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On January 28th the world witnessed the courage of the Egyptian people and the cries of their hearts for freedom from an oppressive regime; I, on the other hand, witnessed the defiance of tyranny first hand.
The youth led movement was inherently non-violent and also inherently non-Islamist. The media narrative that argues the Muslim Brotherhood to be a contributing factor to the Revolution is fallacious. Why is it that the media attributes Islam as always containing an extremist side? The Egyptians, who I know, are completely modern in their mannerisms and dress, as well as in their

Last Friday, I saw a preview performance of The Book Of Mormon, the Broadway musical written by South Park’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and Avenue Q’s Robert Lopez. I wondered how Parker and Stone’s tendency toward scatological sacrilege would work on staid, conservative Broadway, which has been playing it safe for a decade with revivals, reviews and adaptations of hit movies, books and albums. (Not to knock American Idiot, a raw, visceral theater experience. I’d trade every show running for one based on a Green Day

Tonight, in New York City, Gay Men’s Health Crisis will celebrate with Savor; one of the top events of the year, but this year’s event is going to be one for the ages and reason for all of us to celebrate with them.
First, GMHC is celebrating thirty years of serving those in New York City who are living with HIV/AIDS; providing critical services and support to literally tens of thousands of New Yorkers over the decades. That is reason enough for all of us to pause on an early spring Monday and say thank you to this remarkable group.
Next, tonight’s event promises to be the best Savor ever and yes, there are still some tickets available should you be looking for a great night out.

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Will Jerry Brown pull it off? While most eyes focused on governors are zeroing in on the Wisconsin union-busting scheme, Brown is on a full-court press to balance the biggest state budget shortfall in the country.
The new/renewed governor of California is on a fast track to try to quickly solve the state’s chronic-gone-crisis budget problems with a combination of big program cuts and extensions of 2009′s tax hikes.
Having promised no tax increase without voter approval in winning his landslide victory over billionaire Meg Whitman’s biggest spending non-presidential campaign in American history, Brown is shooting for a June special election. Democrats are mostly going along, as they know that the real world alternative — even more draconian cuts — is worse. Republicans are, of course, balking, still gripped by the Cult of

Wilbertine Berkley is one of hundreds of thousands of Floridians with past felony convictions whose voting rights are in peril. After struggling with substance abuse, Wilbertine has served her time, enrolled in college and become a volunteer with a homelessness organization in her community. She’s overcome more obstacles than many of us, but after four years, she’s still waiting to have her voting rights reinstated, lost amidst the backlog of over 100,000 rights restoration cases yet to be acted upon by the Florida Board of Executive Clemency.
Felony disfranchisement refers to the set of policies, which differ from state-to-state, that bar people with felony convictions from

You’ll never guess. It’s “originality”.
But perhaps I should explain.
A few weeks back, I read an announcement that the now white hot Colin Firth might be signing on for a re-make of “My Fair Lady”.
Not since Steve Martin decided to put a new spin on “The Pink Panther” have I been so moved to ask, “Why?”
Will a remake of this venerable 1964 musical, even one featuring Mr. Firth, really improve on Rex Harrison’s definitive performance, one he originated on Broadway?
Flush with success, does Mr. Firth really think he can bring something new and fresh to Rex’s immortal rendition of “Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?”
I for one doubt it.
The truth is, if you span the course of movie-making history, it becomes abundantly clear that remakes and sequels tend not to improve on the

Cutting military spending would make us leaner and meaner; stronger, not weaker.
The budget wars have begun. Duck!
President Obama delivered the first salvo by presenting his $3.5 trillion proposal for the 2012 fiscal year to Congress in a telephone book-sized document. It was very Barack — measured and balanced. It cut a little here, put on a little there, added a pinch of taxes and came up with a budget he said would cut more than a trillion dollars from the deficit over the next 10 years.
Republicans in Congress responded with the calm assurance usually associated with Pickett’s

With the recent spate of attacks on climate science and evolution it should not be a surprise that traditional defined benefit pensions in the public sector are now also under attack. There are powerful political actors in this country who are anxious to build a bridge back to the 19th century; taking us to a time where working people enjoyed few protections and could not count on sharing in the gains of economic growth.
The effort to weaken or destroy public sector unions and take away their pensions is the latest battle in this larger war. As usual, the right has been busy making things up to push its agenda, confident that the media will not expose untrue claims.
At the center of the right’s story is the view that governments are somehow being reckless or irresponsible when they provide guaranteed pensions for their workers. They tell us that these guaranteed benefits will bankrupt state and local governments, imposing impossible burdens on future taxpayers.
This story can be easily shown to be

