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In the flurry of news about cabinet appointments by President-elect Obama, we have yet to hear about the most important one. When will Obama appoint a Secretary of the People? We have elected the next President. Now we desperately need him to name someone whose sole purpose is to defend our interests. The deepening crisis in the economy is unraveling our lives in ways we haven't witnessed on a national scale in decades. Ten million Americans are out of work, with nearly half a million of them added to the dole in October alone. The increase in unemployment is intensifying the growth in foreclosures, and tens of thousands of people continue to lose their homes every month. (1) For the first time in decades, an entire generation of Americans faces the prospect of falling behind its parents. Not that the parents are doing especially well themselves. Millions are helplessly watching their retirement plans turn to vapor after a lifetime of honest labor. They now face the perverse problem of outliving their savings and turning into a burden for their adult children just when the latter themselves are struggling. (2) Nor is the pitiless economy sparing our young, the future of the country. An entire cohort of high school graduates may find college education harder to come by as public universities cut enrolments in response to state budget cuts. (3) Those already in college wait in dread to emerge into a punishing job market. When will Obama appoint a Secretary of the People to stand up for us? There is of course no such position; we have elected Obama himself to work on our behalf. Yet his ability to do so is severely limited by the powerful corporate interests that dominate our national politics. Obama favors measures to ease the financial burden on individuals of bankruptcy, for example, but these are opposed by the American Bankers Association. The National Association of Manufacturers has already drawn "a line in the sand" by opposing any attempt by the next government to make it easier for workers to unionize. (4) In short, for every step Obama considers, there will be someone telling him: No, you can't. So what will Obama need to effectively serve as our representative? He will need us. George Packer writes in a recent New Yorker: "Transformative Presidents...have usually had great social movements supporting and pushing them. Lincoln had the abolitionists, Roosevelt the labor unions, Johnson the civil-rights leaders, Reagan the conservative movement. Clinton didn't have one, and after his election, 'everyone went home' (quoting Robert B. Reich, President Bill Clinton's first Labor Secretary)." "Obama...will need, above all, a mobilized public beyond Washington...Without one, he will soon find himself simply cutting deals." (5) According to sociologist Frances Fox Piven, the frequent comparisons of Obama to FDR miss the importance of the widespread and organized unrest among large sections of the population during FDR's presidency. "FDR became a great president because the mass protests among the unemployed, the aged, farmers and workers forced him to make choices he would otherwise have avoided." Piven writes that national crises can become "moments when ordinary people enter into the political life of the country and authentic bottom-up reform becomes possible." (6) This history teaches us the hard lesson that we have to be our own most forceful advocates. When Obama starts cutting deals, we, the people, must occupy the most important seat at the table. As he himself has said, the campaign ultimately was not about him; it was about us. As he himself has said, our work is not over with his electoral victory; it has just begun. Let us take him at his word. Instead of waiting passively to see what the next administration will do, let us organize ourselves to demand economic security for all. Let us call town hall meetings in all our communities, not the made for TV variety but the real thing, in which we accept the collective responsibility for running our democracy. Let us use these meetings to formulate and sharpen our demands for economic justice. Let us use the same social networking strategies perfected by the Obama campaign to organize our communities around these demands. Let us demonstrate our strength with rallies calling for productive employment, fair wages, and secure pensions for all. In short, let us not let this crisis go to waste. We spoke clearly on November 4 that we wanted real change. Let us continue to speak clearly until we get it. We're the ones we've been waiting for, indeed. NOTES 1. Unemployment figures were obtained from Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates. Foreclosure data are available at RealtyTrac. See also this CNN report on the connection between the trends in unemployment and foreclosures. 2. New York Times reports on September 22 and November 22, 2008. 3. New York Times report on November 19, 2008. 4. Wall Street Journal report on November 6, 2008. 5. "The new liberalism: How the economic crisis can help Obama redefine the Democrats." November 17, 2008. 6. "Obama needs a protest movement." The Nation, November 13, 2008. More on Barack Obama

Lots of folks are expressing concern over Barack Obama's appointments, and in my new newspaper column I offer three separate thoughts on the worries: 1) Don't worry so much, 2) Worry a little bit and make your worries heard and 3) What did you expect? This last point is arguably the most important. Because of the structure of the movement Obama built for himself, and because of the refusal/inability of an independent progressive movement to make concrete demands, he has more top-down power than any previous president. Whether you think that's good news or bad news, it is reality. We have elected a Dear Leader, and have ceded a lot of power to our Dear Leader. We have to simultaneously hope he makes good decisions, and figure out how to organize effectively in case he doesn't. Read the whole column here. More on Barack Obama

Acting 101: Don't play stupid if you're playing a stupid character. Be smart. Stupid characters (i. e., Lenny in Of Mice and Men) think they're pretty smart. I'll say also too cuz saying also means I already said something.

Reggie Love's athletic aspirations are on hold. Long gone are the days captaining Duke basketball and also starring on the football team. And the 26-year-old's NFL dreams are long over, having been cut by the Green Bay Packers and released by the Dallas Cowboys. Then, rather than accepting a lucrative offer from Goldman Sachs, he took a gamble and elected to take a job paying under $30,000 per year in the mailroom of freshman Senator Barack Obama. A year later, Obama selected Love as his personal aide. Saying that Love is "like a little brother to me," Obama and Love were rarely apart during the 21-month campaign that ended with Obama being elected President of the United States. Now, as a part of President-elect Obama's transition team, Love spoke via phone to go "In Depth" with NBC Sports' Graham Bensinger. Bensinger: Prior to being part of the transition team, your most recent role was as the personal aid/body man. How would you describe your duties? Love: The job doesn't come with a description. It depends on the candidate and who had the job before you. For me, during the campaign, it was pretty simple. After time and practice, and after doing it for 22-consecutive months, you kind of get the hang of it. For example, I was responsible for making sure he had his briefings or knew where he was going or that he packed enough clothes for a 10 day trip or that he was eating breakfast and lunch and dinner or making sure there was a place for him to get in a quick workout when we got up in the morning. Also, when he's really tired, I sometimes had to wake him up in the morning which is not always a lot of fun! Bensinger: What did that entail? Love: It really depends -- some days are easier than others. Most of the days are pretty easy, but some days, you try to call him a couple times and the phone is off the hook. So you have to stumble into his room and say, "Excuse me, sir, we gotta get going!" But usually, he pops right out and says, "Hey, another day, gotta go to work!" He's a great guy to campaign with. Bensinger: I want to go through some moments and get your thoughts on what first comes to mind. I would imagine the hardest part is simply the daunting schedule, but what about the best perk? Love: For my 26th birthday, I actually got to spend a few hours backstage at the Jay-Z concert with Jay-Z, Beyonce, and Mary J Blige. It was right after the Pennsylvania Primaries so that was a real treat even though the next day we had to be up and on the plane at 6 a.m. It was really nice of my boss to look out for me and to set something up like that for me as well. Bensinger: The most stressful moment for you, personally. Love: The most stressful moment is definitely the moments when he asks me for something and I know before I even start looking for it that I don't have it. But I still give a good search around for it! Click Here To Read Full NBC Sports Q&A Interview with Reggie Love Graham Bensinger is an NBC Sports Correspondent. His website is www.GrahamBensinger.com. Email Graham at: Graham@TheGBShow.com. More on Barack Obama

It's now official, says the National Bureau of Economic Research. The seven "Wise Men" announced today that the economy entered a recession back in December 2007. The "Wise Men" are seven economists on the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee. They included a woman, Christina Romer, but she resigned last Tuesday after President-elect Obama announced her appointment as head of his Council of Economic Advisers. Data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis last Tuesday showed that the United States has had two quarters of negative GDP growth during the last year - the fourth quarter of 2007 and the third quarter of 2008. The fourth quarter is again expected to be negative, so the second half of 2008 would clearly be in recession using the old rule of thumb of two successive negative-GDP quarters. The NBER Committee takes pains to say that it doesn't rely on the two-quarter-negative-GDP rule and uses a monthly number rather than a quarterly number. The "Wise Men" define a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators. It begins when the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends when the economy reaches its trough." George W. Bush's administration is therefore bookended by two recessions, the first occurring in 2001, after the tech bubble burst. The 2001-2007 span between recessions was long, and the large government spending deficits that the Bush Administration enjoyed may have contributed to lengthening it. Many have worried that the Bush deficits were too large in the past few years. Now that a global financial crisis has taken hold, the worry is that the first Obama fiscal deficit won't be large enough to cure the current global crisis of confidence. More on Economy

