http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/sarah-palin-the-anti-poet_b_237935.html

Watching Sarah Palin resign the other week, I remembered how frustrating it is to listen to her speak. She uses simple words, but combines them into a fog that's hard to penetrate, out of which a few political clichés like "freedom" and "reform" appear. Most politicians, of course, obfuscate to some degree, but Palin is a master, and she does it constantly. Look at how she turns a simple statement into a mind-numbing puzzle (this is from Hart Seely's terrific collection of found poems taken from actual Sarah Palin quotes):

You know,
Small mayors,
Mayors of small towns--
Quote, unquote--
They're on the front lines.

A quick analysis reveals why understanding Palin can be such a challenge. She follows a folksy "you know" with a clear misstatement--"small mayors"--which she follows with a clarification, which she then amends with the inexplicable "quote, unquote." By the time she gets to her point--that small town mayors are on the front lines (which she could have simply said)--one is too bogged down in misstatements, repetitions, poor syntax and folksiness to know what to think. This is, no doubt, why her interviewers often look a bit stunned, jaw slightly agape, when Palin finishes answering a question: they don't have a clear idea of what she said.

When you extend Palin's speaking style (if it's even a style) to a more complex issue like the bailout, it becomes a sort of verbal Armageddon. Here's another found poem by Seely called "On the Bailout":

Ultimately,
What the bailout does
Is help those who are concerned
About the health care reform
That is needed
To help shore up our economy,
Helping the--
It's got to be all about job creation, too.

We've got to see trade
As opportunity
Not as a competitive, scary thing.
But one in five jobs
Being created in the trade sector today,
We've got to look at that
As more opportunity.
All those things.

Your head should be spinning at this point.

Julian Gough of the UK's Prospect Magazine opined facetiously this past December that "Palin is a poet, and a fine one at that. What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse." His example of this "fruitful ambiguity" is a found poem he termed "The Relevance of Africa:"

And the relevance to me
With that issue,
As we spoke
About Africa and some
Of the countries
There that were
Kind of the people succumbing
To the dictators
And the corruption
Of some collapsed governments
On the
Continent,
The relevance
Was Alaska's.

Gough elaborated on his tongue-in-cheek theory: "A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges. A great poet does not self-censor; Sarah Palin seems authentically innocent of what she is saying. She could be the most natural, visionary poet since William Blake." Great poets, of course, do self-censor (even the Beats), at least during the editing process.

Gough's editorial got me wondering if there's any legitimacy to viewing Palin's peculiar speech as a sort of poetry, but I can't think of a poetic movement with which Palin has much in common. Almost all poetry--regardless of its aims-- strives for clarity, precision and some sort of communication. Even if a good poem is difficult, or even surreal, it's carefully crafted to be that way, in order to facilitate a type of understanding. Palin's speech, intentionally or not, works against understanding. Her tangle of folksy obfuscation is the antithesis of poetry, and perhaps more than any other public figure today, she's something of an antipoet.

I do think there are similarities between Palin's statements and a Buddhist ko-an--a deliberately provocative and unanswerable question like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" But whereas the ko-an aims at enlightenment, Palin offers delightenment--if that were like, you know, a word. Quote unquote. All those things. (Sigh)

http://rss.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/_AT4qJJg81E/-Book-Reviews:-Two-Novels,-for-a-Change

Burnt Shadows: A Novel
By Kamila Shamsie
May 2009
$14.00
384 pp
Picador, Trade Paperback Original

This intricately layered novel spans three generations and several continents, highlighting the ways in which political decisions and imperial ambitions impact personal choices and lives, and how -- to put a fatalist spin on what turns out to be a determinedly optimistic book -- we are all history's playthings in the end.

The novel opens on a morning in 1945 in Nagasaki, when young Hiroko bids farewell to her British lover, Konrad. The day, as one can predict from being alerted to the time and place of the setting, does not go well. From the horrific opening, we follow Hiroko for decades, as she shows up in India and winds up in Pakistan, picking up a husband and in-laws along the way. Her knowledge of humankind and the world grows as she does, and some of the most touching passages in the novel are her reflections about individual destinies, how they shape character, and what the role of our society is in making us who we are. In reflecting on Konrad's family impending departing India in preparation for independence, Hiroko reflects:

A year or two, no more, James had told her, and then the British would go. It seemed the most extraordinary privilege--to have forewarning of a swerve in history, to prepare for how your life would curve around that bend.

Such simple yet deep insights about culture and its effects abound in the book.

The story also follows Konrad's British family as members move to America, return to Britain after India's independence, and return in various capacities to the hotbed of insurgency in the Afghan/Pakistan region.

Throughout the sweep of political tides, as relationships and connections are made, get broken, are renewed or severed, the cast of characters expands and are superbly woven in to the fabric of this beautifully written novel. Shamsie is a lyrical writer, with a keen eye for detail and a poignant way of phrasing every-day observations that feel new when she voices them.

War. Colonialism. Romance. Class issues. Tragedy. The seduction of religious extremism. The pull of secularism. Burnt Shadows has it all, with glimpses of what it's like to be a cosmopolitan Japanese woman living with the scars of one of the Second World War's World most shameful moments on her back, or -- as we experience in the final scenes -- a misunderstood Muslim captured in Canada, beginning the long journey to Gitmo.

The Story of a Marriage: A Novel
By Andrew Sean Greer
Picador: New York
April 2009
$14.00 Paperback
Published in hardback 2008
208 pages

How could I possibly explain my marriage? Anyone watching a ship from land is no judge of its seaworthiness, for the vital part is always underwater. It can't be seen.

"At the time," writes the narrator, Pearlie Cook, "my sense was that marriage was like a hotel shower: you get the temperature right and someone just beyond the wall turns on his shower and you are stung with ice water, you adjust the heat only to hear him yelp from pain, he adjusts his, and so on until you reach a tepid compromise that both of you can endure."

