken on an empty stomach, these enzymes can break down the byproducts of inflammation thus clearing the way for cellular repair. ( Bromelain Plus 6 - 250-500mg 3x a day) 3. Efficient inflammation depends on a healthy immune system. 70% of the cells of our immune system are found in the gastrointestinal tract. These cells are fed by short chain fatty acids (that do not exist in nature), which are the result of fermentation of complex carbohydrates -- whole grains, vegetables, beans -- by the friendly bacteria (probiotics) of our intestinal lining. So it is essential for anyone suffering with inflammation to take an ample supply of probiotics on a daily basis. ( Theralac Probiotic - 20 billion CFU daily) 4. Consuming a diet low in Omega 6-rich foods like meat, dairy, baked goods, flour products, and grains (basically the standard American diet), is also helpful when looking to relieve inflammation. Although Omega 6 fatty acids are essential in any diet because they are the building blocks of chronic inflammation (which helps the body protect itself when it can't repair itself efficiently), it will cause the immune system to bypass primary inflammation and default into chronic inflammation, when consumed in excess. 5. Since we require water to serve as the vehicle for all chemical reactions in the body as well as to flush out toxins, proper hydration becomes paramount (the daily requirement varies from individual to individual, consult your physician for what's right for you). I am not talking about dehydrating liquids such as caffeinated beverages and alcohol, but rather, clean, fresh water preferably filtered, distilled, or from a reliable spring. There are many things that influence inflammation and many other things that you can do (in addition to these 5 recommendations) to keep inflammation working efficiently in your body and minimizing the uncomfortable and often disabling effects of chronic inflammation. My next blog: 5 more things you need to know about inflammation. *If you are taking any prescription medications or anti-coagulants, check with your physician before following any of these recommendations. More on Health
 
Tom Wolfe: The Rich Have Feelings Too - Vanity Fair Top
Do the rich have feelings too? In the latest issue of Vanity Fair, Tom Wolfe, who famously chronicled the buyout kings of the 1980s in The Bonfire Of The Vanities , seems to suggest the rich do, in fact feel emotions -- but only after they've been forced to fly coach. Wolfe assumes the voice of a commodities trader who laments the loss of his company's prized private jets. Rhapsodizing about pre-Bailout era, the narrator salutes his CEO Robert J. McCorkle ("Corky"), who led offsites that were, well, memorable: "One of the sweetest sounds in the world was Corky making the rounds up here on the executive floor, saying in his laid-back voice, "I feel like boffing some bimbos in the Caribbean. Anybody like to come along?" In typical Wolfeian fashion, the narrator's prone to wide-ranging references. Nietzche's "tarantulas" make an appearance, as do the former CEOs of the Big Three automakers. Here's more from Wolfe: "At the risk of sounding condescending, we should point out that ordinary people haven't the faintest conception of the strain we had to endure daily. How many ordinary people have ever done anything remotely like betting $7.4 billion--bango!--just so!--that the price of energy will rise sharply 14 months from a certain date?" It almost tugs on your heart strings. But not quite...Read the entire piece at Vanity Fair. Get HuffPost Business On Facebook and Twitter !
 
