The Digital Story of Christmas

HAS ANYONE TOLD HIM THAT HIS FACE

LOOKS LIKE A SHEEP'S BEHIND?

Congressman Sensenbrenner apologizes for criticizing Michelle Obama’s ‘large posterior’
By Holly Bailey

(Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
A Republican congressman from Wisconsin has offered a personal apology to First Lady Michelle Obama after he was overheard at an airport lounge criticizing her "large posterior."

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner was overheard loudly complaining on the phone in the Delta Lounge at Reagan National Airport outside Washington about Obama's healthy food initiative.

According to Fishbowl DC, which first reported the lawmaker's remarks, Sensenbrenner was recounting a recent conversation he'd had at church event in Wisconsin.

Obama, Sensenbrenner said loudly, "lectures us on eating right while she has a large posterior herself."

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Daniel Bice, Sensenbrenner made a similar remark at the Wisconsin church he was referencing in his phone call, telling attendees there that Obama has a "big butt."

The Wisconsin lawmaker—who, it must noted, is a bit rotund--sent a personal note to Obama apologizing for his remarks, his spokeswoman Amanda Infield tells Yahoo News. She declined to go into detail about what the note said.

In a statement to reporters, the lawmaker reiterated his apology. "I regret my inappropriate comment, and I have sent a personal note to the First Lady apologizing," he said.

A spokesman for Obama did not respond to a request for comment.

It's not the first time Republicans have mentioned Obama's looks in criticizing her campaign to end childhood obesity. Earlier this year, Rush Limbaugh trashed the initiative, suggesting Obama doesn't physically appear to practice what she preaches.

A Healthy Start for 2012

Plant-based diet

“In 2012, I will be eating a mostly plant-based diet of root vegetables, lentils, garbanzo and black beans, unprocessed grains and my homegrown herbs and spices — and my own-grown papayas and pineapples — to target my entire detox system and for immune-strengthening benefits. My 2012 fitness goal: Bones willing, I am training to improve my marathon time, ride my bike more and maintain general fitness with yoga.”

— Christine Gerbstadt author of “Doctor’s Detox Diet”


Setting a good example


“God willing, I’ll go another year following my nutritionist’s plan for me, which proscribes not only refined sugar and refined grain but several other foods that I’ve proven I don’t eat moderately. I’ll continue to seek out whole foods grown sustainably, including in my two organic veggie gardens. My goal is not only to feed our family tasty, nutritious food but to show our 2-year-old, Joseph, that nutrition matters, and so does living our values. And I’ll keep spreading the science and experience of food addiction to all who will listen.”

— Michael Prager , author of “Fat Boy Thin Man”


Self-control strategy


“I find big resolutions are often broken. So I incorporate small steps along the way to long-term good health. For example, I’ve just begun an exercise in self-control that’s working. I start my lunch with an apple and a glass of water, and then I wait. Ten full minutes. Then I eat my actual lunch. The apple, the water and the food pause help me feel fuller, making my sandwich or salad more satisfying. In the new year, I’m going to try a similar exercise with dinner.”

— Duffy MacKay , vice president, Council for Responsible Nutrition


Treadmill trick



“Even though I’m a longtime vegan and eat healthfully, I’m a lazy exerciser. A few months ago, I set up a board on my treadmill so that I could place my laptop on it and walk slowly while working. Added to brisker outdoor walks, it’s amazing how easy it is to rack up 5 to 6 miles per day — sometimes more. In addition, I try to make each meal at least 50 percent raw. Between these two strategies, that stubborn weight creep around the middle has been melting away!”

— Nava Atlas , author of “Vegan Holiday Kitchen” and creator of the Web site VegKitchen


Greater grains


“The gluten-free diet can be high in empty carbohydrates, calories and fat. I write about and live the gluten-free lifestyle every day and even spent last year testing nearly 200 recipes for a gluten-free cookbook. You see where I’m going with this? I’ve got to lose five pounds. But I am not great about dieting to lose weight. After all, one diet is enough. So I am going to try to eat more legumes, vegetables and high-fiber gluten-free grains like quinoa, buckwheat groats, brown rice and amaranth. More grains and fewer cookies is my mantra for 2012.”

— Beth Hillson , author of “Gluten-Free Makeovers”


Nurturing others



“Staying healthy is not just for ourselves, nor even just for those we love, but for everyone our lives touch — even in the most indirect ways. Nurturing others often sets up a positive feedback loop, reducing our own stress, improving our health, giving us more to give. This holiday season, I’ll try to sing in harmony with my family, laugh with little kids and listen to my elders’ stories. As for food, health comes not just from what you eat, but how you eat (slowly enough to savor) and how you share — in peace. So that’s what I’ll try to pay attention to.”

— Joshua Sparrow , co-author of “Touchpoints Three to Six”


How to incorporate veggie days

You may have noticed that a number of folks here mentioned making plant-based foods a bigger part of their diets. That’s a great idea. D.C.-based dietitian Jennifer K. Reilly advocates taking that effort a few steps further. Reilly, author of “Cooking With Trader Joe’s Cookbook: Skinny Dish!,” follows a mostly vegan diet and thinks many other people could benefit from eating less animal-based food.

Reilly knows that might be a daunting prospect for those who, like me, can’t imagine life without meat, cheese, milk or eggs. So she offers these ideas for easing into vegetable-oriented eating habits.

1. Workweek veggie days: “If you can’t move to a completely plant-powered diet, then a Monday-through-Friday or Monday-Wednesday-Friday plan is fantastic,” she says. “Enjoy beans and lentils for protein, and load half your plate with veggies to encourage satiety without breaking the bank on calories.”

2. Once-a-week vegan detox: Reilly says this is “a great way to keep your body running smoothly and keep your youthful looks and energy.” During the detox day, your diet should be free of gluten and refined sugars, and include 60 to 80 percent raw foods, lots of filtered water and herbal teas.

3. Sample vegan day: Green smoothie, raspberries, vegetables and hummus, brown rice and lentils, a large green salad with raw sunflower seeds and avocado, curried sweet potato soup, and raw vegetables dipped in tahini dressing. Says Reilly: “After 21 days of these new habits, they’ll be as solid as gold!”

