The public healthcare plan is the major lightening rod of the healthcare reform 'debate' (which, thusfar, has not been about healthcare or reform!). It provides the radical right 'evidence' to engineer fear of 'socialism' and 'a government takeover' that make seemingly rational people scream for the government to "stay out of Medicare (!)". It allows irrational people, e.g., Sarah, with apparent backing from Newtie, to proclaim that the government is setting up "death panels". [Whereas tobacco companies, whose business is, literally, selling death--needing to recruit 15,000 children per month to become nicotine addicts--seem not to be objects of Sarah-Newtie's outrage].
By making the public plan optional for each state, the hot air is let out of the disinformation balloon. "The public plan is socialism". OK, if that what people in your state believe, disallow it in your state. The wingnuts could even declare victory. Who cares?
If Alaska believes their quitter's twitters that the public plan establishes "death panels", then they can refuse to allow that plan to be offered in that state as one of the competing health plans. If Kentucky believes that its people "win" on healthcare by defeating a public plan, then let them defeat it, for Kentucky.
My state (Washington) would certainly adopt it. If Montana (our neighbor and home of Max Baucus) does not want it, then several years later we can see what the healthcare is like in Montana compared to Washington. And, if it is better in Montana without the public plan, why should the rest of us get exercised about it?
Consider this: suppose Medicare had been, similarly, optional. In states that did not adopt it, insurance premiums would have to skyrocket to account for the very high costs of seniors' medical care. Business would have suffered a competitive disadvantage, and many families would have to go into massive debt to pay for Granny's care--something Granny would have felt terrible about. Who would want to live in that state, and how long before the political forces in the state decided, however reluctantly, to adopt Medicare?
Adoption of the public plan, if optional, will become a major campaign issue in most states. I suspect that it will be nearly universally adopted--or the private insurers, in an effort to prove it is unnecessary, will keep their premiums from rising at such drastic rates.
I will go a step further. This was first suggested ("An Offer on a 'Public Option' Republicans Can't Refuse: Let States Determine Whether to Adopt It", June 25, 2009) purely as a political strategy. But, making the public plan optional is not only better political strategy, it is better public policy in our federal system. Federal authority really should be exercised only when necessary, and the burden of proof ought to be on those who assert its necessity. Those states not wishing to partake of the public plan ought not to be provided any additional benefits as compensation, but ought not be treated as pariahs.
The optional public plan can pass. There will no longer be any excuse for a member of the Democratic caucus to vote against cloture (and, if they do, they should be stripped of their seniority). We now know that Senator Byrd can make it to the Senate to cast a vote. That provides 59 votes for cloture. If Senator Kennedy cannot make it for the cloture vote, making the public plan optional ought to attract the Maine Senators to vote to allow a vote on healthcare reform.
Deference to federalism is also good 21st century progressive politics. One does not have to subscribe to the Republicans' nonsense of government-as-ogre to prefer individual control over one's life choices. Progressives who assume that millennials, who shun the rightwing because of their lies and divisiveness, are naturally attuned to federal power do so at their electoral peril. Today's progressivism is not yesterday's
Progressives make a fundamental error, therefore, when they do not take advantage of opportunities to create policies that do not require the assertion of federal authority. On energy and the environment, for example, no such opportunity exists--indeed, even federal authority is inadequate, world action is required.
Healthcare reform, however, is different. It provides an opportunity for accomplishing the goals of reform, while enjoying the benefits of federalism. And, in so doing, enabling the reform to be enacted in the first place.
Health reform is in danger of failing because the focus has been too much on who is covered and not enough on what is covered. Health care reform is primarily about health insurance reform, with the main battle being over coverage and the payment system.
Of course, we need to provide coverage for the 48 million Americans who do not have health insurance. It is morally indefensible that we have not already done so.
But we also need to transform what is covered. If we want to make affordable health care available to the 48 million Americans who do not have health insurance, then the fundamental causes of many chronic diseases need to be addressed -- which are primarily the lifestyle choices we make each day -- rather than only literally or figuratively bypassing them.
If we just cover bypass surgery, angioplasty, stents, and other interventions that are dangerous, invasive, expensive, and largely ineffective on 48 million more people, then costs are likely to increase significantly at a time when resources are limited. As a result, painful choices are being discussed -- rationing, raising taxes, and/or increasing the deficit -- and these are threatening the public acceptance and thus the viability of health reform.
Meaningful health reform needs to provide incentives for physicians and other health professionals to teach their patients healthy ways of living rather than reimbursing primarily drugs and surgical interventions. If lifestyle interventions proven to reverse as well as prevent many chronic diseases are reimbursed along with other strategies for improving cost-effectiveness across the U.S. healthcare system, then it may be possible to provide universal coverage at significantly lower cost without making painful choices, and the only side-effects are good ones.
The U.S. "health-care system" is primarily what Senator Harkin [D-Iowa] calls "a sick-care system." Last year, $2.1 trillion dollars were spent in this country on medical care, or 16.5% of the gross national product, and 95 cents of every dollar were spent to treat disease after it had already occurred.
Heart disease, diabetes, prostate/breast cancer, and obesity account for up to 75% of these health care costs, and yet these are largely preventable and even reversible by changing diet and lifestyle.
Our research, and the work of many others, have shown that our bodies often have a remarkable capacity to begin healing, and much more quickly than we had once realized, if we address the lifestyle factors that often cause these chronic diseases. Medicine today focuses primarily on drugs and surgery, genes and germs, microbes and molecules, but we are so much more than that.
Many people tend to think of breakthroughs in medicine as a new drug, laser, or high-tech surgical procedure. They often have a hard time believing that the simple choices that we make in our lifestyle -- what we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support -- can be as powerful as drugs and surgery, but they often are. Often, even better.
These choices are especially clear in cardiology as an example of this larger issue. Large-scale studies have shown that changing lifestyle could prevent at least 90-95% of all heart disease. (1) Thus, the disease that accounts for more premature deaths and costs Americans more than any other illness is almost completely preventable, and even reversible, simply by changing lifestyle.
In contrast, many people are surprised to learn that bypass surgery and angioplasty don't work very well. In 2006, for example, according to the American Heart Association (2), 1.3 million angioplasties and stents were performed at an average cost of $48,399 each, or more than $60 billion. In addition, 448,000 coronary bypass operations were performed at a cost of $99,743 each, or more than $44 billion -- i.e., more than $100 billion for these two operations.
Despite these costs, a major randomized controlled trial found that angioplasties and stents do not significantly prolong life or even prevent heart attacks in stable patients (i.e., in most patients who receive them). (3) Earlier randomized controlled trials of coronary bypass surgery found that this procedure prolongs life in only a small fraction of patients -- those with left main coronary artery disease or equivalent and left ventricular dysfunction (ejection fraction less than 30%). A recent randomized controlled trial in diabetics found that neither bypass surgery nor angioplasty prolonged life or prevented heart attacks. (4)
Lifestyle changes also can be reframed not only as preventing chronic diseases but also as reversing the progression of these illnesses -- i.e., as intensive non-surgical, non-pharmacologic interventions.
What we eat, how we respond to stress, whether or not we smoke cigarettes, how much exercise we get, and the quality of our relationships and social support may be as powerful as drugs and surgery in treating (not just preventing) many chronic diseases.
Our studies showed that people with severe coronary heart disease were able to stop or reverse it by making intensive lifestyle changes, without drugs or surgery, and these findings have now been replicated by several others. (5) There was some reversal of heart disease after one year and even more improvement after five years, and there were 2.5 times fewer cardiac events when compared to a randomized control group. (6)
Almost 80% of patients eligible for bypass surgery or angioplasty were able to safely avoid it by making comprehensive lifestyle changes instead, saving almost $30,000 per patient in the first year when compared to a matched control group. (7) In a second demonstration project with Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, these comprehensive lifestyle changes reduced total health care costs in those with coronary heart disease by 50% after only one year and by an additional 20-30% in years two and three when compared to a matched control group.
Thus, the disease that accounts for more premature deaths and costs Americans more than any other illness is almost completely preventable, and even reversible, simply by changing lifestyle. We don't have to wait for a new breakthrough in drugs or surgery; we just need to put into practice what we already know.
Reimbursement is a major determinant of how medicine is practiced. When reimbursement changes, so do medical practice and medical education.
Some question whether or not prevention saves money, asking whether these approaches actually prevent or only delay the onset of disease. Part of the reason that preventive approaches are usually scored by the Congressional Budget Office (which estimates the overall costs of any legislation) as significantly increasing costs is that lifestyle changes are viewed only as primary prevention -- paying money today in hopes of saving money later.
But even primary prevention saves money, although the cost savings per person are not as high as when intensive lifestyle changes are offered as treatment to those who are already sick. For example, three years ago, Steve Burd (CEO of Safeway) realized that health care costs for his employees were exceeding Safeway's net income--clearly, not sustainable. I consulted with him in redesigning the corporate health plan for his employees in ways that emphasized prevention and wellness, provided incentives for healthful behaviors, and paid 100% of the costs of preventive care.
Overall health care costs decreased by 15% in the first year and have remained flat since then. Many other worksite wellness programs have shown cost savings as well as a happier and more productive workforce. This approach is bringing together Democrats and Republicans, labor and management.
In each of these studies, significant savings occurred in the first year -- medically effective and cost effective. Why? Because there is a growing body of scientific evidence showing how much more dynamic our bodies are than had previously been believed.
The same intensive lifestyle changes that may reverse the progression of coronary heart disease may also slow, stop, or even reverse the progression of early-stage prostate cancer (8), whereas conventional treatments such as radical prostatectomy and radiation may not prolong life except in the small percentage of patients who have the most aggressive disease. (9)
These lifestyle changes also may beneficially affect gene expression in only three months, turning on genes that prevent disease and turning off genes that promote heart disease, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and other illnesses. (10) Often, people say, "Oh, it's all in my genes, there's not much I can do about it." For many people, it captures their imagination to know that changing lifestyle changes their genes for the better.
Last year, my colleagues and I published the first study showing that these intensive lifestyle changes significantly increase telomerase, and thus telomere length, in only three months. (11) (Even drugs have not been shown to do this.) Telomeres are the ends of your chromosomes that help control aging -- as your telomeres get longer, your life gets longer. (Like all research, these relatively small studies need to be replicated in larger randomized controlled trials.)
Lifestyle changes are not only as good as drugs but often even better. For example, a major study showed that lifestyle changes are even more effective than diabetes drugs such as metformin in reducing the incidence of diabetes in persons at high risk, with lower costs and fewer side-effects. (12)
"Prevention" often conjures up false choices -- "Is it fun for me or is it good for me? Am I going to live longer or is it just going to seem longer if I eat and live healthier?" Because these mechanisms are so dynamic, most people find that they feel so much better, so quickly, it reframes the reason for making these changes from fear of dying (which is too scary) or risk factor modification (which is too boring) to feeling better.
Many patients say that there is no point in giving up something that they enjoy unless they get something back that's even better -- not years later, but days or weeks later. Then, the choices become clearer and, for many patients, worth making. They often experience that something beneficial and meaningful is quickly happening.
The benefit of feeling better quickly is a powerful motivator and reframes therapeutic goals from prevention or risk factor modification to improvement in the quality of life. Concepts such as "risk factor modification" and "prevention" are often considered boring and they may not initiate or sustain the levels of motivation needed to make and maintain comprehensive lifestyle changes.
In our experience, it is not enough to focus only on patient behaviors such as diet and exercise; we often need to work at a deeper level. Depression, loneliness, and lack of social support are also epidemic in our culture. These affect not only quality of life but also survival. Several studies has shown that people who are lonely, depressed, and isolated are many times more likely to get sick and die prematurely than those who are not. In part, this is mediated by the fact that they are more likely to engage in self-destructive behaviors when they feel this way, but also via mechanisms that are not well-understood. For example, many people smoke or overeat when they are stressed, lonely, or depressed.
What is sustainable is joy, pleasure, and freedom, not deprivation and austerity. (13) When you eat a healthier diet, quit smoking, exercise, meditate, and have more love in your life, then your brain receives more blood and oxygen, so you think more clearly, have more energy, need less sleep. The latest studies have shown that your brain may grow so many new neurons that it may get measurably bigger in only a few months -- this was thought to be impossible only a few years ago. Your face gets more blood flow, so your skin glows more and wrinkles less. Your heart gets more blood flow, so you have more stamina and can even begin to reverse heart disease. Your sexual organs receive more blood flow, so you may become more potent -- the same way that drugs like Viagra work. For many people, these are choices worth making -- not just to live longer, but also to live better.
In other words, the debate on prevention often misses the point: the mortality rate is still 100%, one per person. So, it's not just how long we live but also how well we live. Making comprehensive lifestyle changes significantly improves the quality of life very quickly, which is what makes these changes sustainable and meaningful.
Unfortunately, anything involving lifestyle changes gets held to a different standard. Drugs and surgery are not required to show that they save money in order to be covered, only that they work. Lifestyle changes often work even better, and at lower cost.
Finally, it's worth pointing out that what's good for your personal health is good for the planet's health; what's personally sustainable is globally sustainable. For example, eating a diet high in red meat increases the risk of heart disease and many forms of cancer. It also increases global warming: livestock cause more global warming than all forms of transportation combined due to methane production, which is 21 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. (14)
As Senator Harkin said, "To date, prevention and public health have been the missing pieces in the national conversation about health care reform. It's time to make them the centerpiece of that conversation. Not an asterisk. Not a footnote. But the centerpiece of health care reform."
If we don't, then the escalating costs and resulting painful choices -- rationing, raising taxes, and/or increasing the deficit -- are threatening the public acceptance and thus the viability of health reform.
Yusuf S, Hawken S, Ôunpuu S, et al. Effect of potentially modifiable risk factors associated with myocardial infarction in 52 countries (the INTERHEART study). Lancet. 2004; 364: 937-52.
Lloyd-Jones D, Adams R, Carnethon M, et al. Heart disease and stroke statistics 2009 update. A report from the American Heart Association statistics committee and stroke statistics committee. Circulation. 2009;119:e1-e161.
Boden WE, O'Rourke RA, Teo KK, et al. Optimal medical therapy with or without PCI for stable coronary disease. N Engl J Med. 2007;356:1-14.
The BARI 2D study group. A randomized trial of therapies for type 2 diabetes and coronary artery disease. N Engl J Med. 2009;360:2503-15.
Ornish DM, Brown SE, Scherwitz LW, et al. Can lifestyle changes reverse coronary atherosclerosis? The Lifestyle Heart Trial. Lancet. 1990; 336:129-133.
Ornish D, Scherwitz LW, Billings JH, et al. Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. JAMA. 1998;280:2001-2007.
Ornish D. Avoiding Revascularization with Lifestyle Changes: The Multicenter Lifestyle Demonstration Project. American Journal of Cardiology. 1998;82:72T-76T.
Ornish D, Weidner G, Fair WR, et al. Intensive lifestyle changes may affect the progression of prostate cancer. J Urol 2005;174:1065-1070.
Barry MJ. Screening for Prostate Cancer -- The Controversy That Refuses to Die. N Engl J Med. 2009;360:1351-4.
Ornish D, Magbanua MJ, Weidner G, et al. Changes in prostate gene expression in men undergoing an intensive nutrition and lifestyle intervention. Proc Nat Acad Sci USA 2008;105:8369-8374.
