Costa Rica is the happiest place on earth, and one of the most environmentally friendly, according to a new survey by a British non-governmental group.
The New Economics Foundation looked at 143 countries that are home to 99 percent of the world's population and devised an equation that weighed life expectancy and people's happiness against their environmental impact.
By that formula, Costa Rica is the happiest, greenest country in the world, just ahead of the Dominican Republic.
Latin American countries did well in the survey, occupying nine of the top 10 spots.
Australia scored third place, but other major Western nations did poorly, with Britain coming in at 74th place and the United States at 114th.
BarbinMD points out that it's no surprise that Democratic Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) is opposed to the public option. It seems his staff has been caught busily scheming away with big pharmaceutical lobbyists who just happen to have worked as Baucus' own chiefs of staff.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But just to be clear here, if the Israelis decide Iran is an existential threat, they have to take out the nuclear program, militarily the United States will not stand in the way?
BIDEN: Look, we cannot dictate to another sovereign nation what they can and cannot do when they make a determination, if they make a determination that they're existentially threatened and their survival is threatened by another country.
Read the entire post I link to above. I'm not entirely sure that Biden was giving Israel a green light to blow up Iran. It could have just as easily been Biden being very careful to not criticize anything Israel may or may not do, since Israel is a hot-button issue in our country and the world. What do you think? Was Biden signaling that we're okay if Israel attacks Iran (are we?), was Biden just trying to avoid taking a stand either way, or was Biden just being Biden and not speaking as carefully as he should?
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It's not going away, even though the coverage has died down. In fact, I was reading another article today saying that the flu was going to spread further in the months ahead.
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The recruiter knew he was autistic. Didn't tell anyone. Then when the recruit was having problems in training, he told them he was autistic, but they wouldn't let him leave.
The actual number remains small but the rapid increase is disturbing. Boston Globe:
As more women serve in combat zones, the share of female veterans who end up homeless, while still relatively small at an estimated 6,500, has nearly doubled over the last decade, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
For younger veterans, it is even more pronounced: One out of every 10 homeless vets under the age of 45 is now a woman, the statistics show.
And unlike their male counterparts, many have the added burden of being single parents.
“Some of the first homeless vets that walked into our office were single moms,’’ said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “When people think of homeless vets, they don’t think of a Hispanic mother and her kids. The new generation of veterans is made up of far more women.’’
Overall, female veterans are now between two and four times more likely to end up homeless than their civilian counterparts, according to the VA, most as a result of the same factors that contribute to homelessness among male veterans: mental trauma related to their military service and difficulty transitioning into the civilian economy.
I just got the following email from reader Greg. Interestingly, this is the kind of thing a number of Democrats were talking about at the height of the Bush regime. It's sad that under the Obama presidency some minds are going there again.
Dear John and company,
I've been an avid follower of Americablog for several years now. I've trusted the opinion of you and your fellow reporters on many wide ranging topics. I may not always agree with you folks, but I do listen and think about the information you provide.
Recently my partner and I have been growing more and more despondent over the current state of the nation and the direction it is going. We both feel that our votes for Barak Obama, votes we were proud to cast for the very first American of African decent to run for president, were in vain. We have watched over the last eight years as the US has become the antithesis of what we feel our fathers and grandfathers fought for. Then, with the new hope of Obama and a Democratic majority, we thought the clouds had broken and reason had finally returned to Washington. We thought that this nation was finally going to see direct, strong and decisive progressive action that would catch us up with the rest of the industrialized world. But more and more we see that this administration is following the terrible examples set by its predecessor and that the Democratic Party has moved so far to the right that we cannot, in good faith, support it any longer. It is almost like what we fought for was not a new progressive century but a return to politics from the 80s and 90s. Gay rights, corporate welfare, lobbyists, universal health care, smart drug law, support for the middle class and their jobs and all the other progressive issues seem to not even be on the table anymore or have been so castrated that they no longer resemble the change we were promised. This is not what my time, effort and money were supposed to do.
