All Global News on One Page

MONDAY
8-9
ABC – Quran Burning With the Stars
CBS – How I Lost Interest In a Show That Gags On Its Own Stroke-Inducing Pseudo-Cleverness; Some Comedies Just Keep Flying Under the Radar
NBC – Will Chuck Eventually Merge With V’Ger and Become a Living Machine?
FOX – Five CC’s of Asshole
CW – I Bet Senior Year Will Be Totally In Your Face
CNN – If I Constantly Fuck Prostitutes, Can I Get My Own News Show, Too?
Discovery – Who Cares? We’re Just Waiting For Shark Week
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
9 – 10
CBS – If I Threaten My Future Wife With a Switchblade, Can I Get My Own Sitcom, Too?; A Fat Couple? On Prime Time TV? This Is Madness, I Say! Madness!!
NBC – I Know One of the Cast Members So I Hope This Runs A Thousand Years
FOX – Bad Ratings Loom/And Could Spell Doom/(Clap Clap Clap Clap)/For Shows Now Set In Texas
CW – America’s Love Affair With Rich, Useless Socialites Continues Unabated
TLC – If I Learn Of Anyone Watching This, I Will Hunt Him or Her Down Like a Dog
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
10 – 11
ABC – Mon Ami, If You Wish To Catch a Rabbit You Put a Ferret Into the Hole, And If the Rabbit Is There, He Runs
CBS – Shoot Me, Danno
NBC – U.S. Marshal With a Vagina!
Showtime – Toke; Croak
TLC – Kids Sure Are Cute When They’re Not Yours
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
TUESDAY
8-9
ABC – The Incredibles + Home Improvement + Heroes + Spy Kids = You Get the Picture
CBS – NCIS: Frostbite Falls
NBC – So, It’s Not Okay to Call People Fat But It Is Okay to Watch Them Get Weighed Each Week on Truck Stop Scales?
FOX – I Can Hardly Wait For the All-Bjork Episode
CW – Haven’t the Crystals In These Kids’ Palms Started Flashing Yet?
CNN – Soledad O’Brien: Pennsylvania Dutch in America
PBS – Wait! There’s Something Ken Burns Forgot to Include In His Previous 600 Hours About Baseball
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
9 – 10
ABC – Online Sex-Trafficking With the Stars
CBS – NCIS: The Keebler Elf Tree
FOX – For Those Of You Who Missed the Lubitsch-Like Touch of My Name Is Earl ** ; Chris Elliott Would Have Starred In This 20 Years Ago
CW – I’m Guessing Something With Teens
CNN – At Last, Larry King Can Finally Return to His USA Today Exploding Brain Fart Column
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
10 – 11
ABC – Insert Detroit Joke of Your Choice Here
CBS – I Object, Vigorously
NBC – Here’s Hoping For an Art-Imitates-Life Sweeps Month Adam/Sarah Braverman Incest Plot
Bravo – Remember When People Had Real Jobs?
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
WEDNESDAY
8-9
ABC – Wow, This Is Still On; Wow, This Won’t Be
CBS – Survivor: Dove World Outreach Center
NBC – They’re Secret Agents! They’re Married! They’re Hot! They’re…Oh, My Aching Back
FOX – Dr. Cal Lightman and Patrick Jane Should Team Up and Stare at Each Other
CW – America’s Love Affair With Bulimic Coat Hangers Continues Unabated
PBS – Chapter 138 – Earned Runs and Runs Allowed: A Relief Pitcher Shall Not Be Held Accountable When the First Batter To Whom He Pitches Reaches First Base On Four Called Balls If Such Batter Has a Decided Advantage In the Ball and Strike Count When Pitchers Are Changed
AMC – If John Wayne or Clint Eastwood Didn’t Star In It, We Don’t Care
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
9 – 10
ABC – Your One-Stop Shopping Place For Flaming Homosexual Stereotypes, Hot Latina Stereotypes, Stupid Parent Stereotypes, and Repulsive Children!; When Is James Michael Tyler Going to Guest Star As Gunther?
CBS – Can We Have Just One Episode Where a Serial Killer Is the Biggest Dumbass Who Ever Lived?
NBC – Law & Order: Red Velvet Cupcake Unit
FOX – Gordon Ramsay Actually Sent His Li’l Kitchen Nightmares Crew To a Restaurant In My Hometown, Revamped the Whole Place, And Then It Went Out of Business, So Fuck Him With a Cheese Grater
CW – Pom-Pom Bitchfest, Now With 20 Percent More Class-Consciousness!
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
10 – 11
ABC – America’s Love Affair With Self-Righteous Lawyers and Cases That Would Normally Take 17 Years to Complete Continues Unabated
CBS – If This Lasts as Long as According to Jim, Please Feel Free to Find Me in Eight Years And Beat Me With a Sack of Oranges
NBC – Law & Order: Crackerbox Palace
TV Land – Lisa Rinna’s Lips Should Be Used to Smother All Future Fires in Southern California
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
THURSDAY
8-9
ABC – F-Fade Away, Please
CBS – If Only Chuck Lorre Lavished Half the Creativity On His Shows That He Does On the Vanity Cards That Appear At the End of His Shows; I’m Waiting for Cats That Look Like Hitler: The Sitcom and the Upcoming Twitter Feed Movie Blankets I Enjoy
NBC – If They Don’t Make Kick Puncher Into a Movie, There Is No Justice; Still Funny
FOX – For the Love of Christ, Will You Two JUST FUCK ALREADY?!
CW – After Vampires, I Think the Next Big Teen Craze Will Be Flash Gordon 1930s-Style Robots That Are Programmed For Evil But Fall In Love and Vow to Protect Humanity
Comedy Central – And the Winner Is George C. Scott In Man Getting Hit By Football
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
9 – 10
ABC – Time of Death: Two Years Ago
CBS – CSI: Whoville
NBC – Before Carell Leaves, Michael Scott Should Patent His Toilet Buddy Idea And Become Rich *** ; Who’s Up For Non-Stop Ravi Shankar/Spicy Curry Jokes?
FOX – I’m Not Sure Why I Don’t Watch This, I Guess I’ve Been Hurt Too Badly by Other Sci-Fi Shows
CW – If Anyone Knows Where Peta Wilson Is, Tell Her “Hi” From Me
Bravo – The Real Housewives of Glocca Morra
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
10 – 11
ABC – Do Not Resuscitate
CBS – See Wednesday, 8:00pm, Fox
NBC – This Year, Donald Trump Takes 16 Talented, Struggling, Unemployed Young People and Uses Them For Firewood
Comedy Central – Because There Wasn’t Quite Enough Room Over at Fox, What With All Those Seth MacFarlane Masterpieces That Are On
MTV – The Most Obvious Reasons to Reconsider Eugenics
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
FRIDAY
8-9
ABC – Give Me a Million So I Don’t Have to Write This Blog Anymore
CBS – Sometimes a Cigar Is Just a Hideously Murdered Cigar
NBC – The Road to Hell Is Paved With Shows Like This
FOX – We Run Our Gang Shorts Until American Idol Premieres
CW – In Case You Were Wondering, This Has Been On For Ten Years
Fox News – The New Black Panthers Are Stealing Your Luggage
Travel – On the Bright Side, Your Stay at the Grisly Death Inn Comes With Free Continental Breakfast
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
9 – 10
ABC – America’s Love Affair With the Minutia of Decomposing Bodies Continues Unabated
CBS – CSI: Grover’s Corner
NBC – Dateline NBC: We Bury The Last Person Who Watched Dateline NBC
FOX – At Least The X-Files Was An Excuse To Be Home on Friday Nights
CW – If There’s Something Strange In Your Neighborhood, Who Ya Gonna Call? Not Two Guys Who Look Like They’re From Abercrombie and Fitch
Discovery – This Week, the Ghost of Timothy Treadwell Delights Our Couple With Details Of How He Was Attacked and Eaten
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
10 – 11
ABC – 20/20: Every Story We’ve Ever Presented Was Completely Made Up
CBS – You Have the Right to Remain Cancelled
NBC – Jay Leno’s Looking Pretty Good Right About Now, Eh?
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
SATURDAY
8-9
ABC – I Had No Idea There Was a Kraft Fight Hunger Bowl
CBS – And Executives Scratch Their Heads, Wondering Why No One Watches TV Anymore
NBC – Yes, Let’s Rerun Shows That Audiences Skipped When They Originally Aired Days Earlier
FOX – Seriously, Are There Any White Trash Meth Addicts Left To Be Arrested On Camera?
Spike TV – We Interrupt People Kicking Each Other With All Six Star Wars Movies For the Buh-Zillionth Time
TCM – Robert Osborne and Alec Baldwin Discuss What Went Wrong With The Marrying Man
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
9 – 10
CBS – Solving This Case Will Save You 15 Percent On Your Car Insurance
NBC – And Let’s Rerun More Shows Because That’s the Way to Attract Viewers on Saturdays
FOX – John Walsh Never Uses a Good Photo Of Me
Animal Planet – Blue Whale Hoarders
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
10 – 11
CBS – 48 Hours Mystery: Why Hasn’t Katie Couric Been Fired?
NBC – 1939 RCA Indian Head Test Pattern
E! – Hugh Hefner’s Cock Detaches and Reveals The Secrets of the Universe ****
The Golf Channel – Something Involving Golf
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
SUNDAY
8-9
ABC – The Gang Builds the Islamic Cultural Center And Our Nation Gets Seriously, Extremely Uplifted
CBS – To Make It Even More Amazing This Year, Let’s Cut Off the Contestants’ Arms, Legs, and Heads
NBC – Breaking News As Brett Favre Retires During the Opening Kickoff Against the Dolphins and Is Replaced By Fran Tarkenton
FOX – Have No Fears, They’ve Got Stories For Years…; There’s Nothing I Can Say About Seth MacFarlane That Gilbert Gottfried Didn’t Already Eloquently Address at the David Hasselhoff Roast
Lifetime – “Hysterectomy of Love” (2002; Tori Spelling, Susan Lucci, Charles Shaughnessy)
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
9 – 10
ABC – If You Remember When This Was Popular You Deserve To Watch It
CBS – Too Bad Leona Helmsley Isn’t Alive To Be On This
FOX – Here’s the Link to Gilbert at the Hasselhoff Roast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdTLTW1QVNg ; You’re Welcome
HBO – Okay, NOW Will You Shut Up About The Sopranos?
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
10 – 11
ABC – Will God Finally Release a Plague of Locusts to End the Walkers’ Torment?
CBS – CSI: Okefenokee Swamp
AMC – Maybe Peggy Olson Will Create That Commercial With Dustin Hoffman Crawling Inside the Volkswagen
TLC – Boogers!
A&E – More Human Freak Shows Designed to Make Your Drab, Wretched Lives Seem So Much Better By Comparison
** But Martha Plimpton is in it and so, I will watch
*** Then Dwight, inspired by Michael’s success, sells the farm to launch HorseBoat and fails miserably
**** And it speaks in the voice of Morgan Freeman

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

One of my first jobs during college was working as a janitor cleaning offices. I was a very hard worker and proud of what I did. I woke up early, took my job seriously and spent many hours on my feet. That is why I can relate to John Weaver, a Goodwill program participant, who currently works under an AbilityOne contract at the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Every day, he wakes up at 3:30 a.m. so he can catch a bus and be to work by 6 a.m., and he says he doesn’t want to miss a day. John and his team clean 125 buildings. He has been doing this important work for as long as he can remember and he finds his job rewarding because he is helping his country. He likes to see the smiles on the Cadets’ faces and appreciates the “thank yous” they give him daily.
John is an asset to the workplace. His talent has no boundaries, as demonstrated through the many awards he has received for his spotless work. John’s disability doesn’t hinder him from living his life to its fullest potential. In addition to his current job role, he and his wife volunteer extensively within their local community of Colorado Springs, CO, and he recently purchased his own condo.
A growing segment of the population, nearly one in six Americans, has a disability. That is why I am urging employers to consider the unique talents, perspectives and contributions that people with disabilities bring to the workplace. It makes good business sense to hire people with disabilities because your business and organization will benefit. If above average records of job performance, safety records and dependability are important, then you’ll get them by hiring someone with a disability.
Without the AbilityOne contract provided by Goodwill Industries of Colorado Springs, John would have encountered difficulties finding a job. AbilityOne is the largest provider of employment for people with disabilities. A new bill, H.R. 5983, was recently introduced to Congress to modernize the AbilityOne Program. If you feel strongly about supporting this legislation and providing employment for people with disabilities, write your local Congressman.
To learn more about Goodwill’s career training and employment programs, visit www.goodwill.org or call (800) 741-0186.

