The Blog

Victor Williams: Recess Appointments: Obama Prepares to Implement "Yes We Can!"

2010-02-09T20:28:34Z

Last week, Harry Reid stated that recess appointments are needed to fill the growing number of federal government vacancies. On the Senate floor, Majority Leader Reid referenced his past resistance to recess commissions before asking: "But what alternative do we have? What alternative do we have?"

On Tuesday, February 9, 2010, President Barack Obama announced he was considering making the first recess appointments of his presidency. Obama made a surprise visit to the White House press corps to announce that, during a meeting with congressional leadership, he had informed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Majority Leader Harry Reid. "If the Senate does not act, and I made this very clear, I will consider making several recess appointments during the upcoming recess because we can't afford to let politics stand in the way of a well functioning government." Obama told reporters: "In our meeting I asked the congressional leadership to put a stop to these holds in which nominees for a critical job are denied a vote for months."

The Senate GOP caucus has gone too far in obstructing Barack Obama's executive, regulatory and judicial appointments. Beyond delaying and dispiriting the Administration, Republican confirmation obstruction jeopardizes our national government's functioning in critical areas of national security, economic stabilization and federal justice.

Scott "41" Brown and Richard "$45 billion" Shelby Compete for Headlines

Best obstruction evidence is Sen. Richard Shelby's short-lived "blanket hold" -- a ransom demand seeking $45 billion in Alabama earmarks -- threatening to block more than 70 defense, state, justice, and security positions. In response to widespread outrage over the weekend, Shelby tailored the blanket hold to apply only against the three Defense Department nominations most directly tied to the ransom demand.

Announcing the obstruction reduction from 70 to only 3 nominees, Shelby's spokesman acknowledged that getting White house "attention" was the "purpose of placing numerous holds."

Many observers already knew it was his need for attention and his media-envy problem that led Sen. Richard Shelby to issue the absurd "blanket hold." News of Shelby's blanket hold broke the same day as Scott "41" Brown's early Senate seating. Sen. Brown took Ted Kennedy's seat a week early to help block Craig Becker's confirmation to the National Labor Relations Board.

Brown joins Ben "42" Nelson supporting John McCain's longstanding "grudge hold" against Becker. The obstruction will further damage the five member NLRB which has been hobbled by three vacancies since 2008. The legal authority of the scuttled, two-member NLRB is now being questioned in the Supreme Court. Many NLRB rulings are now suspect. Businesses and markets hate such uncertainty; our fragile economy and American workers will suffer for it.

In the end, the gross quantity of Shelby's pulled pork for sweet home Alabama beat out newbie Brown for the best and most headlines. Shelby's reduction of the obstruction to target only the three nominations most directly related to approval of the $45 billion in earmarks put him in the next week's news cycle. Shelby got his desired attention but still doesn't get the fact that he and his Republican caucus continue to make the U.S. Constitution's Article II, Section 2 "advice and consent" process an international joke.

This is not the first time the limelight-deprived senior senator from Tuscaloosa embarrassed himself and the Senate. Unfortunately, it will likely not be the last time that Scott Brown, as the GOP caucus's newest obstructionist, competes with Shelby for headlines.

Harry Reid: National Leader

In stark contrast to Shelby and Brown stands Sen. Harry Reid who protects the institutional integrity of the Senate as he fights Republican obstruction of both needed legislation and appointments. In this time of genuine crisis, Reid proves himself a genuine leader. In preemptively accepting recess appointments, Reid puts the nation's interest in a fully staffed government above his own institutional authority and personal power.

The people of Nevada have good reason to be proud of Harry Mason Reid as he tirelessly works for the nations and for their state interests. Meeting the challenge in the Silver State's tough economic times, Reid actively promoted a jobs agenda, fostered business development, and fought for a clean environment (and against Yucca Mountain). In the best traditions of the United States Senate, Harry Reid works for Nevada while also serving the national interest.

Majority Leader Reid deserves the nation's respect and support; as do other Democratic Senators (such as Pat Leahy and Tom Harkin) who fight daily for confirmation floor votes for nominees-- even while plans for a Constitutional Option to eliminate filibusters and holds develop.

Above all, President Barack Obama needs the nation's support as he seriously considers the recess appointment alternative.

Supporting Barack Obama's Recess Appointments

For past presidents of both parties and for Barack Obama, I have attempted to defend the executive's appointment prerogative. In both academic and popular writings, I have long argued for the broad utilization of the recess appointments power - beyond its use just for controversial nominees.

I have attempted to sound the warning about the harm of confirmation delay and have suggested various appointment reforms (e.g. reducing the number of appointments needing confirmation.) The present confirmation breakdown threatens a Senate institutional rupture and federal vacancy crisis equal or worse than any in the history of the nation. Recess appointments are a valid alternative and at least a partial solution.

It is a practical procedure. Skip the nomination, skip committee hearing, and skip the obstruction. President Obama signs the commission and puts the official to work. The act may be done during the shortest of intra-session Senate breaks. The commission lasts until the end of the Senate next session. (A Presidents' Day recess appointment would last until the end of 2011. This calculation assumes that modern tradition continues with only two formal Senate sessions established in the coming 112th Congress.)

Traditional nomination and Senate confirmation processes can continue while recess commissioned officials hold their posts (e.g. Earl Warren, William Brennan, and Potter Stewart each began their Supreme Court tenure as Eisenhower recess appointee and each were subsequently life-tenure confirmed). Or, the president can choose, at the end of the Senate next session, to re-recess appoint the public servant.

The Congressional Research Service, a bipartisan research division of the Library of Congress, published a series of reports explaining both executive and judicial recess appointments; as well as a helpful FAQ.

This alternative appointment authority is textually based, historically supported, and has been upheld by numerous court opinions. Beginning with George Washington through Abraham Lincoln and to recent administrations, all of our great presidents have made recess appointments by the hundreds. As often referenced, Theodore Roosevelt recess commissioned 160 officials in one en masse signing.

The Founder's wise reasoning in providing an appointment alternative is as evident today as 223 years ago - the president must keep the government fully staffed. There are practical downsides, but few if any enforceable legal limitations, to the temporary appointments.

As with any unilateral power of the executive, it can be subject to misuse. Harry Reid became concerned that President Bush misused the authority for controversial and unqualified officials. In 2007-2008, Reid cleverly scheduled the Senate to be gaveled into pro forma meetings every three days to confuse Bush.

