The curse of the 5,000lb mouse

Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus was hailed as a masterpiece. He's still recovering. As his sketchbooks are published for the first time, he explains all to Angelique Chrisafis

by Angelique Chrisafis

 

"When you've been revealed in all your pathetic nakedness, there's nothing else to lose' ... Art Spiegelman.

 

'I want a blood test," Art Spiegelman shrugs when asked about his status as the father of the graphic novel. Twenty years ago, the wise-cracking New York cartoonist changed the history of comic books with the first installment of his Pulitzer prize-winning Maus: A Survivor's Tale - the story of how his parents survived Auschwitz, with Jews drawn as mice and Nazis as cats. It remains the defining work of graphic memoir, the book that elevated a pulp mass medium to high art and proved that comics didn't have to be comic. But, as one frame in Spiegelman's new exhibition in Paris says, ever since then he's felt he has "a 5,000 pound mouse breathing down my neck".

 

Spiegelman, 61, looks just as he draws himself - a waistcoat, a constant cigarette; he is self-mockingly neurotic but infinitely wise, still carrying the heavy burden of guilt that plagues survivors' children. His vast career has ranged from the grotesque Garbage Pail Kids, to In the Shadow of No Towers, his comic-strip journal about September 11, and last year's reissue of Breakdowns, a graphic memoir described as "the Citizen Kane of modern comics".

Despite the awful details of his life, Spiegelman's confessional style makes his works almost impossible to put down. His parents were forced into the Polish ghettos in 1941, reluctantly handing their eldest son - Spiegelman's brother - over to relatives to hide him. The little boy was poisoned to death by his aunt during a Nazi raid; she thought it better than letting him go to the camps, and killed herself, too. His grief-stricken parents ended up in Auschwitz, which they survived. Spiegelman was born after the war and raised in New York, an only child with a "ghost brother". His father was brutalized and damaged; his mother took her own life when Spiegelman was 20 and didn't leave a note. All this is laid bare in his work. To him, Maus, published in 1986 and 1992, was, "as a blues musician would say, my crossover hit"; but he sees all his work on a continuum, "made from the same fractured psyche".

Next week, three of Spiegelman's sketchbooks will be published for the first time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jun/11/art-spiegelman-maus-comic-sketchbooks

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Literary Lesson: Authors, Poets Write the News

Letter from Jerusalem

By Daniel Estrin

It was on an average Wednesday that a very serious Israeli newspaper conducted a very wild experiment. For one day, Haaretz editor-in-chief Dov Alfon sent most of his staff reporters home and sent 31 of Israel's finest authors and poets to cover the day's news.

The idea behind the paper's June 10 special edition was to honor Israel's annual Hebrew Book Week, which opened the same day, by inviting Israeli authors to get away from their forthcoming novels and letting them bear witness to the events of the day.

This wasn't a Sabbath supplement, a chance to balance the news with extra color. This was a near complete replacement of the newspaper itself. Save for the sports section and a few other articles, all the reporters' notebooks were handed over to poets and novelists, both bestselling and up-and-coming. Their articles filled the pages, from the leading headline to the weather report.

"We really tried to give a real newspaper," Alon said.

For the liberal, Hebrew language Israeli daily — the country's oldest — it was a bold but signature move. From its founding in 1918, Haaretz has distinguished its brand by highlighting Israeli cultural, literary and artistic life with a vigor unmatched by its competitors. That, along with its dense in-depth political and business reporting (achieved with smaller type and far fewer photos than Israel's other dailies) has won it an elite audience, albeit one far smaller than its competitors. Its weekday circulation of some 50,000 compares with 400,000 for Yediot Aharonot, Israel's largest daily, and 160,000 for Ma'ariv, the second largest.

But as the old cliché goes, they are the right readers. "The likelihood of Haaretz readership," Israeli media analysts Dan Caspi and Yehiel Limor write, "rises with income, education, and age." Its elite audience gives it an influence disproportionate to its circulation, as does its internationally read English language Internet edition, which features translations of many of the Hebrew stories. Its readership, along with the paper's dovish political stances, has won it a reputation as Israel's version of The New York Times.

It's hard to imagine the Times doing anything like the June 10 experiment, though. For this edition of the paper, nearly all the rules taught in journalism school were thrown out the window. Writers used the first person and showed up in nearly every photograph alongside their interview subjects, including the likes of Defense Minister Ehud Barak and President Shimon Peres.

Among those articles were gems like the stock market summary, by author Avri Herling. It went like this: "Everything's okay. Everything's like usual. Yesterday trading ended. Everything's okay. The economists went to their homes, the laundry is drying on the lines, dinners are waiting in place… Dow Jones traded steadily and closed with 8,761 points, Nasdaq added 0.9% to a level of 1,860 points…. The guy from the shakshuka [an Israeli egg-and-tomato dish] shop raised his prices again…." The TV review by Eshkol Nevo opened with these words: "I didn't watch TV yesterday." And the weather report was a poem by Roni Somek, titled "Summer Sonnet." ("Summer is the pencil/that is least sharp/in the seasons' pencil case.") News junkies might call this a postmodern farce, but considering that the stock market won't be soaring anytime soon, and that "hot" is really the only weather forecast there is during Israeli summers, who's to say these articles aren't factual?

Alongside these cute reports were gripping journalistic accounts. David Grossman, one of Israel's most famed novelists, spent a night at a children's drug rehabilitation center in Jerusalem and wrote a cover page story about the tender exchanges between the patients, ending the article in the style of a celebrated author who's treated like a prophet: "I lay in bed and thought wondrously how, amid the alienation and indifference of the harsh Israeli reality, such islands — stubborn little bubbles of care, tenderness and humanity — still exist." Grossman's pen transformed a run-of-the-mill feature into something epic.

So, too, did 79-year-old author Yoram Kaniuk, whose novel "Adam Resurrected" was recently adapted for a movie starring Jeff Goldblum and Ayelet Zurer. He went into the field to write about couples in the hospital cancer ward. The thing is, he's a cancer patient, too. "A woman walking with a cane brings her partner a cup of coffee with a trembling hand. The looks they exchange are sexier than any performance by Madonna and cost a good deal less," Kaniuk wrote. "I think about what would happen if I were to get better…how I would live without the human delicacy to which I am witness?"

"I got more telephone calls today than I have in years past," Kaniuk said in a phone interview. "People were very moved, because I wrote it like a writer and not like a journalist. If you see something beautiful and touching, why not write it?" The masterful articles by Kaniuk and Grossman made it seem like there's actually some hope to be reported in a country flooded with doomsday news bulletins.

The next day, Haaretz's usual staff reporters were back on the job.

http://www.forward.com/articles/107571/

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Recession could fuel new era of local newspaper ownership

The recession that accelerated the newspaper industry's transition is creating new models where local journalism can survive, writes Times Editorial Page Editor Ryan Blethen. One model known as the L3C — for low-profit, limited-liability corporations — could give rise to an era of local and independent ownership of newspapers.

