I seriously doubt you’d find anyone willing to shed tears over the sacking of former General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner. His forced retirement pushed out by the Obama administration with its $20 million payout will make his golden years a bit more golden than the tens of thousands of GM employees who were shown the door as a result of Wagoner’s mostly feckless leadership.

But let me say this: Wagoner was right. Absolutely.

Not about wagering the company’s fate on impractical, inefficient SUVs. That was dumb long before gas reached $4 per gallon. Not when he strong-armed unions into give-backs on wages and benefits, and then shuttered their factories anyway. And not when he dragged his feet on electric- and hybrid-powered consumer vehicles. Or on any of the dozens of other bonehead decisions he presided over that hastened the downfall of what was once the cornerstone of the American manufacturing-based economy.

He was right about this: if the government cannot resolve the crisis of spiraling health care costs and its impact on the business of doing business in America, soon there will be no business.

In August 2004, Wagoner reportedly said that regardless of who won the presidential election two months later, fixing health care would have to be a top priority because paying for health benefits for employees, dependents and retirees was putting American carmakers at a severe disadvantage to foreign competitors.Shortly after President George W. Bush’s second inauguration, Wagoner repeated the point in Chicago. GM’s $5.2 billion annual bill for health care, Wagoner said, raised the price tag for a new GM vehicle by $1,500. Asian and European car manufacturers don’t face the same expenses because their governments pick up a huge portion of health care and pension costs, Wagoner explained.

And Wagoner wasn’t alone. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said in 2004 that health care for his company’s 800,000 employees, retirees and dependents came at a cost of $3 billion. In fact, a range of employers from small businesses to large-scale manufacturers are calling for health care reform.

And you don’t even have to ask about labor unions, do you? Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has been writing about the imminent
crisis for years.

But despite the near-universal opinion, the problem persists. It is the problem that everyone recognizes but no one will step up to solve.

In my tenure as Communications Director for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE), I noticed a distinct pattern in contract negotiations. It was hardly a keen insight on my part—you’d have to be oblivious not to notice.

In every case—EVERY case—the major sticking point was health care. Grievance procedures, seniority, discipline, holidays,vacation, whatever… all of that could be resolved amicably, but inevitably there would be a battle over who would pay for health care and how much.

And once that battle ended, with no winner, the negotiators from both sides would lament that the health care problem is a chokepoint for progress and a flashpoint for labor unrest.

My idea then, and it’s available to anyone who wants it, free of charge, was for the union and management to sign a joint statement acknowledging that the failure of government to enact comprehensive health care reform was contributing to workplace strife, and that the continued health of the business was contingent upon a resolution of that problem that took the bosses’ and the workers’ heads out of the health care noose.

Get enough of those statements together, from unions and employers all over the country, and take them to Congress and say, “Here’s your political cover. Now fix it.”

That, I think, is where the problem lies.

The insurance industry is a behemoth with a lot of political clout, and politicians are in no itching hurry to challenge it. No matter how much sense it would make to tear the whole thing down….

You’ve probably never heard of Tommy Douglas, but he did just that, and in doing so earned probably the highest accolade a Canadian could ask for the people of Canada named him the best person ever in its history (Neil Peart didn’t even crack the top ten). Douglas was the premier of Saskatchewan, a fairly bland place all things considered, and hardly the place where you’d expect the greatest anything to come from (except, of course, the greatest wife, Hi, Honey!). In 1962, he stood toe-to-toe with the insurance industry and doctors, who went on strike for fear of losing their financial privilege, and won. Saskatchewan socialized its health care system, and soon was followed by the rest of Canada.britney spears circus download

It was a tough and bitter fight, dramatized in the CBC biopic Prairie Giant. (A fine film, but good luck finding it. It was considered to defame one of Douglas’s political rivals, and the CBC pulled all copies of it.) Despite the strike, scare tactics, red-baiting and personal attacks, Douglas and his supporters stood their ground, and now all of Canada doesn’t have to fear that a broken leg or a sudden illness will lead them to financial ruin.

While the American medical establishment boasts of its whiz-bang technology and a tummy-tuck in every pot, none of my Canadian in-laws would trade their health care cards and supposed waiting lists for the “convenience” and expense of American-style medicine.

