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What can progressives and Democrats do about the anti-Washington tide sweeping the country? The economy certainly isn’t going to get much better before the November election.
One practical and symbolic thing they could do is to pass the Fair Elections Now Act,
which likely to be voted out of committee next Thursday. The Act, sponsored by Rep. John Larsen of Connecticut, with 165 co-sponsors and at least 40 more supporters, would give matching money to candidates who agreed to raise only small donations. It even has three Republican co-sponsors.
The right as well as the left is disgusted with corporate domination of our politics, a system where elected officials spend more and more of their time raising money. We’re not going to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision any time soon, allowing unlimited sums to be spent on soft money. But at least we can drastically reduce the self-interested money that goes directly to candidates.
So far in this election cycle, House and Senate candidates have raised $1.2 billion dollars, and the money arms-race only grows.
Under the proposed Act, a candidate who raised small donations from at least 1,500 small donors contributing no more than $100 each for a total of at least $50,000 could get matching money, at a 4-to-1 ratio.
As much as $3 million in public financing would be available — enough to be competitive on most House races. The money wouldn’t come from tax dollars, but from a special levy on the auctioning of broadcast spectrum, something that belongs to the citizens of the United States.
As a money-and-politics reform, this legislation is a vast improvement on the so called Disclose Act, which Republicans blocked last July. That bill would have provided more complete public disclosures about the sources of funds but did nothing to limit the dependence on special interest money. Many progressives opposed the Disclose Act because it wasn’t really campaign finance reform — and to add insult to injury it included special exemptions for the National Rifle Association.
The task of progressives is to address voter discontent with business as usual, and break it into understandable issues. Like votes drawing the line against cutting Social Security benefits, or offering tax relief to the middle and working class but not the rich, the Fair Elections Now legislation is a good way to smoke out differences between Democrats and Republicans and to disentangle the general backlash against “Washington.” Any incumbent Republican who votes against this reform should be ashamed to face voters.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is said to be torn about whether to schedule a floor vote on this bill. On the one hand, she is a strong supporter of clean elections reform and appreciates the value of the bill. On the other hand, she wants to wrap up House business so that her endangered colleagues can get home to campaign.
But progressives need more ammunition to campaign on, and this is another of those reform measures that remind voters why Washington is not one undifferentiated mess. It will take more than this to get big money out of politics, but it’s certainly a good start.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His new book is “A Presidency in Peril.”

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Who deserves a tax cut more: the top 2 percent — whose wages and benefits are higher than ever, and among whose ranks are the CEOs and Wall Street mavens whose antics have sliced jobs and wages and nearly destroyed the American economy — or the rest of us?
Not a bad issue for Democrats to run on this fall, or in 2012.
Republicans are hell bent on demanding an extension of the Bush tax cut for their patrons at the top, or else they’ll pull the plug on tax cuts for the middle class. This is a gift for the Democrats.
But before this can be a defining election issue in the midterms, Democrats have to bring it to a vote. And they’ve got to do it in the next few weeks, not wait until a lame-duck session after Election Day.
Plus, they have to stick together (Ben Nelson, are you hearing me? House blue-dogs, do you read me? Peter Orszag, will you get some sense?)
Not only is this smart politics. It’s smart economics.
The rich spend a far smaller portion of their money than anyone else because, hey, they’re rich. That means continuing the Bush tax cut for them wouldn’t stimulate much demand or create many jobs.
But it would blow a giant hole in the budget — $36 billion next year, $700 billion over ten years. Millionaire households would get a windfall of $31 billion next year alone.
And the Republican charge that restoring the Clinton tax rates for the rich would hurt the economy — because it would reduce the “incentives” of the rich (including the richest small business owners) to create jobs — is ludicrous.
Under Bill Clinton and his tax rates, the economy roared. It created 22 million jobs.
By contrast, during George Bush’s 8 years, commencing with his big 2001 tax cut, the economy created only 8 million jobs. And as the new Census data show, nothing trickled down. In fact, the middle class families did far worse after the Bush tax cut. Between 2001 and 2007 — even before we were plunged into the Great Recession — the median wage dropped.
It’s an issue that could also be used to expose the giant chasm that’s opened between the rich and everyone else — aided and abetted by Republican policies. As I’ve noted before, in the late 1970s, the top 1 percent got 9 percent of total national income. By 2007, the top 1 percent got almost a quarter of total national income.
These figures don’t even count in taxes. The $1.3 trillion Bush tax cut of 2001 was a huge windfall for people earning over $500,000 a year. They got about 40 percent of its benefits. The Bush tax cut of 2003 was even better for high rollers. Those with net incomes of about $1 million got an average tax cut of $90,000 a year. Yet taxes on the typical middle-income family dropped just $217. Many lower-income families, who still paid payroll taxes, got nothing back at all.
And, again, nothing trickled down.
As I’ve emphasized, the U.S. economy has suffered mightily from the middle class’s lack of purchasing power, while most of the economic gains have gone to the top. (The crisis was masked for years by women moving into paid work, everyone working longer hours, and, more recently, the middle class going into deep debt — but all those coping mechanisms are now exhausted.) The great challenge ahead is to widen the circle of prosperity so the middle class once again has the capacity to keep the economy going.
In other words, this is the right issue. It’s the right time. It allows Democrats to explain what the Bush tax cuts really did, why supply-side economics is bogus, and the economic challenge ahead.
Even if Democrats feel they have to respond to the Republican charge that taxes shouldn’t be raised on anyone when the employment rate is 9.6 percent, they have a powerful fallback: Extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone through 2011, then end them for the rich while making them permanent for the middle class.
Get it, Democrats? Please don’t blow it this time.
This post originally appeared at robertreich.org

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As 140 heads of state and government gather Monday at the United Nations for the Millennium Development Goals summit, they and the public will ask what has come out of this decade-long effort.
The answer will surprise them: A great deal has been achieved, with some of the most exciting breakthroughs occurring in Africa.
I recall how the Millennium Development Goals were initially greeted with cynicism — as unachievable, pie-in-the-sky, a photo-op rather than a development framework. Cynicism has been replaced by hope, born of experience, commitment and breakthroughs.
Back in 2000, the situation in Africa was widely regarded as hopeless. Roughly half of Africa’s population was living on less than one dollar a day. AIDS, malaria and TB were out of control. Wars were pervasive; Liberia, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Uganda, Somalia, and the biggest of all, Congo, were all entangled in conflicts. The African economies had stagnated or declined for a generation.
When my colleagues and I suggested that AIDS, malaria and other epidemic diseases could be controlled and that Africa’s economic growth could be spurred if the world helped the continent to achieve the Millennium Goals, we were often greeted with derision. Africa, I was told, was simply too violent, too corrupt, too divided to improve.
A decade later, the picture has changed dramatically. AIDS incidence has declined, from an estimated 2.3 million new cases in 2001 to 1.9 million in 2008; longevity has risen tremendously, with millions of Africans now on antiretroviral treatment. Malaria is dropping decisively because of programs to distribute bed nets and provide medicines. Measles deaths fell by 90 percent between 2000 and 2008, before a frustrating uptick this past year when donors mistakenly cut back their financing for immunizations. Primary school net enrollments have risen from 58 percent in 2000 to 74 percent in 2007. Most of Africa’s major wars have subsided.
Africa’s economy has also picked up. During 1990-2000, Africa’s per capita G.D.P. declined by 0.3 percent per year. Between 2000 and 2010, per capita growth was around 3.1 percent per year. And Africa has shown resilience in the current crisis, with this year’s per capita economic growth at around 2.5 percent.
Extreme poverty is declining, though not yet fast enough to meet the MDG targets. The share of the African population in extreme poverty has also declined from around 58 percent in 1999 to probably under 50 percent in 2010.
The Millennium Development Goals themselves deserve a lot of credit by providing a powerful organizing framework and a bold but realistic time horizon.
Dozens of African governments have now adopted national planning strategies based on the Millennium Goals. Nations around the world now have specific, time-bound, outcome-oriented plans that are showing real progress because they are tapping into the synergies of poverty reduction, increased agricultural output, disease control, increased school enrollments and improved infrastructure as targeted by the Millennium Development Goals. The donor countries helped to promote major advances in public health when they created the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations.
China’s economic rise has also pulled up the demand for Africa’s mineral and hydrocarbon resources. China obliged as well by becoming a major funder of Africa’s roads and power networks — critical areas where the United States and Europe have mostly stopped financing investment projects.
Asia and the Middle East more recently have become major markets for Africa’s tropical agricultural output as well. African leaders, such as President Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi, also broke old donor-led shibboleths by establishing new government programs to get fertilizer and high-yield seeds to impoverished peasant farmers who could not afford these inputs. Farm yields soared once nitrogen got back into the depleted soils.
The Millennium Development Goals have always recognized the need for a global partnership to end poverty, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. agencies have been persistent in their support of this ambitious agenda. Ironically, though, the main obstacles to achieving the goals by 2015 in Africa are international in origin, many due to high-income countries.
The first challenge is the donor shortfall in honoring specific financial commitments to Africa. Africa was told in 2005 by its donor partners to expect about $60 billion in financing from all of the world’s governments in 2010, but actual aid is only around $45 billion.
The second is human-induced climate change, another visitation upon Africa from the outside world. The region that has contributed by far the least to human-induced climate change is the one bearing the highest price in terms of drought and crop failures.
The third threat is large-scale corruption, often fueled by major American, European and Asian companies. Of course, it is Africa’s responsibility to resist temptations, but global companies (sometimes with the support or tacit knowledge of governments) must also stop spreading the big dollars around.
The fourth threat is rampant population growth. The Roman Catholic Church, politically powerful throughout the continent, continues its opposition to birth control and family planning.
The fifth threat is trade. Europe and the United States preach free trade, but then close their markets to African agricultural products.
The sixth risk is that of neglect. President Obama has spent only one day in sub-Saharan Africa, and has hardly said a word about the Millennium Goals to the American people. Ironically, it is the precisely the goals themselves, rather than hundreds of billions of dollars of annual military spending, that can offer the U.S. and other countries a path to security in places like Afghanistan, Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
The world leaders will agree on the right principles at the summit: targeted investments for agriculture, education, health, energy and microfinance; gender equality; the complementary roles of development aid, trade and private financing. The real question is whether the rich countries will deliver what they’ve promised in the five remaining years, after having fallen far short in the first 10.
When the donor nations have not just talked but have actually pooled their funds to support the national plans of poor countries, the speed of advance has been breathtaking. The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria is the right model. If donors will match that successful effort with similar pooled support in areas such as smallholder agriculture, primary education, primary health, family planning and infrastructure, Africa’s leaders can do the rest.
On their 10th birthday, the Millennium Development Goals offer the world a realistic path to ending extreme poverty.
This article originally appeared in the International Herald Tribune.

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This was … well … quite a game. Injuries, penalties, backup quarterbacks, a total of eight turnovers — everyone expected the Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Tennessee Titans showdown to be crazy, but through it all, the Steelers defense just wouldn’t quit.
The Steelers hadn’t won in Tennessee since November 25, 2001. And they did it with their fourth-string quarterback.
But the biggest question going into the game was: Can the Steelers contain Titans running back Chris Johnson? He’s had 12 straight 100-yard games. Well, the Steelers put that debate to rest. Johnson ran for only 34 yards on 16 carries. He did have a brilliant 85-yard TD run, but that was called back due to a holding penalty.
Finally, it’s the Steel Curtain all Steelers fans know and love. Things got a little scary toward the end, when during the last minute of the game, Titans backup QB Kerry Collins (oh, more on that later) threw a TD pass to Nate Washington (an ex-Steeler) and got the 2-point conversion. It was the first touchdown the Steelers had given up all season.
Then of course, just to keep things interesting, the Titans recovered the onside kick. But the defense again was formidable and unstoppable, as cornerback Bryant McFadden was able to break up a pass in the endzone meant for Washington, two false starts by the offense broke up their rhythm, and linebacker Lawrence Timmons crushed the hopes of fantasy players everywhere by tackling Johnson after a short reception and ending the game.
But let’s get back to the turnovers. The Steelers had three picks and four fumble recoveries. And they did this all without starting nose tackle Casey Hampton. All the big names stepped up: Troy Polamalu had an incredible interception in the endzone (as well as a perfectly timed jump over the line of scrimmage at the end of the game to stuff Collins for a loss, how insane was that?), James Harrison forced a fumble and recovered another, LaMarr Woodley also earned himself an interception — it was stuff that would bring a tear to any Steelers’ fan eye.
It was the most turnovers the Steelers forced in 13 years, when they caused 7 against Baltimore back in 1997.
Not only did the starting QB for the Titans Vince Young get pulled (he completed 7 for 10 for 66 yards, but also was intercepted twice and fumbled once), but the Steelers’ third-string quarterback Dennis Dixon got injured during the second quarter with a sprained knee, so good ol’ Charlie Batch stepped in. Batch completed 5 for 11 for 25 yards (yep … 11 passes in two and a half quarters). Dixon went 4 for 6 for 18 yards — and he ran for 28 — but also lost a fumble, which was caused by Titans linebacker Will Witherspoon.
With two old-school veteran quarterbacks leading the offense, it became a battle of wills. The Steelers were too afraid to do anything but run (Rashard Mendenhall ran for 69 yards with 23 carries and helped run out the clock), while Collins was intercepted, sacked, and fumbled twice, but ended up throwing for 149 yards and that TD at the end.
There were no style points to be had for the Steelers offense. They had a total of 7 first downs, one due to a penalty. Mike Wallace had 2 catches for 25 yards and was the top Steelers receiver for the day. Needless to say, the Steelers offense struggled, but Batch didn’t commit any turnovers or make any huge mistakes. The Steelers offense had 127 total yards, while the Titans offense racked up 238. Clearly the defense and special teams had the last say in this one.
If your head isn’t spinning yet (mine certainly is, and I can’t even blame it on the beer this time), the Steelers special teams (special teams??) actually helped win the day, with Antonio Brown returning the opening kickoff 89 yards down the field, the Steelers’ only touchdown. When was the last time the Steelers returned a kickoff for a TD? 1955? Then right after that, Steelers rookie linebacker Stevenson Sylvester stripped the ball from Titans rookie Marc Mariani after a 33-yard kick return, which made one thing perfectly clear: This was going to be a ridiculous game. Steelers kicker Jeff Reed, who missed a game-winning field goal last week, was four for four today, so we can now forgive him for that.
The Steelers play the unbeaten Tampa Bay Buccaneers away next week, and who knows who’ll start at quarterback. But, as of right now, the Steelers are #1 in the AFC North and the defense is constantly finding ways to win the game. What will this team look like when Ben Roethlisberger comes back? Only two more games until we all find out …

