by CODY LYON-OPINION
Barring a vision from the Lord himself,there is probably no way to alter the thinking of those who subscribe to the philosophy of fringe right wing groups like the Columbus Ohio based Mission America and its leader Linda Harvey.
And, if it weren't for the particularly nasty tone or incessantly misleading words contained in an October 20 opine by Linda Harvey in the conservative "World Net Daily", any response to Mission America's typically insecure, filth laced and fright filled hyperbole wouldn't be worthy of time or effort.
But, in this case, a word or two, perhaps even a counter attack are warranted because, in her latest poisonous diatribe, Harvey not only spews lies about one of the LGBT community's most respected organizations, the Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network, or GLSEN, but also attempts to link her lies to the candidacy of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.
Understanding just how fringe Mission America is easy. This is a group that beckons visitors to its web page by advertising "learn the truth about homosexuality, witchcraft, changing Christian Church, Radical Feminism and the Youth Culture. Even more "mainstream" right wing groups may find this a bit outrageous.
Mission America calls itself a public policy analysis foundation. According to its 2007 tax returns, the private non operating foundation Mission America took in a meager $12,000 in contributions and donations. On its IRS Form 990 PF on a question where it asks did the foundation attempt to influence any national, state or local legislation or participate in any political campaigns, Harvey, or whoever filled out the returns, checked NO.
That said, there's no doubt Harvey and her writing is indeed attempting to influence this year's campaign. And, she's using a tired tactic, one long used by those on the far right that attempts to plant seeds of fear, be they racial, spook tactics on national security or in this case, the always reliable hot button homosexual agenda.
Currently featured in a prominent spot on the group's web page is a link to the article "Advocate of homosexual corruption of kids is leader in Obama's campaign.
That link then takes visitors to 'Gay" pedophilia and Obama', the "World Net Daily" piece where Linda Harvey asks if Obama agrees with his GLBT supporters.
Harvey's article charges that the LGBT organization GLSEN's mission "has been to plant 'gay' clubs and training programs in as many schools as possible" calling those groups a Trojan Horse into America's school children's minds.
She says that the "more closely one reads the GLSEN material, the worse it gets," implying that all manner of sexually suggestive material and pedophilia are acceptable behaviors. She says "just about every sexual practice imaginable is apparently acceptable and even worthy of celebration by any age student or teacher as far as GLSEN is concerned."
Then she asks "is this the kind of 'school reform' Obama has in mind?"
Harvey makes these charges because GLSEN's founder, Kevin Jennings, happens to be a prominent fundraiser in the LGBT community for the Obama campaign.
In the article, she says that Obama should remove Jennings from his 'position' and that voters need answers to a series of questions from Obama regarding his stance or beliefs about the origins, practice and acceptance of homosexuality especially when it comes to school aged children.
She then kicks her piece with "if we want a totalitarian, pansexual society, with its accompanying disease, dysfunction and abuse, and no room for nobility, goodness and tradition, then we need to make sure we vote for Obama with all his various revolutionary hangers-on, including Jennings." If, on the other hand, we envision another America, it's time to speak up now."
Well, Ms Harvey is correct, we do need to speak up.
It's nothing short of pathetic that Mission America would resort to such disgusting misleading smears that use vulnerable children in a Presidential campaign.
Perhaps her desperation arose out of the clear indication that If the "another America" Harvey envisions resembles the noble, good society where the 'tradition' of the past eight years are celebrated, according to a number of polls, most Americans plan to pass this go round.
Clearly, most voters are choosing to look beyond the political smokescreen of far right groups like Harvey's Mission America that have long sought to steer voters from the true issues affecting their lives, and their children's futures by raising false charges about candidates like Harvey does in her Obama/GLSEN piece. There are greater concerns occupying the minds of voters than an LGBT fundraiser at the Obama campaign.
But, besides that, if Americans look at the fine work of all the LGBT organizations in America, GLSEN has the distinction of perhaps being one of the more politically benign. It's mission is clear and it actually speaks to a fundament of who we are as a nation, the opportunity for all Americans to receive a quality education in a safe learning environment.
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network narrows its mission 'to assure that each member of every school community is valued and respected regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity/expression.'
Exactly how does that mission mission cross over into pedophilia?
GLSEN's battles have been defined by its own research.
According to a recent GLSEN survey of almost seven thousand school children across the nation, 86.2% of LGBT students reported being verbally harassed, 44.1% reported being physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation. Around 74 percent heard derogatory remarks like "faggot" or "dyke" used often at school. According to the survey, more than 60 percent of students felt unsafe because of their sexual orientation.
Linda Harvey and her friends at Mission America must not remember what goes on in the hallways or schoolyards of America's schools. The truth is, kids can be extremely cruel, often resorting to name calling and bullying, unfortunate behaviors usually directed at the most vulnerable, those perceived as different or weak, maybe the less than masculine male, or the masculine appearing female. Harvey fails to understand that those taunts, those abuses, that even the victims themselves are often ashamed of, have the ability to leave a child feeling isolated, alone and damaged. Those insults backed up by much of society's deep prejudices have the ability to cripple the self esteem and psychological health of children for years, if not lifetimes.
And, what good does it do the child issuing those taunts, or more importantly, the child on the receiving end of those taunts, when his or her parent, has read a piece like Linda Harvey's or any of the other vicious material on her website, where she has equated the mission of GLSEN and the candidacy of Barack Obama to pedophila or the "homosexual agenda?"
While GLSEN does indeed help in the establishment of what are called Gay Straight Alliances in schools across the nation, the fact is, they are more prominent in places that tend to be more tolerant, places with more socially open school districts, and rarely in the rural hamlets of Mississippi or Alabama, places where if a child who happens to be different, perhaps gay or lesbian, life can be hellish, perhaps destructive and very lonely.
If parents in those more conservative areas are subscribing to the hate filled vitriol of Linda Harvey and her crowd, a child may feel he or she has no place to turn.
Back in 1989, the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued its "Report on the Secretary's Task Force on Youth Suicide," which found that "a majority of suicide attempts by homosexuals occur during their youth, and gay youth are 2 to 3 times more likely to attempt suicide than other young people.
In 2001, the American Psychological Association said that suicide is the number one cause of death for gay teens.
Calling someone heterosexual or straight is not a common insult or perceived as hurtful. In most school yards, shopping malls, social functions or other gathering places the straight jock or pretty cheerleader has less to worry about when it comes to the prejudices facing them. But the prejudices, even disregard for humanity that gets reinforced by the rhetoric of ghoulish figures like Linda Harvey, individuals who spew poisonous rhetoric, reinforcing hate for political gain into the minds of concerned parents and voters is nothing short of shameful.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Rolling the Dice?
by CODY LYON
This past week, as it became increasingly clear that an infusion of $700 billion in taxpayer capital might be necessary to stave off national economic "calamity", a number of Americans expressed increased feelings of doubt, confusion and frustration.
In fact, according to a "Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times" Sept 19-22 poll, by a margin of 55 to 31 percent, "Americans say it's not the government's responsibility to bail out private companies with taxpayer dollars, even if their collapse could damage the economy."
Even in New York City, the home Wall Street of Wall Street Giants, talk on the streets, bars and boutiques beyond the cavernous streets downtown is mixed with worry and anger.
"I do not believe the American taxpayer should have to bail out another business like Bear Stearns" said Scott Woodward, CEO of Sewbranded, a marketing and branding firm in New York.
"My inclination is to let it play itself out naturally, and maybe the goings on of Wall Street as we knew it, will halt the greed and corruption of how CEO's run firms for short term personal gain will subside," said Woodward.
In his initial appearance before lawmakers in Washington, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson urged that the bailout plan, as it's commonly called, be passed "quickly and clearly" and that inaction could lead to a "recession."
President Bush used similar language during a number of television appearances.
Despite acknowledging the use of shrill language, a number of experts appear to believe that the doing nothing is simply not an option.
"The use of recession sounds to me like a scare tactic," said David Backus, Heinz Riehl Professor of International Economics and Finance at New York University's (NYU) Stern School of Business.
But Backus says that a "reasonably rapid response to problems in the financial sector are important."
"Japan is the obvious case of the opposite (inaction),"said Professor Backus.
From 1986 to 1990, Japan experienced what many call an asset price bubble where real estate and stock prices. When the bubble collapsed, gradually, the next 10 years became known in economic circles as the "lost decade."
"The government there ignored the onset of serious problems, and the economy stopped growing," Backus said.
"That's not a recession, it's much worse, that is ten to fifteen years of slow growth," he said.
According to Investorwords.com, a nation's economic growth rate is measured by economic growth during a given interval. Gross National Product and Gross Domestic Product are the fundaments used to measure those growth rates.
Still, understanding the evolution of, and accepting the severity of what a slowdown could mean, has at best, proven to be challenging.
The bailout plan would allow the Treasury Department to buy bad mortgages from banks, and if and when the market improves, then sell them, in the best case scenario, at a profit.
But, ultimately, the Government would pump billions of dollars into the economy by buying up bad debt and restoring credibility to firms like AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie, providing clean balance sheets, so banks can start lending to one another again.
In a recent broadcast of the PBS program "Newshour'" Paul Solmon explained that in this most recent and current era of "credit," the collapse of firms like Lehman Brothers was not a net loss of faith in stocks, but in bonds, basically, the debts of firms like Lehman, Fannie , Freddie and AIG.
Bonds are like official IOUs isued by governments and corporations.
Newshour's Solmon points out that credit is the most important ingredient in an economy. Futher, he says in the report that 'firms, from railways to high tech, pay for their equipment , offices, and workers as they try to grow or expand, on credit.
The availability of fast and easy credit via credit cards, loans, and mortgages has enabled American consumers to buy cars, homes, television sets and vacations basically with a bet that future income from work will allow them to cover debt, or at least allow them to keep up with monthly payments .
Still, many wonder why taxpayers should bail out an industry they view as profiteers of misfortune or bad financial decisions of average citizens...especially during the era of the perjorative term, predatory lender.
Of course, it isn't just sub-prime mortgage lenders who have the appearance of predators who capitalize off the inability of countless individuals who fail to to pay in full or on time.
Just look at the commercial banking industry's biggest arm of profit.
Back in 2004, the PBS documentary series Frontline in collaboration with the "New York Times" produced its "Secret History of the Credit Card" that revealed over 145 million Americans carried charge cards. Of those individuals, 55 million paid their full payments monthly. 90 million of them carried balances while 35 million paid only the minimum required amounts.
FRONTLINE pointed out that the average credit card amount owed by consumers was $8,000.
The documentary meticulously reported how around 25 years ago, 'the banking industry successfully eliminated a critical restriction: the limit on the interest rate a lender can charge a borrower' setting in motion what has proven to be one of the most profitable profit streams for the banking industry.
As most consumers know, a credit card might be issued at a low interest rate of perhaps, 6 percent. But, if the consumer misses or is late on a payment, hidden within the fine print of most charge card agreements are stipulations that allow the bank to raise the rate to as much as 29 or more percent.
According to the FRONTLINE report by Lowell Bergman, the industry's most profitable customers, the ones being sought by creative marketing tactics, are the "revolvers:" the estimated 115 million Americans who carry monthly credit card debt.
To the extent the current the current 'crisis' would affect credit card lending is not yet known.
But as Jocelyn Slovak, a former New York City Public School Teacher, said last week, she's worried that if some sort of plan doesn't save the sector, it's pretty clear that a good bit of the financial freedom that credit provides might be be taken away.
"We've always had the luxury to take risks, through credit and other means, and it looks like that's going to change rather quickly," said Slovak.
So how did America arrive at a place where luxury and now it appears, big houses on credit became the norm?
In a June, 2006 "New York Times Magazine" article titled "The American Way of Debt" Jackson Lears, editor of Raritan: A Quarterly Review wrote During the 1980's, while real income continued to stagnate for most Americans, the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan gave government sanction to unprecedented consumer spending. Reagan's rhetorical refusal of limits combined with the deregulation of the lending industry to detach dreams of luxury from previous constraints.
The lack of constraint and de-regulation apparently created an industry that led to the current bubble linked to credit, a bubble that now appears to be popping most loudly on Wall Street.
Back on street level in New York, Scott Woodward said while he worries that the pain of not bailing out Wall Street will be immediate and extreme, his adverse opinions to this plan's particulars were only strengthened when he heard Secretary Henry Paulson first detail and defend the initial bailout terms with "no attached conditions", conditions that Woodward and plenty of others saw as a gift to CEO's and other players.
"I'd love to know the headhunter that was able to devise the notion of million dollar severances for executives that get fired for running their firms into the ground and not performing," he said.
Headhunters aside, it's understandable why Woodward would blast one of the more high profile companies that will be receiving Washington, ahem, taxpayer money, the nation's largest insurer or AIG. (American International Group Inc.)
For consideration, AIG, whose $85 billion dollar bailout is in addition to the $700 billion figure being crafted in Washington, has what some would might call a less than stellar record in some of its past corporate dealings.
For example, according to Austin based non profit organization Texans for Public Justice, after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, AIG's former chair and CEO, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, led "a lobbying blitz to get taxpayers to bail out terrorism-related insurance losses.
TPJ also reported in a series called Bush donor profiles, that AIG had helped the now infamous Enron Corporation "cook its books" by investing in its LJM2 partnership along with Merril Lynch.
In 2003, AIG paid $10 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charges that it helped a struggling mobile phone company pad its earnings by selling it a phony, back-dated insurance policy. Further still, AIG paid $126 million in 2004 to settle criminal and civil charges that it similarly helped PNC Financial Services hid $762 million in poorly performing loans in 2001.
According to TPJ, former AIG CEO Greenberg, while sitting on the New York Stock Exchange , helped approve what became a publicly condemned $187 million retirement package leading to the ouster of NYSE Chairman Dick Grasso.
TPJ goes on to say that "around that time, Greenberg got Grasso to pressure NYSE buyers to prop up AIG's stock price.
And while such alleged mischief leaves a bad taste in the mouths of countless taxpayers, experts caution that AIG's assets must go someplace and the bailout of AIG and others is probably necessary.
"It's entirely legitimate for people to ask questions about why we're doing this and who benefits as long as this isn't used as an excuse to delay action," said New York University's David Backus.
"To the extent we might want to blame somone, there's more than enough evidence of bad judgement by both parties with Fannie and Freddie being the most obvious examples," he said.
But, there are some holdouts.
As Ari J. Officer and Lawrence J. Officer opined on September 29 in TIME Magazine, 'the $700 billion (ultimately $1 trillion or more) bailout is not predominantly for mortgages and homeowners. Instead, the bailout is for mortgage-backed securities. In fact, some versions of these instruments are imaginary derivatives. These claims overlap on the same types of mortgages.
The Time article said that many financial institutions wrote claims over the same mortgages, and these are the majority of claims that have "gone bad."
One solution that might provide some level of palatability to taxpayers who others who view the bailout as extreme is an "institutional risk insurance premium."
The idea was touted in a September 17, "New York Times" Op-Ed by Jonathan G S Koppell, Director of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at Yale.
Koppell asked "why not make investment banks and other companies pay premiums for this catastrophic insurance." He argues further that the "goal should be to limit the contagion of failure rather than prevent the failure itself."
Later, in an email message, Professor Koppell wrote that the idea of 'failure tax' "could be used to emphasize that the public should not be providing insurance to these companies gratis."
"The American people don't get the profits so why should they be stuck with the losses," he said.
Such input from experts and others has only fueled the ongoing informal conversations, questions and nighttime arguments over who, what and how this will all play out in the end for those beyond the busy trading floors in the financial district and the halls of Government in Washington.
"In a nutshell, we are an over-inflated economy that has placed to much trust in synthetic trades," according to one New York stock analyst who asked to remain anonymous while sipping drinks with a friend who works for a major New York City bank.
The annonymous analyst said that Wall Street is all about leverage. He went on to say that leverage is like odds, you bet one, but if you lose, you lose a thousand.
During that same conversation at a downtown bar, the analyst said that Wall Streets assets are based on synthetic value, mere blips on a screen.
Whatever that means, it seems clear, that Wall Street has been and will continue to capitalize off of every day American's debt, and that debt, has allowed Americans to operate, often beyond their means.
Still, as the anaylist in New York pointed out, ordinary Americans don't really have a say here.
"Whether you think it's good, bad or you're indifferent, you have no control," he said to his banker friend.
He went on to say that taxpayers will be rolling the dice with the $700 billion dollar bailout. First, there is no way of knowing whether or not the market will buy back the distressed debt at any point in the future and whether or not, this will put the country back on the path to greater growth.