Ornish D, Lin J, Daubenmier J, et al. Increased telomerase activity and comprehensive lifestyle changes: a pilot study. Lancet Oncol 2008;9:1048-1057.
Diabetes Prevention Research Group. Reduction in the incidence of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention or metformin. N Engl J Med. 2002;346:393-403.
Ornish D. The Spectrum. New York: Random House/Ballantine Books, 2008.
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's report, Livestock's Long Shadow. Accessed on April 16th, 2007.
I've got nothing against Republicans. Well, I do find them kind of boring and grumpy and clearly not thinking straight on the old "Who controls my ovaries?" issue, when I'm the one who has to endure menstrual cramps every third Saturday. However, do not, I repeat, do not get me started on the subject of George W. Bush.
If you are pals with George W. Bush, you are ipso de facto up to no good. And by "pals" I'm referring to anyone other than Cindy Sheehan who has been to his Crawford ranch. As my friend out in Denver might say, you are up to some "no tells-ies."
You know those violent and crazy town hall mobs? It's now being reported that former Columbia/HCA CEO, Richard Scott and current chief executive of the lobby group Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR) is working with American Liberty Alliance and American Majority. All of these groups are united in fighting the health care reform battle. "Fighting," in the summer 2009 sense, means sending out notices about town halls and prodding the craziest extremists you can find on your mailing list to disrupt the aforementioned town halls. The conveniently named "CPR" is not just organizing these "made for YouTube ambushes," as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow points out in the video below but, "they've also been taking credit for them."
Why should any Texan with a photo ID care about Richard Scott? Well, maybe because Scott was an investor in the Texas Rangers baseball team back in the 1990's. In fact, he was in the same investment group as George W. Bush and Ambassador Tom Schieffer, who's now running for Governor of Texas. As a Democrat.
It's enough to give this yellow-dog Democrat a heart attack--if I could afford it.
In the first video, skip to 4:30 for a fun "Six Degrees of Schieffer" moment. In the second, that bald guy on the right is him -- skip to 2:54 for some juicy, health care gossip. But don't forget -- "no tells-ies."
I'm worried -- and if I'm worried, you should be, too.
The reason I'm worried is that the wrong diagnosis is being made.
As any doctor can tell you, the most crucial step toward healing is having the right diagnosis. If the disease is precisely identified, a good resolution is far more likely. Conversely, a bad diagnosis usually means a bad outcome, no matter how skilled the physician.
And, what's true in personal health care is just as true in national health care reform: Healing begins with the correct diagnosis of the problem.
Washington is working on reform initiatives that focus on one problem: the fact that the system is too expensive (and consequently too exclusive.) Reform proposals, such as the "public option" for government insurance or calls for drug makers to drop prices, are aimed mostly at boosting affordability and access. Make it cheap enough, the thinking goes, and the 46 million Americans who can't afford coverage will finally get their fair share.
But what's missing, tragically, is a diagnosis of the real, far more fundamental problem, which is that what's even worse than its stratospheric cost is the fact that American health care doesn't fulfill its prime directive -- it does not help people become or stay healthy. It's not a health care system at all; it's a disease management system, and making the current system cheaper and more accessible will just spread the dysfunction more broadly.
It's impossible to make our drug-intensive, technology-centric, and corrupt system affordable. Consider that Americans spent 8.4 billion on medicine in 1950, vs. an astonishing 2.3 trillion in 2007. That's $30,000 annually for a family of four. The bloated structure of endless, marginal-return tests; patent-protected drugs and "heroic" surgical interventions for virtually every health problem simply can't be made much cheaper due to its very nature. Costs can only be shifted in various unpalatable ways.
So, a far more salient question that must be addressed is: Are we getting good health for our trillions? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding, "No." The U.S. ranked near the very bottom of the top 40 nations -- below Columbia, Chile, Costa Rica and Dominica -- in a rating of health systems by the World Health Organization in 2000. In short, we pay about twice as much per capita for our health care as does the rest of the developed world, and we have almost nothing to show for it.
I'm not against high-tech medicine. It has a secure place in the diagnosis and treatment of serious disease. But our health care professionals are currently using it for everything, and the cost going to break us.
In the future, this kind of medicine must be limited to those cases in which it is clearly indicated: trauma, acute and critical conditions, disease involving vital organs, etc. It should be viewed as a specialized form of medicine, perhaps offered only in major centers serving large populations.
Most cases of disease should be managed in other, more affordable ways. Functional, cost-effective health care must be based on a new kind of medicine that relies on the human organism's innate capacity for self-regulation and healing. It would use inexpensive, low-tech interventions for the management of the commonest forms of disease. It would be a system that puts the health back into health care. And it would also happen to be far less expensive than what we have now.
If we can make the correct diagnosis, the healing can begin. If we can't, both our personal health and our economy are doomed.
Politicians aren't going to resolve this issue overnight. Any health care reform bill that gets jammed through Congress in the next month or two will be dangerously flawed. Washington needs to take a step back and re-examine the entire task with an eye toward achieving the most effective solution, not the cheapest and most expeditious.
When people allow themselves to be overwhelmed by fear things usually get crazy.
Sadly, such is the case concerning Health Care reform.
During a series of town hall meetings around the country last week, members of Congress have been jeered, shouted-down, and threatened with death. Many of the protesters have been ginned up by pundits and political organizations:
Sean Hannity: "Become part of the mob!" read a banner on his Web site.
Rush Limbaugh: "Adolph Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate."
A Web site called Tea Party Patriots instructed their followers to "Yell out and challenge the Rep's statements early... Stand up and shout and sit right back down."
And former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin wrote in a statement on Facebook, "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide... Such a system is downright evil."
In looking at the results to the Walter H. Capps Center's Post-Election poll that I took part in last November when asked, what the most important, actionable issues were for the next president and congress, the third highest write-in response, behind "Fixing the economy," and "Ending the war in Iraq" was "Fix healthcare... availability for all."
Despite differences in how to go about this, one fact that is not in dispute is that health care costs will rise to unsustainable levels unless something is done.
But this commentary is not about the pros and cons of the health care debate. That's politics. This is about the ethics of a "debate" which has deteriorated into an Us vs. Them shouting match.
What's particularly troubling is how easily people can get stirred up by fear, show up at a meeting designed to have an honest dialog and then proceed to disrupt and proclaim "their rights." Most of those that I witnessed in news clips seemed to have forgotten the corresponding responsibilities that go with those rights. Many demonstrated something akin to shouting fire in a crowded theater.
How can you hear the answers to questions if everyone is shouting? And what kind of message does this send to our kids: that if you don't like what someone says, it's okay to bully, badger or shout them down?
We're better than that.
I don't know how the health care debate will end. There's no doubt that there is genuine public concern. This is a complex issue and there are no easy answers. What I do know is that we won't be able to succeed in fixing anything through misinformation, shout-downs and hate speech.
More communication is needed. Greater clarity needs to be brought forth by the president. He and Congress both need to listen and learn the genuine concerns by Americans. Americans, in turn, need to communicate those concerns in a reasonable, rational manner. Shouting is neither reasonable nor rational.
After a reasoned debate and thoughtful working from both parties, I would like to see the president and a small bi-partisan group of Senators hold a town hall meeting to clearly lay out their plans for reform.
In last November's poll, one of the top qualities likely voters said was important for the next president was a "clear vision to unify the country." In the final analysis, this might be Mr. Obama's greatest challenge. But we bear some of the responsibility for this too.
We need rational rhetoric not irrational fear-mongering. Many of us need to stop allowing ourselves to be stirred up by hate-filled, demagogic rhetoric and start examining the pros and cons by reading and discussing the specifics of any bill with friends, neighbors and colleagues.
"Asked by PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer in February," wrote Time magazine (July 6, 2009) "if he did not feel burdened by the several crises now besetting the country, Obama noted that the moment 'is full of peril but full of possibility' and that such times are 'when the political system starts to move effectively.'"
Last week has shown us the peril. Mr. Obama needs to show us the possibility; a possibility that will move us from fear to faith.
Jim Lichtman has been writing and speaking on ethics since 1995. You can read more commentaries on his Web site, www.ethicsStupid.com.
On Friday night, Arianna appeared on "Real Time with Bill Maher" Friday night alongside Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and they discussed the abuse of antidepressants happening in the US. This is a topic Arianna has been writing about for years. Here are some of her columns and blogs:
On the East Coast, when you think of San Francisco, we often imagine a progressive oasis where ideals of peace and community take precedent over mindless jingoism and division. That's why I was deeply shocked to learn that the San Francisco School Board voted 4-3 to allow Junior ROTC -- military training -- to be available as an option for physical education in the San Francisco public schools.
The historic mission of P.E., dating back to the nineteenth century and the instituting of public school athletic leagues, is to promote teamwork, fellowship, and healthy habits that will last a lifetime. To put it mildly, there are few things less healthy than war.
To see JROTC put forth as a viable option in San Francisco of all places, is particularly eye opening, given the state of school budgets around the country. Physical Education programs are being phased out from coast to coast as emphasis and resources are put toward standardized testing. When budgets become over-stretched or underfunded, physical education classes, along with music and art, are immediately demanded to walk the plank. This is what drove me from teaching in D.C. public schools; the imperative to teach to the test and little else.
The idea that the programs of the Pentagon could serve as some sort of replacement for real physical education is Orwellian. Sure, young people are often desperate for structured physical exercise to break up the monotony of the school day. But why not instill in them the love of participating in sports instead of the military? The two are not synonymous.
San Francisco school board member Rachel Norton wrote on her blog that she supported the JROTC option because it is a simple question of expanding exercise options for our kids. She wrote on her Web site, "So I'm sorry, but I think it's important to allow students as many alternatives as we can if the outcome is that they will ultimately learn how to respect themselves, respect their bodies, and make choices that lead to a healthy, long, and fulfilling life." Leading "a healthy, long and fulfilling life" and patrolling Afghanistan don't exactly go hand in hand.
There are several other problems with Norton's argument.
The first is that a recent study by the San Diego school district, done to support efforts to give P.E. credit to JROTC cadets, showed instead that students who take part in JROTC actually fall physically behind their classmates in the basic exercise curriculum, according to Rick Jahnkow of Project YANO (Youth and Non-Military Opportunities.)
One reason for this is that JROTC is not taught by actual physical educators. In this era of childhood obesity and juvenile diabetes, that should hardly be taken lightly.
The second problem with Norton's logic is that she entirely ignores -- if not obscures -- the political dimension of her decision. Proponents of the JROTC option want more militarism integrated into education. They want the Pentagon in the public square. As Marc Norton (no relation for Rachel), a leading opponent of the JROTC/P.E. option, wrote to me, "What is revealing about this fight over P.E. credit is the way that JROTC boosters have abandoned their rhetoric about giving students a 'choice' to be part of the military program. Now it is all about promoting the program, pumping up the program, luring youth onto a military track, particularly low-income youth and youth of color, using P.E. credit as the bait."
Oftentimes, San Francisco acts as a beacon when it comes to both healthy lifestyles and promoting peace. It's deeply distressing to consider that the San Francisco School Board could be dragging the schools of the United States in the other direction.
Iran's police chief admitted today that protesters arrested after June's disputed presidential election had been tortured while in custody in a notorious prison in south-west Tehran. But he denied any of the detainees died as a result of their mistreatment.
On Friday night, Arianna appeared on "Real Time with Bill Maher" alongside Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and discussed the reissue of her book "Pigs at the Trough" and the need to fundamentally reform our financial system.
CHICAGO (AP) -- Vowing to continue speaking his mind, ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Sunday launched a Web site that catalogues his scores of public appearances and allows for public feedback.
"Since his controversial ousting from office, Rod Blagojevich has refused to be silent," an introduction on http://www.GovernorRod.com reads. "In the meantime, he's not holding back. He's not playing politics or playing nice. He's simply speaking his mind and telling the truth!"
Blagojevich has been in the spotlight since his Dec. 9 arrest at his Chicago home. He regularly appears on television and radio shows, acted in a Second City comedy show about corruption allegations against him and even sang Elvis Presley's "Treat Me Nice" Friday at a Chicago block party.
The Web site, featuring a photo of Blagojevich in a shirt and tie with a suit jacket slung over this shoulder, gives the former governor's schedule for speaking engagements, radio appearances and details on his book, "The Governor."
"Rod Blagojevich needed his own Web site. It was time," Blagojevich's publicist Glenn Selig said in a statement. "GovernorRod.com offers his fans and supporters a way to connect."
The comments portion of his Web site encourages visitors to "Speak Out! Tell Rod what's bugging you."
Blagojevich faces federal charges, including allegations he schemed to sell or trade President Barack Obama's former U.S. Senate seat, attempted to extort campaign money from companies seeking state business and plotted to use the governor's office to pressure the Chicago Tribune to fire editorial writers who called for his impeachment.
Blagojevich has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.
The judge overseeing the corruption case has said Blagojevich could go to trial as early as April.
The next chapter in his case unfolds Tuesday when his former top aide is expected to change his plea on corruption charges to guilty.
Alonzo Monk was due to change his plea July 20 but prosecutors and defense attorneys didn't finish a deal in time.
Monk, often known by the nickname "Lon," is charged with one count of wire fraud for scheming to pressure a racetrack executive for a $100,000 campaign contribution in exchange for Blagojevich signing racetrack legislation. -ASSOCIATED PRESS
CHICAGO — White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen had a warning for the rest of the league: Hit our players and our pitchers will retaliate.
Guillen was upset Sunday after Paul Konerko, Scott Podsednik and Gordon Beckham got hit by pitches by the Cleveland staff a night earlier in Chicago's 8-5 win. Guillen acknowledged he didn't think the Indians were throwing at them, but he's had enough of watching his players get hit.
"Yesterday I get upset, they hit one guy and they throw in into another guy. I got upset. I know for a fact they're not throwing at nobody, but enough is enough," Guillen said. "I have Konerko bruised all over the place. Around the league, be careful because we're going to hit people. I don't care if I get suspended because I need to protect my players."
The White Sox have been hit by pitches 45 times this season, fifth in the majors. The Indians have been hit 65 times, most in the majors.
"When we went to Cleveland they hit two guys, not on purpose, but someone can get hurt out there. You can pitch in, but if you don't know how don't do it," he said. "It gets to the point when they hit us seven times, 20 times in one week and we hit one and they're the headhunters and that's a (problem) with major league baseball."
Guillen also warned, if he suspects a pitcher intentionally throwing at one of his players expect multiple retaliation.
"If I see someone hit my player, and I know they hit him on purpose it's two guys going down. I don't care if I get suspended," Guillen said. "I rather have me suspended for two games than have my players on the DL for 30 days."
Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Ben S. Bernanke deserves another term as Federal Reserve Chairman on the basis of his success in battling the financial crisis, said Princeton University Economist Paul Krugman, a winner of the Nobel Prize.
"He's earned the right to a second term," Krugman, 56, said yesterday in an interview in Kuala Lumpur. "He turned the Fed into the financial intermediary of last resort. When the banking system failed to deliver capital where it was needed, he put the Fed into the markets."
