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Riots swept Jerusalem this morning after Israel rededicated a historic synagogue in the Old City. The Hurva Synagogue, one of the architectural landmarks of the Jewish Quarter, was destroyed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and has been under reconstruction for the past 9 years.

Hamas called for a “Day of Rage” against Israel. According to Gaza MP Ahmed Abu Halabiya (Hamas), the restoration of the Hurva is a prelude to an Israeli plot to destroy al-Aqsa Mosque and replace it with a Third Temple. Joining Hamas in the call to protest is Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; the Palestinian Authority has been collaborating with the Israelis and detaining Palestinians on their way to Jerusalem to protest.

According to the Red Crescent in Jerusalem, 49 Palestinians were injured and 31 arrested. The injuries resulted largely from rubber bullets, teargas inhalation and beatings. Rioting took place in the Old City and the Palestinian neighborhoods of Abu Dis, Hawara, Wadi Joz and al-Tur.

Israeli authorities also stopped Arab-Israelis from joining the protests, including several Muslim members of the Knesset. The statements of one of the Arab politician gives a hint into the tensions underlying the Hurva riots:

MK Haneen Zoubi (Balad) said, “Israel is testing the Palestinian and international threshold via the violent policies of judaization and occupation it is applying in Jerusalem: Massive Jewish inhabitation in the east of the city and in the Arab neighborhoods, the demolition of houses, the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes, revoking identity cards, suppressing demonstrations, arresting resident, picking on human rights activists.” Zoubi, who was in Jerusalem on Tuesday, added, “This policy is nothing short of ethnic cleansing, and it constitutes a strong motive for the launch of a third intifada, even more than Sharon’s visit to the al-Aqsa mosque. It seems that the official Palestinian and Arab stance has given Israel the wrong message: That the Palestinians will not fight for their freedom and their rights, and that the intifadas are a thing of the past. This is an incorrect assumption, as the ongoing aggression and occupation in Jerusalem make an intifada an unpreventable measure.”

Of course, the row over new construction aimed towards Israeli Jews in East Jerusalem has also contributed to today’s unrest.

In a hint of the schizophrenia that effects so much of Jerusalem, the Hurva is less than 800 meters from the Wailing Wall and the Temple Mount. Meanwhile, the Jewish neighborhoods of West Jerusalem were completely safe and tourists strolled semi-obliviously on Ben-Yehuda Street.

A tiny portion of entrepreneurs ever receive funding from venture capitalists.  That’s because VC money is invested in companies with a potential for high, perhaps spectacular, growth– businesses in such areas as the web, bio-tech, or life sciences.

But you wouldn’t know that from either most stories in the press or the slant of many entrepreneurship programs in business schools.  The lion’s share of media coverage of new companies focuses on sexy, VC-backed startups. And there’s a similar emphasis in many b-schools.

Where does entrepreneurial startup money really come from? Typical startups raise initial financing from families, friends, and, possibly, a wealthy surgeon who’s dating the founder’s sister.  As  the companies start generating revenues, that money is then plowed back into the business. So, ultimately, most startups start by bootstrapping–a mix of the founders’ savings and being smart and efficient about how they run operations. It’s a fact of entrepreneurial life.

So, I was heartened to read this post on Forbes.com:

In fact, unless you are teaching at Stanford or MIT, or a handful of institutions with similar access to the financial community, you better come to terms with the fact that your realistic path to grooming successful entrepreneurs is through bootstrapping. So don’t mislead the students, don’t  set them up with unrealistic expectations. Don’t set them up for failure.

via Why B-Schools Set Up Entrepreneurs To Fail – Forbes.com.

The author also lists about seven specific faculty at specific schools who focus on bootstrapping.

One reader also offered an interesting comment: that it’s the “financial realities of b-school” that set up entrepreneurs to fail. Students graduate with so much debt, they’re forced to seek outside capital well before they’re ready.  But, that focus inevitably diverts some much-needed energy away from building the business.

The implication is that the very act of going to b-school to study entrepreneurship might set students up for failure, because they’re saddled with thousands of dollars in debt.   That’s not to  say entrepreneurship can’t be taught, which is another issue.  But that debt is certainly something to think about before young entrepreneurial wannabes start applying to business school.

At the very least, students need to learn from the get-go about realistic ways to fund their businesses, so they can concentrate on building their companies, not chasing after VC windmills.

as he knows about anything else, which is to say 1) very little and 2) not nearly as much as he thinks. I stumbled upon the following in yet another in his endless series of trite and meaningless posts at The Corner:

There is a sort of calm for a bit on Russia’s periphery, since its scared former satellites need time to digest that they are entirely on their own if a Georgia-like dispute flares up.

I am actually quite impressed with the sheer amount of rank stupidity the old raisen farmer has managed to pack into a single sentence. “Entirely on their own?” Really? Has his brain been so scrambled from the endless sophistry and mendacity, and the endless twisting of plain observable facts, necessary to mount any remotely plausible defense of the presidency of George W. Bush that he doesn’t know that many of the countries “on Russia’s periphery” are in a formal military alliance with the United States? Did he not get that memo? Was he too busy fantasizing about young muscular Greek boys in bronze armor throwing spears at one another to remember the small bit about NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, into the very heart of Russia’s “sphere of influence?” Does Hanson not understand that the United States is now legally obligated to treat an attack on the territorial integrity of the Baltics as an attack on its own?