According to an August 2008 report from the Office of Macroeconomic Analysis, the United States economy has "remained on a path of slower growth since late 2007.
To this, many Americans are asking whether or not this plan that allegedly provides a shot in the arm of the market abyss will impact their own income streams.
"There is absolutely no guaruntee this $700 billion will do anything to stave off a catastrophe in the longterm," the anonymous analyst said wearily over a Grey Goose martini with olives.
This past week, as it became increasingly clear that an infusion of $700 billion in taxpayer capital might be necessary to stave off national economic "calamity", a number of Americans expressed increased feelings of doubt, confusion and frustration.
In fact, according to a "Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times" Sept 19-22 poll, by a margin of 55 to 31 percent, "Americans say it's not the government's responsibility to bail out private companies with taxpayer dollars, even if their collapse could damage the economy."
Even in New York City, the home Wall Street of Wall Street Giants, talk on the streets, bars and boutiques beyond the cavernous streets downtown is mixed with worry and anger.
"I do not believe the American taxpayer should have to bail out another business like Bear Stearns" said Scott Woodward, CEO of Sewbranded, a marketing and branding firm in New York.
"My inclination is to let it play itself out naturally, and maybe the goings on of Wall Street as we knew it, will halt the greed and corruption of how CEO's run firms for short term personal gain will subside," said Woodward.
In his initial appearance before lawmakers in Washington, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson urged that the bailout plan, as it's commonly called, be passed "quickly and clearly" and that inaction could lead to a "recession."
President Bush used similar language during a number of television appearances.
Despite acknowledging the use of shrill language, a number of experts appear to believe that the doing nothing is simply not an option.
"The use of recession sounds to me like a scare tactic," said David Backus, Heinz Riehl Professor of International Economics and Finance at New York University's (NYU) Stern School of Business.
But Backus says that a "reasonably rapid response to problems in the financial sector are important."
"Japan is the obvious case of the opposite (inaction),"said Professor Backus.
From 1986 to 1990, Japan experienced what many call an asset price bubble where real estate and stock prices. When the bubble collapsed, gradually, the next 10 years became known in economic circles as the "lost decade."
"The government there ignored the onset of serious problems, and the economy stopped growing," Backus said.
"That's not a recession, it's much worse, that is ten to fifteen years of slow growth," he said.
According to Investorwords.com, a nation's economic growth rate is measured by economic growth during a given interval. Gross National Product and Gross Domestic Product are the fundaments used to measure those growth rates.
Still, understanding the evolution of, and accepting the severity of what a slowdown could mean, has at best, proven to be challenging.
The bailout plan would allow the Treasury Department to buy bad mortgages from banks, and if and when the market improves, then sell them, in the best case scenario, at a profit.
But, ultimately, the Government would pump billions of dollars into the economy by buying up bad debt and restoring credibility to firms like AIG, Freddie Mac and Fannie, providing clean balance sheets, so banks can start lending to one another again.
In a recent broadcast of the PBS program "Newshour'" Paul Solmon explained that in this most recent and current era of "credit," the collapse of firms like Lehman Brothers was not a net loss of faith in stocks, but in bonds, basically, the debts of firms like Lehman, Fannie , Freddie and AIG.
Bonds are like official IOUs isued by governments and corporations.
Newshour's Solmon points out that credit is the most important ingredient in an economy. Futher, he says in the report that 'firms, from railways to high tech, pay for their equipment , offices, and workers as they try to grow or expand, on credit.
The availability of fast and easy credit via credit cards, loans, and mortgages has enabled American consumers to buy cars, homes, television sets and vacations basically with a bet that future income from work will allow them to cover debt, or at least allow them to keep up with monthly payments .
Still, many wonder why taxpayers should bail out an industry they view as profiteers of misfortune or bad financial decisions of average citizens...especially during the era of the perjorative term, predatory lender.
Of course, it isn't just sub-prime mortgage lenders who have the appearance of predators who capitalize off the inability of countless individuals who fail to to pay in full or on time.
Just look at the commercial banking industry's biggest arm of profit.
Back in 2004, the PBS documentary series Frontline in collaboration with the "New York Times" produced its "Secret History of the Credit Card" that revealed over 145 million Americans carried charge cards. Of those individuals, 55 million paid their full payments monthly. 90 million of them carried balances while 35 million paid only the minimum required amounts.
FRONTLINE pointed out that the average credit card amount owed by consumers was $8,000.
The documentary meticulously reported how around 25 years ago, 'the banking industry successfully eliminated a critical restriction: the limit on the interest rate a lender can charge a borrower' setting in motion what has proven to be one of the most profitable profit streams for the banking industry.
As most consumers know, a credit card might be issued at a low interest rate of perhaps, 6 percent. But, if the consumer misses or is late on a payment, hidden within the fine print of most charge card agreements are stipulations that allow the bank to raise the rate to as much as 29 or more percent.
According to the FRONTLINE report by Lowell Bergman, the industry's most profitable customers, the ones being sought by creative marketing tactics, are the "revolvers:" the estimated 115 million Americans who carry monthly credit card debt.
To the extent the current the current 'crisis' would affect credit card lending is not yet known.
But as Jocelyn Slovak, a former New York City Public School Teacher, said last week, she's worried that if some sort of plan doesn't save the sector, it's pretty clear that a good bit of the financial freedom that credit provides might be be taken away.
"We've always had the luxury to take risks, through credit and other means, and it looks like that's going to change rather quickly," said Slovak.
So how did America arrive at a place where luxury and now it appears, big houses on credit became the norm?
In a June, 2006 "New York Times Magazine" article titled "The American Way of Debt" Jackson Lears, editor of Raritan: A Quarterly Review wrote During the 1980's, while real income continued to stagnate for most Americans, the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan gave government sanction to unprecedented consumer spending. Reagan's rhetorical refusal of limits combined with the deregulation of the lending industry to detach dreams of luxury from previous constraints.
The lack of constraint and de-regulation apparently created an industry that led to the current bubble linked to credit, a bubble that now appears to be popping most loudly on Wall Street.
Back on street level in New York, Scott Woodward said while he worries that the pain of not bailing out Wall Street will be immediate and extreme, his adverse opinions to this plan's particulars were only strengthened when he heard Secretary Henry Paulson first detail and defend the initial bailout terms with "no attached conditions", conditions that Woodward and plenty of others saw as a gift to CEO's and other players.
"I'd love to know the headhunter that was able to devise the notion of million dollar severances for executives that get fired for running their firms into the ground and not performing," he said.
Headhunters aside, it's understandable why Woodward would blast one of the more high profile companies that will be receiving Washington, ahem, taxpayer money, the nation's largest insurer or AIG. (American International Group Inc.)
For consideration, AIG, whose $85 billion dollar bailout is in addition to the $700 billion figure being crafted in Washington, has what some would might call a less than stellar record in some of its past corporate dealings.
For example, according to Austin based non profit organization Texans for Public Justice, after the 9/11 attacks in New York and Washington, AIG's former chair and CEO, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, led "a lobbying blitz to get taxpayers to bail out terrorism-related insurance losses.
TPJ also reported in a series called Bush donor profiles, that AIG had helped the now infamous Enron Corporation "cook its books" by investing in its LJM2 partnership along with Merril Lynch.
In 2003, AIG paid $10 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission fraud charges that it helped a struggling mobile phone company pad its earnings by selling it a phony, back-dated insurance policy. Further still, AIG paid $126 million in 2004 to settle criminal and civil charges that it similarly helped PNC Financial Services hid $762 million in poorly performing loans in 2001.
According to TPJ, former AIG CEO Greenberg, while sitting on the New York Stock Exchange , helped approve what became a publicly condemned $187 million retirement package leading to the ouster of NYSE Chairman Dick Grasso.
TPJ goes on to say that "around that time, Greenberg got Grasso to pressure NYSE buyers to prop up AIG's stock price.
And while such alleged mischief leaves a bad taste in the mouths of countless taxpayers, experts caution that AIG's assets must go someplace and the bailout of AIG and others is probably necessary.
"It's entirely legitimate for people to ask questions about why we're doing this and who benefits as long as this isn't used as an excuse to delay action," said New York University's David Backus.
"To the extent we might want to blame somone, there's more than enough evidence of bad judgement by both parties with Fannie and Freddie being the most obvious examples," he said.
But, there are some holdouts.
As Ari J. Officer and Lawrence J. Officer opined on September 29 in TIME Magazine, 'the $700 billion (ultimately $1 trillion or more) bailout is not predominantly for mortgages and homeowners. Instead, the bailout is for mortgage-backed securities. In fact, some versions of these instruments are imaginary derivatives. These claims overlap on the same types of mortgages.
The Time article said that many financial institutions wrote claims over the same mortgages, and these are the majority of claims that have "gone bad."
One solution that might provide some level of palatability to taxpayers who others who view the bailout as extreme is an "institutional risk insurance premium."
The idea was touted in a September 17, "New York Times" Op-Ed by Jonathan G S Koppell, Director of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at Yale.
Koppell asked "why not make investment banks and other companies pay premiums for this catastrophic insurance." He argues further that the "goal should be to limit the contagion of failure rather than prevent the failure itself."
Later, in an email message, Professor Koppell wrote that the idea of 'failure tax' "could be used to emphasize that the public should not be providing insurance to these companies gratis."
"The American people don't get the profits so why should they be stuck with the losses," he said.
Such input from experts and others has only fueled the ongoing informal conversations, questions and nighttime arguments over who, what and how this will all play out in the end for those beyond the busy trading floors in the financial district and the halls of Government in Washington.
"In a nutshell, we are an over-inflated economy that has placed to much trust in synthetic trades," according to one New York stock analyst who asked to remain anonymous while sipping drinks with a friend who works for a major New York City bank.
The annonymous analyst said that Wall Street is all about leverage. He went on to say that leverage is like odds, you bet one, but if you lose, you lose a thousand.
During that same conversation at a downtown bar, the analyst said that Wall Streets assets are based on synthetic value, mere blips on a screen.
Whatever that means, it seems clear, that Wall Street has been and will continue to capitalize off of every day American's debt, and that debt, has allowed Americans to operate, often beyond their means.
Still, as the anaylist in New York pointed out, ordinary Americans don't really have a say here.
"Whether you think it's good, bad or you're indifferent, you have no control," he said to his banker friend.
He went on to say that taxpayers will be rolling the dice with the $700 billion dollar bailout. First, there is no way of knowing whether or not the market will buy back the distressed debt at any point in the future and whether or not, this will put the country back on the path to greater growth.
According to an August 2008 report from the Office of Macroeconomic Analysis, the United States economy has "remained on a path of slower growth since late 2007.
To this, many Americans are asking whether or not this plan that allegedly provides a shot in the arm of the market abyss will impact their own income streams.
"There is absolutely no guaruntee this $700 billion will do anything to stave off a catastrophe in the longterm," the anonymous analyst said wearily over a Grey Goose martini with olives.
FRONTLINE'S "Secret History of the Credit Card"
Perhaps an appropriate time to further educate oneself about the ongoing financial crisis:
From PBS FRONTLINE...
In "Secret History of the Credit Card," FRONTLINE® and The New York Times join forces to investigate an industry few Americans fully understand. In this one-hour report, correspondent Lowell Bergman uncovers the techniques used by the industry to earn record profits and get consumers to take on more debt.
LINK TO PBS Webpage to view entire program online
From PBS FRONTLINE...
In "Secret History of the Credit Card," FRONTLINE® and The New York Times join forces to investigate an industry few Americans fully understand. In this one-hour report, correspondent Lowell Bergman uncovers the techniques used by the industry to earn record profits and get consumers to take on more debt.
LINK TO PBS Webpage to view entire program online
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Once again, the Bob Perry Story (Re-post)
What Bob Perry's Politicking Says About Campaign Finance Rules In America
But, Ahmed says she thinks the busloads of elderly lobbyist were in fact brought in, fed breakfast as well as slanted information, educated, by Pro court reform coaches connected to the Texas homebuilder industry about the so-called frivolous lawsuits, in what Ahmed believes was a clear case of smoke and mirrors politics meant to promote tort reform specifically favorable to home builders and developers. Ahmed says the Austin tort reform blitz was organized by the group Texas For Lawsuit Reform (TLR), run by Richard Weekly. Richard Weekly is the brother of another Texas homebuilder/developer, David Weekly. Ahmed and others have also said that the Texas Tort reform efforts were bankrolled by Developer Perry and Weekly's generous financial support for homebuilder friendly legislative, gubernatorial and judicial candidates.
LINK TO FULL STORY
But, Ahmed says she thinks the busloads of elderly lobbyist were in fact brought in, fed breakfast as well as slanted information, educated, by Pro court reform coaches connected to the Texas homebuilder industry about the so-called frivolous lawsuits, in what Ahmed believes was a clear case of smoke and mirrors politics meant to promote tort reform specifically favorable to home builders and developers. Ahmed says the Austin tort reform blitz was organized by the group Texas For Lawsuit Reform (TLR), run by Richard Weekly. Richard Weekly is the brother of another Texas homebuilder/developer, David Weekly. Ahmed and others have also said that the Texas Tort reform efforts were bankrolled by Developer Perry and Weekly's generous financial support for homebuilder friendly legislative, gubernatorial and judicial candidates.
LINK TO FULL STORY
Monday, September 22, 2008
(REUTERS) Hadron Collider halted for months
Hadron Collider halted for months-FROM REUTERS
Sept. 21 - The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva may be shut down for at least two months after a serious malfunction, the European Organisation for Nuclear Reserach (CERN) says.
Engineers were forced to switch off the world's most powerful particle accelerator after a magnet failure, which led to tonnes of liquid helium leaking into the Collider's 27-km tunnel.
Earlier this month international scientists celebrated the successful start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine located in a deeply-buried tunnel on the Swiss-French border.
The biggest and most complex machine ever made, the LHC aims to unlock the physical secrets of the universe by simulating the conditions of the "Big Bang" that created the universe.
Helen Long reports.SOUNDBITE: James Gillies, Cern's Head of Communications.
Sept. 21 - The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva may be shut down for at least two months after a serious malfunction, the European Organisation for Nuclear Reserach (CERN) says.
Engineers were forced to switch off the world's most powerful particle accelerator after a magnet failure, which led to tonnes of liquid helium leaking into the Collider's 27-km tunnel.
Earlier this month international scientists celebrated the successful start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) machine located in a deeply-buried tunnel on the Swiss-French border.
The biggest and most complex machine ever made, the LHC aims to unlock the physical secrets of the universe by simulating the conditions of the "Big Bang" that created the universe.
Helen Long reports.SOUNDBITE: James Gillies, Cern's Head of Communications.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
A Trip to Ground Zero: Fourth in a Series (Re-post)
From Thursday, September 14, 2006
A TRIP TO GROUND ZERO-FOURTH IN A SERIES by CODY LYON
(photo courtesy Anthony German)
A TRIP TO GROUND ZERO-FOURTH IN A SERIES
By CODY LYON
On a cool, clear September 11th 2006, at around one in the afternoon, two friends riding bicycles met at a fountain just off Christopher Street alongside the Hudson River in New York City. The fountain was the pre-chosen starting point for the two friend’s annual pilgrimage downtown to ground zero, a ritual they’ve repeated for the past four years. The two friends, both in New York during the attacks of 2001, experienced the immediate effects of the disaster in different ways. One witnessed United Flight 175’s crash into the South Tower from his fifth floor Soho apartment. Unbeknownst to him at the time, an old friend was on that plane. He later watched both buildings collapse from his building’s roof.
The other friend, at the time a resident of East 14th Street, was at first oblivious to the event’s magnitude. He was on his way to work at the World Financial Center finding himself underground for over two hours in a Subway tunnel when the towers fell. When he was finally evacuated at City Hall station, just a few blocks from the collapse, he emerged among dust and smoke in a changed world.
For the next few months, both friends, like millions of New York residents, inhaled the smell of death, experienced pain that still has the ability to overcome joy but all the while experiencing a new sense of connectivity with their city.
The two, one originally from Alabama, the other from Germany, had met through friends just a few months after 9/11. They first bonded that June at a large outdoor dance party on the Westside pier at 13th Street. As fireworks blasted and a disco version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” played, the two took in the new downtown skyline, discussed the event and shed tears as the one who lost his friend in the crash, began to talk about his lost friend’s zest for life.
“He was such a fun guy, he’d be here now, if he were around” he said, with an almost empty smile on his face.
The bond between the two new made friends was instant.