Shannyn Moore: The Kennedy Option; A Matter of Life and Death Top
I can imagine awful things. That's why I'm a terrible flier. This week, I sat across from something I couldn't imagine. I remember the story. On December 1, 2007, a Palmer, Alaska man attacked his father and his father's fiancé with a machete in the middle of the night. Leaving them for dead, he drove to Anchorage and shot three people, killing one, injuring two. Tuesday, I had lunch with Lennie. She survived the machete attack that killed her fiancé. The hospital stopped counting after fifty "chop wounds", from head to toe. One of her two uninjured fingers still wears the ring of the man she loved. She smiles a lot. While we were talking, she liked something I said and offered a "high 2 and ¾" instead of a "high 5". She told me about that horrifying, long ago night. She described the sound a machete makes when it hits your skull. She didn't feel her ear being severed, or her fingers. Her funny bone is gone, but she joked about her sense of humor being intact. She recently lost her dog, Bear, who defended her during the attack. Her assailant screamed while he chopped her, "Why are you making me do this?" over and over. Her voice hushed when she shared with me that an angel helped her reach the phone to dial 911. Unseen hands held her legs up to keep her from bleeding to death while help was on the way. Lennie was released from the hospital with only five days worth of pain pills and the inability to feed, bathe, use the bathroom or dress herself. She didn't have insurance. She told me she would rather be hit with a machete than go through the de-humanizing experience of not having health coverage. Lennie supports a public option. She doesn't want anyone to have to fight harder for health care than she did against a possessed man determined to kill her. The man wielding the machete, Chris Rogers, is now serving time in prison. He's entitled to health care under the 8th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. His victim doesn't want the death penalty for him; she doesn't even want his health coverage taken away. She wants everyone to have the health care they need. The surgeries to repair her claw-like hand, like the leg brace that helps her walk, were pro-bono by doctors who were unable to watch the current system ignore her suffering. "At least I'm not bitter," she likes to say, usually after some nightmare story about pain management. We chatted over chicken and grilled cheese about public option possibilities. I shared with her my meeting Howard Dean a few weeks ago. I told her how the message between President Clinton, Senator Kennedy, Dr. Dean, Valerie Jarrett, AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumpka and others were rallying the grass roots across the nation for public health care. I assured her the public option was already a compromise from a single payer system...and we were going to win. We had to, it's a life or death matter. "I sure hope so," she said. "I have a pre-existing condition. It's called attempted murder." Lennie called me today. She said she'd thought of me when she heard of Senator Kennedy's death. I had thought of her, and her struggle to be healed; heart, mind and body. Senator Kennedy, a man born into privilege, fought for the rights of others who were not. That made him a hero. For his decades-long fight, and the daily struggle of people like Lennie, a woman who sees her struggle over health care as more horrific than a machete attack, we must pass a public option; a "Kennedy Option." "Some men see things as they are and say why; I dream things that never were and say why not?" More on Health Care
 
Karen Luniw: The Arrogance of Fear and What to Do About It Top
We all want to get to heaven but none of us want to die. I'm quoting one of my favorite advisors, David Neagle , who was quoting his mentor. I'm not talking about the religious sense of heaven but rather the piece of heaven we're all looking for in the life, job or business we want to create. Dying is the equivalent of having to transform or change. In other words, we all want our problems solved but we don't want to have to change. Sound familiar? What stops us from getting what we truly desire? Whether it's a reformed health care system, a new job, a new place to live or to solve a business problem -- in order to get something new, we have to change. Of course, most people fear change. They fear change so much that when the path or the way that leads to the very thing they want shows up -- they reject it as heresy, craziness or arrogance. How dare someone have a new idea! How dare someone share this idea as a solution? What gives them the right? Who do they think they are? Does this sound the least bit familiar? You don't have to look far throughout history to find people crucified for bringing a good idea to light. Fear is the enemy. Not the person with a new idea or new way of doing things. You'll recognize fear because it makes you tighten up. Your energy is restricted and you automatically move into the fight or flight mode. What that means is you no longer have the ability to think properly. Blood is now rushing to your limbs and into your core and away from your brain. You want to lash out or recoil and hide. Whatever you decide to do when you are in the grip of fear is likely not what you would decide to do if you were in a calm and rational state of mind. Certainly at this point in time, we've seen plenty of evidence at town hall meetings where some people are acting out of fear. They are quite literally unable to think reasonably. Yet, one of the very things the country has been asking for -- change -- is being delivered. Delivered right to the door. Yet it's being rejected, loudly, by some who are acting out of fear. Right now, long standing businesses are finding that their tried and true strategies are not standing up to the test of time. They are desperate for the answer yet when a different way of operating shows up -- they still believe they know what's best. So much so, that they call the gift that was delivered to their doorstep -- arrogant. How could someone with different knowledge and different ideas possibly be able to answer the question that they've been mired in for years? The solution they offer sounds so foreign. Einstein stated that the mind that created the problem is not the same mind that will solve the problem. The fact is that we are constantly attracting into our life that which harmonizes with our foremost thoughts. If we're asking for something different than what we have and something different shows up -- don't we have to assume that this is lining up with what we asked for? Yet most never see the gift. Hard to believe, huh? When the very thing that we asked for shows up -- we shun it. Over and over again, when I coach people in their personal and business life, when they get really clear about what they want - something new shows up. It just generally never looks like, or is in the package they expected. In fact, what shows up often looks like the exact opposite and it often looks like a new challenge or even a mistake. So how do we put attraction in action ? Here's some ideas to help us actually allow us to recognize the answer to our challenges: 1. Take a moment and stop. So often we get triggered and react and if we have others around us that are like-minded...well, the not-so-merry-go-round revs up to warp-speed. 2. Try to figure out what's triggering you. Is it a tone of voice? Are you feeling like you MUST defend a point of view regardless of what the other party is saying? Are others feeding a frenzy? 3. Ask yourself whether drama is a part of your life. You'll be able to identify this because you like to complain with others a lot. 4. Breathe and listen . I love the saying that we were given two ears and one mouth for a reason - so we can listen twice as much as speak. 5. Listen. Yes, I'm saying this twice for a reason. A common practice in communication (poor communication) is to listen with the sole intent of waiting for the other person to stop talking so you can say what you have to say. That's a no-no. Instead, listen without judgment (it really can be done) to the message and the intent. Take in all the information. 6. Think critically ON BOTH SIDES. Of course, you'll already have been thinking critically about the others solution but also review all the information on your side. Take a step back, is everything you're defending actually true? Can you, for a moment, step into the other side's solution? 7. Ask yourself, 'is there a possibility that this is the exact thing I've been waiting for?' I know, I know, it's likely your first response is 'no way'. But take another step back and ask for help to see this as a solution. You might still come to the exact same conclusion but instead of submitting to fear immediately, at least you've given yourself some space to ensure you're not missing the very thing for which you've been asking.
 
