A sunny, early spring weekend in Germany, the small German village where we lived made us part of their life. Farmers slaughtered pigs and prepared equipment to work the fields during the coming week. Following a leisurely breakfast in bed, I was taking a relaxing bath; my wife was baking in the kitchen. A scene of domesticity soon to be torn asunder. As on most weekend days, two of our children were about the village with their German friends. Our youngest, a two year old barely able to speak English but fluent in German, was playing in the living room.
The village boys were playing tag. As they ran their regular path through the neighbor's farm, Bella, the always friendly farm dog, evidently upset by squeals of pigs, the smell of oval and the heavy scent of blood turned on the children slashing one boy clear through the cheek. Chaos reigned as the farmers saw to immediate first aid and called for the child's parents.
My wife heard the heavy knock on the door; answered it and took off down the path with Frau Schneider. Our oldest son, who just turned eight, was the unfortunate child. My wife is a highly experienced registered nurse and probably one of the calmest heads I have ever known in a business where a calm head is necessary for survival. She assessed the situation and shouted for me to stay put and watch our other children. It was her area of expertise, I obeyed. My wife, injured son and the neighbors headed off to the local German hospital five kilometers away. Then passed the longest hours of my life.
The rural German hospital possessed excellent surgery and emergency facilities. As I paced and fretted at home, my wife negotiated our child's treatment in stumbling German and fluent English. She debated transferring our child to the military hospital twenty miles away. The trauma to our son's cheek was so violent and rough that there were serious questions if he would ever be able to smile or have feeling in that cheek again. A young German doctor begged my wife to allow him to perform surgery on our son. He explained that American medicine would require a series of operations (at least three) and a helicopter flight to Frankfurt. My wife knew this to be true. The doctor claimed that under German protocols he could do the "repair" permanently and in one surgery. My wife used her best judgment and told the German doctor that our son's care was in his hands. As is so often the case, my wife was right. The next days and weeks were trying but German hospital care was superb. My son never required another surgery and today you must look very carefully to see the scar. As a side note, the German authorities said that it was our call on whether to execute the dog and examine him for rabies or watch and wait. We left that decision up to our son. He said let him live. Years later we returned to "our" village and had a great reunion. My son asked to see bella and the old dog limped out of the barn. My son thanked us for honoring his decision.
Why do I relate this bit of family history? We paid a pittance for the German national healthcare and treatment of our son. We had insurance but they refused further payment saying the national healthcare covers those costs. Now, European and other nation's healthcare is being attacked as a failure. This is not a misunderstanding; it is a lie. No healthcare system is perfect even if perfection should always be the goal. I KNOW government healthcare works. For most of our lives, my family's healthcare was government healthcare. Not just in Europe, but here in the United States. As many of you know, we still have government military healthcare. I am ready to address any questions concerning universal healthcare.
U.S. Healthcare is failing. I won't address individual horror stories here because there are enough on both sides. However, I will address overall challenges. Doctors tell me they will gladly sacrifice income for more time with patients and more time with their own loved ones. Nurses' unions are fighting for fewer patients (meaning more time with individual patients) rather than more money. Home healthcare attendants are fighting for their own healthcare benefits and a living wage so that they can continue to care for their clients. Do you see a common theme here? Patient care is what drives real healthcare providers not just money. They are caregivers to their very core and they know our current system is working for neither the patient nor society.
Government healthcare works well. My current mix of government and private healthcare fits into our national values. Ask the vast majority of seniors if they want to lose their Medicare and you will find a government single payer healthcare program that is very popular. Time to stop the lies, hate and disinformation. Let's roll up our sleeves and begin to address this key area of our economy and our quality of life. Forty years of debate is time enough.
The White House is in full scramble mode, trying to walk back last week's reports that the administration had struck a deal with Big Pharma promising to remove from its health care overhaul the ability of Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices.
But they can't walk back two essential facts: 1) the drug industry has drawn an $80 billion line in the sand -- that's the maximum amount of cost cutting it'll accept before withdrawing its support for health care reform, and 2) during the campaign Obama promised to repeal the ban on negotiating with drug companies, predicting it would result in as much as $310 billion in savings.
So even if the White House didn't explicitly promise to take price negotiations off the table, by agreeing to Big Pharma's $80 billion ceiling they've effectively done just that (the $150 million ad campaign the drug industry has promised to run in support of the president's health care plan only adds to the stench).
And if the right to negotiate drug prices is dead, so is the chance for meaningful reform.
The White House has now shown itself willing to cave on the two essential elements of real health care reform -- drug price negotiations and having a public option.
Both are crucial to containing costs. The right to negotiate drug prices is how free markets operate -- taking advantage of economies of scale and the bargaining power that comes with bulk purchasing. To give this up should be abhorrent to anyone who believes in a functioning capitalist system, as opposed to what we are increasingly becoming: an oligarchy of powerful interests. In the same way, having a public option is the only meaningful way to provide competition leading to lower insurance costs.
Giving us health care reform without those key ingredients is like serving a PBJ sandwich without the peanut butter or the jelly.
This white-bread-only reform makes no sense practically -- or politically. Health care reform that doesn't contain costs is destined to fail -- arming the GOP with a powerful "I told you so" cudgel to swing in 2010 and 2012.
Making matters worse, the chance to enact meaningful change doesn't come along often. And when the opportunity is squandered, it is lost for a long, long time. When reform that isn't reform passes, people check it off their list and move on -- and we are left with worse-than-no-reform boondoggles like No Child Left Behind and Bush's Medicare drug plan.
For me, it's emblematic of precisely what Obama promised to put an end to: politics as usual where, as Frank Rich put it, "the American game is rigged" and (quoting Obama himself) the system is in hock to "the interests of powerful lobbyists or the wealthiest few" who have "run Washington far too long."
And it's not like the drug industry somehow pulled a fast one on the president. During the 2008 campaign, Obama was unequivocal on the issue. Here are some of the flashback quotes we put together for HuffPost's Obama vs. Obama story:
-- "Congress exempted Medicare from being able to negotiate for the cheapest available price. And that was a profound mistake."
-- "We will break the stranglehold that a few big drug and insurance companies have on the health care market."
-- "We're not going to get change unless we can overcome the resistance the drug companies, the insurance companies, the HMOs, those who are making a major profit from the system currently."
And from his campaign documents:
Allow Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices.... Barack Obama and Joe Biden will repeal the ban on direct negotiation with drug companies and use the resulting savings, which could be as high as $310 billion, to further invest in improving health care coverage and quality.
"We'll tell the pharmaceutical companies 'Thanks but no thanks for overpriced drugs,'" Obama said in October. "We'll let Medicare negotiate for lower prices." From now on shall we just assume that "thanks but no thanks" really means "thanks"?
Obama also promised to hold all negotiations on C-SPAN. He hasn't. Instead we've had a week of White House statements, followed by anonymous White House briefings, followed by contradictory anonymous White House briefings, accompanied by the PhRMA drug lobbyists touting their agreement, followed by the lobbyists issuing "no comment" comments on their agreement, followed by the lobbyists walking back their touting of their agreement.
The health-care industry has hired more than 350 former members of Congress and government staffers to lobby their former colleagues, and is spending around $1.4 million a day trying to maintain the status quo. Looks like it will be money well spent. With price control negotiations and the public option circling the drain, their victory is near complete.
The third fundamental element of real cost containment is getting serious about prevention -- shifting the focus of our health care system from treating sickness to preventing illness. As Einstein put it: "Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them." That's why HuffPost is committed to pursuing new lines of thinking on the health care debate -- including the importance of making changes to the lifestyle choices that greatly impact our health.
To this end, we are delighted to welcome Dr. Dean Ornish as our Medical Editor. He's a pioneer in promoting lifestyle changes and prevention as a path to better health, and will be writing both about personal health issues and about moving prevention front and center in the ongoing health-care debate. See his latest post here. He'll also be recruiting writers with a wide range of perspectives on how to achieve wellness. This is a vital debate to have, because we clearly cannot continue down the current costly and inefficient health care path.
Remember when Obama kept presenting the fact that he hadn't been in Washington very long as a virtue? If real health-care reform dies -- and the death of real health-care reform is completely consistent with a Rose Garden signing ceremony of a "reform bill" -- I guess it will show that even six months in Washington is too long.
The new congressional jets may be getting scrapped.
After an uproar over a proposed purchase of new executive jets for use by senior government official, including members of Congress, the top Defense appropriator in the House has offered to eliminate funding for the planes - but only if the Pentagon, which operates the jets, agrees.
Cash for Clunkers has been rundown by teabaggers opposing health reform as an example of federal management incompetence. But the program has a lot of fans. In addition to the thousands of consumers who took advantage of the Cash for Clunkers auto trade-in deal, the Economic Policy Institute reports this week that the program has been a boon to consumption in the recession economy and a boon as well for the environment, moving gas guzzlers off the roads. The New York Times likewise did "clunker calculus" this weekend and found the benefits inescapable.
Today, Tim Jackson, president of the Colorado Automobile Dealers Association, sent around an op-ed to state media outlets offering unmitigated praise for the program.
Cheryle Jackson, the head of the Chicago Urban League, announced on Monday her intention to run for the U.S. Senate seat that Barack Obama gave up when he was elected President.
I met Jackson, now 44, in the spring of 2003 when I was writing a profile for Chicago magazine of then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Jackson was Blagojevich's communications director at the time.
Before becoming Blago's press flack, Jackson had been Amtrak's regional vice president for communications and government affairs. David Mendell, then a Chicago Tribune reporter, wrote in December 2002 that, according to his sources, Blagojevich "specifically sought an African-American woman for the post that represents the administration to the media [because] the overwhelmingly Democratic vote totals from the black community in Chicago and the south suburbs were key to their election victory."
Jackson was impressive, strong willed and minded, and, initially, difficult.
After I called her to request face-to-face interviews with her boss, she told me, during a telephone call on May 23, 2003, that the level of access I got to Blago would depend on his getting the magazine's cover. I had also asked for an interview with the state's new First Lady, Patti Blagojevich, and Jackson reiterated that access would have to wait on an assurance that my Blago profile would run on the cover. She even had the cover shot set in her mind. She wanted her boss to pose with the cast of the soon to be released Barbershop 2: Back in Business. She explained that there would be a bill signing on the set of the movie.
A week or so later, she left a message on my voice mail accusing me of calling people close to the governor and misrepresenting myself by telling them that I was given their names and contact info by Jackson or by "the governor's office." I told her I would never do that. "I have [a long list] of names," I told her when I reached her by telephone, "and I'll call whom I want."
She backed down and we agreed "to put this behind us." She also dropped the cover boy demand. When the piece was published in the November 2003 issue of Chicago the cover was "the 2003 Dining Awards" with a line running across the top, "Governor Sunshine: the Blagojevich Story."
After that, Jackson never attempted to stymie my progress in any way. She set up face to face interviews with Blagojevich in his office in the State of Illinois Building that July and August.
She helped me arrange interviews with a few key people, including Patti, and Lon Monk, then Blago's chief of staff, who was indicted in the federal corruption case against his former boss.
She called ahead to help me land an interview with Ed Vrdolyak, for whom Blago worked early in his career. She also urged me to talk to David Wilhelm and told me that she intended to call Wilhelm, who was Blago's 2002 campaign chair, transition adviser, and member of his "kitchen cabinet," and tell him to "take my call."
According to Crain's political columnist Greg Hinz, David Wilhelm will serve Cheryle Jackson as a "special adviser" in her 2010 run for the Senate seat. Wilhelm had also run Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. If Jackson was taken with Blago, she was not alone. When I interviewed Wilhem in 2003, he described Blago as "certainly among the most gifted natural politicians. ... Same ability to light up a crowd or a room that Bill Clinton has."
This hit the wires on Friday.... -----------------------------------------------------
Statement of Leaders of LGBT Jewish Synagogues & Organizations in Response to the Attack on the LGBT Youth Center in Tel Aviv on August 1, 2009
On behalf of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) synagogues and Jewish organizations, we wish to express our deep sadness, outrage, and commitment in the wake of the horrible attack on the "Bar No'ar" LGBT youth drop-in center last week in Tel Aviv.
We are first and foremost saddened by this terrible attack on innocent young people, in a place devoted to their safety and security. Our prayers are with the families of Nir Katz z"l, 26, and Liz Trobishi z"l, 16, as well as with the many now recovering from their injuries in Israeli hospitals. This pigu'a -- this terrorist attack -- was against all of us, Jewish and non-Jewish, straight and gay, who cherish the values of diversity, democracy, and pluralism. But we in the LGBT Jewish community feel this pain especially, for we know that it was an attack on us specifically as well, and that it could have been any of our organizations, any of our members, supporters, or loved ones, who were targeted.
We are also outraged. While we do not yet know the identity or motivations behind this attack, we do know that it occurred in the context of months -- indeed, years -- of vitriolic, incendiary rhetoric directed against the LGBT community in Israel. Tragically, some of the harshest words against us were spoken by some of our Jewish spiritual leaders. Whether these words motivated a hate crime, or whether they motivated an act of self-hatred or personal hatred, we know from experience that racist, sexist, or homophobic speech begets racist, sexist, or homophobic violence. We therefore condemn not only the attack itself but also the climate of hatred that some political and religious leaders helped create.
Yet we are also committed: committed to a just society, to dialogue with those with whom we disagree, and to the right of everyone to act in the image of God and love one another. We will not stop or slow our advocacy for full legal equality, in the United States and Israel, for LGBT people. We will not be deterred from building support groups and safe spaces, congregations and community centers, social programs and spiritual havens, of the very type that was attacked last week. And most of all, we will not allow this attack to strip us of our humanity, and our capacity to love. We know that it is love that matters, not the gender or sex of one's beloved, and we know that our tradition teaches us the innate humanity of every person, a Divine quality most visible in our capacity to love.
At this time of mourning, we affirm all of these -- our sadness, our outrage, and our commitment -- and stand with Israel's people and its government as it works to bring the perpetrator of this crime to justice. The blood of the victims cries out from the Earth, mixes with the salt of our tears, and inspires us to pursue justice, seek the holy, and walk in the pathways of love.
Signed,
Jay Michaelson, Nehirim: GLBT Jewish Culture & Spirituality Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, New York, NY Rabbi Joshua Lesser, Congregation Bet Haverim, Atlanta, GA Elke Martin, Congregation Bet Mishpachah, Washington, DC Rabbi Lisa Edwards, Congregation Beth Chayim Chadashim, Los Angeles, CA Congregation Etz Chaim, Wilton Manors, FL Rabbi Denise L. Eger, Congregation Kol Ami, West Hollywood, CA Rabbi Lawrence Edwards, Congregation Or Chadash, Chicago, IL Rabbi Camille Shira Angel, Congregation Shaar Zahav, San Francisco, CA Joel Kushner, Institute for Judaism and Sexual Orientation, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion Gregg Drinkwater, Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity Seth Krosner, JPride of San Diego, San Diego, CA Asher Gellis, JQ International JQYouth Idit Klein, Keshet Nicole Nussbaum, Kulanu, Toronto, Ontario LGBT Alliance of the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay and the LGBT Alliance of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Rebecca Wax, The Rainbow Center, Atlanta, GA Rabbi Benay Lappe, SVARA, Chicago, IL Howard Solomon, World Congress of GLBT Jews
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — The Alaska Legislature voted to override former Gov. Sarah Palin's veto of roughly $28 million in federal stimulus funds intended for energy projects during a special session Monday.
