Haiti Update
January 18, 2010

The steeple clock at Port-au-Prince's St. Pierre Catholic Church is stopped at 4:53, the hour at which a devastating earthquake struck Haiti nearly one week ago.

The church gates were closed Sunday. The doors shuttered. But it seems Tuesday's quake has only strengthened the religious fervor many Haitians carry in their souls.

"A lot of people who never prayed or believed -- now they believe," said Cristina Bailey, a 24-year-old clerk.

In parks and backyards, anywhere a group gathers, the prayers of the Haitians can be heard. Last week, the call-and-response chanting and clapping that accompany those prayers pierced the darkness of night and the pre-dawn hours -- sometimes as early as 4 a.m. The singing and praying was particularly intense in Champs de Mars plaza, where hundreds of people have taken refuge. But the scene was repeated throughout the city, with preachers on megaphones exhorting the faithful, who responded with lyrics like "O Lord, keep me close to you" and "Forgive me, Jesus."

Many preachers are telling followers not to lose faith, that God remains with them regardless of what's happened.

Most Haitians don't feel abandoned, Bailey said.

"People don't blame Jesus for all these things," she said. "They have faith. They believe that Jesus saved them and are thankful for that."

Perhaps few personified that deep belief better than 11-year-old Anaika Saint Louis, who was pulled from the rubble Thursday night and later died. Her leg had been crushed, and doctors thought they might have to amputate her feet. She said she didn't care.

"Thank you, God, because he saved my life," she said. "If I lose my feet, I always had my life."

Jean Mackenle Verpre also suffered a crushing leg injury and was freed after 48 hours underground.

Asked what kept him going, he answered without hesitation: He believes in Jesus Christ and put his life in God's hands.

Colonized by France, Haiti is a strongly Catholic country. Christian motifs are everywhere in Port-au-Prince. Many vehicles bear signs like the one painted on the windshield of a truck on Rue Delmar: "Merci Jesus," it said. A woman passing by on Avenue Christophe chanted softly: "Accept Jesus."

"In Haiti, you have Protestants and Catholics, and you have your percentage of each," said J.B. Diederich, a native-born Haitian who now lives in Miami, Florida, but returned to the Caribbean for several days after the earthquake. "But everybody is 100 percent voodoo."

Voodoo is widely acknowledged but practiced only behind closed doors, with practitioners often placing candles and icons on the floor of a home and dancing to music and drums.

Followers believe the world is under the power of loas -- spirits and deities who act as intermediaries between humans and God. In voodoo, disasters like Tuesday's quake are not the result of natural forces, but displeasure by a loa.

See complete coverage of Haiti earthquake

"It's in every apartment. The voodoo is our culture," 25-year-old Alex Gassan said. "It's like the folklore."

Gassan proudly calls himself a Catholic, pulling out a crucifix necklace from under his shirt to show a reporter.

Many observers have a simple explanation for what makes Haitians so devout.

"Because in all poor countries, you have to believe in something," said Agnes Pierre-Louis, the Haitian-born manager of her family-owned hotel. "If they don't have that, they don't have anything."

Added Diederich: "They leave everything in the hands of God. When you have so little, what else can you turn to?"

Posted by jc at 4:53 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print

#9 Mark Mcgwire admits steroid use
January 15, 2010

Bob Costas landed the first televised interview with Mark McGwire after he admitted using steroids and human growth hormone during his home run record-setting baseball career. And he left with the belief that McGwire has convinced himself of something that isn't logical - that his performance wasn't enhanced by the substances.

Costas said he believes McGwire was genuine in his remarks that they only helped him overcome injury, not gain physical advantages. But Costas added "that is different than saying I agree with everything he said. ... I think he genuinely believes that if he could have stayed in one piece, with the legitimate hard work he did and his natural ability he still would have done all this."

But Costas, a noted baseball commentator who values the integrity of past accomplishments, points specifically at McGwire's home-run ratio and scoffs at the reality of that
"Neither he nor anyone else would have been able to do this," he said. "That part of his response is not credible. But maybe he has convinced himself. And no one can quantify how many home runs he would have hit (without using performance-enhancing substances) - 50? 48? 46? Who knows?"

Costas had been hoping to line up an interview with McGwire for years. And when he got the coup Monday on MLB Network, it took McGwire only a few minutes to show live TV's unpredictability.

Earlier in the day McGwire admitted that he had used steroids and HGH during his career, in which he hit 583 home runs and smashed Roger Maris' single-season homer record. The admission came in a written statement, followed by short interviews with The Associated Press and select members of the St. Louis media.