Katherine Goldstein: This Week In Green: Water Scandals, Whole Foods Anger, KFC's "Double Down" And More Top
We had another interesting week in green news: everything from several alarming stories about tap water (and water bottles), to perhaps the most outrageous fast food sandwich ever sold. Check them out and vote for your favorite.
 
Karin Luisa: An Encounter with a Shipibo Girl in the Amazon Top
While walking at dusk behind my hut in the Amazon, I ran into a little girl I knew crossing the grass , naked, with a towel in her hand, and I said, "what are you doing" sin vestidos? ? She said, "I am going to wash myself! " " Donde?" " Aqui!" she pointed with a confident finger at a plank near a spigot where her mother washed bowls. "And soap?" She pointed at a hut way off, so I went to the hut to go get the soap for her, while she waited on the plank. " Lista? Ti ayudo?" "Si!" She giggled as I soaped her little feet, lifting one after another, inbetween her toes, her squiggly back and her scrunched up little face. Her job was to scoop water over her head. 'Are you sure this is big enough for you?' I asked as she chose her scooping instrument--a coffee cup! Si, si! And then squealed in giggles as I took over the scooping over her soaped head: " Otro vez !" Then I became a little jealous of how clean and sparkling she was, and asked her if SHE would help me now wash my hair, and she did! She soaped my head with little fingers, and poured coffee cups of water over my head and back, squealing each time I got wet, while her mother behind us laughed and boiled chickens (more free range than this you can't get) for our soup! This is the same Shipibo child who the first day I arrived, woke me in the hammock where I was sleeping, with a little hug, so I gave her the wrapped package of food from the airline I had taken to give to anyone I met who might be hungry. "Que es?" she said, excited. " Pan," I said, a bit embarrassed about the predictable disappointment (I too had been disappointed when the stewardess gave it to me). "Pan!" she said. " Pan con que??" " Pan con nada ," I said. Just plain boring bread. " Pan con nada! Pero pan con mantequila es bueno!" "No hay. This is bread with bread." "Y pan con jambon es bueno!" « No hay. » « Y tambien, pan con queso (cheese) es bueno ! » She went on in singsong, pan con marmelada, pan con pollo, pan con .... while I went off to see her grandfather. So after our baths, she took my hand in her firm one and led me to her "house", a clean as a whistle shack she shared with her parents--"I sleep here (big bed) and they sleep there (on the floor!)", and she cuddled next to me on her "bed"--me feeling like a wise old grandmother-- as we watched dancing men on a small tv set, a station she said came all the way from Spain, as "they spoke different." "Come!" she suddenly said, getting up. "I want to now go to the place where YOU sleep. You can read me a cuenta!" "Do you have a book?" I said, knowing that she had none, as I had asked her before, telling her that all little girls should read books. "No tengo!" she said. "You?" "No tengo ," I said. "But maybe we ask the Japanese girl." She led me with her little hand up the rocks in the dark towards my shack, where the Japanese girl was under her mosquito net with a flashlight. "Do you have book?" I asked her. She only had her Japanese picture grammar book of Spanish, and I thought, this will have to do. So, using the light from my computer (it was dark), I sat the little girl on the bed and made up stories using the random pictures of animated cartoons next to the "verb conjugations": stories about four people stuck under the ice in a mountain, who had to ask a passing bird for a flight (this from four little drawings of Mexican men), and about a mother with her green child who did not like being green. "Read me this one too!" she said, cuddling close--and pointing to the conjugation of "hacer." "No, I am tired. YOU read me this one!" So she made up a story about people being stuck in a strange sky, with all sorts of obstacles, very similar to the ones I had had in my stories, and she did a good job of having them all escape. Now, what else does one do to entertain a little girl? "Photos!" I said. "Do you want to see photos of all the countries I have been to?" "Si!" So I showed her Egypt and Turkey and India....and she said, "why do you have so MANY houses?" and I said, they are not houses, but rooms I live in from time to time. And then she said, looking at the other tourists on the boats or in the dinner parties, "are these your primos (cousins)", and I said no, and then she would ask, but where is your own home and where are your parents? She was a smart little girl--only age six--asking me where my country was, what color people were, why Muslim women had to wear veils, and who had "taught" me to smoke, and I said, good question, maybe friends. She really liked the animals from Kenya, and asked each time if the animal was "comida" for the lions, and I said, they are ALL "comida" for the lions. And she squealed each time she saw my little stuffed cow. "He is always with you!" she said. And then, when she saw him with his fellow cows in Kenya, she giggled and said, " Tu vaquita!" " "Time for little girls to go to bed!" I said, scooping her up in giggles. She turned seriously to me. "Can you take me too on your travels? Can you take me to all your quartos ? A very bonito quarto ! One that is lindo, lindo ." She was the FIRST person who ever asked to travel with me! "OF course," I said. "Tomorrow I ask your mother." "WHEN will you take me?" I paused. "In a couple years," I said. We shook hands. "And will you introduce me to your vaquita?!" "Yes!" She lit up in a big happy squeal of giggles. Note: Just asked her mother (boiling soup!) if I could take the little girl and she laughed and said, "Si! Llevala!"
 
