7/22 The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com

BlackRock's Larry Fink Takes Aim At "Luxurious" Wall Street Profits July 22, 2009 at 1:29 am Larry Fink, BlackRock's founder and chief executive, on Tuesday took aim at the "luxurious" trading profits enjoyed by Wall Street banks, saying that they have taken advantage of reduced competition to charge their customers more for even basic trades. Obama Raises His Personal Stake In Health Care Overhaul July 22, 2009 at 1:24 am President Barack Obama is significantly raising his personal stake in the effort to overhaul America's health-care system, as Democrats and the public express growing unease about the costs. Amy Goodman: Henry Louis Gates, Troy Anthony Davis, and the 21st Century Color Line July 22, 2009 at 1:15 am W.E.B. Du Bois' classic 1903 work "The Souls of Black Folk" opens with "The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." Du Bois helped form the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which just celebrated its 100th anniversary. Henry Louis Gates Jr., who directs Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research, knows much about the color line -- not only from his life's work, but from life experience, including last week, when he was arrested in his own home. Gates' lawyer, Harvard Law professor Charles Ogletree, said in a statement that the arrest occurred as Gates returned from the airport: "Professor Gates attempted to enter his front door, but the door was damaged. Professor Gates then entered his rear door with his key, turned off his alarm, and again attempted to open the front door. With the help of his driver they were able to force the front door open, and then the driver carried Professor Gates' luggage into his home." Both Gates and his driver are African-American. According to the Cambridge [Mass.] Police report, a white woman saw the two black men attempting to enter the home and called police. Ogletree continued: "The officer ... asked Professor Gates whether he could prove that he lived there and taught at Harvard. Professor Gates said that he could, and ... handed both his Harvard University identification and his valid Massachusetts driver's license to the officer. Both include Professor Gates' photograph, and the license includes his address." Police officer James Crowley reported that Gates responded to his request for identification: "Why? Because I'm a black man in America?" Despite his positive identification, Gates was then arrested for disorderly conduct. Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, more than 60 mostly African-American and Latino children attending the Creative Steps camp were disinvited from a suburban Valley Swim Club, which their camp had paid for pool access. Suspicions of racism were exacerbated when Valley Swim Club President John Duesler said, "There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the club." The U.S. Department of Justice has opened an investigation. The Senate Judiciary hearings on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor were permeated by the race question, especially with white, male senators questioning her comments on how a "wise Latina" might rule in court. If confirmed, one of the first cases she will hear will be that of Georgia death-row prisoner Troy Anthony Davis, an African-American. As it moves into its second century, the NAACP is, unfortunately, as relevant as ever. It is confronting the death penalty head-on, demanding Davis' claims of innocence be heard and asking Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the case of Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. Another new NAACP initiative asks people to record instances of bias, discrimination and police brutality with their cell-phone cameras, and upload them to naacp.org. At the group's centennial, longtime board chair Julian Bond said, paraphrasing Jay Leno: "When I started, my hair was black and my president was white. Now my hair's white, and my president is black. I hold the NAACP responsible for both." While the Cambridge Police Department has dropped the charges against Gates, his charges of racial discrimination remain. W.E.B. Du Bois' color line has shifted -- but it hasn't been erased. * * * Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column. Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times," recently released in paperback. Pakistan Objects To U.S. Expansion In Afghan War July 22, 2009 at 1:10 am ISLAMABAD, Pakistan Pakistan is objecting to expanded American combat operations in neighboring Afghanistan, creating new fissures in the alliance with Washington at a critical juncture when thousands of new American forces are arriving in the region. More on Pakistan William Bradley: Another '60s Anniversary: The Ur-Action Blockbuster Goldfinger July 22, 2009 at 12:56 am Shocking, positively shocking. We have two iconic '60s anniversaries this week. Ironically, it's the least known by far of the two that continues to resonate most in the culture. On July 20th, 1969, a human being first walked on the Moon. On July 21st, 1964, Goldfinger wrapped principal photography. We haven't gone to the Moon for 37 years, nor can we go to Mars, as the Apollo 11 astronauts are urging, anytime soon, but we sure go to blockbuster action movies. And Goldfinger is the ur-action blockbuster. Some say that 1975's Jaws marked the start of blockbuster movies. But if you look at the big action blockbusters of today, such as the Transformers pictures, the real lineage traces back to Goldfinger. What Michael Bay has done is take the essentials of action moviemaking -- fast pace, violent action, fascination with tech, car chases, humor, elevated macho factor, elevated babe factor -- pare them down to bare essentials, pour it into a petri dish, and then inject the concoction with steroids. The director of Goldfinger, Guy Hamilton, didn't have to inject his blockbuster with steroids, because he had Sean Connery as his star. He and producers Cubby Broccoli and Albert Saltzman added fast-paced action, violence, technology, gadgets, cars, babes, exotic locales, music, and merchandising. Though Goldfinger looks almost sedate compared to today's jittery, mashed-up action, editor Peter Hunt's work 45 years ago, emphasizing fast hard cuts, was an innovation. And you can actually grasp what's happening in the film, which is not always the case with today's action pictures. The violence, especially for the time, mostly courtesy of Connery, was hard-edged and decisive. The opening vignette in Goldfinger, unrelated to the main plot, is a classic, partly replicated in the opening of Arnold Schwarzenegger's True Lies. Bond infiltrates a Latin American town with his scuba gear disguised by a fake duck. After he comes out of the water, he takes off his wet suit only to reveal a white tuxedo beneath. After planting his bomb to blow up a heroin plant funding terrorists, he saunters over to the cantina to see his treacherous playmate of the moment. Catching an attacker coming up behind in her eye's reflection, he ruthlessly turns her into the blow, engages in a brutal fight which he is about to lose until he tosses an electric fan into the bathtub into which he's knocked his assailant. As the man is electrocuted to death, Bond cynically quips: "Shocking, positively shocking." The first two Bonds had had gadgets and tech (the island of Dr. No), but this was the first Bond film which emphasized technology and gadgets to such a memorable degree. Much of it centered around perhaps the most iconic car in movie history, the gadget-laden Aston Martin DB5. In addition to being a fast and stylish sports car, it ha an array of tech tricks, including the famous ejector seat. Along with the Aston Martin, Goldfinger also introduced another iconic car to the movies, the then brand-new Ford Mustang, which looks much the same today as it did 45 years ago. Engaged in a car chase in the Swiss Alps, it ultimately fared badly when Bond's Aston, using a retracting side rotor, slashed its tires. There was also Goldfinger's private jet, new then to the movies, and the action aboard it, the nuclear bomb inside Fort Knox, barely stopped with 007 seconds remaining, and so on. Bond films were already famous for the babe factor, with Ursula Andress's oft-copied arising from the sea like Aphrodite in Dr. No, but in Goldfinger it was even more heightened. There was the famous Golden Girl, Goldfinger's girlfriend punished for her assignation with Bond, murdered by being painted all over, nude, in gold. Her ill-fated sister, tracking Goldfinger's majestic Rolls Royce (itself a massive gadget, secretly lined with gold, the better for smuggling it) through Switzerland, trying to kill him only to be dispatched by Goldfinger's most memorable henchman, the Korean manservant "Oddjob" and his lethal metal-brimmed bowler hat. And there was Pussy Galore, the most extravagantly named of all the Bond girls. Played by the formidable Honor Blackman, already a star in for her high-kicking secret agent turn in the classic British TV series The Avengers, she was a strong match for Bond. There was music, too, with John Barry's jazzy, vibrant score and Shirley Easton's soaring title song. Soundtracks are big today, but Goldfinger led the way. In fact, the Goldfinger soundtrack album even outsold the Beatles in 1965. And then there was the merchandising, beyond the soundtrack. We take it for granted now, but Goldfinger pioneered it with a raft of movie-related products, from toy cars (the Aston is still the best-seller) to action figures, toy guns and radios, clothes and toiletries and tie-in books and watches, both knock-offs and serious watches. Goldfinger, incidentally, really triggered the phenomenon of "the Bond watch," with Bond iconically posed early in the film lighting a cigarette in a Mexican cantina waiting for his bomb to go off. There are actually two Bond watches in Goldfinger, as there were two in the beginning of the series in Dr. No. The constantly identified Rolex Submariner dive watch, and a seldom mentioned, unidentified ultra-thin gold watch with a white face on a black leather strap, which looks like an Omega or Rolex dress watch of the period. The Rolex Submariner was the one that was emphasized, and so the one that caught on as the rugged action man's watch, though it was finally supplanted in the '90s in Bond films by the equally promoted Omega Seamaster. One thing that is very different today from 1964 is the release pattern of a film. Today, it's almost all front-loaded, geared for a gigantic opening weekend in the US and, increasingly, around the world. Then the release pattern was more sedate. It was a world in which Bonnie and Clyde, which was to become a defining classic of "the New Hollywood," could open and disappear, promoted by the studio as nothing more than a B-movie. And then open again when producer/star Warren Beatty insisted, be reviewed and in some cases re-reviewed, and become a big hit. Goldfinger opened in the UK in September 1964, where it was an immediate smash hit, and didn't arrive in America until Christmas. Its release in other countries was similarly staggered. But wherever it opened, it broke box office records. By 1965, it was a global sensation. In today's terms, around the world, it was bigger than The Dark Knight. And as a result of the breakthrough, the next Bond film, Thunderball, was even bigger. Not unlike Transformers and Transformers 2, without comparing the lasting appeal of the movies. Bond was already big prior to Goldfinger, with Dr. No a surprise hit and From Russia With Love a bigger hit. None other than President John F. Kennedy had given the series a big boost in America when he named Ian Fleming's "From Russia With Love" one of his favorite books. But Goldfinger took the series into the stratosphere. Ironically, Goldfinger is based on one of Ian Fleming's worst novels. Fleming, a former journalist and intelligence officer, was an excellent writer, and his novels are an intriguing window on the period, as is the collection of his travel journalism, "Thrilling Cities." Famously described by then left-wing critic Paul Johnson -- who ironically became an arch-conservative booster of George W. Bush (who gave him the Medal of Freedom), Oliver North, and Margaret Thatcher, and apologist for the Watergate scandal -- as founded upon "sex, sadism, and snobbery," the Bond novels come with their own generally un-PC bent. Although Fleming's Bond was an admirer of the Cuban Revolution and notably under-impressed by the rich themselves. In writing Goldfinger, Fleming seems to have been going through a depression of some sort which dulled his powers of thought. He actually writes that society is in sharp decline because women had won the right to vote, one of his most dully reactionary bits of commentary. And much of the action takes place away from the page, described only later, such as Goldfinger's murder of his mistress by swathing her in gold paint. As for the central action setpiece of the novel, the big heist at Fort Knox, it's simply daft. In the novel, the master criminal Auric Goldfinger, England's richest man, enlists the leaders of the American mafia to help him steal the gold from the depository at Fort Knox, Kentucky. As Fleming was no stranger to research, this is surprising, as it would days to actually move the gold. But in the novel, with the gold swiftly removed, which is mind you utterly impossible, the mobsters would split off with their share while Goldfinger took the lion's share to make his getaway. On a cruiser of the Soviet Navy, making a courtesy call at an American port! Not that anyone would notice that, of course. Because Goldfinger actually works for the KGB. Which neglects to inform him that Bond is a British agent when Bond goes to work for him helping plan the caper. Needless to say, the novel is a complete mess, down to Pussy Galore being the head of a New York crime gang of fellow lesbians, yet falling in love with Bond based on nothing more than a few searching looks. At least in the movie her sexuality is more indeterminate, her motivation arguably more clear -- in a male fantasy sense, of course -- after she loses more falls of judo with Bond than she wins and ends up in a famous roll in the hay. Fleming, ironically, died after the film was in the can but before it was released. So he never saw his creation become the sensation of the '60s. Linda Bergthold: Too Fat to be a Surgeon General? July 22, 2009 at 12:55 am The latest idiocy to come out of the media is the accusation that President Obama's nominee for Surgeon General is "too fat". She may be a size 18 or even 20, opines the not so skinny themselves broadcasters and commenters on Fox News. Hold on a moment, folks! Obama's nominee, Dr. Regina Benjamin, holds a MacArthur Genius Award, is the first African American woman to be elected to the Board of the AMA and the Alabama Medical Association and has served a rural community in Alabama with unselfish dedication. And she might be a little overweight? What do we want in a Surgeon General? Some have noted that no one called out Surgeon General Everett Koop for being fat, although he was certainly overweight. Jocelyn Elders was not exactly skinny. So why have the purists surfaced now with this kind of attack? I am calling out these self-righteous (and you can finish this phrase) on this one. Who among you can really cast the first stone here. Who among you is so pure (especially you C Street hypocrites) that he or she has no vices at all? Never eaten too much. Smoked. Drank. Coveted your neighbor's wife or a woman in Argentina. Lied. Cheated on your income tax? They cannot attack Dr. Benjamin for her academic or clinical credentials. They are impeccable. They cannot attack her for her service to her clinic, the Bayou LaBatre Clinic in rural Alabama. Her clinic has burned down and been drowned out by hurricanes, but Dr. Benjamin kept it going, often with her own money. They cannot attack her because of her race. To do that overtly would be way too obvious. So how can they attack her? For not being perfectly skinny. I thank God that Dr. Regina Benjamin is a fat woman," said Joanne Ikeda, a nutrition specialist at the University of California, Berkeley. "Maybe now we will stop making the assumption that all fat people are unhealthy particularly in light of new data coming from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey." The National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance has taken up the cause of defending Surgeon General Nominee Benjamin. The discrimination against people of "weight" is real, in employment and in civil society. It is not something to joke about. In fact, there is a whole decades-old literature about fat discrimination. We do not always know why someone is overweight. It could be glandular or genetic. We know that African Americans and Latinos have higher rates of obesity, and it is not always about calorie consumption. Nevertheless, the key issue here is this -- do we require that our public officials be the perfect embodiments of their duties and their message? Frankly, I would much rather have a Surgeon General who talks about obesity because she has struggled with her own weight, than someone for whom it is only a theoretical issue. The same for a President who struggles with smoking but still exhorts himself and all of us to try to quit. If you believe that imperfection is human and that life experience and academic credentials are more important than dress size, please write your Senator and Congress person and ask them to confirm Surgeon General Regina Benjamin. We are SO lucky to have a doctor who makes house calls helping us understand what we all need to do to lead healtheir lives. Lobbyist Offers Off-The-Record Breakfast With Treasury Official July 22, 2009 at 12:43 am So you can't get inside the government to see top officials and discuss the important issues of the day. But even though you can't darken the door of the White House -- and, with some exceptions, lobbyists are barred from working for the administration -- all is not lost. Safe In Slain Couple's Home Contained $100,000, Source Tells CNN July 22, 2009 at 12:38 am PENSACOLA, Florida (CNN) A safe found in the home of a slain Florida couple known for adopting special-needs children contained about $100,000, a source familiar with the investigation told CNN late Tuesday. John R. Bohrer: Why The Apprentice Candidate Shouldn't Quit July 22, 2009 at 12:34 am This may already be a done deal. In a few hours, Randal Pinkett -- Season Four winner of Donald Trump's The Apprentice -- will make "an official statement regarding the speculative reports on the [New Jersey] lieutenant governor position."