But Costas, who hadn't seen or heard the previous interviews, was taken aback when McGwire said in this very public setting that he believed steroids didn't give him additional strength.

"It very much surprised me when, live, he disavowed any connection between steroids and performance," Costas said. "I haven't seen the tape (of the interview), but somebody told me I came back to it five or six times."

Costas had years to prepare, at least in his mind, his questions. And he had a game plan going in.

"You try to prioritize it," he said. "We'll first get to the stuff that's most topical, then get to personal stuff like what were these years away from the game like, touch on the Maris family. That will happen in the second half after we click through these pertinent things. But when a couple minutes in he says this (that steroids didn't help his strength), then I had to audible. It was like, whoa! If you believe that, it puts a lot of other things in a different light. If you believe you got no benefit from that, how do you explain the whole era? Are you the only guy who got no benefit from it?"

Costas said he thinks the reason that he and MLB Network were picked for McGwire's first national TV interview about the subject was the result of several factors, including Costas' track record and the amount of time - nearly an hour - the outlet could devote to the conversation.

"I had talked to him a couple times, the most recently of which was probably two years ago just to say if you ever want to talk about any of these issues, I believe you'd find a fair and credible place to do it with me," Costas said. "At that time I was at HBO, but I felt it was very important that if he ever spoke, that he do it at a place that not only was credible but also would be able to have a lot of time to devote.

"If you do it on a network news magazine (such as "60 Minutes" or "Dateline," you'd have 12 minutes, 15 minutes. There were a limited number of places that provide the proper forum. ... I'm pretty certain that had I still been at HBO that this would have happened on HBO. I hope anything I do is done civilly and politely."

And in retrospect, Costas said he would have changed two things in the interview - he would have asked McGwire why he apologized to the Maris family earlier in the day, given that McGwire said he didn't think steroids helped him break Maris' record, and he would have pressed McGwire for more details about the steroids he used.

Jose Canseco - a former teammate of McGwire's in Oakland who has long talked about McGwire's steroids use - told Evan Makovsky on a local radion s how that McGwire in the interview looked "like a little puppet completely orchestrated by Major League Baseball

Posted by jc at 6:22 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print

#8 Idol returns, Simon leaving
January 15, 2010

Paula who? Despite losing judge Paula Abdul, "American Idol" started its ninth season on a high note with an estimated audience of nearly 30 million. Tuesday's viewership of 29.9 million is about 2 percent lower than last year's season debut audience of slightly more than 30 million, according to preliminary Nielsen Co. figures released Wednesday.

By comparison, the 2009 debut episode saw a 10 percent drop compared to 2008.

It's an indication that "Idol" can capitalize on cast changes like Abdul's to resist potential viewer boredom as it ages. That will be further tested when judge Simon Cowell leaves after this season to launch another Fox talent contest, "The X Factor," next year.

The 37.4 million who watched the 2007 debut represents the series' high point for opening nights.

"I think people love to love the show," said Mike Darnell, Fox's executive in charge of alternative programming. "It's one of the few phenomena that exist: the Super Bowl, the Oscars, `American Idol.' It's an American tradition.'

The tradition began in Britain as "Pop Idol," which was created by entertainment mogul Simon Fuller and whose 19 Entertainment carried the concept to more than three-dozen TV markets worldwide. FremantleMedia North America teams with 19 Entertainment, a division of CKX Inc., in producing the U.S. version.

"What we've proved now, again, not that we need to prove anything, is this show is about the public's relationship with the fundamental things in life," said Fuller, calling "American Idol" "authentic" in its celebration of people's dreams and aspirations.

Fans can accept change, he added: Who would have thought the James Bond movies would have become such a remarkable franchise over the years "with so many Bonds."

"American Idol" has been the top-rated show for five years among all viewers and for six years among the advertiser-favored 18 to 49 audience.

Abdul, who had been with the show since it started, left over a salary dispute. Her place is being filled first by celebrity panelists, including Victoria Beckham and Katy Perry, and later this season by new judge Ellen DeGeneres.

Fuller said he was unconcerned that "The X Factor," based on Cowell's hit British series of the same name, might affect the audience for "American Idol" by diluting the talent-show marketplace. If it's an issue at all, he said, it's one that's more than a year away.

"That's not my worry. ... We're the biggest talent show on earth. All I'm really worried about is `Idol,' and we're strong," he said, adding, "America has such an incredible talent pool."