And yet the United States, all can-do attitude and we’re-number-one bravado, can’t find a way to ensure that its people don’t suffer from treatable illnesses or lose their homes as a result of untimely injury because they, or their employer, can’t afford health care.

And when its major industries are drowning in health care-induced red ink, can’t we finally acknowledge as a nation that subjecting health care to the unfettered market is killing our economy?

It’s too late to save Rick Wagoner’s job (if anybody but Mrs. Wagoner cared to) and maybe too late to save GM. But can we please have some American somewhere stand up and channel his or her inner Tommy Douglas and demand that every American get real
health care, not one person excluded?

If that happens, I will personally head up the effort to name him or her the Best American Ever.

Dave Saldana is a journalist, civil rights attorney, media critic and satire aficianado based in Washington, D.C..

WOW.

Things are moving even faster than I thought in the re-ordering of the American economy. It’s four PM on Wednesday 3/18/09. Although many people don’t know or don’t yet understand, the link between government and finances has been totally changed.

Yes, we had AIG (see below), and the foreclosures.

But now… check this…. the U.S. government is buying a TRILLION DOLLARS in mortgaged backed securities in order to create instant liquidity in the markets (read: cash you can borrow to buy a home or a market.) I never thought the hip hop chant to “make money money, make money money mon-EEE” would become so literal.

Yes, I am a news geek; and a politics geek; and I am astounded. I linked from the NYT to this handy dandy URL you can share with your friends. tinyurl.com/USmakes-fakes-Money.

I wrote the article below earlier this morning. Already it seems dated. But bear with me as I breathe.

F

==========

I’ve been guesting on WNYC’s syndicated morning show The Takeaway with John Hockenberry. (Adaora Udoji is on maternity leave.) We’ve been talking a lot about branding. Some folks told us about the brands they missed (”Bit ‘o Honey” and the “Reggiebar” candy bars each got a vote).

Other folks talked about what they would rename/rebrand “too big to fail/too small-minded to give up the multimillion dollar bonuses” insurer AIG as…

Amigos in Gold

Amateurs Implementing Guile

Anti Inflammatory Geeks

A**holes Invoking God

As If God

Appalling In Greed

(And that’s just from the journalists!)

Listeners wrote, among others:

Absolutely Insufferable Greed

Angry Investor Gross

But let me take a turn here.

Yesterday, I was invited to address the US Mission to the United Nations, now led by Ambassador Susan Rice. I was part of a panel that examined how and why then-Senator Obama won the Presidency; and what lay ahead. I spoke about Brand Black, or blackness as a mature political brand, just as hip hop is now a mature media brand. Every product/entity/person who wants market share starts out in the experimental, spaghetti against the wall.

Of all the people who start blogs, relatively few keep it up and even fewer find a longterm audience. If they do find an audience—not just bloggers but political candidates, preachers, musicians, etc.—then they enter the brand-building phase. They try to bring on a core constituency first, then expand that constituency. For hip hop, the core constituency was urban blacks/Latinos, adding graf artists, b-boys and b-girls, streetcorner wisemen…. and then multicultural urban youth… and then multicultural global youth. As hip hop has become a mature brand, you see stars like Ice Cube and Queen Latifah moving into mainstream family-oriented film; P. Diddy and Russell Simmons crossing onto Broadway; Simmons into philanthropy and spirituality; and Jay Z into the economic CEO/Beyonceed celebrosphere. My argument in the speech, which I will elide, concerned the use of hip hop as a feedback loop that helped make blackness a culturally mature brand that had political capital.

Since this is a blog post and not a dissertation, peep this:

First, check out Jay Z solo.

Then, Obama on the stump.

Then the remix:

When Obama first made the gesture, it split the world into three camps: people who thought he actually had dirt on his shoulder (maybe three people or less worldwide); people who got the intent of the gesture (back up off this; you don’t matter); and people who got the specific reference to hip hop and the 2003 hit by Jay Z.