... That doesn't sound like a campaign kickoff to me. Governor Jon Corzine was allegedly pushing hard for Pinkett to be his 2009 running mate. Only thing is, state Democratic leaders could push back harder. Pinkett sounded like a gimmick to them and, well, everybody. So he's expected to drop out of the race. But take a step back, and you might be able to see the allure this reality TV star could have over the next three and a half months of the campaign. 1) Smarts. Pinkett has them. If he weren't a reality television star, he would just be a young(-ish), charismatic Rhodes Scholar/MIT Ph.D. 2) Ooh, Shiny Object. As a reality TV star, he would generate loads of stories. No LG candidate is going to overshadow the top of the ticket for the length of time that Pinkett would. That's a good thing in this instance -- getting the focus off of Corzine for a while might do more to help the Democrats' poll numbers than hurt them. 3) Smarts, Again. This is why the attention he could draw would help: Pinkett ain't Palin. Take Cory Booker's word for it and believe the guy would 'wow' people. 4) Outsider. Pinkett is not an elected official and not a traditional pol. That counts for a lot, and there's no one else on Corzine's short-list who can claim the same. "An Evening Of Country Music" At The White House: Michelle Obama's New 'Do And Peter Orszag (PHOTOS) July 22, 2009 at 12:18 am WASHINGTON — The White House went a little bit country Tuesday. "Now, I know folks think I'm a city boy, but I do appreciate listening to country music," President Barack Obama said to guests gathered in the East Room for a performance by country musicians Alison Krauss and Union Station. Brad Paisley and country music legend Charley Pride also entertained the audience, which included first lady Michelle Obama, Cabinet secretaries and lawmakers. The president, whose hometown is Chicago, said the genre has helped to make Americans more hopeful. "It's captured our restlessness and resilience, and told so much of our story in the process," he said. The performance, along with a morning workshop for students, was the second in a music series that Mrs. Obama launched last month to encourage arts and arts education. The first session was devoted to jazz. A classical music workshop is planned for the fall. Earlier, Paisley, Krauss and Union Station taught 120 middle and high school music students from Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Virginia about music and song writing. Paisley and Krauss started their careers early. Krauss, who plays the fiddle, signed a record deal at 14; the guitar-playing Paisley was just 13 when he appeared on a country music show. Krauss said she would listen to music all day but "I didn't think I would ... end up doing it as a career." Paisley's grandfather, a country music lover, gave his grandson a guitar for Christmas when Paisley was 8. And the rest is country music history. "I've really not been good at much else," Paisley said. "Thankfully I was able to do this for a living because, as I said, I did not have anything to fall back on, that's for sure." Paisley and Krauss sat on stools in the State Dining Room in front of a large portrait of a pensive-looking President Abraham Lincoln. Krauss played one piece on her fiddle, and sang another. Paisley also sang. Both answered questions from the students. One of the participants, Sal La Rosa, of Nashville, Tenn., who just finished the fourth grade, also performed a song he wrote as part of a music education program sponsored by the Country Music Hall of Fame. Paisley and Krauss talked about the family support they've enjoyed along the way to country music stardom. "Music is like being up at bat," Paisley told the students. "It's really very much like stepping up to the plate. And you can have all the support in the world but it's up to you guys to really get where you want to go." ___ Associated Press writer Ann Sanner contributed to this report. Follow HuffPost Style on Twitter and become a fan of HuffPost Style on Facebook! More on Photo Galleries Julie Menin: Jack Welch Sounds False Note on Women in Corporate America July 22, 2009 at 12:14 am Women across the country should sound a collective sigh of dismay at the antiquated and frankly harmful comments [Hyperlink: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124726415198325373.html] recently made by former GE CEO Jack Welch. Speaking at a human resources conference, of all places, where one expects to hear more gender friendly rubric, Welch proclaimed: "There's no such thing as a work-life balance," going on to explain that a woman's choice to have a family makes career advancement all but impossible. What kind of message does this send to young girls today? The message is essentially: Don't even try because you can't have it all- Choose one or the other. I regularly interview women for my show "Give and Take", who do have it all- they are mothers with high powered careers. These women are resolute, dedicated and supreme multi-taskers. Take the case of Liz Lange [Hyperlink: http://juliemenin.com/2009/03/liz-lange-part-i/], who started a maternity fashion empire, all while raising two young kids AND battling the ravages of cervical cancer, which included grueling rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. Campbell Brown [Hyperlink:http://juliemenin.com/2009/07/campbell-brown-part-i/], who hosts a national cable news show while raising two young boys, is another great example. Both of these women demonstrate that, while it may not be easy, it is possible to flourish as a working mother. While Welch focuses on the boardroom as a major obstacle to women who choose to raise kids while climbing the corporate ladder, there is a plethora of evidence that proves him wrong. In my conversation with Alexandra Lebenthal [Hyperlink: http://juliemenin.com/2009/03/alexandra-lebenthal-part-i/], who is herself a prime representation of an accomplished CEO and mother, she pointed out that while some women have left Wall Street- many have done so to start their own companies, as evidenced by the fact that women employ more people than all of the Fortune 500 companies put together. There are also a number of women who have briefly exited the career highway to start families only to make successful returns to the corporate world later on. Despite the countless women who have proven it is possible to balance career and family, there are still significant roadblocks in corporate America. According to a 2008 census of Fortune 500 companies [Hyperlink: http://www.catalyst.org/publication/282/2008-catalyst-census-of-women-board-directors-of-the-fortune-500] performed by Catalyst.org, a leading non-profit organization that works to build more inclusive workplaces for women globally, the advancement of women in corporate leadership continues to stagnate, with only 15.2 percent holding board of director positions, as compared with 14.8 percent in 2007. There has also been an increase to 66 from the 59 companies in 2007 with no women at all on their boards. We still have a long way to go in providing more opportunities for women in corporate America but we will never get there if the attitudes that are passed down reflect the belief that a woman "can't" have it all. Hoax Drawings Of Manhattan Airport Plan Surface July 22, 2009 at 12:07 am Concept: bulldoze under Central Park and replace it with a modern, international airport. The idea is so simple, so beautifully elegant, so inevitable that it's hard to believe we didn't think of it ourselves. Rather, credit the shadowy figures behind The Manhattan Airport Foundation, who've worked up an incredibly detailed plan to turn Frederick Law Olmsted's bucolic paradise into a postmodern universe of runways, terminals, and baggage claims. Good news for purists, too: per the Manhattan Airport FAQ, "Whenever possible, vestigial architectural elements of the Park space be retained or reworked into the context of the new design." And they mean it! Richard Ravitch Blocked As Paterson's Lt. Governor By Judge July 21, 2009 at 11:57 pm MINEOLA, N.Y. (AP) -- A judge has issued a restraining order blocking Richard Ravitch from serving as New York Gov. David Paterson's lieutenant governor. State Supreme Court Justice William LaMarca in Nassau County issued his ruling late Tuesday afternoon. "The court is convinced that this is the rare case in which a preliminary injunction enjoining an act of the governor of the state is appropriate,'' LaMarca wrote. He ordered another court hearing on the issue on Aug. 25. The judge also denied a request to move the case to the state capital in Albany. "Were the governor to die, resign, or be removed from office, Mr. Ravitch, if allowed to remain in office, is next in the line of succession,'' LaMarca wrote. "For an illegally appointed lieutenant-governor to act as governor of the state would clearly constitute irreparable harm.'' Calls from The Associated Press to Gov. Paterson's office, Sen. Pedro Espada, Sen. Malcolm Smith and Democratic Conference Leader Sen. John Sampson were not immediately returned Tuesday evening. The governor's attorney argued that a provision of the state Public Officers Law allows him to fill some vacant posts until the next election. Senate attorneys said the state constitution does not allow for the appointment of a lieutenant governor when a vacancy occurs. LaMarca sided with the Senate. "Thus, the court must hold that the office of lieutenant-governor is not an 'elective office,''' the judge said. Paterson appointed Ravitch, a former head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, earlier this month as a way of breaking a monthlong leadership deadlock in the state Senate. Paterson's appointment provided a tie-breaking vote in the Senate, which had been deadlocked at 31-31 since shortly after a June 8 overthrow of Democratic leadership. In cases of ties in the Senate, a lieutenant governor casts the deciding vote. Shortly after Paterson named Ravitch, Espada, who sided with Republicans to stage the monthlong coup, rejoined the Democratic conference, restoring a 32-30 Democratic majority. Paterson was elected lieutenant governor in 2006, but ascended to the governor's office in March 2008 after Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal. Paterson made no attempt at appointing a successor until the Senate controversy. Attorney General Andrew Cuomo declined to represent the governor in the legal dispute, saying he also believed the appointment was unconstitutional. Steven Waldman: Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions, Pre-Existing Conditions July 21, 2009 at 11:55 pm Advocates for health care reform typically emphasize either restraining cost or covering the uninsured. I understand the practical and moral facets of both arguments but believe advocates are dramatically underemphasizing the most potent issue: the tendency for insurance companies to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. The ranks of the uninsured include both people who want to have insurance but can't and those who don't want insurance -- in other words, both the needy and the comfortable. By contrast, most everyone who had been turned town for coverage because of a pre-existing condition is suffering. And on a gut moral level, the idea of denying someone coverage because they had cancer last year ranks just as high in my book as the abstract argument that a just society should "cover everyone." As one of the commenters on my blog wrote after describing her friends who can't get insurance because of pre-existing conditions, "we are all one job loss and major illness away from personal financial ruin." Solving the pre-existing condition issue may require a broader coverage base but to me we have the cart before the horse both ethically and politically. I heard Kathleen Sebelius on the Daily Show the other night and once again she was emphasizing the uninsured and "costs." I remain baffled as to why health care advocates don't stress the pre-existing condition issue. More from Beliefnet's Steven Waldman More on Kathleen Sebelius Surviving The Wrath Of Bill O'Reilly July 21, 2009 at 11:54 pm Last week I was greeted with an uncomfortable curiosity: a brace of hate mail in my inbox, received within a 20-minute span. The first came at 7:26: "You are an uneducated writer! You need to get your fact straight! You are a liberal bastard! You need to get informed!" All arguable propositions, perhaps, but that still left the question: why was this person realizing that precisely now, and why, two minutes later, did "Dr. Anthony" feel moved to inform me, "I've noticed a trend that left-wing extremists tend to be exceedingly ugly & perverse. Living with that ugliness & deviance seems to lead to an aberration of thought as well. I am attempting to formulate the correlation..." More on Bill O'Reilly Michele Bachmann, John Kline Oppose Public Option Because It's "Cheaper" July 21, 2009 at 9:11 pm If you're trying to dissuade someone from buying something, it's best not to tell them it's the cheaper option. But that's the strategy behind some GOP opposition to the "public option" contained in the healthcare reform efforts currently being debated in Washington. More on Michele Bachmann Bertha Lewis: Stephen Colbert in Death Match with Black Barbie July 21, 2009 at 9:08 pm A few weeks ago, Stephen Colbert had me on his show. He was trying to get me to confess the numerous ways that ACORN is working to undermine the principles of capitalism. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Now, you know I'd love to tell you everything about the interview, but I don't know what the editors are going to allow on the air, so how about I just share a few bits and pieces from the interview? Right when I sat down and shook his hand he asked me if I'd helped any poor people that day, and I said, "Of course!" Then he took out his Purell, squirted it into his hands and told me that it was nothing personal, but "poor" seemed to be going around these days and he had a family to think about. Then he tried to take down my information for the "census." His first question was "how many sexual partners have you had!" Now it seemed only fair that I got to take down his embarrassing information as well, so I took one of the forms from his lap and asked him just how many sexual partners he had had. You gotta tune in tonight to find out how we answered! At this point he tried to call me out on ACORN's Grand Plan for Worldwide Socialism and the People's Fight Against Capitalism. He tried to get me to give up the secrets of how helping low-income citizens with affordable housing, registering the disenfranchised, and conducting a fair census is leading to a socialist takeover. Let's just say it got to the point where I took out a black Barbie doll, he took out a transformer and we just started dueling. Guess who won that fight? Join me tonight to see for yourself! The Colbert Report tonight, Tuesday July 21st at 11:30 PM on Comedy Central! The website is www.colbertnation.com More on Comedy Central Daisy Whitney: YouTube Getting $200K and More for Branded Channels July 21, 2009 at 9:02 pm As the world's second biggest search engine and the most popular video sharing site, YouTube has become a home for brands including "H&R Block," "Billy Elliot: The Musical," and "Wal-Mart." In this week's New Media Minute, I report on why it's important for these and other brands to be on the video site. Video can help drive intent to purchase and thereby sales. It can also often be the final piece of the puzzle that gets a consumer to hit buy. There are several options for brands to post their videos on YouTube. A dedicated brand channel, for instance, comes with a price tag, $200,000 or more, according to YouTube. That's more akin to having a fancy branded Web site that lives on YouTube. Another option is posting videos through a partner channel. The site does not charge for partner channels, like those for video creator Fred. Smaller companies or producers with enough views may find the partner option more appealing. Brands can also pay to advertise on the site and these deals are often struck on a CPM basis, as YouTube's Jordan Hoffner discussed with Beet.TV at the NATPE LA TV Fest earlier this month. He also discusses the importance of buying your brand's keywords on the site to help control the results served up. As this episode notes, the results aren't always pretty for brands. (See this video below) You can find this post with all the hyperlinks up on Beet.TV More on YouTube Board Of Education Approves Budget That Guts After-School, Gifted And Early Childhood Programs July 21, 2009 at 8:54 pm CHICAGO (AP) -- The Illinois Board of Education on Tuesday approved a budget that eliminates funding for after-school and gifted programs and cuts money for early childhood, reading and foreign language instruction by as much as half. Speaking at an emergency meeting, chairman Jesse Ruiz said Gov. Pat Quinn and lawmakers had given the board no choice. They approved an overall education budget of nearly $7.3 billion for fiscal 2010, a 2 percent decrease from the $7.4 billion allocated the year before. And while this year appears to be rough, Ruiz said, next year could be "catastrophic." He urged people to demand answers from politicians soon headed to the campaign trail. "We need to become very, very, very discriminating in our public officials," Ruiz