Entire ATM Stolen In Millennium Park Top
Police were notified at 7 a.m. that the ATM was taken from 11 N. Michigan Ave. in Millennium Park near the Bean, according to a Central District police lieutenant.
 
Huckabee: Kennedy Would Have Been Urged To Die Earlier Under ObamaCare Top
Conservative media figures are blasting Democrats for trying to draw political gain from the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. But on Thursday, it was one of their own -- former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee -- who went there. The 2008 Republican presidential candidate suggested during his radio show on Thursday that, under President Obama's health care plan, Kennedy would have been told to "go home to take pain pills and die" during his last year of life. "[I]t was President Obama himself who suggested that seniors who don't have as long to live might want to just consider taking a pain pill instead of getting an expensive operation to cure them," said Huckabee. "Yet when Sen. Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer at 77, did he give up on life and go home to take pain pills and die? Of course not. He freely did what most of us would do. He choose an expensive operation and painful follow up treatments. He saw his work as vitally important and so he fought for every minute he could stay on this earth doing it. He would be a very fortunate man if his heroic last few months were what future generations remember him most for." As it happens, Huckabee made his remarks shortly after he derided Democrats for using Kennedy's death to make the pitch that "Congress must hurry and pass the health care reform bill and do it in his memory," "That not only defies good taste," said Huckabee, "it defies logic." Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!
 
Phillip Craig Garrido: Kidnapper Of Jaycee Lee Dugard, Speaks To Reporter: It'ss A "Heartwarming Story" (VIDEO) Top
Phillip Craig Garrido, the man who allegedly kidnapped Jaycee Lee Dugard nearly two decades ago when she was just 11years-old, spoke to a reporter from the California jail in which he is being held. The interview is bizarre and rambling, and Garrido calls his actions "a disgusting thing" at first, but believes the full story will redeem him somehow in the end. Garrido said he gave information to the FBI which would reveal a "heartwarming story": "If you take this a step at a time, you're going to fall over backwards, and in the end, you're going to find the most powerful, heartwarming story." WATCH: Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News , World News , and News about the Economy More on Crime
 

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