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Texas. 1959. Oilfield boom town. A gentlemanly good ole boy cop is also a serial killer. He is a sadist, and women love him (sort of like an investment banker). Perhaps the most telling line in the film comes from Lou Ford the killer himself, when he asks his fellow cop who has witnessed scars left from months of abuse on the buttocks of murdered young women. Lou asks the cop why the women would keep seeing him if he was physically harming them? The silence is the answer. The women seem to enjoy the abuse, and in the case of the town whore, ask for it. There is something naively suicidal in their behavior, placing their love and their lives in the hands of their killer. Even the fiance who writes him a letter telling him she hopes he heals himself, ends up a victim of her own attraction to the killer inside the man she loves.
What fascinated me was how this brilliant film (based on the book by Jim Thompson) with one of the best soundtracks I have heard in a long time, resonates with what has been going on in America these past years… and frighteningly where we are headed if we don’t act. We make great music, but it is accompanying a ship going down. Film spoiler alert here, but the messed-up, abused as a child, pedophile, murdering cop not only kills everyone he loves and everything of value, but blows himself, all the good men of the town (who are still alive) and his family home up in the process at the end of the film. The seemingly peaceful small town where everyone eats pie and the local oil baron tries to control things, has not only tapped into the black gold which will make West Texas rich, but also has created a kind of subconscious killer which will pollute and destroy everything around it. And the killer in their midst, disguised as a man who is trusted by many, especially women, gets away with it for decades. Until the outsider Northerner union organizer man of the people, figures it out. Until the outsider cop who has not been corrupted calls his bluff. Yet the killer is protected by the union organizer, protected by the oil baron, and fools the good cops until the last scene in the film. Why? Because he can. Because he is presentable and wears a badge of authority. Because shining light on the abuse means things have to change and change can be hard and the various players and their game plans are deeply entrenched, be it labor, oil profits, or small town hypocrisy. And, most of all, because the killer inside this small-town boy is also the killer inside of all of us.
We need to take out the killer in us and transform that negative energy bringing down the US into something creative and positive that binds us together and builds us back into a strong healthy country.
America is like a child who has been abused and yet loves its abuser. People are voting against their own interests, to the point that their loved ones are dying and they are killing themselves and their children’s futures are being destroyed. Those who are speaking up and trying to do something are also ending up as victims. Why? Because they love America. And like a child who, before the abuse begins, has every chance of turning out to be a healthy, happy responsible citizen, America too was once that innocent child which had all the opportunities and possibilities to be the best it could be. But like an abused child, they call out for the parent who abused them, don’t want to testify against them, they “love” them.
We ended up (by voting or vote stealing) with leaders who abused our good will and tore apart our country. Sometimes I wonder if those who voted for Bush&co were abused by their parents and are somehow brainwashed into admiring messed up idiots. Scarier still, they see themselves and even identify with the ignorant evil.
Some people go to therapy and try to heal and forgive. Some people become angry and act out. Very few people channel that anger into positive actions. Too few.
We are angry as a country. We are fearful. Anger and fear turned inward becomes depression and suicidal urges come to the surface. If you numb it all with Prozac and overeating and nonstop diversions and television you end up with, well, what we have… an obese, uneducated, inert, abused shell of what we used to be. Most suicides would actually prefer to be killing someone else, usually those very people who harmed them in the first place. But in our case, we are still claiming to love America. But we have to rebuild and uncover the real America which still exists under the years and years of abuse and neglect. America is not this narcissistic unhealthy country. America is better than that and will be again.
We are at a crucial moment today as we can either choose to be healed and constructively express our anger, thus healing and moving forward and evolving, or we can turn into our abusers, and carry on the endless cycle of abusing others. Like the bankers who have stolen from us, and the top secret clearance folks at the Pentagon who were downloading child porn or the Vatican which protects abusers and allows them to continue to hurt children, America has not only protected but placed abusers in positions of power, in some cases, people want to become just like them! The “Greed is good” line from “Wall Street” was meant to be critical not supportive of behavior on Wall Street! Yet young men congratulated Oliver Stone, wanting to be like Gordon Gekko! They were happy to become narcissistic abusers.
Unlike the killer in the Michael Winterbottom film, we do not have to blow up the whole house where the abuse occurred. Call it exorcism, call it purging, call it redemption, healing, asking for forgiveness and bestowing forgiveness, call it whatever you want, but America needs some positive catharsis (and a good therapist that doesn’t cost a fortune).
I believe Obama was the beginning of that positive catharsis. And I believe America will indeed become a healthy place for all of us again. But we have to take the power back and make sure that those who have abused us and our country never have power again. The good thing about America is, we are still healthy enough to have recognized the Hope Obama represented and we still desire that healthiness on a very deep level. America does not have to be West Texas in 1959. Bush is gone. We can go after the abusers and shut them down. And I believe we will. There are more of Us than Them.

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I am not normally a theater critic. I should just say that right up front. But on this Labor Day, I thought it would be appropriate to write about a play I saw this summer. I was invited (by fellow Huffington Post blogger Michael Gene Sullivan) to a performance of the San Francisco Mime Troupe’s recent production, POSIBILIDAD, or Death of the Worker a few weeks ago, and caught their performance in a local park. The play, written by Sullivan, is a brilliant work, combining tragedy and humor to make a very pointed argument for thinking outside the box on the state of Labor and jobs today.
The play is unabashedly Leftist, in the classic meaning of the term. It tells two parallel stories of factories facing shutdowns, and the possibilities open to them; one from modern-day San Francisco and one from a few years ago in Argentina, and it manages to link these two stories in a very personal way through the lead female character.
And yes, it has dialogue. It’s not a completely-silent “mime show,” as one might think from the thespian group’s moniker. It also has music, which is actually one of the high points of the show, as the musicians range over an enormous breadth of musical styles, varying from New Age to a telenovela soundtrack (and everything in between), seamlessly and perfectly on cue.
All around, the technical aspects of the show were equally impressive. The show I saw was performed outdoors, with a portable stage which was smallish but unbelievably versatile and ingenious in its use of the limited amount of space. The actors all played multiple roles, and the costumes were so good it seemed the cast was much larger than six people. The different characters were portrayed so well, in other words, by both the actors and their wardrobe changes, that it was hard to even recognize that the same actors were playing these very different roles.
As I said, the plot is a tale of Labor, where the workers are pitted against a boss who has sold out his family’s factory to a corporate master. In an only-in-San-Francisco twist, the boss is a dreadlocked peace-love-and-flowers type who (when it gets right down to it) truly only cares about his own creature comforts — and not so much about the workers turning out his hemp fiber clothing. This is not your 1930s mine owner, in other words, but a much more updated concept of the “big boss.” This provides many opportunities for comic relief, as well.
The show is a rollercoaster ride emotionally, as it does indeed have many very funny moments in it, but also tells the personal tragedy of one woman’s previous experience in the struggle of Argentine workers to take over a factory and keep it running when the capitalist owners try to shut it down (based on a true story). The action alternates back and forth between the South American story to the San Francisco factory, where the workers have — almost by accident — occupied the factory in order to keep it from being shut down. The pace of the plot does slow down a bit in the middle, as both these stories play out, but it picks up again to build to a rousing finish.
Towards the end, the play manages to even poke fun at the way Leftist movements sometimes can become victims of their own success, when it comes time for the workers to decide how to actually run the place. But the conclusion is definitely worth waiting for, although I won’t spoil things by saying any more.
I spoke with Sullivan after the show, and asked him what inspired him to write the play. He mentioned the story of the Bruckman Textile Mill in Buenos Aires (which is told within the play), and also of the Illinois workers who recently occupied the Republic Windows and Doors factory — just to get their severance pay. He expressed frustration with how this protest played out, since the workers were only trying to get the pay they were entitled to after their factory was shuttered — while the company moved the equipment to a newly-purchased non-unionized factory. “If the bosses can’t run the place when they’re making money, then they don’t deserve to run the place,” said Sullivan.
When asked what he was hoping to accomplish by writing the play, Sullivan said, “I think for me, what I want from the audience is to question themselves. So much of the American working class has a limited view of change. We struggle for a seat at the table, but we don’t realize we built the table, and no one else would be there without us. We shouldn’t be fighting for a seat at the table, we should be fighting for the table.” When I asked about the Argentinean story within the play, Sullivan responded, “Each year we try to create a show that is going to be challenging to the audience. Right now, we are trying to rebuild the economy. Central and South America has already gone through this,” and he pointed out that we should be learning from their example in how to take on the “corporate bastards.”
As I said at the beginning of this piece, I’m not a theatrical reviewer. If I was, I probably would have written this at the beginning of the S.F. Mime Troupe’s season, instead of at the end (there are only a few more scheduled performances of the show, in the next few weeks). But there’s a reason for highlighting the show today, on Labor Day. And that is that the show has been invited to take part in a large Union centenary effort next spring, as part of a national memorial movement for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (which claimed 146 lives almost one hundred years ago, in a New York City sweatshop).
So, if you are a member of a Union (especially if you’re an officer or hold other clout with your Union), urge them to extend an invitation to the San Francisco Mime Troupe to perform POSIBILIDAD, or Death of the Worker. While the Troupe will be participating next spring, the details of where exactly they’ll be performing will depend on the invitations which are extended to them. And I heartily recommend the play, even though it’s not specifically about Union organizing in nature. Because I’m confident that any Union lucky enough to see this performance will enjoy the message nonetheless. Sullivan summed this message up as: “The job is not to make profit, but to make jobs.” Which, as it turns out, is an excellent way to wish everyone a “Happy Labor Day” this year as well.

[Further Information: Visit the San Francisco Mime Troupe website for more information on both the group and the play, including photos, complete schedule, and contact and booking information.]
[Full Disclosure: I was personally invited to attend this performance of POSIBILIDAD, or Death of the Worker by the playwright. It was a free show, where they asked the audience for donations at the end. To avoid any possible conflict of interest, I donated five bucks, which seemed to be about the average donation, from what I could see.]

