James Carville is a Democratic political consultant, a TV pundit, and one half of the most famous mixed marriage in the country — his wife is Republican consultant Mary Matalin.
We've invited him to play a game called "You're like two peas in a pod!" Three questions about freakishly similar couples.
Rick Perry wants your business.
The Republican governor has been turning up in other states, touting the wonders of Texas and promising business owners they'll find lower taxes and more manageable regulation there.
"It does help get the word out to business leaders that may be frustrated," says David Carney, a longtime consultant to Perry. "Going in person can get literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of free media coverage."
Needless to say, other governors aren't so fond of Perry's efforts. Not only does Perry want to chip away at their tax bases, but he hasn't shied from criticizing the policies they favor right on their home turf.
And Perry's poaching can be construed as partisan in nature. He hasn't been going around to states led by his fellow Republicans.
"Governors don't poach companies publicly in states with governors from their own party," Carney says.
The increasing willingness of governors to come into each other's states and spat openly is not just a violation of longstanding norms, but yet another sign of the increasing polarization of our time.
"There are so many issues at the state level that you'd think wouldn't have Democratic or Republican approaches, but increasingly they are not perceived that way," says John Weingart, director of the Rutgers University Center on the American Governor.
Governors Picking Fights
Governors have always taken ideas from each other, whether it's a breakthrough in education policy or a clever way to promote the arts.
But as Weingart suggests, they increasingly see themselves as playing on different teams. Republicans want to shrink the state and empower employers, while Democrats are committed to investing in human capital and infrastructure.
Their philosophical disagreements are spilling over across each other's borders. Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley of Maryland took a shot at New Jersey's Chris Christie last year on CBS's "Face the Nation," saying that the Garden State's bond rating had been downgraded on the Republican's watch.
Christie countered by saying that O'Malley is "not that smart, he's not that good, but he is flippant, so I give him credit for that."
Christie also took a shot at Dannel Malloy of Connecticut for raising taxes. Malloy in turn knocked Christie for not properly funding his state's pension obligations.
"You've got a case where there have been different paths taken in different states," says Andrew Doba, Malloy's communication director. "When you're talking about these things, it's natural to compare yourself to other states."
Ways To Work Together
As with members of Congress, today's governors take such different approaches on a range of issues that it's harder for them to get along. It wasn't always this way.
There used to be less daylight between governors on a number of issues. But even when they differed, governors used to be better equipped to speak with one voice when arguing for the needs of states in Washington.
The landmark welfare overhaul law of 1996, for instance, was largely built on state-level experiments. In those days, the National Governors Association (NGA) was frequently ranked as the most influential lobbying force in the capitol.
A decade ago, however, the organization nearly came apart. Republican governors publicly complained that NGA's staff was too liberal. The group fired its lobbyist in response but has never fully won back the affection of some GOP governors.
"It's lost its cache," Carney says. "A lot of the governors still participate, but some don't. There's less common ground on a lot of these issues."
NGA still demands attention, but many governors direct their time and efforts toward the Democratic or Republican governors associations, which are not only partisan in nature but fundraising machines for elections.
Get Out Of My House
Governors now have the same problem that bedevils Congress. They think each other's ideas are stupid and they don't spend enough time getting to know one another as individuals to gain empathy for each others' positions.
Even 20 years ago, governors who visited other states to campaign for their party's candidate would not speak ill of the incumbent. And that "host" governor would extend every courtesy, offering visiting governors protection from state troopers.
Malloy, the Connecticut governor, went out of his way to greet Perry when the Texan came to his state in June in hopes of convincing gun makers to relocate further south. "We showed him some old-fashioned Yankee hospitality, as the governor said," Doba says.
It might have been smart politics. Where Democrats have complained about Perry's visits — such as in Missouri and Maryland — it's only garnered more attention from media, which are always willing to highlight political combat.
When Perry visited Maryland last week, O'Malley not only penned an op-ed touting his state's virtues over Texas, but went on CNN's "Crossfire" to debate him.
After O'Malley bragged about the "great companies" in his state, Perry said, "We'll recruit them."
"You're welcome to try," O'Malley said.
All eyes are on a pair of closed wooden doors in the basement of the Capitol. Behind those doors, in room HC-5, House Republicans are plotting their next move in the ongoing shutdown showdown.
On Friday, the Senate approved a short-term spending bill aimed at avoiding a government shutdown. What it didn't do was defund the Affordable Care Act.
That's what a handful of Senate Democrats and a larger contingent of House Republicans have been demanding in exchange for keeping the government funded.
It's now the House's move, as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted yesterday:
.@SenMikeLee #YourMove pic.twitter.com/d9UNzKTPAK
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) September 28, 2013
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is an educated man. But like a lot of well-educated people who run for office, you might not detect it by the quotations he deployed over his 21 hours holding the floor of the U.S. Senate.
Cruz, the Texas Republican, didn't cite great conservative thinkers like Edmund Burke, Sir Tom Stoppard or Saul Bellow, but Dr. Seuss in Green Eggs and Ham.
Liberal politicians can do the same. I don't recall President Clinton ever saying, "That reminds me of something I read by Immanuel Kant at Oxford." Instead, he said, "I'll be there for you till the last dog dies."
The purpose of a quote in politics isn't to be interesting — and certainly not provocative. It's to tie yourself to something or someone indisputable.
So: Lincoln? Franklin? Mandela? Always.
But Karl Marx? Better Groucho.
Shakespeare? Auden? Noel Coward? If you're going to go British, make it Churchill.
Presidents like to quote previous presidents from the other party. It may be a way of declaring, "Those of us who've gotten here know something the rest of you can't." Note how President Obama quotes President Reagan, and President Reagan often quoted Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Interestingly, President Reagan, who was an actor, quoted old British poets and ancient Greeks in some of his signature speeches, saying, "I'm old enough to remember them."
All politicians like to quote Yogi Berra: "A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore," "Half the lies they tell about me aren't true," and, "The future ain't what it used to be" — are all lines that are funny, true, and useful to make any point.
Cruz read Green Eggs and Ham to dramatize his opposition to the Affordable Care Act. A number of people have pointed out that Sam, the little boy in the story, winds up actually liking green eggs and ham.
The Dr. Seuss whom the Republican Cruz quotes was actually a New Deal-loving liberal Democrat. Before he wrote children's rhymes, Theodor Geisel was a political cartoonist for PM, an old left-wing New York daily, drawing panels that vivaciously vivisected FDR's Republican opponents. He also ferociously supported the incarceration of Japanese-Americans in World War II. Dr. Seuss was a man of sharp, sometimes even harsh opinions who wrote light children's verse.
In the 1980s, when anti-abortion groups began to use as their slogan a line from Horton Hears a Who that goes, "A person's a person, no matter how small," he objected.
But a Dr. Seuss character might say, "The same few words / can be like birds / in a nest / They fly off and become different."
Good morning, fellow political junkies. We're now only a little more than three days away from a federal government shutdown if Congress and President Obama don't reach an agreement on a stop-gap budget measure by Monday evening.
So we start our daily look at some of the morning's more interesting political items there.
Over at Politico, Todd Purdum has an intentionally provocative piece that invites congressional Republicans to make good on their threats to cause a government shutdown, default on the national debt etc so we can get the whole governing-by-ordeal thing over with. It's the cry of an exasperated victim who says "just shoot me, already" to the guy with the gun. Of course, that usually feels better to say before the gunshot than after.
An attempt by Speaker John Boehner and his leadership team to lessen the likelihood of a shutdown faltered Thursday, reports the Washington Post's Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane. The leaders were rebuffed by the House GOP Conference's Tea Party faction in their attempt to get hardliners to shift demands for fiscal concessions from the budget fight to the debt-ceiling.
Because of that failure, the House debt-ceiling plan has been delayed, report The Hill's Russell Berman, Bernie Becker and Erik Wasson. The expectation was that a debt-ceiling bill would be considered by the House Rules Committee Thursday with a floor debate and votes Friday. But all that's now up in the air. The Senate is expected to finish its work on the temporary spending bill Friday.
Many have argued that political compromise is the essence of the American constitutional system created by the Founding Fathers and that it would therefore be logical for Tea Party conservatives to be more receptive. Michael Gerson, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, does a particularly good job of laying out the merits of compromise in the Washington Post.
Sen. Ted Cruz achieved something with his 21-hour anti-Obamacare talkathon that would have been harder without the marathon; it redeemed him in the eyes of many Tea Party conservatives who only days before thought he had thrown them under the bus, writes Rich Lowry at the National Review Online.
Haunting. That's one description for the New York Times' campaign "Hers to Lose" documentary on Christine Quinn, the one-time frontrunner's stunning collapse in the recent Democratic primary campaign for New York City mayor. It captures the height and nadir of the former city council president's attempt to become the city's first woman and lesbian mayor. It also shows the mix of forces — in her case anti-LGBT bias, Bill de Blasio's breakthrough campaign messenger (his son) and her own overbearing style — that can make or break campaigns.
Much of Obamacare's success hinges on younger, uninsured people signing up for coverage and in relatively significant numbers. Slate's John Dickerson writes that administration officials believe Healthcare.gov will be a critical part of making the sale to these young invincibles. (Our NPR Shots blog, has a calculator produced by the Kaiser Family Foundation that allows users to learn if they qualify for a federal subsidy to help pay their premiums.)
Whichever Republican coined the phrase Obamacare as a pejorative was on to something. CNBC's Steve Liesman reports that more people (46 percent) opposed Obamacare versus 36 percent who opposed the Affordable Care Act.
