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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/opinion/17mexico-intro.html?hp

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Biden: GOP on deficits is like an arsonist becoming fire marshal

Barbara Billingsley, Beaver Cleaver's TV mom, dies

 

The Associated Press • October 16, 2010

Billingsley, who had suffered from a rheumatoid disease, died at her home in Santa Monica, said family spokeswoman Judy Twersky. 

When the show debuted in 1957, Jerry Mathers, who played Beaver, was 9, and Tony Dow, who portrayed Wally, was 12. Billingsley's character, the perfect stay-at-home 1950s mom, was always there to gently but firmly nurture both through the ups and downs of childhood. 

Beaver, meanwhile, was a typical American boy whose adventures landed him in one comical crisis after another. 

Billingsley's own two sons said she was pretty much the image of June Cleaver in real life, although the actress disagreed. 

"She was every bit as nurturing, classy, and lovely as 'June Cleaver' and we were so proud to share her with the world," her son Glenn Billingsley said Saturday. 

She did acknowledge that she may have become more like June as the series progressed. 

"I think what happens is that the writers start writing about you as well as the character they created," she once said. "So you become sort of all mixed up, I think." 

A wholesome beauty with a lithe figure, Billingsley began acting in her elementary school's plays and soon discovered she wanted to do nothing else. 

Although her beauty and figure won her numerous roles in movies from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, she failed to obtain star status until "Leave it to Beaver," a show that she almost passed on. 

"I was going to do another series with Buddy Ebsen for the same producers, but somehow it didn't materialize," she told The Associated Press in 1994. "A couple of months later I got a call to go to the studio to do this pilot show. And it was `Beaver.'" 

Decades later, she expressed surprise at the lasting affection people had for the show. 

"We knew we were making a good show, because it was so well written," she said. "But we had no idea what was ahead. People still talk about it and write letters, telling how much they watch it today with their children and grandchildren."

After "Leave it to Beaver" left the air in 1963 Billingsley largely disappeared from public view for several years. 

She resurfaced in 1980 in a hilarious cameo in "Airplane!" playing a demur elderly passenger not unlike June Cleaver.

When flight attendants were unable to communicate with a pair of jive-talking hipsters, Billingsley's character volunteered to translate, saying "I speak jive." The three then engage in a raucous street-slang conversation. 

"No chance they would have cast me for that if I hadn't been June Cleaver," she once said. 

She returned as June Cleaver in a 1983 TV movie, "Still the Beaver," that costarred Mathers and Dow and portrayed a much darker side of Beaver's life. 

In his mid-30s, Beaver was unemployed, unable to communicate with his own sons and going through a divorce. Wally, a successful lawyer, was handling the divorce, and June was at a loss to help her son through the transition. 

"Ward, what would you do?" she asked at the site of her husband's grave. (Beaumont had died in 1982.) 

The movie revived interest in the Cleaver family, and the Disney Channel launched "The New Leave It to Beaver" in 1985. 

The series took a more hopeful view of the Cleavers, with Beaver winning custody of his two sons and all three moving in with June. 

In 1997 Universal made a "Leave it to Beaver" theatrical film with a new generation of actors. Billingsley returned for a cameo, however, as Aunt Martha. 

"America's favorite mother is now gone," Dow said in a statement Saturday. "I feel very fortunate to have been her "son" for 11 years. We were wonderful friends and I will miss her very much." 

In later years she appeared from time to time in such TV series as "Murphy Brown," "Empty Nest" and "Baby Boom" and had a memorable comic turn opposite fellow TV moms June Lockhart of "Lassie" and Isabel Sanford of "The Jeffersons" on the "Roseanne" show. 

"Now some people, they just associate you with that one role (June Cleaver), and it makes it hard to do other things," she once said. "But as far as I'm concerned, it's been an honor." 

In real life, fate was not as gentle to Billingsley as it had been to June and her family.