It takes someone who is either profoundly stupid or profoundly dogmatic, and ideally someone who is both, to treat Russia’s meagre countermeasures to the massive expansion of American power in the former Soviet space as “aggressive” or “revanchist.” It takes someone who is much dumber and much more dogmatic to pretend, contrary to all evidence and basic logic, that any of the post-Soviet countries are “entirely on their own” in the case of trouble with Russia. We bailed out Georgia and gave them billions of dollars, and we are still training their armed forces. If that is leaving someone “entirely on their own” what would a “special relationship” look like?

To really put the icing on the cake, Davis renders oddly passive the outbreak of war in the Caucasus, it just “flared up” sort of like a forest fire or a volcano: no one could have predicted that four straight years of nationalist posturing and Russian-baiting on the park of Saakashvili would have any consequences whatsoever! Note to VDH: the Georgians started the war against Russia. Was this a wise course of action? Surely American neoconservatives, who have yet to see a war waged by a “democracy” that doesn’t stir their loins, think so! Almost everyone else, including a very large number of Georgians, thinks otherwise.

 Even if VDH wasn’t 100% wrong, would it really be so bad a signal for America to send that the countries that border Russia need to find some way of reaching accommodation with it? That is disastrous? That is a moral outrage? Does he really think that the stridently anti-Russia positions of the Baltics, Poland, and Georgia, regardless of their morality or advisability, are remotely sustainable? Does he actually have such faith in our ability to project power that he thinks we can, in the long-term, out compete the Kremlin in countries that it borders and that it directly controlled for several centuries? If he does, it is an even more damning indictment of his intellect and the quality of his analysis.

And, on a totally different note, I was just surfing the Weekly Standard’s website (the things we do to ourselves!) and came upon an even dumber reference to Russia. Kristol said: “In June 1978, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a not unworthy heir to the traditions of Athens and Jerusalem…” The idea that Alexander Solzhenitsyn was somehow an “heir” to the Western tradition would shock anyone that is not pig-ignorant, especially, most of all, Alexander Solzhenitsyn! Solzhenitsyn considered himself many things, but a defender of ”Western values” would be towards the very bottom of the list. Indeed you’d think Kristol, who if nothing else is capable of studiously memorizing 4-5 mendacious “facts,” would get his talking points right: Solzhenitsyn was only popular in the West when he was bashing the Soviet Union, he lost virtually all of whatever popularity he had ever enjoyed when he started criticizing capitalism, excoriating Boris Yeltsin, and supporting Vladimir Putin. I think Solzhenitsyn was a praiseworthy man and a very astute critic of Soviet communism, but he could barely restrain his contempt for the poshlost’ of the modern West and would surely retch to know that he has become some sort of figurehead for the unthinking American nationalism that is contemporary neoconservatism.

What is the most amazing is how the Republicans can keep a straight face when they argue the Democrats’ use of Reconciliation to try and pass Health Care Reform will destroy Congressional bi-partisanship forevermore.  In fact, it’s surprising that when they tell that whopper, their noses don’t grow.

WHAT bi-partisanship, for cryin’ out loud?  The GOP has become the NOP, usually voting “NO” as a single flock of automatons against just about anything on the White House wish list.

If one of them, in a rare, weak moment of concern for the country, dares to stray for a brief instant, he or she is,  in effect, immediately waterboarded…nearly drowned in a gush of scalding tea, while the party zealots carve the letters “RINO” on their foreheads.

Thus vilified as “Republicans In Name Only”, they are cast out, shunned, condemned to eternal damnation. If not eternal, it’s at least until their vote is needed the next time around.

It is particularly ludicrous that Senator Lindsey Graham would go on one of the Sunday game shows to insist that the D’s Reconciliation maneuvers would “…destroy the ability of this country to work together for a very long time”.

Setting aside how dopey it is to worry about something that is so long gone, what makes Senator Graham’s comments particularly bizzare is that he is one of those who carries the scarlet “RINO” on his forehead, branded because he has had the audacity to work across the aisle on national security issues.  So feel free to question the heartfelt sincerity of his remarks.

In fact, feel free to dismiss as absurd, the protestations of concern for bi-partisanship from the leaders of the party with which he seems to be having an on-again-off-again relationship.  Equally goofy are their claims that the administration has ignored their ideas on health care, of the economy, for almost anything that matters.

Other than rejecting anything the President wants, they have no ideas, other than doing nothing meaningful that might disturb their wealthy patrons, and to cut taxes.

Critics have a point when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership’s Grovel-For-A-Majority crew concoct a procedure that would allow frightened Democratic members to pass health care legislation, while claiming they didn’t officially vote for it.

It’s a mind-glazing procedure called “Self-Enacting” and it’s too silly to discuss in detail.  It’s dishonest, for one thing.  It would be designed for those legislators who lack the courage to take a public controversial stand.  Worst of all, it is so transparent, it wouldn’t work.

Unfortunately, the very consideration of it shows just how ridiculously divided our political system is. Nobody is Bi in Washington right now. Bi-partisanship, by definition, is a two-way street.  What the Republicans are talking about is a NO-way street, which is really a one way path to the election. Apparently they’ve successfully spooked the Democrats into considering a trip on the low road.

It’s a shame there are so many vital issues that need to be addressed in Washington. They require that the elected officials need to stick around an go through the motions for awhile before heading home to see who gets RE-elected.

Consider all this the Preliminaries.  Nothing more. It’s all about who runs the show the next term around.   It’s a game and that’s a shame.  As for any pious worry about bi-partisanship: That’s a sham.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Writers on True/Slant and elsewhere have lauded and eulogized actor Peter Graves, who died on Sunday, at age 83. They spoke mainly of Mission: Impossible, and scores of films and television shows, including his work on Biography.

