SharpSpeaks

Shakexpear King,''Isn't it true I bring a new meaning to the word "EDIBLE"'''

2009-09-10T23:36:00.001-07:00

Shakexpear King,''Isn't it true I bring a new meaning to the word "EDIBLE"''', originally uploaded by Shakexpear King.

Shakexpear King has been recieving a lot of accolades from fans and critics with his stint on Channel [V]'s EXHAUSTED.What really made him a hit with the masses is the fact that he worked really hard to stay awake to win the grandprize,but he was eliminated from the show,when a fellow contestant got the power to choose the one person,to be eliminated,and out of jealousy as was clearly seen,that contestant eliminated Shakexpear King out,to the chagrin of million of viewers of the hit show,where Vj,Juhi and Vj Gaurav were fantabulous on the show,there were eight contestants on the show and they were supposed to stay awake for 48 hours doing different tasks.

The sad fact is that first Anupama left,who happened to be a very good friend of Shakexpear and viewers loved theier chemistry,after she lost in a task round,later he was getting on well with Mizpah,and it was Mizpah who wanted to be eliminated because she could not stay awake anymore but when Shakexpear was eliminated everybody was shocked.Some corruptible use of power by the contestant babar

Locavore,Sarah Palin

2009-01-16T03:25:00.000-08:00

When John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate, hunting entered the national conversation in a way it hasn't since 2006, when Dick Cheney shot a donor instead of a quail. Palin, in fashioning herself as a leader for Joe Six-Pack America, has emphasized her prowess as a sportswoman. Her office has released photos of her with a dead moose, a dead caribou, and several dead salmon. She was recently spotted in Pennsylvania carrying a tote bag with the logo "Real Women Hunt Moose." One bowhunting company was so excited (or shameless) that it introduced a new model called the Sarah-Cuda in honor of the governor. Love the pink camo.
While Palin and Cheney are both hard-nosed Republicans, they represent different aspects of the hunting tradition. Cheney, who favors canned hunts on private game reserves, shoots his beasts in the manner of aristocrats. Palin, gutting moose in her neighbor's basement, is an heir to the "potlatch" hunters of the Colonial era, who wanted meat for the cabin table. When Palin was running for governor in 2006, she told USA Today, "We hunt as much as we can, and I'm proud to say our freezer is full of wild game we harvested here in Alaska." And if you look twice at the reasons why Palin hunts, they resemble an ideal cherished by city-dwelling, New York Times-reading folks. Sarah Palin is a locavore, harvesting meat from her local "foodshed."
She's also, of course, trying to harvest votes. Hunting has been a useful political symbol since Teddy Roosevelt. When Field & Stream posted Palin's hunting and fishing photos on its Web site, high-fives broke out among the assembled commenters. "You don't find people in Washington who would be seen with their hands on a bloody caribou," one wrote, while another dreamed, "Maybe if elected there's hope she will convert the White House pool into a trout pond?" Naturally, there were a few malcontents in the mix, suggesting that the photographed caribou had in fact been "gut shot" in ignominious style (i.e., the animal wasn't killed cleanly with a precision shot to the heart, lungs, or head). An anonymous commenter came to her defense:

For all you lefty city-slickers out there who are fixating on the blood back in the animals abdomen, that wound was from field dressing the caribou, the process whereby one incises the abdomen to remove the entrails and cool off the carcass quickly. Animals that are gut shot rarely leave a visible blood trail, as major blood vessels are not common in the entrails. So go back to sipping your lattes and gazing at pictures of your Ivy-league messiah. For you, meat comes from a grocery store. Please keep it that way, as we don't want you to handle firearms.
Time to add "buying meat from a grocery store" to the list of liberal sins. Yet we can thank this commenter for capturing one aspect of the cultural politics of hunting in 2008. Hunters hunt for many reasons—family tradition, love of the outdoors, friendship, the challenge of stalking big game—but the sport has always had a "frontier" appeal. I'm a hunter, a self-reliant individual living off the land; here, have some of my venison jerky.
Invoking the frontier theme, the major hunting organizations, such as the Boone and Crockett Club and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, all pay tribute to the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt. Roosevelt championed hunting as a way to reinforce America's pioneer values, at a time (the 1890s) when the real frontier was closing. "The virility, clear-sighted common sense and resourcefulness of the American people is due to the fact that we have been a nation of hunters and frequenters of the forest, plains, and waters" is a typical T.R. exhortation. Roosevelt established the still-flickering idea that hunting teaches self-reliance and love of country.
Perhaps it's this patriotic element of hunting that makes hunting advocates fear for the country when they see their sport in decline. In surveys done by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife service, the overall number of hunters has fallen from a peak of 19.1 million in 1975 to 12.5 million in 2006. Why? Historian Daniel Justin Herman, in his essay "The Hunter's Aim," floats the theory that the middle-class businessmen who went duck and deer hunting in great numbers in the 1950s found a new natural arena to display their manliness, courtesy, and deadly aim: the golf course. If you read around on hunting sites, the anecdotal blame falls on suburbanization, single-parent households, and restrictive gun laws—but the real bile is saved for video games. Chad Love, of Field & Stream, echoed the sentiments of his fellow hunters in a recent blog post, when he recalled his boyhood "back before the dawning of the 'Stoned on Electronic Entertainment Age.' " His remark was greeted with this typical Amen: "We don't let our kids play outside, yet wonder why they are fat, full of allergies and lazy."
The decreasing number of hunters has only intensified the sport's hold on those who still do hunt. As Herman explained: "Hunting has become a counterculture among rural, blue-collar people. It's something that offends the snobs, the white-collar middle-class that has become so soft and opposed to the cruelty of animals." (For a glimpse of the extreme edge of this counterculture, watch an Exploding Varmints video on YouTube.) Herman also notes that the patriotic strain of hunting persists in the contemporary vogue for all-things camouflage. "Camo does double duty," he says, "I'm a hunter, and I'm ready to be a soldier when the call demands."
The outsider status of Sarah Palin-style meat hunting (as opposed to the insider status of Cheney-style hunting) harkens back to the olde days. Herman describes how the Founding Fathers were mostly not hunters, as hunting at the time was deemed "too Indian." It was an insult to call someone a "buckskinner." In addition, early Americans justified the taking of land from Native Americans on the premise that the Indians were hunters who were just passing through—not farmers like the white settlers. It was after the Civil War, as America began to industrialize, that hunting became popular as an aristocratic sport pursued by gentlemen, i.e., "sportsmen," while subsistence hunters found game where they could. Roosevelt built his political career around the gun but also started the conservation movement that set aside land on which average Americans could practice the invigorating, country-affirming act of hunting. Gilded Age women followed their manly men into the forests, as hunting was one way for the "new woman" to exhibit her burgeoning sense of independence.
Like most kids who grow up to be hunters, Sarah Palin was taught by her father—a hunting parent is the key factor in whether a child takes up the sport. Palin's dad, Chuck Heath, is a frontier-style, self-reliant pothunter. He recently bragged to the British Sun, "We raised our family to be able to support ourselves—90 per cent of our meat and fish we get ourselves." His comments are also in tune with our disastrous financial moment. Gun sales have been up this fall, and Tony Aeschliman of the Shooting Sports Association speculated that lack of work gives rural people more time to hunt and more incentive to "put a deer in the freezer." And by the deer carcass is where the shooters and the foodies meet. This week, the leading locavore, Michael Pollan, in an essay titled "Farmer in Chief," advised the next president, "You should support hunting as a particularly sustainable way to eat meat—meat grown without any fossil fuels whatsoever."
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In these divided times, I would love to propose a red state/blue state détente—you guys shoot the deer; we'll cook the venison in a lovely reduction sauce—but game markets didn't work so well in the past. A central tenet of preserving wildlife is that we must remove the economic value from an animal. Otherwise, extensive poaching and habitat destruction follow. So bringing back game markets on a massive scale wouldn't quite work, although Hunters for the Hungry is a worthy idea, and it's only slightly crazy to imagine city dwellers having "community supported hunters" in the manner of "community supported agriculture." There's also the whole moral question of whether hunting is a humane way to treat animals that I will gladly sidestep. Still, animal lovers, latte sippers, and muzzleloaders, please hold your fire for a moment and consider what we have in common: We may disagree about big, federal government, but we're starting to share an idea about small, local food.

Google and Facebook battle for your friends.

2009-01-16T03:16:00.000-08:00

Every so often I am reminded how primitive the Web really is. This usually happens after chatting with someone who works for Google. Recently, I interviewed David Glazer, who thinks about "being social" for the big G. He pointed out the caveman quality of socializing online in 2009. We have friends on Facebook, shared items on Google Reader, blogs on Tumblr, bookmarks on Delicious, and a login at the New York Times, with each of these sites requiring different passwords and user names. Barbaric. And while there are smart companies such as FriendFeed and Plaxo that unite these activities in one place, we are far from what Google describes as the Holy Grail: "Any app, any site, any friend."
Glazer offers this mental exercise to understand how an online social nirvana might benefit you: Think of an activity you do on the Web in a solitary way, and then imagine how that activity would be better if the site knew about the other people that you care about. I read the New York Times every day. In Glazer's model, the Times would show me what articles my friends have read or give me a list of articles where they've left comments. That's kind of a cool idea, and one that the Times is trying to pull off with its Times People feature. Glazer believes that everything on the Web is better if it's social. Checking out a stock? It would be nice to read chatter from other potential investors. Baking a cake? Look at advice from those who have already tried the recipe. Tempted by a new restaurant? See if your foodie friends have eaten there already. The reason we don't do these things now is that the "barriers to social are too high." It's still too annoying to fill out all of those registration forms, and there's no universal way to manage your online identity and networks of friends. Google and its partners want to collapse the barriers to social and give each and every one of us an entourage.
There's just one hiccup in this plan: Facebook, the place where many of us already have our entourage. The pre-eminent social network announced that it has 150 million active users worldwide. My Facebook story may be like yours: I joined on a whim, filling out a rudimentary profile on a lazy afternoon. Facebook took that information and, like a hostess powered by four vodka tonics, kept sending friends my way. (The site is a relentless shoulder-tapper.) Without trying too hard, I had 50 friends, and I soon got interested in managing that network, tagging people by school, workplace, hometown, and family. Facebook was nudging me to do something I would never normally do: map out the networks that link my world together.
In an almost sneaky way, Facebook had become very valuable to me. It's my address book, only supercharged and more nuanced. Yet, as many Web commenters have pointed out, all of the work I've done on my "social graph" is held hostage on Facebook. I can't download it to my computer and take it with me. To offer one prominent example: When blogger Robert Scoble tried to scrape his Facebook data, Facebook closed his account. Mark Zuckerberg and the people who run Facebook, no dummies, fiercely protect the social graph that they have created with our help. They do this for the admirable reason of safeguarding our privacy and the practical reason that the network has enormous potential value. The entire business story of Facebook can be seen as an attempt to leverage this information in a way that doesn't feel like a home invasion.
This is where Google and David Glazer come back in, and why 2009 might see some serious social warfare between Google and Facebook. Last May, the latter announced a service called Facebook Connect, a set of tools that made it easier for Web developers to let people log in to sites with their Facebook ID and share things on their Facebook news feed. (A good place to try this out is the video site Vimeo.) Three days later, Google announced Friend Connect, a set of tools that made it easier for Web developers to do the same sorts of things, except outside the realm of Facebook. A site such as Qloud lets you join and comment with a Gmail or Yahoo account. So far, so good. But Facebook blocked Friend Connect from accessing its data, and now we have two rival social networks.
This may seem like an arcane, technical struggle, but I believe that a year from now, you are actually going to care who owns your social network. A lot of Facebook is flirting, photo sharing, and inane status lines, but we are also telling it how much we value certain people. I want to hear less about this person. I'm married to this person. Please block this person from ever contacting me in any way ever again. We are sorting out the entourage, or, to put it in a more utilitarian way, we are deciding which people are worthy sources of information.
One of the stresses of being on the Web is the vast amount of available information. It's a condition that Clay Shirky has described as "filter failure"—we don't know what sources to let in or what new sources have potential value. (Read this great interview for more Shirky insights.) One obviously great filter is our friends. And one of my favorite places for the random videos and fun links without which the modern workday could not be endured is my Facebook news feed. But my little salon of procrastination is under enormous pressure, as Facebook has yet to figure out the whole making-money thing. I would be bummed if the site had to spam me with ads in order to survive, yet I was forced to stay on Facebook because I wasn't able to take my friend list to new pastures.
Facebook also knows this and is trying to figure out how open to be. It has the advantage of a huge lead in the size of its network. (More people means more opportunities to find new friends for you.) Meanwhile, Google and its partners are gesturing: Come be free and frolic on our open platform. Google and Facebook have said that they will one day play nicely with each other, but a lot is at stake on the social frontier. Glazer put it best: "People are inherently social—killer user habits are built around connecting to other people." Killer user habits also make great marketing and advertising platforms.
The hope is that as Google and Facebook compete, we are fitfully making our way toward the benefits of portable social data, a sort of command center for our online self. The advocates of this openness discuss such sci-fi goodies as geolocation and "ambient controls" that would let us decide, like a dimmer switch, how much social information we want to receive. (If you need to get something done, change the setting to "Hermit.") Keeping a close eye on your online identity might feel burdensome, like putting on a second set of clothes, but consider how much nicer it will be to manage how you look, rather than letting some algorithm do it for you.

Obama is Our Soother-in-Chief

2009-01-16T02:55:00.000-08:00

When these frightful times of financial confusion and credit constipation become too much, I dial up Barack Obama on YouTube to suppress my anxieties. The Voice works like aerosolized Paxil on my limbic system, reducing my blood pressure and lifting my mood.
If this president thing doesn't work out for him, I'm sure Obama could make a living recording evacuation tapes for the airline industry: "The aircraft … in which you are seated … is falling … at a rate that Bernoulli's principle … can not overcome. … As we crash … into the tarmac … please remain calm … unbuckle your safety belts … and walk in an orderly fashion … to the marked exits … to deplane."
Obama smeared the American psyche with his oratorical ointment Jan. 8 as he implored Congress to pass his stimulus plan, which he doesn't call a stimulus plan. That would sound too down. In the Obama version, it's the upbeat "American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan."
If you listen to the words, Obama promises a grim recession that "could linger for years," produce a double-digit unemployment rate, and destroy a "generation of potential and promise" if his package doesn't pass. But when I watched him in the video below, flanked by a pair of U.S. flags as if still campaigning for the job that he won two months ago, he made me feel oddly good about the challenges of coming economic Armageddon.
Say, I said to myself, how does he do that?
For one thing, he's better at remaining calmer and more deliberate in his speech patter than John Wayne in a firefight—and better at it than any politician since Ronald Reagan. If he's calm, I'm calm—even if my portfolio was last sighted burning its way to the bottom of the Bentley Subglacial Trench.
Adopting a slightly scolding tone in today's speech without accusing anybody by name, he blamed such abstract scourges as corporate boardrooms, Wall Street, banks, "the halls of power in Washington, D.C.," and borrowers who took out loans they couldn't repay for the crisis. But like a dad who is tough-loving his wayward children back in line, he calls on us to "trade old habits for a new spirit of responsibility." Yes, we can be redeemed! Painting a sunshine-and-lollipop vista of fuel-efficient cars, high-quality health care, better schools, "new discoveries and entire new industries," a smart electric grid, and job security for cops and firefighters has a way of accentuating gain over pain.
Avoiding talk about pain is one of his secrets. If there is a downside to Obama's "Recovery and Reinvestment"—or even a chance the Recovery and Reinvestment scheme won't work—he shares not a peep. How much will this Recovery and Reinvestment operation cost? Obama wisely avoids putting a price tag on it. But, again, it's not what Obama says that narcotizes the citizenry, but the way he says it. He can't possibly be certain that his plan will work, but he sells it as a done, settled deal, never showing a speck of doubt.
Related in Slate
During the 2008 campaign, Jack Shafer attempted to decode Obama's rhetoric and explained why nothing the press throws at him sticks.
Continuity and this sort of "settledness" was a hallmark of Obama's campaign, and that strategy has evolved during the post-election period. At the exceedingly short press conferences that follow the introduction of some new administration hire, Obama often answers by saying he's answered that question before. Asked about the Iranian bomb on Nov. 7, he said, "Let me state—repeat what I stated during the course of the campaign." "Well, let me repeat a couple of things," he said on Dec. 11 when asked about Gov. Blagojevich's contact with his staff. When that didn't shake the reporters, he repeated his repetition. "In terms of our involvement, I'll repeat what I said earlier, which is I had no contact with the governor's office."
Here are a few more examples of Obama's thanks-for-that-redundant-question response:
"But as I have said consistently, I will listen to the recommendations of my commanders."—Dec. 1
"As I said throughout the campaign, I will be giving Secretary Gates and our military a new mission as soon as I take office—responsibly ending the war in Iraq through a successful transition to Iraqi control."—Dec. 1
"Well, keep in mind what I said during the campaign. And you were there most of the time."—Dec. 11
"As I have said repeatedly, I believe our government should provide short-term assistance to the auto industry to avoid a collapse."—Dec. 11
"With respect to the moratorium on off-shore drilling, what I said during the campaign was that I was open to the idea of off-shore drilling."—Dec. 15 [Emphasis added.]
On the page, these Obamaisms read a little snotty, but on the tube, he sounds like a confidence-inspiring paragon of consistency: Everything is under control. All contingencies have been considered. The ship is sailing straight and true. The Obama pacification express slows, however, when the press corps refuses to let him determine when an issue is "settled," as happened at a March press conference. As this clip illustrates, the Tony Rezko controversy wasn't going to disappear just because Obama thought his answers had vanquished it. "Come on, guys, I answered, like, eight questions. We're running late," Obama said as he retreated. It so shattered my vision of Obama that my acid reflux was out of control for a week.
Another way Obama stills the turbulent waters is by extolling bipartisanship, his old "there is no red-state America, there is no blue-state America" shtick. "American's security is not a partisan issue," he recently said. "I know we will succeed if we put aside partisanship and politics and work together as one nation. … I'm calling on all Americans—Democrats and Republicans—to put good ideas ahead of the old ideological battles, a sense of common purpose above the same narrow partisanship."
Obama's endless hunt for common ground, his desire to bring Kumbaya moments to all, endears him to the multitudes. He's willing to work with everybody from the Republicans to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and even the Rev. Rick Warren, whom he has tapped to give a prayer at his inauguration. Defending his Warren invitation, which angered some gays and lesbians, Obama uncorked his stock explanation that we must be willing to "disagree without being disagreeable."
According to the Chicago Tribune (Aug. 4, 2004), Obama borrowed the disagree/disagreeable trope from Sen. Paul Simon, who pinched it from "three dozen self-help books." I always blanch when Obama uses this construction because it deliberately marginalizes the views of anybody unwilling to match Obama's temperament—which is to say the rest of the planet. And I don't know which is more damning—the fact that Obama's cliché was plucked from a self-help book or that so many bobble-head in agreement whenever he uses it.
"One of the keys to being well liked in Washington is to appear humble, which is why Washington is so full of people who are so unhumble when it comes to touting how humble they are. All of this comes naturally to Obama," Mark Leibovich wrote four years ago in an Obama profile for the Washington Post.
If I understand Leibovich correctly—and I think I do—we like Obama because he's likable, and he's likable because 1) he knows how to be likable, and 2) he wants to be likable. Barack Obama, the ocean that refuses no river, will remain everybody's best friend until he makes his first tough decision. Only then shall we really begin to know him.

60 things girls need to understand about guys!!!!

2008-12-02T22:45:00.000-08:00

1. Guys hate sluts even though they have sex with them!2. "Hey, are you busy?" or "Are you doing something?" ~ two phrases guys open with to stop from stammering on the phone.3. Guys may be flirting around all day but before they go to sleep, they always think about the girl they truly care about.4. Before they call, guys try to plan out a little about what they're going to say so there aren't awkward pauses, but once he's on the phone he forgets it all and makes it up as he goes.5. Guys go crazy over a girl's smile when they’re attracted to them6. Guys will do anything just to get you to notice him.7. Guys hate it when you talk about your ex-boyfriend or ex love-interest. Unless they're going for the let-her-complain-to-you-and-then-have-her-realize-how-wonderful-and-nice-you-are method.8. A guy who likes you wants to be the only guy you talk to.9. Boyfriends need to be reassured often that they're still loved.10. Don't talk about your guy friends to your boyfriend.11. Guys get jealous easily.12. Guys are more emotional than they'd like people to think.13. Giving a guy a hanging message like "You know what?!..uh...never mind.." would make him jump to a conclusion that is far from what you are thinking. And he'll assume he did something wrong and he'll obsess about it trying to figure it out.14. Guys are good flatterers when courting but they usually stammer when they talk to a girl they really like.15. Guys hate asking parents for money to buy girls presents. So they come up with ideas like saving their lunch money for a week. But it never works because guys are always hungry so they end up asking the parents for money anyway.16. Girls are guys' weaknesses.17. Guys are very open about themselves.18. It's good to test a guy first before you trust him. But don't let him wait too long.19. Your best friend, whom your boyfriend seeks help from about his problems with you may end up being admired by your boyfriend.20. If a guy tells you about his problems, he just needs someone to listen to him. You don't need to give advice.21. A usual act that proves that the guy likes you is when he teases you.22. Guys love you more than you love them if they are serious in your relationships.23. Guys will brag about anything.24. Guys use words like hot or cute to describe girls. We rarely use beautiful. If a guy uses that, he likes you a whole hell of a lot.25. Guys think WAY too much. One small thing a girl does, even if she doesn't notice it can make the guy think about it for hours, trying to figure out what it meant.26. Guys seek for advice from girls not other guys. Because most guys think alike, so if one guy's confused, then we're all confused.27. Any guy could write out a rulebook or advice book for flirting, but no guy can write out a book about relationships.28. Try to be as straightforward as possible.29. A guy has to experience rejection, because if he'stoo-good-never-been-busted, never been in love and hurt, he won't be mature and grown up.30. If the guy does something stupid in front of the girl, he will think about it for the next couple days or until the next time he spends time with the girl.31. No matter how much guys talk about asses and boobs, personality is key.32. Guys learn from experience not from the romance books that girls read and take as their basis of experience.33. Guys worry about the thin line between being compassionate and being whipped.34. If a guy looks unusually calm and laid back, he's probably faking it and is spazzing inside.35. When a guy says he is going crazy about the girl, he really is. Guys rarely say that.36. When a guy asks you to leave him alone, he's just actually saying, "Please come and listen to me."37. Guys don't really have final decisions.38. If a guy starts to talk seriously, listen to him. It doesn't happen that often, so when it does, you know something's up.39. If your best guy friend seems to avoid you or is never around when you're with your boyfriend, he's probably jealous and likes you.40. When a guy looks at you for longer than a second, he's definitely thinking something.41. Guys like femininity not feebleness.42. Guys don't like girls who punch harder than they do.43. A guy has more problems than you can see with your naked eyes.44. Don't be a snob. Guys can be intimidated and give up easily.45. Everything in moderation. Put on makeup, wear perfume. Just not too much.46. Guys talk about girls more than girls talk about guys.47. Guys hate rejection, but they hate being led on even more.48. Guys really think that girls are strange and have unpredictable decisions and are MAD confusing but somehow are drawn even more to them.49. A guy would give his left nut to be able to read a girl's mind for a day.50. No guy can handle all his problems on his own. He's just too stubborn to admit it.51. Not all guys are assholes. Just because ONE is a jackass doesn’t mean he represents ALL of us.52. We don't like girls who are too skinny.53. We love it when girls talk about there ass.54. Always make sure you know what kind of stuff your getting into before making out with a guy , like whether it's a one time deal or not .55. Believe it or not shy guys are the most easiest to talk to. It may not seem right but trust me they will start opening up like books after you just ask them questions about their lives and unnoticeable tell them about yours.56. When a guy hits your butt it means that he wants you sexually.57. Even if they refuse it all guys are ticklish on the ribs.58. Guys love neck rubs and if he lets you keep doing it, it means that he really likes you or his neck really hurts.59. Guys will test the waters to see how far they can get with you. Even if he doesn't intend to it will happen. Know how far it is you want to let him go and he will respect that after you let him know a couple times.60. When a guy sacrifices his sleep and health just to be with you, he really likes you and wants to be with you as much as possible.