Despite my challenge to Bush to call Reid's constitutional bluff, the president instead folded. Bush made no recess appointments in his last year of office. Majority Leader Reid exploited the fact that George Bush did not appreciate the broad scope of the unilateral authority, the Constitution or Texas hold 'em. History is the final judge of a president's appointment selections and processes.

Unlike his predecessor, President Barack Obama is a student of the Constitution and a careful steward of executive authority. President Obama genuinely wanted to "move beyond" the confirmation wars with bipartisan cooperation. Obama has been cautious and even suspect using his unilateral recess appointment authority. However, the Republican caucus has left little choice. And, the Constitutional Option has yet to be implemented.

Senate Majority Leader Reid asks, "what alternative" for a functioning government?

It is time for Barack Obama to give his final answer. President Obama can and should fill federal vacancies with the stroke of his pen. As I have suggested, he should go to the White House's Roosevelt Room and under T.R.'s famed portrait, Obama should sign recess commissions by the score. In this time of crisis, history may judge harshly if the President fails to do so.

Victor Williams is a clinical assistant professor at Catholic University of America School of Law and an attorney in Washington, D.C. The views expressed are the author's alone and do not reflect those of CUA.

Huff TV: HuffPost's Ryan Grim Talks About The President's Surprise Visit Before White House Press Corps (VIDEO)

2010-02-09T20:04:03Z

On Tuesday, HuffPost's Ryan Grim went on MSNBC to discuss President Obama's surprise appearance before the White House press corps, and his efforts towards bipartisan cooperation in Congress.

"What the president's really trying to do here is set up a contrast, a real genuine contrast, between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans have had a lot of success so far just standing in the way of Obama's and the Democrats' policies -- and that's going to work as long as people are upset about the direction of the country." Grim said. "He's trying to make 2010 not a referendum purely on Democrats, but comparing the two parties and what the real differences are."

WATCH THE VIDEO

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Robert Lanza, M.D.: Anything Beyond The Universe? New Theory Changes Our Destiny

2010-02-09T20:00:00Z

We think our destiny is to journey to Mars and beyond. Yet as we build our spacecraft, we're about to be broadsided -- from a different direction -- by the most explosive event in history. Life will soon evolve beyond the bounds of three dimensions.

Science is beginning to understand that there's more to nature than sized between atoms and galaxies. In the last few decades experiments have forced a re-evaluation of the nature of the universe that goes far beyond anything we could have imagined. Even science fiction is struggling with the implications.

In "Avatar," human consciousness is infused into blue aliens that inhabit a wondrous world. However, according to Biocentrism, replicating human intelligence or consciousness will require the same kind of algorithms for employing time and space that we enjoy. Virtually everything we experience is a whirl of information occurring in our heads. Space and time aren't the objects we think, but rather tools our mind uses to put things together. Time is simply the summation of spatial states -- much like the frames in a film -- occurring inside the mind. It's just our way of making sense of things. There's also a peculiar intangibility to space. We can't pick it up and bring it to the laboratory. Like time, space isn't an external object. It's part of the mental software that molds information into multidimensional objects.

We take for granted how our mind puts everything together. When I woke up this morning, I was in the middle of a dream that seemed as real as everyday life. I remember looking out over a crowded port with people in the foreground. Further out, there were ships engaged in battle. And still further out to sea was a battleship with radar antenna going around. My mind had somehow created this spatio-temporal experience out of electrochemical information. I could even feel the pebbles under my feet, merging this 3D world with my 'inner' sensations. Life as we know it is defined by this spatial-temporal logic, which traps us in the universe with which we're familiar. Like my dream, the experimental results of quantum theory confirm that the properties of particles in the 'real' world are also observer-determined.

But there are surely other information systems that correspond to other physical realities -- universes based on logic completely different from ours and not based on space and time. For instance, what if we changed the algorithms so that instead of time being linear, it was three-dimensional like space, and our consciousness moved through the multiverse? We'd be able to walk through time just like we walk through space. In the next hundred years or so science should understand these algorithms well enough to create and experience realities that we can't currently fathom. And after creeping along for four billion years, life will finally figure out how to escape from its corporeal cage.

Loren Eiseley once wrote: "While I was sitting one night with a poet friend watching a great opera performed in a tent under arc lights, the poet took my arm and pointed silently. Far up, blundering out of the night, a huge Cecropia moth swept past from light to light over the posturings of the actors. 'He doesn't know,' my friend whispered excitedly. 'He's passing through an alien universe brightly lit but invisible to him. He's in another play; he doesn't see us. He doesn't know. Maybe it's happening right now to us.'"

Like the moth, we can't see beyond the footlights. The universe is just life's launching-pad. But it won't be rockets that take us the next step. The long-sought Theory of Everything was merely missing a component that was too close for us to have noticed. Some of the thrill that came with the announcement that the human genome had been mapped or the idea that we're close to understanding the Big Bang rests in our innate human desire for completeness and totality. But most of these comprehensive theories fail to take into account one crucial factor: We're creating them. It's the biological creature that fashions the stories, that makes the observations, and that gives names to things. And therein lies the great expanse of our oversight, that until now, science hasn't confronted the one thing that's at once most familiar and most mysterious − consciousness. Until we understand ourselves, we'll continue to blunder from light to light, unable to discern the great play that blazes under the opera tent.

Robert Lanza, MD is author of "Biocentrism," a new book that lays out his theory of everything.

Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus: Nanny Returns

2010-02-09T19:39:43Z

Once upon a time, in the late nineties, when the economy was doing the polar opposite of what it's doing now, money figuratively rained from the sky upon certain Manhattan hoods. This abundance spurred a number of articles in New York City publications bemoaning how hard it was for the newly minted rich to find good help. For reasons we've yet to ascertain, 'the help' never had a voice in these pieces. Either editors didn't deem it necessary, or, more likely, the help didn't want to jeopardize their income -- or citizenship -- by speaking out.

We read these articles as two recently "retired" nannies whose tenure had been served in the Fifth/Park Avenue blocks known as The Gold Coast, where it was the encouraged norm for wives to neither work nor parent. We were white, college-educated citizens -- the exception -- who worked alongside other nannies supporting children of their own in far away boroughs or farther away islands. We witnessed exploitation ranging from nannies made to share beds with their charges to those whose pay was flat out "withheld." These one-sided articles were the final push we needed to do what we could to give the help the mike.

When first sent out, our manuscript was titled If Your Nanny Could Talk. But, replied bewildered publishers, they ... can. So we were tasked with finding something that made more sense. When we proposed The Nanny Diaries we thought it wonderfully ironic conjuring a woman in sweat pants, covered in spit-up, popping a bonbon while chronicling the juicy details of eight hours spent playing trains on unforgiving sisal. In retrospect it was blindingly naive how unprepared we were for readers to take us, well, literally. But that's another story.