A three-fourths majority in each chamber was needed to override Palin. The House voted 30-9 to accept the stimulus funds, while the Senate voted 15-5.
Also during the one-day session, lawmakers confirmed Craig Campbell as the new lieutenant governor on a 55-4 vote.
Palin initially said she would not accept about one-third of the $930 million designated by President Barack Obama for Alaska, citing "strings" that could bind the state to federal mandates and increase the size of government.
But lawmakers found few such strings, and accepted the federal money.
Palin eventually signed off on all but $28.5 million in energy cost relief, insisting that accepting it would require a state energy code – she said communities should decide their own codes. Critics said she was grandstanding and trying to appeal to fiscally conservative national voters.
Palin reiterated her claims in a Facebook posting Sunday.
"As governor, I did my utmost to warn our legislators that accepting stimulus funds will further tie Alaska to the federal government and chip away at Alaska's right to chart its own course. Enforcing the federal building code requirements, which Governor Parnell and future governors will be forced to adopt in order to accept these energy funds, will eventually cost the state more than it receives. There are clear ropes attached," she wrote.
Lawmakers had hoped to consider an override in January, but the federal Department of Energy needed an answer by September.
Palin in February designated Corrections Commissioner Joe Schmidt as second in line of succession after Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, and the Legislature confirmed him for that spot. However, when Palin announced last month she was stepping down with 17 months left in her term, she said Campbell, the commissioner of military and veterans affairs, would move up to lieutenant governor.
That raised the question of whether the outgoing governor could legitimately switch the succession line. The uncertainty was enough for lawmakers to address it in the special session.
Rep. Les Gara, D-Anchorage, said Campbell could not take the position without prior confirmation by the Legislature.
NEW YORK — The widow of New York Yankees great Mickey Mantle has died at a hospice facility in Plano, Texas. She was 77.
Family spokesman Marty Appel said Monday night that Merlyn Mantle died from the effects of Alzheimer's disease. She had not appeared in public since last August, at a private dinner before a memorial for former Yankees star Bobby Murcer.
Merlyn married Mickey on Dec. 23, 1951, following his rookie season. They were married for 43 years, until the Hall of Fame outfielder died of cancer on Aug. 13, 1995.
The Mantles had four children – Mickey Jr., David, Billy and Danny. Mickey Jr. died in 2000 and Billy died in 1993.
Merlyn will be buried next to her husband and children at Sparkman Hillcrest Memorial Park in Dallas.
Kasim Kasim couldn't believe his eyes. Coming from the elevator was the woman who had taught him in Sayeda Zainab, home to Damascus' greatest concentration of Iraqi refugees, where she ran English and math classes out of her apartment despite pressure from Syrian authorities. The woman who'd let him assist her humanitarian work, using his wealth of contacts to locate specific refugees for the journalists, aid workers and NGOs that relied on her. He hadn't seen her since his family's resettlement over a year ago. He had agonized ever since he'd heard, five months earlier, that she had been imprisoned in Syria, and he'd heard, but could not bring himself to believe, not until he actually laid eyes on her, that she had been released from prison days ago and resettled right here, to apartment 512, 6011 North Kenmore Street, in the Chicago neighborhood of Edgewater. Find her, his friend Firaz had told him hours earlier from Washington D.C., after receiving word of her arrival. Make sure she is okay. Through a family whose phone she'd used earlier that day, Kasim had tracked her down. Now, at nearly one in the morning, after repeated knocking had yielded no response, and after laying on her doormat to wait because he didn't know what else to do, there she was, Ahlam Ahmed Mahmoud. "Mom!" he exclaimed, unable to hold back tears. "It's you! I can't believe it!"
Hugging, crying, they went inside and called Kasim's family. They talked. As in Damascus, Kasim remained plugged in to the Iraqi community here, and he told Mahmoud about their problems. Unable to find work, their benefits running dry, and struggling with depression brought on by post traumatic stress disorder, culture shock and loneliness, Iraqis were struggling to pay rent, to provide food and clothes for their families, to survive. Mahmoud, Kasim reasoned, could help Iraqis here, just as she'd helped them in Damascus.
But Mahmoud was tired. In the span of three days, she'd gone from a Syrian prison cell to a sudden release and reunion with her two children to a plane ride through Budapest and New York City to Chicago. She'd arrived wearing the same clothes she had on during her arrest five months earlier. Two hours before reuniting with Kasim, plagued by a brutal headache, she'd gone out into the October night looking for a pharmacy and quickly got lost, without knowing her address or phone number. The police had helped her home. How she could possibly solve the problems Kasim now told her about, let alone her own, with no idea how things worked in this foreign country, this alien world, she did not know.
"They expect me to help them," she said later. "Like I was helping them down there in Syria. Well I'm just here, I'm just a person. I don't have anything to offer them."
But Mahmoud's trepidation would not last long. As word of her arrival spread and Iraqis, as they had in Damascus, began knocking on her door asking for help, Mahmoud decided she needed to do something. Her plan: start an organization to help Iraqi refugees.
- - -
By the time Mahmoud began running a makeshift school out of her Sayeda Zainab apartment in mid-2007, Syria had taken some 1.5 million Iraqi refugees, the most of any country. In a nation of less than 20 million, social repercussions such as huge increases in prices of living spurred resentment toward Iraqis. Syrian military intelligence closely monitored them, paying special attention to any organizations they formed. According to the 2007 Human Rights Watch report "No Room To Breathe," Syria's powerful security forces would "routinely harass human rights groups and scrutinize their leaders, activities and funding," a statement Mahmoud's experience confirmed.
Back in Baghdad Mahmoud had worked as a fixer, (a translator and general guide for journalists and NGOs,) then as a city counselor and prominent aid worker for the U.S. Army before she was kidnapped for five days, beaten and interrogated, released for $50,000 ransom, and forced to flee the country, all of which was documented in a 2007 Salon article.
In Damascus, she continued the kind of social service work she'd done in Iraq, but primarily of her own volition. Engaging in what Deborah Campbell, a journalist who worked with her, described as "self initiated community organizing," Mahmoud helped people with the problems they came to her with, connected NGOs like UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, with the needy families they sought, assisted individuals and organizations looking to donate food, clothing or money, and became an unofficial community leader.
"All roads led to Ahlam," Campbell said. "She was a one woman NGO, basically the center of the Iraqi refugee community in Syria. If you didn't know her, you weren't paying attention."
SMI did pay attention, and as her teaching operation expanded to include a downstairs apartment and over 70 students, pressure increased. Intelligence officers came about every week, Mahmoud said, always unannounced. They'd search books and watch classes, threatening to shut down the school if they found anything suspicious. Nonetheless, Mahmoud and her volunteer teachers continued. Iraqi children often did not or could not attend school, and Mahmoud, the first girl of her Sunni tribe to finish high school and its first, period, to graduate college, wanted to make sure the children, girls especially, had the same opportunity.
"The Iraqi people, the first concern in their life is education," said Mahmoud, now 44. "Every one of the children, I can say they are my children. They just need somebody to encourage them, to support them, to push them ahead to join the school and never quit from it." She pauses, taking a drag of her cigarette. Her eyes fall as she breathes smoke. "I don't know what's happening with them now."
Early in May 2008, Mahmoud gave her contacts and passport to her friend Sheryl Mendez, a photographer. It was a precaution, she said, just in case something bad happened to her.
"By this way I saved my life," Mahmoud said.
- - -
As she headed through Sayeda Zainab's dusty alleyways, Campbell had the feeling she was being followed. She'd returned to Damascus to follow up on a piece she'd written for Harper's Magazine and was on her way to visit Mahmoud, as she often did in the mornings. Now, the morning of May 31, 2008, that disconcerting thought flashed through her mind. She ignored it.
Campbell arrived and found Mahmoud making breakfast for her son Abdullah, then 12, who'd returned home from the hospital the previous day after breaking his hand. Mahmoud made tea. After 15 minutes, they heard knocking downstairs. Mahmoud opened the door to four intelligence officers.
"She went downstairs to talk," Campbell said. "Apparently they didn't want me to see them. I'd had that feeling I was being followed, and then it turned out they didn't want me to see them."
The intelligence officers told Mahmoud to come with them to their office to talk. They wanted her to do something for them. They didn't say what. Mahmoud went upstairs and told Campbell not to worry, that she wouldn't be gone long, and left with the officers in a white station wagon.
Since Mahmoud had been similarly summoned before, Campbell didn't think it was serious. But if the officers had taken Mahmoud because of her association with her, a blond foreign female journalist, she didn't want to jeopardize her other Iraqi contacts. So she ceased all phone calls and became extremely circumspect about email.
A few days later, Campbell got a call from an American friend who ran a magazine there, asking her over to talk about something. When Campbell arrived, the friend asked what had happened to Mahmoud. Nobody had heard from her, she said, and nobody knew where she was.
The white station wagon had taken Mahmoud to SMI's local office. In a small, dark room, officers told her they wanted her to spy on the American journalists and aid workers with whom they knew she associated and write a weekly report. Surprised by their questions, she refused.
"I'm just a humanitarian activist," Mahmoud said. "I can't do anything like this. How can I betray anyone who gives me their trust?"
Without letting her contact anyone, they locked her in a cell. After a few days, they moved her to a prison in Damascus' outlying Kfar Sousa district. To everyone she knew, Mahmoud had simply disappeared into the Syrian prison system.
Over the next several months, Mahmoud passed the time praying, reading the Qur'an, talking to the women around her--anything to keep her mind off her children. Prisoners came and went, and new ones told stories of the outside world.
Once, she heard a noise outside the cell. Peering through holes in the door, she saw guards moving a man's limp body, their clothes covered in blood. From their conversation, she knew he had used his glasses to cut and kill himself.
One day, Mahmoud had heavy chest pains. Fearing a heart attack, officers took her to the hospital for a night. The next morning, back in prison, they opened her cell door and told her she had one minute to prepare herself. For release.
Over the past five months, Campbell and others had been endeavoring for Mahmoud's freedom through a variety of channels, pushing international human rights groups like UNHCR and various governments to pressure Syria's. Earlier that week, Amnesty International had finally threatened to go public. Whether their efforts worked or some other force set Mahmoud free, neither she nor Campbell can say.
Mahmoud was brought to the UNHCR offices, where her children were waiting. As a condition of her release, UNCHR had made an agreement with SMI, taking her into their responsibility and ensuring she'd leave the country in seven days. They told her she was to be resettled in the United States. They let her call her brother and sister, and she only said goodbye, because she did not know when or if she would see them again. That night, October 26, 2008, Mahmoud and her two kids were on a plane to Budapest.
"The first sunshine after five months," she said, "I saw it when I was up in the sky."
- - -
Smiling faces, Iraqi and American, on Mahmoud's computer screen. She points out a blond woman, then a shaggy haired twenty something wearing a San Diego Padres t-shirt.
"There's Deborah," Mahmoud says. "And Kasim. He moved to New York to find a job. He's a mechanic now."
Back in December, Mahmoud hosted a gathering of Iraqi and American families. Now she cycles through pictures of them sitting on her apartment floor, nearly bereft of furniture. They shared food, talked and played with one another's children until past midnight.
"Now they are friends," Mahmoud says. "The Iraqis can call them if they have any kind of problems or need anything. The most difficult thing is the mail they have. They cannot read it so they ask help to explain what's going on. Even this tiny thing, it helps so much."
For Mahmoud, a vast personal network provided that initial support her first few weeks. Friends like Deborah sent people to visit or flew in themselves, helping her with things like setting up internet or going to the eye doctor.
One person sent to check on her was Beth Ann Toupin, a 26-year Amnesty International volunteer who coordinated work in the Middle East. As Toupin helped her, Mahmoud told her her story and they became friends. Mahmoud saw that unlike her, Toupin knew the system here. So one day, about a week after they met, Mahmoud asked if she would help her start an organization to help Iraqi refugees. I need your help, she explained, because you're an American.
Toupin was skeptical at first, but Mahmoud, the persuasive advocate people often describe her as, convinced her. They began gathering information, talking to Iraqis about needs and looking into what services existing organizations weren't adequately providing. In late December they met 48th Ward Alderman Mary Ann Smith and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky at their shared Edgewater office. Smith arranged for a meeting that day with Steve Brunton, executive director of the Chinese Mutual Aid Association. He agreed to help them apply for a joint grant along with potential Burmese, Congolese and Nepalese organizations, and they became the Iraqi Mutual Aid Society.
They've since assembled a board of directors, attended conferences and tried to figure out exactly how they can help without repeating what's already offered. They had trouble engaging Iraqis at first, as almost no one came to their first life skills class in May, but 40 showed up to a recent meeting, a huge breakthrough. They've had a few events; Iraqi author Mahmoud Saeed spoke at their inaugural Third Friday Salon, a monthly discussion of Iraqi art, music and literature, on July 17.
Since entities teaching English and job search skills already exist, they've decided to focus on "information and referral" and building an Iraqi community center. An ethnically specific organization would help Iraqis overcome the cultural misunderstandings, language issues, post traumatic stress disorder and suspicion of bureaucracies and false promises that impede communication, Toupin said, bringing the messages they receive closer to the message intended. And by pulling them together to solve their own problems and giving them a place to go, it would create more of a community among Iraqis here, easing them into life in America and teaching them about civil society.
They also want to establish regular professional groups, like health professionals or engineers groups, and address re-certification, because so many Iraqis were affluent professionals before the war. And in the spirit of Mahmoud's December gathering, they want to train American mentors to assist new refugees.
"She's got the Iraqi end and I've got the American end," Toupin said. "All the administrative stuff is mine. She's the one who can tell the story and work the people."
A private donor recently gave $5,000, allowing the women, among other things, to begin paying Mahmoud a small salary. But it's not much, and Mahmoud is still searching for a job. Most of her public aid benefits ran out months ago, and she's getting by on friends and food stamps. A lawyer she knows pays for her phone and internet, which she needs for her IMAS work and to talk to her family in Iraq every morning at five. And she's three months and over $2,000 behind on her rent.
But all she can do is keep trying.
"I cannot stand it," Mahmoud said. "The Iraqi people, they suffer a lot. They deserve a better life." She sighs. "I try to help. It's a long way. I know it's a long, long way."
When insurance companies deny coverage to critically ill patients because of what they deem "pre-existing conditions," they sentence those people to misery and often death. And that has nothing to do with proposed health care reform. This travesty exists now.
When acutely and chronically ill people are unable to purchase medicine because of exorbitant prices, pharmaceutical death panels have spoken. And again, this has nothing to do with universal health care proposals.
