Why stop with just arguing about God?
Describing the creator as "not necessary" in his
latest book is just another day at the office for that
whimsical scamp Stephen Hawking, better known as
"one of the foremost theoretical physicists of this
century" in the words of the Oxford Dictionary of
Scientists.
In his latest book, , out Sept. 7, Hawking and his
co-author, Caltech physicist Leonard Mlodinow,
also lay down their views on intelligent design
(bad), string theory (good) and philosophy ("dead").
"We're not saying there is no God, we're saying there
is no need for God to explain the universe," says
Mlodinow. "The views in the book are scientific
ones."
The scientific views in the book are the ones
Hawking developed after he wrote 2005's , with
Mlodinow. That book updated (and condensed)
Hawking's Brief History of Time, the 1988 best-
selling tome that made him a household name,
laying out how modern "standard model" physics
explained how stars and galaxies grew from the
early moments of the universe.
Hawking, now 68 and confined to a wheelchair
because of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou
Gehrig's disease), also discussed his own work
showing how black holes may emit radiation over
time.
That's all. The Grand Design instead hunts bigger
game.
"The book was really written to address two
questions. Where did the universe come from and
why are the laws of the universe so finely tuned to
allow our existence," Mlodinow says.
Chiefly, Hawking says in the new book that
is criticizing his own approach in his 1988 book)
with "the usual assumption in cosmology that the
universe has a single definite history," which he
calls a "bottom-up" approach. "Instead, one should
trace the histories from the top down, backward
from the present time," he writes.
How do we do that? In the last few decades,
physicists have seen the 13.7 billion-year-old
signature of the Big Bang, the Cosmic Microwave
Background Radiation, filling space. And they have
grappled with a unifying theory explaining both
gravity and nuclear forces (now unreconciled by
standard theories), often called superstring theory
or " M-theory," that suggests the universe has many
"hidden" dimensions besides the familar up-down,
sideways and back-and-forth ones that most of us
experience while sober. Both of these advances,
Hawking suggests, point to a surprising
understanding of our origins.
Taking M-theory's hidden dimensions seriously and
tracing the history of our universe backwards in
time ("top-down") points to our universe being just
one of gazillions of universes spawned at the time
of the Big Bang, Hawking writes. Some of those
universes would have completely different physical
laws. "In some universes electrons have the weight
of golf balls and the force of gravity is stronger than
that of magnetism. In ours the standard model, with
all its parameters (rules), applies."
So there's nothing special about our universe that
needs explaining for why gravity or electromagnetic
forces have their particular strength, values which
allowed life to evolve on our planet. We got the one
we got.
Also in this view, the universe blasted itself into
existence spontaneously, following M-theory's rules
to create physical laws that we call gravity,
magnetism and so on, purely by chance. "He's
pointing to a crucial and fascinating feature of
Einstein's general relativity (law of gravity):
universes are free!" says Caltech physicist Sean
Carroll in an e-mail. He's the author of From Eternity
to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time.
"It costs precisely zero energy (and zero anything
else) to make an entire universe. From that
perspective, perhaps it's not surprising that the
universe did come into existence."
The pronouncements about God also aren't all that
surprising coming from Hawking, says science
journalism professor Declan Fahy of American
cosmologists have made a mistake (and implicitly heUniversity in Washington D.C., who has written
about the history of the celebrity scientist. "A Brief
History of Time has a catchphrase about physicists
'knowing the mind of God'," Fahy says.
"Some people criticize this as using God as a
marketing technique. There is some validity to that
view, but also some unfairness," Fahy adds. "I think
what has really captured the public mind about
Hawking is the image of this great scientist
overcoming real physical challenges to do his
work."
"I just hope a reader comes away from the book
thinking 'Wow, the universe is really a cool place',"
says Mlodinow, a well-regarded science writer who
also wrote episodes of . "I hope people really can
feel some of the awe in the beauty of nature that
scientists feel, and understand where they come
from."
Monday, September 06, 2010
Congressional Charities Pulling In Corporate Cash
WASHINGTON — Representative Joe Baca has achieved near celebrity status in his suburban Los Angeles district, as much for his record of giveaways — Thanksgiving turkeys, college scholarships, spare boots for firefighters — as for anything he has done in Congress.
That generosity is made possible by the Joe Baca Foundation, a charity his family set up three years ago to aid local organizations. It provides another benefit, too: helping the Democratic congressman run something akin to a permanent political campaign.
Joe Baca T-shirts and caps are given out at the charity’s events, where banners display his name. Local newspapers mention the charity’s donations, and cable stations show appearances by Mr. Baca and his family at functions his foundation supports.
“It’s great,” said Laura Goodloe, 36, as she watched her 8-year-old son, Jordan, play at the arena in San Bernardino, Calif., where the Baca Foundation offered a free basketball clinic last month. “He is giving back to the community.”
But unlike most private foundations, Mr. Baca’s gets little of its money from its founders’ pockets. Instead, local companies and major corporations that have often turned to Mr. Baca’s Washington office for help, and usually succeed in getting it, are the chief donors.
A review by The New York Times of federal tax records and House and Senate disclosure reports found at least two dozen charities that lawmakers or their families helped create or run that routinely accept donations from businesses seeking to influence them. The sponsors — AT&T, Chevron, General Dynamics, Morgan Stanley, Eli Lilly and dozens of others — contribute millions of dollars annually in gifts ranging from token amounts to a check for $5 million.
Since 2009, businesses have sent lobbyists and executives to the plush Boulders resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., for a fund-raiser for the scholarship fund of Representative Steve Buyer, Republican of Indiana; sponsored a skeet shooting competition in Florida to help the favorite food bank of Representative Allen Boyd, Democrat of Florida; and subsidized a spa and speedway outing in Las Vegas to aid the charity of Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada.
Just last month, they touted their largess with flags bearing their names near the tees at a golf tournament benefiting the foundation of Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina.
Despite rules imposed in 2007 to curb the influence of special interests in Congress, corporate donations to lawmakers’ charities have continued, thanks to a provision that allows businesses to make unlimited gifts to them. And while business executives say they want to give to a good cause, their pattern of spending — contributions that often are not disclosed, in apparent violation of ethics rules — suggests another reason.
Altria, the cigarette maker, for example, sent at least $45,000 in donations over a six-week period last fall to four charitable programs founded by House members — including Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, and Mr. Clyburn, the Democratic whip — just as the company was seeking approval of legislation intended to curb illegal Internet sales of its cigarettes. An Altria spokesman said the donations were not related to the measure, which all four congressmen backed. (The other two are Mr. Boyd and Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan.)
Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy, acknowledged that the company participates in lawmakers’ charitable events in part to get access to them and push its agenda. “We are not apologetic about it at all: it is part of our overall effort to work with policy makers,” he said. “Social settings are always a good way to get to know people.”
Like Mr. Baca, other members of Congress benefit from the good will that their corporate-financed philanthropy generates among voters. The lawmakers defend the donations, saying they have no influence on the politicians’ positions on legislation or policy. They also say that they typically do not serve on the charities’ governing boards or solicit contributions themselves.
“There is nothing improper here at all,” said Mark Hayes, a spokesman for Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, who helped found two Indiana nonprofit groups that are supported by corporate contributions. “They are simply causes he believes in.”
But some current and former lawmakers, as well as ethics officials on Capitol Hill, find the charitable donations troubling, calling them one of the last major unregulated fronts in the “pay to play” culture in Washington. The donations typically far exceed what companies are permitted to give to candidates in campaign contributions.
The Office of Congressional Ethics, a House oversight group, twice last year investigated lawmakers’ charities, but took no action, in part because the House granted waivers exempting the congressmen from prohibitions against soliciting donations from companies with business before their committees.
The donations by corporations and lobbyists to politicians’ favorite causes can create expectations that the lawmakers will return the favor, said Mickey Edwards, an Oklahoma Republican who served 16 years in the House.
“Almost all of these foundations, they were set up for a good purpose,” Mr. Edwards said. “But as soon as you take a donation, it creates more than just an appearance problem for the member of Congress. It is a real conflict.”
A Time for Giving
In August, with Congress in recess, the charity fund-raising effort goes into overdrive, and last month was no exception.
¶At a mountaintop resort spa in Utah, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Republican, hosted a golf tournament to raise money for the Utah Families Foundation, which he helped establish. Companies willing to donate at least $20,000 got to meet privately with the senator and received other perks.
The guests included executives from Cephalon and Watson Pharmaceutical, drug companies that have sought Mr. Hatch’s help in protecting them from federal regulators who have accusedthem of conspiring to delay the sale of lower cost generic drugs.
(Seven drug makers and big corporate players like Morgan Stanley, Qwest and Chevron donated enough last year to earn an invitation to the private reception, helping the charity raise a total of $900,000.)
¶In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose family began the Waterfall Foundation to finance breast cancer screening in rural Alaska, appeared at an exclusive fishing resort on Prince of Wales Island, reachable only by boat or seaplane. The guest list of nearly 100 was a who’s who of the global oil and coal industries, with lobbyists and executives from Exxon Mobile, ConocoPhillips, BP, Duke Energy and Royal Dutch Shell. (David Lawrence, Shell’s executive vice president for oil exploration, pulled in one of the biggest fish, a 105-pound halibut.)
Ms. Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee who just lost her re-election bid, has been a staunch advocate for the companies, which variously are seeking drilling rights off Alaska, federal assistance for new nuclear projects and a halt to efforts to impose a cap on carbon dioxide emissions.
Ms. Murkowski’s sister, Eileen Van Wyhe, the charity’s executive director, called the event a huge success. It brought in about $500,000, half of which was donated to the foundation and the rest largely covering the resort bill.
“Nothing about this is political,” she said. “Everyone is here just to support the charity.”
¶In Santee, S.C., Mr. Clyburn buzzed around glistening Lake Marion in a golf cart, hobnobbing with some of the 600 players at an annual tournament benefiting the James E. Clyburn Research and Scholarship Foundation.
The event pulls in more than $500,000. At a gala dinner, the charity gave out more than 100 scholarships worth $1,000 and free laptop computers, together worth more than $400,000, to students who otherwise might not be able to attend college.
“This is not about promoting Jim Clyburn, but about filling a real need in the community,” said Hope Derrick, the congressman’s spokeswoman.
But the donors were not there simply to help needy youngsters, several acknowledged in interviews. In addition to drug makers, telecommunications firms and tobacco companies, nearly a dozen nuclear industry companies served as sponsors.
“When it comes to nuclear power, Jim Clyburn is always on our side,” said Robert Eble, a nuclear safety manager from Shaw Areva Mox Services. It has a multibillion-dollar federal contract to convert plutonium from old weapons into nuclear fuel, a South Carolina project Mr. Clyburn has pushed. “Whatever we can do to help him in return, we are there.”
It is difficult to determine how much corporate money flows into the lawmaker-affiliated charities. They are not required to disclose their donors or the amount of their gifts, and few of them do. After scandals involving Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican and former House majority leader, and the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Congress adopted rules requiring corporations with lobbyists to report donations to charities established by a lawmaker.
The Times review, however, found at least a dozen companies that appear to have violated the requirements. A spokeswoman said the Senate Office of Public Records was barred from routinely checking lobbyist filings to ensure that they were honoring the rules.
It is illegal for lawmakers to use government resources — including letterhead or staff members — to help run their charities. But the lines are often blurred. For example, Dalton J. Tresvant, a full-time House aide to Mr. Clyburn, also organizes, as a volunteer, Mr. Clyburn’s annual golf tournament.
The fine print of ethics rules allows lawmakers to be closely associated with fund-raising appeals, even if they do not solicit donations themselves. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, founded two nonprofit groups and has long ties to a third, the Washington Bach Consort. While the senator, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, has donated significant amounts of money to the charities, they still seek gifts from companies that regularly appeal to him as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
At a May fund-raiser, Mr. Rockefeller made fun of the ethics restrictions that forced him to become an “honorary” member of the board of the Bach Consort. While aides say that Mr. Rockefeller does not personally ask for donations and that any gifts do not influence his stands, officials at one of the groups said he regularly invoked Mr. Rockefeller’s name when making fund-raising calls to businesses. The senator also sometimes thanks donors in person.
“This is a major, major — the major event for us,” Mr. Rockefeller told lobbyists and corporate executives at the May fund-raiser. “Many of you are here, and who have contributed, you are special to us.”
Overlapping Agendas
Perhaps nowhere is the mixing of charitable and political agendas more evident than with Mr. Baca and his family-run charity. It is not particularly large, taking in only about $200,000 in contributions this year, according to Joe Baca Jr., the lawmaker’s son. But the list of corporate donors and supporters serves almost like a road map to Mr. Baca’s major legislative actions.
Coca-Cola, which donated $40,000 in the last two years, is preparing to fight a proposal to prohibit the use of food stamps to buy high-calorie sodas, an issue that could be before the agriculture subcommittee that Mr. Baca leads.
The Lewis Group of Companies, a local development firm and a frequent sponsor of Baca Foundation events, is preparing to start construction on a 2,000-unit housing project built on land that Mr. Baca helped deliver by steering legislation through Congress to close the Rialto Municipal Airport, the current occupant. Mr. Baca last year helped secure a $500,000 budget earmark for Telacu, another local housing group that donates to his foundation.