The DVD/Blu-ray for Tropic Thunder is out and in honor of that comic event, I got the opportunity to speak to writer Justin Theroux for UGO.COM. You've certainly heard his name... he's writing the highly anticipated sequel to Iron Man. Not a bad gig, right? Especially for someone who spent most of his career as an actor. He was "Evil DJ" in Zoolander, and had been working on Tropic Thunder with co-star Ben Stiller for the past ten years. We asked him about the DVD/Blu-ray release and some of the more, well, controversial moments in the film... and, of course, Iron Man 2, the whole Rhodey casting drama, and whether or not the size of the role was changed. UGO: Tropic Thunder is out now on DVD and Blu-ray. So was it always the plan to have Robert Downey Jr. do the commentary in character? Justin Theroux: (laughs) No, I think that was decided at the last moment. That part was pretty damn funny though. UGO: Tell me about writing the script... there were three of you. How did that work? Did you email back and forth, or write in the same room? JT: It was a really long process. I think, I forget what it was. Like ten years or something, working on that thing. Long time of working. And basically it was me and Ben hashing out the story and hashing out the characters. Basically sort of sitting around, laughing a lot. And then eventually it came time to sit down and do some work. We'd write a bunch of scenes and then me and Ben got pretty busy. So then we called Etan (Cohen) in to basically produce a draft... and then we started writing on that draft, sort of honing it and making it what we wanted it to be. And it kept evolving and evolving all the way till when we were on set. UGO: And about the "Simple Jack" controversy, have any more issues popped up since the DVD/Blu-ray release? JT: Not really. I mean, I think, no. It was sort of a non-controversy. We know it was a non-controversy when it was going on. And now it's just proven to be what we thought it was. Unfortunately the people who took the most umbrage at it never actually saw the movie or let us show it to them. They beat the drum until it was kind of exhausted. UGO: Well good. Because it was hysterical. JT: Yeah, it bummed me out only because it made people self conscious about the joke. It gave people that extra tentativeness to go, ooh, should I be laughing at this, whereas before the controversy, people just laughed. UGO: You have this and Robert in black face. Do you think you can ever go too far? JT: Yes, you can. You can go too far by making it not funny. Mean spirited. There's the Andrew Dice Clay version of jokes which are just racist... obviously that was not a joke we were trying to make ever. The joke we were trying to make was obviously on actors playing parts that they shouldn't be playing. And that was funny to us. But yeah, you can go too far, for sure. And I think the times where we felt like the intention of our jokes were getting ahead of us, where people might even misunderstand them, we would dial it back, and really make it as grounded a joke as possible so people would, even with the leap of faith wouldn't be able to say there was something there that wasn't there. UGO: You got involved with the script for Iron Man 2 because of your work with Robert Downey Jr... JT: Robert introduced me to those guys over at Marvel. UGO: How psyched were you? JT: I was sooo damn psyched! Are you kidding me? It's like a dream job. Happy to take that meeting. UGO: So where are you with the script at this point? JT: We've kind of got a first draft around. You know what I mean? I just got back from London where I was working with Robert and Kevin Feige. He was out there. We were talking with Robert, who's out there doing Sherlock Holmes, he was giving his input and his notes. We're sort of there. It's just sort of chugging along. The crews, I think, are now starting to see what they need to make, and the places that we might be going and all the rest within the story. That's sort of one of the more exciting times. UGO: So you weren't involved in the whole Terrence Howard/Don Cheadle thing... unless you were, and you want to tell me something... JT: No, I wasn't. I genuinely wasn't. (laughs) UGO: There have been reports that the role of War Machine was scaled back and then beefed up. JT: No, that's all nonsense. Whatever their reason is, I'll leave that up to Marvel. We're writing the thing, virtually the same for Rhodey that we would for any actor. We're really taking what's going to be the most interesting story for the fans, and what are they going to enjoy watching. And who ever's in that part is going to have to play that part and make it work for Jon Favreau and the fans who are watching the movie. UGO: So the size of the role wasn't ever changed? JT: No. God, no. UGO: So did you have to, or did you try to accommodate Don Cheadle's acting style? JT: I think that will probably be something that comes up... I haven't met Don, and I think I'm going to in a little bit and I think once I get a better sense of his voice and also hear what he has to say about what he likes about the character and just pick his brain a little bit, then we'll obviously start to tailor it to him. Once he sort of gets more involved in the process then we'll start tapering the length of his character... making it fit just right. UGO: Everyone's speculating about the villain. Are we talking Mandarin? Or Evil DJ? JT: (laughs) I think it's Evil DJ. He could be the villain in this movie. I don't know. I mean, I do know but I'm not going to let that cat out. I'll let Jon start discussing when he thinks it's the right time. UGO: Considering that everyone's coming together for the Avengers movie, were you ever told that certain things had to be in the story or that things had to go a certain way? JT: No. I mean, I think we're all sort of conscious of the fact that all these people... it is the Marvel universe, but that's really about as far as we've been made... they haven't given us any instruction as far as we want you to do this or we want you to do that. And really it's not really a they/us kind of environment, the way they work. It's just a bunch of guys and girls sitting in a room, trying to come up with stuff and doing what's right for the movie and what, at the end of the day, is going to be the most interesting film that can be made. Kind of a fun film. I think once we're sort of locked on that we'll be able to think about how we can thread things through. There's a couple little things that we've been working on, but it's not that we've been taking meetings with Avengers people. It's not like we're six screenwriters sitting in a room from each movie and thinking about how we're gonna work on each other's things. UGO: Have you written Stan Lee's cameo yet? JT: No, I don't think so. (laughs) I don't know, I don't know. Jon will anoint him with that cameo, I'm sure. UGO: Gwyneth Paltrow is still listed as "rumored". Is she confirmed? JT: I don't know. I don't know if she's confirmed or not... I'm planning like she is there but I have no idea. UGO: Finally, what voice do you think you bring to the script, to make it different from the last one? JT: I'm not really trying to bring a different voice. I'm trying to mimic and sing in the same key as the script that was there before. If anything, I think I bring a knowledge of the way Robert's mind works. I've worked with him once before. Hopefully I've proven I have some modicum of creative relationship with Jon and Marvel. So I really think my job is to work with them and not try and strike any new chords. Of course we want to make the story different and interesting. We want the action to be really good. But I think my job is really just to... serve the ultimate guy, which is Iron Man. More on Movies

We feel poor. Stressed. Depressed. We're trying to hold on to our jobs and pay our bills and not fall behind on our alphabet soup of a mortgage. Our nest eggs are cracking, our home values are plummeting and we're in credit card debt up to our shiny little iPods. We've given up our lattes and our manicures and we're letting our once-pampered tresses grow long and gray. We need help with our money, and we need it fast. So we trundle down to our local newsstand -- we know, so very 20th century of us -- to see what words of wisdom we can glean from the gurus of the personal finance press. We immediately feel better; these magazines understand our pain. Just look at their December cover lines: "Your Tough Times Money Guide," promises Kiplinger's Personal Finance. "Rebuild Your Wealth," teases Smart Money. "Make Your Money Safe!" exclaims Money magazine. So we dole out our $12 (also known as three tall lattes), scurry home and prepare to be educated. Here's what we learn from our reading. We need to buy stocks. NOW. Knight Kiplinger is. He says so right on the cover of his magazine. So is Warren Buffett -- both Smart Money and Money tell us so, and both trot out the Oracle's famous adage, "Be greedy when others are fearful," to kick us into action. We are not Buffett, of course, and the mags are careful to remind us of that, too -- we shouldn't try to do what he does, exactly, they say. But we should try to profit from his wisdom and realize that what we are witnessing isn't just the worst market of our lives, it's one of the greatest buying opportunities of all time. Indeed, that message runs through these magazines in much the same way the virtues of dieting permeates the women's glossies. "Today's market offers the broadest range of undervalued stocks that we've ever seen," chirp Kiplinger's columnists Whitney Tilson and John Heins. "The stock market remains the place where portfolios will get a rebirth," announces Smart Money. The rebound will begin in 2009, "the year of the thaw," Money tells us. To be sure, none of the magazines pretend it's going to be easy to pick the winners -- that's where they come in, we suppose -- but whatever we do, they warn, we shouldn't pull our money out of the market now (assuming we're not desperate for the cash) and lock in our losses. They are right about that, of course. And if their cheerleading for stocks' long-term superiority -- and they are all talking long term here -- prevents a relatively young worker from liquidating his 401(k) in a fit of panic, then for that worker, one of these $4 magazines is money well spent. Besides, what else could these pubs possibly tell their readers to do at a time when nobody knows if General Motors Corp. or Citigroup Inc. will still be standing tomorrow? Advising people on how to make our money safe is a Herculean task right now. But what rankles about the mags' advice is that it assumes we have money to invest. Buy stocks now? OK, with what? Our latte savings? Our unemployment checks? Our dwindling home equity? For whom exactly is this advice, anyway? It's not as if these magazines are unaware that people are strapped for cash. Kiplinger's even provides a feature on 12 ways to find cash if you need it fast. No. 1 on that list: "Sell investments." No wonder we feel poor, stressed and depressed. Get out your swimsuits. According to Fortune magazine, "Lifeguard leaders" -- Xerox Corp.'s Anne Mulcahy; J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon -- have replaced "Lone Rangers" -- Jack Welch; Stan O'Neal -- as the most desirable and effective CEOs. "Unlike the Lone Ranger, the Lifeguard is comfortable not knowing what's about to happen," Fortune says. He can anticipate "a coming shift" and work with a team. "And he isn't in it just for the money." OK, we get it. This isn't about leadership; it's about executive comp. Home Depot Inc. CEO Frank Blake makes the Lifeguard grade. Why? He "accepted an annual pay package worth one-quarter of his predecessor's, and he is also finding creative nonmonetary ways to motivate employees, including giving merit awards for great customer service and assigning store workers more decision-making power." If that strategy works, will Blake get a raise? Or just a new whistle? More on Economy

Vampires, especially teenage ones, know the anguish of forbidden love, so it made perfect sense to ask Michael Welch, star of the anguished tale of teen vampiric love Twilight what he thought about Prop 8 which forbids same sex marriage when we saw him at Santa's Christmas Parade in Hollywood. Here's his response in this exclusive video. I think Prop 8 is an absolute disaster. Basic human rights and human dignity would call for us to overturn that...I have absolutely no doubt that we will get there, and it will happen sooner than later. For full video and comments, click here. More on Gay Marriage