The New York Times ran an article last week entitled "How to Speak Nanny" and we were interested to see that the linguistic capabilities of Manhattan's domestics is once again up for discussion. This time more than one nanny was directly quoted. And even more thrilling, the topic was employee-employer relations! (The core thesis of our satire: This Is A Job.) The article kicks off by accusing us of being part of the problem in "...painting mothers who employ nannies as over-entitled she-devils." So first a little clarification. In The Nanny Diaries Nan says:

There are essentially three types of Nanny gigs. Type A, I provide "couple time" a few nights a week for people who work all day and parent most nights. Type B, I provided "sanity time" a few afternoons a week to a woman who mothers most days and nights. Type C, I'm brought in as one of a cast of many to collectively provide twenty four/seven "me time" to a woman who neither works nor mothers. And her days remain a mystery to us all.

We are guilty of writing about Type Cs, but working moms, while rare for us, were our most positive gigs because, as employees themselves, they remained conscious of what we had in common. Expectations were clearly communicated, check-ins were regularly scheduled, and our salary was prompt and consistent. These employers did not tacitly list telepathy as a job requirement.

In the years since our first novel's publication, we've taken every opportunity to advocate for resources to support what can feel like an incredibly daunting relationship. Managing someone while you're wearing a towel in your own bathroom is no small task. And it is heartening to read that consultants are cropping up to provide best practices to mothers and nannies alike. With skyrocketing real estate costs, there is a dearth of daycare in this city that would shock the rest of the country and for better or worse, the majority of Manhattan's parents depend upon the unregulated nanny system.

So if we might weigh in but one more time.

The best nannies we worked alongside understood that the primary need of their job was to make their employers feel as comfortable as possible about one's frequently awkward presence -- lest we forget, she is also standing in your bathroom. There is an art to making it appear, while still showing humble respect for your guest/employee status, that you feel right at home, that you love their child but are not impinging on their love, that, even when a child is sick, cranky or nap deprived, there is nowhere else on earth you'd rather be. Ironically, the more skilled a nanny is at this high wire act, the more at risk she is of being treated as a sort of step-child relation, rather than as an employee.

We were impressed with the honesty and self awareness of the working moms interviewed yesterday, but feel it important to point out that expecting a nanny to figure out what is expected of her based on "looks", arbitrary bonuses, or humiliating corrections from outsiders and then complaining about her to strangers on blogs -- well, sorry, that's Type C behavior. If a mother switches to a relational paradigm from a professional one, as many of the mothers in the article did in their unintentionally passive-aggressive communications, there is bound to be conflict. Their relationships with their nannies risk being as healthy as their least healthy family relationships. We've all had bosses who treated us like our parents did on their worst day. These jobs drive us to look for new jobs, at best and write books, at worst. The challenge is not to learn to speak nanny, but to feel like one.

Alec Baldwin: Sarah Palin: Faux Populist

2010-02-09T18:13:09Z

So, you think Sarah Palin is embarrassed by the crib-notes-on-the-palm incident?

You're kidding, right?

This woman, like national candidates of both parties, doesn't draw a breath without a team of political and image consultants vetting her choices. Wardrobe, hair, make-up, speaking style, text, context. This woman hasn't moved a muscle spontaneously since she was selected as McCain's running mate.

These gaffes represent a gamble by Palin and her handlers, a bet they are hedging. Republicans and economically weary, anti-Obama independents want W back again. You remember. George W Bush, who, as Ann Richards famously stated, was "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple." Bush, who stumbled through his eight years with an anti-intellectual, homespun style that embraced malapropisms and a legendarily incurious attitude toward issues and the world. Some celebrated him as honest and more real. That was all calculated, too.

Palin reads off the palm of her hand because she can't whittle or cast a fly rod or shoot a wild animal while giving a policy speech. (Then again, who knows?) She reads her palm in order to send a message to her anti-Eastern establishment, Obama-hating, OK-You've-Had-Your-Black-President-Experiment, Tea Party types. That message is, "I'm just one person, doing the best I can with what God gave me. Like all y'all out there."

And it was aimed right at that camera. Right at you and me.

I still believe in Barack Obama. Each new president since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 has been faced with an ever-growing mountain of problems that resist solutions, let alone solutions crafted with bipartisan support. Energy, America's dwindling role in the global economy, health care, terrorism and its impacts.

We may struggle for the remainder of our history to solve those problems and we may come up short. But we are doomed to failure if we choose another incurious, phony populist who pulls off some bad Will Rogers moves and calls that a presidency.

Jose Antonio Vargas: It's a Mac's, Mac's, Mac's World -- So Who Needs Macworld? (VIDEO)

2010-02-09T18:11:32Z

What, exactly, is the need for a yearly Macworld confab?

Produced by the all-Apple, all-the-time magazine, the Macworld Conference & Expo is a five-day conference that begins Tuesday in San Francisco. It's in 25th year, with the first Macworld dating back to 1985. It's part trade show, part customer circus and altogether undeniably, shamelessly Machead central. For some time, two Macworlds were held each year -- the first in San Francisco, the second in Boston and later in New York. As the video below proves, it's for die-hard Apple enthusiasts, the kind of iCustomers that flood tech blogs whenever the latest iSomething hits Apple stores, scattered across 41 U.S. states.

Inevitably, the presence of Apple stores -- nearly 300 around the world, most of them here America -- has diluted the meaning and purpose of a carefully choreographed Macworld gathering. Apple itself agrees. This is the first year that the Cupertino-based Apple, whose headquarters is just a few miles south of San Francisco, is not participating.

In a statement explaining its decision, the company said last year: "Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers."

Who needs a yearly Macworld in San Francisco when, as the release of the iPad last month showed, we're living in bigger, non-stop Mac world? Though a product like Mac OS X, Apple's operating system, has a market share of only 10 percent or so, it's almost impossible think about music in digital-driven the 21st century without iTunes and the iPod. Increasingly, Steve Jobs' Apple is leading the way in marketing and catering to the need of mainstream digital customers who lead portable, app-obsessed lives. Think iPhone. Think iPad. And through its Apple stores -- and, just as important, through its own web site -- Apple reaches and educates its customers.

"Macworld comes to you -- that's Apple's strategy now," Peter Hirshberg, co-founder of the marketing agency The Conversation Group, told HuffPostTech. Hirshberg should know. For nine years, he led a group called Enterprise Marketing at Apple. "Through the Internet and through the Apple stores, Apple expands its brand."