"The X Factor," with Cowell as judge and executive producer, will air in fall 2011, with "American Idol" keeping its January to May run.

Another top TV competitor, CBS' "NCIS," held its own against the Fox series with an audience of nearly 21 million, just shy of its pre-"Idol" performance. The drama has been the season's top-ranked series so far.

Posted by jc at 6:17 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print

#7 Conan may have one week left
January 15, 2010

The future of "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" may be a mere week long.

People magazine quoted "a source close to O'Brien" as saying "Conan does not currently plan on doing any more new shows after next week." His last show would be a week from tonight, ending his tenure after a mere seven months.

Similar sites were quick to corroborate. ESPN "Sports Guy" columnist Bill Simmons - wait, this is a sports story now? - Tweeted Thursday, "FYI: Next week is Conan's final week hosting the Tonight Show. His staff is trying to book big guests so he goes out with a bang. It's true."

The New York Times says Tom Hanks is already slated to appear Tuesday, which may or may not confirm anything.

And TMZ says Jay Leno has renegotiated his contract with NBC so that the network wouldn't be in breach of his original 10 p.m. deal. The renegotiation puts him back on "Tonight" at the regular "Tonight" time of 11:35 p.m.

Not so fast, says NBC. "Network sources and O'Brien insiders" denied the Leno renegotiation to E! and confirmed O'Brien and the show's crew would be on hiatus the week of Jan. 25-29, but that break had been planned for months and the show would resume the first week of February.

The network also announced which shows would spackle the holes left by Leno's vacating the 10 p.m. slot: "Parenthood," "The Marriage Ref," "Law and Order," "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" and "Flatline: NBC." Sorry,

Posted by jc at 6:15 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print

#6 Mass Senate race tightens up
January 15, 2010

A new poll in the Massachusetts Senate race shows a shift in favor of the Republican Party and a potential disaster for President Barack Obama and his Democratic political agenda in Tuesday's special election.

The Suffolk University survey released late Thursday showed Scott Brown, a Republican state senator, with 50 percent of the vote in the race to succeed the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in this overwhelmingly Democratic state.

Democrat Martha Coakley had 46 percent. That was a statistical tie since it was within the poll's 4.4 percentage point margin of error, but far different from a 15-point lead the Massachusetts attorney general enjoyed in a Boston Globe survey released over the weekend.

The Suffolk poll also confirmed a fundamental shift in voter attitudes telegraphed in recent automated polls that Democrats had dismissed as unscientific and the product of GOP-leaning organizations.

And it signaled a possible death knell for the 60-vote Democratic supermajority the president has been relying upon to stop Republican filibusters in the Senate and pass not only his health care overhaul, but the rest of his legislative agenda heading into this fall's mid-term elections.

Brown has pledged to vote against the health care bill, and his election would give Senate Republicans the 41st vote they need to sustain a filibuster.

The third candidate in the race, independent Joseph L. Kennedy, had 3 percent in the Suffolk poll. The Libertarian businessman is unrelated to the senator, who died Aug. 25 of brain cancer.

"Although the results show a race within the statistical margin of error, Scott Brown has surged dramatically," David Paleologos, director of Suffolk's Political Research Center, said in a statement. "He is attracting independent support by a wide margin and even winning some Democrats who won't vote the party line this time."

Paleologos said Joseph Kennedy's supporters could end up being pivotal in the election's outcome.

"A late rotation away from Kennedy to one of the major candidates could have a significant impact," he said.

The survey of 500 registered Massachusetts voters was conducted in a three-day span ending Wednesday, when Brown enjoyed a surge after being widely seen as beating Coakley in their final debate on Monday. The question surrounding it and a number of recent surveys was whether the group sampled accurately reflected the likely field of voters Tuesday.

The election comes the day after the three-day Martin Luther King holiday weekend. Snow is also forecast for Monday, and many locals often head south for warmer weather or north to go skiing during the shortened work week.

Brown supporters, meanwhile, are mimicking Republicans and independents who shaped recent GOP victories in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races. They are showing a high degree of enthusiasm for their candidate, a relative unknown who has never run statewide, while Democrats have shown little passion for Coakley although she cruised in the four-way Democratic primary with nearly 50 percent of the vote.

The White House has shown increasing alarm about the race, with Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel placing calls to top Massachusetts Democrats to assess Coakley's chances and weigh the costs and benefits of a potential Obama visit. Gov. Deval Patrick, a Democrat and close friend of Obama's, told reporters he had talked to White House officials as recently as Thursday.