I'm sitting here looking at information I just received from the Danish Consulate stating that I, as well as my partner, qualify for working in and possibly gaining citizenship in Denmark. Please John, Chris, Joe and the others, convince us to stay. Convince us to fight. Convince us that this nation is worth living in now that all of our hopes have been shattered. We love America, we feel great pride for our nation sometimes, but not enough to justify staying here when there are other nations that have gotten the issues so right while we get them so wrong.
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has been on a tear lately, promoting the public option in health care reform. And he's doing it again today. From Huff Post:
"This is where we are going to end up," he said of a health care overhaul that included a public plan. "And I think, it would be much better for the Senate Finance Committee if we did it in the committee... I think the Senate HELP committee compromised already, because you have a lot of members on the HELP committee who would've liked [the public option] to be much closer to Medicare. The idea seems to be catching everybody's imagination, and sense of fairness. And the only holdouts are sort of ideologues on the Republican side of this saying no government involvement whatsoever."
I'm still very concerned that the Democrats are going to cave in the end, and that a lot of us won't see any benefit from the final plan (for example, as I've written before, I have virtually no prescription drug coverage under my stingy, and absurdly expensive (already $420 a month and going up 25% a year), Blue Cross self-employed plan - will the final plan fix things for people like me?). So this is good news that Schumer keeps pushing, but never underestimate the ability of the Democrats to sell you out at the last minute.
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You'll recall that I wrote this weekend about President Obama's request that a coalition of pro-health-care reform groups, including MoveOn, pull their ads promoting the public option. Well the groups have responded - the ads are staying.
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There's a deja vu feeling to this. It's sounding like the bad days of Iraq:
"We received a message today that four American soldiers were killed in" a roadside bomb in the Kunduz area, he said. "There are no further details. So far as we know, it was a mentor team on the road in a Humvee."
Omar said the attack happened in the Ali Abad district of Kunduz province and wounded two Afghan civilians.
In comparison to the country's south and east, northern Afghanistan is relatively quiet. But roadside and other insurgent attacks have been increasing in the last few years.
The attack came after a suicide car bomber blew himself up outside the outer gate of the main NATO base in southern Afghanistan, killing two civilians and wounding 14 other people.
Now, we still blame this mess on Bush. He never finished the job.
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The Swedish Social Democratic Party has posted the entire video of the panel discussion that Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake and I had in Sweden this past week at the Almedal political conference. It's an hour and a half in full, and the topic was "The blogs and the Obama election." We had a standing-room-only audience that was flowing out the door - it was pretty amazing, especially considering the heat (the stage, where I was sitting, had to be a good 90 degrees, thus my shorts).
It starts in Swedish for a minute or two (including a few seconds of a bad connection), but then switches into English. We discussed how the Obama campaign did or didn't work with the blogs during the campaign and now, the role of blogging vis-a-vis the corporate media, fundraising online (for blogs and candidates), how and why the political blogosphere came about, a few of our top examples of online blog advocacy, and much more.
I provide a table of contents to the video, so you can jump around and see what you want, below.
I've created a table of contents for the video:
3:46 Jane's intro 7:18 John's intro 9:40 Jane diagrams how the blogs came about 23:08 John on the Obama campaign's blog relations 27:31 Jane and John on Congress' blog outreach 33:00 John on where the blogs' power comes from 35:00 Jane on how laws are made in the US, and how blogs can influence them? 40:30 John on a citizen's ability to influence politics in the US 45:46 Jane on how the blogs in the US are funded, and how the blogs raise money for candidates (e.g., ActBlue) and for fighting specific issues 53:00 John on the blogs' relationship with the corporate media
Audience questions:
57:22 Is there any difference between blogs and the media? Employee Free Choice Act, are the blogs involved in that debate? (John first responds to the media question, including talking about the Obama DOMA brief brouhaha, and Jane responds to the EFCA question at 1:03:00) 1:04:22 Jane on where the trends are going in future years? 1:08:53 John on whether American blog activism be repeated in other countries, and whether blogs are media? 1:10:42 Jane on the importance of blogger expertise on a particular subject 1:11:20 Jane and John on blogs not having editors, who are they accountable to? 1:13:48 Is this instant-coffee-democracy? Meaning, blogs only deal with the hot issue of the day - how do you deal with bigger, longer-term issues, issues that need more focus than just a few posts when the issue is hot? Jane responds first, then John responds at 1:18:21, and Jane jumps back in at 1:21:30 1:23:35 What's the difference between having your own blog and writing for a blog gateway, like Huffington Post.