Are you currently at Macworld? What are the highlights for you so far? If you're a Machead and don't see the point of the yearly confab, tell us why. Comment below.

Follow Jose on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joseiswriting

Dwayne Raymond: Food, Friendship and Writing, With Norman Mailer

2010-02-09T17:00:40Z

My work with Norman Mailer revolved primarily around two things: books and food. While I came aboard principally to assist him with research for his novel The Castle in the Forest, he soon began to appreciate my love of cooking and was delighted that I was fairly adept at it. Norman understood that there was an essential connection where writing, food and art were concerned, and that led to him lay out curious ideas for me about preparation. Consider the grapefruit.

There was a long period of time when he favored having only a grapefruit for lunch. It had to be a white grapefruit, however, never pink. He preferred it cut a certain way; halved, scored around the sides to separate the flesh from the skin then sliced into at least nine precise "V" sections. The slices would float freely in a pool of juice in the "skin cup," so at the end, one was rewarded with a satisfying drink.

I am amused when I think about this because so many academics have preached to no end about the intellectualism of Norman Mailer and his notions on God and man, boxing and Marilyn, the politics of America and the world and other lofty matters. But what they probably didn't know was that he considered the cutting of grapefruit, or a particular way of cooking fish, beef, mushrooms, soup and broccoli with as much vigor as he approached concepts of Man's place in the universe. Few know he deliberated, while lying in bed chasing an increasingly elusive capacity to sleep, how to intermingle flavors. Habitually he would tell me he had mused about blends of tastes, puzzles consisting of seasonings, in dark hours of the morning and forced himself to remember to tell me in the light of the next day.

He knew I appreciated culinary combination as much as I enjoyed the research and transcription work, especially so, when he had nocturnally invented something he was certain would interest me. Usually it did. Norman inspired me to approach his peculiar recipes the way one might a book-related project: Is the foundation of the idea sound? Is the choice of particular materials reasonable? Will there be suitable integrity to the finished product? Those questions lingered always when mulling the execution of one of his creations. Where nourishment was concerned, he hypothesized endless possibilities and posed incomparable questions.

Norman and I shared many heavy conversations about writing, of course, but we also had countless discussions about food. Once he asked about using one of his favorite desserts, Haagen Dazs Raspberry Sorbet, as a base for salad dressing. I told him we could simply buy some raspberry vinaigrette as it was marketed widely. No, he said, he was not a fan of "corporate raspberry flavor," but he did have a fondness for the essence one found in that particular sorbet. If only we could capture it! So, I spent an hour or two attempting to master a blend of oil, sorbet, balsamic and God knows what else. It was not a successful venture. In the end, I bought some Newman's Own raspberry vinaigrette, thinned it with water, and mixed it with a heaping tablespoon of sorbet in a blender. A bit later I made a salad for each of us. After a few bites he pronounced the experiment's outcome as being sub-adequate because, although it was not entirely bad, he was aware that one ingredient had come from a plastic bottle.

Plastic, he maintained, adversely affected everything it touched. It didn't occur to him that the whole concept was dreadful; that wasn't the way his mind worked. Norman believed that anything awful could be fixed if enough work was put into it.

In the last year of his time in Provincetown, his food-lust was mainly satisfied by the simple, raw Wellfleet Oyster. A few friends who dined with him during that last year knew about this near-obsession because he would drag them to his favorite restaurant to enjoy the oysters with him. But what in all likelihood they didn't know was that it was more than just the pleasure of the taste and the ease of ingesting the oysters. There was an importance attached to them for Norman that went way beyond the act of consumption. He brought the shells home with him always, intending to literally draw on them later; to illuminate the shadowed faces concealed upon their rough outer shells. He saw mysterious portraits etched by tidal waters on them; images of aged, droll characters that were not altogether different from his own doodle-drawings that he'd published in his book of poems, Modest Gifts. He saw it perhaps as a challenge to enlighten, for anyone who cared, what he interpreted as jagged brilliance hidden in the lowly, overlooked oyster shell.

Now, years later after his passing, I find myself mulling the same quirky thoughts in uneasy sleep when pondering a new piece of writing or a meal as Norman did. I don't know whether to hail him or curse him, but I do know I tend to wake up in a much better mood, stoked with ideas and typically looking forward to my day's work -- and to dinner.

Dr. David Washington: Mrs. Obama Says "Let's Move!"

2010-02-09T15:54:52Z

Today, First Lady Michelle Obama announced her "Let's Move!" initiative to fight childhood obesity, which will be her signature issue while in the White House and beyond. "Let's Move!" is about engaging, motivating, and providing simple tools to help kids eat better, become more active, and lead healthier lives. Just as importantly, the program strives to support working parents so they can encourage more physical family activities; aims to ensure that healthy food options are available in schools; and garners resources for community parks and playgrounds where Americans of all ages can enjoy physical fitness in a safe environment.

This commitment isn't surprising if you've been following the First Lady's activities over the past year. She planted the first vegetable garden at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt's 1943 'Victory Garden', and has consistently promoted healthy eating for herself, her family, and the country as a whole. As a Mom who remembers not too long ago the challenges of working full-time and trying to provide healthy food options for her children, Mrs. Obama's message resonates powerfully with the American people.

Given the current climate of hostile, partisan discourse, we're sure some will be quick to say "what's different about this initiative?" or "isn't this just another First Lady promoting a 'cause'?"

But ask yourself this: can you name another person of our First Lady's intelligence, genuine spirit, and dedication who has taken up the torch of combating childhood obesity? We can't think of anyone who is held in such high regard by so many different constituencies, who is capable of inspiring everyone from the shy 3rd grader struggling with a weight problem, to a mom who is barely keeping it together juggling home and work responsibilities, to the leading corporate executive who wants to help but doesn't know how.

Michelle Obama resonates with the authenticity needed for real change to occur.

She not only had the insight to realize the true need for a coordinated and cross-cutting attack against this epidemic, but also the wisdom to prioritize this signature initiative in a way that ensures it won't get bogged down under the auspices of one federal agency or be delegated to some ceremonial campaign in the private sector.

Instead, the First Lady is rallying the best resources from inside AND outside of government. A Task Force comprising experts from many of the government agencies working on children's issues will meet regularly to see what they can do to help fight the obesity epidemic. Outside of government, the First Lady's team is simultaneously building partnerships within the medical community, the foundation and philanthropic community, and non-profit organizations of all flavors. There is finally recognition that everyone must play a role in battling childhood obesity, from state and local government officials, industry leaders and school administrators, to small businesses, churches and the major sports leagues.

