MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
In Iowa today, presidential candidates of both parties are kicking off the New Year in full campaign mode. One topic of the day is a new Des Moines Register poll that brought good news for Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee and spurred protest from their rivals. We'll hear about the campaigns for the White House in this part of the program. And then, a bit about what is ahead for the current president in 2008.
First, we turn to NPR's David Greene in Oskaloosa, Iowa. He's at the Smokey Row Coffee House and he joins us now.
David, tell us a little bit about this Des Moines Register poll. It looks different from others we've been seeing in recent days.
DAVID GREENE: It does. We have been seeing some tight races in other polls, Michele. But this poll shows that on the Democratic side, Barack Obama is at 32 percent; Hillary Clinton, 25 percent; John Edwards, 24. So Obama has opened a bit of a lead, if you believe this poll. On the Republican side, we see Mike Huckabee. He has now opened a bit of a lead over Mitt Romney. Huckabee at 32. Romney at 26.
NORRIS: In fact, Hillary Clinton is actually ahead in some of those other polls - the CNN and the Zogby poll. How does something like this affect the campaigns? Do they change their behavior based on these polls?
GREENE: Well, that's one of the big questions. A poll like this coming late in the game, you know, there are a lot of undecided voters out there who are thinking about which candidates are viable, which candidates are electable. And you know, even if the poll itself, you could debate whether it's accurate, whether it's not accurate, how it compares to other polls. But the Des Moines Register having big headlines saying Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are the frontrunners, I think it's a question as to how that psychologically will affect the people who are going to be caucusing on Thursday. And certainly, that the behavior of the candidate's - a candidate like Barack Obama tries to feed off the energy from the poll. He had a rally in Des Moines this morning, sounding very confident. Here's a bit of what Obama had to say.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois): Ten months later, Iowa, you have vindicated my faith in the American people.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. OBAMA: Ten months later, my bet has paid off.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. OBAMA: Ten months later, we stand on the brink of doing something very, very special right here in Iowa.
GREENE: And Michele, the Hillary Clinton campaign has asked a lot of questions about whether this poll was done well, whether it accurately reflects what's going on in Iowa. And Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's chief strategist, put out a memo to reporters, basically saying voters should understand this is a very close race. So they're trying to make sure that voters don't take too much from this poll in the Register.
NORRIS: Now, we've been talking about some of the perceived frontrunners in this race. What about those candidates that are not included in that tier - not considered to be a frontrunner? What does this do to them? How do they handle this?
GREENE: Well, that's - it's an interesting question because you have these other candidates who are in single digits in a lot of the polls, who are still out here, you know, hitting the pavement hard. Driving through snowy roads to get to places and talk to voters. I'm actually here in Oskaloosa. I just listened to Bill Richardson and he's just begging voters not to take their cue from the national headlines. Here's a little bit of what Richardson had to say.
Governor BILL RICHARDSON (Republican, New Mexico): And my plea to you is this. Don't let the national media decide who's going to be the top winner or who is, right now, the frontrunners. It should be you. And that's why I'm going everywhere. And I've been doing this for a year. Again, this is my second visit here. And I love Iowa's small towns. I got a nice cup of coffee last time I was here. And I hope to do that again.
NORRIS: So he was talking to maybe a few dozen voters here in Oskaloosa. And you know a candidate like Richardson, Michele, he says that if he finishes, you know, third or a strong fourth, he goes into New Hampshire with a little bit of momentum. He hopes he can keep that momentum until we get to some of the western states voting - closer to his state of New Mexico.
Then you look on the Republican side, a candidate like John McCain, who is in third - a distant third - behind Huckabee and Romney. But if he were to finish a strong third, he goes to New Hampshire, where he has more support. And you could see him getting some momentum. So a lot of the candidates is not necessarily looking at the one or two slot coming out of Iowa.
GREENE: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: Thank you, David.
GREENE: That was NPR's David Greene, speaking to us from the Smokey Row Coffee House in Oskaloosa, Iowa.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
While the race for the White House is heating up, it's worth remembering that President Bush still has a year to go in his second term. And New Year's day is a good time to look ahead to the challenges and the opportunities that are in front of him.
To help us with that, we're joined by Michael Gerson. He's a former adviser and speechwriter for President Bush. He's now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Welcome, Michael.
Mr. MICHAEL GERSON (Roger Hertog Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations): Thank you.
NORRIS: And also with us is Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of The New Republic. And he is also with the Council on Foreign Relations.
Happy New Year, Peter.
Mr. PETER BEINART (Editor-at-large, The New Republic; Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations): Happy New Year.
NORRIS: Now, let's break this into two parts - foreign and domestic concerns. And let's start overseas, and let's start with Pakistan. It's at the top of the news these days with Benazir Bhutto's assassination and the chaos and the violence that has followed.
Michael, I'm going to begin with you. How big of a concern will this be for President Bush in this coming year?
Mr. GERSON: Well, it could hardly be a bigger concern. I mean, this is a proliferation risk, a risk from al-Qaida and the Taliban. The stakes could hardly be higher and it seems to be coming down to a CSI-like investigation to determine whether the government was either complicit or incompetent. And both of those are bad for Musharraf. And so it matters greatly because what happens in Afghanistan is so closely tied with Pakistan as well. I think it's an interesting moment because we may see in this coming year, against all expectation, that Afghanistan may be a bigger problem than Iraq moving forward.
NORRIS: Peter, are the current events - do the current events in Pakistan pose a test for the White House? And how might the president's relationship with Pervez Musharraf change in the coming year?
Mr. BEINART: I think they do pose a quite fascinating test. I mean, the fascinating parallel, in some ways, is to the dilemmas that the Carter administration faced near the end of its term - having to do with the shah in Iran. It's interesting - the conservative foreign policy has, in somewhat degree, been shaped around the debates about that decision. And now, in Pakistan, it seems to me, the Bush administration faces a version of the same dilemma. How much pressure does it put on Pervez Musharraf, not knowing what the alternatives would bring? And I think, to some degree, it's a test of how much George W. Bush really believes in his own rhetoric about America being willing to take risks in crucial countries to push for democracy even though we don't know what would follow - the kind of pro-American autocrat.
NORRIS: Now, beyond Pakistan, other major challenges the president will face overseas, Michael.
Mr. GERSON: Well, I think the continuing challenge in Sudan. I think this is an issue that the president wants to be part of his legacy. He's focused on it directly and personally. But the situation there is deeply complicated. And you have an irresponsible rebel movement that's been attacking the AU forces there. You have a government that, you know, slows up the process whenever there's an attempt to solve the security situation in Darfur. But the outcome is very important for two million refugees that remain in camps in that country.
NORRIS: Gentlemen, we've been talking about foreign policy. We have not really spent much time talking about Iraq. If the president were to leave office today, he could point to progress on his way out the door and looking at the surge and the drop in violence that has happened because of that. But he still has a year to go so, just quickly, what do we expect will happen with regard to Iraq?
Mr. GERSON: Well, I think it's going to be - we're going to begin to see troop withdrawals, which you saw by the end of the year. I think that's three to five thousand. That's going to continue. I think we'll have a period of three months in the new year where there won't be many withdrawals but then there'll be a lot of assessment done. There's supposed to be a report to the president on continuing withdrawals. And then we'll see how the security situation holds up when those troops are withdrawn. And we also are going to have a status of forces agreements with Iraqis themselves. They're going to have a larger voice in the way that troops are deployed and the role that they play. And that's going to be an interesting question as well.
NORRIS: You hope that we will have that.
Mr. GERSON: Yeah. I think that that's likely, though.
NORRIS: Peter, the president has to prepare to pass the baton to the next commander in chief, particular on military matters and Iraq. What do you think he does in the next year?
Mr. BEINART: Well, I think that the critical decision, I think, will be what number of troops he goes down to. Does he follow the troop withdrawal this spring with more troop withdrawals? I think the Bush administration would very dearly like to see the next president, even if it was a Democrat, basically, continue the policy that they are pursuing on Iraq without radical troop withdrawals. You know, they're often - the Bush administration analogizes itself to the Truman administration and I think that the Truman administration was vindicated when the Eisenhower administration continued the policy containment.
NORRIS: Let's turn to the home front and domestic issues. It seems, like here in the U.S., the economy could be a major issue for the president particular with the subprime mortgage crisis and the next quarterly report that we expect to see.
How will this issue, in particular, affect the president's domestic agenda, Peter?
Mr. BEINART: I think, it's going to be quite significant. It's hard in the last year of a president's term to accomplish a lot on the domestic scene. Historically, you've seen that presidents have turned to focus abroad because they have a freer hand and, particularly, obviously, at a time when Democrats now control Congress.
And Bush made a big effort at some domestic achievements: immigration, social security, partial privatization. And now, with those having failed, it seems to me that it's hard to think that you could have a very - ambitious domestic agenda. But one thing to look at, I think, would be No Child Left Behind. It hasn't been reauthorized. That was a very significant part of Bush's first term agenda, and in the whole way he framed compassionate conservatism.
I would imagine for the White House getting that reauthorized, which, right now, looks very, very iffy, I think, would be an important thing.
Mr. GERSON: You know, I agree with that. I think, the time for major domestic initiatives has probably passed. But I do think that holding onto the gains of No Child Left Behind will be an important, you know, achievement for the president's legacy. That is a case where the constituencies of the Democratic Party in their primaries and caucuses particularly the education, union constituencies are so deeply opposed to No Child Left Behind.
NORRIS: A major applause line…
Mr. GERSON: Right.
NORRIS: …on the campaign trail.
Mr. GERSON: Exactly. But, of course, that's happening at the same that No Child Left Behind is beginning to show some significant results for minorities and closing the gap between minorities and whites on both reading and math. And those are the first gains that we've seen in some of those indicators in 40 years.
NORRIS: Now, the president, as I understand, does not like talk about legacy or, you know, people already talking about him in the past tense. But I have to ask both of you what you think his legacy will be in the short term and, also, in the long term. Because things change when you have the benefit of time and you look back years hence. And Peter, I'm going to begin with you.
Mr. BEINART: Well, the obvious one is the decision to make the invasion of Iraq the single biggest fact about how America responded to September 11. That was the most important post-9/11 decision that the United States made, I think. And wars always have unpredictable consequences and the consequences of Iraq, I think, will be profound and we still don't know what they are.
NORRIS: Michael, is the president's legacy already set or does he still have time to amend or alter this?
Mr. GERSON: No. Almost by definition, legacies are better determined 20 years after the president leaves office. But I agree with Peter's earlier analogy when he talked about Truman. This is, at least, the way the president views himself. Truman left office deeply unpopular and particularly because of the Korean War and because of a series of difficult decisions in the early conduct of Cold War. But his historical reputation improved because the Cold War proved worth fighting.
NORRIS: We could go on but we have to leave it there. Thanks to both of you and happy New Year.
Mr. GERSON: Thank you.
Mr. BEINART: Thank you.
NORRIS: Peter Beinart is an editor-at-large at the New Republic and Michael Gerson is a former speechwriter for the president and he's also a columnist for the Washington Post. Thanks to both of you.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
It's easy to imagine a travel writer's life to be glamorous and filled with endless adventure. Independent producer Jake Warga found out being a travel writer isn't all that. He sent us his audio travel log from Australia's Northern Territory.
Mr. JAKE WARGA (Independent Producer): Day one. I'm a fake. Somehow, my name ended up on a list of travel writers, and now I'm hiking in the middle of the Australian desert on a press junket.
LIAM(ph) (Travel guide, Northern Territory, Australia): Main troubles people have are probably blisters out here.
Mr. WARGA: Our guide is Liam, 24, good-looking but with enough wear and tear to be closer to 34.
LIAM: …spare water, too…
Mr. WARGA: Wind and rain, sun-worn face. I don't know what he looks like without a layer of dirt.
LIAM: You definitely always need your sunhat out here.
Mr. WARGA: Every bush and branch seems to be loaded with thorns, like we're not supposed to be here. It's too hot in December, summer, to hike. So we're here in the middle of winter, July, summer back home. It's confusing. Flying over, I lost a day crossing the International Date Line, a whole day. I've no idea where it went.
There are so many ways to die in Australia. The most poisonous animals in the world live here. That combined with how easy it is to make fun of Americans and you get what are called drop bears - bears that drop on you from trees and hoop snakes, neither of which, actually, exist.
LIAM: Yeah. Have you heard about the hoop snakes?
Mr. WARGA: No.
LIAM: They bite their tails and roll down hills.
Mr. WARGA: Really?
LIAM: Drop bears are some. I don't know where they came from. I always tell tourists, look out for drop bears.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. WARGA: When we get to camp, I'm handed something called the swag that I'm supposed to sleep in, on, or something.
(Soundbite of laughter)
LIAM: Well, a swag's just a nylon outer, pretty much flat with a zipper on the front and all you do is just open the zipper and lie straight out on the mattress.
Mr. WARGA: After the sun sets, I gape up at the sky in awe. The Milky Way is huge, a thick band of stars across the entire sky. But Orion is upside down, shooting his arrow the wrong way. I tried to get someone to point out the Southern Cross for me.
MALCOLM(ph): The one that looks like a kite?
Mr. WARGA: Yeah.
MALCOLM: And you have the pointers to the left of it.
Mr. WARGA: Malcolm is writing about this hike for the Sydney Sun Herald.
MALCOLM: If you draw a perpendicular line between the pointers heading towards the horizon, and a line from the two…
Mr. WARGA: Definitely that way.
MALCOLM: That way. That way.
Mr. WARGA: Oh.
MALCOLM: So that's it.
LIAM: Is that big bright star Jupiter?
MALCOLM: Yeah. And there's Alpha and Beta Centauri, all part of this big cluster of stars up in here.
Mr. WARGA: T.E. Lawrence said of deserts that they allow the awareness of one's own finitude, that we're ashamed into pettiness by the enumerable silence of stars. Sleeping in a swag in the middle of Australia, I felt a brief panic. I'm upside down on the globe, looking down at the stars. I fall asleep before falling off the earth.
Day two. What does one wear to a hike? How about clothing with so many pockets that it's easy to lose things on your own person? Malcolm's shirt was fresh out of the bag.
MALCOLM: Well, yeah. I got the digital voice recorder in one, the digital camera in another, and…
Mr. WARGA: So are you a professional journalist because you have the shirt?
(Soundbite of laughter)
MALCOLM: I think, in spite of it.
Mr. WARGA: Leaving the camp, a dingo, a type of wild dog, scampers around the site smelling for food. I wanted to run past everyone frantically yelling a dingo ate my baby but I didn't know if that was an insult or not.
LIAM: About 350 million years ago, there was a big period of mountain building.
Mr. WARGA: The Larapinta trail offers an endless variety of rocks. While Liam is telling us some geological fact about the rocks we've just climbed, I start to hear snoring from somewhere.
LIAM: A heavy true quartzite…
Mr. WARGA: I take off my headphones and looked around. The snoring is coming from inside my own head. I've gone to sleep hiking.
LIAM: That's now the quartzite and…
Mr. WARGA: The brochure for the hike says, you, quote, "might discover something about yourself."
LIAM: …350 million years.
Mr. WARGA: I was hoping to find enlightenment but each step I seemed to grow closer not to nature but my own insanity. I thought and hoped for tranquility, something, but only composed e-mails in my head.
THORPEY(ph): That's it. It's such a mental game, hiking, I find.
Mr. WARGA: This is Thorpey, our other guide.
THORPEY: You have to program your mind to daydream and take your mind off walking and just mull over life a lot which is - it's great. And that's why people come out here to - out in the outdoors to spend a lot of time and have that thinking time and that break from the rat race of urban life, I suppose.
Mr. WARGA: That is the ultimate danger of hiking after snakes and cliffs, thinking.
Day three. By late afternoon, we make it to the top of Mount Sonder, the tallest peak on the Larapinta trail. I find our guide, Liam, perched on a boulder over a steep cliff, staring into that mental horizon of nothingness.
LIAM: I don't know why you climb a mountain. I suppose there's always something a little big exhilarating about being at the top of the mountain. People often need to do something that they don't usually do and I don't know why I do it. I like the outdoors and the wide open spaces. It's a good way to take it all in.
Mr. WARGA: Limping down off the newly-conquered mountain, my knees clicking, my calves aching, I feel the chill breeze of old age against my bare legs.
Unidentified Group: (Singing) Once a jolly swag man camp by a billabong under the shades of…
Mr. WARGA: In celebration of the day's accomplishments, having thwarted all the guides' attempts to kill us and combined with some primal urge to sing into campfires. I get treated to the unofficial Australian National Anthem.
Unidentified Group: (Singing) Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, you'll come a Waltzing Matilda…
Mr. WARGA: I don't know the song but I'm glad it's not just Americans who forget anthem lyrics.
Unidentified Man: (Singing) (unintelligible) shove that…
Unidentified Woman: (Singing) He sang as he shove that…
Unidentified Group: (Singing) jumbuck in his tucker bag. You'll come a waltzing Matilda with me…
Mr. WARGA: Day four. Our last day of hiking was the most exciting. Ormiston Gorge is a deep ancient canyon with gorgeous billabongs, water pools. I'm talking to Mal, the same conversation I find myself having a lot as an American abroad. No, I didn't vote for him.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. WARGA: Then a deep vengeful rumble fills the canyon. An avalanche of rock finally did something interesting. It tries to kill a group of travel writers. We scamper under a cliff as the falling boulder shatters apart, scattering into a rain of debris. The largest comes to rest near us at the bottom.
I hurry with the group to touch and photograph it because after all these, with my hand on a warm boulder, I think, I can finally call myself a travel writer.
(Soundbite of song "Waltzing Matilda")
Unidentified Man #1: (Singing) Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong under the shade of a Coolibah tree. He sang as he watched and he waited till his billy boiled. You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me. Sing waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda. You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.
NORRIS: Independent producer, Jake Warga, lives in Seattle. His work comes to us by way of hearingvoices.com
(Soundbite of Waltzing Matilda)
NORRIS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
2007 was a year of heightened tension between Iran and the United States. Washington imposed economic sanctions, even hinted at possible military action, in response to Iran's nuclear program. Iran has defied the sanctions and intensified its effort to enrich uranium, the very activity that the U.S. find so threatening. Yet Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, now faces more criticism from within his country than at any time since he took office more than two years ago.
Here's NPR's Mike Shuster.
MIKE SHUSTER: Over the past year, Iran may have been one of the key foreign policy issues for the United States, but it cannot be said that the Bush administration and its allies have made any progress.
Mr. KARIM SADJADPOUR (Iran Specialist, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ): Iran was, in 2007, the most vexing foreign policy challenge to both the Europeans and the Americans. And I think it will continue to be the most vexing foreign policy challenge in 2008.
SHUSTER: Karim Sadjadpour is an Iran specialist with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. During the past year, the U.S. pushed through two sanctions resolutions against Iran at the U.N. Security Council and the Europeans engaged in numerous rounds of talks with Iran's government, all designed to persuade Iran to stop enriching uranium. None of it was successful, notes Sadjadpour.
Mr. SADJADPOUR: European and American officials are really at a loss in knowing what it is that is going to be effective in trying to change Iranian behavior.
SHUSTER: The Bush administration even reversed the long-standing American aversion to talking directly with Iran, but with a precondition. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced her willingness to meet with Iran's foreign minister if Iran suspends uranium enrichment. The Iranians said no. Rice repeated the offer just before Christmas.
Secretary CONDOLEEZZA RICE (U.S. Department of State): If Iran will just do the one thing that is required of it by the Security Council resolutions that have been passed, and that is suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities, then I'm prepared to meet my counterpart any place and anytime and anywhere. And we can talk about anything.
SHUSTER: Iranian leaders have repeatedly rejected that offer. And that's where things stood between the U.S. and Iran until December 3rd. On that day, the new National Intelligence Estimate was made public, and with it, the finding of the U.S. intelligence community that Iran had shelved a secret nuclear weapons program four years ago. The conclusions of the NIE effectively removed the option of U.S. military action. And it has challenged the U.S. effort to maintain and expand sanctions against Iran.
At the same time, it gave Russia an opening to assert itself. In mid-December, Moscow announced that it was sending the first batch of nuclear fuel to Iran to operate the nuclear power plant at Bushehr, which the Russians are building. The second batch of nuclear fuel from Russia arrived in Iran last week. Construction of the plant is not expected to be completed until late next year.
At a recent news conference, President Bush tried to put the best face on this development even though the U.S. tried to prevent it for many years.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: If the Russians are willing to do that, which I support, then the Iranians do not need to learn how to enrich. If Iranians accept that uranium for a civilian nuclear power plant, then there's no need for them to learn how to enrich.
SHUSTER: Just a few days ago, Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, declared that in his view, Iran has no need to enrich its own uranium because Russia is willing to do the job for it. This is an offer that the Iranians previously rejected, but the diplomatic sources hint there is now renewed interest in such an arrangement.
Abbas Milani, director of Iranian studies at Stanford University sees this as a move on the part of the Russians to supplant the U.S. as they key outside power on the Iran issue.
Mr. ABBAS MILANI (Director of Iranian Studies, Stanford University): They think and I think they're right that they are now the force that can decide. They have become the decider in Iran, I think. And they have done this carefully. They have moved very, very astutely for their own interest.
SHUSTER: In taking U.S. military action against Iran off the table, the National Intelligence Estimate may have had another unexpected effect inside Iran. It has emboldened the critics of Iran's hard-line president and given them more room to maneuver, says Milani.
Mr. MILANI: As this became known, the number of demonstrations, the number of open letters, the number of defiant interviews has increased dramatically.
SHUSTER: Many of President Ahmadinejad's adversaries, and even some of his former supporters, have begun to criticize him openly for the poor performance of the Iranian economy as well as his overheated and dangerous rhetoric on the international stage.
Karim Sadjadpour has noticed this trend as well.
Mr. SADJADPOUR: When we see the likelihood of a U.S. military attack removed, the more moderate pragmatic forces say, OK, now we can step up our criticism of the, our own hardliners and President Ahmadinejad because we don't have to worry that this is going to give further fodder to the neocons in Washington who may want to launch a strike on Iran.
SHUSTER: The coming year is likely to see further twists and turns to the Iran drama with the first big news coming in March, when Iranian voters go to the polls to elect a new parliament - a parliament that could very well see the number of critics of the current regime increase dramatically.
Mike Shuster, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
It's only natural today to look ahead to the coming year. But we're going to look a little bit further to the next five, 20, maybe even 50 years. And for help, we brought in Syd Mead. He calls himself a visual futurist. His job, to predict the look and the feel of tomorrow. He's designed everything from future cars to office spaces for corporate clients. But Syd Mead is perhaps best known for his work in the movies. He designed the elaborate science fiction worlds in films such as "Blade Runner," "Aliens" and "Tron." And he says there's a very real science at the center of his crystal ball.
Mr. SYD MEAD (Visual Futurist): I've been designing for corporations for, well, ever since I graduated from Art Center here in Los Angeles in 1959. And I learned a methodology, which is industrial design. And it's a way of analyzing what the problem actually is and then you design to solve it. And that applies across the board, whether it's a movie, or a TV. show, or electronic games -which is lately what I've been involved in - and the real world.
NORRIS: Can I ask you to join me in looking ahead into the future, since we're at the start of a new year? If you could take out that proverbial crystal ball for us and tell us how you think, what you think we might see in the years ahead? And let's begin by talking about transportation, how might that change in the future, both in terms of mass transit and the cars that we drive to and from work or the shopping center.
Mr. MEAD: The future of travel involves getting their either physically or by electronic means of duplication. And as we perfect the whole art of holography, you will find that a lot of human contact, face-to-face, will be accomplished by telemedia, duplicating the person, much like portrayed in "Star Wars" when Princess Leia appears on his little, tiny holographic figure. And it's reality reduced and then recreated at destination, and it's very valid.
NORRIS: We're going to move on in a minute, but first, put a timeline on that. We would expect to see this kind of technology in 10 years? 20 years?
Mr. MEAD: Within 15, I think quite easily. The danger in predicting is that you predict too conservatively. That's been proven throughout technical history.
NORRIS: Let's talk about the home.
Mr. MEAD: The home? I worked on a project for 20th Century Fox, all the bells and whistles of what we think the future home will look like - wall-sized TV. Take "The Jetsons" and just give it a very nice, high-fashioned gloss and you have that vision. The trouble is, how do you treat a wall-sized screen? Do you put something in front of it? Do you have grandma's dining room projected on it when you're not receiving programs? Do you have a jungle? Do you have animals? Do you have a zoo? How do you treat that wall when you're not watching it? And all that's going to be a fashion and a lifestyle consideration when that capacity becomes available. And it's becoming available very quickly.
NORRIS: Mr. Mead, walk us through the home of the future. What it will look like? What will we see that we don't see now?
Mr. MEAD: What we'll see are - will be the elaboration of what we already have. Bill Gates is housed up in Redmond. He is buying the rights to some of the world's best known paintings. So you will rent the picture on your wide-screen or your wall-screen. You'll rent "Pinkie" or "The Blue Boy" or a Degas or a Rubens. And you'll rent that picture on your wall on your screen for a certain length of time, just like cable TV. So the home will recognize who you are. It'll follow you from room to room. If there's one person, two persons in the room, the lights go on. When you leave, the lights go off.
And it'll be a whole environment that is like living with an entity. And if you think that's scary, think how scary just normal street traffic would be to a horse-and-buggy population back in the early 1900s. And the other factor is, the house will become a place where you are - even when you're not there, the house will talk to people, take orders, refurnish the refrigerator, run the household like a major-domo without actually having an employee that does that.
NORRIS: Run the refrigerator? We're getting low on milk? We're getting low on milk?
Mr. MEAD: Yeah. Exactly. You'll have jackets, clothing that the patterns change, shift. The cars coated with coatings that can be electronically adjusted - they're working on that now - either polarization or actual molecular shift in light refraction capabilities. All of these things…
NORRIS: So you can change the color of your car on command?
Mr. MEAD: On command. Mercedes is working on that. All the car companies are working on a polarized or electrically manipulated coating on the car.
NORRIS: What is the now wow product of the future that will change our lives? The, the cell phone of the future. The thing that will absolutely revolutionize the way we live?
Mr. MEAD: I really think that implants will be the next stage. It sounds scary and it probably is, but implants will allow you to have a device which is a bio-mechanical kind of thing, which uses the energy of the heat of your body to run. And you'll have little patches. And these are little biometric little things that attach to your skin. They fall off in four days or whatever they're programmed. And these are your communication device. They interact with your physical state, your blood contents, your pulse rate. Everything goes into a medical profile all the time.
And I think that will be a big advancement in terms of communication, in terms of monitoring health conditions, in terms of contacting and keeping in contact with the world that is out there beyond that wants to know or has to know how you're doing.
NORRIS: And people will accept this. It sounds rather intrusive.
Mr. MEAD: They're already accepting implants, code chips for their pets and starting to accept it for children. Now, that is scary. And it sounds almost, well, fascistic, but the nightmare scenario is that you'll be required to have one, otherwise you can't go to the bank, you can't get money, you can't communicate with the media world unless you have one.
NORRIS: Now, does that excite you or are you a bit spooked by that?
Mr. MEAD: I'm spooked because you should always have the choice to stay home, not go anywhere and be left alone if that's what you want to do. And if that impacts your whole lifestyle, then that's the lifestyle you've chosen. We call them recluses. Oddly enough, a lot of your science fiction writers, Isaac Asimov, who has left us unfortunately, a great mind, he refused to fly. He was afraid. And this is a man who wrote about rocket ships, you know, streaking through the universe at beyond-light speeds to distant galaxies. He never flew. He was afraid to fly.
NORRIS: Syd Mead, it has been a pleasure to talk to you.
Mr. MEAD: Very good. It's an honor to be on NPR.
NORRIS: Come back and talk to us again.
Mr. MEAD: I hope so.
NORRIS: Syd Mead is an illustrator, conceptual designer and futurist. He also helped create some of our most famous science fiction film worlds including "Bladerunner," "Aliens" and "TRON."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
And a little movie industry news here. Hollywood studios are starting the new year on an up note. Box office returns for the holiday season were better than they were a year ago. And that helped the movie industry set an all-time revenue record in 2007. But it does not mean more people were actually going to the cinema this year, as Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE: For the first time in history, four different films made more than $300 million at the box office domestically. "Spiderman III," "Shrek the Third," "Transformers" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End" starring Johnny Depp and Geoffrey Rush.
(Soundbite of movie "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End")
Mr. GEOFFREY RUSH (Actor): (As Captain Barbossa) The only way a pirate can make a profit these days is by betraying other pirates.
ROSE: Movie audiences surrendered record amounts of booty in 2007. Nearly $10 billion. But that had a lot to do with the four percent jump in ticket prices. Overall movie attendance was actually flat compared with 2006.
Mr. PAUL DERGARABEDIAN (President, Media By Numbers): It was a rollercoaster of a year at the box office.
ROSE: Paul Dergarabedian tracks box office results for Media By Numbers.
Mr. DERGARABEDIAN: We had an incredible summer, actually, with the box office of over $4 billion for that period. We had a record-breaking summer followed up by a fall season that was pretty, pretty tough. I mean, while it was loaded with some terrific films out, including "Eastern Promises," "No Country For Old Men," "Atonement," "Rendition," I mean, a lot of great film out there. These were not films that collectively added a lot of box office to the bottom line.
ROSE: Dergarabedian says it took a strong year-end performance by the films "Alvin and the Chipmunks" and "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" to push box office totals for the year into record territory. The bottom line also got a boost from "I Am Legend." The sci-fi flick starring Will Smith brought in a remarkable $194 million in less than three weeks. Final figures for 2007 will be released Wednesday. For NPR News, I'm Joel Rose.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
One of the best movies of 2007, according to some critics, was hardly seen by audiences in the United States. It's called, "After This Our Exile." And it's the work of director Patrick Tam. He's a legend in Hong Kong cinema, yet this is the first movie he has directed in 17 years. And he can't find a distributor here in the U.S. More, now, from NPR's Neda Ulaby.
(Soundbite of movie "After This Our Exile")
Unidentified Man: (Speaks in foreign language)
Unidentified Woman: (Speaks in foreign language)
Unidentified Man: (Speaks in foreign language)
NEDA ULABY: Maybe it's not hard to understand why "After This Our Exile" never found any serious traction here, says Grady Hendrix.
Mr. GRADY HENDRIX (Film programmer and critic): You can't say to someone, two hours and 40 minutes, Chinese people screaming at each other, subtitles, actors you've never heard of. That's really not going to pull people in no matter how good the poster looks.
ULABY: The movie got a few screenings across the country, including at the New York Asian Film Festival, which Hendrix co-directs. He says it was a hard sell for festival audiences at first, but rave reviews led to a waiting list for tickets.
Mr. HENDRIX: I've never known anyone to see this movie who didn't feel happy that they had seen it. They didn't feel like somehow they were better coming out than they were going in.
ULABY: "After This Our Exile" is about a poor Chinese family in Malaysia.
(Soundbite of movie "After This Our Exile")
Unidentified Man: (Speaks in foreign language)
ULABY: He's a cook, she's a bar girl. And their painfully disintegrating marriage is seen largely from the perspective of their 8-year-old son who descends into a life of petty crime with his dad. If that sounds a bit like "The Bicycle Thief," that classic of world cinema was part of Patrick Tam's self-education as a director. But Tam says "After This Our Exile" is different.
Mr. PATRICK TAM (Director, "After This Our Exile"): The film is not Italian neorealist kind of cinema. It's not about exterior poverty, about the materialistic side of life, but rather about spatiality, about the emotions. This is the thing that I would like to focus on. And I hope I can get through to the audience.
ULABY: Patrick Tam first reached audiences as part of a group that helped revolutionized Chinese film in the late 1970s. Some, like John Woo, were soon swanning around film festivals and, eventually, Hollywood. Tam stayed home. He edited movies for people like Wang Kar Wai, now a celebrated filmmaker himself. All the while, Tam directed his own movies. Even his martial arts films and thrillers were thoughtful and elegant and provoked audiences to rethink those genres. Then in 1989, he stopped directing.
Mr. TAM: Since I love cinema so much, I prefer not to make another meaningless or mediocre films for my audience, because if you're looking at cinema history, there's already a whole lot of movie junks there.
ULABY: Tam was unable to protect his movies from the kind of junk he hated. Although he was respected for his powerful style, connection with actors and subtle social critiques, he had to put up with Hong Kong studios flapping flashy endings on his films or inserting sensational scenes. Disillusioned, Tam moved to Malaysia where he worked with film students to develop the industry there. One of his students wrote the screenplay for "After This Our Exile."
(Soundbite of movie "After This Our Exile")
Unidentified Child: Mommy?
Unidentified Woman: (Speaks in foreign language)
ULABY: Film programmer and critic Grady Hendrix was apprehensive before sitting down to watch a movie described even by its director as long and depressing. But he was riveted from the very first scene.
Mr. HENDRIX: This young boy getting ready to go off to school. His mom signing off on his report card because he's failing his subjects. He leaves for school, comes back and sees that she's packing a suitcase to leave. He goes and tells his dad who's at work who comes home, drags the mother out of the cab and locks her in the house.
(Soundbite of movie "After This Our Exile")
Unidentified Woman: (Speaks in foreign language)
Unidentified Man: (Speaks in foreign language)
ULABY: Hendrix says it's the editing that makes the scene.
Mr. HENDRIX: Tam is one of the best editors, I would say, in all of Asia. And the edits are hitting off rhythm. They're coming too early. They're coming too late. They're coming in the middle of an action.
ULABY: Those edits give this family melodrama the intensity of a horror movie.
Mr. TAM: I tried to keep the emotional flow dynamic and energetic.
ULABY: Director Patrick Tam.
Mr. TAM: So everything that happens—but not too fast. You have to still have the space and time to really get your message across.
ULABY: Part of Tam's message is to present characters without judging them. People subject to forces they can't control and sometimes crumble beneath. Grady Hendrix says that goes back to Tam's early days working in Hong Kong TV where he wrote and directed dramatic series about social workers and regular working class men and women whose lives were not then normally explored on television. Hendrix says Tam finds such characters essential.
Mr. HENDRIX: They're doing the best they can in a world that really doesn't have any room for them. In a world that wants them to be a short-order cook or a bar girl or a bus driver. It needs to sort of keep these people in their place. And their place is killing them and it's breaking their souls.
ULABY: For Patrick Tam, "After This Our Exile" is the one film he has directed that hasn't broken his.
Mr. TAM: Even if I don't have any chance to make another film again, I'm quite satisfied with this one.
ULABY: "After This Our Exile" has won numerous awards at film festivals all over Asia. Tam says he doesn't mind that it has not found a distributor here.
Mr. TAM: I believe in the film. I mean, in all sincerity, I respect audience's intelligence. And I think everyone, every individual is sensitive to a certain extent if they see that what you're making or are presenting to them is a sincere and serious work, I think eventually they will be touched.
ULABY: Patrick Tam plans to keep teaching and making movies in Malaysia. He says the tropical climate is a hot house, both for his own creativity and for encouraging others. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
NORRIS: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
And we start this part of our New Year's Day program in Kenya. At least 250 people are now reported killed in post-election violence there. The conflict began on Sunday when election results returned incumbent President Mwai Kibaki. But the challenger, Raila Odinga, has refused to concede the vote. And the nation has been paralyzed by ethnic conflict and a de facto state of emergency.
NPR's Gwen Thompkins is in Nairobi.
GWEN THOMPKINS: What began as a political contest in Kenya has become a reckoning. Since President Mwai Kibaki took the oath of office on Sunday evening, much of the nation has been burned and looted, and people raped and killed. The ethnic groups that supported challenger Raila Odinga are in conflict with those that supported Kibaki. Earlier today in western Kenya, a Catholic church harboring women and children who had been burned out of their homes was itself burned. Aid workers estimate that at least 50 people were killed.
Mr. MAINA KIAI (Chairman, Kenya National Commission on Human Rights): Innocent Kenyans did not do anything wrong. They exercised their right to vote whichever way they did it. And that's - they're not the problem.
THOMPKINS: Maina Kiai heads the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. The commission is calling on Kibaki and Odinga to do more to end the violence.
Mr. KIAI: What we suggested is for Nelson Mandela moments, where the political leadership reaches out to the other side in dramatic gestures.
THOMPKINS: On the face of it, Kenya is experiencing a backlash against Kibaki's tribespeople, the Kikuyu, and the other tribes that are seen as Kibaki supporters. The Kikuyu are the nation's largest ethnic group. They are perceived by Odinga's supporters to have prospered unfairly during Kibaki's first term.
Cecilia Wanjira, a Kikuyu in the Kalanguari slum of Nairobi, watched her neighbors from different ethnic groups burn everything on her plot of land.
Ms. CECILLA WANJIRA (Kikuyu): We want peace. We don't want that war because they are our brothers and sisters.
THOMPKINS: But the dead and wounded across Kenya include many of Odinga's people as well, the Luo and other tribes sympathetic to the Luo. Across the nation, people are being told to stay in their homes or at some other shelter where they feel safe. Most businesses have not been open since Christmas Eve. Hooliganism is rampant. Hunger is increasing. The government has banned public demonstrations. Live television broadcasts are off the air, and security forces are on red alert. As Kibaki and Odinga remain at a standstill, so does everyone else.
Mr. ALEXANDER GRAF LAMBSDORFF (Chief Observer, Election Monitoring Delegation, European Union): We find that these elections have fallen short of key international and regional standards for Democratic elections to which Kenyans committed themselves.
THOMPKINS: Alexander Graf Lambsdorff heads the European Union's election monitoring delegation. He says Kibaki may have had the most votes, but the mistakes made in the tallying have eroded his confidence in the veracity of the final count. He's calling for an independent investigation into the matter. Kiai, of the Commission on Human Rights, is calling for a recount. But for now, Kiai says, he would sell for some goodwill food.
Mr. KIAI: So it's just, for example, the government sends foods to the Kibera slum, which is perceived to be a Raila Odinga stronghold, to show that they care for every Kenyan, and vice versa for Raila Odinga to reach out to Kurasoi(ph) in Molo, which is perceived to be a Kibaki stronghold, and take some food there.
THOMPKINS: As of now, no one can tell if the situation is getting better or worse. On Wednesday, many Kenyans expect to go back to work. And some say that normalcy will prevail. One Kikuyu tour operator in Nairobi seemed confident that his tribespeople will quickly recover from this time of trouble. We Kikuyu are so many, he said, we are mighty.
Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, Nairobi.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Here's one prediction for the New Year that is a pretty sure bet. In 2008, I think we're going to hear a lot of talk about 1968. '68 has been called the year that changed everything. Assassinations altered American politics and race relations. Riots reshaped American cities. And of course, a war overseas resonated throughout America.
(Soundbite of song, "Street Fighting Man")
Unidentified Man: Military police got back into the compound at the two and a half million dollar embassy complex at dawn.
Mr. WALTER CRONKITE (Journalist): It is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people.
President LYNDON B. JOHNSON: I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.
Mr. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR (Civil Rights Activist): So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Senator ROBERT KENNEDY (Former U.S. Senator and Attorney General): My thanks to all of you. And now, it's on to Chicago and let's win there.
NORRIS: Historian Bruce Schulman calls 1968 the year of miracles and horror. Schulman is a professor of history at Boston University. He's also the author of "The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics." Professor, welcome to the program.
Professor BRUCE SCHULMAN (American History, Boston University; Author, "The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics"): Thanks, Michele. It's nice to be here.
NORRIS: Now, you've actually said that 1968 was the first year of the 1970s. What do you mean by that?
Prof. SCHULMAN: Well, we tend to remember 1968 for those dramatic, tumultuous events - the assassinations, the riots, Chicago, Columbia. But in many ways, subtler ways, there were broader cultural and political shifts that signaled the end of an era, the end of the long post-war era and all that it involved, and the beginning of something new. In many ways, it's not only the opening of the '70s, a very different era, but in many ways, the opening of our own time.
NORRIS: Now, we're going to get to politics and culture in just a minute. But I want to begin by talking about the war in Vietnam. It seems like there are a lot of milestones that year in Vietnam. Which among these were seen as major turning points in America?
Prof. SCHULMAN: Well, perhaps the most important turning-point comes early in the year at the end of January on the occasion of the celebration of the Vietnamese New Year, Tet. On that day, the enemy - the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong - attacked up and down the length of South Vietnam, even leading an audacious attack on the American Embassy in Saigon, proving that there was a lot of fight in the enemy yet, that the war was not anywhere near its end. And almost overnight in the month after the war, there was a tremendous shift in public opinion. Before the Tet offensive, about twice as many Americans called themselves hawks, supporters of the war, as called themselves doves. But by a month after the war, those numbers were equal and policy was shifting.
NORRIS: It seemed like Vietnam was the backdrop for almost everything in America at that point, from culture to political life, particularly in political life. It led to the end of President Johnson's career. He announced to the public in a rather surprising way that he did not intend to seek reelection. RFK, Bobby Kennedy, picked up the mantle. His career was on the ascent as President Johnson's career was heading toward the sunset. And it was also a year where the word assassination really became permanently affixed to American culture.
Prof. SCHULMAN: Yes. In April of 1968, Martin Luther King, perhaps the figure who, more than any other, represented the utopian idealistic hopes for productive, peaceful change, was assassinated while he was in Memphis, Tennessee. The worst fears of so many Americans seemed to come true. And rioting erupted in dozens of cities around the nation. And I think a lot of the hopes for peaceful reform and change that had been embodied by Martin Luther King then came to rest on Bobby Kennedy. And of course, in June, an assassin raised a snub-nosed pistol causing fatal injuries to Bobby Kennedy. And after that, many observers thought that the dreams of the '60s had expired.
NORRIS: You know, in terms of race relations in America, if you look at the assassination of Martin Luther King as a line of demarcation, what changed after that?
Prof. SCHULMAN: Well, in the aftermath of the King assassination, many Americans, including many African Americans and other racial minorities, began to rethink the entire goal of integration. They began to ask who is being integrated into what. And to worry that racial integration might just mean assimilation into white society and culture. And so we're really seeing the aftermath of the King assassination, the flourishing of African-American cultural nationalism, of the desire to retain, preserve and express a distinctive black culture.
And this ideal will not only be accepted but be embraced by many other groups in American society, first by American Indians and by Hispanic-Americans and Asian-Americans. But then, even by white ethnics, there will be a white ethnic revival in the years after the King assassination as many more Americans come to see asserting their distinctive heritage, their distinctive culture, the idea of a multicultural nation trumping the idea of a melting pot into which everyone would be integrated.
NORRIS: Professor, I'd like to turn to culture, if we would. This was such a vivid year in terms of cultural milestones, and it was a year we saw the sort of beginning of that mix of politics and pop culture. And at the Republican National Convention in Miami in August - in the Republican ticket, you saw Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew. Later that fall, Richard Nixon makes a brief appearance on this new program called "Laugh-In."
Prof. SCHULMAN: There is Richard Nixon, perhaps known as the squarest man in America saying sock it to me with raised eyebrows, trying to show America that he wasn't square. And that is one of the first times ever that a presidential candidate appears on an entertainment program. And of course, as we all know, since then that's become a regular feature of presidential campaigns and of political life where entertainment and politics have merged in ways that no one could have expected in 1968.
NORRIS: Now, an invitation was also extended to Hubert Humphrey.
Prof. SCHULMAN: Yes. And Humphrey declined the invitation. I think Humphrey didn't understand what was changing in political life and in the culture.
NORRIS: In terms of its pictorial history, there are so many iconic images from 1968, that famous photo of the Olympic gold medalists raising their fists. The pictures of the riots. Was there something that was going on in terms of mass media that led to this, these images, sort of, lasting in our memory all these years?
Prof. SCHULMAN: Well, I mean, one of the things that Hubert Humphrey didn't understand when he refused the appearance on "Laugh-In" was the extent to which mass spectacle was becoming a defining feature of American life. But you're right, 1968, I think, marks a watershed in which people sitting in their living rooms watching will define their experiences. And it's no accident that the slogan of the protesters culminating with the violent protests at the Chicago convention in the summer of 1968 was "The Whole World is Watching."
And so a world that was mass-mediated and that in which images would - as much if not more than words - come to define how people understood their culture and their politics that was taking shape in that dramatic year as well.
NORRIS: Professor Schulman, thanks so much.
Prof. SCHULMAN: It was my pleasure.
NORRIS: That was Bruce Schulman. He is a professor of American history at Boston University, and he's also the author of "The Seventies: The Great Shift In American Culture, Society and Politics."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
Over the course of the campaign, we've been speaking to the spouses of the presidential candidates. Today, we hear from Jill Biden. She's the wife of Delaware's Democratic senator, Joseph Biden. With just a day of campaigning left for the Iowa caucuses, Joe Biden is running a long shot campaign. A Des Moines Register poll today suggests he's supported by only four percent of likely caucus-goers.
For now, Jill Biden is Joe Biden's running mate. She's a community college professor in Delaware. And though she spends most of her week on campus, her weekends are spent on the campaign trail in Iowa with her husband and the extended Biden family. She says she and the three grown Biden children convinced Senator Biden to jump in the race.
Dr. JILL BIDEN (Wife of Senator Joe Biden): You know, it was after the last election. And I just saw the direction this country was going in, and I just felt so discouraged. Finally, we decided, you know, we have to go to Dad with this. And we did.
NORRIS: And his reaction?
Dr. BIDEN: Well, you know, when we approached him, and we said we want to have a family meeting, we want to talk to you about something, I think he thought, "Oh gosh, they're going to tell me, no, absolutely not, we don't want you to run. But we went in there and we said, Joe, you know you're the only who can do this. And we believe in you. And it was pretty emotional.
NORRIS: He said yes right away?
Dr. BIDEN: Yeah, he did. You know, I knew he wanted to run. And we had to wait for the right time.
NORRIS: Now, if he wants to run for president, and he is running for president, I mean, he had to go back and begin this race in the place where his last presidential run started to implode, really, when, when he delivered a speech and was accused of plagiarism, and that was sort of the beginning of the end. Was that difficult for him? And what did he do to prepare himself psychologically for that?
Dr. BIDEN: Well, I think, actually, he had rehabilitated himself in the sense that I think he had built his stature. I mean, certainly in the foreign policy community, certainly among the press. I mean, it's been 20 years. So during that time, it wasn't that he worked toward running for president again, but I think he got the reputation that he has today of being a foreign policy expert.
NORRIS: You know, I wonder if you have been involved at all in the long-term strategy. At what point does he have to start bringing in a first, second, third place finish, a strong finish to stay alive in this race once you get beyond these first two or three early contests in these early states. I mean, outside…
Dr. BIDEN: Well, let's face it…
NORRIS: …you know, because at that point, the campaign just, you know, fans out.
Dr. BIDEN: Yeah, yeah. I mean, really and truly. I mean, if he doesn't do well in the first, in Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada and South Carolina, there's no point in going on. It's too expensive and it takes too much time and too much energy and there would be no point. But I'm not expecting that to happen. I'm expecting he's going to do really well in Iowa, and I think he's going to surprise a lot of people.
NORRIS: When you decided to jump in the race, run for president, you make a certain sacrifice. Sacrifice in terms of time spent with your family and friends. In terms of the time you spent at home. You often have to step away from your day job so you can spend all this time in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Dr. BIDEN: Yeah.
NORRIS: What kind of toll does it take on a family and on a marriage to go through this?
Dr. BIDEN: Well, actually, I think, in our case it's made us a stronger family because every member of the family is out there campaigning. And that means, I mean, his sister is running Iowa. Missy, her daughter, travels with me. And she's the field coordinator. My sons are out there every weekend, Ashley travels out there every weekend. Really, it's something that we're doing together.
NORRIS: When you went to your husband and asked him, implored him to run for president, you were asking him to run for president, but in doing so, you are also deciding that you are going to be running for the position of first lady. Do you — how strong is that ambition for you?
Dr. BIDEN: Probably not that strong. I mean, I say that I'm apolitical if that's at all possible being married to Joe for 30 years. But, you know, it's a great opportunity. And one thing I will be is the education first lady. I mean, I'm going to push education, education, education, and not just in the classroom. I mean, as far as preventative health issues, childhood obesity is a major problem, stopping adolescents from smoking.
NORRIS: You sound like you plan on being a fairly activist first lady.
Dr. BIDEN: Absolutely.
NORRIS: Sitting in on cabinet meetings?
Dr. BIDEN: No. No. Anybody who knows me will say I will not be sitting at the cabinet meetings. I would be out meeting with people, going to schools, meeting with teachers, you know, going to battered women shelters. The sort of things I do now.
NORRIS: Doctor Biden, thank you very much for coming to talk to us.
Dr. BIDEN: Oh, you're welcome.
NORRIS: All the best to you.
Dr. BIDEN: Oh, thank you.
NORRIS: That was Dr. Jill Biden. She's the wife of Democratic candidate and Delaware Senator Joe Biden.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Now to the voice of one Republican in the presidential race. We've been airing excerpts of the candidates' stump speeches delivered in auditoriums, diners, living rooms. Today, we'll hear from Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. He's in a tight race with Mike Huckabee in Iowa. Romney spoke this morning in a living room in Ankeny, Iowa.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Massachusetts Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): I think you're going to see more change in the next 10 years than you've seen in the last 10 centuries. And so in a time of change, in an election about the future, in an election about serious things, I think it's important to have somebody who knows something about change, who's lived in the private sector, who knows why jobs come and why they go, who's travelling the world to understand how we compete with other nations. And I will fight to strengthen America, to make sure that our future is bright and prosperous for our kids and for their kids.
Just like your dad said, I'm not terribly worried about me and how I'm doing and how my wife and I are going to do in our next three years. I'm much more concerned about my kids and what they're future is like. And their kids. And I remember, I was at a dinner in New York with a fellow named Ezra Zilkha. And he said to me, you know, what concerns me about America is that politics has become a profession, not a duty. And for me, politics is a duty. I didn't spent my life in politics. I spent my life in a private sector.
Twenty-five years in business. First, helping companies make or break decisions. I was a consultant, actually worked in Marshalltown, Iowa. I have thirst for controls. And got some good learning there. I must admit, I was happy to back to Marshalltown and to see if they were still there. My advice wasn't so bad that it put them out of business. And then I had a chance to start a business of my own. And that, plus by consulting assignments before it took me to about 20 countries around the world to do business.
Then I went to the Olympics, and they were in trouble. And together with a great team of people, we turned those games around made them a great success, most successful games, in some respects, of any Olympic Winter Games in history. Then I went to Massachusetts. It's not easy being the Republican governor in the most Democratic state in America. But we were able to do good things together. Republicans and Democrats came together to get the job done.
NORRIS: That was Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaking this morning in Ankeny, Iowa. We'll bring you more stump speeches as the election season continues.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
Starting today, 150,000 employers in Arizona could have their business licenses suspended or even revoked under the toughest state law of its kind. It's designed to punish companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Even before authorities have had a chance to start enforcing the measure, it's already causing a few shockwaves in Arizona.
NPR's Ted Robbins has been watching developments there and joins us now from Tucson. And Ted, what have you seen in the days leading up to the law taking effect?
TED ROBBINS: Well, Michele, there's actually been more of an effect on workers so far than on employers. I've spoken with a number of them who are in the country illegally, workers that is. They're leaving. They're going home mostly to Mexico, to other states like Nevada or New Mexico, which they perceive as more friendly to immigrant workers. It's pretty quiet on the border today because of the holiday, but some trade groups like the Arizona Contractors Association say legal workers are leaving because of what they see as hostility toward Hispanics. Of course, the construction industry is in a slump. And that could be affecting things, too.
NORRIS: So what do we see as the likely impact of this new law?
ROBBINS: We're headed in to the high season for tourism in Arizona. So it's possible we could see effects shortly. They estimate 10 percent of Arizona's workforce to be here illegally. That's much higher in the hospitality industry. Hotels, resorts and, of course, in construction. People who like this law, they say it'll cut down on what is spent providing services for those here illegally. They also say it could attract more legal workers by resulting in higher wages. Those who oppose the law say higher wages mean higher prices. And they say illegal workers give as much to the economy as they take.
NORRIS: Now, employers have to sign up to verify worker documents through this online federal data base. How is that working?
ROBBINS: As of the end of the year, only about six percent of the state's employers have signed up for the E-Verify program. As far as the federal government is concerned, E-Verify is a voluntary pilot program. Another state, Illinois, actually forbids employers from using it until the government can assure that E-Verify is pretty much always accurate. Two audits say that it returns false results between six and 10 percent of the time. That's one reason business and civil rights groups in Arizona went to court to challenge the law's constitutionality.
NORRIS: But the courts refuse to block the law, is that correct?
ROBBINS: Right. Twice, in fact. But the courts didn't address the law's merits. They only said it wasn't enough of an emergency to stop the law from taking effect. So a two-day hearing on the merits is scheduled for mid-January. It also maybe one reason so few employers have signed up for E-Verify. They're waiting or they're not hiring.
NORRIS: Now, as we said, Arizona now has the toughest employer sanction law, are other states following suit?
ROBBINS: Yes. Example, Tennessee has a law that took effect today also. It finds businesses caught hiring illegal workers. By one count, 17 states are considering laws similar to Arizona's. Foes of illegal immigration are coordinating their efforts through groups like Judicial Watch - they're trying to step in where Congress and the President have failed to address the immigration issue.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Ted Robbins speaking to us from Tucson about Arizona's tough new immigration law, a law that takes effect today.
Thank you, Ted.
ROBBINS: You're welcome.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The state of Nevada is holding its presidential caucuses this month, on January 19th to be precise. That's the first time it's been so early. The Democratic party moved up the date, partly in an effort to give Latinos a voice in the nomination process. They make up nearly a quarter of the population in Nevada, a state that President Bush won by a slim two points back in 2004. Polls show a growing majority of Hispanic voters are Democrats. And so the party is making a big effort to reach out to them.
NPR's Ina Jaffe reports.
INA JAFFE: If you want someone to vote, first you've got to get them registered.
(Soundbite of people talking)
JAFFE: Marco Rauda works for the Nevada Democratic Party, and he's at the federal courthouse in Las Vegas the first two Fridays of every month. That's when new citizens are sworn in and he's there to greet them and say come out. New citizens can also register at the table set by Republican volunteers, but Latinos seems more drawn more to the Democrat's Spanish-language signs and Spanish speakers like Rauda who signed up Alejandra Naison(ph).
Ms. ALEJANDRA NAISON (Nevada Voter): I really want to be able to get my vote count for the next elections. And I think all these people can make a difference today if they could stay and vote.
JAFFE: But Hispanics don't have the clout of the ballot box here that their numbers would suggest. About half are not eligible to vote because they're either under 18 or they're not citizens. Ironically, Marco Rauda is a case in point. He has personally signed up more than $2,000 Hispanic voters in the past six months, but he can't vote because he's not a citizen yet.
Mr. MARCO RAUDA (Member, Nevada Democratic Party): I've been here since I was 6-years-old, since 1988. I've always felt like an American citizen. But I wanted to participate. I want to take part in the election process, and I can't be preaching voter registration at the same and not be registered to vote myself.
JAFFE: He is looking forward to casting his first ballot in November. But in Nevada, even Hispanics who are eligible to vote aren't anymore likely to cast ballots than any other voters. Democrats want to change that, and that's why first term Nevada assembly member, Ruben Kihuen, has become such a star.
Mr. RUBEN KIHUEN (Democrat, Nevada State Assembly): We tripled Hispanic turnout.
JAFFE: In his district, where he beat the Democratic incumbent in the primary, in part by turning out Latinos who were voting for the first time. The 27-year-old Mexican-born Kihuen says he did it the old fashioned way, by knocking on the door of every registered Democrat in his Las Vegas district at least twice. Latino voters, he says, respond to the personal touch.
Mr. KIHUEN: I took the time to write a thank you note to every person that I spoke to at the door. And so if I went to the door and I met Mr. Smith and his wife and their dog Sparky, I will go home and put little notes and say, okay, we talked about health care and education, so what I would do is write a handwritten note with my stances on health care and education. And believe it or not, a lot of those people took it very - to the heart. And I said, Ruben, just because you took the time to write us a thank you note, we're going to support you.
JAFFE: Kihuen as only been a citizen himself for three years. So it's been a heady experience to suddenly have every Democratic presidential contender beating a path to his door, hoping to win the endorsement of that guy who knows the secret of turning out Latino voters.
Mr. KIHUEN: I had calls from Barack Obama, from Senator Clinton, from John Edwards, from Bill Richardson. Almost every single candidate has visited my district twice.
JAFFE: And Hillary Clinton got his endorsement because, says Kihuen, she was the most popular with his constituents. The state Democratic Party is following Kihuen's example of shoe-leather politics. They've nearly quadrupled their staff. The send organizers to neighborhood festivals and even weddings. And they've started a soccer team, Los Democratas, the Democrats, that plays in the Las Vegas City league. There really is nothing comparable from the state Republican party. There is one pre-caucus event for Latinos scheduled in a Mexican restaurant with a $20 admission and a beat-the-donkey pinata.
For their part, Democrats have held dozens of mock caucuses around the state for free like this one at Rancho High School in a predominantly Latino neighborhood.
(Soundbite of music)
JAFFE: And Mexican folk dancers stomped and twirled in front of a large crowd that had signs and stickers for their favorite Democratic candidate. Paul Martinez(ph), a John Edwards supporter, was there with a friend wearing a big Hillary sticker. Yeah, that's okay, he said.
Mr. PAUL MARTINEZ (John Edwards Supporter): I mean, I got other friends that are, that are Hillary, Obama and Edwards, and Richardson. All Latinos and so it's cool, yo. And we don't all agree but we're all interested in supporting our Democratic Party.
JAFFE: The Democrats are hoping that Latino voters will be just as devoted in November, knowing that Republicans may be keeping a low profile during the caucuses. But they'll be going all out to win this swing state and the White House.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
We've been airing a series of commentaries from people who are rejecting conventional wisdom. It's called Au Contraire. And it's with that in mind and all those New Year's resolutions you may be making that we hear from Douglas Kamerow. He's a former assistant surgeon general of the United States. And he has some thoughts on the secret to a longer life.
Dr. DOUGLAS KAMEROW (Former U.S. Assistant Surgeon General): I know what you're thinking. Here comes another harangue about diet and exercise and smoking. All the stuff you should and shouldn't be doing next year. Time to turn the radio to another station. But bear with me. We'll get to the advice, which may surprise you in a minute. But first, a question. What's killing Americans?
You can probably name the so-called leading causes of death; they haven't changed in years: number one, heart disease; number two, cancer; three, stroke; four, chronic lung disease, and so on. Everybody knows that, except that everyone is wrong. Those are not the leading causes of death. Those are the leading diseases that doctors write down on death certificates, not what was really responsible.
Fifteen years ago, two public health service doctors, Michael McGinnis and William Foege, calculated what they called the actual causes of death based on what led to the death certificate diagnoses. For instance, what's a risk factor that's common to all the top four - heart and lung disease, cancer and stroke? You guessed it - smoking. This is where we got the idea that some of the leading causes of death are actually risky behaviors. When McGinnis and Foege did the math, it turned out that the real leading cause of death in America is smoking - 430,000 deaths per year. Second, bad diet and lack of exercise - more than 350,000 deaths. And third, alcohol use - almost 100,000.
So the answer must be clear. We need to eliminate tobacco or get everyone to exercise or rid the world of Twinkies. Well, each of those would certainly help, but none of them is the answer to this question - what's the single factor that best predicts longevity? It's not whether you smoke. It's not diet or exercise. It's not access to health care or getting the right screening tests or shots. It's not even wealth or race. Most experts are convinced that education, the number of years spent in school, has the most direct causal effect on how long people live.
And this is true around the world, in rich countries and poor countries alike. The problem for us in medicine is that the secret to longer life is nothing we can do anything about. Sure, we can help around the margins with our nicotine replacement patches, our cholesterol medicines, our screening tests. We can give expert care to the sick and relieve suffering, and we should. But for every year spent in school, life expectancy is extended 18 months. So the bottom line is, it's not the economy, stupid. It's not even risky behaviors. It is education, and that should be at the top of our agenda for 2008.
NORRIS: Family physician Douglas Kamerow is a former assistant surgeon general. He's now a health services researcher and a columnist. He lives in Maryland.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
And now, we're going to spend some time with an artist of many names. Growing up in Jamaica, he was known as Wayne Rhoden. He's also known as Rankin' Don, a name he picked up as a D.J. in reggae dancehalls. Now he's teamed up with a popular children's musician, Dan Zanes, where he took on another moniker, Father Goose. And under that name, he aims his dancehall boogie at a pint-sized audience.
(Soundbite of "Sly Mongoose")
FATHER GOOSE (Musician): (Singing) Yeah, man, banana (unintelligible). (unintelligible) make me feel this fish. Replace some food, built (unintelligible). Sly Mongoose.
NORRIS: Father Goose's new solo album, "It's a Bam Bam Diddly," draws on the music he heard as a child growing up in Jamaica. He says he likes to take those traditional songs and add his Father Goose twist.
FATHER GOOSE: To add a few flavors, you know, my own seasoning.
NORRIS: Your own seasoning, huh?
FATHER GOOSE: Yeah.
NORRIS: Okay, what goes into that mix?
FATHER GOOSE: Well, I add some, you know, some nice lyrics, sometimes moods, attitudes and, you know, a few, little of the Goose special ingredients.
(Soundbite of "It's a Bam Bam")
FATHER GOOSE: (Singing) It's a bam bam diddly. Ah, diddly, hey. Bam bam. Well, latest craze today. Down here in Jamaica way. Is bam bam, the latest dance. It might even go to France. Bam bam. Celebration time. Work the body line. It's going around. Inna shanty towns.
NORRIS: Why did you decide to move into children's music? How did that happen?
FATHER GOOSE: It all started when I got a call from a very good friend of mine, Dan Zanes, to try something new. (Unintelligible) kicking and screaming, of course. And…
NORRIS: You didn't like the idea at first?
FATHER GOOSE: Well, it was new to me, so I was trying to start thinking first, I like the idea for recording, but not to perform in front of kids. I didn't know what to say or how to act.
NORRIS: So wait, you're a performer. You're used to - working in dancehalls. And that's a tough audience to make sure that the floor is always filled. You were concerned about performing in front of kids? Is that a tough audience?
FATHER GOOSE: Yes. It's a weird thing. It's easier for me to perform in front of, you know, thousands of people than to perform in front of two or three. You know, it's just a weird thing. I don't know. It's just - that's all I am, I guess.
(Soundbite of "Come Down The Line")
FATHER GOOSE: (Singing) Everybody, everybody, them a come down the line now.
NORRIS: You actually tour with Dan Zanes. And you - he often calls you out in the course of the performance. And people, as I understand, at his concert, the kids often sing along. They know the music. They've heard it. They all hear these songs over and over and over again. Your music is designed to get kids moving. It's really dance music. So what happens in that performance when you step on stage?
FATHER GOOSE: Well, basically, they call it the dance part of the segment. And that's all we do, just dance and have fun, you know? We come out to enjoy ourselves and just have a big party onstage. And that's what I love doing, you know? I love to have fun. The best thing for me is when people enjoying themselves more than anything else. I love to put smiles on people's face. And that in turn lets me feel good inside.
(Soundbite of "Come Down The Line")
FATHER GOOSE: (Singing) Let them do all the limbo. So make them do the Rukumbine now, inna de dance party. Everybody them a come down the line now.
NORRIS: How has it changed you as an artist?
FATHER GOOSE: Well, I'm more disciplined now and more mature, but still, I'm addicted(ph) to dancing. There's no way getting around that.
(Soundbite of "Come Down The Line")
FATHER GOOSE: (Singing) People always come tell me. How them love fe dance up inna de dance party. Make them do the limbo inna de dance party.
NORRIS: I want to ask you about one of the songs on the CD It's called "Music Man." And the first voice that we hear in this song is your mother?
FATHER GOOSE: Yes.
(Soundbite of "Music Man")
Unidentified Woman: Imagine, you have been all over the world now with your music. You are not a little goose anymore. You are Father Goose, the music man.
FATHER GOOSE: (Singing) The goose is out the concert hour. I'm the music man. You know, that's what I am.
NORRIS: How did you choose that name, Father Goose?
FATHER GOOSE: It was the first track that we did called "Father Goose," that was the name of the track. It was a medley. And then the name stuck. I tried everything in my power to get rid of the name because it wouldn't work.
NORRIS: Why didn't you like it?
FATHER GOOSE: I don't know. It was just weird to me at first, coming from Rankin' Don. Father Goose? (Unintelligible). You know, I've got a lot of plugging and a lot of radio stations were like, you're what? Father what? Okay, you believe that the dancehall rude boy is now Father Goose? Come on. You know, so to me, I'm happy because then I bring something new to them.
(Soundbite of "Music Man")
FATHER GOOSE: (Singing) That's what I am. (Unintelligible). Music everyday, hey.
NORRIS: Have you always turned to music to express yourself or for comfort? Or what does music mean to you?
FATHER GOOSE: Music is like oxygen to me. I try to walk away from it, put it aside and it keeps pulling me back. You know, I just love music, everything about music. I just love to express myself. It brings my mood up, everything. It's so good. It's the tool to help me let people enjoy themselves on many levels.
(Soundbite of "Nah Eat No Fish")
FATHER GOOSE: (Singing) Worse than pee-rye, mama. Worse than pee-rye. Cumba cumba fish mama. Nah eat no fish. Worse than pee-rye, mama. Worse than pee-rye. Cumba cumba fish mama. Nah eat no fish.
NORRIS: Well, you know, I keep calling you Father Goose because I'm not sure if I should call you Wayne or Rankin' Don.
FATHER GOOSE: Father Goose is perfect. I love it.
NORRIS: Father Goose is perfect, Okay.
FATHER GOOSE: I love the name Father Goose.
NORRIS You embrace it now?
FATHER GOOSE: I embrace it with a lot of love.
NORRIS: All right. Well, Father Goose, thank you so much for coming in to talk to us.
FATHER GOOSE: Thank you.
NORRIS: That was Father Goose. His new album is called "It's a Bam Bam Diddly."
(Soundbite of "Nah Eat No Fish")
FATHER GOOSE: (Singing) Cumba cumba fish mama. Nah eat no fish. Cumba cumba fish mama. Nah eat no fish.
NORRIS: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The number of overdoses on heroin and opiates such as Oxycontin has grown up dramatically over the last decade. In fact, users of those drugs are more likely to die from an overdose than to die from AIDS or hepatitis or murder. Public health workers around the country have responded by handing out drug rescue kits to users. They cost just $9.50.
NPR's Richard Knox reports.
RICHARD KNOX: You can find one of the new rescue operations near Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's off a side street behind St. Peter's Episcopal Church, through an anonymous-looking door, and up some stairs to a program called Cambridge Cares.
Ms. ELIZA WHEELER (Health Educator): Hi.
KNOW: Hi.
Ms. WHEELER: Are you Richard?
KNOX: Yeah.
Ms. WHEELER: Hi, how are you doing?
KNOX: Fine. Thank you.
Ms. WHEELER: We had to make sure. Are you cold(ph)?
KNOX: I feel good.
Health educator Eliza Wheeler cajoles drug users to get tested for HIV and hepatitis, urges them not to share needles, gets them into detox or methodone treatment. On this wintry morning, she's teaching a 34-year-old woman named Elissa how to rescue her friends from a fatal overdose. Elissa has been on methodone for six years, but she occasionally uses heroin when she is under stress.
Ms. WHEELER: All right, so Elissa, the first thing I'm going to do is kind of ask a series of questions about current drug use. So we're going to talk about just the last 30 days.
KNOX: Elissa has had scary experiences with overdoses - her own and others'.
ELISSA: I managed to wake my partner up, who had turned blue. He was not breathing and - which is why I called the ambulance. But I managed to wake him up before they came. And they didn't, you know, take him away. So he went out and convinced them that he was okay.
KNOX: Wheeler runs through the signs of heroin overdose.
Ms. WHEELER: So the first thing you want to is kind of figure out if they're overdosing.
KNOX: When this happens, she says, the first thing to do is call 911. Then you blow some air into the person's lungs, a modified form of CPR called rescue breathing. Then, you open up the overdose rescue kit.
Ms. WHEELER: This is what the box looks like. And then, attached to the box is a little apparatus that makes it into a spray. So it's just a nasal spray, no injection.
ELISSA: Oh, wow, that's so wonderful. I had thought it was a shot. That makes me feel so much better about everything.
KNOX: The nasal spray is a drug called naloxone or Narcan. It blocks the brain receptors that heroin activates, instantly reversing an overdose. Doctors and EMTs have used Narcan for years. But it doesn't require much training because it's impossible to overdose on Narcan. The Cambridge program began putting Narcan kits into drug users' hands last August. Since then, the kits have been used to reverse seven overdoses. New data, compiled for NPR from 16 such programs across the nation, show that more than 2,500 overdoses have been reversed.
John Gatto directs the Cambridge program.
Mr. JOHN GATTO (Director, Cambridge Cares About AIDS): In the work that we do, oftentimes the results are very intangible. This is amazing, to be involved in something that literally can save people's lives. Why wouldn't we do it?
KNOX: Dr. Bertha Madras, has a bunch of reasons why not. She is deputy director of the White House Office on National Drug Control Policy. She's dead-set against the Narcan overdose-rescue programs.
Doctor BERTHA MADRAS (Deputy Director, White House Office on National Drug Control Policy): First of all, I don't agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That's number one. I just don't think that's good public health policy.
KNOX: Madras says fellow drug users aren't competent to deal with an overdose emergency. But more important, she says, Narcan kits are merely a stopgap that may encourage a person to keep using heroin and take away the motivation to get into detox and drug treatment.
Ms. MADRAS: Sometimes, having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation, and snap into having someone give them services.
KNOX: There's not research on the effect on Narcan kits. But one small study suggests that overdose rescue programs drug actually reduce heroine use and get some drug users into treatment
Karen Seal of the University of California at San Francisco is an author of that study.
Ms. KAREN SEAL (University of California, San Francisco): It was one of these great studies where we just kind of all walked away and said, whoa. Yeah, this is terrific. I mean, buy our sheer interaction action with these folks around, you know, life-saving behaviors, we're actually creating some real positive change here.
KNOX: Eliza Wheeler, the Cambridge health educator, says putting overdose rescue kits in the hands of drug users sends them a positive message.
Ms. WHEELER: There is a real potential culture change among drug users because of Narcan, because, from my experience, I feel like drug users internalize a lot of stigma that's out in the world about them, and come to believe that dying is just part of this life that they've chosen.
KNOX: So far, Narcan Rescue programs have sprung up in big cities and in rural areas around the country, with little or no opposition.
Richard Knox, NPR News, Boston.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
And we're going to begin this hour in Kenya where an estimated 300 people have been killed since last week's disputed presidential election. President Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner, but opposition leader Raila Odinga says he will not accept the legitimacy of Kibaki's win. Among the most horrific acts of violence was the burning of a church full of people in the town of Eldoret.
NPR's Gwen Thompkins visited the scene today and sent this report.
(Soundbite of Cow Mooing)
GWEN THOMPKINS: In Western Kenya, on the outskirts of a town called Eldoret, the harvest is in. The sugarcane fields have just the nubs left and a smattering of dry, brown leaves. It is quiet here and beautiful. And the sheep are ushering themselves down a country lane. But wait a minute. There are no people here. And the Assemblies of God church is in charred bits and pieces.
Patrick Yangaza(ph) and his Red Cross team have taken 13 bodies out of the ashes. Someone, he says, will come back to this area and want to bury them someday.
Mr. PATRICK YANGAZA (Red Cross): I know of African culture, people always want to bury their own. And the problem will be identification because (unintelligible). So I think we leave that to technology, but we will just do what we can.
THOMPKINS: Area residents were burned alive in the church Tuesday. They had come to the church for protection against their neighbors. In the aftermath of a disputed election that returned President Mwai Kibaki to office, those who voted for him have been the targets of attacks. But the police say this has never happened before in Kenya. No one has ever set fire to a church.
Ms. JANET KAMALIA(ph) (Resident): They are (unintelligible), the people who are burning, killing, beating, yeah. They are boys we went to school with. We used to be in the same class, the same school. We sat for our examinations together so they are not new people to us.
THOMPKINS: Janet Kamalia was there when it happened. Like Kibaki, she is a Kikuyu. And her family has been living in the area since 1965. And like nearly all Kikuyus nationwide, she supported Kibaki for his second term. But others in the area supported the challenger, Raila Odinga, a Luo. But many of the Kalenjin tribe, the Luhya, the Kisii and the Pokot were so disappointed with the result of the race that they told Kamalia that they would come for revenge against the Kikuyu.
Ms. KAMALIA: They, there's a sort of clay they put on their face, not to be recognized. But when our eyes met them, they were flushing.
THOMPKINS: Dr. Omar Ali(ph) is the acting director of the local research hospital where Kamalia's father died this morning. He was outside the church Tuesday and was beaten unconscious.
Doctor OMAR ALI (Acting Director, Local Research Hospital): This is the worst of, you know? I think this is the worst that I've seen. You know, it's really a pitiful state. I think no, you know, in our country, something like this should never happen.
THOMPKINS: Ali says since the election results were announced on Sunday, the hospital has seen all manner of injuries.
Dr. ALI: Oh, most of the injuries are panga cuts, you know, panga machete? Arrows, bows and arrows. You know, starting on the 31st of December, we've had 13 bodies being brought in. On the 1st, we had 34. And on the second, that's today, we had four bodies so far having been brought in. And there are about 50 still lying and waiting to be brought in. Yeah, they're scattered all over, yes.
THOMPKINS: At the Sacred Heart Cathedral, the bishop estimates that 8,000 to 10,000 people sleep in the open air on the grounds every night. Others have squeezed into police stations and schools.
But Peter Waweru(ph) is getting out. Waweru is a high school biology teacher who has been teaching in the area for 45 years. But he and his wife, Margaret(ph), have left everything behind, even their animals.
Mr. PETER WAWERU (Biology Teacher): We just left the wilds(ph). Wild - cow, sheep, goats, just everything, everything. We just came the way you see us.
THOMPKINS: They want to go to Nairobi, but trouble could be waiting for them there. Raila Odinga has called for his supporters to mount a massive demonstration downtown tomorrow despite a government ban on the gathering. Riot police are expected in full gear.
Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, Eldoret, Kenya.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
To help us better understand the forces behind the bloodshed in Kenya, we've turned to Makau Mutua. He is interim dean of the law school at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He's also the chairman of the Kenya Human Rights Commission. Professor Mutua, thanks for joining us.
Professor MAKU MUTUA (Interim Dean, Law School, State University of New York at Buffalo, Chairman, Kenya Human Rights Commission): Thanks for having me, Melissa.
BLOCK: When you consider the Kenyan population, 40 million people, more than 40 tribes. What is the strength of those tribal bonds, would you say, compared with national identity for the country as a whole?
Prof. MUTUA: Well, I think the first thing for us to realize is that Kenya is really an experiment in nation-building. The country was put together by the British by amalgamating these 40 different groups together. And for the most of the country's history, these groups have lived together peacefully in one nation. That is why what is happening is so tragic.
BLOCK: And what accounts for that do you think? And why has, why have these fissures come to the surface?
Prof. MUTUA: Well, there has always been ethnic tensions in Kenya. But you know, the current crisis cannot be traced back to the dawn of the independent state in 1963 when Oginga Odinga, who was then vice president, and Jomo Kenyatta, who was first president, had disagreements. Eventually, Odinga was hounded out of power. And this rupture between Odinga, who was a Luo, and Kenyatta, who was a Kikuyu, has continued to date.
BLOCK: You know, Kenya is in the middle of an economic boom. The economy is growing there. At the same time, there is this huge, huge class of the dispossessed. How much of that do you think is feeding in to the violence that we've seen in the last few days?
Prof. MUTUA: I think that, you know, the electoral campaign was run on several premises. It is true that the economy has grown at an average of five percent a year. But the problem is that the benefits of this economic rebound have not felt across the board. There is a large percentage of young people who are unemployed and who are dispossessed and who feel completely forgotten by the state. It is to these people that Odinga really appealed. Of course, as I said before, the conflict is also highly ethnicized, so that is mostly the Luo, the Luhya and the Kalenjin members of Kenyan society, you know, who are carrying out many of these attacks against Kikuyus.
BLOCK: What do you think is at stake, not just for Kenya here, but also for other countries in Africa and countries well beyond?
Prof. MUTUA: A collapse of the state in Kenya, you know, which a civil war would engender(ph) or a genocidal conflict, would see a massive flow of refugees from the country. The neighboring states have no ability or capacity to absorb such a large population. You know, secondly, Kenya is really the entry point for businesses and for investment in the region. Its economy is larger than the economies of the five or six countries around it put together so all these things is bound to be imperiled, of course, not to mention the lives of the population itself.
BLOCK: You did raise the specter of, I think your phrase was genocidal conflict. Do you really see the possibility that this could extend to that level?
Prof. MUTUA: I think that the kind of thing that we saw in the church in which 50 Kikuyus were killed because of their ethnicity is reminiscent really of the Rwanda genocide. You can imagine what would happen if Kikuyus or a very large group in the country started to retaliate. The whole place would go up in flames. It's extremely important that the two principal leaders, Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki, appeal to their supporters to step back in the brink.
BLOCK: Makau Mutua, thanks very much for talking with us today.
Prof. MUTUA: Thank you so much, Melissa.
BLOCK: Makau Mutua is interim dean of the law school at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He's also chairman of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Voters in Iowa are about to begin the process of choosing the next president. Tomorrow night, they go to their local party caucuses. It's the earliest the process has ever begun. But just getting to the starting point has already consumed a phenomenal amount of money.
Here to give us an update is NPR's Peter Overby who tracks campaign finance. And Peter, the final reports for fundraising for 2007 are going to be coming in soon. Any sense of what they're going to show?
PETER OVERBY: Well, one of the things that we know is that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has each raised more than $100 million over the past 12 months, which is just breathtaking. Haven't seen that before…
BLOCK: Ever?
OVERBY: …from two candidates in one campaign. We know that Ron Paul had a surge over the last few weeks. He raised $19.5 million in that surge on, most of it on the Internet. That $19.5 million is 70 percent of all the money he's raised in 2007. One thing that we don't know is how much money Mitt Romney has spent out of his own pocket. He's the richest candidate in the race, and he's already spent $17 million as of September 30th. The campaign has picked up dramatically since then. We don't know how deep he's dug into his pocket after September 30th.
BLOCK: And another big question to keep an eye out is how much of the money that these candidates have raised they've actually spent.
OVERBY: That's something that they're talking about even less than the fundraising side of it. One way to look at it is in the olden days, candidates would take matching funds. And they would be limited to how much they could spend in each state as well as in overall spending on it. The limit for Iowa this year would be about $2 million. $2 million is like nothing in Iowa this year.
BLOCK: And remind us, Peter, who has taken matching funds this year?
OVERBY: OK, of the major candidates, only one has taken matching funds. Seven have qualified. Only John Edwards has started accepting the money.
BLOCK: Apart from the candidates spending their money from their campaign, there are other groups, big independent groups. Peter, how are they spending their money?
OVERBY: Well, the most visible example is triumvirate, EMILY's list, the group for pro-choice Democratic women, AFSCME, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the American Federation of Teachers. They are working together to identify and move voters for Hillary Clinton. They've spent roughly $1 million on this that I can total. AFSCME has also spent a half million dollars attacking Obama. Other union groups have spent $2 million to help John Edwards, the guy who's taking matching funds and is limited in what he can spend. On the Republican side, the biggest activity is not disclosed. It's by a group called TrustHuckabee.com. It's a nonprofit organization. And in its crazy quilt of disclosure rules that we have, they don't have to disclose very much. But they are running ads for Huckabee and they are even doing precinct organizing for Huckabee.
BLOCK: With all this money and focus being spent on Iowa and then New Hampshire, who's going to have any money left for any of the other primaries?
OVERBY: Right off, we can figure that Obama, Clinton and Romney will. For the others, there's matching funds. It will carry them through the primaries. The problem is that there's an overall spending cap on the matching funds. They can't spend more than $50 million between now and the conventions. And it's hard to find any analyst who thinks that's going to be enough to carry a campaign.
BLOCK: OK, NPR's Peter Overby. Peter, thanks very much.
OVERBY: My pleasure.
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
A new law in Oklahoma to crack down on illegal immigrants is having a dramatic impact. The measure is known as H.B. 1804, and its first phase went into effect November 1st. It makes it a felony to employ, shelter or transport anyone who is in this country illegally. Hispanic leaders say the law is creating a climate of fear among immigrants. Backers say the law is doing what the federal government has failed to do - aggressively target illegal immigrants.
Here's NPR's Jason Beaubien.
JASON BEAUBIEN: At a sprawling development called Bell Trace(ph) east of downtown Tulsa, new detached homes are sprouting from the prairie. But many of the houses remain only partially built. Bricks have piled around some, others wrapped in white Tyvek sheeting stand empty.
James Baker(ph), who's overseeing one of the few active construction sites, says the effects of Oklahoma's new immigration law are obvious here.
Mr. JAMES BAKER (Construction Staff): Used to be, every house was being worked on every day. Now, most houses are sitting every day. There's more not being worked on than there is worked on.
BEAUBIEN: Baker acknowledges the national housing slowdown, but says the idle construction projects here are due to a lack of workers. Almost all of the workers at the site are Hispanic, most from Mexico. One of Baker's subcontractors said he used to have 18 men working for him. But since the passage of H.B. 1804, eight of them have left the state. The house we're standing in is a 2,500-square-foot, four-bedroom with three baths. Eventually, it'll have granite countertops, a fireplace, a three-car garage. And the list price is $260,000. Baker says as Oklahoma's new immigration low drives construction workers out, it's going to drive the price of houses like this one up.
Mr. BAKER: You know economies, it takes a certain amount of workers to keep economies growing. And we've had too many birth-control pills and not enough workers coming in. So we need more workers, and we've got more jobs than we have people. And that's just, if there was no jobs here, they wouldn't be here.
BEAUBIEN: Hispanic leaders say it's not just illegal immigrants who are fleeing Oklahoma. They say legal residents are also affected by the law. Take Leticia Sandoval(ph). She's a U.S. citizen born and raised in California. But she bursts into tears when she starts talking about Oklahoma's new immigration law.
Ms. LETICIA SANDOVAL (Resident): We're so afraid to even go to the grocery store to go shopping because we're so afraid that, you know, we're going to get stopped.
BEAUBIEN: Her husband is from Mexico. He's been working in Oklahoma for 12 years, much of that time without a work visa.
Ms. SANDOVAL: If they ask him for his papers and he doesn't have it, they will take him right there. It doesn't matter if we did something wrong or not, they'll just take him. So I mean, he's afraid to go, even go to work.
BEAUBIEN: She says if her husband gets deported, she doesn't how she'd pay their bills or support their four children. Since the measure went into effect, Sandoval worries now that she's breaking the law if she's driving her husband somewhere or even just living with him. And so why not try to get him legal status?
Ms. SANDOVAL: We have tried every (unintelligible). They keep telling us he would have to go back to Mexico. And it could take anywhere from seven to 10 years before he even get a permit to come back into the U.S. And I just couldn't do without his income, you know, not even a year. I mean, seven, 10 years is a long time.
BEAUBIEN: Over the last decade, the Hispanic population of Tulsa has grown dramatically. According to the census, the city's Hispanic population went from seven percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2006. And with the influx of undocumented immigrants, the growth was probably far greater.
Gary Rutledge has lived in Tulsa for 17 years and has witnessed that change.
Mr. GARY RUTLEDGE (Political Science Professor, Rogers State University): I've never seen a situation so volatile as the illegal immigrant population, illegal immigrant situation that we have in this region.
BEAUBIEN: Rutledge teaches political science at Rogers State University. But it's in his personal life that he's seen what he calls the escalating conflict between the Hispanic and non-Hispanic populations in Tulsa. And he said the problem of illegal immigration was driven home to him six months ago when he got rear-ended at a traffic light. You know, the driver was intoxicated and had no driver's license.
Mr. RUTLEDGE: We never did or the law enforcement people never did determine who actually owned the car. The tags that were in the car didn't belong in the car. And the driver didn't speak English or, at least, refused to speak English. And so, anyway, the driver was arrested, taken away. And the cop, in so many words, told me, if your car runs, why don't you just drive it down home and just forget it because you really don't have any recourse in this matter.
BEAUBIEN: Rutledge contends illegal immigration is spawning a culture of lawlessness. After breaking one law to get into this country, Rutledge argues that it's not much of a stretch for immigrants to drive without a license or ignore other laws. He said that illegal immigrants are overburdening Tulsa's schools, sapping entitlement programs, and driving down wages for low-skilled jobs. But in the last couple of months, illegal immigrants have either been leaving Tulsa or laying low. In this way, Rutledge says the new measure has already been a success. The debate over this new law has only heated up since it went into effect November 1st.
The Catholic bishop of Tulsa, Edward Slattery, recently denounced the measure in a pastoral letter, calling it immoral. Sitting in his residence on the ground of the diocese, Bishop Slattery says, for years, U.S. immigration policy essentially encouraged millions of immigrants to cross the Rio Grande, to take low-paying jobs. And he think it's a violation of their human rights to now try to force those immigrants to flee the state.
Bishop EDWARD SLATTERY (Diocese of Tulsa): Human rights come from God. They don't come from the legislature. In fact, it's reflected in our Constitution. There is an alienable right of every person to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not just to citizens, but to everyone.
BEAUBIEN: Bishop Slattery insists that he's not calling for the U.S. to surrender its borders. But he says people who've been working here for years have a right to stay and earn a living. Hispanic leaders say that the culture of fear that's developed since 1804 passed in May has been deadly. They point to the case of Edgar Castarenia(ph) who was born in Tulsa to undocumented Mexican immigrants. He died two months later from a minor rupture in his intestine.
Laurie Paul, the head of the Community Health Connection Clinic where Castarenia was first admitted, says the infant's condition absolutely could have been treated if he'd gotten medical attention sooner. She says the parents were too terrified to bring their baby to the hospital.
Ms. LAURIE PAUL (Head, Community Health Connection Clinic): They told us that they were fearful, that since they had no documentation, that the law would be called and they would be deported.
BEAUBIEN: In many ways, the primary impact of the new law has been to amplify fear among illegal immigrants and drive some of them from Oklahoma. Before and after its passage, the parents of Edgar Castarenia could've taken their baby to the hospital emergency room. Schools still aren't checking the immigration status of children. And law enforcement officials say that the new law hasn't significantly changed what they do.
Even though it does make it a crime to shelter or transport an illegal immigrant, Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz says his deputies are not randomly trying to verify the immigration status of people on the street.
Mr. STANLEY GLANZ (Tulsa County Sheriff): When we're just driving down the street and stop someone, we don't ask them if - where they're from. Foreign-born or not, if they violated the law, we deal with that and handle it accordingly.
BEAUBIEN: And the sheriff, who's known to take a tough stand on illegal immigration, says he still only attempts to deport someone if they end up at his jail for some other criminal violation not related to immigration.
Jason Beaubien, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes. Those tapes showed the questioning of suspected terrorists. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has appointed an outside prosecutor to oversee the case. And he's asked the FBI to do a full field investigation.
NPR's FBI correspondent, Dina Temple-Raston, is with us. And Dina, why don't you remind us first what these tapes contain? And tell us more about what the attorney general announced today.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, you recall these videotapes came to light publicly only after the head of the CIA, Michael Hayden, revealed in December that they had actually destroyed them. What we know about them is that they showed, among other things, the interrogation of these two al-Qaida suspects, and apparently, some episodes of harsh interrogation, techniques such as waterboarding, which is like controlled drowning. Hayden had said the tapes were destroyed to protect the identities of the people who actually conducted the interrogations.
And the CIA had hung on to them for three years before destroying them. What happened after that is the Department of Justice's National Security Division had launched this preliminary investigation just days after Hayden announced that they destroyed the tapes. Now, what Mukasey said today was that that investigation recommended, and he agreed that there was enough reason to think a crime had been committed to take the next step. So he appointed a U.S. attorney from Connecticut, a man named John Durham, to oversee the FBI as it looks into this whole episode.
BLOCK: And what will the FBI be looking for?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, launching a criminal investigation means that they think it's more likely than not that a crime was committed. So this moves all of this into a much more serious phase. Among other things, a grand jury gets involved. And it doesn't mean an indictment is inevitable, but now it means that people will be required to give evidence or face contempt of court charges or will have to evoke their Fifth Amendment rights.
This basically says that crimes could have been committed. And those crimes that could have been committed might be contempt as there are court orders calling for preservation of the materials that might have been included in the tapes. There could be the possibility of an obstruction of justice charge if there were subpoenas calling for materials that could've been included in these tapes. So this really does move it to a different level.
BLOCK: And now, not a special prosecutor being named, but John Durham - you mentioned - the U.S. attorney from Connecticut, being called in to oversee the investigation.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Yes, this is a little bit of a distinction. Had they actually used the U.S. attorney for Virginia, who had sort of jurisdiction over this because the CIA is in Virginia, he would've been called a special prosecutor because he was not appointed. Mukasey said, out of an abundance of caution, he wasn't going to appoint this Virginia U.S. attorney. Then we have this John Durham here instead. And John Durham is actually quite well-known. He was a prosecutor who was involved with the FBI mob informant case in Boston, which is a very controversial case. And he also sent several Connecticut public officials to prison. His office has not commented on this yet.
BLOCK: Okay, NPR's FBI correspondent, Dina Temple-Raston. Dina, thanks a lot.
TEMPLE-RASTON: My pleasure.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Pharmaceutical manufacturers routinely shower doctors with free drug samples. And they've long claimed that they do so in part so doctors can pass the medicine along to poor patients. Well, a new study challenges that claim.
NPR's Joanne Silberner has details.
JOANNE SILBERNER: Physician Richard Baron(ph) practices medicine in Philadelphia. Some of his patients are poor, but he won't even take the time to talk to the drug company representatives who stop by to offer free samples.
Doctor RICHARD BARON (Physician): It's typically the wrong medications. It's not to say never, but the medications that they give us are the most expensive, the newest, the ones we know the least about, the ones that - as recent experience has shown - may have side effects that we don't know about yet.
SILBERNER: Up in Boston, Physician Sarah Cutrona shares his concerns. She says free medications can change the way physicians practice for the worse.
Doctor SARAH CUTRONA (Physician): You want to go to your doctor and get the medication that he or she feels is most appropriate for you, not the medication that's on the shelf.
SILBERNER: Well, Cutrona began thinking the free giveaways might have an upside. So several years ago, she started a study.
Dr. CUTRONA: We're looking to see if the use of free samples overall is such an overwhelming positive because without the free samples, we wouldn't be getting medications to our needy patients.
SILBERNER: Cutrona is a doctor with the Cambridge Health Alliance, a Boston area health system that's affiliated with Harvard Medical School. She and colleagues took a close look at a government health survey of 33,000 people. Participants were asked, among other things, whether they had received any free prescription drug samples in the previous year. The analysis is published in the current issue of the American Journal of Public Health. It shows 12 percent of Americans got free drug samples in 2003. But Cutrona wasn't happy.
Dr. CUTRONA: A few samples actually went to needy patients. In short, Americans and those of higher income were actually more likely to report receiving free drug samples.
SILBERNER: Not that doctors were faring those rich people with health insurance, she says. It was more a matter of poor people not seeing personal physicians as often, if at all. About 11 percent of low-income people received at least one free sample compared to 13 percent of people with high incomes.
Dr. CUTRONA: So these free samples really are not a safety net.
SILBERNER: An official at the drug company trade group PhRMA says there are medication subsidy programs to help poor people. Free samples are for something else.
Unidentified Man: Samples are made available to physicians when drugs are launched, so that physicians can get some experience with those drugs. Physicians may also use samples to get a patient started on a drug before they can go to the pharmacy and pick up a prescription.
SILBERNER: But that comes back to Cutrona and Baron's concerns, that free samples tend to be new drugs, which means they're usually more expensive and don't have a long safety record. That's especially a problem with chronic conditions such as high cholesterol or serious heartburn where patients may be on the drugs for many years.
Joanne Silberner, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
Two weeks from now, if you tune in for the season premier of "American Idol," look closely. Deep in the background, you may see the ghost of a man named Arthur Godfrey. Long before Ryan, Simon, Paula and Randy, Arthur Godfrey was the undisputed king of the television talent show. Arthur Godfrey's "Talent Scouts" introduced Americans to a number of well-known performers, including Tony Bennett, Connie Francis, Pat Boone, Marilyn Horne and Patsy Cline.
Today, their names are more familiar than Godfrey's, but that hasn't stopped commentator and radio producer John McDonough of putting together this remembrance of a much earlier "American Idol."
JOHN MCDONOUGH: During television's first decade, Arthur Godfrey was the most omnipresent, watched, listened to and talked about personality in America.
SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE
MCDONOUGH: He was on television five days a week for nine hours, eight of them simulcast on radio. His theme song was played up to 70 times a week.
Mr. ARTHUR GODFREY (Television and Radio Broadcaster): Hello, hello, hello, hello. This is Arthur Godfrey. This is the "Talents Scouts" show. We operate here on the theory that since the public makes stars, the public should have a hand in finding them.
MCDONOUGH: The format was simple. Each guest would bring a struggling newcomer to Godfrey. And audience applause would decide the winner at the end of each show. Godfrey may be forgotten, but not some of his proteges.
Mr. GODFREY: What's your name, Mrs. Bruce?
Ms. SALLY BRUCE (Lenny Bruce's Mother): Mrs. Bruce.
Mr. GODFREY: Mrs. Sally Bruce?
Ms. BRUCE: That's right.
Mr. GODFREY: Who'd you bring with you, Mrs. Bruce, to get right on?
Ms. BRUCE: My son.
Mr. GODFREY: Your son? What's his name?
Ms. BRUCE: Lenny Bruce.
Mr. GODFREY: Lenny Bruce. Let's bring him on.
MCDONOUGH: That's right, Lenny Bruce was doing impersonations then. On "Talent Scouts," he did a Bavarian impersonator impersonating James Cagney.
Mr. LENNY BRUCE (Comedian): All right, (unintelligible).
MCDONOUGH: But Godfrey's "Talent Scouts" was less about talent than it was about Godfrey whose appeal may be hard to imagine today when we insist that words and images move quickly. His only real talent was a folksy, laidback and unpredictable charm. His talk rambled from topic to topic with an informal spontaneity that stripped broadcasting of its pretense and artifice. Anything that popped into his mind was fair game, a shirt stain, for instance.
Mr. GODFREY: Hey, Tom, come over here a minute, will you? Stand around a minute. That's what I saw. How do you get lipstick on the right shoulder of a hunting coat? There it is, right over there.
Unidentified Man #1: That's paint.
Mr. GODFREY: Go away.
MCDONOUGH: He noticed people were laughing even though he never actually says anything especially funny. Godfrey was like that, full of affable mischief and monkey business. Godfrey's charm was nurtured by a team of writers who share his penchant for deflating pretense and sacred cows. One of them was a young war correspondent turned humorist named Andy Rooney.
Mr. ANDY ROONEY (Humorist): I was in CBS probably went up to see Ed Murrow, looking for work. I came down the elevator and Godfrey was in the elevator. And I said I was a writer. And I was here at CBS looking for a job at CBS News. And he said, well, come on over and see me. So I got a job with Godfrey in 1949 late. And I was with him for five years. It was an interesting experience.
Unidentified Man #2: Chesterfield presents, "Arthur Godfrey Time."
MCDONOUGH: "Arthur Godfrey Time" became his flagship show, simulcast daily on radio and television for 90 minutes Monday through Friday.
Unidentified Man #2: Yes, it's Arthur Godfrey and all the Little Godfreys, Janet Davis, the Mariners...
MCDONOUGH: The Little Godfreys were Arthur's extended family of musicians, singers and foils whom he could turn to for banter or a song. He played the benevolent patriarch.
Mr. GODFREY: Look at all these folks in the studio. It's all guarded by - if I was told you were coming, ought to have brought a joke.
SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER
MCDONOUGH: Actually, Godfrey brought plenty, but they were always camouflaged in his cracker-barrel chitchat. The spontaneity was often real as his sponsors were frequently reminded.
Mr. GODFREY: But tonight, I want to talk about Lipton Tea. Lipton Tea is a good drink. Now let's talk about something else.
MCDONOUGH: And he met it. That was the commercial. Advertisers could never be sure what to expect when he started talking about their brand. Godfrey was so powerful, sponsors had no court of appeal. Andy Rooney.
Mr. ROONEY: He was good with advertising. He didn't want any part of it. He wouldn't give them a nickel. Just, I'll sell your stuff for you. And that's all I know, I don't want to hear anymore from you. And he was really nasty to the sponsors. He could tell them to go to hell and they had to take it.
MCDONOUGH: They had to take it because no one had the magic selling touch Godfrey did. At his peak, it was said that he brought in as much as 17 percent of CBS's total income. With such power, he owed fealty to no one, not even his CBS bosses.
Mr. ROONEY: They didn't like him because he wouldn't take anything from them. One guy that he liked who was sort of in-charge of Godfrey, a vice president at CBS. He was his only chum.
MCDONOUGH: But some saw a dark side in such power. Among the private standing rules all Little Godfreys lived under were no agents, no managers. Arthur would provide.
Mr. GODFREY: And now, I want you to meet a young man named Julius LaRosa.
MCDONOUGH: Godfrey had discovered Julius LaRosa in the Navy and brought him to television in 1951. By 1953, he was becoming a star. In October, LaRosa signed with a major talent agency. The following Monday, everything seemed normal as Godfrey gave LaRosa a warm introduction.
Mr. GODFREY: And I would like Julius, if he would, to sing me that song called, "Manhattan." Sing me that.
MCDONOUGH: LaRosa stepped to the microphone and sang. When it was over, seconds before the end of the program, Godfrey did an unprecedented thing that no one on the show could quite believe what is happening.
Mr. GODFREY: Thank you so much, Julie(ph). That was Julie's swan song with us. He goes now out on his own as his own star. So I know you wish him Godspeed same as I do.
Mr. ROONEY: The four us, the writers, were all in the backroom where slip stuff that are out there. We're listening to Arthur and Arthur says, that was Julius's final appearance. Julius look at us and he says, did I just get fired?
MCDONOUGH: LaRosa didn't know what the expression swan song even meant. But unlike Newsweek(ph), the incident became the most talked about event in America. It was the crest of Godfrey's fabled career. A procession of other Little Godfreys would get the ax over the next two years. Each would chip away at his most valuable asset, that of the kindly patriarch. Godfrey's ratings slipped and tastes changed. By 1959, the most pervasive TV presence of the decade was off television. He would never return in a major series. Pieces of Godfrey's darker side are said to live on in the characters of Lonesome Rhodes in "A Face in the Crowd" and Herb Fuller in Jose Ferrer's "The Great Man," both movies made in the mid-1950s.
SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC
MCDONOUGH: Arthur Godfrey left no great movie classic or recording, no reruns to live in perpetual syndication, as Andy Rooney says, only the intense but fragile fame of a broadcaster.
Mr. ROONEY: And it's gone. It's up in thin air. And I can't get over the fact that he's forgotten.
MCDONOUGH: For NPR News, this is John McDonough.
SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC
BLOCK: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
And these are the sounds of the last hours of campaigning in Iowa.
(Soundbite of political speeches)
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Senator; Democratic Presidential Candidate): I'm asking you to go and caucus for me and to take some of your friends with you to the caucus.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): And I think these caucus attendees look at the differences between the different candidates, that I'll be able to get the support that I need to, well, do pretty darn well here in Iowa.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Massachusetts Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): If you go out there and caucus for me and we win this thing, I want to tell you, the political landscape of America will never be the same again ever, because it's not possible to get outspent like me and win.
(Soundbite of applause)
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Are you fired up?
Unidentified Group: Fired up.
Sen. OBAMA: Are you ready to go?
Unidentified Group: Ready to go.
Sen. OBAMA: Fired up.
Unidentified Group: Fired up.
Sen. OBAMA: Ready to go.
Unidentified Group: Ready to go.
Sen. OBAMA: Oh, that's what I'm talking about Davenport.
BLOCK: Voters in Davenport and the rest of Iowa will gather tomorrow evening for the first decisive choices in Election 2008. The race is very close on both sides. For the Republicans, polls show Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney in the lead with John McCain gaining some ground. For the Democrats, John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are running in a tight three-way race. We'll hear about efforts to get people out to the caucuses and we'll talk about the significance of the Iowa vote in a few minutes.
First, NPR's David Welna reports on the candidate's final pitches.
DAVID WELNA: On one of the coldest mornings this winter, Hillary Clinton showed up 25 minutes late to a church meeting room in Indianola, Iowa that more than a 100 hundred people had packed into.
She spoke for nearly an hour and took no questions, but Clinton did promise that, in her words, if you will stand up for me one night, I will stand up for you every day in the White House.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (New York, Democrat; Presidential Candidate): And I will be ready on day one to assume the responsibilities that we, starting tomorrow, will pass on to the next president. So please, put on your coats, warm up the car, call your friends, pick up a buddy, come out to caucus tomorrow night, and together, we will make history. Thank you all so much and God bless you.
(Soundbite of crowd)
WELNA: Many in the crowd were older women. They tend to favor Clinton more than any other Democrat. Here's 66-year-old Cecilia Mescar(ph).
Ms. CECILIA MESCAR (Iowa Voter): I was voting for Hillary Clinton if she ever ran when her husband was president - and I say, the next president after Bill Clinton runs through his terms, I want Hillary. And I want to see that dream come true.
WELNA: But others there were still struggling to make a decision. One of them was Katie Tener(ph), a 19-year-old independent, who says she definitely plans to caucus tomorrow night, but she's not sure for whom.
Ms. KATIE TENER: I figure I'll figure it out when I walk into the caucusing room. So…
WELNA: But you just heard Hillary Clinton make her pitch, didn't it impress you much.
Ms. TENER: I was impressed by her, but I'm also impressed by Barack Obama and some of the other people I've heard. So I don't really know yet.
WELNA: Still up in the air?
Ms. TENER: Yes, definitely.
WELNA: John Edwards, who seems to be running neck-and-neck with both Clinton and Obama, is making a final statewide appeal in Iowa this evening with a TV ad featuring a man who lost his job when the Maytag plant here moved its operations overseas.
(Soundbite of political ad)
Mr. DOUG BISHOP: I want a guy who's going to sit down and look a 7-year-old kid in the eye and tell him I'm going to fight for your dad's job. That's what I want.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. BISHOP: I'm going to do my best to make sure that my children aren't the first generation of Americans that I can't look them in the eye and say, you're going to have a better life than I had. And I think the person that's going to get that done is my friend and yours, Senator John Edwards.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. EDWARDS: I'm John Edwards and I approve this message.
WELNA: And Barack Obama made a final appeal for support in Coralville this afternoon, reaching out to those who are now backing someone else.
Sen. OBAMA: If you're stuck with the other person…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. OBAMA: …then make me your second choice.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. OBAMA: Make me your second choice. I still want your support.
WELNA: Across the state in Mason City, Republican frontrunner Mike Huckabee took aim at the Republican whose lead he appears to have overtaken, Mitt Romney. He didn't mention Romney by name, but he did refer to the many millions of dollars Romney has poured into the campaign from his own fortune.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Arkansas Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): Within about the next 36 hours, those of you here in Iowa are going to make political history, one way or the other. And one of the things I'm hoping for is that we absolutely shock the chattering class of the political pundits on the East Coast - those who have already figured out how it's suppose to turn out. And, you know, there are some who've already figured out that, well, because some folks have more money, they're suppose to win.
Wouldn't it be something if Iowa proved that the people of Iowa cannot be bought, that they can't even be rented for the night.
WELNA: Romney made his own swipe today, not at Huckabee, but at one of the leading Democrats. He promised CNN that if elected president, he and his wife would not embarrass the nation by their conduct in the White House.
David Welna, NPR News, Coralville, Iowa.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
As the caucuses approach, there is increased focus on the nuts and bolts of making sure people actually turn out. The weather could have an impact. It'll be cold. No surprise there.
Also worth noting is that a large percentage of people who tell pollsters they will be caucusing have never participated in the Iowa caucus before, so it's not clear how many of them will actually show up.
NPR's Don Gonyea reports from Des Moines.
DON GONYEA: Presidential candidates have been working Iowa voters since last winter, but now with caucus day upon us, and with races on both Democratic and Republican sides very tight, it all comes down to getting committed supporters to live up to that commitment. Candidates are out making last-minute speeches, their job is to keep enthusiasm up among their backers. But even more critical at this late-stage is the work of campaign organizations.
Gentry Collins runs Republican Mitt Romney's Iowa operations.
Mr. GENTRY COLLINS (Iowa State Campaign Director for Mitt Romney): We're going to door-to-door to as many of them as we can get to, although in 15-degree weather that's hard to do. And we are making certain that they know where to go, making sure that they remember that the caucuses happen at a time certain, that you can't just go vote all day long, that you have to show up at seven o'clock and vote, and frankly, doing anything else that we can think of to turn our supporters out.
GONYEA: Collins says they're also attracting special cases, people who will need help getting to the caucus. He cited one woman with a broken hip who supports Romney, who will be just one of many people being chauffeured tomorrow night.
In downtown Des Moines at Mike Huckabee headquarters, they're doing the same things, though on a lower budget. Upstairs, about 50 volunteers, from senior citizens to high schoolers, are making thousands of last-minute phone calls.
PAUL(ph) (Volunteer): How are you doing? I'm Paul. I'm a volunteer for the Mike Huckabee campaign. I'm calling to remind you about the caucus tomorrow evening. Oh, great.
GONYEA: Eric Woolson is Huckabee's Iowa campaign manager.
Mr. ERIC WOOLSON (Iowa Campaign Manager for Mike Huckabee): Two hours ago, we had a phone call, a gentleman said that he was sight impaired and was there something that we could do, and we said, you know, what's your precinct, what's your address, we'll get somebody there to get you to your precinct to caucus and back.
GONYEA: Huckabee has used enthusiasm among Iowa Republicans particularly evangelicals to build a small lead over Mitt Romney in the polls in the state over the past two weeks. Now, the Huckabee campaign is hoping that such enthusiasm can help offset the big money and organizational advantages that Mitt Romney has. The big final push is playing out in Republican and Democrat campaign offices across the state.
But phone banks and door-knocking are old-school techniques. The most organized campaigns, and those with the most money, are also extremely tech-savvy, reaching out to Iowans through text messages, through Internet networking sites such as Facebook, through e-mails. Babysitting services are being offered to families. Casseroles are even being dropped off, so busy moms can go caucus.
Campaigns are also mindful of the fact that because this is a caucus, there can be confusion even about where to go. Again, Gentry Collins of the Romney campaign.
Mr. COLLINS: Even for people who vote all the time, vote very regularly, their regular voting location and their precinct caucus location are two separate places. And so, just simple things like making certain that our supporters know where to go actually turn out to be quite important.
GONYEA: Also underway today are efforts by the statewide Republican and Democratic Party organizations here to make sure that caucuses simply come off without any problems, and they are braced for a potentially huge increase in turnout.
Carrie Giddins of the Iowa Democratic Party notes that in 2004, roughly 120,000 Democrats participated. This year?
Ms. CARRIE GIDDINS (Communications Director, Iowa Democratic Party): The Iowa Democratic Party is prepared for up to 200,000 caucus-goers, and if we have to, even more.
GONYEA: Giddins says that's not a prediction, but simply something they have to be ready for, given the intense spotlight on Iowa tomorrow night.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Des Moines.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Before we step away from Iowa, a little perspective. And for that, we're joined by NPR's senior Washington editor, Ron Elving.
Hey, Ron.
RON ELVING: Hello, Melissa.
BLOCK: All this buildup, all this hype, and I don't really want to be the role of the wet blanket here, but I will. How much does Iowa really going to matter?
ELVING: You mean, is it going to matter enough to justify all the fuss that's been made…
BLOCK: Yeah.
ELVING: …over it for all these months? Probably not. You'd have to wrap up the whole process and move the winner right on into the White House if you are going to do that. But will Iowa matter? Yes. It's all a question of degree. In a big year, Iowa's been known to re-scramble the entire field, raise up a new frontrunner, even a new number two. We saw that in John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004. Other years, Iowa just serves to confirm the status of the established frontrunners like, say, Bush and Gore in 2000.
BLOCK: And what about this year?
ELVING: Certain candidates are betting very heavily on a big breakout win in Iowa. And here, I'm talking about Obama and Edwards and Huckabee. And if they get that, if they get that big dream, then it isn't a dream. They go on to the other primaries and they're in the thick of it and maybe they could go all the way. Now, if they don't get it, it's not exactly as though there's no tomorrow, but it's hard to see a tomorrow that has the same opportunity promise as Iowa.
BLOCK: And what's the record, Ron? Does the winner in Iowa usually go on to the nomination or not?
ELVING: Well, the incumbent presidents who have run here in Iowa have gone on to get the nomination, of course, and usually to win. But for the party that's not in the White House, the Iowa winner has become the nominee in five of the last eight cycles. That's not too bad. But only two of those nominees actually became president.
BLOCK: A lot of people, Ron, are probably still thinking, why Iowa? Why does Iowa have this role of this first caucus of the campaign?
ELVING: A lot of the great battles in history have taken place in places where nobody wanted to fight. Politics often works the same way. Iowa started these early caucuses several decades ago, really, 1972. And pretty soon, some of the Democratic long-shot candidates who didn't really have much chance in the bigger states started to come around for these early caucuses. They were looking for some early support in a place where they could afford to campaign. And you know, the cost in this is really quite a crucial factor.
So, as soon as it worked for George McGovern in 1972, then to Jimmy Carter in 1976, it caught on. And pretty soon, the Republicans joined in, and they moved their caucuses up and started doing something similar on their side. So, whenever there's been a nomination up for grabs in either party, most of the candidates have started battling for it just as soon as they possibly could, and Iowa's been the first place to fight.
BLOCK: One more last thing. Let's just think ahead just a bit. Five days until the New Hampshire primary. Knowing what you know about who tends to vote in both of these states, do you expect that there could be a very different result on Tuesday than we're going to see tomorrow night?
ELVING: Yes, there could. And the big factor here would be the independents. In Iowa, independents are not really encouraged to vote under most circumstances because these are party processes, they're caucuses, they take a lot of time, they're not convenient. But in New Hampshire, there's a tremendous emphasis on the independents. And oftentimes, they tend to rush to one side of the ship or the other. Some years, they rush to the Republican side, some years to the Democratic. That really helped John McCain in 2000, and it could do the same in 2008.
BLOCK: Okay. NPR senior Washington editor, Ron Elving. Thanks a lot.
RON ELVING: Thank you, Melissa.
MELISS BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
Elections in Pakistan have been postponed for six weeks. The country's election commission made that announcement today, saying the vote will now be on the 18th of February. President Pervez Musharraf defended that decision in a nationwide television address. He also announced that experts from Britain's Scotland Yard are coming to Pakistan to help investigate the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
NPR's Philip Reeves reports.
PHILIP REEVES: Benazir Bhutto's supporters want an international inquiry into her assassination. Pakistan's government has so far resisted these demands. Now, it's given some ground.
(Soundbite of music)
REEVES: President Pervez Musharraf today made a nationwide television address to calm the country still reeling in the aftermath of Bhutto's assassination. He said he'd ask Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown for help.
President PERVEZ MUSHARRAF (Pakistan): (Speaking in foreign language)
REEVES: He'd ask for a team of experts from Scotland Yard to come to Pakistan to support the investigation into the killing of Bhutto. Scotland Yard later confirmed it was sending a small team of officers from the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command. That task won't be easy.
Political analyst Nasim Zehra says the behavior of the Pakistani authorities immediately after Bhutto's assassination has complicated matters.
Ms. NASIM ZEHRA (Political Analyst; Fellow, Harvard University): They've removed all the evidence and nothing was picked up from the scene of the assassination. So it makes the situation a little complex. But nevertheless, I think the government realizes what a big crisis it is.
REEVES: Musharraf said he hoped, by seeking assistance from the British, to remove suspicion surrounding the circumstances of Bhutto's death. These run very deep. Many Pakistanis don't believe Musharraf when he said the assassination was the work of a tribal militant leader called Bastille Mahsud, who's allegedly linked to al Qaeda. Bhutto's supporters suspect she was killed by elements within Pakistan's government and/or the intelligence agencies and believe the authorities are attempting a cover-up.
Bhutto's husband, Asif Ali Zardari, was unimpressed by Musharraf's announcement.
Mr. ASIF ALI ZADARI (Benazir Bhutto's Husband): (Speaking in foreign language)
REEVES: Why haven't the British been called in earlier, he asked. Why wasn't Scotland Yard called in after Bhutto's convoy was attacked in October on the day of her return to Pakistan?
It seems the British are coming to help out the Pakistani authorities. Musharraf made no mention of them conducting an investigation of their own. But Zardari wants an independent inquiry along the lines of the U.N. investigation into the assassination of the Lebanese leader, Rafik Hariri. There was another purpose behind Musharraf's speech today, and that was to explain why the elections are being delayed.
Unidentified Man: No, election will depend on the (unintelligible). This is our (unintelligible).
REEVES: A few hours earlier, at a chaotic and bad-tempered news conference, Pakistan's election commission announced the new date. The commission said it was impossible to stick to the original date of the 8th of January. It said about a dozen election offices, including vital equipment, have been torched in the province of Sindh during riot in the first few days after Bhutto's death. It also said there were problems printing enough ballot papers in time; several presses closed during the violence. And it wanted to wait until after the Islamic holy month of Muharram, which begins in a few days and is often a tense period in Pakistan.
These arguments failed to convince Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party. It wants the elections to be held on time, knowing it stands to do particularly well because of the likely sympathy vote. The other big opposition party, a former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, was also publicly critical of the postponement. Syed Zafar Ali Shah is one of its senior members.
Mr. SYED ZAFAR ALI SHAH (Senior Member, Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz): We have condemned this announcement by the election commission. This is just a favor to the Pakistan Muslim League (Q), which is the so-called the King's Party.
REEVES: The King's Party is the ruling party behind Musharraf. Musharraf's critics said the elections are being put back because the party is facing the prospect of a heavy defeat at the hands of Bhutto's party. The government wants to buy some time, they say, to allow the wave of sympathy for Bhutto to wear off. The opposition parties are planning to participate in the elections, but they say the longer the wait, the greater the chance of further crises and further postponements. Shah says the delay is also deepening suspicions that the elections won't be free and fair.
Mr. SHAH: The apprehension regarding the rigging of the election has increased.
REEVES: Philip Reeves, NPR News, Islamabad.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Whether overseas or in this country, politicians have a reputation for bending the truth every now and then. NPR senior news analyst, Daniel Schorr, has witnessed his share of it. He and others are not impressed.
DANIEL SCHORR: Princeton professor, Sean Wilentz, calls it the delusional style in politics and in media. And he calls an unnamed senior White House official as predicting the downfall of reality-based politics.
The new reality, Wilentz says in a New Republic article, is the reality of touchy, feely(ph) politics in the media, relying heavily on the regard for character and instinct and sometimes taking liberties with the literal truth. Still, vividly remembered in pundit circles is Senator Joseph Biden. In 1987, Biden cribbed from a speech by British labor leader, Neil Kinnock, saying he was the first in his family to go to college. He later called a news conference to acknowledge his mistake.
More recently, there have been several lapses from the truth in this bitterly fought primary campaign. Rudy Giuliani relies heavily on rapid-fire statistics that often turn out to be wrong, like his claim that New York is the only city that reduces crime rate every year since 1994, when he became mayor.
Mitt Romney said incorrectly that he saw his father march with Martin Luther King Jr. Barack Obama said incorrectly that there are more young black males in prison than in college. Newspapers have noted that Obama's autobiography, "Dreams from My Father," includes some events that never happened.
Mike Huckabee tried to link the crises in Pakistan to the issue of illegal immigration in the United States with the assertion that we have more illegal Pakistani immigrants coming across our borders than all other nationalities, except those immediately south of the border. Wrong. And Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized the Bush administration for cutting funds for the National Institutes of Health. In fact, funding has increased under Mr. Bush.
The (unintelligible) School at the University of Pennsylvania and various other such organizations have established a full-time political fact check to check candidates' misstatements. Does it matter when fast-talking candidates talk questionable facts to burnish their images? As Professor Wilentz suggests, it may be that truth has been overwhelmed by celebrity worship.
This is Daniel Schorr.
BLOCK: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
A new collection of stories from Wanda Coleman takes us to the streets in Los Angeles. "Jazz and Twelve O'Clock Tales" will be out in bookstores next week. Here's our reviewer Alan Cheuse.
ALAN CHEUSE: The title spins out of a line from Billy Strayhorn's bittersweet love song, "Lush Life." Wanda Coleman is better known for her poetry and yet here, she presents bittersweet narrative portrait of lower, middle class black life, the portrait that evokes deep emotions about urban Southern California.
In "Backcity Transit by Day," for example, a sketch about a working woman crossing town by public transit, Coleman takes us on a seven-page tour of the neighborhoods, most of her characters and habit. It's a depressing spectacle of dilapidated pastel A-frames, she writes. Gritty-gray, mendable fences and dented primer-splatted jalopies blooming on the black top. These are neighborhoods I once knew and cannot forget.
Watching carefully, I can almost taste the mornings as they were then, the broad avenues dotted with meandering clumps of dark children, reluctantly headed schoolward. The solitary elderly churchwomen with their heavy-handled totes on their ways to tend the sick and soddens(ph) or the preschoolers of young working-class couples.
You can hear Coleman's gift, the way she sets down her scenes and stories in musical speech. And in these lines, her characters come alive, the down-and-outers, secretaries, musicians, folks in detox and therapy, taxi drivers and skimmers, all of them struggling for turf and peace. Now and then, when Coleman shifts the rhythms of her sentences, they shimmy and waver with the power of hallucination.
Here's a vision conjured up by a jazz drummer on a Sunday afternoon at a little bar on the Pacific Coast Highway. The only woman he's true to? She's as black as the Congo, as wide as the Atlantic, as glorious and as elusive as heaven promised here and now. She is as water rises to tongue the troubled shore with shimmers of foam. She's the desolation of being a gifted recalcitrant stranger in one's native land. Amen.
I'll say that again about "Jazz and Twelve O'Clock Tales. Amen.
BLOCK: And that's the title of the book, "Jazz and Twelve O'Clock Tales," new stories by Wanda Coleman. Our reviewer, Allan Cheuse, teaches writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
On the financial markets today, an inauspicious start to the new year. All of the major industries lost ground. The Dow Jones Industrials closing down 220 points. Analysts and traders are blaming a number of culprits: There were sobering data from the manufacturing sector, a weak showing by the dollar against the Euro, and the price of oil briefly hit $100 a barrel for the first time.
NPR's Jim Zarroli is in New York.
JIM ZARROLI: People who follow the oil business have been watching and waiting for oil to hit $100 dollars a barrel for weeks. It's kind of the way people wait for the temperature to dip below zero degrees in the winter. It's not like you want to see it happen, but there's always something little exciting about passing a milestone. Today, it finally happened. So why did oil break three digits, simply because it could. At least that's how Phil Flynn of Alaron Trading in Chicago sees it.
Mr. PHIL FLYNN (Vice President, Alaron Trading): I'm not going to tell you that there weren't full of stories out there driving the market today because there was, whether it was bad weather in the Gulf of Mexico, and concerns about Pakistan, of weather that ultimately, it got there on very light volume. So I think because so many traders were obsessed with the $100, that's why we got there.
ZARROLI: Here is how it happened. The New York Mercantile Exchange said right around noon today, two big trades came in - one for $99.90, one for a $100. Because a lot of people are still off for the holidays, trading was very light. So these trades had a much bigger impact on prices than they normally would have had, and a lot of oil industry analysts were idly speculating today that the people behind these trades simply wanted to be the ones who finally pushed oil over the big $100 mark.
Whether that's true or not - and there's really no way to know for sure - Flynn says it was only a matter of time before the milestone was passed. He says the economy is so strong around the world especially in places like China and India that demand for oil is soaring.
Mr. FLYNN: To find that the world economies are expanding and to find strong economic growth and the improvement of the standard of living to people all over the globe. So if you want a good part of the story or a happy part of the story, that's what it is.
ZARROLI: Of course, as Flynn knows, most Americans don't see what's happening to oil prices as a happy story. Take Ali Sha(ph), a limo driver, who was filling up his tank at a (unintelligible) station in Manhattan today where gas was selling for $3.53 a gallon. Sha says he drives about 300 miles a day.
Mr. ALI SHA (Limo Driver): Before, I would put about $25 to $30 and I'll be good for the whole day. And now, I think it's about - it has doubled more than that, you know.
ZARROLI: So what do you think of $100 a barrel of oil?
Mr. SHA: All I like to do is just sit home, hold my head and be, like, what's going to happen tomorrow. That's about it.
ZARROLI: With prices shooting up again today, the White House was once again asked whether it was time to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and once again, the administration said, no way. A spokeswoman noted that oil is now at $100 a barrel because of a tight supply-and-demand environment. And she said, the way to address that is more investment and production.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
BLOCK: And there's more about who wins and who loses when oil hits $100 a barrel. That's at our Web site, npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
Striking screen writers are back on the picket lines today. And David Letterman and Jay Leno are back on TV tonight. Since the Writers Guild of America went on strike almost two months ago, the late night talk shows have been in reruns. Well, tonight, Letterman returns with his writers, while Leno will have to do without. Both shows will feature some high-profile political guests.