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An excellent read by Frank Rich on the continuing failure of the Obama administration to effectively read the American public on the economic crisis. This piece came out on the same day VP Biden admitted that the administration "misread how bad the economy was" as if somehow the news never made it out to the Blackberry informed Obama or his business-as-usual economic team. To have misjudged - undervalued it's depth and significance, really - this crisis is a striking revelation. The always timid Obama has sided with Wall Street and then asked them to promote a plan to move us forward as if they had the best interest of the American public in mind and not rejuvenating their bonus culture that was on the ropes only a few short months ago.
Seven months after voting for change, it's difficult to grasp how little has changed in this area. As much as everyone can appreciate how difficult it is to move such an entrenched system, shouldn't we at least see signs of a serious attempt to modernize a corrupt system that ran away with billions of taxpayer money? Is it asking for too much to have Obama recognize the anger of a disillusioned public and show that he listens? The presidential bubble is as big and annoying as ever.
Another look at this much-chronicled past, “Dillinger’s Wild Ride,” by Elliott J. Gorn, a professor of history at Brown University, is the first to be published during our own hard times. In it you learn that ordinary law-abiding Americans even wrote letters to newspapers and politicians defending Dillinger’s assault on banks. “Dillinger did not rob poor people,” wrote one correspondent to The Indianapolis Star. “He robbed those who became rich by robbing the poor.”
Gorn writes that the current economic crisis helped him understand better why Americans could root for a homicidal bank robber: “As our own day’s story of stupid policies and lax regulations, of greedy moneymen, free-market hucksters, white-collar thieves, and self-serving politicians unfolds, and as banks foreclose on millions of families’ homes, workers lose their jobs, and life savings disappear, it becomes clear why Dillinger’s wild ride so fascinated America during the 1930s.” An outlaw could channel a people’s “sense of rage at the system that had failed them.”
As Gorn reminds us, Americans who felt betrayed didn’t just take to cheering Dillinger; some turned to the populism of Huey Long, or to right-wing and anti-Semitic demagogues like Father Coughlin, or to the Communist Party. The passions unleashed by economic inequities are explosive because those inequities violate the fundamental capitalist faith. It’s the bedrock American dream that virtues like hard work and playing by the rules are rewarded with prosperity.
Being rewarded for hard work and playing by the rules is as distant as ever. Maybe the GOP was onto something with their mocking of Obama's "hope" and "change." Until he shows an ability to deliver on his big talk, it remains a big joke, unfortunately.
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The President is in Russia today. He's on a trip that will take him to Italy and Ghana.
Congress is back in session today. Over the next few weeks, the Senate will be working on its version of the energy bill and confirming Sonia Sotomayor. Both the House and Senate will be taking up health care reform. We'll have to keep an extra close eye on the proceedings up on Capitol Hill. And, expect to hear how hard their working and how busy they are -- before they begin their four to five week vacation District work period in early August.
Fighting HIV/AIDS is generally a hard subject, often full of sad stories ranging from friends dying to unbelievable statistics. During our travels in Southern Africa, Joelle and I were shocked at the extent of its reach. Everywhere you went and everyone you spoke with had a story. Near the border with Lesotho it was the steady stream of gardeners who were a bit under the weather, which always meant they were going to die soon. In Malawi it was the South African doctors who told one horror story after another about treating patients day after day who came to the hospital not for treatment, but to die. In Botswana it was the newspaper story of over 100 kids who received shots from an infected needle and who were then sick. In Victoria Falls it was the wonderful "show" at a camping lot made up of orphans who lost their parents to AIDS. It was the constant scene of fresh graves in every village regardless of size. Reports of HIV rates varied from 25% to nearly 40% of the population in the various areas.
All of those scenes are burned into our memory so when I read a story like this, it's hard not to celebrate and spread the good word. Wouldn't it be nice if other countries borrowed from this? What a great report out of Haiti.