Conservatism has become obsolete. Social progress and the practicalities of governance have revealed the fundamental and fatal flaws of conservative thought. Conservatives today are like followers of a religious cult milling about confused the day after their leader's prediction of Armageddon failed to materialize. The immediacy of the problem is clear as normal life goes on. The failure reveals a fundamental flaw in the sect's belief system, but the failure simply cannot be denied in the light of the new day's dawn. Republicans face a similar dilemma trying to justify the abject failure of their founding ideals in the face of a confounding reality -- the success of liberalism. Like cult members who sold all worldly possessions in anticipation of the Rapture, Republicans stand naked in the cold wind of change, grasping for a way to explain away their failed vision for the future. A clear sign of decay is their desperate appeal to twisted and contorted logic to shore up the movement's crumbling foundation. This becomes starkly evident in the Wall Street bailout through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), an effort inspired and implemented by a Republican administration and supported by a critical mass of conservative allies on the Hill. Before we can understand how TARP reveals conservatism's soft white underbelly, though, we need to go back to a more fundamental problem. The United States was founded on revolution, a violent break from tradition through radical and sudden change. Conservatism is the disposition to preserve what is already established. If conservatism had prevailed in the 1770s, we would all be British subjects now, answering to the Queen. We are Americans precisely because radical liberalism won the day. Commentator George Will, in a fit of dyspeptic rationalization, tried to suture this fatal gaping wound in the flesh of conservatism with the oxymoronic and absurd notion of a "conservative revolution." Will's formulation is a futile attempt to merge two incompatible concepts to save the founding ideals of his philosophy from the ash heap of history. We might accept some inherent contradictions like "jumbo shrimp" or "found missing," but no revolution is ever conservative. Fast forward to the year 2008, where we find conservatives floundering on the shores of the Bailout Sea. In deepest and most troubled waters is the drowning ideology of Republican icon Ronald Reagan, who famously said that government was the problem, not the solution. Yet his disciples turned immediately to government when Wall Street imploded. They act like an adolescent boy strutting his independence who runs back to daddy at the first sign of trouble. The Republican bailout constitutes failure at two levels. First, the crisis itself is a consequence of conservative prayer at the altar of deregulation, which allowed subprime lending and nearly $1 trillion of hidden credit default swaps to corrupt our economy. Second, these failures, caused by a fundamental flaw embedded in conservative ideology, are solved by taking actions anathema to conservatism: government intervention. And now we come full circle. In the face of this obvious failure of conservatism in an economic meltdown caused by conservatism, Republicans find themselves trying to justify their continued existence with a fresh appeal to the same logic that led to the ridiculous notion of a "conservative revolution." For symmetry, we can again look to George Will for conceptual contortions that would do a gymnast proud. Will claims in a recent editorial that while a Republican administration began the bailouts, conservatives only supported the effort "grudgingly...and with uneasy consciences." He then conjectures that it is "probable" that "some" Democrats "relish this eruption of government into finance and industry." Based on this unsubstantiated conjecture, he concludes that the Republican bailout "serves the left's agenda of expanding the scope of politics by multiplying the forms of dependency on government." Well now. He excuses the Republican appeal to government because the Party does so with some guilt, even as they throw another $800 billion onto the stinking pile of rescue money. He blames Democrats for expanding government, even though they are not responsible for doing so, because they might in theory support the Republican action. That is analogous to a judge letting a murderer go free because the killer felt guilty, while sentencing the victim's survivors to life imprisonment because it is "probable" that "some" thought the killer deserved to die. To justify their existence, Republicans have been reduced to asking us to ignore the actions and deeds of their Party, because they feel queasy about what they are doing, while drawing negative conclusions about Democrats because they might not feel as queasy as Republicans do about Republican programs. Anybody with a pulse can see that this logic is absurd and desperate. Yet that is all the Republicans have to hold onto now in the face of their unambiguous failures. Republicans have failed not because of poor execution, but because they are acting on a philosophy deeply and fundamentally flawed. Without conservatism, we would not have benefitted from the American Revolution or had to suffer the horrors of the past eight years under George Bush. Without liberalism, blacks and whites would remain segregated; women would not vote; blacks would not vote; we would have little or no religious tolerance and our civil rights would be threatened, just as we see happening under Bush. That is the ugly world that conservatism sought to protect from change. In the history of our great republic, only liberalism pushed us toward greater enlightenment from the dark days of bigotry and intolerance. Conservatism, protector of the status quo, resisted the very changes we now take for granted, proving the ideology as wrong then as it is now. I will continue to plead that we once and for all reject the ridiculous myth that Republicans are the party of small government and fiscal responsibility. We must never forget that Republicans have overseen the largest tax increase in U.S. history under the leadership of Ronald Reagan. Reagan was responsible for the most bloated growth of the federal government. Reagan created, with his proposed budgets (not that of Democratic Congress), the largest debts and deficits in history at that time. Now we have Bush, a Republican who epitomizes financial mismanagement. He ballooned our debt to $10 trillion and exploded our deficits in an orgy of prolifigate spending with no off-setting revenue. But all of those travesties under 16 years of Republican rule are OK because Republicans feel "queasy" about their prolifigate spending and government expansions even as they continue to gorge at the trough. Democrats are to blame for these Republican excesses because some might not feel guilty about Republican spending. George Will, along with many Republicans, makes a critical mistake about liberalism. He confuses liberalism with big government because doing so helps perpetrate the failed myth of conservatism. Liberals support a woman's right to choose, a view to limiting government's role in our personal lives. Liberals support limiting the police powers of government in search and seizure. Liberals seek to limit the government's ability to hold American citizens without trial and without the benefit of habeas corpus. Liberals want the government out of our bedrooms, working to overturn laws that prevent consenting adults from enjoying the partners of their choice in the privacy of their homes. Yes, anti-sodomy laws are on the books in 15 states. Liberals literally want the government off the backs of its citizens. Republicans oddly decry "tax and spend" Democrats who seek fiscal responsibility in government, while conservatives go on a wild rampage of "borrow and spend" on the backs of their grandchildren. Liberals and conservatives alike seek to limit the role and power of the government, and both groups support bigger government when an expansion supports their cause. Enough already with the nonsense that Republicans are responsible fiscal stewards and Democrats are big tax hounds dedicated to the "expanding scope of politics." Just read our history, or review the actions of our government over the past eight years, and you simply cannot draw that conclusion. Republicans have failed the test of practical governance. George Will is one of the conservative movement's most articulate and thoughtful spokesmen. Even he, though, cannot overcome the reality of failure in spite of his Herculean effort to contort the truth. His verbal assault on logic represents the terminal gasps of a dying philosophy. The need to go to such extremes to explain Republican behavior is evidence of inherent rot and decay, and the impending collapse of conservatism.

Two weekends ago, I spent the weekend on Whidbey Island with three other people doing our own version of a Think Tank. Our connecting link is that our individual work has been devoted to human transformation. Our shared intention was simply to "think what we've never thought before, to do what we've never done before, and to invent what's never been invented before." Easier said than done. Over the first day and one-half days, the conversation was splashed with more than a few references to the past. As I watched the tenacious hold past identities have on us, I began to appreciate the nervousness that is evoked from the Call to be Present. Who would we be if we were not operating in surround sound of old clichés, worn out stories, and expectations? And what would others think? I know, I know, we should not care. But the fact of the matter is that we humans are social creatures. We have habitual ways of operating: invisible standard operating procedural manuals. What might be revealed if these old scripts were shed? Answers come in unexpected forms. Ladies, perhaps only you can appreciate the following. Eventually, our bellies were sending up their own call for food. Looking around the large, comfortable open room where we were perched, which overlooked Puget Sound, the kitchen began to loom large for me. What was in the refrigerator? What would there be to prepare? Where were the tools I would need? Tension was building. Whose house is this, anyway? And then, it struck me: this was not my house. So, why was I putting myself in the position of taking charge in the kitchen? The fact is that the other three participants were all men. Without realizing it, I had slipped into the customary role of 'fixing the food for the men-folk.' Sounds like an old Western, doesn't it? Despite years of work on the liberation front, there I was, on 'automatic pilot.' I decided to play with this discovery, to see what might be invented by it. During the first three meals, I took a passive role, setting the table, assisting the chef of that particular meal, as well as lending a hand in our shared clean-up. It was easy to join into the laughter, despite the edge of my secret, self-imposed experiment. The guys were doing a great job, the food was fabulous, and all of them seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely. Frankly, gals, very much like we do when left in a kitchen to our own devices with one another! I felt a bit like the 'fly on the wall' in the men's club. It was not until the second dinner, (fresh halibut) that I 'fessed up.' In my sixty plus years, I'd never had the experience of being the only woman in a group where all the men took it upon themselves to create the meal, without anyone saying so. I realized that I had been given a remarkable gift. Through a collective desire to invent what had not been invented before, I had been given the chance to identify how old assumptions carry the power to limit the present. Enter the holidays. With Thanksgiving behind us, who amongst us will not admit that massive attention goes into our shared meals, the ambiance, the ritualistic ways we have in being with one another? Some of which, admittedly, are beautiful. Up to now, there is just something special, for me, of making the exact same Bing cherry salad my mother always fixed, her sweet potato and apple dish, and her special cornbread stuffing that always delights not only me, but my family and guests. That 'something old' contribution which reminds us of the gift of our ancestors, and the offering of their love through food, and communion table. We eat on the same plates my father brought back from Europe in World War II for my mother. Nearly 70 years in use, despite the fact that both my folks were gone before the birth of my daughter nearly 26 years ago, their Presence is palpable, as a pleasing seasoning for the season. But, in the Spirit of Invention, this year was different. As a family, we bundled up the food, bags, and paraphernalia, and trotted off to a get-away place on Bainbridge Island. This year, in the Spirit of Invention, we did something new: new foods, new ways of fixing them, different plates, different games, new rituals. What I found was this: the gift of Presence exists wherever, and however it is sought. I cannot help but think that a major factor was simply the mutual desire to be together, and to do so simply. How can we come together in more inventive ways? Not only during the holidays, but in the months and years to come? Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, gives us a clue. Describing the lives of success giants like Bill Gates, he describes a common design. None of these inventive folks created their results without community, or support. No one does it alone. Nor are they unfocused. They persist in what holds meaning. They are present in focused, creative ways. Each has spent at least 10,000 hours to gain their first round of skill mastery, and confidence. As we enter the season this year, let's keep the following in mind. By my calculations, if the average person lives 75 years, and spends ten hours/year intentionally focused on creating more fulfilling, meaningful holiday time, this gives us only 7500 hours logged in toward holiday mastery. We still would require an additional 2500 hours to achieve that experience. Let's let go of being so hard on ourselves over the holidays! So, the way I see it, no matter what happens around your holiday table, and in the kitchen, we are doing pretty darn well at realizing we can create amazing things together through a shared Spirit of Invention. More on Happiness