How Fox News Is Helping Barack Obama's Re-election Bid

By Jonathan Freedland, Guardian UK 16 December 11

Whoever wrote the political rulebook needs to start rewriting it. It used to be an iron maxim that voters' most vital organ was neither their head nor their heart, but their wallet. If they were suffering economically, they'd throw the incumbents out. Yet in Britain a coalition presiding over barely-there growth, rising unemployment and forecasts of gloom stretching to the horizon is holding steady in the opinion polls, while in the US Barack Obama is mired in horrible numbers – except for the ones showing him beating all-comers in the election now less than 11 months away. Even though the US economy is slumped in the doldrums, some of the country's shrewdest commentators make a serious case that Obama could be heading for a landslide victory in 2012.

How to explain such a turnaround? In the United States, at least, there is one compellingly simple, two-word answer: Fox News.

By any normal standards, Obama should be extremely vulnerable. Not only is the economy in bad shape, he has proved to be a much more hesitant, less commanding White House presence than his supporters longed for. And yet, most surveys put him comfortably ahead of his would-be rivals. That's not a positive judgment on the president – whose approval rating stands at a meagre 44% – but an indictment of the dire quality of a Republican field almost comically packed with the scandal-plagued, gaffe-prone and downright flaky. And the finger of blame for this state of affairs points squarely at the studios of Fox News.

It's not just usual-suspect lefties and professional Murdoch-haters who say it, mischievously exaggerating the cable TV network's influence. Dick Morris, veteran political operative and Fox regular, noted the phenomenon himself the other day while sitting on the Fox sofa. "This is a phenomenon of this year's election," he said. "You don't win Iowa in Iowa. You win it on this couch. You win it on Fox News." In other words, it is Fox – with the largest cable news audience, representing a huge chunk of the Republican base – that is, in effect, picking the party's nominee to face Obama next November.

This doesn't work crudely – not that crudely, anyway. Roger Ailes, the Fox boss, does not deliver a newspaper-style endorsement of a single, anointed candidate. Rather, some are put in the sunlight, and others left to moulder in the shade. The Media Matters organisation keeps tabs on what it calls the Fox Primary, measuring by the minute who gets the most airtime. It has charted a striking correlation, with an increase in a candidate's Fox appearances regularly followed by a surge in the opinion polls. Herman Cain and Rick Perry both benefited from that Fox effect, with Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, the latest: in the days before he broke from the pack, Gingrich topped the Fox airtime chart. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney cannot seem to break through a 20-to-25% ceiling in the polls – hardly surprising considering, as the league table shows, he has never been a Fox favourite.

But it works in a subtler way than the mere degree of exposure. Fox, serving up constant outrage and fury, favours bluster over policy coherence. Its ideal contributor is a motormouth not a wonk, someone who makes good TV rather than good policy. Little wonder it fell for Cain and is swooning now for Gingrich – one of whom has never held elected office while the other messed up when he did, but who can talk and talk – while it has little interest in Romney and even less in Jon Huntsman, even though both have impressive records as state governors. The self-described conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan says that the dominant public figures on the right are no longer serving politicians, but "provocative, polarising media stars" who serve up enough controversy and conflict to keep the ratings high. "In that atmosphere, you need talk-show hosts as president, not governors or legislators."

Fox News and what Sullivan calls the wider "Media Industrial Complex" have not only determined the style of the viable Republican presidential candidate, but the content too. If one is to flourish rather than wither in the Fox spotlight, there are several articles of faith to which one must subscribe – from refusing to believe in human-made climate change, and insisting that Christians are an embattled minority in the US, persecuted by a liberal, secular, bi-coastal elite, to believing that government regulation is always wrong, and that any attempt to tax the wealthiest people is immoral. Those who deviate are rapidly branded foreign, socialist or otherwise un-American.

Some wonder if it was fear of this ultra-conservative catechism that pushed a series of Republican heavyweights to sit out 2012. "The talent pool got constricted," says David Frum, the former George W Bush speechwriter who has been boldest in speaking out against the Foxification of his party. Fox sets a series of litmus tests that not every Republican can or wants to pass.

This affects those who run as well as those who step aside, setting the parameters within which a Republican candidate must operate. What troubles Frum is that it pushes Republicans to adopt positions that will make them far less appealing to the national electorate in November, with Romney's forced march rightward typical. Even if Romney somehow wins the nomination, he won't be "the pragmatic, problem-solving Mitt Romney" of yore, says Frum, but a new Foxified version. It was this process that led the former speechwriter to declare last year: "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us – and now we're discovering we work for Fox."

So far, so bad for the Republicans. Why should anyone else care? Because the Fox insistence on unbending ideological correctness turns every compromise – a necessary staple of governance – into an act of treachery. The Republican refusal, cheered on by a Fox News chorus, to raise the US debt ceiling this summer, thereby prompting the downgrading of America's credit rating, is only the most vivid example. The larger pattern is one of stubborn, forced gridlock, paralysing the republic even now, at a moment of global economic crisis.

The problem is compounded by a wilful blindness towards the facts. Ari Rabin-Havt of Media Matters says Fox has created a "post-truth politics", which is happy to ignore and distort basic empirical evidence. To take one example, Fox pundits constantly repeat that "53% of Americans pay all the tax". In fact, 53% pay all the federal income tax – but many, many more pay so-called payroll taxes. It's hard for a nation to make the right policy decisions if the public is misled on the basic facts. And misled they certainly are. A series of surveys has proven that Fox viewers are woefully ignorant of current affairs, the latest study revealing that it is actually better to consume no news than to watch Fox: you end up better informed.

The extremism, anger, paranoia and sense of victimhood that Fox incubates are all unhealthy for the United States. But it's inflicting particular damage on the Republican party, which could well lose a winnable election because of its supine relationship to a TV network. It turns out it is not liberals who should fear the Fox – it's conservatives.

Thanks Roberta!

Netti Pot Dangers

Louisiana health officials are warning residents not to use nonsterilized tap water in neti pots after the deaths of two people who exposed their brains to a deadly amoeba while flushing out their nasal passages.

The amoeba, Naegleria fowleri, can be found in lakes and ponds as well as in contaminated lukewarm tap water. The organism doesn't pose a threat when ingested, but if it becomes lodged in a person's nose it can end up in the brain and cause an infection.