US banks stand to collect a record $38.5bn in fees for customer overdrafts this year, with the bulk of the revenue coming from the most financially stretched consumers amid the deepest recession since the 1930s, according to research. The fees are nearly double those reported in 2000.
The finding is likely to increase public hostility towards the financial sector, which has been under political pressure to ease the burden on consumers by increasing credit availability and lending more fairly after being bailed out by taxpayers.
I recently attended a music concert, and sitting next to me was a man I had met briefly before, but had never spoken to at length. I turned toward him, and said, "Hi. How's life?" "How's life?" he answered. "What kind of question is that? How do you think my life is?" Taken aback, I mumbled, "I don't know." "Just look around you," he said. "It's been raining for the last two weeks, the economy sucks, and it's freezing in here. That's how my life is." I looked down at my program, and with a forced smile said, "Well, enjoy the concert", "Yeah, OK", he answered, as the lights dimmed.
I felt angry and embarrassed, but soon began to wonder about this man. Perhaps he, or someone in his family, is ill, I thought. Maybe he lost his job, or suffered a recent tragedy. Maybe he has a drinking problem. After the concert I saw a friend who knows this man, and asked her about him. "As far as I've heard, he and his family are fine. And you know, he's quite well off. Why do you ask?" she said. "I just spoke with him, and he seemed very upset about something". "Oh, now I get it," she said. "Don't worry. He's a world-class complainer. If he's not complaining about something, he's not happy. Frankly, no one can stand to be around him, so consider yourself lucky that this was your only encounter."
Most of us probably know someone like this man; one who finds a reason to complain, even when sitting comfortably with his family at a concert in a wealthy New York neighborhood. And let's be honest, most of us also enjoy complaining. We may complain that it's too hot or too cold outside, traffic is too slow, our co-workers are lazy or conniving, our spouses don't appreciate us, our back hurts, politicians are crooked, and the world is too hectic, crowded, unfair, or violent.
But wait a minute, you might say, these are simply statements of fact. My back does hurt. Politicians are crooks. The economy does suck. Should I ignore things that are problems, and simply pretend that everything is OK? Isn't that both unrealistic and irresponsible? How will things ever get better if we don't point out problems?
Well, let's take a careful look at the nature of complaining. Complaints, in the context of this article, are negative statements about things that one can not change - such as the weather, aging, and viewpoints of others - or about things for which one has no intention, or feels inadequate, to take action to change - such as hunger, hatred, and war. Someone who is actively working to bring about positive change through deliberate action is not a complainer, but is one who sees problems as calls to action, and as possibilities for growth and transformation.
Here, then, is my definition. Complaining is: The disparaging observation about a person, event, or phenomenon, for which the complainer has no ability or intention to act in order to create positive change.
From my experience and observations, people complain for several reasons: 1. To avoid taking action: We often complain because we are uncomfortable feeling helpless and out of control in the face of problems for which we feel unable to do anything. Complaining can make us feel active and involved, because we are presenting a strong opinion, often in "righteous indignation". When we place ourselves as the critical observer or victim, though, we exempt ourselves from doing anything to fix the situation. Many complaints are accompanied with a "word-weary" sigh, That's just the way it is, and there's nothing anyone can do to change it. The complainer will often label one who believes that positive change is possible as "naïve", in order to justify and excuse his inaction.
2. To avoid looking at oneself: Complaining puts the focus on outside sources (other people, nature, politics, God...), to keep us from seeing our role in the complaint, and to avoid the hard work of changing our attitude and actions. When, for example, we complain that "everybody is greedy" or "the culture is corrupt" we are blaming others for our situation. Since neither are objectively true (there are many, many generous and honest people and organizations), these complaints say more about the complainer than the object of his complaint. If you complain that everyone is greedy, that's an indication that you need to examine your own relationship to money and possessions.
3. To feel superior: There are those who enjoy looking for problems; finding the one thing that is "wrong" in a situation, and then taking great pride in the discovery of the defect. While this seems like a position of discernment and an insistence on quality, it is actually an effort to feel better about oneself by criticizing another - especially someone who is producing. The complainer may say, What ever happened to quality? (implying that he is one of the rare human being who cares about such things), but the complainer does not present the discovery of these defects in an attitude of helpfulness, but usually vocalizes them with relish and contempt.
I know about these reasons for complaining because at one time or another I've used them all. I've discovered, though, that complaining is not only ineffective but, like the man at the concert, damages relationships, draining my energy, and making me and those around me unhappy. I have recently vowed to stop complaining, and when complaints arise, I now ask myself the following questions: 1. Do I want to, and can I, do anything about it? If so, then do it, if not, then gladly accept the reality of the situation. 2. What's my role in this complaint? If there's a recurring pattern, then the one common factor is me, and I must look inward first for the reason for the complaint. 3. Am I just nitpicking to make myself look good/smart/superior? When I see something that others miss, if it's not important, let it go. If it is important, point it out gently, with an intention to be of service.
These are difficult practices, but as we encounter the damage caused by years of complaining, we start to catch ourselves before we indulge this destructive habit, and begin to see that we can actually transform our inclination to complain in to a means for personal and societal growth.
Despite, or perhaps because of, a lack of press reviews, an entire summer of negative publicity, and Paramount's somewhat toxic attempt to define the movie by the Red State/Blue State culture war, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra grossed a towering $56.2 million in its debut weekend. Disregarding for a moment the pundits (most of whom have not seen the film) hand-wringing about the end of civilization (it's a fun movie that delivered what it promised, end of story), let's discuss numbers. The film had a solid (for its genre) multiplier of 2.52x. At a cost of $175 million (which Paramount split with SpyGlass), the film still has a bit to go for profitability. It opened overseas in most of the world as well, and it's looking like overseas numbers added another $45 million to the take. So GI Joe just had an international opening weekend of $100 million. But since I don't know nearly enough about international numbers to calculate long term potential, let's stick to domestic for now.
An opening weekend of $56 million puts GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra in a very tricky position. Because that seems to be a number where a lot of genre pictures end up opening of late, it gives us some precedence to work with. First of all, this film will not act like Watchmen, 8 Mile or The Village. The film may be divisive, but it delivers what it advertises, so the dreaded 2.0x weekend-to total multiplier ($110-$115 million) finish is probably not a worst-case scenario even worth discussing. At this point, the logical worst case scenario is a performance reminiscent of The Incredible Hulk (2.43x weekend to total multiplier = $55m/$134m), and the Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2.27x = $58m/$131m). But even Sex & The City: The Movie opened to $57 million, crashed and burned in its second weekend, then eventually regained momentum and ended up with $152 million (2.6x its opening number). Heck, the disliked and forgotten Rush Hour 3 opened around this weekend with $49 million and crawled to $140 million. Alas, the movie's $150 million pricetag and $258 million international haul did more to kill New Line than the similarly budgeted and far more successful Golden Compass ($372 million worldwide). But the number I'm looking at is the 3.15x multiplier for the equally 'no one saw it coming' success of S.W.A.T. Opening on the same weekend six-years ago, this surprisingly solid action film rode an intense trailer and a few recognizable names (Samuel L. Jackson, Colin Farell, LL Cool J, and Michelle Rodriguez) to a $37 million opening weekend and a $116 million finish. If GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra acts like S.W.A.T., it'll end its run with $177 million.
So, barring uncommonly strong word of mouth, we're looking at a worst case scenario of about $128 million and a best-case scenario of $180 million. In its favor is the fact that it has the blockbuster field all cleared away, since Star Trek ($255m) is already in second-run theaters, Harry Potter 6 ($273m) is basically playing 95% to its fanbase in an attempt to surpass the $290m of the previous two sequels, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($393m) is just sticking around till it crawls to $400 million. To its detriment is the fact that many kids start going back to school and college in just a few weeks, meaning that it won't have summer weekdays to soak up cash in between the weekends. At this point, the summer season is more or less over, with only geek-centric cult films (District 9, Inglorious Bastards, Shorts) and horror films (Halloween 2 and The Final Destination 3D) left to pick at the pie. Look for GI Joe to become the second-choice for moviegoers for pretty much the rest of the summer.
Coming in second was the Meryl Streep/Amy Adams comedy Julie & Julia. As befitting its nature as an adult-driven film, it had a 3.1x multiplier and ended the weekend with $20.1 million. This is a solid opening weekend for what will likely be a leggy run. Everyone and their brother thinks that Meryl Streep will get another Oscar nomination, so that will help the film in the long run (i.e., -- post nominations release in January). The film cost only $40 million to make, so it will do just fine even if it doesn't play like The Devil Wears Prada or Mama Mia. It's worth nothing that Meryl Streep is becoming one of the more reliable openers around. When she does high-profile, commercial movies, a $20 million debuted is now all but guaranteed. Just in the last five years, she's had fix $20 million+ openers with The Manchurian Candidate, Lemony Snicket: A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Devil Wears Prada, Mama Mia, and now Julie & Julia). It's also worth noting, ONCE AGAIN, that when studios practice cost control for adult-driven films, they can be quite profitable.
Dropping from first to fifth was Judd Apatow's Funny People, which plunged a shocking 65% for a new total of just $40.4 million. Despite what I said last weekend about Adam Sandler movies and their large second-weekend tumbles, this is far outside the bounds of his performances. Granted, I didn't care much for the movie, but it didn't deserve this and Universal is going to take a hit on this $75 million picture (it should have cost $40 million). In defense of the beleaguered studio, I'm sure this looked like a no-brainer on paper. The other new release of the weekend, the surprisingly well-reviewed A Perfect Getaway, opened like the dump release that it was, grossing just $5.7 million.
The rest of the news is just keeping up with the holdovers. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ($187 million) will struggle to make it to $200 million domestic. Fox can take some solace in the fact that it's currently the highest-grossing overseas cartoon of all time. Yup, factoring just overseas numbers, it has outgrossed Finding Nemo, Shrek 1, 2, and 3, and every other animated picture ever made. It's grossed $548 million outside of the U.S., which gives it a current worldwide total of $736 million and climbing. In the realm of leggy comedies, The Hangover has grossed $262 million and The Proposal has grossed just under $155 million. As for The Hangover, it is currently the second-highest grossing pure comedy EVER, behind the $285 million of Home Alone. If it can magically scrounge up another $23 million (not likely barring a release), it can also pass the $282 million total of The Matrix Reloaded and take its spot of the number two-grossing R-rated film of all time. Not bad company.
Finally, in limited release land, (500) Days of Summer has crossed $12 million and The Hurt Locker has crossed $9 million. The former will likely make it to $30 million while the acclaimed Iraq war thriller won't cross $20 million. Frankly, Summit Entertainment made a mistake not just releasing The Hurt Locker as a wide-release after the first weekend of limited play. It's absolutely a mainstream thriller and could have easily been sold as such. For all the screaming about those dumb kids seeing Transformers 2 or GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra instead of The Hurt Locker, the best thing that Summit Entertainment could have done was attach a trailer to either of those films. They didn't, so you can't blame the audience on the studio's missteps. On the plus side, Summit may just be saving its money for the inevitable Oscar campaign, where the increased number of Best Picture nominees all but guarantees the film a shot at the title (if it gets a nomination, it will easily double whatever it ends at in the first release).
Tune in next weekend when District 9 tries to break out of the geek-ghetto, Rachel McAdams returns to mainstream filmmaking in The Time Traveler's Wife, and Ponyo goes limited to add gravy to its current $184 million foreign total. For a look and what happened this weekend last year, a review of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, and more, go to Mendelson's Memos.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane was charged with attacking a cab driver in his hometown Sunday, a beating that police said was triggered when the driver did not have 20 cents in change to give the player and his cousin.
Buffalo police said the 20-year-old Kane and his 21-year-old cousin, James Kane, had apparently caught a cab from the city's downtown nightclub district at about 4 a.m. The cab driver suffered cuts to his face and his glasses were damaged, police spokesman Michael DeGeorge said.
Both men were charged with felony robbery and misdemeanor counts of theft of services and criminal mischief. Patrick Kane pleaded not guilty in City Court on Sunday, WIVB-TV reported. It was not immediately clear when James Kane will appear in court.
The driver said he was punched and hit by both men because he did not have 20 cents in change to give them, according to the police report.
A message left at the home of Patrick Kane's parents was not immediately returned Sunday afternoon. Relatives who answered his grandfather's phone and his mother's cell phone declined to comment and could not say whether either Kane had an attorney.
A Blackhawks spokesman said the team is aware of the allegations against Kane.
"He is a big part of our organization and a team leader and we stand behind him," spokesman Brandon Faber said. "As we are still collecting all the facts, it would be premature to comment further at this time."
On Thursday, Patrick Kane was at a Buffalo ice rink where he played hockey as a child to help Mayor Byron Brown announce funding for improvements.
He said at the time he was happy to have time "to hang out back home in Buffalo."
"The best thing about it is my friends treat me like I'm a regular kid," said Kane, the first overall pick in the 2007 NHL draft. "They don't treat me like a celebrity or whatever they might treat me like in Chicago."
Kane played his first two NHL seasons with the Blackhawks and had 46 goals and 96 assists. He won the Calder Trophy, given to the league's best rookie, in 2008.
___
Associated Press writer Sophia Tareen in Chicago contributed to this report.
CHINO, Calif. — A California state prison near Los Angeles remained on lockdown Sunday after a riot sent 55 prisoners to hospitals and injured more than 250 inmates in all, prison officials said.
As many as 80 officers responded to the riot Saturday night, which involved some 1,300 inmates in seven dormitory-style barracks at the California Institution for Men in Chino, prison spokesman Lt. Mark Hargrove said.
The riot was likely prompted by tensions between black and Hispanic prisoners, Hargrove said.
Officers used pepper spray, wielded batons and shot foam projectiles to remove inmates who had barricaded themselves inside the medium-security facility during the four-hour uprising. A fire ignited during the chaos caused significant damage to one of the buildings, Hargrove said.
The inmates' injuries ranged from stab wounds and slashes to head trauma, and some of the injuries were considered life-threatening, Hargrove said. No staff members were injured in the disturbance, the largest since December 2006, he said.
All prisons in Southern California were put on lockdown and visitations have been suspended because of the melee, officials said.
At Culinary School of the Rockies, appreciation for Julia Child's role in modern American cooking is a given. Office staffers are trying out Child's recipes and blogging about them a la Julie, and the school is offering a home cooking class -- nearly full at the time of this writing -- on Aug. 15 called "Brunch and Julia."
I reported previously that I had encountered some trouble with my Comcast Internet connection. After three months I couldn't stand it anymore and I switched to AT&T u-Verse. (No, contrary to some people's beliefs, I am not being paid by anyone to write this. I'm sure I'll have something to say about AT&T eventually, too. The Electronic Frontier Foundation certainly does.)
My new service works just fine, but I sadly have not been able to escape the grasp of Comcast's truly Herculean incompetence. Rather than write about it forever, which I easily could, I'll just let you and the Federal Trade Commission listen in. After all, my calls were recorded for training and quality assurance purposes; we might as well rest assured of their quality.
What could Comcast possibly have done to make me go through the bother of recording, editing and posting eight telephone customer service telephone calls? The answer is surprisingly simple: they asked me to send a copy of my driver's license to an e-mail address that didn't even belong to Comcast, and then refused to admit the error. (That, and they also deliberately withheld my own billing information for months on end, which they continue to do.)