The use of hip hop signifiers and metaphors, as well as support from the hip hop community, really drove the Obama campaign at first. The hip hop generation (or at this point, really two generations) were the “early adopters” of Brand Obama. The Civil Rights generation were later adopters of Brand Obama. And Brand Obama stood on…. the shoulders of the Civil Rights generation, who took blackness from an exiled/discredited “brand” among anti-integrationist whites to a nearly-mature brand that lacked one thing… the sense that a black man could be president.

I didn’t know that Obama would win. No one did. But Obama used hip hop to leverage early youth support, which in turn built numbers for what political scientist William Jelani Cobb of Spelman calls “The Black History Month Massacre” (Obama winning 10 Dem primaries and caucuses in a row), which in turn helped justify Civil Rights generation political figures/superdelegates like John Lewis switching their allegiance from Sen. Clinton to Sen. Obama.

In the end, Brand Obama leveraged hip hop to take the White House… a final signal that “Brand Black” is mature and thriving. What happens next? I don’t know. But I’m eager to see, hear, and write more, especially now that politics has a soundtrack.

March 3, 2009: L-R: Jack Weiss, candidate for Los Angeles City Attorney, Antonio Villaraigosa, Magic Johnson

Yeah boi! One thing we can say about Mayor V, is his ability to put Los Angeles on the map.

First elected in 2005 after a 180 year drought of Latino Mayors in Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa has seen the ups and downs of being a high profile elected official. Certainly not shy to lights, camera, action! Mayor V’s re-election victory party at the Bonaventure Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles was a celebration of sorts.

Picture this:

Exited supporters waving their signs, Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A” playing loudly in the background, and an introduction by Lakers legend Magic Johnson, this victory party marked not only a historic re-election, but a rebirth of Los Angeles.

With a 10.1% unemployment rate and 1 out 10 people without jobs, the state registers office reports this is the highest unemployment rate since June 1983.

Donna Summer’s “She Works Hard for the Money” was on top of the charts and it seems—not much has changed, we’re still working hard!

Although the economy is in shambles, and the “Dream with Me” Mayor had certain fidelity indiscretions, there is still a sense of hope.

That hope, is the stuff that got Obama elected. And while some cry that the Mayor likes to be in front of the camera too much, or that he really had no competition and that in many ways Democracy in Los Angeles is dead – whaa -whaa, cry me a river and get over it.

So for the man in charge of the second largest city in the nation, a city in debt, low employment rates, a crumbling school system, and god knows what else, L.A continues to be one of the most desired cities to live in: we got the weather, the beach, the mountains, the entertainment, the bars, the clubs, the nightlife, we be big pimpin’! Spending G’s!

And we need a Mayor that understands that!

As well as a Mayor that can secure Los Angeles a huge portion of that stimulus package. You know, for all the official business of job creation, infrastructure and economic development.

Now, if only we knew for sure he’s going finish his term. Rumor has it that Governorship can be pretty enticing…

Who compares himself to another in one breath, only to whack the same person from behind in another? It’s low. It’s dirty. And this is the behavior of the Republican Party’s new wonder boy—the kid they’re supposedly grooming to run for the White House in 2012? Good luck.

And, uh, if the American people “can do anything,” then why the hell was Jindal talking to us like we’re a bunch of illiterate children? We. Can. Understand. You. At normal talking speed. Governor. (But if you feel the itch to dumb yourself down more in the future—by all means…)

Colorado Oil Shaleland

So, it comes as no surprise that President Obama is reversing more of former President George W. Bush’s policies on oil shale. In fact, his Administration recently removed the leases for another round of oil-shale development projects on federal lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. Ken Salazar, Obama’s Interior Secretary, withdrew a proposal for additional research and oil shale leases due to economic and environmental concerns. He thought the previous proposal in January for research and development on 1.9 million acres was flawed. Salazar told MSNBC that new proposals will “help answer critical questions about oil shale, including about the viability of emerging technologies on a commercial scale, how much water and power would be required, and what impact commercial development would have on land, water, wildlife, and communities.” Now, that’s environmentally responsible leadership.

And President Obama has plans to put his money where his mouth is. His proposed budget, released by the White House recently, would call for $15 billion a year to develop clean-energy technologies, which include solar and wind power. The funding to fight climate change and the country’s dependence on foreign oil would come from auctioning off carbon pollution permits, starting in 2012 (more on this below). Obama’s commitment to tackling climate change is fantastic but Congress is ultimately in charge of the budgeting. And the House and Senate haven’t written a bill yet that regulates greenhouse gases and collects money to do so. Let’s see what Congress and the President can devise to stop global warming.