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Making fun of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party wingnuts has been fun, granted. And it’s given Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert lots of great material. But maybe it’s time to re-assess all this.
I now cover Canada for MarketWatch.com, and having lived in that country, Stewart’s announcement of an Oct. 30 rally certainly had the echoes of mild-mannered Canadians:
Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity” and “Million Moderate March” and the faux newscaster’s plea to “Take It Down a Notch, America,” plus his assurance that the Washington, D.C., rally would end at 6 p.m. “because some of us have sitters” sounded more than a bit like a polite request from a Canadian.
Stewart has some of the best writers on television, but his tempered “rallying cry” also made some of the sharpest political observations of this current overheated election season — the kind of salient observations political columnists once made but are now reticent to, for fear of losing access to sources.
Stewart held up some suggested signs for his let’s-all-just-calm-down rally, including this classic: “I Disagree With You But I’m Pretty Sure You’re Not Hitler.”
Stewart also posted this Canadian-like “rallying cry” at his website:
Meanwhile, Stewart’s pal/alleged nemesis Stephen Colbert, was promoting his “March to Keep Fear Alive” counter-rally that day in D.C.
Colbert’s writers have also been busy cranking out funny and insightful material about the cable-news-induced overheated rhetoric of this political season. This, from Colbert’s website:
This year’s political silly season is even sillier than most, and reminds me of a great line that probably cost Canada’s first female Prime Minister, the sharp-witted Kim Campbell, her job (she lasted as PM only four months in 1993.)
“A Federal election,” she quipped, “is hardly the time to discuss issues of substance.”
Most Canadian voters apparently missed the joke. Campbell was voted out.
Treating Glen Beck rallies and the Tea Party as comedy gold is doubtless funny – or, as Canadians might put it, most amusing.
But progressive radio talk host and HuffPost blogger Norman Goldman said something on his nationally syndicated show the other day that caught my attention.
“We have to stop treating Sarah Palin as a joke,” Goldman said. “She could cause real damage to our democracy.”
I treat most politicians today as a joke, especially Palin. But Goldman has me thinking about re-evaluating this. What many of us have been treating as a joke has the potential to become a tragedy.
Neither I nor hardly anyone I know would ever vote for Palin or her nutty acolytes. Same is true in the town where I live.
But a recent trip to a popular National Park brought me abruptly back into the general public I’ve avoided for years.
Many of these chronically under-informed, ill-educated people love Palin.
And because of this, it’s no longer so easy to laugh her off.

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Tadeusz Sudol is a renowned architect working with a prestigious Manhattan firm. He also presides over his local art gallery, RIVAA. Above and beyond that, he is an exceptionally talented artist. In the past, he has focused on drawing the human form. His latest project was capturing the multi-colored Roosevelt Island Tram in a show called “Past and Future,” the exhibition of which opened this weekend.
I asked Tad, who lives on Roosevelt Island, what had inspired him to capture the brilliant colors of the tram’s mechanisms. He told me:
Architect, artist, photographer and RIVAA president Tad Sudol speaking about his work at the Opening of the show “Roosevelt Island Tram – Past and Future.”
The Roosevelt Island Tram featured in the show closed in March for modernization. It originally connected the island to the Upper East Side in 1976. Its colorful mechanical parts, captured brilliantly by Tad, are responsible for having moved over 26 million passengers since inception. It makes 115 trips per day when in operation, carrying up to 125 people each time. Granted access to the trams mechanical rooms, before and during reconstruction, Tad was able to take photographs of settings never publicly available.
“After more than 30 years, the machine room was so well kept,” he says. “Everything was still clean, almost like it just opened.” His photographs faithfully reflect that observation. Brightly colored wheels with complex cables wrapped tautly through their grooves offer poetic images of simple mechanical workings that look ready to carry on into a 35th year. This show manages to uplift mechanics into art, as creative constructions that allows us to imagine an improving future.
I also live on Roosevelt Island. I explain where I live in New York City, as I travel the world, in terms of the 2002 movie Spider-Man. Globally, people remember that our tram was featured prominently in the climactic battle in which the villain throws the heroine off the Queensboro Bridge, and Spider-Man must choose between saving her or passengers on the tramway.
More than two hundred New Yorkers turned out on Sept. 11 to celebrate the city’s arts.
Tad serves as president of the Roosevelt Island Visual Artists Association (RIVAA), following in the footsteps of Arline Jacoby. RIVAA established its ambitious gallery on Roosevelt Island as a gateway between Manhattan and Queens, P.S. 1 and the Noguchi and Socrates Park in 2002. RIVAA’s original aim was to bring world class art to Roosevelt Island and revitalize the economic environment through the arts. Tad’s show illustrates their success.
RIVAA today has several dozen active members and is open to all visual artists in the community. They are comprised of painters, sculptors, photographers, installation artists, computer imaging artists, graphic artists, and ceramists from the Island, but also from the outer boroughs, Manhattan, and even Westchester County. Shows are juried and curated by professional artists.
The Roosevelt Island Visual Art Association (RIVAA) which hosted the show is a non-profit organization comprised of an internationally diverse group of artists. RIVAA is dedicated to enhancing the quality of life in the community through art, community events and workshops. It is supported by private donations and artist contributions.
Since 2002, more artists each year became involved with Gallery RIVAA, showcasing over eighty different exhibitions including member and guest shows since its founding. Additional gallery space, called Octagon Gallery, is now located in a nearby historic landmark, The Octagon.
Proposed sculpture by Tad Sudol at the Roosevelt Island Motorgate – 3D Rendering.
Living here, I have known and supported Tad and RIVAA since 2002. Every community should have a RIVAA. Indeed, every community needs a Tad. Of Polish descent, Tadeusz Sudol is a thought leader and global citizen in the fields of architecture and the arts. Roosevelt Island — New York City — is fortunate to have him as an Ambassador for Art and Culture, as I am to be his neighbor and friend.
For more on Roosevelt Island, see the websites of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society (RIHS) and the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation (RIOC). See also the R.I. Blog.
Photography by Tadeusz Sudol and Jeremi Sudol.
See also by Jim Luce:
Jim Luce on Art
Jim Luce on Photography
Jim Luce on Roosevelt Island

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Oscar De La Hoya, a man who should know, says that Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (34-0-1 25 KOs) is a matinee idol and a babe magnet. Alvarez, an accomplished pro from Mexico, signed in January, by De La Hoya’s promotions firm, Golden Boy, is a mere 20 years old. His record as a professional is not a mirage nor is it littered with many meaningless fights to beef it up.
With flaming red hair and freckles, Alvarez was given the nickname, Canelo, which means cinnamon, but he could gain a new one if he continues his path through the men in his weight class. Golden Boy Promotions hopes for that and publicly says they expect it.
On Saturday night September 18, Alvarez was the fighter the audience really came to see. The fight card headlined by Shane Mosley vs. Sergio Mora never lived up to the undercard bouts that preceded it. For a report on that fight, click here. The boxing lineup was filled with Mexican and Mexican American fighters as the city of Los Angeles celebrated the bicentennial of Mexico’s independence. Among the many events to mark the occasion was a jammed packed fight card at the Staples Center.
It was a no-brainer to include Canelo who has drawn 63 million people to tune into his fights in his native country. He is dating a former Miss Mexico contestant. Marisol Gonzalez, who got as much attention at ringside as any other celebrity in attendance. Alvarez went pro at 15 years of age and whoever managed him certainly knew how to groom a future champion.
He caught the eye of Golden Boy who showed him off for his U.S. debut in Las Vegas this past May, on the under card for the Mayweather vs. Mosley fight. Canelo stopped Miguel Cotto’s brother, Juan Miguel (31-2-1), in the ninth round by TKO. On the bicentennial card, in a city with a huge Mexican population, Saturday night at Staples Center served as his official coming out party, and he didn’t disappoint.
His opponent, Carlos Baldomir (45-13-6 14 KOs), a former WBC welterweight champion, who at 39 hoped he had one more shot at a title in him, found out he didn’t. He was crushed by the young Mexican with a blow at 2:58 of the sixth round after absorbing a lot of punishment that required the services of the ring physician. Afterward, Baldomir said, “It is true that he hits very hard, He is the real deal. No one has hit me like he has.”
The spectators in attendance were ecstatic and the chants of “Canelo, Canelo, Canelo”, that had rung out throughout the bout, continued even after he left the arena. In fact, with the Mosley vs. Mora fight grinding along, the crowd started calling for the red-haired winner again. When Alvarez emerged from the training room for a sit-down with Mexican media, you might not have known that the main event was still in progress.
It was an impressive showing and a peek at the Canelo-mania that has begun in earnest in the United States.

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It’s time to rethink Sarah Palin. From the moment that Republican presidential candidate John McCain plopped her on his ticket, the supreme article of political faith from all pundits, much of the press, most Democrats, and the GOP establishment has been that Sarah Palin is a laughingstock, a sideshow diversion, an ignoramus on the issues, a gossip and celebrity starved media creation, and, of course, a closet race tinged crowd baiter. The Palin allure is built squarely on elements of these features. But what’s now painfully obvious, is the allure has turned Palin into a political force, threat, and danger.
The millions of Palin loathers gag at the thought of this. But her string of victories by candidates she endorsed in the primaries, and a flip-flop in some polls that now show more people than not say that she should run, and a more than a few say that she should win, have radically changed the game.
The tough to swallow truth is that she has greater national political name recognition than any other Republican and that includes her former ticket head, McCain. She energizes and rallies conservatives, and polls say more Americans self-identify themselves as conservatives than liberals, let alone progressives. Palin’s motherly, family-values, fundamentalist pitch fascinates even those who personally detest her message. This includes much of the Palin obsessed media. Her political ineptness, naivet smacks of a bumbling political innocence that far from being a liability endears her to throngs. This makes her the hot ticket item she is on the media and lecture circuit. It also now has more GOP candidates and some incumbents begging her and her Tea Party pals to troop through their neck of the woods and say a word of praise on their behalf.
GOP regulars and political pundits still shrug her off as a possible GOP presidential candidate in 2012. And she’s still a favored running joke of late night comics. But this has endeared her to many as a scorned mother non-politician. That serves to keep her public stock and appeal high. The Christine O’Donnell and Joe Miller GOP senate primary victories in Delaware and Alaska sent her stock through the ceiling.
Palin exploits another feeling that GOP mainstream politicians have been inept, clumsy, or gun shy about exploiting. And that’s race and Obama. During the campaign McCain wisely declared that off-limits. But Palin didn’t. She quickly trotted out the GOP’s old reliable playbook of racially tinged code words, phrases, and digs at Obama, “paling around with terrorists,” and “This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America.” Far from turning voter’s heads in disgust and revulsion at the word play, they got rousing cheers whenever she spewed them out on the campaign stump.
That sent the signal that there were millions of voters who would never accept an Obama presidency, no matter what he said, or did, and no matter how well he said or did it. They just simply could not stomach the idea of a black man in the White House, and they would go to any lengths to get him out of there. But to make the counter assault on Obama work, it would take a media savvy and manipulative, galvanizing figurehead to rev up the crowds, and a vehicle to organize them once they were revved up. Palin and the Tea Party were the manna from above to try and accomplish that. Even while the much of the press and the pundits continued to bash her harder than any GOP candidate since Hoover Herbert during the presidential campaign, the crowds that wildly cheered her didn’t slack up one bit. And neither did the endless refrain from the Palin cheerleaders that she was one of us. And since winning elections is still as much about which candidate can win the hearts not the heads of the voters, Palin was clearly the one who could tug at the voter’s heart strings.
The final vote result proved it. Despite the colossal baggage McCain and the GOP carried, and colossal advantages Obama and the Democrats had, the majority of white moderate and conservative voters, and a large segment of young whites and independents still voted for McCain. In the nearly two years since Obama’s election, Palin has been the GOP stalking horse to stampede the herd of moderates and conservative independents even further away from Obama.
The Palin success in grabbing headlines, firing up anti-Obama mania, and snapping the heads of the GOP establishment to attention hasn’t been lost on Palin. She’s adroitly moved her game plan to the next level, and has extended the Olive Branch to the GOP mainstream with saccharine public appeals for the party to make peace and target Democrats for the boot in November. Her party unit pitch is aimed at doing one thing, and that’s to bring her in from the fringe cold and establish her as a worthy, even credible, presidential candidate in 2012. So far she’s done everything else right, and there’s no reason to think that she won’t make some headway on this either. This horrific possibility is more than enough cause to rethink Palin.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a nationally broadcast political affairs radio talk show on Pacifica and KTYM Radio Los Angeles.
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Democrats may have finally caught a break in 2010. As the Sunday morning political shows, a civil war may erupt in the GOP after the defeat of both Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware and Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. These are good, solid, experienced GOP candidates. Mainstream Republicans are mad as hell, and are finally not going to take it anymore.
The New York Times talks about the divisiveness propped up by Republicans operatives like Sal Russo who got his start with former President Ronald Regan. If the Dems can get their messaging organized, now is the moment to use folks like Colin Powell – the King of Moderation for the GOP. These Tea Party candidates do not represent the majority in the Republican Party, but they are winning these late primaries. There is opportunity to coalesce around issues: unemployment, TARP, health care and many other issues if we seize the moment and clarify the message.
You know there is something up when former President Bill Clinton is carted out to speak to the public on multiple programs. Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell’s primary win over favorite Republican Rep. Mike Castle in Delaware may be the tipping point. Let’s stay tuned.
Check out the references for this article at the pearltree below.
Dems Catch Break