said. "Keep your dollars in your pocket. Give it to a school before you give it to a candidate." Education board members also voted Tuesday to severely reduce funding for arts, agricultural education, advanced placement classes, bilingual studies and teacher certification programs. Money for the rehabilitation of truant students and the visually impaired also was slashed. Advocates who testified at the meeting warned of consequences as dire as more children on the streets. Officials agreed that, at the least, the cuts could hurt the quality and competitiveness of education in the state. Of the overall education budget, the Legislature set general state aid - money allocated to school districts - at more than $4.7 billion for fiscal 2010, up 2.5 percent, or nearly $117 million, from the previous year. That amounts to about $160 more per pupil for the year. While they passed the budget unanimously, board members said they felt broken-hearten and dejected. "I do not envy you," Gerald Brookhart, Peoria regional education superintendent, told them while testifying. He said the board was faced with the question of "which child are you going to throw away?" -ASSOCIATED PRESS McDonald's Sued After Hepatitis Outbreak July 21, 2009 at 8:42 pm CHICAGO (AP) -- An attorney who specializes in food safety filed a lawsuit Tuesday against McDonald's following a hepatitis A outbreak in northwestern Illinois. The lawsuit was filed in Rock Island County Circuit Court on behalf of Cody Patterson, 33, of Milan. The suit claims a McDonald's in Milan allowed one or more employees to work while infected with the virus and that Patterson ate there during that time. The complaint seeks class action status for other patrons who ate at the restaurant on certain dates and sought the preventive treatment recommended by county health officials. The suit also names Kevin Murphy, who owns the fast food franchise in Milan, as a defendant. Patterson said he has receipts for meals at McDonald's with his family on at least two dates when authorities say an infected worker may have contaminated food or beverages. "If you eat at a restaurant, you should feel safe there," Patterson told The Associated Press. He said he's not interested in monetary damages. "It's finding out who's at fault and making sure it doesn't happen to others," Patterson said. "That's my biggest thing." Patterson said he was worried about his family and searching online for hepatitis information when he found a Web site for Seattle attorney Bill Marler, who has handled numerous foodborne illness cases. He filled out a form on the site and, when contacted, agreed to take part in the lawsuit. The suit, which seeks damages of at least $30,000 for Patterson, is a way to compensate people for the time, wage losses and expense of getting preventive treatment, Marler said. Danya Proud, a spokeswoman for Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's Corp., said health officials haven't confirmed the source of the outbreak. "In fact, they believe, based on the number of confirmed cases, that most likely there are multiple sources," Proud said in an e-mail. She said commenting further would be inappropriate because "this is a pending legal matter." Murphy, who operates the Milan McDonald's, has said the restaurant took immediate action once it learned from health officials on July 13 that a food handler had been diagnosed with hepatitis A. Murphy has said that no one who was sick knowingly worked at the restaurant after that notification. Rock Island County Health Department spokeswoman Theresa Foes said other businesses in Milan were investigated during the outbreak, but no others were closed. The Milan McDonald's was closed for three days last week at the direction of health officials and reopened Saturday. Foes said 4,000 people were expected to receive treatment at a two-day vaccination clinic organized in response to the outbreak. The clinic held at the local high school ended Tuesday. The Illinois Department of Public Health said 21 confirmed cases of hepatitis A have been linked to Milan. The hepatitis A virus can cause liver swelling but rarely causes lasting damage. Symptoms include fatigue, abdominal pain, vomiting and fever and can appear from 15 to 50 days after exposure. -ASSOCIATED PRESS More on Health Obama Calls Into Health Care Negotiations July 21, 2009 at 8:36 pm The phone rang toward the end of Max Baucus' meeting Tuesday night: It was President Obama. Obama has been pushing for a health care bill before Congress takes off next month, and Sen. Baucus (D-Mont.) has taken heat from reform advocates while his Senate Finance Committee remains the prime obstacle to a final vote in the upper chamber. On the phone, however, Obama's direct involvement in the committee's negotiations left Baucus feeling "very comforted," the senator said. "It was a very amicable, warm conversation. We talked a little bit about how to get to yes," said Baucus, who refuses to set a date for the end of negotiations among his self-styled "coalition of the willing" -- Sens. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine). Baucus said Obama offered no concerns regarding the timetable. "He didn't express a view on that one way or the other, nor did he imply it. He just asked how we're coming along," Baucus said. "I explained, he says 'Great, sounds like you're moving along.'" The president did discuss some policy specifics, Baucus said, but he declined to elaborate beyond deeming the conversation "very constructive." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. One proposal did gain Baucus' public consideration, though not support, after the meeting: A compromise proposal from Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) that would place an excise tax on health insurance providers' high-cost plans. The goal is to motivate insurers to lower premiums and the overall cost of coverage. It's unclear if the plan would pass White House muster -- it could be seen as a backdoor method of taxing benefits, which Obama has ruled off the table, though Conrad continues to fight for it. "That's one idea that's on the table. We're looking at it, among many, but it's one idea that I think merits consideration," Baucus said. "I think that would help, but I don't want to get into specifics at this point, because you never know where we're going to end up. I don't want to lead people astray." The Tuesday afternoon meeting benefited from the input of Tom Barthold, chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Tax, who Baucus said lent his expertise to the debate on cost offsets. Barthold will rejoin the committee members when they resume their debate Wednesday morning, Baucus said. "He was very helpful. It gave the senators I think a very high level of comfort and better understanding," Baucus said Tuesday night. "It's very comforting to ask questions and get some answers." Exiting the meeting, Conrad was less -- or possibly more -- forthcoming. "I have nothing new to add," he said. "Honestly, I just have nothing to add. It's a continuation of what we talked about earlier." More on Barack Obama PET A WHALE! Shedd Aquarium Charging $200 To Play With Belugas July 21, 2009 at 8:35 pm Visitors now can touch one of the Shedd Aquarium's prized beluga whales, but it comes with a price: $200. More on Animals Anna Kelner: How the Subway to the Sea Could Change Los Angeles' Culture July 21, 2009 at 8:33 pm Last Monday, officials began drilling on Wilshire Boulevard to examine the possibility of constructing the long-anticipated Subway to the Sea. Such a subway could not only cleanse Los Angeles' polluted air and clear its congested roads, but could also radically change the way Angelinos relate to one another. The logistical and environmental problems stemming from Los Angeles' reliance on motor transportation should be obvious. The city is plagued with epic traffic jams that discourage residents from leaving the areas in which we live and work. We have long held the dubious honor of being the Most Polluted City in the United States; the emissions from our cars can cause cancer, birth complications, and forest fires. Just as our reliance on cars endangers the natural resources that Angelenos justifiably take pride in -- the mountains that rear over the flatlands, the dense Chaparral forests, the celebrated coastline, and the stark desert that lies just outside city limits -- so does it prevent the city from coalescing into a more mobile, unified whole. Los Angeles is infamous for its defiant rejection of all things "big city"; the verdant suburban streets in Brentwood, the sun-bleached, lit storefronts in Hollywood, and the mountainous twists of Mulholland Drive all lie within close proximity, but resist interaction. The racial lines that divide the city's east and west sides are intrinsic to the subway debate that has raged since 1985 when Henry Waxman, Representative to the 30th District, blocked the extension of the Redline Subway into Santa Monica. Although Waxman claimed that pockets of methane gas would prevent the subway's construction, some suspected that his wealthy constituents' resistance provided just as much impetus. Many believe that when the Westside's homeowners wanted to prevent disadvantaged minorities from gaining easier access to their neighborhoods, the project halted. Since then, Waxman has lifted his one-time funding ban and Antonio Villaraigosa, who some dubbed the "Subway Mayor," has come to office. Despite repeated proposals, though, LA's subway is still limited to East and South Central Los Angeles, thus splitting what should be a unified city in two. Unlike comparable US cities like Chicago or New York, where public transportation is easily accessible and reliable, in Los Angeles, disadvantaged socioeconomic groups use the public buses and subway lines almost exclusively. On the Westside, the disparity between residents driving their air-conditioned cars and their employees who wait for buses that often run far behind schedule is so great that the bus lines have earned the name "the nanny bus." The term is so ubiquitous that realtors use it to reassure potential buyers, and a film bearing its name is planned for release. Certainly, racial and socioeconomic division plague all cities. In Los Angeles, though, I've found that those barriers are especially rigid. I attended a private high school on the Westside, where we were lucky enough to take annual trips whose focus varied from outdoor education to cultural immersion. One year, while some of my classmates journeyed to Mexico and Quebec for language study, about a third of my class and I opted to stay in the city to explore Downtown LA. Clearly, the school felt that Downtown -- although only about twenty minutes away by freeway -- was as foreign as Mexico City to many of its students. On the trip, we shopped in Santee Alley, rolled sushi in Little Tokyo, and marveled at The Watt's Towers' whimsical heights, all the while taking rolls of slides as mementos of our cultural adventure. The trip did help my classmates and I recognize the unique character of our home. The Eastside has a vibrancy and diversity that much of the Westside lacks; it feels more like a "real city," with its crowded streets, ethnic pockets, and government offices. While I commend my school's efforts, encouraging students to explore their own city should not be necessary. The subway to the sea would certainly not erase LA's socioeconomic divisions. However, it would make the city much more accessible for Westsiders and Eastsiders alike, and would also provide a logical communal space for interaction. I now attend Columbia, where students often frequent neighborhood bars and restaurants, but where the subway also grants us easy access to the city's attractions, forcing us to interact with New York's diverse population in order to reach them. Subway culture is central to the probing, intellectual sensibility that New York is known for. Presented with an opportunity to scrutinize, I have eavesdropped on Upper West Side mothers bemoaning their childrens' scholarly failures, observed a group of flamboyant black men perform complex dance moves, and been flattened against the wall as devoted Rangers fans stormed the car. I use each person's reading material, travel companion, and subway stop as basic evidence of their character, transforming the city into a living, breathing novel. Clearly, I am not the only one who feels similarly. In author David Yezzi's "Subway Sketches", he writes, People jostle each other, make room for each other, secretly check each other out, ignore each other, read, coast, float. It's a weird instance of privacy in public. For a few minutes out of their day, people aren't multi-tasking, taking the bull by the horns, kickin' ass and taking names; they are swaying with the movement of the tracks, thinking, staring blankly, listening to music, people-watching, taking it all in, working out the meaning of life, or not. On the popular site Overheard in New York, anonymous posters often regale readers with hilarious, unselfconscious conversations pilfered from subway rides. By making such vulnerable moments public, New Yorkers find much-needed comedy in others' tragedy and, more subtly, find a source of common humanity. At any moment on any subway ride, someone -- whether they submit their observations to the site or not -- could be finding humor, hatred, or empathy in your behavior. Whether it is positive or not, we all relate to each other. Los Angeles will never be, should never be, New York. Its residents relish the opportunity to blare music within their sound-proof car windows, to recline in their backyards rather than the scarce public parks. It is less intense and less vibrant, but it is more relaxed and even-keeled. A subway would not eradicate LA's unique character but would instead allow its residents to experience first-hand just how diverse that character is. More on Cars Burr Oak Update: Cook County To Sue Cemetery Owners, Over 200 Bones Found July 21, 2009 at 8:24 pm CHICAGO (AP) -- The Cook County Board of Commissioners voted Tuesday to sue the owners of a historic black cemetery in suburban Chicago to recover the cost of an investigation of an alleged scheme to dig up graves and resell the plots. The county board acted after Sheriff Tom Dart said the cost of overtime, materials and equipment poured into the investigation at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip was mounting quickly. "About $350,000 has been expended on the investigation," Dart said at a news conference. "I can't turn over county assets without receiving compensation." Dart and Robert D. Grant, special agent in charge of the FBI's Chicago office, said 200 human bones have been found scattered in the cemetery. Those bones may never be identified, they said. The sheriff described a chaotic situation in which headstones had been removed, some bodies may have been buried on top of each other and pieces of wood that might have been part of coffins were found scattered around the cemetery. Although families are eager to get into Burr Oak to check on relatives' graves, the cemetery remains closed while FBI agents and sheriff's workers attempt to bring order to the situation. "It makes no sense to further torture people by having them come out to the cemetery and wander around aimlessly," Dart said. Four former cemetery workers - Carolyn Towns, Keith Nicks, Terrence Nicks and Maurice Dailey - have been charged with dismembering a body and are being held the Cook County jail. The cemetery is the final resting place of perhaps 100,000 people, including blues singers Dinah Washington and Willie Dixon, boxer Ezzard Charles, several Negro League baseball players, and Emmett Till, the Chicago teenager whose 1955 lynching in Mississippi helped spark the civil rights movement. Officials said none of those graves have been disturbed. -ASSOCIATED PRESS Andy Borowitz: Cambridge Police Conduct Sweep of Harvard Professors July 21, 2009 at 8:16 pm CAMBRIDGE, MA (The Borowitz Report) - Police in Cambridge, Massachusetts have begun an extensive sweep of Harvard professors whom they have targeted as the number-one crime threat to the community, officials confirmed today. Cambridge police chief Ryan Slatson said that the department was responding to a recent crime wave in which tenured Harvard professors were attempting to break into their own homes. "These academics may be armed and dangerous," Mr. Slatson warned. "They may also be long-winded and boring." Arthur Filowicz, who holds Harvard's Arne Jacobsen chair in European Literature, said that last night as he tried to gain entry to his own home a Cambridge policeman drew a gun on him and shouted, "Publish or perish, motherfucker!" More here. Jacob M. Appel: A Culture of Liberty July 21, 2009 at 8:15 pm The Catholic Church and American religious conservatives have advanced a so-called "culture of life" ever since Pope John Paul II coined the term on his 1993 visit to Denver. The Church's 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, defined this ideology quite precisely, condemning condoms and capital punishment as well as abortion and euthanasia. Over the succeeding years, right-wing activists and politicians, including former President George W. Bush, have selectively advocated for a loose confection of ideas cherry-picked from this basket. Yet the widespread consensus among social conservatives in the United States is that the program against which they define themselves--most notably, the acceptance of abortion-on-demand, physician-assisted suicide, gay marriage and diversity in sexual practices--will genuinely transform our society. Some progressives reject this criticism. I prefer to embrace it. Anyone who has spoken to a woman who has traveled a long distance at considerable personal expense in order to terminate a pregnancy, or to an adult child who has been unable to help a debilitated parent end his suffering, or who has witnessed the pain of gay couples separated by overtly discriminatory immigration laws, should recognize that we live in a society desperately in need of profound and lasting transformation. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans who reject the underlying premise of the "culture of life" movement--namely, that biological existence and social tradition should trump the values of individual choice and personal privacy--have so-far failed to unify in support of a comprehensive alternative. For far too long, supporters of abortion rights and legalized assisted suicide and sexual liberation have huddled in separate political corners. These divisions are unfortunate, as each of these skirmishes is part of a larger struggle to defend personal autonomy. The right to remove an unwanted conceptus from one's uterus, and to choose one's intimate partners, and to end life on one's own terms, are each threads in the same social blanket. Those who value freedom should be equally incensed by New York's prohibition on no-fault divorce, and Alabama's statute banning sex toys, and the United States military's prosecution of adultery, by the forcible feeding of competent prisoners, and bans on the medical use of marijuana, and the anachronistic "alienation of affection" statues under which jilted spouses sue their partners' lovers. That is not to say that a person may not, with some philosophical legerdemain, embrace some liberties and oppose others. However, when viewed through the prism of personal autonomy, which I believe is the preferable perspective, then these issues become, to paraphrase John Donne, pieces of a unified continent of liberty and parts of the same moral main. In short, components of a Culture of Liberty. This is not to say that freedom should be without meaningful limits--or that government regulation does not have its appropriate place, particularly where the economy and public safety are concerned. Moreover, even those who believe in a Culture of Liberty will grapple with gray areas, such as mandatory vaccination and quarantine, where private choices may challenge the public welfare. But as Justice William O. Douglas suggested in the seminal Supreme Court case of Griswold vs. Connecticut, which enshrined privacy rights in the Constitution, certain areas are far too intimate for government interference. If freedom means anything at all, it is the right to primacy in regard to sexuality, reproduction, medical care and death. I am grateful that I have rights in the proverbial public square--but, as a practical matter, my most cherished rights are those that I possess in my bedroom and hospital room and death chamber. Most people are far more concerned that they can control their own bodies than they are about petitioning Congress. The reason that a Culture of Liberty has not yet developed in the United States may be that, for many years, issues of personal freedom were too often political losers. Supporters of reproductive choice or the right to refuse medical care feared binding themselves to a larger ethic at odds with what they perceived to be a conservative-leaning populous. Fortunately, aided by demographics and new technologies, personal liberty has become a political winner. Our nation is better educated, increasingly secular, and exceedingly more tolerant than it has been at any time since its founding. Poll numbers strongly suggest that, with regard to matters of sex and death, Generation Y will be Generation Why Not? That is certainly not to say that all of today's high school students will someday choose to terminate pregnancies or to end their lives with a chalice of hemlock. Rather, they will make their own private decisions--and allow their fellow men and women to do the same. Eventually, I imagine, some savvy entrepreneur will combine these diverse but related intimate services under one roof, offering "liberty centers" at which teenagers will be able to terminate pregnancies and elderly couples will be able to end their lives in mutual embrace. To many self-styled traditionalists, this prospect is unwelcome. In contrast, those who favor a genuine Culture of Liberty will view such a widespread embrace of personal autonomy as a sign that our democracy has finally lived up to its mantra of freedom for all. The day will inevitably arrive when current efforts to impose the particular set of theological values at the core of the "culture of life" movement upon society-at-large is looked upon as no less misguided than the Inquisition or the Crusades. In matters as intimate as reproduction and death, history favors freedom over the power of church and state. However, this victory will arrive sooner if those who favor personal liberty unite against individuals and institutions, however sincere or well-intentioned, who seek to return us to an age of moral darkness. The twenty-first century can witness a Second Great Enlightenment embodied in a cohesive Culture of Liberty. Or those of us who believe in personal autonomy can remain fragmented in the face of monolithic opposition, each of us beating a faint drum for a particular right or freedom that we cherish. The choice is stark and the choice is ours. I can only hope that we rise to the occasion. Murray Fromson: And That's the Way It Was... July 21, 2009 at 8:12 pm I had dinner with Walter Cronkite the first night he arrived in Saigon on what was his personal fact finding trip "into country" after the Communists' 1968 Tet Offensive. He was a hawk, a supporter of the conflict in Vietnam like so many Americans of his generation. Walter clearly was troubled by the visual images from Tet contrasted with mixed messages he was getting about the war, especially LBJ's assurance that the war was going well. In the rooftop restaurant of the Caravelle Hotel Cronkite's frustration was apparent immediately. "How are we going to win this damned war?" he asked me. I was hesitant to answer, but having traveled up and down the country for several months, having seen evidence of "live and let live" between the Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong, like the sharing of water and rice, I'd concluded that we were witness to a civil war that would not end until we got out of the way and let the two sides decide the future of their country by blood or diplomacy. Walter was stunned. Like President Kennedy and so many Americans conditioned by the Cold War, he believed in the domino theory that assumed a defeat in Vietnam would lead to the communization of all of Southeast Asia. Cronkite acted as if he could not believe what he was hearing. "That's just plain crazy," he said. At the dinner were Peter Kalisher, CBS's Paris bureau chief and Cronkite's executive producer Ernie Leiser who chimed in. "That's the problem with you so-called 'Old Asia hands.' "You think you have it all figured out." In self-defense, I replied, "Wait a minute, you guys asked me for my opinion and that's what I gave you. Quite to the contrary, I had not yet figured it out. I only wish that I could." The dinner ended and soon I left Saigon for the battle at Khe Sanh, but I confirmed Cronkite continued to hear similar messages from other CBS correspondents who had echoed my belief about the realities of the war. In the weeks that followed, Walter traveled to see the war for himself in the battle for Hue. He gave no sign that he was re-evaluating his view of the Vietnam conflict, for whatever his thoughts were, he kept them to himself. Cronkite rigorously defended the Evening News as a balanced, unbiased presentation of the day's events. But then on February 27th he summed up his Vietnam trip at the end of a CBS Special Report on the war in Vietnam with a personal departure that stunned the nation: "To say that we are closer to victory today," he said, "is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right." Cronkite went on, "in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could." His commentary was a shocker that stunned America; a different Cronkite than I had ever heard before, because until then he had so scrupulously avoided expressing any personal opinions on the air. The question remained, was there a single, defining event or was it the sum total of what he had seen and heard that led to his profound change of heart about the war? By November 2002, Ernie Leiser was in declining health. Shortly before he died, I wanted to confirm my belief that he had actually written the script for which Cronkite got so much credit. Leiser confirmed my hunch. "I wrote every word of it, but," he emphasized that "it could not have gone on the air without Walter's approval." He added, "When Walter was troubled by Vietnam, he sought out the friends and people he felt comfortable with from his World War II generation." Ernie remembered the evening before their departure for home when they were invited to dinner with General Creighton Abrams, the successor to General William Westmoreland as commander of all forces in Vietnam. Cronkite knew Abrams from the Battle of the Bulge in World War II and as the daring tank commander of the 2nd Armored Division in the European campaign against Nazi Germany. After a few drinks, Leiser recalled, Abrams declared firmly that "we cannot win this Goddamned war, and we ought to find a dignified way out." That, Leiser told me, "affected Walter profoundly and caused him to approve my script." In the end, it was his comforting image of decency that enhanced his reputation as a fair-minded but troubled critic of the war. It was important to those of us in the field to know that Cronkite had the courage to risk his reputation when he could just as soon have remained silent. Murray Fromson, a former CBS News correspondent, is a Professor Emeritus in journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. He has just completed a memoir, "The Whole Truth and Nothing But." More on Vietnam Brandon M. Terry: A Stranger in Mine Own House: Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and the Police in "Post-Racial" America July 21, 2009 at 8:00 pm This past Thursday, the renowned Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., author of Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, was reminded that sometimes, there's just one. It is the way that his white neighbor, Lucia Whalen, looked at him as he stood on his porch with his luggage, attempting to nudge his jammed front door open. That look that somehow confuses a nearly sixty year old bespectacled professor with a blue blazer who cannot walk without the aid of a cane, as a crafty black burglar practicing his illicit deeds at 12:30 PM in the afternoon. Likely imagining herself as some courageous vigilante protecting the sanctity of her exclusive neighborhood to the unending praise of her grateful neighbors, she instead must bear the ignominious title of "the white lady who called the cops on 'Skip' Gates'" from dinner party to dinner party like a Scarlet K-K-K . It is the way that Officer James Crowley, who responded to Ms. Whalen's misguided vigilance, looked at the MacArthur fellowship winner standing in his own foyer, as if to make humiliatingly literal the W.E.B. Du Bois lament from The Souls of Black Folk, "Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?" Gates, understandably exhausted from the return flight from China he had just taken, responded to the officer's insistent questioning of his identity with frustration -- but did indeed prove his ownership of the residence and right to be there. One cannot help but be reminded, thinking of Professor Gates' home, where photographs of he and Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, and Nelson Mandela must have looked down at plenty of black men from their places on the walls, of the Dave Chappelle routine where white officers assault a black man in his living room. Proud of their "top-notch" police work, they conclusively proclaim, "Apparently, this n----r broke in and hung up pictures of his family everywhere. An open and shut case." To his minuscule credit, Officer Crowley's report claims that he did realize it was Gates' home early into the incident. But to what hopefully is his eternal regret, instead of leaving the situation immediately once the crime he was called in for was proven to be a mistake, Crowley continued to exchange harsh words with Gates and unnecessarily radio for backup. The officer then demanded that Professor Gates step out of his home, and in front of a gathering crowd of neighbors and onlookers, a man who was of TIME's 25 most influential Americans in 1997, was arrested for "disorderly conduct." This charge, always unfailingly ambiguous, is easily recognized by many blacks as an offense that is not in any legal code, but still manages to elicit punishment from authority daily: failure of a black to show proper deference to a white police officer. Gates' refusal to be humiliated in his own home and insistence on calling the incident what it was -- racial profiling -- was more than anything, a direct challenge to the fragile hierarchy of superiority and propriety that Officer Crowley attempted to enforce. The war of words between Crowley and Gates was a contest about dignity, imbued with the intricacies of hundreds of years of domination and deference between white and black, felt most acutely in the rituals of policing and criminal justice. Arguably the most profound existential dilemma that racism presents to those that are confronted with it is what could be called an "utter substitutability." In its most relentless form, it is the wholesale indifference to human individuality. It seeks to erase our singularity in the pursuit of some gain, whether it be material, psychological, emotional, or political. It is the terrifying reality that sometimes, in the course of a police investigation, criminal trial, act of violence, or discriminatory practice, any black person can stand in for any other, and be made to bear the burden for all. The singular promise of the Barack Obama era, even if his health care, education, and economic stimulus plans are unsuccessful, is that it signals what is a decisive shift in what racism means for black life. The truth of the matter is that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. will be fine. The event undoubtedly is traumatic and will take a psychic toll on him, his colleagues, and his students -- who must certainly be wrestling with a deep unsettling of their sense of belonging in a place like Cambridge -- but the consequences of this incident will be limited. Beyond his own personal courage and resilience, Gates' counsel, the esteemed law professor Charles Ogletree, has already seen the charges dropped. Moreover, Gates' celebrity ensured that his case was watched with close scrutiny by global media, black activists, and intellectual elites of all backgrounds. Someone like Gates does not remain "substitutable" for long anymore. But if we can step back and see how easily this happened to someone like Gates, arguably the most famous academic in the country, it should encourage us to be more vigilant about the toll that continuing racial disparities in law enforcement are taking on blacks, particularly the working class and poor, in America. The disproportionate policing of amorphous criminal statutes like "disorderly conduct" and "disobeying the lawful order of a police officer" have served to introduce thousands of otherwise law-abiding people into the criminal justice system. This puts undue stress and costs on police forces and communities, undermining the capacity to stem crime at its roots. When applied to juveniles in particular, this type of policing only stigmatizes and alienates youth, exposing them further to deleterious influences that ultimately encourage them to turn away from school and legitimate employment. To make matters worse, this expansively punitive penal system fuels employer discrimination against blacks. A seminal experimental study by Princeton sociologist Devah Pager shows that even black men without criminal records receive fewer callbacks for entry-level employment than whites with criminal records. One can only expect this discrimination to expand far beyond employment when criminal court proceedings are instantly available online in most states, and some non-violent convictions are grounds to deny students access to federal funding. These are not the stories that make headlines in news outlets from CNN to TMZ. There are not Harvard lawyers on retainer to expunge their records and win them noelle prosequi judgments. Al Sharpton is not offering to stand at their arraignments, and student activists are not chomping at the bit to pressure their arresting officers. Instead, a nation turns aside in an indifference built sturdily upon received "wisdoms" of race and class, ignoring a mountain of evidence about the catastrophic isolation of an increasing swath of Americans. All, of course, while at the same time applauding themselves for a "post-racial" politics that spends more time admonishing aspiring rappers than criticizing disproportionate suspension and expulsion rates, public school funding disparities, and overcrowded prisons. These are the type of people who are confined, often for the duration of their lives, to that one way of looking at a black man Gates experienced again for a brief moment. In the just outrage we have summoned in defense of this brilliant scholar, it is fitting testimony to his life's work that we should give voice to their plight as well. Brandon M. Terry is a doctoral student at Yale University in Political Science and African American Studies. He is also a graduate of Harvard where he received an AB in Government and African and African American Studies, and studied under Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Sybil Adelman Sage: An Open Letter to President Obama July 21, 2009 at 7:58 pm Dear President Obama: My husband did his best to try to console me when it became clear that I wasn't among the progressive bloggers you considered important enough to participate in today's conference call to help gain support for your health care agenda. "I'm sure Obama tried to call," he said, wiping away my tears, "while you were at