Follow Jim Gibbons on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/goodwillintl

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Last Sunday, after I posted my most recent blog, “Climate Educators Wanted,” I visited the Green page in HuffPost. My eyes lit up. Before my eyes, the GREENscape slowly turned into a story. Stories are nothing but fragments from life put together. Here’s how this story came together.
About midway down the left column, my earlier post, “Letter to Young Americans” was still visible. Right above it was a Shell oil ad. The ad and the story each occupied an equal amount of space, so that was a good beginning. Here is a quick read: the ad says, “Let’s Go,” asking all of us to join in. The story asks all young people to join in. The ad says, “Go Further,” telling us to progress into the future. The story says, “Start the climate revolution now,” for the purpose of a brighter future. The ad and the story outwardly appear to be saying the same thing and peacefully cohabiting in the HuffPo GREENscape.
Allow me to use my wild storyteller imagination to go a little deeper. The ad says, “Let’s Make What We’ve Got.” Let’s split this in two parts. I’d say, because Shell likes to “take” more than they “make,” we can replace one with the other. And “What We’ve Got”? Oil is what we’ve got. So to get at the essence of the story, the line should read, “Let’s Take the Oil We’ve Got.” My story, on the other hand, talks about getting off of fossil fuels — oil and coal — and starting a clean energy revolution. So you see, in spite of the superficial similarities, the ad and the story are actually heading down two different roads. As poet Robert Frost wrote,
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp I took the one less traveled by,
&nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp &nbsp And that has made all the difference.
It’s time that we also take the road less traveled — the one with a clean energy future.
About the oil that we’ve got. Resource expert Michael Klare keeps pointing out that there is no easy oil anymore, only extreme energy in faraway places like the Arctic or in deep oceans. And it comes to us with great devastation.
That’s why Shell wants to “Go Further,” literally–in distance, not in time. Actually Shell wants to go quite far, all the way to the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of Arctic Alaska to get the oil that is there. And they want you to support them in their journey, which is why they say, “Let’s Go.”
As it happens, Shell was ready to start drilling this past July in America’s Arctic Seas. But BP’s deadly oil-and-methane spill in the Gulf of Mexico put a kibosh on that plan. On May 25, I wrote a piece titled, “BPing the Arctic? Will the Obama Administration Allow Shell Oil to Do to the Arctic What BP did to the Gulf?” which was first posted in TomDispatch.com and then in numerous progressive outlets around the world, including HuffPost, and was also translated in other languages. I’ll not repeat what I said there; I hope you’ll take a look, but here is the last line:
On May 27, President Obama suspended Shell’s Arctic drilling plan for 2010. So I thought that this particular story had ended for the year and we’ll reopen it again next year. But like all good stories, it became more like a large onion with many layers to peel.
Back to the HuffPo GREENscape. I saw that, two columns to the right and about an inch down, there was a news story with title, Alaska Sues Feds to Lift Arctic Drilling Suspension. Here is how that story came to life. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar visited Arctic Alaska at the beginning of this month. His itinerary included a town hall meeting in Barrow (the northernmost Inupiat community in Alaska), a stop at the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, and a flight over the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas. Then on Sept. 4, there appeared a story in the Los Angeles Times with a headline that read, “Salazar: Arctic oil drilling must wait.” In that piece you’ll see my polar bear photo with the Beaufort Sea in the background, one of the two Arctic seas that Shell wants to drill for oil. But of course the story couldn’t end there, either.
There is a lot of money at stake for Shell. They have already spent more than $2 billion in lease sale and probably several hundred million already in other operations and PR in the Arctic communities and outside. Did Shell arm-twist the Alaska state government? From my decade-long experience working on Arctic Alaska issues, all I can say is — most likely. So there you have it. The State of Alaska is so willing to allow Shell to go drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas that it sues the Feds to lift the Arctic offshore drilling ban.
Back to the ad: Shell wants to “Go Further.” As it happens, Shell has actually gone very far. Perhaps not as far as Star Trek’s famous where no man has gone before, but quite close — all the way to Sakhalin Island, on the Sea of Okhotsk in Far Eastern Siberia, to drill for oil.
I’ve also been to Far Eastern Siberia, to the Yakutia province, the largest sub-national entity in the world. But I’ve never been to Sakhalin in person. However, I’ve been there through stories told by none other than the master storyteller Anton Chekov. In 1890, Chekov made a seven-months-long journey to the Tsarist penal colony on Sakhalin Island. Chekov’s journey was so amazing that he regularly wrote home about it. His book, Sakhalin Island, is now considered a masterpiece of world literature.
Shell’s journey to Sakhalin, on the other hand, is something no one would want to write home about. As a storyteller I believe in retelling stories again and again, because stories keep a culture alive. So here are some fragments from stories told by others about Shell’s journey to the Sakhalin.
Things actually got really bad for Shell in Sakhalin. When Shell bought the Sakhalin leases in 1996, the price of oil was $22 a barrel and so little attention was paid. But five or six years ago, as the price of oil went through the roof, everyone began paying attention, including Mr. Vladimir Putin. Moscow sided with the Sakhalin Island environmentalists, and there was even a threat of a $50 billion lawsuit against Shell. In 2007, Shell was forced to give up half of its control of the Sakhalin operation to the Russian energy giant Gazprom. This story was reported in CNNMoney.com. One thing that stood out for me in that story was a comment by a Sakhalin local: “The company did everything that was good for them and not good for us.”
As I was wrapping up this story, the following news came in, in a story called Melting sea ice forces walruses ashore in Alaska:
Tens of thousands of walruses have come ashore in northwest Alaska because the sea ice they normally rest on has melted. Scientists with two federal agencies are most concerned about the one-ton female walruses stampeding and crushing each other and their smaller calves near Point Lay, Alaska, on the Chukchi Sea. The federal government is in a year-long process to determine if walruses should be put on the endangered species list.
– Seth Borenstein, Associated Press, September 13, 2010.
The news hit me like a rock. I have spent much time in Point Lay, an Inupiat community, and have walked some of the barrier islands where these walruses are probably jammed together right now. These animals are already seriously stressed by climate change, and now Shell wants to go drill for oil in the Chukchi Sea.
None of this bodes well for Shell’s drilling plan in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of Arctic Alaska.
It’s time Shell gave up on their hope to drill in America’s Arctic Ocean and started spending their money to build a clean energy economy and create real jobs right here in America. Then we’ll surely write home about “Shell’s Journey to the Clean Energy Future,” and we’ll take Shell’s “Let’s Go” to heart. This will surely “Go Further” into a cleaner future for all life. Who knows? Like Chekov’s book, such a story could eventually become a masterpiece as well.
But until then, we must stop Shell’s plan to drill in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas of America’s Arctic, no matter how many “Let’s Go” ads they place in the HuffPo GREENscape.
Copyright 2010 Subhankar Banerjee
Crossposted with ClimateStoryTellers.org

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

If we take an honest look at ourselves, it is easy to see that we are a mixture of light and shadow, of good qualities and defects. One of the main obstacles we face is a deep-seated and often unconscious conviction that we’re born the way we are and nothing we can do can change that.
Doing so, we significantly underestimate our capacity for change. Our character traits remain the same as long as we do nothing to change them. Yet, it is possible to arrive at a more optimal way of being.
Our mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy. The aim of meditation is to transform the mind. As things stand now, our mind is often filled with troubles. We spend a great deal of time consumed by painful thoughts, plagued by anxiety or anger. It would be such a relief, if we could master our mind to the point where we could be free of these disturbing emotions.
We readily accept the idea of spending years learning to walk, read and write, or acquire professional skills. We spend hours doing physical exercises in order to get our bodies into shape. We do so because we believe that these efforts are going to benefit us in the long run.
Working with the mind follows the same logic. It will not change just from wishing alone. Meditation is a practice that makes it possible to cultivate and develop certain basic, positive human qualities in the same way other forms of training make it possible to acquire any other skill.
The goal of meditation is not to shut down the mind or anesthetize it, but rather to make it free, lucid and balanced.
Over the course of the last 10 years, a number of scientific research programs intended to document the long-term effects of meditation practice on the brain and on behavior. This research has shown that it is possible to make significant progress in developing qualities such as attention, emotional balance, altruism and inner peace. Other studies have demonstrated the benefits of meditating for 20 minutes a day for a period of eight weeks. These benefits include a decrease in anxiety and in the tendency toward depression and anger, as well as strengthening the immune system and increasing one’s general well being.
Practicing meditation can give your day an entirely new “fragrance.” Its effects can permeate your outlook and approach to the things you do, as well as to your relations with the people around you. It allows us to experience life with greater serenity, to be more open to whatever happens and to envision the future with confidence. Such a transformation enables us to act more effectively in the world we live in and contribute to building a wiser, more altruistic and kinder society.
WATCH:
Matthieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk who went from a scientific career as a molecular biologist in France to the study of Buddhism in the Himalayas 40 years ago. He has been the French interpreter for the Dalai Lama since 1989. Matthieu donates all proceeds from his work and much of his time to 30 humanitarian projects in Asia through Karuna-Shechen. You may learn more about him on his website, MatthieuRicard.com