Born Barbara Lillian Combes in Los Angeles on Dec. 22, 1915, she was raised by her mother after her parents divorced. She and her first husband, Glenn Billingsley, divorced when her sons were just 2 and 4. 

Her second husband, director Roy Kellino, died of a heart attack after three years of marriage and just months before she landed the "Leave it to Beaver" role. 

She married physician Bill Mortenson in 1959 and they remained wed until his death in 1981.

 Survivors include her sons, stepchildren and numerous grandchildren.

October 15, 2010, 10:10 pm

Are the Democrats the True Extremists?

 

TOBIN HARSHAW

NY Times

   

It’s the duty (and, O.K., the bliss) of an opinion journalist to demonstrate that the Beltway’s conventional wisdom has far fewer garments than it supposes. But on one count — that the progressives are at the moment far more marginalized by their Democratic president and Congressional leadership than are the Tea Party enthusiasts by the Republican powers-that-be — it’s been hard to show contention. After all, the president who insisted that the day of his inauguration would be “the moment when we ended a war,” who confidently said that “we are going to close Guantanamo”, who promised to repeal the military’s don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy has shown, through deed if not word, that he’s not exactly a hostage to the far left. Nor has the Democratic leadership: Senate majority leader Harry Reid is an apostate on a woman’s alleged right to choose — “abortions should be legal only when the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape, or when the life of the woman is endangered” – and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi isn’t exactly beloved.

A poll on which party is more dominated by its fringe found that the far left is viewed as more influential than the Tea Parties.

 

So how to explain this, from The Hill’s Alexander Bolton?

Likely voters in battleground districts see extremists as having a more dominant influence over the Democratic Party than they do over the GOP. This result comes from The Hill 2010 Midterm Election Poll, which found that 44 percent of likely voters say the Democratic Party is more dominated by its extreme elements, whereas 37 percent say it’s the Republican Party that is more dominated by extremists.

Award for the pithiest response goes to Gawker’s Jim Newell: “44% of likely voters say the Democratic Party is ‘more dominated by its extreme elements,’ versus 37% for the GOP. This is probably because Democrats have very few ‘likely voters.’ “ 

Now, it’s true that the survey was focused on just a handful of Congressional districts in which the races are considered toss-ups, but can the Democrats’ election gurus really ignore it? “That’s real trouble for Democrats,” Jim Kessler, co-founder of the Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank, told The Hill. “All the press coverage has been about how these Tea Party candidates are fringe ideologues, and there have been high-profile examples of them proving the point. Yet, still at this moment, you have independents saying, ‘I think the Democrats are a little more extreme than the Republicans.’ ”

Some on the left think it’s less a matter of how Democrats are behaving than of poor framing on the concept of extremism. “The Democratic Party is ‘more dominated than the GOP by extreme views’?” asks Misty at Shakesville. “What? Did they forget to finish that statement with ‘…. more dominated than the GOP by extreme views because they’re so like the GOP and not like Democrats at all’? Who are these ‘extremists’?” As for the villains in her mind, you can probably guess:

Media like Fox and their hateful talking heads certainly make a lot of noise–and many people listen to that noise. This country seems to have drifted “right”ward, given how many people actually take it seriously–see it as a reasonable accusation–when Obama is called a socialist. He’s a centrist, milquetoast Democrat. He’s not a freaking socialist! However, a lot of people really seem to believe that some centrist positions are socialist (and un-American, to boot).

This is in line with the comments the liberal activist Markos Moulitsas gave the Hill:

“Democrats haven’t nominated anyone like Sharron Angle or Rand Paul or Christine O’Donnell or Rob Johnson or Joe Miller for Senate seats, much less the myriad of wackos in House races across the country,” said Markos Moulitsas, founder and publisher of Daily Kos, one of the nation’s largest liberal blogs. “We don’t have media figures like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh calling the shots for our party.

“But they have built their alternate world courtesy of Fox News, thus making them impervious to reality. Is that a problem? Sure. Even more so when Democrats think they can reason with this crowd,” said Moulitsas, a contributing columnist for The Hill.

