What Snubbing the Dalai Lama Means to You

The Dalai Lama is in Washington tonight. The exiled spiritual leader of Tibet and past recipient of the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal will meet with politicians, hand out thanks and awards and glad-hand the city's high and mighty. With one very notable exception.

He's not being received by President Barack Obama.

After 18 years of being honored and revered as the walking, talking human personification of the American belief in freedom of religion, he's been turned away at the gate. We, who were supposed to be his greatest supporters, have failed him.

The Obama administration sent a delegation to meet with His holiness at his residence-in-exile in India last month. Afterwards, the Dalai Lama's spokesperson said the Tibetan exile looked forward to meeting President Obama not during this visit, but after Mr. Obama returns from his first presidential visit to Beijing.

That key word "after" is very disappointing to Dalai Lama supporters. It allows the Chinese government to say to Tibetans, "See! Those Americans considered our bullying more important than your spiritual freedom."

For the Dalai Lama's part, this is part of being a good sport. On U.S. president's part, it's more like recognition of the New World Order. And Barack Obama is toe-ing the line.

The beauty of Israel is slain upon thy high places: how are the mighty
fallen! Samuel 1:19

I want to be a supporter of this president, but this action gives me serious pause. The strange thing is, the Chinese didn't demand this of the United States. President Obama offered this sizable chunk of diplomatic coin without being asked. We surrendered without firing a shot.

Oh, I'm sure there was an implied threat. China routinely punishes nations that receive the Dalai Lama. They refuse to attend conferences and cut off diplomacy. They later reschedule, restore diplomacy and life goes on. So if the punishment is routine, and the Dalai Lama has met with the sitting president of the United States ten times since 1991, then why worry about it now?

Very simply, the position of the United States on the world stage has changed.

In reviewing the huge debt that nearly crippled the U.S. economy last year, the Chinese have emerged as the single largest holder of that debt. We ought to be dizzy and shaken to our knees by the throttling we are taking. Our own stupid spending has led us down this dark little trail and we may not have seen the depths of it.

A second story caught my attention as I flitted around the 'net this afternoon. "U.S. Drops to 13 on List of World's Best Countries to Live in." The second part of the headline was that China has moved up seven places to 92. Yeah, sure you smirk, but the weekend get-togethers on Tiananmen Square are killers.

We all know what life on the outside looking in on a Communist Regime looks like, but China has improved living conditions, education, income levels and life expectancy. Think about that as you watch the evening news reports of teacher layoffs and job cutbacks.

We're losing our position in world politics. We're losing our standing on world debt markets. And we're tossing out our self-respect by catering to a global bully that kills its own people, dictates religion and family size, and has refused to let an entire section of the country have access to its spiritual leader for the last 50 years.

Earlier this year, the Dalai Lama address his 90,000 followers form his home in India and told them to prepare themselves "in case our struggle (with China) goes on for a long time."

Sadly, this week our country is working against the oppressed in Tibet; doing the bidding of China, as our new economic taskmaster.

Van Jones, White House Environmental Adviser, 2009

It's so easy to look at politicians who lie to the public, accept bribes, hire call girls or cheat on their wives and children (because if you cheat on a wife, you are cheating your children at least as much) but what about people who have strong political convictions and do things about them that they later regret?

Van Jones, the Obama administration guru of green jobs has resigned his position after his past actions and statements with some controversial groups came under public scrutiny.

Mr. Jones has issued two apologies in recent days. One of those mea culpas was for joining a group called 911Truth.org that questioned whether Bush administration officials "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war" and the other for using a crude term to describe Republicans in a speech he gave before joining the administration.

Haven't we all called an opponent something regrettable at some point? I read a statement once that a man wasn't a man if he couldn't control his temper... or if he didn't have a temper.

It's a sad truth that youth is wasted on the young, but isn't it more regrettable when we are so naive that we go into public office thinking no one will ever question our abilities or intents? When you serve the public in this country, you have several hundred million bosses, each of whom is allowed to criticize and comment on your abilities at will.