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 9.6 percent unemployment rate in August. Men still make up the majority of the labor force currently without work. But the women, like me, are certainly out there.
I’ve gone through several stages of self-directed pity regarding my new role as stay-at-home mom since I was laid off nearly a year and a half ago. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful for the time I get to spend with my two-year-old. And lest I forget, people tell me that I should be all the time.
“Really,” they say sentimentally, after concurring that, yes, it is very difficult to find work in this economy. “Time at home with your daughter is for the best, don’t you think?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I’m dying to reply. “Is it?”
In talking to mothers, I’ve found that women who have temporarily or permanently abandoned a professional career to stay home — voluntarily or not — feel guilty in admitting that their experience is anything less than joyous, despite its unending tedium.
Many feel unfulfilled, says Michele Hoffnung, Professor of Psychology at Quinnipiac University, who studies the lives of working and stay-at-home mothers.
“Work provides a totally different setting, a different set of social interactions and a different set of resources than home does,” she says. “Which is not to say it’s better. But when you work you still have home. When you don’t work, you only have home.”
Some women choose to stay home because they truly believe it is better for their children, and there is a satisfaction in that, she adds. “I don’t want to suggest anything different.”
Still, a majority of those who once worked miss it. I sometimes beg my husband to stay just a few more minutes on mornings he’s opted to go to work early. I have no real excuse beyond that I’m jealous of his freedom to get out of the house. Plus, I want the company.
“Once you leave, it’s just us,” I tell him. I love her, of course I do. And I love our time together, the fellow mom friends I’ve made and my lazy mornings over coffee while she plays.
But the endless preparing of toddler meals, the getting her in and out of the car seat, the trips up and down the stairs? “Perhaps you should be more efficient?” my husband suggests, and I suppress an urge to yell.
Discussing a mother’s role is tricky, especially in trying economic times. I certainly feel lucky for what I have: An employed husband, roof over my head and supportive family. Yet I find myself fighting off feelings of boredom and a general longing for more.
“Society leads us to have totally unrealistic expectations of what a mother is,” says Hoffnung. “None of us ever had a mother who was always patient, always happy. If you’re home and you feel like, ‘I can’t stand this another minute’ you feel guilty.”
“Motherhood is supposed to be the ultimate fulfillment,” she says. “Well, nothing is the ultimate fulfillment.”
And that feels good to admit.
I thought about this recently as my daughter and I took a long walk around the old Italian section of New Haven. She paused every few seconds, pointing out things I didn’t find quite as interesting, like a circular mound of dirt filled with trash and cigarette butts where a tree used to be. A few times she got frustrated with my mandate on holding hands and sat right down on the concrete in a passive aggressive, noncompliance act.
But the weather was ideal, the air was crisp, and we met several friendly strangers. I couldn’t help thinking about how that particular walk and so many other mundane pursuits turn out to be completely worth the various annoyances included in this life I didn’t plan. But there are still the annoyances. I know, the moral of this story is supposed to be that losing my job and staying at home with my daughter turned out to be everything I ever wanted. But it’s simply not true. I miss work and I’ll continue looking for something that fits in with this new lifestyle.
The day to day, however, holds moments I’m smart enough to recognize as unforgettable. I’ve gained new perspective, and patience; the ability to see the beauty in one very good morning.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

We’re entangled in an Atlanta traffic jam, besieged by pachyderms on four wheels. Many of the SUVs are so enormous all we can see are their rear bumpers.
With little else to look at, I start studying the ubiquitous bumper stickers with which Americans so love to adorn their cars.
One of the first to catch my eye is “I am the Proud Parent of a National Fitness Award Winner.” Then I see “Proud Parent of a Dean’s List Scholar,” “Proud Parent of a Boy Scout” and even “Proud Parent of Tracy” (is that a joke?).
In Europe, stickers on cars in general are frowned upon, let alone ones bearing such crass declarations of pride. I’ve never seen any, and, if they existed, people would snigger or gasp in horror.
Yet, here they are as common as the millions of bumper stickers praising Jesus, urging peace on Earth, egging on this or that political candidate or cheering on favorite baseball, basketball or football teams.
My cynical side asks whether it really is the parents affixing said stickers to their automobiles, or whether it’s the kids themselves doing it (and the parents, not daring to offend their offspring, refrain from tearing them off).
But, according to the handful of Americans I grilled on the matter, it is a genuine demonstration of admiration towards one’s children. It is an affirmation of affection and — above all — pride on behalf of a category of parents who encourage their kids to achieve what they were often unable to achieve. Be it going to a prestigious college, graduating with top grades or even just being a scout.
Absurd, I think to myself. Ridiculous.
But then, mulling over the matter, I wonder whether we Europeans — who place so much importance on modesty — cannot perhaps learn something from our transatlantic cousins when it comes to praising children. We, who cringe at the thought of overly praising our kids for fear of giving them big heads, could perhaps affix a symbolic sticker every now and then in our lives.
Maybe by interjecting our (often excessively hectic) daily interactions with our sons and daughters with a few added words of encouragement. As simple as that.
Or, then again, is it the Americans who need to learn a little about curbing boasting from us?

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

When Thoreau was on his deathbed, his aunt asked him if he had made his peace with God, and he responded, “I was not aware that we had quarreled.” Someone else once (I don’t recall the source) said, “The most salient characteristic of an enlightened being is not what one might think–having great wisdom, emanating love and so forth–but rather, that they are completely relaxed.”
I have certainly had my share of restful times in hot tubs over the years, and have received countless wonderful and deeply soothing massages, but truthfully, I don’t think I have been completely relaxed since I was, oh, say, two hours old.
Actually, come to think of it, those first two hours weren’t so great either. On the contrary, I was the youngest person ever to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome; it came over me just moments after a rather terrifying and sudden expulsion from the safety and comfort of my cozy room, the only home I’d ever known, to be sent God-knows-where. Talk about a rude awakening. And now that I’m older and finally beginning to grasp where in fact I was sent, I believe that my response to being born was quite appropriate to the situation. Apart from the trauma of getting evicted, given the nature of what goes on here on this planet, birth is a bitch.
That’s why, back in the New Age days of yore, Leonard Orr created “Rebirthing,” a technique that uses deep and continuous breathing in order to regress and relive one’s birth trauma and heal that primal wound, that original separation from what we knew to be the very source and home of our Being before we were summarily dumped off in a completely bizarre situation. As another figure from that era, Stewart Emery, once said, “Nobody told us when we were born that we were coming to the lunatic asylum of the galaxy.”
Many spiritual systems would assert, however, that the actual birth process is only a physical mirror of a more primordial sense of separation that lives in our consciousness itself, a misconception of an illusory ego believing itself to stand alone and apart from the “All and the Everything,” the “Unified Cosmic Field” that underlies and is the very stuff and substance of Being and existence. The birth process just makes the situation worse, because we retain a cellular memory of that original state we knew in the womb of absolute safety, the bliss of unity, and complete relaxation (barring cruel and unusual neonatal incidents); from that moment on, anything short of those feelings is never quite enough, and a perpetual sense of suffering and dissatisfaction–subtle or not-so-subtle–fuels the forward motion of our lives.
Those of us traveling a spiritual path have become more consciously aware of this basic, fundamental disturbance in our core, goading us onward toward an elusive goal that seems forever out of reach. And since the womb is obviously no longer available, we’ve spiritually upgraded the object of our yearning to God or Awakening, striving for union with the Divine, dissolving into the Light, merging with the Beloved, to open our hearts, get enlightened or one of a myriad variations along those lines.
A traditional description of this journey compares it to a fish in search of water; if the fish would just stop swimming around for a second and completely relax and be still, it might have a better chance of recognizing that it is always-already residing in the very place for which it is relentlessly searching. Every step towards the goal is actually a step away from it. Perhaps that explains those annoying Zen masters who are always saying, “There is nowhere to go and nothing to do.” (Meanwhile, they sit on cushions staring at the wall for 40 years to prove the point!)
But actually, Zen, as well as many other spiritual paths, advise us to meditate, not to get anywhere, but to “be still and know,” to recognize that our essential nature is already present and exists prior to our egoic identity and the concomitant underlying intimation that something’s not quite right, that we’re not quite okay, and that we need to do something to remedy the situation, ASAP. Again and again we are told by those in the enlightenment business that we need only “Rest in the Present Wholeness of your True Nature,” that which lives outside of time and precedes even the womb; for who we really are, we are advised, is completely independent of this merely temporal residence in a body/mind.
And if being Eternal and not constrained by a body/mind isn’t relaxing, I don’t know what is! But what would being “completely relaxed” actually feel like, while we are here? This is how I imagine it:
1) Someone who is completely relaxed would probably never need Valium to take the edge off. The edge is off. (I refilled my Rx today.)
2) There would either be a complete absence of fear and worry, particularly the fear of death, or, when fear or worry did arise, one’s Relaxed Self would somehow remain unruffled, not worried about being worried, not fully identified as the one who is scared. And to take it one step further, even if this person did identify as the fearful one, and did get ruffled, he or she would be relaxed about that state of affairs as well. In other words, this dude is really mellow about “what is,” no matter what’s going on, inside or out.
3) The Completely Relaxed Ones would be free of the core, egoic disturbance of imagined separation from Source, and so would be likewise released from the driving force to “become”–anything–so there would be no anxiety-stricken movement toward a future that held out any promise for some anticipated state or situation that might arrive “someday” and improve the quality of their lives in any way. As Werner Erhard once bluntly put it to me, staring right into my eyes, “There isn’t ANYTHING that is EVER going to come along that is going to make you happy. NOTHING. Getting that is the entre into the system in which the truth lies, for the truth is always and only found now, in the circumstances you’ve got.” That was quite sobering news for a truth-seeker.
It is also why “now” has become so popular; just “this,” whatever is present right now, is considered to be the opportune moment–indeed, the only moment–and when we completely relax into that understanding, we will experience the present as sufficient, complete and satisfying. Or beyond merely “sufficient,” the present moment, were we to gaze upon it with eyes unclouded by longing, would be seen to be permeated by unfathomable mystery and unspeakable beauty. We are tripping over God with every step we take.
4) This possible human I’m constructing would have a deep and innate trust in the unfolding process of life, filled with a seemingly nave and childlike certainty that we live in a benevolent universe and therefore, as Julian of Norwich asserted, All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
If we experienced that to be an absolutely true statement, we’d be a lot more laid back about all the evidence that appears daily to dispute that claim. We’d be relaxed and fundamentally okay with the moment-by-moment, unfolding life stories of everyone everywhere, both the good and the horrible, including those slings and arrows of outrageous fortune aimed directly at us. Recognizing the providential perfection of the moment, however, does not at all preclude experiencing a natural, effortless compassion for those in pain and suffering, as well as a deep desire to help. Or at the very least, we’d be committed to not making things worse for anyone while we’re here. That seems like a reasonable goal for the likes of most of us.
But who among us will ever fulfill all these criteria? After 58 years of being more or less a nervous wreck about this whole living thing, it would be somewhat of a shock and a gift of Grace if I was suddenly free of fear and the race against time to “become” something or somebody, and just completely relaxed into a felt sense of satisfaction and joy with things “just how they are,” in harmony with the “Way of Things,” as Taoism describes it. I don’t think I would recognize myself. Or perhaps that way of being would be more familiar to me than my own face.
I have learned this much: the meaning of the word “practice” in the phrase “spiritual practice” is exactly that: it’s not something we do to get somewhere, change ourselves or become anything. It’s to practice just being here, however things are. When we meditate, we’re not trying to attain a better state of mind, although that is obviously pleasant and welcome when it happens. Rather, we are practicing the act of simply sitting and being relaxed with any and all mind states or life situations, all of which are forever changing and temporary, coming and going, including our bodies. As Dharma teacher Christopher Titmuss put it, “We are looking for that in us which does not arise or pass away.” We sit inside a boundless, impartial, endlessly empty container–we are a Vast Viewing Station–inside of which all of life continues to strut about with great fanfare and drama … signifying nothing.
It just might be that the ultimate spiritual teaching, were we one day to come face to face with a Great Awakened One, would simply be, “Hey, take it easy. Chill.”
And on the seventh day, God said, “Relax.”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

