The Blog

Richard Greener: We Have A Crisis, Mr. Vice-President

2010-02-09T22:31:36Z

Nearly 100 years ago President Woodrow Wilson pegged the Senate filibuster for exactly what it was. Wilson asserted that the filibuster served only to enable "a little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own," to debase the Senate and turn it into "the only legislative body in the world which cannot act when its majority is ready for action."

Who is to blame for the filibuster? The answer is: those who are the Senators. A glance in the mirror is all it takes to see the enemy of democracy, the obstructionists, those who would willingly disable the Constitution. The filibuster is a creature of the Senate; wholly its own creation; thriving only at the pleasure of those who sit in that chamber today. Nothing in the Constitution mentions the filibuster or for that matter any rule or regulation governing the proceedings of Congress. Those who are the Members make their own rules. The Constitution is clear on that. They may change them at any time. And the procedure allowed for that change is really quite simple.

If you are being told that decades of Senate tradition are difficult to overcome, you are being purposely misled.

Here is exactly what the Constitution says about proceedings in the Senate. Article I, Section 5: "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member."

That's it. Nothing more. Not a single word. Filibuster? Invented by Senators for Senators.

In March of 1975, the second appointed Vice-President of the United States, the never elected Nelson Rockefeller, made a courageous ruling from the Chair in his constitutionally mandated position as President of the Senate. Here is how the Constitution makes this designation in Article I, Section 3: "The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided."

Rockefeller ruled that each Senate -- which is to say each meeting of this body following an election or every two years -- is a separate body and is not bound by the rules of previous Senates. That means that each new Senate must either pass a complete set of procedural rules for itself or take affirmative action to subscribe to previous rules previously established. Further, Rockefeller ruled specifically that Senate Rule 22 -- which is the filibuster rule -- could be overruled, could be changed, could be altered or even eliminated altogether by a simple majority vote of those senators voting. He was the President of the Senate. Such was his perfectly constitutional ruling. Rockefeller's dramatic declaration was indeed challenged, by senators from the right and from the left, by Republicans and by Democrats, by conservatives and liberals, by Southerners and those from other parts of the country as well. But when it came to a vote, the forces of reform -- those who supported the Rockefeller ruling -- won the day by a vote of 56-27.

However, the very same victorious senators then immediately turned around and agreed to negotiate with the defeated forces of the filibuster. Why? Why would the winner offer to settle? Losers settle. Winners celebrate, don't they? After all, they had already won the procedural battle. The President of the Senate was on their side. Game over. Who is to say why, but its true -- they did. And so a modification to Rule 22 was passed reducing the number of votes necessary to stop a filibuster from two-thirds of all senators to three-fifths. In essence, after March 1975 it now took 60 senators to halt a filibuster instead of 67. And yet the Rockefeller ruling remained -- and remains to this day -- in place. A majority of senators may -- at their pleasure -- send the filibuster flying full force into the fires of Hell. The filibuster could be, as Chuck Berry might say: "Gone like a cool breeze." All thanks to the legacy of Nelson Rockefeller.

That was 35 years ago. Now, in 2010, we see a federal government stymied by obstructionism in a Senate where using Rule 22 brings the entire Congressional system to a grinding halt. The Congress has been rendered impotent. Nothing the House passes matters because no bill can avoid Rule 22 when it reaches the Senate. And so, no legislation actually gets passed by the Congress as a whole and nothing at all gets sent to the President for signature. Also, the Executive branch cannot operate at full capacity because so many of its appointees require Senate approval and those appointments, like all other procedural matters, cannot reach the floor for a vote... because of Rule 22. Yes, that "little group of willful men."

It is time for the current Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, to rise up from his decades of legislative slumber -- himself a nearly lifelong Member of the Senate -- and his more recent Executive depression and take the Chair in the United States Senate -- which is his constitutional duty -- and, in the spirit of Vice President Rockefeller, Biden must declare Rule 22 as void. Pitch it into the dust bin of history. The Vice President should stand for the Constitution. A procedural rule that eliminates the possibility of tie vote in the Senate must be unconstitutional in the first place. How could the Constitution entrust the breaking of a tie vote -- "...unless they be equally divided." -- to the Vice President if no such vote total is allowed? Mister Vice President, we have a crisis. Step up and be counted. Take the mantle of Rockefeller and the myth from Jimmy Stewart. It's time to be the man!

Richard Greener, a critically acclaimed author and former broadcast industry executive, blogs at PAPADABLOGGER, from whence this is cross-posted.