NPR's Kim Masters is following the writers strike and has this report.
KIM MASTERS: Bill Scheft is a writer for "Late Night with David Letterman." He says he'll return to work today with extremely mixed feelings.
Mr. BILL SCHEFT (Writer, "Late Night with David Letterman"): Believe me, we are mindful of the 11,000 people that don't get to go back to work.
MASTERS: Scheft intends to keep walking the picket line even though his back to writing. He also promises that tonight's show, and perhaps many others in the future, will be aimed directly at the networks that make up the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers.
Mr. SCHEFT: I can't think of anything that will be on tonight that will not address the strike.
MASTERS: But the Writers Guild now faces an awkward situation. David Letterman's company, Worldwide Pants, owns his show. Last week, that company made a deal with the guild and met the union's key demands, so Letterman returns with these writers providing the jokes. So does Craig Ferguson because Letterman's company also owns his show.
Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien do not own their shows. Their network, NBC, does. So they cannot make a deal with the union and both must go on the air without pre-written material.
Patric Verrone is president of the Writers Guild's western branch, and he was walking the picket line outside the NBC Studios in Los Angeles today.
Mr. PATRIC VERRONE (President, Writers Guild West): Now that we have Letterman and Craig Ferguson back on the air with their writers and getting guests that don't have to cross the picket line, we think ABC and NBC feel the pressure.
MASTERS: But the risk is clear. Some writers could break ranks if they feel it's unfair for Letterman's writers to go back to work while those employed by his main competitor must stay off the job.
Verrone says it was a difficult call, but he thinks most union members support the guild's tactics. Certainly, that was true of the head writer on Jay Leno's show, Joe Medeiros, who also showed up to picket at NBC.
Mr. JOE MEDEIROS (Head Writer, "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"): Personally, it's a little tough. But, you know, in the scheme of things, you know, it's good that a company has signed the deal. We need more companies to sign it. We need somebody big like NBC Universal to step up to the plate and put us back to work.
MASTERS: Tonight's competition from Letterman will include an appearance by Robin Williams in a taped cameo by presidential contender Hillary Clinton from Iowa. Letterman appears with a beard, as does NBC's Conan O'Brien. He will lament his writerless state.
(Soundbite of show "Late Night with Conan O'Brien")
Mr. CONAN O'BRIEN (Host, "Late Night with Conan O'Brien"): We have no writers and we have an hour show, a one-hour show to do every night.
MASTERS: Jay Leno's guest is presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. He's a funny guy for a politician, but Michael Winship, president of the Writers Guild's eastern branch is hoping that Leno and other hosts without writers will be at a very obvious disadvantage.
Mr. MICHAEL WINSHIP (President, Writers Guild East): I think anything is possible if we can go by the experience of the 1988 strike when David Letterman was being shaved on the air and featuring accordion solos. We'll just have to see what they come up with. It might be quite a contortion act.
MASTERS: Letterman writer Bill Scheft hopes that tonight's show is just a beginning of a comedy assault that will drive the networks back to bargaining table. He knows audiences could get tired of hearing about the writer situation, but expects the material will be entertaining enough that they won't.
Mr. SCHEFT: Dave, he is still talking about his heart surgery. He's still talking about the Academy Awards from 1995. You know, as long as it's funny, it's okay.
MASTERS: Will it be funnier than the competition? Only those with TiVo will find it easy to make a quick comparison.
Kim Masters, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Finally this hour, a new piece of classical music with a twist. "Rumba Sinfonica" is written for symphony orchestra and Latin pop band. It got its world premiere last year when the group Tiempo Libre took the stage with the Minnesota Orchestra. There are several performances with other orchestras planned for this year.
From Minneapolis, Gail Wein reports.
GAIL WEIN: Ricardo Lorenz is a Venezuelan-born composer who teaches at the University of Michigan. His works have included a concerto for maracas, miniatures for flute and ghetto blaster. And this piece for solo piano called "Bachango."
(Soundbite of piano piece "Bachango")
WEIN: He often raises his music with traditional Latin America sounds, but Lorenz doesn't write what anyone would describe as pop music.
Tiempo Libre is a tight seven-piece Cuban timba band.
(Soundbite of music)
TIEMPO LIBRE: (Singing in foreign language).
MASTERS: The two approaches come together in "Rumba Sinfonica," a 25-minute long piece that Lorenz describes as a musical travelogue through Latin rhythms. Lorenz says that when he met Tiempo Libre band leader Jorge Gomez. He knew he had found a perfect partner to bring classical and Latin music into one piece.
Mr. RICARDO LORENZ (Composer): I've always been interested in hybrids. I mean, that's where I feel most comfortable. I don't like pure forms in music. It just don't - somehow, they don't much to me. But hybrid forms just drive me crazy.
MASTERS: Lorenz first heard Tiempo Libre a couple of years ago at Indiana University. They are Cuban American musicians based in Miami, and they all went through rigorous classical training at the conservatory in Havana. He was impressed by the arrangements and writing of Jorge Gomez.
(Soundbite of music)
TIEMPO LIBRE: (Singing in foreign language).
Mr. LORENZ: When I heard his so-called montunos, those very intricate piano mechanisms that you hear even in salsa music, I thought, you know, this montuno sound like coming on to me. You know, the typical montumo will be - ga, ga, ge, go, ge, ge, ga, go, go, ge, ga, ga. How would you transform to that?
Mr. JORGE GOMEZ (Band Leader, Tiempo Libre): (Singing in foreign language).
(Soundbite of laughter)
MASTERS: Richard Lorenz and Jorge Gomez worked together over the course of a year in marathon brainstorming sessions, using electronic keyboards to play the parts of both of the orchestra and the band. Composer Richard Lorenz.
Mr. LORENZ: We had three sessions in Miami, three phenomenal sessions we had at his house in his wonderful apartment overlooking the beach. And we worked for 12 hours at a time. And I saw every single idea I would bring being transformed in real time to fit the style and needs of Tiempo Libre.
WEIN: Not only did the two composers have to be on the same page musically, but the performers had to match as well. You can't just put an amplified Latin band in front of an 80-piece orchestra and hope for the best.
Mr. LORENZ: It's almost like mixing chemicals and you need to know how many, you know, how many woodwinds to use in order to balance out an electric bass and how many strings to balance out on electric bass.
WEIN: And when it all came together, the Minnesota Orchestra found itself swinging. Sarah Hatsuko Hicks was the conductor for the concert. One of her challenges was to get the players to loosen up.
Ms. SARAH HATSUKO HICKS (Conductor, Minnesota Orchestra): I kind of danced on the podium, and I jumped up and down and I swing and I swayed, and they sort of relaxed into the rhythm that I'm trying to show them. It eventually got into this great group.
(Soundbite of music)
WEIN: The musicians in the orchestra not only responded to Hicks conducting, they picked up on the stage presence and attitude of the guest artist. Manny Laureano, principal trumpet of the Minnesota Orchestra, says that watching Tiempo Libre at rehearsal gave him and his colleagues a different perspective on performing the music.
Mr. MANNY LAUREANO (Principal Trumpet, Minnesota Orchestra): It was wonderful to see how incredibly relaxed they were about everything that they did. Okay, there's energy, but they're not forcing anything.
WEIN: And that's due in part, says band leader Jorge Gomez, to a classical background of the members of Tiempo Libre.
Mr. GOMEZ: To play timba, you need that technique, to play timba and to play jazz. If you understand the classic music, you understand whatever music you want to play.
WEIN: Besides Minnesota, there will performances this season with the other groups that commissioned "Rumba Sinfonica." The Ravinia Festival, Festival of the Arts in Boca Raton and the Detroit Symphony. Tiempo Libre has at least three more performances scheduled this spring across North America.
For NPR News, I'm Gail Wein.
(Soundbite of applause)
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Larry Abramson has been visiting some of these districts, including Denver. It's a pioneer when it comes to performance pay.
LARRY ABRAMSON: In 2005, the voters of Denver were asked to approve a $25 million in funding to boost teacher pay. They said yes, but they wanted something in return, according to Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper.
JOHN HICKENLOOPER: Teachers are underpaid. I don't think anyone argues that. But if - given the sentiment of the public, if they want to have taxpayers vote more taxes, they're going to have to give some dramatic change in the way they go about teaching.
ABRAMSON: Little Leo is learning how to write.
BONNIE STAACK: And?
LEO: Add more details to your story.
STAACK: And what do I mean by details?
LEO: You mean, details, like, more birds...
ABRAMSON: Teacher Bonnie Stack, a 20-year veteran, knocks herself out for these kids. But in the past, her energy was not reflected in her pay. Now, it is, and that's one reason why Bonnie Staack is bullish on Denver's new pay system known as ProComp. In fact, she helped to design it.
STAACK: I thought that there has to be a way for teachers to make more money because we put many hours in - after school and on weekends. And I felt like this might give us some hope.
ABRAMSON: In other words, this is a way of recognizing all that donated time?
STAACK: Yes, I think so.
ABRAMSON: Staack added about $2,000 to her base salary last year, thanks to ProComp. As a long-term teacher, Staack had reached the top of the pay ladder under the old seniority system. Under ProComp, with some extra effort, she can earn more. But like other pay systems, ProComp is meant to attack many different problems at once. That means performance pay often gives with one hand and takes away with the other. For example, Staack says, Denver wants to attract more teachers who speak Spanish.
STAACK: Because the teacher speaks Spanish, she gets an extra stipend. I don't speak Spanish, but I teach children from all over the world, and I don't get a stipend for that.
ABRAMSON: ProComp is also supposed to reward schools and teachers who raise test scores from year to year. But in immigrant neighborhoods, students keep changing schools when local rents go up. Teachers have to keep starting over with new kids.
STAACK: You know, we don't want to have that mobility. We want to keep the children here so that we can help them.
ABRAMSON: And having all that turnovers doesn't help you in any way?
STAACK: Exactly.
ABRAMSON: Right, right.
STAACK: So that makes it very difficult to meet their standards.
ABRAMSON: And one of the ways teachers can earn extra money is by meeting those standards. Procomp is a landmark for many reasons. Union reaction to these schemes has ranged from suspicious to downright hostile. But in Denver, the union helped design the plan. And not surprisingly, teachers with more experience are more enthusiastic about ProComp.
SANDY STOKELY: I got $3,800.
ABRAMSON: Sandy Stokely, who teaches first grade at Ellis, finally got credit for advanced degrees in coursework she'd taken years ago.
STOKLEY: They gave me credits for things that I took in the '70s. It was fabulous. So for me, ProComp has been, you know, a good boost in my salary.
ABRAMSON: As I'm sure you know, there's a lot of question about whether or not those, you know, just straight college courses help students. I mean...
STOKLEY: But that wasn't the deal, you know? The deal was you've taken this and you've put in a lot of your own money. We have to take credits to keep our licenses current anyway. And nobody was ever helping us with that before.
ABRAMSON: In fact, teachers can generally earn more money through coursework than they can by boosting student performance.
STEVE ERIKSSON: But before we get to that, why don't you start on this vocab sheet?
ABRAMSON: Just a few miles down the road at Merrill Middle School, social studies teacher Steve Eriksson is respected for his experience and command of his subject. Like many experienced teachers here, he did the math and signed up for Procomp. It's helping his salary, but he's not sure it's helping the district.
ERIKSSON: New teachers, young teachers in the long run are not going to make as much money on it. And we could be losing those teachers to other districts.
DANIELLE PRICE: I was asked how do I feel as a brand-new teaching coming into a district where they're like, here is your pay system with procramp - ProComp.
ABRAMSON: That slip of the tongue from math teacher Danelle Price gets a laugh from her colleagues. It also says a lot about how many new teachers view a system that gives them a steep hill to climb.
PRICE: I thought it was pretty crappy, to say the least, because when you come in as a new teacher - I was told my starting salary is $34,200. I am in a hard-to-serve, hard-to-staff school. However, if I had gone to a school and I wasn't teaching math, and I didn't do a professional development, and I didn't meet my student growth objectives, I am at $34,200 for a long time.
ABRAMSON: But talk to administrators in Denver schools and you get a very different picture. At 6 feet 2 inches tall, Stacy Miller is a commanding presence in the halls at Merrill Middle. She's the acting principal. And she has no doubt that ProComp will help her turn around this failing school.
STACY MILLER: Unidentified Woman: Hey, price of calculators for schools, the number purchased...
ABRAMSON: To explain how this happens, Miller takes me around to a match class.
MILLER: So one of the things you'll notice from this classroom is that students are in groups. And that's one of the biggest things that we focus on in our professional development...
ABRAMSON: Miller has turned this school's problems, low math and reading scores, into an opportunity. Teachers can join in a group effort to address those problems. And if they submit the right paperwork, they can earn another small bonus.
MILLER: And the only people that do get the extra compensation are the people that are, have opted in - as is our language here - have opted into ProComp.
ABRAMSON: James Guthrie has been watching these developments from his perch at the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University. He says the traditional argument that teachers need predictable salaries won't wash anymore.
JAMES GUTHRIE: Join the rest of the world. I don't know what I'm going to earn next year either. I think that's the case for most of the workers in the workforce. What isn't predictable is how much more you're going to be paid. And I understand the desire for certainty, but very few of us have that.
ABRAMSON: Larry Abramson, NPR News.
BLOCK: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Our series, You Must Read This, starts the new year off with author Diana Abu- Jaber. She remembers discovering the work of her favorite writer when it was cold and dreary outside.
DIANA ABU: As I read the collection, huddled in my drab room, I flipped to the photograph of the frowning author. I imagined him crossing Russia at night in a horse- drawn sleigh, calling on his patients, dispensing glittering insights upon a sea of darkness. Chekhov said, people don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy. His stories captured the way people moved between their wishes and the cold realities of the world. Even in Siberia there is happiness, says the narrator of "In Exile." Those snowed-in winters of reading would eventually help me become a writer. Even in the coldest, darkest places, there is comfort and joy.
SIEGEL: You can find several of Chekhov's stories plus a winter's worth of book recommendations at NPR.org.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "RUNAWAY MAMA")
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
The first notes of the latest CD from country legend Merle Haggard let you know he's taken a turn to bluegrass.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "RUNAWAY MAMA")
BLOCK: (Singing) She's my runaway mama, always chasing other men. She's my runaway mama.
BLOCK: Merle Haggard, at age 70 now, with an absurd number of hits behind him - 38 number one songs. Haggard was raised outside Bakersfield, California, grew up along the train tracks in a 40-foot boxcar that his father turned into a home. When he was 11, Merle Haggard hopped his first freight train, rode a hundred miles to Fresno. He was in and out of juvenile detention, then jail and he did indeed turn 21 in prison, just like his song "Mama Tried" says. He served nearly three years at San Quentin.
BLOCK: a prisoner on death row, a factory worker laid off at Christmas time, a family dreaming of an easier life, in this number one song from 1969, "Hungry Eyes."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "HUNGRY EYES")
BLOCK: (Singing) A canvas-covered cabin in a crowded labor camp stand out in this memory I revived.
BLOCK: Haggard does a new version of that song on his CD "The Bluegrass Sessions."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "HUNGRY EYES")
BLOCK: (Singing) My daddy raised a family there, with two hardworking hands. And tried to feed my mama's hungry eyes.
BLOCK: Mr. Haggard, I'm hearing two songs that are very much the same over the last, almost 40 years. What do you hear?
BLOCK: Well, I sounded like a kid on the first one and was very excited and the other one, I sounded like an old man.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: To me, now, maybe you guys don't hear the difference and if not, I'm tickled to death.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Well, there's some - there's some weight of the years in your voice for sure, but in a good way.
BLOCK: Thank you.
BLOCK: What's the newest song on this CD? "Learning to Live with Myself?"
BLOCK: That's probably my favorite song in there.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "LEARNING TO LIVE WITH MYSELF")
BLOCK: At my age, you know, I've learned how to live with my spouse and I've learned how to live with my beautiful children. I'd learned how to be friends with everybody and do everything, the only thing I really hadn't learned how to do is to learn to live with myself. I think that's probably the hardest thing we all have to do. We can lie to everybody else, we can't lie to ourselves.
BLOCK: Where did you write this song?
BLOCK: I wrote it in the bathtub.
BLOCK: In the bathtub?
BLOCK: Seemed like it was. There was water everywhere, I'm hoping it was.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Well, how do you write in the bathtub?
BLOCK: Well, you try to remember. You set there and you work on it and you - and if it's not good enough to remember until you get to a pencil, it's usually not very good.
BLOCK: So you've just got to hang on to it.
BLOCK: Yeah, you hang on to it. That's - I'm talking about the song, of course.
BLOCK: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: I was. I don't know about you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "LEARNING TO LIVE WITH MYSELF")
BLOCK: (Singing) Till he gives me my call, the hardest of all will be learning to live with myself.
BLOCK: I've read that you have said about your songwriting that a lot of times, the songs are coming to you almost like from another place entirely. That's it's not really a conscious thing, it sounds like.
BLOCK: Yeah, I write all the time. I say all the time. I'm always aware in trying to pick up on something - should something come through, and once in a while, it does and it usually in a most inopportune time like in the bathtub or on the way to the stage or, I remember one song I wrote in England. And there was four people with pencils and papers and we were writing on the way to the stage and they were playing the theme bringing me on and we got it all written and remembered the melody and everything.
BLOCK: Does it ever work for you the other way to actually, you know, sit down with a pad and paper and try to really work something through?
BLOCK: Well, Bob Wells was one of my idols and he used the phrase, he said, you know, I never did sweat out a song. I'm the same way. I don't - I've tried to do that and it sounds like that's what it is. It doesn't come out anything other than something you might've squeezed out. The real stuff comes unexpectedly.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "WHAT HAPPENED?")
BLOCK: (Singing) It used to be Andy and Barney Fife, now it's Howard Stern and the brothel life. Too much crap can drive the world insane. Everybody's singing the jailhouse blues. Don't believe a word of the evening news. Truth that stood for years is down the drain. Trailer...
BLOCK: The song "What Happened?" it's really I guess a lament for how the country is changing. And that's something that seems like it's been on your mind for quite a while, through a number of songs over the years.
BLOCK: Well, it should be on everybody's mind. We're, we're losing it. This country, another eight years like we've put up with, there won't be any country.
BLOCK: What do you mean?
BLOCK: Well, financially, we're broke. Nobody has any confidence in the man in charge. You know, we're torturing people; we're not known to be that kind of people. People all over the world look up to us, and we're not setting a very good example.
BLOCK: Do you think you've gotten more political as you've gotten older?
BLOCK: Yeah. When I was younger, I had enough sense to keep my mouth shut. But it's hard to do. And I think that some people have to speak out.
BLOCK: You said you used to keep your mouth shut, but I think a lot of people would remember songs like "Okie from Muskogee" and say, he wasn't keeping his mouth shut then, it might have been a slightly different mouth. But he was singing exactly what was on his mind back then too.
BLOCK: Well, you're right. You're right. I haven't ever been able to hold my feelings back and the proof of it's in all the songs.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "WHAT HAPPENED?")
BLOCK: (Singing) What happened, does anybody know? What happened, where did America go? Everything Wal-Mart all the time. No more mom and pop five and dimes. What happened, where did America go? Where did America go? Where did it go boys? Tell me.
BLOCK: Mr. Haggard, when you've been doing this as long as you have, trying to keep things new and fresh, what - how do you keep it exciting? How do you keep yourself going?
BLOCK: It's not easy. I'm sitting here, faced with the decision on what I should do with the next five years of my life. And you can't do it a year at a time, it's time for me to buy new buses, it's time for me to do this and do that. And you either get on the wagon or get off. It's not exciting like it used to be. I'm not excited about it. But I, you know, there's a lot of other people that I owe all of my success to and you got to at least take them in consideration.
BLOCK: Can you imagine being retired?
BLOCK: Yeah. I've tried to be satisfied with that and it really doesn't work. And it's been several weeks since I've struck a note on the guitar, you know, and I don't know if I can even find G-chord but they're expecting me to go do a tour in February. And I'll have to hire these musicians come and train me again.
BLOCK: I'm pretty confident you're going to be able to find that G-chord, Mr. Haggard.
BLOCK: I hope so. That'd be awfully embarrassing.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: Well, Merle Haggard, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Thanks very much.
BLOCK: Oh, it's been fun talking to you, Melissa.
BLOCK: Merle Haggard, his latest CD is "The Bluegrass Sessions."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
BLOCK: (Singing) Now you'd probably laugh if you could see the dream I had last night. You and I together on a maiden rocket flight. You were seated next to me with that happy frightened look. And you and I got young again on that rocket flight we took. Now wouldn't that be something?
BLOCK: You can hear Merle Haggard talk about one of his musical heroes, Jimmy Rogers, and yodel. And you'll hear more songs at npr.org/music.
BLOCK: (Singing) Wouldn't that be something?
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Charlie Brown and Snoopy. Calvin and Hobbes. Fern and Wilbur. The kid section of the library is full of stories about children and their animal friends. Artist and illustrator Maxwell Eaton hopes to add his own set of friends to the bookshelf. He has created a series of books about the adventures of Max and his pig, Pinky. Here's North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann.
BRIAN MANN: It's a frigid December afternoon, and Maxwell Eaton is sitting at a table in his apartment in the tiny village of Saranac Lake, New York. Sketch(ph) by sketch, he forms the image of a grinning little boy.
MAXWELL EATON: Max's head is the hardest part for me. I got to get that perfect circle.
MANN: Eaton is in his mid-20s. He has black, curly hair, and he draws with his left hand, scrunched like a kid doodling at a desk. A couple of years ago, he was working as a ski bum in Colorado after graduating from the arts program at St. Lawrence University.
EATON: Some of my drawings are really dark and charcoal and mechanical things.
MANN: But sitting around the ski lodge, Maxwell Eaton found himself sketching cartoons on bar napkins.
EATON: Kind of out of boredom almost, I was just doodling and I came up with this character that I was just kind of drawing all the time. And finally, it became Max.
MANN: Max the character looks nothing like Maxwell the artist. With his bright red shirt and blue plants, the little boy is sort of like a happier, better- adjusted version of Charlie Brown. His sidekick who also evolved over thousands of doodles is a slightly subversive, marshmallow-obsessed pig named Pinky.
EATON: And he had the pig to say something or think something and show a little sarcasm, almost, in observing these ridiculous things Max was doing. And - but then it's just Max and Pinky.
MANN: On a whim, Eaton mailed his drawings to a New York City agent who liked them a lot; he then found an editor at Knopf who liked them even more. The first Max and Pinky book called "Best Buds" was published in 2006.
EATON: Max and Pinky love adventure. They go here, and we had them out camping at night. And Max is looking around in the tent and he says, hey, where did the marshmallows go? And we got Pinky out front with all the marshmallows.
MANN: Elizabeth Bluemle is a children's book author who has a particular fondness for Pinky.
ELIZABETH BLUEMLE: How cute is that pig? And It's a flying one. I just love that.
MANN: Bluemle owns a bookstore for kids in Shelburne, Vermont called The Flying Pig. She says kids love reading about characters who stick together even when times are tough.
BLUEMLE: The friendship between Pinky and Max is just so sweet and hilarious. They're a little bit like, you know, those George and Martha stories of friendship. It has that, I don't know, you know, that smiling feel to them, if you know what I mean by that.
MANN: Eaton says the texture of Max and Pinky's friendship grew out of his love for newspaper comics.
EATON: I like to think of it as kind of the Calvin and Hobbes generation. When I grew up in first grade starting to read Calvin and Hobbes, that was a big part of my childhood, I think, and that's where I get a lot of the timing and just the give-and-take between two very different characters.
MANN: In their finished form, Eaton's sketches are illuminated with the kind of bright, simple colors that you see in Sunday morning comics. Easton says he's been incredibly lucky finding an audience for his books, which are aimed at kids age 5 to 7. He also had to overcome one really inconvenient fact: He is colorblind.
EATON: It was an interesting jump into children's books and what turned out to be very bright illustrations and colorful in everything. In college, I focused mostly on print-making and drawing.
MANN: That's really when charcoal came in.
EATON: Yeah, exactly. So I kind of shied away from painting and everything.
MANN: With the help of a computer, and an art director at Knopf, Eaton finally found just the right palette for Max and Pinky's adventures.
EATON: They went out fishing. I don't even like worms, this fish says to Pinky. Pinky says, have you tried marshmallows? He's always got that on his mind, it seems - marshmallows and Max.
MANN: For NPR News, I'm Brian Mann in Saranac Lake, New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
NPR's Christopher Joyce reports on a new investigation into the carbon offset market.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE: Pankaj Bhatia of the World Resources Institute, an environmental think tank, says business is hot.
PANKAJ BHATIA: Amazing, in a word.
JOYCE: Last year, experts reckon the trade in the U.S was about $100 million and growing fast. Bhatia assess carbon footprints - how much carbon you or your business emits. He says he's been very busy.
BHATIA: Today, I got a phone call from a group that is managing concerts. And they wanted to know how they can quantify emissions from the transportation by helicopters of their equipment.
JOYCE: That's because the concert promoters wanted to buy offsets to neutralize the CO2 their concert produced. But how do the promoters know what they're paying for? After all, this is a market that trades in, well, gas, or more accurately, units of gas that are not produced. In the U.S., this trading is voluntary and no one is in charge. That worries consumer advocates.
JIM KOHM: Our concern is that because these claims are very hard to substantiate, and consumers can't easily tell whether they're getting what they pay for, that there is the real possibility of fraud in this market.
JOYCE: That's Jim Kohm. He is in the enforcement division of the Federal Trade Commission. Kohm says he doesn't know yet if there is much fraudulent carbon trading, but he is suspicious.
KOHM: There's been an explosion in green marketing. There are claims that we didn't see in the marketplace 10 years ago. Carbon offsets are one of those new claims.
JOYCE: So the FTC had decided to investigate. One of the things they'll look into is double-selling.
KOHM: So for example, if I have solar panels on the top of my store, and then I sell somebody else the right to claim that carbon scrubbing, I can't then claim the carbon scrubbing for myself as well. And if somebody were selling that twice, three times, then that would be a deceptive practice that the FTC would need to take action.
JOYCE: But Erik Carlson of Carbonfund, a company that trades in offsets, says it doesn't really matter who cuts carbon, who pays for those cuts, or who profits.
ERIK CARLSON: We need a 70 or so percent reduction in emissions. And in fact, that's all the planet actually cares about. It doesn't care about electricity versus methane versus this versus coal versus whatever.
JOYCE: Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
BLOCK: If you want to check up on your own carbon offsets, you can find some suggestions at npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Here's NPR's Chris Arnold.
CHRIS ARNOLD: It's just over a week since Christmas when you think people might consider taking a break from spending money. But at lunch time in downtown Boston, the streets are thick with people dashing around the stores and going out to eat. Leah Volpe is carrying a shopping bag in one hand and she's about to go do something that, well, this may be extremely disturbing for any financial planners who are listening.
LEA VOLPE: I'm actually going to be withdrawing money from my 401(k) to go on vacation because I'm only 31, so I really don't care about retirement quite yet.
ARNOLD: I guess that's one of those things you're really not supposed to do.
VOLPE: Right, yeah. You're absolutely not supposed to withdraw money, but I have every intention. I waited 'til the first of year so I wouldn't have to do it on my taxes. But I'm actually waiting 'til, like, tomorrow or the next day to see if the mark goes up a little more, I'm going on vacation with like $1,200, and I don't really care. I'm doing it all wrong, but I'm going to enjoy myself.
ARNOLD: But elsewhere in the shopping district here, some people are at least thinking about saving more money this year.
STEVE PERRY: Yeah, it's one of the resolutions to go ahead and save more, and also to try to look at more investments.
ARNOLD: Steve Perry and Jag Rondus(ph) are heading back to their offices. Both are 35 and work for the state in labor relations. Perry says he hasn't been putting away enough.
PERRY: I mean, put away more, more and more - pure and simple, more money and more money.
ARNOLD: But Rondus says he's actually been setting aside money for years.
JAG RONDUS: I work with a financial planner, so we already have a sort of a plan in place of where you want to be in and how long, you know, you need to save for. But you're looking at, I mean, family income, combined income, you know, probably about 10, 15 times that amount.
ARNOLD: Ten to fifteen times your income. So let's say you make $80,000 a year, that's around a million dollars. With that, you could live off the interest, plus Social Security. But how do you get there? That question makes many Americans go cross-eyed. In part, that's because as important as all this is, most people don't learn it in high school or even college.
STEVE MARIOTTI: One of the most important things that you can teach a young person is the power of compound interest.
ARNOLD: Steve Mariotti is the president of the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. He started in the Bronx in New York basically getting high school kids from lower-income families into math by teaching then how to make money. One thing he teaches, it's called the rule of 72.
MARIOTTI: It's absolutely crucial for people to learn.
ARNOLD: Okay. This is math, but it's actually pretty interesting. You divide 72 by the interest rate that you're earning, and that's how long it takes for your money to double. So if you're earning a seven percent interest rate, 72 divided by seven, your money doubles in about 10 years. At eight percent, it doubles in nine years. Mariotti says this is why it's so important to save and invest at a young age.
MARIOTTI: If a person can start saving in their 20s $300 a month, and save for 40 years at eight-and-a-half percent interest, then that money turns into over a million dollars in 40 years. That's just $300 a month.
ARNOLD: If you start when you're 25, by the time you're 65, you'll have $1,064,457.
MARIOTTI: But if you wait and don't start saving 'til your 30s and do the same strategy, it only comes up to $447,000, less than half of the million sixty-four thousand you would've made.
ARNOLD: Chris Arnold, NPR News, Boston.
BLOCK: You can learn more about saving for your retirement as well as the rule of 72 at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
After a year of campaigning, Iowans will gather in school auditoriums, church basements, even a few living rooms, 1,781 precincts in all, to meet with neighbors and, literally, stand up for their candidates.
SIEGEL: On the Republican side, two former governors - Mitt Romney of Massachusetts and Mike Huckabee of Arkansas - were the top of the heap, with Senator John McCain, who barely campaigned in Iowa, coming on strong.
BLOCK: Our colleague Michele Norris is in Des Moines tonight. She's been talking with the caucus-goers. And Michele, what have you been hearing?
MICHELE NORRIS: In this case, Lee Olmstead, the wife, had gone to see all the candidates of both parties speak at some point before she made her decision.
BLOCK: You mentioned turnout, Michele. What motivates people when you've talked to them? What do they say makes them head out in the cold to spend a couple of hours caucusing?
NORRIS: Well, we found people who are indeed motivated. We went to a senior center, which, ironically, is located at 2008 Forest Avenue. And we spoke with several people including an 89-year-old man, his name is Hal Wilson(ph). He was wearing World War II veteran's cap. He walked with a cane. And when I asked him who he was supporting, and although he appeared to be slightly weak as he moved around, he was very strong on that.
BLOCK: Hillary, Democrat. Of course, she's just like her husband. She thinks the way he does. He got us out of debts. Oh, my golly.
NORRIS: Let's hear what he had to say about that.
BLOCK: Yeah, I'm taking my wife from the hospital. She's - I'm taking her from the hospital. They will never - they're going to leave the hospital for a while just for the caucus.
BLOCK: Those are some motivated voters, Michele.
NORRIS: Yes. Very, very motivated. We also spoke with - we spoke with some folks who've lived in Iowa for years. Again, we're in a senior center so these are people who have, you know, some years behind them. And we talked to people who have either never caucused or have not caucused for years. Edith Sharp(ph) was one of them.
BLOCK: First, he was well-versed on his goals. And second, he's come a long way for our rights.
BLOCK: Who's she talking about there, Michele?
NORRIS: There, I was going to say, he, the person that she's talking to is Barack, talking about is Barack Obama. Edith Sharp is an African-American woman. She says that she was motivated to go to the caucus for the first time in years because she felt that it was a chance to make history. When we found her, she was eating lunch with her husband. It was pie day. Thursday is pie day at the senior center so they had a big crowd there for the chocolate cream pie that day. And her 79-year-old husband was there. And he said he had never caucused either. His name is William Sharp(ph). And he, too, was supporting Barack Obama.
BLOCK: Never paid no attention to them in the past. But this year, it really took a hold of me. We are in need for a change. I think the Democratic candidates running - they are very good. But I just favored Obama because he talks down there. He talks to the little people, big people, in between, all over, doesn't make any difference.
NORRIS: Now, you heard him say that he has not caucused in the past.
BLOCK: Yeah.
NORRIS: And after wavering back and forth between Huckabee and Romney, he finally settled on Romney and he said it was because of economics.
BLOCK: I run a small business here. I have a small lawn care business. And I settled on Mitt Romney because he's been a manager and he's run a company and he's worked in the private sector. And I just feel that he has the strengths from the private sector as a manager to come and manage one of the largest organizations in our country, the federal government.
NORRIS: Now, Melissa, Adam is young, only 20 years old. It'll be a sharp analysis of why interest in these races are so high on both sides. He said in past years, there has been someone - one candidate who has strong momentum. In this case, that wasn't the case so no one is essentially going with the flow. They had to do the work. Check out all the candidates. And he says that's why interest is so high.
BLOCK: Okay, Michele. Our colleague Michele Norris, thanks very much.
NORRIS: Thank you, Melissa.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This must be the night of the Iowa caucuses because Andrew Kohut is here. And he's president of the Pew Research Center. Good to see you.
ANDREW KOHUT: Very happy. Thank you.
SIEGEL: Once again. First, I want you to do the - nothing up your sleeves here. We haven't seen any numbers from any exit or entrance polls or another. No one has been coy about this. We do not know a thing about it, what's happening.
KOHUT: We don't know a thing about it. It hasn't happened yet.
SIEGEL: What are the questions that you're going to hope to answer when you look at the data coming out of Iowa? First, on the Democratic side.
KOHUT: From the Edwards' point of view, whether his experience in Iowa, whether his populism, his appeals to middle-class voters, feeling their pain, can make a - can allow him to make in rows on the other two candidates, who've largely been somewhat ahead of him in these very close polls.
SIEGEL: The Des Moines Register poll had made what was either a very interesting judgment call or an extremely trenchant observation about the 2008 race, they assumed an unusually large share of the Democratic turnout at least, if not the Republican turnout as well, to be first-time caucus goers - we heard a couple in Michele Norris' piece - and independence. What do you think about that?
KOHUT: Extraordinary. Seventy-two percent of the people in this poll who were backers of Obama had never caucused before. And for Hillary, it wasn't much larger. It was 58 percent. Certainly, whether - if there is a very high turnout of first-timers, it's going to advantage Obama. If on the other hand it's what - there are fewer old timers, more people who've been there before, it's going to help Hillary and Edwards to some extent.
SIEGEL: On the Republican side, what questions are you looking to see answered?
KOHUT: Well, what we've seen so far in Iowa and elsewhere is the emergence of a divide with - what had been a previously very unified Republican Party. We have the Christian conservative supporting one candidate, Mike Huckabee in the Des Moines Register poll by a margin of 57 to 19 over Romney, and then, the moderates and liberals supporting Romney by almost the same margin. And will that divide be as sharp as this poll number suggest? Which of these two candidates will prevail and will it, in fact, be social conservatism that drives preferences or not?
SIEGEL: And though, one number that we may not know until late at night and even then is how many people took part in the two caucuses. That is this is - the Iowa is a state that goes either way in presidential races and whichever party generates more enthusiasm could actually win this state.
KOHUT: That's right because independents have an opportunity to go either way, and there's - as you've mentioned earlier, there's a pretty high concentration of independents, particularly on the Democratic side of the race.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Andy.
KOHUT: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: Andrew Kohut, he's president of the Pew Research Center. And our coverage continues online, where you can read about how Iowa's caucuses work and watch a video about the process. That's NPR.org/elections.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
NPR's Richard Gonzales reports.
RICHARD GONZALES: There were probably more reporters and cameras than patrons outside the zoo this morning when officials swung open the gates for the first time since Christmas. Among the early morning visitors, Gaye Bryson(ph) of San Francisco and her young grandson.
GAYE BRYSON: I feel it's important to show my support for an institution that I really, really value, and that's why we're here.
GONZALES: Any concerns about safety?
BRYSON: None. Absolutely none.
GONZALES: What visitors won't see is the zoo's big cat exhibit, where 17-year- old Carlo Souza was killed. The exhibit remains closed as officials erect a new 19-foot glass wall. The current 12-and-half-foot barrier failed to hold the tiger. Officials are also installing a new public alert system and signs warning visitors not to taunt the animals.
MANUEL MOLLINEDO: The zoo is a safe place. And I would just like to encourage and invite everyone that lives here in San Francisco and the Bay Area to please come out again and visit the San Francisco Zoo.
GONZALES: That's the zoo director, Manuel Mollinedo. He's still unclear why Tatiana, the 350-pound tiger, escaped in the first place.
MOLLINEDO: All I know is that something happened to provoke that tiger to leap out of her exhibit. The police is investigating it. And until they can come up with some definitive answers, I probably, there would only be speculation on my part at this point.
GONZALES: Rory Little, a professor at UC Hastings College of Law, says legal action is predictable, but so many of the facts of the incident are still unknown. And he says, in a civil trial, it may not matter whether the victims provoked the tiger.
RORY LITTLE: You know, most people don't expect the animals to be able to escape their enclosures. Even if these kids did taunt the tiger, I think it's perfectly clear that it never occurred to them that the tiger would then escape and chase them down and attack them.
GONZALES: Richard Gonzales, NPR News, San Francisco.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Adam Davidson has the story.
ADAM DAVIDSON: The idea of one of the best-known British brands being bought by a company from the old colonies is pretty shocking to a lot of people including Arvind Subramanian.
ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN: This is not how it's meant to happen - English workers working for Indian managers and Indian entrepreneurs.
DAVIDSON: Subramanian is senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He's also from India, and he says that for centuries, there have been some really clear guidelines in place over how rich countries and poor countries in interact.
SUBRAMANIAN: So there's a very clear allocation of who can and should do what in this global game of capitalism. You know, the rich country provides technology, entrepreneurship, management, you know, how to run a business.
DAVIDSON: Right. So, Ford in the U.S. or Jaguar in the U.K. will be the expert on how to run a business and India, well, India is a poor country so by the standard rules...
SUBRAMANIAN: What poor countries have to offer is either cheap resources or cheap labor.
DAVIDSON: But of course, in the case of an Indian company buying Jaguar...
SUBRAMANIAN: Almost exactly the opposite is happening. Tata, in this case, they're saying, we will tell you how to run the business and you know, the labor is going to be provided in England with Englishmen working for the company.
DAVIDSON: Subramanian expects Indian firms to continue buying big U.S. and U.K. companies. Seema Desai, an Asian analyst at the Eurasia Group, says Americans won't get used to India's emergence any time soon.
SEEMA DESAI: I think that's going to be a long time to come because China has been doing this for some time and it still get a huge amount of attention in the international press.
DAVIDSON: Adam Davidson, NPR News.
SIEGEL: Jane Lindholm reports from Vermont Public Radio.
JANE LINDHOLM: Unidentified Man #1: Until snowboarders everywhere are free to ride where they want to ride, until the snow on the slopes of this great nation have been purged of the scourge of segregation, until the four elitist fascist resorts lift their draconian ban, there should be no rest, no justice and no peace.
LINDHOLM: Burton is offering a $5,000 purse for the best videos of snowboarders poaching the four skier-only resorts in the country. It's a publicity stunt, sure. But Nate Bosshard, brand manager at Burton's says there's a more serious issue at stake.
NATE BOSSHARD: At a certain level, this is discrimination. It's the way people go down a hill, are they going forward or are they going sideways?
LINDHOLM: Skiers don't all like at it that way.
JOAN YOUNG: I think the snowboarders ought to get a life.
LINDHOLM: Joan Young has been going to Mad River Glen in Wakefield, Vermont, since 1952. That's a ski-only mountain right in Burton's backyard.
YOUNG: They've got pipes, they've got special snowboarding parks, I mean, I don't know what's wrong with Burton. What is their business of capturing Mad River?
LINDHOLM: But capture Mad River is just what a group of audacious snowboarders did recently. Early on a Saturday morning, a couple dozen riders trudged up the mountain carrying their snowboards.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS ON SNOW)
LINDHOLM: Unidentified Man #2: Please line up towards down the hill...
LINDHOLM: Unidentified Woman: We're going to (unintelligible).
(SOUNDBITE OF NOISY CROWD)
(SOUNDBITE OF SNOWBOARDING)
LINDHOLM: Despite initial boos, the snowboarders actually got a pretty warm welcome from the skiers. Local skier Carrie Dolan(ph) even liked the stunt - to a point.
CARRIE DOLAN: It was so (unintelligible). Here he would come down, doing great. It was really fun to watch. But, you know, this is a skier's mountain.
LINDHOLM: Eric Friedman, Mad River Glen marketing directors, says if Burton wants snowboarders to grace these slopes, founder Jake Burton should put his money where his mouth is.
ERIC FRIEDMAN: Any decision is made by the co-p. So we encourage them to show you care, Jake, buy a share.
LINDHOLM: For NPR News, I'm Jane Lindholm.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
NPR's Philip Reeves reports from Islamabad.
PHILIP REEVES: It's a week since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHANTING)
REEVES: In the streets of Pakistan's capital Islamabad, the supporters gather to remember her. At the same time, not far away, President Pervez Musharraf is tackling hostile questions from the foreign media.
SIEGEL: I wonder whether you could explain how Pakistan can make the peaceful transition to democracy when many people in the country believe you have blood on your hands over Benazir Bhutto's death?
REEVES: Musharraf said it was beneath his dignity to answer that question. But he did.
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: I'm not fugitive(ph). And I'm not a tribal. I've been brought up in a very educated and civilized family, with beliefs and values, with beliefs and principles, with beliefs and character. My family is not a family which believes in killing people, assassinating, intriguing. And that is all that I want to say.
REEVES: Musharraf had plenty to say, though, about allegations that Bhutto's death was because of lax security. Bhutto died as she left a political rally in the city of Rawalpindi. Musharraf said she had proposed going to the same spot a few weeks earlier.
MUSHARRAF: We knew, the intelligence agency knew there's a threat. And we told her not to go. And we stopped her from going. This time, she again decided to go and she went. So therefore she went on her own volition, ignoring the threat.
REEVES: People who had stayed inside that car had been unharmed, he said. But Bhutto decided to poke her head out at the sunroof.
MUSHARRAF: Who is to blame for her coming out of the vehicle and standing outside? Who is to blame? The law enforcement agency?
REEVES: He said the Islamist extremists are the only people who use suicide bombers.
MUSHARRAF: No intelligence organization of Pakistan, I think, is capable of indoctrinating a man to blow himself up.
REEVES: Musharraf particularly blames the tribal militant called Baitullah Mehsud in Waziristan, who he alleges is linked to al-Qaida. Musharraf was asked why Pakistani forces don't simply go into Waziristan and get him.
MUSHARRAF: And let me tell you that getting him in that place means battling against thousands of people, hundreds of people who are his followers. If you try to attack, it means maybe the original effort going in to attack will all deaths on our head.
REEVES: This was a robust performance by Musharraf, considering the turmoil his country's in. However, every now and then, he showed signs of bitterness, especially towards the Western press.
MUSHARRAF: I know what you people are writing, what is being written everywhere. And I don't believe whatever you write.
REEVES: He had some questions of his own.
MUSHARRAF: Philip Reeves, NPR News, Islamabad.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Jesse Sheidlower, an editor of the "Oxford English Dictionary" is one of the many people who love the "Flashman" books.
JESSE SHEIDLOWER: Thank you, George MacDonald Fraser for Harry Flashman.
SIEGEL: Jessie Sheidlower is an editor at the "Oxford English Dictionary."
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson is in Des Moines. And Mara, what are you watching for this evening?
MARA LIASSON: The other thing to watch for, particularly on the Democratic side, is who is the second choice of the second-tier candidates? On the Democratic side, if a candidate does not reach 15 percent of the caucus participants in most caucuses, they have to either go home or pick another candidate. And already, Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson have said that Barack Obama will be the second choice of their supporters if they don't reach 15 percent in those caucuses.
SIEGEL: Mara, is it fair to say that in a caucus, as opposed to a primary, that turnout and organization are more important?
LIASSON: The number of delegates the people get are not based on the number of people they turn out. It's based on a complicated formula based on the turnout among Democrats in the last two general elections. So in other words, if you get a tremendous turnout in a previously poorly performing precinct, it doesn't give you any extra delegates. It's kind of like Democrats turning out 10 million extra votes in New York.
SIEGEL: Mm-hmm. Well, what's the last-minute buzz you're hearing about the candidates? First, in the Democratic race.
LIASSON: Well, the buzz is that as he has been getting all along, very big crowds for Barack Obama, bigger than Hillary Clinton's. The big question - we're now going to finally find and have the answer - is can he turn those crowds into votes? I would say there is cautious optimism on - in the Obama camp. I think there's a lot of nail-biting and frustration among Hillary Clinton's supporters, very concerned here. And of course, John Edwards has staked everything on doing well in Iowa.
SIEGEL: He's been out there for years campaigning.
LIASSON: Yes, ever since 2004.
SIEGEL: And Republican buzz?
LIASSON: Republican buzz is that Romney might finally have kind of beaten back the Huckabee surge with this barrage of negative ads. Romney is feeling cautiously optimistic. Huckabee is already downplaying expectations, saying that a second-place finish here would be great for him. The other thing that you're hearing a lot about is John McCain. He has barely campaigned in the state, but he has come back in the last couple of days because he's been moving up in the polls. If he comes in as the number three here, that will give his campaign a very big boost.
SIEGEL: Well, we have to settle for buzz for a couple more hours. We'll get some facts after that. Thank you, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Mara Liasson speaking to us from Des Moines.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
The Democratic caucuses in Iowa require patience, stamina and math.
JOE LOEBACH: We got calculators and we got telephone numbers.
BLOCK: To call if you need some help?
LOEBACH: Yes.
BLOCK: That's Joe Loebach who'll be hosting a Democratic caucus tonight in his home in Burt, Iowa, population about 500, near the top of the state. He says he's hoping for 30 caucus-goers. He has chairs for 50. Joe Loebach has hosted a caucus for at least six election cycles. So we asked him to help explain how it works.
LOEBACH: We get a computer sheet that comes out from the state. And when you come in, you're supposed to mark who you're supporting.
BLOCK: I see. As they come in, and then you steer them to the right part of the house?
LOEBACH: Well, we just steer them to a chair. And when 7:00 gets here and we say, okay, we're going to start. And we announce the people that's running and point to wherever. And that's where they should go.
BLOCK: Okay. And this is where this all gets tricky. How many total delegates for your precinct?
LOEBACH: I have two delegates for the precinct.
BLOCK: Two delegates?
LOEBACH: Yes.
BLOCK: Okay. And so this is where the math and that calculator are going to come in handy, right?
LOEBACH: Correct.
BLOCK: Because if I read this right, according to the rules, each candidate would need - since you have two delegates - would need to get 25 percent of the people at that caucus supporting them to be viable. So they would need, say if you've got 30 people, they would need eight people in their group. If there's a group that doesn't have enough, it doesn't get to that number eight, they have to move around to a different part of the house to a different candidate or they can leave?
LOEBACH: Well, yes. I'd much rather have moved to a different candidate or go to undecided. Now, I have, we have an undecided chair, too.
BLOCK: Mr. Loebach, have you ever really done this before, and you've done it a lot of times now, it sounds like, have you ever gotten totally stuck, confused about something, a rule that didn't make sense or you didn't know what to do?
LOEBACH: Always get confused. We try to work it out ahead of time. But, yeah, there are times when you wonder what the heck you're going to do.
BLOCK: Now, when you finally figure out a result from your caucus there in your house tonight, what do you do? How do you get that number out?
LOEBACH: We have a telephone number. And we call that number and it's automated. And we put in a code and that is supposedly instantaneous on the board in Des Moines. And we'll be on television here. We can sit here and watch it come up if we want to.
BLOCK: Mr. Loebach, who are you supporting tonight?
LOEBACH: I was afraid you're going to ask that question. I have been particularly interested in John Edwards. Now, I don't know Obama and Clinton have had a lot of press. And they've had - and I just cannot do it with them. And they might be, you know, overall, they might get it. And then I'm going to wonder what I should do when it comes to election this fall.
BLOCK: Mm-hmm. You have a little while to think about that.
LOEBACH: Yes, I do.
BLOCK: Well, Joe Loebach, have a great caucus tonight. Good to talk to you.
LOEBACH: Well, thank you very much.
BLOCK: Joe Loebach talking with us from Burt, Iowa where he's hosting a Democratic caucus tonight.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
A Republican caucus in Iowa is less complicated. Just ask Ed Fravel who's hosting one in his home in Plymouth County this evening.
ED FRAVEL: Well, they come, they sign in. We're going give - depending on the amount of people here - we're going to give them each so much time to tell which person they like and why they like them. We then pass out a written ballot, go count the ballots. And then we have to turn those in, of course, to the state Republican Party.
SIEGEL: All in? Nobody's eliminated? No...
FRAVEL: Nobody's eliminated.
SIEGEL: So yours is a pretty straightforward caucus?
FRAVEL: It's a pretty straightforward caucus.
SIEGEL: You're not at all attracted to the idea of, you know, second preferences counting of some candidates who are eliminated, not doing very well?
FRAVEL: No.
SIEGEL: No? You stand by the Republican caucus, I see.
FRAVEL: Yes, we do.
SIEGEL: Well, Mr. Fravel, thank you very much for talking with us today.
FRAVEL: All right, thank you.
SIEGEL: That's Ed Fravel of Plymouth County, Iowa. He's hosting a Republican caucus this evening in his home north of Sioux City.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
In Kenya today, President Mwai Kibaki called for an end to ethnic violence that has flared since last week's elections. He says he's willing to talk to the opposition once calm has been restored to the country. His challenger, Raila Odinga, claims the vote count was rigged and he refuses to accept the results. Kenya's attorney general is calling for an independent body to verify the vote tally.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Today in the capital, Nairobi, riot police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters. But as NPR's Gwen Thompkins reports, that didn't keep opposition supporters from coming out.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE SINGING)
GWEN THOMPKINS: These folks are smiling as they sing. But they're apparently breaking the law. They support Raila Odinga for president of Kenya. And they were on their way downtown to sing praises to their leader. But President Mwai Kibaki put the kibosh on today's planned demonstration and warned anyone with a cell phone not to go.
(SOUNDBITE OF CELL PHONE RINGING)
THOMPKINS: And Kenya lives on cell phones. For days now, the local network has been sending messages to customers, telling them to avoid the rally on Thursday. And for anyone who didn't get the message, there were hundreds of paramilitary troops and police on the streets today with every intention of making it clear.
COSMOS INSIOTA: It takes time to make an economy grow up. But it takes a very short time for it to get finished.
THOMPKINS: Cosmos Insiota is a mechanic who has come more than 50 miles to take part in the rally for Odinga. But that wasn't the only reason he came to Nairobi. Insiota has begun to feel uncomfortable where he lives. Post-election tensions have closed his business. Food stocks are low. And the ethnic groups in his area are getting belligerent. Nearly everyone walking downtown took one step toward Odinga and one step away from troubles at home.
JOJO NIANGO BIORO: Things are distorted. They are no shops. There's no food. Children have died. Women have died. People are now running away. So this is too much for the normal human being.
THOMPKINS: Jojo Niango Bioro left the rambling shanty town of Kibera and walked two hours to get downtown. Kibera is in the parliamentary constituency of Raila Odinga. And the bitterness over the presidential election has resulted in a long spasm there of unspeakable violence. Bioro talked his way past any number of security teams, telling them that he's looking for food because his family is hungry. He's telling the truth. The soldiers let him through the checkpoints. Many of them are in the exact same streets.
DENNIS KAKUNGA: At this point, we only want to speak.
THOMPKINS: Dennis Kakunga came all the way from Dallas, Texas to cast his vote. He said he wanted to be a part of history. Kakunga says he thinks the election was rigged, but he could not anticipate the national paralysis that has followed.
KAKUNGA: Unidentified Man: Five, four, three, two, one. Sound check. Five, four, three, two, one.
THOMPKINS: And speaking of being a part of history, the reclusive President Kibaki gave a rare press conference today at state house.
MWAI KIBAKI: The government is doing everything possible to ensure that security of all Kenyans is maintained.
THOMPKINS: In his remarks, Kibaki never mentioned that the chairman he appointed at the electoral commission now says he doesn't know who really won the presidential vote. Kibaki never mentioned that his attorney general today called for an independent investigation into the tally. And Kibaki never mentioned the name Raila Odinga. But he urged other leaders to restrain the violence that has taken hold of Kenya. Kibaki also refused to take questions.
KIBAKI: The people want to see our democracy strengthened and expanded rather than-that they will cut its space, squeezed by this government.
THOMPKINS: Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, Nairobi.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Here's NPR's Michele Kelemen.
MICHELE KELEMEN: For a secretary who has been a vocal proponent of human rights, today's visit by a top Libyan official could have proved awkward. But Secretary Rice did not appear before reporters with Libyan foreign minister Abdel-Rahman Muhammad Shalgam. Instead, one of her deputies, Undersecretary of State Paula Dobriansky, spoke about the budding relationship at a formal signing ceremony for a science and technology cooperation agreement.
PAULA DOBRIANSKY: Today we pledge to strive toward global partnership in science and technology. The possibilities are exciting and limitless.
KELEMEN: Foreign Minister Shalgam is the highest ranking Libyan official to visit Washington in 35 years. He spoke briefly at the ceremony today and at a luncheon yesterday with U.S. business executives. But he did not take questions or speak about past troubles and U.S.-Libyan ties, instead he focused on the future, calling for more investment in his oil-rich nation.
ABDEL: Libya is open for the American companies to come and to invest there. They are welcome, all of them, because we want the American technology, the American know-how. The American, also, capital to come back to Libya and to invest there.
KELEMEN: Families of the victims of Pan Am Flight 103 are furious with the reception the foreign minister has gotten here. Libya has not fully compensated the families of the Lockerbie bombing victims because part of the settlement was contingent on the U.S. pulling Libya off the list of state sponsors of terrorism by a certain date, a date that the U.S. missed. Kara Weeps(ph), whose brother was killed in the 1988 airline bombing, told the memorial service in December that the U.S. should not normalize ties until Libya finishes compensating the Pan Am families and the families of the American victims of a 1986 Berlin disco bombing.
KARA WEEPS: To do, otherwise, risk a shocking failure of U.S. diplomacy and security. While I understand diplomacy can be delicate, so are innocent human lives.
KELEMEN: Those thoughts were echoed by a Libyan-American human rights activist, Mohammed el-Jahmi, who now lives in Massachusetts.
MOHAMMED EL: The cost of embracing a dictator like Gadhafi, who also has American blood on his hands, outweighs any benefits that we could get from him.
KELEMEN: His brother, Fathi el-Jahmi, is a prominent democracy activist who is listed in a new report by human rights watch as one of three jailed Libyan dissidents who have disappeared. Mohammed el-Jahmi says his family has had not contact with his 66-year-old brother for nearly 17 months.
BLOCK: We certainly hope that he is alive. We don't know anything about his condition.
KELEMEN: El-Jahmi says he was appalled when State Department officials told them they can't do much to help and suggested that he deal with Moammar Gadhafi's son, the heir apparent in Libya. El-Jahmi says Libyan intermediaries who approached him wanted assurances that his brother would stay silent if released.
BLOCK: They wanted me also to whiten their faces. Meaning, that I become part of the machine of saying that Gadhafi has changed. I refuse this.
KELEMEN: Michelle Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Thursday is the day we read from your e-mail. And we heard from many people about my interview with Cathy Wilkerson.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Wilkerson was a member of Weatherman. In 1970, Wilkerson and four others were using her parent's townhouse in New York's Greenwich Village as a bomb factory. That's when sticks of dynamite they were using to make bombs exploded.
CATHY WILKERSON: A blast reverberated through the house, and in places the ironing board, a mountain of splintered wood and brick rose up all around me. Plaster dust and little bits of debris blew out from everywhere, instantly filling the air.
SIEGEL: Ray Reagan(ph) of Phoenix, Arizona was one of many who were dismayed by this story. He writes, being removed from the era by a generation, I did not listen to this story through the prism of nostalgia, rather, every time Robert Siegel called her a radical and her movement radicalism, I heard terror and terrorist.
BLOCK: Don Wrightmeier(ph) of Danville, Kentucky shared the sentiment. Their freedom to protest for civil rights and against the Vietnam War are protected rights. Their decision to use explosives embedded with nails and use those devices on Fort Dix against fellow Americans would have been nothing short of murder.
SIEGEL: How tragic, he writes, that some of her friends were killed in the explosion. How much more tragic it would have been if they had been successful in their plans.
BLOCK: Unidentified Man: And look how India's a lot more advanced than the U.K. At least our kings and princes marry beautiful women. Well, if an Indian king married Camilla, we would worship her, because in our country, cows are considered sacred.
SIEGEL: Well, Ed Harris(ph) of Kansas City, Missouri doesn't think the striking writers have anything to worry about. Futilely trying to understand each successive joke, he writes, I suddenly realized that I wasn't meant to understand the jokes. Has NPR outsourced writing for such pieces?
BLOCK: We got some nice remembrances from you about yesterday's story on Arthur Godfrey. He was the host of several shows in the early days of TV, including "Talent Scouts." You could consider it a precursor to "American Idol."
SIEGEL: At the end of this story, Andy Rooney said this about Godfrey's legacy.
ANDY ROONEY: And it's gone. It's up in thin air, and I can't get over the fact that he's forgotten.
SIEGEL: Larry Miller(ph) of Pineville, North Carolina asked us to tell Rooney Godfrey is not forgotten.
BLOCK: Mr. Miller says he met Godfrey once, and it was unforgettable. In 1969, for CBS, he writes, I did an ad for Godfrey coming back on radio. What a raconteur. I spent an hour with Godfrey's chauffeur, driving cross town in New York in his Rolls or Bentley. After that, I could not imagine him going on air without powerful cuss words.
SIEGEL: Well, now for some corrections. Earlier this week in our reporting on the aftermath of the elections in Kenya, we misidentified a church that had been burnt down as Catholic, rather it was a Kenyan Assemblies of God Church.
BLOCK: In our story yesterday about a piece of music called "Rumba Sinfonica," we made a mistake describing the composer's employment. Ricardo Lorenz does not teach at the University of Michigan. In fact, he is on the faculty of Michigan State. Sorry, Spartan.
SIEGEL: And now, reporting on the Iowa caucuses, we also misidentified the singer of this song.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "THIS IS OUR COUNTRY")
JOHN MELLENCAMP: Sing out through this land. This is our country.
BLOCK: That is John Mellencamp singing "This is Our Country," who we somehow confused with Bruce Springsteen. Ouch. Our mistake.
SIEGEL: Well, whether you think we're a bust(ph) or not, let us know. Go to our Web site, NPR.org, and click on contact us at the top of the page.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
In Iowa, the campaign rallies, over. The ads, no more. The bus trips, the baby kissing, pie eating, the diner visits and the hand shakes, done. More than a year of run-up as history and the Iowa caucuses are underway.
SIEGEL: They've began just a few minutes ago and we should start getting preliminary results within an hour. Going in, the race was the tight on both sides. For the Republicans, poll show Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee at the top of the pack. For the Democrats, it's a three-way race according to the polls, with John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama pulling about even.
BLOCK: NPR has reporters at campaign headquarters for candidates of both parties. We've also got analysts and commentators standing by. We'll check in with many of them this hour. We're going to begin where the action is or at least at one of the places where the action is, where going to the town of Nevada, Iowa, which (unintelligible) in the center of the state.
SIEGEL: Linda, what's going on?
LINDA WERTHEIMER: There are a lot of people in the cafeteria. There's another caucus going on in the high school library. There's one over in the middle school cafeteria as well. There is a tremendous amount of interest in this one, apparently. People are liking their candidates, and they thought, you know, it was close, it's exciting, there's a lot of energy so they're here.
SIEGEL: Now, this is just one precinct caucus and not at all representative but you've talked with people there, what are you hearing from them?
WERTHEIMER: There are two basketball games. There was cheerleader practice. And now there are, well, three caucuses in this building and more all around us in various venues around the town. This is about 5,000 people.
SIEGEL: It sounds like a big night in Nevada. And we'll be checking with you a little later. Thanks a lot, Linda.
WERTHEIMER: Right.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Linda Wertheimer in Nevada, Iowa.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And Michele, the Obama campaign has said it's going to come down to organization and turnout, but couldn't any campaign say just about the same thing?
MICHELE NORRIS: And tonight we'll see if that strategy pays off if we see more situations like the one Linda has just described where there were many first-time caucusgoers.
BLOCK: Now, Hillary Clinton has been banking on the support of women. Barack Obama is spending a lot of time of focusing on young people and trying to get college students to come back from break to caucus in Iowa, right?
NORRIS: Yes. And you know, it seems like that has worked at least anecdotally from what we've seen and heard here around Des Moines. We spoke to students who headed back to Iowa from Illinois and Kansas. One student is planning to caucus tonight at Drake, in the same room where he took his Biology 101 class. Overall, we found not just young people but a lot of the older people, people who've lived in the state for a long time who are planning to caucus for the first time or for the first time in years, Melissa.
BLOCK: And for Iowans, it's the end of a long, long campaign - beginning of a whole process for the rest of the country - but for Iowa, just about over. How do they feel about that?
NORRIS: Well, people are a bit worn down by all the calls, all the mailings, the pitches, and frankly, all of us, the giant press corps tromping all over the state. But they also take this process very seriously. We met one woman at a John Edwards rally, her name is Lee Olmstead(ph) and she took the time to actually get out and see all of the Democrats and almost all of the Republicans. She said it was important to hear the candidates, to ask them questions and to see them face to face. We should listen to her.
BLOCK: I wanted to hear their responses first and foremost but when I look them in the eye, I want to see where - how connected they were, if there was passion behind what they had to say, if there were - what I saw in their eyes is connected to what was in their hearts or if they were just reeling off figures they've been reeling off everywhere.
BLOCK: And where did she end up, Michele?
NORRIS: Well, Lee Olmstead, in the end, said she settled on Barack Obama but just, you know, last night, right before the eve of the - right on the eve of the caucus, she still wasn't - she wasn't absolutely sure, and she went to see John Edwards. You know, Melissa, all day long here, you would hear people greeting each other by saying happy caucus day like it was almost some sort of holiday. And after spending time here, I get the sense that people really are happy that it's caucus day but they're also happy that it's finally over.
BLOCK: Okay, Michele, thanks very much.
NORRIS: Thank you.
BLOCK: That's our co-host Michele Norris at Obama headquarters in Des Moines.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Ina, I gather it's a small place, perhaps reflecting his late entry into the top three of candidates in Iowa?
INA JAFFE: All I could say is that when I covered bond measures in California that Arnold Schwarzenegger was supporting, the governor had bigger headquarters for his bond measures than I'm seeing here in this ballroom tonight, but there are a few dozen people here and I imagine it will fill up eventually as the caucuses shut down. And what we've had so far is a prayer circle, several people, most of them young, not all, from Arkansas who came up here to pray and summon - quite a bit of intensity in some lengths for former Governor Huckabee's success.
SIEGEL: Now, Ina, going into this, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney were very, very close in the polls, I assume that this is seen by them as a test of organization on the Republican side.
JAFFE: As for the governor of Arkansas, former governor of Arkansas, he's been relying a lot on free media, appearing on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" last night and things of that nature where he can sort of show off his charm and his likability.
SIEGEL: Well, Ina, we'll be hearing from you as the evening wears on. Thanks a lot.
JAFFE: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: NPR's Ina Jaffe at the Embassy Suites Hotel in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, Republican Mike Huckabee's headquarters this evening.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And Linda, you're at the Democratic caucus. We spoke about a half an hour ago, things were just getting started. Where are we now? And this is just one of the hundreds and hundreds of Democratic caucuses across the state of Iowa.
LINDA WERTHEIMER: So they counted off, they figured it out, it was 20. Everybody went to stand in their corners. They had, you know, Hillary people goes to stand by the Hillary poster. Obama people over there in the middle. Dodd people are at the back. There was a hand-lettered sign for Kucinich who apparently did not have any posters and three people stood under that so they're not viable. The Bidens aren't viable. The Edwardses are barely viable, and the Richardsons are short ones so they all went after the Bidens. And now, they're out there trying to negotiate and work it out. They're all out of there corners and they're all talking and there are a bunch of kids playing by the door. It's a fairly confusing, lively, amazing piece of democracy in action.
SIEGEL: And they're talking ideas and politics? They're not trading jobs here, are they, in the middle of the caucus?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
WERTHEIMER: They're actually moving very fast at this caucus. They should be pretty much ready to count the thing down. They'll take a half hour for what they call persuasion, and then they'll count again.
SIEGEL: It's NPR's Linda Wertheimer at the Democratic caucus...
(SOUNDBITE OF COUGH)
SIEGEL: We'll be hearing from Linda Wertheimer again. We'll have more coverage later in this hour at throughout the evening.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And Scott, Governor Romney has spent a lot of time in Iowa; how did he spent this final day of the campaign?
SCOTT HORSLEY: He spent this morning visiting with supporters at a couple of Des Moines area businesses. And this evening, as folks were heading into their caucuses, he stopped by three different caucus locations. The last one, just about 15 minutes ago, he has - it's a very close race here in Iowa and he's trying to reach as many voters as he can as the moment arrives for them to express a preference.
BLOCK: And there's been quite a battle of words between Governor Romney and his main rival there in Iowa, former Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who has a big following among the large evangelical base there.
HORSLEY: That's right. One of the things that the Romney camp has been talking about as they try to perhaps lower expectations a little bit is to keep an eye on the evangelical turnout. As you mentioned, the evangelicals tend to sway in favor of Mike Huckabee. And the Romney camp has said that if there is a large evangelical turnout at tonight's caucuses, it would be very difficult for Governor Romney to finish first here. That said, Romney himself wasn't making any predictions today when he spoke at the Kum and Go headquarters in Des Moines. He quoted Yogi Berra, and said, it's tough to make predications especially where the future is concerned.
BLOCK: Okay, that's NPR's Scott Horsley in West Des Moines at the headquarters for Mitt Romney.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Audie, Senator McCain didn't pay much mind to Iowa. What are the expectations for him in New Hampshire?
AUDIE CORNISH: Well, that's - he didn't pay much attention to Iowa because its expectations are so high in New Hampshire. He really believes and thinks he needs to come in first here. He won the primary here in 2000, and his latest ad implored voters to give him a second chance. And he's also spent a lot of time in South Carolina. He's also unveiled a new ad in Michigan. So McCain is not his - I get the sense that he's pleased that he's made movement in Iowa and he did visit there yesterday as a show to say, yes, I'm paying attention, but he's really focused his effort on New Hampshire and beyond.
SIEGEL: And what do his efforts produce in the way of poll numbers in New Hampshire nowadays?
CORNISH: Well, at this point, he's certainly the chief rival or competitor to former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. In some polls, he's certainly pulled ahead of Romney, and it's very, very close. Right now, both of these candidates are looking to get the support of that great swath of undeclared voters who call themselves independents here in New Hampshire - 40 percent of the electorate. And this is a lot of the same community that supported McCain in 2000. And he's hoping that they'll give him another chance.
SIEGEL: In Iowa, Senator McCain appears to be running in the teens - or the low teens, perhaps, according to the gross numbers and the polls that we've seen.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And David, we should say that the Democratic Party has results coming up trickling in with just about a third of precincts reporting. It could not be any closer among senators - former Senator John Edwards and Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. What are you hearing there at Clinton headquarters?
DAVID GREENE: Well, I think that's the sense here as well, Melissa. And, you know, the Clinton campaign said on its Web site today this all is going to come down to turnout. And the campaign has been working very hard to get supporters out. They said they had 5,000 volunteered drivers, 600 snow shovels trying to clear sidewalks and driveways. Day care centers set up in Des Moines to make sure that parents could have their children taken care of to get out. And the Clinton campaign has focused a lot on women. One of the big concerns, though is, are first-time caucusers or some independent voters or some younger caucus goers going to come out for rival Barack Obama. And I think that's one of the things that the campaign here is watching very closely.
BLOCK: And what is Hillary Clinton's plan B if things do not go according to plan A there in Iowa tonight?
GREENE: Well, you know, the campaign realized the stakes here. I think they realized, you know, Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner. There was an air of inevitability for a while. But I think then they realized that there was a lot at stake - that Iowa was going to be a real proving ground for her. They've taken it very seriously. But they're also planning probably for - if things don't work out, if she were to finish second or third, they already have an event planned in New Hampshire early tomorrow morning, Nashua, New Hampshire with former President Bill Clinton by Hillary Clinton's side. So the campaign feels like they could regain some momentum if they don't get everything they want here. But they're hoping for good results.
BLOCK: And the same strategy would apply in New Hampshire that they've been using in Iowa, do you think?
GREENE: I think so. You know, it's a totally different state as you know, different types of voters, different messages, and then we'll have some debates and see how the messages change or stay the same once the state shifts.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And again, with about a third of the precincts reporting in Iowa on the Democratic side, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, each at 32 percent down to fractions of a percentage-point difference. But we're going to hear about the entrance polling now with Andy Kohut. Robert?
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Right. Andy Kohut of the Pew Research Center is back with us. And Andy, you've been looking at the entrance polls from Iowa. These are pretty big samples or rather there's still a lot of room for error here. But first, on the Republican side, what are you seeing?
BLOCK: The other thing that's really surprising and interesting on the Republican side is that there's a big gender gap. Huckabee is running two to one over Romney among women. And they're running dead even among men. And that again may reflect religiosity. Religiosity seems to be so much the pattern in the Republican race.
SIEGEL: The - as you say, the sample that the - of the Republican entrance polls find a very large number of evangelical Christians, conservative Christians, and Mike Huckabee does very well with them. And he's doing very well in the exit polls.
BLOCK: He's doing very well in the exit polls. He has a very significant lead over Romney. Now, you know, we have to take these entrance polls with a grain of salt. It's not like an election. But he has a nice lead...
SIEGEL: And the Democratic side, what do you see?
BLOCK: Four years ago, only 45 percent of the entrance poll respondents on the Democratic side were first-timers. And Obama is doing quite nicely among them. He's doing well among independent voters. And he - in the entrance poll at least, going in, he holds a nice - held a nice lead over both Edwards and...
SIEGEL: And Hillary Clinton?
BLOCK: ...Hillary Clinton. Yeah.
SIEGEL: Melissa?
BLOCK: He also just seems to be doing very well, Barack Obama, among people on a number of issues; people who think the economy is a big issue, the war in Iraq, health care. He does well across the board.
BLOCK: Health care is Mrs. Clinton's issue, though.
SIEGEL: And you're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Ina Jaffe is at the Embassy Suites hotel in downtown Des Moines. That's Huckabee campaign headquarters and I assume it's a happy headquarters at this point.
INA JAFFE: The national chairman of the Huckabee campaign, Chip Saltsman, addressed the crowd and he said it's going to be a long night, although maybe not that long for these folks. And he said what we're seeing tonight is that Mike Huckabee is right, message matters, you can't buy this election in Iowa. And he says that Romney, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, has the best organization money can buy but we've got the best volunteers anyone could hope for. So people right here are pretty happy.
SIEGEL: Is there a volunteer organization that either awaits Governor Huckabee in New Hampshire or that can go there with him?
JAFFE: Well, there were some folks here - are some folks here who came up to support him from Arkansas. As to what his organization on the ground is in New Hampshire, I really don't know really much about it, but he is still working really hard to raise money because he's certainly underfinanced compared to the likes of Mitt Romney.
SIEGEL: It's actually a remarkable first place finish for Huckabee when we consider that a few months ago he was considered one of those candidates like Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul who would pull up the rear of the Republican field.
JAFFE: And I think it shows that debates are important. That people watched him on television and said that this is somebody who they found very likable, who sounded smart and it made a lot of people take a look at him that might not have originally.
SIEGEL: Melissa.
BLOCK: NPR's Scott Horsley is at his headquarters in Des Moines. And Scott, if there was elation at Huckabee headquarters, I imagine there is sullen dejectedness there with Mitt Romney's supporters.
SCOTT HORSLEY: But it's also true that Iowa has been very important for Mitt Romney's strategy. He's run more than 40 percent of his television ads here in Iowa. He spent more than 70 days campaigning in the Hawkeye State. One of his sons traveled to all 99 counties in Iowa in their converted R.V., the Mitt-mobile. So he wanted a strong finish here and I think it's safe to say a stronger finish than we're seeing so far tonight.
BLOCK: Spent a lot of time in Iowa, also spent a huge amount of money, including a lot of his own money in Iowa.
HORSLEY: That's right. And one of the things that the campaign has been talking about is the evangelical turnout that Ina mentioned. And I was with both former Governor Romney and former Governor Huckabee yesterday, Huckabee said, you know, we were outspent 20-to-1 and that this was an opportunity for Iowans to say they can't be bought, can't even be rented for a night. Romney spent a huge amount of money, much of it his own, here in Iowa. And it appears that the evangelical turnout has just swamped that.
BLOCK: Now, a very different electorate in New Hampshire where they head next to the primary on Tuesday, that evangelical base not nearly as important, if important at all. And, of course, Mitt Romney from the neighboring state of Massachusetts, the former governor from there. He would be expecting a far better showing there.
HORSLEY: Well, yes. Although the campaign has tried to say that the neighboring state doesn't mean that much. There's, of course, a fair amount of tension between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. But it's much more a sort of fiscal conservative audience in New Hampshire that they'll be appealing to rather than the social conservatives that have dominated at least this round of the caucuses here in Iowa.
BLOCK: Okay. NPR's Scott Horsley at the headquarters of Mitt Romney in Des Moines, Iowa. And, again, NPR has projected that Mike Huckabee has finished first in the Iowa caucuses on the Republican side, Mitt Romney has finished second.
SIEGEL: NPR's Mara Liasson is at the Polk County Convention Center in Des Moines - Des Moines is in Polk County - keeping an eye on the results. Pretty close race you got there.
MARA LIASSON: Really extraordinary, Robert. I mean it is really, it's a three-way tie almost. Obama is ahead. We've got just about half precincts reporting from the Iowa Democratic Party - Obama at 34.3, Edwards at 31.6, and Clinton at 31.2, so that means that Edwards and Clinton are pretty much tied, Obama ahead at 34 percent. I mean, this is really extraordinary.
SIEGEL: Now, we should say here, Mara, that in terms of tangible gains from the Iowa caucuses, this doesn't mean much. There are about - in 44 convention delegates at stake...
LIASSON: You're talking about tangible gains as an actual delegate.
SIEGEL: That's right. It's...
LIASSON: No. But that's not what this is about.
SIEGEL: It's all about showing that you can win an election.
LIASSON: Yes. That's right.
SIEGEL: And at this rate, you could say no one has shown that so far with these results.
LIASSON: Yeah, that's true. But there is so much free media and expectations. And, look, they wouldn't be in Iowa if it didn't mean something.
SIEGEL: Right.
LIASSON: And they've been here for a long time. And what it means is that they can prove to Democrats that they can win. And this is the first opportunity they have to show they can win, and so far, Obama looks like he's - at least with just about half reporting - he is in the lead here. A small one...
SIEGEL: Yes.
LIASSON: ...but a lead. And I can assure you, Robert, that if this stays this close until the end we're going to hear some furious spinning after this. Whoever wins, even by a .0001, is going to say I am the winner, and the guy who's close to him is going to say, well, I tied.
SIEGEL: Yeah, 34, 32, 31 is a dream scenario for the spinmeisters to go with. Just one point I'll add before I let you go, Mara. I saw comparative charts for Obama and Hillary Clinton in terms of age groups. The older the age group, the better Hillary Clinton did. The younger the age group, the better Barack Obama did. It was just a stunning difference between the two contenders.
LIASSON: Not surprisingly, yes.
SIEGEL: Okay. NPR's Mara Liasson at the Polk County Convention Center in Des Moines, Iowa, keeping an eye out on the results of the Iowa caucuses as they come in there.
BLOCK: Andy, what are you seeing in the numbers that you've been looking at most recently?
BLOCK: Obama was so much - so much of this is about change and new ideas and that's what has been most positive for Obama throughout, thematically throughout all of the internals of this entrance poll.
BLOCK: And as we've been talking about, a lot of first-time caucusgoers, he was banking on that and they, you know, a lot of the questions about whether they would actually show up tonight and they did.
BLOCK: That's right. And it's more about personal qualities and less about issues. I mean, earlier, we talked about health care where surprisingly 31 percent of people who said health care is most important picked Obama, 30 percent Hillary.
BLOCK: Let's bring in our political commentators E.J. Dionne, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and columnist at the Washington Post, joining us from Manchester, New Hampshire. Hi, E.J.
BLOCK: How are you?
BLOCK: Good. And Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, he joins us here in our Washington studio. Welcome back, Rich.
BLOCK: Hi, there.
BLOCK: First, your take on the Huckabee projected finish. First, Rich?
BLOCK: Well, it's an incredible personal victory for Mike Huckabee. He had everything thrown at him by the Romney campaign and by the media. He really hadn't had a good day in the free media ever since there was this Newsweek poll three or four weeks ago that showed him popping up to an incredible 22-point lead. There was an onslaught, ever since then, he survived it mostly because of his incredible personal communications skills. This is an extremely talented politician.
BLOCK: But E.J. Dionne, what's your thought on whether it survives beyond Iowa?
BLOCK: And I think these are folks who had been used by the establishment Republicans for a long time and they decided this time they're going to vote for one of their own. The person this helps a lot in the short term is John McCain, because Mitt Romney was counting on coming into New Hampshire, right here where I am tonight, with a victory in Iowa. John McCain has been pulling ahead of him in New Hampshire. I think this will make life very difficult for Mitt Romney. Mike Huckabee is going to fight on here, but he's really looking to South Carolina for another victory.
SIEGEL: Rich Lowry, let's turn to the Democrats right now. It looks like we could be having the result that one Obama aide, David Axelrod, referred to in the New York Times the other day, as a hung jury. What if it ends up 34, 32, 31?
BLOCK: Well, I think a win is a win for Obama. I mean, it's very close to being a three-way push here. But a win is still a win. You got to be impressed the way he turned out the youth vote. We always hear about young voters and very often they don't show up. Apparently, enough of them showed out - showed up tonight to help push Obama, perhaps...
SIEGEL: Now, we don't know that. We don't know that yet.
BLOCK: ...this time, we don't know yet. But if Edwards finishes second, it'll be I think sort of a repeat of what happened to him in 2004 when he had an amazing surge at the end based on a connection with Iowa voters that he captured in a stump speech, and he surged to second and it wasn't quite enough. And he wasn't the biggest story coming out of Iowa. And it looks as though he might be facing a repeat of that tonight.
SIEGEL: E.J. Dionne, what do you think the big story is on the Democratic side?
BLOCK: And it's very interesting, the analysis before the caucuses turns out to be largely right, which isn't the case all the time. The previous caucusgoers actually did vote for John Edwards as expected, but there were a lot more new ones.
SIEGEL: New ones.
BLOCK: And those - a lot more than people might have expected. And Obama carried those quite handily.
BLOCK: Very briefly. Let's also just say that apart from the top three whom we've been talking about, Iowa also serves as a winnowing place. And with people like Governor Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd below 2 percent, we'll see a narrower pack very soon.
SIEGEL: You're listening to coverage of the Iowa caucuses on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
We're watching the action tonight in Iowa where former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has come in first in the Republican caucuses.
BLOCK: That's right. With about 41 percent of precincts reporting Mike Huckabee, 31 percent; Mitt Romney, 23 percent; Fred Thompson, 13 percent; John McCain, 12; Rudy Giuliani, 11; Ron Paul, 10 percent.
SIEGEL: What's the sense there?
MICHELE NORRIS: Well, Robert, what you have here are a number of Barack Obama supporters starting to trickle in. But right now, the reporters, the press corps outnumbers the supporters that are here. And what you see are a lot of people walking around, looking at small screens at these numbers, and just how close this race is. We've been talking about frontrunners for some time - three frontrunners - on the Democratic side. It's not entirely clear that we're going to start talking about any one of them in the singular after this because the race is still so close at this point.
SIEGEL: Are any of Obama's people there giving their spin to the results so far or is it still too early for them to do that?
NORRIS: Well, you know, they're - what you hear - what you've heard really in the last week is measured optimism. The people here are feeling pretty good. I spoke with David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, and, you know, they were feeling great about coming into this. They said they've done a good job in building an organization and getting the voter turnout. And they're looking at this and, you know, they're pumped about this, but the numbers are too small for them to start, you know, really crowing about this. I mean, Barack Obama, at this point, we just got an update, 34.99 percent. John Edwards, 31.26 percent; Senator Hillary Clinton 30.96. Boy, it's as close as it can be.
SIEGEL: Yeah. And we're looking now at as many as two-thirds of the precincts having been counted. A lot of the action today was all about getting - being the second choice of minority candidates; that is are the people who will win no doubt. Did the Obama campaign work hard at being other candidates' second choice?
NORRIS: You know, Obama did this - and you heard this also from Senator Clinton and former Senator Edwards - but, particularly, Barack Obama made this pitch: If I'm not your first choice, at least make me your second choice. And that's really a unique pitching in Iowa in the way the caucuses work. If a particular candidate couldn't draw enough support, 15 percent in that caucus room, his supporters or her supporters, have to go to another candidate or go home. And what he's really saying there, if your candidate is not viable, make sure that I am your guy. And what we heard, at least anecdotally, in some of the polls, in many cases, the Edwards was the number two choice. But Barack Obama was the one who really made the strongest pitch there.
SIEGEL: Okay, Michele. Take care.
NORRIS: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's Michele Norris, our colleague who is in Des Moines, and she's just talking to us there from Barack Obama's caucus night headquarters.
BLOCK: And, David, what's the word where you are?
DAVID WELNA: Now, this is a better result than the polls had been indicating for many weeks. Edwards, at one point during this year, was way ahead in the polls, and then he fell behind. But he really needed to win in Iowa, and they really have their hopes pinned on that happening. At this point, that does not seem to be happening.
BLOCK: And very briefly, David, John Edwards has been spending time in Iowa, probably longer than any of the other candidates. He's been there since 2004.
WELNA: He has since he finished second in 2004. And he practically moved here, and he is way behind both Obama and Clinton in fundraising. And his team here is saying, well, you know, this just goes to show what money can buy. But they're hoping to prove that Edwards' argument can overcome the spending disadvantage that they have. But he's got to win tonight.
BLOCK: Okay. That's NPR's - thanks.
WELNA: Yeah.
BLOCK: Joe Loebach, how did things end up in your caucus?
BLOCK: How did finish up? We had 30 - ho, ho, 38 - no, we had nine for John Edwards, which gave us one delegate, and seven for Barack Obama, which gave us a second delegate.
BLOCK: Mm-hmm.
BLOCK: And in the final, we had six for Hillary Clinton, which she didn't get a delegate.
BLOCK: I see. And how many people showed up total?
BLOCK: Well, let's see. What's the count? Nine and six are 15, and seven are 23.
BLOCK: A little shorter than - you were hoping for 30. You said you had chairs for 50.
BLOCK: Yeah.
BLOCK: So not as high a turnout.
BLOCK: Well, the wind is still blowing 30, 35 mile an hour.
BLOCK: Uh-huh.
BLOCK: And a little snow moving. And it's down there, you know, pretty cool.
BLOCK: And you told me earlier you were a John Edwards supporter, so at least in your own small caucus there in your own house, you've got to be pleased with that result.
BLOCK: Oh, I'm very pleased. Yes. I was hoping we can get two, but we just couldn't quite get it going.
BLOCK: You told me earlier, Mr. Loebach, that this was the first morning that you went out to the mailbox and did not find campaign literature in it.
BLOCK: Correct.
BLOCK: Is that a good feeling?
BLOCK: It's a very good feeling.
BLOCK: Why is that?
BLOCK: It lightens the load by quite a bit when I have to carry the mail in.
BLOCK: I bet. I bet. Well, now that the caucusing is done, what's happening at the Loebach house?
BLOCK: What's happening? Oh, there's a lot happening. We're going to be running all over the country.
BLOCK: No, right now. I mean, what's going on in your house right now?
BLOCK: Oh, what's going on right now? Well, we have coffee and cookies and cookies and cookies and candy and more cookies and nuts. And, you know, we're having a little party.
BLOCK: Okay. Well, Mr. Loebach, good of you to talk with us. Thanks so much.
BLOCK: Thank you very much.
BLOCK: That's Joe Loebach who hosted a Democratic caucus tonight in his home in Burt, Iowa.
SIEGEL: Latest numbers: Barack Obama now, on the Democratic side, has just over 35 - 35.26 percent of the result. Just under 31 percent for John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton is - Hillary Clinton is within the fifth of a point. NPR News is now...
BLOCK: And, Robert, we're told now that we are now projecting...
SIEGEL: We are projecting...
BLOCK: ...that Barack Obama has come in first in the Democratic caucuses in Iowa.
SIEGEL: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
We are now projecting winners on both sides in the Iowa caucuses. For the Democrats, Barack Obama is the winner in a very tight race. With over three quarters of precincts reporting, Barack Obama has about 36 percent of the vote; former Senator John Edwards and Senator Hillary Clinton running neck and neck with about 30 percent each. On the Republican side, Mike Huckabee is projected to be the winner by a substantial margin over Mitt Romney.
SIEGEL: And, you know, we just point out that there are, obviously, other candidates and certainly on the Democratic side as it was.
BLOCK: Mm-hmm.
SIEGEL: But of them, according to the counted votes, Bill Richardson is the only one who's gotten over 1 percent.
BLOCK: Yeah.
SIEGEL: And he's under two percent.
BLOCK: Not even two. Right.
SIEGEL: Yes.
BLOCK: And, Michele, it's going to be a very happy time there.
MICHELE NORRIS: For someone who has just pulled off a victory, he is surprisingly calm. But - I had a chance to listen to some of this, and he was thanking the people of Iowa and he was going back to the thing that the campaign has been talking about over and over and over again.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING)
NORRIS: There, again, you hear...
BLOCK: A big cheer.
NORRIS: ...another round of applause going up as they look at these results projected on these big screens here in this hall. But Axelrod, in front of me, is talking about the thing that they've been saying over and over again, this all came out to turnout and organization, targeting people who had not participated in the caucuses before, getting them out, training them, making sure that they showed up and that they spoke up.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING)
NORRIS: You're starting to hear chants in the room here. Senator Obama and his family, they have not yet arrived. They're back at the hotel watching the results on television surrounded by friends and family. They'll be heading here soon, and you'll really see and hear the temperature turn up then.
BLOCK: And very briefly, Michele, how do they translate this victory in Iowa tonight to next Tuesday's vote in New Hampshire?
NORRIS: You know, you used the word that they never use. They - and I asked why, you know, you won't even - in projecting this one - won't even talk about that. They don't - and, again, that's part of the expectations game - they don't call this a victory. They say that the people of Iowa have spoken and that the senator has momentum, and that they're ready for the next fight in the next state. But it's interesting, they will not use that word, victory.
BLOCK: Michele, thanks very much.
NORRIS: Thank you, Melissa.
BLOCK: That's our colleague Michele Norris at Obama headquarters in Des Moines.
SIEGEL: David, running neck and neck for second place, possibly looking at a bronze medal here. It's not the night that Hillary Clinton wanted, I should think.
DAVID GREENE: And, again, not conceding, but you already sort of hear a message coming together. What the campaign is saying is that Hillary Clinton said all along that Iowa was just the beginning and not the end, and that they're ready to land in New Hampshire and push the reset button as one person put it.
SIEGEL: Is there any sense that there's something that Senator Clinton said that she shouldn't have said or didn't say that she should be saying more of in New Hampshire? Do you get any judgment about that for their headquarters?
GREENE: And, you know, a lot of voters who - a lot of caucusgoers who I spoke to, you know, it wasn't so much that they had a problem with her. They liked her. They said they really liked the message. Their concern was, okay, if we send her into a general election, are moderate voters, are independents going to like her? And if they don't, then, you know, the Democratic Party loses, and that was a big worry. So not so much likeability personally for Iowans, but worry about how she would play elsewhere in the country. And I think that's going to be an issue for her as we go forward. We'll see how they'll deal with that.
SIEGEL: She is now running at about 30 percent of the Democratic caucus vote, neck and neck with John Edwards. Barack Obama with, well, about 80 percent, I think, of the precincts reported already. He is almost seven points ahead of them, more than 6 percentage points ahead of them.
BLOCK: That lead seems to be widening just a little bit.
SIEGEL: Yes.
BLOCK: NPR's Mara Liasson is in Des Moines, as well. Mara, let's start with this Democratic result and how turnout seems to have affected the finish here with Barack Obama coming in first.
MARA LIASSON: Well, clearly, turnout was very big tonight. The Iowa Democratic Party says that with - at two-thirds of the precincts reporting - we obviously have a little bit more of that now.
BLOCK: Yeah.
LIASSON: But at that point, they said, a hundred and thirty-five thousand people had turned out; that's about 11,000 more than turned out in 2004, so that's quite a boost. And just anecdotally, we hear our colleague Tom Bevan who's from Real Clear Politics, the very useful Web site that averages all the polls, he came back from a precinct caucus in West Des Moines, where in 2004, a hundred and eight people had caucused. The caucus chairman said he would have been thrilled if a hundred and twenty-five turned out this time.
BLOCK: Mm-hmm.
LIASSON: But 224 showed up.
BLOCK: Do they have enough room?
LIASSON: So you can really see - yes, they barely had enough room. So turnout was higher; clearly, Barack Obama benefited from that. We don't know about the participation of independents. Some of the early entrance polls show that the independent participation was not changed from 2004, but, clearly, turnout was high; that is what Obama was trying to do - get first-time caucusgoers to go to the polls whether they were independents or Democrats, and that clearly seems to have benefited him.
BLOCK: Yeah. And we'll remember that four years ago, those same expectations did not pan out at all for Howard Dean.
LIASSON: No. Not at all. But, you know, Barack Obama used a very different method. They went to school on the Dean campaign's failures and instead of bringing in a lot of volunteers from outside, those orange hats that swarmed all over the state four years ago, he used a community organizing model, the model he had learned as a community organizer in Chicago. His volunteers became part of the community, they formed relationships, they really kind of did a mind meld with the Democrats in their precincts and their towns, and that is the model that he used. And, you know, when Evie Stone, my producer who's sitting right next to me here in Iowa, we're out here, watching the Obama organization team a couple of weeks ago. It was extraordinary.
BLOCK: Mm-hmm.
LIASSON: We saw these people forming these relationships, spending hours and hours with the voters they were trying to cultivate, not just calling them or visiting their house, but actually really becoming part of their lives.
SIEGEL: Mara, I was just curious, do we have any sense, because the big Democratic turnout in the caucuses squares with the size of rallies that you and others were reporting on all this time in Iowa, being bigger than the Republicans. Do we know if it was a very poor Republican turnout this year? Other than...
LIASSON: We don't have the Republican turnout numbers yet, but every Republican I've talked to said that they didn't expect it to be much higher than 2004. But we'll know those numbers pretty soon.
BLOCK: And, Mara, let's talk a little bit more before we let you go. On the Republican side with the result, Mike Huckabee coming in first. Substantially - it's a substantial margin over Mitt Romney. Where does that take him heading into the caucus, the primaries to come?
LIASSON: Well, you know, everybody that I talked to said that for Huckabee to have a significant win, he had to win by about five points or more. Now, he's got 25,000 votes to Mitt Romney's 18, and I can't really do the math in my head, but I think he's got a significant win here. Now, he goes on to New Hampshire where Mitt Romney has a strong base, but he's got a very significant challenge from John McCain.
BLOCK: Mm-hmm.
LIASSON: The state is very, very different, not as hospitable to Mike Huckabee because there are fewer numbers of evangelical voters among the Republican primary; immigration isn't as important an issue. So - and he has so much less resources than Romney. So I think that the big question is: How much legs does Huckabee have?
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
SIEGEL: What does it mean? Well, we're going to ask some of our analysts just that right now. Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review is with us in our studio in Washington. Hi, Rich.
BLOCK: Hello.
SIEGEL: Andy Kohut of Pew Research Center is here in our studio.
BLOCK: Hi, Robert.
SIEGEL: How are you doing?
BLOCK: I'm doing fine.
SIEGEL: Barack Obama just under 37 percent of the Democratic caucuses, almost 7 percent lead over John Edwards; Hillary Clinton in third. What do you make of it?
BLOCK: Hillary didn't win because she didn't do very well among women. She did relatively well among women, she did moderately well among moderates, but she never really has - really doesn't have a very strong constituency relative to Obama's strong support from these building blocks of his victories - men, younger voters, liberals, independents.
BLOCK: I'm going to interject just for a second. We've got the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Mike Duncan, on the line. Welcome, Mr. Chairman.
BLOCK: Good evening.
BLOCK: And would you characterize these results tonight as a GOP upset? Mike Huckabee toppling Mitt Romney?
BLOCK: I'm the chairman of the Republican Party, my job is to prepare the party for the general election, and I don't take sides in this. I'm like Switzerland, so I won't get into handicapping any of the candidates tonight - on the caucus tonight.
BLOCK: Well, one thing you have to contend with is you have a candidate who has done very well against - done very well on the back of a huge percentage of evangelical voters in Iowa, which is not necessarily representative of the voters who will be voting in other parts of the country and certainly in the general election. Does that trouble you?
BLOCK: Well, I've heard the story before. I've been involved in politics since 1972; that was my first convention as a delegate. And I heard this in 1988 when we were - when it was said that, gee, the party will split, that we had an economic conservative who was running and who was going to take one side of the party, and we had a socio-conservative running who was going to take another, and there was a sitting vice president. And you know what, at the end of the day, we all came together; this is going to be the same thing in 2008.
SIEGEL: But, Chairman Duncan, if you had an electorate, if you had a Republican vote that's 60 percent evangelical, you would be a minority party, wouldn't you?
BLOCK: Well, the evangelicals are part of a coalition just as the social, economic conservatives are part of our coalition, just as the people who believe in a strong national defense are part of our coalition. And we're very pleased to have all of them there, and I'm happy that they participated today. I encourage more people to participate on both the Republican and Democrat side.
BLOCK: Briefly, Chairman Duncan, would there be a candidate on the Democratic side whom you would say would be the easiest for you to beat?
BLOCK: Well, that's very interesting. I think all the Democrats are in a pretty narrow spectrum from my standpoint. They all believe in more government, bigger government. They believe in bureaucracies that control health care. They believe in spending less on national defense. They've really not done a good job - the candidates have not done a good job backing our troops this time.
BLOCK: This is NPR.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Some analysis now of the Iowa caucus results with Rich Lowry of the National Review, E.J. Dionne who now is in Manchester, New Hampshire. Do I have that right, E.J.?
BLOCK: I am. I'm ahead of the crowd. I'll serve coffee to everybody tomorrow morning.
SIEGEL: Rich Lowry, a couple of minutes ago, we heard the Republican National Committee chair Mike Duncan put a brave face on a win for Mike Huckabee in which his votes overwhelmingly seemed to come from conservative Christians - evangelicals. Good news or bad news for the GOP?
BLOCK: And part of it also was in identity politics. And If you look at the entrance polls, at the numbers of voters who said they cared a great deal about a candidate sharing their religious beliefs, Huckabee wiped up among those people. Romney, in turn, beat Huckabee among those voters who said they didn't care so much or not at all, but there are just less of those voters.
SIEGEL: But does that mean that the road to Iowa takes you all the way to South Carolina. I mean, can you win this way all the way nationally?
BLOCK: Yeah, well, Andy is probably more familiar with these numbers than I am, but I don't think we'll encounter an early primary or caucus where evangelicals are such a huge part of the constituency even in South Carolina. So the challenge Huckabee has is widening his appeal
SIEGEL: Do you agree with that, Andy?
BLOCK: Well, I think that the polls that we saw in South Carolina and Iowa were comparable in terms of the size of evangelical Christians in the potential electorate. If you had the same kind of turnout that - in South Carolina that they had in Iowa, you could see this thing happen in South Carolina again. Now, it's not going to happen in New Hampshire where Christian conservatives are a third of what they are in Iowa and in South Carolina. But you could see this again in South Carolina.
BLOCK: What you could see here with Huckabee is an analogy...
BLOCK: Sorry.
BLOCK: ...to Jesse Jackson in 1984 who had the African-American vote locked up - it was enough to win some places, it was enough to get 25 percent in a lot of places, but he had a ceiling on his support. And that may be the case with Huckabee. We don't know.
SIEGEL: E.J. Dionne, your thoughts on Huckabee, conservative Christians, Iowa and New Hampshire.
BLOCK: And then on the Democratic side, I think the - with apologies to James Carville, it's change, stupid. I mean, it's remarkable that, you know, you've, not only got Barack Obama winning, but you've got a neck and neck race between John Edwards and Hillary Clinton for second place.
SIEGEL: Yeah, we're going to give you the latest results, the latest numbers, from the Democratic race. With 1,611 of 1,781 precincts reporting, Obama is now at 37 percent - 37.03 percent - then John Edwards at 30.08 percent, and Hillary Clinton at 29.70 percent.
BLOCK: Just one last question, Andy. I've been curious about this. We've been talking a lot leading up to this, watch the independents, watch the independents, see whom they caucus for, they tipping Democrat or Republican because that's going to say a lot about what happens in November. Can you glean anything from these entrance polls about that?
BLOCK: I don't think you can glean very much. You've got about the same percentage. I think it's about 15, 16 percent independents in each of the caucuses. They weren't overwhelmingly one way or another. But, that doesn't say - I mean, that's the relative numbers. We don't know what the absolute numbers. There may have been in absolute numbers many more independents voting in Democratic caucuses, but we have to see how many - what the absolute levels of turnout have been, and we don't know that yet.
BLOCK: I think Andy's right because if you just look at the raw numbers, independents are a slightly larger percentage of a much larger Democratic turnout.
BLOCK: We are joined now by Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, former Vermont governor, and welcome to the program, chairman Dean.
BLOCK: Thanks for having me on.
BLOCK: You also are somebody who knows something about finishing third in Iowa. Any advice for Senator Clinton?
BLOCK: And this is, I think, honestly, the turnout is the big story tonight. Certainly, we don't want to take anything away from Senator Obama's victory, but from the point of view of the chairman of the Democratic Party who's going to be neutral on the candidates, the fact that we just about doubled the Republican turnout and that virtually every independent in Iowa apparently voted in the Democratic primary is a very good piece of news for the future of this election.
SIEGEL: Chairman Dean, after the top three, the fourth finisher, from what we see in the actual votes counted so far, is Governor Bill Richardson with 2.15 percent of the vote. Is it time for people other than the top three to get out of the field?
BLOCK: No, really, that's - the way they count the votes in Iowa is a little unusual. It's not like a primary, so, Bill, I'm sure, and Senator Biden, Dodd and - as well got more than that. What happens is, is if you don't get 15, your vote total essentially disappears.
SIEGEL: Senator Dodd got three hundredths of a percent.
BLOCK: Right. But that's the - he may well have gotten more than that in the actual vote count. I don't want and go and spend the time going into the complicated way that Iowa totes up their votes, but if you don't get 15 percent, your vote total disappears in a particular caucus.
SIEGEL: Right.
BLOCK: So, you know - and also having done this, this is a very personal quest to take - to look for the presidency. When it's time for people to get out, they will decide that for themselves, so I wouldn't call on anybody to drop out of the race at this point.
BLOCK: Governor Dean, thanks very much.
BLOCK: Thanks for having me on.
BLOCK: We've been talking about the results coming in all evening from the Iowa caucuses. Barack Obama on the Democratic side is the projected winner, showing right now about 37 percent of the vote. John Edwards and Hillary Clinton hovering right around 30 percent. Robert?
SIEGEL: Over on the Republican side, where as we've heard, the turnout was lower, Mike Huckabee has come in a convincing first, ahead of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. And after them, it seemed - it looks like a close race between former Senator Fred Thompson and Senator John McCain.
BLOCK: I was just talking with chairman Dean there, asking about advice for Hillary Clinton if she finishes third. It now appears possible that, in fact, she will finish second. As we said, it's extremely close - the race between John Edwards and Hillary Clinton.
SIEGEL: Yeah.
BLOCK: But again, Barack Obama coming in first on the Democratic side.
SIEGEL: So, we can see the outlines of the result - more than the outlines of the result. Everybody's thinking now about what happens next. On Tuesday, New Hampshire votes, an actual primary, and that is also one of the traditional tests for would-be presidential candidates. Senator McCain's already there. He's put a statement out on the Web. He's run pretty well recently in polls in that state. On the Democratic side, Senator Obama has run convincingly in polls against Hillary Clinton.
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News on this Iowa caucus night.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The Mekons, an English punk band, have been making music for about 30 years. Originally inspired by the Sex Pistols, the Mekons have wandered far from their musical roots. On their new album, "Natural," the group opts for acoustic instruments over screeching electric guitars.
Chris Nickson has our review.
(Soundbite of song, "Dark Dark Dark")
MEKONS (Singing Group): (Singing) The twisted trees sing, dark, dark, dark.
CHRIS NICKSON: "Natural," sees the Mekons walking in a post-apocalyptic world -full of past and present, but precious little future. What remain are the timeless things - stone circles, plants, animals, myths and friendships. That might sound depressingly dour, but the results have a surprisingly hopeful quality, as on "White Stone Door."
(Soundbite of song, "White Stone Door")
MEKONS: (Singing) A sparrow falls through dawn air mist. Set in stone, searching for a signal. Beams through the atmosphere, a white stone door.
NICKSON: Recorded over a couple of years in a pair of rural English locations, "Natural" stands even more removed from the musical mainstream than most Mekons albums. There's a studied artlessness to it. It might sound thrown together, but it's the product of plenty of thought and work.
Even at its most accessible, on the reggae-tinged "Cockermouth," it still remains tantalizingly elusive. After all, how many songs can weave together a ramble through Wordsworth country, with mentions of The Rolling Stones' Brian Jones and naturalist Henry David Thoreau?
(Soundbite of song, "Cockermouth")
MEKONS: (Singing) Over the hills and far away, all through the day I ramble. I rock 'n' roll in standing stones; with Brian Jones I ramble. You don't have to believe in the end. You have to believe this is the end. This is the end - I ramble.
NICKSON: The Mekons might have started out as punks in 1977, but three decades on, they have evolved into a category of their own, outside any pigeonhole. But with its sly humor, iconoclastic wisdom, and mix 'n' match musical ethos, the mostly acoustic "Natural" hews closer to the real spirit of punk than any CD of buzz saw guitars and shouted lyrics.
SIEGEL: The music is from the Mekons; our critic is Chris Nickson.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Here's an introduction to a musician who changed her name, changed her sound, and helped changed the way we buy music. Her name was Jane Siberry. And years ago, she stopped putting out CDs and started using what she calls self-determined pricing on her Web site.
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers has a profile.
(Soundbite of song "Calling All Angels")
Ms. JANE SIBERRY (Musician): (Singing) Oh, a man is placed upon the steps and a baby cries.
JEFFREY PEPPER RODGERS: The music of Jane Siberry has drawn an avid following since the early '80s. As a singer/songwriter, she's often compared with such free spirits as Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush and Laura Nyro. This is a duet with K.D. Lang from Siberry's 1993 CD, "When I was a Boy," is perhaps her best known song.
JANE SIBERRY and K.D. LANG (Singer): (Singing) Calling all angels, calling all angels. Walk me through this one. Don't leave me alone. Calling all angels, calling all angels.
Ms. SIBERRY: (Singing) We're trying. We're hoping. But we're not sure how.
RODGERS: Today, Jane Siberry could easily be trading on her musical past, but she's chosen to leave it behind. In 2006, she emptied and sold her house in Toronto, even shredding her old letters and photographs. And she renamed herself Issa.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. SIBERRY/ISSA: (Singing) Why, where, what, if, a train is coming, a train is coming, a train is coming. Who…
RODGERS: On a recent U.S. tour, Issa sang almost no Jane Siberry songs. Backed only by a keyboard player, she came across as a strange and mesmerizing combination of jazz singer, poet and performance artist — the furthest thing from a pop singer touring to promote her latest record.
Ms. SIBERRY: This is all my clothes and everything is in here.
RODGERS: The morning after a show in Philadelphia, Issa showed me the small backpack that contains most of her belongings.
Ms. SIBERRY: My clothes, I didn't want to look like I was a backpacker and, you know, wearing mountain co-op stuff. So I wear really elegant expensive boots and shoes, but only one pair and one beautiful suit. And one - you know, so it's a different way of doing things. I think, because I'm an artist, part of my job is to be a barometer, an antenna. It's in the air and it resonates with a lot of people to lighten up.
RODGERS: The rebirth of Jane Siberry as Issa, the way she tells it, is not just about clearing away the glut and clutter of modern life. It's also about reinventing the way musicians sustain themselves in the Internet era. In this respect, she's been way ahead of the curve.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. SIBERRY/ISSA: (Singing) In my own world, bring myself to bed.
RODGERS: In the mid-'90s, well before the record business began its precipitous decline, Siberry left Warner Bros. to start her own label. Two years ago, she stopped selling physical CDs. And she started allowing fans to download her music and pay whatever they wanted or nothing.
Ms. SIBERRY: The response from people is so positive that it confirms that it's the right way to go, and I'll sink or swim by it. People say, I can't believe you trust us, or, thank you for not making us feel like the minute you take off the brakes, we're going to shoplift everything.
RODGERS: Issa's Web site gives statistics on what it costs to produce her music and how much fans are paying for it. The average payment is around $1.25 a track, considerably more than the standard 99 cents.
Ms. SIBERRY: I didn't do it as a business model, although I have a feeling that it will help me do what I want to do. So, but if you see it as a way to further manipulate people into emptying their pockets, I think it'll get a balancing reaction.
RODGERS: Issa still doesn't make much money from downloads. Touring and licensing, she says, are her bread and butter. But to Issa, the point of self-determined pricing is to circulate her music more widely and to create a direct way for fans to support her. In fact, Issa's fans can now support her even more directly by subsidizing a day in the studio. So far, patrons have given more than $10,000 for the recording of 33 new songs, essentially advancing her the money the way labels used to do.
Mr. TOM NEFF (Fan): She genuinely, has a genuinely warm relationship with her fans. They love her. We love her. And so that's one of the big reasons this works.
RODGERS: Tom Neff is one of Issa's patrons. He's such a long-running fan that he ran the first Jane Siberry e-mail list some 20 years ago.
Mr. NEFF: When she says, hey, I'm going to try this new thing, we trust her, you know? We know she's not doing a number on us. And we know that the experiment is going to be worth a shot.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. SIBERRY/ISSA: (Singing) I remember the river. I remember the river. I remember the willow. I remember the willow. I remember the wind. I remember the wind. Everything was peaceful.
RODGERS: These days, Issa is taking the self-determined pricing idea even further. She's making the prototype of her Web store available for other musicians to use for, of course, whatever they want to pay. She also plans to introduce something called creative currency. In exchange for a download, you can choose to do a good deed and her site will automatically post your choice for others to ponder.
Ms. SIBERRY: I think we're returning to more of the original vibration of music and creativity through the removal of this distortion called the music industry. That's where we're heading. And it'll cut out a lot of music if people ever expected to make money. And people will even cut down on the songs they put out. Maybe put three songs out in your whole life, you know, no rush to do it.
RODGERS: So Jane Siberry/Issa has truly put herself out on a limb, building a radically new kind of music career under a new name with no label or manager or publicity machine, all the while roaming around with little more than a backpack, laptop and cell phone. Issa calls this reverting to a troubadour state. She acknowledges that it may or may not prove to be sustainable.
Ms. SIBERRY: I'm just opening the doors. And a lot of this is new to me — thinking about it, and letting go again and again and again, trusting that if I'm meant to continue working as a musician, it'll happen. If I'm not, then pull out the life support.
RODGERS: For NPR News, this is Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. SIBERRY/ISSA: (Singing) There is peace. There is trust. There is…
BLOCK: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Many of the more than 2 million Iraqi refugees now in Jordan and Syria hope to build new lives elsewhere. And for young artists forced to flee Iraq, talent is one way out. Invitations from Europe are the prize, an opportunity to perform and, perhaps, find a new life.
From Damascus, NPR's Deborah Amos has this story of one young dancer.
DEBORAH AMOS: The Iraqi refugee community in Damascus is a haven for young artists - filmmakers, painters, dancers. They say the country they left behind has no place for them, not now anyway. And like most refugees, they have time on their hands, which they spend developing their talents.
Mr. MUHANAD RASHEED (Dancer): We don't have a dance culture in Iraq. So I feel responsible that I make dance inside Iraq, a dance culture.
AMOS: 23-year-old Muhanad Rasheed joined a contemporary dance company in Baghdad in 2003. But when the company fled the country, he quickly founded his own group in Damascus called Iraqi Bodies. The dance group combines Western, Japanese and Iraqi folklore dance styles. During a break, he says all the hours of rehearsal, all the hard work have finally paid off - an invitation to perform in Holland.
Mr. RASHEED: I will perform there in dance festival. You should do something good because you are from Iraq, you know?
AMOS: What does that mean?
Mr. RASHEED: It's like, you should go there and tell the world that there is artists in Iraq. Not all the Iraqis carry guns on the streets.
AMOS: Rasheed is evasive when asked if he'll return to Damascus after the festival. European visas are highly prized by the refugee community because an invitation to one capital opens the door to all of the European Union and a host of asylum opportunities. But Rasheed knows to announce an intention to stay for good could jeopardize the invitation.
Now, he's focused on the dance performance in Damascus — perhaps his last in the Arab world for a while — where he debuts his dance, the "Crying of My Mother."
(Soundbite of music)
AMOS: The theater is in an old stone building, cold and damp, but there's a good turnout — Syrians and some Iraqis. The performance is both beautiful and violent. Two brothers who love each other turn on each other, die in each other's arms. It is everything Muhanad Rasheed wants to say about his country, a message, he believes, too dangerous to deliver inside Iraq.
Mr. RASHEED: We are the main problem, we as an Iraqi people. I mean, we have a lot of problem in our culture, and that's why they killed each other. I understand there is American military and there's a lot of bad hands from outside Iraq, but I think it's in our hands. We can fix the problem or we can make the problem a huge problem.
(Soundbite of applause)
AMOS: The performance is a hit with this audience, including two Iraqis, Yaser and Miriam Rahim.
Ms. MIRIAM RAHIM: It's very beautiful. I like it.
AMOS: Did it speak about Iraq, do you think?
Ms. RAHIM: Yes. I love it. It was very, very beautiful.
Mr. YASER RAHIM: It's very fantastic, very brilliant.
AMOS: A few days later, Muhanad and his brother are packing their few belongings in their one-bedroom basement apartment in Damascus.
Mr. RASHEED: (Speaking in foreign language).
AMOS: Muhanad is saying goodbye to his family.
Mr. RASHEED: So I think I will go to Holland. And I try to find my future there. And if I succeed, I will stay there. And if I will not, who knows? Maybe I will come back to Iraq.
AMOS: Muhanad Rasheed did dance at the Dutch festival, then was accepted for asylum when he applied a week later. His success has been telegraphed throughout the Iraqi arts community in Damascus, where young dancers and filmmakers and composers are working harder than ever.
Deborah Amos, NPR News, Damascus.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
I'm Melissa Block.
And Iowa? That was so yesterday. With the caucuses behind them, the presidential candidates hit the campaign trail in New Hampshire today, slightly worn out voices and all.
(Soundbite of political speeches)
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois): And New Hampshire, if you give me the same chance that Iowa gave me last night, I truly believe I will be the president of the United States of America.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas): People are connecting. And it's not because I'm waving money at them, it's because I'm talking about how to make America better. I think, obviously, I don't change what I'm doing because it's working. And I just make sure I get it to more people.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York): I think that I have both the track record, the depths of support and the understanding about how you put together those states that add up to the electoral majority that we need.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts): You're going to see change in Washington because America recognizes that we're not going to change the nation and have a bright future if we just send the same old people back to Washington and just different chairs. That's not going to work. We need new faces in Washington, and I intend to be one of them.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina): We have four days. Four days in New Hampshire to decide what fighter are we going to send into that arena to be the next president of the United States.
BLOCK: Voters in New Hampshire often insist that they make up their own minds. They say they don't care about what happened 1,200 miles to the west. But as NPR's Robert Smith reports, last night's stunning caucus results in Iowa have gotten New Hampshire's attention.
ROBERT SMITH: If candidates get confused about what state they are waking up in, here's an easy guide. In Iowa, your breakfast is eggs and some part of a pig. Here in New Hampshire, it's…
Ms. CYNDI COBB (New Hampshire voter): Cranberry almond caramel pancakes.
SMITH: These candidates are going to gain some weight here?
Ms. COBB: I think so, yes.
SMITH: Cyndi Cobb is competing in a national pancake flip-off in Durham, New Hampshire. The candidates were all invited, but none so far have stopped by to show off their flip-flopping skills. That's okay. Cobb explains that here in New Hampshire, they like their pancakes fancy and their candidates plain.
Ms. COBB: Straight talkers. You need to tell it like it is. Don't try to mince words. Be straight.
SMITH: Cobb is a John Edwards fan, but like everyone in the restaurant, she wants to talk about Hillary Clinton's third-place finish.
Ms. COBB: I was shocked. I expected her to finish first.
SMITH: One of the surprises from last night's Iowa caucus was that actually more women ended up voting for Obama. And they…
Ms. COBB: Younger women.
SMITH: And younger women, yeah.
Ms. COBB: And older women tended to vote for Hillary Clinton, which I thought was really interesting.
SMITH: Do you see any of that here in New Hampshire?
Ms. COBB: No. I just — I still think she is a strong candidate.
SMITH: The only Clinton supporter in the restaurant is perhaps surprisingly the youngest person here, 22-year-old Kayla McCarthy. She's having her pancakes with a side of sour grapes.
Ms. KAYLA McCARTHY (New Hampshire voter): I don't even think caucuses are legitimate. I don't even think that we should be using that as a form of — essentially for the first one. I don't think we should be looking at that at all. So I think it's just important to remind people that this is the first primary. This is not — this isn't - caucuses, to me, I find they're a joke.
SMITH: Just about every voter I spoke to had a variation on this same theme. We don't care, they say, what Iowa says. We make up our own minds. Fine. But when you probe a little, you find that the results of the Iowa caucus do cause some mental shifts. Mason Cobb is 57-years-old and an independent. He was impressed by Obama's victory speech last night, and the win has made him re-examine the senator's chances.
Mr. MASON COBB (New Hampshire voter): I will think of him as a more viable candidate now, because he can win. He can win, at least in Iowa, he can win there. And I think he will come in strong in here. I was really surprised that he did as well in Iowa because of the people that are there.
SMITH: Although they may deny it, some New Hampshire voters have been keeping close tabs on the whole Iowa campaign. Michelle Croich is attending the pancake contest from Rye, New Hampshire. She's a Republican and feels like Mitt Romney acted differently in Iowa than he does when he's in New Hampshire.
Ms. MICHELLE CROICH (New Hampshire voter): A lot of the people don't like some of the comments that he's been making, a little bit, you know, brushing off, you know, just brushing off questions, not really answering them thoroughly. I mean, he just, you know, he's the politician's politician, if you will. And I don't necessarily follow along with that.
SMITH: She'll be voting for Rudolph Giuliani. And yes, she knows he came in sixth place in Iowa, and no, she doesn't care. Coming in first place, by the way, in the bedandbreakfast.com pancake competition is a long-shot, dark-horse entry.
Ms. JOANNE NICHOLS (New Hampshire voter): A lemon-blueberry ricotta-cheese pancake with a sweet lemon sauce, and then we're going to be garnishing it with fresh strawberries.
SMITH: Joanne Nichols of Rye, New Hampshire, denies that Iowa breakfast choices had any influence on her pancake.
Ms. NICHOLS: Whatever I decide, I decide, independent of anyone else's decision.
SMITH: That's the New Hampshire spirit.
Ms. NICHOLS: There you go. Absolutely.
SMITH: Robert Smith, NPR News, Manchester, New Hampshire.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And now, our two regular political observers, columnists David Brooks of the New York Times, who is still in Des Moines, Iowa, and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post, who earlier this week beat the crowds to New Hampshire. And he's still in Manchester. Welcome to both of you.
Mr. DAVID BROOKS (Columnist, The New York Times): Thank you.
SIEGEL: David, you wrote a column for today's New York Times in which you described the victories of Huckabee and Obama in Iowa as two political earthquakes. You see implications of real political change in those results, yes?
Mr. BROOKS: Certainly. I mean, the Obama victory was — it's not like John Kerry winning. It's not like Al Gore winning. It was an emotional victory. I see people all around here today who were emotionally moved by the victory, emotionally moved by his speech. We've got an African-American man on the juggernaut to the White House. I find it very hard to see how Hillary Clinton is going to stand in the way of that. How do you attack that? People were tremendously moved, and I think it's going to carry on to New Hampshire. New Hampshire's a state with a lot of independents, a lot of highly-educated voters.
That's bread and butter for Barack Obama. And so this is, this is just a huge victory that puts them on a tremendous course of momentum no matter how independent the New Hampshirites claim to be.
SIEGEL: And the tremors from Huckabee's win in the Republican caucus?
Mr. BROOKS: Well, the big story there is that the Republican party is in a state of transformation. We have the old Republican establishment. And Mike Huckabee is not part of it. And he took it on. He took on Rush Limbaugh, he took on free market groups like the Club For Growth. They hit him with everything they had, and he came out standing. It shows how weak the Republican establishment has become. And he did it, in part, for this old-fashioned social issue. But the big thing is the way he mixes the social issues with the economic issues.
If you're a middle class person making $45,000 a year out here, you have a lot to fear, not only from wage stagnation but also from divorce and single-parenthood. And what he did was he mixed the values and the economics into one story. And that's how people actually lived. And that's something Republicans, with talks of tax cuts and capital gains, haven't done. And that's why he appealed much more directly to real life than Mitt Romney, for example.
SIEGEL: E.J., what do you think of, of these words David is using? Earthquakes, an Obama juggernaut toward the White House?
Mr. E.J. DIONNE (Columnist, The Washington Post): Well, the headline on my column this morning was "A Whiff of Revolution," so it's only a matter of which metaphor we use, because I utterly agree…
SIEGEL: Some would say you might be a little extravagant, too, here today.
Mr. DIONNE: I agree with David on almost everything he said. The only thing I would say is the transformation of the Republican Party may also involve a nervous breakdown, which I think is what is going on. These two candidates, Huckabee and Obama, are both, in their way, preachers who say very interesting things. And that's, sometimes, unusual in politics. Even if their lines(ph) are focus group, they sure don't sound that way. I was at an Obama rally this afternoon in Concord, and he said his opponents say he needs to be seasoned and stewed.
We need to boil all the hope out of him so he's like us and he'll be ready to lead our country. He has really cast himself as both the generational change agent, and I think that's a huge story out of Iowa. He grew a generational line across that state and overwhelmed his opponents among the under 30s who voted in large numbers, contrary to what everyone always says about young people. And also, he did next best in the next youngest group. Huckabee, when he talks about the right to life, he quickly moves from abortion to talk about the equal dignity of human beings: rich and poor, black and white.
It's a very different kind of discourse than you've heard from many evangelical conservative. But I do think it speaks to where evangelicals are and that the old leaders of that movement, I think, are significantly out of touch with where their people are. They didn't endorsed Huckabee, but their people in Iowa went with him.
SIEGEL: Well, obviously the candidate selection process has just begun. But from what, from what you can see now, you saw in the caucuses in Iowa, if you were pressed to say what the election of 2008 is actually about, to the extent that if somebody can express that thing, they're most likely to. And David Brooks, what is this year about right now?
Mr. BROOKS: I'd say two things. First, the crisis of authority. People have lost faith in the government of the country and the whole ruling class of the country. And different campaigns had, had ways to go at that issue. John Edwards with his attack on corporations. Obama with the political system is broken. Huckabee with his attack on Wall Street, K-Street and the Republican establishment. John McCain with his attack on the dishonorable way government is being run.
But that is a theme, the crisis of authority. And then the second big crisis is middle class anxiety, wage stagnations, fear of losing their health insurance. All that stuff is pulled into one thing. And again, all the candidates who have succeeded somehow talked about that issue too.
SIEGEL: E.J., what's it all about, the way you see it?
Mr. DIONNE: What David said, and therefore, change, change and change some more. It's 1992 on steroids or it's the 1960 campaign for a new, diverse country which is in a much worse shape than Americans felt their country was in, in 1960. And what's notable about the democratic side is that they were all imitating each other to some degree. Obama had to change word. Hillary Clinton started using it. John Edwards had this dose of populism aimed at that middle class anxiety that David spoke about. Obama's made his speeches somewhat more populist. So is Hillary Clinton.
And of course, she even got grief when she went up and said, we're fired up and ready to go, which is a Barack Obama line. I think on the Democratic side, there is this kind of consensus and on the Republican side, there is great dissensus. They are all going in quite different directions. Romney is the candidate of the Reagan restoration, if you will. But that is way too backward looking. Huckabee is more forward looking. And McCain, oddly, the oldest candidate in the race is probably more forward looking than most of his opponents, which is why he, this morning, is in much better shape than almost anyone else out there.