A list of 51 different things that girls wish guys knew,my girlfriend suggests

2008-12-02T21:50:00.000-08:00

A list of 51 different things that girls wish guys knew1. When you see a girl with huge knockers, do not go "Damn!" and then laugh appreciatively to yourself - we can hear you. 2. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials. 3. If you don't act like soap-opera guys, don't expect us to dress like Victoria Secret models. 4. Mark anniversaries on a calendar. 5. There is no such thing as too much spooning. 6. Just because you L the C doesn't mean we have to S the D. 7. This is how we see it . . . Don't call = Don't Care. 8. Which also means that if we don't call, take the hint. 9. We like you to be a little jealous . . . but overly possessive is not necessary. 10. Putting things in our butt does not turn us on. 11. Return favors: we massage, you massage; we shave, you shave (and not just your face). 12. Foreplay is not an option . . . its a prerequisite. 13. We're allowed to be late . . . you are not. 14. Eye contact is key. 15. Don't take longer to get ready than we do. 16. Laugh at our jokes. 17. Three words . . . honesty, honesty, honesty. 18. Girls can be groupies. Guy groupies are stalkers. 19. We never have to wonder if your orgasm was real. 20. Do not start with us. You will not win... not kidding .. we ALWAYS win 21. Would you like it if a guy treated your sister that way? We didn't think so. 22. If you ask nicely, we usually answer the same way. 23. We will never have enough clothes or shoes! Ever!24. We have an excuse to act bitchy at least once a month. Come on guys...most of you have more PMS then us girls..25. Open the door for us no matter where we are . . . even at our house and getting into the car. I know it seems like a lot but is it that hard?26. We love surprises! 27. We liked to be kissed softly, not with an iron tongue. 28.Pay attention to the little things we do, because they mean the most. 29. Boxers and maybe boxer briefs sometiems . . . NEVER whitey-tighties, NEVER! 30. Clean your room before we come over. 31. Always brush your teeth before you see us . . . a fresh mouth and white teeth are a necessity plus we do the same for you. 32. When we use our teeth it means that you suck at going down on us, so we are just returning the favor. 33. Even though you are sometimes insensitive and hurt us, we still love you with everything we are. 34. Sometimes even when you think we hate you, we don't, we just want you to apologize so we can be allowed to love you again 35. Don't act hard around your friends because I won't make you hard tonight. AKA don't be an ass36. Sometimes "NO!" really means "NO!" 37. "Wife Beaters" are not an adequate form of fashion. 38. If we wanted to be on video tape, we'd be a porn star not your girlfriend. 39. Sensitive guys are great . . . but crying more than we do in a movie just isn't right. 40. Don't let ex-girlfriends cause drama, relationships are stressful enough!!!!! 41. It takes a special kind of stupid to forget birthdays. 42. Guys who are good cuddlers = guys who know how to satisfy a woman. 43. "Fat Chicks" have feelings too--all chicks have feelings. 44. Silent treatment + shoulder shrugs + tears + yelling + nasty looks = YOU DID SOMETHING WRONG! 45. If you are not a good dancer, please be self-aware. 46. Just because a girl doesn't pick up on the first ring doesn't mean she's not waiting by the phone. 47. You don't have to spend a lot, if it means a lot. 48. Don't say you love me if you don't mean it. 49. Don't lie to us . . . we will catch you...eventually we always catch you. 50. When the girls get together, we talk about EVERYTHING. Meaning my best friends knows everything about you. 51. Don't Make Promises You Can't Keep (Thanks to Katie Brown, good idea to add this one.)#52 - Don't tell your girl "I saw "this thing" that you would have loved and I was going to buy it for you..." or " I was going to buy you "fill in the blank"... but then didn't for whatever reason. If you didn't buy it we don't want to hear about it, all that does is create disppointment. Either buy it or shut up about it.53. A quote from Sex and the City submitted by MollyAdam: Well then c'mon....give me a BJ. Up and down a couple of times; you're done....its easy!!Samantha: Easy? You men have no idea what we're dealing with down there; Teeth placement and jaw stress and suction and gag reflex and all the while bopping up and down, moaning, and trying to breathe through our noses. Easy? Honey....they dont call it a job for nothing!!SO TRUE!!!!

britney dishes out on k-fed being a bad influence on her kids

2008-11-27T01:33:00.000-08:00

Britney's K-Fed Dis, Bad Dates & 'Old Fart' Life

Posted Nov. 25, 2008

Britney Spears' heavily hyped comeback will culminate with the release of "Circus" on Dec. 2., the same day she turns 27. And while you'd think her birthday would be a time for her to reflect on the choices she's made that have led her to her current circumstances -- her father in control of her life; custody of sons Sean Preston, 3, and Jayden James, 2, lost to ex-husband Kevin Federline -- she instead seems to be blocking out some of her past behavior.

(©Rolling Stone)

"I didn't think my husband was gonna leave me," Brit tells Rolling Stone in a new cover story optimistically titled "Yes She Can!" (and somewhere, Barack Obama's press office sighs heavily). "Otherwise, I'd be with my babies 24/7. But since they're almost like twins, they both take care of each other. I think they look like me. They don't look like their father at all."

And even though Spears' own mother said last month that Federline "could have been a real pill about a lot of things, but he wasn't," the popster apparently doesn't think he's doing a perfect parenting job.

"And it's weird 'cause they're starting to learn words like 'stupid,' and Preston says the f-word now sometimes. He doesn't get it from us. He must get it from his daddy," finger-points Britney. "I say it, but not around my kids."

How quickly she's forgotten her memorable tirade against a paparazzo in July 2007 while driving around with her tots. In video of the incident, Spears rolls down the window of her Mercedes and, as her kids wail heartbreakingly in the backseat, tells the shutterbug, "Hey, baby. When are you gonna get on a diet? Have you ever tried Weight Watchers, you fat [bleep]? Why don't you run? You need to [bleeping] jog, you p***y. Yeah, run. Run, b***h!"

Anyhoo, Britney plays the proud mother in the carefully orchestrated sit-down ("We were never left alone together, and my questions had to be submitted ahead of time for approval," the reporter tells USA Today), marveling at how fast they're growing up and sharing a personal anecdote.

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"Every time they come to visit me, I think about how they're such special people," says Spears, who is allowed two visits and one overnight per week with her sons. "Like, they're going to preschool now! I went there to pick them up on Friday, and seeing them in their little classroom and seeing Jayden being bad or not listening? It's like, those are mine, and it's just crazy, you know what I mean?"

Bubbles Brit, "And the things that are coming out of their mouths right now -- they're learning so much, and it's new, and you never know what they're going to say, and they're so smart yet so innocent. They're obsessed with monsters, and every night we look outside, and we have to show them that there's no monsters out there. It's dark outside, but there's nothin' out there, you know?"

Speaking of things that go bump in the night, the days when she would drive aimlessly around into the wee hours with an army of paparazzi in tow are long gone.

"I feel like an old person now," sighs Spears, who compared her life to "Groundhog Day" in her new documentary, which debuts on MTV on Nov. 30. "I do! I go to bed at, like, 9:30 every night, and I don't go out or anything, you know what I mean? I just feel like an old fart."

Not that her life is completely devoid of fun. She reveals how she's gone on a few chaperoned dates, although neither resulted in a love connection.

"One of the dates I had recently, I was accompanied by my assistant Brett and my manager Larry Rudolph's friend Adam Leber," recalls Britney, who stepped out last week with a chiseled fella named Marco. "Right when we got there, we just knew it was just bad. He looked like an older version of Harry Potter, but skinnier. So I had to get dessert first."

And then there was a meet-and-greet with a gentleman who "was really, really tall and a lot older. We're trying to ask him questions, like, 'OK, you're into martial arts, so what kind of martial arts are you into?' And he was like, 'Oh, all kinds.' So we were just cracking up."

For now, it's all work and little play for Spears, who jetted to Europe on Monday to promote "Circus."

One unnamed track, which she says she wrote, is about "artistic expression and the masquerade of people acting and putting on shows," explains Brit. "Through that, you create your own world. The song talks about how other people are coming into this girl's world, but she didn't invite them in. So she's saying, 'Why are you here, if I didn't invite you?' It's complicated, but you can tell it's me who wrote it, because it's in my voice and there's a difference."

Still, she's worried about revealing too much of herself to the public, which has already been witness to her flashed lady parts and her ambulance-chauffeured trip to the hospital.

"It's scary to put yourself out there and be like, 'Oh, God, is that cool?' If you're not going to really go for it, you can't just go there halfway," says Britney. "But sometimes, when you go for it, you can't lose."

Britney: My Life Is Like 'Groundhog Day'

2008-11-27T01:31:00.000-08:00

Britney: My Life Is Like 'Groundhog Day'

Posted Nov. 18, 2007

With exactly two weeks to go before Britney Spears completes her much-ballyhooed comeback with the release of "Circus," the publicity machine has cranked into overdrive with the release of some attention-grabbing (and, we're guessing, slightly out-of-context) excerpts from her new documentary.

"I have really good days, and then I have bad days," she admits in "Britney: For the Record" (via People and the London Sun), a 90-minute, behind-the-scenes look at her life since her epic and painfully extended public meltdown.

According to Spears, who turns 27 on the same day "Circus" is released, her current, closely monitored circumstances are kind of like being in prison -- or a Bill Murray movie.

"Even when you go to jail, you know, there's the time when you're gonna get out," sighs Brit, who is legally unable to make any major decisions (her father, Jamie, remains her permanent guardian until the court says otherwise). "But in this situation, it's never-ending. It's just like 'Groundhog Day.'"

Britney makes an appearance during Madonna's Los Angeles tour stop on Nov. 6. (©AP)

And while Murray's character eventually changed and grew and became a better person by being forced to live the same day over and over again, Britney appears to chafe a bit from the more structured, less aimless-driving-and-gas-station-stop existence.

"I think it's too in-control. If I wasn't under the restraints I'm under, I'd feel so liberated. When I tell them the way I feel, it's like they hear but they're really not listening," says the popster, who also reckons there's a lack of "passion" and "excitement." "I never wanted to become one of those prisoner people. I always wanted to feel free."

But Spears, who lost custody of sons Sean Preston, 3, and Jayden James, 2, to ex-husband Kevin Federline following a January police standoff and her subsequent hospitalization, seems to realize the road to recovery -- both personal and professional -- is long and bumpy.

"If you do something wrong in your work, you can move on," she figures, "but I'm having to pay for a long time."

Brit hopes the documentary, which tracks three months in her life and debuts on MTV on Nov. 30, will offer a positive look at the strides she's made since her head-shaving, paparazzo-dating, gurney-strapped nadir.

"I wanted to make this film because I started to feel like I wasn't being seen in the light that I wanted to be seen in," she explains. "This is an opportunity to set the record straight and talk about what I've been through and where I'm headed."

Concludes the optimistic Britster, "I think I've learned my lesson now, and enough is enough."

trouble in the paradise of lindsay and ronson

2008-11-27T01:25:00.000-08:00

Talk of Trouble and Public Tiffs Hits Lindsay and Sam

Posted Nov. 24, 2008

The good news is that the tabloids are treating Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson like any other Hollywood couple. The bad news is the inevitable rift rumors have begun.

On the heels of the flour-bombed starlet's declaration to Harper's Bazaar that her DJ inamorata is "a wonderful person and I love her very much," the pair is being accused of bickering all over the world.

According to the London Daily Mirror, the joined-at-the-hip honeys had a tiff Thursday night at the ridiculously opulent and star-packed kickoff party for the Atlantis resort in Dubai.

Lindsay, 22, was allegedly miffed because she felt Ronson, 31, who had been hired to DJ at the $20 million shindig, was focused more on her tune-spinning than on her.

The paper claims the underemployed actress "collapsed in a heap before storming angrily" to the DJ booth as the bash wound down.

"How many more songs were you going to play?" Lohan is said to have hollered. "How long does it take to pack? It takes five minutes. PACK!"

At that point, designer Matthew Williamson purportedly popped up to play amateur mediator, saying, "Now Sam, you speak first, then Lindsay, it's your turn."

Sam and Lindsay are spotted in London on Nov. 19. (©Retna Ltd.)

This is the latest report of squabbling between the squeezes to surface, with similar tales emerging from their recent stops in London and New York.

They're "fighting like cats and dogs," a source tattles to the New York Post. "They fight every day, screaming, crying and yelling at each other. Sam and Lindsay are still very much together and very much in love, but drama just seems to follow Lindsay, and Sam hates it. She deals with Lindsay every day. And every day for Sam means questioning, 'Is this worth it?'"

Adds another source, "Lindsay is high-maintenance and a lot to deal with. Sam has always dealt with her. But it isn't easy."

The paper claims Lohan and Ronson are seeing a couples counselor in order to work through some of their ostensibly "escalating" problems, although a rep for the actress says she knows nothing about the supposed therapy sessions.

of leo and kate's makeout,paris post benji break

2008-11-27T01:12:00.000-08:00

Romance Report: 'Full-On' Makeouts and 'Super' Flirtiness

Posted Nov. 24, 2008

If David Spade could find a way to bottle the seemingly irresistible pheromones he emits when among the opposite sex, he'd be so stinkin' rich he'd never have to co-star in another second-rate sitcom again. The funnyman, whose inexplicably impressive romantic history includes wooing Heather Locklear, reportedly offered the gift of saliva to Nicollette Sheridan at her 45th birthday party Friday night at Los Angeles hot spot Luau, the same place they were seen enjoying a "deep conversation" last month. Word is, Spade and the veteran "Desperate Housewives" vixen arrived separately and remained out of smooching range for part of the evening before coming together for some snuggle time. "They cuddled and kissed," a spy tells People. "They were full-on making out in a booth." But did that same spy share the sighting with several other media outlets? Us, OK! and E! News all just happen use the same "full-on making out" line in their reports of the birthday bussing, with the latter two also noting how Nicollette and David "cuddled and kissed." Anyhoodle, insiders say the two aren't an item, although People's eyewitness relays how Spade "winked at her and stood by her side while she blew out the candles on her cake." Sheridan, you'll recall, split with fiancé Michael Bolton in August, while Spade became a reluctant first-time dad in August when Playboy Playmate Jillian Grace gave birth to a baby girl.

Were Leo and Kate getting "super flirty" at GQ's Men of the Year party? (©Retna Ltd./AP)

Maybe Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Bosworth are just really tactile people, but their surprisingly demonstrative behavior at GQ's Men of the Year bash last week in Los Angeles raised more than a few eyebrows. "They were really close together and acted super flirty," a snitch tells People of the comely pair. "They just kept getting closer as the night went on." Later, the fat-free starlet, who began dating model James Rousseau soon after she parted ways with Orlando Bloom in 2006, joined the actor, who's been on-and-off with model Bar Refaeli for the last couple of years, at hot spot Bardot, where their newfound chumminess supposedly continued. "Kate was all over Leo," a clubgoer informs Star. "Her body language suggested that she wanted to be more than just friends and wasn't worried who saw. They spent the entire night together side by side, intimately whispering in each other's ears and squeezing each other tight." Adds the hawk-eyed, conclusion-drawing witness, "Leo and Kate acted as if there was no one else in the club. She was making sure his focus was solely on her, and the black skintight dress she was wearing certainly helped."

Newly single Paris hit a Pussycat Dolls event in Los Angeles on Nov. 23. (©WireImage.com)

Nothing says "I'm single and loving it" quite like strapping on a shiny pleather minidress and matching spats, Bedazzling a policeman's hat, uncomfortably arching your back and striking a pose. At least that seemed to be Paris Hilton's strategy Sunday night as she showed off how well she's doing in the post-Benji Madden era by styling a shiny, airtight ensemble for a Pussycat Dolls event in Los Angeles. Speaking of the split, the starlet told Ryan Seacrest last week that she and Benji were just "taking a break," but the Chicago Sun-Times thinks there may be a ulterior motive behind the Ross-and-Rachel-like breather, namely, a romantic experiment. A Paris insider tells the paper that she wants "to know if she absolutely can't stand to be apart from him. ... That's her test to make sure this is the guy for her ... something she's never felt before with anyone." If true, she seems to be failing the test. The London Daily Mirror says she made a beeline for Los Angeles hot spot Villa on Friday night with pal Avril Lavigne after hearing her ex was hanging out there with twin brother Joel. But someone apparently tipped Benji off, because he made a hasty exit just moments before she arrived, allegedly grumbling, "Can't I have a night out in peace?"

Tana and Gordon Ramsay take their kids to the London premiere of "High School Musical 3" on Oct. 7. (©Retna Ltd.)

You'd figure that British chef Gordon Ramsay wouldn't have a second to spare in his ridiculously busy life, filled as it is with his eatery empire and a gazillion different TV shows on both sides of the Atlantic. But Britain's News of the World claims the tongue-lashing- and four-letter-word-loving restaurant mogul, who has four kids with wife of 12 years Tana, recently carved some time out of his packed schedule to rendezvous at a London hotel with mistress extraordinaire Sarah Symonds, who is the author of the book "Having an Affair? A Handbook for the 'Other Woman,'" a how-to tryst tome that she promoted on "Oprah" last year. While Ramsay is remaining tight-lipped on the accusations (the tabloid contends the purported affair began in 2001 and continued off-and-on), a mole tells Metro.UK that he may sue. "There are so many holes in this story," insists the insider. "I'm not going to say what those holes are, but it is going to the legal team." The Ramsays, who were named Celebrity Family of the Year in 2007 (Ramsay received Father of the Year honors the year before), made a point to stand together in the wake of the allegations. "Everything is fine," the chef's spokesman assured the London Sun. "Life is good and it's business as usual for their marriage." The embattled pair reinforced that status quo statement by walking hand-in-hand on Sunday in front of photographers. The following day, Mrs. Ramsay showed no signs of turmoil as she took the kids to school. When asked how she was doing, she smiled and responded, "I'm good, thanks for asking." As for Symonds, she's also mum on the report, although she did declare late last year, "I am reformed. I would rather be alone than ever again have to face the utter loneliness a mistress feels in an affair."

A comfortably shod Paul McCartney stays a few steps ahead of Nancy Shevell as they exit the Natural History Museum in London on Sept. 16. (©Reuters)

One thing that apparently differentiates Paul McCartney's yearlong romance with American businesswoman Nancy Shevell from his ultimately disastrous relationship with Heather Mills, besides a distinct lack of drama: His onstage repertoire has expanded. The Times of London reports that when Shevell accompanied the Beatles legend to his concert in Tel Aviv last month, he performed "My Love," a song he wrote in honor of his wife, Linda, who succumbed to cancer in 1998. Seems Mills would "stomp out" if he played it, so he removed it from the set list; Nancy, on the other hand, was unconcerned when he dedicated the Wings ditty to Linda, and she looked on "adoringly" as he sang. "I just like being in love," Sir Paul reveals to the paper, offering no further details about Shevell, who accompanied him on a road trip across the U.S. over the summer. She's equally circumspect, but shrugs off a question as to whether his iconic status stresses her out. "I don't find it stressful," Shevell tells the paper. "I'm a cancer survivor, I run a trucking company and I've got a 16-year-old to raise. That's stress."

Looks like French actress-model Noemie Lenoir won't have to buy baby wipes in bulk. The New York Post says she steering clear of hygienically minded Terrence Howard, who reportedly serenaded her at a Miami bash a few days back. After the story surfaced, Lenoir was supposedly bombarded with cautionary tales. "Calls were flooding into her agency," a source tells the paper. "At least 50 women called to tell Noemie to stay away after seeing the Page Six item. She now wants nothing to do with him."

Celebrity Quotes: What Celebrities Are Thankful for

2008-11-27T00:11:00.000-08:00

Celebrity Quotes: What Celebrities Are Thankful for This Year

Associated Press

Being rich and/or famous doesn't stop Hollywood from taking a moment to gorge on turkey and take stock of this year's blessings. The Associated Press asked dozens of celebrities what they're thankful for. Here are just a few samples:

"I am grateful for so many

things in 2008. I feel like there's a chance of real promise in this country." — singer Faith Hill.
"I think we want to be, most of all, thankful for the fans. This year, they've been always sticking around for us, always been there for us. The fans are the best. They've come to every concert. They've slept outside (of) venues. And we can't thank them enough." — Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers.
"Health. It's all about health. My health. My loved ones' health. We're all here. We're all OK. As I get older (starts to chuckle) we're all hanging on! What's going to happen next year? So far, we made it through another one." — musician Barry Manilow.

"I'm thankful that America actually stood up and did something quite extraordinary (with the election). ... I've been over here for 12 years and I have a green card and I've been delaying becoming a citizen because I was really troubled by the politics in this country, and sort

of befuddled by it." — Australian actor Simon Baker, "The Mentalist."

"Mostly it's my family. I think I've realized that mostly this year, because there's been so many crazy ups and downs, and so many different things, and I've always had the same family to come home to that will treat me like the same Miley as I was in Nashville. So, cool." —

musician Miley Cyrus.

"On a personal level, my family's health. And on a global level, I guess everyone still has hope, and I like that." — actor John Travolta.

"In 2008 my son was born, Zuma Nesta Rock. So, that is clearly the most massive thing for me. ... I lucked out because my wife is really good with him. So, right now (wife Gwen Stefani is) doing most of it. So, my life hasn't changed that much, drastically. But it's incredible

to have another little spirit right there." — musician Gavin Rossdale.

"I'm just blessed to have two very lovely children in my life, and health. It's something people don't think about a lot. I'm very lucky to be healthy and have healthy kids." — actress Reese Witherspoon.

"I'm most thankful that our country reminded everybody that we are a part of the world, and we're capable of incredible greatness in this country." — actress Mary Steenburgen.

"I'm grateful for all the times I laughed this year. That sounds crazy, but as you get older, you really take a moment and go, 'I laughed there, I had a sweet moment there. I took my kid to (hamburger restaurant) In-N-Out.' You know, I've to say, that's it for me pretty much

at this point in my life: Just take those moments." — actress Rene Russo.

Madelyn Dunham, Obama's grandmother, dies at 86

2008-11-05T03:45:00.000-08:00

Madelyn Dunham, who watched from afar as her only grandson rapidly ascended the ranks of U.S. politics to the brink of the presidency, did not live to see whether he was elected.

Dunham, 86, Senator Barack Obama's grandmother, died late Sunday evening in Hawaii after battling cancer, which Obama announced upon arriving here Monday for a campaign stop on the eve of Election Day.

"She has gone home," Obama said, his voice tinged with emotion as he briefly spoke of her death at a campaign rally here. "She died peacefully in her sleep with my sister at her side, so there's great joy instead of tears."

Obama learned of his grandmother's death at 8 a.m. Monday, aides said, but appeared at a morning rally in Florida without making an announcement. A written statement was issued around 4:30 p.m., in the name of Obama and his sister, before he spoke at an evening rally in Charlotte. The delay was intended to allow his sister, who was six hours behind in Hawaii, time to take care of a few details before news of the death became public.

Dunham was the final remaining immediate family member who helped raise Obama during his teenage years in Hawaii. He called her Toot, his shorthand for "tutu," a Hawaiian term for grandparent.

Obama broke from the presidential campaign trail in late October to travel to Honolulu to bid his grandmother farewell. He spent part of two days with her, as she lay gravely ill in the small apartment where he lived from age 10 to 18.

While Dunham was too sick to travel to see her grandson on the campaign trail, Obama and other family members said that she closely followed his bid for the presidency through cable television. Yet she became a figure in his campaign, seen through images in television commercials intended to give him a biographical anchor.

Dunham, who grew up near August, Kansas, moved with her husband, Stanley Dunham, to Hawaii. In the early stages of his candidacy, Obama spoke wistfully about his grandparents, whose all-American biography suddenly was critical to establishing his own story.

For Obama, the loss came on the final full day of his presidential campaign. Campaigning in New Mexico, Senator John McCain and his wife, Cindy, offered their condolences Monday, saying: "Our thoughts and prayers go out to them as they remember and celebrate the life of someone who had such a profound impact in their lives."

His grandmother's illness had been weighing on him in recent weeks, friends said, which is why he insisted on interrupting his schedule to visit her last month. While she was gravely ill, aides said, Obama carried on a limited conversation with her. He kept the visit to one day, advisers said, partly out of her own insistence that people not create a fuss.

Obama moves America beyond racial politics

2008-11-05T03:43:00.000-08:00

Even during the darkest hours of his presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois held on to his improbable, unshakable conviction that America was ready to step across the color line.

On Tuesday, America leaped.

Millions of voters — white and black, Hispanic and Asian, biracial and multiracial — put their faith and the future of their country into the hands of a 47-year-old black man who made history both because of his race and in spite of it.

African-Americans wept and danced in the streets on Tuesday night, declaring that a once-reluctant nation had finally lived up to its democratic promise. Strangers of all colors exulted in small towns and big cities. And white voters marveled at what they had wrought in turning a page on the country's bitter racial history.

"It brought tears to my eyes to see the lines," said Bob Haskins, a black maintenance worker at an Atlanta church, where scores of college students voted on Tuesday. "For these young folks, this is a calling. Everything that Martin Luther King talked about is coming true today."

Tobey Benas, a retired teacher who voted for Obama in Chicago, also savored the moment: "I can't believe how far we've come," said Benas, who is white. "This goes very deep for me."

In a country long divided, Obama had a singular appeal: He is biracial and Ivy League educated; a stirring speaker who shoots hoops and quotes the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr; a politician who grooves to the rapper Jay-Z and loves the lyricism of the cellist Yo Yo Ma; a man of remarkable control and startling boldness.

He was also something completely new: an African-American presidential candidate without a race-based agenda. And his message of unity and his promise of a new way of thinking seemed to inspire — or least offer some reassurance — to a country staggered by two wars, a convulsing economy and sometimes bewildering global change.

Americans, of course, have not suddenly become colorblind or forgotten old wounds. But millions of white citizens clearly decided Obama was preferable to the alternative, even if some had to swallow hard when they walked into the voting booth.

"In difficult economic times, people find the price of prejudice is just a little bit too high," said Governor Michael Easley of North Carolina, a white Democrat. "They're saying, 'We don't care what your race is. If you can make things better, we're for you.' "

Easley said he knew big changes were coming when he passed a pickup on the road a few weeks ago. The white driver, who looked like he had been hunting, was wearing camouflage apparel and had a gun rack in his truck. Easley said he was sure he was looking at a McCain supporter — until he saw the Obama stickers plastered on the door.

"I thought to myself, 'We might be winning now,' " Easley said. "We could cross that chasm, we could cross the Rubicon this time."

Confident in the country's ability to move beyond racial politics, Obama had his finger on the pulse of a nation in transition.

Day by day, year by year, racial tensions have eased as black and white classmates giggle over scribbled notes, co-workers gossip over cups of coffee, predominantly white audiences bond with Oprah and people have grown accustomed to black executives on Wall Street, black movie stars in Hollywood and black cabinet secretaries in the Oval Office.

Still, the fact that Americans would be willing, at last, to elect a black president stunned many scholars, politicians and advocates for civil rights. They remain keenly aware of the nation's record of denying black aspirations — from the time African slaves were forced to these shores nearly 400 years ago, to the broken promises of Reconstruction, to the bloody resistance to the civil rights movement in the 1960s, to the last lynching of a black man in 1981.