In our opinion the most exciting effort on this front is the creation of a new foundation to be the rallying point for childhood obesity efforts across the country, the "Partnership for a Healthier America." Its focus on brining together all the great work already being done across the country and pushing this massive fleet of ships all in the same direction through the promotion of public-private partnerships could end up being one of the First Lady's most powerful and lasting legacies.

This is an "all hands on deck" moment, requiring partnerships between government agencies and the private sector to inspire true long-lasting social change. As the First Lady has recognized, this collaborative effort can make the difference in an age when one in three kids in this country is overweight or obese - one in three. Rather than just adding another Band-Aid to the wound, compounding the problem and placing the burden of fixing it onto future generations, this initiative can finally move us toward a real solution to the obesity epidemic.

Through all of us doing our part, whatever that may be, we can prove the researchers wrong who warn that this could be the first generation of children in 200 years to live a shorter lifespan than their parents.

Mrs. Obama's involvement in this issue is a game-changer and we hope her leadership will inspire others, as it has the two of us, to pledge to do whatever we can to help.

So enough talking, "Let's Move!"

Dr. David Washington is a Senior Fellow at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a former aide to President Obama, and a Health Fellow who worked on childrens' health matters for Senator Ted Kennedy. Gabriella Reese is an athlete, author, mother and life-long advocate for healthy living and eating. Follow her at TheHoneyLine.com.

For more information on Let's Move! go to www.letsmove.gov

Download the White House Memorandum establishing a Task Force On Childhood Obesity [PDF]

Albert Brooks: Barack Obama Is Being Punk'd

2010-02-09T15:29:44Z

Okay. Time is up. Barack Obama is being punk'd.

Sarah Palin had notes written on her hand at the same moment that she was making fun of Obama for using a teleprompter. One of the radio "hosts" who makes fun of the teleprompter daily said that Palin's notes on her hand were "endearing." The "host" also blamed Obama for televising his day with the Republican leadership, saying that if he was serious, he would have done it in private. This was after a solid month of daily beatings for not making the health care negotiations public.

The Democratic Party can now be assured forever that nothing, nothing, nothing they will do will stop the insanity. Or Sean Insanity, whatever you want to call it. If they are hoping for good publicity from the majority media, (yes, I'm sorry Fox, but you are now the highest rated news network) forget it. Writing on the hand is okay, teleprompter is not. Opening up health care is okay, opening up the meeting with Republicans is not. It would not surprise me if Ashton Kutcher popped out of the West Wing and told Obama that he has been punk'd.

The swift boat ad that killed John Kerry was not an aberration, it was just the beginning. They took a man who actually served in Vietnam and made him a coward compared to a man who didn't. And people bought it. Now it's everywhere. Right is wrong, wrong is right, crazy is normal, good is bad, hot is cold. I am not sure what the anti-Christ's plan is, but I can't imagine this is not part of it.

David Sirota: What Air America Tells Us About the Difference Between Conservative and Liberal Benefactors

2010-02-09T15:26:51Z

Former Air America CEO Danny Goldberg has a must-read on the demise of the radio network and what he believes it tells us about the difference between conservative movement funders and their (supposed) progressive counterparts. Here's the key excerpt:

Conservatives believe in doing whatever it takes to promote their ideas. Richard Viguerie, viewed as one of the architects of the modern conservative movement, wrote a book in 2004 called America's Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media To Take Power, in which he explains how the right wing used talk radio among other tools. Viguerie stresses that conservatives understand that ideological change does not usually occur overnight; that it takes patience and long-term thinking to build a movement...

The fatal flaw in Air America's genetic code was the pretense that liberal talk radio was a great business opportunity, that progressives could have their cake and eat it too, could do well by doing good, make big salaries and get a great return on investment while also pursuing an ideological agenda. Sure, every once in a while political media like Michael Moore's movies or Rush Limbaugh's radio show will make money, but for those interested in influencing public opinion, media in all venues is vital whether it makes money or not...

Perhaps the major liberal donors are confused because they became accustomed to focus groups and polling, which are useful tools in predicting short-term public reaction to political messages. They can tell you if a particular TV spot will turn off swing voters two weeks before an election. But long-term political ideas have a more complex and uncertain creative path. Conservatives understand the need to focus on both long- and short-term political communication...

Whatever the reasons, the theory of leaving political media to the marketplace has enabled a status quo in which one-third of the American public are never exposed to progressive ideas or even to facts that are incompatible with the right-wing narrative.

Identifying, developing and marketing talent takes a lot of experimentation with a predictable amount of failures in order to establish successes. This is part of the reason it took even an ultimately successful company like Fox News years to turn a profit. Another need for investment was to market a brand-new format with lots of personalities new to radio and to give incentives for radio station owners in smaller markets to give the new format a chance.

Although the earliest and wackiest group of Air America owners overspent on a few items like studios and initial salaries, within months the primary characteristic of Air America was a lack of cash for marketing, affiliate growth and talent development. The pressure from wealthy liberals was not to create a long-term strategy as conservatives had done, but to show a business model that would turn a profit in a year or two.

To his credit, Goldberg acknowledges that he was far from a perfect manager during his tenure at Air America. But he goes on -- rightly, IMHO -- to point out that regardless of management, this key difference between conservative and progressive investors have inherently tilted the scales against Air America and progressive media in general.

What explains this difference? That's a good question. I think it is a mix of starfucker-ism and ideological bankruptcy on the part of major progressive individual and institutional donors.

Starfucker-ism is short for an ideology among rich political donors that says getting face time with famous politicians is far more important than getting politicians to actually pass anything in particular.

This is a much bigger problem among progressive donors than it is among conservative donors, primarily because of self-interest. Whereas the rich right-wing donor is giving to conservative media/politicians in order to legislate policies that protect rich people's wealth, the rich progressive donor is giving to progressive media/politicians not out of such self-interest. At best, they are giving out of true principle and noblesse oblige, but often, they are giving to feel important and special - and in our celebrity obsessed culture, one way to feel that is to get to hang around with famous people. Donor money spent on that, therefore, is not as devoted to any particular principle, much less progressive ones that might undermine the donors' wealth/status and alienate them from famous politicians.

That leads to the second problem -- core principles. Simply put, there are many Democratic Party donors who are just not progressive. This is not shocking -- many wealthy people are just not interested in policies that might change a system of economic inequality that has enriched them. They may give to the Democratic Party perhaps because they are liberal on non-economic social issues, but they aren't exactly interested in the kinds of New Deal economics that built a successful progressive movement in the past.