SIEGEL: Well, both of you enjoy this ideal weekend for political journalists as you look ahead to Tuesday's New Hampshire primary. And thanks for talking with us once again, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and David Brooks of the New York Times.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
One footnote to today's political news, there can be odd coincidences in politics, candidates groping for the same metaphor, the same theme song or slogan at the same time. Well, today we heard this.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina): We are Seabiscuit.
BLOCK: How is that again?
Mr. EDWARDS: We are Seabiscuit. I ask you to join us in this cause.
BLOCK: That's a hoarse John Edwards, comparing himself to a horse today in Manchester, New Hampshire. And he wasn't alone.
(Soundbite of TV program "FOX News")
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas): I feel like Seabiscuit.
BLOCK: That's Mike Huckabee on FOX News, making his move on the outside.
Mr. HUCKABEE: I mean, let's face it. There's a whole lot of Americans out there who love to know that the underdog can still win.
BLOCK: Seabiscuit, the legendary thoroughbred race horse of the 1930s. Knobby-kneed, awkward, lazy and unlikely champion who started winning and winning and ultimately beat the vaunted favorite War Admiral in the match of the century in 1938 by a lot.
(Soundbite of archived recording)
Unidentified Man: Seabiscuit leads by a length. Now, Seabiscuit by a length and a half. (unintelligible) Seabiscuit by three. Seabiscuit by three. Seabiscuit is the winner by four lengths. And you never saw such a wild crowd.
(Soundbite of music)
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
We've all heard about the polar bears suffering in the Arctic because of global warming. But that's far from the only species that's hurting. The Pacific walrus has had it especially tough. And as the Alaska Public Radio network's Annie Feidt reports, wild life managers are working on plans to respond.
ANNIE FEIDT: To the human eye, the Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Russia may look like a remote and forbidding environment. But for female walrus, it's an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. The animals float along on ice platforms, letting the currents take them to nutrient-rich areas where they can dive to the ocean bottom for clams and mussels.
Mr. TONY FISCHBACH (Biologist, U.S. Geological Survey): As far as human memory goes, walrus have used the Chukchi Sea in the summer to forage.
FEIDT: Tony Fischbach is a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He spent the summer tracking walrus he tagged off the northern coast of Alaska and he watched in disbelief as the massive arctic ice sheet retreated north in mid-July.
Mr. FISCHBACH: Within the Chukchi Sea, there was no ice at all.
FEIDT: At first, there were small chunks of ice called remnants. But they didn't last very long.
Mr. FISCHBACH: When that ice was gone, they had no choice but to come to shore.
FEIDT: In August, thousands of walrus began showing up along Alaska's north coast. It was something that had never been seen before. Joel Garlich-Miller is a walrus biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He says the agency was caught off-guard.
Mr. JOEL GARLICH-MILLER (Walrus biologist, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service): This is the first time I had ever heard of such an event. And we didn't quite know how to respond, initially. We were trying to say, okay, well, is this just something that they're going to come ashore for a little while and move on?
FEIDT: As it turned out, the walrus were there to stay. And while Garlich-Miller kept his eye on the Alaska animals, a Russian colleague was watching an even more dramatic scene play out on his side of the Chukchi Sea. Anatoly Kochnev is a biologist in Chukotka on the northern coast of Russia where walrus gathered in groups as large as 30,000 animals, he says by fall, the adults looked very undernourished.
Mr. ANATOLY KOCHNEV (Biologist): (Through translator) They were quite underweight. There was a lot of animals that definitely were starving. And I could also detect some skin diseases. Skin was cracked and wouldn't heal.
FEIDT: Kochnev believes most of the calves in Russia died. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is just starting to get a handle on what all this means for the walrus population as a whole. Rosa Meehan heads the agency's marine mammal division in Alaska. She says it's scary how fast the arctic environment is transforming.
Ms. ROSA MEEHAN (Chief, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Marine Mammal Division): It's difficult to really come to grips with this because what we're seeing, it's not just that the ice is going away and the ice is a platform. Ice is more than just, you know, something physical to stand on. It's actually an ecosystem. And what we're seeing is this dramatic ecosystem change. And so it's clear that's going to have a lot of ramifications for all of the species that depend on it.
FEIDT: Meehan says this winter, her department is beginning to work out what types of conservation efforts may be necessary to protect walrus. They're also planning more studies for next summer to better understand how the animals are responding to this changing environment.
For NPR News, I'm Annie Feidt in Anchorage.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Global warming may be an undeniable trend, but right now, in the eastern part of the country, it is cold. In New York's Adirondack Mountains, the temperature got as low as minus 33 degrees, according to some measurements. And for the people of Saranac Lake, subzero temperatures are just part of life, as North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reminds us.
BRIAN MANN: Most northerners will tell you that the hardest part of life in a really cold place like Saranac Lake is the little stuff, the small chores that add up. Like convincing my dog, Sarah, that's her tail thumping nervously, to go out in the morning. Sarah is literally hiding, trying to avoid her morning constitutional.
All right. You're caught.
And then there's that next little hurdle: excavating the car.
(Soundbite of excavating a car in the snow)
MANN: It sounds like I'm prying open an ancient tomb. But that's just my beat-up Subaru.
(Soundbite of engine noise)
MANN: I turn the key and say a prayer. Success. After warming up the car, just enough that the gear shift actually works, I head downtown. Main street is brilliant with sunlight. I get out to walk, and my boots squeaked on snow so cold that it feels like Styrofoam.
(Soundbite of footsteps on the snow)
MANN: What's amazing is that the shops are bustling. People are going about their business. The only difference is that most folks are wearing so many layers that they look like Weebles.
Mr. BOB SEIDENSTEIN (Columnist, Saranac Lake, New York): I'm wearing mukluks.
MANN: Bob Seidenstein, who writes a column for the local newspaper, is standing outside the Blue Moon Cafe, looking downright toasty.
Mr. SEIDENSTEIN: And after that, I think it's Swedish Army pants. Wool, of course. And a pretty heavy-duty wool sweater and a scarf.
MANN: Seidenstein says he loves the cold and hates crowded sunny places. He also thinks icebox temperatures and brutally long winters make this place unique.
Mr. SEIDENSTEIN: Basically, people who have lived up their whole lives are defined by the cold. I mean, when you spend seven months of it, it is part and parcel of who we are.
MANN: Saranac Lake is often the coldest town in the U.S., colder even than Alaska. The villagers hold a winter carnival to celebrate that fact, building a huge palace out of ice carved from the lake. But for every purist who slogs through every frigid day, there are a half dozen folks like Martin Godel(ph). He grins through his frosty beard at the prospect of escaping winter, at least for a holiday.
Mr. MARTIN GODEL (Resident, Saranac Lake, New York): As long as the car starts, I'm fine. And very shortly, I'm on my way to Tucson. So it's even going to be better. And they're laughing right now about 20 below.
MANN: It's not all old timers braving the northern winter. As I head back to my car, I ran into Carly Ulrich(ph) and Ashley Patel(ph), two women in their early 20s who moved here from New Jersey.
Hey, Ashley, you're not dressed very warmly. You're wearing a sweater and a little cap. It's, like, minus…
Ms. ASHLEY PATEL (Resident, Saranac Lake, New York): And jeans.
MANN: And jeans. It's, like, minus 10 out here.
Ms. PATEL: Really?
Ms. CARLY ULRICH (Resident, Saranac Lake, New York): No.
MANN: So, like, this morning, when you got up and went out, you didn't feel cold?
Ms. PATEL: Well, I'm here starting my car.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MANN: All right. Now the truth comes out. That's cheating for sure.
I started this story talking about the little things, all those little chores that add up to life in the deep freeze. When I reached my car, I find the windows already glazed over in a fresh rime of ice. There is hope of a reprieve this weekend with balmy temperatures in the upper 30s expected by Sunday.
For NPR News, I'm Brian Mann in Saranac Lake, New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee are two very different candidates, but they share a few things in common. They were both media favorites leading up to last night's Iowa caucuses.
NPR's David Folkenflik caught up with some long-time political reporters to ask how that happened.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK: No one loves an underdog more than the press. For very different reasons, it's given a one-term senator and a folksy weight-dropping former governor an awfully gentle ride. Let's start with the winner of the Iowa Republican caucuses, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
Max Brantley is the editor of the liberal weekly, the Arkansas Times, who's often tangled with Huckabee.
Mr. MAX BRANTLEY (Editor, Arkansas Times): Well, Mike Huckabee hit the national scene much as he did in Arkansas. He's a charming fellow with a quick wit. And reporters loved him at the start and paid not a whole lot of attention to what he was saying beyond his personality.
FOLKENFLIK: Until around November, Huckabee made little impact on the media radar. But he gravitated to just about every microphone that would have him. And he often beat others to the punch line, as he did last month in talking about his foreign affairs experience on Don Imus' radio show.
(Soundbite of radio show "Imus in the Morning")
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Arkansas Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): You know, I may not be the expert of some people on foreign policy, but I did stay in the Holiday Inn Express last night.
FOLKENFLIK: When Huckabee made several off-the-mark comments after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, it was as though he had already inoculated himself from the criticism that he was too green to be a world leader.
Max Brantley compares Huckabee to Ronald Reagan.
Mr. BRANTLEY: He's built a Teflon coating around himself with the narrative the media has built of a nice guy who's just like you and me. And you and me, we make mistakes. And when Mike Huckabee, who is just one of us, makes a mistake, we tend to forgive it.
FOLKENFLIK: On Wednesday, right on the eve of the caucuses, Huckabee flew to California for a less than grueling grilling by Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show."
(Soundbite of TV program "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno")
Mr. JAY LENO (Host, "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno"): You literally, in the last couple of months, come from nowhere with hardly any money. How - explain how this happened. How did you…
Mr. HUCKABEE: I'm just trying to keep from going back to nowhere as fast I got here.
FOLKENFLIK: His Democratic counterpart arrived in a hurry as well. Barack Obama has served just three years in the U.S. Senate. And he recalled his start in political life in a speech to supporters last night in Iowa.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Organizing and working and fighting to make people's lives just a little bit better.
FOLKENFLIK: The address sent MSNBC hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski into rhapsodies this morning.
Mr. JOE SCARBOROUGH (MSNBC Host): Trying to stop that momentum over the next four days will be a lot like standing in front of a hurricane on Pensacola Beach. I don't know how you do it.
Ms. MIKA BRZEZINSKI (MSNBC host): I don't know how you do it at this point as well. His speech last night was certainly his moment. He rose to the occasion. You could tell he was really feeling it.
FOLKENFLIK: Veteran Chicago Tribune political reporter Jill Zuckman says Obama has received kind treatment from the press, even though he's not as media-hungry as Huckabee.
Ms. JILL ZUCKMAN (Political Reporter, Chicago Tribune): I think he's been taken seriously because he's had a lot of star value. So I think television likes to talk about him. I think newspapers like to write about him.
FOLKENFLIK: Democratic faithful might like Obama's early stance against the war in Iraq, but reporters, of course, like a fresh story, one that's not about, say, a world-renowned former first lady methodically crushing the opposition.
Mr. MATTHEW COOPER (Washington Editor, Conde Nast Portfolio): They've bought the basic premise of his campaign, that he's change, she's not, and they've echoed it.
FOLKENFLIK: Matthew Cooper is the Washington editor of Conde Nast Portfolio. And it should be disclosed, his wife is a senior strategist for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Cooper says the press can be awfully fickle. He's watching the caustic New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who's previously depicted Senator Obama as a very specific deer caught in the headlights.
Mr. COOPER: Let's see when the next morning and Obambi column comes. That'll be a sign that the tide is turning.
FOLKENFLIK: And when that happens, Cooper says, using a wince-worthy metaphor, then it'll be Obama's turn or Huckabee's in the media blender.
David Folkenflik, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From national politics, we're going to go local now and hear about one of the country's most outspoken and most liberal mayors. Democrat Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City is leaving office next week. He made a name for himself with aggressive leadership on global warming and with his calls to impeach President Bush.
From member station KUER, Jenny Brundin tells us about his time in office.
JENNY BRUNDIN: Just about everything Rocky did - people here simply call him Rocky - generated controversy, whether it was banning water bottles in city hall, calling for looser liquor laws or holding mass antiwar demonstrations.
Here's Mayor Rocky Anderson when President Bush came to town.
Mayor ROCKY ANDERSON (Democrat, Salt Lake City, Utah): Or to show slavish, blind obedience, and deference to a dishonest, war-mongering, human-rights-violating president.
BRUNDIN: Salt Lake City's liberal majority adored him, cheering him on. Reverend Tom Goldsmith.
Reverend TOM GOLDSMITH (Unitarian Church, Salt Lake City): He was sensational. He just was able to articulate policies, the politics that everyone really felt inside. And he was the voice that we've been waiting for.
BRUNDIN: But the rest of Utah, typically Republican, found the former civil rights lawyer profoundly embarrassing. Here's Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff.
Mr. MARK SHURTLEFF (Attorney General, Utah): Rocky says he doesn't respect people who follow our president? Well, let me tell you something. Rocky says that if we had more people who had the integrity to stand up like him, wow, I'm going to call bull on you, Rocky, today. That is not right.
BRUNDIN: But Rocky Anderson wasn't about the politics of consensus. Instead, he was deeply disturbed by what he called the nation's culture of obedience, a culture he believes is particularly powerful in Utah. And the mayor was baffled by the reaction of Utahns outside Salt Lake whenever he led rallies or introduced bold initiatives.
Mayor ANDERSON: When it comes to matters of principle, I don't think you ever let go. I think you have to stand up on certain things. And if people see that as confrontational, I think they're personalizing it too much.
Ms. DEEDA SEED (Mayor Rocky Anderson's Former Chief of Staff): The way Rocky provokes people in terms of public policy…
BRUNDIN: Anderson's former chief of staff, Deeda Seed.
Ms. SEED: For Utah, well, it was unusual. People were shocked and amazed that he was willing to be impolite about issues that he cared about.
Mr. ANDERSON: And yet these vested interests, the coal industry and the legislators…
BRUNDIN: Anderson's biggest passion was global warming. He pushed mayors nationwide to reach the goals of the Kyoto Protocol, reducing carbon emissions from city operations by 30 percent. And he used every means at his disposal to carry his hard-hitting message to people.
(Soundbite of Music)
BRUNDIN: At this high school, after a lecture on the downsides of coal-fired power plants, the 56-year-old Anderson straps on his guitar, thrashing along to "Baby, Please Don't Go." But he has rewritten the lyrics. Got to stop the coal, got to stop the coal. As our world burns up, don't you be so cruel.
But as his popularity and stature grew at home and on the world stage, turbulence increased at city hall. Anderson frequently clashed with the city council. Council member Eric Jergensen says the mayor wasn't collaborative.
Mr. ERIC JERGENSEN (Councilmember, Salt Lake City Council): If you don't agree with this particular mayor, boy, he'll jump down your throat so fast, it'll make your head spin. And he's, at times, abusive if you don't agree with him.
BRUNDIN: In eight years, the mayor went through nine communications directors and five chiefs of staff. He became persona non grata at the Utah legislature after he joined a lawsuit to block a multimillion-dollar highway and championed causes unpopular with the body's conservative majority.
Representative Mike Noel.
State Representative MIKE NOEL (Utah State Legislature): He's antagonized a lot of people. He's just way out there for Utah.
BRUNDIN: Even some loyal supporters were starting to tire of the turbulence that surrounded him. Still, most agree, if he wanted to, Mayor Anderson could have won a third term in Salt Lake. Instead, he's leaving to create his own nonprofit focused on human rights and global warming.
For NPR News, I'm Jenny Brundin in Salt Lake City.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
As we mentioned, NPR reporters are traveling with many of the candidates in New Hampshire today. And we have reports from four of them, beginning with Don Gonyea in Concord with Senator Barack Obama.
DON GONYEA: Huge crowds and big enthusiasm greeted Barack Obama at a pair of campaign rallies in the Granite State today. Still a bit hoarse from an intense schedule in Iowa over the past two weeks, he addressed a packed high school gymnasium in the capital city of Concord, New Hampshire this afternoon.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): It's good to be back. It's good to be back. You know, we've been spending a little time in Iowa.
GONYEA: New Hampshire voters like to say that they are independent, that they aren't swayed by what happens in Iowa or anywhere else. But for Obama, there are signs in the Iowa results that his campaign is attracting a broad variety of support, something he hopes to repeat in New Hampshire.
Sen. OBAMA: We won the young vote, we won the old vote, won the union vote, won the non-union vote. We won men and women, black and white. We gave thousands of people who had never participated in politics before a reason to believe.
GONYEA: The Obama campaign is also bracing for a fresh round of attacks now that he has the Iowa win under his belt. But his advisers say the numbers in Iowa where turnout doubled the previous record proved the power of a positive message. Obama will maintain an aggressive schedule with large events and small. Polls in New Hampshire show Obama still trailing Hillary Clinton here, at least until today.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Concord, New Hampshire.
DAVID GREENE: I'm David Greene in Manchester where today was the day for Hillary Clinton to hit the reset button. She eagerly worked a crowd at a downtown cafe and even departed from normal policy by taking questions from reporters. To get in position for the cameras, she had to ask a few diners a favor.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Gentlemen, can we ask you to - would you mind? I mean, I hate to ask you to leave your comfortable table, but I don't want to have my back to the…
(Soundbite of menu board falling)
GREENE: That last sound was a menu board crashing down on the head of one reporter.
Sen. CLINTON: Are you okay? Oh, that - wow. Are you okay?
GREENE: Once Clinton got started, she was her usual analytical self. She said that in Iowa, turnout among Democrats was much higher than expected.
Sen. CLINTON: And I did very, very well with people over 45, and I didn't do as well with people under 30. And I take responsibility for that.
GREENE: But she also denied being disappointed.
Sen. CLINTON: Well, you know, Iowa does not have the best track record in determining who the parties nominate. Everybody knows that.
GREENE: But then, there's New Hampshire, a place, she says, that's more like a traditional election than those caucuses.
Sen. CLINTON: But obviously, this is a new day. This is a new state; this is a primary election.
GREENE: And Clinton says she's ready to get to work.
Sen. CLINTON: We're going to crisscross the state. We're going to go anywhere two or more people are willing to meet and hear my case and ask me the questions that are on their minds to help them make their decisions.
GREENE: With a smile on her face, Clinton said in these next few days in New Hampshire, she expects to have a great time.
David Greene, NPR News, Manchester.
AUDIE CORNISH: I'm Audie Cornish with the John McCain campaign.
People say there were only three tickets out of Iowa, but Senator McCain didn't need the ride. He's already leading New Hampshire polls among Republicans, and when he woke up here this morning, he didn't sweat his close fourth place finish behind Fred Thompson in Iowa.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): And I called Fred Thompson this morning - we're in a virtual tie - and apparently, I'm a couple of hundred votes behind him. I called him up and tell him, I'm demanding a recount.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. McCAIN: Because I want to finish third, so.
CORNISH: At a pharmacy in Hollis, people stood on tiptoes over aisles of chips and magazines to get a look at him. McCain crowds that barely filled rooms two months ago are spilling over at his events. With all the fuss over Iowa, McCain has practically had New Hampshire to himself for weeks.
Now, McCain's psyching up for an onslaught from his rivals especially Mitt Romney who's already been running pointed TV ads against him.
Sen. McCAIN: And by the way, my friends, negative ads don't work for New Hampshire. Tell candidates that. Tell candidates that you want positive ads. You want to know what the vision is, not attacks on other candidates. You know, they didn't work in Iowa and they won't work in New Hampshire.
CORNISH: In his speeches, McCain is playing up his bipartisanship, his belief in a long-term commitment to the war in Iraq, and his mission to cut pork barrel spending.
He says he's focused on fiscal conservatives here regardless of party, but he could have competition for independent supporters like Denise April(ph) from Hollis who are also looking across the aisle.
Ms. DENISE APRIL (Independent Supporter): Like, my dilemma right now is do I want a Republican in the White House or do I want a Democrat? And I don't know the answer to that yet. And I probably won't know the answer 'til - on the eighth when I vote.
CORNISH: Audie Cornish, NPR News, Manchester.
SCOTT HORSLEY: And I'm Scott Horsley.
Mitt Romney arrived in New Hampshire before the sunrise, hoping a new day and a new state would bring a new dawn for his campaign. Romney stepped off his chartered airbus in the seacoast town Portsmouth, crossed an ice-covered tarmac, and walked into a warm New England welcome complete with Dunkin' Donuts and a sing-along worthy of Fenway Park.
(Soundbite of music)
HORSLEY: About a hundred and fifty well-wishers were on hand to greet the former governor from neighboring Massachusetts. Romney told the crowd, it's great to be back in New Hampshire.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): And when we came back with a silver medal - we wanted the gold, we got the silver - but New Hampshire, we're getting the gold.
HORSLEY: Romney insists he's satisfied with his second place finish in Iowa even though he'd outspent the winner Mike Huckabee by a huge margin. Romney says Huckabee had a natural constituency in Iowa's churchgoing evangelicals. But Huckabee said on NBC's "Today Show," it was more than that that put him over the top.
(Soundbite of TV show, "Today Show")
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): What we're seeing is that this campaign is not just about people who have a religious fervor, it's about people who love America but who want it to be better.
HORSLEY: Here in New Hampshire, Romney expects his biggest challenge to come from Arizona Senator John McCain. He told reporters he plans to campaign aggressively in the handful of days before Granite Staters go to the polls.
Mr. ROMNEY: There's no way that Senator McCain is going to be able to come to New Hampshire and say he's the candidate that represents change, that he'll change Washington. He is Washington.
HORSLEY: Romney is already running TV ads in New Hampshire that start out praising McCain for his war record and his patriotism then attack the senator for his positions on taxes and immigration. Romney's also looking ahead to Michigan, and he sent two of his five sons to Wyoming for that state's caucuses tomorrow.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Manchester, New Hampshire.
MELLISA BLOCK, host:
In politics, there's a movement afoot to try to fix a broken, polarized system - or at least there's a one-day bipartisan forum geared in that direction. A group of centrists will gather at the University of Oklahoma on Monday. Among them, and most notably, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg who has not definitively ruled out a third-party run for the presidency.
The others who are expected to attend are former politicians, including former senators Jack Danforth, Bill Cohen, Gary Hart, and David Boren - former Democratic senator from Oklahoma; now president of the University of Oklahoma. I asked Boren why he thinks the political system needs fixing.
Mr. DAVID BOREN (Former Oklahoma Senator; President, University of Oklahoma): What we've seen really, and it's been growing over the last 20 years, is partisan polarization that is just literally paralyzing the country. We're not able to take action because if one party's for something, the other party is automatically going to block it.
And I think that's really why we're seeing the polling data from the American people saying that we're on the wrong track. They'd say they don't believe the future is going to be as good as the past, and that just breaks my heart to hear that. And I really think the people see it. They may not use the term polarization, but that's what they're reacting to.
BLOCK: But Senator Boren couldn't you look at the results from last night in Iowa which had record turnout - nearly double the turnout on the Democratic side - and say, look, there's a lot of enthusiasm from voters on both sides here?
Mr. BOREN: Well, I think there's certainly participation because I think the people are worried, and I think the people want to see us move in a different direction, you know? But I don't think it's embracing the old kind of politics which, frankly, what we've been seeing in this country for too long is let's hit the emotional hot buttons to score points for ourselves as individual politicians. And people want real leaders, they want leaders who will talk about how they're going to unite us, how they're going to bring us together, what are their strategies to build bipartisan consensus because they know that's the only way you get progress.
BLOCK: Now, a big question that's hanging out there: Is your meeting on Monday really a platform for Michael Bloomberg to launch an independent bid for the presidency?
Mr. BOREN: No, it is not. And both Senator Nunn who's co-hosted this meeting and myself and other participants have made that very, very clear. It is not a Bloomberg for president meeting. There are members of both parties that I think many of them will continue to and will end up supporting their own party nominees. But what it does say is it's time to refocus the campaign; let's have some specifics about forming a government of national unity and how it can be done.
But if not, I think, certainly, there is the possibility of an independent candidacy out there and the resources to launch one. And if you want to call it something of a warning shot; that there are other possible alternatives out there if the two-party candidates and the ultimate nominees don't rise to this occasion.
BLOCK: If it were to come down to an independent run, given what you've seen with independent candidacies before - John Anderson, Ross Perot - do you think, say, a Bloomberg-Hagel, for the sake of argument, a Bloomberg-Hagel ticket would have a chance?
Mr. BOREN: Well, I think, yes. A Bloomberg-Hagel, Bloomberg-Nunn, who knows? I think that would. When you look at it, I really think the Perot candidacy which received 19 percent of the vote, and that was even after he got in and got out and a lot of things happened, and also, very different times. The level of frustration, even fear about where our country is right now or worry about the future was not nearly as great then as it is now.
We've had, what, another 15 years or more of party bickering and frustration, and people seeing erosion of the strength of our country and our standing in the world - political and economic. And so I think that's the base, that's the lowest possible thought - 19 percent. Doesn't - it's - when circumstances change like they have with - if a Bloomberg, for example, were to get into it with his resources, not having to go to the special interest groups to get funding, you know, there's a real possibility - doesn't, you know, 35 percent, 36 percent.
Again, though, I want to state, I hope that's not what has to happen. I hope that we can do this within the two-party system, and I don't think it's romantic to think about it.
BLOCK: Okay. David Boren, thanks for talking with us.
Mr. BOREN: Thank you very much.
BLOCK: That's David Boren, former Oklahoma governor and senator who's hosting a bipartisan conference this coming Monday at the University of Oklahoma.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Diplomatic efforts to break the political impasse in Kenya are in full swing. The country has been in turmoil since Sunday when dubious election results gave President Mwai Kibaki a second term; challenger Raila Odinga has refused to concede. European ambassadors are involved along with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer, even South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu has made the rounds.
NPR's Gwen Thompkins reports from Nairobi.
GWEN THOMPKINS: Archbishop Desmond Tutu this week met with all the players in Kenya's current political crisis. Raila Odinga, the populist challenger who is convinced that the presidential vote was rigged against him, President Mwai Kibaki who says he won fair and square, and Kalonzo Musyoka, the second runner-up and a one time ally of Odinga who has since sided with Kibaki.
When Tutu was asked whether he felt hopeful about an end to the stalemate that has triggered violence nationwide, he said, yes, sort of.
Archbishop DESMOND TUTU (South Africa): I am always a prisoner of hope. If you could maintain that in a situation, like South Africa, then you can do so almost anywhere else. But am I more hopeful now than I was? Yes.
(Soundbite of laughter)
THOMPKINS: That note of uncertainty in Tutu's voice is shared by many Kenyans. Election year violence is not new here, but the cataclysms that have followed the 2007 race have prompted many to question whether the nation can ever be the same again. Such deep, ethnic and political antagonisms are being expressed between neighbors that more than 300 people have been killed nationwide.
The most commonly mentioned belligerents are the president's tribe, the Kikuyu, and Odinga's tribe the Luo, but many others are fragmenting.
Ms. WANGARI MAATHAI (Nobel Peace Prize winner): People are dying. People are now in refugee camps. They are hungry. People are not able to travel. I mean, there are hundreds of people out there who are suffering.
THOMPKINS: Kenya's Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai, was also in the room with Tutu. Speaking to the BBC, she urged Kibaki and Odinga to put aside lesser concerns and make peace.
Ms. MAATHAI: I have a lot of hope in both Honorable Raila Odinga and President Kibaki; that they would all rise up to the occasion.
THOMPKINS: Last Sunday's official tally of the presidential vote gave Kibaki the win by just over 200,000 ballots. But irregularities in the counting have prompted skepticism from European Union election monitors.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said publicly today that the election was rigged.
Mr. BERNARD KOUCHNER (Minister of Foreign Affairs, France): (Through translator) Whether the election is rigged or not, I think so. Many think so, the American thinks so, the British thinks so, and they know the know the country well.
THOMPKINS: President Kibaki has rejected Odinga's calls for a new election, saying he will agree only if the Kenya High Court rules in Odinga's favor.
Here's Kibaki's spokesman Alfred Mutua.
Mr. ALFRED MUTUA (Spokesman, Kenyan Government): That is all - we want is the rule of law and order followed.
THOMPKINS: Emboya Ochang(ph) is a spokesman for Odinga's political party. He says the matter must ultimately be decided in the court of public opinion.
Mr. EMBOYA OCHANG (Spokesperson, Odinga's Political Party): We felt we don't need - we have - we don't have any recourse except maybe to go to the streets.
THOMPKINS: Thousands of Odinga supporters were rebuffed from rallying Thursday in downtown Nairobi. Washington insists that Kibaki and Odinga must come up with their own solutions. And a conversation at Odinga party headquarters today brought home how entrenched ethnic tensions have become. One Luo man hung up on a telephone caller and said, someone is trying to speak to me in Kikuyo. His colleague said, well, talk to him in Kikuyo. And the Luo man asked, why should I?
Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, Nairobi.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
While the crisis in Kenya is big news, this next story was also worthy of headlines, across Africa on its western coast today.
(Soundbite of TV broadcast)
Unidentified Woman: (French spoken)
BLOCK: The Dakar Rally, one of the toughest events in the world of motor sports, has been canceled. It was called off because of terrorists and security concerns in the country of Mauritania, which is the host of eight stages of the race. The desert endurance race was due to start in Lisbon tomorrow. Destination - the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
That's where NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton is based.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON: Dakar Rally contestants assembled in Lisbon were bitterly disappointed by this message from the organizers at a hurriedly convened news conference.
(Soundbite of news conference)
Mr. ETIENNE LAVIGNE (Organizing Director, Dakar Rally): (French spoken)
QUIST-ARCTON: Etienne Lavigne, the organizing director, announced that this year's Dakar Motor Rally had been called off at the 11th hour. He then read a statement explaining why.
Mr. LAVIGNE: (French spoken)
QUIST-ARCTON: With direct terrorist threats targeting the event, the organizers said it was too dangerous to risk the lives of competitors and everyone else. The decision to cancel the Dakar Rally was taken in consultation with the French government. This was after four Frenchmen were shot dead in Mauritania just before Christmas. A shocking attack compounded by reports linking the gunmen to a terrorist network affiliated to al-Qaida; that sent alarm bells ringing in Paris and other Western capitals.
Race drivers and bikers were scheduled to ride across the wind-blown Sahara Desert in Mauritania. The cancellation of the Dakar Rally is a blow to the West African nation, which is trying to promote desert tourism. The high-profile rally was an ideal international showcase and a major media event.
Mauritania's tourism minister, Madine Ba.
Mr. BA MADINE (Minister of Tourism, Mauritania): (French spoken)
QUIST-ARCTON: The minister said Mauritania's initial reaction was disbelief and deep disappointment. He noted that only last week, the Mauritanian government had met and given guarantees of reinforced safety and security measures which seemed to satisfy the rally organizers, so he couldn't understand what had changed.
The financial implications are huge for the cancellation of the multimillion dollar annual motor race. Ian Rochelle was in Lisbon waiting to compete in the Dakar Rally.
Mr. IAN ROCHELLE (Competitor, Dakar Rally): Of course, there's obviously an awful lot of money, but it's not just about the money, it's the time, effort and passion that our friends and family have put into going up here. It's very devastating. We're just walking out of the press conference now, and it feels like we were in a state funeral with thousands and thousands of people with long faces. It's just devastating news.
QUIST-ARCTON: Here in Senegal where the Dakar rally was due to finish on January the 20th, there are mixed feelings about the race. For 30 years, anti-rally campaigners and critics in Africa have lobbied to have it stopped. They cite environmental damage and the number of children knocked down each year by a noisy and ostentatious procession of drivers and support vehicles riding rough across West Africa.
Terrorism was never the issue, but it appears that this year, the specter of al-Qaida has succeeded where the activists failed - getting the Dakar rally scrapped, at least for 2008.
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Dakar.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR, National Public Radio.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
All this week, the financial markets were waiting to see what this morning's unemployment report would bring, and the news was not encouraging. Unemployment shot up to an even 5 percent, and the number of jobs created was just 18,000, far less than expected. Investors took a look at the numbers and then sent stock prices down sharply - where they stayed.
NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
JIM ZARROLI: Over the past year, house prices have fallen, oil has gone through the roof, and Wall Street banks have become mired in the subprime muck. But through it all, there were consolations, and one of them was the low U.S. unemployment rate. This morning's report suggests that the job market is no longer the bright spot it was.
Mr. ROBERT DYE (Senior Economist, PNC Financial Services Group): We were expecting to see a soft number, and this number was very soft.
ZARROLI: Robert Dye, senior economist at PNC Financial Services Group, says there were big declines in construction, manufacturing, and retail employment in December. And, he says, if the job market takes a beating, then consumer spending will be affected, and that is worrisome.
Mr. DYE: We were teetering on the edge of recession, and what I would need to see to sort of put me over that edge would be a continued weak-to-negative job growth in the next couple of months.
ZARROLI: Bad news, like this, is just the sort of thing that can throw a monkey wrench into a political election season, and Democrats were quick to draw attention to it.
Fresh off her disappointing showing in Iowa yesterday, Hillary Clinton appeared at a campaign event in New Hampshire this morning, and the employment report was almost the first thing out of her mouth.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): You know, the way here, I got an e-mail that the jobs report came out. And guess what, unemployment is up. And I predict to you that we are just at the beginning of a very tough economic year.
ZARROLI: That seemed to be the consensus on Wall Street too, and stock prices spent much of the day wallowing in correction territory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost nearly 2 percent and the NASDAQ Composite Index had its worst day in nearly a year.
The poor performance seemed to throw the Bush administration on the defensive. The president went ahead with an already scheduled gathering of his economic advisers. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez did his best to put a positive spin on the news. He said, this report aside, there are still a lot of good things to be said about the U.S. economy right now.
Secretary CARLOS GUTIERREZ (U.S. Department of Commerce): Exports are booming, consumers are buying, and businesses are investing. So the only part of the economy that has been a drag on growth has been residential construction.
ZARROLI: But Gutierrez also said the administration isn't taking today's jobs report lightly.
Sec. GUTIERREZ: We're not complacent and we take this number very seriously and we're constantly looking at ways of keeping the economy strong. We've had a long string of growth, and we want to keep that going.
ZARROLI: Just what the administration might be planning, if anything, isn't clear, but officials said the weak report underscores the dangers of raising taxes. One all but certain result of today's report will be to make another interest rate cut more likely. Federal Reserve policymakers cut rates four times last year in an effort to make money cheaper to borrow and restore some confidence in the financial system. After today's report, they'll be under pressure to do so again.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Painter and naturalist Julie Zickefoose tells the story of a couple whose houseplants threatened to take over their living room - that is, until Julie intervened.
JULIE ZICKEFOOSE: We've all seen it - the rundown house at the end of the block with yews or hollies growing up to the second story, covering the windows. Zoning regulations and neighbors' complaints often take care of such eyesores, but what about when plants take a house over from the inside?
My friend Steve(ph) and Sheryl(ph) live in Nebraska, where Steve, a master bricklayer, built Sheryl a beautiful castle complete with turrets out on the wind-swept prairie. It's a dream house with a vaulted ceiling in the living room; huge windows light up the space.
The first time I visited Steve and Sheryl, I noticed that the light that might have been streaming in those windows was blocked by two huge potted Norfolk Island Pines. They were so big that they had hit the vaulted ceiling and begun to bend over, their crowns feeling along the plaster like the sinuous palm trees in a Dr. Seuss drawing.
When I asked Sheryl about the oversized pine trees in her living room, she rolled her eyes. Steve's had those since he was in college, and he's too soft-hearted to get rid of them. He built the whole living room around those darn trees. I've been trying to get him to throw them for 10 years.
Two years later, I visited Steve and Sheryl again, the trees, huge before, were simply monstrous now, bowing down to the white carpet, hooking up again for another try at growing through the roof. Sheryl watched my face as I walked into the living room. Her eyes begged for an intervention.
I decided to use a line that my blunt-spoken friend Janet(ph) had unleashed on me when she beheld the ratty, leather recliner in our living room. I gave it to Bill when we were married 14 years ago. Green duct tape crisscrossed its torn arms. Janet paused, looked from the chair to me and said, so, what's with the recliner? In the hot flush of embarrassment, I saw our beloved recliner, not as the extravagant wedding present it had been, but as the rotting hulk it was. We covered it for six more months, like a corpse, then finally hauled it to its rest.
I took a deep breath. So, Steve, what's with the pine trees? I felt Sheryl tense beside me. Steve chuckled sheepishly, oh, I've had those since I was in college, and I'm too soft-hearted to throw them out. Sheryl hates them. There was no turning back now. Steve, leave them here long enough and they will take over your kitchen. Sheryl's right, it's time. Steve didn't say anything. Sheryl shot me a grateful look, steered me into the kitchen, and thanked me for echoing her views on the funky growths in her living room.
It's a mistake to get emotional about plants. There are always more to be had. I say this as someone who threw out two eight-foot-tall scale-infested ficus trees; a 12-foot-tall palm that had become a spider-mite factory. The ficus trees had flanked the altar at our wedding; the palm was a sympathy buy at a discount store. Easy come; easy go. Sure, they're living things, but they're not ancestors. They're plants.
By the next May, the deed was done. Steve had pulled the cord on a chainsaw right in the living room and rendered the Norfolk Island Pines into logs. Knowing Steve, I'm sure he wept; I'm just as sure that Sheryl's eyes were perfectly dry.
SIEGEL: Julie Zickefoose is a writer and painter in Whipple, Ohio. She's the author of "Letters from Eden."
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Now, some sounds from the alternative music scene in Egypt. Pop music there is dominated by slickly packaged songs and videos. A few bands are providing an alternative. One of them is called Black Theama. It combines Nubian rhythms with R&B, hip-hop, reggae, and other African-influenced sounds. Lyrics are sung in colloquial Egyptian Arabic. Black Theama has almost no money and not a single CD to its name.
But as NPR's Peter Kenyon reports, the band still manages to pack every show with adoring fans.
PETER KENYON: Getting to hear Black Theama isn't easy even for Cairenes with a taste for music found off the beaten path. The band's shows are not heavily advertised and they have almost no recordings to speak of. The band refuses to work inside the commercial music industry, preferring to painstakingly save money to produce its own recordings one at a time with the help of friends and supporters. This song, "Kharsan," is one of the few studio-quality recordings that exist.
(Soundbite of song, "Kharsan")
BLACK THEAMA (Singing Group): (Singing in Egyptian Arabic)
KENYON: Until the band's financial situation improves, Black Theama fans have to content themselves with seeking out their irregularly scheduled lived shows, and they do - forming an avid underground following that packs venues such as the Al-Sawi Cultural Center along the banks of the Nile River where they sing along with songs apparently learned from very low-fidelity, amateur live recordings passed around on the Internet.
(Soundbite of song, "Sheraton")
BLACK THEAMA: (Singing in Egyptian Arabic)
KENYON: This song, "Sheraton" is one of the band's most popular. Its lyrics, sung in a shorthand that assumes a lot of local knowledge, describe an early morning Cairo scene as ordinary Egyptians walk home to their poor neighborhoods, shuffling past the tourist-filled towers of the five-star hotels that line the Nile.
Nubian actor Amir Salah Eddin is one of three singers who front the band. He says they take their name, a stylization of "Black Theme," seriously, as they do their goal of avoiding standard pop-music cliches in their lyrics.
Mr. AMIR SALAH EDDIN (Member, Black Theama; Actor): (Through translator) What Black Theama does is that they combine the music from all the different black people in the world, like reggae, jazz, rap, hip-hop, and Nubian. But it's also in colloquial Egyptian language.
KENYON: In other words, don't expect high poetry or anthems to black power. What Black Theama provides are very personal street-level views of Egyptian life.
Singer Mohammed Abdo, who met Salah Eddin through theater work, says they try to celebrate the black experience in Egypt through their music.
Mr. MOHAMMED ABDO (Member, Black Theama): (Through translator) It means being special, and being dark-skinned in Egypt is always connected to the South. And people from the South have their own character, their own culture - even their tone of voice is different.
KENYON: Ancient Nubia included much of northern Sudan and southern Egypt, and dark-skinned Egyptians are invariably referred to as Nubians. Traditionally, they were given menial or servants' jobs.
But Black Theama doesn't want to be mistaken for a protest band. A song called "Magnoon," Egyptian for crazy, features one of the group's most popular musicians, violinist Mohammed Sami. For now, the only available version is this amateur recording posted by a fan on the YouTube Web site.
(Clip from YouTube video)
KENYON: Amir Salah Eddin says young Egyptians are familiar with alternative bands from other countries, and they're eager to embrace a homegrown group that bypasses the music industry to speak directly to them.
Mr. SALAH EDDIN: (Through translator) When they found a band here that achieves this, so they said, yeah, we should support this band.
KENYON: While mainstream Egyptian singers may croon about starry-eyed love and teenage heartbreak, a character in a Black Theama song responds to his fiancee's question about marriage by saying, why not ask me about the corrupt politicians who stole my dreams? Or about wealthy countries with children sleeping under bridges?
Salah Eddin says Black Theama's amazingly loyal fans, who flock to concerts that cost around $2 to attend, have reinforced his desire to pursue this, so far, unprofitable style of music-making.
Mr. SALAH EDDIN: (Through translator) We're not into this to be famous, because if we had wanted to be famous, we could have done one of the - just a Nubi song and we dressed like Nubians and we do the Nubian dance, and we could have been famous. But we are trying to do the thing that we believe in, the thing that goes straight to the hearts of people.
(Soundbite of music)
KENYON: Music critics say it's not clear that Black Theama could have achieved instant fame by sticking to traditional Nubian folksongs, but it is clear that their band has tapped into a hunger among young Egyptians for something that feels authentic to them today.
Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Cairo.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Today, New Hampshire woke up to a political invasion. The candidates - or at least the ones who survived the Iowa caucus tallies - arrived en masse along with the media scrub(ph).
SIEGEL: Iowa's big winners - Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee - were out to prove that they have momentum and staying power going into Tuesday's New Hampshire primary.
We'll hear from our reporters traveling with four of the campaigns in a few minutes. First, Melissa spoke with the happiest Republican contender.
BLOCK: We're joined now by Mike Huckabee. He's on a campaign bus in New Hampshire. Governor Huckabee, welcome to the program.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): Thank you very much. A pleasure to be here, and I hope the cell signal holds on for the ride.
BLOCK: We hope so too. Now, according to the latest polls from New Hampshire, you are battling for a distant third place there. You have about a weekend, a little bit more to campaign in that state. How do you turn last night's success in Iowa to a victory in New Hampshire?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, certainly, we come in to New Hampshire with some significant momentum, surprise, and really convincing win in Iowa in the caucuses. You know, I understand that there are some advantages that Senator McCain has from having been here a long time and a strong lead that he has now taken. Senator - or Governor Romney, rather, being next-door neighbor to New Hampshire and owning property here, but I also think people of New Hampshire are very independent. They'll make up their minds late. We're going to try to do everything we can to get some of them signing up with us before Tuesday.
BLOCK: But a very different population there in New Hampshire. Your finish last night in Iowa was held by a really heavy turnout of evangelical Christians; that put you over the top. That's not the case in New Hampshire by a long shot.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Not at all, but I think sometimes people make too much of the valued voters or evangelicals. It's a very important part of my base, but so are fiscal conservatives and so defense conservatives because they know that those are important issues. And the fact is a lot of people who are religious also believe in strong fiscal conservatism. There are people who believe in a very strong national defense.
So just because they're religious conservatives doesn't necessarily mean that they don't hold dear other forms and aspects of, really, the conservative part of our party.
BLOCK: Are you running the same ads in New Hampshire that you were running in Iowa? You had a bunch of ads touting your credentials as a Christian leader in Iowa.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Because of the concentrated schedule, we're running ads that focus more about cutting taxes and economic empowerment, and those are issues that really matter a whole lot to people in New Hampshire. So we're not really changing our message. What we are changing is just the focus and putting a real emphasis on the need to lower taxes and to have less government and not to make that a different message, but just a different focus.
BLOCK: You said that your first place finish last night in Iowa showed that people are more important than the purse. Now, you had enough money to get through the Iowa caucus, but how do you go on to wage campaigns in more than two dozen states over the next month without a lot of money in the bank?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, we're raising a lot of money. The win last night certainly put us in a position where people are beginning to realize we could go all the way. We actually ended December with as much of a cash flow as many of the other campaigns. Problem is some of them have these huge budgets that they can't meet. We've always operated very frugally, much like the federal government ought to be operating. Unfortunately it doesn't.
We do something the federal government doesn't do. We avoid deficit spending. We only spend what we have. The result is we had over $2 million cash on hand when we ended the quarter.
BLOCK: And how much do you have now? How much came in since last night?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Oh, gosh. You know, I haven't heard the last numbers. I know that we were raising, like, $20,000 every, you know, every 20, 30 minutes last night after the caucuses.
BLOCK: Governor Huckabee, you know well that there are parts of the Republican Party that are not at all happy about your win last night. How do you answer the criticism that you are not in line with fiscal conservatives in New Hampshire and elsewhere?
Mr. HUCKABEE: It's a charge that I don't think that I can understand and no one else could explain. I was the first governor in the history of my state to cut taxes. I did it 94 times, the first ever in 160 years. We held the line on government spending. I managed government well; took us from a $200 million deficit to an $850 million surplus. By anybody's definition, that's true fiscal conservatism.
BLOCK: Would you rule out any new tax increases?
Mr. HUCKABEE: I don't think we need any new tax increases at the federal level. We need to cut spending; we need to better manage the money we have. We need to modernize some of the processes so it's more efficient and less costly; that makes a lot more sense to me than raising taxes. And frankly, when you raise taxes, what you end up doing is have a counterintuitive effect on the economy by taking more money out of the (unintelligible)…
BLOCK: And at that point, I'm afraid we did lose our cell phone connection with Mike Huckabee, who was talking to us from his campaign bus, driving north between Manchester and Concord, New Hampshire.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
In New Hampshire today, it's the last weekend before the nation's first presidential primary. Candidates are campaigning in both parties and beyond, seeking the votes of independents as well.
Tonight, there will be debates among the major candidates of both parties -Republicans first and then Democrats - at Saint Anselm College just outside Manchester.
NPR is there, and two of our reporters in New Hampshire join me now to talk about the two races, Audie Cornish and Scott Horsley.
Hello to both of you.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Good to be with you, Andrea.
SEABROOK: Scott, let me start with you. We'll come back to the debate in just a second. But with that prospect in the air, how did the candidates meet the voting public today?
HORSLEY: Andrea, it was a busy day for the fire marshals around New Hampshire today. The candidates, especially the Democrats, were drawing big crowds. Some voters are just there to wave their signs and show their support. Others still gathering information, trying to make up their minds just a few days before the primary.
And the candidates went out of their way to try to oblige those information seekers. John Edwards took more questions than usual today, and Hillary Clinton held a marathon town hall in a high school gym, building questions for almost two hours.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): I want to take as many questions as I can. I'll stay as long as I can. I'll try to get to everybody because I know how important this election is to all of us.
SEABROOK: And Scott, how did the audiences react?
HORSLEY: Generally favorably. (Unintelligible) voter Susan Youngs(ph) was typical of the people I spoke with after the Hillary Clinton event.
Ms. SUSAN YOUNGS: Actually, I was very impressed. I'm still not 100 percent decided, but I found her impressive. She's so knowledgeable. She thinks well on her feet. And she does a good job of actually responding to the questions she's asked.
HORSLEY: But as you heard, Youngs is still not committed to Clinton and that's a challenge. Youngs also wants to hear from John Edwards in the next few days and had said she's very impressed by Barack Obama as well. Obama drew the biggest crowds today. And I heard from one voter, Martin Mary(ph), who says he's leaning Obama's direction but could cross over and vote for John McCain on the Republican side.
SEABROOK: It's an interesting point about independents, Audie Cornish. Are you hearing people mention the dilemma of choosing between two candidates and two different parties?
AUDIE CORNISH: I'm hearing a lot of that because I'm following John McCain. And there are a lot of people who go to his events who are folks, who are independent voters and who are straddling both parties here in New Hampshire. You can choose which primary you want to participate in.
Back in 2000, 62 percent of independent voters decided to go over to the GOP primary, and McCain benefited from that. This time around, you're seeing polls that are saying that 63 percent of independents are actually leaning Democrats this time. And as a result, I'm hearing folks say to me, well, I really like Senator Obama and Senator McCain, which might seem kind of like an odd pairing. But here, in New Hampshire, it's more than possible.
SEABROOK: And Audie, the other guy who's not so visible in Iowa despite his national standing in the polls is Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York. You saw some of him today.
CORNISH: Yes. Former Mayor Giuliani was back in New Hampshire. He went to an event today for a robotics competition and entered on a segue and sort of made this jerky, bump-and-go entrance, which is probably not the best photo op, but that what he did. And later on, he went to a house party. And he's really focusing on this sort of smaller events and getting to know the voters and also trying to get people to see him passed, maybe, the conversation around 9/11.
Here's a cut of him sort of making that appeal.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Republican Presidential Candidate): I'm not talking just about September 11th 2001, although that is part of my history and part of what I had to handle. But I'm talking about all the things that I did before that as mayor of New York City, the problems of crime, the problems of welfare, the problems of the economy.
CORNISH: But Of course, Giuliani is coming into this race, hovering around fourth and really competitive with Huckabee at this point. The leaders here are Senator John McCain and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, who does have, in the past anyway, people thought had some advantage of being the governor of a neighboring state, but is most definitely setting his sights on McCain and trying to make sort of advance there.
SEABROOK: Now, of course, the most important business of today comes later, with the debates between the leading candidates in each party. There is big interest in these debates in the state and beyond. And Scott Horsley, what should Democrats be watching for?
HORSLEY: It's everything, Andrea. There's huge interest in these debates. You might think that everything that could have been said in the debate has already been said by these candidates. But I talked to a lot of voters who are going to be watching very closely. And the question is really whether Hillary Clinton or John Edwards or anyone else can put a roadblock in front of the Obama bandwagon. I'm not sure a debate is the best setting to do that.
SEABROOK: And Audie, how about the Republicans?
CORNISH: I think you're going to be looking to see how much attacking there might be on Senator John McCain. You know, in past debates, when people thought he wasn't doing so well, there was a lot of praise heaped on Senator McCain. This time around, you've got former Governor Mitt Romney, who's coming back looking to rebound and really looking to, let's say, draw appointed differences between the candidates. And well, we also see alliances, where we see former Governor Mike Huckabee and McCain maybe being a little nicer to each other and piling it on on Romney.
And so I think you should watch really for how the candidates are in relationship to each other at this sort of attack and withdraw.
NPR's Audie Cornish and Scott Horsley in Manchester, New Hampshire. Thanks guys.
CORNISH: Thank you.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Now, this news from Wyoming, Mitt Romney captured his first win today, the biggest chair of the 12 presidential delegates at stake in the Republican county conventions in Wyoming. That state scheduled its caucuses between the Iowa and New Hampshire contests in hopes of getting the candidates to visit. And some did stop by.
Attention may be on New Hampshire this weekend, but a bipartisan group of former and current office holders are gathering in Oklahoma. They want the presidential candidates to address some big issues, they say, are being ignored. Among those planning to attend is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. This is fueling speculation the independent mayor may yet decide to spend some of his vast personal fortune on an independent presidential run.
NPR's Brian Naylor has this report.
BRIAN NAYLOR: The Oklahoma conference is being co-sponsored by former Democratic Senator David Boren, now president of the University of Oklahoma, and former Democratic Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia. Both were known as conservative Democrats, who, while in office, often reached across the aisle to work with Republicans.
Nunn says that's not happening much now.
Mr. SAM NUNN (Former Democrat Senator, Georgia): We had to form coalitions in order to get something done for the country. And I think we share frustration that the campaigns and the discussions of the debates that are now occurring are not on the fundamental issues, and that America has to deal with the fundamental issues, and the next president of the United States, whoever he or she is, cannot be successful without a mandate for governing. And that can only come with a national debate and discussion.
NAYLOR: Nunn points to issues including what he calls erosion in America's strategic leadership, weaker alliances, less financial flexibility, stress on the military and global climate change. He says while the current crump of presidential candidates does occasionally address those issues, they have not made them part of the debate.
Mr. NUNN: In our view, we have a badly bent political process, maybe broken but is at least badly bent.
NAYLOR: Former New Jersey Governor and EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican, will also be at the conference. She expects the group will produce an outline in an effort to get the presidential candidates to focus on something other than, as she put it, eviscerating themselves.
Ms. CHRISTINE TODD WHITMAN (Former Republican Governor, New Jersey; Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency): Get away from just the sound bite; get away from the very personal nastiness; get away from just saying every issue is a moral issue so that if you disagree with me, you're not just wrong, you're immoral. And we've been posing issues like that for too long now in this country of late. And it's been very detrimental to good policymaking.
NAYLOR: The politician likely to draw the most attention during the conference, at least from the media, will be New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg was first a Democrat, became a Republican when he ran for mayor, and is now an independent. He's often denied any intent to run for president. But in an interview with NBC's "Today" show the other morning, the multibillionaire expressed frustration with partisan bickering and special interests.
Mayor MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (Independent, New York): There's nothing wrong with parties. But everybody is out there for their own advantage or the advantage of their own party rather than what's right for this country. And we're in trouble domestically and internationally, and we've not addressed the key issues like health care and international relations, immigration and all of those things. And people have got to start standing up and saying if they're elected, what they'll really do? Not just that they are in favor of motherhood and apple pie, but what they'll do.
NAYLOR: Whit Ayres, a pollster who works with Republican candidates, says it's hard to make the case that important issues are being ignored in this presidential campaign. But he says that centrists like those attending the Oklahoma conference do have a valid point.
Mr. WHIT AYRES (Republican Pollster): The primary process pulls both Democrats and Republicans to their ideological extremes. And the centrists who were so influential in making policy in the Congress for many years have essentially disappeared.
NAYLOR: Christine Todd Whitman says while a possible independent presidential bid may well be favored by some in Oklahoma this weekend, it's not what the conference is all about.
Ms. WHITMAN: There are some people who will be there who I think are at the point where they'd say, yes, I could support a third party yeah, but that's not the genesis of it. That's not how it came about, and that's certainly not the intent. There's not an intent to start a third-party movement. The intent is to try to get the two existing major parties back to a place where they are functioning as they used to function certainly from a partisan perspective, but in one that actually gets good policy enacted.
NAYLOR: And Whitman and Nunn agree that's something most voters want too.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Last weekend, after the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistan People's Party named her 19-year-old son Bilawal to succeed her as party leader. Given Bilawal's age, reporters around the world ran to their computers to find out details about him. They figured he had an account on Facebook, the online social networking site that's especially popular among students. This was a place to mine clues about his hobbies, interests, thinking.
It turns out someone had created a new fake Facebook profile for Bilawal Bhutto Zardari. And several media outlets picked up the information on it. What followed was a lot of column space, trying to figure out who got the right Facebook profile and who got what was the handiwork of an online prankster. Social networks like Facebook and MySpace are blurring the lines of what is and what isn't reliable personal information.
Sree Sreenivasan is a professor of New Media at the Columbia School of Journalism in New York.
Thank you very much for speaking with us.
Professor SREE SREENIVASAN (New Media, Columbia School of Journalism): Nice to be here.
SEABROOK: What happened with Bilawal Bhutto Zardari's Facebook profile?
Prof. SREENIVASAN: Journalists got fooled by an online prankster, and that happens fairly often these days. And it's so much easier to fool people because the production values of these hoaxes have gotten better and better because of the tools have made these hoaxes easier to make. Now, a couple of things play a role in this, including the fact that journalists were looking desperately for information about this young man.
And the fact that here was something easy to grasp, a Facebook profile in this case, was there. And so you've kind of jumped on it. We've seen over the last few years that whenever there's a big crisis people, rush online to get some sense of control, and getting information even if it's bogus in the end makes people feel like they have some control. And especially for journalists, that sense of having control and getting ahead of the story is - are important to them.
SEABROOK: You teach young aspiring journalists. How do you tell them that journalists should approach things like Facebook?
Prof. SREENIVASAN: In the same way that we have been talking about approaching things like the Internet, that you have to be skeptical, you know, in everything you see online. If it's too good to be true or too bad to be true, it probably isn't.
SEABROOK: We should point out, though, that Bilawal Bhutto Zardari did have a Facebook profile, and there are several news organizations that figured out which one was the correct one. I mean has the game of journalism changed in terms of checking your facts, making sure that which Facebook page is the real Facebook page and so on?
Prof. SREENIVASAN: Well, one of the things we learned here is, yet again, the importance of connecting with your primary sources and double checking directly. And in this case, you know, he was not giving interviews, so you were not able to check him. So then, you go around the person and kind of the circle of people who know him and on Facebook, they would have been friends. You go and double check and see - are these people who are also at Oxford? Are they connected in some way? Do they have connections? What is he saying? All of those things, you would want to keep, you know, checking around and looking.
SEABROOK: Sree Sreenivasan is a professor of New Media at the Columbia School of Journalism in New York City.
Thank you very much, sir.
Prof. SREENIVASAN: Thank you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Facebook hoaxes another online high jinx might never have been possible without a couple of guys at an obscure military agency. Twenty-five years ago this week, they switched their employers computers over to a new standard called TCP/IP. Sound dense? Well, that switch on that day suddenly made it possible for small experimental computer networks all over the country to talk to each other. And that made the Internet possible.
The obscure military agency was DARPA — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. And one of those guys was Vinton Cerf, now commonly called The Father of the Internet. He joins me now.
Hello.
Mr. VINTON CERF (Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google): Oh, hello, Andrea. It's a real pleasure to chat with you.
SEABROOK: First, can you explain to those of us who don't know sort of the inside guts of our computers, what exactly TCP/IP is?
Mr. CERF: First of all, let me say that Robert Kahn, who is also here in Virginia, is the other half of the team that designed the TCP/IP protocols and he, as much I would deserve to be referred to, is fathers of the Internet. Second, what you saw on January 1, 1983 was the culmination of 10 years of work. The first half of which was to define the protocols, the standards, the formats, the conventions of internetwork communication for all the computers that were on these various packet switch networks.
And then in the last five years was implementing the protocols in a variety of operating systems so that people could, in fact, use the design. So what we saw with TCP/IP was the specification of how computers interacted with each other through these multiple nets and the basic architecture of the Internet itself.
SEABROOK: You said something in there - I think I followed you on pretty much all that except the words packet switch networks. I think what you're talking about is how TCP/IP works, right?
Mr. CERF: Well, basically that's a fundamental technology on top of which the TCP/IP design functions. And for your listeners who aren't too familiar with that, the simplest way to describe it is to say that packet switching is like postcards, except they're about a hundred million times faster than the post office works.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CERF: But they behave the same way. When you put a postcard into the postal service, there's no guarantee it comes out the other end. It's called best-efforts communication. And that's also true of Internet packets. Similarly, if you put two postcards into the postbox, there's no guarantee that the recipient gets them in the same order that you put them in. And that's also true of Internet packets. And so the TCP, your transmission control protocol, is what keeps everything in order, and the IP layer, the internet protocol, is what actually delivers things from the source to the destination.
SEABROOK: Vint Cerf, back in the late '70s and early '80s, what problem were you solving when you created this? I mean, were you envisioning the Internet when you installed this new computer protocol?
Mr. CERF: Well, it would be a long story to say exactly what we were thinking, but in short terms, yes, we understood a lot of what was happening or what could happen with this technology. We knew it was very powerful. Whether we envision what the world would be like with a billion users, I think, it would arguably, no, we didn't really. But the basic problem we were solving is that the military needed to be able to use satellite radio and wire-line computer networks in order to use computers and to man the control.
And so we had to find a way of taking a variety of very different kinds of computer networks and connect them together in such a way that the computers at the - on each of those networks saw just a common and rather uniform system despite the diversity of the underlining computer networks.
SEABROOK: Vinton Cerf helps create the Internet communication standard TCP/IP. He's now at Google as the company's - this is his title - vice president and chief Internet evangelist.
Thank you very much for joining us, sir.
Mr. CERF: Thanks so much, Andrea. I appreciate the chance to chat.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Now, this election news from a small place with strategic importance beyond its size. No, not another update from New Hampshire. Exit polls show voters in the former Soviet Republic of Georgia re-elected their president today.
Mikhail Saakashvili is a U.S.-educated lawyer who came to power after the so-called Rose Revolution four years ago. He's tried to push Georgia closer to NATO and the European Union - to the dismay of the country's much bigger neighbor, Russia.
NPR's Gregory Feifer is in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, and joins me on the line.
Greg, how big a win does this seem to be for Saakashvili?
GREGORY FEIFER: Well, according to exit polls, this is a very big win. And the figures are showing that he won more than 50 percent of the votes, a majority which enables him to avoid a runoff in two weeks. Saakashvili today told me after casting his vote that the election was really about whether the Georgian people wanted to continue the radical reforms that he has undertaken, trying to reduce the country's poverty, trying to overhaul its economy, and also very important, trying to push Georgia closer toward the West. He said that a win for him would mean that Georgia would continue on this path that he began four years ago.
SEABROOK: The president scheduled the election after he'd used force to crackdown on protesters back in November. He got a lot of flack for that especially from the West. What's been the reaction from his opponents to his win?
FEIFER: Well, his main opponents have said that Saakashvili has falsified the vote count. They are not accepting the results and they are calling for a protest in the streets tomorrow afternoon, local time in Georgia. We'll have to see just how many people will come out.
When I was speaking to voters today at polling stations in the capital, many of them said that they had voted for opposition figures, but that they still respected the president and that they thought that the campaign was largely free and fair. And my sense was that people really weren't ready to come out. That they were ready to respect the results, whichever way they went.
SEABROOK: There were Western election monitors there, weren't there also? And what did they say about the fairness and freeness of this election?
FEIFER: That's right. There are more than a thousands international observers here, and there have been some instances of reported violations, and international observers have said that they had verified some reports. But largely, the first reaction is that this election was free and fair. The OSCE's main election monitoring body is set to hold a news conference tomorrow and they're not officially commenting until this news conference. But so far, the reaction has been that Georgia is passing the democracy test.
SEABROOK: Now, let's remember for a moment that Georgia is in a strategic location near Iran and Turkey. There's an important oil pipeline that runs through Georgia and there was a referendum question on the ballot today, asking voters whether Georgia should join NATO. What was the result of that, Greg?
FEIFER: According to the exit polls, more than 60 percent of voters said that they wanted Georgia to join NATO. Now, Georgia is sandwiched essentially between Russia and the West. And Russia has reacted furiously to President Saakashvili's drive for his country to join NATO, to integrate with the West. And Russia has enacted today a full economic embargo. You can't fly Tbilisi from Moscow. I had to fly through Istanbul. You can't buy Georgian products in Russia. So Russia has really done a lot to try to, actually, undermine Saakashvili's rule.
Moscow also supports two separatist provinces inside Georgia. But Georgian people say that they want the country to join NATO. Every single opposition candidate agrees with President Saakashvili that Georgia should join NATO and that it should move closer to the West and this is one thing that voters to whom I was speaking today all agreed that this is something that they wanted to see too.
SEABROOK: NPR's Gregory Feifer in Tbilisi, Georgia.
Thank you very much.
FEIFER: You're welcome.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
And now, to Spain, and a story about the Gypsies or Roma people who have live there since the 15th century. It wasn't until the late 1970s that Spain accepted Gypsies as citizens. Now, the Spanish government is spending millions of euros to improve their lot.
But as Jerome Socolovsky says some Gypsies are resisting the government's efforts to move them out of the slums where they live.
JEROME SOCOLOVSKY: A long line of garbage trucks heads for the municipal dump, rumbling pass tin huts and cinderblock shanks in a shantytown on the outskirts of Madrid. Junkies and prostitutes languish along the potholed thoroughfare that has no stop signs or cross walks. It's not unusual for children to get run over. This is one of several shantytowns populated by Gypsies and immigrants. Municipal bulldozers have started demolishing illegally built homes here, and recently, things got out of hands.
(Soundbite of crowd noise)
SOCOLOVSKY: Spanish TV broadcast images of youths furling rocks and police running away. There have been several outbreaks of violent protests like this in recent months and some parts of the Spanish press are calling it intifada.
This slum, known as La Canada Real is a sight you don't expect to see in western Europe. Over the past few decades, it swelled to around 40,000 inhabitants. It's thought that about a third of the estimated 650,000 Gypsies in Spain live in shantytowns like this one. There are some nice homes here with gardens and even fountains, but all the dwellings are illegal and Madrid's urban sprawl is encroaching with luxury high rises just over the hill. Many residents of La Canada fear eviction may be imminent.
Unidentified Woman #1: Hola.
SOCOLOVSKY: A social worker goes into an old furniture workshop that's been converted into a school for illiterate adults. Gypsy women wearing thick makeup and flashy jewelry sit around the table, learning multiplication.
Unidentified Woman #1: (Speaking in Spanish)
Unidentified Group: (Speaking in Spanish)
SOCOLOVSKY: The high school drop out rate among Gypsies is 80 percent. Many of these women, when they were girls, were kept home from school and then started families in their teens. Still, the women don't complain about their laden life and the class is lively.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SOCOLOVSKY: The women are less happy about the city's plan to get rid of the shantytowns.
Ms. MARUJA VARGAZ FERNANDEZ(ph): (Foreign language spoken)
SOCOLOVSKY: At least they should give us a roof over our heads, says Maruja Vargaz Fernandez. What are we supposed to do? End up on the street? She seems unmoved by government promises of subsidized housing for those who qualify. The teacher, Paloma Cuaver(ph) says Gypsies are still weary of Spanish society. Even those who've moved up face stereotypes of them as beggars, thieves and fortunetellers. She says Spaniards are more prejudiced against Gypsies than against recent immigrants from Morocco, Latin America and Eastern Europe.
Ms. PALOMA CUAVER (Teacher): (Foreign language spoken)
SOCOLOVSKY: There's less racism toward the immigrant population than there is toward Gypsies, she says, and they've been in this country for more than 500 years.
Unidentified Woman #2: (Singing in Foreign language)s
SOCOLOVSKY: The women in the class sing flamenco spiritual. Flamenco music is the Gypsy's best known contribution to Spanish culture. It's also used heavily in the new anti-job-discrimination ad campaign by the Gypsy foundation which tries to capitalize on Spaniard's positive association with the music.
(Soundbite of music)
SOCOLOVSKY: Since Gypsies became Spanish citizens from the late '70s, local governments have tried to integrate them by relocating them in municipal housing. Over the next four years, Madrid plans to spend $100 million in an effort to clear out all remaining shantytowns. The effort in Madrid is run by the Institute for Relocation and Social Integration. Seating at his sleek modern office, director Javier Ramirez(ph) says the Gypsies throwing rocks at police, do it because they are individuals with criminal records or something else that disqualifies them from the program.
Mr. JAVIER RAMIREZ (Director, Institute for Relocation and Social Integration): (Foreign language spoken)
SOCOLOVSKY: Those who know that they don't have a right to be relocated are trying to obtain that right by force, he says.
Some Gypsies say they prefer to stay in the shantytowns where they have a tight-knit community life. Others simply don't trust the authorities.
Dolores Hernandez Jimenez(ph) walks out of the relocation institute into the bitter cold. She said she thought she'd be relocated within a month.
Ms. DOLORES HERNANDEZ JIMENEZ: (Speaking in foreign language)
SOCOLOVSKY: But is still don't have a place to live and I've been waiting for four and half years, she says. It's not right that they do this to us Gypsies. It's not right. We are Spaniards.
For NPR News, I'm Jerome Socolovsky in Madrid.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
(Soundbite of movie "Animal House")
SEABROOK: The movie "Animal House" is, of course, the stereotype of the college fraternity: binge drinking, hazing, partying. But some fraternities are trying to change that frat-boy culture.
NPR's Chana Joffe-Walt explains.
CHANA JOFFE-WALT: How do you bond with a frat guy? Ask them about their latest, wildest, hottest party. It's what I asked freshman and new Sigma Phi Epsilon recruit Lin Chen(ph) at Georgetown University in D.C. So togas - or no, wait, wait, I know beer bong beach team.
Mr. LIN CHEN (Recruit, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Georgetown University): Yeah. Paul(ph) got like 20 something pumpkins.
JOFFE-WALT: Pumpkin smashing, all right.
Mr. CHEN: …tarps and he started carving.
Unidentified Man: Music.
Mr. CHEN: Yeah. Music, hot cider. Get the real family feel together so…
JOFFE-WALT: Wholesome pumpkin carving? Okay, but you guys have done something crazy recently. What about the ladies? Fraternity president Paul Happel says he and his brothers, they're not about random drunken hookups. They're trying to do something different.
Mr. PAUL HAPPEL (President, Sigma Phi Epsilon, Georgetown University): There this sort of thing at Georgetown. It's sort of an unspoken rule that you don't exactly take girls out on dates. I think it's interesting that SigEp really takes great pains to improve the culture of dating at the school, and they do that through having different sorts of events off of campus and the Christmas…
JOFFE-WALT: Events like ice skating, formals, or taking the lady to the opera. Sigma Phi Epsilon has taken on a new agenda. It goes by the name of Balanced Man. The principles: scholar, leader, athlete and gentleman. There's lots of talk about being gentleman. And they've thrown out the defining first step of fraternity membership: pledging. That means freshmen like Lin Chen don't have to scrape out the pumpkin seeds or do unspeakable things at them. Glen says if there was hazing and endless keggers, he never would have joined.
Mr. CHEN: I came to Georgetown paying $50,000 a year. I kind of want to accomplish something outside of, you know, having a good story to tell my grandkids about what not to do in college.
JOFFE-WALT: SigEp isn't the only one flying classy frat guys though. According to the North-American Interfraternity Conference, half of its 350,000 undergraduates are in these re-imagining-the-frat-type programs, the programs, with names like Man of Principle and the True Brother Initiative prop up civility, scholarship and virtue. But the truth is they weren't exactly born out of some sort of lofty ideal.
Matt Ontell is director of member development for SigEp, and he remembers the rowdy '80s and that '90s and a lot of the 2000s too.
Mr. MATT ONTELL (Director, Member Development, Sigma Phi Epsilon): We had a lot of risk mismanagement issues.
JOFFE-WALT: That's frat code for lawsuits when drunk kids throw themselves off buildings.
Mr. ONTELL: From hazing to alcohol abuse and declining academics in grades.
JOFFE-WALT: So basically frat boy culture have spawned so many disasters on college campuses that chapters kept getting shut down. Now, people like Mike Hayes, director of fraternities at the University of Maryland, are hesitantly allowing some chapters to reopen, if they are balanced men.
He says universities have been pushing fraternities to be focused on honor and scholarship for years now. But, finally, the fraternity's headquarters are on board. And he says for the kids who want to be animals, who aren't into the wine tasting, the group study sessions…
Mr. MIKE HAYES (Director, Fraternity and Sorority Life, University of Maryland): Here's that one answer, I don't think they're going to have a choice. The headquarters and the universities are now in synch, and so the undergraduates won't have a choice. I think it's one of the first times in my 20 years where I've seen something that I believe will stick.
Unidentified Woman: (Unintelligible)
JOFFE-WALT: I'll leave the gentleman over at Georgetown to stop in on their brothers at George Washington University's SigEp chapter. They're on the basement floor, concentrating on their breath.
Unidentified Woman: Pointers, like, they're going to try pretend that you're (unintelligible). In between tooth means a blast. So everything's back on top of the other.
JOFFE-WALT: Yeah. That's right. These frat boys are doing yoga. They're sweaty, red faced, very earnest and incredibly inflexible. The downward dogs that talk about manly virtue, it's all almost too much. These guys are in college. Where is the fun?
Chana Joffe-Walt, NPR News, Washington.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Children's book writer Jon Scieszka is known for his charmingly twisted best-sellers, "The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales" and "The True Story of the Three Little Pigs."
This week, he gained a new title, National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. He is the first author to get this honor from the Library of Congress.
Mr. Scieszka, Thank you very much for joining us.
Mr. JON SCIESZKA (Author; National Ambassador for Young People's Literature): Oh, my pleasure.
SEABROOK: So the first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature sounds like a pretty grown up job.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCIESZKA: That's a very easy title too. It's just rolls the (unintelligible)…
SEABROOK: What exactly do you do, sir?
Mr. SCIESZKA: I'm just starting. You know what is the best part, I'm the first guy to ever do this, so I got to kind of make it up and like go along.
SEABROOK: Well, you know what's interesting about that is that the Library of Congress could have picked somebody, shall we say, not quite as edgy or maybe weird is the word.
Mr. SCIESZKA: What are you implying?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCIESZKA: Like - you're not even implying. You just said it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCIESZKA: No, you know what, In fact, that's part of what really stun me when they called me. I think you've dialed the wrong number. Were you trying to get Katherine Paterson or someone? I'm the guy who wrote "The Stinky Cheese Man" not "The Bridge to Terabithia."
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: Are kids reading less? Why do we need an ambassador for young people's literature?
Mr. SCIESZKA: Yeah. In fact, people are realizing kids are reading less. Like all those recent studies, like the NEA study that just came out found without a doubt kids are reading less and getting worse at it. So I've got a chance to connect kids with some really exciting books that might sign of spark them, get them reading again.
SEABROOK: I thought with all the "Harry Potter" stuff, all that hype about the "Harry Potter" books, kids were reading more.
Mr. SCIESZKA: The "Harry Potter" stuff certainly has got a lot of kids reconnected with reading. But I think we struggle from like a bigger overall problem where we're not communicating to kids that you can read for pleasure, you can read for fun. I mean, reading has become this thing that kids have to do in school.
SEABROOK: Hmm.
Mr. SCIESZKA: And then answer a bunch of questions.
SEABROOK: So what do you do? How do you fix it?
Mr. SCIESZKA: For one, maybe make a broader definition of what reading really is and let kids read what they enjoy. And I was a teacher for 10 years here in New York, an elementary teacher. And I understand like we really promote fiction. But a lot of kids like nonfiction. Kids like humor. Kids like science fiction. Kids like a lot of motorcycle magazines. Graphic novel is another great area that's just booming. But it's not really seen as reading.
But I think kids actually, in my class, then realized, like, oh, all right. You can like different kinds of books. Miss Alberty(ph) in first grade, she likes different kind of books. Mr. Scieszka, he likes these weird books there.
SEABROOK: That's Ambassador Scieszka to you.
Mr. SCIESZKA: Oh, yes. Now, it's Ambassador Scieszka. I can tell them what they'll like.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: I understand that you don't want to demonize television actually.
Mr. SCIESZKA: I think we've tried that and it didn't work. I even had an experience with my son when he was growing up. I had to go and then beg off and turn off TV week because it was hockey play-offs. He's a hockey player. And I couldn't tell him like we can't watch the play-offs. We can read about it in the newspaper. That's no good. You got to see it. Some things are better on TV.
SEABROOK: Now, all this talking about reading makes me want to actually…
Mr. SCIESZKA: See, it worked, my whole ambassador plan.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCIESZKA: Oh, my God. It's perfect.
SEABROOK: I have in front of me this beautiful book titled "Cowboy and Octopus."
Mr. SCIESZKA: Ah, that's my most recent.
SEABROOK: I read it, very scary, which is the story of Halloween.
Mr. SCIESZKA: Oh, it's almost too frightening to read.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCIESZKA: Do you like my scary Halloween costume, says Octopus. What are you, says Cowboy. Octopus says, I am a shark. Oh, yes, says Cowboy, now I see your little shark thingy. Oh, it's not very scary, is it, says Octopus. Cowboy says, nope. I'm going back to my first scary idea, says Octopus. Then you turn the page and you look and you see he's in a very nice little tiara and little dress with a wand. Whoa. What the heck are you, says Cowboy. Octopus says, I am the tooth fairy. Now, that's scary, says Cowboy, very scary.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: Jon Scieszka, you have a new book coming out this week called "Trucktown." I understand…
Mr. SCIESZKA: Oh, yeah.
SEABROOK: …your motto is move over Thomas the Tank Engine.
Mr. SCIESZKA: Somebody coined that motto, but I love it.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCIESZKA: It's actually more than a book or a book series. It's going to be 50 books in the next three years.
SEABROOK: What do you mean?
Mr. SCIESZKA: It's crazy. I know. But I'm the ambassador so I can do whatever I want now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: Jon Scieszka, I mean, Ambassador Scieszka, thank you so much…
Mr. SCIESZKA: Yes.
SEABROOK: …for speaking with us.
Mr. SCIESZKA: Yes. It's my pleasure, Andrea.
SEABROOK: Jon Scieszka is the author of "Trucktown," a children's book series to be published next week. He'll be touring the country as the first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature of the Library of Congress.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
You've shoveled it. You packed it into balls. And if you're in Daytona Beach, Florida, this week, you even got a tiny taste of it. But have you ever look really closely at snow? That's this week's Science Out of the Box.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Discover magazine ran a list just a few weeks ago of 20 facts you didn't know about snow. For instance, snow is a mineral like diamonds or salt.
To dig a little deeper into this drift, we called up Dr. Matthew Sturm. He's a senior research scientist and snow expert with the Army's Cold Regions Research Laboratory. That's in Fairbanks, Alaska.
How are you, Dr. Sturm?
Dr. MATTHEW STURM (Snow Expert; Senior Research Scientist, U.S. Army Cold Regions Research Laboratory): I'm fine.
SEABROOK: Good. How cold is it up there today?
Dr. STURM: It's about 10 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
SEABROOK: Eek. So tell me, Dr. Sturm, how can snow be a mineral?
Dr. STURM: Basically, we're used to water as being a liquid that comes out of the tap. But once the temperature drops below 32 degrees and, of course, water is a solid, and just like any other mineral, it has a molecular structure and properties. If you took a hunk of ice, it feels a lot like a rock, acts a lot like a rock in many ways, has material properties and it is effectively a mineral.
SEABROOK: Now, I also read in this list on Discover magazine that each snowflake has a tiny mote of dust at its center, something it can be volcanic ash, it can space dust.
Dr. STURM: What happens is where there is a cloud in which snowflakes are forming, water doesn't like to freeze. It's very hard for very minute sort of single molecule level amounts of water to freeze and so that the water can actually super cool. And under some conditions, water can stay liquid down to about minus 40 degrees. But if we introduce a piece of dust, a piece of sea salt that's in the atmosphere, that helps the water to freeze. And so what happens is where there are these little moats in the cloud, the water begins to freeze more rapidly. And those become the little hearts or insipient pieces of the snowflakes.
SEABROOK: Is it true that really there are no two snowflakes that are alike if you look at them carefully? Or is it just because there is no two of anything that are just…
Dr. STURM: There are no two of anything that are alike. That would be the basic thing. The second thing is that at least those snowflakes that are fairly ornate, these won't even be visually alike under a microscope. The only hope we find for finding two snowflakes that are absolutely alike at least visually would be the simpler forms, which would be simple hexagonal plates with no arms or branches. If we could search all the snowflakes on Earth in the simpler forms, we might someday find, too, that for all intents and purposes would look close enough to be the same.
SEABROOK: So there's - there are - how many basic patterns of snowflakes are there?
Dr. STURM: There's prisms, low squat prisms. There're plates - always hexagonal, everything is on a hexagonal base. There're dendrites, which what everyone thinks of, they're the Christmas decoration snowflake, kind of a branching thing, capped columns, needles and bullets. When all is said and done, we probably can come up with 30 or 40 general types but probably about six basic forms.
SEABROOK: Dr. Sturm, I understand that you're an expert on what happens to snowflakes once they hit the ground.
Dr. STURM: Yes. Strangely, the world of the cloud where the snowflake forms is a very dynamic world. It's very moist. When they finally fall to the ground, they've been immersed in a new world, totally different temperature and vapor pressure. In other words, how moist it is.
And so they immediately start to change. You can see this actually with a hand lens. If you look the day after a snow fall, you won't see the beautiful pristine snowflakes that fell the day before. They're already breaking up and rounding over. They can change in one of two ways. They can either become very rounded type snow crystals now in the snow pack, or very angular sort of ornate hollow crystals, which is we called kinetic or temperature-gradient forms.
SEABROOK: Any kinds that's best for snowballs?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. STURM: Typically the rounded ones, and the snow needs to be warm because the thing that makes a good snowball is that the snow sticks together.
SEABROOK: Dr. Matthew Sturm of the Army's Cold Regions Research Lab. Thank you so much for talking to us.
Dr. STURM: Thank you for having me on.
SEABROOK: And Dr. Sturm, we have a little parting gift for playing along with us today. Here's a little story about snow from Stanley McNeal(ph) in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
Mr. STANLEY McNEAL: These two old guys, it was in the Gaelic days, I guess. And they were in this old general store over in Scottsville. And these two old fellows were in and they were busy talking Gaelic. And all of a sudden, it started to get rough outside, snowing, blowing, first snow of the year, you know? And one old fellow said in Gaelic, well, I hope to have - we won't get the snow we had last winter. And the other old fellow answered him, there's no way we'll get that. That's melted.
SEABROOK: That's melted.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. STURM: That's very good.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Well, that leads us into last week's Homework assignment. Jacki Lyden hosted the show and she asked you to help us start the New Year with a laugh by telling a favorite joke.
So here it goes. A small sampling from you, our dear listeners.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. JIM SULLY(ph): My name is Jim Sully. I'm in Indianapolis, Indiana. I'm an engineer. A joke that stuck with me for years and years is the following: Two atoms are walking down the street. And one turns to the other and says, hang on a second, I just lost an electron. And the first one says, are you sure? And the second one says, yeah, I'm positive.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. ARLENE MORRETT(ph): Hi, it's Arlene Morrett of Coral Gables, Florida. You know what the snail said when hitching a ride on the tortoise's back? He said, wait.
(Soundbite of music)
ANDREW(ph): Hi, my name is Andrew. And I live in Greensboro, North Carolina. My friend, Ali(ph), actually made out the joke. And it goes, what is the hardest thing about rollerblading? And the answer is telling your parents that you're gay.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: And here's a submission of my own. Here goes. Before going in search of gold, what does a swashbuckler do to limber up? Answer, pirates.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: Thank you. Thank you. No, no, really. And thanks to everyone who called in. Sorry, we couldn't get all the jokes on. We're donating the extras to Jay Leno, during the writers strike, I'm sure he'll take all the help he can get.
For next week's Homework assignment, now that we're in the thick of the presidential campaigns, I want you to tell me about your election experiences. Think back - a run for elementary school student council count, captain of your cheerleading team, just fine. Send us your stories to homework@npr.org or you can call our Homework hotline at 202-408-5183.
And now for these parting words. Lest do you think our jocularity today was all silliness and frivolity, consider these words from the great American humorist Mark Twain: power, money, persuasion, supplication, persecution - these can lift at a colossal humbug - push it a little - weaken it a little, century by century; but only laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast. Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.
That's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Every year, the American Dialect Society, which is dedicated to the study of American English, votes on a word of the year. The group's members include linguists, lexicographers and etymologists, grammarians, professors and amateurs. The word of the year doesn't have to be brand new, but it does need to have the flair of the year. Past winners include metrosexual, millennium bug and chad, as in hanging chad.
And now, the 2007 Word of the Year as been announced, and it is - drum roll please - subprime. By now, you know what that means. But did you know it's gotten a little currency beyond the world of real estate lending? Some college students are reported to be saying I subprimed that exam, meaning to have bombed it - the term of art in my college days.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
There is a war within war that some soldiers fight long after they're home. Thousands of men and women returning from Iraq are suffering from some form post-traumatic stress disorder. We tend to think of them as soldiers who've been in firefights or bombings. What's less well-known is that the very people who are supposed to care for soldiers, including medics and chaplains, are also susceptible to PTSD.
Reporter Jane Arraf has the story of one Army chaplain she knew in Iraq who's now struggling with the war at home.
JANE ARRAF: A lot of people wonder what happened to Chaplain Douglas Faker(ph) Fenton. He's a Presbyterian minister, a former military lawyer, a Major in the Army. He went to Iraq with the best of intentions - to serve his country, to comfort the wounded, to honor the dead. People think a chaplain's faith is his armor against the horrors of war.
Major DOUGLAS FENTON (Chaplain, U.S. Army): Chaplains are not allowed to have problems. Chaplains have to focus on other people's problems. And if you get to that point, God help you. God help you.
(Soundbite of trumpet playing)
ARRAF: This was the homecoming Chaplain Fenton was supposed to have had.
(Soundbite of trumpet playing)
ARRAF: It's Fort Hood, Texas - a cold and foggy December morning. The First Cavalry Division band plays in the drizzle. Soldiers in black Stetsons stand at attention, holding sabers aloft.
(Soundbite of soldier formation)
ARRAF: One of the men stepping off the plane is Colonel David Sutherland. I met him in Iraq eight months ago. For almost a year and a half, he was responsible for as many as 5,000 soldiers attached to the Third Brigade, including Chaplain Fenton. They were in one of the most dangerous parts of the country, Diyala province.
Colonel DAVID SUTHERLAND (Third Brigade): We have gone through things that you can't imagine together. And there will always be that bond between us that no one will understand, and no one could understand.
ARRAF: One hundred and eight of his soldiers didn't come home. For those who have returned whole, the homecoming is particularly sweet.
Unidentified Man: That is awesome.
Unidentified Child: Welcome home, daddy.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Man: Thank you.
(Soundbite of music)
ARRAF: That's a homecoming Chaplain Fenton could have had if he hadn't been medically evacuated months before to a psychiatric ward.
Maj. FENTON: You had to turn over your uniform. You weren't given razor blades. You had to shave with someone watching you. And you had to wear pajamas.
ARRAF: Major Fenton was a career officer. At the Army hospital in Germany, junior soldiers were suddenly calling him by his first name instead of his rank.
Maj. FENTON: My first name is Douglas but I go by Charlie. My middle name is Charles, after my grandfather. They all started calling me Doug or Douglas. They didn't ask. So there I am, a 48-year-old man being called Doug or Douglas by E1s, E2s, E3s. They remove all your dignity. They remove all your professionalism. It's just, you know, on top of feeling like you've been castrated anyways, the shame and the guilt that you bring with it from PTSD in leaving theater, they then started heaping it on you.
ARRAF: The story of Chaplain Fenton's troubles began before he was stationed in Iraq. When he served at Arlington National Cemetery, he notifies families of soldiers who had been killed. At the cemetery, he conducted four to six funerals a day. At first, it was older veterans of other wars and then the Iraq War came home to Arlington.
Maj. FENTON: I started having friends die and I started burying friends.
ARRAF: One of them had been his driver at Arlington, Corporal William Long. Bill Long had been so close to the family that Fenton's son and daughter thought of him as their own brother. When Long was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade near Baqubah, the family was overwhelmed with grief. And Chaplain Fenton got word that he, too, was being sent to Baqubah. At Fort Hood, Texas and the months before he left, he drank to dull the pain. The drinking stopped in Iraq, he says, but not the grief.
I met Major Fenton in Baqubah last year. For an officer, he was unusually open in public. That might be why soldiers liked him. He seemed to have things under control. As brigade chaplain, a big part of his job wasn't just to council soldiers, it was to pray over the wounded and the dead.
Maj. FENTON: Invariably, when I would be with one of our fallen, I would think of a whole picture. I would think, obviously, about the soldiers that were left. I think about the soldiers that were wounded with him. I would think about him and then I would know his whole - from his record before I got there what his denomination was, whether he was married or not, whether his parents were married or divorced or not, how many kids he had. I would know that whole picture. So I could imagine and I could not keep myself from imagining that knock on the door. The next day, there's going to be a chaplain or an officer knocking on that family's door, telling them, and it just - it was always a picture for me. It was always a package.
ARRAF: And then he came to dread the knock on his own door in his tiny trailer on the base in Iraq.
Maj. FENTON: And they were so many times you got awaken to the middle of the night and told someone is either waiting for you in the helicopter or you got 10 minutes to get ready, that whenever I would hear noise like that, I was - at the beginning, I would start praying. At the end of my time there, I was saying, you know, no God.
ARRAF: No matter what you think the Iraq war, there is an indisputable truth - people die in horrible ways. One day, not long after Chaplain Fenton had been deployed, soldiers he was visiting handed him a cardboard box. It contained the severed foot of one of their buddies who have been killed. Fenton took the box on a helicopter and flew with it on his lap back to his base.
Maj. FENTON: You know I used to think that people will die and be peaceful. One gentleman drowned and he looked peaceful. It's hard to find a peaceful face there in the deceased just because the deaths there are so hard, so brutal.
ARRAF: And that's - is that why you'd have nightmares about seeing the bodies after they've been…
Maj. FENTON: Right.
ARRAF: …particularly in improvised explosives device attacks, I imagine?
Maj. FENTON: Yeah, yeah. Really hard to pray with.
ARRAF: As the death toll mounted, Chaplain Fenton did something he'd never done before. One night, he stopped in front of a concrete memorial wall at the base. Soldiers had inscribed it with the names of the fallen. It was pitched dark. Fenton took out a bicycle light and started reading the names on the wall. He could see only three or four at a time. And there, on that wall, was the name of his driver, Bill Long, the one he'd buried at Arlington.
Maj. FENTON: I sit in front of that wall and I couldn't breathe and I was crying. And I remember, at least in my head, I don't know if I was saying it out loud, it would have been three or four in the morning, but I think I was saying why God.
ARRAF: Why send them to Iraq after a tour at Arlington Cemetery? Why post them here in Baqubah of all places? He didn't get an answer that night. For the chaplain, that was the beginning of his descent.
Psychiatrist say PTSD sufferers behave in ways that are logical when someone's trying to kill you. But then that behavior persists after the danger is gone, behavior like hyper-vigilance to threat or emotional isolation.
Colonel John Bradley is the chief psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He says care providers including medics and chaplains seem to suffer from PTSD at about the same rate as deployed soldiers, between 10 and 17 percent.
Colonel JOHN BRADLEY (Chief Psychiatrist, Walter Reed Army Medical Center): One person's trauma may not be another person's trauma. So it could be something from being engaged in a firefight, which I think we would all agree is a potentially traumatic event, to witnessing death and destruction, death bodies, injuries, and things along those lines.
Chaplain Fenton saw a lot of that people, dead soldiers.
ARRAF: Battalion Chaplain Jesus Perez served under Fenton.
Captain JESUS PEREZ: When he left, he saw about 80 soldiers killed. That's a lot. And I think that was too much for him, not because he was weak, it's because he loved too much. He loved his soldiers. He loved his soldier, his driver. And he was seen in each of every soldier that got killed, his own soldier.
ARRAF: Chaplain Fenton lost his ability to concentrate. It took him hours to write sermons. He'd cry uncontrollably. He was depressed and angry. His heart raced. Some days, he couldn't get out of bed to preach. He started withdrawing from the very soldiers he was supposed to council. And then it got worse.
Maj. FENTON: At the end, I would go to a memorial ceremony and I wouldn't remember anything until I got the volleys or taps. And I have my eyes up in the whole time but it was like you're asleep. And I'd wake up for volleys and taps and realize it was over. The chaplains would say, how did I do, and I'd say, oh, you did great. But I don't remember a single thing they had to say. It's just way too painful.
ARRAF: By the end of his tour, he felt he was losing his mind. Everything fell apart one day last August. Chaplain Perez remembers Fenton saying he wished sometimes that he had died instead of the soldiers.
Capt. PEREZ: He was in the chapel, and I came to the office and he was sitting down. And suddenly, he burst, crying. So I asked him what was going on. And he says I can do this no more. And we had a conversation where I realized that it was time for him to get help outside Iraq. Iraq was not going to be the place where he's going to get better.
ARRAF: They evacuated Chaplain Fenton to Germany, diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and then onto Walter Reed.
Maj. FENTON: My first day out of in-patient, I walked into the Malone House to get my room assignment to live at Walter Reed and pushing out the doors with an amputee who I didn't recognize but he recognized me. You know, he's, hey, Chaplain, do you remember me? And he goes, you prayed with me. But there were too many, there were too many.
ARRAF: Major Fenton is still on active duty. He's been transferred to what the Army has begun calling the Warrior Transition Brigade. His job now is to get well. Several times a week, he attends therapy at Walter Reed. His wife, Christine, took unpaid leave from her job in mortuary affairs at Fort Hood. The whole time Charlie was in Iraq, she'd been on the other end helping to receive the bodies he's prayed over. In some ways, they share those loses. But later, she realized there were a lot of things she couldn't share with her husband.
Ms. CHRISTINE FENTON: Things that happened, I pretty much don't tell him. I mean, I remember the day my daughter called to tell me she was being deployed. And I talked to her on the phone. I was at work. I was at Fort Hood still, and I talked to her. And I was very calm on the phone and I hung up the phone. I started sobbing hysterically. My supervisor came out and took me to one of the grief rooms in our office, sat me down and, you know, asked me what was wrong. And I said I can't do this anymore. She says you don't have a choice. You have to do it and you will do it. And I remember thinking that was mean, but she was right. Someone has to be strong for everyone else.
ARRAF: And right now that someone is Christine Fenton. At their home in Virginia, Major Fenton's 13-year-old son, Connor, slouches against his dad on the couch.
Mr. CONNOR FENTON: Even though he's having a hard time with it, I'm glad that he's able to stay emotional because, even though it's hard when he cries a lot or when he (unintelligible) because he's sad, at least you know he's feeling it and at least you know he's starting his path to recovery, hopefully, because, yeah, like some of those guys who never recover or because they can't feel anything, nothing changes for them.
ARRAF: On the day we visited, Chaplain Fenton was preparing an invocation he'd been asked to give at the Pentagon. He was nervous. He hadn't offered a public prayer since before he was evacuated.
Maj. FENTON: It's hard for me to pray out loud. I mean, tomorrow I'm going to write my prayer out so I can control myself, but I cannot pray out loud without it taking me places right now. And I don't want to do that in public.
(Soundbite of noise)
ARRAF: We waited for Chaplain Fenton the next day at the Pentagon, but he never came. Christine Fenton arrived alone. Her husband had panicked. She left him at home crying, apologetic, ashamed. Dressed in red, she sat ramrod straight in the front row next to an empty seat with her husband's name on it. Her determined smile didn't waver.
Charlie Fenton says his faith in God hasn't been shaken. He and his family believe he has a new calling, one that will lead him to use his faith and his suffering to help others with PTSD. When I asked him if there was a peace of Scripture he turn to for comfort, he recalled this passage.
Maj. FENTON: It says when there's no buds on the trees, there's no fruit in the vines, when the sheep are not in the stalls and the cattle are not in the fields, yet I will worship you. Oh God, you are my strength. You will lift me up to the high places like the feet of a deer. And you know I think of that image of a family, you know, starving to death and not making it and in great suffering and still worshipping God. That's the one I think of.
ARRAF: For NPR News, I'm Jane Arraf.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Our parting words tonight came from Chaplain Charlie Fenton.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Today, the clouds cleared and the temperature rose in New Hampshire, where a dozen candidates for president may be producing climate change themselves with near-nonstop frenzy of rallies, debates and speeches.
Last night, there were debates for both Democrats and Republicans. And tonight, the GOP candidates meet again near Manchester. NPR's reporters have accompanied the candidates across the landscape today. And they sent us their insights, beginning with Tovia Smith who's travelling with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
TOVIA SMITH: As he takes to the stage in New Hampshire these days, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney waste no opportunity trying to sell himself as a favorite son and exploit what he hopes will be his home field advantage.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Republican Presidential Candidate): Now, Tag, my oldest son isn't here but his son, Joseph, is here, wearing the Red Sox hat, of course.
T. SMITH: New Hampshire voters have been kind in the past to candidates from neighboring Massachusetts. Michael Dukakis, Paul Tsongas and John Kerry have all won here. Romney is hoping his familiarity - and his conservative fiscal stance - will appeal to voters in live-free-or-die New Hampshire. He brought up his friend and anti-tax crusader, Barbara Anderson, to remind voters of the uphill battles he has fought in the base state like opposing a retroactive capital gains tax.
Ms. BARBARA ANDERSON (Executive Director, Citizens for Limited Taxation): Mitt Romney saved Massachusetts because he said that was crazy. You can't do that.
T. SMITH: It's a storyline that resonates with many New Hampshire voters like Steve Presstack.
Mr. STEVE PRESSTACK: It can be an easy thing to do to be, you know, a Republican in a Democratic state. And just to get elected, I think, was pretty amazing.
T. SMITH: But New Hampshire voters' familiarity with Romney doesn't always work in his favor.
Mr. CHRIS LONUS (Resident, New Hampshire): It's a double-edged sword.
SMITH: Thirty-year-old Chris Lonus remembers the pro-life, anti-gay marriage Mitt Romney back when he was pro-choice and vowing to be a stronger advocate for gay rights than Ted Kennedy. Now, he doesn't which is real and which is fake.
Mr. LONUS: There are too many things that make you wonder why the flip-flopping. And if you don't believe in what you're talking about, then how's the rest of the country are going to believe in you?
T. SMITH: So the better you know him for you…
Mr. LONUS: The more I second-guess him.
T. SMITH: But for some voters the increasing attacks on Romney hurt his attackers more than him. This voter made up her mind for Romney after watching John McCain go after him in last night's debate.
Ms. SHARON FAKE (Resident, New Hampshire): It was childish. It was not presidential. It was a little scary in some parts. So today, we just felt we've kind of sealed the deal.
T. SMITH: And tell me your name, please.
Ms. FAKE: Sharon Fake.
T. SMITH: Fake?
Ms. FAKE: F-A-K-E.
T. SMITH: Really.
(Soundbite of laughter)
T. SMITH: And you're for Romney.
Ms. FAKE: Fake for Romney, is that bad?
T. SMITH: His opponents would have a feel to it.
Ms. FAKE: That's right. I know. But I think that, you know, politics - there's all kinds of politics. I mean, you know, that's the way it is.
T. SMITH: Tovia Smith, NPR News.
ROBERT SMITH: I'm Robert Smith.
Scripture tells us remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, but Baptist minister Mike Huckabee wasn't resting two days before the New Hampshire primary. In fact, at a rally in Windham, he was advocating distinctly unchristian behavior.
Mr. HUCKABEE: If you've got neighbors that say I'm not voting for that Huckabee guy, shovel your snow in his driveway.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. HUCKABEE: Do me and yourself a favor.
R. SMITH: In Iowa, Huckabee build himself as a Christian leader. In South Carolina, he preached from the pulpit. But New Hampshire doesn't have that many evangelicals, so today Huckabee's only mention of religion was a quote from the "Declaration of Independence." Instead, in New Hampshire, he mostly talks about his rural upbringing and the economy - sometimes simultaneously.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Man, we can fix anything in the South with WD-40 and duct tape -except the tax code of the United States of America. It needs a total overhaul.
R. SMITH: He sure converted Steve Moore, a Republican from Windham. And Moore doesn't vote just based on religion.
Mr. STEVE MOORE: I voted for Perot, too. So I want government shaken up, and I want taxes to be revamped, and I think Mike Huckabee is going to do it.
R. SMITH: After his win in the Iowa caucuses, Huckabee said that he didn't expect to win in New Hampshire - he hasn't campaigned vigorously here. But he told the crowd today that all he has to do is surprise people to do well.
Robert Smith, NPR News.
DON GONYEA: I'm Don Gonyea, following the Obama campaign with a candidate that's striking an optimistic tone at rallies that are drawing huge crowds. The theme that runs through every Barack Obama's stump speech is hope. At times, it sounds like a Big Tent Revival meeting. This morning, he was at the old Palace Theatre in downtown Manchester.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Democratic Presidential Candidate): It was because of hope that workers were able to win the right to organize and get a minimum wage and overtime and all the benefits we now take for granted. It was because of hope that women got the right to vote. It was because of hope that young people travel down south to Selma and Montgomery and marched, and sat in, and got beaten, and got fire hosed - all in the cause of freedom.
(Soundbite of applause)
GONYEA: Obama won over a 22-year-old student Ashley Currey of Bedford, New Hampshire.
Ms. ASHLEY CURREY (Resident, Bedford, New Hampshire): He is, you know, like he says, I talk about hope and people kind of talk down upon that. But, I mean, how could you? Hope is what gets people through every day. Hope is, you know, all people can have sometimes, and what a better thing to run on but hope, so.
GONYEA: Currey is a Democrat. But Obama events are also attracting a lot of undecided voters and independents. That describes 54-year-old Manchester attorney Chris Winzer.
Ms. CHRIS WINZER (Lawyer): I'm here to try and decide who to vote for.
GONYEA: You're still trying to decide?
Ms. WINZER: Yes, I am.
GONYEA: So give me a reaction.
Ms. WINZER: Well, I'm looking for an inspiration, and I think I found a little bit here today.
GONYEA: Winzer, who says she voted for George Bush in the last two elections, says she's still wants to see Hillary Clinton in person before making a decision this year. With polls showing the race so close and just two days to go, both says hard to nail down, as Winzer's, can still make the difference.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Manchester.
DAVID GREENE: And I'm David Greene in Nashua, where Hillary Clinton got back into rhythm today, speaking to an overflow crowd of more than 3,000 people at a high school. She used the moment to pick apart Barack Obama's record on Iraq.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): If you gave a speech, and a very good speech, against the war on Iraq in 2002, and then by 2004 you're saying you're not sure how you would have voted and by 2005, '06 and '07, you vote for $300 billion for the war you said you were against, that's not change.
(Soundbite of cheering)
GREENE: And so it went with her line of attack throughout the day. Clinton's advisers backed it up with a conference call to reporters, insisting that the media ask tougher questions about Obama. At least one voter at the Nashua event said she was turned off by Clinton's attack.
Ms. SARAH REYES: In talking about somebody else, I don't think that's going to get anything done.
GREENE: Sarah Reyes came today with her 4-year-old son. She said she was undecided between Clinton and Obama and especially interested in the issue of immigration. Her husband is from Mexico and became a legal resident in the U.S. in 2006. By chance, an audience member asked Clinton about the issue. And Reyes said she liked hearing Clinton say that those in the country illegally should have a shot at becoming a citizen.
Ms. REYES: Yes, they're going to have wait, you know, she was saying about 10, 15 years to be able to be maybe a legal resident. But they'll have that opportunity. Whereas - there are people who have been here for 50 years and haven't had that opportunity, but if they go back they're going to go back to nothing.
GREENE: Clinton's response, she said, helped her decide on a candidate.
Ms. REYES: I think I'm going with Hillary.
GREENE: Then again, she is a good New Hampshirite, so she added Obama and Clinton will still have her ear for another two days.
David Greene, NPR News, Nashua.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
NPR's David Folkenflik is following the rhetoric that's flying around during this campaign. And he's found many candidates were fighting last night during the debates over one word in particular.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK: Everybody was getting into the act.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Democratic Presidential Candidate): Change.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Democratic Presidential Candidate): Change.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): Change.
(Soundbite of song "Changes")
FOLKENFLIK: Those Democratic candidates minus David Bowie were hawking at change during last night's debate hosted by ABC, WMUR-TV and the Facebook online social network. That theme helped catapult Barack Obama to victory in Iowa and has landed him neck and neck with Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire polls. In the debate, Obama made his case.
Sen. OBAMA: I think it's easy to be cynical and just say, you know what, it can't be done because Washington's designed to resist change. But, in fact, there have been periods of time in our history where a president inspired the American people to do better. And I think we're in one of those moments right now.
FOLKENFLIK: Obama didn't even have to clear his throat to convey who he thinks would be a president who inspires. And John Edwards was clearly saying, hey, me too.
So when Hillary Clinton chimed in to defend him from criticism from Obama, Edwards refused her help.
Mr. EDWARDS: What will occur every time he speaks out for change, every time I fight for change, the forces of status quo are going to attack every single time.
FOLKENFLIK: Clinton sought to claim the mantle of change for herself.
Sen. CLINTON: I want to make change, but I've already made change. I will continue to make change.
FOLKENFLIK: And no, the good senator does not aspire to give you two fives for a ten anytime soon. She says she's not just running of president on a promise, but on a record of 35 years in public life.
Sen. CLINTON: I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change, and we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered. The best way to know what change I will produce is to look at the changes that I've already made.
FOLKENFLIK: And the rhetorical pivot is one of the changes she's made after a third place finish in Iowa and the erosion of her strong lead in New Hampshire.
Dr. LARRY PRELLI (Chair, Department of Communications, University of New Hampshire): It's a common sense appeal if you're going to - to want to change things, then it would be good to have someone who can point to a track record, saying, well, I handled these issues.
Larry Prelli is a professor at the University of New Hampshire who studies rhetoric, propaganda and political persuasion. He says Clinton risks being seen as part of the politics of the past.
Dr. PRELLI: Then this is the problem that she's having, that her strength, the virtue of having experience can readily be painted into the vice of status quoism.
FOLKENFLIK: Clinton is following the path of then-Texas governor George W. Bush, who got clobbered in the 2000 New Hampshire Republican primary. John McCain won there on a platform of reform, so Mr. Bush regrouped.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: And I've got a record of reform with results, and the question is does my opponent?
FOLKENFLIK: And we all know how that one ended up. This time, with President Bush toxic for a lot of voters in both parties, the idea of change seeped into the Republican debate last night, too, from Mitt Romney who lost in Iowa and is now tied with McCain in New Hampshire.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Republican Presidential Candidate) For 25 years I brought at company after company. In the Olympics - it was in trouble - I brought change. In Massachusetts, I brought change. I have done it.
FOLKENFLIK: With both primaries going down to the wire, the one thing the candidates most want to change are the minds of the New Hampshire voters.
David Folkenflik, NPR News.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
You have flipped through your supplements of your local newspaper this morning and thought you were reading an old issue. If your Sunday paper carries Parade magazine, as more than 400 do around the country, you would have seen this headline today: Is Benazir Bhutto America's Best Hope Against al-Qaida.
As you surely know, the Pakistani opposition leader was assassinated 10 days ago. But Parade magazine had already gone to press before that with writer Gail Sheehy's story about Bhutto. If you're a careful reader, you might have seen a brief editor's note in the front section of your newspaper - not the Parade magazine - alerting you to the fact that the Bhutto story had not been updated. Parade's publisher Randy Siegel explains what happened.
Mr. RANDY SIEGEL (President, Parade Publication): We have a contract with five printing presses across the country that we do not own. When you're printing 32 million copies, you have different constraints. And it's not like publishing a daily newspaper, it's just simply different. Every week, it costs several million dollars to print and distribute Parade, and I never justified our decision by saying it was a financial decision because it would have caused several million dollars to do. But that's not the reason - the rational for doing it. We believe that what Benazir Bhutto had to say should be heard and this story deserved to be told.
SEABROOK: Still, some readers commented on the magazine's Web site, calling the decision to run the story irresponsible, tasteless and disrespectful. One thing that may have confused some readers is that Parade magazine looks like the newspaper it comes with. It has the papers masthead.
The Chicago Tribune's public editor, Tim McNulty, suggests his paper should perhaps consider whether to drop the Tribune's branding because Parade's deadlines are so different from the Tribs.
Mr. TIM McNULTY (Public Editor, The Chicago Tribune) Our editorial judgment would have been different. We never would have published something ourselves that we had worked on without an update. So we thought of if not as a journalistic issue for us but as a contractual one.
SEABROOK: Now, this isn't the first time Parade magazine has been caught between the news and its early deadline.
Mr. SIEGEL: Around the time of the tragic assassination of John F. Kennedy, there was a story that went to press about a White House celebration that created some awkward circumstances because it went to press before President Kennedy was killed.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Now from old tech to new tech. If you're an audiophile with a surround sound setup and a library of Stravinsky mp3s, or a mega gamer with a souped-up Xbox 360 and virtual multiplayer connectivity, geek heaven this week is in Las Vegas. It's the Consumer Electronic Show, the biggest yearly convention of new gadgets and computing.
Parker Brugge is with the Consumer Electronics Association.
Mr. PARKER BRUGGE (Senior Director & Environmental Counsel, Consumer Electronics Association): There are 2,700 exhibitors and, what, 20,000 products that will out on the show floor. This is the place to see, new technologies and new products that the industry is bringing to consumers.
SEABROOK: Our own NPR's Laura Sydell is on the convention floor right now.
And Laura, it sounds pretty busy down there.
LAURA SYDELL: It sure is. Everyone if setting up for tomorrow's opening.
SEABROOK: So you got a sneak peak this weekend. What do you see?
SYDELL: Well, I would say I don't see so much. What's new is that everything is smaller, faster, more connected. And increasingly, this show is becoming central to a lot more industries. So this year, for the first time, there's a keynote speaker from the automobile industry. You have Rick Wagner who's the CEO of GM. And he's here because cars are increasingly computerized, so the have GPS, they have the ability for voice control of your music collection, built-in hands free cell phones.
SEABROOK: What you're getting at, Laura, is that this convention is sort of an important glimpse at what's going on in this vibrant park of our culture, technology. And you've covered the Consumer Electronic Show for years, how has it changed?
SYDELL: Well, again, I would say there's that convergence of many different industries coming together. This year, what I would say is really the newest thing is that wireless is getting better. So you're seeing more and more gadgets that enable you, for example, to move the Internet to your television. I think we're finally beginning to see affordable and workable technology that can really do that. And you're starting to see gadgets, like, for example I saw a picture frame that has wireless connection. And ultimately what they're working for here is that your picture frame will be able to connect to you Flickr account, so you'll be able to, you know, show your photos that way or you'll have GPS devices that will be able to tell you what restaurants are around you and it will give you reviews of the restaurants.
SEABROOK: And I know there's a lot of buzz this year about green technology.
SYDELL: There is a lot of talk about green technology and people are going to be showing off their new green technology, but I have to say I'm not so sure about those big 100-inch flat screen TV's right in front of me.
SEABROOK: Laura, one last question. With all the indications these days that the economy is slowing down, are you hearing any concern from electronics makers about whether people will actually buy a 100-inch flat screen TV or any other gadgets there?
SYDELL: I think there is concern here when you're seeing oil in your $100 a barrel and you're seeing unemployment figures rise, there are some concern that people are not going to have the kind of expendable income to pay for all these gadgets. However, I think that there is still a lot of optimism, because I think the march towards smaller, faster, cheaper wireless is pretty much inevitable. Our society is changing and this is the place where you see the gadgets that are making a change.
SEABROOK: NPR's Laura Sydell, speaking to us from the floor of the Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.
Thanks, Laura, very much.
SYDELL: You're welcome.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
The Mona Lisa, The Last Supper - these masterworks of the Renaissance were painted by the hand of Leonardo da Vinci. He is the archetype of what we think of today as a renaissance man. He's infinite curiosity led him to study anatomy, botany, music, sculpture, design and, says writer Fritjof Capra, Leonardo da Vinci was also a great scientist.
Capra is the author of a new book "The Science of Leonardo," inside the mind of the great genius of renaissance.
Hello, Mr. Capra.
Mr. FRITJOF CAPRA (Author, "The Science of Leonardo"): Hello. Thank you for having me on your show.
SEABROOK: Surely. Now, Leonardo da Vinci is now known of course to who've been a great artist, a great mind, but he was not classically trained in science or math? Tell us a brief story.
Mr. CAPRA: No, he was not. But he was classically trained in art and also in engineering. He lived in the time in the 15th century in Florence where there was a great unification of various disciplines. And he was trained in all these disciplines, but he was not trained as a scientist. In fact, he did not go to university and therefore could not speak Latin or Greek. And that was a big hindrance on the one hand, but on the other hand, it allowed him to not be prejudiced by the classical teachings and go to nature herself as he would say to observe nature's systematically.
SEABROOK: Exactly. In your book you write that his lack of classical education freed him.
Mr. CAPRA: That's right. And he often commented on that. And one of my favorite quote is when he said, "When you can go to the well you don't go to the water jag" In other words, you don't need to read the classical texts, which of course he studied also, but you have a more direct access to natural phenomena, and this is what we now called the empirical method of the scientific method which he developed single-handedly 100 years before Galileo who's usually called the father of modern science. So in my view, that honor should really go to Leonardo da Vinci.
SEABROOK: Give it a sense of how the other scientists were approaching their work. What was da Vinci seeing around his that was different?
Mr. CAPRA: Well, not science, of course. In fact, the word science was not use in our sense until the 19th century. Instead of science, they would use natural philosophy. And those philosophers would generally just copy Greeks texts. So Aristotle, of course first of foremost really ruled the day, and then these scholastic philosophers of the middle ages, the Christian theologians fuse Aristotelian philosophy and science with Christian doctrine. And so then any contradiction to Aristotle, any even critical reading of Aristotle was soon as being heretical, and this is the tradition with which Leonardo broke.
SEABROOK: His notebooks are full of clues about how his mind worked. For example, Leonardo da Vinci was preoccupied with motion, he write, especially the flow of water.
Mr. CAPRA: Yes. And that is a science that is now known as hydrodynamics or fluid dynamics that he really created. That did not exist at all. There were a lot of hydraulics engineers especially in Lombardi in northern Italy who were very talented and very knowledgeable about the flow of water. But Leonardo was the only one who made the transition from engineering to science by asking how can I represent the flow of water mathematically? How can I describe it in theoretical models? That was absolutely unheard of.
SEABROOK: So tell me about some of the experiments that he devised to look at water?
Mr. CAPRA: Well, for instance, he did controlled experiments in the laboratory. He designed a glass tank to study turbulent flow and he painted the wall behind it black. And then he poured water into this tank and colored it or put fine grains of millet or straw into it. And these are techniques now known as flow visualization that are still used by scientists today.
SEABROOK: Da Vinci was also interested in patterns that he saw in nature. There are wonderful prints that you include in your book. One is the pattern of rivers on the Earth seen from above?
Mr. CAPRA: Yes.
SEABROOK: And another is the pattern of veins in the human arm.
Mr. CAPRA: Right.
SEABROOK: And they look so much a like.
Mr. CAPRA: Yes. And this actually the main thesis of my book. I present a new interpretation of Leonardo's science as a science of patterns of living forms, of processes of transformation that comes very close, often, to what we now know as the theory of living systems and complexity theory. For him, to know something, all it's meant to relate it to similar patterns in other fields. And this is, by Leonardo, sounds so modern to us.
SEABROOK: One of my favorite parts of your book is where you talk about how his sense of the mystery of life translated into that enigmatic smile that you see in the Mona Lisa.
Mr. CAPRA: Yes. And that is especially true for the later parts of his life -for his old age. That smile appears also in the Saint John and in many other figures in his drawings. And in addition to the smile, we often have a finger pointing heavenwards. So that mysterious smile and that finger pointing into the darkness is Leonardo's acknowledgement that nature, in effect, will always be more complex and more mysterious than our human science can explain
SEABROOK: Fritjof Capra, the author of "The Science of Leonardo: Inside the Mind of the Great Genius of the Renaissance."
Sir, thanks very much for speaking with us.
Mr. CAPRA: Thank you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
One thing that makes da Vinci's appeal so universal is that we're still wrestling with the question of whether nature can never really be understood by science alone. Now, the battle of evolution versus creationism has moved beyond the classroom to a new front - the laboratory.
A former scientist at the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution says he was fired from his research position because he's a Christian and doesn't believe in evolution. Sean Corcoran has the story.
SEAN CORCORAN: A few weeks before Christmas in 2004, biologist Nathaniel Abraham received a letter from his supervisor at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, informing him that he was to be terminated from his job as a post-doctoral investigator. The letter read, quote, "the fact that you do not recognize the concept of biological evolution means you are unable to be a full intellectual participant in this research, a requirement for any post-doctoral investigator," end quote. Abraham's attorney, David Gibbs, of the Florida-based Christian Law Foundation, said the letter was a reaction to an earlier discussion Abraham had with his boss.
Mr. DAVID GIBBS (Lawyer, Christian Law Foundation): One day in casual conversation, Dr. Nathaniel Abraham, mentions to his boss that he believed in creationism - that he didn't totally buy evolution, but that he thought God or a higher being was involved in the origins of the universe as we know it.
Unbelievably, after he made that casual comment to his supervisor, the supervisor began to pressure him to change his beliefs. And when he realized that Dr. Abraham would not do that, to resign and leave the institution.
CORCORAN: Now, Abraham is seeking a half-million dollars in a discrimination suit against Woods Hole. The institution is not commenting beyond releasing a statement that says it firmly believes its actions were entirely lawful. Documents show that when Abraham appealed his dismissal to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, Woods Hole argued that accepting evolution was a bona fide job qualification. And the commission agreed, writing in its decision that the research project Abraham was working on required him to interpret his results from an evolutionary perspective. That requirement was even laid out in the job ad. Gibbs acknowledges that Abraham, who is an Indian citizen, never expressed his doubt about evolution during the hiring process but nor did he think he had to.
Mr. GIBBS: He had no idea that in the United States of America, he would run into this wall of an acceptance that believe evolution or we don't want you. And I think, probably, the question that a lot of people want to somehow think is that if you don't believe evolution, you don't believe science. The reality is evolution takes as mush faith as creationism. You cannot prove either one.
CORCORAN: But Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, which monitors the creationism versus evolution controversy, says evolution is not a faith statement. It's a statement of evidence. And Scott also is not surprised Abraham was never asked if he accepts biological evolution before he was offered the job because it would have been assumed.
Ms. EUGENIE SCOTT (Executive Director, National Center for Science Education): I mean, it'd be sort of like a flight instructor school interviewing a candidate - do you accept that the Earth is spherical. I mean, you know, in evolutionary biology, evolution is such a basic part of the field that you would just assume somebody applying for a post-doctoral fellowship would be working within the standard paradigm.
CORCORAN: Scientific institutes have every right, Scott says, to require that their biologist accept evolution. And creationists have a very small role to play in biological labs.
Ms. SCOTT: Well, I'm sure there are some jobs that you can do in a laboratory that don't involve evolution. I mean, you can wash test tubes and you can do very routine kinds of machine rounds and so forth. But that's not why you hire a post-doc.
CORCORAN: What's unclear from the court documents is whether or not Abraham, as a creationist, was willing or even capable of interpreting his research results using evolutionary principles, as the project required. It's also not clear whether his boss offered him the opportunity to do so. The courts will have to sort through that issue. And while the suit makes it way through the federal courts, Abraham has moved on. He's now teaching at Liberty University - a Christian school in Virginia - where he is an associate professor of biology.
For NPR News, I'm Sean Corcoran in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
We have two stories now from the Iraq war. In a moment, a man whose role is to give solace - an Army chaplain who is struggling to find solace after his deployment.
But first, this news from Baghdad. Today was a holiday - celebrating the Iraqi army. And our correspondent, Corey Flintoff, reports there was a spike in violence in what had been a quite start to the New Year.
COREY FLINTOFF: The day's deadliest bombing took place in central Baghdad, where a suicide bomber threw himself into a group of soldiers and police at a holiday commemoration. Police say three Iraqi soldiers tried to subdue the man, but the blast of his explosive vest killed them and at least nine other people. Later on, a bomb hidden in a parked car killed at least three people outside a popular restaurant in northeast Baghdad.
Earlier today, gunmen killed a Shiite Arab leader in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab. Sheikh Ismaiel Abbas was said to be trying to establish an armed volunteer group with U.S. military funding. Most of the anti-insurgent groups that have allied themselves with the U.S. recently have been Sunni Arabs, but this one would have been Shiite, designed to resist Shiite militias operating in the area.
In the northern city of Mosul today, attackers targeted Christian churches and a convent. Police say that a bomb damaged the altar area of one church, injuring at least four people. A second bomb went off between the Church of the Virgin Mary and a nearby convent, damaging both buildings, but apparently causing no injuries.
U.S. military officials announced the deaths of two more American soldiers, bringing the number of combat deaths so far this year to five. One soldier died today and three were injured when a bomb hit their patrol in south Baghdad. The officials also announced the death of an American soldier that took place yesterday in Diyala province, north of the capital.
Corey Flintoff, NPR News, Baghdad.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
More lost fiction now. In 1940, Chicago-based author Richard Wright published a violent first novel called "Native Son." It was a huge success. And he spent the next 20 years blazing trails for other African-American writers. Wright died of a heart attack in Paris in the autumn of 1960, leaving behind an unfinished novel he called "A Father's Law." That book will finally be published this week by Wright's daughter.
Alan Cheuse has a review.
ALAN CHEUSE: Wright begins by introducing a black Chicago cop, Rudolph "Rudy" Turner, who's only a few months away from a planned retirement. That plan goes awry when Rudy is summoned to a late-night meeting with the police commissioner and gets promoted to chief of Brentwood Park. That's a small, wealthy, mostly white Chicago suburb in this novel, troubled by a series of murders. And Ruddy finds a growing chain of evidence that connects the killing to an unusual suspect - his son, Tommy. Tommy is a serious college student currently reeling from a breakup with his first big love.
Themes of crime and punishment, the nature of freedom and law, parenting, citizenship and community all emerge writ large in this compelling draft that comes to us in a forward-moving style with prose that's easy to engage and characters difficult to ignore. As a proud Catholic Republican policeman, Rudy is a fascinating figure, one of Wright's most interesting inventions. And the enigmatic, brilliant, distressed Tommy is a perfect match for the father as one rises in the world and the other sinks.
If Wright had lived to finish this book, we might have had another masterpiece on our hands. As it stands, this forceful but unresolved novel calls us back to the earlier work of one of our country's literary giants.
