Overhead, the sky is a crystalline expanse of blue punctuated by drifting billows of clouds. Towering pines look down on a raging torrent of river that wildly sweeps and eddies. Knee-deep in that torrent stands the majestic brown bear, his paws grasping a twisting, gleaming prize - a plump, delicious king salmon.
This is the Copper River in Alaska, home to some of the most acclaimed salmon in the world - and rightly so. It turns out the bear has absolutely the right idea, for a wild-caught salmon offers myriad benefits.
It All Starts With Omega-3's
Sure, salmon has an impressive array of nutrients, including a major dose of protein and generous helpings of niacin and vitamin B-12, both of which contribute substantially to heart health. But it's the omega-3 essential fatty acids that make salmon one of the brightest of superstars in the food firmament.
Note the designation "essential" - these are compounds that the body must have, but cannot manufacture for itself; it is therefore imperative that they be obtained in sufficient amounts from food sources. And salmon is the ultimate source - chock-full of omega-3's, readily available, and incredibly delicious.
Omega-3's can do all of the following and more: help maintain the integrity of the immune and circulatory systems; reduce the risk of unwanted inflammation; help lower blood pressure and prevent strokes and heart attacks; help prevent erratic heart rhythms; make blood less likely to clot inside arteries; improve the ratio of good cholesterol to bad cholesterol; protect against deep-vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism; reduce the risk of macular degeneration and dry eye syndrome; and protect against a wide array of cancers - prostate, breast, colon, and pancreatic, to name just a few.
And that's only the beginning. You know that old saying about fish being brain food? Many studies are now indicating a direct correlation between substantial consumption of fish rich in omega-3's and better brain function in older people. Indeed, regular and generous helpings of salmon and other cold-water fatty fish may guard against cognitive decline and Alzheimer's as we age by preventing plaque formation in the brain - a baby boomer's dream come true...
Depressed? Grill a salmon steak. Studies have shown that because of their anti-inflammatory effects in the brain, omega-3's can protect against depression. Got a surly teenager in the house? Serve up a salmon burger for dinner. A study detailed in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found a statistically significant relationship between consumption of fish rich in omega-3 fats and lower hostility scores in young urban adults.
Go Wild!
Wild-caught salmon is the only way to go, for many reasons. Although farmed salmon is much cheaper and available everywhere year-round, it has been undeniably proven that farmed salmon is loaded with toxins, including flame retardants and dioxins that are classified as human carcinogens. In fact, farmed salmon has a higher toxic equivalency potential score than any other food. And in terms of damage to the environment and to the wild salmon population, farmed salmon is devastating on many levels. Salmon farms themselves are lethal - lice from these coastal pens kill up to 95 percent of the juvenile wild salmon that migrate past them.
So insist on wild-caught salmon, for your own health and the health of our ocean ecosystems. At a restaurant, ask your server if the salmon on the menu is wild-caught, and don't order it if it's farmed; same thing at your local market - ask for wild-caught only.
As far as I'm concerned, salmon from Alaska is the best. The wild population there is totally healthy and has the lowest levels of contaminants. If you can find salmon from the Copper River or the Yukon River - you are blessed! They are full-flavored, especially fatty (therefore higher in omega-3's), and totally delicious.
When purchasing fresh salmon, as with all fish, smell is your best indicator - there shouldn't be any. A fresh, clean, slightly briny aroma is fine; any strong or "off" smell means it's not fresh enough. Develop a relationship with your fishmonger, and trust him or her to steer you to the best and freshest available. Keep it cold, and cook it up as soon as possible.
Here's a quick and easy recipe to take advantage of the goodness of wild-caught salmon. Serve it with a wild rice pilaf and some steamed asparagus - good eating and good health!
Roast Salmon Filet with Pineapple-Jalapeno Relish
¾ cup chopped fresh pineapple ¼ cup diced jicama 1 Tbs. chopped Italian parsley ½ tsp. minced fresh red jalapeno chile ½ Tbs. fresh lime juice 1 ½ Tbs. jalapeno-lime olive oil (or plain olive oil) 4 6-oz. wild-caught salmon filets, skin on Lime wedges for garnish
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with heavy-duty aluminum foil.
Mix together pineapple, jicama, parsley, jalapeno, lime juice, and ½ Tbs. olive oil. Set aside.
Place salmon filets skin-side down on lined baking sheet, drizzle filets with remaining 1 Tbs. olive oil. Roast in oven for 13-18 minutes, depending on thickness and desired degree of doneness.
Remove filets from pan by sliding a spatula between flesh and skin. Place filets on plates with rice pilaf and asparagus, top fish with pineapple relish, and garnish with lime wedges.
Serves four.
Note: A version of this post appeared in my column Eat Smart in the June issue of Better Nutrition.
As many as 15 people were reported shot at the LA Fitness gym in Bridgeville, emergency officials confirmed for WTAE Channel 4 Action News.
The reports came in shortly after 8:15 p.m. that authorities were called to the gym at the Great Southern Shopping Center at 1155 Washington Pike. Emergency officials said eight to 10 people may have been involved, but their conditions were not immediately known.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - His mission accomplished, former President Bill Clinton left Pyongyang early Wednesday accompanied by American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling after North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pardoned the women from their 12-year prison sentences.
Clinton and the two Californians were heading back to the U.S., his spokesman Matt McKenna said, less than 24 hours after the former U.S. leader landed in the North Korean capital on a private, humanitarian trip to secure their release.
The women, dressed in short-sleeved shirts and jeans, appeared healthy as they climbed the steps to the plane and shook hands with Clinton before getting into the jet, APTN footage in Pyongyang showed. McKenna said the flight was bound for Los Angeles, where the journalists will be reunited with their families.
The White House had no comment.
Their departure was a jubilant conclusion to a more than four-month ordeal for the women arrested near the North Korean-Chinese border in March and sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in "hostile acts."
Clinton's landmark trip to Pyongyang also resulted in rare talks with reclusive Kim Jong Il that state-run media described as "wide-ranging" and "exhaustive." The meeting was Kim's first with a prominent Western figure since reportedly suffering a stroke nearly a year ago.
North Korean media characterized the women's release as proof of "humanitarian and peace-loving policy." State media said Clinton apologized on behalf of the women and relayed President Barack Obama's gratitude. The report said the visit would "contribute to deepening the understanding" between North Korea and the United States.
While the White House emphasized the private nature of Clinton's trip, his landmark visit to Pyongyang to free the Americans was a coup that came at a time of heightened tensions over North Korea's nuclear program.
The meeting also appeared aimed at dispelling persistent questions about the health of the authoritarian North Korean leader, who was said to be suffering from chronic diabetes and heart disease before the reported stroke.
Kim smiled broadly for a photo standing next to a towering Clinton. He was markedly thinner than a year ago, with his graying hair cropped short. The once-pudgy 67-year-old, who for decades had a noticeable pot belly, wore a khaki jumpsuit and appeared frail and diminutive in a group shot seated next to a robust Clinton.
North Korea accused Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, both of former Vice President Al Gore's Current TV media venture, of sneaking into the country illegally.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged North Korea last month to grant them amnesty, saying they were remorseful and their families were anguished by their detention.
The journalists' release followed weeks of quiet negotiations between the State Department and the North Korean mission to the United Nations, said Daniel Sneider, associate director of research at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
Clinton "didn't go to negotiate this, he went to reap the fruits of the negotiation," Sneider said.
Pardoning Ling and Lee and having Clinton serving as their emissary served both North Korea's need to continue maintaining that the two women had committed a crime and the Obama administration's desire not to expend diplomatic capital winning their freedom, Sneider said.
"Nobody wanted this to be a distraction from the more substantially difficult issues we have with North Korea," he said. "There was a desire by the administration to resolve this quietly and from the very beginning they didn't allow it to become a huge public issue."
The families of Ling and Lee said they were "overjoyed" by the pardon.
"We are so grateful to our government: President Obama, Secretary Clinton and the U.S. State Department for their dedication to and hard work on behalf of American citizens," the families said in a statement. "We especially want to thank President Bill Clinton for taking on such an arduous mission and Vice President Al Gore for his tireless efforts to bring Laura and Euna home.
"We are counting the seconds to hold Laura and Euna in our arms," the statement said.
Lee, a South Korean-born U.S. citizen, is the mother of a 4-year-old. Ling, a California native, is the younger sister of Lisa Ling, a correspondent for CNN as well as "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and "National Geographic Explorer."
They were arrested as they reported about the trafficking of women. It's unclear if they strayed into the North or were grabbed by aggressive border guards who crossed into China but recent statements suggested they admitted to deliberately crossing into the country.
The Committee to Protect Journalists also welcomed their release.
North Korean state media said Clinton and Kim held wide-ranging talks, adding that Clinton "courteously" conveyed a verbal message from Obama.
In Washington, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs denied Clinton went with a message from Obama. "That's not true," he told reporters.
"While this solely private mission to secure the release of two Americans is on the ground, we will have no comment" until the mission is complete, Gibbs said in a statement. "We do not want to jeopardize the success of former President Clinton's mission."
Clinton was accompanied by John Podesta, his one-time White House chief of staff, who also is an informal adviser to Obama.
Clinton was accorded honors typically reserved for heads of state. Senior officials, led by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan, who also serves as the regime's chief nuclear negotiator, met his private unmarked plane as it arrived Tuesday morning.
Video from the APTN television news agency showed Clinton exchanging warm handshakes with officials and accepting a bouquet of flowers from a schoolgirl.
Kim later hosted a banquet for Clinton at the state guesthouse, Radio Pyongyang and the Korean Central Broadcasting Station reported. The VIPs and Kim posed for a group shot in front of the same garish mural depicting a stormy seaside landscape that Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, posed for during her historic visit to Pyongyang in 2000.
But not long ago, North Korea's Foreign Ministry had harsh words for his wife, describing her as "a funny lady" who sometimes "looks like a primary schoolgirl and sometimes a pensioner going shopping."
In the past, envoys have been dispatched to Pyongyang to secure the release of Americans. In the 1990s, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a congressman at the time, went twice on similar missions: in 1994 to arrange the freedom of a U.S. pilot whose helicopter strayed into North Korean airspace and again two years later to fetch an American detained for three months on spying charges.
Richardson, Clinton and Gore, Clinton's vice president, had all been named as possible envoys to bring back Lee and Ling. However, the decision to send Clinton was kept quiet, revealed only when he turned up Tuesday in Pyongyang.
The trip was reminiscent of one 15 years ago by former President Jimmy Carter when Clinton was in office, also at a time of tensions over North Korea's nuclear program.
Carter's visit -- he met with Kim Jong Il's father, the late Kim Il Sung -- helped thaw the deep freeze in relations with the Korean War foe and paved the way for discussions on nuclear disarmament. Clinton later sent Albright to Pyongyang for talks with Kim in a high point in the often rocky relations with North Korea.
Discussions about normalizing ties went dead when George W. Bush took office in 2001 with a hard-line policy on Pyongyang. The Obama administration has expressed a willingness to hold bilateral talks -- but only within the framework of the six-nation disarmament talks in place since 2003.
North Korea announced earlier this year it was abandoning the talks involving the two Koreas, Japan, Russia, China and the U.S. The regime also launched a long-range rocket, conducted a nuclear test, test-fired a barrage of ballistic missiles and restarted its atomic program in defiance of international criticism and the U.N. Security Council.
Last month, the U.S. Navy tailed a North Korean cargo ship as it sailed south suspected of carrying cargo banned under a U.N. resolution on board until the vessel turned around and returned to port.
Kim inherited leadership of impoverished North Korea upon his father's death in 1994, 20 years after being anointed the heir apparent. Kim has not publicly named his successor but is believed to be grooming his third son, 26-year-old Jong Un, to take over.
___
Associated Press writers Anne Gearan in Washington, Samantha Young in Sacramento, Calif., Lisa Leff in San Francisco and AP researcher Jasmine Zhao in Beijing contributed to this report.
"Journalists of your generation," said British playwright Tom Stoppard yesterday to a roomful of students gathered at the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change, "very often and quite rightly you are considering things you'd like to change in the world--if possible, by Tuesday. You could hardly do worse than write a play about them. I've always felt that journalism, and I include very definitely television journalism, has far more immediate leverage."
Yesterday a call to action by a Tony and Academy-award-winning playwright. Today, our attention here in Austria turned to North Korea to watch the drama of the pardoning of two television journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been sentenced to 12 years at hard labor for entering North Korea illegally.
Laura and Euna were fortunate--not just for being released, but for being alive, a fact also borne home today with the broadcast of the confession to the kidnapping, rape and murder of Atwar Bahjat, a presenter on Al-Arabiya television. In an Iraqi security video that aired on Al-Arabiya, Yasser al-Takhi told interrogators that he, his two brothers and a third man kidnapped Bahjat's news team and drove them to a side street where he raped and shot Bahjat, while his two brothers killed cameraman Adnan Abdallah and sound engineer Khaled Mohsen.
In Stoppard's conversation here in Salzburg yesterday afternoon with students from Uganda and the UK, China, Chile and the United States, he essentially called journalism a "lever" to "change the world." But what is it that needs to be moved with that lever?
We are what needs to be moved--out of our apathy or ignorance of the essential role journalists play in keeping us informed and in protecting our freedoms.
This year already, 19 individuals have been killed around the world because of their work as journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Those 19 either died in the line of duty or were deliberately targeted for assassination because of their reporting or their affiliation with a news organization. Another 15, according to CPJ, died under suspicious circumstances.
Laura and Euna didn't make that list, and neither did Roxana Saberi, an American journalist who lived in Iran since 2003 and reported for several news organizations, including NPR. Not quite three months ago she was released from an Iranian prison. She had been convicted on spying charges in a one-day trial closed to the public and been sentenced to eight years in prison.
Those here at the Salzburg Academy who have come from places such as Colombia and Mexico, Turkey and Jordan know well that we need to value journalists--and help protect them and all the platforms on which their reporting appears. If we, students and adults alike, want to change the world, we need our levers: journalists such as Roxana and Euna and Laura and Atwar. Stoppard would agree.
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Photo of Tom Stoppard taken by Salzburg Academy student Juanita Ceballos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Argentina
It's becoming increasingly clear that Bill Clinton can't function without Hillary Clinton. Nor can Hillary Clinton function without Bill Clinton.
When Barack Obama signed up Hillary for Secretary of State, he knew that he was getting a twofer. Now that Bill has successfully completed his North Korea mission, he is sure to play an increasingly prominent role in foreign affairs.
The trick for Hillary will be to use him to solidify rather than undermine her position as Secretary of State. Her husband solved a thorny problem in helping to liberate two American journalists who either strayed into North Korean territory or were seized in China by border guards. The episode earns him some plaudits, allowing him to burnish his reputation as well as his wife's.
So far, so good. But will Obama use Bill as the magic bullet in the future to deflect, or solve, crises? Or will he find that Bill becomes a freelancer, exceeding his mandate? It will be interesting to learn, for example, if Clinton confined himself to his mandate of extricating the two women, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, from the North Korean Gulag or whether he broached the subject of nuclear weapons in meeting with Kim Jong Il.
At a minimum, he did accomplish something else -- a fresh photo of the frail dear leader, sitting next to a former president, the kind of homage and fealty that the North Koreans crave. For make no mistake: Clinton was paying court to Kim. Conservative will remonstrate that Clinton and, by extension, Obama were extending feckless apologies that will only prompt the North Korean despot to engage in further shenanigans.
For Obama, however, the hostage crisis -- which is what it really was -- will have to prompt him to further mull over the use of Bill Clinton as an informal representative. For Hillary, there is only an upside; as long as the White House assents, she can tap Bill as her troubleshooter of troubleshooters. She has a whole battery of them, after all, beginning with Richard Holbrooke, who is supposed to pacify Afghanistan and Pakistan.
For now, Bill has emerged in a new incarnation -- as a statesman. It's a role that he tried to play as president, but always slipped from his grasp, whether it was the refusal of the Palestinians to reach a lasting peace with the Israelis or his own sexual peccadilloes or his pardoning of Marc Rich. Now both Bill and Hillary have left behind politics to become emissaries to the world and begin their latest comeback together.
When I watch the news on network and cable television channels the stories about business are overwhelmingly focused on Fortune 500 firms and Wall Street. Yet, when the commercials come on, they are directed to the general public and small business owners, not Fortune 500 executives. Commercials targeted at small business owners are becoming more common. Does the phrase, "I don't have a small business, I have a fast business," sound familiar? It seems advertisers on major television networks have figured out something news producers haven't. The majority of American television viewers work for small businesses, not big businesses.
I have seen countless stories on television covering the recession, the economy and government programs designed to rescue our nation's failing economy. I do not recall ever seeing a single story that reported over 50 percent of the private sector workforce is employed by small businesses. I have never seen a story that reported over 50 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is created by small businesses, and that those firms are responsible for over 97 percent of all net new jobs in America.
It is rare to see stories on small business issues in major newspapers. It is extremely rare to see a story about small business issues on the front page of a major newspaper. One international journalist told me, "if you want to put your editor to sleep, pitch a story about small business issues."
The fact that small businesses have been shortchanged in the national media could even be a contributing factor in the failure of federal government economic stimulus plans to focus attention on small businesses.
Of the approximately $2.8 trillion that has been spent to stimulate the national economy, to date, less than 1 percent has been specifically directed to small businesses. President Barack Obama has promised to create up to 4.1 million jobs, and yet the small businesses that create over 97 percent of all net new jobs have been virtually ignored by federal economic stimulus plans. The funds that have been allocated specifically to small businesses seem to have been done more as a public relations tactic than an attempt to genuinely create jobs and boost our nation's failing economy.
To put things into perspective, President Obama's ARC loan program would give qualifying small businesses interest free $35,000 loans. Sounds great until you read the very, very fine print and discover that the program is caped at $255 million, which is roughly one tenth of one percent (0.1 percent) of the overall stimulus funds. The $25 billion JPMorgan Chase received from the federal government was more than all 27 million American small businesses combined. Maybe the fact that Goldman Sacks just reported $3.44 billion in quarterly profits while national unemployment heads to 10 percent might be a clue to President Obama that more stimulus funds should have been allocated to small businesses.