Over four years later, pedaling slowly to Ground Zero down the bike path along the Hudson, several persons, some with photographs of smiling faces, wedding pictures or individuals in other happy moments, passed by. One elderly couple dressed in sensible shoes and matching white top’s, each wearing a photograph of a smiling bright eyed woman, held hands as they walked on the path uptown. Men and women in uniform walked by, many with peaceful expressions that have long since dealt with the horror and loss this day represents. Motorcycles, many with POW flags, whizzed by on the highway, while honking horns blew in the distance from back at Christopher Street, an area now called Point Gratitude.
When the two reached the Hudson side of the former World Trade Center as bells rang in the distance, the two friends paused and separated.
As they stood among TV trucks, law enforcement officials and other observers, dust and dirt from the pit, one of Manhattan’s rare un-paved, plant free massive patches of earth, kicked up into the sky like a giant wave crashing against the sea wall. Interestingly, on the first anniversary of the horrors, dust had swirled from the freshly cleared site where the towers fell, in almost poetic cyclonic motion high into the sky.
This year it was different.
The two then rode a little further downtown, crossed the West Side Highway, hopped off the bikes and walked among the crowds past the Deutsche Bank building and around the corner headed towards the site itself. As they walked towards Liberty Street, now a giant observation area, they came upon Engine/Ladder Company 10, the firefighter’s station directly across from where the twin towers once stood.
On the side of the buildings wall, is the 56 foot bronze memorial structure that honors members of the New York City Fire department who died just across the street from the fire-station. The dramatic interactive memorial, designed by Martin V. Rambusch of the Rambusch Decorating Company, a gift from the Holland and Knight Law firm, was dedicated this past June 6, the four year anniversary of the conclusion of Fire Department recovery operations.
The top of the firefighter’s memorial reads “Dedicated to those who fell and to those who carry on- May we never forget.”
The wall was dotted with photographs of victims, mostly firefighters with names like Scott Larsen and Michael Kieffer.
Flowers and candles covered the base of the memorial and at one end of the structure, a large stuffed red heart that said in big gold letters, Angel.
All around, tears began their slow decent down countless faces forever marked by pain while the bells continued tolling in chaotic rhythms in the background.
While people of all shapes, shades and sizes stood quietly staring, reflecting or mourning, the two friends slipped into the huge shuffling crowds that moved at the steady pace of deceased head of state’s viewing.
Once past the site, the two crossed the street to find the bells they’d been hearing, four of them, all around the size of the famous one in Philadelphia, hanging at waist’s height with large ropes attached so that anyone could walk up and ring one in tribute to the fallen.
But, the earlier reverence was overshadowed by the piercing anger of protests competing for ears, cameras and notepads.
To some, the sadness of 9/11’s memory has been overshadowed by a tragic evolution of national and world events, politics and the selfish evidence of National division on vivid display at Ground Zero.
Clearly, the long extinguished flames of 9/11 continue to cast a pungent smell over a dvided nation and tumultuous world.
In the crowded blocks surrounding the 16 acres that changed the world, the smell was stronger than ever. The two friends inhaled the scene and mood around them in disoriented silence and sad awe.
Many in the crowd appeared to revel in the division, the conspiracy folks who claim “Bush knew” with their shrill condemnation of all that is mainstream to the “we support the President and our troops” crowd, brimming with self righteous certitude and shallow patriotic arrogance.
One wonders, if the angry people pointing, accusing, shouting and politically exploiting the deaths of nearly 3000 innocent souls had lost a loved one when the towers fell. In fact, one wonders if members of this circus were even in New York City on this day back in 2001.
According to a “New York Times” “CBS News” poll, around one third of New Yorker’s think about September 11th terrorist attacks every day.
As the two friends made their way through the newly formed town square, a police officer said she didn’t find the protesters offensive.
“They have a right to do and say what they want” she said.
Such is the beauty of a free society. But, had any of the shouting, pointing and exploiting people taken some time to go over to the memorial wall at Engine Company 10, and if they had, did they take a moment to digest and understand what it means to not forget?
The two friends had completed their annual ritual in less than two hours. It was time to get on their bikes, ride back uptown to the village, and contemplate all that has been lost.
A TRIP TO GROUND ZERO-FOURTH IN A SERIES by CODY LYON
(photo courtesy Anthony German)
A TRIP TO GROUND ZERO-FOURTH IN A SERIES
By CODY LYON
On a cool, clear September 11th 2006, at around one in the afternoon, two friends riding bicycles met at a fountain just off Christopher Street alongside the Hudson River in New York City. The fountain was the pre-chosen starting point for the two friend’s annual pilgrimage downtown to ground zero, a ritual they’ve repeated for the past four years. The two friends, both in New York during the attacks of 2001, experienced the immediate effects of the disaster in different ways. One witnessed United Flight 175’s crash into the South Tower from his fifth floor Soho apartment. Unbeknownst to him at the time, an old friend was on that plane. He later watched both buildings collapse from his building’s roof.
The other friend, at the time a resident of East 14th Street, was at first oblivious to the event’s magnitude. He was on his way to work at the World Financial Center finding himself underground for over two hours in a Subway tunnel when the towers fell. When he was finally evacuated at City Hall station, just a few blocks from the collapse, he emerged among dust and smoke in a changed world.
For the next few months, both friends, like millions of New York residents, inhaled the smell of death, experienced pain that still has the ability to overcome joy but all the while experiencing a new sense of connectivity with their city.
The two, one originally from Alabama, the other from Germany, had met through friends just a few months after 9/11. They first bonded that June at a large outdoor dance party on the Westside pier at 13th Street. As fireworks blasted and a disco version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow” played, the two took in the new downtown skyline, discussed the event and shed tears as the one who lost his friend in the crash, began to talk about his lost friend’s zest for life.
“He was such a fun guy, he’d be here now, if he were around” he said, with an almost empty smile on his face.
The bond between the two new made friends was instant.
Over four years later, pedaling slowly to Ground Zero down the bike path along the Hudson, several persons, some with photographs of smiling faces, wedding pictures or individuals in other happy moments, passed by. One elderly couple dressed in sensible shoes and matching white top’s, each wearing a photograph of a smiling bright eyed woman, held hands as they walked on the path uptown. Men and women in uniform walked by, many with peaceful expressions that have long since dealt with the horror and loss this day represents. Motorcycles, many with POW flags, whizzed by on the highway, while honking horns blew in the distance from back at Christopher Street, an area now called Point Gratitude.
When the two reached the Hudson side of the former World Trade Center as bells rang in the distance, the two friends paused and separated.
As they stood among TV trucks, law enforcement officials and other observers, dust and dirt from the pit, one of Manhattan’s rare un-paved, plant free massive patches of earth, kicked up into the sky like a giant wave crashing against the sea wall. Interestingly, on the first anniversary of the horrors, dust had swirled from the freshly cleared site where the towers fell, in almost poetic cyclonic motion high into the sky.
This year it was different.
The two then rode a little further downtown, crossed the West Side Highway, hopped off the bikes and walked among the crowds past the Deutsche Bank building and around the corner headed towards the site itself. As they walked towards Liberty Street, now a giant observation area, they came upon Engine/Ladder Company 10, the firefighter’s station directly across from where the twin towers once stood.
On the side of the buildings wall, is the 56 foot bronze memorial structure that honors members of the New York City Fire department who died just across the street from the fire-station. The dramatic interactive memorial, designed by Martin V. Rambusch of the Rambusch Decorating Company, a gift from the Holland and Knight Law firm, was dedicated this past June 6, the four year anniversary of the conclusion of Fire Department recovery operations.
The top of the firefighter’s memorial reads “Dedicated to those who fell and to those who carry on- May we never forget.”
The wall was dotted with photographs of victims, mostly firefighters with names like Scott Larsen and Michael Kieffer.
Flowers and candles covered the base of the memorial and at one end of the structure, a large stuffed red heart that said in big gold letters, Angel.
All around, tears began their slow decent down countless faces forever marked by pain while the bells continued tolling in chaotic rhythms in the background.
While people of all shapes, shades and sizes stood quietly staring, reflecting or mourning, the two friends slipped into the huge shuffling crowds that moved at the steady pace of deceased head of state’s viewing.
Once past the site, the two crossed the street to find the bells they’d been hearing, four of them, all around the size of the famous one in Philadelphia, hanging at waist’s height with large ropes attached so that anyone could walk up and ring one in tribute to the fallen.
But, the earlier reverence was overshadowed by the piercing anger of protests competing for ears, cameras and notepads.
To some, the sadness of 9/11’s memory has been overshadowed by a tragic evolution of national and world events, politics and the selfish evidence of National division on vivid display at Ground Zero.
Clearly, the long extinguished flames of 9/11 continue to cast a pungent smell over a dvided nation and tumultuous world.
In the crowded blocks surrounding the 16 acres that changed the world, the smell was stronger than ever. The two friends inhaled the scene and mood around them in disoriented silence and sad awe.
Many in the crowd appeared to revel in the division, the conspiracy folks who claim “Bush knew” with their shrill condemnation of all that is mainstream to the “we support the President and our troops” crowd, brimming with self righteous certitude and shallow patriotic arrogance.
One wonders, if the angry people pointing, accusing, shouting and politically exploiting the deaths of nearly 3000 innocent souls had lost a loved one when the towers fell. In fact, one wonders if members of this circus were even in New York City on this day back in 2001.
According to a “New York Times” “CBS News” poll, around one third of New Yorker’s think about September 11th terrorist attacks every day.
As the two friends made their way through the newly formed town square, a police officer said she didn’t find the protesters offensive.
“They have a right to do and say what they want” she said.
Such is the beauty of a free society. But, had any of the shouting, pointing and exploiting people taken some time to go over to the memorial wall at Engine Company 10, and if they had, did they take a moment to digest and understand what it means to not forget?
The two friends had completed their annual ritual in less than two hours. It was time to get on their bikes, ride back uptown to the village, and contemplate all that has been lost.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Descent into political chaos
by Cody Lyon
On Wednesday, September 10, 2008, New York City saw puffy clouds, cool breezes and sunshine that gently bathed the city's tall buildings in crisp golden sunlight. The bike path along the Hudson was filled with cyclists and joggers while on the streets, tourists made their way to places like Times Square or the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty.
Outside towers near Wall Street, office workers took smoking breaks enjoying the hints of autumn while others lunched on benches tossing an occasional crumb to pigeons while traffic whizzed by on the West Side Highway. From an observation deck of an individual life in the city, the island of Manhattan was enjoying a beautiful day.
Still, there is no doubt, countless New Yorkers have been engrossed by the ongoing nonsense gripping the current contest for the land's most important political office a horse race that has recently been punctuated by references to dogs, swine and lipstick.
But with that captivation has come an increasing sense of worry and frustration, as many New Yorkers watch and listen to a political contest that has in many minds descended into a chaotic diversion and not a debate over party ideology, values and solutions.
Here it is, the second week of September and despite a Congressional Budget Office report saying the United States deficit is projected to rise to $407 billion, along with a continued rash of failing financial institutions, the nightmare of misled war in Iraq, a mere treading of water in the land of the Taliban, Afghanistan, despite the fact that 50 million un-insured, a disappearing middle class, the headlines are filled with talk of pitbulls, swine and lipstick, as if some sort of Animal Farm like fever had stolen the meat from the potato's of reality that politics is meant to address.
Even on this day before the anniversary of what is arguably the city's greatest tragedy, a crime of death, destruction and horror, a memory that still blips loudly on the radar screens of so many New Yorkers and Americans everywhere, text messages were being sent and phone calls made among political junkies who call themselves Democrat as they worried aloud that the party values they support were facing increasingly tremendous obstacles come November.
For many, some who call themselves transplants, those who originally come from places far away from the so called sophistication, the bustle and hustle, those who ran away to New York to exist in tolerance and acceptance, an added sense of urgency was setting in as polls showed increasing numbers for the party they held responsible for exploiting pain and tragedy for political gain.
They wondered why, in an election year where the baggage of the past administration would simply and dramatically sink the hopes of Republicans maintaining control of the executive branch, the Democrats were failing in their attempts to make victory, perhaps more appropriate, change, a "sure thing" in November
Since the days of September 11, 2001, New York City has moved on. Sure, the memories are still there, the pain, the hurt and the anger, but regardless, the busy lot that New Yorkers are, dictates staying on their toes, and that includes politics.
In one phone call, a CEO of a small marketing firm downtown said that whomever devised the coronation of Sarah Palin as a running mate for the 25 year veteran of Congress was "simply genius."
He went on to say that they, the Republican strategists, long ago mastered how to get into the psyche of America's heartland.
Just what is that psyche?
In a chapter tilted Persecuted, Powerless and blind from his book "What's the matter with Kansas", author Thomas Frank asserts that in what he calls 'red land' "both workers and their bosses are supposed to be united in disgust with those affected college boys at the next table, prattling on about French cheese and villas in Tuscany and the big ideas for running things that they read in books.
According to the transplant marketing exec in Manhattan, the people described in that book are his family, his family's friends and other people who see the antithesis of those college boys in Sarah Palin and John McCain.
"David Axelrod just got his head handed to him on a silver platter," he yelled into his phone.
Not that the marketing exec is happy about that. Rather, he says, the Democrats, i.e. Obama and his team must rise up, perhaps take a humble pill, and somehow figure out how to "inspire" the reportedly "more than half" of the nation's voters. He, his running mate and his surrogates must figure out a way to re-inject the hope that a better America is somehow attainable through the political process, a poisoned process that they can overcome, if they maintain their sincere message of opportunity for all.
To be fair, the marketing man on the phone was a Hillary supporter during the primary and as of just a few weeks ago, made no denials of his reluctance to grudgingly support the Obama-Biden ticket. But, with the new Alaska superstar stealing the thunder from everyone else in the campaign, he says he realized that his frustration was geared more towards the American people, and perhaps the media for not highlighting the crucial differences in the candidates and what it is they intend to do, or not do, once in power.
Plain and simple, how can Democrats spell out to the people that voting for the Republican candidate would most likely do little to change their lives from the current state it is in now?
Still, during the chat, he said some members of his own mostly politically moderate working class family had been energized by Palin simply because they can identify with her.
"They really don't care about her stand on issues, it's about a person that's like them, not some fancy pants elite politician like Obama," he said.
At that moment in the conversation, thinking back in political time to the Democratic Primaries, one can't help but recall the moment that Senator Hillary Clinton seemed to wake up and embrace the populism espoused by the now "disgraced" John Edwards. It was at that point Clinton appeared to whip her campaign out of an entitled, arrogant state of being and began to aggressively market herself as someone who passionately embraced the populist issues of all the people in a manner that was purely political, but somehow sincere. In the waning days of her campaign, Clinton was able to work that political formula, while guzzling whiskey shots and beer all the way to several victories, but alas, to little to late.
For some reason, despite being a Clinton, people began to believe, that this candidate would wake up every morning and fight for their interests. They saw someone who would seek to bridge the glaring economic inequity that had helped further foster the class divides of the states. Perhaps, they even began to believe that she was sincere.
It is imperative that the Obama campaign figure out its way in doing the same, perhaps not a carbon copy repeat of the Clinton awakening but certainly not the sad tit for tat insult show that the campaign has engaged in along with the Republicans. Otherwise, millions of Americans will continue on their quest to choose a candidate they can relate to.
Meanwhile, in New York City, the anniversary of that day that shook modern America to its very foundation, tested its resolve and for a brief shining moment, unified a nation so tightly, will come and go just like every other day.
On Wednesday, September 10, 2008, New York City saw puffy clouds, cool breezes and sunshine that gently bathed the city's tall buildings in crisp golden sunlight. The bike path along the Hudson was filled with cyclists and joggers while on the streets, tourists made their way to places like Times Square or the ferry out to the Statue of Liberty.
Outside towers near Wall Street, office workers took smoking breaks enjoying the hints of autumn while others lunched on benches tossing an occasional crumb to pigeons while traffic whizzed by on the West Side Highway. From an observation deck of an individual life in the city, the island of Manhattan was enjoying a beautiful day.
Still, there is no doubt, countless New Yorkers have been engrossed by the ongoing nonsense gripping the current contest for the land's most important political office a horse race that has recently been punctuated by references to dogs, swine and lipstick.
But with that captivation has come an increasing sense of worry and frustration, as many New Yorkers watch and listen to a political contest that has in many minds descended into a chaotic diversion and not a debate over party ideology, values and solutions.
Here it is, the second week of September and despite a Congressional Budget Office report saying the United States deficit is projected to rise to $407 billion, along with a continued rash of failing financial institutions, the nightmare of misled war in Iraq, a mere treading of water in the land of the Taliban, Afghanistan, despite the fact that 50 million un-insured, a disappearing middle class, the headlines are filled with talk of pitbulls, swine and lipstick, as if some sort of Animal Farm like fever had stolen the meat from the potato's of reality that politics is meant to address.