By Ryan Blethen

For nearly 40 years, newspapers have been acquired by publicly traded corporations or ever-expanding privately held, but highly leveraged, companies. The inexorable, greed-fueled feast might finally be coming to an end.

An industry-transforming recession has exposed the decay of decades of corporate and profit-driven newspaper ownership.

In the detritus comes real opportunity. Some of the remaining Bigs are going to have no choice but to get out of the newspaper business or shed a number of what corporate types call "properties." This jettisoning of newspapers and the near valueless Wall Street assessments could give rise to an era of independent and local ownership.

One of the many intriguing ideas that could again place newspapers in the hands of local ownership is a new take on a tested business model: low-profit, limited-liability corporations. The new incarnation is called an L3C.

The L3C might be the perfect pairing for journalism and business. It would permit a company to act as a nonprofit and attract investors but allow for modest earnings. Even better, the overriding reason for an L3C is the public role it endows. This is a model made for the mission of newspapers.

Victor Pickard is examining L3Cs as senior research fellow at Free Press, a national media-reform organization. He said that L3Cs could free up newspapers to focus on serving communities with quality journalism.

"The low-profit model would let newspapers focus on their social good — that is, newsgathering — and not just the bottom line. It takes from the nonprofit and for-profit worlds: giving a return to investors, creating new avenues for philanthropy and focusing on local community service."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2009332914_ryan14.html

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First Guantanamo Bay Detainee Brought To US; Promptly Escapes And Kills 5,600 In 'Hellish Flames'

What began as the normal transportation of a Guantanamo Bay detainee to the United States ended in chaos and destruction today, as prisoner Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani easily escaped custody and leveled 15 New York City blocks, killing and injuring over 30,000 people.

Authorities say Ghailani used a combination of terrorist training and telekinetic powers to unleash a wave of supervillainy on New York.

"We knew those Guantanamo bastards were supercriminals, but how can any city defend against a terrorist who can levitate 100 feet in the air, and shoot fireballs out of nowhere?" said New York City Police Department commissioner Raymond Kelly, pounding his fists in frustration. "The worst that we all feared is now happening. God help this nation now."

Kelly referenced the fact that many politicians and American citizens have long been concerned that bringing detainees from Guantanamo to American soil could have dire consequences. Ghailani himself acknowledged their concerns, laughing as he summoned a large dragon demon named Kluulorth from the Hudson River.

"Only that wretched super prison Guantanamo could hold me," Ghailani hissed, after clarifying that he now wants to be called Doctor Natas. "Now that I'm out of there, my powers have only grown exponentially."

"You fools," he added, giggling. "You unbelievable fools."

Shortly after his escape, Dr. Natas teleported to various neighborhoods around the country, alarming citizens by literally being right in their backyards.

President Barack Obama called a press conference to address the situation, but he didn't get far before being disintegrated by a blast from Dr. Natas' eye lasers.

"This is what I get, America," Obama sobbed as he faded away from existence. "This is what I get for wanting to close the only prison we had that was able to hooollldd...hiiiimmm..."

In a recent Associated Press poll, most Americans agreed, saying Obama's belief that the Guantanamo Bay prisoners could be tried and placed into supermax prisons throughout the country was "naive".

"Yes, our prisons currently hold some of the world's most violent and brutal criminals," admitted Kathy Blovitz, president of the Iowa chapter of the organization Keep Them Away From Me, "but when was the last time you saw a normal criminal shoot a freeze ray out of his genitalia?"

Blovitz says that super-terrorists like Dr. Natas and some of his Guantanamo Bay cohorts, including Captain Gold and Giganta, have the potential to do untold damage to the country, even by merely entering its borders.

http://www.enduringvision.com/news/politics_061009.php

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Progressives and Bluedogs Can Defeat War Supplemental with Twitter

 

by Bob Fertik

 

Tammy Baldwin Michael Capuano Yvette Clarke John Conyers Jerry Costello Peter DeFazio Lloyd Doggett Donna Edwards Sam Farr Bob Filner Alan Grayson Raul Grijalva

Luis Gutierrez Jay Inslee Steve Kagen Marcy Kaptur Dennis Kucinich Barbara Lee John Lewis Eric Massa James McGovern Michael Michaud Richard Neal

Jim Oberstar Chellie Pingree Jose Serrano Carol Shea-Porter Brad Sherman Pete Stark Nikki Tsongas Nydia Velasquez Maxine Waters Diane Watson Lynn Woolsey

Call House Progressives now!
Twitter users: Tweet against war funds!

All 178 House Republicans plan to vote against the $100 billion Iraq/AfPak War Supplemental to protest $5 billion for the International Monetary Fund. That means 39 Democratic opponents could defeat the bill. 34 Democrats on the right promised to vote no, so we only need 5 more.

On May 14, 51 Democrats voted no and 4 Democrats were absent. Most were Progressives who oppose the war funding, but a few were Bluedogs who want to cut unnecessary spending.

The list below includes every House Democrat who has ever voted against Iraq War funding, so activists should contact every one they can.

The first column codes are:
++: voted with us on May 14 and will definitely vote with us
+: voted with us on May 14 and still with us as far as we know
*: voted wrong on May 14 but will vote with us now
~: voted with us on May 14 but wavering now
a: absent on May 14
I: will vote with us if it includes IMF funds
M: will vote with us if it includes IMF funds that could go to Iran
F: will vote against us if IMF policy is "pro-growth"
P: will vote with us if it includes FOIA ban on torture photos
-: voted with us on May 14 but now oppose us

http://www.democrats.com/progressives-and-bluedogs-can-defeat-war-supplemental

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Dear CNN, Please Check Twitter for News About Iran

By MARSHALL KIRKPATRICK and READWRITEWEB

The western world's most feared government is shaking with insurrection in the streets after a contested election and the leading name in news, CNN, is shockingly absent from the story. Twitter, meanwhile, is how Iranians are communicating with the outside world. It's the best place to follow events going on in that country and CNN's failure to engage with the story is one of the hottest topics of conversation there.

Hours after Iranian police began clashing with tens of thousands of people in the street, the top story on CNN.com remains peoples' confusion about the switch from analog TV signals.

One quip we've seen is that "Tienanmen + Twitter = Tehran." Twenty years ago this month, CNN brought real time news about the Tienanmen Square uprising to the world. It's really strange that the network is absent from this story. CNN anchor and mega-Tweeter Rick Sanchez defensively Tweeted hours ago that he covered Iran throughout the afternoon on TV, so perhaps it's just the CNN.com web team that's incurring the wrath of news consumers. CNN's official Twitter account has been silent for four hours.

The BBC is covering the story well, we found this video posted to YouTube. It's being passed around Twitter. These photos on Flickr are good, too. This video from LiveLeak is quite moving, if likely to cause motion-sickness. Twitter search engine Twazzup has created a great aggregator page for real-time multi-media updates from and about Iran. Andrew Sullivan writes well about the extensive use of Twitter by Iranians in the uprising. This in a country where the government recently debated applying the death penalty for subversive blogging.