Someone's trying to soften Obamacare's image by giving it a cute and furry face through the Adorable Care Act Tumblr using photos of animals. (Internet + cats = success.) The White House and its political expeditionary force, Organizing for Action, disclaim responsibility. But they might want to put on retainer whoever did it.
What interesting political items have you come across this morning? Feel free to share them with us in the comments section.
President Obama was more dependent on female campaign contributors in 2012 than any presidential candidate in recent history.
According to a new report from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, female donors accounted for more than 44 percent of Obama's campaign contributions, the most for any White House hopeful since at least 1988.
The GOP nominee, Mitt Romney, received just 28 percent of his campaign cash from women.
Despite the increased role of women in financing Obama's re-election effort, men still provided the lion's share of federal campaign donations across the board in 2012. CRP found that less than 30 percent of all political contributions made during the 2012 election cycle came from women. And of the top 100 donors in that election cycle, just 11 were females.
At the congressional level, CRP reported that Democratic candidates are becoming increasingly reliant on female contributors.
Female Democrats receive the highest proportion of their money from women, and Republican men receive the lowest.
Three Senate Democrats — Barbara Boxer of California, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire — topped the list for highest percentage of campaign donations from women. Between 2007 and 2012, each received 45 percent of their cash from women.
Over the same period, Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., collected about 12 percent of his donations from women — less than any sitting senator.
In the House, four female Democratic House members brought in at least half of their contributions from women in the 2012 election cycle. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., ranked first with 65 percent.
Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C., ranked dead last among House members in the 2012 cycle: Just 9.5 percent of his cash haul came from women.
Things were better in the old days.
Lots of people feel that way — particularly when the current state of politics inspires such despair. Maybe for that reason, former officeholders are much in demand these days.
In Philadelphia, there's a move afoot to draft Ed Rendell, a former Democratic mayor and governor, to run for mayor again after 13 years' absence from City Hall. Three states already have repeat governors who had previously been out of office an average of 16 years.
In many places, it's been out with the new and in with the old.
"They just said, enough of this nonsense that's going on over there," says Ron Erhardt, one of a dozen state legislators in Minnesota who were re-elected last fall after spending some time out of office. "We're a better state than is being pushed around by these folks who are getting nothing done."
It's not a huge trend. Not all former politicians are seen as sages more capable than the current incumbents.
But plenty of people are open to the idea that the old guys and gals might have had better ideas about how to run things than the elected officials who are currently messing things up.
"With all the recent talk of shutdowns, fiscal cliffs and debt ceilings, and the general sense that our politics are broken or dysfunctional, people are longing for a time when politics seemed to work and politicians seemed to get things done," says Lara Brown, program director of the public management program at George Washington University.
Prepared For Comebacks
California Democrat Jerry Brown was elected to a third term as governor of California in 2010. His second term had ended back in 1983.
He's now seen as easily the dominant figure in state politics, getting nearly everything he wants from the Legislature and helping to put the state's finances back into some kind of order.
"Sometimes public officials actually learn from their previous mistakes, as I think is the case with Jerry Brown," says Stanford University political scientist Bruce Cain.
Brown was one of five former governors trying to win back their old jobs in 2010. Two others also won: Republican Terry Branstad of Iowa and Democrat John Kitzhaber of Oregon.
All three now appear to be safe bets for re-election next year, benefiting from the lack of political bench strength in their states.
"Part of what goes on with these cases is just simple name recognition, which is a very big resource for any politician who has it," says Bill Lunch, a political scientist at Oregon State University.
That may be why Florida Democrats appear willing to nominate former Gov. Charlie Crist for another term. He governed as a Republican, ran for Senate in 2010 as an independent, and has since discovered his inner Democrat.
Experience Matters
Name recognition is one reason dynasties have always been a part of American politics, from the Adams family to the Bush presidencies.
"You can't bring back Bill Clinton, so his wife is the next best thing," says David Crockett, a political scientist at Trinity University in San Antonio.
But in many cases, people are holding out for the original — not a relative, but the specific person who has held the job before.
Part of this may be nostalgia for their former tenure. If times were good on their watch, why not let them take control again?
Not many Californians, however, remember much about how Brown governed back in the 1970s, Stanford's Cain says. Instead, they were attracted by the fact that he had plenty of experience, as governor and in a number of other political roles since.
"Nostalgia did not factor into Jerry Brown's election as much as a reaction to his predecessor" — the Republican movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger — "who had to learn politics on the job," Cain says. "There is a tendency in politics to cycle back and forth between new people who promise new approaches, and old, steady hands."
No Longer LBJ's Town
That might be what's driving political nostalgia in Washington. Barack Obama was elected president with less experience than any of his modern predecessors.
Obama's not the only relative newbie.
As the current Congress got underway in January, 36 percent of the House members were either freshmen or sophomores. (Eight House members had just been re-elected after spending at least a couple of years out of office.)
Thirty senators had served no more than two years in the chamber. At the state level, lack of on-the-job experience is even more pronounced.
After voting in so many newcomers and outsiders who haven't been able to agree on much, there's been a lot of pining for old-timers who knew how to get things done. There have been endless evocations during Obama's tenure of Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan being able to get along in the 1980s when they served, respectively, as the Democratic House speaker and GOP president.
Obama has also frequently been compared unfavorably with the wheeling and dealing demonstrated by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson, who managed to push through any number of landmark bills during the 1960s, including the Voting Rights Act and the creation of Medicare.
Bring Back The Old Band
But times have changed. If you brought back LBJ — or Reagan or Clinton — they would find that making deals and winning votes from the opposition party is practically impossible just now.
"When Johnson was president, it wasn't arm-twisting that produced legislation," says Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution. "He had [Senate GOP leader Everett] Dirksen and half of the Republican Party willing to work with him. The parties are tribalistic now."
The very fact that times and circumstances have changed, however, explains why some voters might want to try to turn back the clock and give retreads another spin.
"The tenor of American politics is very polarized, and that makes politicians look pathologically incapable," says Crockett, who has studied restoration politics. "We look back and imagine there was a time when things looked better, so why not bring back the people who ran things then."
Chinese-American TV personality Julie Chen reveals she had plastic surgery to make her eyes look less "Asian" to advance her career. Korean women are getting surgeries for permanent smiles. In Venezuela, breast augmentation is so widespread, it's a popular coming-of-age gift for quinceaera, or 15th-birthday celebrations.
What century are we in, anyway? Around the world, women continue to go to extreme measures in pursuit of "beauty."
That women subject themselves to these complicated and bizarre, not to mention dangerous, procedures got me thinking about these notions of physical beauty — and who gets to define them. And what struck me is the irony that what's considered "beautiful" or desirable in one culture is often the exact opposite in another.
The Tyranny Of The Tan
Take skin color, for instance. In the West, women expose their skin to harmful radiation and buy self-tanning products in pursuit of skin that's "sun-kissed" and glowing.
About a million people hit tanning beds each day in the U.S., according to the American Academy of Dermatology, with nearly 70 percent of them women ages 16 to 29. The market for sunless tanning products is big business, too, with one industry report estimating annual revenue in 2011 at $516 million.
Enlarge image i
After the Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack near Damascus that reportedly killed more than 1,000 people and has been blamed on Bashar Assad's regime, the Syrian president's ambassador to the U.N. claimed that opposition forces had used such weapons at least three times in the days immediately after.
As Russia's RT.com reported on Aug. 28:
"Ambassador Bashar Jaafari said he had requested of U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that the team of experts currently in Damascus investigating an alleged use of chemical weapons last week also investigate ... other attacks.
The attacks took place on August 22, 24 and 25 in Jobar, Sahnaya, and al-Bahariya, Jaafari told journalists Wednesday. The 'militants' used toxic chemical gas against the Syrian army, the diplomat said."
A French mountain climber came upon an unexpected treasure earlier this month near Mont Blanc in the French Alps, The Guardian writes.
It was a small metal box containing rubies, sapphires and emeralds worth an estimated $332,000. It's thought, The Wall Street Journal says, that the box "was on board one of two Indian planes that crashed in the mountains, one in 1950 the other in 1966."
According to France 24, "the climber turned the haul in to local police. 'This was an honest young man who very quickly realized that they belonged to someone who died on the glacier,' local gendarmerie chief Sylvain Merly told AFP." The news network adds that:
"French authorities are contacting their Indian counterparts to trace the owner or heirs of the jewels. Under French law, the jewellery could be handed over to the mountaineer if these are not identified, Merly said."
Wednesday's Highlights
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ended his marathon Senate floor speech at noon when his appointed time ran out.
He concluded his 21-hour-plus session by calling on his fellow Senate Republicans to block final passage of the spending bill the Senate must pass to avoid a government shutdown next week: "Otherwise, if we vote with the majority leader and with the Senate Democrats, we will be voting to allow the majority leader to fund Obamacare on a straight party line vote, partisan vote," he said.
Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, immediately labeled Cruz's speech a "big waste of time." The Senate then took a procedural vote on the question of whether to move forward toward a debate on the House-passed spending bill. That bill contains the language to defund Obamacare — which the Democratic-controlled Senate is expected to remove.
The result was a 100-to-0 vote to move forward (it needed 60). That vote obviously included Cruz, who surprised many who thought the only logical thing for him to have done was to vote "no."
On the Senate floor, Arizona Republican John McCain castigated Cruz for likening those opposed to the Texan's approach to World War II-era Nazi appeasers. McCain defended Republican senators who were in the chamber in 2009 and 2010 for the initial Obamacare battles for fighting the good fight, but ultimately losing to the majority.