S. Ward Casscells, MD: Americans Have a Prescription for Congressional Health Care Delirium

2010-02-09T22:12:22Z

With their metaphors as mixed as their messages, some Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are scrambling to pass health care reform this week, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) says, "We're not on health reform now," and Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D, MT) says it can wait until summer. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs disputes the assessment of Senator Mary Landrieu (D, LA) that health care reform "is on life support." He also disagrees with President Obama's advisor David Axelrod, who said the ball is on the one-yard line: Gibbs now says it's "inside the five." The loss of yardage is attributable to the blitz by walk-on Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown, whose win cost the Democrats their filibuster-proof, 60-vote Senate majority.

The one thing that's clear is that the way ahead is unclear. But the public is showing the way. Congress just has to listen, and not mistake the loudest voices (and lobbyists) for the majority. In an online survey we completed last week, 2,525 representative Americans told us that President Obama and Congress should focus on jobs (46%), excess government spending (26%), health care reform (18%), homeland security (7%), the environment (1%) and education (1%). Only 40% support the House or Senate health reform bills, while 51% oppose them. Though advocates of the bills say the public's skepticism is due to distortions and fear-mongering, 85% of the public say they are somewhat or very familiar with the bills. Indeed, when asked if Congress was "out in front" on health care, or "out of touch," 59% said "out of touch."

But a closer look reveals some surprises: while 81% are fairly or very satisfied with their health care, 87% want some type of health reform. Of these, most want "a fresh start," though nearly half want Congress to pass something now, modifying it later as needed. Indeed, 56% favor step-wise improvements, while 12% want one large health reform bill. Having some Republican support is thought important by 64% of respondents, and 61% advise Senator-elect Brown to work with both parties to find a compromise (versus 36% who say he should oppose health care reform in general). To our surprise, 33% say their support for some type of health reform has increased since a year ago, versus 26% who say their support has decreased.

Exactly what health reforms do they support? Cutting costs is the top priority for 40% (especially Independents and Republicans); expanding coverage is the top goal for 31% (especially Democrats); improving the quality of care was the top priority of 14%. When asked to rank what is essential, Americans place highest priority on requiring insurers to offer coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, not permitting them to drop people who get sick or hurt, and establishing health exchanges where individuals and small businesses can pool risks to reduce premiums and comparison shop online. Slightly fewer (50-55%) believe it is important to bar premium differences based on sex, to require employers to offer health insurance, and to extend coverage to all children. Nearly half say it is important to cap out-of-pocket expenses, subsidize premiums of those making less than 4 times the poverty level, expand Medicaid, and reform medical malpractice laws.

In contrast to our surveys last summer and fall, lower priority was given to increasing efforts to fight fraud, further restricting federal funding for elective abortions, wellness incentives for doctors and patients, and efforts to reduce waste and errors. Least popular of all: requiring individuals to purchase health insurance, or cutting Medicare.

As to paying for it, 43% want no increase in their own taxes, but 46% would tolerate increased taxes of $50 (19%) to more than $1,000 (6%). (In previous surveys we found the favored approach to be an increase in cigarette taxes, which was not asked this time.)

In short, while the public now ranks health care reform behind jobs and government spending as one of America's top problems, they are not in favor of abandoning health reform, and indeed assign it a higher priority than homeland security, education reform, and the environment. They do not support the recent health reform bills, but want a fresh, bipartisan start, step-by-step, starting with health insurance reforms that expand coverage but do not cut Medicare or require large tax increases. They also support tort reform and efforts to reduce waste, fraud, and errors, and to incentivize prevention and wellness.

Reform leaders in Congress and Administration will object that many of these provisions are already in the bills that have passed the House and Senate. True, and many were advocated by Republican presidents going back to Nixon. If ever there were an opportunity for both sides to meet in the middle, with just a half-step by both, this is it. President Obama's visit to House Republicans on January 29 was such a step.

Republicans who think the country opposes health care reform and will punish its advocates at the polls should think twice. The public wants practical, step-wise, bipartisan health care reform. This will only increase as a priority once unemployment begins to fall. Americans could not possibly speak more clearly, and they will support whoever listens.

S. Ward Casscells, MD, the Tyson Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Public Health at the University of Texas at Houston, was Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs) from 2007-9.

John Zogby, Chairman of the Board of Zogby International, is the author of "The Way We'll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream."

Paul Slansky: The Horror, The Horror

2010-02-09T22:10:24Z

She took great umbrage at Rahm Emanuel's use of the phrase "fucking retards," then excused Rush Limbaugh's subsequent reference to a "retard summit" as "satire." She snarked to the Tea Partiers about President Obama's use of a teleprompter, then was caught during the Q&A sneaking peeks at her hand, where she had pathetically scribbled crib notes in the idiotic belief that no one would notice them. ("Energy," "Tax," and "Lift American Spirits" -- she was afraid she'd forget those deep thoughts?) And, of course, there was, "How's that hopey-changey stuff workin' out for ya?" which, in all my years of watching politics, is the most viscerally nauseating utterance I've ever heard. And these are just from the past week.