Environmental change calls for big bucks and a new funding system. To pay for his environmental budget to fight global warming, Obama proposes a “cap and trade” system. Basically, the federal government would require companies like power plants and industrial facilities that emit greenhouse gases linked to global warming to purchase permits. It’s like a costly swap-a-roo. If a company exceeds their greenhouse gases limit (read: cap), then they must buy credits from those that are emitting less.

This new revenue stream could bring in $78.6 billion to the Treasury by 2012. And the auctioning of emission allowances as outlined by the Obama plan is predicted to usher in a whopping $645.7 billion between 2012 and 2019. This is no small change and no small difference. The plan would “cut total emissions 14 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83 percent below 2005 levels by 2050.”

And Obama’s thinking of the little guy too. His proposed plan would take 80 percent of the anticipated revenue (or $526 billion) and subsidize the higher energy costs of low- and middle-income folks through tax credits. And the rest of the dough would go towards alternative, clean energy initiatives. Good thinking Prez!

In his address to Congress Tuesday, President Barack Obama said, “We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.”

It sounds good. Will it happen? It’s very much up to us.

We live in a country that, until recently, floated on a bubble of consumer spending. Every time we ran up our credit cards, we made it a little easier to generate economic indicators (like the Gross Domestic Product) that said we were fine. We were producing and consuming. Who cares if we were also spending to excess, speculating on homes we couldn’t afford, and failing to save? We ignored those indicators, to our peril.

I say this not as a financial goody two shoes. Though I am lucky enough to have some savings and no debt RIGHT NOW, I have been tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt in the past. I learned that scrounging for change to buy lunch is not a fun way to live when you KNOW you could have had money in the bank if only you didn’t take that vacation, buy those shoes, and speculate on money you thought was coming in but didn’t. I had to learn that lesson dozens of humiliating times before I finally said, “I ain’t doin’ that no more.”

Of course, there are times when some of us are buying groceries off of credit cards, not because we are spending too much but because there seem to be no options. It for folks who have spent as wisely as they can and are still backed against the wall that we have to figure out how to rejigger this economy. How can we sort out how to help people who are trying their best and not just funnel the money into tax breaks for people who jacked us to begin with?

I believe the first thing to do is to read the news and to educate ourselves about the economics of the nation at large and of the communities we live in.

I’ll be posting some more on jobs and economics soon… a lot more. And you can read the full version of Obama’s speech here.

Rise Up, Stay Strong

On my way back from a long trip that included my stop in Detroit, I ended up watching the airplane movie. I hate airplane movies. They usually pick the worst thing that failed in the theatres and throw it on the screen 33,000 feet in the sky.

Then I saw Ice Cube, one of my favorite “blacktresses,” Tasha Smith, and this wonderful teen, who I found out was KeKe Palmer of “Akeelah and the Bee.” The movie is called The Longshots and it’s about a girl whose spirit-broken, ex-football star uncle (Cube) teaches her to be a Pop Warner football quarterback in a broke-down factory town. It sounds treacly, right? Well, I loved it. It’s a straight up feel good movie. And my favorite part is when the salty bar owner gives a speech about how no one is going to come rescue this town, but they can up their own game, clean up their own streets, and take some pride in who they are. This girl’s ambition helps lift folks up. Best of all, it’s a true story.

My Pollyanna side says we can make more of those true stories… the kind about people finding pride in their towns and their friends, family, and creative talents. Money pays the rent but it doesn’t make people happy. I believe that. Of course I’m hustling for mine, but we can either face the hard times with some heart or fall apart. We do have choices, even if they’re only how we react to the challenges at hand.

Pop your collar, give me some dap… and tell me what’s next in black cultural iconography.

We now have a President who has not only broadened the audience for but shown the power of black cultural tropes in a national and international context.

