Hooray for chocolate

It's for medicinal purposes, of course. AFP:

Heart attack survivors who eat chocolate two or more times per week cut their risk of dying from heart disease about threefold compared to those who never touch the stuff, scientists have reported.

Smaller quantities confer less protection, but are still better than none, according to the study, which appears in the September issue of the Journal of Internal Medicine.

Earlier research had established a strong link between cocoa-based confections and lowered blood pressure or improvement in blood flow.

Read the rest of this post...

Picnic!

Paris is picnics. But not the picnics Americans are accustomed to. In Paris, they often take place at night, starting around 730 or 830 and going until midnight or so. In Paris, picnics are often in the dark. And they involve large quantities of wine, which is permitted in public, depending where you are, when you're there, and whether your picnicking or just being rowdy drunks.



For this picnic, two of my new friends were promo-ing some dessert recipes they're honing down for their new coffeehouse/bakery they hope to open early next year. Below is their cheesecake. It's not as easy as you'd think to translate an American recipe into French. French butter, for instance, I learned tonight, has 2% more water than American butter. And the flour is different too. You need to therefore adjust your recipes to get things to turn out just right.



As noted above, public drinking is encouraged.



A better view of our picnic site, along Paris Plage (that's our group in the pic). Paris Plage is Paris' attempt every summer to turn its river banks into beaches. It's pretty fun, and a neat idea.

I almost made a newbie mistake when leaving the picnic around 1130 tonight. I knew I had to get home to blog before bed, especially since Joe is in Pittsburgh attending the Netroots Nation conference, so I planned to grab the Metro right at the picnic site rather than walk back to Cité, which was a direct line to my place, but a longer walk to the station. Then it hit me: Are you nuts? You have the chance to walk through Paris, lit up by night, and you'd rather grab the closet train?

So I took the ten or fifteen minute walk to Cité.



It's a lovely walk. And ridiculously safe. And the best part? You have to walk by Notre Dame.



Yes, this is a typical walk to the subway in Paris.



Maybe my eye problems are making me a bit melancholy, or it's the late hour, but damn this is a beautiful city. Read the rest of this post...

Is it stealing?

Mark Glaser at PBS's MediaShift did an interesting story on when blogs, and other online sources steal and when they're just promoting other people's content. I'd have to say I agree with every example he gave, save perhaps the Reuters example. Is it wrong for one paper to 'report' what another paper has said, if they give credit? How much do you need to take before it's stealing? Again, I think Glaser's analysis is pretty spot on. But I think I'll pass on excerpting it :-) Read the rest of this post...

Sarah Palin was for death panels before she was against them

From ThinkProgress:

In recent weeks, right-wing groups have been pushing the myth that health care reform will somehow kill seniors. One of the most high profile voices pushing this lie has been Sarah Palin, who claimed President Obama will institute bureaucratic “death panels.” Today, again on her Facebook page, she continued the attack. Though some Republicans have rebuffed this absurd, inaccurate notion — like Johnny Isakson (R-GA), who called such talk “nuts” — others, like Newt Gingrich, have piled on to agree with Palin.

However, on April 16th 2008, then Gov. Sarah Palin endorsed some of the same end of life counseling she now decries as a form of euthanasia. In a proclamation announcing “Healthcare Decisions Day,” Palin urged public facilities to provide better information about advance directives, and made it clear that it is critical for seniors to be informed of such options.

In all fairness to Palin, the proclamation does contain a number of multi-syllabic words. It's entirely possibly she didn't understand it. Read the rest of this post...

Home foreclosures set another new record

Bankers of the world, unite! Ignore such data and pretend as though nothing has changed and it's still 2007. If that doesn't work, hum louder so you don't have to hear anyone and the lavish bonus culture can live forever. Surely the problem can't get worse, right? Reuters:

U.S. home loans failed at a record pace in July despite ongoing federal and state programs to avoid foreclosures, which have severely strained housing and the economy.

Foreclosure activity jumped 7 percent in July from June and 32 percent from a year earlier as one in every 355 households with a loan got a foreclosure filing, RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

Filings — including notices of default, auction and bank repossession — have escalated with unemployment.

Read the rest of this post...