The infection, lethal in 95% of cases, triggers an array of symptoms that resemble those of bacterial meningitis, including vomiting, headaches and sleepiness. As it progresses, it can cause changes in a person’s behavior and lead to confusion and hallucinations. It usually causes death within one to 12 days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals issued its warning after a 51-year-old woman in DeSoto Parish died after rinsing her sinuses with a neti pot, a small vessel used to pour warm water into one nostril and out the other. Earlier this year, a 20-year-old man near New Orleans died after contracting the infection in the same way.

Thanks Roberta!

US election 2012: Mitt Romney's life as a poor Mormon missionary in France questioned

Much of Mitt Romney’s life as a Mormon missionary in France was not as poor or arduous as he has claimed, say those who knew him at the time.

By Henry Samuel, Paris and Jon Swaine in Des Moines 7:45PM GMT 15 Dec 2011

It was a rare reflection by Mitt Romney on his life as a young Mormon, offered as proof to struggling Americans that despite being born into privilege and amassing a $250 million fortune, he too had known hard times.

A day after being labelled “out of touch” for casually offering a $10,000 bet to a rival candidate, Mr Romney told supporters he had experienced austerity as a missionary in France, using a bucket for a lavatory and a hose for a shower. “You’re not living high on the hog at that kind of level,” he said.

But the Republican presidential hopeful spent a significant portion of his 30-month mission in a Paris mansion described by fellow American missionaries to The Daily Telegraph as “palace”. It featured stained glass windows, chandeliers, and an extensive art collection. It was staffed by two servants – a Spanish chef and a houseboy.

Although he spent time in other French cities, for most of 1968, Mr Romney lived in the Mission Home, a 19th century neoclassical building in the French capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. “It was a house built by and for rich people,” said Richard Anderson, the son of the mission president at the time of Mr Romney’s stay. “I would describe it as a palace”.

Tearful as he described the house, Mr Anderson, 70, of Kaysville, Utah, said Romney aides had asked him not to speak publicly about their time together there.

The building, on Rue de Lota, was bought by the Mormons in 1952, having been seized by the Nazis during the Second World War. The Church sold it again in the 1970s, and it was until recently the embassy of the United Arab Emirates. It is currently worth as much as $12 million (£7.7 million).

Mr Romney moved into the building following a stay in Bordeaux, after being promoted to assistant to the president, Duane Anderson. He arrived in the spring of 1968, weeks before Paris erupted into riots, and returned to the US that December. He was given a room on the third floor.

“They were very big rooms,” said Christian Euvrard, the 72-year-old director of the Mormon-run Institute of Religion in Paris, who knew Mr Romney. “Very comfortable. The building had beautiful gilded interiors, a magnificent staircase in cast iron, and an immense hall.”

Mr Romney and his fellow missionaries worked ten-hour days from 6.30am trying to spread the word of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Several said that the future Governor of Massachusetts was a gifted doorstep salesman.

In his remarks this week, Mr Romney said of his French lodgings: “I don’t recall any of them having a refrigerator. We shopped before every meal”. Mr Anderson said that as well as a refrigerator, the mansion had “a Spanish chef called Pardo and a house boy, who prepared lunch and supper five days a week”.

It was “well equipped” with all modern conveniences, including a combination washer-dryer machine, Mr Anderson said. “I never saw anything like it in another private home at that time.”

Mr Romney added in his comments that “most of the apartments I lived in had no shower or bathtub”. He said: “If we were lucky, we actually bought a hose and we stuck it on the sink.” He said he was forced to use a hole in the ground and a bucket for a lavatory.

Jean Caussé, a 72-year-old Mormon who met Mr Romney in Bordeaux, said he “would be astonished” if that had been the case. “I never knew missionaries who had to do that,” he said. “I don’t see why he would have lived in conditions like that for two years when it was far from the general case”.


The mission home in Paris was fully plumbed and central heated. “All of the missionary rooms had something like a bath or a shower attached to it,” said Mr Anderson. “The home had several”.

This was in stark contrast to lodgings in working class areas given to other missionaries in Paris at the same time. “It was much better than the other places,” said one, Alan Eastman. “Most of us stayed in rented apartments quite a way from luxurious”.

Mr Eastman, 65, of Salt Lake City, Utah, recalled waking in one “spartan” apartment to “frost on my blanket”. A lavatory trip meant creeping past the owner’s vicious dog to an outhouse, he said.

Regarding spending money, Mr Romney “would have been on the same amount of money as the rest of us, about $125 per month,” said Mr Eastman – about $813 (£524) per month in today’s money.

But Mr Anderson said that while “we made a contribution for the common meals, I remember feeling that financially it was somewhat easier to be in the mission home”. Mr Romney said this week: “I lived in a way that people of lower middle income in France lived, and said to myself, 'Wow, I sure am lucky to have been born in the United States of America’.”

One of the mansion’s details stood out to several of the young Mormon men, whose faith banned them from courtship, among other perceived vices such as caffeine, nicotine and alcohol.

“It had beautiful stained glass windows, including a woman with bare breasts, which raised some eyebrows,” said Mr Eastman. “The windows depicted the four seasons,” said Mr Anderson. “Summer was lightly dressed, let’s put it that way”.

Mr Romney’s time in Paris was marked by tragedy when he, the president and the president’s wife were involved in a car crash as he drove them back from Bordeaux in June 1968. Mrs Anderson was killed and Mr Romney, who had not been at fault, was admitted to hospital after initially being presumed dead.

When the president returned to the US for surgery, J. Fielding Nelson, the president of the Geneva mission, was sent to Paris to take over. But Mr Romney had things so under control that he soon returned to Switzerland. “It was astonishing,” Mr Nelson said. “This 20-year-old kid was running it”.

Mr Anderson said that Mr Romney’s Mormon allies were eager to cite this as an example of his natural leadership skills. But it is “a story that his campaign doesn’t want spread around,” he said. He declined to say who on the Romney team made this request. “I’ve been in email contact with his eldest son Tagg, who is an old friend,” he said. “Tagg basically does what the campaign says”.

One Mormon friend who has known Mr Romney for decades said: “The campaign’s line is that whenever people talk about his missionary time, people try to make him sound like a kook”.