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First an apology that I dropped off the face of the planet last week and was unable to rubberneck Episode 7. Real life and my job intervened as I had to leave town for a few days for a certain Film Festival taking place in a border country. Suffice it to say that, although I felt sure it was inevitable, I felt bad to see Casanova go. He brought a certain je ne sais quoi? to the show that was quite hilarious. Also I very much enjoyed seeing Michael Kors make the rounds with Tim in the workroom. He seemed to be in his element with that added dimension and was completely engaged in the critiques. It was kinda fun to watch. And April’s win was nice. Her black gothy babydoll outfit was cute, even if it did look like Bonjour, Tristesse on acid.
This week the show begins with everyone (ok, Ivy and Michael D) tweezing their eyebrows in their pocket hand mirrors. Michael C dishes on Ivy to Andy and honestly, I can no longer feel sorry for him as he appears to be waxing more devilish by the day. A little faux Bo Diddley beat is the musical bed as the designers leave their digs for Parsons to hear about their newest challenge. Gretchen to camera: “You never know what’s going to happen on this show. All I know is I don’t want to be forced into making a corset.”
Gretchen’s corset face
The group joins Tim who is standing in front of a collage of photos of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in different outfits. La Gunn explains that their challenge this week is to create a look that is your own take on classic American sportswear, using Jackie O as their inspiration. They’ll have 30 minutes to sketch and a budget of $150 at Mood to shop with. Interesting. Whereas Peach might have actually shone at this, this group doesn’t have Jackie O’s aesthetic ingrained into their personal zeitgeist. Good thing they have the collage up there on the wall to refer to.
By the way I need to divulge here that Mondo (swoon) is nattily attired today in a red and black striped sweater and the cutest black and white tights. See below.
Christopher feels he has it in the bag, because classic American sportswear is what he does. Andy’s worried that his aesthetic is imbued with Asian influences which might not mix well in this particular challenge (duh) but Jackie O was a risk-taker without even knowing it (his words) so “it’s going to be a statement piece.”
Tim reminds them before he lets them loose at Mood to “think quality taste style sophistication elegance…expensive.” Mondo reminds us that the fabrics speak to him, “those bolts of fabric have voices and they say come over and pick me up and I usually do.” This time he hears the dulcet tones of a bright purple and black houndstooth and I like where he’s going with this. Meanwhile, at the cash register, Michael D is having second thoughts, which never portends well: “Crap! Did I make the right choice?”
Back in the workroom, Michael C is hamming it up in the sewing room with a swath of gold fabric around his head, very Sophie’s Choice meets September Issue. “I think it’s very Jackie O, don’t you?” he giggles. Full disclosure: I’m really over him, and wouldn’t care a fig if he was ejected at this point.
Gretchen’s oversharing as usual, this time she’s “concerned” about Mondo’s look. She feels that because of the materials he chose, he “might not be hitting the nail on the head with this one.” (Snicker…sorry, can’t help it given the eventual end of this episode). Meanwhile Mondo is worried about his original design so he decides to make a skirt and top instead.
Michael D opines that “this is either going to be really good or really bad.” He doesn’t like sportswear so wants to make a look that is a little dressier using sportswear fabric. Oh, my. I really don’t like where this is going. Meanwhile Valerie is hysterical over his quips. “He’s the funny that I wish I could be.”
“For this challenge I decided to channel the earliest Americans – the Puritans,” Michael D intones (still sporting his Butterfly McQueen headscarf by the way), pretending he’s defending himself before the judges. His outfit is looking more and more like a 1960′s version of Big Love, sans bonnet (Also, per Christopher, The Crucible). “I’m not sure what’s going on but I really really don’t care at this point because I think I’m losing my mind.”
Valerie tells us that she feels like she is “the Susan Lucci of the show. I’ve been in the top like four times and have not won a challenge yet.” Sadly I feel Valerie’s glory days are behind her after the last few weeks, and she has to really step it up to matter again. I no longer feel like she’ll make it to the end, though I hope she makes a turnaround. Mondo tells the camera that Valerie has to get feedback from everyone on her work and her design decisions, which is the kiss of death. Confidence is everything on this show (and in life, come to think of it).
Ivy thinks that some of the other contestants “don’t really know what sportswear is.” “To me Michael C’s look looks very cocktail and I would have to say the same thing for Christopher’s.” Meanwhile Michael C is draping the aforementioned gold scarf around his blue backless dress and asking Andy, “That looks too flight attendant stewardess doesn’t it?” Andy says kind of but he’s not all that concerned because it is, after all, a competition. And everyone is still hoping for Michael C to slip up and be gone.
Meanwhile, Andy – oh Andy. He’s working on a pair of huge cargo pants that even he admits he could fit into one leg with his model. He declares, “a fashion forward person takes risks.” Which means he’s going five hundred miles an hour, I guess.
Tim arrives for his mentoring check-in. As he takes a look at Christopher’s form fitting dress, April shares to camera that it looks like her grandmother’s clothes, which I take to mean that her grandmother is very similar to, say, Lily van der Woodsen Bass on Gossip Girl. Tim thinks Valerie’s fitted-almost-a-legging pant could be “pretty vulgar” and she should “be very mindful of the fit.” Michael C has whipped up two dresses because he’s worried that one might be too cocktail but actually they both are and don’t resemble sportswear in the least little bit. OK, we get it – you can sew fast. (Even if Valerie does say later your looks are very Donna Karan).
Tim likes Andy’s experiment, which I have to say is the best word for it. “It’s a very beautifully draped cargo pant. It’s you.” He’s not very into Michael D’s look and we get the famed Tim Gunn hand to mouth face. “I mean, the more I look at this it’s Annie Oakley, it’s Annie Get Your Gun” both references probably zing over Michael D’s head in the same way that Jackie O must have if he really believes she would ever have worn something like this). Michael D comes back with “I don’t want people to think she’s also got a ruler and she beats children, do you know what I’m saying, I mean it could go there” to which Tim doubles over in laughter and then whispers “that could be the other side of her.”
Mondo’s calling his fetching outfit “First Lady Fabric” then “First Tranny.” YES! April shares that Jackie Kennedy would never wear Andy’s weird pants. “I don’t care what time period it is.” Late in the day Exhaustion Giggles are setting in as Andy puts a black lace mask around Michael D’s eyes. “Michael Drummond, I can’t tell if I should be harvesting wheat, or smacking you with it,” Gretchen intones, channeling La Klum. “All of a sudden, it’s Prairie Home Sex Shop.”
Ivy is so behind with everything she can’t even give her model something to try on, and her buddy Gretchen tells the camera that she thinks Ivy is a “beautiful tailor,” but doesn’t think of her as “one of the more forward designers in the room.” I’m now allowing myself to fantasize about the next season when the show will no doubt have Gretchen blog episodes in the same way that Laura Bennett is doing now. That will be worth reading, n’est ce pas?
When our little friends rise and shine for the runway day the next morning, April thinks the girls are all in the clear, and that Andy’s look is “more Jackie Yo! than Jackie O.” Michael C is buttering Andy up by telling him that the judges will think if Jackie O was alive today, she’d probably wear pants like Andy’s because she was such a risk-taker. Yeah, right.
Mondo, meanwhile, is dressed in a pink shirt and tie, a denim vest, and a cute little blue knit newsboy cap. His roommates, Michael D and Christopher, think he kind of looks like Jackie O “if she came back as a tranny.” And off they go to Parsons.
As the usual runway morning madness ensues, Tim enters the room to make an announcement. “I’m so happy about this little twist you have no idea!” It turns out they have to create an outerwear item to go with their look, 15 minutes of sketch time and another budget of $150 for Mood. Michael D is pleased because as a knitwear designer, “I am Captain Outerwear” (remember this later).
Mondo’s not hearing the fabrics talk too clearly this time. He’s a little bit deer in the headlights. Michael C picks out a roll of fabric and Gretchen comes over and takes it right out of his hands, saying, “I’m grabbing that actually.” The color is oatmeal, which may as well be renamed Gretchen, since it’s a staple of her palette. Michael C tells the camera he could have been a bitch about her grabbing the fabric out of his hands, but he rises above that kind of stuff. Christopher is having a crisis de coeur about using leather, but he thinks it’s his only option as the other stuff he could use for a shrug looks too cheap. He later wonders if the leather was male or female, and reveals he has never sewn leather before.
Gretchen likes Michael D’s jacket on top of his Big Love skirt which tells me he is irrevocably doomed. (Spoiler alert – he is). Michael C made a beige jacket but he feels it looks like a terrycloth towel so he has to make another look. Gretchen tells the camera that in every challenge, Michael C creates multiple outfits and waits until Tim comes in and tells him what to do. “He has no conviction or vision.” Mondo feels like Harry Potter as he tries out the cape cloak he made. Christopher: “You are Harry Potter.”
Tim Time. He is very concerned about Michael D’s skirt. “I had it on my model yesterday and it looked really good,” says MD. Tim obviously does not believe this. “It did? The skirt?” He shakes his head and puts his head in his hand. Michael D reveals to us the Gauges of Tim Gunn.
There’s this one
This one
And this one
To Andy, Tim kvells, “this is the most you you’ve been all season.” But he is concerned about the crotch. “Jackie Kennedy would not have a camel toe.” Michael C brags that he made three jackets, oh yeah, and three other dresses too. Eyebrows are raised and you could cut the disdain in the air with a pair of pinking shears. Tim tells Christopher that his dress is so form-fitting “it looks kind of anemic.” Christopher tells us “a little piece of my soul is dying every second.”
As runway day dawns, Michael D is freaking. “I don’t want to go home, that’s all I’m asking, please don’t send me home.” Mondo says kindly, “I don’t think you’re going home, Michael Drummond” and tells camera that he thinks Michael D is probably the most artistic designer in the group. (Alas, not this time.) Christopher loves Mondo’s runway day outfit, which is kind of like he stepped out of the Lollipop Guild in the Wizard of Oz. He says it was inspired by the Cotton Club. Michael D says he’ll give him a dollar if he’ll tap dance, so Mondo gives us a little soft shoe. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and suspenders, little black shorts, black and white knee socks, a chunky punky stud bracelet, mascara, and has his hair lacquered in place.
Here’s an awesome gif of Mondo tapdancing created by those fantastically creative people over at Jezebel.
At the workroom, Tim comes in to recite the litany of product placements and send in the models. The usual backbiting and Michael C hating commences, Andy worries about the crotch of his cargo pants not fitting, smokey eyes all around in the makeup room, Christopher worries about the shrug he made, and ten minutes before the runway the zipper in Mondo’s skirt breaks and he almost loses it. Gretchen shares with us that she’s concerned about “50 percent of the room…Andy’s is pure Andy but doesn’t read Jackie at all…Michael C’s is a cocktail dress with a mom jacket over it….Christopher’s outer piece is just odd.” She’s of the mind that more than three could be in the bottom this time.
Hey by the way it looks like some great footage ended up on the cutting room floor this week of Andy trying on April’s look. Quite possibly in the Exhaustion Giggles timeframe last night.
The guest judge this week is Mad Men actress January Jones, who knows a thing or two about period piece clothing, one would think. Heidi starts the show.
CHRISTOPHER
He thinks it hit all the notes and is pleased. I think it’s pretty much a snoozefest but does fit beautifully and the dress, at least, channels Jackie well. You’re cute and safe, CC, and I think there’s something there but in future you better step it up big time to stand out from the madding crowd (And they are. Madding that is).
APRIL
Seems very gothy vampire to me (and very April). She’s happy with it and thinks it fulfilled the challenge. I can’t really see Ms. Onassis in this number at all though perhaps the Vampire Queen of Louisiana from True Blood would like it, but c’est moi. I never thought you’d make it this far, Savannah Girl. I’m watching you closely.
IVY
Ivy’s all puffed up thinking it’s very original, different, expensive looking, even stupendous. It gets the Gretchen seal of approval. The sunglasses and chignon certainly don’t hurt.
MICHAEL C
He’s a little nervous, since it’s clearly a cocktail dress. He thinks the model looks great. Again with the schizoid hem. This is really ugly, and that jacket doesn’t match in the least. Again color me surprised that he gets away with this.
GRETCHEN
She feels good about this, I’m quizzical as to me this is as far off the mark as Andy’s look in a whole different way. January Jones has a bit of a knitted brown in a reaction shot. Earth to Gretchen: get over yourself. Your two wins are now far in the past, and you’re way too obsessed with this beige/oatmeal/fawn palette. The writing’s on the wall, sister.
MICHAEL D
Nina has a face on her you don’t ever want Nina to have – kind of like she’s figuring out a math problem. Michael D must have seen this because he perceptively whispers, Oh God I’m dead, and then Bye Guys to the group. To which they all nervously laugh.
VALERIE
She honestly thinks this looks good. I will now officially declare that my love affair with Valerie’s work is over. Ish! I’m still rooting for you, sort of, and hope you pull out of this slump you’ve been in.
ANDY
He is sweating because the fit is really off on the crotch area but he thinks it’s great overall. Oy vey ismir!
MONDO
He is 150 percent happy with the look and says “I think I’m gonna win this one.” Earlier, Michael D told the camera “if you took Jackie Kennedy to the desert and gave her some mescaline to eat then you would have Jackie Kennedy in Mondo.” Oh yes and oh yes.
The judges declare Michael C, April, and Gretchen to be safe. (Wait, what? Gretchen? How long is she going to get away with this sub par crap??!) In the dishing area Michael C tells April and Gretchen he is astounded, he really thought he might go home for sending down a cocktail dress with a denim jacket on the runway. He smarmily brown-noses Gretchen, telling her that he could imagine Jackie Kennedy in her outfit so he doesn’t understand why she is merely safe and then turns around and tells the camera it’s total bullshit, he doesn’t think JK would ever wear any of those pieces.
Back out on the runway the following designers are ready to face the music: Valerie, Christopher, Michael D, Mondo, Ivy, and Andy. Valerie’s up first. The judges are curious as to why she put a jacket over a jacket. MK says “it has no impact at all, it’s just sad looking.” Valerie says she wanted to keep it really simple, to which MK returns, “Simple doesn’t mean boring.” Heidi finds the colors drag it down even further. January says “the ankle boot confuses me with that length of skirt.” Nina’s all, “any time that you want to make a design reference it’s pleating and zippers…some of the best things are very simple and have no design gimmicks to them.” And take THAT, Susan Lucci!
January loves Christopher’s dress, “this was my favorite.” They all like the dress, but the wrap well not so much. Heidi says it looks like a dirty old rug. They all agree it looks better without.
Michael D is next. He states that he wanted to make something modern but something that could also transcend to the past. Whaaa? MK goes in for the kill: “She’s an old lady on top and a cheerleading ice skater on the bottom. I’m mesmerized that you can take the inspiration of a woman who frankly looked fabulous for four decades and now suddenly she’s in a mall. The skirt is so unbelievably unflattering, the top underneath the jacket is just an insane concept – that you would think that that has anything to do with American sportswear. I think it’s insulting.” The others aren’t quite as stinging, but they all echo MK’s concerns. Not flattering, surprised, top doesn’t fit, it looks sloppy, etc.
Next up on the chopping block only not really: Mondo. Even Heidi has noticed how cute he looks today in his outfit. She jokes that she wants to hear all about his look but she means his look, not the model’s. Mondo reveals that he has a photo of Jackie Kennedy in his kitchen. (Whew! Someone in the group actually had a preconceived idea of JK!) Mondo was very observant that last week on the runway his look was called cheap, so he wanted to make sure this week that didn’t happen. Heidi loves the plum fabric inside the cape jacket which perfectly matches the houndstooth skirt. “It’s fun, yet it’s still elegant and chic,” quoth Nina. “Really well done,” January chimes in. By all accounts, a home run.
Mondo’s Look and Mondo’s Look
They all like Ivy’s look too, except for the jacket – not so much. Ivy agrees that the coat is too small. January loves the tailoring, the seam on the blouse, the twisted tuxedo pant. Nina says it was smart to keep the palette black and white and she loves the shoes. They all like the outfit without the sheer gray jacket, which Heidi feels confuses the eye. “There’s almost too much design in the top.”
Andy is next. This critique makes Michael D’s look like the reception to a big dinner. Andy tells the judges that he felt there was a chicness about Jackie O, she wasn’t afraid to have her own style, hence of course his look which veers into the realm of cray-cray. Heidi starts by saying she is having a hard time keeping it together because “I want to burst out and crack up, especially for this challenge, to come up with this? I feel like I’m on a different planet….I don’t see it at all. At all. At all.” (yes, she repeats this three times) MK moves in, “I mean come on, if someone said to me the inspiration was MC Hammer meets the Beverly Hillbillies’ Grandmother, I mean that’s what that looks like. The fit is horrific. And then the ankle boot, I mean come on!” La Klum agrees the boots look like they’re from the 1800′s. (It’s called Steampunk, kids) MK on the boots, “It’s like she’s making soap or something.”
Nina asks Andy to take “the terrible vest” off the model. Andy does. “This is just a trainwreck,” sighs NG. MK twists the knife by saying Andy obviously had a problem with the silk jersey of the top also, it’s not fitted enough to be fitted and it’s not draped enough to be draped. “It looks like a mistake.” Andy: “I did want to take a risk, so….” MK responds, “Oh, you took one.”
At this point the group traipses off to the dishing area allowing the judges to further slice and dice. Obviously they hated Valerie’s look (boring, nothing special, no design, no imagination), Andy’s (ill fitting, ill appropriate, from top to toe it’s a mess) (they also question why the model is wearing Nicole Kidman’s boots from Cold Mountain and her hairstyle from Far and Away), and Michael D’s (terribly unflattering, overthought, ill fitting).
They liked Christopher’s dress though they hated the shrug (Heidi called it “a dirty dish rag” in her notes), Ivy (sleek and elegant, she’s stepping up especially from the first week when she made that hideous flimsy gray blouse with Peach’s print pants – but the jacket this week doesn’t work), and Mondo (clean, classic, chic, outside the box).
To no one’s surprise (especially mine) Mondo is named the “clear winner” of this challenge. Christopher and Ivy are safe in a good way. Andy is safe but just squeaking by, and he’s still inexplicably pleased as punch with his look. The bottom two are Valerie and Michael D. Valerie is told that she missed the mark in a big way by Heidi, “Your look did not read chic sportswear” but rather “badly executed mallwear.” To Michael D, she says, “your look was an unfortunate mismatch and your proportions were way off. The top was ill fitting and the bottom was bulky and unflattering. And no woman wants that silhouette.” Michael D is out.
Tim comes in to the dishing area to wish him goodbye and good luck and “that damn skirt!” Michael D is resigned, but “at the end of the day I had to do what I wanted to do” to which Tim says, “you did, you stand by it and it was your Waterloo.” Michael D: “I have to go look that up now.”
Upstairs he goes to clean up his space and pack up his little Virgin Mary statue.
And sew it goes!
Next week: Drama! (I know, I know. That never happens)
Project Runway airs Thursday nights at 9pm ET on Lifetime TV.