Even on this day before the anniversary of what is arguably the city's greatest tragedy, a crime of death, destruction and horror, a memory that still blips loudly on the radar screens of so many New Yorkers and Americans everywhere, text messages were being sent and phone calls made among political junkies who call themselves Democrat as they worried aloud that the party values they support were facing increasingly tremendous obstacles come November.
For many, some who call themselves transplants, those who originally come from places far away from the so called sophistication, the bustle and hustle, those who ran away to New York to exist in tolerance and acceptance, an added sense of urgency was setting in as polls showed increasing numbers for the party they held responsible for exploiting pain and tragedy for political gain.
They wondered why, in an election year where the baggage of the past administration would simply and dramatically sink the hopes of Republicans maintaining control of the executive branch, the Democrats were failing in their attempts to make victory, perhaps more appropriate, change, a "sure thing" in November
Since the days of September 11, 2001, New York City has moved on. Sure, the memories are still there, the pain, the hurt and the anger, but regardless, the busy lot that New Yorkers are, dictates staying on their toes, and that includes politics.
In one phone call, a CEO of a small marketing firm downtown said that whomever devised the coronation of Sarah Palin as a running mate for the 25 year veteran of Congress was "simply genius."
He went on to say that they, the Republican strategists, long ago mastered how to get into the psyche of America's heartland.
Just what is that psyche?
In a chapter tilted Persecuted, Powerless and blind from his book "What's the matter with Kansas", author Thomas Frank asserts that in what he calls 'red land' "both workers and their bosses are supposed to be united in disgust with those affected college boys at the next table, prattling on about French cheese and villas in Tuscany and the big ideas for running things that they read in books.
According to the transplant marketing exec in Manhattan, the people described in that book are his family, his family's friends and other people who see the antithesis of those college boys in Sarah Palin and John McCain.
"David Axelrod just got his head handed to him on a silver platter," he yelled into his phone.
Not that the marketing exec is happy about that. Rather, he says, the Democrats, i.e. Obama and his team must rise up, perhaps take a humble pill, and somehow figure out how to "inspire" the reportedly "more than half" of the nation's voters. He, his running mate and his surrogates must figure out a way to re-inject the hope that a better America is somehow attainable through the political process, a poisoned process that they can overcome, if they maintain their sincere message of opportunity for all.
To be fair, the marketing man on the phone was a Hillary supporter during the primary and as of just a few weeks ago, made no denials of his reluctance to grudgingly support the Obama-Biden ticket. But, with the new Alaska superstar stealing the thunder from everyone else in the campaign, he says he realized that his frustration was geared more towards the American people, and perhaps the media for not highlighting the crucial differences in the candidates and what it is they intend to do, or not do, once in power.
Plain and simple, how can Democrats spell out to the people that voting for the Republican candidate would most likely do little to change their lives from the current state it is in now?
Still, during the chat, he said some members of his own mostly politically moderate working class family had been energized by Palin simply because they can identify with her.
"They really don't care about her stand on issues, it's about a person that's like them, not some fancy pants elite politician like Obama," he said.
At that moment in the conversation, thinking back in political time to the Democratic Primaries, one can't help but recall the moment that Senator Hillary Clinton seemed to wake up and embrace the populism espoused by the now "disgraced" John Edwards. It was at that point Clinton appeared to whip her campaign out of an entitled, arrogant state of being and began to aggressively market herself as someone who passionately embraced the populist issues of all the people in a manner that was purely political, but somehow sincere. In the waning days of her campaign, Clinton was able to work that political formula, while guzzling whiskey shots and beer all the way to several victories, but alas, to little to late.
For some reason, despite being a Clinton, people began to believe, that this candidate would wake up every morning and fight for their interests. They saw someone who would seek to bridge the glaring economic inequity that had helped further foster the class divides of the states. Perhaps, they even began to believe that she was sincere.
It is imperative that the Obama campaign figure out its way in doing the same, perhaps not a carbon copy repeat of the Clinton awakening but certainly not the sad tit for tat insult show that the campaign has engaged in along with the Republicans. Otherwise, millions of Americans will continue on their quest to choose a candidate they can relate to.
Meanwhile, in New York City, the anniversary of that day that shook modern America to its very foundation, tested its resolve and for a brief shining moment, unified a nation so tightly, will come and go just like every other day.
McCain gains among women voters (REUTERS)
McCain gains among women voters (REUTERS)
(02:08) Report
Sep 9 - McCain's surge in the polls since the Republican Convention is attributable to a shift in support among white women, who now give McCain a 12 point lead.
According to a Washington Post/ABC poll, among all voters who supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries-- nearly a quarter-- about 5 million voters-- say they plan to support John McCain in November.
Jon Decker reports.
SOUNDBITE:Brian Darling, senior fellow, Heritage Foundation
(02:08) Report
Sep 9 - McCain's surge in the polls since the Republican Convention is attributable to a shift in support among white women, who now give McCain a 12 point lead.
According to a Washington Post/ABC poll, among all voters who supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries-- nearly a quarter-- about 5 million voters-- say they plan to support John McCain in November.
Jon Decker reports.
SOUNDBITE:Brian Darling, senior fellow, Heritage Foundation
Thursday, September 04, 2008
The Truth about Pit Bulls and Lipstick
by Cody Lyon
Pit bulls with lipstick aren't an especially pretty sight. In more harsh terms, they smell of oxymorons, sort of wolves in sheep's clothing.
At this week's Republican Convention in St Paul Minnesota, Senator John McCain's new running mate Sarah Palin said “the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull” was “lipstick.”
Now it's not that pit bulls themselves aren't lovely canines, when they are given love, and trained properly by caring owners. These pooches can be truly some of the most affectionate animals around
But with her lipstick on a terrier analogy, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin set the house on fire at the GOP Convention after pontificating her resume, revealing some of her private and public persona to a curious nation by charming the audience, even introducing her family in the more personal eagerly anticipated getting to know you portion of the speech heard round the country.
But then the lipstick came off and the ideological pit bull stepped up to bat as Palin tossed out some classic right wing red meat into the Republican "pound" by lashing out at the "elite" media, Washington insiders, her opponents record's and with an an almost deceitful fashion, utilizing her sisterhood to reach out to women voters by vaguely implying she had co-opted Senator Hillary Clinton's role as the new "woman candidate."
It was and is politics at its most clever. It is also politics at its most misleading at least as far as women's and other social issues are concerned.
Still, according to a number of Republican spokespeople and pundits, much of the vetting, curiosity, criticism and shock over Senator John McCain's politically crafty pick of Palin is simply media hype that has its roots in sexism.
But, that's when the Republicans walk right into the land of the ridiculous by participating in a political system gone awry that has seen an epidemic of kitchen table issues going on the back burner while image and pre-packaged selfish identity political sell tactics command the front and center of political discourse.
As for sexist media coverage, there is no valid comparison between the treatment dished out on Hillary Clinton and the miniscule reportage on Governor Sarah Palin. The media and the people of America practically just met the Alaska Governor. Clinton, on the other hand, has seen her record, rhetoric, other assorted baggage and even her pantsuits picked clean by the press, much of which, covertly expressed its disdain of anything Clinton with shrill tactics that called into question character and motive, thus, at least in part, contributing to one of the boldest political derailments in American history.
In Governor Palin's case, it might appear sexist when some question whether this Mother of five will have time for her children as vice President. True as well, some have made fun of her pistol packin, assault rife shootin NRA endorsement, echoes of the Democratic Primary Annie Oakley snip by Obama a few months ago when Hillary talked about going hunting, Yes, there will be unfair attention paid to Palin's children's private lives, an area that should be off limits since, in fact, it's really nobody's business but her and her family's and how the Palin's handle their affairs doesn't really affect most American's elderly parents social security checks or whether or not their child goes to a good school.
Of course, there will be those, like the many individuals who will not vote for Obama because of his race, or in fact those who didn't vote for Hillary because of her gender, who might avoid casting a ballot for a ticket that could potentially lead to a female President, a nugget of sad commentary on a still maturing nation. But, really, that's all irrelevant in the grand scope of potential tangible change considering the fact that one positive that will result from the outcome of this race will be, no matter what the narrow minded wish, a historic first will be seen in the White House in January.
Still, as we've seen throughout this election process, the power of self identity politics is alive and well and it is in part a reaction to our collective struggles with racial prejudices and a continuing culture of sexism. More unfortunate, is the power it possesses over an electorate that at times appears to lose site of what is truly at hand in this race to Pennsylvania Avenue.
Example?.
Could it actually be a sign of pervasive sexism, that a woman candidate believes that in order to win her party's approval she must prove she's tough enough to run a nation by invoking analogous machismo by holding up a dog with a less than gentle reputation as an example of her strength? Is Palin and her party's attempt to elevate her into a tomboyish tough love Mom with conservative virtues a party that deep down, at least appears to be complacent with a woman knowing her place in the grand political game of the true powers that be in the western world? While it might be true, that the Republican party claims to be a party that endorses a stronger philosophy of individual responsibility, does the scent of hypocrisy not waif through the minds of millions of women who recognize it is also a party that would deny them the right to choose?
Perhaps on a more basic level it might be worth considering the pit bull and lipstick analogy. Like any dog, a pit bull depends on its owner and trainer for guidance. As most people know, there have been countless news reports over recent years detailing pit bull owners who have bred and trained the dogs for cruel and vicious fighting matches. Usually, the dogs in question were seen as mere objects used by cruel, self serving owners who engaged in inhumane treatment all for victory in the dog fight ring, regardless of the cost to the animal itself.
On the day after the speech, New York City tabloid headlines were screaming pit bull with lipstick. But, there is a more important story about Governor Palin's politically clever line and her party. Palin, like any other up and coming political figure has been trained, mentored and has let it be known that she subscribes to an Party ideology that has for the most part been responsible for one of saddest, most selfish economic, disastrous foreign policy reigns of our century. The results have led to one of the most destructive collective psychological downturns that this country has ever seen. Albeit hard to accurately measure, American's are not happy with the direction the nation is now heading. Gloom is in the air as an occasional news report or perhaps more revealing, a casual conversation at the grocery store details heartache and struggle, perhaps Americans witness a foreclosure sign on a neighbor's home, maybe the reality comes in the form of a knock on the door from a military officer with bad news regarding a loved one who bravely followed orders from a commander in chief who's administration now appears to have engaged in the most sinful form of deceit.
No matter how much lipstick one applies on the conditions and philosophy, facts bubble forth. And, once weaved together, those facts are very telling. And, it is imperative that voters do their homework and look beyond the makeup of both parties and understand what is at stake here.
Regardless of Sarah Palin's gender, her charisma or any questions on negatives and positives regarding her ability to lead, there are greater, more stark choices in this election. In the end, despite the historic change our nation will witness with the election of either of these tickets, sexism, racism and all the prejudicial and reactionary baggage that comes with it will continue to poison our society. But, putting "lipstick" on Party ideology that endorses policy that has led us to what could be called the miserable place so much of our nation finds itself in today, only threatens the realistic changes that government can indeed make in all American's lives.
Pit bulls with lipstick aren't an especially pretty sight. In more harsh terms, they smell of oxymorons, sort of wolves in sheep's clothing.
At this week's Republican Convention in St Paul Minnesota, Senator John McCain's new running mate Sarah Palin said “the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull” was “lipstick.”
Now it's not that pit bulls themselves aren't lovely canines, when they are given love, and trained properly by caring owners. These pooches can be truly some of the most affectionate animals around
But with her lipstick on a terrier analogy, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin set the house on fire at the GOP Convention after pontificating her resume, revealing some of her private and public persona to a curious nation by charming the audience, even introducing her family in the more personal eagerly anticipated getting to know you portion of the speech heard round the country.
But then the lipstick came off and the ideological pit bull stepped up to bat as Palin tossed out some classic right wing red meat into the Republican "pound" by lashing out at the "elite" media, Washington insiders, her opponents record's and with an an almost deceitful fashion, utilizing her sisterhood to reach out to women voters by vaguely implying she had co-opted Senator Hillary Clinton's role as the new "woman candidate."
It was and is politics at its most clever. It is also politics at its most misleading at least as far as women's and other social issues are concerned.
Still, according to a number of Republican spokespeople and pundits, much of the vetting, curiosity, criticism and shock over Senator John McCain's politically crafty pick of Palin is simply media hype that has its roots in sexism.
But, that's when the Republicans walk right into the land of the ridiculous by participating in a political system gone awry that has seen an epidemic of kitchen table issues going on the back burner while image and pre-packaged selfish identity political sell tactics command the front and center of political discourse.
As for sexist media coverage, there is no valid comparison between the treatment dished out on Hillary Clinton and the miniscule reportage on Governor Sarah Palin. The media and the people of America practically just met the Alaska Governor. Clinton, on the other hand, has seen her record, rhetoric, other assorted baggage and even her pantsuits picked clean by the press, much of which, covertly expressed its disdain of anything Clinton with shrill tactics that called into question character and motive, thus, at least in part, contributing to one of the boldest political derailments in American history.
In Governor Palin's case, it might appear sexist when some question whether this Mother of five will have time for her children as vice President. True as well, some have made fun of her pistol packin, assault rife shootin NRA endorsement, echoes of the Democratic Primary Annie Oakley snip by Obama a few months ago when Hillary talked about going hunting, Yes, there will be unfair attention paid to Palin's children's private lives, an area that should be off limits since, in fact, it's really nobody's business but her and her family's and how the Palin's handle their affairs doesn't really affect most American's elderly parents social security checks or whether or not their child goes to a good school.
Of course, there will be those, like the many individuals who will not vote for Obama because of his race, or in fact those who didn't vote for Hillary because of her gender, who might avoid casting a ballot for a ticket that could potentially lead to a female President, a nugget of sad commentary on a still maturing nation. But, really, that's all irrelevant in the grand scope of potential tangible change considering the fact that one positive that will result from the outcome of this race will be, no matter what the narrow minded wish, a historic first will be seen in the White House in January.
Still, as we've seen throughout this election process, the power of self identity politics is alive and well and it is in part a reaction to our collective struggles with racial prejudices and a continuing culture of sexism. More unfortunate, is the power it possesses over an electorate that at times appears to lose site of what is truly at hand in this race to Pennsylvania Avenue.
Example?.
Could it actually be a sign of pervasive sexism, that a woman candidate believes that in order to win her party's approval she must prove she's tough enough to run a nation by invoking analogous machismo by holding up a dog with a less than gentle reputation as an example of her strength? Is Palin and her party's attempt to elevate her into a tomboyish tough love Mom with conservative virtues a party that deep down, at least appears to be complacent with a woman knowing her place in the grand political game of the true powers that be in the western world? While it might be true, that the Republican party claims to be a party that endorses a stronger philosophy of individual responsibility, does the scent of hypocrisy not waif through the minds of millions of women who recognize it is also a party that would deny them the right to choose?
Perhaps on a more basic level it might be worth considering the pit bull and lipstick analogy. Like any dog, a pit bull depends on its owner and trainer for guidance. As most people know, there have been countless news reports over recent years detailing pit bull owners who have bred and trained the dogs for cruel and vicious fighting matches. Usually, the dogs in question were seen as mere objects used by cruel, self serving owners who engaged in inhumane treatment all for victory in the dog fight ring, regardless of the cost to the animal itself.
On the day after the speech, New York City tabloid headlines were screaming pit bull with lipstick. But, there is a more important story about Governor Palin's politically clever line and her party. Palin, like any other up and coming political figure has been trained, mentored and has let it be known that she subscribes to an Party ideology that has for the most part been responsible for one of saddest, most selfish economic, disastrous foreign policy reigns of our century. The results have led to one of the most destructive collective psychological downturns that this country has ever seen. Albeit hard to accurately measure, American's are not happy with the direction the nation is now heading. Gloom is in the air as an occasional news report or perhaps more revealing, a casual conversation at the grocery store details heartache and struggle, perhaps Americans witness a foreclosure sign on a neighbor's home, maybe the reality comes in the form of a knock on the door from a military officer with bad news regarding a loved one who bravely followed orders from a commander in chief who's administration now appears to have engaged in the most sinful form of deceit.
No matter how much lipstick one applies on the conditions and philosophy, facts bubble forth. And, once weaved together, those facts are very telling. And, it is imperative that voters do their homework and look beyond the makeup of both parties and understand what is at stake here.