The following calls have been edited to remove my personal information and shorten some of the more insane hold times.
Side Note: Now you can pay Comcast using an automated system -- FOR FREE! (It's $3.99 to make a payment otherwise.) This particularly abhorrent practice was the subject of debate in the recent financial industry reform discussions in Congress, but apparently it's still okay for telecommunications companies to charge people for the privilege of paying their bills.
Call 9 (12:12 Edited) - August 7, 2009 - I call Comcast again to get my latest billing statements e-mailed to me. Aside from being wrong about her own company's e-mail address scheme, Comcast's customer service supervisor exhibits an all-too-common (among arrogant corporations) misunderstanding of California's call recording statutes. According to Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, California Penal Code § 632 states that "[e]very person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, by means of any electronic amplifying or recording device, ... records the confidential communication" may be held criminally or civilly liable. Comcast can record calls nonetheless because (again, according to the article) "a business that advises all parties of its intent to record a telephone call at the outset of the conversation does not violate Section 632." Simultaneously, situations where there is a reasonable expectation that a recording could be made are excluded from the statute. Given that Comcast greets all of its customer service callers with a disclaimer about calls being recorded within seconds, and that there's already a reasonable expectation that customer service calls will be recorded in this day and age, it's absurd for Comcast to claim that it, but not the customer, can record calls.
I did try sending a test e-mail to the address I was told, and received this error (as I expected):
The original message was received at Fri, 7 Aug 2009 18:08:10 -0400 from X-X-X-X.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net [X.X.X.X]
----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- (reason: 553 5.3.0 ... No forwarding information. Try the phone.)
----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to mail.it.ca.: >>> >>> DATA <<< 553 5.3.0 ... No forwarding information. Try the phone. 550 5.1.1 ... User unknown <<< 503 5.0.0 Need RCPT (recipient)
I also tried sending an e-mail to the same address but without the extra dot between "comcast" and "cable." Instead, I got a different error:
********************************************** ** THIS IS A WARNING MESSAGE ONLY ** ** YOU DO NOT NEED TO RESEND YOUR MESSAGE ** **********************************************
The original message was received at Fri, 7 Aug 2009 18:14:12 -0400 from X-X-X-X.lightspeed.sntcca.sbcglobal.net [X.X.X.X]
----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... Deferred: Connection timed out with comcastcable.com. Warning: message still undelivered after 4 hours Will keep trying until message is 5 days old
Sadly, despite all of this, I still don't have all of my statements. I did manage to file complaint number 23595394 with the FTC, however. Maybe I'm asking too much -- or maybe not.
Aaron Greenspan is President & CEO of Think Computer Corporation and the author of Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era.
Of course, farmers aren't the only ones affected. If you love eating flavorful organic field tomatoes, good luck -- they'll be as rare this summer as a week without rain. And those that survive will cost you; we're already seeing price increases of 20 percent over last year.
So what's going on here? Plant physiologists use the term "disease triangle" to describe the conditions necessary for a disease outbreak. You need the pathogen to be present (that's the late blight), you need a host (in this case tomatoes and potatoes) and you need a favorable environment for the disease -- for late blight that's lots of rain, moderate temperatures and high humidity.
Encouraged by their ability to disrupt a week's worth of town hall meetings on health care, Republican organizers have secured the services of a Hollywood casting director to conduct a nationwide talent search for angry assholes.
Carol Foyler, who has stocked numerous Hollywood films with angry mobs for crowd scenes, says that she is looking for people who are "willing to shout and scream and get red in the face with no provocation."
Saying that her current assignment was a "challenging" one, Ms. Foyler said finding "angry, out-of-control assholes" is harder than it looks: "You really have to tip your hat to Fox for finding Glenn Beck." More here.
With the pharmaceutical companies at the bargaining table on healthcare reform, and Congress considering new restrictions on drug advertising, it may pay to bone up on some facts about the industry with the following quiz:
The Obama administration enjoyed a moment of triumphalism this past week. The economy lost only 247,000 jobs in July, and due to a statistical oddity the unemployment rate actually dropped a tenth of a point, to 9.4 percent rather than rising to 9.7 as had been predicted. President Obama briefly popped into the Rose Garden to advise reporters that his leadership has "rescued the economy from catastrophe."
Broad credit was given to the $787 billion stimulus package approved at Obama's urging in February. Commentators generally calculated that without the stimulus, the job numbers would have been a lot worse. Some economists suggested that the unemployment rate might be spared double digits. Even the usually pessimistic Nouriel Roubini, who was an early Cassandra warning of the collapse, declared that the economy had turned a corner. The stock market continued its amazing rebound.
But before we break out the champagne and declare the recession over, let's put this all in perspective. First, the job numbers. The official unemployment rate dropped only because so many people have given up looking for work and dropped out of the measured labor force. But of course, they are just as unemployed -- in fact, more so, since the long-term unemployed have the hardest time finding work. The percentage of long-term unemployment is still the highest in seventy years; and in July, the average duration of unemployment continued its relentless increase.
What about the stimulus? The other day, I came upon a large sign in Lenox, Massachusetts in the Berkshires. It was on Route 183, which is undergoing road work, and the sign proudly declared, FDR style, "Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act." I pulled over to the side, cheered, and took a picture.
What surprised me, though, is that this is the first such sign I've seen after more than six months of stimulus (and it is in a very blue town, in the bluest of states.) I suspect the locals put the sign up. As I'm writing this, it's now Sunday and the town offices are closed, but I will inquire and report back in my next post.
But the paucity of such signs is a metaphor. The stimulus has put out, so far, about $100 billion in a more than 14 trillion dollar economy. Economists generally have credited the stimulus with adding between one and three percentage points to GDP growth, and saving or creating on the order of 500,000 to 700,000 jobs. That is nothing to scoff at; however, it needs to be kept in perspective.
As Floyd Norris recently reported in the New York Times, the economy has added virtually no net private sector jobs in a decade, an unprecedented record. The labor force is several million people larger than it was in 1999, but in that period the entire private sector has increased its employment by only 121,000 jobs out of 109 million.
So, while the stimulus kept things from being even worse, public outlay will need to do even heavier lifting before we get a real recovery. Compared with its pre-recession level, the economy now has a jobs gap of about 9.1 million jobs, according to EPI. Those include 6.7 million jobs lost since 2007, and 2.4 million jobs that would have been created and job-growth had followed its normal trend needed to absorb new workers and to keep the unemployment rate from rising. We are a far cry from even beginning this turnaround.
Also, as I write in a forthcoming column for the American Prospect, state and local governments continue to be in severe budget crisis, causing them to cut jobs and services and raise taxes in a recession, thereby sandbagging the recovery. All states except Vermont are constitutionally prohibited from running current deficits. As a consequence, they behave perversely when revenues fall (as they do in a recession.) All but two states (North Dakota and Montana) now face budget shortfalls, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. So while one level of government, the feds, is providing a net stimulus, other levels of government are adding to the economic undertow.
What's needed is Stimulus II. In addition to more jobs spending, it should include emergency revenue aid to the states (an idea as radical as Richard Nixon who first proposed general revenue sharing) as well as federalization of long term unemployment benefits.
Suppose Bernanke, Paulson, Geithner and company really got the financial rescue about right? And suppose the Obama team got the stimulus about right, we averted a depression, and things are already reverting to normal?
Don't count those chickens yet. What if Wall Street got too much of the aid and Main Street too little? What if mounting home foreclosures continue to sandbag household net worth? What if we are in for a health reform in name only, a financial reform that leaves the casino model of crony capitalism largely intact, and a jobs recovery that leaves working Americans even more insecure than they were before this financial collapse?
What if Obama had a chance to be Roosevelt, and settled for being Clinton?
First, let me define how I am using the term cosmopolitan brands. The origin of the word cosmopolitan is borrowed from the Greek word kosmos , meaning world. Through globalization, brands have extended their products and services into new markets. Yet is profiting from new global markets the end game, or will brands come to value the needs of humanity as important to their bottom line?
The next phase will be if brands chose to do this. Will they make the choice to be responsible, interconnected world citizens, knowing that the choices they make inevitably effect everyone? Thus becoming worldly cosmopolitan brands that are defined and shaped, not just in the short term for profit margins, but in a longer more sustainable humanitarian view.
For a really good article on cosmopolitanism and how Noah Bopp, the director of the School for Ethics and Global Leadership teaches his students, how global interconnectedness and many choices determine brand ethics, by using a Hershey's Kiss as an example please visit Patriotism and Cosmopolitanismby Policy Innovations an online publication of the Carnegie Council
Brands like US's Patagonia, Sun Chips, Ethos Water, Newman's Own, Ben & Jerry's, UK's Ethletic Sneaker, Ireland's Edun, France's Sur Le Dos Des Filles, and Korea's Beautiful Store and Natural Dream and a growing number around the world are beginning to move in this direction. These brands are making very conscious and considered choices about their impact on humanity. They are building into their brand DNA a code of ethics that is next generation and humanitarian focused. It is a long-sighted view. Given the urgency of global warming, issues of poverty, human rights, and confluence of other factors facing our global human society, planning only in the short term is rapidly becoming yesterday's model.
The new model of cosmopolitan brand building is not waiting for perfection but taking deliberate consistent steps weighing the good of humanity along the way. It will take influencial leaders to guide brand policies, behaviors, and actions as it relates to humanity at large. Informing and educating customers about their policies and practices, and encouraging them to become cosmopolitans is beginning to happen. In turn individuals can make the choice to buy from brands that recognize this worldly interconnected humanitarian view. They can teach their children this one world philosophy early so that they too will contribute to the principle of cosmopolitanism. Brands who build up from a humanitarian foundation will create a more responsible and harmonious system. And that is a really good place for all brands to be and grow into tomorrow.
The new model of cosmopolitan brand building is not waiting for perfection but taking deliberate consistent steps weighing the good of humanity along the way. It will take influencial leaders to guide brand policies, behaviors, and actions as it relates to humanity at large. Informing and educating customers about their policies and practices, and encouraging them to become cosmopolitans is beginning to happen. In turn individuals can make the choice to buy from brands that recognize this worldly interconnected humanitarian view. They can teach their children this one world philosophy early so that they too will contribute to the principle of cosmopolitanism. Brands who build up from a humanitarian foundation will create a more responsible and harmonious system. And that is a really good place for all brands to be and grow into tomorrow.
Goodbye to a limited short-term profit only view of corporate brand building Hello to a long-term view of strong bottom-lines from humanitarian brand building
Goodbye to disconnected brands lacking ethics and concern for humanity Hello to an interconnected brands with moral compasses guided by humanity
This has been a summer for famous people dying. The iconic anchor man Walter Cronkite and Frank McCourt, the notable Irish American author of Angela's Ashes, recently left the scene. I write here of another Irish American's death: my nephew by marriage, John McNamara, called Johnny Mac by his friends, who died yesterday after a three year battle with cancer. And what a battle it was. He fought like a champion to stay alive, enduring every form or medical treatment so as to be there for his two-year-old son Jack and his wife Jennifer. He lost that battle but he left behind a legacy as valuable as that of Cronkite or McCourt: a legacy of helping out in troubled times.
John was a New York City fireman. Plain, but not simple. He worked tirelessly at the cleanup after 9/11, exposing himself to every known and unknown toxin that settled in the air at Ground Zero, toxins undisclosed and misrepresented by our then panicky and disingenuous leaders. It can be truly said that his work there cost him his life. He later rushed to volunteer in New Orleans after Katrina, rescuing people and animals, living in those polluted waters, sending home messages for relief packages for the survivors, and looking for homes for lost dogs. He was that rare creature, an altogether good man who found his deepest pleasure in helping others. Virtue, old fashioned virtue, comes in short supply these days; it is so rare that it is often suspected of being faked, but John had it real and in abundance. He lived by his word. Because John made decency seem so easy one mistook it for simplicity, like watching a great athlete or actor -- the effortlessness of true talent. His was a genius for kindness.
When my 92-year-old mother-in-law insisted upon living alone in her apartment, long past the time when that was a good plan, John, during those times when he was off duty from his firehouse work, would often visit with her, play cards with her, take her marketing, walk her dog, and make a lonely old woman feel that she mattered to him. He had a great smile and a natural wit -- he called things as he saw them -- but he was no plaster saint. He could be irreverently funny and get more than annoyed by what he considered unfairness. When he married my niece Jennifer he even called me Uncle Sherman, much to my bewilderment -- adopting me immediately as his family elder although I am anything but avuncular. Best of all for me, he enjoyed and understood my plays and political essays and called me from time to time to discuss them with me. No greater flattery can a writer feel than to be taken seriously by an intelligent guy who listens hard, learns much, and is not afraid to challenge or to be challenged by other folk's ideas. He had voted for Obama but he kept a sharp eye on Washington, which had more than once betrayed the firefighters.
Later, after his colon cancer appeared, and so many of his fellow first responders began to die of 9/11 related illnesses, he became an activist in the cause of these Ground Zero workers -- a voice to be reckoned with who would travel to Washington with such champions of their cause as Congresswoman Caroline Maloney, hoping to make the case for government recognition of their medical needs and their sacrifice.
As I visited John at his backyard family gatherings and later during his many hospital stays, I came to know some of his brothers in the fire department: for brothers they were. These men would drive him from his home on Long Island for treatment for his cancer at Sloan Kettering in Manhattan and wait around for news of his progress, with someone always there to drive him home. They were heroes without hook and ladder. There is something remarkable about that brotherhood born in shared danger but developed in quiet times. It was so much more than the camaraderie of beer and football, both of which John enjoyed: it was plain old- fashioned brotherly love. Corny? Sure. True? Absolutely.
My sons Nick and Chris and my daughter-in-law Lise loved John as someone who "got it." Someone with a life force in him, with a spirit of fun wedded to an underlying decency that made his company welcomed everywhere. Aware that he did not have long to live, he asked my son Nick to make sure that Nick's four-year-old daughter Vivian grew close to Jack, for to John, family was everything. He could be sympathetic without prying; your problem was not viewed as an opportunity to show his feelings but a chance to offer you simple comfort. John had a rough sweetness, he was a man without artifice -- he spoke his mind freely but always with complete candor and generosity. He could be irreverent, sometimes outrageous, but never cruel. My niece Jen will have a hard time in the days to come, as will his son Jack, who will find it hard to understand why his father is no longer a presence in his life. But those firemen and their wives will be there for them, as well as their many family friends. Time does not heal everything, often it heals nothing, but it does dull the pain, and it helps to know that we are not alone in the world with our grief. John's last days were difficult ones for him and for his wife. Jen showed extraordinary courage, clinging to whatever hope was offered by his doctors, until hope was no longer a possibility. Medical complications piled up on his frail body, the dreaded sepsis and pneumonia arrived to prevent him from taking the necessary life saving chemo, but he continued to fight on even as there was little left to fight with. Finally, with Jen holding his hand, John slipped out of his life into our memories.