the gym. With your numbers slipping, you might have shown more respect for my readers, who will, I'm sure, be indignant on my behalf and organize protests in major American cities as well as on the lawn of the White House. I just hope they don't trample on Michele's vegetable garden. Though I didn't hear from you personally, I saw you on TV, trying to persuade the general public that we need health care, "sooner, rather than later." Had I been among the elite group of blogger included in the call, I would have shared what had been my highly successful strategy for pressing a very reluctant boyfriend to marry me "sooner, rather than later. By late autumn, all of America would be insured and be having long-overdue hip replacements and gall stones removed. And your ratings would certainly be on the upswing. Hillary, too, didn't call before leaving for Bangkok. If she had, I'd have given her the name of a tailor who'd custom make her pant suits for a fraction of what she pays here. Like me, she may not be on today's call sheet, but If you should speak to her, tell her to stop in at Milan Suit on Sukhumvit Road near Soi 14. More on Hillary Clinton Amjad Atallah: The Obama-Likud Staredown: Who's Going to Blink? July 21, 2009 at 7:55 pm Israel and the United States have already begun negotiations over whether there is going to be a two-state solution or not, and the Israelis have begun employing all the negotiating tricks they have become accustomed to using with the Palestinians. But there is a significant difference in the disparity of power between Israel and the Palestinians on the one hand, and Israel and the United States on the other, that the diplomats in the Israeli government haven't yet picked up on. (Israeli Government Press Director Daniel Seamen reacted to US policy on settlements by sarcastically saying: "I have to admire the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews should live in Jerusalem," which tells you a lot about how the Israelis view the Palestinians.) Let's hope that the US does a better job in earning Israel's respect than the Palestinians have in their negotiations thus far. Here's the standard operating procedure: Israel takes a provocatively strong opening position. The other side is outraged but enters negotiations. Israel issues leaks, almost every day, that are designed to suggest the Palestinians are about to make a major compromise on their core principles, undermining the Palestinian negotiating position. The Palestinians struggle to present their position. The Israelis spread false rumors about Palestinians involved in the talks as flanking attacks designed to put them on the defensive. If the Palestinians are not yet fully on the defensive, Israel announces facts on the ground that fly in the face of good faith efforts to end the conflict. Finally, the talks fail in a manner that allows the Israelis to present the Palestinians as the obstinate party. Israel is the aggrieved nation that has no partner in peace. If it works, why change the script? Netanyahu's opening gambit with the Obama administration on settlements has been that Jews have the right to build anywhere in Israel or the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights, including East Jerusalem. Almost every other day now, Israeli newspapers have printed reports that the United States is prepared to compromise President Obama's and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's clear and unambiguous demand of an end to all settlement activity in the occupied territory. On Monday, just as the Mitchell Team was lining up compromises on early normalization from Arab states, Prime Minister Netanyahu was quoted in the Washington Post saying that "We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem." Senior Likud officials have been making the rounds telling everyone why there won't be a Palestinian state. Now, former White House National Security official Elliott Abrams, a strong Likud supporter, has suggested that Special Envoy George Mitchell wants to retire by the end of the year. Pretty hardball stuff from the Israelis and their right-wing supporters in the US. So what is at stake? In fact, these negotiations about settlements are about whether President Obama's goals of a comprehensive peace agreement within two years will be stillborn or not. The Israeli discourse right now is based entirely on a narrative in which the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem are already part of Israel -- and in which the Gaza Strip is a large open-air prison. The public rhetoric by Likud officials about Jews being allowed to live anywhere in "Eretz Israel" is an attempt to transform the international narrative from one of a two state solution to a demographic question for one state. Essentially, this Israeli government views the problem not as one over land, but as one over non-Jews, who, unfortunately for ethnic nationalists, compose about half the population between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. What Israel wishes to negotiate is how to treat those non-Jews in a manner that does not prejudice Israel's continued colonization of the territory it is integrating into its heartland without affording them citizenship. But that is a very different narrative than the one the United States and the international community have. In our narrative, both Palestinians and Israelis have equal rights to self-determination, but in the territory international law has accorded each nation. The territory Israel conquered in 1967 is occupied and as such the Geneva Conventions apply to Israel's rule. Any attempt to colonize the territory by importing settler populations or to remove the existing population is expressly prohibited. US diplomats are now stuck. If they blink and actually legitimate -- in a formal agreement -- any Israeli settler activity, they will not only be condoning a breach of international law but they will be validating the Israeli position that this conflict is all about demographics. The Arab states that were prepared to offer elements of normalization as a down payment on peace will run for the exit. The Palestinians who were backing the US position by insisting that they would not engage in permanent status negotiations until there was a settlement freeze will be stuck. Most importantly, those elements in Israel who believe that there is no such thing as a US president who can defend US interests when they conflict with those of a right-wing Israeli government will be emboldened. If the conventional wisdom that Netanyahu is ultimately a pragmatist is right -- this will strengthen those elements of his constituency who want him to stand firm against peace. The pragmatist in him will be forced to concede that he will have to buck the US in every future step as well, because his constituency knows that he can. So what now? Do the US and Israel simply stare at each other for the next six months? That too can't be allowed to happen. The US should find a way of going into permanent status negotiations anyway -- even if it is the US negotiating permanent status issues with the parties instead of them negotiating with each other at first. But the pressure for a settlement freeze has to continue during this process, with the US unambiguously adopting the only narrative it can support for a two-state solution. Settlements are illegal, and therefore there should be consequences for US aid to settlements, such as the 20-unit complex in East Jerusalem purchased by a Miami-based businessman, and for the use of US weaponry in the occupied territory in violation of US law. (Britain has already blocked the sale of spare parts to Israeli gunboats for their use in attacking civilians in Gaza and most countries that sell weapons to Israel prohibit their use in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights.) The Palestinians may have a built-in disadvantage in negotiating with the Israelis because of the disparity of power. The United States shouldn't make the mistake of assuming we are the Palestinians when it comes to our negotiations with Likud. More on Palestinian Territories Anthony Papa: Turning Cold Medicine into a Controlled Substance? July 21, 2009 at 5:34 pm Should common chemicals found in cold medications such as pseudoephedrine be made into a controlled substance? I don't think so. But, the city council of Washington, MO disagrees. Earlier this month they became the first local government in the country to require a prescription for cold medications that contain pseudoephedrine -- a substance that can be used to manufacture methamphetamine. The unprecedented move came out of the city counsels frustration caused by the inaction of the Missouri Legislature to combat methamphetamine use and abuse. The ACLU quickly took a position against the anti-meth ordinance As it stands now, consumers with colds across the country must present a photo ID and sign a log in order to purchase cold and allergy medicines containing pseudoephedrine. The ordinance created by the city council has attracted interest from other cities that want to follow them. This sets a dangerous precedent. There are an estimated 34 different chemicals found in common household products such as lighter fluid, road flares and matches that can also be used to make meth. In the future are they going to declare that these chemicals can also become controlled substances? The war on drugs has created convenient vehicles of looking tough on crime while hiding being the shield of public safety. But that shield gets worn down when our basic rights are curtailed through its use. In 2006 a federal law went into effect that forced cold sufferers to jump through ridiculous hoops to purchase what were originally over-the-counter medications. Customers now have to show photo identification and sign logs that are monitored by the police. The manufacture, trafficking and abuse of meth have jumped to the forefront of national concern as the latest U.S. "drug epidemic." Cover stories depict meth as "America's Most Dangerous Drug." Alarmist media coverage of the dangers of meth and the draconian political responses that followed are reminiscent of the public reaction to crack cocaine in the 1980s. A new federal government Meth/Drug Hot Spots program was soon implemented. It offered local and state agencies almost $400 million to find and eradicate meth labs. Through financial incentives, policing policies were increased to take advantage of this new federal cash cow, all in the name of stopping the meth epidemic. Now desperate measures are being enacted to tackle this "high priority" problem -- measures that sometimes invade the privacy and civil liberties of citizens in ways that seem far removed from the war on drugs. Recent studies by several policy organizations such as the Sentencing Project have questioned the very existence this so-called epidemic, busting many of the myths perpetuated by the media. The studies concluded that meth is actually one of the rarest of illegal drugs used, with its use declining among youth, stabilizing among adults and demonstrating no increase in first-time users. Furthermore, even governmental data dispute the existence of an epidemic. We need to invest scarce public resources into educating the public about the use of meth and providing high quality treatment options to fight addiction, not create needless legislation or layer on ineffective bureaucratic busy work. The ordinance implemented by the Washington, MO city counsel leads to the further erosion of precious civil liberties. It might not be apparent now, but neither was our right to not be hassled when buying cold medicine before the law changed. Anthony Papa is the author of 15 to Life and a communications specialist for the Drug Policy Alliance Paul Szep: The Daily Szep: Sen. Max Baucus July 21, 2009 at 5:29 pm Charlotte Hilton Andersen: Food Allergies Are the New Eating Disorder July 21, 2009 at 5:27 pm I think this little guy can safely rule out peanut allergies. Although he may have seen a few too many KISS shows... As a Woman with Uneasy Relationships to Food, let me tell you: the easiest way to restrict your diet is to take out a whole group of foods. And nothing cuts food pushers off at the knees like a moralistic food resistor. Sure you can always decline that burger by saying, "I'm trying to eat healthy" but how much better -- and less arguable -- is it to say, "I'm a vegetarian. Don't you know that cows are the number one polluter of groundwater? And besides, red meat consumption is linked to a 30-50% increase in colon cancer." Not only do you not have to eat the burger -- probably they will never offer you meat again -- but you put the focus back on the person by making them answer the lose/lose: Which do you hate more -- me or the planet? Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that all vegetarians have eating disorders (nor am I saying all vegetarians are militant jerks). But I am saying that vegetarianism has long been used by anorexics the world over as a way to hide and distract from their disordered eating. This is a point that my family and I still talk about, a decade after my sister and I "went veg" as a way of not eating. Me, I eventually went back to being (mostly) a vegetarian for a host of health, moral and spiritual reasons without being disordered about it. My sister, on the other hand, while she sympathizes with vegetarianism has said that she fears returning to it will cause a resurgence of her long-overcome eating disorder. Then there's my brother: current vegetarian, never eating disordered, and happy about both. But in the ever-evolving world of "not dieting" food restricting, things are always changing as people come up with new ways to perpetuate the old behaviors. The current fad? Food allergies. As with many trends, these things seem to start with celebrities. Everyone from Elizabeth Hasselbeck to Rachel Weisz to Geri Halliwell claim to be gluten intolerant. Victoria Beckham and Orlando Bloom, among others claim to be allergic to dairy. And then there is Gwyneth Paltrow who pretty much avoids everything except water (we call that a "cleanse" these days in case you missed the memo). A 2006 study of general practitioners found that almost all had seen a rise in patients saying they had a food allergy after watching a celebrity interview on the subject. The doctors said that 94% of those patients had no idea of the difference between an allergy and an intolerance. "Food allergies and intolerances can be serious for individuals who are affected. Whilst it's encouraging that awareness is improving, it's crucial that people don't jump to conclusions based on what they've heard or read. Excluding particular food groups can upset a balanced and healthy diet." A 2009 study reported in the LA Times states, "Only about 25% of people who think they have a food allergy will actually have one." Adding, "And the twice-as-high rates of peanut allergies and four hundred percent increase in those who suffer from celiac disease has got to have more to do than just increased awareness and more frequent testing." To add to the psychosomatic aspect of self-diagnosing food allergies, it turns out that the blood tests that many (most?) doctors rely on to diagnose them often aren't correct either. Apparently the only true way to test for a food allergy is to have the person - under close doctor's supervision - gradually eat more and more of the suspicious food. I can't see anyone, patients or doctors, thinking that is a fun idea. (Is that an EpiPen in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?) So now the question becomes why would anyone who is not a clinical hypochondriac want to have a food allergy or intolerance? Any person who is deathly allergic to nuts will tell you how miserable it is just trying to buy food at the grocery store, much less eat out. It severely restricts what, where and how you can eat. And that, I think is the key to their meteoric rise. It's one more way to give yourself a reason to not eat something or more likely an entire group of somethings. Do all people with food allergies or intolerances have an eating disorder? Absolutely not. But are some people using the allergy/intolerance umbrella as a reason to restrict food? I'm betting yes. And it's not just celebrities. So, do you think I'm nuts? Or have you seen someone who suddenly became gluten intolerant overnight, treating it as the newest diet fad? P.S. Want to see vegetarianism from "the other side"? Check out this hilarious video! Seriously, even I laughed and I'm a vegetarian (when I'm not pregnant): Note: If you are reading this via e-mail or a reader, click thru to see the video blah, blah, blah. More on Gwyneth Paltrow Frank Dwyer: Political Haiku: Uh-Oh July 21, 2009 at 5:24 pm Somebody please tell Taliban they're not allowed to waterboard us! More on Harsh Interrogations Giannoulias Making Senate Run Official July 21, 2009 at 5:22 pm CHICAGO (AP) -- Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias is formally announcing his bid for the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama. Giannoulias (jeh-NOO'-lee-ehs) will visit seven Illinois cities in three days starting on Sunday in Chicago and Springfield. On Monday, the Democrat will travel to Carbondale and the Metro East area before heading to Rockford, the Quad Cities and Peoria on Tuesday. The first-term state treasurer wants the seat Sen. Roland Burris is giving up. Burris has served under a cloud since he was appointed to replace Obama by ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Burris has bowed out of the 2010 election, citing fundraising problems. Five-term Congressman Mark Kirk announced this week that he's running for the Republican nomination. -ASSOCIATED PRESS More on Senate Races Eric Schurenberg: Why China is Dangerous for Your Money July 21, 2009 at 5:16 pm If you have to have a Great Recession, you want to have one like China is having. A laggard on the way into the downturn, the Middle Kingdom has become a leader on the way out. Its economy vaulted 