One of the religious right's standard splutterings is that legalizing same-sex marriage will open the door to legalizing polygamy. Many of us have dismissed these splutterings as just another boogeyman that the right is conjuring up...one that will make voters afraid of gay people. After all, it usually comes in the same breath with a threat that same-sex marriage will lead to people wanting to marry their pets... a ridiculous idea that shows how paranoid the religious right is, and how willing they are to grasp at straws to make a point. After all, marriage requires consent, and pets can't consent. But polygamy is a different matter. And it is one of the major battlefields in the marriage war. Many "traditional" religionists don't want us to have marriage, of course, and they will fight us to the death on this point, even if we agree to call it "civil unions" or "domestic partnerships." But they're also using the noisy public debate about "gay marriage" as a diversion, to keep the public away from a serious debate about the pros and cons of polygamy. So far, their tactic has met with mixed success, because some polygamists are actually making a little headway in their drive for recognition. Twelve years ago, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act. DOMA defined marriage as the "legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife. Note the operative word "one." This language was established nearly a century and a half ago, in the 1868 federal legislation outlawing polygamy, that targeted the Mormons. Today, throughout the states, anti-gay-marriage legislation -- including Prop 8 -- often opts for a different wording, namely "a man and a woman," which would seem to skirt the polygamy issue. But there's no doubt that the Alliance for Marriage Foundation, which was the main lobbyist/instigator for DOMA legislation, had a double purpose. They were determined to slam the door on both gays and polygamists at the federal level. Congress and President Clinton evidently went along with the AMF's supporters -- which were conservative Christians, Jews and Black Muslims who note with alarm that an growing percentage of the U.S. population are demanding legalization of polygamy. The grounds for this demand: religious freedom. The fact is, not one but three different factions want to get polygamy legalized. Each is basing its claim to religious freedom on its sacred book. The Mormon Polygamists Naturally the first to come to mind is the Mormon Church. Polygamy, or "plural marriage" as they call it, was one of the practices of ancient Hebrew patriarchs that Mormons sought to restore at their founding in 1830, as per their Book of Mormon. In 1890, after occupation of Utah by federal troops, lots of coercion, unfriendly legislation by Congress and rejection by the U.S. Supreme Court, the LDS Church agreed to give up polygamy. But today there are still an estimated 100,000 Mormons who are said to practice polygamy underground. Some are creepy rogues like Warren Jeffs and his splinter group, who were prosecuted for their crimes against minor children. But the majority of closet polygamists are portrayed by supporters as dignified community figures who view the practice as legitimate when practiced by consenting adults. Why should anybody tremble at Mormon leverage on this issue today? Because, in the last century, the LSD Church has moved from marginal to massive in its social and economic influence. It can now swing the vote in several Western states, not just Utah, but California, Nevada, Arizona and Wyoming. We already saw how they swung California with Prop 8. Plus the LSD church can now field politicians who are viewed as serious candidates for President, like Mitt Romney. Does the Mormon leadership ever plan to formally reintroduce the polygamy issue? They insist not. But in recent years, a rash of individual Mormon polygamists have gone to court hoping that their cases would make it on a freedom-of-religion basis. So far, they've been slapped down. In 2006, Utah's Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the state's bigamy statute, and the U.S. Supreme Court agreed. Still, with the right case, and enough money, and a changing political climate, individual Mormons in favor of polygamy might get what they want. That scares the bejeezus out of the DOMA crowd. The Bible-Based Christian Polygamists Less known to most Americans is the growing movement of Christian polygamists. Somewhat like the Mormons, they base their marriage dogma on the early Hebrew patriarchs like Abraham who were said to be polygamists. Their sacred book is the Bible's Old Testament. But they resent being compared to the Mormons. Many don't even consider the Mormons to be "Christian" because their canon of belief differs from the Mormons' on some points. They fall over themselves to point out that they are not child molesters like Warren Jeffs. The Christian polygamists take a different tack on trying to change U.S. law. They insist that the federal law outlawing polygamy is unconstitutional, that it violates separation of church and state. They demand that government stop trying to "protect marriage" with its laws. Instead, they say, government should get out of the business of regulating marriage altogether, and leave this "sacred" institution to the churches. In advocating this, the Christian polygamists are bucking several centuries of Western history and precedent. In most Western countries, religion deliberately turned marriage over to civil government precisely because some churches had issues with other churches about efforts to control access to marriage. But Christian polygamist leader Henkel fulminates against "the false god of big socialist government" and its policy "to define, license, and control God's doctrine of marriage." Legislative efforts along this line have already been tried. In Maine in 2007, a state legislative committee quickly killed a proposed bill, L.D. 779, which sought to remove clergy from certifying marriage licenses. Christian conservatives, even the pro-polygamist variety, have convinced themselves that "all churches will be compelled to perform same-sex marriages if we LGBT people get the legalization we want." The Muslim Polygamists The third threat that the DOMA crowd see coming is from traditionalists in the U.S.'s growing Muslim population. Since 1900, the U.S.'s Islamic community has been quietly growing; but in recent decades, however, that growth has exploded with an inflow of immigrants and refugees, many of them from fundamentalist Islamic countries where plural marriage is legal. While liberal and even moderate Muslim-Americans have largely abandoned the practice of polygamy, traditionalists still insist on it. Their sacred book, the Koran, authorizes Muslim men to have up to four wives, provided they can care for them adequately. U.S. census authorities don't keep stats on religion, so they don't know how big the Muslim population actually is. Recent conservative estimates put it at nearly 3 million, while liberal estimates push it as high as 7-8 million. Even a middling 5-6 million would make Muslims a sizeable voting bloc. Muslim immigrants or refugees who arrive here with more than one wife, though legal in their country of origin, are required to pick one wife as the legal spouse under U.S. law and jettison the rest. However, according to a recent NPR story, there are an estimated 100,000 U.S. Muslims, perhaps more, who are practicing closet polygamy. With plural marriage so thoroughly outlawed in the U.S., one would think that the DOMA faction wouldn't lie awake at night worrying about Islamic polygamy. But evidently they do...and here's why. Immigrant traditionalists who want the same kind of life here that they lived in their countries of origin have discovered a back door into our legal system. Through it, they're quietly linking their Islamic law system, sharia, with our practice of civil arbitration. Under conservative Islam, sharia is "state religion" -- government by clerics (called imams), rather than government by elected officials. In countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia that have a sharia government, all decision-making involving law -- legislation, courts, education, family issues, even finance -- is based on Koranic teachings. With the growth of large conservative immigrant Muslim populations in Western countries, the issue of how these immigrants can continue practicing their sharia-based religion freely within non-Muslim law systems, has become a very hot one. From the traditionalist Muslim standpoint, religious freedom in the U.S. should include the right to plural marriage. Right now, sharia is actually stealthing its way into the U.S. Sharia courts are operating in Texas, of all places, under the aegis of a Second Court of Appeals decision that sharia judgments rendered by U.S. imams are enforceable by government. The new Texas process now makes it possible for civil and family-law cases involving traditionalist Muslims and their beliefs to be handled in faith-based arbitration. Here, issues like dowries, divorce and child custody can be shunted from regular court to Texas Islamic Court, on request of the parties involved. There the cases would be handled in a manner that Islamic sensibilities would find friendly. Sharia law is also reportedly being used in Minnesota and New Jersey. In California, where the biggest U.S. population can be found, attempts are being made to launch sharia courts as well. All these developments are being fiercely opposed by human-rights and Muslim women's organizations. And the constitutionality of U.S. sharia courts may well be challenged in higher courts, or their existence ended by oppositional legislation. Meanwhile, how might this U.S. sharia movement open the door to polygamy? It might create a body of decisions that allows the practice to become gradually legalized nationally through establishing precedent. Under U.S. law, arbitration decisions carry a great deal of force. Meanwhile, those who fear that legalization of same-sex marriage and polygamy are linked can also point to what's happening in Canada. Sharia courts have already come and gone in Canada, having been outlawed in 2006. Yet in the liberal-minded province of Ontario, which legalized same-sex marriage several years ago, there is now some legal slack for Muslim polygamists who enter the country and can show that they were legally married to more than one wife in their country of origin. Reportedly Muslim men are receiving welfare and social benefits for each of their partners, both from Ontario Province and the city of Toronto. Two Final Points In Texas, a state DOMA and constitutional amendment uses the anti-polygamy language to define marriage as a "union of one man and one woman." Yet the Texas legal system apparently has no problem doing a 180-degree flip-flop in order to accommodate marriage practices that might touch on closet polygamy of traditionalist Muslims. Surely this is a horrible contradiction that LGBT lawyers and activists, and their non-gay supporters, should point out. In the meantime, some Mormon, Christian and Muslim advocates of plural marriage are themselves opposed to same-sex marriage, and accuse us gays of trying to "redefine" marriage. Yet they're trying hard to redefine marriage themselves. It's the biggest "go figure" we've faced. More on Civil Rights