“This is the direct result of systematic, intentional right wing media deregulation,” is the echo from Michael Tedesco at Comments From Left Field. “If reasonable people wish to ever see their political process return to some semblance of sanity then the focus of grass roots efforts on reform needs to directed on reversing the decades of destruction wrought on the journalism.”

Hmmm, if conservative commentary is the product of “deregulation,” I’m curious to know how Tedesco would have the press regulated. Why do I doubt that such a media utopia would have little room for people like JammieWearingFool, who had this to say about the Hill poll:

Despite 18 months of the media calling tea partiers frothing rabble and angry extremists, a new poll shows precisely the opposite. More people perceive the Democratic Party to be dominated by the fringe. Of course anyone with functioning synapses has recognized this for the past few decades …

In other words, clear-thinking people have tuned out the lamestream media and their mantra about how crazy tea partiers are. The think they can constantly harp on Angle and O’Donnell yet they overlook the surge nationwide from independents toward the GOP. The media won’t change, they’ll just lose more viewers and readers.

“Recall how the unhappy Barney Frank, after leaving on a (bailout recipient’s) jet plane to the Virgin Islands, insisted that Republicans “need to do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from the hateful speech spewed in the healthcare debate’s final hours’?” asks B. Daniel Blatt at GayPatriot. “Seems this mean-spirited Massachusetts Democrat wants to tie his partisan adversaries to the fringe elements of the Tea Party (while they, in Barney’s fervid imagination, want to tie him to the train tracks). Well, Barney, like most things you try, this, well, this strategy isn’t working.”

Susan Duclos at Wake Up America notes that the poll result “even crossed party lines with one-in-five Democrats, 22 percent, saying their own party was dominated by extremists, which is double the amount of Republicans that said the same thing about the GOP (11 percent).” She thinks the reasons for this are obvious:

Obama, Pelosi and Reid have represented the extreme portion of their party base at the exclusion of Independents, centrists, moderates and conservatives and the midterm election results with reflect whether the country approves of that representation or not … Perhaps this is one reason we are seeing Blue Dog Democrats come out so hard against Pelosi, swearing to their constituents they will not vote for her as Speaker of the House if the Democrats should manage to retain control of the House of Representatives, going so far as to say they want a centrist as Speaker, calling her “divisive” and too “extreme”.

William Teach of Pirate’s Cove, however, thinks the poll result has more to do with longstanding, shared American values:

The United States is a center-right nation. The People like their taxes low, their military strong, their government out of their lives. The want law and order, they want their government to listen and be responsive. They also like their social programs. Bush, for all his faults, was really about the perfect American president. Strong on international affairs, kept taxes low, but was big on the social programs.

The story points out that despite the constant drum beat about the TEA Party and other conservatives, painting them as extremists, it is the Democrats who are more dominated by their fringe elements, their folks who want to massively increase government, increase their hold on our private lives, and want to raise taxes, among others. The principles of the Republican Party are more like the principles of the American People. They just have to remember to not forget those principles, as they did under Bush.

The liberal blogger BooMan is one of the few to think outside the partisan box here, and comes up with a dandy of a conspiracy theory:

It’s embarrassing that The Hill commissioned a poll from Mark Penn and Doug Schoen … In case anyone’s interested, Schoen and Penn make their living off of corporate clients, and they do everything they can to make the Democratic Party sympathetic to those client’s interests. All this poll represents is an effort to blame the midterm losses on the Democrats going too far to the left. No one in their right mind is going to believe these poll results.

Perhaps, but as for those predicted midterm losses and the next Congress, how big a role will “extremists” play? Well, if you think the Tea Partiers are extreme and believe the analysis of The Times’s Kate Zernike, the answer is: the central one. Here’s Zernike’s explanation:

Enough Tea Party-supported candidates are running strongly in competitive and Republican-leaning Congressional races that the movement stands a good chance of establishing a sizable caucus to push its agenda in the House and the Senate, according to a New York Times analysis. With a little more than two weeks till Election Day, 33 Tea Party-backed candidates are in tossup races or running in House districts that are solidly or leaning Republican, and 8 stand a good or better chance of winning Senate seats.