Former President Bill Clinton was making two stops in Massachusetts Friday on behalf of Coakley, while former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani was to stop in Boston to tout Brown's anti-terror credentials.

A Coakley loss was long viewed as unthinkable among local political analysts and observers. The state not only has a Democratic governor, but overwhelming Democratic majorities in its House and Senate, as well as an all-Democratic congressional delegation.

Kennedy, meanwhile, was a liberal Democratic icon who made the goal of a health care overhaul the capstone of his nearly 47-year career. Brown has long been best known in Massachusetts as a former model who once posed naked in Cosmopolitan magazine, as well as the father of an "American Idol" contestant.

The Suffolk poll hinted at some reasons for the shift in the political landscape.

It found that while 54 percent support the universal health care law that took effect in Massachusetts in 2006, 51 percent opposed Obama's national overhaul modeled on the state's plan.

Posted by jc at 6:12 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print

#5 Cali closer to Legal Weed
January 15, 2010

California lawmakers took steps this week to be the first state to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana for recreational use.

A marijuana-legalization bill passed the California Assembly's Public Safety Committee on a 4-3 vote on Tuesday. The bill, AB 390, was authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a Democrat from San Francisco. He said that the existing prohibition does more harm than good.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the bill is not likely to get a needed second hearing by a Friday deadline, but the committee's approval was significant because it marked the first approval by lawmakers of the proposal.

The bill allows individuals 21 or older to posses up to an ounce of pot for recreational use. Ammiano said the $50-an ounce tax on marijuana would generate $1.3 billion a year in tax revenue, which he said would go toward drug education and treatment programs.

California first banned marijuana in 1913, and Ammiano said in a statement that "the existing model of prohibition has failed across the country," and that "the call for a new direction in our drug policy grows louder every day

Posted by jc at 6:03 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print

#4 Health Care Bill
January 15, 2010

The White House reached a tentative agreement with union leaders early Thursday to tax high-cost insurance plans, officials said, removing one of the major stumbling blocks in the way of a final compromise on comprehensive health care legislation sought by President Barack Obama.

Details were not available of the tentative deal, which the White House was expected to present to senior lawmakers later in the day.

The agreement came as the White House sought fresh concessions from drugmakers and other health care providers as they looked for funds to sweeten subsidies the bill provides for lower-income families who cannot afford coverage.

Senior Democratic lawmakers who spent hours at the White House on Wednesday rearranged their schedules to return at mid-afternoon, and Obama planned to address a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic rank and file in late afternoon.

One participant in the overall talks, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said, "We're shooting for tomorrow" for an agreement in principle that would cover key issues such as how many Americans would get coverage, and how to pay for it. Certain issues, including restrictions on taxpayer funding for abortion, would be resolved later.

No final votes could occur in the House and Senate until the Congressional Budget Office provided a formal estimate on the cost and impact of any bill, a process that could take days.

The breakthrough on the insurance tax marked a victory for the White House, which has long sought a tax on high-cost plans as a way of curbing the rise in health care expenditures. Organized labor-backed by its allies in the House-had opposed it, arguing the impact would fall heavily on workers whose bargaining contracts gave them more robust health care coverage.

Officials said the agreement was thrashed out over more than 15 hours of negotiating at the White House, ending after midnight. Participants included AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka; Andy Stern, head of Service Employees International Union; Anna Burger, head of Change to Win, and the leaders of unions representing teachers, government workers, food and commercial workers and electricians. Obama's deputy chief of staff, Jim Messina, was the lead White House bargainer, although Vice President Joe Biden also was involved periodically.

If it holds, the tentative deal should ease concerns among labor friendly lawmakers in the House, and also permit the White House and senior Democrats to move quickly through numerous other decisions as they drive for a compromise on the overall health care bill.

Union and Democratic officials spoke about the tentative deal on condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

Word of it came as the pace of negotiations on the overall health care bill quickened.

On the high-cost insurance tax, union officials were seeking chances to soften the impact of the Senate-passed measure. Under its terms, family policies with combined premiums higher than $23,000 would be subject to a tax. Official estimates by the Congressional Budget Office say the result would be consumers opting for less expensive plans to avoid paying the tax. That, in turn, would reduce the amount of money they could claim as a tax deduction, and in the end raise their income taxes.

Public support for the health care remake continues to drop, perhaps in part because of the messy debate in Congress, and lawmakers are feeling the pressure of other issues, from unemployment to ballooning budget deficits. In Massachusetts, the race to fill the seat of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is turning into a referendum on the health care overhaul, with Republicans hoping to capitalize on voters' misgivings.