Our government, who has spread its largesse to saving our banks and auto manufacturers, is still refusing to compensate the workers at Ground Zero who became sick in the cleanup and aftermath, still challenging their claims. As our understanding of the environmental catastrophe of that tragedy deepens that may well change. Jen will struggle to make a life as a single working mother; her young son Jack, who grew so close to his father during his years of illness at home will feel a great void in his life; Jen's mother and father, Jack's grand-parents, John's sisters and brothers, and his buddies from the firehouse will be there for his family. And I will so miss this guy who had the nerve to call me uncle. One can say of John what can be said of few men: he has left the world richer for having been in it and poorer for having left it. Trust me, John McNamara mattered as much as any of those men and women who get the big obits in the New York Times. His son Jack, being so young, may not easily recall his father in the years to come. So I've written this for you, Jack. You need to know that your Dad was a good and caring man who dedicated his life to helping others, the best that any one of us can hope to be.
ABC entertainment president Steve McPherson responded to Katherine Heigl's latest gripe about starring in a hit TV show.
"I think it's unfortunate," McPherson told TV critics about her comments. "People are going to behave in the way they choose to behave. There are so many people who work so hard on 'Grey's,' and all of our shows, without any notoriety and those are the ones I'd be concerned about, people who feel like they're being criticized or looked down upon."
In the world of Palin Wack-a-Mole, you need steroids to win. Facebook press releases seem to come on Fridays. Yesterday was no different. This week's word salad had the crazy dressing on the side; a link to Michele Bachmann's health care rant. The crap croutons had quote marks around them; "death panel", and "level of productivity in society."
If you ever needed proof our current health care is deficient, or for that matter, our education system, try to make sense out of either woman's position. For all the fear mongering and "bearing false witness" as this is:
"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
As weirdly elitist as this:
"I commend her for being a voice for the most precious members of our society, our children and our seniors."
And as "grab your torches and pitch forks" this is:
"Let's stop and think and make our voices heard before it's too late."
there is a much bigger problem. Sarah Palin has a history of fudging about health care.
At one point, trying out a debating point that she believed showed she could empathize with uninsured Americans, Palin told McCain aides that she and Todd in the early years of their marriage had been unable to afford health insurance of any kind, and had gone without it until he got his union card and went to work for British Petroleum on the North Slope of Alaska. Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along. She insisted that catastrophic insurance didn't really count and need not be revealed. This sort of slipperiness--about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered--persisted on questions great and small.
During the vice-presidential debate, Palin stated:
About times and Todd and our marriage in our past where we didn't have health insurance and we know what other Americans are going through as they sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care? We've been there also so that connection was important.
WHAT? There are 228 federally recognized tribes in Alaska. According to the Indian Health Services website:
IHS-funded, tribally-managed hospitals are located in Anchorage, Barrow, Bethel, Dillingham, Kotzebue, Nome and Sitka. There are 37 tribal health centers, 166 tribal community health aide clinics and five residential substance abuse treatment centers. The Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage is the state-wide referral center and gatekeeper for specialty care. Other health promotion/disease prevention programs that are state-wide in scope are operated by the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), which is managed by representatives of all Alaska tribes.
Todd Palin's heritage as an Alaskan Native was a curiosity to many during the 2008 campaign.
According to public disclosure forms that Sarah Palin filed with the state of Alaska, her husband and their children are BBNC (Bristol Bay Native Corporation) shareholders, meaning they would likely qualify for the health service program.
So between Todd's union job insurance, the governor's state coverage and the FEDERALLY FUNDED health care through Native blood, when did the Palins ever sit around the kitchen table and discuss their "out-of-pocket" health care costs? There are millions of people who don't have ANY options to provide for the health care needs of themselves or their children, let alone THREE!
And that's just the personal hypocrisy.
While under contract to govern the state of Alaska, Palin's administration failed to keep up on the state's Medicaid obligations and were ordered to cease signing up new patients. No other state in the country had been put under such a moratorium, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
A particularly alarming finding concerns deaths of adults in the programs. In one 2 1/2 year stretch, 227 adults already getting services died while waiting for a nurse to reassess their needs. Another 27 died waiting for their initial assessment, to see if they qualified for help.
Doctors and other health care providers wrote to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid with concerns that the state wasn't responsive. Some alleged that the lack of state controls "has resulted in the death(s) of the active clients," the federal review said.
While the people served are frail and suffer from chronic health issues, the state never investigated to determine if any failure in service contributed to the deaths, the federal review found.
Seriously, when are we going to stop electing people who say "the government is bad"? Once elected, they do everything they can to prove it. It can only be one of two things; incompetency or sabotage. Either way, Alaskans have died due to a lack of health care.
The point of this post is not to point out the never ending hypocrisy of Sarah Palin. Nor is it to point out the blatant lies of one person -- but how the intention, manipulation and lies of one person can affect the lives ordinary people.
Perhaps Citizen Palin should take her own advice, "Quit makin' things up" and "leave the kids alone."
My friend and I have known each other since high school. We went to college together and I was in her wedding. We both were in the same phases of life at the same time (engaged, newly married, etc.). I enjoyed having someone to talk to about these things since many of my friends aren't married or even in relationships.
In high school, my friend never seemed happy unless she "bettered" me in some way. This died out once we reached college. However, when I got engaged, she began pressuring her then-boyfriend to get engaged as well. For a while, she and her now husband were our go-to couple friends. After a while, I began to feel that she was using us as her excuse to make her husband stop playing video games (his only hobby) and get out and do what she wanted to do.
A friend of ours began hanging out with the four of us. Then they began hanging out with him without us--talking about whatever they had done when we weren't around, interjecting memories about a dinner together or movie they saw, with no real reason other than to mention that he hung out with them, without us.
This wouldn't bother me if I hadn't gone through this with her in high school. I thought we were grownups and well past anything like that. We began looking for a house about six months ago, and so did they. When we bought one, she was jealous but cloaked it with fake congratulations and feigned interest in every detail of the house. They bought a house a month later in the same subdivision. They are impossible to shake.
I feel as though her "friendship" is poison, making me the self-conscious, anxious teenager I was in high school. I don't like living this competition. I'm not looking to be lifelong friends with them, so how do I break it off now that they have infiltrated every one of our social circles and our neighborhood?
Signed, Molly ANSWER
Dear Molly,
Since you've decided you want out of this friendship, you need to act that way: If she wants to get together, make yourself less available both as an individual and as a couple. When she invites you for another round of competition, say something like, "I have so much to catch up on..." or "We've been so busy with...."
Above all, don't initiate contact with her. Apart from shared history, your life and that of your high school friend are now interwoven by geography and common friends so it would be better to drift apart rather than make your distaste for her explicit. You don't want to feel uncomfortable each time you see her (or make your circle of mutual friends uncomfortable). It may turn out that your children-to-be attend the same grade at the same school!
If you are consistent in your behavior, hopefully she will get the message that you are backing off. When you see her, simply say hello and acknowledge her with a smile but don't go any further.
Unfortunately, it sounds like your friend's one upmanship is an enduring personality trait that stems from her own insecurities so it isn't likely to change. All you can do is change your own behavior.
My best, Irene
TWITTER VERSION FOR SHORT ATTENTION SPANS: Don't initiate contact, don't respond to her contact, be tactful, behave consistently.
I'm just back from a wedding, which prevented me from catching Real Time with Bill Maher until today. And I have to say that I'm delighted that I didn't watch it Friday night because I would have been too riled up to sleep. Bill Maher and his guest Arianna Huffington were talking about ADHD (ADD) like experts when clearly they're not.
The subject arose when Maher raised the topic of overmedicated America - a fair point. Huffington used this as an opening to raise the topic of ADHD. She disclosed that teachers in her children's school had wanted her kids to take ADHD medication, which she linked to the propensity to overmedicate in America. In many well-to-do communities, this certainly occurs, but this is not the whole story. A far larger problem than the over-diagnosis of ADHD is under-diagnosis. As a result, many children and adults with ADHD never get the help that they need, including medication.
As someone who has the disorder and benefits from taking Vyvanse, I feel an obligation to point out that equating a genetically-caused mental health disorder like ADHD with an avoidable excess (over-medication) cheapens the discussion of both. In fairness, most people only know ADHD by reputation, so I thought that I'd share something of the reality. Hopefully, it will explain why medication is so very important to so many people with the condition.
One, the ADHD brain develops in an atypical fashion when compared to the population at large. Those of with the condition are literally wired differently. As a result, many things which most people take for granted are difficult for us.
Two, everyone experiences ADHD symptoms - e.g., impulse control, inattention and organizational deficits - at least some of the time. The different for those of us with ADHD is the frequency, duration and depth of these states. In our case, the symptoms are very likely to disrupt our ability to succeed in rather important arenas like school, work and long-term personal relationships.
Three, discipline and routine can help people to control the symptoms of ADHD but are not always sufficient. That's why Vyvanse (similar to Adderall) was such a revelation to me: it has helped me to achieve the capacity to focus that most people take for granted. That's why I take it daily.
Four, ADHD is subtle and therefore easy to dismiss. This is because: there's no single, clear-cut test for ADHD; it's popularly regarded as a childhood disorder; and it's over-diagnosed.
Unfortunately, none of this changes the fact that over 10 million adults have ADHD or the reality that medication can help many of them to lead happier, more fulfilled lives. Of course, if you don't have ADHD, it's hard to imagine what a difference the right medication makes.
Mr. Maher and Ms. Huffington, please continue to discuss ADHD but first consider using your prodigious and powerful network of experts to get the facts right first. So much focus on abuse can obscure the reality that ADHD medication can help many people lead happier, fuller lives.
Jimmy Kimmel is no fan of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the regulatory body in charge of policing the airwaves. Each week he mocks their job by doing a segment called "This Week In Unnecessary Censorship," that takes normal every day language and uses censorship to make it seem lewd or inappropriate. As a result everything from "Sesame Street" to CNN comes out dirty...and hilarious.
This week, Jimmy looked at Sherri Shepherd's sex life, Putin's very public sexual performance, and the lost "Jonny Quest" episode. It's all pretty disturbing for a lazy Sunday.
I recently appeared in a Broadway production of Christopher Hampton's 1970 play The Philanthropist. It's English, it's densely verbal (though accessible to American ears), it's funny and moving, and it takes place in an unspecified yet unmistakably OxBridge University.
The play concerns the insular lives of academics comfortably nestled in the bosom of their respective subjects who never actually have to deal with the real world, which in the late '60's and early '70's was raging outside the ivy-covered walls they called home. They philosophize, engage in intellectual (and occasionally physical) intercourse and generally exist in a relatively carefree environment. Oh, and they have cocktail parties. Lots of cocktail parties.
At one such gathering, a well-known novelist by the name of "Braham Head" has been invited to join the regulars and, in a fascinating scene in which all the complex dynamics of an ordinary drinks party are laid bare, "Braham" proceeds to provoke his captive audience with outrageous proclamations of brazen, solipsistic, quasi-capitalistic dogma -- the proud gaming of the human soul, surfing the hopes and dreams of humanity for personal gain.
Eschewing his former, more humanitarian ambitions as naive, he adopts (having once tasted the sweetness of naked profit) a stance that is so blatantly repugnant that it actually becomes attractive to a world already reeling from the ennui of mass-media mediocrity:
"....when I was younger, I was a passionate Lefty writing all kinds of turgid, earthshaking stuff...but eventually I realized, and what a moment of five-star disillusionment that was, that it wasn't going to work...God, in his infinite wisdom, had given me the ability to create essentially frivolous entertainments, which were enjoyed by essentially frivolous people for me to be able to amble comfortably through life. Naturally, it distresses me that people are wasting their energies killing each other all over the world, and of course, I'm sorry thousands of Indians starve to death every year, but I mean that's their problem, isn't it, if they will go in for all this injudicious fucking. I actually used to think that in some obscure way it was my fault."
"...obviously my living depends on disgusting a certain percentage of people. If I don't disgust at least a substantial minority, I wouldn't be controversial and if I wasn't controversial, I wouldn't be rich."
"...I realized I belong too that small class of people who make exactly what they deserve. I'm a product. If the public stop wanting me, I stop earning."
Anyone come to mind faintly reminiscent of this "Braham" (braying ham)?
How about any number of high profile gas-bags who bully their way into your living room and your psyche and, in the name of bald profit, seek to brutally crush opposition to their bully-ideology?
How about the great culture warrior himself, Bill O'Reilly?
In a prescient stroke, Hampton has drawn O'Reilly in the form of "Braham Head" as if the No Spin Zone's host himself had modeled for it personally. What was in 1970 perhaps an amusing and somewhat extreme take on media personalities has come to pass with deadly accuracy.
Braham/O'Reilly is a creation born from the playwright's desire to portray the more Machiavellian side of capitalism's need to manipulate rather than cooperate, a side fraught with basic insecurities and the attendant defensiveness erected in order to cover/cope with those insecurities. Bullies in the Braham/O'Reilly mold are cruel in direct proportion to the cruelties done unto them, a nasty link in a dysfunctional chain.
When the unlikely hero of the play (a bookish and introverted teacher of philology) finally deposes "Braham," it is because the bully's method -- apart from his ideology, although each requires the other -- is deconstructed to his face, simply and cleanly, and in a clever twist, with no ill-intent whatsoever. The disassembled "Braham" subsequently expresses his frustration with a combination of childish verbal attacks and frightening petulance, and having been denuded of purpose and identity slinks off. If only life was like that.
In this fictionalized scenario, essential humanity cannot be denied, though it may have been temporarily marginalized by the bigger, the stronger and the more desperate who need to be scrupulous in their lack of compassion in order to maintain some relevance in a world where they would otherwise be rendered unnecessary.
After years of quiet submission, thoughtful people are fighting back. The first blow struck is the understanding of the motivations behind the mutation of hate-journalism and the toxic-jockies of Fox News and other sleaze outlets. When Fox's other smug hit-man Sean Hannity starts to train his bullets on progressive issues, it is invariably done so with the kind of low-brow brutality reserved for backyard brawling, but comes under the knowingly manipulative guise of pretending to be journalism. More and more people are seeing what lies beneath the litany of half-truths and outright fibs by experiencing real-life refutations of their fear-mongering fabrications.
The sheer raving bluster of such obstructionists, whether in the form of media entertainers like O'Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh, as well as the screaming mimis who disrupt town hall meetings (dumbly doing their corporate fearmeisters bidding) or Christopher Hampton's prescient creation "Braham Head" can be momentarily riveting.
But the shallow messages they seek to convey necessitate continual pounding into the psyches of people seeking easy answers to complex problems, lest those messages evaporate. Once exposed, their motives become understood and they lose their hold on people and slink away into the murk, waiting to spring back when society becomes as insular and as sated by frivolous pursuits as the fictional academics in Hampton's play.
The only difference is that "Braham", unlike his real-life counterparts, has the balls to admit it.
The overdose, the racism, the casual incest, these are not the shocking parts of Jon Daly and Nick Kroll's newest video for Funny or Die. The real surprise is how spot-on the pair are in their imitations of the heirs one may find in St. Barth's or a reality TV on VH1. It's disturbing, but also awesome.
Sonia Sotomayor took the oath of office on Saturday. She became the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the U. S. Supreme Court. But will her presence make a difference?
Soyomayor grew up in Bronx housing project and was raised by her mother after the death of her father. She had the good fortune, and she is not afraid to admit to a helping hand through affirmative action, to attend two Ivy League universities and later served on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Her rise through the ranks as a federal judge has now taken her to the highest plateau.