Regardless of Sarah Palin's gender, her charisma or any questions on negatives and positives regarding her ability to lead, there are greater, more stark choices in this election. In the end, despite the historic change our nation will witness with the election of either of these tickets, sexism, racism and all the prejudicial and reactionary baggage that comes with it will continue to poison our society. But, putting "lipstick" on Party ideology that endorses policy that has led us to what could be called the miserable place so much of our nation finds itself in today, only threatens the realistic changes that government can indeed make in all American's lives.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Values verses Candidates
By Cody Lyon
(OPINION)
In what was probably the most important speech of his political career thus far, Barack Obama used his acceptance speech at the Democratic party convention to light up the election season stratosphere in ways that both inspired and challenged voters to consider the stark choices being offered this fall.
In one of the speeches' more powerful moments, Obama said "America, we are better than these last eight years," and "we are a better country than this."
For anyone that calls themselves middle class, lower middle class, poor or whatever wonkish and impersonal term that gets applied by countless experts, politicians or pundit, the tea leaves seem to indicate a resounding... he's correct.
Basically, over the past eight years, we've witnessed actions by our executive branch that have further tested much of the nation's mantle of trust in government. We find ourselves in a what might be called a nationwide psychological malaise, an unfortunate sense of collective frustration, even depression. The litany of almost incomprehensible events administrated by the current White House, from misleading tactics that led to the invasion of Iraq to allegations of abuses of power in our Justice System to a tax code that rewards the country's most wealthy while cold shoulders are turned to struggling homeowners, those without healthcare and the longrunning continued fostering of cruel cultures of poverty, inequity and damaged ladders of opportunity.
In short, the sense of gloom in America is tangible.
An April 3 "CBS News" poll found that 81 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the wrong direction.
Still, during the Democratic party primaries, many Americans became more engrossed by the petty, but typical political drama's of those days instead of debates and analysis of policy specifics.
At times, it seemed that many Democrats were more engaged by personalities, baggage and images.
As the convention approached, many pundits and others with platforms still appeared to be more focused on the drama's between the Hillary's and the Barack's rather than the real drama of reality on the ground that is America, a drama that was continuing its pronounced assent onto the stage of the nation's sad collective reality.
At the stadium acceptance speech, Senator Obama did his best at clearing up the mess by reaching out to those Democrats, who have expressed leeriness over his relative inexperience in foreign policy, his un-tested mettle in dealing with powerful big business lobbies or, more simply, what they see as a starry eyed idealist, who like many humans upon entering the shark infested political waters of Washington, often succumb to the molding of powers that be, forces that in the end, shape policy, policies that in the end, are the nuts and bolts of our economy, defense, education system, health care and in the end, how this has impacted our collective national psyche.
Most Democrats hope and feel he succeeded in alleviating those fears for now.
But there was something else that took place that night. If nothing else, Obama, if only for a moment, lifted the nation's psyche and in some ways succeeded in inspiring all Americans to believe that the dream is still alive in this land of freedom, where the bells of democracy occasionally ring with messages of hope, not the fear and gloom that has crippled the very essence of who and what we as a people stand for and strive to be.
Obama's uplifting moment followed an by his former opponent when she did her best to further bridge the divide between those Democrats who express leeriness about Obama.
Just two nights before the Obama moment, Senator Hillary Clinton stood before her supporters on the floor along with millions of viewers and voters who had long held to the belief that it was she, not Obama, who should have been chosen to lead the party to a November victory against the Republican party.
Television reports showed delegates in tears, but, even still, Clinton directed a laser eye at her supporters and made it clear, she is not their therapist or for that fact, their Mother.
Clinton was clear, a vote for either her, or for Senator Obama, was so much more than a vote for an individual candidate's image, personality, for that matter, race, gender or origin or rhetoric.
No matter what a delegate or voter's preferences between the two candidates, a more simple question of fundamental political party values is at stake.
In these modern times when a campaign song like "Happy Days are here again" seems silly, in these days of Presidential administrations filled with countless advisors, policy shapers and other insiders who pontificate from above to the 'chosen ones' occupying the oval office, it is imperative that voters take into account what are clearly package deals, they are the packages that each party embodies, and each is filled with stark differences and competing ideologies.
For anyone on the political fence, it might be especially important to remember some simple basics.
Both candidates Obama and Clinton embody the values of the party they love, the Democratic. At the heart of their political souls, they embody the political values of Ted Kennedy, for that matter his late brother, former President John Kennedy. They are the political offspring a a party who produced a President that saw the nation through the horrors of the second world war, the same President who created the "New Deal" and social programs that elevated America into a more humane existence.
The political policy values that Senator Obama embodies are the values of another President, ironically from a Southern State, a President who was the leader of a party that when the poisons of racism dripped from the lips of many of his former allies in the 1960's, chose morality over politics and signed the Voting rights Act into law. This is the party that subscribes to the values of a President who more recently, in the 1990's brilliantly reached across party lines and oversaw one of the greatest economic expansions this nation has ever witnessed, a President who bravely brought seemingly controversial issues and concerns to the political table, opening the door to a more tolerant and accepting society for LGBT Americans among others.
Democratic Party values are seen in the work of a Peanut Farmer from Plains Georgia, a former President in dire time who is now an international statesman and peacemaker who travels the world mediating disputes, risking his own legacy in the face of controversy and stands and speaks to what is right and fair and who still teaches a Sunday School class at least once a month back in Plains.
Barack Obama and his candidacy embody the values of what some conservatives like to call liberal, but are in truth, values based in compassion, values that encourage the hopes of the less fortunate, the rescue of a sadly disappearing middle class, the fair and decent rewards for hard work and life played by the rules . They are also the values of those who demand a solid ladder of economic and educational opportunity in every town, county and state in the country, ladders available for every American willing to climb.
They are the values of a political party that will hopefully seek out tangible solutions that perhaps must start with self examination and acceptance of the humbling reality that we as a nation have allowed our own arrogance threaten our true greatness.
That said, millions pray, that this chosen Democratic candidate, if he indeed wins, will embody the values and good sense that recognizes and respects the responsibilities of perhaps his most crucial role, commander in chief. They pray for a President who will not play upon the fears of a traumatized nation and will only call upon our military when it is essential to the preservation of our nation's security.
Never again should we as a people allow a military excursion into a land that has led our great military men and women, as well as their families, into what has become one of our longest running nightmares. And, never again should every member of the nation not be called upon in some way to share the pain and offer some form of sacrifice, like those military families either through some sort of mandatory public service or higher taxes for our most wealthy citizens and corporations.
Perhaps, at its very deepest core, the Democratic party embodies the values of a great nation.
Now, there are those who may say that this young, relatively inexperienced candidate is not ready, or they may secretly hold reservations over his ethnicity, his upbringing perhaps even his name. They may see a candidate that they could never possibly relate to on a more personal level. Perhaps they see a candidate who they feel they simply don't know enough about. But despite such tragic misgivings among the electorate, there is and are greater, quiet frankly, less selfish reasons to carefully consider jumping off the fence of indecision in November.
In the end, voters must make their decision based on what is clearly a choice of packages. And, they must remember, beneath the wrapping paper of campaign ads, rhetoric, assorted controversies and infighting, there are solid differences between these two Party ideologies. Whichever ideology succeeds in selling itself best, could determine the outcome of the election. Whichever candidate that voters ultimately choose, will place in power a party ideology that will perhaps shape the future of our nation, perhaps too, our world.
(OPINION)
In what was probably the most important speech of his political career thus far, Barack Obama used his acceptance speech at the Democratic party convention to light up the election season stratosphere in ways that both inspired and challenged voters to consider the stark choices being offered this fall.
In one of the speeches' more powerful moments, Obama said "America, we are better than these last eight years," and "we are a better country than this."
For anyone that calls themselves middle class, lower middle class, poor or whatever wonkish and impersonal term that gets applied by countless experts, politicians or pundit, the tea leaves seem to indicate a resounding... he's correct.
Basically, over the past eight years, we've witnessed actions by our executive branch that have further tested much of the nation's mantle of trust in government. We find ourselves in a what might be called a nationwide psychological malaise, an unfortunate sense of collective frustration, even depression. The litany of almost incomprehensible events administrated by the current White House, from misleading tactics that led to the invasion of Iraq to allegations of abuses of power in our Justice System to a tax code that rewards the country's most wealthy while cold shoulders are turned to struggling homeowners, those without healthcare and the longrunning continued fostering of cruel cultures of poverty, inequity and damaged ladders of opportunity.
In short, the sense of gloom in America is tangible.
An April 3 "CBS News" poll found that 81 percent of Americans believe the United States is headed in the wrong direction.
Still, during the Democratic party primaries, many Americans became more engrossed by the petty, but typical political drama's of those days instead of debates and analysis of policy specifics.
At times, it seemed that many Democrats were more engaged by personalities, baggage and images.
As the convention approached, many pundits and others with platforms still appeared to be more focused on the drama's between the Hillary's and the Barack's rather than the real drama of reality on the ground that is America, a drama that was continuing its pronounced assent onto the stage of the nation's sad collective reality.
At the stadium acceptance speech, Senator Obama did his best at clearing up the mess by reaching out to those Democrats, who have expressed leeriness over his relative inexperience in foreign policy, his un-tested mettle in dealing with powerful big business lobbies or, more simply, what they see as a starry eyed idealist, who like many humans upon entering the shark infested political waters of Washington, often succumb to the molding of powers that be, forces that in the end, shape policy, policies that in the end, are the nuts and bolts of our economy, defense, education system, health care and in the end, how this has impacted our collective national psyche.
Most Democrats hope and feel he succeeded in alleviating those fears for now.
But there was something else that took place that night. If nothing else, Obama, if only for a moment, lifted the nation's psyche and in some ways succeeded in inspiring all Americans to believe that the dream is still alive in this land of freedom, where the bells of democracy occasionally ring with messages of hope, not the fear and gloom that has crippled the very essence of who and what we as a people stand for and strive to be.
Obama's uplifting moment followed an by his former opponent when she did her best to further bridge the divide between those Democrats who express leeriness about Obama.
Just two nights before the Obama moment, Senator Hillary Clinton stood before her supporters on the floor along with millions of viewers and voters who had long held to the belief that it was she, not Obama, who should have been chosen to lead the party to a November victory against the Republican party.
Television reports showed delegates in tears, but, even still, Clinton directed a laser eye at her supporters and made it clear, she is not their therapist or for that fact, their Mother.
Clinton was clear, a vote for either her, or for Senator Obama, was so much more than a vote for an individual candidate's image, personality, for that matter, race, gender or origin or rhetoric.
No matter what a delegate or voter's preferences between the two candidates, a more simple question of fundamental political party values is at stake.
In these modern times when a campaign song like "Happy Days are here again" seems silly, in these days of Presidential administrations filled with countless advisors, policy shapers and other insiders who pontificate from above to the 'chosen ones' occupying the oval office, it is imperative that voters take into account what are clearly package deals, they are the packages that each party embodies, and each is filled with stark differences and competing ideologies.
For anyone on the political fence, it might be especially important to remember some simple basics.
Both candidates Obama and Clinton embody the values of the party they love, the Democratic. At the heart of their political souls, they embody the political values of Ted Kennedy, for that matter his late brother, former President John Kennedy. They are the political offspring a a party who produced a President that saw the nation through the horrors of the second world war, the same President who created the "New Deal" and social programs that elevated America into a more humane existence.
The political policy values that Senator Obama embodies are the values of another President, ironically from a Southern State, a President who was the leader of a party that when the poisons of racism dripped from the lips of many of his former allies in the 1960's, chose morality over politics and signed the Voting rights Act into law. This is the party that subscribes to the values of a President who more recently, in the 1990's brilliantly reached across party lines and oversaw one of the greatest economic expansions this nation has ever witnessed, a President who bravely brought seemingly controversial issues and concerns to the political table, opening the door to a more tolerant and accepting society for LGBT Americans among others.
Democratic Party values are seen in the work of a Peanut Farmer from Plains Georgia, a former President in dire time who is now an international statesman and peacemaker who travels the world mediating disputes, risking his own legacy in the face of controversy and stands and speaks to what is right and fair and who still teaches a Sunday School class at least once a month back in Plains.
Barack Obama and his candidacy embody the values of what some conservatives like to call liberal, but are in truth, values based in compassion, values that encourage the hopes of the less fortunate, the rescue of a sadly disappearing middle class, the fair and decent rewards for hard work and life played by the rules . They are also the values of those who demand a solid ladder of economic and educational opportunity in every town, county and state in the country, ladders available for every American willing to climb.
They are the values of a political party that will hopefully seek out tangible solutions that perhaps must start with self examination and acceptance of the humbling reality that we as a nation have allowed our own arrogance threaten our true greatness.
That said, millions pray, that this chosen Democratic candidate, if he indeed wins, will embody the values and good sense that recognizes and respects the responsibilities of perhaps his most crucial role, commander in chief. They pray for a President who will not play upon the fears of a traumatized nation and will only call upon our military when it is essential to the preservation of our nation's security.
Never again should we as a people allow a military excursion into a land that has led our great military men and women, as well as their families, into what has become one of our longest running nightmares. And, never again should every member of the nation not be called upon in some way to share the pain and offer some form of sacrifice, like those military families either through some sort of mandatory public service or higher taxes for our most wealthy citizens and corporations.
Perhaps, at its very deepest core, the Democratic party embodies the values of a great nation.
Now, there are those who may say that this young, relatively inexperienced candidate is not ready, or they may secretly hold reservations over his ethnicity, his upbringing perhaps even his name. They may see a candidate that they could never possibly relate to on a more personal level. Perhaps they see a candidate who they feel they simply don't know enough about. But despite such tragic misgivings among the electorate, there is and are greater, quiet frankly, less selfish reasons to carefully consider jumping off the fence of indecision in November.
In the end, voters must make their decision based on what is clearly a choice of packages. And, they must remember, beneath the wrapping paper of campaign ads, rhetoric, assorted controversies and infighting, there are solid differences between these two Party ideologies. Whichever ideology succeeds in selling itself best, could determine the outcome of the election. Whichever candidate that voters ultimately choose, will place in power a party ideology that will perhaps shape the future of our nation, perhaps too, our world.
Monday, August 25, 2008
(REUTERS) Suicide Bomber Targets Banquet in Iraq
Iraq bomber targets banquet (REUTERS)
(01:03) Report
Aug 25 - A suicide bomber detonates a vest packed with explosives at a celebration feast in western Baghdad.
Police say 25 people have been killed in the blast at the home of a local sheikh who was holding the feast to celebrate the release of his son from U.S. detention.
Paul Chapman reports.
(01:03) Report
Aug 25 - A suicide bomber detonates a vest packed with explosives at a celebration feast in western Baghdad.
Police say 25 people have been killed in the blast at the home of a local sheikh who was holding the feast to celebrate the release of his son from U.S. detention.
Paul Chapman reports.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Is America's Judicial System Antagonistic?
From my story at OMNI
The Central Park Jogger crime occurred in a time before the seeds of DNA evidence had taken root as tools of evidence in the United States judicial system. And some say New York Law Enforcement authorities needed a suspect to appease the public's outrage over the brutality of the incident that night in the park.
In the case of the Central Park Jogger, the original group of suspects easily fit the psyche of local tabloids and what was clearly a traumatized and apparently divided city.
But as history has shown, in the thirst to obtain a shut and close case, justice was in fact denied on three fronts.
LINK TO FULL STORY
The Central Park Jogger crime occurred in a time before the seeds of DNA evidence had taken root as tools of evidence in the United States judicial system. And some say New York Law Enforcement authorities needed a suspect to appease the public's outrage over the brutality of the incident that night in the park.
In the case of the Central Park Jogger, the original group of suspects easily fit the psyche of local tabloids and what was clearly a traumatized and apparently divided city.
But as history has shown, in the thirst to obtain a shut and close case, justice was in fact denied on three fronts.
LINK TO FULL STORY
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Alabama Rumor? An emerging story where money trails may lead to answers
FROM BIRMINGHAM BLUES (Kathy) (including reporting from "The Birmingham News")
The Birmingham News ran an article yesterday (the online version of which is in serious need of an editor's mouse) detailing the inflated salaries of some of AG Troy King's aides. King's chief of staff and spokesman, Chris Bence, apparently managed to keep a straight face while explaining how King had designated Bence a paralegal this spring -- despite his complete lack of legal education or experience -- in order to increase his salary from $94,000 to $104,400. He says Troy did it to make up for the three years he didn't get a raise. And, according to him, the AG has the authority to appoint five paralegals without regard to their qualifications.