BLOCK: The novel is "A Father's Law" by Richard Wright. Our reviewer, Alan Cheuse, teaches writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Our co-host, Melissa Block, is on her fourth trip to the town of Milford, New Hampshire. It's in the southern part of the state. She's been checking in with voters in Milford since last March. We chose Milford because it's a lot like New Hampshire. It traditionally votes Republican, but it also has a lot of independent voters and lots of new arrivals who were turning the red state more blue.
And Melissa joins us now. Melissa, are you seeing signs of election fever in Milford?
MELISSA BLOCK: Well, they are hoping for a record turnout here, Michele. I stopped by town hall today and talked with the town clerk, Peggy Langell. She said she's hoping they won't run out of ballots. You know, one big wild card here is that people can register in New Hampshire on the day of the primary. And they're getting a lot of calls from folks who want to do just that. Remember also that nearly half of Milford voters are undeclared or independent. And one big question is, which ballot they're going to pick up tomorrow.
NORRIS: Now, Melissa, your first trip to Milford was back in March. What's changed in the last 10 months?
BLOCK: You know, back then, the presidential race was really very far from people's minds. And over the next few trips, I found people getting more and more aware. But there was a lot of indecision. Until now, they've reached a saturation point with so many ads and phone calls. A lot of people have gone to hear the candidates in person. And the number of undecideds has really shrunk dramatically. We came back to Milford to talk one last time, Michele, with some of the folks that we've met. And we talked with them here at the Santos Dumont Coffee Bar in Milford.
Let's start with Tim and Noreen O'Connell. He's a state representative. He's a Republican. She's chair of the Milford Board of Selectmen and an independent. Or, here's how she puts it.
Ms. NOREEN O'CONNELL (Chairwoman, Milford Board of Selectmen ): Painfully independent.
BLOCK: Painfully independent. Now, when I talked to Noreen a few months ago, she was undecided. She has made up her mind. She's voting for an underdog, Democrat Bill Richardson.
Ms. O'CONNELL: He is a diplomat, and he has balanced a budget. As a selectman, I know how hard that is. He might not be as flamboyant, but I think he's a Steady Eddie.
BLOCK: Her husband, Tim, is backing Republican John McCain. He thinks he speaks straight, takes difficult stands and has shown the ability to work on both sides of the aisle in the Senate. But Tim O'Connell says he's not as enthusiastic a McCain supporter as he was eight years ago, when McCain won the New Hampshire primary. And he says it's because of one thing.
State Representative TIM O'CONNELL (New Hampshire State Legislature): The Iraq situation. I was strongly opposed. I did not think it was a good idea to go in there in the first place. And I guess I will talk straight on - I sometimes get the feeling that Senator McCain might be a little trigger-happy.
BLOCK: If John McCain were to win the presidency, he would be the oldest president ever inaugurated in this country. Do you care about that one way or the other?
State Rep. O'CONNELL: He certainly doesn't act 71. I'm not sure I would advocate him running for a second term. But I certainly think he's, you know, could be very effective in his first term.
BLOCK: Michele, I also visited again with Gail and Jack Ruonala whom I first met last March. They're retired, they're Republicans. And just a few days ago, they settled on a candidate, but not wholeheartedly.
Ms. GAIL RUONALA (New Hampshire Voter): Well, sort of Romney.
Mr. JACK RUONALA (New Hampshire Voter): I wouldn't vote for any of them with a great deal of enthusiasm because none of them have come forward with - that gives you the feeling that this is the guy or gal that's going to really do things for this country which are really going to be beneficial.
Ms. RUONALA: I would love to see a person run where I could say, now, that's the type of person I would like to have face international figures. Is he diplomatic? Does he have a light in his eye?
BLOCK: Do you remember feeling that excited, enthusiastic about a candidate before?
Ms. RUONALA: Well, this goes back a long, long ways. But how about Eisenhower?
BLOCK: You do hear considerably more excitement about the Democratic field. Steve and Cammie Opre are strong supporters of John Edwards. Cammie is a Democrat. Steve was a Republican for 20 years. He switched to independent last month.
Mr. STEVE OPRE (New Hampshire Voter): It's great to be able to look at a field of candidates and see a number of them that, if any of those people became president, I think the country would be in good shape. It's not just bad choice or worse choice.
BLOCK: Cammie Opre says she did go back and look more carefully at Barack Obama after his win in Iowa last week.
Ms. CAMMIE OPRE (New Hampshire Voter): I was talking to people at church this morning. A lot of people think he's great, but that he is young. I mean, the older people, like my parents' generation, are all like, oh, he's a little young. They just can't feel comfortable with him.
And what was interesting this morning, I did my own informal poll at church. And everyone's voting for Richardson. I couldn't believe it. And this is what I think people are missing about New Hampshire is, if you give us a choice of A or B, we pick C. And if you give us a choice of A, B or C, we pick D. Don't tell us we only have two choices, you know? You can't tell us that.
BLOCK: Milford library director Michelle Sampson lost her top choice. She was backing Democrat Joe Biden, who left the race after a dismal finish in Iowa.
Ms. MICHELLE SAMPSON (Director, Wadleigh Memorial Library): I was really disappointed. I was a Biden girl. I loved Joe Biden. And hopefully, perhaps, he'll make a wonderful secretary of state now that he's dropped out.
BLOCK: So she went to a forum on Friday to hear the other Democrats, and she became a convert to Barack Obama.
Ms. SAMPSON: I was completely and utterly blown away by hearing him speak. And you know, I called my mom at home in Pennsylvania right after and I said, I have one word for you. And she's like, what? I said, Kennedy. They're - I mean, I had goose bumps. Politicians don't give me goose bumps.
BLOCK: What was it that you were hearing that made you - that gave you goose bumps?
Ms. SAMPSON: I think because there's just so much bad news when you turn on the television anymore or the radio, and he gave me hope that there is a possibility for a change.
BLOCK: So Michelle Sampson contributing to that post-Iowa Obama bounce in the polls we've been hearing about, but not Karin Lagro. She's an independent. When I talked to her in October, she told me about a spreadsheet that she had set up to compare all the candidates on both sides. Now, she's made her choice.
Ms. KARIN LAGRO (New Hampshire Voter): I've actually made a decision just this week. And it's sort of surprising me. I'm going to vote for Clinton. I really, really wanted to like Barack Obama, but one of my concerns is that I think we're at a time where our foreign policy is going to be an enormous issue. And I think that his lack of experience shows there.
BLOCK: And finally, let's hear from Steve O'Keefe. A Republican, he works for Fidelity Investments. He's gone back and forth. He was 100 percent for Mitt Romney, then he flirted with Mike Huckabee. Now, he says he's 95 percent sure he'll vote for Romney. He likes Romney's leadership experience with the Olympics, likes his business sense. He thinks he'll continue what Republicans are known for.
Mr. STEVE O'KEEFE (Fidelity Investments): Doing tax cuts. He'll be able to provide some sort of kick to this economy, especially now that everyone's concerned with a recession. I think Mitt Romney is ready to do that based off his business background. You know, somebody can just really impress me over the next day, and you know, maybe John McCain's going to knock on my door. That obviously could stray me one way. But you know, to be honest with you right now, it's definitely for Mitt.
BLOCK: You never know, it's New Hampshire.
Mr. O'KEEFE: You absolutely are correct. You never know.
BLOCK: You never know. But Michele, for now, he's definite.
NORRIS: As definite as definite can be, I guess, with just a day left now before the voting.
BLOCK: That's right.
NORRIS: Thank you, Melissa.
BLOCK: You bet, Michele.
NORRIS: That's our co-host, Melissa Block, in Milford, New Hampshire. You can hear her previous conversations with residents of Milford and see how the town has voted in previous presidential contests. That's at npr.org/elections.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
At the Supreme Court today, important arguments about the method of execution used in most states, specifically, whether it violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. This was not a challenge to the death penalty itself, but to the way lethal injections are administered in 36 out of 37 states that have capital punishment.
Today's case focused on the protocol in Kentucky. NPR's Nina Totenberg has our story.
NINA TOTENBERG: Thirty years ago, death by lethal injection was conceived of as a humane way to execute the condemned. But the three-drug protocol has not changed since then, and critics charge that it poses an unnecessary risk of pain and suffering that now can be easily avoided.
Indeed, death penalty opponents note that the protocol used today for executions was long ago abandoned by the American Veterinary Medical Association for use in killing animals because it was deemed unnecessarily cruel.
In Kentucky, a similar protocol is outlawed for animals. Kentucky's execution protocol, basically the same as those in 35 other states and the federal government, is in three steps. First, sodium thiopental is administered to put the condemned prisoner to sleep deeply enough that he feels nothing. The second drug is pancuronium bromide, a paralytic that prevents the prisoner from twitching and having muscle spasms. But anesthesiologists and end-of-life doctors contend that if a person is not properly anesthetized, the paralytic would prevent him from indicating distress, and the third drug, used to stop the heart, would make the condemned man feel as if his veins were on fire if he's not properly anesthetized.
At the Supreme Court today, lawyer Donald Verrilli told the justices that a one-drug protocol with an overdose of a barbiturate would kill a condemned prisoner without the risk of pain and suffering. Justice Breyer said the studies he's read are inconclusive.
Justice STEPHEN BREYER (U.S. Supreme Court): I'm left at sea. I understand your contention, your claim that this is somehow more painful than some other method. But which, well, and what's the evidence for that, the - what do I read to find.
DONALD VERRILLI (Lawyer): The thiopental is a barbiturate, by definition, will inflict death painlessly. TOTENBERG: Breyer noted that death penalty supporters contend this challenge as just a backdoor way to attack capital punishment. Chief Justice Roberts added…
Chief Justice JOHN ROBERTS JR. (U.S. Supreme Court): If you prevail here and the next case is brought by someone subject to the single-drug protocol, and their claim is, look, this has never been tried. We do know that there's a chance that it would cause muscle contractions that would make my death undignified. It will certainly extend how long it takes to die.
TOTENBERG: The argument then turned to the challengers' assertion that the state of Kentucky does not adequately monitor the condemned man's depth of unconsciousness. That's because after the IV lines are inserted in the condemned prisoner, the execution team departs the death chamber and observes from another room, leaving only the warden and deputy warden inside the death chamber to monitor the prisoner at close hand. Lawyer Verrilli argued that the warden and his deputy are not trained to and cannot possibly monitor the depth of unconsciousness. That prompted this from Justice Scalia.
Justice ANTONIN SCALIA (U.S. Supreme Court): Mr. Verrilli, this is, this is an execution, not surgery. The other side contends that to know whether the person is unconscious or not, all it takes is a slap in the face and shaking the person.
Mr. DONALD VERRILLI (Lawyer): There is no slap in the face; there is no shaking the person. All there is, is visual observation by an untrained warden and an untrained deputy warden, who have testified in this case that they don't know what to look for to determine whether somebody is conscious or unconscious.
TOTENBERG: Justice Scalia asked just where the challengers got the idea that the Constitution requires the least painful execution method.
Mr. DONALD VERRILLI (Lawyer): Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain? We have approved electrocution, we have approved death by firing squad.
Mr. DONALD VERRILLI (Lawyer):This court's cases have said that the standard is whether the means of execution inflicts unnecessary pain.
Mr. DONALD VERRILLI (Lawyer): Unnecessary and wanton.
TOTENBERG: The tests we are advocating, said lawyer Verrilli, is whether there's a risk of tortuous pain and a readily available alternative. Following Verrilli to the lectern was lawyer Roy Englert, representing the state of Kentucky. We agree, he said, that if the first drug, sodium thiopental, is properly administered, there will be a painless death. Justice Stevens…
Justice JOHN PAUL STEVENS (U.S. Supreme Court): But do you also agree with the counterproposition that if it is not properly administered, there is some risk of excruciating pain?
Mr. ROY ENGLERT (Lawyer): Yes.
TOTENBERG: Englert, however, pointed to the steps Kentucky has taken to ensure that doesn't happen, including 100 practice session for the execution team. Justice Ginsburg then asked about the fact that only the warden and his deputy are actually in the death chamber while the drugs are being administered.
Justice RUTH GINSBURG (U.S. Supreme Court): What seems puzzling to me is the state has made an effort to make sure that the people on the team that inserts the IV, those are well-trained, professional people. But then, apparently, they leave the room, so that once the IV is inserted, there is no professional person that has any further part.
TOTENBERG: She asked that question three times before finally getting an answer. After the IVs are inserted, the team leaves the room and operates from a separate room with a one-way mirror, so that when the curtains are opened in the death chamber, the team members' identities remain unknown to the witnesses and press. Justice Stevens focused on the drugs administered after the barbiturate.
Justice STEVENS: What is the justification for the second drug when it does, that is the drug that creates the risk of excruciating pain?
Mr. ENGLERT: It does bring about a more dignified death - dignified for the inmate, dignified for the witnesses.
Justice STEVENS: The dignity of the process outweighs the risk of excruciating pain.
Mr. ENGLERT: No, your honor. No, it takes a very long time to die with a one-drug protocol. And so…
Justice STEVENS: What's very long, 10 minutes?
TOTENBERG: Lawyer Englert quoted the state's expert as saying it could take as long as 30 minutes. Justice Stevens conceded that the state seems to be doing a reasonable job of carrying out its three-drug protocol, but he added…
Justice STEVENS: I'm terribly troubled by the fact that the second drug is what seems to cause all the risk of excruciating pain and seems to be almost totally unnecessary.
TOTENBERG: By the end of today's argument, it was unclear where the court is heading. Three justices wondered aloud whether the record in the Kentucky case is simply inadequate. The lower courts did not make any finding as to whether a one-drug protocol would pose a lesser risk of pain and suffering.
And Justices Breyer and Souter asked whether the court should send the case back to the lower courts to hear evidence on that question and make a finding. Justice Souter put it this way…
Justice DAVID SOUTER (U.S. Supreme Court): What's disturbing Justice Breyer, disturbing me and others, is we want some kind of a definitive decision here, and it seems to me that the most expeditious way of getting it, if comparative analysis is appropriate, and I will be candid to say I think it is, is to send this case back and say, okay, do a comparative analysis. Make the findings.
TOTENBERG: But others, like Justice Scalia, disagreed.
Justice SCALIA: I'm very reluctant to send it back to the trial court so we can have a nationwide cessation of all executions while the trial court finishes its work and then it goes to another appeal through the state Supreme Court, and ultimately, what you're looking at years.
TOTENBERG: A decision in the case is expected by summer.
Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
In New Hampshire, the primary races are in their final hours. And several new statewide polls show that it's a very interesting contest on both sides. For the Democrats, polls point to a big win coming for Illinois Senator Barack Obama over Senator Hillary Clinton. A much closer race is shaping up on the Republican side between Republicans John McCain and Mitt Romney.
BLOCK: Senator McCain hopes his appeal to independents will make the difference while Romney, the former governor of neighboring Massachusetts, is setting his sights on traditional Republican voters.
We'll hear from our reporter with the Romney campaign in a few minutes. First, here's NPR's Scott Horsley, who's following John McCain.
SCOTT HORSLEY: John McCain volunteers used snow shovels and wooden sticks to scrape the ice off the sidewalk before a rally in front of Nashua City Hall this morning. A few hours later, the sun might have done it for them. New Hampshire is enjoying a warming trend. And for the Arizona senator, it feels like home. McCain won the New Hampshire primary eight years ago, and he's hoping for a repeat tomorrow.
Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): My friends, thanks for coming out this morning. Thank you for your support. I got to tell you, there's a lot of nostalgia associated with this morning. It's - we've had a great time. This has been a wonderful experience again.
HORSLEY: The Nashua rally was the first of seven for McCain today. In the state capital of Concord this afternoon, McCain said if he's elected, he won't need on-the-job training.
Sen. MCCAIN: I'm asking for your vote because I believe that I can lead this nation in difficult times. And like another president we had that came out of California, I believe our best days are ahead of us.
HORSLEY: McCain managed only a fourth-place finish in last week's Iowa caucuses, but he spent a lot more time campaigning in New Hampshire, where he is popular with voters like Roberta Barrett.
Ms. ROBERTA BARRETT (New Hampshire Voter): He had my vote last time and he has it again this time. Because of his experience, because he's consistent in his positions, because he says what he believes is right for the country, not what he thinks is popular. That goes a long way.
HORSLEY: McCain's fortunes in New Hampshire may rest with independent voters. They lean his way in a USA Today/Gallup poll, while committed Republicans favor Romney.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Concord, New Hampshire.
TOVIA SMITH: I'm Tovia Smith following Mitt Romney, who with hopes of shoring up his base hit two local businesses and a country club this morning. He stood in front of a giant to-do list and cast himself as the manager who could get the job done.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Massachusetts Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): You see, the private sector, where most of you live your life, you either change and improve or you go out of business.
SMITH: The point was well taken by lots of men and women in business suits who were impressed by the well-coiffed and well-spoken candidate.
Ms. DOE SHAGNON (New Hampshire Voter): He is presidential in every way.
SMITH: Seventy-nine-year-old Doe Shagnon is exactly the kind of voter Romney needs now, a loyal Republican who was committed to Romney pretty much before he even started running.
Ms. SHAGNON: He acts like a president. He looks like a president. He speaks like a president. I think the United States could be very proud having a president like George Romney - Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney.
SMITH: Did you know his father, George Romney?
Ms. SHAGNON: Yes. As a matter of fact, he came - we had a coffee for his father when he was running for president. And my 2-year-old daughter sat on his lap and had hot chocolate.
SMITH: But other Republicans here, just one day before the big dance, are still not swept off their feet.
Mr. WALLY AMMON (New Hampshire Voter): I don't know. I mean, I've always liked Romney but not been in love with the guy, but I do like him.
SMITH: Wally Ammon, an undecided from Francestown, says he may go with Romney.
Mr. AMMON: He's a good man, he's competent. I think he's a very good manager. He's not the most exciting speaker. He just doesn't give a stem-winder speech. And he's not, you know - get your blood all circulating. But I don't if that's necessarily that important in a good president.
SMITH: If he can't make it on passion, Romney's spokesperson Eric Fernstrom makes a more practical appeal, warning voters that McCain would be just the kind of Washington insider who'd be destroyed by a Democratic nominee like Barack Obama.
Mr. ERIC FERNSTROM (Spokesperson for Mitt Romney): The lesson from Iowa is that Barack Obama is a senator killer. He demolished a field of more experienced Washington veterans.
SMITH: But can that win the hearts of the still undecideds like David Quimby?
Mr. DAVID QUIMBY (New Hampshire Voter): I think that's a good argument, but I think you still need to have connections because connections are how you get things done.
SMITH: So outsider could be bad, too?
Mr. QUIMBY: Absolutely
Tovia Smith, NPR News, Nashua, New Hampshire.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
The short story writer Raymond Carver was praised for his brevity. Critics were taken with the spare, minimalist style of his work, including the collections, "Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?" and "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." Well, a scholar says Carver's stories may have been a little more spare than he wanted.
NPR's David Gura explains.
DAVID GURA: Ten years ago, journalist D.T. Max followed up on something he'd heard from a few New York literati. It was about the relationship between Raymond Carver and his editor, Gordon Lish. Rumor had it that Lish cut Carver's stories drastically - by as much as 70 percent. So D.T. Max went to the University of Indiana in Bloomington, home of the Gordon Lish papers. And when he leafed through the editor's manuscripts, he was stunned.
Mr. D.T. MAX (Journalist): I've looked at a lot of archives. I have never seen anything quite like the way Gordon Lish's handwritings sort of scrawls over Raymond Carver's typescript. He just cuts, and then he writes in. And his hand is confident and it's big. I mean, editors more typically make small emendations in the margins. That wasn't what Gordon was up to. In his mind, they were co-writers and he was the writer who wrote second and therefore, wrote for keeps.
GURA: In the 1970s and '80s, Gordon Lish was known as Captain Fiction. As an editor at Esquire, then at Knopf, Lish published Don DeLillo, Richard Ford, Barry Hannah and Raymond Carver. He met Carver in California in the '60s. Back then, Carver struggled with his writing and with alcoholism. By the time he wrote "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" in the early '80s, he was sober. His widow, Tess Gallagher, says that his writing meant more to him then than it did before.
Ms. TESS GALLAGHER (Gordon Lish's Widow): Ray went through a lot of drafts. And he definitely needed an editor. And Gordon Lish became that editor. And he was a very intelligent editor, and they had a very good relationship through a good part of Ray's career. But at this point, Ray was coming out of the chaos in which he'd had three systemic collapses from the alcoholism. And I think he really connected so closely with these stories in the part of his re-entry into his writing as a sober person.
GURA: Now, 20 years after her husband's death, Gallagher wants the world to see how his prose changed - or how it was changed. She says that the originals have more description, more dialogue, and that they're not as dark. One of them has already been printed in The New Yorker's fiction issue under its original title, "Beginners."
David Remnick, who edits The New Yorker, wrote an introduction to the piece.
Mr. DAVID REMNICK (Editor, The New Yorker): I want to make it clear that I published "Beginners" in the spirit, not of an endorsement of "Beginners" as a, quote, unquote, "superior story" or original story, but I published it as a matter of interest.
GURA: Remnick doesn't believe that Lish made Carver, or that he was using Carver, or that Lish ghost-wrote Carver's stories.
Mr. REMNICK: Writers are not Frankenstein monsters. They're not idiot savants. Writing is really, really hard. And what Carver risked in every story is for everyone to see and to read and to feel.
GURA: Remnick also published several emotionally erratic letters that Raymond Carver sent to Gordon Lish. In one missive, Carver tells Lish that he feels closer to him than he does to his own brother. In another, he begs Lish not to publish "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love."
D.T. Max reads an excerpt from that letter.
Mr. D.T. MAX: He says, I've got to pull out of this one. Please hear me. I've been up all night thinking on this and nothing but this, so help me. I've looked at it from every side. I've compared both versions of the edited manuscript. First one is better, I truly believe.
GURA: Nevertheless, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" was published with Lish's edits to resounding success. One of those who praised it was Doris Betts, who reviewed the book for the Washington Post. Betts taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill for more than 30 years. She compares "Beginners" without Gordon Lish's edits to the short story she read and reviewed rather favorably a quarter century ago.
Professor DORIS BETTS (Creative Writing, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill): The first edits that he makes on page one, for instance, I thought they were pretty sensible, you know? Any writer would say, yeah, it was better to cut this word out, yes. But the deeper you go into the manuscript, the more it becomes surgical. It becomes an amputation.
GURA: Lish changed the ending.
Ms. BETTS: He literally wrote it. He wrote an extra paragraph that was not Carver's, but was Lish's. And that seems to me to be going beyond what an editor can do.
GURA: Still, The New Yorker's David Remnick says that it's impossible to overlook how Gordon Lish helped Raymond Carver's writing and his career.
Mr. REMNICK: It's my feeling that Carver learned something from Lish and internalized something from Lish's edits. And it helped him develop this aesthetic that we know as Raymond Carver's style, which may be fuller and lusher in the later stories and more spare and laconic in the middle stories, but nevertheless, it's a recognizable voice from beginning to end.
GURA: Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher, says there's more of that voice to hear. But getting his unedited manuscripts to readers may be difficult. Most contracts prohibit writers from releasing books that could compete with books they've already published. But Gallagher says she doesn't envision this proposed collection of Carver's original stories as a replacement. She says readers would benefit from seeing both versions.
Ms. GALLAGHER: I think it's possible to have people preferring Lish's way of treating it or Ray's. And you will learn something in the process of that comparative work. And you'll definitely learn something about Ray.
GURA: Whether or not readers will be able to see the stories side by side may be in the hands of lawyers. Knopf says it holds the exclusive publishing license for "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love." The agent for the Carver estate and Tess Gallagher says she holds the copyright to the collection. Gallagher plans to submit 17 of Carver's short stories as she says he wanted them to be printed to Knopf.
David Gura, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
In Kenya, talks between President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga appear to be on track. The two leaders have been at odds since disputed election results were announced last week. The violence that has accompanied that political impasse has destroyed thousands of lives across Kenya.
NPR's Gwen Thompkins is in Nairobi. And as she reports, getting the two sides talking has not been easy. Their grudge reaches way back.
GWEN THOMPKINS: U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Fraser has been meeting separately with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and challenger Raila Odinga. Kibaki claims to be the legitimate president of Kenya despite an untrustworthy count of the vote. Odinga has called for Kibaki to step aside. Fraser today says both leaders are now prepared to talk.
Ms. JENDAY FRASER (U.S. Assistant Secretary of State): I think that what they need is some confidence. They don't trust each other very much. They're not certain. But I think that both President Kibaki and Raila Odinga have said that they are prepared to talk.
THOMPKINS: Getting Kibaki and Odinga talking takes both a national emergency and a strong push from the international community. Asked just about any Kenyan why and the answer would be in three words or less - Memorandum of Understanding, otherwise known as MOU, a 2002 political deal between Kibaki and Odinga relates directly to the current crisis. That's when trust between the two men vanished.
Mr. GITAU WARIGI (Political Columnist, Sunday Nation): They sat together at the Nairobi club and signed some document, some secret document. All has changed. When Kibaki go into power, he trashed the whole thing.
THOMPKINS: Gitau Warigi is a political columnist for Kenya's largest newspaper. He says he's one of the few who have seen the document. Warigi says that in order to get elected in 2002, Kibaki made promises to Odinga that he couldn't or wouldn't keep.
Mr. WARIGI: That document outlines specific positions. Raila wanted to be made prime minister, various other players at different positions. It was clearly an elaborate power-sharing plan, it was never made public that this existed.
THOMPKINS: In 2002, both leaders wanted to snap the political franchise of Daniel arap Moi, who was then president. Moi had held power for 24 years and had just chosen a successor. Kibaki, who was in the political opposition, needed Odinga to leave Moi's party and join with them. By all accounts, it was a glorious revolution. Raila Odinga joined with Kibaki and let all of Kenya know that he supported Kibaki for president. And Kibaki won by a landslide.
Ms. WANGARI MAATHAI (Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize Winner): Part of what had been promised was not in the constitution.
THOMPKINS: That's Kenya's Nobel Peace Prize winner, Wangari Maathai. She was in the political opposition at the time. Maathai says Odinga was counting on a change in the constitution to create the position of prime minister. And the opposition had promised Kenyans a new constitution within a hundred days of assuming power.
Ms. MAATHAI: And so 100 days would not have been a very long time for a prime minister to reach and assume power. As it turned out, we didn't have a constitution, a new constitution in 100 days. And that's when the frustration started to set in.
THOMPKINS: The constitution that the Kibaki government eventually put to a vote did not mention any significant provisions of the 2002 Memorandum of Understanding. And that's when Odinga formed an opposition to Kibaki. When the voters went to the polls in 2005, they followed Odinga and defeated Kibaki's constitutional referendum. Again, Wangari Maathai.
Ms. MAATHAI: They didn't say - the people of Kenya did not say, they didn't know what — they did not want a new constitution. What they said is that they did not want that particular constitution.
THOMPKINS: For the Odinga camp, the 2007 votes should have given him the presidency. But a disputed election tally gave Kibaki a second term. And much of the country has exploded in rage. Either men could have won the race, but now it's impossible to tell who actually did.
Today, Kibaki invited Odinga to visit him Friday at the presidential residence. It might improve Kenya's prospects for peace if neither leader mentions the Memorandum of Understanding by name. Many Kenyans now use the term as a joke, to describe something that probably won't happen.
Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, Nairobi.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Time now for our series Climate Connections, which is produced in cooperation with National Geographic. As the Earth warms up, rising sea levels will increase the threat of storm surges and flooding. In some places, this will make existing problems worst.
For a glimpse of what may lie ahead, we're going to Venice, Italy, today.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
For years, Venice has topped the list of the world's most endangered cities. Built 1,300 years ago on mudflats in the center of a lagoon, the city is sinking, and it is subject to increasingly frequent winter flooding due to high tides known there as acqua alta.
SIEGE: A major engineering project is under way to build mobile floodgates in Venice to protect the Venetian lagoon from rising sea levels. But as NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports, most Venetians seem to take the high water in stride.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: This has been a very lucky year for Venice. There have been only a few and very mild high-tide events, and the city has stayed dry. But it's always prepared for the worst. Wooden planks lean against walls, ready to be used for elevated walkways as soon as water washes up over the pavement. And shoe stores display the required footwear - rubber boots. From dull brown, fishermen style thigh-high, to below-the-knee in DayGlo colors. Most Venetians keep one pair at home and one at work just in case. At this sport shop, saleswoman Ana Tridisan(ph) is like all her fellow townsfolk - by necessity, an amateur meteorologist. She explains how high tides become a serious problem and cause acqua alta.
Ms. ANA TRIDISAN (Sports Shop Employee, Venice): The tide, six hour it goes up, six hour it goes down. If the wind blow up from the south, the kind of wind is a scirocco, the tide has no way to go out from the lagoon. So stay inside the lagoon, and after hour, six hours, we have a new tide over.
POGGIOLI: That's exactly what happened when I was there five years ago, when southerly winds produced a tide that reached 4 feet 2 inches.
(Soundbite of splashing water)
POGIOLLI: Walking in St. Mark Square at 10:15 a.m. on Thursday, November 21. Residents and tourists had to walk single file on the elevated wooden walkways. Acqua alta almost brings life to a halt in Venice, at least for a few hours. Big boats can't go under low-hanging bridges, water seeps into homes and shops through the sewage system, smelling both of heating oil and waste.
And in the longer term, as the city sinks, high water is corroding the porous bricks of buildings and their wooden and iron doorways. Over the last few decades, this phenomenon has been happening more and more often - on average, 100 times a year. And nobody lives on the ground floor anymore.
Everyone, residents and visitors alike, has to cope with high water. Even at luxurious hotels, it's not uncommon to see tourists walking on gangplanks above flooded marble floors. At the Bisanzio Hotel, concierge Gabriel Brunelli(ph) says a barrier is placed in the doorway.
Mr. GABRIELLE BRUNELLI (Concierge, Hotel Bisanzio): We have a pumping system. We pump the water out all the time, continuously. So the water inside, if there will be, it will be like this - a few inches maximum. Outside might be something like 50 centimeters or even more than that.
POGGIOLI: That's about two feet. But for many Venetians, rising sea levels and climate change are not the number one priority.
Professor SHAUL BASSI (English Literature, Venice University): Venice is dying as a city. I mean, socially speaking, before it is dying as a physical place. We should talk about the social climate change, which is more urgent and more relevant.
POGGIOLI: Shaul Bassi is a professor of English literature at Venice University. Venice has a population of 58,000 but receives 20 million tourists annually. With an economy solely focused on tourism, Bassi says, prices are sky-high. Venice has lost one-third of its population in the last 30 years as young people seek jobs elsewhere.
Prof. BASSI: Venice is sinking. But look around. When I see half of the houses in Venice that are closed and nobody lives in there, it is as threatening and as alarming as the acqua alta. If we solve the acqua alta problem and the city is just a beautiful empty container for tourists, I don't really care.
POGGIOLI: Many Venetians are skeptical about the huge engineering project aimed at holding back the tides. Floodgates are being built at the three inlets that link the lagoon to the Adriatic Sea at a cost of $7 billion. Francisco Orlandi(ph), who owns a newspaper kiosk near the Rialto Bridge, dismisses the project known by its Italian acronym, MOSE.
Mr. FRANCISCO ORLANDI (Newspaper Kiosk Owner): (Through translator) The MOSE doesn't serve any purpose. We are spending a boatful of money for nothing. Acqua alta is a natural phenomenon. It's the rats that bother us.
POGGIOLI: However blase Venetians may be, city authorities ensure that they are warned well in advance of high-tide events. The tides forecast office is located on the Grand Canal. Antennas cover the roof, and banks of computer screens line the walls. Real-time information arrives here from 15 monitoring stations in the lagoon and out at sea, providing wind speed and direction, wave height and air pressure.
This year, there's a novelty. City authorities have abandoned the old alarm system dating from World War II and too depressing, they say. It's been replaced by alarms with rising tones, indicating how high the tide is expected to be. This is the one for four feet, seven inches.
(Soundbite of alarm tone for tide change)
POGGIOLI: But even at this office, where the staff is required to be on constant alert for dangerous high tide, Venice's centuries-old love affair with the sea still prevails. Pablo Canestrelli(ph), a scientist by training who directs the office, says Venetians are used to acqua alta from their childhood.
Mr. PAUL CANESTRALLI (Director, Venetian Tide forecast Office): (Through translator) I remember as a kid floating on a raft in St. Mark's Square. We are not afraid of the water. Venice has always been defended by the sea. It's our friend, our defense and our economic well-being. Outside, they are scared because they don't know how high the water will get and when it will stop rising. We know it is a cycle, like a breath of the Adriatic that enters the lagoon. The breath of a good friend.
POGGIOLI: Such a good friend that still today, Venetians celebrate a festivity harking back to the times when Venice was the pearl and ruler of the Adriatic. Each spring, the mayor, as the doges did before him, set sail on a ceremonial boat, leading a colorful fleet out to sea. There, accompanied by civic, religious and military authorities, he flings a gold ring onto the waves. And renews the wedding vows of Venice's millennial marriage to the sea.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
SIEGEL: You can hear more stories in our series at npr.org/climateconnections. And while you're there, you can also find the latest climate change coverage from National Geographic magazine.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
More fall-out from the writers strike in Hollywood today. The Golden Globe awards may not go on as they always have because the actors refuse to cross picket lines to attend. Tonight, "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" are going back on the air without the benefit of writers, and it appears that United Artists may cut its own deal with the writers union.
NPR's Kim Masters has been following all these and she joins us now. Kim, first, what's going on with the Golden Globes?
KIM MASTERS: Well, I would like to know. There have been a lot of rumors, some of them published about it on the Internet, that the globes will be canceled. On Friday afternoon, the Screen Actors Guild announced that they had pulled their members and no one who is nominated will show up. So NBC, which broadcasts the Golden Globes every year, is hoping to salvage something. They have yet to say uncle, but the belief is that it's awfully hard to put on that show when no one shows up.
NORRIS: Now, this deal that the writers union may cut with United Artists, is this a deal like, like David Letterman has? He went back on the air last week with jokes written by his staff.
MASTERS: Yes. That would be a solar sort of an arrangement. The hope of the writers guild, of course, is to split up the block of producers that make up the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Again, we've had a lot of reports that Tom Cruise's supposedly revitalized United Artists, which has released one movie so far, that was "Lions for Lambs," it did not do well, would make a deal and — that it would assume they would then want to follow up by making deals with other smaller companies. Now, there's been no official confirmation of this.
I assume that United Artists, which is part of MGM, which is one of the big Hollywood studios, I assume there is a lot of screaming and yelling going on right now to prevent United Artists from going forward with the deal and opening the door to perhaps some other — there aren't very many, bear in mind, small companies that would break off. But I think it would be a psychological victory for the writers, and the producers would be determined to prevent it if they can.
NORRIS: Kim, remind us. How long has this strike been going on, and are there any plans for the writers union to go back to the bargaining table with all the studios?
MASTERS: The strike has been going on for about two months. And I would say at this point, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television producers would rather have their collective fingernails pulled out than go back to the table with the writers. There's been a lot of rancorous rhetoric. Things are extremely negative. And I think that basically, right now, they're just going to — there's no discussion.
NORRIS: Now, as we mentioned, Comedy Central's two marquee shows back on the air tonight without writers, "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report." It's kind of hard to imagine an unscripted Jon Stewart.
MASTERS: I know. And people have been waiting to — and in the middle of an election season. But what's going to happen, according to the people I've talked to, is things that some viewers of the show might love such as Jon Stewart's "Headlines" and Steven Colbert's "The Word" will not be part of the show because they are written. And so what you would expect to see, they — I feel that they - they feel that they can do those field reports where somebody like Rob Riggle is somewhere and there's a banter back and forth between Jon Stewart and his staff. Of course he could still book guests. He does not tend to book, you know, as many movie stars, perhaps, as some of the late-night shows do or television stars. So that can go ahead.
NORRIS: And a lot of pressure on those two men.
MASTERS: Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, they're both writers guild members and staunch supporters of the guild. So I think that they will, you know, use their show as you saw David Letterman do to try to advance the cause of the writers and remind people of what's going on.
NORRIS: Thank you, Kim.
MASTERS: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: That was NPR's Kim Masters.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host;
From the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas comes the likely answer to a question you may not even have heard. The answer, apparently, is Blu-ray. And the question is, which successor format to the DVD is winning, HD-DVD or Blu-ray? To which we might add the clarifying questions: what's the difference between Blu-ray and HD-DVD and who needs a successor format to DVDs anyway?
Well, for the answers to these questions and others, we turn to our reporter, Laura Sydell, who is covering the Consumer Electronics Show. And Laura, let's take those questions in reverse order. First of all, what's wrong with the -that venerable product of the 1990s, the DVD player?
LAURA SYDELL: Nothing's wrong with it. It's just that technology marches on. These days, everybody talks about high-definition video. And that's what you won't get on a DVD. So more people are buying their HDTVs. And if you put a DVD on it, it doesn't look as good. You want to get either a HD-DVD or a Blu-ray technology because it's going to look better on your television set.
SIEGEL: Okay. What is the difference between HD-DVD and Blu-ray?
SYDELL: Well, I think to most consumers, they're not really going to see the difference. The differences are things like how they make the product. So Blu-ray is actually a bit more costly. The biggest difference, however, is which companies are backing which technology. So Microsoft and Toshiba have been backing HD-DVD, and Sony is the big backer of Blu-ray. The studios say they like both technologies better than DVD because they're more secure, it's harder to steal them. But Blu-ray is even a little bit harder to make copies of.
SIEGEL: And in what ways is Blu-ray wining the race?
SYDELL: Content. That's the key. Many of the studios were releasing movies in both formats for a while, and some studios chose only one. But now, Warner Brothers has announced that it's going to start releasing its movies only in the Blu-ray format. And that means that about 70 percent of the movies are going to be on blu-ray. So if I were a salesperson in a store and you were saying to me which player should I buy, the Blu-ray player or the HD-DVD, I'd be hard-pressed to tell you to buy the HD-DVD anymore.
SIEGEL: But what if I go to the video rental, assuming such a place still exists in another few years, and I say, I don't have either a Blu-ray or an HD-DVD. I just have an old DVD player.
SYDELL: Well, for a while, I think DVD is going to be around. It's not like it's going to go away overnight. It will take a while, as it usually does with any technology.
SIEGEL: Now, when you look at video pictures from either of these competing systems and an ordinary DVD on an HD screen, do you see remarkable differences among them?
SYDELL: Yes. I would say there is. It's much, much clearer. But, you know, the biggest difference, really, besides the picture, is that it can have features like interactivity or you can do things like, for example, be watching a movie, click it, and all of the sudden, the director can point to scenes and talk to you about it as the movie is actually playing.
SIEGEL: And if we armed people with their own remote devices and HD screens, and they watch both Blu-ray and HD-DVD images, do we think one is significantly better than the other one?
SYDELL: Well, of course the manufacturers who are backing one format or the other will tell you, yes, ours looks better. But I don't see any difference. So I don't think consumers would actually see the difference between the two products. I should add that here in the hall at CES, Blu-ray is packed. There are all kinds of people looking at that technology and not so many over at Toshiba. Although, Toshiba says the war isn't over yet.
SIEGEL: Okay, thanks. NPR digital culture correspondent Laura Sydell at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Thank you, Laura.
SYDELL: You're welcome.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Two years ago, most Americans got an introduction to a term they'd never heard of.
(Soundbite of 2006 State of the Union Address)
President GEORGE W. BUSH: Switchgrass.
NORRIS: That's President Bush during his 2006 State of the Union address. He presented a laundry list of things his administration would do to help America kick its oil habit.
Pres. BUSH: We'll also fund additional research and cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol, not just from corn, but from wood chips and stalks, or switchgrass.
NORRIS: Since then, a lot of switchgrass has been through the mill, so to speak. But there's been little evidence that growing grass could actually make a dent in our demand for oil. Now, there's new research showing that this prairie plant could be a good source of ethanol.
Here's NPR's Christopher Joyce.
CHRISTOPHER JOYCE: Right now, Americans get their ethanol fuel from corn, so much of it that corn prices have been bouncing up near their historical ceiling. A lot of economists say if the country wants more ethanol, it should not come from food. Thus, switchgrass. It's a kind of prairie grass, but you don't have to go to the prairie to find it. For example, it grows on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, where Ken Staver has been tending a plot for years. It's six-feet high, yellowish, and stiff as a pencil.
Mr. KEN STAVER (Scientist, University of Maryland): As you can see, it's doing, done very well here with very little care other than when we planted it 10 years ago, we used some herbicide during the establishment phase. But since then, there's, literally, the only thing we do out here every year is harvest it.
JOYCE: Switchgrass contains cellulose, the starting material that, with enough heat and the right enzymes and chemicals, can be made into ethanol fuel. Staver, a scientist with the University of Maryland, says one of the good things about this grass is that it pretty much grows by itself.
Mr. STAVER: It's considered a perennial plant. So, it does reseed some, but mostly these are the original plants. It's not growing back from seedlings every year, it's growing back from the same, from the same rootstock.
JOYCE: So you don't have to plant it every year or even fertilize it much, and it's easy to harvest. And these things are essential if you want to make fuel from plants, biofuels. The more energy you use to make them, say, gas for tractors or electricity to convert them into liquid fuel, the lower your net energy yield. In short, if it takes close to a gallon of gasoline to make a gallon of biofuel, why bother?
Well, plant scientist Ken Vogel, at the federal government's Agricultural Research Service in Nebraska, has done a new study that says switchgrass is worth the bother. Vogel spent five years with farmers growing switchgrass in the Midwest. It was one of the biggest experiments with actual crops. He calculated with what might seem like mind-numbing thoroughness, everything that went into each plot.
Mr. KEN VOGEL (Scientist, United States Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service): And this includes the energy used for fuel, the energy used to make the tractors, the energy used to produce the seed to plant the field, the energy used to produce the herbicide, the energy used to produce the fertilizer, the energy used in the harvesting process.
JOYCE: Vogel says for every unit of energy used to grow the switchgrass, he could get almost five and a half units worth of ethanol out. And that's a lot more efficient than making ethanol from corn, he says.
Mr. VOGEL: The bottom line is perennial energy crops are very net energy-efficient. It is going to be economically feasible, the basic conversion technology has been developed, and it is going to be a viable process.
JOYCE: Now, Vogel has focused on the growing part of the process, mostly. He hasn't demonstrated that commercial distilleries can actually achieve the same level of efficiency.
One issue is how you power your distillery. If you use electricity made from coal, you lose some of the advantage of biofuels. Vogel argues that a distillery could regain that advantage by burning leftover parts of the switchgrass to generate the energy.
Vogel's research appears in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Christopher Joyce, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
In New Hampshire today, a study in mood contrast as two presidential campaigns head in opposite directions. Here's a moment from Barack Obama's campaign day. He's in the town of Lebanon, responding to the suggestion that he's peddling false hope.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois): This country was built on hope. Is JFK looking up at the moon and saying, ah, false hope, too far. Reality check. Can't do it. Dr. King, standing on the steps of Lincoln Memorial, looking out over that magnificent crowd, the Reflecting Pool, the Washington Monument, sorry, guys, false hope. The dream will die. It can't be done.
NORRIS: That was Barack Obama today in Lebanon, New Hampshire.
SIEGEL: Hillary Clinton is trailing Obama in New Hampshire polls by double digits. Her campaign is already looking past the possible loss there and onto the big states that vote on February 5th. But Clinton is still on the trail in New Hampshire and today, she showed something rare for a campaign event.
NPR's Mara Liasson was there.
MARA LIASSON: Hillary Clinton got emotional today here at the Cafe Espresso in Portsmouth. She was talking to undecided voters. And after about an hour and a half of detailed policy-laden answers, a woman said she wanted to ask a personal question, how do you do it, she said, how do you keep upbeat and so wonderful?
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York): It's not easy. It's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don't want to see us fall backwards, no, no.
(Soundbite of applause)
LIASSON: She didn't actually cry, but her eyes were wet with tears.
Sen. CLINTON: And some people think elections are a game. They think it's like who's up or who's down. It's about our country. It's about our kids' futures. It's really about all of us together.
LIASSON: It was a moment that many in the room said made her seem human and accessible, just what her campaign has been wanting her to show. Although she's trailing in the polls, she still have strong supporters, like Monique Sheblin(ph), who came to the event today.
Ms. MONIQUE SHEBLIN (Hillary Clinton Supporter): I have actually been a Hillary supporter since before she decided to run. I had always hoped that she would. And I think she has what it takes to run the country. She has the experience.
LIASSON: But even Sheblin has been affected by the Obama surge.
Ms. SHEBLIN: I think, I've been caught up with what's going on with a lot of people and that, you know, Obama does carry a lot of appeal and charisma, and that can be his winning factor, unfortunately.
LIASSON: So you're feeling yourself tugged in his direction?
Ms. SHEBLIN: It's - just a tad. He says the right things and in a nice way.
LIASSON: Sheblin said she uses her head, not her heart, when it comes to politics. Jeffrey Cooper(ph) wishes that more of his fellow Democrats will do the same when they look at Obama.
Mr. JEFFREY COOPER (Hillary Clinton Supporter): There's no question that he is a great motivational speaker, but that's not a qualification for president. (unintelligible) make him the next Dale Carnegie.
LIASSON: Cooper, like a lot of hard-core Clinton supporters, is frustrated.
Mr. COOPER: While I was canvassing for her yesterday, and I talked to this guy and says, oh, I'm for change. (unintelligible), well, what do you - what change are you looking for? What do you mean by that? And he was dumbfounded. He had no idea. Everybody's for change. Well, look, we're all for change. Smoke and mirrors, it's kind of like a cult following.
LIASSON: Gloria Kay(ph) was also at the cafe today. She's an old friend of both Clintons from Little Rock and a former Clinton administration official. She says she understands Obama's appeal.
Ms. GLORIA KAY (Former Clinton Administration Official): I do get it because I, too, was seduced as by JFK. And I think it's that same sort of seduction that we see going on right now…
LIASSON: You mean with Obama?
Ms. KAY: …with Obama. I understand, I really understand why young people are swooning. I just want, I just want them to look a step further and say, this is (unintelligible) in the times in which we live to take us where we need to go, and I think the answer is going to be (unintelligible).
LIASSON: Kay is a veteran rider on the Clintons' political roller coaster.
Ms. KAY: I'm remembering 1992, when Bill - everybody wrote Bill Clinton off, and we came out of here right into the next primary as winners. And I frankly see the same kind of thing for Hillary.
LIASSON: Even if she doesn't place first?
Ms. KAY: Oh, absolutely. She doesn't need to take New Hampshire. She can take Florida, South Carolina, California and New York.
LIASSON: Bill Clinton likes to say that when Republicans choose a nominee, they fall in line, but Democrats want to fall in love. And for now, to the great disappointment of the Clinton campaign, more voters in New Hampshire seem to be happy to be swept off their feet by Obama. But there's something else that Bill Clinton used to say, it was the title of his 1992 campaign song, "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow." And that Hillary Clinton campaign is already thinking about the day after New Hampshire.
Sen. CLINTON: So I'm going to do everything I can to make my case and, you know, then the voters get to decide. Thank you all.
(Soundbite of applause)
LIASSON: Mara Liasson, NPR News, Portsmouth.
DANIEL SCHORR: Not everybody was surprised by the emergence of a Barack Obama coalition of the young and the independent rallying around the magical word, change.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
NPR senior news analyst, Daniel Schorr.
SCHORR: As long ago as last February, a Harvard sociologist, William Julius Wilson, wrote in the student newspaper, The Crimson, that Democrats and some Republicans would respond to Obama's political message that he had the great potential to unify this divided nation. Obama doesn't have a lock on the word change; "it's time for a change" is a staple of political campaigns.
And Senator Hillary Clinton has responded to Obama by citing her 35 years of fighting for change. But that was still looking backward. The 70 percent of Americans who tell pollsters that America's on the wrong track seem to be demanding a break with the corrupt and partisan past and a new set of names, faces and ideas.
It may or may not be relevant that Senator Obama, at 46, is the youngest of the candidates on both sides. It's commonplace to say that Iowa is oddball and atypical. It tells you nothing about what will happen in subsequent contests, starting with New Hampshire. But if that was ever true, it is no longer true. The networks, which have been giving unprecedented time to this political spectator sport, have helped to nationalize these state-by-state primaries.
And there seems to be no doubt about a spillover effect from Iowa in New Hampshire and beyond. Obama is probably justified in saying, as he did in his Iowa victory speech, that this is a defining moment in history. He's reaching for the high ground with a unifying theme of moving on from the bitterness and pettiness and anger that have consumed Washington. This campaign, as few would have foreseen, may be turning into a transforming event.
This is Daniel Schorr.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
The first primary of this election season starts in a matter of hours, and candidates from both parties are making their last-minute pitches. For the Republicans, polls have John McCain leading Mitt Romney and the rest of the field. On the Democratic side, Barack Obama appears to be widening his lead over Hillary Clinton. Former Senator John Edwards is running in third.
NORRIS: I spoke with John Edwards this afternoon. He was on his campaign bus between Bedford and Laconia, New Hampshire. And he insisted that despite the polls and the fundraising picture, that he is in good shape.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democrat Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): I know that I'm the underdog. I understand that. But I think as long as the people understand here that I'm fighting and fighting for what matters, fighting against entrenched interests and - which means not taking lobbyists' money, not taking Washington lobbyists' money, not taking money from PACs, fighting for jobs in the middle class, for universal health care, we're getting - as this is personal for me, we're getting extraordinary response here.
NORRIS: You note that you're the underdog in this race; that's your own word. Are you battling the perception that this has become a two-person contest?
Mr. EDWARDS: No, what I'm battling is a hundred million dollars in each of two campaigns. They're the big-money campaigns; I'm not. My campaign is much more of a grassroots campaign, and I'm very proud of that. Now that voters are taking a hard look at us, it's actually amazing what I've been able to accomplish first in Iowa and now here in New Hampshire. And I think it will continue going forward.
NORRIS: You know, I've had the chance to attend some of the campaign rallies, and there's a stark difference in both the tone and the message between you and Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton.
Mr. EDWARDS: Yes.
NORRIS: In your rallies, you are absolutely on fire. You talk about this war against the middle class. You note time and time again that you are a fighter and that you're willing to take the fight to big corporations. Are you concerned at all that that sort of us against them anger won't catch fire when it's clear that the thing that really fired up voters back in Iowa was this message that was all about change and optimism, not anger?
Mr. EDWARDS: My message is entirely about change, and it's entirely optimistic. What I believe, it is the truth. I mean, there's a certain strength and passion when you tell the truth, and the truth in America is that these interests are standing between middle-class families and what they need. And it's just - it's not just rhetoric. This is real stuff affecting people's lives.
NORRIS: In speaking to some of the voters at some of your rallies, one of the concerns I heard was a concern about consistency in your past and in your rhetoric on the campaign trail; your vote for the war as a senator, your stand against the war as a candidate; your early position favoring a gradual approach to health care reform versus your call now for universal health care; your focus on poverty and the beleaguered middle class as a millionaire who now lives a privileged, upper-class life. What do you say to voters who wonder if there are not just two Americas but also, perhaps, two versions of John Edwards?
Mr. EDWARDS: I'm 54 years old; I have fought the same fight my entire life. The success I've been able to have in my own life, which I don't make any excuses for, I'm proud of. I achieved that success fighting for the same kind of people that I grew up with - the poor, working middle-class families fighting against very well-financed, entrenched corporate interests.
Now, on the war, I've been very clear about the war. I was wrong about the war. I should never have voted for this war. I have accepted responsibility for that. I did it voluntarily. I did it before - long before there was any presidential campaign this time around because it was right. It was the - no one else is responsible for that vote. I'm responsible for it. But I've learned a lesson. You learn lessons the hard way sometimes, and I've learned a lesson, and I have been one of the strongest critics of the war and one of the strongest, if not the strongest, presidential candidate for bringing this war to an end.
NORRIS: What's at stake for you there in New Hampshire? What do you need to do to survive? What would a second distant or even a third-place finish in that state mean for your campaign?
Mr. EDWARDS: It means I go on to the next contest. It means I go on to Nevada, South Carolina. It means we go on to the states that come after that. When I say I'm in this for the long haul, I'm deadly serious about it. This is not a fight for me. You can walk away from a fight for you. You can't walk away from a fight that is the cause of your life. And making certain that everybody in America has the kind of the chances I've had, that is the cause of my life. And I have - I'm going to be in it to the end. And that will be the White House.
NORRIS: Senator Edwards, thanks for talking to us.
Mr. EDWARDS: Thanks for having me.
NORRIS: That was former Senator John Edwards on his campaign bus in New Hampshire.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
Tensions between Iran and the United States are on the rise over an incident in the Persian Gulf. The U.S. Navy says yesterday, small Iranian attack boats harassed three American warships in the Strait of Hormuz.
Vice Admiral KEVIN COSGRIFF (Commander, Fifth Fleet, U.S. Navy): Yesterday, the Revolutionary Guard demonstrated their capacity to act irresponsibly and, in my estimation, well out of the ordinary norms of what we would expect.
SIEGEL: That's Vice Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. He says the American warships had to take evasive actions to avoid the Iranians. For its part, Tehran calls the incident normal.
NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman is with us.
And, Tom, what more can you tell us about what happened yesterday?
TOM BOWMAN: Well, Robert, Navy and Pentagon officials say that five small Iranian attack boats came and swarmed around both sides of these three American ships. This is early Sunday morning in the Persian Gulf. There was a U.S. destroyer, a cruiser and a frigate, and they were heading into the Gulf on a routine patrol. The Americans say they were at least 15 miles from Iran, so outside the 12-mile territorial waters. And the Navy says the Iranian boats did not heed American radio calls, they were aggressive, moving fast, and closing to as close as several hundred yards from the American vessels.
And this is interesting, they also threw boxes into the water, but the Americans say it was unknown what was in them. Also, the Americans received a radio message, and here's what Admiral Cosgriff had to say about that.
Vice Admiral COSGRIFF: Our ships received a radio call that was threatening in nature to the effect that they were closing our ships and that the ships might - the ships would explode - the U.S. ships would explode.
BOWMAN: Now, the Navy says it's not certain that radio message came from the Iranian boats, but officials here say it's likely. And we're told that one of the American Navy ship commanders was close to firing at the Iranians, but Admiral Cosgriff, when I asked him about that, he would not confirm that.
SIEGEL: Tom, how unusual is an incident like this? Very rare or have the Iranians done things like this before?
BOWMAN: Well, you know, they have. The Navy officials say they routinely encounter Iranian Navy and also Revolutionary Guard ships in the Gulf and even some that very morning. They often exchange radio messages, so the Iranians, you know, they shadow the American ships in the Gulf. But most officials say nothing like this - nothing this threatening has happened between the two countries before.
SIEGEL: What did - yeah, go ahead, Tom.
BOWMAN: And, of course, there was an incident back in March with the British Navy and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. This took place in the Northern Gulf, and 15 British sailors from the HMS Cornwall were in a small patrol craft. They were seized by the Revolutionary Guard in a larger boat; they were held for two weeks. At that time, the Iranians say the British intruded on their territorial waters; Britain denied this.
SIEGEL: Well, in this incident from yesterday, what's the Navy's sense of what the Iranians were up to, why they were doing it?
BOWMAN: Well, they really don't know at this point. There's speculation that the Iranians might have been probing to determine the American defensive measures, maybe trying to keep them off guard, provoking them perhaps into firing, but at this point, it's really only speculation.
SIEGEL: And is the Navy going to change any procedures as a result of this?
BOWMAN: We don't get sense of that. The admiral said that the American sailors were disciplined, measured in their response, and clearly ready to defend their ships. He wouldn't say if there were any change in procedures.
SIEGEL: Okay. Thank you, Tom.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Tom Bowman at the Pentagon.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
The federal government is looking for some new ideas to try to save a species. About a decade ago, wildlife managers reintroduced Mexican gray wolves to the southwest U.S. A similar effort was hugely successful in the Northern Rockies, where more than a thousand wolves now live. But in Arizona and New Mexico, the wolves are running into some old problems.
NPR's Ted Robbins has the story.
TED ROBBINS: If the Mexican gray wolf didn't have enemies, it wouldn't have been exterminated in the southwest a half century ago. Times change, but some opinions don't.
Tom Clumpker(ph) spoke with Albuquerque member station KUNM.
Mr. TOM CLUMPKER (River Outfitter): Our ancestors and the people that settled this area, they worked long and hard to get rid of the wolves for a good reason because they were a dominant predator and were hard on their livestock and wildlife.
ROBBINS: Clumpker is a river outfitter who frequently camps in the Blue Range Mexican Wolf Recovery area.
Mr. CLUNKER: You know that old forlorn howl they've got, it's kind of blood curdling.
(Soundbite of howling)
ROBBINS: That is not a wolf. It's a wolf advocate demonstrating outside a recent meeting in Albuquerque. Hundreds of people showed up at meetings in New Mexico and Arizona. They heard a recorded Fish and Wildlife presentation admitting the current strategy is flawed.
(Soundbite of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service presentation)
Unidentified Man: We need your input in helping us identify all possible alternatives and remedies.
ROBBINS: Over the last decade, more than 80 wolves have been killed by poachers, shot by the government for killing cattle, returned to captivity, or accidentally destroyed by the project's managers.
Michael Robinson of the Center for Biological Diversity cites just one example.
Mr. MICHAEL ROBINSON (Conservation Advocate, Center for Biological Diversity): A wolf had left the boundary of the recovery area. It was not bothering any cattle or any other domestic animal. They chased him by helicopter for almost 20 miles until he collapsed.
ROBBINS: The goal was to have at least 100 wild wolves on the ground by now. There are only about 60; that's largely because the Mexican gray wolf is limited to a relatively small reintroduction area in the Blue Range of Arizona and New Mexico. Contrast that to the Rocky Mountain wolf, which was reintroduced into a huge swath of protected public land in the Yellowstone region. The Mexican gray wolf is removed for leaving its area. There's a lot of people at these public meetings on both sides who pointed out, wolves roam. They don't know they aren't supposed to cross an invisible boundary. And while they quickly learn to kill elk or deer, they don't know they aren't supposed to eat cattle.
Eva Sargent is with Defenders of Wildlife.
Ms. EVA SARGENT (Southwest Representative, Defenders of Wildlife): The problem is, in the southwest, there's almost no place that's free of livestock. And - so you're going to have conflicts with wolves and livestock, and that's generally what causes people to not like the wolves.
ROBBINS: At least one rancher has been quoted as saying he baits wolves with beef carcasses so the wolves will be shot or removed. At the meeting, some suggested requiring ranchers to remove dead or dying cattle before wolves can get to them, as ranchers must do in the Northern Rockies. Another suggestion: make the reintroduction areas larger, using biological boundaries instead of political ones.
Given the compromises over the last decade, Eva Sargent says that she's amazed there are any Mexican gray wolves left.
Ms. SARGENT: In a lot of ways, it's a success because there were no Mexican wolves in the wild, so it's an absolute miracle that they're back. And wolves are great, and we can all feel good about that. What we have to worry about is the fact that the program is, at this point, so bungled that it looks like the service is condoning the second extinction of this species.
ROBBINS: The Fish and Wildlife Service insists it will come up with a better management plan for the Mexican gray wolf that will clearly have to include more cooperation from ranchers or better law enforcement against poachers, or maybe it will mean finding other areas where the Mexican wolf can live in peace.
Ted Robbins, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The man called the greatest living pitcher offered yet another public defense today against allegations that he used performance-enhancing drugs. Over the weekend, Roger Clemens appeared on "60 Minutes" and filed a suit against his former trainer. Clemens is one of 90 baseball players named in last year's Mitchell Report, which detailed baseball's steroid problem.
Joining us is NPR's sports correspondent Tom Goldman.
Tom, this was Roger Clemens's first appearance before a large group of reporters since the Mitchell Report. What did he say?
TOM GOLDMAN: Well, as a matter fact, Robert, he's still talking - what has happened so far at this press conference in Houston. The most dramatic part was Clemens and his lawyer, Rusty Hardin, played a tape made between - of a phone conversation last week between Clemens and Brian McNamee. He is the personal trainer who made the allegations in the Mitchell Report that he had injected Roger Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone several times over three seasons. Clemens knew this phone conversation was recorded, McNamee apparently didn't, and both men, obviously, are in pain. They're uncomfortable. There are long pauses. It's very emotional.
And the striking part of it is that McNamee keeps asking, desperately at times, to Clemens, what do you want me to do? And Clemens never says - he never comes - he never says to McNamee - excuse - come out and tell everyone you lied when you made the allegations. Now, Clemens's lawyer points out that Clemens keeps saying, I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't take the drugs, and McNamee never responds by saying, yes, you did. But, again, Clemens never directly confronts McNamee and says, why did you say this about me?
SIEGEL: Now, Clemens, through his lawyers, has taken the offensive and brought a defamation suit against McNamee. What can you tell us about the suit?
GOLDMAN: Yeah, you know, it feels almost like one of Roger Clemens's high heaters, those fastballs he throws. He is coming out and unequivocally saying no to everything that Brian McNamee said in the Mitchell Report. The lawsuit details 15 statements McNamee made to the Mitchell commission, and it labels all of them, quote, "absolutely false and defamatory," unquote. The lawsuit says McNamee was bullied by federal agents into testifying that Clemens used banned performance-enhancing drugs, saying that the federal agents had it out for Clemens and threatened McNamee with jail time on steroid distribution charges if he didn't finger Clemens.
SIEGEL: Did Clemens explain why he didn't file that suit sooner than a month after the Mitchell report went public?
GOLDMAN: Yeah, you know, before they played that tape today that I was just mentioning, his lawyer, Rusty Hardin, came out and explained that in detail - why it didn't happen. It was basically, Hardin said, under his advice to Clemens not to talk publicly. He said that Clemens, all along, had said he was innocent, he was ready to come out and meet the cameras, meet the microphones, meet the reporters, but Hardin knew the stakes in this game and he wanted to make sure that everyone was comfortable before Clemens made a very public statement, which is why it took so long.
SIEGEL: Well, given their statements, McNamee and Clemens cannot both be telling the truth. One of them is lying.
GOLDMAN: It would seem that way, and it seems to be an incredibly high-stakes game going on here. When you think about the reputation of Roger Clemens, he is so forcefully denying this and is, you know, he's suing now for defamation; that means he will have to sit down with lawyers and tell the truth under oath. And if he's not telling the truth, he would be charged with perjury; that's pretty striking.
SIEGEL: Okay. Thank you, Tom.
GOLDMAN: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's sports correspondent Tom Goldman.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
When it comes to New Hampshire, Mike Huckabee can't get respect from his big Iowa win. He doesn't have a built-in base of evangelical voters in the state. But he does have one secret weapon to get people to show up at his rallies - TV tough guy Chuck Norris.
NPR's Robert Smith sent this audio postcard about what happens when political science meets martial arts.
ROBERT SMITH: Young teenage boys can't vote for president, and let's be honest, that's probably a good thing. I mean, come on, who's powerful enough to get a 14-year-old to show up for a political rally?
Mr. TYLER GRAHAM: Chuck Norris is so fast he can run around the world and punch himself in the back of the head.
SMITH: Well, there you are. Tyler Graham is holding a book called "The Truth About Chuck Norris," a collection of so-called facts about the karate star. He came to the Huckabee event in Windham, New Hampshire, just to have the man sign it.
Mr. GRAHAM: Chuck Norris can speak Braille. Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice.
SMITH: Are you a Chuck Norris fan?
Mr. GRAHAM: Yes.
SMITH: Or a little tongue-in-cheek?
Mr. GRAHAM: It's a big teenage fad right now, and me being a teenager, you know?
SMITH: Never mind that Graham wasn't even born when Chuck Norris starred in "Delta Force." He was just a kid when Chuck Norris wrestled a bear on "Walker Texas Ranger."
(Soundbite of movie "Walker Texas Ranger")
SMITH: I don't need to tell you who won that fight because I think you're getting the idea of just how tough Chuck Norris is.
Mr. GRAHAM: Chuck Norris can charge a cell phone just by rubbing it against his beard.
SMITH: Yeah, but here's one fact about Chuck Norris you may not know; he's probably going to kick me in the head for saying it. He's not the best political speaker. Oh, he gets cheers when he walks on stage, but the audience tends to zone out after a few minutes.
Mr. CHUCK NORRIS (Actor): Because the thing is, what impresses me the most and the things that are more passionate to me is education. Education's very important to me.
SMITH: In fact, during his speech, reporters in the back of the room compete to come up with the best political version of the Chuck Norris facts. Perhaps you didn't know that Mike Huckabee's bumper stickers don't have glue. They stick to your car because Chuck told them to.
Mr. NORRIS: Actually, interesting, you know, me being a martial arts teacher for 15 years…
SMITH: When Chuck Norris gives a stump speech, it's on an actual stump that he pulled from the ground with his teeth.
Mr. NORRIS: You know, physically, psychologically and mentally and spiritually…
SMITH: You know, the toughest guy on this stage is perhaps Mike Huckabee, who has to listen to this speech five times a day. I'm not saying that Chuck Norris is not a powerful political prop. When a heckler starts yelling at Mike Huckabee from the back of the room…
(Soundbite of hecklers yelling)
SMITH: …Huckabee is ready for it.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Democrat Governor, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): Don't make me send Chuck back there.
SMITH: And Huckabee rarely talks about his immigration policy. I mean, why does he need to when he has ads like this?
(Soundbite of political ad)
Mr. HUCKABEE: My plan to secure the border? Two words: Chuck Norris.
SMITH: It's hokey and maybe even a little desperate, but politics is a sales job, and you have to get the people in the door. And heck, some of those teenagers can actually vote. Daniel Savasano is 18.
Mr. DANIEL SAVASANO: I honestly came today for Chuck Norris, but after hearing everything that Mike Huckabee said, I really do like him. I think he would make a great president.
SMITH: Well, are you saying Mike Huckabee is more powerful than Chuck Norris?
Mr. SAVASANO: No, nobody is more powerful than Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris might be God, but Huckabee's pretty close right now.
SMITH: They might as well put it on the bumper sticker, come for the Chuck; stay for the Huck.
Robert Smith, NPR News, Manchester.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And talk about change. We're now going to visit a couple of western towns that have succeeded in reinventing themselves. The towns of Wallace and Kellogg in Idaho are on the rebound after decades of depression. Reporter Tom Banse takes us to the Silver Valley, which calls itself the silver capital of the world.
TOM BANSE: An old factory whistle symbolizes the changing times in Kellogg, in the Idaho Panhandle.
(SOUNDBITE OF OLD FACTORY WHISTLE)
BANSE: The whistle is one of the few surviving remnants of a big mine and smelter complex. Smokestacks spewing lead-contaminated fumes once turned the hillsides hemming this valley dead and brown. Now, earthmovers sculpt golf fairways and cul-de-sacs on some of those same slopes. Higher up, a ski area is expanding. It's all part of the Silver Mountain Resort. Neal Scholey sells real estate for the company. He wants to get you in on the ground floor, at the next Northern Rockies boomtown.
NORRIS: Imagine if you had the opportunity to purchase at, we're talking about the golf community here, at a golf community in Vail, in Park City or Sun Valley 15 years ago.
BANSE: The sales pitch is working. Scholey says hundreds of condo units sold out in a matter of days at the ski hill-base village. The twist here is that legacy of mining pollution. This is a Superfund site, isn't it?
NORRIS: Yeah. Or Super-fun, as we like to say.
BANSE: Much of the Silver Valley was declared a Superfund site in 1983. Lead and other toxic metal residues made it a federal priority cleanup. The area is still on the list, but Scholey believes the remaining work has little impact on skiers, golfers, bikers and hikers.
NORRIS: There's been over $200 million invested in the cleanup for the Silver Valley, here. And it's one of the most successful in Superfund history.
BANSE: Not so fast, says the leader of a cleanup advocacy and watchdog group. Barbara Miller argues the EPA still has a ways to go to close off all the pathways for lead exposure.
NORRIS: We believe that there are strong measures of remediation that still need to be in place. There is, there is recontamination. People should be aware. I mean, it doesn't take much.
BANSE: Long-time Kellogg mayor Mac Pooler is amazed how far the Silver Valley has come after its mainstay of mining went kaput.
NORRIS: The cards were stacked against us. Losing the mines to Superfund, I think a lot of areas had thrown their hands up and said, geez, you know. I mean, we had ski hill. We had a little bitty ski hill up there. That's all we had.
BANSE: The signal bells in the hoist room toll steadily from all the preparatory lifting and lowering. Maintenance manager Brian Higdem says this is just one of roughly a half-dozen underground mines in the area that are reviving.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELLS)
NORRIS: Silver's the primary ticket here. And good silver prices, people are going back to work, and we are close to about 100 people now at the mine, whereas four years ago, there's about three people here.
BANSE: In the Sunshine ore mill, John Ackerman(ph) looks forward to showing that modern mining and an outdoor recreation economy can co-exist. Expensive new condos aren't for him, but he wants to get along with that set.
NORRIS: You know, any community is better off with a mixture of industry. So if there's the mining, there's tourism. If there could be some other things as well, that adds to the economy and also makes it more stable, more resilient.
BANSE: For NPR News, I'm Tom Banse.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
In the liner notes to her latest CD, the violist Kim Kashkashian writes that one of her earliest and most visceral memories is of her father's singing voice. And since she began playing, she says she has always tried to capture some of the essence of that sound.
SIEGEL: Songs from Spain and Argentina." Here's his review.
TOM MANOFF: Although Kim Kashkashian is world-famous as a violist, when I hear her name, the first word that comes to mind isn't viola, but lyricism, that quality of music to be songlike and to flow easily with emotion.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MANOFF: The words in these songs are important to Kashkashian, and you can hear how they underlie her interpretation by following each lyric in the liner notes. "Asturiana," the title track, is a song from the Spanish province of Asturia. The words, in part, say this: "Seeking consolation, I drew near a green pine tree. And seeing me weep, it wept."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MANOFF: More than most classical traditions, Spain's is deeply connected to its folk and popular music. Flamenco is one of these styles. And in this song by Manuel De Falla, the piano imitates a guitar, and the viola, a gypsy singer.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MANOFF: Robert Levin, the pianist, always reveals something interesting in familiar music. As famous as these pieces may be, Levin emphasizes bits of harmony and melody that seemed to have been hiding in the piano part, which creates another level of interest in this performance. But it's the melodies that matter most. Striking in their beauty, and captivating in the emotions they impart, they will leave you singing.
SIEGEL: Our critic, Tom Manoff, reviewing the latest CD from violist Kim Kashkashian. It's called "Asturiana: Songs from Spain and Argentina." You can hear more selections and discover more classical music at npr.org/music.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
I'm Michele Norris.
SIEGEL: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
We'll check in with one of our correspondents in Manchester in a few minutes. But first, the other major story we're following today.
NORRIS: From Jerusalem, here's NPR's Eric Westervelt.
ERIC WESTERVELT: Another sign offers new Euro-view apartments. In fact, the view is of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank. And what Israeli officials call expansion of a neighborhood of the united Jerusalem, the Palestinians call an illegal settlement. Har Homa is built on land Israel captured and annexed after the 1967 Mideast war, annexation the Palestinians and much of the international community view as illegal.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRILLING)
WESTERVELT: Construction in Har Homa today is booming. Just one week after the Annapolis conference restarted long-stalled peace talks, the Israeli Housing Ministry announced tenders to build more than 300 additional housing units here. The move enraged Palestinians.
NORRIS: They're poking me in the eye. They are (unintelligible) me in front of Palestinian people. If they think they can have settlements and peace, forget it.
WESTERVELT: In 1997, the start of construction of Jewish homes in Har Homa contributed to a violent collapse in peace talks. Erekat warns that ongoing construction in East Jerusalem and expansion of West Bank settlements could one again undermine negotiations.
NORRIS: Just the total pity politics was the reason of Israel. (Unintelligible) Har Homa, (unintelligible), remember they said no. We decided already, we have dictated on this Palestinians, so we are preempting the reasons for negotiations before they begin, and will determine the faith of Jerusalem by adding all these settlement blocks to us.
WESTERVELT: Hebrew University political scientist Reuven Hazan says it's a tragedy the president waited until his final year in office to get directly involved in the peace process.
D: A president has to decide that he really wants to deal with the conflict. But presidents who come here late in office, who have lost both houses of Congress - all these and American think too little too late.
WESTERVELT: Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Jerusalem.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Hello, Laura.
LAURA SYDELL: Hello, Michele.
NORRIS: So what is this new technology?
SYDELL: So, essentially, what, what I'm looking at here in the front is just a small screen. And on that small screen, there are a variety of things I can do. I can make phone calls. I can map where I am. Right now, I'm seeing a map right there on the system, and I guess that can just tell me where I am. I guess, the question is what's different from this from, say, just a regular GPS system?
COSMEN JOHNSON: Well, the regular GPS system is just GPS system location. But with this, you can have up-to-date traffic reports, road construction. And if you're running low on gas, the GPS will actually route you to the closest gas station with the cheapest prices.
SYDELL: So that map system is just one of the many services that the WiMax system is going to bring to the car. And here's another one.
JOHNSON: Yahoo! Mini Jukebox, which is a, an online, on demand music. So, you could search any artist or song that you like and stream it live over your WiMax connection, so like those stored locally on your system. But now, you have access to unlimited amounts of music without having to go out and buy CDs and store them on your system and go through all the hassle.
SYDELL: And that's because it's coming directly from the Internet?
JOHNSON: Directly from the Internet over WiMax. It's a great example of broadband on the go. So if you have a specific artist, I could search for it and actually play it.
SYDELL: How about Tori Amos?
JOHNSON: Okay.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NORRIS: Laura, that's great. So if it's a Stevie Wonder day, you just plug that in and then you listen to Stevie all day long, huh?
SYDELL: Exactly. You can just say, I want to hear Stevie Wonder, put it in, and as much Stevie Wonder as you want to listen to will be streaming right down from the Internet.
NORRIS: That sounds like fun. So how soon will WiMax technology actually be available?
SYDELL: Well, the big companies are, that are getting behind WiMax are Intel, which makes the chips so that the devices can actually get the WiMax signal, and then Sprint and Clearwire, which were going to be the WiMax service providers. And I should say that Sprint and Intel have been talking about WiMax here at CES for the last three years. So, there is some history, and it hasn't come out yet. But I want to say that it looks like they really are getting closer. I've talked to a number of analysts who say in the next few years, we should see it. And Sprint has said that you there in D.C. will be getting some WiMax this year, and they're also going to try it in Chicago. And they've started rolling out in parts of Oregon. So, I think that slowly but surely, in the next few years, you're really going to see this, probably a few years before you see a whole state blanketed with WiMax.
NORRIS: Now, all of this stuff sounds great, but it also sounds like it depends on getting a wireless signal. How good is the signal in the car that you were in?
SYDELL: Well, yeah, the signal was darn pretty good. And no matter how fast we drove, it was consistent. And what's really promising about WiMax is it's going to be possible to quickly download anything in the car while you're walking around. So, if your kids are in the backseat and they want to watch something, they can get it right away. They can just download a video. They can also play online games without that lag time that in previous generations of wireless technology, you know, you could suddenly get your avatar killed because of the lag time. Internet radio will stream pretty seamlessly without any dropout.
NORRIS: Now, aside from all the stuff in that car that you rode in, what else are companies planning to do with wireless?
SYDELL: Well, the idea would be to have it have it on other mobile devices. So for example, Intel is hoping that people will buy small laptops that they can use on the go. This could also be a real plus for Internet telephone services. So in the car, we had Skype, which is an Internet telephone service, and it worked really well. You could just dial it up. They also hope that, eventually, this will all be voiced command. You'll just be able to say, "Call Michele," for example.
NORRIS: Well, we could go on and on, but I guess I have to say goodbye. Thanks so much, Laura.
SYDELL: You're welcome, Michele.
NORRIS: That was NPR's digital culture correspondent, Laura Sydell. She was speaking to us from the Consumer Electronic Show, or CES, in Las Vegas.
SIEGEL: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Unidentified Man: (Speaking in foreign language).
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Unidentified Woman: (Speaking in foreign language).
BEARDSLEY: Are you going to marry Carla Bruni and when, a journalist asked.
NICOLAS SARKOZY: (Speaking in foreign language).
BEARDSLEY: How do I answer that, said Sarkozy, flashing a broad grin.
SARKOZY: (Speaking in foreign language)
BEARDSLEY: But Sarkozy's complete change of style - mixing his private life with his public life - may be more than some French people can handle, says analyst Dominic Moisi.
DOMINIQUE MOISI: There's always something happening in the new Sarkozian republic. I think that's a little too much for many Frenchmen who are accusing the president from neglecting their problems and from leading a lifestyle that is too much in contrast with the difficulties of their own private lives.
BEARDSLEY: At the counter of Le Mirabeau cafe near the Seine River, Jerome Barron(ph) is enjoying a draught beer after work. Barron says he doesn't think Sarkozy's relationship is directly related to his drop in popularity, but it's what he calls the president's permanent show that is beginning to wear thin.
JEROME BARRON: (Speaking in foreign language).
BEARDSLEY: He's too Americanized. We have an image of a more statesman-like, reserved president, not someone who acts like a tycoon, Barron says. He goes too fast, we French want gradual change. So it's his image that's a bit troubling.
BEARDSLEY: For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson is in Manchester, she's following the candidates and talking to the voters. How are you doing, Mara?
MARA LIASSON: Good, Robert.
SIEGEL: A lot of activity out there, with talk of momentum and surges, and of course, a lot of talk about change. What are you looking for tonight?
LIASSON: Obama is very strong with independents. He won them in Iowa. McCain, of course, won the vast majority of independents in New Hampshire in 2000. But this year, independents have trended to the Democrats. Another interesting fact about the New Hampshire electorate is that 25 percent of them are new to the state since 2000. That is a lot of New Voters. Most of them are moving up from Massachusetts. That means smaller proportions of people here who remember the storied campaigns of Bill Clinton in '92 or John McCain in 2000. Also, these new voters are more upscale, educated. They fit the profile of the Obama voter on the Democratic side and the Romney voter on the Republican side.
SIEGEL: Mara, what do you think winning, or for that matter, losing New Hampshire means to the candidates? How much has it actually meant in the past?
LIASSON: But in 1992, Bill Clinton turned a second place finish here into the greatest act of political hutzpah in history when he called himself the comeback kid. And I would watch for Hillary Clinton if she places much closer to Obama than the polls show her doing to try to spin something similar. I think on the Republican side, a Romney win would effectively end the campaign of John McCain. A McCain win would wound Romney even further, but anyone worth 250 million is not going to be thrown out of the race by a lost in New Hampshire.
SIEGEL: Yeah. But whatever happens later tonight, for now certainly, everyone is vowing to fight on, win or lose.
LIASSON: That's right.
SIEGEL: You can't...
LIASSON: And...
SIEGEL: ...let the side down going into the election, going into the primary.
LIASSON: On the Democratic side, Obama and Clinton will begin a very different kind of battle. Those Super Duper Tuesday states are all about tarmac events. They do not lend themselves to the kind of individual, one on one, intense grassroots organizing that the Obama campaign has really excelled at in Iowa and New Hampshire. Obama is also going to be getting a lot more scrutiny now that he's the frontrunner. He's going to be focusing on the February states, these states that have open primaries, where independents can vote. Hillary Clinton will, of course, focus on the states that have closed primaries where only Democrats can vote. But of course, before Mrs. Clinton goes anywhere, she - if she loses here by a sizeable margin, she'll probably go home, huddle with her husband and think about a staff shake up and a retooling of her campaign. Insiders in her campaign say she needs a message more about her vision for the future.
SIEGEL: Okay, Mara, and we'll hear from you as the day goes on. Thank you.
LIASSON: Thank you.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Changing the subject now - more good news today from middle-class families hoping to finance an Ivy League education. Yale University has announced that it will follow Harvard's lead and overhaul its financial aid system. Like Harvard, Yale plans to dip into its multi-billion dollar endowment to do it. And the plan is expected to resemble Harvard's, which caps tuition for families earning up to $180,000 at 10 percent of their entire earnings. A number of elite schools are making changes in their financial aid plans. I asked Eric Hoover of the Chronicle of Education, why.
ERIC HOOVER: One answer is simply that there is genuine concern. There is a concern about the future of higher education, about the future of classes - what are they going to look like, are they going to be representative more so or less so of the diversity of the United States at a time when the population is becoming more and more diversed.
NORRIS: So a concern about what some might call the bow tie effect. That you have a lot of students who are on full financial aid, a lot of wealthy students, but not a lot of students in that little category of the middle class.
HOOVER: Absolutely. A number of admission deans have cited quite publicly about that shrinking middle or the pinch in the middle, however you want to define it. Certainly, that concern is genuine. At the same time, there are other issues in play. Here in Washington, the United States Senate recently held a hearing on endowment spending rates. And so there's interest on Capitol Hill in how colleges and universities spend their money.
BLOCK: So Eric, if the schools are sitting on these big fat endowments, why don't they just lower tuition for everybody?
HOOVER: That's a very good question. I think in this country, there's a - and in Harvard, there's an old soul that's hard to let go of and that is you get what you pay for.
NORRIS: So there might be this perception that if Harvard lowered its tuition that the quality of the education would diminish as well.
HOOVER: I think - as with many things, perceptions in higher ed shape a great deal of reality.
NORRIS: Will this make it hard for small, private little art schools to compete with Harvard now?
HOOVER: I think that is a real concern. And some officials from smaller institutions, less wealthy institutions have expressed that concern. And some experts believe strongly that while this may be good for Harvard and Yale and their ilk, it puts other institutions in a bind, and that's simply because they do not have the resources to compete across the board in the financial aid packaging game with the richest colleges.
NORRIS: So what can schools do? I mean, it sounds like it is having a catalytic effect - some schools are making changes.
HOOVER: That money that they're putting out is going to come out of other places. That's why you hear, not necessarily resentment, but some healthy skepticism or at least plea for perspective from the presidents and admissions deans at schools who are just below or well below that top wealth tier that Harvard and Yale are in.
NORRIS: Eric, thanks so much for talking to us.
HOOVER: Okay. Thank you for having me on.
NORRIS: That was Eric Hoover, he's a writer with the Chronicle of Higher Education.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Richard Gonzales joins us now from Sacramento with a preview. And Richard, 14 billion sounds pretty big. Just how bad is this California budget crisis?
RICHARD GONZALES: But as we both know, those days are history, and the governor has been reluctant to make any new major tax increases. And now, he's faced with a mess that won't be very easy to fix.
SIEGEL: Hence, those drastic steps that we've heard about. Tell us about some of the possibilities.
GONZALES: Now, one proposal is opening the doors to the state's prisons and reusing about 20,000 so-called low-risk prisoners. There's also a call to reduce the number of parolees returned to prison every year for technical violations. The governor has also talked about leasing the state's lottery to a private company in exchange for a huge payment to the state upfront.
SIEGEL: Schwarzenegger is a Republican who works well with Democrats and he often says that that's an example for how Congress and the White House ought to work together in Washington. Any chance that there would be some rediscovered harmony in Sacramento over this budget crisis?
GONZALES: Well, I wouldn't bet on it. The Democrats are dug in against any big- spending cuts for things such as education. And the Republicans are stonewalling any, any talk of tax hikes. Now, the governor has talked about fixing the deficit with cuts and reforms, not with higher taxes. But he's likely to have big problems with the Democrats on that approach.
SIEGEL: But even if he changes his mind and sides with the Democrats on the issue of a tax increase, can the Republicans block such a tax increase in Sacramento?
GONZALES: Meanwhile, the governor is planning to declare a fiscal emergency here in California which gives lawmakers here a lot of timetable for dealing with the crisis. The details of his approach will come out later this week when he lays out his budget plan.
SIEGEL: And as Schwarzenegger addresses lawmakers there today, any sign that he tried to hold on to some of his big plans for the coming year?
GONZALES: Well, the budget problems have forced him to scale back a lot of his big plans, his big ambitions. But one thing I think he'll try to hang on to is to renew his push for health care reform - health care coverage for millions of uninsured Californians. The governor is hoping that Democrats will stick with him on that. But many say that they won't if it means having to make big cuts in existing programs instead of raising taxes.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Richard.
GONZALES: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Richard Gonzales speaking to us from Sacramento, California where Governor Schwarzenegger will address state lawmakers about the state's budget crisis.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
As NPR's Elaine Korry reports, the National League of Cities says the program is a model for the rest of the nation.
ELAINE KORRY: For most middleclass people, it's hard to imagine how anyone might get by without a checking account, or automated tellers. But it's a convenience that 50,000 people in san Francisco didn't have. They're a population known as the unbanked.
BILL GANDY: Not having a bank account really does cripple you.
KORRY: Bill Gandy is a 49-year-old computer programmer. He used to spend hours traversing the city to pay his rent, telephone, gas and electric bill all in cash. Besides wasting time, not having a bank account also cost Gandy money.
GANDY: You incur a lot of fees at the check-cashing places, and that's 100, 200 bucks sometimes. So that's highly inconvenient.
KORRY: It hadn't always been that way, about nine years ago, Gandy had a checking account then lost it through his own financial mistake.
GANDY: I had a little bit of problem. I was going through a relationship that broke off. We built weird little mishmash with our finances at the end. And it threw us into a situation where all of a sudden, we were on checks system.
KORRY: Checks system is like a financial blacklist for customers who mishandle checking accounts. Once on the blacklist, it's very hard to get off. Many other San Franciscans didn't qualify for a checking account, mostly because of their low income. Like Gandy, they had to rely on check-cashing outlets. And that bothered Jose Cisneros, the city treasurer of San Francisco.
JOSE CISNEROS: It really just tore me out to think about, literally, thousands of folks in the city having to pay these unnecessary, unreasonably high fees just to get access of their own funds.
KORRY: Michele Ashley with Wells Fargo said Gandy's is one of 2,000 new accounts they've opened.
MICHELE ASHLEY: It's the right thing to do. And we see so many people with different stories but at the end of the day, we want to make them be more financially successful and give them the tools to do that.
KORRY: According to the league's Clifford Johnson, cities themselves are important bank customers and they should use their financial clout to bring banks to the table.
CLIFFORD JOHNSON: We are convinced that city leaders have key leverage, you know, have key roles to play.
KORRY: Elaine Korry, NPR News, San Francisco.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
launched a rebellion in Liberia, a small West African country settled by freed American slaves back in the 19th century. Liberia's western neighbor is Sierra Leone. And it's in Sierra Leone that Taylor stands accused of masterminding and bankrolling the savage civil war in the '90s. He was driven out of office in Liberia into exile in 2003 with an indictment for war crimes issued by the U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone. Two years ago, Taylor was captured and imprisoned to face those charges, all of which he denies. Fast-forward to 2008.
SIEGEL: The Special Court for Sierra Leone is seeking for the resumption of the trial in the case of the prosecutor versus Charles Ghankay Taylor. Justice Julia Sebutinde, presiding.
QUIST: Charles Taylor's trial was transferred to The Hague because of lingering security concerns that holding it in Sierra Leone could again destabilize West Africa. On the second day of the trial, the prosecution's second witness was a pastor, Alex Tambate(ph). Speaking through an interpreter, he gave harrowing testimony. One horrific account was of a group of child soldiers known as a small boys' unit who got hold of another youngster and indulged in the Sierra Leone's rebels' trademark torture tactic of mutilation.
ALEX TAMBATE: They had to put his right arm on a log. They took a machete and amputated it at the wrist. The boy was screaming, shouting, asking them, what have I done that you are doing this to me? They took the left arm again and put it on the same log and sliced it off.
QUIST: Then the boys' legs were chopped off. But the boy rebels still haven't finished with him.
TAMBATE: They were swinging the boy. They threw him over into a toilet pit. I was there. I saw it myself. The boy was screaming, shouting, crying.
QUIST: The pastor was then taken to a rebel camp where he reports hearing women being terrorized.
TAMBATE: The women, at night, they used to force to have sex with them. Sometimes you hear them scream. They used to use those women as sex slaves, and these are the things that happened.
QUIST: Charles Taylor's lead counsel, Courtney Griffiths.
COURTNEY GRIFFITHS: Of course it's part of the overall picture of events in Sierra Leone. But atrocities were committed. Nobody is denying that. Mr. Taylor isn't denying that. But the fact of the matter is, when one looks at the issues on the indictment, ask himself the question, why is this material relevant?
QUIST: Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Dakar.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
The writers are on strike figuring that only blockheads would contribute to DVDs and the Internet without compensation. And they're complaining about some of the people who are back on television, cracking jokes that are presumably written.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHOW "THE TONIGHT SHOW WITH JAY LENO")
JAY LENO: Here I'm doing - I'm doing what I did the day I started. I write jokes and I wake my wife up. And then I go, honey is this funny?
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
LENO: So if this monologue doesn't work, it's my wife's fault, okay, because she said the jokes were funny.
SIEGEL: That was from Jay Leno's return last week. Last night, Jon Stewart was back on "The Daily Show."
(SOUNDBITE OF SHOW "THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART")
JON STEWART: So there you have it. Iowa has spoken. Cold, white people have had their say. Tomorrow night is New Hampshire where colder, whiter people will have their say. And if all goes right, Obama and Huckabee will soon be the presidents of Scandinavia.
SIEGEL: Joining us now is John Bowman who is chair of the Writers Guild of America negotiating committee. And John Bowman, are Jon Stewart and Jay Leno skirting the line of what the union, your union, regards as permissible joke- writing right now?
JOHN BOWMAN: Well, the law that we have about permissible joke-writing is that if you are a Writers Guild of America member, you cannot do any writing for a struck show. Both Jay's show and Jon's show are struck shows. So unless they made those jokes up in the moment, which they may well have, then they are skirting the issue a bit.
SIEGEL: But NBC says that there's an exception if you're writing jokes for yourself, that that doesn't count.
BOWMAN: Well, if you're writing jokes for yourself and you're not a WGA member, that's true.
SIEGEL: Now, Jon Stewart told a joke about the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. I haven't gone back to do an extensive title search of this joke, but it's possible that similar jokes about whiteness and weather(ph) were made in previous primary seasons. If he's telling a joke that we can find some reasonable ancestry for, is that strike-breaking?
BOWMAN: I think every joke has an ancestor. I haven't seen a new one under the sun. So they are both in a very difficult position. If you are a WGA member, you are not supposed to be telling prepared material, period. Now, the question is - we'll go through each one internally and see what we think they have and haven't done. But you know, we'd obviously prefer not to prosecute them, but we will issue them some warnings.
SIEGEL: But non-prepared material - I mean, we'd have to assume that somebody who is a creative comedian, like Leno or Jon Stewart, is walking around half the time mentally preparing jokes.
BOWMAN: Exactly. You've just said exactly how difficult it would be to try to actually (unintelligible) them up for any committee. And that's the last thing that we want to do. We're not the Committee for Public Safety. We're a guild that is on strike against very powerful companies. We're not interested, really, in prosecuting our own members, but we do want our members to abide by our guidelines. It's the only way that we can bring the strike to an end.
SIEGEL: But you're not going to go knee-capping people who've come up with jokes and e-mail them to someone else?
BOWMAN: We're not, no.
SIEGEL: NBC says according to the minimum bargaining agreement, that some programs are excepted, have an exception, if they're not in primetime, and that Leno can write for himself and prepare for himself because it's not a primetime show.
BOWMAN: Right. Well, anybody - if you're not a WGA member, you can do that. Like Johnny Carson, for instance, wasn't a WGA member even though he was a great joke writer. He could go back on and do a monologue that he wrote. And that wasn't a problem.
SIEGEL: Okay. This strike has been going on for a long time.
BOWMAN: Yes, it has.
SIEGEL: Are you beginning to worry whether there might be audiences just lost to some of the programs that are being struck if you don't get some fresh material on pretty soon?
BOWMAN: Oh, no, I completely agree that's a possibility. And I think it's a terrible situation to be in. And I hope the networks that employ us are as concerned about it as we are. But they walked away from the bargaining table, we didn't. And this can't get resolved until they come back to the bargaining table.
SIEGEL: Well, John Bowman, thank you very much for talking with us today.
BOWMAN: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: John Bowman, chair of the Writers Guild of America negotiating committee. He spoke to us from Los Angeles.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And NPR's Elizabeth Shogren reports that today, the agency is launching a new campaign to try to change that.
ELIZABETH SHOGREN: The EPA is joining forces with cell phone companies to coax Americans to recycle their phones. The agency says recycling all the old ones could save as much energy as 200,000 homes use in a year. So far, only about one-fifth of the phones used in America are recycled.
MIKE NEWMAN: Consumers don't realize how easy it is to recycle your phone these days.
SHOGREN: That's Mike Newman, vice president of ReCellular, a Michigan-based company that recycled four million phones last year. Newman says most cell phone companies collect old phones at retail stores or customers can mail them in. Often, the companies sell them to recyclers and give the money to charity.
NEWMAN: Cell phone recycling is one of those rare win-win-wins. It's a win for the environment because you're keeping those materials out of our landfills. It's a win for the charities that are supported from the value of these phones. And then it's a win for people around the world who want access to cell phone technology but often can't afford the new phones.
SHOGREN: Cathy Hill is the president of a Chicago-based cell phone recycler called HOBI International.
CATHY HILL: The plastic can be reused, the metals, the copper, the chemicals that make up the battery, the lithium can be reused, so it's all recyclable.
SHOGREN: Hill says some parts can even be resold like LCD screens and keypads.
HILL: There is tremendous resources that can be easily gleaned through proper recycling of electronics. And quite frankly, it's getting very, very easy to do.
SHOGREN: Elizabeth Shogren, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Chana Joffe-Walt introduces us to "Halo's" game designer turned novelist.
CHANA JOFFE: Isn't gaming all just like shoot them up? Why do you need a story?
JOSEPH STATEN: I think to understand why stories are important in games, you need to actually play them and see.
JOFFE: So Staten takes me to this room at Bungie Studios, something he calls a conference room. It's really just a gaming play land with office-like furniture to hold up all the Xbox consoles. "Halo 3" flickers to life in front of us.
STATEN: So this is the main screen. And you can hear the music in the background. There is this vista of a destroyed human city with alien ships hovering the sky, this tempest storm with lightning hitting the ground. There is very little hope. There's room for one savior to come and rescue us from this horrible fate. And that's you, of course, the player, as it always is.
JOFFE: That's it, right there, the entire "Halo" story. Not your typical beginning, middle and end story structure, but if Staten told you all that flat out, you'd have no reason to play. You see, writing for a first-person shooter game is about creating a skeleton, an environment that holds the potential for other stories to be created. But in order to deliver this universe - the space marine allies, the bluish gray aliens - Joseph Staten has to develop a lot of back story.
STATEN: Really figuring out what makes this group of aliens species stick together, how is that even possible. We really do go into a lot of detail to figure those things out ahead of time. So the games are just this little subset of facts that we pull out from a much bigger context and present to the player.
JOFFE: But all those other facts, all those details about each of his complex and treasured characters, Staten hates that they all get left out of the videogames.
STATEN: I always felt as though we shortchanged them. We don't have a lot of time to tell a story while the bullets are flying. And every time you stop the player from shooting to tell him a story, you need to be really fast, really efficient - make it cool but quick. And so characters in the games end up being caricatures, really.
JOFFE: Do gamers read?
STATEN: I hope so.
JOFFE: It appears he hopes right. "Contact Harvest" made both the USA Today and New York Times best-seller lists. Will Tuttle, editor of GameSpy.com, says that's not surprising when you consider that more than 20 million "Halo" games have been sold. Tuttle says books are somewhat new to videogaming franchises, but it makes sense because videogames are increasingly focused on story.
WILL TUTTLE: I think as consoles are getting more powerful, we're seeing a lot more narrative-driven videogames that aren't necessarily just go from point A to point B and shoot stuff. There's a lot of talk and there's a lot of exposition and back story. And you can sort of unveil things as you're going. You know, I think the days of hopping and shoot stuff are - may be coming to a close.
JOFFE: Gamers love "Halo" and are interested in the story. So Staten knows he's blessed with a somewhat guaranteed readership. But he says that does not mean gamers are easy to write for. These are some exceptionally barbed critics.
STATEN: When you play a game, you have the ability to look at everything for as long as you want. You can become an expert on the source material. So when you're writing a book for a bunch of highly literate gamers, you need to be very, very careful about stuff that you throw in, if you're dealing with this Internet-connected, very savvy audience.
JOFFE: Geeks, in other words. You're dealing with geeks who do not like it when the book presents, quote, "factually incorrect information." But we're talking about religious aliens with god-like(ph) technology, it doesn't matter. Staten crossed his hardcore gaming readers a few times, but he was mostly forgiven his trespasses thanks to his "Halo" cred - 10 years at the franchise, "Halo 1, 2 and 3." Staten even appears in the games as a crustacean, little, bluish, alien Grunt character. Just listen.
(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEOGAME "HALO")
STATEN: (As character) He's going to kill us all.
JOFFE: That's you?
STATEN: That's me, yup.
JOFFE: He's going to kill us all.
STATEN: It's a very odd experience to be running through this universe populated by enemy mes and gunning them down viciously.
JOFFE: For NPR News, I'm Chana Joffe-Walt in Seattle.
NORRIS: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Soon, it will all be over in New Hampshire. Votes will have been counted, winners announced, speeches made and the Granite State residents will once again eat at their local diners without encountering a presidential candidate or two. But today, the state's famously quirky primary voters are enjoying their moment in the sun politically and meteorologically.
NORRIS: Melissa, you've been visiting the town of Milford, New Hampshire repeatedly over the past 10 months, and you went back there today. What did you find?
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Well, first of all, Michele, it is hot today.
NORRIS: Hot?
BLOCK: It's positively tropical in New Hampshire, T-shirt weather, which is pretty much unheard of. In Milford, there is a very steady, a heavy turnout; a lot of voters filing into the Milford Middle School. They were expecting a possible record turnout today there and elsewhere in the state. And I talked with a number of voters after they voted in Milford. Let's take a listen to one of them. This is Stephen Shaheen, a Democrat. He voted for Hillary Clinton.
NORRIS: I just feel like the country needs a woman to run this country. I think it needs like a Mother Earth. It needs a mother to take care of the country.
BLOCK: Mother Earth?
NORRIS: That's how I feel, I mean, personally. She struck me as the person with more experience. She seems very, you know, with a lot of intelligence, a lot of education. And it's a gut feeling inside me. I can't really put words to that.
BLOCK: That was Stephen Shaheen in Milford. I also met Republican Carmen Gilbert there. She said she wants a business person to run the country. And she said she voted for Mitt Romney.
NORRIS: Somebody that could take charge and turn things around. Like they said, he has taken small businesses that were in shambles and turned them around and done good things. He has turned over the Olympics.
NORRIS: So that was one voter who was impressed with Mitt Romney, you spoke to a couple of voters there in Milford. Where else did you head today?
BLOCK: Well, we went to a great town, it's the town of Antrim, much smaller than Milford. People there voting in the town hall. If Milford has about 10,000 registered voters, Antrim has about 1,800. And Michele, how is this for small town politics? After you vote in Antrim, you can help yourself to a homemade peanut butter cookie made by the chair of the supervisors of elections, Diane Chauncey.
NORRIS: I have a reputation.
BLOCK: What's the reputation?
NORRIS: That they're very good - it's like a reward, but unfortunately, I think they're going to be going very soon. And usually they're here for most of the day.
BLOCK: Well, see, this is maybe the best indicator of turnout then because the cookies are almost gone.
NORRIS: Yeah.
BLOCK: It's only what? 11:30 in the morning. Three cookies left on her plate. I also should say the third grade classes from Antrim had painted signs in the hallway. They're great. Make your best choice; think for yourself. And then on the way out, you see a poster that says, good job voting. I did meet a voter, Edward LeMay, as he was leaving town hall. He is retired. He voted for John McCain, but he said he almost voted for Rudy Giuliani. And here's when he made up his mind.
NORRIS: Right in the booth. I've been tossing it around for quite a while. It's a hard decision to make to try to pick the right man to do the right job. And it was when I got in the booth that I finally decided it would be McCain.
NORRIS: So one of those last-minute deciders, quite literally.
BLOCK: You bet. Although most of the people we met had made up their minds well before today. We also went to the town of Hillsborough. You'll remember that New Hampshire has an open primary. You can go in an independent or undeclared voter, switch to a party to vote and then reclaim your fierce independence when you leave. Here's how that transaction sounds.
NORRIS: Now, you're undeclared, how would you like to vote?
U: Democrat, please.
NORRIS: Okay. And you know you can reregister on the way out?
BLOCK: That's ballot clerk Gail Johnson in Hillsborough. And here's a key thing, Michele. Everybody has been wondering about how these independent voters who are so strong in New Hampshire, how they will vote. Well, about 52 percent of registered voters in Hillsborough are independents. And when I was there today, the tally of those independents was breaking solidly for the Democrats, about 60 percent of independents picking up a Democratic ballot, 40 percent picking up a Republican ballot.
NORRIS: Clear trend there.
BLOCK: That's right. And I want to leave you with one last voter. This is Gil Shattuck in Hillsborough. I met him just after he voted. He's a state rep in the New Hampshire House. He says he has managed to meet most of the candidates. And he was very proudly wearing a Barack Obama button.
NORRIS: He represents the hope of a real change in Washington and that many of us have not felt since Kennedy.
BLOCK: Michele, this was such a surprising moment for me. Mr. Shattuck getting so emotional there, remembering his hopes from the election of JFK and, of course, remembering the tragedy that followed, but he said this country, he thinks, is in a mess. He thinks Hillary Clinton is too much the same old, same old, and he said it's time to move on with Barack Obama.
NORRIS: Melissa, thank you very much. Good work in New Hampshire.
BLOCK: Thanks, Michele.
NORRIS: That was our co-host Melissa Block talking to us today about voters in New Hampshire.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
So what is the expression that one aims for at a moment of defeat, especially so early in the primary season, when so many contests are still in the offing? Well, we brought together two speechwriters. First, Eli Attie wrote speeches for Al Gore, for New York City mayor David Dinkins, among others, before writing for President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet aka Martin Sheen on "The West Wing." Welcome, Eli.
M: Hi, pleasure to be here.
SIEGEL: And Kerry Tymchuk wrote speeches for, among other Republicans, Bob Dole, including his concession speech in 1996. Good to have you on the program, Kerry.
M: Thank you.
SIEGEL: When you're writing a speech in which the candidate is going to concede - we tried hard, but we didn't make it, what's the sentiment, Kerry, that the main sentiment that you're trying to communicate?
M: Well, actually, I think the concession speech is much tougher than the victory speech. You, you have to be humble and humorous and gracious and self-deprecating and not bitter in the slightest and magnanimous and all that in a couple-minute speech, hopefully.
SIEGEL: Agree with that, Eli Attie?
M: Yeah. I think so. I mean, politics is a very personal business. I think running for office, you really lay yourself bare. And I think there's always a temptation when you lose an election to show bitterness, be defiant in a way that can seem like you're sort of contesting the results. And I think what people really crave at the very end of an election is a kind of coming together, a kind of an embrace of the process and democracy. And I think people want to go home, whether their candidate won or lost, feeling that everybody accepted that this is the system we have.
SIEGEL: So, somehow you have to communicate the idea that the candidate is saying, I know this isn't what any of us here in the room wanted, but I'm big enough to take it. I understand I've been defeated, but, you know...
M: Yeah. I believe it's so important, even if it sometimes goes against the instinct of the politician, for them to be dripping with graciousness toward the person who defeated them.
SIEGEL: Some observers faulted Senator Clinton in Iowa for when she came before her supporters, giving a speech that almost could have been a victory speech. Someone said, she should have opened with some kind of gently self-lacerating line like, so much for inevitability. Is it important to get up a funny line when you face people at that moment?
M: Well, you know, it's hard, I think, to call a speech like that a concession speech because you're not at the end of the race. Obviously, you're trying to spin it. The most famous example of that was when Mike Dukakis came in third in the Iowa caucus in 1988 and came out with the line, well, we won the bronze tonight, some version of that, which actually was brilliant spin because most of the press coverage, you know, had a sort of a sense to, well, Mike Dukakis, far from home; not in a region that's friendly to him, you know? Came home with the bronze. Not bad for, you know, the Massachusetts governor, you know? I think Romney's advisors borrowed that Thursday night.
SIEGEL: Kerry Tymchuk?
M: Yeah. What people are looking for, I think, more than ever this year is authenticity. To be authentic. And I do agree somewhat with the criticism. I think she should have let her emotion show. And I like the idea of a self-deprecating joke up front.
SIEGEL: We will wait for a number of candidates to come out tonight. And typically, they'll do a lot of thanking before they get to anything of substance that they say. And then, you know, it's a race between the candidates' patience and the patience of many producers, television and radio networks. When do we leave this thing? When do we stop listening to this? How long should a candidate talk for, do you think, after he says a few thank yous, Eli Attie?
M: Well, I always think a speech should be no more than three, four minutes maximum and really dispense with the acknowledgments and formalities.
SIEGEL: Kerry Tymchuk, how long do you think you should take up there?
M: Okay, absolutely three to five at the max, especially for a concession speech. I mean, you are not the main act. The winner is the main act. You need to gracefully get off the stage.
M: I think it's also true that these are not the kinds of speeches you give at the Brookings Institute on a Tuesday morning. You're not laying out a 19-point, you know, tort reform proposal. They're tone poems. You're trying a little bit to open up your heart. And if you can't get that across in two minutes, then you probably don't have a clear rationale for your campaign.
SIEGEL: Kerry?
M: I'd say it would be interesting at some time to hear a concession speech that Senator Obama might give. He is so eloquent and it'd be interesting to have the tables turned, and if Hillary were to upset him in New Hampshire or somewhere, to see what he would bring to the podium.
M: The interesting thing is I would bet, somewhere on a laptop, unbeknownst to him, there exists such a speech. And, you know, I hope he never has to see it.
SIEGEL: I gather that's a rule of these things, that you should be ready to have that speech prepared in any case to use.
M: Yeah. I was told by a much older political consultant, when I started working in politics, that you had to always have a concession speech ready. The speechwriter had to have one. Didn't have to show it to anyone, did not have to even mention to the candidate that it had existed, but you had to have one. It was like a superstition among speechwriters, because if you didn't have one, you would need it. I, unfortunately, tended to have them and need them.
SIEGEL: And you needed them, I see... (Laughter)
M: Maybe I, maybe I did something wrong. Maybe I misheard the rule.
SIEGEL: Well, thanks to both of you for talking with us about this.
M: A pleasure to be here.
SIEGEL: That's Eli Attie and Kerry Tymchuk. Both of them are speechwriters. Eli Attie wrote for such Democrats as Al Gore, Kerry Tymchuk for such Republicans as Bob Dole.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
There are no returns in yet from New Hampshire, but we think it's safe to declare the official word of this week in the presidential campaign.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Is there any candidate who is not promising change?
NORRIS: Change is coming to America.
NORRIS: Washington needs fundamental, top to bottom change.
NORRIS: I know that I have been an agent of change.
NORRIS: My message is entirely about change.
NORRIS: I am offering 35 years of experience making change.
NORRIS: Well, for candidates looking to personalize the rhetoric, we offer some alternatives.
SIEGEL: Courtesy of Merriam-Webster, vote for the candidate of alteration, modification, variation, transfiguration, rectification.
NORRIS: Rectification? Okay. How about transformation or metamorphosis or the candidate of refashioning, revamping, reworking? How about just difference?
SIEGEL: And from Roget, the candidate of shift, of substitution, transformation, transmutation. Maybe not transmutation.
NORRIS: I don't think so. A little too sci-fi. We're talking about a potential commander in chief, not the commander of some spacecraft. Just a few suggestions for alternatives there. Then again, do we really expect anything to...
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
We do a lot of obituaries on this program, and they're usually about people who have at least a few mentions in the media. But this next remembrance, which was sent to us today, is about someone who was neither rich nor famous, but she still offers important lessons, says essayists Melody Moezzi.
NORRIS: If only to have the privilege of another minute in her company, it is worth my every effort on Earth to assure that like her, I, too, find my way to paradise.
NORRIS: Melody Moezzi is a writer, activist, attorney and author.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Robert Smith went out to take the temperature of voters.
ROBERT SMITH: I'm here in the streets of downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, where voters are asking each other one very important question, can you believe that it's almost 60 degrees in the middle of January?
NORRIS: Beautiful. And we never get a weather like this. I mean, you can't even explain weather like this. It's phenomenal. I mean, it's, you don't get weather like this.
SMITH: Look at you, you're actually giddy. Is this going to make you go out and vote?
NORRIS: Yes, it is.
SMITH: Heather Hilton(ph) just came from casting a ballot.
NORRIS: I've been to two different voting places, and they're a lot more than it was a few years ago.
SMITH: The New Hampshire primary is usually an indoor sport. But today, downtown Manchester was like a political street fair. The fringe candidates, who will stand on street corners in subzero temperatures, actually have an audience now.
NORRIS: Yes, all politicians are vermin. And I am the Vermin Supreme. And that is why I am the most qualified candidate in this race at this time.
SMITH: As a candidate who likes to, you know, basically, take his campaign to the streets because that's really all you have, weather like this must be perfect, there's actual people out for you to harass?
NORRIS: Campaign to. Unfortunately, if it gets too warm, this whole global warming thing happens, I mean, there will be no snow banks to stick our signs in and that would be a damn shame.
SMITH: Some people have better things to do on a nice day than voting. I met Dana Millman(ph), who is out for a walk in short sleeves.
NORRIS: I'm a landscaper, so any day above 30 is beautiful.
SMITH: He just doesn't feel like waiting in line at a polling place today.
NORRIS: So, I'll let everybody else take care of that. And when the time comes, I'll make my decision then.
SMITH: You know, if I were to give your name to some of these campaigns, you would have 30 people showing up on your door this afternoon trying to get you out there.
NORRIS: I got that now. I have my - I got a security lock. I got people coming in. I don't even know how they do it.
SMITH: Actually, the time for door-knocking is over. The residential streets of Manchester were strangely quiet this afternoon. Raymond Curval(ph), an undecided voter, could finally emerge from his home.
NORRIS: I think we only got two calls today so far.
SMITH: Wow, it's like a vacation.
NORRIS: Yes, it is. Definitely.
SMITH: Sunny weather, no phone calls...
NORRIS: Right.
SMITH: ...you can just quietly make up your mind.
NORRIS: Yes, definitely.
SMITH: Robert Smith, NPR News, Manchester, New Hampshire.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From member station KQED, Judy Campbell talks to one mother in Oakland who lost her son.
JUDY CAMPBELL: In September, 22-year-old Willy Tatman Jr.(ph) was shot to death at a neighborhood rec center after an argument over a basketball game. His mother, Aida Hancock(ph) got word quickly and rushed to the scene.
AIDA HANCOCK: I saw my son lying there and I saw him bleeding from his ankle. And I just walked up and I said, well, he's going to be all right. He's going to be okay. As I walked closer, I saw him bleeding from his heels area, and I still said, he's going to be okay. He's going to be okay. Then I saw him bleeding from the back of his shoulder, and I still said he's going to be okay. When I got up closer to my son and I leaned over him, and I saw the side of his head was bleeding. And I just immediately, as parent, as a mother, just screamed and completely lost it. It was over a basketball game.
CAMPBELL: Even though the gym was full of people who witnessed the crime, the murder case is still open. The police say there is a suspect in custody. Hancock said she understands why people don't come forward.
HANCOCK: That's the kind of life we live now, is you're scared to say anything, you're scared to go out your door, you're scared to go to the store, you're scared to walk to your mailbox, and even more so, scared to say something about the crimes that happen because something is going to happen to you as well.
CAMPBELL: Willy Tatman was the third of Hancock's four boys. She said he was the son she was closest to. People would mistake them for brother and sister, the way they laugh together, and were such good friends. He was funny, his mom says, but he was scared of the violence from the street; he didn't like to go out much. He held two jobs to support his 3-year-old son. Hancock says trying to stay cheery for her grandson keeps her from indulging in her own despair. But she still runs that last day of her son's life over and over in her head and can't find a way to explain it.
HANCOCK: If I could struggle to raise four boys and make them understand violence is not the way, drugs is not the way, abuse is not the way. If one mother can do it with four children on her own, other parents need to do the same as well with one child, two child, six child, seven child, or how many kids you have.
CAMPBELL: For NPR News, I'm Judy Campbell.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Now, the big jolt at Starbucks. With its stock down sharply from a year ago, the company has fired its CEO. Starbucks chairman and guiding force, Howard Schultz, will return to that position. And here's that word again, Schultz is promising change, as NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports from Seattle.
WENDY KAUFMAN: Unidentified Woman: How you doing today?
KAUFMAN: Starbucks continues to make money, and lots of it, but after years of seemingly unimpeded growth in profit, the company is facing serious challenges. The stock, which was at $36 a year ago, is now trading at about $20 a share. And for some customers, the weak economy has turned the latte into a luxury item. Dairy prices are up and competition is increasing. On the very day that Starbucks fired its CEO, McDonald's announced it would put coffee bars in 14,000 of its stores. But for Starbucks, there is a larger problem. In 1992, Starbucks had 119 stores. Today, more than 15,000. Along the way, says chairman and now CEO Howard Schultz, the company lost some of its emotional connection to its customers. On a conference call late yesterday, Schultz said Starbucks was a victim of its own success.
HOWARD SCHULTZ: The most serious challenge we face is of our own doing. I'm here to tell you that just as we created this problem, we will fix it. We are changing our organization now and for the future. It will take a good deal of work and some time, but it will happen starting today. To put it simply, we are going back to what has made Starbucks and the Starbucks experience so unique.
KAUFMAN: A friendly environment, more personal attention, and a less bureaucratic approach. Julie Daniels(ph), who was grabbing a drink this morning at a suburban Seattle Starbucks, worked as a company barista for about a year. She saw firsthand the kinds of things that Schultz wants and needs to address.
JULIE DANIELS: It's change. It's so much more businesslike and - customer service is the number one thing that we tried to do, but it just got down by how many we sold, and I thought it was pulling away from what the intention of Starbucks was, so.
KAUFMAN: Starbucks understands it won't be easy to address all the issues the company faces. But Schultz says he intends to be CEO for the long term. Among his first initiative, close underperforming U.S. stores and shift resources from opening new domestic stores to opening more new foreign ones, all of which make sense to Bob Goldin, executive vice president of Technomic, a leading restaurant industry consulting firm. But Goldin goes on to say that ousting the CEO and bringing back Schultz is a drastic move, especially for a company that remains highly profitable.
BOB GOLDIN: This is a company that may be a little bigger, that may have - their problems may be a little bit bigger than we thought.
KAUFMAN: Wendy Kaufman, NPR News, Seattle.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And now, a profile of a young man who's hoping a dying craft will help secure his economic future. He's a tailor's apprentice devoted to learning from an old master.
NPR's labor reporter, Frank Langfitt has our story from the Philadelphia suburbs.
FRANK LANGFITT: Step into Centofanti Custom Tailors on Philadelphia's Main Line and step back in time. In one corner stands a rusting steam press with a pipe held together by duct tape. Next to it, an old machine that makes buttonholes.
(Soundbite of drilling)
LANGFITT: But head into the basement and you find a real throwback: A young tailor's apprentice.
He's Joe Genuardi, 27 years old. And at the moment, he's using a huge pair of shears to cut a suit from a piece of blended fabric made of cashmere and silk.
You know in a factory, this would be done by machine?
Mr. JOE GENUARDI (Tailor's Apprentice, Centofanti Custom Tailors, Philadelphia): Yeah. They cut it with like a big band saw, if you can imagine that.
LANGFITT: Genuardi has spent the last year-and-a-half learning to make custom suits by hand. Instead of working off digital blueprints, he drafts the clothes for each customer on life-size pieces of cardstock. They hang by the hundreds from pipes in the basement.
Joe rolls out one. He's using to make a pair of pants for his girlfriend, Kelly.
Mr. GENUARDI: You know, I'm proud to be at this point where I can make this from scratch. I don't have to buy a pattern, I don't have to go to a store and buy something off the rack. I can, I mean, I can make something and it's better quality than what I'm going to find in the store.
Mr. JOSEPH CENTOFANTI (Operator, Centofanti Custom Tailors): My name is Joseph Centofanti.
LANGFITT: Centofanti is almost 90. He learned tailoring as a boy in Italy.
Mr. CENTOFANTI: I've been on this sort of occasion for 51 years. In fact, I made a very lovely change on the store except for the custom tailor. No show business.
LANGFITT: Centofanti makes more than 150 pieces of clothing a season. Suits begin at $2,500. But Centofanti says finding people to help him is tough.
When you try to find a tailor to work for you, where do you go?
Mr. CENTOFANTI: They find me.
LANGFITT: But there aren't many.
Joe Genuardi was planning to move to Italy to learn tailoring. Then, he heard about Centofanti. Thinking the store would be closed on a Sunday, he went there to check it out. Centofanti's daughter, Helen, who helps run the store, listens as Joe recounts meeting her father.
Mr. GENUARDI: Looking in the window and he's staring right back at me and I said, oh, gosh, I guess I have to go in now. And we talked that morning for, I'd say, at least an hour. He asked me why I wanted to - why in God's name do you want to get into this field? Are you crazy?
LANGFITT: Since then, Centofanti has taught Joe how to calculate proportions using an L-shaped metal tailor's square. Joe's also learned how to draft, cut and sew by hand. Centofanti tells Joe to practice techniques hundreds, even thousands of times.
Mr. CENTOFANTI: I push him. Sometimes, I push too much so he gets the role because, you know, I don't know much on myself.
LANGFITT: Joe studied in industrial design in college. He says most of his colleagues work for global firms like Ralph Lauren or DKNY. But people who follow fashion say there are more and more people like Joe Genuardi.
Patricia Mears is deputy director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.
Ms. PATRICIA MEARS (Deputy Director, Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology): He's an anomaly, that's for sure but there's a growing trend amongst young people who not only want to avoid the issue of creating things or really consuming things on a mass-market level. They are engrossed in the concept of craft and really looking at making things beginning to end, especially something that's so intimately connected to the human body.
LANGFITT: So, what are Joe's dreams after an apprenticeship?
Would you like to have your own tailor shop some time?
Mr. GENUARDI: Sure. Yeah. But it takes a long time to learn and the more I learn, the more I know it takes longer. But - and I'm okay with that because I love what I'm doing.
LANGFITT: As for Centofanti, he has no plans to retire. And he expects his tailor shop to outlive him.
Mr. CENTOFANTI: I thought I was going to stay cover.
Ms. HELEN CENTOFANTI (Daughter of Joseph Centofanti): And hopefully, Joe will stick with me.
LANGFITT: Do you - so, you don't have much doubt that this Centofanti's will keep going on in the next generation?
Mr. CENTOFANTI: Oh, yeah. It would go on forever.
LANGFITT: Frank Langfitt, NPR News.
MICHEL NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
I'm Robert Siegel.
And where else to begin the hour, but with politics and the race for the presidential nominations. There is one casualty today. It looks like Ne Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will dropping out of the Democratic race. He lagged behind in fourth place in both the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. For the remaining candidates on both the Democratic and Republican sides, the race remains wide open.
Coming up, we'll talk strategy with our regular political observers, but first, the outlook for the Republican race. Arizona Senator John McCain is hoping to build on his success last night in New Hampshire. He took his revitalized campaign to Michigan today before heading on to South Carolina. Both states hold Republican contests in the next ten days.
Here's NPR's Scott Horsley.
SCOTT HORSLEY: John McCain hosted a boisterous airport rally in Grand Rapids this morning, complete with confetti and red, white and blue streamers. It came just 13 hours after he declared victory in the New Hampshire primary. McCain hopes that momentum will carry him forward during a flurry of nominating contest over the next week and a half.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): The next victory has got to be right here in the state of Michigan. We won New Hampshire. We'll win Michigan. We'll win South Carolina. We will win the nomination. And I will be the next president of the United States — with your help.
(Soundbite of crowd)
Sen. McCAIN: With your help.
HORSLEY: McCain won the Michigan primary eight years ago. But this year, his Republican rival Mitt Romney has strong family ties to the state where he grew up and where his father was a popular three-term governor.
Romney suffered a disappointing second-place finish in yesterday's New Hampshire primary despite having served as governor of neighboring Massachusetts. But the multi-millionaire, former businessman insists he has the money and determination to keep going.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): For Michigan, we're going to go on: South Carolina, Nevada, Florida, states across the nation. And I'm going to keep on racking up the fact that we're going to get more votes than anybody else running for Republican -the Republican nomination. And I'm ultimately going to become the nominee for president for the Republican Party.
(Soundbite of crowd)
HORSLEY: Romney has tried to paint McCain as a Washington insider, ill-prepared to deliver the kind of change many voters seem to be seeking. In New Hampshire, though, the 71-year-old senator managed to score points for experience without being burdened by his D.C. credentials.
Sen. McCAIN: I didn't go to Washington to go along to get along or to play it safe to serve my own interests. I went there to serve my country.
(Soundbite of cheering)
HORSLEY: In Michigan, McCain is stressing the economy, along with national security. Exit polls in New Hampshire show McCain did well with voters who think the economy is in trouble, and Michigan has been hard-hit by job losses in the manufacturing sector.