Another donor to his foundation is Rentech, a California-based biofuels company that wants to build a new fuel plant in Mr. Baca’s district. After it made two donations last year, Mr. Baca’s son, who serves on the Rialto City Council, voted to endorse federal assistance for the project — even before the company had completed the local environmental permit reviews. Then the congressman sent a letter to the Energy Department on his office stationery urging approval of the assistance.
Mr. Baca’s office in Washington declined to address questions about the charity, or about positions the congressman has taken that appear to benefit donors. “They do a lot of great work,” said Stephen Wall, a spokesman for Mr. Baca, referring to the foundation. “But as far as what we do, it is separate.”
Mr. Baca’s son, who handles administrative matters at the charity, said many of the other donors were small California businesses with no issues before lawmakers in Washington. “We have always been about giving back,” he said.
Scott Folkens, a Republican who is fighting what he acknowledges is an uphill battle to replace Mr. Baca, said the charitable work by his opponent was smart politically, but unfair.
“I have no problem with a congressman doing good for the community,” Mr. Folkens said. “But this is a way for him to campaign for himself and his family, with the bills being paid by corporate sponsors.”
Rebecca Cathcart contributed reporting from San Bernardino, Calif., and Ron Nixon from Washington.
That generosity is made possible by the Joe Baca Foundation, a charity his family set up three years ago to aid local organizations. It provides another benefit, too: helping the Democratic congressman run something akin to a permanent political campaign.
Joe Baca T-shirts and caps are given out at the charity’s events, where banners display his name. Local newspapers mention the charity’s donations, and cable stations show appearances by Mr. Baca and his family at functions his foundation supports.
“It’s great,” said Laura Goodloe, 36, as she watched her 8-year-old son, Jordan, play at the arena in San Bernardino, Calif., where the Baca Foundation offered a free basketball clinic last month. “He is giving back to the community.”
But unlike most private foundations, Mr. Baca’s gets little of its money from its founders’ pockets. Instead, local companies and major corporations that have often turned to Mr. Baca’s Washington office for help, and usually succeed in getting it, are the chief donors.
A review by The New York Times of federal tax records and House and Senate disclosure reports found at least two dozen charities that lawmakers or their families helped create or run that routinely accept donations from businesses seeking to influence them. The sponsors — AT&T, Chevron, General Dynamics, Morgan Stanley, Eli Lilly and dozens of others — contribute millions of dollars annually in gifts ranging from token amounts to a check for $5 million.
Since 2009, businesses have sent lobbyists and executives to the plush Boulders resort in Scottsdale, Ariz., for a fund-raiser for the scholarship fund of Representative Steve Buyer, Republican of Indiana; sponsored a skeet shooting competition in Florida to help the favorite food bank of Representative Allen Boyd, Democrat of Florida; and subsidized a spa and speedway outing in Las Vegas to aid the charity of Senator John Ensign, Republican of Nevada.
Just last month, they touted their largess with flags bearing their names near the tees at a golf tournament benefiting the foundation of Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina.
Despite rules imposed in 2007 to curb the influence of special interests in Congress, corporate donations to lawmakers’ charities have continued, thanks to a provision that allows businesses to make unlimited gifts to them. And while business executives say they want to give to a good cause, their pattern of spending — contributions that often are not disclosed, in apparent violation of ethics rules — suggests another reason.
Altria, the cigarette maker, for example, sent at least $45,000 in donations over a six-week period last fall to four charitable programs founded by House members — including Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the Republican leader, and Mr. Clyburn, the Democratic whip — just as the company was seeking approval of legislation intended to curb illegal Internet sales of its cigarettes. An Altria spokesman said the donations were not related to the measure, which all four congressmen backed. (The other two are Mr. Boyd and Representative Bart Stupak, Democrat of Michigan.)
Tom Williams, a spokesman for Duke Energy, acknowledged that the company participates in lawmakers’ charitable events in part to get access to them and push its agenda. “We are not apologetic about it at all: it is part of our overall effort to work with policy makers,” he said. “Social settings are always a good way to get to know people.”
Like Mr. Baca, other members of Congress benefit from the good will that their corporate-financed philanthropy generates among voters. The lawmakers defend the donations, saying they have no influence on the politicians’ positions on legislation or policy. They also say that they typically do not serve on the charities’ governing boards or solicit contributions themselves.
“There is nothing improper here at all,” said Mark Hayes, a spokesman for Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, who helped found two Indiana nonprofit groups that are supported by corporate contributions. “They are simply causes he believes in.”
But some current and former lawmakers, as well as ethics officials on Capitol Hill, find the charitable donations troubling, calling them one of the last major unregulated fronts in the “pay to play” culture in Washington. The donations typically far exceed what companies are permitted to give to candidates in campaign contributions.
The Office of Congressional Ethics, a House oversight group, twice last year investigated lawmakers’ charities, but took no action, in part because the House granted waivers exempting the congressmen from prohibitions against soliciting donations from companies with business before their committees.
The donations by corporations and lobbyists to politicians’ favorite causes can create expectations that the lawmakers will return the favor, said Mickey Edwards, an Oklahoma Republican who served 16 years in the House.
“Almost all of these foundations, they were set up for a good purpose,” Mr. Edwards said. “But as soon as you take a donation, it creates more than just an appearance problem for the member of Congress. It is a real conflict.”
A Time for Giving
In August, with Congress in recess, the charity fund-raising effort goes into overdrive, and last month was no exception.
¶At a mountaintop resort spa in Utah, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, a Republican, hosted a golf tournament to raise money for the Utah Families Foundation, which he helped establish. Companies willing to donate at least $20,000 got to meet privately with the senator and received other perks.
The guests included executives from Cephalon and Watson Pharmaceutical, drug companies that have sought Mr. Hatch’s help in protecting them from federal regulators who have accusedthem of conspiring to delay the sale of lower cost generic drugs.
(Seven drug makers and big corporate players like Morgan Stanley, Qwest and Chevron donated enough last year to earn an invitation to the private reception, helping the charity raise a total of $900,000.)
¶In Alaska, Senator Lisa Murkowski, whose family began the Waterfall Foundation to finance breast cancer screening in rural Alaska, appeared at an exclusive fishing resort on Prince of Wales Island, reachable only by boat or seaplane. The guest list of nearly 100 was a who’s who of the global oil and coal industries, with lobbyists and executives from Exxon Mobile, ConocoPhillips, BP, Duke Energy and Royal Dutch Shell. (David Lawrence, Shell’s executive vice president for oil exploration, pulled in one of the biggest fish, a 105-pound halibut.)
Ms. Murkowski, the ranking Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee who just lost her re-election bid, has been a staunch advocate for the companies, which variously are seeking drilling rights off Alaska, federal assistance for new nuclear projects and a halt to efforts to impose a cap on carbon dioxide emissions.
Ms. Murkowski’s sister, Eileen Van Wyhe, the charity’s executive director, called the event a huge success. It brought in about $500,000, half of which was donated to the foundation and the rest largely covering the resort bill.
“Nothing about this is political,” she said. “Everyone is here just to support the charity.”
¶In Santee, S.C., Mr. Clyburn buzzed around glistening Lake Marion in a golf cart, hobnobbing with some of the 600 players at an annual tournament benefiting the James E. Clyburn Research and Scholarship Foundation.
The event pulls in more than $500,000. At a gala dinner, the charity gave out more than 100 scholarships worth $1,000 and free laptop computers, together worth more than $400,000, to students who otherwise might not be able to attend college.
“This is not about promoting Jim Clyburn, but about filling a real need in the community,” said Hope Derrick, the congressman’s spokeswoman.
But the donors were not there simply to help needy youngsters, several acknowledged in interviews. In addition to drug makers, telecommunications firms and tobacco companies, nearly a dozen nuclear industry companies served as sponsors.
“When it comes to nuclear power, Jim Clyburn is always on our side,” said Robert Eble, a nuclear safety manager from Shaw Areva Mox Services. It has a multibillion-dollar federal contract to convert plutonium from old weapons into nuclear fuel, a South Carolina project Mr. Clyburn has pushed. “Whatever we can do to help him in return, we are there.”
It is difficult to determine how much corporate money flows into the lawmaker-affiliated charities. They are not required to disclose their donors or the amount of their gifts, and few of them do. After scandals involving Tom DeLay, a Texas Republican and former House majority leader, and the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Congress adopted rules requiring corporations with lobbyists to report donations to charities established by a lawmaker.
The Times review, however, found at least a dozen companies that appear to have violated the requirements. A spokeswoman said the Senate Office of Public Records was barred from routinely checking lobbyist filings to ensure that they were honoring the rules.
It is illegal for lawmakers to use government resources — including letterhead or staff members — to help run their charities. But the lines are often blurred. For example, Dalton J. Tresvant, a full-time House aide to Mr. Clyburn, also organizes, as a volunteer, Mr. Clyburn’s annual golf tournament.
The fine print of ethics rules allows lawmakers to be closely associated with fund-raising appeals, even if they do not solicit donations themselves. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, founded two nonprofit groups and has long ties to a third, the Washington Bach Consort. While the senator, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, has donated significant amounts of money to the charities, they still seek gifts from companies that regularly appeal to him as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.
At a May fund-raiser, Mr. Rockefeller made fun of the ethics restrictions that forced him to become an “honorary” member of the board of the Bach Consort. While aides say that Mr. Rockefeller does not personally ask for donations and that any gifts do not influence his stands, officials at one of the groups said he regularly invoked Mr. Rockefeller’s name when making fund-raising calls to businesses. The senator also sometimes thanks donors in person.
“This is a major, major — the major event for us,” Mr. Rockefeller told lobbyists and corporate executives at the May fund-raiser. “Many of you are here, and who have contributed, you are special to us.”
Overlapping Agendas
Perhaps nowhere is the mixing of charitable and political agendas more evident than with Mr. Baca and his family-run charity. It is not particularly large, taking in only about $200,000 in contributions this year, according to Joe Baca Jr., the lawmaker’s son. But the list of corporate donors and supporters serves almost like a road map to Mr. Baca’s major legislative actions.
Coca-Cola, which donated $40,000 in the last two years, is preparing to fight a proposal to prohibit the use of food stamps to buy high-calorie sodas, an issue that could be before the agriculture subcommittee that Mr. Baca leads.
The Lewis Group of Companies, a local development firm and a frequent sponsor of Baca Foundation events, is preparing to start construction on a 2,000-unit housing project built on land that Mr. Baca helped deliver by steering legislation through Congress to close the Rialto Municipal Airport, the current occupant. Mr. Baca last year helped secure a $500,000 budget earmark for Telacu, another local housing group that donates to his foundation.
Another donor to his foundation is Rentech, a California-based biofuels company that wants to build a new fuel plant in Mr. Baca’s district. After it made two donations last year, Mr. Baca’s son, who serves on the Rialto City Council, voted to endorse federal assistance for the project — even before the company had completed the local environmental permit reviews. Then the congressman sent a letter to the Energy Department on his office stationery urging approval of the assistance.
Mr. Baca’s office in Washington declined to address questions about the charity, or about positions the congressman has taken that appear to benefit donors. “They do a lot of great work,” said Stephen Wall, a spokesman for Mr. Baca, referring to the foundation. “But as far as what we do, it is separate.”
Mr. Baca’s son, who handles administrative matters at the charity, said many of the other donors were small California businesses with no issues before lawmakers in Washington. “We have always been about giving back,” he said.
Scott Folkens, a Republican who is fighting what he acknowledges is an uphill battle to replace Mr. Baca, said the charitable work by his opponent was smart politically, but unfair.
“I have no problem with a congressman doing good for the community,” Mr. Folkens said. “But this is a way for him to campaign for himself and his family, with the bills being paid by corporate sponsors.”
Rebecca Cathcart contributed reporting from San Bernardino, Calif., and Ron Nixon from Washington.
Saturday, September 04, 2010
MEDIA THAT MATTERS WEEKLY FOCUS
Will Glenn Beck's The Blaze follow Breitbart's trail?
Glenn Beck has a three-hour radio show, a one-hour television show, regular guest slots on Fox News and Fox Business, and a subscription website. Still, he doesn't have enough hours in the day for some of the "stories that matter most."
"I hired some journalists because there are stories I don't have enough broadcast hours in a day to cover them and somebody has got to cover them," Beck told viewers on September 1 while discussing his new online media site, The Blaze.
Anyone remotely familiar with Beck knows he's notoriously thin-skinned, resulting in copious amounts of time defending himself and his brand. So it's little surprise that the topic most important to Glenn Beck's The Blaze is Glenn Beck.
Within several days after launching, some of the site's stories include such page-scrollers as "NY Times Columnist on Beck: 'I Underestimated the Man,'" "Columnist: Sharpton, Not Beck, Distorts MLK's Legacy," and "Slideshow: Newspaper Coverage of 8/28."
If Beck confines his website to "Glenn is great" stories, then there's ultimately no harm, no foul. But in an "exclusive" press release -- or what Mediaite refers to as an "article" -- about the site, Beck said he envisions The Blaze as having "reporting, insightful opinions and engaging videos about the stories that matter most ... I look forward to keeping [editor] Scott [Baker] and his team busy by sending countless ideas at 3am every morning." (So far, "insight" and "reporting" have been lacking.)