After a year and a half of exposure to this virulently toxic presence, the question on the table is: In our lifetime, has there ever been a worse human being in American politics than Sarah Palin? For all the morons and criminals and bigots we've been subjected to, has there been anyone else who has combined all of the fetid qualities -- the proud ignorance, the sadistic viciousness, the shameless hypocrisy, the arrogant laziness, the congenital dishonesty, the unctuous sanctimony, the bilious resentment, and whichever others I'm forgetting for the moment -- that this morals-free harridan so relentlessly displays? (Not to mention that atonal bray with which she communicates it all.)

Talk amongst yourselves.

Nick Turse: The 700 Military Bases of Afghanistan: Black Sites in the Empire of Bases

2010-02-09T21:48:10Z

Crossposted with TomDispatch.com

In the nineteenth century, it was a fort used by British forces. In the twentieth century, Soviet troops moved into the crumbling facilities. In December 2009, at this site in the Shinwar district of Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province, U.S. troops joined members of the Afghan National Army in preparing the way for the next round of foreign occupation. On its grounds, a new military base is expected to rise, one of hundreds of camps and outposts scattered across the country.

Nearly a decade after the Bush administration launched its invasion of Afghanistan, TomDispatch offers the first actual count of American, NATO, and other coalition bases there, as well as facilities used by the Afghan security forces. Such bases range from relatively small sites like Shinwar to mega-bases that resemble small American towns. Today, according to official sources, approximately 700 bases of every size dot the Afghan countryside, and more, like the one in Shinwar, are under construction or soon will be as part of a base-building boom that began last year.

Existing in the shadows, rarely reported on and little talked about, this base-building program is nonetheless staggering in size and scope, and heavily dependent on supplies imported from abroad, which means that it is also extraordinarily expensive. It has added significantly to the already long secret list of Pentagon property overseas and raises questions about just how long, after the planned beginning of a drawdown of American forces in 2011, the U.S. will still be garrisoning Afghanistan.

400 Foreign Bases in Afghanistan

A spokesman for the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) tells TomDispatch that there are, at present, nearly 400 U.S. and coalition bases in Afghanistan, including camps, forward operating bases, and combat outposts. In addition, there are at least 300 Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) bases, most of them built, maintained, or supported by the U.S. A small number of the coalition sites are mega-bases like Kandahar Airfield, which boasts one of the busiest runways in the world, and Bagram Air Base, a former Soviet facility that received a makeover, complete with Burger King and Popeyes outlets, and now serves more than 20,000 U.S. troops, in addition to thousands of coalition forces and civilian contractors.

In fact, Kandahar, which housed 9,000 coalition troops as recently as 2007, is expected to have a population of as many as 35,000 troops by the time President Obama's surge is complete, according to Colonel Kevin Wilson who oversees building efforts in the southern half of Afghanistan for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. On the other hand, the Shinwar site, according to Sgt. Tracy J. Smith of the U.S. 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, will be a small forward operating base (FOB) that will host both Afghan troops and foreign forces.

Last fall, it was reported that more than $200 million in construction projects -- from barracks to cargo storage facilities -- were planned for or in-progress at Bagram. Substantial construction funds have also been set aside by the U.S. Air Force to upgrade its air power capacity at Kandahar. For example, $65 million has been allocated to build additional apron space (where aircraft can be parked, serviced, and loaded or unloaded) to accommodate more close-air support for soldiers in the field and a greater intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capability. Another $61 million has also been earmarked for the construction of a cargo helicopter apron and a tactical airlift apron there.

Kandahar is just one of many sites currently being upgraded. Exact figures on the number of facilities being enlarged, improved, or hardened are unavailable but, according a spokesman for ISAF, the military plans to expand several more bases to accommodate the increase of troops as part of Afghan War commander Stanley McChrystal’s surge strategy. In addition, at least 12 more bases are slated to be built to help handle the 30,000 extra American troops and thousands of NATO forces beginning to arrive in the country.

“Currently we have over $3 billion worth of work going on in Afghanistan,” says Colonel Wilson, “and probably by the summer, when the dust settles from all the uplift, we’ll have about $1.3 billion to $1.4 billion worth of that [in the South].” By comparison, between 2002 and 2008, the Army Corps of Engineers spent more than $4.5 billion on construction projects, most of it base-building, in Afghanistan.