Link at:
BIRMINGHAM BLUES
The Birmingham News ran an article yesterday (the online version of which is in serious need of an editor's mouse) detailing the inflated salaries of some of AG Troy King's aides. King's chief of staff and spokesman, Chris Bence, apparently managed to keep a straight face while explaining how King had designated Bence a paralegal this spring -- despite his complete lack of legal education or experience -- in order to increase his salary from $94,000 to $104,400. He says Troy did it to make up for the three years he didn't get a raise. And, according to him, the AG has the authority to appoint five paralegals without regard to their qualifications.
Link at:
BIRMINGHAM BLUES
Monday, August 11, 2008
(REUTERS)Russia takes fight into Georgia
(02:23) Reuters Report
Aug 11 - The conflict in the Caucasus escalates as Russia moves to bolster the separtist region of South Ossetia which lies within Georgia's borders.
Andrew Potter reports.
Aug 11 - The conflict in the Caucasus escalates as Russia moves to bolster the separtist region of South Ossetia which lies within Georgia's borders.
Andrew Potter reports.
Friday, August 08, 2008
From Whence I come
PHOTO CREDIT-JAY KIRKPATRICK-(*-Click on Photos for large size image*)
by Cody Lyon
Just south of Birmingham, Alabama situated on Hiway 25 lying on the banks of the Coosa River sits the one stop-light town Wilsonville. This pretty little hamlet is just down the road from another small town, a spitting image of television's Mayberry, a place that happens to be crowned by a stately southern court house, hence it is the County seat, Columbiana. A portion of the farm land area between Wilsonville, Columbiana and the area just north, the fast growing Hiway 280 suburban corridor leading to Birmingham, is called Four Mile. My parents, now retired from normal shift work, live there now, as they have existed in close proximity for most of their lives. Currently, they operate a small, casually run blueberry picking farm.
Here, one can come with family in tow, and you and your's pick a gallon bucket of berries for $7.
The berry bushes were planted on a whim years ago by my parents and sister, in neat rows, on a slope that catches the Alabama sunlight from all angles of the sky daily. A natural irrigation system keeps the plants moist, even in the face of drought conditions that nearly destroyed the crop just one year ago. The bushes have since grown into large tree like plants, filled with bountiful berries with deep hues of blue hidden inside their branches.
His business is brisk, in part due to the fact that blueberries are one of the richest sources of antioxidant phytonutrients of the fresh fruits and vegetables, according to the USDA.
Next year, he's hoping his new blackberry bushes will be ready for picking, as will his new fig trees, that is, if he can keep the birds from eating them.
Along with the berries, fresh tomatoes burst from vines in another patch, alongside fresh okra, turnip greens and what reportedly seems to be a favorite among many newcomers to his small operation, watermelons.
One day, during a phone conversation as I sat by the Hudson River in New York City's Manhattan, my Dad told me he's certain some of the people that visit him are first timers to a farm like his. He said that more than one visitor had told him they had never actually picked berries, watermelons or a tomato from a vine or bush.
He said he liked to share the story of his now deceased basset hound, who when the tomato's were ripe, could be seen strolling in the garden, stopping occasionally to inspect, then eat a couple off the vine. To this day, he finds his tomato loving basset hound a bit, unusual.
As cyclists and joggers passed me as I sat on a bench in the manicured Hudson River Park, from Alabama, my Dad spoke of guests who speak with accents unlike his, people originally from beyond these United State borders, who now made their way down to his blueberry patch in Shelby County.
My Dad has found joy in showing the first time visitors how to gently roll their fingers over the berries so the ripe ones fall into the bucket. He also loved taking them to the watermelon patch, a place where these giant pod like pieces of fruit grew from tiny seeds, where they'd tap and thump the melon to 'hear' if it was ripe. The watermelon patch was always almost magical, mysterious, a place to find those creations where he, like many a southerner, discovered the satisfaction of salt on the sweet juicy creation from the ground.
When the guests found find one they like, he tells them to "go on and get it" and they go and cut the curly pigtail lifeline that connects to the ground and hoisting the melon, load it into their car, maybe for a trip back to suburbia, another town, city, perhaps too, with a vivid memory tucked away, to be recalled at another place and time.
He said it just tickled him to death to see the fascination in these folks faces, the beauty of introducing something he'd always known as a simple part of seasonal and daily life.
Maybe too, they find him interesting, a relic of sorts, one who worked shift work at a power plant for years, but now finds peace and joy with the land, one who shares, albeit sells the fruits of that love with the world around him.
This past Spring, my Dad was thrilled when he went outside and found that one of his humming birds had made it back to Alabama for the summer season. During another phone conversation between my adopted home and Alabama, my Mother described an older man behaving like a small child on Christmas morning. One day, he rushed into the house and announced with smiles from ear to ear, "they come back, they're back!"
They, being tiny creatures with wings, who humm, devour nectar then build nests no larger than a walnut to raise there young.
He has five humming bird feeders and the customers who come to the farm reportedly marvel at the tiny creatures as they feed, dance and dart at lightning speed, often dodging each other in a sort of bird combat, sometimes in the quest for a mate. He had done research and found that the tiny birds spend part of their lives in this part of Central Bama but as Fall and Winter approach, they come together and flap their tiny wings and fly thousands of miles across the Gulf to Mexico. By the next spring and summer, the birds somehow find their way back to this newly established sanctuary of humming just south of Birmingham, near the Coosa River.
Of course it's not just the feeders , the birds love the berries as they will the new crop of figs, blackberries and pears too.
It goes without saying, that in this world where we are constantly bombarded with the pains of life's challenges and the news of world events that seem so far beyond our control, that all around us are unreported and under discussed simplicities that are in fact, capsules of the beauty, communication and the exchange of experiences that we as living beings truly are capable of. There is less than obvious beauty in this world, often times, right under our noses, perhaps far away from the banks of the Hudson, or yet again, right along those banks but lost in the shuffle of daily life. As our world grows smaller, we can be sure, that places like my Dad's blueberry farm, are helping in some small way to bring us all a little closer together, face to face, human to human, as people, as living beings of this earth we all share. And, as the bustle continues all around here in the Big Apple, there is comfort in knowing that this place from whence I come, it is the root of who I am.
Note: No one in this story is affiliated in any way with, or subscribes to in any way, the political opinions pontificated by this author in other parts of this blog-that being because I often speak my mind)
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
RWANDA ACCUSES FRENCH OFFICIALS OF GENOCIDE (REUTERS)
(01:34) REUTERS-Report
Aug. 6 - Rwanda has formally accused senior French officials of involvement in its 1994 genocide and called for them to be put on trial.
Among those named in a report by a Rwandan investigation commission were former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and late President Francois Mitterrand.
France denies any wrongdoing, and says its forces helped protect people during a U.N.-sanctioned mission in Rwanda at the time.
Andrew Potter reports.
Aug. 6 - Rwanda has formally accused senior French officials of involvement in its 1994 genocide and called for them to be put on trial.
Among those named in a report by a Rwandan investigation commission were former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and late President Francois Mitterrand.
France denies any wrongdoing, and says its forces helped protect people during a U.N.-sanctioned mission in Rwanda at the time.
Andrew Potter reports.
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
(REUTERS) Obama Shifts position on Energy
Aug 4 - Barack Obama proposed tapping the strategic oil reserves to help lower gas prices, a reversal of a stance he made just weeks ago.
The emergency reserve created in the 1970s holds about 700 million barrels of crude stored in Texas and Louisiana.
Jon Decker reports. (REUTERS)
The emergency reserve created in the 1970s holds about 700 million barrels of crude stored in Texas and Louisiana.
Jon Decker reports. (REUTERS)
Monday, July 28, 2008
(From Reuters) Dozens die in Iraq bombings
July 28 (FROM REUTERS)- Many more have been wounded in the wave of attacks in Baghdad and another explosion in Kirkuk.
At least 28 people have been killed and more than 90 wounded in Baghdad as three female suicide bombers targeted Shi'ite pilgrims in the city for a major religious event.
Another explosion in the northern city of Kirkuk has claimed the lives of at least ten people and wounded over 50 more as demonstrators gathered for a protest march.
Paul Chapman reports.
At least 28 people have been killed and more than 90 wounded in Baghdad as three female suicide bombers targeted Shi'ite pilgrims in the city for a major religious event.
Another explosion in the northern city of Kirkuk has claimed the lives of at least ten people and wounded over 50 more as demonstrators gathered for a protest march.
Paul Chapman reports.
Friday, July 25, 2008
We Must Figure out How to Make Peace
BY CODY LYON
The afternoon sun had begun to fade, but the Bryant park trees twinkled, offering a sense of shelter, comfort, peace, away from the bustle of sidewalks, the glaring of glass high in the sky towering over the beating nucleus ,Midtown Manhattan.
A conversation carries on by phone, the New Yorker, questions, listens and learns about a friend's trip up north to a city many miles away.
"It went well," said the friend, on assignment in New England, where he'd given a speech, seeking to explain a campaign of tolerance to a younger generation.
"Great" came the response from Midtown from under the trees that twinkled, as he propped his feet on his bicycle, after a job interview, before beginning the journey down 5th Avenue to his soon to be former home in New York's east village.
After saying goodbye, he walked his bike to 42nd street, hopped on, thinking about the chat, passed the public library, then pedaled down the hill on 5th avenue.
Up ahead, a man with no legs, his back muscles pronounced, triceps bulging, pioneered ahead of the cyclist in a wheelchair.
The cyclists wondered, how or where the man's legs went missing, what had happened. At the same time, he felt worry, a ping of sad, but still, admiring the man's athletic defiance, his resilience, a wonder to behold, whizzing past cars, faster than the cyclist, much like the city where he now rode, a place where despite constant obstacles, the strong survive, endure and persevere, here too, the strong may shine.
But, after losing sight of the legless man, after passing the tourists with their sensible shorts and striped shirts making their way to the architectural majesty that is the Empire State Building, the cyclist came upon a familiar site, a church he'd passed many times.
In fact, it was at this spot, on the last Sunday in June, members of the Congregation, passed out cups of water, to participants in a parade, that some would rather avoid.
But on this day, there was no parade, no congregants with water, and for whatever reason, he noticed the ribbons.
They hang on the iron gating surrounding the old church, the Church of the collegiate, a building erected in 1854, a congregation chartered in 1696 by William III, king of England as the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, now called the Marble Collegiate Church.
The ribbons, golds, blues, and greens represented something, unclear at first, perhaps a memorial, perhaps another symbol of war a testament of death, perhaps renewal, perhaps all, but it turned out, they represented prayers.
Gold, the more common color, represents prayers for the families and friends of the thousands of Americans lost in the Iraq war.
Blue for those Iraqis scores killed in the violence that devastated a nation.
Green, were for prayers of peace.
While observing, a family of three, what appeared to be tourists, all wearing baseball caps, the father nokia around his kneck, the mom with a digital, both took photos of the site, as the New Yorkers glided by. On the sidewalks, some glanced, others pausing briefly, all the while, cars, cabs and cyclists whizzed by, perhaps on their way to dinner, drinks, maybe even coming from a job interview, perhaps in a conversation about tolerance, love, joy, sadness or perhaps too, tragedy.
Among the family of three, a small boy, no more than ten, touched, held and appeared to read some of the ribbons.
Captain Mark Pane, age 32.
Lance Corporal Bradely L Parker, age 19.
Sgt Pamela G. Osborne, age 38 and hundreds perhaps thousands more.
In addition to a green baseball cap, the small boy wore a bright orange T-Shirt with the dove's foot peace symbol occupying the shirt's face, a simple request, never a simple answer.
From afar, the child tourist's face at least appeared in this moment, to offer pause, maybe hope, hope that someday, ribbons will only be used for things good, like apple pies, rose competitions, or a giant pumpkin.
It brings tears when ribbons hanging from an old iron fence just blocks from the Empire State building represent prayers for precious souls, souls taken so unfairly, so early. It's not fair that they can no longer participate in conversations about tolerance while sitting under trees amidst buildings that touch the sky. Those ribbons remind everyone that there are millions of broken hearts across the world thanks to the horror that the un-necessary human behavior war is.
On a small, plaque, in front of the increasingly weathered blues, golds and greens, a message from Marble Collegiate's Senior Minister, Arthur Calandro.
In it, he recalled attending a Quaker meeting after the first Gulf War in Iraq.
He said that of all the comments he heard that day, the one he remembered came from a man around his own age.
"I know how to protest war, but I don't know how to make peace," the Quaker said.
The message says that it seems that man at the Quaker meeting speaks for most of the world. The message went on to say we "continue to pray daily- we pray for the wounded-we pray for the day war is no longer an option.
Later, as observations of this fading New York afternoon on Fifth Avenue continued, a gentleman approached, and offered, "you know they (the church) have a website."
It turned out, the man was a New York City teacher, a man probably in his late 30's, soft spoken, kind, his knowledge of New York history obviously grand.
He shared an interesting fact, that this, the Marble Collegiate Church, is in fact, oldest place of worship of the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York
"That explains the New Netherland enshrined on the stone," noted the cyclist.
"Yes," he confirmed.
He then shared that on Staten Island, there was a place called Richmond Town, a place that was full of history, a time capsule dating back to the 1600's where on some buildings one could still see holes from the bullets from the days of its founding, holes from the Revolutionary war.
But, perhaps, here on Fifth Avenue, as passers by, protected from the outside not by trees but by IPODS, Blackberries, the shelters of cabs, the indiscriminate bustling to and fro on our ways to places, drinks, dinners, new jobs, new lives, on our collective way to a new era in our nation's journey through time, despite those holes on Staten Island, despite the painful hole inside our own impressive skyline, there are holes even greater, and there are reminders everywhere, no matter where we are, that those are the holes in the hearts of those who lost someone, a Mother, A Father, daughter, son, lover and those are the holes that are all the more greater than anything history has to offer.
It is our pain and we are sharing it.
We human beings must someday figure out how to make peace.
The afternoon sun had begun to fade, but the Bryant park trees twinkled, offering a sense of shelter, comfort, peace, away from the bustle of sidewalks, the glaring of glass high in the sky towering over the beating nucleus ,Midtown Manhattan.
A conversation carries on by phone, the New Yorker, questions, listens and learns about a friend's trip up north to a city many miles away.
"It went well," said the friend, on assignment in New England, where he'd given a speech, seeking to explain a campaign of tolerance to a younger generation.
"Great" came the response from Midtown from under the trees that twinkled, as he propped his feet on his bicycle, after a job interview, before beginning the journey down 5th Avenue to his soon to be former home in New York's east village.
After saying goodbye, he walked his bike to 42nd street, hopped on, thinking about the chat, passed the public library, then pedaled down the hill on 5th avenue.
Up ahead, a man with no legs, his back muscles pronounced, triceps bulging, pioneered ahead of the cyclist in a wheelchair.
The cyclists wondered, how or where the man's legs went missing, what had happened. At the same time, he felt worry, a ping of sad, but still, admiring the man's athletic defiance, his resilience, a wonder to behold, whizzing past cars, faster than the cyclist, much like the city where he now rode, a place where despite constant obstacles, the strong survive, endure and persevere, here too, the strong may shine.
But, after losing sight of the legless man, after passing the tourists with their sensible shorts and striped shirts making their way to the architectural majesty that is the Empire State Building, the cyclist came upon a familiar site, a church he'd passed many times.
In fact, it was at this spot, on the last Sunday in June, members of the Congregation, passed out cups of water, to participants in a parade, that some would rather avoid.
But on this day, there was no parade, no congregants with water, and for whatever reason, he noticed the ribbons.
They hang on the iron gating surrounding the old church, the Church of the collegiate, a building erected in 1854, a congregation chartered in 1696 by William III, king of England as the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church, now called the Marble Collegiate Church.
The ribbons, golds, blues, and greens represented something, unclear at first, perhaps a memorial, perhaps another symbol of war a testament of death, perhaps renewal, perhaps all, but it turned out, they represented prayers.
Gold, the more common color, represents prayers for the families and friends of the thousands of Americans lost in the Iraq war.
Blue for those Iraqis scores killed in the violence that devastated a nation.
Green, were for prayers of peace.
While observing, a family of three, what appeared to be tourists, all wearing baseball caps, the father nokia around his kneck, the mom with a digital, both took photos of the site, as the New Yorkers glided by. On the sidewalks, some glanced, others pausing briefly, all the while, cars, cabs and cyclists whizzed by, perhaps on their way to dinner, drinks, maybe even coming from a job interview, perhaps in a conversation about tolerance, love, joy, sadness or perhaps too, tragedy.