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Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan is the latest to weigh in on the great Ground Zero mosque debate. Predictably, Farrakhan gave fulsome backing to building the mosque at the controversial spot. But Farrakhan took it a step further and just as predictably gave it a racial spin. He said that there are a lot of blacks who are Muslims, and some of them were killed in the 9/11 terror attack. Farrakhan, race, and controversy; the three go hand in hand. That’s always enough to make folk squirm.
In the days building up to the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the question is how just much will Farrakhan’s public tout of the mosque, make some of the mosque’s fervent backers squirm? Probably not a lot since the battle lines on the mosque are pretty firmly drawn. You’re either for it on religious freedom, tolerance, or constitutional grounds. Or you’re against it on desecration of hallowed soil, insensitivity, or it’s a deliberate provocation grounds.
Polls show that the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose it for one or all of the reasons cited. The mosque is a religious and political minefield. It was inevitable that Farrakhan would plunge into it. He has that right.
But Farrakhan is instant controversy, and even more instant racial polarization. That was never more evident than during the 2008 presidential campaign. Days after then Democratic presidential contender Obama announced his candidacy, Farrakhan praised and virtually endorsed him in a speech at the Nation of Islam’s annual Savior’s Day confab in Chicago. A horrified Team Obama promptly issued this statement: Senator Obama has been clear in his objections to Minister Farrakhan’s past pronouncements and has not solicited the minister’s support.” That didn’t satisfy his primary foe Hillary Clinton. She publicly demanded that he forcefully reject Farrakhan’s endorsement. Obama did but even then he carefully avoided mentioning Farrakhan by name. It was just too hot. Obama recognized one compelling fact about Farrakhan. He may be a controversial and much vilified figure but he is not a fringe figure within black communities. He is still cheered and admired by thousands of blacks. They are also voters too and most embraced Obama with almost messianic zeal.
Mosque supporters can now count Farrakhan among their ranks. In this mid-term political season that shapes up to be the most hard fought one in decades, the mosque issue is an issue that’s one of the most inflammatory. It pricks, inflames, and punches just about every person’s hot button. It’s almost certain that one or more shrill rightwing websites, bloggers, or radio talk show hacks that froth at building the mosque at the WTC site will throw up Farrakhan’s name as see-I-told-you proof that the mosque is a closet Jihadist conspiracy against the US. That’s enough to make some squirm.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
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Growing up, I remember walking to school in Athens past a statue of President Truman. The statue was a daily reminder of the magnificent nation responsible for, among other things, the Marshall Plan.
Everyone in Greece knew someone who’d left to find a better life in America. That was the phrase everyone associated with America: “a better life.”
I was sixteen when I first came to this country, as part of a program called the Experiment in International Living. I spent the summer in York, Pennsylvania, staying with four different families. I went back to Athens and then soon went to Cambridge and London. But part of me remained in America.
When I came to live here in 1980, I knew that this time would be for good — and that there was no other place I’d rather live. Thirty years later, I still feel that way.
But something went wrong — terribly wrong — and put our country on a very dangerous path that threatens to transform us into Third World America.
It’s a jarring phrase, I know, one that is deeply contrary to our national conviction that America is the greatest nation on earth — as well as the richest, the most powerful, the most generous and the most noble. It also doesn’t match our day-to-day experience of the country we live in — where it seems there is, if not a chicken in every pot, then a flat-screen TV on every wall.
So why did I call my new book, which is being released today, Third World America?
For me, it’s a warning, a way of saying that if we don’t change course — and quickly — that could very well be our future.
Wherever I looked, and in so many of the stories we covered on the Huffington Post, I kept seeing all the ways the middle class was getting the short end of the stick.
It was the way that Washington rushed to the rescue of Wall Street but forgot about Main Street. It was the daily drumbeat of depressing statistics: One in five Americans unemployed or underemployed. One in nine families unable to make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans on food stamps.
Upward mobility has always been at the center of the American Dream — a promise that if you work hard and play by the rules, you’ll do well, and your children will have the chance to do even better.
Well, that promise has been broken, and America’s middle class is under assault. The American Dream is becoming a nightmare.
What became clear while writing the book is that the decline of the middle class was no accident. Middle-class America didn’t suddenly lose its mojo. It was the result of tricks and traps. Tricks in the ways we financed our homes. Traps in the ways credit-card companies used hidden fees and fine print and skyrocketing interest rates to get their hands on our money, driving more and more people into debt.
Here’s the bottom line: The fix is in. The game is rigged. The dice are loaded. And it starts in Washington, where special interests run the show — and where lobbyists outnumber elected officials 26 to 1. Unfortunately, there are no lobbyists for the American Dream.
Our financial system is similarly rigged — it’s become a bad carnival game where the rich always get the grand prize and the average American walks away empty-handed. We’ve gone from an economy where we make things to an economy where we make things up: default credit swaps, derivatives, CDOs and the like have turned Wall Street into a casino. Actually, a casino is fairer: At least you know the odds going in.
Given this, you might be surprised to hear that writing Third World America ultimately left me feeling hopeful. But it did. It’s because, as I was traveling around the country or discovering online sites where people affected by the economic crisis are gathering and connecting (places like HowIGotLaidOff.com, RecessionWire, Project Bounce Back and We’ve Got Time to Help), I was again and again struck by the resilience, creativity and acts of compassion taking place all across America.
They convinced me that we can turn things around, as long as we demand more from our political and business leaders — and more, much more, from ourselves.
I’m in no way letting Washington off the hook. Indeed, the last section of the book, which is filled with the specific steps we — as individuals, as families, and as a country — need to take to save ourselves from a Third-World future, starts with what must be done to fix a democratic process that is badly broken and to put millions of Americans back to work.
At the same time, this moment in history demands that we stop waiting on others — especially others living in Washington — to solve the problems and right the wrongs of our times.
There is no doubt: Times are hard. The “new normal” is a punch in the gut, a slap across the face and a pitcher of icy water dumped on our heads. It’s a chill running up our national spine.
The question is, what are we going to do about it? Are we going to shut off the lights, curl up in a ball, and slap a victim sticker on our foreheads? Or are we going to shake off the blows, take a deep breath, hitch up our pants and head back into the fray? Are we going to wallow in despair or rage against the fading of the American Dream?
The preamble of the Constitution starts with “We the People.” And we have never needed the active participation of each one of us more urgently than now. We can’t save the middle class and keep America a First-World nation without each of us making a personal commitment and taking action — without each of us doing our part. We can’t just sit on the sidelines and complain. It’s up to us: We the People.
Americans have always been a positive, forward-looking people. A can-do attitude is part of our cultural DNA. And that mindset is a prerequisite for turning things around. Without it, the seeds of change and innovation will wither in a soil of negativism and defeatism. With it, we can shake off our cynicism and avoid the slow slide to Third World status. As a country, we have an unparalleled track record for marshalling our forces and rising to meet great challenges — see our response in the wake of Pearl Harbor or the Soviets’ launch of Sputnik. It is one of our greatest strengths.
In looking at the leader in the mirror, we are just following that very American urge to take matters into our own hands and get things done. Tip O’Neill said, “All politics is local.” And, in the end, all problem solving is personal. So we have to ask ourselves: What are we going to do to help ourselves — and one another?
That’s why writing Third World America was actually just the beginning of a larger journey, one that continues with our Third World America section, where you can find out more about what you can do to help yourself, help your family, and help make a difference in the lives of others.
It’s a place for you to share your stories of struggle and success; a place to connect with others looking to take action; a place to learn about ways you can use your skills, time and money to have a positive impact on those in need.
I’m also going to be traveling around the country for the next few months, speaking about the practical steps we can all take to help each other through the hard times and strengthen our communities. And we are crowdsourcing part of the tour. Click here to find out where I’m going to be speaking and how you can get your group, school, organization or town on the schedule. We’ve already had dozens of great submissions (see a slideshow of some of them here), so be sure to add yours to the mix.
Winston Churchill reportedly said, “America can always be counted on to do the right thing, after it has exhausted all other possibilities.” Well, we have exhausted a hell of a lot of possibilities, and for millions of the unemployed, the underemployed, the ones whose homes have been foreclosed, and the ones who’ve declared bankruptcy or can’t pay their credit card bills, the process has already been deeply painful.
It’s time now to do the right things.
Watch this video to learn more about the positive steps we can take to rebuild the middle class and restore the American Dream:
P.S. Fixing America’s broken educational system is vital to rescuing America’s middle class. And that fix has to start with reforming how we treat our nation’s teachers. So be sure and check out this post from Academy-Award winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim. His new film, Waiting for Superman, opening later this month, is a devastating look at America’s educational system and what needs to be done to turn it around.

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Despite stupidly opening on a Wednesday (and siphoning off $3 million before the traditional opening weekend), The American grossed a completely predictable $13 million over three days and $16.4 million over the four-day holiday. This is no less than the ninth George Clooney vehicle to open to around $11-13 million since The Peacemaker in 1997. And, as I’ve written before, every time this happens, the pundits jump up and down about how Clooney may not be a real movie star. As I’ve also said before, true stardom is when it’s just your face on the poster, especially when you’re selling a somewhat uncommercial bit of cinema. That was certainly the case with The American, which is a slow and ponderous European-style thriller, with only just enough action to fill up the third act of a trailer (filmgoers felt duped, as the film received a D- from Cinemascore). The fact that it will end up with $19.5 million between Wednesday and Monday is a testament to Clooney’s sheer constancy as an opener for relatively cheap (the film cost Focus Features just $20 million) and arty projects.
The next major opener was Robert Rodriguez’s Machete. It was another case of hardcore interest in the geek world not translating into much mainstream interest. Once again, advertising a film as “so bad that it’s good” is a surefire way to turn off general moviegoers, and in the era of $10+ movie tickets, it’s a tough thing for any number of younger filmgoers to stomach as well. Still, with an opening three-day gross of $11.3 million and a $14 million four-day gross, the picture more than justified its cost (it had a $20 million budget, and Fox paid around $5 million to distribute it). At the end of the day, the cameo-filled comedic riff on 70s exploitation was always destined to be more talked about for its nerd appeal and its immigration politics then seen in a theater. For what it’s worth, the Danny Trejo vehicle played to a 60% Hispanic audience. The geek-centric film is destined for cult status on DVD/Blu Ray and, if FX can cut the exceedingly violent and bloody film down to an acceptable TV version, a decades-long run on cable. Point being, don’t be surprised to see Machete Kills in theaters (or just on DVD) in a few years.
The last major opener was the Drew Barrymore/Justin Long romantic comedy, Going the Distance. Alas, the picture, along with the weak opening of her fantastic directorial debut Whip It last October, proves that Drew Barrymore no longer has the cache of her Never Been Kissed/Charlie’s Angels peak ten years ago, and that Justin Long isn’t yet an opener. The film got generally negative reviews, but those who liked it really liked it, so its $6.8 million three-day gross and $8.5 million four-day numbers will be heartbreaking for a select few. The Warner Bros film cost $32 million to make, so it will likely be okay once international and DVD money rolls in. Last weekend’s openers were a study in audience satisfaction. The B-movie heist picture, Takers, basically delivered what its trailer promised, so it only dropped 44% for an $11.4 million three-day second weekend and a $13.5 million four-day gross. The $30 million caper has now grossed $39 million. I have to wonder how many kids bought tickets to the PG-13 Takers and snuck into the R-rated Machete, which makes their battle for second place a little more amusing. On the other hand, The Last Exorcism promised old-school religious supernatural thrills, but instead delivered a fauxumentary that dealt with religious fundamentalism in the Bible Belt. Cue 62% second-weekend drop, as the Lionsgate release grossed $7.6 million three-day gross and an $8.7 million four-day gross (expect a similar plunge with The American next weekend). Still, the dirt-cheap acquisition has already grossed $32 million.
In other holdover news, The Expendables now sits with $94 million and is Lionsgate’s second-biggest domestic grosser ever, behind the $119 million gross of Fahrenheit 9/11 back in 2004. The hold for this film has been kinda shocking, as it dipped just 29% this weekend despite direct demo-competition with two of the three openers. It has also amassed around $180 million worldwide, although Lionsgate only has the distribution rights for the UK. Despicable Me crossed the $240 million mark, making the film the summer’s fifth-biggest grosser and overtaking Shrek Forever After ($238 million). Inception is right under $700 million worldwide, and that “flop that spells the end of 3D,” Step Up 3D, has amassed $115 million worldwide on a $40 million budget. Salt has crossed $115 million, The Other Guys crossed $100 million, and Eat Pray Love sits at $70 million.
That’s all for now. Join us next weekend for just a single new wide-release, Resident Evil: Afterlife 3D! In other words, it’s a good weekend to catch up on those arthouse films from earlier in the year that are now on DVD (I recommend Chloe and The Killer Inside Me). Until then, keep reading.
Scott Mendelson