When an infant is stillborn because of inadequate or nonexistent prenatal care, a cancer patient foregoes or is denied treatment because of costs, a family is forced to decide whose medical needs will be met - whose postponed, don't tell me somewhere a death panel isn't at work.
Sarah Palin is supposedly worried that people are going to die if health care reform occurs. They're dying now! Right under our noses!
Instead of what could be, let's talk about what is. Instead of fiction, let's discuss reality. And instead of President Obama responding to wild attacks from fabricators as if deserving of reasoned responses, let's hear him describe the death panels we have now and how much worse it is going to get if only the lucky and the wealthy have health care.
Craft Statewide Force to Spur Jobs, New Kinds of Businesses
Crain's New York Business published this op-ed on July 27, 2009
From a business perspective, nothing could be worse during this period of economic uncertainty than the chaos and instability that have characterized New York state government during the past two years.
As things stand, there is every chance that the State Senate will be paralyzed by partisan rivalries right up to the 2010 election, and perhaps beyond. In the interim, the New York economy will continue to drift, with job creation coming from sectors that rely on public spending--health, education, public construction and government bureaucracy--while the tax revenues needed to support these sectors evaporate.
What should happen next in Albany is a coming together of leaders from the public and private sectors, business and labor, to forge a long-term plan for economic recovery and growth. This plan should be statewide in scope, while reflecting the unique assets and opportunities of each region.
Gov. David Paterson's appointment of Richard Ravitch as lieutenant governor gives us a state official who is uniquely capable of leading such an effort. But Mr. Ravitch is hostage to the same contentious politics that have disrupted New York City school governance and derailed efforts to deal constructively with the state's fiscal and economic crises.
If fractious politics continue, New York will see further erosion of its manufacturing, agricultural and service sectors and zero growth in technology-enabled emerging industries. There will be no resources to support education and research. New York will be left out of the innovation economy.
Components of an economic plan are easy to identify:
Replace failed Empire Zones with a program aimed at building advanced industry clusters offering high-paying jobs in every part of the state.
Help entrepreneurs start and build businesses in these clusters through expanded access to capital, more favorable regulation and targeted state procurement policies.
Capture research and business-support operations that corporations and banks are looking to bring home as the cost advantages of running these operations overseas diminish. Offer a combination of tax credits, low-cost power, and creative partnerships with universities and community colleges.
New York state is rich in assets: a deep and diverse talent pool; many of the world's leading business and financial firms; outstanding academic, research and cultural institutions; and much more. In the past, the richness of our resources has allowed New Yorkers to tolerate some sloppy stewardship in state government. What comes next in Albany will, hopefully, reflect a recognition that New York no longer has that luxury.
The ACLU and Human Rights Watch released a disturbing report today which claims that "students with disabilities face corporal punishment in public schools at disproportionately high rates." From the release:
In the 70-page report, "Impairing Education: Corporal Punishment of Students with Disabilities in US Public Schools," the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found that students with disabilities made up 18.8 percent of students who suffered corporal punishment at school during the 2006-2007 school year, although they constituted just 13.7 percent of the total nationwide student population. At least 41,972 students with disabilities were subjected to corporal punishment in US schools during that year. These numbers probably undercount the actual rate of physical discipline, since not all instances are reported or recorded.
Corporal punishment, legal in 20 states, typically takes the form of "paddling," during which an administrator or teacher hits a child repeatedly on the buttocks with a long wooden board. ACLU and Human Rights Watch interviews found that students with disabilities also suffered many other forms of corporal punishment, including beatings, spanking, slapping, pinching, being dragged across the room, and being thrown to the floor.
The report found that some students were physically abused for conduct related to their disabilities, including students with Tourette syndrome being punished for exhibiting involuntary tics and students with autism being punished for repetitive behaviors such as rocking. In some cases, corporal punishment against students with disabilities led to a worsening of their conditions. For instance, some parents reported that students with autism became violent toward themselves or others following corporal punishment.
My daughter, Amy, is 16 years old. She is a very sweet girl, a good student, and has a variety of interests like playing the flute, singing in the chorus, writing for the student paper and acting in school plays. She also has a part-time job at our local ice cream shop. She is a bit different than most kids because we live in a small town that is dominated by a certain clannish church (LDS), which we do not belong to, so she is a bit of an outcast. She has about five to ten friends. Her best friend for the past two years has been Heidi, an LDS girl that shares her interests in music and acting.
Last year, Heidi's divorced parents began hurling accusations at each other over a custody dispute, so the local judge removed her from the home and put her into foster care. She wasn't allowed unsupervised contact with either parent, not even phone calls. Amy and Heidi were extremely close when Heidi needed someone to help her get through this tough time. (Just as an aside, I'm not a fan of her mother. I think she is domineering and controlling. Also, she could have easily prevented her daughter from being placed in foster care by not allowing her boyfriend in her house and by playing nice with the judge.)
After a year in foster care, Heidi was allowed to live with her mother again. Now that she is back with her mom, she has distanced herself from Amy. Amy is upset and confused, not understanding what she did to deserve this. Heidi wrote Amy an e-mail saying that they have issues: Amy has more money than Heidi (because she has a job) which makes Heidi feel bad, and that Amy tries to make Heidi do immoral things (I asked what she was talking about since both girls are very good and aren't into drinking, drugs or sex, and Amy said that she had asked her to go to the free concert at the park that the town puts on and a local music festival, both of which are family-oriented events. Apparently the fact that people (adults) drink beer at these events was the problem!)
I don't know what to tell Amy to do. She doesn't want to lose her best friend since most of her life she has been without a best friend, but it really angers me that this girl is being so mean to the one person who was there for her through the roughest time in her life. I told Amy to stand up for herself, and not accept blame for things she isn't guilty of. I also explained that going to church isn't what makes you a moral person; it is how you treat others that makes you moral.
Do you have any advice that I could pass along to her?
Signed, Helen
ANSWER
Dear Helen,
When children are young, parents often manage their relationships with other kids. As they get older, however, preadolescents and teens want to choose their own friends, sometimes from families that have different values than their own.
One of the tasks of these years is for a young, soon-to-be adult to learn the skills of being a good friend and how to assess whether a friend is being kind, loyal and trustworthy to them. There is a fine line between coaching your child and making decisions for them. While parents need to be open about expressing their own values they have to resist the impulse to jump in and solve problems for their teens unless their child's health or safety is being threatened.
The best thing you can do is talk to your daughter about friendships, in general, and try to get her to talk openly about her feelings about her best friend. It sounds like you have made a good start. Empathize with her disappointment and reassure her that friendships, even very good ones, change over time. You might point out that Heidi may need time to reconnect and bond with her mother and isn't able to be the friend she once was to Amy right now.
Explain to Amy that no friendship is perfect. Sometimes problems can be worked out and sometimes they can't. Remind her that she has other family and friends to fall back upon and the fact that she has made one best friend shows that she is capable of making another. In fact, her relationship with Heidi may improve after her friend feels more comfortable in her new setting.
It is painful for a parent to see their child being hurt by a friend but consider this a teachable moment that will serve Amy well in the future. Remember that your daughter has sound values and that kids are generally more resilient than their parents think they are.
I hope this is helpful.
My best, Irene
TWITTER VERSION - Unless your teen's health or safety is at risk, resist the temptation to solve friendship problems for her.
CHASKA, Minn. — Tiger Woods will be fined by the PGA Tour for his public criticism of a rules official after winning the Bridgestone Invitational, a tour official said Monday.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the tour does not publicize fines.
Woods was bothered after his four-shot victory Sunday because he and Padraig Harrington were put on the clock at the par-5 16th. He said that caused Harrington to rush three difficult shots, leading to triple bogey.
European Tour chief referee John Paramor told Woods and Harrington they were being timed.
Woods said he told Harrington after it was over, "I'm sorry that John got in the way of a great battle."
Paramor said the final pairing was well behind most of the back nine, but officials gave them time to catch up. They were still 17 minutes out of position on the 16th tee, when they were put on the clock.
Woods hooked his tee shot, punched out to 178 yards and hit an 8-iron that stopped a foot from the hole for birdie. From the right trees, Harrington hit a 5-iron to the edge of a bunker, went over the green, then hit a flop shot too hard and into the water. The four-shot swing took the drama from one of the most compelling final rounds of the year.
"I don't think that Paddy would have hit the pitch shot that way if he was able to take his time, look at it, analyze it," Woods said. "But he was on the clock, had to get up there quickly and hit it."
Harrington conceded he was rushed, although he said it would be unfair to give the final group preferential treatment.
Section VI-D in the PGA Tour's player handbook says, "It is an obligation of membership to refrain from comments to the news media that unreasonably attack or disparage tournaments, sponsors, fellow members, players, or PGA Tour."
Former President Bill Clinton's recent trip to North Korea prompted Wall Street Journal Arts and Leisure features editor Eric Gibson to write an interesting article on "totalitarian kitsch," which he defines as "where art's sole raison d'etre is to bolster a dictatorial regime and glorify its leader." In North Korea's case, the flamboyant seascape in the background of an official photograph of Kim Jong Il and Bill Clinton gives rise to Gibson's meditation on art in totalitarian states.
Gibson also mentions the afterimages of totalitarianism -- the ways that in post-totalitarian societies like today's Russia, "what constitutes the public face of leadership would inevitably have been shaped by the tropes of totalitarian kitsch." (He cites the recent photographs of Vladmir Putin in shirtless poses reinforcing a cult of personality.) While Gibson briefly mentions art in Mao's China as an example, my own recent experience living in China allowed me to observe multiple cultural vectors that have emerged there after the end of Mao's totalitarian rule -- and it's a fascinating and complex picture. Here are some snapshots, with no pretense of being comprehensive:
--One reason that such showiness may have less currency in China today is globalization: people's yardsticks have been rescaled according to a world where every leader must match up against the most charismatic individuals all over the globe. The accessibility of information has led to deflation; deification has become reification. It's no coincidence that Gibson's example of the kitsch aesthetic comes from North Korea, the most closed society in the world.
--A young Chinese friend once told me over dinner that he and his friends have no real idols, elaborating that there are no figures they view as purely heroic and inspirational. The closest to that measure, he said, are Barack Obama, the pop star Jay Chou, and, for the country's numerous nerds, Steve Jobs (in the same way that a slightly older crowd regarded Bill Gates). This phenomenon reflects globalization, to be sure -- but it also may indicate a kind of cultural aversion to creating domestic icons, the result perhaps of a bad taste left by Mao's cult of personality, which unleashed many destructive forces and made self-correction difficult.
Also, the uncanny obsession of many young Chinese with sports stars like Kobe Bryant, which prompted the Los Angeles Times to write "Kobe Bryant rules China," may be one way in which Chinese society is still fixating on "superhuman" or "larger-than-life" individuals, and the cardboard cutouts and NBA memorabilia certainly seem kitschy -- but this is global capitalist kitsch.
--Many Chinese are acutely aware of the downsides of, if not slightly embarrassed by, the worship of Chairman Mao that defined much of the history of the People's Republic. Textbooks are continuing to downplay his historical role. But in a society that is searching for a suitable set of values, neo-Maoism offers some appeal and is making an appearance, alongside a youth-driven nationalism. Yet the Party has taken a fairly negative view of the phenomenon, according to reports.
--Much of the best art to come out of China in the past 20 years has seemed targeted at breaking down whatever aesthetic of totalitarian kitsch remains in the Chinese mind. For example, many of the greatest achievements of China's fifth and sixth generation directors (from Zhang Yimou's To Live to Wang Xiaoshuai's Beijing Bicycle and Jia Zhangke's Platform) have often been frankly naturalistic, telling small, authentic stories of families or non-epic individuals.
In the visual arts, many of the most memorable styles do seem to focus on de-individuating individuals, whether we take Yue Minjun's countless self-images frozen in grotesquely exaggerated laughter or Zhang Xiaogang's monochrome, monotonous portraits. This may reflect the same trend as described above, albeit in a more surreal form: a powerful artistic effort to tear down a held-over cultural reliance on cults of individuals, although the very vivid sameness and repetitiveness of the painted figures may indicate a strong cultural memory of Mao's once omnipresent visage.
--That said, the stunning opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics had many of the characteristics, even if not the exact iconography, of what Gibson described as "totalitarian kitsch": grandiose imagery marshaled by the state for political purposes. So kitsch may not quite be out the door. Indeed, a fascinating figure here is Zhang Yimou, who, as I said above, was a cinematic leader in escaping the artistic forms of the Mao period. But he was the director of the Olympic opening ceremony; he has also come under some criticism in China for his recent films, gaudy pageants like Curse of the Golden Flower -- both of which indicate the complex crosscurrents of spectacle and taste in a society that is still emerging from an era dominated by Mao.
--What does all of this leave us with? A picture of a China that is full of contradictions and conflicting trends, of liberalizing desire to become an open society mixed with a strong strain of conservative attachment, of kitsch and real splendor existing side-by-side -- all of which, I have to say, sounds about right.
Time is running out before we're robbed of our sanity. Long ago in World War II, there used to be a patriotic poster that hung on many walls. It read, "loose lips sink ships." Today, our ship of state is in mighty danger of being sunk because of the reckless violation of one of our treasured liberties: freedom of speech. Reckless free speech. It pains me to say this because I'm a First Amendment fanatic with a strong belief in free speech, no matter how reckless it is sometimes. But we should remember that freedom is not absolute anymore than it is allowable to yell fire in a crowded theater.
What can be said of the public when the loud mouths of Fox News enjoy some of the highest ratings of any cable television programs in the country? Fortunately, we can thank Jon Stewart for keeping us awake most evenings by poking fun at O'Reilly and Beck who are the Abbott and Costello on a ship of fools. Rush Limbaugh, talk radio's schlockmeister, also gets a few seconds of attention from Stewart, but fortunately not much.
It is no wonder that Rupert Murdoch, who claims to have voted for Barack Obama last November, hasn't checked his commentators even mildly. He and Roger Ailes hide behind the myth of presenting news that is "fair and balanced." But as long as the ratings and ad revenues remain high, O'Reilly and friends no doubt will stay right where they are. It is when Limbaugh, the corpulent commentator, goes on the radio airwaves to liken the president's tactics to those of Adolph Hitler, and Beck, a former CNN polluter and more recent inductee in Fox News, claims that our president hates white people, you know it is time to put the brakes on their charade. This is not a call for censorship, but a demand for accuracy. These guys need to be policed by tough-minded editors or the kind of executives who used to be in charge of program practices on the television networks.
The talking heads paid by Murdoch and other cable operators are not as serious as they 0are dangerous. Their language is inflammatory, and they arouse the worst instincts in human beings. They raise the emotional temperature when the level of America's anger, frustration and even desperation has never been higher in recent memory. The number of Americans faced with losing their homes or jobs is alarming. Some people are genuinely skeptical of the Administration's health plan, if only because they do not understand it, and President Obama has yet to spell it out clearly. But to ignore the rate of spiraling health costs that could bankrupt the country is just plain foolish.