While the numbers are relatively small, they could exert outsize influence, putting pressure on Republican leaders to carry out promises to significantly cut spending and taxes, to repeal health care legislation and financial regulations passed this year, and to phase out Social Security and Medicare in favor of personal savings accounts.

Jennifer Rubin at Commentary offers backhanded compliments to The Times for according “grudging respect to those it once decried as racists and extremists.” Here’s her take on the mainstream media:

And the Tea Party candidates have performed “better than expected” — umm, better than the Gray Lady expected — the report tells us. Yes, there is Christine O’Donnell, but the Times has figured out that there are many more viable Tea Party–backed candidates (e.g., Ron Johnson and Ken Buck). And it must have slipped the reporter’s mind, but that Marco Rubio looks pretty good, too.

This is yet another instance — the surge in Iraq was one of the more egregious examples — in which the media ignored or derided a conservative effort and then discovered that, by gosh (who could have expected it?), it’s pretty darn successful! If the media weren’t so busy telling liberals what they wanted to hear and ignoring conservative politics, they’d be surprised less.

“Scared yet, America?” asks Zandar. “You should be. The Tea Party will effectively take control of the Republican Party if the Republican Party takes control of Congress. Obama will actually develop some sort of elbow condition from overuse of his veto pen. But that’s what we’re facing here.

“The Tea Party isn’t anything new, folks. it’s just the same old fringe lunacy on the right repackaged, astroturfed, and mass produced for consumption. In fact, just about the only thing people are consuming these days in our economy is Tea Party ideas. It’s the same old litany of hate, the same old ‘I’m the candidate who stands for something, I stand for being against blah blah blah’ and if you value any sort of two party sanity in DC or in the American system as a whole, you’ll want to see these guys go down in flames roughly the same height and temperature as the sun’s corona. These guys actually make me miss the Republicans of the 80’s.”

Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen has more to say about that “blah, blah, blah”: “For the right, government-by-platitudes is surprisingly easy. Spending is bad, earmarks are bad, taxes are bad. They tend to run into a little trouble when this worldview runs into practical applications.”

The liberal blogger Prairie Weather jumps on this passage in the Zernike piece — “in the House, Tea Party candidates are allowing Democrats to poll well in a few districts where demographics and voting history suggest that Republicans should win” — to come to the conclusion that “Republicans are getting their noses rubbed in it.” Hmmm, really? “That’s not to say Democrats aren’t getting hurt, too,” the post acknowledges. After all, there’s the pending Wisconsin tragedy.” Somehow I suspect that Russ Feingold is hardly the only liberal ruing the day the Tea Party took off.

In any case, we’ll know where we stand electorally in a couple of weeks; the more pertinent issue stemming from the Zernike piece is what happens afterward. New York Magazine’s Daily Intel has a pretty intelligent analysis:

Counting how many tea partiers are elected to office won’t give you an accurate measure. Essentially, we have to think of each congressman and senator as falling somewhere along the tea-party spectrum. We’ll have no trouble figuring out where to place prospective senators Sharron Angle or Rand Paul, or in the House, Ohio candidate Steve Stivers, who wants to axe the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Interior, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, “and others.” But almost every Republican, and even some Democrats, will embody the tea-party movement to varying degrees. This is especially true for any Republican whose re-nomination in 2012 is anything less than a sure thing. In that respect, the influence of the tea party in Congress goes far beyond the number of “tea-party candidates” — whatever that means — elected this year.

“Whatever that means” is exactly the riddle of the Tea Parties, and that odd poll from The Hill makes it harder than ever to decipher.