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“I’m Gonna Make A Change, For Once In My Life,” these are the opening lyrics to one of Michael Jackson’s most critically acclaimed songs, “Man in the Mirror” released in 1988, but they are also the words that filled Royce Hall at UCLA last week during the closing performance at “A Global Call to Conscious Evolution: Our Moment of Choice.” The audience, of over 1,500 people, stood up and clapped as Siedah Garrett, co-writer of Man In the Mirror, sang her heart out.
This keynote song was the perfect conclusion to the rare gathering of some of the greatest global thought leaders of our time.
The evening opened with an evocation by Agape Spiritual Center’s Reverend Michael Beckwith, accompanied by his wife Rickie Byars Beckwith and the Agape Choir. Together, with music, prayer and song, they set the stage for an evening that was sure to be inspirational.
Deepak Chopra then stepped forward to welcome the audience and initiate the “Call to Conscious Evolution.” I looked down at the program and it said that he was going to share about the importance of being an evolutionary leader. Immediately I thought to myself, “What does that even mean?” From what I gathered, evolutionary leadership is all about working with others to facilitate the next big evolutionary leap of consciousness. Intellectually this made some sense, but it was Jean Houston who hit the definition out of the park with an audience participation exercise. In less than 5 minutes, she told the story of evolution and instructed the audience to literally “jump” at every point in her story that signified a change in our evolution. She exclaimed how we “jumped” from sea to land creatures, we “jumped” from hunters to gathers, and now we are at a “JUMP” point in human history and the evolution of the future.
After Houston’s fun and effective exercise, Gregg Braden, Barbara Marx Hubbard and Marianne Williamson, shared why this action is needed and why now. Their stories and speeches lead to asking the audience, “What is the single most important contribution you feel you are currently making or can make toward the evolution of consciousness?”
At this point in the program, the audience broke up into pairs and shared what they felt to be their contribution to the world and what tools they needed to step into their greatness. My answer was definitely, patience. Patience with myself, my work and with others. Whether it’s the tools included learning technology or mastering a language, you could see how excited people were getting at the tangibility of the action they were going to take into their lives.
Groups of teachers and speakers then came on stage to share inspirational quotes about consciousness and the future. Each leader was introduced by one of the most recognized female voices of America, Randy Thomas (Oscars, Tony Awards, CBS “Entertainment Tonight”). Wendy Craig Purcell, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Howard Martin, Debbie Ford, Jean Houston, Rod McGrew, Nina Meyerhof, Gregg Braden, Bruce Lipton, Gerard Senehi, Scott Carlin, Arielle Ford, Judy Martin, Carter Phipps, Emily Squires, Katherine Woodward Thomas, Brian Hilliard, Steve McIntosh, Jack Canfield, Kathy Gardarian, Tom Gegax, Van Jones, Lynne Twist, Fred Matser, Lynne McTaggart, Michael Backwith, Joan Borysenko, Dale Colton, Mak Gerzon, Deborah Moldow and Yuka Saionji all stood side by side on the stage sharing the same message of urgency and collective consciousness.
What made this event different from others is not only the gathering of these great names and teachers, but that, in fact, they were all coming with the same message and that you could physically see it. It wasn’t as if you were reading various opinion pieces, or books and thinking to yourself, “Yeah, that sounds familiar.” It was clear, leaders and teachers from all over the world were together on stage with the same message, we need a paradigm shift in our behavior and most of all in our consciousness.
Lynne Twist shared how we have been at this here before. She compared the similarities between where we are in history and the Renaissance and how we, if we choose, could have a similar impact on human history. She explained how many historians and thought leaders are looking to the Renaissance as a pivotal and reference point in our conscious evolution. The Renaissance was a time of art, creativity, invention and exploration. During this time, people abandoned the restraints of the Middle Ages and developed modern interests, enthusiasm and ideals. There was an awakening of mind and a thirst for knowledge which resulted in numerous studies of natural events, the exploration of new styles of art and literature and ultimately, in a broadening outlook to a degree never before known. And, they did in conjunction with the invention of the printing press, now we have social networks! Twist shared that we are in a similar time we have the choice to change and truly make a difference.
The Call to Conscious Evolution says that “the changes required of us are really broad and far-reaching but if we act quickly we can birth a new story…a really new age.” Fellow Evolutionary Leader, Deborah Moldow states that “The times we live in are calling us all to a new level of love and service. What a joy to answer this call together!”
So, “how” do we answer the call and how do we change the ways of the Man in the Mirror? It’s up to you. I found the answer in Siedah Garrett’s newly written and world debuting song, “The Answer is Love.”
If you are interested in the work of The Evolutionary Leaders, they announced that they are making global impact with hundred of thousands of people from around the world on 11-1-11, check out www.ecolutionaryleaders.net/onevoice for more information.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Today President Obama announced a massive $50B plan for improving and building new infrastructure across the United States. This plan includes laying enough road to circle the world six times and coast-to-coast rail.
Part of the Presidents rallying cry was to note that this plan “will change the way Washington spends your tax dollars”. Given it is our tax dollars I want to make a very simple request – let’s have an online system of transparency that the government can clearly articulate success to the broader population. Additionally let’s hope a small amount of this funding will be set aside for jump starting innovative and green construction technologies and if it is let’s hope that tax payers will have access to adopt the solutions found. But let’s get back to that suggestion on transparency.
Online Transparency
We live in a digital world. So no monster sized white papers, micro-type spreadsheets or fancy scientific charts but photos documenting each project in development and at milestones. Every site foreman and engineer has a camera phone or digital camera. Have them take regular photos and upload them to an accessible project management system. This would allow anyone to look a project in their neighborhood and comment on progress made. It is amazing the positive response that happens when you actually find out what is being done.
This has been happening in the humanitarian and development field for the past few years. Through the Open Architecture Network more than 3000 projects have been uploaded to the system and range from low-income housing, health and education facilities, public gathering points and transit nodes. Every project is held under a Creative Commons license allowing other to adapt and share innovative ideas. In less than a month the system will launch a geo-based mobile app that will allow anyone to find local solutions or discover ones from afar. All managed by a handful of people.
Given it is public funding that is jumpstarting the ‘new, new deal’, let’s make it transparent and open for mass-adaptation, enabling State and City agencies to share in lessons learned and best case practices. I’m all for putting our tax money to creating new jobs but let’s also create smart systems to facilitate these projects.
—
A few projects from the system
Post-Katrina Housing in Biloxi, MS
by Marlon Blackwell Architects, Fayetteville, AK with Architecture for Humanity
Low-impact Public Access Point in San Clemente, CA
By Co-Lab Design Office
Navajo Elder Housing, Navajo Nation, AZ
by Nathaniel Corum, Indigenous Community Enterprises
Community Center and Youth Sports Facility in Khayelitsha, South Africa
By ARG Design, Cape Town, South Africa with Architecture for Humanity
Freret Street Community Transit Shelter, New Orleans, LA
by Design Corps, Raleigh, NC

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Recounting the findings of a new study by the Keystone Research Center, the Denver Business Journal reports that “the unemployment rate would approach 16 percent nationally — more than 6 percentage points higher than the current jobless rate — if not for the federal stimulus program.” This comports with data released earlier by the Congressional Budget Office and with the opinions of both liberal and ultra-conservative economists.
Such consensus should end the debate about whether or not Congress should pass another stimulus bill. It should – the only debate should be over the shape of that stimulus bill, and even that shouldn’t be up for debate, though, unfortunately, it most certainly is.
From both liberal and conservative economists – as well as from history – we know that direct government spending on things like infrastructure and education investment is a good way to prime the economy in the short term and the long term. So is spending on stuff like unemployment benefits and food stamps, which puts money into the hands of those who will spend it immediately on necessities. And, of course, we know from polls that spending on such priorities is far more politically/electorally popular than devoting more money to corporate tax cuts or to deficit reduction.
We also know from the Bush era – and from 20th century history in general – that tax cuts are far less effective at spurring economic development than direct spending. That’s why this Washington Post story is so troubling:
Sure, it’s great that the president today is talking about spending $50 billion on infrastructure. As evidenced by this very diary, I obviously support such new spending. But when the paltry sum of $50 billion is put up against double that amount in corporate tax cuts, it seems like the administration’s priorities are all screwed up. If the job-creating weakness of the first stimulus bill was it’s willingness to devote roughly 40 percent of its funds to less-effective tax cuts and just 60 percent to employment-boosting spending, then a similar weakness will even more amplified in new stimulus proposals that, by the administration’s initial figures, may end up devoting double to tax cuts what it devotes to infrastructure spending.
After all, there are two fundamental problems with the tax cuts being proposed: 1) In general, tax cuts have not proven to be a very good short- or long-term job creator or economic engine and 2) In specific, as Citizens for Tax Justice has long reported, the R&D tax credit has become something of a corporate boondoggle, especially in light of the far more effective direct government spending on R&D. Even the conservative Wall Street Journal has lambasted this particular tax credit as blatant corporate welfare, noting that, according to the Government Accountability Office, 70 percent of it goes not to small businesses in need, but to already-wealthy multinational firms with receipts of $1 billion or more. Think big drug companies, as just one example.
But maybe that’s the unfortunate point. Maybe this is yet another example of the administration looking first at how a policy can satisfy Big Money, and then at the (alleged) residual benefits to average American workers – rather than looking at it in the opposite way. If that’s the case, it’s tragic – because the success of the first stimulus’s spending gives the administration strong ammunition to put forward a far more progressive proposal, one that would be far more politically popular for Democrats in advance of the 2010 election.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Acceptable Trash Talk: U-G-L-Y, Your Team Ain’t Got No Alibi, They’re Ugly!
Unacceptable Trash Talk: “The Vikings need to go down there and hit that town like Katrina.”
This quick lesson in how not to be stupid, insensitive and offensive is in honor of sportscaster and Chicago Bears Hall of Famer Dan Hampton. While co-hosting the Pro Football Weekly show, Hampton thought it wise to actually use Hurricane Katrina in an analogy for how the Vikings should match-up against the Saints during the NFL season opener this Thursday night. You know, that stormed that killed all those people and destroyed all those homes and ruined all those lives? Yeah, that storm is apparently an appropriate reference when talking pigskin. Experience this foolishness for yourself…
The irony that Hampton is a former Chicago Bear isn’t lost on this Saints fan. After all, I remember the cruel signs many Bears fans held up during the NFC Championship game in Chicago just one year after Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast. Here’s on asinine example:
(Stay classy, sh*t for brains. Thankfully, that voodoo curse I put on your team is holding up quite nicely.)
It’s jarring that such a life shattering event is so often callously tossed around by idiot fans of other teams and even so-called professional sportscasters as a means of “sticking it to the Saints.” And while it would be easy for Saints fans like me to stoop to this pathetic level by, say, writing a nasty letter to Hampton alleging he’s the product of a late night crack binge, we fans have bigger fish to fry. Those of us who aren’t still living in trailers, looking for permanent work after losing our jobs after the storm, wondering how we’ll ever recoup the money those shady contractors made off with, bogged down by government red tape, mourning the loss of our loved ones, mourning the loss of our livelihoods, and lobbying for fair housing rates, tougher levees, and therapy for our children who waded in water next do dead bodies….those of us who aren’t bogged down with all that “messiness” are actually getting ready for a game of football on Thursday.
Let’s also be clear about another thing: any sportscaster that would dare weave images of September 11th into a football analogy would be fired on the spot, and rightfully so. While Hampton’s fate has not been announced, there appears to be a general perception that we “Gulf Coast hicks” are just too busy marrying our cousins and plucking a banjo to be affected by some a-hole’s tactless, senseless jibber jabber. Fox analyst and resident douchebag Chris Meyers apparently thought so when he pulled a similar gutless move earlier this year by bashing Katrina victims in comparison to victims of the Tennessee flood.
Since apparently common sense is in short supply, let me spell it out plainly. Hurricane Katrina is still an open wound. We’re still not “over it.” People’s lives are still being affected. Not lazy, dependent, unmotivated people, as some would like to suggest. Hard working homeowners who lost everything, from homes and jobs to family members, are still struggling in this dreadful economy to get their lives back.
Using Katrina to trash talk a football team or its fans is an unnecessary sucker punch. But if you’re gonna do it, I suggest you keep your cowardice comments on the internet or in the cozy confines of a studio where you can avoid the well deserved retaliatory blow to the face from the nearest Gulf Coast resident. And don’t worry, it’s not because we need you to pity us or even that we need your sympathy. The aftermath of the storm is our cross to bear. All we ask for is a little human deceny and a little something my momma called “home training.”
Oh, and here’s another wild thought: how about we keep the football trash talk, to football.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