Spokesmen for Mr Romney did not respond to a request for comment.

*Additional reporting by Devorah Lauter in Paris

No Honor Among Thieves

FBI pondered sting against Gingrich

No evidence found after arms dealer talked of potential bribe in ’90s

By James V. Grimaldi, Thursday, December 15,11:53 PM

It is a curious case in the annals of the FBI: The bureau considered a sting operation against then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich after sifting through allegations from a notorious arms dealer that a $10 million bribe might get Congress to lift the Iraqi arms embargo.

A convicted arms dealer who cooperated with authorities told the FBI that Marianne Gingrich said she could secure legislative favors.  The FBI ended up calling off the operation in June 1997. It decided there was no evidence that Gingrich knew anything about the conversations the arms dealer was secretly recording with a man who said he was acting on behalf of Gingrich’s then-wife, Marianne, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

But details of the case, which became public this week in an article and documents posted online by a nonprofit journalist, show how a series of second- and third-hand conversations alleging that the top man in Congress might be for sale caught the attention of federal investigators.

“There are so many falsehoods,” Marianne Gingrich said Thursday. “The FBI, they should have been protecting me, not going after me. This is scary stuff.”

Her lawyer, Victoria Toensing, said: “There was no basis whatsoever for an investigation. These were people puffing, which means they were making up access to a high-level goverment person.”

Gingrich’s presidential campaign did not provide immediate comment when asked for response Thursday.

The investigation began after the arms dealer, Sarkis Soghanalian, told federal prosecutors and FBI agents in Miami that Marianne Gingrich said during a meeting in Paris in 1995 that she could provide legislative favors through her husband. The case progressed to the point that it was deemed a major investigation requiring approval in Washington.

Soghanalian, a convicted felon who is now dead, said he wanted the speaker’s help in getting the arms embargo lifted so he could collect an $80 million debt from Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, according to an FBI document filed to obtain continuing wiretap authorization for the case. The facts in the document were “developed through a cooperating witness,” whom The Washington Post has confirmed was Soghanalian.

Soghanalian said Marianne Gingrich assured him “she would be able to do anything [Soghanalian] requested of her ‘as long as they had an understanding,’ ” the document states.


Several months after the meeting in Paris, a man who had been on the trip with Gingrich and Soghanalian told the arms dealer that the embargo could be lifted for the right price. In conversations recorded by Soghanalian, the man, a Miami car salesman named Morty Bennett, stated that Marianne “wanted 10 million dollars to get the job done, five million of which would go directly to Marianne Gingrich,” the document states.

Bennett said in an interview Thursday, “I knew somebody and introduced them to somebody and that was it. Thank you for calling, and don’t call me back.”

The document and the existence of the aborted sting was first revealed this week in a 6,400-word story by Joseph Trento, who operates a Web site called DC Bureau (www.dcbureau.org). Trento interviewed Soghanalian several times before his death in October at 82.

The investigation foundered because there was no evidence against Newt Gingrich to establish “predication” — a basis to believe the target was engaging in or about to engage in criminal activity — according to people familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. FBI policy requires predication before significant undercover operations are initiated.

“There wasn’t any direct evidence that he knew anything,” said a source who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The rules are you just can’t go in there and do an integrity check on someone.”

Bruce Udolph, the former chief federal corruption prosecutor in Miami, said he could not confirm the existence of the investigation but added, “With respect to Speaker Gingrich, I am not aware of any direct, credible evidence linking him to any conspiracy to receive a bribe from anyone.”

The Justice Department referred calls to the FBI, which declined to comment on the case.

The Armenian-born Soghanalian was a high-volume arms dealer nicknamed “the Merchant of Death” who was indicted by federal authorities in South Florida for conspiring to sell U.S. helicopters to Iraq in violation of a U.S. ban. His 61 / 2-year sentence was reduced to two years in 1993 because of his cooperation with federal authorities.

He was already a federal informant when he met with Marianne Gingrich in Paris in July 1995. Also in attendance at those meetings were Bennett and Howard Ash, who had earlier worked with Marianne Gingrich at the Israel Export Development Corp., a company that advocated for a free-trade zone in the Gaza Strip.

Marianne Gingrich, who had left her position as vice president of marketing at IEDC, said she went to Paris at the request of her former boss to help get an investment from Soghanalian in IEDC.

The FBI document states that Soghanalian, Marianne Gingrich, Ash and Bennett spent several days together in Paris. Gingrich said “her relationship with her husband was purely a relationship of convenience,” the document states. “She told [Soghanalian] that she needed her husband for economic reasons, and that he needed to keep her close because she knew of all his ‘skeletons.’ ”

“She also told [Soghanalian], ‘It’s time for me to make money using my husband, and after we get started doing this, it will be easy,” the document says.


In January 1996, the document states, Soghanalian said he received a call from Bennett, who said he was acting on behalf of Marianne Gingrich and asked for $10 million to get the embargo lifted. Bennett wanted more than $1 million in advance, $300,000 in cash. The rest of the money was to be wired into Bennett’s bank account so that it could be transferred to the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli-based think tank with offices in Washington where Ash was a fundraiser, according to the document.

“Bennett stated that the way they had the deal structured nobody would ever be able to prove it was anything illegal,” the document states. “Bennett stated that it would be handled like a campaign payment and ensured the source that [Marianne] Gingrich knew what she was doing. Bennett stated that the money was for Gingrich and her husband and that they needed buffers to protect them.”

Marianne Gingrich said Thursday, “All that’s hogwash.”

Soghanalian asked for a telephone call with Marianne. Bennett said that “would spook Gingrich” but that he would try to arrange it “for small talk about their Paris trip,” the document states.

But Bennett never produced Marianne Gingrich. He reestablished contact with Soghanalian in February 1997, and the FBI asked for approval from headquarters to keep recording the conversations “to develop evidence of possible Hobbs Act, Conspiracy, and Bribery violations by Bennett, Ash, Marianne Gingrich, and as yet unidentified federal officials,” the document states. Ash did not return calls seeking comment.