As Media Matters has documented, the conservative web has tried its hand at "reporting, insightful opinions, and engaging videos" -- and done it badly.
Exhibit A comes in the form of Andrew Breitbart, who -- in the words of Shep Smith -- runs a "widely discredited website" that posts "inaccurate" and "edited" videos. Breitbart, of course, was widely criticized for posting misleading videos about ACORN, and then came back for an encore by posting another deceptive tape, this time wrongly accusing former USDA official Shirley Sherrod of racism. Those two incidents are the most high-profile of a long rap sheet against Breitbart.
How does Glenn Beck feel about Andrew Breitbart? You don't have to read between any lines to see that Beck views him as an inspiration -- one of the "great journalists of our time" and a future chapter in history books:
"You [Andrew Breitbart] are in instrumental in changing America. I think the history books will - I mean, assuming that our side wins - the history book will reflect your service to the country." (February 12, Fox News)
"Thank goodness, BigGovernment.com and Andrew Breitbart are always watching, as are we." (December 7, 2009, Fox News)
"You know where the great journalists of our time are? Andrew Breitbart. I was just thinking when I was listening to this, I mean this Andrew. You are the only one -- you were the only one, besides watchdogs, that were really aggressively working behind the scenes with us on Van Jones." (September 10, radio)
"Andrew Breitbart brought this to my attention. He called me the other day. And I wanted to bring it to your attention - the National People's Action group. This action group - this is yet another community organizing group that makes ACORN look like a Sunday morning, you know, knitting clutch." (May 4, Fox News)
"Well, Andrew Breitbart from Breitbart.com brought this video to my attention, and I've got to show it to you. We'll show it all tomorrow. But this is SEIU's president Andy Stern on the real motives of the unions." (March 2, Fox News)
As Media Matters has documented, Beck has frequently turned to Breitbart for stories and inspiration. Indeed, Beck was perhaps the media figure most responsible for pushing the ACORN story into the mainstream.
So when it came to launching his own site, Beck turned to one of Breitbart's top lieutenants, Scott Baker, who co-founded Breitbart.tv and served as vice president for business development at Breitbart.com. Under Baker, Breitbart.tv launched a litany of false and misleading videos and stories against progressives, such as smearing Department of Education staffer Kevin Jennings and posting a doctored video falsely claiming community organizers were "praying" to Obama.
Breitbart also hired Pam Key who, as Terry Krepel noted, is the activist behind the Breitbart-promoted operation Naked Emperor News. Key's videos are notorious for attacking the Obama administration while omitting necessary context (a la Breitbart).
After the Sherrod fiasco blew up in Breitbart's face, MSNBC.com's First Read blog wrote, "you would have thought that all of us in the ACTUAL news business would have learned this lesson about Andrew Breitbart and his protégés: They're not out for the truth; they're out for scalps."
Similarly, if Glenn Beck's track record on television and radio isn't enough to disqualify his new website as anything other than a dubious exercise in new media, surely his Breitbart-infused vision of "great" new media journalism is.
Dick Morris: Fox News' traveling GOP salesman
Fox News "political analyst" Dick Morris is a busy man. According to The Hill, Morris plans "to campaign for some 40 Republican congressional candidates in 2010."
Last month, for instance, Morris hit the campaign trail for Ohio congressional candidates Bill Johnson, Bob Gibbs, and Tom Ganley. The event reportedly featured a 5 p.m. "private reception and roundtable discussion with Morris, costing $2,400 a person. The cost also includes a photo with Morris and an autographed copy of his latest book, '2010: Take Back America.' It costs $500 a person for a private reception, photo and book signing at 5:45 p.m."
Morris also headlined a fundraiser for congressional candidate Scott Tipton, costing a minimum of $50 per person, with a "special VIP reception" at $500 per person.
None of the GOP fundraising and advocacy would be possible -- or even relevant -- if not for one important party: Fox News.
Consider, for instance, how Morris' appearance at an event for West Virginia congressional candidate David McKinley was described this week at the very top of a local TV station's 6 p.m. newscast:
"A Fox News commentator is here in the mid-Ohio valley for a local candidate."
The station then aired video of McKinley explaining why he brought in Morris: "I think people that have followed Fox News and get a lot of their news that way, maybe this is something that they can relate to. But this man has a national voice that understands this economy."
Indeed, throughout events across the country, Morris is often sold by touting his Fox News affiliation.
Morris' off-air boosterism is only compounded by the fact that he continues it on-air. Recently, Morris suggested that viewers donate to the anti-Harry Reid group Americans for New Leadership -- a group for which Morris is currently fundraising and helping with ad strategy. In February, the Republican Federal Committee of Pennsylvania paid Morris $10,000 for speaking at its 2010 Lincoln Day Dinner. Following the payment, Morris repeatedly appeared on Fox News to discuss Pennsylvania politics and shill for Pennsylvania Republicans and causes. And Morris appeared on Fox News twice to tout then-Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum -- after hosting a pricey fundraiser for him. In none of the previously mentioned incidents did Morris disclose his ties.
Still, Fox News doesn't appear to care about any of Morris' GOP activism despite the fact that he's one of the channel's most frequent on-air commentators. According to a Nexis search of available Fox News programs -- this typically excludes Fox & Friends and daytime programming -- Morris has appeared on Fox News a whopping 110 times in the past year.
This weekly wrap-up was compiled by Media Matters research fellow Eric Hananoki.
Glenn Beck has a three-hour radio show, a one-hour television show, regular guest slots on Fox News and Fox Business, and a subscription website. Still, he doesn't have enough hours in the day for some of the "stories that matter most."
"I hired some journalists because there are stories I don't have enough broadcast hours in a day to cover them and somebody has got to cover them," Beck told viewers on September 1 while discussing his new online media site, The Blaze.
Anyone remotely familiar with Beck knows he's notoriously thin-skinned, resulting in copious amounts of time defending himself and his brand. So it's little surprise that the topic most important to Glenn Beck's The Blaze is Glenn Beck.
Within several days after launching, some of the site's stories include such page-scrollers as "NY Times Columnist on Beck: 'I Underestimated the Man,'" "Columnist: Sharpton, Not Beck, Distorts MLK's Legacy," and "Slideshow: Newspaper Coverage of 8/28."
If Beck confines his website to "Glenn is great" stories, then there's ultimately no harm, no foul. But in an "exclusive" press release -- or what Mediaite refers to as an "article" -- about the site, Beck said he envisions The Blaze as having "reporting, insightful opinions and engaging videos about the stories that matter most ... I look forward to keeping [editor] Scott [Baker] and his team busy by sending countless ideas at 3am every morning." (So far, "insight" and "reporting" have been lacking.)
As Media Matters has documented, the conservative web has tried its hand at "reporting, insightful opinions, and engaging videos" -- and done it badly.
Exhibit A comes in the form of Andrew Breitbart, who -- in the words of Shep Smith -- runs a "widely discredited website" that posts "inaccurate" and "edited" videos. Breitbart, of course, was widely criticized for posting misleading videos about ACORN, and then came back for an encore by posting another deceptive tape, this time wrongly accusing former USDA official Shirley Sherrod of racism. Those two incidents are the most high-profile of a long rap sheet against Breitbart.
How does Glenn Beck feel about Andrew Breitbart? You don't have to read between any lines to see that Beck views him as an inspiration -- one of the "great journalists of our time" and a future chapter in history books:
"You [Andrew Breitbart] are in instrumental in changing America. I think the history books will - I mean, assuming that our side wins - the history book will reflect your service to the country." (February 12, Fox News)
"Thank goodness, BigGovernment.com and Andrew Breitbart are always watching, as are we." (December 7, 2009, Fox News)
"You know where the great journalists of our time are? Andrew Breitbart. I was just thinking when I was listening to this, I mean this Andrew. You are the only one -- you were the only one, besides watchdogs, that were really aggressively working behind the scenes with us on Van Jones." (September 10, radio)
"Andrew Breitbart brought this to my attention. He called me the other day. And I wanted to bring it to your attention - the National People's Action group. This action group - this is yet another community organizing group that makes ACORN look like a Sunday morning, you know, knitting clutch." (May 4, Fox News)
"Well, Andrew Breitbart from Breitbart.com brought this video to my attention, and I've got to show it to you. We'll show it all tomorrow. But this is SEIU's president Andy Stern on the real motives of the unions." (March 2, Fox News)
As Media Matters has documented, Beck has frequently turned to Breitbart for stories and inspiration. Indeed, Beck was perhaps the media figure most responsible for pushing the ACORN story into the mainstream.
So when it came to launching his own site, Beck turned to one of Breitbart's top lieutenants, Scott Baker, who co-founded Breitbart.tv and served as vice president for business development at Breitbart.com. Under Baker, Breitbart.tv launched a litany of false and misleading videos and stories against progressives, such as smearing Department of Education staffer Kevin Jennings and posting a doctored video falsely claiming community organizers were "praying" to Obama.
Breitbart also hired Pam Key who, as Terry Krepel noted, is the activist behind the Breitbart-promoted operation Naked Emperor News. Key's videos are notorious for attacking the Obama administration while omitting necessary context (a la Breitbart).
After the Sherrod fiasco blew up in Breitbart's face, MSNBC.com's First Read blog wrote, "you would have thought that all of us in the ACTUAL news business would have learned this lesson about Andrew Breitbart and his protégés: They're not out for the truth; they're out for scalps."
Similarly, if Glenn Beck's track record on television and radio isn't enough to disqualify his new website as anything other than a dubious exercise in new media, surely his Breitbart-infused vision of "great" new media journalism is.
Dick Morris: Fox News' traveling GOP salesman
Fox News "political analyst" Dick Morris is a busy man. According to The Hill, Morris plans "to campaign for some 40 Republican congressional candidates in 2010."
Last month, for instance, Morris hit the campaign trail for Ohio congressional candidates Bill Johnson, Bob Gibbs, and Tom Ganley. The event reportedly featured a 5 p.m. "private reception and roundtable discussion with Morris, costing $2,400 a person. The cost also includes a photo with Morris and an autographed copy of his latest book, '2010: Take Back America.' It costs $500 a person for a private reception, photo and book signing at 5:45 p.m."
Morris also headlined a fundraiser for congressional candidate Scott Tipton, costing a minimum of $50 per person, with a "special VIP reception" at $500 per person.
None of the GOP fundraising and advocacy would be possible -- or even relevant -- if not for one important party: Fox News.
Consider, for instance, how Morris' appearance at an event for West Virginia congressional candidate David McKinley was described this week at the very top of a local TV station's 6 p.m. newscast:
"A Fox News commentator is here in the mid-Ohio valley for a local candidate."
The station then aired video of McKinley explaining why he brought in Morris: "I think people that have followed Fox News and get a lot of their news that way, maybe this is something that they can relate to. But this man has a national voice that understands this economy."
Indeed, throughout events across the country, Morris is often sold by touting his Fox News affiliation.
Morris' off-air boosterism is only compounded by the fact that he continues it on-air. Recently, Morris suggested that viewers donate to the anti-Harry Reid group Americans for New Leadership -- a group for which Morris is currently fundraising and helping with ad strategy. In February, the Republican Federal Committee of Pennsylvania paid Morris $10,000 for speaking at its 2010 Lincoln Day Dinner. Following the payment, Morris repeatedly appeared on Fox News to discuss Pennsylvania politics and shill for Pennsylvania Republicans and causes. And Morris appeared on Fox News twice to tout then-Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum -- after hosting a pricey fundraiser for him. In none of the previously mentioned incidents did Morris disclose his ties.
Still, Fox News doesn't appear to care about any of Morris' GOP activism despite the fact that he's one of the channel's most frequent on-air commentators. According to a Nexis search of available Fox News programs -- this typically excludes Fox & Friends and daytime programming -- Morris has appeared on Fox News a whopping 110 times in the past year.
This weekly wrap-up was compiled by Media Matters research fellow Eric Hananoki.
IF YOU NEED A REASON! Why Do People Have Sex?
Why Do People Have Sex?
Sexual motives greatly surpass the 'Big Three'
-- love, pleasure, and making babies.
Your partner may come up with a dozen excuses to say "Not tonight, dear, I have a ____," but how many reasons can the two of you name for seeking sex?
One? Two? Twenty? How about 200? Some college students have cited as many as 237 different reasons for having sex.
From pleasure to procreation, insecurity to inquisitiveness -- today's reasons for taking a roll in the hay seem to vary as much as the terms for the deed itself. A 2010 Sexuality & Culture review of sex motivation studies states that people are offering "far more reasons for choosing to engage in sexual activity than in former times." And we're doing it more often, too. It is a stark contrast from historical assumptions, which tend to cite only three sexual motivators: To make babies, to feel good, or because you're in love.
Today, sexual behaviors seem to have taken on many different psychological, social, cultural, even religious meanings. Yet, some sexologists say, at the most basic level, there is only one true reason people seek sex.
Wired for Sex
"We are programmed to do so. Asking why people have sex is akin to asking why we eat. Our brains are designed to motivate us toward that behavior," says Richard A. Carroll, PhD, a sex therapist and associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The idea that humans are hard-wired for sex reflects an evolutionary perspective, says Elaine Hatfield, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii and author of that 2010 review examining sexual motives from cross-cultural, historical, and evolutionary viewpoints.
