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The erosion of Barack Obama’s popularity has lessons in it for every American who wishes to remain interesting and current, both professionally and personally. The real story in this election is not that America has no jobs, that the economy continues to falter, or that the national debt continues to balloon. While all three are true and, more importantly, Obama has failed to fix them, it is also true that these conditions existed prior to Obama’s election.
Yet somehow his personal charisma and captivating charm elevated the electorate. The real story of campaign 2010 is how boring Obama has become. Obama, who had never run anything except a campaign in his entire life, performed an almost unprecedented conjuring act in 2008, getting the electorate to embrace him regardless of the utter absence of managerial skills. They believed not necessarily in Obama’s capacity to fix America’s transient problems but in his ability to focus us on more eternal, upbeat themes like hope, faith, and the future. Yet, this time his very presence seems irritating. A man whose oratory lifted him to earth’s highest office can’t seem to deliver a single uplifting speech.
As a connoisseur of great oratory, I used to love hearing Obama’s staccato delivery, perfect timing, and mesmeric self-confidence — the mark of any great speaker — even as I disagreed with him on many of the issues. But Obama’s speeches have now become insufferable, devoid of charisma and personal magnetism. Here are three principal reasons why.
First and foremost, Obama has utterly overexposed himself. As a marriage counselor I always advise husbands and wives that, paradoxically, their marriages require intimacy on the one hand, but barriers and distance on the other. Wives walking around a bedroom unclothed, for example, is an invitation to erotic boredom and a dilution of the body’s natural attractiveness. Overexposure, as everyone knows, breeds contempt. The Catholic Church is a master of mystery — from the shadows of its darkly lit Gothic cathedrals to its insistence on innumerable divine mysteries — and it is therefore no wonder that it grew to become the world’s largest faith.
It is the same reason why, in Judaism, Torah scrolls are sequestered in an ark, obscured first by doors, then curtains, then a velvet covering, all of which increases hiddenness and thus reverence. In Hollywood it is specifically those celebrities who understand the need to stay out of the public eye that achieve the greatest longevity. Obama, by contrast, has the unfortunate flaw of always needing to be loved. He is forever in our face. From weighing in on every issue right down to the Ground Zero mosque to becoming the president who traveled most in his first two years, Obama lives permanently in the sun. President Bush used to vacation on his ranch where he’d disappear for two weeks. Not so Obama, who even on holiday is constantly photographed buying ice cream and shooting hoops.
Less is more, Mr. President. Sometimes you have to give the people the opportunity to miss you. Superman knows that his grand entrances depend on being disguised the rest of the time as Clark Kent. But by being forever available, Obama has made himself pedestrian. He went from Messiah to mortal, rock star to bland stone.
Second, Obama has betrayed a lack of substance. When he was more mysterious, Obama encouraged our belief that there was subterranean depth beneath the gleaming surface. Just give the man some time and out will come the magic. But it turned out that vacuous speeches on hope and change were not the thin veneer that concealed great complexity but the very substance itself. I have yet to hear one truly new or exciting idea from Barack Obama since becoming President.
President Bush was dismissed as a lightweight. But love it or hate it, the Bush doctrine of preemption and its corollary of exporting democracy to recalcitrant states was a compelling and divisive idea that invited ferocious debate. But with Obama we are back to the tired, yawn-inducing discussions of big versus limited government and whether Keynesian stimulus spending or reducing the national debt is the best way to kindle the economy. I’m bored.
Third, Obama comes across as perfect. The most interesting people are always the most tortured. Bill Clinton clogged his arteries with cheeseburgers and had sex with an intern in the Oval Office, yet he left the presidency with a sixty percent approval rating. America never lost its fascination with this angst-ridden and highly imperfect leader, so unpredictable that we never knew what he’d get up to next. Not so no-drama-Obama who evinces an imperturbable cool utterly bereft of inner trauma. Of course we don’t want the president to cheat on his wife. But show us a tiny demon or two, other than the fact that you light up a cigarette. Demonstrate that you wrestle with moods the way we do when we can’t pay our bills, that you struggle with life’s disappointments like us ordinary mortals.
When I was a boy I revered but had no deep interest in our founding fathers because they were portrayed as marble busts who were perfect. It was only later when we discovered how inconsistent the slave-owning Thomas Jefferson could be about human freedom, how depressed and suicidal Lincoln became, and how Martin Luther King, Jr. wrestled with marriage that these aloof figures were humanized and became so endlessly fascinating. In this sense I believe Obama was poorly served by seemingly being a golden boy who suffered few setbacks.
Perhaps it’s time for him to talk about the pain of being an abandoned child who was later orphaned of his mother as well, or the pain of seeing his popularity plummet. Perfect people are boring and monolithic. But flawed human beings who rise above adversity to reach great heights are inspirational. And if the president wants to recapture the public imagination, he would do well to expose a wart or two before the November elections.

This Blogger’s Books from
Kosher Sex: A Recipe for Passion and Intimacy
by Shmuley Boteach
The Blessing of Enough: Rejecting Material Greed, Embracing Spiritual Hunger
by Shmuley Boteach

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Nicole Tichon is the Tax and Budget Reform Advocate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group; Andrew Moylan is Director of Government Affairs for the National Taxpayers Union.
Our nation faces unprecedented fiscal challenges, as the commitments we’ve made now and into the future far outpace our fiscal capacity. Congress, the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and citizens across the country must grapple with very difficult decisions about how we can put our fiscal house in order. It will be critical to reach out across party lines and across ideological persuasions to achieve common-sense reforms that can bring us closer to balance.
The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) and National Taxpayers Union (NTU) have joined together to propose a list of 30 specific recommendations to reform our future spending commitments. If enacted in their entirety, these changes would save taxpayers over $600 billion in total by 2015, the target date for the Fiscal Commission to reduce our publicly-held debt-to-GDP ratio to a more sustainable level of 60 percent. While our organizations have often differed about the proper regulatory scope of government and a host of tax policies, we are united in the belief that we spend far too much money on ineffective programs that do not serve the best interests of the American people.
The cuts deal with specific reforms to entitlement programs, defense spending, wasteful subsidies and a broad range of discretionary items of a smaller scale. While these proposals won’t get us all the way there, it is a start that could establish some common ground and make government more accountable in the process.
Some of the suggestions are aimed at procedural improvements, like collecting errant payments for Supplemental Security Income or housing subsidies. Others seek to eliminate programs that are wasteful or unnecessary, like the Market Access Program, which helps some of the most profitable companies in the world advertise their products abroad.
Every item on the list includes a five-year savings estimate for the Commission’s 2015 target. Those estimates are backed up by authoritative official sources such as the Congressional Budget Office, Government Accountability Office, Joint Committee on Taxation, or the Office of Management and Budget, as well as bipartisan panels and audit agencies. The recommendations are specific, detailed, and actionable items that Congress could pursue right now to reduce spending.
Most importantly, we strongly believe this list represents a consensus that can be reached between political factions that spend a great deal of their time fighting one another. In our estimation, these recommendations reduce spending without significantly degrading the level of services provided to the American taxpayer and without neglecting the federal government’s commitments.
As a nation, we can no longer afford to delay difficult decisions. It is our hope that this list of spending reductions can serve as a starting point for long overdue reforms and lay the groundwork for a bipartisan approach to those decisions.
What follows is a general summary of spending reductions that fall into four rough categories: ending wasteful subsidies, improving contracting and asset acquisition, improving program execution and government operations, and addressing outdated or ineffective military programs to align spending with current needs. Download the full report for a list of each specific recommendation,with an estimate of its savings by 2015, totaling over $600 billion, and a reference to the source from which the estimate is based.
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The National Journal reported today:
As my PCCC colleague Jason Rosenbaum told PC Magazine today, “This is the first time ever that congressional candidates have joined together to make net neutrality an election issue.”
Once again, progressives are working together with bold Democratic challengers to show Democratic Party leaders what it looks like to on offense.
Many media outlets are writing about this big announcement, and some observers will wonder if voters care about this issue.
That’s why the candidates involved — led by bold progressive Ann McLane Kuster (NH-2) — are asking the public to make clear that the answer is “yes” by being a “citizen signer” of today’s bold joint-candidate statement on Net Neutrality. Click here to see it and sign.
The PCCC also set up a page on the political fundraising site ActBlue where the public already chipped in over $10,000 to support pro-Net Neutrality candidates today — you can chip in $3 to support these bold candidates by clicking here.
The statement signed by nearly every leading Senate candidate and many top House candidates says:
In an email announcing the news to PCCC members this morning, Ann Kuster made clear how this issue is relevant to voters in her district and others — modeling how other candidates can talk about this issue on the campaign trail:
Let me tell you how protecting Net Neutrality affects voters and jobs here in New Hampshire.
Phone and cable companies want to put tollbooths on the Internet — forcing businesses, organizations, and individuals to pay extra for their websites to open quickly on people’s computers.
Big corporations like Exxon Mobil could afford this cost. But small businesses, economic innovators, independent media, and grassroots groups could not. Losing Net Neutrality would stifle free speech, innovation, and jobs.
Especially in the “Live Free or Die” state, hurting Internet freedom by putting new tollbooths on the Internet is a non-starter. And across the nation, Democratic candidates agree.
Are you inspired by candidates willing to be bold on this issue?
If so, join 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 others in becoming a “citizen signer” of today’s bold joint-candidate Net Neutrality statement? Click here.
Or, pile on to the $10,000+ already given today to support these bold candidates. Click here to chip in $3.
At the end of the day, it’s not an accident that candidates like Joe Sestak and Ann McLane Kuster are surging in the polls by being bold economic populists, willing to stick their necks out on issues that directly challenge corporate power — like Net Neutrality. It’s also not an accident that RealClearPolitics just moved Ann Kuster’s race from “toss up” to “leans Dem.” (How often has that happened this year!)
Today’s big announcement is a model for boldness that Democratic leaders could learn from.