Anyone who has ever read anything I have written knows that my mission in life is to stop the federal government from giving over $100 billion a year in small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms and thousands of other large businesses around the world. An end to that problem would direct more money back into the middle class economy than any economic stimulus plan that has been proposed by anyone in Washington to date.
My fantasy is to have just one mainstream journalist ask President Obama why his Administration is giving billions of dollars a month in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms, or why less than 1 percent of the economic stimulus funds have been allocated to small businesses.
Producers for network and cable television stations, and editors for major newspapers and magazines should consider the impact it could have on their bottom line if they were to focus more on the 27 million small businesses where most of their viewers and readers are employed. What would be the impact on our national economy if the mainstream media began to question the logic of giving billions of dollars in federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms? Or allocating less than 1 percent of the economic stimulus funds to the firms that are responsible for 50 percent of the GDP and over 97 percent of all net new jobs?
One question in a White House press conference, one front-page newspaper story, or one investigative report on national television could have a dramatic impact on if and when the U.S. economy fully recovers. Sounds like big news to me.
In my morning post on the MSNBC-Fox-GE controversy, I noted that all we learned last night is that Keith Olbermann said he wasn't "party to any deal" -- something the New York Times reported in its original story. To my mind, whether Olbermann was or was not a party to a deal is far less important than the behavior of General Electric and MSNBC executives. Nonetheless, because this is such a destructive and precedent-setting example of corporate manipulation of news content, it's important to check out these new posts by Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher after Olbermann just released a statement today.
It seems Olbermann is now saying two mutually exclusive things: Last night, he said he was not part of any deal, but today he tells Glenn that everything Glenn has reported is completely accurate. And since Glenn has reported exactly the opposite -- that, in fact, Olbermann was part of some sort of deal -- there doesn't seem to be a way for both of Olbermann's statements to be true.
So, yes, as Jane says, "There will be a cloud over Olbermann's credibility until he clarifies what really happened."
ADDENDUM: Some readers may believe this story is not important -- they may believe that we should just forget about this whole sordid affair simply because Olbermann does great work on behalf of progressive causes like ending the war in Iraq and enacting a universal health care system. My response is simple: We can all agree on the quality of Olbermann's work, while disagreeing on the significance of this particular story -- and additionally, there's no contradiction in simultaneously believing that Olbermann does great work and that this is an important story. Many of us -- and especially many of us working in independent media -- believe that corporate control of the media is a crucial issue that tends to distort and impact all other issues (and especially when it involves as huge and as economically significant company as General Electric).
As an MSNBC and Olbermann fan, I'm bummed to see Olbermann caught up in this situation -- but I'm not surprised. The problem of corporate control of the media is so big and powerful, there's no way Olbermann could avoid it, despite his vehement protests to the contrary last night. Indeed, his new statement today seems to confirm that very reality.
And so I'll just conclude by saying this: You may like Keith Olbermann (as I do), but if your love of Keith Olbermann makes you refuse to defend/demand respect for independent journalism, then you ought to consider how fucked up your value system really is. Loyalty to an individual over loyalty to principles is the definition of cultism. MSNBC partisans insisting that we should ignore General Electric's manipulation of the news out of deference to Keith Olbermann's supposedly infallible awesomeness are at best being intellectually dishonest, and at worst endorsing in precisely the kind of propagandistic pro-censorship sycophancy that is at the heart of this scandal.
Want an extra $1,000? Who doesn't? Just put on your economic thinking cap and read about an intriguing contest.
If the recession has taught us anything, it's that most economists are clunkers. Not only did the overwhelming majority of them miss the depth of the economic downturn -- I'd guess at 99% -- but many, would you believe, thought the idea last year of an impending recession was nonsensical.
Given this ineptness, you have to wonder whether the economic fraternity is seriously blundering again with its current consensus economic forecast, which calls for the recession to be absolute history by year end. Such an outlook, by the way, is heartily endorsed by Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner and even New York University's economic doomsayer, Nouriel Roubini.
Granted, there's talk about a double-dip recession -- notably, the current one will end soon and another will kick off in mid-to-late 2010 or in early 2011 -- but that's basically a minority view at this juncture.
You may well think, justifiably so, that you can probably do a better job of predicting the economy than the economists can and you may be right. But are you ready to prove it and maybe win $1,000 doing it?
If so, here's your chance. Just turn on your computer and go to TheTurnaroundBlogger.com. website, and alert the world to your economic expectations.
The site and the contest are a brainchild of Renee Fellman, a Pacific Northwest turnaround specialist who has been helping troubled businesses return to profitability for nearly 25 years.
To win, you must correctly answer two questions: In which quarter will the GDP increase by 2% or more from the prior quarter? In which month will the unemployment rate be the same or exceed the same month of the prior year?
The winner will receive $1,000 from Fellman's Portland, Ore. firm, Renee Fellman & Associates. The earliest entry is the winner. If there are any ties, the next five winners will each receive $150. The limit is one entry per person per month and the contest will end when one of the two criteria of the contest becomes a reality.
No one, of course, knows the answers. It's strictly guesswork. Fellman, obviously seeking to promote her company's business and has concocted an imaginative way to do it, offers her own thoughts on the two questions. Her answers suggest she also expects the recession to end in the fourth quarter, but, alas, she looks for unemployment to be an economic drag for at least another two years.
Her forecasts: The GDP will increase by 2% from the prior quarter in the fourth quarter of 2009. On the other hand, she doesn't think the monthly employment rate will equal or top the same month of the prior year until December of 2011.
One of the country's premier market strategists, Bill Rhodes, the skipper of Boston-based Rhodes Analytics, who doles out advice to institutional investors, thinks we could see a quarter-to-quarter 2% jump in GDP as early as the current quarter. But Rhodes, a former investment strategist at Merrill Lynch, also thinks new job creations will lag the recovery. He doesn't think the monthly employment rate will equal or top year-earlier numbers until April 2010 at the earliest.
The word on the economic recovery from San Francisco money manager Gary Wollin is wait till next year. He doesn't expect a GDP sprint of 2% or more from the previous quarter until the second quarter of 2010. Around the same time, he sees a peppier employment picture, with the rate in May 2010 topping the year-earlier rate.
In any event, since it doesn't cost anything but some time to enter the contest. It's an effort worth thinking about. Besides, how often do you get the opportunity to pick up a G note for simply stretching your economic noodle? Who knows? I may enter the contest as well.
Legislation that Gov. Pat Quinn signed into law today asks state environmental officials to find ways to reduce trace elements of painkillers, bug spray, sex hormones and other man-made products that show up in water quality tests.
Originally published on Youthradio.org, the premier source for youth generated news throughout the globe.
By: William A. Nelligan
It has now been a little over a week since your resignation as governor of Alaska, and thankfully you haven't made many recent headlines. It seems America has been too busy discussing race relations, health care, and the economy to notice you. How refreshing!
As a 17-year-old American who has to live in this country for probably the next 80-90 years, I formally request that you pack your bags and swim across to Russia. After all, it must be close enough if you can see it from your house. I have never seen, nor have I ever heard of, a politician less qualified and less engaged than you are, and I want you to leave politics for good before you start giving the impression to other politicians that somehow these deficiencies are acceptable.
It's not so much that you and I see two different Americas, or that we just have different perceptions of the same core American ideals. It's that you fundamentally misunderstand America's ideals. Every time you talk about freedom, or the future, or "the wisdom of the people," I only have one question: what the hell are you trying to say?
One of the most absurd "arguments" you made in your farewell address was that the "wisdom of the people" can solve our most complex problems. The day that the "wisdom of the people," and I assume you are referring to white, Anglo-Saxon, gun-owning Republican people, solves health care, education, or really any part of domestic or foreign policy is the day I move to your state, start a gun shop, hunt caribou, and build homemade artillery shells to send to the minutemen on the US-Mexico border. You're right in asserting that government can't make us happy, just like it can't tell women what they can and can't talk to their doctors about, and can't tell gays and lesbians what kind of love is moral. However, you are wrong in saying that government can't cure the sick and insure their families; that it can't educate our children and reform our adults; or that it can't generate employment for those who need it and lift those who don't have it out of poverty. Government has done all of those things for a very long time, and will continue to do them for even longer.
We have very complex problems in America, problems that require complex solutions and intelligent leaders. I don't want to grow up in this nation knowing that my destiny - and my country's future - has been determined by a woman more concerned with maxing out the Republic National Committee's wardrobe budget than tackling the tough issues.
It gives me some hope that you've all but disappeared from even the cable news networks this past week, but I am still wary. I'm wary that when the "birthers" that replaced your news cycle finally implode into a racist, xenophobic spitball of self-righteousness, you might feel it appropriate to make more of a fool out of your party and your country by re-entering the national spotlight.
I have had to grow up in this country, the land Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy, under George W. Bush. A man who demonizes being smart and educated as "elitist," and who somehow manages to make being uninformed and unengaged into something honorable. I'm lucky enough now to have a President who does none of those things, and quite frankly I don't want to turn back the clock.
Youth Radio/Youth Media International (YMI) is youth-driven converged media production company that delivers the best youth news, culture and undiscovered talent to a cross section of audiences. To read more youth news from around the globe and explore high quality audio and video features, visit Youthradio.org
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) and his two major senate challengers in 2010, Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) and Rep Joe Sestak (D-Penn.), all hammered away at each other on Tuesday while speaking to Chris Matthews, a Pennsylvania native.
Toomey, the Republican challenger, repeatedly blasted Specter as a political opportunist with no core ideals. Toomey alleged that "the only principle that's important to Arlen Specter is his own reelection," seizing on Specter's recent switch to the Democratic party after 28 years as a Republican senator.
"This is a guy who has made a career out of being on both sides of as many issues as he can," said Toomey.
Toomey described himself as politically "in the center-right," and "a supporter of limited government, less government spending, ending the bailouts, lower taxes, free enterprise." He also said he was "pro-life" and believed states should be allowed to outlaw abortion. He dismissed the "birther" viewpoint.
Specter's sights were set on the Democratic primary, as he focused his attacks on Sestak. Specter slammed Sestak's voting record, saying "he's missed 105 votes" and had the "worst record" of any Pennsylvania Congressman. In a series of tweets posted hours before his appearance on Hardball, Specter called into question Sestak's competence, his work ethic and his integrity.
But Specter also said of Sestak: "I think he's a fine Congressman and ought to stay in the House of Representatives," before defending his own legislative record on jobs, health care, education and the environment.
Grilled on his decision to switch parties, Specter responded that he believed the Republican party had become too ideologically intense and for him. "[My] effort to bring moderation to the Republican party was not successful," he said, adding "I feel very comfortable as a Democrat."
Specter touted his endorsements from President Obama and Vice President Biden, and admitted that his support for Republicans McCain and Palin in 2008 was a political decision, and not one based on conviction: "When you're in a party and you work for a party and you're trying to work within the structure to moderate the party, I think that's the correct thing to do," he said.
Sestak, who officially announced Tuesday that he will challenge Specter in the Democratic primary next year, dismissed Specter's allegations. "I don't know" what he's talking about, said Sestak, "and I really don't." Sestak went on to defend his record, particularly with middle-income Pennsylvanians and had harsh words for top leaders in Washington.
"Washington never kept the middle-class, the working families in mind," said Sestak. "That's why I'm running."
A recent poll involving a potential battle between Specter and Toomey showed the two at a statistical dead heat. Another poll conducted late in May found Specter comfortably leading Sestak in a potential primary.
Brokers love wrap accounts (also called "managed accounts"). They are accounts managed by private fund managers. The pitch is that you get access to the "best" managers who normally would not deal with smaller accounts. You are charged a flat fee which averages around 1.17% a year, plus the cost of the underlying funds. Some of the discount brokers offer reduced fees.
When you add the cost of the underlying funds to the mix, the total costs can be north of 2%.
These accounts are popular with brokers because they generate predictable fees for relatively little work. Clients like them because they believe they are getting "superior" fund managers at a fixed cost.
Wrap accounts never made any sense to me. If you want a managed account, try Vanguard's Target Retirement Funds. The underlying funds are all index funds. The expense ratio is a puny 0.19. Historically, these funds have outperformed comparable portfolios of actively managed funds (like those in wrap accounts), largely due to the significant difference in expenses.
Target retirement funds rebalance your portfolio over time to become more conservative as you age.
Lower costs. Better performance. It seems like a no-brainer to me.
Yet over $1.5 trillion is invested in wrap accounts.
The securities industry doesn't know much about investing, but they are great at sales!
I explore wrap accounts in this week's video.
The views set forth in this blog are the opinions of the author alone and may not represent the views of any firm or entity with whom he is affiliated. The data, information, and content on this blog are for information, education, and non-commercial purposes only. Returns from index funds do not represent the performance of any investment advisory firm. The information on this blog does not involve the rendering of personalized investment advice and is limited to the dissemination of opinions on investing. No reader should construe these opinions as an offer of advisory services. Readers who require investment advice should retain the services of a competent investment professional. The information on this blog is not an offer to buy or sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy or sell any securities or class of securities mentioned herein.
The ranking member of the Committee on Oversight & Government Reform, Darrell Issa, is taking issue with the invective-spouting, political superstar from Chicago known as Rahm Emanuel.
What's an organization whose core mission is to create a false impression supposed to do when its hired agents add an additional, unauthorized layer of falsity to the scheme? That appears to be what tripped up the coal-industry front group, ACCCE, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. (If you are an energy insider, you may already have noticed the first layer of deception -- ACCCE as an acronym is clearly a rip-off from ACEEE, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, the country's premier energy-efficiency think tank. ACCCE, however, is actually funded by the coal industry; its logo features a cute lump of coal with an electric plug stuck into it -- and no pesky emissions showing in between.)
ACCCE was fighting to kill the House climate legislation. It retained Washington's premier creator of misleading "astro-turf" campaigns, Bonner & Associates, to do what Bonner does so well -- generate an impression that Main Street America is violently against whatever legislation Bonner's clients don't like. Bonner makes no bones about the fact that it can create the impression of a groundswell regardless of the facts -- all that is required is enough of a retainer to pay its typically "temporary" employees to get on the phone and get enough local influentials and organizations to sign the letters that Bonner has written for its clients. Bonner firmly believes that if you spend enough hours on the phone, you can get enough organizations signed up for whatever position you have been hired to flack.
But apparently the "groundswell" that Bonner promised to generate against clean energy legislation wasn't quite strong enough, so Bonner's staff guy on the project resorted to forgery. He simply made up the names of officers at a dozen local organizations, copied their letterhead from the web, and sent letters to three members of Congress urging them to vote against the House climate bill.
When Bonner discovered the forgery (days before the House cast its vote), it did tell ACCCE "whoops, Houston, we have a problem here." It also fired the staff guy who had forged the letters. But neither Bonner nor ACCCE had the heart to tell the three members of Congress, Pennsylvania Reps. Kathy Dahlkemper and Chris Carney, and Virginia Congressman Tom Perriello, that it had generated fraudulent grassroots letters to them. Nor did ACCCE tell the organizations whose signatures had been forged about the misrepresentation. (Even today, ACCCE has refused to provide a complete list of the forgeries. We know in the case of Perriello that the local chapter of the NAACP and Creciendo Juntos were at least two of the forgeries.) This all reeks of what the Nixon administration used to call "plausible deniability."
Perriello ignored the fake advice and voted for the bill. Carney and Dahlkemper voted against it.
ACCCE now says it is "outraged" by the deception. But when it learned about it, days before the House vote, it kept mum and allowed members of Congress to cast their votes on the basis of false information provided on its nickel. And ACCCE knew how Bonner operated -- the firm was first exposed back in 1997.
But you really have to wonder, when this is the relatively routine stock-in-trade of firms like Bonner, why members of Congress pay any attention -- they may not know that such letters are forged, but they're far too smart not to know how phony the "groundswell" of public opinion they allege to represent is. Maybe it's time to get serious about crime -- on K Street.
I introduced him in San Francisco at the Civil Justice Foundation last week as a man who could change the direction of health insurance reform in America. Watch or read the full speech by former CIGNA executive Wendell Potter to see why, and hear about his decision to go public and what the stakes are for health care reform in America.
Having spent a couple of days with Wendell, I can say that he is a linchpin in the new Democratic strategy to show the middle class that health insurance reform will help them. The White House needs to embrace Potter, though, and answer his call to come to Los Angeles next week for the first urban Remote Area Medical clinic, a massive volunteer effort to care for the uninsured and underinsured. No doubt thousands will be turned away from the free medical care offered at the Inglewood Forum, where the Los Angeles Lakers used to play. The White House needs to send a representative to offer those patients a hand and make the case of the president's plan.
The local coverage of Potter's San Francisco speech -- see ABC and CBS --shows what a potent force for change Potter's testimony is and how health insurers have no good answer to him. Will the White House join Wendell? Such strategic decisions at this moment will make all the difference for health insurance reform in America when Congress returns after Labor Day.
Franklin Roosevelt and John F Kennedy uttered the words that would come to define their Presidencies ("New Deal" and "New Frontier") in their acceptance speeches at the Democratic National Conventions.
FDR said simply that he would offer a new deal to the American people. By that he meant that the cards had been stacked unfairly, and that he was going to reshuffle the deck in favor of what was called in the 1930s "the common man". It is not clear whether he was consciously self-labeling his policy program "the New Deal", or whether that moniker arose gradually from his use of that phrase.
JFK was more deliberate, explicit and self-conscious. The New Frontier, he said, "was not a set of promises; it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them". He explained in his speech that the United States, and the world, stood on the precipice of a New Frontier, a world fraught with great danger in the Cold War standoff between two nuclear-armed superpowers, and of great hope with the opening of space, the ending of colonialism and the opportunity for the superpowers to lift up the Third World.
FDR reshuffled the deck. JFK reached for the stars from a strong platform.