The time -- the early '50s -- is replete with adjustments, not just about marriage, but in arrivals home from Korean War and shifts in changing roles in society. And nowhere are these adjustments more manifest than in the Sunset district of San Francisco, where Pearlie and her veteran husband, Holland, struggle to put down roots.

The Story of a Marriage, released in April of this year in paperback, received  mountains of praise and adulation when first published in hardback in spring of 2008, deservedly so.

The novel is a simple, straightforward story on the surface--part traditional love story, part near mystery--but the author layers intricate twists delicately into the plot, playing more often than not on readers' own assumptions about roles and characters. After a couple of unexpected turns, you learn to suspend expectations and predictions and ride with the flow of this beautiful, beautiful work, which features some of the most brilliantly crafted--yet simple--passages in any novel I've read in the past couple of years.

Example: When Holland confesses to Pearlie he thought about her for years while at war, she observes, simply: "How beautiful to find you once were someone's ghost."

Or take this passage:

We think we know them, the ones we love--for can't we see right through them? Can't we see their lungs and organs hanging like grapes under glass; their hearts pulsing right on cue; their brains flashing with thoughts we can so easily predict? But I could not predict my husband. Ever time I thought at last I'd seen to the bottom of him--he clouded over.

Or this, as she ponders, from the point of view of a woman, what it must be like to be a man (and then consider that a man is authoring this work, for a double reverse dose of awesomeness):

What is it like for men? Even now I can't tell you. To have to hold up the world and never show the strain. To pretend at every moment: pretend to be strong, and wise, and good, and faithful. But nobody is strong or wise or good or faithful, not really. It turns out everyone is faking it as best they can.

The novel's plot is full of well-timed surprises, as Pearlie gradually learns more about her husband's past--which she thought she was a part of--and even more about what she, herself, is capable of sacrificing for the sake of their son. Painstaking care is taken in describing the small details of every-day life, and of the heroics of those who keep things going and make the world comfortable for others. The richness of spirit embraced by the novel is rare, and puts it in a realm beyond a simple summer beach read, although the story is full enough of mystery to qualify as a good yarn on its own.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/fred-goldring/reflections-of-a-would-be_b_239924.html

When I was a kid, I was pretty convinced I was going to become an astronaut. In fact, I was obsessed. I memorized tons of facts and figures about the space program, learned the names and backgrounds of all the astronauts in each of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space projects, and was even on the NASA mailing list.

My Dad was a mechanical engineer whose company did major work in the aerospace industry, and I spent hours pouring over insider magazines I found in his office, cutting out pictures of the latest space vehicle prototypes and hanging them in my bedroom for inspiration. I constructed, painted and launched just about available every Estes model rocket, including the huge Big Bertha I launched in my 6th grade science class at Penn Wynne School. After a successful countdown and launch, the entire class ended up running about a quarter-mile down the street chasing the rocket to retrieve it as the wind carried the parachute far away from our athletic field, much to the chagrin of our teacher, Mr. Fritz. I spent countless hours doodling pictures of rockets, astronauts, and the LEM, the lunar landing module, which I thought was just the coolest alien-looking thing I had ever seen, imagining what it would be like to be one of the astronauts landing on the moon for the first time. My crowning achievement was building and painting a 4-foot Revell plastic model kit of the Saturn V rocket, which I proudly displayed in my room.

So imagine how I felt when I learned that the moon landing was going to happen on July 20, 1969 -right smack dab in the middle of when I would be at summer camp at Camp Saginaw in Oxford, Pennsylvania - where we didn't have a television set. I would be missing what to me would be the most important event of my then-young life. As much as I loved camp, I told my parents that I would be willing to forego going that summer just so I could watch the moon landing live. Luckily, a number of the counselors and older campers didn't want to miss it either so the camp director, Herb Cohen, arranged for some televisions to be brought in for the evening. So those of us who were interested were allowed for just this one special occasion to stay up late in order to be able to watch the moon landing as it happened.

Although it was forty years ago, I can remember that night as if it were yesterday. Walking up the hill to the camp cafeteria from my bunk in my pajamas in the still, humid night to the sound of chirping crickets and the lights of fireflies, ripe with anticipation. A bunch of us crowded in the dimly lit cafeteria around the small black and white TV sets with the fuzzy pictures being beamed in live from the moon. The feeling of disbelief, wonder and amazement upon seeing Neil Armstrong take that "One Small Step For Man, One Giant Leap For Mankind". The spontaneous, emotional eruption of hoots, hollers and backslaps. And walking back to my bunk in the late night when it was over, looking up at the moon on the starry night thinking to myself, "wow, they're actually up there!"

Many years later, on the day I finished my last law school final exam, I convinced my classmate and friend, Jeff Shapiro, to drive with me up to Cape Canaveral from Miami to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle. We drove out the night before, and slept in lounge chairs we had set up on the shore directly across from the launch site a couple of miles away. We awoke to the sounds of a three-ring circus as hundreds of others had somehow joined us during the night. It's hard to describe what it was like to actually experience the sights and sounds of a real rocket taking off right in front of me after years of only watching launches on TV and shooting off model rockets. For a day, I was that young kid again.

Last year, I had the honor of meeting one of my childhood heroes, Captain Gene Cernan, at the Seoul Digital Forum we were both attending. Captain Cernan was the last man on the moon as Commander of Apollo 17 (and previously was the second man to walk in space as part of the Gemini 9 mission and also flew Apollo 10). What most people don't realize is that Captain Cernan actually spent much more time on the moon than the Apollo 11 astronauts, sleeping for 3 nights on the lunar surface in the LEM. Watching him talk about that experience, and seeing the look in his eyes as he spoke, it was clear he had been deeply and permanently moved by it. What seemed to have affected him most was his being able to look back at our small, blue planet from his unique perspective on the moon and truly realize that we all live together on it as one.