Sen. McCAIN: Now, my friends, the reason why I just won that election yesterday in New Hampshire is I went to the people of New Hampshire to tell them the truth. Sometimes I told them what they wanted to know. Sometimes I told them what they didn't want to know. And I've got to give you some straight talk. My friends, some of the jobs that have left the state of Michigan are not coming back.
HORSLEY: McCain promised to create a job-retraining program centered around community colleges to replace existing federal programs that he says don't work.
Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee will also be campaigning in Michigan. But he's likely to be a more formidable candidate in South Carolina. Evangelical Christians are a significant political force there, as they were in Iowa.
Even so, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham expects voters in his state will respond well to McCain's military background and his support for the war in Iraq. Graham said last night, none of that would have mattered had McCain not won in New Hampshire.
Senator LINDSEY GRAHAM (Republican, South Carolina): This win put him back in the viability category. That was what's missing, people like John — his experience, his message. But he had to prove to them that he was viable, and he did it tonight.
HORSLEY: Aides say McCain's win in New Hampshire has also given a boost to fundraising — a welcome relief for a campaign that was virtually broke six months ago.
McCain now has money for TV ads in both Michigan and South Carolina. And the candidate who could barely afford a tour bus last summer now has a chartered 737, paid for through the giant multi-state nominating contest on February 5th.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Pontiac, Michigan.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Analysis now from our regular political observers: columnists David Brooks of The New York Times and EJ Dionne of the Washington Post and the Brookings Institution.
Hi, guys.
Mr. EJ DIONNE (Columnist, Washington Post; Senior Research Fellow, Brookings Institution): How are you?
Mr. DAVID BROOKS (Columnist, New York Times): Good to see you.
SIEGEL: And sticking with the Republicans for a few minutes, Mike Huckabee had this to say about his campaign today. It's not just a campaign anymore, he said, it's a cause.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): It's a cause to recognize that this nation is not a great nation because its government in Washington has some brilliant people making great decisions. It's a great nation because mothers and fathers out in places like South Carolina and Arkansas and the rest of the country raise decent kids and raise them up to be able to stand on their two feet. And what they really want is not a government that wants to provide everything for them but a government that will simply protect them so they can provide for themselves because we know that mothers and fathers raise better kids than governments do. And we kind of like to leave it that way.
(Soundbite of applause)
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
So, EJ and David, you heard Mike Huckabee there describing his campaign as a cause. But can you run a campaign on a cause? South Carolina is an expensive place to run a campaign. You have to bounce all over the state, run ads in several markets. Does Mike Huckabee have the money or the organization for that?
Mr. DIONNE: I think in South Carolina, he can run a campaign on it as a cause partly because evangelical Christians, his strongest group, are probably the largest part of that state's Republican primary electorate. Mike Huckabee got two pieces of good news out in New Hampshire. One, very modest, he ran third. He - it's better that he ran third - it wasn't a strong third, but he was there. But secondly, he did do well among white evangelical Christians again as he did in Iowa. There just happened not to be a whole lot of white evangelical Christians up here in New Hampshire. So, I think he may have the capacity to hang on in this race for a long time if he can keep consolidating this one important group in the Republican Party.
Mr. BROOKS: And I would say, if he can get it narrowed down to a one-on-one race - him versus McCain, him versus Romney, him versus Giuliani - he's got a very real chance because he does have the evangelicals. He's also in touch with economic anxiety in a way, I would say, the others are not. He talks about social anxiety, which is about divorce and single parenthood, intermingled with losing your job and losing your health care. And when real people experience that anxiety, it's the social and the economic all intermingled. Then the final thing he has - he is simply the most natural campaigner in the field.
So, he's got a lot of unlikely aspects to him. He doesn't believe in theory of evolution. That's not so great if you're going to run a national campaign. But he's also got a lot of skills. And I've talked to a bunch of Republican consultants, and they all say he'd have a real shot if it was one-on-one - him versus somebody else.
SIEGEL: How about the other candidates in South Carolina? We hear that Mitt Romney is pulling his ads in the state. EJ, have you heard that?
Mr. DIONNE: I have not. But I was struck by what happened yesterday with McCain in New Hampshire. The good - very good news is that he won in New Hampshire. But he won with votes from people who aren't going to loom in large numbers in South Carolina. He won moderates and liberals. There were some liberals who voted in the Republican primary. He won with people who disapproved - who had a negative view of George Bush. Interestingly, for the strongest supporter of the war, he won with voters who don't like the war in Iraq. And as he moves down to South Carolina, a lot of the groups who are - were still reasonably big in Republican primaries - appear - are not very big down there. And as for Mitt Romney, I mean, he does have a shot in Michigan. But listening to Scott Horsley's piece, I was struck that if Howard Dean in 2004 screened the names of states, Mitt Romney sounded like he was calmly listing new markets at a sales meeting.
And I think that David is absolutely right about Mike Huckabee. He does - he is the one candidate who talks believably about people's economic anxieties.
NORRIS: David, is it…
Mr. BROOKS: Well, you know, I…
NORRIS: Go ahead, David. Go ahead.
Mr. BROOKS: Well, I rode around with McCain a couple days ago. And we talked about economics, which he's pivoted to, as he goes to Michigan. And what's clear is he is - he actually feels in his gut what Huckabee has been talking about - the middle-class anxiety. And he said, you know, people are not afraid of globalization. But they want to know that government is non-neutral in the fight, that government is on their side. And he has broken with the pure-free market position a long time ago. And so, what he's offering people in Michigan is that the retraining program with the community colleges what you just heard about from Scott, but he's also offering some displaced worker insurance. If you work, you'll get your wages supplemented. That is not a pure-free market position.
But McCain had a very traumatic experience eight years ago where a guy came up to him and said, I have been working on this mill for 30 years. I just got laid off, I got no future. What are you going to do for me? And McCain wanted to enter this race with an answer to that question. So he has entered beyond the pure-free market - sort of Reagan coalition - into a new sort of Republican economics.
NORRIS: Gentlemen, I'd like to turn to the Democratic side. Quite a lot is being made of Hillary's, so we called it a moment in New Hampshire where she became very emotional during this talk with voters. Many are now saying that that tearful moment, or at least where her eyes started to well up with tears, was a defining moment. Do either of you buy that?
Mr. DIONNE: I think it was - I should say I had a nice breakfast of crow(ph) and eggs this morning. In more than 30 years of thinking about elections for a living, I've never been more certain and more wrong about a race. I thought that Barack Obama was going to win New Hampshire so take any (unintelligible) as I say with a grain of salt, but I do think that there were several moments that sort of presented Hillary Clinton, sort of ripped the veneer off a human being as her own supporters saw it. I thought there was the moment with the tears, there was the moment in the debate when the local TV, political reporter asked her, you know - said you're not likeable. And she said, well, that hurt my feelings. And I think Barack Obama hurt himself maybe more than we knew at the time when he said, Hillary, you're likeable enough, which came off as snarky to a lot of people. I think all those things helped.
But I also think, perhaps, we reporters judge speeches more as theater critics than as both in the way voters do. You know, voters care about health care and family and medical leave and job training. They're consumers, not theater critics. And I think a lot of us looked at the inspiration of Obama and it really is inspirational. It ought to be a lesson to Clinton because she needs a lot more of that. But these voters seem to respond to her very long and clear descriptions of what she was going to do for them.
SIEGEL: David Brooks, I just like to hear from you on the Democrats and you can retract that the - the phrase was juggernaut to the White House for Obama that…
Mr. BROOKS: I'm taking the dishonest approach. I'm simply going to deny that I said what I actually did say.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BROOKS: I'm taking a vacation from the reality-based community in the spirit of the…
Mr. DIONNE: I think my position poll's better, David.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BROOKS: But, you know, the Bush administration has taught me something. Now, I think what happened was a lot of different things. I think the tears were part of it, I think the debate performances - what, I think the organization cannot be underestimated. She actually got her vote out young people did not turn out. But then, what EJ said, I think is actually the most important. Obama catered to what you might call the Whole Foods, Starbucks set. Upscale, he did very well among college-educated, up-the-income ladder who want a more sensibility-drenched sort of politics.
Hillary Clinton did very well among the Wal-Mart people, who want good products at good prices. She did very well with high school-educated, very well with union households, very well with people making less than $50,000 a year and she offered them a longer list of deliverables, and those people stuck with her. And the fascinating thing to me is Democratic race is, year-after-year, are all the same. You got an upscale candidate versus a high school-educated candidate and inevitably, the high school-educated candidate, the candidate that wins those people ends up winning the nomination. This time, it's a little more complicated because for the first time, the upscale candidate, the Starbucks candidate - Obama is African-American, and he could get those people.
SIEGEL: Well, that's retail - no, it's political analyst David Brooks of the New York Times and EJ Dionne. Thanks to both of you once again.
Mr. BROOKS: Thank you.
Mr. DIONNE: Thank you.
NORRIS: Bye-bye.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
As we've heard, the economy turned out to be a major issue for voters in New Hampshire yesterday. According to exit polls, 98 percent of Democrats and 80 percent of Republicans are worried about it.
And that's making this election feel very familiar for NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr.
DANIEL SCHORR: This is not a new phenomenon. In 1992, Clinton political strategist James Carville enriched the lexicon of politics by hanging a sign in Clinton's Little Rock office that read, the economy, stupid. That year, the first president, George Bush, was soaring in the polls after the victorious Gulf War but lost the election to Bill Clinton because America fell into a recession. That lesson has been burned into the memories of politicians ever since.
Now, it may be getting to economy stupid time again. In 2006, the Iraq war helped Democrats to make gains in Congress. And it was widely assumed that this time, the war, and not the pocket book, would again be the leading issue in the campaign. But then, the war began to look a little better and the economy began to look a little worse, and now, with unemployment up and other indicators down, the emphasis may be shifting back to the economy.
The best indication of that is the way President Bush is backing all of his (unintelligible) assurances that the fundamentals were in good shape and there was no reason to worry. The president admitted to a group of business leaders in Chicago on Monday that the country faces economic challenges spurred by the mortgage crisis, high oil prices and the weakening job market. Ever so cautiously, Mr. Bush has started talking about the possibility for an economic stimulus package, about which h would design, in time for his last State of the Union address.
But the nature of that package - tax cuts versus measures targeted for the middle class - is likely to lead to a battle royale with congressional Democrats that could dominate the burgeoning election campaign. Mr. Bush acknowledged that many Americans are anxious about the economy. What he did not say is what many Republican politicians, including candidates, are anxious about a possible recession as November election approaches. The (unintelligible) mantra resonates today.
This is Daniel Schorr.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michelle Norris.
President Bush got a warm welcome today in Israel, where he's been called a trusted ally and friend. He's there at the start of a weeklong tour through the Middle East to try to nudge Israelis and Palestinians toward peace. And although those negotiations have gotten off to a slow start, Mr. Bush said he thinks the leaders he's dealing with are ready to make tough choices.
NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN: It was a day of tight security and plenty of presidential pomp.
(Soundbite of music "The Star-Spangled Banner")
KELEMEN: But while President Bush was feted by Israeli leaders at an elaborate airport ceremony outside Tel Aviv, his view from the helicopter ride to Jerusalem showed some of the troubles ahead, as he tries to get Israelis and Palestinians to agree on the contours of a Palestinian state. Some Israelis put up a huge sign in a field that could be seen from the air. It read, "Hands off Jerusalem." One of the key issues in the talks is how the Israelis and Palestinians would share the ancient city.
In another sign of trouble, Hamas fired rockets from Gaza, striking Southern Israel again today, provoking a sharp response from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
Prime Minister EHUD OLMERT (Israel): There will be no peace unless terror is stopped, and terror will have to be stopped everywhere. Gaza must be part of the package, and as long as there will be terror from Gaza, it will be very, very hard to reach any peaceful understanding.
KELEMEN: President Bush said he is going to bring up that issue when he meets with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank tomorrow, even though Abbas has little, if any, influence in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas. In return, the President is likely to hear a lot of other concerns from the Palestinians, particularly about Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Israeli building projects in Jerusalem that Palestinians say are undermining negotiations. President Bush, not one to get down into the nitty-gritty of peacemaking, said he's been urging the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to keep the big picture in mind and not get sidetracked over settlements or rocket attacks.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: I've come away with the belief that, while those issues are important and certainly create consternation amongst the respective constituencies, that both leaders are determined to make the hard choices necessary.
KELEMEN: Despite the odds, he says he is optimistic the two sides can agree on a vision of a Palestinian state by the time his term ends. He says the US won't dictate, but will nudge the two sides.
Pres. BUSH: Well, my trip was a pretty significant nudge.
KELEMEN: There has been little headway, however, since Pres. Bush hosted Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Annapolis in December. And another issue is crowding the agenda on this trip, the threat of a rising Iran. Mr. Bush is trying to clear up some confusion in the region about his Iran policy following an intelligence report that said Iran halted a nuclear weapons program in 2003.
Pres. BUSH: A country which once had a secret program can easily restart a secret program. A country which can enrich for civilian purposes can easily transfer that knowledge to a military program.
KELEMEN: The President is urging allies to help isolate Iran, which could be a hard sell in some of the Gulf states he is planning to visit later in the week. The administration has been playing up what it says was a provocative act by Iranian naval boats in the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, and President Bush, today, had a warning to Iran about that.
BUSH: There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple. And my advice to them is: don't do it.
KELEMEN: The Pentagon released a video of the incident. Iran called it a fake, accusing the U.S. of trying to stir up tensions in the region.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Jerusalem.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Well, now we're going to hear from a spokesman for the Israeli government and for the Palestinian Authority. First, Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, he acknowledges there is widespread cynicism about this peace initiative. But he says the Israeli prime minister, the Palestinian president, the Europeans and President Bush all wanted to succeed. And as for the contentious issue of settlements, Mark Regev says Israel is prepared to act.
Mr. MARK REGEV (Spokesman, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel): Israelis have, for a while, been saying the Palestinians have to implement all their obligations into the road map. And we've been saying, yes, and about our obligations, well, wait and see. Today, we say Israel will move forward, will implement all our obligations into the road map.
SIEGEL: That means that Israel would be eliminating, say, settlements and settlement outposts as an undertaking that Israel is obliged to make regardless of Palestinian progress, say, on achieving security. That's up to them, you're going to take part of your obligations independently or is it conditional upon Palestinian action?
Mr. REGEV: I think in the past, when there was an expectation on the Israelis to act and evacuate was more difficult for us to act. But today, in the framework of the post-Annapolis atmosphere, where both sides are taking steps, it's easier to move forward. And the truth is, if we both do what we're supposed to do, and I think there's a good chance we will, there is reason for cautious optimism.
SIEGEL: Here's a question now about the understandings of what those commitments are. Secretary of State Rice told the Jerusalem Post last night, the United States does make a distinction between settlement activity in East Jerusalem and settlement activity on the West Bank. And Israel's road map obligations, which included building freeze, according to Secretary Rice, relate to settlement activity generally. How can Israel square, say, the expansion of the Har Homa neighborhood of East Jerusalem with a commitment to the road map as other people understand the road map?
Mr. REGEV: We do make a distinction between the West Bank and Jerusalem. Having said that, we understand the sensitivity of the issue of Jerusalem. But it was last week my prime minister, Mr. Olmert, sent a letter to all the relevant government ministries calling for a freeze, saying no new settlement activity without his and the defense minister's specific approval. That there are still gaps, I accept, but we are moving on this issue, and we want to see the Palestinians move, as they are, on the important issues of security and fighting terrorism.
SIEGEL: But Har Homa is not part of that order. Do I understand that correctly because it's in East Jerusalem, and Israel regards it as separate?
Mr. REGEV: Correct. We make a clear distinction between Jerusalem and the West Bank.
SIEGEL: How far can this process between Israel and the Palestinians go without your negotiating partners, the Palestinians, having de facto control over the Gaza Strip?
Mr. REGEV: From my point of view, President Abbas is the president of all Palestinians. Now, at the moment a group has taken over violently, I would say, control of the Gaza Strip. And that's a sad situation. But it's clear we don't want a three-state solution, we want a two-state solution where there is Israel, the Jewish State and Palestine, the Palestinian State, living side by side in peace. And eventually, you have to have a situation where the Palestinian Authority exercises its political authority, it's political control also over the Gaza Strip.
SIEGEL: But at some point, don't the rocket attacks have to stop under the authority of the Palestinian Authority before you can have a signing agreement that somebody ignores what's going on in that part of the country, say?
REGEV: I think that's the Achilles heel of the whole process, what's going on Gaza. And I think we're all looking at Gaza, which (unintelligible) how can we stop the extremists there from exporting their violence and trying to torpedo any chance for historic reconciliation between us and the Palestinians.
SIEGEL: So is the policy, to paraphrase a famous statement from an Israeli history, to pursue the rocket attacks from Gaza as if there were no peace process and the peace process as if there were no rocket attacks from Gaza?
Mr. REGEV: I think you could say that, but it's more complicated. We believe that if was can succeed in working with the Palestinian government, if we can succeed in creating new realities, economic success, political developments, if people on the West Bank feel that their life is getting better, that is the best answer to the Hamas control of Gaza. You'll have an East Germany-West Germany type situation, a situation where Palestinians could understand that the path of moderation, the path of pragmatism, the path of negotiation serves Palestinian interests much more than the jihadists ever could.
SIEGEL: Well, Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. REGEV: Always a pleasure. Thank you.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Now, Rafiq Husseini, who is chief of staff to President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority. Welcome to the program, Mr. Husseini.
Mr. RAFIQ HUSSEINI (Chief of Staff to President Mahmoud Abbas): Thank you.
SIEGEL: And first, can Pres. Abbas negotiate credibly on behalf of the Palestinians without some acknowledgement from the Hamas leadership in Gaza, that he actually speaks with them too?
Mr. HUSSEINI: Well, I think the president has been elected with a 66 percent majority in 2005 on a mandate and a program to negotiate for peace. And therefore, he has his mandates from his people. I know that there is a problem with Hamas in Gaza, but that is not an obstacle, in our opinion, to negations.
SIEGEL: Without control of Gaza, can President Abbas bring about an end to rocket attacks on Israel?
Mr. HUSSEINI: Well, we are, of course, not in control of Gaza at the moment, but I think the population - the people in Gaza have shown that they are supporting Pres. Abbas and supporting the stopping of rockets. And as you know, maybe in November, there was a big demonstration in Gaza where over 600,000 people went out in the streets to support Pres. Abbas. Six-hundred thousand people out of 1.5 million people is a lot of people, and therefore, we are sure that the people in Gaza will understand and support the peace process if and when it begins and if is Israelis also are ready to negotiate with the Pres. Abbas in good faith.
SIEGEL: Mark Regev, spokesman for Prime Minister Olmert, said that the Israelis have undertaken the change as they described it to undertake their obligations under the roadmap, not conditionally upon Palestinian actions toward their obligations but on their own. First of all, do you sense any difference in that regard, and second, what are the Palestinians doing on their own, say, in terms of security guarantees with the Israelis apart from how much progress they make, how soon on the settlements.
Mr. HUSSEINI: Well, first of all, on our side, we're trying our best to get the situation under control from a security point of view. You can ask anybody in Palestine and they will tell you that the security situation here is much better. The problem, of course, you have to understand that we don't control all the West Bank. As Palestinian security, we only control 12 percent of the West Bank. The rest of the West Bank is controlled by the Israeli army.
Now, what I've heard from you about Mr. Regev, only he has said it, it is very welcome - it's a very welcome statement and we would like the Israelis to start with the first item of their obligations on the roadmap and that is to declare a freezing of settlement activity to which they have not done as yet.
SIEGEL: Including East Jerusalem…
Mr. HUSSEINI: Absolutely…
SIEGEL: …as far you are concerned.
Mr. HUSSEINI: …including East Jerusalem because East Jerusalem was occupied in 1967 as the rest of the West Bank has been.
SIEGEL: Well, how are you going to get around that then to talk further when Prime Minister Olmert says with Pres. Bush to decide we regard East Jerusalem as different. And we regard, say, the Har Homa construction is separate.
Mr. HUSSEINI: Well, I mean, we have been encouraged to hear Dr. Rice today saying that there's no distinction between the settlements off East Jerusalem and the settlements of the West Bank. This is encouraging and this is what where the American rule is important as long as broker when it comes to the deciding whether this is acceptable from an international committee point of view or not.
SIEGEL: Rafiq Husseini, thank you very much for talking with us today.
Mr. HUSSEINI: Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: Mr. Husseini is chief of to Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian authority. We also heard from Mark Regev, spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
After Hillary Clinton and John McCain come from behind victories in New Hampshire, the presidential race is even more unsettled for both parties. The next big battlefield is South Carolina, a state where religion, race, states' rights and the occasional right hook can present a tricky minefield for candidates.
We're going to take a look at the road ahead for Democrats and Republicans of the Palmetto State. We began with the GOP seals(ph) since their primary is first on January 19th. Scott Huffmon is a political science professor at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, and he joins us now.
Welcome professor.
Professor SCOTT HUFFMON (Political Science, Winthrop University): Thank you very much.
NORRIS: Help us understand how the battlefield there in South Carolina differs from what the candidates thought experienced in New Hampshire and Iowa.
Prof. HUFFMON: Right. For the Republicans now, there's a large number of evangelical voters and we saw the impact they can have in Iowa. South Carolina has often been thought of as the test for the true conservative, the true Republican, meaning if you do well among the independents and the other states, that might not be enough here in South Carolina. It's a test of the party faithful and the very conservative party faithful at that.
NORRIS: So, John McCain was the big winner in New Hampshire. He comes out of that state with quite a bit of wind in his sails. Does he meet that test?
Prof. HUFFMON: He looks good to the voters in South Carolina because he was advocating the surge before Bush was. And now that there's a little less violence in Iraq, South Carolina, which is a very militaristic state, approves that. However, this state is really being focused on illegal immigration for at least the past year. It was huge in the 2003 congressional election. And John McCain has taken a drubbing from the Republican faithful so he comes in with a high on Iraq, a low on immigration and where it's - he might be helped as long as the focus is on international issues with things like the harassing of the U.S. military ships by Iranian boats, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, as long as eyes are looking outward, his foreign policy experience is going look good next to Mike Huckabee. But Mike Huckabee has that advantage of coming in and being so strong among the evangelicals who are so important to the Republican primary here in the South Carolina.
NORRIS: Now, all these candidates are now talking about that word, change. Is that a potent message there in South Carolina?
Prof. HUFFMON: Well, you know as some of my colleagues have said quite accurately, you know, South Carolinians aren't that fond of change about anything, you know? So, that is not necessarily the nature or the message that is going to do well among South Carolina's conservative voters. We've been resistant to change - well, you know, we fired the first shots in that War Between the States…
NORRIS: Oh, yeah, that war.
Prof. HUFFMON: …you might have heard that. So, you know, the message of change, which might have resonated in for a New Hampshire voter is not going to play out exactly the same way. The messages need to be tweaked for South Carolina. South Carolina is a different test.
NORRIS: Cauldron of big and important issues across the country on, particularly in South Carolina, security, immigration, the economy, cultural issues, which is the most important.
Prof. HUFFMON: Well, in the Winthrop polls that we've done are likely Republican voters, illegal immigration was number one, followed by Iraq, but no single issue took more than 20 percent. So, it was illegal immigration, Iraq, then security and terrorism followed a distant fourth by health care. You're right, it's a myriad of issues spread very thinly. The candidates have a lot of different constituencies to speak to in South Carolina. And because of our geography, they're going to have to zigzag the entire state to speak to.
NORRIS: They have to cover a lot of ground to campaign in South Carolina.
Prof. HUFFMON: Absolutely. And you have to spend a lot of money on media to cover the way our media markets work, for example, where I am in the northern part of South Carolina, all of my television stations come out of Charlotte in North Carolina. If you want to reach me, you have to buy time in another state, and that's true for the part of South Carolina on the Georgia border as well. And if you want to reach every region of our state, you have to spend kind of a disproportionate amount of money to reach them than you would in a more densely packed but far more numerous population state.
NORRIS: Now, I'm not trying to speak ill of politics as it is practiced there in South Carolina but things do tend to get a little bit rough and tumble when a…
Prof. HUFFMON: That's the kind of…
NORRIS: …tends to head that way.
Prof. HUFFMON: Right. That's the kind of description I've heard of South Carolina politics. Everyone remembers what happened to John McCain in 2000. In fact, he is - he fired the first volley that he's going to have his South Carolina Troop Squad out there. They were the terrible smear campaign from nasty flyers under windshield wipers to push polling. Any of that's already started here again. There have been…
NORRIS: I guess, it already started again.
Prof. HUFFMON: It has already started over Christmas…
NORRIS: Saying what?
Prof. HUFFMON: Christmas cars went out sniping at Mitt Romney's Mormonism, and so, the knives were already drawn. They're firing up the chainsaws this week.
NORRIS: That's Scott Huffmon. He's a political science professor at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Thank you, professor.
Prof. HUFFMON: And thank you.
NORRIS: Now, we turn to the race for votes in the Democratic primary held one week later on January 26th. African-Americans account for almost half of the Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, and their support is key to victory for Democratic candidates.
LaBrena Aiken-Furtick joins us now to help analyze how the Democratic race is shaping up. Ms. Aiken-Furtick is a community activist in Orangeburg, South Carolina. She's supporting Barack Obama.
Welcome to the program.
Ms. LABRENA AIKEN-FURTICK (Community Activist): Thank you. How are you?
NORRIS: So, you're supporting Sen. Obama? Is Orangeburg going Obama or is it split?
Ms. AIKEN-FURTICK: It's split. You cannot call a winner today. I know we've heard a lot here about people who feel which one can win, not necessarily issue based but who can win? Right now, people are still saying, well, I really hadn't made my mind yet.
NORRIS: With Barack Obama running a fairly strong race in this - a very strong race in this contest, there was an expectation that when he headed down to South Carolina, the first state with a sizeable black population, that he would automatically draw a lot of support but that hasn't been the case. What's happened there?
Ms. AIKEN-FURTICK: Oh, no, it has not been the case. And again, once again, we've proven that African-Americans are not a monolithic people. They vote all over the place; they even vote in the Republican primary. He's new. He's different. Even African-Americans are not used to seeing someone of that stature in that position running. So, I think, for a lot of them, it's hard to believe. After he won in Iowa, that's what I heard, even in my family, I can't believe it. They just did not believe that white America would accept a black man running.
NORRIS: How did the candidates change their strategies as they head down to South Carolina? I want to begin by asking about Hillary Clinton first. Her husband is very popular in the state.
Ms. AIKEN-FURTICK: Yes.
NORRIS: She's proven to be very popular as a candidate, too, but when she was in New Hampshire, there are a few things that were said that might play a little bit differently on a place like South Carolina when she tried to chip away at Barack Obama's comparisons to John F. Kennedy or to Martin Luther King. Can she say those kinds of things in South Carolina?
Ms. AIKEN-FURTICK: That would be a little risky. She actually has a lethal weapon and that is her husband. He is very popular. He's even popular amongst some Obama supporters.
NORRIS: You know, Ms. Aiken-Furtick, in looking at the polls and the analysis down there in the state, it looks like African-American women, people just like you, are the swing voters in this race.
Ms. AIKEN-FURTICK: It does. And I know everyone is energized. Either way you go, either (unintelligible) Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton, you have history in the making, and I think people want to be a part of that history.
NORRIS: LaBrena Aiken-Furtick is a community activist in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Ms. Aiken-Furtick, thank you so much for talking to us.
Ms. AIKEN-FURTICK: Okay. Thank you.
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Predictions are always dangerous in the election season, but here's one that's pretty safe now: It's going to be a wild ride to the nomination on both sides. And while campaigns move to Michigan and Nevada and South Carolina, we're going to take a few minutes to take not of what happened in New Hampshire last night.
For the Democrats, the story was largely about women voters. They stayed with Hillary Clinton, allowing her to edge out Barack Obama by three percent. Clinton's fortunes turned, many observers say, in the cafe in Portsmouth, New Hampshire on Monday.
Here's our co-host Melissa Block in Manchester to tell us more about that.
MELISSA BLOCK: The unguarded moment that the Cafe Espresso in Portsmouth came at a gathering of women voters. And it came after a question from Marianne Pernold Young. She said, my question is very personal, how do you do it? How do you keep upbeat and so wonderful? Well, that question brought an emotional response.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): It's not easy. It's not easy. And I couldn't do it if I just didn't, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do. You know, I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don't want to see us fall backwards, you know. So…
(Soundbite of applause)
BLOCK: Well, now we're going to here from the woman who asked the question that drew that response, Marianne Pernold Young. She is 64, a photographer from Portsmouth. And what made you ask the question in the first place?
Ms. MARIANNE PERNOLD YOUNG (Photographer): Because I've been watching Hillary for the last year and it just boggles my mind how she keeps going and is still pleasant. And it's mind boggling how any politician does it, actually.
BLOCK: Mm-hmm. What were you thinking when she answered it and when she became emotional there?
Ms. PERNOLD YOUNG: I said, wow. I was honored that she would have that reaction and that she would open herself like that to all of us in that room. You know, when she was having problems with her marriage, she was stoic. And this was wonderful.
BLOCK: You know, a lot of people are now pointing to that moment as being a turning point for her campaign here in New Hampshire. Are you surprised about that?
Ms. PERNOLD YOUNG: Yes, I am. It was just a very innocent, caring question. I didn't know this was going to explode like this. I just wanted to connect with her as fellow woman.
BLOCK: Ms. Pernold Young, whom did you end up voting for?
Ms. PERNOLD YOUNG: Obama.
BLOCK: You voted for Obama after all that.
Ms. PERNOLD YOUNG: Mm-hmm.
BLOCK: And why?
Ms. PERNOLD YOUNG: Because he moves me to tears. And he is a fresh person, a fresh start for our country. And I think we need that right now.
BLOCK: That's Marianne Pernold Young in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Hillary Clinton went on at length in her answer to Ms. Young's question. Here is more of what she had to say.
(Soundbite of applause)
Sen. CLINTON: You know, this is very personal for me. It's not just political, it's not just public. I see what's happening, and we have to reverse it. And Some people think elections are a game. They think it's like who's up or who's down. It's about our country, it's about our kids' futures. It's really about all of us together. You know, some of us…
BLOCK: That Portsmouth moment has a lot of women talking here in New Hampshire. Today in Manchester, I got together with three women who voted for Hillary Clinton to find out why. They're between 29 and 36. All of them work outside the home. All are married. Two of them have children. They are Jillian Cole(ph), Jessica Say(ph) and Christina Anderson(ph) who begins. She was torn between Edwards, Obama and McCain. Then she saw the video of Clinton at the Portsmouth cafe.
Ms. CHRISTINA ANDERSON: When I saw what I saw, I didn't see an emotional woman. What I saw was a woman who was speaking from her heart, trying to convey why she truly was doing this. There is real passion, real conviction, determination and a sense of real obligation to her country. I really was touched by that absolutely. And I hate to be cliched, but it really actually - it resonated with me very strongly to see her boldly stating her purpose.
BLOCK: Jillian, did you see the video from that moment (unintelligible)?
Ms. JILLIAN COLE: I saw it, but…
BLOCK: What do you think?
Ms. COLE: It made you feel comfort, I think, because she was saying that she knows she can do that in the White House. She wants to do it and it would a shame to have her not in the White House to do it. And I think that that's - I know, it's just - it did, like Christina said, it touched something. And I think she's absolutely what we need.
BLOCK: Let me ask you all to play pundit here, what do you think happened in New Hampshire? Jillian, what do you think happened?
Ms. COLE: I think a lot of people, like Christina, saw her talk in Portsmouth, and I really think that it has an impact and people changed their vote.
BLOCK: You do? Christina, do you think that the polls underestimated women here?
Ms. ANDERSON: I think they did. I think they really, really did. I think that people hadn't really looked at Hillary as a woman. Maybe, it's just my personal opinion. I don't think that people looked at women connecting with Hillary for the opportunity for women to speak to the idea of having our first female president.
BLOCK: Jessica, let me turn to you. Does it mean something to you as a woman that you're voting for a woman candidate?
Ms. JESSICA SAY: Oh, absolutely. Yes. That is a big thing, too, that she's a woman, for sure.
BLOCK: Why is that?
Ms. SAY: I think the United States should have a woman president. I think it's about time, you know, to meet our needs and listen to us and get a woman in there t clean up all the men's messes that they've made over the years. And I think it's about time.
BLOCK: You have kids.
Ms. SAY: Yes, two.
BLOCK: How old are they?
Ms. SAY: I have a 4-year-old daughter, Karisse(ph), 9-year-old son Chase(ph). And my son Chase actually has special needs. He has Down syndrome. So, you know, the whole education and heath care is very important to me.
BLOCK: Do you think about the message to them that this would send to have a woman president.
Ms. SAY: It's funny you would say that, because we were watching last night and my daughter was, like, what are you watching? And we said, you know, we're watching the primary and we wanted - she went with me to vote - so I explained it to her. And I said, you know, we want Hillary to win. You know, she's a woman, and we want - we believe in her ideas, and we want her to win.
So when Karisse when to bed last night, she said, I hoped Hillary wins. And then this morning, when she woke up, the first thing she said to me was, Mommy, did Hillary win? And I said, yeah, she won. And she said, yahoo(ph), Hillary won. So she was excited was and she was telling everybody in the day care that Hillary won.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. SAY: They're like, are you brain washing her already? And I was like, I sure am. So it was pretty fun.
BLOCK: Jessica Say, Christina Anderson and Jillian Cole. Three voters who helped put Hillary Clinton over the top.
I'm Melissa Block in Manchester, New Hampshire.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Politics was the matter at hand at the Supreme Court today as well. At issue: An Indiana law requiring all voters to show current government-issued photo ID. Since 2000 in Bush versus Gore, Republicans have pushed such laws across the country, and Indiana's is the strictest.
NPR's legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG: Twenty-four states have laws that require voters to provide some form of ID at the polls. Seven states require photo IDs. Indiana's law requires anyone voting in person to present a current government-issued photo ID. People can get them free from the state, but must have appropriate documents such as a certified birth certificate plus other secondary proof, and obtaining those documents often cause time and money.
The Democratic Party challenged the law in court and lost. A federal appeals court acknowledged that the law would impose a burden on minorities, the poor and the elderly, but the lower courts said the burden was slight and was just justified to prevent fraud in the future.
On the steps of the Supreme Court today, Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher acknowledged that the state has no history of voter impersonation fraud. But he said there have been reports of voter impersonation fraud in other states.
Mr. THOMAS FISHER (Solicitor General, Indiana): We've got our problem with voter confidence. I think that's the main thing. We want to make sure that votes do not lose confidence in the integrity of election.
TOTENBERG: But Democratic Party Chair Dan Parker said there's not a single recorded case of voter impersonation fraud in Indiana's history.
Mr. DAN PARKER (Chairman, Indiana Democratic Party): The solution, looking for a problem. There is no problem in Indiana with voter impersonation.
TOTENBERG: Inside the courtroom, lawyer Paul Smith, representing the Democrats, took quite a pounding from the justices.
Chief Justice Roberts: I had understood you had no voters who had actually been prevented from voting. Answer: That's because we challenge the law before any election actually occurred. Now, we have such voters.
Justice Scalia: Did you have anyone who said, I don't have an ID and won't be able to get one? Answer: Yes.
Chief Justice Roberts: Even though the state provides free ID? Answer: Yes.
The state ratcheted up the difficulty of getting that ID, requiring a birth certificate and other documents that you have to pay for. Yes, said lawyer Smith, there's a special provision for indigents, but it is gratuitously burdensome. Requiring them to make more than one trip in order to vote, and requiring them to go to the county seat, not just their precinct polling place.
Justice Breyer: There used to be a common urban legend of political bosses voting whole graveyards of people. Now, that would be almost impossible to catch. Answer: It would not be impossible catch. In a state with 5,000 precincts manned by poll workers who know many of their neighbors, many kinds of fraud are hard to catch, but they do get caught.
Justice Alito: If you concede that some kind of voter ID requirement is appropriate, where do you draw the line?
Justice Souter: How do we quantify how many people will suffer in Indiana? Answer: A substantial portion of the 400,000 without IDs. The Lafayette Urban Ministry, which helps the needy, to cite just one example, had 150 people come to them for helping getting IDs. But these voters were in this catch 22 where they needed a driver's license to get a birth certificate. And a year later, even with the ministry's assistance, 75 of them still didn't have IDs.
The state's lawyer, Thomas Fisher, rejected the Democrat's numbers. That prompted Justice Souter to interject, well, even the lowest estimate is 10,000 people affected. Answer: Then you're talking about less than half of a percent of the total electorate.
Justice Souter: But isn't 10,000 voters enough to be considered more than de minimis?
Justice Scalia: Why can't that one-half of one percent challenge the law, saying it can't be applied to them?
Justice Souter: You'd never be able to bring a pre-election challenge then, would you? Answer: No.
Justice Ginsburg: And the horse would be out of the barn. The election would be skewed against them.
Justice Kennedy: There's nothing that prevents the state from confirming the validity of the registration at the polls. If we thought that the birth certificate was burdensome, he added, are there states that have a reasonable alternative?
The Democrats' lawyer, Paul Smith, sought to answer that question in his rebuttal time pointing to other states like Michigan that require affidavits at the polls when a person doesn't have an ID.
Justice Scalia: Aren't there going to be problems with any system, you imagine? And shouldn't we wait for lawsuits challenging how the law has actually been applied to individuals? Answer: To paraphrase King Lear, that way lies madness. The court would have to do what it has never done before, carve out groups of people who are exempt from the law. And at the same time, the court would leave a larger group of people to suffer smaller inconveniences, which would cause some small percentage of them not to vote.
Justice Kennedy: You want us to invalidate a statute on the grounds that it's a minor inconvenience to a small percentage of voters?
That question from Justice Kennedy whose vote may be pivotal in the case could be telling.
Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
The political impasse that has paralyzed Kenya may be the result of dubious election results in the presidential race. But it has turned to a standoff involving more than 40 ethnic groups. The two most prominent are President Kibaki's tribe, the Kikuyu, and the Luo, the tribe of opposition leader, Raila Odinga. Somewhere in the middle are millions of Kenyans who can't get out of harm's way.
NPR's Gwen Thompkins reports from Nairobi.
GWEN THOMPKINS: Timothy Maugu(ph) is a 35-year-old shoe salesman and, given the circumstances, remarkably polite. He's standing in an open field in Nairobi outside the Kibera slum where thousands of people, who are no longer welcome there, have come for food and shelter. Maugu was burned out of his house more than a week ago. He says the assailants mistakenly thought he'd voted for President Mwai Kibaki. Maugu is from the Luhya tribe and says he and his will never vote again.
Mr. TIMOTHY MAUGU (Shoe Salesman): Yeah, because you - we voted. And these are now their future. See their mom working here, children here, and babies crying here. See, we will not vote.
THOMPKINS: In just over a week, Kenya has cracked under the weight of ethnic rivalries and political hatred. And those who are just hanging on before the vote are now in free fall. In Nairobi's Jamhuri Park, a showground for prize cattle and agricultural wonderments, about 4,000 people from nearly every major ethnic group are sleeping with the monkeys in the open air. And there are show grounds like this with comparable numbers nationwide.
Ms. ANIRIN TIPLICAT(ph) (Humanitarian Aid Worker): We were even told last week that two women delivered there at the Jamhuri Park. And can you imagine the type of condition there.
THOMPKINS: Anirin Tiplicat is organizing food and medicine donations for the displaced at St. Mark's Church in Nairobi. Here's her list.
Ms. TIPLICAT: Medicine (unintelligible), rice, sugar, you know, food, diapers, you know, for the babies. You can see, we are told that in the process of running, some people have broke their legs. We need crutches.
THOMPKINS: Humanitarian aid agencies estimate that more than 250,000 people have been displaced nationwide in the violence. The World Food Programme moved a convoy of trucks across the country carrying a month's worth of food for 70,000 people in western Kenya. That area has been hard hit by post-election violence. In addition, the United Nations is diverting food from Somali refugees in northeastern Kenya to help the displaced. Back in Nairobi, people are depending on this aid.
Give Beatrice Acheyen(ph) a fish and she'll eat for a day. Rebuild her fish stand in Nairobi's Kibera slum and everyone will eat for as long as they like. Acheyen is a 28-year-old Luo vendor whose little shop burned along with the entire marketplace more than a week ago. Kikuyu vendors are associated with that market. And like so many, she was burned by association. She now looks for food everyday at Jamhuri Park.
Ms. BEATRICE ACHEYEN (Fish Vendor): If you see us coming to look for food and we are the people who are selling food for the people, it means that it's a desperate life here.
THOMPKINS: Joe Motori(ph) is a Kikuyu who sold secondhand T-shirts and sweaters at the same market in Kibera.
Mr. JOE MOTORI (Vendor): We are very worried because, at the moment, people are supposed to be looking for (unintelligible) for their children. People are supposed to be looking for - or they are taking back their children to school, pay rent. Why should I suffer? Because Kibaki's stole our election.
THOMPKINS: Motori belongs to a grassroots organization called Pamoja Trust that looks out for the poor in the Nairobi shanty towns. Today, the group called on the politicians they voted for to show their faces in Kibera and other areas hardest hit by violence. But the material effect of such visits could be minimal.
For the first time since Kenya's troubles began more than a week ago, President Mwai Kibaki went west to visit those displaced by the violence. And tonight, most of those people will still be sleeping under the stars.
Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, Nairobi.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
A new study points out just how tough it can be to estimate the number of violent deaths in Iraq. The World Health Organization and the Iraqi Health Ministry have put out a number that is one-fourth of an earlier estimate. They say that over 150,000 Iraqis died violent deaths during the first three years after the U.S. invasion.
NPR's Brenda Wilson has our story.
BRENDA WILSON: The World Health Organization's study of violent deaths is based on visits to more than 10,000 households throughout Iraq. Ties Boerma, WHO's director of Measurements and Health Information, says the results include the deaths of civilians and soldiers who were part of those households.
Mr. TIES BOERMA (Director of Measurements and Health Information, World Health Organization): They don't include car accidents. They don't include unintentional injuries. They just include intentional injuries and armed conflict. And in fact, the armed conflict deaths are more than 80 percent of those deaths that we have reported.
WILSON: Researchers left it up to the respondents to define the cause of death.
Mr. BOERMA: If they said, you know, it was a traffic accident, then we record it - it was recorded as a traffic accident. But if they sort of said, well, somebody died while trying to avoid a bomb blast or something like that, they could have also recoded it as armed conflict death. But that was up to the respondent on what kind of detail and how they would define it.
WILSON: Boerma and his team looked at the period between March 2003 and June 2006, when there were around 151,000 violent deaths in Iraq. That's a fraction of the more than 600,000 violent deaths reported for the same period by researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2006, a survey that continues to be debated in the press and political circles. Both studies counted civilian and combatant fatalities. Boerma thinks the difference in their findings is that Hopkins' earlier study visited many fewer clusters, that is, neighborhoods and villages, 47 compared to more than 1,000 that WHO visited.
Mr. BOERMA: Because we're talking about a survey that's much larger, we have a little bit more confidence in that method than in a very small 47-cluster survey that came up with a very high number.
WILSON: Boerma admits that even the bigger survey missed areas that were too violent to get into, and so they made adjustments for that. Les Roberts was the co-author of the Johns Hopkins study. He says that they can produce a death certificate for every violent death in their tally. And he doubts the surveyors working with Iraq's Ministry of Health can produce the same.
Mr. LES ROBERTS (Researcher, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health): Every graveyard tally, every morgue description I've seen suggests that the majority of deaths are from violence. So there's two possibilities. Our estimate has too many violent deaths or their estimate has too few. And I think in this case, people were reluctant to admit to a government official that my family member died a violent death.
WILSON: However, there are other reports on increases in violent deaths whose trends are closer to those reported by WHO. It is unlikely that this latest research will settle the question of the magnitude of death the Iraq conflict has caused.
Brenda Wilson, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
I'm Robert Siegel.
And with us in the studio, fresh from the airport, is NPR national political correspondent, Mara Liasson. Hi yah.
MARA LIASSON: Hi. How are you doing?
SIEGEL: And we should say, Mara is part of the massive exodus of reporters -some of them sleepwalking - out of New Hampshire along with the pollsters, politicians and others. The presidential candidates have dispersed to the states with primaries and caucuses up next. Some of the candidates who are savoring the sweetness of unanticipated success, others tasting the bitter opposite. But all were counting the dollars and the delegates of a protracted nomination fight.
Mara, I guess at this stage it's pretty clear there's no frontrunner in either party.
LIASSON: Absolutely not.
SIEGEL: But in New Hampshire, among the big losers were a lot of the polls.
LIASSON: Yes, well, at least the polls regarding the democratic race. The polls and conventional wisdom took a beating. And I think we'd probably all do well to throw the polls out the window and just pay attention to the candidates. It probably won't happen.
SIEGEL: Okay, well, we will do that for now, at least. Let's pay attention to the candidates and the choices that face them. First, the Democrats. Hillary Clinton, what does she have to do between now and, as we call it, Tsunami Tuesday in February?
LIASSON: Well, I think what she has to do is really retool her message. Instead of complaining about falls hopes and being - making the unusual argument of attacking idealism of Barack Obama, she needs to generate some of her own. She really has to show her vision of the future. That's what her folks say that she's got to do, not just stress her experience and her resume and her tough toughness. Make it not just about her. She did stop Barack Obama's momentum for now, for the moment. But she has to win sometime soon, either in Nevada or South Carolina, to generate some of her own momentum.
SIEGEL: And Barack Obama, what does he have to do?
LIASSON: I think he has to pass the Oval Office test. I think he have to make some policy speeches. His advisors say he will be doing that. And he has to keep winning. He's won one now, he has to win somewhere else, either Nevada or South Carolina. He did get the endorsement of the Culinary Workers Union in Nevada, that's very important.
SIEGEL: Very powerful.
LIASSON: Also, I think he has to show that he is tough enough to withstand the onslaught that's going to come from the Clinton campaign and the increased press scrutiny.
SIEGEL: Is it now a two-way race? Or if not, how long does John Edwards stay in it?
LIASSON: Well, that's hard to say. Unless he pulls off some kind of a miracle and wins in South Carolina, which I can't imagine, there's going to be pressure on him to pull out. I don't see him pulling out, certainly not until after South Carolina; it's the state where he was born. And he really is on a personal mission now. But I do think it has become a two-way race.
SIEGEL: Now, let's switch over to the Republicans where the field is bigger. We agreed there are no frontrunners, could you make a case that John McCain is now the Republican frontrunner?
LIASSON: For the moment. But I think the task for John McCain is to win Michigan, win Michigan and win Michigan. I just — it's hard to see how he goes on without doing that. He has to show that he can do what he couldn't do in 2000, which is come out of New Hampshire, and he actually did win Michigan in 2000, but then he has to go on and win more. The problem for McCain is that he's in a position that's too similar to the position that he was in in 2000 with not a lot of money, little organization after his New Hampshire win.
In Michigan, it's going to tough for him. He's facing Romney, of course his father was governor there. And Huckabee's competing there, too. And even though he and Huckabee have been real partners in the race, so far, against Romney, Huckabee will give John McCain competition for blue-collar votes in Michigan.
SIEGEL: What does Mitt Romney do? Where does he go after Michigan, let's say?
LIASSON: Well, he goes to Michigan and he really has to win there. And then, of course, he goes on to South Carolina or Florida. I think that if he loses Michigan, he certainly can go on because he has the resources. But I think he'll face some pressure to drop out if he doesn't win Michigan. There is a report today that he's pulling his television spots in South Carolina and Florida to concentrate on Michigan. It shows you how important that state is to him and how he's husbanding his resources. He's not running out of them, but he is concentrating them.
SIEGEL: Mike Huckabee, does he need a mass conversion to evangelical Christianity to carry him?
LIASSON: Well, one of his task is to show that he can broaden his appeal, that he's more than a one-note candidate. He has big support in South Carolina, where there are lots of evangelicals. But then if he wins there, he has to go on and win somewhere else, maybe Florida, states where the electorate is more diverse.
SIEGEL: Where Giuliani expects to win.
LIASSON: Yeah, and Giuliani absolutely has to win Florida. He has to show that he can win somewhere. He has to show that his unconventional strategy is going to work. And, of course, his strategy depends on the Republican race staying muddled. And so far, it is.
SIEGEL: Fred Thompson hasn't much to show for his campaign so far.
LIASSON: I think he has to win South Carolina. I just don't see how he stays in without a win in the south very, very soon.
SIEGEL: Okay, Mara. Well done. Thank you very much.
LIASSON: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: NPR national political correspondent, Mara Liasson.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And as Mara just told us, conventional wisdom and all those polls we talk about all the time were just plain wrong. Pollsters and pundits are wondering where they missed the mark.
Here is NPR's Tovia Smith.
TOVIA SMITH: If nothing else, the misleading polls made for some exciting TV.
(Soundbite of TV program bits)
Unintelligible Man #1: And Hillary Clintons win. What a stunner.
Unintelligible Woman: Well, I think everyone is surprised about yesterday's primary results.
Unintelligible Man #2: Lo and behold, she won. But why?
SMITH: Pollsters and pundits are still trying to come up with ways to explain it. There's everything from Obama's place on the ballot, his name was printed 25 lines below Clintons, to, well, you know how women can change their minds at the last minute.
Ms. COURTNEY KELLY(ph) (New Hampshire Voter): Yesterday.
SMITH: You decided yesterday?
Ms. KELLY: Yes.
SMITH: Courtney Kelly is one of the nearly 20 percent of voters who woke up on primary day undecided. She had never really considered Clinton.
Ms. KELLY: I never was a fan of hers, really.
SMITH: But Kelly, a waitress in Manchester, says she started thinking about it after she saw Clinton's now famous Oprah-esque moment when the candidate seem to let her guard down at a local diner and reveal a more vulnerable side.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, presidential candidate): This is very personal for me. It's not just political. It's not just public. I see what's happening.
Ms. KELLY: She just seemed to come across softer. I always thought of her as very - I don't know, not that lovable. Stern-like, you know, but you'd like to know that there's a gentle side to her, too.
SMITH: For Kelly, the moment was as pivotal as it was poignant. She says she actually started to feel sorry for Clinton.
Ms. KELLY: I just feel bad for her, to be honest with you. Because being a woman, it's kind of hard, because you're going to get — you're always going to have these guys who are not going to vote for a woman no matter how good she is.
SMITH: So Kelly figured she would. And so, apparently, did many other women.
Ms. CELINDA LAKE (Democratic Pollster): Well, women always make up their minds later than men. What was unique here was that there were back and forth, and so many of them describe themselves as making last-minute snap decisions.
SMITH: Democratic pollster Celinda Lake attributes most of yesterday's shift to women. In Iowa, Obama won among women narrowly. In New Hampshire, as late as Sunday night, he was leading among women by four points. But the teary moment came after the last tracking poll. By the time votes were counted Tuesday night, Clinton was ahead with women by 12 points. In part, it was her well-tuned get out to vote machine. But, Lake says, it was also her retuned, softer, gentler pitch.
Ms. LAKE: I think what happened in New Hampshire is that Hillary Clinton became very comfortable with both a tough side and the soft side. She found comfort with the gender aspect of her campaign. And I think that appealed very much to women voters.
SMITH: Some voters here in the very white and Yankee state of New Hampshire think there may be racial element at work as well. Karen Danchick(ph) voted for Obama, but she suspects many others who claim to support him didn't really.
Ms. KAREN DANCHICK (New Hampshire Voter): Maybe they would like to feel that they're more willing to be accepting of all people than they really are. When it comes time to fill in the bubble, they're not quite as ready to be as color-blinded they might think that they are.
Dr. BETHANY ALBERTSON (Political Psychologist, University of Washington): I do think it's a problem.
SMITH: Political psychologist Bethany Albertson from the University of Washington predicted a month ago that support for Obama was being overstated. Her research found that voters' stated preferences didn't seem to match up with what she measured as their unconscious feelings.
DR. ALBERTSON: Even people who said that they supported Obama shows that they had an unconscious preference for Clinton or a bias against Obama.
SMITH: There has been a lot of academic debate about the role of race in political polling. But Albertson says in a presidential contest, in particular, race may still be one of the many dynamics that conspired to foil the pollsters trying to track yesterday's vote.
Tovia Smith, NPR News, Manchester, New Hampshire.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
It sounds like something out of a Wesley Snipes movie. A missile is fired at an airplane, but a laser fired at the missile sends it harmlessly off course. The military has been using such anti-missile technology on its planes for years. Now, this spring, the Department of Homeland Security will test similar anti-missile systems on three passenger jets.
Here's NPR's David Schaper.
DAVID SCHAPER: I'm standing in an office in industrial park just east of Chicago's O'Hare Airport. Hundreds of airplanes, either taking off or landing at O'Hare, pass over this area at a very low altitude everyday. The anti-missile systems would protect those aircrafts from the possibility that a terrorist could be lurking behind one of these small factories or warehouses with a shoulder-fired missile launcher.
Mr. BURT KEIRSTEAD (Director, Commercial Airline Protection, BAE Systems): They're so insidious because they're kind of like the Saturday Night Special of terrorists.
SCHAPER: Burt Keirstead is the director of commercial aircraft protection at aerospace defense contractor, BAE Systems.
Mr. KEIRSTEAD: They're portable. They're shoulder fired. They have been highly proliferated. And so there is this specter of a threat to commercial aircraft if in the wrong hands.
SCHAPER: Keirstead says the missile defense system is actually a small robotic device attached to the plane. They call it R2-D2 for its similarities to the droid from the "Star Wars" movies. He says the device first senses the missile fired at the plane, processes what it is, turns toward it, and then fires a laser beam at the missile to divert it.
Mr. KEIRSTEAD: The way the missile operate - they're sensing the heat of the aircraft and that's why if you can shine a laser back at the missile and, you know, effectively dazzle his eyeballs with infrared light, then he can no longer attract the aircraft and falls harmlessly to land.
SCHAPER: Keirstead says the technology has worked effectively on military aircrafts, though there are questions about its range. Congress ordered the Department of Homeland Security to test the system and BEA systems won a $29 million contract to install it on three commercial American Airlines jets this spring.
Homeland Security spokeswoman Amy Kudwa says the devices will be tested on Boeing 767-200s that fly daily between New York's JFK Airport and LAX in Los Angeles.
Ms. AMY KUDWA (Spokeswoman, Department of Homeland Security): Of course, we're not going to be firing anything at these aircrafts. What we're looking at in this particular testing is the cost to operate and maintain these systems in a commercial airline setting.
SCHAPER: The laser systems cost a half a million to a million dollars each. But it's unclear how durable and reliable they'll be when used on commercial flying coast to coast everyday.
Mr. JOHN HOTARD (Spokesman, American Airlines): One of our biggest fears is that the government is going to pass the cost along to the airlines. And the airline industry is in no financial shape to take on this additional cost.
SCHAPER: That's American Airlines spokesman John Hotard who says the nation's largest carrier is philosophically opposed to equipping all its domestic planes with these defensive devices. He says setting up a missile defense system around the perimeter of an airport might be a better use of Homeland Security funds because that's where the greatest threat from shoulder-fired missiles would be.
But Hotard says, American agreed to participate in the test because it may have use on certain international flights. And Congress might eventually mandate the systems on all domestic planes anyway. Some airlines passengers are also less than enthusiastic about anti-missile technology on passenger jets.
Mr. JASON GERACHE(ph) (Passenger): I don't know. This one's a little bit like the argument over "Star Wars" to me.
SCHAPER: Jason Gerache of Chicago is waiting at O'Hare Airport's baggage claim area.
Mr. GERACHE: I guess any security is good security. It doesn't seem like a pressing issue as far as domestic flights. I guess I could understand it in more dangerous threatened areas of the world, you know. That would seem to make more sense to me.
SCHAPER: The tests of the anti-missile devices are expected to begin in late spring with results reported to Congress next year.
David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
He was praised by CIA critics, considered a traitor by many agents. Philip Agee has died in Havana at age 72. Agee was a spy who turned against the agency and exposed some of his former undercover colleagues. He took refuge in Cuba after losing his American passport. His 1975 book, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary," revealed details of covert CIA operations against leftist movements in Latin America.
NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.
TOM GJELTEN: Philip Agee went to work for the CIA in Latin America in 1960, a time when the United States was worried that Fidel Castro's revolution could spread. Agee later said the agency worked secretly on behalf of right-wing dictatorships across the region. In 1969, he resigned from the CIA and resolved to do what he could to thwart those covert CIA operations by exposing them. He spoke to NPR in 1987.
(Soundbite of archived interview)
Mr. PHILIP AGEE (Former CIA Agent; Author, "Inside the Company: CIA Diary"): I made the decision after I had left the CIA to write a book about my experiences and those operations that other people undertook, but which I knew about. Because I wanted to put this experience and knowledge at the disposal or at the service of the people who needed it to defend themselves.
GJELTEN: Agee's 600-page memoir was a detailed expose of CIA activities, but most controversial was a 21-page appendix in which he identified undercover CIA operatives by name. That same year, the CIA station chief in Athens, Richard Welch, was assassinated. Welch was not one of the agents identified in the book, but Agee was still blamed for his death.
Anger over Agee's actions was a factor in the passage of a 1982 law that made it a federal crime to reveal the identity of a covert U.S. agent. That was actually the law that led to the 2003 investigation of the exposure of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
In his 1987 interview, Agee expressed no remorse for having identified fellow CIA agents.
(Soundbite of archived interview)
Mr. AGEE: There's no way to separate what the agency does from who does it. If you want to try to disrupt this type of activity, you can describe their operations, but it's impossible to describe these operations in any detail without getting into the personalities involved.
GJELTEN: Some of the operatives uncovered by Agee, however, had little to do with covert CIA activities in Latin America. One was Eugene Poteat who was working undercover in London as a CIA technology officer.
Mr. EUGENE POTEAT (Former CIA Science and Technology Officer): He exposed not only my name, but he listed my family's name and so on, and the positions I held overseas, which caused me considerable problems thereafter.
GJELTEN: Poteat said he was followed in his car, vandalized. Agee's CIA expose, however, made him a hero in European leftist circles. His book was published in 27 languages and he appeared often at public rallies. Poteat went to see him speak from a soapbox at Hyde Park in London.
Mr. POTEAT: I stood at the back of the crowd to see what he would have to say. And he said, well, in this crowd, somewhere there's probably a CIA man keeping an eye on me. And a young British man turned to me and said, you're not a CIA spy, are you? And I said, no, are you?
GJELTEN: After Agee lost his American passport, he settled in Cuba. In recent years, he ran a travel agency there promoting cheap excursions around the island. Agee's death was announced today by the Cuban Communist Party newspaper, Granma. His widow, a German ballet dancer, told friends he died as a result of surgery for a perforated ulcer.
Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
A study in The New England Journal of Medicine finds that a common heart test can identify some young athletes at risk of dropping dead from cardiac disease. But experts say it's not feasible to give it to everybody who wants to play sports.
NPR's Richard Knox reports.
RICHARD KNOX: Joanne Babbitt of Chatham, New Jersey has lived through the nightmare. Her 16-year-old son John was a strapping, three-season athlete.
Ms. JOANNE BABBITT (Chatham resident): One evening, he went down to play basketball in an intramural league that's part of his church youth group. And he was running down the court and he just collapsed, and died instantaneously.
KNOX: An autopsy showed that John Babbitt died from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy - an enlarged and thickened heart. It's the most common cause of sudden death among young athletes.
Ms. BABBITT: His heart was extremely thick. There was like a 95 percent chance that if he had an EKG that would have shown up, because the progression of the disease within John, at that time, was quite significant.
KNOX: An EKG, or electrocardiogram, is a $50 test. In Italy, every athlete - from elementary school through the pros - must have an EKG before he or she can play sports. Those with abnormal EKGs get other tests to see if their hearts are structurally abnormal.
Dr. ANTONIO PELLICCIA (Scientific Director, Italian Institute of Sports Medicine and Science): The Italian experience clearly demonstrated that screening is feasible and also is very efficient.
KNOX: Dr. Antonio Pelliccia is with the Italian Institute of Sports Medicine and Science. He's an author of the study on the 26-year-old Italian screening program. Researchers followed 81 athletes with severely abnormal EKGs. Over nine years, five developed cardiomyopathy, one died suddenly, another survived a cardiac arrest. So a severely abnormal EKG does sometimes predict later heart disease. Some had thought an abnormal EKG could be a harmless result of athletic training.
But Dr. Barry Maron says that doesn't mean all U.S. athletes should, or could, get EKGs.
Dr. BARRY MARON (Director, Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center, Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation): I wouldn't want to put a price tag on a young athlete's life that, you know, could be saved through screening. The issue is resources and the practicality. It just can't be done in the United States.
KNOX: Maron, for the Minneapolis Heart Institute, is also an author of the new study. He says sudden death in apparently healthy young people occur, on average, once a week. It seems like a big and scary problem because these tragedies are getting increasing attention.
But out of the young athlete population of 10 million or more, Maron says it's actually pretty rare. And, he says, screening everybody would be prohibitively expensive.
Dr. MARON: It's hard to know exactly, but it could be as much as $2 billion a year.
KNOX: Lisa Salberg was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy when she was 12. Her father has it, her daughter has it, and it killed her sister. She founded a group called the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Association. But she's not for universal EKG screening.
Ms. LISA SALBERG (Founder, Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Association): There are some people that will say, to save a life if it costs $1 million per person, we should do it.
KNOX: She thinks it's more feasible to tighten up screening programs already in place than ask parents to disclose any family history of premature cardiac death. But that's not fullproof.
Ms. SALBERG: Unfortunately, I'll tell you, that some families choose purposely to not disclose information about family history for fear of being disqualified from competition.
KNOX: And Dr. Barry Maron says neither high school, nor college athletic officials have shown any interest in programs that tell some young athletes that they can't play.
Richard Knox, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
By the end of this year, U.S.-led forces in Iraq will no longer operate under a U.N. Security Council mandate. So over the next six months, the U.S. and Iraq will try to reach an agreement that will allow the U.S. military to stay. Some influential administration advisers are also optimistic about the chances of changing the U.S. mission in Iraq. They say that if security continues to improve on the ground, the U.S. may be able to shift the military from fighting the war to keeping the peace.
NPR's Guy Raz has that story.
GUY RAZ: Back in September 1999, Texas Governor George W. Bush gave a speech at The Citadel military college in South Carolina. He just launched his candidacy for president. And in that speech, he talked about what a Bush administration's military policy would look like. Here's what he said.
SIEGEL: What is our goal? Can it be met? And when do we leave? Then Governor Bush finished his speech by saying the U.S. military, quote, "will not be permanent peacekeepers, dividing warring parties. This is not our strength or our calling," he said. But peacekeeping is, in fact, what some influential administration advisers are starting to talk about in light of the recent security gains in Iraq.
STEPHEN BIDDLE: If things continue, we may cease to be war fighters but we will remain necessary, if so, as peacekeepers.
RAZ: This is Stephen Biddle, an informal adviser to General David Petraeus, who spoke at the conservative Heritage Foundation this week. Now, Biddle, up until just a few months ago, was deeply pessimistic about the prospects for success in Iraq. But he now says Iraq is at a turning point and...
BIDDLE: If current trends continue and if the United States government continues to play its cards right, I think we could be within reach in the next 12 months of something that looks like a reasonable approximation of a nationwide ceasefire.
RAZ: This is what administration policymakers like Mark Kimmit hope to broker sometime this year.
MARK KIMMIT: 2008 and beyond will be a success. The surge will be a success if the gains in security can be translated into gains in stability.
RAZ: Kimmit is the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. At a recent forum, he acknowledged that much of what President Bush promised to achieve in Iraq last year didn't happen. And so now, the talk among administration officials is to attempt to do this year what wasn't accomplished last year; things like brokering political agreements and pushing the Iraqi parliament to pass important legislation.
KIMMIT: This is where the focus for 2008 and beyond will need to be.
RAZ: Except, there may be some problems with achieving these things.
EDWARD JOSEPH: I think that that is optimistic. I think it's putting the car before the horse.
RAZ: Edward Joseph, a fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies, says any talk of brokering ceasefires or political agreements anytime soon is way too optimistic.
JOSEPH: The main factor that drives the sectarian fighting and controls the kind of mission and the transformation that all of us would like to see, is the underlying political relationship, finding a meaningful role for Sunnis in Iraq.
RAZ: Joseph and many others argue there are no obvious indicators to suggest that Iraq's political leaders are prepared to make the kinds of compromises that could at least temper some of the sectarian tension. And besides, much of this year will be spent trying to hammer out a long-term arrangement that would keep the U.S. military in Iraq until - at the very least - December 2009, the month when Iraq will hold its next general election.
Guy Raz, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
As the president addresses the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there's growing concern on another front in the region. Turkey, a key ally of the U.S., is rapidly improving its relationship with Syria. Syria and the U.S. are at odds over Lebanon, the Iraq War, Iran, not to mention the Middle East peace process.
NPR's Deborah Amos has this report.
DEBORAH AMOS: This is how Syria's ambassador in Washington Imad Moustapha talks about his country's ties with Turkey.
NORRIS: I think we are going through what you might call as a honeymoon as the best possible relations between any two neighborly countries of the world.
AMOS: Such enthusiasm over Turkey is a worry for the U.S., says Omer Taspinar, a Turkish analyst at the U.S. War College.
NORRIS: The Syrians have a lot to gain. That's why it's definitely in their interest to send a signal they're not isolated, that they have Turkey on their side.
AMOS: And do they?
NORRIS: Yes. Syria is perceived as the underdog against the U.S. So, the more the U.S. says, don't talk to Syria, I think, the more it will become attractive for Turkish public opinion.
U: (Arabic spoken)
AMOS: Which may be why the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad got such a warm welcome on a recent trip to Turkey. With his attractive young wife, the Assads toured the capital with Turkey's president and prime minister. The TV cameras were there as they opened a new Turkish shopping center. The coverage of smiling presidents and their wives surprised even Syrians, says George Sageur, a Syrian-American businessman.
NORRIS: The face of Syria represented by both the president and his wife has been tremendous in Turkey, received very, very well indeed.
AMOS: A marked improvement from tensions a decade ago. Syria and Turkey seemed on the verge of war after Turkey accused Damascus of harboring a Kurdish rebel leader. But that was all before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Now, Turkey and Syria have shared concerns. Both have sizeable Kurdish populations. Both worry about the nationalist goals of the Kurds in neighboring Iraq. Turkey and Syria are both wary of U.S. plans in the region, says Omer Taspinar.
NORRIS: The real impetus behind these visits is the Kurdish question - Turks are very, very much disillusioned with this whole Iraq episode.
AMOS: And Syria has benefited from that disillusionment.
In Damascus, Turkish language classes are now popular for these Syrian Arabic speakers because of expanded trade. Syria's deputy prime minister was in Turkey last week to sign an agreement for a joint natural-gas pipeline.
(SOUNDBITE OF TURKISH LANGUAGE CLASS)
NORRIS: The relationship with Turkey has an economic aspect, but it's also very important for domestic legitimacy.
AMOS: That's Josh Landis, an American academic who writes an influential blog on Syria. He says the new partnership with Turkey has helped Syria's president blunt a domestic problem: Many of Syria's majority Sunni Muslims do not like Assad's close relations with Shiite Iran.
NORRIS: Syria is very unhappy in this Shiite alliance because 80 percent of the country, 75 percent of the country are Sunnis. It's caused a lot of angst amongst your average businessmen in Syria.
AMOS: Turkey is a predominantly Sunni Muslim country. And on the political front, Turkey's moderate politics could offer an alternative to Iran, says Ibrahim Hamidi, a Syrian journalist and analyst.
NORRIS: If we really want to support moderate policies in the region, if we really want to isolate Iran, we have to give bigger role for Turkey in the region.
AMOS: And this is exactly what Turkey's new government wants, says Henri Barkey, a professor of international relations at Lehigh University. He says Turkey's leaders intend to become players in Middle East politics. The opening to Syria is a major move to do just that.
P: I mean, it's quite smart on their part to say, look we have good relations with everybody, everybody can come and talk to us, we will listen to anybody, we will help anybody. This is a way the Turks are pushing themselves up in the region.
AMOS: It's a new role for Turkey, a welcome lifeline for Damascus, and a problem for the United States: Turkey, a key U.S. ally, is reaching out to Syria - which President Bush has called a dangerous regime.
Deborah Amos, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
On now to another long-running conflict: This one ecological.
On the savannahs of Africa, giant elephants are pitted against angry ant swarms that live in trees. And according to a new study, one of the worst things that could happen in this conflict is for the two sides to find peace.
NPR's John Nielsen has more.
JOHN NIELSEN: If trees could feel emotions, there is nothing that would scare them more than the sight of an approaching elephant, according Todd Palmer, an ecologist with the University of Florida at Gainesville.
TODD PALMER: Elephants eat trees. They don't eat parts of trees, they don't eat - they can eat a tree much like we would eat a cupcake.
NIELSEN: We reached Palmer on a cell phone at his research site in Kenya. That's where he goes to study a small African tree that has found a way to repel hungry elephants. Palmer says these trees ooze tasty sap that attracts nasty ants and then makes the ants even nastier. He says a single of these trees can hold 100,000 of the ants, which is very bad news for any elephant that decides to chow down on a branch.
PALMER: So imagine 100,000 ants streaming across the tree towards this point of disturbance. At some point, enough is enough and you're going to have a face covered in these biting, stinging ants.
NIELSEN: Palmer says he's watched these ants charge straight into an elephant's trunk, which is famously sensitive. Now, scientists call this kind of ant-tree alliance a mutualism, which has a kind of peaceful ring to it. But not in this case, according to Palmer.
PALMER: It's a co-evolutionary war. People think of mutualisms as are the friendly sort of situation where species are helping each other out but it - what really is a battlefield.
NIELSEN: And on this particular battlefield, a tiny insect trumps the biggest land animal on earth. But that got Palmer wondering. What would happen to the ant-tree alliance if the common enemy - elephants - was gone? To find out, he put great big fences up around some of his trees, which are known locally as whistling thorns. And then he watched them for 10 years.
Palmer expected these trees to flourish with no elephants around but no. Some of them grew half as fast as before and many died and all of them stopped producing that tasty sap. That drove off all the ants that had once guarded them from the elephants.
PALMER: These trees, in the absence of herbivores, decided, well, the herbivores are gone so it doesn't make a lot of sense to pay these ant- bodyguards, so let's reduce the salaries. In essence, they were paying these bodyguards.
NIELSEN: Palmer says the sap productions turned out to be a big mistake. That's because the guard ants were quickly replaced by other insects that attacked the trees, digging lots of ugly holes and tunnels.
PALMER: It's like the trees riddled with cancer or something, it's basically when you cut open a cross-section of a tree, it's all it is, is just this torn up inside with massive numbers of tunnels and dead branch systems everywhere.
NIELSEN: This is an experiment that shows just how powerful and complicated natural alliances can be, says Mark Bertness, a biologist with Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. But more importantly, he says, it shows that you never know what you are going to get when you mess with Mother Nature.
MARK BERTNESS: This is a great example of how, without these mutualisms, the community collapses.
NIELSEN: Bertness says it's possible that similar collapses could take place in other parts of Africa, where elephant populations are now in trouble.
John Nielsen, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
This is an entry I would've preferred not to have published, but there are limits to what we can control in life, and apparently, I have passed one of those limits.
Those are the first words Major Andrew Olmsted of Colorado wrote for his last blog entry. The 37-year-old Army officer had been writing online about his experiences in Iraq for the Rocky Mountain News since last May. He'd asked that his last entry be posted on his Web site in the event of his death.
As NPR's Jeff Brady reports, Olmsted's final wish has now been carried out.
JEFF BRADY: Andrew Olmsted finished writing that final blog post just a few months ago. Last week, insurgents attacked and killed him and a fellow soldier, who'd come to his rescue. Wesley Olmsted says he read the post shortly after learning of his son's death.
NORRIS: I've read it twice now. It made my wife angry the first time she read it because she didn't want him to have been thinking about the possibility of his death, of course. But when she read it the second time, she was incredibly impressed.
BRADY: There's plenty of Olmsted's characteristic humor in the post. In the second paragraph, he asks friends and family not to cry, but to remember the good things about him. Then in parenthesis, he says, if it turns out a specific number of tears will, in fact, bring me back to life, then by all means, break out the onions. Olmsted was a fan of the science fiction television series, "Babylon 5," he included a quote from one of the characters, Dr. Stephen Franklin.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHOW "BABYLON 5")
NORRIS: (As Dr. Stephen Franklin) It's all so brief, isn't it? A typical human lifespan is almost a hundred years. But it's barely a second compared to what's out there. It wouldn't be so bad if life didn't take so long to figure out. Seems you just start to get it right, and then, it's over.
BRADY: Politics also were a big part of Olmsted's life. That's what led into blogging. Friends and family describe him as a conservative or a libertarian with a small L. In his final blog post, he specifically asked that no one use his death for political purposes. His father explains why.
NORRIS: He didn't want people from either side to use his death as a way to beat up the other side, because that's not the kind of person he was. He wants people to come from reasoned positions and not do a lot of screaming, and certainly not to use his death as a political weapon - that would be obscene.
BRADY: Through blogging, Olmsted became good friends with Hilary Bok. She's a philosophy professor at Johns Hopkins and a prolific blogger.
P: You know, he and I could not have been more different politically. And one of the things that made us friends is partly that we were just really interested in listening to the other, but also that we were both committed to the idea that if you are a democracy, you should treat people, who have opposing views, not just as fellow citizens who deserve your respect, but as the very people you have the most to learn from.
BRADY: Near the end of his final blog entry, Olmsted offers a tribute to his wife, Amanda. He wrote that she made life something to enjoy, rather than merely survive, and then he apologized for the burden his death is causing her. His father, Wesley, says this is the part that choked him up most.
NORRIS: I knew he loved his wife. I know they had loved each other for years. But the sensitivity, the understanding of himself and his relationship with Amanda, that was a little over the top. It was hard to handle.
BRADY: Finally, Olmsted expressed doubt about an afterlife, but just in case, he offered another quote from "Babylon 5" to his wife: I will see you again in the place where no shadows fall.
Jeff Brady, NPR News, Denver.
NORRIS: And you can find a link to Major Andrew Olmsted's last blog entry at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
As the U.S. economy slows, the Bush administration and Congress are struggling to decide how to respond. It's not an easy task. Policymakers don't know if the economy is just stalling for a bit or spiraling downward into a recession.
Today at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., some of the country's best-known economists gathered to discuss the situation. Among those present was Martin Feldstein, a former Reagan administration official who is said to be advising the White House on what to do.
NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
JIM ZARROLI: These days, nobody disputes that the U.S. economy is weakening. Hiring is down, real estate is in a coma and banks have suddenly become a lot more skittish about whom they'll lend to. Whether the economy will actually slip into a recession is a matter of debate. But Feldstein, the former head of the Council of Economic Advisers, says Washington needs to find ways to get ahead of the problem.
MARTIN FELDSTEIN: What we're talking about now is a preemptive strike. What do you do to stop the economy turning down, and if it starts turning down, to make it milder?
ZARROLI: The trick, says former U.S. Treasury secretary Robert Rubin, is to design a stimulus package that sidesteps Washington's ideological and partisan fault lines. He says a stimulus package should be timely. It needs to work quickly. Rubin says tax policy and education may be vital issues to the economy, but the recession is likely to be over long before they can be resolved.
ROBERT RUBIN: Let's not worry about debates about long-term marginal tax rates, infrastructure, social spending, all of which are extremely important issues and profoundly important in the long-term future of our country. But keep all of that out of it and just focus on this.
ZARROLI: What the government can do quickly is hand out money in the form of tax rebates and credits. Injecting the economy with a quick hit of cash would goose spending. But who should receive it?
Former Federal Reserve vice chair Alice Rivlin would like to see the federal government pass funds directly to the states, some of which - like California, Arizona and Florida - are already in recession.
ALICE RIVLIN: If we go into recession, the states feel it very quickly and very drastically and do all the wrong things from a macroeconomic point of view - they raise taxes, they cut spending. And if we can forestall that, I think it should be part of the package.
ZARROLI: The federal government could pump more money into food stamps. Martin Feldstein noted that it could be done quickly and it would go to the very people most likely to spend it right away. Feldstein was cooler to another proposal: Letting people collect unemployment benefits for a longer period. He said that could actually slow the economy's recovery.
FELDSTEIN: What it does is increase the incentive to stay unemployed because that increase in unemployment benefits - you'll only continue to get those checks the longer you are unemployed.
ZARROLI: But economist Mark Zandi took issue with that.
MARK ZANDI: No one is more panicked than a person that loses their job. And no one cuts back on their spending more than someone who's lost their job and has been out of work for 26 weeks. I mean, that's pure panic. And it's key to helping those folks.
ZARROLI: Zandi also disagreed with parts of another proposal that's been promoted by Feldstein lately. The Harvard economist has talked about creating triggers for a stimulus package. That is, Congress would vote to pass out rebate checks now, but they would only be sent out if the economy slowed sufficiently, if, for instance, job growth declined for three straight months. Feldstein says that will give consumers confidence that help will come if it's really needed. But Zandi was skeptical.
ZANDI: If you tell people they're going to get a $300 or a $600 or a $1200 tax-rebate check no matter what, that makes a big difference. If you tell them it's, well, the economy is not really good, you're going to get it, it doesn't shore up confidence.
ZARROLI: One thing everyone agreed on is that the Fed needs to keep cutting interest rates and do so aggressively. That may not revive the housing market anytime soon simply because the sector's problems run so deep. But doing so, they said, is the best way to ensure that the rebound, at least, gets under way.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
President Bush says he believes Israelis and Palestinians will come to a peace agreement before he leaves office. On the second day of his Mideast trip, Mr. Bush said that now is the time for leaders in the region to make difficult choices, to make that happen. He called for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories with some adjustments to borders to reflect reality is on the ground.
And NPR's Michele Kelemen reports the president saw some of those realities as he toured the West Bank today.
MICHELE KELEMEN: President Bush told Palestinians today he understands their frustrations about Israeli checkpoints and he got a firsthand view of that, well, sort of.
GEORGE W: You'd be happy to here that my motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped. I'm not so exactly sure that's what happens to the average - in an average person.
KELEMEN: A heavy morning fog meant that he had to travel by road to the West Bank city of Ramallah rather than by helicopter. So he passed Israeli checkpoints, Israeli settlements and one of those unauthorized outpost that he says have to go as Israelis and Palestinians begin to negotiate the contours of a Palestinian state. Mr. Bush said he's facing a tight timeline just 12 months.
BUSH: And I believe it's possible, not only possible. I believe it's going to happen if there'll be a signed peace treaty by the time I leave office.
KELEMEN: Though there is much skepticism in the region, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was also sounding hopeful. He spoke through an interpreter.
MAHMOUD ABBAS: (Through translator) Good. His state visit today to the Palestinian territories is highly appreciated by our people. And it's a new expression of your deep commitment towards establishing peace on the land of peace.
KELEMEN: President Bush had little interaction with Palestinian people, though. Ramallah was a ghost town today with only Palestinian security forces on the street, the same was true in Bethlehem where the president took in some of the sights and sounds from a Muslim call to prayer to bells of the Church of the Nativity. The president lit a candle in the grotto where Jesus Christ was believed to have been born. The president called it one of the holiest sites for Christians. And he thanked Palestinians for enduring the presidential trip which meant tighter security in a town already walled off by the Israeli security barrier.
BUSH: Someday, I hope that as a result of a formation of a Palestinian state there won't be walls and checkpoints, that people will be able to move freely in a democratic state.
KELEMEN: After a short helicopter ride back to his hotel in Jerusalem, the president recorded a message spelling out more precisely some of the tough choices both sides will have to make and send in a clear signal to Israel.
BUSH: There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish the Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people.
KELEMEN: He suggested a compensation fund for Palestinian refugees and talked about the need for Israel to have secure, recognized and defensible borders, and a state of Palestine that is viable and contiguous. Mr. Bush named an Air Force general, William Fraser to monitor how the Israelis and Palestinians are doing in carrying out confidence-building measures. And his aides say the president might return to the region this year to continue nudging the process forward.
Left unanswered in all of these is how to deal with Gaza - a Palestinian territory now controlled by Hamas, which rejects peace talks and refuses to recognize Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said there could be no peace without Gaza being part of the package. Mr. Bush today called it a tough problem but offered no solutions.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Jerusalem.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Mitt Romney is in South Carolina tonight for the Republican presidential debate. That state holds the first primary in the south next Saturday. But Romney won't be there long. He is eyeing Michigan, where he grew up and where his father was a popular governor. Romney's campaign is calling Michigan their firewall, the place where they say they plan to stop John McCain.
NORRIS: NPR's Scott Horsley has been following the Romney campaign. He joins us now from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Hello, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Good to be with you, Michele.
NORRIS: Now, to what extent is Romney now staking his campaign almost entirely on Michigan?
HORSLEY: Well, he's making a big bet on Michigan. Not only has he pulled his ads here in South Carolina but he's also devoting most of his personal campaigning time to Michigan. He was originally scheduled to stay here in South Carolina after the debate and do some campaigning tomorrow. Instead, he's going straight back to Michigan. He is running ads in Michigan that talk about how he shares Michigan values and touting his personal ties to the state, not only that he grew up there, of course, but his father was a popular, three-term governor in Michigan.
Some of the rival campaigns, I think, are skeptical if this is really going to work for Mitt Romney. Some of the John McCain camp were joking this morning that anyone in Michigan who remembers George Romney has probably moved to Arizona by now.
NORRIS: And Scott, this is interesting because Mitt Romney, for a long time had boasted that he was running a national campaign.
HORSLEY: Absolutely. I mean, as recently as a week ago, he was saying after finishing second in Iowa that he had the money, the resources and the strong organization to run coast to coast. And, in fact, he had criticized opponents for cherry-picking the states where they decided to play. He'd said that Mike Huckabee made a mistake in running only in Iowa, John McCain in focusing almost exclusively on New Hampshire. Of course, that cherry-picking strategy worked for Huckabee and McCain - they won in those two states and that's been a setback for Mitt Romney, whose whole strategy counted on early wins to help him build momentum. Now, he's got his back to the wall and he apparently feels like he has to win Michigan so he's putting all of his resources there.
NORRIS: There is no doubt that Mitt Romney has great personal wealth(ph) he's had this big campaign war chest but is the money now starting to dry up?
HORSLEY: Well, not exactly. He had a much-publicized telephone fundraiser yesterday when they reached out to contributors and actually raised about $5 million. But the lion's share of that was for the general election. In fact, his financial people were guaranteeing donors that if Romney is not the ultimate nominee, they'll get their money back. As we said, Mitt Romney's a multimillionaire he's already spent more than $17 million of his own just to (unintelligible) on the campaign. You know, he was spending about $300,000 a week on ads here in South Carolina so another week-and-a-half of ads wouldn't exactly broken the bank. Part of the question may be what message to use in those ads. He used a lot of negative commercials in Iowa and New Hampshire. It didn't work for him. It might even hurt him somewhat, so pulling the ads may be as much about retooling the message as conserving cash.
NORRIS: So, Mitt Romney is trying to get his mojo back in Michigan, what message does he use?
HORSLEY: Well, one of the things he was talking about on the campaign trail yesterday is to focus voters were putting on the economy and especially in Michigan, which has been hard hit. He has argued that as a businessman and someone from the private sector, he has the knowhow to create jobs. And that's certainly a plausible argument. Unfortunately for Romney, exit polls in New Hampshire showed the voters who were most concerned about the economy actually tilted towards John McCain. And former Arkansas Governor Huckabee has, is now waging at least a token campaign in Michigan and he's running ads there with a line he tried out in New Hampshire, that voters want a president who reminds them of a co-worker, not the guy who laid them off.
NORRIS: Thank you, Scott.
HORSLEY: My pleasure, Michele.
NORRIS: That was NPR's Scott Horsley speaking to us from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Democrat Barack Obama was in South Carolina today, too, and he received an endorsement from his party's last presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry.
Both men greeted supporters at a rally in Charleston as the Obama campaign shores up support with an eye to that state's Democratic primary on January 26th.
NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR: Kerry delivered his endorsement today in a city where he formerly launched his own presidential bid more than four years ago. Standing not far from whether he had made that announcement, Kerry chose words from civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL SPEECH)
JOHN KERRY: Martin Luther King says that the time is always right to do what is right. And I'm here in South Carolina because this is the right time to share with you to make sure that we know that I have the confidence and that Barack Obama can be, will be and should be the next president of the United States.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
NAYLOR: Kerry said there were other candidates in the race who he's worked with and respects, each of whom, he said, could be president tomorrow, that presumably includes Senator John Edwards, Kerry's running mate in 2004. While he did not mention any candidates by name, he seemed to single out Senator Hillary Clinton for criticism, alluding to her remark at last Saturday's debate that, quote, "we don't need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered."
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL SPEECH)
KERRY: Some have suggested in this campaign that Barack is guilty of raising false hopes. My friends, the only charge that rings false is one that tells you not to hope for a better tomorrow.
NAYLOR: For his part, Edwards issued a statement saying that he respects the decision of his former running mate but still believes the race is about the future and not the past.
Obama received the endorsement at a sunny, noonday rally at the College of Charleston, where a large crowd with many students and supporters stood under trees that were draped with Spanish moss. Obama called it a spectacular day and he praised Kerry for his service in Vietnam and for raising a voice against that war when he returned.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL SPEECH)
BARACK OBAMA: John Kerry is a man of courage, a man of conviction and a man whose life soared(ph), a man whose life story has given him an intimate understanding of the kind of change we need right now.
NAYLOR: Obama also picked up the endorsements of Senator Tim Johnson of South Dakota and California Congressman George Miller. The effect of any endorsement is debatable but Kerry's comes with something that may prove quite valuable - his list. It reportedly contains the e-mail addresses of more than three million supporters whom Obama can now call upon for campaign contributions and organizing help. Obama spoke as he usually does before large banners, with the words, change we can believe in. He noted that it's a theme other candidates have been sounding off late.
(SOUNDBITE OF POLITICAL SPEECH)
OBAMA: There's no message of change - it's been our message since the beginning of this campaign. It was our message when we were down as message when we were up. And it must have caught on because I noticed now everybody's talking about change.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING)
OBAMA: And you know that's a good thing. We want everybody on the change bandwagon.
NAYLOR: Kerry's endorsement of Obama continues on mutually beneficial relationship between the two men. Obama first gained national attention when he delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic Convention, which nominated Kerry. Obama hopes it will be his convention this summer.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, Charleston, South Carolina.
NORRIS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
In Iraq today, U.S. warplanes launched their biggest airstrike in at least a year. B-1 bombers and F-16 jets hit targets on Baghdad's southern outskirts - an area that's long been a haven for al-Qaida fighters. The attack is part of Operation Phantom Phoenix - a major countrywide offensive against al-Qaida that began this week.
NPR's Anne Garrels has this report from Baghdad.
ANNE GARRELS: In quick succession, the Air Force dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs near the contested town of Arab Jabour to clear a path for U.S. and Iraqi ground troops who were to follow. The airstrikes targeted an extensive series of underground bombs, which al-Qaida fighters had recently planted. Before the attack, a drone surveyed the dense palm groves along the Tigris River. An Air Force spokesman reached by phone said the bombing was delayed for 30 minutes until civilians spotted in the area had left. Civilians had been hit here in earlier attacks, causing a backlash.
NORRIS: The general's name is MARK Hertling.]
The movement of masses of troops is hardly phantom despite the operation's name. And delayed by weather on Sunday, the massing of troops have been hard to hide. Hertling acknowledged many militants have fled in advance - tipped off by troop movements or inside information.
GARRELS: I'm sure there's active leaking of communication.
GARRELS: As an indication of infiltration here, the military said today an al- Qaida leader responsible for weapons training, underground bombs and suicide bombings had numerous contacts within the Iraqi security forces to help him before he was recently caught.
Al-Qaida spies within the Iraqi forces are just one problem. General Hertling cited unsecured Iraqi army communications as another risk.
GARRELS: I was at a planning session for this with a group of about 20 Iraqi generals. The number of cell phones that went off in that meeting - I was, like, guys, we got to talk about the operation and you just don't do that in the American Army. But they don't have any secure communications.
GARRELS: Soldiers trudging through villages laced with canals said they were encountering much less fighting then they expected but they remained wary. Soldiers are handing out pamphlets urging residents to form concerned citizens groups to help defend their areas. So far, Hertling says these groups are weak in Diyala because Iraqi forces there are still weak and al-Qaida can intimidate the locals.
GARRELS: On Monday, the citizens of Diyala found five severed heads in their towns with Arabic writing in blood on the forehead that said, join the concerned citizens and you will end up like this.
GARRELS: Nine U.S. soldiers have been killed in the opening days of the operation. Six died in a booby trapped house. House bombs have long been a staple weapon for Sunni fighters who try to lure soldiers inside. General Hertling anticipates this will be a tough fight. And he gave no end date for the current operation, simply suggesting it could go on for at least several weeks.
Anne Garrels, NPR News, Baghdad.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Hollywood is consumed with the writers' strike right now, but even when it's resolved, the television networks will still have their troubles. The audience is shrinking. And the traditional model for making money is breaking down.
And as NPR's Kim Masters reports, it's become very, very expensive to make one of the signature products of a big network - the hourlong primetime drama.
KIM MASTERS: On Sunday night, Fox is taking a big, action-packed roll of the dice, the new show, "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles."
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW "TERMINATOR: THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES")
Unidentified Man #1: Nothing matters anymore, only the boy. The future is ours and it begins now.
MASTERS: It's the familiar "Terminator" concept, mom struggles to save her child from grim, time-traveling cyborgs.
Unidentified Man #2: Twenty-nine Baker(ph), take one.
Unidentified Man #3: Guys, take the ledge (unintelligible) with your flashlights, that would be good. Thank you, guys. Here we go. (Unintelligible).
MASTERS: In a Los Angeles park on a Friday afternoon, 19-year-old Thomas Dekker, who plays young John Connor, waits to shoot a scene. The size of the crew would seem more worthy of a big film than a single television episode. The magnitude of the operation impresses even Dekker who's been acting since he was 5 and has credits ranging from "Seinfeld" to "Heroes."
THOMAS DEKKER: The budget on this show is definitely for everything. It's massive. I mean, it's huge. It's a very expensive show.
MASTERS: All the networks are caught up in pursuit of a costly effects-packed hit. That's because of the success of shows like "Lost" and "Heroes" says James Hibberd, a writer with "TV Week."
JAMES HIBBERD: They keep setting the bar higher for what viewers expect.
MASTERS: Bigger special effects are only part of the equation. There's the skyrocketing price of talent, actors, writers, producers. Marc Graboff is co- chairman of NBC Entertainment. He says it now costs about $4 million to make one episode of an hourlong drama. Sitcoms have gotten more expensive too. And that's transformed primetime. Ten years ago, Graboff says, NBC could pack its schedule with scripted programs.
MARC GRABOFF: Can't do that anymore. No network can do that. I don't care what anybody tells you. You just can't do it anymore.
MASTERS: Because as costs are rising, the audience is shrinking, lured away to the Internet. Hits are more elusive than ever. Already this season, the networks have failed with a number of new big-ticket programs. CBS cancelled "Viva Laughlin" after one airing. ABC has had only modest success with "Pushing Daisies," and NBC struck out with "Bionic Woman." Marc Graboff says something must change.
GRABOFF: We got to keep our programming costs under check or else, we're out of business.
MASTERS: Networks are looking for ways to save, on shooting pilots, for one thing. For many years, each one has made 20 to 30 each season. They keep getting more expensive, and still, most never even get on the air.
GRABOFF: Maybe you - instead of going to pilot, you order six scripts. And you read the show and you go, okay, they have a show here. You go right to series. You save yourselves a lot of money.
MASTERS: Of course, approving a show without ever seeing what it looks like is risky too, but NBC has done it with one upcoming series. "The Philanthropist" is from an established player, Tom Fontana, who produced "Homicide: Life on the Street." Another way to save, of course, is cheaper shows. NBC has ordered a block of programming modeled on shows like the History Channel's "Ice Road Truckers," people doing tough jobs in extreme conditions. That kind of program might not draw a big audience, but Graboff says the price is right.
GRABOFF: We can get shows for under half a million dollars an hour. The bar is much lower for what the ratings need to be. You can get closer to cable ratings.
MASTERS: Still, Graboff says, NBC can't swear off big, pricey dramas entirely.
GRABOFF: They're bigger bets, but you got to take them from time to time. To consider yourself a broadcast network, you still have to do things like that.
MASTERS: Graboff says the network will try to offer just enough of the high- priced stuff to hold on to some brand identity, to distinguish NBC from a cable channel.
GRABOFF: We care deeply about the image of NBC and the brand of NBC such as it is. But we also understand the economic realities are different now than they've ever been.
MASTERS: NBC is contemplating other cost-cutting changes, questioning, for example, whether it has to shell out millions at the upfronts, an annual event in New York during which the networks woo advertisers with lavish parties. It's not clear how far the networks will go in breaking with tradition. What is clear is that resolving the writers' strike doesn't mean the networks can go back to business as usual. NBC's Marc Graboff.
GRABOFF: In a world that's on demand, where people watch what they want, where they want, how they want and when they want, okay, then what is NBC? What is any network?
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW)
MASTERS: And to a network executive, that question is just about as scary as cyborgs from the future.
Kim Masters, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Winter is a season of hibernation for bears and baseball fans. Unlike the former, the latter must make some pretense of wakefulness and engagement in the work-a-day world. But their inner torpor is measured by a countdown. Pitchers and catchers report for spring training in 34 days. For some diehard fans, the weight is killing. And from Farmington Hills, Michigan comes news of a product to cope with all sorts of fatalities among baseball fans.
Clint Mytych is CEO of the Farmington Hills-based company, Eternal Images. And Mr. Mytych, I want you to tell us about your new product.
CLINT MYTYCH: We're a company that offers various brand-name funeral products, caskets and urns. And one of our lines happens to be with Major League Baseball. And we are licensed to design and manufacture caskets and urns for all 30 Major League Baseball teams.
SIEGEL: So if someone who has been a Chicago Cubs fan all his life and is the dearest thing to them, wants to be buried into (unintelligible), he can be buried in a casket that has what on it exactly?
MYTYCH: Well, it would have the MLB batter's logo. It will have the team logo, in this case, the Cubs. The interior fabric, the stitching, the trim, everything would be reflective of the colors for that team. The casket themselves use wood on the lids of the caskets, the same wood that they use to make the wooden baseball bats. So they're very beautiful products.
SIEGEL: I happen to speak of the Cubs because it's a team with a following that I can imagine doing this. But are all the teams available at the same time?
MYTYCH: We have 12 teams available now. The remaining teams will be available by the middle of next year.
SIEGEL: I'm a Washington Nationals fan. Are we available yet with our...
MYTYCH: Not yet.
SIEGEL: No, no.
MYTYCH: Not yet.
SIEGEL: That's a team makes you accustomed to waiting in more ways than one in that case. You're counting here on people approaching what typically regard as the most solemn and grievous moment in our - in a family's life with a rather light-hearted concern about how folks should be remembered.
MYTYCH: Yeah. You know, our slogan here in the office always is, we want to celebrate the life of an individual, not focus on the death. And we do feel that our products, by taking an everyday brand-name that somebody could relate to in their life and integrating it into a funeral product, we feel that a very respectful and honorable way to recognize the life of somebody that they've lost.
SIEGEL: Well, business is good?
MYTYCH: Business is very good. We've been well-received from all our arenas. And we do get e-mails and phone calls from people that used a product and a service. And it's overwhelming with thankfulness. And they're very appreciative of being able to use one of our products in their service.
SIEGEL: Well, of course, the main customer here is not going to contact you to complain?
MYTYCH: No.
SIEGEL: No. They're...
MYTYCH: Yeah, that would've - because they're dead.
SIEGEL: Well, Mr. Mytych, thank you very much for talking with us.
MYTYCH: Appreciate it. Thank you.
SIEGEL: That's Clint Mytych who's CEO of Eternal Image in Farmington Hills, Michigan, which manufactures caskets and funeral urns with Major League Baseball logos on them.
MICHEL NORRIS, Host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
His tone was subdued and fitting for the central bank. Yet, Wall Street was quite excited about comments today from Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke. He signaled that the Fed is very concerned about the health of the economy and is prepared to act.
BEN BERNANKE: In light of recent changes in the outlook and the risk to growth, additional policy easing may well be necessary.
NORRIS: Additional policy easing - the code words for lower interest rates. Just what the stock market wanted to hear.
NPR's John Ydstie has more on Bernanke's remarks.
JOHN YDSTIE: Chairman Bernanke gave his speech at a noontime gathering of housing and financial experts. It was equally anticipated given the recent signs that the economy may be slipping into recession, signs that include poor job growth and a pull back in manufacturing output. Bernanke didn't use the R word in his carefully crafted address, but after the words, he took some questions. And one audience member asked exactly what was on everyone's mind.
Unidentified Man: I'm curious. How do you feel personally? Are you worried about a possible recession this year?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BERNANKE: Let me tell you a story.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
YDSTIE: Bernanke went on to describe working at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of recessions, lamenting how difficult it is to know when they begin and end. But then, he decided to give a more straight- forward response.
BERNANKE: The Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession. We are forecasting slow growth. But we - as I mentioned today, there are downside risks, and therefore it's really important for us to stand ready, as I mentioned, to take substantive action to address those risks and provide some insurance against those negative outcomes.
YDSTIE: Another audience member asked Bernanke about the economic stimulus plans being developed at the White House and in Congress to combat and economic downturn. He said he does look forward to discussing with the plan's authors what they eventually put on the table.
BERNANKE: But for right now, my focus obviously is on monetary policy, which is the immediate tool that we have to try to address the risk that our economy faces.
YDSTIE: Bernanke was also urged by one questioner to clearly state that the Fed's interest rate decisions will not be affected by political pressures as the presidential election reaches a crescendo. Bernanke responded that in his more than four years on the Fed's policy-making board, he had never heard anyone suggest any adjustment in policy should be made because of an upcoming election.
BERNANKE: It's difficult enough to make good policy in the face of a complex economy, complex financial system. We must do the best we can for the economy. Political considerations will play no role. And I assure you as strongly as I can that we will be objective. We will be analytical. And we will do what's right for the economy.
YDSTIE: Much of Bernanke's speech today was a look back at the causes of the subprime lending crisis which is at the root of the economy's current troubles, including adjustable rate mortgages that are forcing homeowners into default as their interest rates ratchet higher. He urged lenders participating in the Bush administration's Hope Now program, which is aimed at helping those stressed homeowners, to be more aggressive. Bernanke said millions more mortgage holders will face higher rates in the next few months and years. And he said lenders need to create systems and staff up more rapidly to handle the flood.
John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Professor Bill Wheaton is an economist at MIT and director of research of the Center for Real Estate there. Welcome back to the program, Bill Wheaton.
BILL WHEATON: Thank you very much, Robert.
SIEGEL: And first, what's the most significant thing that you've heard in the Bernanke speech today?
WHEATON: I think it was probably the speech itself. The Federal Reserve chairman has a history of coming out in front of issues just before we get news that's a little worst than we thought. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the next week we all find out something that in fact the chairman knew yesterday.
SIEGEL: You mean, the fact of the speech is a leading indicator of some bad news?
WHEATON: Exactly. Exactly.
SIEGEL: When he looked ahead at issues facing the housing market, whether it's defaults or housing prices, he wasn't very optimistic. What's your sense of what lies ahead in housing?
WHEATON: I think housing looks just terrible right now. We actually have about half of the residential investment that we did in 2006, that's construction and homebuilding. And I actually think that it's going to fall further, you know, because we think that prices are going to continue to fall, perhaps, all the way through 2010. So housing itself looks really quite bleak. I think the question was on the chairman's mind as whether or not that's going to spill over to the rest of the economy.
SIEGEL: If the stigma of housing, for a moment, if prices really do fall a good deal, many Americans fall into a negative equity situation where they actually owe more on a house than what it can actually fetch in the market.
WHEATON: That's true. And what we're finding now is that a growing number of foreclosures are not the result of people not being able to afford their monthly mortgage payment, for example, but it's because they have negative equity. And they say, why should I continue to pay off a loan that's, you know, worth 20 or 30 percent more than my house is. I'll just turn the house back to the bank and rent for a few years. So it's sort of a voluntary default.
SIEGEL: Are you, at all, hopeful that some of the remedies that have been talked up - whether it's the Bush administration's Hope Now program or trying to get banks to do workouts on loans with people - that this might, in some way, limit the number of foreclosures and keep people in their homes and maybe keep prices from falling still further?
WHEATON: Well, it's certainly true that if you lower the federal funds rate, you do help a certain number of adjustable rate mortgage contracts. But many of those contracts, for example, are actually pegged to liable rates which are not very sensitive to what the U.S. Fed does. So it's - I mean, it certainly won't hurt and it will help a little bit. But there's still a huge number of potential foreclosures looming which really don't auger well for house prices.
SIEGEL: I wanted to ask you about an observation that the Fed chairman made in his speech, which I find interesting. He said that at some level, the magnitude of the reaction, the economic reaction worldwide, to the subprime problems here might be deemed surprising given the small size of the U.S. subprime market relative to world financial markets, which does make a lot of sense. There are only so many mortgages, and there seems to be an awful lot of reaction to the problems with them.
WHEATON: I think that's a view that many economists around the world have. That magnitude of the subprime market, of its loses, looks absolutely tiny by world markets. And what happened is, what macro economists call a financial contagion. And it's really pretty emotional as far as we can tell, which is lenders of other kinds of financial instruments - corporate loans, other kinds of loans, begin to look over their shoulder and say, oh, gee, did we do any of the strange things that the subprime mortgage market did.
And so there's a period of a lot of uncertainty as everybody sort of checks on, looks behind their shoulder to see if, in fact, they did some of the strange things that the subprime market did.
SIEGEL: And you think we're still in that?
WHEATON: We just don't think that they actually did.
SIEGEL: You think we're still in that phase now, everyone trying to figure out what they did?
WHEATON: Yes, yes.
SIEGEL: Really?
WHEATON: I think there are still a lot, of sort, of emotion in other parts of that, yes, of the financial markets.
SIEGEL: Well, Bill Wheaton, thanks a lot for talking with us once again.
WHEATON: My pleasure.
SIEGEL: Professor Bill Wheaton, an economist at MIT and director of the research at MIT Center for Real Estate.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Okay. We know the New Hampshire primary is so over. Candidates have pressed ahead to focus on other contests, in places such as Michigan and South Carolina. However, two days after New Hampshire, pundits, pollsters and the press corps, still looking back, trying to figure out why so many polls were so wrong. Consider this sampling from today's newspapers.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Pundits were the big losers in New Hampshire primary.
NORRIS: Where did pollsters go wrong?
SIEGEL: Polls ain't perfect.
NORRIS: And this from The New York Times op-ed page.
SIEGEL: The failure of the New Hampshire pre-election surveys to mirror the outcome of the democratic race is one of the most significant miscues in modern polling history.
NORRIS: That was the first sentence in op-ed written by Andrew Kohut. He's the president of the Pew Research Center. He's also one of our contributors. And he joins me now in the studio.
Welcome, Andy.
ANDREW KOHUT: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: Now, perhaps with two days now to look at these results, you can tell us what went wrong. Why did so many polls overestimate that wide lead for Senator Obama, underestimate support for Hillary Clinton, yet it seemed to get just about right in the Republican side? What went wrong?
KOHUT: Well, it wasn't general methodology or else the McCain race would not have been called correctly. It didn't have to do with the subtleties of survey methodology because the really rigorous polls, CBS and Gallup, had the same kind of overstatement, and as the polls that have not as much rigor in the way they pursue respondents and interviews. It wasn't, I don't think, a matter of a last-minute trend because only 17 percent of voters said they decided that very day, and Hillary Clinton only had a three percentage point margin over Barack Obama. That could not possibly explain the overstatement of Obama in the pre-election polls.
NORRIS: So we talked about some of the things that it didn't explain, what does explain it?
KOHUT: Well, we're not sure. But one of the things that you can't preclude is race.
NORRIS: The so-called Bradley effect.
KOHUT: Well, the so-called Bradley effect or that some whites are reluctant to vote for black candidates. And there are some reason to suspect that that might be in play, given the character of Hillary Clinton's support. Her support is disproportionately among poor people and less well-educated people. And we know that surveys underrepresent poor and less well-educated people. Statistical adjustments are made to bring the percentage of them up in samples. But we suspect that there are, I suspect that the people who we are not interviewing are different from the people who we are interviewing in that category. And I don't think it's a surprise that the people who are less well- educated and poor have more negative opinions of African-Americans. So that's a possible explanation.
NORRIS: That's interesting, because you suggest that perhaps they're not participating in these polls or these surveys. But in previous cases, this so- called Bradley effect is named for former Los Angeles mayor, Tom Bradley, where the polls show that he had significant support among white voters, and when they actually were in the (unintelligible) to the voting booth, a much smaller number of them actually voted for him. So, same thing with David Dinkins in New York, the same thing with Governor Doug Wilder many, many years ago.
KOHUT: Yeah. Well, you can believe that that's the problem. That respondents are lying to the pollsters in the Dinkins race. I was the victim of this. But from my point of view, it wasn't so much that people were lying, it's that the people we weren't getting had different opinions than the people we were getting.
NORRIS: Since we're talking about a problem or an issue that was specific to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I wonder if there is something that is unique to historical candidates, people might get last-minute jitters or something tantamount to that when they get ready to cast their vote.
KOHUT: You're right. I mean, I think we're a long way for understanding the motivation behind this. We're a long way from really saying that this is what's going on. But we cannot rule it out; we have to consider. The last thing pollsters should say is the people that we don't get are always like the people we do interview because we know that in some cases, they're not. And this may be one of the instances.
NORRIS: Sounds like that's the most important lesson you are taking from this.
KOHUT: Yeah.
NORRIS: Thank you, Andy.
KOHUT: You're welcome.
NORRIS: That was Andrew Kohut. He's the president of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
I'm Robert Siegel. And this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
NORRIS: It can take a lot of effort to make a phone call in the town of Iowa Hill, California. The remote mountain hamlet is between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, and it has no landlines. Its 150 residents, instead, rely on cell phones. And even then, coverage is pretty spotty. But thanks to a state grant and the moxie of citizens, like Cathy Morgan, that's going to change as early as this spring. Cathy Morgan joins me now by cell phone.
Hello, Cathy.
NORRIS: Hi.
NORRIS: Why are there no landlines there in Iowa Hill, and why have you gone so long without landlines?
NORRIS: Well, we are so remote. The road coming up is a one-lane road up the hill and it's like an 18 percent grade. And then we had Verizon, but they really didn't want to do it because there wasn't enough people to make it worthwhile.
NORRIS: And all this time, what did you have to do if you needed to make a phone call?
NORRIS: Actually, when I first moved here in '85, we had an eight-party line, but we had to maintain it. And if it would rain or snow, we still didn't have phones, so we used CB radios.
NORRIS: That works if the other person you're trying to reach has a CB radio.
NORRIS: Well, yeah. We couldn't call out to doctors or anything like that.
NORRIS: Now, I imagine that things started to change in the last decade with cell phones.
NORRIS: Cell phones, except that most of the people can't get out from their homes. They have to go two or three miles. And they have places on the road they call phone booths because it's now a place they can get out on them.
NORRIS: So it's not actually a phone booth, but it's a place that everybody knows is a hotspot.
NORRIS: No, it's not actually a phone booth. They're amongst the trees, standing in the middle of the road.
NORRIS: So, my goodness, what was it like when you were trying to figure out where the hotspots were? If you found one, you probably had to mark it somehow.
NORRIS: I found one, but mine is two miles away from my house.
NORRIS: You mentioned something - and pardon me for asking you this - that was difficult to call doctors. I understand that that was actually a very difficult situation for you when a family member got sick.
NORRIS: He was sick for a long time. But he got a blood clot and I couldn't get out to 911. And when I finally got 911, they put me on hold. And I finally went out the driveway and called the fire chief. And by the time she got here, my husband was gone.
NORRIS: Did that motivate you to push even harder to get some sort of service up there?
NORRIS: Yeah. And the fact - we've had several incidents up here. I remember, we've had a guy that cut his fingers off, we couldn't get through to help. If you get hurt up here, you shoot your gun three times and hope somebody comes.
NORRIS: Really, that's the protocol?
NORRIS: Yeah.
NORRIS: So, Mrs. Morgan, when you finally get that phone service some time in the spring, who do you think you're going to make your first phone call to?
NORRIS: Probably my kids.
NORRIS: Where are they?
NORRIS: They're in Arizona, yeah.
NORRIS: So how do you keep up with them now?
NORRIS: I go down three miles down the road and call them.
NORRIS: Ah, okay. I thought you guys maybe write a lot of letters.
NORRIS: No. We only get mail delivery three times a week up here.
NORRIS: Well, congratulations, Cathy Morgan. Thanks so much for talking to us.
NORRIS: Okay. Thank you.
NORRIS: And that was Cathy Morgan of Iowa Hill, California, talking about the town's new phone service set to begin this spring.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
While Iowa Hill is finally getting connected, the FBI is getting cut off. According to a Justice Department audit out today, a handful of field offices racked up tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid phone bills. And as a result, a few companies actually stopped FBI wiretaps. And at least one of those taps was being used in a top secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation. It's not clear how much evidence was lost before the FBI paid its tab.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Now, a story about a movie that's likely not coming to a theater near you unless you live in New England. This is the story of filmmaker Jay Craven, his car, and money spent on film stock, gasoline and tires. It's also a story about regional cinema and one filmmaker's belief that Hollywood does not and should not have a monopoly on storytelling.
Jon Kalish reports.
JON KALISH: On a weekday afternoon, director Jay Craven pilots his Mini Cooper into the New Hampshire seacoast town of Portsmouth. He's done a lot of driving over the past year.
NORRIS: Last week, I was in Bucksport, Maine for two evening showings and a matinee. And then I was in Rockland, Maine, and then Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.
KALISH: Craven's tiny car is packed with a 35-millimeter print and DVDs of his film, along with a bunch of projection gear. Speaker stands and a screen are strapped to the car roof with bungee chords.
NORRIS: And tomorrow night, we're in Damariscotta, Maine, and on Thursday, in Jamestown, Rhode Island.
KALISH: All 130 feet in the Portsmouth Public Library's community room are occupied for a screening of Craven's most recent feature, "Disappearances." More than a year after Craven started showing it, he's still drawing crowds to his story of a Vermont farmer's ill-fated attempt at whisky smuggling during the Great Depression.
while sneaking a load of Canadian whiskey into Vermont. The farmer is accompanied by his teenage son, Wild Bill, who is actually not all that wild.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "DISAPPEARANCES")
NORRIS: (As Quebec Bill) The Mounties are gonna be all over us before we know it.
NORRIS: (As Wild Bill Bonhomme) I hope so.
NORRIS: (As Quebec Bill) What?
NORRIS: (As Wild Bill Bonhomme) If they get up to us, we're giving up on the spot. And you're going to a doctor, no stops. You have to promise.
NORRIS: (As Quebec Bill) As long as you promise to bust me out of jail.
KALISH: Like many of the characters in his films and quite a few of his neighbors in the part of Vermont that is affectionately known as the Northeast Kingdom, Jay Craven is something of a maverick. Rather than leave the promotion and distribution of his films to others, he does it mostly by himself with the help of a lot of volunteers. Craven has personally introduced more than 150 small screenings around New England.
NORRIS: The idea of regional cinema is very important to us because we believe that Hollywood does not have a monopoly on all the stories that are worth telling, and that this is a cultural enterprise more than it is a commercial enterprise, which is not to say that we aren't trying to get every nickel we can.
KALISH: Craven made "Disappearances" for less than $2 million. A quarter of that came from small contributions. Craven raised another $1 million from investors who, he says, haven't seen any return on their money yet. Over the years, Craven has gotten respected actors to work for scale in his views.
William Sanderson is best known for his role as the hotel manager in the HBO series, "Deadwood." Sanderson plays one of their Vermonters on a whisky- smuggling run in "Disappearances." He was a bit surprised during the shoot that Craven was asking his stars, including actress Genevieve Bujold, to go out to dinner with people who weren't part of the crew.
NORRIS: I keep getting these invitations to dinner. And a nice person. But I went to dinner a few times, and I found out later they're potential investors in the film.
KALISH: Sanderson's co-star, Kris Kristofferson, performed two benefit concerts during the shoot that raised $70,000. Luis Guzman also worked for scale on "Disappearances." Guzman is a character actor who's played a gangster in "Carlito's Way" and a DEA agent in "Traffic." He's a neighbor of Craven's in Vermont.
NORRIS: I'm proud to be a part of that because here's a guy going around, and he's showing this film to everybody. And you know, he's doing the right thing with it, taking it to the people.
KALISH: In 1993, actor Michael J. Fox worked for free in Craven's first feature, "Where The Rivers Flow North." Fox also contributed $10,000 towards the production. That film told the story of a Vermont logger and his Native American companion as they wait for trucks to haul away trees they hope will bring in some money.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "WHERE THE RIVERS FLOW NORTH")
NORRIS: (As Bangor) Where them trucks?
NORRIS: (As Noel Lord) They'll be here anytime.
NORRIS: (As Bangor) Winter come tender(ph) on the corner(ph), old man. No winter woodpile, no hemp(ph) on cellar, hardly any hemp in the attic. No tea and sugar. We're running out of tobacco. Maybe you take that 5,000 now.
NORRIS: "Where The Rivers Flow North," we took to 212 cities and towns across the country and created a dynamic where it could sell videotapes to video stores back in those days, which paid pretty well. And when we didn't get a TV deal that we liked, we decided to launch a grassroots Oscar campaign for Tantoo Cardinal, the female lead in the film, and as a result, got attention in Los Angeles, and finally got a good television deal from The Disney Channel, and the Sundance Channel, and Star and places like that.
KALISH: Craven has also tried his hand at television. The idea for a sitcom came from an audience member at one of his film screenings. "Windy Acres" is about a New York City businesswoman who moves to Vermont and falls in love with a struggling farmer. Craven shot the series for Vermont Public Television with a crew made up in large part of students at Marlboro College where Craven teaches. The actors are professionals. In this scene, the businesswoman questions her teenage daughter's taste in men, specifically an auto mechanic named Turkey Tatro.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHOW "WINDY ACRES")
U: He's on parole. And Laura says he ate his wife.
U: Does he look like a cannibal to you? A rhetorical question.
U: My rhetorical answer? Yes.
KALISH: Craven wanted to do a second season of the "Windy Acres" series but couldn't raise enough money. But he is committed to making and showing feature films.
NORRIS: We do the one thing we know how to do, which is to put our equipment at the back of the car, and go to town halls, and go to alternate venues, and go to movie theaters, and continue to dig deeper roots into the region. We may not have what are considered to be commercial demographics, but we do have audience, and we know where that audience is. And as long as we keep going out onto the road, we connect with that audience.
KALISH: Craven is still on the road showing his films. But his next movie could very well be set outside the Green Mountain State. He's currently developing a film about a roadhouse stickup that takes place below the Mason-Dixon Line.
For NPR News, I'm Jon Kalish.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Tinseltown is mourning one of its great showmen. Johnny Grant, the honorary of mayor of Hollywood, died Wednesday. He was 84. Grant is perhaps best known for hosting star dedications on Hollywood's Walk of Fame as well as hosting the town's annual Christmas parade.
JOHNNY GRANT: You're going to be an enthusiastic crowd? Yeah, okay, all right. Save it, save it, save it.
NORRIS: Johnny Grant got his big break in New York, hosting a game show called "Stop the Clock." But he always had his heart set on the other coast.
GRANT: In class, I would - should have been thinking about my studies, but I was really dreaming about coming to Hollywood and being a part of it.
NORRIS: And he did just that, hosting a string of popular L.A.-based programs as well as bit parts in "White Christmas" and "The Lucy Show." In later years, Grant emceed thousands of events, most of them in his beloved Hollywood, from parades to telethons, charity fundraisers to celebrity roof-raisers(ph). Tinseltown's elder statesman was usually there among the stars, enjoying the view.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "TOP HAT, WHITE TIE AND TAILS")
TONY BENNETT: (Singing) For I'll be there, putting down the top hat, mussing up my white tie, dancing in my tails.
SIEGEL: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Surely, you've heard that shaving makes your hair grow back faster and coarser, and that we only use about 10 percent of our brains. There is a lot of homegrown medical wisdom out there, and it's tough to separate some of the myths from the real science.
A family physician and former Assistant Surgeon General Douglas Kamerow is here to debunk some of those common beliefs.
DOUGLAS KAMEROW: I used to work for the medical journal, BMJ, which is published in London. It was formally called the British Medical Journal. One of the things I liked best about the BMJ is its humor and irreverent style.
A great example of this is a recent article by two Indiana University doctors, Rachel Vreeman and Aaron Carroll. They critically examined some strongly-held medical beliefs that you may have heard from your mother or even from your doctor. They're not quite true.
For example, reading in dim light ruins your eyesight. If you spend your childhood reading with a flashlight under the covers, you can rest assured. Although poor lighting can cause glinting and dry eyes temporarily, there's no evidence that any permanent damage is done. When you think about it, lighting has only improved since the days when everyone read by candlelight, and vision hasn't gotten any better. In fact, near-sightedness is more common these days with better lighting.
Or how about the old saw that we only use 10 percent of our brains? This one, apparently, has been around since the turn of the last century, and it's been closely attributed to Albert Einstein. Modern medical imaging, however, shows that we use much more than 10 percent of our brains. Essentially, no areas of the brain are completely inactive, and studies of people with brain injuries have found that damage to virtually any part of the brain is associated with specific and lasting negative effects.
Okay, well, here's one that everyone knows is true. Shaving causes hair to grow back faster or coarser. If you're a woman, I guarantee someone has told you this at least once. For this one, we have strong evidence that it's a myth. Clinical trials have proven that shaving has no effect on the rate of hair growth or on the thickness of the hair that grows back. What unshaven hair does have is a finer taper at the end that may make it look less coarse. And newly grown hair looks darker because the sun hasn't had a chance to bleach it.
Speaking of hair, have you ever been told that hair and fingernails continue to grow even after someone dies? What's going on here, it turns out, is that post- mortem drawing of the skin can cost it to retract around the hair and nails, making it look like they're growing. But there's no way that the hair and nails actually continue to grow without the ongoing delivery of nutrients that a beating heart delivers.
Finally, how many diet articles and books have you read that advocate drinking at least eight glasses of water a day? No one knows exactly where this one came from, but it might be from a leading nutritionist in 1970s. It turns out that there's no such requirement. Thirst is the best guide for how much you need to drink. An drinking liquids in excessive amounts can actually be dangerous as we see in the occasional marathon runner who over drinks, gets water intoxication, and dies.
Bottom line, don't believe everything your mother or maybe even your doctor tells you.
SIEGEL: That's family physician Douglas Kamerow, a former assistant surgeon general and he's a health service researcher and columnist. He lives in Maryland. A link to the full BMJ article on medical myths is available at the Web at npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Just as Pakistan is trying to bring back order to the streets after Benazir Bhutto's assassination, violence has erupted again. At least 24 people were killed today by a suicide bomber in the city of Lahore. Most of the dead were policemen. The attacks are adding to the instability and unease in the country at a critical time, ahead of parliamentary elections next month.
NPR's South Asia correspondent, Philip Reeves, reports.
PHILIP REEVES: It happened in the heart of the city, outside the high court. A group of policemen was at the courthouse gate, deployed there ahead of a lawyers' demonstration. A suicide bomber ran up and detonated, killing and wounding scores of people.
Most of Pakistan's big cities have become all too familiar with bombings and bloodshed, but its cultural capital, Lahore, has mostly escaped the violence that's blighted Pakistan recently. Some 20 suicide bombings in three months, generally targeting the police, the military, and the intelligence services.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE CHANTING)
REEVES: Today's attack happened as Pakistan's beginning to return to life after the trauma of Benazir Bhutto's assassination. Political parties are mobilizing again, ahead of the parliamentary elections now postponed to the 18th of February. They're doing so amid a mood of profound distress and also fear, reinforced by today's events.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE TALKING)
REEVES: Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan Peoples Party is already alleging election skullduggery. This week, the party summoned the media to complain.
Unidentified Man: We are collecting (speaking in foreign language).
REEVES: A party spokesman alleged the authorities had arrested a large number of its party activists in Sindh province, Bhutto's stronghold. Party workers have been picked up on charges linked to the rioting there that erupted after Bhutto's death, causing many millions of dollars worth of damage. But the spokesman said the real reason was to stop the party workers campaigning in the elections.
Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, says he's taking the country towards democracy. He denies the elections will be rigged. Safeguards are in place, he says.
PERVEZ MUSHARRAF: The system, inherently, is fair. There were a few bugs which we'll remove to ensure that elections will be fair and transparent - more fair, more transparent.
REEVES: Many Pakistanis are unconvinced. And they question how much power Musharraf is willing to give away.
BABAR SATTAR: If the elections take place, they're free and fair, and there is a two-thirds majority in the parliament which can remove the general, then that's real transfer and a real transition to democracy in my opinion.