This is simply freaking cool

You can read about it here, or just watch it - it's a 3D trip through the universe, courtesy of the Hubble Telescope. It's totally cool.

Read the rest of this post...

Stephen Hawking responds

Yesterday, a publication that always fronts for the far-right of the Republican party suggested the following about famed genius Stephen Hawking:

"The controlling of medical costs in countries such as Britain through rationing, and the health consequences thereof, are legendary. The stories of people dying on a waiting list or being denied altogether read like a horror script … People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service (NHS) would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless."

Only, problem? Hawking is British, and gets his health care from that very system. Yesterday, Stephen Hawking responded:

"I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told us. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived."

At some point, the media needs to stop with the he-said she-said reporting on these ridiculous accusations from the right. There is a campaign of massive misinformation going on, and the media needs to start reporting on that campaign as an orchestrated campaign of deceit, rather than simply folks who are angry about the Democratic plan. They're not angry, they're liars. Read the rest of this post...

Economist suggests "three U" shaped recoveries

It would be fitting that the "W" administration would stick us with a "W" shaped economic crisis, but now there's a risk of adding another "V" to it. If only Bush was the only leader involved in this fiasco though. Clinton played his role in all of this and Obama thought it made sense to hire the friends-of-Robert-Rubin crowd who still don't find it necessary to curb the destructive excesses of Wall Street. Deutsche Bank Chief Economist Norbert Walter on CNBC:

Norbert said recently in research notes “the world is in trouble.”

“I believe that the rescue packages brought on have been so costly for so many governments that the exit from this fiscal policy will be very painful, very painful indeed,” he said. “Some of us are already talking about a W-shaped recovery. I’d probably talk about a triple-U-shaped recovery because there are so many stumbling blocks here to get out of this.”

“There are a few countries that have not dismissed people, they had a dramatic drop in their sales but they kept on people because they believed the recession would be very shallow,” Walter said. “They now have to fire people. That will increase unemployment and they therefore, of course, may be endangering retail sales in some countries.”

Read the rest of this post...

Citigroup to ask Obama for $100 million bonus exception

Because when deals cut in the opposite direction and were losses, taxpayers made out so well. Right? Telling Citi to pound salt would be a good small step by Obama and would show the public that he hears them but the friends-of-Robert-Rubin crowd might get upset. The masses of Citi people at Treasury probably wouldn't be happy either.

Citigroup is planning to claim that an energy trader who is due to receive compensation of $100 million this year should be exempt from review by a federal authority given responsibility for setting pay packages at financial companies that received taxpayer bailouts, executives at the bank said Wednesday.

Such a claim would come as the Obama administration is set to begin examining the pay packages and, if accepted, could set off a new wave of criticism from the administration and from lawmakers already incensed over recent Wall Street pay packages.

Citigroup executives say the trader’s compensation is exempt because it is part of a contract signed before the law establishing the review system was passed.

So what? That was before the global economy tanked thanks to Citi and other banks who gambled and still won even though they lost. It's true that Bush-Paulson and later Obama-Geithner did a poor job of managing this process and did not immediately scrap all of these "it's in their contract" moments. Even so, that argument is so 2008. Maybe it's time Washington started to consider the financial blood bath for Americans who don't live on Wall Street. Read the rest of this post...

GOP candidate for Governor of New Jersey was groomed by Rove, "exhibited loyalty" to Bush

We're learning a lot from the House Judiciary Committee's investigation of the firings of the U.S. Attorneys. It's further confirmation that the Bush administration overly politicized everything. The Bush politicos actually ranked the U.S. Attorneys in terms of fealty to Bush and his agenda. Right at the top of the list was Chris Christie, who is this year's GOP candidate for Governor in New Jersey -- a post for which he was groomed by Karl Rove:

The ranking -- disclosed for the first time this week as part of a Congressional investigation into the controversial firings of U.S. attorneys in 2006 -- places Christie among prosecutors who "produced, managed well and exhibited loyalty to the President and Attorney General."

Other categories included U.S. attorneys who "chafed against Administration initiatives" or "have not distinguished themselves," according to the documents.

The March 2005 list, sent to the White House by the Justice Department, was part of a trove of internal documents and Congressional testimony released on Tuesday. The documents also included testimony by Bush political advisor Karl Rove, who said he and Christie had discussed the possibility that Christie might run for governor. Those discussions occurred while Christie was still U.S. attorney, a non-political post.