"Evolutionary theorists point out that a desire for sexual relations is 'wired in' in order to promote species survival," she tells WebMD in an email. "Cultural theorists tend to focus on the cultural and personal reasons people have (or avoid) sex. Cultures differ markedly in what are considered to be 'appropriate' reasons for having or avoiding sex."
What's Your Motive?
Why do you seek sex? Motivations generally fall into four main categories, according to psychologists at UT-Austin, who asked more than 1,500 undergraduate college students about their sexual attitudes and experiences.
Physical reasons: Pleasure, stress relief, exercise, sexual curiosity, or attraction to a person.
Goal-based reasons: To make a baby, improve social status (for example, to become popular), or seek revenge.
Emotional reasons: Love, commitment, and gratitude.
Insecurity reasons: To boost self-esteem, keep a partner from seeking sex elsewhere, or because of a feeling of duty or pressure (for example, a partner insists on having sex).
The Difference Between the Sexes
Generally speaking, men seek sex because they like how it feels. Women, although they very well may also derive pleasure from the act, are generally more interested in the relationship enhancement aspects of sex. Researchers describe these differences as body-centered versus person-centered sex.
Body-centered sex is when you have sex because you like the way it makes your body feel. You are not really caring about the emotions of your partner.
Person-centered sex is when you have sex to connect with the other person. You care about the emotions involved and the relationship.
The Difference Between the Sexes continued...
"Men often start out being body centered," says Janell Carroll, PhD, adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Hartford and author of a human sexuality textbook (no relation to Richard Carroll). "But that changes later on. As men reach their 40s, 50s, and 60s, their relationship becomes more important."
Richard Carroll has been counseling couples with sexual issues for more than two decades. "Women actually become more like men over time, in the sense that often early on, sex is about initiating, developing, strengthening, and maintaining relationships, but in a long-term relationship they can actually begin to focus on the pleasure of it."
Despite the generalities, research suggests that there has been a big convergence in sexual attitudes among men and women in recent years. In 1985, Janell Carroll and colleagues found that most college-aged males had casual sex for physical reasons, without emotional attachments. She repeated many of the same study questions to a new audience in 2006, and is working toward publishing her results.
"Instead of men and women being at opposite ends of the sexual spectrum, they are now coming together," she tells WebMD. "More women might be having sex for physical reasons, but many more men were more likely to say they had sex for emotional reasons."
20 Reasons People Have Sex
Stressed out? Have sex. Stress reduction is one of the leading reasons Americans, particularly men, say they have sex, says Richard Caroll. The review, published online in Sexuality & Culture, shows other most frequently cited reasons for having sex include:
Boosting mood and relieving depression
Duty
Enhancement of power
Enhancement of self-concept
Experiencing the power of one’s partner
Feeling loved by your partner
Fostering jealousy
Improve reputation or social status
Making money
Making babies (procreation)
Need for affection
Nurturance
Partner novelty
Peer pressure or pressure from partner
Pleasure
Reduce sex drive
Revenge
Sexual curiosity
Showing love to your partner
Spiritual transcendence
Why Study Sex?
Understanding why people seek sex is not always a simple task. Most studies have involved college undergraduates, a "sample of convenience" for university researchers, but one that is often very limiting. Such young men and women typically haven't been in very committed relationships and are in the process of discovering their sexuality. Their answers to "why do you have sex" are often greatly tied to the image of themselves and their social relationships, says Richard Carroll. This can change over time.
But such knowledge can improve a couple's sex life.
"Understanding these differences in motivations is very important. It helps us understand what's going on in the sexual relationship and treat sexual disorders. Very often you find the source of the problem can be traced to the particular motivation," says Richard Carroll.
If you need help, you can find a qualified sex therapist in your area through organizations such as the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapist (AASECT) or The Society for Sex Therapy and Research.
Sexual motives greatly surpass the 'Big Three'
-- love, pleasure, and making babies.
Your partner may come up with a dozen excuses to say "Not tonight, dear, I have a ____," but how many reasons can the two of you name for seeking sex?
One? Two? Twenty? How about 200? Some college students have cited as many as 237 different reasons for having sex.
From pleasure to procreation, insecurity to inquisitiveness -- today's reasons for taking a roll in the hay seem to vary as much as the terms for the deed itself. A 2010 Sexuality & Culture review of sex motivation studies states that people are offering "far more reasons for choosing to engage in sexual activity than in former times." And we're doing it more often, too. It is a stark contrast from historical assumptions, which tend to cite only three sexual motivators: To make babies, to feel good, or because you're in love.
Today, sexual behaviors seem to have taken on many different psychological, social, cultural, even religious meanings. Yet, some sexologists say, at the most basic level, there is only one true reason people seek sex.
Wired for Sex
"We are programmed to do so. Asking why people have sex is akin to asking why we eat. Our brains are designed to motivate us toward that behavior," says Richard A. Carroll, PhD, a sex therapist and associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
The idea that humans are hard-wired for sex reflects an evolutionary perspective, says Elaine Hatfield, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Hawaii and author of that 2010 review examining sexual motives from cross-cultural, historical, and evolutionary viewpoints.
"Evolutionary theorists point out that a desire for sexual relations is 'wired in' in order to promote species survival," she tells WebMD in an email. "Cultural theorists tend to focus on the cultural and personal reasons people have (or avoid) sex. Cultures differ markedly in what are considered to be 'appropriate' reasons for having or avoiding sex."
What's Your Motive?
Why do you seek sex? Motivations generally fall into four main categories, according to psychologists at UT-Austin, who asked more than 1,500 undergraduate college students about their sexual attitudes and experiences.
Physical reasons: Pleasure, stress relief, exercise, sexual curiosity, or attraction to a person.
Goal-based reasons: To make a baby, improve social status (for example, to become popular), or seek revenge.
Emotional reasons: Love, commitment, and gratitude.
Insecurity reasons: To boost self-esteem, keep a partner from seeking sex elsewhere, or because of a feeling of duty or pressure (for example, a partner insists on having sex).
The Difference Between the Sexes
Generally speaking, men seek sex because they like how it feels. Women, although they very well may also derive pleasure from the act, are generally more interested in the relationship enhancement aspects of sex. Researchers describe these differences as body-centered versus person-centered sex.
Body-centered sex is when you have sex because you like the way it makes your body feel. You are not really caring about the emotions of your partner.
Person-centered sex is when you have sex to connect with the other person. You care about the emotions involved and the relationship.
The Difference Between the Sexes continued...
"Men often start out being body centered," says Janell Carroll, PhD, adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Hartford and author of a human sexuality textbook (no relation to Richard Carroll). "But that changes later on. As men reach their 40s, 50s, and 60s, their relationship becomes more important."
Richard Carroll has been counseling couples with sexual issues for more than two decades. "Women actually become more like men over time, in the sense that often early on, sex is about initiating, developing, strengthening, and maintaining relationships, but in a long-term relationship they can actually begin to focus on the pleasure of it."
Despite the generalities, research suggests that there has been a big convergence in sexual attitudes among men and women in recent years. In 1985, Janell Carroll and colleagues found that most college-aged males had casual sex for physical reasons, without emotional attachments. She repeated many of the same study questions to a new audience in 2006, and is working toward publishing her results.
"Instead of men and women being at opposite ends of the sexual spectrum, they are now coming together," she tells WebMD. "More women might be having sex for physical reasons, but many more men were more likely to say they had sex for emotional reasons."
20 Reasons People Have Sex
Stressed out? Have sex. Stress reduction is one of the leading reasons Americans, particularly men, say they have sex, says Richard Caroll. The review, published online in Sexuality & Culture, shows other most frequently cited reasons for having sex include:
Boosting mood and relieving depression
Duty
Enhancement of power
Enhancement of self-concept
Experiencing the power of one’s partner
Feeling loved by your partner
Fostering jealousy
Improve reputation or social status
Making money
Making babies (procreation)
Need for affection
Nurturance
Partner novelty
Peer pressure or pressure from partner
Pleasure
Reduce sex drive
Revenge
Sexual curiosity
Showing love to your partner
Spiritual transcendence
Why Study Sex?
Understanding why people seek sex is not always a simple task. Most studies have involved college undergraduates, a "sample of convenience" for university researchers, but one that is often very limiting. Such young men and women typically haven't been in very committed relationships and are in the process of discovering their sexuality. Their answers to "why do you have sex" are often greatly tied to the image of themselves and their social relationships, says Richard Carroll. This can change over time.
But such knowledge can improve a couple's sex life.
"Understanding these differences in motivations is very important. It helps us understand what's going on in the sexual relationship and treat sexual disorders. Very often you find the source of the problem can be traced to the particular motivation," says Richard Carroll.
If you need help, you can find a qualified sex therapist in your area through organizations such as the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapist (AASECT) or The Society for Sex Therapy and Research.
Thursday, September 02, 2010
NAACP watches for 'tea party' racism, stirs controversy
Washington Post = By Krissah Thompson
NAACP leaders have a message for the members of the tea party movement: We're watching you.
The civil rights group has partnered with three liberal media Web sites to form a "tea party tracker" intent on monitoring "racism and other forms of extremism" within the tea party movement.
The online project, which was developed and branded by the NAACP's new media staff, has already drawn strong criticism from tea party supporters, who have said repeatedly that racism plays no role in their movement.
Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, said the project was started because NAACP leaders kept hearing from its members that they were seeing racist signs, T-shirts and commentary coming from the tea party movement.
"The site is set up to be utilized as a tool to track activities as they come up," Shelton said. "It is in some ways consistent with the kind of tracking that has been done of other extremist entities. I do not want to suggest that the tea party is a hate group, but there are some disturbing elements within."
The conservative Web site Daily Caller first reported the story about the site, which features a blog, breaking news section and the tagline "a watched pot never boils."
Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for Freedomworks - which supports many tea party groups - called the ongoing conversation about racism and the tea party frustrating.
Steinhauser said liberal groups don't hold themselves to as strict a standard. For example, he said, at antiwar rallies during the Bush administration there were signs showing communist decals and supporting communist leaders Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il.
"There's such a different standard we're held to," Steinhauser said. "Both sides have to self-police. We should all hold ourselves accountable."
The tea party tracker site is aggregating stories from Think Progress, Media Matters for America and New Left Media - which all promote liberal ideas, while criticizing conservatives and Republicans.
The tracker's launch comes a month and a half after NAACP members voted overwhelmingly to condemn "racist elements" within the tea party. Members of the conservative movement responded by saying that the civil rights group was "attempting to silence" the tea party with "inflammatory name-calling."
Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart said the NAACP's resolution was the instigation for his release of a selectively edited video that made it appear that federal agriculture official Shirley Sherrod had discriminated against a white farmer. Sherrod was fired and condemned by the NAACP before the full video was released, which showed that Sherrod had actually helped the farmer and was telling a story of racial redemption. President Obama and NAACP officials apologized to Sherrod, who said she was targeted because the NAACP had called out the tea party.
(Coverage of Shirley Sherrod controversy)
That episode was embarrassing for the NAACP but has not stopped what it has said is an effort to hold the tea party movement accountable for the actions of its members.
Faiz Shakir, editor in chief of Think Progress, said he was glad to support the NAACP's site because he has already been sending staff members out to conduct interviews at tea party events. NAACP staffers will cull from that reporting for its site - along with any information that comes from the NAACP's 2,200 chapters. "I think the NAACP felt like it needed to justify its stance," Shakir said, referring to the group's resolution about racism within the tea party. "One of the things it is trying to do is note instances where there is great intolerance projected by the tea party."
A few weeks ago, NAACP leaders approached Media Matters about using its tea party-related posts, said Ari Rabin-Havt, vice president of research and communications for Media Matters. "We appreciate the role that they're playing in aggregating this content," Rabin-Havt said. "Anyone who wants to spread our content, we're more than happy to let to let them use it."
So far the tracker site has posted links related to conservative commentator Glenn Beck's "restoring honor" rally last weekend, including a picture of a man wearing a T-shirt that reads: "Blacks own Slaves in Mauritania, Sudan, Niger and Haiti." NAACP has also posted a slideshow of photos it says are of offensive signs displayed at tea party rallies.
Steinhauser said his biggest concern about the tracker site is that "a lot of the signs that are going to end up on this site are going to be from left-wing groups infiltrating these rallies. It's so clear that they are holding up signs to make us to look bad. It serves their purpose to do that."
Shelton said the NAACP will not post photos or video that has been altered. He noted that after the NAACP's resolution, the National Tea Party Federation expelled vocal supporter Mark Williams, who had posted a letter about slavery that was derogatory of African Americans and the NAACP.
"We have been very heartened to see that there have been some tea party entities that have said they do not desire to have those racially inflammatory signs and T-shirts," Shelton said. "As we have always believed, there are some components of the tea party that are very much in tune with our democratic values, and they are actively and politically engaged - which the NAACP supports."
NAACP leaders have a message for the members of the tea party movement: We're watching you.
The civil rights group has partnered with three liberal media Web sites to form a "tea party tracker" intent on monitoring "racism and other forms of extremism" within the tea party movement.