I kept the New York Times from July 20, 1969 and later framed it along with the first-day covers with the stamps commemorating some of the anniversaries of the moon landing which for years I hung in my office. Although I obviously never did follow my dream to become an astronaut, the "can do" attitude of our country during that time clearly affected me in a major way. So for those that say reaching for the stars is a waste of time and money when we have other far more pressing endeavors back home to deal with, I beg to differ. There is nothing more important than inspiring young people to think big and believe that they can do anything - even what is seemingly impossible - if they just put their minds to it. And by looking up and out, rather than just in and around, we are reminded of something we all too easily forget - the commonality of what all we all share on this planet. On July 20, 1969, regardless of our nationality, religion, age or creed, we all shared in something amazing as citizens of the earth. On the 40th anniversary of this remarkable event, it is certainly a bond worth remembering.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gretchen-rubin/4-steps-to-a-happier-you_b_232907.html

I realized that I've never done a post about my Four Splendid Truths, although I think about them all the time.

I named these realizations the "Four Splendid Truths" because I was reading a lot about Buddhism when I started to come up with the list.

I get a tremendous kick out of the numbered lists that pop up throughout Buddhism: the Triple Refuge, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, the eight auspicious symbols: parasol, golden fish, treasure vase, lotus, conch shell, endless knot, victory banner, and dharma wheel. (After I formulated the First Splendid Truth, I just had to assume that I'd end up with more than one.)

Each one of these truths sounds fairly obvious and straightforward, but each was the product of tremendous thought. Take the Second Splendid Truth - it's hard to exaggerate the clarity I gained when I managed to identify it. Here they are:

First Splendid Truth
To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

Second Splendid Truth
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy;
One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

Third Splendid Truth
The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)

Fourth Splendid Truth
You're not happy unless you think you're happy.
corollary: You're happy if you think you're happy.
[Many argue the opposite case. John Stuart Mill, for example, wrote, "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so." I disagree.]

Now I'm trying to come up with my personal eight auspicious symbols for happiness. Let's see -- bluebird, ruby slippers, dice, blood, roses...hmmm. I will have to keep thinking about that.

* Ah, I love the blog Zen Habits.

* If you like the blog, you'll love the book! Pre-order The Happiness Project.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/sarah-palin-the-anti-poet_b_237935.html

Watching Sarah Palin resign the other week, I remembered how frustrating it is to listen to her speak. She uses simple words, but combines them into a fog that's hard to penetrate, out of which a few political clichés like "freedom" and "reform" appear. Most politicians, of course, obfuscate to some degree, but Palin is a master, and she does it constantly. Look at how she turns a simple statement into a mind-numbing puzzle (this is from Hart Seely's terrific collection of found poems taken from actual Sarah Palin quotes):

You know,
Small mayors,
Mayors of small towns--
Quote, unquote--
They're on the front lines.

A quick analysis reveals why understanding Palin can be such a challenge. She follows a folksy "you know" with a clear misstatement--"small mayors"--which she follows with a clarification, which she then amends with the inexplicable "quote, unquote." By the time she gets to her point--that small town mayors are on the front lines (which she could have simply said)--one is too bogged down in misstatements, repetitions, poor syntax and folksiness to know what to think. This is, no doubt, why her interviewers often look a bit stunned, jaw slightly agape, when Palin finishes answering a question: they don't have a clear idea of what she said.

When you extend Palin's speaking style (if it's even a style) to a more complex issue like the bailout, it becomes a sort of verbal Armageddon. Here's another found poem by Seely called "On the Bailout":

Ultimately,
What the bailout does
Is help those who are concerned
About the health care reform
That is needed
To help shore up our economy,
Helping the--
It's got to be all about job creation, too.

We've got to see trade
As opportunity
Not as a competitive, scary thing.
But one in five jobs
Being created in the trade sector today,
We've got to look at that
As more opportunity.
All those things.

Your head should be spinning at this point.

Julian Gough of the UK's Prospect Magazine opined facetiously this past December that "Palin is a poet, and a fine one at that. What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse." His example of this "fruitful ambiguity" is a found poem he termed "The Relevance of Africa:"

And the relevance to me
With that issue,
As we spoke
About Africa and some
Of the countries
There that were
Kind of the people succumbing
To the dictators
And the corruption
Of some collapsed governments
On the
Continent,
The relevance
Was Alaska's.

Gough elaborated on his tongue-in-cheek theory: "A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges. A great poet does not self-censor; Sarah Palin seems authentically innocent of what she is saying. She could be the most natural, visionary poet since William Blake." Great poets, of course, do self-censor (even the Beats), at least during the editing process.

Gough's editorial got me wondering if there's any legitimacy to viewing Palin's peculiar speech as a sort of poetry, but I can't think of a poetic movement with which Palin has much in common. Almost all poetry--regardless of its aims-- strives for clarity, precision and some sort of communication. Even if a good poem is difficult, or even surreal, it's carefully crafted to be that way, in order to facilitate a type of understanding. Palin's speech, intentionally or not, works against understanding. Her tangle of folksy obfuscation is the antithesis of poetry, and perhaps more than any other public figure today, she's something of an antipoet.

I do think there are similarities between Palin's statements and a Buddhist ko-an--a deliberately provocative and unanswerable question like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" But whereas the ko-an aims at enlightenment, Palin offers delightenment--if that were like, you know, a word. Quote unquote. All those things. (Sigh)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-kaus/john-king-should-ask-sen_b_239569.html

UPDATE King asked Sessions no such questions and in agreed with both Leahy and Sessions that the hearings were excellent. King told leahy and sessions that "both of you have received wide acclaim." On what planet?

Hey John King*. how about making some news?

We have spent the past week listening to Alabama Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III condescend to Sonia Sotomayor. As Bill Maher said Friday, it was like the white male Republicans suspected the cleaning lady from their club of stealing something.