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TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport.
The ‘GNR’ is also now available on your cell phone via Stitcher Radio’s mobile app!.
IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Congrats ExxonMobil, ya did it again!; Have a greener Halloween; The Governator slams “wimps” in D.C., and his director James Cameron jumps in; PLUS: It’s Crazy Time in the final stretch before Tuesday’s pivotal elections, and the fists, dollars and puns are flying … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
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IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): CA Student Delivers Prop. 23 Debate Challenge to Koch; Strongest storm ever recorded in the Midwest smashes all-time records; “Security zone” set around BP oil spill site; Seattle Fuel Spill Spreads Slick Across Salmon Bay; South Africa unveils plans for ‘world’s biggest’ solar power plant; Companies Fight to Keep Global Warming Data Secret; air emissions of benzene may cause birth defects; Global warming threatens CA state’s parks …PLUS: Justice Dept. Inspector: Prison E-Waste Recycling Endangered Inmates…
‘Green News Report’ is heard on many fine radio stations around the country. For additional info on stories we covered today, plus today’s ‘Green News Extra’, please click right here…

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My country of Albania has had an incredible economic transformation over the past few years. When I started in government 20 years ago, Albania had an unemployment rate of almost 80% and no country was more devastated by hyper-collectivization and dictatorships than my country. Since that time Albania has become a business-friendly country whose economy continues to grow despite the state of the world’s economy.
Albania has become an upper middle income country which last year had the highest growth in Europe. It was the only European nation whose economy grew in 2009 and continues to do so in 2010. We have a well-educated populous and a government that has reduced the bureaucratic burden on business. These policies have encouraged direct foreign investment in Albania and its natural resources such as; chrome, copper, iron ores and oil, found in the fields of the Adriatic Sea. Exports are up 85% and government has cut its budget deficit to 3.1% of GDP. Additionally, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, which measures 178 countries success in fighting corruption, moved Albania from 95 to 87 in their 2010 results, indicating that my government has been successful in fighting corruption and creating a business-friendly environment.
All these changes have come to fruition and become possible because my government and I have followed free market principles that have allowed for economic growth and a business-friendly environment for investment in Albania. We cut the payroll tax in half from 32% to 15%, personal income tax from 23% to 10%, the corporate tax from 25% to 10% and Social Security contribution from 32% to 15%. These measures and steps that were taken were necessary to spur economic growth and to get my country out of the economic doldrums that we had faced for decades.
When the economic crisis hit the US and Europe, I still believed that the only way to get out of the situation is to help and spur business growth in my country. For this reason my government and I have streamlined approval procedures for foreign investors, as well as for local citizens who wish to start their own businesses. Albania has enacted so-called one-euro zones in which land is leased–at virtually no cost–to firms constructing new facilities. We have simplified the tax system from 26 national taxes to six national taxes, as well as creating a good climate for investors by improving business registration and simplifying licensing processes whereby approvals can be granted quicker and at a lower cost.
I encourage the US and other European nations to follow some of the steps that we have taken. Everything we have done will not work for every country, but if we all follow the idea of free market principles, our world economy will be better for it in the long run.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The nation’s drug war warriors (led by current and past DEA chiefs and drug czars) along with sideline apologists (timid politicians, blinkered editorialists), are resorting to a last-minute campaign of hair-afire hysterics in the effort to dissuade California’s voters from voting Yes on Proposition 19. The initiative would, finally, sensibly, regulate, control and tax cannabis.
What’s all the screeching about? The usual: marijuana is a gateway drug…law enforcement will not be able to detect or arrest people driving under its influence… employers will not be able to discipline or fire under-the-influence employees. Lies and red herrings, all. Also, they know Proposition 19 will pass if young, educated voters turn out.
But, what’s the subtext? Why are anti-19 forces battling so frantically to defeat the smartest piece of drug reform legislation to come along since the repeal of alcohol prohibition?
Two words: money and identity.
The drug war, particularly the part that focuses, advertently or inadvertently, on adult possession of small quantities of cannabis, is spectacularly expensive. Billions of taxpayer dollars are “invested” annually as federal, state, and local police, courts, and corrections agencies target, investigate, arrest, charge, prosecute, and, in many jurisdictions, incarcerate Americans for possessing even a wee quantity of the weed. Add to this the ancillary costs, such as laboratory testing (necessary to charge even a petty pot case), probation and parole agent involvement, and the like, and you get a pretty good idea of just how financially dependent our criminal justice system really is on the preservation of marijuana prohibition.
(The most odious and ominous aspect to all of this is the effect of the rapidly expanding privatization of our prisons: corporations rake in profits with each and every prisoner. A parole violator re-imprisoned for possession of a joint is worth every nickel as much as a rapist.)
Then there’s the identity piece, which doesn’t get nearly as much play as it should. If I grow up in the criminal justice system, subjected to the steady drumbeat of drug war propaganda, there’s a good chance I’ll come to self-identify as a drug warrior. In other words, drug enforcement is not just what I do: It is who I am. Not to get too woo-woo here, but the prospect of ending the war against cannabis is for some drug warriors tantamount to excising a chunk of their egos. Which just might help explain why all those anti-19 superegos are in moralizing overdrive in these waning moments of the California campaign.
An evidence-based argument may be a weak match against something as knotty as one’s core identity, but imagine California’s criminal justice practitioners putting the public’s money, plus their own time, imagination and egos behind a drive to end domestic violence, child abuse, drunk and drugged driving, and predatory street crimes. This is precisely the reasoning of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, whose thousands of members enthusiastically support Proposition 19.
It will happen. Marijuana will be legalized in California. This week will tell when it will happen. In the interests of public health and safety, human rights, personal liberties, and sound fiscal policy it makes far more sense that it happen next Tuesday, not the next election.

This Blogger’s Books from
Breaking Rank: A Top Cop’s Expose of the Dark Side of American Policing
by Norm Stamper