Here's where the cynical tactics of Republican leaders in Congress come in. They're not interested in any kind of health care reform. To them, this issue is part of a strategy that is no strategy at all. It is gutter politics by a party that seems to have lost its way and its dignity. How else can Newt Gingrich truly endorse the absurdities of Sarah Palin and the attempt to use her Down Syndrome child as a prop to attack the President?
The most vocal opponents of health care reform have been recruited, either by the GOP or the health insurance industry, to disrupt town meetings.and instead of appearing to be concerned citizens, they're acting like nothing less than thugs. They've been brainwashed into thinking that what they have is good enough without realizing that the employer-paid benefits they have or had are going away, never to return. The unions that ensured their continuation or the institutions that did so before ( because it made good corporate sense) may not be able to sustain them in the future. But the nasty tone of the opposition can be traced significantly to the Fox commentators and Republican congressmen like John Boehner of Ohio, whose appearance on television suggests that he is suffering from gallstones or permanent cramps.
The number and tone of irrational and hysterical letters to the New York Times is frightening. The failure of the Republican Party to control rather than exacerbate extremism is depressing. Its mantra for the past half century or more is that government and taxes are the evil enemies of the middle class, when in fact the government is us. We elect its participants in the House of Representatives and Senate all the time. We vote for state legislatures and city council routinely. They add up to what we know is representative government. It is no amorphous "thing" lurking out in the woods ready to devour us. As for taxes, we have been against them since the days of the Boston Tea Party. Everyone has to pay them, but every politician acts as if they are poison that must be purged from our system vigorously. California voters are still suffering from the foolishness that was deposited on us by Proposition 13.
With the exception of the nation's major newspapers, the mainstream press in general does little to inform its reader of the realities of life. What's worse is the absence of civic responsibility in local broadcast journalism. It is appalling to be exposed to a drum-beating video version of the police blotter every weekday evening. The silence of the political and business elite also is bewildering. Moreover, there is the failure of American institutions to warn citizens everywhere of just how much danger ignorant, ideological and ill-informed rabble-rousers pose to our nation. Need we be reminded of the consequences caused by these reckless critics? They are frightening because their appeal is to the lowest common denominator.
We need to applaud, not disparage, the most intelligent leader in the White House we've had in years. He is doing his best to lift the country out of the economic mess he inherited. Abroad, he is restoring America's image that was tarnished by the Bush Administration. To demean Barack Obama with the language his critics have employed is to demean us all.
Obama's top national security and counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, outlined the Obama administration's counterterrorism strategy in a speech to a packed house at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC. The strategy calls for orienting all resources of US foreign policy to address the social, economic, and cultural roots of terrorism, while minimizing the role of 'kinetic' U.S. power, such as the use of military force and covert action.
Aside from Obama's renunciation of torture and 'black site' prisons and his increasingly hollow-looking promise to close Guantanamo, Brennan nonetheless offered little indication that the role of intelligence and the armed forces in response to terrorism will change under the Obama administration. Brennan artlessly dodged questions about his role in questionable Bush-era operations, underscoring that retreaded Bush-era intelligence programs lurk beneath the ideals set forth in Obama's otherwise laudable counterterrorism policy.
Brennan began the speech by hailing the Obama administration's progress so far on reforming counterterrorism policy and highlighting the parallel efforts of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in re-establishing US foreign policy prestige and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in building up robust homeland security capabilities. He poignantly acknowledged that some counterterrorism strategies have contradicted fundamental US values:
I believe President Obama is absolutely correct: such practices [as waterboarding] not only fail to advance our counterterrorism efforts, they actually set back our efforts. They are a recruitment bonanza for terrorists, increase the determination of our enemies, and decrease the willingness of other nations to cooperate with us. In short, they undermine our national security.
Brennan dismissed critics on the right--who maintain that Obama is making the US defenseless in the face of the Al Qaeda threat--and the left--who maintain that Obama is retaining Bush-era intelligence policies. In making the case that Obama recognizes the gravity of the Al Qaeda threat and is leading a spirited charge against it, however, Brennan undermines his argument that counterterrorism policy under Obama is substantively different from his predecessor's. But leaving aside the Obama administration's backtracking on Guantanamo, extrajudicial detentions, accountability for counterterrorism excesses, reining in domestic surveillance programs, and the state secret privilege, the new Obama counterterrorism policy is major departure from earlier approaches to the scourge of terrorism.
The new Obama counterterrorism policy as outlined by Brennan is based on five major principles. First, terrorism will no longer be the defining characteristic of US foreign policy. "Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism-whether they are with us or against us," said Brennan, "the administration is now engaging other countries and peoples across a broader range of areas."
Second, the paradigm or concept behind US counterterrorism policy will no longer be the "global war on terror," and will not dignify the cowardice and inhumanity of Islamic extremist terrorists by referring to them as "jihadis." Indeed, Brennan drew upon his own experiences in the Middle East throughout his speech, calling for sensitivity and appreciation of Islam and Middle Eastern culture.
Third, US counterterrorism policy will recognize and address the "upstream factors," such as poverty, corruption, and illiteracy, that provide fertile ground for the growth of violent extremism. The fourth principle builds off the third to provide for "a political, economic, and social campaign to meet the basic needs and legitimate grievances of ordinary people: security for their communities, education for children, a job and income for parents, and a sense of dignity and worth."
The fifth principle calls for a coordinated, integrated effort on the part of all elements of US power to address these upstream factors. "That is why," Brennan explained, "President Obama is committed to using every element of our national power to address the underlying causes and conditions that fuel so many national security threats, including violent extremism. We will take a multidimensional, multi-departmental, multi-national approach."
While Brennan's speech enunciated a sustainable, comprehensive, and coherent long-term strategy for how the US can take on international terrorist threats, the defensiveness into which he retreated during the question-and-answer period afterwards emphasized just how problematic--and emblematic--a figure Brennan is for the Obama administration, whose policy of looking forward to future keeps getting dragged back to the unresolved past.
Brennan, a career intelligence officer, had been Obama's first choice for CIA Director, but concerns over his role in controversial torture and domestic surveillance programs, as well as his ties to a prominent intelligence contractor, derailed his nomination. Sure enough, questions for Brennan went to near-term counterterrorism strategy--as in, what is US intelligence doing now--touching on Brennan's involvement in torture and domestic surveillance programs.
First, Eli Lake of the Washington Post posed a question regarding the desirability of a classified annex to the US Army interrogation manual, a query that came uncomfortably close to the topic of torture. Brennan--perturbed either by the weediness or the cheekiness of the question--punted his answer to the White House's special interrogation task force.
Then came a question about the timetable for closing Guantanamo. Here, Brennan cited the dizzying array of contingent factors that are affecting the Obama administration's stated goal of closing Guantanamo by January 2010, such as pending US court cases, foreign government cooperation, and the US Congress, whom Brennan singled out for understated contempt.
But Brennan gave a halting, carefully parsed, lawyerly non-answer when Washington Independent's Spencer Ackerman asked him directly about his role in domestic surveillance activity. Ackerman's colleague, Marcy Wheeler, even characterized Brennan's response to the domestic surveillance question as "Gonzales-like," a reference to the disingenuous answers provided to Congress by Bush Attorney General and sometime counsel Alberto Gonzalez.
Brennan's role as a top national security honcho in the Obama administration shows the limitations of Obama's "look to the future, not to the past" mantra. A well-informed, commonsense, and thoughtful counterterrorism policy is long overdue. The American people and foreign security partners need more than slogans and well-received speeches delivered at revered think tanks to know that the past is behind, a past marked by torture, botched renditions, and dragnet surveillance of US citizens' communications.
In his closing remarks, Brennan said, "Finally, as I described, we will harness perhaps our greatest asset of all-the power of America's moral example. Even as we aggressively pursue terrorists and extremists, we will uphold the values of justice, liberty, dignity and rule of law that make people want to work with us and other governments want to partner with us."
That moral example, which Brennan correctly cites as necessary in the fight against terrorism, is undermined by the persistence of bad old policies and, sometimes, the persistent architects of those bad old policies.
President Obama, at the "Three Amigos" summit today in Mexico, responded to Canadian and Mexican complaints about the "Buy American Clause" in the stimulus package, reiterated that the clause is legal within existing trade agreements and does not threaten our trading partners. From an Edmonton Sun report, Obama: 'Buy American' won't hurt Canadian trade
While he didn't leap to the defence of the contentious "Buy American" program, U.S. President Barack Obama urged Canadians to take a deep breath and put things in perspective. The policy is a one-off to help weather tough economic times and will have minimal impact on multi-billion trade between our two countries, he said.
. . . Obama said the policy is geared only to the massive American stimulus package, not part of a larger pattern of protectionism. He insisted it complies with World Trade Organization rules, and suggested provinces and states can work on cross-border procurement practices that expand trade.
Back in February Paul Krugman wrote about "policy externalities,"pointing out that the only way a stimulus package can work is if it stimulates. In the absence of a coordinated worldwide response to the financial crisis each country has to be responsible for stimulating its own economy. Or not. Since the world's economy is far too large for just the U.S. to provide adequate stimulus, our stimulus needs to focus on our economy. Other countries need to stimulate their economies. In Protectionism and stimulus (wonkish), Krugman wrote,
Let's be clear: this isn't an argument for beggaring thy neighbor, it's an argument that protectionism can make the world as a whole better off. It's a second-best argument -- coordinated policy is the first-best answer. But it needs to be taken seriously.
What's the counter-argument? Don't say that any theory which has good things to say about protectionism must be wrong: that's theology, not economics.
The right argument, I think, is in terms of political economy. Everything I've just said applies only when the world is stuck in a liquidity trap; that's where we are now, but it won't be the normal situation. And if we go all protectionist, that will shatter the hard-won achievements of 70 years of trade negotiations -- and it might take decades to put Humpty-Dumpty back together again.
Also in February, the Alliance for American Manufacturing published a report, Buy America: Key To America's Economic Recovery (PDF), that knocks down several myths about the legality of the clause, points out the steps that other countries take to protect their own economics, and points out that this provision is essential to creating the necessary jobs in America. From the report,
The recovery package will create an estimated 3,675,000 jobs, 408,000 of which will be in manufacturing. Buy American provisions will maximize the number of recovery program jobs that are created in America, kick starting domestic demand and economic growth here at home. A recent analysis found that application of Buy American requirements to recovery projects would raise the number of jobs created by such projects by as much as 33 percent.
It is important to note that the Hufbauer and Schott estimate of additional manufacturing jobs created directly by the inclusion of Buy American provisions in the recovery legislation is based on the understanding that, absent the inclusion of such provisions in the legislation, domestic preferences already in existing legislation would apply to economic recovery spending. Thus, their estimates only measure the additional jobs created due to including Buy American language in the recovery legislation itself, not the number of jobs owed to the application of any Buy American rules at all.
The President is correct to say that the "Buy American" clause is beneficial and necessary. The package, with this clause has already saved hundreds of thousands of American jobs and stands to save millions more.
It has been a dream to host a formal dinner on our farm. It was an idea discussed long ago which finally came to fruition. The farm, though young, is out of infancy - somewhere in adolescence and ready for more formal entertaining. The Spring Clean-ups, Fall Festivals, all dress rehearsals for Saturday night's dinner in the field of Katchkie Farm.
What a production - with the Farm and the NYC based GP teams devoting weeks to concentrating on the hundreds of details: From dinner menu to equipment logistics; marketing tickets to media outreach; service steps to setting up outside; readying the fields to running a farm -all with the intent of creating a perfect dining scenario in a location with neither floor, kitchen, running water nor light.
It was a remarkable experience. The day was perfect. All hands converged on the farm, some Friday, with the backbone of the crew arriving Saturday morning. Dishes were unwrapped, tables with crisp linens were placed, gardens were weeded, clean up around the farm continued, (while the truck and farm stand crew rolled out at 7 am to open the weekly farm stand in Delmar.)
With every passing hour, another piece fell into place. The culinary team was ensconced in a nearby host kitchen (The Red Barn) by 10 am cooking from scratch with all local ingredients, ready at 3 pm to move to the field kitchen at the farm. (Talk about a new understanding of the phrase 'field kitchen')
The farm tractor plied another trade - party set up, with Farmer Bob expertly delivering equipment to its required spot.
Gradually, the elegant pair of dinner tables took shape, graced by bouquets of our farm flowers and touches of glassware and fine china. The Field House was set for cocktails. Wine was chilled, hors d'oeuvres plated as we prepared to greet our first arrivals.
As guests sat at the tables there was an emerging sense of community as 130 diners ate together as one large family. It was inspiring to hear the speakers each talk about his or her connection to local food, each finding their way along a different path.
There are several highlights I am digesting, each different and meaningful. I think this is what is so unique about the evening - that it touched so many powerful chords simultaneously and harmoniously.
It was a great pleasure to have 6 farms represented at the table - and the connection between them resembles a brotherhood absent from typical commercial life. Their shared passion, hardships, wisdom and camaraderie have forged a community wewitness with great respect. It is a daily way of life so different from our urban lives, yet built on the same fundamentals of respect for individuals, the land and the work.
From a purely professional perspective as a caterer, serving a perfectly cooked meal to 130 people simultaneously is no small feat when you consider the absence of electric power, running water and any form of shelter. And the service staff was not the seasoned city cater-waiter, but a local 'farm team' - what they lacked in polish they made up with passion. There was pride in their service, which enhanced the experience for diners and servers alike.
The speakers were delightful. It fell upon our neighboring farmer Jean-Paul Courtens/Roxbury Farm, to give a little taste of what the land that was to become Katchkie Farm was like before 2006. It was with a smile that he recalled warning us NOT to buy this property. It was, gently stated, a swamp. Three years of hard and thoughtful work, we were all witness to the fruitful efforts of Bob Walker, Katchkie Farm Manager. Before we grew vegetables, he grew the farm.
Was it chutzpah or intuition that led us to make plans that did not include a foul weather scenario? It was meant to be - as we planned our meal on one of the rare perfect evenings of this consistently rainy summer.
And while we were all celebrating the local growers, it was Farmer Bob who toasted the Chefs, for taking the raw ingredients into which the farmer pours so much love, and transforming it into such incredibly tasting meal. The circle is complete - the chef and diners laud the grower, who salutes the team that cooks. It is a symbiotic relationship and the mutual discovery feeds both passions. As with any gathering of like-minded individuals, there were multiple discoveries of one or two degrees of separation between people. A farmer and a guest reconnected after decades - they had gone to grade school together. Another woman discovered a gentleman who was her close cousin's best friend. Under a star-lit sky, with a full moon on the wane, this kind of thing happened again and again.