I have to admit that for the first several years in television news, I was very thin skinned. These days, if you criticize me, unless you are the one signing my paycheck or my time sheet, I probably will laugh in your face. Literally. I've learned to handle the ups and downs of a very fickle public.

I'm sorry Van Jones has resigned from the position of White House Environmental Adviser. I don't know that he shouldn't have. I don't know that he should. I do know that I understand him to be uniquely qualified, except for this: he didn't have the backbone needed to stand up under public pressure. Which means in his case, he wasn't right for the job.

Politics. Sensitive souls need not apply.

The High Cost of Comfort in One's Skin

Caution: There is a naked woman on this page and I don't consider it porn. It is, however, somewhat annoying.

Don't get excited. The naked woman in question is a reasonably modestly posed 20 year old "plus size" model named Lizzi Miller, who posed for the photo which graces the pages of Glamour Magazine. The article attached to it is about body image and "feeling comfortable in your skin.

Online fans have been buzzing about it since it went up late last week.

"I am gasping with delight...I love the woman on p 194!"

That was offered by one commenter, and apparently almost every statement that followed.

Am I glad to see it? Yes and no. Yes, I'm glad for any woman, any person really, to feel comfortable in their skin.

Am I comfortable with this particular woman? No. And here's why.

That little pooch, as the magazine lovingly refers to it, isn't really healthy for a 20 year old woman. It just isn't. If that were a 40 year old woman, she'd have earned it righteously. Maybe a few kids and a few days (or years) of "too busy to take care of me" meat on her bones. But on a 20 year old? Oh, please no.

And while I'm glad not to see one more stick-thin anorexia-infected model, I wonder about articles such as this one and another one in the New York Times suggesting, no, saying outright that it's "hip to be round."

Uh, no it's not. It's actually unhealthy. In fact, it could be downright deadly in a few years.

We all know that Americans have a health problem and it's right around our middle. We're gaining weight at an alarming rate. And to suggest that it's now become stylish to be overweight is outright insanity.

I don't want to call anyone out for their weight issues. I'm not even suggesting Lizzi Miller has a weight issue, but the fact is that the average American puts on 10 pounds per decade after age 20 and that is unhealthy.

Certainly, I have my own weight issues. But to suggest to the younger set, the group coming up, that carrying extra weight around one's middle is stylish is simply cultural suicide.

We're suffering from an epidemic of obesity and overweight in this country. And it's bringing with it something even worse. Right next to our weight issues are the attached health issues. Diabetes will be THE health issue of this 21st century. It is already striking in shocking numbers.

And oh, by the way, if you think the current health care program proposed by President Barack Obama will cost a lot now, you give it ten years, at our current rate of weight gain, and then check back, my friends. We won't have the current administration to blame then. If we continue to gain weight at our current rates, death panels won't be necessary. We'll be dying in record numbers, as we sit in wheelchairs with diabetes-induced blindness and minus our fingers and feet.

Personally, I don't want to pass the later years of my life suffering from numb, or even worse, amputated fingers, toes or full limbs. I have no intention of going blind in my later years, if I can avoid it at any cost. And if that cost means I don't eat the current average of 22 teaspoons of sugar in my daily diet, so be it. That article just linked, by the way, contains your daily bit of news from this blog.

It's NOT hip to be round. It's sad. It's indicative of a culture that has surrendered to its desires and shows no impulse control. If a candy bar a day is going to make you blind in your 60's and possibly kill you, is there really no way to avoid it?

There is. Stop now. Rethink your diet and exercise. It's not just society that will suffer. It's you. Take it personally before it becomes personal. Yes, please feel good about your body, but work at making it something to be proud of.

I have to cut this short. (You know I could go on about this for a lot longer, right?) But it's time for the gym.

Besides, there's nothing ironic, funny or hip about being round.