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Most Americans would be astonished to learn that of the approximately 12,500 individual chemical ingredients in personal care products, the overwhelming majority has never been reviewed for safety by any governmental or “publicly accountable body.” It is estimated by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics that Americans generally use ten personal care products daily–which can expose them to more than 126 “unique” chemicals. More than 500 products sold in the United States utilize ingredients banned in Canada, Europe, and Japan. Hormone disruptors have been found in perfume; chemicals have been identified in umbilical cord blood. Are American consumers being adequately protected?
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) doesn’t think so. A long time consumer advocate, Schakowsky is spearheading a move to revamp the obsolete federal law from 1938. She has introduced House Resolution 5786, with current co-sponsors Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI).
In 2001, Schakowsky introduced the Safe Notification and Information for Fragrances Act. At that time, she reached out to Janet Nudelman, who serves as both the legislative coordinator for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and the Director of Program and Policy for the Breast Cancer Fund. Nudelman outlined how fragrance was only a small part of the larger problem–toxic chemicals throughout the spectrum of cosmetics and personal care products. When I interviewed Nudelman she said, “Rep. Schakowsky looked to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics as a resource when she was developing her legislation. We helped her identify the key issues that needed to be addressed. The result was the Safe Cosmetics Act of 2010.”
The premise of the Safe Cosmetics Act is to secure legislation that would terminate those loopholes in federal law that currently allows companies to use any ingredients–even those known to have an adverse effect on human health and the environment. Chemicals in products shown to have a link to cancer, birth defects, and learning disabilities would be eliminated.
Statistics show that 80 percent of all personal care products can be tainted with “cancer causing pollutants.” As Schakowsky pointed out, “It’s not just a women’s issue.” In a teleconference about the Resolution, Markey said, “Men just don’t think of themselves in terms of cosmetics.” Yet they are at risk from the unregulated formulations in shaving creams, aftershaves, and deodorants.
Included on the call was actress and cancer activist Fran Drescher, who spoke about her concerns. “The cosmetics industry can no longer be a self-regulating industry,” she opined. A repeated premise was that safety standards had to be uniform. Markey emphasized, “The details are important.”
There would be big changes for the fragrance industry. Previously shielded by invoking “confidentiality” in the categories of “fragrance, flavor, and color,” they would have to disclose and label their products with the chemicals that are used as preservatives.
Jane Houlihan, Vice President for Research at the Environmental Working Group (EWG), weighed in on the proposed bill commenting, “The legislation would give [the] FDA real authority to ensure that personal care products sold in the United States met a basic standard of safety.” The EWG has put together the “Skin Deep” database with over 60,000 product entries that allows consumers to research the levels of toxicity in the beauty items they use.
Two previous attempts at putting regulations into place in 1973 and 1988 failed. Markey made clear, “We intend on insuring that cosmetics will no longer fall into a regulatory back hole that winds up hurting people.”
The proposed bill has nine key provisions. They are:
Registration of Cosmetic Companies and Registration Fees: Cosmetics companies would be required to register with the FDA and pay registration fees.
Cosmetic and Ingredient Testing and Safety: The FDA would establish a list of ingredients prohibited from being used in cosmetics. Manufacturers would be required to conduct safety assessments and submit information to the FDA.
Cosmetics and Ingredient Statements: Companies would have to submit ingredient statements for every product they manufacture to the FDA.
Ingredient Labels on Cosmetics: The label on each package of cosmetics would be required to list the name of each ingredient, including the components of fragrance.
Post Market Testing: This requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to conduct annual random sample tests for pathogens or contaminants in cosmetic products.
Mandatory Reporting of Adverse Health Effects: Cosmetic Manufacturers, packagers, and distributors would have to submit a report to the FDA on any serious adverse events associated with the use of a cosmetic.
Market Restrictions: For products that fail to meet the safety standard, HR 5789 would provide the FDA with recall authority, the ability to request a voluntary recall, or to order a halt to distribution.
Worker Issues: This requires companies that distribute cosmetics for salon use to provide information on health hazards listed by authoritative bodies, or found in scientific studies.
States Rights: This allows states to set more stringent standards.
I contacted Stacy Malkan, spokesperson for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. She has been involved in chemical safety policy reform for ten years and is also the author of Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry”.
Malkan reeled off more numbers supporting her belief in the need for legislation. She told me that only 13 percent of cosmetic chemicals have been publicly reviewed for safety: more than 70 percent of all personal care products may contain phthalates, which are linked to birth defects and infertility: there is also evidence that some baby soaps contain the cancer causing chemical 1,4 dioxane, formaldehyde, or both.
Having checked the Skin Deep database, I was discouraged to learn that some of the items I use, advertised as “natural” or “eco-friendly,” had problems. Malkan explained, “Even if an ingredient comes from a plant or is organic, it needs to be accessed for safety.” Therefore, it is important to also take into account that the labels “safe” and “natural” have no legal definitions.
Speaking about how big brands were working to capitalize on consumer interest in greener alternatives, Malkan referenced name players who were either creating alternative lines to their regular cosmetics or buying pre-existing “green” labels, while still using toxins in their other products. She singled out Este Lauder for specific criticism. Malkan suggested, “If they can use less parabens or formaldehyde releasing toxins in the Origins line, why don’t they extend that to their other products? How can they support breast cancer research and at the same time have carcinogens in their makeup?”
Malkan described how cosmetic chemicals in shampoo, toothpaste, hand soap, and bath products wash down the drain into the national waterways–and end up in the fish that we eat. Admitting that the big picture could be overwhelming, Malkan suggested that simple steps could reduce chemical exposure. Her advice to individuals was to “start by cutting a few things out” of your beauty routine. “Less is more. Simpler is better.” Top advice was to avoid synthetic fragrance, and use fewer products overall–especially on babies and young children.
I asked her for a list of what she considered the most toxic components to avoid. They are:
Parabens: Widely used as a preservative in a range of personal care products. They are suspected endocrine disruptors that can mimic estrogen in the body. Higher lifetime exposure to estrogen is a known risk factor for breast cancer.
Ethoxylated chemicals: Chemicals such as sodium laureth sulfate, PEGs, ceteareth-20 and other chemicals with “eth” in the name are often contaminated with 1,4 dioxane, a probable human carcinogen that may also be toxic to the kidneys, brain and respiratory system, according to the California EPA.
Triclosan in anti-bacterial soaps: This pesticide is found in a range of products including anti-bacterial hand soaps, dishwashing liquids, and toothpaste. Triclosan is associated with carcinogenic byproducts, and is linked to disruption of the thyroid hormone. The U.S. FDA has found there is no evidence that triclosan soaps are more effective in killing germs than regular soap and water.
Hydroquinone in skin lightening and face creams: Banned in the European Union but legal in the United States, hydroquinone is a suspected carcinogen.
Coal tar-based hair dyes: Several coal tar-based ingredients have been found to cause cancer in lab animals. Studies of humans link long-time hair dye use with cancer, including bladder cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and multiple myeloma.
Formaldehyde-releasing preservatives: Found in bath products and shampoos. Formaldehyde, is a known allergen and probable human carcinogen.
Fragrance: Studies have found that many fragrances contain sensitizing chemicals that can trigger allergic reactions such as headaches, wheezing, and asthma attacks. Many fragrances contain diethyl phthalate, a chemical linked to sperm damage in adult men and abnormal reproductive development in baby boys.
On a positive note, Malkan referred me to a list of companies that have already signed a pledge to make safe products, available at The Compact for Safe Cosmetics. Addition resources include: the EWG’s 2010 Sunscreen Guide; the Whole Foods program tied to their Premium Body Care seal; the OPI nail company–which has reformulated its line of Nail Lacquers, Nail Treatments, and Nail Hardeners to eliminate DBP (dibutyl phthalate) and Toluene. (They have an “OPI Cares” link on their site).
Malkan sees the bill as an “incredible opportunity”–a once in a generation possibility to put “health protective environmental regulations in place for the cosmetics industry.” She is aware that not everyone sees it that way. She told me, “The bill has certainly stirred up a lot of passion, which was to be expected since this is the first attempt to regulate an industry that has had very few regulations to deal with.” She continued, “My view is that there are some legitimate questions about the bill, but there is a desire on the part of environmental groups to work together with small businesses to come up with a final bill that is meaningful and workable.” She noted, “There are already people who are spreading disinformation about the bill and about environmental health science, which is not helpful to the debate on how to make the beauty industry as safe as it can be.”
Optimistically Malkan concluded, “I think people’s behavior is already changing. The sales of green personal care products are growing faster than that of conventional products.”
“We don live in a bubble. Home use, food packaging, air and water pollution–we’re being doused with chemicals. Cosmetics are the tip of the iceberg. If we can do something about it, why not?” Nudelman underscored. At the Breast Cancer Fund, the organization’s mission is to prevent breast cancer by identifying and eliminating the environmental links to the disease. “Consumers have the right to know,” Nudelman emphasized, pointing to transparency as the goal. “Why do companies use harmful ingredients when they can do a product without it?” Nudelman asked rhetorically. Her answer was, “Because they can, and there is no standard definition of safety. It’s business as usual. It’s what they have always done.”
The Personal Care Products Council, based in Washington, D.C., doesn’t agree. They describe their organization as the “leading national trade association representing the $250 billion global cosmetic and personal care products industry…whose member companies are global leaders committed to product safety, quality and innovation.” They issued a statement in reaction to the Safe Cosmetics Act on July 21, through Lezlee Westine, the President and CEO of the Personal Care Products Council.
I spoke by telephone with Kathleen Dezio, Personal Care Council spokeswoman, to get a clearer perception of her organization’s position. She told me, “”We think our proposals are more rooted in practicality and efficacy in terms of product safety. A regulatory regime for cosmetics that is stricter than the regulations for food, drugs, or medical devices is costly, unnecessary, and it’s impractical.” I asked her if she would define the Personal Care Products Council as a lobbying organization. She responded, “We do lobby like other trade associations, but that’s a small part of what we do. The largest part of our operations is scientific services for our member companies.”
Dezio did believe that “the FDA cosmetics regulatory structure should be contemporized,” saying, “And we have put forward a proposal we believe would effectively accomplish that. We have also lobbied for several years to secure more funding for FDA’s cosmetics office. Yet she made clear, “I think that a lot of the allegations being made about cosmetic ingredient safety are misrepresentations of what the scientific community thinks.” She pointed to a study conducted by the FDA published in July/August 2009 about lead in lipstick. The FDA responded to the question, “Is there a safety concern about the lead found by FDA in lipsticks?” with the answer, “Lipstick, as a product intended for topical use, is only ingested incidentally and in very small quantities. The FDA does not consider the lead levels that it found in the lipsticks to be a safety concern.” Nevertheless, the FDA went on to state that it will “continue to test for lead in a wider range of lipsticks, including lipsticks similar to those recently assessed for lead content by another laboratory.4″
Nudelman believes that “for the last seventy years they [the council] have been lobbying against regulation of the industry.” She told me, “We want companies to step up to the plate and say we want to be part of the solution, not the problem.”
The battle has just begun. Annie Leonard’s seven-minute video, “The Story of Cosmetics”, has already received over 300,000 hits on YouTube. Dezio, in turn, responded with a statement about the animated short saying, “The content in this harsh and unscientific ‘shockumentary – genre’ video bears no relationship to the ‘real’ story of cosmetics.”
I contacted Rep. Schakowsky directly to find out how long it will take to move the legislation along. Her estimate was that it would get to the next stage “early on in the next [Congressional] session.” When I questioned her about the likelihood of pushback from the cosmetic and fragrance industries her reply was succinct: “We will work with them, or not, to make sure what ends up on the shelf is safe.”
This article originally appeared on the women’s health site Empowher.
Image courtesy of RVR Associates.