Barack Obama has a good excuse for not engaging substantially with the protests in the streets - if he condemns the incumbent's victory then negotiations around nuclear weapons will be much more difficult. What's CNN's excuse?

http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwriteweb/2009/06/14/14readwriteweb-dear-cnn-please-check-twitter-for-news-abou-45130.html

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Strange Changes in Iranian Transit

 

By James Cowie

 

Many media sources have reported outages in Iranian mobile networks and Internet services in the wake of Friday's controversial elections. We took a look at the state of Iranian Internet transit, as seen in the aggregated global routing tables, and found that the story is not as clear-cut as has been reported.

There's no question that something large happened in the Iranian telecom space, and that the timing aligns with the close of voting and the emerging controversy. Iran typically has a fairly high baseline level of sporadic route instability, due to the country's highly centralized incumbent transit through DCI (Data Communications Iran, AS12880) and DCI's somewhat peripheral connectivity to the main east-west conduits for data. Even so, we started seeing spikes of route instability (changes in the paths to Iranian IP space) starting around 08:05 UTC on Saturday (just after noon in Tehran) that were significantly larger than normally expected. These bursts affected as many as 400 prefixes (blocks of IP addresses) — the majority of Iran's Internet presence.

At 17:48 UTC, instability turned into outage, as more than 180 Iranian networks were withdrawn from the global routing tables, indicating that there were no remaining paths into DCI for that portion of Iranian traffic. Contrary to media reports, however, the outages were fairly short-lived. Within a few minutes, half of the outaged population were restored to alternative transit; over the course of an hour, outage levels returned to their normal baseline. Route instability continued to be fairly high, and that pattern has continued through the night and into Sunday.

What can we say for sure? Not much, except that Iran remains well-connected to the Internet from a routing perspective. If I had to guess, I'd say that there are probably a lot more people around the world pulling local content from Iran's providers right now, and that surge of demand is probably contributing to increased congestion and (perhaps) some of the route instability we see. It wouldn't be unusual for there to be some inbound cyber-mischief as well, from supporters of one or the other side, but so far we only have rumors on that front.

It is interesting to note that the changes in routing that took place were very specific in their impact on DCI's various transit providers, who keep the country connected to the world. There are six of them: Turk Telecom (TTNet, AS9121), FLAG (AS15412), Singapore Telecom (AS7473), PCCW (AS3491), Telia (AS1299), and Telecom Italia Sparkle (AS6762). As the following plot shows, five of them lost Iran's transit, and one of them (Turkish Telecom) was a big gainer. (Red arrows indicate loss of transit preference from the outside world; green indicates a gain in transit via the given provider.)

A transit shift of this magnitude may indicate that something (administrative, or physical) has affected Iran's connection to the submarine cables running east and west — not a total outage, but some kind of significant impairment. Turkey has their own, interesting arrangements with Iran for transit, and those are still in good shape (perhaps somewhat congested, having presumably doubled or tripled in transit volume). It wasn't unusual to see 300ms traceroutes from North America and Europe in this timeframe to many Iranian sites.

Of course, you have to remember that globally visible routes are the signposts for inbound traffic to and through DCI to the local providers; from the outside, there's no telling what the Internet experience of the average person inside Iran is like today. It sounds as if a lot of content is being blocked within the country. For now, it's a good sign that information continues to flow, and Iran is still connected to the world at large. Let's hope they stay connected.

 

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President Ahmadinejad by aleXsandro Palombo

http://www.alexsandropalombo.com/

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Army Orders Bases to Stop Blocking Twitter, Facebook, Flickr

By Noah Shachtman

The Army has ordered its network managers to give soldiers access to social media sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, Danger Room has learned. That move reverses a years-long trend of blocking the web 2.0 locales on military networks.

Army public affairs managers have worked hard to share the service's stories through social sites like Flickr, Delicious and Vimeo. Links to those sites featured prominently on the Army.mil homepage. The Army carefully nurtured a Facebook group tens of thousands strong, and posted more than 4,100 photos to a Flickr account. Yet the people presumably most interested in these sites — the troops — were prevented from seeing the material. Many Army bases banned access to the social networks.

An operations order from the Army's 93rd Signal Brigade to all domestic Directors of Information Management, or DOIMs, aims to correct that. Issued on May 18th "for official use only," the document has not been made public until now.

It is "the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to 'tell the Army story' and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information," says the order, obtained by Danger Room. Therefore, "the social media sites available from the Army homepage will be made accessible from all campus area networks. Additionally, all web-based email will be made accessible."

The operations order (OPORD) doesn't apply to all GI Bases overseas, or those run by the other armed services, which aren't affected by the decree. Nor does the order overturn the long-standing, military-wide ban on sites like MySpace, YouTube and Pandora. And it's almost certain some Army posts that still block the now-approved web 2.0 networks. Still, it's a click in the right direction for the armed service which seems to be making a slow but steady recovery from its lingering hostility towards social media.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/army-orders-bases-stop-blocking-twitter-facebook-flickr/#comments

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This is Personal

By Mark Blumenthal

Regular readers will probably remember my that my father-in-law Frank Burstin, who passed away about a week before last fall's elections, was a survivor of the Auschwitz death camp. For that reason, as you may imagine, the news this afternoon about a shooting at Washington's Holocaust Museum hits pretty close to home for me and for my family.

But you don't know the half of it.

I have a special memory of Pop (as we knew him) from last summer. It was a few weeks before he received his cancer diagnosis, during what turned out to be his last visit to the Holocaust Museum. Because he lost his parents and all of his siblings to the Nazis, and because no grave site exists for any of his family, Pop made it a habit to visit the Museum at least once a year. It fulfilled for him the custom that many Jews practice of visiting the cemetery of loved ones once a year. I only got to accompany him on one of these visits, that one last year, along with my wife's nephew Jake.

I described him last year as "kind and optimistic soul," and he certainly was. But when he entered that museum, something changed. He was not unkind, but in that place, as I soon learned, he suffered no fools (nor anyone else).

We wandered into the museum, through the same doors and into the same foyer where shots rang out this afternoon. My wife had given us visitor passes that she receives as a member of the Museum. The lines were long, and it was not obvious which line we needed to stand in.

Pop was having none of it. He walked away from me and wandered up to the museum staffer standing at the head of the long line leading to the elevators that takes all visitors to the museum exhibits. I thought for a moment that Pop was going to ask directions. I was wrong.

He thrust out his arm in the direction of the staffer, displaying the number the Nazis tattooed on his arm at Auschwitz just a few inches from her face. Without making eye-contact and barely breaking stride, Pop kept walking. Understandably, the staffer barely blinked. She didn't make a move to stop him.

Pop kept walking right into the elevator that had just filled with the visitors that had been waiting in that long line. And even though the elevator was already quite crowded, he walked right in. Jake and I had to run past the guard to catch up. "Pop, Pop," I said, feeling a little embarrassed, hoping to talk him into at least waiting for the next elevator.