I asked a few friends, bloggers, and thinkers to give their take on the remix. Here’s a sample of what they had to say:
Artist Susan Smith Pinelo

“My friend told me that her husband was “Gonna buy a flag on Wednesday.”  Hm. Wow. This crunked out, beer drinking black garbage man who don’t think much about nothing felt proud. Not proud to be black—he already was—I think. Not proud to be finally free—he already was. He was proud to be American. Hm. Wow.

So I started thinking, what if just half of the Black Americans started being proud about being Americans. Maybe we start figuring things out with a new perspective—the perspective of not being victims, second class citizens who are angry with the man—the government—the police.

We stop being angry with the system and start combating with the stereotypes of our drug dealing, welfare cheat baby mommas, and cousins who don’t pay taxes and fathers who are serving time in the “university.” Maybe, just maybe, we can become captains of their own destiny. Hm. Wow.

Thank you Barack for commanding that we think that we can.”

Alyson Palmer, musician/mother/activist

“Having a Black president lifts the racial profile. However, the fact that Barack Obama is the child of a Black African, not a Black American should not be overlooked.  There is none of the downtrodden, hopeless, already beaten-by-The-Man gene in him that I’ve seen in all my relatives, even the most successful. I am praying that he becomes a new Daddy to all African-Americans, a new paradigm of personhood and fatherhood and citizenship.  If we slave-descended Americans can look at him as to a mirror and see reflected somewhere in us that ease with power, I think our inner strength can grow beyond any transitory economic concerns.

At least, that’s what I’m hoping for in myself.”

Tamika Morrison, marketing guru for The Writestylz PR Firm

“As a 30-something person who’s African American, I do believe blackness is “so over” in a sense that’s it can’t be used as an excuse for mediocre living and behavior.  We now have proven evidence as a minority, particularly, African-American, that you really can live the ultimate American Dream if we apply ourselves. Our identity is now woven in the fabric of ALL Americans—Black, White, Red, Orange and Yellow—and it’s imperative that we learn how to relate across the board or else.”

Carmen Dixon, All About Race

“I haven’t seen blackness so celebrated since the days of ‘Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud’ in the late 60’s. Even then it was black folks awakening to their beauty and power. Now you have Larry King’s son wishing he was black, and I heard an MSNBC commentator saying that her daughter wants to be Sasha or Malia! That is so powerful especially when I remember that I wanted to be Marcia Brady when I was a youngster.”

Princeton University political scientist Melissa Harris Lacewell gave some wonderful deep answers too but I had to laugh at this:

“I think light-skinned brothers are coming back into style. After an era of Michael Jordan-inspired worship of the bald, athletic brown man, I think we will see a re-ascendance of the light-skinned brothers. Al B. Sure is making a new album!”

That model of totally unbiased and legit broadcast news reporting—Fox news—has done it again. When the network’s Detroit affiliate called in its resident “Love Doctor” to discuss the ins and outs (so to speak) of Barack and Michelle Obama’s relationship, the sexpert backed into a Freudian flip. Pay attention MSNBC. Lookee here CNN. This is “hard-hitting” journalism at its finest:

Michael Ramirez cartoon from Investor's Business Daily for Jan. 12, 2009

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may seem old news, but it’s entering a new phase, argues Jonathan Schanzer, deputy executive director of the Jewish Policy Center. Mark Hemingway of National Review Online discusses Schanzer’s new book, Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine, and relays Schanzer’s argument that the mainstream media have oversimplified the conflict by underestimating the internal divisions in Palestine. After all, Fatah and Hamas aren’t allies. Israel’s current struggle is with Gaza alone.

President George W. Bush held his final press conference yesterday morning. Fox News commentators and guests offer analysis.

And here Bush gets a little more personal with Fox’s Brit Hume. The president explains why he is so calm and content as he prepares to leave office, and tells Hume that he’s even planning to write a book that will explain and defend some of the most controversial decisions he made while in office.

Is it a new New Deal or not, and does it even matter? President-elect Barack Obama’s record-smashing stimulus plan will likely top $1 trillion when it’s finally approved. Jonah Goldberg writes over at NRO’s The Corner blog that only liberals are comparing this strategy with FDR’s New Deal and adds that conservatives feel the comparison is moot. But Pat Buchanan would apparently disagree. In an editorial for Investor’s Business Daily, Buchanan argues not only that Obama seems to be channeling Roosevelt, but that massive spending is more likely to get us into trouble than to bail us out of it. In a separate IBD editorial, Lawrence Kudlow sees a more conservative tinge to Obama’s plan, drawing a parallel to Reagan’s tax-cut plan. Big government, limited government, or something in between? Obama keeps us guessing.