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There is at least one organization that won’t label President Obama a “marxist” or “socialist,” and it ought to know. I speak of the Democratic Socialists of America, a tiny group of less than 6,000 members that is rather benign and wholly within the American mainstream compared, say, to the extreme radicalism of the raucous anti-government Tea Parties.
The DSA was founded in 1982 by the late Michael Harrington, who won fame in the Sixties for his book “The Other America,” a passionate expose of rural and urban poverty that shocked the nation and brought about Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty.
Harrington’s DSA co-founder was Barbara Ehrenreich, a prolific journalist whose books, “Nickeled and Dimed,” and “Bait And Switch,” chronicled the business practices that have victimized low-paid workers and consumers. Unlike the far right Republicans and Tea Baggers, Harrington and Ehrenreich were people of talent and accomplishment, and, as far as I know, they have not sought the overthrow of the government or the destruction of a president.
In fact, if you visit their web site, www.dsausa.org, you will see how close to the American ideals these socialists are. They call themselves the Democratic Left and they have nothing in common with the centralized communist regimes of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, North Korea and China. It is true that Harrington embraced the theories of Karl Marx, who held that unfettered capitalism would fail because the rich would get richer and the rest would be exploited by corporate excess. But those were also the views of Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes, both of whom were in favor of government intervention to tame capitalism.
True to our Democratic values, the DSA does not call not for government ownership of private business, but for tempering the excesses of the unregulated, free-wheeling market economies with Social Democratic reforms, such as health care, social insurance and public education like those in most of Europe, Japan and other enlightened countries.
As the DSA web site says, “In the short term we can’t eliminate private corporations, but we can bring them under greater democratic control. The government could use regulations and tax incentives to encourage companies to act in the public interest and outlaw destructive activities such as exporting jobs to low-wage countries and our environment.”
These could have been the goals of Republican presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, creator of our national parks, trust buster William Howard Taft, Dwight Eisenhower, who sponsored the Interstate Highway system, or Democrats, like Harry Truman, who confronted Soviet communism, or John Kennedy, who championed civil rights..
Only the very far right, which is what Republicans have become, could disagree with those sentiments. But they seem so ignorant of the consequences of their hard shell laissez faire views that they would destroy in government what is in their own best interests: Their targets include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Department of Education, public education itself (Thomas Jefferson’s idea), the civil rights laws, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. What’s next? The VA medical system? The Tennessee Valley Authority? Government owned military hospitals? The Post Office? Public highways? Public utilities? Surely many tea baggers use these services. Were millions of us un-American when we used the GI Bill?
My quarrel is not with these know-nothings, who pop up now and again in American politics; they won’t succeed. My aim is to give lie to their fears and fear mongering of Democratic-based socialism. That happens to be as American as the pioneers who came west in communal wagon trains, or the rail roads, built with the help of government on public lands. Even at its birth and in war, the government acts of 1787 and 1862, which opened the northwest territories, created land grant colleges and enabled farmers to stake their 40 acres. Jefferson’s Louisiana purchase was not specifically permitted by the Constitution, nor was the purchase of Alaska in 1867. Should we give them back?
When I wrote a few weeks ago that the VA health system, among other American enterprises, was socialist, most of my replies via the internet were positive and supportive. Many Americans, if truth be told to them, would welcome some democratic socialism, in health care and other public services, like good roads and strong bridges and street lights, which are disappearing.
One of my readers, unsigned, wrote, “The only thing better than Medicare or the VA is having both…I was on my way to the Minneapolis VA hospital for a 2 pm MRI on a Sunday…when I had chest pains and shortness of breath. So I went to the VA emergency room…I had three doctors, three nurses and three technicians treat me before sending me on to my MRI (where the technician waited for me until 4.) Anyone who claims the government can’t do health care should walk a mile in my orthopaedic shoes.”
On the other hand, Marcelo M. writes, “If anything, the VA system is the poster child as to why we shouldn’t have socialized Medicine…Mandates that require you buy health care violates the Constitution…” (That is questionable, but the issue is before the courts.) And Jerry L. says “medical care can’t be a free lunch,” and he suggests competition could hold down costs if patients and insurance companies can choose among doctors and hospitals.
But “kerewin21″ asks, “How does the VA system violate the Constitution? And he adds, “It’s really hard to make medicine into a truly competitive marketplace….Do you choose the doctor who costs half as much for your knee surgery? Do you call around to emergency rooms to find out who charges the least for a CT-Scan?”
Americans who have not traveled abroad tend to belittle the experiences of Europeans like David Jordan, who is a British PhD, in geophysics and leader of a university research team. He was in business for many years and now lives in Germany’s social democracy. “Politically,” he writes, “I’m a caring capitalist but my only affiliation is to Whatever Works. Ideologies give me the creeps.” He’s a fan of Britain’s National Health Service, even though the waiting room at a doctor’s office may include unwashed working stiffs. But he praised his emergency room treatment of a bad chest infection, and the NHS was there to help his wife give birth at home (his choice) to two children. “For free,” Jordan said. “It was wonderful. Can’t do that in the U.S….Isn’t socialism a bitch?”
The Nation’s Katha Pollitt, back in New York after a year in Germany, observed in a September 2 essay entitled, “It’s Better Over There,” that “not once in my time in Berlin, which is a relatively poor city,” did she see “the kind of destitution we take for granted in the United States…The strong German safety net keeps people from plunging into the abyss.” She cited a new book by Chicago labor lawyer and writer, Tom Geoghegan, “Were You Born on the Wrong Continent.”
As Pollitt writes, Geoghegan contrasts the Western European social democracies with laissez faire America, which victimizes not only the poor, but the middle class, which has meager economic protection compared to their counterparts in Europe. He argues “contrary to U.S. popular opinion, life is better for almost everyone in a social democratic system like those in Western Europe, especially Germany.” Even with high taxes that support the system and its benefits for workers, the unemployed, students and new mothers, Germany’s economy is in better shape than ours.
Also missing in Europe’s social democracies is the kind of irrational hostility towards government that has led Republicans to advocate deep cuts in taxes and government services. There are consequences: In wealthy San Diego, a two-year-old boy, Bentley Do, choked to death on gum ball last July when help was delayed for a precious nine minutes because budget cuts had closed the nearest firehouse. The next day, Bentley’s Vietnamese mother, six months pregnant, was sworn in as a U.S. citizen and collapsed from exhaustion and grief. I saw mention of the tragedy only in the New York Times, which reported that San Diego is still reluctant to consider a tax increase to restore public services.
Write to saulfriedman@comcast.net Friedman also writes for www.timegoesby.net

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Lawrence Wright, New Yorker staff writer and Pulitzer Prize winning author of “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11″ is also a performer/ playwright. Wanting to tell the backstory of writing his book, he created “My Trip to Al-Qaeda,” a one man stage play performed at The Culture Project. The film version directed by the Academy Award winning documentarian Alex Gibney premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and is now airing on HBO-timely programming for the anniversary of 9/11.
Speaking about his attraction to this interesting and provocative story, Gibney noted that Lawrence Wright’s journey into the Middle East shows the threat that we face: how dangerous it is in facing that threat that we are becoming more like the terrorists than we imagine.
“My Trip to Al-Qaeda” begins with Wright’s travels to Cairo, and with a history of violence involving a movie Wright scripted, “The Siege,” starring Denzel Washington and Bruce Willis. In early September, I had the opportunity to talk to Lawrence Wright about his work.
Q: You have a strange destiny to have to tell this story from “The Siege” to “My Trip to Al-Qaeda.” Do you see the provocation in these films as relevant today?
The current mosque controversy echoes the controversy about “The Siege.” I was proud of the movie, which was, by the way, a box office failure. Just as there was a campaign against “The Siege,” now there is a controversy with more heat around it. Poor Muslims. I find myself in an oddly neutral spot. As in the case of the cartoons in Holland depicting Mohammed like pig having intercourse with a dog, the character of the people involved is distorted by the right wing.
[Wright's makes this comparison in the "Talk of the Town" section of the current New Yorker.]
Islam is religion of peace, and both sides on the mosque controversy are reprehensible because they have created a self-defeating strife where there should be a bridge for understanding. There is room for flexibility. The Muslim center has a perfect right to be there.
Q: What about the Wikileaks?
As a reporter aware that documents have been hidden, I am glad that the information is coming out. I am concerned that the information is inadequately vetted and people may die or go to prison. Afghan lives are in danger.
Q: Can you tell me how the film evolved from the stage play to film to television?
I was performing the play at the Kennedy Center. Alex Gibney had an idea about how the play could become more cinematic, could go out into the world. HBO is the best possible place for this film. They have courage.
Q: So, are you more writer or actor?
When Matt Damon and Robert DiNiro came to see me in the play, I felt that I was blessed by the tribe. I know I am not an actor in the way that they are. I was working in a novel form, non-fiction theater, communicating what I learned and experienced as a journalist.
Q: Is your new play in the same genre?
Yes, I’m doing it again. I am writer and performer of “The Human Scale,” part of the New Yorker Festival on October 2. A co-production with The Public Theater, the work is interesting and gratifying. Print. Stage. Film. Each has a unique domain. This play derives from my New Yorker story on Gaza and the capture of an Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and how that event has led to war and a blockade. It would be a great thing for Israel and Hamas to be pressured to make a deal. Of course Hamas wants 1400 prisoners, some of them murderers, to be released in exchange for the one Israeli soldier.
Q: Are you working on anything else?
My band Whodo played in Washington on Sept. 11 at a club called Madame’s Organ. It’s a rockabilly and blues band. I am on keyboard. The fiddler is 15 year old and tours with Willy Nelson. Daunting.
Q: Would you call yourself a Renaissance man?
Restless, I guess.
This post also appears on Gossip Central..