Our Healthcare Crisis and Costs

I saw this news article just now and thought it had something to say that without further comment from me. The night after a presidential news conference on health care reform, this news item provides pure irony, start to finish.
(AP) STUART, Fla. – All sides agree on one thing in the strange case of a South Florida hospital that secretly repatriated a seriously brain injured patient back to Guatemala.

During the early hours of a steamy July 2003 morning, Martin Memorial Medical Center chartered a private plane and sent 37-year-old Luis Jimenez back to the Central American country without telling his relatives in the U.S. or Guatemala — even as his cousin and legal guardian, Montejo Gaspar, frantically sought to stop the move.

There, things get murky. Gaspar is suing the hospital for essentially deporting Jimenez, who was an illegal immigrant. The hospital, which spent more than $1.5 million on his care over three years, says Jimenez wanted to go home.

Underlying the dispute is the broader question of what's a hospital to do with a patient who requires long-term care, is unable to pay and doesn't qualify for federal or state aid because of his immigration status. Health care and immigration experts across the country are watching the case, which could go to a jury Thursday, and which could set precedent in Florida and possibly beyond.

Lawyers for Jimenez said this appears to be the first time a lawsuit has been filed in such a case. In closing arguments Thursday, Jack Hill, Gaspar's attorney, said the hospital wanted to send Jimenez back before the case could get on track for appeals.

"The plan was designed once and for all to stop the meter from running, to stop the expenses ... to stop the case from going all the way up to the Supreme Court — because Luis Jimenez was gone," Hill said.

The case also raises the question of whether a hospital and a state court can decide on their own to deport someone.

"Regardless of the decision, it will heighten the awareness of hospitals nationwide. The next time they debate shipping a patient overseas, they're going to have to do their homework because it's going to leave them open to a lot of legal challenges and questions," said Steve Larson, an assistant dean at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Medicine and medical director of a nonprofit clinic for Latino immigrants.

But Linda Quick, president of the South Florida Hospital & Healthcare Association, says hospitals may become even more wary about providing extended care to uninsured immigrants.
Hospitals are already struggling under the staggering costs of treating the nation's roughly 47 million uninsured. Illegal immigrants make up an estimated 15 percent of this group, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

"I think they'll do what's required according to physician orders," she said, "but I think they will be more pro-active and aggressive in finding a discharge plan."

Like millions of others, Jimenez came the U.S to work as a day laborer, sending money home to his wife and small children. In 2000, a drunk driver crashed into the van he was riding in, leaving the robust soccer player a paraplegic. For more than a year he lingered in a vegetative state before he began to recuperate, eventually reaching a fourth grade level in cognitive ability. The hospital sent him to a long-term care facility for a brief stint, but eventually he was returned to the hospital for care. Armed with a letter from the Guatemalan minister of health stating the poverty-ridden country could care for him, the hospital sent him home.

Because Jimenez has diminished capacity to make decisions, Gaspar was named as his legal guardian. Gaspar appealed a judge's order approving the move. The appellate court later reversed that order, ruling a state court lacks the authority to decide immigration cases. But by then, Jimenez had been released from the Guatemalan hospital and was living with his mother in a one-room home in the mountainous state of Huehuetenango, 12 hours from the Guatemalan capital. There is no road to the house, making it nearly impossible for his mother to get help for him in an emergency.

A South Florida Roman Catholic priest described a visit to Jimenez in an e-mail to The Associated Press: "He was clean, glad of the visit and occasionally made apparently good sense comments," wrote the Rev. Frank O'Laughlin. "It seemed that he was cooperating with his caregiver and would survive, I guessed, until his first pneumonia."

O'Laughlin said he wasn't sure that Jimenez should be returned to "medical care in an alien Florida institution."

But he maintains the lawsuit is important because hospitals should not be allowed to deport people.

He and Larson also say a country that relies on cheap, immigrant labor for everything from agriculture, to clothing to construction, should factor in the cost of catastrophic injuries to those providing these essential services — whether it means requiring employers to offer coverage even for day laborers or ensuring public and nonprofit hospitals can care for them.