They say you can find anything on the internet. Well, do you know how difficult it is to find a photo of the back of a school bus to use for a blog post? There are hundreds of images of school buses from the front or the side, or the smarmy pics with the stop sign extended and the smiling kids waiting to board. And there’s always some eager student ready to help load his wheelchair-bound classmate. But really, it’s the view of the back of the bus I’m interested in. Come September, I want to see that bus pulling away, not pulling up.
So, instead of an image of a jaunty yellow school bus fading into the distance, I offer up this gem. This bus is going places.
Sure that yellow barge on wheels means school is back in session, but it is also more than that. In just a few brief moments every morning, groups of children and adults wait for a bus. The bus arrives, the children board, parents give a wave and kids take their seats. (And contrary to many an “After School Special,” there’s actually no drama in finding a seat, because every child knows exactly where he belongs on the bus.) In the scant minutes this drama has played out and the bus pulls away, the tectonic plates of the earth have shifted. It actually is that big.
You head off to the bus stop or even the carpool drop-off circle as a family unit of three or four, a few doors open and close, the pneumatic brakes squeak and you are all alone. And, yes, perhaps happier than you have found yourself in weeks.
What I hadn’t realized until late last year was that the bus offers magical transitive powers when it travels in the other direction as well. My boys usually ride the school bus halfway home and I pick them up at a transfer point. Mostly, it is a matter of convenience. It keeps me out of the arduous “carline” that threatens to define the lives of so many suburban parents, and it gets my boys home an hour earlier than if they rode the bus the entire way.
Through painful observation last spring, I learned that the ride offers not only convenience, but also a buffer for my kids and me — particularly for my child who is letting go of childhood. That 15-minute ride bridges his two worlds. The days are spent in classrooms that demand a student to be simultaneously independent and a dutiful pupil, and the schoolyard that requires a child to be both offensive and defensive. At home, for better or worse, dependence is tolerated, and he can let go of any need to be offensive or worry about self-preservation.
Home and family, by definition, are a safe place. Middle school, by definition, is a proving ground, a stage for pitched battles of discovering and defining one’s identity and role in the hierarchy. To have these two worlds collide in a suburban parking lot is almost too much.
When he rides the bus, my son has time to digest his day, let go of most incidents, words or frustrations, and settle into his own skin again. If I arrive in his world at 3 p.m. bringing the protective aura of home — in the guise of a 2400-pound SUV — it is almost too much for the raw emotions and fragile state of adolescence. Even Clark Kent needed his phone booth to rectify his two worlds.
As a parent, middle school pick up and drop off has been strangely reminiscent of preschool. I remember watching the teachers working car line crawl into the car in front of mine to physically extract a child from the idling minivan. Most of the time mine were happy to go, but there were days that required extensive negotiations, and sometimes even going in to settle them with a puzzle or Play-Do, offering promises that I would definitely be back (really, how far can you get in 2 hours and 15 minutes?)
Then there was preschool pickup. In the early months, I remember saying over and over to myself as I waited in car line, “please let him be wearing the clothes he went to school in.” (I have heard from some mothers of middle school girls, that they actually hope for the same thing now, in seventh and eighth grade.) Such were the demands I put on my children and my preschool. If there was no accident, the day was a success. If the teacher approached the car with a plastic grocery bag and my child was wearing shorts in a snowstorm, well, then I knew I’d be volunteering to bring more than cups and napkins to the holiday party.
Of course, you’d think that with the trappings of cell phones, Friday night dances and homework done while instant messaging, those days of graham crackers and construction paper pumpkins would seem far away. But they seem acutely near.
A friend who counsels troubled teens says that middle school is the time when kids figure out who they are and who their friends are. And because self-discovery is no small task, many young teens spend much of middle school lost, confused and afraid. Sure, most of my son’s sixth grade challenges were remembering the right books on the right days, and seventh grade was more work and more books. But in the vast spaces between the books and sports and dances, he battles away at the real work of middle school. And there are still mornings when a little boy wearing size eight men’s shoes takes a deep breath before getting out of the car.
And on the afternoons when I do pick up at school, I am the one taking a deep breath saying over and over to myself, “please let him be smiling when he sees me.” And really, I could care less if he’s wearing what he went to school in. Clark Kent can have his quick-change phone booth. I’ll take the emotional buffer zone of school bus #34. Besides, my kids say George the bus driver is hilarious. And he does Sudoku while he drives.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

It’s human nature to name things, so we had to come up with a name for what we turned around one day and discovered everyone else doing — Tweeting, Facebooking, YouTubing, Digging, Etsying, You-Name-It-ing, basically platforming the hell out of the internet as a way to participate in the new conversations within networks, cultures and communities. Social Media is the name we’ve given the new modes of communicating.
From Sept 20-24, 2010, Social Media Week will be happening in five cities — Bogota, Buenos Aires, L.A., Mexico City and Milan. (A choice of locations that seems at least as poetic as geographically rational). Following the format of the inaugural Social Media Week in 2009, each of the cities will host a week-long series of free-admission events that will include workshops, panels, performances and games designed to explore the subject of social media.
Participants in the ‘generator’ cities will carry the week’s narrative over their own business and personal networks, and because these are some hefty networks we’re talking about, millions of people will be participating at some point during the week.
And as we say in L.A., let’s cut to the chase: Every event will undoubtedly pose the question new media types have had to ask since Grok showed Mok a spark from two flints and Mok said, “It’s cool and all, but who’s going to pay for it?”
I met the producer for Social Media Week in Los Angeles, Erick Brownstein of The New Agency, through BlobLive, a series of open-mic nights for entrepreneurs that combine live presentations in front of an audience with Twitter and videostreams to expand the possibilities for their seedling projects.
Erick and his team, Wendy Walz and Dawn Sinko, demonstrating how a few capable people with good social networking skills can work wonders, have organized a program of more than 70 events for Social Media Week in L.A., including:
-A discussion of how customers connect with restaurants and other local businesses using social media, hosted by UrbanSpoon and Postling;
-a geo-location workshop hosted by Rob Reed (a.k.a. @MaxGladwell) a prominent sustainability blogger;
-shows at the renowned improv theater Upright Citizens Brigade that are based on Facebook profiles and txt msgs;
-a ‘Fandom’ event moderated by the legendary ‘fan-cademic’ Henry Jenkins and hosted by the Cimarron Group, which does community building for major Hollywood films;
-the virtual fundraising “Twelethon” which will raise money for the Inner City Arts in Los Angeles;
-and parties, it wouldn’t be social without parties, and lots of them. There’s a beach party. A skating party. MTV is hosting a premiere party for its new online series, The Buried Life. Whether you’re a Mad Man or a Roller Derby Doll, there will be a scene during Social Media Week for you.
I’m involved with several of the events for the week, including a workshop at USC to help aspiring science journalists improve their communication skills using improvisation, with NPR science reporter K.C. Cole, and Alan Alda, who will be teleconferencing from Stony Brook U. on Long Island. It is an extension of a program Alda has piloted with scientists at the Brookhaven National Lab. I’d be lying if I said I don’t have butterflies about following Alda’s act.
Social Media Week promises both an exploration of what we believe is possible, and a confrontation with the realities of the marketplace. It feels to me as if the vibe of the event will be more realistic than euphoric, less brag, more fact. We can’t afford another bubble. This is not a technology play. This isn’t the turn ‘em and burn ‘em game. This is about using the new tools to help bring about a fundamental and necessary shift in the way we interact with the world.
Mike Bonifer is the author of GameChangers — Improvisation for Business in the Networked World and the CEO of GameChangers LLC.

Follow Mike Bonifer on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/Bonifer

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

What are the basic pieces of information I should keep track of for each work of art I make and sell?
Kimberly B., Painter
Los Angeles, CA
It is vital for any artist to keep track of what is happening with their work, sold or not. I know a lot of artists depend on their dealers to keep track of everything, but I can’t tell you how many times that a dealer has closed their gallery without telling their artists, or not given the artist all the information that they are legally required to share. And if you sell the work yourself or create work on a commission basis, you need to keep your own records. So whether you do it by hand, or use software, be sure to have the following information.
title of the work
date the work was created
any collaborators
how much it cost you to make the work
the category of the work (painting, sculpture, installation)
mediums used to make the work
dimensions of the work, framed and unframed if applicable
a tracking number (more on this in my next post)
a description of the work
if the work is signed and where
whether the work is an edition and how many were made
images of the work, both super high res, high res and low res (enough images to document all aspects of the work)
any notes on the work that you feel are important to the work
where the work has been shown (provenance/exhibition history)
where the work is located (stored or at a gallery, or sold)
the status of the work (available, sold, traded, not for sale, donated etc.)
whose collection it is in
how much the work sold for
how much you were paid for the work
whether you have been paid a percentage of the sale if the work is sold in California (in California, the California Resale Royalties Act stipulates that an artist who work is sold for a certain amount over the former sale, the artist is entitled to a percentage)
a condition report on the artwork
installation instructions to send out with the work
a receipt of the sale of the work, with the name of the collector and all the sales details (by law each artist is entitled to this information)
any sketches or drawings used to create the work
any reviews or articles about the work
any contracts or paperwork (for commissions, etc.)
Please send questions to karen@gyst-ink.com
http://www.gyst-ink.com for more information

Follow Karen Atkinson on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/GYSTInk