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In Today’s Washington Post, George Will reaches the conclusion that many of us have held as an abiding faith for some time – America’s Cuba policy doesn’t work and its counterproductive. His column (available in full here) concludes as follows:
Today, the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba by means of economic embargoes and travel restrictions serves two Castro goals: It provides an alibi for Cuba’s social conditions, and it insulates Cuba from some of the political and cultural forces that brought down communism in Eastern Europe. The 11th president, Barack Obama, who was born more than two years after Castro seized power, might want to rethink this policy, now that even Castro is having second thoughts about fundamentals.
Will’s last comment frames the right question. Why, in the face of really big changes taking place in Cuba is the President so utterly failing to capitalize on these developments, even to help realize the goals of his own policy?
For some U.S. political figures in both parties, there is nothing that Cuba could do – short of dissolving its government and economic system unilaterally to curry favor with the United States – that would satisfy their definitions of progress. But President Barack Obama was not supposed to be from that school of thought – not because we imagined him or wanted him to be different, but because he declared himself to be.
Let us not forget in the 2008 presidential campaign that he expressed his willingness to meet with President Ral Castro, with an agenda and with pre-planning, if there were something real to discuss. He said on one occasion “I would never, ever, rule out a course of action that could advance the cause of liberty.” He promised he would not substitute posturing for serious policy — “we have seen too much of that in other areas over the past six years.
He said before the Cuban American National Foundation and in an early op-ed column in the Miami Herald that political prisoners in Cuba required justice, that a goal of U.S. policy was to make Cuban families less dependent on the Castro regime, and that efforts by Cuba’s government to liberalize its system would be met by steps to help solidify openings into lasting change.
As recently as Friday, Cuba’s Catholic Church revealed the names of four more political prisoners to be released, under the agreement it made with the government this spring, which will bring to 36 the number of dissidents freed. The agreement calls for all 52 of the remaining prisoners from Cuba’s 2003 round up to be let go. This agreement is not uncontroversial among hardliners in the government or the Cuban communist party, but it is being honored nonetheless.
This past week, Cuba’s government also announced that it would lay-off 500,000 Cuban citizens on state payrolls, and take steps to help the private sector economy absorb them, which sounds an awful lot like they will be less dependent on the government.
These changes, along with others already made, are redefining, as many analysts have written, Cuba’s social contract with its own people, and represent extraordinarily difficult decisions taken even in the context of a one-party state.
In other words, the conditions that President Obama articulated as core to his policy toward Cuba are beginning to be met. While Cuba rejects the notion that actions it takes can or should be linked to gestures that liberalize U.S. policy – that is Obama’s policy. By failing to act in response to what Cuba is doing, the President is undermining the credibility of his Cuba program.
In the weeks following the announced prisoner deal, Administration officials repeatedly promised action. Obama, they said, would use his executive authority to ease limits on travel short of tourism (academic, religious, cultural, sports, and the like) not expressly to reward the prisoner release, but doing exactly that in practice.
But as summer rapidly turns to fall, the prospects for positive action are appearing to dim.
Given a chance to reflect on reforms in Cuba resulting in layoffs for ten percent of the nation’s workforce, P.J. Crowley, the State Department spokesman said, “I mean, we’re looking for action by Cuba, but I don’t have a particular comment on about what they’ve announced.”
Democratic leaders are being advised that action on travel – by the White House or Congress – would be politically inconvenient before November. According to Congressional Quarterly, Rep. Albio Sires said “this is not something you want to do now,” but changing Cuba policy is something he – a Cuban American hardliner from New Jersey opposes all the time.
Others – like Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela – blame Cuba for continuing to detain Alan Gross, saying action on liberalizing policy is not possible while he remains in prison. Gross a USAID contractor has been behind bars since December 2009 after illegally entering Cuba (on multiple occasions), funded by a “regime change” program, with the goal of handing out high tech equipment to Cubans, activities illegal under Cuban (and, frankly, US Law) without government authorization. My organization has repeatedly called on Cuba to release Mr. Gross, but by making progress on ideas like the freedom to travel hostage to a resolution of his case is not going to spring Mr. Gross any time soon.
Blaming Gross, blaming politics, blaming Fidel Castro, no, these are excuses for inaction, posturing instead of policy making, what the president promised – as a candidate – we would not be getting from him.
Failing to act has real consequences. It says to the Cubans that Obama, despite his words to the contrary, and some very positive but smaller steps, is not the sharp departure from the past that he said he would be. Inaction sends a message to Cuban hardliners that the U.S. is simply unreachable and unreasonable not matter how many reforms the government undertakes. Inaction will also send them a message about the reforms that Obama is undertaking of the now discredited and dangerous USAID program that landed Mr. Gross in prison in the first place.
The National Security Program of the Third Way recently argued that refusing to engage Cuba or to help the reforms move forward puts the U.S. in weak position to criticize the Cuban government. By opting for silence over action we ignore the history of transitions, as Tomas Bilbao wrote recently, which teaches us to encourage even incremental steps when they happen.
What we’re asking Obama and the Congress to do isn’t politically difficult. After all, we are asking them to restore the constitutional rights of Americans to travel, to create jobs and profits here in America by opening up the Cuban market to travel and trade, to put money in the pockets of Cuban families by creating more tourism jobs on the island when their economy needs more private sector activity, and to honor the pleas of dissidents on Cuba that we end the ban on travel as a sign of solidarity to Cuba’s civil society.
It’s all easy in comparison to what Cubans are experiencing. We should be on their side and acting – strongly and promptly – as the President led us to believe that he would do.

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Like it or not, Western Civilization’s great epic poems are being adapted into testosterone-oozing mega productions. In the past few years we’ve watched Brad Pitt strut around in a big screen version of “The Iliad” and seen Dante’s “Inferno” became a Blockbuster gore-fest of a video game. I guess we can only wonder how “Paradise Lost” lasted so long.
This past week, Variety reported that an adaptation of Milton’s epic poem will hit theaters in 2012 under the direction of Alex Proyas, whose credits include The Crow, Dark City, Knowing and I, Robot.
You can expect Proyas to lend the sort of stylized treatment he gave “Dark City” to Milton’s Hellscapes. You shouldn’t expect any substantive philosophizing in the Garden of Eden. Variety reported, “the project tells the story of the epic war in heaven between archangels Michael and Lucifer, and will be crafted as an action vehicle that will include aerial warfare, possibly shot in 3D.”
Well, at least it could be fun? One can’t deny that, in parts, “Paradise Lost” is highly cinematic. Here are two excerpts from Book 1 of the poem that detail Satan’s first awakening in Hell after he and his defeated army are cast down from Heaven.
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views
The dismal situation waste and wild.
A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,
As one great furnace flamed; yet from those flames
No light; but rather darkness visible
Served only to discover sights of woe,
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes
That comes to all, but torture without end
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.
He spake: and to confirm his words, out-flew
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs
Of mighty Cherubim; the sudden blaze
Far round illumin’d hell: highly they rag’d
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms
Clash’d on thir sounding Shields the din of war,
Hurling defiance toward the vault of Heav’n.
A talented director like Proyas could do a lot with that. And while I doubt that Milton would approve of his poem — which he hoped would help to “justifie the wayes of God to men” — getting the Hollywood Blockbuster treatment, is it a crime to spend a little of our light watching angels battle in the skies? In 3D!? I must admit, part of me is looking forward to it.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The pages of the Living Section often discuss the importance of sleep and for good reason — most of us are not listening! A majority of adults are severely sleep deprived, getting an average of six hours when our bodies need eight. Statistics show that over 90 percent of teenagers are averaging three hours less sleep than they require, and the same 90 percent of parents do not think their children’s reduced sleep time is a significant issue. How come everyone thinks sleep is for sissies or for babies?
Parents in the United States are obsessed with sleep — for their babies that is. There must be hundreds of books about how to get an infant to sleep. I know I tried many of them — including co-sleeping, the dreaded Ferber method and the Baby Whisperer, to name a few. However, our interest in monitoring their sleep dramatically drops off after that, and sleep is no longer a priority.
Why is that? Once we have finally achieved the milestone of getting our kids to sleep through the night, parents move into cruise control and don’t keep track of sleep as a health priority like diet and exercise. Yet the impact of sleep deprivation is much more immediate and long standing than eating a doughnut or avoiding working out. A student who drives to school on less than seven hours of sleep is just as impaired in their reflexes as if they drank a beer and got behind the wheel.
With modern families trucking around until late in the evening with work, sports and activities, kids are often encouraged to stay up later at night to finish homework or unwind. Most parents have no idea that even an hour less of sleep can have a dramatic affect on their children’s cognitive abilities the next day — effectively losing one or two grade levels of performance. Somehow it has become culturally acceptable to be lax around bedtime routines. The permissiveness for younger children sets up a dangerous pattern of sleep deprivation as the norm.
For example, loads of parents allowing their elementary aged kids to stay up until 10 p.m. to watch prime time shows like “American Idol” or “Dancing With the Stars.” At the elementary level, kids still need close to 10 hours of sleep for optimum health. If they are waking up at 6 a.m., they need to be asleep by 8 p.m. Kids start going to bed later than they should at a much younger age, and it naturally seems OK to push the bedtime out further as they grow older. If a six-year-old is going to bed at 9 p.m., by age nine, they feel entitled to go to bed at 10 p.m., and by 14 they want to stay up until midnight.
This is a common perspective I have found while conducting interviews with parents. Many of us have not had enough education on the health risks of sleep, and naturally feel defensive, or protective of our children. Common responses include, “My kid is fine, and just doesn’t seem to need that much sleep,” or a sense that learning to function as a sleep deprived individual is part of the rites of passage to make it in the world as an adult. It is pretty insane.
In the last 20 years, life of a teen or young adult has become successively more intense, with no end in sight. Most kids are addicted to their cell phones and constant social networking, pushed academically at school, physically in sports and socially in public service, until all the hours of the day are effectively squeezed into a vice-like schedule. Many kids are also falling apart with caffeine addition, depression and teen suicide on the rise.
Until I started researching the issues of sleep for an upcoming book, I had absolutely no idea what kind of price our kids are paying for the lifestyle we have created. I knew kids had a lot of pressures that affected them, but sleep? Nah, no big deal. Not anymore. I have become a sleep advocate and so can you.
Here are a few tips to get started increasing the Zzzz’s in your house:
Understand the risks of sleep deprivation. In a nutshell, losing sleep once in a while is fine, but regularly is absolutely not. Risks include: obesity, depression, a loss of cognitive function, impaired sports performance and increased risk of drowsy driving accidents.
Have a family discussion. Explain to your children that the brain is very busy at night. It is logging the lectures they learned in school to help them retrieve it for tests, managing the stress and emotions of the day, and strengthening muscles to better perform at their sports. Good sleepers always get the best grades!
Set up a bedtime schedule by counting backwards from wake up time. I have a freshman in high school who can easily stay up past midnight every night texting and talking to friends. We agreed that he needs to get at least eight hours of sleep at night, even though the optimum amount is nine and a half hours. Together we counted back from the 6 a.m. wake up time so he understood that he has to be asleep by 10 p.m. This lessens some of the arguments and helps them assume responsibility.
Be a good role model. Hey, most of us adults are just as bad! Help set a good example by slowing down activities an hour before bedtime, turn off the computer and get out a good book to start unwinding. Try to get a solid eight hours yourself. Everyone will feel better and family life may be a whole lot more pleasant!
*Be sure to check out the college pages of Huff Po to see the “Freshman 8″ challenge started by Arianna Huffington and Dr. Matthew Edlund for more tips on transforming our relationship with sleep.
How are you managing sleep in your house? Love to hear your stories below and feel free to click on “Become a Fan” for weekly updates.
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The ruptured well that has spewed millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico has finally been sealed, US officials say.
A pressure test showed a cement plug put in place by BP to permanently “kill” the well was holding.
President Obama hailed the news, vowing to continue to help those affected.
The worst offshore oil spill in US history began after the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up on 20 April, killing 11 workers and later sinking.
A cap had sealed the flow on 15 July, and the top US federal official overseeing the disaster, Coast Guard Adm Thad Allen, said on Sunday that the well was now “effectively dead”.

…And cook up the day that I had on Thursday.
For the record, I know that two of these men are actually dead, and yet they would have appreciated the positively dystopian day that was my Thursday. It all started innocently enough: I woke up in New York, remembered what I was supposed to panic about something work related and clicked open my email. That’s when just a normal day became the stuff that dreams — bad dreams — are made of.
While I had slept, others were having a party with my Mac email. The aforementioned identity thieves got control of my MobileMe account and started emailing seemingly everyone that I have ever met that I was in London, broke, desperate and in need of money urgently. Of course, the recipients were asked to respond to a Yahoo email account that varied from my real name by the addition of a single letter.
To all the people who did genuinely panic and offer to come to my aid, please know that you were the day’s silver lining. Many expected and unexpected friends offered to come to my aid. Fortunately, I don’t think that anyone actually got as far as sending money, though one kind soul has had to cancel his credit card. (M.R., you have my gratitude and apologies.)
There ends the happy part of the story. Between answering frantic calls, I managed to ascertain that the thief had locked me out of my own account by changing my password. This, coincidentally made it impossible to navigate Apple’s Kafka-esque “help” (don’t bother us) system, which requires use of the password that I no longer had. Even if I had wanted to use the web chat system — which I didn’t — I literally could not.
To circumvent this small problem, I had to call an Apple sales phone number — the company no longer publishes a technical support number — and then engage in a lusty debate with the automated call attendant. Eventually, my linguistic gymnastics got me connected to a nice but totally hapless rep in the Philippines. Since my situation was unusual, she and script were totally useless in my hour of need. Because I knew that every minute meant more pirate mail going on it’s evil way, I quickly insisted on a supervisor, which got me transferred to an American with sufficient latitude to provide me with actual assistance. I’d thank him by name, but I wouldn’t want Apple to retaliate. (I say that only somewhat in jest.)
Now, here comes the fun part. Are you ready? The Apple supervisor had to then use the same chat system to “talk” to a technical rep, located who knows where, that I was originally supposed to use to begin with. The fix took an hour and twenty minutes of me talking by cell phone to a stranger who was communicating by text to a third party that he couldn’t speak to either. This was the point when it hit me that we’d moved from Kafka to Orwell. I was caught in in a bureaucratic hellhole in which the orderly functioning of an efficient system was more more important than a few crushed cogs while a crime was being perpetrated.
The epilogue to this ridiculous tale is that Apple’s fix did not stop my incoming mail from being rerouted. Later that day, I had to endure another 45 minute chat with BRAXTON — not his or her real name — to stop my incoming mail being routed to the ID thieves. And when all was said in done I still couldn’t send email: after all, I had exceeded my allowable allocation by spammed in the first place.