A farm is a magical place where all kinds of things can grow. The evening was a dream come true for us. So many divergent groups of individuals converged around a shared love of food, support for eating locally, the desire to connect to the source of our food with a sense of adventure and curiosity. There were no less than 3 generations at the table; some old enough to remember when eating local was not a movement, but all there was to eat. The youngest generation ran through the fields and the children's garden, completely at ease with what the middle generation is struggling to reconnect with - farm fresh meals, simply cooked, shared with family and strangers who become friends. Ideas sprouted, friendships bloomed, and the seeds were sown for the next gathering.
Budd Schulberg, Academy Award winner for the script of the movie On the Waterfront, and a member of the Boxing Hall of Fame, died this past week. Too bad he couldn't have been the corner man for President Obama in his fight for health care reform. I think the President could use a guy who knows the difference between the Marquis of Queensbury rules and a street fight.
I met Schulberg once, and only briefly, through my friend Jack Newfield, another writer with a love of boxing. Jack once described himself as the writing equivalent of Smoking Joe Frasier, working hard, boring in, taking shots to land shots. From nights at Jack's house, watching the fights of the old timers, to many dinner discussions, I learned again what the older generations of my family knew about boxing -- never box a boxer, don't slug with a slugger. This is a lesson the President should be learning now as the opponents of health reform are using brawling tactics to stifle debate and smother voices of the supporters of health reform. In short, organizations that can't touch Obama in the ring, are moving to a crowding, brawling, Frasier-like approach to the debate.
Loud voices, obnoxious chants, signage that borders on fantasy and nightmare scenarios. Shouting down Members of Congress at public meetings. This is the Carmen Basillio approach to fighting -- elbows, forearms, body punches (some below the belt) -- a style from another era, a smart choice if you can't match the President's arm reach, or get inside his jab. Maybe it's the only style that works when you have such a decided disadvantage in the center of the ring.
The question becomes, then, what can the President do to blunt these tactics and re-capture control of the debate. Many political consultants, at least of the older ones, use sports analogies, particularly from boxing and football. Hopefully, the president has someone around him who has knowledge of different fighting styles. First thing is to understand that, whatever your initial strategy, it might be wise to recalibrate. Winston Churchill once said " No matter how beautiful the strategy, occasionally it is wise to look at the results". On "Meet the Press" this Sunday, Jon Meachum, Editor of Newsweek magazine, said that the President and his team had lost control of the debate, a most un-Obama like development.
So, the opponents have decided to use the August Congressional recess to batter individual congressmen and senators in their home districts. With all our modern technology, it is fairly easy to raise a group to attend events and share tactics to disrupt or to show a strong grass roots presence. The Obama team knows this form of organizing from their own successful campaign last year. So, when your opponent adapts and negates your advantages, how do you respond and regain control of the fight?
Budd Schulberg, or Newfield if he were here, may suggest the Muhammed Ali tactic of the Rope-a-dope. When confronted with the powerful slugger George Foreman (he of the grills, yes), Ali deliberately chose to lay on the ropes and absorb, and deflect, as many punches as possible. After setting one pace in the first round, Ali then went to the rope-a-dope for the next six rounds. While occasionally firing a punch or two at Big George's face, mostly he covered up and deflected or absorbed as much as Foreman could throw, eventually wearing out Foreman from the exertion and the heat in the ring. Since the President's opponents have adopted this same attack strategy, and since they have targeted all of August to pound away, there seems to be a parallel to the Rumble in the Jungle in 1974.
If the President, who has allowed Congress to take the lead on fashioning a health reform bill, uses August to develop his version, come up with particulars, and develop arguments against the attacks leveled by these brawlers, he can regain control and win the battle after Labor Day. After the public is tired of the tactics and the nonsense and the disruptive games, a crisp, clean, direct approach from the President, using his skills with language and presentation, will appeal to most Americans, who hate politics anyway. The President can come off the ropes, and rally his forces like Ali did in Zaire over 30 years ago.
CIA Director Leon Panetta wants the world to know: he is on a mission is to promote the agenda of top-level intelligence chiefs and former members of the Bush administration chickenhawk-ocracy who fear accountability for their policies, which not only diminished American honor but increasingly appear to have been riddled with incompetence while yielding little worthwhile intelligence.
In an op-ed in the Sunday, 2 August Washington Post, Panetta intended to make the case, yet again, that subjecting Bush-era intelligence misdeeds to investigative scrutiny amounts to just so much political score settling. But Panetta's Washington Post piece affirms that he drank the CIA kool-aid and is an avowed defender of the CIA and Beltway conventional wisdom that holds that all calls for accountability for Bush-era intelligence abuses are nakedly partisan attacks that could not possibly be motivated by serious, well-informed concern for US intelligence policy.
This same conventional wisdom puts forth a false choice: America can either sweep past intelligence misdeeds under the rug, or stab junior intelligence officers in the back so that Democrats can take cheap shots at dethroned Republicans.
To begin making his point, Panetta claims that the intelligence chief of "a major Western ally" asked him, "Why . . . is Washington so consumed with what the CIA did in the past, when the most pressing national security concerns are in the present?"
It would be interesting to know just which "major Western ally" thinks that CIA is unfairly getting grief, when most of America's major Western allies have strongly disapproved of both US intelligence's unilateralism and humans rights abuses.
Canada, that closest of US allies, actually fired the head of one of its security agencies after revelations that Canadian officials were complicit in a US operation that erroneously sent a Canadian citizen to a Syrian torture chamber.
America's other close ally, the United Kingdom, has experienced domestic political repercussions and court challenges over UK spy service complicity with CIA detention and torture operations, with repeated reports that senior US officials have threatened to cut off security ties with the UK if details of US torture and detention operations are disclosed in UK courts or media.
Italy is actually trying CIA renditions officers for kidnapping, and Germany attempted to do so as well after CIA abducted and imprisoned a German national in a case of mistaken identity. Other EU countries have mounted their own investigations of CIA rendition activity that may have taken place in their territory.
Despite Panetta's hang-out of this suspect anecdote, America's major Western allies--and their pesky, independent courts and accountable democracy--turn out to be a lot of the reason why Bush-era intelligence activity won't just go quietly into the night. Maybe Panetta is confusing what he heard a "major Western ally" spy chief ask, with what a "major authoritarian ally in the Middle East" or a "major authoritarian ally in the former Soviet republics" spy chief might have uttered.
Panetta goes on to lament that there has been a fundamental breakdown in the 'consensus' between the executive and legislative branches regarding intelligence and covert operations. "We need broad agreement," Panetta writes
between the executive and legislative branches on what our intelligence organizations do and why. For much of our history, we have had that. Over the past eight years, on specific issues -- including the detention and interrogation of terrorists -- the consensus deteriorated.
Of course that consensus deteriorated--it was built on lies and outhouse lawyering. No less an eminence than President Bush denied that the US used torture and illegal imprisonment in the fight against terrorism. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld assured Americans and the world that Guantanamo housed only "the worst of the worst." To drum up support for invading Iraq, Bush officials concocted specious intelligence to connect the 9/11 attacks to Iraq. As more details of US military and intelligence excesses emerged, journalists and critics of these policies were excoriated--even accused of treason--by Bush administration supporters. Meanwhile, Bush administration ideologues devised a Rube Goldberg tangle of secret legal justifications that sustained the radical new reach of US intelligence activity into torture, extrajudicial imprisonment, and new domestic spying operations.
Panetta, and by extension, the Obama administration will not be able to restore intelligence policy consensus between the executive and legislative branches until it forthrightly confronts the deceit and abuse that gutted that consensus in the first place. The Obama national security team will need to do more than just say, "It's okay to trust us now."
And so far, there's not much indication that CIA and the intelligence community are really doing anything differently. Obama administration lawyers continue to stymie courtroom defendants with the same old 'state secrets' assertions. CIA still maintains that it can magically turn information it previously released to the public back into super-secret classified information. Investigative reporters continue to uncover more horrors from the torture and detention programs, and that intelligence officers involved in egregiously botched intelligence operations--like the ones in which the wrong guy ends up in a hellhole prison in Afghanistan, or a homicide occurs--continue to climb the career ladder. In short--many of the policies of secrecy and uncritical defense of a broken intelligence culture and ingrained resistance to accountability are still very much in existence. Unfortunately, Panetta says practically nothing in his Washington Post piece that actually gives lawmakers or the public assurance that CIA is on a track to more constitutional, humane, and above all, more effective intelligence operations.
Disingenuous appeals of "trust me" on the pages of the Washington Post aren't going to stop what Panetta calls "recrimination" that will supposedly cause the brave men and women of CIA "pay a price." Senior Bush (and maybe a few Obama) apparatchiks and spy chiefs--who devised and sustained intelligence policies that don't conform with American traditions of decency and humanity need to come forward to accept responsiblity for these policies.
It's a matter of honor in the profession of arms, after all: good leaders protect their subordinates from harm, and accept responsibility when their subordinates go astray. Panetta, an old Army guy, ought to know that the troops eat first.
But stalwart Sergeant Rocks are far and few between in the ranks of national security policymakers and senior intelligence bureaucrats. Resident Bush chickenhawks Cheney (five draft deferments due to "other priorities in the '60s"), Addington (dropped out of the US Naval Academy), and Yoo (lifelong attorney and thinktanker) never were fortunate enough to learn manly-man military leadership lessons.
And I'm sad to report that leaderly honor is in shockingly short supply in CIA hallways as well--I remember, quite clearly, one CIA manager in full-on, cold sweat panic at the unfairness of it all when she learned she might possibly have to take the heat for an errant subordinate. Later, as a consiglieri-contractor to a senior operations manager, I witnessed dizzying combinations of blame-shifting, blame-deflecting, blame-denying, and counterblaming--and even swallowed a lot of that blame myself.
Panetta's--and Obama's--instincts are correct when the promise to protect CIA's rank and file from prosecution. But protecting the troops from prosecution is not the same as resisting accountability. To begin with, Panetta should take highly visible action to show the American public, lawmakers, and the world that CIA polices itself and takes its ethical, legal, and moral obligations very seriously. Egregious acts of cruelty and violence that significantly exceeded operative policies, such as homicides and sexual assaults by individuals against detainees, ought to be referred with vigor by CIA to the Justice Department. Several such cases are known to exist and should be acted on immediately. Intelligence professionals of all ranks would welcome prosecution of murderers, sadists, and worse who are in their midst.
Panetta should support and commit to facilitating a full accounting of Bush era intelligence excesses--whether that arises from Congress, the courts, or a special commission. If such inquiries determine that prosecutions for criminal policy are warranted, however, they should be focused on Senior Intelligence Service officers, appointed intelligence leaders, and enabling policymakers. So far, Panetta has protected his senior-most officers
SIS officers were, ostensibly, expert advisers and organizational representatives to senior US policymakers on intelligence matters. Senior intelligence officers should have advised Bush administration officials that the Jack Bauer/24 vision of intelligence operations does not work in reality and would certainly damage US honor and credibility. And if Bush administration officials wouldn't accept such expert intelligence counsel and advice, these senior officers and appointees should have visibly and publicly resigned in protest. But they didn't--SISers and appointees went along with Bush administration directives that didn't have the backing of true consensus between the executive and legislative branches of government. When the mask came off that fake consensus, Congress and Americans started wanting answers.
Today, CIA's institutional resistance to any kind of accountability--as embodied in Panetta's beg for less scrutiny in the Washington Post--ends up making the agency look like its senior officers are indeed in a hurry to put the past behind. But if Panetta's new era of trust and consensus is to emerge, CIA will need to earn that trust. That means Panetta should end old, reflexive secrecy that looks absurd and accomplishes nothing for national security. It also means that CIA should meaningfully and visibly police itself and take decisive action against senior intelligence officers who misused their trust and responsibility.
Intelligence officers I know favor getting rid of senior-level incompetents, cowards, and opportunists who steered US intelligence away from American values. Maybe morale would actually improve if Panetta took bold steps to restore professionalism and ethics to the spy ranks--instead of nursing an intelligence status quo that doesn't boost the reputation or security of America.
By Brian Evans, Death Penalty Abolition Campaigner at Amnesty International USA
On July 15th the North Carolina House voted 61-54 to approve the Racial Justice Act, which, if signed into law, would allow death row prisoners in the state to appeal their sentences if racial prejudice played a role in their sentencing. Last night, the North Carolina Senate approved the legislation, which now goes to Governor Bev Perdue for her signature.
The Racial Justice Act could be a very significant step towards ensuring that race does not affect the fate of capital defendants in North Carolina--a state with a history of racial prejudice, where race has been a factor in death penalty cases in the past. A 2001 study conducted by Dr. Isaac Unah and Prof. Jack Boger from the University of North Carolina showed that the probability of a defendant receiving the death penalty in North Carolina is 3.5 time higher if the murder victim was white. In some parts of the state the findings were even more disturbing. For instance, in Durham County, prosecutors were 5 times less likely to seek the death penalty if both the defendant and the murder victim were black than if the defendant was black but the murder victim was white.
A review by the Winston Salem Journal found similar racial discrepancies in the application of North Carolina's death penalty. The Journal discovered that, although the majority of murder victims in North Carolina are black, only 18 percent of the state executions carried out between 1984 and the present were of prisoners whose victims were African-American. In contrast, four fifths of the executions were of prisoners whose victims were white.
Another way race has played a role in death penalty cases in North Carolina (as well as across the country) has been though jury selection. Although African-Americans constitute more than one fifth of North Carolina's total population, between 1977 and the present 35 defendants in the state have received death sentences from all-white juries.
In light of these discrepancies and the unequal application of capital punishment in North Carolina, passage of the Racial Justice Act is a milestone achievement. The legislation has gained the support of clergy and civil rights leaders who have described it as "a clear signal that we are serious about removing any vestiges of racial discrimination in the administration of the death penalty." In a joint statement published on the website of the North Carolina NAACP Chapter, the leaders went on to say that the Racial Justice Act has the potential to "make North Carolina a leader in the southeast on a matter of great importance to anyone who believes justice should be color blind."
Nude photographs of Twilight star Ashley Greene have hit the Internet -- and the actress's attorney is warning: Post them and you'll likely get sued.
"The photos in question, which appear to be of our client, are illegal and are being unlawfully displayed," Greene's lawyer says in a statement. "Our client intends to take legal action."
The Democrats are in power, leaving the Republicans plenty of discretionary time to make their own special brand of mischief. The Tea Parties of last April, as silly as they seemed, were the first shot across this administration's bow.
The silver haired granny who disrupts your town hall meeting may well have gotten her marching orders from the Republican's answer to MoveOn.org, the conservative Grassfire.org, Resistnet FreedomWorks.org or perhaps the Tea Party Patriots.
In addition to this summer's Town Hall festivities, the Republican's 'astroturf' movement is planning a big blowout in the nation's capital for the second week in September, the timing to correspond with the debate over the president's Health Care Reform legislation.
"Government goes to those who show up"
That is a quote from the FreedomWorks website.
Dick Armey is right. At one time this sort of activism was the sole province of the labor unions and the civil rights movement, now scrappy clutches of conservative Republicans are mixing it up at town hall meetings all over the country. The events are covered by a sensation mad media, as a result, the only voices heard belong to the badly behaved.