"In democracies, almost always, the majority governs and passes legislation. But I was extremely proud of the effort that we on this side of the aisle made to attempt to defeat a measure we thought was not good for America," McCain said.
What Now?
The Senate's unanimous Wednesday vote kicked off what is essentially a debate-filled 30-hour waiting period before senators take their next vote.
What's Next?
Thursday, Sept. 26: The next vote could come in the evening during which the Senate would vote to proceed to actual debate on the House budget bill itself. Cruz would have another chance then to vote against moving forward. Reid needs only 51 votes to proceed.
Reid is expected to get those votes since he has 52 Democrats — before you even count the two independent senators who caucus with them.
The majority leader is then expected to substitute an amendment to expunge the House GOP provision to defund Obamacare. He is also expected at this point to file a cloture motion to limit debate and to use Senate rules to keep senators from proposing amendments.
Friday, Sept. 27: Debate
Saturday, Sept. 28: This is when a vote to end the debate is expected and Reid would again need 60 votes. The Senate would get a new 30 hours to debate.
Sunday, Sept. 29: The Senate is then expected to vote on two amendments that would only need a simple 51-vote majority. One would remove the anti-Obamacare language; the other would be for a "clean" spending bill or continuing resolution. The Senate would then send the clean CR to the House.
Monday, Sept. 30: The House would have until midnight to approve the Senate version of the CR. If not, come Tuesday it's "Good morning, government shutdown."
During the fifth hour of his televised marathon speech protesting Obamacare, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz caught the attention of Dr. Seuss fans everywhere by pulling out a copy of Green Eggs and Ham on the Senate floor to read as a bedtime story to his children.
He noted Tuesday that it was his favorite childhood book, and even pointed out that his father had invented his own version of green eggs and ham, the food Sam-I-Am famously encouraged the book's unnamed narrator to try.
Although he may have squeezed the most attention out of his dramatic Seuss reading, Cruz is far from the first politician to lean on the classic children's story to advance his cause.
Here are a few examples:
Rev. Jesse Jackson, 1991
The former Democratic presidential candidate and civil rights activist read the story on Saturday Night Live following the 1991 death of Theodore Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss). His serious yet comical reading was a big hit for the late-night sketch comedy show and remains popular two decades later.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, 2003
Pawlenty, a former two-term governor and GOP presidential candidate, acknowledged his taste for green eggs and ham not long after first taking office in 2003. He made the admission to a group of children after a playful line of questioning with Judy Schaubach, the president of the Education Minnesota union, at an event the governor hosted to promote Read Across America Day.
President Obama, 2010
The president attempted "to do the best rendition ever of Green Eggs and Ham" to a group of children at the 2010 White House Easter Egg Roll. With some help from the first lady, Obama gave an animated reading and encouraged the kids to try new things — even green beans and peas.
Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, 2011
The Oklahoma Republican read the book to a group of kindergarten students at the state Capitol as part of her early-childhood-education push. Afterward, Fallin even gave each child a copy of the book and encouraged their parents to read to them daily.
Maryland Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, 2012
Brown, a Democrat who's running for governor in 2014, hosted a Green Eggs and Ham-themed breakfast for 62 Annapolis-area elementary school students in March 2012. The Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2 — all famous Dr. Seuss characters — were in attendance and posed for pictures with Brown and the children.
Don Jon
Director: Joseph Gordon-Levitt
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Running Time: 90 minutes
Rated R for strong graphic sexual material and dialogue throughout, nudity, language and some drug use
With: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson, Julianne Moore, Tony Danza
Thursday's highlights (and lowlights):
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid raised the possibility that the Senate might be able to finish its work on the budget bill by the end of the day, sending it to the House sooner rather later. If Republicans went along, that would give the House more time to act to avert a government shutdown next week.
Perhaps predictably, Republicans didn't go along. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, in particular.
After Reid asked for unanimous consent to accelerate the process so the Senate could vote Thursday, Lee and Cruz got into a rhetorical knife fight with fellow Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee. It was the Senate GOP civil war breaking out into the open.
Corker accused Lee and Cruz of wanting to delay the vote until Friday because they had sent out news releases to their Tea Party supporters to expect "a show" on Friday — and a Thursday evening vote would ruin their plans. Cruz and Lee didn't deny it.
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats and House Republicans showed themselves no closer to a compromise to keep the federal government funded past Monday.
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, was asked if Republicans controlling the House would accept from the Senate a so-called "clean" continuing resolution to fund the government — one stripped of House language to defund Obamacare.
"I don't, I do not see that happening," Boehner told reporters.
At a news conference on the other side of the Capitol, Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, said: "We want a clean CR. That's what we're going to get."
Turning to a flat-screen TV that was being used as a shutdown clock, Reid said: "If they want to shut down the government, here's how much time they have to figure it out: 4 days, 11 hours, 22 minutes and 15 seconds."
House Republicans also unveiled a number of items they hope to trade Democrats for next month when Congress turns to a debt-ceiling increase. Among House requests: a one-year delay in implementing Obamacare. Asked if Democrats would accept that, Reid simply said, "No."
Adding to the gloom, Reid said he and Boehner haven't talked at all in recent days.
For his part, President Obama sounded as adamant as everyone else. He told an audience at a Largo, Md., event, about Republican efforts to halt Obamacare: "That's not going to happen as long as I'm president. The Affordable Care Act is here to stay."
What's next?
Friday
Reid says the Senate should vote on the spending legislation Friday.
First, the Senate will take a vote to end the current period of debate. Assuming that gets the needed 60 votes, which now seems likely, the Senate would proceed to debate the actual House continuing resolution. At least 60 senators also would have to agree to end debate on the spending bill.
Senate Democrats will substitute the House's continuing resolution with an amendment that removes the Obamacare defunding language. That would require only 51 votes, which Senate Democrats should have no trouble getting. The Senate could then get the spending bill back to the House late Friday.
Also on Friday, and in the other wing of the Capitol, the House will take up its debt-ceiling bill, which is expected to emerge from the Rules Committee late Thursday. The House is expected to pass that measure sometime Friday.
The one unmovable thing is the deadline to avoid a shutdown; that's midnight Monday, the end of the month.
Fast food giant McDonald's has made a commitment to stop marketing sodas as a beverage option in kids' Happy Meals.
Moving forward, the chain has committed to market and promote only milk, water and juice with the children's meals.
Now, if parents order a Coke or Sprite with their child's Happy Meal, they won't be turned down. But going forward, sodas will no longer be marketed or promoted visually in any of McDonald's advertisements or in-store visuals.
The Salt
This 9-Year-Old Girl Told McDonald's CEO: Stop Tricking Kids
U.S. drone strikes carried out in Pakistan appear to have little impact on insurgent violence in neighboring Afghanistan, according to a new meta-study published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.
But the study also finds that strikes carried out by unmanned aerial vehicles cause fewer civilian casualties than other kinds of combat and that those deaths don't appear to be linked to further violence against U.S. forces and allies.
"We know little about how effective [drones] are as tools of punishment and deterrence," according to James Igoe Walsh, the author of the study titled The Effectiveness of Drone Strikes in Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism Campaigns. Walsh writes:
"[O]ne reasonably consistent finding ... is that drone strikes have little influence, positive or negative, on the amount of insurgent violence that occurs in Afghanistan. This is important, because one objective of the drone strike campaign is to weaken and undermine insurgent organizations based in Pakistan that launch attacks against American, Afghan, and international military forces."
Out in the Dark
Director: Michael Mayer
Genre: Drama, Romance
Running Time: 96 minutes
Not rated
With: Nicholas Jacob, Michael Aloni, Jamil Khoury
Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, whose Innocence of Muslims film sparked deadly protests in Muslim nations in the summer of 2012, is being released from federal custody on Thursday. He'll have served slightly less than the 1-year sentence he was given for violating the conditions of his probation on an earlier bank-fraud conviction.
CNN says the 56-year-old Nakoula has most recently been living in a Southern California halfway house. The online federal prison locator says he's been in San Pedro, Calif.
He was sent to prison last year because the conditions of his probation included not using aliases and not using computers or the Internet for five years. He did those things while producing and distributing his anti-Muslim film.
After the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, and the deaths there of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on Sunday TV talk shows and pointed to the film as being the spark behind the violence.
When it became clear that it had been an organized attack by men with links to terrorist organizations and not a spontaneous protest about the film, Republicans accused the Obama administration of trying to mislead the American public during a presidential campaign. As NPR's David Welna reported last weekend, House Republicans continue to hold hearings about the attack and the administration's response.
A middle school jab goes something like this: "We're having an A-B conversation, so you can C your way out." I bring this up because there's a workplace parallel to this that doesn't seem to have a name. It's when you're having an A-B email conversation and one party suddenly copies your boss, manager or someone more senior, in order to get an advantage in the discussion at hand.
Let's call it the acc. The A can stand for angry, awkward or annoying. We already know blind copying (bcc) can be toxic (read: congressional aide Kurt Bardella's secretly copied emails to a New York Times reporter that led to his firing), and openly copying more interested parties in a benign situation usually doesn't bother anyone. But it is not cool to use the cc as a weapon. And that is the stuff of the acc.
Our stab at a working definition for the acc: The situation in which new recipients are unexpectedly added to an existing email chain by one of the original parties with the intent to undermine the other original party's position.
Putting aside that it's not fair to the third party who's getting dragged into a situation for which he lacks context, the acc is just an unnecessary, passive-aggressive move that blindsides the original party. The point you are making should either be valid on its own, or part of a wider conversation to begin with. There's an implicit rank-pulling or tattling involved when you add an acc; bringing in someone else is no way to e-behave.