The only thing I can add is that Graves took extensive risk to his career to host and narrate the first national documentary about the bigfoot/sasquatch phenomenon, The Mysterious Monsters, in 1975, which freaked me out more than any show I can remember from childhood (it was made as a movie, but I saw it later, on TV). The NY Times has removed the reference to this documentary from Graves’ obit, for some reason. The reference was there in the first on-line obit, but not now. 

Not only did Graves take this risk at the height of his career, pre-Airplane, he also played it straight, or, at times, even questioned why science was so skeptical of evidence of cryptids (the scene between Graves and an anthropologist, in which Graves repeatedly asks why the scientist rejects any evidence, was visibly acted, but Graves still played advocate, for the sake of argument).

Mission: Impossible ended before I ever saw an episode. While watching The MM, however, I recognized Graves a major actor, i.e., a mainstream person who I wouldn’t expect to talk about hairy “monsters,” but he basically said, “Here’s something weird but interesting and I’m not laughing at it.” He set an example of curiosity and open-mindedness, even if he was acting, not a bad thing for a journalist-in-the-making to see on TV. 

This open-mindedness must have been true about him, at least to some degree. As the Times reports, Graves nearly freaked out when he read his part for Airplane. What must he have thought when he read the script for The Mysterious Monsters? Why did he decide to do it, if he didn’t feel a real sense of curiosity? 

So, here’s to you, Peter Graves. You told me, “This may be the most startling film you’ll ever see,” and at the time I whole-heartedly agreed:

A few weeks ago, we noted how Hulu really wasn’t getting along with Jay Leno. Users, you see, can add tags to any show they like. Or, in the case of the new Tonight Show, shows they really don’t like. Well, Hulu users are back it, this time with The Marriage Ref in their sights. I can’t say I disagree with their evaluation.

Let’s zoom in on those insults…

Really? “Worse than AIDS” again? Tough crowd.

Image via Wikipedia

Facts? You want facts?

You wish.

It’s only getting worse, according to the new, annual State of The Media, an annual report from the Pew Project For Excellence in Journalism. The report, their seventh, is enormous and detailed.

This, from the executive summary, struck me immediately:

Technology is further shifting power to newsmakers, and the newest way is through their ability to control the initial accounts of events. For now at least, digital technology is shifting more emphasis and resources toward breaking news. Shrinking newsrooms are asking their remaining ranks to produce first accounts more quickly and feed multiple platforms. This is focusing more time on disseminating information and somewhat less on gathering it, making news people more reactive and less proactive. It is also leading to a phenomenon in which the first account from newsmakers — their press conferences and press releases — make their way to the public often in a less vetted form, sometimes close to verbatim. Those first accounts, sculpted by official sources, then can rapidly spread more widely now through the power of the Web to disseminate, gaining a velocity they once lacked. That is followed quickly by commentary. What is squeezed is the supplemental reporting that would unearth more facts and context about events. We saw this clearly in a study of news in Baltimore, but it is reinforced in discussions with news people. While technology makes it easier for citizens to participate, it is also giving newsmakers more influence over the first impression the public receives.

I have added the bold and italics. This worries me enormously.

Here’s what happened yesterday when I spoke to the public affairs office of a major corporation. I asked for an interview with their CEO and determined, after more discussion, that lower-level executives might be better suited to this topic — part of the research for my book.

“Oh, a book,” she said. “They take up so much of our time.”

“No more time than a magazine or newspaper interview,” I retorted, a little — maybe a lot — sharply.

“No,” she said, “There’s all that fact-checking.”

News to me — most publishers do not fact-check at all; the onus is on the non-fiction writer to be ethical and honest and get it right. The most meticulous (or well-financed) hire their own fact-checkers, knowing no one else (which they still do for most major magazines) will make those calls.

I always explain in detail to potential sources not just what I want from them  — 10 minutes (more like 60, to start) — but why I need their point of view and how they fit into my larger story. I choose my sources carefully: my time and energy is limited and my book is only 75,000 words, of which most is my own story.

I was told I would have to sign a legally-binding document allowing them to review my material about them and to amend it as they see fit.

She called my request a “deep dive.”

This used to be called reporting.

I recently emailed a list of 20 questions to another source — who freaked out. “I don’t have time for this! Do you have any idea what you’re asking?”

Yes, I do. Like any reporter who cares about their work, I want as much detail as I can possibly get my hands on — not just that someone drove a car, but what color/year/make/model and whether the left mirror was cracked and why. I once covered a head-on car crash in Montreal between a small car in which everyone was killed and a city bus. It one of the most horrific stories in my career — the car’s windows, a sight I will never forget, were sheeted with fresh, wet blood. I only saw that because I got as close to the car as police would allow. My editor told me I was the only reporter to get the make and model of the car.

I didn’t want to do it. It was disgusting and terrifying — and I had my driver’s test the very next day.

That’s what reporters do.

We do not: sit in press conferences and take hand-outs and re-write press releases and let spokesmen tell us their shiny, happy versions of the story. Letting “newsmakers” tells us what matters — hey, it matters to their shareholders and Wall Street! — is BS. Letting corporate and government interests set and control the agenda is a recipe for disaster. And the more they get used to a lazy, stupid, under-paid, under-trained style of “reporting” the harder they bite down on the dinosaurs among us who want facts, dammit.

Not spin. Not a press release. Not just one interview, with three of their flacks sitting in and recording every word — but maybe three or four or 12.