Do you recall the 'Brooks Brothers Riot' November of 2000 ?
That relatively minor disruption, by a small cohort of well dressed, conservative activists at the Miami/Dade election recount offices, effectively ushered in the first term of George W. Bush. It was a simple plan, but oh so elegant.
The concerned taxpayers who are exercising their first amendment rights at town hall meetings (they claim they've torn a page from MoveOn's play book) are merely in dress rehearsal for the big event, The Taxpayers March on Washington DC, scheduled for September 9-12 2009.
Getting Barack Obama elected was just the beginning, defending his six o'clock position is a full time job. Pull out your dayrunners progressives. Mark down this dates:
Event: The Taxpayer's March On Washington DC Date: September 12, 2009 Place: Washington DC Time: 9:00 AM at the Lincoln Memorial 1:00 PM at the Capitol Building
Sponsored by Grassfire.org, Resistinet, FreedomWorks, The National Taxpayers Union, Campaign for Liberty, The Tea Party Patriots, The Club for Growth and others.
Darla Dawald, National coordinator for the march has invited all of us to contact her directly at Grassfire.org and Resistnet.com. One Step Promotions is offering affordable travel packages for every budget.
Sun Tzu counsels us to understand the nature of our adversary.
Lately I have spent some time reading the material on the major conservative websites. I encourage you to do the same, gentle reader, the stakes are far too high.
Is there anything on your calendar that trumps defending the promised change of the last election ? If we snooze this time, (the notion of health care reform hasn't seen the light of day since 1993) think of what we may lose for decades to come.
Many of the conservative activist organizations have adopted lofty patriotic names evoking the founding father's struggle against tyranny. To my mind that begs the question, If patriotism is their private bailiwick, are those of us who truly believe that access to health care is the most basic of civil rights, unpatriotic ?
MoveOn, you wrote the book with the missing page. You also have an enviable e-mail data base. The Republicans keep repeating, "Elections have consequences." It would be a pity to disappoint them.
Dick Armey is the former Republican Representative of the 26th congressional district of Texas, he currently serves as chairman of FreedomWorks.org. Dick Armey will be a headline speaker at The Taxpayer's March on Washington DC More on Barack Obama
Tough times can inspire lasting images, and the HuffPost's Eyes & Ears is compiling a photo album of our readers' most evocative recession pictures.
To submit a photo to the contest, join our Flickr group and add your photos to the group pool. It's easy to sign up for a flickr account if you don't already have one. And you can check out the entire collection of recession photos in our Capture the Recession Flickr group pool.
Vote below on the images you think best capture the changes brought on by the global recession.
You can also take a look at the first slideshow installment here.
By Charles M. Sennott With Photos By Seamus Murphy | GlobalPost
It was out of the refugee camps in Pakistan's northwest frontier province that the Taliban was born by recruiting foot soldiers from the Madrassas there. Today there is a profound shift: for the first time in large numbers, the Pakistani public is supporting the military operation against the Taliban.
More from the international news site GlobalPost and its comprehensive look at the Taliban:
KABUL -- It is the open secret no one wants to talk about, the unwelcome truth that most prefer to hide. In Afghanistan, one of the richest sources of Taliban funding is the foreign assistance coming into the country.
The school of 600 students has dirt floors. There is no electricity, running water or bathrooms. The students' uniforms are old and torn. Lunch comes from the banana trees and vegetables that are grown on the school property. The teachers use small pieces of chalk to write their lessons on handmade blackboards. Despite the severe poverty, the children are happy and trying hard to learn. I was visiting a primary school outside of Kisumu, Kenya two weeks ago to check on the status of 18 AIDS orphans who are supported by my students, family, friends and several donors in a project that was started five years ago by my daughter and the international club at her high school.
As I was leaving the school, I happened to glance down at my iPhone (something I do far too often), and discovered that my wireless was working. In the midst of this severe poverty, surrounded by students who will be lucky to learn to read and write, the world's knowledge was at my fingertips. With a few keystrokes I could respond to email, gain access to the world's libraries or browse one of the 1,900 free online courses offered by MIT. This certainly is the digital divide and it is certainly a big part of the solution to our educational challenges both locally and globally.
As we begin the school year, schools and colleges across the US are reeling from budget cuts that have forced layoffs, cutbacks in services and are leading to larger classes. In California, the statewide financial crisis has led to unprecedented cutbacks and increases in tuition and fees in the California college system. We will no longer be able to educate as many students in college as before -- in a traditional manner. But in an increasingly competitive global economy, it is imperative that all students get a world-class education.
How can we accomplish this in our challenging economic times? One of the only solutions -- and it is far better than most people realize -- is to harness all the amazing tools of technology in creative ways to teach, to learn, and to collaborate. There is strong evidence that online and hybrid learning (where students learn online and in class) can be personalized, rigorous and of very high quality. In June the U.S. Department of Education released a very important report, discussed in the Chronicle of Higher Education, that showed something few academics will accept: "Students learn more effectively in online settings. Most powerful of all appear to be 'blended' courses that offer both face-to-face and online elements. Previous research has generally found that online and offline courses are equally effective." The key variable may not be the technology but that in using a technology-based course, the instructor has to take into account how students learn and the fact that people have different learning styles, and develop different instructional approaches based on that evidence. In a class of 500 where a professor uses the "chalk and talk" method, students are not engaged and involved in the learning process.
A new movement has begun in the educational world. Called the open educational resources (OER) movement, it was spurred by the development of MIT's free, open courseware. "The confluence of the Web and a spirit of sharing intellectual property have fueled a worldwide movement to make knowledge and education materials open to all for use. OER are content (courses, books, lesson plans, articles, etc.), tools (virtual laboratories, simulations, and games), and software that support learning and educational practice, says the head of Carnegie Mellon's Open Learning Initiative, whose goal is to "fundamentally change the way post-secondary education is done in this country." The Obama administration agrees and has proposed a $500 million online education plan that would pay for the development of free technology-enhanced, online classes for high school and college students that would be offered through community colleges. Obama's goal is to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020 and this can only happen through a plan like this that transforms educational practices.
The world's educational resources increasingly are in the palm of our hand. The only question is whether we can envision and create a new educational world where all children have access to the world's knowledge.
Other people's family fights always make me uncomfortable. That's why I cringed a little last week as I watched Ryan O'Neal's oldest son, Griffin on the Larry King show spewing a few choice memories about his nutty father. The younger O'Neal (now four years sober) pulled no punches as he told tales of being forced by his dad to do cocaine at age eleven and how supposedly, Ryan had hit on his own daughter, Tatum (at Farrah Fawcett's funeral, no less!) When asked when he'd last seen his father, Griffin replied that it was "the night that he tried to shoot me in the face."
In response, Ryan O'Neal has given his own interview (out in this month's Vanity Fair), where he says the reason he hit on his own daughter was because he didn't recognize her. Apparently, the two have not seen each other in years. Ryan (who later in the article refers to his daughter as a "bitch") admits that he was not always the best father, but is at least maintaining a strong relationship with his youngest son by Farrah, Redmond O'Neal, whom he visits regularly in jail.
Hollywood families have been in the press a lot lately. After weeks of speculation on the fate of Michael Jackson's children, there was a collective sigh of relief on Thursday, when their grandfather, Joe Jackson announced that at least, he would not be involved in their upbringing - This from the guy who reportedly beat young Michael and his brothers with a belt every time they missed a dance step.
Let's face it. Being a parent is tough under the best of circumstances, but trying to raise a family in the wilds of show business carries with it some big challenges. Several mega-celebrities have opted to pull their families out of Los Angeles altogether and relocate them to slightly less dangerous territories in Montana, Colorado or the Midwest, in the hopes that their kids will not be swept into L.A.'s ever-swirling underworld of loose morals and wanton drug abuse.
I suppose what a great many famous people don't realize at the onset is that parenting requires a great deal of the one item that most celebs don't have much of - Time. People at the height of their careers work long hours, sometimes in distant locations for weeks (or months) at a time. The work is draining, all-consuming and doesn't necessarily stop for inconvenient things like soccer matches or a childhood bout of the measles. The pressure to "ride the wave" leads people to think they can catch-up on their "quality time" after the film wraps or the series goes on hiatus. But in reality, children are in a constant state of change; always developing; always soaking up their values and patterns of behavior, based not on what they are being told via a crackling cell phone call, but by what they observe and experience on a daily basis. All the "I love you's" in the world don't mean much when you only see your parents at breakfast every other week or so. Unable to man the fort themselves, well-meaning celebs frequently hire dutiful stand-ins like nannies, housekeepers and assistants who do their best to create some kind of stability, but eventually these folks move on, leaving the kids to start over with a new employee who is ostensibly hired to "care."
The other oft-ignored reality is that some of the qualities that make a person a wonderful artist don't necessarily make them a great spouse or parent. Talent requires enormous commitment. And it usually comes with a healthy amount of ego and competitiveness attached. Opting for a career in show business can lead to a very prolonged adolescence and a life forever governed by all those fabulous rules from high school - like "Who's the most popular this week?" or "Who got invited to the prom?" Honing your talent sometimes means giving over to a certain degree of self-absorption; which can in turn lead to a sense that you are the center of the universe and all those around you (including your offspring) are merely satellites orbiting your general fabulousness.
Truthfully, I'm grateful that my parents were not famous. Dean and Ruth were regular, working-class joes, who were always around, day-in and day-out. By the time I was a teenager, I sort of resented their unrelenting presence, but in hindsight I've come to appreciate that when I was at my most formative, they hammered a few values into me that have proven handy to have in the murky world of show business.
I recently saw a TV interview with the remarkable Stevie Nicks (still gorgeous and going strong at age sixty). When asked why she'd never married or had kids, she was unapologetically forthright. "I knew I wanted to be an artist and I wanted everything that came along with that. I knew I needed to be free to fly to New York on a moment's notice and if I was married or had kids, that would have been hurtful to them. I never wanted anyone else to suffer for my choices."
God knows there are many celebrities who have managed to raise seemingly healthy, happy families. For some, maintaining that delicate balance between the business and "real life" has worked out well, but it often requires tough choices, like occasionally dropping out of the business altogether for a few years. I remember reading an interview with Jodie Foster who was talking about her decision to forgo making movies in favor of a daily routine of picking up her kids, helping with homework and refereeing unruly family dinners. When asked why she didn't hire a staff to take care of those duties, she replied, "What would be the point of that? Isn't that the reason you have children? So you can take care of them."
Copyright 2009 Quitcher-Bitchyn Entertainment, Inc. www.daviddeanbottrell.com
David Dean Bottrell is an actor ("Boston Legal") and screenwriter ("Kingdom Come") who writes a weekly blog about being strangely middle-class in Hollywood at www.partsandlabor.tv
We all know bacon is awesome, but do some bacon products go too far? Do we really want bacon clothes and bacon home decor? Tell us which of the following items you love and which you'd like to send back to the pig.
Conservatives -- newfound lovers of political dissent -- are so very OUTRAGED at Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer for their USA Today oped, which says: "These [congressional town hall] disruptions are occurring because opponents are afraid not just of differing views -- but of the facts themselves. Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American. Drowning out the facts is how we failed at this task for decades."
As you can see, the two did not call the act of protest un-American. They did not call the expression of conservative views un-American. They did not call anyone who has gone to a town hall un-American. They said the "drowning out of opposing views" is un-American.
Further, they were referring to the act of suppressing speech, not to the loyalties of individual people. There is no implication that anyone -- even those who have been trying to drown out the views of others -- lacks patriotism or traffics in treason. Their use of the word "un-American," charged it may still be, but clearly in reference to the "American" ideal of free speech, not "American" in terms of citizenship. The backdrop of the health care debate itself is in far different context than the use of such terms when debating war.
If I thought there was a whit of actual suppression of conservative views, I would stand with conservative complaints in a flash.
But freedom of speech has never meant freedom to libel, freedom to riot or freedom to suppress the speech of others. And we've seen all of three in the past several days.
With photography and video by photojournalist Brendan Bannon, Doctors Without Borders brings you the underreported story of hundreds of thousands of Congolese who are fleeing the violent attacks of Ugandan rebel group the Lord's Resistant Army (LRA).
Following a military offensive against them, the LRA has intensified attacks against civilians. During these attacks, entire Congolese villages are often looted and burned to the ground; people are hacked to death with machetes and women and children are abducted as sexual slaves, forced to carry looted goods or recruited to fight.
Approximately 250,000 people have been displaced from their land and livelihoods, many of them taking refuge in Southern Sudan. These are their stories:
WASHINGTON — As the Pentagon warns of the security risks posed by social networking sites, newly released government documents show the military also uses these Internet tools to monitor and react to coverage of high-profile events.
The Air Force tracked online messaging service Twitter, video-sharing site YouTube and various blogs to assess the huge public backlash to the Air Force One flyover of the Statue of Liberty this spring, according to the documents.
And while the attempts at damage control failed – "No positive spin is possible," one PowerPoint chart reads – the episode opens a window into the tactics for operating in a boundless digital news cycle.
This new terrain has slippery slopes, though, for the military. Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites are very popular among service members, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan who want to keep in touch with friends and family. The sites are also valued by military organizations for recruiting or communicating with other federal agencies.
But posting information on these interactive links makes it vulnerable to being lost or stolen by the enemy, according to Pentagon officials. On Thursday, a hacking attack shut down Twitter for several hours, while Facebook had intermittent access problems – an indication of the shortcomings of relying on these services.
The Marine Corps' computer network blocks users from accessing social media sites, which service officials say expose "information to adversaries" and provide "an easy conduit for information leakage."
The Marines recently made its ban official. And that prohibition might extend to other parts of the military pending a top-level review ordered in late July by Deputy Defense Secretary Bill Lynn.
In a widely distributed memo, Lynn said the so-called "Web 2.0" sites are important tools but more study is needed to understand their threats and benefits.
Air Force officials are already aware of the potential benefits.
According to the Air Force One documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, a unit called the Combat Information Cell at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida monitored the public fallout from the April 27 flight and offered recommendations for dealing with the fast-breaking story.
Formed two years ago, the cell is made up of as many as nine people who analyze piles of data culled from the Internet and other sources to determine whether the Air Force's message is being heard.
The presidential plane took off for New York from Andrews Air Force in Maryland accompanied by two F-16 jet fighters. The purpose of the flight, which wasn't publicly announced, was to get new photos of the specially modified Boeing 747 with the statue in the background.
The mission quickly became a public relations disaster as panicked New Yorkers, fearing another 9/11-style attack, emptied office buildings. In the aftermath, Louis Caldera, director of the White House military office that authorized the flight, was fired.
The Combat Information Cell's first assessment of the event said "Web site blog comments 'furious' at best." Local reporting of the flyover was "very critical, highlighting scare factor," it added.
A search of Twitter, which allows people to post messages of 140 characters or less to a circle of friends, family or fans, showed that users were posting a rate of one message, or "tweet," per minute about a pair of F-16s chasing a commercial airliner, the cell said.