Christie offers New Jersey a return to the Bush/Rove era. I really hope the voters in the Garden State are smarter than that. Read the rest of this post...

David Frum: The reckless Right courts violence

From conservative writer David Frum:

It's not enough for conservatives to repudiate violence, as some are belatedly beginning to do. We have to tone down the militant and accusatory rhetoric. If Barack Obama really were a fascist, really were a Nazi, really did plan death panels to kill the old and infirm, really did contemplate overthrowing the American constitutional republic—if he were those things, somebody should shoot him.

But he is not. He is an ambitious, liberal president who is spending too much money and emitting too much debt. His health-care ideas are too ambitious and his climate plans are too interventionist. The president can be met and bested on the field of reason—but only by people who are themselves reasonable.

Strong words, but he's right. I've often said that if gay people were everything the religious right described us to be - pedophiles after your children - I'd be first in line to stop them by any means necessary. The language invites and incites violence. And the same thing is happening on health care reform. Except now you have a leading conservative voice saying so. Read the entire piece, it's excellent. Read the rest of this post...

Cheney expresses frustration with Bush

Et tu, Darth? Washington Post:

In his first few months after leaving office, former vice president Richard B. Cheney threw himself into public combat against the "far left" agenda of the new commander in chief. More private reflections, as his memoir takes shape in slashing longhand on legal pads, have opened a second front against Cheney's White House partner of eight years, George W. Bush.

Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. By habit, he listens more than he talks, but Cheney broke form when asked about his regrets.

"In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him," said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney's reply. "He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney's advice. He'd showed an independence that Cheney didn't see coming. It was clear that Cheney's doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times -- never apologize, never explain -- and Bush moved toward the conciliatory."

The two men maintain respectful ties, speaking on the telephone now and then, though aides to both said they were never quite friends. But there is a sting in Cheney's critique, because he views concessions to public sentiment as moral weakness. After years of praising Bush as a man of resolve, Cheney now intimates that the former president turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end.

What's particularly interesting about this is to see that Cheney's outspokenness since leaving office has not been reserved exclusively for President Obama or Democrats. He's going after his own boss as well. This suggests that Cheney's motives are less partisan, and more personal. Well, that's not entirely true. He still could be trying to shore up the GOP brand by criticizing one of his own who strayed from the orthodoxy (in his view). Still, it does smack of disloyalty so soon after leaving office. Read the rest of this post...

Whole Foods comes out against health care reform, calls it "socialism"

The CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, just penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal. It sounds like something written by Dick Armey with the help of Sarah Palin and the teabag brigade. I am absolutely shocked. Joe, an avid Whole Foods shopper, up until this morning, is absolutely devastated.

Read this opinion piece. It's not just someone who disagrees with President Obama about the details of health care reform. It reads like someone who is a conservative Republican activist. I'd highly suggest you share this article with your progressive friends who, like Joe and me, have for far too long been under the mistaken assumption that Whole Foods was a "good" company. Apparently they're one of the worst out there. Not just agnostic on doing good, but affirmatively trying to stop good from happening.

When you go to Whole Foods you are bankrolling the conservative Republican effort to kill health care reform and to label Democratic presidents and Democratic values "socialist." The CEO of Whole Foods thinks you're a socialist. It's time to stop giving him your money.

Whole Foods' co-founder and CEO opens the piece by quoting Margaret Thatcher, in an effort, apparently, to label President Obama's health care plan as "socialism:

"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people's money."

—Margaret Thatcher

Then, Mackey implicitly criticizes the stimulus bill (by harping on the deficit), calls health care reform "an entitlement," and suggests that health care reform would be some kind of "government takeover" - all GOP talking points:

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people's money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone...

Like a good teabagger, he's accusing Canada and the UK, and I guess France and every other "socialized" country of "rationing":

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

Oh dear God. He's actually arguing that most diseases and health care problems wouldn't happen if we all simply ate our vegetables:

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Read the rest of this post...

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Actually seems like there's not much happening in Washington today. Well, not much on any schedule I've seen. But, there's really no such thing as a slow news day this month.