"The history of the country is such that you wonder when, if ever, certain things will ever happen," said Representative James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who is 68. "You sit down and you say, 'How did the Lord allow me to be a part of all this? Why not my mother and father or their parents? Why me?' "

Henry Louis Gates Jr., the Harvard scholar of African-American history, said that the election rivaled the day in 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation and the day 101 years later when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. Then Gates declared, "There's never been a moment like this in our lifetime, ever."

For older blacks, Obama's victory was particularly momentous. They marveled as they compared the scenes of white policemen beating black marchers in the 1960s to those from this year's campaign rallies where thousands of white people waved American flags and chanted, "O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!"

Richard Hatcher, who became one of the nation's first black mayors when he was elected in 1967 to lead Gary, Indiana, said he believed the election would reshape the perceptions that blacks and whites have of each other.

"That's the great hope," Hatcher said. "We do not have to be absolutely obsessed with the issue of race anymore. There's no reason why the vision of America cannot be real."

A century or so ago, such optimism was unthinkable. Before the Civil War, only two black people — a justice of the peace and a township clerk — had managed to get elected to public office in the entire country.

The prospects for black politicians were so dim that Frederick Douglass, the former slave and abolitionist, when asked what he might do as president, dismissed the question as absurd, saying, "No such contingency has even one chance in 60 million to be realized."

After black men won the right to vote in 1870, they sent 23 African-Americans to Congress over the next three decades. But by 1901, when the last black lawmaker of that era left Capitol Hill, Southern whites had disenfranchised blacks, using, among other devices, the poll tax, intimidation and violence.

By the time Obama announced his White House bid last year, though, white voters had elected black members of Congress, state legislators, mayors, even governors. This year, 70 percent of white adults surveyed in a New York Times/CBS News poll said the United States was ready to elect a black president.

Still, most of the political establishment — black and white — thought that Obama had no chance. Previous black presidential candidates had never drawn significant white votes. And Obama, only the third black lawmaker ever elected to the Senate, had an unusual biography — a white mother from Kansas, black father from Kenya, a childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia — and a relatively thin résumé.

But once the primary season started, it became clear that Obama had a persona and a message that resonated deeply with voters. Variously a soaring orator, a sober policy wonk, an urgent promoter of change and a steady leader, he displayed a gift for finding consensus that let him draw support from people who might disagree with each other.

African-Americans, wary at first of a candidate who had not emerged from the civil rights movement or the black church, soon embraced him. And though he struggled to win over white, working-class voters, many whites were attracted to a candidate who rarely talked about race and focused on their concerns about the war in Iraq, health care and the economy.

His biracial background may have reassured voters who might otherwise have felt uneasy, said Governor James Doyle of Wisconsin, a white Democrat. "He has understood that occasionally white people say things that can be hurtful and can still be wonderful, loving people."

Yet Obama also expressed pride in his African-American identity. Gates, the Harvard professor, called Obama "the postmodern race man."

"He can wear it, he can take it off, he can put it back on. It's just an aspect of his identity," Gates said. "People don't see him primarily as black. I think people see him primarily as an agent of change."

Obama is a student of history, and he turned to it in delivering the speech in March that many believed saved a candidacy threatened by his ties to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., whose 2003 "God damn America" sermon became notorious.

The senator spoke of the legacy of slavery, of black grievance and white resentment, and of the possibility of redemption.

"I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy — particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own," he said then. "But what we know — what we have seen — is that America can change."

"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society," Obama added. "It's that he spoke as if our society was static, as if no progress has been made."

Civil rights leaders cautioned that much work remains to be done. But Lattrell Foster of Chicago, 32, who voted for the first time on Tuesday, was still close to tears as he considered the enormity of the nation's progress and vowed to tell his children about it. "Just like my grandparents told me what it was like during the civil rights movement," he said. "I feel like this night is a culmination of that history."

Why has America turned on Sarah Palin?

2008-11-05T03:40:00.000-08:00

Why has America turned on Sarah Palin? Obviously, her wobbly television interviews haven't helped. Nor have the drip, drip of scandals from Alaska, which have tarnished her reformist image. But Palin's problems run deeper, and they say something fundamental about the political age being born. Palin's brand is culture war, and in America today culture war no longer sells. The struggle that began in the 1960s - which put questions of racial, sexual and religious identity at the forefront of American politics - may be ending. Palin is the end of the line.

This won't be the first time a culture war has come to a close. In the 1920s, battles over evolution, immigration, prohibition and the resurgent Ku Klux Klan dominated election after election. Those issues pitted newly arrived, saloon-frequenting, big-city Catholics against old-stock, teetotaling, small-town Protestants.

Then, in the 1930s, the culture war died. A big reason was the Depression, which put questions of economic survival front and centre. In the 1920s boom economy, politicians were largely free to focus on identity politics. By Franklin Roosevelt's election in 1932, that was a luxury leaders could no longer afford.

The other thing that killed the '20s culture war was generational change. Over time, Catholics and other immigrants left their ghettos and began to assimilate. The cut-off of mass immigration in 1924 ushered in an era of cultural consolidation in which the differences among white Americans came to matter less and less. When Democrats nominated a Catholic, Al Smith, for president in 1928, he lost in a landslide. But by 1960, when they nominated John Kennedy, he grabbed a far larger share of the Protestant vote, and won.

Something similar is happening today. Our era's culture war also began in prosperity. It was in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the high point of America's postwar boom, that African Americans took to the streets in vast numbers to demand equal rights. And it was in the early 1960s, as a result of the vast increase in postwar college enrolment, that students began challenging the conformity of American life. Middle-class baby boomers sparked the movements for women's rights and gay rights and the rise in blue-state secularism, all of which helped touch off this era's culture war. The relationship between prosperity and cultural conflict is not exact, of course, but it is significant that during this era's culture war we have gone a quarter-century without a serious recession.

Economic issues have mattered in presidential elections, of course, but not until today have we faced an economic crisis so grave that it made cultural questions seem downright trivial.

In 2000, in the wake of an economic boom and a sex scandal that led to a president's impeachment, 22 per cent of Americans told exit pollsters that "moral values" were their biggest concern, compared with only 19 per cent who cited the economy.

Today, according to a recent poll, the economy is up to 44 per cent and "issues like abortion, guns and same-sex marriage" down to only 6 per cent.

It is no coincidence that Palin's popularity has plummeted as the financial crisis has taken centre stage. From her championing of small-town America to her efforts to link Barack Obama to former domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, Palin is treading a path well-worn by Republicans in recent decades. She is depicting the campaign as a struggle between the culturally familiar and the culturally threatening, the culturally traditional and the culturally exotic. But Obama has dismissed those attacks as irrelevant, and the public, focused nervously on the economic collapse, has largely tuned them out.

Palin's attacks are also failing because of generational change.

The long-running, internecine baby boomer cultural feud is not that relevant to Americans who came of age after the civil rights, gay rights and feminist revolutions. Even many younger evangelicals are broadening their agendas beyond abortion, stem cells, school prayer and gay marriage. And just as younger Protestants found JFK less threatening than their parents had found Al Smith, younger whites - even in bright-red states - do not view the prospect of a black president with great alarm.

The economic challenges of the coming era are complicated, fascinating and terrifying, while the cultural battles of the 1960s feel increasingly stale. If John McCain loses, the Republicans will probably choose someone like Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, or the Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, to lead it back from the wilderness, someone who - although socially conservative - speaks fluently about the nation's economic plight and does not try to substitute identity for policy.

Although she seems like a fresh face, Sarah Palin actually represents the end of an era. She may be the last culture warrior on a national ticket for a very long time.

Peter Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Washington Post

Economic issues have mattered in presidential elections, of course, but not until today have we faced an economic crisis so grave that it made cultural questions seem downright trivial.

Today, according to a recent poll, the economy is up to 44 per cent and "issues like abortion, guns and same-sex marriage" down to only 6 per cent.

Palin's attacks are also failing because of generational change.

Although she seems like a fresh face, Sarah Palin actually represents the end of an era. She may be the last culture warrior on a national ticket for a very long time.

Obama's Speech after becoming President of America

2008-11-05T01:21:00.000-08:00

Barack Obama has made history by becoming the first African American to win the White House.

This is the full transcript of his speech to the nation in Chicago early this morning.

Hello, Chicago.

If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.

It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.

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'We are the United States': Barack Obama gives his acceptance speech in Chicago early today

It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.

We are, and always will be, the United States of America.

It's the answer that led those who've been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.

It's been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this date in this election at this defining moment change has come to America.

See video of Obama making his acceptance speech here

A little bit earlier this evening, I received an extraordinarily gracious call from Senator McCain.

Senator McCain fought long and hard in this campaign. And he's fought even longer and harder for the country that he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine. We are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader.

I congratulate him; I congratulate Governor Palin for all that they've achieved. And I look forward to working with them to renew this nation's promise in the months ahead.

I want to thank my partner in this journey, a man who campaigned from his heart, and spoke for the men and women he grew up with on the streets of Scranton ... and rode with on the train home to Delaware, the vice president-elect of the United States, Joe Biden.

And I would not be standing here tonight without the unyielding support of my best friend for the last 16 years ... the rock of our family, the love of my life, the nation's next first lady ... Michelle Obama.

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First family: The Obamas in Chicago today

Sasha and Malia ... I love you both more than you can imagine. And you have earned the new puppy that's coming with us ...to the new White House.

And while she's no longer with us, I know my grandmother's watching, along with the family that made me who I am. I miss them tonight. I know that my debt to them is beyond measure.

To my sister Maya, my sister Alma, all my other brothers and sisters, thank you so much for all the support that you've given me. I am grateful to them.

And to my campaign manager, David Plouffe ... the unsung hero of this campaign, who built the best - the best political campaign, I think, in the history of the United States of America.

To my chief strategist David Axelrod ... who's been a partner with me every step of the way.

To the best campaign team ever assembled in the history of politics ... you made this happen, and I am forever grateful for what you've sacrificed to get it done.

But above all, I will never forget who this victory truly belongs to. It belongs to you. It belongs to you.

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We did it: Alex Wong, 5, of Nevada, listens to Barack Obama's acceptance speech on television early today

I was never the likeliest candidate for this office. We didn't start with much money or many endorsements. Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington. It began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston. It was built by working men and women who dug into what little savings they had to give $5 and $10 and $20 to the cause.

It grew strength from the young people who rejected the myth of their generation's apathy ... who left their homes and their families for jobs that offered little pay and less sleep.

It drew strength from the not-so-young people who braved the bitter cold and scorching heat to knock on doors of perfect strangers, and from the millions of Americans who volunteered and organized and proved that more than two centuries later a government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the Earth.

This is your victory.

And I know you didn't do this just to win an election. And I know you didn't do it for me.
You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime - two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century.

Even as we stand here tonight, we know there are brave Americans waking up in the deserts of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan to risk their lives for us.

There are mothers and fathers who will lie awake after the children fall asleep and wonder how they'll make the mortgage or pay their doctors' bills or save enough for their child's college education.

There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair.

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even in one term. But, America, I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I promise you, we as a people will get there.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can! Yes we can! Yes we can!

OBAMA: There will be setbacks and false starts. There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president. And we know the government can't solve every problem.

But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And, above all, I will ask you to join in the work of remaking this nation, the only way it's been done in America for 221 years - block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began 21 months ago in the depths of winter cannot end on this autumn night.
This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.
So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

Let us remember that, if this financial crisis taught us anything, it's that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.

In this country, we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.

Let's remember that it was a man from this state who first carried the banner of the Republican Party to the White House, a party founded on the values of self-reliance and individual liberty and national unity.

Those are values that we all share. And while the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress.

As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, we are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.

And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn, I may not have won your vote tonight, but I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.

And to all those watching tonight from beyond our shores, from parliaments and palaces, to those who are huddled around radios in the forgotten corners of the world, our stories are singular, but our destiny is shared, and a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.

To those - to those who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons - because she was a woman and because of the colour of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she's seen throughout her century in America - the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can't, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

At a time when women's voices were silenced and their hopes dismissed, she lived to see them stand up and speak out and reach for the ballot. Yes we can.

When there was despair in the dust bowl and depression across the land, she saw a nation conquer fear itself with a New Deal, new jobs, a new sense of common purpose. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA: When the bombs fell on our harbor and tyranny threatened the world, she was there to witness a generation rise to greatness and a democracy was saved. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA: She was there for the buses in Montgomery, the hoses in Birmingham, a bridge in Selma, and a preacher from Atlanta who told a people that We Shall Overcome. Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA: A man touched down on the moon, a wall came down in Berlin, a world was connected by our own science and imagination.

And this year, in this election, she touched her finger to a screen, and cast her vote, because after 106 years in America, through the best of times and the darkest of hours, she knows how America can change.

Yes we can.

AUDIENCE: Yes we can.

OBAMA: America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves - if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment.

This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.

Obama's Historical acceptance speech for nomination from democratic party for presidential candidate

2008-11-05T01:06:00.000-08:00

The following is the transcript of Senator Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, as recorded by CQ Transcriptions.

OBAMA: Thank you so much.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you very much.

(APPLAUSE)

Thank you, everybody.

To -- to Chairman Dean and my great friend Dick Durbin, and to all my fellow citizens of this great nation, with profound gratitude and great humility, I accept your nomination for presidency of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

Let me -- let me express -- let me express my thanks to the historic slate of candidates who accompanied me on this journey, and especially the one who traveled the farthest, a champion for working Americans and an inspiration to my daughters and to yours, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

(APPLAUSE)

To President Clinton, to President Bill Clinton, who made last night the case for change as only he can make it...

(APPLAUSE)

... to Ted Kennedy, who embodies the spirit of service...

(APPLAUSE)

... and to the next vice president of the United States, Joe Biden, I thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

I am grateful to finish this journey with one of the finest statesmen of our time, a man at ease with everyone from world leaders to the conductors on the Amtrak train he still takes home every night.

To the love of my life, our next first lady, Michelle Obama...

(APPLAUSE)

... and to Malia and Sasha, I love you so much, and I am so proud of you.

(APPLAUSE)

Four years ago, I stood before you and told you my story, of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to.

It is that promise that's always set this country apart, that through hard work and sacrifice each of us can pursue our individual dreams, but still come together as one American family, to ensure that the next generation can pursue their dreams, as well. That's why I stand here tonight. Because for 232 years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women -- students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors -- found the courage to keep it alive.

We meet at one of those defining moments, a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.

Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit cards, bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach.

These challenges are not all of government's making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.

(APPLAUSE)

America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.

(APPLAUSE)

This country is more decent than one where a woman in Ohio, on the brink of retirement, finds herself one illness away from disaster after a lifetime of hard work.

We're a better country than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment that he's worked on for 20 years and watch as it's shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news.

We are more compassionate than a government that lets veterans sleep on our streets and families slide into poverty...

(APPLAUSE)

... that sits...

(APPLAUSE)

... that sits on its hands while a major American city drowns before our eyes.

(APPLAUSE)

Tonight, tonight, I say to the people of America, to Democrats and Republicans and independents across this great land: Enough. This moment...

(APPLAUSE)

This moment, this moment, this election is our chance to keep, in the 21st century, the American promise alive.

Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third.

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

And we are here -- we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight.

(APPLAUSE)

On November 4th, on November 4th, we must stand up and say: Eight is enough.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, now, let me -- let there be no doubt. The Republican nominee, John McCain, has worn the uniform of our country with bravery and distinction, and for that we owe him our gratitude and our respect.

(APPLAUSE)

And next week, we'll also hear about those occasions when he's broken with his party as evidence that he can deliver the change that we need.

But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 percent of the time.

Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but, really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than 90 percent of the time?

(APPLAUSE)

I don't know about you, but I am not ready to take a 10 percent chance on change.

(APPLAUSE)

The truth is, on issue after issue that would make a difference in your lives -- on health care, and education, and the economy -- Senator McCain has been anything but independent.

He said that our economy has made great progress under this president. He said that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

And when one of his chief advisers, the man who wrote his economic plan, was talking about the anxieties that Americans are feeling, he said that we were just suffering from a mental recession and that we've become, and I quote, "a nation of whiners."

(AUDIENCE BOOS) A nation of whiners? Tell that to the proud auto workers at a Michigan plant who, after they found out it was closing, kept showing up every day and working as hard as ever, because they knew there were people who counted on the brakes that they made.

Tell that to the military families who shoulder their burdens silently as they watch their loved ones leave for their third, or fourth, or fifth tour of duty.

These are not whiners. They work hard, and they give back, and they keep going without complaint. These are the Americans I know.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, I don't believe that Senator McCain doesn't care what's going on in the lives of Americans; I just think he doesn't know.

(LAUGHTER)

Why else would he define middle-class as someone making under $5 million a year? How else could he propose hundreds of billions in tax breaks for big corporations and oil companies, but not one penny of tax relief to more than 100 million Americans?

OBAMA: How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people's benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college, or a plan that would privatize Social Security and gamble your retirement?

(AUDIENCE BOOS)

It's not because John McCain doesn't care; it's because John McCain doesn't get it.

(APPLAUSE)

For over two decades -- for over two decades, he's subscribed to that old, discredited Republican philosophy: Give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else.

In Washington, they call this the "Ownership Society," but what it really means is that you're on your own. Out of work? Tough luck, you're on your own. No health care? The market will fix it. You're on your own. Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, even if you don't have boots. You are on your own.

(APPLAUSE)

Well, it's time for them to own their failure. It's time for us to change America. And that's why I'm running for president of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

You see, you see, we Democrats have a very different measure of what constitutes progress in this country.

We measure progress by how many people can find a job that pays the mortgage, whether you can put a little extra money away at the end of each month so you can someday watch your child receive her college diploma.

We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was president...

(APPLAUSE)

... when the average American family saw its income go up $7,500 instead of go down $2,000, like it has under George Bush. (APPLAUSE)

We measure the strength of our economy not by the number of billionaires we have or the profits of the Fortune 500, but by whether someone with a good idea can take a risk and start a new business, or whether the waitress who lives on tips can take a day off and look after a sick kid without losing her job, an economy that honors the dignity of work.

The fundamentals we use to measure economic strength are whether we are living up to that fundamental promise that has made this country great, a promise that is the only reason I am standing here tonight.

Because, in the faces of those young veterans who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I see my grandfather, who signed up after Pearl Harbor, marched in Patton's army, and was rewarded by a grateful nation with the chance to go to college on the GI Bill.

In the face of that young student, who sleeps just three hours before working the night shift, I think about my mom, who raised my sister and me on her own while she worked and earned her degree, who once turned to food stamps, but was still able to send us to the best schools in the country with the help of student loans and scholarships.

(APPLAUSE)

When I -- when I listen to another worker tell me that his factory has shut down, I remember all those men and women on the South Side of Chicago who I stood by and fought for two decades ago after the local steel plant closed.

And when I hear a woman talk about the difficulties of starting her own business or making her way in the world, I think about my grandmother, who worked her way up from the secretarial pool to middle management, despite years of being passed over for promotions because she was a woman.

She's the one who taught me about hard work. She's the one who put off buying a new car or a new dress for herself so that I could have a better life. She poured everything she had into me. And although she can no longer travel, I know that she's watching tonight and that tonight is her night, as well.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, I don't know what kind of lives John McCain thinks that celebrities lead, but this has been mine.

(APPLAUSE)

These are my heroes; theirs are the stories that shaped my life. And it is on behalf of them that I intend to win this election and keep our promise alive as president of the United States.

(APPLAUSE)

What -- what is that American promise? It's a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have obligations to treat each other with dignity and respect.

It's a promise that says the market should reward drive and innovation and generate growth, but that businesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, to look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road.

Ours -- ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves: protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education; keep our water clean and our toys safe; invest in new schools, and new roads, and science, and technology.

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. It should ensure opportunity not just for those with the most money and influence, but for every American who's willing to work.

That's the promise of America, the idea that we are responsible for ourselves, but that we also rise or fall as one nation, the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper.

That's the promise we need to keep. That's the change we need right now.

(APPLAUSE)

So -- so let me -- let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president.

(APPLAUSE)

Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it, but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, unlike John McCain, I will stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas, and I will start giving them to companies that create good jobs right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I'll eliminate capital gains taxes for the small businesses and start-ups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow.

(APPLAUSE)

I will -- listen now -- I will cut taxes -- cut taxes -- for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

(APPLAUSE)

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as president: In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

(APPLAUSE)

We will do this. Washington -- Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years. And, by the way, John McCain has been there for 26 of them.

(LAUGHTER)

And in that time, he has said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil than we had on the day that Senator McCain took office.

Now is the time to end this addiction and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.

(APPLAUSE)

As president, as president, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I'll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America.

(APPLAUSE)

I'll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.

OBAMA: And I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power, and solar power (OTCBB:SOPW) , and the next generation of biofuels -- an investment that will lead to new industries and 5 million new jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced.

(APPLAUSE)

America, now is not the time for small plans. Now is the time to finally meet our moral obligation to provide every child a world-class education, because it will take nothing less to compete in the global economy.

You know, Michelle and I are only here tonight because we were given a chance at an education. And I will not settle for an America where some kids don't have that chance.

(APPLAUSE)

I'll invest in early childhood education. I'll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries, and give them more support. And in exchange, I'll ask for higher standards and more accountability.

And we will keep our promise to every young American: If you commit to serving your community or our country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

(APPLAUSE)

Now -- now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American.

(APPLAUSE)

If you have health care -- if you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don't, you'll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves.

(APPLAUSE)

And -- and as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

(APPLAUSE)

Now is the time to help families with paid sick days and better family leave, because nobody in America should have to choose between keeping their job and caring for a sick child or an ailing parent.

Now is the time to change our bankruptcy laws, so that your pensions are protected ahead of CEO bonuses, and the time to protect Social Security for future generations.

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have the exact same opportunities as your sons.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I've laid out how I'll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don't help America grow.

But I will also go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less, because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a 20th-century bureaucracy.

(APPLAUSE)

And, Democrats, Democrats, we must also admit that fulfilling America's promise will require more than just money. It will require a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us to recover what John F. Kennedy called our intellectual and moral strength.

Yes, government must lead on energy independence, but each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient.

Yes, we must provide more ladders to success for young men who fall into lives of crime and despair. But we must also admit that programs alone can't replace parents, that government can't turn off the television and make a child do her homework, that fathers must take more responsibility to provide love and guidance to their children.

Individual responsibility and mutual responsibility, that's the essence of America's promise. And just as we keep our promise to the next generation here at home, so must we keep America's promise abroad.

If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.

For -- for while -- while Senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats that we face.

When John McCain said we could just muddle through in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights.

You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell, but he won't even follow him to the cave where he lives.

(APPLAUSE)

And today, today, as my call for a timeframe to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration, even after we learned that Iraq has $79 billion in surplus while we are wallowing in deficit, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.

That's not the judgment we need; that won't keep America safe. We need a president who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past.

(APPLAUSE)

You don't defeat -- you don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq. You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington. You can't truly stand up for Georgia when you've strained our oldest alliances.

If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice, but that is not the change that America needs.

(APPLAUSE)

We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don't tell me that Democrats won't defend this country. Don't tell me that Democrats won't keep us safe.

The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, have built, and we are here to restore that legacy.

(APPLAUSE)

As commander-in-chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm's way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home.

(APPLAUSE)

I will end this war in Iraq responsibly and finish the fight against Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts, but I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression.

I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide, climate change and disease.

And I will restore our moral standing so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.

(APPLAUSE)

These -- these are the policies I will pursue. And in the weeks ahead, I look forward to debating them with John McCain.

But what I will not do is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes, because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and each other's patriotism.

(APPLAUSE)

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together, and bled together, and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America; they have served the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

So I've got news for you, John McCain: We all put our country first.

(APPLAUSE)

America, our work will not be easy. The challenges we face require tough choices. And Democrats, as well as Republicans, will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past, for part of what has been lost these past eight years can't just be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits. What has also been lost is our sense of common purpose, and that's what we have to restore.

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country.

(APPLAUSE)

The -- the reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than they are for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.

(APPLAUSE)

I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in a hospital and to live lives free of discrimination.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, passions may fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.

But this, too, is part of America's promise, the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

I know there are those who dismiss such beliefs as happy talk. They claim that our insistence on something larger, something firmer, and more honest in our public life is just a Trojan horse for higher taxes and the abandonment of traditional values.

And that's to be expected, because if you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare voters.

(APPLAUSE)

If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things.

And you know what? It's worked before, because it feeds into the cynicism we all have about government. When Washington doesn't work, all its promises seem empty. If your hopes have been dashed again and again, then it's best to stop hoping and settle for what you already know.

I get it. I realize that I am not the likeliest candidate for this office. I don't fit the typical pedigree, and I haven't spent my career in the halls of Washington.

But I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me; it's about you.

(APPLAUSE)

It's about you.

(APPLAUSE)

For 18 long months, you have stood up, one by one, and said, "Enough," to the politics of the past. You understand that, in this election, the greatest risk we can take is to try the same, old politics with the same, old players and expect a different result.

You have shown what history teaches us, that at defining moments like this one, the change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.

(APPLAUSE)

Change happens -- change happens because the American people demand it, because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

America, this is one of those moments.

I believe that, as hard as it will be, the change we need is coming, because I've seen it, because I've lived it.

Because I've seen it in Illinois, when we provided health care to more children and moved more families from welfare to work.

I've seen it in Washington, where we worked across party lines to open up government and hold lobbyists more accountable, to give better care for our veterans, and keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists.

And I've seen it in this campaign, in the young people who voted for the first time and the young at heart, those who got involved again after a very long time; in the Republicans who never thought they'd pick up a Democratic ballot, but did.