I once interviewed a Navy admiral. She actually reached for my notebook to see what I had written. I shoved it under the desk and kept writing.

People will try, whenever and wherever and however they can — and they have powerful tools at their disposal — to intimidate, ignore, stonewall or confuse reporters.

You, readers, deserve better. John Edwards — shiny, happy guy….until some dogged reporters found out he wasn’t. Enron? Great company…until reporter Bethany McLean led the pack and said, Not so much.

No one likes to be asked a lot of nosy questions. Takes up their valuable time. Might make them uncomfortable. Might raise an issue they hoped no one had even considered. Might scare them.

The day we stop doing that, we’re all screwed.

Reconciliation has been used with increasing frequency. That was bad enough. But at least for the Bush tax cuts or the prescription drug bill, there was significant bipartisan support. Now we have pure reconciliation mixed with pure partisanship.

via Op-Ed Columnist – The Spirit of Sympathy – NYTimes.com.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t one of the Bush tax cuts only passed when Dick Cheney broke a tie in the Senate?

We’re going to hear an awful lot of hand-wringing in the next few weeks if the health care bill sneaks through the House and ends up passing in the Senate via reconciliation — as though using reconciliation were somehow immoral, or cheating.

I’m not sure I get what the issue is here. No Republican Senator is ever going to vote for the health care bill under any circumstances. It could have a rider in it mandating biblical readings up through the junior college level and you still couldn’t get even a very God-fearing Republican like Tom Coburn to vote for an Obama health care bill. Chuck Grassley wouldn’t vote for it if you moved the U.S. Naval Shipyard to an Iowa cornfield. They’ve locked arms on this bitch like soccer players on a free kick.

From the start, the only way this was going to pass was with 100% Democratic votes. So if there are 60 Democrats, you can do it without reconciliation. If there are 59, you have to use reconciliation. “Sympathy” has nothing to do with this; it’s math.

I also don’t get how anyone could have watched the Senate over the last year or so and not concluded that this thing is better passed with 50 votes than 60. With 50 votes, you have ten fewer Senators to bribe, which according to my calculations should bring the overall cost of the bill down by about at least fifty trillion dollars.

I hate this bill and have since the beginning — to me it seems like a radical and dangerous step to start forcing people to become customers of a seriously overpriced, inefficient product, thereby removing the last incentive for an already antitrust-exempted, horrifically-performing industry to improve itself in any way.

But I’m beginning to come around to the idea that if we do pass this thing, sooner or later Congress is going to get around to complaining about subsidizing the profits of WellPoint and Aetna and all the rest of them. Naturally the first place they’ll cut in future budget crises is the “affordability credits” for low-income earners, but there’s a slim chance they’ll get around to chiseling the fat from the insurance companies, too, which might in turn lead ultimately to a sane revamping of this ridiculous system.

Or maybe not. I’m trying to find a way to feel good about this thing. Is there a way this thing doesn’t suck? Input is welcomed here.

Returned from Baghdad today, so apologies for the absence of posts. I blame travel–you would, too, had you spent 11 hours yesterday on a Turkish Airways flight wedged into between two rather portly and vocal Russian speakers who just couldn’t figure out to work their in-flight video screens yet demanded, every fifteen or so minutes, your humble correspondent show them. Brutal. Which reminds me: if you are ever tempted to stay in the Istanbul Airport Hotel at the Attaturk International Airport….Don’t…. Stay away. Take the cab to the nearby Renaissance if you must, but don’t get sucked into the overpriced and inconvenient purgatory that is that hotel. I could go on at length, so perhaps more on this later, in a new review section of the blog, called “Overpriced Luxury Hotels That Have Scarred My Soul and Taken Years Off My Life.” Or something.

David Corn has a great piece today, pushing back against the recent eczema like rash of revisionist columns on how we won the war, after all. I have to say, this desire to tell ourselves that Iraq turned out to be a great victory still seems to me rather delusional, but whatever.

Corn suggests that before we throw out elbows out patting ourselves on the back, we should take a moment to think about the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and millions of refugees who aren’t going to be able to enjoy this particular success story.(What a liberal!)

But, of course, the ultimate outcome of the Iraq war — whatever the results of the latest election — remains unknown. And we can continue to debate whether Bush was justified in launching the war, whether he bamboozled the public about the threat Saddam Hussein supposedly posed, and whether Bush’s late surge did help nudge Iraq in a better (or less worse) direction. (It does take chutzpah to hail the Bush administration for the surge, after this crew spent years screwing up in Iraq.) Yet what is galling is the frequent absence from these discussions of a central fact: Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of Iraqis are dead because of the war, and millions have been displaced, driven out of their homes and out of their country. (Another PoliticsDaily.com colleague, Jill Lawrence, has not forgotten this.)

Corn makes another important point: our chosen method to bring democracy has always been undemocratic, which has made us look basically like hypocrites and liars to those we had hoped to convince of the righteousness of our cause.

The Iraqi civilians who were killed or who lost relatives or homes were not asked their consent for the invasion. Bush and Cheney decided their fate. Yes, Iraqis were living within a repressive state. But, no doubt, many of them had made their accommodations and were not willing to sacrifice a family member for possible regime change. Most citizens of tyrannical states manage to get by. (Ask the Chinese.) At times, populations do rise up, and in these instances, people knowingly assume risks and make sacrifices. (See Iran.) Yet in one of the most anti-democratic actions imaginable, Bush decided that he knew what was best for the Iraqi people — and more than a hundred thousand perished.