Media coverage over the next 24 hours "will focus on local hysteria and lack of public notification," the cell predicted. "Blogs will continue to be overwhelmingly negative."
"Damage control requires timely counter-information," but the opportunity for that had passed, the assessment said. The cell recommended acknowledging the mistake and ensuring it didn't happen again.
Another update on April 28 said the story was still "reverberating, surprisingly resilient." The tweet rate had grown to three per minute and the words "New York" had been pushed into Twitter's list of most talked about topics. Videos of the event posted on YouTube had been viewed more than 260,000 times, it said.
By April 30, the story had faded, the cell reported. The blogs were still very critical, but it was the White House, not the Air Force, that was taking the heat, the assessment for that day said.
The other dominant news story at the time was public concern over the spread of swine flu. According to the documents, the same Air Force cell suggested there may be an opportunity to turn the tide. "Government involvement in this incident could be used to frame expected handling of H1N1 outbreak," one of the PowerPoint charts reads.
A Utah Air National Guard unit, the 101st Information Warfare Flight in Salt Lake City, was also monitoring the social sites. "To say that this event is being beaten like a dead horse is an understatement," reads an April 28 e-mail from the unit to other Air Force offices. "Has really taken off in Web 2.0."
Both the 101st and the Combat Information Cell are attached to the 1st Air Force, which is based at Tyndall and is in charge of guarding U.S. airspace.
1st Air Force spokesman Al Eakle explained that the command had no role in planning or coordinating the Air Force One flight. But the units tracked social networks and blog traffic "to obtain what lessons we might learn so as not to repeat them in the future." The assessments were sent to the command's leadership so they'd know how the public was reacting, he added.
John Verdi of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington said gray zones can emerge while monitoring social networking sites because viewing and participating is based on trust.
"Lots of times individuals upload private or sensitive information that they expect to share with their friends or family and not the whole Internet world," Verdi said. "It would certainly be a major problem if the government were accessing that information under false pretenses."
Paul Bove, an Air Force digital media strategist, said service personnel are instructed not to do that. Nor are they to use aliases or represent a position that's beyond the scope of what they do.
"We always tell people, 'Stay in your lane and don't talk about something that you're not qualified to talk about,'" Bove said.
The issue of aliases is at the heart of a complaint stemming for the Army Corps of Engineers' performance in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina.
On Tuesday, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., asked the Pentagon inspector general to examine allegations that Corps employees posed as ordinary citizens and posted comments on a New Orleans Web site defending the organization from criticism following the disaster.
Jon Donley, former editor of NOLA.com, said in a June 9 affidavit that there were as many as 20 registered users who developed a pattern of not only defending the Corps, but at times being "overtly abusive" to any critics. He said he was able to trace their posts to a Corps Internet address.
Ken Holder, a spokesman for Corps' New Orleans District, said it will cooperate with any investigation.
SPRING and summer are usually busy seasons for the New York City rental market. And after an extraordinarily slow winter, deals have picked up.
The true lifeblood of the rental market, however, isn't warm weather. It's jobs. And those are projected to be scarce for some time. So as owners cast a wary eye toward fall, some are taking action to stave off vacancies.
The U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic communities are to be commended for their forward-leaning approach to viewing global warming as a national security threat, as documented in Sunday's New York Times.
These dedicated professionals have clearly grasped the ways climate change puts all of us in harm's way and they are making plans to deal with a raft of possible crises stemming from the global rise in temperature.
The Times story broke through the noise of the climate change debate by drawing out the connection between our climate and our national security. As reporter John Broder wrote, climate change "will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics."
These effects are in addition to challenges like the weakening of marginal states, the flooding of coastal cities, the spread of malaria and other tropical diseases, catastrophic shortages of fresh water and food. (See OnEarth Magazine's story about how Bangladesh is coping with some of these challenges.) These are among the clear and present dangers the world potentially faces from the steady march of global warming.
Our national security experts have no choice but to plan for these potential threats. Training and equipping U.S. forces for the additional missions and overall burdens of these international crises, after all, will take years, if not decades, and cost this country untold billions of dollars.
Meanwhile, though, there is much the rest of us can do to help stem the tide of global warming and avert the worst of the dire ills it portends. The best way to start is for our Senate to move ahead with comprehensive energy and climate legislation.
Earlier this summer, the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) which would take meaningful and needed steps toward curbing the greenhouse emissions that cause global warming. The bill would help create 1.7 million new jobs in exciting new technologies that help us reduce our carbon footprint. It would save the country some 440 million barrels of oil a year by the year 2030, the Department of Energy estimates, reducing our dangerous reliance on foreign oil. And it would cost the average household just 23 cents a day through 2030, the DOE estimates.
Let's put this sum in perspective by considering what retired General Anthony Zinni recently wrote (as reported in the Times):
"We will pay for this one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives." (You can read the full report here.)
Americans everywhere can be proud of the dedicated professionals devoted to assessing future risk and defending the United States against it.
Safeguarding the country, though, has never been solely the responsibility of the men and women who bear arms. It has always been the responsibility of every American to do what we can to stand up for the common good.
While those in uniform stand watch at home and abroad, watching out for threats both old and new, the rest of us can support them by making our voices heard. Call or write your U.S. Senators today and ask them to move forward with comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation. (You can find out more about NRDC's action here).
It's one thing we can all do to make our country more secure - today, tomorrow and always.
The post originally appeared on NRDC's Switchboard blog.
The former Harlem brownstone of legendary writer Langston Hughes, which has remained in private hands since his death in 1967, is being toured by the public as it is now up for sale.
I must come back to Space.NK - it's a loooong story - but that's for later. Now, I was able to finish my presskit. .
PR 101: Editors, writers, journalists, media types, bloggers... they get hundreds of press kits and product samples every week. When you're in their position, everyone wants you to cover them so they drench you in product. I still have 37 hand creams, 46 conditioners, 7 eye creams, 18 toners, 3 foot creams, and an entire shelf of SPF and self tanner left over from the good 'ole days of my swag-a-licious life as a reporter.
The problem when you get so much loot? You get jaded. The more you see, the more discerning you become, the harder it is for brands to stand out. 90% of the products I received went to interns, my housekeeper, friends, the cab driver on the way home from an event. Brands need to cut through the clutter. They must stand out at every touch point.
A strong visual impact was vital. No product of mine was to be relegated to the trash bin, i.e. no plain white folders, please!
JD showed me a rendering of a custom $5 folder, about 6x10", in a gradient purple with fuchsia metallic hot stamping (the official color - Crown 750 foil). I melted. I would need 1,000. Yes, that is 5k on folders.
Todd raised his eyebrow in suspicion. "You're spending how much...???"
"Baby, we need it. We're new. We need to pop," I explained, some how convincing him.
To fill the folder, we used super duper cardstock - printed on both sides, one with info, the other with repeated logo graphics and lip print marks a la Murakami/Louis Vuitton (dare I compare myself!).
In went a cover page - a Marilyn Minter (my fave photographer - Tom Ford collects her work which is very sexy and raw) inspired close up of a mouth with the Huge Lips Skinny Hips logo inside.
It was followed by the press release, about Purple Lab, my bio, the product sheet about star ingredients, a page for each color and its inspiration, contact page.
When all was said and done, it was a $15 press kit.
Yikes. Need I say again that there were 1,000?
Remember that savings I was dipping into? It was near gone.
That brings me to the business plan and money - the topic for next week.
President Obama is holding a press conference with the President of Mexico, Felip Calderon, and the Prime Minister of Canda, Stephen Harper. Watch it live below.
So in the spirit of park enthusiasm, we'd like YOU to tell us about your favorite parks, and send us your photos of national parks you've been to.
Here's how it works:
Hit the participate button, leave your description and mark the area of your favorite park by searching for an address in the box on the top right of the map, upload your photo and hit submit. Thank you!
MTV Networks is currently selling ad inventory for the format it officially declared the best for online video, and the media company expects other Web publishers to follow suit,
said Jason Witt, SVP and GM of MTV's digital advertising unit in an interview with Andy last week in Manhattan.
Based on a study it commissioned, MTV said a five-second pre-roll ad combined with a lower-third ad is the most effective and consumer-friendly ad unit for short-form video on sites like MTV.com and ComedyCentral.com.
In the study, MTV measured ads and consumer reaction to them across a range of audiences, videos and ads. The network's efforts occur against a backdrop of increased industry research into the best ad formats for online video. The agency Starcom is testing online ad formats; so is ESPN.
In his interview with Beet.TV, Witt explained MTV's goals with the study. "We wanted to take a fresh look at whether or not there was a better video ad than pre-roll that could be more effective," he said.
In the research, MTV tested three types of online video ads and benchmarked their performance against a 30-second pre-roll. The 5-second pre-roll with the lower third came up the winner, even beating out more novel and unusual ad formats, Witt said.
"If the ad is too disruptive, users will tune out," he said. "You don't have to be in their face to make an impression."
With Sonia Sotomayor's swearing in over the weekend as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts are aggressively debating what was learned from her four days of grueling testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee - and even whether these hearings are instructive or merely Capital Hill's version of Kabuki Theater.
The nomination of the court's first Latina member - and only the third woman to serve on the nation's highest court -- was confirmed by the U.S. Senate last Friday by a vote of 68-31, with all Democrats voting "aye" and nine Republicans bucking their Party's line to do likewise. She was sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts on Saturday.
The widely accepted morning-after view among legal scholars is that Sotomayor's confirmation hearings were more about politics, campaign endorsements, and financial contributions than about the business of judging. And a jingoistic attempt to exploit the obviously deep divisions within our society.
Amidst a torrent of thinly veiled Republican accusations that her off-the-bench speeches suggested she would be a "judicial activist" on the high court - tempered only by their fear of offending Hispanic voters -- she was questioned about only two or three actual cases.
Those cases were at the top of the GOP playbook: Gun ownership, property rights, reverse discrimination. The consensus is that Sotomayor persuaded most observers that she was following precedent - which is what an Appeals Court judge is supposed to do. But she also and totally predictably ducked many questions and bobbed and weaved around many others.
If we expected to actually learn very much about Sotomayor's "judicial philosophy," we were bound to be disappointed. The overarching mission of the "Murder Boards" who prepped her for these hearings was to avoid as many specifics as possible. For that, she got an "A".
Sadly, from the Democrats, there were largely softball questions, punctuated by lavish praise for Sotomayor's personal story and her "mainstream" legal philosophy. Arguably, the most penetrating questions came from Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. When he got no straight answers, his frustration seemed palpable.
But Republican Senators, evidently chagrined at being unable to hit a home run based on the nominee's judicial record, turned to The Nation's Pastime.
The baseball analogy has become widely used by nominees ever since now-Chief Justice John Roberts famously stated at his own confirmation hearings in 2005: "Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules."
But a number of legal scholars we contacted expressed dismay at the use of a baseball analogy to define a jurist. To many, this represents the ultimate dumbing down of jurisprudential thinking. They ask why, if judging were only about balls and strikes, why would we need nine Justices, why would we so often have cases decided in five to four decisions, and why would so many Supreme Court rulings be reversed by later courts?
Nonetheless, the baseball analogy persisted throughout the hearings and in the vote on the Senate floor. SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) Blog, a widely respected online report about the High Court's decisions, wrote that the Senators used the phrase "balls and strikes" at least 11 times, and "umpire" or "umpires" 16 times.
For example, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the highest ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, said that if a judge had a personal or political agenda, "Such an approach to judging means that the umpire calling the game is not neutral, but instead feels empowered to favor one team over the other."
But Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island countered with, "I particularly reject the analogy of a judge to an 'umpire' who merely calls 'balls and strikes'. If judging were that mechanical, we would not need nine Supreme Court Justices."
His conclusion is borne out by two centuries of Supreme Court rulings reaching different conclusions in the same cases and of majority decisions later being reversed. Just two areas -- civil rights and equal protections under the law -- provide ample illustrations.
In a civil rights case called Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, the Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States. But a later Court ruled that at least one part of it had already been reversed in 1868 by the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave equal protection of the law to everyone.
Legal scholars mostly agree that the Dred Scott decision was the worst in the history of the Court. The majority opinion was written by Chief Justice Roger B. Taney. Ironically, Taney said "Slavery is a blot on our national character, and every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away..." But at the same time, he asserted that "All blacks- slaves or not... were not and never could not be citizens.
But perhaps the most telling example in the civil rights sphere is the Court's ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1886. In a vote of 7 to 1, the justices ruled that states could force railroad companies to exclude African-Americans from first-class, or "ladies," cars. The case deprived African Americans of equal protection under the 14th Amendment and gave judicial sanction to the doctrine of "separate but equal."
Justice John Marshall Harlan, a former slave owner who decried the excesses of the Ku Klux Klan, wrote a scathing dissent. He wrote, in a leap of wishful thinking, "... in view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law."
Legal experts ask, "If they were all umpires, why did one - the only Southerner and a member of a prominent Kentucky slave-owning family - dissent?"
It would not be until the mid-20th Century that these decisions would begin to be reversed, the most sweeping being a unanimous 1954 landmark ruling in a case called Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka .The Court struck down Plessy's "separate but equal" doctrine. The Justices concluded "that in the field of public education the doctrine of 'separate but equal' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." The opinion spurred a social revolution.
And the issue of equal protection led to the historic 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which made abortion legal. In a 7-2 vote, the court's majority said the 14th Amendment's due process clause guaranteed a woman's right to privacy and to end a pregnancy - though neither abortion nor privacy are ever mentioned in the Constitution. Subsequent decisions have chipped away at this protection - for example, banning "late term" abortions -- and most Conservatives continue to push for a total reversal.
Once again, did the seven umpires know something that their two brethren did not?
A number of prominent legal experts have weighed in with us on the "balls and strikes" analogy.
Chip Pitts, A Lecturer at Stanford University Law School and president of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, told us, "Notwithstanding the current public triumph of the 'umpire' metaphor, judging usually isn't a matter of objectively and passively applying a simple rule from a single rulebook to a specific set of facts. Judging real cases at this time of great social and technological change -- especially cases of the sort that make it to the U.S. Supreme Court, involving complex disputes over meaning, sources of legal authority, and application to facts -- cannot possibly be crammed into such a formalistic box without doing great damage to both truth and justice."
"We now know from science as well as experience that markets aren't always 'efficient,' that legal rules and their meaning (including that elusive, so-called 'original intent') aren't always 'clear,' and that reason and emotion are inextricably intertwined in decision-making. That doesn't throw judges back on the pile heap of radical subjectivity, where anything goes; but regardless of Justice Sotomayor's distancing herself during her hearing from emotions and empathy, it does mean that they play an indispensable role in good judging, by helping (like weights on a scale) to calibrate judgments."
And he adds, "Empathy, by the way, is not the same thing as prejudice. The former represents an opening to greater understanding, while the latter capitulates to ignorance and thus blocks genuine understanding."