Among the family of three, a small boy, no more than ten, touched, held and appeared to read some of the ribbons.
Captain Mark Pane, age 32.
Lance Corporal Bradely L Parker, age 19.
Sgt Pamela G. Osborne, age 38 and hundreds perhaps thousands more.
In addition to a green baseball cap, the small boy wore a bright orange T-Shirt with the dove's foot peace symbol occupying the shirt's face, a simple request, never a simple answer.
From afar, the child tourist's face at least appeared in this moment, to offer pause, maybe hope, hope that someday, ribbons will only be used for things good, like apple pies, rose competitions, or a giant pumpkin.
It brings tears when ribbons hanging from an old iron fence just blocks from the Empire State building represent prayers for precious souls, souls taken so unfairly, so early. It's not fair that they can no longer participate in conversations about tolerance while sitting under trees amidst buildings that touch the sky. Those ribbons remind everyone that there are millions of broken hearts across the world thanks to the horror that the un-necessary human behavior war is.
On a small, plaque, in front of the increasingly weathered blues, golds and greens, a message from Marble Collegiate's Senior Minister, Arthur Calandro.
In it, he recalled attending a Quaker meeting after the first Gulf War in Iraq.
He said that of all the comments he heard that day, the one he remembered came from a man around his own age.
"I know how to protest war, but I don't know how to make peace," the Quaker said.
The message says that it seems that man at the Quaker meeting speaks for most of the world. The message went on to say we "continue to pray daily- we pray for the wounded-we pray for the day war is no longer an option.
Later, as observations of this fading New York afternoon on Fifth Avenue continued, a gentleman approached, and offered, "you know they (the church) have a website."
It turned out, the man was a New York City teacher, a man probably in his late 30's, soft spoken, kind, his knowledge of New York history obviously grand.
He shared an interesting fact, that this, the Marble Collegiate Church, is in fact, oldest place of worship of the Collegiate Reformed Protestant Dutch Church of the City of New York
"That explains the New Netherland enshrined on the stone," noted the cyclist.
"Yes," he confirmed.
He then shared that on Staten Island, there was a place called Richmond Town, a place that was full of history, a time capsule dating back to the 1600's where on some buildings one could still see holes from the bullets from the days of its founding, holes from the Revolutionary war.
But, perhaps, here on Fifth Avenue, as passers by, protected from the outside not by trees but by IPODS, Blackberries, the shelters of cabs, the indiscriminate bustling to and fro on our ways to places, drinks, dinners, new jobs, new lives, on our collective way to a new era in our nation's journey through time, despite those holes on Staten Island, despite the painful hole inside our own impressive skyline, there are holes even greater, and there are reminders everywhere, no matter where we are, that those are the holes in the hearts of those who lost someone, a Mother, A Father, daughter, son, lover and those are the holes that are all the more greater than anything history has to offer.
It is our pain and we are sharing it.
We human beings must someday figure out how to make peace.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
CBS NEWS: Lining Up for free Dental Care (The Other America series)
Comment-Cody Lyon: Once again, CBS News holds up a mirror to the often cruel injustices that result from the way our nation's health care system operates. Albeit a dreadful experience for most, for millions, a trip to the dentist is out of reach, thanks to the fact that around one hundred million have no Dental insurance at all. Many have not seen a tooth doctor in years, among them, millions of children.
But, at the same time, CBS shows us as they did with the REMOTE AREA MEDICAL report, that America is also home to angels, like Bruce Bergstrom of AMERICA'S DENTISTS CARE. As reporter Seth Doane reveals, America's Dentists Care sets up free dental clinics across the nation for those lacking dental insurance. In the CBS report, we see a line of families already wrapped around a building at 5 a.m.
. Here is a link to CBS Evening News July 23 report, part of the network's "The Other America" series:
LINK TO CBS
But, at the same time, CBS shows us as they did with the REMOTE AREA MEDICAL report, that America is also home to angels, like Bruce Bergstrom of AMERICA'S DENTISTS CARE. As reporter Seth Doane reveals, America's Dentists Care sets up free dental clinics across the nation for those lacking dental insurance. In the CBS report, we see a line of families already wrapped around a building at 5 a.m.
. Here is a link to CBS Evening News July 23 report, part of the network's "The Other America" series:
LINK TO CBS
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Remembering the Super Bug of 2005
by CODY LYON
On February 5, 2005, the New York City Department of Health in conjunction with the Aaron Diamond Aids Research Center called a press conference and issued an urgent health alert to the public. The event was especially targeted towards men who have sex with men. According to health officials, one individual had been infected with what appeared to be a never before seen particularly potent and apparently mutated strain of HIV that had rapidly progressed to full blown AIDS.
Doctors treating the patient said the man was resistant to three out of four classes of drugs available used to treat HIV/AIDS, a condition clinically called 3-DCR-HIV.
At the press conference, New York City Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden, warned “virtually no one is immune” saying the new super strain virus could quickly progress into full-blown AIDS, perhaps in as little as two to twenty months, a process that normally takes up to ten years.
Health officials described the patient as a man in his mid-forties, who had binged on the drug crystal methamphetamine and had un-protected sex with numerous partners, a number the Department said was 'possibly hundreds.'
The DOHMH said the encounters had occurred at sex parties or individually, arranged through “hook-up” sites on the Internet.
A firestorm of controversy, debate and media sensationalism followed the press conference.
Fault lines erupted both inside and outside the gay community as fingers were pointed at recreational drugs and "reckless" lifestyles. Fear laced with words of caution competed with skepticism over the accuracy of the reported science from Aaron Diamond Institute and the Health Department.
But many condemned the New York City Health Department for issuing a health alert that some called hasty and shrill.
Central to the skepticism were questions and worries about how gay men would react if the science proved false or inconclusive. Further, were worries that the public's perception of gay men would be tainted by reports of reckless behaviors in the age of AIDS. And, if the diagnosis of a new "super-bug" proved false, would the understanding and attitudes surrounding what HIV/AIDS is, a disease littered with a history of misinformation, rumors, prejudice and conspiracy theories become even more misunderstood and misinformed?
Overall immediate public reaction to the press conference and subsequent news reports was grim and flavored with what some saw as patronizing condemnation of the affected community, gay men.
Newspaper headlines were announcing that a new “super virus” had made an appearance in New York. The New York "Daily News" screamed “Super Bug Scary: World’s First Case of Drug Resistant Strain Found Here,” while another Daily News headline read “Super HIV Man Had Sex Binge with 100.” Meanwhile, the “New York Post” warned of a “Super Bug Nightmare Strain” and the “The "New York Times"” said Gays had “Grown Complacent” about HIV, which contributed to reckless behavior.
Within the Gay Community some began to directly link crystal meth use to the “new strain” issuing wholesale condemnations of the highly addictive drug. In the mainstream press, a number of columnists and editorial writers began to scold the reportedly promiscuous behavior and its alleged impacts.
For example, Former “"Newsday"” reporter Laurie Garret wrote “Those who use methamphetamine and prowl for sex need the wake-up call” and "Washington Post" columnist Richard Cohen wrote that when gays “are victims of discrimination they need to be defended, but when they are victims of their own behavior, they need to be condemned.”
But, in the background of the ensuing coverage, doctors and experts began raising skeptical concerns about the timing and tone of the alert.
“In its haste to issue a health alert, the Department of Health and Aaron Diamond failed to consider the impact of such frantic media coverage” said Dr. Michael Saag, Director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
“The average reader will focus on the behavior of gay men” said Dr. Saag.
He noted that news of the New York Department of Health press conference was the lead story in the next day’s "Birmingham News".
“It is not a helpful message in an era when we are trying to communicate that HIV is a sexually transmitted disease that effects anyone who is sexually active, not just gay men” said Dr. Saag from Birmingham, Ala.
Amid the shrill headlines, controversy and fear, questions were raised about a more probable theory regarding the patient's condition, a theory that appeared to contradict the Health Department's conclusion in the health alert.
“The intersection of the patient’s drug resistance and rapid progression made this man’s condition unique” said Jessica Frickey, a spokesperson at The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HIV is a highly variable disease. It is usually the 'host virus interaction' that determines the characteristics of a case, not the virus itself. In fact, there are individuals who may be more genetically susceptible to a quicker progression to full-blown AIDS. That condition has been called rapid progression.
Was this patient’s condition an unfortunate intersection of two deadly factors, rapid progression and anti-viral drug resistence?
Apparently, that would have indicated that the individual who played host to the virus was genetically pre-disposed to a rapid-fire progression to full blown AIDS.
Futher, could the man’s drug resistance have been a result of being infected by an individual who was infected with a mutated version of the HIV virus, a disturbing but potential cause of his anti-viral reisistence? Doctors say that HIV drug resistance can develop in a patient after taking drugs over an extended period.
Like other viruses or bacteria, HIV strains begin to mutate and show resistance over time, in essence, outsmarting some drugs or drug combinations, similar to anti-biotic resistance. When this happens, doctors usually manipulate, switch or re-evaluate the patient's cocktail of medicine until an effective anti-viral regimen is found.
But the reporting in the "super-virus" case implied that the patient had been infected a new “strain” as if the bug itself had mutated into a newly emerged form of the virus meaning that AIDS, already deadly, had grown into an even more dire threat.
Some supporters of the initial health alert press conference to say that the use of the term new "strain" was incorrect.
“There would need to be evidence of significant biological difference to warrant the designation of a new strain” admitted Dr. Jay Dobkin, Director of the AIDS Center at Columbia University.
Some advocates of full and forthcoming medical information, as well as a few medical experts began to openly and loudly question whether the health alert had indeed been based on inconclusive science. There were rumblings that that the alert was being used as an overly cautious and condescending tactic to try and change what some argue were increasing risky behaviors within the Gay male community?
Martin Delaney, co-founder of the San Francisco based organization “Project Inform” argued that the health alert was meant to scare people into changing behavior.
Delaney also questioned whether the science behind the alert was solid.
“None of the science was sound” and “no matter what Aaron Diamond and The Department of Health think they knew at the time of the press conference, they could not possibly have had any useful information about how widely this “new strain” had spread, or what its clinical consequences would be.”
Some doctors concurred with Delaney's assertion noting that in fact, the reportedly "new" strain was actually nothing new.
“This particular strain has been seen before thus is not new” said University of Alabama Birmingham’s Dr. Michael Saag of the new “super-strain”.
Dr. Harold Jaffe is the former director of the National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since leaving CDC, Dr. Jaffe has been a fellow and Professor of Public Health at Oxford University in London.
Jaffe said the Health Department’s alert was probably a well intentioned but overly cautious approach that used fear to try and curb what most experts charge are risky behaviors.
At the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections Conference in Boston, two weeks after the Health Alert was issued, Dr. Jaffe argued that fear might motivate behavior changes in the short term, but it ultimately leads people to not trust messages of prevention.
Later, during a phone conversation from London, Jaffee further explained his reluctance to support the decision to issue a health alert.
Still, he cautioned that far to many gay men have become more careless, in part because of the false sense of security provided by new HIV drugs.
“A number of factors are probably contributing to increasingly risky behavior among men who have sex with men (or msm), and “lack of fear is probably a factor, but I personally don’t believe the New York case should be used to scare gay men into safer behavior” said Dr. Jaffe.
Still, one of the world's groundbreaking pioneers in HIV/AIDS research defended his institution’s decision to issue the alert.
“We felt it was appropriate to bring such an extreme case to the attention of public health authorities” said Dr. David Ho, Executive Director of The Aaron Diamond Institute.
“ADRAC stands by its decisions involving this case,” said Dr. Ho.
Columbia University's Dr. Jay Dobkin suggested that the decision to issue the alert and the ensuing media coverage linking Crystal Meth use to increasing risk of HIV infection, may have in fact, been constructive by helping to discourage what many see as reckless behaviors.
Still, some question Dr. Dobkin and Ho’s seemingly clinical rhetoric.
Martin Delaney argues that many health officials see the world through academic lenses that is out of touch with the reality “on the ground.”
“People do not engage in unsafe behaviors because they have considered issues of treatment” noting that drug use and unsafe behavior are not “reasoned choices,” said Delaney.
Reasoned or not, according to a one survey by The Center for HIV/AIDS Education Studies or CHEST at New York University, men who used Crystal, were three times more likely to contract HIV through receptive anal intercourse than those who did not use meth. Among gay men who admit to recreational drug use, 62 percent admit to at least having tried crystal.
Debate over how best to affect sexual practices or change behaviors range from harm reduction tactics to zero tolerance approaches. Harm reduction encourages those who do use recreational drugs, to do so responsibly, and be armed with knowledge on how best to protect oneself from increased risk of HIV infection.
Some worry that zero tolerance approaches about certain behaviors, or fear tactics, simply encourage denial and drive behaviors further underground often leading to destructive collective side effects such as increasing rates of HIV.
Over the past 5 years, HIV infection rates have risen among gay men under the age of 30 in New York City according to the City's Department of Health. At the same time, HIV infection rates have fallen by around 22 percent among older gay men.
While some say the complacency over un-safe sexual activity among many gay men may have been temporarily shaken by the super-bug reports, some express worries that collective distrust of medical officials and authorities was the end result.
“If it turns out the ‘super-bug” is really an isolated case, the gay community may feel they were being manipulated” said Dr. Harold Jaffe.
As of 2008, the 2005 “super-strain” was an isolated case.
On February 5, 2005, the New York City Department of Health in conjunction with the Aaron Diamond Aids Research Center called a press conference and issued an urgent health alert to the public. The event was especially targeted towards men who have sex with men. According to health officials, one individual had been infected with what appeared to be a never before seen particularly potent and apparently mutated strain of HIV that had rapidly progressed to full blown AIDS.
Doctors treating the patient said the man was resistant to three out of four classes of drugs available used to treat HIV/AIDS, a condition clinically called 3-DCR-HIV.
At the press conference, New York City Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden, warned “virtually no one is immune” saying the new super strain virus could quickly progress into full-blown AIDS, perhaps in as little as two to twenty months, a process that normally takes up to ten years.
Health officials described the patient as a man in his mid-forties, who had binged on the drug crystal methamphetamine and had un-protected sex with numerous partners, a number the Department said was 'possibly hundreds.'
The DOHMH said the encounters had occurred at sex parties or individually, arranged through “hook-up” sites on the Internet.
A firestorm of controversy, debate and media sensationalism followed the press conference.
Fault lines erupted both inside and outside the gay community as fingers were pointed at recreational drugs and "reckless" lifestyles. Fear laced with words of caution competed with skepticism over the accuracy of the reported science from Aaron Diamond Institute and the Health Department.
But many condemned the New York City Health Department for issuing a health alert that some called hasty and shrill.
Central to the skepticism were questions and worries about how gay men would react if the science proved false or inconclusive. Further, were worries that the public's perception of gay men would be tainted by reports of reckless behaviors in the age of AIDS. And, if the diagnosis of a new "super-bug" proved false, would the understanding and attitudes surrounding what HIV/AIDS is, a disease littered with a history of misinformation, rumors, prejudice and conspiracy theories become even more misunderstood and misinformed?
Overall immediate public reaction to the press conference and subsequent news reports was grim and flavored with what some saw as patronizing condemnation of the affected community, gay men.
Newspaper headlines were announcing that a new “super virus” had made an appearance in New York. The New York "Daily News" screamed “Super Bug Scary: World’s First Case of Drug Resistant Strain Found Here,” while another Daily News headline read “Super HIV Man Had Sex Binge with 100.” Meanwhile, the “New York Post” warned of a “Super Bug Nightmare Strain” and the “The "New York Times"” said Gays had “Grown Complacent” about HIV, which contributed to reckless behavior.
Within the Gay Community some began to directly link crystal meth use to the “new strain” issuing wholesale condemnations of the highly addictive drug. In the mainstream press, a number of columnists and editorial writers began to scold the reportedly promiscuous behavior and its alleged impacts.
For example, Former “"Newsday"” reporter Laurie Garret wrote “Those who use methamphetamine and prowl for sex need the wake-up call” and "Washington Post" columnist Richard Cohen wrote that when gays “are victims of discrimination they need to be defended, but when they are victims of their own behavior, they need to be condemned.”
But, in the background of the ensuing coverage, doctors and experts began raising skeptical concerns about the timing and tone of the alert.
“In its haste to issue a health alert, the Department of Health and Aaron Diamond failed to consider the impact of such frantic media coverage” said Dr. Michael Saag, Director of the Center for AIDS Research at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
“The average reader will focus on the behavior of gay men” said Dr. Saag.
He noted that news of the New York Department of Health press conference was the lead story in the next day’s "Birmingham News".