7.9% in the second quarter, a turnabout that on Sunday The New York Times, quoting Andy Rothman, a Shanghai-based economist at brokerage CLSA, called a "stunning recovery." Stunning indeed: China is expected to account for 74% of all GDP growth in the world in the three years ending 2010, and the Shanghai Composite is up 75% so far this year. Still, it's the last place on earth I'd want to invest right now. That's partly a matter of market history. The sector that performs best in one period tends to take a pratfall in the next, as Nathan Hale reminds us in this smart post about ETFs. And contrary to what you might think, the fastest-growing economies tend not to have the best-performing stock markets, according to this fascinating research from Buckingham Asset Management's Larry Swedroe. But I'm also responding to the niggling worry that the Chinese rebound, like the late, lamented U.S. real estate boom, is a creation of loose money and skewed incentives. Like Uncle Sam, the Chinese government has been shoveling stimulus money at the recession. Unlike us, however, it's also getting plenty of support from banks, which are estimated to have lent more than 7 trillion renminbi in the first half of this year (a little over $1 trillion), nearly double what they lent in all of 2007. Why? One reason could be that China is a dictatorship in which people do what the government tells them, and that includes bankers. Uncle Sam sometimes bosses American bankers around, too-I'm looking at you, Ben and Ken (or as my colleague Jill Schlesinger calls Bernanke and Lewis, the bully and the weenie). But the Fed hasn't leaned on U.S. bankers hard enough t persuade them to lend if they can't find creditworthy borrowers, who are always scarce in a recession. In his most recent Grant's Interest Rate Observer, Jim Grant worries that the Peoples Bank of China is less concerned about such niceties of credit quality. Leaning on a Fitch Ratings report from May, Grant finds it suspicious that Chinese lending has exploded even as Chinese companies' profitability has fallen. It usually doesn't work that way. His explanation: Chinese loan officers work to a quota. They take their direction from their branch managers, who report to the senior management, which answers to the board of directors-and the directors hang on the words of the People's Bank. The trouble these days is that too many motivated loan officers are chasing too few creditworthy borrowers. Net interest margins at Chinese banks are tightening on account of the recession and the governmentally sponsored drive to lend their way to prosperity. So loan officers push all the harder. "For example," as Fitch explains, "a branch manager is given an annual profit target of Rmb35 million. If the average loan margin is 3.5%, he needs to lend Rmb1 billion to meet this goal. However, if the average margin declines to 2%, he now needs Rmb1.75 billion to meet the same objective...In the past, the ability to raise credit volume was limited by quotas [ie, central-bank-imposed quotas to restrict lending to combat inflation]. Now, in a quota-less environment, that restraint is gone." Grant may be alarmist; it wouldn't be the first time. On the other hand: You don't quadruple loan volume during a recession by tightening lending standards. Loose lending leads to inflation or defaults or both. And if any country's banking system has too much of it, the end isn't pretty. Aaron Bruns, Ex-Fox News Producer, Sentenced To 10 Years For Child Porn July 21, 2009 at 5:11 pm From AP: A federal judge has sentenced a former Fox News Channel producer to 10 years in prison for possession of child pornography. The U.S. Attorney's Office says Aaron Bruns was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court. Prosecutors had recommended the 10-year term, citing Bruns' prior conviction on similar charges. Authorities arrested Bruns in February after investigators said he had been sharing pornography on a social networking Web site. Bruns pleaded guilty in May to possession of child pornography. Bruns covered Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008 and later was a general producer in Washington, covering politics. More on Fox News Rick Sanchez Takes On Obama "Birther" Movement (VIDEO) July 21, 2009 at 4:58 pm CNN's Rick Sanchez did a bit of public service announcement on Tuesday, reading President Obama's birth certificate on air for all the skeptics out there. The segment was prompted by a "birther" hijacking a press conference held by Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) to accuse him of ignoring the scandal. It's a "completely unfounded story," Sanchez said, and then repeated himself for emphasis. "There's something strange about even having to do this story," he said, but so many people believe it that "it needs to be addressed." Sanchez had on conservative radio host Ben Ferguson, who said he had banned the topic from his show. However, Ferguson suggested the onus was on the White House to take out his birth certificate and show it to the public. Sanchez pointed out that members of the media, including two from Factcheck.org, were shown the certificate and documents. Viveca Novak, the deputy director at Factcheck.org, was on hand to corroborate and even had pictures of the papers. Ferguson stood his ground. Pointing out that Obama has a press conference tomorrow night, he suggested the president "make a joke and show it then." Novak pointed out that it might be "a little unpresidential" to go on national television and defend the facts of his birth against a group of fringe extremists. Sanchez ended with even more evidence -- the birth announcement in a Hawaii paper. But its doubtful that anyone who has held onto this delusion in the face of so much evidence can be convinced. Watch: Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter! Una LaMarche: Wii Think You Are Fat July 21, 2009 at 4:51 pm Every single morning I set my alarm for 7:00 AM. And every single morning I snooze until 8:15, the time when I actually have to get up. I torture myself day after day with interrupted sleep because I believe, deep in my soul, that one day -- soon! -- I will bound out of bed, fresh and flush with health, go to the living room, and finally do one of my bajillion exercise DVDs. This never happens. I would say that my quest for physical fitness is Sisyphusean, but Sisyphus actually pushed a giant boulder up a hill, which, if you take a look at my biceps, is obviously not something I can claim. My main problem is that I want to be toned but don't want to work at it; to paraphrase Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites, I am the reason the Ab Roller was invented. I have gone to extraordinarily lazy extremes to stave off the letting-myself-go process. I own a pair of phenomenally expensive sneakers that look like orthopedic platforms and are designed to work my calves and butt while I am standing or walking. I think they work, but I can't actually tell because they are so ugly that I have to wear long pants with them, thus hiding my legs. I also own a Pilates magic circle, which looks like a giant, flexible intrauterine device and which is used to build muscle through resistance exercises. It's a glorified Thighmaster, but I happily trot it out during commercials, doing pliés until it inevitably springs from my knees and flies across the room and breaks something. So, of course, when the Wii Fit came out, I knew that it would be mine. My husband and I like our Wii, but wii (ha!) don't use it that often because it involves unplugging the DVD player, and yes, wii are that lazy. But Wii Fit seemed like the perfect momentary obsession workout regimen for someone with absolutely no willpower or motivation who needs to be distracted in order to exercise (If you dangled a cupcake in front of me, maybe -- maybe -- I would run, but probably I would just go online and order cupcakes from FreshDirect and then watch 14 hours of television while I waited). In other words, desperate quads called for desperate measures. Unfortunately after only a few uses I was forced by vanity to shove my balance board under the couch and cower in fear. For instance, no one told me that if one does not use it every single day (and really, who has that kind of time, let alone willpower?), the Wii chides you as soon as you start. "Oh, too busy to work out yesterday, huh?" it mocks in a high-pitched, childlike voice not unlike HAL after a few hits of helium. I don't know about you, but standing in front of my TV wearing a sports bra is not the best time for me to be mocked. It sends me into the kitchen for some ice cream and/or vodka. The least it could do is mock you after you're done. As it is if I miss a day (or two, or ten) I fear the mocking too much to get back on schedule. Also, before each exercise, the Wii asks you to step onto the balance board so that it can register your alignment. For some reason, half the time when I step on the voice says "Okay!" but the other half of the time it says "Oh!" Like, "Oh! Wow! We've got a bigg'un! Send in the reinforcements!" Suffice to say it is not great for the self-esteem. Neither is the machine's unsolicited report of how much weight you have gained since the last time you used your Wii. As if that wasn't insulting enough, it asks "Why do you think you gained weight?" and then goes on to give you tips on how to stop being such a fatass. (Note: screaming at the TV that you have your period will not register with the sensor). Of course, it's not all bad. My virtual trainer looks like an animated Ken doll and has a cheery disposition. He says things like "Wow, you've got amazing ab strength!" or "You've got great balance!" Even when I suck he says "It gets harder to balance when you're tired, doesn't it?" And I'm like, "Yes, Ken, it does. Thank you for understanding me." Sometimes he flirts with me unintentionally: "Press the + sign to view me from the back," he says as he demonstrates a squat. Aye aye, cap'n! Still, Wii Fit 2.0 could use some adjustments. Some suggestions: The Wii's voice should sound like Barry White in "You're My First, My Last, My Everything," and should address users as "Baby." When someone steps on the balance board, it should say "Are you standing on me yet? I can't feel a thing!" When you finish exercising, Wii should say "You know what tastes great after a good workout? Nachos." Have Ken wear short shorts. Can The Lottery Help Us Save Money? July 21, 2009 at 4:49 pm Based on recent headlines, you might think that Americans are finally saving again. Want to bet? In 2007, the latest year for which final numbers are available, Americans spent $92.3 billion on legalized gambling, according to Christiansen Capital Advisors; that same year, says the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Americans saved only $57.4 billion. Congo Rapes, Violence Linked To UK Companies: Rights Group July 21, 2009 at 4:41 pm Murders, rapes and major internal displacement in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been linked to a number of multinational companies in a report released today by the international advocacy group Global Witness. Entitled "Faced With A Gun, What Can You Do?" the report names a number of high-profile companies it says are involved in buying minerals from questionable sources within the DRC who use the money to fund violent armed conflict in the region. The report states: The militarization of mining in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is prolonging the armed conflict which has been tearing the country apart for more than 12 years. In their broader struggle to seize economic, political and military power, all the main warring parties have carried out the most horrific human rights abuses, including widespread killings of unarmed civilians, rape, torture and looting, recruitment of child soldiers to fight in their ranks, and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people. The lure of eastern Congo's mineral riches is one of the factors spurring them on. The UN currently estimates that 1.6 million people are displaced in the eastern provinces. Global Witness names AMC, THIARSCO, Trademet and Afrimex among the companies they say are linked to the DRC violence. In 2007, after Global Witness made similar claims again Afrimex, a UK government group found the company guilty of breaching the OECD guidelines for trading in conflict regions. Global Witness claims that Afrimex still needs to be more thorough in tracing its supplies. Patrick Alley, Director of Global Witness, said, "It is not good enough for companies to say they buy only from licensed exporters, when they know full well that their middlemen buy from armed groups. The failure of governments to hold companies to account, of Burundi and Rwanda to restrict the trade across their borders, and of donors and diplomats to address explicitly the role of the mineral trade, have all contributed to the continuation of a conflict that has killed millions and displaced many more." The report calls on the British government to step up and challenge the breaches to the OECD's guidelines on trading with groups in conflict countries. Global Witness also states that AMC-subsidiary company THAISARCO sources supplies through a firm which sells minerals from mines controlled by the FDLR Hutu extremist group which was involved in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. The International Crisis Group recently stated that the FDLR troops continue to be extremely violent towards civilians. The Mirror reports that some of AMC's main shareholders have appeared on the Sunday Times Rich List. In a statement released today, AMC said that both it and its subsidiary company THAISARCO are in compliance with the UN requirements regarding DRC mineral sourcing, and say the Global Witness report contains a number of inaccuracies in relation to their operations. "AMC and THAISARCO have the objective, in common with most of the participants and stakeholders involved in the trade of Congolese Cassiterite, of improving the visibility and traceability of the supply chain in order to ensure that warring groups do not benefit from the trade," the statement said. "If the UN were to decide that dissociation from the trade is the most appropriate way forward, then THAISARCO would comply absolutely with such a requirement. " The AMC group also quoted a World Bank estimate that up to 10 million people in the DRC are dependent on the mineral trade. Afrimex and Trademet were unavailable to speak to the Huffington Post on this issue. Get HuffPost World On Facebook and Twitter! More on Congo The Baby Asian Bearcat Debut (PHOTOS) July 21, 2009 at 4:41 pm New-born Binturongs, also known as the Asian Bearcats, sit in a basket at the Tierpark zoo during their presentation to the media in Berlin, Germany Tuesday. The four cubs were born on May 16, 2009 in Tierpark zoo. Get HuffPost Green On Facebook and Twitter! More on Animals Cantor: We Need A "Judeo-Christian" Foreign Policy In The Middle East July 21, 2009 at 4:38 pm This afternoon, at the annual Christians United For Israel conference, House minority whip and rumored presidential hopeful Eric Cantor discussed his vision for U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Namely, that it needs to be "firmly grounded" in "Judeo-Christian principles." Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told Christian Zionists that U.S. policies in the Middle East must be "firmly grounded" in Judeo-Christian principles. "Reaching out to the Muslim world may help in creating an environment for peace in the Middle East, but we must insist as Americans that our policies be firmly grounded in the beliefs of the Judeo-Christian tradition upon which this country was founded," said Cantor (R-Va.), the House minority whip and the only Jewish Republican in Congress, in a speech to the Christians United For Israel annual conference in Washington. (h/t Washington Monthly) More on Israel Fired Entrepreneur Writer Rails Against Magazine, Editor-In-Chief July 21, 2009 at 4:35 pm My employment at Entrepreneur Media, as a staff writer online and for its magazine, was terminated abruptly on Friday afternoon. More on Magazines Julie Zeilinger: Gloria Steinem: The Iconic Feminist Speaks to Our Generation July 21, 2009 at 4:35 pm All I see are books. Books about religion, race, gender and more wallpaper every room I see. It almost appears as though books inhabit this home rather than a human being. I have always believed that a person can be accurately judged based on their home. If I find someone to be too eccentric, too strange or even too bland, I can always trace the feelings back to their homes. Whether there is an overwhelming abundance of porcelain figurines crafted in the likeness of Disney characters, a dull smell of cat despite the fact that not one cat had ever lived in the home, or even just empty, white rooms, perfectly formed to fit a non-personality, homes generally reflect who their inhabitants are. Therefore, upon entering Ms. Gloria Steinem's Manhattan apartment, this feeling remained in the back of my mind; admittedly, it was put on the back burner, letting the spotlight shine on my inordinate feelings of both terror and excitement. Who was I, a Midwestern teenager, to interview the iconic feminist who led multiple women's rights organizations, founded and published Ms. Magazine, one of the first feminist magazines, in addition to being a groundbreaking journalist? But when I entered her apartment the overwhelming sight of books accosted me, and the tumultuous tornado of fear whipping around my stomach lost speed. I felt at ease, just one character, one plot line among many. I let my eyes wander. The literary motif continued into a small room with perfect reading lighting, warm and comforting, not overpowering but illuminating, and back into a porch area with a two story window, New York City light spilling down onto a spiral staircase, the likes of which exist in a child's ideal playhouse. It turns out Ms. Steinem had bought two apartments in the