At the site of the future FOB in Shinwar, more than 135 private construction contractors attended what was termed an “Afghan-Coalition contractors rodeo.” According to Lieutenant Fernando Roach, a contracting officer with the U.S. Army’s Task Force Mountain Warrior, the event was designed “to give potential contractors a walkthrough of the area so they'll have a solid overview of the scope of work.” The construction firms then bid on three separate projects: the renovation of the more than 30-year old Soviet facilities, the building of new living quarters for Afghan and coalition forces, and the construction of a two-kilometer wall for the base.

In the weeks since the “rodeo,” the U.S. Army has announced additional plans to upgrade facilities at other forward operating bases. At FOB Airborne, located near Kane-Ezzat in Wardak Province, for instance, the Army intends to put in reinforced concrete bunkers and blast protection barriers as well as lay concrete foundations for Re-Locatable Buildings (prefabricated, trailer-like structures used for living and working quarters). Similar work is also scheduled for FOB Altimur, an Army camp in Logar Province.

The Afghan Base Boom

Recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Afghanistan District-Kabul, announced that it would be seeking bids on “site assessments” for Afghan National Security Forces District Headquarters Facilities nationwide. The precise number of Afghan bases scattered throughout the country is unclear.

When asked by TomDispatch, Colonel Radmanish of the Afghan Ministry of Defense would state only that major bases were located in Kabul, Pakteya, Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-e-Sharif, and that ANA units operate all across Afghanistan. Recent U.S. Army contracts for maintenance services provided to Afghan army and police bases, however, suggest that there are no fewer than 300 such facilities that are, according to an ISAF spokesman, not counted among the coalition base inventory.

As opposed to America’s fast-food-franchise-filled bases, Afghan ones are often decidedly more rustic affairs. The police headquarters in Khost Farang District, Baghlan Province, is a good example. According to a detailed site assessment conducted by a local contractor for the Army Corps of Engineers and the Afghan government, the district headquarters consists of mud and stone buildings surrounded by a mud wall. The site even lacks a deep well for water. A trench fed by a nearby spring is the only convenient water source.

The U.S. bases that most resemble austere Afghan facilities are combat outposts, also known as COPs. Environmental Specialist Michael Bell of the Army Corps of Engineers, Afghanistan Engineer District-South’s Real Estate Division, recently described the facilities and life on such a base as he and his co-worker, Realty Specialist Damian Salazar, saw it in late 2009:

“COP Sangar... is a compound surrounded by mud and straw walls. Tents with cots supplied the sleeping quarters… A medical, pharmacy and command post tent occupied the center of the COP, complete with a few computers with internet access and three primitive operating tables. Showers had just been installed with hot [water]... only available from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 4 p.m...

“An MWR [Morale, Welfare and Recreation] tent was erected on Thanksgiving Day with an operating television; however, the tent was rarely used due to the cold. Most of the troops used a tent with gym equipment for recreation... A cook trailer provided a hot simple breakfast and supper. Lunch was MREs [meals ready to eat]. Nights were pitch black with no outside lighting from the base or the city.”

What Makes a Base?

According to an official site assessment, future construction at the Khost Farang District police headquarters will make use of sand, gravel, and stone, all available on the spot. Additionally, cement, steel, bricks, lime, and gypsum have been located for purchase in Pol-e Khomri City, about 85 miles away.

Constructing a base for American troops, however, is another matter. For the far less modest American needs of American troops, builders rely heavily on goods imported over extremely long, difficult to traverse, and sometimes embattled supply lines, all of which adds up to an extraordinarily costly affair. “Our business runs on materials,” Lieutenant General Robert Van Antwerp, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, told an audience at a town hall meeting in Afghanistan in December 2009. “You have to bring in the lumber, you have to bring in the steel, you have to bring in the containers and all that. Transport isn’t easy in this country -- number one, the roads themselves, number two, coming through other countries to get here -- there are just huge challenges in getting the materials here.”

To facilitate U.S. base construction projects, a new “virtual storefront” -- an online shopping portal -- has been launched by the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA). The Maintenance, Repair and Operations Uzbekistan Virtual Storefront website and a defense contractor-owned and operated brick-and-mortar warehouse facility that supports it aim to provide regionally-produced construction materials to speed surge-accelerated building efforts.

From a facility located in Termez, Uzbekistan, cement, concrete, fencing, roofing, rope, sand, steel, gutters, pipe, and other construction material manufactured in countries like Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan can be rushed to nearby Afghanistan to accelerate base-building efforts. “Having the products closer to the fight will make it easier for warfighters by reducing logistics response and delivery time," says Chet Evanitsky, the DLA’s construction and equipment supply chain division chief.