America's Top 5 Healthiest Fast Food Restaurants

Tracy Minkin and Brittani Renaud

Who hasn’t unwrapped a sandwich while driving down the highway or pulled a hard U-turn into a fast-food joint on the way home from a late meeting or soccer game? We practically live in our cars, so we need quick food, and please, we’d like it to be healthy.

Well, guess what: We surveyed the nation’s 100 largest fast-food chains, as defined by the number of locations, and found many are creating menus that look more and more like what we’d cook ourselves (if we had the time)—from nutritious soups and healthy salads to fresh whole grains and sensible desserts. Even better: They’re offering good-news Mexican, Asian, and Mediterranean fare.

Using criteria that was created with the help of our expert panel, we scored the chains on such factors as the use of healthy fats and preparations, healthy sodium counts in entrees, availability of nutritional information, and the use of organic produce to determine the 10 highest-ranking restaurants.

One big surprise: A traditional fast-food chain, McDonald’s, cracked our top 10. Sure, it’s the home of the Big Mac, but did you know it also serves a mean yogurt-and-granola parfait? Here, the standouts that are making grabbed food healthy food.


1. Panera Bread
Over 1,230 locations nationwide (and in Canada)

This bakery-cafe-based eatery wowed our judges with a comprehensive menu of healthy choices for every meal. “Variety makes it easy for everyone to choose healthy,” praises registered dietitian and panelist Marisa Moore. What does that mean for you? For starters, you can pick from two whole-grain breads for your sandwich and have an apple with it instead of chips (though the chips are fine, too—they can be baked!). Half-size soups, salads, and sandwiches make it a cinch to control portion size. Also, most of the chicken is antibiotic- and hormone-free, a rarity for large chains.

Panera also won top honors for kid fare, dishing out RD-approved crowd-pleasers like squeezable organic yogurt, PB&J (with all-natural peanut butter), and grilled organic cheese on white whole-grain bread.

We love: Delicious, nutrient-packed combos like a half–Turkey Artichoke on focaccia bread with a bowl of black bean or garden vegetable soup.
Danger zone: Sticky buns and cheese danishes are on display at the counter.

2. Jason’s Deli
206 locations in the West, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, South

How did this up-and-comer snag second place? Largely because of its devotion to organic food: About one-fifth of all its ingredients are organic, from blue-corn tortilla chips and whole-wheat wraps to field greens and spinach. Plus, its creative salads—like the Nutty Mixed-Up Salad with organic field greens, grapes, chicken breast, feta cheese, walnuts, dried cranberries, pumpkinseeds, raisins, and organic apples—make you actually want to order the greens.

Our judges applauded the portion-control option: Reduced sizes of, say, a stuffed baked potato, are $1 less. Jason’s menu also highlights ultrahealthy sandwiches and provides the nutitional info.

We love: Being able to build any sandwich on an organic whole-wheat wrap.
Danger zone: High-sodium counts on some sandwiches; if sodium is a concern, stick to the ultrahealthy choices.

3. Au Bon Pain

280 locations nationwide

A pioneer in healthy fast food, Au Bon Pain serves up sandwiches, soups, salads, and hot entrees made with whole grains, veggies, and hormone-free chicken.

New this year: Portions, a 14-item menu of nutritious small plates—from appetizers like apples, blue cheese, and cranberries to salads like chickpea and tomato—all of which are less than 200 calories. Another impressive feature: Au Bon Pain provides on-site nutritional information via computer kiosks, so before you even order you know each option’s calories, fat, and sodium. “It’s a great way to empower customers,” praises judge Amy Jamieson-Petonic.

We love: Yummy low-cal soups, from Jamaican Black Bean to Fire Roasted Exotic Grains and Vegetables.
Danger zone: The sodium counts can get high if you don’t pay attention.


4. Noodles and Company
204 locations in West, Midwest, South

Noodles and Company isn’t your typical greasy Asian food-court joint. In fact, it goes beyond Asian fare and cuts out the grease (only healthy soybean oil is used in sauteing). Here, you choose from three food types: Asian, Mediterranean, or American, then within each style, pick from four noodle bowl options. Lean proteins—hormone- and antibiotic-free chicken, beef, shrimp, and organic tofu—can be added, too.