In June 1997, Soghanalian was planning to meet Gingrich and his wife at a fundraiser in Miami arranged by Ben Waldman, a Reagan administration official who later was lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s business partner in the controversial purchase of a casino cruise line in Florida. Waldman did not return calls for comment.

FBI agents began preparing to bug the meeting, but Neil Gallagher, then deputy chief of the FBI’s criminal division, ordered the investigation closed prior to the fundraiser, people familar with the case said. They said local agents were upset by Gallagher’s move.

“I’d have to refer any comment back to the FBI,” Gallagher said Thursday.

The FBI special agent in charge in Miami at the time, Paul Philip, who signed the document, said he could not recall the case. After reviewing the document, he said he could understand why the case did not progress.

“When you’re dealing with elected officials, you have to be real careful,” he said. “Not that they can do anything to us. But their reputations are so fragile, if you don’t really, truly try to do the right thing, you could really shaft somebody.”


Staff researcher Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.

“The banks got bailed out — the people got sold out!”

By Joy Freeman-Coulbary, Tuesday, December 06,6:08 PM

Like so many Americans, I need a mortgage modification to avoid the gut-wrenching anguish of possibly losing my home.

The poor economy has depleted much of my savings and has considerably reduced my income. I am sleep deprived, and I work three times as hard for only a percentage of what I once earned. Contracts have dried up, and many clients can’t afford to pay.

I know their pain, because I am embarrassed and humiliated by my own debt and financial hardship. It’s no consolation that the net worth of the under-35 crowd (mine) dropped by 68 percent between 1984 and 2009, according to the Pew Research Center.

This experience makes me feel isolated and marginalized. When I’m overwhelmed, I wonder: Where’s my bailout? Perhaps if my name were Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan I’d have a better shot.  I am probably stuck. I am not considered too big to fail. And I cannot afford to donate millions to political campaigns.

One in five U.S. homeowners is underwater, and without a real plan to help them, the average American’s dreams of financial assistance are being foreclosed. Banks that received federal bailout money repay our generosity by evicting the people who saved them.

As my income dropped suddenly, I have attempted to modify my home loan with Bank of America, only to be greeted with a bureaucratic battle akin to a WWE-style smack down.

I had been warned by David, a colleague. A few years ago, David had been ecstatic about buying his first new condo. He swore to burn the midnight oil to pay for his swank city crib. But with an unstable job market and the pool of jobs for lawyers shrinking, he took a more rewarding and stable job outside of the profession. He was denied a loan modification. So David unloaded his underwater downtown condo this past summer. He’s happily renting in a Virginia suburb.

“Don’t waste your time, girlfriend,” he told me. “They’ll have you do a whole slew of convoluted paperwork, make you wait forever, get your hopes up and still just turn you down.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce opposes continuation of the Obama administration’s attempted anti-foreclosure programs, arguing for more foreclosures to resolve the economic crisis. They argue that most people will eventually lose the homes anyway, so why bother.

Perhaps those evicted or foreclosed upon can pitch a tent with Occupiers at Freedom Plaza, McPherson Square or Dewey Square in Boston. At least until that public ground is foreclosed upon by city mayors.

At McPherson Square recently, Heather Maria Johnson of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty said that “housing should be recognized by our country as a human right.”

*As I drove my mother home on a recent evening, she said, “Instead of bailing out the banks, why wasn’t that money used to bail out the average citizen, to have an effective plan worked out so people could remain in their homes?”

I responded with the chorus of my fellow 99 percent: “The banks got bailed out — the people got sold out!”

*BLOGGER'S RESPONSE:  They didn't use that money to bail out the average citizen because they knew that someone would have to pay for their years of thievery.  They knew, the money was in their Bentleys, their European vacations, their big bellies.  They knew it was gone, and whatever was left they had to hide, they had to protect it - or it would be their livelihood that was lost, their homes, their families. 

So the Rich Black Man gave the money to Rich White Men, and sealed the deal with the Bernankes and the Geithners to tie up all the loose ends. To make it legal for the 99% to have nothing.  To make it legal for the 99% to be stripped of everything they had worked for, everything they had accumulated. 

We got jacked by the President of the United States.

Racial income disparities stay wide in D.C., narrow in its suburbs

The Money Gap

By Carol Morello, Thursday, December 08,1:39 AM

The income gap between whites and blacks living in the District is one of the widest in the country, new census statistics show. That stands in stark contrast to the Washington suburbs, where the gaps have become some of the nation’s narrowest.

OXON HILL, MD- DECEMBER 07 Kenneth KAS Flanagan is a fashion entrepreneur and boutique owner of the House of KAS in Oxon Hill, Maryland on December 07, 2011. He fits the profile for a business success cited in a recent release of census data. Income levels for both blacks and Hispanics in Washington's suburbs are among the highest in the nation, census statistics show. The gap between black and white incomes in the region's suburbs is one of the lowest in the country, even though the District itself has one of the biggest gaps. Washington suburbs dominate the top ranks of counties with the highest per capita income for blacks

The per capita income for whites in the District is more than triple what it is for blacks, and the difference has only widened since 1990. In several suburbs, including Prince George’s, Loudoun and Stafford counties, incomes for blacks and whites are closer than ever, and today whites earn $1.30 or less for every $1 that blacks earn.

Demographers and city activists say the difference reflects four decades of upper- and middle-class blacks abandoning the city for the suburbs, coupled with a more recent resurgence of affluent whites moving to the District. Some speak of the city’s middle class as a vanishing phenomenon, propelled in part by rising housing prices.

“A lot of my friends and colleagues say they can’t afford to live in the District,” said Maudine Cooper, president of the Greater Washington Urban League. “Many of the people that moved to the suburbs would like to live closer to work, but it’s not possible.”

In the suburbs, the closing of the income gap has been accompanied by a sharp decrease in residential segregation. Increasingly, neighborhoods are filled with people who have similar levels of education and income, regardless of their race or ethnicity.

Nationwide, the gulf between black and white incomes is pervasive. It exists in every one of the 700 counties with significant black populations, according to census numbers that are to be released Thursday and were analyzed by William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. For every $1 in black income, white per capita income ranges from a low of $1.04 in mid-Michigan, near the capital of Lansing, to a high of $4.15 in Manhattan.