The staffer inside the elevator must have heard me, because he smiled, held the door and said with smile, "We have room for Pop. You guys too. C'mon in."

And up we went. I have been to the Holocaust Museum many times, but none as memorable as that visit.

About a month ago, in a conscious effort to carry on her father's tradition and to commemorate his birthday, my wife Helen paid her own solo visit to the Museum. She arrived at the end of a busy work day, in a rush, just a few minutes before closing time. Unfortunately, given the late hour, they had run out of the candles usually provided in the Hall of Remembrance for visitors to light and leave in the niches of the outer walls.

Already feeling emotional -- her dad had passed away just six months before -- she broke down sobbing.

A staffer nearby immediately came to her assistance, asking if she needed help. She explained, and the gentleman asked her to wait. He soon returned with a candle, explaining with a conspiratorial wink that he kept his own special supply for such emergencies.

The guards and staff at the Holocaust Museum have a special duty. The do more than just protect and operate one of Washington's many heavily trafficked museums. On a daily basis, they help open the doors to the elderly survivors of the atrocities of World War II. As my stories attest, they do it with a remarkable degree of kindness and professionalism.

As far as I know, the Holocaust Museum personnel that we encountered were not armed guards, though it is possible they were. But when I heard about the shooting this afternoon, and more specifically that at least one of the victims is a security guard now apparently in critical condition, it struck very close to home.

This is personal.

http://www.pollster.com/blogs/this_is_personal.php

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How regulation works

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Dear AMA: I Quit!

by Dr. Chris McCoy: Policy Chair for the National Physicians Alliance

 

Dear American Medical Association,

I recently had the opportunity to read your response to the Senate Finance Committee proposal [pdf] for health care reform, and it is clear to me that I cannot remain a member in your organization. Please remove my name from your membership rolls, effective immediately.

In reading the response, I was frustrated and disheartened by the fact that you couldn't get through the second paragraph before bringing up the issue of physician reimbursement. This merely highlights how the AMA represents a physician-centered and self-interested perspective rather than honoring the altruistic nature of my profession. As a physician, I advocate first for what is best for my patients and believe that as a physician, as long as I continue to maintain the trust and integrity of the profession, I will earn the respect of my community. The appropriate financial compensation for my endeavors will follow in kind.

I encourage the AMA leadership to read Atul Gawande's recent article describing how physician culture drives up the cost of health care without benefiting patient outcomes. At the heart of this problem are physicians who have a vision of themselves as money-generating profit centers rather than professionals serving the public good. The AMA represents, and encourages, this mindset with its single-focus on physician reimbursement over all other health care reform issues.

However, the most disappointing aspect of the AMA's response to the proposed health care reforms was the opposition to the public health insurance option. I simply cannot support an organization that opposes the public health insurance plan for my patients. Instead of advocating for patients, the AMA is supporting the private insurance industry, which has been a driving force in creating the dysfunction health care system we have today.

But this should not have surprised me: when health care reform has been necessary, the AMA has always stood on the wrong side of history. The AMA opposed the creation of Medicare in the 1930s, when it was first proposed as part of Social Security. The AMA opposed Medicare again in the 1960s, going as far as to hire an actor named Ronald Reagan to read a script to the AMA Auxiliary declaring Medicare as the first step toward socialism, and concluding with the statement that if Medicare were to become law, "One day, we will awake to find that we have socialism.... One of these days, you and I will to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it was once like in America when men were free."

That was 50 years ago ... and none of that has come to pass. And yet this year, the AMA argues that a public health insurance plan will destroy the private insurance market. I challenge the AMA leadership to cite a single example of an industry where involvement by the government has lead to the elimination of private enterprise. This has not been the case with the creation of public police forces in the second half of the 1800's (private security companies still exist), we have a robust system of public and private colleges existing the same market, and bookstores still sell books despite the presence of public libraries. A mix of public and private enterprises in the market is a truly American solution to ensuring equal access, as well as competition to drive quality improvement. In fact, the creation of the public health insurance option will *increase* competition, as demonstrated by the AMA's own studies showing that 94% of health insurance markets only have 1 or 2 providers in the market.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-chris-mccoy/dear-ama-i-quit_b_214318.html

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Who Will Be at the Table?

The docs have escaped media scrutiny—so far

By Trudy Lieberman

During the campaign, Barack Obama promised his cheering crowds that, when he rolled up his sleeves to work on health care, he would "have insurance company representatives and drug company representatives at the table. They just won't be able to buy every chair." Now is a good time to look at just what kind of seats special interest groups will have at Obama's table, and what they're doing to bring the public around to their ways of thinking. This is the fourth of an occasional series of posts that will analyze their activities and how the media are covering them. The entire series is archived here.

The last graph of a relatively recent New York Times story hinted at the politics of health reform. The story, a rather routine piece about a Congressional Budget Office report, described the potential savings from various cost containment nostrums. At the end of its story, the Times revealed what's at stake. Medicare is scheduled to cut doctors' fees by 21 percent in 2010 and by 5 percent in each of the next few years. If those cuts materialize, the government would save $318 billion over the next decade, far more than would be saved by other remedies.

In a presentation to Congress, acting CBO director Robert Sunshine amplified this point: "Significantly reducing the level of growth of health care spending would require substantial changes in the incentives faced by doctors and hospitals to control costs," he said. Translation: to really reduce medical spending, doctors and hospitals might face cost controls that could lower their incomes. The American Medical Association successfully fought this possibility every time health reform rose on the national agenda, and it's a good bet they will fight again, while angling for a prominent place at Obama's table.

In the current round of reform mania, the media have hardly discussed the role of doctors and other health professionals. For starters, they have given gobs of money to Obama and to those legislators who will be gatekeepers for reform. According to Opensecrets.org, the Web site of the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, health care professionals—including doctors with lucrative specialty practices as well as dentists and nurses—rank sixth out of eighty-some industries in campaign donations this year, spending nearly $87 million on various candidates, with more than $10 million going to Obama. Senate recipients include influential Republicans John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell, who got about half a million dollars each, and Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, who got almost $360,000. That's not chump change.

http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/who_will_be_at_the_table_3.php

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Gay Animals on Parade

Gay Penguins

Image Credit

In Germany's Bremerhaven zoo almost a third of the penguins have formed same sex relationships.  So, when one pair of heterosexual Humboldt's penguins adamantly refused to incubate their egg the keepers turned in despair to Z and Vielpunkt, two gay males in a relationship and with an obvious hankering for adoption.  The egg has now successfully hatched and the pair is looking after the chick as if it were their own.  Oblivious to the raging debate around gay humans and adoption they seem to be doing a very good job so far.  Gay (or homosexual if you prefer the technical term) behavior in the animal kingdom is more common than many think or choose to believe.  So, what other gay animals can we proudly put on parade?