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

With Delaware Congressman Mike Castle’s earth-shattering loss of in his Senate primary bid, the Tea Party insurrection is destroying the last vestige of the Grand Old Party as a major driving force behind pragmatic foreign policy. The rise of the Tea Party, the self described “loose network of conservative grassroots movements,” has challenged the old internationalist wing of the party and won. As the brutal primary fights in Utah, Alaska and now Delaware have shown us, this is not your father’s Republican party. And it probably never will be again.
Gone are the great thinkers that once made the Republican Party a driving force in internationalist policy. How would the Tea Party react today to the globalist tradition of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard M. Nixon, Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, or even Ronald Reagan?
It was Eisenhower who supported reversing the isolationist bent that had plagued the party during the New Deal.
As Congressman and Senator, Nixon fully supported the formation of the United Nations. As president, his foreign policy sought to end the illusion of American supremacy and to secure a stable global order.
Ronald Reagan was instrumental in reaching out to Moscow and signing arms-control treaties more sweeping than anything Nixon or Kissinger had ever envisioned. What would the Gipper think of the intellectually bankrupt campaign launched by the Heritage Foundation to sink New START?
The candidates of the Republican Party today bear little if any resemblance to their internationalist cohorts of yesterday. Take for example the current bare-knuckled battle for Pennsylvania’s Senate seat between former Congressman Pat Toomey and current Rep. Joe Sestak. As David Schorr, (a fellow member of Citizens for Global Solutions PAC) put it, “Toomey must be getting his foreign policy advice from John Bolton and Dick Cheney, since his message today tried to portray international cooperation as a radical left cause.”
Toomey recently blasted Rep. Sestak for supporting an increase in the foreign aid budget, a standard boilerplate campaign slogan for modern day “fiscally responsible” Republicans who can’t (or don’t) want to think too hard. It doesn’t take a lot of research to figure out that discretionary spending for international programs since 1962 has averaged just 0.4% of GDP, and has through the years generally trended downward.
This unsettling fact was even recognized by the Bush Administration, when shortly after the September 11th attacks it elevated foreign aid to “a third pillar of national security.” This doctrine was even articulated in the U.S. National Security Strategy of 2002, and reiterated in 2006 and 2010.
How do these decidedly grown-up views compare to today’s Tea Party-backed candidates? Delaware Senate Republican Nominee Christine O’Donnell is adamantly against “outsourcing our foreign policy to the U.N.” Rand Paul, who is running for Senate in Kentucky, believes “all funding of the U.N. as a whole [should] become voluntary,” and that the “United States should withdraw from and stop funding altogether those UN programs that undermine legitimate American interests and harm the cause of freedom around the world.” Nevada Tea Party Senate candidate Sharron Angle just flat out wants to see the U.S. out of the U.N.
Recent political history serves only to highlight this great exodus (forced or not) of internationalist minds from the party. The defeat of Congressman Mike Castle in Delaware is but the latest in a long line of purges. After being labeled RINOs by many party activists, Congressman Chris Shays, Jim Leach and Senator Lincoln Chafee (whose single vote prevented the confirmation of Ambassador John Bolton) were all defeated in their reelection bids. Political environs caused Senator Chuck Hagel to retire in 2008.
Senator Lugar, perhaps the Senate’s most pragmatic and courageous internationalist, is expected not to run for reelection in 2012. And rumors abound of a possible trip to the other side of the aisle for one of the last truly moderate Republicans in the Senate, Olympia Snowe.
The United States deserves two mature political parties that can work together and reach educated consensus. An effective foreign policy requires the U.S. to be a good global citizen. When we build positive multilateral relationships, respect international law, and use military engagement only as a tool of last resort, we flourish collectively as a nation.
In Washington, there has always been a tradition that politics stopped at the water’s edge. We saw an example of that today when Republican Senators Lugar, Corker, and Isakson joined their Democratic colleagues to approve the New START nuclear weapons reduction treaty in the Foreign Relations Committee. The question is, will a Tea Party-dominated Republican party ever be sane enough to do this again?

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Do you believe your thoughts? If you’re anything like me, you probably do — especially the ones you think and obsess about most (i.e. the negative, critical ones). However, what if our thoughts aren’t true? In many cases, they’re not — they’re just stories we’ve made up over time and continue to perpetuate with our thinking, speaking and acting.
This past weekend, my wife Michelle and I went to a day long workshop with teacher and author Byron Katie. The workshop blew us both away. Katie (as she goes by) created a simple, but profound inquiry process more than 20 years ago called “The Work,” which consists of four questions and a turnaround.
To utilize “The Work” you identify a specific negative thought (a complaint, a judgment of another person or situation, or something you criticize about yourself) and then ask these four questions:
Is it true?
Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
Who would you be without that thought?
After you have investigated your statement with the four questions, you’re ready to turn around the concept you’re questioning. Each turnaround is an opportunity to experience the opposite of your original statement and see what you and the person, situation or characteristic you’ve judged actually have in common.
A statement can be turned around to the opposite, to the other and/or to the self. You then find a minimum of three genuine, specific examples of how each turnaround is true in your life.
For example, let’s say you have an issue with your friend Joe. Your statement might be, “My friend Joe is too critical of me.” If you turn this around, it could be: “My friend Joe is accepting of me,” or “I am too critical of Joe,” or “I am too critical in general.” Then you’d look for multiple examples of where each of these turnarounds are true in your life.
The idea with this process isn’t to make yourself wrong or to live in fantasy land, it is to consciously question reality. Most of what we deem to be real (especially when it causes us to suffer) is made up of negative ideas, beliefs, judgments and thoughts that we’ve come up with as a defense or justification. By questioning our truths, we expand our thinking and begin to see new possibilities. In other words, by not believing everything we think, we take back the power we often give away to our mind.
As I sat in the workshop and listened to Katie work with people one-on-one about some very intense circumstances and situations (grief, abuse, mistrust, guilt, conflict and more), I was amazed by the freedom they were able to experience by simply inquiring into their negative thoughts and questioning them with an open mind.
It made me realize how many of my own judgments, complaints and self criticisms go unchallenged and how I let my mind simply take over and run the show in certain areas of my life (especially the most stressful ones).
Not everything we think is true, thank goodness! The more willing we are to challenge our own thoughts and beliefs, the more peace and freedom we can create and experience in our work, our relationships and our lives.
Mike Robbins is a sought-after motivational keynote speaker, coach and the bestselling author of “Focus on the Good Stuff” (Wiley) and “Be Yourself, Everyone Else is Already Taken” (Wiley). More info www.Mike-Robbins.com

Follow Mike Robbins on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/mikedrobbins

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

As the recession drags on, policymakers and community leaders are searching for strategies to encourage job creation, investment in neighborhoods, and a return to economic stability. The findings from Woodstock Institute’s latest report, however, depict troubling barriers to recovery — particularly in communities hit hardest by the financial crisis.
In “Bridging the Gap: Credit Scores and Economic Opportunity in Illinois Communities of Color,” our researchers found that Illinois communities of color had high concentrations of individuals with very low, “non-prime” credit scores. For example, in highly African-American communities, 54 percent of individuals had credit scores below 620 — that’s more than three times the percentage of very low score individuals in white communities.
This bears repeating: Over half of the people in Illinois’ predominantly African-American communities likely would not qualify for low-cost, prime credit. What does this mean for these neighborhoods’ chances for revitalization?
For one, communities of color were disproportionately devastated by the foreclosure crisis. Stretches of vacant homes, many of which have fallen into serious disrepair, are common sights in many parts of Chicago, but local families may want to invest in rebuilding their communities. Obtaining a mortgage may be difficult or costly, however, if someone in the household saw their credit damaged because they were unable to pay certain bills due to a period of unemployment. Even finding a new, good paying job may not be enough to get a mortgage, given many lenders’ increasingly tight underwriting standards. Access to affordable credit cards, car financing, or small business loans will also likely be limited. And while the data and findings in our report are from Illinois, neighborhoods across the country are struggling with similar challenges.
A high concentration of low credit scores can affect employment and housing in a neighborhood as well. Increasingly, employers are incorporating information from credit reports into hiring decisions, and landlords routinely check credit data during tenant screening procedures.
It’s clear that high concentrations of low credit scores will challenge Illinois’ communities of color, but there are solid strategies available that can help individuals build credit histories and increase access to sustainable, affordable credit. The Credit Builders Alliance has developed a five-step toolkit to build a positive credit history. Policymakers and funders should support efforts to make curricula like this one widely available to credit counselors. Additionally, data from this report can be used to better target these resources to communities with high concentrations of individuals who need credit repair.
Some individuals have low credit scores because of a lack of credit history or “thin file,” not because of a poor payment history. Reporting positive payment history on services like utilities, phone bills, insurance premiums, and rent can build credit and reward positive behavior.
Finally, financial institutions should expand efforts to use relationship-based underwriting. While the increasing reliance on automated underwriting has lowered costs, automation can overlook borrowers who are potentially good credit risks but lack a traditional credit history. Lenders such as Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago and Self-Help Credit Union in North Carolina have proven that taking a more expansive view of the factors that make someone a good credit risk can be a successful model for borrowers and lenders alike.
I believe that a solid credit history is an asset that greatly contributes to an individual’s opportunities for economic security. If you can get favorable terms on credit for buying a home, starting a business, or continuing education, you’ll have more to invest and save over the course of your lifetime. With so many families reeling from unemployment, foreclosures, and loss of income, continued advocacy for strategies like credit building that promote economic security is more important than ever.

Follow Dory Rand on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/WoodstockInst