The online project, which was developed and branded by the NAACP's new media staff, has already drawn strong criticism from tea party supporters, who have said repeatedly that racism plays no role in their movement.
Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington bureau, said the project was started because NAACP leaders kept hearing from its members that they were seeing racist signs, T-shirts and commentary coming from the tea party movement.
"The site is set up to be utilized as a tool to track activities as they come up," Shelton said. "It is in some ways consistent with the kind of tracking that has been done of other extremist entities. I do not want to suggest that the tea party is a hate group, but there are some disturbing elements within."
The conservative Web site Daily Caller first reported the story about the site, which features a blog, breaking news section and the tagline "a watched pot never boils."
Brendan Steinhauser, director of federal and state campaigns for Freedomworks - which supports many tea party groups - called the ongoing conversation about racism and the tea party frustrating.
Steinhauser said liberal groups don't hold themselves to as strict a standard. For example, he said, at antiwar rallies during the Bush administration there were signs showing communist decals and supporting communist leaders Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il.
"There's such a different standard we're held to," Steinhauser said. "Both sides have to self-police. We should all hold ourselves accountable."
The tea party tracker site is aggregating stories from Think Progress, Media Matters for America and New Left Media - which all promote liberal ideas, while criticizing conservatives and Republicans.
The tracker's launch comes a month and a half after NAACP members voted overwhelmingly to condemn "racist elements" within the tea party. Members of the conservative movement responded by saying that the civil rights group was "attempting to silence" the tea party with "inflammatory name-calling."
Conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart said the NAACP's resolution was the instigation for his release of a selectively edited video that made it appear that federal agriculture official Shirley Sherrod had discriminated against a white farmer. Sherrod was fired and condemned by the NAACP before the full video was released, which showed that Sherrod had actually helped the farmer and was telling a story of racial redemption. President Obama and NAACP officials apologized to Sherrod, who said she was targeted because the NAACP had called out the tea party.
(Coverage of Shirley Sherrod controversy)
That episode was embarrassing for the NAACP but has not stopped what it has said is an effort to hold the tea party movement accountable for the actions of its members.
Faiz Shakir, editor in chief of Think Progress, said he was glad to support the NAACP's site because he has already been sending staff members out to conduct interviews at tea party events. NAACP staffers will cull from that reporting for its site - along with any information that comes from the NAACP's 2,200 chapters. "I think the NAACP felt like it needed to justify its stance," Shakir said, referring to the group's resolution about racism within the tea party. "One of the things it is trying to do is note instances where there is great intolerance projected by the tea party."
A few weeks ago, NAACP leaders approached Media Matters about using its tea party-related posts, said Ari Rabin-Havt, vice president of research and communications for Media Matters. "We appreciate the role that they're playing in aggregating this content," Rabin-Havt said. "Anyone who wants to spread our content, we're more than happy to let to let them use it."
So far the tracker site has posted links related to conservative commentator Glenn Beck's "restoring honor" rally last weekend, including a picture of a man wearing a T-shirt that reads: "Blacks own Slaves in Mauritania, Sudan, Niger and Haiti." NAACP has also posted a slideshow of photos it says are of offensive signs displayed at tea party rallies.
Steinhauser said his biggest concern about the tracker site is that "a lot of the signs that are going to end up on this site are going to be from left-wing groups infiltrating these rallies. It's so clear that they are holding up signs to make us to look bad. It serves their purpose to do that."
Shelton said the NAACP will not post photos or video that has been altered. He noted that after the NAACP's resolution, the National Tea Party Federation expelled vocal supporter Mark Williams, who had posted a letter about slavery that was derogatory of African Americans and the NAACP.
"We have been very heartened to see that there have been some tea party entities that have said they do not desire to have those racially inflammatory signs and T-shirts," Shelton said. "As we have always believed, there are some components of the tea party that are very much in tune with our democratic values, and they are actively and politically engaged - which the NAACP supports."
Is Glenn Beck's rise good for Mormonism?
By Felicia Sonmez Washington Post
Like conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Stephen Owens is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His in-laws traveled from Utah to Washington last weekend to join Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
Owens, however, said he has always "kind of rolled my eyes" at Beck's views.
And when the Salt Lake City lawyer read that Beck publicly questioned President Obama's "version of Christianity" the day after the rally, he was so angry that he wrote a letter to the local newspaper.
"I think it's arrogant of anyone to say whether someone is a Christian or not," said Owens, a 42-year-old Democrat. "My view of that is, if someone says, 'I follow the teachings of Jesus Christ,' then they're Christian, and who am I to say, 'No, you're not,' let alone [to] the president of our country? I was offended at that."
Owens's comments reflect the mixed opinions that members of the Mormon Church have of Beck's higher profile. Some see his rise as a sign of Mormonism going mainstream, while others worry that he is a divisive figure who does not represent Mormon values.
Michael Otterson, managing director of public affairs for the church, said that opinion of Beck is just as divided among Mormons as it is elsewhere.
"Views on Glenn Beck would be right across the spectrum," he said. "It depends on where individual Latter-day Saints are. Some would embrace him completely and others would no doubt be at odds."
Otterson also noted that there are more than 6 million Mormons in the United States and that prominent Mormons in the political arena run the ideological gamut - from Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R).
"It really underscores that members of the church are free to have their separate political views and express them whatever way they like," Otterson said, adding that Beck "would be the very first person to say that he does not speak for the church."
Philip Barlow, the Arrington chair of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University, said that Beck is "something of a polarizing figure" in the Mormon community.
Barlow noted that Beck's statement that the Constitution is an "inspired document," his calls for limited government and his emphasis on not exiling God from the public sphere "have considerable sympathy in Mormonism."
But he added that Beck's claim that social justice is "a code word for Nazism and fascism" as well as his some of his more inflammatory remarks about his political adversaries have turned off some members of the church.
"One wouldn't describe Glenn Beck as always being civil in his descriptions of his opponents," Barlow said, noting that the Mormon Church recently issued a statement calling for "civil discourse" on immigration.
Mormons have faced considerable obstacles when it comes to politics and perceptions among the American public. A Time magazine poll released last week showed that 29 percent of Americans hold unfavorable views of Mormons, compared with 43 percent who had unfavorable views of Muslims, 17 percent who felt unfavorably toward Catholics and 13 percent who viewed Jews unfavorably.
During Romney's 2008 presidential bid, some viewed his Mormon faith as a liability. A Pew survey at the time showed that 25 percent of Americans - including 36 percent of evangelical Republicans - expressed reservations about voting for a Mormon for president.
And while Mormons consider themselves Christians, key tenets of the Mormon Church are disputed by mainstream Christian denominations - a disparity that critics say adds to the irony of Beck questioning another person's Christian faith.
The Mormon Church recently began an advertising campaign in nine markets nationwide featuring 30-second TV spots in which members of the church talk about their lives in an attempt to dispel myths.
There are more than a dozen Mormon members of Congress from across the political spectrum, from Reid on the left to Sens. Orrin G. Hatch and Robert F. Bennett - both Republicans from Utah - on the right. But Beck, whose Washington rally last weekend drew upward of 87,000 people, may be the highest-profile Mormon on the national stage.
In public appearances and on his Fox News show, he has made religion a central part of his message, although he rarely refers to his Mormon faith. (One such mention came in the "Fox News Sunday" appearance last week during which he took aim at Obama's religious beliefs.)
Barlow also said it is possible that as Beck's profile rises, so, too, will the views that Mormonism is synonymous with Beck's brand of conservatism.
As Barlow put it, "There might be a few maverick Harry Reids out there," but ultimately moderates and those on the left "are going to be seeing Mormonism running somewhere between Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck."
Owens expressed concern that some may come to see Beck as representing the views of most Mormons.
"I know he doesn't speak for the Mormon Church. And yet everyone seems to know he's LDS," Owens said. "And when he's so outspoken religiously, that bothers me, because I'm worried people in the public will mesh the two - Mormonism and him as a political commentator."
Owens said that should Romney run for president in 2012, Beck could prove to be more of a liability.
"If I were Mitt Romney, I would think that Glenn Beck would be hurting my cause, because presidential candidates want to be liked, and he's so divisive," Owens said.
He added: "I wouldn't want to be associated with someone who's such a controversial figure." By Felicia Sonmez Washington Post
Like conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Stephen Owens is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His in-laws traveled from Utah to Washington last weekend to join Beck's rally at the Lincoln Memorial.
Owens, however, said he has always "kind of rolled my eyes" at Beck's views.
And when the Salt Lake City lawyer read that Beck publicly questioned President Obama's "version of Christianity" the day after the rally, he was so angry that he wrote a letter to the local newspaper.
"I think it's arrogant of anyone to say whether someone is a Christian or not," said Owens, a 42-year-old Democrat. "My view of that is, if someone says, 'I follow the teachings of Jesus Christ,' then they're Christian, and who am I to say, 'No, you're not,' let alone [to] the president of our country? I was offended at that."
Owens's comments reflect the mixed opinions that members of the Mormon Church have of Beck's higher profile. Some see his rise as a sign of Mormonism going mainstream, while others worry that he is a divisive figure who does not represent Mormon values.
Michael Otterson, managing director of public affairs for the church, said that opinion of Beck is just as divided among Mormons as it is elsewhere.
"Views on Glenn Beck would be right across the spectrum," he said. "It depends on where individual Latter-day Saints are. Some would embrace him completely and others would no doubt be at odds."
Otterson also noted that there are more than 6 million Mormons in the United States and that prominent Mormons in the political arena run the ideological gamut - from Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney (R).
"It really underscores that members of the church are free to have their separate political views and express them whatever way they like," Otterson said, adding that Beck "would be the very first person to say that he does not speak for the church."
Philip Barlow, the Arrington chair of Mormon history and culture at Utah State University, said that Beck is "something of a polarizing figure" in the Mormon community.
Barlow noted that Beck's statement that the Constitution is an "inspired document," his calls for limited government and his emphasis on not exiling God from the public sphere "have considerable sympathy in Mormonism."
But he added that Beck's claim that social justice is "a code word for Nazism and fascism" as well as his some of his more inflammatory remarks about his political adversaries have turned off some members of the church.
"One wouldn't describe Glenn Beck as always being civil in his descriptions of his opponents," Barlow said, noting that the Mormon Church recently issued a statement calling for "civil discourse" on immigration.
Mormons have faced considerable obstacles when it comes to politics and perceptions among the American public. A Time magazine poll released last week showed that 29 percent of Americans hold unfavorable views of Mormons, compared with 43 percent who had unfavorable views of Muslims, 17 percent who felt unfavorably toward Catholics and 13 percent who viewed Jews unfavorably.
During Romney's 2008 presidential bid, some viewed his Mormon faith as a liability. A Pew survey at the time showed that 25 percent of Americans - including 36 percent of evangelical Republicans - expressed reservations about voting for a Mormon for president.
And while Mormons consider themselves Christians, key tenets of the Mormon Church are disputed by mainstream Christian denominations - a disparity that critics say adds to the irony of Beck questioning another person's Christian faith.
The Mormon Church recently began an advertising campaign in nine markets nationwide featuring 30-second TV spots in which members of the church talk about their lives in an attempt to dispel myths.
There are more than a dozen Mormon members of Congress from across the political spectrum, from Reid on the left to Sens. Orrin G. Hatch and Robert F. Bennett - both Republicans from Utah - on the right. But Beck, whose Washington rally last weekend drew upward of 87,000 people, may be the highest-profile Mormon on the national stage.
In public appearances and on his Fox News show, he has made religion a central part of his message, although he rarely refers to his Mormon faith. (One such mention came in the "Fox News Sunday" appearance last week during which he took aim at Obama's religious beliefs.)
Barlow also said it is possible that as Beck's profile rises, so, too, will the views that Mormonism is synonymous with Beck's brand of conservatism.
As Barlow put it, "There might be a few maverick Harry Reids out there," but ultimately moderates and those on the left "are going to be seeing Mormonism running somewhere between Mitt Romney and Glenn Beck."
Owens expressed concern that some may come to see Beck as representing the views of most Mormons.
"I know he doesn't speak for the Mormon Church. And yet everyone seems to know he's LDS," Owens said. "And when he's so outspoken religiously, that bothers me, because I'm worried people in the public will mesh the two - Mormonism and him as a political commentator."
Owens said that should Romney run for president in 2012, Beck could prove to be more of a liability.
"If I were Mitt Romney, I would think that Glenn Beck would be hurting my cause, because presidential candidates want to be liked, and he's so divisive," Owens said.
He added: "I wouldn't want to be associated with someone who's such a controversial figure." By Felicia Sonmez Washington Post
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Newt Gingrich Is Crazier Than You Think
He’s fired up the ground zero mosque debate, stirred buzz by visiting Iowa, and is Meet the Press’ favorite guest. Liberals should root for Gingrich in 2012.
Most of my liberal friends are rooting for Sarah Palin to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, believing that, when forced to face up to the oddity of beliefs she’s expressed on Facebook, Twitter, and the like, coupled with her strange, albeit brief history as Alaska’s governor, and throwing in the weirdness of the whole Levi/Bristol soap opera, what you end up with is an Obama landslide.
They may be right.