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Peter Tosh’s prophetic anthem “Legalize It” is sounding pretty good these days. Since the former Wailer penned the reggae tune in 1976, the legalization movement has come a long way. Still, others may say: What’s taking so long?
America’s longest prohibition dates back to 1937 — the “Reefer Madness” era when the country’s earliest anti-drug zealots (led by former head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, Harry J. Anslinger) convinced a gullible public that marijuana caused people to commit unspeakable acts of depravity, such as when the hopped-up stoner runs over an elderly man in the guffaw-inducing exploitation flick.
While most Americans no longer accept the bald-faced lies that propelled the campaign to ban marijuana for all its uses — recreational as well as industrial (hemp) and medical — it remains an uphill battle to counter the government’s standard-issue pot propaganda, such as increased harm due to greater potency, the gateway theory that marijuana leads to hard drugs and suggestions that cannabis use causes cancer (quite the opposite, actually).
Our hidden marijuana history contradicts the most outlandish claims. Though used for pain relief in the 19th and early 20th centuries in the U.S., synthetic drugs would replace cannabis and other natural remedies as the pharmaceuticals industry expanded after World War II. The same could be said for hemp – cannabis’ versatile relative. Despite being the material on which the Declaration of Independence was written, and its use as rope and sails for ships (see “Hemp for Victory,” the 1943 government short extolling the marijuana’s industrial virtues), as seed for birds and as fiber for clothing, hemp was also curiously phased out in favor of cotton and synthetics such as nylon.
Marijuana’s emergence as the drug of choice of the ’60s had little to do with medicinal and industrial applications and everything to do with its profound power to intoxicate an entire generation. While parents popped pills and drank martinis, the younger generation (dubbed hippies) smoked pot and chugged Boone’s Farm wine.
By 1970, for the first time a political movement began to coalesce around legalizing marijuana. Founded by a lawyer, NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) would put a serious face on an issue whose time had come.
Turning up the propaganda machine, Richard Nixon answered with the “War on Drugs.” In 1961, the U.S. had signed on to the International Single Convention Treaty, which divided illegal and legal drugs into four schedules, placing marijuana along with heroin and LSD in Schedule I, which is defined as having “no currently accepted medical use” and a “high potential for abuse.” (Cocaine and morphine are in Schedule II.) The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 implemented these schedules. And in 1973, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was formed to enforce these schedules, focusing primarily on marijuana – the most widely-used illegal drug.
With Nixon’s impeachment around the corner and the Democrats ready to take over the White House, the prospects of liberalizing the marijuana laws seemed very likely. Twelve states voted to decriminalize pot in the ’70s, most while Jimmy Carter was in office. Carter voiced support for decrim, but soon backed off as another Republican backlash loomed and Carter’s second term was in jeopardy.
The ’80s was hardly a pothead’s paradise. Americans took their cues from Ronald Reagan — an aging actor turned President — and his headline-grabbing wife, who together racheted up the drug-war with their “Just Say No” rhetoric. With cocaine use up and pot down, it took the crack epidemic of the mid-’80s to spur marijuana’s gradual reemergence as a safer alterative to the drugs it was supposedly a gateway to.
At the same time, largely thanks to instructions and pictorials in High Times magazine, smokers began to take control of the means of production, growing their own small crops in basements, closets, spare rooms and backyards. Rather than face detection, many went indoors, simulating the outdoor environment using soil or soil-less mediums to create bushy plants that could feed a family of stoners or the whole block. What was exclusively a smuggler’s business in the ’60s and ’70s shifted to domestic cultivation in the ’80s and ’90s. Now more than 50% of the marijuana consumed is grown in the U.S.
As a result of yet another political shift from Republican to Democrat, new life was breathed into the marijuana legalization cause when Bill Clinton arrived in Washington in 1993. He may not have inhaled, but Clinton’s White House projected tolerance and soon pot was “hot” again, just like in the ’70s.
However, this time, rather than decrim, medical marijuana would be the new call to arms. It proved highly successful, first winning in California (Prop 215) in 1996 and sweeping across the nation with 13 additional states voting or passing legislation that allows patients to medicate with pot.
Those opposing medical cannabis viewed it as a stalking horse for complete legalization, and they were right. In states like California and Colorado, where more than 600,000 people have doctor’s recommendations and nearly 3,000 dispensaries cater to those with ailments ranging from debilitating diseases to insomnia, qualifying is generally not a problem, as long as you can afford the $150 doctor’s consultation.
Stores up and down the California coast and across the Colorado Rockies now stock a full range of colorfully named marijuana strains and edible products. You really don’t need go to a dealer any longer in these states (count Montana in as well) to acquire marijuana. It’s de facto legalization.
But because of the rapid spread of dispensaries in California, Colorado and Montana, countries, cities and towns have enacted moratoriums, ordinances, regulations and outright bans to get a handle on this new pot economy. Until Barack Obama took over the White House in 2009, the DEA under G.W. Bush regularly raided pot shops and busted patients. That changed when Obama’s Attorney General Eric Holder ordered U.S. attorneys to back off. Though the Feds have stopped bashing in dispensaries’ doors, the Los Angeles City Council recently passed an ordinance to close as many as 800 shops. Still, Oakland has forged ahead, taxing marijuana (10%) and licensing large-scale grow operations that will supply the city’s four dispensaries. There’s a good reason why they call it Oaksterdam.
Which brings us to Prop 19 — or the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 – which is on the California ballot on November 2. It’s not the first time voters have had a chance to “tax and regulate” marijuana. Similar initiatives failed twice each in Alaska (2000, 2004) and Nevada (2002, 2006). What’s different now is the county’s mood. Still battling a recession, marijuana is being seen as a boon, if not savior, to California’s staggering economy. With a 10% tax in place, based on sales of $14 billion per year worth of marijuana, that’s a potential $1.4 billion raised in taxes. Considering that California, like most states, can barely pay its bills, Prop 19 has to be mighty tempting — even to the gubernatorial candidates Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, both of whom are currently opposed to the tax-pot initiative.
What are the drug warriors saying about Prop 19? Nothing new, as you might expect. They mouth their usual concerns: use will rise, minors will have easier access, emergency room visits will skyrocket, blah, blah, blah. The most ludicrous argument is: “We have enough problems with alcohol and tobacco, we don’t need pot legal too.” Let’s examine: Tobacco-related deaths and ailments remain at epidemic levels (440,000 deaths per year). Alcohol related deaths: 110,000. All hard drug deaths: 17,000. Marijuana: zero.
This is the argument pot smoker’s can’t lose. But smoking anything causes cancer, right? Wrong. Though combusting cannabis creates tar and carbon monoxide, this still doesn’t lead to cancer, And studies are now showing that marijuana may inhibit the growth of tumors. Marijuana cures cancer? Very possibly.
Potheads are not dummies, no matter what the government and all those Partnership for a Drug Free America TV spots would lead you to believe. Stoners practice what is known as harm reduction on a daily basis. Countering the low-grade imported weed from Mexico, Jamaica and Colombia (a.k.a schwag), home growers converted to sinsemilla (seedless female plants), increasing potency from 2% THC to anywhere from 10% to 25% levels. Not only is domestic weed prettier to look at and smells like roses, you need to smoke less to get high.
Rather than toke out of metal and plastic pipes and bongs, stoners shifted to glass — a cleaner alternative. There are even so-called “clear” papers made out of cellulose that are safer than standard bleached rolling papers and will save trees.
But the biggest harm reducer is the vaporizer. You might even call it the equalizer. No flame is necessary for these space-aged looking contraptions. A heating device vaporizes marijuana rather than combusts it, preventing the creation of tar and carbon monoxide. Medical patients swear by vaporizers, and so do more and more daily smokers.
Clearly, marijuana doesn’t kill or cause cancer. So then it’s worst harm has to be getting arrested. Nearly 900,000 Americans were busted for pot in 2008. About 5% of that total, 46,000, took place in New York, which has been dubbed, “The Marijuana Arrest Capital of the World,” thanks to two successive mayors, Guiliani and Bloomberg, who have had no sympathy for the city’s pot-smoking citizens.
Second worst harm? Failing a drug test. An entire new industry was founded in the ’80s to detect small amounts of illegal drugs in people’s urine. Marijuana is by far the easiest drug to detect, since its metabolites remain in the body’s tissues for up to 45 days after smoking. So, let’s say you puffed at a party on the 10th, got randomly tested on the 20th and flunked the test. What exactly does this have to do with your work performance? Absolutely nothing. And now they can test hair, saliva, your work station for residue. Drug testing clearly targets those who choose to recreate with marijuana. Smoke pot or lose your job? It’s a tough call.
Perhaps even more harmful is the stereotyping of marijuana smokers as lazy, dumb, slow, passive, apathetic, memory-challenged junk-food addicts. Though anti-drug organizations like the Partnership gladly re-enforce all of these supposed stoner traits, the media has piled on with constant jokey references to pot-heads adding “dude” to every sentence (ok, maybe that one’s true, dude) with their groggy heads buried in colossal sized bags of Doritos. Stephen Colbert is one of the biggest perpetrators of this archetype.
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This Blogger’s Books from
Reefer Movie Madness: The Ultimate Stoner Film Guide
by Shirley Halperin, Steve Bloom

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Grand Challenges Explorations–part of the foundation’s Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative–funds bold research ideas that have the potential to create breakthroughs in global health solutions. This week, nine previous grant recipients were awarded next-stage grants of up to $1 million.
I have always been interested in the scientific discoveries underlying health advances in developing countries. The benefits of such breakthroughs are substantial, with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives. And the challenges are great, often involving issues that no one has been able to solve before.
Two years ago, the foundation launched Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE), which is aimed at encouraging researchers with promising and sometimes unconventional ideas for improving health to apply for $100,000 grants. That may not seem like a lot of money for scientific research. But by funding a larger number of smaller grants and encouraging applications from a wider range of individuals–including those with little or no experience–Grand Challenges Explorations can fund initial research into potentially innovative concepts that might not otherwise ever be explored.
This week, Dr. Tachi Yamada, president of the foundation’s Global Health Program, announced the first round of next-stage grants to nine previous GCE grantees. This funding–up to $1 million per grantee–will allow projects that have shown outstanding progress and great promise to move forward.
For example, Dr. Mark Davis, professor and director of the Stanford Institute for Immunology, Transplantation and Infection, is working on a new technique to measure vaccine efficacy, a tool that could shorten the time required to test new vaccine candidates. Dr. Pradip Rathod, a professor of chemistry at the University of Washington, is trying to develop a mechanism that could help prevent drug resistance from developing during malaria treatment. Dr. Dan Feldheim, professor at the University of Colorado is exploring how gold crystals could be tailored to block many viral and bacterial drug resistance mechanisms. And Dr. Szabolcs Marka, an experimental astrophysicist at Columbia University who specializes in gravitational waves, is applying his expertise to malaria prevention. He’s working on a device that will use light fields to create barriers to deter mosquitoes from humans and prevent malaria transmission.
I had a chance to meet these researchers and other GCE grantees this week and I found their passion and creativity inspiring. Some, perhaps many, of these ideas may not pan out. But if even one of these projects is successful, it will have been well worth the investment.

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Everett Dirksen is one of my heroes. The Senate Republican leader from 1959 to 1969, he pushed strongly for Vietnam escalation and took conservative stands that I’d have strongly disagreed with on economic issues. But he joined Lyndon Johnson in going to the mat to pass the Civil Rights and Voting Rights bills, and for that I admire him immensely.
Today’s Republicans are far from Everett Dirksen, and that’s a shame. Beyond political differences with Obama and the Democrats, they’ve been making war on reality itself, which should be a major issue of the campaign’s final days. Consider these examples:
The myth of Obama as secret foreign-born Muslim: If 45 percent of Republicans think Obama wasn’t born in this country and 57 percent think he’s a secret Muslim, there’s a reason. It’s not just that Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have been spouting crazy lies, but that the overwhelming majority of Republican leaders have been silent, so as not to damp the fervor those outraged at Obama’s mere presence in the White House. Yes, a few have bluntly said it’s nonsense, like Hawaii’s Republican governor Linda Lingle, South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham, and Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck. But most have responded with a wink and nod, saying Obama’s the legitimate president or that he’s a Christian “as far as I know,” or in Senator James Imhof’s words that the birthers “have a point.” They’ve refused to publically challenge a belief that fuels so much grassroots Republican energy.
Denial of Global Climate change: Dino Rossi, Washington State Senator Patty Murray’s Republican challenger, recently told the Seattle Times that he couldn’t take a stand on climate change because it’s still being debated between “scientists and pseudo scientists.” Agreed. On the one side you have the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the British, German, and Norwegian academies of science, the Japanese, French, Indian, Brazilian, Australian equivalents, and the major scientific organizations of every nation in the world, not to mention such dangerously radical groups as the American Chemical Society, American Meteorological Society, and the American Statistical Association, all of whom say that human-caused climate change is a real and unprecedented danger that’s rapidly getting worse. On the side of the skeptics you have a handful of scientists funded by Exxon, the coal companies, the Koch Brothers and other corporate sponsors who want to maintain business as usual. They claim the jury’s still out, and do this in a year when a fifth of Pakistan was flooded, when Russians fled Moscow because runaway forest fires made the air impossible to breathe, and when much of the US suffered both record temperature levels and extreme weather events like massive floods, tornadoes and ice storms. But Rossi sided with the pseudo-scientists, as has practically every other Republican Senate candidate on an issue that should cross political lines. Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Roy Blunt, Marco Rubio, Linda McMahon, Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Carly Fiorina, Christine O’Donnell, Joe Miller and Rossi–every one of them has questioned the reality of the crisis and therefore the need to act. Even some who once took strong stands, like John McCain, have muted their voices to appease their hard right base. While European conservative parties lambast their more left opponents for not doing enough, the Republicans remain in denial on the ultimate issue of our lifetime.
Denial of our economic crisis and of its roots: The Republicans are certainly talking about the crisis. It benefits them politically. But they’re also denying the urgency of doing anything to assist those who cannot find jobs no matter how hard they try, or to acknowledge the roots of the crash in policies spearheaded by Bush and the Republicans. They focus particularly on the bank bailouts while refusing to acknowledge that they were voted in on Bush’s watch with major Republican support. They also near universally parroted the talking points of the banks in trying their best to stop or gut the Financial Reform Bill that makes such bailouts less likely in the future I’d call a refusal to rein in tax breaks for corporations shipping jobs overseas a similar fundamental denial of the relationship between actions and consequences. Granted, Clinton era deregulation and treaties like NAFTA have helped erode America’s industrial base. But it’s still a major denial of reality to pretend to support Main Street while doing the direct bidding of those whose sole interest is protecting their right to make as much as they can off predatory speculation.
Denial of the threats to our democracy by the power of unlimited wealth: You could say Republican stands on this are just a question of opposing government regulation. But it takes some massive level of denial to claim that it does no harm to the public good to allow corporations to buy and sell politicians of either party like baseball trading cards. In an even greater affront to reality, Republicans who’ve long claimed that transparency solves the problems of opening up the floodgates to unlimited cash have fought unanimously against the barest attempts to impose this accountability through the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that would have at least required ads to list the names of their prime corporate backers. As a result, groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, and new front groups that spring up daily have been flooding the airwaves with commercials paid for by corporate donors whose identity is masked. These ads will elect Republican candidates, or so their backers hope. They will also provide a subtle or not so subtle incentive for Democrats to avoid challenging corporate interests. Yet not a single Republican was willing to vote for the DISCLOSE Act, which remains one vote short of passage.
If there’s an antidote to this denial and to the paid lies that fuel it, it’s citizen participation . If enough of us knock on doors, make phone calls, talk to coworkers and neighbors, and otherwise reach out beyond the core converted (or at least get sympathetic voters to the polls), there’s a chance that this denial of reality will backfire, and that the Everett Dirksens of the Republican Party will regain the upper hand. If we’re silent, we allow reality itself to become hostage to delusion, and our country and planet to pay the price.
Paul Loeb is the author of the wholly updated new edition of Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times (St Martin’s Press, April 2010), and The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, which the History Channel and the American Book Association named the #3 political book of 2004. See www.paulloeb.org.