At my house the other night, the suspense was more intense than a thriller. My wife, daughter and I were huddled over a computer in the kitchen. I had control of the mouse, but clearly I wasn’t going fast enough scrolling down the list, because my wife snatched it from my hand. Then my daughter shrieked, “Mom!, it’s right there! See!!!” There it was, the list of fourth graders and which teacher was assigned to each student — her little nine year old finger, hunting for her name. She saw it first and starting squealing, then my wife jumping up and down (I’ve always been the slow reader) But yes, yes!!!! It was there. We got the teacher we wanted. I joined in the celebration high five-ing my daughter, but more importantly my wife because we knew the single most important factor in determining her success this year would be the teacher she sees at the front of the classroom each day.
Regardless of where the school is or what it’s called: public, private, charter or magnet, Parents know (even if the rest of the world often forgets) that teachers are what matter most.
When I made my very first documentary in 1999 called The First Year, I followed five teachers through their first year teaching in some of LA’s toughest schools. I was with these young teachers all the time. I was there with them on their first day, driving to school where they declared proudly their mission to change kids lives. I was there in the middle of the year, when exhaustion was taking over, and the hard and cold reality of what it takes to be a great teacher was feeling impossible. And I was there seeing the relief of the last day of school and witnessing the bittersweet hugs from kids whom they would miss — and who’s lives they had changed forever.
It was an amazing thing to observe. And what was always apparent is that life of a teacher is really hard work. Really hard. Every day is a performance, but with a new script. There’s curricula to follow. Lessons to plan. Discipline problems. There are the fast learners, who might get ahead or might get bored and there’s the slower learning kids, who need that extra attention. Or the quiet ones, where you have to assess what’s actually going on. And after a really exhausting day, all these teachers wanted to do was collapse in their living rooms. But there are papers to grade and there’s preparation for tomorrow when the whole thing starts again.
But what keeps these teachers going every day is the impact they have on kids. Knowing the potential they have. Feeling when it happens. Seeing a kid’s face light up. For every teacher I followed, this is why they went to work everyday. They knew then, and know now it’s not about the latest debate: The curricula. Or class size. It’s not about the reform du jour. It’s simple.
It’s all about great teachers!
And as first year teachers, the results were often mixed. They knew they had a long way go — and they weren’t getting a lot of help from the outside. And walking down the hallways of each of these five schools you could see it with your eyes. When the teachers were great, the results were great. When the teachers weren’t great…well, you know what happened.
So when the conversation about how to fix our school feels too complicated and overwhelming, just think of one thing: we can’t have great schools without great teachers. Repeat after me: We can’t have great schools without great teachers.
And when you start with that simple truth, the solutions become pretty clear. Let’s recruit our best and brightest. Develop the ones we have to become better teachers. Reward the ones who are doing a great job. Recruit and train talented principals. And after trying everything, help find another job for those teachers who aren’t cutting it.
When the excitement died down in my house, the phone rang. It was the mother of my daughter’s friend from another school calling, and there were tears — they didn’t get the teacher they wanted.
Every family knows what matters most and wonders why we’ve forgotten this simple truth. Every teacher on every list for every school needs to be great. And we can’t stop until we get there.
Learn more at www.waitingforsuperman.com

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Many people are worried this Labor Day about unemployment and the economy. With the midterm elections season kicking off, and the economy remaining Americans’ number one issue, Obama’s turning his attention in that direction with a $50-billion plan to jumpstart the economy. The president’s stimulus bill notwithstanding, many believe that Obama could be doing more to create jobs. Here, a selection of the best editorials from around the country offering both insights and solutions that speak to Americans’ economic concerns this holiday:
Douglas E. Sizemore, Cincinnati.com:
Indianapolis Star editorial:
Miami Herald editorial:
The question for public officials now weighing next year’s budget demands: Can taxpayers continue to pay firefighters, police and other government workers at the same rate they did in flush times when property values were stratospheric and governments were raking in the cash? Expecting cash-strapped taxpayers in a recession to pony up at the same levels is fantasy. That’s why it’s incumbent on union leaders to downsize their demands.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial:
There was hope among respondents in retailing, transportation and high-tech manufacturing. Staffing firms reported strong demand for temporary hires, with the best hope for permanent hires coming among the ranks of those already on temporary payrolls. Still, amid the optimism was uncertainty about the longer term. The economy will get better. It always has. The best hope for that is people who persevere, who won’t give up on finding ways to make their business prosper or who, when they are out of a job, continue to search for opportunity.
San Jose Mercury News editorial:
This recession, however, is less a downturn than a sea change in the economy that will require altered expectations for workers and families. Maybe today’s celebrations and symbolic farewell to summer aren’t the time to dwell on it. But they should remind us of one thing: We’re all in it together.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Have you seen it? Secretary Clinton is in the midst of probably the most intense and arguably most important diplomatic talks in years, and what are some of the newspapers writing about? The length of her hair!
“In her latest act of defiance, Hillary Rodham Clinton gets a new, longer hairdo,” The Washington Post titles an article on Sunday, Aug. 29, just before the talks began; The Buffalo News titled an article: “Clinton’s longer hair opens debate for women of a certain age” on Sept. 3, toward the end of a week filled with talks. These articles delve into age and hair-length and psyche and what this all means for someone in her sixties to be wearing hair at, G-d forbid, shoulder length. And so, I say, who cares?
When John Edwards turned to Hillary Clinton during the South Carolina presidential debate in July of 2007 and criticized her jacket, that was painful enough — but at this stage of the game one would think, or at the very least hope, that we would be past all of this. Sure, some of these articles are complimentary (i.e. The Washington Post piece). Yet, this is entirely beside the point.
Find me parallel articles where a man in the midst of such important meetings has running commentary on his hair length; they don’t exist. Newspapers don’t write articles about the length of hair or face wrinkles or growing bald spots or suits and ties on men. This is the case unless, of course, there is something patently absurd to write about.
Is this because our societal values are so overtly placed on the importance of women’s beauty and men’s machismo? And thus, in such a universe, we occasionally see a photo-op with a male politician throwing around a football or playing basketball or golf, but rarely does the media demand certain “look” standards of male politicians. Now don’t get me wrong, I have studied media and recall the Kennedy-Nixon debates well. As many of you likely already know, the majority of those watching on television thought that Kennedy won. The majority of those listening on the radio thought that Nixon won. Why? Watch the video. Of course looks matter.
But overall, with men today is it possible that it is the opposite societal structure? If a man (back to Mr. Edwards) gets an expensive haircut that is over the top — this is where the criticism comes in, not the other way around.
So, what does this tell us about society that we don’t already know? That ultimately we are all captivated by sexism? Or is sexism so ingrained that it is no longer sexism but entirely something else? Does the media continually spin us into this sexist state, if one does exist, or are we in one naturally — in a world blinded from papers and television; a little bit of the chicken-and-egg phenomenon. But when Secretary of State Clinton is working on negotiating peace in the Middle East, let’s not paparazzi this. Let’s lay off the hair. Frankly, it’s a bit of an embarrassment to us, isn’t it?
David Helfenbein has also posted this blog posting on his site, http://www.TheBeanPredicts.com, under his blog, The Bean Blog.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Right Think and Wrong Think About Muslims
Earlier this year the Gallup polling organization provided two intriguing statistics about Americans and their view of Islam: 53 percent of Americans view Islam unfavorably compared with 42 percent who view the religion favorably. Majorities view other major religions favorably: 91 percent for Christianity, 71 percent for Judaism and 58 percent for Buddhism. The negativity comes even as 63 percent of Americans said they know little about Islam.
It’s no surprise that ignorance leads the way for prejudice. When I set out to write a fictional account of the life of Muhammad, I considered myself free from prejudice. I was raised in India playing with Muslim kids and maintain close ties with Muslim friends. Yet when I began to research the origins of Islam, I found that compared to what I had absorbed about the life of Jesus or Buddha, my knowledge of the Prophet’s life was almost a blank. But in the present climate of antagonism toward Muslims, a blank is good, since so many people started out their knowledge of Islam with two facts: Arabs control the world’s oil supply, and Muslim extremists attacked the U.S. on 9/11. This accounts for another finding by Gallup, that Americans see extremists as woven into the basic fabric of Islam, a view they don’t hold about Jewish or Christian fundamentalists. Would you say that Christians who kill anti-abortion doctors and burn down abortion clinics are basic to Christianity? Yet the protest of moderate Muslims that jihadis are an extremist minority tends to fall upon deaf ears.
There are some moderating facts as well. Only 9% of respondents told Gallup that they had a great deal of prejudice against Islam, and until the recent upsurge of rhetoric against the proposed Muslim center near Ground Zero, the tradition of religious tolerance in this country held strong, with half of respondents saying that they felt no prejudice against Muslims. Right think prevails over wrong think. And yet Muslim-Americans are still a hidden minority in this country. Did you know that they are the most diverse religion ethnically in America? Most people automatically equate Muslim with Arab. Given the image of Muslim women as being strongly oppressed, would it surprise you to learn that in this country, they are : one of the most highly educated female religious groups in the United States, second only to Jewish American women.”
By the time I finished writing my book, I had a wealth of knowledge about Muhammad compared to when I started. The most surprising fact about him is that among all the founders of great world religions, he considered himself “a man among men,” in other words, the closest to how you and I see ourselves. Even though Muhammad received the Koran as a divine transmission (in keeping with most of the world’s scriptures) and is a sacred figure in Islam, his self-conception was not like that. I found him fascinating, even as I found that the contradictions present in Islam today, such as the clash between religious tolerance and jihadist fervor, have roots going back to the very beginning.
In the end, the issue isn’t right think or wrong think. It’s about emotions. Could I write about seventh century Islam without the negative feelings surrounding al-Qaeda, 9/11, the Iraq War, oil oligarchies, and the looming Iranian bomb? Not completely. This is consistent with psychological findings, which show that emotions cannot be entirely separated from reason. So our duty isn’t to join right think — however abhorrent wrong think is — but to be self-aware and honest. Being able to hold mixed feelings at the same time is known as the capacity for ambivalence. Mature people have this ability; immature people don’t. Self-aware people speak openly about their ambivalence; people who prefer to be unconscious hide their prejudices until it is safe enough to haul them out. Which camp you belong to is your choice.
deepakchopra.com