It’s been pointed out numerous times of late that those good protesters who dumped tea into Boston Harbor in 1773 weren’t against taxation. They wanted representation! Taxes, maybe, but let our elected leaders be the ones taxing us, please.
Fast forward about 238 years to Rep. Cheri Gerou talking about taxes Feb. 11 on KVNF community radio in Paonia.
Host Sally Kane asked Gerou about how Colorado will deal with its budget shortfall in the future, and whether tax increases could be “part of the picture.”
“It’s not my job,” answered Gerou, who sits on the Joint Budget

Charlie Sheen may have become the media’s newest chew toy during the past two weeks, but the one place he could free himself and steer the train wreck a little was on his own twitter feed. After only one week and little more than 50 posts, Sheen has almost 2 million followers and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Under the tutelage of celebrity online wranglers ad.ly, Sheen has shown some surprisingly good moves for someone new to social media.
If you’re looking for a lesson, it’s this: Crisis is an opportunity for new branding.
People had an idea of what Charlie Sheen was like, but didn’t have an idea of him as a person. Love him or hate him, you know who he is

Matt Franklin (Topher Grace) has the charm and sensuality of a young Cary Grant and uses these charms on Tori Frederking (Teresa Palmer) who is his high school dream girl whom he never had the courage to ask on a date during the heated 80s. She is so stunning you can imagine Matt being intimidated by her beauty. In an opening sequence Tori comes into a video store in the Sherman Oaks Galleria where Matt works. He tricks her into a conversation with

Along the Gulf Coast, the marketing blitz for spring break is rolling out as the oil from the BP blowout 11 months ago continues to roll in along with increasing numbers of dead infant dolphins, in numbers completely without precedent. The beaches remain polluted with toxic oil and dispersant even as local politicians and government officials insist everything is fine and the oil miraculously gone. Thousands of pounds are collected each day from the few areas that remain under scrutiny, all of those being in highly visible resort areas. In one zone on

In a recent in-depth interview with Helene Gayle, President and CEO of CARE USA, we discussed empowering women and girls around the world, the efforts and initiatives of CARE towards this end, non-profit leadership and management, the new digital CARE Package, innovations in development, her advice to President Obama on foreign aid, and future challenges and opportunities for the international development sector. This interview is the first of many for International Women’s Week.
An excerpt of Dr. Gayle’s interview is below, while the full interview can be found here.
Rahim Kanani: As president and CEO of CARE USA, how would you characterize the global trend in awareness, advocacy and action towards the social, political and economic empowerment of women and girls around the world?
Helene Gayle: I guess you could say the stars have aligned. It’s as if many of the world’s biggest and smartest thinkers have come to the same conclusion almost at once: you can’t marginalize more than half of the globe’s population and expect to see any meaningful solutions to the problems that ail the

US toy manufacturer Mattel has shut its flagship Barbie concept store in Shanghai after just two years.
Mattel launched the store in March 2009 – Barbie's 50th birthday – in an attempt to expand the market for it's famous doll into China.
The store was spread across six floors, replete with a staircase decorated by 875 Barbie dolls and a Barbie bar.
Mattel was hoping to offset falling sales in traditional markets hit by the financial crisis.
However sales failed to meet expectations and the firm was forced to cut its targets within the first eight months of the store's

Animated cowboy comedy Rango has shot to the top of the North American box office taking 38m (23.4m) in its first weekend, according to estimates.
It tells the tale of a pet chameleon, voiced by Johnny Depp, who becomes an accidental hero when he is stranded in the Nevada desert.
The Adjustment Bureau, a thriller starring Matt Damon and Emily Blunt, opened at two with 20.9m

View of the volcanic gas activity from the Jaggar Museum. Photo by Sue Frause.
Looks like we missed Kilauea’s volcanic eruption by a month. One of the Big Island’s biggest tourist attractions put on a really big show on March 5, 2011. That’s when the Pu`u ` ` crater floor collapsed, followed by a middle east rift zone