Although the Washington area’s individual jurisdictions are at one extreme or another, as a whole the region falls somewhere in the middle of all metropolitan areas. Whites in the area have per capita incomes of $1.80 for every $1 that blacks earn. The narrowest gap is in Stafford County, where white income is $1.18 for every $1 for blacks.

The disparity persists even though many Washington suburbs boast some of the highest per capita incomes for blacks in the nation. Of the top 20 counties for black income, 10 are around Washington.

Frey said the income statistics show that African Americans in the suburbs are in the vanguard of minorities who are moving closer to achieving income parity with whites.

He attributed the high income levels to federal jobs, which have long been equal-opportunity positions, even during recessions.

“Historically, African Americans came to Washington because they knew they had a better shot of moving up the ranks to the middle class, with higher pay and more security,” Frey said. “Though African Americans have lots of other opportunities now, it’s still true for Washington.”

Kim Lambert was one. Lambert, who is president of Blacks in Government at the Interior Department, grew up in a small town in North Carolina and moved with her sisters to Washington in the 1980s to pursue government employment.

“There was a huge migration,” she said. “If you were to take a poll of people working with you, you’d see a large number came from Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and other states in the South. Many more than came from the North. Back in the ’80s, people bypassed a Charlotte or an Atlanta. D.C. was seen as a hub for federal jobs.”

But even by the time Lambert arrived, many well-off blacks were leaving the District for the suburbs, especially Prince George’s County. Census figures show that trend continuing through the past decade, although there are indications that it has slowed. African Americans still make up the largest group in the District, but last year they slipped below 50 percent for the first time in half a century.

The movement of more upper-income and young professional whites to the District during the past decade exacerbated the divide between blacks and whites.

“The African Americans who stayed in the District were the poorest, who didn’t have opportunities to leave,” said Peter Tatian, a senior research associate with the Urban Institute’s Center on Metropolitan Housing and Communities. “The District does provide affordable housing in many neighborhoods, particularly east of the river, so there’s the opportunity to stay if you’re poor. But if you’re middle class, it’s a different story. As housing became more expensive here, those folks moved to the suburbs.”

The bifurcation can be seen in education levels reported by the census. Almost nine in 10 whites in the District have college degrees, while barely two in 10 blacks do. Although the education gap exists in virtually every jurisdiction in the region, it is much narrower in the suburbs. In Montgomery County, for example, more than four in 10 blacks have college degrees, compared with two-thirds of whites.

Ed Lazere, head of the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, said the District’s economy is so dominated by people with higher educations that even jobs that don’t require a degree are often filled by college graduates.

“We have a high-end economy, and not much of a blue-collar economy,” he said. “It’s increasingly hard to get a decent-paying job in the District without an advanced degree.”

Lazere noted that during the city’s financial crisis in the 1990s, vocational training programs were cut that would have helped people who weren’t headed to college.

“We’re reaping the effects of that now,” he said. “We do have a mayor who talks a lot about jobs, but we don’t have a citywide strategy to address the literacy and skills gap.”

Cooper of the Urban League said the income gap also reflects the large number of people who work in the city, where wages are relatively high, but live in the suburbs. She said that if the city required its employees to maintain a residence in the District, as it used to, the gap would narrow.

“You’ve got police, firemen and other blue-collar workers crossing the river to work in the District because they get better wages,” she said. “The teachers’ parking lots are filled with Maryland and Virginia tags. Wages here are good. It’s that the people who collect those wages live elsewhere.”

Families will be reluctant to stay, or move to the District, unless schools improve.

“If families don’t feel schools are good enough, and you’re not wealthy enough to live where schools are better or you can send your kids to private school, that’s another incentive to move elsewhere,” Tatian said.

Few people expect the difference to diminish anytime soon.

“Unless there’s a significant intervention, both to preserve affordable housing throughout the city and to invest in building up the skills of D.C. residents, the gap will grow,” Lazere said. “When there are job fairs, the line’s out the door. People want to work and feed their families. But if we’re creating jobs at Wal-Mart, not giving people the skills to compete for higher-paying jobs, the problems are going to perpetuate.”

Mass. Attorney General hits big banks

with foreclosure lawsuit

(Reuters) - The Massachusetts attorney general has filed a lawsuit against five large U.S. banks accusing them of deceptive foreclosure practices, a signal of ebbing confidence that a multi-state agreement can be worked out.  Attorney General Martha Coakley said on Thursday she filed the lawsuit partly because it has been taking too long to hammer out a nationwide settlement.  For more than a year, state and federal officials have been negotiating a deal in which banks would pay billions of dollars in fines - to go toward housing relief - in exchange for legal protection against future suits.

The Massachusetts lawsuit, filed in state court in Boston, accuses Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co Inc, Citigroup Inc, Wells Fargo & Co and GMAC of deceptive foreclosure practices, such as using robo-signers and false documents.

"Our suit alleges that the banks have charted a destructive path by cutting corners and rushing to foreclose on homeowners without following the rule of law," Coakley said in a statement.

The attorney general in Iowa, Tom Miller, who is leading the negotiations for the states, said in a statement they hope to reach a settlement "soon." He also said Coakley had indicated she is still open to joining the settlement.

"We're optimistic that we'll settle on terms that will be in the interests of Massachusetts," Miller said.

However, analysts said Coakley's lawsuit is a bad sign for banks, which hope a deal with states and federal authorities could help the industry move beyond the legal fallout that has dogged it since the peak of the financial crisis.

"I can't say anything is dead, but it sure looks like this is a negative. The banks are going to have these suits out there for years." said Paul Miller, a bank analyst with FBR Capital Markets.

The mortgage servicing units of the five banks are accused of taking shortcuts as a way to deal with a deluge of foreclosures in the wake of the 2008 credit crisis.

State attorneys general, the Justice Department, and other federal officials have been talking with the banks for more than a year.

The discussions have been bogged down by states concerned the deal was either too lenient or provided the wrong kinds of relief, and by the banks who sought release from mortgage-related claims beyond the original conduct at issue.

GOING IT ALONE?

The Massachusetts complaint accuses the banks of using fraudulent documents when processing foreclosures; of foreclosing on properties without holding the actual mortgage; and of failing to uphold promises to modify loans for the state's homeowners.  It also names the banks' private mortgage registry, MERS, as a defendant, accusing it of dodging fees and corrupting the state's land recording system.  On Thursday, Coakley was firm that she would not sign a mortgage settlement that included "broad liability release regarding MERS and other issues."