Let's hope that Judge Sotomayor is hiding an agenda to counteract the one that John Roberts hid
Sunday, Senator Sessions is on State of the Union and John King can turn the tables. King should ask Sessions whose side he was on when George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door. Sessions would have been 17 when this occurred. I guarantee that Sessions cannot honestly answer this question because he was then, and continues too be, a racist.

Sessions has not been questioned properly since his own unsuccessful hearings when he was nominated for a judgeship. In those hearings, witnesses testified that Sessions had called a white civil rights attorney a "disgrace to his race" and referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) as "un-American" and "Communist-inspired" and that they "forced civil rights down the throats of people."

Cory Doctorow has posted an educational slide show. One of the interesting items is a Nina Totenberg script from those hearings in which she states that Sessions never denied making those statements.

On a more serious note, as Alabama Attorney General, Sessions unsuccessfully (four hour verdict) prosecuted civil rights workers for voter fraud to the exclusion of investigating whites for the same offense.

Why should Sessions get a pass after three ridiculous days of "wise Latina" nonsense?

*CNN's twitter feed seemed to say that John King was on vacation. I changed my original post from King to Wolf Blitzer, but it turned out to be King.

King adds a column that is equally superficial. I guess that is why I watch Rachel Maddow and the Daily Show, but frankly, I would rather watch Sean Hannity than this pablum.

http://crooksandliars.com/mike-finnigan/mikes-blog-roundup-252

Obsidian Wings: Farewell, Hilzoy

skippy the bush kangaroo: The same Republicans who scoffed at the CBO during the Bush administration's crazed spending and tax cutting, now revere the office's prognostications

AverageBro: Mr. "I Been Had" is back

A Tiny Revolution: Interview with Wendell Potter, a former head of corporate communications for CIGNA who finally listened to his conscience, left behind the blood money, and started talking about the evil he was doing as a shill for the health care denial industry.

Bitch Ph.D.: PUMAS are all about the white ladies

Danger Room: Company denies its Robots feed on the dead

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/lobbyists-pay-homeless-pe_n_239914.html

CNN reports on lobbyists recruiting homeless people to stand in line for them on Capitol Hill. The man they interview is surprisingly earnest about his duties.

WATCH:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/leahy-to-gop-stop-the-rac_n_239905.html

The two top officials on the Senate Judiciary Committee left niceties at the door when they held a joint appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday.

Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) accused the Republican Party of playing "racial politics" with the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, even declaring that the leaders of the GOP had called her a "bigot" and the "head of the KKK."

"I have no idea how many [Republican votes] she'll get in committee or on the floor," said Leahy. "But she will have Republican votes... She deserves it. Now, I understand [Senator] Mitch McConnell and I've worked with Senator McConnell on different things. But like the other leaders of the Republican Party, he came out very, very early against her and he doesn't want to change his mind. You had one leader of the Republican Party call her the equivalent of the head of the Ku Klux Klan. Another leader of the Republican Party called her a bigot. To Senator McConnell's credit, he has not used those things, but the leadership of the Republican Party came out against her long before we ever had the hearing, long before they had a chance to look at her record. I think that's unfair."

"I hope we don't go back to the day when we used to put African-Americans up for confirmation and say yes, but you belong to the NAACP so we're really suspicious of you," Leahy added later, referencing the Republican concerns with Sotomayor's involvement with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund. "Come on, stop the racial politics."

Leahy later explained that he was referring to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich when he accused the GOP of labeling Sotomayor a bigot.

It was a fiery segment, during which Leahy talked over the protests of his colleague Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the committee's ranking Republican member. When the Alabama Republican finally got the chance to speak, he pleaded that Leahy had greatly distorted the tone and tenor of the hearings.

"Pat, I want to correct something," Sessions said. "No Republican leader said she was a bigot. You've overstated that. There's nothing wrong with us asking about her personal views about positions, legal positions that she took as a member of any organization. That's a normal thing to do. And I don't think that was unfair. She said that she thought she was fairly treated. Other commentators, objective leaders, civil rights leaders have said that. We gave our absolute best to make sure this was a fair hearing, but it had to be vigorous. We had to ask about things that people cared about, her speeches, her prior pleadings that she did and some of her decisions, which are troubling. But Pat, you gave us a fair hearing. I appreciate that. A lot of people felt we were pretty tight on time, but you -- when the hearing came up, we had an opportunity. And I appreciate that."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/orszag-republicans-trying_n_239888.html

President Obama's Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, accused Senate Republicans on Sunday of trying to kill health care reform by dragging out the legislative process.

Appearing on CNN's State of the Union, Orszag labeled the attempts to push back the health care reform timeline as a "typical Washington bureaucratic game of if you don't have a better alternative just delay in hopes that that kills something."

"We want to get this done by August and we think we can," he added. "There are those that are advocating delay just as a desperation move to try and kill this."

Orszag stressed that not everyone calling for delay had sinister motives. The moderate Democrats in the Senate and Blue Dog Democrats in the House, he said, were "actively participating in the debate and that is great." This past week, Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.), along with Independent Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and Maine Republicans Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins signed a letter asking to slow down the health care reform debate.

Nevertheless, from Orszag's CNN appearance, it seemed clear that the administration thinks pushing back the health care timeline amounts to a death sentence for reform. On Sunday, the OMB Director repeated that the White House's goal was to have legislation passed through both the House and the Senate by the time both chambers break for August recess.

"It's still the goal," he said. "We think we can make that. We are working towards that."

He added that the White House had been in discussion over the weekend with many of the recalcitrant House Democrats and Senate Finance Committee members to hammer out some sort of agreement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/kelly-hildebrandt-marries_n_239873.html

Kelly Hildebrandt's Facebook search for her own name turned up just one match, a young man from Texas. Intrigued, she sent him a message, and the rest as they say, is history.

