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More than 60 million women are missing from the world's population today as a result of sex selective abortion, violence, and unequal access to health care and food. That's according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. He contends that the paramount moral challenge for the 21st century is achieving global gender equity. Kristof and his wife, former Times editor Sheryl WuDunn, tell stories of women's struggles in their book Half the Sky: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide. Nicholas Kristof spoke at Town Hall Seattle on October 15, 2009, in an event sponsored by the World Affairs Council. He urged the audience to actively help women around the world achieve equal status in the global economy.

I just don't get it. When Congress approves gifts worth billions of dollars to exactly the people who don't deserve it, why isn't it front page news? On Nov. 6, when President Obama signed the Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009, he extended unemployment benefits and renewed the first-time homebuyer tax credit, but hidden deep inside the law was a bonanza to exactly the big home builders that overbuilt us into a mortgage meltdown. The tax break would help struggling businesses, Obama declared. But the act actually lets big companies as well as small offset losses incurred in the bad years of 2008 and 2009 against profits booked as far back as 2004. In case you were wondering, there's no requirement that companies claiming the tax refunds create jobs with it or need any of that cash. No quid pro quo worked so well for banks and lending, why not hit repeat again, with builders? Those with the biggest boom followed by the biggest bust are exactly the companies like to benefit the most. Among them, you guessed it, home builders -- companies like Pulte Homes, which will receive refunds exceeding $450 million under the new law. Pulte has $1.5 billion in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet. Standard Pacific, which is poised to reap cash refunds of $80 million, has $523 million. Will the builders build with the bonanza? Not likely. In building it's not supply that's the problem; it's demand. Overbuilding and over-lending is what got us in to this mess and that river's run dry. What the companies are likely to do is keep on lobbying. Gretchen Morgenstern of the New York Times reports that, "Securing this tax break was a top priority for home builders. " According to lobbying records, home builders paid $6 million to their lobbyists through the end of October this year, "much of focused on arguing for the tax loss carry-forward." Pulte Homes for example, spent $210,000, -- for which it'll receive $450 million in refunds. Nice. "The problem here is that this public policy decision was made with little to no input from the public," reports the ever-vigilent Morgenstern in her Sunday column. But her own paper could help solve that problem. How about reporting on this -- before it's a done deal -- on the front page?

Watch more at http://www.theyoungturks.com and follow us on twitter at twitter.com/theyoungturks Read Ana's blog here: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-5445-Politics-in-Education-ExaminerAuthor: Young_Turks1 Tags: young turks cenk uygur ana kasparian tyt nation news grassroots outreach commentary analysis political commercial documentary Megan Fox Transformers New York Times smart hot sexy dumb Posted: 17 November 2009 Rating: 0.0 Votes: 0

If you have a few minutes today I'd strongly recommend reading this fascinating five-page New York Times Magazine story on Megan Fox called The Self-Manufacture of Megan Fox. I know, you're not really interested in reading another "OMG, she said that!" article on the overly hyped, sexified actress, but this one is a little different. Yes, it touches on just about everything controversial that's crossed her plate -- from her much-publicized spat with Michael Bay to her longterm off-screen relationship with Brian Austin Green -- but it also digs beneath the surface and exposes the way in which she's sort of self-manufactured her own image depending on where she is and who she's speaking to in order to expand her brand, which, she'll admit, isn't the most glamorous or family-friendly, but it's what's keeping her working. Fox admits that she got herself into the whole Michael Bay mess, and wonders why no one came to her defense when that nasty crew letter surfaced online ("I think it's because I'm a girl. They left me out there to be bludgeoned to death"). Another interesting fact was that they were going to include a Hitler/Michael Bay joke when Fox hosted Saturday Night Live, but dropped it because it wasn't appropriate. Fox explains, "They wanted me to do a Q. and A. with the audience for the opening monologue. And Hitler is in the audience. Hitler stands up and says, 'Why did you compare me to Michael Bay?' " Fox laughed. "Which is funny, but we can't do that." Watch the actual monologue and read more after the jump. Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy, Fandom, NewsstandContinue reading Megan Fox's Scratched SNL Hitler/Michael Bay Joke Permalink | Email this | Comments