A person familiar with the talks said Massachusetts has sought to protect its ability to pursue certain claims against the banks for their use of MERS. Those liability issues are still being hashed out in negotiations, the person said.

The banks targeted in the suit said Coakley's move imperils chances for broader relief.

Bank of America said in a statement that a collaborative resolution, rather than continued litigation, would more quickly heal the housing market and help drive an economic recovery.

Chase said in a statement that it is disappointed Massachusetts filed a lawsuit when negotiations are ongoing on a broader settlement that it said could bring immediate relief to borrowers.

GMAC said it was unhappy that Massachusetts "elected not to continue a more constructive path that could help borrowers in the state, but rather has chosen to use the court process."

Wells Fargo disagreed with Coakley that it has not kept a promise to modify loans.

Citi said it had not yet reviewed the lawsuit, but the bank believes it has operated appropriately and in compliance with existing laws.

Coakley, who took office in 2007, has been aggressive in moving against Wall Street firms and U.S. banks. Her office said it has secured more than $600 million in relief for investors and borrowers, while keeping more than 24,000 people in their homes.

(Additional reporting by Scott Malone, Svea Herbst, Rick Rothacker and Joe Rauch; editing by Andre Grenon)

The Coveted Republican Dumbass Throne

Why Republicans Embrace Simpletons

and How it Hurts America

By James Marshall Crotty

Since I report on American education, including the intellectual lassitude of American voters, foreign observers routinely ask me: Why Do Republicans Gleefully Embrace Idiots as Presidential Candidates?

The question naturally begs a larger question: How can a country, with the world’s highest national GDP, and absurdly complex systems regulating everything from credit default swaps to nuclear missile safety, possibly allow onto its national stage men and women of such transparently inferior intellect?

The easy answer is that there has always been a long, pathetic history of anti-intellectual paranoia in American politics, as Richard Hofstadter documented in his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963). It is like kudzu. You just can’t kill it. No matter how advanced the U.S. becomes in technology, biomedicine, and weaponry, it not only attracts, but promotes, under the rubric of equal opportunity, a confederacy of dunces as Presidential candidates.

To be fair, Democrats have had their share of dolts, including the tax-cheating, race-baiting, college dropout Reverend Al Sharpton (who gained fame not only because of his courageous civil rights protests, but because he claims to be “Keepin’ It Real”; read: not formally educated), as well as Democrat-turned-Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond (whose 1948 campaign slogan was “Segregation Forever”). Nevertheless, in 2011, the God-fearing Ossified Party has rolled out the greatest assortment of Know-Nothings in its history, most of whom share a singular misconception: because I can do one small thing well (e.g., run a pizza chain), I can handle the world’s most demanding job.

At first blush, one thinks this embrace of incompetence has something to do with the uniquely American idea that anyone from any background can become President. It’s an old saw told to almost every young person in the country. I believed it. I also believed that I would be an astronaut or a professional basketball player.

However, reason suggests, that when a clear-headed adult, with no experience in national politics, no reputable training in public policy -- as opposed to a bastion of Christian zealotry like the former Oral Roberts School of Law, which Michelle Bachman attended -- and little understanding of countries outside U.S. borders, says that he or she is running for President, his or her reasonable adult compadres should rightly say, “You are suffering from delusions of grandeur.” After all, you need advanced degrees to properly practice medicine, law, and nuclear physics. Why would we expect the Leader of the Free World to have anything less than the precise qualifications for such an elevated job opening?

However, only in America is no training or knowledge required to perform a job that is not only more complicated and demanding than the above three fields, but one which regulates the above three occupations and all sorts of other complex and nuanced occupations around the globe (including undercover agents in foreign lands).

But that’s only the beginning. What's far more troubling is that you can attract a huge amount of support in this country precisely because you lack qualifications to be president. Such reasoning is, in effect, the raison d’etre of all so-called “outside-the-Beltway” campaigns of recent vintage. However, to fully grasp why inexperience, incompetence and outright stupidity has such an emotional hold on Republicans in particular, you have to understand a core principle of conservative orthodoxy: intelligence equates with moral relativism. Which is why, after twice-electing a genuine, but fatally corrupt, thinking person in Richard Nixon, the Republican Party moved away from its historically pragmatic moderation in search of morally doctrinaire ideologues. Naturally, this paved the way for conservative extremists, who, while short on smarts -- or perhaps because they were short on smarts -- stuck to “conservative principles” like maggots to rotting meat. As my late diehard conservative Republican mother told me when I asked how she could rabidly support such an obvious dullard as George W. Bush, "Because I don't trust the smart ones."

Ronald Reagan became the first of many morally unambiguous dimwits to warm the cockles of conservative hearts. Yes, with this post-Nixon strategy, the dwindling GOP intellectual fringe (historically held up by William Buckley and barely maintained to this day by the likes of David Brooks and Peggy Noonan) has had to stomach an occasional faux pas (e.g., Reagan's simpleton predecessor, Gerald Ford, claiming in a 1976 presidential debate that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe”), or gasp-inducing ignorance of foreign policy basics (e.g., Sarah Palin not knowing that there is a North and South Korea, or her hysterical notion that Sputnik bankrupted the Soviet Union). But, at least they knew their standard-bearer was not going wishy-washy on them (i.e., thinking hard for a living).

This gambit worked so well with Reagan, it naturally attracted other knuckleheads. First came George Bush Sr.’s running mate, William Danforth Quayle, who promptly showed his latent stupidity by public misspelling potato as “potatoe” … in front of a sixth-grader.

Thereafter, Quayle was the butt of many excellent late night jokes, but he lacked the earnest believability of a Reagan to ever accede to the Oval Office (though he did have a fairly hot wife). It took two terms of an intelligent commander-in-chief, and another moral equivocator, former law professor Bill Clinton, for the Republicans to search again for an unequivocal moral crusader with not a whole lot going on upstairs.