Republicans criticized her for her votes on Second Amendment and property rights and on a racial discrimination case involving white firefighters in New Haven, Conn.
On Thursday the Senate voted 68 to 31 to confirm her nomination. The Democrats voted solidly to support her while only 9 Republicans joined them. Thirty-one Republicans voted against her. They may feel the wrath of the Hispanic voters in 2010.
There appears to be a fear among the Republicans that Sotomayor will vote her beliefs as a Latina, minority woman rather than as an impartial, Constitutional judge. Do the Catholic and conservative justices on the Supreme Court vote as strict Constitutional purists when it comes to abortion, or do they vote their personal, religious beliefs?
In the first 200 plus years of this country there was never a question brought up about affirmative action. After all, it worked in the favor of the white race for all of those 200 years in politics, unions, state government, schools, city government, and in hiring practices all across America.
African Americans and other minorities couldn't even join most unions because a part of the criteria included having a friend/sponsor or relative already in the union. This pretty much closed the door to African American membership in most unions.
Even the men and women that defended America in time of war were segregated. Hispanics and Native Americans were counted as Caucasians on the rolls of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and Coast Guard prior to and during World War II for some odd reason. Chinese Americans could serve in the regular military units, but the Japanese and African Americans had to serve in all-Japanese and all-Colored units.
It was only after so-called "liberal" justices made it to the U. S. Supreme Court that things began to change for the minority races. Of course, it took the leadership and persuasion of Harry S. Truman to integrate the armed forces and a Texan named Lyndon Baines Johnson to push for the civil rights and voting rights of minorities, especially African Americans. But behind those two leaders and innovators were African American, Hispanic, Native American and Asian American leaders and citizens fighting for justice every step of the way.
Perhaps it will be a cold day in hell before a genuine Native American ever reaches the rarified air of the U. S. Supreme Court. Heck, Indians have to fight tooth and nail to get appointed to serve on a city, county or state court, least of all to a federal court.
In South Dakota, where Native Americans make up more than 10 percent of the total state population, there has never been a Native American appointed to serve on a federal court. And it's not because there are no qualified Indian attorneys. There are plenty of damned good Indian lawyers in this state, but the glass ceiling that women have had to contend with for a couple of hundred years seems to be the same roof keeping Indians down.
Sonia Sotomayor has experienced the frustrations of climbing the ladder of success in lieu of the glass ceiling by virtue of being a woman, as have the other two women who have served on this highest of courts, but she has also experienced the discrimination that none of the other women experienced, and that is the discrimination of being a racial minority.
No doubt there will be cases coming down the pike that will severely test her personal beliefs and experiences, because until you have faced racial discrimination, you cannot know the devastating impact it has on your psyche.
There is an old saying that goes, "Freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press" and for too many years, the laws that were the foundation of justice in America were written and enforced by the majority, white politicians and justices of America. To a minority that is not just speculation, but it is a fact. In South Dakota, for example, there are two forms of justice; one for whites and one for Indians. Every Indian knows this to be a fact.
Appointing Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court was a longtime a-coming. I will not hold my breath waiting for the first Native American to join her club.
(Tim Giago, an Oglala Lakota, is the publisher of Native Sun News. He was the founder and first president of the Native American Journalists Association, the 1985 recipient of the H. L. Mencken Award, and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard with the Class of 1991. Giago was inducted into the South Dakota Newspaper Hall of Fame in 2008. He can be reached at editor@nsweekly.com)
I am shocked and appalled by the allegations posed in this week's Us Weekly that the man who proposed to Jillian Harris in the finale of the The Bachelorette was cheating on her with not one, but two women -- even sleeping with one of them after the proposal.
Is it true, as Us Weekly says on its cover, that Jillian's "dreams are destroyed?" I wouldn't lose hope too quickly, Jillian! If you ask me, these "other" women are just bitter, spotlight-grubbing liars. I mean, we watched Ed and Jillian fall in love on national television, amidst beautiful backdrops in Vancouver, Spain and even Maui. How could their love be anything less than genuine?
Everyone dreams of finding a soul mate. A search that commences in high school hallways and campus quads extends into an endless succession of offices, nightclubs, churches, grocery stores, and online dating services. So who would have guessed that, for 29-year-old Jillian, that search would finally end on a television show in which she would find not one or two, but three potential lifelong loves, all from a group of 25 guys chosen by some TV producers?
The coincidence is even more amazing for the guys. After all, they only had one girl to choose from. Yet all it took was a dance, or a deep gaze into Jillian's eyes, for most of them to declare their love, or at least profound attraction and interest. And at the end of less than two months of shooting, three of them proposed to her. They, too, had found their lifelong companion!
I'll tell you, all these coincidences certainly make for great television. The thrilling competition for this amazing girl! The heartbreaking decisions she faced! Above all, it is such a powerful experience to hear these men and this woman speak from the heart about the experience of true love.
Of course, the show had a couple of losers. I mean, look at Wes, who only joined the show to get exposure for his music career. When Jillian found out Wes had a girlfriend, it was time for him to go. But once she finally narrowed it down to her top guys--that's when the show really had me on the edge of my seat.
Jillian obviously had profound feelings for these guys, and vice verse. But I think the winner was clear all along. The other guys wavered in their commitment, or had a hard time showing their true feelings -- all guys are the same, don't you know it? Only Ed was willing to come straight out and declare his love, and his willingness to close the deal after only a few weeks with his beloved Jillian.
Only Ed was willing to go the distance. Therefore, only Ed deserved Jillian's heart (as well as the extra airtime, instant celebrity and promotional opportunities that go along with being the Bachelorette's top pick).
For all those reasons, I believe that Ed was telling the truth. I believe he and Jillian were meant for each other. And I don't believe those lying shrews. Because if you believe those girls, you might conclude that the whole show was just a cynical charade that cheapens the significance of proposals, of marriage, maybe even of love itself, all for the sake of a ratings grab. And that would be so wrong!
Well, it certainly has been a rousing and rollicking time in the joyous world of food blogger-dom, hasn't it. I don't care if you don't know a chef's knife from a thumbtack: you'd have to be living under a rock if you didn't hear something about It.
But just in case you didn't:
Short-ish version In 2002, depressed Manhattan cubicle dweller-with-a-potty-mouth, Julie Powell, shakes up her morose life by cooking her way through every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and blogging about it. Along the way, she disses J.C.'s roast chicken recipe, and generally has a challenging time with the project, overall. This is because the recipes in MAFC can in fact be quite challenging, and sometimes even idiosyncratic. They are so challenging that one can assume that any person who ventures to cook through the entire book in a year and actually manages to do so is a dedicated cook. Sometime during the process, Julie lands a book deal with Little, Brown & Company, and sometime later during the process, her book is optioned by Hollywood. We can only gather that she made a tidy sum from the whole ordeal, but that is none of my business, and it shouldn't be yours either. It's not nice to talk about money.
In the weeks precipitating the release of the movie, Julie & Julia (which turned out to only be partially based on Julie's blog/life probably because someone finally figured out that the blog as movie needed far more meat to carry it along for 2 hours and 13 minutes), there has been more yammering and downright ill-tempered caterwauling going on between two camps -- those who think that Julie attempted to make off with the proverbial Child family jewels, and those who think that Team Julia needs to loosen the damned apron strings and stop claiming metaphysical ownership of her -- than has ever been seen this side of a Greek drama . It's been like the Hatfields and the McCoys only with Foie de Volaille.
At some point, the inevitable question is asked: what did Julia think about Julie's blog?
"If they met I think Julia would have liked her. But given what we had to go on from the early blog I don't think Julia thought she was a serious cook. Secondly, you just didn't use swear words in cooking. Not where Julia was concerned," says Jones.
Then, somewhere further along the line, words like "stunt" started to get tossed around, and then there was a comment about Julia and what she less-than-affectionately termed "The Flimsies-" or, cooking lightweights and folks who just didn't take the process seriously.
As for foul language, if Julia had spent any time behind the scenes with Anthony Bourdain and even her beloved Emeril (her affection for the latter was profoundly palpable), would she have considered them anything less than serious cooks because they let fly with enough expletives to make a longshoreman blush? Probably not. But then again, Julia was a lady of a certain time, who expected other ladies to, well, behave like ladies. And this excludes the use of four-letter words. So maybe Anthony and Emeril were okay flinging around four-letter words because they weren't ladies.
Moving On
The dreck hits the fan. One well-known, longtime blogger blames jealousy for all of the Julie-Haters who bubble to the service: many of us who have been blogging for years have nothing to show for it, and why does she? Other questions: are food bloggers actually food experts just because they can use the words "pan-seared" and "noisette" in the same sentence? Probably not. Do skill and expertise trump visibility, and is there any place in the blogosphere where skill and expertise run parallel to visibility? Yes, of course: just visit baking guru Dorie Greenspan's blog, make her dishes, and then read her writing. Brilliant, in both cases.
Onward.
Virginia Willis, estimable author of Bon Apetit, Ya'all and a clear, and wonderful traditionalist who trained in France and knew Julia, writes a blog entry entitled "Julia and Julie: Yes the Swap is Intentional." The entry is hit on more in one day than a Roman hooker. Virginia being Virginia is as polite as she can be. But then things start to erupt: Julie dissed Julia's roast chicken. In fact.
I can't lay claim to whether or not J.C.'s roast chicken is dry, mostly because her recipe scares me so I've never made it; I'm on Crestor, and the thought of massaging a bird inside and out with butter also makes me want to go out and pre-order a casket. Then again, I also never cared for Julia's spit-roasting episode, which calls for so much trussing that in our home we've dubbed it The Bondage Chicken Show. It might be the right way to do it, but still. I do get Julie's point about roast chicken being a deeply personal sort of thing; I stuff mine with tarragon and do the whole rotational thing, too. But I don't rub it with butter and until I make Julia's version, I can't say anything about it. Ditto the spit-roasted, bondage chicken version.
The question is, What if I did make them? And what if I didn't like them, for whatever reason. Could I say so? Is one person's salty another person's just fine? Is too much butter bad for me, but okay for you?
End of saga. The bloggers (myself included) have had our say. Julie did in fact diss the chicken, and Virginia was accurate in saying that Julie's tone was, well, less than respectful. And I'll venture a guess that Virginia was raised to respect those who have gone before her, who have paved the way, and who know better. And I absolutely cannot agree with her more.
But the question remains: when is it okay to call an icon on something, when it comes out funky? Is it ever? Honestly, I'm not sure. It's like when the family strudel maker suddenly wakes up and forgets to add the butter to the puff pastry. Do you say anything, or do you just shut up and eat it? Where I come from, we just eat it.
The movie: pretty good but the flash-back/flash-forward was about as forced as squeezing a size nine foot into a size six shoe. I wanted more Julia and Paul and I wanted more of their food. Then, I wanted to leave the theater and walk through the lobby to a different movie--the one about Julie during 2002, the year that every New Yorker was clinically depressed and in mourning for a world suddenly stolen from them that horrible day, on 9/11. And I wanted to watch this young woman--the one with the potty mouth and the attitude--reach back in time to ask for help from Julia Child, who singlehandedly changed our world, and to whom a debt of gratitude will never be sufficiently paid.
President Obama was forced to dip deep into his cache of political capital to pay for his "indiscretion" in the "Gatesgate" affair. There's little doubt the uproar served to divert attention from the white-hot issue of health care, at least for a time. (Agree with him or not, the president's original candor on the Gates arrest triggered a vigorous national discussion on race and policing. That's a good thing...if we have the nerve and the wisdom to sustain the conversation beyond a few news cycles -- and the self-control to keep it civilized and constructive.)
The controversy did raise questions about the president's reputation for staying on message, for avoiding needless setbacks to his political agenda.
There's little doubt it was Obama's vaunted personal discipline that motivated him to swiftly dismiss the "marijuana question" during his electronic town hall meeting back in March. He appears to have decided, for purely political reasons, to just say no to consequential drug policy reform.
How can a man of Obama's intellect deny the breathtaking failure of the drug war, and its violence-inducing predicate, prohibition? For that matter, why has he not corrected or muzzled his drug czar when the man speaks repetitively and erroneously of marijuana as dangerous and addictive, and possessed of no medicinal value?
Make no mistake, the president gets it. He knows the personal suffering our laws and policies have caused, the violence they've wrought, the endless drain on our treasury. He's said as much in the past.
But at a time when his administration is struggling to right the economy and secure meaningful health care for all, he no doubt believes he cannot afford yet another brouhaha of the type and proportion threatened simply by raising the subject.
Given the ugly, visceral tone and tenor of his opposition, his fears might well be warranted. Merely calling for an honest examination of our drug policies would likely prompt even more frightened and ignorant citizens to join the agitated souls who continue to question the president's birthplace (that includes you, Liz and Lou), compare him to Hitler, and scream down free speech at congressional members' public gatherings on health care.
Yet there's no escaping the reality that the country's collective imagination, fueled by research and compassion, has shifted toward saner drug laws. Polls have shown that the overwhelming majority of us believe the drug war has failed, and that ending it is long overdue. Support for the legalization of marijuana stands at greater than half the population, with fresh converts signing on daily. And people are finally beginning to understand a simple truth about drugs: The more dangerous a substance, the more sinister its reputation, the greater the justification for replacing prohibition with regulation.
Conventional wisdom has Obama tackling drug law reform in 2012 (if then), not before.
Meanwhile, change we can believe in must come from voter initiatives and/or legislative action in each of the 50 states, pressure on the U.S. Congress, and support for Senator Webb's courageous efforts to radically overhaul our criminal justice system, including its drug laws.
WASHINGTON — A Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee says more troops are needed in Afghanistan and is warning that the U.S. must not 'Rumsfeld' the war.
That's a reference by Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina to Bush administration Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was criticized for not putting more troops in Iraq to secure the country after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Graham says that if NATO allies don't commit more troops and money in Afghanistan, then the U.S. must because Afghanistan is central to the fight against terrorism.
In Graham's words: "We made mistakes in Iraq. Let's not 'Rumsfeld' Afghanistan. Let's not do this thing on the cheap."
Team Obama is winning on education and losing on health. One difference between the health care food fight and the coherent education agenda is a mostly unified eight year policy push by the new money foundations.
The debacle we're watching in health care is, in part, sponsored by competing foundations. Heritage is supplying talking points on the right, Kaiser Family Foundation is pushing the president's agenda.
Centerpiece of Team Obama's education strategy is the Race to the Top grant program. The RTT criteria--particularly requirements for a school turnaround strategy, strong charter law, comprehensive data system, and links between student achievement and teacher evaluation--are the new education reform agenda. They represent a consensus of centrist foundations that simply doesn't exist in health care.
The 'new' education agenda didn't get written last month, it's been a decade in the making. During the last reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (called No Child Left Behind), Education Trust was the voice for reform. Kati Haycock's gap-closing advocacy created an unusual degree of congressional consensus in favor of standards and accountability.
Since 2001, the charter school movement has become a powerful force backed by funding from Gates, Broad, Walton, Fisher, and Robertson foundations. Active charter advocates include The National Alliance of Public Charter Schools, Center for Education Reform, and funding coalitions including New Schools and Charter School Growth Fund.
The 'human capital' agenda has also matured in the last 8 years with the scaled success of foundation favorites Teach for America, New Leaders, and New Teacher Project. Accelerated progress on national college ready standards began with a 2004 Gates Foundation orchestrated National High School Summit, a shotgun marriage of Achieve and NGA.