Sure Sarah and Bristol and Levi would be a lot of fun on a campaign trail. But if we liberal elitists have any sense, we will immediately refudiate that idea and jump on the Newt bandwagon.
But if what you’re looking for in a Republican presidential nominee is someone who holds views no less odd, and yet whose twisted personal history puts Sarah Palin’s silly saga to shame, the great Republican hope of the left can be none other than Newt Gingrich. One day before John H. Richardson’s boffo 8,300-word Gingrich profile, in which his ex-wife, Marianne, spills all for the first time, CNN was reporting that Gingrich was enjoying “plenty of presidential buzz,” what with his sixth recent visit to Iowa, his headlining of two fundraisers, on his way to having out-raised Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee combined. He was doing so while at the same time posing as the leader of America’s forces of religious intolerance, long ago having left Palin in the dust in that category. Finding role models where few American politicians have gone before him, Gingrich thinks the Saudis apparently have things right when it comes to tolerance. “There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” he pronounces.
In any halfway normal country, such xenophobic sentiments might disqualify the speaker from being spoken of as a future president, at least by its political class. Not here, however. After all, Newt has been saying this kind of thing for his entire political career. And though he has not held any elective position since 1998, and has never been elected anywhere outside his deeply conservative district in suburban Georgia, somehow Meet the Press chose Newt as its single most frequently invited guest in 2009. Pundits and politicians alike treat the man as a serious contender for 2012; a more moderate, seasoned version of what Palin offers, if you will.
But one wonders: Are Americans really ready to elect as president a man who believes that the country is threatened by “a gay and secular fascism” that, he explained, “is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it?” What about one who felt it necessary to tweet—from Auschwitz no less, that Justice Sonia Sotomayor was a “racist,” whose views revealed “a betrayal of a fundamental principle of the American system—that everyone is equal before the law.”
Newt also has some interesting ideas about violence. No matter who is doing the shooting, according to his Newtness, the perpetrator is always the same: liberals. Remember that fellow who went on the April 2007 shooting spree at Virginia Tech? That was the fault of the "liberal elite" for creating “a situation ethics, essentially, zone of not being willing to talk about any of these things.” This is the same elite that, he has explained, "taught self-indulgent, aristocratic values without realizing that if an entire society engaged in the indulgences of an elite few, you could tear the society to shreds." Ditto the violent threats made by crazed right-wingers against Democratic legislators during the passage of health care reform last year. You think the bad guys were the ones making the threats? Nope. “The Democratic leadership,” Newt explained, “has to take some moral responsibility for having behaved with such arrogance, in such a hostile way, that the American people are deeply upset.” But what can you expect from the people Gingrich terms “the enemy of normal Americans?”
Sometimes ordinary Americans are at fault, like during Katrina, where, in the 9th Ward, “22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane."
What would President Gingrich’s foreign policy look like? While most Americans today recoil from the grandiosity of George W. Bush's war plans in Iraq and elsewhere, Gingrich felt they did not go nearly far enough. The correct strategy for the U.S., he argued, "would have built up sufficient economic, political, and military power to confront the four nations [Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia] with a simple choice: Change your behavior or have your regimes changed." On Meet the Press, he also noted, "I believe if you take all the countries I just listed, that you've been covering, put them on a map, look at all the different connectivity, you'd have to say to yourself this is, in fact, World War III."
But believe it or not, it is in his personal life where Gingrich truly outdoes himself in the category of un-presidential behavior. This was true, or should have been before Esquire convinced Marianne Gingrich to talk, as it was all a matter of the public record for over a decade. (Why so many in the MSM preferred to ignore the evidence before them is the topic for another column.) In any case, this would-be moral leader’s past includes:
• ditching his first wife, who had put him through college, by announcing their separation in the hospital room where she was recovering from ovarian cancer surgery, and telling a friend, “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the president. And besides, she has cancer”;
• leaving said woman to depend, literally, on church alms to survive, as he refused to provide child support. (In a campaign leaflet, he argued that his opponent for the seat he eventually won would have to separate from her family to move to Washington and would have to hire a nanny to fulfill her maternal obligations.);
• marrying a much younger woman with whom he had been having an affair —and to whom he had long ago proposed—six months later;
• leaving this woman by calling her at her mother’s home on her mother’s birthday following her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and announcing their impending divorce.
• marrying yet another woman, described by The Washington Post as a " blonded-up, French-horn-playing Agriculture Committee staffer” 23 years his junior, with whom he had also been having an affair, while leading the forces of impeachment against Bill Clinton for his extracurricular activities with Monica Lewinsky.
(And let’s note I haven’t even mentioned any of the extremely credible ethics charges, like the $4.5 million book advance from Rupert Murdoch he took before he was even sworn in as speaker, and was forced to return, to say nothing of the fact that the House Ethics Committee found him guilty of laundering donations through charities, submitting what he himself characterized as "inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable" testimony…” etc.,
Gingrich considers himself, according to his 1992 doodling, to be an "advocate of civilization, definer of civilization, teacher of the rules of civilization and leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces." Maybe so, but I’m guessing it is a civilization with which most Americans remain unfamiliar and would likely prefer that way.
Sure, Sarah and Bristol and Levi would be a lot of fun on a campaign trail. But if we liberal elitists have any sense, they will immediately refudiate that idea and jump on the Newt bandwagon. After all, people, we control everything. We can make this happen.
Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals.
Most of my liberal friends are rooting for Sarah Palin to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, believing that, when forced to face up to the oddity of beliefs she’s expressed on Facebook, Twitter, and the like, coupled with her strange, albeit brief history as Alaska’s governor, and throwing in the weirdness of the whole Levi/Bristol soap opera, what you end up with is an Obama landslide.
They may be right.
Sure Sarah and Bristol and Levi would be a lot of fun on a campaign trail. But if we liberal elitists have any sense, we will immediately refudiate that idea and jump on the Newt bandwagon.
But if what you’re looking for in a Republican presidential nominee is someone who holds views no less odd, and yet whose twisted personal history puts Sarah Palin’s silly saga to shame, the great Republican hope of the left can be none other than Newt Gingrich. One day before John H. Richardson’s boffo 8,300-word Gingrich profile, in which his ex-wife, Marianne, spills all for the first time, CNN was reporting that Gingrich was enjoying “plenty of presidential buzz,” what with his sixth recent visit to Iowa, his headlining of two fundraisers, on his way to having out-raised Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee combined. He was doing so while at the same time posing as the leader of America’s forces of religious intolerance, long ago having left Palin in the dust in that category. Finding role models where few American politicians have gone before him, Gingrich thinks the Saudis apparently have things right when it comes to tolerance. “There should be no mosque near ground zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia,” he pronounces.
In any halfway normal country, such xenophobic sentiments might disqualify the speaker from being spoken of as a future president, at least by its political class. Not here, however. After all, Newt has been saying this kind of thing for his entire political career. And though he has not held any elective position since 1998, and has never been elected anywhere outside his deeply conservative district in suburban Georgia, somehow Meet the Press chose Newt as its single most frequently invited guest in 2009. Pundits and politicians alike treat the man as a serious contender for 2012; a more moderate, seasoned version of what Palin offers, if you will.
But one wonders: Are Americans really ready to elect as president a man who believes that the country is threatened by “a gay and secular fascism” that, he explained, “is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it?” What about one who felt it necessary to tweet—from Auschwitz no less, that Justice Sonia Sotomayor was a “racist,” whose views revealed “a betrayal of a fundamental principle of the American system—that everyone is equal before the law.”
Newt also has some interesting ideas about violence. No matter who is doing the shooting, according to his Newtness, the perpetrator is always the same: liberals. Remember that fellow who went on the April 2007 shooting spree at Virginia Tech? That was the fault of the "liberal elite" for creating “a situation ethics, essentially, zone of not being willing to talk about any of these things.” This is the same elite that, he has explained, "taught self-indulgent, aristocratic values without realizing that if an entire society engaged in the indulgences of an elite few, you could tear the society to shreds." Ditto the violent threats made by crazed right-wingers against Democratic legislators during the passage of health care reform last year. You think the bad guys were the ones making the threats? Nope. “The Democratic leadership,” Newt explained, “has to take some moral responsibility for having behaved with such arrogance, in such a hostile way, that the American people are deeply upset.” But what can you expect from the people Gingrich terms “the enemy of normal Americans?”
Sometimes ordinary Americans are at fault, like during Katrina, where, in the 9th Ward, “22,000 people were so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn't get out of the way of a hurricane."
What would President Gingrich’s foreign policy look like? While most Americans today recoil from the grandiosity of George W. Bush's war plans in Iraq and elsewhere, Gingrich felt they did not go nearly far enough. The correct strategy for the U.S., he argued, "would have built up sufficient economic, political, and military power to confront the four nations [Iran, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia] with a simple choice: Change your behavior or have your regimes changed." On Meet the Press, he also noted, "I believe if you take all the countries I just listed, that you've been covering, put them on a map, look at all the different connectivity, you'd have to say to yourself this is, in fact, World War III."
But believe it or not, it is in his personal life where Gingrich truly outdoes himself in the category of un-presidential behavior. This was true, or should have been before Esquire convinced Marianne Gingrich to talk, as it was all a matter of the public record for over a decade. (Why so many in the MSM preferred to ignore the evidence before them is the topic for another column.) In any case, this would-be moral leader’s past includes:
• ditching his first wife, who had put him through college, by announcing their separation in the hospital room where she was recovering from ovarian cancer surgery, and telling a friend, “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the president. And besides, she has cancer”;
• leaving said woman to depend, literally, on church alms to survive, as he refused to provide child support. (In a campaign leaflet, he argued that his opponent for the seat he eventually won would have to separate from her family to move to Washington and would have to hire a nanny to fulfill her maternal obligations.);
• marrying a much younger woman with whom he had been having an affair —and to whom he had long ago proposed—six months later;
• leaving this woman by calling her at her mother’s home on her mother’s birthday following her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis and announcing their impending divorce.
• marrying yet another woman, described by The Washington Post as a " blonded-up, French-horn-playing Agriculture Committee staffer” 23 years his junior, with whom he had also been having an affair, while leading the forces of impeachment against Bill Clinton for his extracurricular activities with Monica Lewinsky.
(And let’s note I haven’t even mentioned any of the extremely credible ethics charges, like the $4.5 million book advance from Rupert Murdoch he took before he was even sworn in as speaker, and was forced to return, to say nothing of the fact that the House Ethics Committee found him guilty of laundering donations through charities, submitting what he himself characterized as "inaccurate, incomplete, and unreliable" testimony…” etc.,
Gingrich considers himself, according to his 1992 doodling, to be an "advocate of civilization, definer of civilization, teacher of the rules of civilization and leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces." Maybe so, but I’m guessing it is a civilization with which most Americans remain unfamiliar and would likely prefer that way.
Sure, Sarah and Bristol and Levi would be a lot of fun on a campaign trail. But if we liberal elitists have any sense, they will immediately refudiate that idea and jump on the Newt bandwagon. After all, people, we control everything. We can make this happen.
Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals.
Palin’s Shopping Spree: Yes, There’s More...
Michael Joseph Gross
Vanity Fair
Bose headphones.
A birthday dress for Bristol.
Campaign documents and e-mails reveal the fine print.
The clothes.
Few aspects of Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential candidacy have been more discussed than the $150,000 worth of clothing and accessories bought by the Republican National Committee’s coordinated campaign fund on behalf of the candidate and her family in 2008. Yet interviews with campaign aides and internal campaign e-mails and documents obtained exclusively by Vanity Fair shed new light on the situation, revealing Palin to have been more innocent at the start of this shopping odyssey than has previously been reported—and more knowing and more calculating as time went on.
Initially, Palin objected to the very idea of clothing being purchased for her to wear at the Republican National Convention. When she was first presented with a $3,500 jacket, an aide recalls, the price tag sent her into shock: “I don’t spend that much money on my clothes in a year,” Palin said. “I will not do this.” Aides decided, in future, to cut off the price tags, so Palin wouldn’t quite know how much was being spent. But eventually, they say, Palin grew accustomed to the privilege of a designer wardrobe—not only for herself but also for her family.
On October 21, 2008, Federal Election Commission filings revealed the massive expenditures made on behalf of the candidate, her husband, and her children. As was reported at the time, the vast majority of the purchases—$130,000—were made by Jeff Larson, a Republican consultant in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the 2008 convention was held. Other purchases were made by a stylist, a Dallas fund-raising firm, and campaign staff. In fact, shopping for the Palins involved many campaign staffers: at least eight of the candidate’s aides requested reimbursement for clothing purchases for the Palins that they charged to their personal credit cards. The records of those purchases also reveal that Palin’s later claims—that “we had three days of using clothes that the R.N.C. purchased” (at the Republican National Convention) and that she understood the clothes to have been “loaned to us during the convention”—were completely false. So was the spin of Palin’s campaign spokesperson, who stated on October 22 that “it was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.” On October 23, in a previously unpublished e-mail (quoted below), Palin wrote that she had no idea the clothes would eventually need to be returned, and suggested that she believed the items were being given to her and her family as gifts. And campaign documents show that, remarkably, the spending continued into October. On the 20th, the day before the clothes-buying sprees were made public, a staffer paid $639.36 for clothes and a coat at Macy’s and Ann Taylor in Reno.