The result? Tasty combos like Japanese Pan Noodles with broccoli, carrots, shiitake mushrooms, Asian sprouts, and sauteed beef. Also key: “You don’t have to chow down on a giant bowl of noodles. You can opt for a small portion,” says judge Frances Largeman-Roth, RD, Health’s Senior Food and Nutrition Editor. The small Bangkok Curry bowl has just 250 calories.

We love: The whole-grain linguine—usually hard to find when eating out.
Danger zone: The desserts. The only options are two kinds of cookies and a Rice Krispy Treat bar that checks in at 530 calories and 19 grams of fat!

5. Corner Bakery Cafe

111 locations in West, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, South

What sets Corner Bakery apart? A fantastic breakfast menu, which is rare in the quick-serve world. We love the Farmer’s Scrambler: eggs scrambled with red and green bell peppers, red onion, mushrooms, potatoes, and Cheddar cheese. (It’s only 260 calories when ordered with egg whites.) There’s also Swiss oatmeal, a chilled European breakfast cereal made with rolled oats, green apples, bananas, currants, dried cranberries, low-fat yogurt, and skim milk.

But Corner Bakery also has healthy salads, sandwiches, and soups made with whole grains, fresh, lean meats, and vegetables, as well as great portion-controlled combinations that make limiting calories a no-brainer.

We love: Healthy oven-roasted chicken that comes on most pastas and salads.
Danger zone: You have to go to their Web site to get nutritional info.

Wealth Matters

Scrutinizing the Elite, Whether They Like It or Not

 

PAUL SULLIVAN

October 15, 2010

THE rich are sitting firmly in the public cross hairs, especially as the economy continues to stumble. Reports that Wall Street bonuses will again be high, and the debate in Congress over tax increases for the wealthy, just add to the outrage.

So it was a serendipitous time for Columbia University to convene the first Elites Research Network conference last week. The conference drew in scholars focused on inequality across academic disciplines, like economics, political science, sociology and history.

In the academic world, this was remarkable. As several of the scholars acknowledged, there has traditionally been some unease in talking about the elite, let alone researching them.

“When we study the poor, it’s relatively easy,” said Sudhir Venkatesh, a professor of sociology at Columbia and the author of “Gang Leader for a Day” (Penguin Press, 2008). “The poor don’t have the power to say no. Elites don’t grant us interviews. They don’t let us hang out at their country clubs.”

But Dorian Warren, an assistant professor of political science at Columbia, said the increasing concentration of wealth, moving from the top 10 percent of Americans to the top 1 percent, has made this the right time to look more closely at the group. “We have to understand what’s going on at the top,” Mr. Warren said.

The discussion quickly went beyond examining how those with more had traditionally exercised control over those with less. Many of the younger scholars said their goal was to do more than just look at tax returns and see who sat on boards. Instead, they said, they want to start looking at the relationships between the elite and the non-elite.

“If you look at the poor as a problem, you’ll be angry at elites or you’ll expect them to come up with a solution,” said Mr. Venkatesh, who took the most pragmatic line. “You have to come in accepting that there will always be poor people in society and there will always be wealthy people in society, and neither of the two reached that status by their own efforts.”

That’s not the usual description of this issue. But otherwise, you risk viewing the rich as rapacious thieves or seeing the poor as lazy freeloaders.

That said, there were other academics who hewed to an older model of power dynamics. Jeffrey Winters, associate professor of political science at Northwestern University, talked of the wealthy in America in terms of oligarchy. And he advanced an argument against what he called the “income defense industry.”

The term referred to the accountants, lawyers and financial advisers employed by the wealthy — and the merely affluent — to manage their financial affairs. Mr. Winters argued that this group was hurting the non-elite by minimizing tax collection. He estimated that $70 billion was lost yearly just from offshore accounts.