Google searches are speeding climate change (but then, isn’t everybody?). A physicist is trying to publish his findings on the amount of energy consumed by Google’s data centers every time you try to run a search (the energy used boiling water for a cup of tea equals two searches). William Teach responds sarcastically at Right Wing News, suggesting that the global warming “Believers” log off and stop using the Internet. Teach writes that he did 15 Google searches after reading the article, just for fun.

Eco-warriors: stop procreating, humans hurt the planet. Feminists: stop procreating, it’s sexist. Cassy Fiano writes on her blog and on Right Wing News that the newest argument in favor of the extinction of mankind is that sexual reproduction is a sexist, culturally oppressive holdover from a less civilized time, more or less. She goes on to excoriate modern feminism as it drifts toward something like Stalinism. But hey, sex without reproduction would be really fun for about, say, one generation.

Always a rebel, Mickey Rourke’s Hollywood comeback doesn’t preclude careless comments—you know, supporting Bush. It’s unpopular in Hollywood to defend the outgoing president, writes Andrew Breitbart of Big Hollywood, but having just won the best actor Golden Globe award for his performance in The Wrestler, Rourke did just that. Bush was simply “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Rourke said, and the situation after 9/11 would have been near impossible for any conceivable leader. Breitbart suggests that Rourke’s peer-slash-rival Sean Penn had a much inferior and less ballsy dalliance into politics when he publicly supported Fidel Castro’s regime, and writes that any “no friend of Sean Penn is a friend of mine.”

For the White House, the “permanent campaign” is fighting to win every news cycle, and protecting information with a tight inner circle of in-the-know people. The Bush administration mastered the art of the permanent campaign—is Barack Obama following suit?

In a New York Times Magazine feature posted online Wednesday about future White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, lamented the end of the campaign. ”It’s never going to be the same,” he said. “I think everyone is wistful.”

Ah, the days when you could completely control the message. Obama was allegedly furious that details about his courtship of Hillary Clinton for secretary of state leaked out. He said he was hopeful, yet realistic, about what it would be like once his team was installed in the White House. “This is Washington,” he told the Times. “Or it will be Washington. So I’m sure it will not be perfect.”

A White House with no leaks? Impossible. And we’ve presumably learned there are drawbacks to a administration that is always in campaign mentality. Scott McClellan, Bush’s press secretary between 2003 and 2006, received praise from Bush for staying so consistently on-message. As related in the Times feature, Bush thanked McClellan for his work during the campaign. “I want to thank Scotty for saying—nothing,” the President said.

And yet McClellan eviscerated Bush in his tell-all book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, writing that running a permanent campaign with the goal of getting re-elected was especially bad. “And that meant operating continually in campaign mode: never explaining, never apologizing, never retreating. Unfortunately, that strategy also had less justifiable repercussions: never reflecting, never reconsidering, never compromising.”

There’s no question we’re getting ahead of ourselves—Obama hasn’t even been president for one day yet. And while Obama and his team might be wishing the campaign were still going on, they also aren’t the Bush administration. According to the Times article, Robert Gibbs will have walk-in privileges to Obama’s office, which will be right down the hall from his own. David Axelrod, one of Obama’s closest advisers, says the the atmosphere will be “collegial” and “not excessively hierarchical.”

President Bush attempted to keep the press at bay during his first term in office, holding the fewest number of press conferences (17) for any president in the television age. Obama had beaten the record for most post-election, pre-inauguration press conferences back in November.  At least in superficial access, Obama gets the nod.

Obama is also experimenting with how he communicates with his constituents—directly, and not through the press. He is posting his weekly addresses on YouTube, and there is a place on the Change.gov Web site for feedback from voters. Like any new media experiment, it’s not clear how well this one is working yet. The first Obama address received almost one million hits, but since then, the numbers have steadily decreased. Only 161,000 people want to watch the President-elect talk about his choice for Secretary of Housing last week.