This Blogger’s Books from
Soul of a Citizen: Living with Conviction in Challenging Times
by Paul Rogat Loeb
The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear
by Paul Loeb

Follow Paul Loeb on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/www.twitter.com

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Go vote. Seriously.
If you need more of a reason to get out there and vote, let’s reflect on a few of the memorable moments in the 2010 midterm election season.
Remember when Ron Johnson, running against Senator Feingold in Wisconsin, said that extreme weather events were caused by sun spots, not global warming pollution.
Or when the Senate candidate from West Virginia John Raese posited, “If you have one volcano in the world, that one volcano puts out more carbon dioxide than everything man puts out.”
Rabid climate denial–despite all facts to the contrary– has received a lot of attention this campaign season. But what got less coverage were the many times candidates denied or conveniently forgot their own party’s history and contradictory policy positions–again, despite all the facts pointing to the truth.
One after another, GOP candidates denounced the cap and trade approach to reducing global warming pollution. Senator Grassley said, “Since a cap-and-trade system inevitably involves increased costs for American consumers, it is in effect a national energy tax.” Nevada’s Sharron Angle said that people who pass things like cap and trade are “certainly not friends of the free-market system.”
But what these candidates failed to mention is that cap and trade is a Republican policy. It was created under President Ronald Reagan as a flexible, market-based system to reduce pollution without resorting to the “command and control” approach of regulation. (Read this fantastic post by Dan Weiss for more on the history).
President Reagan used cap and trade to phase out lead in gasoline and CFCs. Then President George H.W. Bush used a cap-and-trade system to reduce acid rain. And here is the amazing thing: the 1990 cap and trade system passed the Senate by 89-10 and the House by 401-25. Among its supporters: Senator McConnell and Representatives Gingrich, Barton, and Inhofe.

But that was back in 1990. Fast forward to 2010, the year when the GOP’s philosophy could be summed up by the famous Groucho Marx song: “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It.”
So what if the revered President Reagan pioneered cap and trade? If Democrats support it, it must be bad. So what if every time we used cap and trade it has dramatically cut the cost of reducing pollution? If environmentalists support it, it must be an energy tax.

One of the most obvious flip-floppers is Senator McCain. During the presidential campaign just two years ago, McCain said the famous line, “I don’t see how you can be a conservative and not support cap and trade.” But come 2010, he suddenly started calling it a “cap and tax” measure and refused to support it in the Senate.

So, a lot is at stake in this election. You need to go vote. Knock on your neighbor’s door, tell your Mom, call your best friend and tell them all to vote. The issue is not the details of legislation, but an entire worldview. Are important matters going to be dealt with using reason, analysis, science and consistent thinking? Or are ignorance, stubbornness, negativity and political expediency going to rule the day?
We also have to be prepared. We have to fight the deniers by setting the record straight and broadcasting the truth. And we have to do it right away.

We won’t even have a respite after the election because the Clean Air Act will be under attack within weeks by another campaign of falsehoods. So let’s start fighting the ignorance right now.

Follow Heather Taylor-Miesle on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/NRDC_AF

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The other day I was invited to meet with a book club that had chosen my book to read. I love to do this, and I most often phone into these. But fairly regularly a group is in my area, and so I am graciously invited into someone’s home.
The other night I showed up, expecting the usual lovely evening of polite discussion, signing some books, posing for a group photo. I’m always touched to see how shy some people are in the presence of an author; I generally feel as if I’m letting them down by being such a bland, normal person. I’m no Dorothy Parker, not by any means!
However, this particular evening was different. I couldn’t wait to leave, and spent the drive home muttering witty rejoinders — that of course, I had failed to come up with on the spot — under my breath. Because one member had derailed the entire evening by attacking my book, and me. She had problems with the way I had depicted some of the historical figures, and didn’t seem to understand the “fiction” part of historical fiction.
It wasn’t the opinion that bothered me. Goodness knows I wrote a book that I hoped would generate lively discussion and conflicting opinions.
But I didn’t hope — didn’t think, for a minute — that I would be subjected to these opinions in person. In someone’s home. At their invitation.
This is the brave new world of social interaction between author and reader. Authors are on Twitter, Facebook, GoodReads, etc. We actively encourage reading groups to seek us out. I have a page on my website dedicated solely to reading groups. On it, I have a list of discussion questions, a link where I can be emailed to see if I can call in or participate in the discussion, even an offer to send signed bookplates to the club.
But one of the newer occupational hazards of this brave new world is that authors simply know too much. We see the Tweets that praise our books and recommend them to others and we also see the Tweets that eviscerate them (in 140 characters or less). Now, I’m not saying that, back in the day, Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Wolfe didn’t get letters from readers complaining about their books. But it took some time and effort back then; a person had to write a letter, find a stamp, walk to the post office. Now, we’re seeing every reader’s impulsive thought, unfiltered. Even when they’re not addressed to us specifically — for I doubt that the average person who comments on Amazon or on Twitter is considering the fact that the author might be reading, as well — we see them. All of them. In all their impulsive, unfiltered, permanent-record glory.
Still, there’s a difference between seeing a disparaging comment on Twitter, and being challenged in person. There’s a difference between me seeking out your opinion by asking you what you thought of my book, and me being invited into your home, expecting cookies but given a bad case of indigestion instead. Because it’s hard to sit there and swallow an attack upon your work that you sweated so much over, that you wrapped up in a ribbon of hope and optimism and sent out into the world hoping that it would touch, move, engage.
I’m not complaining about this brave new world of constant contact, because there are so many benefits to it. The author is engaged with the reader like never before; I’m truly inspired, when I sit down to write, by the readers who’ve clasped my hand and thanked me for my words, my stories. I’ve learned so much about my own book by seeing how others react to it, the things they’ve picked up on, the themes that I didn’t even understand were there, until someone else showed them to me.
What I am complaining about is being invited into someone’s home, only to be attacked. Not only because I simply think it’s rude, and I can’t imagine doing it myself. But also, because I am giving of my time to do this; the promise of wine and goodies notwithstanding, the truth is there are a thousand other things I could be doing instead — like trying to meet my deadline. Or reacquainting myself with my husband.
I realize it may sound as if I want it both ways; I want to hear from readers, but only if they tell me good things. Well – duh! I’m only human. Nobody ever asks, “Do I look fat in this?” expecting to be told, “Yes, you do.”
So my plea is a simple one. Yes, please — I’d love to come visit you or call you and talk about my book, if you want me to. But if you or someone else in your group didn’t like it, it might be best not to ask me. If you had a problem with my book or a part of my book, by all means talk about it, discuss it with others — just make sure I’m not in the room, too. Unless I asked to be there, myself.
I’m a big girl. I know not everyone is going to like what I’ve written. But I do have feelings. Despite my brave face and public claims to the contrary, I do take to heart everything — good and bad — that people tell me about my work. Especially when they tell it to me in person, when I can’t just close a computer window or hit “delete.”
So be kind to the author you invite. Remember, we are sensitive creatures who put ourselves out there hoping for the best, hoping to enhance your reading experience. It’s not always an easy thing to do.
Not all of us are Dorothy Parker, you see. Not all of us are able to shrug off an in-person evisceration with a quip and a sip of a martini.