Something magical happened yesterday.
Parking at the Colorado Convention Center involves driving up a narrow, tight, concrete spiral at a very low speed — again and again and again, until one reaches the first level of the parking structure. While cranking the wheel to the right, one can see the tread marks and scrapes from all the cars that previously passed through, some leaving a little of their paint job behind. Not normally claustrophobic, I am always relieved when I see sunlight again at the top. The experience reminds me of the spiral of the Democratic Party after a period of political

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke knows it. Education and training are central to our nation’s economic competitiveness. In fact, he recently urged that budget deliberations recognize the benefits of programs that equip workers with needed skills — even when we must grapple with difficult decisions around balancing state and federal budgets.
But House leadership is taking action that will cut off our nose to spite our face. The House-passed Continuing Resolution, which would fund the government through the remainder of FY 2011, includes drastic cuts to adult, dislocated worker and youth programs under the Workforce Investment Act

Some movies – most movies, in fact – grab you by the lapels and get right in your face. They tell you – in a million different ways – what to think and what to feel about every moment from start to finish.
Eric Mendelsohn’s 3 Backyards is just the opposite.
A film that is at once lyrical and mysterious, familiar yet enigmatic, this movie, for which Mendelsohn won the directing award at Sundance 2010, is the very definition of an arthouse film – or, for that matter, of art.
In other words, this is a movie to which the audience must bring something. It’s a movie that raises more questions than it answers, which offers a peek into a world you may not have seen – and which never explains just what it is you’re seeing. It leaves you feeling haunted and touched, even if you can’t express exactly what that is
Set over the course of a single day in an unnamed Long Island community, 3 Backyards is like a triptych of short stories, connected only by the general

1)Wine criticism and the internet | Wine information in the U.S. until the past 10 years came primarily from two sources: Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate and The Wine Spectator. There were certainly other publications in the market, but these two had a stranglehold on influencing the buying patterns of retail stores, restaurants and the American public. Both Robert Parker and The Wine Spectator review wines using a 100 point grading system, and this grading system has filtered through both the industry and the public to create a tremendous demand from the public for high scoring wines, and an increased pressure on wine producers to make wines that are most likely to please the most important critics.
The most positive influence the internet has given the public is many voices with many different outlooks in regard to evaluating

This Blogger’s Books from
Chaos for the Weary
Lee Camp
Satiristas: Comedians, Contrarians, Raconteurs & Vulgarians
by Paul Provenza, Dan Dion

Follow Lee Camp on Twitter:
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In yesterday’s New York Times, the editors ran an article called “Charlie Sheen Deconstructed” which listed a collection of opinions about the troubled actor and his many recent media appearances airing his dirty laundry. The article described the collection as “analysis of the analysis” and included:
Craig Ferguson on The Late Late Show
Jacob Weisberg in Slate
Willa Paskin in New York magazine’s “Vulture Blog”
Adam Sternbergh in the New York Times Magazine blog
Walter Kirn on his blog
And even:
Charlie Sheen himself on Twitter
Each of these six opinions shared a common theme: they were talking about talking about Charlie Sheen—and they amounted to a tiny drop compared to the tsunami in the media on the subject.

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If you ever had a doubt that the French are obsessed with love, or at least have a different mindset about all variations: amour fou, fidelity, passion, adultery than we puritanical Americans, check out their movies. On this matter, the French are consistent.
Even in an epic length period drama like The Princess of Montpensierwith its sweeping battle scenes and violence, the love the young womanof the title experiences for Henri de Guise (Gaspard Ulliel), the rakish heartthrob of her youth is what matters most to director Bertrand Tavernier. Adapted from a 16th century 30 page story by Madame de Lafayette, the film also features Lambert Wilson, perhapsthe most appealing of French actors (see the very fine Of Gods and Men), as Chabanne, a soldier who transgresses military code by murdering a pregnant woman, driving his long blade through her belly, for which he renounces violence.Most tender are Marie’s scenes with Chabanne who instructs her in literature, philosophy, and all mattersof the court.
But as the popular Rendez-vous with French Cinema festival screens in the week ahead, love takes many forms: In the opening night film, Francois Ozon’s Potiche, the trophy wife played by Catherine Deneuvein curlers and professing bourgeois bliss, reconnects with an old love, bringing the iconic actress together again with that grand and sexy bear, Gerard