Gay Giraffe

Image Credit

Another argument that has been raging has been the statistical fact that the majority of giraffe couplings are homosexual in nature.  When observed in action, it seems that over ninety percent of mountings are between males.  However, when the males come in to contact with females when they are in estrus then they invariably will go with them.  This means, one can only suppose, that the majority of male giraffes are bisexual.  It could be argued then that the gay behavior they exhibit is down to the fact that they are so constantly horny that they will go with each other when the females aren't having any of it.  Bisexuals, huh, nature or just plain and simple sexual greediness?  Discuss...

Gay Dolphin

Image Credit

The Bottlenose Dolphin has long been shown to exhibit gay behavior.  Male dolphins will regularly form lifelong pairings.  When in their adolescence the males live in large same sex groups and gay activity is commonplace.  Pairs will bond very closely and this often translates in to a lifelong pairing, exclusive to each other.  Other male pairs will work together to follow a female, often for weeks.  When she becomes sexually receptive then one of them will mate with her, then they will go their own male-male way again.  These male couples are often observed engaging in pretty obvious (not to mention explicit) sexual play with each other.  Scientists have argued that this homosexual behavior is vital and helps the species on an evolutionary basis.  Those that play together, so it seems, stay together and when you are in a gang (even of two) then your chances of survival are so much higher.

Gay Snow Monkey

Image Credit

The Japanese Macaque, otherwise known as the Snow Monkey is best known for its habit of taking baths in the hot springs around its home habitat.  The female monkeys, however, will form intense lesbian relationships that last for a few days to several months.  It must be noted here that gay behavior has been noted in all of these animals mentioned in the wild, and has nothing to do with captive living, and apparently also has nothing to do with mates of the opposite sex being unavailable.

The Gay Seahorse

Image Credit

The Sea Life Aquariums of the UK did a survey in 2007 and discovered that their seahorse population was 'promiscuous, flighty and more than a little bit gay'.  They recorded over three thousand sexual encounters and discovered that thirty seven percent of them were between same sex seahorses.  The Australian Big Bellied variety was way out in the lead in terms of being indiscriminate about with which gender it mated.  Generally, the scientists discovered that the seahorses were truly shameless and indiscriminate creatures, but noted that as no survey has been done in the wild, they are unsure whether this behavioral pattern would be reproduced there.

Gay Flamingos

Image Credit

Carlos and Fernando are the names of two male flamingos that are resident at the Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust in the UK.  They have been together for eight years and first came out, as it were, in 2001.  They surprised the park workers by engaging in the usual elaborate mating rituals of the species and have been inseparable since then.  The boys have even raised chicks together, but they were not gifted to them in the manner of the Humboldts of Germany.  Naughty old Carlos and Fernando stole the eggs from their straight neighbors.  Notably, straight flamingos stay together for the mating season and then go their separate ways, choosing a new partner the year after.  Carlos and Fernando are unique as their love has endured the passing of the years.

The Gay Bonobo

Image Credit

Unusual among apes, the Bonobo has a matriarchal society and is one of the few species that can be labeled fully bisexual.  Both females and males will engage in hetero and homosexual behavior.  More than sixty percent of Bonobo sexual activity will be between two or more females.  They have the highest homosexual pairing frequency of any animal.  It seems that sex is their answer to reduce the chance of conflict and it is thought that sex is used to diffuse tension and to divert attention from things that may result in fighting.  Make love, not war!

http://www.scienceray.com/Biology/Gay-Animals-on-Parade.764625

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O’Reilly Defends Gay Penguins: ‘God Made The Penguin That Way’

By Ali Frick

Last night, Bill O'Reilly discussed the "gay penguins" at a zoo in Germany with guest Dennis Miller. O'Reilly shocked Miller by being eminently tolerant of the penguins, saying the zoo should "leave the penguin alone" because "God made the penguin that way":

O'REILLY: Number one, if the penguin's gay, leave the penguin alone. God made the penguin that way and I agree — I mean, I'm not one of these guys who thinks you should be converting anybody to anything. If you're that way, and you're not hurting anybody, I think you and I agree, we're libertarians. So who cares? … If they're happy, they're happy. That's my philosophy.

Watch it:

If only O'Reilly were as tolerant of gay humans; alas, his record shows quite a different picture:

— O'Reilly complained that J.K. Rowling is making children "tolerant" of homosexuality.

– O'Reilly warned that if gay marriage were allowed, people could marry ducks, turtles, and dolphins.

– O'Reilly censored a photo of two men kissing.

– O'Reilly claimed J.K. Rowling is a "provocateur" for "the gay agenda" of "indoctrination."

– O'Reilly was disgusted by a transgender couple, saying, "Imagine a poor kid getting born into that family."

– O'Reilly was furious that "thousands of gay adults showed up and commingled with straight families" at a Padres game, and suggested that gay couples hugging were making "over-the-top displays."

In O'Reilly's world, gay penguins should be left alone, but gay people should be mocked, reviled, and censored.

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/06/11/oreilly-fox-news-lgbt/

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CORPORATIONS TRY TO CO-OPT LOCAL FOOD MOVEMENT

by Jim Hightower

The big demand in food these days is that it be locally-produced. A new term has even been coined – "locavore" – to describe consumers who want the freshness and sense of community that comes from eating the bounty of small-scale, local producers. You know, hometown guys like Frito-Lay and Hunt's Foods.

Proving that no standard of integrity is so pure that it can't be perverted by corporate profiteers, these giants of industrialized food production are reaching out with their deep-pocket advertising budgets to co-opt the locavore label. Frito-Lay – a multinational, multibillion-dollar, agribusiness giant, that buys two billion pounds of spuds a year from hundreds of very large farmers to make Lay's potato chips – is presently running national television ads trying to convince viewers that its farmers are just local folks.

"We grow potatoes in Florida," declares one of its corporate providers in an ad imbued with bucolic, down home imagery. Not mentioned is that the potatoes he grows on a sprawling 800-acre spread end up as chips that are sold in New York, California... and beyond. Local?

ConAgra, the conglomerate that owns Hunt's tomatoes, concedes that it can't literally be local in the geographical sense. So, says a consultant working on Hunt's current locavore ad campaign, "the question is, how do we take [local] to that next level?" In Corporate World, you see, "local" is not a place, but a figment of marketeering imagination.

Jessica Prentice, the food writer who coined the "locavore" tag, begs to differ with that definition. The local food movement, she explains, represents an ethic of small-scale production, ecologically-centered in a place, and based on personal relationships within a community. "Large corporations peddling junk food," she says, "are the exact opposite of what this is about.""

When 'Local' Makes It Big," The New York Times, May 13, 2009.

http://www.jimhightower.com/node/6838

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Redneck fire alarm

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The Boat that Rocked

 

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We're Stopping the War Money

AfterDowningStreet.org

We're on Facebook and Youtube and Twitter

In This Email:

1. Stop the War Supplemental
2. Torture Accountability Action Day: June 25

1. Stop the War Supplemental

Whip list here with contact info and updates. (Help us update the list!)

We have 15 Democrats committed to voting No on the war money, and all the Republicans voting No because of the IMF money that has been included with it.