(APPLAUSE)

I've seen it -- I've seen it in the workers who would rather cut their hours back a day, even though they can't afford it, than see their friends lose their jobs; in the soldiers who re-enlist after losing a limb; in the good neighbors who take a stranger in when a hurricane strikes and the floodwaters rise.

You know, this country of ours has more wealth than any nation, but that's not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military on Earth, but that's not what makes us strong. Our universities and our culture are the envy of the world, but that's not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

Instead, it is that American spirit, that American promise, that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance. It's a promise I make to my daughters when I tuck them in at night and a promise that you make to yours, a promise that has led immigrants to cross oceans and pioneers to travel west, a promise that led workers to picket lines and women to reach for the ballot.

(APPLAUSE) And it is that promise that, 45 years ago today, brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln's Memorial, and hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.

(APPLAUSE)

The men and women who gathered there could've heard many things. They could've heard words of anger and discord. They could've been told to succumb to the fear and frustrations of so many dreams deferred.

But what the people heard instead -- people of every creed and color, from every walk of life -- is that, in America, our destiny is inextricably linked, that together our dreams can be one.

"We cannot walk alone," the preacher cried. "And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back."

America, we cannot turn back...

(APPLAUSE)

... not with so much work to be done; not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for; not with an economy to fix, and cities to rebuild, and farms to save; not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend.

America, we cannot turn back. We cannot walk alone.

At this moment, in this election, we must pledge once more to march into the future. Let us keep that promise, that American promise, and in the words of scripture hold firmly, without wavering, to the hope that we confess.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.

Obama's rise reflects a dream realized for many Detroiters

2008-10-31T21:17:00.000-07:00

Obama's rise reflects a dream realized for many Detroiters

BY CASSANDRA SPRATLING • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • October 31, 2008

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Serving proudly in the Army in the 1940s, Samuel Green sought to exercise a basic right of citizenship. He wanted to vote.
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While stationed overseas, he requested an absentee ballot. But officials in his hometown of Montgomery, Ala., said no.

He had not paid the poll tax, the roughly $2 fee that kept many black people from voting.

"Here I was overseas, fighting in World War II, and they denied me the right to vote," said Green, who moved to Detroit in 1945. "We could hardly afford to live, let alone pay a poll tax."

For African Americans like Green -- who lived through segregation and the country's hottest stretch of racial violence since slavery -- the rise of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama as a viable candidate for president is more than amazing. It represents the realization of a future they never thought they would live to see.

They are elated, not just because a black man is the presidential front-runner, but because voters appear to be judging Obama for his qualifications, not his skin color.

Today, at 85, Green is proud once again.

"I think this was what Dr. King was talking about when he had that March on Washington," Green, a retired Detroit Department of Public Works supervisor, said of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. "I never believed in my lifetime I would witness this."

Obama's run signals the significant maturing of the American voting public, said DeWitt Dykes Jr., associate professor of history at Oakland University.

Although Congress passed the 15th Amendment granting all American men the right to vote in 1869, it was nearly 100 years later before the Voting Rights Act made it illegal to hinder black people from voting.

"Until recently, most persons of African descent would not have been considered by the majority of white Americans as the nominee of a major party, and that he was able to convince people to look beyond race and to look to program and qualifications and ability is remarkable," said Dykes, who specializes in civil rights history.

"For all its shortcomings of the past ... for even some of the shortcomings for some citizens today ... America is now ready to look to individual ability, individual appeal and to promote, as much as possible, those who are capable."
'It's history'

John Hardy's Detroit home is filled with Obama paraphernalia -- a collection of buttons, T-shirts and hats.

"If my mother and father were alive, they would be shouting in the streets that we've come so far in a relatively brief period of history," said Hardy, who voted absentee a couple of weeks ago.

"I feel a lot of emotion bubbling up when I think of the fact that here we are in 2008, I'm 68 and I've just voted absentee for an African American for president of the United States," said Hardy, an actor and retired Detroit teacher. "And I've voted for him not solely because he's an African-American candidate, but because he's the candidate that best represents the high standards people would expect for a leader. I'm beaming with pride.

"No matter how it goes, it's history."

For Hardy, Obama's story is especially sweet.

As a college student at what today is Tennessee State University, Hardy participated in sit-ins to desegregate lunch counters and went into rural towns in Mississippi to encourage and teach black people to vote.

On Sept. 7, 1961, Hardy had to escape the small town of Tylerton, Miss., after he escorted two black people to the Walthall County courthouse to register to vote. The registrar took a pistol and brutally hit Hardy about the head. Afterward, Hardy was arrested for "bringing an uprising among the people" and breaching the peace.

A few days later, he was released from jail. One of the townspeople put him on the floorboard of a pickup and covered him with a blanket to get him out of town to safety.

Ultimately, attorneys from the U.S. Justice Department intervened, and the charges against Hardy were dropped.
'So proud and so happy'

Detroiter Geraldine Blackwell Bledsoe grew up in one of the few black families in Mississippi that could vote. Bledsoe's father was a widely respected dentist in Meridian, Miss., and he could afford to pay the poll taxes.

But she, too, learned the dangers of fighting for the right to vote.

In the early 1950s, she drove civil rights activist Medgar Evers around town as he tried to organize black people to register to vote. Years later, a Klansman gunned Evers down in the driveway of his home.

"I knew it was dangerous, but I didn't think it was that dangerous," she said. "I drove him around, and I didn't dream he would reach this fate."

Today, the retired teacher is overwhelmed by the possibility of the first black president.

"I'm so proud and so happy," she said. "I feel that all this voting I've been doing has been worth it, however it turns out."
'It brought tears to my eyes'

Mary Upshaw McClendon, 84, a Detroit community organizer and retired domestic worker, had her voting precinct delegate review her absentee ballot with her because she wanted to make sure she cast it correctly for Obama.

"I just felt uplifted and everything," said McClendon, who never voted until after moving to Detroit from Red Level, Ala., in 1955 at the age of 32. "It was like a flash of freedom, like when I first voted in the city of Detroit."

"I believe our ancestors prayed for this day to come," said McClendon, whose grandmother had been a slave. "They used to say, 'Things goin' to be all right in the by and by.' Obama done made the by and by come."

McClendon's precinct delegate is Pearl Reynolds, a neighbor in a senior citizens apartment building. At 91, Reynolds still actively volunteers in political campaigns and encourages people to vote.

When Obama clinched the Democratic nomination, she was at a victory party at Bert's Marketplace in Detroit's Eastern Market.

"It brought tears to my eyes, tears of happiness," said Reynolds.

Reynolds, a retired laundry factory worker, didn't vote until after moving to Detroit from Oak Ridge, La., in 1941.

M. Juanita Walker McGill, 83, also has already voted.

"The ballot came one day. I read it, signed it and posted it the next day," said McGill of Detroit, a retired social worker. "I wanted to make sure it got back in time to be counted.

"I feel if you don't vote, you're missing a golden opportunity," said McGill, who helped black people in Virginia register to vote when she was a Hampton University student in the 1940s.
'One of the highlights of my life'

When Joe Greene began teaching in the early 1960s at the South Panola Colored School in his hometown of Batesville, Miss., not one of the approximately 60 teachers was registered to vote.

"I thought because we were teachers and we were teaching students about being citizens, we should be registered to vote," Greene, 70, said.

He convinced 11 teachers to go to the courthouse one morning to register to vote. Only one followed through -- Greene.

"Fear either paralyzes you or it makes you do things you should be doing," Greene said. "I was always afraid, but I was also afraid to sit around doing nothing."

The clerk asked Greene to copy a portion of the Constitution. He carefully copied it word for word, knowing that even a misplaced comma could disqualify him.

The clerk took Greene's copy, read it and handed him a registration form. Greene signed it; he was officially registered to vote. He has voted ever since.

A few weeks ago, Greene cast his ballot for Obama.

"To be able to vote for him was one of the highlights of my life," Greene said. "Where I grew up, there were no rights for African Americans -- not to vote, not to run for anything. To come this far to where an African American can not only run, but be seriously considered for president, is to come a long way."

Contact CASSANDRA SPRATLING at 313-223-4580 or spratling@freepress.com.

The Black middle class mantra – ‘Let them eat cake’

2008-10-31T21:14:00.000-07:00

The question about African-Americans’ “empowerment” is not as much about our political clout as it is whether or not we are better off economically than we were when Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed in 1968.

Some Black Americans are doing very well. Barack Obama’s presidential run. Tiger Woods, the world’s best-paid athlete. Former Merrill Lynch CEO Stanley O’Neal pocketed $160 million in a golden corporate parachute.

But these Blacks are the exception rather than the rule. Where MLK’s civil rights activities paid off the most was in spawning a Black middle class, which grew from the civil rights movement through public policy and increased opportunities for skills development.

Forty years since MLK declared America owed a debt to Black Americans, Obama is our race-neutral messiah, and our middle class group is regressing. In what Booker T. would have called “frivolous actions,” the Black middle class’ activities have tilted more toward trappings of consumption than economic advancement for the race.

All after 1960s
The “Black middle class” is predominately a development that arose after the 1960s. Prior to then, African-Americans had limited opportunities. In 1960, Blacks had little to no access to higher education and only three percent graduated from college. Those Blacks who were professionals were mainly confined to serving the African-American population. The Black middle class MLK had envisioned was to grow and impact traditional Black communities.

Since King died, the Black middle class population has quadrupled.Black middle class cashed in on the check MLK said America owed. In 2008, over a million Black households have annual incomes of $100,000 a year or more. These upward strides and their excesses have given the illusion that race cannot be the barrier that some make it out to be.

As they became middle class, they became adherents of the status quo. Many among the Black middle class never think or act outside a mainstream mindset. They became establishment-oriented and provided “insufficient funds” toward lifting up their fellow Black Americans.

Never equal
Despite their displays of opulence, similar salaries and educational backgrounds, the majority of the Black middle class never enjoyed class-equivalency to Whites. The rates of self-obsession and consumption among the generations of the Black middle class illustrate how static hold reaps regression.

Nowadays, many Blacks are finding their grip on middle class is precarious. The value of many Black middle-class homeowners wealth is falling. Loans that many of them received in the 1990s were high-cost subprime loans. Now the value of their homes is sinking as foreclosures occur and their banks have frozen home equity lines of credit. Their “trappings of power” are being foreclosed and America’s contemporary Black middle class is being revealed as having been more symbol than substance.

To their determent, middle class Blacks have been obsessed with “mainstreaming.” Their unflinching support of the Obama candidacy and acceptance of the American establishment’s indifference to the plight of poor Blacks and social policy needed to maintain affirmative action, end law enforcement and judicial injustices, and increase race-targeted antipoverty programs to help poor Blacks illustrates their abandonment of any legacy of King’s economic dream.

No help for ‘cousins’
“If they have no bread, let them eat cake,” is how the Black middle class has responded to their urban and underclass cousins. A Black underclass has remained rooted in urban poverty. Blacks of middle class means started to leave them in the 1970s to pursue quality schools, security and appreciated property values in suburban neighborhoods.

With their contemporary image of surfeit, the question surrounding the Black Middle Class Era is “What contribution have they made toward Martin’s dream of economic equity in America?” As they reel backwards, I wonder how many of the Black middle class recognizes the error of their deeds?

Martin Luther King, Jr,''Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence''

2008-10-31T03:34:00.000-07:00

delivered 4 April 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City

Audio mp3 of Address

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*Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here tonight, and how very delighted I am to see you expressing your concern about the issues that will be discussed tonight by turning out in such large numbers. I also want to say that I consider it a great honor to share this program with Dr. Bennett, Dr. Commager, and Rabbi Heschel, some of the distinguished leaders and personalities of our nation. And of course it’s always good to come back to Riverside Church. Over the last eight years, I have had the privilege of preaching here almost every year in that period, and it is always a rich and rewarding experience to come to this great church and this great pulpit. I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

In the light of such tragic misunderstanding, I deem it of signal importance to try to state clearly, and I trust concisely, why I believe that the path from Dexter Avenue Baptist Church -- the church in Montgomery, Alabama, where I began my pastorate -- leads clearly to this sanctuary tonight.

I come to this platform tonight to make a passionate plea to my beloved nation. This speech is not addressed to Hanoi or to the National Liberation Front. It is not addressed to China or to Russia. Nor is it an attempt to overlook the ambiguity of the total situation and the need for a collective solution to the tragedy of Vietnam. Neither is it an attempt to make North Vietnam or the National Liberation Front paragons of virtue, nor to overlook the role they must play in the successful resolution of the problem. While they both may have justifiable reasons to be suspicious of the good faith of the United States, life and history give eloquent testimony to the fact that conflicts are never resolved without trustful give and take on both sides.

Tonight, however, I wish not to speak with Hanoi and the National Liberation Front, but rather to my fellowed [sic] Americans, *who, with me, bear the greatest responsibility in ending a conflict that has exacted a heavy price on both continents.

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision.* There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

For those who ask the question, "Aren't you a civil rights leader?" and thereby mean to exclude me from the movement for peace, I have this further answer. In 1957 when a group of us formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, we chose as our motto: "To save the soul of America." We were convinced that we could not limit our vision to certain rights for black people, but instead affirmed the conviction that America would never be free or saved from itself until the descendants of its slaves were loosed completely from the shackles they still wear. In a way we were agreeing with Langston Hughes, that black bard of Harlem, who had written earlier:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath --
America will be!

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

As if the weight of such a commitment to the life and health of America were not enough, another burden of responsibility was placed upon me in 1954** [sic]; and I cannot forget that the Nobel Prize for Peace was also a commission -- a commission to work harder than I had ever worked before for "the brotherhood of man." This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

And finally, as I try to explain for you and for myself the road that leads from Montgomery to this place I would have offered all that was most valid if I simply said that I must be true to my conviction that I share with all men the calling to be a son of the living God. Beyond the calling of race or nation or creed is this vocation of sonship and brotherhood, and because I believe that the Father is deeply concerned especially for his suffering and helpless and outcast children, I come tonight to speak for them.

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

And as I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion, my mind goes constantly to the people of that peninsula. I speak now not of the soldiers of each side, not of the ideologies of the Liberation Front, not of the junta in Saigon, but simply of the people who have been living under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades now. I think of them, too, because it is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution there until some attempt is made to know them and hear their broken cries.

They must see Americans as strange liberators. The Vietnamese people proclaimed their own independence *in 1954* -- in 1945 *rather* -- after a combined French and Japanese occupation and before the communist revolution in China. They were led by Ho Chi Minh. Even though they quoted the American Declaration of Independence in their own document of freedom, we refused to recognize them. Instead, we decided to support France in its reconquest of her former colony. Our government felt then that the Vietnamese people were not ready for independence, and we again fell victim to the deadly Western arrogance that has poisoned the international atmosphere for so long. With that tragic decision we rejected a revolutionary government seeking self-determination and a government that had been established not by China -- for whom the Vietnamese have no great love -- but by clearly indigenous forces that included some communists. For the peasants this new government meant real land reform, one of the most important needs in their lives.

For nine years following 1945 we denied the people of Vietnam the right of independence. For nine years we vigorously supported the French in their abortive effort to recolonize Vietnam. Before the end of the war we were meeting eighty percent of the French war costs. Even before the French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu, they began to despair of their reckless action, but we did not. We encouraged them with our huge financial and military supplies to continue the war even after they had lost the will. Soon we would be paying almost the full costs of this tragic attempt at recolonization.

After the French were defeated, it looked as if independence and land reform would come again through the Geneva Agreement. But instead there came the United States, determined that Ho should not unify the temporarily divided nation, and the peasants watched again as we supported one of the most vicious modern dictators, our chosen man, Premier Diem. The peasants watched and cringed as Diem ruthlessly rooted out all opposition, supported their extortionist landlords, and refused even to discuss reunification with the North. The peasants watched as all this was presided over by United States' influence and then by increasing numbers of United States troops who came to help quell the insurgency that Diem's methods had aroused. When Diem was overthrown they may have been happy, but the long line of military dictators seemed to offer no real change, especially in terms of their need for land and peace.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing of the nation's only noncommunist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. *Soon the only solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise. These, too, are our brothers.

Perhaps a more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies.* What of the National Liberation Front, that strangely anonymous group we call "VC" or "communists"? What must they think of the United States of America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem, which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the South? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of "aggression from the North" as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings, even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.

How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent communist, and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam, and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will not have a part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them, the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again, and then shore it up upon the power of new violence?

Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence, when it helps us to see the enemy's point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition.

So, too, with Hanoi. In the North, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French Commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which could have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again. When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered.

Also, it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva Agreement concerning foreign troops. They remind us that they did not begin to send troops in large numbers and even supplies into the South until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.

Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the North. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor, weak nation more than *eight hundred, or rather,* eight thousand miles away from its shores.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:

Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom, and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism (unquote).

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

*I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

Number one: End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.

Number two: Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.

Three: Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.

Four: Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and any future Vietnam government.

Five: *Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva Agreement.

Part of our ongoing...part of our ongoing commitment might well express itself in an offer to grant asylum to any Vietnamese who fears for his life under a new regime which included the Liberation Front. Then we must make what reparations we can for the damage we have done. We must provide the medical aid that is badly needed, making it available in this country, if necessary. Meanwhile... meanwhile, we in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

*As we counsel young men concerning military service, we must clarify for them our nation's role in Vietnam and challenge them with the alternative of conscientious objection. I am pleased to say that this is a path now chosen by more than seventy students at my own alma mater, Morehouse College, and I recommend it to all who find the American course in Vietnam a dishonorable and unjust one. Moreover, I would encourage all ministers of draft age to give up their ministerial exemptions and seek status as conscientious objectors.* These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

Now there is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter that struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

In 1957, a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. During the past ten years, we have seen emerge a pattern of suppression which has now justified the presence of U.S. military advisors in Venezuela. This need to maintain social stability for our investments accounts for the counterrevolutionary action of American forces in Guatemala. It tells why American helicopters are being used against guerrillas in Cambodia and why American napalm and Green Beret forces have already been active against rebels in Peru.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

*This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations.* These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. *We must not engage in a negative anticommunism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops.*

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression, and out of the wounds of a frail world, new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. We in the West must support these revolutions.

It is a sad fact that because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch antirevolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has a revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions that we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores, and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain."

A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.

This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. This oft misunderstood, this oft misinterpreted concept, so readily dismissed by the Nietzsches of the world as a weak and cowardly force, has now become an absolute necessity for the survival of man. When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Muslim-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: "Let us love one another, for love is God. And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love." "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us." Let us hope that this spirit will become the order of the day.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word" (unquote).

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter, but beautiful, struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons of God, and our brothers wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men, and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message -- of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise, we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.

As that noble bard of yesterday, James Russell Lowell, eloquently stated:

Once to every man and nation comes a moment to decide,

In the strife of Truth and Falsehood, for the good or evil side;

Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight,

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong

Though her portions be the scaffold, and upon the throne be wrong

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.

If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

Martin Luther King a prophet not a cardboard saint

2008-10-31T03:33:00.001-07:00

It is a testament to the greatness of Martin Luther King Jr. that nearly every major city in the U.S. has a street or school named after him. It is a measure of how sorely his achievements are misunderstood that most of them are located in black neighborhoods. Three decades after King was gunned down on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tenn., he is still regarded mainly as the black leader of a movement for black equality. That assessment, while accurate, is far too restrictive. For all King did to free blacks from the yoke of segregation, whites may owe him the greatest debt, for liberating them from the burden of America's centuries-old hypocrisy about race. It is only because of King and the movement that he led that the U.S. can claim to be the leader of the "free world" without inviting smirks of disdain and disbelief. Had he and the blacks and whites who marched beside him failed, vast regions of the U.S. would have remained morally indistinguishable from South Africa under apartheid, with terrible consequences for America's standing among nations. How could America have convincingly inveighed against the Iron Curtain while an equally oppressive Cotton Curtain remained draped across the South?

Even after the Supreme Court struck down segregation in 1954, what the world now calls human-rights offenses were both law and custom in much of America. Before King and his movement, a tired and thoroughly respectable Negro seamstress like Rosa Parks could be thrown into jail and fined simply because she refused to give up her seat on an Alabama bus so a white man could sit down. A six-year-old black girl like Ruby Bridges could be hectored and spit on by a white New Orleans mob simply because she wanted to go to the same school as white children. A 14-year-old black boy like Emmett Till could be hunted down and murdered by a Mississippi gang simply because he had supposedly made suggestive remarks to a white woman. Even highly educated blacks were routinely denied the right to vote or serve on juries. They could not eat at lunch counters, register in motels or use whites-only rest rooms; they could not buy or rent a home wherever they chose. In some rural enclaves in the South, they were even compelled to get off the sidewalk and stand in the street if a Caucasian walked by.

The movement that King led swept all that away. Its victory was so complete that even though those outrages took place within the living memory of the baby boomers, they seem like ancient history. And though this revolution was the product of two centuries of agitation by thousands upon thousands of courageous men and women, King was its culmination. It is impossible to think of the movement unfolding as it did without him at its helm. He was, as the cliche has it, the right man at the right time.

To begin with, King was a preacher who spoke in biblical cadences ideally suited to leading a stride toward freedom that found its inspiration in the Old Testament story of the Israelites and the New Testament gospel of Jesus Christ. Being a minister not only put King in touch with the spirit of the black masses but also gave him a base within the black church, then and now the strongest and most independent of black institutions.

Moreover, King was a man of extraordinary physical courage whose belief in nonviolence never swerved. From the time he assumed leadership of the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott in 1955 to his murder 13 years later, he faced hundreds of death threats. His home in Montgomery was bombed, with his wife and young children inside. He was hounded by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, which bugged his telephone and hotel rooms, circulated salacious gossip about him and even tried to force him into committing suicide after he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. As King told the story, the defining moment of his life came during the early days of the bus boycott. A threatening telephone call at midnight alarmed him: "Nigger, we are tired of you and your mess now. And if you aren't out of this town in three days, we're going to blow your brains out and blow up your house." Shaken, King went to the kitchen to pray. "I could hear an inner voice saying to me, 'Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.'"

In recent years, however, King's most quoted line—"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character"—has been put to uses he would never have endorsed. It has become the slogan for opponents of affirmative action like California's Ward Connerly, who insist, incredibly, that had King lived he would have been marching alongside them. Connerly even chose King's birthday last year to announce the creation of his nationwide crusade against "racial preferences."

Such would-be kidnappers of King's legacy have chosen a highly selective interpretation of his message. They have filtered out his radicalism and sense of urgency. That most famous speech was studded with demands. "We have come to our nation's capital to cash a check," King admonished. "When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir," King said. "Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' " These were not the words of a cardboard saint advocating a Hallmark card-style version of brotherhood. They were the stinging phrases of a prophet, a man demanding justice not just in the hereafter, but in the here and now.

I have A Dream speech by Martin Luther King

2008-10-31T03:21:00.000-07:00

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the "unalienable Rights" of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back.

There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by a sign stating: "For Whites Only." We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until "justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."¹

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest -- quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."²

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

And this will be the day -- this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning:

My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride,

From every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!³

A gifted orator, Obama is on an historic path

2008-10-31T02:09:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama burst onto the national stage four years ago with a speech describing himself self-deprecatingly as a skinny guy with a funny name and an improbable life story.

On Tuesday, he may make history by becoming the first black man elected U.S. president.

Born in Hawaii to a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya, Obama spent part of his childhood in Indonesia.

In the 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention that vaulted him to rock-star status, he introduced himself to America as someone who hoped to bridge divisions, political and racial.

"In no other country on earth is my story even possible," Obama said, highlighting his biracial heritage as a metaphor for his call for unity.

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America," he said. "There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America -- there's the United States of America."

The first-term Illinois senator, known for his stirring eloquence, now draws tens of thousands to his political rallies and is the author of two best-selling autobiographical books.

To his fans, he is an inspiring once-in-a-generation politician like President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, both assassinated in the 1960s.

To his critics, including Republican rival John McCain, Obama is little more than a celebrity with a thin resume, an eloquent speaker who preaches "naive" foreign policies and advocates "socialist" economic policies.

But if Obama, who commands a solid lead against McCain just four days before Election Day, fares as well as the polls predict, the Arizona senator and Vietnam War hero will become the latest in a long line of politicians who have underestimated Obama.

They include New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the former first lady he defeated in the Democratic primary.

It was in Hawaii where Obama's mother, Ann Dunham, met his father, Barack Obama Sr., who was from a goat-herding family in Kenya and got a scholarship to study in the United States.

They married and she gave birth to her son when she was just 18. Two years later, Obama's father abandoned the family and his mother raised him with the help of his grandparents.

FOOD STAMPS AND TUTORING

Obama has recalled that his mother once had to rely on food stamps to get by when he was growing up. When the family moved to Indonesia for four years after she remarried, his mother used to regularly wake him at 4 a.m. to tutor him.

His mother and his grandparents secured a scholarship that enabled Obama to attend the prestigious Punahou School in Honolulu. He later attended Columbia University and Harvard Law School.

Obama spent his early adult years as a community organizer in Chicago, where he lives with his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7.

He first gained national prominence in 1990 when he became the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review.

He later worked as a civil rights lawyer and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. He was elected to the Illinois senate in 1996 but suffered a crushing defeat in 2000 when he ran for the U.S. Congress against an incumbent Democrat.

Nevertheless, in 2004, he was elected to the U.S. Senate.

Using journals in which he used to jot down notes about his travels and experiences, Obama wrote "Dreams From My Father," which focused on his search for identity and his efforts to connect with his father's roots in Africa.

The 1995 memoir showcased the lyrical writing style that would later mark some of his best-known speeches. It also helped to shape Obama's political identity.

"The Audacity of Hope," published in 2006, outlined Obama's political philosophy, which he says was molded by the Midwestern values of his mother and grandparents. Brisk sales of the two books have made him a millionaire.