Carla Luggiero, a senior associate director for American Hospital Association, stressed that cases such as Jimenez's are rare. Most of the time, hospitals are able to work with the families to find alternative and acceptable care. And most of the time families don't have pro bono lawyers working for them as Jimenez does.

But she also warned the issue is serious, and it is one Congress has yet to address in its health care reform proposals.

"There is absolutely no discussion about it," Luggiero said. And yet, hospitals that receive Medicare reimbursements are required to provide emergency care to all patients and must provide an acceptable discharge plan once the patient is stabilized.

"It's a complicated, huge issue. Without repatriation, the issue of undocumented immigrants is already a hand grenade and so is health care," Larson said. "So together, you're really walking a tightrope."

Polls and Presidents

Polls are slipping... just a little.

The Washington Post headline suggests that the love affair of the public with President Barack Obama is perhaps waning, its ardency now being checked by the clear reality that yes, times are tough. The ABC News/Washington Post poll shows President's approval rating is the lowest it has been since election and sliding badly on economic issues.

Yes, it IS the economy, stupid. Anybody who didn't get that one before the election is by now in clear receipt of the news. Jobs are down, productivity is down, and morale is even lower. The buck stops here and just because his election already made history doesn't mean he won't make history again... as a failure.

Rush Limbaugh said he was hoping Obama fails, but I can not. How any American could wish failure on a sitting president, knowing that such would take the entire country down it? The politic-playing has to end somewhere and when the object being toyed with is our country's future, it seems some go to far.

But as a member of the media, I can admit the ongoing suck-up been a little tough to watch. The first few months of the Obama Administration, with very few words of criticism voiced by the national media, reminded me of the months after the 9/11 attacks. It was unheard of, and considered almost un-American to criticize the government, the President, or the war on terror.

It's a tough time, sure enough. I'm sure that the Obama Administration will weather the storm as presidencies have in the past. We elected him. He told us it wasn't going to be easy to get out of our financial morass. One can only assume that he knew it wasn't going to be easy for him, either.

Leading is more than holding frequent news conferences, Mr. Obama. It's getting down in the trenches where mud is almost always flying.

Prescription for the Media

ABC News announced today that on June 24, the network will turn its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care. As capstone to the move, ABC News anchor, Charlie Gibson will deliver World News Tonight from the Blue Room of the White House. The network will also air a prime time special, "Prescription for America," originating from the East Room of the White House. Good Morning America will originate from inside 1600 Pennsylvania that day, as well.

Checking around the Internet, the words "whore" and "prostitute" are coming up in the google searches on the subject.

I'm betting that those words were also in play during the days and weeks leading up to NBC's two-part special, "Inside the White House." The specials, which aired in early June, were part of a long tradition at NBC, but this time, the network's main anchor, Brian Williams said they would,

"show aspects of life in the White House — the Obama White House — that no one on the outside has ever seen before."

In other words, they followed President Barack Obama around like a puppy until shooed away by Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

While I do think the prostitution references are a bit harsh and overdone, the whole thing feels wrong. We should we keep ourselves a respectable, professional distance. And when will the pandering and sucking up will end? By now, shouldn't the whole "honeymoon with the media" thing be over? This is the national media we are talking about. These are people paid to critically examine and present both sides of issues. They're expected to be the barking dogs of our government and people. They need to start sniffing around again.

The Republican National Committee thinks it's unseemly. (That's a literary tool called understatement.) They wrote to David Westin, President of the network to protest the airing of what they called an "infomercial" on the administration's health care reform proposal.

Mr. Westin didn't answer back, but a Senior Vice President at the network did, offering:

"I hope we can all agree that a robust debate of health care issues and potential policies is in order. ABC News prides itself on covering all sides of important issues and asking direct questions of all news makers -- of all political persuasions -- even when others have taken a more partisan approach and even in the face of criticism from extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. In the end, no one watching, listening to, or reading ABC News will lack for an understanding of all sides of these important questions."