House Democrats are uneasy over concessions they are being asked to make to preserve the 60 votes needed to pass the bill in the Senate. That includes dropping the government-run insurance option liberals have fought for and accepting some form of the high-cost health insurance plan tax.

House Democratic leaders are pushing for more generous subsidies to help make health insurance affordable to a greater number of middle-class households, as well as other concessions.

To help pay for that, Democrats want health care providers to bear more of the cost, said lobbyists speaking on condition of anonymity because conversations within the industry were confidential. One said Democratic proposals include adding $10 billion to the $80 billion over 10 years that the drug industry had agreed to contribute, and raising the $20 billion in Senate-approved fees imposed on medical device makers by $10 billion.

Susan Feeney, spokeswoman for the American Health Care Association, said Wednesday that White House and Senate officials recently have asked the nursing home industry to agree to additional concessions.

Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, predicted Thursday that despite numerous complaints from rank-and-file House Democrats about losing liberal priorities in deference to a handful of Senate moderates, the House ultimately would sign off on the deal taking shape at the White House.

House leaders "clearly go to the White House knowing what is acceptable to the caucus, so I think that once that is negotiated with the caucus' views in mind, it should be something that the caucus will accept and would pass."

"The goal is to get it finalized and voted on in the next few weeks," Pallone said.

The House and Senate passed the bills with just one Republican vote, and the GOP was not invited to the White House talks. Republicans say they still have a chance to derail the bill

Posted by jc at 6:02 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print

#3 Airport security
January 15, 2010

'We don't need to look at naked 8-year-olds and grandmothers to secure airplanes,' a lawmaker says. The TSA is adding machines to screen more passengers, much to the chagrin of privacy advocates.
Reporting from Washington - The government has promised more and better security at airports following the near-disaster on Christmas Day, but privacy advocates are not prepared to accept the use of full-body scanners as the routine screening system.

"We don't need to look at naked 8-year-olds and grandmothers to secure airplanes," Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said last week. "I think it's a false argument to say we have to give up all of our personal privacy in order to have security."

After each major terrorism incident, the balance between privacy and security tilts in favor of greater security. But in the last decade, privacy advocates have been surprisingly successful in blocking or stalling government plans to search in more ways and in more places.

A conservative freshman in the House, Chaffetz won a large bipartisan majority last year for an amendment to oppose the government's use of body-image scanners as the primary screening system for air travelers. He was joined by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said the scanners were the equivalent of a "virtual strip search."

The pro-privacy stand does not follow the traditional ideological lines; Republicans and Democrats have joined together on the issue now and in the past.

Advocates of increased security are frustrated.

"Privacy and attacks on profiling have been the big hurdles" to developing a better security system for air travelers, said Stewart Baker, who was a top official in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.

Since 2001, privacy advocates have twice blocked moves to collect more personal data on passengers and to compile it in a computerized government system. Critics said mass databases would give the government too much information about ordinary Americans. And they said too many innocent people showed up on the watch lists.

At the same time, privacy concerns slowed the move to put more body-imaging scanners in airports. Currently, 19 airports have at least one scanner in use. Now, however, the specter of a man authorities say is a young Al Qaeda convert walking onto a transatlantic flight with a plastic explosive in his underwear has spurred the drive to put the full-body scanners in all the major airports.

The Transportation Security Administration had already announced plans to buy 300 devices, and is likely to purchase more.

The Senate did not adopt the Chaffetz amendment, so the TSA is free to press ahead with installing the body scanners.

"They significantly enhance security because they can detect metallic and nonmetallic items hidden under clothing," said Greg Soule, a TSA spokesman. "And on average, it takes 12 to 15 seconds."

He also suggested that privacy concerns were exaggerated. "It is 100% optional for all passengers," he said. "They can choose to be screened with a full-body pat-down."

Moreover, the screener who observes the passenger's body image is "in a remote location" and cannot see the individual's face, he said. And the body image itself "looks like a chalk etching of a passenger."

Chaffetz disputes that point. He said the body scanners give an explicit view of a naked person. "It is a whole-body image, and they can spin it 360 degrees. And they can zoom in and see something as small as a nickel or dime," he said. "But they can't spot something hidden in a body cavity. A good old-fashioned sniffing dog is more effective."

ACLU lawyers said air travelers should not have to face the prospect of exposing potentially embarrassing medical details, such as colostomy bags or mastectomy scars or their use of adult diapers.