The pair appeared together with NBC's Jenna Wolfe:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/obama-ally-throws-cold-wa_n_239869.html

During the course of the presidential campaign, Governor Brian Schweitzer (D-Mont.) was often rumored to be on Barack Obama's vice presidential short list. At the Democratic National Convention he gave one of the most crowd-pleasing speeches -- a blue-collared take on Democratic politics with a healthy dose of acid-tongue pokes at John McCain's wealth.

Now, however, Schweitzer isn't doing the president any favors, becoming one of the highest-profiled Democrats outside of Washington to throw cold water on health care reform.

Appearing on C-SPAN Sunday morning, Schweitzer said that the legislation currently making its way through Congress would unfairly burden states by requiring them to pay for a portion of the expanded coverage (at a time when budgets are tight) and pushing for an growth in Medicaid.

"I have a lot of concerns as a governor," Schweitzer said from the National Governors Association meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi. "Now, let me lay this out, there are only a few states that have a budget surplus, we are one them, we have about $400 million in cold hard cash in the bank. Very few states have got that. And we got there through good fiscal management. You can't put more things on your plate than you can afford to pay for. Now what is happening in Congress right now, things that disturb us as governors, is first they are looking at the rules and one of the proposals would be that the way we are going to pay for a portion of this health care is we will turn to the states and ask them to bond, to pay for some of the health care. They want to do some financial trickery, simply stated, we can't afford what we are doing today so we will get the states to borrow some money. Well we are not going to do that, because it is going to hurt our bond rating. We as states, we have as prizes our bond rating and this would tend to decrease our bond rating. By the way, the federal government, if Congress wants to have a health care program, then they need to pay for it. They can't dump it back on the states."

"The second problem we have is that one of the least effective programs in terms of health care, in the history of this country, is something called Medicaid," the Montana Democrat added. "About 20 percent of America is on a Medicaid program and they would like to shift it and grow it to somewhere around 25 or 30 percent. In Montana's case alone it would add 115 million dollars to our costs in our state, as our match. Now Medicaid is a system that isn't working, almost everyone agrees. But what Congress intends to do is increase the number [of people] on Medicaid so they could do it for the cheap. It is not working for anybody."

Fortunately for the Obama White House, Schweitzer ultimately won't have a vote on health care legislation. But his skepticism doesn't help the administration's argument that Washington is out of touch with the American public. And having a prominent ally express doubts publicly is not something the president wants right now. And it wouldn't be much of a shocker if Schweitzer were to get a call sometime this week from his former gubernatorial colleague, current HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Or maybe even Obama himself.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gretchen-rubin/4-steps-to-a-happier-you_b_232907.html

I realized that I've never done a post about my Four Splendid Truths, although I think about them all the time.

I named these realizations the "Four Splendid Truths" because I was reading a lot about Buddhism when I started to come up with the list.

I get a tremendous kick out of the numbered lists that pop up throughout Buddhism: the Triple Refuge, the Noble Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, the eight auspicious symbols: parasol, golden fish, treasure vase, lotus, conch shell, endless knot, victory banner, and dharma wheel. (After I formulated the First Splendid Truth, I just had to assume that I'd end up with more than one.)

Each one of these truths sounds fairly obvious and straightforward, but each was the product of tremendous thought. Take the Second Splendid Truth - it's hard to exaggerate the clarity I gained when I managed to identify it. Here they are:

First Splendid Truth
To be happier, you have to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.

Second Splendid Truth
One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy;
One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

Third Splendid Truth
The days are long, but the years are short. (click the link to see my one-minute movie)

Fourth Splendid Truth
You're not happy unless you think you're happy.
corollary: You're happy if you think you're happy.
[Many argue the opposite case. John Stuart Mill, for example, wrote, "Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so." I disagree.]

Now I'm trying to come up with my personal eight auspicious symbols for happiness. Let's see -- bluebird, ruby slippers, dice, blood, roses...hmmm. I will have to keep thinking about that.

* Ah, I love the blog Zen Habits.

* If you like the blog, you'll love the book! Pre-order The Happiness Project.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-lundberg/sarah-palin-the-anti-poet_b_237935.html

Watching Sarah Palin resign the other week, I remembered how frustrating it is to listen to her speak. She uses simple words, but combines them into a fog that's hard to penetrate, out of which a few political clichés like "freedom" and "reform" appear. Most politicians, of course, obfuscate to some degree, but Palin is a master, and she does it constantly. Look at how she turns a simple statement into a mind-numbing puzzle (this is from Hart Seely's terrific collection of found poems taken from actual Sarah Palin quotes):

You know,
Small mayors,
Mayors of small towns--
Quote, unquote--
They're on the front lines.

A quick analysis reveals why understanding Palin can be such a challenge. She follows a folksy "you know" with a clear misstatement--"small mayors"--which she follows with a clarification, which she then amends with the inexplicable "quote, unquote." By the time she gets to her point--that small town mayors are on the front lines (which she could have simply said)--one is too bogged down in misstatements, repetitions, poor syntax and folksiness to know what to think. This is, no doubt, why her interviewers often look a bit stunned, jaw slightly agape, when Palin finishes answering a question: they don't have a clear idea of what she said.

When you extend Palin's speaking style (if it's even a style) to a more complex issue like the bailout, it becomes a sort of verbal Armageddon. Here's another found poem by Seely called "On the Bailout":

Ultimately,
What the bailout does
Is help those who are concerned
About the health care reform
That is needed
To help shore up our economy,
Helping the--
It's got to be all about job creation, too.

We've got to see trade
As opportunity
Not as a competitive, scary thing.
But one in five jobs
Being created in the trade sector today,
We've got to look at that
As more opportunity.
All those things.

Your head should be spinning at this point.

Julian Gough of the UK's Prospect Magazine opined facetiously this past December that "Palin is a poet, and a fine one at that. What the philistine media take for incoherence is, in fact, the fruitful ambiguity of verse." His example of this "fruitful ambiguity" is a found poem he termed "The Relevance of Africa:"

And the relevance to me
With that issue,
As we spoke
About Africa and some
Of the countries
There that were
Kind of the people succumbing
To the dictators
And the corruption
Of some collapsed governments
On the
Continent,
The relevance
Was Alaska's.