We have succeeded in getting the ban on releasing torture photos removed from the bill, and we may succeed in having the IMF bailout for European banksters removed too.  But we want the bill defeated, and right now, with the IMF funds included, defeating the whole thing is easily within reach.

Look at the promises.  51 Democrats voted No on the same bill when it was guaranteed to pass.  89 have sworn not to vote for any more war money except for withdrawal.  85 have cosponsored a bill requiring an exit strategy for Afghanistan.  And 73 have joined an "Out of Iraq" caucus.  Is this all for show, or will 40 Democrats vote No when the No votes can actually be decisive, actually make the peace movement a force in Congress, actually create the power to negotiate a compromise, change the public discourse, and begin to bring these nightmares to an end?

Please call your representative today and urge them to vote no: 202-224-3121.  And call them every day: as long as they keep delaying the vote, we are winning.

Whip list here with contact info and updates. (Help us update the list!)

2. Torture Accountability Action Day: June 25

http://tortureaccountability.webs.com

June 25th in Washington, DC, and across the USA !

Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland, Honolulu, Las Vegas, Anchorage, Pasadena, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Charlotte



More locations are being added every day !

Details for Washington DC Rally:

Meet at: John Marshall Park - 501 Pennsylvania Ave NW - Washington, DC Directions: Google Maps ( To View the layout of the Park in 3-D go to : http://www.johnmarshallpark.org/index.html )

When: There will be tabling from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and continuing after rally. To reserve a table please contact us at http://tortureaccountability.web.com/contactus.htm

Rally: Speakers from 11 a.m. to Noon

March: Departs from Rally site at High Noon to the Department of Justice.
Some participants may engage in nonviolent civil resistance, risking arrest, if the Attorney General refuses to appoint a Special Prosecutor.

If you wish to sponsor this event or any of the others, or add one to the list of cities participating, please contact us at: http://tortureaccountability.web.com/contactus.htm

Sponsored by:
After Downing Street, Code Pink: Women for Peace, Democrats.com, Indict Bush Now, National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance, Progressive Democrats of America, Torture Abolition & Survivor Support Coalition, Veterans for Peace, Washington Peace Center, Witness Against Torture, World Can't Wait, Amnesty International, US Labor Against the War, Historians Against the War, NJ Peace Action, NJ People's Organization for Progress, National Accountability Network, We Are Change LA, Action Center for Justice, Peace Action, Consumers for Peace, High Road for Human Rights, BuzzFlash, Individuals for Justice.

http://afterdowningstreet.org

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This Time, We Won’t Scare

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Perhaps you've seen those television commercials denouncing health care reform as a plot to create a Canadian-style totalitarian nightmare, and you feel a wee bit scared.

Back in the election campaign, some people spread rumors that Barack Obama might be a secret Muslim conspiring to impose Sharia law on us. That seems unlikely now, but what if he's a covert Canadian plotting to impose ... health care?

Rick Scott, a former hospital company chief executive, leads a group called Conservatives for Patients' Rights. He was forced to resign as C.E.O. after his company defrauded the government through overbilling and is now spending his time trying to block meaningful health care reform by terrifying us with commercials of "real-life stories of the victims of government-run health care."

So here's a far more representative "real-life story."

Diane Tucker, 59, is an American lawyer who moved to Vancouver, Canada, in 2006. Like everyone else there, she now pays the equivalent of just $49 a month for health care.

Then one day two years ago, Ms. Tucker was working on her office computer when she noticed that she was having trouble typing with her right hand.

"I realized my hand was numb, so I tried to stand up to shake it out," she remembered. "But I had trouble standing."

A colleague called 911, and an ambulance rushed her to the nearest hospital.

"An emergency room doctor met me at the door, and they took me straight upstairs to the CT scan," she recalled. A neurologist explained that she had suffered a stroke.

Ms. Tucker spent a week at the hospital. "The doctors were great, although there were also a couple of jerks," she said. "The nursing staff was wonderful."

Still, there were two patients to a room, and conditions weren't as opulent as at some American hospitals. "The food was horrible," she said.

Then again, the price was right. "They never spoke to me about money," she said. "Not when I checked in, and not when I left."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/opinion/11kristof.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

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HASTA LA VISTA, ARNOLD!

What California's Budget Mess Means for America

 

 

 

He was the perfect political superhero, sent to rescue California from spend-happy politicians at just the right time. And yet Arnold Schwarzenegger's reign as governor has turned into a disaster flick that could spell catastrophe for the Golden State—and the whole nation.

In 2003's historic recall election, the former Mr. Olympia pummeled dozens of candidates—from incumbent Gray Davis to former child actor Gary Coleman to porn star Mary Carey—on the road to Sacramento. He promised to abolish the odious car tax hike implemented by Davis. And to balance the budget, cut taxes and spending, and make California more business-friendly.

"He promised to stop the crazy deficit spending, cut up the credit cards, live within our means. And he did exactly the opposite. Schwarzenegger increased spending faster than we saw under Gray Davis," says Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), who was a state senator—and one of Arnold's challengers—six years ago. 

Now the Golden State faces yet another spending-induced catastrophe. California could simply go broke by July. Sacramento reacted to the latest crisis by passing a massive tax increase in February, squeezing another $1,100 from the average family. Even the dreaded car tax, the issue that catapulted Arnold to office, is back.

How could it all have gone so horribly wrong, especially after it looked so wonderfully right? Well, it turns out there's a force in California politics that's much more powerful than the Governator: a culture of spending pushed by public-employee unions, money-grubbing corporate-welfare cases, and more.

Sadly, California and Schwarzenegger are hardly alone in spending well beyond their means. As many as 40 states face whopping deficits that are only going to get worse as the recession continues.

If country-wide trends do start in California, Rep. McClintock worries about what's in store for our nation. "As high taxes, high borrowing and high spending destroy California's economy, Californians are moving to those 49 other states. If we allow the same policies to destroy our country where are we going to go?"

"Hasta La Vista, Arnold" is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Director of Photography is Alex Manning and Associate Producer is Paul Detrick.

http://reason.tv/video/show/783.html

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WHAT IF VON BRUNN HAD BEEN A MUSLIM?

by Adam Serwer

I think Paul Campos' response to the shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday is worth pondering.

If radical Muslims had carried out terrorist attacks in Kansas and Washington DC over the past five days, we might be trying to pass legislation giving the president the legal authority to place people in preventive detention, and Daniel Pipes would be implying that we need to round up Arab-Americans (correction: Muslims) and put them in relocation camps.

But it was only a couple of old white guys, so our civil liberties remain unthreatened.

There's been a startling trend of fringe-right violence recently, from Richard Poplawski to Scott Roeder and now James Von Brunn. But we view these instances of violence as the acts of deranged individuals rather than of groups because they are white men. Campos' hypothetical isn't mere snark, Michelle Malkin wrote an entire book defending the internment on the basis of race in the case of Japanese internment during World War II. Cliff May argued that torture is justified against Muslims because they're Muslim. Republicans have opposed the transfer of terrorists to American prisons on the grounds that our prison facilities might not be able to hold them, and Ed Morrisey is apparently planning his vacation around avoiding the recently relocated Chinese Uighurs. Imagine what attempting to close Gitmo, banning torture, or even withdrawing from Iraq would look like in the aftermath of three attacks perpetrated by Muslim rather than right-wing extremists.