Anyway.

To claim that the war is a success because we established something that looks like democracy is an interesting one to make. First, it presupposes that an establishment of democratic principles in the region is an actual goal of American foreign policy. This is clearly not true, as seen by our relationship with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, and the Gulf States–we don’t pressure those folks too much about their democratic principles. Secondly, it presupposes that the only(or certainly the most effective) way to bring democracy to the Middle East was to invade Iraq. This, I think, is a claim that should be subject to debate, and the winning argument should be pretty obvious. Perhaps we could have used our economic leverage with our above mentioned allies to push them towards democracy first, and maybe then that would have the “democratic domino” effect on Iraq, all while avoiding a war!

The point I’m making is that we should never forget how truly unwise and silly the arguments to support the war to spread democracy really were, and how lame they still sound to justify what will always be, no matter how many columnists tell you otherwise, a catastrophic foreign policy blunder.

The excellent Jerome Starkey broke this story last week, about a night raid conducted on Feb. 12 by NATO and Afghan forces near the town of Gardez.

The raid was on the home of a Commander Dawood (who like many Afghans uses only one name,) a well-loved man who had worked closely with US and coalition forces in the area. That night, Dawood was hosting a baby-naming party for his grandson.

At around 3 a.m., one of the musicians at the party went outside to use the toilet, saw a group of armed men near the house and ran back inside to warn the others. Dawood went outside and was immediately shot by a man on the roof.

Dawood’s brother, a government prosecutor in  the district was next to die, as he stood in the doorway shouting that he worked for the government, according to an eyewitness I spoke with today.

“He said, ‘We work for the government, we are with you.’ That was when the bullets tore into him,” Mohammad Sabhir, a relative of Dawood and the prosecutor told me. “Three women were standing behind him. When he was killed, they were too.”

One of those women was Sabhir’s wife, Bibi Shirin, who was pregnant and the mother of four children under the age of five. The other was Bibi Saleha, also pregnant. She had 11 children. The third was an 18-year-old bride to be. Her wedding was planned for this summer.

Until today, it was unclear exactly which coalition forces were involved in the raid, though the victim’s families are convinced that Americans were involved.

A senior NATO commander told me this afternoon that it was a joint operation between coalition Special Forces and Afghan Special Forces. He did not know what country the NATO unit came from, but said that 18 NATO contributors have Special Forces operators in Afghanistan.

Apparently the soldiers thought they were targeting a Taliban stronghold. They were wrong.

As if this situation could get any worse, NATO denied killing the women. A press release from their HQ, released after the raid,  made it sound as if the women were dead when the soldiers got there, and had been bound and gagged before being murdered execution style. The release also stated that the soldiers had been fired upon as they approached the house.

When Starkey questioned NATO spokesman Rear Admiral Greg Smith, he gave quite possibly the dumbest quote of this war:

“If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don’t have to be fired upon to fire back.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but in order to “fire back” don’t you first have to be “fired upon?”

But this is semantics.

Five innocent people are dead (not counting the unborn babies) and  the entire province is in a rage. The victim’s families have turned down a compensation payment from the government, calling it “blood money.”

“Life means nothing to me now,” Sabhir told me. “If the government does not bring the people who did this to justice my family and I will get revenge on American convoys.”

Tatyana with Daddy.

Boris Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko has recently resurfaced in Russian public life and now there’s talk of having her head a Kremlin-made right-leaning business party that would propagate Medvedev’s ideas of modernization.

The idea comes to us courtesy of Alexander Voloshin, once a member of Yeltsin’s “Family” (your Sopranos mental image is right on), then Putin’s chief of staff, and now the head of Norilsk Nickel.

So much for at least being sly about creating shell parties.

via RBK

Last night, a Moscow couple decided to get romantical and have sex in their car, which was still parked in a little pre-fab portable garage known in Russia as a “shell,” because it’s made of corrugated iron.

Anyway, it was cold last night so said couple — mid-”intimate closeness,” as the Russian wire called it — kept themselves warm by turning on the heat, which meant running the engine. The car, of course, was in the closed “shell.”

They died.

via Interfax

Image from Wikipedia

A Santa Cruz County Superior Court judge denied a motion by a stun-gun manufacturer to dismiss a civil lawsuit filed by a man who claims he suffered permanent injuries after being shocked by one of the weapons in 2006.

Monday, Judge Jeff Almquist turned down the request by TASER International that would have ended the case. Almquist also fined TASER International $15,000 for delaying the court process, according to court documents.

Watsonville resident Steve Butler, now 51, is seeking lifetime medical costs in the suit. The trial is set for Aug. 2.

– via Judge fines Taser International; case moves to trial

In 2006, Steve Butler was riding a bus when a police officer ordered him to get off. Steve admits he was drunk, and he refused the order. That’s when the officer tasered Steve. Three times.

According to doctors, Butler suffered immediate cardiac arrest. He was revived by emergency medical technicians who happened to be close by, but his attorneys say his brain was deprived of oxygen for as long as 18 minutes. He is now permanently disabled.

[snip]

Medical experts say that if a person is hit by a Taser dart near the chest, one result is a dramatic increase in the subject’s heartbeat — from a resting 72 beats a minute to as many as 220 beats a minute for a short period of time. In its court filings, the company says the “peak-loaded” voltage from a Taser at impact ranges up to 40,000 volts but it’s a 600-volt average for the duration of the firing.

Steve now has trouble answering simple questions. He can’t remember the day of the week, or what month it is.