Throughout October, staff members were still buying clothing and accessories for the Palins. That month’s purchases, which totaled more than $9,000, would seem to stretch the boundaries of what constitutes a legitimate campaign expense. On October 9, a “Jersey for Piper” was purchased at a store called I Love Cincinnati. On October 10, a $316.94 pair of Bose headphones were purchased for Sarah Palin in Pittsburgh. (Separate purchases that day were made for “Intimates” and “Workout Clothes.”) On October 16, a “Jewelry case” purchased in Concord, New Hampshire, was charged to the campaign.
On October 17, the day before Bristol’s birthday, after a senior Palin aide asked a junior aide, in an e-mail, “Do you mind talking w/Bristol about getting an outfit for tomorrow & via the campaign. Thanks,” the response came back: “Yep. I talked to her about it this morning and picked up a few dress options at saks during the event today. And a pair of snazzy shoes to wair on her bday : ).” That same day, the same junior staffer charged $1,312.94 at Saks 5th Avenue in Cincinnati. In campaign records, that expense was labeled as if it were made not for Bristol but for the candidate’s appearance on Saturday Night Live. (The memo line reads “Clothes-SNL.”)
On October 23, two days after stories about Palin’s exorbitant campaign clothing budget first surfaced, Palin e-mailed aides in a fury: “Ridiculous – I’ll try to be patient through this, but this is ridiculous and hypocritical in terms of my values, and prudent use of ‘other people’s money’ – It’s puzzling, even infuriating, why the clothes issue is what it is now. My family was never told that all must be returned ... Not until two days ago when I read we may have a challenge in tracking down [her son] Track’s very expensive sweater(s) (that he didn’t request), as they’re either on base at Ft. Wainwright somewhere, or perhaps even overseas ... I’ve asked many, many times how this was all supposed to work with clothes that were presented me and the kids – who was paying … ” (A close campaign aide says that this is untrue, and that Palin never asked any such questions.)
But in the very next paragraph, Palin was trying to figure out a way to hang on to some of the items: “Do they want the nylons and other things that are pretty worn, returned?” (And she asked a campaign aide, “Do they really want my dirty undergarments?” Indeed, Palin had something of a fixation on the handling of her undergarments, and insisted, when hotel maids did her laundry, that only campaign aides be allowed to touch those particular articles.) Attempting to wrest some control over the situation, she added, “I want say in the charities these will go to.”
By the time she returned to Alaska, after Election Day, Palin’s transformation was complete. An e-mail string dated November 7 includes terse directives to aides to search for particular items of clothing that she wanted to keep: “Remember the five black leather Flyers bags w sweatshirts and jerseys and Flyers propaganda in each bag? Anyone know where they ended up?” One of the aides who were sent to Alaska to retrieve and catalogue the items purchased for Palin recalls that, during these days, mysteriously, “all of a sudden, she couldn’t find stuff.”
Vanity Fair
Bose headphones.
A birthday dress for Bristol.
Campaign documents and e-mails reveal the fine print.
The clothes.
Few aspects of Sarah Palin’s vice-presidential candidacy have been more discussed than the $150,000 worth of clothing and accessories bought by the Republican National Committee’s coordinated campaign fund on behalf of the candidate and her family in 2008. Yet interviews with campaign aides and internal campaign e-mails and documents obtained exclusively by Vanity Fair shed new light on the situation, revealing Palin to have been more innocent at the start of this shopping odyssey than has previously been reported—and more knowing and more calculating as time went on.
Initially, Palin objected to the very idea of clothing being purchased for her to wear at the Republican National Convention. When she was first presented with a $3,500 jacket, an aide recalls, the price tag sent her into shock: “I don’t spend that much money on my clothes in a year,” Palin said. “I will not do this.” Aides decided, in future, to cut off the price tags, so Palin wouldn’t quite know how much was being spent. But eventually, they say, Palin grew accustomed to the privilege of a designer wardrobe—not only for herself but also for her family.
On October 21, 2008, Federal Election Commission filings revealed the massive expenditures made on behalf of the candidate, her husband, and her children. As was reported at the time, the vast majority of the purchases—$130,000—were made by Jeff Larson, a Republican consultant in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the 2008 convention was held. Other purchases were made by a stylist, a Dallas fund-raising firm, and campaign staff. In fact, shopping for the Palins involved many campaign staffers: at least eight of the candidate’s aides requested reimbursement for clothing purchases for the Palins that they charged to their personal credit cards. The records of those purchases also reveal that Palin’s later claims—that “we had three days of using clothes that the R.N.C. purchased” (at the Republican National Convention) and that she understood the clothes to have been “loaned to us during the convention”—were completely false. So was the spin of Palin’s campaign spokesperson, who stated on October 22 that “it was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign.” On October 23, in a previously unpublished e-mail (quoted below), Palin wrote that she had no idea the clothes would eventually need to be returned, and suggested that she believed the items were being given to her and her family as gifts. And campaign documents show that, remarkably, the spending continued into October. On the 20th, the day before the clothes-buying sprees were made public, a staffer paid $639.36 for clothes and a coat at Macy’s and Ann Taylor in Reno.
Throughout October, staff members were still buying clothing and accessories for the Palins. That month’s purchases, which totaled more than $9,000, would seem to stretch the boundaries of what constitutes a legitimate campaign expense. On October 9, a “Jersey for Piper” was purchased at a store called I Love Cincinnati. On October 10, a $316.94 pair of Bose headphones were purchased for Sarah Palin in Pittsburgh. (Separate purchases that day were made for “Intimates” and “Workout Clothes.”) On October 16, a “Jewelry case” purchased in Concord, New Hampshire, was charged to the campaign.
On October 17, the day before Bristol’s birthday, after a senior Palin aide asked a junior aide, in an e-mail, “Do you mind talking w/Bristol about getting an outfit for tomorrow & via the campaign. Thanks,” the response came back: “Yep. I talked to her about it this morning and picked up a few dress options at saks during the event today. And a pair of snazzy shoes to wair on her bday : ).” That same day, the same junior staffer charged $1,312.94 at Saks 5th Avenue in Cincinnati. In campaign records, that expense was labeled as if it were made not for Bristol but for the candidate’s appearance on Saturday Night Live. (The memo line reads “Clothes-SNL.”)
On October 23, two days after stories about Palin’s exorbitant campaign clothing budget first surfaced, Palin e-mailed aides in a fury: “Ridiculous – I’ll try to be patient through this, but this is ridiculous and hypocritical in terms of my values, and prudent use of ‘other people’s money’ – It’s puzzling, even infuriating, why the clothes issue is what it is now. My family was never told that all must be returned ... Not until two days ago when I read we may have a challenge in tracking down [her son] Track’s very expensive sweater(s) (that he didn’t request), as they’re either on base at Ft. Wainwright somewhere, or perhaps even overseas ... I’ve asked many, many times how this was all supposed to work with clothes that were presented me and the kids – who was paying … ” (A close campaign aide says that this is untrue, and that Palin never asked any such questions.)
But in the very next paragraph, Palin was trying to figure out a way to hang on to some of the items: “Do they want the nylons and other things that are pretty worn, returned?” (And she asked a campaign aide, “Do they really want my dirty undergarments?” Indeed, Palin had something of a fixation on the handling of her undergarments, and insisted, when hotel maids did her laundry, that only campaign aides be allowed to touch those particular articles.) Attempting to wrest some control over the situation, she added, “I want say in the charities these will go to.”
By the time she returned to Alaska, after Election Day, Palin’s transformation was complete. An e-mail string dated November 7 includes terse directives to aides to search for particular items of clothing that she wanted to keep: “Remember the five black leather Flyers bags w sweatshirts and jerseys and Flyers propaganda in each bag? Anyone know where they ended up?” One of the aides who were sent to Alaska to retrieve and catalogue the items purchased for Palin recalls that, during these days, mysteriously, “all of a sudden, she couldn’t find stuff.”
Ten Iraq War Legacies
by The Daily Beast
When President Obama announced an official end to combat operations, he acknowledged George Bush’s “support for our troops” as well as his “love of country and commitment to our security.” The Daily Beast surveys the lasting political fallout of Bush’s fateful war.
In an Oval Office address Tuesday night, Barack Obama will announce the official end of combat operations in Iraq. Numbers tell most of the story: 50,000 troops will remain in the country, down from a high of 160,000. More than 4,000 American soldiers have been killed since George W. Bush announced the war’s beginning nearly three thousand days ago. But beyond the numbers, Iraq has left a deep mark on America, its politics, its military, and its place in the world. Here are a few of the legacies of war.
1. The Fall of Neoconservatism
Among the ideological fathers of the war were a group of leading neoconservatives—liberals mugged by reality, in Irving Kristol’s often-repeated phrase. The philosophy guided the foreign policy gurus around Bush, a confidence that the world could be better off if America exported its liberal democratic values at the point of a gun. Over the years, the reasons for invasion grew increasingly shaky—and the absence of WMD’s, the tenacity of the insurgency, the slow progress along the path to democracy, all dimmed the neocons’ ideological standing. Some, like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, fell from favor. Their cousins, liberal hawks, did not fare well either. When too many neoconservatives seemed to be making their way inside John McCain’s inner circle, even fellow Republicans cried foul. But it is a sign of the distressed state of the Democrats’ foreign policy that the neocons are emerging from hiding. Wolfowitz penned an op-ed in the New York Times, offering advice to President Obama on the perils of abandoning Baghdad altogether.
2. The Rise of the Wounded
As Anne Applebaum wrote in The Washington Post this week, Iraq has been a far less deadly place than Vietnam for American soldiers: 4,400 have died compared to 60,000 lives lost in Southeast Asia. Yet that seemingly encouraging statistic holds a scary truth: The number of soldiers who suffered violent injuries and survived has greatly increased. While we can pat ourselves on the back for advances in medical technology, we have a long way to go in figuring out how to care for the wounded.
3. The Permanent Mercenary Army
In 2007, there were somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 armed security contractors at work in Iraq. The most prominent firm was Blackwater, the North Carolina-based contractor, which was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in State Department contracts, including responsibility for guarding the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. There have always been private actors in the military arena, but the company’s role as an army without a flag had unprecedented power. Eventually, the contractor’s activities were curtailed by the Iraqi government, tired of firefights involving American guards. Blackwater has now changed its name—call it Xe, please—but it also changed how America goes to war.
4. The Death of the Coalition
America was able to cobble together a collection of states to send forces to Iraq, most notably Britain and Spain. But many of the countries sent small delegations, and the coalition was widely derided as window-dressing for America’s determination to go to war in the face of sketchy evidence about Iraq’s WMDs. The leaders of those supporting countries were made to suffer for their cooperation at the polls, and Britain—America’s closest ally—is still reeling from Tony Blair’s controversial decision to follow President Bush so faithfully into the fight. One country—Georgia—sent thousands of soldiers but watched the U.S. stand by as Russian forces crossed its borders. The discovery, after Saddam’s fall, that he did not in fact possess weapons of mass destruction severely dented America’s credibility—and it will be much more politically difficult to mount such a coalition again.
5. Return of the Superstar General
The Iraq War gave us Gen. David Petraeus, thereby reintroducing the superstar general to the American public. Perhaps not since the days of Eisenhower and MacArthur has a man in uniform loomed so large. Petraeus, to be sure, did not save the world, but a war-weary nation, starved of heroes, has latched onto him. It was the counter-insurgency strategy, honed by Petraeus in Iraq, that is now our best hope of ending the daunting conflict in Afghanistan. All of the furor over the West Point-trained, Princeton-schooled leader has lead more than a few to wonder whether Petraeus would consider running for the presidency.
6. America’s Standing in the World
Barack Obama campaigned on the promise that he would return America’s standing in the world to pre-Bush levels. But he’s finding an unpopular war hard to shake. This spring, the Pew Research Center found that a majority of countries polled approved of his international policies. On Iraq, however, 11 out of 20 disapproved. The antipathy toward America in the Middle East continues even after the architects of the Iraq war have exited the stage. Twenty-six percent of Jordanians approve of the president and only 23 percent of Turks. Even less promising, Obama’s popularity has fallen since coming into office among Muslim peoples.
7. The Rise of Middle East Democracy
The lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction will endure as a fault line in American politics for generations to come. But one clear good came of the controversial campaign: The world was treated to the sight of an oppressed people going to the polls and proudly portraying purple fingers, the colorful sign that they had, for the first time in their lives, chosen their own political leaders. As Iraq is now learning, one election does not guarantee the survival of a political system, and the challenges ahead are formidable. But the breakthrough is undeniable.
8. The Dawning of the Netroots
The anti-war left, a powerful force in the Vietnam era, was outmaneuvered politically in the Reagan era, and eclipsed by a more muscular brand of liberalism in the 1990s. But the Iraq conflict helped stoke the antiwar movement. Furious over the mainstream media’s acquiescence to the Bush post-9/11 story line, these liberals met up online, helped propel a more pointed brand of partisan journalism and commentary—and organized to help elect like-minded advocates to political office.