Campos' post implies an unsettling question. How much of the call for "extraordinary measures" in fighting terrorism has to do with the unique challenges of fighting global terrorism, and how much of it has to do with an irrational, orientalist fear of all things Arab and Muslim?

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=06&year=2009&base_name=what_if_von_brunn_had_been_a_m

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Night Flight Shines

Threadbare production values still look pretty good in Night Flight

 

Book-it Repertory Theatre's latest production, Night Flight, based upon a short story by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (best known for The Little Prince), is their first operetta, and a ground-breaking moment in the history of novel and theater.

 

It's not quite a musical. Unlike Les Miserable, there are no stirring Broadway numbers to go out humming. Strictly speaking, there aren't any "songs" at all. There are no verses or choruses. It isn't poetry set to music, it's prose set to music. They literally just "sing" the book to you in a sort of endless recitative, those musical moments in operas in between the songs where people "speak" in music. Traditionally, these are the most boring parts of an opera where you're just waiting for the next aria, but thanks to the extraordinary adaption by Myra Platt and Rachel Atkins, this production takes you places unique both to theater and the written word, a hybrid that's uniquely satisfying. If you don't want to read a book, you may as well have someone sing it to you.

 

The story is nothing particularly exciting, a footnote in the history of airmail delivery in South America, with bureaucrats trying to keep the mail on schedule while wives wait for their husbands to return through the storms. The production is small, with pilots simply on top of ladders or scaffolding to signify flight. It all shifts the focus to the purity of the technique, the music and performances, which are all top notch. Every member of the singing ensemble has a moment to shine. The music from the Degenerate Art Ensemble's Joshua Kohl is impressionist tango, Ravel and Debussy filtered through the dance of Buenos Aires. It's melodic and soulful, the band and voices excellent, and one wishes for some repeats of phrases that would be catchy if you could only hear them more than once.

 

 

This production is at the incredibly beautiful Moore Theater, just up the block from the Pike Place Market, for a mere ten days. Fans of books and musical theater miss it at their peril as it genuinely breaks new ground. It's such a good idea that one cannot help but imagine a Kindle that not only reads but sings to you. Pick a book. Night Flight. Pick a voice. Mixed baritone and soprano. Pick a musical style. Tango. Go.

 

Tickets are available online at www.book-it.org or by calling 206.216.0833. Prices range from $15 to $35; opening night, all seats are $40 (includes party). Box office hours are Tues. through Fri., Noon – 6:00 p.m. (Tues. – Sat. during production). Tickets are also available online at www.book-it.org. Showtimes are 7:30 evenings, 2:00 matinees; performances of Night Flight are held in The Moore Theatre in downtown Seattle.

PPosted By Michael Dare to The Seattle Diaries

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Rock Art by the Bay

TRPS PRESENTS THE ANNUAL

~ and ~

AMERICAN ARTIFACT MOVIE PREMIERE

JUNE 20, 2009 - SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Make sure you mark down Saturday June 20th on your calendar. It's going to be a big day for poster fans everywhere! We will be presenting our annual Rock Art By the Bay poster artists show, once again at Fort Mason in San Francisco. We always look forward to this show. It's free to all, and we expect to have an outstanding lineup of some of the best rock poster artists in the business.

We've got a great graphic being designed for the show by none other than John Van Hamersveld. We'll have a limited number of silkscreen prints of the show poster (printed by The Firehouse). The graphic will also be featured on our new TRPS t-shirt.

Here's the part we're really excited about. That evening TRPS will be sponsoring the world premiere of the long-awaited documentary film American Artifact: The Rise of American Rock Poster Art. This is the first public screening of the film, portions of which were filmed at our Hall of Flowers show in 2007. The film features interviews with your favorite poster artists from the 60's to the present, and chronicles the history and rise of the art form. We're especially pleased to have filmmaker Merle Becker joining us for the premiere, as well as many of the artists in the film.  

The buzz about this film has been building for some time, fueled by the release of the trailer last fall. We feel that this is a historic event for the poster community, and are thrilled to be presenting it for the first time. Big thanks to Merle for giving us that privilege.  

It's fitting that the film will be presented at The Red Vic Theater in the heart of the Haight-Ashbury, Ground Zero of the rock concert poster movement in the 60's (it's across the street from the old Straight Theater). Tickets can be purchased in advance, and we recommend you do so. The Red Vic's not that big, and we can't guarantee ticket availability at the door on the night of the show. Ticket purchasing info is listed below.

So, any movie about posters has got to have, well, posters.......right? We've been helping coordinate a series of posters for the movie, all done by artists featured in the film. Most of these are signed and numbered silkscreens, some will be lithos, and there's even a letterpress number from Hatch Show Prints. Artists featured include Stanley Mouse, Dennis Loren, Leia Bell, Chris Shaw, Ron Donovan, Chuck Sperry, Lindsey Kuhn, Justin Hampton, Gary Grimshaw, and others. Most will be available at Rock Art By the Bay, or you can check Merle's website for availability.

Okay, here's the info you need:

 

http://www.trps.org/upcoming-events.html

 

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US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre

by Tom Loudon

    During the last week, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confrontations between nonviolent indigenous protesters and police have left up to 100 people dead. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians, who have been conducting peaceful demonstrations in defense of the Amazon rain forest.

    For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA. According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory.

    On Friday, June 5, the government decided the protests needed to end and launched an aggressive assault against the people protesting on the road outside of Bagua. The dislocation was conducted from helicopters and the ground, with police and army using automatic weapons and heavy equipment against people armed with only rocks and spears. As videos, photos and testimonies from the region slowly emerge, it is clear that this was designed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, and deter those in other regions from continuing protests. Pictures circulating on the Internet depict snipers in uniform firing at protesters from the streets, tanks and from on top of buildings. On Saturday, in Lima, Peru's capital, a large spontaneous demonstration in support of the Amazonian indigenous was broken up by police.

    In the wake of what appears to be a massacre perpetrated by the police, the government of President Alan Garcia is mounting a massive propaganda campaign, claiming that indigenous protesters attacked the police, and accusing them of being terrorists. Human rights lawyers have accused Peru's government of a cover-up, and have been impeded from getting in to investigate more fully. The Bishop's Vicariate for the Environment for Jaen, Nicanor Alvarado, said "The main problem is that injured and deceased civilians are being transferred to the "El Milagro" military base ... so, it's possible that a group of injured and deceased people are disappeared later on."

http://www.truthout.org/061109B

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Coleman ordered to pay Franken $95,000 in legal fees

by Elizabeth Stawicki and Mike Mulcahy

 

St. Paul, Minn. — A three-judge panel has ordered Norm Coleman to pay Al Franken nearly $95,000 related to Coleman's lawsuit over the still-unresolved U.S. Senate race.