"The irony" he points out, "revealed by Justice Sotomayor's record, is that in her reluctance to consider global sources of law and in other respects, she seems much more conservative than either conservatives or liberals currently appreciate. Expect to be surprised."
Marjorie Cohn, president of the National Lawyers Guild, told us, "Since he was confirmed to the Court, Roberts has behaved more like a radical right fielder than an umpire. He routinely favors corporations over individuals, and prosecutors over criminal defendants. Roberts is doing his best - quite effectively - to shape the Court into a reliable tool to further the right-wing agenda."
Prof. Peter M. Shane of the Ohio State University law school told us, "The ideas that Supreme Court Justices are mere umpires, or that constitutional interpretation bears any authentic resemblance to following a baseball rule book, are ludicrous."
He said, "The right-wing has so successfully animated the public fear of 'judicial activism' that any candid admission that the act of judging involves actual judgment is regarded as politically fraught. This is especially regrettable because the GOP's only definition of judicial activism seems to be "judicial decision making at odds with the Republican Party platform."
And he added, "Comparing the hearings to Kabuki Theater is rather insulting, I fear, to Kabuki Theater." "Chief Justice Roberts has actually been relentless in his attempt to shift the Supreme Court towards a socially conservative, pro-business, anti-egalitarian view of the law that is utterly at odds with the spirit of genuine constitutionalism. Justice Scalia seems personally bent on rewriting entire swaths of the constitutional law of criminal procedure," he said.
On the subject of "judicial activism," he said, "You need go no further than Bush v. Gore or District of Columbia v. Heller for iconic examples of what it looks like in its right-wing form. If, as many fear, the Supreme Court next year creates new political expression rights for corporations -- corporations!! -- you will see it again."
But he injects a cautionary note: "I do think, however, that simply shouting, 'Judicial activism!' at the right is no more a real argument than shouting, 'Judicial activism!' at the left. What ought to count is whether a legal opinion offers the most compelling view of the Constitution in light of its text, history, prior judicial interpretation, and current understanding of the country's needs. A lot of what I dislike about right-wing judicial activism is not just its political agenda, but its pretense to be true to history -- a history that is often more or less fabricated in order to reach a pre-ordained result."
An arguably even more dire view was expressed to us by Prof. Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois law school. Here's what he said:
"Roberts' analogy to a baseball umpire was sheer propaganda designed to mask his hard-line movement commitment to accomplishing the agenda of the Federalist Society, of which he was a member despite the misrepresentation he made to the Senate Judiciary Committee to the contrary, which was illegal. The Federalist Society is a gang of lawyers and judges who are right- wing, racist, reactionary, bigoted, sexist, war-mongering, elitist and totalitarian. For example, Feddie lawyers were responsible for the Bush Administration's torture scandal. Right now, there are four die-hard Feddies on the U.S. Supreme Court: Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
He continued: "Reportedly (Justice) Kennedy was also affiliated with the Feddies, but he breaks from their ranks from time to time, thus producing the well known 5 to 4 majorities gravitating back and forth between the two wings of the Court. There is no 'liberal' wing of this Court. For the media to apply the word 'liberal' to Souter and Stevens and Breyer just indicates how far to the right the Court has been moved deliberately since Nixon became President, followed by his Republican successors." President Bill Clinton, he says, "did little to redress the balance, though to be sure Justice Ginsburg is the only person on the Court who has had extensive experience standing up for the common people of this country, to her great credit."
But he doubts that Sotomayor is "in the mold of Justice Ginsburg." He says, "She very well could be somewhat to the right of Justice Souter, especially when it comes to protecting the interests of big business and further whittling down the constitutional rights of criminal defendants -- she started her career as a prosecutor. It appears that Obama picked her in order to pay off his debt to those Latino/as who voted for him in 2008, and to consolidate Latino/a support for 2012."
Boyle sums up: "Supreme Court nominations and confirmation hearings are all about politics and economics, not calling balls and strikes. And Supreme Court Nominees are by nature political animals: Indeed it was 5 Republican Justices who unconstitutionally installed George Bush Jr. as President of the United States in 2000, thus giving America the most disastrous Presidency since the dawn of the nineteenth century."
And he predicts that the next Supreme Court nomination battle "will be even more vicious given what is at stake: the very future of this country as a constitutional democracy with a commitment to the Rule of Law. I kid you not. The Boumedienne decision upholding the writ of habeas corpus for those on Guantanamo was only 5 to 4 -- a near-death experience for the Constitution. Souter was part of that majority."
About Justice Sotomayor, he says, "I cannot predict with any degree of certainty how Sotomayor would have voted. So the very future of this Republic hangs by a perilous thread in the Supreme Court. And the constitutional law teacher Obama seems to be more interested in playing politics as usual than in dismantling the American Police State erected by the Bush Jr. administration and its Federalist Society lawyers and judges starting with the USA Patriot Act."
But criticism of the baseball analogy is not limited to progressives. Bruce Fein, a Conservative civil libertarian who served in the Department of Justice under President Ronald Reagan, told us, "The umpire metaphor of the task of a Supreme Court Justice is juvenile. There is no moral or philosophical element in calling balls or strikes--no more so than in calculating the circumference of a circle."
He explains: "Constitutional law and constitutional interpretation, in contrast, pivots on a Justice's philosophy about the meaning and purpose of constitutional restraints on the political branches of government as deduced from the words, practices, and unwritten expectations of the Constitution's makers. That leaves substantial legitimate latitude for any Justice because the Founding Fathers were blurry about the matter."
"For example, a Justice who believes that the makers intended the constitutional amendment process to be employed to overcome oversights or unexpected changes in the political landscape as opposed to enlightened and independent judges will naturally be loath to read anything more into the Constitution's text than the bare minimum. But a Justice who subscribes to the view that the Constitution's makers intended the judiciary to be the prime headwind against impetuous and myopic Congresses and Presidents will readily embrace latitudinarian interpretations of the text to fulfill the judicial role and blunt the political branches, he says.
"Confirmation hearings are constructive and educational only to the extent the nominee is forced to elaborate on his or her convictions about the role of the judiciary as opposed to alternate constitutional vehicles in curing, preventing, or arresting moral or other evils," he says, then asks: "It is ridiculous, but once one acknowledges that, what role remains for the Senate?"
Others are also questioning the role of the Senate. Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil liberties advocacy group, is among them. He told us, "In many other countries, the top judges are civil service appointees who've worked their way up the ladder since their graduation from law school, and thus all have very long judicial records to examine. But beyond looking at their track records, the review process doesn't involve any questioning about judicial philosophy and beliefs. Most of it is well-known and accepted; the focus is on technical competence."
For most of our nation's history, Supreme Court nominees did not appear for grilling by Senators. But that was before television. Today most agree that it is utterly unrealistic to expect politicians to give up a golden opportunity to posture before the cameras for headline-making political theater. For Senators, all the world's a stage!
Despite grim predictions, most major U.S. companies have reported positive earnings for the second quarter of 2009. Given how wrong past predictions have been, the fact that earnings have blown away expectations shouldn't be so surprising. Still, the numbers are genuinely impressive: More than 73% of the companies that have reported so far have beaten earnings estimate-and stocks have rightly rallied.
Yes, profits are down sharply from a year ago, but this is in the context of an overall global economy that is shrinking.
In recent years, some pollsters, pundits and consultants have pointed to declines in partisan voter registration, along with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's two elections, to question California's reputation as a left-leaning "blue state" and to argue that it is in fact a post-partisan "purple state."
Exhibit A, for the post-partisan advocates, is the voter roll: Democratic registration stands at 45%, down 12% since 1978; Republican registration is 31%, down 3%, and independents now represent 20% of the voters, up 12%. These data, it is argued, prove that partisanship is waning and California is evolving into a bastion of independence.
Here at the Calbuzz Repository of Analysis and Policy, we've never bought the neo-kumbaya thesis. It's long been our view that while political parties, like other large institutions -- corporations, unions, metro newspapers, etc. -- have become atomized and decentralized in the modern era, political behavior is pretty much like it's always been.
And the Field Poll's release of a new study of 30 years of voting patterns last week offers further evidence that advocates for the post-partisan theory misread our history and attitudes. While Field's data confirm the long-term trend of voters increasingly bypassing both parties to register as independent declines-to-state, their analysis also shows that these independents reliably think and vote like Democrats most of the time.
Consider, for example, voter attitudes on same-sex marriage - one of the most incendiary issues in California politics. Back in 1977, Democrats were opposed 29-63%, Republicans were opposed 30-65% and independents and others were opposed 38-55%. Three decades later - in 2009 - Republicans have hardened their opposition to 23-68%. But Democrats have flipped their position to 64-30% in favor and so have independents -- to 57-38% in favor.
Likewise on abortion rights, another divisive issue. Back in 1975, a narrow majority of California voters approved of abortion rights, with Republicans in favor 50-44%, Democrats at 52-43% and independents at 59-34%. By 2006, 70% of voters overall favored abortion rights and the big movement came among Democrats, now 82-10% on the issue and independents at 73-14%. Republicans' attitude on the issue moved only slightly, to 55-40% in favor.
As Mark DiCamillo and Merv Field explained in the Field Poll release, public attitudes about death and taxes haven't moved much, but on social issues like same-sex marriage, abortion and euthanasia, "California voters, especially Democrats, have become more socially tolerant" over the past three decades. What's important in the numbers is that independents - while there are more of them - function for all intents and purposes as if they were unregistered Democrats.
The purple state thesis was stated perhaps most forcefully -- and mistakenly -- by GOP consultant and former Schwarzenegger communications director Adam Mendelsohn during last year's presidential elections, when he predicted in September that John McCain was "exactly the kind of Republican" who would be competitive amid the purple hues of the Golden State.
"Certain Republicans are able to win in California and when you have a Republican , like John McCain who has a proven track record of reaching out to independents, reaching out to disaffected Democrats, this is something he built a career on doing. It's exactly the kind of Republican who poses a real opportunity for us in California," Mendelsohn told Fox News in September, adding that "California (is) not a red state, or a blue state, but a purple state."
Others, like Dave Lesher and Mark Baldassare of the Public Policy Institute of California have made the case more subtly, arguing that because California's independents combine strains of social liberals and fiscal conservatives, "their vote is up for grabs."
"Independents' attitudes, in contrast to that of Democrats and Republicans, don't fit neatly into traditional liberal and conservative camps," the two wrote in a LAT op-ed in 2006, adding that this made for "a surprising degree of uncertainty and volatility."
In fact, it hasn't. The analysis of fiscal conservatism is based on a single issue: the long-standing strong support of Proposition 13 by voters of every ideological stripe. But by almost any other measure, the notion that independents have their finger to the wind in every election cycle is, we think, not right.
For starters, the rise of independent registration has not been accompanied by the surfacing of any independent political movement. Setting aside the Superintendent of Public Instruction (a nominally non-partisan office) no one has been elected to a statewide office without partisan identification. Beyond that, independents have sided with Democrats most of the time.
- Democrats have won the state in five of the eight presidential elections since 1978 and have made a clean sweep since 1992, when the move towards independent voters started gaining steam. (And no candidate who opposes abortion rights, on which independents have moved left, has won at the top of the ticket, i.e. for president, governor or senator, since George H.W. Bush beat Michael Dukakis here in 1988.)
- Democrats have dominated every single Legislative session except for the anamolus "Contract with America" election of 1994, when Republicans briefly held a majority.
- Democrats have controlled most of the statewide constitutional offices in the last 30 years, buoyed by independent backing.
The purple staters' best case is the history of the governor's office which, since Jerry Brown's re-election in 1978, has been won only twice by a Democrat, who was tossed out before finishing his second term.
But even in the case of the governor, California independents -- with their Democratic-leaning tendencies on social issues and their centrist outlook on fiscal issues -- have for two decades only rewarded the GOP when they have fielded relative moderates like Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger. When the GOP has tried to win statewide with one of their red-meat candidates (see: Dan Lungren, 38%, and Bill Simon, 43%) they have been crushed by their inability to win independents.
It is undeniably true that voters are increasingly declining to declare themselves either Democrat or Republican when they register to vote. But scratch an independent in California and you find a voter who leans Democratic.
If the Republicans were to nominate a fiscally moderate, pro-choice, pro-environment candidate who is not seen as virulently anti-immigrant or anti-gay, that candidate might well attract enough independents (and Democrats) to win at the top of the ticket. But it's unclear that such a candidate can win a Republican primary without first lurching so far to the right as to be poisoned in a general election (recall that Schwarzenegger never had to run in a contested primary, and that Wilson first won nomination after being drafted from the U.S. Senate by GOP leaders as the party's best hope of ensuring a competitive reapportionment).
The problem with confusing independent voter registration with independent voting behavior is that it leads to the kind of thinking Schwarzenegger's former communications director engaged in when he told the SF Chronicle in 2008: "John McCain will give a Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama a serious run in any purple state like California."
Calbuzz sez: Purple staters can argue that 'til they're blue in the face, but they'll still end up red-faced with embarrasment.
A lot of people can't wait for Mad Men next Sunday because they think Jon Hamm is hot. Others just want to see January Jones do her Breck Girl thing again. Poor confused Sal - Will he or won't he? - That will keep a lot of us going. And everyone in the beleaguered advertising industry is dying for another whiff of what life could have been like, if they'd been born thirty years earlier. Not me. I can't wait for Man Men to resume because I want to see all those midcentury modern sets - it's my own weird Selectric dream come to life. To get me through the final countdown, I've been looking through old issues of House Beautiful and found some real Mad Men style from the Sixties. Unfortunately, not in High Def. http://www.housebeautiful.com/decorating/1960s-designs?click=pp
Yet, as with the Web, it is far from clear how much revenue media apps for the iPhone can produce.
"We're all trying to figure out as we go: is there a subscription model here, is it an advertising model, is there a monthly recurring revenue stream, is it a one-time payment model?" Mr. Jones said. "It's a very fluid model."
For instance, the cover of the September issue of a Hearst magazine, House Beautiful, will include a pouch containing a chart that readers can pull out and save. The chart, offering tips on choosing colors for home decorating, carries an advertisement on the back for Glidden paints, part of a new campaign with the theme "Glidden gets you going."
GM is now selling new cars on eBay. The move comes after the government approved the cash for clunkers program and finds many California based GM dealerships auctioning off brand new cars, including Buick, Chevrolet, Pontiac and GMC trucks. Analysts believe that the move may not work well for GM, as competing for products with too much supply doesn't make economic sense.
Its official, Microsoft has agreed to terms with Publicis Groupe, who will acquires its Razorfish property. The heavily rumored deal has Publicis paying roughly $530 million for the online advertising business, is expected to close int he fourth quarter. Microsoft hopes the deal, which includes millions of dollars in advertising for its Bing property, will help spur its search ads business.
G.I. Joe topped the domestic box office this weekend earning $44.1 million. The film beat out Julie & Julia by more than $24 million to gross $100 million worldwide in its opening weekend. The theatrical version of the classic animated television show earned one of the highest domestic August openings in recent memory.
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