He has made a point of not running on his race in the presidential campaign, but his candidacy has galvanized many blacks, who constitute some 12 percent of the population.

The issue of race has reared its head at times, including during the Democratic primary contest against Hillary Clinton.

Obama came under attack after videotapes surfaced showing his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, making racially inflammatory statements about whites.

Addressing the controversy, Obama gave a widely praised speech in March calling for racial healing.

As Clinton had during the primary, McCain has tried to use Obama's reputation for lofty speeches against him, suggesting he is all rhetoric and no substance.

But the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression has led to a surge in the polls for Obama, who won high marks from many voters for his response to the upheaval. He has benefited from anger at President George W. Bush's economic policies.

Obama boosts "Daily Show" to new record

2008-10-31T01:50:00.000-07:00

Comedy Central's "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" pulled in its biggest audience ever Wednesday night.

The 11 p.m. episode, which featured an appearance by presidential candidate Barack Obama, averaged 3.6 million total viewers, beating by 600,000 viewers the previous record set October 8 when his wife Michelle Obama appeared on the show.

At 11:30 p.m., "Colbert Report" also had its most-watched episode ever, drawing 2.4 million viewers.

USA/ McCain's secret army to defeat Obama

2008-10-29T04:29:00.000-07:00

This is being written about one week from the elections here in the USA. According to most polls, an Obama victory seems inevitable. The outcome of the election for President, however, does not depend on the number of votes received by Obama and McCain in the entire nation, but on the number of votes in five or so States whose electoral votes can make the difference between winner or loser regardless of the national results. From this perspective, a McCain victory cannot be entirely ruled out. Indeed, McCain is famous for these last minute victories, and he is counting on being able to do it again.

The election of a new President, however, is not the only important result of this contest. In fact, the election of a new national legislature is just as important, because a President that cannot count on sufficient support from the House of Representatives and the Senate will not be able to do much to implement his political agenda. On the other hand, a President that can count on sufficient support in the House and Senate will have a great power to shape American life in the next four years. For that reason, one of the strongest arguments of the McCain campaign these last days is that the likely control of the legislature by the Democrats will allow a President Obama and his Party to move the country much farther to the left of where most of the American people are. This is why the McCain campaign has promoted the view that Obama is a socialist, and that his victory would amount to a socialist revolution.

But it is not only the area of economic policy that worries those inclined to vote for Obama, but who are not sure even now that they know enough about him to trust him with such powers. This is also the fear of the “cultural conservatives” (especially pro-life voters). It seems that the Democratic leaders have finally realized that the total identification of the Party with the pro-abortion agenda hurts them, and probably explains why they have lost so many elections in the past decades. For the first time, the Party leaders have actually recruited candidates to run as pro-life candidates in areas that have been taken for granted by the Republicans. This year there are at least 12 such candidates whose campaign is entirely financed by the Democratic Party. Obama himself has insisted that he has softened the pro-abortion position of the Party and made space for pro-life candidates to run as Democrats. Whoever wins the election to the presidency, it will be interesting to see whether this new tactic of the Democratic Party succeeds. If it does, it is bound to begin to detach the Party from its nearly total dependence on the pro-abortion activists and financial supporters.

A campaign of living history

2008-10-29T04:28:00.000-07:00

A campaign of living history

The 2008 presidential contest will go down as one of the most interesting, and most important, races of at least the past half-century. Why? Major crises, compelling debates and strong — indeed, historic — candidates.

Whether it was the hard times, serious national mood or a superb cast, 2008 will go down as a year of great political theater.

At this stage in past elections, we've all heard pseudo sophisticates gripe, "This is so endless and boring; wake me when it's over." Or jaded malcontents grumble, "Out of 300 million people, couldn't we get better candidates than these bums?"

(Less than a week to go: Barack Obama and John McCain race to Nov. 4 /
Gary Hershorn, Reuters)

Not this time.

As someone who covered presidential campaigns for three decades, traveling with candidates and interviewing voters, the 2008 election has crackled with the highest level of intensity in my memory.

Whether Republican nominee John McCain will defy the doomsday pollsters or Democratic candidate Barack Obama will launch a historic landslide win, the political season that began in Iowa and New Hampshire has been a vivid show diverse actors, weird plots, dumbfounded pundits. Only hindsight will tell whether 2008 was a game-changing election in the way that Roosevelt-Hoover in 1932 led to the New Deal, Kennedy-Nixon in 1960 intensified the Cold War, or Reagan-Carter in 1980 began a Republican dominance.

But there's no doubt that millions have felt a heightened sense of importance: This time it really matters. One clear reason is the gloom of impending crisis two wars, the global economy and U.S. stock market in belly-churning tumble, and 85% of Americans saying we're on the "wrong track."

Voters are energized

You only have to look around to see the evidence. Early voters swarming in lines as though free Super Bowl tickets were being dished out. New voter registrations in record numbers. In states I visited this fall, I saw a back-to-the-old-days array of yard signs and car stickers for Obama and McCain. It looked like the '60s. And campaign rallies are drawing monster 100,000-people crowds.

Another yardstick of 2008's political intensity is the way the campaign has infiltrated pop culture. Saturday Night Live skits are a hot item (who was real, Sarah Palin or Tina Fey?), Oprah, Comedy Central, David Letterman and Jay Leno are thriving on political hijinks. CNN, Fox and MSNBC are politics 24/7. And, of course, the Internet has become a Babble Machine for argument and money raising.

Sure, it's an American art form to sneer at politicians, their hypocrisy and cupidity. But even at the beginning of the 2008 campaign, the level of competitors was exceptionally high Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards and Obama for the Democrats; Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and McCain for the Republicans.

When McCain and Obama fought their way through that maze, the skepticism that we didn't get the best two Oval Office candidates quickly faded.

But a word here for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Her admirable, up-and-down persistence in the primaries and debates against Obama was to my mind the most stirring drama of 2008. The topsy-turvy narrative of Obama vs. Clinton was more fierce than most recent general elections.

A historic year for women

Give Clinton credit for lighting fires, especially among women, that have endured through the fall campaigns. And far beyond.

Nor should we ignore the cultural force of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who spiraled from "who?" to "wow!" to "whoa!" in public view. Whether she turns out to be a disaster or bonus for McCain, Palin has been a shot of Tabasco to 2008 politics.

Happily, this has been a chaotic election year when conventional wisdom and print and television pundits and polls got blindsided. Remember when McCain was too old, too broke and too disorganized to become the nominee? Or when Obama was too inexperienced, just a showboat orator, sure to be doomed by secretly racist voters?

Voters kept shoving the professionals aside and taking over the election.

Sure, there is a queasy excess too much campaign money sloshing around, too many TV ads, too many polls constantly taking temperatures in every state. But by the standards of other years the Willie Horton ad in 1988, Swift-Boating in 2004 it wasn't an excessively dirty campaign. For that we could partially thank McCain, whose sense of honor forbade employing racial overtones against Obama.

Nor can we complain that we haven't gotten enough policy detail. We were inundated by "my plan and his plan" in three presidential debates. Never mind that Congress will decide the surviving plan. What we really gauged on TV was the candidates' personas McCain aggressive behind the smiling mask, Obama quick-witted and unflappable.

When all the bluster and bloviating fade, maybe we'll remember only snippets from the TV blur: "Lipstick on a pig," "Joe the plumber," "terrorist," "socialist," "the real America," "that one," "I am not George Bush." But I hope we'll remember 2008 for an electric, engaged election, to me the most dynamic campaign in a half-century.

In a perilous year, people took charge and made their own history.

Barack Hussein Obama and the Triumph of Marxism

2008-10-29T04:27:00.001-07:00

One of the recurring themes in my essays is the realization that the West didn't win the Cold War as decisively as we should have done. A generation after we "defeated" Marxism, Marxist-inspired groups control much of the Western education system as well as Western media and form alliances with our enemies, especially Islamic ones. I have concentrated on Europe, but this is a problem in North America as well. Barack Hussein Obama represents the triumph of cultural Marxism; or perhaps we should simply say Marxism. One generation after Ronald Reagan led the USA to "victory," a person with Marxist sympathies could be about to be elected President of the USA. When the Nazis were defeated they were seen as evil, as they should be. When the Communists were "defeated," they were not seen as evil; they are misguided individuals with good intentions, a bit like Santa Claus with a bad hair day.

Journalist Stanley Kurtz has done an excellent job at tracking the many ties to radical organizations in Obama's personal history. Dr.Daniel Pipes lists some of the indirect ties he has to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Nation of Islam. Pipes states that "Obama's multiple links to anti-Americans and subversives mean he would fail the standard security clearance process for Federal employees. Islamic aggression represents America's strategic enemy; Obama's many insalubrious connections raise grave doubts about his fitness to serve as America's commander-in-chief."

In my view, it's insane that the United States can even contemplate electing a person such as Obama. Americans will look like a defeated nation to the rest of the world if they pick an individual who has for a generation been a member of an organization dedicated to hating the majority population of the country. That's exactly why so many of their enemies want him elected. Meanwhile, 7 years after Saudi Arabian Muslims staged Jihadist attacks against the United States, the Saudis are systematically infiltrating the Western education system at all levels with pro-Islamic propaganda. Americans are outsourcing their industry to China, their education system to Saudi Arabia and their breeding to Mexico. This is not a wise strategy followed by a country that wants to remain a superpower, or simply continue to exist.

A person with such a radical background should never have been close to nomination. The only reason why Obama got so far is because the media deliberately downplayed much of the most troubling information about him. The mass hysteria whipped up in favor of Obama in the press is disturbing. A person who had been a member of an openly anti-black or anti-Asian congregation for a couple of decades would never have been seriously considered for presidency, but being a member of an anti-white congregation is apparently OK. This tells us much about the cultural climate in the West at the moment.

The term "Fascist" is so misused that people no longer remember its original meaning. A "Fascist" is now any person to the right of Hillary Clinton, especially if he's white and doesn't like Multiculturalism. However, the personality cult surrounding Obama is a traditional hallmark of Fascist and Communist societies. When an average voter dared to ask a few critical questions about Obama's Socialist sympathies, he was virtually ambushed by members of the mainstream media. This is the kind of behavior one expects to see in authoritarian societies when someone questions the Divine Wisdom of the Great Leader. It is disappointing and not very reassuring to see it in the land of the free, home of the brave.As journalist Nidra Poller put it: "The chance encounter between Barack Obama and a commoner—Joe the Plumber—not only exposed the Hope & Change candidate's plan for redistribution of wealth, it also revealed his attitude toward the ordinary guys he has pledged to serve. Leftists everywhere love the wretched of the earth…as long as the poor stay poor and the downtrodden downtrodden."

The Iranian ex-Muslim Ali Sina, author of the book Understanding Muhammad, comments on the dark sides of Obama's personality:

Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer

"Never did George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt. Martin Luther King Jr. or Ronald Reagan arouse so much raw emotion. Despite their achievements, none of them was raised to the rank of Messiah. The Illinois senator has no history of service to the country. He has done nothing outstanding except giving promises of change and hyping his audience with hope. It's only his words, not his achievements that is causing this much uproar. When cheering for someone turns into adulation, something is wrong. Excessive adulation is indicative of a personality cult. The cult of personality is often created when the general population is discontent. A charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and project himself as an agent of change and a revolutionary leader."

"If Obama turns out to be the disaster I predict, he will cause widespread resentment among the whites. The blacks are unlikely to give up their support of their man. Cultic mentality is pernicious and unrelenting. They will dig their heads deeper in the sand and blame Obama's detractors of racism. This will cause a backlash among the whites. The white supremacists will take advantage of the discontent and they will receive widespread support. I predict that in less than four years, racial tensions will increase to levels never seen since the turbulent 1960s. Obama will set the clock back decades."

I don't agree with everything Sina says, but I am pretty sure an Obama presidency would dramatically increase racial and ideological tensions within the USA; I cannot see him "heal" anything. I agree that such displays of personality cult are always a sign of dark ideological undercurrents. Jimmy Carter was one of the worst presidents in American history. I don't recall that there ever was a "Carter Youth" movement in the 1970s or people claiming that he was the Messiah, but we do have an "Obama Youth" movement. This is unprecedented, a disturbing indication that the world's most powerful state no longer thinks in rational terms. Obama represents everything the American Founding Fathers tried to avoid when they wanted to make their young nation a constitutional Republic, not a mass democracy.

The dilemma is that both major parties ended up with arguably the worst possible candidates. The choice is between John McCain, an open-border fanatic with an anger management problem who isn't a real conservative, and Barack Hussein Obama, who has for a generation been a member of a church which is explicitly hostile to the majority population of his country, who has Socialist sympathies and ties to anti-American and Islamic radicals. As in the rest of the Western world, the radical Left has largely succeeded in moving politics to the left. The Republican candidate is now what the Democratic candidates used to be like, and the Democratic candidate comes from a background where open shows of hostility to one's own country are commonplace.

In 2007, a proposed immigration bill hundreds of pages long and supported by the Bush Administration would have amounted to the greatest changes in US immigration policies since the 1960s and de facto legalized millions of illegal aliens. As writer Matthew Spalding said at the National Review Online, "the devil is in the details. This legislation is long and complicated, with lots of details — and lots of devils." Yet its supporters were keen to have it implemented as soon as possible. "We all know this issue can be caught up in extracurricular politics unless we move forward as quickly as possible," said Senator John McCain, a key architect of the bill. The bill was stopped after massive popular resistance, but there is reason to fear that a future President McCain will support it in 2009 or 2010 as well.

There are both left-wing and right-wing Globalists. They have different agendas, for instance with left-wing Globalists putting emphasis on silencing free speech and promoting "international law" through the United Nations and similar organizations while right-wing Globalists concentrate more on the free flow of people across borders, just as they want free flow of goods and capital across borders. The presidential election campaign in the USA in 2008 between Obama and McCain is a race between a left-wing and a right-wing Globalist. Both want open borders, if only for slightly different reasons, and tend to think of countries as ideas, not as entities populated by distinct peoples with shared values and a common history.

This does of course not mean that President Obama and President McCain would follow the exact same policies in all areas. For instance, I fear that President Obama would be more aggressive in weakening the freedom of speech enshrined in the First Amendment than President McCain, although I could be wrong in this. Obama would most likely also be more active in pushing Socialist economic programs. When it comes to mass immigration, legal and illegal, I see little difference between them.

An Obama presidency would be bad for the United States but also bad for the world. Many Europeans seem to like Obama. I'm not one of them. Here in Western Europe, we are faced with increasingly aggressive Islamic colonization. How would the American political elites react if native Europeans suddenly grew a backbone and implemented serious policies aimed at halting and reversing Islamization? I don't think we should expect much sympathy from President Obama or the mainstream media. Since Americans are indoctrinated from birth with the idea that any person of European origins defending his cultural heritage is a white supremacist and a Nazi, I suspect we would be viewed as something along those lines. By that point it wouldn't be America Alone, as Canadian writer Mark Steyn says, it would be Europe Alone. Leftists have complained about virtually all American military campaigns except the NATO bombing against Serbs on behalf of Muslims.

For that matter, it isn't self-evident that President McCain would be wholly sympathetic, either. It is a great irony that the USA is vilified for its "anti-Islamic" policies. What anti-Islamic policies would that be? The American political establishment is dedicated to making the world safe for sharia. Muslim immigration to the US has increased since 9/11. The Bush Administration has sponsored the eradication of non-Muslim communities of Iraq, supports Turkish membership of the European Union and together with the EU awarded the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo by granting Muslim Albanians their very own Jihadist state.

I'm not going to blame Europe's problems on Americans; we made our own mess and should deal with it ourselves. Besides, it is quite possible that the Americans will soon have their hands full with problems of their own and will be in no position to assist anybody even if they wanted to. Europeans can and should maintain good relations and cooperate with ordinary North American citizens, who live under the same Multicultural regime as we do, but we cannot and should not rely on aid from the American elites.

Barack Hussein Obama hasn't been elected President yet, and it is quite possible that the polls we are shown in the media do not accurately reflect the popular support he has, but the very fact that he has come this far represents an unprecedented triumph for radical Leftism in the heart of the largest state in the Western world.

Anti-Western ideologies have penetrated the very core of our societies at the same time as we are under siege from outside. This is clearly not a sustainable situation and it will need to be resolved if our civilization is going to survive this century. Regardless of who wins this November, the West is in for a bumpy ride.

Lovely lady Michelle Obama shops at J. Crew, buys online

2008-10-29T04:25:00.000-07:00

Michelle Obama shops at J. Crew, buys online

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) — No $150,000 wardrobe malfunctions for Michelle Obama.

"Actually, this is a J. Crew ensemble," the wife of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama told comedian Jay Leno on Monday on his talk show. She wore a yellow sweater, skirt and blouse ensemble.

"You can get some good stuff online," she added.

Questioned by Leno, the potential first lady declined to criticize GOP vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin about revelations that the Republican National Committee spent $150,000 at Neiman Marcus and other high-end retailers on clothes and accessories for Palin and her family.

Obama said she and her husband have a policy of spending their own money on their clothes. But she said she wanted to be "empathetic."

"A V.P. pick, it's like being shot out of a cannon. All of a sudden you're at the center of attention, and you want to look good," said Michelle Obama, adding she has never met Palin. "You're living in your home, minding your business, and all of a sudden you're on the national stage and everyone's watching."

Leno asked about Barack Obama's ailing grandmother. Obama recently left the campaign trail to spend time in Hawaii with his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, who virtually raised him and is his main remaining family.

"She's doing OK, up and down. But we are just grateful that he took time off and went to see her," Michelle Obama said. She said her husband credited his grandmother, whom he calls "Toot," with teaching him strength.

She quoted him as saying: "'She's tough, she's been through a lot. She's still hanging on. If you wonder where I got my toughness, it's from Toot.'"

She said neither of Obama's two young daughters is overly excited by the campaign.

Ten-year-old Malia's reaction to her father's plans to air a 30-minute paid advertisement on national TV Wednesday night?

"'You're going to be on all the TV? Are you going to interrupt my TV?'" her mother said Malia asked.

She said Barack Obama reassured his daughter that he hadn't bought time on the Disney Channel.

Color of Obama’s Skin May be in Favor of Him

2008-10-29T04:22:00.000-07:00

Color of Obama’s Skin May be in Favor of Him
Azerbaijan, Baku, 28 October /corr. Trend News V.Zhavoronkova / The color of the skin of Presidential candidate from the Democratic Party, Barack Obama, not only will not affect the results of presidential elections in the USA, but also even it can draw voters to his side, experts said.

“There are, however, many people for whom his race is an asset, given that his election could go a long way to heal the racial scars of America's history,” Jack Glaser, American politician told TrendNews via e-mail.

According to the last surveys, Presidential candidate of the USA from the Democratic Party, Barack Obama, continues to lead due to the drop in the rating of his rival, Republican John McCain. For example, according to the survey by CBS News together with New York Times, Obama has the superiority of 13%.

At the meeting, which took place in the end of the last week in Denver, the State of Colorado, Obama brought together large number of his supporters during entire history of the pre-election campaign, Vesti reported. According to the different estimations, the meeting was attended by nearly 45-50,000 people.

With regards to the rival of Democrat, Republican John McCain, the meeting in his support took place with the substantially smaller participation of public. Only 2,000 people came to listen to McCain in Ayov, and in Ohio - no more than 5,000.

American experts concur in the opinion that the number of voters, who will not vote for Obama due to the color of his skin, will be less than the number of those, who will give preference to him.

The factor, which can prevent Obama, can become Bradley's effect, which manifests with the rivalry of the two candidates, one of whom is dark-skinned. Significant part of voters hides their position, giving their voice to the dark-skinned candidate during surveys, but fearing the direct accusations of racism, in the polling booth, the white voters will vote for the white candidate. In the history of the USA there were two cases, when with the serious leading according to the data of survey, the black candidates lost during the voting.

In 1982 African American Tom Bradley lost the elections to the governor of California, white rival, despite the fact that he led with the superiority of 7%. And in 1989 elections, the governor of Virginia, black candidate Douglas Vilder won the post with the superiority in of half a percent, although he led in the survey with the superiority of 9%.

A number of polls show up to 6 points disadvantage due to Obama's race, Charles Henry, American expert on the African-American searches at California University, said.

Many Americans are probably supporting Senator Obama in part because it will be transformative to have a President who is African-American, and people want to be a part of history, Peter Shane, American expert on elections, said.

“That historic signal of change that is probably helping to turn out unprecedented number of young and minority voters, which will surely be a big part of the story if Senator Obama wins,” Shane, search fellow of University of Ohio State, told TrendNews via e-mail.

There will be some voters who choose McCain, in part, because they could not support a black President, Shane said.

“Given the political landscape in America -- with the unpopular war, the unpopular Republican president, the economic crisis that Republican philosophies are seen as ill-equipped to fix, if not the actual cause, and Obama's eloquence and political giftedness -- if he does lose, one would have to consider that race played a role,” Glaser said.

Many experts consider that the color of the skin here generally is not reason, and for the candidate from the Republicans already practically it is not possible to outdistance rival in the pre-election race.

“I don't think anything can prevent Obama from winning. There is simply no scenario I see that stops him. And no, his race does not hurt him. In fact, I expect a large turnout of black voters who will go overwhelmingly for Obama,” American expert on elections, John McAdams, told TrendNews via e-mail.

Any last-minute "stunt" by the McCain campaign will now be perceived as an act of desperation, not of strength, Shane said. Only an event such as a terrorist attack could swing the public in McCain's direction, Henry said.

The majority of the public sides with Obama on most of the major issues, Glaser said.

So McCain's campaign has to try other angles, but they undermined one of their strongest arguments (that Obama doesn't have enough experience) by selecting Sarah Palin (who has even less, and seems to have learned much less from those limited experiences) as the vice presidential nominee, Glaser said.

So they are stuck trying to make a lot out of small things, he added.

Hollywood’s REAL eco-celebrities

2008-10-29T04:15:00.000-07:00

Hollywood’s REAL eco-celebrities

A lot of stars claim to be green…but these guys and gals are the real deal The 90210 zip code may still be home to the massive mansions we first caught glimpses of on The Beverly Hillbillies,

but these days the Clampetts are converting their estates to green, and not the kind you roll in. It seems the Beverly Hills City Council is borrowing a page from the eco-friendly handbook by offering incentives for home owners to build or remodel in an energy-efficient manner.

The famed city also recently passed a Green Building ordinance mandating environmentally friendly requirements for commercial and multifamily developments. We can only hope that speculator Donald Trump is mindful of these eco initiatives since lately he's been snapping up several acres of properties around the Beverly Hills Hotel.

Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom

Happily, there are many Hollywood types we can count on to pave the way toward eco-conscious abodes. Take Johnny Depp - in 2005, the star converted his Bahamas island home to run on solar hydrogen technology. Depp's eco enlightenment may have rubbed off on his Pirates of the Caribbean costar Orlando Bloom. Last year Bloom built an enviro-friendly house in London."It's as green as I can make it," Bloom said on the green design Web site Inhabitat."It's got solar panels on the roof, energy-efficient light bulbs - newer technology basically that is environmentally friendly."

Ed Begley, Jr., Jackson Browne and Katey Sagal

Then there are stars that take it to the max, like musician and longtime activist Jackson Browne. His Malibu ranch home is completely off the grid, and is far from running on empty. The airy barn-style house has two loft bedrooms, two guest bedrooms, skylights and tons of windows."It's made out of masonry and rebar in a way that it stays cool all year round," Browne's live-in girlfriend, Dianna Cohen, told Living with Ed, a Planet Green series starring Ed Begley Jr.

Browne's dwelling is powered by wind turbines and solar panels; a solar-weather measuring station sits atop the property, and a well provides water."I regard this place as sort of an ongoing experiment," Browne said."I think if you set out to do it all at once, it might seem like a huge expense, but we've done it a little bit at a time." Maybe Browne can share his expertise with Dennis Haysbert (24, The Unit), who is reportedly building his own off-the-grid Malibu digs.

Phil Rosenthal

Everybody Loves Raymond producer Phil Rosenthal( pictures above) may not be off the grid, but his house is eco-friendly cool, replete with recycled cork floors, denim insulation and a waterless urinal. Rosenthal and his actress wife, Monica (she played Brad Garrett's wife on Raymond), even recycled the show's set furniture - Frank and Marie's kitchen table sits in their guesthouse.

Larry"J.R. Ewing" Hagman says he played the meanest oilman in the world, but in real life, he is an energy-efficient cowboy, even in his magnificent 25,000-square-foot residence. How? Hagman's home sports more solar panels than probably any other single residence. He also has retractable skylights, negating the need for air-conditioning, and claims his annual energy bill totals $13. Altruistically, Hagman's system goes beyond his own needs; he supplies solar power to five nearby lower-income homes.

Rachel McAdams

Actress Rachel McAdams, currently on the big screen in The Lucky Ones opposite Tim Robbins, tells People she is planning a green remodel on her newly purchased house. She might want to hit up Entourage star Adrian Grenier for tips - the posse king hosts another show, Alter Eco, on Planet Green, where he and a team perform enviro-makeovers on a surf shop, skate park, art gallery and other hip spaces.

Or McAdams can check out PETA activist Alicia Silverstone's home."Everything we've brought into this house is environmentally sound," the actress told InStyle.com. But few can rival Jackson Browne's ex, actress Daryl Hannah, whose Rocky Mountain, Colorado, home is a restored stagecoach stop that operates entirely off the grid. Hannah is so hard-core green, her couch is made of mossy stone that she actually waters to keep alive.

Celebrity home designer and Holmes on Homes TV personality Mike Holmes is another go-to green tip guy. The home renovation advocate is planning to build sustainable houses in a Canadian community with features like living roofs, gray-water recapture systems, solar-assist hot water and radiant floor heating.