Gough elaborated on his tongue-in-cheek theory: "A great poet needs to leave open the door between the conscious and unconscious; Sarah Palin has removed her door from its hinges. A great poet does not self-censor; Sarah Palin seems authentically innocent of what she is saying. She could be the most natural, visionary poet since William Blake." Great poets, of course, do self-censor (even the Beats), at least during the editing process.

Gough's editorial got me wondering if there's any legitimacy to viewing Palin's peculiar speech as a sort of poetry, but I can't think of a poetic movement with which Palin has much in common. Almost all poetry--regardless of its aims-- strives for clarity, precision and some sort of communication. Even if a good poem is difficult, or even surreal, it's carefully crafted to be that way, in order to facilitate a type of understanding. Palin's speech, intentionally or not, works against understanding. Her tangle of folksy obfuscation is the antithesis of poetry, and perhaps more than any other public figure today, she's something of an antipoet.

I do think there are similarities between Palin's statements and a Buddhist ko-an--a deliberately provocative and unanswerable question like "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" But whereas the ko-an aims at enlightenment, Palin offers delightenment--if that were like, you know, a word. Quote unquote. All those things. (Sigh)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-jarvis/charity-or-collaboration_b_239830.html

The New York Times has accepted free stories from ProPublica. It has endorsed a journalist getting help from the public via Spot.US to underwrite a story that might appear at NYTimes.com. And Poynter's Bill Mitchell says the paper is even wondering about foundation support for its work (but for perspective, I suspect one could safely say The Times is wondering about any possible economic model of support).

All this is being viewed as charity: giving The Times gifts directly or indirectly to produce journalism in its pages, physical or digital.

I think that's looking at it - and at The Times - the wrong way. I prefer to think of it as a few of many possible forms of collaboration to create journalism that may or may not appear in the paper (and to which it may or may not link). I prefer to think of the paper as the organizer of networks of journalism.

Thinking that way, then when The Local, the hyperlocal blog at The Times, asked for a volunteer to cover a meeting it wasn't planning to cover, you could say that it was asking for a charitable act. I'd rather say The Times was opening up to collaboration.

And let's say that a local blogger covers the meeting and reports on it on her own blog and The Local takes advantage of that by aggregating, curating, quoting, and/or linking to that report. The net result is the same but that's not charity. It's cooperation.

Go one step farther: Say that The Times lends a video or sound recorder to that blogger so she can better report on the meeting and provide more coverage to her and The Local's readers. Is that support an act of charity to the blogger? No, it's collaboration. (By the way, this will be happening when CUNY provides equipment and training to members of the communities in The Local's footprint as part of a Carnegie Corporation grant we just received.)

When we define The Times solely as a commercial institution that produces and controls an asset - the news - then any provision of money or effort to it appears to be charity.

But when we define the news as the creation of a larger ecosystem and The Times as just one member of it, then help - money, effort, equipment, training - instead appears to be collaboration.

And once one looks at the ecosystem through the lens of collaboration, then many other things are possible: then The Times (or any other member) could organize many members to work together to produce journalism no one of them could do alone. Then we start to account for the value of the work of the entire news ecosystem not based solely on the size of the staff of the last newsroom standing in the community; we open up to volunteer and entrepreneurial effort that can expand the scope of journalism far, far past what that one newsroom could do.

So I say that The Times and other papers opening up to the work of others supported by others is not an act of begging and charity if it is one bit of evidence of opening up to collaboration.

Now having said all that, I'm aware of the issues that are raised by giving of any sort and Clark Hoyt's and Bill Mitchell's columns address many of them: the potential for influence from the donor leading the list. There can also be tax questions (only a gift to a 501c3 is a charitable deducation and when is value received by a for-profit company taxable income?). There are labor delicacies when volunteer take on the work formerly done by staffers (there's one of the reasons that professional journalists sneer at citizen journalism; it's not always about high standards but instead about self-interest).

Still, I say it's important to open up journalism and its institutions and players to many kinds of collaboration in a new ecosystem. That cooperation should extend to the commercial - revenue - side of the equation as well, as advertising and ecommerce networks enable each member of the ecosystem to gain more value together than they could alone. This is a key assumption of our work at the CUNY New Business Models for News Project.

One more caution: As we debate and explore the opportunities for charitable and volunteer support of journalism, it is important - critical - that we not declare surrender against the hope that journalism can be sustained in profitable enterprises. This is the keystone of our NewBizNews work at CUNY. We will estimate how much charitable support is possible in a market and what it can buy. We will also emphasize the importance of including volunteer effort in viewing the value of the ecosystem. But we also stipulate that none of that - not foundations, not the goodwill work of bloggers and neighbors - will support the level of reporting and journalism a community needs. And we believe that the market will support journalism - even the growth of journalism - commercially. We are working on models to examine how both the revenue and efficiency of enterprises in the ecosystem - news organizations to bloggers - can be optimized (we'll be putting out models as we get closer to our first August deadline).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/tv-soundoff-sunday-talkin_n_239831.html

Hello, fellow Muggles, and welcome to this week's edition of your Sunday Morning Liveblog, your weekly, occasionally witty rundown of the week in political monkeyshines and the Hollow Men who rend their garments over it, whilst you sleep off your Saturday Night USA. My name is Jason, and I will be your sherpa. Today! Well...today we'll have many of the same topics as last week, and, indeed, many of the same conversations. But today! We'll also have the people on our teevee attempt to wrap themselves in the corpse of Walter Cronkite. It could get disgusting, watching all these people who fail miserably at living up to his legacy claim to be inspired by him. But that is what our Gag Reflexes are for, and why we keep a fresh paper bag by our sides each morning, when these shows come on. (I also use mine in case the kitties vomit, something which may or may not be related to these shows, I don't know, cats, they tend to vomit.)