As far as we can tell, this irritating practice doesn't have a widely adopted name. Don't know if acc will stick, but let's try it out, folks. And if you want to, email me about it. Just be mindful of whom you cc.
In Pennsylvania, more than a half-million people who don't have insurance are waiting to hear whether the state will take advantage of a Medicaid expansion that's part of the Affordable Care Act.
The federal law would allow people earning up to 138 percent of federal poverty guidelines to sign up for Medicaid. But a Supreme Court ruling that largely upheld the law gave states the choice whether to expand their Medicaid programs.
About half decided against it or are still working out agreements with the Obama administration. Pennsylvania falls into that latter category, leaving the state's working poor in limbo for now.
Substitute teacher Susan Mull says she has lived without insurance for 13 years. At age 60 that would be stressful enough, but Mull also is HIV-positive. She was diagnosed 21 years ago.
"I never thought that I would become a grandmother," says Mull. "We were told in the early 1990s that we simply wouldn't live long."
Because of how little Mull and her husband earn, they could qualify for Medicaid under an expansion. The annual income limit for a couple is $21,404.
Mull says she's never been sick and receives low-cost care and free HIV medication through government programs. But she says full health care coverage — including checkups, eye exams and dental visits — would bring a level of security she hasn't known for a long time.
"I'll be able to embrace that whole part of the system that I have been away from for 13 years," says Mull.
While Republican governors in neighboring New Jersey and Ohio have agreed to expand Medicaid, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett hasn't yet.
Earlier this month he proposed the Healthy PA plan, which includes a Medicaid overhaul. It still taps into the billions of dollars in federal Medicaid expansion money available to states, but it also asks the federal government to approve significant changes in how the program is run.
Part of the proposal is similar to those in Arkansas and Iowa. New enrollees would get coverage from private health insurance companies through health exchanges. Corbett also wants new beneficiaries to look for work and pay a premium of up to $25 a month.
"It's a Pennsylvania-based plan that is based on common-sense reforms, creates real health care choices, reduces government bureaucracy and provides a pathway to independence for all Pennsylvanians," said Corbett in announcing his proposal.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says it needs more detailed information before approving the proposal. "HHS is committed to supporting state flexibility and working with states to design Medicaid programs that work for them, within the confines of the law," says agency spokesman Fabien Levy.
Advocates for expanding the Medicaid program in Pennsylvania say they're encouraged the governor has proposed something. But they'd prefer a plan that doesn't place new burdens on beneficiaries.
"The work requirement provision we, obviously, have concerns about — we don't want to see more barriers created for folks to access care," says Antoinette Kraus, director of the Pennsylvania Health Access Network.
Insurance companies and the health care industry are pleased Corbett wants to pursue federal funds to expand Medicaid. "The more people that walk through the doors of hospitals — who are insured — the better off our hospitals are," says Curt Schroder, regional executive of the Delaware Valley Healthcare Council. Still, Schroder says, there are many details to work out.
That means those who could benefit from a Medicaid expansion, like Susan Mull, will have to wait. While some states begin signing up Medicaid beneficiaries on Oct. 1, it could be months before that happens in Pennsylvania.
Wednesday's Highlights
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ended his marathon Senate floor speech at noon when his appointed time ran out.
He concluded his 21-hour-plus session by calling on his fellow Senate Republicans to block final passage of the spending bill the Senate must pass to avoid a government shutdown next week: "Otherwise, if we vote with the majority leader and with the Senate Democrats, we will be voting to allow the majority leader to fund Obamacare on a straight party line vote, partisan vote," he said.
Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, immediately labeled Cruz's speech a "big waste of time." The Senate then took a procedural vote on the question of whether to move forward toward a debate on the House-passed spending bill. That bill contains the language to defund Obamacare — which the Democratic-controlled Senate is expected to remove.
The result was a 100-to-0 vote to move forward (it needed 60). That vote obviously included Cruz, who surprised many who thought the only logical thing for him to have done was to vote "no."
On the Senate floor, Arizona Republican John McCain castigated Cruz for likening those opposed to the Texan's approach to World War II-era Nazi appeasers. McCain defended Republican senators who were in the chamber in 2009 and 2010 for the initial Obamacare battles for fighting the good fight, but ultimately losing to the majority.
"In democracies, almost always, the majority governs and passes legislation. But I was extremely proud of the effort that we on this side of the aisle made to attempt to defeat a measure we thought was not good for America," McCain said.
What Now?
The Senate's unanimous Wednesday vote kicked off what is essentially a debate-filled 30-hour waiting period before senators take their next vote.
What's Next?
Thursday, Sept. 26: The next vote could come in the evening during which the Senate would vote to proceed to actual debate on the House budget bill itself. Cruz would have another chance then to vote against moving forward. Reid needs only 51 votes to proceed.
Reid is expected to get those votes since he has 52 Democrats — before you even count the two independent senators who caucus with them.
The majority leader is then expected to substitute an amendment to expunge the House GOP provision to defund Obamacare. He is also expected at this point to file a cloture motion to limit debate and to use Senate rules to keep senators from proposing amendments.
Friday, Sept. 27: Debate
Saturday, Sept. 28: This is when a vote to end the debate is expected and Reid would again need 60 votes. The Senate would get a new 30 hours to debate.
Sunday, Sept. 29: The Senate is then expected to vote on two amendments that would only need a simple 51-vote majority. One would remove the anti-Obamacare language; the other would be for a "clean" spending bill or continuing resolution. The Senate would then send the clean CR to the House.
Monday, Sept. 30: The House would have until midnight to approve the Senate version of the CR. If not, come Tuesday it's "Good morning, government shutdown."
At Georgetown University this week, an outdoor religious display looks more like a public art installation than a commandment from the Torah, Judaism's holy book.
First, the basics: It's called a sukkah, a temporary dwelling — translated from Hebrew as a "booth" — where observant Jews traditionally eat and sleep during the weeklong harvest holiday of Sukkot.
The holiday, which began the night of Sept. 18, also pays homage to the 40 years during which the Israelites wandered in the desert, living in temporary structures.
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Oracle Team USA has successfully defended the America's Cup, leaving challenger New Zealand in its wake off San Francisco after clawing back from a seven-race deficit in one of the most spectacular comebacks in yachting history.
A week ago, it looked to be all over for the U.S., with Emirates Team New Zealand having built a seemingly unassailable lead and poised at one race away from taking the Auld Mug back to Wellington.
But Oracle Team USA, skippered by James Spithill, with Ben Ainslie in the tactician's seat, took the wind out of the Kiwi's momentum, finding the speed in their giant 72-foot foiling catamaran and outmaneuvering New Zealand on the course.
Member station KQED's Jon Brooks says:
"They said it over and over: at the end of the day, it's the faster boat that always wins. Oracle Team USA is that boat—it has just completed what has to be considered one of the greatest comebacks in all of sports history."
In Denmark, pigs outnumber people two to one. No traditional Danish meal would be complete without something wrapped in, wrapped around, or topped with pork.
In 2012, the country exported close to $6 billion in pig meat (a figure that includes "carcasses" which leads to the question: what does one do with a pig carcass?).
All this is by way of explaining the hubbub that erupted following a recent headline: "Daycares Ban Pork."
Over the summer, the Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet undertook a survey of public institutions and found that "at least 30" daycares had dropped pork from their menus so that children from different ethnic and religious backgrounds (primarily Muslim) would not have to queue up in different lunch lines. But 844 comments later, it became clear that many Danes thought this was a bad idea.
About a week later, the same paper revealed that a major hospital near Copenhagen had been serving —and continues to serve — only halal meat to patients (something it has been doing for "practical and economic reasons" for years now, according to the hospital's website). That one netted 1,047 comments.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who leads the country's center-left government, eventually joined the fray, insisting that Danish tradition should not be abandoned in public institutions, and that perhaps halal meat should be labeled as such, presumably so that qualmish Danes can avoid it. That proposition seems unlikely to go far, however, since labeling issues inevitably involve the 28-headed monster that is the European Union.
As the dust has settled, some have taken a second look at the so-called "meatball wars" (meatballs are traditionally made of minced pork here) and chalked it all up to a slow summer news cycle (something Danes have dubbed "cucumber season"). No news begets non-news.
But there is no question that this fight over what should fill children's plates has unearthed tensions buried (admittedly) not much deeper than Danish potatoes. The world became witness to the Danes' struggle with multiculturalism in 2005, when one newspaper insulted Islamic tradition (and caused riots) by publishing cartoons of Muhammad. Clearly, the issue of Muslim accommodation continues to simmer, and at least one political party is hoping to use that to its advantage.
The far-right Danish Peoples Party has emerged from the whole summer meatball mess with a tidy boost in the polls, and is likely to make special treatment of religious minorities a major theme in the upcoming municipal elections, to be held on Nov. 19.
According to Jyllands-Posten (the cartoon controversy newspaper), the idea of a "pork quota" was something given fairly serious consideration at a recent national party meeting. That is, a requirement that the menu at public institutions for the young and old contain at least 20 percent pig.
"People should have the freedom to live according to Islamic law," says Mikkel Dencker, the man behind the dream. "It's also fine with us that they don't want to eat pork. But there should be meatballs in daycare centers, and on those days they can eat more potatoes or side dishes."
That said, the quota seems unlikely to make it onto the national DPP platform, and was even voted down in Dencker's own municipality (the same one that houses the halal hospital).
But Dencker says the interest is there, so he is now setting his sights on a "less rigid" strategy for keeping the issue afloat.