Barack Obama campaigned on change, and used his acceptance speech at the convention to emphasize it. More recently, he has referred to rebuilding the decayed foundation of this country, and doing so in a manner that is relevant for the 21st century...i.e, the New Foundation. "Change" after all is only a process; a New Foundation is the result all that change is about. As President, it is not only fitting, but proper for his theme to be restated as the end result, not a process.
The "New Foundation" is, I submit, the theme of the Obama Presidency.
President Obama took office in a country with a decaying physical infrastructure--levies breeching, bridges collapsing, roads requiring repair, an outdated mass transport system, school buildings crumbling. It was allowed to decay because of ideology and politics: in order to provide taxcuts for the wealthy, and not to make deficits even worse, all these investments were delayed or ignored, and the people who needed them did not have political clout.
This President also took office in a country with a decaying human infrastructure--students falling behind world standards in math and science, inadequate healthcare access, public health systems neglected, high-wage jobs being shipped offshore, embezzlers sapping billions in savings from thousands and thousands of people. Again, the reason was ideology: taxcuts for the wealthy took precedence, and enforcing regulations to the detriment of the wealthy was taboo.
Mr. Obama also inherited a country with a decayed financial and economic system-- banks collapsing, an auto industry disintegrating, credit and private consumption paralyzed, burgeoning unemployment, home foreclosures, retailers closing their doors, borrowers defaulting on loans , rising national debt and gaping deficits, increasing dependency on mideast oil, an environment being despoiled. Again, ideology with a heavy dose of corruption were the key culprits.
This President also found a country with a decaying moral integrity--increasingly disliked and distrusted by the rest of the world, extolling wealth accumulation in the hands of the few, torturing, illegally wiretapping, ignoring mining and environmental regulations, censoring and altering scientific information, using signing statements as an excuse not to enforce or execute laws faithfully, race-baiting and immigrant bashing. Once more, ideology, in this case coupled with arrogance and rank stupidity, was to blame.
None of this needed to have happened. Each could have been prevented, or addressed in a timely manner so that rigor mortis would not have set in. But, it did. The only benefit of decay and disintegration of the old is that it provides space not only to rebuild the foundation, but to transform it, so that it fits the requirements of the modern world, i.e., the New Foundation.
President Obama's policies are designed to create that New Foundation, in every area from education to healthcare, from energy to the economy, and from the rule of law to a new partnership with countries around the world.
It is not surprising that what FDR called the ""forces of reaction" have joined to block the New Foundation, just as they did in the 1930s to block the New Deal and again in the 1960s to stop the New Frontier. "The purpose of conservatism," said William F. Buckley, Jr., that movement's intellectual "is to stand athwart history".
Those who benefit from the old order, from the imams in Iran to the gay-haters in churches, from the Taliban to the bank bonus-babies, always fight to the death to protect it, even if it is a smaller piece of a decaying pie, because it is the only pie they know. That is why the fight is partially generational, and why the millennials, those born after 1980, who experience and see the world so much differently, must not be silent or cowed into submission by lies, innuendo and fear. They, after all, will inherit it.
If President Obama is to build the New Foundation, he will have to use new political techniques to do it. That is the subject of another article. Otherwise, the forces of reaction will "win", but it will be a pyrrhic victory since the existing infrastructures will rot so badly that they will collapse, and the country along with it.
The change required to create the New Foundation is painful, but so is the status quo.
Dream Theater sounds like something Jim Henson created in the 1980s, but as we all know, it's actually the name of a pretty killer prog-metal band from, well, the 1980s (and 90's and today damn it!).
Altogether, the band's sold over two million albums in the United States, a boatload more overseas, and they have absolutely no intention of stopping the pyrotechnics anytime soon. As they hit the road for their tenth album, I had an irreverent (and irrelevant) chat with drummer Mike Portnoy recently on the state of the band and rock as we know it.
How is this album different than all other Dream Theater albums? This album has songs called "A Nightmare To Remember," "A Rite Of Passage," "Wither," "The Shattered Fortress," "The Best Of Times" and "The Count Of Tuscany." None of our previous albums have songs with those names.
Why is this night different than all other nights? (Ma-neesh-tana-halila-hazed?) Because tonight we eat unleavened bread (or something like that...)
Speaking of Passover only not really, how has your fan base changed over the years? Well, the core of our fans have always been a combination of musicians, metal fans and prog fans. I don't think that's ever changed for us. We've never been the "flavor of the month" (or year or decade for that matter), so our fans tend to stick with us for the long haul. We still see a lot of the same faces that have been following us on tour for almost 20 years except now they are starting to bring their kids. On that note, we do see a lot of young kids just now only discovering DT, which is refreshing as wel.
What do you think of the state of rock? Well the state of the "music industry" is at its most fragile that it's ever been since rock music became corporate business 50 years ago and in that respect, I'm happy to see a lot of artists are finally "getting their music back" (by default) after been getting it stuck to them by unfair record company deals for all these years.
As far as the state of "rock," it's actually pretty sad actually. When the new Dream Theater CD entered the Billboard Top 10 this summer, we were the only "rock" act in the top 10. We were surrounded by pop acts (Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana), hip hop acts (Black Eyed Peas, Eminem) and soundtracks (Transformers). We were the only thing slightly resembling a rock "band" on the chart. That's pretty lame actually.
To take it one step further, I do think the state of "progressive rock" is stronger and more vital than it has been since its heyday in the early 70's. In addition to what DT has been doing now for over 20 years, there are bands as diverse as The Mars Volta, Muse, Mastodon, Opeth, Radiohead, Coheed & Cambria and Tool that are pushing the envelope with long songs, instrumental passages and daring, experimental arrangements and production that critics are finally actually applauding rather than criticizing.
Amen. How do you guys determine a set list on any given night? That is something that I personally spend a ridiculous amount of time and energy determining. I will send out a master song list to the band and crew to learn/program at the start of the tour with a few songs I've picked from each album...I then change up the sets each night depending on the city. I do a tremendous amount of research for every single show....looking at what was played in that particular city the last two or three times through the years and I will write a set that hopefully doesn't repeat anything to make each time a fan sees a show a unique experience. I also take into account if we are playing two or three shows within driving distance of each other, to make those shows different from each other as well.
It's a ridiculous, obsessive compulsive process that I don't think anybody else in this business does for their fans, but somehow I make myself insane doing it. It's like trying to solve the ultimate puzzle each and every day!
Speaking of which, how bad was that Oliver Stone movie Any Given Sunday? Jeez. It wasn't that bad. In fact, it's probably the last film of his that I liked or cared about. He lost me with Alexander and W., World Trade Center was OK...but he hasn't done anything recently that equals the period of Platoon, Talk Radio, Natural Born Killers, The Doors and JFK.
Stone aside, what do you make of the American Idol phenomenon? Should there be a genre-bending night on the show that incorporates you guys? I hate to admit it, but I watched every episode of the last two seasons! I think America got it right with David Cook and I was very happy to see his great talent recognized and appreciated, but this last season was very disappointing. Although Kris Allen has a great voice, he was just too "safe" (like last season's David Archuleta, who I thought would win, but was pleasantly surprised to see America give it up to D.C. instead). I was really hoping for Adam Lambert to pull it off as D.C. did. Adam's voice is just incredible. He is a true star and deserves every bit of fame I hope he gets-he is a truly gifted vocalist -- the likes of which we don't often see in this business (ala Freddie Mercury, Jeff Buckley, Matthew Bellamy, etc.).
Who is the best act you've ever seen live? From a production standpoint, maybe Roger Waters. From a musical standpoint, I'd say Frank Zappa -- or even Dweezil's Zappa Plays Zappa (OK -- self-serving Progressive Nation tour plug!) Both Frank and Dweezil surrounded themselves with musicians of the utmost highest caliber, playing some of the most complex and diverse music ever written....and to have Zappa Plays Zappa currently opening for Dream Theater this summer is an absolute honor and personal dream for me.
Getting back to DT, because that's why you're talking to me, do you guys still all get along with each other after all these years? Well, as much as I'd like to give a clever answer, the truth is we get along way better now than we did throughout any period during the 90's. Maybe we're mellowing with age. Maybe we just understand and accept each other's quirks and personalities better. Maybe we all know each other's roles in the band and let it flow rather than fight it. Whatever the case, the last decade has been pretty smooth for the most part.
By its inaction before this month's recess, Congress has actually done everyone a big favor. The politicians and electorate can read the draft legislation that has come out of the various committees. No one can complain that 31 days this month is not long enough to do this, or at least do it by reading detailed summaries provided on various websites. No doubt we will also hear much about the subject in our home states and districts by way of, for example, speeches, town-hall gatherings, and presentations at county and state fairs. We also know we will be bombarded by ads, media pieces, blogs, pundits and political types galore staking out positions. Yet if the democratic process works here, then those we put into office know that any lemons in current bills need to be turned into lemonade. We demand no less. Concomitantly, we have been given some breathing room ourselves -- to go back to the basics and ask, why do we need health care reform?
Without our health, we aren't much good to anyone -- to families, communities, the workforce, and ourselves. Others, including me, have said health care should be a right, or viewed at least like a service, i.e., akin to the heat that keeps us warm at night, or the municipal transportation that takes us to work. To be sure, we get our health from providers of healthcare. And all we want is to be cared for at a price that we can all afford. But if we cannot afford and access our doctors and nurses, then the healthcare system fails us.
While the debate about affordability and accessibility has been vigorous, certainly contentious, and, in the end, confusing, the debate and the message has morphed into reforming health care insurance coverage -- so that we all have it in order to go to our doctor or to the local hospital, and then for them to be paid a reasonable charge for their services. By necessity, reforming health care insurance now has become the sine qua non for reforming health care in our country.
As a measure of this, when main street America speaks of reform, it speaks not only of being able to afford a doctor of its own choosing and the hospital where we may go for care, but other items our personal experiences allow us to understand and appreciate. Those of us who have coverage don't want it to change nor do we want our premiums and care to reflect that for every dollar we spend or are charged, a certain percentage is intended to cover the costs of those without insurance or care. If this is so, we should all know about it, and now. We don't want insurance (including Medicare) which we have to be taken away as a quid pro quo for reform. We also don't want to be denied health care insurance coverage because of a pre-existing condition; after we pay a premium and have been treated, we don't want an insurer to deny us coverage; nor to have a "cap" placed on coverage. And we all certainly understand that if we lose a job, we don't want to lose insurance coverage as well. We want such coverage from whatever source wherever we go, regardless of employment or state of our residence. We also want premiums to be fair. If that takes the insertion of a public option into any legislation to steer competition into lowering costs, and keeping private insurance companies honest (which such an option would most definitely do), then we should have it. At the same time, we should have an ironclad assurance that a public option will not be a government takeover of health care. Such an option must not prevent our employer from tossing away all other insurance plans from which we can presently choose because it may be cheaper to pay a fine or fee for not having them than having a menu of plans in place. President Obama and those who may have to rewrite the tax code on this point, listen up. For goodness sake, we want reforms that have room not only for every single citizen, but only for others who want to become citizens in earnest.
As well, we want a system of reform that continues to encourage physicians and other health care providers to continue doing what they have been trained to do well. Equally true is that those of our young people who are thinking about becoming doctors and nurses must be similarly encouraged and motivated to enter these and similar professions.
Since reform should be a shared responsibility, then all Americans must do their part. For starters, we need to stay healthier (we are a nation of flabby folks). But telling us we need to lose body weight, or to reduce our alcohol consumption, or to forget that next cigarette, has been tried, and failed. We, too, must have incentives. Any such legislation should have built into it real ways to motivate us to lead healthier lifestyles.
In the end, all of us were given the month of August to listen to the pundits, the politicians, our friends and our colleagues about whether or not our health care system needs a makeover. Again, we can also read the proposed legislation ourselves.
Atop this piece, I said Congress gave everyone, including itself, a gift -- time -- to reflect, consider, and then reconsider. Let's use this time wisely and realize that the "sky is falling" approach (spewed forth by opponents of reform) cannot replace the merits for reform before year's end, and our sound judgment and personal experiences. If we do not use this month of August wisely, we most likely will never see health care (insurance) reform in our lifetime.
As Democrats fan out across the country to hold town hall meetings on health care, a small group of loud and angry"teabag" protesters have been shouting over speakers, disrupting proceedings, and grabbing the headlines. In response, some Democratic strategists have called for the town hall organizers to open meetings with emotional testimonies from people as a strategy for heading off the teabag protesters.
It is sound advice, but switching gears will not work for Democrats in the town halls for a simple reason: they have already decided that the way to win the health care debate and pass a reform bill is to make sure the debate stays as far from emotional arguments as possible.
Despite the Democratic communications strategy, the media victory of the teabag protesters is the clearest sign so far that the health care reform will not be won by quietly unrolling logical arguments about reducing costs by nudging all consumers to a more regulated market. Victory in the health care debate will go to the side that leverages core American symbols to spark the passions of the people.
The question remains as to whether the Democrats leading these August recess health care town halls would even be capable of suddenly switching gears to a more emotional narrative? The problem is that these same Democratic Party leaders are the people who long-ago decided that passing a health care bill depends 101% on making anodyne arguments that persuade people who (1) already have health care, (2) are too self-interested to want reform to help others, and (3) only care about reducing their monthly expenses. That means the organizers of the town halls see these meetings more like open enrollment information sessions than historic battles in the push for reform.
In other words, it is the Senate, Congressional, and White House Democratic Party communication teams that have created the ideal, quiet conditions for a half-dozen fever-pitched teabaggers to shout "tyranny!" and disrupt the hushed sessions.
If, by contrast, the Democrats leading these sessions had gone into them with more passion, the political stage available to the teabag protesters would have been radically diminished, if not eliminated altogether. Beyond just inviting people to kick off the town halls with a story of how their families have suffered as a result of the health insurance industry, Democrats could have followed communications strategy where the overall goal was to control the emotional symbolism of the town halls--wherein everyone who attended would be so shouting mad and teary-eyed in favor of reform that there would be no silent vacuum that could have been filled by protesters.
Because the Democrats treated the town halls as information sessions rather than symbolic stages, they left the emotional terrain wide open for a few voices to exploit, which is exactly what the teabaggers have done.
Rather than arguing for better financial practice or sound health care policy, the teabag protesters are treating the town halls themselves as opportunities to control the national debate on the meaning of American life. Thus, while a vast majority of Americans, for example, want a new public option to replace their current health insurance, those same Americans do not see or hear that story being passionately argued in the media.
It is astounding that, even with control of the Congress and the Executive branch, Democrats still do not understand the symbolism implicit in these health care town halls, whereas a ragtag bunch of teabag protesters does get it.
So what should the Democrats do?
For starters, they need to splash some cold water on their faces and wake up to the fact that people do not go to town halls to get information. When was the last time you or anyone else you know decided to buy health insurance based on a live one-hour presentation given by an elected official? Numbers and details about health care coverage are better presented in pamphlets, on web sites, and via phone in systems that allow people to pursue answers to the specific questions they have.
Second, Democrats need to see the town halls as symbolic arenas to be dominated, not mere meeting locations to attend. To dominate a symbolic arena, Democrats need to literally fill the proceeding with the most compelling reasons for reform that exist: ending injustice, averting personal bankruptcy, eliminating the paralyzing fear of illness, preventing systemic financial collapse, ending the personal and economic humiliation of living with chronic illness in America. Never before in the history of political debate have there been more passionate arguments to be made and more people willing to step up and make them than for the health care debate.
Third, Democrats need to bridge the gap between the town hall meetings and the media. They cannot stage effective town halls and then sit back and hope that the media finds it interesting enough in the dog days of August to cover them instead of covering power outages or lost kittens. Every elected Democrat in Washington, DC, has an office full of talented staffers with experience mobilizing the media to cover their bosses. These staffers need to be enlisted to put the town halls on the front pages and in the lead position of every broadcast from now until September.
Fourth, Democrats need to enlist and energize the grassroots of their party. After the election, the Obama campaign left one of the greatest legacies in political history: hundreds of thousands of Americans centrally organized via the internet and willing to turn out to push for real change. These people need to be mobilized with the same passionate arguments that got them to turn out to walk door-to-door in cold weather to elect a President. They will not respond with arguments about lowering the general costs of coverage and forcing insurance companies to live up to their responsibilities. By contrast, this grassroots will respond to arguments about a historic moment to end health insurance injustice, to fight health care inequality, and to put the United States on the road to a healthier, stronger future after decades of wandering in the wilderness.
Fifth, a real public option (not some phony baloney "co-op") must be put front and center of the debate by leading Democrats including the President. Without the public option at the center of the debate, the very people who would be the most passionate voices in the health care discussion are hamstrung. They cannot argue passionately for what they believe if the moral core of the debate has been stripped away. This means letting people speak passionately about "single-payer" systems or "medicare plus" or whatever language they feel best describes a real public option.
Lastly, the President needs to cut his vacation down to size so he can climb back on the bully pulpit as only he can. Nothing would speak louder to the urgency and passion of this debate than President Obama telling the country that he is willing to spend less time frolicking on Martha's Vineyard with his family because he believes so strongly in the need for health care reform. This would also mean no more "this isn't about me...I have good health care coverage" comments from the President. He needs to tell everyone--each and every day--that this is the fight of his life. That he cannot sleep at night because of the urgent need for health care reform. And he cannot stop saying that until every single media outlet in the world is either echoing his concern or fighting him tooth and n
If the Democrats put aside their anodyne approach and restart the health care debate with a level of passion worthy of the issue, neither the teabaggers nor any other protest group will have much peace and quiet to disrupt.
Health care is a passionate topic. If the Democrats lead the public in an intense debate that matches the emotions of the subject matter, by September they should have the political backing to pass the real reform that 70% of the public wants anyhow.
"They are talking about six years ago," Joe Torre was quoted as saying in The New York Times on the subject of Manny Ramirez appearing on the infamous 2003 steroid user list. "It's ancient history."