Since retiring from a sparkling 40-year military career the Associated Press says combined "impeccable military credentials with an ambassador's polish," Gen. Jim Jones has served as president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for 21st Century Energy. This job requires, according to the organization's website, ensuring that "America's energy supply is adequate, affordable, and secure while protecting the environment." Having heard the chatter over whether Obama's choice of Jones, along with Hillary at State and Gates at Defense, has raised the eyebrows of his liberal base (the best response comes from Peter Beinart, who writes in Time, "It's precisely because Obama intends to pursue a genuinely progressive foreign policy that he's surrounding himself with people who can guard his right flank at home") we now turn to Jones' opinions on energy and the environment. It could be Jones, after all, to utter the final words before Obama decrees on a major conflagration, military or otherwise. In a speech Jones gave in June 2007, launching the Chamber's new energy initiative, he said he first became aware of the importance of energy in 1973, "while sitting in a Volkswagen in Springfield, Virginia at 4 o'clock in the morning." He was waiting in a gas line on his way to Quantico, Virginia. "Thirty-three years later," he recalled, "as Commander of NATO, I worried early in the mornings about how to protect energy facilities and supply chain routes as far away as Africa, the Persian Gulf, and Caspian Sea." Even George W. Bush understood that energy and security are inexorably linked, and that dependence on foreign oil makes Americans less safe every day. Where the next top National Security Advisor stands on energy, therefore, becomes a central issue in this debate. In a recent interview with Big Think and Roll Call, Jones outlined his vision for America's energy future, making several astute and innocuous recommendations -- diversify our supply base, modernize our infrastructure, increase research and development for clean coal technology, and provide a streamlined regulatory framework for energy investments. But Jones, who sits on the board of directors of Chevron and Boeing, also said the it was time to "consider an end to the moratorium on the production of oil and gas off our lands and off our shores," and that "the nuclear sector has to be reenergized and reinvented." He further lamented, "we haven't built a nuclear power plant in this country in over 30 years." It is these controversial energy recommendations that should raise liberal eyebrows more than his stint last year working for Condoleezza Rice to improve Palestinian security forces. As his biography on the Institute for 21st Century Energy website recounts, Jones "brings passion and commitment for finding practical solutions to the energy problems facing the nation, and he believes that the Energy Institute will play a key role in influencing our national and international energy policy in a nonpartisan manner." Following the disastrous experience of having a U.S. military in the pocket of Halliburton and Big Oil, we hope the pragmatism and polish Gen. Jones will likely bring to the NSA is not offset by corporate allegiances more tied to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce than to the health and security of the American people. More on Oil

CHICAGO--As the season's first snow hit, Barack Obama on Monday took a shovel to the chilliest element of Bush administration national security policy: moral certitude. Rather than look to the heavens, a skillful president-elect seemed distinctly focused on the ground for inspiration. With Sen. Hillary Clinton and six other new colleagues aligned in front of their very own American flags, Obama left little doubt that we're shifting the political center of gravity. For all Monday's talk of power, and successfully ending the "war on terror" in Afghanistan, the significance was less the obvious signals of being "muscular" than of an attempt to be flexible and, yes, multilateralist. Historian Richard Norton Smith was perusing records of the late President Gerald Ford's administration out in California when I tracked him down. He agreed that Obama's talk about bipartisanship is a predictable, quadrennial ritual (there was speculation about a Democrat landing in the first Bush cabinet eight years ago) but also that Obama is exploiting an aura of being non-ideological as he also provides "a contrast with the portrait painted of an administration of cowboys." And perhaps we should put aside the unceasing "team of rivals" gibberish and whether Obama and Clinton can get along (history shows that rivals were picked long before and after Honest Abe's presidency and, most of the time, it doesn't really work too well). As far at that goes, a superfluous press release from Bill Clinton, informing us that he fully supports Obama's choice for Secretary of State, suggested that it might be Madame Secretary's spouse, not her, that's ultimately the nettlesome one. Just imagine if the new rules of the road, which bring significant financial disclosures by him, also mean diminished globetrotting. Will he succumb to the early symptoms of Persistent Oratorical Withdrawal, namely nightmares in which ballrooms are empty, your spokesman's cell phone rarely rings, or you're never called by Charlie Rose to discuss global challenges? Bill's potential specter of irrelevance is at least better than the reality of Bush's actual irrelevance to many. Smith, the historian, also agreed that while Bush has shown signs of born-again pragmatism in recent years (a deal with North Korea, regrets over the stupid "Axis of Evil" line), few are listening. He's a tree falling in the forest with not a soul within miles. It's perhaps why they were probably breaking out their stockpile of airline liquor at the State Department as Obama talked about renewing American diplomacy. Is it possible that with Obama, Hillary Clinton and holdover Defense Secretary Robert Gates, we may actually wind up with more Foreign Service personnel than active members of U.S. military bands?! And was former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, the skunk at the UN's (many) dinner parties, listening when Susan Rice, Obama's selection for his old job, talked about a need for "more effective international institutions" and the need to "rededicate ourselves to the United Nations"? "Rice is the un-Bolton," said Smith. But, our obsession with Hillary Clinton aside, the most telling pick may be Gates. Don't forget that our budget for the military is about 4 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. His operation is a whole lot bigger than hers. So does the world know that Gates has recently said the following: Over the long term, we cannot kill or capture our way to victory. Non-military efforts -- tools of persuasion and inspiration -- were indispensable to the outcome of the defining struggle of the 20th century. They are just as indispensable in the 21st century -- and perhaps even more so. Pulling off successful non-military efforts is arduous. It's about a lot more than cultivating a nice image and having people like us. It's dealing, in a constructive way, with real threats, as the Bush administration itself is trying to do now in Djibouti. There, our military is actually building clinics, digging wells, inoculating cattle and offering seemingly helpful services to a population of horrendously poor rural Muslims in Africa -- the very same folks who are handy recruits for Al Qaeda. James Glassman, a former journalist now serving as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy (the job previously held by Bush chum Karen Hughes), recently gave a speech a few blocks away from Obama's Monday personnel announcements. He talked about the need to show other societies, like Pakistan, why it's just not in their interest to harbor bad guys, or why it's not bright for their citizens to view violence as a prime means to achieve political, social and other aims. Glassman cited figures from a Pew Global Attitude Survey in which 25 percent of Jordanians think that suicide bombing is sometimes justified. There were other statistics of that sort. More importantly, the Obama once again heard Monday would surely concur with the call for "soft" power in the speech by Glassman, whose area of the State Department is an underfunded backwater. At the end Monday, Obama was once again asked a few questions, including a sharp one by ABC News' Jake Tapper about policy toward India and Pakistan in the wake of the Mumbai horror. No surprise, Obama punted since he must walk a line between exuding competence and not coming off as precipitous since Bush is still boss. But it shouldn't be a surprise that real change is afoot. The nattering to Obama's political left aside, it's probably wrong to assume too much tactical and strategic continuity, even given all the serious and experienced Washington veterans being picked by him. Peel back the onion and one finds substantive differences with the guy whom nobody seems to be listening to. It's why John Bolton may be cringing, knock on wood.

President-elect Barack Obama chose a security team to implement strength at home and renewed standing abroad, with an understanding that "our destiny is shared with the world." Can Obama's big tent team of friends and rivals really deliver change? If they govern the way they presented today - yes they can. Looking through the prism of all appointees - transformation, transparency and trust - a qualified yes. Transformation: Candidate Obama promised to change the tone in Washington, withdraw combat forces from Iraq, assert ourselves more forcefully in South Asia, and restore America's standing in the world. As to tone, President-elect Obama presented a bipartisan team including people who did not campaign for him and likely did not even vote for him as well as others with strong opinions who differed with him during the campaign. Expanding on his selection of former Presidential rival Joe Biden as Vice President, Obama picked friends and rivals with impressive public service credentials: Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense, Eric Holder as Attorney General, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security, Susan Rice as Ambassador to the United Nations and General Jim Jones as National Security Adviser. Their relationships bring in even more breadth - Robert Gates at Defense is allied with former Obama critic General Petreaus and Hillary Clinton at State brings in former President Bill Clinton, who curtailed his independent portfolio so that his wife might serve. As to Iraq and South Asia, Obama renewed his campaign pledges to withdraw combat forces from Iraq in 16 months in consultation with generals on the ground and to redouble counter-terrorism efforts in Afghanistan and throughout South Asia which as a whole constitute the "single most important threat to the American people." And as to America's standing, Obama stressed that from markets to security to climate we will have to work together to face challenges and solve problems. Each nominee stood with Obama as he announced these steps and committed to his or her part in this transformation. So far, so good. Transparency: Can a national security team be transparent? Obviously most deliberations are classified, so those who know don't talk publicly, and those who talk publicly don't know. So how will we know? Less drama, more disclosure. Less drama: Rather than asking staff to merely flank him, Obama called them up one by one to pledge her or his membership on his team. Why? Because we know - and Obama knows we know - that administration officials always pledge unity and then leak like crazy once deliberations begin. But this time, each issued a public personal pledge to the job as Obama defined it: not to agree with him at all times - but to implement his vision one decisions are made. Talk about a big tent revival - this ego management technique is community organizing 101 - have people take personal responsibility to do a job and be held accountable for it. Armed with citizen media tools, we will be collectively monitoring their pledges: if the backbiting leaks come we will know pretty quickly whether these folks are doing their job as promised or breaking their word. Who wants to be the first person up there to star in a viral video with footage of their December 1 pledge crosscut with anti-Obama counter-organizing? Likely no one. This is not a campaign where drama is created to create contrasts - this is a governing team where competing ideas need full and frank pre-deliberative discussions. Anyone giving up a personal portfolio has to give up freelancing and the positive and negative drama that comes with it. As much as their friends in media and political circles may love drama, these public servants love America more. So the personal pledges were a good first step and proof point that the team knows they were hired for the specific transformation Obama pledged. More disclosure: The Bush-Cheney administration was unnecessarily secretive, classifying documents and shielding decisions from public knowledge or oversight. Obama has pledged to change this culture. His national security team has a major role to play in public discussions of their vast non-classified portfolios. The more information placed and discussed in the public domain, the better opportunity to build national consensus on issue ranging from Iraq war policy to implementation of the 9/11 Commission reforms to comprehensive bipartisan immigration reform. We can expect more public testimonials and input on these critical issues in the days ahead. Again, we will know who is doing their job by their candor with the American people and their willingness to engage in public discussions with the ultimate decisionmaking authority vested in the President. While Obama is clearly comfortable with more disclosure and informed debate, his team - starting with the Bush-Cheney alums and their staffers - must adapt to his policies and practices in order to succeed. Moreover, elected officials are adjusting to life as appointed officials - just ask the Clintons. Throughout her candidacy, Hillary Clinton did not disclose her husband's business dealings; yet, in order to be Secretary of State, she and Bill Clinton agreed to disclose his donors and clear future efforts through the White House and State Department. More of this, please. Trust: Can we trust Obama's team to restore international alliances, the rule of law, and the American ideal that each person fulfill their fullest human potential? Team Obama knows that the world will trust America again when we can trust our leaders again. Thus, President-elect Obama hired a staff whom he trusts to debate vigorously and then implement his vision. Then he got them to publicly pledge to do just that. This builds our trust that they will speak their minds, offer discreet counsel, respect his decisions, and then speak collectively with one voice. Not a groupthink that precludes dissent, but a unity built on consensus that moves America forward. Again, so far so good. While many are skeptical that former rivals can actually work together to achieve change, 66 million Americans vested Barack Obama with the responsibility to try. He recommitted to his campaign promises and built a big tent government team of friends and rivals to implement them. Already each has publicly pledged to help formulate the transformation, to do so in a more transparent way, with the knowledge that we can trust them insofar as Obama can. Hungry for change, vigilant for results, we will watch and see with qualified hope. More on Barack Obama