Embodying all four--college ready standards, gap closing accountability, choice, and human capital--are several new and powerful voices including Democrats for Education Reform and Education Equality Project. These new voices scaffolded the Race to the Top criteria and, with EdTrust, will be active in shaping the next ESEA reauthorization.
An Oregon editorial is a recent example of using the new reform consensus embodied in the RTT criteria to judge the state of education affairs. The website of the Lt. Gov. of Colorado is an example of using RTT to goad local progress.
Duncan's announcement of Race the Top criteria didn't come out of the blue--it's the result of the smart investment of several billion dollars by a coalition of foundations supporting the work of hundreds of education policy entrepreneurs.
If health care had benefited from a decade long push by a unified group of foundations, we would already have broader coverage and lower costs.
Now that former President Bill Clinton secured the freedom of two jailed American journalists, possibly opening the doors of communication between the U.S. and North Korea, he has assumed the role of the nation's top private diplomat, a distinction once held by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
By no means is this a slight on former President Jimmy Carter, whose diplomatic efforts as a private citizen in part led to his receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, but Jackson's accomplishments in freeing hostages as a private citizen remains unparalleled.
Since the early 1980s, there has been a running joke among my friends in the unlikely event we became hostages to make sure the first call was not to the State Department or CNN, but instead to Jackson.
Jackson possessed the uncanny ability, without any diplomatic credentials or official backing by the U.S. government, to go into some of the world's most unlikely places to secure the release of American hostages.
In 1983, Jackson traveled to Syria to secure the release of captured American pilot Navy Lt. Robert Goodman, who was being held by the Syrian government. Goodman had been shot down over Lebanon while on a mission to bomb Syrian positions in that country.
After Jackson made a personal appeal to Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Goodman was released. The Reagan administration was initially skeptical about Jackson's trip to Syria. But after Jackson secured Goodman's release, Reagan welcomed Jackson and Goodman to the White House.
In June 1984, Jackson negotiated the release of 22 Americans being held in Cuba. In 1999, during the Kosovo War, which may rank as the most remarkable of his accomplishments, Jackson traveled to Belgrade to negotiate the release of three American POWs. Given the reputation of Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milosevic, it seemed unlikely Jackson's efforts would bear fruit. But after meeting with Milosevic, the hostages were freed.
In my opinion, these efforts represented the apex of Jackson's career. He transcended partisan politics, using his clout as a global leader to win the freedom of Americans held in places not beholden to the Bill of Rights.
Private citizen diplomacy is one of the great mysteries. The more successful one is at freeing hostages, there is the risk of casting a negative shadow on the current president, especially if like Jackson, one's visit was not sanctioned by the secretary of state. But this may be the only way to work with the likes of North Korea's Kim Jong-il, al-Assad and Milosevic.
It was comedian Chris Rock who ventured a hypothesis about Jackson's negotiation strategy. He said Jackson probably went over and told the leaders, "If you really want to make the United States mad, give me the hostages."
Rock's theory may be applicable to Jackson and Clinton. It may also reveal the inherent limitations placed on the presidency.
Jackson's past accomplishment are all the more impressive when one factors in that Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton was involved in the process. She proposed sending several people to North Korea, including former Vice President Al Gore. Mr. Clinton, as a former president carrying a certain global respectability, was the choice of the North Koreans to come to Pyongyang.
Mr. Clinton's efforts brought to an end a disturbing account for Laura Ling and Euna Lee, the two women who were seized near the North Korea's border researching a story about human trafficking. They were facing years of imprisonment confined to hard labor -- one of the few terms in North Korea that may be gender neutral.
The news of Ling and Lee reunited with their families became a collective shot in the arm for a nation that could use some good news beyond "Cash for Clunkers." It is deservedly a proud moment for Clinton, perhaps the proudest in his post-presidency.
With the rise of Barack Obama to the presidency and now Clinton as apparently the private citizen in charge of special diplomatic efforts, much of the limelight that was once bestowed upon Jackson has faded. He has been pushed further into the abyss of yesterday.
But that doesn't mean Clinton's efforts to win the freedom of Ling and Lee should cause us to forget the service Jackson rendered to his country.
Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist and blog-talk radio host. He is the author Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War. E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or visit his Web site: byronspeaks.com
President Richard Nixon resigned on Aug. 9, 1974, in the wake of the Watergate scandal and the revelations of his "abuses of power" and obstruction of justice. For his involvement in criminal activities, Nixon earned his unique epitaph: an unindicted co-conspirator.
As the nation watched events unfold from 1972 to 1974, a host of then-famous names passed before us: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Mitchell, Colson, Haig, Ziegler, Liddy, Hunt, Kleindienst, Magruder, Agnew, and so on. But the burglars, assorted presidential aides, congressional investigators and prosecutors now have faded into the mists of history--spear carriers at best. Only the principal remains in our consciousness for his achievements and his misdeeds.
In 1974, more than 30 hours of White House tapes proved sufficient to force Nixon's resignation in the face of certain impeachment. In succeeding years, Nixon maintained that his tapes would exonerate him, yet he fought doggedly (and expensively) to prevent access to the remaining several thousand hours.
Eventually, a successful 1996 lawsuit forced the liberation of his remaining tapes, and secured wide public access to them. The new tapes have magnified and pinpointed Nixon's criminal liabilities. He openly discussed "hush money" payments to the arrested Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt, one of his "plumbers," a secret group engaged in break-ins and other illegal activities. H.R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, reported on Aug. 1, 1972, that "Hunt's happy." "At considerable cost," the president replied. And then hastily added: "It's worth it, [t]hey have to be paid. That's all there is to that." He knew that Hunt "had done a lot of things." He worried that Hunt's "plumbers' " work--his "earlier venture," according to Nixon--might be exposed.
Nixon was both aware of the cover-up and was a participant in it from the outset, as the famous "smoking gun" tape of June 23, 1972, long ago revealed. He discussed the cover-up constantly throughout the next year. Haldeman told him that John Dean was "watching it on an almost full-time basis" and reporting to him and John Erhlichman, another principal Nixon's aide. Haldeman assured Nixon that the investigation of Watergate was proceeding "along the channels that will not produce the kind of answers we don't want produced." On obstruction of justice, the tapes are clear.
Nixon's famous March 21, 1973, meeting with Dean ("There is a cancer on the presidency") has been variously interpreted. Either Dean told an uninformed Nixon of the full scope of the cover-up (as Nixon contended) or, more likely, he merely summarized whatever the president knew. In any event, no sooner had Dean left the Oval Office than Nixon called in his longtime secretary, Rose Mary Woods, and told her he "may have a need for substantial cash for a personal purpose"--Woods had several hundred thousand dollars of "campaign contributions" in her office. Nixon acknowledged that his good friend Thomas Pappas "has raised the money." Haldeman laconically added: "And he's able to deal in cash." Later, Nixon thanked Pappas for his aid "on some of these things that ... others are involved in."
Nixon learned as early as October 1972 that Mark Felt had leaked FBI field reports to The Washington Post, a "secret" known since 1997 with the first release of new tapes. But Haldeman told him, "If we move on him, he'll go out and unload everything. He knows everything that's to be known in the FBI." Nixon agreed and then, trying to fathom Felt's motivation, he and Haldeman concluded that Felt was Jewish (he was not) and that explained his leaking of the information.
On April 30, 1973, Nixon dismissed his top aides. He spent several hours in telephone conversations that evening, making remarks uncharacteristically emotional, distraught, poignant and sprinkled with slurred words. At one point, he told the fired Haldeman, "I love you, Bob." A few days later, he lamented to his press secretary, "It's all over, do you know that?"
Nixon's tragic fate was self-inflicted. In the literary sense, he was a comic figure--"I am not a crook" is popular shorthand for a reflection on his life. The comic side reflects his awkwardness, and that awkwardness resulted in fatal isolation. He was constantly at odds with himself, allowing hate and suspicion of others to consume him, and this sent his career crashing into ruins. Nixon's conflicts and hates fueled his drive for power, and they eventually unraveled his authority. There was no "new Nixon" after all; he was the same man who had played on our public stage for so many years. In the end, Nixon delivered his most revealing insight into himself: "[T]hose that hate you don't win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself."
Partisans and historians will long argue over Nixon's presidential record; they similarly will divide over how to measure his impact on American political style and life. But Nixon's ignoble end indisputably left a disturbing legacy for that political life. Today, we speak of presidential abuses of power as being "worse than Watergate" in their contempt for lawful processes and the rule of law. The "lessons" and meaning of Richard Nixon remain exquisitely relevant.
Watergate persists as Nixon's nemesis. For it is Watergate and the unprecedented spectacle of a presidential resignation that most set him apart. Neither Nixon nor we can escape that history. The 35th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation once again raises his name and his memory, and reminds us of who and what he was. "For hateful deeds committed by myself!/ I am a villain: yet I lie. I am Not," Shakespeare's Richard III declared. Watergate remains Nixon's burden and our legacy.
Stanley Kutler is the author of "The Wars of Watergate" (W.W. Norton).
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran's police chief acknowledged Sunday that detained protesters were abused in prison and the country's top prosecutor said those responsible for the mistreatment should be punished, in unusually pointed criticism of security officials.
But a more hard-line tone came from a senior commander of the powerful Revolutionary Guard, who called for opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and former President Mohammad Khatami to be put on trial. The two have led protesters who charge the June 12 election was rigged in favor of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The difference in tone of the statements could point to some tension at the highest levels of Iran's power structure between the hard-line Revolutionary Guard, an elite military force, and the Islamic leadership that controls the judiciary and may want to send a more moderate message to calm public outrage over prisoner deaths.
Gen. Ismail Ahmadi Moghaddam, the police chief, acknowledged protesters were beaten by their jailers at Kahrizak, the prison on Tehran's southern outskirts that has been at the center of abuse claims. But he denied abuse was to blame for any deaths, saying prisoners had died of a virus outbreak.
"This detention center was built to house dangerous criminals. Housing people related to recent riots caused an outbreak of diseases," official news agency IRNA quoted Moghaddam as saying. Protesters "died of viral illness and not as a result of beating," he added, according to another news agency, the semiofficial Fars.
Iran's Prosecutor General Ghorban Ali Dorri Najafabadi called for those responsible for mistreating detainees to be punished for "violations and carelessness," IRNA reported.
He said there was an order not to take protesters to Kahrizak but it was ignored. Human rights groups have identified at least three protesters they say died after being detained at Kahrizak.
"Unfortunately, negligence and carelessness by some officials caused the Kahrizak incident, which is not defendable," IRNA quoted Najafabadi as saying. "During early days, it is possible there were mistakes and mistreatment due to overcrowding in the prison," he added.
Iran's opposition has seized on claims of abuse at Kahrizak, saying young protesters were tortured to death there. Perhaps more troubling for the government, however, is that some prominent figures in its own conservative support base also say protesters were murdered in prison and demand that those responsible should be brought to trial.
Conservative lawmaker Hamid Reza Katouzian rejected the police chief's explanation that illness was to blame for detainee deaths.
"Murders were committed that led to the loss of life of a number of our youth. This has to be probed," the semiofficial ISNA news agency quoted him as saying.
Stories of widespread abuse at Kahrizak prompted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to order its closure last month for substandard conditions. Authorities fired the head of the prison for mismanagement and three guards were detained on charges of mistreating detainees.
The Revolutionary Guard, which operates with some autonomy from the ruling clerics, led the harsh crackdown and detention of protesters in the most tense weeks after the election and appears to have sought even wider sway over Iranian affairs in the aftermath.
The Guard was created following the 1979 Islamic revolution as an ideological force to defend Iran's clerical rule. The 120,000-strong force is believed to be better armed and equipped than the far larger regular military. In recent years, the Guard has also amassed a wide network of economic and political power.
The facilities where abuses took place are officially controlled by police but effectively controlled by the Revolutionary Guard. The prosecutor's statement was directed at both the Guard and the police.
Senior Revolutionary Guard commander Yadollah Javani, in turn, challenged the judiciary and intelligence officials, asking why they had had not arrested Mousavi, Khatami and another reformist presidential candidate, Mahdi Karroubi, and put them on trial.
Javani said the three men have led what he called a "velvet coup" aimed at toppling Iran's clerical rulers.
"If Mousavi, Khatami ... and Karroubi are the main elements of a velvet coup in Iran, which they are, it is expected that judicial bodies and intelligence officials go to them to put out the fire of sedition, arrest, try and punish them," IRNA quoted him as saying.
Iran has confirmed at least 30 people have died in the worst internal unrest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, though human rights groups believe the death toll is probably far higher. Hundreds have been detained and Najafabadi said about 200 protesters remain in detention.
Authorities say Kahrizak was closed after Khamenei's order, and prisoners transferred to Tehran's Evin prison, a detention facility known for holding Iranian dissidents.
The only fellow conservative to challenge Ahmadinejad in the June election, Mohsen Rezaei, has led the demands for high-level probes into abuses.
The son of Rezaei's top aide, Abdolhossein Rouhalamini, died in detention. He was arrested during a July 9 protest and taken to a hospital two weeks later where he died within hours. Reformist Web sites reported that he had been held at Kahrizak and that his jaw was broken when his father received his body.
The issue has come to the fore as Iran presses forward with a mass trial of more than 100 prominent reformist figures, opposition activists and others accused of offenses ranging from rioting to spying and seeking to topple the country's Islamic rulers.
The trial, which has included televised confessions that rights groups say are likely extracted through pressure, is the government's latest attempt to crush the opposition.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a TV interview broadcast Sunday that the Obama administration continued to back the opposition, as she said it did in the days just after the vote.
"We're continuing to speak out and support the opposition," she said on CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" program.
Clinton said she was appalled at the treatment of detainees brought to trial.
"It is a show trial. There is no doubt about it," she said. "And it is a sign of weakness. It demonstrates, I think, better than any of us could ever say, that this Iranian leadership is afraid of their own people, and afraid of the truth and the facts coming out."
During a second hearing in the trial on Saturday, defendants talked about helping a shadowy monarchist-linked group planning a terror campaign to destabilize the country as well as meeting with U.S. intelligence operatives in northern Iraq, state-run Press TV reported.
Mohammad Reza Ali Zamani said he met with a U.S. intelligence agent called "Frank" in Irbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdish autonomous region, and received money from him.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Sunday it is willing to hold direct talks with North Korea over its nuclear weapons if it first resumes international negotiations.
Despite reports of his declining health, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il seems fully in charge of the reclusive communist country, White House national security adviser James Jones said.
Jones said former President Bill Clinton passed no official messages and made no promises during his mission last week to bring home two American journalists convicted of illegally entering North Korea and held in prison.
Making the rounds of the Sunday talk shows, Jones added few details. He did say Clinton "was able to convey his personal views of the issue of the moment, which is making sure nuclear weapons do not appear on the Korean peninsula."
The North has developed a nuclear weapons capability, tested two devices and fired missiles theoretically able to carry a nuclear warhead.
Jones said North Korea has said it wants better relations and long has sought one-on-one talks with the United States, as opposed to the six-nation negotiations involving the U.S., South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. Both Jones and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice said the United States is ready to resume the kind of direct talks held in the latter years of the Bush administration.