Anyway, as always, leave a comment, send a missive my way via email -- like fans of Pat Buchanan and Glenn Beck do! (I have learned this week, for example, that I am a "dirty Jew" who should "kill myself" which sounds delightful, God bless you, fans of Pat Buchanan and Glenn Beck, I have decided to become a Kabbalist.) -- or follow me on the Twitters. Let us relax, sit back, and enjoy our first show, FOX NEWS SUNDAY AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

So, right off the bat we have Peter Orszag, so, I hope you ladies are up early. I know that many of you can barely contain yourselves when he busts out the mad wonk and starts discussing budget figures and cost overruns.

Wallace is all: "Damn, Peter, Douglas Elmendorf thinks your health care reform package is going to be a massive turdie, budget wise!" Orszag says, "Well we won't sign a bill that expands the deficit." (I assume he means long term.) He says that the CBO analysis looks good and that there are other parts of the program coming into play that will lower costs. Additional steps that will make it "better than deficit neutral" include AWESOME COMMISSIONS OF DOCTORS COMMISSIONING.

What about the crazy TAXAPOCALYPSE! About 1.2% of America will have to pay higher taxes! Like they do in Denmark! By the way, Denmark: REALLY GOOD SOCIAL POLICY THERE.

What will happen to the teensy portion of small businesses, that may have to pay extra, so that people can have the sort of health care that will keep them from dying. Orszag points out that they are working to save the economy so that people will buy the products made and dols by small businesses. I'm guessing the whole LESS PEOPLE DYING OF TREATABLE ILLNESSES AND INJURIES will probably boost their bottom line as well.

What about taxing health care benefits? Ruled out? "It's something the President doesn't favor." Because of unions? UHM, HOPEFULLY BECAUSE HE MOCKED HIS ELECTION OPPONENT FOR PROPOSING IT, REPEATEDLY.

Wallace then asks if a commitee of doctors will be telling health care providers WHO WILL LIVE AND WHO WILL DIE, like a health care Star Chamber from the depths of Roger Ailes paranoid fantasia? Orszag says, "that's the biggest canard out there," and that's saying something, because there are some BIG CANARDS out there.

Is Peter Orszag prepared TODAY, to tell America that the public funded health plan will not include abortion? He's "not prepared to rule it out." Great news for women, I guess! No one is prepared to rule out your personhood!

Why was Peter Orszag so WRONG about unemployment numbers? He says, "almost everyone was wrong about the economy." He says that you cannot go from massive losses to massive gains in a fingersnap. "It's going to take time to work our way out of this."

Meanwhile, Judd Gregg! Remember when this guy was almost in the administration? What a wild time in our lives that was. Anyway, guess what, he thinks Doug Elmendorf is a wise and sage individual. "Those were pretty damning words," he says.

Gregg says that taxpayers should not have to pay for abortions, if they find it immoral. OKAY, THEN! GIVE ME MY IRAQ WAR MONEY BACK, PLEASE?

Wallace asks if the status quo on health care is acceptable, Gregg says no, and the GOP have three plans that they are pretending will work. Gregg says that the current plans "put bureaucracy between you and your doctor and will lead to rationing in the end," which makes me want whatever health care plan Gregg has, because my health care plan right now puts a massive bureaucracy between me and my doctor and which rations health care out the yangles, and which keeps me in dread that one day there's going to be something put on my chart somewhere that will cause an alarm to go off, dropping me from the crappy health care I do have. See, I'd listen to Gregg and people like him if they'd stop pretending that American health care is something that it isn't.

I think though, that Gregg's health care plan is called, Being An Impossibly Rich Lawmaker With Many Many Lobbyists To Orally Stimulate On A Daily Basis.

Anyway, their plan would be for young people to stay indestructible, and pay one third of their alreay tiny incomes for catastrophic care, because who needs good preventative care. Also, the plan is for our streets to be clogged with dessperate and sick illegal immigrants. It's a blighted hellscape of the dead and dying and impoverished, but Judd Gregg will still enjoy gold-plated care, thanks to me.

Anyway, Panel Time! I'm assuming the Buzz Aldrin section was more celebratory than newsy. And anyway, Charles Krauthammer is on today, so this will get INTERPLANETARY real quick.

One thing I share with Bill Kristol, and sympathize with him on, is the inability to smile naturally on camera when introduced. Like him, I sort of make this, "I'm holding back some serious farts" face, which I think is preferable to Juan Williams' "Look at meeee! I am farting!" face or Krauthammer's "I, myself, am a collection of noxious gas that has somehow formed a rubbery skin" face.

WHERE ARE WE ON HEALTH CARE? Kristol says the Democrats' plan "is in trouble." This, of course, means that it's in good shape. "What is the case for doing it this year?" Kristol bitches. UHM, the MORTALITY OF POOR PEOPLE?

Liasson says the White House might "lose the narrative." OH NO! THE NARRATIVE! FIND IT! HURRY! This great nation needs our narratives found! We are a giant KINDLE OF POLITICS! I hope Walter Cronkite cuts a deal with Jesus to spit celestial tar at every newsperson who worried about narratives.

Meanwhile, Krauthammer says that everyone is getting taxed and that Elmendorf "exploded the entire rationale of his plan." Juan Williams HAS A SAD because he's been hugging conservadems this week and they are SAD PANDAS, who only want to pass something that won't really work but that comes larded with the magical powers of BIPARTISANSHIP, which makes everything better.

Then Williams yells the word "point" about a million times! "The point is this is not the point, point point McPoint!"

Liasson says that this calls the legislative strategy of the White House into question. DUH.