Follow Melanie Benjamin on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/MelanieBen

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Looking to paint an accurate landscape, the artist places the tree right here, the boulder just so, the wildflowers in exactly this place. Of course, the composition might be different depending upon where the artist sets up an easel, and the time of day or time of year may affect the colors and shadows (and if that tree has leaves). Still, anyone else standing at that vantage point is likely to recognize the pictorial image. However, if we take a step or two away from accuracy as a criterion, allowing for artistic license — move the boulder closer to the wildflowers, for instance, or throw in something red — the resulting artwork might even be viewed as better. Who is going to fault Monet if he placed those haystacks too close together?
But, let’s step back to accuracy: “I had an argument with a fellow once about the eye color of a mockingbird,” said Melanie Fain, a wildlife artist in Boerne, Texas who had this exchange in her booth at an art fair. “A golden color is what I saw when I painted it, but maybe mockingbirds in Austin look different than those in San Antonio.” More likely the case, however, “he wanted to catch me doing something wrong.”
She shouldn’t take it personally. All artists who focus on wildlife, historical and nautical scenes are confronted on a regular basis by people who are knowledgeable in these fields — outdoorsmen, hunters, birders, Civil War reenacters, military historians (or military buffs), yachtsman and boating enthusiasts — looking for mistakes. “People test me all the time,” said Jan Martin McGuire, a wildlife artist in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. John Warr, a painter in Scottsboro, Alabama, said that he knows all about how disputatious wildlife enthusiasts can be (“I call them feather-counters”), but they are nothing compared to Civil War buffs, his other subject area. “Civil War collectors are so much pickier, and they point out things more, especially in weapons.” A sharp-eyed observer noticed in one of his paintings that the cannon balls being used by Confederates were actually Union balls. Confederates are his stock-in-trade, largely because he shows and sells his paintings and the print editions made from them at shows throughout the South. “I haven’t found many Union collectors. It’s the romantic lost cause.” For him, “the good thing about painting Confederate soldiers is that they wore and used equipment that they found; it was a mismatch of everything,” allowing Warr to use historically appropriate shoes, hats, clothing and guns but not ones that were actually known to have been used in one battle or another. Federal soldiers, on the other hand, “had government issue,” which makes painting them perhaps easier if less interesting.
With Confederate Civil War generals, on the other hand, there is no room for improvisation, and artists better know their minutiae. For example, Nathan Bedford Forrest was left-handed, which affected where he carried his sword. John Hunt Morgan never wore a general’s jacket into battle, because Union snipers took aim at opposing generals in order to put their regiments into disarray. Details are everything in this realm: A particular general wore a specific coat, but only at this battle and another coat at a different engagement. Confederate flags were often homemade, while northern volunteer regiments made their own flags; the canteens, haversacks, horse tack, hats, uniforms, artillery, guns of all types — the specifics are endless and everything. The process of learning what questions to ask and where to find answers turns artists into historians.
How to research is not taught in studio art classes, but it is a needed acquired skill for artists in the accuracy trade. Melanie Fain has thousands of photographs (hers and other people’s) in a filing cabinet and close to a hundred birds in her freezer; when needed, she will take a bird out, thaw it partially in order “spread a wing out and see the colors of the feathers and how long the feathers are.” Jan McGuire has “a whole library” of books on African wildlife that she has bought, and she has traveled to Africa more than a dozen times to photograph animals that she may later paint. “Guides in Africa know me and what I want, and they help me position my camera.”
McGuire spends almost as much time researching her subjects as she takes in the studio actually doing the painting. “Going traveling, doing the research is the fun part,” she said. “Standing in front of my easel is the work.” Even when she finds the animal in the wild or the ideal photograph, she knows that no one creature can represent the entire species. Zoos, which she visits periodically, may have a certain big cat, but “the muscle tone isn’t the same for a tiger in a zoo, and they get a big belly. You can’t paint the tiger you see there and call it ‘Serengeti King.’”
Research takes many forms. Fain has a bird call App on her iPhone, which helps attract ducks that she photographs in the wild and occasionally shoots with her gun, providing her with food for thought and food for dinner. Many artists use Internet search engines to find images of what they seek, and they also take their own photographs, lots of them, enough to fill whole rooms. William Beebe, a marine artist in Williamsburg, Virginia, travels to marinas to take one photograph after another — broad images and detail shots — of ships and boats that might be used in a painting, and these photographs are from all different angles, “because you never know from what vantage point someone commissioning a painting is going to want to see the boat.” Once, he was challenged by someone on the position of a rudder handle in a painting of a schooner, “but I had worked from a photograph, and I know I got it right and the other fellow didn’t.” Artists cannot use photographs too slavishly, however, because the shadow on a sail in one photograph may be out of sync with the light source in the painting, the action on the water inconsonant with the direction of the wind. Beebe recalled seeing another artist’s painting of a schooner in which the flags were flapping in the same direction as the boat was heading, a mistake he attributed to piecing together different photographs without paying attention to the fact the flags on sailing ships usually are blowing back.
John Warr learned about John Hunt Morgan’s jackets from the John Hunt Morgan Society (an informal group composed of descendants and others) and about Nathan Bedford Forrest’s left-handedness from a local history buff lawyer who had done an undergraduate thesis on the Confederate general. Finding out whom to ask is key, and they are not the usual suspects; university academics may be well-versed in the politics of the Civil War, and they may know a multitude of anecdotes about certain military or political figures, but not necessarily the kinds of information that help an artist paint an accurate picture of what someone who might have been there would have seen: the crops grown in that field, the weather that day, the length of so-and-so’s sleeves, the flag a specific regiment was carrying that day, how tall this person was, how far apart lines of troops marched, the percentage of soldiers that wore no uniform at all, was that house in the distance painted that color (or painted at all). The problem of painting for Civil War reenactors is that an artist is required to become like them.
For a painting titled “Minnesota Forward,” Dale Gallon, a painter who lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, developed a sense of what a Minnesota regiment at the battle of Gettysburg looked like and did from reading four contemporaneous accounts — letters and diaries — by soldiers in the outfit. “All four accounts are different, and one of them I didn’t trust, because the man who wrote it was actually 50 miles away from the battlefield at the time,” he said (that bit of information itself required some research). “I read them all and kind of distilled what I think actually happened, basing a picture on that.” There is considerable ambiguity in trying to tell the story of what took place from these writings, three of which were penned within a few days of the fighting while the other was set down almost 50 years later. Even those written soon after the battle had little perspective to offer. “Their adrenaline’s up, there’s confusion, smoke and dead bodies everywhere.” Gallon has to glean from all this what these soldiers were doing and, especially, what they looked like doing it.
Every painting that relies on accuracy in its broad lines and details has a problem, and sometimes a lot of problems, that has to be solved. “I go to experts, maybe a university professor here, maybe a local historian there to get answers,” said Mort Kunstler of Oyster Bay, New York, a painter of historical scenes. In another example, the height of certain Civil War generals may be known, “or people estimate after the fact, based on what others said of them or where they came up to on a horse. Phil Sheridan was a little guy, maybe 5’2″, while Stonewall Jackson was considered tall, maybe 6′. That was very tall at the time. For other people, you have to fill in the blanks and just give them an average height, which historians tell me was around 5’7″ at the time.”
All the detective work, the attention to detail and facts, may obscure the artist’s other important goal — to create an interesting picture. Beebe noted that schooners have “a tremendous number of lines, and there are a lot of connection points where ropes meet a pulley. It can take away from the painting if you have to put in every rope and every cleat.” For that reason, he tends to depict these ships at a distance, requiring less detail and making the overall painting “more appealing to the eye.”
It is a difficult balancing act. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” Keats wrote, but the poet clearly sided with beauty over facts. More prosaically, James Dietz, a Seattle, Washington painter of military scenes from more recent wars (“I have scrupulously tried to avoid the Civil War”), said that “if you try to be true to life, you’ll create a terrible painting. Those who slavishly copy every rivet on a jet fighter produce really boring paintings.” Producing an interesting composition may require him to compress things that were further apart into a small space, or it may mean leaving something out in order to focus the viewer’s attention. That is not to say that he neglects fact-finding and research; he consults a battery of military know-it-alls (“Monday morning academics”) around the country and, when commissioned to do a painting for a regiment, asks for uniforms and weaponry to be brought to him, as well as sends preliminary sketches for approval. “There was one time, I was pretty far along on a painting, and someone from a regiment said ‘We didn’t have those sights on our rifles. How difficult is it to change that?’” He made the change (a bit grudgingly). His intention, however, is to capture the mood of an event if not the event in every detail. “If the composition is right, it brings people in,” he said. “If the color is right, it makes the painting exciting. If I’ve done my job as an artist correctly, soldiers will forgive small mistakes.”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