"I want a home that will not burn down, will not blow down, will not fall down under any circumstances, and it's really not that hard," the outspoken Holmes told ecorazzi.com."We've had, for years, the possibility of building like this. I'm just stunned that we haven't moved on it."

President Bill Clinton and actor Brad Pitt, founder of the Make It Right Foundation, pose with DeeCarla Rogers while they break ground for new homes in the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans.

Brad Pitt has moved on it, with Holmes as part of the team, in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward, which was devastated by the levee breaks in 2005's Hurricane Katrina. Pitt's goal is to build 150 homes, all designed to prevent future catastrophe by being raised three feet above ground. Besides solar panels and other enviro-friendly features, the homes will capture rainwater to reuse for gardening and toilets. Pitt's Make It Right project is being touted as the future model for our cities.

Nice to know that Hollywood has come a long way from Granny, Jed and Company and is consciously making a difference.

Famous (and Infamous) Celebrity Firings

2008-10-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

Canned. Let go. Downsized. Dismissed. Terminated. No matter how you put it, it all means the same thing: You've been fired.

So what? So has everyone. In fact, the average employee has a one-in-three chance of getting fired, according to BusinessWeek.

In our current economy, getting the boot is more common than ever before. Just look at our financial industry: Thanks to bad loans, risky investments and dwindling stocks, the heads of five major banks including Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and American International Group were all recently relieved of their duties.

But getting fired isn't all bad (depending on who you ask). Many say it builds character, inspires you to do better and, if nothing else, makes a good story to tell your friends.

In fact, getting fired and talking about it seems to be the new trend. Workers are no longer getting the boot and feeling bad about it. Now, they are sharing their stories with anyone who will listen. Annabelle Gurwitch, actress and author of "Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized and Dismissed," discovered this fact when she was fired by her idol, Woody Allen.

"As it turned out, nothing bored my five-year-old son more than an account of being fired by a cultural icon; however, the response from others was quite different," Gurwitch says in her book. "Friends in the industry assured me that they too had been fired and proceeded to relate their stories. Their humor and insight and generosity consoled me. So I began collecting these tales of jobs gone bad."

Think your termination tale was awful? Read the following famous (and not-so-famous) firings from workers, job seekers and celebrity icons around the world. Some will make you laugh; others will inspire and motivate you to do better. After all, Gurwitch says, "It's not the bounce that counts, it's the bounce back."

Famous firee: Britney Spears

Fired from: The Firm, her former management company

Gist: After a tumultuous year, Spears hired The Firm, a talent management company, to help promote her new album. In September 2007 (one month later and during an intense custody battle with her ex-husband), the company suspended its services. In a statement to the media, the company said: "We have terminated our professional relationship with Britney Spears. We believe she is enormously talented, but current circumstances have prevented us from properly doing our job."

Famous firee: Isaiah Washington

Fired from: Television show "Grey's Anatomy"

Gist: In 2006, Washington was accused of using an anti-gay slur to describe fellow actor T.R. Knight during an argument on the set of the show. He repeated the slur at the 64^th annual Golden Globe Awards while denying the allegations during a backstage press conference. ABC Studios didn't invite Washington back to the show because of the bad press generated for the show after the incident, as well as his behavior on and off the set.

Famous firee: Chef Robert Irvine

Fired from: The Food Network

Gist: Irvine, a celebrity chef, prepared difficult dishes on TV for four seasons on his series, "Dinner: Impossible." His contract with the Food Network was terminated earlier this year after the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times revealed that Irvine had embellished and fabricated the more impressive parts of his résumé, including claiming to have cooked for the British royal family; catering to four U.S. presidents; and helping to make Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding cake.

Famous firee: Marty Schottenheimer, San Diego Chargers ex-head coach

Fired from: San Diego Chargers

Gist: Schottenheimer was fired in 2007 by the team president, who cited a "dysfunctional situation" between the coach and general manager. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that although Schottenheimer was coming off a winning season, he was fired after he tried to interview his brother for a vacant defensive coordinator position. The president said disagreements over future staffing played a role but it was "more the actual working relationship" that was an issue.

Famous firee: Janet Cooke, former journalist

Fired from: The Washington Post

Gist: Cooke became famous for a Pulitzer Prize-winning profile in 1980 about an 8-year-old heroin addict named "Jimmy." Upon publication, the government demanded to know Jimmy's whereabouts so it could help him. Cooke claimed she couldn't reveal her sources for fear that drug dealers would endanger her life. Several people noticed numerous discrepancies in her story; further investigation revealed Cooke's false credentials. Two days after the prize had been awarded it was revealed that the story was fraudulent. Cooke was forced to resign and return the prize.

Famous firees: Four women in Hooksett, N.H.
Fired from: The Town Council of Hooksett

Gist: Four women were fired in May 2007 for gossiping and discussing rumors about an illicit relationship between the town administrator and another employee. After the administrator complained, the council fired the women, saying, "Gossip, whispering and an unfriendly environment are causing poor morale and interfering with the efficient performance of town business."

Famous firee: Don Imus, radio announcer

Fired from: CBS Radio

Gist: During a discussion on his show, "Imus in the Morning," about the 2007 NCAA Women's Basketball Championship, Imus used a slur to refer to the Rutgers University women's basketball team and called them "rough girls." Imus accepted his fate when his show was canceled in April 2007 and apologized for his actions. His show resumed eight months later, on ABC Radio.

Famous firees: Larry Mendte and Alycia Lane, former TV newscasters

Fired from: KYW-TV, a CBS affiliate in Philadelphia

Gist: Lane was fired in January from the station first after becoming the subject of several embarrassing news stories, including allegedly striking a police officer and sending bikini pictures of herself to a well-known sports anchor. In June, Mendte was fired after admitting that he illegally hacked into Lane's e-mail accounts and read hundreds of personal e-mails during the same time period when information about Lane's personal life was leaked to the media.

Oriya Actress Leslie Tripathy met with some sad fate when organisations like World Vision,Nandan Kanan chose to not go ahead with a professional relationaship with her,after her personal life came under media scrutiny post herobsessive-fan- stalker ended up up harassing her,she had to face some brunt and was stripped from being their Celebrity Ambassador.

Price of fame

Why do citizens in 70 countries prefer Obama to McCain?

2008-10-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

Senator John McCain says when it comes to foreign policy he’s light years ahead of Barack Obama. Over and over again, McCain has insisted Obama lacks the necessary experience to conduct business with foreign countries on behalf of the United States.

So how do you explain this?

Citizens of dozens of foreign countries prefer Barack Obama over John McCain as our next president by a margin of almost 4 to 1, according to a massive poll conducted by the Gallup Organization. About 30 percent of those surveyed prefer Obama, while just 8 percent favor McCain.

This was no daily tracking poll either. Gallup polled people in 70 countries in Africa, Europe, Asia and North and South America, representing nearly half the world’s population, between May and September of this year.

Citizens of the Philippines and Georgia were the only ones who preferred McCain to Obama. Not exactly the super-powers we’re looking to mend fences with.

Here’s my question to you: Why do citizens in 70 foreign countries prefer Barack Obama to John McCain by a margin of nearly 4-1?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

Justin from North Carolina writes:
Barack Obama is the candidate of reason. Only a fool would think of supporting the ticket with the oldest presidential nominee and a woefully inept vice presidential candidate are in the best interest of America or the world especially when the current disaster of a president proves to be more coherent than the both of them.

Kevin writes:
They prefer him because he’s a patsy and they know he’s going to pander to them. Kennedy was on medication during meetings with Khrushchev and Khrushchev called him a pygmy. No fear whatsoever. Good thing Kennedy did stand up to him during the Cuban missile crisis. Obama needs some testosterone shots. Putin, Chavez, the Castro’s, the Girl Scouts of China…anybody could chew him up, push him around, and spit him out.

F.S. from Rollinsford, N.H. writes:
Jack, just to let you know that from my wife’s and my visit to Europe for 3 weeks just recently, we couldn’t find anyone in 4 countries that wanted McCain for President. They all think he is warmonger and that Palin is a joke. Do they know something we don’t?

Jackie writes:
To be fair, I think McCain’s negativity rests with the “R” after his name. He is a decent man who, because of his age and knowing this is his last chance, sold his soul to the Republican National Committee.

Mike writes:
It’s simple. It may sound racist, but it’s really not. Foreign countries are tired of old white men bossing them around and looking down on them. They finally see someone who will respect & approach them as equals.

Zach writes:
Let’s see, Jack…where to begin…They don’t want to get bombed? They want to work with a well-spoken, even-keel U.S. President for a change? They’re smarter than almost half of the people in our own country?

Cindy McCain defends her blasphemous past and habits not to forget devious self

2008-10-22T04:26:00.000-07:00

Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, decried the "viciousness of the media" Monday, days after the New York Times ran a front page story detailing her troubled history with prescription drugs and difficulty fitting into Washington social circles.

In an interview with Fox news that aired Monday night, Mrs. McCain said she thought the biggest difference between her husband's first presidential run eight years ago and his campaign this year was the media's attitude toward the Arizona senator's candidacy.

"What has really stunned me is the — quite honestly, is the kind of viciousness of the media on occasion," Mrs. McCain said. "In 2000 — there's certainly always been, you know, differences, and the — you know, the things that occur. But this has taken on a different tenor. And I don't know why and what's caused that, and I'm sorry for it because I think it turns a lot of young people off."

Cindy McCain's comments come a week after she accused Obama of waging the "dirtiest campaign" in U.S. history. On Monday, she also addressed the lengthy New York Times story directly, saying she has no plans to read it and has since received several messages of support.

"I did not read it, no. I did not read it, and I have no intention of reading it," she said. "My BlackBerry was loaded with friends the next morning saying, ‘I cannot believe this, you know? I'm sorry for you and all this.’"

The article drew a sharp response from the McCain campaign, which called it a "barrage of petty and personal attacks," and said the New York Times reporters "employed tactics that are obviously unprofessional and almost certainly unethical" in researching the story.

McCain attorney John Dowd also scolded the paper for rehashing a series of facts that he said have been long reported, and said they had failed to do similar investigative pieces into either Michelle or Barack Obama.

"It is worth noting that you have not employed your investigative assets looking into Michelle Obama. You have not tried to find Barack Obama's drug dealer that he wrote about in his book, Dreams of My Father," Dowd wrote in a letter to the paper.

18 Leadership secrets of Colin Powell

2008-10-22T04:23:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this interesting summary of Colin Powell’s leadership principles from the book, The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell. The summary was written by Mr. Oren Harari, a professor at the University of San Francisco. Who is Collin Powell you may ask!

Colin Powell is the first black secretary of state in U.S. history. Powell was born in New York City to Jamaican immigrants and attended City College of New York as a cadet in the Reserve Officers Training Corps. He served two tours of duty successfully in the Vietnam War from 1962-63 and once again from 1968-69 and then held important military and civilian positions before becoming national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan in 1987. In 1989, Powell was promoted to the rank of four-star general and was named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff later that same year - the first black officer to hold the nation’s highest military post.

Colin Powell’s principles of leadership described in the book include the following:

Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.
Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.
Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.
You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.
Keep looking below surface appearances. Don’t shrink from doing so (just) because you might not like what you find.
Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavors succeed or fall because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.
Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.
Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.
Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission.
Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
Powell’s Rules for Picking People: Look for intelligence and judgment, and most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego, and the drive to get things done.
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.
Part I: Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired. Part II: “Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.
The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
Have fun in your command. Don’t always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you’ve earned it: Spend time with your families. Corollary: surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
Command is lonely.

Collin Powell Looks for a Hug from the Left by Endorsing Obama

2008-10-22T04:19:00.000-07:00

Four out of five Secretaries of State surveyed recommend John McCain to those who will vote.

That’s right. Henry Kissenger, James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger and Alexander Haig have all endorsed the Republican nominee. But like the one dentist out of five who recommends sugary gum, Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama.

That’s the only secretary of state endorsement the media wants to talk about, like it’s some “Republican on Republican crime.”

Powell has essentially endorsed the guy from the other team. But beware the effect of “that’s your own man saying so” in politics. Because which player is on what team isn’t always so clear.

Powell never fully committed to the Republican team, even while Republicans recognized his talents and made him National Security Adviser, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and secretary of state.

After the first Gulf War, when there was talk of Powell running for President, he was coy about which party he’d use to do it. His finger was in the political wind.

On liberal issues, Powell has been a fan of that weird civil right involving killing baby humans. He supports affirmative action, some gun control and won’t support a constitutional ban on burning the flag in protest of America here on her soil. He now complains Republicans are “too far right.” Where are we supposed to be, Colin?

So was Powell really a teammate of Republicans (despite having given McCain the maximum campaign donation allowed by law)?

I’ll admit though there are Republican positions Powell has supported…

Like the Iraq invasion. Since 2003 those on the left have painted Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and anyone else at the top as more horrid than those who attacked us on 9/11.

If your motto is “Bush lied, people died,” surely you recognize the voice of Powell. He appeared at the UN to sell the invasion based on WMDs to the UN and the world.

So where now is the rage of the left, who even tried to have Rumsfeld indicted as a war criminal in several European countries? Will the left forgive and forget what they once saw as Powell’s crimes against humanity in exchange for a mere endorsement? Oh, that’s right, the left forgave Bill Ayers. Forgiving Powell should be a cinch.

What is really behind this endorsement is Powell looking for forgiveness and a hug from the left. This is what he said nearly a year ago about what he will look for in a candidate:

“A vision that reaches out to the rest of the world and starts to restore confidence in America. And starts to restore favorable ratings to America, frankly. We’ve lost a lot in recent years.”

If you agree (or care) that our standing in the world has been lessened by the Iraq invasion as Powell says, then it’s fair to say it’s Powell’s fault. Repair that and Powell gets to wake up tomorrow as a different person.

So the Obama endorsement is Powell’s personal mea culpa to the left for the Iraq invasion, without regard to whether Obama will be good or bad for America here at home.

Lose weight,follow 10 simple steps

2008-10-21T01:50:00.000-07:00

When it comes to losing weight, tried-and-true strategies work, period. Obese adults who were given a pamphlet with 10 basic rules were motivated enough to lose 4 pounds in 8 weeks. Follow them all, and you could shave off up to 900 calories a day, study authors say—enough to lose nearly 15 pounds in the same amount of time.
1. Eat your meals on a regular schedule.
2. Choose low-fat foods.
3. Wear a pedometer and walk 10,000 steps a day.
4. Pack healthy snacks.
5. Check the fat and sugar content on food labels.
6. Portion wisely and skip seconds (except vegetables).
7. Stand for 10 minutes every hour.
8. Avoid sugary drinks.
9. Turn off the television while you eat.
10. Eat at least five servings of fruits and veggies daily.

Colin Powell endorses Obama, breaks ranks with the GOP

2008-10-21T01:42:00.000-07:00

Powell served three Republican presidents and was once seen as the party's likely presidential candidate. Some critics, including Rush Limbaugh, say race is a factor.
WASHINGTON -- In 1996, the political world was buzzing about the intentions of a possible presidential contender -- one who could make history.In the end, Colin L. Powell, four-star American icon, proclaimed that he would not run after all, disappointing millions of supporters but generating sighs of relief at the Clinton White House.

Powell showed over the weekend that he could still affect presidential politics, declaring his support for Democrat Barack Obama.The prospect of Obama becoming the first African American president, Powell said, would "electrify the world," and the endorsement is already reverberating.Given his decades as a professional soldier and high-ranking official in three Republican administrations, Powell carries weight with the military and moderate voters. Now, more of them could swing to Obama.
Even before Obama was first elected to public office as a state senator in Illinois, Powell was considered the odds-on favorite to become the first African American to head a major-party presidential ticket.He looked to be a formidable candidate in the 1996 race: a black centrist, long an independent, who had led the victorious U.S. military during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But he declined to run, citing concerns about his privacy and a lack of passion for political combat. There were also reports that his wife, Alma, feared for his safety.Instead, Powell said, he would join the Republican Party, hoping that his involvement would broaden the GOP's appeal and humanize its attempts to reform social welfare programs."I believe I can help the party of Lincoln move once again close to the spirit of Lincoln," he said.With his embrace of Obama, Powell, 71, has broken ranks.The decision led to debate over his motives. Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh suggested Powell's endorsement was rooted in race and the hope that Obama would become the first black president."I am now researching his past endorsements to see if I can find all the inexperienced, very liberal, white candidates he has endorsed," Limbaugh said in an e-mail. "I'll let you know what I come up with."Powell, in his appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," denied that race was the motivating factor. He said he had pondered a decision for months, and that he had told Obama, "I'll give you all the advice I can, but I'm not going to vote for you just because you're black."Powell's decision to cross party lines, former associates said, is far more complicated than black and white."It was a painful thing for him to do, for sure," Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who was Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, said in an interview Sunday. "One of the principal parts of his character is defined by loyalty."The Republican Party and Republican presidents "have done a lot for his career," Wilkerson said. Powell was President Reagan's national security advisor, then served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President George H.W. Bush before he became President George W. Bush's first secretary of State.Wilkerson said that Powell ultimately was distressed over what he saw as growing divisiveness in the country and a return to "the vitriol and bigotry and prejudice" of the 1960s.Adm. Henry Ulrich, the former commander of U.S. naval forces in Europe, said he thought Powell's decision was not easy."Colin Powell is a very, very, very bright, thoughtful person, and I can assure you that he did not enter into this endorsement without giving it lots and lots of thought and give it all the due process it deserved," Ulrich said. "I think it is remarkable that he has endorsed a Democrat, and so I am sure he didn't do it lightly."Sen. Obama is quite lucky and fortunate," he added. "It should have made his Sunday."

Every passing day spells danger for Barack Obama

2008-10-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight, US presidential candidate Barack Obama squares off against his Republican opponent John McCain in the last presidential debate before Americans vote on November 4. There are 19 days left before the historic US election that could see an African-American elected to the highest office in America or the first woman vice-president in American history. Yet, each day spells increasing personal danger to Senator Obama who polls show has opened a 10-point lead over Senator McCain. To those responsible for protecting Obama from harm, the threat is real that some crazy fellows will take a shot at the candidate, wounding him or killing him altogether. Such an event, God forbid, would be an unimaginable tragedy of global proportion. Sadly enough, should this unthinkable tragedy occur, it will be just another addition to the dark side of America’s political life. Americans, after all, are no strangers to political violence and assassinations which date back more than a century. Nine American presidents including Andrew Jackson in 1835, Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901, Harry S. Truman in 1950, John F. Kennedy in 1963, Richard Nixon in 1974, Gerald Ford twice in September 1975, and Ronald Reagan in 1981 were the targets of assassination. Four—Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy—were killed by the assassins. The attempted assassinations of Gerald Ford within the span of a mere two weeks in September 1975 were made by would-be female assassins. In the first attempt, the gun failed to go off and the woman was arrested, while in the second attempt, a former serviceman may have saved Ford’s life by knocking the gun off target when the assassin fired the shot that whistled above Ford’s head. Assassination attempts were also made on the lives of president-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 and three presidential candidates—Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, and George Wallace in 1972. While Roosevelt and Wallace survived, Robert Kennedy died from shots fired by an Arab-American Sirhan Sirhan in a Los Angeles hotel. Other high profile assassinations include the murders of black Muslim preacher Malcolm X in February 1965 and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee. No doubt, Obama’s security detail, already one of the tightest ever around a presidential candidate was likely beefed up over the last two weeks, and for good reasons. Senator McCain trailing in the polls has opted for the nuclear option—launch blistering attacks on the character of Barack Obama. The opening salvo in this new attack strategy was fired by McCain’s vice-presidential running mate Sarah Palin. She accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country.” Governor Palin was referring to Obama’s relationship with distinguished Professor Bill Ayers of the University of Illinois at Chicago who was linked to the radical anti-war group the Weather Underground that bombed US Federal buildings including Capitol Hill and the Pentagon in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the time Prof. Ayers committed the crime, Obama was just eight years old, and Ayers was an anti-war activist angry with US war in Vietnam. By the time Obama met Ayers, the latter was fully rehabilitated and was a respected professor of education, a job he holds to date. In other words, Governor Palin’s accusation that Obama was “palling around with terrorists” was not only false because the two men hardly know each other, it was also a blatant lie to give the impression that beside Ayers, Obama retains ongoing connections to other terrorists, say, Osama bin Laden. Now, Governor Palin may have been trolling for political points in order to win the elections in November. Unfortunately for her and the McCain campaign, the attack on Obama was the opening hate-mongers were waiting for and, within days, several were heard openly calling for Obama’s head with shouts such as “terrorist”, “kill him”. Last week, during a town hall meeting, a white woman told Senator McCain: “I don’t trust Obama, he is an Arab.” A startled McCain took the microphone from the woman and blurted: “I have to tell you, Senator Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.” McCain’s defence of Obama comes too late after the Arizona senator himself set the hound-dogs after Obama. Just this past Monday, a supporter of McCain in Virginia Beach was seen holding the sign “Obama Bin Lyin”, a clear attempt to connect Obama to Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. In the mind-eyes of some angry racist Americans, McCain has reinforced the view that Obama is America’s Enemy Number One who must be taken out at all cost. Though few, these fringe elements may now see it as a ‘patriotic’ duty to stop Obama from becoming president of America. While millions of Americans will use the ballot to try to stop Obama from becoming president next month, the increasing strength of Obama’s campaign coupled with desperation on the part of the handful of hateful individuals could inspire someone to try to silence the African-American candidate. That is the permanent threat Obama assumed when he began his quest for highest office in America, but one which the Secret Service must work hard to eliminate. Whether he wins or loses next month, Obama has brought fresh hope to millions—and nobody wants to see this hope snuffed away by an assassin’s bullet. Certainly, nobody with a straight thinking mind.

Jennifer Aniston loves wearing bikinis

2008-10-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

Whoever cast Jennifer Aniston in Marley & Me is my new Jesus. The film is shooting in Miami where Jennifer is guaranteed to be sporting a bikini at least once a week. This time around she's got a friend with her (red bikini) who I'm 90% positive is John Mayer. In the meantime, some of these pics aren't focused very well, but with boobs, quantity is always better than quality. I mean, who cares if they're in-focus, out-of-focus, sepiatoned, or attached to a trucker named Ralph you met last night at Arby's hundreds of women you meet every day while racing Lamborghinis in a ninja suit.
Thanks to Karl who could find breasts in the lost city of Atlantis.

lonely Jennifer Anniston by herself on the beach

2008-10-06T00:15:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Aniston continues her vacation in Los Cabos, Mexico, and she should probably start posing for the paparazzi because, damn, are they getting some unflattering shots. It's almost as if the majority of Jennifer's body is defying age except her stomach. Which obviously gave up and said "Hey, I wanna look like your grandpa."
NOTE: Jennifer Aniston completely making my words a moot point here, and I'm pretty sure that's the entrance to Narnia.

sarah palin is a bitch lady

2008-10-05T23:57:00.000-07:00

Last night the Vice Presidential Debate took place between Republican Governor Sarah Palin and Democratic Senator Joe Biden. If you don't know who these people are, please engage in activities with a high risk of infertility. Anyway, consider this post an open thread/romper room to get your politics on and sound off about the debate. In the meantime, I'll be trying to salvage my eardrums which feel like they've been raped by Marge Gunderson from Fargo.
Oh, and who do I think won? How about I answer a completely different question instead? Waffles.*
*Didn't get the joke? Don't worry; I'll post about Britney soon.

Samantha Ronson on the beach with lover babe Lindsay Lohan

2008-10-05T23:49:00.000-07:00

Samantha Ronson dropped a bombshell today when she admitted she doesn't work out. Apparently, the folks at People couldn't get enough of Sam's "svelte" figure in a bikini this week. Which leads me to believe they get wet in the pants at the sight of Amy Winehouse - another 12-lines-a-day diet success story:
When asked about the secrets to her slim physique, Ronson, 30, told PEOPLE that less – a lot less – is more: "No gym – well, not in the last five years. All the credit goes to Mom and Dad and their genes!"Not that she doesn't indulge in the occasional cardio activity: "Sprinting through airports to catch flights," Ronson added about her workout "regiment."The deejay even jokes about one of her only vices: Marlboro Reds. "I get winded just reaching for my cigarettes!" she said.
She gets winded reaching for her smokes. God, why are all the good ones gay?

The ten things we didn''t know about men and sex

2008-09-23T01:05:00.000-07:00

If you thought men''s sexual response is quite simple and their needs can be met easily, then you certainly need to revise your knowledge of the "birds and bees," for men aren''t as simple as they are made out to be.
According to Fox News, here are 10 things that you didn''t know about men and sex:

1. Trapped Sperm

Not all sperm go racing for the egg at once. Once sperm has been deposited into the vaginal canal, some of them are temporarily trapped in a semen coagulate or clot. Eventually, they are decoagulated by enzymes, which set them free to swim about a female''s reproductive system. This clotting, according to scientists, is meant to pace the release of sperm into the uterus, increasing the chance that one of these sperms will reach the egg and fertilise it.

2. Oxytocin affects males too

It is believed that oxytocin affects females during sex (and breast-feeding). But this cuddle hormone, released by both sexes during intimacy, is also found to influence males. Research from Switzerland found that oxytocin is associated with increased feelings of trust in males.

3. High testosterone = Less sex

While higher testosterone levels is typically considered a good thing for men when it comes to their sex drive, still researchers continually found that males with higher testosterone levels marry less often, are more abusive in their marriages and divorce more regularly. In fact, married men see more action than single men.

4. Death during sex has a prototype

While examining the incidence of death during sex, a 1975 study discovered a unique pattern in males: the "deceased is usually married; he is not with a spouse and in unfamiliar surroundings," and death usually occurs after "a big meal with alcohol." Another study in 1989 found further evidence supporting the extramarital sex bit. Fourteen of the 20 cases of "la mort d''amour," or coital death, happened during an affair.