America’s Shadowy Base World

The Pentagon’s most recent inventory of bases lists a total of 716 overseas sites. These include facilities owned and leased all across the Middle East as well as a significant presence in Europe and Asia, especially Japan and South Korea. Perhaps even more notable than the Pentagon’s impressive public foreign property portfolio are the many sites left off the official inventory. While bases in the Persian Gulf countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates are all listed, one conspicuously absent site is Al-Udeid Air Base, a billion-dollar facility in nearby Qatar, where the U.S. Air Force secretly oversees its on-going unmanned drone wars.

The count also does not include any sites in Iraq where, as of August 2009, there were still nearly 300 American bases and outposts. Similarly, U.S. bases in Afghanistan -- a significant percentage of the 400 foreign sites scattered across the country -- are noticeably absent from the Pentagon inventory.

Counting the remaining bases in Iraq -- as many as 50 are slated to be operating after President Barack Obama’s August 31, 2010, deadline to remove all U.S. “combat troops” from the country -- and those in Afghanistan, as well as black sites like Al-Udeid, the total number of U.S. bases overseas now must significantly exceed 1,000. Just exactly how many U.S. military bases (and allied facilities used by U.S. forces) are scattered across the globe may never be publicly known. What we do know -- from the experience of bases in Germany, Italy, Japan, and South Korea -- is that, once built, they have a tendency toward permanency that a cessation of hostilities, or even outright peace, has a way of not altering.

After nearly a decade of war, close to 700 U.S., allied, and Afghan military bases dot Afghanistan. Until now, however, they have existed as black sites known to few Americans outside the Pentagon. It remains to be seen, a decade into the future, how many of these sites will still be occupied by U.S. and allied troops and whose flag will be planted on the ever-shifting British-Soviet-U.S./Afghan site at Shinwar.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and the winner of a 2009 Ridenhour Prize for Reportorial Distinction as well as a James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, In These Times, and regularly at TomDispatch. Turse is currently a fellow at New York University's Center for the United States and the Cold War. He is the author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books). His website is NickTurse.com.

Jason Paez: Where Elizabeth Warren Gets It Wrong

2010-02-09T21:19:54Z

I adore Elizabeth Warren and consider her one of the most courageous policy leaders in Washington today. Her simple, prescient toaster metaphors in 2007 -- remember the world before the financial crisis? -- were brilliant. That summer, a full year before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, she wrote:

It is impossible to buy a toaster that has a one-in-five chance of bursting into flames and burning down your house. But it is possible to refinance an existing home with a mortgage that has the same one-in-five chance of putting the family out on the street-and the mortgage won't even carry a disclosure of that fact to the homeowner.

However, in her most recent Wall Street Journal Op-Ed, "Wall Street's Race to the Bottom," I believe Professor Warren makes unfortunate leaps that weaken her purpose and give credence (if not, outright strength) to the destructive ongoing debate around financial regulation. This debate continues to paralyze our political system, change nothing about the underlying causes of the crisis and offend just about everyone. As American citizens we need to hold our elected officials accountable to get something done now, or history is bound to repeat itself.

So...where does this great thinker go wrong? Oddly, she doesn't get her villains right.

Before I explain, let me be clear - I have few doubts that weak lending standards, NINJA ("No Income, No Job, no Assets") loans, option ARMs and other complex financial products sold to consumer were among the multiple contributors to our current economic climate. Even Ben Bernanke himself purchased an option ARM that "exploded" and had to be refinanced. (See the Chairman's own words on page 11 from his Time Magazine 2009 Person of the Year Extended Interview.)

However, I believe that in vilifying Wall Street, policymakers fall into a familiar pattern of scapegoating that occurs irrespective of party affiliation or ideology. They find the most obvious target from outside the ranks of Capitol Hill and foment public frustration in a manner that isn't productive. Blaming Wall Street for pursuing profit is like a vegetarian getting angry at tigers because they eat meat.

The simple truth is that when American corporations pursue profit -- successfully or not -- as long as they stay within the law they are functioning exactly as we designed them to. Wall Street firms are legally obligated to focus on their fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and employees. This reaches to the core of what it means to be American, and how capitalism has helped make the United States the extraordinary nation it is today.

Elected officials, by contrast, have a very explicit moral responsibility to taxpayers and should make 100% of their decisions towards the benefit of citizens they represent.

It is important to remember that Jamie Dimon doesn't have the final say on what regulation will come to pass; the Senate does. To pretend differently may actually hurt us in the long run.

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.