New York City has an obesity problem and it’s hurting our children. Almost 40% of New York City public school children in kindergarten through eighth grade are overweight or obese. Obesity rates are substantially higher in low-income neighborhoods like Harlem and Corona, Queens where the percentages of obese or overweight children are 48% and 51% respectively. It is telling that consumption of sugar-packed drinks is consistently higher in those neighborhoods.
This is why Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. David Paterson are seeking permission from the USDA to ban the use of food stamps to buy sugar-sweetened drinks in NYC as part of a government effort to battle obesity. They requested this ban for two years in order to study whether it would positively impact health. This ban would apply to beverages that have more than 10 calories per 8 ounces. (A 12-ounce soda, for example, contains 150 calories and the equivalent of 10 packets of sugar.) The ban would not apply to fruit juices without added sugar, milk products and milk substitutes.
In the United States, soda and other sugary beverage consumption has more than doubled over the past 30 years. That has paralleled the rise in obesity, leading many scientists to place part of the blame for increased waistlines on soda itself. Studies have suggested that soft drinks sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup may contribute to the development of diabetes, particularly in children. In New York City, one in every eight adults has diabetes and poor New Yorkers are almost twice as likely to have the disease as wealthy New Yorkers. These numbers are particularly troublesome when children are considered. Drinking one sugary beverage per day puts a child at a 60% higher risk of becoming obese.
A recent study by the American Journal of Epidemiology states that citywide obesity increased from 20 to 22% between 2003 and 2007. However, in affluent neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, Chelsea and the West Village, the rates remained around eight percent. Meanwhile, in lower-income neighborhoods the rate was higher. In 2003, East Harlem was the only neighborhood with an obesity rate higher than 30%. By 2007 there were seven neighborhoods with rates that high including three in the Bronx, Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, Rockaway in Queens and northern Staten Island.
Designed to ensure low-income people can afford nutritious food, food stamps are a significant tool for helping working families stretch their budgets. Yet, unfortunately, under the current food stamp program, public funds are helping pay for the beverages that play a large role in rising obesity. The USDA estimates that 6% of food stamp benefits nationwide are used to buy sodas, which means an estimated $75 to $135 million in benefits are spent each year in New York City on soda. In addition, the public ends up paying the bill for treating some of the health problems that result from obesity. Currently, obesity-related illnesses cost New York state residents almost $8 billion each year; that’s $770 for each household. There are 22,300 New York City residents hospitalized each year for obesity-related diabetes and almost half of those live in low-income neighborhoods.
This is a problem that needs to be addressed. Cutting or limiting soda consumption is a good step towards improving health and fitness. There are other ways to address the problem as well.
Proper nutrition is crucial, especially for growing children. Having access to locally grown fruits and vegetables can greatly improve the health of a community. That’s why United Way of New York City’s food programs already require soup kitchens and food pantries to limit beverages to skim milk and 100% fruit juices, and mandate expenditures of at least 15% on fresh produce. United Way also operates Local Produce Link which is a public-private partnership that connects farmers with low-income neighborhoods to provide fresh produce to emergency food programs.
Other programs also help to increase access to fresh produce. For example, New York City’s Green Cart program offers low-income residents a selection of produce — the carts only sell raw fruits and vegetables and are set up in specified “underserved” neighborhoods in all five boroughs. Another example is the city’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health program , or FRESH, which has been approved in order to help develop stores that sell a full range of foods with an emphasis on fresh fruits, vegetables and meats because many low-income neighborhoods are underserved by grocery stores offering healthy food options.
Exercise is another important component of personal health. There are some great programs designed to encourage fitness, particularly by targeting children. New York Road Runners (NYRR) has implemented a successful program into New York City schools called Mighty Milers. This program introduces children to the healthy habit of walking or running for fitness. NYRR lets students set personal goals and record their distances in an online database. Mighty Milers keeps students interested by letting them earn incentives for reaching milestones.
Another organization working to promote youth fitness is the National Football League with their program NFL PLAY 60. In partnership with the American Heart Association, United Way and other national partners, they’re encouraging kids to get active and play for at least 60 minutes each day. The program is implemented at the grassroots level through NFL’s in-school, after school, and team-based programs with the goal of curbing childhood obesity.
Exercise and nutrition are both important components of healthy living and we can always do more to promote these habits. Encouraging food stamp users to engage in healthier lifestyles by banning the use of nutrition assistance on sugary beverages is good for our community. It’s an easy way to address a serious problem that can have deadly results if we let it get out of hand. Paired with other efforts that increase nutrition education and encourage regular exercise, this is an excellent way to significantly reduce the obesity epidemic that is taking over so much of our country. We can work together to reverse this trend by educating the public about proper fitness and nutrition and by making it easier for everyone to make healthier choices.

Follow Gordon Campbell on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/gordonnyc

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

There’s a battle under way for the new living room ‘box’ and Apple had the early lead and a sexy price point with Apple TV 2.0. Sure critics could say that the 1.0 box underwhelmed, and that it was buggy.
But as an Apple TV owner for more than 3 years, I have to say that my experience is that the new 2.0 box is in fact significantly worse. While the new device runs without a hard drive -and is therefore cooler, the lack of storage or a USB connection makes it singularly a streaming device.
Ok, sure.
So – last weekend, I tromped out to buy the new Apple TV box – this is a ‘diary’ of what I experienced.
10/10/2010
Went to Apple store, Upper Westside. Told Apple TV was ‘sold out’ – no idea when it would be available.
Went to Tekserve, had more than one hundred in stock. Took one home.
Install was easy, quick.
Finds wi-fi, logs on. 5 bars of signal.
Order first movie at 8pm. Says ‘ready to stream’ – click ‘play’ says: movie will be ready in 8,000 (yes, eight thousand!) minutes.
Huh???
So, now – I’ve got 30 days to watch a movie, 24 hrs after it starts streaming, and have to wait 8,000 minutes before I can start watching. That’s some really terrible math. But I do love Apple, so maybe it’s just an early glitch. Traveling the next week, so by the time i’m ready to watch again -
10/23/2010
Press play on same movie – says now it will take 120 minutes before it can play. This means the movie can start at midnight.
Check web connection, wifi strength and overall set up. All is correct – and my 30 days is running out, and ‘on demand’ seems to now mean, ask for a movie – and then hope the Apple gods are willing to deliver it at some point in the foreseeable future. FAIL.
Next stop – the Apple support boards, to see if others are having this problem and what Apple said about it.
This is the big Uh Oh. There are TONS of complains just like mine. Plenty of wifi, and then crazy long delivery times.
Forum member Sirstever seems to feel my pain:
“Went to watch a movie last night with the wife, rented it and then it said loading ready to view in 78 minutes. It was on wireless at the time, thought this might be the problem so I spent 10 minutes re-running all my cables to plug it in via ethernet, it did not work. Still said 78 minutes, was bummed but we thought maybe you just need to “pre-rent” right? So, come back today to watch it (Apple TV has hibernated) and go to watch, it says 78 minutes again. I think the problem is it needs to buffer the movie but once it does that it losses the buffered stream after so long or after hibernation.
So, the only potential work around doesn’t work either. Some one has to do something because this literally negates the ENTIRE point of the Apple TV. With this much wait time, I could just rent the movie from playstation store or use Netflix. In fact, that is what we ended up doing, watching a “free” Netflix movie after paying $5.00 to Apple to rent a movie. Now my 30 days are counting down and I can only watch the movie when I have 80 minutes to sit around and wait BEFORE I even want to watch the movie.
*** Apple! Someone please tell me what I am doing wrong and how I am just being stupid so that I can get this to work right and actually start enjoying this $100 (what is for now completely useless, albeit nicely designed black box). ”
Yeah, I second what SirStever says.
And we’re not alone. What’s most troubling is that this is the Apple forum, and there’s NO response from Apple. No suggestion if it’s a bug, a user error, a known problem, or some other kind of issue.
Earth to Apple. TV is not a place for you to be treating technology as a Hobby. Folks like Boxee, Google, Logitech and Roku are all fully ready to eat your lunch.
Here’s a collection of other unhappy Apple TV customers:
Hilltopperscb
“My new two week old ATV2 finally got my temperature boiling tonight. I’m cursing myself for buying this thing.
Judith Evans1
This is the first apple thing I have bought that I am truly disappointed in.
rz22g
Based on process of elimination, and giving the ATV every advantage, I have come to the conclusion that there may be issues with the ATV wifi, movie prompting 500+ minutes till ready.
Saintrroy
I rented “Predators” from Apple TV, LAST NIGHT, it said 400+ mins for loading, what are they NUTS! I went to sleep, guess what, today when I tried to watch it – it says loading time 375 mins! They are insane, the product is an outright lie. The whole point is streaming video otherwise who needs another box, Jobs claimed this will connect seamlessly with wireless modems (have Airport Extreme base station) and stream all content. Heck, Netflix is going to eat their lunch. This is a bunch of crap technology. Have call with them tomorrow morning, and want them to take this junk back.
Robert Palumbo
It basically doesn’t work…just sits there loading but it may take forever for all I know.
alock
I got my Apple TV last friday and so far I must say this is the biggest piece of junk that I’ve ever bought from apple. It won’t play a rented movie or content from my mac mini across a wireless network – which is the whole reason I bought it. I’ll be returning it shortly…..

TWalkerPolk
I go to play the rented HD movie and am transferred to a screen that says “Loading….” for about a minute or two. Then, that message is replaced with one that says “Ready to play in xx minutes”…with horribly long times listed (my movie was rented last night, and as of this evening, it shows “Ready to play in 232 minutes”
So, you get the idea. Apple 2.0 seems to have some sort of issue with streaming that Apple either doesn’t recognize, or isn’t responding to. Given Job’s history of not being that focused on video as a business, and the fast moving competitors who ARE focused on this space – you can see how it might be a problem for Apple’s end-to-end solution. For content companies, the choice between Apple and Google may be uncomfortable – but that leaves folks like Netflix and Boxee in the catbirds seat.
Steve Rosenbaum is founder and CEO of Magnify.net, a NYC-based Web video startup. He has been building and growing consumer-content businesses since 1992. He was the creator and Executive Producer of MTV UNfiltered, a series that was the first commercial application of user-generated video in commercial TV. Follow Steve on Twitter @Magnify. His book Curation Nation comes out on McGrawHill early next year.

This Blogger’s Books from
Staffers ’04
Directed by Steve Rosenbaum
7 Days in September: A Powerful Story About 9/11
Directed by Steve Rosenbaum

Follow Steve Rosenbaum on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/magnify

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Earlier this year I read Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, or at least the accessible translation by Edith Grossman. This 17th century literary classic about the deluded knight and his side-kick, Sancho Panza – and their foolhardy quest for noble adventure – is a very big book that I repeatedly tried to read when I was younger but could never complete. But this year I made my way through the tome, plodding step by plodding step, feeling great empathy for Don Quixote’s old nag, Rocinante, every step of the way.
But I fought the good fight, through the dated prose, making my way through the beguiling tales of the kind but deluded donkey-face “knight,” who wears a barber’s basin on his head and sees a tired roadside inn as a castle, and a flock of traveling sheep as an army of marauding enemies. As you all know, it is in essence a timeless road trip, with lots of earthy moments, including my favorite ribald scene when Don Quixote and Sancho Panza start violently vomiting over each other.
And yet the work, most crucially, is also about the eternal struggle between those who believe in the power of the imagination and books, versus those who believe that looking harsh reality straight in the face is the only true way to live a life. Sound familiar? Cervantes’s greatness is that he lyrically and persuasively makes the arguments for both worldviews.
My friend, the writer Kazuo Ishiguro, years ago urged me to pick up Cervantes’s classic, saying that many of the great writers claimed it to be the well-spring of all modern literature. I recall being rather skeptical of his claim at the time, but I should have known better. Just look at what some of the grandmasters have said about Don Quixote over the years, which, incidentally, Cervantes started writing while in jail (supposedly for malfeasance as a tax collector), before finally completing the classic in 1615. These quotes are found in the back of the book’s HarperColins edition.
“Don Quixote is the first modern novel, perhaps the most eternal novel ever written and certainly the fountainhead of European and American fiction; here you have Gogol and Dostoevsky, Dickens and Nabokov, Borges and Bellow, Sterne and Diderot in their genetic nakedness, once more taking to the road with the gentleman and the squire, believing the world is what we read and discovering that the world reads us.” – Carlos Fuentes.
“It can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.” – Lionel Trilling
“How its creative genius – critical, free, and human – soars above its age.”- Thomas Mann
“Cervantes is the founder of the Modern Era…The novelist needs answer to no one but Cervantes. Don Quixote is practically unthinkable as a living being, and yet, in our memory, what character is more alive?” – Milan Kundera
“Don Quixote is greater today than he was in Cervantes’ womb. [He] looms so wonderfully above the skyline of literature, a gaunt giant on a lean nag, that the book lives and will live through [his] sheer vitality. ..He stands for everything that is gentle, forlorn, pure , unselfish, and galant. The parody has become a paragon.”- Vladimir Nabokov
“Don Quixote begins as a province, turns into Spain, and ends as a universe…The true spell of Cervantes is that he is a natural magician in pure story-telling.” – V.S. Pritchett
Impressive stuff. Don’t you agree?