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Who counts and who doesn’t count? We hear so much about the “middle class” but rarely about the plight of the poor. And of course we hear again and again that the wealthy are “successful” and the “job-creators” who shouldn’t be “punished” by being asked to give something back to the country that enabled their wealth. Conservative “market” thinking and Ayn Randian “the poor are losers” dehumanizing ideology* has become pervasive and dominant as we transition from one-person-one-vote democracy to one-dollar-one-vote plutocracy. In this plutocratic environment the national discussion of tax cuts for the wealthy saturates the corporate media, while the 44 million of us in poverty now are barely mentioned and count for little.
Yesterday the Census Bureau reported (NYT) that another four million people fell below the poverty line just last year, with trends showing it will probably grow. 44 million Americans — one in seven of us — are now trying to make it on $10,830; $22,050 for a family of four.
This chart (from the Census report) shows the trends.
On top of this, the level of “severe poverty” has hit an all-time record level. At Angry Bear, All Time Record Level of Severe Poverty,
The Lifesaver Net Is Under Attack: Unemployment Benefits, Food Stamps, Welfare, Social Security
Even as poverty rises (because of conservative policies) the conservatives are attacking and weakening the safety net that keeps this disaster from getting even worse. They denigrate the idea of our government assisting citizens — taking care of and watching out for each other — as “spending” and “handouts.” They say that unemployment and poverty assistance “undermine the work ethic.” They say that helping the poor is “reaching into other people’s pockets.” Click through to read an example of what the Koch/Scaife/Walton (WalMart)/Tobacco/Oil/Corpation-funded Heartland Institute on “handouts”. Or click through to read a sample of what the Koch/ Scaife/Tobacco/Corpation-funded Freedomworks (one of the astroturf organizations behind the Tea Party) on “handouts.” Here is the Koch-founded/tobacco/oil/corporate-funded Cato Institute saying, about helping the people of New Orleans after Katrina, that government helping people is”coercion” (taxes are theft) and “it is important to remember that you can’t be compassionate with other people’s money.”
This is dehumanizing and degrading and listening to it at all dehumanizes and degrades all of us. And the result is right in front of our faces: poverty grows, poverty becomes more extreme, wealth concentrates at the top, society becomes more cruel, the country falls further and further backwards. We have lived through a decade of conservative policies, and from the NYTimes story on the increasing poverty rate,
“This is the first time in memory that an entire decade has produced essentially no economic growth for the typical American household,” Mr. Katz said.
The Money Is Going To The Top
The Census report notes that the highest “quintile” or fifth of income-earners received 50.3 percent of all income last year, the bottom fifth receive only 3.4%..
In 2009, the share of aggregate income received by the bottom quintile was 3.4 percent; the second quintile, 8.6 percent; the third, 14.6 percent; the fourth, 23.2 percent; and the highest quintile, 50.3 percent.
Unemployment Benefits Running Out
Conservatives in the Congress are blocking emergency extensions of unemployment benefits, jobs programs and other critical parts of the safety net that helps people in emergencies such as the conservative-caused financial collapse. So another indicator of human suffering is about to get even worse. Unemployment for the “99ers” is running out, many of them older, with no jobs in sight.
Only unemployment benefits are keeping another 3.3 million from the same fate. (Chart from Center for Budget and Policy Priorities)
Health Insurance, Too
According to the Census Bureau report, the number of United States residents without health insurance climbed to 51 million in 2009, from 46 million in 2008. Additionally in 2010 millions of unemployed workers who were covered by the stimulus’ COBRA subsidies are losing their coverage. There is no relief in site for years.
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Expiring
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Emergency Fund from the “stimulus” expires at the end of this month. Steve Benen at Washington Monthly writes that the TANF program, “subsidizes jobs with private companies, nonprofits, and government agencies and has single handedly put more than 240,000 unemployed people back to work.”
So of course it needs to be renewed. But conservatives are blocking this. Benen writes,
The irony is, when those Americans lose their jobs, Republicans will say it was the failure of the stimulus. Their pathetic rhetoric will have it backwards — the stimulus created those jobs, and the GOP’s filibuster of an effective jobs program will throw these men and women out of work. In a sane political world, this would be a pretty big scandal…
Food Stamps Cut
Last month we saw this tragedy happen, Food Stamps Slashed to Pay for Teacher Jobs Bill. Conservatives forced cuts to food stamps before they would allow a bill providing $26 billion to help states cover Medicaid expenses and teacher salaries to pass.
Social Security
It has been covered here extensively that the President’s “Deficit Commission” is talking about cuts to Social Security, which by law cannot borrow so it cannot contribute to the deficit, instead of looking at the tax cuts for the rich and military spending increases which caused the deficits. At the very time older Americans have had their retirement savings wiped out and many cannot find jobs and are taking early retirement, the commission is talking about reducing instead of increasing this vital program!
JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS
This is really all about jobs and wages. The best antidote to poverty is more employment and better wages. Just yesterday 300 economists issued a statement saying so. But conservatives continue to block all efforts to provide jobs and lift wages. Isaiah Pool wrote here yesterday, in Latest Senate Jobs Bill Tests The Limits Of Right-Wing Obstruction,
Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus has introduced a bill today that is a frankly unadventurous mix of jobs initiatives and tax incentives, with a healthy dose of loophole-closings to make sure that it can be presented as revenue-neutral.
. . . Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued his “hell no, you can’t” edict … telling reporters that he’d lead a filibuster to make sure billionaires and millionaires paid not one dime more in earned income tax.
Such is the political environment in which Baucus drops his latest effort to move the jobs debate forward.
So every indicator of a society in terrible trouble — unemployment, poverty, severe poverty, balance of trade, concentration of wealth, foreclosures, health insurance coverage, you name it — is going in the wrong direction. And conservatives are proudly doing what they can to make it even worse! Why do we even listen to them at all?
* (For more on the roots of Ayn Rand and dehumanizing ideology click and scroll to the asterisk.)
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The growth rate of U.S. exports to the countries with whom we do NOT have Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) has been over double that to U.S. FTA partners. That stunning finding should put an end to recent Obama administration talk about reviving three NAFTA-style FTAs leftover from the Bush era. And, it should provide impetus to finally implement President Obama’s campaign commitments to renegotiate aspects of the past FTAs, and create a new American trade pact model going forward.
The core justification for FTAs like NAFTA and CAFTA is that they boost exports. Yet Public Citizen’s recent study “Lies, Damn Lies and Export Statistics,” analyzes the actual government trade flow data. It showed that, if exports to the 17 U.S. FTA partners had only grown as much as exports to the rest of the world, the U.S. would have had an extra $72 billion in exports over the past decade. Check out this stunning graph:
Yup, U.S. FTAs resulted in a relative export penalty! Not only did U.S. manufacturing exports grow faster with non-FTA countries, but so did service sector exports. And, we have a substantial agricultural trade deficit with our FTA partners, contrary to the sales pitch about the supposed gains for our heartland farmers.
That is Exhibit # 1 for why reviving the Bush NAFTA-style FTAs with Korea, Colombia and Panama should not be part of the administration efforts to double U.S. exports over the next five years and create two million U.S. jobs.
Exhibit #2 is more well known, although recent corporate reports have tried to distort the reality that the U.S. has suffered large and growing trade deficits with its major FTA partners and with the group of FTA nations as a whole. Even as trade flows declined because of the economic crisis, as of 2009, the new report shows that the United States had a $54 billion trade deficit in goods, excluding oil, with its 17 FTA partners. The president cannot achieve net U.S. job creation through export growth if he implements more FTAs that increase imports more than exports.
Trade officials have occasionally admitted the unfortunate deficit-boosting trend of U.S. FTAs. In an October 2006 speech to a Korean audience, Bush’s chief Korea FTA negotiator Karan Bhatia said that it was a myth that “the U.S. will get the bulk of the benefits of the FTA. If history is any judge, it may well not turn out to be true that the U.S. will get the bulk of the benefits, if measured by increased exports.” He added that, in the instance of Mexico and other countries, “the history of our FTAs is that bilateral trade surpluses of our trading partners go up.”
Unfortunately, the 28 titans of the pharmaceutical, financial service and other industries that dominate the President’s Export Council did not display such candor or attention to the actual data in their first meeting this week. On the top of their list, was… well, what has always been on their list: more job-offshoring FTAs – although now repackaged as helping the president’s export initiative. The White House also released a progress report that highlighted the festering Bush FTAs as a tool to boost exports.
In our job-starved economy, no one disputes the need to increase exports. But the data is in: There are many ways to expand exports, but pushing more of the same NAFTA-style trade agreements is not on the list.
You’re not likely to hear corporate lobbyists cop to the demonstrated failure of the FTAs they worked so hard to pass. In fact, the Public Citizen report goes through a scandalous assembly of errors and suspect methodologies used by corporate groups like the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers to generate numbers to support their FTA advocacy. These range from bad arithmetic, to ignoring inflation, and more. This section of the report is quite an astonishing read.
A personal favorite: In order to get wild FTA gains, the Chamber averaged export growth averages to FTA countries like Morocco without weighting their overall importance to our trade. (So, increasing exports to Morocco from $0.6 billion to $1.6 billion after the FTA is counted as a 167% gain despite the nominal gain effectively being a rounding error in the total U.S. exports of over $900 billion.) Then, this inflated export growth data for FTA countries is compared to data for non-FTAs that was generated using a different methodology that weights trade volume. Needless to say, this “apples and oranges” comparison biases the findings to meet their lobby pitch. But the funny-slash-sad thing is, when you utilize their unweighted methods consistently – the FTA export penalty actually is eight times larger than Public Citizen’s finding!
Another doozy is that a corrected version of their methods finds that the U.S. would lose out on $30 billion in exports over the next five years if Bush’s FTAs with Korea, Panama and Colombia are signed. The uncorrected numbers claiming export gains from those pacts are being widely cited to push these pacts.
Okay, so on economics and job creation, it’s clear that the Obama administration should not be taking up Bush’s FTAs unaltered. But the political case for instead pursuing fair trade policies is just as clear. As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week,
President Obama himself knows the political value of fair trade, having campaigned and won key swing states in 2008 by promising to sweep away the NAFTA model.
In short, in the name of both expanding U.S. exports and saving U.S. jobs (including those of the Democratic Majority-makers in the U.S. House), President Obama should pour a healthy dose of salt on corporate entreaties to pass Bush’s trade deals and instead make good on his fair trade campaign pledges.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The 58th International San Sebastian Film Festival started on September 16th and goes through the 25th. Julia Roberts will be there to receive a lifetime achievement award. But, San Sebastian is known more for its Michelin stars than its movie stars. Acclaimed chefs from all over the world make a pilgrimage to this seaside Basque city just for the food. It’s not necessary to spend loads of euros to eat well. You can graze on simple and inventive pintxos (Basque tapas), which are made from the freshest local ingredients and will blow your mind. Here is a list from local chefs of places to hit.
Playground For The Royals
1 of 11
Kevin Sbraga: ‘Top Chef: DC’ WINNER, Plus Finale PHOTOS Of Padma, Tom, Gail & More
The Kings Of Pastry: Inside the Legendary Meilleur Ouvrier de France, Ptissier Competition (PHOTOS)
Meet Bravo TV ‘Top Chef: Just Desserts’ Head Judge Johnny Iuzzini
6 Chefs’ End of Summer Recipes
Unfuddling The Many Different Cuts Of Pork Ribs
PHOTOS, VIDEO: The World Testicle Cooking Championship
The stunning Spanish Basque city on the Bay of Biscay was once the playground for European royalty. Aside from beautiful beaches, Belle Epoque architecture, and the prominent yearly film festival, San Sebastian has more Michelin stars per capita than any other city.
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

New poverty and wage data released yesterday paint a grim picture of the economic prospects for American families dependent on women wage earners. Yesterday’s new data show that more than half a million, or more than one in ten, single mothers working full-time, year-round jobs lived in poverty in 2009. Poverty rates are even higher among African-American and Hispanic single-mothers working full-time, of which nearly 17 and 19 percent, respectively, lived in poverty. Moreover, two-parent families are increasingly dependent on women as sole wage earners because so many men have lost their jobs in the economic downturn. We have known for some time that the number of married couples with children who depend exclusively on women’s earnings rose to 1.9 million in 2009, more than a 36 percent annual increase as compared to a 5 percent increase from 2007 to 2008.
Unfortunately, yesterday’s data show that women in full-time jobs can expect to bring home far fewer dollars than their male counterparts. On average, a woman who works year-round in a full-time job makes 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man. The wage gap grows even wider when we look at the numbers for women of color: African-American women earn 62 cents for every dollar earned by white, non-Hispanic men, while Hispanic women earn only 53 cents. These disparities translate into an earnings gap of $10,849 per year. That’s not pocket change–it’s a serious discount on women’s paychecks and money that families need to pay for basic necessities such as groceries, child care, rent and health insurance.
Women and their families cannot afford to be shortchanged, especially in these tough economic times. That’s why it’s so critical that the Senate moves quickly to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act. The Paycheck Fairness Act would help correct the effects of discriminatory pay practices by providing a much-needed update to the Equal Pay Act of 1963. First, it protects workers who share their own salary information from retaliation by their employers. Second, it makes employers more accountable for showing that pay differentials are not based on gender discrimination and serve a legitimate business purpose. It also brings the remedies available under the Equal Pay Act into line with those available under other civil rights laws.
The House of Representatives passed the Paycheck Fairness Act in January 2009. The Senate now has only a small window of time to deal with the nation’s business before heading home, and its “To Do” list is long. We cannot let this moment pass. It is time for the Senate to stand up for women and their families and finally pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