President-elect Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan focused on creating 2.5 million jobs and rescuing "Main Street," not just Wall Street, is a welcome departure from the top-down economic theories we have heard up until now. But though Obama's plan feels right on the surface, for me it raises two questions: "Which Main Streets?" and "Who gets those jobs?" Main Street is in the eye of the beholder. On Chicago's South Side, Main Street runs through neighborhoods with double-digit unemployment along the Dan Ryan Expressway, a perfect example of a road reconstruction project that cut through the black community but did not translate into significant economic opportunities for area residents and minority contractors. Obama's plan could potentially be a real game changer for urban America. It could go beyond the economic boom of the Clinton years and finally address the high jobless rate and income gaps that persist even in good times for far too many Americans. The complete article can be viewed at: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-oped1130jobsnov30,0,499266.story More on Barack Obama

Barack Obama has inspired a wave of young voters to get involved in politics for the first time. Like Ronald Reagan, Obama might be at the forefront of a Democratic majority for the next three decades the same way the Republicans dominated during the last three. But in fact the biggest news of this election was not a new Democratic majority. It was the rise of the Swinger. That's the independent/moderate voter who dislikes candidates that cater to the fringes of either party. Is the US a center-left or a center-right country? The truth is that it's a center-center country, with most voters -- whatever their party affiliation -- representing a moderate middle that likes practical solutions to the real problems that face us and have no patience with special interests and the parties who are beholden to them. Let's look at the facts. Exit polling asked voters to identify themselves as either liberal or conservative or moderate. 22% called themselves "liberal" and 34% "conservative." But 44% of voters call themselves "moderate." Both parties tried to claim those moderates for themselves and indeed on many issues the moderates fall into the progressive camp. Nonetheless, they prefer to ID themselves as moderate. In truth, there's nothing "liberal" about a concern for gloabl warming, for example; it's just common sense. What about party affiliation? 39% of voters were registered Democrats. 32% were registered Republicans. And an astonishing 29% were registered Independents. Given the trends of the last 25 years, it's far more likely that the Independents will pass the Republicans before the Republicans tie the Democrats again. That's right: in 2016, the two major blocks of voters will more likely be Democrats and Independents instead of Democrats and Republicans. Heck, let's look at the two major candidates in the election that just happened. It wasn't the Republican base that nominated John McCain. They preferred Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. But Swingers swept in and made McCain the front runner. It wasn't the Democratic base that nominated Barack Obama; the establishment was solidly in line for the coronation of Hillary Clinton. But Swingers stepped in and turned Obama from an inspiring story to the real deal. Swingers are the moderate middle. They don't vote based on the tiny letter next to a candidate's name. They vote based on the policies that person puts forth. And catering to the Swingers doesn't mean you have to be a "centrist" who always compromises and takes the safe path. Look at US energy policy. Swingers take global warming and our national security seriously and they want dramatic action. They want a new national electrical grid, they want solar panels and wind farms to become dominant and not just curiosities shown in political ads. They're willing to see higher gasoline prices today if it means a healthier environment tomorrow, fewer dollars flowing into the coffers of cruel governments overseas, and real energy independence. Swingers love electric cars. Swingers are tired of a few farm states perverting our national food policy by skimming off massive billion dollar payouts to agricultural conglomerates. Swingers like their privacy. Swingers don't get riled by single issue idiocies like gun rights or abortion or gays. They know reasonable gun laws will let people have all the weapons they want without handing out Uzis to felons. They believe in a woman's right to choose. And they don't really care very much about interfering in the ways other people live (gays) or die (Terri Schiavo). Live and let live is the American way to Swingers. Every election seems to boil down to the independent voters -- and here we're talking about Swingers, not the mealy mouthed people who pretend they haven't made up their mind five days before the election just so they can be interviewed on CNN. The growing number of Independents will be the best thing in the world for BOTH parties, keeping the Democrats and the Republicans focused on competence and compassion and away from the fringes who always seem to gain an outsized voice when a party stays in power too long. If you like the idea of Swingers -- independent voters who choose the best candidate regardless of party affiliation; people who are focused on the real problems that face us -- they need your help to flourish. A number of practical steps need to be taken to let their voice be heard. 1. Choose the President by popular vote -- The Electoral College is a classic Swinger issue. Swingers think the Electoral College is an absurd joke but tiny states are so vested in the process so they can have an outsized voice in choosing the President that passing a Constitutional Amendment to abolish it seems unlikely. Happily, there's a very viable work-around gaining momentum. The National Popular Vote bill would award the electoral college vote to whomever wins the popular vote. It would take effect once enough states have passed bills promising to award their electoral college votes to whichever candidate wins the national popular vote. Four states have already done so -- New Jersey, Maryland, Illinois (!) and Hawaii -- and momentum is growing. When Presidents are picked by popular votes, the sad farce of candidates ignoring the voters of hugely populous states like California and Texas to focus on a sliver of people in battleground states will be over. Get involved and get this passed by your state. 2. Open primaries -- They take many forms but the basic idea is that voters can choose the candidate they prefer in a primary regardless of that voter's party affiliation. I'm a registered Republican in New York, but I would switch my party affiliation to Independent in a New York minute if that didn't mean I was blocked from voting in the primaries. I'll bet a lot of other people feel the same -- which is exactly why the Democrats of New York oppose the open primary system. Let people register any way they want and then vote any way they want and you'd see Swingers take center stage. Find out if your state has open primaries and push your elected officials to make the switch if it doesn't. 3. Redistricting -- Voters have to take away the power of redistricting from the politicians and put it in the hands of an independent panel, be it retired judges, a mix of voters and bureaucrats or whatever. The current system lets politicians design districts that virtually guarantee a seat for one party or the other forever. Since that means whoever wins the primary generally wins the election, that pushes politicians to cater to the fringes of their party that are far more active early on. It also makes it nigh on impossible to kick politicians out of office even after they've lost touch with voters. Districts should encompass reasonable neighborhoods that reflect their diverse communities, not convoluted and absurdly shaped districts that zig and zag to keep the Dems in one box and the Republicans in another so that the politicians in power can stay in power. Are you a Swinger? And if you have any other ideas about how to let their voices be heard, let us know. More on Mitt Romney