REEVES: That's Babar Sattar, a lawyer and political commentator. He says the real transition to democracy he's talking about is not a foregone conclusion. Bhutto's party is the largest and best organized party. It's expected to get the biggest vote, buoyed by sympathy for Bhutto. But to change the constitution, the party and its allies need to get a two-thirds majority in Pakistan's lower house of parliament, the national assembly. Only then would it stand a chance of removing some of Musharraf's key powers, including the right to appoint the military chiefs and to sack the prime minister and dissolve the parliament. Even then, any changes would have to go through Pakistan's senate. But if there's no two-thirds majority, all bets are off.
SATTAR: If it's a hung parliament, then we are back to the situation where there'll continue to be disputes between the parliament, the executive and the judiciary.
REEVES: In that situation, says Babar Sattar, the judiciary would be likely to back Musharraf. After all, the main reason Musharraf imposed the recent state of emergency in Pakistan was to purge the supreme court of judges who challenged him and to replace them with more compliant judges.
But some of Musharraf's critics, like General Hamid Gul, a former head of Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, says Musharraf has no intention of ever sharing the levers of power.
HAMID GUL: Not with Pervez Musharraf. I know him. He has been my student. He has been my subordinate. I know it is not in his genes. He will never accept any kind of a partnership with anyone in any political force.
REEVES: Philip Reeves, NPR News, Islamabad.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Thursday is the day we read from your e-mail.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And politics dominated the news this week. So we'll start with some comments on our political coverage.
SIEGEL: I expected better review, writes John Kramer(ph) of Portland, Oregon, I was quite disappointed in your coverage of the New Hampshire primary. From listening to it, one would think that Hillary Clinton had a landslide victory despite Barack Obama garnering as many delegates as she did. It just shows that what the media reports is as important as what actually happens.
NORRIS: Nora Burnham(ph) of Butte City, California was unhappy with some of our analysis of the New Hampshire primary. She writes, I found to believe that Obama's votes were due solely to upscale voters - Whole Foods kind of people, and that Hillary's vote were casted by less-educated, Wal-Mart going folks. I am college educated, and I have intended to vote for Hillary since she announced her candidacy because she is a very intelligent woman who's going to make history. Oh, and by the way, I also shop at Whole Foods.
SIEGEL: Stephen Hughes(ph) of North Bend, Washington didn't like our stories about Senator Clinton's emotional moment in a New Hampshire cafe. Our country faces numerous critical issues, he writes, we need to know the details of each candidate's plan to deal with our problems. Instead of focusing on the issues, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED chose to discuss the impact of Mrs. Clinton's emotional response to a voter's question. Have you lowered your journalistic standards to report only sensationalist and sexist aspects of this important contest?
NORRIS: Moving on to praise for yesterday's story about a young man who has chosen an unusual career path. He works as a tailor's apprentice.
JOE GENUARDI: It takes a long time to learn, and the more I learn, the more I know it takes longer. And I'm okay with that, because I love what I'm doing.
SIEGEL: Well, Nathan Gold(ph) of Ardmore, Pennsylvania loved Frank Langfitt's story. Apprenticing to one of the old trades has been a dream of mine for some time. Though tailoring is too delicate a craft for me, I was going to be a blacksmith. But just as willing apprentices have grown scarce, so too have willing masters. The young man in your story is very lucky to have tracked down such a kind and talented teacher.
NORRIS: We attracted the attention of a few proud Hoosiers when we got the name of a University wrong. It is Indiana University, not the University of Indiana. I'm so sorry about that.
SIEGEL: And finally, kind words for the words and music of Merle Haggard.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "WHAT HAPPENED?")
MERLE HAGGARD: (Singing) What happened, does anybody know? What happened, where did America go?
SIEGEL: Our colleague Melissa Block's conversation with Haggard drew praise from many of you, including Ally Murphy(ph) of Sarasota, Florida. And she writes, listening to Mr. Haggard made me want to pick up my cell phone and quickly call my husband. Haggard's words, thought processes and idealism made me want to share the moment. It doesn't matter if you're a punker like my husband or an '80s child like me. We can all appreciate sincerity, honesty, humility and thoughtfulness. My personal thanks to Mr. Haggard for expressing so eloquently, yet so simply the ideas of so many of us.
NORRIS: We want to hear what you have to say. So go to our Web site, npr.org, and click on Contact Us at the top of the page.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "WHAT HAPPENED?")
HAGGARD: (Singing) What happened, does anybody know? What happened, where did American go? Everything Wal-Mart all the time, no more mom and pop five and dimes. What happened, where did America go?
SIEGEL: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
The first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, has died. He was 88.
In 1953, Hillary - a beekeeper by trade - and his team reached the mountain's south peak. But, exhausted by the altitude, most could go no farther. Only Hillary and a native Nepalese climber, Tenzing Norgay, went on. Hillary described the climb just a few years ago in an interview with NPR.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)
EDMUND HILLARY: It wasn't we actually - on the summit ridge, there's a step which is called nowadays as Hillary Step, which I climbed just before the summit. It wasn't until I got to the top of that, that I was absolutely convinced that Tenzing and I are going to get to the top.
SIEGEL: And they did.
For more on the life of Sir Edmund Hillary, we've called David Breashears, a fellow climber and a friend of Hillary's.
Tell us, what made him tick? He was a remarkable man.
DAVID BREASHEARS: You know, climbing Everest was what got him all the initial fame and kudos and praise. Of course, he stood there alongside of Tenzing Norgay on May 29th 1953. But his true legacy and what he should be remembered for is his generosity and his tireless, endless work towards uplifting and improving the lives of the Sherpas who he came to know, by not only watching through their villages on the way to Everest in 1953, but of course, climbing alongside a Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay.
SIEGEL: And that was the cause that occupied him for much of the last 50 years of his life?
BREASHEARS: Yeah, really, yeah. He founded the Himalayan Trust in the early 1960s, that's eight or nine years after climbing Everest. And he was there with his hammer in his hand, the humble beekeeper from New Zealand, building schools where there were no schools in the Sherpa villages, 20 miles, 15 miles from Everest; bridges over rivers, air strips, the list goes on and on, reforestation projects. It was his life and he lived a great life. And he's just such a gift to all of us who knew him.
SIEGEL: When you think back on his climb of Everest back in 1953 and compare it with people do nowadays in terms of technical assistance he had in the climb, is it all comparable or was it a totally different era for climbing?
BREASHEARS: Well, it was completely different. I know the route he's climbed. I've climbed it five times myself, the southern route up Everest, up the southeast ridge, and today, well, when I climbed it, there was no fear of the unknown. We knew what was around the corner. We knew somebody else had been there. But when you stand on the south summit at 28,750 feet, and you look across at this knife-edge ridge with an 8,000 foot drop on one side and a 7,000 drop on the other, and it's soaring up into the heavens and there's a rock step barring the way to top. To think that they - he and Tenzing had the courage to set out and finish the ascent, it's just something I can't imagine.
And we called that rock step, the bars the way to the summit, the Hillary Step, and he was the first to climb it. They had heavier oxygen equipment. They had different oxygen apparatus but what they weren't lacking in was skill, determination, experience and an absolute passion for what they were doing.
SIGEL: Well, David Breashears, thank you very much for talking with us.
BREASHEARS: It's a pleasure, Robert, to speak to you even though it's a bit of a sad day for me.
SIEGEL: David Breashears who's a climber, filmmaker and friend of Sir Edmund Hillary who died today at the age of 88.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The tenuous relationship between the U.S. and Iran has been even more strained this week. At issue are conflicting accounts about an incident that occurred Sunday morning between U.S. and Iranian naval vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. and Iran have both released videos of that incident, and each blames the other.
NPR's Tom Bowman reports from the Pentagon.
TOM BOWMAN: Last Sunday's incident first set off a war of words. Now, we have a war of competing images. Both sides agree only on these facts: U.S. Navy ships were passing through the Persian Gulf when they were approached by Iranian fast boats.
Let's begin with the U.S. Navy's version of events. It released a video on Monday. It showed the Iranian boats darting around the warships. An American sailor is pictured on the bridge, radios crack a warning to the Iranian boats. A warning whistle is blown. Then the Americans pick up this ominous message.
Unidentified Man #1: I am coming to you. You will explode after minutes.
BOWMAN: I am coming to you. You will explode after minutes. The Pentagon called the Iranian behavior provocative. But U.S. officials concede they can't pinpoint the source of that radio message. They said it could have come from the Iranian fast boats, another ship, even a shore station.
Admiral MIKE MULLEN (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff): I can't shed any light as far as the radio transmission is concerned.
BOWMAN: That's Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said today the incident may signal a new, more aggressive strategy by Tehran in the Gulf.
Secretary ROBERT GATES (U.S. Defense Department): What concerned us was, first, the fact that there were five of these boats.
BOWMAN: That's Defense Secretary Robert Gates speaking yesterday.
Sec. GATES: And the second that they came as close as they did to our ships and behaved in what appeared to be a pretty aggressive manner.
BOWMAN: Now, let's consider the Iranian version of events. The foreign ministry in Monday said the incident was routine, normal. On Wednesday, they called the American video a fabrication. Yesterday, they released their own video on Iran's English-language satellite channel, Press TV.
Unidentified Man #2: (Speaks in foreign language).
BOWMAN: The Iranian picture show no hint of confrontation. The video shows an Iranian Revolutionary Guard sailor standing on a small boat, radioing the Americans and receiving a standard reply.
Unidentified Man #3: This is coalition warship 73. I am operating in international waters.
BOWMAN: Responding to the Iranian charges of fabrication, Defense Secretary Gates dismissed them, saying, who you are going to believe? U.S.-Iranian tensions in the Gulf go back years.
Harlan Ullman is a retired Navy officer who commanded a ship in the Gulf during the 1980s. He believes the American tape is real, but he's also not ready to say the Iranian tape is fabricated.
Mr. HARLAN ULLMAN (Retired U.S. Naval Commander): Until we have a chance to analyze the Iranian one I think that we should withhold our judgment.
BOWMAN: And Ullman says there are ways to check the authenticity of the Iranian tape, such as matching Iranian radio transmissions with those recorded by the Americans. Ullman agrees with American officials that whatever happened in the Strait of Hormuz, it's a serious event, one that both sides should try to avoid. When similar confrontations occurred with the Soviet navy during the Cold War, Ullman says both sides signed an agreement to prevent incidents at sea.
Mr. ULLMAN: So that inadvertently, there would not be a mistake or an error that could get out of hand.
BOWMAN: Ullman says the U.S. and Iran should work out a similar agreement. That might help. Today, the Navy announced that one of its ships fired warning shots last month at a small Iranian boat in the Strait of Hormuz.
Tom Bowman. NPR News, the Pentagon.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
There's growing interest in having local and state police help enforce federal immigration law. Nearly three dozen agencies have joined a popular program at the Department of Homeland Security that trains officers and delegates these powers. Supporters say it makes sense to assist federal immigration agents who are understaffed and overwhelmed. But critics worry that programs like these undermine decades of community policing efforts in immigrant neighborhoods.
NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports.
JENNIFER LUDDEN: In the past decade, thousands of immigrants have settled among the rolling hills of Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, finding jobs in poultry processing, construction, and the service industry. When local police would find they'd arrested an illegal immigrant for some crime, they'd call Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
But Rockingham County Sheriff Don Farley says, often as not, federal agents were so busy that the immigrant would make bail and disappear before they ever showed up, and there was nothing Farley could do.
Mr. DON FARLEY (Sheriff, Rockingham County): When I have to respond to my community about this problem, I don't want to say, well, yes, I have a badge, but it doesn't work on immigration problems. It only works on speeding and cats in trees, and that type of thing. I didn't feel good at all about that.
LUDDEN: So, last year, Farley signed on to a Homeland Security program that lets his officers hold people on immigration charges. He sent five deputies for a five-week training course in immigration law. And these days, the routine at the county jail in Harrisonburg is different.
Unidentified Woman: And we'll be back here. We have to put this on you.
LUDDEN: Everyone booked here is asked their immigration status. Officers can take fingerprints and check them against the federal immigration agency database. And if there's no hit there, they can interview the suspect and investigate his legal status. If someone's deemed to be illegally present, the sheriff's office can then detain him and start the paperwork for the deportation process.
Sheriff Farley says since August, his force has detained 69 illegal immigrants.
Mr. FARLEY: We're not going out and pulling people off the street because they have a foreign look about them.
LUDDEN: Farley says when the program was announced here, he took heat from those who feared he was going to conduct random raids. Now that the program's in place, he has taken heat from folks upset because he's not conducting random raids. Farley says the bottom line is he only has so much detention space.
Mr. FARLEY: Someone that comes here and they are trying to provide for their families, they're here illegally, and I don't feel that's a harm to us. If someone wants to build me a 10,000-bed jail, then maybe I'll start looking at all the illegals, but that's not going to happen.
LUDDEN: So in addition to checks at the jail, Farley's officers focus on immigrants suspected of dealing in drugs and gangs.
Deputy Sheriff Corrie Bauserman drives across town, up a steep hill to a trailer park of mainly Hispanic families. He points to one beat-up trailer sprayed with layers of gang graffiti.
Mr. CORRIE BAUSERMAN (Deputy Sheriff, Rockingham County): Here we had MS-13, and then Sur 13 came in and tagged over top of it. And then Los Hombres…
LUDDEN: In theory, Bauserman has authority to check the legal status of anyone even without any criminal charges. In practice, so far, he's done it once. He says a gang member he knew to be here illegally kept being implicated in crime after crime, but the victims were afraid to press charges.
Mr. BAUSERMAN: I said this guy is a problem. He's associated with recruiting 12-year-old children and 10-year-old children. He's setting up the meetings; he's doing this; he's doing that. We need to get rid of him.
LUDDEN: Bauserman does not think his new powers make people avoid him. In fact, he says Latinos here are eager to help because they're often the victims of the crimes he targets. Not everyone's convinced.
Mr. RICK CASTANEDA (Chairman, Harrisonburg Area Hispanic Services Council): To me, it's just a matter of fear-mongering. It's just creating more fear.
LUDDEN: Rick Castaneda heads the Harrisonburg Area Hispanic Services Council. He says immigrants, even legal ones whose family members are undocumented, are more afraid to report crimes now.
Mr. CASTANEDA: And I've had situations where people have called me and said, you know, I had a thousand dollars stolen from me. I have an idea who did it, but I'm afraid to go to the police.
LUDDEN: Harrisonburg lawyer Aaron Cook says he appreciates that Sheriff Farley and his deputies exercise discretion. But he says other local police forces who also use the county jail may not. And since everyone at the jail is checked, Cook says long-time residents with jobs and families can be deported after minor infractions.
Mr. AARON COOK (Lawyer): Driving under the influence or petty theft. I've seen folks charged with reckless driving or driving without a license.
LUDDEN: Cook had one client he says was wrongly arrested when she was a passenger in a car accident. He got that charge thrown out, but because the woman's legal status had been checked at the jail, she was deported anyway.
Even within the law enforcement community, delegating immigration powers is controversial.
Mr. HUBERT WILLIAMS (President, Police Foundation): If it's an issue of resources, who has the resources, the cities or the Federal government? Give us a break here.
LUDDEN: Hubert Williams heads the Police Foundation, a research and training organization. He worries about the burden local agencies bear taking on this new responsibility, and he worries about racial profiling. Williams says studies show immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born, so he believes all this isn't so much about public safety as about politics.
Mr. WILLIAMS: Right now, it's being driven by impulse and emotions and fear of political backlash over the immigration problem. Over time, eyes will be opened, and people will give a lot more thought to the impact of this kind of decision.
LUDDEN: Maybe. But right now, the trend toward local enforcement is so strong, the Federal immigration agency, ICE, has just set up a new office to coordinate it. It's headed by a former North Carolina sheriff, Jim Pendergraph.
Mr. JIM PENDERGRAPH (Former North Carolina Sheriff): I just got off the phone a few minutes ago with a representative of the Florida Sheriffs Association. I get calls every day from another state.
LUDDEN: Pendergraph says there are a host of ways ICE is helping communities crack down on undocumented immigrant criminals, and new programs are in the works.
Mr. PENDERGRAPH: And I don't see it reversing at all. There's been too many people that have said that immigration is a federal responsibility. Immigration is all of our responsibility, and it can't - it can never be successful without partnerships with the state and locals.
LUDDEN: Pendergraph says more than 90 local agencies are on a waiting list to be trained in immigration enforcement.
Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
We're awfully early with this next one. In about 20 million years or so, astronomers are predicting that a giant cloud of gas will collide with our home galaxy, the Milky Way.
NPR's Richard Harris has more on this galactic surprise.
RICHARD HARRIS: In 1963, a young astronomer in Holland named Gail Smith discovered a giant cloud of hydrogen gas lurking just beyond our galaxy. She went on to do other things and the Smith Cloud was more or less forgotten. But recently, Jay Lockman at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia, decided to take a look. He got interested, obsessively interested. Using a radio telescope, he mapped 40,000 locations in the Smith Cloud in order to cobble together a picture of what the Smith Cloud looks like.
Dr. JAY LOCKMAN (Research Scientist, National Radio Astronomy Observatory ): It really looks like a comet. It has a very condensed head and these trails of gas billowing out behind it.
HARRIS: Lockman unveiled the image today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, Texas.
Dr. LOCKMAN: Just one look at the image and you know it's falling into the Milky Way, there's no question about which way it's going.
HARRIS: And it's huge. If you could actually see that cloud of gas in the sky, it would appear to be much bigger than the moon. When it gets here, blam. Lockman says it's going to collide with other gas clouds that, at the moment, are sitting rather peacefully out in the nether reaches of the galaxy.
Dr. LOCKMAN: And new stars might pop out of them kind of like raindrops condensing out of a cloud. So the result could actually be quite spectacular.
HARRIS: But don't bother to set up your lawn chair just yet. We still have a little bit of a wait for it to collide with the Milky Way. Hard to say if it will slow down from its current speed.
Dr. LOCKMAN: But if it's in freefall, then in about 20 million years or so, it's going to hit. It's very close right now as distances go.
HARRIS: But if you're worried about your progeny, 20 millions years hence, relax. Looks like the Smith Cloud is not going to hit our particular arm of the Milky Way.
Dr. LOCKMAN: It's going to be about a quarter of the way around the Milky Way from the sun when it hits.
HARRIS: So you're saying we don't have to send Bruce Willis out there to stop it or anything?
Dr. LOCKMAN: No, no, no. But I tell you, somewhere out, around a quarter of the way around the galaxy, there is some astronomer who is probably just now looking up and saying, oh, wow, when is this thing coming toward us?
HARRIS: There is a more local astronomer also interested in this news. And that would be Gail Smith, now Gail Beeger-Smith, who discovered the cloud decades ago. She settled in Holland and is no longer an astronomer, but she's thrilled to hear that her cloud turned out to be exciting.
Ms. GAIL BEEGER-SMITH (Retired Astronomer; Discoverer, Smith Cloud): Well, if it's going to cause a catastrophe, I don't know, maybe I shouldn't be so happy about it. But of course it is exciting.
HARRIS: Yeah. In 20 million years, who's going to blame you.
Ms. BEEGER-SMITH: Yeah, well, I guess so.
HARRIS: Richard Harris, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
It's been more than two weeks since the streets of Kenya erupted with violence, following a highly contested presidential election. Charges of vote-rigging and election fraud led to riots and hundreds of deaths. The turmoil has disrupted daily life for thousands there with businesses shut down and food supplies interrupted.
Three members of an international rock band are among those affected. Now, the group's American members and their fans are trying to help.
Joel Rose has that story.
JOEL ROSE: When violence erupted in Kenya, much of the country ground to a halt. Singer Onyango Jagwasi and his band were supposed to play a gig in Kisumu, the country's third-largest city.
Mr. ALEX MINOFF (Vocalist/Guitarist, Extra Golden): They had gone there thinking they would play elections celebrations. They didn't.
ROSE: That's Alex Minoff. Jagwasi's friend and sometime musical collaborator who lives in Washington, D.C. Minoff says Jagwasi, who is from the same Luo tribe as opposition candidate Raila Odinga, was stranded 150 dangerous miles from his family in Nairobi. Finally, after 10 days, Jagwasi says he was able to get his family on the phone.
Mr. ONYANGO JAGWASI (Vocalist, Extra Golden): When I got them, all of them are crying, telling me, oh, dad, where are you? Can you come back? It was really painful time. It forced me to come back to Nairobi whether it was bad or good.
ROSE: Jagwasi made the trip back to Nairobi on Sunday, only to find that his wife and children had fled to safety elsewhere, and his house had been looted.
Mr. JAGWASI: What I found was a chair there without cushions. A bed there without mattress and bed sheets. They took my TV, radio, clothes. Even what I found there I could not carry to anywhere because they break the bed, break the chairs. They destroyed everything. So now I have to start a new life.
ROSE: His old life had been as a musician, entertaining listeners and dancers in restaurants and clubs, playing a style of music called Benga that's popular with many Kenyan bands.
(Soundbite of music)
ROSE: Five years ago, American Ian Eagleson went to Kenya to research his dissertation on Benga. That's how he met Onyango's older brother, Otieno.
Mr. IAN EAGLESON (Guitarist/Vocalist, Extra Golden): When I got there for the year to do that research, he was my main collaborator and contact to meet other musicians. And I spent a lot of time with him. So we got to know each other's ways of playing music.
ROSE: And they decided to make a record together. Eagleson's partner in a band called Golden flew to Nairobi for the session. Guitarist Alex Minoff says there was no time for rehearsal. They taught the drummer the songs the night before.
Mr. MINOFF: We had tracks of drums from things that Ian had recorded prior to that. So we played him these recordings of our music with his drumming on them. And he kind of listened to each song and he kind of — he had a couple of pencils and he tapped them on the table. And it was like, okay. So I'll see you guys tomorrow.
ROSE: Minoff says the studio was the nightclub where Otieno Jagwasi sang in the house band.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. MINOFF: There was sort of a concrete slab that was sort of outside. It was loosely covered by a tin roof. And it was right between sort of the restaurant area and then the restrooms. And they were open for business. And we set up the stuff there, set up all our recording equipment. And about three hours later, we had it all torn down and we were gone.
(Soundbite of music)
ROSE: The band called itself Extra Golden and named its first album "Ok-Oyot System," after a Luo phrase that means, it's not easy. And except for the music, it seems like nothing for this band has been. Before the CD came out, singer Otieno Jagwasi died of liver and kidney disease when he was just 34 years old.
Still, the music gathered enough attention to get Extra Golden invited to the Chicago World Music Festival. But none of the Kenyan musicians had passports, let alone visas to get into the U.S. That's when Minoff put out a call for help to Illinois senator Barack Obama, whose father was Kenyan.
Mr. MINOFF: And I spoke with a woman named Jenna Pilot. And I went through my whole rant. I must have had, I don't know, 400 cups of coffee. And she didn't say a word. I finished and there was a pause. And she said, okay, I think I can help you.
(Soundbite of music)
ROSE: With help from Obama's office, the band members made it to Chicago for the show, although just barely. They recorded a song of gratitude called "Obama" on their second album.
(Soundbite of song "Obama")
ROSE: Alex Minoff says the band's second recording session was very different from its first.
Mr. MINOFF: We had five days to record, and we did it in a house in the Poconos. And it was just us. There's no one there. So 24 hours a day, we could just do what we wanted. We ended up recording 20 songs. Those guys did not want to lose this opportunity and they made the most of it. We all did.
(Soundbite of song "Obama")
ROSE: The band members have seen each other only once since 2006. In the weeks after post-election violence erupted in Kenya, singer Onyango Jagwasi says he's been communicating with Eagleson and Minoff by phone and text message.
Mr. JAGWASI: When I was in Kisumu, Ian and Alex, they used to SMS me, to call me,to give me some morale because I was really in pain. And due to their calling, my heart was cooling down.
ROSE: But Ian Eagleson says heart alone won't be enough. With nightclubs closed, he says the situation for his colleagues is desperate.
Mr. EAGLESON: Since they're out of work, there's no way to get food. Their children are getting sick from drinking dirty water. And what I wanted to do was just to be able to help them some way. And cash is the way to do that.
ROSE: So Eagleson and Minoff turned to Extra Golden's fans for help. They posted a message Monday on the band's Web site and MySpace page asking for $5 donations. The message spread through e-mail and blog postings. They say they have received hundreds of responses and raised thousands of dollars. But for now, Onyango Jagwasi is keeping a low profile with relatives outside Nairobi.
Mr. JAGWASI: It's not safe for me, but I have to stay of course. I have nowhere to go to. So I'm just praying to God, so God can guide us, because we don't have good security there. There's no security. So we're just in the hand of God.
ROSE: Jagwasi says he wants to start playing music again, but he doesn't know when that will happen.
Mr. JAGWASI: Nobody can enjoy music because they're really worried with what is going on in Kenya now. So they don't enjoy music. They are just watching news.
ROSE: For NPR News, I'm Joel Rose.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Last night, a new stage adaptation of Disney's film "The Little Mermaid" opened on Broadway. This morning, some pretty downbeat reviews washed up in the New York papers. Can the magic world of an animated movie - most of which takes place under water - work on stage?
Jeff Lunden reports.
JEFF LUNDEN: Over the years, Disney has put dancing teapots and flatware on stage in "Beauty and the Beast"…
(Soundbite of movie, "Beauty and the Beast")
Unidentified Group: (As characters) (Singing) Be our guest, be our guest…
LUNDEN: …the animals of the Serengeti in "The Lion King"…
(Soundbite of movie, "The Lion King")
Ms. CARMEN TWILLIE (Sing): (Singing) …in the circle of life.
LUNDEN: …and now they've gone under the seas with "The Little Mermaid."
(Soundbite of movie, "The Little Mermaid")
Mr. SAMUEL WRIGHT: (As Sebastian) (Singing) Under the sea. Under the sea.
LUNDEN: Adapting an animated film into a stage show is a tricky business. In animation, characters can swim, fly and bend in ways that have nothing to do with the laws of physics, particularly gravity. But these laws are very much in evidence on stage, so a different kind of magic needs to be devised, says Disney Theatrical producer, Tom Schumacher.
Mr. TOM SCHUMACHER (Producer, Disney Theatricals): You can be a mermaid in an animated movie and swim. And onstage, you're obviously, no matter what, going to stand there. If we tell the audience you're under water, I think they're happy to understand that they are under water.
LUNDEN: Variety's chief theater critic, David Rooney, says in spite of the challenges, Disney managed to beat the odds 10 years ago with "The Lion King," which featured dazzling puppetry and stage pictures from Tony Award-winning director, Julie Taymor.
Mr. DAVID ROONEY: (Variety, Chief Theatre Critic): Julie Taymor's ingenuity in that show was to be able to stage a stampede of animals, you know, a drought in the Savannah Plains, you know, all of these things that were done very visually, very economically, with certain solutions that you would look at and think, oh, my God, that's so simple, and yet, at the same time, it's genius, and something that only somebody with a very interesting command of stagecraft would be able to summon up.
LUNDEN: Taymor came from the world of avant-garde theater. For "The Little Mermaid," producer Tom Schumacher turned to creators from the world of opera, like director Francesca Zambello.
In telling the story of a mermaid who falls in love with a prince, Zambello says she asked her designers to create abstract settings using translucent materials, which could transport the audience from the sea to the land in a matter of seconds.
Ms. FRANCESCA ZAMBELLO (Director, "The Little Mermaid"): We very much use a lot of plastic. And by lighting it in different ways, we suggest the underwater world, but also, it suddenly becomes the sun above. I don't want to make it sound simple, it was difficult to arrive at this solution, but it was really very much about working with special materials and creating sculpture and changing the sculpture through light and through projections.
(Soundbite of movie, "The Little Mermaid")
Ms. JODI BENSON (Actor): (As Ariel) (Singing) …up where they stay all day in the sun, wandering free, wish I could be part of that world.
LUNDEN: A big part of "The Little Mermaid's" world is under water, and choreographer Stephen Mear had to find a way to suggest swimming. He makes extensive use of Heelys, the sneakers that many kids wear which have wheels in their heels.
Mr. STEPHEN MEAR (Choreographer): I was walking through Disneyland, of all places, about two-and-half years ago, and I saw this kid just walk by me, and then suddenly whizzed by me. And I just thought, wow, that's fantastic. You know, you can dance, you can pirouette, you can jump, and then suddenly, you can just glide somewhere else.
(Soundbite of movie, "The Little Mermaid")
Mr. WRIGHT: (As Sebastian) (Singing) Sing with me now. Sha, la, la, la, la, la, my, oh, my, look like the boy too shy, ain't gonna kiss the girl.
LUNDEN: Variety critic, David Rooney, says he wasn't convinced.
Mr. ROONEY: To me, putting people on Heelys and having them wave their arms like they're swimming just didn't do it. What you get is the equivalent of an ice show. It's like a "Disney on Ice" show. It doesn't have this sort of soaring feel to it.
LUNDEN: Whatever the critical response, "The Little Mermaid," like most of the stage adaptations of Disney films, has a built-in audience - people who know and love the animated movie. And the show has been sold out since it began preview performances in November.
Producer Tom Schumacher says that's the power of the Disney brand.
Mr. SCHUMACHER: We also have 16 shows running around the world tonight. Somewhere in the world, you can see "Aida," "Beauty and the Beast," "Lion King," "Tarzan," "Mary Poppins," "Little Mermaid," "High School Musical" - it's what we do.
LUNDEN: For NPR New, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
There is a foul smell coming from the Italian city of Naples. The city is suffocating under mountains of garbage. Last month, the trash spilled out into the streets. The local mafia, known as the Camorra, runs the illegal waste management business there without any accountability.
NPR's Sylvia Poggioli spoke with a young journalist who infiltrated the Camorra and wrote a firsthand account of his investigation.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: Roberto Saviano has carefully studied the nuts and bolts of the Camorra's waste management business, which allows northern regions, like Tuscany and Umbria, to remain bucolic while illegally dumping their waste at low cost in the south.
Mr. ROBERTO SAVIANO (Journalist; Author, "Gomorrah"): (Through translator) The Camorra has disposed of all kind of dangerous toxic waste from northern companies — printer toners, residues from leather tanneries, harmful dust from pharmaceutical companies - which they mix with cement, non-metal car parts, and even the remains of the dead from pauper graves that have to be disposed of every 50 years.
POGGIOLI: Saviano says anti-mafia investigators estimate the Camorra's turnover just in illegal waste management is close to $1 billion a year. In a region where there are no high-tech incinerators, more and more agricultural land has been bought up for landfills. And medical research has shown the region's soil is increasingly poisonous, the long-term effects of which can only be guessed at.
Mr. SAVIANO: (Through translator) This led to a silent plague that has killed hundreds and hundreds of people. I'm scared not only but what I drink and breathe, but what really terrifies me is the idea of having children.
POGGIOLI: Roberto Saviano goes everywhere with a 24-hour police escort. For over a year, he has been living under a Camorra death sentence triggered by his book "Gomorrah." It has sold a million copies in Italy and recently came out in the U.S. Naples has the highest murder rate in Europe. More than 100 were killed last year. The region has Europe's highest ratio of drug dealers to inhabitants.
Saviano believes the Camorra is bigger, more powerful and more dangerous than the better known Sicilian Cosa Nostra.
Mr. SAVIANO: (Through translator) They sell drugs outside, to Sicilian, Roman, in Lombardy, in France. It is banned for locals to consume drugs. If locals sniff the coke, the bosses will break their bones. They do that to control the territory and their subordinates. The Camorristi are also moralists. They don't want drug addicts or homosexuals among their ranks.
POGGIOLI: Saviano says in the suburb of Mondragone, there's a group that goes around killing addicts and even people with HIV to ensure the virus does not spread. Besides cocaine, the other major Camorra activity is high-fashion knockoffs. Saviano says investigators have shown that the fashion industry is the Camorra's favorite sector to launder money.
Mr. SAVIANO: (Through translator) Every top Italian designer label is copied, but none of these designers has ever denounced the counterfeiters. And the reason is that the knockoff market is actually useful for the designer label. It offers free publicity. It makes the designs visible all over the world, and it ensures their popularity. Moreover, very often, the original and the copies are made with identical fabrics, in the same shops, by the same seamstresses all controlled by the Camorra.
POGGIOLI: Saviano says the problem for authorities is that the Camorra's criminal enterprises are so closely enmeshed with legitimate businesses they are practically unassailable.
Mr. SAVIANO: (Through translator) The Italian state and the European community are faced with a dilemma. Organized crimes in Italy generates huge sums of money. The three major mafias have a turnover of 100 billion Euros a year. The small business federation says organized crime is the biggest business in Italy. It accounts for 7 percent of the GNP. This means that in an area where no one invests, organized crime is major provider of jobs and control votes. Who can dismantle this?
POGGIOLI: Saviano says this means that one-third of Italy is in the grips of organized crime and condemned to a permanent state of underdevelopment.
Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News.
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
In one week, all questions will be answered, at least regarding the new movie from J.J. Abrams, the guy behind the TV shows, "Lost" and "Alias." His new film will be in theaters in just seven days.
And as NPR's Neda Ulaby reports, his fans on the Internet are more than ready.
NEDA ULABY: Even the movie's name was the subject of rampant Internet speculation. It was called "The Untitled J.J. Abrams Project." Fans thought "Cloverfield" was a fake name designed to throw them off. "Cloverfield" is an oddly pastoral title for a movie in which a giant monster rips the head off the Statue of Liberty.
(Soundbite of movie, "Cloverfield")
Unidentified Woman: (As character) What is it? Is it coming this way?
Unidentified Man #1: (As character) I saw it. It's alive. It's huge.
Mr. JEFF BOCK (Box Office Analyst, Exhibitor Relations): They've been marketing the film brilliantly.
ULABY: Box office analyst, Jeff Bock, says "Cloverfield's" first theatrical trailer last summer showed little more than a few dramatic minutes captured on a handheld camera.
Mr. BOCK: I mean, it was a really gutsy move to not even use a tag for the title. So the only thing you saw was this cinema verite video footage, and at the end, numbers 1-18-08.
ULADY: Those numbers, the release date, the only clue for curious fans like Dennis Acevedo.
Mr. DENNIS ACEVEDO: We took screenshots of every frame of the trailer and looked for clues inside the trailer.
ULADY: The trailer started innocently with a party. By the end, all the guests are wandering the streets of New York in terror. Hundreds of YouTube videos obsessively analyze every minute.
Mr. TOM SIMMONS (Student): I'm watching the trailer again. There's one scene -very clearly hung on the wall is a board with the letters AKM listed on it, which is obviously the abbreviation of Alpha Kappa Mu.
ULADY: Obviously. This video is by Tom Simmons, a 19-year-old forestry student who lives with his parents in England. He devoted himself to the arcania of the characters' MySpace pages and Web sites planted by the studios online. He figured fellow fans might benefit from his research.
Mr. SIMMONS: Putting on a YouTube video seemed like the obvious thing to do, and it got enough views.
ULADY: Over 10,000 of them. Some analysts compare the "Cloverfield" phenomenon to a recent box office disappointment, New Line's "Snakes on a Plane."
Mr. BOCK: What New Line got wrong was that people, yes, were chatting about this film in online communities, but really, they were making fun of the film.
ULADY: Exhibitor Relations Jeff Bock says an online campaign for the star to utter one expletive-laden line about snakes and planes did not mean people actually wanted to pay 10 bucks to see a mediocre action film.
"Cloverfield" lured fans down a narrative rabbit hole by creating a whole universe online. Dennis Acevedo's guide to it is called CloverfieldClues.com. It helped lead fans to studio-produced news reports about a monster attacking New York.
Mr. ACEVEDO: There was a Japanese and Spanish and German and Italian and English, and even a Russian video.
(Soundbite of news report video on the Internet)
Unidentified Man #2: (Foreign language spoken)
Mr. ACEVEDO: You have all these theories about what's going to happen in the movie, and then you start to see all these different videos come out, and that just really builds up the excitement for the movie.
ULADY: I asked Tom Simmons, the British forestry student, if he minded being co-opted into a marketing strategy.
Mr. SIMMONS: I never really thought about it like that. I mean, obviously, they are creating an incredible amount of interest about the film without spending much money at all. But they deserve it, really. I mean, I don't mind it as long as the film's good.
ULADY: The movie doesn't come out in England until February, so he's going to scrupulously avoid the fan sites until then. When he sees the movie, Simmons says he wants it to be fresh, no surprises.
Neda Ulady, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
The nation's largest mortgage lender, Countrywide, is being rescued. Countrywide, perhaps best known these days for being the poster child of the subprime mortgage crisis, will be acquired by Bank of America. The stock deal, valued at $4 billion, now makes Bank of America the nation's largest mortgage lender and saves Countrywide from bankruptcy.
NPR's Elaine Korry reports from San Francisco.
ELAINE KORRY: It looks like a case of in for a penny, in for a pound. Last August, Bank of America, the nation's number-two retail banker sank $2 billion into Countrywide. Now, for twice that down payment, B of A could walk away with the entire company. In a conference call this morning, Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis said that was too good a chance to pass up.
Mr. KENNETH LEWIS (CEO, Bank of America): So we view this as a one-time opportunity to acquire the best mortgage platform in the business. The time and the value is very attractive.
KORRY: Lewis stressed all of Countrywide's positives - its 9 million mortgages and 700 loan offices in virtually every state, plus, a balance sheet of roughly $200 billion in assets - all that sounds good until, of course, you look at Countrywide's stunning negatives.
Mr. SEAN EGAN (Managing Director, Egan-Jones Rating Company): If you do the math, you're looking at losses that are north of $20 billion.
KORRY: And that's Sean Egan, managing director of Philadelphia-based Egan-Jones Rating Company. Egan says mighty Bank of America can afford to absorb those losses, but the question remains - why would it want to?
Mr. EGAN: It's certainly not a good business deal, in my opinion. I think they're buying a pig in a poke.
KORRY: Martin Weiss heads Weiss Research in Florida, one of the state's hardest hit by the subprime meltdown. Weiss notes that Countrywide's new business is down by 50 percent and the firm could be facing widespread litigation for its lending practices. On top of that, the cultures of the two firms couldn't be more different.
Steve Cochrane is a senior managing director with Moody's Economy.com.
Mr. STEVE COCHRANE (Senior Managing Director, Moody's Economy.com): Here we see Bank of America, which has been rather cautious, rather conservative in their lending policies over the past couple of years versus Countrywide where they've been very aggressive.
KORRY: Cochrane says Bank of America can benefit from Countrywide's innovations and the breadth of their operations. But he says it will be a tough challenge to reign in some of Countrywide's more flamboyant practices, as well as to align different customer service styles and loan-pricing formulas. Some analysts are suggesting that federal regulators may have nudged B of A to act, and act quickly because the alternative - that Countrywide would fail - was unthinkable.
Again, Martin Weiss.
Mr. MARTIN WEISS (Founder, Weiss Research): The U.S. government would like to see Countrywide get saved by someone because, otherwise, it would be almost impossible for the average homeowner to get financing in this country.
KORRY: A spokesman for the U.S. Treasury denied the agency played a role in arranging a rescue for Countrywide. The deal will not be completed until, at least, the third quarter of this year. No matter what happens, one player is bound to walk away happy. According to SEC documents, Countrywide founder and CEO Angelo Mozilo stands to profit handsomely. Mozilo reportedly could earn $115 million in severance pay plus paid country club dues and free rides on the company jet whether he resigns or he's fired.
Elaine Korry, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The city of Cleveland is suing 21 national and international financial institutions over the subprime lending and foreclosure crisis. Cleveland has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the nation, with thousands of abandoned homes. The city's mayor now wants the courts to force banks and mortgage lenders to help clean up the mess.
From WCPN in Cleveland, Mhari Saito reports.
MHARI SAITO: For more than 20 years, Tony Brancatelli has been working to bring development into his working-class Cleveland neighborhood, Slavic Village. He used to love driving through the area's new developments of 200 homes complete with green space for trails and parks. But these days, Brancatelli spends most of his free time checking up on the more than 1,000 abandoned homes here. He pulls up in front of a wooden frame that was once a house.
Mr. TONY BRANCATELLI (Councilman, Cleveland City Council): You can't get any more stripped than 3443 East 53rd. They pulled the wiring out of the house, they pulled the fixtures off the walls, and they pulled every piece of metal that can be salvaged is now in a scrap yard.
SAITO: Once scavenged like this, Brancatelli says, there is little left for these homes but the wrecking ball. Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson blames financial institutions that provided thousands of subprime loans to risky borrowers. He goes so far as to compare subprime lenders to drug dealers.
Mayor FRANK JACKSON (Cleveland, Ohio): The money was just too good. It - the consequences of what they were doing, the impact that it had on other people became irrelevant to them.
SAITO: So today, Cleveland announced a lawsuit against companies such as Deutsche Bank and Bear Stearns. The city's law director, Bob Triozzi, says investment banks financed thousands of high-risk loans in Cleveland between 2002 and 2006 even though the rust belt city was in bad fiscal shape.
Mr. BOB TRIOZZI (Law Director, Cleveland): Given the economic conditions that existed here, given the investment vehicle which they were foisting upon the market, there was no other result in the foreclosures that we've incurred here. And that is why you see, over the last couple years, this enormous spike in the foreclosures in our community.
SAITO: Some experts say borrowers looking to blame the subprime industry for their woes should look in the mirror as they took advantage of easy money. The city is using a legal strategy most recently tried in lead paint class action suits. That complaint says lenders violated public nuisance laws by selling loans they could have known would go bad and damage property tax revenue and home prices.
Mr. ERIC TALLEY (Co-director, Berkeley Center for Law, Business and the Economy): I would describe it as creative. And that may be a necessary condition also for being a long shot.
SAITO: Eric Talley is co-director of the Berkeley Center of Law, Business and the Economy.
Mr. TALLEY: Courts that have had taken a rather dim view on the public nuisance sort of approach have done so with the view that this may not be the best area for courts to be making policy. Maybe this is a better area for legislators or the executive branch to be making policy decisions about how to allocate the losses due to foreclosure.
SAITO: Cleveland is the second city this week to file a lawsuit against the subprime lending industry. Baltimore filed in federal court, alleging that lender Wells Fargo unfairly targeted African-Americans for high-cost loans.
John Taylor is the president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
Mr. JOHN TAYLOR (President, National Community Reinvestment Coalition): There's very much interest in these efforts to see if that might be part of the solution to forestalling a lot of the foreclosures.
SAITO: Some of the largest financial institutions named in the suit declined to comment for this story today. Nearly all of them have lost billions of dollars because of the meltdown in the subprime markets.
Mayor Frank Jackson says that's just not his problem.
Mayor JACKSON: I look at the people whose lives have been ruined, look at neighborhoods that have been destroyed and quality of life that's been just extinguished in neighborhoods. So you know, that's their problem, not ours. They did it, they owe.
SAITO: Jackson says Cleveland will sue for hundreds of millions of dollars. Asked if he really thought the city's small team of lawyers could seriously take on the legal talent of Wall Street's investment banks, Jackson says, we're in this to win.
For NPR News, I'm Mhari Saito in Cleveland.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
America stood as the world's dominant superpower for at least half a century, some would argue longer. But in the 21st century, several global powers, including China and Russia, are on the rise. A new book says this growth could actually make the U.S. stronger and safer. That book is called "The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise." It's written by Nina Hachigian and Mona Sutphen. Both were foreign policy experts in the Clinton administration.
Sutphen argues that America can no longer afford to go it alone.
Ms. MONA SUTPHEN (Co-author, "The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise): Primacy really doesn't deliver results. And if you look, we have been the sole superpower now since the end of the Cold War. But it turns out that's led us into a war in Iraq, it's led us into questionable policies here and there, created lots of potential enemies around the world. And then finally, most importantly, if we're telling the world we have to be the sole superpower or the strongest power by any margin, you encourage other countries to try to knock us off of that mantle.
NORRIS: You know, it sounds, in listening to this, that you're almost advocating a weaker U.S.
Ms. NINA HACHIGIAN (Co-author, "The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise): Absolutely not. This is Nina. No, absolutely not. In fact, a central message of our book is that we have to reinvest in American strength, and that we have to change the country that we actually have the power to change, and that's the U.S. And we have to work hard on fixing some of our domestic problems at home in order to thrive in an era with bigger powers.
If we say that we have to always be the strongest power by a given fixed margin, Mona's absolutely right, we're encouraging other countries to see power as a zero-sum game, and it's just not anymore. Just look at the example of North Korea. We cannot, without China's deep involvement, roll back North Korean nuclear program.
NORRIS: But you know, the - power can be used in many ways. And when it comes to a country like North Korea, sometimes it is more beneficial to take a much more aggressive stand. I mean, that seems to have worked at least to some degree with the current administration.
Ms. HACHIGIAN: There's two issues. There's the carrot and the stick and then it's working with the other powers. I mean, if we can get together with - this is Nina - if we can get together with China, and Russia, and Japan and South Korea, and be tough on North Korea, then it very well might work. And in fact, it did work. After they tested, China voted for tough U.N. sanctions against North Korea, something that they've never done before.
Ms. SUTPHEN: Actually - and this is Mona - to that point, I mean, the Bush administration has been - was talking tough, but they were doing it alone and it wasn't getting them anywhere. In fact, you know, the deal that they've struck now with the North Koreans is more or less the same place that we were, you know, seven years ago. So had they been engaging with the other major powers all along, perhaps we could have gotten to this result two years ago before they managed to produce enough fissile material for multiple weapons.
NORRIS: Nina, you say that when you talk about rising powers, that America's fear of growth in countries like China and India is more damaging to the U.S. than the growth itself.
Ms. HACHIGIAN: That's right. And that's because we really need to work with these powers. That, for security reasons, for economic reasons, that we are much better off if we are thinking of them as on our team, basically. I mean, it doesn't mean that we aren't going to have great disagreements, and they could be profound disagreements, but basically, they are our teammates.
NORRIS: Is that a hard sell? The Russians are our teammates?
Ms. HACHIGIAN: Yes. Yes, particularly now that is a hard sell. But the fact is that they are on some important issues, you know, we will have all kinds of disagreements with them. But they are the cofounder and co-leader of a group of 50 countries that are trying to keep nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists.
Ms. SUTPHEN: Of course, right now, today, right, Russia and China and India are undisputedly on the rise. But if you go back just 20 years in our history, you can track - I mean, we started in the late '80s, and obviously the Soviet Union was a big threat, then it was Japan, then it was Germany, then it was the E.U. Then the E.U. fell off, Germany fell off, then China came on, India has popped up on the scene, Russia is now back in play. So you know, it is true that these powers are growing, but they may not rise at the same trajectory forever.
And the key point for us is when you look at the threats that could kill lots of Americans today, those threats are not emanating from these major powers. Technically, they're - you know, Russia's a nominal, only knows - God only knows exactly what kind of "democracy," quote, unquote, it is, and China certainly is not. But neither are they trying to push their ideology and change forms of government all around the world. They're busy just trying to figure out how they're going to continue to grow their economies. And that's a really fundamentally different situation that we face today than, say, you know, 30 years ago.
NORRIS: If you're talking about rising powers and if a truly hostile superpower does emerge, or reemerge, I guess, a real and direct threat to the U.S., either militarily or ideologically, where is that likely to come from? Who's that likely to be?
Ms. HACHIGIAN: I mean, I actually, personally, don't really see the, at this point, the writing on the wall about which of these major powers could be a threat down the road because I really - firmly believe that the world that we're living in is one - the technological change and the impact of globalization has meant that non-state actors and countries that used to never have the ability to challenge major powers, now have the means to do so because they can get their hands on nuclear technology. And we're seeing that obviously with, you know, terrorists of smaller states like Iran and the like.
I actually think that those threats are going to be with us for a very, very long time. And 25 years from now, we will be wanting as many strong powers as possible because we're going to need them for the states that are stable, that are managing, you know, trying to manage and keep the world moving in a positive direction. There will be this banding together to stave off the forces of instability that are kind of creeping up all over the place.
NORRIS: You're talking about forces like al-Qaida.
Ms. HACHIGIAN: Al-Qaida and - I mean, if you look in many, many countries and places, you know, even the situation in Kenya, which I find so unfortunate -the developments there. But you have lots of places that have instability lurking under the surface - Pakistan, Kenya, Venezuela, lots of places. States no longer can guarantee their own security, right? You need other countries to help you protect your own country. And that is fundamentally new in the world, in the international system.
NORRIS: Thank you very much for speaking with us. It's been a pleasure to speak to you.
Ms. SUTPHEN: Thank you.
Ms. HACHIGIAN: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: That was Mona Sutphen and Nina Hachigian. They're the authors of "The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
President Bush has wrapped up his three-day tour of Israel and the West Bank, where he pushed the Israelis and Palestinians to forge a peace agreement under his watch. Mr. Bush is now in Kuwait to thank that nation for hosting American troops. On the second leg of his journey, the President will emphasize regional security, Iraq and Iran.
NPR's Michele Kelemen is traveling with the President.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Soon after arriving, the President sat down for dinner with the Amir of Kuwait at a sprawling palace overlooking the Gulf. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says talks are focusing on threats in the Gulf, the problem of extremism, whether by al-Qaida or Iran and, as she put it, Iran's tentacles in the region. President Bush is likely to hear in private, though, Kuwaiti concerns about U.S. strategy on Iran and words of caution against military action.
The President brings another issue to the table here. His effort to get Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to agree on the contours of the Palestinian state. Before leaving Israel, President Bush told Olmert he'd be seeking Arab support.
President GEORGE W BUSH (United States): I'll share with them my thoughts about you and President Abbas and your determination to work, to see whether or not it's possible to come up with a peace treaty that will be lasting.
KELEMEN: The President said he'd be back in May. And Rice said she thinks that could be an incentive for the parties to move. This was Mr. Bush's first visit to Israel as president, and he capped it with an emotional tour of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, where he said it was a sobering reminder that evil must be resisted. Then it was off to the Galilee where he told his aides it was awe-inspiring to be where Jesus lived and preached.
Pres. BUSH: It's an amazing experience.
KELEMEN: President Bush posed for pictures with nuns at the Church of the Beatitudes, and was given a small slab of crystal carved with the words: Blessed are those who are peacemakers for they will be called Children of God.
Here in Kuwait tomorrow, President Bush is to visit U.S. troops and get an update on the situation in Iraq.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Kuwait.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
With President Bush's visit to the Persian Gulf, we turn our focus next to the overall U.S. military presence in the region. Questions remain about the long-term needs and goals of the American military there.
Joining now to discuss this is retired Army Major General Robert Scales. I want to begin with Kuwait, since this is where the President actually happens to be today. When you talk about this region, you so often — we so often are focused on Iran or Iraq, but it sounds like this is a country that we don't hear as much about right now, but a country that is of great strategic importance to the U.S. military.
Major General ROBERT SCALES (Retired, U.S. Army): Kuwait is extremely important to U.S. interests in the area for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's America's aircraft carrier in the region. The Kuwaitis have been very open to the stationing of troops, logistical facilities and, of course, air power. Secondly, is its geostrategic position. The fact that it's juxtaposed between Iran and Saudi Arabia. It's centrally located, and therefore, geographically, very, very important to our interests.
So in terms of long term prospective, the United States needs to have basing rights in Kuwait. It needs to have good relationship with the Kuwaitis. Because at the end of the day, this is where most of America's combat power is going to be centralized in the region.
NORRIS: So most of the combat power is there. There was a time when we had a very large presence in Saudi Arabia. Much less so now.
Maj. Gen. SCALES: The Saudi Arabian story is a cautionary tale. There is good reason to have a presence in the Middle East, and there are bad reasons to have a presence in the Middle East. And one of the lessons that we've learned is the extreme sensitivity, particularly among Muslim states of any foreign presence in their region, whether it's American or coalition or anyone else for that matter. You could make an argument that a great deal of foment in the region really was generated by this prolonged presence of American forces, particularly American air power in Saudi Arabia.
And the temperature went down considerably when the last American soldier left the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. But what's oftentimes missed is the naval presence and the air presence in places like Bahrain and the Gulf States. And clearly, the policy is two-fold. First of all, to prevent the spread of radical Islam. And secondly, to hold Iran and the leadership of Iran in check.
NORRIS: I want to turn back to Iraq, if I could. And, you know, there's a debate about the eventual withdrawal of troops.
Maj. Gen. SCALES: Right.
NORRIS: it's not clear when that will happen, certainly, how that will happen -depending on who's elected come November of 2008. As we look to the long term, though, should we be thinking of Germany or Japan as models here, what kind of long term presence in Iraq are we likely to see? And are we likely to see bases in Iraq or elsewhere in the region?
Maj. Gen. SCALES: Iraq is different than Germany and Japan. There will be a long-term presence of American forces in Iraq, but it won't form the same function that our forces formed in Europe and Asia. Remember, the sole purpose for us being there is to make sure that the Iraqis can stand on their own. So it's an advise, train and assist function. It's not a combat function over the longer term. I believe it's in America's best interest over the long term - I'm talking now in terms of years, perhaps even a decade or more - for us to plan on a complete withdrawal from Iraq.
So as soon as the Iraq nation is able to stand on its own, particularly if it's able to defend its own borders against potential outside aggressors, then it's time to plan on a substantial withdrawal of American forces.
NORRIS: And over the long haul, whether we're talking years or perhaps decades…
Maj. Gen. SCALES: It's hard to say.
NORRIS: …will the military have a footprint within the country of Iraq or will it be just outside?
Maj. Gen. SCALES: America will have a footprint inside Iraq, I would say, probably for about a decade. It's going to take that long to build an Iraqi military that's able to stand alone. Stand alone for two reasons. First, obviously, to defeat the insurgency. But remember, our long term plan is to make Iraq a military presence in the region that's able to act as a countervailing force against the Iranians.
NORRIS: General Scales, thanks for talking to us. Always a pleasure to talk to you.
Maj. Gen. SCALES: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: That was retired Army Major General Robert Scales. He's also a defense consultant.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
We have an exclusive interview now with an FBI official at the heart of U.S. anti terrorism efforts, and the dispute over whether the U.S. is violating civil liberties.
Bassem Youssef is an FBI special agent and chief of the unit responsible for two warrantless search programs. He's already known as a whistleblower. In 2002, he said discriminatory practices within the bureau were hobbling the effort to fight terrorism.
The Justice Department found later that the bureau illegally retaliated against Youssef after making those claims. Youssef has a lawsuit pending against the bureau.
Bassem Youssef was planning to make a speech to the American Library Association tomorrow. However, the FBI barred him from making that speech in Philadelphia, but the bureau is permitting him to answer questions at that ALA meeting. He came here first to answer our questions about what he wanted to say in that speech.
Mr. BASSEM YOUSSEF (Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation): The entire issue that I want to share with the American public, and with the proper authorities, is that the FBI's counterterrorism division is not staffed with the right people, with those who have the expertise and have the know-how and the experience working counterterrorism matters before 9/11. And that lack of expertise is going to hamper our war on terror.
NORRIS: What specific expertise is lacking?
Mr. YOUSSEF: I believe that, first of all, a language, knowing the language and the culture in the group that you're working against is very important.
NORRIS: The language and the culture?
Mr. YOUSSEF: Absolutely. You also must know your enemy, regardless of what avenue, what front you're fighting the enemy on, you must know your enemy. And if you don't have an understanding of your enemy, they will be elusive and they will escape you.
NORRIS: Is it that they might miss things or that they might misinterpret things and - because you're talking about surveillance here. You're talking about basically giving the green light for what is essentially a big fishing expedition, looking at people's personal records.
Mr. YOUSSEF: Absolutely. For example, if you attribute exigency or an emergency to a particular case - and it's not - how does that relate to a case that may be an emergency and you should be looking at and you should putting - you should put all of your resources on? If you can't make that differentiation, we will lose both ways. The cases that should be looked at, we're not looking at. The threats that we're not looking at, we're actually looking at.
NORRIS: To your knowledge, are there cases where these sort of investigations, this kind of warrantless surveillance is launched based on false information or the false reading of information?
Mr. YOUSSEF: Absolutely. I've seen that in my capacity as the chief of the communications analysis unit. I can't go into any sort of detail, obviously, because these investigations are classified.
NORRIS: If I may push this a little bit further, are there people who are being investigated, people whose personal information is under review without their knowledge who should not be in that position because information was misread?
Mr. YOUSSEF: I can't answer that question directly, Michele, but I can say that if we are misreading the leads that we have, our results will also be incorrect. But I would not feel comfortable going into more detail than that.
NORRIS: Is there any way to quantify that? How many people do you think are improperly targeted?
Mr. YOUSSEF: I can't really get into that or address it because statistics can get me in trouble.
NORRIS: Yeah, I understand that, but I'm sure the people listening to this right now are asking themselves that question.
Mr. YOUSSEF: I'm sure.
NORRIS: And it sounds like you're saying it happens. You just can't say how often.
Mr. YOUSSEF: That's correct.
NORRIS: Now you have been pointing out these flaws within the system. You actually pointed this out beginning in 2002. Are you talking about the same problems that you addressed then, and how has the FBI addressed this since you — it's been almost five years that you've been talking about this?
Mr. YOUSSEF: That's a very good point, Michele. The root cause is the same, and that is lack of experience, lack of expertise, and the insistence that neither is necessary to run the FBI at all levels. The lack of expertise in operational counterterrorism is going to harm us in the future. The same thing is happening with the administrative tools that we use, for example, the national security letters or the exigent letters or the warrantless searches. Those are going to hurt us, not just operationally, but it will also hurt the civil liberties of the American people.
NORRIS: So what will it take to actually address this problem?
Mr. YOUSSEF: For the FBI, first of all, to admit we do have problems in terms of recruiting the right people for the right positions. There are no doubt, Michele - and I want the American people to know this - that there are great, highly dedicated FBI agents and analysts who want to do the right thing, who want to win the war on terror. But we just don't have the proper placement of those people in the right positions.
NORRIS: Now, you stepped out and you pointed out these flaws as you see them. Is there a course of other FBI employees who take the same position, or are you the lone voice on this?
Mr. YOUSSEF: I am the lone voice publicly because I anticipate, and I have, in the past, been retaliated against mercilessly, if I might even add. So because of that, I believe that the other FBI employees who feel the same way and who understand the problem will not speak out because of it.
NORRIS: I just want to ask you about this agreement that you've reached with the FBI. You are allowed to speak to the American Library Association; you just can't deliver a speech, but you can take questions. And I imagine that some of those questions will allow you to talk about some of the things that you were planning to address in your speech. That's curious.
Mr. YOUSSEF: That is curious, in fact. There was no speech written, but I believe just the gist of what I will be speaking about was something that they had issues with.
NORRIS: How do you expect that they're going to react to this? How do you think they're going to react to the fact that you're talking about these things right here in Studio 2A at NPR?
Mr. YOUSSEF: I'm not clairvoyant enough to know exactly what's going to happen, but I would assume that there could be retaliation against me again in some kind of (unintelligible).
NORRIS: And you're willing to do this despite that?
Mr. YOUSSEF: I need to do this, Michele, for several reasons. But the most important reason is we need to change our ways. And I want the American public to know because I can't do this alone.
NORRIS: Are you confident that the FBI will address these matters?
Mr. YOUSSEF: I will say the track record that I have seen so far, I don't believe that will be the case.
NORRIS: You're not optimistic.
Mr. YOUSSEF: I'm not.
NORRIS: Mr. Youssef, thank you very much for coming in to talk to us.
Mr. YOUSSEF: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: Bassem Youssef is an FBI special agent in charge of two counterterrorism warrantless search programs. We asked the FBI to respond to Youssef's claims. Assistant Director John Miller says the bureau does need more Arab expertise.
As for wrongful investigations or missed opportunities…
Mr. JOHN MILLER (Assistant Director, FBI): When you're going through thousands and thousands of cases, you're going to miss opportunities, although I don't know what missed opportunities he's referred to; that's just a numeric certainty and the fact that we're dealing with human beings, and you're going to look at people who eventually don't pan out into suspects. But I don't think you can attribute that on the whole to a lack of cultural understanding.
Now, would we like to have more people within the FBI that have that ethnic background, cultural understanding? Yes.
NORRIS: Miller says the FBI has more than doubled its Arab language analysts, for example, since 2001, but he says it's been difficult.
Mr. MILLER: We've put up recruiting booths at Arab-American organizations' functions and conventions. We've contacted leaders and done extensive reach-out. It is not because we have had a steady stream of applicants that we've been turning away. We've worked very hard at this
NORRIS: And, Miller says, there has not been another attack on American soil since 9/11.
Mr. MILLER: I don't think you can extrapolate from that, that we're making the wrong calls or doing things wrong. It just doesn't add up.
NORRIS: That's the FBI's John Miller responding to claims by FBI unit manager Bassem Youssef that lagging experience and language skills are hampering anti-terrorism efforts and causing civil liberties violations.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Marion Jones was the darling of the 2000 Summer Olympics, winning five medals and winning over fans. Today, her fall from grace has a hard ending. Jones was sentenced to six months in prison for lying about her use of banned performance enhancing drugs and her knowledge of an illegal check-cashing scheme. Jones has until March 11th to turn herself in.
NPR's Tom Goldman reports.
TOM GOLDMAN: This morning, in a New York federal courtroom, Marion Jones ran into one tough judge. Jones and her lawyers pleaded for leniency - no prison, but probation, perhaps home confinement. Jones asked Judge Kenneth Karas that she not be separated from her two young boys even for a short period of time. I ask you, she said, to be as merciful as a human being can be. Prosecutors had recommended zero jail time to six months in prison, and Karas went with the maximum. He also sentenced Jones to two years probation.
Karas said he wanted to send a message of deterrence to athletes. "They have an elevated status," he was quoted as saying. "They entertain, they inspire, and perhaps most important, they serve as role models."
Courtroom observers said Jones cried after being sentenced. Outside the courthouse, she said she was extremely disappointed.
Ms. MARION JONES (Athlete): But as I stood in front of all of you for years in victory, I stand in front of you today, I stand for what is right. I respect the judge's orders, and I would truly hope that people learn from my mistakes.
GOLDMAN: U.S. Olympic Committee chief executive officer Jim Scherr said in a statement, the sentence shows how far-reaching and serious the consequences of cheating can be. But in fact, Marion Jones is not going to prison because she cheated; it's because she lied. In 2003, she was asked by federal agents whether she had taken banned performance enhancing drugs, and she said no. In her guilty plea last October, she admitted she had taken banned drugs. Subsequent documents filed in court showed she used drugs extensively before, during and after the 2000 Sydney Olympics, something she'd always publicly denied. She also lied to agents about whether she knew that former track star Tim Montgomery, the father of her oldest child, was involved in an illegal check-cashing scheme. Montgomery has been convicted for his involvement.
Adam Nelson is an Olympic shot putter who won the silver medal at the 2000 games. He says he'd like to believe today's sentence will act as a deterrent against doping by athletes.
Mr. ADAM NELSON (Athlete): But I think the message that this sends is that if you get caught, you shouldn't lie. The real message that we need to send to athletes is that if you get caught cheating, you're going to go to jail.
GOLDMAN: Harsh perhaps, but Nelson says doping by a small number of celebrity athletes has a huge ripple effect. All athletes in a sport, like track and field, become suspect even though the majority, he believes, are clean. And Nelson says the athletes who competed against Jones and finished behind her are directly affected.
Mr. NELSON: She has taken money away, not just from the athletes that's she's beat in prize money and - but she's also taken away from the opportunity of other athletes to make that living in the terms of taking away sponsorships, taking away endorsement deals, taking away appearances.
GOLDMAN: The International Olympic Committee is trying to figure out how to redistribute the three gold and two bronze medals Jones won in Sydney, which she has returned. There's also a dispute over whether or not her relay teammates from the 2000 games have to give their medals back as well.
Tom Goldman, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
The next test of strength for the Democratic presidential candidates comes a week from tomorrow in Nevada, which is holding its earliest caucuses ever and doing it with the blessing of the National Democratic Party. The idea was to showcase one mountain west state with a substantial Hispanic vote. Hispanics are one-fourth of Nevada's population, and they cast about one vote in seven. Most are expected to prefer the Democratic caucuses over the Republican even though the only Hispanic candidate in the race, Bill Richardson, dropped out yesterday.
Joining me to talk about what all this might mean is NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson.
And first off, Mara, Bill Richardson, he was supposed to be able to make his sort of big showing in Nevada, but he surprised a lot of people when he quit the race before the contest in that state.
MARA LIASSON: He really did. You know, Bill Richardson was the only sitting governor in the race from a neighboring state, the only Hispanic-American. You would think that's what his campaign was all about, but he just couldn't go on.
NORRIS: So I guess after that fourth place finish in Iowa and New Hampshire, he was just so discouraged or out of money or not willing to go to Nevada and possibly face a bit of embarrassment. What was it?
LIASSON: I think all those are good reasons. I think all those are the reasons he got out. He only got 5 percent of the vote in New Hampshire; he got 2 percent in Iowa. There was no sign of any traction for him in South Carolina; he doesn't have any money to compete on February 5th. He may still be thinking he can be considered for a vice presidential slot if he quits now and isn't further humiliated and doesn't take sides.
NORRIS: Now a big question about where his support might go. At least one candidate has already issued a press release saying really nice things about him after he dropped out of the race.
LIASSON: Yes, they're all saying nice things about him, and, of course, he had very nice things to say about all the candidates. And actually, he's had so many nice things to say and particularly, about Hillary Rodham Clinton when she looked like the dominant front-runner. It gave a lot of people the impression that he really was running for vice president.
NORRIS: So with him - with Richardson out of the race, do the Republicans now have a fair shot or at least a better shot at the Hispanic vote in Nevada?
LIASSON: Well, in theory, John McCain from neighboring Arizona would have some appeal here, but I think in practice, the Republican candidates are ignoring Nevada. They have two other contests that they're focusing on - Michigan on Tuesday and then South Carolina primary which is key for the Republicans. I don't know if any nominee has ever lost South Carolina. It's on the same day as Nevada, and you can see by their travel schedules that the Republicans are practically ignoring the state. They're really leaving it to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
NORRIS: So what about the Democrats? Who now benefits from Richardson's absence?
LIASSON: Well, there are two Democrats who are still competitive, one who's barely competitive; that's John Edwards. He is, of course, focusing on his native state of South Carolina which votes on the 26th. He doesn't have any time or resources for Nevada. And in a real indication of his diminishing fortunes - he is the guy who had built himself as a labor candidate, and the unions in Nevada went with Obama instead, so I think another indication that this really is a two-person race on the Democratic side.
NORRIS: Mara, speaking of all of those unions, how much do those union endorsements mean in a state like that?
LIASSON: In Nevada, they mean a lot. They don't mean as much in other states, but this is a caucus state, it's a brand new caucus, so organization and education is key. The culinary workers, which endorsed Obama, is 60,000 people, about 40 percent of them are Hispanic. SCIU is 17,000 people, probably pretty similar ethnic makeup. Also, these are young workers. Latino voters, in general, skew young, and that is Obama's demographic.
Also today, I should mention that Obama got the endorsement of a neighboring governor, Janet Napolitano from Arizona. Arizona votes on February 5th; maybe that would have a little spillover effect to Nevada.
But, you know, Hillary Clinton came to Las Vegas yesterday. She's not giving up the state. She headed for a Latino neighborhood. She went door-to-door. She showed her new, accessible, emotional style. She's not conceding anything, and she also has recently released a new ad kind of emphasizing her new empathetic approach where she reprises her New Hampshire victory speech where she says, by listening to you, I found my voice.
So it's a real battle royal in Nevada. I think these are two very easily matched candidates.
NORRIS: We'll be watching. That was NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Mara, thanks so much.
LIASSON: Thank you.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
After Nevada comes South Carolina, Florida, and then Super Tuesday. One of the biggest prizes for the presidential candidates is California, and Hillary Clinton was there today campaigning near Los Angeles. Speaking at a training center for solar energy workers, Clinton announced a new $70 billion economic plan she said would hold recession at bay. Her trip westward had to be a welcome change. Unlike the crowd she has been working in places like Iowa and New Hampshire, Senator Clinton was greeted today by solid fans and supporters.
Here's NPR's Ina Jaffe.
INA JAFFE: The old Hillary Clinton campaign and the new Hillary Clinton campaign were both on display today. First the New York senator presented a multi-billion dollar plan to protect homeowners from foreclosure and provide assistance for middle class families dealing with sky-rocketing energy costs called the policy and statistic-heavy plan Clinton Classic.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Number one, I'm calling for a 90-day moratorium on foreclosures. No foreclosures for three months, so if the bank is about to foreclose on your home, you'll have some breathing room to try to figure out how to restructure you mortgage.
JAFFE: Then, the newer Clinton campaign came to the fore when she answered question after question, roaming the stage with a handheld mic. It was clear that ever since the now-famous teary eyed event in New Hampshire, both candidate and crowd are getting more comfortable with getting personal. This question came from a woman who said she's been planning to vote for Clinton since the year 2000.
Unidentified Woman: My daughter just text messaged me, and she wants to know if you feel any pressure being - or she says being or running for the first woman president.
Sen. CLINTON: Oh, no not at all.
(Soundbite of cheers)
JAFFE: Everyone here got the irony. Clinton tried to personalize every answer without ignoring the policy she was here to promote, like training more people to work with solar power. So here was her answer to the simple question about her husband, quote, "How's Bill?"
Sen. CLINTON: He was so excited when I told him where I was coming this morning because we had a whole energy audit done on our home. You know, we have an old farmhouse that was pretty leaky, and our utility bills were pretty high, so we've now moved all of our lighting to compact fluorescent bulbs.
JAFFE: The questions ranged from borrowing money from China to caring for Iraq war veterans. No one asked her any really tough questions about the plan she had just announced like how she was going to pay for it. The people here felt she was someone they knew and trusted, like electrical worker Dale Crisp(ph).
Mr. DALE CRISP (Electrical Worker): I think she's got a grassroots appeal. I think she's got a grassroots insight. She came from the common people, and that's what we need.
JAFFE: Like just about everybody here, she had them at hello.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News, city of Commerce, California.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
There's more news out of the Homeland Security Department today. The agency announced new rules for secure driver's licenses. They'll take effect over the next 10 years. But the consequences could be felt right away for residents of states that don't participate.
NPR's Pam Fessler reports.
PAM FESSLER: The secure driver's license, or Real ID, was supposed to take effect this year. But states said their DMV offices would be overwhelmed. So now, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff says the secure licenses won't be required for individuals under age 50 until December 1st, 2014. Those 50 and older have another three years. Chertoff predicted that three types of people would be unhappy with the new IDs.
Secretary MICHAEL CHERTOFF (Department of Homeland Security): Terrorists and people who want to get on airplanes and in federal buildings and avoid terrorist watch lists, illegal immigrants who want to work in this country by pretending to be American citizens, and conmen.
FESSLER: But there are already other unhappy voices including civil libertarians with privacy concerns. Several states have also said they plan to opt out of the program. Chertoff says if they do, there'll be a price.
Sec. CHERTOFF: After May of this year, that state's driver's licenses will no longer be acceptable as a form of federal identification for getting on an airplane or getting into a federal building.
Mr. DAVID QUAM (Director of Federal Relations, National Governors Association): It's always been interesting to me that noncompliance with this is not an issue for the state, but it's foisted on the citizens.
FESSLER: David Quam is director of Federal relations for the National Governors Association.
Mr. QUAM: The devil is going to be in the details to see whether or not we've really made it so that these can be done by states and will actually make us safer.
FESSLER: One question is whether databases will be ready in time, so states can verify if individuals are indeed legal residents.
Pam Fessler, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The New England Patriots' quest for the first perfect season in the National Football League in 35 years resumes tomorrow. The Patriots and NFL MVP, Tom Brady, face the Jacksonville Jaguars in primetime at home in Foxborough, Massachusetts, one of four quarter final playoff games this weekend.
Sports writer Stefan Fatsis of the Wall Street Journal joins me now, as he does most Fridays, to talk about this.
Stefan, there's the talk that the Jaguars might be in the best position to beat the Patriots. Is that true?
Mr. STEFAN FATSIS (Sports Writer, Wall Street Journal): Well, talk, and talk is pretty cheap, as we learned in New Hampshire this week.
NORRIS: Oh, yeah.
Mr. FATSIS: I think some of this is wishful thinking here. It's infinitely more interesting to be contrary especially when there is no court of accountability for writers and talkers like us.
There is some justification, though, for the idea that the Patriots could lose this game. Statistically, Jacksonville improved dramatically over the course of the season. The Patriots were far less dominant toward the end of the season especially on defense. But the Patriots' offensive line is so good, and as the folks at the great footballoutsiders.com Web site explain, Jacksonville's up the middle defense against the run is a very weak spot. The effectiveness of the wide receivers on both teams is going to be a key here. I think it's going to be a very high scoring game one way or another.
NORRIS: I'm afraid to ask for a prediction, but I am interested in what you think might actually happen.
Mr. FATSIS. I think it's going to be a high scoring game. We've all watched, you know, how, officially, the Patriots have played all season long and how they react to slights, I'm thinking of the Spy Gate controversy at the beginning of the year, where the team was punished for taping an opponent's bench signals. And they've got some bulletin board material against Jacksonville. After these two teams played late in the 2006 season, the Jaguars' head coach, Jack Del Rio, said that his players should have speared Tom Brady on one play; that is hit him straight on with a helmet, which is illegal in the NFL. And that quotation has made the rounds this week. But the Patriots are really good.
NORRIS: As we mentioned, three other quarterfinal playoff games: Seattle at Green Bay tomorrow, San Diego at Indianapolis, and the New York Giants at Dallas on Sunday. Give us a quick breakdown of these matchups.
Mr. FATSIS: Okay. Seattle's defensive line just obliterated Washington in the first round of the playoffs last week. But Green Bay has better pass protection, and the Packers do still have a very effective Brett Favre playing quarterback. Indianapolis is much, much healthier than when San Diego just beat them in November. And that was a game in which Peyton Manning threw six interceptions. You're not going to see that again. The Giants-Dallas game is an exaggerated version, I think, of New England-Jacksonville. The Giants and their quarterback, Eli Manning, played very, very well in their last three games. Dallas has faltered, but we'll see come game time.
NORRIS: We should mention the big story in Dallas this week, though, was Tony Romo's little Mexican vacation with the singer Jessica Simpson. Cowboys fans are actually concerned that she might be a distraction.
Mr. FATSIS: Yes, since she showed up in a luxury box a few weeks ago wearing a pink and white Romo jersey, and the Cowboys lost. A lot of fans seem to believe that his trip to Cabo San Lucas showed a misplaced sense of priorities. But the team had two weeks off because they had a buy in the first round of the playoffs. Romo would not have gone anywhere if the team didn't have those days off. Other players traveled. They just didn't happen to do it with Jessica Simpson.
NORRIS: Finally, Stefan, this wouldn't be a football conversation with you if we didn't talk about kickers, of course.
Mr. FATSIS: Yeah.
NORRIS: So this week's news is that one of the playoff kickers will be wearing battery-powered heated pants. Do I have that right, battery-powered heated pants on the sidelines? I guess, in Green Bay, he might need them.
Mr. FATSIS: That's right. It gets pretty cold in Green Bay. And as a former kicker, I will say, so what? The kickers' Josh Brown, he's on Seattle, the pants are down-lined rain pants. He sticks a couple of battery-operated heaters in there to keep his legs easily warm, number four, everybody rolls their eyes. Kickers spend about 98 percent of games walking up and down the sidelines, trying to stay loose, and in freezing weather, trying to stay warm, these little heaters will keep Josh's pants at a toasty 75 degrees.
NORRIS: Oh, well, good for him. Thanks, Stefan.
Mr. FATSIS: Thanks, Michele.
NORRIS: That was Stefan Fatsis as he covers the business of sports for the Wall Street Journal.
Will The Little Mermaid sink on Broadway? That's next.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
You have now warmed us up for our next story about warming up. It's a topic producer David Schulman knows a lot about. He's interviewed musicians of all stripes for his series Musicians in their Own Words. And he likes to limber up by asking this question: what do you do to warm up. He has post the question to concert pianist, Brazilian jazz vocalist, Tuvan throat singers. And the musician answers can be as distinct as the music they make.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. ABIGAIL WASHBURN (Folk Musician): I just do scales.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. LANG LANG (Classical Pianist): It's quite boring but it works.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. FLORA PURIM (Singer): In Santa Barbara, I live in front of the ocean. When I practice, I go to the Natural History Museum, to the bird room. And I try to imitate the birds. It's beautiful because I see if I can speak with them, you know - so I hear the sound and…
(Soundbite of noise)
Ms. PURIM: I'm very good at seagulls.
(Soundbite of noise)
Ms. CECILIA BARTOLI (Singer): I love to have a good, light healthy lunch and a little nap. And then before a performance, yes, I warm up the voice but maybe no more than five, 10 minutes, because I have to keep the freshness of the voice. So the only way to do it is to be silent.
Mr. ALBERT KUVEZIN (Tuvan Rocker): Usually, I just stop something from traditional to one musical.
(Soundbite of noise)
Ms. GILLIAN WELCH (Singer; Songwriter): I warm up pretty much the way most blue grass singers warm up, which is like…
(Soundbite of clearing throat)
Ms. WELCH: That's about…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. WELCH: …that's about me warming up.
(Soundbite of song, "I Want to Sing That Rock and Roll")
Ms. WELCH: (Singing) I want to sing that rock and roll. I want to 'lectrify my soul. 'Cause everybody been making a shout, so big and loud. It's been drowning me out. I want to sing that rock and roll.
Ms. DAR WILLIAMS (Singer): The best thing probably to do is to sing with the radio on the way to the gig.
DAVID SCHULMAN: Does it matter what radio you listen to?
Ms. WILLIAMS: Pardon me?
SCHULMAN: Does it matter what kind of (unintelligible)?
Ms. WILLIAMS: Oh - well, I would say all these stations and stuff like that. I mean, something that - with familiar music that you could sing along with loudly.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. LAWRENCE BROWNLEE (Singer): I start with lip trills. We call it buzziness.
(Soundbite of noise)
Mr. BROWNLEE: Very simple. Not putting any stress on the voice at all. And from that I do…
(Soundbite of noise)
Mr. BROWNLEE: …I do a lot of I guess you should say sirens. Those are just…
(Soundbite of noise)
Mr. BROWNLEE: …just to wake up the entire voice from top to bottom.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. YO-YO MA (Cellist): The way that when you wake up in the morning, you kind of checking how your body is, you know, whether you feel tweaky.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. YO-YO MA: Or that you're in pain or whether do you feel stiff or not. The same thing with the instrument. When I make the first sound, I always want it to be a friendly sound.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. YO-YO MA: I want to make friends with the instrument and develop.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. YO-YO MA: So I'm there to attack it and say, go with top speed. You know, you're not gunning the motor; you're trying to just ease it in and feel the lay of the land, because you're about to enter into some kind of partnership.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: What it takes for a musician to get warmed up? We heard the words and sounds of old time singer Abigail Washburn; concert pianist Lang Lang; Brazilian jazz master Flora Purim; mezzo soprano Cecilia Bartoli; Tuvan rocker Albert Kuvezin; Singer/songwriters Gillian Welch and Dar Williams; Bel canto tenor Lawrence Brownlee; and cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
Our montage was produced by David Schulman. You can find the list on our Web site along with other stories from the series Musicians in their Own Words. It's at npr.org.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Iraq's parliament finally passed the long-awaited measure today to ease restrictions on members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. Washington has pushed Iraq Shiite-led government to pass a new de-Baathification law. It's hoped this will bring more Sunnis into the political process and ease sectarian tensions.
NPR's Anne Garrels has this report from Baghdad.
ANNE GARRELS: During his visit to the south of here in Bahrain, President Bush had immediate praise.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: It's an important step toward reconciliation. It's an important sign that the leaders of that country understand they must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people.
GARRELS: Haider al-Abadi, an aide to the Iraqi prime minister, said the new law provides balance, protecting the rights of victims while benefiting innocent members of the Baath Party.
Mr. HAIDER AL-ABADI (Iraqi Prime Minister's Aide): We're trying to legalize the whole process. Now, it is a proper Iraqi law, which was judiciary, which would oversee the whole process. So this is a major departure from the previous law. It is a success for Iraq and a success for the new Iraq.
GARRELS: The U.S. had promoted de-Baathification in the early days of the U.S. occupation, but later claimed the de-Baathification commission it helped form had gone way too far, often acting capriciously.
The new law still bans the most senior Baath Party members from government work. But senior Baathists will now be allowed to claim their pensions. Those who will benefit most are tens of thousands of midlevel Baathists who were fired.
The old law was ostensibly designed to give Iraq a fresh start by keeping members of the old regime's political party out of jobs where they could wield influence. But it also resulted in gutted ministries and helped fuel the Sunni insurgency.
Many of these former Baathists will get their jobs back.
An educator for three decades, Weedad al-Latiya was fired as a school principal because of her Baath Party rank.
Last year, she told NPR Iraq lost people of great experience even though they had not committed any crimes.
Ms. WEEDAD AL-LATIYA (Member, Baath Party): (Through translator) You know, it was mandatory to be Baathist if you were a teacher. Otherwise, you couldn't get a job.
GARRELS: For the past five years, despite repeated promises of a reprieve, she has received no pension.
Reached by phone today, Weedad was sitting on the dark because there was no electricity. At the news, she laughed with resignation, not with joy.
Ms. Al-LATIYA: (Speaking in foreign language)
GARRELS: She says she'll believe there are really changes when they're actually enforced and she sees her money.
Under the new law, Mohammed Ali Mohssen, a former Baathist and official in the transportation ministry, can return to government work but not in his former senior position.
Mr. MOHAMMED ALI MOHSSEN: (Speaking in foreign language)
GARRELS: Also reached by phone, he says he returned from exile hoping for more. And he, too, fears the government will not implement even the limited improvements.
The bill passed today was the product of long, hard wrangling. An early draft offered former Baathists immunity from prosecution after a three-month period. Shiite and Kurdish lawmakers protested that was too lenient.
Unidentified Man: (Spoken foreign language)
GARRELS: Some Sunni members of parliament like Mustafa al-Hiti say the final version is too severe, and in key places dangerously vague, opening the door for abuse.
This is just the first of many reform measures the U.S. has long pushed Baghdad to pass. But so far, a lack of consensus on key issues like power sharing with the regions has created a stalemate.
The next thing up in parliament is actually a debate on a new flag. Earlier efforts have failed. Kurdistan has pointedly refused to fly the old Saddam-era banner, underscoring the Kurds growing separation from the rest of Iraq.
A new design removes Baath Party insignia and instead of God is great, scrawled in Saddam's handwriting, it's now spelled out in standard script, and right in the middle is a yellow circle signifying Kurdistan.
That will be an interesting debate.
Anne Garrels, NPR News, Baghdad.
SEABROOK: See that proposed flag at npr.org.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
President Bush is in the tiny Gulf nation of Bahrain tonight. He'll visit the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet.
Earlier today, he had a chance to thank U.S. troops based in Kuwait. He also got an update on the war in Iraq from his commander, General David Petraeus and the ambassador to Baghdad Ryan Crocker.
NPR's Michele Kelemen is traveling with the president and filed this report.
MICHELE KELEMEN: President Bush says he thinks Iraq is a different place from a year ago. Violence is down and hope is returning. But as for hopes that U.S. troops can begin to draw down faster, Mr. Bush said that will depend on the conditions on the ground and on what General David Petraeus thinks he needs.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: My attitude is if he didn't want to continue the drawdown, that's fine with me, in order to make sure we succeed, see. I said to the general, if it's - if you want to slow her down, fine, it's up to you.
KELEMEN: When reporters pressed Petraeus about this, he would give no promises.
General DAVID PETRAEUS (Commander, Multi-National Force - Iraq, U.S. Army): We've begun to analyze the possible alternatives and to look at the possibility for reductions beyond the reduction of 15 brigades in July.
KELEMEN: But President Bush didn't get into that sort of detail when he spoke to several thousand troops gathered at the Arifjan military base south of Kuwait City.
Pres. BUSH: Hoo-ah(ph).
KELEMEN: The president thanked them for serving and said the U.S. is in an ideological struggle in the Middle East.
Pres. BUSH: It's hard work that you've done, but it's necessary work. It's hard to be away from your home. But that's a soldier's life.
(Soundbite of applause)
Pres. BUSH: And you get to e-mailing your family, you tell them I check in with you.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Pres. BUSH: And you're looking pretty good.
(Soundbite of applause)
KELEMEN: The crowd was not overly enthusiastic, though. Sergeant Jamie Serrano(ph), who's on his third tour doing logistical support for the Iraq war, says he was glad the president came to Camp Arifjan but he was hoping for something more.
Sergeant JAMIE SERRANO (U.S. Army): He just gave us thanks, which we appreciate. But as far foreseeing the future and - I thought - I expected more.
KELEMEN: A member of a National Guard unit from Tennessee, Specialist Outlaw(ph), didn't even really want to be there.
Specialist OUTLAW (U.S. Army): I'm kind of mad because I could have been sleeping right now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Spc. OUTLAW: Yeah. We've got voluntold to come here so, it's all right.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Spc. OUTLAW: Don't mess with Texas.
KELEMEN: It was also a chilly day today in Bahrain, but the president got a warm red carpet welcome there complete with the traditional dance by roadmen holding rifles and swords.
(Soundbite of music)
KELEMEN: When President Bush was given a sword, he held it over his head just as the dancers had done. President Bush said he is the first sitting U.S. president to visit here. And he told the king it's about time. Bahrain is a strategically located country and a host to the U.S. Naval Fifth Fleet, which the president plans to visit tomorrow.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Manama, Bahrain.
(Soundbite of music)
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
This week, Colombian guerrillas freed two women they had held in a jungle camp the better part of a decade. The women have since spoken out about the harsh conditions they were held in. And they voiced concern for the hundreds of hostages, including three Americans, who remain in captivity.
NPR's Juan Forero has this update from Bogota, Colombia.
JUAN FORERO: Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzales are enjoying their new found freedom since Venezuelan President Hugo Chaves brokered a deal with their captors, the FARC guerrilla organization. But it won't be soon before they forget the horrors of being held against their will for years on end, deep in Colombia's vast wilderness.
Gonzales, a former congresswoman, abducted in 2001, spoke of hearing how her husband died during her captivity. She knew about it because the daughter provided the news in a radio message taped in Bogota.
Ms. CONSUELO GONZALES: (Through translator) She said, mommy, I don't have good news. Daddy died last night of a heart attack. I imagine how you feel. You want to scream and cry.
FORERO: Rojas, a politician kidnapped in 2002, recalled how she and the guerrilla commander conceived a baby boy, and how she gave birth in a jungle camp. Months later, the boy, Emmanuel, was taken from her and later wound up in foster care while she remained a hostage.
Ms. CLARA ROJAS: (Through translator) I was only able to be with him for eight months. After that, I couldn't get any news.
FORERO: Living in the jungle meant rice and beans every day, unless the rebels were able to hunt wild game. It meant sleeping on hammocks or on the ground. It meant passing the time playing cards or scrounging up a magazine to pass the time. All there was, in fact, was time.
In a long interview with Colombia's Caracol Radio, Gonzales said that Colombian policemen and soldiers held by the rebels were chained, day and night - when they bathe, when they use the bathroom, when they marched. She said the hostages also lived with the possibility that the rebels would kill them, especially if an army attack came.
Ms. GONZALES: (Through translator) We were calmly notified by those in charge that in a rescue attempt, the order they had was to kill us.
President HUGO CHAVEZ (Venezuela): (Speaking in foreign language)
FORERO: In a speech, Venezuela's President Chavez said the FARC is an army and political actor, not a terrorist group as the United States and Europe say. He says the terrorist label should be dropped, and that would help in negotiations leading to the release of other hostages.
Pres. CHAVEZ: (Through translator) I ask that of the governments of this continent and the governments of the world.
FORERO: The Colombian government rejected Chavez's suggestion, saying that the FARC's actions have shown that the group is a terrorist organization. And Colombian officials pointed to Gonzales' words to Caracol. Gonzales says the guerrillas showed little concern for their hostages.
Ms. GONZALES: (Through translator) In some moments, some of them, perhaps a minority of those who take care of hostages feel bad about the conditions we live in. They try to cheer you up, saying calm down. At some moment, this will end. But that's the biggest gesture I can think of.
FORERO: For Gonzales, of course, the nightmare has ended, but she promises to work now for the release of those she left behind.
Juan Forero, NPR News, Bogota, Colombia.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Well, it's been a lousy week for the U.S. economy. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke joined many leading economists in saying he's very worried about economic growth. And there's been a grim flow of economic data, pointing increasingly towards that R-word. Congressional leaders and the president say they're poised to do something to avert a recession, but what?
We called up Timothy Taylor, the managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives for a little perspective.
Mr. TIMOTHY TAYLOR (Managing Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives): There are two big tools that the government always has to fight recession. One is fiscal policy. And fiscal policy just means cutting taxes or increasing spending. And the other big tool is monetary policy, which means cutting interest rates in effect. And so - then there's disputes about which of those tools and in what order would make the most sense.
SEABROOK: But that's the basic ingredients in the cake, huh?
Mr. TAYLOR: Well, those are the basic ingredients in government policy. I guess what I'd like to say sometimes is that the economy is what happens when 150 million people get up and go to work in the morning for hundreds of thousands of different employers. And that's a giant, you know, $13-trillion enterprise. So when the government does something like it has a tax cut or changes the interest rates, it affects the overall economy. But it would be mistaken to think that the government can sort of come along and steer us carefully out of every downturn and make everything smooth all the time. The economy is just too big an ocean liner for anybody to steer it with precision.
SEABROOK: And yet that ocean liner is headed off course in the middle of an intense presidential campaign. And so all of the candidates are touting what they would do if made captain of the ship.
NPR's Adam Davidson covers the economy, and is listening carefully to the economic platforms of the candidates. Adam joins us from New York.
Hello.
ADAM DAVIDSON: Hi, Andrea.
SEABROOK: Let's start with John Edwards. He's probably the candidate who's paid the most attention to economic distress. And let's listen to him from this debate here in January.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Democratic Presidential Candidate): What's at stake here is a fight for the future of the middle class, and we do have different perspectives on how we fight for the middle class, how we fight for jobs, how we fight for health care.
SEABROOK: So Adam, are there big differences between Edwards and the other Democrats as he says?
DAVIDSON: Rhetorically, they are radically different. When you actually get into the substance of their policies, the differences start to go away. All three of the leading Democratic presidential candidates hope that President Bush's big tax cuts that are due to end in 2010 will just go away. They don't want those tax cuts made permanent. All have various ways to increase taxes on wealthier people and to lower the tax burden on middle class and lower-income people. All have very large spending plans for health care.
I would say that Edwards probably has more aggressive tax cuts for the poor and middle class, has more aggressive tax increases for the wealthier people. But on spending - his spending plan seem to be even less than Hillary Clinton's or Barack Obama's.
SEABROOK: Now, yesterday, Hillary Clinton made a proposal that she says will stimulate the economy. Let's listen to her for a moment.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Democratic Presidential Candidate): I want to get back to where we see millions of new good jobs created in America. I know we can do that. But I don't think we can wait until January 20th of next year. Too many people will be hurt. Too many jobs will be lost. Too many homes will be foreclosed on.
SEABROOK: Adam, what is she proposing?
DAVIDSON: Well, she has a big spending proposal. We're talking about 25 billion that would go to help poor people pay for their energy bills. There's more than $30 billion to help people pay for their mortgages, who might otherwise go into default. We're talking about a huge spending plan.
SEABROOK: So we've talked about Edwards. We talked about Hillary Clinton. What about Barack Obama?
DAVIDSON: Obama has not released his fiscal stimulus package yet. But in the specifics that he has released, when it comes to taxes, when it comes to spending, it's pretty standard stuff. Probably, Obama's unique idea is this idea that senior citizens will pay no taxes at all if they make less than $50,000 a year. Now, that's obviously an idea that's going to be extremely popular among seniors who make less than $50,000. But the people I talked to, the policy wonks told me this is not a fiscally prudent policy. It will be very hard to afford it.
SEABROOK: Adam, let's go now to the Republicans. Here's an ad from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
(Soundbite of campaign ad)
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Republican Presidential Candidate): Let's have a president that will look at spending and set up systems of accountability where we measure how affective is the spending. We need accountability in the spending of our money, so that people will have confidence in government again.
SEABROOK: Now, Giuliani here is clearly defining himself as the most fiscally responsible candidate. Is he?
DAVIDSON: This is the really interesting battle among the Republicans on economic issues. Giuliani and Thompson and Mitt Romney and McCain are battling for this idea that they are the standard bearer of the Ronald Reagan-fiscally-conservative-small-government vision. When you look at Giuliani's specifics, he's very aggressive on cutting corporate income taxes, on cutting capital gains taxes that - those are obviously taxes that benefit wealthier Americans. He is quite unspecific when it comes to what spending he will cut. He simply says he's going to look through the federal budget and cut everything that shouldn't be there.
Mitt Romney is pretty similar. He wants to lower the corporate tax rate. He also wants to eliminate the tax on capital gains and dividends for taxpayers who make less than $200,000 a year. Not a lot of specifics on the spending he'll cut.
McCain is actually kind of the flipside of this. McCain is very specific on the spending he'll cut. He's the only candidate willing to take on what many see as one of the biggest boondoggles that Congress involves itself in, which is the farm subsidies. But he doesn't get too excited about tax cuts. McCain voted against President Bush's tax cuts, although he's become a convert and now says he wants to extend them past 2010.
I talked to a lot of fiscal conservatives this week, sort of saying who excites you. And the truth is none of these guys are exciting them. They all have real problems. The only guy who has, on the Republican side, who has some radical new ideas is, I would say, Mike Huckabee. His ideas really are out there.
SEABROOK: Let's listen to Huckabee.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Republican Presidential Candidate): Dr. Martin Luther King gave a magnificent speech in which he spoke of having a dream. Ladies and gentlemen, I, too, have a dream. I have a dream that one day as president of the United States, I would be able to put a going-out-of-business sign on the front door of the Internal Revenue Service.
(Soundbite of cheering crowd)
SEABROOK: He wants to close the IRS. That's pretty radical, huh?
DAVIDSON: Yeah. This is an idea that probably gained most of its popularity through conservative talk radio. There's been a whole bunch of talk radio hosts who have been promoting this idea. They call it a fare tax. Huckabee calls it a fair tax.
SEABROOK: This is the idea of putting a flat sales tax, right?
DAVIDSON: Exactly. Economists would call it a consumption tax; and you get to keep the money you make and you get to earn interest on it tax-free. But as soon as you spend it on anything that's when you pay your tax. You - when you…
SEABROOK: Twenty, 25, 30 percent.
DAVIDSON: Or some economists argue it has to go up to 40 or 50 or 60 percent. And that's the real problem with it. Anytime sales taxes go up, above, say, 10 percent you see a big black market, and that causes all sorts of problems. So Huckabee's idea has not gained a lot of traction among serious policy people I talked to. But you do have to give Huckabee credit. Of the leading candidates, he's the one guy who's come up with something that radically changes the debate.
SEABROOK: NPR's Adam Davidson.
Thanks very much, Adam.
DAVIDSON: Thank you, Andrea.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Speaking of messy things all in a tangle, let's talk for a moment about Christmas lights, the garden hose, that gold necklace. No matter how carefully you put these things away, when you take them out again they're hopelessly knotted up. So this week on Science Out of the Box, we investigate the hows and whys of knots.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Douglas Smith is a psychics professor at the University of California in San Diego, and he's just published a paper on this thorny, or should I say, knotty problem.
Hi there, Douglas Smith.
Professor DOUGLAS SMITH (Physics, University of California, San Diego): Hi.
SEABROOK: So why does my jewelry knot itself up whenever I put it away?
Prof. SMITH: Well, you might call it a kind of an example of Murphy's Law. But we, you know, we have done kind of specific scientific studies to try to answer this question. We got interested in this because - actually one of my students was interested in mathematical field of knot theory. So mathematicians have kind of been thinking about knots for a very long time, for over a hundred years, but it kind of occurred to us that, you know, knots in the real world and the physics of how knots actually come to form - so annoyingly often, you know, in life - hadn't really been well studied.
SEABROOK: So what did you find?
Prof. SMITH: Well, we basically did experiments, and we found that just a little bit of kind of random jostling motion would very quickly tend to get a piece of string knotted. And - then, there are also many, many different kinds of knots that can form increasingly complex. We put a length of string in a box and we kind of spun the box the way the drum of your clothes dryer would spin and tumble your socks. We tumbled a piece of string and we kind of watched it and asked how long does it take to become knotted, how does that depend on, you know, how many times you rotate the box and the length of the string and the flexibility of the string and this. So we did - we tried to very carefully control the experiment to understand the phenomena.
SEABROOK: And you're not just playing around here with knots? These are not - this is not sort of a Boy Scout endeavor. You're actually trying to understand, as I gather, something about more organic things - DNA, proteins.
Prof. SMITH: Well, that's right. On the one hand, you can think of it as a kind of a fun, little physics project that a sort of nerdy physicist would like to do that's how…
SEABROOK: Nerdy physicist. No.
Prof. SMITH: Oh, yes. That's - you know, we definitely are. But on the other hand, there are real life situations where you have this. And so, one of the things that we were interested in is the tendency of DNA molecules, which are essentially also strings, just very tiny strings inside your body to get tangled and knotted and sometimes that has serious consequences, like when a cell copies its DNA and is going to try to divide into two cells. If the two copies of the DNA get themselves tangled or knotted, then those two sells can't divide.
And we could try to jump to studying DNA but it's difficult. So we thought to ourselves, well, there's nobody really even understands how a common piece of string ends up getting in a knot, we better try to understand that first and then move on, you know, potentially later to look at DNA.
SEABROOK: Not so really a basic human problem. They're really kind of universal.
Prof. SMITH: People seem to have fascination with them, believe it or not.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: Douglas Smith is an assistant professor of physics at the University of California in San Diego. He and his student, Dorian Raymer, published this paper called "Spontaneous Knotting of an Agitated String."
Thanks so much for talking with us.
Prof. SMITH: Thank you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
2007 was a bad year for sports, at least ethically. Cheating football coaches, and doped-up baseball players and sprinters got more publicity than the games themselves. And through it all, maybe the sport brimming with the most controversy was tennis. Don't let those little white outfits fool you there -no angels. Three top Italian players were suspended by their country's federation for involvement in a betting scandal.
Nikolai Davydenko, a Russian who's one of the world's top-ranked players, stands accused of throwing a match. With the Australian Open about to begin the grand slam season tomorrow, it seemed a good time to find out what's going on with all of this gambling in tennis.
I spoke with Jon Wertheim. He writes for Sports Illustrated and SI.com, and I asked him to take us back to the alleged Davydenko match-throwing incident.
Mr. JON WERTHEIM (Writer, Sports Illustrated; SI.com): There was a match played (unintelligible) tournament between Nikolai Davydenko and an opponent who wasn't even, you know, on the top 50. Davydenko actually won the first set and after that, bets against him, went through the roof 10, 20 times more than normally would be bet, and then he ended up losing the match, with an injury - very, very suspicious. He wished - try to point out his vigorously proclaimed his innocence, but it sure - you know, something smells around.
SEABROOK: Davydenko is the number four tennis player in the world in men's, what would he stand to gain by throwing a match?
Mr. WERTHEIM: Well, that's a good question that a lot of people have asked. I mean, you know, money is the short answer. We also don't know. Perhaps he was under duress. And, you know, it's one of these things where tennis is so strange this way. Davydenko is one of these guys that play probably twice as much as other top players, and a lot of these results don't count under this Byzantine ranking system.
So in theory, he could play this match and lose it and it wouldn't count against his ranking. So part of the problem with all this, I think, is Internet wagering, but also tennis sort of almost begs for scandal like this, the way the rankings are set up.
SEABROOK: You know what makes this story interesting is that tennis isn't the kind of sport that you sort of associate with gambling or the mob or unsavory elements. But John McEnroe himself says there might be a mob influence in the sport.
Mr. WERTHEIM: You know who - I think that's a pretty cavalier speculation. But, you know, I think something else is going on. If you look at the nature of tennis, I mean, Roger Federer is the best player ever, will make dozens and dozens of mistakes every match. So it's very hard to discern what's - you know, who's throwing and who's simply making errors which are, you know, an organic part of tennis. So I think there are a lot of factors here that sort of make tennis unfortunately pretty ripe for this kind of scandal.
SEABROOK: Jon Wertheim, give us a quick preview of the Australian Open. The two singles champions last year were Roger Federer in men's, and Serena Williams in women's. But this year, Federer's been battling a stomach ailment and Serena has fallen to number seven in the world tennis rankings, when she used to be number one. What are their chances this year?
Mr. WERTHEIM: We'll, unless Federer's stomach ailment becomes stomach removal, I think he's still the overwhelming favorite. He's just essentially playing a different sport than the rest of the field. And Serena Williams had this tremendous comeback last year, winning the title but did very little the rest of the year. Meanwhile, Belgium's Justine Henin, who sort of like Federer - this artistic flashy European player. She comes in with 28 match win streak. I think she's probably the overwhelming favorite, although, you know, if it's Serena's fitness and body is up to it, it's always fun to see her at her best.
SEABROOK: I understand that the Ausies have rolled out a new kind of playing surface, not clay, not grass but plexi cushion.
Mr. WERTHEIM: Yeah. Their complaints with this new surface are that it might change the speed. Right now, all we know is it's a different color.
SEABROOK: It's blue, not green.
Mr. WERTHEIM: Yeah, exactly. We have a blue court. So it will be better on television so long it doesn't change the speed. So long that it stays where the aggressive players can aggress and the defensive players can counterpunch. I don't think there'll have much material impact on the tournament.
SEABROOK: The Australian Open begins tomorrow.
Jon Wertheim writes about tennis for Sports Illustrated and SI.com.
Thanks very much.
Mr. WERTHEIM: My pleasure.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
The Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina is two weeks from today. African-Americans will play a bigger role there as in any of the contest so far. And this weekend, the Clinton campaign is having to clear the air on the matter of race.
Senator Hillary Clinton surprised some people with her remark this week, quote, "I would point to the fact that Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964." She went on to say, "That dream became a reality because we had a president who said we are going to do it and actually got it accomplished," end quote.
Then, former President Bill Clinton spoke out on Barack Obama's stance in the Iraq war, saying, this is the biggest fairy tale I've ever seen. Obama campaign spokeswoman Candice Tolliver told Politico.com, quote, "a cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements."
House Major Whip James Clyburn, an African-American from South Carolina told the New York Times that politicians should be sensitive about the words they use. And Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, also black, called the former president's words unfortunate. Yesterday, Bill Clinton went on the radio show of civil rights activist Al Sharpton and stressed his respect for Senator Obama and his campaign.
Now, the Republicans' presidential primary in South Carolina is just one week from today. Some 420,000 veterans live there and it's a constituency all of the candidates are reaching out to. For Arizona Senator John McCain, winning over veterans is key to his hopes of winning the state.
NPR's Brian Naylor reports from Charleston.
BRIAN NAYLOR: At the VFW Post 3433 in Ladson, South Carolina, just north of Charleston, Sam Waters(ph) sits a the bar, working on a Coors Light. It's midday, but it's hard to tell in the dim, smoky room. Waters served in the Marines and the Air Force 26 years in all. He says he votes in every election, otherwise, he can't complain. Next Saturday, he'll be voting for John McCain.
Mr. SAM WATERS (War Veteran): The reason is simple. He paid the price. He's been there, done that.
NAYLOR: Walters said he met McCain once at a campaign stop when the subject of McCain's being held prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese came up.
Mr. WATERS: He's talking a bunch of guys back there. Some sailor back in the banks. So I was down south while he was up north. He's said why didn't you come and get me? Well, I was on the Son Tay prison raid at North Vietnam and (unintelligible) corner so we try to come and get you. And he talks very well.
NAYLOR: While McCain can count on Sam Waters' vote, eight years ago, another Vietnam veteran may have grievously wounded McCain's 2000 campaign in the state. Jay Thomas Birch(ph), chairman of the National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Committee, declared during a rally for George Bush that McCain had come home and, quote, "forgot us."
While McCain's record on veterans' issues was defended by a bipartisan group of Senate war veterans, the incident, along with the whisper campaign against McCain helped win the state for Bush. This time around, there have been no such dirty tricks - at least not yet. And McCain, who spoke at the Citadel Military College here Wednesday night, is confident his military experience will be a net plus.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Republican Presidential Candidate): Well, I think it's certainly is helpful with a lot of South Carolinians who's had military tradition in the state. They have the Citadel. They have a very large National Guard and Reserve presence, and a lot of retirees from the military as well as the military bases. So it's helpful, but it's…
NAYLOR: To be sure, all of the Republican candidates for president are wooing veterans. Here's former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee during the GOP presidential forum last fall.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Republican Presidential Candidate): And if I were president, I'd like to see us have a very plainly written, simple-to-understand veterans' bill of rights that would make sure that every single thing that these veterans have been promised is delivered. And it's delivered as the first fruits of the federal Treasury, before anyone else gets their nose in the trough. The veterans get their benefits paid, not on the basis of a limited budget, but on the basis of making sure that we keep promises to the people who have kept us free.
NAYLOR: Back at the VFW, such claims are taken with a grain of salt. Jake Mans(ph), an 83-year-old veteran of World War II has heard it all before.
Mr. JAKE MANS (World War II Veteran): Oh, yeah, a bunch…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MANS: …and stupid. It's a bunch of them that say, oh, we go give veterans everything, you know? Go protect veterans and that sort of thing, but that's a bunch of B.S. as far I'm concerned.
NAYLOR: You sound skeptical.
Mr. MANS: Well, yeah, (unintelligible). Yeah. I guess I am.
NAYLOR: Mans, by the way, says he is voting for Ron Paul, a Vietnam-era Air Force vet.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, Charleston, South Carolina.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Last week, we asked listeners to tell us stories about their own elections. This one came in from our backyard.
Ms. TONI WARD(ph): Hi, I'm Toni Ward. I lived in Kensington, Maryland. And my first election came about as a result of the Second World War starting.
SEABROOK: It was 1941 and Toni Ward was in the first grade, 6 years old. Her father had struggled through the Depression but finally found a steady job. The family had just moved to Maryland that November.
Ms. WARD: I have a vivid memory of December 7th because my brother and I were sitting on the stairs and suddenly there was crying. The radio was going and everybody gathered around the radio and we understood that a war had started.
SEABROOK: The next day at school, there was a lot of talk about what that meant. And then, Toni Word was elected by her peers and her first grade teacher to hold office.
Ms. WARD: My first election was as chair of the war bond drive at Glenmont Elementary School in Wheaton, Maryland.
SEABROOK: She remembers carefully collecting the pennies that most children brought in. The coins purchase stamps and the stamps accumulated until the children had enough to trade in for a war bond.
Ms. WARD: Oh, I felt so responsible. And I think I probably made lists of names and how much money and went over and over just like I was a bookkeeper. It was really a big thing in my life. I think I thought about it a lot when I wasn't at school.
SEABROOK: Toni Ward now works in a school. She teaches special education -still in Maryland. But back then, shortly after heading up the war bond drive, her family had to move again. She was thrust into a new school and a new state. But she brought with her a sense of confidence from that first experience holding office.
For next week's Homework assignment, I want you to tell me about the character you find most memorable. It can be someone from a novel you've read or a favorite film. Tell me all about it and why. Write us. The address is homework@npr.org. Or you can call the Homework hotline: 202-408-5183.
You'll never know when we're going to play your message from the Homework hotline. And we could not resist playing you one more submission from our election assignment. It's the campaign jingle from listener Martha Carats(ph) of Indianapolis, Indiana. In a bid to be class secretary, here's how she once courted the vote of her fellow seventh graders.
Ms. MARTHA CARATS: (Singing) I'm going to sit right down and write you all a letter and ask you all to vote for me. I'm going to write words oh, so sweet, so efficient and so neat. All the eyes, I'll get them. On the line, I'll sign them. I'm going to sit right down and write you all a letter. So all you folks can plainly see that I am the one who writes the better letter and I should be your secretary.
I lost the election.
SEABROOK: Thank you, Martha Carats for bravely leaving this message on our Homework hotline.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Over the years, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED has had many memorable guests. For my colleague Jacki Lyden, perhaps no more so than one Irish poet, philosopher and writer John O'Donohue. He died suddenly on January 3rd in France. Jacki shares this remembrance.
JACKI LYDEN: It's a privilege to host an NPR show. To find that person who has a music in him or her that a listener might find an indelible voice, a transforming presence.
John O'Donohue, a native Irish speaker and former priest, had such a voice. We didn't know him when his book came, as many do across our transom in March of 1999. It was called "Eternal Echoes." A friend of mine said I might like it. I did. I very much did.
He was writing about the places my own ancestors hailed from - Connemara, the shelf of Ireland, the western edge of limestone ridges, bog and the black estuaries of the Atlantic Ocean.
In this poem, John describes it at sunset.
Mr. JOHN O'DONOHUE (Irish Poet, Philosopher, Writer): In an instant, the whole place flares in a glaze of pools, as if a kind sun let a red nest sink through the bog, reach down to a forgotten infancy of granite and dredge up a hall of colors that play and sparkle through the smother of bog - pinks, yellow, amber and orange.
LYDEN: I was fortunate to meet John later that year in Ireland. And he became a friend, a life friend for always, the sort who finishes your sentences, that John O'Donohue's sentences came in sunburst and rainfalls of speech He was a poet, a scholar, a speaker with an international following, a massive man with a massive rambunctious spirit. And he had recently fallen in love with the woman he planned to spend the rest of his life with.
John was a former priest and author of books that provided sustenance for many souls hungering for connection in our shallow, narcissistic culture - a world full of what he called the religion of rush.
Again, he spoke about it in our first interview.
Mr. O'DONOHUE: Well, my read on it is that in postmodern culture, that we are now in the middle of a huge crisis of belonging, that all the traditional shelters have really fallen or semi-collapsed. For instance, religion and the Western religions in particular, the great traditions have fallen more and more into the hands and custodianship of frightened functionaries. People who are exquisite masters of the gateways know who should be let in and who shouldn't be let in, but they know little of the treasure that lies buried further in. And a great tradition has great treasure. And it's a pity that the image of the great religious tradition is so reductionist and so negative.
LYDEN: And while the books became frequent and the crowds that came to hear him ever larger, this was a man who could find quiet.
One of my favorite O'Donohue poems was one of the first he published. It's about bereavement, and it is called "Beannacht," which in Irish means passage. He wrote it for his mother, Josie(ph), on the occasion of his father's death.
Mr. O'DONOHUE: On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you.
And when your eyes freeze behind the grey window and the ghost of loss gets in to you, may a flock of colors, indigo, red, green and azure blue come to awaken in you a meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays in the currach of thought and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours, may the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life.
LYDEN: John O'Donohue was buried today in Fanore, County Clare, Ireland. He was 53 and I'm happy to say, my dear, my cherished friend.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: NPR's Jacki Lyden with that remembrance.
Our parting words this evening came from John O'Donohue. It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Mr. MUHAMMAD YUNUS (Nobel Peace Prize Winner; Banker; Economist): Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
With those words, the Nobel Committee awarded the 2006 Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus. His ideas on microlending had changed lives in his native country Bangladesh and beyond.
Now, Muhammad Yunus has written about his next big idea in a new book called "Creating a World without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism." Muhammad Yunus joins me now.
Thank you very much for coming in to our studio.
Mr. YUNUS: Well, thank you very much for inviting me.
SEABROOK: We know you for your work on microfinance. You share the Nobel Peace Prize with the Grameen bank. What is this next idea of yours? What is a social business?
Mr. YUNUS: If you'll look at the business world, you always imagine people being some kind of a money-making machine - all they do in the world of business is make money for themselves. Well, the human being to me is much bigger than that. Human being is also a caring human being, sharing human being who wants to make a difference in the world. That thing is not considered within the framework of economic theory of business. So I'm saying this is something missing and it created a lot of problems for us in the society. So I want to put it back, have the whole human being included into the economic theory.
So I am saying there should be at least two kinds of businesses: business as usual to make money and the business to do good without any personal benefit out of it, and I'm calling it the social business. Social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company with a social objective.
SEABROOK: How is it different from a non-profit organization which does make money but just plows it back into business?
Mr. YUNUS: Non-profit by definition is a charity organization. In a non-profit, you can give your money, and you can't take it back. So I'm talking about a business where I own it. It's my business and I'm the investor. But I don't want to take any profit out of it. And so the bottom line in social business is how much impact I have made on the society by doing that, not how much money I made because I've decided the money I'll make is zero. I can take back my investment money. If I put a million dollar into my business, I can gradually take my million dollar back - not any more.
SEABROOK: It sounds like it requires the investors to value those social goals as much as or more than making a profit. What makes you think that that's as much of an incentive for investors as making a profit on their money?
Mr. YUNUS: We do it all the time but we don't notice it. When you are in politics, you dedicate yourself. In religion, you do it all the time. You want to do good. You want to do so many good to other things, and nobody questions that. But why suddenly economics is different? It's not different.
SEABROOK: Let's talk about your experiment with the yogurt company known globally as Danone, but here in the United Sates Dannon.
Mr. YUNUS: Yes.
SEABROOK: Tell me about this experiment with Grameen and Danone.
Mr. YUNUS: We tried to create a social business. With a chance meeting, I had a discussion with the chairman of Danone and I proposed to him, why don't we create a Grameen-Danone Company in Bangladesh which will produce yogurt. But this will be a very special kind of yogurt. There are millions of children who are malnourished in Bangladesh, so we take the missing micronutrients in these children and put it into the yogurt and let the children eat those yogurts and Danone agrees right away.
SEABROOK: One of the adjustments you've made to the business side is that Danone is now paying a dividend on the investment that investors have put into Grameen-Danone. That is completely counter to your original idea of social business.
Mr. YUNUS: A shareholder can say why are you using our money into your project which doesn't produce any dividend for us? So they went ahead and circulated this resolution. Then, whenever the Danone Company gives you a dividend, would you care to put a little money into a tiny little fund here where you'll promise that you are not interested in getting dividend.
SEABROOK: I see. Another social business that you have worked to set up is Grameen Telecom. This is the joint venture between Grameen bank...
Mr. YUNUS: Telenorth.
SEABROOK: ...and Telenorth, the Norwegian phone company. It seems like there's been a hitch.
Mr. YUNUS: Yeah.
SEABROOK: Tell me about what's happened with Telenorth.
Mr. YUNUS: We had a joint venture with Telenorth and a company that we created called Grameen Telecom, to create a cell phone called Grameen phone. So at that point when we're making the joint venture agreement, we put a clause that after the company is born and operation has started, after six years Telenorth will sell the shares to Grameen Telecom so that Grameen Telecom become the majority shareholders of Grameen phone.
So we talk this very safely, very nicely done. But our intention was Grameen phone will ultimately become a social business, meaning that majority shareholders will be the poor women in Bangladesh like Grameen borrowers.
SEABROOK: What happened?
Mr. YUNUS: After the six years were gone, when we asked Telenorth to sell the shares, they said no we are not going to sell the share. In the meantime Grameen phone become a big company and they're making lots of profit...
SEABROOK: Hundred of millions of dollars.
Mr. YUNUS: That's right. And they became very interested in keeping it.
SEABROOK: It seems like here, again, it comes down to once the company was making profits the shareholders' interests rule the day.
Mr. YUNUS: It's not that - it's a mechanism by which shareholders' opinions have reflected in the company policy. That's we're at fault. Shareholders are not doing that. They don't want to hang onto something which is supposed to go to the poor people. They feel embarrassed about that. But somehow the company doesn't feel that way. The company feels that we have to show our result. This is something that we want to maintain.
SEABROOK: Well - my larger question - the bigger picture seems to be it's a beautiful idea, this idea of social business. The Grameen-Danone and in the Grameen Telecom case - they've been both been very much affected by traditional capitalist market forces…
Mr. YUNUS: Sure, absolutely.
SEABROOK: …meaning the investors - the shareholders in the end.
Mr. YUNUS: Absolutely, because we live in the world where all these rules and procedures made for one type of company. Once you said that this is a good idea then all the rules will come in this direction. The new legal framework will develop.
SEABROOK: I wonder if you think profit-motive business in specifically China, Taiwan, these places, haven't they done as much or more as your groups for the cause of poverty?
Mr. YUNUS: These are not separate issues. Micro-credit doesn't say you stop the economy, we'll take care of everything else, no. If you didn't have the people at the bottom hitched into the economy they will be staying where they are. So the gap between the people who are moving at a high speed and the people who are at the zero speed will be widened. So micro-credit brings in that kind of hitching mechanism.
SEABROOK: Muhammad Yunus, I want to read something from your book. It says, perhaps to some, the idea of social business sounds purely fanciful - a fantasy of a world that can never be. But why? Who has given the ultimate verdict that people are motivated only by money; that the desire to do great things for the world can't be just as powerful a driving force than human behavior?
Do you have any indication that this dream of a social business could actually be a reality in our markets?
Mr. YUNUS: I know for sure it will be the reality because the urge is very strong among people. They want to do things for other people who want to feel that they are significant; they made a contribution in the world. So as long as that urge will be in the persons, this will be happening because today I cannot express that urge into business world. I have to take that urge either to politics, or to charity, or to something else. So, I said, this is a kind of a shortcoming, a lapse in our theoretical framework. So I'm just trying to correct by bringing this piece into the picture and making it closer to the reality than what it was been.
SEABROOK: Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner. His new book is called "Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism."
Sir, thank you very much.
Mr. YUNUS: Thank you.
SEABROOK: And there's an excerpt from Muhammad Yunus' book about a surprising meeting he had with a multinational company at npr.org/books.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
People whose hearts are failing have a couple of options. They can get a mechanical device, but artificial hearts don't last forever. They can get a heart transplant, if someone donates an organ in time. Now, someday doctors may be able to offer something else - a real heart grown in a lab. It sounds like science fiction, but one group in Minnesota has figured out a way to grow a heart and make it beat.
NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce has the story.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE: It's no big deal to grow heart cells in a little dish. But take a second and picture your heart beating away in your chest. It's a round meaty muscle the size of your fist with four chambers and a complicated network of blood vessels.
Dr. DORIS TAYLOR (Director of the Center for Cardiovascular Repair, University of Minnesota): The heart is a beautiful, complex organ. And we realized pretty quickly that we weren't going to be able to figure out how to build that in a dish.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Doris Taylor runs a lab at the University of Minnesota. She says when nature builds a heart, the cells attach to a kind of scaffold or frame made of things like proteins.
Dr. TAYLOR: It's basically what's underneath all of the cells, the tough part that the cells make to hold each other together.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Taylor and her colleagues thought, okay, what if we took a dead heart and found some way to remove all of the old cell, leaving the scaffold behind? They could then use the scaffold to construct a new heart out of young healthy cells.
Harold Ott worked in Taylor's lab, and he took this on as kind of side project, something to fiddle with. He started treating rat hearts with a bunch of chemicals.
Dr. HAROLD OTT (Massachusetts General Hospital): We had a big chemical shelf in the lab, from A to Z, right? So I started using all sorts of chemicals starting at A and every day perfused a rat heart with some sort of solution.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He tried enzymes - they dissolved the heart. Other chemicals made the heart swell and change shape. Then, one day, Ott grabbed a chemical known as SDS.
Dr. OTT: It's a regular component of shampoo. It's a soap.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: At first, it seemed like nothing was happening. Then, patches on the heart began to turn white. The red part, the meaty part, was disappearing.
Dr. OTT: You can see the detergent working and making the heart literally translucent. So it turns into a jellyfish sort of appearance. Really, I mean, when you ever saw a jellyfish on the beach, that's exactly how it looks like.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Except this jellyfish was shaped just like a heart. All of the organ's 3-D structure was still there. Then Ott and his colleagues took heart cells from newborn rats and put them onto the scaffold. The cells stuck, started to grow, and the heart became red again. But it didn't beat until the researchers added a tiny pacemaker. Then the heart began to rhythmically wiggle. After several days, it kept beating even without the pacemaker. Taylor says it was an amazing thing to see.
Dr. TAYLOR: Our reaction was, yes. It was the best we could possibly hope for.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The heartbeat wasn't that strong, just 2 percent of the pumping action of an adult heart. Still, Taylor thinks they can improve on this work, reported in the journal Nature Medicine. And she's started working with pig hearts, which are about the size of human ones.
Dr. TAYLOR: One possibility is that we could take a pig heart scaffold and then use your cells to repopulate that.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: And since cells are always slowly replacing their scaffold, eventually the heart would be entirely yours.
Taylor says this approach could also work for other organs. Her group has shown that they can get a similar kind of scaffold from the liver, lungs and kidneys.
William Wagner thinks the idea has potential. He's a scientist at the University of Pittsburgh who studies ways of trying to restore heart function.
Dr. WILLIAM WAGNER (Scientist, University of Pittsburgh): This approach does address some of the major challenges that one faces in thinking about how to generate a functional heart that really has the structure and function of the native heart.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Still, he says, this is just a first step. There's lots of work to do before people could get organs grown in a lab. For example, you'd have to find a human cell that's very good at growing into new heart tissue. That's something that lots of scientists are looking for.
Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
SEABROOK: Watch scientists make a beating heart. The video is at npr.org.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Today, President Bush addressed the people of the Middle East.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: Throughout the sweep of history, the lands that the Arab people called home had played a pivotal role in world affairs.