There is no denying that members of the elite have a lot of money and would like to hang on to as much of it as they can. But that’s true of most people.

Olivier Godechot, a French academic on the sociology panel, presented research that quantified just how skewed the increase in wealth at the very top has become. Mr. Godechot, a researcher at the National Center for Scientific Research in France, said that two professions — finance and business services — accounted for almost all of the increase in income inequality.

D. Michael Lindsay, assistant professor of sociology at Rice University, said his research showed that many of the people now considered elite in America did not start out that way. He is conducting what he described as the largest study ever of top leaders in America, having talked to over 500 so far across business, nonprofits and academia.

He said he had found that a privileged upbringing did not matter as much as generally thought. Nor, he said, did many of the top leaders inherit large sums of money. While many went to top colleges and a large number attended Harvard Business School, the biggest determining factor of whether someone moved into the elite was an early career opportunity.

Being able to look beyond their specialty early — as opposed to being highly specialized their entire career and then thrust into a leadership role — distinguished great leaders more than any inherent advantage in their upbringing, he said.

“These people had a chance to be a generalist early on, as opposed to being specialists their whole career,” Mr. Lindsay said. “They had that experience in their early 30s or 40s.”

Some of the conference presenters took note that they themselves were almost entirely from Ivy League and other elite universities — only one was from a state university.

“When we send our kids to the Brookline schools, we’re not making a judgment about the Boston schools,” said Michèle Lamont, a sociology professor at Harvard University. “There are unintended consequences to our actions.”

Mr. Warren put it more bluntly: “I did not come up as a child of privilege, but I got into Yale for graduate school. I’m going to want to do the same for my kids. It’s not a malicious intent to exclude others; it’s a rational impulse to maintain the advantage.”

Those at the conference defined the elite as people with power over others, and the debate was framed largely in economic terms. But professors at an Ivy League university are part of an elite, even if their salaries do not reflect it.

Shamus Rahman Khan, a conference organizer and assistant professor of sociology at Columbia, seemed to be most at ease with the conflict. The son of a Pakistani father and Irish mother who both emigrated to the United States, he said he came from a wealthy but not elite family. His father, a successful surgeon, paid his son’s way to the St. Paul’s School, a top boarding school.

Yet when Mr. Khan arrived there in the mid-1990s, he said he lived in the “minority students dorm.” He used that experience and a later teaching stint at St. Paul’s to write a book on the nature of advantage, “Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul’s School,” which will be published by Princeton University Press in January.

“Is it morally responsible for you to get your kids into very expensive schools if it will advantage them?” Mr. Khan said. “It’s hard not to do it. But by doing it, you’re not explicitly squirting some other kid in the eye with pepper spray. It’s more subtle.”

His concern is what the concentration of wealth means for American society in the future. He said he wondered whether the post-World War II era in America — as defined by prosperity and rising income levels — was a historical anomaly and was coming to an end.

He cited data showing that the United States now had the second-lowest level of intergenerational income mobility in the world, after England.

“If we lose this truly American thing — that you can become anything if you just work at it — then you’re really going to lose what makes America America,” he said. “It already appears that it will take a tremendous amount of time for people to bring their families out of poverty and for the wealthy to fall from the advantages they have.”

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/health/sns-c-50-fattiest-foods-across-the-nation,0,960482.photogallery?index=sns-c-50-fattiest-foods-002

Injured man wins $650,000 judgment against strip club

Stripper's shoe strikes man in eye; he suffered broken bones, double vision

The Palm Beach Post

9:20 p.m. EDT, October 14, 2010

 

A man who sued after being struck in the face by a strip dancer's shoe at the Cheetah nightclub, seriously injuring his eye, has won a $650,000 judgment.

Personal injury litigator Lake "Trey" Lytal III said Thursday that while the club's insurance company agreed to the amount, getting the money to Cheetah's patron Michael Ireland still is not a done deal and may require more litigation.