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Los Angeles has convened a new court to handle the growing number of veterans suffering from stress and substance abuse who fall into trouble with the law. The BBC's David Willis meets some of the first to face the judge.
Delton Baker Jr still has the air of a military man.
He stands tall and erect and dresses in a black suit and tie. For eight years his home was the sprawling Camp Pendleton Marine Base near San Diego, California. From there, his regiment saw tours of duty in Grenada, Lebanon and Okinawa.
Then he fell sick, and that was when his problems began.
“I started to find that I had difficulties with my knees,” Baker, 50, told the BBC.
“They were weak, and it was becoming more and more of a challenge to keep up with the training.”
After his discharge from the military Baker was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Unable to find work, he turned to drink and drugs, and soon fell into trouble with the law.
“I got out of the service and it just seemed as though there wasn't anything for me to do,” he said.
“So I fell by the wayside.”
Non-violent offences
Baker was the first person to face a judge at the newly launched court for veterans in downtown Los Angeles. As a condition for participation in the programme, he had pleaded guilty to a drug possession charge.
The court, which will convene weekly, caters to former servicemen and women who are suffering from PTSD and other forms of mental illness, such as traumatic brain injury.
The voluntary programme will enable them to receive treatment instead of a jail term. The scheme, which is only open to veterans charged with non-violent crimes, has been tried in other parts of the US and deemed a success.
“This is long overdue,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan, who will preside over the veterans' cases, told the BBC. “These people served their country, they stuck their necks out for the rest of us, and some – because of their experiences – are more susceptible to drugs and alcohol and also to mental illness.”
Depending on the nature of their crimes, veterans could be referred to treatment within the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) network of outpatient and clinical care facilities.
The veterans will be supervised for a set period of time; if they violate the court's conditions their penalties could be increased.
Former tank commander Alex Barlow, 48, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after his discharge from the US Marines Corps. He spent several years in Los Angeles's notorious Skid Row district, which has a large homeless population, and also turned to drink and drugs.
The second defendant to be brought before the veterans court, he too agreed to enrol in a VA programme after pleading guilty to petty theft. Afterwards, he said he looked forward finally to having a roof over his head.
“It's just good to feel that someone recognises I have a problem, rather than that I am a problem,” he told the BBC.
The VA estimates that 131,000 former servicemen and women are homeless on any given night. In Los Angeles – the city thought to have the largest homeless population in the US – an estimated 8,000 veterans sleep on the streets.
VA social worker Sergio Antoniuk sees a clear link between the large number of veterans sleeping rough and figures suggesting that as many as 30% of troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan could be suffering from some sort of stress disorder.
“It's vitally important that these people have their needs assessed, and we draw up treatment programmes so these people can be rehabilitated,” he told the BBC.
Delton Baker Jr, meanwhile, had already enrolled in Alcoholics Anonymous before he came to the veterans court. The judge referred him to the VA for counselling and additional support. He left the court beaming.
“It's good to know that somebody cares for us,” he said.
“Some of us here have been through a lot, and if you don't have someone to talk to, you bottle up your experiences and that's when the problems arise. I think a lot of us just need someone who will sit down and listen.”

Source:BBC

An adviser to China's central bank has rebuffed criticism from the US over Beijing's exchange rate policy.
In a speech in Beijing, Li Daokui said China “will not appreciate the yuan solely because of external pressure”.
His comments follow strong criticism in America that the yuan is significantly undervalued, damaging US exports.
Last week US the Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, said he was considering ways to press China to let the yuan appreciate.

Share this page Iran denies report on US arrests Iran's state owned TV has denied a report from the semi-official Fars news agency that Iranian forces had detained seven US troops trying to enter the country.
Fars had earlier said that: “Recently seven American troops were detained by Iranian guards in a south-eastern province of the country… Two Iranians accompanying the troops were also arrested”.
US officials say they have no knowledge of the reported arrests.
South-east Iran borders on Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But there are no US troops usually stationed in the reported area, says the BBC's Jon Leyne in Cairo.
Our correspondent says the Fars news agency is known to be close to Iran's Revolutionary Guards, but it has made spectacular mistakes in the past.
The announcement comes amid growing tension over two US hikers who have been detained for about a year.
A third member of the group was released on bail and is on her way to the US. Iran says the hikers are spies and will be tried. Families say they strayed inside Iran by mistake.

Source:BBC

[This post is co-authored by Bella DePaulo and Rachel Buddeberg.]
Today marks the beginning of Singles Week (or, more formally, National Unmarried and Single Americans Week). We want to kick off the week by putting on our activist hats and declaring that no one should be banned from any basic rights or dignities just because they are single.
The most publicized challenges to current marital privileges have come from the GLBT activists who want those privileges extended to same-sex couples. Their argument is that same-sex marriage is a basic human right. We applaud any expansion of human rights. Yet, as we’ve watched the debate over this issue unfold over the years, we have had some misgivings about the current approach: It seems too piecemeal. First some couples get admissions tickets to the legal benefits and protections of marriage, then the gates are opened to other kinds of couples. But why should a person have to be part of any kind of couple in order to qualify?
We each recognized that there are others who have made relevant statements challenging the role of government in marriage. When we started comparing notes and puttings our lists together, we were encouraged by the number and diversity of perspectives we found. We’ve collected 37 of them here. (Further suggestions are welcome.) The people (and groups) we have quoted have cast their arguments in terms of getting beyond marriage or conjugality, or privatizing marriage, or abolishing marriage, or maintaining the separation of church and state. The authors include libertarians, liberals, and conservatives; people from various religious perspectives; gay rights activists and people hostile toward the GLBT community; people taking a marketplace perspective as their starting point and others starting from a concern with basic human dignities and needs.
There are important distinctions in the arguments that have been advanced. For example, some simply suggest replacing marriage with civil unions – civil contracts for all couples. That option, though, would continue to privilege conjugal couples. A more inclusive possibility is to open the civil contract to any two people, whether friends, relatives, or conjugal couples. Again, though, people would qualify for protections only by way of their link to another person (or persons, in some versions). Even broader is an approach that regards every individual as equally deserving of fundamental protections.
Take the Family and Medical Leave Act as an example and consider its relevance to people in the same generation (i.e., setting aside parents and children). If you are seriously ill, your spouse can take time off from work to care for you under the Act. If the conjugal criterion were set aside, then people could also qualify to take leave to care for, say, a sibling or a friend with whom they had a civil contract. With the broader approach, any person could take leave to care for any other person in need (within the usual stipulations, such as the 12 week limit). Within a given workplace, every employee would have the same opportunity to give or receive care under the Act, regardless of their relationship status.
The statements we found are arranged under these headings:
I.Statements from formal groups
II.Arguments from book-length discussions
III.Contributions from anthologies
IV.Arguments from academic journals
V.Arguments from religious perspectives
VI.Articles from political publications and other media
VII.A sampling of other arguments online
In this post, we share a sampling of the dozens of perspectives. The full list, together with links to all 37 statements, can be found here.
I.Statements from Formal Groups
Beyond Marriage statement (2006). Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision For All Our Families and Relationships.
Published July 26, 2006
Law Commission of Canada (2001). Beyond Conjugality: Recognizing and supporting close personal adult relationships.
II.Arguments from Book-Length Discussions
Martha Albertson Fineman (1995). The Neutered Mother, the Sexual Family, and Other Twentieth Century Tragedies. NY: Routledge.
“[...] we should abolish marriage as a legal category and with it any privilege based on sexual affiliation [...] Of course, people would be free to engage in ‘ceremonious’ marriage; such an event, however, would have no legal (enforceable in court) consequences. If they didn’t execute a separate contract, there would be no imposed terms as now operate in the context of marriage. Any legal consequences would have to be the result of a separate negotiation. Mere agreement to form a live-in sexual relationship would not suffice.” (228-229)
Valerie Lehr (1999). Queer Family Values: Debunking the Myth of the Nuclear Family.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
“Yet by supporting marriage in order to get material benefits, we fail to ask whether basing benefits on marital status and whether the class bias involved in the current distribution of benefits are fair [...] it is important to remember that all nonmarried people (or more accurately all people without domestic partnership or marriage benefits) subsidize the relationships of married people, or those who receive domestic partner benefits.” (31-32)
Example of a recommendation: “[...] rather than asking whether an individual’s family status makes her/him eligible for health insurance, we can now ask whether providing health insurance and health care for that individual enhances his/her ability to be a responsible agent within society.” (175)
Nancy Polikoff (2008). Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage.
Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Polikoff argues in her book that rather than moving the “bright red dividing line” between married and unmarried, we need to remove it. She provides examples of families that are hurt by the privileging of marriage and how a new legal approach could benefit everybody.
“A law reform agenda that values all LGBT families and relationships, and by extension those of heterosexuals as well, does not start with the package of rights that marriage gives different-sex couples and work down from there [...]. Instead, such an agenda starts by identifying the needs of all LGBT people and works up from there to craft legislative proposals to meet those needs.” (209)
Michael Warner (2000). The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Warner documents that the call for “marriage equality” is not an original demand in the queer movement and was taken up only when more conservative forces – who were trying to normalize queerness – became influential within the LGBTQ movement.
“The time is ripe to reconsider the issue. The campaign for marriage, never a broad-based movement among gay and lesbian activists, depended for its success on the courts. It was launched by a relatively small number of lawyers, not by a consensus of activists.” (85) “[...] when gay and lesbian organizations did include the expansion of marriage in their vision of change after Stonewall [in the early 1970s], they usually contextualized it as part of more sweeping changes designed to ensure that single people and nonstandard households, and not just same-sex couples, would benefit.” (90).
III.Contributions from Anthologies
Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller (2006). “Taking Government Out of the Marriage Business: Families Would Benefit.”
In Anita Bernstein (Ed.) Marriage Proposals: Questioning a Legal Status.
“[...] we join those who advance a reasonable thoughtful proposal to abolish marriage as a legal category. As both a personal decision and a public institution, marriage could and most likely would retain all its religious and symbolic significance, but not the legal meaning it has had in the United States in the last few centuries. [...] [T]oday the state acts as a hands-off licensing bureau and divorce granter, making marriage relatively easy to enter and exit, yet maintain legal marital status as a key determinant of eligibility for more than one thousand federal rights and obligations. Cultural lag in family law leaves other kinds of family relationships dangerously ignored and penalized.”
Martha Albertson Fineman (2004). “Why marriage?”
In Mary Lyndon Shanley, Joshua Cohen, Deborah Chaseman (Eds.). Just Marriage. NY: Oxford University Press.
“An analysis that perpetuates the primacy of marriage excludes nonmarital relationships [...] the target of state policies should be the caretaker-dependent tie, not that between sexual affiliates. If our concern is with children, the question should not be how we can resuscitate marriage and thus save society and the traditional family, but how we can support all individuals who perform the important societal work of taking care of those who because of their age or physical or mental conditions are dependent upon some form of family.” (46 and 50)
Wendy Brown (2004). “After marriage.”
In Mary Lyndon Shanley, Joshua Cohen, Deborah Chaseman (Eds.). Just Marriage. NY: Oxford University Press.
“[Locating] the public importance of private unions in marriage not only glosses the reality of marriage today, it occludes emerging ways of living and connecting to others that concretely embody commitment to ‘a shared purpose that transcends the self,’ ways that may have little relation to one’s sexual life – be it serially monogamous, chaste, or promiscuous. If we are looking for the present and future possibilities of ties and associations that exceed the rationally choosing individual and also embody ambitions for justice, marriage would seem to be the least of these [...]” (91)
Paula L. Ettelbrick (1998). “Since when is marriage a path to liberation?”
In Karen V. Hansen, Anita Ilta Garey (Eds.). Families in the U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. (Originally appeared in Out/look: National Gay and Lesbian Quarterly, no. 6, Fall 1989, 9, 14-17.)
“In setting our priorities as a community, we must combine the concept of both rights and justice. At this point in time, making legal marriage for lesbian and gay couples a priority would set an agenda of gaining rights for a few, but would do nothing to correct the power imbalances between those who are married (whether gay or straight) and those who are not. Thus, justice would not be gained.” (482)
“[...] gay marriage will not topple the system that allows only the privileged few to obtain decent health care. Nor will it close the privilege gap between those who are married and those who are not.” (484)
IV.Arguments from Academic Journals
Social Work
Michael C. LaSala (2007). “Too many eggs in the wrong basket: A queer critique of the same-sex marriage movement.”
In Social Work, 53, 129-132.
From a summary: “The fight for legally recognized same-sex marriage dominates the contemporary gay rights movement and has ignited national debate. However, missing from the current discourse is a critical view of the privileges of marriage. Arguments for legal, same-sex marriage center on the many rights and benefits married heterosexual couples enjoy but from which same-sex couples are excluded. However, lesbian and gay activists and social workers are notably silent on whether it is fair that marriage bestows such privileges. [LaSala presents] a critique of the privilege of marriage from a queer theory perspective and its implications for social action and future directions of the lesbian and gay rights movement.”
Ethics
Elizabeth Brake (2010). “Minimal Marriage: What Political Liberalism Implies for Marriage Law.”
In Ethics, 120 (2), 302-337.
From a summary: “As Brake observes in her essay, there are many kinds of caring relationships that adults enter into with many individuals. Some resemble traditional marriages, others are nonexclusive sexual relationship (such as those favored by polyamorists), others are ongoing economic or caretaking relationships between adult family members or friends, others involve sharing a household and finances without necessarily sharing sexual intimacies, and so on and so on. What should a political liberal recommend that the law’s relation be to the plurality of possible adult caring relationships?”
Cass R. Sunstein and Richard H. Thaler (2008). “Privatizing Marriage.”
In The Monist, 91 (3/4), 377-387.
“The privatization of marriage could take many forms. The most extreme version is signaled by the science-fiction story, in which official marriage does not exist, and government acts solely via ordinary contract law and default rules. A less extreme version would also abolish official marriage, but at the same time recognize the legal status of “civil unions,” whose availability and meaning would remain to be decided.”
[...] Instead of debating government monopolies and mandates, we should consider allowing people to sort out their private relationships as they see fit, so long as coercion is absent and children are not harmed.
“In an era in which marriage is not a necessary condition either for sex or for children, the state’s licensing role has become far less essential.
“Official marriage licenses also have the unfortunate consequence of dividing the world into the status of those who are “married” and those who are “single,” in a way that produces serious economic and material disadvantages for the latter (and sometimes for the former).
Feminist Philosophy
Claudia Card (1996). “Against Marriage and Motherhood.”
In Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 11 (3), 1-23.
“This essay argues that current advocacy of lesbian and gay rights to legal marriage and parenthood insufficiently criticizes both marriage and motherhood as they are currently practiced and structured by Northern legal institutions. Instead we would do better not to let the State define our intimate unions and parenting would be improved if the power presently concentrated in the hands of one or two guardians were diluted and distributed through an appropriately concerned community.”
Claudia Card (2007). “Gay Divorce: Thoughts on the Legal Regulation of Marriage.”
In Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, 22 (1), 24-38.
From a summary: “Although the exclusion of LGBTs from the rites and rights of marriage is arbitrary and unjust, the legal institution of marriage is itself so riddled with injustice that it would be better to create alternative forms of durable intimate partnership that do not invoke the power of the state. Card’s essay develops a case for this position.”
V.Arguments from Religious Perspectives
Religion Dispatches
Louis A. Ruprecht (August 9, 2010). “Jesus Was Single. So, Was the Savior Really a Second-Class Citizen?”
In Sexuality/Gender.
“One of the more striking things about all of the ink that has been spilled over California’s now-infamous Proposition 8 (and its long legal aftermath) is the almost reflexive assumption on all sides that marriage, somehow, is a norm–a desirable norm. And so the argument swiftly becomes an argument about normalcy: about who is normal, and about who may be privileged to participate in normalizing social institutions like marriage. [...] Proposition 8 may be unconstitutional not because it discriminates according to sexual categories, but because it discriminates according to marital ones. [...] And so the end result of this long debate–and it will be a long one–may have the unintended consequence of lending a newly aggrieved social group a more public voice: those single or quietly cohabitating persons who are tired of hearing arguments about the legitimacy or the sanctity of marriage [...] [The ultimate result may be] the realization that a secular state cannot justify its continued involvement in the social institution of marriage.”
Catholics for Choice
Mary E. Hunt. (2005) “A Marriage Proposal.”
In Conscience Magazine, Summer.
“The best proof that the religious right is in charge in the United States lies in the movement for same-sex marriage. Of course the Right opposes it, but by setting up marriage as the main lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/ queer (LGBTQ) agenda item, the Right has set itself up to win. This issue, like gays in the military before it, is not necessarily the most important to LGBTQ people ourselves. But the Right’s polarizing opposition has made it necessary to struggle for it or lose ground. [...] In fact, what seems to be a huge step forward for lesbian and gay people, will, when achieved, extend the reach of state control over relationships. It will privilege those who are coupled over those who are single or otherwise connected. It will shore up the nuclear family model despite the fact that people live in many other relational constellations.”
VI.Articles from Political Publications and Other Media
Lisa Duggan. “What’s Right With Utah.” The Nation.
July 13, 2009.
“The brilliance of the strategy [in Utah] is its ability to refocus public opinion, put conservative opponents on the defensive, shift public perception of the barriers to LGBT equality and broaden the scope of action to include the needs of people living in nonconjugal households, be they straight, gay or other. [...] Equality Utah organizers repeatedly stress a simple but often overlooked fact: many basic rights and protections for LGBT citizens [...] are not guaranteed by marriage. Housing and employment discrimination, for example, could continue against married or cohabiting couples as well as single people. That point is very well taken in the current political climate, when marriage equality often stands in for all civil equality.”
Amanda Marcotte (2009). “For Many, Marriage Is Sexless, Boring and Oppressive: Time to Rethink the Institution?” AlterNet.
July 1, 2009.
“Marriage is failing people as an institution, and it’s time to stop trying minor modifications on the side, such as expanding the right to all people or making it easier to divorce, and consider broader changes. We could start by untying all the benefits that lure people into marriage and expanding them to all people — health insurance, hospital visitation rights, tax breaks — so that married people don’t get special status over the unmarried.”
Michael Kinsley. “Abolish Marriage.” Slate.
July 2, 2003.
“End the institution of government-sanctioned marriage [...] Privatize marriage [...] Let churches and other religious institutions continue to offer marriage ceremonies. Let department stores and casinos get into the act if they want. Let each organization decide for itself what kinds of couples it wants to offer marriage to. Let couples celebrate their union in any way they choose and consider themselves married whenever they want. Let others be free to consider them not married, under rules these others may prefer. And, yes, if three people want to get married, or one person wants to marry herself, and someone else wants to conduct a ceremony and declare them married, let ‘em. If you and your government aren’t implicated, what do you care?”
David Boaz. “Privatize Marriage.” Slate.
April 25, 1997.
“Why should the government be in the business of decreeing who can and cannot be married? [...] why should anyone have – or need to have – state sanction for a private relationship?”
“Make [marriage] a private contract between two individuals [...] Under a privatized system of marriage, courts and governments would recognize any couple’s contract – or, better yet, eliminate whatever government-created distinction turned on whether a person was married or not.”
“”Privatizing” marriage can mean two slightly different things. One is to take the state completely out of it. If couples want to cement their relationship with a ceremony or ritual, they are free to do so. Religious institutions are free to sanction such relationships under any rules they choose. A second meaning of “privatizing” marriage is to treat it like any other contract: The state may be called upon to enforce it, but the parties define the terms. When children or large sums of money are involved, an enforceable contract spelling out the parties’ respective rights and obligations is probably advisable. But the existence and details of such an agreement should be up to the parties.”
“Marriage contracts could be as individually tailored as other contracts are in our diverse capitalist world. For those who wanted a standard one-size-fits-all contract, that would still be easy to obtain. Wal-Mart could sell books of marriage forms next to the standard rental forms.”
Stephanie Coontz. “Taking Marriage Private.” New York Times.
November 26, 2007
“Using the existence of a marriage license to determine when the state should protect interpersonal relationships is increasingly impractical. Society has already recognized this when it comes to children, who can no longer be denied inheritance rights, parental support or legal standing because their parents are not married.”
David Harsanyi. “Time for a Divorce.” Real Clear Politics.
August 6, 2010.
“Isn’t it about time we freed marriage from the state?”
“Imagine if government had no interest in the definition of marriage. Individuals could commit to each other, head to the local priest or rabbi or shaman — or no one at all — and enter into contractual agreements, call their blissful union whatever they felt it should be called and go about the business of their lives.”
“[...] mostly I believe your private relationships are none of my business.”
VII.A Sampling of Other Arguments Online
(Continue reading here.)