What you are left with, then, are progressive institutions that rely on a funding base that isn't genuinely committed to anything progressive, especially those that will take years to develop famous people who might at some point at least attract the unabashed starfuckers. Not surprisingly, many of these institutions then become either A) not all that progressive or B) not even minimally financially capitalized.

Although certainly more a victim of the second than the first, Air America was a little bit of both. At times it was far more interested in simply shilling for the Democratic Party rather than discussing a transpartisan progressive agenda, and - as Goldberg says - almost all the time it suffered from a lack of basic resources.

I'll add one other problem that I think Goldberg doesn't fully address, but that is related to this problem in progressive media. As I alluded to in an earlier post, many progressive media suffer from a simple lack of talent and talent incubation.

As many program directors and just casual media consumers will tell you, many progressive media voices don't seem to fully grasp the audience's desire for a mix between "political" and "non-political" content. Some call this an entertainment gap - the idea that progressive writers and talk show hosts just aren't "entertaining." Call it whatever you want, but I do think it is very real.

Too many progressive media voices believe the average media consumer makes a distinction between "political" content and "non-political" content, and that the way to match the right is to simply yell louder. And while volume/capacity is certainly one reason conservative media has done well, so is conservative media's attention to the mass audience's sensibilities.

Here's the truth: The "political"/"non-political" distinction that hard-core progressive activists make is not a distinction that most of the general mass audience makes. The average non-political person out there just wants compelling content - and I'm sorry to say that when you turn on your radio dial or television (as just two examples) you don't get much of that from the progressive voices out there. You certainly get important facts and information, and you are getting some more progressive voices yelling louder...but compelling, entertaining content? It's really rare - and becoming more rare.

Let me end by saying that nobody is perfect, of course. I can speak for myself in saying I'm trying my damndest to learn and implement these lessons on my AM760 morning radio show here in Colorado and in my writing but I'm certainly not perfect - not even close. What I am trying to be, at least, is cognizant - cognizant that if progressive media is going to reach a broader audience than just hard-core progressives, we must understand that audience, and not just scream more loudly at them.

And so I've tried to mix in discussions of policy with discussions of culture, movies, music and all the other forces in society that don't fit neatly into the "political" silo. Sure, I've been predictably criticized by some hard-core progressive activists for this (sidenote: the conservative claim that a portion of the hard-core progressive base is absolutely - and repulsively - humorless has some truth to it). But I think I've started to reach a broader audience.

That will ultimately be the key to success -- not just for me, but for every progressive working in media. To get there, we must understand that we're probably not going to get the kind of financial support that conservatives get, because of the differences in conservative and progressive donors. But I think, despite the odds, we can get there, as long as we understand the challenges ahead.

* It is important to understand that the traits displayed by individual donors are similar to those displayed by institutional donors, because institutional donors are headed by individuals with much the same self-interest. It's not that, say, a union leader is as rich as a Democratic multimillionare Wall Street donor and wants to protect his/her own personal bank account - but it is that the union leader can, individually, be just as much of a politician starfucker and therefore just as uncommitted to genuine progressive principles as that multimillionaire.

Louis Licari: Hairapy: What to Do When You've Gone Too Far With Color

2010-02-09T15:09:06Z

It was around 7 p.m. and the end of a long work week. I had been up since 4:30 a.m. because it was "Ambush Makeover" day at the Today show. I had flown back from the Grammys in LA a few days before, and I was more than ready for the week to be over. Just as the day was about to finish, a beautiful young woman stopped by for a consultation. She had on a Russian Cossack faux fur hat that completely covered her hair. She looked gorgeous. I was mesmerized by her beauty. I had just finished placing the final foil on my last client, so I immediately went over to talk to her.

As she began to tell her story, she removed her hat. What lay beneath were brown roots with bleached blond ends. Around the crown area of her head, the hair had broken off to about a half-inch long. Her story unraveled like a bad movie. She had been bleaching her hair once a week and had destroyed her hair. What was left was in dire shape. There was no way I could begin to help her unless she agreed to stop coloring her hair for a month or two. She began to cry when I told her this and said she wanted it corrected immediately. Then she showed me a picture from a magazine of a model with beautiful, natural looking blond hair. I tried to explain to her that there was no possible way her hair would accept color in its present condition. She continued weeping, but finally agreed that her way of doing color was not working. Once she was willing to listen to reason, I had a chance to revitalize her hair and give her a color close to the shade of her dreams.

We sat and talked for the next half hour. Clear communication between the colorist and the client is always most important. When a client's hair is breaking or on the verge of breaking, it is crucial to have a frank talk. In this case, it was absolutely essential she understood that fixing her hair would be a process that would take tender loving care and that it would occur over the course of many touch ups and haircuts. I also had to be sure she understood what her hair would look like during the recovery process, and what the end result would look like. Only when I was sure she understood her hair situation could we set up a plan off action.

Making sure that you and your colorist are on the same page is most important. There must be no ambiguities when discussing hair color. I highly recommend bringing along pictures of the color you like to your colorist and maybe even one or two of colors you dislike. Words describing color can be vague. Brassy can mean orange to one person and excessively ash to another. Having a photo of your desired color choice helps to insure that everyone has the same vision.

The most important advice I can give you is that if your hair condition continues to decline, you must see a professional. If you are already going to a professional and your hair is becoming progressively unacceptable, it's probably time to look for another colorist. Make a list of questions before you go in for your consultation. Ask for his or her advice about what the best solution would be to fix your color. Look at the other clients in the salon. Does their hair appear to be in good condition? Do the colors look pretty? These are big indications of the quality and aesthetic of the colorist's work.

Almost all hair color can be fixed. Doing your homework to be sure you are with the right person is a must. Avoid any colorist who promises you a miracle. Remember the old saying, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is." Better to pick a more cautious colorist and be pleasantly surprised.

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Robert Reich: Obamanomics One Year Out

2010-02-09T15:04:01Z

Obamanomics suffers from a misunderstanding of what the president is trying to achieve and what he's up against. Into the breach come Republicans, Tea Partiers, nay-sayers, deficit vultures, and Raging-Dog Democrats, all viewing Obamanomics as more taxes and more spending. That's nonsense. To see the big picture, keep your eye on three big things.

1. Government spending needed to offset the continued reluctance of consumers and businesses to spend. You don't have to be an orthodox Keynesian to understand that as long as the private sector is deleveraging, the public sector has to borrow and spend in order to keep the economy moving forward.