This Blogger’s Books from
The Hundred-Foot Journey: A Novel
by Richard C Morais
Hundred-Foot Journey, The
by Richard C Morais

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www.twitter.com/richardcmorais

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Microsoft has announced a 51% rise in first-quarter profit, thanks to higher sales of its flagship Windows and Office software.
Net profit for the three months to September came in at 5.4bn (3.4bn).
Revenues increased by 25% to 16.2bn – a company record for the first quarter.
But Microsoft said that in the same quarter last year it had deferred some revenue from Windows sales. Had it not done so, its net profit would have been only 16% higher in comparison.
“This was an exceptional quarter, combining solid enterprise growth and continued strong consumer demand for Office 2010, Windows 7, and Xbox 360 consoles and games,” said Peter Klein, chief financial officer at Microsoft.
Windows sales rose 66% on a year earlier to 4.8bn, while Office and other business software brought in 5.1bn, a 14% increase on last year.
Microsoft shares rose 2.8% in after-hours trading.
Its stock has fallen 14% so far this year as investors worry about its ability to adapt to new ways of computing.
Last week, its chief software architect Ray Ozzie unexpectedly resigned, and warned that the company must think “beyond the PC”.
But its latest results were better than analysts had expected.
“Microsoft had a very good quarter,” said Toan Tran, an analyst at Morningstar.
“Windows is still doing well, Office is doing well, and servers and tools are doing well. The big three businesses are firing on all cylinders as the PC upgrade cycle continues.”

Source:BBC

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Anna Nicole Smith: Two convicted of drugs conspiracy
A jury has found late Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith's psychiatrist and boyfriend guilty of conspiring to give her excessive amounts of prescription drugs but has acquitted her doctor.
Psychiatrist Khristine Eroshevich was also convicted of prescription drug fraud. Ms Smith's boyfriend Howard Stern was cleared of other charges.
All three had denied supplying Ms Smith, 39, with the drugs.
They were not charged in her 2007 death from a prescription drug overdose.
The trio were charged with conspiracy, excessive prescribing of opiates and sedatives to an addict and fraudulently obtaining drugs by using false names.
Dr Sandeep Kapoor was acquitted on all charges by the court in Los Angeles.
The verdicts came after members of the jury earlier in the day asked Superior Court Judge Robert Perry what they should do if unable to reach a verdict on “a count or an object crime”.
They then inquired whether it was valid to conclude the Ms Smith's prescriptions were in excessive amounts.
“Does it follow that prescriptions also have no legitimate medical purpose?” they asked.
The California judge told the jury they should not hesitate to declare a hung jury if they could not agree on a verdict.
The former topless model married Texas oil tycoon J Howard Marshall, a billionaire more than 60 years her senior, at the age of 26.
Ms Smith was accused of marrying simply for money, and spent years after his 1995 death fighting his family over his large fortune.

Source:BBC

When President Obama took to Jon Stewart’s special Washington set on the Daily Show and gave him a full 15-minute interview last night, he demonstrated EXACTLY why voters are deserting him in droves.
He CALMLY told us that his administration has had historic achievements. He agreed that the slogan that helped him win the last presidential election, “Change you can believe in,” needed to have the new add-on: “but we have to work on it.” He continually repeated that change “is a work in progress.”
President Obama, you are right! We the people are unreasonable. We want our change immediately! We want our jobs back! We want our mortgages fixed! We want better education! Lower taxes!
But we weren’t sure we want health care, especially after all the crazy ads that have convinced us that Obamacare will raise our premiums and send our grannies to death panels!
In any case, we wanted all the good stuff fast, especially JOBS! Instead, you keep telling us that it will take longer than 18 months to make these things happen.
And when you tell us these things, you say them so quietly and calmly (like you did last night on the Daily Show), we feel gypped!
Click here for more on why America wants change like Obama promised!
Watch President Obama on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart!
Wake up President Obama! You’re in DENIAL Like Lindsay Lohan!
Sarah Palin Files Restraining Order Against 18-Year-Old Stalker!

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Samuel Johnson once told his friend and biographer James Boswell that “public affairs vex no man.” But Dr. Johnson did not live through the off year election of 2010. For some of us, obsessive worries about the possible election to the Senate of Sharron Angle and Rand Paul, of Ken Buck and Christine O’Donnell and Joe Miller and about the possible defeat of Russ Feingold and Barney Frank and young rising stars and future party leaders like Tom Perriello and Betsy Markey blight our days and nights. We are in fact vexed and deeply apprehensive about the future of this country. Now the end of this bizarre election season is fast approaching and by next Wednesday, we will learn if the news is merely bad or truly terrible. In the interim, what ,if anything, can be done to increase the chances of the first outcome?
To put it simply, liberals must rally now as never before to the cause of endangered Democratic candidates. All of us have criticisms to offer of the performance of Barack Obama as president, and of the political transgressions of the Obama administration and of the Democratic congressional leadership. But between now and next Wednesday, they should be shelved. In conversations with friends and co workers, what should be emphasized instead is the danger to the United States of placing in positions of power Republican candidates so woefully ignorant of American history, constitutional law, and the economic history of the Twentieth Century.
Conversely, we should forthrightly defend the administration’s actions in saving the banking system and domestic auto industry and in later passing financial reform, in grappling with the crisis of the uninsured, and in attempting to prevent a depression by the stimulus program. There is a solid case to be made that the administration has done as well as anyone could have under the grim circumstances, as has been made, for example, by Steven Pearlstein in the October 19 Washington Post. But between the opposite right and left wing criticisms of everything the administration and Congress have done, defenses of the administration’s course have not been heard. We have to do what we can now to offer that defense. Too little and too late perhaps. But preferable to the alternative.
It has been said that there is an “enthusiasm gap” between the dispirited left, broadly speaking, and the energized Tea Party right, coupled with independent voters looking once again for someone to blame for the country’s long term economic problems. We can do nothing in the next few days to dampen the enthusiasm the right or the center-right. One is tempted to quote Yeats”s line, “The best lack all conviction/ while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” But that does no good. We can at least show equal dedication and make sure that elections are not lost by decent Democratic candidates because of us failing to show up.
If you can canvass or work in a phone bank for the candidate of your choice, do so. Everyone can give money or a bit more money. Logistically, nothing is easier than typing a candidate’s name into Google, clicking onto their campaign web site, and then taking out one’s credit card. Add buys for this weekend must be made by tomorrow. Do this now. And whatever else you do or don’t do, make sure that you vote, either early or on election day. Ask your family and friends do so as well. Your college age children should be made to understand what it would be like to live in a country in which the Tea Party ruled, for example with respect to the right to legal abortion. Feel free to exaggerate because you won’t be exaggerating much. Accept no excuses.
This is it. A triumphant Republican majority will likely attempt to cut about $100 billion out of projected federal spending, starting in 2011. And those cuts will not come from interest payments on the national debt, or spending on present or future wars and weapons systems, or (for a while anyway) from Social Security or Medicare. Rather they will come from weather satellites and national parks, from education spending and unemployment compensation, from TANF and Medicaid, from PBS and CPB, from OSHA and the NRLB, in short from that spending which seeks to shelter the poor and workers from the excesses of speculative capitalism and improve American civilization and culture.
The new model Republicans, unlike their more worldly predecessors, are actually unlikely to back down from this course. Current Republican theology, believed in by both the Tea Party and mainstream right, as exemplified by GOP House leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor, holds that the Republicans under George W. Bush, Dennis Hastert, and Trent Lott, fell away from the true conservative faith between 2001 and 2006, compromised with the liberal enemy on spending, and were justly punished for their heresy by the voters in 2006 and 2008. Now, chastened by defeat, they have “learned their lesson,” and are ready to implement austere domestic policies without listening to the cries of the victims of such policies. As in Britain, what seems politically unthinkable can become a live option all too quickly under the influence of a powerful ideology which seems (to its devotees) to explain the world and point the way to a better future, whatever the costs in the present. However, in Britain, the armed forces are bearing their share of the proposed cuts in spending. Here, a GOP victory will only increase pressure on the president to back away from his pledge to reduce our forces in Afghanistan in 2011 and to go to war with Iran, which will in turn force even more domestic spending cuts to achieve their overall deficit reduction targets.
If the Republicans win either or both Houses of Congress, even though they will not have the presidency, they will hold the power of the purse and will wield it with a ruthlessness harking back to the pre-New Deal era. Whatever we can do in the next 96 hours to prevent that, we should do. This is Last Call.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