"We continue to think the American people are being sold a bill of goods with these body scanners. Giving the government the authority to scrutinize your body is a tremendous invasion of privacy, and the benefits are questionable," said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert in the ACLU's Washington office.

If the scanners become standard, "the terrorists will adapt to it," he added. "What will we do the next time if someone inserts an explosive in a body cavity and takes it out in the bathroom of the airplane? At some point, we need to draw the line on how much privacy we are willing to give up."

Despite their disagreements, the defenders of privacy and advocates of increased security agree that a better use of information should permit the government to focus its screening on the individuals who pose a threat.

"We clearly need to move faster to a point where we're looking for terrorists, not just weapons," said Baker, a Washington lawyer and formerly general counsel to the National Security Agency. "And the key to that is having more data and using it with more discretion in screening passengers. The current system condemns children and grandmothers to intrusive screening without any assurance it will catch sophisticated terrorists."

He blames Congress, business travelers and privacy advocates for stalling computerized data systems that could alert airport officials to passengers who pose some risk, so they could be given additional screening. Because of past rebuffs in Congress, the Department of Homeland Security "has been quite gun-shy about programs that could be called profiling or data-mining," he said.

Shortly after the Christmas Day incident, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called for making it easier to add travelers to a government watch list so they will get extra screening or be denied the right to fly.

President Obama and his top aides also said the government needed to focus more on "high-priority threats" and add names quickly to the no-fly list.

Chaffetz said he strongly supported extra screening -- including the use of a full-body scanner -- if a passenger's name appeared on any of the government watch lists.

"I favor secondary screening for all 550,000 persons in the government database. They should be required to go through a mandatory secondary screening," he said. "If there is some basis for doing a secondary screening, do it. But don't do it for every person. You don't have to screen the grandmother from Boise."

Posted by jc at 5:55 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print

#2
January 15, 2010

Why another book on the 2008 campaign, a year after the inauguration of President Obama? What more is there to say about a race that was covered day in and day out by newspapers, magazines, television, radio and bloggers? Is there anything more to learn about the candidates - and does it matter to an American public now focused on unemployment and health care and terrorism?

The veteran political reporters John Heilemann and Mark Halperin think they do have something new to say. "What was missing" from the wall-to-wall coverage and what "might be of enduring value," they write in their buzzy new book "Game Change," was "an intimate portrait of the candidates and spouses who (in our judgment) stood a reasonable chance of occupying the White House."

They proceed in these pages to serve up a spicy smorgasbord of observations, revelations and allegations - some that are based on impressive legwork and access, some that simply crystallize rumors and whispers from the campaign trail, and some that it's hard to verify independently as more than spin or speculation on the part of unnamed sources.

(Enough of the really juicy stuff has leaked out that the book has become an instant best-seller, selling out in many book stores and now back-ordered on Amazon.com.)

The authors mix savvy political analysis in these pages with detailed reconstructions of scenes and conversations they did not witness firsthand

like an exchange that Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bill Clinton had on a beach in Anguilla). They employ the same sort of technique Bob Woodward has pioneered in his bestselling books: relying heavily on "deep background" interviews, along with e-mail messages, memorandums and other forms of documentation to create a novelistic narrative that often reflects the views of the authors' most cooperative or voluble sources. Unlike Woodward's last two books, this volume has no source notes at the end.

The authors write that one of Clinton's "senior-most lieutenants" watched her "bitter and befuddled reaction" to her loss in Iowa, and thought for the first time, "This woman shouldn't be president." They write that during debate preparations, some staff members assigned to Sarah Palin by the McCain campaign discussed the "threatening possibility: that Palin was mentally unstable." They add that several of Sen. John McCain's lieutenants agreed that if it looked as if their candidate might actually win in November, they would have to discuss how to relegate Palin "to the largely ceremonial role that premodern vice presidents inhabited": "it was inconceivable" that "if McCain fell ill or died, the country be left in the hands of a President Palin."

In addition Heilemann, who works for New York magazine, and Halperin, for Time magazine, write that Clinton, encouraged by her husband and aides, considered running for president in 2004 but ended up listening to her daughter, Chelsea, who argued that she needed to finish her Senate term. They write that Bill Clinton and George W. Bush "spoke more often than almost anyone knew" - that "from time to time, when 43 was bored, he would call 42 to chew the fat."

They assert that Hillary Clinton blew an opportunity to win the endorsement of Caroline Kennedy, who, they say, had been "dreading a call from Hillary" asking her to go to Iowa on her behalf, knowing, the authors write, that "once she had campaigned for Clinton, siding with Obama would be off the table." Instead of making the call herself, Clinton had one of her staffers phone Kennedy, who ducked the call.