In many ways the 35-year-old mother's story is Haiti's too. In the early 1980s, when the strange and terrifying disease showed up in the U.S. among migrants who had escaped Haiti's dictatorship, experts thought it could wipe out a third of the country's population.
Instead, Haiti's HIV infection rate stayed in the single digits, then plummeted.
In a wide range of interviews with doctors, patients, public health experts and others, The Associated Press found that Haiti's success in the face of chronic political and social turmoil came because organizations cooperated and tailored programs to the country's specific challenges.
Much of the credit went to two pioneering nonprofit groups, Boston-based Partners in Health and Port-au-Prince's GHESKIO, widely considered to be the world's oldest AIDS clinic.
"The Haitian AIDS community feels like they're out in front of everyone else on this, and pretty much they are," said Judith Timyan, senior HIV/AIDS adviser for the U.S. Agency for International Development in Haiti. "They really do some of the best work in the world."
This doesn't sound like a very serious, modern country to me. Riots can obviously occur in any country for many reasons but killing 140 people while putting down the riots is quite unusual in the developed world. The communist Chinese can never move beyond the old thugs who ran the country for decades before the new team started wearing fancy suits. Beijing is blaming all of the violence on the World Uyghur claiming separatist violence but with that government, their truth is never quite as clear as they like to suggest. Again, 140 killed?
But exiled Uighur groups adamantly rejected the Chinese government claim of a plot. They said the riot was an outpouring of pent-up anger over government policies and Han Chinese dominance of economic opportunities.
"They're blaming us as a way to distract the Uighurs' attention from the discrimination and oppression that sparked this protest," said Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uyghur Congress in exile in Sweden.
"It began as a peaceful assembly. There were thousands of people shouting to stop ethnic discrimination ... They are tired of suffering in silence."
The government's claims of conspiracy by pro-independence exiles echo the handling of rioting across Tibetan areas in March last year, which Beijing also called a plot hatched abroad.
The Honduran military blocked the plane from landing and they also shut down protests including killing one protester. The ousted president had flown to Honduras together with Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann of the UN.
Honduras was in turmoil last night as President Manuel Zelaya attempted to return and topple coup leaders who ousted him, prompting deadly clashes between his supporters and security forces.
The president flew from Washington towards home in a high-stakes effort to reclaim power, sparking dramatic scenes at the airport in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, where soldiers and police squared off against thousands of demonstrators.
After the interim government refused Zelaya permission to land and parked military vehicles on the runway, he was forced to divert the plane to the Nicaraguan capital, Managua, where it later landed.
Zelaya is now targeting another attempt either today or Tuesday.
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Well would you look at that? Someone is interested in confronting mainstream bankers and infuriating them. This cuts to the central issue of banks affording fat bonus checks and never experiencing the downside of their gambles. Let them put their own skin in the game so when their gambles fail, they pay for it instead of everyone else. The bankers can brag about BABs but at least they are going to make them pay a price for their arrogance.
City banks that pay out lavish bonuses for short-term profits will be forced to set aside a bigger cash cushion against losses, Alistair Darling will announce this week, as he sets out the government's plans to crack down on the practices that led to the credit crunch.
With the darkest days of the financial crisis apparently over, bankers in the Square Mile have quietly begun to use the phrase "BAB", or "bonuses are back," to signal their hope that the era of outsize pay packets is returning. US bank Goldman Sachs is expected to pay out the biggest bonuses in its history this year, on the back of bumper profits.
But government ministers have stepped up their rhetoric against the City's bonus culture in recent days, with Lord Myners railing against "weak and lazy" remuneration committees that wave through generous payouts.
As part of measures to re-regulate the banking sector, due to be announced on Wednesday, the chancellor will tell the Financial Services Authority that it must treat banks that pay out large cash bonuses on the basis of short-term targets as riskier than their rivals, and force them to hold more capital.
The most important addition will be to properly coordinate policies such as this across the world or at least in the most critical trading countries such as US, UK, Germany, France and Japan. The more coordination and agreement, the better the end result will be for everyone else. It's time to quit indulging this pampered bunch and get serious about reform.
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