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For those with a good memory this is the promised follow up to my piece on the manipulation of the silver market and its very scary ramifications. Before we get into the possible end of civilization as we know it details, a recap is in order. Andrew Maguire of London blew the whistle on JP Morgan Chase’s very likely profound manipulation of the silver market to the CFTC. As financial government watchdog agencies are wont to do these days, they did their best to sweep it all under the carpet. How the SEC handled Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme is a prime example of this. This matter is not a ponzi scheme but it is a the largest scam ever going into the trillions of dollars territory. But back to Maguire who was quite determined to clean up the business of commodities trading. He goes public with powerful compelling evidence of JP Morgan Chase’s manipulation of the silver market. This happens on a Kingsworld radio show. The next day someone tries to kill him by ramming a car into Maguire’s car. Maguire and his wife who was also in the car are hurt pretty bad but survive. After this in their infinite wisdom the commodities watchdog the CFTC decides to have a meeting with most of the key players in commodities trading but exclude Maguire from attending. At this meeting a secret is revealed that could easily tear apart the fabric of our barely functional financial system. The secret is that for every 100 ounces of gold and for every 100 ounces of silver traded on paper there is only one actual ounce of gold and one actual once of silver to back up these trades. Given that yearly there is trillions of gold and silver traded on paper this is the literally biggest scam in the history of scams. Now the guy who let this cat out of the bag didn’t think it was a big deal using the logic that as long as the buyer was paid the value of his purchase at the time he wants to sell it doesn’t matter if his purchase was backed up by an actual commodity. This cavalier attitude does seem to reflect the mind set of people working in our financial system that everything is smoke and mirrors except the money being exchanged.
It is quite possible and even probable that someone with enough financial resources and the will to do it could turn our financial system upside down and make an enormous profit from it. This person would have to have no loyalty to western currency and the financial well being of western countries. So let’s assume a very wealthy Asian wants to take a shot at getting into Bill Gates’s wealth status. From what I gather the game plan would be a simple one. That is buy enormous amounts of what I like to call the paper version of silver and gold and buy even more actual silver and gold. Then start a run on Comex by demanding to replace your paper with actual gold and silver. The next part is for me admittedly a bit fuzzy so my play by play of this could be off a bit but I believe the general idea fits the situation. Given that commodities’ trading is a relatively small community, if the player of this scenario has purchased enough of these metals and starts demanding their paper be replaced with the real thing, their demands should cut fairly deep into Comex reserves and then the rumor mill will kick in big time. It shouldn’t take long for the word to get out that there is more paper of gold and silver out than actual gold and silver exists to back it up. Once this gets on the street it should not take long for the Comex reserves to get wiped out. Then financial chaos is right around the corner. However as chaos swirls around them those that possess actual silver and gold will see their investment shoot up perhaps skyrocket in value. I believe a conservative estimate would be to rise anywhere from 2 to 4 times in value. However given the volatility of anything financial these days I fully expect it to zoom to 5 to 10 times in value.
That’s the good news if you are sitting on actual gold and silver but the bad news is really really really bad because the basis for all valuation including the stock market, the dollar the euro etc. etc. is gold and silver. Remove silver and gold from the valuation process and as one financial analyst recently told me the stock market probably drops to 25 percent of its value the dollar probably loses 30 percent of its value and so on. These figures are guesswork and possibly conservative but what is not a guess is that the value of stocks, the dollar, the euro and more will lose big chunks of their value enough to throw our fragile financial system into chaos. The value of silver and gold are bedrocks for building the valuation of currencies the stock market and other financial entities. Remove a bedrock and the house comes tumbling down or at least a good part of it probably most of it.
Financial Armageddon anyone, sure we have already looked that bullet in the eye and dodged it. However, many financial wizards have predicted it could still occur and none as far as I know took into account the wipeout of the silver and gold reserves. However back to the gutsy whistleblower Maguire, he was scheduled to be interviewed back when all this broke out by all the big news outlets. However, quite suddenly all of these major media sources cancelled these interviews. So unless someone you know who is into the silver market brought this to your attention, it likely went completely under your radar. Presumably, the government the wolves of Wall Street and every other financial player who has a lot to lose are working hard to keep this on the way down low for as long as possible. I can’t really blame them for this given the impending catastrophe revealing this secret will release. However the trigger for all this going public is likely the DOJ and SEC’s investigation of JP Morgan Chase’s manipulation of the silver market. Once this investigation comes to a close there has to be some consequences which the media can’t completely ignore and then the stink storm hits the fan for most of us and for those that own silver or gold their personal value jumps up quite a bit.
Between silver and gold, silver gives the much stronger appearance of giving an investor a more viable short term reward. Since the DOJ and SEC started investigating JP Morgan Chase’s very likely manipulation of silver, you no longer see silver pushed down hard after it has rallied up. In fact an interesting phenomenon has taken place recently regarding silver. Silver and gold used to be joined at the hip in that both would go up and down together as a matter of course. However, silver has continued to go up regardless of when gold goes down. Even more remarkably, silver has recently continued to go up even if the stock market goes down. This shocking behavior of silver only strengthens the case that JP Morgan was manipulating the silver market. That the silver market has such staying power is not really surprising given the big picture of high deficits, a weak dollar, a weak euro. Silver stands out as a relatively safe investment perhaps the safest investment anyone with a some extra money can make. Right now its just under $20 an ounce which is a whole lot more affordable for the average person than gold at around $1250 per ounce.
Obviously, if any of you readers have some money and you can afford to sit on for 6 to 18 maybe 24 months, it is my opinion that buying actual silver or gold especially silver is one hot investment. I suggest this time frame because I suspect within to 2 years the investigation of JP Morgan Chase’s obvious manipulation of the silver market will be concluded and made public. The government will no doubt drag this out as long as they can which is why I foresee this possibly lasting a good 2 years. It’s also possible that within that time frame, some enterprising filthy rich person is willing to blow up the silver and gold market to make to make themselves super rich.
I wouldn’t just take my word on any of this. If this subject grabs your interest I strongly recommend you listen to an interview between Andrew Maguire and Adrian Douglass of GATA. GATA is the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee and was organized in January 1999 to advocate and undertake litigation against illegal collusion to control the price and supply of gold and related financial securities. When you hear these two speak about the inevitability of the biggest fraud in the history of man being exposed you cant help but feel that its just a matter of time before what I like to call the big bang hits our financial system. One of the questions Douglass asks Maguire is why it was allowed to happen that we now only have 1 ounce of gold and 1 ounce of silver to back a 100 ounces of each that is being sold on paper. As I recall Maguire thinks it happened because at a low point it was a quicker way to juice the financial markets and eventually it all just got way out of control. I see a parallel in the steroids era of baseball and sports in general. After the baseball strike put the sport in a dark period, the lords of baseball looked the other way while some players juiced themselves up so they could hit more home runs in one season than had ever been hit before. This created a major buzz for baseball and quickly took them out of this dark period. However when the stink hit the fan baseball would be forever tarnished and would never be the same.
Apparently the fools that run our government and our financial world also looked the other way and took the short term upside gambling against the long term loss. The question begs to be asked if and when this big bang hits given all the other bullshit that the protectors of all financial have allowed to be fostered upon the general populace, will said general populace ever again trust the members of the Fed Reserve, big banks the Secretary of Treasury etc etc ad nauseam ever again. There sure isn’t much left to trust so this new catastrophe ought to really wipe out any vestige of trust the peons of Main street still have for any and all of the big financial players. I doubt if this will lead to people stuffing cash into their mattresses but it will probably lead to the creation of more state run banks like the one that now exists in Montana.
To any of you who read my first piece on the silver market please accept my apology for not keeping my promise of following up right away with a second piece. If you care for an explanation, at first I delayed because the BP oil spill seemed like more than enough of a major downer for everyone to handle and I didn’t want to pile on. Then I got distracted and lazy. Now after a two week vacation I feel renewed enough to finally keep my promise. Hope it was worth the wait.
Lastly a note of caution given that I am recommending you readers to spend your hard earned cash on an investment, for those thinking of jumping into buying silver or gold or any investment, when contemplating making any purchase especially big ones, there are two lines not to cross. Crossing these lines is a leap from risk taking to gambling and I strongly recommend you don’t gamble with your money. In my considered opinion an action becomes a gamble when you risk something you can’t afford to lose like betting your rent money. The other line not to cross is taking unnecessary risks. I am not suggesting you should live like you are in a straight jacket but with money it’s usually best to be cautious. Taking lots of unnecessary risks can become as addictive as betting on the ponies or sports. The reason for this is both give you an adrenaline rush. The more someone takes unnecessary risks the more likely they will get burned. With that in mind please be conscious, be cautious be smart and pick your battles or risks wisely.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