In another passage, which was widely reported over the weekend, Halperin and Heilemann write that the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, encouraged Obama to run early on, arguing that "the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama - a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.' " Last weekend, Reid called the president to apologize for his choice of words.

Clinton, long the front-runner in the race, was so confident of winning, Heilemann and Halperin write, that she went so far as to start thinking about her choice of a running mate in fall 2007: she "had already determined without a sliver of doubt that she was not going to choose Obama," they say, and told her aides that Evan Bayh, Joseph R. Biden Jr., Tom Vilsack and Ted Strickland were at the top of her shortlist. Around the same time, they write, Clinton asked her friend Roger Altman, deputy Treasury secretary in her husband's administration, to lead a secret project - planning her transition to the White House based on the assumption that a year later she would win the election.

Heilemann wrote incisively about Clinton in the pages of New York magazine - chunks of his reportage and analysis, taken directly from his articles, appear in this book - and there is more revealing material about her and her husband in this volume than the other candidates and their wives. The authors not only dissect the dysfunctional, conflict-ridden Clinton campaign - something that has already been done in detail by other reporters - they also emphasize that communication difficulties between the Clintons exacerbated that campaign's problems.

They write that Hillary Clinton "couldn't bear to confront her husband directly" after his heated words about Obama caused an uproar in South Carolina, and asked aides "to implore him either to leave the state or to pipe down." They write that Patti Solis Doyle, Cheryl Mills and Howard Wolfson "formed a war room within a war room inside Hillaryland, dedicated to managing the threat posed by Bill's libido." And they quote one "old Clinton hand" who suggests that Clinton stayed in the primary race to the bitter end, because her husband's approval mattered a lot to her, and "throwing in the towel would mark her as a failure in his eyes."

In a fascinating account about Hillary Clinton's initial decision to decline the post of secretary of state, Halperin and Heilemann paraphrase a conversation between the two former rivals in which, they contend, Clinton brought up the Bill issue: "You know my husband, she said. You've seen what happens. We're going to be explaining something that he said every other day. You know I can't control him, and at some point he'll be a problem."

Though this book focuses on personal matters, not policy concerns, and though some of what will be its most talked about passages fall into the realm of gossip and reflect the views of chatty and, in some cases, bitter, regretful or spin-conscious aides, the volume does leave the reader with a vivid, visceral sense of the campaign and a keen understanding of the paradoxes and contingencies of history. The authors note, for instance, that had Clinton decided to run for president in 2004, John Kerry might not have become the Democratic nominee that year and would not have had the opportunity to choose as the convention's keynote speaker a young and then largely unknown Illinois state legislator by the name of Barack Obama.

game change


Obama and the Clintons,
McCain and Palin,
and the Race of a Lifetime


By John Heilemann
and Mark Halperin
Harper, 448 pp., $27.99

Posted by jc at 5:49 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print

#1 Haiti Earthquake
January 15, 2010

Haitians took recovery efforts into their own hands Thursday as aid workers trickled into the quake-battered capital where impassable roads, damaged docks and clogged airstrips slowed the arrival of critically needed assistance.

Using chisels, blowtorches and bare hands, one group of Haitians worked for 24 hours to free a man pinned under a collapsed school; still others -- possibly including students -- were trapped inside.

Across town, an 11-year-old girl pleaded for water and screamed in pain as a group of people painstakingly tried to lift a piece of metal off her right leg. After sunset, they managed to set her free.

Those scenes of Haitians banding together to free their neighbors played out across the capital while the few rescue crews who managed to make it into the hillside city came face-to-face with the death and destruction caused by the massive quake.

The stench of corpses wafted in the air after two days under the hot sun, and throughout the city people covered their faces to block the odor.

At one of the city's cemeteries, people were opening old crypts and shoving the corpses of quake victims into them before resealing them, CNN's Anderson Cooper reported.

As night fell on the streets of Port-au-Prince, there were signs of progress. CNN correspondent Chris Lawrence watched as workers loaded bodies of quake victims, which had been piled on the sides of roads, into the basket of a front-loader tractor. It deposited them into blood-stained dump trucks lining the street.

Watch as dogs help in rescue efforts

Roads leading from the port city's dock into town were buckled about 5 feet high, and large cargo ships couldn't tie up at the damaged port. Rubble-strewn roads, downed trees and a battered communications network hampered humanitarian groups trying to get supplies to victims, and thousands of people left homeless by Tuesday's 7.0-magnitude quake roamed the streets.