9. Barack Obama
The skinny guy with a funny name would have never emerged from the Democratic primary were it not for his vociferous opposition to the Iraq War. By coming out against the war in 2002—calling it “a dumb war. A rash war.”—he established his lefty bona fides. That proved crucial in his primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, who was stuck having to defend her Senate votes for the war before an increasingly restive base (it was also one of the few points of genuine disagreement between the two candidates). In the end, Obama’s antiwar stance propelled him past the heavily favored Clinton and an historic election to the White House.
10. Death of Tyrants
In addition to the dawning democracy, the war had another indisputable consequence: it ended the reign of terror perpetuated by Saddam Hussein. It ended his life and those of his miscreant sons Uday and Qusay, not to mention Abu Zarqawi and many of his henchmen in al Qaeda in Iraq. A land where telling a joke about Saddam was a capital crime has been freed forever from his ruthless possession.
When President Obama announced an official end to combat operations, he acknowledged George Bush’s “support for our troops” as well as his “love of country and commitment to our security.” The Daily Beast surveys the lasting political fallout of Bush’s fateful war.
In an Oval Office address Tuesday night, Barack Obama will announce the official end of combat operations in Iraq. Numbers tell most of the story: 50,000 troops will remain in the country, down from a high of 160,000. More than 4,000 American soldiers have been killed since George W. Bush announced the war’s beginning nearly three thousand days ago. But beyond the numbers, Iraq has left a deep mark on America, its politics, its military, and its place in the world. Here are a few of the legacies of war.
1. The Fall of Neoconservatism
Among the ideological fathers of the war were a group of leading neoconservatives—liberals mugged by reality, in Irving Kristol’s often-repeated phrase. The philosophy guided the foreign policy gurus around Bush, a confidence that the world could be better off if America exported its liberal democratic values at the point of a gun. Over the years, the reasons for invasion grew increasingly shaky—and the absence of WMD’s, the tenacity of the insurgency, the slow progress along the path to democracy, all dimmed the neocons’ ideological standing. Some, like Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, fell from favor. Their cousins, liberal hawks, did not fare well either. When too many neoconservatives seemed to be making their way inside John McCain’s inner circle, even fellow Republicans cried foul. But it is a sign of the distressed state of the Democrats’ foreign policy that the neocons are emerging from hiding. Wolfowitz penned an op-ed in the New York Times, offering advice to President Obama on the perils of abandoning Baghdad altogether.
2. The Rise of the Wounded
As Anne Applebaum wrote in The Washington Post this week, Iraq has been a far less deadly place than Vietnam for American soldiers: 4,400 have died compared to 60,000 lives lost in Southeast Asia. Yet that seemingly encouraging statistic holds a scary truth: The number of soldiers who suffered violent injuries and survived has greatly increased. While we can pat ourselves on the back for advances in medical technology, we have a long way to go in figuring out how to care for the wounded.
3. The Permanent Mercenary Army
In 2007, there were somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 armed security contractors at work in Iraq. The most prominent firm was Blackwater, the North Carolina-based contractor, which was awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in State Department contracts, including responsibility for guarding the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. There have always been private actors in the military arena, but the company’s role as an army without a flag had unprecedented power. Eventually, the contractor’s activities were curtailed by the Iraqi government, tired of firefights involving American guards. Blackwater has now changed its name—call it Xe, please—but it also changed how America goes to war.
4. The Death of the Coalition
America was able to cobble together a collection of states to send forces to Iraq, most notably Britain and Spain. But many of the countries sent small delegations, and the coalition was widely derided as window-dressing for America’s determination to go to war in the face of sketchy evidence about Iraq’s WMDs. The leaders of those supporting countries were made to suffer for their cooperation at the polls, and Britain—America’s closest ally—is still reeling from Tony Blair’s controversial decision to follow President Bush so faithfully into the fight. One country—Georgia—sent thousands of soldiers but watched the U.S. stand by as Russian forces crossed its borders. The discovery, after Saddam’s fall, that he did not in fact possess weapons of mass destruction severely dented America’s credibility—and it will be much more politically difficult to mount such a coalition again.
5. Return of the Superstar General
The Iraq War gave us Gen. David Petraeus, thereby reintroducing the superstar general to the American public. Perhaps not since the days of Eisenhower and MacArthur has a man in uniform loomed so large. Petraeus, to be sure, did not save the world, but a war-weary nation, starved of heroes, has latched onto him. It was the counter-insurgency strategy, honed by Petraeus in Iraq, that is now our best hope of ending the daunting conflict in Afghanistan. All of the furor over the West Point-trained, Princeton-schooled leader has lead more than a few to wonder whether Petraeus would consider running for the presidency.
6. America’s Standing in the World
Barack Obama campaigned on the promise that he would return America’s standing in the world to pre-Bush levels. But he’s finding an unpopular war hard to shake. This spring, the Pew Research Center found that a majority of countries polled approved of his international policies. On Iraq, however, 11 out of 20 disapproved. The antipathy toward America in the Middle East continues even after the architects of the Iraq war have exited the stage. Twenty-six percent of Jordanians approve of the president and only 23 percent of Turks. Even less promising, Obama’s popularity has fallen since coming into office among Muslim peoples.
7. The Rise of Middle East Democracy
The lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction will endure as a fault line in American politics for generations to come. But one clear good came of the controversial campaign: The world was treated to the sight of an oppressed people going to the polls and proudly portraying purple fingers, the colorful sign that they had, for the first time in their lives, chosen their own political leaders. As Iraq is now learning, one election does not guarantee the survival of a political system, and the challenges ahead are formidable. But the breakthrough is undeniable.
8. The Dawning of the Netroots
The anti-war left, a powerful force in the Vietnam era, was outmaneuvered politically in the Reagan era, and eclipsed by a more muscular brand of liberalism in the 1990s. But the Iraq conflict helped stoke the antiwar movement. Furious over the mainstream media’s acquiescence to the Bush post-9/11 story line, these liberals met up online, helped propel a more pointed brand of partisan journalism and commentary—and organized to help elect like-minded advocates to political office.
9. Barack Obama
The skinny guy with a funny name would have never emerged from the Democratic primary were it not for his vociferous opposition to the Iraq War. By coming out against the war in 2002—calling it “a dumb war. A rash war.”—he established his lefty bona fides. That proved crucial in his primary campaign against Hillary Clinton, who was stuck having to defend her Senate votes for the war before an increasingly restive base (it was also one of the few points of genuine disagreement between the two candidates). In the end, Obama’s antiwar stance propelled him past the heavily favored Clinton and an historic election to the White House.
10. Death of Tyrants
In addition to the dawning democracy, the war had another indisputable consequence: it ended the reign of terror perpetuated by Saddam Hussein. It ended his life and those of his miscreant sons Uday and Qusay, not to mention Abu Zarqawi and many of his henchmen in al Qaeda in Iraq. A land where telling a joke about Saddam was a capital crime has been freed forever from his ruthless possession.
Illegal immigration to U.S. down almost 67% since 2000
The number of illegal immigrants entering the United States has plunged by almost two-thirds in the past decade, a dramatic shift after years of growth in the population, according to a new report by the Pew Hispanic Center.
Between 2000 and 2005, an average of 850,000 people a year entered the United States without authorization, according to the report released Wednesday. As the economy plunged into recession between 2007 and 2009, that number fell to 300,000.
The sharp drop-off has contributed to an 8 percent decrease in the estimated number of illegal immigrants living in the United States, from a peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009, the report said. Of the 11.1 million, 8.9 million came from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. Virginia, Florida and Nevada were among the states with steepest declines in their populations of illegal immigrants.
The new figures come amid a heated national debate over efforts by Arizona and other jurisdictions to identify people who are here illegally and push to have them deported.
Douglas Massey, a Princeton University sociologist who studies migration, said the recession and lack of jobs are major factors in the decline of those entering the country illegally.
The unemployment rate for unauthorized immigrants is 10.4 percent higher than that of either U.S.-born residents or legal immigrants, the Pew report said.
Massey said other likely reasons for the decline include an increase in law enforcement and deportations, and enactment of stricter legislation against illegal immigrants. He also pointed to more guest-worker spots, from 104,000 in 2000 to 302,000 in 2009 -- allowing more immigrants to come to the United States legally.
"Life's gotten pretty miserable for immigrants in the United States," he said, noting that even for legal immigrants, many of whom have relatives who are unauthorized, the increased scrutiny has been stressful.
Still, the flow of legal immigrants into the United States has increased slightly over the past decade, according to the report, noting that the trends have reduced the percentage of immigrants who are here illegally, from 31 percent of all immigrants in 2007 to 29 percent in 2009.
Although an earlier Pew study pointed to signs of fewer illegal immigrants in recent years, the new report reveals the first statistically significant reversal in the growth of the population in the past 20 years, said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew.
Passel, an author of the new report, noted that in recent years, illegal entry has gotten more expensive, harder and more dangerous.
"We know that it's harder to sneak across the border than it was four or five years ago, and especially than it was 10 or 15 years ago," he said. "Virtually everyone who sneaks across the border uses a coyote now, and the cost has gone up. The increase of the border patrol around cities and ports of entry has pushed the flows across the border into more remote places."
The report's findings were hailed by Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates tighter immigration controls.
The figures contradict "the idea that the only options before us are mass expulsions or mass amnesty," he said. "This finding points to the middle way, of a consistent decrease of the illegal population over time through enforcement."
Large declines in illegal immigrants in Florida and Nevada are likely because of the mortgage and foreclosure crises and the loss of thousands of construction jobs, which immigrants often fill, Passel and Massey said. Florida's illegal immigrant population fell by 375,000, to an estimated 675,000, between 2008 and 2009, and Nevada's decreased by 50,000, to an estimated 180,000 during that period.
The number in Virginia fell by 65,000, to 240,000, which Passel attributed to the economy as well as stricter legislation passed in Prince William County in 2007 and 2008.
The nationwide trajectory will likely depend on the strength of the country's economic recovery and the level of enforcement of immigration laws, Passel said.
"In the past the flows have moved in line with the state of the U.S. economy," he said. "But we have stepped up enforcement right now. Right now, both are working in the same direction. If the economy turns around and enforcement is increased, we don't know."
Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post
Between 2000 and 2005, an average of 850,000 people a year entered the United States without authorization, according to the report released Wednesday. As the economy plunged into recession between 2007 and 2009, that number fell to 300,000.
The sharp drop-off has contributed to an 8 percent decrease in the estimated number of illegal immigrants living in the United States, from a peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009, the report said. Of the 11.1 million, 8.9 million came from Mexico and other parts of Latin America. Virginia, Florida and Nevada were among the states with steepest declines in their populations of illegal immigrants.
The new figures come amid a heated national debate over efforts by Arizona and other jurisdictions to identify people who are here illegally and push to have them deported.
Douglas Massey, a Princeton University sociologist who studies migration, said the recession and lack of jobs are major factors in the decline of those entering the country illegally.
The unemployment rate for unauthorized immigrants is 10.4 percent higher than that of either U.S.-born residents or legal immigrants, the Pew report said.
Massey said other likely reasons for the decline include an increase in law enforcement and deportations, and enactment of stricter legislation against illegal immigrants. He also pointed to more guest-worker spots, from 104,000 in 2000 to 302,000 in 2009 -- allowing more immigrants to come to the United States legally.
"Life's gotten pretty miserable for immigrants in the United States," he said, noting that even for legal immigrants, many of whom have relatives who are unauthorized, the increased scrutiny has been stressful.
Still, the flow of legal immigrants into the United States has increased slightly over the past decade, according to the report, noting that the trends have reduced the percentage of immigrants who are here illegally, from 31 percent of all immigrants in 2007 to 29 percent in 2009.
Although an earlier Pew study pointed to signs of fewer illegal immigrants in recent years, the new report reveals the first statistically significant reversal in the growth of the population in the past 20 years, said Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer at Pew.
Passel, an author of the new report, noted that in recent years, illegal entry has gotten more expensive, harder and more dangerous.
"We know that it's harder to sneak across the border than it was four or five years ago, and especially than it was 10 or 15 years ago," he said. "Virtually everyone who sneaks across the border uses a coyote now, and the cost has gone up. The increase of the border patrol around cities and ports of entry has pushed the flows across the border into more remote places."
The report's findings were hailed by Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates tighter immigration controls.
The figures contradict "the idea that the only options before us are mass expulsions or mass amnesty," he said. "This finding points to the middle way, of a consistent decrease of the illegal population over time through enforcement."
Large declines in illegal immigrants in Florida and Nevada are likely because of the mortgage and foreclosure crises and the loss of thousands of construction jobs, which immigrants often fill, Passel and Massey said. Florida's illegal immigrant population fell by 375,000, to an estimated 675,000, between 2008 and 2009, and Nevada's decreased by 50,000, to an estimated 180,000 during that period.
The number in Virginia fell by 65,000, to 240,000, which Passel attributed to the economy as well as stricter legislation passed in Prince William County in 2007 and 2008.
The nationwide trajectory will likely depend on the strength of the country's economic recovery and the level of enforcement of immigration laws, Passel said.
"In the past the flows have moved in line with the state of the U.S. economy," he said. "But we have stepped up enforcement right now. Right now, both are working in the same direction. If the economy turns around and enforcement is increased, we don't know."
Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post
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