You've got to love Joe. Joe put up with The Boss when he was still a tyrant. Joe was the serene manager of those championship teams. But Joe, your Manny, and he is your Manny now, wasn't only caught using six years ago, although he was a user then, he was caught using again recently. It's not ancient history at all.
The baseball owners colluded to control free agent salaries. In retaliation the union flexed its muscle and helped create stratospheric compensation from the lowest to the highest paid ballplayers. The newly empowered union under Donald Fehr with the capacity to shut down the game battled ferociously against drug testing. With Bud Selig as commissioner, the owners got drunk on home runs and enhanced performances which boosted attendance. Law-abiding, clean ballplayers were playing on an uneven playing field, but getting rich beyond their fantasies and developed an insidious wall of silence about steroid use in the locker rooms.
Baseball beat writers are beginning to ask about the so-called good ballplayers and where they were while baseball and its statistics and history were diminished, while the marquee players who used were tipping the balance of the sport and the union protected them. Where were players like Cal Ripken, Gregg Maddux, Derek Jeter, why didn't they pressure the union to allow more stringent testing, why didn't they organize others of integrity?
And where were the managers, so attuned to the physical characteristics and physical conditions of their players that they make subtle decisions, who hits, who sits, who pitches and when, who stays in, who comes out. We know why they didn't speak out about steroid use, the owners who employed them were condoning the practice. And their ballplayers were going along with it. And maybe, just maybe they knew they were benefiting in their careers from the steroid-enhanced performances of their players.
But why can't a manager like Joe Torre speak out now? Sadly, about the names being revealed from the 2003 list, Joe Torre told The Times, "It's something that certain people have access to and they are choosing to systematically have fun with what they are doing with it." Joe, the leaks aren't the issue. People are still using. We know because some of them are getting caught. Yet testing in baseball still doesn't come close to Olympics Games or cycling standards.
The Yankee locker room on Joe Torre's watch was the very opposite of a steroid-free zone. To quote the Times again, "The list of Yankees who either admitted to or are accused of doping includes Alex Rodriguez, Andy Pettite, Chuck Knoblauch, Jason Giambi, Jason Grimsley and Roger Clemens."
If there's still work to be done in cleaning up the sport, saying it's ancient history and blaming the messenger doesn't help. We really don't know whether you were an enabler in the locker room, Joe, but don't be an enabler in print.
I hope you don't mind me calling you Arnie, but I feel like we have a lot in common. My family also immigrated from Europe to follow the American Dream, and a couple of years ago I had the pleasure of meeting one of your wife's relatives -- Anthony Shriver -- when we were both invited to speak at the Shafallah Center for Children with Special Needs in Qatar. Also, your oldest daughter, Catherine, was born the same year as my son, Jeremy, and my daughter is a few months younger than your Aurelia. And did I forget to mention? We live in the same state. So, I feel close to you.
Arnie, I'm writing to you today in regards to a topic I know you are sick of hearing about. I promise, I'll keep it short. It's about the budget. I just want to know, have you forgotten the nice things about living in the old country? I'm not sure about Austira, but I know from personal experience that in France, Germany and the UK, they take care of their young, their sick, their old, and their disabled -- those who are now who are suffering the most from the budget cuts here in California. By the way, I'm still trying to figure out how we got into this position; I heard that if California were a country, it would rank among the ten largest economies in the world, interesting, huh?
Speaking about budget cuts, my friends are always picking on me about the French only working 35 hours a week and how the system over there is going broke. Well, now all my friends working for the different California state departments aren't laughing anymore -- they are being forced to work as little as the French (you know, those unpaid furlough days they have to take?) -- and our beautiful state is still broke. Big difference -- in France -- the same workers are getting health care and 5 weeks paid vacation, nice pensions, can you beat that? Weird, huh?
Granted, Europe is not perfect and it was hard to be a self-made man back then in the old days, (easier now, so I have heard). When I was over there working in TV and film, I could not get an education for my autistic son (I hear that, too, is beginning to change). But when I was pregnant with my daughter, Rebecca, the French doctors realized from the pre-natal care that they had insisted in providing me, that she was going to be born with a certain medical condition. Rebecca required shots, blood tests, medication and frequent monitoring. They gave her excellent medical care (all for free) for a year and continued to monitor her afterwards. Thanks to that preventative and early intervention, today she is healthy, and on her way to becoming a productive member of society.
My French grandmother lived in Paris till she was 96, bless her heart, and she did not have to worry about having a roof over her head and enough food to eat (what with rent control and all). Memere had health care workers visit once a day, and when she could not climb the stairs anymore she went to an old age home which was an old Victorian house -- where many of her former neighbors lived. She enjoyed the last of her days without worrying about how she could afford to eat and sleep. Memere was a factory worker, and she had her pension, and medical care, too.
In comparison, my mom has Parkinson's, she is stuck in a wheelchair and lives in a nursing home down the street from me, and believe me -- you don't want to now how much it costs. I'm not sure what we are going to do when Maman's money runs out.
Meanwhile, I have raised my son, Jeremy, despite his severe autism as best I could, and he has become an inspirations to many in the autism community. You can see for yourself on MTV's True Life, in "I Have Autism." In fact, his story was picked as the one of the tops 5 most inspiring moments for overcoming challenges from a couple of hundred True Life Stories. Last fall, he passed the California High School Exit Exam, all by typing with one finger. Pretty amazing, huh?
Arnie, I love the whole self-made man and the "American Dream" that made you move here years ago in the first place -- which is why I was so thrilled when the state of California started some self-employment projects for people with developmental disabilities. My son and I have been involved in a few of these projects; he is all for pulling his own weight. 'Course now with all the budget cuts, I'm not sure what is going to happen to him and his American Dream.
Which reminds me -- right now, my husband still has a job, although it is in construction project management, so who knows how long that will last. I kinda worry sometimes what will happen to our family -- our nice middle class tax-paying family if the construction business completely dries up. And I'm sure we can't be the only ones losing sleep and worrying over stuff like this.
Now, I know I am rambling here -- I'm almost done -- but did I tell you about my Rebecca? I'm very proud of her, too. She is going to be a senior in high school and we are going on a road trip next week to visit some University of California and State College campuses in California. I don't have the heart to tell her it is probably a waste of time -- with all the budget cuts I'm not sure she will get in (even though she is an excellent student) because they are admitting less people next year -- what with the budget cuts. Even if she gets in, I'm not sure how we can afford it, seeing how Rebecca's brother and her grandma are going to be depending upon us more and more this coming year.
Hey, I read yesterday in the Sunday New York Times that Tom Arnold says he is making a movie with you in 14 months -- it's going to start shooting the day after you leave office? He says there is no plot or script determined yet. He said, "It's not going to be called 'True Lies II,' but it might as well be..." Well, that's pretty funny, though I don't think he meant it quite that way.
But actually I have an idea for your first movie when you leave office -- it goes like this: you take a wealthy state like California, and you take away the social supports in place for the children, disabled and elderly; you force those who have government jobs to close their offices a few days a month and take a cut in pay; drive the unemployment rate up to 10%; you mix in a few natural disasters like wildfires in San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara; add an earthquake in San Francisco; and -- but wait! Didn't these things happen already? LOL -- I guess it can be a reality TV show!
Actually, I think we could all use a good, funny comedy when you are back in Hollywood, don't you, to take our mind off our troubles? Come to think of it, going to the movies is not in our budget anymore. Hope it doesn't effect your children's future if most Californians can't afford movie tickets anymore, either. Actually, it probably won't even make a dent a your finances. "Funny the way it is, if you think about it, somebody's going hungry and someone else is eating out." Dang! This darn Dave Matthews song keeps playing in my head! So annoying.
Now please, Arnie, don't get the idea I'm blaming you for all this. I understand it takes more than a few years and a few people to get us into a mess like this. But, right now, you're the top man -- "the buck stops here." Which reminds me -- I read the other day in my local San Diego Union Tribune that LA City Hall paid an estimated $1.4 million on police protection and other services at Michael Jackson's memorial, including $48,000 on sandwiches brought in for police from 70 miles away. Those must have been some sandwiches! (You know, sometimes I'll go that extra mile for a cheeseburger from In-and-Out, but I digress). Anyhow, I'm a big fan of Michael Jackson, but where did all that money come from to pay for this?
Well got to go -- need to write a letter to President Obama. Gotta let him know I can't afford to volunteer for the community anymore. Got to spend every free moment earning money or taking care of my mom and son. By the way, I've spent money traveling around to advise different autism taskforces around the state these last few years -- do you think I can get reimbursed for expenses? I could use the gas money now.
Please give my best to your lovely wife, Maria. I really do appreciate all that she and her family have done for the developmentally disabled -- Special Olympics, Best Buddies. God knows we need these volunteer programs now more than ever.
It's pretty cool. I've come to realize that I'm pretty lucky growing up in the City. I mean, its not like you really 'get it' until you travel. Like when I go to France and people find out I'm from NYC and they start asking me all these questions, and suddenly you realize you're living in a pretty amazing place if kids in Paris think its cool you live in New York.
What was your first memory?
As a kid I remember running around the Metropolitan Museum of Art a lot. The Temple of Dendur was a great place to play tag! And the Arms and Armor gallery is really cool.
Did you always feel like city kids had access to more and were a bit more advanced than other kids?
In the City you're exposed to so much! When I was younger my parents would take me to the places they were going, whether that was an art opening or a dinner party or a reception. You don't realize it at the time but it really shapes your perspective and helps to socialize you more, especially in the adult world. But of course there's also bad influences in the City, too, so you have to learn how to handle yourself and judge each situation as it comes. The other thing is that as a teenager in the City, its also much easier to get around and you're not dependent on being driven by your parents everywhere. So I think it does help to mature you faster than most other places.
Is there a certain pride to growing up in New York City?
Sure there is, but I also really like to travel and discover new places and meet new people. I think that's part of being a New Yorker, you're just more comfortable in new and different situations so you're always ready to be adventurous.
What were some of your favorite places in NYC? Hangout spots, Meeting places, in central park like great lawn, the bandshell etc.?
Central Park I think is one of the best places in the City to just hang out. I mean, you can play soccer or shoot hoops with a buddy or just walk or go ice skating or something with a girl. There's always something going on there.
Why do you think everyone on the planet wants to live in NYC?
If you're walking through Times Square or over by the Empire State Building, sometimes it feels like everyone in the planet is already here. But that's also what's so cool about this City. You hear just about every language spoken and you meet people from all over the world.
How do you feel about becoming a sort of cult like figure? Is it scary at all?
Wait, I'm a "cult figure"? Are you trying to creep me out or something?
Where would you want access to that you have never been in NYC? The vault inside the Met, hot club?
Well, my little sister got to be one of the first to do a sleep over party at the Natural History Museum and she said that was pretty cool and a great place for playing tag. But for me, maybe a sleep over at the Federal Reserve down on Wall Street.
After several days of being attacked for his spreading of the blatantly false Obama birth certificate story, the tide appears to have now turned for CNN's Lou Dobbs.
Indeed Dobbs has gained a most powerful ally. One that goes by the name of Chuck Norris.
Not only did Chuck write a blog post defending Lou, he has now cut a video showing that when you mess with Lou, you mess with Chuck. Take a look.
With a man like Chuck Norris at his side, Lou can feel free to continue to spread this ridiculous story for as long as he pleases. He can even do more interviews like this one, where he talks to some guy named "Zeke" about Obama's birth certificate.
On a side note, Chuck Norris and Glenn Beck are friends. Chuck regularly appears on Glenn's show.
I wonder how Chuck is going to react when he hears that Glenn called the birthers "stupid"?
As exuberance following the reported release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee from North Korea rules the trending topics on Twitter, I asked Richard Horgan for a statement on his e-activism through @LiberateLaura.
He describes a chain of events that truly reached the sixth degree of separation, and if I knew how to make a Huffington Post jump quote this would be it:
"Biz Stone and Evan Williams' brilliantly simple communication tool is without a doubt the most powerful activism tool to ever hit the Internet." Richard Horgan
Here's the timeline, in his own words:
"It started innocently enough: I recommended - via Twitter - @LauraLing's NARCO WARS @current report to L.A.-based UK The Independent correspondent @guyadams, as he was preparing to cover the Mexican drug war. Laura Ling evidently Twitter-searched her name, found my tweet, and soon we were following each other. This also in fact led Guy to speak to Laura about Mexico literally hours before she left for China, at which point I followed with interest her tweets from overseas.
Twitter played a role once again in my i-activism when, on April 26th, @NYTimesKristof observed that though there was a Twitter page for Roxana Saberi, none existed yet for Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Given my peripheral acquaintance with Laura, great interest in the story and journalistic background, I figured I could effectively jump into this breach.
Biz Stone and Evan Williams' brilliantly simple communication tool is without a doubt the most powerful activism tool to ever hit the Internet. Through it, I was able to keep the story alive with the highest sense of urgency, keep in touch with supporters of all stripes and learn much about the harrowing lives of most North Koreans. Much work is left to be done on the humanitarian front, but I am thrilled that the biggest story of Laura Ling's journalistic career has found its way to a relatively happy ending."
What a great time to be Twitter. It's all the rage. Sitting in the social networking sweet spot that used to belong to first MySpace, then Facebook. This too shall pass when the next hot socialnet comes along. But, for now, there's something different about Twitter. And it's more than just the poetic brevity of 140 character messages.
Twitter can actually be useful.
By useful I don't mean for keeping in touch with friends or finding old flames or organizing your family reunion. We mean Twitter can actually be a useful tool at work, for work.
Unchecked, Twitter streams millions of messages from and to millions of users every day. But for the enterprising Soloist and his equally inventive Ensemble, the hottest social network of the day can also be one lean mean connection tool to get the job done. It's a practical way to stay linked with your key Ensemble members throughout the day, wherever you might be.
Establishing an account on Twitter is easy. Takes seconds. And is free. All you need is an email address. The secret to making your productive (instead of clogged with messages about what people in Europe are doing right this minute) is to make yourself invisible. Except to the folks that count: The ones on your Ensemble who are helping you tackle that time-sensitive challenge.
First, once you've gotten your account set up, go to the Settings page. At the bottom, click on the "Protect my tweets" button. This means that only the people you choose can see what you post. Next, have the people in your Ensemble select the same button. People can find you on Twitter (if they know what user name you're using) but they can't see what you're tweeting.
The next step is to choose to Follow only those people on your Ensemble. Search for their names, then click the "Follow" button when their page comes up. And have them do the same with you. The last move is to approve them (since you have to now authorize who sees what you text) and -- VOILA! -- instant Stealth Ensemble.
Now, no matter where in the office, the city or the world your tight little crew may be, you can all instantly tweet each other important updates or information from your computer or your smartphone (with appropriate Twitter app or widget). No one can eavesdrop. No one can beat you to the punch. And your team is always in contact.
It's like having that cool decoder ring you always wanted as a kid, except you don't have to scarf down ten boxes of cereal to get it.
Marc Hershon is the co-author of the new book I Hate People (Little, Brown and Company; June 2009) with Jonathan Littman. Marc is a branding expert who, through his Simmer Branding Studio, has created such memorable names as nüvi, Crackle.com and the title for Dr. Phil's book Love Smart.
Gatorade, one of the most well known brands of our time, was inexplicably laid to rest in early 2009 after suffering from a brief yet catastrophic case of marketing malaise. It is survived by heartbroken marketers who mourn the loss of a true brand luminary and by millions of confused consumers around the globe. Without argument, there hasn't been a more untimely demise or massive misstep in recent beverage brand memory than the internment of the brand consumers know and love as Gatorade.
Marketing pundits at PepsiCo's Gatorade division, for reasons beyond thoughtful imagination, believed that changing a brand-leading household name from "Gatorade" to "G" would reverse market share loss and slumping sales. The corporate team and like-minded agencies decided that a product with consumer awareness numbers higher than most deities should be replaced with a single letter that would require hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising before it held any meaning at all.
In an industry where experts have evangelized "brand equity" since the dawn of the ad man, the loss of Gatorade falls well outside of logic. Just about everyone in the free (and many in the less than free) world know the name Gatorade. The brand's level of unaided, feel good awareness is the stuff we marketers dream about. And yet, faced with sagging sales, the choice was made to ditch the brand that was over 40 years in the perfecting. In essence, the Kleenex of sports beverages had changed its name to facial tissue.
Sadly, the experts at Gatorade failed to realize that the brand name was its biggest asset, not a problem in need of solving or its drastic change a solution to the problems it was having. Consumers knew what Gatorade was in general terms, but simply weren't given enough of the "why to buy" necessary to move a brand. You can change a name and packaging and introduce a glitzy new ad campaign, but without the why Suzie Shopper needs to put it in her cart you won't sell product.
It's true that if you're losing shelf space/market share/sales, all facets of marketing must be carefully considered. However, if you have a brand with an awareness level that rivals God, the last thing you should do is walk (or in this case wind sprint run) away from it. Instead, the Gatorade team should have figured out why they were losing at retail and invested in that solve. They didn't need a new name or a few hundred million dollars more in image advertising. Certainly, roll up your sleeves and win the sale marketing is not as glamorous or as carefree as shooting a TV spot, but it is critical to a brand's sales success and a whole lot less expensive. Having won the awareness battle, Team Gatorade needed to shift their primary focus to the wants/needs/desires of their consumers at the point of purchase impact. Further, strategies would need to be tailored depending on the product's sales environment.
In convenience stores where the majority of Gatorade pulls are typically single bottles chosen by males, center the in-store promotional and advertising campaign that delivers on the target's wants/needs/desires. In general merchandise and grocery stores where Suzie Shopper mom lives, center the effort on what she wants/needs/desires to provide for her family. Mom might not know and/or care who basketball star Kevin Garnett is, but she does want to answer the nags of her children and/or feel she's doing what's best for them and her household.