The police state apologists (I’m looking your way, Youtube commenters) will predictably blame Steve for his circumstances. After all, he was drunk and refused direct orders from a cop. Clearly, that means the officer had the right to maim Steve and handicap him for the rest of his life.

Tasers were originally intended to be used as a non-lethal way to put down violent resistors. Yet, time and time again, these weapons are instead used on the drunk, those confused with the drunk, non-violent protesters, the mentally ill, and victims who are kneeling and already handcuffed.

Public drunkenness isn’t a nice thing, and surely it leads to citizens getting mouthy with people (even police officers,) but the last time I checked, the penalty for that faux pas isn’t a death sentence. There’s a reason why a cop can’t kick or slap a disagreeable taxpayer, and that law should extend to tasering. Just because a citizen becomes unpleasant doesn’t mean they should then be put down like a rabid dog.

Tasers are dangerous weapons that are capable of inflicting great bodily harm on their victims. Even some cops got together and sued Taser after they were injured during a demonstration.

The officers were at a training seminar in November 2003 to learn how to use the newest weapon on their belts, a device the manufacturer claimed would incapacitate a person but not do permanent harm. You can’t really comprehend the Taser, students were told, until you’re Tasered.

So an instructor attached alligator clips to each end of the daisy chain. Two officers became electrical bookends, strung at the shoulder by wires feeding back into a Taser gun. Pull the trigger and the daisy chain shudders, seizes and pitches forward, the pile of police officers becoming a portrait of Taser’s selling point: neuromuscular incapacitation.

In the middle of the chain, hands locked at her sides, Peterson had only her face to absorb the impact. She fell hard on her neck and fast into the rabbit hole – traumatic internal disc disruption, steroid injections, surgical reconstruction, temporomandibular derangement, persistent dizziness, cognitive defects, numbness, vertigo.

And that’s what happens in a “controlled” setting.

Though tasers have caused death and significant injury, they are not classified as a firearm. They are technically called an “electronic control device.” An electronic control device that occasionally kills and permanently wounds people.

But Taser itself seems to finally be acknowledging that shooting someone in the chest with an electric gun might be dangerous.

The maker of Taser stun guns is advising police officers to avoid shooting suspects in the chest with the 50,000-volt weapon, saying that it could pose an extremely low risk of an “adverse cardiac event.”

The advisory, issued in an Oct. 12 training bulletin, is the first time that Taser International has suggested there is any risk of a cardiac arrest related to the discharge of its stun gun.

But Taser officials said Tuesday that the bulletin does not state that Tasers can cause cardiac arrest. They said the advisory means only that law-enforcement agencies can avoid controversy over the subject if their officers aim at areas other than the chest.

As Digby states, this is a way for Taser to avoid liability the next time someone dies. Gee, we told you guys not to aim for the chest! Well, see ya later! Regardless, the statement was remarkable because it marked the first time Taser admitted its product can be lethal.

Interestingly, the warning doesn’t appear on Taser’s homepage, but what does appear is an ad to upgrade to a sweetass newer model, specifically the “triple shot, semi-automatic Taser X3.” Imagine how many mentally ill immigrants I can pick off with that thing!

These types of lawsuits are going to keep coming, and will probably increase now that the word has gotten out that tasers are lethal, barbaric weapons, which are more often used to suppress non-violent dissidents, mildly disagreeable citizens, and the mentally ill than as a safe way to subdue violent criminals.

Plushenko looking pleased with his new car.

If you can believe it, Russia still hasn’t gotten over its sixth place finish in the medal count (eleventh, if you’re counting golds).

Yesterday, President Dmitry Medvedev held an award ceremony at the Kremlin for the Russian Olympians that brought home bacon, and rewarded them with some more bacon, of the automotive variety. Gold medalists got gold-colored Audi Q7s; silver got you a silvery Q5; a bronze medal could be exchanged for — you guessed it — a bronze A4 Allroad Quattro.

But it was a dour meeting. Unlike in years past, there was no reception. Officials from the athletic ministry were pointedly not invited, nor were the non-bacon-bearing Olympians. And those who were invited were explicitly instructed not to wear the distinctive Russian Olympic costume designed by Bosco di Ciliegi, the official outfitter of the Russian Olympic team turned official scapegoat for their loss. “The team colors cause a certain amount of irritation in the leadership at the current moment,” a government source told Gazeta.ru.

(The official reason for the displeasure, by the way, was that Bosco set up a posh little bar in Vancouver where anyone wearing the red-and-white was given free alcohol. “Just because they’re the sponsors, does that mean they have to get everyone so drunk they squeal like pigs?” a Russian parliamentarian complained.)

Evgeny Plushenko, meanwhile, continued to bemoan the cruel fate and stupid judges that handed him a silver instead of gold. (Residents of St. Petersburg have been trying to correct it by gathering their spare gold to make a new medal — which, at 516 grams, would have more gold than the Vancouver model — for Plushenko, who serves in the local parliament.)

At the ceremony, Plushenko approached Medvedev and began to complain about how none of the money allotted for training figure skaters makes it through, that he pays for all his training and costumes and sparkly gloves himself, that figure skaters “are treated like floor rags,” and that the money now slated for his training — around $30,000 per year — was an insultingly unrealistic figure.

“I know that a huge amount of money is budgeted for this, but what happens to it is unclear,” Plushenko said to the President. “Dmitry Antaloyevich” — reverently using the boss’s patronymic — “please, bring this under control, because a lot of us want to perform. And I want to perform in Sochi in 2014. This is insane.”