5. Orgasm ... or lack of ... may prevent breast cancer in males

A study in Greece found evidence that the frequency of adult orgasms may have an impact on the incidence of breast cancer in men. In fact, it was also revealed that males with breast cancer had experienced fewer orgasms on average than men without the disease.

6. You can tell a guy''s "size" by his fingers

A University of Liverpool research cited that if a man''s ring fingers are longer than his index fingers, this means there were healthy testosterone levels in the womb. If the ring fingers are the same size or smaller than the index fingers, then the male received lower levels of testosterone, implying that one can estimate the length of his organ by the length of the ring finger.

7. Men fall in love faster than women

It''s not the women, but men, who get out of control after a glimpse of the right attractive face and fall head over heels in love immediately, claimed love researcher Dr. Helen Fisher.

8. Family affects testosterone

As a man becomes increasingly attached to his family, his testosterone level goes down, according to a 2001 Mayo Clinic study. Particularly, fathers experience a significant decline in levels of testosterone with the birth of his child, especially when he holds the baby.

9. Can a bowel movement make for bliss?

In a 2002 study, it was mentioned that a male had a history of orgasmic-like feelings after going to the bathroom. After he answered nature''s call, his body went through the rest of the male sexual response cycle. His pulse rate increased as he reached climactic state, followed by relaxation, then extreme fatigue.

10. Males like ''unusual'' sex

Men have a 20 to 1 likeliness against women to practice an "unusual" and often socially unacceptable or illegal behavior, for example exhibitionism.

The surprising benefits of frequent snacking and emotional eating

2008-09-23T00:40:00.000-07:00

Hourly fluctuations in how much energy your body uses dictate how much food—or fuel—you need. Here's a snapshot of how your body uses energy during the day: You burn around one calorie per minute at rest. If you start to walk, that might increase to four or five calories per minute. Vigorous exercise might bounce that up to 10 or 12 calories per minute. (Keep in mind that calorie-burn figures are always estimates and vary between individuals according to body weight and other factors.)
The typical approach to balancing the energy you burn with the energy you eat is to look at your total daily energy expenditure and eat within that range. So if you burn around 2,000 calories per day and eat about that number, you will provide your body with the energy it needs (no more, no less) and your weight will remain stable.
How you eat those 2,000 calories can vary. Some people skip breakfast and may eat very little until later in the afternoon, when they eat high-calorie snacks and/or big meals. Some people, like you, nibble frequently throughout the day. Some people eat during the day and avoid eating past a certain time at night.
The body-fat factor
Theoretically, as long as the total calorie intake and expenditure are in balance, weight stays the same. However, since food doesn't just affect your body weight but also other aspects of how your body functions, it's possible that varying eating patterns may make a difference when it comes to other physiological factors such as body fat (as opposed to body weight)—and even physical performance and mental concentration.Researchers at Georgia State University compared the eating patterns of different athletes. One study, conducted by Dan Bernadot, Ph.D., found that female runners and gymnasts who went for long periods without eating—specifically, they didn't eat or snack for three hours or more—had the highest percentage of body fat. These athletes weren't overweight; they were in energy balance. But they had more body fat than those who ate at more regular intervals. And the longer they went without eating, the higher their body-fat percentage tended to be, especially if they exercised during these periods of calorie deprivation.
It's speculated that the scenario this creates—energy demands that are unmet—puts the body into a starvation or emergency state. So the body copes by drawing on even more stored energy and conserving what (if anything) comes in. Since normally available glucose is low, in addition to burning more body fat, the body converts normally unused proteins, like the amino acid alanine that's found in muscle, into glucose for energy.
So when food is in short supply and energy requirements are high, not only is muscle tissue compromised, but there is a larger insulin response when a fuel-deprived person finally does eat. This causes more calories to be stored as fat to prepare for future "famine." In addition, Bernadot's research also found that athletes with more erratic eating patterns experienced poorer performance and worse concentration than athletes who ate at more regular intervals.
How to plan how much and when you'll eat
Providing your body with a constant fuel supply by eating throughout the day helps regulate appetite. People who eat more often binge less and tend to eat smaller meals because they aren't as hungry when mealtime comes around.
Bernadot's research suggests that the best approach is to eat at regular intervals, specifically every three or four hours, and roughly matching how much you eat to how much energy you are expending during specific periods of the day.
One problem with applying this information on a practical level is that it's not easy to know how many calories you expend, nor is it always easy to know how many you eat. Generally, these researchers recommend that you avoid dropping into a caloric deficit that's greater than 300 calories, and also avoid binging or building up a surplus of more than around 300 calories.
It's not easy to calculate these guidelines to exact numbers, but here's a rough example: If you wake up at 8 a.m. and have not eaten anything since 8 p.m. the night before, you've burned about 60 calories an hour for eight hours. Therefore, you may be in a deficit of about 480 calories. (The size and time of your dinner the night before will also impact how great the caloric deficit will be when you wake up, so these are not exact figures.) Then, if you take an intense hour-long run and burn another 600 calories, you might find yourself in a deficit of more than 1,000 calories—and this may trigger the protective starvation response. But if you eat breakfast, you can avoid dipping too low.
Short of living in a lab, there's no surefire way to calculate your exact energy-balance status every hour of the day. But you can avoid creating large energy deficits or surpluses by eating small- to medium-sized snacks or meals every three or four hours during the day. And if you are going to do intense or long exercise sessions, eat more before and during to compensate. A useful book with more information is Nutrient Timing: The Future of Sports Nutrition by John Ivy, Ph.D., and Robert Portman, Ph.D.

Katharine McPhee Wants You To Look Her In The Eyes.A perfect Tease

2008-09-11T23:49:00.000-07:00

Katharine McPhee has excellent taste in dresses. When a girl wears a nice dress like Miss Katharine’s she has no expectations of you whatsoever. All she wants is for you to look and drool. But you can’t touch. That’s a no-no. So why do women torture us with their sex appeal? Because they know they can. But the joke is on them because what they don’t know is that we know that they know they can tease us. So we, in essence, have the upper hand. The key to this madness is to continue to act stupid, hit on them every chance you get, get hammered, make fools of ourselves and stare at their goodies whenever they give you the opportunity. This way chicks will continue to flaunt their stuff thinking that we are all just morons who can’t think of anything else. We can discuss politics, the economy, world hunger and saving the environment in our private lunchrooms. As long as we act like Homer Simpson’s much dumber brother when we are in public we’ll be just fine and girls will continue to wear dresses like Katharine’s. And when Mr. Busy Hands comes out after you 15th cocktail, you will get away with much more because chicks will assume you are as dumb as a post…

Modest millionaires on a budget by Erin Burt for Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine

2008-09-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

Some of today's young and prosperous focus more on giving than on spending. Here are 3 rules you can learn from them -- and live by -- even if you don't have their fortunes
Rik Wehbring, in his late 30s, lives on $50,000 a year in San Francisco.
That's quite a feat in itself, considering the Bay Area has one of the highest costs of living in the country. However, that's not what makes his situation so impressive: Wehbring is a millionaire.
I read about Wehbring in a recent Associated Press article. He's frugal by choice. He doesn't own a TV, drives a gas-thrifty Toyota Prius and listens to music on his $20 MP3 player. In the AP story, he states matter-of-factly, "I don't need a lot of material possessions."
Modesty rules Wehbring, a dot-com millionaire who made his wealth working for several Internet startups, isn't alone. In this era of conspicuous consumption, he and other people like him are saying, "No, thanks," opting instead for a more reasonable lifestyle. The Sunday Telegraph of London has given this demographic a name: YAWNs, for young and wealthy but normal.
How refreshing! Twenty- and 30-something adults who don't believe that just because they've got it they've gotta flaunt it. Think of them as the anti-Paris Hilton.
Talk back: Do you hope to become a millionaire?
For public entertainment value, this group elicits, well, yawns. These folks prefer to live quietly outside the spotlight (Wehbring declined my request for an interview). They use their money for good causes instead of for their own glory. Many are also environmentally conscious. They eschew excess and embrace modesty.
The idea of being wealthy, frugal and socially aware certainly isn't new. Take investing mogul Warren Buffett, for example. The 77-year-old is one of the wealthiest people in the world, with a net worth estimated around $60 billion. Yet this is a man who lives in the same modest house he bought 50 years ago in Omaha, Neb., for $31,500. He's also giving the bulk of his wealth to charity. Or consider Bill Gates, 52, who dresses like a research student and also gives away most of his money.
Today's crop of young and wealthy normals is particularly inspiring, though, because those of us in our 20s and 30s are generally known for being materialistic and irresponsible with money. We're obsessed with wealth, luxury and ourselves. So if these millionaires think they need to be mindful of their money, shouldn't we?
Financial values We can all learn something from the YAWN philosophy, even if we're missing the "wealthy" part now. In fact, adjusting your money mind-set may actually be your ticket to getting that "W." Here are three tenets to live by, no matter your financial status:
Live below your means. In other words, don't spend money you don't have. This sounds like a no-brainer, yet many of us have a hard time putting it into practice, no matter how much money we have. (Remember Mike Tyson's infamous multimillion-dollar bankruptcy?)
Be a good steward of your money. Don't rely on credit cards, and invest wisely. The wealthy know that it's much better to earn interest for themselves than to pay interest to someone else. That's the key to getting ahead and staying there. Creating a budget can help you get your finances on track. It'll allow you see where your money is going and how you can manage your expenses to live within your income.
Remember that stuff does not define self-worth. It's cliché but true. Money can't buy you love or happiness.
I suspect that YAWNs, like anyone else, find fulfillment in personal relationships and social causes because those are things that last. Why waste time, energy and money trying to impress other people with designer clothes, fancy cars and palatial mansions? Those are merely distractions. It's the things that money cannot buy that best define your life.
Ray Sidney, 38, a former software engineer at Google, made bank when the company went public in 2004. Instead of living it up, he quietly retired to Stateline, Nev. He says he probably doesn't qualify as frugal -- he owns two planes to shuttle between home and the Bay Area -- "but I could certainly live a more fancy-pants life than I do."
With his means, there's a lot of temptation to buy, buy, buy. But the habits he learned years ago as a strapped student are well-ingrained. "I only buy things I know I'll use," he says. "Why buy something to just sit there and take up space?"
Give back. Many young adults aspire to leave the world a better place than they found it. And those with considerable wealth are having an awakening.
"You start to realize: What's the point of spending money when you can think of so many better ways to use it?" says Sidney, who has helped fund a high school football field and helped pay for a local arts center, among other donations. With his latest pet project, he's aiming to do something for Mother Earth: He's building an affordable, eco-friendly housing development in Nevada.
Feeling generous but strapped for cash? You may not have the bankroll of millionaires, but you have just as much time in a day as they do. Give of yourself if not of your wallet. (See "A dozen creative donations" for more no- or low-cash ways you can give to charity.)
Whatever your financial situation, being charitable and socially conscious can be rewarding -- not to mention that it's good karma.
I like how Knight Kiplinger, the editor-in-chief of Kipinger.com, puts it: "Your own financial security depends far more than you may think on the financial, physical and spiritual health of others in your community, our nation, our world. When you share your good fortune by donating your money, time and talent to charity, you help create a stronger economy and a healthier, safer world."
More from MSN Money and Kiplinger
Young adults all but ignore 401(k)s, IRAs
The best cities for your future
Little luxuries that cost big
The quarter-life retirement plan
12 steps to become a millionaire
Turn $451 a month into a million bucks

7 ways to buy happiness By MP Dunleavey

2008-09-11T23:36:00.000-07:00

Whether it's lending seed money, taking in a pet, buying a greenhouse or trading a high salary for a better quality of life, our readers know when parting with dollars makes soul-satisfying sense
Does your money make you happy?
The team here at Women in Red headquarters has launched the 2007 Happiness Challenge -- a live, interactive contest and somewhat unscientific field experiment -- to find out how you can use your money to buy more happiness.
This month, people were asked to submit stories describing how they had spent their money in a way that made them very happy.
The only caveat was that we asked people to focus on things that had brought them lasting joy or satisfaction, as opposed to the short-lived thrill of splurging at the mall. That's because as much as I love to shop -- and I suspect I'm not alone -- economists have yet to find a connection between sales at Best Buy and true happiness.
In fact, a lifestyle based on constant consumption probably won't make you happy, says Christopher Hsee, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Graduate School of Business.
Hsee says that when we spend money on certain material goods or status items, there is ''no natural stopping point.'' There will always be a bigger house, a fancier car, a more expensive watch to go after.
When it comes to "intrinsic needs," as Hsee calls them -- including food, rest, relationships, health -- most people can naturally reach a point of satisfaction. Thus, spending more on quality of life, as opposed to stuff, appears to be a better investment.
Indeed, when people submitted their stories about how they had spent money on something that made them happy, those intrinsic values carried the day.
We ended up with seven winners in as many categories. But I want you to think of these folks not as winners but as front-runners, whose stories are excellent examples of how money can bring happiness.. Pursue growth One popular source of satisfaction can be thought of as investing in yourself.
After getting out of the military a few months ago, Monica Rivera found herself stuck in a job as a store manager. So she decided to invest $193.50, plus $96 for books, on an online class toward getting her college degree.
"I used to hate school and never realized how exhilarating it would be to turn in assignments," says Rivera, who lives in Omaha, Neb. "I know this is the beginning of a great thing, as well as a lot of expenses, but I'm looking forward to putting more time, effort and money into this one. Here's to looking toward the future!"
2. Buy back your time Spending, or surrendering, money to regain personal time is another popular investment.
Last year, Amy Weik decided it was worth giving up a raise and a promotion to have more time with her baby daughter.
Weik, who lives in the Baltimore area, decided to switch jobs -- taking a significant pay cut -- to reduce her three-hour daily commute and 12-hour-plus workdays. "What I gained was really worth the money I gave up," she says, estimating the total loss at $10,000 a year, including lost matching funds to her 401(k). "I got a life."
In addition to the sanity and the flexibility her new job provides, "I get home in time to play with my daughter and even relax a little."
The biggest payoff was when Weik and her husband learned recently that she was pregnant, "and instead of freaking out, we are only filled with joy. That is worth giving up untold amounts of money for!"
3. Don't forget 4-legged friends A striking number of people contributed remarkable stories about the joy of rescuing, fostering and adopting animals. One of my favorites:
Mary Lammé, who lives in Southern California, adopted Yaeger, an 8-year-old, 100-pound giant schnauzer who was blind. It was an investment of about $2,350 in adoption fees, vet bills and other assorted expenses during the two years he was a part of her household before he died.
"That was the best $2,350 I have spent in decades," Lammé says. Aside from the satisfaction of saving a life, she says, "over time he taught me more about life than I can probably convey."If an older, blind dog could adapt to a new owner and a new home, "how can I be scared to try something new, when I've got all my senses?" she asked.
Yaeger introduced Lammé to people in her own neighborhood and, she believes, showed her that it pays to be open to life.
"I learned that jumping in with both feet sometimes brings bigger rewards than analyzing my choices to death," she says. "We miss the old guy and don't miss the money at all -- not at any rate of return over any length of time."4. Upgrade your life Several people made a case for investments, even little ones, that ended up upgrading their entire quality of life.
"I live in Wisconsin, where the winters are brutal and spring never seems to come," says Kristin Zickuhr. "So this spring I spent about $250 on a small greenhouse and $300 for a cedar deck beneath it."
Though $550 wouldn't have gotten her a weekend in the Caribbean, Zickuhr's greenhouse brought her weeks of sunshine and warmth in the late winter and early spring. "I fixed it up with secondhand benches and a bamboo chair, and spent the spring out there reading books -- sitting quietly, soaking up the light," she says.
Considering how little she spent, "it brought a lot of happiness."
5. You gain when you give Giving to others turned out to be one of the biggest ways people spent money on happiness, and it doesn't take much.
Keri P., who preferred not to give her last name, contributes just $25 at a time to Kiva.org, an organization that lends small amounts of money to help impoverished people start or maintain their livelihoods. "I've helped people to buy rice to plant and flowers to grow, and I've given money for sewing machines and fabric and even cows," says Keri, who lives in Nashville, Tenn.
Kiva then pools these microloans so that specific individuals -- you can read their profiles on the Kiva Web site -- can accomplish their goals.
"It makes me happy that I can see exactly where my 'charity' is going," she says, adding that as people pay off their microloans, she reinvests the money in the next person. "I have a portfolio of people I've loaned to. It's almost like you know them personally."
6. Invest in bonds Another rewarding way to invest your money is in folks you love.
Several years ago, Rhodora Bustos borrowed $1,200 for plane tickets to get herself and her two young daughters out of a violent relationship. She then lived with family members while she saved money to get back on her feet, buy a car and make a down payment on a condo."There were many years there where I sacrificed, swallowed pride and started to live again, after that mind-numbing hell," says Bustos, who lives in San Joaquin, Calif. "I know that I bought myself freedom; I bought my family a good future and happiness that is immeasurable."
7. Invest in financial security There was one contributor who declined to give her real name, but I would be remiss if I didn't include her smart happiness investment -- in her own long-term financial security.
By taking profits from the sale of her house in 2005, she was able to make a 45% down payment on a condo last year, which slashed her housing costs. Even better, by lowering her overhead she has been able to redouble her savings efforts, maxing out her 401(k) and Roth IRA contributions, and socking away $20,000 in an emergency fund.
Some might argue that she would have been better off making a lower down payment and investing the difference, but sometimes the right thing to do is doing what feels right to you.
The Happiness Challenge continues What I like about that last story is that it highlights the point of this Happiness Challenge.
It's so easy to drift through life, thinking of money as a merely financial matter -- and happiness as an emotional one. What these stories demonstrate is that the two are connected, that how you spend can change your life for the better.Aside from the obvious emotional impact of putting your money where your happiness lies, is there a financial benefit, as well, when you spend less on stuff and more on life?
'Money Can Buy Happiness'
MSN Money's MP Dunleavey punctures myths about personal finance in her book "Money Can Buy Happiness: How to Spend to Get the Life You Want." Dunleavey shows readers how to abandon empty spending and make more satisfying investments. Visit her Web site to find out more.

From homeless drug user to millionaire

2008-09-11T23:27:00.000-07:00

As a teen, Bob Williamson 'got all hung up in drugs and all that nonsense.' Decades of hard work later, his company has 173 employees and sales of $26 million a year
When Bob Williamson left home at 17, he lived on the streets and did time for heroin possession. But he pulled himself together, got a job and eventually began his own business as a manufacturer of art supplies.
In 1993, Williamson started a company to develop software for cafeterias. Horizon Software International today supplies more than 15,000 schools, colleges and universities, and has annual sales of $26 million. Meal payments are made online, and parents can monitor what their kids eat at school.
Horizon, based in Atlanta, also sells to hospitals, retirement communities, big corporations and, soon, U.S. military bases around the globe -- "wherever," Williamson says, "large numbers of people need to be fed."
Williamson, 61, recently told his story to Inc.com's Andrew Park:
My childhood was tough. My father was in the Air Force. We moved around a lot. When I graduated from high school, I got all hung up in drugs and all that nonsense. I slept on the side of the road; I stayed in missions; I didn't have anything to eat. I fought a lot. I was in jail lots and lots of times.
I had been told all my life that I was worthless and would never amount to anything. I hitchhiked from New Orleans to Atlanta. I had only one change of clothes, and I didn't know anybody. My first job was cleaning mortar off bricks with a hatchet for $15 a day. Not long after that, I had a head-on collision and very nearly was killed. While I was in the hospital I read the Bible and became a Christian. After that I met my wife. We've been married 37 years.

Bob Williamson hopes his food-tracking software will help kids eat smarter.
I went to work for a paint company called Glidden. I had the worst job in the company: I was in charge of the label room, a caged-in area in the basement. But I was promoted eight times in two years to the point where I was managing special projects. I knew a lot of the chemists and taught myself about the chemistry of paint. In my spare time, I was a wildlife artist. There wasn't a good airbrush paint on the market. Everybody was using automotive lacquers. I spent about two years developing one for myself. I'd go to an art show and take my entire inventory. People lined up out of the door. Within about six months, I had distributors and customers all over the country.
I started Wildlife Artist Supply in 1977. I went from my basement to my garage to a little building. Then I went to a 50,000-square-foot warehouse. And I didn't just sell paint. We had a thick catalog, 6,000 or 7,000 items for artists, primarily mail order. It was everything you could imagine: brushes, compressors, clay. I started a magazine to teach people how to do wildlife art. We also founded the World Taxidermy Championships.
In 1988, I made a deal to take the company public. We were going to develop my business into a company like L.L. Bean. My customers were hard-core sportsmen. We were selling wildlife art supplies, so we could have just as easily sold them hunting and fishing stuff.
The next day, my controller turned in his notice. And then a whole bunch of other people quit. I discovered that all of our financial records had been destroyed, and we were $1 million in debt and $278,000 overdrawn at the bank, and my inventory was decimated. It was like a nightmare. I spent two years trying to make him pay. To this day, there's never been anybody but a Williamson reconciling our bank accounts.There are only so many artists in the world. I wanted to get into something that didn't have any limits. My sons were very gifted in computer technology, and they wanted to start a software company. I had a couple of programmers who worked for me. We had written all this software. The best was our warehouse and distribution package. I had been using it for years in my own stuff. We decided to try selling it. I thought it would be like the paint: I'd just go out there and introduce myself, distributors would pick it up, and I'd be home free. Well, I had a rude awakening. When those big boys are in there, they just stomp you. I realized I had to have a niche.
A rep who worked for me also sold systems to school lunchrooms. I went with him on one of his calls and found out that in the schools there wasn't a system like ours, and there was a tremendous need for it. So I modified my warehouse and distribution system so it would work in cafeterias. The market was too small to attract those big guys, but it was big enough for me. There are 14,000 districts, 97,000 schools. It was a really big opportunity. It seemed unlimited. Everybody's got to eat.
I hired salespeople, but they couldn't sell anything. I told my wife, "I might just do it myself." I had always detested sales and salespeople. But I found out that's what I'm really good at. I went in and told food-service directors how they could save money. They were doing everything manually, and I showed them all the things that our software could do. Within two weeks I had my first order. Then I went to another one, and I went to another one, and pretty soon I had all of Georgia. So I became our chief salesperson. You wouldn't believe how I could sell. I could sell firewood in hell.
Video on MSN Money

How to turn a hobby into a businessBeing your own boss and working from home is a dream for many -- and a reality for a few. One path toward that kind of life is to turn something you do for fun into something you do for a living.
It wasn't like I was real flush with cash. Pretty much all my career I was undercapitalized. I borrowed on my home equity and loaded up my credit cards. We started with three or four people, in 1993, and each year we would either double or triple in size. Now we have 173 employees and sales of $26 million.
We ended up developing an A-to-Z software system for managing school food services: warehousing and tracking inventory and sales. For a long time I didn't have any competition. I started looking at other markets. We developed software for colleges and universities and then hospitals and senior living communities. Whoever feeds a lot of people, that's who we go to. We have more than 15,000 installations.
In 2005, we got a $10 million deal with the U.S. military. I worked five years on that deal. Our technology will be in every dining facility worldwide for the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. Every land base, ship, submarine and remote battlefield.
It's my goal to get junk food out of the schools. Oranges instead of Snickers bars. We've developed technology so kids can buy healthful items from vending machines on their prepaid accounts. And we have software so parents can go online and view what their kids ate that day. I want to help kids make the right nutritional choices. We've got all this technology and all these schools, and we ought to be able to have an impact.