Luckily for us marketers, most of our races are marathons and not sprints. Often we can change strategies mid-race, and improve on our tale of the register tape. If your well-known brand's share is slipping, begin your solve at the point where your product can actually be purchased. Build out a marketing strategy from that arena. Consider the competitive environment, and the wants/needs/desires of the consumer (typically a woman) who is purchasing the vast majority of your products. Get a keen understanding of what your competition is doing that's hurting your sales. Form a strategy with key retailers, and give them a reason to believe that their bottom line will benefit from your brand's marketing plan. If you start where you can sell and win the battles from that point outward, invariably you will have to spend less on advertising in the long run. And what you save on advertising can be invested in winning more often at retail.
Regardless (and sometimes in spite) of our own expert musings about the industry, the primary purpose of marketing never changes. We're in business of selling products. If we don't sell, we've failed. We can say that marketing is about awareness and traffic and click through rates and eyeballs and exposure and a host of other things, but nothing really matters if we're not selling products or services. Corporations, brand managers and agencies don't own brands, consumers do. A product or service is worth nothing until it is purchased. We need to deliver a compelling promise to consumers which rings loud and clear at the register before we claim victory.
Here's hoping that G becomes Gatorade again, and Team Gatorade hones in on the battle at point of purchase. Well hydrated and filled with marketing savvy, Gatorade can once again be the undisputed sports beverage heavyweight champion. Until then, let's all take a knee and pray for a resurrection.
Sarah O'Leary is the author of BRANDWASHED: What's Wrong with Marketing and How We Can Fix it, due for publication in 2009. She is also the chief strategist of Logic Marketing for Sales (thelogicagency.com).
The "Kenyan birth certificate" circulated online in the past few days was quickly exposed as a fake. Some conservatives suggested the flimsy piece of work was created by Obama supporters to make the birthers look foolish.
But birther-leader Orly Taitz is doubling down on the document. From her blog (via Salon, which warns that Firefox sees orlytaitzesq.com as "an attack site.")
Recently Obama's thugs in main stream (sic) media came up with this Bomford report in order to stop my efforts in exposing and prosecuting Obama. Though typically I don't have time to waste on each and every dumb obot, since it got to National TV and my children's friends called my children, I'll spend a few minutes to debunk the obots.
Taitz goes on to make a few dubious claims, but mostly just argues that she doesn't have to prove the birth certificate is real: "I am not supposed to waste my time and money on this issue, Obama us the one who is supposed to provide evidence of legitimacy ... Kenyan BC provides more info than the piece of garbage Obama posted on the net."
She also cites Hillary Clinton's trip to Kenya as proof that the administration takes the birth certificate issue seriously.
Meanwhile, other birthers are worried Taitz is discrediting their movement. "I've advised her in writing, along with several other attorneys, that if she has an original document that seems to bolster her case, it needs to be examined by a professional document examiner," a lawyer who assisted her in the past told the Washington Independent.
You usually answer relationship and dating questions without breaking down specific recommendations for male/male, female/female or female/male combinations. I think it would be interesting to see how advice might be different for these. What do you think about doing that sometimes? - C
I think I would be very interested in seeing that too, and I am smiling as I type that. One reason for my interest is that I am gender stupid. I mean it. I can read personality really, really well (am damn accurate is what I am saying), but cannot usually tell the gender. So, I do not perceive much difference in the various combinations myself.
Except -- and this is important -- cultural overlays about gender and hetero and homo couplings do some funky stuff to people and block their ability to have perfectly healthy, joyful and whole partnerships. You have hetero couples with some hidden gender role beliefs. You find some gay couples under constant drama. Now, you and I know that couples of all combinations exhibit those traits, but in my years of psychic readings, I notice that some specific issues occur more often depending upon the gender makeup.
For instance, if you are reading that one spouse has expectations about who is supposed to make more money in the marriage, than it is more likely that you are reading a heterosexual couple than a homosexual one. I once read a man who has found his perfect and certain love with another man, and their love had a different and magnificent "honed through the fire" vibration to it that other types, that are easier to make happen, don't have. But these all have to do with how people are acculturated, and not with the nature of healthy interpersonal bonds.
Therefore, I would say the same things in general about what it takes to have a healthy, joyful, whole partnership (and there are only a few things people need to know about that) to each type. But if I were to address specific issues, I would talk about how to leave old cultural indoctrinations, icons and beliefs about gender and love behind so to be more able to fully enjoy a loving relationship with whomever you please.
Let me know if that makes sense, MR
Questions, comments and ideas are welcome and encouraged. Contact Psychic Margaret Ruth on her Facebook page, email mr@margaretruth.com or call 801-575-7103. You can also get details on private readings, Margaret's classes and blog at www.margaretruth,com.
It is easy for Democrats to fear the sky is falling in. Grim headlines proclaim that voters are nervous and Democrats are fighting among themselves over health care. National public opinion surveys reveal a 10-percentage point decline in voter confidence in President Barack Obama's overall leadership. There are unresolved policy questions about health funding mechanisms, a public option, and an employer mandate. All this evokes flashbacks to the spectacular collapse of Bill Clinton's reform efforts in 1994. But Obama already has demonstrated much greater political effectiveness than Clinton. The new president is more popular than Clinton was at the six-month point. In mid-July, 1993, for example, Clinton had a 41 percent approval rating in the Gallup poll, much lower than Obama's most recent rating of 56 percent. Four of the five relevant congressional committees actually have passed health care reform, which is not something Clinton was able to achieve. Obama's leadership style of delegating specific policy decisions to Congress has led to committee approvals and given himself maximum room for bargaining and negotiation at the end of the legislative process. When you look at public opinion polls, there is little evidence that opposition scare tactics are working. Sixty-six percent of Americans in a recent CBS News/New York Times survey favored a "government administered" public health insurance option. This is despite private insurance industry anguish over a public option. And 55 percent believe the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans. Critics who claim America should not expand the role of the government are losing that argument with the general public. Even more striking are poll numbers revealing that voters have much greater confidence in Obama on health care than congressional Republicans. For example, 55 percent of Americans say Obama has better ideas about reforming health care, compared to only 26 percent who think that of congressional Republicans. Obama's greatest challenge is determining how to pay for reform. House members worried about costs made changes that scaled back the original program by 10 percent. This saved around $100 billion and kept the overall price tag under $1 trillion. This is not exactly a bargain price, but it helps make the argument back home that legislators are doing something about reform costs. Ultimately, Democrats will succeed in passing health care reform because the risks of failure are too high. When the 1994 Clinton effort collapsed, conservatives were emboldened and liberals alienated. The result was a spectacular GOP comeback in that year's election that gave Republicans control of the House and Senate. If Democrats lose health care reform, the biggest victims will be Blue Dog Democrats. Since many of them represent conservative areas, they will be the ones swept out of office if liberals are disillusioned by failure and stay home in the 2010 elections. Moderate members who oppose health care reform because they worry about specific provisions should understand they have more to fear from failure than success in passing comprehensive reform. Victory in passing a bill will give them a major platform to brag that they did something no American president has done in 50 years. In the end, the Democrats' October surprise may turn out to be congressional passage of health care reform.
Josh Marshall considers the health care town hall ambushes by the teabagger crowds and asks: "Folks can whine on endlessly about outfits like Freedom Works putting these rackets together. But if the president's plan has any public support they should be able to get supporters to these events too, right? Not to pull the Black Shirt routine but to provide some public demonstration that there's real public support for making reform a reality. ... If there is. So that's the question. Where's the other team?"
If they're waiting until after the Senate recesses on Friday, then they're ceding an entire week to the goon squads here. They were ready to go as early as this weekend and will continue to attack for the next four weeks. It's a very good question and very indicative of the problem Obama has had in the last six weeks: for the centerpiece of his administration's policy initiatives, he's sure not acting like he wants this very much.
The GOP, on the other hand, is treating this fight as what it is: an existential battle. They know that if robust health care reform passes, they are beyond toast. Democrats will run the show for a generation. They are pulling out all the stops on the attacks and the pressure. To use a crappy sports metaphor, they want the win more.
Team Obama has gotten hamstrung here in the last three days. Multiple Democrats have been jumped at appearances. The GOP telegraphed the plan well in advance. So far it's looking like the Dems don't have much of a "boots on the ground" response. I am hoping this changes and fast. The best organized grassroots political machine ever conceived rolled over the landscape last fall. Where is it now?
A major question (and source of angst) on the left is encapsulated in that last sentence, namely, where's the vaunted Obama operation and why can't it counter a ragtag group of so-called "teabaggers"? [For the record, as someone who protested the Iraq war and believes in citizen activism, I don't like using broad-brush pejorative terms for grassroots activists, even if I disagree with them politically. Two exceptions: astroturfers organized by big moneyed interests deserve all the disdain they get, and those who have a race-based anti-Obama agenda are despicable beyond words.]
Weeks ago, I cautioned that the White House was in perpetual campaign mode. Now we read that the Obama team will once again turn to the tried and true methods of the 2008 campaign.
Therein lies the problem. The August health care battle isn't the presidential campaign. Here are five reasons why:
1. The media and punditocracy have a different agenda. Back then, the favored narrative was David vs. Goliath, i.e. the unthinkable and exhilarating notion that Obama could vanquish three formidable foes: the indomitable Clinton operation, the resurgent McCain campaign, and the rightwing Swift-Boat machine. Today's narrative is also David vs. Goliath, but in reverse: can the downtrodden GOP, with the aid of insurance companies and assorted Obama detractors, deal him a gut-wrenching political blow? And can they convince enough rank and file Republicans and independents to work against their own best interests and sink the Obama agenda?
2. Obama's much-talked about online 'army' of 13 million people doesn't exist. At least not in the mobilized, battle-ready and efficient form we saw during the campaign. Between natural attrition rates and typical open (and conversion) rates, that 13 million is closer to a tenth the number who actually read the emails and far fewer who take concrete actions. The singular focus of a presidential race is absent in a multi-faceted legislative fight. Mobilizing an online 'army' on the scale of a presidential campaign is significantly more difficult in these circumstances, if not impossible.
3. Republicans and conservatives have far less to lose. When McCain-Palin were a few percentage points away from the White House, there was an incentive to be somewhat (and I emphasize 'somewhat') restrained, for fear of completely turning off the country. Now there's much more to gain politically by throwing caution to the wind and being total obstructionists. The dirty politics everyone expected during the campaign is showing up in full force now.
4. Inside baseball is less effective when you're on the inside. The media manipulation that helped win the White House, the masterful messaging, the leaks, the back-scratching, the hard-hitting conference calls with strategists and advisers while the candidate stayed above it all, the playing of one outlet and one reporter against the other, the smart turns of phrase, the snarky retorts, the outsider vs. insider kabuki, all these lose a good deal of potency when campaigning gives way to governing. Especially when bankers are running away with taxpayer money, polls are shifting and the public is hurting.
5. The netroots, excited and energized by the prospect of an Obama presidency, are disillusioned. The administration's Bush-affirming decisions on secrecy, civil liberties, torture, gay rights, etc. have alienated a good number of influential bloggers and progressive activists. These are the elite opinion-makers on the left, and their voices have been perennially marginalized (and their impact underestimated) by Democrats.
As Democrats fight for a signature issue, a serious strategic blunder has left them scrambling to catch up with their opponents. The White House should have laid out clear, unwavering objectives, a solid plan, rather than leave the health debate to meander through Congress. That vacuum has enabled the proponents of the status quo to marshal their forces.
Perhaps resorting to campaign tactics will turn the tide, I certainly hope so, but it bears acknowledging that the landscape has changed.
I am no fan of the far right, but can respect an honest difference of opinion. When the difference of opinion turns into crass and cynical lies and propaganda designed to frighten and deepen the already fragmented population, then it is time to cry "STOP!". During one of the darker moments of the prior administration, I proposed (with tongue in cheek) the idea of creating a new organization called the "National Organization of Pissed-Off Elders" (N.O.P.E.). Its mission: to step up to the plate and declare that enough is enough whenever and wherever necessary. There is an old maxim that the only thing that has to happen for evil to prevail is for good people to do (and say) nothing.
Bob Cesca wrote a brilliant piece in the Huffington Post ("Republicans Lying to Old People about Euthanasia, Robots") slamming the current Republican attempt to defeat health care reform. The Republican attempts are not based on the strength of an argument, but on insane mainstream rhetoric charging that the Bills under consideration were designed to legalize killing older people -- a final solution for dealing with the 'Senior Set'. This kind of noise is not just a demonstration of freedom of speech: it is intentionally yelling "Fire!" in the theater to create a panic. I am reluctant to believe that any thinking American actually believes this kind of nuttiness, but enough apparently do to suggest that N.O.P.E should rally once again.
It is time, I believe, for thinking Americans and politicians to stop being polite in the name of bipartisan inclusiveness. When the nutters want to both destroy civil discourse and undermine the democratic process in some cynical financially motivated power grab, then we must call it what it is: bullshit.
Periodically, I get junk emails proclaiming that The Book of Revelations says President Obama is the Anti-Christ, or that he is scheming to make soldiers pay for their own health insurance, or the unbelievable hoopla about whether he was actually born in the United States (in spite of the facts). The only explanation for these kinds of issues getting any airtime at all is that we are captured in some sort of surreal warp in which there is so much irresponsible media that we're not only losing our capacity to care, but also our ability to think and distinguish facts from fabrication. Has it all just become so much noise? Are we really wanting to leave ourselves open to being manipulated by our most basic fears?
I think that skepticism can be healthy. None of us should buy into any point of view without some doubts and deep thinking about who is behind the idea and what is really going on. But cynicism is not honest doubt: it is a commitment to zero possibility. It is a point of view that says only the chosen few really know the way it is and how it should be. Cynicism is, in my view, a disease, an addiction to a self-righteous and ignorant point of view without regard to the consequences of that view on the lives and well-being of others -- like Marie Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake".
Our slogan ("Don't be a D.O.P.E., vote for N.O.P.E.") is a reminder to take action and not roll over and assume we have to take this cynicism masked as politeness lying down. I encourage all members to not only write the usual letters, but to also boycott the worst offending media (those who knowingly provide a platform for disseminating intentionally dishonest information), to push back with 'fact finders' when receiving propaganda, and to stop tolerating irresponsible and inaccurate gossip. In other words, promote critical thinking and kill cynicism. If we ever use our demographic muscle, we might even make a difference.
Yesterday morning I got up early and went for a walk. There's a beautiful hiking trail close to my house here in Boulder. It wraps up the back of a mountain, and as you ascend up the trail you get a fuller and fuller view of the city below and the landscape in the distance.
During that particular outing, my mind was pretty busy sorting through details of my upcoming move, rehashing a heated conversation that I had had the night before, and believing my inner dialogue of doubt around a big writing project I'm working on.
Then I looked up. Rather than just seeing the dusty gravel underneath my feet and the periwinkle wildflowers beside me, I saw the sky. Cobalt blue, unfettered, and vast: the sky instantly silenced my chattering mind. I realized that I had been applying such a microscopic view to my life; and, in an instant, I remembered that there was so much more to who I am and what this life is about.
This experience inspired me to practice a "sky meditation" that I have learned from several different Tibetan Buddhist teachers over the years. It's so simple and effective; and I'd love to share it with you:
1. Choose a time when the sun is not too bright in the sky. Early morning and evening are best.
2. Sit down outside or near a window. You can also lie down on the grass. If you're sitting down, make sure that you have mostly sky in your line of sight.
3. Relax your gaze, relax your body, and let your jaw drop open slightly, as if you in a state of quiet awe.
4. Sit for 5 minutes, letting your awareness mix with the spaciousness of the sky. You're not looking for anything, or trying to get anywhere. You're just gazing at the sky.
5. Can the sky remind you of anything about who you truly are, beyond your thoughts and feelings?
6. Blink whenever you need to and remember to never look directly at the sun!
7. When you've finished, close your eyes , take a few deep breaths, and prepare to transition into the rest of your day, keeping that sense of vast awareness with you during all of your thoughts, conversations, and actions.
Republicans say that Democrats fail to encourage personal responsibility. A battle in Seattle Washington over plastic bag fees provides a perfect, if minor, example. After the city council voted to require a twenty cent per bag fee for disposable grocery bags, CAMP, the Central Area Motivation Program joined the chemical industry in opposition. A fee, they said, would adversely impact poor people, even if they are provided with reusable bags for free. It's just too much to ask that poor people remember a bag when they shop, and so they will get charged for them. That's the reasoning -- from a "Motivation" program, which is now lending credibility to a $1.3 million dollar referendum propaganda campaign by a plastics trade group -- all aimed to ensure that those fees don't happen.
Why all the money? Well, right now the average Seattle resident uses over 500 disposable bags per year, and a similar fee in Ireland reduced disposable grocery bag use by 90%, with approximately one billion fewer bags consumed per year. Yes, people replace some of those free grocery bags with purchased garbage bags etc, but the chemical industry's opposition tells us loud and clear that they expect overall consumption of plastics to go down here too. Now add the fact that the Center for American Progress heralded the Seattle fee as a model for cities across the country. The chemical industry thinks it's worth crushing this thing before it gains momentum.
I'll confess, it took me months to get used to bringing bags when I shop, but given a little time, even harried old dogs can master new tricks. My own tricks all aim to get around forgetfulness:
1. In the bottom of my purse I keep a plastic grocery bag or two folded into little triangles as demonstrated by a Japanese friend. (You fold it like a flag, then tuck in the little end. Very OCD, but it ends up teeny and cool looking.) 2. A thin nylon bag that stuffs inside itself (given to me as a party favor) now clips onto my bicycle; 3. After shopping I leave my collection of canvas bags prominently in the entry way where I get annoyed enough at tripping over them that I put them in the trunk. 4. Even so, I've had to locate the bag recycling bins at my grocery stores for the times I still walk in the door without one.
My four tricks get me to about 90%, -- the magic Irish number. That would be fifty bags per Valerie per year instead of 500, a little embarrassing still, but a major accomplishment for someone with the memory of a gnat.