SEABROOK: The president gave his keynote speech on a swing through the region during a stop in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates. It was there, he launched a new verbal attack on nearby Iran.
NPR's Michele Kelemen has been following the president.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Mr. Bush came out strong on Iran, calling it the world's leading state sponsor of terror, and accusing Tehran of sending hundreds of millions of dollars to extremists around the world.
Pres. BUSH: Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. So the United States is strengthening our long-standing security commitments with our friends in the Gulf and rallying friends around the world to confront this danger before it is too late.
KELEMEN: Gulf states are worried about a rising Iran, but Tehran is also an important business partner in much of this region, making sanctions a tough sell.
But that was not the only message the president had for the VIPs of Abu Dhabi. The president also came out to talk to them about democracy, and he described the United Arab Emirates — an oil-rich nation highly dependent on foreign labor — as a model Muslim state that is tolerant toward people of other faiths.
Pres. BUSH: You have succeeded in building a prosperous society out of the desert. You have opened your doors to the world economy. You have encouraged women to contribute to the development of your nation, and they have occupied some of your highest ministerial posts.
KELEMEN: The women in the room — dressed in black abayas, some with beautifully embroidered details to show some individuality — sat mainly in clusters, though mixed in with the men wearing traditional white robes. This was the Abu Dhabi elite. And though few wanted to say anything about the president afterwards, one man did give a so-so sign when asked about the speech.
There was little new in it, and it came from a lame-duck U.S. president, though Bush seemed to be trying to write his own legacy when he talked about how the United States helped rebuild Japan after World War II.
Pres. BUSH: And just as our commitment to Asia helped people there secure their freedom and prosperity, our commitment to the Middle East will help you achieve yours.
KELEMEN: Prosperity is a good word for this city on the Gulf. The president was speaking in a gilded auditorium in the Emirates Palace, a hotel which is said to have cost more than $3 billion to build. Abu Dhabi's crown prince also showed him around his weekend desert encampment, where they dined together and the prince showed off his hunting falcons.
Oh, and there was one more sign of wealth around here. On arrival, Mr. Bush was given a large encrusted necklace with hundreds of rubies, emeralds and diamonds and a medallion with a hand-painted enamel American flag. A reporter with him said the Secret Service called it the biggest bling they've ever seen.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Abu Dhabi.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
We were interested in how President Bush's visit to the Gulf states is playing out in the Arab media. So we turned to Shibley Telhami. He's the Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development at the University of Maryland.
Thanks for joining us.
Professor SHIBLEY TELHAMI (Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development, University of Maryland; Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): My pleasure.
SEABROOK: At the end of President Bush's speech, he directly addressed Palestinians, Israelis, Iraqis and Iranians in turn. And I wonder, how common is it for people living in the region to hear the entirety of Mr. Bush's speech versus just soundbites in the media?
Prof. TELHAMI: Actually, very common. In fact, really, since 9/11, even stations in the region that had been criticized for being not friendly to the U.S. had given the American voice a big airing. I mean, speeches, news conferences, important statements on the Middle East, throughout the Iraq war, pertaining to the Arab-Israeli issue, were covered. There is no shortage of hearing the American voice in the Middle East.
The problem is not that people don't hear it. They hear it. The problem is they don't trust it. They assess it in relation to their reality, and the reality is so substantially different as they see it from what they hear, that they've become more dismissive. And very often, in fact, those statements that they hear reinforce the biases.
SEABROOK: President Bush reiterated that he believes Iran to be the world's leading state sponsor of terror. In contrast, he praised the United Arab Emirates as a model Muslim state and spoke of rallying friends around the world to confront the danger of Iran before it is, quote, "too late." How does it play in the Arab media when President Bush publicly enlists Muslim states like this in a sort of us-against-them scenario?
Prof. TELHAMI: Well, first of all, you have to put that in some perspective. He is making the statement from the United Arab Emirates - a statement he made today, on Sunday. And the United Arab Emirates is popular in the Arab world as kind of a model of progress, not just because of Dubai, but because they're seen to have a little bit more freedom and economic development. So in some ways, the choice of the UAE is a good one. The problem for the president is that the Arab public, again, is much more dismissive of even the highlighting of the Iranian threat.
In polls that I conducted last year, when you ask Arabs: Name the two countries that pose the biggest threat to you, personally. The United States and Israel are on the list of nearly 80 percent of the public. Iran is only on the list of 10 percent. So most of the public sees the United States of America and the American presence is more threatening to them than Iran. So it's very hard if you're the president of the United States who, by the way, is also the most unpopular leader in the Arab world, according to the polls - even less popular than the prime minister of Israel. If you are making that statement and you are telling them Iran is a threat, how credible is that?
In many ways, when I read the president's words in the United Arab Emirates, I would have to believe that much of this is intended to address our own public -to project that the Gulf is on our side of this issue and to make a case for our public rather than for the Arab public.
SEABROOK: Shibley Telhami. He's a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, specializing in American foreign policy and Middle East studies.
Thanks very much for speaking with us.
Prof. TELHAMI: My pleasure.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Senator Hillary Clinton charged today that Senator Barack Obama's campaign had injected racial tension into their contest for the Democratic Party nomination.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): This is, you know, an unfortunate storyline that the Obama campaign has pushed very successfully. They've been putting out talking points; they've been making this. They've been telling people in a very selective way what the facts are. And I'm glad to have the opportunity to set the facts straight.
SEABROOK: Senator Clinton spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press." She was responding to questions about remarks she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, had made - remarks that prompted concern among some prominent African-Americans.
NPR senior correspondent Juan Williams joins me now to catch us up on all this.
And Juan, remind us how this dispute between the Clinton and Obama camp started.
JUAN WILLIAMS: The background is very interesting, Andrea. And I think lots of people hadn't been paying attention, maybe even thought that this was some kind of small issue that was just off to the side. But in recent days, we've seen a bunch of comments come forward.
One, former President Bill Clinton saying that he thought one aspect of the Obama campaign was a fairy tale. Initially, it was taken that this was referring to the hope and optimism that Obama has adopted as his campaign themes, that he has a vision for a different kind of America, that he's not going to get caught up in partisanship.
But subsequently, President Clinton has called the likes of Al Sharpton's radio show in New York to say, no, he was talking about Obama's claim that he has always been a consistent opponent of the war. President Clinton is saying, no, he gave one speech. But subsequent to that, then took the speech off his Web site and has not been consistent in terms of his vote. He'd, in fact, did vote to fund the war effort as a U.S. senator.
And then on top of that, you've had the attorney general of New York, Andrew Coumo, speaking about the necessity for candidates to get out there and get beyond the rhetoric by not shucking and jiving. And of course, many people took that to be racially loaded.
And finally, Mrs. Clinton herself made a statement when asked about Barack Obama's affiliation, association, if you will, with the likes of Dr. King, Robert F. Kennedy. She said, well, when it comes to actually getting something done, you have to also include Lyndon Johnson. It was President Johnson, she said, for all that Martin Luther King - that it was President Johnson who signed the '64 civil rights legislation.
Well, that last comment really rang a bell with lots of people, including Jim Cliburn, the number three man in the House but also the well-known and well-respected congressman from South Carolina who said, you know, you got to be careful how you talk about this. You don't want to be somehow diminishing Martin Luther King. And similarly, others have said, wait a second, this is now really seems like a racially loaded if not coded effort by the Clinton campaign to remind voters that Obama is a black candidate.
SEABROOK: So, Juan, in your analysis how is this playing out among African-American voters?
WILLIAMS: Well, so far, I don't think the impact has been great. Now, obviously, the Obama campaign, according to the Washington Post, has even sent a memo listing all of these incidents. And the idea is, I think from the Obama people, to stir the pot and remind voters in one key state, South Carolina, where you have about half of the Democratic primary voters as blacks, and of course most of them are black woman, that somehow there is a black candidate in the race and that they should practice identity politics.
But also that Mrs. Clinton has been playing some racial games. But Ms. Clinton was on "Meet the Press" today. You played a segment of that earlier, and she says all of this is a distortion, and in fact the Obama campaign is playing a race card out there, trying somehow to damage her campaign by making it appear that the Clintons, who have a very strong and long record of being supporters of civil rights causes and efforts, that somehow they are playing racial politics.
SEABROOK: It's interesting though to see, Juan, that Barack Obama's relationship with, sort of, the old guard of the civil rights movement is not close.
WILLIAMS: No, it's not. And if you go to people like Andrew Young, who was Dr. King's top lieutenant, you know, they say that Bill Clinton has a much better record in terms of supporting key efforts in the black community civil rights legislation. When you hear these people speak, they're talking about the Clintons as a trusted ally for the civil rights movement, and that Barack Obama, as a young man who they take great pride in, but someone that they don't believe - is unknown quantity in the black community, someone they can't rely on down the line in political terms. And that's why they say they prefer the Clintons.
SEABROOK: NPR's Juan Williams. Thanks very much.
WILLIAMS: You're welcome.
SEABROOK: Senator Obama spoke this afternoon and gave this apparent response to the controversy.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): The slaves and abolitionists fought against that evil system...
Unidentified Man: Yes
Sen. OBAMA: ...with their prayers and their hope. That's what allowed them to resist and that's how a president was able to chart a new path.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
China may lag behind developed nations in tackling air and water pollution, but it's just taken the lead in one area - banning free plastic bags. In the near future, Chinese shoppers will either have to buy them or bring their own. It's expected to save China millions of barrels of oil each year, as NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports from Beijing.
ANTHONY KUHN: The rules announced Tuesday will take effect in June, just a couple of months ahead of this year's Beijing Olympics. The rules ban the manufacture of thin, flimsy plastic bags. Stores can use thicker ones, but they have to charge customers for them.
Shoppers laden with bright orange plastic bags are coming out of a supermarket near the Forbidden City. Most of them say they're ready for the new policy. But real estate developer Li Yu Ying(ph) sounded a cautious note.
Ms. LI YU YING (Real Estate Developer): (Through translator) I support this policy but I was a little surprised at it just because to be frank it may be hard to implement in China. There are too many people here without a strong environmental awareness.
KUHN: China's government says that the country uses up to three billion plastic bags a day. They can often be seen flapping in trees or floating in lakes, a pervasive sign of China's devastated environment.
Wu Deng Ming is founder of the Green Volunteer League of Chongqing in southwest China.
Mr. WU DENG MING (Founder, Green Volunteer League of Chongqing): (Foreign language spoken)
KUHN: This policy is significant, he says, because through these little bags, it will change our lifestyles and consumption habits and take us back to our original, more environmentally, friendly way of shopping.
Wu said that folks are likely to go back to putting their groceries in cloth or string bags or straw baskets the way they used to do as recently as a decade and a half ago before supermarkets and plastic bags started becoming common in China. It's still that way in some small towns in rural areas. This week, another country followed China's lead. Australia said it wants to start phasing the bags out by year's end.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Now, here's an example of a business with social goals. You may have heard of the One Laptop per Child project, a nonprofit that developed a cheap laptop under $200 for kids in the third world. Well, now one of the top executives at One Laptop per Child has left to form a for-profit company that will market some of the technology she developed. Her name is Mary Lou Jepsen.
Ms. MARY LOU JEPSEN (Founder, Pixel Qi): My company is called Pixel Qi, and we're going to both market the technologies that I invented for One Laptop per Child and extend them.
SEABROOK: Jepsen says there are limits to what a nonprofit business can do. Now that the technology exists, she may be able to reach more needy people than One Laptop per Child can because hers will be a commercial business.
Ms. JEPSEN: There are literally billions of people - the mass market - that could use these devices to improve their lives, join the information age, get access to information that could transform their lives. If we can get this out to more than just children, if we can get it out to more of a cross-section of people, then we can drive the costs down.
SEABROOK: It comes down to manufacturing, Jepsen says, and economies of scale. If she can contract for five million units a month, for example, rather than 500,000, the cost of each laptop drops dramatically. Jepsen believes that in one year, she can get the price of her laptop down to $75. So does this means she'll now compete with the One Laptop per Child project?
Ms. JEPSEN: No. I'm committed to collaborating with One Laptop per Child and then giving them whatever I developed at cost, again, for volume reasons and because it's the right thing to do. Muhammad Yunus is on to something with social businesses because everyone involved works a lot harder. You'll stay up all night because the kids need their laptops. It's finally easing your scale through something that could really matter, could really change the world in a positive way.
SEABROOK: Mary Lou Jepsen's new company is called Pixel Qi.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was in the economically depressed state of Michigan today. Romney told a rally in Southfield that if he's elected, he will not rest until Michigan makes a comeback. Governor Romney is hoping to edge out Arizona Senator John McCain, who made a comeback himself in the New Hampshire primary.
Overshadowed by the sagas of political resurrection of McCain and Senator Hillary Clinton this past week was another kind of resurrection. The event set commentator Peter Manseau's mind working.
PETER MANSEAU: It was a good week for escapes from the crypt. We witnessed miracles of political rebirth for two presidential hopefuls, and the Roman Catholic Church announced that it is going to exhume the body of Padre Pio, an Italian priest made a saint in 2002.
According to church officials, the holy man's remains will be unearthed to guarantee the best conditions for their conservation. A team of scientists is standing by to assist with preparations for the massive public viewing planned for later this year. All of this will take place in honor of the 40th anniversary of Padre Pio's death.
Of course, some would wonder if digging a person up and putting him on display is an honor at all. Throughout history, graveyards have been either sacred ground or places to be avoided - sometimes both. Yet, one thing across time and cultures has almost always been true - once a body has been sent to the great beyond, we usually prefer it to stay there.
So what to make of exceptions to the rule? Why are some bodies welcomed back? The church points out that exhumation really isn't so unusual. Would-be saints are regularly given a physical, years after death, to determine if sanctity has slowed the process of decay. Pope John XXIII was examined in 2001. St. Catherine Laboure was inspected in 1932. St. Bernadette was exhumed twice, once in 1909 - three decades after her death - and again in 1919.
And it isn't just saints who have received posthumous attention. Eva Peron's body was kept in a display case in the early days after her death. Then it went missing for 16 years. She logged more miles as a corpse than many do in a lifetime. From Argentina to Italy to Spain and then back again, she was buried, reburied and occasionally exhibited at each stop along the way. Mussolini, likewise, had a busy schedule as a cadaver. A year after he was shot, his body was dug up by supporters who kept it for four months before they were discovered.
What do all these unburied dead have in common with politicians who escape the ditches dug for their careers? In every case, a trip to the grave and back again brings greater fame - or infamy. The stories of our national narratives are mercifully less bloody and less macabre than tales told of saints and sinners of old, yet they are no less compelling. We love to hear stories of those who have escaped the inevitable. They bring us to the brink and back again.
SEABROOK: Peter Manseau is the editor of Science & Spirit magazine. He's writing a book about the history of religious relics.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Fireworks, strobe lights and 120 head of Texas longhorn cattle helped introduce the new models at the North American International Auto Show that opened in the media today in Detroit. It's the biggest and most widely covered auto show in North America.
Ford introduced the Verve by lowering it from the ceiling. Those cattle, they came herded down a Detroit street by new Dodge Ram pickup trucks.
But with oil hovering around $100 a barrel, and gas at about $3 a gallon, the talk of the show wasn't so much the spectacle but new greener innovation by automakers.
NPR's Anthony Brooks is at the show in the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit.
And Anthony, tell me where you are right now.
ANTHONY BROOKS: Well, I'm in the exhibition hall, Andrea. And all around me, I can see dozens of shiny, brand new cars that are on display from Honda, from Dodge Chrysler. Behind me is Jeep. And they actually have a Jeep mounted vertically - climbing the wall. In front of me is the new Ford Escape hybrid. There are automakers, virtually, from all over the world, all touting their new cars. And as you suggested, green is the theme here - or at least one of the themes.
SEABROOK: Hasn't been a great year for Detroit, huh?
BROOKS: No, not at all. U.S. carmakers have lost a lot of money. GM actually posted a $39 billion loss in one quarter of last year. Keep in mind that was largely a sort of an accounting issue. However, it was an indication of the kind of troubles U.S. automakers have been in. So they're hoping that this auto show marks the beginning of some kind of recovery. And they're hoping that green can lead the way.
SEABROOK: So the big theme, as you're saying, this year is green -environmentally friendly cars. But U.S. automakers are still counting on the sale of those big trucks and SUVs.
BROOKS: Absolutely. And with gasoline selling around $3 a gallon, with the price of oil up close to $100 a barrel, and now that Congress has finally passed new fuel efficiency standards, everyone is tripping over each other, claiming that they're the new green. At the same time, big pickup trucks and SUVs still represent Detroit's bread and butter.
And so, you know, you have Ford trotting out its new F-150 pickup truck, which is the most popular selling truck in America. You have - you mentioned all those cattle being herded up Washington Boulevard. That's the new Dodge Ram pickup truck. You have Corvette with a new V8 that can go 200 miles an hour. So there is a bit of schizophrenia. On the one hand, it's green. On the one hand, it's still big. It's still muscle. It's still hauling power and the sort of horsepower contest and love affair with big cars that continues to hold sway here in Detroit.
SEABROOK: Tell us a little bit about some of the cars that are going for that fuel efficiency. I understand the smart car may be coming to the United States now.
BROOKS: Yeah. Well the smart car was introduced by Mercedes. And that's a good example because that was literally the first car that Mercedes rolled into their display as part of their so-called reveal. They're tiny and they claim they get about 50 miles per gallon. BMW, you know, high-performance luxury cars - they're talking about green. So it's pretty much cars from all over the country and all over the world that are picking up on this theme.
SEABROOK: Really quickly, Anthony, those cattle. How did they get there and how are they going home?
BROOKS: Well, those cattle were brought up on a private train, along with their horses and 12 cowboys and cow women who actually helped herd them down the street. And they'll be going home to Texas on a private train.
SEABROOK: NPR's Anthony Brooks, reporting from the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
Thanks, Anthony.
BROOKS: Thank you, Andrea. It's a pleasure.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
It's the start of a brand spanking new year. And we thought it would be a good time to look at other beginnings. For instance, did you know that Pepsi Cola began life as the far more ordinary-sounding Brad's drink; or that the man who helped develop the lie detector test also created Wonder Woman?
These tasty tidbits come from the book "In the Beginning: From Big Hair to the Big Bang, mental_floss Presents a Mouthwatering Guide to the Origins of Everything." Will Pearson is an editor of mental_floss magazine, and he joins me now.
How are you?
Mr. WILL PEARSON (Editor, "In the Beginning: From Big Hair to the Big Bang, mental_floss Presents a Mouthwatering Guide to the Origins of Everything"): I'm doing well, Andrea. Thanks.
SEABROOK: Good. So okay. First things first. This may be an obvious question, but what about the origins of this book. How did you start writing this book?
Mr. PEARSON: We get so many questions from readers about origins that eventually, it became a no-brainer for Mental Floss magazine. People ask us questions all the time. And finally, we decided, you know, we've got about a hundred or 200 of these. So we need to put these into a book and add some others with curious things of our own.
SEABROOK: And we should say that, for those who haven't seen it, mental_floss magazine is sort of a magazine that answers weird questions and thinks about sort of odd things.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PEARSON: It's definitely one way to put it.
SEABROOK: Is that fair?
Mr. PEARSON: We look at it as a way to blur the lines between education and entertainment. It's a way to look back and learn the things you wish you'd learned in school.
SEABROOK: Okay. So I wish I learned this in school - the creator of Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston. He sounds like quite a character.
Mr. PEARSON: Yeah, he does. And researching this, we learned, you know, we kind of think of Wonder Woman as this great feminist character. But his original intentions with Wonder Woman was actually to create a character that would show women how to be both active but also submissive and peace-loving at the same time. So not exactly what people expected.
SEABROOK: Barf. That's what I have to say about that, is barf.
Mr. PEARSON: Exactly. I'm with you on that.
SEABROOK: And while we're on this track of talking about women and their place, let's talk about the dishwasher. This was actually designed in the early 1900s, I read in your book. The first model came out in 1914. And it was invented -this Rube Goldberg sort of contraption was invented by a woman.
Mr. PEARSON: That's true - and not a woman that you might expect. It was, you know, it's hard to feel sorry for Josephine Cochran, given the problems most people faced in her day - poverty, work schedules, poor health, whatever it may have been. Josephine, on the other hand, was a very rich socialite. And her main problem was that it was hard to find good help. She was a pretty well-known socialite - would entertain many people. And what would happen is her servants were breaking her dishes on a regular basis. And this frustrated Josephine; she decided to take matters into her own hands.
So she went out to the woodshed behind her house and invented this contraption which, surprisingly, when you look at the contraption she invented, had many of the same features that the dishwasher has today - with the wires sticking up where you would place each of the dishes - worked pretty well. The only problem, had a hard time catching on because when they interviewed women of the time, they actually found - at least their answer was - that they enjoyed washing the dishes themselves. I have a hard time believing that but it took many decades before it actually caught on.
SEABROOK: Fascinating. All right, I want to talk about my own personal torture here - the diet. For those of us swearing at this time of the year to start eating better and, you know, cut out all the sweets - stuff like that, tell us about the origins of this grave torture.
Mr. PEARSON: Well, you know, it turns out dieting wasn't exactly a concern of our ancestors. For them, the main problem was actually getting more carbs, fat and sugar - not less. Well, that's why in looking back, the first person we could find to go on a recorded weight-loss program was actually England's William I - better known as William the Conqueror. And by all accounts, he's the fattest person to lead a major country until President Taft got stuck in a bathtub. So to cut his waistline, he adopted a liquid diet, which you should read as a liquor diet. So for the better part of a year, he attempted to subsist on nothing but alcohol, and it worked much better than you might expect. And he was eventually able to ride again.
SEABROOK: Well, I imagine if he was drinking something like beer, I mean, that's made of grain, right? So it's not like straight, you know, vodka or something, right?
Mr. PEARSON: You know, yeah. And I'm not sure what exactly these drinks were that he was taking in. But somehow it worked. I guess it's kind of one of the early Atkins-like diets.
SEABROOK: Will Pearson is one of the editors of mental_floss magazine.
Thanks for joining us.
Mr. PEARSON: Thanks, Andrea.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
The Silver Beats are a Japanese band that pays tribute to another great beginning. They take their name from an early incarnation of The Beatles - back when John, Paul, George and Pete Best were scruffy kids scraping gigs in Liverpool clubs. The Silver Beats have been staging their own invasion of America - relying on word of mouth and fan blogs to bring in the crowds.
They played Washington, D.C.'s 9:30 Club this weekend so we sent our producer, Petra Mayer, to check out the scene.
(Soundbite of song, "Can't Buy Me Love")
Mr. TADAAKI NAGANUMA (Bassist, Vocals, The Silver Beats): (Singing) Can't buy me love. Love. Can't buy me love. I'll buy you a diamond ring...
PETRA MAYER: For a minute, I can almost believe I've fallen through a wormhole to 1964. The sold-out crowd is screaming, waving hands and lighters. And the girl in front of me has a really impressive beehive 'do. Up on stage, there are four moptops in skinny gray suits. But something is not quite right. For one thing, George is playing a Fender Telecaster, which I happen to know he only used much later in his career. And for another, they're Japanese.
Mr. ERIC MABUCHI (Guitar, Vocals, Keyboard, The Silver Beats): My name is Eric and I play as John Lennon.
Mr. NAGANUMA: I'm Tadaaki Naganuma, Paul McCartney.
Mr. HAJIME KUBO (Guitar, Vocals, The Silver Beats): My name is Hajime Kubo, as George Harrison.
Mr. YUKINOBU KABE (Drums, The Silver Beats): My name is Yukinobu Kabe. I'm Ringo Starr.
MAYER: Meet the Silver Beats, part of Japan's thriving Beatles impersonation scene. Back home in Tokyo, they play five nights a week, six half-hour sets a night in Roppongi's very own version of the Cavern Club.
(Soundbite of song, "All My Loving")
Mr. NAGANUMA: (Singing) Close your eyes and I'll kiss you. Tomorrow, I'll miss you. Remember I'll always be true.
MAYER: Doesn't it get old after a while?
Mr. MABUCHI: It's always new. You feel like - you're not doing old songs. That's what we feel, I think.
MAYER: That's Eric Mabuchi, who bears an uncanny resemblance to John Lennon. He's the youngest one in the band. Tadaaki, who plays Paul McCartney, has been doing this for 25 years. According to the Silver Beats' Web site, he's sung "Yesterday" more times than Sir Paul himself. And Kubo, who plays George, was once hired to transcribe the entire Beatles catalogue. He knows them all - even the obscurities. And he's pretty convincing with that Telecaster.
(Soundbite of music)
MAYER: The audience is loving it. I think it's true, on some deep molecular level, that everyone knows the words to Beatles song, as if they're engrained in our collective cultural DNA. And the crowd here at the 9:30 Club is proving my theory at the top of their lungs.
(Soundbite of song, "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da")
Mr. NAGANUMA: Everybody.
Crowd: (Singing) Ob-la-di. Ob-la-da. Life goes on, brah. Lala how the life goes on.
MAYER: The strangest thing is that many of the people here tonight have never heard of The Silver Beats. Like Lisa Neal(ph) and her friend Joyce Price(ph).
Ms. LISA NEAL: Nope. Not at all.
Ms. JOYCE PRICE: We did actually look them up on the Internet, though.
Ms. NEAL: Because we're like, who's playing at the 9:30 Club tonight? Oh, a Japanese Beatles band. Yeah. Perfect.
Ms. CHRISTINE GALANI: I think I saw them on the Web site and then my friend Carolyn told me to come on down. And so I did.
MAYER: Christine Galani(ph) is a local girl who actually saw the original Beatles at the old Washington Coliseum.
Ms. GALANI: August 15th, 1966. You know how much a ticket cost for The Beatles in 1966? Five dollars.
MAYER: I asked Christine Galani what she thought of The Silver Beats.
Ms. GALANI: Oh, I thought that was fabulous. I haven't had this much fun since -I had sex about an hour ago. That was fun.
Petra Mayer, NPR News, Washington.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Our parting words tonight come from a Beatle, about The Beatles. John Lennon sparked a firestorm in 1966, when he told a London newspaper: We're more popular than Jesus now. I don't know which will go first, rock and roll or Christianity.
Unidentified Man #1: I believe in mystery.
Unidentified Woman: I believe in family.
Unidentified Man #2: I believe in being who I am.
Unidentified Man #3: I believe in the power of failure.
Unidentified Man #4: And I believe normal life is extraordinary.
Unidentified Man #5: This I believe.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Now, an essay from our series This I Believe. Maria Mayo Robbins is getting a doctorate in religion at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Her life has taken unexpected turns - good and bad - that helped her find meaning and go forward.
Here's our series curator, independent producer Jay Allison.
JAY ALLISON: After she experienced a traumatic event, Maria Mayo Robbins felt her life was divided into two parts - before and after. She said that writing this essay helped her understand how to bring those parts together and keep going.
Here's Maria Mayo Robbins with her essay for This I Believe.
Ms. MARIA MAYO ROBBINS (Student, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee): I believe in chance. Strings of unexpected encounters mark my life. I believe that chance has guided me — jolted me sometimes — onto paths I wouldn't have chosen but needed to follow, whether I knew it or not. Chance encounters have led me across continents and into unanticipated worlds.
At 21, I first visited Italy. As I struggled with a mouthful of college Italian to find the word for towel in a hostel one morning, an older woman laughed, straightened out my garbled attempts, and invited me to her home. Chance gently pushed me and led me to a lifelong connection to her family, their small town of Castelfranco Veneto and, several years later, the opportunity to live there.
But chance is not always kind. When I was 25 years old, chance led an intruder to break into my home in the middle of a quiet spring night. The violence of that night and months of rehabilitation left me questioning how I could ever find meaning in such a vicious stroke of fortune. But in the years that followed, I drew even closer to my family and became a more empathetic friend. I relished the ability to walk, or even run, on my own. I did all the things I had always wanted to do: I pierced my nose, flew to Israel, and hauled a rented grand piano up to my eighth-floor apartment. I lived a life in vivid moments. I followed the questions raised by the attack into graduate school, where today, I continue to study and work for justice for victims of violence. I kept going, and meaning took hold in unexpected places.
As a student of religion, I read and write about people and texts that desperately seek cosmic order in a world of chaos. Coincidence threatens the divine order of creation and must be explained. For myself, I believe that chance creates order in the world. We can't choreograph life events, but we can clasp the hands of those who appear in our paths and see where they lead us. So many chance encounters have moved me forward, offering me direction and a sense of purpose — if I was willing to follow.
My belief in chance lets me see life as brimming with possibility: the person next to me in line at the airport who becomes a lifelong friend, the professor on the elevator who asks a provocative question, or the soldier I meet at an outdoor cafe in Jerusalem who takes me on a romantic tour of the city, leaving me with an indelible memory.
And as much as I have resisted saying this for many years, even the unwelcome and cruel strikes of chance must somehow find their place in the order of our lives. Believing this — believing in chance — I can always pick up my body and move forward.
ALLISON: Maria Mayo Robbins with her essay for This I Believe. Robbins told us that now, she's taken to writing short statement of belief whenever she encounters problems and needs to crystallize her thinking.
We invite you to visit npr.org/thisibelieve if you'd like to write an essay and submit it to our series.
For This I Believe, I'm Jay Allison.
SIEGEL: Next Sunday, on WEEKEND EDITION, an essay from a listener in Bangor, Maine. She believes that she learned from her son after his death.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
(Soundbite of fictional characters)
Mr. MEL BLANC (Voice Actor): (As Bugs Bunny) What's up, doc?
Unidentified Woman #1: Mr. Grant.
Mr. GREGORY PECK (Actor): (As Atticus Finch) It was a sin to kill a mockingbird.
Unintelligible Woman #2: Fiddle-dee-dee.
Unidentified Man #1: I am your father.
BLOCK: This month, NPR is launching In Character, a new series exploring the origins and impact of great American fictional characters. Well, today, a character who's celebrating his 75th anniversary this month.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. CLAYTON MOORE (Actor): (As John Reid) Look up there, it's a headwall(ph).
SIEGEL: In 1874, six Texas Rangers were betrayed by a guide and ambushed at Bryant's Gap.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) It's an ambush, men. Scram. Find cover. Quick.
(Soundbite of gunfire)
SIEGEL: Riding on a canyon floor, they came under rifle fire from a gang of outlaws on the cliffs above. Five died. The sixth was left for dead and would have died that day but for an amazing coincidence. After the shooting was over, an Indian man happened upon the scene of the ambush.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. JAY SILVERHEELS (Actor): (As Tonto) Lie still. Me not hurt you.
SIEGEL: The ranger who was wounded but still clinging to life had saved that Indian from outlaw raiders a few years earlier, when the two were just boys.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. SILVERHEELS: (As Tonto) Why, you — you Kemosabi.
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) Kemosabi? That sounds familiar.
SIEGEL: The Indian recognized his boyhood companion, carried him to a nearby cave, and nursed him back to health.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) The other rangers, Tonto, are all dead?
SIEGEL: Including Captain Dan Reid, the ranger's own brother. The Indian did the subtraction.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. SILVERHEELS: (As Tonto) You all alone now. Last man. You are lone ranger.
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) Yes, Tonto. I am a lone ranger.
Unidentified Man #2: The Lone Ranger.
SIEGEL: He has been the Lone Ranger ever since. On radio, in movies, in novels, on television, in comic books. Over the 75 years since he first hit the airwaves, his story has been embroidered, embellished and rewritten, but he always wore a mask, he always pursued justice, and he never accepted praise or payment.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) Hi-yo Silver, away.
Mr. FRAN STRIKER JR. (Son of "The Lone Ranger" Creator Fran Striker): Well, my name is Fran Striker Jr., and my father's name was Fran Striker. And he was the creator and author of "The Lone Ranger."
SIEGEL: In 1933, Fran Striker, a self-described hack writer, was in Buffalo, New York, writing radio scripts for, among other stations, WXYZ in Detroit.
Mr. STRIKER JR.: And they were buying five programs a week from him. Some of them were mystery series, some of them were Secret Service series.
SIEGEL: And the owner of WXYZ, George Trendle, wanted a western. Fran Striker started writing. And over the course of a dozen episodes, a character took shape, a paragon of virtue.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) I'll shoot to wound, not to kill. A man must die, it's up to the Lord to decide that, not the person behind a six shooter.
Mr. SILVERHEELS: (As Tonto) That's right, Kemosabi.
Unidentified Man #3: May I offer you gentlemen a drink?
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) No thanks. A man drinks that kind of medicine to forget something he doesn't want to remember.
Mr. STRIKER JR.: The Lone Ranger always used dead-on perfect English. That's what George Trendle read the scripts for.
SIEGEL: He didn't even have a hint of a Texas accent about him as he spoke.
Mr. STRIKER JR.: Well, nobody's been west of Buffalo or Detroit either.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. WALTER SANDE (Actor): (Sheriff "Two-Gun" Taylor): Who's there?
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) Open the door, sheriff.
Mr. SANDE: (Sheriff "Two-Gun" Taylor): A masked man…
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) Back inside.
Mr. SANDE: (Sheriff "Two-Gun" Taylor): You've got a lot of nerve…
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) Don't make a move to your guns. They're covered.
Mr. SANDE: (Sheriff "Two-Gun" Taylor): What do you want?
Professor GARY HOPPENSTAND (American Popular Culture, Michigan State University; Editor, Journal of Popular Culture): My name is Gary Hoppenstand. And I am a professor of American studies who specializes in popular culture studies. And I am also currently editor of The Journal of Popular Culture, which is the largest scholarly journal of its type in the world.
SIEGEL: Professor Hoppenstand ranks "The Lone Ranger" among a handful of important iconic figures in American popular culture. A vigilante lawman who protects the criminal justice system by working outside it, a hero made for radio audiences of the Great Depression.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) I reckon we ain't no choice but to sell out to this pole cat and try and find new diggings somewhere.
Unidentified Man #4: $150 is a lot of cash, Jim.
Unidentified Woman #3: Don't you take it, Jim. What would we do when $150's gone? We won't have nothing then, not even this house and the (unintelligible).
Prof. HOPPENSTAND: In the 1930s, the perception was that there was a failure of government to protect the American people, and so this was a character masked who used vigilante techniques to basically protect those who can't help themselves. And so this was a character who found a decided audience experiencing those kinds of things in their daily lives while also having that wonderful escapist enjoyment as well.
(Soundbite of song "Bob Dylan's Blues")
Mr. BOB DYLAN (Singer): (Singing) Well, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, they are ridin' down the line, fixin' ev'rybody's troubles, ev'rybody's 'cept mine.
SIEGEL: For the first 10 episodes of "The Lone Ranger," the ranger actually rode alone. This was before they cooked up the back story of the ambush at Bryant's Gap. As writer Fran Striker told his son, Fran Junior, that posed a problem for creating dialogue.
Mr. STRIKER JR.: The problem being that the Lone Ranger had nobody to talk to if he was a lone ranger. So they suggested that they create a sidekick for the lone ranger. Script 11 introduced Tonto. And he was developed solely for the purpose of giving the Lone Ranger somebody to talk to.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) All right, Tonto, you'll be a lot of help. We will ride together.
Mr. SILVERHEELS: (As Tonto) Me glad, Kemosabi. Me fight good for you.
Mr. MOORE: (The Lone Ranger) Take cover, Tonto.
Mr. MARK ELLIS (Author, "Masked Men"): I always looked at the Lone Ranger as like your idealized white man and Tonto as your idealized Native American.
SIEGEL: Writer Mark Ellis compiled a fictional timeline of the Lone Ranger's life.
Mr. ELLIS: As a kid, my idea of a Native American was based on, basically, Tonto, who was a good person. He was very moral. He was very smart, even if he spoke rather broken English.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. SILVERHEELS: (As Tonto) Me call you Kemosabi. It mean trusty scout.
Mr. STRIKER: If the Lone Ranger accepts the Indian as his closest companion, it's obvious to the child listener that great men have no racial or religious prejudice.
SIEGEL: Fran Striker Jr. says in all "The Lone Ranger" episodes, there is never a disparaging word about any minority group. Of course, what had sufficed as racial equality in 1933 could easily provoke cynicism by the time the show was on television in the 1950s or in reruns in the '60s. Again, Mark Ellis.
Mr. ELLIS: Bill Cosby used to do a routine where he could never understand why the Lone Ranger would always send Tonto into town for supplies, and then he would get beaten up.
Mr. BILL COSBY (Comedian): And I'd always holler on the radio, Tonto, don't go to town, you know. They're gonna beat you up again, man. You know, at just one time, Tonto? Yes, Kemosabi? If you go to town, you go to hell, Kemosabi.
(Soundbite of song "You Don't Mess Around With Jim")
Mr. JIM CROCE (Singer): (Singing) And they say, you don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind. You don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger. And you don't mess around with Jim.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) I'll hide my identity somehow.
Mr. SILVERHEELS: (As Tonto) You mean, like mask?
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) That's it, Tonto. From now on, I'll wear a mask.
SIEGEL: Why the mask? Well, the idea was that the Butch Cavendish gang, the bad guys who had killed his comrades in the ambush, shouldn't know that one of them had survived and was out to seek revenge.
Mr. TERRY SALMANSON ("The Lone Ranger" Fan): And in order to keep his identity secret, he used a mask and never used his name so he could go after the gang. And the mask, as the legend goes, was cut from his dead brother's vest.
SIEGEL: That's Terry Salmanson, lifelong fan and collector of Lone Ranger memorabilia. Of course, that doesn't explain why he always wore the mask even when he and Tonto were riding alone across the Texas wilderness.
Mr. SALMANSON: Over caution.
SIEGEL: Over caution.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) No one is going to know I'm alive. I'm supposed to be dead and I'm going to stay that way.
Prof. HOPPENSTAND: He wears a mask that is the very symbol of the outlaws that the Lone Ranger's - go after.
SIEGLE: Professor Gary Hoppenstand.
Prof. HOPPENSTAND: I think what it plays into is the audience's sense of escapist fantasy. The idea is that in their imagination, all they need to do is don their own mask and they, too could have these sort of grand and exciting adventures where they're doing exciting and good things.
SIEGEL: So who actually knew the Lone Ranger's face? Well, his nephew did and, of course, Tonto did. And this may be surprising, but President Ulysses S. Grant did.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) Mr. President?
Unidentified Man #5: Who are you? Who let you come in here with that mask on your face? Take it off if you want to speak to me.
SIEGEL: Terry Salmanson explains this encounter.
Mr. SALMANSON: President Grant summoned him to a railroad siding in Saint Louis, because of the actions of a particular group of individuals that were trying to carve out their own country, so to speak, in the West. And that started off a 64-episode series entitled "The Legion of the Black Arrow." And President Grant requested that the Lone Ranger come in for a meeting to say, is there something we can do and how can you fight against it?
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) There.
Unidentified Man #5: You know your face is just what I had thought it would be, what I hoped it would be.
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid) Thank you, sir.
SIEGEL: The Lone Ranger was a patriot. In real life, too. Again, Fran Striker Jr., son of the writer.
Mr. STRIKER JR.: Interestingly during World War II, my father was called to Washington by the War Department and they had a favor. He have had a number of ranger programs where the lone ranger would help the cavalry out at the end of the program. And the War Department thought that it would be nice if the cavalry could help the Lone Ranger out.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. STRIKER JR.: And this was their P.R. effort for the year, I guess, and Dad said, of course.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Man #6: (Singing) The adventure of Lone Ranger and Tonto, that mount (unintelligible) rider. Hi-yo Silver, away.
SIEGEL: Something else about the Lone Ranger, he rode a white stallion named Silver. And his six-shooter fired silver bullets.
Mr. MICHAEL CHABON (Novelist): You got to love the silver bullets. The silver bullets are genius.
SIEGEL: That's novelist Michael Chabon.
(Soundbite of program "The Lone Ranger")
Mr. MOORE: (As John Reid): Silver bullets will serve as sort of a symbol. Tonto suggested the idea. A symbol which means justice by law.
SIEGEL: It didn't hurt that the Lone Ranger had inherited a silver mine. Writer Mark Ellis says these props were designed to be indelible in the mind's eye.
Mr. ELLIS: The silver bullets, the mask and the white stallion, Silver. Those were what was known, I guess in the old days of radio, as shiny things for the mind so that the imagination could latch onto and made it easier to visualize the characters and the places.
SIEGEL: And people did. Time was, kids had Lone Ranger rings, hats, masks, Lone Ranger giveaways from cereal boxes. Novelist Michael Chabon says the charm still works.
Mr. CHABON: My 4-year-old son and I just stumbled upon some books we have from the 1950s. We have two Lone Ranger Golden Books. And my son was just immediately rapt. There's something about the mask and the hat and the horse and the silver bullets and the faithful Indian friend and - there's something really powerful there in that character. I mean, there's some reason why the Lone Ranger continues to endure, even though he's far less visible now than he once was.
Mr. FRED FOY (Radio Announcer): We never dreamed that this would become a legend when we were doing the show.
SIEGEL: Fred Foy is 86. In 1948, he got the job at WXYZ in Detroit to be the announcer on "The Lone Ranger." And he filled the same job on the TV show that followed.
Mr. FOY: And it's so beautiful to know that you had so many people who sat back and enjoyed your work. And I'm very flattered to hear that.
SIEGEL: I was wondering if you could give us up, in the clear, a rendering of the opening.
Mr. FOY: The opening. Okay. And that includes the, all of it. All right. Let's see what happens here.
A fiery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty Hi-yo Silver. The Lone Ranger. With his faithful Indian companion, Tonto, the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains led the fight for law and order in the early western United States. Nowhere in the pages of history can one find a greater champion of justice. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. From out of the past comes the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse, Silver. The Lone Ranger rides again. Hi-yo Silver, away.
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: You have the magical power to make people feel they're 5 years old once again, sir.
Mr. FOY: Well, thank you.
SIEGEL: "The Lone Ranger" in character for 75 years.
This is Robert Siegel. You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Detroit is about as far away from Las Vegas as you can get. But when it comes to the big auto show, Motor City embraces its inner glitz. The show is famous for grandiose product unveilings; there were 50 this year. And the over-the-top prize goes to Chrysler for staging a cattle drive in downtown Detroit. Here's NPR's Anthony Brooks.
ANTHONY BROOKS: The North American International Auto Show is an American cultural phenomenon. The show is a reflection of this country's love affair with the automobile and its addiction to kitsch.
Unidentified Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, please be aware that today's press conference incorporates strobe lights and pyrotechnic effects.
BROOKS: This was one of yesterday's so-called reveals when car companies reveal their new models. In this case, it's Ford's newly redesigned F-150 pickup truck.
In an arena filled to capacity, mostly with the press, the truck emerges from the back of the stage through a cloud of blue smoke and flickering strobe lights. And who better to sell truck than country and western singer Toby Keith? Dressed in blue jeans, cowboy hat and boots, he reads from a teleprompter and talks with Ford executives about the truck.
Mr. TOBY KEITH (Country Musician): It's roomy, the interior is really slick, but it's still great for a big guy like me.
Unidentified Man: Now, let's talk about trailer towing. One of the truck's…
BROOKS: Just in case trailer towing doesn't keep the reporters on the edge of their seats, more strobe lights and smoke and down from the ceiling comes Ford's new small, fuel-efficient concept car, the Verve. This event embodies the dichotomy of this year's show. On the one hand, Detroit's commitment to green, and on the other its continued reliance on big trucks. But many here say this reveal is a disappointment.
Mr. RAY WERT (Editor in Chief, Jalopnik.com): There has been a lot of buildup to their events as of late. But the delivery?
BROOKS: Not so great, according to Ray Wert. He's editor in chief of Jalopnik.com, a Web site obsessed with car culture.
Mr. WERT: It was slightly underwhelming because there wasn't an attempt at grandiose. There wasn't an attempt at something amazing and different. It was just, here's the truck - oh, and look, there's Toby Keith.
BROOKS: Tough crowd. But this week's most anticipated reveal was for Chrysler's new Dodge Ram pickup. Two brand-new trucks joined a dozen cowboys herding 120 head of longhorn Texas steer through downtown Detroit. It was a great idea, but in the end, it was just a group of big cows lumbering down the street. Then, when Chrysler Vice Chairman Jim Press tried to talk about the new truck, some of the steers began to mount each other.
Mr. JIM PRESS (Vice chairman, Chrysler): Well, let's not watch that. This is one show you're not going to forget. Okay, look at the truck.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BROOKS: Auto companies spend millions of dollars on these events, even when the industry is struggling. But with some 5,000 journalists here and thousands more picking the images up around the world on the Internet, they're a chance for automakers to push their brand.
Micheline Maynard, who covers the auto industry for The New York Times, says Chrysler is known for these spectacles.
Ms. MICHELINE MAYNARD (Detroit Bureau Chief, The New York Times): It's dropped minivans out of the ceiling. It's crashed Jeeps into and out of Cobo Center. So I guess if you're going to make a point about how tough your truck is, why not round up 120 Texas longhorns and run them down the avenue in front of the convention center?
Mr. WERT: It was funny to watch. I don't necessarily know what it did to sell the trucks.
BROOKS: That's Ray Wert again of Jalopnik.com. His favorite reveal was two years ago, when Chrysler introduced its Aspen SUV.
Mr. WERT: They had a virtual snowstorm that blinded the audience in white to the point you couldn't even see the vehicle in front of you. But everyone remembered it because they were picking pieces of the paper that they used as the faux snow out of their hair and clothes for the next month and a half.
BROOKS: Wert says it's not clear if the fake blizzard helped sell cars either, but he says it definitely made an impression. And that is apparently the point.
Anthony Brooks, NPR News, Detroit.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Time now for Climate Connections, our series with National Geographic. Today, we visit two places facing the threat of flooding.
BLOCK: Around the world, global warming will increase the risk of catastrophic floods, especially in areas below sea level. That's bad news for one part of California near San Francisco. Floods there could not only destroy homes and farms, but could also endanger a major source of drinking water.
SIEGEL: For ideas and inspiration, California is looking to the Dutch. More than half of the Netherlands lies below sea level. Its entire history has been shaped by the need for pumps, dikes and other barriers to keep back the sea.
NPR's Joe Palca visited California and the Netherlands, and he found that while the Dutch are taking pretty radical measures to manage flooding, Californians are still trying to figure out how to start.
JOE PALCA: California's water problems are largely focused in an area called the Sacramento Delta. It's a triangle of land just northeast of the San Francisco Bay area. It's prone to flooding today and climate change is just going to make things worst. There are many ways to protect the Delta and its residents, but deciding on one and actually doing something won't be easy. Part of the reason is that there are a lot of federal agencies with opinions.
Mr. PHIL ISENBERG (Veteran California Politician): The Corps of Engineers, Bureau of Reclamation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, on and on and on and on.
PALCA: Phil Isenberg is a veteran California politician. He's tracked water issues for decades. Isenberg says in addition to the federal agencies, there are comparable state agencies.
Mr. ISENBERG: Hundred and hundreds and hundreds of water districts, of flood-control districts, of irrigation districts - add all those together, any decision that gets taken in the Delta, in one sense or another, involves over 200 different government agencies.
PALCA: Then you've got the environmentalists, agribusiness, developers and cities all at odds about what to do.
Jeffrey Mount is a geologist at the University of California, Davis.
Mr. JEFFREY MOUNT (Geologist, University of California, Davis): You also have this situation in California where we are a bunch of consensus wimps, and that is, we try to achieve consensus about most things that we do. And frankly, this is one of those problems where there's going to be winners and losers, and we're never going to come up with consensus in this.
PALCA: Mount says building higher and higher walls to keep back the flood waters won't work. It'll be ruinously expensive, and it's probably not the way to keep up with the sea-level rise climate change is bringing.
So, what to do? Mount says someone has to take charge and make tough decisions. And that's what he says is happening in the Netherlands - consensus is dead; it's time for action.
Mr. MOUNT: They're actually cognizant of the fact that they are on a trajectory of change. And they're trying to adapt to that change rather than simply make it work for today, they're trying to make it work for tomorrow at the same time. We haven't got there yet.
PALCA: Mount says the Dutch people and the Dutch government know there's no alternative.
Mr. ERIC BOESSENKOOL (Directorate-General, Dutch Water Ministry, The Hague): The dikes go here, and there's nowhere to go. So if you look at it dramatically, we're with our backs against the wall.
PALCA: Fifty-five hundred miles from the Delta, Eric Boessenkool sits in his office at the Dutch Water Ministry in The Hague. His agency is in charge of Holland's aggressive strategy to keep climate change from swamping the country.
The Dutch know they have to work together when it comes to flooding. They have a thousand-year history of maintaining the dikes to keep the water out. The Dutch federal government has concluded that it can no longer keep up with sea-level rise by building higher dikes, so it's considering innovative alternatives such as building barrier islands in the North Sea. And it's trying to reduce the pressure on the dikes by allowing controlled flooding in certain areas. But that means taking charge and telling people who live in those areas that they have to move.
Mr. BOESSENKOOL: Of course, it's difficult to come in and say well, 30 years ago, we wanted you to live here to be a farmer, but now we want you to move out because we need the space to keep the system safe.
PALCA: So I would - I wouldn't - I shouldn't think that it's just a question of walking down to the local farmer, knocking on the door, and saying, I'm sorry, we need to take your land back. And he goes, oh, fine. Thank you, and just tell me how soon I have to move and I'll be happy to go for the good of my country?
Mr. BOESSENKOOL: Yeah. Well, it doesn't go like that obviously.
PALCA: No?
(Soundbite of laughter)
PALCA: I've been telling everybody that's how Holland is different from America, and now you're disabusing me of that.
Mr. BOESSENKOOL: Well, I'll try to put some nuance into that maybe.
PALCA: Nuance, sure, a kinder and gentler version of move, but basically move is the bottom line whether people are happy or not.
There are flood-control projects going on throughout the country now, and they're just the start.
Piet Dircke is an executive with the water engineering firm Arcadis.
As we stand by the water in the port city of Rotterdam, Dircke says the Dutch are considering their options for the next several centuries.
Mr. PIET DIRCKE (Program Manager, Arcadis): Dealing with climatic changes adapting to that is a flexible process that will never end any more. We will have to adapt again and again.
PALCA: And for the Dutch, adapting isn't something to debate about; it's something to do now.
Joe Palca, NPR News.
SIEGEL: And at npr.org/climateconnections, you can see videos of climate science in action. They're from Public Television's "Wild Chronicles."
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
In Louisiana today, a new governor was sworn in. Bobby Jindal is just 36 years old, and he has some serious challenges ahead of him. In his inaugural speech, he pledged to clean up state government and boost the economy.
Governor BOBBY JINDAL (Republican, Louisiana): We don't live in a poor state. We've had a state with poor leadership.
SIEGEL: As Jindal takes office, one big question is whether he can speed up the recovery from hurricanes Katrina and Rita more than two years ago.
NPR's Jason Beaubien visited several struggling communities where people are still trying to rebuild their homes and their lives.
JASON BEAUBIEN: Cameron is a small, gritty port town in the western Louisiana bayou near the border with Texas. Boats that service the oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico tie up along Cameron's docks next to shrimp and fishing boats. Before Hurricane Rita, the town had 2,000 residents, immediately after, it had none.
Mr. WILLIAM DOXEY (Seafood Business Owner): Nothing's here. I mean, nothing, nothing at all. Everything was gone. Even the cement blocks. Like, see that block? There were not - I had a boat bigger than that. It was gone.
BEAUBIEN: Seventy-eight-year-old William Doxey runs a small seafood business. He buys and sells oysters and shrimp. Hurricane Rita hit here on September 24th of 2005, less than a month after Katrina slammed into New Orleans. The storm surge from Rita drove 14 feet of water through Doxey's property. The water took his house and business with it. Doxey now lives in a beat-up, second-hand trailer that he's parked next to the concrete slab of his old house. After the storm, he got $37,000 from the Road Home program. He says it's not enough to rebuild, but now, he's sick of fighting about it.
Mr. DOXEY: I'm not looking for it. I'm not looking for it. Because it's been two years. Was that two years? We'd go to meetings, we send papers off and everything, whatever. Nothing comes of it.
BEAUBIEN: If he had the money to rebuild, new zoning regulations would require him to elevate his house 14 feet above sea level. Doxey says it seems to him that the government is trying to drive people out of the coastal areas.
Mr. DOXEY: So I don't look for nothing now. I don't look for nothing.
BEAUBIEN: But why do you stay here?
Mr. DOXEY: What?
BEABIEN: Why do you stay here? Why don't you go somewhere else?
Mr. DOXEY: I was born here, man. I work here. Why should I go somewhere else and starve? They're not going to feed you once you move out of here.
BEAUBIEN: Doxey doesn't expect things in his part of Louisiana to change with the inauguration of Bobby Jindal as governor. If Cameron gets rebuilt, he says, it will be as a result of the locals, not the politicians in Baton Rouge.
(Soundbite of bells tolling)
BEAUBIEN: Thirty miles north of Cameron, straight inland, the city of Lake Charles was also battered by Hurricane Rita in 2005, and it's still dealing with the effects of that storm. The airport terminal still hasn't been rebuilt. Some houses are still draped in blue FEMA tarps. As the economy continues to sputter, Macy's announced last week that it's closing its department store in Lake Charles.
The mayor, Randy Roach, says the Rita recovery effort in southwest Louisiana is making progress, but it's been hampered by so many contractors heading east to deal with the Katrina damage in New Orleans.
Mayor RANDY ROACH (Lake Charles, Louisiana): This is a significant time for Louisiana. It's a - it's probably the most significant time in my life. And my prayer is that there will not be another event like this in my lifetime.
BEAUBIEN: By capturing 54 percent of the vote, Bobby Jindal won the governor's office outright in the primary. Mayor Roach says the rush of voters to Jindal was, in part, a response to the storms.
Mayor ROACH: I think they made people recognize, you know, and think about what's really important here. You know, what's - what do we really need to be focusing on and what do we really need to be doing and how do we want to go about doing it? Bobby Jindal offered a state in need of a vision and in need of leadership that.
BEAUBIEN: Jindal is a conservative Republican and a devout Catholic. He was first elected to Congress in 2004. He's young, just 36. But Roach says Jindal's youthful energy is one of his greatest assets.
Two hundred miles east of Lake Charles, New Orleans continues to clean up from the worst natural disaster in American history, although many city residents say the damage from Katrina wasn't natural.
Ms. DARLENE MARTIN (Gentilly Neighborhood Resident): My house was undamaged by that hurricane.
BEAUBIEN: Darlene Martin in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans says the flooding of her neighborhood that followed the storm was the fault of the government. If the Army Corps of Engineers had properly maintained the city's levee system, she says, she would have been back in her home two days after Katrina hit.
Ms. MARTIN: And I think the government should compensate us for what we have endured — eight months living in isolation up in Baton Rouge, commuting back and forth, and then having to live in my house while it is being rebuilt.
BEAUBIEN: Martin had flood insurance, and thus, got no state compensation for the $200,000 in damages to her property. More than two years later, her neighborhood is still a long way from normal. Some houses, like Martin's, are completely rebuilt - the lawns are mowed, Mardi Gras decorations are up. But the new homes are often right next to gutted houses with weeds and debris covering the yard.
Martin is angry at how the government has dealt with Katrina and its aftermath. Her neighborhood is coming back, she says, not because of government, but because of volunteers. Ask Martin, however, about Bobby Jindal taking over as governor, and her tone softens. She praises Jindal as bright, capable, energetic. Despite her frustration and anger towards the public sector right now, she's hopeful the new governor can do, in her words, a lot of good for Louisiana.
Jason Beaubien, NPR News, New Orleans.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Health care is a top issue for both Democratic and Republican voters this year. So candidates from both parties have plans for curbing health costs and boosting insurance coverage. There are lots of promises of change.
NPR's Julie Rovner has this report on which plans would change the system the most.
JULIE ROVNER: The Democratic candidates have mostly emphasized covering the 47 million Americans who don't have health insurance. Here's former Senator John Edwards.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former North Carolina Senator; Democratic Presidential Candidate): The single, most important element is, does it cover everybody? Because if it doesn't cover everybody, then I think whoever the candidate is should be made to explain what American they believe is not worthy of health care coverage.
ROVNER: Republicans, on the other hand, tend to stress ways to bring down health care costs. Here's former Senator Fred Thompson at the GOP debate just before last week's New Hampshire primary.
Mr. FRED THOMPSON (Former Tennessee Senator; Republican Presidential Candidate): We've got the best health care in the world. It costs more than it should. We can either go one of two ways. We can let the government take it over, and they'll lower costs, like they do in other countries. We will also sacrifice care, which nobody wants to do. We're not going to do that in this country. Or we can make the markets work more efficiently.
ROVNER: It's true, says Drew Altman, president of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, that the Democrats want to rely more on government programs and the Republicans more on the free market to fix what's wrong with the nation's health care system. And it's true that Democrats are proposing to spend more money on their plans
Mr. DREW ALTMAN (President, Kaiser Family Foundation): But it's actually the Republicans who are proposing the bigger transformation of the health insurance system and indeed the more radical change, and that's been completely lost and misunderstood.
ROVNER: That's because most of the Democrats — still smarting from the failure of the last health reform effort in the 1990s — want to build on the existing system, in which most people get their health insurance on the job. Their plans would have government fill in around the edges and offer subsidies to make coverage more affordable. Republicans, on the other hand, want to go in an entirely different direction, using the tax system to encourage people to purchase their own individual coverage. Here's how former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani explained it at that New Hampshire debate.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former New York Mayor; Republican Presidential Candidate): Only 17 million Americans right now buy their own health insurance. If 50 million Americans were buying their own health insurance — because it would be just as tax-advantageous to do it that way — and we had health savings account, people — economists believe there'd be a 30 to 50 percent reduction in the cost of health insurance and quality would come up.
ROVNER: That last contention is debatable. But what isn't, says Altman, is how the average consumer would be affected by the Republicans' proposals.
Mr. ALTMAN: Because they see a world in which we move away from the current employment-based system, and to some extent, our existing public programs, and many more Americans purchase their health insurance themselves, that's a much bigger change.
ROVNER: But other health analysts aren't convinced the GOP plans are really all that radical. Joe Antos of the conservative American Enterprise Institute said he thinks the Republican changes would likely be more gradual.
Mr. JOSEPH ANTOS (President; American Enterprise Institute): So, I think what the main Republican candidates are really talking about is the idea that we want to level the playing field on taxes, but I don't think they seriously imagine that the employer-sponsored health system is simply going to dry up and blow away — in fact, it won't.
ROVNER: That's mainly because big employers, at least, still use health insurance as an important tool to recruit and retain workers. And besides, says Antos, when it comes to changing health care in this country, nothing ever happens fast. That's something Democrats and Republicans do agree on.
Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Jose Manuel Cobles has been making music since the 1940s. He's a native of the Dominican Republic, where he watched musical styles come and go. He's over 80 now, and he has outlived all the members of his original music group. Now, he has released his first solo album in the U.S. It's called "Mujer De Cabaret." Banning Eyre has a review.
(Soundbite of music)
BANNING EYRE: The sound that established the career of Jose Cobles lies buried beneath layers of musical and political history. His stage name, Puerto Plata, refers to the resort town where he was born. But Cobles made his mark in La Joya, a storied red-light district of the Dominican capital, Santiago.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. PUERTO PLATA (Singer): (Singing in foreign language)
EYRE: This style is called son, Puerto Plata's signature back in the late '40s when he got his start. Son is usually associated with Cuba, but you find it all through the Spanish-speaking Caribbean.
Dominican son got overshadowed because that country's notorious dictator, Rafael Trujillo, preferred merengue, effectively making it the national music. No surprise then, Puerto Plata also cranks out a mean merengue. Like this one, "Dolorita."
(Soundbite of song "Dolorita")
Mr. PLATA: (Singing in foreign language)
EYRE: Puerto Plata is the only surviving member of his original group, Trio Primavera. But he's pulled together an impressive ensemble of veterans for this release. The two lead guitarists provide the real fireworks. So far, we've been hearing 62-year-old Edilio Paredes. But Paredes' protege, Frank Mendez, also plays on "Mujer de Cabaret," and he's no slouch either.
(Soundbite of song "Los Piratas")
EYRE: On this song, "Los Piratas," Puerto Plata condemns the 9/11 attacks. Merengue tradition has always called for commentary on contemporary events, even from singers whose mission is to revive the sound and spirit of the past.
"Mujer de Cabaret" is Afro-Latin revival music at its best - passionate, brisk, and, coming from an all-but-forgotten octogenarian, delightfully unexpected.
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: Banning Eyre is senior editor at Afropop.org. The CD by Puerto Plata is called "Mujer de Cabaret."
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
It's becoming the norm this election season: the day before a primary, and the race is neck and neck. Today, we're talking about Michigan, where Republicans Mitt Romney and John McCain are just about even in the polls. Tomorrow's vote in Michigan is seen as a must-win for Romney, who's in need of a victory as the campaign goes increasingly national.
SIEGEL: Coming up, we'll hear about the challenges of going national from two political strategists who are sitting out this primary season. First, to Michigan and the Republican race.
BLOCK: NPR's Don Gonyea is in Detroit.
And, Don, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Huckabee all in Michigan today. Give us a sense of their pitches to voters there.
DON GONYEA: Mitt Romney is focusing on his business experience. He also has deep family ties in Michigan. His dad was an auto exec and a former governor. So he's playing on that. John McCain is playing off a bounce he seems to be getting from New Hampshire. Also, he has a history here. He beat George W. Bush in the Michigan primary in 2000. Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, is again pursuing Christian conservatives.
BLOCK: The economy is turning out to be a major issue nationally in the campaign. It's always a big issue in Michigan - that state has the highest unemployment rate in the country. What do the candidates have to say about that?
GONYEA: It's bigger than ever here. And Mitt Romney is talking about how the state needs a president who understands. He says that the domestic car industry has a chance to come back, but that it needs help in terms of research and investment and fewer government regulations.
Here's Romney at the Economic Club of Detroit today.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Massachusetts Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): Of course I hear people from time to time say, well, that's Michigan's problem. Or they say something like, well, it's the car companies. They just brought it on themselves. But that's where they're wrong. What Michigan is feeling will be felt by the entire nation unless we win the economic battle here.
GONYEA: And Romney insists that the hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs the state has lost can come back. That is a message that Mike Huckabee promotes as well, though, perhaps a bit less adamantly. Give a listen.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Arkansas Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): If we're talking about the auto industry, cars have to be built somewhere. I don't know why they couldn't be built in Michigan. The infrastructure is here, you've got trained workforce. So I don't necessarily agree that Michigan is no longer capable of producing automobiles.
GONYEA: Then there's John McCain. For days, he has been delivering some of that straight talk to Michigan voters, saying, hey, those jobs are not going to come back, but we can supply training and education to help displaced workers. He's been criticized for that as being too pessimistic. So he was a bit more upbeat today in Kalamazoo.
Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): We have the innovation, the talent, the knowledge and the ability in Detroit, Michigan and in this state to regain Michigan's position as the best in the world. We will create new jobs. We will have the ability.
BLOCK: John McCain there in Michigan today. We've been talking about the Republicans. We haven't mentioned the Democrats in Michigan, Don, and that's because most of the candidates aren't competing there.
GONYEA: It is a mess. The only major candidate on the ballot on the Democratic side is Hillary Clinton. John Edwards is not on the ballot. Barack Obama is not on the ballot because there was a dispute between the state party and the national Democratic Party over the attempt to move the Michigan primary up. The state was stripped of its delegates. People will have a chance to vote uncommitted as a way of voting against Hillary Clinton if they would like. But they can't even write in the names Barack Obama or John Edwards.
BLOCK: Okay. NPR's Don Gonyea in Detroit. Don, thanks very much.
GONYEA: A pleasure.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Looming ahead after Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina and Florida is the big time. On February 5th, we'll witness the closest thing we've ever seen to a national primary, 22 states, and among them, California, New York, Illinois. There is not a luncheonette on Earth big enough to reach those voters. So what does the shrewd campaign strategists do? Well, we're going to ask two of them, Republican Dan Schnur and Democrat Donna Brazile. Welcome to both of you.
Mr. DAN SCHNUR (Republican Political Strategist): Thank you.
Ms. DONNA BRAZILE (Democrat Political Strategist): Thank you.
SIEGEL: And Dan Schnur first, how would you describe the turn that the campaigns have to make at this point?
Mr. SCHNUR: Well, this is an entirely different kind of challenge for the candidates in both parties - no more living rooms, no more coffee shops, no more diners, and less possibly as a backdrop as a TV studio, if you will, to reach tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of voters all at once. This is a moment that they should have been preparing for months ago because if you step off the Iowa and New Hampshire stage onto a national landscape and haven't done months and months of organizational spadework, you're in deep trouble no matter how much momentum you have behind your campaign.
SIEGEL: Donna Brazile, you agree with that assessment of where the race stands now?
Ms. BRAZILE: Dan is absolutely right. The candidates must pivot from retail politics to a campaign where they now have to go to cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, St. Louis, Atlanta, Newark, and talk to a much larger, much more diverse and a much more complicated set of politics. In Iowa, you practice understanding agriculture policy, perhaps economic policy in New Hampshire. But now, these candidates will have to be well-versed in some of the regional, local, political trends that may ultimately help them get their message across to the crucial voters they need to turn out on, of course, Super Duper Tuesday.
SIEGEL: What do you then? Do you contest all or most of the states? Or do you pick your states? Do you decide, if you're Obama, you'll win Illinois anyway and Hillary Clinton will win New York, so make California a showdown? What do you do?
Ms. BRAZILE: Well, because of the rules on the Democratic side, candidates cannot really afford to cherry-pick too many states. So Obama clearly is going to compete for delegates in New York. If he gets 15 percent or more of the vote, he will be able to, of course, accumulate delegates. Hillary will, of course, compete for delegates in her home state of Illinois. So what you'll find is the candidates cherry-picking a little bit in terms of where to put additional resources. Do you put them in primary states that might offer more delegates or do you put it in caucus states that require a lot more money in terms of organizational ability to get people out to the poll? Or do you leave it up to the local and statewide leaders to do all of the get-out-to-vote spadework?
SIEGEL: So Dan Schnur, where are we going to see the candidates now? Are they going to be on the tarmac all the time, flying in and out of major markets?
Mr. SCHNUR: Well, that's exactly right. When several states, including California and New York and several others, moved their primaries up to February 5th, it was with the hope that we would get to see more of the candidates. And we did. We got to see a lot more of them in the spring and summer of 2007. But from this point forward, it's tarmac news conferences and very quick drive-bys because there isn't a human being in the world who can cover 21 or 22 states, all in the course of seven days.
SIEGEL: People would remark, Donna Brazile, in either Iowa or New Hampshire, for that matter, on the size of the crowd that would turn out to hear Clinton or Romney or McCain or Obama. Nowadays, it seems to have a crowd that's worth mentioning going into February 5th is to gather tens of thousands of people somewhere.
Ms. BRAZILE: And actually, to get them out to the polls, especially when you will not have as much money. Look, it's likely to cost upwards of $20 million just to advertise in all of the major markets. That's a good buy to get your message across.
SIEGEL: $20 million between now and February 5th?
Ms. BRAZILE: Between now and February 5th. So look at where the money is being spent, of course, where they will spend additional time to see how they intend to come up with the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.
SIEGEL: From here on in, on February 5th, is it no longer about building momentum, it's about counting delegates here - from here on in, Dan Schnur?
Mr. SCHNUR: Well, it's really about both. In both parties, you've gotten to a point where it looks like we're going to have a very sustained primary race probably not being decided on February 5th, at which point all the campaigns have to start on delegate counts. But the way you get those delegates is the same way you gather votes, is with message and momentum.
SIEGEL: And they're convincing some of those super delegates, for example, that this is a winning candidate, this is somebody who can bring your party back to the White House?
Ms. BRAZILE: Well, I'm one of those…
SIEGEL: You're a super delegate?
Ms. BRAZILE: I'm one of those super delegates. And I must tell you, as a neutral observer in this race, it's very exciting to see three viable candidates compete for the presidency. Some of us, of course, have taken positions. But majority of super delegates will allow the voters to make this decision. And at the end of the day, our role is to help bring the party together.
SIEGEL: Do both of you think that this actually could still be a contest in either or both parties after February 5th? Donna Brazile?
Ms. BRAZILE: Yes, I do believe…
SIEGEL: Really?
Ms. BRAZILE: …because of the tightness of this race. Look, I think that Nevada may become a tie-breaker, South Carolina a circuit breaker. But we won't know anything until after February 5th. If Obama is able to capture his delegates and Hillary capture her delegates, and perhaps Edwards maintains some delegates, then I think this race will go another week or two.
SIEGEL: On the Republican side, Dan Schnur?
Mr. SCNHUR: I'd say, if anything, the Republican side is even more at loose ends. See, I look at February 5th now as sort of the political equivalent of the NCAA basketball tournament. We have a final four, and every team or every candidate has a must-win game in order to qualify for the tournament. McCain won his must-win in New Hampshire, Romney needs to win his in Michigan, Huckabee needs to win his in South Carolina, and Giuliani needs to win his in Florida. So we'll have a better sense of the field on February 5th. Because there are so many states that - and so many delegates at stake, I think it's going to be very hard for one candidate to claim a clear-cut victory, at which point we'll continue to head down the trail to the next round of states.
SIEGEL: Well, Republican strategist Dan Schnur at NPR West and Democrat Donna Brazile in Washington. Thanks to both of you for talking with us.
Ms. BRAZILE: Thank you.
Mr. SCHNUR: Thank you very much.
President Bush has two strategic goals in the Middle East — promoting democracy and isolating Iran. So far, NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr says, the president has made very little progress on either one.
DANIEL SCHORR: President Bush appears to be pursuing a two-fold policy in his swing around the Middle East.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
NPR's senior news analyst, Daniel Schorr.
SCHORR: He is trying to promote democracy and trying to isolate Iran. So far, he has little to show for either of these efforts. On the democracy front in Kuwait, women can now vote in national elections. But in Egypt, the authoritarian president, Hosni Mubarak, piles up 90 percent of the vote in a rigged election, and an opposition candidate ends up in jail.
Mr. Bush's zeal for pushing freedom and democracy is tempered by his effort to line up support against Iran. And so in the United Arab Emirates, a human rights activist had trouble delivering a petition to the American Embassy. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In BAHRAIN, a human rights activist had trouble delivering a petition to the American Embassy.]
In the contest for predominance in the Middle East, Mr. Bush is finding that Iran has its own cards to play. In one recent incident in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran managed to set American nerves on edge when patrol boats made a feint of approaching an American destroyer, and then scurried away when challenged. In an earlier incident, an American vessel may have overreacted by firing warning shots.
Iran is also working to counter Mr. Bush's efforts to assemble an anti-Iran coalition by choosing a strategic moment to invite Mohamed ElBaradei, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, to Tehran. Baradei was received, not only by the hard-line president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but also by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran's promise to disclose all its nuclear operations may complicate Mr. Bush's effort to assemble a coalition supporting more stringent sanctions against Iran. In the diplomatic contest for influence in the region, Mr. Bush has found a formidable foe.
This is Daniel Schorr.
In the broadcast version of this commentary, Daniel Schorr referred to a human rights activist having trouble delivering a petition to the American Embassy in the United Arab Emirates. According to The Washington Post, which reported the story, the incident occurred in Bahrain, not the United Arab Emirates.
The biggest stories and ideas — from politics to pop culture — in 10 minutes.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
One of the country's leading civil rights groups is in trouble with the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS says the Southern Christian Leadership Conference hasn't filed financial reports for several years.
From member station WABE in Atlanta, Charles Edwards has the story.
CHARLES EDWARDS: When Martin Luther King Jr. headed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference 40 years ago, it was a key civil rights organization. But after his assassination, the SCLC began to lose its reputation. Funding and membership declined.
SCLC's general counsel, Dexter Wimbish, says people wrote them off.
Mr. DEXTER WIMBISH (General Counsel, Southern Christian Leadership Conference): The general consensus was the organization was dead a few years ago.
EDWARDS: SCLC bought a new headquarters building in downtown Atlanta. But mounting debt and internal strife hurt the organization. The group's president, Charles Steele, a former Alabama state senator, began to raise money. And Wimbish says they've collected more than $6 million since 2003.
Mr. WIMBISH: And for Dr. Steele to be able to convince a number of corporate sponsors that SCLC has an international vision, and convince them that, you know, you should support SCLC, is incredible.
EDWARDS: While the group was finding money, it wasn't filing tax reports with the Internal Revenue Service. IRS spokesman Mark Green says nonprofits can get in trouble for not filing.
Mr. MARK GREEN (Spokesman, Internal Revenue Service): And of course, we may be pressured into taking additional actions and steps, which may include suspending or revoking one's status, especially in the exempt arena.
EDWARDS: But Dexter Wimbish says the IRS should have the tax forms in 45 days.
Mr. WIMBISH: You know, in the end, when those documents are made available and it's shown that the funds are being correctly administered, then my question would be okay, what's the story then?
EDWARDS: Wimbish hopes the SCLC can then return to fighting for labor rights, helping low-income residents and preventing gang violence.
For NPR News, I'm Charles Edwards in Atlanta.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
In the Democratic presidential contest, the issues of race and civil rights are surfacing in unexpected ways. In a moment, we'll hear what three African-American political insiders in South Carolina have to say about this turn the campaign has taken.
BLOCK: One week ago, Senator Hillary Clinton made a comment suggesting that Martin Luther King's civil rights dream was fulfilled only because President Lyndon Johnson backed civil rights legislation. Well, today, Clinton was at a union event in New York City to honor the late civil rights leader. Tomorrow is King's birthday. She spoke about Dr. King's impact on the 2008 campaign.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): How many of us ever could have dreamed that we would see the day when a woman and an African-American are running for the presidency of the United States of America?
SIEGEL: NPR's David Greene has been following this story and was with Senator Clinton today. And David, I guess this union event took on a new level of importance for Senator Clinton?
DAVID GREENE: It certainly did, Robert. You know, it was really a venue for Hillary Clinton to talk about how important Martin Luther King is to the country in her eyes. And this was an event to basically rally the troops and support security officers, private security officers in New York City, and that the union was trying to use the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, and when he stood in 1968 with the sanitation workers in Memphis, an effort that, of course, ended in his assassination. And so, Hillary Clinton spoke about what Martin Luther King did for the union back in 1968. Here's a bit of what she had to say.
Sen. CLINTON: The cause for justice has always come from people of faith and people of labor. Here in this great hall today, you understand, as Dr. King did, that your cause was his cause.
GREENE: So Robert, if there were some doubts, and Hillary Clinton said the whole time that her comments about Martin Luther King have been misinterpreted and that she always appreciated his work, but if there were any doubts, she wanted to really drive the message home today, that she sees what Martin Luther King did as very, very important to American workers and Americans in general.
SIEGEL: Well, how did people react to her today?
GREENE: It was a warm reception. You know, there was gospel music playing and there were some pastors who were speaking. It felt like church on a Sunday morning. She came in - she got warm applause. I would say about half or a little less than half of the crowd of a few hundred stood up and gave her a standing ovation. At the end, I spoke to a few people outside. They're mixed on whether they're going to vote for her, but a warm reception. Barack Obama, when someone mentioned his name and said he might be the first African-American president, he got a warm reception as well.
SIEGEL: Now, we should remind our listeners that the comment that Senator Clinton made about Dr. King, that wasn't the only thing said by the Clinton campaign that angered some blacks.
GREENE: That's right. There have been a number of comments, one of them actually from former President Bill Clinton, who spoke about Obama's campaign as a fairy tale. Now, that bothered a lot of African-American leaders who said that's a comment he never should have made. Bill Clinton, in the days since then, has really been working hard to try to explain what he meant. He said he was only referring to the way that Barack Obama talks about his votes on the Iraq War, which Bill Clinton thinks is not entirely accurate. But certainly, once that comment was out there, a lot of concerns from the African-American community.
SIEGEL: This is an interesting dispute because Bill Clinton was known, lovingly in some quarters, as the first black president. What's at stake here?
GREENE: A lot, Robert. I mean, it's incredible where we are today if you think about how popular Bill Clinton was with the African-American community. I don't think that Bill Clinton ever thought that he would be, at this moment, having to go out and defend his record and his commitment to African-Americans and, and his wife's record. This was not what Hillary Clinton wanted to be talking about as she moves into a moment when she's trying to talk about the importance of African-Americans and what - the work that she's done for them.
SIEGEL: Well, David, let's talk about Barack Obama. Is it in his interest, do you think, to keep all this in the news?
GREENE: You know, Barack Obama has always treaded very carefully with the issue of race. He didn't want to make his campaign about race. He doesn't bring up the fact that he would be the first African-American president that often. And the campaign has been careful not to have Obama out there in campaign speeches talking about Hillary Clinton and her comments. But certainly, I think both campaigns, in a moment with South Carolina, a very important state, and at a moment when they're in a tight race, I think, are looking at this and trying to decide what to do very, very carefully.
SIEGEL: Hmm. Okay. Thank you, David.
GREENE: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's David Greene.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Well, in South Carolina, black radio stations, Afrocentric blogs and church sermons have been focused on racial matters. On top of Senator Clinton's comments about Martin Luther King and former President Clinton's fairy tale remark, there was also this remark yesterday from Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, at a Clinton rally.
Mr. ROBERT JOHNSON (Founder, Black Entertainment Television): As an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood, that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book.
BLOCK: Some heard a swipe at Obama's admitted drug use years ago. Johnson says he was talking about Obama's work as a community organizer. Our co-host, Michele Norris, is in Orangeburg, South Carolina, trying to understand how this war of words is playing there. Michele spoke with three high-profile black women: Gilda Cobb-Hunter, a state representative who is uncommitted in the presidential race; Labrena Aiken-Furtick and Baraka Cheeseboro are activists and Obama supporters. They are known as The Marvelettes because of their close bond and their clout in South Carolina politics.
MICHELE NORRIS: What has changed in the past 10 days with this discussion about race and gender politics?
Ms. LABRENA AIKEN-FURTICK (Political Activist, The Marvelettes): This is Labrena. A lot has changed. It's red hot and rolling now. Well, you think of the Clintons because they made the comment about Senator Obama, and for those that love Senator Obama and also had respect for the Clintons because the Clintons pretty much have had a blank check with the African-American community for a long time, for them to make that comment was hurtful. And for those that still respect the Clintons, feel like the spin has gotten out of control and that much more has been made of it than it should be.
NORRIS: Gilda, is it possible that much more has been made of this, that perhaps the Obama camp saw an opportunity here?
Ms. GILDA COBB-HUNTER (Political Activist, The Marvelettes): Well, I think it's important to note that there is probably blame to go around on both sides. Let me go back to your question and share with you from my perspective. The change there, as far as South Carolina is concerned, is that there were a number of people here, particularly those supporting Senator Clinton, who had used the argument in the African-American community that a vote for Barack Obama was a wasted vote because white folk would not vote for him. What Iowa and New Hampshire clearly demonstrated is that that is not the case. So, it certainly was not the case in those two instances.
NORRIS: Is it possible that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton just stepped through a racial minefield and just didn't understand that where they were stepping and how their comments would resonate in the black community? Is it possible that this wasn't nefarious or pejorative, but something that was a bit more benign? Baraka?
Ms. BARAKA CHEESEBORO (Political Activist, The Marvelettes): Possible - very possible. However, it doesn't, you just have to look at the history on it and where people are. And a few of the folks that I've spoken with since the comments - they're like, well, I'm not coming out. I'm not going to go out. It's not worth coming out. If they're going to do this, why should I waste my vote?
NORRIS: So, either candidate, they're not coming out?
Ms. CHEESEBORO: Yeah. Yeah, people, and I just (unintelligible) this weekend. They're saying, I'm not getting in the mess. And see, we have to change that because so many people died and for it - for us to have that right to vote, and for you to come out and not be conscious of what you're doing, and then you're going to lead a country, there are some things you really need to think about before you open your mouth.
NORRIS: Now, here in South Carolina, this is the first time that the candidates will have to work hard to win the hearts and minds, support from a large African-American electorate. And I'm told that the key voting block, the swing voters in this upcoming Democratic primary, are African-American women, women just like yourselves. And so many of those women - estimates range from 25 to 40 percent - are still undecided. Why are so many people still undecided this close to the primary? Baraka?
Ms. CHEESEBORO: I think part of it has to do with gender. You have a lot of African-American women, especially, that says, okay, well, the Clintons has been - it goes back to that experience - the Clintons have been around, they know we had jobs when Clinton was in the office, but when he left, the jobs went. So, where are the jobs that was, that were created for you as a woman to take care of your household? The other thing, when it comes to African-Americans, it's still the same hype. Bill Clinton was the black - first black president, that's the same hype. But on the other hand, Barack Obama has said one key thing that I think is really working with younger women, 'cause you have a lot of women, a little old, a little more mature women, that are, you know, they are stuck in their ways. Okay, we're going to go with the Clintons because we know them, okay? The thing with Barack Obama, I think, is the one word, change. So I think everybody's looking for a change, especially women.
Ms. COBB-HUNTER: Well, this is Gilda. And I do want to very quickly comment on this issue about the conflict that women of color, specifically African-American women, are having. And a part of it is because you have to ask yourself the question, am I black or am I female, are my problems because I'm black, or are my problems because I'm female? And it's kind of like the chicken and the egg. And women are very conflicted because we, black women, that is, are having to make a choice. We're being forced to choose whether gender or race is more important. Most of the problems I have are not because I'm a woman, it's because I am of color. And there are a number of women of color, African-American, who have said it gets down to what legacy I want to leave for my children. How do I say to my son or daughter, that back in 2008, in the primary in South Carolina, where people of color had an opportunity to advance the campaign of a man of color, how do I say to my son or daughter, I chose someone other than somebody who looks like me? We are focusing in now on the importance of January 26th, and I believe that women are deciding based on what the issues are and what's important to them and what they want their children to see, and race and gender have become secondary, in my opinion, in spite of what the media wants us to believe.
NORRIS: Gilda Cobb-Hunter, Baraka Cheeseboro, Labrena Aiken-Furtick, thank you so much for speaking with us.
Ms. COBB-HUNTER: Thank you for having us.
Ms. CHEESEBORO: Thank you.
BLOCK: That's our co-host, Michele Norris, in Orangeburg, South Carolina. There's a guide to what's at stake for the candidates in South Carolina and other upcoming presidential contests at npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Health departments are tracking a new type of staph infection. It's resistant to even more antibiotics than the drug-resistant staph that has spread from coast to coast over the past seven years. So far, most cases, but not all, have been in gay men.
NPR's Richard Knox reports.
RICHARD KNOX: So far, the new super resistant staph that's infected hundreds of people, almost entirely within certain communities…
(Soundbite of phone rings)
Unidentified Man: Fenway Community Health, how may I help you?
KNOX: …such as the gay community of Boston, which depends heavily on the Fenway Community Health Center. Dr. Steve Boswell is its president.
Doctor STEVE BOSWELL (President, Fenway Community Health Center): We initially saw just a few sporadic cases, but over a period of 18 to 24 months, the number of cases climbed significantly.
KNOX: Currently, cases show up regularly.
Dr. BOSWELL: We see a case or two a week pretty easily.
KNOX: But it's not just in Boston. Gay men in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York are also getting serious infections with the new staph variant. A few have even died. It's related to the strain that's shown up in schools, prisons and athletic teams around the country, but it's resistant to even more antibiotics. Boswell says the new variant also causes more virulent skin infections.
Dr. BOSWELL: They grow much more rapidly. Hours can often make a difference.
KNOX: But antibiotics that doctors often use to treat resistance staph, such as Clindamycin, don't work against this bug, so precious time is lost.
Dr. BOSWELL: That delay, which can often be days, and in some cases, even weeks, can result in significant compromise of the patient — in some cases, even death.
KNOX: An article in the Annals of Internal Medicine documents spread of the new staph. Author Binh An Diep says the bacterium, a variant of the more common strain called USA-300, has made striking inroads in some places.
Mr. BINH AN DIEP (Epidemiologist): About 20 percent of gay men in San Francisco, and it seems to be more in Boston, up to 50 percent of gay men in Boston are infected with this more-difficult-to-treat form of USA-300.
KNOX: Not all gay men, just gay men with staph infections. Still, the incidence of the new variant is alarmingly high in some communities, 13 times higher in San Francisco's heavily gay Castro district and surrounding ZIP codes than in the city's general population. That concentration — and the fact that many infections appear on the buttocks and genital region — lead researchers to think the new staph is being spread through sexual contact. And that leads some to worry this new infection could stigmatize gay men once again.
Mr. DIEP: We are worried about the fact that this could be taken to mean that this is another gay man plague. That's really not what we want to push forth here. I think there's a message of hope that just, you know, soap and water is the best defense against community acquired MRSA infection and USA-300.
KNOX: Even so, experience suggests the more resistant staph won't stay confined to the gay community.
Mr. DIEP: Because USA-300 and other Staph aureus are so easily spread — just through contact transmission — we don't think that it will be restricted to the men-who-have-sex-with-men population, but that it will spread into the general population.
KNOX: Already, the new variant has been found in an 81-year-old woman in New York City.
Richard Knox, NPR News, Boston.
BLOCK: You can find answers to commonly asked questions about drug-resistant staph infections at npr.org/yourhealth.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
An uncovered dump truck full of fish guts was just too tempting for dozens of bald eagles in Kodiak, Alaska. They swarmed the truck outside a cannery on Friday, diving into the open bed to feed, and many of them died in the frenzy. The eagles that survived have been cleaned up and are recovering.
Gary Wheeler is manager of the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge. He says a bystander reported seeing one slime-covered eagle at the cannery. But when his staff showed, they got a surprise, 50 birds buried in the mess.
Mr. GARY WHEELER (Manager, Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge): As the feeding frenzy occurred, eagles were piling on top of eagles and pressing these birds down into the fish waste. And there was about two feet of fish guts in the back of this dump truck, and so some of the birds were submerged in this waste and probably breathed in this fish waste and essentially ended up drowning.
BLOCK: Goodness. And then your job, then, is to get the live ones out. How do you do that?
Mr. WHEELER: Well, we had a lot of assistance from the cannery workers. They pulled the truck back inside the plant and basically sorted the living from the dead. And we set up several large tubs of warm water and tried to quickly clean up the survivors and get them warmed up.
BLOCK: The risk there would be that it was so cold that they couldn't moderate their own temperature?
Mr. WHEELER: That's correct, yeah. We had outside temperatures of about 10 degrees or so, and a fairly strong wind as well. So, we needed to get them inside where it was warm, get as much of the oil off of them as we could, and keep them in a warm environment.
BLOCK: Have you ever done anything like this on this scale before?
Mr. WHEELER: No, not really. I think the last time folks in Kodiak have had to deal with an incident of this magnitude was the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
BLOCK: Hmm. Mr. Wheeler, what was the total number of eagles who died?
Mr. WHEELER: We had 20 birds that died in this incident.
BLOCK: And the survivors? I take it you're flying them to Anchorage. What are they going to do there?
Mr. WHEELER: There's a care facility in Anchorage called the Bird Treatment and Learning Center. And so they will be giving these birds probably several washes and rinses and then keeping them at the facility of - for enough time for the birds to naturally get their feathers re-oiled and build up the feather insulation factor.
BLOCK: Hmm. You know, this dump track was uncovered, was outside the cannery there. Would there be a fine, a penalty, any sort of punishment for the cannery for leaving that truck exposed like that?
Mr. WHEELER: Well, I think that remains to be seen. Clearly, the birds are protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. So they are a protected species, definitely, and we'll be working through that whole situation.
BLOCK: That's Gary Wheeler, manager of the Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge. He says once those eagles that survived recover in Anchorage, some of them may be released on the mainland; the others will head back to Kodiak.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
The most mysterious aspect of a recent naval confrontation between the U.S. and Iran was a voice. Over the radio, an ominous voice with a strange accent threatened American ships. The Navy is investigating, but sailors who know the Persian Gulf well say they've heard that voice many times. Radio pranksters are commonplace in the Gulf, and they've picked up an odd nickname, the Filipino Monkey.
From Abu Dhabi, NPR's Ivan Watson reports.
IVAN WATSON: On January 6th, five Iranian navy speedboats approached a convoy of three U.S. Navy warships sailing through the busy Strait of Hormuz. An officer from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says they were conducting a routine maritime inspection procedure, but Commander Lydia Robertson, a spokesperson for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet stationed in the Gulf, disagrees.
Commander LYDIA ROBERTSON (Spokesperson, 5th Fleet, U.S. Navy): These boats approached the three ships very fast, they maneuvered very aggressively. There was a threatening radio transmission that came to the ships over the channel 16, which is the normal line for communication between mariners.
(Soundbite of radio transmission)
Unidentified Man #1: I am coming to you.
WATSON: The Pentagon released this video of the incident during which an accented English speaker can be heard, apparently warning the U.S. Navy ship that it will explode.
(Soundbite of radio transmission)
Unidentified Man #1: You will explode after a few minutes.
Unidentified Man #2: You will explode after a few minutes.
WATSON: Commander Robertson says there are several possible sources for the ominous radio transmission.
Cdr. ROBERTSON: It ranges from a possible heckler to maybe the transmission came from a shore station, maybe from a passing ship.
WATSON: In fact, hecklers have long plagued the open, international radio channel used for ship-to-ship communication in the Persian Gulf.
Mr. JOHN HUSCHON(ph): Over the radio in channel 16 of the VHF, these voices used to come across, saying Filipino Monkey.
WATSON: John Huschon is a Dubai-based veteran of the British Merchant Marine. He says radio hecklers in the Gulf quickly earned themselves the nickname Filipino Monkey.
Mr. HUSCHON: They would just come on in a highly - a high-pitched voice, would sort of scream out the term Filipino Monkey. And sometimes, when they stop, somebody else would pick it up, and it was a real nuisance.
WATSON: American sailors say to this day, the Filipino Monkey is a recurring phenomenon in the Gulf.
Mr. MICHAEL BURNS (Civilian Mariner, Massachusetts): They just kind of chatter on the radio incessantly, and try to, I guess, provoke a reaction from other people listening to the radio or generally kind of harass other mariners that might be of that nationality.
WATSON: Michael Burns is civilian mariner based in Massachusetts. He has sailed repeatedly through the Strait of Hormuz aboard ships contracted by the U.S. government.
Mr. BURNS: I have heard derogatory remarks made about the U.S. Navy while in that area or rival fishermen or, really, whatever happens to strike their particular source of amusement at that moment.
WATSON: Veteran mariners assume that the hecklers are bored sailors playing on their ship radios. But the U.S. Navy says the timing of the radio message on January 6th was extremely suspicious.
In the aftermath of the incident, President Bush warned Iran there would be serious consequences if Iranian forces attack U.S. warships. Tehran says Washington is exaggerating the incident for political gain.
Ivan Watson, NPR News, Abu Dhabi.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
The top honors in literature for children and young people were handed out today. The Caldecott Medal for best illustrated book went to "The Invention of Hugo Cabret." The book has been a hit with critics and young readers.
But as Joel Rose reports, it was still a surprising choice for the award.
JOEL ROSE: Author and illustrator Brian Selznick says the illustrations and images in "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" pick up where the prose leaves off. His reading at the National Book Awards last November was more like a multi-media presentation.
Mr. BRIAN SELZNICK (Author and Illustrator, "The Invention of Hugo Cabret"): How did you know about his apartment here in the station and the tunnels in the walls? Where is he?
Please, my fingers are broken, grab my other arm. It hurts too much.
The station inspector saw the bandages and loosened his grip, at which point, like a wild animal, Hugo escaped. And then you turn the page.
(Soundbite of laughter)
(Soundbite of music)
ROSE: Projected on a screen behind Selznick was a series of pencil drawings from the wordless scene that follows as young Hugo darts in and out of the crowds at a Paris train station. The book's 500-page length and hybrid form make "Hugo Cabret" an unusual choice for the Caldecott Medal, which is supposed to go to a, quote, unquote, "picture book."
Whatever you call it, "Hugo Cabret" is apparently very popular with librarians, who whooped and hollered when the selection was announced at the American Library Association meeting in Philadelphia.
Unidentified Woman #1: "The Invention of Hugo Cabret."
(Soundbite of cheers)
ROSE: The choice delighted Kate McClelland, a librarian from Old Greenwich, Connecticut.
Ms. KATE MCCLELLAND (Librarian, Old Greenwich, Connecticut): This is a book you don't have to assign because everybody has already taken it completely to their hearts.
ROSE: McClelland chaired the Caldecott selection committee in 2002 when Selznick was honored for an earlier book, "The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins." She says "Hugo Cabret" was considered a long shot to win the Caldecott Medal this year because of its experimental nature.
Ms. MCCLELLAND: We were not expecting this joyous surprise, which the book we all love the best, and we all knew was the most important book of the year. We were told, well, it's wonderful, it's the most important, but it can't win. And you know what, it did win. And we're just…
Unidentified Woman #2: Yay.
Ms. MCCLELLAND: Yay. And we're…
ROSE: The chair of this year's Caldecott committee was Karen Breen, an editor at Kirkus Reviews.
Ms. KAREN BREEN (Chair, Caldecott Award Committee; Editor, Kirkus Reviews): You can't find anybody who didn't think it was a wonderful book. It really came to the issue of whether it was a picture book or not. And that's what this committee decided it was.
ROSE: The ALA also awarded its other top literary prizes today. Like the Caldecott, the prestigious Newbery Award for outstanding children's book went to a non-traditional narrative. In the book "Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village," author Laura Amy Schlitz brings to life characters from the year 1255. Schlitz, who works at a school in Baltimore, is the second librarian in a row to win the Newbery Award.
For NPR News, I'm Joel Rose in Philadelphia.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced today that meat and milk from cloned animals is safe to consume. The FDA says food from clones is no different from what we're already eating. In a moment, more on the FDA's decision.
First, though, what some people at grocery stores around the country have to say.
Mr. RAY HUBLEY(ph) (Resident, New York City): I don't really understand why the food from a cloned animal would be bad to eat.
Ms. KIM JORADIA(ph) (Resident, Chicago): I don't feel like it's correct. I wouldn't want to buy meat if I knew it was through cloning. You don't know what the long-term effects can be of that for our system. I don't feel comfortable with that.
Mr. MARK MONTECINOS(ph) (Resident, Chicago): It's funny we were just talking about this, me and my wife. And her comment was we are not buying food that comes from a cloned animal. Somehow in her mind, in a weird way, it sounds a little grotesque.
Ms. VANS GARRY(ph) (Resident, Washington, D.C.): It doesn't seem moral or ethical or any of that practical or any of that stuff to me, you know. So I guess that's all I got to say about it.
SIEGEL: That was Ray Hubley of New York City, Kim Joradia and Mark Montecinos of Chicago, and Vans Garry of Washington, D.C.
Now, NPR's Dan Charles has the details of the FDA's decision and reaction from some of the people it affects.
DAN CHARLES: Today's announcement was good news for Karen Shoff(ph) in Barron, Wisconsin. Some years ago, the Shoffs had a cow named Black Rose.
Ms. KAREN SHOFF (Resident, Barron, Wisconsin): And she was a really good cow. She's kind of what we call one of those once in a lifetime cows that seems to put it all together.
CHARLES: In 1997, Karen Shoff and her husband Bob heard that scientists had created a genetic copy of a sheep, a clone named Dolly. And their thoughts turned to their prized cow.
Ms. SHOFF: We knew Black Rose was at some time going to leave us, you know, and you just look for that opportunity and almost really it felt like a responsibility to be able to somehow continue working with this line of genetics.
CHARLES: The Shoffs contacted a newly founded cloning company, ViaGen, in Austin, Texas. And now, they own a clone of Black Rose. But the Shoffs don't sell the milk from their clone. There's no law against it, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked them not to. The FDA wanted to examine whether it was safe.
Today, the agency announced it is. Randall Lutter is the FDA's deputy commissioner for policy.
Dr. RANDALL LUTTER (Deputy Commissioner for Policy, U.S. Food and Drug Administration): The meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones are as safe to eat as the food we eat every day.
CHARLES: Lutter said FDA scientists looked at the chemical makeup of the milk and meat. They monitored the health of cloned animals and they're convinced food from clones is exactly the same as what consumers are eating already.
So the FDA won't require labels on food from clones. In fact, Lutter says, it can't.
Dr. LUTTER: We lack authority to mandate labels of food as being from clones because we find that there's no scientific difference.
CHARLES: Still, FDA officials today made a distinction between cloned animals and their offspring. The offspring can now be treated like normal farm animals. But the FDA wants livestock producers to continue keeping milk and meat from the actual clones off the market for now.
The reason is many people, including important trading partners, want nothing to do with animal cloning. And the reasons go way beyond food safety. Margaret Mellon, a biotech critic from the Union of Concerned Scientists, says cloning harm some animals. Many clones don't survive. Some are born abnormally large which can injure their surrogate mothers.
Dr. MARGARET MELLON (Food and Environment Program Director, Union of Concerned Scientists): Finally, there is this really big issue that animal cloning is a stepping stone to human cloning.
CHARLES: Mellon says she thinks all animal cloning should stop until there's been a chance for more people to debate the need for this technology and also its risks.
The cloning company ViaGen though is looking forward to a surge of orders. The company's Leah Wilkinson says when people come to them, inquiring about making a clone, the first question has been whether the FDA will declare clones safe.
Ms. LEAH WILKINSON (Director, Industry Relations and Policy, ViaGen): So we are happy today that we will be able to answer those questions of - with an affirmative confirmation of safety.
CHARLES: Congress though may also weigh in. The Senate has already voted, asking the FDA not to approve foods from cloned animals until there's been more study. But that legislation hasn't yet passed the full Congress. It's also still not clear whether consumers will accept this technology and let food with a clone in its family tree onto the dinner table.
Dan Charles, NPR News, Washington.
SIEGEL: And you can read highlights from the FDA's report at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The 1990s were busy years for the indie rock group the Magnetic Fields.
Led by a quirky singer-songwriter, Stephin Merritt, the group released six albums and that included an ambitious three-CD set of 69 so-called love songs.
So far in this decade, The Magnetic Fields have put out only two albums. One came out in 2004. And our critic, Robert Christgau, thinks the second, released today, was well worth the wait.
ROBERT CHRISTGAU: One reason people love Stephin Merritt is that he's neat. He prefers shapely tunes to messy emotions, which he keeps at an ironic distance while writing in the first person. And though we call the Magnetic Fields a rock band because what else can we call them, the ukulele he likes to wield isn't exactly built for rocking out. So what will his adoring fans think when they put on the band's new album, "Distortion," and hear this?
(Soundbite of music)
CHRISTGAU: Merritt wanted to finish this album quickly, with the same instrumentation on every song. And he also wanted a contrast with 2004's "I", which he describes as self-consciously soft-rock. So he turned to one of his favorite rock albums, the Jesus and Mary Chain's 1985 feedback classic, "Psychocandy."
I'm sure he's telling the truth about this — he had to try hard to get feedback out of cello and piano. The new album is loud, fast, fuzzy. But there are some differences from "Psychocandy," which sounds like this.
(Soundbite of song "The Hardest Walk")
Mr. JIM REID (Vocalist, The Jesus and Mary Chain): (Singing) I cannot deceive, but I find it hard to speak. The hardest walk you could ever take is the walk you take from a to b to c.
CHRISTGAU: That's the Jesus and Mary Chain, talking about walking from A to B to C, their true formulas, which is why Merritt loves them. Now, compare this, from "Distortion."
(Soundbite of song "California Girls")
Mr. STEPHIN MERRITT (Vocalist, The Magnetic Fields): (Singing) They ain't broke so they put on airs. The faux folks sans derrieres. They breathe coke and have affairs with each passing rock star. They come on like squares then get off like squirrels. I hate California girls.
CHRISTGAU: They come on like squares then get off like squirrels. I hate California girls. A very Merritt-like turn of phrase. Followed by John Woo's guitar rising distinctly from the murk. This is far from neat. But it has a lot more definition and wit than "Psychocandy." And though what I'm about the play is one of Stephen Merritt's livelier turns on "Distortion," the lyric would stand out even if it was more muted.
(Soundbite of song "Too Drunk To Dream")
Mr. MERRITT: (Singing) I got to get too drunk to dream because I only dream of you. I got to get too fried to cry or I'll be crying all night long. I got to get too high to sigh. Oh, my God, where did I go wrong? So why do I get blasted, and why am I so lonely? It's you, you heartless (unintelligible). You're my one and only.
CHRISTGAU: In 1999, Magnetic Fields arrayed 69 songs about love over three CDs, a once-in-a-lifetime opus Stephin Merritt will never match. But to me, this new album he's tossed off has a consistency and weight that's more impressive than any of the other numerous products of his fecundity and facility. It does rock out and its momentum counterbalances Merritt's typically dour mood. Summing up is a duet called "Please Stop Dancing" that has it both ways.
(Soundbite of song "Please Stop Dancing")
Mr. MERRITT: (Singing) Please stop dancing in my soul…
SIEGEL: Robert Christgau is a contributing editor with Rolling Stone magazine. He reviewed the new album from the Magnetic Fields called "Distortion."
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
It's not easy to win a spot on the best-seller list for fiction unless you're John Grisham or Stephen King. And they both have new novels out this month. King's is called "Duma Key." Grisham's is titled "The Appeal."
Our reviewer Alan Cheuse expects these books, too, will be blockbusters.
ALAN CHEUSE: Both of these novels will soon be climbing up those best-seller lists and for mostly good reasons.
First, "The Appeal." The opening pages find a small town jury siding with a widow who's lost her family to a toxic dump fouling the local water supply. She's due $41 million from Krane Chemical, the company found at fault. But Krane quickly appeals the decision and pours millions more into buying itself a new state Supreme Court judge, hoping he'll overturn the jury's finding on appeal. Will he or won't he? That's the melodramatic heartbeat of this rather routinely told novel.
But despite characters who feel cinematic - more indicated then flashed out -and some over-the-top cartoonlike descriptions of life among the chemical tycoons and their lackeys, it's still worth the reading. Apart from the story or the characters, what stays with you here is the message: Justice is expensive and - take note, John Edwards fans - trial lawyers are the heroes of our time.
Now, if Grisham's "The Appeal" leads you by the hand, Stephen King's new novel "Duma Key" takes you by the throat for some 600 pages. King sets his story on a hurricane-swept Florida isle and employs a mechanism familiar to fans of his terror epics. There's an evil power on the loose that wants to do certain people harm. This time around, it's a telekinetic pagan goddess who thrives in salt water.
This evil genie comes after a middle-aged Michigan contractor-turned-painter who's lost an arm in a construction accident and has rented a seaside house where he hopes to recuperate. The house isn't haunted. The entire beach is. Maybe even your copy of this book.
King may play on childhood fears but he himself keeps on maturing as a novelist. And "Duma Key" stands as one of his frightening best.
BLOCK: The novels are "The Appeal" by John Grisham and "Duma Key" by Stephen King. Reviewer Alan Cheuse teaches writing at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
It's primary day in Michigan. The Democratic contest there is a non-event. Several candidates aren't on the ballot because of a dispute over the primary schedule. But for the Republicans, the contest is seen as a critical test before their next primary in South Carolina.
Our co-host Michele Norris is in South Carolina this week. And she was surprised this morning to find some of the Republican candidates in Myrtle Beach - sort of.
MICHELE NORRIS: There's Fred, then Mitt, then Rudy, and Mike, John and Ron — not the actual candidates, but their faces carved in sand - a sand sculpture almost 20 feet tall. South Dakota has Mount Rushmore, South Carolina now has Mount Myrtle.
And while it took Gutzon Borglum more than 14 years to complete Mount Rushmore's four granite faces, an outfit called Team Sandtastic took just four days to carve the Myrtle Beach sculpture.
It's quite an attraction - cars slow as they pass, groups of tourists gather. We caught up with two couples - Paul(ph) and Lyn Worth(ph), and Dave(ph) and Judy Carlson(ph).
Unidentified Woman #1: I think they're very good.
Unidentified Man #1: I think they did look not so real.
Unidentified Woman #1: I think - yeah.
NORRIS: That seems to be the consensus.
Unidentified Man #2: Yeah.
NORRIS: That Fred looks like Fred.
Unidentified Man #2: And Rudy.
Unidentified Man #1: Now, Romney - His hair isn't that big. It's not (unintelligible).
Unidentified Man #2: Actually, they're all very true likenesses. You can see the bulge in McCain's left side of his jaw. You can see Ron Paul's big ears.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Man #2: So I think they're all very good likenesses.
NORRIS: Now, John McCain has a lot of hair.
Unidentified Man #1: Well, I think that's just a little sand that's wet.
Unidentified Woman #2: No way.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Man #1: (Unintelligible) right there.
NORRIS: Okay. All right.
Brad Dean came up with the idea for Mount Myrtle. He heads the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. He explains how they try to capture the candidates.
Mr. BRAD DEAN (President and CEO, Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce): We used photos but we asked the sculptors to use their imagination and make them creative. Some are better than others. Mike Huckabee loved his. Mitt Romney wasn't crazy about his. I think Mr. Romney felt like we overdid the hair and overdid the smile. But he still did well in the debate. So hopefully, he came away from Myrtle Beach with a positive (unintelligible).
NORRIS: Yeah. The hair is buoyant.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DEAN: It's got some buoyancy to it. So - and of course, the big question has been how do we place and where do we place them and will we do one for the Democrats.
NORRIS: How did you choose the location?
Mr. DEAN: We tried to play them off of each other. And of course, Ron Paul was farthest to the right because nobody is to the left of Ron Paul politically or otherwise.
NORRIS: Now, what's the long-term plan here? How long will this last?
Mr. DEAN: The sand sculptures can last for weeks at a time. We are looking for a creative way to dismantle them. And hopefully, we can have some fun with the dismantling of Mount Myrtle once the debates are over.
NORRIS: How do you dismantle it? It means like, you know, basically, taking a pickax to someone (unintelligible). How do you do that?
Mr. DEAN: Normally, you use equipment to dismantle the sand and move it. We understand there are maybe some Democrats who are looking forward to helping dismantle the Republican candidates.
NORRIS: And vice versa I would say so.
Mr. DEAN: Absolutely.
NORRIS: And the Democrats? Work on their sculpture begins tomorrow.
In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In Los Angeles, police officers who work in gang and narcotics units will soon be required to disclose private details of their personal finances. It's an attempt to fight corruption within the ranks. Crooked cops have been a big problem for the LAPD in the past, but the police union says this new policy is not the right solution.
NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO: A federal judge handed down the financial disclosure requirement as part of a consent decree responding to the LAPD's infamous Rampart Scandal. In the late 1990s, anti-gang unit officers in the city's Rampart Division were found to have been planting evidence, framing and even shooting alleged gang members.
Mr. JOHN MACK (Police Commissioner): These are the officers who handle cash money. You know, they are the ones who have contact with drug dealers and operators, and a lot of cash gets exchanged.
DEL BARCO: Police Commissioner John Mack chairs the civilian oversight committee that monitors the LAPD. He says the requirement would apply to such officers throughout the department.
Mr. MACK: The thinking of the court was that it's important to determine if some officers may have some unexplained wealth.
DEL BARCO: For example, Mack says, the anti-corruption plan would look into officers with salaries of $50,000 to $75,000 a year, who seem to be living beyond their means. They'd be asked to reveal details about their bank accounts, mortgages and credit cards.
But Tim Sands who heads the L.A. Police Protective League says the plan is ill-conceived and intrusive.
Mr. TIM SANDS (President, L.A. Police Protective League): And it will not prevent corruption because if I'm a dirty cop, I'm not putting that money in my checking account.
DEL BARCO: The police union has already filed a lawsuit against the department to stop the financial disclosure requirement. Now, Sands is running dramatic-sounding radio ads.
(Soundbite of radio ad)
Mr. SANDS: Imagine if your boss demanded that you give him all of your personal financial information, even when you had done nothing wrong, including all your bank account numbers and those of your spouse, your children, and even your grandchildren. He then told you that there would be no guarantee who the information would be seen by. Would you agree to work under these conditions?
DEL BARCO: Sands says the LAPD already has tools to weed out suspicious cops -polygraph exams, investigations, subpoenas. And while the police commission promises to store the financial information in the police chief's office, Sands says many are afraid their records could get into the wrong hands. It's part of the message he talks about in the radio ad.
(Soundbite of radio ad)
Mr. SANDS: It will make the men and the women who put their lives on the line vulnerable to yet another kind of crime - identity theft. More than 500 officers are willing to leave their units rather than take the financial risk of sharing their personal information.
DEL BARCO: The police union says officers feel they'll be vulnerable to some of the criminals they arrest. But Police Commissioner John Mack isn't buying their arguments.
Mr. MACK: That's a threat that they've been throwing out there. Frankly, I think it's a scare tactic.
DEL BARCO: Mack admits the requirement is not foolproof. There are those who could beat the system. But he says most officers shouldn't fear the requirement.
Mr. MACK: It is not the end of the world. Their lives are not going to be turned upside down. And assuming that most of them, I'd like to assume all of them are honest, they have nothing to hide.
DEL BARCO: The plan will soon take effect for new hires into the anti-gang and narcotics units, and in two years, for officers already there. But as their lawsuit proceeds, the police union continues to lobby L.A. city officials to reverse the plan.
Mandalit del Barco, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
If you're among the many millions of people who take drugs to lower cholesterol, you may well be confused by the results of a study of the drugs Zetia and Vytorin. The manufacturers of those drugs have just released data showing that while they do significantly lower the level of bad cholesterol, or LDL, they do not prevent the buildup of plaque in the arteries. In fact, the drugs might increase that buildup.
So what's a patient to do?
Well, we've asked Dr. Stuart Seides to help sort through this. He's associate director of cardiology at the Washington Hospital Center.
Dr. Seides, are you getting a lot of calls from your patients today?
Dr. STUART SEIDES (Associate Director of Cardiology, Washington Hospital Center): Oh, yes. The way the press has picked up this information has created a lot of angst on the part of our patients who are taking either these drugs. And we've gotten a lot of calls today.
BLOCK: What are you telling your patients who call in?
Dr. SEIDES: Well, we're telling our patients, at least for the time being, to continue on the drugs that have been prescribed for them and that there is no reason for them to discontinue either Vytorin or Zetia.
BLOCK: Now, why use that? These new findings say that, yeah, the drugs do lower cholesterol but its benefit of reducing plaque in the arteries is not holding up. So why wouldn't you take something that might do both?
Dr. SEIDES: Well, I think it's important to remember that what we really care about when we use these drugs or any drugs that influence cholesterol or other risk factors is whether we are preventing heart attacks or strokes. What was looked at here was the thickness of the interior part of the carotid artery, which is a big artery in the neck. The study attempted to show that the use of Vytorin or Zetia as opposed to a statin drug, like Zocor, alone reduced the thickening of the arterial wall over a period of two years. That was not shown.
And so it is an interesting finding and suggests that simply by lowering cholesterol, you may not reduce the thickening of the walls on the carotid arteries, but it doesn't answer the issue of whether reducing the cholesterol further with Vytorin or Zetia compared to a statin alone will reduce events.
BLOCK: Was the expectation of these two drugs - Vytorin and Zetia - that they would help prevent heart attack strokes?
Dr. SEIDES: Well, the expectation I think is still, if they will. I do know that this study does not exclude that possibility. Remember that when we measure serum cholesterol, that too is a surrogate for clinical outcomes. We don't treat people to lower their cholesterol just to give them a better number. The number itself is a surrogate that we use to convince ourselves that we are reducing risk of clinical events.
BLOCK: So if you know there are drugs out there that do both - that lower cholesterol levels and would decrease the risk of, say, heart attack - why not just prescribe those?
Dr. SEIDES: Well, I think one should. I think with the exception of those people who cannot tolerate those drugs, the first line of treatment should be, and in my mind always has been, the prescription of a statin drug like Lipitor, Zocor, Crestor, Pravachol, Lescol - I think I hit all the ones that are marketed in the United States, and clearly that should be the first line of treatment.
However, in those patients who are getting a robust dose of statins, where you still have not achieved the cholesterol level that you think is optimal, I believe that adding Zetia still represents a very reasonable move on the part of the physician and patient. And we should have data on long-term outcomes. The real outcomes data are probably some time in the next, I would say, two to four years.
BLOCK: Two to four years could be a long time to wait.
Dr. SEIDES: It is a long time to wait. But unfortunately, one is talking is talking clinical outcomes, you need large numbers of patients studied over long periods of time to get statistical significant data.
BLOCK: Dr. Seides, if this study by the manufacturers, which are Merck and Schering-Plough, was completed about two years ago is just being released now after a lot of pressure from Congress and the media. Do you find that troubling?
Dr. SEIDES: Well, I think any time that one has a belief that data was available that could be used for the benefit of patients or the medical community and was not released promptly, that's always troubling. My understanding is that the manufacturers or sponsors of this study said that lots of time was required for data analysis. But obviously, there's a sneaking suspicion that because the outcome was not particularly favorable for the drug that they held it for as long as possible. I don't know what the truth is, but certainly it doesn't smell that good.
BLOCK: Dr. Seides, good to talk to you. Thanks very much.
Dr. SEIDES: Take care. Bye.
BLOCK: That's Dr. Stuart Seides. He's associate director of cardiology at the Washington Hospital Center.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
It's been more than six months since nine firemen died in a warehouse fire in Charleston, South Carolina. It was the worst single loss of firefighters in the U.S. since the 9/11. The disaster has prompted several investigations into the way Charleston's fire department operates.
As NPR's Adam Hochberg reports, that's causing tension with the fire department, which is proud of its record.
ADAM HOCHBERG: The fire department in Charleston, South Carolina not only is one of the nation's oldest, but it also considers itself among the nation's most aggressive — a rugged force dedicated to saving lives and property in a historic city. At issue is whether they were too aggressive June 18th.
(Soundbite of radio communication)
Unidentified Man #1: Attention: (unintelligible) fire out at 1807 Savannah Highway, structure.
HOCHBERG: That evening, crews responded to what started as a debris fire on the loading dock of the Sofa Super Store, a huge furniture showroom and warehouse. But the firefighters' radio communication that night shows how quickly things worsened.
(Soundbite of radio communication)
Unidentified Man #2: The minute I got inside, the rear of the building is (unintelligible) and it's way right on the end of the showroom.
HOCHBERG: Just after crews arrived, they reported the fire had spread inside the store. More than a dozen firefighters rushed inside, too — attacking the flames in the department's usual vigorous style.
(Soundbite of radio communication)
Unidentified Man #3: I want you to come with the boys in (unintelligible) Savannah Highway and come in the front door.
HOCHBERG: But as the men charged into the store, they may not have anticipated the challenge they face. The building was loaded with flammable furniture. It had no sprinklers. And its steel truss roof allowed the fire to spread deceptively fast - faster than crews could bring in water to fight it. And as the smoke thickened and the firefighters' air supplies began to run low, several of the men apparently became disoriented and couldn't find their way out through the maze of furniture.
(Soundbite of radio communication)
Unidentified Man #4: Everybody get out of the building. Everybody stay out of the building.
HOCHBERG: By the time fire chief Rusty Thomas ordered his men to flee the store, it was too late for nine of them. They succumbed to smoke inhalation and burns. Today, more than half a year later, Chief Thomas says his department still grieves.
Chief RUSTY THOMAS (Charleston Fire Department, South Carolina): I lost nine friends, and we lost a lot of these (unintelligible). And those nine guys, they gave it all.
HOCHBERG: But as Thomas mourns the victims, he also faces questions about how his department handled the fire. Whether there was an adequate plan of attack and whether firefighters should have stayed so long in a burning building, even when no other lives were at risk.
Chief Thomas' boss, Charleston mayor Joe Riley, defends the department and says nothing could have prevented the tragedy.
Mayor JOE RILEY (Democrat, Charleston, South Carolina): This was a un-sprinkled building that was filled with very flammable sofas. And so it was beyond the firefighting capabilities of any fire department.
HOCHBERG: South Carolina regulators, though, have found fault with the Charleston department's response. They allege the department violated several workplace safety rules at the fire scene. Last month, the city, while not admitting wrongdoing, agreed to pay a $3,000 penalty. Among the allegations was that the department lacked an adequate command structure, which experts say made it hard to keep track of how many men were in the building and how much danger they faced. George Munkenbeck teaches fire safety at American Military University.
Professor GEORGE MUNKENBECK (Fire Safety and Emergency Management, American Military University): This was a very rapidly developing situation. And there were a lot of things going on simultaneously. I would imagine that in this confusion things started getting out of hand and people started getting lost. And if you put the incident command system then it becomes much easier to sort everything out.
HOCHBERG: In addition to the state investigation, the city hired a team of consultants to review how the fire department does its job. And while their report didn't specifically address what happened at the furniture store, it said the department urgently needs better equipment, better training and a new culture - one that Charleston City Councilman Henry Fishburne says should emphasis safety.
Mr. HENRY FISHBURNE (Councilman, Charleston City): The department has a reputation of being aggressive, some people have said macho. But you just don't rush into a building with a hose without making a risk analysis. That may have been the philosophy, you know, hundred years ago, 50 years ago. But it's not now.
HOCHBERG: City leaders say they are committed to modernizing their tradition-laden fire department. They say since June, they've updated their training regimen and improved their command structure. They've also pledge to develop a comprehensive safety program and upgrade much of their gear. Fire Chief Thomas says he welcomes the proposed reforms. But he also says his department never put firefighters at risk.
Chief THOMAS: We are an aggressive fire department. That's basically why most of our city is still standing. But we don't do it in an unsafe manner.
HOCHBERG: With the benefit of hindsight, is there anything that you think had you done it differently the night of the fire would have saved lives?
Chief THOMAS: No, sir.
HOCHBERG: Four more state and federal fire investigations are still underway, including one that's expected to address how it started. Meanwhile, the owner of the furniture store, this month, agreed to a settlement with state regulators, who say they found several safety violations in the building, including fire doors that, investigators say, failed to work the night the nine men died.
Adam Hochberg, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
President Bush got the royal treatment in Saudi Arabia today while his secretary of state was dispatched on a quick trip to Iraq. The president and his policies are unpopular in the Middle East. This was mainly a visit about shoring up key alliances.
NPR's Michele Kelemen has been traveling with the president. She joins us from Riyadh. And first of all, Michele, why don't you give us the sense of the president's stop there in the Saudi capital today?
MICHELE KELEMEN: Well, he's staying out tonight at Kim Abdullah's ranch in the desert. He had a chance to see some of the king's thoroughbreds who are also, apparently, given the royal treatment. Trainers give these horses aqua therapy, according to the White House staffers who were out there. At dinner at the ranch, President Bush and his staff were all wearing these full length Saudi robes lined with fur because it's unusually cold here this week.
As for the talk, President Bush said he's going to be raising the high price of oil with the Saudi king. He said that's been tough on the U.S. economy. He said he wanted to tell the king that if there's an economic slowdown in the U.S., that would mean less barrels of oil purchase. I mean, it's an odd ways to do it in this very lavish tent, but that's what he said he was going to be talking about tonight.
Of course, there's a lot of other things to talk about, but it seemed, at least from my perspective, that this was mainly a day to show how strong this relationship is and to show the personal ties between these two men.
BLOCK: And in the meantime, Secretary Condoleezza Rice was sent on a quick trip to Baghdad and then back to Saudi Arabia. Tell us about that.
KELEMEN: Well, the Bush administration was really pleased that the Iraqi parliament over the weekend passed this law to let former Baath party members get government jobs. And President Bush said he decided Rice should go to build on that momentum. The secretary had a news conference tonight here in Riyadh, and she said that the legislation might not have been exactly what everyone wanted, but she said this is, and this is a quote, "fragile as it is, it's clear that the Iraqi people are finding their way toward reconciliation."
BLOCK: Michele, President Bush started this trip in Israel and the West Bank, and he was sounding very optimistic there about the prospects for peace. What did he have to say about Middle East peace today with the Saudis?
KELEMEN: Well, he told reporters that as he's been travelling throughout this region, he's been in other Gulf states as well, that the Palestinian issue is — this is the way he brought it, he said it's kind of a touchstone on the mind of a lot of people here and a lot of other problems in the Middle East. So you solve this one and then a lot of other problems go away. And he said, I hope they're right.
What he's been talking about here is that he wants to see Arab states reach out to Israel. Saudi Arabia's foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, said he doesn't know how much more outreach his country can give the Israelis. Saudi Arabia has offered to normalize ties after a peace deal is agreed. And he said Saudi Arabia, you know, has this peace plan that it has on offer, and he said that it includes security for Israel. Secretary Rice said she thinks that the Saudis and others could do a little bit more.
BLOCK: The president has also been talking about his hopes for political reform in the region. He talked about that in a speech in Abu Dhabi. Did he raise that same issue or did he talk about repression, say, there in Saudi Arabia?
KELEMEN: Secretary Rice said that it's an issue that always comes up in his conversations. She said that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have a kind of a relationship where they can talk about these issues. She said she's never gotten a stonewall from her Saudi colleague on these issues. But she wasn't specific at all. She didn't even talk, for instance, about the lack of women's rights here. And when she was asked if she raised an issue of a jailed Saudi blogger, she said she's raised that before with the ambassador. So she didn't get specific, really, at all.
BLOCK: Okay. Thanks a lot, Michele. That's NPR's Michele Kelemen in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
A little over two years ago, President Bush laid out a strategy for fighting the war on terror which included this commitment to transformational change in the Middle East.