"One thing we could do instead," he says "is write into the municipalities' food policies that dishes from other lands should be offered as supplements to, but never instead of, traditional Danish foods."
In Denmark, pigs outnumber people two to one. No traditional Danish meal would be complete without something wrapped in, wrapped around, or topped with pork.
In 2012, the country exported close to $6 billion in pig meat (a figure that includes "carcasses" which leads to the question: what does one do with a pig carcass?).
All this is by way of explaining the hubbub that erupted following a recent headline: "Daycares Ban Pork."
Over the summer, the Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet undertook a survey of public institutions and found that "at least 30" daycares had dropped pork from their menus so that children from different ethnic and religious backgrounds (primarily Muslim) would not have to queue up in different lunch lines. But 844 comments later, it became clear that many Danes thought this was a bad idea.
About a week later, the same paper revealed that a major hospital near Copenhagen had been serving —and continues to serve — only halal meat to patients (something it has been doing for "practical and economic reasons" for years now, according to the hospital's website). That one netted 1,047 comments.
Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who leads the country's center-left government, eventually joined the fray, insisting that Danish tradition should not be abandoned in public institutions, and that perhaps halal meat should be labeled as such, presumably so that qualmish Danes can avoid it. That proposition seems unlikely to go far, however, since labeling issues inevitably involve the 28-headed monster that is the European Union.
As the dust has settled, some have taken a second look at the so-called "meatball wars" (meatballs are traditionally made of minced pork here) and chalked it all up to a slow summer news cycle (something Danes have dubbed "cucumber season"). No news begets non-news.
But there is no question that this fight over what should fill children's plates has unearthed tensions buried (admittedly) not much deeper than Danish potatoes. The world became witness to the Danes' struggle with multiculturalism in 2005, when one newspaper insulted Islamic tradition (and caused riots) by publishing cartoons of Muhammad. Clearly, the issue of Muslim accommodation continues to simmer, and at least one political party is hoping to use that to its advantage.
The far-right Danish Peoples Party has emerged from the whole summer meatball mess with a tidy boost in the polls, and is likely to make special treatment of religious minorities a major theme in the upcoming municipal elections, to be held on Nov. 19.
According to Jyllands-Posten (the cartoon controversy newspaper), the idea of a "pork quota" was something given fairly serious consideration at a recent national party meeting. That is, a requirement that the menu at public institutions for the young and old contain at least 20 percent pig.
"People should have the freedom to live according to Islamic law," says Mikkel Dencker, the man behind the dream. "It's also fine with us that they don't want to eat pork. But there should be meatballs in daycare centers, and on those days they can eat more potatoes or side dishes."
That said, the quota seems unlikely to make it onto the national DPP platform, and was even voted down in Dencker's own municipality (the same one that houses the halal hospital).
But Dencker says the interest is there, so he is now setting his sights on a "less rigid" strategy for keeping the issue afloat.
"One thing we could do instead," he says "is write into the municipalities' food policies that dishes from other lands should be offered as supplements to, but never instead of, traditional Danish foods."
In my memory, Tarell Alvin McCraney's plays are weighted with silence. It fills the stage like a stone, so that even when characters are talking or singing or shouting, the emptiness echoes hard and heavy.
But that's mostly my perception, I think. Because really McCraney, who just won a MacArthur "genius" grant, writes plays that burst with songs and dances and elegant speeches.
In Choir Boy, which recently played Off Broadway, high-schoolers at an elite school for African-American boys filter their sexual and moral awakenings through their time in the choir, and the songs they sing are a window on their lives. When a young gay man and his homophobic classmate croon "Motherless Child," they leave reality for a moment, not necessarily hearing or seeing each other — but sharing a language all the same. It's a volatile scene about the ways we resemble our supposed enemies.
A MacArthur 'Genius' In The First Person
Tarell Alvin McCraney talks about shyness, speaking up — and rewriting Shakespeare.
With just six days to go before the federal government is due to run out of money, it's becoming increasingly clear that Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's fellow GOP colleagues aren't following his lead in the anti-Obamacare fight.
That fact alone raises the odds of avoiding a government shutdown next week. It doesn't mean a shutdown won't happen, but it largely removes one of the major stumbling blocks — at least in the Senate.
Led by Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, a number of GOP senators indicated they would vote to let the Senate proceed to consider the House-passed spending bill that contains language to defund the Affordable Care Act.
Senate Democrats were actually OK with that since they intended to vote against the House bill and strip out the provision to defund Obamacare and they have enough votes with Democrats alone to do all that.
Most Republicans were OK with it, too: It allowed them to vote for the House bill with its anti-Obamacare provision.
Cruz wanted Senate Republicans to filibuster the House bill — to stop it in its tracks — unless Senate Democrats agreed to weaken their ability to strip out the unfunding measure. "I intend to speak until I cannot stand," he said Tuesday on the Senate floor.
But it was mostly for show. Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, said Cruz's extended Senate floor speech wasn't really a filibuster because the vote to end debate and bring up the House bill would go on as scheduled.
And while Cruz vowed to continue until he could no longer stand, few other Republicans were standing with him. Republican Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and David Vitter of Louisiana were among the few. (And then there was Corner Guy.)
As McConnell told reporters Tuesday, Cruz wasn't attracting a lot of support from his fellow GOP senators because the Texas senator's complex strategy, among other things, made for murky messaging to voters.
"We'd all be hard-pressed to explain why we were opposed to a bill we were in favor of," McConnell said. Allowing the Senate to proceed to a vote "on a bill that defunds 'Obamacare,' it doesn't raise taxes and respects the Budget Control Act — it strikes me as a no-brainer.
"And so I'm not reluctant to explain voting for things that I'm for," McConnell said. "That's the way I see it. And I'm hopeful that a majority of the Republican conference will see it the same way."
What McConnell didn't have to say is that Cruz's strategy would also increase the chances of the dreaded government shutdown.
Also on Tuesday, Reid indicated one change Senate Democrats planned to make to the House bill — to have the period it covers end one month earlier, on Nov. 15, instead of Dec. 15.
Reid told reporters there was some Republican support for that move since it would give the Senate more incentive to reach agreement on appropriations bills and not rely on another stopgap measure. McConnell said he supported that plan.
Meanwhile, Reid hoped that Cruz's relative isolation in the Senate Republican Conference signaled that a critical mass of GOP senators might be more willing to work with Democrats than has been true recently.
"One thing is very clear," Reid said. "There are a number of Senate Republicans who recognize the Tea Party agenda is wrong for the country and wrong for their party. So I hope that these reasonable Republicans will prevail upon their colleagues in the next few days, so that we do not have to shut down the government."
It's Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013, which puts us five days away from a possible federal-government shutdown that would begin Oct. 1 if Congress fails to pass a stop-gap spending bill.
So the drama in the Senate over the spending bill leads the day's interesting political items and features Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. At this writing, Cruz was in the last gasps of an anti-Obamacare talkathon. That's where we start:
If you got a good night's sleep, you have at least that over Sen. Cruz. He spoke through the night on the Senate floor as he maintained an anti-Obamacare marathon floor speech (technically not a filibuster since he wasn't delaying a Senate vote on a must-pass spending bill to keep the federal government from shutting down next week.) Grasping for rhetorical filler at times, he even worked in Dr. Seuss's "Green Eggs and Ham" though somehow failed to get around to Tupac Shakur's "All Eyez On Me."
Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican known for his bluntness, called Cruz "a fraud," reports The New York Times's Jim Dwyer. King accused the senator of misleading many Republican voters into believing the Affordable Care Act could be de-funded if only other Republicans would support the Texan. King has presidential ambitions, as does, presumably Cruz.
Congressional Democrats see opportunity for political gains in what they see as Republican overreach in risking a government shutdown next week over Obamacare, Zachary A. Goldfarb writes in the Washington Post. Not only is Democratic confidence that it's likelier they will hold on to the Senate increasing, some are even suggesting Republicans are unwittingly setting the table for Democrats to retake the House — which almost no Congress watcher thinks will happen.
The battle royal of ten candidates to succeed Thomas Menino as Boston's next mayor was whittled down to two contenders writes Jim O'Sullivan and Patrick D. Rosso of the Boston Globe. Facing each other in a runoff in November will be Massachusetts state representative Martin Walsh (18.47 percent) and city councilor John Connolly (17.22 percent), who topped the field. Coming in third was C. Charlotte Golar (13.77 percent) who had hoped to become Boston's first woman and African American mayor.
A runoff in a Republican primary for Alabama's 1st Congressional District seat, a race our Adam Wollner paid attention to here at "It's All Politics" — in which a hatred of Obamacare has been an animating force — will pit mainstream conservative Bradley Byrne against Tea Party conservative Dean Young. Young also is the preferred candidate of the religious conservatives, writes George Talbot of the Alabama Media Group.
The hunters become the hunted, sort of, in California where paparazzi who take pictures not just of celebrities but of the children of the rich and famous will now be guilty of a misdemeanor for their snaps of the kids. Gov. Jerry Brown signed a new law that makes such photos illegal, writes Patrick McGreevy and Melanie Mason in the Los Angeles Times. Celebrities had lobbied for the law.
The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.
Authors Karen Russell and Donald Antrim are among 24 MacArthur "genius" fellows announced Wednesday morning (though the news leaked on Tuesday evening). The $625,000 grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation are awarded annually, with no strings attached, to "talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction." The foundation wrote that Antrim's "fiction and nonfiction are marked by a contrast between elegant, concise language and the disorienting chaos in which his characters find themselves. Antrim creates fictional worlds that are both commonplace and yet surreal, combining close observations of the banality of everyday life with the absurd." Karen Russell, whose 2011 novel Swamplandia! was a finalist for the Pulitzer, writes "haunting yet comic tales [that] blend fantastical elements with psychological realism and classic themes of transformation and redemption," according to the MacArthur Foundation. Russell told The Washington Post that the award couldn't have come at a better time: "The day after I learned about this, I had to get an emergency root canal, and I don't have dental insurance."
After Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man was banned from the library at North Carolina's Randleman High School, publisher Vintage Books donated copies to a local bookstore to be given away for free to high school students. Evan Smith Rakoff, a former North Carolina resident and editor at Poets & Writers, teamed up with Salon's Laura Miller to ask Vintage to donate the books. According to PBS, the school board is reconsidering its decision following an enormous public swell of support for the novel.
The New York Times asked authors Mohsin Hamid and Zoe Heller to debate the value of "likeable" characters in fiction. Hamind writes, "I'll confess — I read fiction to fall in love. ... In fiction, as in my nonreading life, someone didn't necessarily have to be likable to be lovable." Meanwhile, Heller worries that likeability is perceived as an "embarrassing solecism, committed only by low-rent writers and hopelessly nave readers." She says, "Likability in fictional characters is a complicated matter, but it isn't exclusively the concern of philistines and dolts."
Peter Matthiessen, co-founder of the Paris Review as well as a novelist and wilderness writer who has won three National Book Awards, is coming out with a new book this spring. According to the press release from Riverhead Books, In Paradise is "the story of a group of men and women come together for a weeklong meditation retreat at the site of a World War II concentration camp." Matthiessen wrote in the release: "At age 86, it may be my last word."
A.S. Byatt considers the Icelandic poet Sjn for The New York Review of Books: "Every now and then a writer changes the whole map of literature inside my head...I think of Icelanders as erudite, singular, tough, and uncompromising. Sjn is all these things, but he is also quicksilver, playful, and surreal. His pen name is an abbreviation of his full name, Sigurjn Birgir Sigursson — Sjn means sight."
Americans love bananas. Each year, we eat more bananas than any other fruit. But banana growers use a lot of pesticides — and those chemicals could be hurting wildlife. As a new study shows, the pesticides are ending up in the bodies of crocodiles living near banana farms in Costa Rica, where many of the bananas we eat are grown.
Of course, there's a reason why banana plantations rely heavily on pesticides. For one, banana trees are particularly susceptible to infestations, says Chris Wille, the chief of sustainable agriculture at the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance. He works with banana growers to help them reduce the amount of pesticides they use.
Second, most plantations are in the tropics, "where there are a lot more kinds of pests and in abundance," he says.
And insects aren't the only problem there. There are worms and fungi, too.
"When you see pictures of airplanes spraying banana farms, they're spraying for airborne fungal disease called Black Sigatoka, which can devastate a plantation in a matter of a week or so," says Wille.
Many of Costa Rica's banana plantations are in the remote northeastern region, at the headwaters of the Rio Suerte. The area is full of streams and canals, flowing past the banana farms and into protected rain forests that are part of the Tortuguero Conservation Area.
Paul Grant, a wildlife biologist at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, went there to investigate whether pesticides are hurting local wildlife.
"In the past, I have witnessed and a lot of the locals have pointed out that there have been massive fish kills as a result of pesticide exposure in high levels," says Grant.
He wanted to know whether these pesticides are also ending up in animals that eat the fish. In particular, he was interested in a small crocodile called a spectacled caiman (so named because a bony ridge between its eyes makes it look like it's wearing eyeglasses). These caimans live in the Tortuguero Conservation Area, which is just downstream from the banana farms. The animal is considered a threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Grant wanted to test caimans because they are long-lived animals and are top predators in the ecosystem. "A lot of the pesticides will wind up at the top of the food chain," he says.
He collected blood samples from 14 adult caimans. Some of the animals lived closer to plantations and others farther downstream, in more remote, pristine areas.
He and his colleagues analyzed the blood samples for 70 different pesticides. The results concerned him.
The samples contained nine pesticides, of which only two are currently in use. The remaining seven are "historic organic pollutants," says Grant.
These are pesticides like DDT, dieldrin, and endosulfan — chemicals that have been banned, some of them for nearly a decade. But they persist in the environment and build up in the bodies of animals.
These chemicals are also found in significant levels in all sorts of aquatic mammals, including crocodiles in the U.S. and whales and seals in different parts of the world.
The overall levels of pesticides in the Costa Rican caimans in comparison were modest, says Peter Ross, an environmental scientist at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, also an author of this study.
Still, he says there was some indication that the chemicals may be harming the caiman.
"What was revealing to me was the fact that the caiman that were near the banana plantations had not only higher concentrations of pesticides, but also they were in a poorer state of health relative to the caiman in more pristine, remote areas," says Ross.
Ross and his colleagues have published their findings in the latest issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.
There's an important lesson here, says Wille of the Rainforest Alliance.
"You know, we're now reckoning with the problem left by past use of highly toxic, highly persistent pesticides," he says. "So, what plantations must avoid now is leaving similar toxic legacies for the next generation to deal with."
Especially as the demand for bananas has been growing worldwide, and farms move toward more intensive methods of cultivation.
From vacant lots to vertical "pinkhouses," urban farmers are scouring cities for spaces to grow food. But their options vary widely from place to place.
While farmers in post-industrial cities like Detroit and Cleveland are claiming unused land for cultivation, in New York and Chicago, land comes at a high premium. That's why farmers there are increasingly eyeing spaces that they might not have to wrestle from developers: rooftops that are already green.
The green-roof movement has slowly been gaining momentum in recent years, and some cities have made them central to their sustainability plans. The city of Chicago, for instance, boasts that 359 roofs are now partially or fully covered with vegetation, which provides all kinds of environmental benefits — from reducing the buildings' energy costs to cleaning the air to mitigating the urban heat island effect.
Late this summer, Chicago turned a green roof into its first major rooftop farm. At 20,000 square feet, it's the largest soil-based rooftop farm in the Midwest, according to the Chicago Botanic Garden, which maintains the farm through its Windy City Harvest program.
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We're kicking off a new fall TV season this week. A generation ago, even less, that was cause for major media focus, as new shows from the broadcast networks jockeyed for attention and position while old favorites returned with new episodes. Also back then, the Emmys were a celebration of the best, and clips from the nominated shows reminded you just why they were considered the best of the best.
But now? In 2013? All bets are off.
I'll end the suspense right off by declaring that, once again this season, the broadcast networks haven't come up with one single show that absolutely, positively has to be added to your watch list. Oh, there are a handful of good ones, or promising ones, but not one that arrives so perfectly made out of the box that it sticks the landing the way Lost once did. These days, it feels like the broadcast networks are the ones who are lost, trying to straddle the territory between edgy, new-school cable shows and comfy, old-school broadcast ones.
Some of the best new shows of the season — on broadcast television, at least — you may have sampled already. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a comedy cop show on Fox teaming Saturday Night Live veteran Andy Samberg with Homicide: Life on the Street vet Andre Braugher, started Sept. 17 and is enjoyable precisely because of that odd-couple pairing.
The Blacklist, a very Silence of the Lambs-ish NBC drama, stars James Spader as a mysterious career criminal advising a rookie FBI profiler. That show started Monday, and is much better than that description makes it sound.
NBC also has The Michael J. Fox Show, which returns the beloved star to the weekly sitcom form. The first few episodes aren't as rich or funny as I'd like, but there's no denying it's a treat to watch this actor again, and it's the sort of show I expect will find its legs quickly.
Over on CBS, there's another show bringing back a hot sitcom star from the '80s: Robin Williams, who plays a fast-talking ad executive in a sitcom called The Crazy Ones. Like Fox's show, it's not as amusing as it should be, but shows plenty of potential.
Television
Fall TV: A Whole Lot Of Trouble On The Home Front
On why schools like Virginia Tech, which has one of the best player graduation rates in the industry, don't brag about their success
You never hear that because that's bad for business. The NCAA doesn't want to talk about graduation rates. Division I football players [have an] overall graduation rate of 55 percent. That's not only below students at the comparable universities as a whole — football players should graduate at a higher rate. They get five years. They don't have to pay for college. They get special tutoring. It's never mentioned by the NCAA or any of its partner networks because it's bad for business. Three years ago, Stanford and Virginia Tech met in the Orange Bowl. That game was the highest combined graduation rate in football bowl history, and neither the network nor the NCAA said anything about it. They want the bar to be kept low.
... [Virginia Tech has] 20 consecutive winning seasons at the big-deal football level and 77 percent graduation rate ... for its football players. Very admirable track record. Most colleges don't have admirable track records. Some places, it's terrible. LSU, when they won the national championship five years ago — their football graduation rate was 44 percent. But did you hear that on ESPN? Fox? CBS? Of course not.
More from Gregg Easterbrook
There's a showdown underway in Congress.
The Republican-controlled House has voted to keep the government running only if the Affordable Care Act is defunded, and the Democratic-controlled Senate isn't likely to go along with that plan. If the two sides can't resolve their differences by Oct. 1, the U.S. government will shut down.
We asked you what you wanted to know about the potential government shutdown, and journalists from NPR's Washington Desk tracked down the answers:
I'd like to know the definition of "shutdown," and the consequences of such. — Alex Larson
Unless Congress agrees on a continuing resolution to fund government programs by Sept. 30, the federal government will no longer have the authority to spend money, leading to a partial shutdown of the government.