Then, because a speedskater and volleyball player once had their Olympic automotive bacon heisted, Plushenko wasted no time and traded in his Audi Q5 for something less flashy the very same day.

via Gazeta.ru

I’ve always liked Michel Gondry (more for directing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind than for directing music videos by Björk, Radiohead, Kylie Minogue and countless others), but now I think I might love him, too. Why? Because you couldn’t pay him enough money to work with Lady Gaga.

“I’m not interested,” he tells Movie|Line. “To me, it’s like a form of Marilyn Manson. It’s hard for me to talk about it; I’ve seen a couple of videos of hers, and not for very long. I stop watching them each time because I don’t think there’s melodies…. The music to me is very expected. I don’t think there’s anything in the tone or the melody that makes me say, ‘Oh, there’s something going on.’”

He goes on to call her melodies “very conventional” and suggests that perhaps she’s considered high art because of the way she dresses, and I beg to agree. I’ve been saying more or less the same thing for more than a year now. Although she had her moment — “Poker Face” deserved all of its fame and acclaim and then some — for the most part, Lady Gaga tries too hard. She’s like the ugly girl in the back of the classroom who is starved for attention and would do anything to get it, even if it means walking around half naked 95 per cent of the time.

Take her overpraised and overplayed “Telephone” clip, a dumbed-down Thelma & Louise with lesbian overtones. Do we really need to see her strutting about a women’s prison wearing next to nothing with another frenetic, over-produced, ’90s-retro Eurodisco musical backdrop. And where exactly do the lyrics fit in? She doesn’t have time to talk to her lover become she’s locked up, line dancing and shamelessly aping Madonna in a prison cell? Give me a break — from the storyline and the song. (And let’s not forget that her “Telephone” video partner Beyoncé already covered that tired I’m-too-busy-for-you-because-I’m-just-not-that-into-you theme on Destiny’s Child’s “Bug a Boo.”)

But if Gaga so desperately wants our undivided attention, why did she invite Beyoncé to hijack her video? From the minute “Honey B” shows up about halfway through, I don’t give Gaga another look. Even the song improves, thanks to Beyoncé’s far superior vocal ability and the production’s sudden detour into herky-jerky “Diva”-style R&B.

Apparently, “Telephone” was initially offered to Britney Spears, who probably wouldn’t have done much more with it. I think Lady Gaga should have just given it up to Beyoncé, stepped out of the way, and let a true diva show her how it’s done — without the shameless stripteasing.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The numbers are staggering. According to a newly released study by researchers at UCLA, 24% of Californians now say they don’t have health insurance.

That means that 8.2 million residents of the state are crossing their fingers and hoping they don’t require medical care, a jump of nearly 2 million from 2007.

Why have the numbers grown so precipitously? In part, because of unemployment:

The number of uninsured has swelled in tandem with California’s unemployment rate, which rose to 12.3% in December from 5.7% two years earlier, and as employers shifted more healthcare costs to employers.

This is the private sector at work. Without the intervention of a government plan, it’s not hard to see where this trend line will continue to move. Insurance companies are poised to raise rates by double digit percentages. Employers will pass on those costs, or drop plans altogether. As a result, more employees will simply go without.

Dennis Kucinich, are you listening?

I’ve had some questions about the piece I wrote the other day about Madrona Studios, the 176-unit affordable housing project in Portland, OR. To some folks, the very concept of a publicly sponsored affordable housing project conjures images of large cost overruns, poor construction quality, geographic isolation and some good old fashioned nepotism in the mix.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Madrona Studios proves it. Consider these factors:

Madrona Studios: All this, for $110,000 per unit.

• The cost per unit to rehab the old Ramada Inn/Rose Quarter was $110,000. This is with green materials and energy-saving practices.  A typical multi-family rehab costs $140,000 per unit, according to sources from the city of Portland, Central City Concern and Housing Development Center, the primary partners in the project. New construction would have been well over $200,000 per unit, these sources say.
• The project is far from isolated–in fact, it lies just one block from the workplace where Oregon’s richest individuals earn their keep–the Rose Garden, home to the Portland Trail Blazers. Madrona Studios is located minutes from a mass transit hub, on one of the city’s best bike commuting corridors, minutes from shopping, schools, workplaces, the elegant Pearl District–it’s in the heart of the city, and not in a low economic neighborhood. Hard to believe, right?
• The project came in under budget. That’s right, UNDER BUDGET. The developers were able to add in a couple of touches they had earlier eliminated in order to stay on budget. (I wonder if this has ever happened in Detroit, Cleveland or Chicago.) (Love those towns, just sayin’.)
• Corruption? In Portland? OK, this may be one factor that can’t be transferred. This town is so squeaky clean you can’t find a brother-in-law running a concrete company to save your soul.

Those in charge of the project are eager to take on a similar one. I’ve long had a personal interest in seeing aging motels and hotels turned into decent housing for the poor. After I did an extensive surveys of Portland’s “no-tell motels” for Willamette Week in 2004, I became convinced that the destitute families and individuals who called those wretched rooms homes knew something. They were, for the most part, on public transportation lines, they were close to shopping and low-wage employment opportunities, and the motels met the basic human needs: a shower, a bed, a place to cook a meal, and neighbors. To see Central City Concern, the city of Portland and Housing Development Center do such an amazing job with the Ramada Inn just about blew my mind. But now, the model is there to be replicated.