How Much Nest Egg Do You Need to Join the True Elite

2008-09-11T22:27:00.000-07:00

THE TOOL-AND-DIE MAN figured he was retiring rich. After selling an Arizona business that he'd built up over 30 years, he retreated to a 30-acre spread on the coast of Oregon and handed a $10 million investment portfolio to a big, New York-based private-banking outfit. The bank, however, seemed less than impressed. Over three years, he says, he received nary a phone call from the reps in the local office. "There was no 'How are you doing?' or 'Maybe you should buy this' or 'How about some concert tickets in Portland?' There was nothing at all." The retiree eventually reached an inescapable conclusion: "I was considered insignificant."
Yes, it takes more than $10 million to be seen as rich these days. It takes more like $25 million. Not only is that the minimum for the red-carpet treatment at a growing number of banks, it is also, in the view of many experts, the sum needed for a truly cushy retirement, one free of financial worry.
"With $25 million, you can fund college and grad school for the kids, take care of your own parents, travel, start a backyard vineyard and, well, "do whatever you want," says Maria Elena Lagomasino, of GenSpring, which helps some 600 wealthy families manage their money. After all, if you simply stashed the $25 million in municipal bonds, you'd have tax-free income of well over $1 million a year. Exactly how much money you need to retire in a time of constantly increasing life expectancies has been a hot topic of late. The Internet is teeming with calculators to help answer the question, and some of them are quite useful. But if you want to know what you'll need to really feel rich in your golden years — rather that what you'll need to make ends meet mathematically — just take a good look around.
Thanks to a global explosion of wealth over the past 10 years or so, the number of U.S. households with $1 million to $25 million in net worth has more than doubled. Households with $500 million and up have roughly tripled. "Heck, $1 billion isn't a lot of money," says Bill Sanderson, a broker of mega yachts in Palm Beach, Fla. Even if he's a little jaded from all his dealings with zillionaires, Sanderson could be on to something: Billionaires now occupy every slot on the Forbes 400, and that list, some bankers and consultants say, may be overlooking at least 100 billionaires-next-door whose financial dealings are too private to track.
More and more rich people certainly believe they need at least $25 million. In a recent survey by Chicago-based Spectrem Group, 25% of affluent folks said it takes $25 million to be rich, and another 8% said $100 million. Those two groups combined weren't all that much smaller than the 45% who cited $5 million.
While $1 million was once a sign that you had arrived, plenty of people with up to $10 million nowadays don't think of themselves as rich. Many actually consider themselves "middle class," according to survey work by the authors of a new book, The Middle-Class Millionaire. That's increasingly true as the $10 million crowd finds a new intruder in its gated communities: the weakening economy. The delinquency rate for "jumbo" home mortgages — a category that includes loans for basic McMansions — more than doubled last year, to 0.74%, according to Fitch Ratings.
True, only a tiny portion of all Americans meet our definition of rich: Just 0.20% of households have net worths of $25 million or more. But in absolute numbers, the group is considerable. If one representative from each of the 175,400 households filed into an NFL stadium at the same time, they wouldn't all find seats. In fact, they would have to go in two shifts — and even then, some 15,000 would be left in the parking lots, tailgating in their Bentleys.
And so it is that Barron's has devised a score card for folks heading toward retirement or already there. Are you rich yet? And if so, how rich? We divided true wealth into three categories. Perhaps you fall into one of them, or aspire to. It is our fondest hope that the advice in this magazine each week — and in the story "How to Avoid the Three Big Mistakes" — helps you get there swiftly, enjoyably and enduringly.
This is entry-level rich, consisting of people with net worths of $25 million to $50 million (counting primary residences). The number of households in this group increased by a factor of four from 1998 through 2006, to 125,000, according to research by Northern Trust, a leading private bank. It bases its estimates on an analysis of net-worth surveys by the Federal Reserve.
Many people move into this group on the strengths of private family businesses (a strong initial public offering doesn't hurt). Executive-level compensation can also do the trick, along with smart investing.
Over the past 10 years, therefore, aspirants to the category have been helped by low interest rates, strong markets and rising corporate profits.
The sense of relief that comes with reaching this altitude can be extraordinary, as you leave behind a host of worries — like health-care expenses. Spiraling medical costs are a big fear even for those who can afford doctors who make penthouse calls. "It's at the top of the list" of concerns among people with $10 million, says David Thompson of Phoenix Affluent Marketing Service, a consulting outfit.
At $25 million, you can not only breathe easier but can start buying some serious toys. With petty cash, you could buy a Bentley in the $200,000 range. "People at this level don't finance," says Hugh Bate, president of Chariots of Palm Beach.
While buying a mega yacht (a vessel of at least 100 feet) could bust your budget, chartering one is entirely possible. Want to splurge? Why not head to sea for a week on the Maltese Falcon, the 289-foot, high-tech sailing machine of venture capitalist Tom Perkins. It's available for $513,000 a week.
That swanky bank account is yours for the picking, too — JPMorgan, UBS, whatever. You're at the level of wealth where most of the leading private banks will start showering you and your family with attention, including access to hot hedge funds and other exclusive investments. If for any reason you don't get the treatment you think you deserve, a host of smaller banks stand ready to help. The tool-and-die entrepreneur, who is now 66 and asked that his name not be used because he doesn't like discussing his money publicly, wound up at Chicago's Harris Private Bank, where he's thoroughly content. He says he was won over when a Harris "wealth manager" arrived for their first meeting on a motorcycle, after traveling nearly five hours from the freeway to reach the retiree's retreat.
Wine & CheeseThe air gets noticeably thinner AT $50 million to $500 million in net worth — partly because you're now flying in your own jet. "The first thing people do after arriving in this group is to resolve to never to fly commercial anymore," says Lagomasino of GenSpring. The fabled Gulfstream V, which can carry more than a dozen people and fly internationally, is yours for $20 million to $50 million, depending on your preferred level of luxe.
A penny-pinching hectomillionaire might opt instead to up his or her stake in a jet through a fractional-ownership outfit. A 50% stake in a jet through NetJets, for instance, offers 400 hours of flying a year and costs $3.3 million, plus $50,000 a month for management fees. By contrast, a minimum stake of one-sixteenth offers 50 hours of flying for $417,000, plus $7,000 for management fees.
While the range of wealth in the Wine & Cheese category — $50 million to 10 times that amount — may seem wide, the members tend to have similar goals. Philanthropy, for instance, often becomes a preoccupation, since all members of the group are likely to outlive their money by wide margins. Many launch their own family foundations to carry out customized giving. The number of family foundations stood at 34,000 at last count, up from about 28,000 in 2001.
The opportunities for home ownership become particularly intriguing for the Wine & Cheese crowd. While lesser millionaires may have a nice second home in, say, the Bahamas or Europe, people with $50 million and up might well have three or four homes. And thanks to the private jet, the homes can be in places that are difficult to reach on commercial airlines, like Sun Valley, Idaho.
Your primary residence won't be too shabby, either. In New York City, if you have $50 million in the bank, you can probably afford a $15 million cooperative apartment, says prominent socialite Alice Mason of the Alice F. Mason Ltd. real-estate brokerage.
The rule of thumb, she says, is that you can buy a home that costs about a third of your net worth, assuming you don't want too much of your fortune concentrated in your home. She believes the "true rich" of Manhattan have net worths of $100 million, allowing them to comfortably buy $30 million Park Avenue apartments with several bedrooms. Champagne & CaviarWith a net worth of $500 million or more, "You can buy whatever you want" in Manhattan real estate, says Mason. Or you can buy anywhere else. Some members of this group buy $20 million homes "all over the world," says Gary Gold, realty broker to the rich at Hilton & Highland in Los Angeles. He's been as surprised as anyone by the growing number of people who qualify for the Champagne & Caviar class. Five or 10 years ago, he says, "you'd know who they are. Now, they can have vast wealth and you don't know who they are."
Leslie Mandel, chief executive of the Rich List, a marketing company, contends there are now more than 2,000 Americans with net worths of a $1 billion or more, far more than the 400 who appear on Forbes' annual list (the cutoff for that is now $1.3 billion). Some bankers figure the number of billionaires is closer to 500, but either way, it's up remarkably from the 170 of 10 years ago.
When you hit $500 million, you can at last buy a decent mega yacht. For about $50 million — and another $5 million a year in maintenance payments — you can have a 200-foot yacht with 21-foot launches, 15 crew members and five or six staterooms, says broker Sanderson.
Like realty broker Gold, he says potential customers are getting harder to pick out of the crowd. "At one boat show, a guy in cutoff shorts and a T-shirt was one of the wealthiest guys I ever met," he says. "You never know." It goes without saying that you will travel to the mega yacht in your private jet. Surprisingly, however, your kids may be getting bored with the jet. In his 2007 book about the wealth explosion, Richistan, Wall Street Journal writer Robert Frank tells the story of an 11-year-old girl who asked her father for a ride on a commercial airline even though the family owned its own jet. "I want to ride on a big plane with other people," the girl said.
The fact is, people in the Champagne & Caviar set are so rich that their money can become a burden. Everyone from your gardener to your local opera house may know about your money and want a piece of it, suggests Lagomasino. "It's kind of sad," she says. People at this level, she says, have to ask, "Do you like me or my money?"
Many Champagne & Caviar members ratchet up their philanthropy to world-saving proportions. They can scarcely get rid of their money fast enough. Bill Gates, with a net worth of $58 billion at last count, would have to spend about $10 million a day on non-appreciating items like McDonald's Happy Meals just to hold the level of his wealth constant.
Even people at some lower levels of wealth turn philanthropy into a full-time pursuit. Take John Hunting of Grand Rapids, Mich. Now 76, he inherited $140 million when a company started by his father went public 10 years ago. He set up a new foundation for environmental causes and gave it $100 million of his fortune. A bachelor with no children, he plans to give most of the rest away, too.
"I live off my income and devote myself to philanthropy," he says.
This is not to say that america's rich have stopped spoiling themselves. They absolutely haven't. This May, for instance, all 750 seats at Christie's are expected to be full as a Mark Rothko oil painting is auctioned for an expected $30 million-plus says Marc Porter, president of Christie's Americas.
And for many members of all three groups of wealth, the term "credit crunch" means nothing. American Express offers the truly rich a Centurion card with such perks as zero-gravity flights with astronaut Buzz Aldrin. A person with $500 million in net worth could charge $10 million to the card for some gambling in Monaco. But even that card holder would first undergo a credit check. Yes, Virginia, there are deadbeat billionaires.
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Optimism and our health

2008-09-11T22:22:00.000-07:00

Look for the silver lining…
Buddy DeSylva's upbeat lyrics to Jerome Kern's lovely tune provide an appealing call to a positive outlook on life, even in the face of adversity. Indeed, a cheerful disposition can help you get through the tough patches that cloud every life, but do people who see the glass half-full also enjoy better health than gloomy types who see it half-empty?
According to a series of studies from the U.S. and Europe, the answer is yes. Optimism helps people cope with disease and recover from surgery. Even more impressive is the impact of a positive outlook on overall health and longevity. Research tells us that an optimistic outlook early in life can predict better health and a lower rate of death during follow-up periods of 15 to 40 years.
Measuring optimism
To investigate optimism, scientists first needed to develop reliable ways to measure the trait. Two systems are in widespread use; one measures dispositional optimism, the other explanatory style.
Dispositional optimism depends on positive expectations for one's future. These are not confined to one or two aspects of life, but are generalized expectations for a good outcome in several areas. Many researchers use the 12-item Life Orientation Test to measure dispositional optimism.
Explanatory style is based on how a person explains good or bad news. The pessimist assumes blame for bad news ("It's me"), assumes the situation is stable ("It will last forever"), and has a global impact ("It will affect everything I do"). The optimist, on the other hand, does not assume blame for negative events. Instead, he tends to give himself credit for good news, assume good things will last, and be confident that positive developments will spill over into many areas of his life. Researchers often use either the Attributional Style Questionnaire or the Content Analysis of Verbatim Explanations method to evaluate optimism based on explanatory style.
In some studies, researchers have concentrated on the link between optimism and specific medical conditions. DeSylva and Kern tell us that a heart full of joy and gladness can banish trouble and strife—and now scientists tell us that optimism may help the heart itself.
In one study, doctors evaluated 309 middle-aged patients who were scheduled to undergo coronary artery bypass surgery. In addition to a complete pre-operative physical exam, each patient underwent a psychological evaluation designed to measure optimism, depression, neuroticism, and self-esteem. The researchers tracked all the patients for six months after surgery. When they analyzed the data, they found that optimists were only half as likely as pessimists to require re-hospitalization. In a similar study of 298 angioplasty patients, optimism was also protective; over a six-month period, pessimists were three times more likely than optimists to have heart attacks or require repeat angioplasties or bypass operations.
Optimism and blood pressure
A sunny outlook may help people recover after a cardiac procedure, but can it also reduce the risk of developing one of the major risks for cardiovascular disease—hypertension? Research conducted in Finland suggests it can. Scientists evaluated 616 middle-aged men who had normal blood pressures when the study began. Each volunteer's mental outlook was checked with questions about his expectations for the future, and each was evaluated for cardiovascular risk factors such as smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, alcohol abuse, and a family history of hypertension. Over a four-year period, highly pessimistic men were three times more likely to develop hypertension than cheerier souls, even after other risk factors were taken into account.
An American study of 2,564 men and women who were 65 and older also found that optimism is good for blood pressure. Researchers used a four-item, positive-emotion summary scale to evaluate each participant during a home visit. They also measured blood pressure, height, and weight and collected information about age, marital status, alcohol use, diabetes, and medication. Even after taking these other factors into account, people with positive emotions had lower blood pressures than those with a negative outlook. On average, the people with the most positive emotions had the lowest blood pressures.
Emotions and infections
A 2006 study explored the link between emotions and viral infections of the respiratory tract. Scientists evaluated the personality style of 193 healthy volunteers, then gave each a common respiratory virus. Subjects who displayed a positive personality style were less likely to develop viral symptoms than their less positive peers.
Optimism and heart disease
High blood pressure is an important cause of coronary artery disease. If optimism can reduce the risk of hypertension, can it also protect against developing coronary artery disease itself? To find out, scientists from Harvard and Boston University evaluated 1,306 men with an average age of 61. Each volunteer was evaluated for an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory style as well as for blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity, smoking, alcohol use, and family history of heart disease. None of the men had been diagnosed with coronary artery disease when the study began. Over the next 10 years, the most pessimistic men were more than twice as likely to develop heart disease than the most optimistic men, even after taking other risk factors into account.
Optimism and overall health
Optimism appears to protect the heart and circulation—and it's heartening to learn that it can have similar benefits for overall health.
A large, short-term study evaluated the link between optimism and overall health in 2,300 older adults. Over two years, people who had a positive outlook were much more likely to stay healthy and enjoy independent living than their less-cheerful peers.
Staying well for two years is one thing, remaining healthy for the long haul another. But for 447 patients who were evaluated for optimism as part of a comprehensive medical evaluation between 1962 and 1965, the benefits of a positive outlook were desirable indeed. Over a 30-year period, optimism was linked to a better outcome on 8 measures of physical and mental function and health.
A laughable study
Experienced clinicians know that humor is good medicine. Now researchers in Tennessee tell us it may also provide a bit of a workout. They found that genuine, voiced laughter boosts energy consumption and heart rate by 10 percent to 20 percent. That means a 10- to 15-minute belly laugh might burn anywhere from 10 to 40 calories. It's a lot of laughing for a few calories, but optimists will be tickled by the result.
Optimism and survival
It's obvious that healthy people live longer than sick people. If optimism actually improves health, it should also boost longevity—and according to two studies from the U.S. and two from the Netherlands, it does.
The first American study evaluated 839 people in the early 1960s, performing a psychological test for optimism-pessimism as well as a complete medical evaluation. When the people were rechecked 30 years later, optimism was linked to longevity; for every 10-point increase in pessimism on the optimism–pessimism test, the mortality rate rose 19 percent.
A newer U.S. study looked at 6,959 students who took a comprehensive personality test when they entered the University of North Carolina in the mid-1960s. During the next 40 years, 476 of the people died from a variety of causes, with cancer being the most common. All in all, pessimism took a substantial toll; the most pessimistic individuals had a 42 percent higher rate of death than the most optimistic.
The two Dutch studies reported similar results. In one, researchers tracked 545 men who were free of cardiovascular disease and cancer when they were evaluated for dispositional optimism in 1985. Over the next 15 years, the optimists were 55 percent less likely to die from cardiovascular disease than the pessimists, even after traditional cardiovascular risk factors and depression were taken into account.
The other study from Holland evaluated 941 men and women between the ages of 65 and 85. People who demonstrated dispositional optimism at the start of the study enjoyed a 45 percent lower risk of death during a 9-year follow-up period.
Possible mechanisms
Taken together, these studies argue persuasively that optimism is good for health. But why? What puts the silver in the silver lining?
Skeptics (or pessimists) might suggest that the effect is more apparent than real. People who are healthy are likely to have a brighter outlook than people who are ill, so perhaps optimism is actually the result of good health instead of the other way around. To counter this argument, researchers can adjust their results for pre-existing medical conditions, including physical problems such as diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension, and mental problems such as depression. The studies that made these adjustments found that medical conditions did not tarnish the benefits of a bright outlook on life. Moreover, by tracking people for 15, 30, and 40 years, scientists can minimize the potential bias of pre-existing conditions.
Another explanation is behavioral. It is possible that optimists enjoy better health and longer lives than pessimists because they lead healthier lifestyles, build stronger social support networks, and get better medical care. Indeed, some studies report that optimists are more likely to exercise, less likely to smoke, more likely to live with a spouse, and more likely to follow medical advice than pessimists. But optimism is not generally associated with a better diet or a leaner physique, and even when results are adjusted for cardiovascular risk factors, a beneficial effect of optimism persists.
In addition to behavioral advantages, optimism may have biological benefits that improve health. A 2008 study of 2,873 healthy men and women found that a positive outlook on life was linked to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, even after taking age, employment, income, ethnicity, obesity, smoking, and depression into account. In women, but not men, a sunny disposition was also associated with lower levels of two markers of inflammation (C-reactive protein and interleukin-6), which predict the risk of heart attack and stroke. Other possible benefits include reduced levels of adrenaline, improved immune function, and less active clotting systems.
Finally, heredity may explain some of the link. It is possible that genes predispose some people to optimism, and that the same genes exert a direct effect on health and longevity.
Blue skies
More study is needed to clarify the link between optimism and good health. It's likely that multiple mechanisms are involved.
Personality is complex, and doctors don't know if optimism is hard-wired into an individual or if a sunny disposition can be nurtured in some way. It's doubtful that McLandburgh Wilson was pondering such weighty questions when he explained optimism in 1915:
"Twixt the optimist and pessimist / The difference is droll / The optimist sees the doughnut / But the pessimist sees the hole.”
Today's doctors don't think much of doughnuts, but they are accumulating evidence that optimism is good for health. As you await the results of new research, do your best to seek silver linings, if not doughnuts.

Oprah Winfrey tops list of 30 most generous stars

2008-09-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

She's been named as the highest-paid TV celebrity and one of the world's most powerful women, but American talk-show host Oprah Winfrey is also a big giver, topping a list of the 30 most generous celebrities for the second year running.
The second annual list, compiled by The Giving Back Fund, a group that seeks to encourage philanthropy, put Oprah in the top slot with The Oprah Winfrey Foundation and Oprah's Angel Network spending $50.2 million in 2007 on education, health care, and advocacy for women and children worldwide.
Second place on the list, published in the latest edition of Parade magazine, went to trumpeter and A&M records co-founder Herb Alpert with The Herb Alpert Foundation spending $13 million on education, including the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.
Singer-actress Barbra Streisand came third in the list that was based on public records of donations made in 2007, with $11 million donated by The Streisand Foundation to the environment, women's issues, civil rights, AIDS research, and advocacy.
Fourth place went to Paul Newman who gave $10 million to the Scholarship for Kenyon College, his alma mater in Gambier, Ohio, while Mel Gibson was in the fifth slot, giving $9.9 million to the Holy Family Church in Malibu, California.
The next five slots on the list were taken by Hollywood glamour couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who run The Jolie-Pitt Foundation that has been actively involved in rebuilding New Orleans and refugee aid, and cyclist Lance Armstrong whose foundation raises money for cancer research.
Tied in seventh place were former basketball player Michael Jordan giving $5 million to Hales Franciscan High School, an African-American all-boys school in Chicago, and Canada's ex-ice hockey player Eric Lindros who donated $5 million to the London Health Sciences Centre, a Canadian hospital where he was treated.
Rounding out the top 10 was talk radio host Rush Limbaugh who gave $4.2 million to children of marines and law-enforcement officers killed in the line of duty.
Marc Pollick, president of the Los Angeles-based fund, said The Giving Back 30 list was set up to encourage by example, as people could not help but be influenced by the generosity of their peers.

Sarah Palin stirs passion in Hollywood

2008-09-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin represents many things Hollywood liberals love to hate, from her opposition to gay marriage to her support for gun rights, yet she possesses two key qualities they admire -- star appeal and a great script.
Accordingly, Hollywood Republicans -- often overshadowed by their left-leaning peers -- are seeking to capitalize on the celebrity of John McCain's running mate in the Nov. 4 election to generate support in a town well-known for its lavish Democratic fund-raisers and events.
"She's certainly got star appeal and is the kind of candidate that is made for Hollywood. I offered to throw her a fundraiser myself," said MGM chief Harry Sloan, one of Hollywood's most vocal Republicans.
Palin has shaken up the White House race, boosted enthusiasm among previously apathetic supporters of McCain's presidential nomination and drawn support from women, rural voters and Southerners, according to recent polls.
Sloan said there were no plans for a Palin Hollywood fundraiser yet as her campaign managers were inundated with similar requests from all over the country after her national debut at the Republican National Convention on Sept. 3.
A campaign spokesman would not disclose McCain and Palin's movements beyond one week's time, but various Hollywood executives said they heard the Arizona senator and Alaska governor would be swinging through California later this month or early next month.
Democratic candidates have long enjoyed a fundraising advantage in Hollywood. Through the end of July, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama raised $5.2 million from the entertainment industry, compared with McCain's $885,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
"It's like 10 to 1 here in terms of performing artists who support Obama versus McCain. There are a significant group of Republican supporters in Hollywood, but they're just not as outspoken," said political analyst Allan Hoffenblum.
PERSONAL STORY
Hollywood is aligning again for Obama on Sept. 16 when Barbra Streisand will sing at a Beverly Hills event expected to raise as much as $9 million.
While some Hollywood political watchers see Palin helping to mobilize greater celebrity support around Obama, they said filmmakers, producers and other entertainment executives were fascinated by the personal story of McCain's running mate, including her "hockey mom" persona and passion for hunting.
"These people are interested in drama, and Sarah Palin, a pistol-packing mother of five, is clearly an interesting character. Politically, they may not agree with Sarah Palin but they are intrigued," said Joel Fox, a political analyst.
Long-time Democrat Dan Glickman, chairman of the Motion Picture Association of America, attended the Republican National Convention. "It's important to show our organization has allies in both camps. Our issues are bi-partisan," said Glickman.
"The question is does she become a bigger draw than McCain? It's too early to draw any conclusions," he said.
Palin's arrival is encouraging to Hollywood conservatives like Robert Davi, who stars in director David Zucker's upcoming "An American Carol," a spoof about a liberal filmmaker who wanted to abolish the July 4 Independence Day holiday.
"A lot of times, conservative guys on the set feel intimidated and unable to speak their view," said Davi, describing Palin as "energizing."
For his part, Zucker, a former liberal Democrat turned conservative Republican, hopes his movie, also starring Hollywood Republican Jon Voight, could help change how Hollywood views movies with conservative themes.
"I think Hollywood is naturally drawn to making anti-American movies. This will be an unabashedly conservative piece of entertainment. If it does well, it will have a huge effect," Zucker said.
The film opens widely on Oct 3, weeks before Oliver Stone's left-leaning "W," about U.S. President George W. Bush.
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The top ten most misheard pop lyrics

2008-09-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

A survey carried out by hearing aid firm Amplifon has come up with a list of the top ten most hilariously misheard pop lyrics, with Sting topping the chart with the song 'When the World is Running Down'.
Listeners often mishear the lyrics of the song by Sting's old band The Police as "You make the best homemade stew around", instead of the original "You make the best of what's still around".
Following him were Barry Gibb and the Bee Gees, whose song 'Stayin' Alive' had its lyrics twisted into, "It's alright. It's okay. You make love the other way" from "It's alright. It's okay. You may look the other way".
Sir Paul McCartney's band 'The Beatles' were next with their 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds', the lyrics having been changed from "The girl with the kaleidoscope eyes" to "The girl with the colitis goes by".
The third slot was taken by Bono's U2 song 'Mysterious Ways', whose lyrics were turned into "Shamu the mysterious whale" from "She moves in mysterious ways."
The Beatles had the lyrics of their song 'Michelle' turned from "Michelle, ma belle, sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble, tres bien ensemble" to "Michelle ma belle, some say monkeys play piano well, play piano well."
Another song to fall victim was Freddie Mercury and Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody', which had "Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango" changed to "Scallaboosh, Scallaboosh, will you do the banned tango."
In seventh place came The Police's song 'Message In A Bottle' whose lyrics were changed from "A year has passed since I wrote my note" to "A year has passed since I broke my nose."
David Bowie had his song 'Changes', changed from "Strange fascination fascinating me" to "Strange vaccinations are killing me."
Taking the ninth place was Liam Gallagher's Oasis song 'Wonderwall', which had its lyrics turned from "You're gonna be the one that saves me" to "You're gonna be the one at Sainsbury's."
In the 10th place was English singer Kate Bush, whose 1978 hit was heard as, "Heathcliff, it's me, I'm a tree, I'm a wombat", when the actual lyrics were, "Heathcliff, it's me, I'm Cathy I've come home".

Remorseful Getty Rebuffed? Sienna's Ex Rebounding?

2008-08-02T03:39:00.000-07:00

Remorseful Getty Rebuffed? Sienna's Ex Rebounding?
Will Balthazar Getty's inability to keep his mitts off Sienna Miller's mammaries cost him his marriage? That's the word from TMZ.com, which claims the "Brothers & Sisters" actor has been "desperately" attempting -- so far unsuccessfully -- to make amends with his estranged wife, Rosetta, with whom he has four children, including a 9-month-old daughter.
Seems his supposed contrition over his camera-captured Italian grope-fest with the semifamous starlet has been met with an ice-cold shoulder, even though he's reportedly sent a "flurry" of warm–and-fuzzy e-mails professing his devotion and made repeated phone calls.
The missives are said to contain such standard sentiments as "I love you" and "I miss you," along with a hint about how he'd like to "move back into the house."
As for the calls, TMZ says Getty has been "incessantly" reaching out and trying to touch his spouse, who was reportedly "blindsided" by his liaison with Miller, but that she won't pick up the phone.
It remains unclear whether Balthazar has ended things with Sienna, who is suing over her decision to frolic in public without a shirt.
In related news, has Miller's ex, Rhys Ifans, rebounded with another blonde whose tonsils were pre-inspected by Jude Law?
The actor was photographed on Tuesday afternoon strolling around London with Kimberly Stewart, who despite her best efforts is still known solely as Rod's daughter.
The night before, says the London Sun, the pair partied it up at a local hot spot.
"Rhys was well-oiled as usual and Kimberly was having a big night out. They were dancing together and one thing led to another," a spy alleges to the tab. "They were all over each other. At one point they got pretty carried away with the kissing and the grinding."
Cut to two months ago, and the scene was much the same, only the leading man was different, with Stewart snapped sharing a smooch with Law at a nightclub and reportedly "getting frisky" with him on a stranger's lawn.
But Ifans looked anything but lovey-dovey Wednesday night, when, the Sun says, he blew up at paparazzi as they took pics of him with Stewart outside her London apartment.
"Kimberly rushed inside and urged him to follow as it all began to get heated but Rhys didn't give up," says a bystander. "He kept coming out shouting and swearing and challenging the photographers to some fisticuffs."