There’s a lot of talk these days about something called the New Normal. Some of it is justified. Consumer spending, for example, will not be going back to pre-crash levels anytime soon. The heedless mass-consumption society looks to be behind us: Don’t count on buying that new PlayStation for your kid this Christmas. Or the next one. It’s hard to argue that a profound adjustment in the way we think about spending, saving and credit is happening whether we like it or not. This we must accept.
But sometimes talk of the New Normal sounds like a cover for the Old Status Quo. Experts tell us that we should understand 9.5 percent unemployment as a “structural” feature of the economy. Or they try to convince us that Social Security has to be rolled back because “we can’t afford it.” Is this a reaction to a new reality? Or is it the kind of thinking that benefits the same old powerful interests that helped drive the country into economic ruin? Like those who want to keep wages depressed, and those who desire to play with our national savings and charge high fees for it.
The Old Status Quo folks tell us that many of us will be jobless for now and insecure when we reach retirement age. “Call us when you get honest work!” wrote Fiscal Responsibility Co-Chairman Alan Simpson to a critic who called into question his views on Social Security. The program, he observed, is a “milk cow with 310 millions tits.” This is the kind of attitude that tells us we had better just accept our economic defeat, even as we watch bailed-out financial institutions and corporate chieftains reap record-breaking profits. We should keep our heads down and realize that crumbling roads, second-rate schools, the destruction of nature and massive economic inequality are just “the way things are.” This bleak message, discernible in the rhetoric of politicians, the antilabor strategies of the Federal Reserve, and the inequities of globalization, says that the lives of American middle and working class people are in decline and that we have only ourselves to blame. In our current unbalanced economy, large banks, multinational corporations, and wealthy individuals won’t have to cope with the consequences of the New Normal. The rest of us will.
Rather than accepting this managing down of our expectations and the effort to make us meek in the face of injustice, maybe we should be thinking a bit more about what is Decidedly Abnormal. Like companies existing solely for profits no matter what burden they place on society. Or government policies that put corporate profits ahead of any other national agenda. If you look at the way things are done in other countries, the state of affairs that seems so natural in America doesn’t look quite so normal anymore. In his latest book, Come Home, America, veteran reporter William Greider challenges us to reconsider how we think about some key fundamentals:
Greider’s book is an essential guide not only to honest conversation about the Decidedly Abnormal, but an inspiring blueprint for the New Possible — a realm where long-held beliefs that no longer serve us can be discarded.
We have done this as a country before. In the 20th century, we moved from a society that tolerated and legitimized the discrimination of women and minorities to one in which civil rights are recognized for all. My grandmothers could not vote when they turned 18. At the same age, my mother was barred from attending most colleges and universities. And yet these women did not keep their heads down and accept the status quo. When my mother graduated from high school, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was closed to women, so she attended the Woman’s College in Greensboro. She went on to earn a doctorate in education and became the second female department head at North Carolina State University. Even so, I recall her story of going to the local department store to apply for a credit card. “No problem,” said the store manager. “Just have your husband come on down here to sign for you.” Unwilling to play along, she told him to keep his application. Later, after the manager’s research apparently showed that she earned more money than her husband, Wachovia Bank called to say that she could indeed have a card in her own name. As a result of a hard-won, generations-long struggle against unjust and undemocratic attitudes that were once considered perfectly normal, I did not face these barriers. I reached my 18th birthday with the opportunities of my country open to me in a way that many would have found inconceivable a mere generation before. The struggles and triumphs of my foremothers tell me that if individuals push hard enough and long enough, old beliefs do get left behind. Transformation, we know from so many stories in our nation’s history, is entirely possible.
The most insidious of our current beliefs — one that was dealt a serious blow by the financial crisis — is a cold-blooded ideology that holds that some people are naturally economic losers and some are winners. Over the course of a generation, this belief gradually became naturalized to the point that it seemed obvious and ineluctable. We learned to accept an economic system based on short-term gains and deceptions that denied our fundamental human needs and values. As Greider put it, we got used to a growth engine that “actively damages anything it does not itself value.” Here is what this growth engine values: wealth accumulation at the top. Here are the things it does not value: justice, equality, morality, beauty, the future, the planet. It tolerates stripped pensions, sick bodies and polluted oceans. It is not interested in our well-being. Nor even nature itself.
Instead of accepting this regime of false belief — as false as that which viewed women and minorities as less than human — Greider encourages us to embark on a journey of self-discovery in which we ask ourselves searching questions about who we are, how we want to live and what we will tolerate. Rather than keeping our heads down, he urges us to rediscover our self-confidence by coming out of our isolation to talk to one another about what we think and feel and sharing the stories of struggle that have come down to us from our families and our communities. Uninhibited conversation, self-reflection and remembering the past can ignite the spark that will help us to consider turning our national focus from the accumulation of more wealth to the enhancement of human lives; from unfettered growth to sustainable development; from sitting on the sidelines of our democracy to participating in it — loudly. Greider calls for nothing less that a new conception of progress focused on commonly-shared values about life. In the realm of the New Possible, there are things a child needs much more than a new Playstation. She needs parks to play in, schools to learn in and bridges that don’t fall down. She needs a sense that she can safely explore the world, develop her abilities, make choices and a lead self-directed, fulfilling life.
Greider’s investigation of the New Possible calls for restoring public obligations to corporations, confronting wage-depressing forces, and guaranteeing that our essential needs for food, shelter, and security are met. It calls for an economic system with less wasteful destruction and more responsiveness to society at large. And for decentralizing the power of the federal government so that states and communities can foster more social and economic innovation. Most importantly, it calls for strengthening our democracy by promoting citizens’ ability to actively shape our social and economic landscape.
Proponents of the Old Status Quo and defenders of the Decidedly Abnormal want us to believe that all this boils down to questions of what we can afford. Champions of the New Possible know that it’s more about what we value. How is it that we could afford to rescue banks in crisis and conduct repeated, unnecessary wars? Because we can afford it, or because these are the things powerful interests have insisted that we prioritize? Other countries do not have guaranteed health care, modern high-speed rail systems and affordable childcare because they are richer than we are. They have them because they have different, more human-centered and life-sustaining priorities embedded in their domestic agendas. Powerful interests want us to remain timid and defeated. They do not want us to be self-directed and to demand change, and they block our efforts with every bit of lobbying power and persuasion they have. They usually get to decide. That is not normal.
The Herculean task of transforming the corporate and financial sectors into partners in our human future will not happen quickly, and it will not happen without patient, sustained struggle. We will have to give them incentives for good behavior and penalize them if they continue their Abnormal ways, such as defrauding us, polluting our environment, or keeping wages down even as productivity rises. We will also have to trade our devotion to mass consumption for a commitment to investing in the hospitals, highways and schools we need for a productive economy and livable society. And most of all, we will need to rediscover that what we think and how we act as individuals matters. When the man at the department store tells us we will have to play his game, we have to firmly say “no.”
The “good times” as we knew them are not coming back. But if we can summon the energy to construct a new framework for American life, better times may await us. Greider has challenged us to start the conversation. Let’s do that. Today.
Cross-posted from New Deal 2.0.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

George Bush and Dick Cheney knowingly lied the United States into war. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair did the same to the United Kingdom.
Tony Blair is donating all the proceeds from the sale of his book, “The Journey”, to wounded British veterans. That will not repay them for his lies, or restore their limbs, but it will provide some help for their lives.
The Bush/Cheney crowd rarely visited wounded veterans. They refused to allow photos of killed veterans’ caskets. In both cases they feared that exposing the human costs of the war would cause public support to wane, in essence a lie by omission.
They also sent our soldiers into battle without adequate armor.
Americans, rightly, pride themselves on their charitable giving. It is an example of American exceptionalism. Billionaire Mort Zuckerman and I ‘discussed’ this last Christmas.
Let us see if Bush and Cheney match Blair’s generosity. Call on them to donate all the proceeds from their upcoming books–including the advance fees–to wounded veterans..
Are you holding your breath?

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

American students’ lack of knowledge about the world is unsettling.
According to surveys by National Geographic and Asia Society, young Americans are next to last in their knowledge of geography and current affairs compared to peers in eight other countries, and the overwhelming majority of college-bound seniors cannot find Afghanistan, Iraq or Israel on a world map.
Less than one half of today’s high school students study a foreign language, and while a million study French, a language spoken by some 80 million worldwide, less than 75,000 study Chinese, a language spoken by some 1.3 billion. Minority students especially have little access to global topics taught in “higher performing” schools, ranging from languages and economics to exchanges, arts and cultural activities.
The typical teacher or supervisor is not prepared to address this gap: most educators have not taken any international courses and comparatively few participate in study abroad programs.
Our concern stated simply is this: America’s leadership position depends on preparing students to be savvy citizens with the specific competencies needed to compete and cooperate in a global age. While debate over the building of the Islamic Cultural Center and limiting illegal immigration has made headlines, we have noticed that nary a word of the dialogue has focused on what we are teaching children about the connections between educational success and the value of cultural and global knowledge to a productive, shared future.
Educators rarely delve into the sensitive issues of race, religion and culture — they are so charged. However as forward-looking educators and parents, we realize that our nation’s most pressing problems — from cooperative security concerns in the Middle East — to the clean-up of the Gulf Region — to the imperative to develop environmentally safe, renewable energy sources — depend on intercultural work teams that practice the values of openness and respect.
In the 21st century, young people who understand the dynamics of global economic and intercultural relations will have a distinct advantage in securing good jobs. Those with knowledge of world history, languages, global health and international affairs will be able to make informed decisions as voters about domestic issues influenced by global circumstances.
It is time to pivot from the “wedge politics” of the summer to reflect on the educational implications: While it is a point of strength and pride that we have every part of the world represented in our communities, have we successfully “put the world” into our classrooms? And how can teaching about the world help us guide students to have a rigorous intellectual foundation for learning that promotes the distinctly American core values of tolerance and respect?
Here are three ways to add global competency to school reform so that the next generation keeps our country strong while defending fundamental freedoms.
First, let’s train at least 100,000 teachers in international subjects and foreign languages. During the Cold War era, our nation made an admirable commitment to science and math education by creating the National Science Foundation. It helped us reach the moon. The president’s and private sector’s efforts to re-energize STEM education for the current generation are of vital significance. The emphasis will fall short if the importance of international knowledge and skills is overlooked. To “educate to innovate,” a new cadre of highly qualified teachers of critical languages such as Arabic and Chinese who can promote understanding of the international dimensions of subject content must be prepared. A new public-private partnership initiative could draw from successful models created by the Peace Corps and Teach for America, both of which have prepared thousands of intellectually curious teachers committed to education and global success.
Second, every school and state should examine its learning standards and integrate global benchmarks about the international dimensions of subjects into curricula, assessments and professional development programs. Resources to map out global competencies are available from the Asia Society’s International Studies Schools and Global Partnership for Learning initiatives.
The common core standards also offer a new opportunity to reduce the number of state level assessments and increase our focus on internationally benchmarked standards that colleges and university’s value.
Finally, let’s propel US schools out of their time warp while taking advantage of young people’s natural interests in other nation’s people, culture, music and technology. Recent studies indicate that most teens are bored with conventional school offerings which leads many to lower performance or dropping out. One solution: unpack the homegrown technological tools that are the envy of the world to reengage digital and global kids. Take off the internet filters, reward excellent virtual teaching wherever it takes place, lift the bans on mobile and game-based media, and open-up educational resources to the globe’s intellectual resources.
An immediate step would be to use existing infrastructure by adding support to design and deliver excellent international courses to the growing network of state-run virtual schools, modeled on Florida’s Virtual School’s pioneering work. Many universities who are part of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement such as the MIT Open Courseware initiative have already made online language instruction of world class quality available, but K-12 schools are not yet able to participate at critical mass.
Also, with the digital games and mobile revolution, we now have largely untapped but fabulous global education and classroom collaboration resources such as epals, and iEarn to help children and teachers connect via virtual communications and exchanges, and games such as Peacemaker,and Ayiti: the Cost of Life, which teach children mutual respect and to solve global problems together.
The current economic crisis has swayed too many Americans to look inward. Political demagogues have used discontent to marginalize the groups that view our country as a magnet for freedom and democracy lovers.
Educators should not be sidetracked from a stark reality — our future as the world’s innovation leader requires difficult but needed long-term steps to prepare our children for a diverse and interconnected global age. The “new foundation” for America’s promise begins this fall in every school. By teaching about the world beyond our borders we will discover new ideas and advance the relentless quest for a “more perfect” union that makes the US truly exceptional.