How big a mess
Does it take to say “Yes!”
To an Angle, a Miller, a Paul?
How much frustration
Across the whole nation
To think of such people at all?
To say that they’re lacking is more than polite,
To give them your backing is more than far-right,
But how big a mess,
And how great the duress,
To vote Angle, or Miller, or Paul?
How high the fear
Of next month and next year
To want Johnson, O’Donnell and Buck?
How deep the panic —
At least oceanic! —
To think that they’ll get things unstuck?
Their answers are simple, but governing’s hard,
And facts deserve more than their blithe disregard,
But how high the fear
For the things we hold dear
To trust Johnson, O’Donnell and Buck?
How strong the snit
To think “These folks are it!”
And to turn the reins over to them?
How fierce the worry
To be in such hurry
To pick ‘em off, Dem after Dem?
The wave heading shoreward is easy to see,
And this time the winner is spelled “G-O-P” —
But how long the snit,
And how messy the fit,
Before people start coming for them?
# # #
Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist. You can write to him at rickhoro@execpc.com.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The year since the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC opened up our elections to unlimited corporate spending has been one of big bucks and little information. While what the Supreme Court might have imagined was a political system with flawless transparency and unlimited access to information, what he have ended up with is exactly the opposite–a pre-Watergate system of cash packed in suitcases…only with much bigger suitcases. Big donors with plenty of money to spend have unprecedented influence over our elections, and voters are left to pick through murky pieces of evidence to try to figure out where that money’s coming from and what it’s paying for.
While secretive groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads GPS have sprung up this year to funnel corporate interest money to help out pro-corporate candidates, without robust disclosure laws, efforts to pin down these groups’ donors and motivations have been largely based on rare small leaks and inference. We know for certain that there’s a big money pay-to-play political system going on, but we can only guess at who’s paying and what exactly their game is. Last night, ABC News uncovered one of these games:
So, a Kentucky businessman is bankrolling a campaign against the man who, as Kentucky Attorney General, is prosecuting his company for a sexual abuse cover-up. We know that he’s active in American Crossroads (the branch of Rove’s group that has to disclose its donors). But, because of the lack of disclosure laws, we have no idea how much money he’s channeled through the secretive American Crossroads GPS to attack the man who’s enforcing the laws that he has been alleged to have broken.
Not that we need another smoking gun to expose the power of secret money in this election, but this one is unambiguous.
Huge election expenditures from secret sources may be legal, thanks to congressional Republicans’ unified effort to sink the DISCLOSE bill earlier this year, but they’re also fishy. This is what happens when matters that should be played out in public view–from sexual abuse lawsuits to tax policy decisions–are instead played out in the expensive behind the scenes election market. The extraordinarily wealthy have extraordinary power to help elect candidates who will promote their interests. And middle class Americans are left to be pawns in the game that only a few citizens–and corporations–can afford to play.

Follow Michael B. Keegan on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/peoplefor

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

There she was, thrown to the pavement by a Republican in a checkered shirt. Another Republican thrusts his foot in between her legs and presses down with all his weight to pin her to the curb. Then a Republican leader comes over and viciously stomps on her head with his foot. You hear her glasses crunch under the pressure. Holding her head down with his foot, he applies more force so she can’t move. Her skull and brain are now suffering a concussion.
The young woman’s name is Lauren Valle, but she is really all of us. For come this Tuesday, the right wing — and the wealthy who back them — plan to take their collective boot and bring it down hard on not just the head of Barack Obama but on the heads of everyone they simply don’t like.
Teachers union? The boot!
Muslim-looking people? The boot!
Thinking of retiring soon? The boot!
Living in a house you can no longer afford? The boot!
Doing a bit better with your minimum wage? The boot!
Stem cell research, the bullet train, reversing global warming? Ha! The boot for all of you!
What? You like your kids being covered by your health plan ’til they’re 26? The boot for them and the boot for you!
In love with someone of your own gender? A double boot up the ass for every single one of you sick SOBs!
Hoping there’s a few jobs left here in the U.S. when you graduate? How ’bout just a nice boot to your head instead?
And most importantly, the last boot is saved for the black man who probably wasn’t born here, definitely isn’t a Christian and possibly might be the Antichrist sent here to oversee the destruction of our very way of life. A boot to your head, Obama-devil!
Yes, one big boot is poised to stomp out whatever hopey-changey thing we might have had two years ago and secure this country in the hands of the oligarchs and the culture police.
And if they win on Tuesday, they plan to show no mercy. They will not speak of bipartisanship or olive branches or tolerate any filibuster threats. They will come in and do the job with a mandate they’ll perceive the electorate will have given them. They will not fart around for two years like the Democrats did. They will not “search for compromise” or “find middle ground.” They will not meet you halfway on the playing field. They know that touchdowns aren’t scored at the 50-yard line. Unlike our guys, they’re not stupid or spineless.
Make no mistake about it, my friends. A perfect storm has gathered of racists, homophobes, corporatists and born agains and they are on fire. Two years of a black man who secretly holds socialist beliefs being the boss of them is more than they can stomach. They’ve been sick to death since the night of 11/04/08 and they are ready to purge. They won’t need a rope and tree this time to effect the change they seek (why bother when a nice shoe on another’s skull will do just fine, thank you).
They simply need to get their base to the polls (done), convince enough people Obama is responsible for the fact they don’t have a job or a secure home (done), and then hope enough of us Obama-voters are so frustrated, disappointed and downright mad at the Dems (done) that we’ll either stay home Tuesday or, if we vote, we won’t be carpooling with 10 others to the polls.
Done? Or not?
These Republicans mean business. Their boots are all shined and ready. But they’ve got one huge problem:
The majority of Americans don’t agree with them.
The majority want the troops home. The majority want true universal health coverage. The majority want the thievery on Wall Street to be stopped. The majority believe that global warming is happening, that social security shouldn’t be privatized and that unions are a good thing.
Too bad the majority party has done precious little to bring about the change for which the majority voted. Yes, change takes time. But try telling that to someone who hasn’t worked in two years. Or who hears the knock of the foreclosure sheriff at the door. The booted-up minority knows how to make hay in a situation like this. All they need is us, the disappointed, dismayed, disgusted us.
What say you? Stay home and punish the weak-kneed, sell-out Democrats? Or spend every free moment you have between now and Tuesday trying to protect what little progress has been made so we can live to fight another day (even if it is with “allies” like a Democratic Party that will more than likely still not get the message of what they need to do — and has, in fact, spent much of the past two years giving progressives the boot)? Perhaps our job, post-election, is to provide a gentle but swift boot in the bee-hind of the party whose mascot is an ass.
Right now, we’ve got 112 hours. Seems like enough.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

T-Mobile announced the myTouch 4g will be available for purchase on November 3rd, 2010. The price point will be $199.99.
Here is a small sample of the key features of the myTouch 4G:
Multimedia Capabilities:
HD Camcorder with Screen Share to capture, share and broadcast HD videos at 720p
Front-facing camera and rear-facing 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, autofocus and face detection
T-Mobile TV offers access to live and on-demand TV, including always-free programming from ABC News Now, Fox Sports, PBS Kids, Disney, Univision and family holiday movie favorites.
Media room integrates music, videos, T-Mobile TV, FM Radio and Slacker Internet radio in a single media player.
CommunicationsFeatures
Video Chat over T-Mobile’s network or Wi-Fi to other mobile devices or a capable PC computer through Yahoo! Messenger or Qik
Genius Button, powered by Dragon Dictation from Nuance, for voice commands to control features of the smartphone
Built-in support for Wi-Fi Calling for increased in-building coverage
I first got my hands on the smartphone last night at a T-Mobile myTouch eventin NYC. The handset is a beautiful 3.8-inch WVGA touch-screen display. The most impressive feature is that the myTouch — like the G2 — will take full advantage of the HSPA+ network. The myTouch has a built-in HSPA+ radio and real world speed tests look something like this — 9.11 Mbp/s download and 2.73 Mbp/s upload.
Take a quick look at the myTouch from our friends at Wirefly.
If you want to get updates on the myTouch 4g then head on over to theT-Mobile site and sign up to receive alerts.

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

To keep America moving forward, President Obama needs partners in Washington. Partners like Senator Barbara Boxer. We are fortunate to have Barbara Boxer representing us because she is a champion for civil rights, for voting rights, for education and for economic policies that will benefit all of our families.
During her time in the House and Senate, Barbara Boxer has worked hard to create jobs and make life better for the people in our communities. She supported President Obama’s Recovery Act, which helped save or create more than 150,000 jobs in California alone and provided tax breaks for middle-class families.
Another top priority of Barbara Boxer is kids. She has worked to expand educational opportunities and wrote the law that is helping to make sure 1.7 million of our children have after-school programs that keep them safe and enrich their education with tutoring, music, art, sports and more.
As Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, she’s been delivering for California to create jobs in our communities — building roads, fixing bridges and improving transit systems. She’s helped double the transportation funding coming to California for critical local projects. She secured a $546 million federal loan to Metro to fast-track the Crenshaw light rail line.
She has led the fight in the Senate for cleaner air and cleaner water, and she’s fought to clean up toxic waste sites that threaten our families.
She has focused on taking care of our veterans when they come home, including securing funding for the first Combat Casualty Care Center on the West Coast to treat severely injured soldiers.
Barbara Boxer fought to pass health-care reform to give our families more access to affordable health care. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, she has been a leader in funding international HIV/AIDS relief in Africa.
After the 2004 presidential election, Barbara Boxer was the only senator to join the late Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones to challenge the certification of Ohio’s electoral votes because of voting irregularities.
Now she’s working to help small businesses hire again and to give tax cuts to working families — not to millionaires, billionaires and companies that ship jobs overseas.
She has been standing up and fighting for us during her three terms in the Senate. Now it’s time for us to fight for her.
President Obama said recently that Senator Boxer has stood “shoulder to shoulder” with him through the tough battles in Washington. “California needs her and I know I need her,” he said.
It is time to make our voices heard. Vote now — and make sure your friends and family get to the polls on Tuesday.
There’s too much stake for all of us. Get out and vote for Barbara Boxer.
Alfre Woodard is an Emmy Award-winning actress who co-founded Artists for a New South Africa, a non-profit group. She has also been active in civil rights and voting rights in the United States.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com