I set out on My Fashion Week Challenge with very little expectations. I had hoped that I would come up with cool ways to wear my six things — a pair of skinny jeans, a white linen A-line skirt, a striped button-down dress shirt, a navy blue cardigan and a little black dress. I crossed my fingers that I would look decent enough to hit Lincoln Center during New York Fashion Week free of judgment from other fashion editors who were dressed to the nines. But never in my wildest dreams did I think I would enjoy the challenge enough to do it again every season. (Yes, stay tuned for a new “six challenge” out of my fall staples.) And since posting my outfit choices, never did I think that I would inspire iVillage readers to do the same! (Thanks for all of your e-mails and support, guys and gals! And yes, stay tuned for a “six challenge” contest at iVillage in the near future.)
This morning, I stepped into my walk-in closet filled with 100+ dresses, skirts, pants, blouses, sweaters, rompers, jumpsuits, shoes, bags… to find an outfit to wear to work. You’d think I’d know exactly what to reach for — I had been fashion-starved for a week, after all. But instead, I stood there, frozen, uninspired and overwhelmed.
Was Brian Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, right? Can having too many options affect a person in a negative way? We assume that more options mean better decisions and more satisfaction, but is that even true?
After 30 minutes, I eventually decided on a sleeveless button-down bodysuit from Forever 21 worn under a vintage navy blue and white polka dot, mid-length skirt with gray suede Nine West booties. It’s a cute outfit, but I wasted a lot of time to put it together. Whereas on the previous days during my challenge, it would take me all of five minutes to get myself dressed and accessorized. I could’ve used the extra time eating breakfast or enjoying a cup of coffee while watching today’s morning news, but instead, I ran out the door with little time to spare, irrate about traffic because I needed to beat the clock.
So were six things better than a hundred? This morning, I’d have to say yes. In the longrun, I might be whistling a different tune because there’s also that theory that sometimes change (not to mention, washing clothes) are good ideas.
Click on each pic to get the outfit details:

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

If he’s on your team, it’s “cheating.”
In the seventh inning of the Sept. 15 game between the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay Rays, legendary stand-up guy Derek Jeter hoodwinked home plate umpire Lance Barksdale into believing he had been hit in the wrist/forearm area by a Chad Qualls pitch and was thus entitled to first base.
Replays — unofficial, of course, since baseball doesn’t use them for anything other than disputed home runs — clearly showed the ball hit Jeter’s bat. But the Yankee captain and face of the franchise for more than a decade was jumping up and down like he’d just been stung by a nest of bees. The trainer came out, I guess for moral support since there was no injury, and the ump sent the Yankees’ role model on his merry way. (Barksdale also kicked out Rays’ manager Joe Maddon for voicing his opinion about the situation). Curtis Granderson immediately followed with a home run to put the Yankees up, 3-2.
See for yourself:
Fortunately for truth and justice, the Rays’ Dan Johnson hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the frame to give Tampa Bay the 4-3 win.
I don’t usually listen to sports talk radio, but once in awhile I hear Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN, which is where this situation came to my attention. Mike Golic, a former pro football player who admitted to taking steroids, believes what Jeter did is no big deal, and even admirable. Mike Greenberg sort of took the other side of the argument.
Cheating? Gamesmanship? The program played an audio from the post-game interview in which a reporter asked Jeter what the ball hit. “The bat,” he said. “And…” prompted the reporter? No response. To paraphrase Jeter, if the umpire was kind enough to award him first base, it would be impolite to refuse the invitation.
Golic and Greenberg compared this to other bits of sports trickery, such as an outfielder claiming to have caught a ball that actually short-hopped into his glove, or a soccer player taking a dive to get a penalty call. Golic suggested that if an athlete actually declined a gift such as the one Jeter received, honing up by saying something along the lines of “Mr. Umpire, Sir, I cannot tell a lie. That ball didn’t hit me,” said athlete would not be long for the pro ranks. (They also agreed that if it had been A-Rod instead of Jeter, there probably would have been a lot more discussion, given Rodriguez’s past indiscretions, but that’s another story.)
That’s what really got me thinking: where is the ethical ledge that one steps off from youth sports into the higher levels? We try to teach our kids to be good sports and do the right thing… but only up to a point. Does that mean it’s okay to follow the rules as long as the games don’t really count for anything?
Many words have been written about this fine line. Joshua Prager based his 2006 book The Echoing Green: The Untold Story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World on whether baseball’s most dramatic home run was abetted by an elaborate system of stealing signals. Dan Gutman devoted a whole volume to the many ways to circumvent the rules in It Ain’t Cheating If You Don’t Get Caught (1990), a veritable primer on how to get by.
There’s playing the game on the field as it’s meant to be done, and then there’s playing the game by looking for the loopholes. Who’s going to step up and determine which is the right way to play “America’s Game?”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

If you liked Rovian anti-gay marriage referendums, the Terry Schiavo saga, anti-abortion litmus tests for diplomatic service in a war zone, and creationism in the Grand Canyon bookstore, you’ll love this season’s Tea Party candidates.
Why are we just getting the bulletin about “social conservatives” in the Tea Party movement? The media, beguiled by the period costumes and libertarian theatrics of the Tea Party demonstrations, overlooked from the very beginning the influence of veteran Christian rightwing activists within it. But read between the lines and you’ll find clues that the Christian Right has been in the Tea Party trenches from the start. A few examples:
USA Today illustrates a report on the Tea Party movement’s seven defining attitudes with a photograph of a Tea Partier holding his gigantic family bible. Their poll (with Gallup). however, doesn’t ask a single question about social issues.
An April New York Times poll notes that Tea Partiers are more conservative on social issues than other Republicans, only to dismiss the point as irrelevant.
A brilliant article by historian Jill Lepore profiles Christen Varley, president of the Boston Tea Party. Varley says she’s new to politics. But she is a home-schooling parent, and works for the Coalition for Marriage and Family, a nonprofit formed to try to get a same-sex marriage ban on the ballot. Home-schooling and anti-gay groups are two of the most important sites of political activism in the Christian Right, though you wouldn’t know it from the article.
The successful Tea Party candidates reveal how vital social conservatism is to Tea Party voters. Would-be GOP Senators Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell are bona fide Christian zealots. “The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. You can’t masturbate without lust!” according to O’Donnell, during her stint as the founder and president of the abstinence group, Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth. Angle put her name in the ’90s to medieval-themed screeds against gays, and famously said that teen rape and incest victims “can turn a lemon situation into lemondade.” In Alaska, an onerous anti-abortion ballot measure helped drive up turnout for Joe Miller. Colorado’s Ken ‘Vote-for-me-because-I-don’t-wear-high-heels’ Buck favors a state Personhood amendment, an anti-abortion measure which would effectively outlaw many common forms of birth control. Likewise, he favors a “much closer relationship” between church and state and turning over government services to faith-based groups.
And then there are Sarah Palin’s ‘mama grizzlies’ — Carly Fiorina (CA), Nikki Haley (SC), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Christine O’Donnell (DE), and Angle (NV). What they have in common is not a ginned up conservative feminism, nor anti-government populism, but rather a common mission to legislate traditional Christian values. Each one plans to make abortion illegal and man the barricades against gay marriage. O’Donnell, Angle, and Palin have been vocal about how their conservative Christian faith shapes their political beliefs. Haley, faced with a difficult primary race, soft-pedaled her Sikh upbringing and testified to and “living in Christ every day.”
In this season of the libertarians, even the one genuine article, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, would like to put the government back in your bedroom.
By their enemies you shall know them. The Tea Party’s targets reveal even more about the primacy of social issues. Charlie Crist is a solid fiscal conservative, but has socially liberal inclinations. The Tea Party almost took down Mark Kirk, a pro-choice Republican with a decent chance of winning Obama’s former Senate seat. Mike Castle’s fatal act, according to Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council, was to author “left and lefter” legislation on stem-cell research.
So why did the Christian Right flock to the Tea Party movement, and what explains their libertarian posturing? To survive after Bush, the Christian Right had to rebrand and lay low. That’s nothing new. When Clinton took office, as I detail in my forthcoming book, Christian Right operatives were explicit–among themselves–that their recovery depended on deception. As Ralph Reed, head of the Christian Coalition, put it:
In joining the Tea Party movement as a silent partner, today’s Christian Right is taking a page from an old playbook–the one that ushered the GOP back into power in 1994 and in 2000.
Yet signs are emerging that veteran Christian Right leaders have become so confident they’ve decided to come out of the closet and claim their right to dictate terms to the GOP. First there was Glenn Beck’s emphasis on faith, not politics, at his August rally. He and Palin struck the same notes at their Alaskan 9/11 commemoration. That same weekend, top Republican strategists convened for Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Conference and Strategy Briefing. At the conference, weathervane Gingrich predicted that the “election of 2010 and 2012 will be a referendum on values.”
Of course there are genuine and sincere small government, fiscally conservative, quasi-libertarians in the Tea Party. With the faithful claiming power, however, tensions have flared. A Quinnipiac poll suggests that the Christian rightwingers will prevail: Born-again evangelicals are the most dissatisfied group in the nation, and the group most likely to say they would vote for a Tea Party candidate. The GOP knows well that Christian conservatives are their most reliable constituency, and won’t cross evangelicals simply to hold onto the handful of votes wielded by libertarians.
History shows that when the Christian rightwingers control the GOP, the voters recoil, and Democrats win. As the mirth over O’Donnell’s anti-masturbation video subsides, attention is finally turning to the real Tea Party, and its extremism on abortion, gay marriage, the family, religion, and sexuality in general. It’s none too soon. Half the electorate is still undecided or knows little about the Tea Party. There’s still time to get the word out. But only just.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