Here’s how Craig Kelley, Housing Development Center’s Construction Project Manager, sums up the hidden value behind Madrona Studios:

The transit oriented location with proximity to bus, light rail, street car, bike lanes and bike room for 120 bikes allows residents of Madrona and staff of Hooper to reduce their transportation costs.  The proximity to transportation, jobs, services and retail will allow residents to affordably meet all of their needs.

Adds Kelley’s boss, Robin Boyce, Housing Development Center’s executive director:

The project also provided space to expand Central City Concern’s Hooper Detox Center, allowing an additional 20 beds and services for men and women in their first days of sobriety, for a total of 75 beds. What a tremendous asset to have the Detox program co-located with both rent subsidized, service enriched housing, and, up the continuum, with housing affordable to entry level workers. This really is a program to move people up and onward from homelessness to self-sufficiency.

Look around any big city. There are dozens of hotels and motels fallen into disrepair, long since disconnected from the economic enterprises that drew them to their locations. They are underutilized, often slated for demolition. Madrona Studios suggests a better fate for these buildings, one that offers the sort of decency to our downtrodden fellow man and woman that the American Dream at one time promised. Says HDC’s Robin Boyce:

The scale [of such renovation projects] can be challenging – but the end result is tremendous. We think this can be a great model, particularly when the hotels are located in central, transit friendly locations.

Come on out here and take a look. We’ll leave the light on.

Image by meg and rahul via Flickr

The Pew Foundation’s Project for Excellence in Journalism’s 2010 survey paints in some grim hues for most news orgs: only 15% of audiences surveyed would pay for their news; nearly 80% don’t click through* ads.

We’re OK, though:

the commentary and discussion aspect of media, which adds analysis, passion and agenda shaping, is growing – in cable, radio, social media, blogs and elsewhere.

via There Is Literally No Way to Make Money Selling News – journalismism – Gawker.

And Gawker commenter “sgidge” brings us all our Ray of Hope:

Plan to Revive News Media:

1. Let news die

2. Let world fall into chaos and uninformed confusion

3. Let all computers be destroyed in apocalypse

4. Start news media again

* Also, “michaelduff” reminds us all that, just because online’s the only medium where advertisements can elicit immediate, direct and measurable responses doesn’t mean that response is the sole measure of efficacy (right on, “michaelduff”!):

Why does an ad have to be clicked on to be considered effective?

If I see an ad for Domino’s pizza or Tide with Bleach I’m likely to recognize and think about those products just like I would if I saw a commercial, a billboard or a print ad.

I don’t need any extra information about my pizza or my laundry detergent. There’s no reason to click on it, but the ad still made an impression on me.

Why isn’t that good enough?

Outside the funny, the survey’s got plenty to make you worried – e.g. of the top 9 original news content sites Pew cited, 5 of them produce less than 50% of their own original news content; and some to make you hopeful – e.g. international stories were covered better than ever online; audiences are growing and the ability to measure them and their preferences is improving.

But no one’s saying it’s going to be anything but a scratching, clawing scrap to find a winning – or even marginally-sustainable – formula for making a go of it in the news space. It makes for an interesting challenge, but sometimes the apocalypse of uninformed confusion doesn’t sound like such a bad way out.

Environmentalist Peter Sinclair fires off some pretty good snark at the climate change denial community in his new video, “Flogging the Scientists.” The title comes from denial mob leader Marc Morano, who said about climate scientists, “They deserve to be publicly flogged.”

(His extreme punishment fantasy sounds oddly similar to what shrieking harpy Pamela Geller said last January about yours truly. What is it with wingnuts and sadistic fantasies?)

It’s not all snark, though. Sinclair also points out some especially outrageous cases of the distortions and lies for which deniers are infamous. And it’s in 720p too.

Playing the intern on a Thursday night NBC sitcom is not a bad gig for a young actor. Look at B.J. Novak, the young man who plays “Ryan” on “The Office.” He was literally unknown when he joined the show and quickly became a strong character onscreen and off, writing at least 10 episodes and producing 33.

So what can we expect from Aubrey Plaza, who plays April the Intern on “Parks and Recreation”?

Amy Poehler’s character, Leslie Knope, strives to be a positive influence on young April, not quite realizing that April is already smarter and savvier than Leslie may ever be.

Okay, maybe she’s not that smart.

Plaza brings some pretty strong credentials to the role of an intern, including graduating from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and several years of improv and sketch comedy experience at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater—you might know them for producing Stephen Colbert and Amy Sedaris. She also appeared in the Adam Sandler film Funny People, alongside her “Parks and Recreation” co-star Aziz Ansari.

Aubrey Plaza on Twitter

AUBREY PLAZA AUDIO EXCERPT: “Amy Poehler is the most fun ever. She was my comedy hero in high school. She started the Upright Citizens Brigade, which is where I trained. My feeling is, if I can make her laugh, then I’m doing my job.” 

Hear it now!

You can LISTEN to this interview with AUBREY PLAZA, co-star of PARKS AND RECREATION, by clicking HERE!

DON’T MISS: More Mr. Media Radio interviews with the cast of NBC’s Parks and Recreation:
Aziz Ansari

• Aziz Ansari: The ODB of ‘Parks and Recreation’ (tvsquad.com)
• Lunch Hour Veg: Aziz Ansari (yesbutnobutyes.com)
• NBC Renews Its Thurday Night Comedy Lineup (screenrant.com)
• NBC Gives PARKS AND RECREATION Its Third Season!! COMMUNITY, 30 ROCK & THE OFFICE Expected Back For 2010-2011 As Well!! (aintitcool.com)
• Aziz Ansari’s funny Intimate Moments (tvsquad.com)