“It is not a helpful message in an era when we are trying to communicate that HIV is a sexually transmitted disease that effects anyone who is sexually active, not just gay men” said Dr. Saag from Birmingham, Ala.
Amid the shrill headlines, controversy and fear, questions were raised about a more probable theory regarding the patient's condition, a theory that appeared to contradict the Health Department's conclusion in the health alert.
“The intersection of the patient’s drug resistance and rapid progression made this man’s condition unique” said Jessica Frickey, a spokesperson at The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
HIV is a highly variable disease. It is usually the 'host virus interaction' that determines the characteristics of a case, not the virus itself. In fact, there are individuals who may be more genetically susceptible to a quicker progression to full-blown AIDS. That condition has been called rapid progression.
Was this patient’s condition an unfortunate intersection of two deadly factors, rapid progression and anti-viral drug resistence?
Apparently, that would have indicated that the individual who played host to the virus was genetically pre-disposed to a rapid-fire progression to full blown AIDS.
Futher, could the man’s drug resistance have been a result of being infected by an individual who was infected with a mutated version of the HIV virus, a disturbing but potential cause of his anti-viral reisistence? Doctors say that HIV drug resistance can develop in a patient after taking drugs over an extended period.
Like other viruses or bacteria, HIV strains begin to mutate and show resistance over time, in essence, outsmarting some drugs or drug combinations, similar to anti-biotic resistance. When this happens, doctors usually manipulate, switch or re-evaluate the patient's cocktail of medicine until an effective anti-viral regimen is found.
But the reporting in the "super-virus" case implied that the patient had been infected a new “strain” as if the bug itself had mutated into a newly emerged form of the virus meaning that AIDS, already deadly, had grown into an even more dire threat.
Some supporters of the initial health alert press conference to say that the use of the term new "strain" was incorrect.
“There would need to be evidence of significant biological difference to warrant the designation of a new strain” admitted Dr. Jay Dobkin, Director of the AIDS Center at Columbia University.
Some advocates of full and forthcoming medical information, as well as a few medical experts began to openly and loudly question whether the health alert had indeed been based on inconclusive science. There were rumblings that that the alert was being used as an overly cautious and condescending tactic to try and change what some argue were increasing risky behaviors within the Gay male community?
Martin Delaney, co-founder of the San Francisco based organization “Project Inform” argued that the health alert was meant to scare people into changing behavior.
Delaney also questioned whether the science behind the alert was solid.
“None of the science was sound” and “no matter what Aaron Diamond and The Department of Health think they knew at the time of the press conference, they could not possibly have had any useful information about how widely this “new strain” had spread, or what its clinical consequences would be.”
Some doctors concurred with Delaney's assertion noting that in fact, the reportedly "new" strain was actually nothing new.
“This particular strain has been seen before thus is not new” said University of Alabama Birmingham’s Dr. Michael Saag of the new “super-strain”.
Dr. Harold Jaffe is the former director of the National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since leaving CDC, Dr. Jaffe has been a fellow and Professor of Public Health at Oxford University in London.
Jaffe said the Health Department’s alert was probably a well intentioned but overly cautious approach that used fear to try and curb what most experts charge are risky behaviors.
At the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections Conference in Boston, two weeks after the Health Alert was issued, Dr. Jaffe argued that fear might motivate behavior changes in the short term, but it ultimately leads people to not trust messages of prevention.
Later, during a phone conversation from London, Jaffee further explained his reluctance to support the decision to issue a health alert.
Still, he cautioned that far to many gay men have become more careless, in part because of the false sense of security provided by new HIV drugs.
“A number of factors are probably contributing to increasingly risky behavior among men who have sex with men (or msm), and “lack of fear is probably a factor, but I personally don’t believe the New York case should be used to scare gay men into safer behavior” said Dr. Jaffe.
Still, one of the world's groundbreaking pioneers in HIV/AIDS research defended his institution’s decision to issue the alert.
“We felt it was appropriate to bring such an extreme case to the attention of public health authorities” said Dr. David Ho, Executive Director of The Aaron Diamond Institute.
“ADRAC stands by its decisions involving this case,” said Dr. Ho.
Columbia University's Dr. Jay Dobkin suggested that the decision to issue the alert and the ensuing media coverage linking Crystal Meth use to increasing risk of HIV infection, may have in fact, been constructive by helping to discourage what many see as reckless behaviors.
Still, some question Dr. Dobkin and Ho’s seemingly clinical rhetoric.
Martin Delaney argues that many health officials see the world through academic lenses that is out of touch with the reality “on the ground.”
“People do not engage in unsafe behaviors because they have considered issues of treatment” noting that drug use and unsafe behavior are not “reasoned choices,” said Delaney.
Reasoned or not, according to a one survey by The Center for HIV/AIDS Education Studies or CHEST at New York University, men who used Crystal, were three times more likely to contract HIV through receptive anal intercourse than those who did not use meth. Among gay men who admit to recreational drug use, 62 percent admit to at least having tried crystal.
Debate over how best to affect sexual practices or change behaviors range from harm reduction tactics to zero tolerance approaches. Harm reduction encourages those who do use recreational drugs, to do so responsibly, and be armed with knowledge on how best to protect oneself from increased risk of HIV infection.
Some worry that zero tolerance approaches about certain behaviors, or fear tactics, simply encourage denial and drive behaviors further underground often leading to destructive collective side effects such as increasing rates of HIV.
Over the past 5 years, HIV infection rates have risen among gay men under the age of 30 in New York City according to the City's Department of Health. At the same time, HIV infection rates have fallen by around 22 percent among older gay men.
While some say the complacency over un-safe sexual activity among many gay men may have been temporarily shaken by the super-bug reports, some express worries that collective distrust of medical officials and authorities was the end result.
“If it turns out the ‘super-bug” is really an isolated case, the gay community may feel they were being manipulated” said Dr. Harold Jaffe.
As of 2008, the 2005 “super-strain” was an isolated case.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
REUTERS-ul 18 -Drug bust in Mexico submarine
Jul 18 - The Mexican military, working with information from U.S. intelligence services, recovered nearly six tons of cocaine in a makeshift submarine seized this week off the Pacific coast.
It was one of Mexico's largest maritime drug seizures and the first time the country has seen drug smugglers using a submarine, the navy said.
Pavithra George REUTERS reports.
It was one of Mexico's largest maritime drug seizures and the first time the country has seen drug smugglers using a submarine, the navy said.
Pavithra George REUTERS reports.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
"The New Yorker" Cartoon: The Jokes on the People
by CODY LYON
It looks as if some Americans have finally found a cartoon they can get really upset about.
Last week's "New Yorker" cover cartoon featuring presumed Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama and wife Michelle, both in outrageous garb that included the Senator in a turbin, sandals and robe, with Michelle sporting an Angela `Davisesque' 70's afro, a gun, both fist-bumping all the while an American flag burned, has drawn condemnation and charges of "offensive and tasteless" from campaign spokespeople and supporters.
Tuesday evening, Senator Obama told CNN's Larry King that the cartoon "probably fueled misconceptions about me."
Really?
Was the cartoon offensive?
Of course it was.
Did it fuel misconceptions about the Senator and his wife?
Probably not......that's already been done.
In fact, the increasingly famous "New Yorker" cover held up a mirror to the campaign, the media and more importantly to America itself. The cartoon revealed some offensive truths about how this campaign has been conducted and covered, but also, about America in general and how out of touch with reality so many of us truly are.
First and foremost, this was the "New Yorker" being ironic, not some tabloid or sensationalistic media spook machine that was seeking to raise questions about the Senator of his wife's commitment to the nation's well being. The "New Yorker" is in fact, one the few bastions of intelligent and measured writing where analysis and good story telling pair up with meticulous investigative journalism. It is one of the few places that those with the patience, to actually read an article longer than four or five pages long,find articles that reveal facts, figures and truths about our Democracy, better yet, our world.
What might be considered offensive is the fact that so many Americans don't take the time to actually pick up the magazine and read those stories beyond that offensive cover.
But, even more offensive is the deeper truth pointed out by the cover and the seemingly insecure and condescending reaction that some Obama supporters and even some Republicans have claimed to have.
The "New Yorker" cover page makes fun of the sad fact that vast swaths of voters actually believe that the Obama's depicted in the cartoon are real. But, it also shines a light on the units of the media machine that have inadvertently helped perpetuate the rumors and innuendo that have led to misperceptions about the Obama's patriotism.
Now that's offensive.
The inability of Obama supporters to appreciate that sort of irony is offensive as well, since they know all to well, the cartoon, in its outrageousness and non-PC style, does exactly that.
But, by raising such a fuss about a cartoon in the "New Yorker", by going public with worries that it will affect voter's perception, those supporters, spokespersons, even the candidate are in essence participating in the wildfire of paranoia and condescension so common in American politics today?
If anything, "The New Yorker" that bastion of elitism was pointing out that America, despite being a place of instant information gratification is a place where vast portions of the public are ill informed, a public that shows increasing signs of collective ADD, always looking for the next shrill topic, the next scandal and not real truths that might inform them to make wise decisions in voting booths that might truly impact their communities, their nation their lives, truths often found in magazines like "The New Yorker".
It's really a shame that so many are up in arms about this cartoon. The only positive might be that more people may actually buy the magazine and read it.
This was clever satire and the jokes on `the people', not the Obamas.
It looks as if some Americans have finally found a cartoon they can get really upset about.
Last week's "New Yorker" cover cartoon featuring presumed Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama and wife Michelle, both in outrageous garb that included the Senator in a turbin, sandals and robe, with Michelle sporting an Angela `Davisesque' 70's afro, a gun, both fist-bumping all the while an American flag burned, has drawn condemnation and charges of "offensive and tasteless" from campaign spokespeople and supporters.
Tuesday evening, Senator Obama told CNN's Larry King that the cartoon "probably fueled misconceptions about me."
Really?
Was the cartoon offensive?
Of course it was.
Did it fuel misconceptions about the Senator and his wife?
Probably not......that's already been done.
In fact, the increasingly famous "New Yorker" cover held up a mirror to the campaign, the media and more importantly to America itself. The cartoon revealed some offensive truths about how this campaign has been conducted and covered, but also, about America in general and how out of touch with reality so many of us truly are.
First and foremost, this was the "New Yorker" being ironic, not some tabloid or sensationalistic media spook machine that was seeking to raise questions about the Senator of his wife's commitment to the nation's well being. The "New Yorker" is in fact, one the few bastions of intelligent and measured writing where analysis and good story telling pair up with meticulous investigative journalism. It is one of the few places that those with the patience, to actually read an article longer than four or five pages long,find articles that reveal facts, figures and truths about our Democracy, better yet, our world.
What might be considered offensive is the fact that so many Americans don't take the time to actually pick up the magazine and read those stories beyond that offensive cover.
But, even more offensive is the deeper truth pointed out by the cover and the seemingly insecure and condescending reaction that some Obama supporters and even some Republicans have claimed to have.
The "New Yorker" cover page makes fun of the sad fact that vast swaths of voters actually believe that the Obama's depicted in the cartoon are real. But, it also shines a light on the units of the media machine that have inadvertently helped perpetuate the rumors and innuendo that have led to misperceptions about the Obama's patriotism.
Now that's offensive.
The inability of Obama supporters to appreciate that sort of irony is offensive as well, since they know all to well, the cartoon, in its outrageousness and non-PC style, does exactly that.
But, by raising such a fuss about a cartoon in the "New Yorker", by going public with worries that it will affect voter's perception, those supporters, spokespersons, even the candidate are in essence participating in the wildfire of paranoia and condescension so common in American politics today?
If anything, "The New Yorker" that bastion of elitism was pointing out that America, despite being a place of instant information gratification is a place where vast portions of the public are ill informed, a public that shows increasing signs of collective ADD, always looking for the next shrill topic, the next scandal and not real truths that might inform them to make wise decisions in voting booths that might truly impact their communities, their nation their lives, truths often found in magazines like "The New Yorker".
It's really a shame that so many are up in arms about this cartoon. The only positive might be that more people may actually buy the magazine and read it.
This was clever satire and the jokes on `the people', not the Obamas.
Monday, July 14, 2008
(New York Times) Bank Stocks Are Battered as Unease Grows
Bank Stocks Are Battered as Unease Grows
By LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH "New York Times"
Published: July 15, 2008
Investors continued to beat down bank stocks on Monday, fearing that the government’s aid to help Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not hold back the rising tide of bad loans.
Link to full story at NYT
By LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH "New York Times"
Published: July 15, 2008
Investors continued to beat down bank stocks on Monday, fearing that the government’s aid to help Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would not hold back the rising tide of bad loans.
Link to full story at NYT
Sunday, July 13, 2008
From "The Raw Story"; Alabama US Attorney denies any involvement in university editor's termination
The abrupt dismissal of a veteran University of Alabama employee who blogged about the firing of seven US Attorneys has added a bizarre new twist to allegations that the state's US Attorneys targeted political opponents for prosecution.
"Raw Story's' Lindsay Beyerstein has a closer look at the firing of Roger Shuler from UAB
LINK TO FULL STORY AT "RAW STORY"
"Raw Story's' Lindsay Beyerstein has a closer look at the firing of Roger Shuler from UAB
LINK TO FULL STORY AT "RAW STORY"
From "New York Times":A New Fashion Catches On in Paris: Cheap Bicycle Rentals
A New Fashion Catches On in Paris: Cheap Bicycle Rentals
By STEVEN ERLANGER (New York Times)
Published: July 13, 2008
A year after the introduction of the sturdy gray bicycles known as Vélib’s, other major cities, including American ones, are exploring similar projects.
Link to full Story at NYT
By STEVEN ERLANGER (New York Times)
Published: July 13, 2008
A year after the introduction of the sturdy gray bicycles known as Vélib’s, other major cities, including American ones, are exploring similar projects.
Link to full Story at NYT
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
(REUTERS VIDEO) Hebron settlers accused of beating
Jul 8 - An Israeli -Palestinian rights group has released video of a Palestinian man tied to a phone pole claiming it shows the man being beaten up by Jewish settlers.
FROM REUTERS-The video was recorded by activists belonging to Ta'ayush, an Israeli-Palestinian human rights group.
The group claims it shows a bound Palestinian man being kicked by Jewish settlers while Israeli soldiers stand by. The man, a 30-year-old Palestinian teacher, was eventually freed and taken to hospital.
He later told Reuters the settlers had falsely accused him of setting fire to one of their fields before beating him. Israeli police say two settlers were arrested on suspicion of assault.
A settler leader in Hebron says the video wrongly portrays the settlers as aggressors when, in reality, they're defending themselves.
Susan Flory (REUTERS) reports.
FROM REUTERS-The video was recorded by activists belonging to Ta'ayush, an Israeli-Palestinian human rights group.
The group claims it shows a bound Palestinian man being kicked by Jewish settlers while Israeli soldiers stand by. The man, a 30-year-old Palestinian teacher, was eventually freed and taken to hospital.
He later told Reuters the settlers had falsely accused him of setting fire to one of their fields before beating him. Israeli police say two settlers were arrested on suspicion of assault.
A settler leader in Hebron says the video wrongly portrays the settlers as aggressors when, in reality, they're defending themselves.
Susan Flory (REUTERS) reports.
Wednesday, July 02, 2008
Downtown Gotham Laments Closure of a Meatpacking District Eatery
LINK TO MY FULL STORY AT EDGE
excerpt
The paint on the window told the whole story.
"Serving 24 hours until the bitter "sweet" end on June 29," it read.
After 23 years of serving countless steak frites, muscles and Boudin Noire in an area more known for beef racks, leather daddy’s, transgender prostitutes, club kids and Hogs and Heffers, the modern landmark 24 hour French diner that served the fashionable alongside the "freaky" has closed its doors. News reports account Morellet signed a lease for $6,000 in 1995. The landlord reportedly sought to increase the rent to around $700,000 per year-or $58,000 per month-this past year. And Morellet was left with little choice but to close shop after a period of unsuccessful negotiation.
excerpt
The paint on the window told the whole story.
"Serving 24 hours until the bitter "sweet" end on June 29," it read.
After 23 years of serving countless steak frites, muscles and Boudin Noire in an area more known for beef racks, leather daddy’s, transgender prostitutes, club kids and Hogs and Heffers, the modern landmark 24 hour French diner that served the fashionable alongside the "freaky" has closed its doors. News reports account Morellet signed a lease for $6,000 in 1995. The landlord reportedly sought to increase the rent to around $700,000 per year-or $58,000 per month-this past year. And Morellet was left with little choice but to close shop after a period of unsuccessful negotiation.
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