I'm heading to Pittsburgh early this afternoon to attend Netroots Nation. Should be interesting. Looking forward to seeing a lot of good friends -- and finally meeting video genius Jed Lewison and the incomparable Andy Cobb in person. I've also lined up some interviews with members of Congress and candidates and will hopefully have some video to post.

Any news? Read the rest of this post...

British economic crisis to be more difficult than forecasted, again

Well now. Who would have expected that news? How many more times will we have to see more hype about the recovery only to be updated with a new dose of reality? On the upside, isn't it great that the bankers are doing so well? It's important that they keep on making money for respectable bonuses and avoid any and all responsibility for their global failure.

Britain's economy faces a slow and protracted recovery and "we will still find ourselves in a difficult position for a long time to come", the Bank of England's Governor warned yesterday.

Mervyn King said the world economy "remains in a deep recession and its financial system in a fragile condition". The UK economy showed signs of stabilising now, he added, but the upturn could be so muted that many people will not notice the difference.

Mr King said: "I don't think it's unrealistic to suppose that growth rates come back but that doesn't mean that, as far as most people and most companies are concerned, the recession will feel as if it is over."

According to the Bank's quarterly Inflation Report, the recovery will be constrained as banks rebuild their strength and remain reluctant to lend, and as households and the Government set about paying off their debts. As in his many previous recent statements, the Governor emphasised that the banking system had to be fixed. He said: "We have to recognise that the banking sector is still in a bad way and it will take several years for it to repair balance sheets and be weaned off public support and in a position to lend again normally."

Read the rest of this post...

Early morning greetings from Switzerland

For the first two weeks of our summer holidays we've been almost 100% offline - which is a good thing from time to time - but we're back in France so back online. We met retired friends of ours (school teachers from upstate Pennsylvania) who do a house exchange every year with a Swiss family. The Swiss chalet is up in the mountains, 1,000 meters above the village of Meiringen. Meiringen is known for the Sherlock Holmes story where he dies but then lives. (Perhaps Soap Operas got their crazy ideas from the survival story.) It's also known for the place where meringue was first created, at least by the locals. Whether it's the place or not doesn't matter though because it's superior to the meringue elsewhere as it lacks the excessive sugar of the awful stuff we find in France.

Though I've been to Switzerland many times for work I've never had a chance to see it from a tourist perspective. It's pricey - the rail passes are eye popping - though everything is stunning. The scenery that Mother Nature created is amazing and the Swiss are so tidy and maintain everything so well. Even with the expensive rail tickets we didn't complain much (well, not too much) once we used the system. You can get up and down and around the mountains in a well running, clean system. The walking trails are perfectly groomed and the views in the region were stunning. Above is behind the village where we stayed but is much higher (around 2200 meters, I think) so the parasailers are everywhere. Perfectly fresh air up there, the way it's supposed to be. Read the rest of this post...

Colbert asks: How gay is Maine?

Colbert interviewed Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D) who represents Maine's First District (my home district):

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Better Know a District - Maine's 1st - Chellie Pingree
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Meryl Streep

Read the rest of this post...

'Incompetent' political leaders failing to make structural changes

I'd say "incompetent" is a bit too charitable but it's a start. I've hardly had access to the news in the last few weeks but this subject has come up over and over and over with everyone I've met. When will the political leadership show leadership on a problem that is costly for everyone outside of Wall Street? Each day "change" sounds more like a pathetic joke. CNBC:

"It is a matter of risk and responsibility, and I think the risks that were there before, these problems are still there," he said. "We still have a very high level of debt, we still have leadership that's literally incompetent ..."

"They did not see the problem, the don't look at the core of problem. There's an elephant in the room and they did not identify it."

Pointing his finger directly at Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and President Obama, Taleb said policymakers need to begin converting debt into equity but instead are continuing the programs that created the financial crisis.

"I don't think that structural changes have been addressed," he said. "It doesn't look like they're fully aware of the problem, or they're overlooking it because they don't want to take hard medicine."

With Bernanke's term running out, Taleb said Obama would be making a mistake by reappointing the Fed chairman.

Dumping Bernanke would be a great start but unfortunately it runs much deeper. Leadership is supposed to start at the top. Read the rest of this post...