Follow Esther Wojcicki on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/EstherWojcicki

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

When Elizabeth Gilbert set off on her now-famous journey to eat, pray and love, she started in Italy. But these days, the hottest destination for the traveling gourmet is the Basque Country. The region’s restaurants range from renowned establishments known for cutting-edge techniques, like that of Martin Berasategui, to traditional pinxtos bars, where locals debate politics while they dine on stacks of mini-tapas. The center of the culinary scene is San Sebastian, a picturesque Belle poque resort town that boasts a higher density of Michelin stars than Paris. Perhaps the most famous structure in the Basque Country remains Bilbao’s glamorous Guggenheim museum. But the region’s eateries, hidden in unassuming farmhouses and narrow bars on cobblestone streets, take a close second place.
Read our Cheat Sheet on the best of Basque Country
Read a Q&A with Elizabeth Gilbert on her favorite spots on Bali

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

How nice of AMC to run one of the better episodes of Mad Men on Labor Day weekend. (That’s a little joke.) Fortunately, it’s not one of the more mysterious ones. As always, there be spoilers ahead.
The episode is about people taking potential knock-out blows, and how they react. Not all of them bounce back up. And so it’s not hard to figure out, it’s organized around a famous fight, the May 25th, 1965 re-match of Muhammad Ali and Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight boxing championship.
Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston, their 1965 re-match for the world heavyweight boxing championship. Was that a “phantom punch?” Maybe not. But the aftermath sure looks strange.
The young Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, won the title by surprise in 1964 from the bruising Liston, the fearsome Mike Tyson of his day. Now it’s time for the re-match, and most of the Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce crew, which persists in calling the now Muslim Ali “Clay,” picks Tyson to regain the crown. That includes big Don Draper, who lays down a big $100 bet on Liston. (That’s about $800 today, or the same size as his now former secretary Allison’s infamous Christmas bonus.)
Notably, Pete Campbell, once again a harbinger of the future, goes with Ali.
After his lost weekend following his big Clio win, Don is functional again. He doesn’t particularly like what his crew has recommended for a new client, Samsonite, the subsequently famously tough luggage company. For one thing, he doesn’t like the idea of using rookie New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath as a celebrity endorser. (This will prove to be a bad call on Don’s part, but not yet, as the future “Broadway Joe” hasn’t played a down of pro football yet.)
Don’s Ghost of Christmas Future, Duck Philips, is in a bad way following his impromptu speech from the floor at the boozy Clios. He sends Peggy Olsen a “gift” of business cards for their ad agency that will never be; in reality, he’s been let go for his heavy drinking.
Meanwhile, Don has an urgent phone message from California. Anna Draper’s foxy Berkeley coed niece Stephanie is calling. Fearing the worst, Don avoids her and starts drinking. He chooses his true escape. Not simply alcoholism, but workaholism. (Let’s see some moralizing about that.)
With the memoir-writing Roger Sterling lamenting how they’ll be stuck for the fight with the reformed alcoholic Freddy Rumsen and his Alcoholics Anonymous client charge from Pond’s Cold Cream, Don decides to scrap his team’s disappointing Samsonite material and start over. Maybe a boxing theme. Anything but call California for the likely bad news about cancer victim Anna, the soul mate who knows all about his double identity.
Don, unhappy with her work, insists that fellow workaholic Peggy stick around for a while and work on Samsonite with him. She agrees. Hey, it’s only her 26th birthday, and she’s having a celebratory dinner with her sort of fiancee at a ritzy restaurant. None of which she mentions.
After working for awhile, and making ready to leave, Peggy is interrupted by a call from her sorta fiancee. Long story short, he’s waiting with her appalling family members, who are there for a surprise birthday party. Don says she can go, but she decides she doesn’t want to, and breaks up with her poor fellow over the phone. Nice.
Now we get to the heart of the matter.
Though not going was her choice, as was breaking up over the phone, Peggy blames Don for making her stay because he hired Jane Siegel Sterling’s little cousin after unconsciously ripping off his idea to satisfy the breakfast cereal company — “Life, the cure for the common breakfast!” — and because he is supposedly responsible for Peggy not having come up with anything good on Samsonite.
Broadway Joe Namath, seen here with Farrah Fawcett in an early ’70s ad for Noxzema shaving cream, proved to be a great pitch man in commercials. But Don Draper doesn’t like the idea in 1965.
This very shaky logic is a cover for her feeling unappreciated by Don, ostensibly for not sharing in his Clio Award. Because she came up with an idea for the ad.
Actually, the idea she came up with, about which she feels so aggrieved, turns out not to be a commercial at all, only part of an idea for one, as Don points out.
Holding up his end of an unreasonable argument, Don tells her that he needn’t give her credit or even thanks, only money. Whereupon Peggy bursts into tears and runs to the ladies room.
Realizing he’s been inhuman, Don asks her back into his office and entertains her with a tape from Roger’s memoirs. Yes, Roger is writing one of those books that is not actually being written. In addition to being quite inane, it has some amusingly bizarre nuggets.
Don wants to hang out with Peggy. He also wants to procrastinate some more before making that phone call to California.
Over dinner in a diner, Peggy has a confession. She knows what she’s supposed to want in her life, but nothing feels as important as what happens in the office. This resonates with Don, who as we saw in the series premiere is nearly always working, except when he’s drinking or chasing women. And even then, work frequently intrudes. Imagine working with Don in this era of hyper-connectivity.
Peggy tells Don that “everyone” thinks she got her job by having sex with him, and that her mother thinks Don is the father of her abandoned baby which, as we know, he is not. We learn that Don doesn’t know who the father is. He tells her he’s always found her attractive, but hasn’t wanted to cross a professional line.
It really is getting to be about time to call California, but Don suggests they stop in a bar to check out the heavyweight title fight. And gather some liquid courage. The fight lasts less than a round (many thought Liston, who supposedly died from a mysterious 1970 drug overdose in Las Vegas, stayed down on orders from the Mafia in the thoroughly chaotic conclusion of the fight), but the drinks last much longer.
Back at the office, where it really is time to call California, all the liquid avoidance has finally added up. Stumbling, Don is helped into the men’s room by Peggy, who’s obviously never been in one before as she tries to help him find a place to throw up. Which Don proceeds to do, copiously, at great length, near Monty Python territory.
As Don carries on being sick, Peggy, now outside his previously sacrosanct masculine preserve, spies her old lover Duck Philips. Horrendously drunk again, Duck has arrived at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to make a deposit.
The essential milieu of Mad Men is not all that admirable.
As he squats over some ultra-white Mod furniture, Duck announces that he is there to “leave Draper a little present.”
Sadly, Duck has again made an enormous miscalculation in the agency offices. He’s not in Don’s office, he’s in Roger Sterling’s Jane-decorated office. And he is about to defecate before the altar of a huge white painting of black dots.
I don’t have time on Labor Day to research it, but the painting could be an Op art work by Bridge Riley. Or it could be a Pop parody by Roy Lichtenstein. The dots look like the Ben-day dots that were a staple of Lichtenstein’s work, taken from the comics tradition and used in virtually all of Lichtenstein’s famed works of the period, which centered on ironic, abstracted depictions of comic book panels and consumer products advertisements. Which makes me think it’s supposed to be a Lichtenstein, perhaps a prop created for Mad Men.
His mission having been interrupted by Peggy, Duck spies Don when he at last emerges from the men’s room, shirt dirtied by his epic bout of retching. Putting two and two together and coming up, as he often does, with five, Duck deduces that Peggy has “gone back” to Draper, which makes her a “whore.”
Defending her honor, the off-balance Don throws an overhand right, which Duck, unlike Sonny Liston, slips. He wrestles Don to the floor then, announcing that he “killed 17 men on Okinawa” — Duck was a Marine hero in World War II — threatens Don with a martial arts blow to the face. Which he has the remaining good sense not to deliver.
Later, in his office, Don knows he has to, at last, call Stephanie in California. He asks Peggy for some more liquid courage, which she dutifully if disapprovingly delivers. “I know it’s going to be bad,” Don says of the impending conversation.
But in his exhausted state, the booze conks Don right out, and he falls asleep with his head in Peggy’s lap.
In the middle of the night, he awakes to see a shiningly spectral Anna Draper smiling at him, carrying a small case for her journey ahead. She smiles at Don, turns, and fades at last out of his life.
As morning breaks, Don finally calls California and learns what he’s known since the day before. Anna has passed away from cancer.
Is this still the TV programming most frequently featured in the Don Draper household?
Crying now, Don tells Peggy that Anna was “the only person in the world who really knew me.” As she rubs his back, Peggy tells him: “That’s not true.”
That’s right, Peggy. Pete Campbell knows Don.
After napping on her office sofa, Peggy awakes to a whistle blast from the obnoxious art director. (Must. Bring. Back. Sal.) The team assembles in Don’s office to see what he’s come up with on Samsonite.
It’s a take-off on the victorious Muhammad Ali standing over Sonny Liston. Don is in tune with what will become one of the most iconic sports images of the 20th century.
Peggy says she likes it. Does she really? It’s out of her experience zone. Briefly yet tellingly placing his hand over hers, Don tells her to go home, take a nap, shower, and come back with 10 tag lines for the ad.
He’s such a romantic.
Will Don and Peggy hook up? Or is the prospect of two characters between whom there has been zero sexual tension getting together every bit as much of a MacGuffin as the titular suitcase of the episode?
Mostly what we have in this episode is characters rising off the mat after taking big blows. Unlike Sonny Liston.
Don is knocked down by the news of Anna’s death. Which he keeps re-experiencing because he keeps putting off getting the word from her niece. He’s also knocked down by Duck.
But he finally gets up, both emotionally and physically. He opens up, some, to Peggy. Who only imagines that she really knows Don. But for him, that’s a potential breakthrough. By the end of the episode, he’s quite functional, as he’s been most of the season.
Peggy is knocked down by her rejection by Don, then by her break-up with her kinda fiancee. But she doesn’t care all that much, not really, about the latter, which also has the virtue of being a break with her family back in Brooklyn.
And she stands up to Don, giving as good as she gets, in the process gaining if not a lover or future mate, at least a real friend and a greater and much deserved measure of respect.
Even poor Duck, who with his evident talent and expertise really is the poster child for the dangers of alcoholism that many imagine Don to be, gets up off the canvass. He decides not to beat Don into a bloody pulp when he has the opportunity to do just that. He’s not that far gone.
The only one who doesn’t get up is Sonny Liston. His life goes decidedly downhill after his second loss to Ali. In the end, he lies dead in Vegas for nearly a week over New Year’s 1971 before his body is discovered.
While other characters have their mostly brief moments, this episode really centers on Don and Peggy.
Once again, Jon Hamm is fantastic, playing Don Draper in multiple modes from commanding presence to absolute wreck, and is thoroughly convincing at every turn.
It’s time for him to win the Emmy as best actor.
Elisabeth Moss is even more of a revelation. Always good, here she shines as a young woman coming of age in an age which still discourages that very thing. Her natural reticence combines with her reluctance to definitively challenge this man whom she both fears and loves.
Yet she does so, becoming luminous in the process, achieving a breakthrough with her revered boss and freeing herself from constraining expectations and family ties in the process.
It’s a great set of moments for her, and for the series.
You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes … www.newwestnotes.com.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

As if my inspiration from MTV’s The City last week wasn’t highbrow enough, this post was inspired by the one and only well-oiled, tanning bed, hair gel-fueled Jersey Shore. I wonder how that gelato shop got stuck with the Jersey Shore cast. Nothing about that can be sanitary. Nothing.
On last week’s episode, a beautifully-crafted, anonymous letter was created by Snooki and JWoww for Sammi, alerting her about her boyfriend’s misbehavior. I love nothing more than watching orange reality show stars writing. That might have been my all-time Jersey Shore highlight. However, getting involved in someone else’s relationship, when it comes to cheating, is a tough call.
Cheating now has such a presence in modern love – Elin Nordegren’s interview is making headlines and Al Gore did something weird with a masseuse (shudder. I hope it was in the name of saving polar ice caps or growing a really bushy beard.)
Not to mention, cheaters can be exposed on national billboards, (as we saw earlier this summer), on Twitter (or just busted for coke…nice one Paris), or on Facebook. Don’t go around “liking” too many photos of another girl or you’re going to get dumped before you can say “I just checked into another girl’s pants on foursquare.”
But as a third party, what’s your responsibility? What if you’re friends with both people involved? Or just one? Or neither party really has a strong relationship to you but you hate to see the girl or boy look like a total fool?
I once made the mistake of getting involved in a situation like this. I was friendly with a girl, and knew for a fact her boyfriend was cheating on her. I sort of hinted at it with one of her friends, which turned into a crazy shame-spiral. Of course, told her friend immediately, who told the boyfriend, who called me. And threatened me. Repeatedly. Yes, he screwed up, but I’m not sure I should have been the whistleblower. Because the messenger almost always gets shot. I inadvertently took on a lot of responsibility I shouldn’t have had. It was ugly.
What I learned from that was that you should never really get involved in someone else’s relationship. But that’s really not easy, especially if it’s a friend of yours, let alone a very close one.
What do you think?