It's time to stop the utter condescension that says harried poor people can't learn new tricks too or be expected to inconvenience themselves for the common good. One of the fascinating differences between government programs for poor people and faith-based programs is that church communities expect people to give back. And they do, at a much higher rate. They volunteer in child care and food banks, and as ushers, and in Vacation Bible Schools. By contrast, government assistance far to often treats poor or disabled people as if little to nothing can be expected of them, which is just plain degrading.
Reciprocity is hard-wired into our moral instincts and it is written into the expectations of cultures around the planet. Even chimps expect favors for favors and punish or shun cheaters. We humans give gifts and we receive gifts back. We do favors, and we expect favors back. We provide mutual support. Sometimes we are happy to say "Don't pay it back, pay it forward." But we want our efforts and generosity to go somewhere instead of dead-ending. The only people who aren't expected to engage in reciprocity are young children and those who we consider debilitated beyond hope. Even with children, moving toward independence means participating as household and community members to the level of their growing ability. Give-back expectations go hand in hand with dignity, respect and self-respect.
I'm not advocating faith-based services. Those who know me know I prefer that people receive services without a dollop of dogma on top -- and I think social services often are used unethically as bait by those who think themselves heaven-sent fishers of men. I also realize there are far more significant examples of responsibility and dignity than the question of whether poor people can be expected to bring bags to the grocery store. But conservative complaints often contain kernels of truth that progressives should heed. If we really want to empower and motivate people, we would do well to expect things of them -- even small things like being resourceful enough to get the groceries home.
It's not quite the jet pack we all dreamed as kids, but a Canadian company may have the next best thing. For a price of about $130,000 Jet Levitation will sell you a water-powered jet pack (of sorts) that can launch users 30 feet into the air.
The JetLev system's only catch is that it attaches to a jet ski motor -- and users are tethered by a 30-foot cable. The pack should be available this year.
Fox News recently ran a segment on the invention in which the editor of Discover magazine tried out the device. WATCH:
ROME — Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian premier engulfed in a sex scandal over alleged encounters with young women, has been taken to task by his daughter, who is quoted as saying in an interview that public officials should enhance moral values.
Barbara Berlusconi also said that public officials cannot afford to differentiate between their public and private spheres, the Italian edition of Vanity Fair reports in an interview to be published Wednesday.
Berlusconi, 72, has been entangled in scandal for months over his alleged encounters with women, including a call girl who says she spent the night with him. Recordings of purported conversations between Berlusconi and the prostitute have been released by the left-leaning magazine L'Espresso on its Web site.
Berlusconi's lawyer has disputed the veracity of the tapes, which include intimate details. Berlusconi has denied he ever paid for sex, and has called the allegations "trash." But he also said last month that he is "no saint."
"Politicians who are called upon to govern well, to make a community prosper, are also required to safeguard the values that it expresses, possibly elevate them," Barbara Berlusconi was quoted as saying by Vanity Fair. The comment came in response to a question about her father's enduring popularity despite the scandal.
"I don't believe that a politician can afford the distinction between public life and private life," she said, according to a transcript of the interview provided by Vanity Fair.
Barbara Berlusconi is a director of Fininvest, the holding company for Berlusconi's media empire. Officials at the company and aides at her home near Milan could not immediately confirm the contents of the interview.
The 25-year-old is the oldest of three children the premier had with Veronica Lario, his now estranged wife. Lario set off the scandal when she announced her intention to divorce Berlusconi, citing his selection of showgirls for European Parliament candidates and his attendance at the birthday party of an 18-year-old model in Naples.
"What doesn't show on the outside is that their pain is deep and it touches both of them," Barbara Berlusconi said of her parents.
The Italian premier said he would reserve some of his summer vacation to diet at a health center and then travel to Villa Certosa, his Sardinian estate that has served as the backdrop of some of the allegations.
Last night Long Island's own Taylor Haiduk spat her way to victory in the Late Show with Jimmy Fallon's "1st Annual Watermelon Seed Spitting Invitational & Championship."
Check out the videos below for all the seed-spittin' action!
In many areas starved for retail businesses, welcoming a Wal-Mart would be a no-brainer.
But Ald. Howard Brookins (21st) is having one heck of a time persuading his colleagues on the South Side to support his efforts to bring a Wal-Mart to 83rd and Stewart.
I received an email from a fan. I was surprised to hear about the food conditions that our military works under. It made me feel grateful for the food choices I live daily.
Dear Dr. Laura,
I am a Family Medicine physician in the US Navy, and I am currently stationed in Iraq with the Marines as part of a Shock Trauma Platoon. This is my first deployment. We have been here for about 4 months and have about 3 months to go.
I recently received a care package from one of my friends that contained your Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Bite-lettes. I had never had them before and they are such a welcome treat! Our base is very small and our food options are very limited. The choices served at our chow hall are all pre-cooked and reheated by either frying or boiling. The limited produce that we have is canned. The few food items sold in our exchange are similar: reheatable entrees, chips, canned meats, and squirtable cheeses. Also, since I am 1 of 3 females on a base of nearly 500 young men, there is not much clamoring for healthier options.
These bites not only arrived safely in their plastic container after 3 weeks of bouncing around in the mail, they were also still soft and chewy despite 130 degree heat. They are the closest things we've had to home-baking for over 4 months. And I love that you use all natural ingredients without any extra junk -- they taste so wonderful because they're made with wonderful, good things. I feel healthier by eating just 1! Not only are they good for my body, as a fellow doctor, they're good for my conscience. Hopefully a store in the Palm Springs area will start to sell them, so that I can recommend them to my patients, as well as stock up myself.
Thank you so much for enriching my deployment in such a tasty, delightful way!
Your lifelong fan, Julianne LoMacchio Palumbo, DO LT MC USN
P.S. I attached a photo of our STP group and one of me in front of our ambulance, as well as the view from inside our trauma center, so you get an idea of what it's like out here!
YANGON, Myanmar — An American facing up to five years in jail for entering the house of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been hospitalized after suffering seizures, a week before a court is expected to issue a verdict in his case.
John Yettaw, 53, was admitted to Yangon's main hospital Monday, and his condition is improving, according to hospital sources who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals in the military-run nation. The U.S. Embassy confirmed he had been hospitalized.
Yettaw's health problems – he has epilepsy – risk delaying trial proceedings already hit by protracted disputes over how many witnesses could appear for the defense. Most recently, judges said Friday they needed more time to sort through legal issues. Their verdict is now due next Tuesday.
Suu Kyi could also be imprisoned for five years, as could two companions who lived with her. The 64-year-old Nobel Peace laureate is charged with violating the terms of her house arrest for allowing Yettaw to stay for two nights at her Yangon residence.
Critics say Myanmar's military regime has seized upon the bizarre intrusion as an excuse to keep Suu Kyi jailed through next year's scheduled elections – the country's first in nearly two decades. The last vote in 1990 was swept by Suu Kyi's party but the junta refused to relinquish power.
Yettaw, of Falcon, Missouri, testified that he swam to Suu Kyi's house to warn her that he had a vision that she would be assassinated.
As well as epilepsy, he reportedly has diabetes and other health problems, including post traumatic stress disorder from his time in the U.S. military. According to his wife Betty Yettaw, the devout Mormon received a head injury during his Army service that caused blackouts and later seizures.
His lawyer Khin Maung Oo said earlier that Yettaw had been kept in the hospital of Insein prison so authorities could monitor his health.
"The news was that he had some seizures. This is ongoing with him," U.S. Embassy spokesman Richard Mei said. "He has long history of epileptic seizures. He is being treated and this is what we know."
Mei said that the embassy's consular officer, Colin Furst, attempted to visit Yettaw at the hospital Monday morning but was not allowed to see him.
Associated Press interviews with people who know Yettaw reveal a man with a troubled past, strong Christian beliefs and a compulsion to comfort the afflicted. During the last hearing on Friday, Yettaw appeared in good spirits and walked around the court room saying, "I Love You," to everyone.
A former wife of the American, Sharon Yettaw, who lives in the Los Angeles area, said his hospitalization in Myanmar just added to her worries for him.
"I wish I could get a message to him to say that I wish him well, and that I'm praying for him," she told AP. "John's kind, you know. And all of this trouble he's brought to this woman (Suu Kyi) probably troubles him a lot."
"He doesn't want to bring anybody any harm. He doesn't want to bring trouble into anybody's life. He was hoping to save her life."
While there has been little speculation about the court's verdict in Yettaw's case, many diplomats expect Suu Kyi to be found guilty and she herself has said the court's decision was already "painfully obvious."
Suu Kyi's full testimony in the mostly closed-door trial was released Monday for the first time by her party, the National League for Democracy. In it, she said that the verdict in her case will be a test of "the whole of legal, justice and constitutional system in our country."
Suu Kyi said that she had allowed the American to stay in her home "without malice, simply with intent to ensure that no one concerned should suffer any adverse consequences."
Although defended by Suu Kyi, Yettaw has been called a fool and a madman by some of her supporters.
The charges against Suu Kyi, who has been detained for 14 of the last 20 years and was under house arrest at the time of the incident, have refocused international outrage on Myanmar, which has been ruled by its military since 1962. The regime is believed to hold hundreds of political prisoners.
Both Western nations and less critical Asian neighbors have criticized the regime's actions and urged Suu Kyi's release. Suu Kyi's lawyers have argued that the repeated extensions of her house arrest were illegal and that she is being tried under a provision of a constitution that has been superseded.
____
Associated Press writer Maria Fisher contributed to this report from Kansas City, Missouri.
If you got your information from Wyatt Andrews on CBS News last night, you would believe that "angry protesters" are cropping up "everywhere Democrats are trying to defend health care reform" You would think that "conservative websites" like Freedomworks are organizing these ordinary Americans, based on "real fear over the increased taxes" and "government control" of the health care system.
Max Pappas from Freedomworks shows up to speak on their behalf.
Freedomworks isn't some "organic grassroots" outfit. It's run by former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey -- corporate lobbyist, global warming denier and ladies' man. The President and CEO of Freedomworks is Matt Kibbee, who was trained by Lee Atwater. Kibbe was behind the attempt to get Ralph Nader put on the ballot in Oregon in 2004, prompting a complaint to the FEC of illegal collusion with the GOP.
Freedomworks has a long history of skunk works. In 2004, a woman who identified herself as a "single mother" in Iowa, Sandra Jacques, appeared at a George Bush town hall and gushed about his plan to privatize Social Security. She left out the part about being an employee of Freedomworks, who were lobbying on the issue at the time.
David Koch is also Chairman of the other major outfit heavily involved in these "organic" uprisings, Americans for Prosperity, whose members lynched Democrat Frank Kratovil in effigy. Koch is the 19th richest man in the world. They recently renamed the New York State Theater in Lincoln Center the David H. Koch Theater.
These aren't just some organizations that these guys gave money to. They run them.
This extreme violent behavior is being organized and funded by those at the highest levels of the conservative infrastructure. It's not some sideline, some quirky hobby. It is the function and purpose of these organizations to threaten and intimidate elected officials in order to subvert the will of the electorate to a corporate agenda.
As DDay says, "This is not about policy. It's about incitement to violence."
The country overwhelmingly does not trust the private insurance industry. Even internal GOP polls show that 58% of Republicans support "creating a government run health insurance agency that will compete with private insurance companies," as do 76% of the American public.
According to the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, there are 52 million Americans currently without health insurance. We are a country in crisis. If the government cannot respond by delivering a public plan with a President who campaigned on creating one, a 60 vote Democratic majority in the Senate, a Speaker of the House who has committed to doing so and majority support in both parties among the public, then we do not live in a representative democracy any more. The country is ungovernable.
And that is in large part because organizations like CBS and the New York Times do not report the news when it is right in front of them. They pass off these transparent lobbyist funded thuggery as a grassroots effort. They do not say who is organizing these violent uprisings, or what the objective is of those who are funding them -- which has nothing to with the public's "fear" of "government control" over the health care system. These media outlets are playing a critical role by telling the country that its people believe something that they don't. When David M. Herszenhorn and Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times refer to them simply as "oose-knit coalition of conservative voters and advocacy groups," they are helping to pass off blatant propaganda as news.
It is to "journalism" what David R. Koch is to "grassroots."
ISLAMABAD — An independent Pakistani human rights commission said Tuesday that rioting that killed eight Christians last week was not spontaneous but was planned by the attackers, some of whom belong to an al-Qaida-linked group.
The findings were released the same day Pakistani police began questioning more than 200 people to determine if the attacks were premeditated, said Punjab province Law Minister Rana Sanaullah. Another top official suggested militants fleeing an army offensive in the northwest Swat Valley were also involved.
Hundreds of Muslims attacked a Christian neighborhood in the eastern Pakistani city of Gojra on Saturday after reports that Christians had desecrated a Quran. The assault, in which dozens of homes were also torched, underscored the precarious existence of religious minorities in this Muslim-majority nation where extremist Islam is on the rise.
Sanaullah told The Associated Press that members of the banned Sunni group Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan and its al-Qaida-linked offshoot Lashkar-e-Jhangvi were arrested as suspected attackers.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said its fact-finding team interviewed the families of victims, residents, witnesses and officials. Commission head Asma Jahangir said in a statement that announcements made from mosques the day before called upon Muslims to "make mincemeat of the Christians."
The statement said many of the attackers came from a neighboring district, Jhang – the birthplace and stronghold of the banned militant groups.
"The attackers seemed to be trained for carrying out such activities," she said.
A Pakistani intelligence report some two months earlier suggested militant groups may be switching from suicide attacks to creating sectarian strife in cities, Sanaullah noted.
"We need to locate and arrest those who were wearing masks during the carnage," he said, referring to the attackers who were covering their faces during the rioting to avoid being identified.
The demonstrations began Thursday but reached their violent zenith Saturday, allegedly after hardline clerics began making speeches against the Christians. Authorities say an initial probe had debunked the claims that the Muslim holy book was defiled. Christians in the community attended special church services for the victims Tuesday.
Separately, Punjab province Gov. Salman Taseer, on a visit to Gojra, said "those who were evicted from Swat have a hand in this incident." Taseer offered no evidence to back up this claim.
Pakistan's army is engaged in a three-month-old offensive in Swat, a northwest valley that was once a prominent tourist destination. The military claims to have killed 1,800 suspected militants in the operation.
Christians – including Protestants and Catholics – make up less than 5 percent of Pakistan's 175 million people, according to the CIA World Factbook. They generally live in peace with their Muslim neighbors.
Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif promised Tuesday that the government would cover the cost of rebuilding the charred houses and pledged to bring the perpetrators of the weekend attack to justice.
"There couldn't be any cruelty more harsh than this," he said in an address to Christians in Gojra.
Pakistan has also been fighting militants in its semiautonomous tribal regions in the northwest. In the latest violence, four security forces and 11 civilians died, two intelligence officials said Tuesday.
Suspected militants fired rockets at a military base camp in the North Waziristan tribal region late Monday, killing the four security forces. Also late Monday, mortar shells fired by an unknown source hit two homes in two villages of the same region, killing 11 civilians, the officials said.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
___
Associated Press writers Munir Ahmad in Islamabad and Rasool Dawar in Mir Ali contributed to this report.
It was President George W. Bush who presided over the largest socialized expansion of government-supported healthcare, Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.) asserted Tuesday.
Ross, a leading member of the centrist Blue Dog Democrat coalition on health issues, said that it was Bush, not President Obama, who pioneered the expansion of government's role in healthcare.
Dear Maddisen: I'm a healthy and productive person, and am happy with my life overall. But when I get into dark or unhappy moods, I sometimes feel paralyzed, stuck. Then I get mad at myself for getting stuck. And then it gets worse! Do you have any advice for how I can move through the natural dark times without feeling so stuck and self critical? With much appreciation, NS
Dear NS. First, I've got to tell you how refreshing it is to hear you acknowledge the natural dark times. We live in a culture that tends to propagate the unnatural perception that we should be spouting in joyful exuberance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - so trust me, NS, when I say you've already taken a big step into the natural movement and mobility you seek merely by your acknowledgment. My intention is to share a theory about the natural cycle of our human nature and to provide a few tips for getting unstuck from the natural dark times.
What is the natural cycle of our human nature, our psyches? If we study ancient traditions including those of the Native American Indians and the East Indian Buddhists, and the more recent teachings of psychoanalyst C.G. Jung and Dr. Steven Foster & Meredith Little of the School of Lost Borders, we find a common theme related to a psychological paradigm referred to as the four shields, or four directions (south, west, north, and east), or four seasons (summer, fall, winter, spring). This is also related to the wheel of life.
For example, when our psyches are in the south, or what I call the "I Need" state, we are more like children, expressive, spontaneous, playful, reactive, with our attention on what satisfies our immediate needs and cravings. When we are in the west, what I call the "I Feel" state, we may feel more like an adolescent passing through the dark lands of self-consciousness, isolation, loneliness, boredom, and we want to go our own way, but feel exposed to the indifferent forces of nature. It can feel unbearable here, but this place is often where we unbury our greatest gifts. In the north, the "I Want" state, we are like the adult, focused on survival, self control, self reliance, hard work, sacrifice, and immersed in mental processes. And in the east, the "I Am" state, we experience the wisdom and reward of experience from our trip around the wheel of life, and the birth of new life, new hope, and a shift in perspective toward the Light, or what some call Spirit. And then we move naturally to the south again, and go around and around and...
Have you noticed this cycle in your own life? Can you see any examples of how you have moved in and out of these states throughout a day, a week, and hour, etc? Do you sense that you tend to exaggerate one or more of the directions? For example, a person who is a workaholic and who doesn't make time for fun or play might be described as exaggerated in the north and undernourished in the south. Just becoming aware of this could help this person take steps to create more balance and satisfaction in these areas. Even entire cultures, generations, or groups can appear to be exaggerated and undernourished in certain directions.
Please keep in mind; this is a simplified and somewhat generalized description of the psychological paradigm. However, I'm sharing it with you to demonstrate the dynamic nature of our psyches, and how very natural it is for us as humans to experience and move through a rich and wide array of emotions ranging from dark to light.