image: Breeding Zombie Consumers by Sam Sebren I've tried to put myself in the shoes of the Long Island lemmings who stomped the life out of Jdimytai "Jimbo" Damour in their rampage to ring up a bargain, but I just can't seem to fit into their frenzied footwear. Black Friday--this travesty of a tradition of dashing out the door to score a discounted tv or dvd player before you've even begun to digest your Thanksgiving dinner--is a sign of how badly we need to heed the Reverend Billy and seek salvation at the Church of Stop Shopping. Damour's death was shocking but not surprising. Isn't the whole point of this retail ritual to feed a shopping stampede? Hopped-up Black Friday buy-bunnies pawed their way through the madding crowd at big box brouhahas all over the country this year; the fatal mall mauling on Long Island was just a new nadir for our nation. Make no mistake--this was not a tragic accident. At 3:10 a.m.--about two hours before Damour was trampled to death--Newsday reported that the police were dispatched to the Valley Stream Wal-Mart to investigate a disturbance. They spent half an hour admonishing the unruly crowd of 500 or so shoppers "to be orderly," and then they left. By 5 a.m. the crowd had swelled to 2,000 people pushing against the soon-to-open doors with such force that the glass shattered and the doors came off their hinges. "A metal portion of the door frame crumpled like an accordion," Newsday noted, adding that: Other workers were knocked to the ground as they tried to rescue Damour, and customers simply stepped over him and kept shopping even as the store announced it was closing because of the death, police and witnesses said. "It was crazy," a worker who witnessed the stampede told the New York Times. "The deals weren't even that good." Police trying to clear the crime scene were stymied by shoppers who refused to stop shopping even as Damour lay dying, because they'd waited so long for the chance to profit from those special "5-a.m.-to-11-a.m.-only" prices. So who's to blame for this barbaric episode? It seems pretty clear that both the police and Wal-Mart failed to provide sufficient crowd control, but New York Times media reporter David Carr fingers another faction: the "newspaper writers and television anchors who are now wearily shaking their heads at the collective bankruptcy of our mass consumer culture"--you know, the ones who cheered it all on as the countdown to Black Friday began. But what about the frenzied folks who left their sweatshop sneaker track marks on Damour's back? Who created these monsters, these real-life incarnations of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead zombie shoppers? As Wal-Mart warrior Al Norman observed on HuffPo: The 2,000 or so Wal-Mart shoppers at the Valley Stream store were merely lab rats responding to a stimulus. When the door opened, they went after the cheese. Reverend Billy mourned Damour the morning after, imagining the horrific last moments of this young man's life before the glass gave way: I read that there was a Magnavox flat-screen DVD player on sale at the Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, Long Island yesterday, available on Black Friday only, for $147. That is the deal that waits behind Jdimytai Damour. There he stands at the electronic doors, looking out at us. We stand in the darkness, pushing out with our elbows, spying the shiny packages up the aisles. We are a distorted America standing in the pre-dawn darkness. We have turned our Pursuit of Happiness into this desperate feeling. Jdimytai watches us. We push on the glass. Jdimytai Damour we will slow down! We will stop shopping! On Sunday's Face The Nation, Bob Schieffer was appalled and baffled by the deadly stampede: It made me wonder: What were they shopping for? Christmas gifts? They didn't show much Christmas spirit. When store officials ordered the mob out of the store because someone had died, many called it unfair, because they said they had been waiting hours to shop. The terrorist attack in India will cause us to redouble our anti-terrorist efforts, and economic recovery plans are already in the works. But shouldn't the death of that poor sales clerk give us some pause as well? If we have become a people so self-centered that we are willing to step over a lifeless body to get a bargain, we have problems that go beyond terrorists, a credit crunch and bad mortgages. Surely we can do better than that. Yes, we can. But will we? There are 24 days left till Christmas. It's not too late to stop shopping. More on Holiday Sales

Here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), we get countless complaints about religiously-based mental health and counseling programs, which, over the past few years, have been systematically replacing proven psychological and medical approaches to a multitude of issues faced by military personnel. I've seen so many truly insane, not to mention blatantly unconstitutional, ways that the military is playing with the mental well being of our troops since I began working for MRFF that I really didn't think it was possible for me to be surprised by anything anymore. Then I was sent a PowerPoint presentation by an airman at RAF Lakenheath, the largest U.S. Air Force base in England. On the MRFF scale of classifying by various expletives the egregiousness level of things that are reported to us -- "holy crap," "holy shit," and "holy f..." -- this one, promoting creationism as a means of preventing suicide among our military personnel, was definitely a "holy f..." In March 2008, this presentation, titled "A New Approach To Suicide Prevention: Developing Purpose-Driven Airmen," was shown at a commander's call that was mandatory for an estimated 1,000 of Lakenheath's Air Force personnel, and sent out by email to the entire base of over 5,000 the following day. As the use of the phrase "Purpose-Driven" in its title implies, also incorporated into this presentation is the wisdom of presidential candidate inquisitor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, a book that, second only to the Bible itself, is the most heavily promoted religious book in the military. Following a slide stating, "Dr. Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life, provides a powerful model for Suicide Prevention, developing leaders, and making troops combat ready and effective," the author of the presentation, Air Force chaplain Capt. Christian Biscotti, brings up Charles Darwin for the first time in defining what he calls "3 Levels of Purpose." On one of the next slides, Capt. Biscotti states that if we don't know where we came from we are lost, and that knowing where we come from is the origin of hope. This is followed by a slide comparing "Chance" and "Design," a.k.a. evolution and creationism. And, why not work a little religious nationalism into this "suicide prevention" presentation? (I'm still trying to figure out how Capt. Biscotti came up with the notion that Charles Darwin was a leader of the former Soviet Union.) Another segment of Capt. Biscotti's presentation, titled "FAITH is Foremost," contains three stories -- his own personal story, the story of the woman who made the news a few years back by talking her way out of a hostage situation by reading to her captor from The Purpose Driven Life, and, incredibly inappropriately for a presentation promoting religion, the story of Pat Tillman. I'm sure everyone remembers Lt. Col. Ralph Kauzlarich's outrageous remarks that Tillman's parents' dissatisfaction with the investigation of their son's death was caused by their religious beliefs, or lack thereof, saying in an ESPN.com interview, "When you die, I mean, there is supposedly a better life, right? Well, if you are an atheist and you don't believe in anything, if you die, what is there to go to? Nothing. You are worm dirt. So for their son to die for nothing, and now he is no more -- that is pretty hard to get your head around that. So I don't know how an atheist thinks. I can only imagine that that would be pretty tough." I'm fairly certain that the Tillmans would not be very happy to find out that their son is now being used as an example in a presentation promoting religion to the military. The presentation ends by asking the viewer to receive their fist tool, which is to "Impart Faith." According to MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein, "The shocking discovery of this hideously unconstitutional, mandatory, military PowerPoint presentation, which is essentially coterminous with Rick Warren's sectarian Purpose Driven Life, takes the quintessential cake as far as magnitude of odiousness of illegality is concerned. Indeed, it is arguably not only the most prominent example in MRFF's current Federal lawsuit against the DoD of the 'pervasive and pernicious pattern and practice' of unconstitutional rape of the religious freedoms of our honorable armed forces members, but an example of the reckless substitution of religious ideology for the real professional help that could save the life of a member of our armed forces considering suicide. Bertrand Russell once sagaciously opined that very few people can be happy without hating another person, nation or creed. This 'Purpose-Driven Airmen' mandatory presentation is the epitome of military-sanctioned 'hatred of the other' and those commanding its viewing must face trial by General Courts Martial." The entire "Purpose-Driven Airmen" PowerPoint presentation can be viewed here.