Enter George W. Bush, who, like Reagan, also enjoyed two terms in office, despite beliefs in brazen poppycock such as Intelligent Design and in the whopper of all disastrous absurdities, that Saddam Hussein was not only marshalling weapons of mass destruction to directly attack the U.S. (no, he was bluffing to deter his real enemy, neighboring Iran), but that he was also behind 9/11 (never let a good crisis go to waste, eh Mr. Cheney?). Only a true rube could believe such specious nonsense. And G.W. Bush – who exemplified the adage, “Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity” -- fit the bill. The Republican Party loved him for it, bending over backwards to sanitize and “Hannitize” his many blunders, while selling his disinformation to a gullible American public still in shock from the attacks of 9/11.

At last count, the Iraq Detour has cost this nation trillions of dollars (with more trillions to come, as this country keeps its commitment to care for wounded and mentally shell-shocked Iraq War veterans and their loved ones). It also cost the lives of 125,000 Iraqi civilians, and many times more than that who’ve been wounded or displaced by the Iraqi misadventure. All because of a lie and Americans’ willingness to either believe that lie or not forthrightly contest it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is the empirical cost of stupidity.

After the costly policy blunders of Bush, Jr. -- for which this country is still paying dearly in lower credit ratings and draconian cuts in funding for parks, libraries, law enforcement, and more -- in came yet another Democratic law professor to clean up yet another Republican mess. Except this Democrat, Barack Obama, did not carry the moral and ethical baggage of his Democratic predecessor.

However, for reasons both racial and political, though primarily intellectual (President Obama is too cosmopolitan, too wordly, too nuanced, too calm, too Europe-friendly), Republicans have aggressively sought to cut Obama’s tenure short. Unfortunately, this time around they lack a bona fide, morally unequivocal, conservative with enough general election appeal to take Obama on. Each hopeful successor to the Republican Dumbass Throne (the coveted RDT) has proven so cartoonishly dopey as to offend even the intelligence of diehard Iowa primary voters, easily the most unbending conservatives in the U.S.

Things are now so bad on the dumbass front that, in a poll announced yesterday, Iowans are no longer interested in the current crop of Republican cretins. This includes Texas Governor Rick “Oops” Perry, who, in a colossal boneheaded moment in a live nationally televised debate, could not remember the third federal agency he would cut as president.

In an empirical validation of the anti-intellectual streak in GOP Politics, Perry then went on national talk shows the following morning to defend his stupidity as a reason to vote for him. On CNN’s “American Morning,” Perry said, "We've got a debater-in-chief right now, and you gotta ask yourself: 'How's that working out for America?'" In other words, being a good debater, and knowing the issues, is bad for America. This list also includes Michelle “Pray the Gay Away” Bachman, who believes that “Founding Fathers” like John Quincy Adams “worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States” (except J. Q. Adams died in 1848, long before “slavery was no more”). Even though the self-righteous Bachman is a native of Waterloo, Iowa, voters in her home state just cannot see trusting her with the codes to the U.S. nuclear arsenal (trusting a Creationist like Bachman on any public policy would be like trusting a phrenologist with curing your cancer).

And, yes, this also includes the endlessly entertaining Herman “I’m Not Supposed to Know Anything About Foreign Policy” Cain, whose inability to construct a coherent sentence on Libya and stated desire to prevent an already nuclear-armed China from “going nuclear” are now part of national dumbass folklore.

And lets not forget the deeply annoying Rick "Sanctum" Santorum, who said publicly that former P.O.W. John McCain “didn’t understand advanced interrogation techniques.” A Republican dumbass hallmark: arrogance wed to ignorance.

As a result of such transparently dumb stooges, Iowa Republicans, and conservatives in general, are actually settling on a bona fide shyster in the Richard Nixon mold: the pudgy, pompous, nastiness known as Newt Gingrich. As I made clear in my previous column, Darth Gingrich Vs. the Romney Ken Doll, the Republican nomination is now a race between Gingrich and Romney, which, once all the baggage of the corrupt former Speaker is laid out for all to see, could tilt to the nomination back to the Massachusetts Mormon, where’s it’s been for most of this Republican election cycle.

Now, you might ask, why aren’t Republicans in love with Romney? After all, he’s been a successful businessman in the Republican mold, essentially downsizing companies to their bare essentials and then reselling them for profit. He has that vague, detached, tall Ken Doll vibe that Republicans idealized in Reagan. In addition, as a devout Mormon, he’s squeaky clean in the morals department. Dude doesn’t drink, smoke, do drugs, or drink hot caffeinated beverages. He’s more straight edge than the Crotty, and that’s saying something.

Unfortunately, Romney, a Harvard graduate (and not a faux one like G.W. Bush), is just not seen as dumb enough. Though he and his Mormon faithful believe in preposterous canards (e.g., that Jesus Came to America), Romney consistently demonstrates a frustrating lack of imbecility, particularly in the the artful compromises he’s engineered over his political career, including his momentous achievement of passing mandatory health insurance in his adopted home state of Massachusetts. This subtlety of purpose, this nuance, is anathema to politically and morally unambiguous conservatives, who see the world in great big Murdoch-style tabloid dualism.

Which makes their sudden embrace of Mr. Gingrich so hilarious. Because, even more than Romney, it is Gingrich who has demonstrated enormous flexibility in his core conservative principles. He voted for NAFTA and the WTO; loan guarantees for China; most favored nation status for China; $1.2 billion in aid to the United Nations; and the creation of the Department of Education. Moreover, he reached across the aisle to make deals with Democrat Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, while achieving a compromise on global warming with Nanci Pelosi (which he has since pathetically renounced in an attempt to appeal to the Hannity-Bennett blockhead wing of the GOP). Recently, he attacked Paul Ryan’s budget plan as “right-wing social engineering” (before backing off that claim as well).

What Gingrich proves is not his electability, but, rather, the disastrous absurdity of the Conservative fealty test. Like other fealty tests in American history (from Truman’s Executive Order 9835, a.k.a. the “Loyalty Order,” to Grover Norquist’s Taxpayer Protection Pledge, right up to Herman Cain’s Muslim Loyalty Test), it is bound to end badly for the candidate, the party, and the country, which is governed best when the commander-in-chief is given enormous flexibility to do the practical, diplomatic, and, thus, smart, thing, not the ideologically pure one.

..