The panel's order comes as both sides are still waiting for the Minnesota Supreme Court to rule on Coleman's appeal.

The panel found that Franken received 312 more votes than Coleman in last November's election.

Franken had originally asked the court to force Coleman to pay $160,000 in costs. Coleman had asked the panel to delay a decision until the Supreme Court finishes its review.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/06/10/coleman_franken_legal_fees/

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North Korea experts say U.S. can negotiate reporters' release

By Stephen Magagnini

California journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee — sentenced to 12 years of hard labor for "hostile acts" against North Korea — could be home by the end of the year.

Experts on the world's last Stalinist state said U.S. officials historically have been able to negotiate the release of citizens and soldiers held by North Korea. The price generally has been public apology and the promise of humanitarian aid and other political concessions.

The timing is ripe for a good will gesture by North Korean leaders since their rocket and nuclear tests this spring brought heated calls for international sanctions.

"Given all the provocations they've committed, they realize the tensions with the outside world — even with erstwhile ally China — have reached a breaking point," said Dr. Chaibong Hahm, North Korea specialist at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica. "I think they would be looking for some way to defuse the tension, and releasing the journalists might do that."

Scholars and activists describe negotiations over the release of the California journalists as a no-limit poker game between North Korea and the United States. They say U.S. negotiators will have to put something on the table without looking as if they're rewarding bad behavior.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/69930.html

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Why God Invented C-SPAN

Posted by Karen Tumulty

This morning's House debate on tobacco legislation brought us this argument:

Which was followed by this one:

Public Service Announcement: "The Swampland Surgeon General has determined that smoking lettuce could be harmful to your health."

(H/T to our friends at the C-SPAN Video Library)

http://swampland.blogs.time.com/?xid=newsletter-daily

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The Fiat-ization of the American male

Can a nation of dudes whose sexual self-image was built on macho Jeeps survive the rise of the Little Mouse?

By Gary Kamiya

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court in its wisdom poured a large bucket of iced Pellegrino on that most delicate of objects, the American male libido. I refer to the court's removal of the last legal obstacle to an impending deal in which the Italian automaker Fiat will take control of Chrysler, the once mighty Detroit company that currently reposes on blocks, its precious fluids drained and tires removed, in that ever expanding vacant lot known as bankruptcy.

Whether or not this deal makes business sense for Chrysler's employees and shareholders — who now include the American people — is not within my area of expertise. But a much more serious problem looms: the potentially deflating effects on 100 million American men of outsourcing their sexual self-image to a company whose most famous product was known as the "little mouse."

Ever since the first American car clanked off an assembly line, American males have been programmed to associate virility with large, overpowered steel-and-chrome automobiles, preferably adorned with tumescent hood ornaments and protruding, D-cup-size bumper boobs. Buffeted by divorce, feminism, potbellies, a useless repertoire of lame pickup lines and the thousand other natural shocks that flesh is heir to, the long-suffering American male has always known he could find solace in the long, rigid-chassis object reposing in his garage. Indeed, only their function as a kind of auxiliary national phallus can explain why Detroit's gas-guzzling dinosaurs have survived as long as they have.

But with one rash, emasculating decision, the Supreme Court has drained the oil out of our national crankcase. The merger of Fiat and Chrysler means that the all-American era of he-man Jeeps, phallocentric Chargers and randy Rams has yielded to humiliating automotive domination by a country whose most famous building cannot even attain full verticality.

 

As George Herbert Walker Bush and John Wayne Bobbitt said, "This will not stand."

 

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2009/06/11/fiat_chrysler/

 

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Dueling protests square off near Bush's Dallas home

By ANNA M. TINSLEY

 

DALLAS — Eighth-grader Steven Rasansky had a front-row seat for a government lesson Monday.

Sitting at his friends' lemonade stand across the street from former President George W. Bush's new home, he watched anti-war protesters and Bush supporters square off with only a city street dividing them.

Front and center in the sweltering 90-degree heat was Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who drew national attention in recent years with her protests near Bush's Crawford ranch as she demanded to speak to him about her son's death in Baghdad.

"George Bush and his administration are mass murderers," she told the crowd, using a loudspeaker. "People say, 'Cindy, get over it.' Well, there are still two wars raging. I don't have an option of getting over it.  . . . We have to keep it up so things like this don't happen again."

Anti-war protesters say they want Bush and his administration investigated and prosecuted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Sheehan has also demonstrated against President Barack Obama because the Democrat has continued the wars.

During the more than half-hour protest, which included a nearly mile-long march to the neighborhood, protesters yelled, "Don't wait, investigate." Pro-Bush supporters chanted "USA" for the former president whom they say did a good job.

"I think this is crazy," said Rasansky, 13, whose friends had hoped to make some money selling pink lemonade and chocolate chip cookies. "I didn't think it would end up like this."

Bearing signs with slogans ranging from "No war criminals in my neighborhood" and "W = War Crimes" to "Don't Mess with Bush" and "They did not die in vain," more than a hundred people turned out on both sides of the issue.

Dozens of police officers and Secret Service agents blocked the entrance to the Bush neighborhood and patrolled the area. An officer who declined to give his name said there had been no arrests and no problems.

http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1422108.html

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Warren: Banks Returning Money Are Still Part of A Troubled Industry

By Susie Madrak

I can't imagine the thinking behind this. We lend them the money and then let them pay it back - before we've fixed the problems that lead to the crash in the first place? And it won't do much for consumers, since half of them are investment banks.

Elizabeth Warren is skeptical, and wants to hear the terms of repayment. She also warns that the stress tests were not as strong as they should have been. Stay tuned:

... The decision to allow the banks to exit the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, also ushered in a new, and potentially risky, phase of the banking crisis. Letting the lenders out now — earlier than many had envisioned, and without the industry reforms some consider necessary to prevent future crises — raises many sobering questions for policy makers, bankers and taxpayers.

The program was aimed at purchasing assets and equity from banks to strengthen them and encourage them to expand lending during a tightening credit squeeze. But after banks return the TARP money, the administration will forfeit much of its leverage over them. With that loss goes a rare opportunity to overhaul the industry. The administration's ability to push institutions to purge themselves quickly of bad assets and do more to help hard-pressed homeowners will be diminished.

Of even deeper concern is the running trouble inside the banking industry. Despite tentative signs of revival, many banks remain fragile. Four of the nation's five largest lenders, including Citigroup and Bank of America, were not allowed to return their bailout funds.

Some analysts worry that financial institutions that repay bailout money now may turn to Washington again if the economy worsens and losses overwhelm banks. One of the most vexing problems of the credit crisis — how to rid banks of their troubled mortgage investments — remains unresolved.

Which, of course, is why so many experts were urging the administration to nationalize the banks. Those bad mortgages have to be dealt with sooner or later, and the bailout program simply postponed the day of reckoning.

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/banks-returning-money-are-still-facin

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It's Sickening

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