Ireland, a roofer, has experienced chronic double vision since stripper Sakeena Shageer's shoe made contact with his eye at the suburban West Palm Beach club in September 2008, Lytal said.

"When this case was first filed, many people criticized it simply because it occurred at a strip club," Lytal said. "But we feel the $650,000 settlement goes to show that this was a serious case with serious injuries."

Shageer said she was walking along the bar, with her feet near patrons' heads, when she spun around in reaction to someone touching her, Lytal said. Shageer struck Ireland accidentally, he said.

Shageer did not respond to a phone message seeking comment.

Lytal said he was not sure precisely what kind of shoe Shageer was wearing except that it was a platform with a metal heel.

The registered agent of the Cheetah's parent company, Joe Rodriguez, did not respond to a message seeking comment. A manager at the club Thursday said he could not comment whether dancers are still allowed to shimmy on the bar.

Lytal could not either. "No, no. I wouldn't know about that," he said.

He is expecting another round of litigation in the case, since he does not anticipate the nightclub's insurance carrier to just pay the $650,000 judgment. Lytal said they were forced to sue the Cheetah and Shageer after the insurance company wouldn't pay.

Ireland suffered broken bones around his eye and in his nose and now has permanent double vision and frequent dizziness, Lytal said.

Strip club lawsuits have centered on the hazard of sky-high platform shoes strippers frequently wear.

In New York, a man sued after a stripper giving him a lap dance swiveled and smacked him in the face with her shoe. A Broward man sued after a woman's stiletto flew off during a pole dance, shattering a mirror and cutting him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/13/us/politics/13biden.html?_r=3

http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20101014/FEAT/101014018/%20View%20%20co-hosts%20walk%20out%20on%20Bill%20O%20Reilly?GID=RaJyHzq09vCjvBPc9E0Gtx54taYGtrZTAhQcYyO93Qs%3D

http://www.wreg.com/news/nationworld/sns-d-most-biting-tea-party-signs-pictures,0,7469281.photogallery

Daily News Photo IllustrationYoung voters are losing faith in President Obama, according to a new poll.

 

Barack Obama is no longer the big man on campus.

College students' support for the President is waning -- a worrying sign for Democrats who are trying to reenergize young voters before the midterm elections, which are just three weeks away.

Just 44% approve of the job Obama is doing, while 27% said they unhappy with his job performance, according to a new Associated Press-mtvU poll.

That's a significant dip from the 60% who gave the president high marks in a May 2009 poll. Only 15% of college goers had a negative opinion of him back then.

And if 2008 is any indication, the Democrats need young voters. During that presidential race, nearly one in eight voters cast their ballots for the first time. Exit polls showed 55% of new voters were age 18-24, and those young first-timers strongly supported the Democrats.

In 2008, Obama benefited from a flurry of endorsements from celebrities that young adults look up to such as Jay-Z, Chris Rock and Jennifer Aniston.

The President is making an effort to renew that campus enthusiasm. Obama will appear at a town hall that will be aired live on several youth-friendly networks including MTV and BET.

He'll also lead a rally Sunday at Ohio State University -- where the campus' 55,000 students are an important voting bloc in the battleground state.

Political scientists, campaign workers, and students said many young people are disenchanted with Obama's handling of the economy, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and failures to end the ban against gays serving openly in the military. There's also frustration of his inability to have delivered campaign promises to change Washington.

"People expect things to happen quickly," said Elizabeth Wright, a senior at the University of Colorado. "I don't think people understand it takes time."

The survey asked 2,207 randomly chosen undergraduates at 40 randomly selected four-year schools with at least 1,000 students. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3%.

Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, a nonpartisan group that encourages young voters, said it registered 225,000 voters for this year's election. While that's more than four times as many as last midterm's election in 2006, she said the political parities aren't dishing out as much cash to garner the youth vote.

"It's a cycle of neglect," she said.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/2010/10/14/2010-10-14_president_barack_obamas_support_among_college_students_waning_before_2010_midter.html#ixzz12Kqjur3u