The current stimulus will peak in a few months. Add in unemployment insurance payments and outlays for the jobs bill, and the stimulus will be about $90 billion larger. But this sum is not likely to be enough to make up for the shortfall in private spending. Consider also that state and local governments are also slashing jobs and services - and raising taxes about $350 billion over this year and next - and Obama needs to spend more.

Just look at projected unemployment. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the labor market has shed 8.4 million payroll jobs. Add to these the number of new jobs needed to keep up with population growth and we're about 11 million jobs behind the pre-recession unemployment rate. To fill the 11 million jobs gap, employment would have to increase by over 400,000 jobs every month for the next three years, starting now.

The Council of Economic Advisors foresees 10 percent unemployment through the rest of 2010, falling only to 9.2 percent in 2011. The result is a giant drag on the economy, not to mention pain for millions of American families. High unemployment also allows firms to keep wages low. That's good for corporate profits but not for their customers, who are someone else's employees. America can't have a vigorous recovery when consumers are this anxious about their jobs and wages.

The federal budget deficit is a huge problem, to be sure. But you need to distinguish between deficits occurring this year and next when the economy is still trying to climb out of a hole, and deficits five to ten years from now. If government doesn't spend enough in the short term to get jobs back, those out-year deficits will be even larger because tax revenues will be lower than otherwise and we'll be spending more on unemployment benefits. The public doesn't quite get this distinction, which is probably why the President thought it necessary to freeze discretionary nonmilitary spending.

2. The boomers now speeding toward retirement. Neither party wants to deal with the inevitable consequences for Medicare and Social Security. The President's idea for a bi-partisan congressional commission on the deficit was too large and amorphous to gain the support it needed. He'd do better to try for a bi-partisan commission that focused just on these two giant entitlement programs. Social Security is an easier fix than Medicare, but the growth of both have to be tamed. In the 1980s, Alan Greenspan chaired a commission to deal with Social Security's pending problems that came up with fixes Congress implemented.

Don't get confused by the size of the numbers at stake. Pay attention to the ratio of cumulative debt to the size of the national economy. That will tell you how easily we can manage the debt. The debt-to-GDP ratio right now is close to 53 percent - still in the manageable zone. But after the boomers hit retirement, it will soar. One of the most telling figures in the President's budget document is the Congressional Budget Office's projection that by 2020 the debt-to-GDP ratio will be 77 percent, assuming no entitlement reforms. That's bad news. The ratio is moving in the wrong direction. At some point, the dollar could tank and interest rates explode.

3. Mad-as hell politics. The economic stresses of continued high unemployment and low wages are contributing to the growth of the "I'm Mad As Hell" Party - a rag-tag collection of Tea Partiers furious at establishment Republicans, left-wing Democrats angry at what they consider lily-livered Democrats in Washington, and Independents disgusted with everybody inside the Beltway.

Mad-as-hellers on the right hate government; mad-as-hellers on the left hate big business. Both share a growing sense that the economic game is rigged against them. The two are also united by how much they detest Wall Street and its bailout, and their contempt for any cozy relationship between big business and government. They distrust the Fed, and have no particular fondness for international trade, either. Mad-as-hellers are likely to be a formidable force in the upcoming midterms and beyond.

Obama is responding. That's one way to view his newly-proposed crackdown on Wall Street - limiting the size and potential risks big banks can take on, and imposing new fees on the biggest banks designed to repay outlays for the bailout. It also explains why the President is making another attempt to increase taxes on the overseas earnings of multinational corporations, and reduce tax breaks for hedge-fund managers and oil and gas companies. And why he feels it's a good time to let the Bush tax cuts expire on higher-income individuals (whose propensity to spend is limited even absent higher taxes), although not on the middle class.

The mad-as-hellers' influence could also be seen in the Senate's initial resistance to confirm Ben Bernanke for another term as Fed Chair, and in continued congressional threats to the independence of the Fed. Trade agreements have also suffered. The President's single trade request during his first year of office - duty-free status on exports from Afghanistan and Pakistan, in order to boost employment in these troubled areas and thereby counter terrorist groups - was shot down by Congress. Pending trade agreements with South Korea and Columbia have been put on hold.

In sum: If you want to understand Obamanomics one year out, look at the demand-side hole we're still in, the gargantuan boomer deficit we're heading for, and the mad-as-hell party these bad times have spawned. How Obama deals with all three will be the real economic test of his presidency.

Cross-posted from RobertReich.org.

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore: Michelle Obama and America's Fiscal Future

2010-02-09T14:37:49Z

During a breakout session at last winter's White House Fiscal Responsibility Summit, President Obama's chief economic advisor Larry Summers introduced the subject of Social Security reform by suggesting that an increase in the retirement age may be a prudent consideration given that "Americans are living longer."

When it was my turn to speak, I pointed out that "everyone" is not living longer and that, in fact, some researchers are forecasting a drop in America's overall life expectancy due to the childhood obesity epidemic. Prominent lawmakers and experts in the room stared at me with incomprehension and not a little doubt since the connection between childhood obesity, life expectancy and our nation's economy hadn't been a part of Washington's conventional wisdom. As First Lady Michelle Obama launches her historic childhood obesity prevention initiative it is important that we take the time to fully comprehend why her effort is so important for our children and our fiscal future.

Nearly one in three children in the U.S. -- more than 23 million nationwide -- is overweight or obese. For the past four decades, obesity rates have increased more than four times among children 6-11 (from 4.2% to 17%) and more than three times among adolescents 12-19 (from 4.6% to 17.6%). These increases have been attributed to societal trends such as increasing consumption of high calorie fast food, junk food, and sugar-sweetened beverages, declining opportunities to engage in safe physical activity in schools and neighborhoods, and the growing popularity of sedentary entertainment like television and computers.

Research shows that obese children are more likely to develop serious chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes, at earlier ages and are at increased risk for becoming obese adults who are vulnerable to severe chronic diseases like hypertension, stroke, certain cancers, and renal disease. Experts estimate that childhood obesity costs up to $14 billion each year and adult obesity up to $147 billion each year in direct medical expenses alone. They estimate an additional $58 billion in annual obesity-related losses due to indirect costs like disability and missed work days.

In addition to its devastating physical and psychological consequences, some experts predict that because of the childhood obesity epidemic we are raising the first generation of children to live sicker and die younger than their parents. Indeed, a widely-read 2005 article in the New England Journal of Medicine forecast a decline in U.S. life expectancies by as much as 5 years over the next few decades as a consequence of childhood obesity. The authors pointed out that this decline would also affect age-based entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare. This point is worth exploring in the context of high stakes debates about fiscal responsibility, health care reform, and the future of entitlement programs.