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I have 3 NFL Best Bets for Sunday after going 2-0 on my Saturday Best Bets with Arizona over Iowa and Stanford killing Wake Forest. One of my Best Bets is analyzed below and you can get all Best Bets each week at http://www.drbobsports.com/analysis.cfm
Make sure to check out my weekly free analysis and money management articles at drbobsports.com.
Each Thursday afternoon (after 3 pm Pacific this week) I post analysis of about 50 College and NFL games in the Free Analysis section of my website. I also have 3 NFL Best Bets this week that you can purchase if you’d like.
Philadelphia (-6 1/2) 24 DETROIT 10
They’ll be two new starting quarterbacks in this game, as Michael Vick takes over the Eagles for concussed starter Kevin Kolb while Shaun Hill takes the reigns of the Lions from an injured Matthew Stafford. Vick is not as good of a passer as Kolb (Vick has averaged just 5.4 yards per pass play in his career), but his running almost makes up for the less efficient passing. Vick has averaged 7.2 yards per run over his career (much higher if you take out kneel downs) and he ran for 103 yards on 11 scrambles last week (and averaged a decent 6.0 yards per pass play) while nearly bringing the Eagles back from a huge deficit in their 20-27 loss to the Packers. Vick should have good success throwing the ball against the perennially bad Lions’ secondary that was torched for 362 yards at 9.3 yppp last week by Chicago. Don’t be fooled by the 19-14 final score of that game, as the Lions allowed 464 yards at 6.7 yards per play and were only close because of 3 Bears fumbles and a pick. Detroit’s offense was horrible last week, running for just 20 yards on 21 rushes and totaling just 168 yards at 3.0 yppl. Shaun Hill didn’t play well off the bench last week (just 9 for 19 passing and 4.0 yppp), but I think he’s actually an upgrade over Stafford, who throws way too many interceptions (20 in 11 career games). Hill’s 5.5 yppp career average is better than Stafford’s 5.2 yppp career average and Hill has a very good 2.2% interception rate. The Lions should be a better team with Hill not making the mistakes that Stafford would likely make. Detroit’s offense is still bad, however, and Philadelphia has a good defensive unit that held a very good Packers’ attack to just 302 yards at 4.8 yppl in last week’s loss. My ratings favor Philly by 9 points in this game and the Eagles apply to a very good 20-2 ATS week 2 bounce-back situation as well as an 80-38-2 ATS week 2 statistical indicator. Detroit is just 3-38 straight up in their last 41 games and only 5-20-1 ATS when not getting more than 10 points, so I don’t mind taking the Eagles in a good situation against a bad team – especially given that fact the Philly is 47-22-1 ATS since 2000 when not favored by more than 9 points against a team coming off a loss (19-5-1 ATS if the Eagles are also coming off a loss). I’ll take Philadelphia in a 3-Star Best Bet at -6 points or less and for 2-Stars at -7 points.
I have free analysis of 13 NFL games and 47 College games this weekend in the Free Analysis section of my website.

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Man oh man, I’m mad. I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. Take what? I don’t know. And that makes me mad too. Angry. Riled up. Cranky. Irate. Livid. Bellicose. Splenetic. Which has something to do with the spleen. Think it involves leakage. Whatever it is, it can’t be good and I got it.
I’m mad at everything and everybody, but especially at career politicians. Not to mention career pediatricians. From now on, one of my kids gets sick, I’m taking them to see some incensed old coot straight off the street carrying a misspelled sign. Experience is way overrated. Why can’t US Senator be an entry- level position?
I’m mad about paying taxes. Because I don’t like paying taxes. I’m tired of my hard earned money wasted on silly things like roads and air traffic controllers and paramedics and pipeline inspectors. And flossing. I hate that too. Who needs teeth? Members of the lamestream media elite, that’s who. So they can lie through them. Those guys I’m mad at because they keep running stories about me being mad.
I’m mad at the government’s nit picking rules. Let corporations regulate themselves. They know what they’re doing. I’m mad because I have to work two jobs just to get by and I’m mad rich people don’t get more tax cuts. I’m mad about all the jobs that went overseas and I’m mad at unions demanding a living wage. I’m mad my life isn’t better than my parents’ and I’m mad I can’t have everything now and force my children to pay for it. And knowing I’m confused just fuels my maddening.
I’m mad our Muslim President was born in Kenya. And don’t bother me with your so- called facts. I know what I know and it makes me so mad I could just spit. So I do. Often. Right into the wind. And having the front of my shirt constantly moist just gooses the scale of how mad I am.
I’m mad at both of the parties. All of the parties. Political parties and birthday parties and tailgate parties. I’m mad at Democrats because they’re the polar opposite of mad and I’m mad at Republicans because they’re mad at me. And if my maddish spews hurt them, tough. Because they’re not as mad as I am. I’m so mad I’ll bite off both my hands one finger at a time if that’s what it takes. To prove I’m mad. Which I am.
I’m mad at immigrants for doing jobs that are beneath me. I’m mad at the French. I’m mad at French’s mustard. I’m mad at people who put ketchup on hot dogs. I’m even mad at people who are mad at people who put ketchup on hot dogs. You can never hope to replicate the purity of my precious maditude.
Some folks don’t ever get mad which makes me maddest of all. The hell is wrong with these people? These uppity madless ones. Oooh, they make me so mad. But they will be mad. Soon enough. Because my madness is going to bloom and grow until everyone is as mad as me. Which, is going to be tough. Because I’m really really mad. Did I mention I was mad? Good. Because I am. Mad, that is. Man oh man, I’m mad.
Will Durst is a San Francisco based political columnist who also tells jokes sometimes.
Catch him at Comedy Celebration Day, Sunday September 19th. Noon to five. Golden Gate Park. Comedyday.com
His new CD, “Raging Moderate,” now available from Stand Up! Records on iTunes and Amazon.
Coming next year: “Where the Rogue Things Go.”

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com