building, one on the ground floor, one right above it, and had manipulated them to meet her will. For some reason, this fairly rational idea left me with wonder. It would never have occurred to me to alter an already existing structure to meet my needs, and ultimately, to become something even more beautiful in it's own right. But Gloria Steinem is used to that idea. We sit down in her living room, on couches I sink halfway into. She makes small talk and I set up the tape recorders. My dad is shooed out of the room. It's time to get down to business. I mumble something about how I'm going to proceed, she smiles, and somehow I manage to get words out of my mouth. I ask her about feminism, about how girls just seem to hate that word. Ms. Steinem says that people don't understand it, and people are afraid of it. But when you know you are one, when you know you are proud enough of your gender to support yourself and fight for yourself and others, you have to stand up and say it, to encourage others. We talk about my generation, and she clearly thinks highly of it: she's both supportive and admiring. I start to feel more comfortable, and delve a little deeper. What would an ideal society be like? What if this sexism that is so wrong, that exists everywhere, were to disappear? Is it even imaginable? "The future is organic," she says. "Suppose we want more equality in the future, which we want, and less violence and more humor and joy and love and poetry and whatnot. So put it in this present." And she's right. "If we reflect what we hope for in the future in what we do everyday," she continues, "Then we don't exactly know what's going to happen, but we can be more sure that it will look like what we're hoping for." The idea of putting love into your life and spreading it around may sound like a lyric from a seventies folk song. But it's true. How often do we get so preoccupied with changing the future that we forget about the present? You have to start somewhere -- you can't just dream of a better tomorrow. For me, it's how as a girl I'm constantly told I don't have power. Of course, it's never clearly stated like that. No one has ever come up to me and has said, "You, young girl, have no power." I have never known someone to lack the basic social skill of subtlety to such an extent. But, for example, I constantly hear that boys are better at math than girls. Of course that's not true, but somewhere along the line, we got it into our heads that boys could solve math problems and girls could write papers. And now, even though statistics, not to mention reality, beg equality, the idea stays the same. We continue to talk about this underlying power guys have, how they can get away with wrongdoings. Why is this? I know I've seen it a million times: a man can make the same mistake as a woman. For a man it's a one-time thing; after all, everybody makes mistakes, no matter how intelligent and driven they are. But for a woman, it's a stupid blunder probably due to her feminine silliness. She's made a mistake once, and it will inevitably happen again. Is this because men really mess up less? Of course not. "In a general way, anything that affects men is taken more seriously than anything that affects only women," Steinem explains. So, because men are taken more seriously, their problems are more serious, as are the causes. If a man messes something up, there must be some deep, underlying problem. But if a girl messes up, it's because she's silly. Or she just can't get anything right. People will become more exasperated with women, because it's easier to question them. It's easier to believe that there is nothing more than meets the surface. I constantly run into this in my life. As a woman, I'm not taken as seriously. I've had teachers call me "love, hon, dear" in class when they never would dare to say that to a male student. In Gym class the guys think it's amusing when a girl is able to run as many laps as them. When I make a comment in class, guys will scoff at me if they disagree -- something I've never seen a girl do. I'm sick of being treated as this entertaining figure instead of someone with ideas -- even on the smallest of levels. I'm sick of being met with surprise when I do something well, instead of congratulations. I think the main difference I see being a girl is that all of my accomplishments are a bonus, an addition to just being "nice" and "cute" instead of being essential to my future or development, as they are for guys. While I've never been told I can't do something, thanks to the feminists who came before me, the surprise people have when I do it is enough to solidify that doubt. While I am incredibly frustrated with the fact that I don't have the power to be taken seriously, I wonder if there are drawbacks to the power men do have. Their power is their masculinity, but does their masculinity limit them? I ask Gloria what she's found about masculinity. "When I'm talking to groups that are all men, we talk about how the masculine role limits them," she says. "They often want to talk about how they missed having real fathers, real loving, present fathers, because of the way that they tried to fit the picture of masculinity." It seems, that while we as women sorely miss having the power to be taken seriously, men miss the power of being able to have that less serious side, the side responsible for unconditional, unabashed love. Sexism limits men, just like it limits women. Fathers should be able to talk to their daughters like mothers do! Maybe it can get awkward to get into the nitty gritty (I know if I even mention the three letters PMS my Dad basically runs screaming out of the room), but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be a verbal connection. (And besides, it's pretty sexist for Dads to assume that every conversation we'd have is bound to end up in the realm of the dreaded menstrual cycle in the first place). Bottom line is until we get rid of sexism, fathers will always be limited. And it's not just affecting daughters: it's affecting sons too. They grow up living by the example their fathers have set for them. So how do we reverse this curse? Ms. Steinem has the simple, but far from easy answer. She suggests, "When men start to become the fathers they wished they had, it's a real change." It would seem that one of the main road blocks to discussion between men and women is pretty essential: the fact that we are two different genders. It's because men are concerned with "masculine" things (football, girls, mud) and women with "feminine" things (make up, tight jeans, gossip) that the two just cannot find anything to talk about. It would seem that this idea of gender, of girl-things and guy-things, is more responsible for sexism than the physical aspects of being a man or a woman. I'm fairly positive that certain physical attributes of my body, solely on their own, aren't responsible for the sexism aimed at me. Though, that is what makes me a woman, right? So why are we so caught up on gender? I think its part of the reason why I'm so sure feminism is right and why I'm so proud to be a feminist. I have this sense of history. I know the world must have been different at some point, that this state of sexism we live in now is so unnatural it has to have been man-made, invented at some point for some corrupt reason. Maybe it dates back thousands of years, but there was a time when things were as they should be. Before everything went crazy. Gender has sort of messed everything up. Luckily for us, there are advantages to gender. Our gender defines our oppression, it's true, but that aspect of our oppression is what makes us stronger. "I think the advantages are that we are not nationalistic, we feel loyalty to groups of women in other countries that may be greater than we feel to our own government because their lives have more in common with our lives than Bush, to put it mildly," Ms. Steinem points out. "So, that's an advantage, to be able to organize internationally and to support each other internationally." The thing about sexism is that it's global. Even in the best of societies, sexism exists. Women everywhere can relate to each other on this level -- we can all feel how each individual society favors men over women, whether it's how here in America women have legal and political rights, but barely a voice in the matter, or how in some countries women aren't even allowed to drive. We can learn from the women who have prevailed in other countries, and we can help those who have not. It's the common belief in America that despite all this nonsense in the media and the fact that women still aren't paid as much as men, we are the only "enlightened" country as far as women's rights go. In fact, we are one of the last. Take maternity leave. The United States does not have a system of pay for new mothers, let alone new fathers, while in Sweden both parents can split sixteen months of parental leave at 80% pay. Clearly, we have a lot to learn from our Nordic friends. Instead of convincing ourselves that we enlighten other countries, Americans should take a look at reality. But how will we ever connect to other women, how will our generation of girls ever realize this reality when the culture we live in is so destructive? Our culture destroys our self-esteem, destroys our integrity, and destroys the opportunities we deserve through the media and the continuance of sexist beliefs. What's the big picture? Why are girls, who are smart and capable and caring, so influenced by this culture that is so obviously wrong? "We're social creatures," Ms. Steinem explains. "We pick up cues so easily because that's how we survive. It's very easy for us to get molded by the culture." It's so easy to fall into this trap society made for girls. It's fun to get dressed up and look "girly." It just feels good when you know you look pretty. Especially when you see other people noticing it too. It's fun to be this "mysterious creature" that guys just can't figure out. That's how our culture has allowed us to feel accomplishment and self- confidence: the way other people see us. We should recognize our own accomplishments the way the guys do: the way we see ourselves. I know girls worry, because they're so used to feeling good through the approval of others. They worry that if they give that up and try to actually accomplish things in the way guys do (academically, athletically, etc.) that they will lose that feeling, that they will never feel good about themselves in the way they've become comfortable with. They worry that this new way won't be as satisfying. It's a scary thought, to think you will never feel good about yourself again. But it's not true, and plenty of girls have already realized this. I have. I know getting an A on a paper really does make me feel better than when a guy compliments me. I think it's because I know the grade is more meaningful. It says more about me than one guy's opinion ever could. In the end, feminism isn't about angry girls burning their bras, or about getting back at men: it's about redefining the way we see ourselves and the way we treat ourselves, so that we can learn to love ourselves enough to feel we deserve rights, and to feel empowered enough to continue to fight for them. In the end, it all comes down to one point. Feminism makes sense. From wanting to put our own ideas of equality into our every day lives, to appreciating Clinton for pushing women in further, to recognizing the disgusting display of the media in response. Feminism is all around us. As girls, we're all part of it whether we like it or not. We live as we do because of the feminists who came before us. And it's real. So when people ask, do we still need feminism, we have to point to these examples. Look how my teacher talks to me in class. Look at the relationships between senior boys and freshmen girls, and how everybody else reacts. Look at how the media treated Hillary! Of course we need feminism. As Gloria said, "They try to declare it over, but it's actually just begun." As the interview draws to a close and it becomes apparent that it's time to leave, I ask Ms. Steinem one more question. Though I've read through all her essays and watched a good number of her interviews, I'm not about to leave without hearing something a little more personal. I ask her what advice she has for us, young feminists and feminists-to-be of the world today. "If I have any advice, it's just to listen to your own unique self and make sure you have support for it," she says. "Because we are communal creatures, if you're with people who think you're smart, you're smart and if they think you're dumb, you're dumb. At least spend as much time as possible with people who make you feel smart, who make you feel good, who support you in that role, and help you become who you already are." She pauses for a moment. "This culture in general is much too much saying that we have to do what's out there rather than what's in here. It needs to be a balance. It isn't that we're more important than anybody else as an individual, but we're not less important either." I leave Gloria Steinem's apartment with a certain sense of relief. Admittedly, it's partially because she didn't have anything inordinately strange, like a large collection of discarded license plates lying around her house. I mean, you never know what you'll find in the house of someone so famous, and I really didn't want to be disappointed. And I wasn't. In fact, my biggest sense of relief came from knowing that there are people out there who have gone through their own battles with sexism, in time different than ours, but still understand our generation's own battle. In the end, it's nice to know we're not fighting this alone. It's nice to know that the crazy, hurtful things you encounter every day are not left unnoticed. It will take a ridiculously long time to rid our own culture of them, let alone the world. But conversations like this one; between generations, between people of different backgrounds, struggles and ideas, they help. Because as any feminist knows, women are more than capable of solving difficult problems like these. We just need a little help from our friends. Lizzie Parsons: Lax Checks of Mineral Companies Allow Atrocities and Abuses in Congo July 21, 2009 at 1:48 pm Congo is a staggeringly beautiful place. As I write this in Kinshasa, I can see a couple of orange-backed birds chase one another around banana and mango trees. The natural beauty is all the more striking in the eastern regions which are famous for their pleasant climate, rich wildlife, lush and fertile land. However, for over twelve years, men, women and children in the eastern provinces of North and South Kivu have undergone unimaginable violence. There have been waves of displacement from homes, killings, rape and widespread looting by rebel groups and, perhaps most commonly of all now, members of the national army. It seems almost paradoxical that such a beautiful place could be home to such violence and misery. The trade in Congo's natural resources which lie beneath the ground has facilitated and funded, in large part, the recent years of fighting. The Kivu region is rich in resources which are much in demand overseas, including gold, tin ore and an array of minerals used to make mobile phones and computers, among other things. The mining in the region is dangerous and dirty. Global Witness researchers have received reports of countless cases of deaths in the mines. Miners may work underground for days with little light and air. In addition, the resident rebel group or army brigade commonly use forced labour, extort money or minerals from the miners and impose so-called 'taxes' to make further gains from the population. The armed groups are able to buy arms as well as provisions with the proceeds of this trade. I have worked on issues of human rights and governance in the Democratic Republic of Congo for several years and I am still baffled as to why more has not been done to tackle this issue as one of the main underlying causes of the fighting in the east. Some people argue that the trade shouldn't be meddled with because of the multitude of Congolese miners and their families who depend on in. Such arguments ignore the current atrocities. Hundreds of thousands of people in the region have been forced to flee from their homes - some many times - because men with guns have given them no choice. Others have been massacred, raped or tortured. The status quo should not be an option here. Instead it must now be time for companies buying the minerals - all the way from the region's boom towns to the mineral trading and electronics companies in Europe and elsewhere - to control their supply chain and ask themselves and their suppliers tough questions as to where exactly their minerals are coming from. They should then decide to purchase minerals only where concrete and verifiable guarantees are provided that the trade has not benefited armed groups. For too long, companies, and governments of countries where they are based, have played a game of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil. They have chosen to ignore the blatant links between their trade and the atrocities in eastern DRC, allowing commercial interests to override the most basic human rights. It is time to challenge these attitudes and to start holding these companies to account. More on Congo Journalism Boot Camp: Booming Islamic Antiquities Market in the Gulf Leads to Thefts in Old Cairo Mosques July 21, 2009 at 1:48 pm In old Cairo's Al Darb Al Ahmar district, the minarets of several historic mosques reach out from the modern grunge surrounding them. They are timeworn but elegant, with windows and walls adorned with carved wood and dome ceilings tiled with colorful mosaics. People still come to pray, but in recent years another sort of visitor has come, who have chiselled off priceless tiles and crudely scooped out intricate wood carvings from the mosques. Egyptian officials blame the thefts from these heritage sites on a booming market for Islamic antiquities, fueled