Raymond Joseph, the Haitian ambassador to the United States, said Thursday that the priority of arriving military personnel will be to clear the roads.

Watch a student tell how she tried to flee

"The Port-au-Prince airport is going to be overloaded [with] supplies and there's going to be no way to distribute it because the roads are blocked," he told "The Situation Room," calling for heavy machinery to move the debris.

U.S. flights into the Port-au-Prince airport were grounded several times Thursday because ramp space was too crowded, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration said. As of Thursday afternoon, 34 planes were on the ground in Haiti and up to 12 planes were in a holding pattern waiting to land, an FAA official said. One problem, the official said, is the lack of resources to unload planes on the ground.

"We don't have enough water, we don't have enough medical supplies, we don't have enough blankets," Dave Toycen, president of World Vision and a 35-year veteran of disaster response, told "Larry King Live." "People aren't getting the help they need and it's just unacceptable."

CNN's Cooper came across the family of a 28-year-old woman named Brigitte Jean Baptiste, on their way to the cemetery. They were pushing a wheelbarrow with a coffin carrying her body precariously balanced on top of it. The woman was pulled from the rubble alive Thursday morning, but her family couldn't find a doctor to treat her.

"She could have been saved, but we didn't find any help," a family member said.

See CNN's complete coverage of the quake

The rescue and recovery efforts have become priorities for nations across the globe, including the United States.

"Even as we move as quickly as possible, it will take hours and in many cases days, to get all of our people and resources on the ground," President Obama said Thursday morning. "Right now in Haiti, roads are impassable, the main port is badly damaged, communications are just beginning to come online and aftershocks continue."

Obama announced $100 million in aid and said, "This is one of those moments that calls for American leadership." He tapped former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton to help lead humanitarian and fundraising efforts.

Watch as social-media sites help in search

During an appearance before the House Democratic Caucus Retreat later Thursday, Obama again addressed recovery efforts in Haiti, saying, "My national security team understands that I will not put up with any excuses for us not doing the very best in this time of tragedy."

Other countries and agencies also allocated millions in aid. Assistant Secretary of State P.J. Crowley said he estimates at least 30 countries have pledged meaningful assistance that has already reached Haiti or is on its way.

Speaking at the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said "one of the most heartening facts in this otherwise heartbreaking story is the dimension of the international response."

Watch the chaotic situation outside a hospital

Precise casualty estimates were impossible to determine, and Ban said it will be days before an "educated guess" can be made about what he thinks will be a high death toll, with authorities saying it could be in the thousands or even the hundreds of thousands.

At least 22 U.N. peacekeepers were killed in the quake, Ban said Thursday. Also among the dead is Joseph Serge Miot, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince. The U.S. government announced on Thursday the death of a U.S. citizen, identified as cultural affairs officer Victoria DeLong. A seminary in Iowa said one of its students apparently had also died.

Impact Your World: How you can help

But thousands of injured people have survived, and the calamity has overwhelmed doctors. Medical teams with the aid group Doctors Without Borders have treated more than 1,000 people. The group said it has seven charter flights stocked with staff and supplies ready to travel to Port-au-Prince, but thus far, only one has been able to fly into Haiti.

Watch as U.N. chief gives grim update

The United States and other countries were dispatching medical supplies, facilities and personnel.

As of Thursday, more than 300 military personnel were on the ground in Haiti. That number is expected to top at least 5,000 by early next week with the arrival of 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division and 2,200 Marines from the USS Bataan amphibious group of ships, according to military officials.

The U.S. Navy's USS Carl Vinson is expected to arrive Friday, and the hospital ship Comfort is preparing to deploy Saturday morning to Port-au-Prince. It will carry 560 medical personnel and supplies. The U.S. Coast Guard has also dispatched ships to the area.

Are you there? Submit an iReport

Eight search-and-rescue teams from the United States and other countries began their work in Port-au-Prince to search for residents trapped in their homes and for others who are unaccounted for, including 150 members of the United Nations staff.

A U.N. security officer from Estonia was pulled alive from the rubble of the U.N. headquarters Thursday, in what Ban called "a small miracle during a night which brought few other miracles."

Crowley said another person was rescued Thursday from the heavily damaged Hotel Montana in Petionville.

"I think the Haitian people are very sturdy and they are fighters," Haitian ambassador Joseph said. "I think we'll live through this."

Posted by JC at 5:43 AM - Link to this entry  |  Share this entry  |  Print