"Meaning if they come back to the talks, we will talk to them bilaterally within those talks," Jones said. "We have coordinated all of this by the way with the other allies – the Chinese, the Russians, the South Koreans, the Japanese," Jones said. "So the path is clear, and President Clinton is a very convincing gentleman and I hope he was able to convince them."
Rice urged the North Koreans "to uphold their international obligations" and resume the international negotiations. "In that context, we have said that we would be prepared to have a direct dialogue, she said. "But North Korea can't continue to make commitments and then violate them and expect to start from where they left off. The ball is in their court."
North Korea agreed to give up its weapons and the ability to make more, but later walked away from the six-nation negotiations and kicked out international inspectors.
Clinton "did press home the fact that if North Korea really wants to rejoin the community of nations, the way forward is not to produce a nuclear weapons and (that it should) rejoin six-party talks," Jones said.
Clinton and Kim held more than three hours of discussions, but Jones said North Korea got nothing out of the visit except a photo opportunity. Photos of the visit include Clinton standing with Kim, who is noticeably thinner following what may have been a stroke last year. There have been reports of a succession struggle in North Korea.
"Kim appeared to be control of his government and sounded very reasoned," Jones said. "He seemed in control of his faculties."
Rice said the administration is "debriefing" the former president.
"He obviously heard what Kim Jong Il had to say. And what that contributes to our understanding of what's going on in North Korea I'd rather not get into in this discussion, but obviously we look forward to a full analysis of the observations and analysis of what President Clinton brought back," she said.
Rice said Clinton's mission does not make her more hopeful about a diplomatic opening with the North, but it doesn't leave her less optimistic either.
She rejected criticism from a former U.N. ambassador, John Bolton, that the mission walked dangerously close to negotiations with terrorists.
"That's, in fact, a ridiculous statement," Rice said.
Clinton's diplomatic trip to North Korea secured the release of two women – Laura Ling and Euna Lee – jailed in North Korea nearly five months ago. The women work for former Vice President Al Gore's San Francisco-based Current TV.
Jones spoke on "Fox News Sunday, NBC's "Meet the Press" and CBS' "Face the Nation." Rice appeared on CNN's "State of the Union."
One of Barack Obama's chief allies in the United States Senate hinted on Sunday that a public insurance option could go by the wayside as Congress hammers out its health care legislation.
Appearing on CNN's "State of the Union," Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), one of the chamber's foremost progressives, said that while he supported a government-run option for insurance, he was "open" to alternatives.
"Just understand that, after we pass this bill -- and I hope we do -- in the Senate, it will go to conference committee," said Durbin. "We'll have a chance to work out all of our differences."
"So we'll see how this ends, but I don't want the process to be filibustered to failure, which unfortunately, many senators are trying to do," Durbin added. "I want to make sure that we do something positive for the American people."
The comments are similar to the line coming from the White House in recent days, with officials indicating that they would be open to a co-op based insurance model, provided that it had enough leverage to lower costs for consumers. (In this plan, non-profit cooperatives would get a charter from the government to take premiums from members and cover claims, expanding the risk pool for individuals buying insurance). Indeed, for Durbin to make the remarks he did on CNN is a strong indication that the party -- from Obama on down -- sees the public option as a likely victim in an effort to get 60 votes for health care's passage in the Senate.
However, not everyone is willing to concede that 60 votes are needed. On ABC's "This Week," former Vermont Governor and DNC Chair Howard Dean said that Democrats should be comfortable using reconciliation (which would require 51 votes) in order to get legislation -- including a public option -- through the Senate.
In an effort at bridging divides within the Democratic Party, Dean also complimented the more conservative Blue Dog members for forcing changes to the legislation that freed up small businesses from burdensome health care costs.
"This bill is terrific for a small business," said Dean. "The Blue Dogs made it a better bill, and I hope by the time gets through, it gets even better. Right now in the House bill... if you're a small business with a payroll of less than $500,000, you have no responsibility whatsoever to give your employees health insurance. That now becomes a subsidy based on your income. And then you can choose either the private or public sector. This is choice. This is real choice."
BEIJING — A typhoon pummeled China's eastern coast Sunday, toppling houses, flooding villages and forcing nearly a million people to flee to safety. Officials rode bicycles to distribute food to residents trapped by rising waters.
Typhoon Morakot struck after triggering the worst flooding in Taiwan 50 years, leaving dozens missing and feared dead and toppling a six-story hotel. It earlier lashed the Philippines, killing at least 21 people.
Morakot, which means "emerald" in Thai, made landfall in China's eastern Fujian province, carrying heavy rain and winds of 74 miles (119 kilometers) per hour, according the China Meteorological Administration. At least one child died after a house collapsed on him in Zhejiang province.
People stumbled with flashlights as the storm enveloped the town of Beibi in Fujian in darkness, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Strong winds uprooted trees or snapped them apart, while farmers tried to catch fish swept out of fish farms by high waves.
Village officials in Zhejiang rode bicycles to hand out drinking water and instant noodles to residents stranded by deep floods, while rescuers tried to reach eight sailors on a cargo ship blown onto a reef off Fujian, Xinhua reported.
Morakot was expected to weaken as it traveled north at about six miles (10 kilometers) per hour, but still bring strong winds and heavy rains to Shanghai, the meteorological administration said.
Flood control officials in Shanghai released water stored in inland rivers to reduce levels in preparation, Xinhua said.
About 1 million people were evacuated from China's eastern coastal provinces – more than 490,000 in Zhejiang and 505,000 in neighboring Fujian. Authorities in Fujian called 48,000 boats back to harbor.
Five houses were destroyed by heavy rain ahead of the typhoon's landfall, burying four adults and a 4-year-old boy in debris, Xinhua said. The child died after emergency treatment failed, it said.
Another 300 houses collapsed and thousands of acres (hectares) of farmland were inundated, Xinhua said.
Dozens of domestic flights were canceled and delayed in Fujian and Zhejiang, and bus service in Fujian's capital, Fuzhou, was suspended, it said.
Taiwan, meanwhile, was recovering after the storm dumped more than 80 inches (200 centimeters) of rain on some southern counties Friday and Saturday, the worst flooding to hit the area in half a century, the Central Weather Bureau reported.
Taiwan's Disaster Relief Center said a woman was killed when her vehicle plunged into a ditch in Kaohsiung county in heavy rain Friday, and two men drowned in Pingtung and Tainan. It said 31 were missing and feared dead.
Morakot hit Taiwan late Friday and crossed the island Saturday. The Disaster Relief Center reported Sunday that flash floods washed away a home in southern Kaohsiung, leaving 16 people missing. Three were swept away in southeastern Taitung county, including two policemen helping to evacuate villagers.
Twelve others were missing, including three fishermen from a capsized boat and three others whose cars fell into a rain-swollen river, it said.
In southern Pingtung county, 4,000 people were stranded in inundated villages waiting for police boats to rescue them, news media reported.
In Taitung county, a six-story hotel collapsed and plunged into a river after floodwaters eroded its base, but all 300 people inside were evacuated and uninjured, officials said.
In the northern Philippines, the typhoon and lingering monsoon rains left 21 people dead and seven others missing in landslides and floodwaters, including three European tourists who were swept away Thursday, the National Disaster Coordinating Council said Sunday.
The bodies of the Belgian and two French citizens were found Friday, the council said.
Meanwhile, Xinhua said three fishermen died and 26 others were missing from Tropical Storm Goni, which hit Guangdong on Wednesday but weakened into a tropical depression by Sunday. Helicopters and ships were searching for the missing crew.
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Associated Press writers Annie Huang in Taipei and Jim Gomez in Manila contributed to this report.
Joshua spent about a month in the file room of the Harvard Study of Adult Development hoping to learn the secret of happiness. The project is one of the longest-running and probably the most exhaustive longitudinal studies of mental and physical well-being in history. Basically, for 72 years researchers at Harvard have been following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s--following them through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age.
A brilliant man named George Vaillant has directed the study for 40-plus years, compiling and processing all the information.
So what did Joshua learn? What makes for happiness??
Let me just pluck out a few of the most intriguing concepts presented in the article.
Everything We Do Is a Defense Mechanism
Joshua explained to me that according to George's theory, which is drawn from Sigmund and Anna Freud, EVERYTHING we do is a defense mechanism, some "psychotic," some "immature," some "neurotic," and some "mature."
Joshua writes:
Most psychology preoccupies itself with mapping the heavens of health in sharp contrast to the underworld of illness. "Social anxiety disorder" is distinguished from shyness. Depression is defined as errors in cognition. Vaillant's work, in contrast, creates a refreshing conversation about health and illness as weather patterns in a common space. "Much of what is labeled mental illness," Vaillant writes, "simply reflects our 'unwise' deployment of defense mechanisms. If we use defenses well, we are deemed mentally healthy, conscientious, funny, creative, and altruistic. If we use them badly, the psychiatrist diagnoses us ill, our neighbors label us unpleasant, and society brands us immoral."
The Seven Major Factors of Healthy Aging
George Valliant identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically. Here they are: employing mature adaptations, education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, exercise, and maintaining a healthy weight.
I asked Joshua if we could count on those seven things to promote our mental-health program, as well. Although they aren't a "blueprint" for mental health, he said--because a blueprint doesn't exist--he agreed that yes, those seven elements certainly contribute to good physical and mental health.
The Power of Relationships
When someone asked George Valliant what he learned from the study, he responded: "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."
Joshua writes:
Vaillant's other main interest is the power of relationships. "It is social aptitude," he writes, "not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging." Warm connections are necessary--and if not found in a mother or father, they can come from siblings, uncles, friends, mentors. The men's relationships at age 47, he found, predicted late-life adjustment better than any other variable, except defenses. Good sibling relationships seem especially powerful: 93 percent of the men who were thriving at age 65 had been close to a brother or sister when younger.
Joy Is Pain and Pain Is Joy
The wisdom and dept of Joshua's article reminded me of the classic, "The Prophet," especially Kahlil Gibran's essay on pain:
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.
Joshua discusses the relationship between George Valliant and the positive psychology movement, especially to University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman. He writes:
When Vaillant told me he was going to speak to Seligman's class, he said his message would be from William Blake: "Joy and woe are woven fine." Earlier in his career, he would use such occasions to demonstrate, with stories and data, the bright side of pain--how adaptations can allow us to turn dross into gold. Now he articulates the dark side of pleasure and connection--or, at least, the way that our most profound yearnings can arise from our most basic fears.
I realize that I have probably just left you with more questions than answers. Joshua's article was clearly not a "5 Steps to Happiness" write-up.
That's why I have read it several times, each time taking away something different, and even more profound.
WILL Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, deny they are Scientologists and deny the school they founded is a Scientology school -- yet they've replaced the head of the New Village Leadership Academy, Jacqueline Olivier, with a woman who's studied Scientology, Piano Foster.
There's a saying in the literary world that good poets borrow while great poets steal. By that standard, Madonna shouldn't be accused of anything more than borrowing, and some sage news outlets are accusing her of doing exactly that.
At issue is a love poem the pop star wrote to her former bodyguard James Albright, with whom she had a relationship in the early 90s. Albright--no longer in love and apparently in need of some cash-- just auctioned off some Madonna mementos at the online auction site Gottahaveit.com. For sale were erotic answering machine recordings, some "very personal and intimate" videos, and a series of steamy love letters that Madonna faxed (it was the early 90s) to Albright using the pen name Lola Montez. Here's the poem the press seized on:
I was the girl of the love letter the girl full of talk of dreams and destination . . . the one with her eyes half under the covers with her large gun-metal blue eyes with the thick vein in the crook of her neck.
As far as celebrity verse goes, that's not too bad, right? Well, sleuthy reporters discovered that Madonna may have borrowed heavily from Pulitzer Prize winning poet Anne Sexton. Note the following lines from Sexton's poem "Love Song": I was the girl of the chain letter the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes . . . the one with her eyes half under her coat with her large gun-metal blue eyes with the thin vein at the bend of her neck.
That can't be a coincidence. And while I don't think that borrowing a few lines to write a personal poem is a big deal, the act sheds some interesting light on Madonna. For one thing, the changes she made to the poem--while they make it a bit more pedestrian--are pretty solid. The chain letter becomes a love letter; coffins and keyholes become dreams and destinations (a little cliché); the coat becomes the covers; and the sexy thin vein at the bend becomes "the thick vein at the crook of her neck" (well, that's just not attractive).
It's also interesting that Madonna chose to poach this Sexton poem. While Sexton is well known, this poem is not, and it begs the question of whether Madonna felt some kinship with the confessional poet, a woman who--to put it mildly--led a turbulent life. Sexton battled serious mental illness, once writing of fellow poet Sylvia Plath's suicide,
Thief! how did you crawl into crawl down alone into the death I wanted so badly and for so long.
She took her own life less than a decade later.
"Love Song" is from Sexton's collection Live or Die, which documents (in verse) a period of recovery from mental illness. The poem's frenetic movement and strange and often dark imagery (you'll notice that the poem contains the words "chain," "coffins," "gun," "old red hook," "bleeding," "terrible" and "death") makes more sense in light of this. Here's the full text:
I was the girl of the chain letter, the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes, the one of the telephone bills, the wrinkled photo and the lost connections, the one who kept saying- Listen! Listen! We must never! We must never! and all those things...
the one with her eyes half under her coat, with her large gun-metal blue eyes, with the thin vein at the bend of her neck that hummed like a tuning fork, with her shoulders as bare as a building, with her thin foot and her thin toes, with an old red hook in her mouth, the mouth that kept bleeding in the terrible fields of her soul...
the one who kept dropping off to sleep, as old as a stone she was, each hand like a piece of cement, for hours and hours and then she'd wake, after the small death, and then she'd be as soft as, as delicate as...
as soft and delicate as an excess of light, with nothing dangerous at all, like a beggar who eats or a mouse on a rooftop with no trap doors, with nothing more honest than your hand in her hand- with nobody, nobody but you! and all those things. nobody, nobody but you! Oh! There is no translating that ocean, that music, that theater, that field of ponies.
"Nobody, Nobody but you!" The speaker at the end seems desperate to cling to love so as not to fall into despair. Madonna (and I never thought I would be writing this) seems quite stable by comparison.
Former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd, who was something of a reliable GOP heretic during the 2008 campaign, offered another off-message moment on Sunday when he warned that the Republican Party was playing with fire on health care.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Dowd cautioned conservatives to not go too far in pushing back against Obama's agenda, lest they be blamed for actually preventing people from getting better health care coverage.
"I think the Republicans soon have to be careful of something," Dowd said. "I know Republicans are all patting themselves on the back and saying, "We've got the Democrats on the run, Obama on the run.' I don't think it's necessarily a good political place to be in by November if you've defeated any health care reform."
Dowd's remarks get at a looming reality in the current health care debate. There is a thin line between being credited for stopping the president and being blamed for defeating reform. While a vast majority of Americans like their current coverage, public polls show that similar or even greater percentages of the public believe the system is broken and in need of fixing.
The Republican Party certainly knows this. In an internal RNC poll, which the Huffington Post obtained and reported, 54 percent of respondents said that America had "the best health care in the world," but 70 percent said the system was "badly in need of reform."
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