I am as American as it gets and a bit too Texan for my liking: “y’all” occasionally creeps into my colloquialisms. But originally, my family hails from Pakistan. In my culture, we have a great love of carpets. Carpets, spicy food and colorful, kaleidoscopic clothes with too much bling. Yes, it isbecause of the fine embroidery, but mostly it is becausesome carpets can take generations to make. Between the carefully knotted silk threads you will find our family histories. Carpets function as anything from a prayer mat to a dining table, but really, they are breathing, animated family photo albums.
My mother taught me how to shop for carpets:
Double-knotted are always woven tighter. Each knot carries the burden of the other, so the carpet will last longer if it is tightly interwoven.
Make sure the colors are made from vegetable dye and not chemicals. Natural is always better.
An intricate design doesn’t make a fine carpet. Simple is more meaningful.
Look at the back, not just the front. It’s where you can see the carpet’s depth and it’s where the character lies.
The carpet should not be perfect. Flaws indicate that it is man-made. Asymmetry makes it valuable and lends it authenticity. Some flaws will make you cringe, but they are a reflection of humanity.
The rug is not just for you to place in your living room, or to be trampled upon by high heels at a cocktail party while people swirl martinis. Women have sewn their lives into it. They have whispered about their husbands, gossiped about in-laws, and exchanged riveting hopes and dreams while their fingers diligently worked the loom. Take your shoes off and don’t tread heavily. Respect their stories.
As I left Afghanistan, I felthow humans are woven together — sometimes a bit too closely, sometimes not closely enough. I realized that this stunning tapestry of life we find ourselves in unravels when we are not intricately enmeshed. There is a sense of camaraderie amongst my patients — that sentiment that I will carry you, and you will carry me. It is something we could all stand to learn from. Each knot carries carries the burden of the other, so the carpet will last longer if it is tightly interwoven.
We cannot come to the negotiating table with false promises, fake alliances and mouths full of venom. It takes genuine, wholesome attitudes of sincerity to make honest deals that will pave the way for progress. Natural is always better.
I recently assisted in a surgical procedure in Kabul on a young boy. The chief surgeon was an Afghan man. I didn’t know how he would respond to a woman in the operating theatre with him. At the start of the case, our fierce Asian eyes met over surgical masks. He handed me the scalpel and stepped aside from the patient, offering me the prestigious first cut on the patient. The simple, powerful gesture showed his immense respect for me and his willingness to yield to an outsider, not to mention a female physician. Simple is more meaningful.
The back is where the depth is. It is not in burqas or in the front page news. It is in the details: the back stories of women helping other women succeed, or how Afghan doctors extended their hospitality to a Pakistani-American, or how Pakistan’s borders are open to offer medical care to Afghan children. It’s in the story of a widow who buries her ten children, but also in the one where a young Afghan couple in love rejoices at the birth of their daughter. It’s when Afghan doctors are ecstatic over a few medical textbooks an American doctor bought for them. It’s in the fact that everyone is a victim, but no Afghan is consumed by their victimhood.
The chronicles of Afghanistan will continue long after military forces withdraw. It is up to us to decide whose narrative we choose to engrave in our carpets. We cannot continue to paint this region with broad strokes of rhetoric akin to re-runs of Three’s Company: massive amounts of chaos and confusion (Jack), interjected with a few sleazy references to women (Larry), some emotional blackmail (oh-so-cute-Chrissy), and a smart alec quote (Janet), followed by a hollow, yet authoritative one by a General (Mr. Furley). Afghanistan has more substance than “X amount of people killed again in Blank-abad Province,” and a cliched reference to Alexander the Great and the Soviet invasion. Tread lightly and respect their stories.
Some flaws will make you cringe, but they are a reflection of humanity. I struggle with the idea of sharing my faith with a people whose vision of Islam is vastly different than mine. Until we Muslims collectively recognize that our religion is being raped by zealots who are ignorant of the progressive texts of Islam, all our future holds is more atrocities committed in the name of Islam.
The flaws lend a degree of authenticity. There is something to be said for my Afghan colleagues who initially suspected I was a Pakistani spy, but who later realized that I was just a doctor treating Afghan children. As much as I complain, I like having to prove myself to the Afghan people. I respect the fact that they are a bit suspicious and that their threshold for fake niceties is low. I enjoy rising to the occasion to prove that my intentions are pure, and not poisoned by ulterior motives. I admire the intelligence it takes to cultivate such a seasoned litmus test for people. Their refined radar for artificiality resonates with me.
As I close this chapter in Afghanistan, I hope I have approached my medical work and my writing with a sense of responsibility. I hope I have told a few Afghans’ stories with truth and allowed their dignity to flicker through, that I have done their magnificent and inspiring stories justice.
I chose pediatrics because I wanted to advocate for a forgotten population, and perhaps I was a delusional, young hippie when I thought I could be the voice for the voiceless. Shoved to the periphery, children are the most marginalized demographic of the world’s population, but also the most insightful. My pediatric patients are the colors in this great tapestry and without them, there would be no vibrance, no depth to my life. Natural, simple, and innately keen judges of character, children have taught me more and healed my heart more than I could ever hope to do for them. They understand things we struggle with, like dying young. “I’ve been chosen to leave this world early because the walk home is easier when you are younger. I have less suitcases than you grown-ups,” one of my patients with cancer once told me. She was 9 years old. They get it, more than we ever will.
Now back in the U.S., I am honored to have received several letters from my Afghan colleagues asking me to hurry back. We are woven together now. The way to keep this great carpet brilliant and strong for decades is to continue to hold the Afghans up, to continue to advocate for their children. We must do more than begrudgingly allow them a few crumbs from the table. We must sit on their floors with them, drink their teas, eat together, share tales of our families, and shower affection on their children. When we step up to the plate we will we be accepted as friends and more importantly, sewn into the tapestry of their lives. If we can weave our stories together tightly enough, what a magnificent carpet we would share – one we could all be proud of, and one that holds tender tales that we can pass on to many generations.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Can you believe it was 25 years ago that Donna Karan left Anne Klein to strike out on her own? She revolutionized fashion by really tackling the body at a woman’s most vulnerable… the breasts, the waist, the hips… She has always worked her magic to either disguise or accent a woman’s body in fabrics that move and drape to work magic. But in her 25th year, this Spring collection is not about the hard-edged NYC woman dressed in black riding around looking sultry in the back of a black limo, a la 80′s Donna ads. Instead, it’s all honey, ivory, crinkly, soft… so rumpled that you can take it out of any suitcase and look purposely “unswept” and thus sexy. Yep, that unswept, je ne sais quoi look is the collection’s thing. See for yourself.
Hey, did I mention? Her pal Susan Sarandon, who was there, told me, “this is one woman who knows how to design for women.”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Atlantic City, NJ — Dreams without passion are useless. That’s fantasy. That’s a waste of time.
Raised in the infamous North End, a section of Atlantic City blanketed with poverty and hopelessness, riddled with drugs and violence, young John Paxton saw up-close how quickly passion dies and dreams fade away. He saw it everywhere, every day. But John had two good parents and some good luck. At Rutgers University, then as a writer and a filmmaker, his dreams did not die. They grew larger. Now John Paxton has returned to Atlantic City with a really huge dream.
“The arts are a way out,” John’s soft dark eyes burn with intensity, “my dream is to make a film and music festival in my hometown. This is about community, about place. It’s not about money and fame. It’s about making a bridge out for the kids.”
The inaugural Atlantic City International Film and Music Festival was held from Wednesday to Sunday with venues at Bally’s, Caesars, Harrahs, and Showboat Casinos. The number of attendees was not as large as hoped, the more than 80 films and nearly 20 musical groups varied in quality, the festival’s organization made some mistakes. But this first festival was not about hitting a home, it was about laying a foundation.
“Next year,” Paxton proclaimed at the Awards ceremony, “our festival will be bigger and better. This is just the beginning. The beginning to reinvigorate the arts and culture for young people who live in Atlantic City and who come to this city.” Next year, Paxton went on to say, jazz will be added to the rock and hip-hop. And later, possibly, a red carpet will be laid on the boardwalk with search lights shooting into the night sky for arriving guests. After all, this is Atlantic City.
Settings are important for film festivals. The Woodstock Film Festival utilizes the beautiful fall foliage of the Catskill Mountains, the Woods Hole Fest Film Festival offers popular Cape Cod during the summer. Both are excellent festivals enhanced by their locations. Top-tier fest Sundance is in the snowy Rockies, which seems to only elevate the intensity of America’s premier festival. Prestigious Telluride is in the summer Rockies, the gorgeous mountain scenery enhancing contemplation.
But Atlantic City is about rolling the dice and jumping into the ocean. Atlantic City has an army of homeless beggars who hit the night boardwalk. Crime is rampant in Atlantic City. The police union erected a billboard saying the resort was not safe. As for the glitter and the fun, they are locked in the mammoth self enclosed casinos, fortresses in a struggling city, hope surrounded by despair. The good is also locked in the ancient memories of old folks who remember an earlier Atlantic City. Today the city’s reputation can be summed up two words: greed and sleaze. This heavy materialism and pervasive plight makes Atlantic City a tough setting for a film and musical festival.
Falling into two soft cavernous chairs in the Blue Martini lounge, with slot machines pinging-panging on Bally’s casino floor — a sudden a roar, probably from a craps table — John says the advice he has received has been mostly negative. He ticks off a litany of reasons why others say he should not be doing what he is doing: “This is a gaming place… people here aren’t interested in cultural events… there was a film festival before and it failed… the town is downright dangerous…”
But his enthusiasm is not dampen, not in the least. And it has reasons. “Atlantic City is no longer the exclusive gambling center for the region,” he points out. “There is now gambling in Philadelphia, New York, Delaware. And there is online gambling. So Atlantic City can’t survive on only gambling. It needs to capture new markets, it needs new events. A film and music festival can bring more people to Atlantic City.”
John envisions people in the morning going to the beach, after lunch seeing a movie at the festival, in the late afternoon hitting a casino, after dinner talking a stroll on the boardwalk and then listening to live music at the festival, and finally returning to the casino for some late night gambling. Beach and boardwalk and casino intermingled with films and music. While highlighting Atlantic City as an entertainment hub that includes more than gambling, includes the arts, there would be a forum for independent filmmakers and musicians to showcase their talents.
Since Atlantic City has more than 30 million visitors a year — it’s the fourth-largest destination stop in the United States, after Las Vegas, New York and Orlando — John Paxton is betting a sliver of these millions of visitors want more than gambling and beach.
Not unexpectedly, our conversation weaves back to what fires John’s passion — “the youth of Atlantic City … the neighborhood I came from… the lack of viable alternatives for the kids… the power of art.” His large body inches forward, eyes narrow, his intensity level takes a wild jump: “This will be a festival that is a bridge to a better world.”
For more than three decades, since casino gambling was legalized in Atlantic City, the impoverished residents of this seaside resort have been waiting for a better life. For the vast majority, certainly for the downtrodden living in the North End, a better life has not arrived. With the lingering economic recession and increased competition from regional gambling casinos, bad has turned to worse. Dreams are dying even faster. The youth are increasingly viewing crime as the only alternative. John Paxton, however, sees another way out. That is his dream. That is his passion. It’s called the Atlantic City International Film and Music Festival.
Click here for the Atlantic City International Film and Music Festival.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

That’s why it was so critical to take down what became the “Walmart” of child prostitution and sex trafficking online. It is now less convenient, easy, and normative to sell girls online.
We can obfuscate the dirty little secret in America that girls are being sold for sex on a legitimate website like Craigslist, and on streets. We can make ourselves feel comfortable by talking about the girls who are prostituted in India and Thailand as victims of sex trafficking, but cast aside the girls sold off of Craigslist as “hookers” or just bad girls.
We can neatly gloss over the ugly business of commercial sexual exploitation that disfigures the lives of poor and undereducated girls, who are usually Black or Brown, as just being about escort services, or the choice work of some sexually free-thinking graduate students. And we can talk about the first amendment rather than the human rights issue of American children being bought and sold for sex.
Or, we can start asking the very difficult question of why in 21st century America, any girl is for sale?

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com