A robust debate? I may be wrong, but I don't go into someone's own house to criticize them. I just don't. In this case, I might do it out on the lawn, from the same neighborhood, in a room in a hotel across from Lafayette Park or other nearby location. And I have. But I don't do that in their living room. Or their East Room.

I like my politics with two parties. I do. I like to listen to both sides. I also shut both out equally. The funny thing is that the people "back home" conclude that I'm very liberal while the people I work with seem to think I'm kinda (to put it mildly) conservative. The fact that I'm offensive to both sensibilities implies to my mind that I might be doing something right. They did tell us in journalism 101 to expect to be disliked. By that standard, I've succeeded.

So here I am, watching first NBC News and now ABC News go before the current administration, hat in hand, asking to be allowed up close to cover a President whose approval ratings are through the roof. As if they want a little of his lustrous popularity to rub off on them.

A Senator from my home state in the West once hugged me on the White House lawn. It was a sickly squeamish woman that faced the cameras soon after.

Someone needs to remind them that we aren't in it to buddy up with someone so that the other kids like us, too. This isn't kindergarten. It's not even high school. But if we were to use that metaphor, we cheered when he entered the field, but now it's time for us to go sit in the stands and leave the quarterback alone so he can do his job.

We're not players. Not really. We're not cheerleaders. Although looking around Los Angeles television sometimes, I can see where some might get that idea. But no, the cheerleaders are on the front row in their short skirts.

Our profession doesn't get sunshine blown up its skirts. We aren't on the field to play, and we do not take orders from the quarterback. This is what we're supposed to do: go sit in the stands and call the game. We're onlookers by nature, with a lofty perch. We need to go sit in our cheap seats and our ivory towers and remember that the reason we are (occasionally) looked up to is because we set ourselves apart.

Someone also ought to point out to the brain trusts that are making these decisions that Mr. Obama's numbers are showing weakness. And that when the scandals come, which they inevitably will (I'm not saying his people are corrupt, but when was the last scandal-free administration? Was there ever one?) do you really want to have your people so close to the line of the fire? The potential for disaster is huge there.

So I say, "Out! Out! Out of that White House." We need to quit acting like lapdogs and go back to barking.

Celebritolaramamanianessicity...

I'm just going to say what we've all been thinking for a very long time. It sucks being a celebrity, doesn't it? There. I've said it.

There are rumors out of Hollywood that celebrity participants Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt were evacuated to a hospital after Heidi started throwing up during "punishment" on a reality show. She and her um, husband/fellow spotlight chaser, are currently "starring" in the NBC primetime reality show, "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!"

Or as I think of it when I think of it, "How Low Will I Go to Get Attention?"

So what happened? The truth of that depends on who you believe. This weekend's grab for attention by the Montag-Pratt duo included multiple attempts to quit the show earlier in the week. To punish them for this, the newlyweds were put in a darkened isolation chamber. Beyond that, the show's producers say the couple had food and water and spent most of their time sleeping. The entire thing was filmed and the couple emerged after several days "in great spirits."

But the couple and their relatives (entourage?) say that bugs were lowered in on them in the dark, there was no food, and when Heidi began throwing up, "She thought she was dying," according to celebrity-sister-in-law, Stephanie Pratt. Heidi Montag-Pratt was later diagnosed with a gastric ulcer.

Ok, but the name of the show is "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here," right? And the premise is that bad things happen to famous people who then throw temper tantrums, quit the show and stomp off in a somehow entertaining display of poor sportsmanship, right? So... if they tried to quit, then why the punishment? Wasn't that the show's intention all along? Wasn't that where it was headed from the start? Wasn't that not just part of the game, but The Game?

It sucks being a young couple whose relationship beyond its publicity value has been questioned from the start. (You think that picture is annoying? Google their names and click on images. These two never miss a chance to pose.) Being stuck in a darkened room for 3 days with someone you married within the past year sucks. In the face of all that, the bugs seem a little extraneous, don't they?