Author: noaraz Keywords: New York Times Added: November 11, 2009

http://vook.tumblr.com A New York Times Editorial claims "at-risk youth" need mentors. It's idealistic. Reality is another animal. As someone who mentors "at-risk" youth, I can tell you for a fact that not too many men want to put themselves in a vulnerable position where their sexuality will be questioned, their sense of morality will be questioned, their manhood will be questioned, and their humanity will become stretched tight as a motorcycle tie-down day one. You will be pushed up against a wall a dozen times a day and called a faggot every time you turn around, and you will ask yourself: why am I here. You will note that the other mentors around you -- your peers -- are there because they were one of these "at-risk youth" one time, too. Chances are, you are in the same tenuous boat. No man stays in any of these jobs too long. Not if you want to feed your family, and not if your own sons are in any way tempted to experiment with being the kind of kid Daddy spends most of his time with. Your motives will be questioned by every single person who looks at you juxtaposed against the scene the "at-risk youth" lives in; particularly if that "at-risk" mentor is male. Gender is an explosive issue. I would have to be out of my mind to be alone in a room engaged in any kind of communication with a female where simply keeping a door open is not enough. You want a reliable witness who was there who can verify nothing exploitive happened. Any male who works in a situation with "at-risk youth" where they find themselves in a locker room or any other setting involving nudity has to have his head examined. The New York Times editorial goes, as it should go, to funding issues. But funding issues are ephemeral. You won't find too many programs where mentors are offered retirement because no one stays that long. Two years is considered an eternity. One is more the norm. If you are mentoring a kid who is fourteen, and you leave him when he's fifteen, you simply become part of the problem especially when this is going to be a child with grief and abandonment issues. Grief over being left to twist in the wind by men all his life. To see this as a funding problem is to miss the forest for the trees and these programs are ALL underfunded anyway. Get used to being somebody who is going to confront a world of options limited to the military. You are going to become painfully aware real fast that keeping the kid in a street environment that consists of gang warfare, drug dealing, drug use, prostitution (which will have a direct impact on how he perceives and deals with women), abandonment, no male role models, and where educational success is considered to be a liability, is simply reinventing the sociological wheel because that kid is not going to pull himself up by his bootstraps -- the kid has no bootstraps, and probably no boots. You are going to look at the military as the only option in a place where options are almost nonexistent. Society has never been serious about any of this. It covers up the leaks with Bandaids before the blood spills anywhere near the middle class which has problems now of its own. Who do you think fights our wars. Although I am a child of the counter culture, almost sixty, I say: bring back the draft. As we bring back the draft, let's make sure that we eliminate the current overtly reluctant attitude of the military to take soldiers with criminal records. "At-risk youth" doesn't get into the military if the kid is a habitual criminal because the military doesn't want them. Then what. I say: bring back the draft and get serious about it. Allow the young man from the streets of Compton to serve beside the young man from Yale. We all know this will never happen. It has never happened. Bring back the draft and your wars will end tomorrow. The future of the "at-risk youth" is a vacuum filled by HIV/AIDS, intravenous drug use, hopelessness, suicide, prison. Once in prison, the issue becomes rape depending on how young he (or she) is. Where do you think the hot pockets of HIV exist. Once in prison he can learn how to become a better drug dealer. The military for this kid is no longer an option and never was one. Idealism is one thing. But it never seems to be based in any form of reality whatsoever. Mentoring involves such issues as "Manhood Means We Don't Kill Women." Domestic abuse is ordinary. Turf and the marketplace (drugs rule) are the only concepts he gets because he's ultimately so intimately exposed to them day after day, month after month, year after year. His own life expectancy harkens back not to the post-industrial days of Charles Dickens, but to serfdom and the Middle Ages where you died at thirty from disease. Drugs are the economic engine that drives this culture on the fringes of a culture. Let's not simply bring back the draft but let's legalize the pharmaceuticals and remove the rush from the economics of foreclosure. Foreclosed from Any Way Out of Here. We all know it will never happen. It is morally disingenuous for the knee-jerk liberal to recommend a dribble of funding for the kind of job description -- that as mentor with "at-risk youth" -- when it's not a job description any never-at-risk-for-anything graduate of Yale would take for more than one year of abuse from the inside and the outside of what amounts to a gun-infested nightmare of terror and despair. There's your America. If I had no way out of there, I would probably own as many guns as I could afford, and the kids know it. They're not stupid. "You gotta gun, what kind?" Is the very first thing you will be asked. Not because they don't want to rob you (they do) but because they want to see how invested you really are in the reality of where they live. Tim Barrus lucian.daemon@gmail.com

New York TImes NewsToday's News of November the 4th 2009