After spending 7 years of my life head to toe with the characters of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle, you can understand my amazement when, at 11 A.M. that autumn morning, the phone rang and the person on the other end introduced himself as "Stephen Joyce." On the morning of September 18, 2008, Stephen James Joyce, grandson, and only surviving relative of renowned Irish writer, James Joyce, called from France in response to a letter I sent to him some weeks before. The letter I sent, at the request of an Irish independent producer, asked for permission to use excerpts from Ulysses, and a few letters his grandfather wrote to his patron, Harriet Shaw Weaver, in my feature-length screenplay, Shakespeare & Company, which tells of the censorship struggle to publish Ulysses; the Sylvia Beach story. I was no more prepared for the nearly two hours of conversation which followed than I am to repeat, from memory, what transpires during a dream, and I had to pinch myself to believe that I was, in fact, awake. What follows is from a collection of notes that were hastily scribbled on pieces of scrap paper on the desk. In the interest of protecting Mr. Joyce's privacy, I will not include anything that might be considered personal, but only that which has universal, historical value: Among the first things Stephen Joyce told me is that he likes to be called "Stephen James Joyce," and that I'd better be "very careful with the facts," not unlike his grandfather, I thought, who went over the details of a biography someone was in the process of writing about him with a fine tooth comb. Of his grandfather, ("JJ"), Stephen would saying only that he is "not just a passing ghost" to him. He asked me to keep our conversation "strictly confidential," a request I was fully prepared to honor until, in the closing minutes of the call, he gave me permission to write about it. Joyce said that since my screenplay is about the bookstore "Shakespeare & Company," and not about Ulysses, or his grandfather, per se, it was none of his business what I did, or who I quoted from. He said explicitly that he didn't want to get involved with the project one way or the other. That said, he told me that the only edition he would authorize me to take passages from is the original 2/2/22 "Shakespeare & Company" version, published by Sylvia Beach, of which there were 1,000 copies printed worldwide. It was a pronouncement he made dramatically, almost defiantly, and one with which I was fully prepared to comply. He mumbled something about the Harry Ransom Center having a copy. During more than 90 minutes we spent on the phone, Joyce said three times he would "neither help nor hinder me" in my efforts. He asked if I was familiar with that quote which he took from an American play. (When I checked later, I saw that, according to the New York Times, "When the biographer Deirdre Blair first approached Samuel Beckett in the late '70s, 'the first sentence he ever said to me was, 'So you're the one who's going to reveal me for the charlatan that I am,' Blair recalled. But he also told her, 'I will neither help nor hinder you,' adding, 'I'll introduce you to my friends; my enemies will find you soon enough.") The line makes perfect sense to me, esp. in light of the fact that Stephen Joyce, later in the conversation, acknowledged that Samuel Beckett was among his closest friends. Also toward the beginning of the conversation, he asked who told me that the copyright for Ulysses would expire in a couple of years. He said that copyright depends upon where in the European Union the movie is made. He also insisted, as part of his statement that I have to be "very careful with facts," that Sylvia Beach never spent time in an internment camp (something that contradicts Beach's memoir, Wikipedia, and Harriet Weaver), and that her bookstore never closed, but only relocated. He noted, too, that the German soldier, to whom my script refers, only appears in a book by Paul Leon, and is thus suspect. When I told him all my research came from Beach's own autobiography, he suggested she could have misrepresented things. He said I have "a problem" in that I have to sort through all the different stories and versions of events leading up to the publication of Ulysses in order to get to the "facts" when there is only one person who knew the true story, and that was his grandfather, James Joyce. I stressed emphatically that my screenplay is not intended to be a documentary, and that I "fictionalized" his grandfather, as well as took liberties with what he calls "facts." I insisted that it is a dramatization, and not intended to be a literal representation of the events that led to the publication of Ulysses. Later on in the conversation, he repeated the word "fact" in such a way that suggests he appreciated my thinking. I told him that Samuel Beckett isn't in the script, and why: "Beckett deserves his own screenplay." I also mentioned that his Aunt Lucia only has a few lines, and why. I said I wanted to keep JJ's family, and private life, out of it. I also told him that he isn't in the script. Stephen said that "family meant everything" to his grandfather with which I agreed heartily. He said it's my script, and my call as to who should be in it. The relationship between father and son is a big one, Joyce noted, and I told him it played a large role in the screenplay. He added that even though he was named "Giorgio," his father liked to be called "George." I told him I knew that. He mentioned his half brother who died young -- 52, something I didn't know. "If you consider 52 young," he said and laughed. Stephen Joyce gave me a bibliography of sources to read that would help me to come to know his grandfather better; books by Paul Leon, and others. He said that, of everyone, Harriet Shaw Weaver knew James Joyce better than anyone, and that Ellmann's biography is okay, actually better than widely considered, but Weaver was the most important person in his grandfather's life. Frank Budgen, he added, was among his grandfather's closest friends along with Vitalo Svevo, an Italian writer JJ discovered. He also mentioned another close friend of JJ's, Valerie Larbaud, and asked me to not confuse Larbaud with another great French poet who has a similar name (Paul Valery?) Joyce also said he considers the story of Beach's bookstore, "Shakespeare & Company," and Adrienne Monnier's bookstore, "La Maison des Amies de Livres," to be the most important story of our times, and one that needs to be told. That said, he suggested that there would be no Sylvia Beach, or Shakespeare & Co., without, he paused and I yelled out "James Joyce." He spoke of the magical day when Ms. Beach delivered the first copies of "Ulysses" to his grandfather -- a book that was published on 2/2/22 -- JJ's 40th birthday -- we both repeated the date together, then laughed like two schoolchildren in a playground. It was a discovery that, yes, we were kindred spirits. He spoke lovingly of all the great writers who passed through Beach's and Monnier's bookstores. He asked me if I knew about the closing of the Gotham Book Mart, in New York, and spoke of the loss as if he were talking about the death of an old friend. And, when I mentioned Ernest Hemingway (a main character in the script), he told me how he pictured Hemingway carrying a drunk "Nonno" home from bars on his shoulders. Joyce said he spent a good deal of time at The Ritz, a bar which was liberated in 1945, and which is also featured in my script. As if reading from an envelope, he called out my address: "Walnut Creek, sounds like a nice place." I responded with a line from one of his grandfather's letters from Zurich -- "a delightful nullity." He said he knows America well, went to prep school in New York, and then to Harvard. When I asked what he studied there, he responded with: "What do you think I studied?" I told him English and Philosophy. No, no, he said, history and government. He has been married to the same woman for 50 years, Solange, and acknowledged that, while she has no degrees, she knows his grandfather's work well. Among my favorite Stephen Joyce lines, from the conversation: "America never liberated France. France liberated itself." He added, too, how his grandfather (JJ) never went to America (which I knew), and mentioned a book written by "that woman in California" about his aunt. He said he is well-aware of what is going on in America, and the differences between California and New York. I told him I heard all about the book, about Lucia, by that writer at Stanford, and find it offensive that she would take that angle on JJ. He objected to the word "angle" which I also used in a different context. Like his grandfather, he has great sensitivity to words. I told him I think he inherited his grandfather's talent, and wit, and suggested he ought to write himself whereupon he went off on an extraordinary description of the sea which, frankly, so captivated me I was unable to take notes on it. He recalls my having written to him in the past, fondly. He mentioned an interview which appeared in The New Yorker and said that he had a phone conversation with the fellow who wrote it, and wasn't even told the guy was taking notes; next thing he knew, the story was published in the form of an interview. I confessed that I, too, was taking notes, but he needn't worry about my writing about our talk because I wouldn't be able to read my own notes. He said not to worry, I could write about our talk, in contrast with his original request to keep the conversation confidential. When he said, again, that he would neither "help nor hinder" my efforts to dramatize his grandfather's story, I asked him if he would write a letter stating that. There was silence on the other end. I told him that my producer might not believe that I got a call from him. After all, I was having a hard enough time believing it myself. I told him I need tangible proof of the conversation as would the producer in Ireland. He said that I shouldn't work with anyone who doesn't trust, or believe, me. He asked me to send him a note with the Irish producer's phone number, and he would call him to tell him "exactly what he told me." I added, for clarification purposes, that without written permission, we couldn't use the extracts because it is copyrighted material and we could be sued. He replied by saying he could give permission, "and sue you anyway" at which he laughed, and so did I, thinking he's right. There's always reason to sue if one wants to. Joyce was reluctant to give me his phone number. I completely understood, and asked if he has an e-mail address. He has no computer, or machines except for a fax machine. I thought about asking for his FAX number, but didn't want to intrude. He doesn't even use a typewriter, he said, but writes by hand (which was his grandfather's custom, for many years). "The mail will do just fine," he said. While he insists he's not a big fan of the Irish, he said he'd have no objection to an Irish production. He claimed that his grandfather was not Irish, but "a British subject of Irish origins," and told me not to tell that to any Irish producers cause it will rile them up. He asked if I knew the story of Joe Strick, and how the movie rendition of Ulysses was banned in Ireland for 40 years because of Irish censors. He also mentioned how poorly the Irish treated his Nonno and Nanna. But, then, he added laughingly, and lovingly, that he and Solange were involved with the Ulysses centennial in Dublin, in 2004, and that he's been to Ireland. I recall saying it's time to let go of the Irish thing, and he agreed with me, adding he has a few Irish friends. He asked me to send him a copy of my screenplay, and said Solange would read it first, then he would read it, and gave me his word that not one other living soul would see it. He also asked that I include the extracts from Ulysses that I wanted to use. He told me I was under "no obligation" to send it; "just don't say you're sending it, and make me run to check the mailbox every day looking for something that never comes." I told him I was scared to death to let him read the script, and he replied "You should be." Among the last things Stephen Joyce told me was that he wants to be alive, and able to get around, so he could go to the movies himself and see Shakespeare & Company when it comes out. He asked me to remember that he is still that 8 year old boy waiting for his Nonno to come home. More than anything, I don't want to disappoint him. "Rest assured, you will be hearing from me again," he said. "I sure hope so," was all I could say, except to add what an honor, and pleasure, it was to hear from him. His response: "Don't say an honor; a pleasure, okay, but not an honor. Every time someone says they'll honor me, they stab me in the back." There are things Joyce and I discussed that I won't include here. Indeed, there were times, during that conversation, that I felt as if I inadvertently entered a room, and caught someone standing naked. Only, this someone made no attempt to hide his nakedness, and invited me to witness his vulnerability with an openness one expects only to encounter in dreams. At the risk of being audacious, I can honestly say there was an understanding, a bond, between us; one that exists between two people who have suffered deeply, and who share a great love for another human being -- his grandfather, and my muse, James Joyce. Stephen Joyce is misunderstood. He has been maligned by those who fail to recognize that his whole purpose, his raison d'etre, has been to prevent the perverse, crass, crude commercialization of his grandfather's work and life. He is a man with immense gifts of his own who has sacrificed his own future to preserve the dignity of the works, and life, of James Joyce. For this, his grandfather would be hugely grateful. When it was time to hang up, I felt as if I were about to be roused from a trance. I waited to hear every syllable of the word "goodbye" as if it had come from the mouth of a ghost -- not a passing ghost, mind you, but one with whom I had lived for 7 years.

For some, today is a day of reflection, to remember a loved one or friends lost to AIDS. For others, today is a day to acknowledge the progress we've made fighting this pandemic, and the tens of thousands of lives that have been saved thanks to the availability of life-saving antiretroviral medicine, and new ways of getting access to it, like (RED). For me, today is a day where I think of what still needs to be done, of the literally millions of people we still need to help in Africa who are fighting to survive. I recently traveled to Rwanda and saw the impact of the (RED) money at work. Clinics that a few years ago lacked basic sanitation and supplies, now are functioning well and helping thousands of people live a better life. Real results in preventing mother to child transmission of the virus . Real progress in getting the anti retroviral drugs to those in need and to stemming the spread of AIDS. However, this clearly isn't work that is finished and today is the day where I see not only how far we've come, but how much more remains to be done. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 4,000 lives are lost every day to this preventable, treatable disease. Mothers and fathers die for lack of two pills that cost 40 cents a day. There are 12 million AIDS orphans in Africa, and it is projected that there could be 18 million by the end of the decade. Children bringing up children. It's not a cause. It's an emergency. The numbers can seem overwhelming, the size of the epidemic so massive, that we ask, what can one person do? Well, thanks to (RED) purchases, you have driven $115 million into the Global Fund to buy the two pills a day that keep a person living with HIV in Africa alive. Through the power of the purse you have caused companies to give a percentage of their profits to the Global Fund. And today, Starbucks is donating 5 cents for every single drink sold directly to The Global Fund and throughout the rest of the holiday season, there will be special (RED) drinks available at Starbucks. They sell 50 million cups of coffee every day. You do the math -- potentially millions will be delivered to the fund. And all you have to do is buy a cup of coffee. At no extra cost to you. Also today, we are launching (RED) WIRE, a digital music magazine that, for $5 a month, gives you amazing music from artists like John Legend, U2, Jenny Lewis, Keith Urban, Elvis Costello and more. You'll also get special content and updates from Africa -- with half the money going directly to The G