Kristol says the country will not get a health care bill, and that's great for the country, because maybe some people will finally learn to achieve immortality by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

Meanwhile, OLD MEN WHO LOOK LIKE LESBIANS PARTY WITH SOTOMAYOR. What does everything mean? Wallace is like, "Wow, she contradicted everything she ever said about race!" which is something you can say if "everything she said" is NOT an entire career of legal judgements and instead is the three words "wise Latina woman." By the way, if the Congress says "wise Latina woman" fifty times, area Five Guys will be giving out free hamburgers, so let's keep our fingers crossed that our Congress is filled with dim-bulb morons who glom onto one idea, milk it to death, and then brainlessly stumble to their next committee assignment as powerful lobbyists tell them what to say, because they are hollow sacks of human filth but HEY FREE HAMBURGERS MAYBE SO PLEASE KEEP SAYING "WISE LATINA WOMAN" YOU TERRIBLE HUSKS!

Liasson says Sotomayor did all the things that SCOTUS nominees do, which is humor this jackasses in the Senate by allowing them to ask their idiot questions, and do nothing controversial.

Wallace asks, "Have these hearing become a waste of time?" YES. And maybe if you TURNED THE CAMERAS OFF, which just encourage these popinjays to MUG FOR THEM, it would become valuable again. THINK ABOUT IT.

Anyway, Juan WIlliams says the GOP did a "good job attacking Sotomayor, making her out to be a quota queen." YES. SHREWD LEGISLATIVE STRATEGY. That will serve them well with all the Latina women Obama is sure to nominate.

Naturally, Bill Kristol thinks the value of Walter Cronkite has to do with the ratings he got. So does Liasson. Krauthammer says something I'm not even remotely interested in transcribing. Williams says he didn't pander and was a real newsman and "we all honor that," even though no one on this panel actually does honor that, GAH SHUT UP ALL OF YOU.

FACE THE NATION

Health care reform! Are discussions of health care reform the nations' leading sickness? I think maybe! If not then, then now, because it's Charles Rangel and Orrin Hatch, z-listers both. Harry Smith is all: HAVE YOU BOTCHED THIS JOB? Rangel says, no, "at the end of the day, we'll have health care for the country." Will taxing the rich fly with Republicans, Smith asks Hatch. WHY EVEN HAVE THIS SHOW? Of course taxing the rich will not fly with Orrin Hatch! The rich need tax cuts, all of them! Then Hatch laments the fact that everything's become "so political." Also, it's all "going too fast." WHY ALL THE URGENCY? IT'S JUST HEALTH CARE.

Anyway, Harry Smith, really wants America to try--really, REALLY try--to think about what it's like in the United States today to be an impossibly wealthy person! SO MANY DEMANDS! Have you thanked a rich person today? YOU BETTER.

Rangel says that everyone in the House is waiting for the Senate to do ANYTHING. Orrin Hatch is like, GOD OUR HEALTH CARE IS AWESOME. Somehow, long waits and constant denials of care are just BETTER when they are American. The men who settled this nation dragged themselves off into the woods to die from easily treatable infections, and so can all of us!

Rangel points out the the GOP is involved, and that Chuck Grassley hands out at the White House all the time, and so they cannot deny that they are playing a role in shaping the bill. He's right: what usually happens is that the Democrats bend over backwards and allow all sorts of amendments to the bill from the other side, and then they don't vote for it. It's awesome, the political process! And then there's the whole LET'S FILIBUSTER EVERYTHING IN THE SENATE NOW, which Rangel is just laughing about, like a jackass, but it's really just rendering both houses of Congress impossibly useless.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/paula-abdul-idol-drama-sh_n_239823.html

Paula Abdul is unhappy. And unless the producers of "American Idol" change her frown to a smile soon, she'll dance like there's no tomorrow away from TV's No. 1 show.

"Very sadly, it does not appear that she's going to be back on 'Idol,' " David Sonenberg, Abdul's manager, told The Times when contacted about the judge's contract negotiations.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/the-heat-is-on-play-it-co_n_238213.html

The weather has turned sticky, but the ladies in the limelight across the world know where to turn: to a great white ensemble. Whether it's a dress or a suit, accessorized or worn plain, light clothing is the only way to look cool this summer. Take a sartorial suggestion from the likes of Michelle Obama, Carla Bruni and Queen Rania: If you can't take the heat...get into some white clothes.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/50-cent-slashes-price-of-_n_239803.html

FARMINGTON, Conn. — The price of the Connecticut mega-mansion owned by rapper 50 Cent has dropped again – to $10.9 million.

The 50,000-square-foot mansion is in the Hartford metropolitan area suburb Farmington. It was owned by boxer Mike Tyson.

It has 19 bedrooms and 37 bathrooms. It boasts a gym, billiards rooms, racquetball courts and a disco with stripper poles.

The New York City rapper bought it for $4.1 million. He said it had "a 'Miami Vice' feel" and spent $6 million on renovations and repairs.

The home was for sale for nearly two years before being pulled off the market in May. The initial $18.5 million price dropped to $14.5 million late last year.

50 Cent says he's tired of the two-hour commute to New York City and wants to downsize.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/katherine-heigl-and-gerar_n_239817.html

While police were investigating a bomb scare at the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles, actors Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, inside the hotel promoting their upcoming film, The Ugly Truth, were forced to evacuate, along with 400 other guests.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/they-played-presidents-wh_n_231884.html

Whether playing a fictional head of state or a real-life US president, these leading men have found themselves in the role of POTUS--some more convincingly than others.

How presidential were they? Let us know who's captured your vote.

PHOTOS:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/19/presidential-hobbies-test_n_238488.html

Although they worked hard as the Commanders-in-Chief, these men can also be looked to as leaders in leisure.

Who painted and who played piano? Who collected stamps and who cleared brush? Test your knowledge below.

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/apparently-one-racist-buchanan-isnt-quite

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Ugghh..I thought the only place I was going to see this woman's face was on CNN. MSNBC's Carlos Watson brings in Pat's sister Bay Buchanan to regurgitate his talking points on Sonia Sotomayor. Apparently one racist Buchanan on the air just isn't enough for MSNBC.