We tend to cycle naturally and unconsciously through these states. However, where many of us often get "stuck" is in the west, the place of depression or other forms of unhappiness, and there are a few simple methods I'll share to help you get unstuck, so that you can continue your natural journey on the wheel of life. Of course, the best way to move out of the west place is to move into the north and do - take action, walk the dog, go to work, engage in service work, etc. But if even that's not working and you still feel stuck or paralyzed, carry out one or both of the following simple processes to help get you moving again.
SET SAIL WITH SELF FORGIVENESS If you are stuck in the dark place, it's most likely because you are judging yourself for feeling what you're feeling (!), so to set sail, the first thing you do is self forgiveness.
I've observed that the judgment about feeling bad is in itself what causes stuckness and emotional suffering. In other words, if we are unhappy about something and just allow the feeling of unhappiness without judging it, there is less suffering and the unhappiness dissipates faster and we move on.
Follow these steps to self forgiveness:
Step 1 Take note mentally or on paper the specific judgments you are making about yourself (and others if applicable).
Step 2 Start with the expression: "I forgive myself for judging myself for..." or "I forgive myself for judging myself as...", and then add whatever the judgments are. Make this an audible process, meaning say these phrases out loud.
For example, "I forgive myself for judging myself as depressed and stuck."
Step 3 Repeat until feel complete with the self forgiveness, and follow with this phrasing: "Because the truth is...", and then add the positive traits you know or sense to be true.
For example, "Because the truth is it's natural for me to feel dark sometimes, and I always move out of it feeling better."
If this gets you "moving" into the north and into action and no longer feeling stuck - wonderful. Be kind to yourself and gently move yourself into the north and do something, taking small steps to get yourself moving around the wheel. If you need more assistance to get moving, try the next process too.
IGNITE YOUR CONFIDENCE FROM THE DOOM This is a fun way to trick your ego into regaining its confidence and mobility. You do it from wherever you are emotionally, especially if you are down in the dumps and feeling stuck in it.
Step 1 Start with the expression: "I am confident that ..." and then fill in the blank with whatever you are currently confident about.
For example, "I am confident that I am feeling depressed and stuck." Or, "I'm confident that I'm resisting this and judging myself." Or, "I am confident I don't wish to be stuck here." Or, "I am confident I want to feel better." Or, "I am confident that I love my cat." Or, "I am confident that I love pizza." Or, "I am confident my friends love me." Etc.
Try this, and repeat the phrasing until you feel lighter and more elevated, and no longer stuck. Being confident about what you are feeling, regardless of what it is, can shift you into feeling empowered, which is an emotion of higher energy and motion.
Step 2 Think about what small action you can take next, even if it's as simple as cleaning the kitchen and loading the dishwasher. Be kind to yourself and gently move yourself into the north and do something, taking small steps to get yourself moving around the wheel.
Moving on The result should be that you get unstuck from the dark place, and move into the doing, however simple that is. Acknowledge yourself for getting yourself unstuck!
And so, dear NS, I hope this provides you with some useful steps for getting unstuck from the natural dark times. The beauty of the paradigm of the four directions and the wheel of life is that we are always moving and evolving whether we realize it or not. Even better, if we feel stuck or exaggerated or undernourished in any area, we now have ways to get moving and practical knowledge about how to balance and nourish our psyches in natural ways that honor our full humanness and the rich rainbow of our emotions.
I am 48 years old, in excellent health and in great shape. I had my last period just over a year ago and had a very uneventful menopausal experience, with the exception of the usual hot flashes. I take calcium and Vitamin D, eat a balanced diet and exercise daily. My bone density test from a month ago showed normal in the spine, hip and forearm.
I have always been meticulous about my dental care, since on mother's side of the family there have been lots of dental problems, with some of my aunts actually losing all their teeth. They were in their early 60s when this happened; it was very traumatic for me to watch them age overnight and deal with the shame of dentures. I don't know if it is relevant, but I am Irish-American in ancestry.
I floss daily. I have my teeth cleaned three times a year and have had few cavities.
I did smoke from age 16 to 30; apart from one glass of wine a day, I have no other vices.
For the last year I have been in the Middle East due to a job transfer. I did not see a dentist until last week, when I returned to work in the large city where I live.
Over the past six months I became aware that my teeth, upper and lower in the front, seemed a bit loose, so subtle that I wasn't sure I was over-reacting. Then I noticed some new spaces between my teeth. I am under a great deal of stress and am having terrible insomnia.
I saw my dentist and he did an X-ray of all my teeth. I was shocked to learn that I have lost 50 percent of bone in parts of my mouth. MY dentist did not have much information for me. He referred me to a gum specialist.
Does this bone loss mean that I have osteoporosis in my jaw?
What caused my teeth to become loose? If the problem is in the bone, why is the dentist sending me to a gum specialist?
Did menopause cause this? My dental health seemed fine until my last period over a year ago.
What is the general plan for evaluation of this kind of problem? What is likely to happen to my teeth?
I know this may sound juvenile, but since my aunts lost their teeth relatively young and had to have dentures, I am terrified.
I would appreciate any information that you can give me.
Regards, Margaret
Dear Margaret,
This is a common problem. I can certainly understand your concern. Dental and gum health are not only essential to proper mastication (chewing), but problems that you describe can lead to pain, chronic infections and let's face it, self-esteem. No one wants to face the specter of losing their teeth. We don't have all the answers to your questions, but I have asked Dr. Steven Butensky, who is on our Medical Advisory Board, to give you some detailed information about these issues.
Dr. Butensky is a skilled prosthodontist who has been in private practice in New York City for over 25 years. He is a clinical associate professor in Post-Graduate Prosthodontics as well as the Director of Aesthetic Dentistry in the Advanced Education Program in Prosthodontics at New York University. He has agreed to address your questions.
1. Does this bone loss mean that I have osteoporosis of the jaw? Not necessarily. Your bone loss around your teeth is most likely due to periodontal disease. This oral disease is called periodontitis, in which bone-destroying cells are activated by toxins released by bacteria adhering to the surfaces of your teeth and then populate pockets around them. It is true, however, that research has suggested osteoporosis can lead to decreased density of the jawbone, leading to greater tooth loss.
2. What caused my teeth to become loose, and if the problem is in the bone, why is the dentist sending me to a gum specialist? Did menopause cause this? My dental health was fine until I lost my period over a year ago. Loose teeth may be a symptom of periodontal disease, as bone support around your teeth diminishes. Menopause, with its decrease in estrogen production, is a secondary contributing factor to periodontitis. Your teeth cannot withstand the normal forces of chewing and clenching as the supporting structures around the dentition decrease. Many people's teeth do appear to migrate into new positions as periodontal structures (bone and gum tissue) are being destroyed. In other words, decreased levels of estrogen make women more susceptible to bone loss around the teeth.
Estrogen replacement therapy may decrease the amount of bone loss. However, the primary cause of periodontitis is bacteria; therefore good oral hygiene practice is crucial to prevention of periodontal disease. A periodontist, a gum specialist, can also decrease the depth of the pockets around your teeth with a minor surgical procedure. Smaller pocket depth makes it easier for you to remove the plaque or bacteria around your teeth.
3. What is the general plan for evaluation of this kind of problem? What is likely to happen to my teeth? I suggest that you see a qualified prosthodontist to evaluate your oral condition. A prosthodontist is a dental sub-specialist who deals with the restoration and maintenance of oral function, comfort, appearance and oral health of patients by restoration of natural teeth and/or the replacement of missing teeth. The prosthodontist will evaluate your family and past medical history just like a good doctor does. Then an evaluation of your current problems will allow a plan to be created to address your specific issues: loose teeth, migrating teeth and probably periodontal disease. It sounds like your teeth are in secondary occlusal trauma, a condition where your teeth can not withstand the normal forces of eating and grinding due to the loss of bone support.
In this case, you may need to have your teeth splinted with crowns in order to prevent further loosening or migration of the teeth. Research has proven that loss of tooth structure in the front of the mouth (short or worn teeth) can have a significant impact on the way muscles get activated during the grinding motion. The front teeth become short due to wear and tear over time and allow the back teeth to touch during grinding. The strong masseter muscles become activated, which can lead to increased tooth wear, fracture of the teeth and in severe cases joint and facial pain syndromes. I suggest to patients that they prevent these bad outcomes by placing porcelain veneers over the damaged teeth, which increases the length of the teeth, improves neuromuscular patterns in the face and, of course, is aesthetically an improvement.
When patients can not afford this expensive procedure, a night guard can be fabricated for the patient to place in the mouth at night to prevent further tooth loss and deactivates the strong facial muscles.
4. I know this may sound juvenile, but since my aunts lost their teeth relatively young and had to have dentures, I am terrified. Your concern may be well founded, as genetics do play a part in periodontal disease but once again is not the primary cause of tooth loss. Regular dental cleanings, replacement of lost teeth, healthy life-style choices, and maintenance of teeth and gum health by a qualified dentist can help prevent the unavoidable change of teeth and gum appearance and function. Use your anxiety in a healthy way. Visit the hygienist every 3 months. Floss every day. And, correct the current problem before it becomes worse.
Thanks for sending along your question, Margaret. It covers many interesting issues that will be of interest to many other women as well.
An alcoholic does not necessarily a good bartender make. A band of unhinged plastic surgery addicts is similarly ill-advised to open a one-stop shop for body transformations, and this obvious disaster recipe is the basis for Oxygen's newest reality series, 'Addicted to Beauty' (premiering Aug. 4 at 11 p.m. EST).
After running a spa with her now-estranged husband for seven years, socialite and surgical creation Dianne York-Goldman has joined forces with plastic surgeon Dr. Gilbert Lee to start an upscale medi-spa in Southern California that offers everything from spray tans to cellulite reduction to calf implants. As the California unemployment rate swells above 11 percent, business is booming!
To fuel the beauty addictions that enable their own, the Changes staff must inspire jealousy with its appearance, and so on goes the strange loop of Gore-Tex lips, globular breasts and contoured cheeks.
"I'd really love it if you get your teeth done," Dianne, who is a few face lifts away from becoming cat woman Jocelyn Wildenstein, tells her office manager, Shannyn, who has a Lauren Huttonesque gap between her teeth but looks to have removed all traces of humanity from every other part of her body. "Having bad teeth in the beauty business lets people know it's okay to not be perfect. And it's not okay! I would have done my teeth first thing over my breasts if I were you." Off to the dentist Shannyn goes.
Too bad all the characters are all so plastic that their lines would appear scripted even if they weren't, so the tension is not very interesting or believable.
Because the success of her reality show is more important than the success of her medi-spa, Dianne brings to Changes several contentious employees from her old business. All are at war with themselves and each other. The stabby, Botox-fueled staff makes 'Real World' corporate experiments look like a human resources dream.
There's Gary, the whiny receptionist who flat irons his hair behind the desk, cakes foundation into his cratery skin and begs Dr. Lee for Restylane injections on the sly in an unending quest for Cher's cheeks. Dr. Lee, whose face is stretched so tightly he probably sleeps with his eyes open, says that if there's anything he can do to help Gary, he will, and gets out the injectables. Gary also cries a lot for no apparent reason.
We meet Ronnie the concierge as he is down on his hands and knees bronzing Dianne's legs because they don't match. He has the bleached/tan coloring of a photo negative and often speaks in unison with Gary ("Oh. My. Gawd."), even though they both hate each other for not doing any work at all, ever, which begs the question of how closely they are following the producers' eye-stabbingly stereotypical gay boy script.
Then there's Natasha, Dianne's unflappable executive assistant who tries her hardest to keep the gays in line and dreams of running her own medi-spa one day. Having only been under the knife for a boob job, Natasha is the allegorical embodiment of the inverse relationship between beauty addiction and sanity. She has long dark hair and is pretty in a pre-rhinoplasty and lip collagen Megan Fox sort of way.
This motley crew's first task is to pull off a launch party that will announce the opening of Changes and the new, aggressively cheerful singledom of Dianne, who is ripe for the picking for anyone whose next career move is to appear on reality television. Dianne drapes herself in hundreds of carats of tasteless jewelry that are real but make her look faker, Dr. Lee summarily injects Botox into the foreheads of the staff before they pop the champagne, Natasha wears a low-cut dress and her dad is proud of her in the creepy way you'd expect. All things considered, the event is a success.
"All my friends who knew me when I was married want to introduce me to their friends," Dianne exclaims a little too exuberantly as she twirls around her La Jolla manse. "It's a whole new world opening up to me!"
Dianne was separated from her surgeon husband after shooting, so the show has shifted focus from the couple's relationship to Dianne's reinvention as a fabulous single woman. While reentry into the dating pool after 11 years wouldn't be easy for anyone, it's a particular challenge from behind an immovable mask. An expressionless face is, besides being a gross makeout target, a poor invitation for emotional intimacy.
"The staff is my family," Dianne says in a rare (but not real!) moment of self-awareness. "They're the closest people to me, and they're not all that close."
Sounds like one of Adam Sandler's lines in 'Funny People.' Sadly, the Changes staff lacks the comedic gifts of Seth Rogen.
'Addicted To Beauty' premieres Tuesday, August 4 at 11 p.m. ET/PT on Oxygen, and starting August 11 will air during its normal timeslot of 10 p.m. ET/PT.
In January 1997, Fab National magazine sent me to interview Julia Child, then 82, who was making an appearance at a large department store in downtown Toronto. As I was neither a cook nor any particular sort of gourmand, I barely noted it in my appointment book a the time.
Still, given that she was a lady of a certain age, and the grande dame of American cuisine, I brought her flowers. Mrs. Child appreciated the flowers very much, and generously gave me half an hour of her time. Fab National was a Canadian lifestyle magazine for gay men, and the theme was Valentine's Day cuisine, but Mrs. Childs, upon hearing that I wanted to talk about the romance of food, decided that I was writing for Romantic Food magazine.
I don't believe there is such a magazine, but it seemed less important to correct her than it did to listen to her words of wisdom.
At the end of the interview, I knew two things: I understood why Julia Child was a force of nature, and I was very, very hungry. Mrs. Child's descriptions of food--the sensuality with which she endowed descriptions of butter, and salt, and wine--were very nearly narcotic. And she was lovely. A truly great lady, as well as a true lady.
In light of the impending release of Julie and Julia starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child (I ask you, seriously--who else could play Julia Child?) and Amy Adams, I revisited our 1997 interview with a pang of genuine nostalgia, as well as the more usual cravings her words have always inspired. It was an honour to speak with her, even for such a short time.
And she was right about the chocolate and the marijuana, too.
MR: Mrs. Child, what deprived times we live in. We are at the mercy of low-fat this and high-fiber that, and it is impossible to ingest a bite without someone counting each calorie aloud for us. What are we to make of this grim landscape?
JC: I think if it continues, it may be the death-knell of good cooking. It has nothing to do with the enjoyment of food, or the pleasure of food, or the taste of food. I think it's a very dismal concept, and it's not necessary.
MR: It's certainly lacking in sensuality.
JC: There's no sensuality in it. And I think this fear of food is misplaced. If people use their heads sensibly, what they want is a well-balanced diet and small helpings. Then, have a good time and enjoy it.
MR: Will butter and gravy ever go completely out of style, in your opinion?
JC: I hope not, and I think it's coming back. I think people are realizing that just a little bit of the taste of good butter does so much to improve a sauce. And you don't need a great deal. Just a little bit adds glory and loveliness, don't you think?
MR: What might make Julia Child feel happy and contented on a cold February night?
JC: A really good dinner. A lovely piece of fish poached in white wine with mushrooms, and a nice sauce with butter in it.
MR: Valentine's Day is coming up. Do you find food romantic?
JC: Yes, I think careful cooking is love, don't you? The loveliest thing you can cook for someone who's close to you is about as nice a valentine as you can give.
MR: What is the connection between chocolate and romance, Mrs. Child?
JC: Chocolate? Well, I have heard that chocolate has some of the same elements that marijuana does. And marijuana presumably makes people happy. Chocolate certainly does.
MR: What do you think of Martha Stewart?
JC: We know her. She's a very special person. And I think she's also a perfectionist. She came to our house when we were doing the baking series. She was very professional and pleasant to be with, and she did a beautiful job.
MR: She has been lampooned and parodied somewhat mercilessly, alas.
JC: Yes, and I don't know why. People are probably jealous of her because she's so good-looking and capable, and anything she sets out to do she can do.
MR: Mrs. Child, I've heard about your days in the O.S.S.--the spy agency--during World War 2. Tell me, how does a 6'1 glamour queen from Smith College remain inconspicuous enough to be a spy.
JC: The O.S.S. was a big bureaucratic organization, and I was a file clerk the whole time I was there.
MR: So you didn't see any action?
JC: I would have liked to, but they said, "If any of you girls start fooling around, you'll be sent right home!"
MR: As a no-nonsense Yankee woman, how does it feel to have been set up as the dowager empress of American cookery? How have you handled the adulation?
JC: I don't pay much attention to it. I go about my work, and I'm very happy to be in this profession.
MR: What would be your suggestions to young men starting to entertain, cook, and throw dinner parties for the first time? The advice from God Herself, please.
JC: I would try to learn as much about cooking as I could. One good way is--if you have a friend who is a good cook--to offer to help him or her, to say "Anytime you're giving a party, I'm your man. I'll help, wash dishes, take garbage out." Another way is to take cooking classes. You don't need an enormous amount of knowledge. It's not that difficult. You just do it.
MR: What's next for Julia Child? More videos? More books?
JC: We haven't decided yet. I'll be glad to get back in the kitchen. I miss my stove.
MR: Your energy hasn't flagged at all, has it? Even at 82?
Before taking aim at ABC for actually inviting the far right-wing provocateur Michelle Malkin onto their Sunday talk show with Stephanopoulos, I have to say it was actually fascinating studying her behavior.
It's instructive to watch it with the sound on to hear the kind of presumption she uses in speaking for the American people or assigning phrases to them that she has coined herself on her blog. It's also interesting to listen to how, like a too-leading and tightly-wound prosecuting attorney, she ascribes an actively conspiratorial dimension to all things Democratic or Presidential at every turn. It's even more interesting, though, to study Ms. Malkin with the sound off.