The battle lines have been drawn between fiscal hawks, who want to cut Social Security and Medicare and scale back comprehensive health care reform efforts because they view these investments as too expensive to maintain in the face of skyrocketing national debt, and fiscal doves who believe the best way to address America's economic challenge is by strengthening programs important for the economic security of Americans while making prudent investments that increase worker productivity -- such as education and training -- and minimize avoidable costs -- like preventable health care expenses.

Fiscal hawks, who propose raising the retirement age, would not necessarily be disturbed by news that more adults will die from obesity-related diseases before they become eligible for Social Security's retirement benefits. From their perspective, this saves the government money. Fiscal doves, on the other hand, would view preventable illnesses and death as undercutting workers -- the very engine driving our economy. They would ask: How can we expect our children to sustain a vibrant economy, including its entitlement programs, if they are too sick to maximize their contributions? They would also point out that any savings gained by raising the retirement age will likely be offset by increases in obesity-related costs to Social Security's disability and survivor programs.

A nation oblivious about the condition of its children is a nation in denial about its future. That's why the First Lady's initiative to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic is more than a lightweight effort. The quality of our children's lives and the viability of our fiscal future depend on what we do to secure the health and well-being of our children today. By leading a broad primary prevention effort that tackles the root causes of childhood obesity, the First Lady transcends ideological divisions and gets to the heart of what our country needs to succeed in the new global economy. For this, she deserves the support of every American.

Dr. Maya Rockeymoore is President and CEO of Global Policy Solutions, a social change strategy firm based in Washington D.C., and Director of Leadership for Healthy Communities, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Andy Borowitz: Fox News Gives Palin's Hand Job

2010-02-09T14:37:42Z

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) - The Fox News Channel, which has already signed Sarah Palin to a deal as an on-air commentator, today deepened their commitment to the former Alaska governor by signing her hand as well.

"We were very impressed with the job her hand did at the Tea Party Convention," Fox News chief Roger Ailes said. "And we said to ourselves, let's give Sarah Palin's hand a job."

Governor Palin's hand was not available to reporters, but it did release an official statement about its new job with Fox News.

"I am thrilled to be joining the Fox News team," Gov. Palin's hand said in the statement. "No one is better at giving Republicans' hand jobs than Fox." More here.

Katherine Goldstein: The Week Of Eating In: A HuffPost Green And Eyes&Ears Challenge

2010-02-09T14:26:17Z

We'd like to invite you to eat with us.

As HuffPost Green has expanded and grown over the past year and a half, we've come to learn that our readers are extremely passionate about all things food. How we eat impacts everything from climate change to the farmers in our communities to our country's growing waistlines.

HuffPost Green readers have shown that they are totally engaged on topics like the local food movement, sustainable agriculture, factory farming, seafood politics, farmers markets and even hot farmers. But now we'd like to invite you to go beyond just consuming news to present you with a way to make it all personal. So that's why we'd like to invite you to participate in The Week Of Eating In Challenge.

One of HuffPost Green's bloggers, Cathy Erway, embarked on an exciting journey last year that helped her think about what she ate in a whole new way. She decided not to eat out in restaurants for two full years and embrace the value of home cooking instead. Along the way, she learned how to be ingeniously self-sufficient about cooking for herself and built a passion for understanding where her food came from. She made up awesome recipes, saved money and had lots of fun along the way.

Cathy started a a popular blog about her adventures, Not Eating Out in New York and just wrote a book, "The Art of Eating In: How I Learned To Stop Spending and Love The Stove", about her time in the kitchen. With Cathy's expert help, we want to bring you mini-version of the experiment featured in the book.

We're proud to announce that starting on Monday February 22nd, HuffPost Green and HuffPost Eyes&Ears will be doing The Week of Eating In. For seven days, we'll invite you to take a pledge to eat in, aka COOK all of your own food for a week. There are no complex rules to follow. Just sign up below so that we can communicate with you, and pledge to do the week by letting your Facebook friends and Twitter followers know what you are up to.

We're defining cooking with broad strokes. We encourage you to use basic, whole food ingredients to prepare food, avoiding pre-packaged, pre-made food, like frozen dinners and ready-to-eat canned goods, but there are no strict rules. Make the rules for yourself. If this experiment for you means making your own bread and eating locally, so be it. If it means turning on your stove for the first time in your life, that's great too.

We think The Week of Eating In is important for the environment for a number of reasons.

When you don't cook what you eat, it is so much easier to be disconnected from what it actually is. Maybe you object to factory farming and buy organic meat. When you go out for an $8 chicken sandwich, however, you have no idea how that chicken was raised. Maybe you assume french fries are just potatoes-- but at restaurants, they can be cooked in partially hydrogenated oil, frozen, filled with preservatives and shipped thousands of miles.

We think taking responsibility for actually preparing what you eat for a week will be an (outrageously fun) consciousness-raising activity. Reading food packages, learning your way around your local grocery store or farmers market, and understanding what actual ingredients go into making your favorite dishes will empower you to think about what you eat in new ways.

In addition to making decisions about food that are better for the planet, we think you will also save money. Eating organic food, for example, can often be more expensive, but is very often cheaper to buy and cook than eating non-organic food at a restaurant. Eating non-packaged, non-processed food is also a better choice, even if it's conventionally grown. We ultimately think that if you cook your own food, you'll be eating healthier food -- less processed food, less snacks, less sweets.

One awesome rule we love from Food expert Michael Pollan's book, "Food Rules", is eat all the junk food you want -- as long as you make it yourself. Think about what a difference in effort it would be to make a Twinkie from scratch than to merely open a package? It makes the treat much more of a rarity.

So if you'd like to join us of a week of putting our aprons on and getting messy in the kitchen, we're here with resources every step along the way. Get started with this awesome slideshow explaining the most important and common food buzzwords and why they are important. Always wondered what the deal was about grass-fed beef? This slideshow will explain this and important eco-food lingo. In addition to exploring the environmental costs of eating out and where our food comes from, Cathy will be sharing everything from tasty winter dishes to kitchen must-haves.

We are also very excited to bring social media and citizen journalism elements to The Week of Eating In. We'd like to invite our readers as citizen journalists to send us photos of their favorite food stores, and track how much money they spend before the week of eating in and during the experiment. We'll also ask you to tell us what you got out of the week, and send us photos of some of the best dishes you made.

Sign up here!

You can take the pledge below and let your friends and contacts know what you are up to.

Happy eating (in)!