by the collecting of wealthy Persian Gulf patrons. But Gulf countries, particularly oil-rich Qatar, say they are modern-day preservationists, with the resources to properly display Islamic heritage from around the world. Egypt, with a vast history of Islamic and other historical sites in its borders, often struggles to protect the heritage it possesses. Art observers have noted that since the 1980's, Gulf States such as Qatar have fueled the market for Islamic antiquities, and in the last few years, the advent of new Islamic art museums and projects in the region has further driven up demand. Sotheby's, one of London's main art auction houses, said it has seen total annual sales of Islamic art grow by 340 percent in the last five years, reaching $35.6 million in 2008. Qatar has spent a fortune building The Islamic Arts Museum in its capital of Doha, and filling it with nearly 800 unique pieces spanning the 7th to 18th-century, including the silk carpet that Mongol conqueror Tamerlane used to play chess on. "(The museum) is an entity that I think stands to be a landmark now for Doha as a city," said Abdulla Al Najjar, the CEO of the Qatar Museums Authority. According to Al Najjar, the content of the museum was originally part of a collection belonging to Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, which he then donated to the state and for which he ordered the museum be built. The museum's curators said the collection has been thoroughly checked to ensure no pieces on display were pieces stolen from heritage sites. One of the museum's main suppliers of antiquities is Sotheby's. The auction house has reported $12 million of sales this year in Doha and London alone. "Normally you hope that the auction houses and dealers will make sure that objects provenance certificates are valid" said Joachim G., Museum of Islamic Art curator. "But honestly, and this is no secret, there is always a chance that you pick up something that doesn't have a proper certificate." Al Najjar said every object in Qatar's museum was "100 percent legally acquired," and rejected the notion that the buying of pieces by Qatar helped fuel a black market for Islamic antiquities. "If people think that by building the museum it has created a black market, that's their problem not ours," Al Najjar said. "We know what we have, and if we need to get more objects, we know where to get them from." Egyptian officials, though, say Gulf collectors are the reason Islamic heritage sites are being looted. "Nowadays, one of the most active countries in selling stolen artefacts is Jordan," said Mokhtar El Kasabany, advisor to secretary general of Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt. "They have a massive market and the major buyers of stolen artefacts are the Gulf countries." El Kasabany said buildings in Cairo's old Islamic quarter were targeted by professional thieves. "There is an invisible black market in Egypt for Islamic art and heritage," he said. "They knew exactly which pieces to take and which were the unique ones. By dawn they would have entered a mosque, taken what they want and left without anyone catching them." One mosque in the old quarter, Al Fakahani, had to replace its 1,000-year-old inlaid wooden panels that were stolen from its doors. Nearby, valuable pieces of the mimbar (pulpit) from the 15th century Mamaluk mosque Mangak Al Youssefy were stolen piece by piece without anyone noticing. A short walk away is Al Maridani mosque, where pieces of the ancient mimbar were also stolen. Authorities have in some cases placed recreated pieces to obscure the thefts. "I used to talk to tourists a lot about those rare pieces of Mamaluk art," said 55-year-old Ibrahim -- the mosque's caretaker, who asked to withhold his family name. "These new substitute pieces cannot replace the original ancient ones." Being both historical sites and places of worship means the mosques are overseen by the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Ministry of Religious Endowments. But in the overlap lies a major security problem. The SCA is responsible for the sites until visiting hours end at 5 p.m., when a caretaker -- appointed by the Ministry of Religious Endowments -- takes over for the rest of the day. The mosques are kept open so that worshipers can get in during prayer times. This shift in responsibility leaves room for blame to be passed around when things go wrong. The SCA has gone as far as to file charges against some of the mosques' caretakers, as several thefts occurred during the night. "Unfortunately, the Ministry appoints men who are not up to this responsibility -- who are not capable enough," El Kasabany said. But the Ministry's caretakers work in good faith. In the past, it was not uncommon for someone to ask for the keys to a mosque when it wasn't prayer time. "These are houses of God, and the ordinary caretaker who looks after the place would never imagine that someone would abuse a house of God," said Salem Abdel Gelil, deputy minister of religious endowments. "The reason for the thefts that occurred is the lack of conscience, as is the case with any crime." Police questioned several mosque caretakers, including Ibrahim, who was not a suspect, but still saw a month's pay docked from his salary. The caretaker at one of the desecrated mosques, Mohamed Salah, said professional thieves were behind the raids. Against the advice of his colleague not to reveal information, Salah said that a tourist once offered $15,000 dollars for the silk and ivory cover of the seat of the imam. Following these incidents and others, the SCA and Ministry of Religious Endowments are now working more closely to prevent further loss. New security measures have supposedly been put in place, including cameras and a secret police force. Egyptian authorities would also inform Interpol if there is any suspicion of a stolen artifact leaving the country. If a stolen piece is put up for sale at an auction house like Sotheby's or Christie's, the SCA would inform them through the Egyptian embassy in London. The auction houses also have their own systems in place to prevent sales of stolen items. "All clients are required to represent and warrant to us in writing that they can pass good legal title to the property in question and are not aware of any competing claims on the property," said Matthew Weigman, worldwide director of sales publicity for Sotheby's. The auction house pays a fee to each of the Art Loss Register and traces pieces for sale against their databases of reported looted art. They also circulate their catalogs to law enforcement agencies so that they can run their own procedures. In an attempt to stop the black market, the Egyptian parliament in its next round will discuss a law increasing imprisonment for artifact theft to 25 years. Egypt is also one of several UNESCO members calling for an international law that prohibits any country from exhibiting stolen artifacts, especially as museums in the region grow. In a few months the Cairo Islamic Museum will reopen after four years of extensive renovation. It will exhibit at least 3,000 artifacts from Egypt's history and from the greater Islamic world. While Egypt is trying to preserve its Islamic heritage, Qatar has plans to expand its top cultural attraction. In October, the Museum of Islamic Art will complete its second building phase, consisting of an education center for students and community members to learn about Islamic history. Meanwhile, the Islamic art market shows no signs of slowing. A gilded and enameled glass finger bowl from 14th century Egypt or Syria estimated to be worth $900,000 was sold earlier this year for $2.6 million. Anna Koulouris is a newspaper journalism major at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, minoring in both Middle Eastern studies and philosophy. She has reported for The Post-Standard in Central New York, and NPR affiliate WAER in Syracuse. Karim Gohary is a Masters student in journalism and mass communication at The American University in Cairo, and currently is a news anchor and program host with the Egyptian TV channel NileTV. More on Syria Jonathan A. Schein: McDonalds Goes McElectric July 21, 2009 at 1:44 pm The world's largest fast food franchise corporation is continuing its move into the green era by offering an electric charging outlet for cars at its Cary, NC, location. While McDonald's already has a "green" restaurant in Chicago with a "living roof," this new facility will be the first to have electric car charging stations, and there are plans to implement many more across the country. This is not the only green aspect of the Cary franchise. The facility will also have low-energy LED lighting and solar tubes that bring natural light into the restaurant. It will also be certified by the U.S. Green Building Council's new LEED for Retail program. This is all fine and good, but there are a couple issues that should be discussed. First, as well meaning as this initiative is, are there enough electric cars in Cary, NC -- or America, for that matter -- to make this worthwhile at this point in time? Perhaps it would be easier to convert the kitchen's byproducts into biodiesel fuel, as there are more diesel-powered vehicles driving around now. Secondly, McDonald's is certainly on the right track in bringing energy efficiency and sustainability to the marketplace. However, is the company employing other methods as well? For example, how many of the food products that are used to make delectable dishes are delivered from local purveyors? Are the cups, plates, and utensils produced from recycled materials? Although the attractiveness of electric charging stations is a great way to make a statement, there are are certainly more immediate ways to prove one's mettle in the world of sustainability. Tom Donohue: Achieving Responsible Health Care Reform July 21, 2009 at 1:44 pm The biggest challenge posed by health care reform is fixing what's broken without breaking what works. What's broken is obvious -- health care costs too much, covers too few, and is of uneven quality. What works is the health insurance that employers voluntarily provide to more than 160 million Americans. Despite this success, some policymakers want to create a government-run health care plan. This fiscally reckless approach will lead to lower-quality health care and more government bureaucracy, while undermining one of the most functional parts of our health care system. To encourage reforms that will lower costs, improve quality, and expand coverage, the U.S. Chamber launched the Campaign for Responsible Health Reform. In the weeks ahead, the campaign will communicate to businesses and families about the importance of protecting employer-sponsored health insurance and the risks involved with government-run health care. This will be achieved through advertisements, meetings with local policymakers, and outreach to citizens. Unfortunately, Congress' current plans to reform health care are anything but responsible. The financial strain that the House bill would impose on Americans is tremendous -- more than $1 trillion -- while still failing to cover every American. To pay for it, Congress may tax businesses that don't offer health insurance and raise rates on small businesses. This would drain desperately needed funds from a private sector struggling to overcome the recession. A government-run plan would move us closer to a European model where there are fewer covered procedures, longer wait times for consultations and surgeries, and more government bureaucracy. In Massachusetts, which mandated universal health care in 2006, patients wait an average of 63 days to get an appointment with a primary care provider. That is seven times the wait in Philadelphia or Atlanta. Further, employer-sponsored health coverage would be decimated by a government-run plan, and millions of Americans would be forced out of their existing plans. For the 8 out of 10 workers who are satisfied with their current insurance coverage, this would come as a real blow. We can and must do better than this. Americans deserve a first-class health care system -- one that delivers accessible, affordable, high-quality care. But we can't achieve this goal by attacking the bedrock of our current health care system -- employer-sponsored health insurance. We should, instead, focus on positive reforms such as pay-for-performance, comparative effectiveness research, and medical malpractice reform, while taking steps to provide for those who are truly in need. Let's get started on fixing what's broken. Dan Silverstein: Stella D'Oro's No-Win Solution July 21, 2009 at 1:39 pm I'm pissed off at everybody involved in the Stella D'Oro fiasco. No one gets a gold star (stella d'oro) unless it's for incompetence. The union negotiators gang planked the 136 workers in their care right into a watery grave. The private equity firm that owns the company allowed a semi-literate cabal of chest thumpers to box them into a corner that practically mandated they shutter the bakery. A Battle of Midgets Stella D'Oro's collapse was a battle of midgets, and it didn't have to happen. Each side overplayed its hand. Brynwood Partners clearly anticipated leveraging its experience owning food companies when it bought the struggling bakery. The principals knew that once the existing union agreement expired they would impose substantial constraints on wages and benefits to boost profitability, and after a few years of skillful management they expected to sell it at a premium valuation. Standing in their way was an activist work force that felt entitled, and who became incensed when management tried to impose a plan for renewal that contradicted the evolution of nest feathering previous owners had tolerated. The union representatives were particularly outraged by the introduction of a restructured pay scale in which new workers would no longer be paid almost as much as seasoned workers. In that, they were wildly successful; now everyone is paid exactly the same. A Pox on Both Their Houses The errors in judgment and procedure by Brynwood Partners seem to belie a lack of sophistication that is surprising. They should have wrapped up the negotiations quickly, but because of their intransigence they instigated a strike that dragged on for almost a year. From a reading of the 39-page ruling by an administrative judge of the National Labor Relations Board it looks as though Brynwood Partners was naive when it told the union reps it had to cut wages and benefits in order to operate profitably, while steadfastly refusing to let the union copy confidential financial documents that supported its claim. Brynwood should have known there are clearly articulated guidelines of the NLRB that compel a company which cries poor mouth to turn over financial documents to the union so its accountants can parse the information. But, even worse than that lapse in judgment were the misplaced citations made by their attorneys, the Proskauer Rose law firm, in citing the wrong cases in order to justify Brynwood's refusal to provide copies. The administrative judge nailed them on it then cited the company for unfair labor practices; a public relations nightmare. Here is the entire ruling. Finding a Balance Certainly workers must be allowed to use their best leverage -- the walkout -- to protect themselves from unbridled greed. And, they have a right to expect a safe and clean workplace, and humane working conditions. They also should expect to be paid a competitive wage and should assume kindness in return for loyalty, dedication and excellence. But, the mind-numbing arrogance of the negotiators for the Bakery Workers Union Local 50 is particularly disturbing because it sealed the fate of the workers whose jobs they were supposed to be protecting. Obviously they thought they could arm wrestle management into caving in. What a mistake. Evidence of their changing world is everywhere. Earlier this year Wal-Mart closed a lube shop in Quebec, Canada because the costs associated with a new union contract made it unprofitable; it's not the first time they have done that. IBM is on a company-wide tear to reduce costs. It expects to save $2bn this year, according to The Financial Times, by "workforce rebalancing", which eliminates employees in more expensive countries and adds back a smaller number elsewhere. My guess is the Stella D'Oro union reps don't read The Financial Times. Rallying Cries Upon learning of the administrative judge's ruling that Brynwood Partners had to fork over back pay and reinstate the workers a great "Huzzah" arose from the rank and file. It was as though all cautionary comments by the firm's lawyers had gone right over their heads. All those months of admonitions that if the terms of the expired contract could not be constrained to the point at which the company was earning a profit, Brynwood withheld the option of closing the company's doors. Around and around the workers marched outside the bakery door on the morning after the ruling. Self-congratulatory shouts filled the air. For the union reps the ruling of the administrative judge seemed to turn back time. Here's an excerpt from a union published summary of that moment: "It was a great sight this morning under the El in the Bronx: workers' power had won a VICTORY! Cheers, chants of "We Are Stella!" and "¡Obreros, unidos, jamás serán vencidos!" and "Same Enemy, Same Fight, Workers of the World Unite!" A strike leader and two supporters spoke. The air was thick with the blaring horns of drivers giving us a cheer." It was as though the economic realities carried no resonance with these workers of the world. They failed to comprehend the most basic linkage between management's needs and their lives: No Return on Invested Capital, no innovation. No innovation, no products. No products, no sales. No sales, no taxes. No taxes, no emergency room, no public schools, no police, fire, diabetes testing, or maternal education for teenage girls. No fireworks on the Fourth of July. No ROIC, no jobs. No jobs, no better life. Go rally around that.