You might think the screen grab above is unfair, like a sliver or instant pulled out-of-context in which any of us might look ready to be committed. I could offer you any number of other stills from this program, however, that isolate Ms. Malkin's disturbed affect, incendiary manner and inability, as she gets herself going, to make eye contact. If you watch her, she doesn't suggest or propose so much as she starts to ignite. She doesn't recognize or acknowledge so much as she she glares and stares, her eyes and her body, when it's her turn to speak, constantly darting, punctuating, escalating, agitating.
In the tradition of Limbaugh or Coulter, Michelle Malkin's anger is always looking to break through to the surface, and when it does, it's often palpable to the point of paranoia. This image is not exceptional, it is characteristic.
The fate of health care reform could be determined by progressive and labor groups' ability to fight right-wing lies and health industry lobbying against health care reform during the August Congressional recess. But even as debunked smearscontinue, such as the claim the bill aims to kill old people through "death care," progressives are being hamstrung by mainstream media outlets.
That's because respected news organizations, not just Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, have allowed lies, misinformation and other distortions about health care reform to flourish. One little-noticed reason: the media's never-ending emphasis on covering the political "horse-race" of a story, rather than the policy side in a clear, emotionally compelling way.
As one union lobbyist tells In These Times, where this article first appeared: "What is so frustrating is that the media is so focused on the political process, not on what reform will do for people. They are not focused on the value of reform and what everyday people face: whether they will have in fact insurance if they lose their jobs. The [reporters] are more stuck in covering the political maneuverings, the tug of war."
This sort of mindless coverage also helps spur mobs protesting healthcare reform, organized by right-ring and corporate front groups, that are now harassing members of Congress holding public forums. Here's the result: Angry protesters shouting "just say no" to healthcare change, like this group greeting Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX):
As Think Progress has reported, these harassment campaigns have been organized by lobbyist-controlled groups, such as FreedomWorks, run by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey. A FreedomWorks memo from an organizer advised followers on "Rocking Town Hall" meetings with the aim of shouting down members of Congress by such tactics as "Yell," "Stand Up and Shout," and "Rattle Him."
As a corrective to the media's general influence in helping spur such fear-driven intimidation campaigns, Rachel Maddow explored on Monday's show the role of conservative lobbyists in promoting GOP thuggishness:
Let's look at how the "granny-killing" lie spread that helped fuel these mobs' reactions, and how it was pushed by influential media outlets. The myth that the legislation's proposed voluntary advice offered about living wills was a plot to kill old people originated in mid-July with a right-wing shill-for-hire whom critics call a "serial fabricator." That's Betsey McCaughey, of course, a well-funded Hudson Institute fellow, medical devices firm board member and former Republican lieutenant governor, who helped kill President Bill Clinton's health reform plans. Now she's back, and here's how her latest misinformation missile was first launched:
As chronicled by Media Matters for America, her claim that the bill promotes euthanasia may have started on right-wing talk radio, but then, like many useful smears, wormed its way into mainstream coverage, despite being blatantly false:
PolitiFact: McCaughey's claim is a "ridiculous falsehood"
McCaughey's original claim gets "Pants on Fire" status. On July 23, PolitiFact.com reported: "On the radio show of former Sen. Fred Thompson on July 16, 2009, McCaughey said 'Congress would make it mandatory -- absolutely require -- that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner.' " PolitiFact.com stated:
For our ruling on this one, there's really no gray area here. McCaughey incorrectly states that the bill would require Medicare patients to have these counseling sessions and she is suggesting that the government is somehow trying to interfere with a very personal decision. And her claim that the sessions would "tell [seniors] how to end their life sooner" is an outright distortion. Rather, the sessions are an option for elderly patients who want to learn more about living wills, health care proxies and other forms of end-of-life planning. McCaughey isn't just wrong, she's spreading a ridiculous falsehood. That's a Pants on Fire.
Even as Fox News and Limbaugh continued peddling the falsehood (Limbaugh talked about the government planning to "get rid of your clunker grandparents"), the story continued to be pushed along by other conservative and more mainstream outlets. One strategy to keep such stories alive is to refer to it as a "controversy" or cite "rumors" that won't go away, thus keeping it in the news. The bogus claim ultimately lead President Obama to deny it during a public forum.
Here's how the media aided the spread of just this one piece of misinformation:
Debunkings, McCaughey's backtracking doesn't stop media echo chamber
[ Washington Examiner political correspondent Byron] York says according to bill, "there will be consultation ... to discuss ... end-of-life issues,"... which he claimed raised the question of "whether there's any coercive element to this." [Fox's Special Report with Bret Baier, 7/28/09]
Washington Post promoted falsehood. In a July 29 Post article about President Obama's AARP forum on health care, Ceci Connolly wrote that "[o]ne woman asked Obama about 'rumors' that under the proposed legislation, every American over age 65 would be visited by a government worker and 'told to decide how they wish to die,' " but did not report that the "rumors" are not true, as Cuthbert and Obama noted during that forum.
Hannity: "I don't want somebody at the end of my life from some bureaucrat counseling me about whether or not I need antibiotics."
Buchanan: "Now we're hearing all this stuff about people at the end of their life are gonna get visited by some guy." ... After Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said, "[T]hat's why we've got to straighten out some of these untruths. Some of these things are actual lies," host Joe Scarborough replied: "Are you saying you do not have the Grim Reaper clause in this health care bill? They're all saying the Grim Reaper's gonna come visit them." Cummings responded, "That is absolutely untrue."
The Washington Post later deconstructed the spread of the myth on its front page, but by then the damage was already done, taking proponents of health-care reform further off-message after the Henry Gates controversy as they were forced to rebut health care lies.
Indeed, in a perceptive column by the Century Foundation's Maggie Mahar, she notes that the downbeat reporting about health reform's prospects has seemingly become self-fulfilling. And that in part was due the media's penchant, including by progressive publications, to focus on the political "horse-race" element of health care reform rather than substance:
The Press Fails to Analyze the Arguments
In light of the compromises that Senate Democrats are making, one could argue that the press was correct earlier this month, when it declared that health care reform was headed for trouble. But I can't help but wonder: to what degree did the headlines become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
Less than two weeks ago, it seemed that Senator Baucus' political capital was falling, and that the Senate HELP committee bill, along with the House bill, might well define the terms for reform. But the media continued to "highlight setbacks far more than progress."
Moreover, Media Matters is right in pointing out that the press failed to analyze the contradictions in the Blue Dog's arguments as they simultaneously criticized progressive Democrats for creating reform bills that "did not include enough cost savings," and at the same time, insist that any public plan should pay doctors and hospitals more than Medicare pays. The Blue Dogs seem to be winning on that last point.
Paul Krugman has skewered the hypocrisy of the Blue Dogs, who eagerly accepted billions in lost revenue from Bush-era tax breaks and favor across-the-board increases for all rural providers, rather than paying more for effective care -- or using a public health option that would lower costs through competition. But that still hasn't prevented them from dominating the debate on health care, abetted by fawning, uncritical media coverage.
Mahar and writers for The Columbia Journal Review, among others, point to the underlying dynamics of the superficiality and the profit motive driving media coverage that also keeps the issue a captive of special interests. Mahar observers:
What I find most disappointing is that when the 1,018 page House Plan was made public, even progressive newspapers failed to give readers much-needed, solid information on the strengths of the plan...
What all of this adds up to is security. No family would ever again go bankrupt because a child suffering from cancer had blown through their insurance plan's life-time cap on reimbursements. No parent would have to worry that her twenty-something might be in a car accident--and then find himself in a situation where he received subpar care-- because he didn't have insurance. No one would have to fear watching a loved one die in screaming pain because the doctor never explained that "palliative care" was available. (Palliative care specialists are trained in the fine art of controlingl pain.They also counsel critically ill patients, explaining treatment options.)
Yet journalists have been so cowed by the challenge of explaining the bill clearly that corporate and right-wing interests, with simple and inflammatory messages about government control of health care and Obama's plan to kill your grandparents, now dominate the debate. Journalists admit they've viewed health care reform as not being "journalist-friendly" and, essentially, too boring for TV. As a result, journalists turn to covering the story they know best, political machinations, rather than policy.
That leaves the details of highlighting what's in the bills to special interest groups, from GOP henchmen eager to destroy Obama to the insurance industry , that have their own ideological reasons for spreading falsehoods. As Trudy Lieberman noted in The Columbia Journalism Review, citing a Politico story on how health reform "sinks ratings":
NPR's Julie Rovner added her two cents, saying that health care is "so big and so complicated that the public is never really going to understand all the moving parts of this." That makes them vulnerable to the fear-mongering ads bought and paid for by special interest demagogues of all stripes, she explained. [Emphasis added.] Jon Banner, Charlie Gibson's executive producer over at ABC News, believes "there are too many bills with too many details, which are all different.... That's confusing to people."
So should we stop explaining to the public how they will be affected by whatever comes forth from Congress because, as Rovner suggests, they will never understand it anyway? Should we forget about the details, as Banner implies? For months, we at [CJR's]Campaign Desk have criticized the president and members of Congress for being too vague, and have urged them to explain--in detailed terms--how reform will affect their constituents. Failing to do so leaves the public susceptible to special interest propaganda. What exactly does a "public option" or "bundled payments" mean to an auto mechanic on Main Street?
She points to the work of a San Francisco public radio station, KQED, as a model for valuable reporting. For instance, she observed:
Health reporter Sarah Varney separated the facts from the fiction currently being spread by TV ads purchased by conservative interests who oppose single-payer systems.
Varney traveled to Vancouver to learn what health care is actually like in Canada. Contrary to popular belief, she found health care works pretty well. In a note to me, Varney said:
"I would say as an American health reporter there is a lot of pressure inside news rooms to give the Canadian horror stories equal footing with what my reporting actually found---which was that the Canadian system is by-and-large a functioning system that covers everyone for half the cost with enviable health outcomes."
Varney told a compelling and interesting story that directly contradicts the ads now running on U.S. television....As for the long waits Canadians supposedly endure, the number of people who do that is "vanishingly small." The illusion has been created, said [Canadian health expert Robert] Evans, that there are lines of people near death wanting services in Canada. He called that "absolute nonsense." The government has recently taken steps to alleviate whatever waits existed, by establishing national benchmarks and allocating more money for certain types of care.
But instead of such thoughtful reporting, instead we get some of the Sunday talk shows and recent articles spreading granny-killing claims or the notion that health reform is a budget-buster that will bankrupt the government; that latter claim is based largely on an early partial draft of one bill assessed by the Congressional Budget Office, later supplanted by a more thorough review, which has been rarely mentioned. In fact, as Media Matters for America, reported yesterday on claims of $1 trillion for health reform by Fox News pundits Mara Liasson and Chris Wallace :
Suggestion the bill has a $1 trillion "price tag" is false
CBO found that the House tri-committee bill would increase the federal budget deficit by $239 billion over 10 years -- not $1 trillion. In its July 17 cost estimate of the bill as introduced, CBO explained that its "estimate reflects a projected 10-year cost of the bill's insurance coverage provisions of $1,042 billion, partly offset by net spending changes that CBO estimates would save $219 billion over the same period, and by revenue provisions that [the Joint Committee on Taxation] estimates would increase federal revenues by about $583 billion over those 10 years." CBO thus concluded the legislation "would result in a net increase in the federal budget deficit of $239 billion over the 2010-2019 period."
Wallace and Liasson join New York Times, CNBC's Bartiromo, Fox News' Rove in advancing false cost estimate....
Add all that misinformation to the $133 million the health industry spent on lobbying in just the second quarter of this year, it's not surprising why progressives are seeking so much citizen support in the fight for health care reform. Now they have the extra public relations burden of showing, as Bill Scher of Campaign for America's Future has pointed out, "A Right-Wing Mob is Not A Majority."
So organizations such as the AFL-CIO,SEIU and Health Care for America NOW know that grass-roots activism will be critical in the dog days of August will to overcome the fog of media-fed untruths -- and GOP-driven thuggery -- clouding their drive for reform.
Mixing Michael Jackson's solo material with that of The Jackson 5's, The Stripped Mixes rips away layers of production, revealing a young boy with the ability to emote mature emotions at an early age. Of course, that's the irony, considering Michael Jackson's post-thirty-five material is riddled with man-child topics and some pretty contrived acrobatic voicings. But Stripped's vocals sound honest and full of life, despite the family drama at the time of these recordings; and they are presented as round and mostly uncompressed, making this batch one of the most revealing presentations of all the works of The King of Pop.
Producers Tom Rowland and Jeff Moskow (with Motown guru Harry Weinger and Mulholland Music's mastering chief Doug Schwartz) lovingly treat the young Jackson's recordings with respect, allowing his notes to breathe and soar whenever possible. Opening with the lone bass of "I'll Be There," these new mixes hush anything that competes with Michael's cherubic voice as it earnestly suggests things like "you and I should make a pact" or when it crescendos in lyrics such as "let me fill your heart with joy and laughter." One of the project's best re-mixes is the almost unbearably innocent "Ben" that is now cradled within a far-off string section and gentle acoustic guitar. The album practically is worth its cost for this song alone, or possibly for its newly-simplified bridge with a previously buried, touching string conclusion.
The remix of the heartbreaking "With A Child's Heart" mainly succeeds from Michael's now clarified, sullen approach that tackles its subject matter with an eerie perceptiveness--especially sad considering his later "adult" years; and the revision of his cover of Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine" (released as a UK single) spotlights a moodier, soulful side, one that someone Michael's age normally doesn't have access to. These are some of his richest vocals prior to the ink on his Epic contract drying.
But the schoolyard romps that are the simplified "ABC" and "I Want You Back" show off this happy little kid goofing around with his big brothers, and celebrates his just being a boy (albeit a ridiculously gifted one). Though "Got To Be There" is all about its vocal octave jumps and not much more, "Never Can Say Goodbye" and its re-focused rhythm section (is that electric guitar a sixth Jackson?) show-off Michael being a showoff. It's a great showcase for all of the Jackson brothers, but especially for the runt who's just riffin' away on lines such as "I never can-a-say-a-goodbye" like a little wiseass.
And Stax fans are going to love "Who's Loving You" that's been pared down to its pianos (including electric), bass, era-appropriate electric guitar chinks, and doo-wop background vocals, it time-tripping us back to the sixties where the song belongs. The only complaint one might have about this collection is a major one...it only offers eleven tracks (what, no "Mama's Pearl," "The Love You Save" or "Rockin' Robin"?). But throughout these short, blissful insights into the music of Michael's childhood, you get to re-explore this pop genius from another perspective, one that invites you to revisit your own youth along the way.
For the completist, there is the box set Hello World - The Motown Solo Collection that gives you everything that united the "Michael Jackson" and "Motown" monikers. It gathers every Jackson recording between 1971 and 1975, including bonus tracks such as nine from the album Farewell My Summer Love in their "original, un-dubbed mixes." The three-disc collection features all the hits and Michael's unreleased, original mix of his take on Edwin Starr's "Twenty-Five Miles." Liner notes include those by Motown artist and Jackson friend Suzee Ikeda plus Mark Anthony Neal, and they and the discs are housed within a 48-page, hard-backed box that also includes annotations, rare photos, and LP jacket reproductions, including the disturbing "rat" cover originally released for Ben.
The Stripped Mixes
1. I'll Be There 2. Ben 3. Who's Loving You 4. Ain't No Sunshine 5. I Want You Back 6. ABC 7. We've Got A Good Thing Going 8. With A Child's Heart 9. Darling Dear 10. Got To Be There 11. Never Can Say Goodbye
Hello World - The Motown Solo Collection
Disc 1 1. Ain't No Sunshine 2. I Wanna Be Where You Are 3. Girl Dont Take Your Love From Me 4. In Our Small Way 5. Got To Be There 6. Rockin' Robin 7. Wings Of My Love 8. Maria (You Were The Only One) 9. Love Is Here And Now You're Gone 10. You've Got A Friend 11. Ben 12. Greatest Show On Earth 13. People Make The World Go Round 14. We've Got A Good Thing Going 15. Everybody's Somebody's Fool 16. My Girl 17. What Goes Around Comes Around 18. In Our Small Way 19. Shoo Be Doo Be Doo Da Day 20. You Can Cry On My Shoulder 21. Don't Let It Get You Down (original mix) 22. You've Really Got A Hold on Me (original mix) 23. Melodie (original mix) 24. Touch The One You Love (original mix)
Disc 2 1. With A Child's Heart 2. Up Again 3. All The Things You Are 4. Happy (Love Theme From Lady Sings The Blues) 5. Too Young 6. Doggin' Around 7. Euphoria 8. Morning Glow 9. Johnny Raven 10. Music And Me 11. Were Almost There 12. Take Me Back 13. One Day In Your Life 14. Cinderella Stay Awhile 15. We've Got Forever 16. Just A Little Bit Of You 17. You Are There 18. Dapper-Dan 19. Dear Michael 20. I'll Come Home To You 21. Girl You're So Together (original mix) 22. Farewell My Summer Love (original mix) 23. Call On Me (original mix)
Disc 3 1. When I Come Of Age 2. Teenage Symphony 3. I Hear A Symphony 4. Give Me Half A Chance 5. Love's Gone Bad 6. Lonely Teardrops 7. You're Good For Me 8. That's What Love Is Made Of 9. I Like You The Way You Are (Don't Change Your Love On Me) 10. Who's Lookin' For A Lover 11. I Was Made To Love Her 12. If 'N I Was God 13. To Make My Father Proud (original mix) 14. Here I Am (Come And Take Me) (original mix) 15. Twenty-Five Miles (original mix) 16. Don't Let It Get You Down 17. You've Really Got A Hold on Me 18. Melodie 19. Touch The One You Love 20. Girl You're So Together 21. Farewell My Summer Love 22. Call On Me 23. Here I Am (Come And Take Me) 24. To Make My Father Proud
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