Now, "partial" is the key word here, because some programs and spending will continue — Social Security and Medicare, for instance. They fall under the rubric of mandatory spending, along with food stamps and unemployment insurance. Those are all programs that are more or less on autopilot and do not rely on annual appropriations bills to keep operating. So Grandma or Dad or older baby boomers do not have to worry; those checks will keep on coming.
Other spending that's exempt from a shutdown: active duty military, Border Patrol and air traffic controllers. According to a memo released by the White House Office of Management and Budget, funding will continue for those functions "necessary to the discharge of the President's constitutional duties and powers" (the military part) or if the "suspension of the function would imminently threaten the safety of human life or the protection of property" (air traffic controllers, Border Patrol).
However, civilian Pentagon employees and hundreds of thousands of other federal workers are not so lucky. According to a memo from the Pentagon, "while military personnel would continue in a normal duty status, a large number of our civilian employees would be temporarily furloughed." So would employees in a range of agencies from the IRS to the National Park Service.
So that weekend trip to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park? If the government shuts down, so will the parks.
— Brian Naylor
Does the shutdown mean that Congress won't be paid? — @mocolvin
Members of Congress will get paid in the event of a shutdown. That is because they fall under the category of "essential" personnel. The last time the government faced a serious threat of shuttering, in 2011, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would prevent Congress and the president from receiving paychecks during a shutdown. The House never took up the measure. In January, at the beginning of the new legislative year, Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, both Democrats, introduced their bill again. The full Senate has not taken up the measure.
Whether or not congressional staffers get checks during a shutdown is a little bit harder to discern. The general thinking is that most staffers are considered "nonessential" personnel and therefore won't be paid. Based on what took place during the 1995 and 1996 shutdowns, staffers — along with most other federal employees — got paid retroactively for days missed once the government reopened. It is not clear whether staffers would receive retroactive pay this time around. According to Barry Anderson, who was assistant director for budget at the Office of Management and Budget during the last shutdown, the number of people deemed essential or nonessential can be fluid. "During a short shutdown, you may not need to do certain things. But the longer it goes, more people may be deemed 'essential' over time."
— Brakkton Booker
If there's a shutdown, what's the effect on Obamacare rollout? Do the [people] running the new exchanges get laid off? — @21stProgressive
In general, the Affordable Care Act — whose health exchanges are set to launch Oct. 1, which would be the first day of any government shutdown — would be largely unaffected. That's because most of the law's funding does not come from annual appropriations, which are what is at issue in the current budget standoff.
In the 17 states that are operating their own exchanges, a shutdown will have almost no visible impact. "The D.C. exchange would not be affected at all by a government shutdown," said Richard Sorian, communications director for D.C. Health Link, the exchange for the District of Columbia. "We already have our funding and we're ready to open as scheduled on Oct. 1."
The other 34 states have exchanges that are being run in whole or part by the federal government. In 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a document in anticipation of a possible shutdown that noted that employees building the health exchanges were not subject to furlough, because their funding came from money already provided under the Affordable Care Act. HHS officials have not yet said that those who will be operating the exchanges are also protected should the government shut down, although it is assumed that will continue to be the case. Congress has refused to provide any new funding for the law since it passed in 2010.
— Julie Rovner
Will I still be able to get a passport? — @quozimodo
Passports and visas will not be issued if a shutdown comes to fruition. During the last shutdown, a daily backlog of 20,000 to 30,000 applications by foreigners for visas went unprocessed. And some 200,000 passport applications did not get processed, according to the Congressional Research Service. Richard Moose, who was undersecretary of state for management during the Clinton administration's shutdown, said the bar was extremely high for getting a passport processed while the government was closed. "It would have to have been somebody who had to travel for medical purposes or someone who could persuade us that they were going abroad on defense business or with one of the intelligence agencies."
If that doesn't apply to you, expect long delays.
— Brakkton Booker
A brief and abstract chronicle of some of Tuesday's more interesting political stories, the kinds of stories that might get people who like politics talking around a water cooler, if people still did that sort of thing.
Conventional wisdom in Washington is that the Republican brand stands to take a politically painful hit with voters if there's a government shutdown since that's what happened in the 1990s. Some conservative Republicans beg to differ, writes Alexandra Jaffe in The Hill. Are these people whistling past the graveyard? Maybe.
Three House Republican leaders of the past told National Journal's Jill Lawrence that the House's current leaders have it far tougher than they did, though they gave varying reasons why. Former Speaker Dennis Hastert isn't as sanguine as the aforementioned conservatives interviewed by The Hill. If House Republicans achieve little that resembles governing, "we're going to lose our majority," he says. He should know; it happened to him in 2006.
In a New York magazine profile of Hillary Clinton by writer Joe Hagan, the former secretary of state comes off as working hard to portray herself as temporarily above the partisan fray as the jockeying for 2016 roils around her. The image the piece brings to mind is of a political swan, all grace above the water's surface but paddling furiously beneath it.
If Democrat Terry McAuliffe goes on to win the Virginia race for governor, it will be largely on the votes of women who according to a new poll now prefer him by 24 percentage points over Republican Ken Cuccinelli, the state's current lieutenant governor. (A poll in May found them tied for women.) Cuccinelli's conservative abortion views and the McAuliffe campaign's efforts to paint Cuccinelli as a three-star general in the so-called Republican war on women have apparently taken a heavy toll on the Republican.
With Obamacare set to start enrolling individuals next week, Politico's Jennifer Haberkorn and Carrie Budoff Brown remind us that the program falls significantly short of its creators' hopes when President Obama signed it into law in 2010. Large employers were given a year's delay before they must provide insurance, and dozens of states have refused to set up exchanges, for instance.
Former President George W. Bush defends President Obama from critics who accuse the present Oval Office occupant of spending too much time golfing. "I know the pressures of the job. To be able to get outside and play golf with some of your pals is important for the president. It does give you an outlet," the former president told a Golf Channel interviewer. Now, watch this drive.
Just a week before the federal government could shut down if no agreement is reached to fund it past the end of September, it's anyone's guess whether Democrats and Republicans will avoid plunging over this particular cliff.
More certain, however, is that if a shutdown happens over Obamacare and Republicans wind up taking the heat, many GOP fingers of blame will point squarely at Sen. Ted Cruz.
The Texas Republican will likely become the face of the 2013 shutdown, just as Newt Gingrich became the poster boy of two government shutdowns of the mid-1990s.
What we're seeing, in part, is the distrust and lack of loyalty that runs in both directions when a group of relatively new members of Congress, with a grass-roots political base that scorns the establishment, operates independently of and often at odds with the party's more traditionalist members.
Today, it's the Tea Party movement that helped Cruz get elected. Three decades ago, it was the large post-Watergate class of freshmen Democrats elected in 1974 who drove more senior Democrats crazy with their impertinent demands that party elders be more accountable to them.
There's something else going on as well. As in most workplaces, lawmakers tend to have more respect for colleagues they perceive as workhorses rather than show horses. Cruz is certainly getting a reputation for being more the latter than the former (see David Brooks' comments during a recent PBS Newshour segment.)
Overlaying all that are the very real concerns held by more experienced Republicans that Cruz's defund-Obamacare-or-bust approach, as laid out in his Real Clear Politics op-ed Monday, will do more harm than good for the Republican brand, as in the 1990s.
That's how you get Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, letting it be known that he parts company with Cruz on strategy. And that's despite McConnell needing to watch his right flank as he runs for re-election.
It's also how you get to Arizona Sen. John McCain tweeting links to opinion pieces from an economist who advised his 2008 presidential campaign and a syndicated conservative radio talk show host. Both share McCain's view that Cruz is the leader of a political-party suicide mission.
And it's how you get Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee swiping at Cruz for being smart enough to have two Ivy League degrees but not politically savvy enough to avoid a fight the Texan can't win and that could cost the party plenty.
It's also how you get Karl Rove saying on Fox News saying that Cruz and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah didn't win any friends among Senate Republicans by communicating their Obamacare strategy through the media, not in face-to-face meetings. Rove said:
"You cannot build a congressional majority in either party for any kind of action, unless you're treating your colleagues with some or certain amount of respect and saying, 'Hey, what do you think of my idea?' and instead, they have dictated to their colleagues through the media, and through public statements, and not consulted them about this strategy at all."
Miami-based Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise operator, reported a third quarter profit nearly a third lower than a year ago following a series of embarrassing and deadly mishaps involving its ships.
Carnival turned a $934 million profit for the period June through August, down 30 percent from the same quarter in 2012.
The company owns several cruise lines, including Carnival, Holland America, Princess and Costa, whose Costa Concordia liner wrecked on the Tuscan coast last year, killing 32 people. Carnival also has had its share of problems, including fires and power outages at sea that became public relations disasters for the parent company.
Carnival Chairman Micky Arison acknowledged Tuesday that it could take as long as three years for the company's brand and reputation to rebound from the Costa Concordia wreck and other problems.
"There are a lot of great brands that have had setbacks, and they've recovered ... but the economic situation in southern Europe isn't helping," Arison said at a news conference Tuesday in London, according to Reuters.
"Costa is already beginning to recover, studies of acceptance suggest it [the brand] has recovered nicely," Arison said, according to the news agency. He added that it would take "two to three years" to get the brand back to where it was.
Arison's comments come a week after the completion of a massive operation to right the capsized Costa Corcordia, which had been lying on its side since the accident in January. The liner's captain is on trial in Italy on charges of manslaughter and abandoning his stricken vessel.
Testifying on Monday, Capt. Francesco Schettino blamed the ship's helmsman for steering the wrong way as he tried unsuccessfully to avoid hitting a reef off the coast of the island of Giglio.
On Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, Schettino got "some support during his trial from an unexpected corner: representatives of the tragedy's many victims."
" 'Schettino is the only defendant, but he's not the only one responsible,' said Daniele Bocciolini, a lawyer for several survivors in a civil suit attached to the criminal trial, according to the news agency. 'He's not responsible for the lifeboats that couldn't be launched nor for the emergency generators' that failed."
President Obama's health care law has so far survived challenges in Congress and the courts. But its biggest test could begin next week. That's when the online marketplaces offering health care coverage to the uninsured are set to start signing people up. The question is, will they come?
Of the uninsured surveyed by NBC and the Wall Street Journal this month, only about one in three said they're likely to use the exchanges. Obama is trying to make the argument that signing up is a good deal: "In many states across the country, if you're say a 27-year-old young woman, don't have health insurance, you get on that exchange, you're going to be able to purchase high-quality health insurance for less than the cost of your cell phone bill."
The White House is enlisting nurses, ministers, celebrities, even radio DJs to help spread that message. On Tuesday, Obama got some help from former President Bill Clinton. The two leaders sat side by side in a pair of overstuffed armchairs at the Clinton Global Initiative for a televised — if somewhat wonky — conversation about health care economics.
It's the nature of insurance, Obama said, for healthy people to subsidize those who need more care. Clinton says that's why it's important to get healthy young people enrolled in the insurance exchanges.
"This only works, for example, if young people show up," said Clinton. "We've got to have them in the pools. Because otherwise all these projected low costs cannot be held if older people with pre-existing conditions are disproportionately represented in any given state."
Clinton understands those economics, having launched his own, unsuccessful push for universal coverage 20 years ago this week. Obama got further, pushing his bill through Congress, but he notes the battle to implement the law is far from over: "Let's face it, it's been a little political, this whole Obamacare thing."
The administration is now using social media and other tactics honed during the president's re-election campaign to promote enrollment in the health care exchanges. Obama acknowledges they're battling a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz mounted by the president's critics.
"Those who have opposed the idea of universal health care in the first place and have fought this thing tooth and nail through Congress and through the courts and so forth, have been trying to scare and discourage people from getting a good deal," said Obama.
Congressional Republicans also continue to challenge the law, which was passed over their unanimous opposition in 2010. Despite the battle being waged within the Republican ranks right now over tactics like the filibuster and a threatened government shutdown, Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell says his party is united in its opposition to the health care overhaul.
"Obamacare hasn't even been fully implemented yet but we can already see the train wreck headed our way," said McConnell. "Major companies have been dropping the health care plans their employees have and like. And every week it seems there are new reports about glitches that will hurt families, compromise personal information, or expose the American people to fraud."
The administration has been forced to delay some elements of the law, including a requirement that large employers provide health care coverage or pay a penalty.
On the plus side, Clinton noted Tuesday the growth in health care costs has slowed dramatically in recent years, though analysts are unsure what's behind the change. Obama says if U.S. health care costs could be brought in line with other countries, it would largely fix the federal deficit and make U.S. employers more competitive.
"This has everything to do with the economy, in addition to what I consider to be the moral imperative that a mom should not have to go bankrupt if her son or daughter gets sick," said Obama.
Obama plans to deliver another health care speech Thursday, as the countdown to enrollment continues.
Imagine running power lines through a cathedral. That's how archaeologists describe what the Bonneville Power Administration proposes doing in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington state. The federal electricity provider is trying to string a new transmission line near a cave that contains ancient paintings, a site considered sacred by Native Americans.
The paintings are inside a tall cave on a rocky hillside in Wishram, Wash. Four humanlike figures were painted in red hundreds or even thousands of years ago. And that's not all.
"There's actually a very complex picture on this wall. You can see little elements of it over here in a different color," says Mike Taylor, an amateur archaeologist who helped write a book on Columbia River rock art. He says for generations, Northwest tribes have used this place for vision quests and other spiritual ceremonies. They still do. In fact, it's so sensitive, the nearby Yakama Nation declined to speak on tape about this cave. Taylor says it's rare to find one still intact.
"In the rest of the world, a lot of people know about the painted caves in France and Spain, which were painted 15,000 to 30,000 years ago. To us here, this is about as close as we get from an archaeological perspective to anything like that," he says.
The site lies along the path of transmission lines carrying electricity from vast wind turbine farms upriver to the Western electrical grid. The BPA proposes building a new 243-foot tower near here to carry even more cables across the Columbia River.
But not if Robert Zornes, the owner of the property, has anything to do with it.
"If we can stop Bonneville, it will send a message that these cultural sites are worth protecting," Zornes says.
Zornes is playing David to the BPA's Goliath. The agency has already done studies, gathered comments and begun construction elsewhere along the planned line. But progress stalled after Zornes invited archaeologists from the Yakama Nation to study the cave. They ended up filing a range of objections, and they are currently negotiating ways to protect not just the cave but the wider historical landscape. BPA spokesman Doug Johnson says his agency is committed to preserving culturally sensitive spots for tribes.
"And we're going to work through the issues that they have and then make sure that they're consistent with our goal to bolster our transmission system and do it. But we want to make sure we do it right," Johnson says.
Similar controversies have sprung up elsewhere. Last spring in the Mojave Desert, the discovery of ancient remains delayed a big solar energy development. And many tribes have been wary of the proposed Keystone pipeline out of concern it would disrupt cultural sites along its 1,700-mile route.
"It's the ongoing problem of trying to push through these energy projects quickly, at the same time protecting these cultural and natural resources," says Allyson Brooks, the state of Washington's chief preservationist.
The latest dispute over the BPA power project is whether the site where the tower would go is eligible as an official Lewis and Clark landmark. The explorers came through here in 1805. The BPA hopes to settle that and other conflicts soon so construction on the new transmission line can resume this fall.
Sunny Pettinati walked into the L.L. Bean store in Yonkers, N.Y., clutching a plastic bag and looking a little embarrassed.
"I'm returning a sweater that I purchased, I think, about 10 years ago," she said.
The sweater had sat in a drawer, unworn, for years, and she was trying her luck with the store's famously lenient return policy.
It turned out to be painless. A few taps on the keyboard, and the saleswoman handed her a gift card worth the full value of the sweater.
L.L. Bean has an astonishingly lenient return policy. The company has taken back a live Christmas wreath that had turned brown and a shirt ripped by a rescue crew after a car accident. My own Planet Money colleague, Lisa Chow, has been returning her L.L. Bean backpacks for two decades whenever a zipper breaks. She's gone through three or four backpacks this way. Every time, they send her a new one free.
I asked Steve Fuller, L.L. Bean's chief marketing officer, if Lisa was gaming the company's system. He was a model of nonjudgment. "If she believes her zippers should last a longer time, we'll respect that and we'll refund her money or give her a new product until she's happy," he said.
L.L. Bean customers seem more worried than Fuller about the return habits of their fellow shoppers. "A customer will come to the desk after watching a return, and she or he will say: 'I can't believe you're taking this back. I hope these people aren't ruining it for the rest of us,' " Fuller said.
L.L. Bean competitor REI used to have a return policy like L.L. Bean's. "I've seen some 15-year-old shoes that went directly into the trash in a toxic waste bag," Tim Spangler, REI's senior vice president for stores, told me.
But REI began to worry it was getting a reputation as a sucker. Customers started giving it nicknames like "Rental Equipment Inc." "Rent Every Item" was another. Some called it "Return Every Item."
Two years ago, REI noticed that the number of people returning really old stuff was increasing. Some customers talked about their returns on social media, which led to even more people bringing in their old junk to get refunds. It was hurting profits.
After intense debate and customer surveys, Spangler and his team unveiled a new policy: From now on, you get only a year to return your stuff.
"I don't want to be in the business of looking somebody in the eye behind the counter and questioning the morality of their return," Spangler said. "I want to be able to say, 'Look, it's outside the confines of what we agreed upon when you bought it, or it's within it, and we're going to take care of you,' and leave it at that."
For his part, Fuller of L.L. Bean says his company is sticking to its policy. He says he's never been in a meeting where someone questioned the value of the guarantee. The only question he gets is whether the company talks about it enough.
If anything, L.L. Bean seems to be welcoming the customers REI might be willing to let go. Behind its store counters, the guarantee is written in giant text. And there are a few reasons why this may be better business for L.L. Bean. Many of its sales are mail order, so it's less convenient for customers to return stuff. And, Fuller says, the crazy return stories are great marketing for the company.
"How many times has your colleague talked about the fact that she's returned that backpack, and L.L. Bean gave her a new one without question?" Fuller said. "That's really the value of the guarantee."
As a business practice, it's expensive. As advertising, it's cheap.
Sales of its new iPhone 5s and 5c models have surpassed other iPhone releases and exceeded initial supply, Apple says. The company says it has sold 9 million of the phones since their launch on Friday and that "many online orders" will ship in coming weeks.
"This is our best iPhone launch yet — more than nine million new iPhones sold — a new record for first weekend sales," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a Monday press release. He added that "while we've sold out of our initial supply of iPhone 5s, stores continue to receive new iPhone shipments regularly."
As Apple notes, the phones went on sale Friday in the United States as well as in many parts of Europe and Asia, including China. That was a departure from previous releases, in which American consumers were able to buy their smartphones weeks or even months ahead of the international market.
The news led Apple to brighten its own predictions for sales in the current financial quarter, which ends this month.
As Reuters reports:
"Apple tweaked its financial forecast to reflect the higher sales, an unusual move for the company. It said revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter would be near the high end of its previous forecast of $34 billion to $37 billion."