When Obama selected conservative pastor and gay marriage opponent Rick Warren to participate in the inauguration, people turned to transition Web site, voicing their opposition on the one place they could—the discussion page about Obama’s plan for service. Thousands said Warren was a bad choice. Obama hasn’t changed his mind about Warren yet (he said at his press conference Thursday, “We’re not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere where we can disagree without being disagreeable …) but the transition team did add a new discussion page Friday for “general issues.” Here’s one sample post:

I’m done. While I wouldn’t vote for a Republican, I will actively promote people to not vote for Obama in the future, unless an apology is released.

An explanation that all he is doing is bringing different opinions together is not OK. you don’t get it, you don’t have to fight for your right to see your partner in the hospital everyday.

Shame on you Obama. Shame on your people. We had such big hopes and look at what you did to us.

In 2012 we will not come out in support of you, not after what you have done.

At the very least, this experiment in direct communication with constituents will be a learning experience for Obama. If Obama thought the press could be bad, he doesn’t know the American people.

Mr. Cool almost loses it when a dogged reporter, John McCormick, from the Chicago Tribune presses for a response to the revelation that Obama’s Chief of Staff-to-be, Rahm Emanuel, had 21 taped conversations over Obama’s vacated Senate seat with disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevitch.

Although everyone in the world seems to be on bated breath waiting for President-Elect Barack Obama to select a dog for his daughters, Vice President-elect Joe Biden recently chose a new dog for his family. Apparently, Biden also had a similar “election doggie” promise. A writer for the Christian Science Monitor reports that if Obama and Biden won the election, Joe promised to get him and his wife a dog.

Well true to his word, Biden got a dog. He purchased a beautiful three-month-old German Shepherd puppy from breeder, Linda Brown of East Coventry Township, Pennsylvania. According to Delaware Online News, Biden chose the dog because he is familiar with the breed.

However, not everyone is happy about Biden’s decision. Animal rights activists are making a big bark about Biden buying a dog from a commercial breeder instead of getting a rescue or shelter puppy. There are an estimated four million dogs that are euthanized each year because they don’t have a home.

“We are surprised that Sen. Biden chose to purchase a dog from a commercial kennel since he has been a leader on animal-protection issues and has championed a number of important animal-welfare reforms in the Senate,” Michael Markarian, executive vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, told the Philadelphia Inquirer. “President-elect Obama can send a stronger message of hope and change for animals by adopting a homeless dog from an animal shelter or rescue group.”

Even People for the Equal Treatment of Animals (PETA) came out with a statement about Biden’s breeder pup.

“I was extremely disappointed to read that Vice President-elect Joe Biden and his wife bought a dog from a breeder instead of adopting one from an animal shelter,” writes Dore on the PETA blog.  “Obviously he or his wife blanked on Ingrid’s letter, which asked him to consider adopting,” she wrote. ”Every year, U.S. animal shelters are forced to euthanize millions of wonderful, deserving dogs and cats because of the lack of good homes.”

Animal rights advocates are still holding out hope that Obama gets a pound puppy. Meanwhile, check out Biden’s cute puppy on the video below.

As the first black man elected President of the United States, Barack Obama’s win is unprecedented. But there’s another first associated with him, too.

“I think that’s the first time bulletproof glass was used around a candidate during an acceptance speech,” says Tony DiPonio, the vice-president of operations at Pacific Bulletproof Co., a manufacturer of bullet resistance products.

Viewers at home couldn’t see it, but Obama gave his Nov. 4 victory speech in Chicago’s Grant Park while sandwiched between two-inch thick, 10-feet high, and 15-feet long bullet-resistant glass panels. News crews formed a layer of protection in front of him. Nearly all of the city’s police force worked the crowd around him. Undercover agents were posted in the skyscrapers surrounding the venue. And the air above the President-elect was a designated no-fly zone, minus the numerous police helicopters that dotted the night sky.

Ever since Hillary Clinton alluded to the A-word way back in the primaries and got blasted for it, the possibility of Barack Obama’s assassination has been nestled uncomfortably in people’s minds.