Follow Meredith Fineman on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/50firstjdates

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

On days like this I very much regret not having an Internet connection to share so much happiness with the commentators on the blog. Clacking keyboards, drinking toasts screen to screen, and thanking all of you who have supported me with your words of encouragement, your critiques and your suggestions.
Three years ago that shy woman — who I once was — opened this virtual space to narrate her reality, with more fears than certainties. I remember the incredulity of the readers at first, the doubts of some, the State Security or CIA card others assigned me, the slip ups on the arduous journey of opinion. From 2007 until now I feel I have lived six or seven lives at once, full of achievements but also marked by constant coercion from a repressive apparatus that never sleeps.
As I am a chronic optimist, however, I’m only going to focus on the satisfactions: the growing alternative blogosphere, the cracks that have opened in the wall, the Podcast I just inaugurated a few weeks ago, and all the text messages I’ve received to congratulate me on the International Press Institute’s World Press Freedom Hero Award, and today, the great surprise of the 2010 Prince Claus Award.

Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/yoanisanchez

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

There are certain American towns that capture the essence of simple pleasures on the water and a slower summertime pace. My favorites all have shingled cottages cheered up with bright paint colors or potted plants and gingerbread trim. Mixed in with the tourist shops selling t-shirts and flip-flops may be a surprisingly good antiques store, attractive clothing boutiques or a special art gallery. There is definitely an excellent ice cream or candy shop as well as at least one memorable hotel and some very good restaurants. And, perhaps, most importantly, there are annual visitors who flock to these places to cherish the laid-back atmosphere and a sense of a return to the summers of our childhood.
The most recent of these iconic American coastal towns that I have visited is St. Michael’s, Maryland, where I stayed at the Inn at Perry Cabin. (It appeared as the waterfront estate in Wedding Crashers.) From the rooms are views of sailboats on the bay and herons cruising over the marshes. Bicycles can be borrowed for a ride into town or sailboats arranged for a day on the water with a picnic of sandwiches or lobster rolls on fresh-baked bread from the hotel bakery. Nearby attractions include the quaint town of Easton (be sure to eat at Mason’s, an exceptional restaurant in a converted two-story with an adjacent garden and chocolate shop) and Annapolis, only a forty-minute trip, best taken by boat. A five-minute walk from the Inn is the Maritime Museum (213 N. Talbot Street; 410-745-2916), an eighteen-acre campus of sea-related buildings where you can learn about oystering (the Eastern Shore is the world’s biggest source), waterfowling, crabbing and the history of sailing.
American summer vacation may unofficially end with Labor Day but at any of these towns in late September and even into October, you can still savor sea breezes and warm days and probably the prettiest cloud-streaked skies of the year. Among them are Key West, Florida; Edgartown on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket town, Massachusetts; Laguna Beach, California and St. Michael’s, Maryland.
Read suggestions on where to stay in each of these towns

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

As our nation celebrates Labor Day, Kaiser healthcare workers in California are celebrating an action by the Obama Administration’s National Labor Relations Board that protects our rights and gives new momentum to our movement to get our union back under members’ control.
On August 27, the Board’s General Counsel took legal action (Case #21-CA-39296) to protect Kaiser RNs and professionals who have joined NUHW and are entitled to all of their previously scheduled raises, tuition reimbursements, and other benefits of our union contract.
This is great news, not just to the 2,300 NUHW members at Kaiser, but for the 43,500 of us who will vote to become members of NUHW starting Sept. 13.
Nearly 30,000 of us signed petitions telling the government that we want NUHW to be our union and we wanted this election to make it official–the biggest private sector union election in more than 70 years.
For months, SEIU has been sending staff into our workplaces and mailers to our homes, with one big threat: they claimed we would lose our raises and benefits if we joined NUHW.
We knew our raises and benefits were protected by law, and now the NLRB has put it in writing again with their latest action. We can vote for NUHW, a union that tells the truth about our rights and about our raises and benefits.
As a Kaiser healthcare worker and union steward for over 30 years, I know that many of my co-workers are asking important questions right now. “Which union is better, NUHW or SEIU? (link)” “Will my wages and benefits be safe if I join NUHW? (link)” “Why does SEIU spend so much time talking about Sal Rosselli?” “Why was our lump sum pension reduced? (link)” “Why did SEIU agree to layoffs last year while Kaiser made $2.1 billion in profits? (link)” “Why did SEIU promise management they’d support healthcare takeaways next year? (link)”
As Kaiser workers forming NUHW, we’ve built a website called Kaisercoworkers.org, to answer all of those questions and more with documentation and clearly-explained facts. I encourage any Kaiser worker who wants to make an informed decision in our election to visit Kaisercoworkers.org today.
I tell my co-workers that I have a simple explanation of why Kaiser workers should vote to join NUHW: the wages and health benefits we have earned over decades will only be safe from SEIU’s side deals when we get our union back under control.
Unlike SEIU, NUHW is a union that is accountable to healthcare workers, and only to healthcare workers. Since California healthcare workers are the people building NUHW, we know that our union won’t cut side deals with Kaiser executives that give away our benefits or job security.
That’s the kind of accountability we need. We are forming NUHW to bring back integrity and democracy in our union.
This Labor Day, Kaiser workers are celebrating an action by the National Labor Relations Board protecting our rights. When Kaiser workers across California make history by voting to join NUHW, the whole labor movement will celebrate our victory.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

My life was changed this month and I hope that by sharing my experience, it may save yours. I turned 50 in June and decided with the producers of “The Dr. Oz Show” to get a colonoscopy to demonstrate to the audience what is recommended and what they could expect. To be perfectly candid, if I didn’t have a show to do, I probably would have put it off months, perhaps years. I had no risk factors – no obesity, a nearly perfect diet, no tobacco or alcohol consumption and no family history. I knew the odds as they related to my circumstances and worried about colon cancer about as much as being struck by lightning on a sunny day. But I had signed up for the role of teacher in hosting my show and, out of deference to demonstration, found myself at home drinking a solution to clear my bowels in front of a field production crew the evening before the colonoscopy.
Thinking back now, those were some of my most arrogant moments. I didn’t see myself as a patient. I saw the whole process as a twisted form of cinema verite while delivering the ultimate lecture. In fact, part of me just wanted to get it over with and move on to “more important things” like my daughter Daphne’s upcoming wedding at that time, just two weeks away. I had a routine to keep. A 24-hour bowel cleansing and sedation was disruptive. There can be no greater oblivion in a person’s life than when self importance clouds your sense of mortality.
I lay on the table the next morning, feeling the effects of the mild anesthesia enter my arm and fog my senses as the nurse gently narrated what was happening. I was determined to try to stay awake – for the sake of the show – and could grasp some of what Dr. Jon LaPook, gastroenterologist and CBS Evening News correspondent, was saying as he began the exam. Then, suddenly and surreally, I recall him saying “Mehmet you have a polyp”. I lay there in a daze knowing something wasn’t right. The drugs beat back the fear, but as they wore off over the course of the day the reality set in that something unexpected had happened.
That afternoon I spoke on the phone with Mindy Borman, the executive producer of our show. The tone in her voice was something I was hearing for the first time. When an executive producer tells you that she is keeping the situation top secret you know it’s serious.
I met my television crew at Jon LaPook’s office on Monday morning to learn my diagnosis. He had found an adenomatous polyp, the kind that develops into colon cancer. He told me what I already knew as a physician – that if I had not had the colonoscopy and the polyp was not discovered and removed, there was a chance I would have developed metastatic colon cancer. It’s amazing how many thoughts race through your mind in those moments. For the first time I was on the other side of the desk. I was the patient that was feeling the wrench of a harsh reality.
Like most people who learn troubling news about their health, my initial reaction was this was somehow unfair – I had kept my end of the bargain. I had done everything right. I had exercised my entire life, studied what foods to eat and carefully selected every item of my diet. I got enough sleep. I meditated. I did everything in my power to maintain good health AND I devoted my life to teaching and healing others. But through reflection emerged an epiphany – the act of getting a colonoscopy was in itself an act of prevention. I went at 50. I did what I was told. And as Jon LaPook so beautifully provided the analogy – the sound I heard was a bullet whizzing by – a bullet I had dodged.
We cannot control the cards we are dealt but we can control how we play them. While these reminders are never pleasant, they are almost always gifts if we choose to treat them as such. Otherwise, they will become progressively heavier baggage that we need to cart around. In my case I could choose to wish this away, or I could attach to it a deeper meaning and have it serve a higher purpose. I could teach my audience the crucial need for preventive colonoscopies. I could show them that the most common warning signs of a pre-cancerous polyp are no symptoms and excellent health. I could share with the world the emotional roller coaster I was riding in the hopes that those watching or listening would stop procrastinating, get their own colonoscopies and save their own lives. I could share with the world my transition from arrogance to humility and reveal that at the end of the day I was just another person who was playing his best hand in the game of genetic poker with fate as the dealer.
Many of my male patients have asked that I keep them alive for the sole purpose of walking their daughters down the aisle. I never appreciated the profound sense of completion that this act brings to a father until August 28 when I took my daughter’s arm in mine and walked her down the aisle at her wedding. The child whose heartbeat I used to hold against my chest while I studied in medical school had grown into this beautiful woman, accomplished, worldly, independent. Her happiness on this day was more important than my circumstances. I handed her to her fianc, a man who loved her as much as I did and would now be her partner for the adult portion of her life. I looked at her sisters and brother as they smiled with admiration at their big sister. I need to be there for them too when their wedding days arrive. So much of our lives aren’t about us but rather the loved ones who need us. The next day I shared with my children the results of my colonoscopy and their genetic pre-disposition. They had questions. They were supportive in the way only your family can be. I was now ready to share my story.
The next evening I told the staff at the show what we would be shooting the next day. I told them how much they all meant to me. I told them that the next day’s show would be one of the most important we had ever done, and the most personal for me. Many had questions, all had words of encouragement. I felt it was an important opportunity for everyone to feel a shared sense of mission in why we come to work every day. I told the staff that if we did our jobs right the next day, viewers would elect to get screened and lives would be saved. I believed it then and I believe it now. You’ll see the show we put together today, September 7 (check local listings for time and channel).
If you are reading this and you are 50, please waste no time in getting a colonoscopy. 32,000 people will die this year because they didn’t go for a screening. I could have been one of them. If you are younger than 50 and have risk factors such as family history of polyps or cancer, obesity, or tobacco use, have a conversation with your doctor about getting screened earlier. Do it for your loved ones. Do it for yourself. Play the hand you are dealt wisely.

Follow Mehmet Oz, M.D. on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/droz.com

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com