What I really want to know is why do we pander to people who are so starved for attention? At what point are we going to realize that this is a sickness and we're abusing these poor, emotionally-deprived-as-children people in their endless search for someone to watch them.

In a real life display of... well, absolutely nothing, Kal Penn, the successful, working actor who quit the show "House" in favor of taking a public servants' salary for working in the White House Office of Public Engagement as a liaison to Asian American and Pacific Islander communities has gone off the radar. He's not at the set of "House," nor is he at the White House.

(You remember this story, right? In a moment of overwhelming love for his country, Kal or Kumar, if you know the "Harold and Kumar" movie series, said he was so excited about the prospects for change with the Obama administration that he longed to leave acting and work for that change with President Obama. And President Obama's office took him up on it.)

The White House denies that he's AWOL; they say he simply hasn't started the job yet. And as celebrities do, he had a prior commitment to shoot a movie in India.

That's a place where bugs really can fall through the roof in the dark of night. It sucks being celebrity, doesn't it?

That Was Then, This Is Now

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," said Sonia Sotomayor, the current nominee to fill a vacancy on the United States Supreme Court.

I would have hoped for a nominee wise enough not to say such things. But let’s parse the statement just a little, shall we? What Sotomayor was saying effectively was that she, as a Latina woman, was more capable of understanding and making rulings because of her minority bloodlines and standing. Imagine a white male making the same statement and you instantly understand why this is offensive.

Sonia Sotomayor made this statement as part of the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2001, delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. It was reprinted in the Spring 2002 issue of Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, a symposium issue entitled "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation."

Okay, those are ready recipients, glad to hear good tidings about their particular minority. But since previous white male nominees haven’t published articles suggesting their superiority in the “White Person’s Law Review,” perhaps this wasn’t the wisest of choices.

In the last election, we voted in the first minority President of the United States. And we then hotly argued that he was not elected because of his race. We were all about change, as a culture, we said.

So maybe if it isn’t about race, we should stop talking about race. I’m not suggesting this was the right statement to make. But perhaps to a group of law school students, it was a reasonable statement for the time. Perhaps it was in keeping with the culture just eight short years ago. Could we have come so far fast enough that our statements, acceptable (and even "encouraging" to a minority audience in need of encouragement during their college years) just eight years ago, are questionable now?

If it’s not about race anymore, we need to stop making it about race.

Bonuses? THEY'RE GETTING BONUSES???

You can hear the cry echoing all over the country. "AIG's top executives are getting bonuses???" The story is out there, churning up renewed anger against AIG, the insurance giant which got a multi-billion dollar bailout from the U.S. government, then continued to spend on lavish parties and weekend retreats for executives.

They spent their bailout (with zero federal oversight) and returned to Washington with their hand out for more. The government gave them billions of dollars in additional bailout funds, and now the truth: they are using the money to pay millions of dollars in bonuses to top executives.

As a taxpayer, I'm floored. I feel like I've been reasonable about the whole thing; believing that the cost of the company going under would be greater than the bailout given. But. No. More.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told AIG Chairman and chief executive Edward M. Liddy that "the (bonus) payments were unacceptable and needed to be renegotiated," according to an administration source quoted in the Washington Post today.

Liddy countered, saying that the payments have to be made otherwise the company will be sued for breach of contract. And without the bonuses, company talent pools suffer.

"We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses -- which are now being operated principally on behalf of the American taxpayers -- if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. treasury," Liddy wrote.

He sure knows how to twist a knife, doesn't he? AIG is paying the bonuses to protect our investment as taxpayers. The man knows his spin.

Are these the same great, top talented executives that got AIG into this mess? Can they really not be allowed to leave? Should their jobs be reserved for them, at such a high rate of pay, when there are other equally talented but now jobless executives who might be happy to have the work at a much lower rate of pay?

Liddy was one of a few top executives who didn't take his bonus. How very big of him. In the old seafaring tradition, the captain went down with the ship. Since the taxpayers are now helming the finances, perhaps its time we get a new captain... lest the ship takes us all under.