People don’t want to hear or talk about the A-word, which is understandable, given the excitement and optimism Obama has brought to a country on the brink of implosion. But the man will be, after all, the first black president. This consideration was beside the point during his race to the White House—and rightly so—but now that Obama’s crossed the finish line, perhaps it’s time to own up to the real danger that looms over his historic presidency.

The public may prefer to keep hush-hush about any impending threat, but thankfully, the Secret Service seems more than ready to face reality for us. The bulletproof glass is just one step toward protecting Obama.

Is it all overkill? Hardly.

There are nine levels of bulletproof protection, based on the dimensions of the glass used. The highest level used for civilian situations—in banks, fast food restaurants, check cashing stores—is a level three.

“For Obama, they used a level five, which could withstand a 7.62 mm round armor piercing, which you’d see out of a rifle,” says DiPonio. “Thinking a guy’s not going to run up to the podium with a handgun, that’s a smart choice.”

Glass with a level five protection rating also sufficiently shields against the impact of any debris that could fly from an explosion about 10-15 feet away.

DiPonio anticipates that we’ll be seeing more and more of this glass used in these situations.

“From the research I’ve read, a few days after Obama was elected, gun sales went up almost 300 percent,” he says.

In addition, white supremacy groups are claiming that they’ve seen a membership surge since the election. Their website traffic is up. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke acknowledged that Obama has emerged as “a visual aid for hate groups.” This has prompted the Secret Service to amp up its protection by arming the President-elect with 30 body guards—24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Obama had already been the target of countless threats and a couple assassination attempts prior to election day, so the public’s insistence on skirting any discussion of the man’s safety is a little negligent, but at least we can rest assured that the Secret Service has stepped up its efforts to have our boy’s back. We may not want to see our next president “on display” in a glass box, but if we want to see him make history on Jan. 20—then so be it.

Photo Source and Source

The New York Times has had Rep. Charles Rangel in its sights since July, when the paper reported on the New York congressman’s four rent-stabilized apartments. Last week, the Times raised the stakes, reporting on Nov. 25 that Rangel kept open a tax loophole for a corporation whose chief executive had made a large donation to Rangel’s charity.

Rangel responded to the story’s allegations the next day by letter. Instead of running a shortened version of the 700-word letter in the hard-copy version of the paper, the Times posted the entire letter online Wednesday afternoon, with a 1,500-word point-by-point rebuttal of Rangel’s complaints and clarifications by the original story’s author, David Kocieniewski.

News outlets reporting on the Times and Rangel back and forth have called it a “war of words.” And the verdict is in: After a “beatdown,” “the Times is winning the battle.”

The strangest description of the fight comes from the Congressional newspaper Roll Call, which said the Times‘ response was a “bizarre new twist.” The response is hardly bizarre—after the paper asked Rangel multiple times for an interview, only his lawyers spoke with the reporter. Immediately after the story ran, Rangel offered a lengthy explanation, but one that still raised questions. The Times used the expanded space of the its Web site to put Rangel’s response in context.

Charles Rangel’s actions deserve to be scrutinized; he wields a lot of power as chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. And that scrutiny has turned up plenty of questionable behavior (all documented here). But the Times‘ extraordinary response to Rangel’s letter shows just how much power the paper wields, too. There’s no question more people read Rangel’s letter and the Times‘ response because it was posted in full on the paper’s home page.

What kind of precedent does the paper’s devastating rebuttal set? The Times‘ reporting was rock-solid in this instance, so it had no problem with doing a point-by-point takedown of Rangel’s letter. What happens when the reporting isn’t so solid? Will the protesting letter get relegated to the paper’s letters page?

The interaction between the Times and Rangel has been fascinating to watch. Will Rangel respond again to the paper’s reporting? And if it doesn’t run his next letter on the Web site, Rangel can always call a press conference to dispute the Times‘ claims.

There is no point in wringing our hands about the slippery slope of posting letters and responses to the Web—more dialogue between papers, sources, reporters and the reading public is a good thing. But it’s important to remember that the Times took the step of running Rangel’s letter because it knew it had the goods to dispute him. Every story should be as well-reported as the work David Kocieniewski has done on Rangel. If it isn’t, let’s hope the Times is still willing to publish a takedown, even if it takes down itself.