President GEORGE W BUSH: To deny the militants' future recruits by replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the broader Middle East. This is difficult and it's a long term project, yet there is no alternative to it.
SIEGEL: Or is there? On this trip, some observers heard more emphasis on justice than democracy in the president's rhetoric. And when he spoke in Abu Dhabi, the president underscored what he described as successes in the movement toward democracy.
Pres. BUSH: Citizens have voted in municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, in competitive parliamentary elections in Jordan and Morocco and Bahrain, and in a multiparty presidential election in Yemen. Across the world, the majority of Muslim people live in a free and democratic society, and the people of the Middle East must continue to work for the day. Well, that is also true of the lands that Islam first called home.
SIEGEL: Is democracy in the Middle East a credible aim of U.S. policy or does it run counter to Washington's interest in strategic partnerships with highly undemocratic regimes?
Well, joining us from New York to talk about this is Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International. Welcome back to the program, Fareed.
Mr. FAREED ZAKARIA (Editor, Newsweek International): Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: And first, what, if anything, has changed in U.S. policy since President Bush first started pushing democratic reform in the Mid East as a U.S. interest?
Mr. ZAKARIA: The most important thing that's changed has been the unraveling of the Iraq idea. The other stuff is real, it's very small - the elections in Jordan and Morocco, both of which are, again, run pretty tightly by absolute monarchies. But most of the Arab world looks at Iraq and sees a country that is in inconceivable chaos - two million people have left. And most importantly, they don't see democracy, they see Shiite majority rule.
So in order to account for, you know, plan B as it were — plan A was that Iraq would show everyone, you know, the transformational nature of democracy, plan B is this much more modest, incremental approach focusing, as you said, on justice. Pointing to very, very small steps such as the municipal elections in Saudi Arabia. I mean, to understand, Saudi Arabia is a country which is still running an almost medieval, monarchical fashion. So the point to the municipal elections there is a very small step.
SIEGEL: At the high watermark of President Bush's talking about democracy in the Mid East, Lebanon also seem to be an arena where democracy was on the rise.
Mr. ZAKARIA: Precisely. And it pointed to - and the elections of the Palestinian authority, you'll recall. In Lebanon, they empowered Hezbollah. In the Palestinian authority, they empowered Hamas. And then we refused to deal with the elected government in Gaza. All of which points to two things, it seems to me. One is, the process of modernization in these societies is very complicated. There's economic modernization, there's political modernization, which includes - but does not involve only democracy, there's also the rule of law, the institutions of liberty. And to simply focus in on one thing and assume it's going to happen, it takes a long time in this situations.
And the second part, which is, I think, the most important, is it points to the hypocrisy of the United States. Because we talk a lot about democracy, except in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In other words, all the countries that matter, we emphasize the stability of the present. And then when it comes to Burma, you know, strategically a relevant country, we beat the Chinese and the Indians on the head by saying, why aren't you more in favor of democracy? Well, they point out they'll have a million refugees if Burma implodes.
SIEGEL: Well, as you listen to another domestic debate over foreign policy, to the extent that there is one in the presidential primary campaigns, can you imagine a more coldly realistic foreign policy emerging in Washington, which says, let's face it, we don't care that much if a vital strategic partner passes our test for good government?
Mr. ZAKARIA: Well, in a sense, that position has been taken by its absence, by which I mean there aren't a lot of people calling on Musharraf to resign. There aren't a lot of people calling on the Saudis to engage in a democratic revolution, now that oil is $100 a barrel. In a strange sense, you have a kind of stealth realism returning to Washington. It's not that anyone will admit it, but they all seem to be pursuing a policy that's more Henry Kissinger than George W. Bush.
SIEGEL: Fareed Zakaria, thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. ZAKARIA: Pleasure.
SIEGEL: Fareed Zakaria spoke to us from New York where he is editor of Newsweek International.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The border near Tucson, Arizona, is one of the nation's busiest. Last year, nearly 400,000 illegal immigrants crossed into the U.S. there. The federal government has begun prosecuting more of those illegal immigrants.
As NPR's Ted Robbins reports, that effort is likely to strain all parts of the legal system.
TED ROBBINS: This is the processing center of the Border Patrol's Tucson station, an eight-sided cinderblock room. Groups of men, women and children caught crossing the border illegally sit in cells along the walls. One by one, they step up to a curved counter manned by Border Patrol agents. The agents take their fingerprints and pictures and enter their personal information into a computer.
(Soundbite of people talking)
ROBBINS: In the Tucson sector, this scene is repeated anywhere from 500 to 1500 times a day. So often that the vast majority of crossers are just put on a bus and driven back to the border to try again or go home. But now, some first-time crossers with no criminal record are being prosecuted.
Mr. ROBERT BOATRIGHT (Chief Deputy Patrol Agent, U.S. Border Patrol, Tucson Sector): It's a deterrent.
ROBBINS: The Border Patrol's deputy sector chief, Robert Boatright, says the purpose of the increased prosecutions is not to punish crossers. It's to get them to stop trying.
Mr. BOATRIGHT: Yeah. Word of mouth spreads very quickly in a border environment. One merely has to mention prosecution initiatives and the average border-crosser and, certainly, the smugglers learn about that very quickly.
ROBBINS: But it's going to be a very expensive and difficult proposition.
Deputy Chief U.S. Marshal Raymond Kondo and his staff have to transport, feed and house every arrested border crosser.
Mr. RAY KONDO (Deputy Chief U.S. Marshal, Tucson): Our biggest problem is not so much the financial aspect but the physical aspect as far as running out of bed space for prisoners.
ROBBINS: So to start, the Border Patrol is prosecuting just 42 additional people every day. But each defendant needs a judge, a prosecutor and a defense attorney. What happens when this plan, the count goes up to 60 or even 80 a day? The head of the Federal Public Defender's office in Tucson, Heather Williams, says clients can forget about adequate representation.
Ms. HEATHER WILLIAMS (Assistant Federal Public Defender, Tucson, Arizona): I don't think that it can be effective at all. I don't think that you have enough time, first of all, to explain to that number of people their constitutional rights and what a plea agreement is and giving up a right to trial and believe that you know that all 80 of those people really understand what they're giving up.
ROBBINS: They face two weeks to six months in prison, and likely, their future right to immigrate legally. Williams believes the stepped-up prosecutions will not deter many people. By and large, she says, people who cross illegally do so out of desperation.
But the Border Patrol's Robert Boatright says getting the word out that there's even a chance of arrest before the killing desert's heat sets in.
Mr. BOATRIGHT: If we can create that deterrent now early in the year and reduce those numbers of cross-border interdictions as well as, you know, mitigating even one death, we can make some benefit here.
ROBBINS: Stepped-up prosecutions have cut the number of people crossing in Texas and cut border violence in Yuma. But those places have less than one-tenth the crossings in the Tucson sector. Making a dent here could take more time and more prosecutions than 42 or 142 a day.
Ted Robbins, NPR News, Tucson.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
In 2006, Megan Meier, a 13-year-old who lived near St. Louis, committed suicide after receiving cruel messages on MySpace. She thought she was communicating with a 16-year-old boy. It now appears it was the mother of a girl she knew who was using a fake online profile. Missouri prosecutors have said they are not able to pursue any criminal charges. State legislators are scrambling to pass a law against online bullying.
And now, as Matt Sepic of member station KWMU reports, federal prosecutors are getting involved in the case.
MATT SEPIC: The story is well known. In late 2006, Megan Meier met Josh Evans on the social networking site MySpace. But Josh soon turned on Megan, allegedly telling her, the world would be a better place without you. After that, Megan hanged herself in her closet. The police report say Josh's MySpace profile was the creation of 48-year-old Lori Drew, who was retaliating against gossip about her daughter.
Megan's own mother, Tina Meier, welcomed the news federal prosecutors are now considering charging Drew and others with wire fraud. This, from an appearance on NBC's "Today Show."
(Soundbite of "Today Show")
Ms. TINA MEIER (Megan Meier Mother): I still truly believe in my heart they absolutely should be criminally prosecuted. So if that's the way it needs to be in the end, then I say go for it.
SEPIC: But in St. Louis, former U.S. attorney Jim Martin says wire fraud is a long shot for federal prosecutors because it would mean proving MySpace was somehow a victim.
Mr. JIM MARTIN (Former U.S. Attorney): The question is, was there an intent to defraud MySpace? I think MySpace itself would have a hard time arguing that because MySpace's goal is to generate as much activity as possible. They're not concerned whether people are entering with their real name or some other name.
SEPIC: Martin says harassment and bullying are tough things to prove, and the First Amendment makes it hard to limit even hateful speech. Besides that, he says laws against bullying run the risk of being vague. But that hasn't stopped people from trying. Most states require school districts to have anti-bullying policies, and laws in Oregon, Washington and Arkansas specifically target online harassment.
Since the news broke of Megan's suicide, several communities near St. Louis passed misdemeanor bullying ordinances and in the Missouri legislature, State Senator Scott Rupp is pushing an even stronger measure.
State Senator SCOTT RUPP (Republican, Missouri): We're going to be suggesting that it would be a Class D felony if this is done for an adult to a minor, which is what this case was, and we think that's a little more of an egregious thing and so should carry a heavier penalty.
SEPIC: But Nancy Willard says these laws are nothing more than feel-good measures that stem in large part from intense media coverage. Willard runs the Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use, and she advises schools on Internet bullying.
Ms. NANCY WILLARD (Executive Director, Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use): We see very frequently in our society that there's a particularly outrageous case, and then we come up with a criminal law to make us all feel better that we're going to take care of it. But in fact, those laws don't take care of it.
SEPIC: Willard says the best way to eliminate online bullying among children is vigilance on the part of parents, teachers and kids. Now, MySpace is helping with that effort. The company just announced additional parental controls and promised quick responses to complaints of inappropriate content. In its statement, MySpace made no mention of Megan Meier. The company's agreement with 49 state attorneys general is aimed at sexual predators. But efforts to rein in one type of crime just could help curb other nasty online behavior.
For NPR News, I'm Matt Sepic in St. Louis.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Today, the stock market took another big hit, and all the major industries lost more than 2 percent. The market was reacting to news about inflation, some weaker-than-expected retail sales numbers, and a bad earnings report from Citigroup. The financial services giant said it lost nearly $10 billion during the last three months of 2007. Much of the loss occurred because of the subprime mortgage crisis that's been battering the U.S. banking sector for months. There is also a new wrinkle, a rise in defaults on consumer loans and credit cards. More on that from NPR's Jim Zarroli.
JIM ZARROLI: It fell to Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit to announce the bad news after just a month on the job. The bank had racked up more than $22 billion in bad loans last quarter, which wiped out any profit the bank made and left it with a big loss. In a conference call with analysts, Pandit said most of the losses were in mortgage-backed securities.
Mr. VIKRAM PANDIT (CEO, Citigroup): Steady fourth quarter is also unacceptable. We need to do better, and we will do better.
ZARROLI: Pandit said he was still studying the sprawling corporate landscape that is Citigroup, and once he had done so, he would come up with a comprehensive plan to get the company's finances in order. That could mean selling off part of the company. In the meantime, he said Citigroup was cutting the dividend it pays shareholders and eliminating 4,200 jobs. Bert Ely is a banking consultant who has worked for Citigroup in the past.
Mr. BERT ELY (Bank Consultant): They're going in there and they're looking at their various lines of business and are selling off assets where it makes sense to do so.
ZARROLI: Ely believes the company has made some progress in cleaning up its balance sheet, which has been cluttered with a confusing array of leveraged debt products. Citigroup officials told investors they've done something else too. They've attracted an additional $12.5 billion from big investors. The largest share will come from the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. By doing all this, Citigroup is clearly hoping it can show shareholders it is addressing its problems. But the efforts seemed to fall short, and Citigroup's shares ended the day down 7 percent.
Mr. JAMES ELLMAN (President, Seacliff Capital): The real problem now is that the pain is migrating from Wall Street to Main Street.
ZARROLI: James Ellman heads Seacliff Capital, a hedge fund that invests in financial services companies, though not in Citigroup. He says a lot of shareholders were probably unhappy about the dividend cut. But Ellman said something else may have disturbed them, too. Citigroup said it'd seen a big increase in defaults for certain kinds of consumer loans, evidence of how much the economy has slowed.
Mr. ELLMAN: Now, unfortunately, the problem is migrating to credit card portfolios, auto loan portfolios, and small commercial real estate portfolios. And unfortunately, that will cause significant pain for Citi, as well as for many other large banks in the United States.
ZARROLI: Citigroup says the losses on the consumer loans have been offset by gains in the revenue it makes in the booming overseas economies. But unless the mortgage crisis ends soon - something few people expect — 2008 is likely to be a tough year for the company.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Citigroup is not the only U.S. bank to get cash from foreign governments. Today, Merrill Lynch said that it's received an almost $7-billion investment from a group that includes the governments of Kuwait and Korea. Over the last few months, foreign governments have invested tens of billions of dollars in U.S. banks. The investments have some in Congress worried that foreign governments will gain too much control over the U.S. economy.
NPR's Adam Davidson has been following this story. And Adam, these are big investments, but they amount to a pretty small stake in a company like Citigroup or Merrill Lynch. What's the concern here?
ADAM DAVIDSON: I think it's really easy to portray this process, these large investment funds owned by governments investing in the U.S. financial market in very scary terms. It's an easy thing to do for people of a certain mindset. I mean, these are huge funds. They have trillions of dollars. They're controlled pretty secretly by governments in Asia and the Middle East. We don't know much about who runs them, what their goals are, are they purely financial instruments, or do they have political goals. There's been a lot of, sometimes, overheated political rhetoric. Will these funds be used by malicious foreign governments to hurt the U.S. economy, or worse, hurt our national security? So, so, when you add that to a presidential election season, I think it's a time when this becomes a pretty juicy political issue.
SIEGEL: But if those are the reasons that some people give for saying they're nervous about this development, are there other people who support this kind of investment in U.S. financial institutions?
DAVIDSON: Yes, certainly. I mean, first off, Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, all the huge banks that have gotten money when they desperately needed it, are very happy. But it's more than that. The Bush administration - and not just Republicans, plenty of leading Democrats too - say that these investments by foreign governments are very good for the U.S. economy. They help stabilize our banking infrastructure at a time of real chaos and fear. They increase the share prices of these banks - although today, that didn't necessarily happen…
SIEGEL: Oh, okay.
DAVIDSON: …but in general, they do. So, yes, there's so many, many people who say the good far outweighs the bad.
SIEGEL: Well, is there likely to be some congressional action or some debate over the likelihood of congressional action?
DAVIDSON: Yes. There's been several senators, both Republicans and Democrats, who said they plan to hold hearings looking into this. This heated up a few years ago with the Dubai Ports World. That was a government buying U.S. assets. I think we can pretty much guarantee this will be a hot political issue, especially since we're going to be seeing more and more of these investments in the coming months.
SIEGEL: It's NPR's Adam Davidson in New York. Thank you, Adam.
DAVIDSON: Thank you. You're welcome.
SIEGEL: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Now, what if stock prices are going down and bond prices are going up - which means yields go down - and dollars in the bank are losing value against other currencies, and real estate is losing value. What do people invest in? Well, there are some things that are going up in value. For example, precious metals, like gold. Ira Epstein is president of Ira Epstein and Company Futures in Chicago. He does twice daily video Web cast. Mr. Epstein, what's the gold story this week?
Mr. IRA EPSTEIN (President, Ira Epstein & Company): Well, the gold story has been pretty consistent. Gold has been a safe haven, as people around the world - not just the United States - have been running to it because of the falling and worsening economic tide that's gripping nearly all the industrialized countries.
SIEGEL: Has trading been frantic today and last week, say?
Mr. EPSTEIN: Actually, it hasn't been frantic. It's been orderly. It became frantic for a short time after Bernanke's speech, of course, last week. And then, after that, things have settled down, and the market's been probing higher in levels. But right now, I think profit-taking is probably more in order than anything.
SIEGEL: But if you buy gold, you own something that doesn't pay a dividend or yield interest. And unlike a barrel of oil, you can't heat your home or run your car with it. What can you do with gold?
Mr. EPSTEIN: You can transport it and store wealth. And that's what it's been all about since biblical times. You can put an ounce of gold in your pocket, today, that's $900, anywhere that you want to go. So, that's what it's been about. Of course, people don't just buy an ounce of gold and carry it in their pocket. But the concept is a haven when things are uncertain. And you are 100 percent correct, it does not pay interest. But what good is interest if you're making 3, 4 percent and the value of your currency is falling 6 percent? You're net behind.
SIEGEL: I'd like you to explain something. You said something in the Web cast that I called up earlier today and saying that obviously, gold has already been rising in value. You said the train has left the station you acknowledged.
Mr. EPSTEIN: I say this all the time. Here's what I say. People think they've always missed an opportunity. The problem is they haven't. That's why there is airports, train stations, and that's why there are schedules. There's always another train coming on going to another destination of the same one. Well, there's always an opportunity in the marketplace, the question is when they get on board for that opportunity.
SIEGEL: Okay. Well, thank you very much for talking with us, Mr. Epstein.
Mr. EPSTEIN: You're more than welcome.
SIEGEL: It's Ira Epstein, who is president of Ira Epstein and Company Futures in Chicago.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Until a couple of months ago, American troops in southwest Baghdad were caught in a daily fight. The area was devastated by sectarian violence. Soldiers of the 1st Infantry Division's 4th Brigade went house-to-house, street-to-street. The brigade has lost 80 men with hundreds more wounded. And now, violent incidents have been dramatically reduced, down from a high of 900 to just four a day. And for the 4th Infantry and local Iraqis, the name of the game is reconciliation.
NPR's Anne Garrels has this story from the neighborhood of Amil.
(Soundbite of radio transmission)
Captain SHAWN LYONS(ph) (4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, U.S. Army): Now, we're still waiting on the fashionably late element, which is the Sunnis.
ANNE GARRELS: For Captain Shawn Lyons, getting Sunnis and Shiites in the same room in a safe place is like herding ants. But the members of Amil's new reconciliation committee now meet with him every week to discuss their problems. Three months ago, that was inconceivable. The turnaround came when representatives of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, the power in Amil, gave the go-ahead.
Back in his combat outpost, the 30-year-old captain says Abu Dumu(ph), a leading Sadrist here, has been key.
Capt. LYONS: He's the one that broker a lot of deals with Sunnis, trying to make sure that the violence stayed at a medium level instead of blowing up (unintelligible). He's the one that if a guy came here with a bad attitude, he would make sure he was replaced, and somebody else who is more willing to work with the Sunnis.
GARRELS: Abu Dumu himself doesn't meet openly with U.S. forces and he doesn't attend the meetings. That's still taboo for Sadr's militiamen known as JAM. But Lyons's boss, Colonel Ricky Gibbs(ph), says there's a finesse.
Colonel RICKY GIBBS (4th Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, U.S. Army): We're talking to JAM leaders, not face-to-face, but through intermediaries. Gibbs says it's a dance worth engaging in because Abu Dumu provides results.
Col. GIBBS: And we can solve our differences. And he helped us with the ceasefire. So, if he's willing to turn his energies into a different direction, I'm all for it.
GARRELS: Once U.S. officials were leery of dealing with Sadrists, to put it mildly, the change reflects a new realism. Sadrist movement is split between those who are abiding by a ceasefire and those who continue to attack Sunnis and U.S. forces.
Captain Lyons says Sadrists who are willing to work with the Americans are taking real risks and are worth developing.
Capt. LYONS: There's a pressure put on them by the people just like a mafia, extremely powerful in their little world. And unfortunately, that's where a lot of their representatives that talk to us live.
(Soundbite of radio transmission)
Capt. LYONS: All right, keep in mind there was the IED detonated in the vicinity. Keep your heads on a swivel. Make sure you guys are paying attention.
GARRELS: Lyons still hunts down Sunni and Shiite extremists. Both communities continue to criticize the U.S. raids even though both are providing intelligence on their own bad guys. Lyons says it's another part of the dance.
Capt. LYONS: Hey, you can't do it yourself, and you told me you could, so now I'm going to help you out.
GARRELS: Given the fragility of the situation and the continued weakness of the national police, Col. Gibbs believes U.S. forces are key.
Col. GIBBS: If we left too early, it would probably crumble because it's, you know, the cement hasn't dried yet, but it's starting to catch.
GARRELS: Before declaring a ceasefire last August, Sadr's militia had forced out many of the Sunnis who lived here. Families now want to return. But Captain Lyons is taking it slowly after seeing violence erupt when large numbers of displaced families turn up to reclaim their houses at the first sign of improvements.
Capt. LYONS: They don't understand how fragile the situation was, so we had to push them off, and then sell them on a systematic approach, reintegrating their families. Unfortunately, if it's not controlled, then people end up getting killed.
GARRELS: The joint Shiite-Sunni reconciliation committee is going block-by-block in the most volatile neighborhoods to see which houses had been destroyed, damaged or occupied by squatters. The Sadr office promises it will help relocate Shiites now living in Sunni houses to help the process.
Lyons says Sunnis and Shiites wishing to come back will be vetted to prevent extremists returning.
Capt. LYONS: We'd like to welcome everybody to our sixth northwest Rasheed reconciliation conference.
Unidentified Man: (Speaking in foreign language).
GARRELS: For Amil, the reconciliation committee is the closest thing to a local government, which evaporated in the violence. But committee member Hisham al-Maqsusi(ph) tells U.S. commanders, the Iraqi ministries aren't backing them up.
Mr. HISHAM AL-MAQSUSI (Member, Reconciliation Committee): (Through translator) Let's go to the point, sir. We meet with the Americans, but where is our government? We are making promises we can't deliver, and no one is going to respect us if we can't deliver services.
GARRELS: It's a refrain heard again and again. And this is one thing on which Sunnis and Shiites are in complete agreement.
Anne Garrels, NPR News, Baghdad.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In the Gaza Strip today, the Israeli military killed at least 18 Palestinians, most of them armed militants. The killings come one day after Israeli and Palestinian negotiators began new peace talks. It was one of the bloodiest days in Gaza since the Islamist group Hamas seized control of the territory last June. A son of a senior Hamas leader was among those killed in the fighting.
NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.
ERIC WESTERVELT: Israeli troops backed by air cover pushed into an area just east of Gaza City today for what a military spokesman called a routine effort to target militants who regularly fire rockets and mortar rounds into Israeli border towns. But the expanded ground operation was not routine. The 18 Palestinians killed was the highest single-day casualty toll from Israeli fighting in Gaza in over a year. 15 of those killed, Gaza hospital officials say, were gunmen, most of them from Hamas's Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.
Among the dead was 24-year-old Hassam Zahar(ph), the son of senior Gaza Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar. At the Gaza City hospital morgue tonight, Mahmoud Zahar vowed that Hamas would respond by all means. The bloodshed comes just a few days after President Bush made his first visit to Israel and the West Bank to try to push peace talks forward. Yesterday, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators sat down for their first face-to-face talks on the so-called core issues in the conflict.
President Mahmoud Abbas today called the killings in Gaza a massacre and said the violence was, quote, "a slap in the face that weakens the position of the Palestinian negotiator." Abbas's rule is now limited to the West Bank after Hamas routed his forces in Gaza last summer. Israeli officials today said as long as militants continue to fire rockets into Israel, Israeli military operations into Gaza would continue.
Israeli spokesman Mark Regev said Israel must protect its civilian population from rocket fire. Hamas claimed responsibility today for the sniper-shooting death of a volunteer farmhand working on an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza border. Hamas also fired a barrage of rockets into the battered Israeli town of Sderot(ph), lightly injuring four Israelis.
Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Jerusalem.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is NPR, National Public Radio.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
The U.S. Supreme Court Today dealt a major blow to some investors seeking to recover damages and schemes to mislead stockholders. The case was built as the most important test of investor rights in decades. By a 5-3 vote, the investors lost.
NPR's Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG: This was trumpeted as a do or die case for investors seeking to recover losses in cases like Enron. Cases where banks, insurance companies and other so-called secondary players allegedly helped perpetrate a fraud. To investors, including pension funds and other institutional investors, the case was critical because secondary players are often the only ones left standing after a stock meltdown - the only ones with money to pay off damages. The SEC also saw the case as essential for preserving the integrity of the securities market. But President Bush personally rejected that view, and his administration instead backed the business community and the Supreme Court.
The actual case before the court involved a cable company named Charter Communications that was accused of deceiving investors by conspiring with two off its vendors to make Charter's balance sheet look better than it was. The SEC found that two cable box vendors, Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta, agreed to participate in a phony transaction complete with backdated documents that would help Charter conceal a cash shortfall. When Charter's days of reckoning finally came, the investors left holding the bag, sued not only Charter but the cable box vendors, too, contending that they knew the sham transactions would help Charter keep an inflated stock price. In short the investors contended that as knowing enablers, the vendors were liable, too.
Today, though, the U.S. Supreme Court disagreed. Writings of the five justice majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said that Congress did not authorize such investor lawsuits against secondary players in fraud unless it could be shown that the secondary players themselves filed misleading financial reports or made public statements on which investors relied.
In this case, said Justice Kennedy, the vendors had no duty to disclose their deceptive acts and didn't, therefore, the investing public did not rely on them except, said Justice Kennedy, in an indirect chain that we find too remote for a liability. In designing the federal securities laws, said Kennedy, Congress allowed the SEC to exact civil penalties from the vendors and authorize criminal sanctions as well, but Congress did not authorize the investors themselves to seek damages from secondary players.
For the business community, the decision represented a big sigh of relief. Robin Conrad is vice president and general counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Ms. ROBIN CONRAD (Executive Vice President, National Chamber Litigation Center): This case had the potential where the court to have accepted this novel theory of scheme liability to reach any company that was involved in any commercial transaction that indirectly affected the purchase or sale of the security. That is huge. That's what corporate America was concerned about.
TOTENBERG: Lawyers for investors agreed that today's ruling shuts the door on most private investor lawsuits against secondary players. But a few such suits may be able to survive, namely the suit brought by institutional and other investors against secondary players in the Enron debacle. Christopher Patti is counsel for the University of California, one of the investors suing Enron.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER PATTI (Legal Counsel, University of California): Mostly were suing investment banks and the investment banks did communicate to investors. They had analysts that scouted Enron as a good investment while the investment bank itself was engaging in these deals that had knew were manipulating Enron's financial results.
TOTENBERG: whether the investors on the Enron case are able to keep their suit against secondary players alive remains an open question. Of course, as the court observed, Congress is free to change the law. House Banking Committee Chairman Barney Frank, however, does not expect any efforts to change the law while George Bush is president since the measure would almost certainly be vetoed.
Representative BARNEY FRANK (Democrat, Massachusetts): With a Democratic president, I think, we would go back this particularly, by the way, if California now, as a result of these bruises in the Enron case, which would seem likelier than not by a considerable amount, I think you're going to feel a lot of pressure to get this case.
TOTENBERG: Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
In any political campaign, there's fierce competition for endorsements and this year's presidential race is no exception. With so many members of Congress running for the White House, their colleagues have been under serious pressure to back them publicly. At the same time, most political analysts and even some of the endorsers question the value of endorsements.
NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR: Last week in Charleston, South Carolina, Senator John Kerry announced with great enthusiasm his support for that candidate he hopes will be the successor as the Democrat's presidential nominee.
Senator JOHN KERRY (Democrat, Massachusetts): Who better than Barack Obama to turn a new page in the American politics so that Democrat, independent and Republican alike can look to the leadership that unites to find the common ground. That's what this is about.
(Soundbite of cheering)
NAYLOR: It was a classic campaign photo op; the two men posing side-by-side, beaming at each other - a scene replicated dozen of times in this campaign season so far. Sometimes, the endorsements like Kerry's of Obama gets national attention, other times it's a more localized story. For instance, when the first lady of New Hampshire Dr. Susan Lynch announced her support for Hillary Clinton.
Doctor SUSAN LYNCH (Pediatrician; New Hampshire's First Lady): It is my privilege and honor to announce to you today my endorsement for the next president of the United States, Hillary Clinton.
(Soundbite of cheering)
NAYLOR: Of course Clinton has had her share of high-profile endorsements, too, including from Barbra Streisand. But what do these endorsements really bring to the candidates? The answer, says political science Professor Mark Rozell of George Mason University in Virginia, not much.
Professor MARK ROZELL (Political Science, George Mason University): Ultimately, I think, what these candidates get out of it is a one-day media event where they get some good publicity and perhaps the opportunity to raise a little bit more money surrounding such an event but in terms of long term impact on voting behavior, there's really no evidence at all to suggest that endorsements matter.
NAYLOR: Still, the endorsements game gets played as if it really counted by both sides. Here's Connecticut Independent Democrat Joseph Lieberman explaining his endorsement of Republican John McCain during an interview on the Fox News Channel.
Senator JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (Democrat, Connecticut): I know it's unusual for a Democrat to be supporting a Republican, but there are some things that are more important than the political parties. One is friendship and the other is that I happen to think this guy is the best of all the candidates to unite our country across political alliance so we could finally begin to solve some of the problems people have in this country.
NAYLOR: In the Senate this year, there's been intense competition among the two leading Democrats to snag the endorsement of a colleague. According to a count by Congressional Quarterly, Clinton has lined up the support of 10 fellow Democratic senators while Obama has the backing of six including Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri.
Senator CLAIRE McCASKILL (Democrat, Missouri): I think all of the senators have felt some pressure. I think all of ushad been buttonholed by both of them in trying to secure endorsements. And, obviously, the pressure for those endorsements has gone up in the last few weeks.
NAYLOR: Most Democratic senators - 30, according to CQ - are still on side lines. McCaskill says she chose to support Obama because, among other things, he campaigned on her behalf in 2006. Her biggest contribution to Obama maybe her status as a super delegate to the Democratic convention, which means she can still deliver her support regardless of the outcome of her state's primary. McCaskill says her endorsement may also bring something intangible.
Sen. McCASKILL: If I can just give some of the women in Missouri permission to take another look at Barack Obama as somebody who, I think, would make them very proud as president, I think that would be great as far as I'm concerned.
NAYLOR: But McCaskill who has often been on the receiving end of endorsements in her political career downplays the value of any endorsement including her own.
Sen. McCASKILL: I don't think it's a big deal…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. McCASKILL: …to tell you the truth.
NAYLOR: Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
A man who fundamentally changed the way we understand and treat cancer has died. Dr. Judah Folkman was 74. For years he endured ridicule from his scientific peers for his theory that tumors depend on a blood supply and in fact that they recruit their own blood supply.
In 2001, Dr. Folkman told NPR he continued his research without knowing if it would pay off.
(Soundbite of recorded interview)
Dr. JUDAH FOLKMAN (Cancer Researcher): We always said there's a fine line between persistence and obstinacy in research, and you'll never know when you've crossed that.
BLOCK: Dr. David Nathan worked with Judah Folkman at Children's Hospital in Boston starting in the 1960's. Back then Folkman was still developing his groundbreaking theory that tumors feed on their own blood supply.
Doctor DAVID NATHAN (Former Colleague of Dr. Judah Folkman; President Emeritus, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute): By the time he enunciated that idea in the '70s, most people thought it was just a wild idea. And there was a tremendous amount of criticism of him, not just for that idea, but for the whole idea that chemicals could be isolated that would stimulate blood vessel growth. I mean, there was some critics who said, look, I can throw anything into the eye of an animal and get a red eye. What does that mean?
BLOCK: What did he say to those doubters and what did he say to you about hearing those doubts?
Dr. NATHAN: He would always smile. Judah loved ideas. He love to dream about new approaches. He is — he was one of the paradigm shifters of our time. He loved to challenge orthodoxy. So, he was perfectly pleasant about it. He didn't object to people repelling his notions. He just get another idea.
BLOCK: There's a funny anecdote he tells from early on when he was applying for a research grant and he went to a Noble laureate who worked in a lab nearby and said, I'm worried about putting too much information out there. I'm worried that somebody's going to steal it. And the doctor read his paper and said, it's theft-proof. You'll be able to work at your own pace, I figure, for 10 years before anybody is going to believe.
Dr. NATHAN: That's right, yeah. He said, it was better in the old days when nobody believed me. Now, I've got competitors.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. NATHAN: Oh, but he was an extraordinarily intelligent man. And although he's remembered most for the work on cancer, you know, actually, the angiogenesis work may have its greatest practical realization in treating diseases of the eye.
BLOCK: Angiogenesis is the word he came up. It means the birth of blood vessels.
Dr. NATHAN: The — that's right.
BLOCK: I was interested in this, that he used to talk about how he would see cancer differently from purer researchers because he wasn't just a guy in a lab with specimens under a microscope, he was seeing it in a clinical basis at that time.
Dr. NATHAN: Oh, that's right. He got much of his stimulation from patients, and I think a lot of us do. But the unique part was that he was very curious about patients. He never lost his curiosity.
BLOCK: Dr. Nathan, was there something that Dr. Folkman may have told you over the years that still informs you, still — you keep in mind as you think about your medical work and maybe your life in general?
Dr. NATHAN: Yes. I had a wonderful conversation with him about a particularly tough problem that we were working on, a disease that I've been focused on for a long time. And I was talking about it with him and feeling kind of discouraged because we really weren't getting very far. And he said, well, don't just keep thinking. Don't ever give up. And I loved that.
BLOCK: That's Dr. David Nathan, physician and chief emeritus at Children's Hospital in Boston. He's also president emeritus of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He was remembering his friend and colleague, Dr. Judah Folkman, who died suddenly yesterday. He was 74.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Today, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said he hopes by spring training, Major League Baseball will be doing even more to fight doping. Selig spoke at a congressional hearing about the recent report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. The report's author, former Senator George Mitchell, also testified as did Selig's longtime nemesis, the head of the player's union, Donald Fehr. But as we hear from NPR's Tom Goldman, the tone at the hearing was far less adversarial than in the past.
TOM GOLDMAN: What a difference nearly three years make. In March of 2005, Bud Selig and Donald Fehr were infamously dressed down by lawmakers for letting steroid use fester in the major leagues and for taking their sweet time in enforcing rules against doping. One of the most vocal critics was House Oversight Committee member Henry Waxman. But listen to how today's hearing ended with Waxman, now the committee chairman, speaking to an obviously relieved Selig and Fehr.
Representative HENRY WAXMAN (Democratic, California; Chairman, House Oversight Committee): But I thank you very much for your leadership, your efforts. And I hope we could hear continued good work, good news from both of you about this subject.
Mr. BUD SELIG (Commissioner, Major League Baseball): Thank you very much.
Mr. DONALD FEHR (Executive director, Major League Baseball Player's Association): Thank you very much.
GOLDMAN: Indeed, after the 2005 cattle prodding by Congress, Selig and Fehr opened their collective bargaining agreement twice to tighten up the sports' anti-doping program. Now, it's considered the toughest program of all the major sports leagues in this country. At today's hearing, Selig said he has already put in place some of the recommendations for further improvements included in the Mitchell report. Those include creating a drug investigative unit and eliminating advance notice for drug testing players at the ball parks.
Mr. SELIG: We've done the ones that we felt we should.
Rep. WAXMAN: Right.
Mr. SELIG: And I would hope that frankly we have this all completed before spring training.
GOLDMAN: That's a little over a month away. Reform in fast motion. But before Selig and Fehr tied this all up with a pretty little bow, it's important to note that today was not just one big slap on the back for the lords of baseball. Washington delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton brought up what may end up being the most contentious issue going forward. Former Senator Mitchell's number one recommendation urges baseball to turnover its drug testing program to an absolutely independent agency like, for instance, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Here's Norton.
Ms. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON (Delegate to Congress representing the District of Columbia): He knew about the vast improvement that you've already done, and still he said you needed a totally transparent independent commission. Mr. Selig, what would be your response to at least considering that?
Mr. SELIG: I really believe, as I said to you earlier, that this program is working independently, but it's a very fair question and it's one we will closely evaluate because we need to be totally and completely independent.
GOLDMAN: In today's Los Angeles Times, Selig is quoted as saying, he won't promise to turnover baseball's drug testing program to a third party. I'm satisfied with the way it is now, he says. Mitchell, himself, testified for nearly two hours and answered questions about the most dramatic revelation in his report - the allegations by Brian McNamee, former personal trainer for all star pitcher Roger Clemens, that he injected Clemens with banned steroids and human growth hormone, that Clemens versus McNamee, he said-he said dispute has turned nasty and gobbled up all the media attention. Clemens has angrily stated that McNamee lied to George Mitchell. Here's Chairman Waxman.
Rep. WAXMAN: Despite the public presentation by Mr. Clemens that the testimony was not accurate, you continued to feel comfortable with Mr. McNamee's credibility?
Mr. GEORGE MITCHELL (Democrat, Former Maine Senator): We believe that the statements provided to us were truthful.
GOLDMAN: Waxman and his colleagues will get a chance to ask Clemens and McNamee next month. Clemens, McNamee, along with several others have been asked to testify in a hearing that promises to be more titillating, albeit less substantive than what happened on Capitol Hill today.
Tom Goldman, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
For the first time in 33 years, a NASA probe has taken a trip past Mercury. NASA's Messenger spacecraft blazed past the planet yesterday during the first of a series of visits.
NPR's Richard Harris was at mission control at the applied physics lab in Maryland for the encounter.
RICHARD HARRIS: Planetary flybys are usually pretty big deals. Some amazing robotic spacecraft spins past an exotic world and gives us dazzling new views. The Messenger mission, though, tests our patience a little bit. The spacecraft was operating on autopilot as it approached Mercury yesterday, and it was recording images but not sending them back right away. Sean Solomon, from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, is the lead scientist on the project. Yesterday, he was in a conference room, looking through a wall of glass into the Messenger mission-control center. He is fascinated by the parched and moon-like planet Mercury because it's one of our sister planets in the inner solar system.
Doctor SEAN SOLOMON (Lead scientist, Carnegie Institution of Washington): Though we have four siblings that all had a similar birthing process, four and a half billion years ago. Of course, we live on one of them. And to the extent that we claim to be shepherds of our own planet, it is incumbent on us to understand how our planet works, how it came to be. What are the processes that give rise to the phenomena we see today?
HARRIS: Mercury's story will help tell the story of Earth. Rob Gold, from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, has also been working on the project since its inception. He's now watching colorful screens of data which tell engineers what Messenger is supposed to be doing. Messenger, by now, has disappeared behind Mercury, so even its faint radio signal has stopped reaching the Earth.
Doctor ROB GOLD (Staff scientist, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory): I'm not too nervous today. I'm actually glowing because we're finally going to see what Mercury looks like.
HARRIS: It's been 33 years, huh?
Dr. GOLD: It's 33 years since the Mariner 10 flybys. And Mariner 10 only saw about 40 percent of the planet.
HARRIS: Messenger will eventually see all of Mercury, assuming it doesn't die an untimely death as many other space probes have.
Unidentified Man: The (unintelligible) that we're going through for this flyby is just over 13 minutes long. And we're just about 10 minutes away…
HARRIS: Things got suddenly got quite quiet around here. And we are waiting for our closest approach, which is coming up shortly.
Unidentified Man: We're coming up on one minute.
HARRIS: Scientist, engineers and a few journalist try to figure out what exactly we should be looking at other than the faces in the control room.
Unidentified Man: Okay, we are now 10 seconds away from closest approach. We're marking flyby one, just over 200 kilometers.
HARRIS: I see essentially no reaction in there right now. And I think the reason for that is that even though the spacecraft supposedly had its closest approach just a few moments ago, it will take 10 minutes for that signal travelling at the speed of light to get back here. So, no one has any indication that anything actually happened except by looking at their watch. Mission control takes on the feel of a waiting room outside the labor and delivery ward. People mill around, hands in pockets. Will they or won't they get a radio signal from their $400-million spacecraft? Finally…
Unidentified Man: (unintelligible)
(Soundbite of applause)
Unidentified Man: The applause says it all. Radio (unintelligible) does see the expected signal.
HARRIS: Engineer Michael Paul smiles broadly. That means the giant antenna in California has heard Messenger's dial tone.
Mr. MICHAEL PAUL (Systems engineer): We've at least gotten that far.
HARRIS: So it didn't crash into Mercury?
Mr. PAUL: Well, we'll — I'm not ready to make any definitive statements, but they were clapping, weren't they?
HARRIS: Indeed, they were. And today, the first of Messenger's recorded images are supposed to be beamed back to earth. In the coming week, scientists will soon have hundreds of brand new vistas of Mercury to relish.
Unidentified Man: Hey, it worked. (unintelligible) the money.
HARRIS: It's thought out, I mean, I'm going to…
Richard Harris, NPR News.
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Mitt Romney is the projected winner of Michigan's Republican Primary, and Hillary Clinton is the winner on the Democratic side, in a race where she was the only major candidate on the ballot. We'll explain why in a few minutes, but first to Mitt Romney.
After Disappointments in Iowa and New Hampshire, Romney gets a much needed primary victory that comes in a state where he spent much of his childhood and where his father was a popular governor.
Joining us now is NPR's Don Gonyea. He's at Romney campaign headquarters in Detroit. And Don, that has to be a very happy scene there tonight?
DON GONYEA: Why, there had a lot of hugging, a lot of patting one another on the back and you can also feel the relief, Melissa. I mean, the polls going into this weekend show Michigan to be very, very close. At that heat, had Mitt Romney lost here. It's hard (unintelligible) he would have really made the case. But for being able to win anywhere and (unintelligible).
BLOCK: What, in the end, do you think worked for Mitt Romney in Michigan and did he changed his message or his tone from the earlier contest in Iowa and New Hampshire?
GONYEA: You know what he did, he changed the focus. He was very much lack the social conservative here. He was Mitt Romney, a bit of (unintelligible) talking about his long business resume but also weaving into that, his family experience in the auto industry. His father, of course, was not only a governor of Michigan but an American motors executive back in the 1960s.
And Romney focused on that and talked about how - because he grew up here, that the automobile (unintelligible) and he took a very positive approach saying yes, the industry is troubled; yes, there are big problems but he went so far as to say that those jobs that have been lost - thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs in the manufacturing sector in the state can come back. So, he was positive, without offering specific plan and that's apparently what Michigan voters wanted to hear on the Republican side.
BLOCK: And not a whole lot of time to savor that victory. He's onto the next.
GONYEA: Exactly. He's off to Nevada and nearly spending time in South Carolina as well so, but he got a win under his belt which is something he really desperately needed for his campaign especially here in Michigan, which is considered friendly territory for him.
BLOCK: Okay. Thanks, Don. That's NPR's Don Gonyea at Romney campaign headquarters in Detroit.
And now to NPR's David Greene who's traveling with the McCain campaign. And David, you've already moved on to South Carolina?
DAVID GREENE: We sure have, and that says something about what John McCain was thinking and then trying to send a message that if things didn't work out as he hoped in Michigan that he was ready to hit the ground. And, you know, there are lot of McCain supporters here in. And the first thing they said was welcome to South Carolina for the first in the south primary, so they're trying to move forward, not necessarily talk about Michigan.
You know, Melissa, this is not a script that John McCain would have written. I mean, he wanted to come out of New Hampshire with a momentum that he had and really carry that but it seems like he learned a lesson than a lot of Republicans are learning. It's very hard to sustain any sort of momentum in this sort of wild GOP race that we have right now.
BLOCK: And he's looking ahead to South Carolina. What is the strategy there?
GREENE: Well, they say - his aide say there's a very large military community in South Carolina and so his record on foreign policy and foreign affairs, they hope will play very well. But there are some questions, you know? John McCain, their different questions about how much money he has to sustain a financial campaign. They haven't talked about their most recent contribution and so we'll see what happens, but they say they're ready to go and that they learned to let them from when John McCain lost to George W. Bush here in 2000.
BLOCK: Okay. That's NPR David Greene traveling with the John McCain campaign at the Hibernian Society in Charleston, South Carolina, and to our (unintelligible) John McCain finished second tonight behind Mitt Romney in the GOP primary in Michigan.
And now to NPR's political editor, Ron Elving. Hi, Ron.
RON ELVING: Good to be with you, Melissa.
BLOCK: Let's talk about this result in Michigan changes the GOP race. What do you think?
ELVING: I think the GOP race becomes more wide open than ever, which is saying something. We now have four, five, possibly even six candidates we have to keep in consideration. Right now, in Florida, there are five Republican candidates all in double digits, none with more than 20 percent.
When you consider that, on the February 5th date, with 20-some events going on in one day, clearly, these candidates are going to scatter out across the country, all the regions, they're all going to have winds in some places. Many Republican states are still winner take all. We're going to have an absolute riot of delegate counting and delegate charting that's going to probably go beyond February 5th now and possibly go all the way to the convention in the summertime.
BLOCK: We haven't mentioned Mike Huckabee, Ron. He finished third in Michigan. He's giving his concession speech right now predicted to get, at this point, about 17 percent of the vote. What is this result mean for him?
ELVING: Well, that's not a humiliation. That's a fairly decent third place finish when you consider the strength of Mitt Romney in this particular state, and that John McCain is leading in all the national polls of Republicans. So, Huckabee doesn't have to hang his head. He can go on to Nevada and compete and then on Saturday as well in South Carolina - a very important primary for him. I don't think he's really lost a lot of ground with this third place finish. I think he can come back and possibly win in South Carolina, putting himself in a strong position for Florida on the 29th of the month.
BLOCK: Ron, let's talk about the race on the Democratic side. Hillary Clinton, a big victor but it's really meaningless because she was the only major candidate on the ballot. Barack Obama and John Edwards weren't even listed. What - tell us what that's all about.
ELVING: Well, there were no delegates at stake in Michigan on the Democratic side today. This really was meaningless vote. The candidates have not campaigned here. As you said, Hillary Clinton's the only major name on the ballot. And we're still going to get about a third of the people preferring to be uncommitted so no actual delegates, no real strength. This is a casualty, really, this event today of the long-running war between the Michigan Democratic Party and the National Democratic Party.
Michigan jumped out of February where it was supposed to have its primary jumped way up into January, challenged the national party and the death penalty was essentially assessed against them by the National Democratic Party.
BLOCK: Okay, NPR's political editor Ron Elving talking about the results in the Michigan primary. Again, Mitt Romney, the projected winner there.
Ron, thanks a lot.
ELVING: Thank you Melissa.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
I'm Melissa Block.
And Mitt Romney is the winner of Michigan's Republican primary. A few minutes ago, Romney addressed his supporters at his Detroit campaign headquarters.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Republican, Former Massachusetts Governor; Presidential Candidate): Tonight marks the beginning of a comeback - a comeback for America.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. ROMNEY: You know, only a week ago, a (unintelligible) like it was impossible but then you got out and told America what they needed to hear.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. ROMNEY: You said we would fight for every job; you said you'd fight for us to be able to get lower taxes from middle-income Americans; and Michigan heard and Michigan voted tonight. Congratulations…
(Soundbite of applause)
BLOCK: For Romney, this is a much needed victory after disappointments in New Hampshire and before that, in Iowa. John McCain came in second behind Romney. He'd already left Michigan before the results and a few moments ago, he spoke to his supporters in Charleston, South Carolina.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Democrat, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): My friends, for a minute there, in New Hampshire, I thought this campaign might be getting me (unintelligible)
(Soundbite of laughter)
Sen. McCAIN: But you know what? We've gotten pretty good at doing things the hard way, too, and I think we've shown them we don't mind a fight. We don't mind a fight and we're ready.
(Soundbite of applause)
BLOCK: So, Mitt Romney, first in Michigan, John McCain, second and Mike Huckabee, third. We're going to go now to the Mitt Romney and John McCain campaigns. First, to Don Gonyea, who is at Romney campaign headquarters in Detroit.
And Don, that message from Mitt Romney - very big smile on his face tonight.
DON GONYEA: And a bit uncharacteristic for Mitt Romney. He was in his shirt and sleeves, and his hair, which is always perfect, was must. It was kind of dangling about the rear forehead. I don't think he…
BLOCK: He had to happen, right, Don?
GONYEA: Yes. I see it half a minute. It took a wait in Michigan to do it. But the other thing is watching him recall that from the beginning, you know, Mitt Romney was a very well-funded candidate and he expected to win Iowa. He was going to nail things down in New Hampshire with a win there. And then with a win in Michigan really go to the south with a sense of him being the guy to beat - the inevitable candidate. Instead, he lost the first two in Iowa and New Hampshire. And Michigan is the place rather really kind of sending him on his way, really allows him to leave to fight another day. It's a win he needed. And you could see the relief on his face. He was almost as relieved as he was happy with this win as he was addressing his supporters here.
BLOCK: Mitt Romney said in that victory speech tonight - there's no way an insider or (unintelligible) Washington inside-out and that does seem to be aligned - targeted directly at John McCain.
GONYEA: Absolutely. Absolutely. And he also talked about how he is kind of overcome the, you know, the divisive politics - again, kind of a shot at the, you know, increasingly, you have bitter battle that was raging between him and McCain. They clashed over the economy here more than anything else. Of course, Michigan's unemployment rate is 7.4 percent that is by far, the worst jobless rate here in the country well above the national average.
And Romney tonight, in his speech, talked about his victory being a victory for optimism. And it is true. He talked about the troubled domestic automobile industry. But said, having been born here, you know, being the son of the father who was an automobile executive that he had the auto industry in Michigan in his DNA, that he's the guy to really turn things around. And he said, those jobs that are lost will come back, calling John McCain, a pessimist when McCain talked about, you know, talking straight with people, telling them that those jobs are not coming back but that retraining and education and those things are needed to help displaced workers.
BLOCK: Okay, Don, thanks so much. Don Gonyea at Romney campaign headquarters in Detroit. And now, to John McCain headquarters in South Carolina, and David Greene. NPR's David Greene, tell us more about what John McCain had to say tonight.
DAVID GREENE: What did you hear, Melissa, about John McCain was talking about he has hoped, which was that he could carry some of this momentum that he got in New Hampshire into Michigan? It was not to be, he said, he's ready for a fight. And I think the message he was sending supporters tonight was that it had been hard for him. I mean, there were points in the summer when people basically proclaimed his campaign all but dead, no money, been seen to be going anywhere - he came back, he got the win in New Hampshire, and so I think the message is stick with him. And he said that he's ready for a big fight in South Carolina.
Now, listening to his speech, he congratulated Romney. He was very polite but he also made clear that Michigan had chosen its native son, and that's the message from a lot of McCain's people today that if Mitt Romney couldn't win in Michigan, where could he win.
BLOCK: Right. Of course, Mitt Romney, born and raised in Michigan, his father was a governor there for quite sometime. Okay. NPR's David Greene with John McCain in South Carolina.
We're going to turn now to NPR senior political editor Ron Elving.
And Ron, important to note now that at this point, we've got three winners in three different states.
RON ELVING: Yes. The Republicans are passing it around a little bit like the college football teams pass around the number one rating last fall. So, when it is one gets on top, that one comes tumbling down immediately.
BLOCK: What do you think shapes up from here in terms of the campaign and how these candidates target voters in the states that are coming up - Nevada, South Carolina - immediately.
ELVING: Nevada and South Carolina for the Republicans come up on Saturday. And for the Republicans, the stakes are much higher in South Carolina. Nevada, of course, they'd love to win. It looks like Romney is probably going to. But South Carolina has been really the king maker for Republicans in presidential politics ever since 1980, and Ronald Reagan winning there. Ever since then, whoever wins in South Carolina has gone on to sweep the South. And by sweeping the South, secure the nomination on the Republican side. So, that's the one everyone would like to win. And people are going to come out of the woodwork and vote in that primary that have not really been registered yet in this Republican contest, so where going to see Mike Huckabee be competitive. We're going to see Fred Thompson make his desperate choice. He's really going to have to win there if he's going to be a factor in Florida and beyond. We're going to see everyone playing there who has won any kind of an event up to now. And so we'll have four or five candidates to watch - maybe six.
BLOCK: Okay. NPR's senior political editor Ron Elving, thanks a lot.
ELVING: Thank you, Melissa.
BLOCK: And we're joined now by Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review.
And Rich, it looks like Mitt Romney has about 31 or 32 percent of the vote, candidates about a 39 to 30 percent lead, a victory margin over John McCain. How do you interpret that margin?
Mr. RICH LOWRY (Editor, National Review): Well, it's a pretty solid victory. And it's pretty impressive in that Romney went into this race behind after losing New Hampshire, after losing Iowa, and the question was whether he could come back. He had to try to come back in Iowa, and Huckabee had a big lead, fell short. He had to comeback in Ne Hampshire because McCain, you know, sprinted ahead after Romney lost to Iowa fell short. And this time, he really did come back and, you know, the cliche around politics now is anyone who in wins a primary after losing one before is found his or her voice. But I do think there's something to that with Romney tonight. You know, he was much more comfortable in Michigan where his family obviously has a strong background and he was very comfortable talking about the economy where he has a natural credibility as a former business leader.
BLOCK: Rich, does it strike you that Mitt Romney has a message that would appeal nationwide to Christian conservatives and the conservative base of the Republican Party.
Mr. LOWRY: Well, there's been some resistance to him among…
BLOCK: A lot of resistance. Yeah.
Mr. LOWRY: …locals, and (unintelligible) look at the exit polls from tonight. But if you look at Iowa, New Hampshire, Christians who said a candidate's religious beliefs were very important to them, just don't vote for Mitt Romney, and that's going to be a problem for him in South Carolina. And I think the Romney campaign is probably, as we speak, making some very difficult decisions about how seriously they're going to compete over the next few days in South Carolina as (unintelligible) there and finishes third or so a disappointing finish, well, then, if that could have hurt him going into Florida, it might make sense just to skip it. Let McCain and Huckabee and Thompson fight it out and hopeful bruise each other somewhat and just take a pass and go straight onto Florida.
BLOCK: Okay. Rich, thanks so much. That's Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, talking about Mitt Romney's victory in the Michigan Republican primary. Again, John McCain coming in second, Mike Huckabee, third, and on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton, the winner and a race that only her name as a major candidate on the ballot. Barack Obama and John Edwards were not.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
A businessman in Florida has recently started a new type of airline service. DayJet offers direct flights to and from midsized cities, and they're scheduled where and when you want to go. The service is aimed at business travelers without the money to charter a private plane. The company is depending on the latest in computer technology and a new generation of jets.
NPR's Greg Allen reports.
GREG ALLEN: Ed Iacobucci has had skeptics before. As the founder of Citrix nearly 20 years ago, he developed a product that at first few companies thought they needed: software that would allow many computers to share a single application. In Citrix, Iacobucci says he created not just software, but a whole new market. He is looking to do something similar with DayJet.
Mr. ED IACOBUCCI (President and CEO, DayJet Corporation): The concept is very, very deceptively simple. Our vision from day one has been to provide commercially viable - and by that, I mean affordable - commercially viable transportation, point to point, on a regional basis - direct.
ALLEN: Seven years ago, Iacobucci left Citrix. After a few years, he realized he wasn't ready for retirement and turned his attention to another interest: aviation. When he was with Citrix, Iacobucci bought his first private jet. He was very busy, and suddenly, he says, he found a way to reclaim what had become a precious asset: his time.
Mr. IACOBUCCI: It was like a drug, you know? I was addicted to the notion that I would travel on my schedule instead of someone else's, and that I could organize my travel around my commitments.
ALLEN: His idea was to make flexible air transportation available to travelers who can't afford to buy or charter their own jet. A big guy with a beard and a baseball cap, Iacobucci dresses Florida casual. But he's busy. He spent the last five years developing his concept and has raised more than $200 million to get DayJet off the ground.
(Soundbite of jet engine)
At one of the company's seven DayPorts, this one in Boca Raton, Iacobucci is out on the tarmac watching the takeoff of a plane that's made his vision possible, the Eclipse 500.
Mr. IACOBUCCI: The operating cost is low. It's modern aircraft, twin turbo-fan. We run with two pilots. And this particular airplane can do the missions that we're doing perfectly. Two to six hundred miles. It's great for that.
ALLEN: And each jet costs well under $2 million. Iacobucci likes the Eclipse so much, he has firm orders in for 300 of them, and he plans to buy several hundred more. DayJet's marketing director, Vicky Harris, climbs into one of the Eclipses. She's flying from Boca Raton to Lakeland, Florida for a meeting and then back. Those are the kinds of trips DayJet is designed for: business travel to and from mid-sized markets, trips typically made by car. Inside, the jet isn't luxurious. There is room for two pilots and just three passengers — and forget about a bathroom. But Harris says she'll have a 40-minute flight instead of a three-and-a-half-hour drive.
Ms. VICKY HARRIS (Marketing Director, DayJet): It's very comfortable. It's like sitting inside an SUV.
ALLEN: It's something like an air taxi, a small jet that's chartered to fly when and where you want. But with DayJet, you don't charter the whole jet, just the seats you need. You first must become a member. And then, Iacobucci says, you book your flight online, much as you would on Expedia or Orbitz.
Mr. IACOBUCCI: They say, I want to go from A to B on such-and-such a day, and I need to be there by 4 o'clock. But - we don't present you a schedule, you just say, I need to be there by 4 o'clock. Now, of course, there's another part of the equation, and that is how early are you willing to leave. Okay. And that's where the magic happens.
ALLEN: The earlier you're willing to leave, the cheaper your ticket. DayJet calls it per seat, on demand jet service. Making it possible is real-time logistics software that allows the company to respond immediately to customer demand. It's all brand-new and exciting, but will it make money? Analyst Vaughn Cordle of Airline Forecasts says DayJet's business plan could work if it can get a couple hundred planes flying and keep prices below $1,000 per hour. But he sees problems with the reliability of a jet not designed for commercial use and the less-than-glamorous appeal of a flight that's like riding in the back of a van.
Mr. VAUGHN CORDLE (Analyst, Airline Forecasts): I am quite skeptical that they can reach those volumes that they need at the price they need to make that a viable business.
ALLEN: It may be risky, but DayJet has lots of company. More than a dozen other new air taxi companies are struggling to get off the ground in markets around the U.S. and a similar number are starting up in Europe.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
For all of the time and energy the presidential candidates have devoted to raising money, it's only January and those millions won't be enough. February 5th, with two dozen states in play, is big enough to break any bank account, so staying alive requires careful strategy.
NPR's Peter Overby explores how he candidates are playing the odds.
PETER OVERBY: Mitt Romney's battle cry today may be: On to South Carolina. But just a week ago, he was yanking his ads off the air down there so they could run in Michigan. In fact, Romney may have hit his low point a week ago today. That's when some of his big money-raisers went to work in a boiler-room-style setup. Romney gave them a pep talk.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Massachusetts Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): So hit the phones today, make all the promises you have to, and I'm going to make sure the we get the funds that we need to keep on propelling this campaign forward with power and energy.
OVERBY: But later on, the numbers didn't look all that good - $5 million raised, but three-fourths of it from people who had already given the legal limit for the primaries. That means Romney could use only one and a half million of it now.
All of the Republicans are strapped for cash. GOP consultant, Eddie Mahe, says each of them has to pick a few states for February 5th and spend like mad in them.
Mr. EDDIE MAHE (Republican Consultant): If you don't win something on February 5th, the rest of the money isn't going to do you any good.
OVERBY: Rudolph Giuliani is targeting Florida, January 29th. Another Republican consultant, Bill Greener, notes that even if he wins there, Giuliani's bouts for February 5th could be limited.
Mr. BILL GREENER (Republican Consultant): I don't think that there are enough hours in the day or media time available if you had all the money in the world to pursue an advertising approach.
OVERBY: So on the fifth, Giuliani may run hardest on his home turf - New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. All three are winner-take-all states with a total of 183 delegates among them.
Observers say Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson will likely find their campaigns cramped by lack of funds. But John McCain seems to have a lot of potential. After nearly going bust last summer, he celebrated a spike in online fundraising after winning New Hampshire.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona): That's the inevitable resolve to the victory in the right place (unintelligible).
OVERBY: But it was a behind-the-scenes move that really saved McCain's campaign. He had to borrow money, not unusual for a campaign. In the old days, when most candidates took federal matching funds, he would have borrowed against the promise of those funds. Instead, he used his campaign mailing list and future fundraising prospects to borrow against. That allowed him to forego matching funds even though he qualified for them.
It's critical, because the matching funds come with tight limits on spending. Limits that would have let McCain's rivals leave him in the dust. Again, Eddie Mahe.
Mr. MAHE: It was a brilliant one. Because if he would have gone matching funds, he couldn't have competed.
OVERBY: One Democrat, John Edwards, went the other way. Trailing far behind the fundraising of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, he's qualified for nearly $9 million federal dollars. But there's that spending cap. It's less than either Clinton or Obama has already spent. Edwards' campaign manager, David Bonior, insists that's okay.
Mr. DAVID BONIOR (John Edwards' Campaign Manager): We believe with the $54 million cap and with the judicious spending through the primary and the caucus season that we can be and will be competitive throughout.
OVERBY: Clinton and Obama each raised about $100 million last year. But that doesn't mean they're letting up. Last week, Clinton's finance director, Jonathan Mantz, was at a conference call urging the campaign's money people to bring in another $10,000 a piece this month.
Mr. JONATHAN MANTZ (Finance Director, Clinton Campaign): With 500 people in this call, I want to have everyone do as much as they can and make a special effort this week to fulfill the full $10,000 that each of you, I know, can raise. You know, $10,000 is - you've gone so far past that level. Go back to your networks and go back to the people that have been - that have not made the decision to contribute or support, and so you can go back to them.
OVERBY: Last year, the two top Democrats could afford to plan ahead and think big. But now, they're going to have to pick and choose their states just like everybody else.
Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The leading Democratic candidates are all in Nevada today. Polls show that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are in a tight race there just three days before the state's caucuses.
Edwards has yet to win a primary or a caucus. He is relying on strong showing in Nevada, as well as in South Carolina's primary on January 26th. Edwards was born in South Carolina.
In 2004, he won the presidential primary there by a wide margin, and he has spent a lot of time in recent days campaigning in the state.
Our colleague Michele Norris caught up with him earlier this week at a rally at Myrtle Beach High School.
MICHELE NORRIS: A couple hundred Edwards supporters are in the Myrtle Beach High cafeteria but hardly enough to fill the room. The volunteers urged folks to come forward and crowd the space in front of the stage. The crowd is upbeat. The mood ain't a bit low key.
Janice Olds is a proud Edwards supporter from Myrtle Beach. I asked whether a strong showing in her state was crucial for her candidate.
Ms. JANICE OLDS (Resident, Myrtle Beach): Very, very important and I suspect that God bless him. He keeps saying that he's going to go all the way, and I sure hope he does, and you know, all of our little $50 pledges or whatever hopefully will drive that bus all the way to the convention, but I don't know.
NORRIS: Nick Januzzi was also at the back of the room. He, too, plans to stick with Edwards.
Mr. NICK JANUZZI (Resident, Myrtle Beach): You know, you can't be runner-up all the time because you're never going to be a winner, you know? He's doing pretty well, but not well enough. So, I'm hoping he does well here. I think, you know, like they said, he might be a sleeper. That's what I'm hoping for, you know. Hillary and Obama battle it out, and here he comes.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Democratic Presidential Candidate): Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much for the introduction.
NORRIS: Edwards came to this rally alone - no wife, none of his children were there - just the candidate in a blue blazer and jeans, giving his impassioned and by now, well-practiced stomp speech.
Mr. EDWARDS: …because I will bring all combat troops out of Iraq. I will end combat missions in Iraq…
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. EDWARDS: …and there will be no further permanent military bases in Iraq…
(Soundbite of people talking)
NORRIS: Afterwards, he signed a few autographs, posed for a few photos, then hopped back on his big blue campaign bus emblazoned with the words real change starts now.
We joined Edwards on his main street express. Ironically, Clinton and Obama were splashed across the flat screen TV just as we climbed onboard.
I sat down with John Edwards to talk about his campaign and the impact of race surfacing just as the Democratic contest heads south.
Mr. EDWARDS: I grew up in, first, the segregated South and grew up in the midst of the civil rights movement. I lived in South Carolina, and then, Georgia, and North Carolina.
So, everything from Selma to the Orangeburg massacre to the four young men walking into a luncheon counter, a Woolworth luncheon counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, all of that was going on around me as I was growing up.
And you have to just - you have to be really thoughtful about issues of race, because I grew up with an awful lot of code words that were used. And efforts were made to stir up race, in some cases for political motives, in some cases just driven by hatred. I mean…
NORRIS: Is now what we're seeing here though an effort in some ways to stir up racial politics?
Mr. EDWARDS: It's hard for me to know, to perfectly honest. I don't know the answer to that. Sometimes stirring it up is an intentional. It's not the intended result but it is the result. And I think any stirring it up this issue whether it's intentional or unintentional is unfortunate and not healthy.
I think what we want to do is move forward.
NORRIS: Now, this is coming back to South Carolina is like coming home for you. We talked to people at this last event who see you as a son of South Carolina. What is at stake for you here in this state?
Mr. EDWARDS: Well, it's important for me to do well. And I think it's important for the other two to do well, too. But…
NORRIS: Now, what's at stake for you?
Mr. EDWARDS: For me, I just need - If I make certain that voters here know that I'm fighting for the middle class and to lift up low-income families and, I guess, moneyed interests, they'll respond. And I think that these people know me, they trust me.
NORRIS: What is your strategy coming out of South Carolina? You said that you're in it to win it. You plan to stay in this until February 5th and beyond. So, what's your strategy coming out in South Carolina?
Mr. EDWARDS: Well, after South Carolina, we'll go to the February 5th states. Later this week, I'm making a February 5th fly-around to a number of February 5th states. See, at that point, it really is - it's going to happen fast and furiously.
I think what's different though about this race that voters will begin to see is we have three serious candidates. All of them are taking a significant part of the vote, and I just strongly suspect, unless I don't know something about the other two that I should know, that everyone's in this for the long haul. Yeah, I would expect this to go on for a long time.
NORRIS: It seems that you could be a candidate or almost a kingmaker right now if you were willing to think about cutting deals, if you were willing to give signals to some of your supporters.
MR. EDWARDS: Well, my job right now is to run for president on the causes that I believe in. That's what drives me every day. It's the reason I get up every day and that's what I'm going to continue to do.
NORRIS: Is it possible that we could see a broker convention?
MR. EDWARDS: I have no idea.
NORRIS: Have you been spreading those rules?
MR. EDWARDS: Not like I should, probably. I think anything's possible, honestly. I think - I would fully expect to see over the next several months, a lot of ups and downs. I think we got a long way to go.
NORRIS: Next question I just want to ask you is there someone I met at the rally just now at Myrtle Beach High School. I met a gentleman named Nick Januzzi and he was there. He had two Edwards buttons on, he was holding an Edwards sign, he is fully committed to your candidacy, but he said at some point, we need more than just a runner-up finish. We've got to see him actually win one of these races. If that does happen in Nevada, if that doesn't happen in South Carolina, you're committed to stay on the race, what is the model for that? Who do you look to that's actually run this kind of unconventional campaign?
MR. EDWARDS: I think we've had them in the past and I think there were circumstances where they could've been successful. I think it depends on the kind of candidate - all three candidates in this case because I think that all of us are going to be tested and we're going to be looked at very hard. And what do I think the honest likelihood is anytime somebody pops up, they're going to be critically evaluated and people then are going to look hard at the other one or other two candidates that are still on the race. We got a long way to go.
NORRIS: So what is your - in order for you, if you don't take a strong finish in these races that are just ahead of us…
MR. EDWARDS: You mean Nevada and South Carolina.
NORRIS: Nevada and South Carolina. Yeah. How do you remain viable?
MR. EDWARDS. Oh, you just keep going because the difference is right now, we're - part of it is we're accumulating delegates. The difference between the three of us on delegates is miniscule and it's the delegates that win you the nomination. So…
NORRIS: So, you're saying that we're focused on the wrong thing, we're too focused on the vote count?
MR. EDWARDS: Yeah. And it's going to last a long time. I mean, as I've known New Hampshire, I think less than half of 1 percent of voters in America have voted. I mean, 99 percent of voices have not been heard. I mean, I had to set this early. I intend to make sure their voices are heard.
NORRIS: And I'm not going to bother to ask you the vice presidential question because you seemed to be asked - over and over again.
MR. EDWARDS: I'm not going to be vice president.
NORRIS: But I assume that - okay. So, I don't have to ask, you just told me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MR. EDWARDS: I could say that very simply.
NORRIS: Senator Edwards, thank you very much.
MR. EDWARDS: Thanks, Michele.
SIEGEL: It's John Edwards speaking with our colleague, Michele Norris, today in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
If Chinese automakers have their way, in a few years, you might be able to get a good deal on a Grand Tiger, a Strip of Cloud, or perhaps a Liebao. Those are cars all on display at this year's North American International Auto Show. It's the second year in a row that Chinese automakers have brought their cars to Detroit, and that sends a clear signal that China is setting its sights on the lucrative American market.
NPR's Anthony Brooks reports.
(Soundbite of music)
ANTHONY BROOKS: Coming soon to Automile or AutoNation or to a showroom near you, Chinese SUVs, sedans, and minivans. Well, maybe not so soon. But here at this year's big auto show in Detroit, five Chinese car companies are displaying some 20 different vehicles, clearly aiming for the U.S. market.
Unidentified Man #1: Please give a warm welcome to Chairman Li, the CEO of Chang Feng.
BROOKS: The presentation by the chairman of Chang Feng Motors showed both a promise and a challenge facing Chinese automakers. Chairman Jianxin Li had the attention of hundreds of journalists. But his English was so poor, nobody had a clue what he was saying.
Mr. JIANXIN LI (Chairman, Chang Feng Motor): In this spending(ph) they sought challenger. I've been able - Chang Feng market see that (unintelligible)…
BROOKS: Even so, the presentation signaled Chang Feng's clear intention to enter the U.S. Market. Here's Chairman Li making that point more clearly to an interpreter.
Mr. LI: (Through translator) This is the second time Chang Feng Group came to this auto show. That shows our interest to get in to this market.
BROOKS: Should American automakers be worried about Chinese competition?
Mr. LI: (Through translator) Oh, I feel no threat to GM, Ford, the Chrysler cars in Chinese market. So, it's normal there's some Chinese cars in North America. Yeah.
BROOKS: Sounds fair to me.
Mr. LI: (Chinese spoken)
(Soundbite of laughter)
BROOKS: Detroit automakers understand it's only a question of time before the Chinese and their rapidly growing economy represents serious competition.
Mr. ROBERT A. LUTZ (Vice Chairman, General Motors): Well, I don't think it's just Detroit automakers. I think it's the entire United States - U.S. Incorporated.
BROOKS: But Bob Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors, says nobody is panicked by this. That's because U.S. automakers already have a huge presence in China, where they're selling cars and setting up joint ventures.
Mr. LUTZ: So we are an integral part of the Chinese automobile industry. So, as China grows, we will benefit.
BROOKS: But Chinese automakers still face some big hurdles before they can penetrate the U.S. market. With relatively cheap labor, they can produce affordable vehicles, but their cars still lack many of the basic features and comfort that American consumers now demand. And Paul Eisenstein, publisher of TheCarConnection.com says the Chinese face other more serious challenges.
Mr. PAUL EISENSTEIN (Publisher, TheCarConnection.com): We saw some tests out of Europe just a few months ago. The Europeans ran a crash test, and their car folded up like an accordion. One of the comments made by an executive was, well, we sell our cars to people who drive safely. I don't think that's going to fly. I don't think it's going to meet federal mandates, whether in Europe or the U.S.
BROOKS: The Chinese say they hope to be selling cars here within two or three years, but they understand the challenge. Here's Waping Jong, the chief designer of Chang Feng's new diesel SUV.
Mr. WAPING JONG (Chief Designer, Chang Feng): We are not sure whether we can pass the qualification test or safety test in the United States. We haven't…
BROOKS: I see. So, there's still some work to do?
Mr. JONG: Yeah. We have a lot of work to do for the qualification.
(Soundbite of music)
BROOKS: So, don't expect to see Chang Feng vehicles for sale in the U.S. anytime soon. But the company's presence here at this year's North American International Auto Show is making quite a splash, and it's serving notice that China is on its way to becoming a major player in the global auto industry.
Anthony Brooks, NPR News, Detroit.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
After yesterday's presidential primary in Michigan, the Republican race is as muddled as ever. There are now three winners from three states: Mike Huckabee in Iowa, John McCain in New Hampshire, and yesterday, Mitt Romney won Michigan, the state where he grew up.
South Carolina is next this Saturday. Fred Thompson says he has to do well there to go on. And then, on January 29th, there's Florida, where Rudy Giuliani has staked his campaign.
As NPR's Mara Liasson reports, this wide-open race is confounding Republicans.
MARA LIASSON: For an orderly hierarchical party that tends to line up early behind a front-runner, this year, is breaking all the rules. The Republican National Committee began its annual winter meeting today in Washington. National Committee man Bob Shelander from Illinois couldn't point to a single trend or clue from the results so far.
Mr. ROBERT SHELANDER (Member, Republican National Committee): It's very unclear. There's no clarity here. I mean, we've had three major races and three different winners, and this is going to go on a long time. It's a very fluid situation. Anybody that tells you they know what's going to happen is pulling your legs.
LIASSON: But one thing is clear: the retail part of the campaign is over, with voters vetting candidates in their living rooms; now, it's wholesale politics. So many primaries coming up all at once, and in big states where it is a lot more expensive to advertise. In Florida, for instance, TV ads can cost up to $2 million a week.
Republican strategist Scott Reed, who is neutral, says although there are three winners, some winners are more equal than others.
Mr. SCOTT REED (Republican Strategist): I think it's fair to say Romney has a clear edge, because he has a win under his belt in Michigan, and he has the financial resources to go the distance. So, having the resources, the ability to run a campaign is now is going to make a difference as you go into this rapid-fire string of states, where there are not only a lot of delegates, but you're going to need momentum.
LIASSON: Romney isn't counting on a win in South Carolina, where his Mormon religion is an obstacle for evangelical voters, but, says Reed, John McCain really needs to win there.
Mr. REED: A McCain loss in Michigan has hurt him. It's not devastating, but he has to follow it up with a win in South Carolina, the state that tripped him eight years ago, that everybody's waiting and watching. Can he break out? Short of a victory in South Carolina, it's going to be very difficult for McCain to go on, mostly because he's not going to have the financial resources to carry on an extensive campaign in Florida and in all those 22 Super Tuesday states.
LIASSON: One thing that hasn't changed since voters began weighing in is the unhappiness with all of the candidates on the part of the conservative activists. Don Devine of the American Conservative Union says grudgingly that Romney is probably the least bad of the Republicans who seem to have a shot at the nomination.
Mr. DONALD DEVINE (Vice Chairman, American Conservative Union): He says everything right. The question is his credibility. There's no question that if after South Carolina — Thompson hasn't won South Carolina — then Romney probably will be the one conservatives will have to rally around.
LIASSON: Sounds like they'll do it with not much enthusiasm.
Mr. DEVINE: That's true but they may grow on. Who knows?
LIASSON: Longtime national committee man Morton Blackwell of Virginia says the rush of primaries in January and February is coming back to haunt the party.
Mr. MORTON BLACKWELL (Member, Republican National Committee): I think the front-loading is not a good thing. On February 5th, I think it's likely now that we'll see one candidate carrying some states, another candidate carrying other states, another candidate carrying other states. So, it seems to me a really live possibility that no one will have 50 percent plus one when the convention assembles in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
LIASSON: And that means maybe an open convention where the nominee is only decided after multiple ballots of the delegates, something that hasn't happened since 1948 - just another interesting possibility, in an election that has so far defied conventional wisdom and historical precedent.
Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host
And I'm Melissa Block.
There are 293 days left until Election Day. Who's counting? And senior news analyst Daniel Schorr is already thinking about one of the reforms he hopes the next president will make.
DANIEL SCHORR: When the candidates on the campaign trail talk of the need for change in Washington, they're talking about many kinds of abuses. There is the Jack Abramoff-type lobbying scandal, planting cohorts in the administration who will then do the bidding of your clients. There is the earmark scandal, sneaking items into appropriations bills that will serve some specific interest at home. There is the revolving door scandal, leaving Congress to make more money lobbying Congress for some well paying interests. And there is a scandal of a firing of U.S. attorneys to bring in administration supporters.
And now, there is a scandal I've never even heard of before, the monitoring scandal involving, of all people, former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Yeah, the one who made himself a hero by refusing on his hospital bed to sign an extension of the Surveillance Law.
The monitoring scandal has to do with companies that escape prosecution by promising to mend their ways. They agreed to have monitors whom they will pay to make sure that they stay on the straight and narrow. And so, as revealed by The Washington Post, when the Zimmer Company of Indiana, which makes medical equipment, was threatened with prosecution for paying kickbacks to doctors to promote its products, it promised to reform and it agreed to a monitorship.
The monitor is selected by the federal prosecutor, in this case, U.S. attorney Christopher Christie, a New Jersey Republican, possible candidate for governor. He selected the consulting firm headed by John Ashcroft. That is where $25 million in company money that a prosecutor lavished on the former attorney general and that amounted to a no bid contract.
So, the monitorship practice can allow a company to flout the law and escape punishment. All they have to do is strike a deal with the U.S. attorney that puts an administration crony into the boardroom. And since the administration has seen to it that most U.S. attorneys are friendly to business, the companies don't have to worry too much. One exhibit in a list of what needs changing when the next president inaugurates the era of change.
This is Daniel Schorr.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
People in Stephenville, Texas are calling it a life-changing experience. That experience was the sighting last week of a large unidentified flying object. They say the UFO hovered for several minutes and then flew off quickly.
NPR's Wade Goodwyn went to Stephenville to find out what folks think they saw.
WADE GOODWYN: On a Tuesday evening, police officer Leroy Gatin walked out his front door to his car and up in the sky he saw something glowing. It was a deep fiery red. The light reminded him of pictures he'd seen of a volcano erupting at night. The object was about 3,000 feet up and Gatin says it was close.
Mr. LEROY GATIN (Police Officer): From what I saw, the initial or two red glows, I'd say about five football fields.
GOODWYN: Gatin saw a red glow, and he says it was big. He watched it hover, disappear then reappear. Finally, it occurred to him to get his family. He ran back inside and yelled to come look. His wife on the couch rolled her eyes and ignored him but his 8-year-old son, Ryan(ph) came running.
Mr. RYAN GATIN (Son of Leroy Gatin): First, my dad saw some bright red lights. And then I came out there with him. We saw like some bright white lights flying around like dancing around. And then they just took off.
GOODWYN: Father and son were stunned at the speed the lights traveled. Within seconds, they were gone. Gatin decided to keep mostly quiet about what he'd seen but two days later, there was a story in the local paper.
(Soundbite of phone ringing)
Unidentified Woman: Empire-Tribune. I'm sorry she's currently in a meeting right now. Would you like to leave your name and number? About the UFO? Yes. That's correct. We did have some articles run on that.
GOODWYN: Stephenville is about 80 miles southwest of Fort Worth. When something unusual happens, people call the newspaper. That works well because there's only one fulltime reporter, Angela Joiner. Joiner says a lot of people saw the UFO that night.
Ms. ANGELA JOINER (Reporter, Stephenville Empire-Tribune): I would say several dozen. Now, I've gotten so many phone calls, I really (unintelligible) where to keep up with them all and so many e-mails.
GOODWYN: The descriptions were the same. It was big. It had bright, strobing white lights that flash in no pattern. It would hover silently and then when it did move…
Ms. JOINER: Yes, they said it was very, very fast. Once it started moving - one lady said, you couldn't have put your finger on it and followed it and kept your finger on it.
GOODWYN: Perhaps nobody had a better view than pilots Steve Allen. Allen and his two friends were clearing brush on this hilltop with views that extend 20 miles.
Mr. STEVE ALLEN (Pilot): Oh, we look off to the east towards the nuclear plant and see some flashing strobe lights coming at us. They had a erratic flash, I mean, it was very large and very bright - nothing we had ever seen before. Now, I asked the two gentlemen with me, Mike Odom and Lance Jones, if they were seeing it, and of course, they said, yes.
GOODWYN: Allen says the object slowed as it approached the outskirts of Stephenville.
Mr. ALLEN: It was probably about 2,500-3,000 foot above the ground. By the time it got to Stephenville, we could see the back end of it and the lights had reconfigured. It was just two in the back corners. And the several more lights come on into an arch.
GOODWYN: Allen says it took the aircraft just a few seconds to cross a section of sky that it takes him 20 minutes to fly in his Cessna. When the object disappeared, the three men ran into Michael Odom's house and got his wife Claudette.
Ms. CLAUDETTE ODOM (Wife of Michael Odom): And he goes, run outside right now. He said they're in the west. Look in the west and you can see what I'm talking about. So, I ran out there and I saw it.
GOODWYN: And then, what did you see?
Ms. ODOM: Just - they were like bright, bright yellow kind of like strobe lights, you know? What an airplane. I know it wasn't a airplane.
GOODWYN: And then Claudette and the men saw something several other witnesses reported seeing as well. Although the nearby Air Force base reported that it didn't have fighters in the area at the time. Claudette Odom says somebody gave chase.
Ms. ODOM: Yeah. They were fighter planes. It's exactly what they were. They - the military can say what they want to say. I don't know who was flying out here or where the jets were from whether they were from around here but they were two of them and they were following whatever the lights were and there was no way they were catching up.
(Soundbite of theme "The Twilight Zone")
GOODWYN: The large object that appears in the evening sky, every day, Americans witness something they can't explain and will never forget. Their eyes tell them they're still in Texas but looks can be deceiving because they've entered The Twilight Zone.
Wade Goodwyn, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
But China may not be exporting cars to the U.S. quite yet, but more and more people there are buying cars. The huge Chinese demand for oil is one of the main reasons that oil prices have risen so high. And that, in turn, affects the U.S. economy. The price of oil was a key topic for President Bush during his trip to the Persian Gulf. But NPR senior news analyst Ted Koppel says the U.S. will have to look beyond the Gulf.
TED KOPPEL: We are getting close to the end of an era. For the better part of 50 years now, the United States has looked to the Persian Gulf as its safety valve in times of economic uncertainty. For most of the 1950s, '60s, and '70s, American presidents turned to their ally, the shah of Iran. When he was removed from power and Iran became an Islamic republic, Washington focused its attention on Saudi Arabia. As was true with Iran, a willingness on the Saudi's part to settle prices by putting more oil on the world market has been rewarded, on Washington's part, by a willingness to sell to Saudi's another enormous package of sophisticated weapons. That won't work much longer. Though the Saudi has produced one-third of OPEC's oil output, the global demand for oil is on the verge of becoming so great that even Saudi Arabia won't be able to keep prices from skyrocketing. The next few American presidents will have to come to terms with China, and eventually India on the subject of oil supply and energy costs, but let's focus for the moment on China.
In another seven years or so, Chinese customers will be buying as many cars every year as are bought annually here in the United States. By that same year, 2015, China will have more miles of roads and highways than we do. By 2030, the total of automobiles in China will be greater than here in the United States. And the projections beyond that are so discouraging that, suffice it to say, there won't be enough oil to go around. Something has to change - alternate energy, alternate means of powering cars, a massive conservation effort, not to mention a genuine strategic cooperation between China and the United States. Because the days of asking the Saudis to fix our economic problems by opening another valve or two, those days are over.
This is Ted Koppel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Global supply issues are at the heart of the Boeing Company's latest woes. The company announced today that production of its new 787 Dreamliner jet is being delayed even further. It was already behind schedule.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The 787 is designed to be quieter and more comfortable for the passenger and also more fuel efficient, and airlines have been eager to buy it. Boeing already has 800 orders.
BLOCK: But Boeing outsourced much of the production work, and the company says some suppliers have not met expectations. Boeing also says they underestimated how long it would take to finish someone else's work. Pat Shanahan heads the 787 program. He spoke to reporters on a conference call this morning.
Mr. PATRICK SHANAHAN (Vice President, General Manager, 787 Program, Boeing Commercial Airplanes): We designed our factory to be a lean operation. We thought we could modify that production system and accommodate the travel work from our suppliers. We were wrong.
SIEGEL: Japan's All Nippon Airways was supposed to get the very first 787 in May. Now, Boeing says that airplane won't be delivered until early next year, and the company will probably have to pay millions in penalties to airlines whose new 787s won't be ready when promised.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
California is creating refugees for marine life along its coast. It's an ambitious project, the largest of its kind in the United States involving hundreds of square miles of coastal waters. Now, comes the task of trying to prove that it works.
David Gorn reports from the middle of Monterey Bay.
(Soundbite of waves off the central coast of California)
DAVID GORN: These waters off the central coast of California are the largest protected area for marine life in the nation and outside of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the world.
Professor STEPHEN PALUMBI (Marine Biologist, Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station): We're standing on China Point, which sticks out into the Monterey Bay. It's close enough to the Pacific Ocean so that the waves raft around and really smack it.
GORN: That's Stanford marine biologist, Steve Palumbi. One-fourth of the California coastline, he says, the entire central coast area makes up the first phase of the project. Now, the state isn't trying to protect the whole ocean here. Instead, it has picked out pockets of the richest marine life and restricted them from fishing. The idea is to set up little fish nurseries up and down the coast. In all, more than 200 square miles of ocean has been set aside and that's just the start. California expects to expand the program in three additional phases to cover the entire California coast by 2011. That kind of protection, says Palumbi, is long over due.
Prof. PALUMBI: It's a relatively simple solution to what is otherwise a really horrific problem, that is, the health of the ocean and the health of the life in the ocean is something that is being stressed by all kinds of things by pollution, by development, by global climate change, by overfishing. All of these things build up to the point where in a lot of places, the ocean ecosystem has collapsed.
GORN: Ah, but here's the rub. To keep the project going, the state needs to prove the thing's working. It needs to see that there are actually more fish in the water because of these protected zones. But it's not so easy to catalogue sea life in 200 square miles of open water. Fish move. The ocean is big. But still, the ultimate success of this project all comes down to counting fish.
It's about eight a.m. on a dark autumn morning on the University of California research vessel, Paragon, off the coast of Santa Cruz. Four crew members are getting ready to dive, their air tanks banging against the heavy gear. They pour hot water into their wet suits to fight off the chill of changing.
(Soundbite of divers preparing to dive)
Unidentified Woman: (unintelligible)
Unidentified Man: Yup.
(Soundbite of water splashing)
GORN: Divers go in teams of two, one halfway down and one near the bottom. They measure a water alleyway, two-meters wide and two-meters tall, 150-meters long, counting the fish, the invertebrates, and other life in that sample area, says boat captain Dave Benet(ph).
Mr. DAVE BENET (Boat captain): The restructure is really different. It's really flat reef. There's this kind of long staircases and there'll be no fish or hardly any life and then you'll hit some of these ledges and (unintelligible).
GORN: These meticulous surveys take three to five months and will be done in the exact same spots every year to mark the ocean's progress. According to Mark Carr, the UC Santa Cruz biologist in charge of counting the fish, the state is hoping to follow the town of Monterey's lead. Years ago, Carr says, a small section of Monterey Bay was protected and over time, its blush marine life has helped the larger area of Monterey Bay recover. On a tiny scale, says Carr, that's exactly the kind of success the state is hoping will happen all up and down the coastline of California.
Mr. MARK CARR (Biologist, University of California, Santa Cruz): There's no doubt that the MPA process in California is unprecedented. And certainly, throughout the country, as well as internationally, everybody's looking at this process big time. Big time.
GORN: In particular, officials in Oregon, Washington, and Massachusetts are watching how California is running its program and what kind of results it can produce and the success or failure of this monumental landmark effort looks like it's going to be measured fish by fish one dive at a time.
For NPR News, I'm David Gorn.
(Soundbite of music "Amazing Grace")
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This week, the police department in Oceanside, California paid tribute to one of their own, a fallen hero.
Officer KEDRICK SADLER (Stryker's Handler; Oceanside Police Department): He was a protector and guarder(ph), a family member, a friend, and an enemy to those who prey on the (unintelligible). He was bold, noble and brave.
BLOCK: And he was a dog. A 6-year-old Belgian Malinois named Stryker, which serves with the Oceanside PD's canine unit for five years. That was his handler, Officer Kedrick Sadler, delivering the eulogy. Lieutenant Fred Armijo of the Oceanside Police told us there were 150 canine officers and their dogs at that memorial service from all over the San Diego area, and a couple of hundred other people besides.
Lieutenant FRED ARMIJO (Oceanside Police Department): It's not unusual, although it is a first for us, most departments that have suffered a canine line-of-duty death have put together some type of memorial service. They're not on the same level, obviously, as the type of services that are put together for police officers, but nevertheless, they, they typically will honor the dog and what it did for the community.
BLOCK: It's a really terrible story about how Stryker died. This happened after a car chase that ended up on the Coronado Bay Bridge in San Diego. What happened?
Lt. ARMIJO: Well, the suspect ultimately pulled over on the bridge about mid-span. The suspect got out of his car; Stryker was deployed on the suspect to apprehend him. Stryker bit the suspect. The suspect fell to the ground. At some point, the suspect got up and with Stryker attached to him leapt over the railing of the bridge and fell into the water. And it was that, that fall, obviously, that killed Stryker. And amazingly, the suspect actually survived.
BLOCK: How high is that bridge?
Lt. ARMIJO: I'm told it's about 200 feet off the water, so a pretty significant fall.
BLOCK: has the suspect been charged along with the other crimes that he was already facing, has he also been charged with the death of the police dog?
Lt. ARMIJO: Right. There is a penal code section in California that deals with injuring or killing police service dogs. And he has been charged with that in addition to the other obvious charges related to the pursuit. And I believe that he was down to be driving under the influence of alcohol, and I believe that's one of the charges that have also been brought against him.
BLOCK: Lieutenant Armijo, I gather you worked on teams in the past with this dog, with Stryker. What was he like?
Lt. ARMIJO: Well, he, by far, was the most experienced canine that we had. He was very tenacious. Once his handler gave him a mission, he was on that mission until it was complete; very good at finding suspects who were trying to elude the police. He had the most apprehensions of any of our canine corps; just a very good, dependable and reliable animal.
BLOCK: Well, Lt. Armijo, good of you to talk to us. Thanks so much.
Lt. ARMIJO: You're welcome.
BLOCK: That's Lt. Fred Armijo of the Oceanside, California Police Department, talking about Stryker, a police dog killed in the line of duty on New Year's Eve. And thanks to the San Diego Union-Tribune for sounds from the memorial service.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Today, the presidential campaign headed south and west. All three of the leading Democrats campaigned in Nevada today. Nevada holds its caucuses this Saturday. The GOP candidates have mostly ignored Nevada in favor of South Carolina. That Republican primary is also this Saturday. And the race remains wide open. For Mitt Romney, who won yesterday in Michigan, South Carolina will be tougher territory.
SIEGEL: Mitt Romney joins us from his campaign bus near Charleston, South Carolina. Welcome to the program.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Massachusetts Governor: Republican Presidential candidate): Good to be with you, Robert.
SIEGEL: You have contrasted your optimism about American manufacturing jobs, in particular, the auto industry jobs in Michigan, with the Washington-style pessimism, you said - I assume of Senator McCain. Can you deliver on the promise to work to transform the U.S. auto industry and save auto jobs?
Mr. ROMNEY: Well, first I'd tell you that the pessimism is far more widespread than any one individual. I think there's a general perspective in this country that we just can't compete with China, that we just can't compete with Korea, that manufacturing here is going to go away, and that perhaps other jobs will go away as well. And I reject that idea. I think the transformation and change, which you're seeing in technology, suggests that if we lead that change, that we may well be able to develop products for the future that can rekindle the kind of strength that we've seen in these industries before.
SIEGEL: But what does the president of the United States do in that or that as opposed to the presidents of GM or Ford, let's say?
Mr. ROMNEY: Well, you know, as a nation, we invest very substantially in basic science. And we do that in space program and we talk about how we spin out products that come from the space program. We invest in the basic science of health care. And that, of course, leads to products for the health care industry and defense as well. In all three areas, we invest and we lead the world.
But we're going to have to start investing also in energy technology, fuel technologies, material science, some basic areas that will help rid us of our dependence on foreign oil. And that offers the opportunity for technology sharing that may well lead to great products for the home and for the, if you will, for the garage.
SIEGEL: But in Detroit, you spoke of increasing R and D from $4 billion to $20 billion, I assume for the auto industry, it seemed that's what you were saying.
Mr. ROMNEY: No, no, actually you didn't read the article or the speech carefully. It speaks of taking our investments in - federal investments in energy, material science, automotive technology and fuel technology from $4 billion a year, which it is today, rising over time to $20 billion a year. That's the kind of technology investment I believe is going to be necessary akin to the Manhattan project or the Apollo project. To be investing in technologies related to reducing our use of energy.
SIEGEL: Where does the extra $16 billion come from?
Mr. ROMNEY: Well, we're going to be dramatically reducing the amount of the money that's been going in discretionary nonmilitary funds. That's something which I've said I'd cap, at the inflation less one percent.
SIEGEL: Just to clarify here. The nondefense, discretionary spending is only about a fifth of the federal budget. Can you imagine programs in your mind that could be done away with or radically cut - just off the bat - to pay for new projects without raising taxes?
Mr. ROMNEY: Yes. Actually, the 10-year forecast of holding that level at inflation less one percent is approximately $300 billion. So not only there are plenty of money to fund the increase from four to 20 as I was speaking about, there's a great deal more funds to do other things as well. Look at the kinds of programs we have.
We have 40 different job training programs in America administered by different agencies and departments, in many cases with extraordinary bureaucracy and duplication. I would slim these down to a very small number. I also would make it more likely that we just give an account to people who are laid off and let them use this account to pay for community college or perhaps even to use as a on-the-job-training program for people who'll actually find real work and a real employer.
So there are numerous ways for us to become more efficient, the way we spend our money, and then, of course, we have to go through the big one. And the big one is entitlements. And we, right now, are seeing entitlements gobbling up a larger and larger portion of our federal spending. And it's time for us not just to talk about that and to say it's a problem, but actually to propose solutions, and I've done that.
SIEGEL: You're there to contest South Carolina seriously and win a big share of the vote there?
Mr. ROMNEY: Well, we're going to do better than people expect here, at least I sure hope so. I think Senator McCain has been putting a lot of time and money to the state and I believe it's a must-win state for him. So we're here to campaign, get our shares and delegates and keep on going. We've got a lot of states ahead of us. There've been four states so far. I've won two. I've come in second in the other two. No one's come close to me in terms of the total number of Republican votes I've received and the total number of delegates I got. So if I can keep this up, that'll be good news.
SIEGEL: But it's a must-win state for McCain, South Carolina. Is there — are there other must-win states for you down the road?
Mr. ROMNEY: Yeah, I think Michigan came as close as that…
SIEGEL: No, I mean future, future primaries is what I mean.
Mr. ROMNEY: You know, I don't think anyone would suggest that there is a particularly must-win state for me going forward. But, of course, that could change. But at this stage, on the heels of victories both in Wyoming and Michigan and with the lead in delegates, I think I'm given a bit of a rest here. But I'm going to keep on working hard and hope to do well here in South Carolina and, of course, in Nevada as well.
SIEGEL: Governor Romney, thanks a lot for talking with us.
Mr. ROMNEY: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts governor, the winner of the Michigan Republican primary speaking to us from the Mitt mobile in South Carolina.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
There's no rest for the Democrats either. In Nevada, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama are in just as tight a race as the Republicans are. Nevada holds the first western nominating contest on Saturday.
NPR's Scott Horsley reports from Henderson, Nevada.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Nevada differs in several ways from the contests that have come before, in Iowa and New Hampshire. It's a lot less whites for one thing, a point that "Ugly Betty" star America Ferrera made last night during a rally at a Las Vegas high school for Hillary Clinton.
Ms. AMERICA FERRERA (Actress): The minorities in this country, the Latinos in this country, the African-Americans in this country are ready to be heard.
HORSLEY: Nevada is also struggling economically, with the nation's highest home foreclosure rate and a higher-than-average unemployment rate. Clinton and the other Democrats have all offered up proposals to stimulate the economy.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): You know, we are going to restore a strong and prosperous middle class and that begins by having an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected who have been very well taken care of by George Bush.
HORSLEY: Nevada also has a higher proportion of union members than either Iowa or New Hampshire. And those unions could play a big role in getting people out to the caucuses on Saturday. Barack Obama scored the endorsement of the state's biggest union, the Culinary Workers, which represents many casino employees. And there were a lot of union members in attendance this morning when Obama held a town hall meeting just outside Las Vegas.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): What a healthy, vibrant union movement does is it gives the employers incentive - even if they don't have a unionized workforce - to pay decent wages, to provide decent benefits, and that's very important.
HORSLEY: Like Clinton, Obama has called for tens of billions of dollars worth stimulus for the economy. He says he's heard personally from Nevada residents at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure. And he blames lax federal oversight for allowing the mortgage crunch to get out of hand.
Sen. OBAMA: We've got to have an advocate, who recognizes that the American dream is for all people, not just some people. That's why I'm running to be president of the United States of America.
HORSLEY: John Edwards holds his own town hall meeting tonight at a union headquarters in Las Vegas. Nevada could be a chance for Edwards to show it's still a three-person race among the Democrats. The latest poll by the Reno Gazette Journal shows Edwards, Clinton and Obama in a statistical dead heat.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Henderson, Nevada.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
President Bush made a brief stop today in Egypt, his last on a weeklong tour of the Middle East. He promised to return and said that he would stay committed to the Arab-Israeli peace process.
NPR's Michele Kelemen has been travelling with the president and she filed this report about the past week's events - a mixture of pump and policy.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Egypt has historically been a key player in the Middle East peace process, so when Mr. Bush sat down with President Hosni Mubarak on a glorious day in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominated the agenda.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: I'm optimistic an agreement can be reached. And the reason I am is because I believe the leadership in Israel and the leadership of the Palestinians is committed to a two-state solution. And I know nations in the neighborhood are willing to help.
KELEMEN: He spent eight days in the neighborhood trying to get Arab states to reach out to Israel and to help Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. President Bush was also in Gulf states talking about the high price of oil and the threats emanating from Iran. But mainly, this was a trip about shoring up alliances. He spent more time than usual touring cultural sites, sitting down for tea and lavished dinners with kings and sheikhs. He stayed at King Abdullah's ranch in Saudi Arabia and checked out the king's price-winning horses.
Pres. BUSH: He's looking at you, your majesty, it's as if he's paying attention to you.
(Soundbite of laughter)
KELEMEN: The rulers in the United Arab Emirates showed off their hunting falcons and the president seemed to have fun taking it all in.
(Soundbite of children singing)
KELEMEN: On his stop in Dubai, the president even tried out a word of Arabic, saying shukran, or thank you, to the young girls who serenaded him in flowing pink and blue robes. He repeated his calls for reforms in the Middle East, but was fairly soft, at least in public, on Egypt and Saudi Arabia. He also seemed quite taken by the oil-driven building booms in Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
Pres. Bush: We're here working to embrace the opportunities for a modern, global economy. And doing - and in doing so, are not abandoning the traditions of the cultures or their faith.
KELEMEN: In many ways, it felt like a trip that should have been made much earlier in Mr. Bush's presidency, before the Iraq war made him so unpopular here, and we he had more time to help solve a central issue on the minds of many in the region - the Arab-Israeli conflict. He said he had to explain to leaders on this trip why he's so optimistic at this point.
Pres. BUSH: It's a wonder whether or not the American president - when he says something, whether he actually means it. When I say I'm coming back to stay engaged, I mean it. And when I say I'm optimistic we can get a deal done, I mean what I'm saying.
KELEMEN: His aides say, in his waning months of office, this is a good time to really push for peace because he's not running for office and not worried as much about politics. But many people in the region have serious doubts and are thinking ahead. Even the president's aides say they got questions from their hosts about the U.S. primaries and which president they might be dealing with next.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Sharma El Sheikh, Egypt.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Today, House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer told reporters that bipartisanship is breaking out all over. He was talking about legislation to stimulate the U.S. economy; he thinks it could be passed in 30 days. Suddenly it seems everyone has a stimulus package to propose.
Economist Russell Roberts says, everyone should just slow down.
Mr. RUSSELL ROBERTS (Economist; Research Fellow, Hoover Institution): Love that word — stimulus. It sounds so scientific. With the right stimulus, you can even make the leg of a dead frog twitch. A heart attack victim gets the stimulus from those chest paddles and bam - back to life.
My online dictionary defines stimulus as something that rouses or incites to activity. Sounds like the perfect prescription for an ailing economy. But if politicians know how to stimulate the economy, why wait for a recession? If you can make the economy grow, why wait for bad times?
One answer is that a healthy patient doesn't need medicine. But the other possibility is that it's all hot air. Maybe we don't know how to make a $14 trillion economy move very quickly. And if we did, it would take a lot more than an injection of even 125 billion dollars.
There's that scientific language again — an injection. The politicians are always going to inject some amount of money into the hands of consumers and into the economy, like a doctor giving a lifesaving blood transfusion. But where does the economic injection come from? It has to come from inside the system. It's not an outside stimulus like the chest paddles or a transfusion. It means taking money from someone or somewhere inside the system and giving it to someone else.
The standard stimulus package doesn't change incentives. It's a check from the government. The hope is that the receiver will spend it. But when you just send out checks from the government, whoever gets stimulated is likely to be offset by someone who gets unstimulated.
The money has to come from somewhere. If you raise taxes to fund the plan, the people who are taxed are poorer and they'll spend less. If you borrow money to fund the plan, the people who buy the government bonds have less money to spend and that offsets the stimulus. It's like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end. Funny thing—the water in the shallow end doesn't get any deeper.
And even the people who get the money often save more of it than they spend. That's why stimulus schemes based on giving people money have a poor track record of energizing the economy. Usually, the only thing that gets stimulated is a politician's approval rating.
I'm not saying that economy policy is irrelevant. Economic policy matters because it affects the long-run growth of the economy. I'm all for policies that make us more productive or innovative by changing incentives. But those policies take time. There's little any economic doctor can do to move our $14 trillion organism of an economy in the next few months.
Politicians who work in the Oval Office — or those who seek to work there — would be wise to remember that patience is a virtue. Focus on the policies that lead to growth over time. Expecting results overnight is bound to lead to disappointment.
SIEGEL: Russell Roberts is a professor at George Mason University and a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
The CIA's top lawyer, John Rizzo, was on Capitol Hill today. He was testifying about what he knows about the agency's destruction of controversial interrogation videotapes. Those tapes showed two terrorism detainees being subjected to severe interrogation methods, including the procedure known as waterboarding. Rizzo spoke behind closed doors at a meeting of the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating the destruction of the tapes.
NPR's Tom Gjelten joins us here in the studio.
And, Tom, John Rizzo was the only witness before this committee today. What did the committee want to hear from him?
TOM GJELTEN: Melissa, he was the acting general counsel also in late 2005 when the decision to destroy the tapes was made. So the committee wanted to ask him what he knew about that decision to destroy the tapes, whether he knew about it ahead of time, whether he approved of the decision. This would establish whether the decision - the destruction of the tapes was an agency action or whether it was the action of a few individuals, a more limited action. There have been some indications that there were counsel against destroying the tapes. So I think the committee wanted to know what Rizzo knew about that. That's one thing.
The second thing - this is also important. As the general counsel, Rizzo would have been the point man with the White House in terms of any discussions that took place between the agency and the White House on the wisdom of destroying the tapes. And this committee is very interested to know what the White House involvement was in this decision.
BLOCK: The CIA official who actually ordered the destruction of the videotapes, Jose Rodriguez, did not show up on Capitol Hill today. Why is that?
GJELTEN: That's right, Melissa. He was the head of the Clandestine Service. He was the one, as you say, who'd ordered the destruction of the tapes. What basically happen - and they did want to hear from him today, in fact, they subpoenaed him to appear today with Rizzo. But what happened is the attorney general, Michael Mukasey, decided to launch a criminal investigation into this case. Rodriguez, as the key person, has retained counsel. And his lawyer suggested that he not - ordered him, basically, not to testify without the promise of immunity.
The committee wasn't willing to give him immunity just yet, so they excused him from testifying at least for the time being. Now, what Rodriguez' lawyer is saying is that he got a green light to destroy these tapes. That's a very important issue. And I'm sure they wanted to ask Rizzo what he knew about any green light that was given to Jose Rodriguez.
BLOCK: Tom, you mentioned that Justice Department investigation. How is the committee on Capitol Hill? How is it keeping its own inquiries separate from the criminal investigation?
GJELTEN: Well, they do have different interests, Melissa. They - of course, the Department of Justice wants to know if any crime was committed. Pete Hoekstra, who's the ranking minority member on the committee, came out today. And he reminded us that he has said in the past that there are parts of the intelligence community that are, not only incompetent, but also arrogant and possibly criminal. So he clearly wants to - wants the Justice Department to be able to proceed and find out whether there were any criminal acts that were committed.
But as far as Congress is concerned, what they're concerned about is accountability. The CIA is supposed to be accountable to Congress. And what Hoekstra and what Chairman Reyes - the Democratic chairman of the committee, Silvestre Reyes, have said is that the CIA has not been sharing, did not share what it was doing with these tapes with Congress. And that is the critical issue as far as Congress is concerned, their oversight.
BLOCK: Tom, you've been following this story since it broke about a month ago. What's the latest you've learned about why these tapes were made and why they were destroyed?
GJELTEN: They were made, Melissa, basically for two reasons. The agency wanted to know that their interrogation of these guys was legal. And also, Abu Zubaydah, one of the guys being interrogated, was seriously injured. They wanted to show that they weren't doing anything dirty during these interrogations that was actually going to kill him.
So they had lawyers and doctors watching them. And then once the tapes were made, once that - on-sight purpose was kept, then they needed them destroyed, they said.
BLOCK: Okay. NPR's intelligence correspondent, Tom Gjelten. Tom, thanks so much.
GJELTEN: Thank you.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Three weeks have passed since the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. The government insists that the attack in Rawalpindi was ordered by an al-Qaida-linked militant by the name of Baitullah Mehsud.
But as NPR's Philip Reeves reports, some Pakistanis are not convinced that he was the culprit.
PHILIP REEVES: Two or three years ago, no one has heard of Baitullah Mehsud. They have now. Pakistan's president, Musharraf, is hunting him.
President PERVEZ MUSHARRAF (Pakistan): He shoots and moves every day, every night. We know that.
REEVES: Pakistani journalist Ismail Khan is writing about him.
Mr. ISMAIL KHAN (Journalist): Baitullah Mehsud was described to me at least, you know, as a very cool, calculated guy.
REEVES: Pakistani pundit and retired soldier Brigadier Mahmood Shah is reminiscing about him.
Mr. MAHMOOD SHAH (Retired General, Pakistan): He is intelligent. He's very careful. He is patient.
REEVES: Yet the picture of the man, who Pakistan's government says was behind the Bhutto assassination, remains incomplete. Here's what we know. Baitullah Mehsud is in his early '30s. He's from Mahsud tribe in South Waziristan where the writ of central government does not run. He's fought against the U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, who he views as foreign occupiers. We know he wants to see the introduction of Sharia law. And we know he's attacking the Pakistani army.
Speaking recently, Musharraf said Baitullah Mehsud was what he called a facilitator for al-Qaida. He blamed him for organizing a wave of suicide bombings mostly aimed at Pakistan's army and security services.
Pres. MUSHARRAF: He is attacking our people. And if you want to know the casualties, about 400 dead and about 900 wounded in the last three months.
REEVES: Musharraf argues the only groups in Pakistan capable of brainwashing suicide bombers are Islamist militants, like Baitullah Mehsud. Bhutto's convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber, ergo, argues Musharraf, her assassination must have been the work of Baitullah Mehsud or his allies.
However, photographs also show Bhutto being shot at from close range seconds before the blast. Many of Bhutto's party supporters don't believe she was killed by Islamists. They think her killers came from within the Musharraf government or elements linked to it.
(Soundbite of passing vehicles)
REEVES: And they're not the only ones who are not so sure about Musharraf's theory. This is the frontier city of Peshawar. It borders on the tribal areas and is the gateway to the Khyber Pass and the road to Afghanistan.
Ismail Khan, who runs the local bureau of Dawn newspaper, says Baitullah Mehsud is a Pakistani Taliban leader, but he doubts whether he's from al-Qaida.
Mr. KHAN: If he was an al-Qaida, really al-Qaida leader, why was the government talking to him?
REEVES: The Pakistani government talked to him more than once. In fact, three years ago, the authorities signed a peace agreement with Baitullah Mehsud, which later collapsed. A few months ago, the government was negotiating with him again after he took several hundred Pakistani soldiers hostage. Recently, Baitullah Mehsud's taken on a new role. A coalition's being formed of Islamist militants united in violent opposition to Musharraf, who they see as a puppet for the U.S. This includes so-called jihadists, once trained and funded by Pakistani intelligence to fight in Kashmir and Afghanistan, but who've since broken with their handlers.
Rahimullah Yusuf Zai, a veteran correspondent based in Peshawar, says this is a new development for the militants.
Mr. RAHIMULLAH YUSUF ZAI (BBC Correspondent): I think they realize that the must coordinate. And that's why this new umbrella group has been formed, they're linked to Taliban Pakistan.
REEVES: Baitullah Mehsud is the leader of that group. But is he Bhutto's killer? A day after Bhutto was killed, Pakistan's interior ministry issued a transcript of a conversation intercepted by Pakistani intelligence, which it said showed Baitullah Mehsud was responsible.
In it, he's talking to another man, allegedly a cleric, who tells him that the attack was the work of their people. But it's not clear when the recording was made or whether the two men were talking about Bhutto's death or whether the recording is authentic. The chief question now facing Musharraf is what to do about Baitullah Mehsud. Musharraf says that killing or capturing him isn't going to be easy.
Pres. MUSHARRAF: Getting him in that place means battling against thousands of people, hundreds of people who are his followers, the Mahsud tribe, if you get to him. And it will mean collateral damage.
REEVES: Collateral damage is, of course, another word for the death of civilians. For Baitullah Mehsud, that means dispatching another suicide bomber on a mission of indiscriminate revenge. And for Musharraf, that means more opposition and more instability.
Philip Reeves, NPR News.
BLOCK: You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
NASA scientists announced today that 2007 tied the record for the second hottest year in a century. A lot of that warm air was near the North Pole, so it's no coincidence that 2007 was also the worst year on record for melting sea ice in the Arctic. But air temperature is only part of the story, as NPR's Richard Harris reports.
RICHARD HARRIS: Every winter, the Arctic Ocean freezes over with a bed of ice that stretches from Canada to Siberia. Every summer, a lot of that ice melts back, exposing open ocean. Melting sea ice doesn't change sea level, but it does change the environment for polar bears and other wildlife. And for the past decade, the melt back has been getting bigger and bigger. 2007 was a doozie, eclipsing all previous records.
That trend has led Wieslaw Maslowski, at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, to make a bold projection. Soon, he says, virtually all the Arctic Ocean's ice will melt in the summertimes.
Prof. WIESLAW MASLOWSKI (Oceanography, Naval Postgraduate School): If the trend that we've seen through 2007 continues, we probably don't need much more than five to 10 years to actually experience ice-free summers in the Arctic.
HARRIS: At a scientific meeting in San Francisco last month, he mentioned 2013 as the date that could happen. More warming leads to more open water. Water is darker than ice, so more sunlight gets absorbed. And that warming leads to more melting.
Prof. MASLOWSKI: So, we're just pretty much like a snowball going downhill.
HARRIS: But the Arctic Ocean isn't quite so tidy. Take last year's massive ice melt off. Cecilia Bitz, at the University of Washington, says it wasn't just caused by warmer water melting more ice.
Prof. CECILIA BITZ (Department of Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington): It's normally very cloudy in the Arctic and it was much less cloudy and that let in more sunlight and that caused a lot more sea ice to melt.
HARRIS: And not only do icebergs melt, wind also blows them out of the Arctic Ocean.
Prof. BITZ: We know there's a stream of ice moving out. Something like 10 percent of the ice leaves every year.
HARRIS: Last year, Bitz says odd weather pattern shoved a lot more ice out into the North Atlantic, and that also contributed significantly to the loss of Arctic ice.
Dr. JIM MASLANIK (Research Associate, University of Colorado, Boulder): 2007 was very unique. You had all kinds of situations that came together to make it almost a perfect storm year for lost sea ice.
HARRIS: Jim Maslanik, from the University of Colorado, says next year will almost certainly be not so dramatic, but the long-term trend is still worrisome. He has an article in the latest issue of Geophysical Research Letters, "Looking at What Happened to the Arctic Ice as it Melted."
Dr. MASLANIK: The big change that we targeted was, what's happening to the ice that's remained.
HARRIS: He and his colleagues found that the ice that manages to survive summer is getting thinner and thinner. There's a lot of variation, but in general, ice that used to be 10 feet thick is now just six feet thick.
Dr. MASLANIK: So we have greater potential to lose more and more of the surviving ice because it's thinner to start with.
HARRIS: Eventually, Maslanik says, the Arctic Ocean will probably end up looking like the ocean around Antarctica. The sea ice will form every winter and melt every summer. But because there are so many factors that contribute to ice loss, it's hard to project when that day will come.
Cecilia Bitz and colleagues have run many sophisticated climate forecasts and they show an open Arctic Ocean in the summertime as soon as 2040 and as late as some time beyond 2100.
Prof. BITZ: I will see changes in my lifetime that will be more and more remarkable. But I think it's the future generation that I worry very much for. I think that they will see a planet that we would not recognize in their lifetime.
HARRIS: That is unless we do something dramatic and soon to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Those emissions don't explain the dramatic year-to-year changes we've seen in the Arctic, she says, but they do seem to drive a long-term trend.
Richard Harris, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
We realize we should be paying more attention on this program to the journal Nano Letters. This month, there's a little gem described there - and we do mean little. It's a substance made of tiny tubes of carbon, said to be the darkest man-made material ever. It comes very, very close to approaching an ideal black object, a perfect absorber of light.
Pulickel Ajayan is a professor of engineering at Rice University in Houston. He helped create the material, which is not easy to describe.
Dr. PULICKEL AJAYAN (Engineering, Materials Science and Nanotechnology, Rice University, Houston): So it looks like a lot(ph) of gas, you know? It's a thick film, a several hundred microns thick, and it contains millions of carbon nanotubes, which are extremely tiny cylinders made of gracillic(ph) carbon. And the interesting thing about this particular material is that all the nanotubes in this film are all aligned vertically with respect to each other. So, it's almost like a bed of nails, where the nanotubes are standing up vertically to the substrate.
BLOCK: And those nanotubes would be how tiny?
Dr. AJAYAN: The nanotubes are a few nanometers in diameter.
BLOCK: I don't know what that means.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. AJAYAN: Okay, so, it's a billionth of a meter.
BLOCK: Uh-huh.
Dr. AJAYAN: Typically, a strand of your hair would be 10 microns, and this would be about a million times smaller than a strand of hair or something like that.
BLOCK: So, invisible to the naked eye, fair to say?
Dr. AJAYAN: Absolutely invisible to the naked eye. You can only see a collection of these, and that's why you could see them.
BLOCK: How close to ideal black did you come?
Dr. AJAYAN: You know, an ideal black material is a material that absorbs light perfectly at all angles and at all wavelength. If you look at the man-made materials, the best you could find is in the "Guinness Book of World Records," and they say the total integrated reflectance from that material is about .16 percent. And what we have, if you compare it to the darkest reported before is about three times better dark.
BLOCK: So when you're saying .16 percent, that's the amount of light that is not absorbed, that's bouncing back?
Dr. AJAYAN: Right. That is coming out. So, any material, you will find some light that is, you know, reflected back or transmitted. Now, what we have here is - essentially, the light that is going into this material, almost 99.96 percent is taken up by this material and only about 0.045 percent is reflected.
BLOCK: So, that 0.045 percent that's coming back, is that part driving you crazy?
(Soundbite of laughter]
Dr. AJAYAN: Well, you know, you could actually get better if you make these carbon nanotubes maybe a little bit more straighter, more perfect, because there's always some defect in this material that, you know, creates a problem. But this is pretty dark.
BLOCK: I'm curious. When you look at the film that you've developed, does it look to you blacker than anything you've seen before? Is that a virtual thing or no?
Dr. AJAYAN: Well, certainly, it did look much blacker than the other carbon material that we're used to. And in fact, when we were trying to do some experiments with, you know, light and laser beams, we couldn't find the beam for a while because it is absorbing so much.
BLOCK: Well, that's when you knew you were really on to something.
Dr. AJAYAN: Right, right.
BLOCK: Dr. Ajayan, do you know the movie "Spinal Tap"?
Dr. AJAYAN: I'm afraid not.
BLOCK: You don't. Okay.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: Well, the reason I asked is that there's a scene in that movie - one of our producers mentioned this today - where it's about a fictitious rock band, and they get their new album, and it's called "Smell the Glove," and I'm looking at the cover. The cover is pure black. And the guitarist, Nigel Tufnel, is very impressed. Here's what he says.
(Soundbite of movie "This is Spinal Tap")
Mr. CHRISTOPHER GUEST (Actor): (As Nigel Tufnel) Here's what he's talking about. This is so black, it's like, how much more black could this be? And the answer is, none, none more black.
BLOCK: None more black, he's saying.
Dr. AJAYAN: Well, I suppose he is not familiar with nanotechnology.
BLOCK: Yeah, probably not.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BOCK: Well, Pulickel Ajayan, it's nice to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Dr. AJAYAN: Absolutely. A pleasure. Thank you.
BLOCK: Pulickel Ajayan of Rice University helped lead the research that developed the blackest man-made material ever.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
More than 200,000 American men will be diagnosed this year with prostate cancer, more than any other cancer. Today in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers report on a genetic test that shows which men are at high risk.
As NPR's Richard Knox reports, some experts are not sure they can do anything useful with that information.
RICHARD KNOX: Over the past two years, scientists have identified a bunch of genetic markers - distinctive little stretches of DNA that indicate higher risk of prostate cancer. But a man's risk from having just one of these markers isn't much higher, only 10, 20 or 30 percent. The new study looked at the combined effect of a handful of markers on prostate cancer risk among 4700 Swedish men.
Dr. KARIM KADER (Urologist; Assistant Professor, Wake Forest University): We were able to demonstrate by adding five different markers as well as family history. There's a tremendous additive effect to that.
KNOX: That's Dr. Karim Kader of Wake Forest University, a study coauthor. He says men with all five markers plus a family history of prostate cancer have a much higher risk of the disease.
Dr. KADER: They have tenfold the risk of being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
KNOX: That's a meaningful difference. So, the researchers have applied for a patent and are working on a blood test that would tell a man if he's at high risk of prostate cancer.
William Isaacs of Johns Hopkins University thinks it won't take long to develop such a test.
Dr. WILLIAM ISAACS (Urology and Oncology, Johns Hopkins University): One aspect of it may be to identify individuals at risk for the disease at some earlier stage in their life, in their 20s or 30s. So, you may want to screen those men earlier and more intensively. Others, you may be able to wait until later in life before you begin screening for prostate cancer.
KNOX: But there are problems. Karim Kader of Wake Forest says the known genetic markers don't signal what doctors would most like to know about a man's prostate cancer risk.
Dr. KADER: It's not aggressive or less aggressive. They're predictive of your risk of developing prostate cancer, period.
KNOX: Dr. Howard Sandler of the University of Michigan says that's the same problem doctors have with the current screening test for prostate cancer called prostate-specific antigen, or PSA.
Dr. HOWARD M. SANDLER (Radiation Oncology, University of Michigan): We can find lots of prostate cancer with PSA screening. But what's really important is to identify those patients who need to be treated for their prostate cancer.
KNOX: Uncertainty over that question is leading to unnecessary biopsies, surgery and radiation therapy, what the experts call overtreatment
Dr. SANDLER: Overtreatment is common in prostate cancer population because prostate cancer can grow so slowly it might never interfere with someone's life expectancy.
KNOX: I asked Karim Kader, the Wake Forest urologist, if he thinks the new genetic test will increase overtreatment of indolent tumors that may never cause a man any trouble.
Dr. KADER: Oh, most definitely. But I'm not about to bury my head in the sand and disregard early prostate cancer diagnosis just for fear of diagnosing indolent disease.
KNOX: Dr. Edward Gelmann of Columbia University isn't convinced.
Dr. EDWARD GELMANN (Hematology and Oncology, Columbia University): We are a society of the worried well, people want as much information about their health as they can get and they will pay for it. Interpreting it is another matter. You know, if I had a strong family history of prostate cancer, I would be checking my PSA starting at age 50 anyway. If I did these tests and they indicated that my risk was stronger yet, what would I do differently?
KNOX: It's an example of a growing problem. Scientists are getting more information about genetic risk than doctors know what to do with.
Richard Knox, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block:
According to the United Nations, one in five Iraqi refugees living in Syria experience torture or other violence back in Iraq.
NPR's Deborah Amos reports the physical wounds may heal, but the long-term, psychological damage can be profound.
And a warning, this report contains graphic descriptions that some listeners may find disturbing.
DEBORAH AMOS: Nibras Naseer, a rail-thin 18-year-old, fled Iraq more than a year ago after he spent 10 days in a hospital, he says, for injuries - the result of severe beatings.
(Soundbite of doorbell)
He now lives in a fifth-floor walk-up in Damascus, a spare space he shares with his uncle's family. The only decoration is a picture of Jesus on the wall. The apartment building fills up with the laughter of children when school lets out, but even when his nephew bounds into the apartment, Naseer does not smile.
Mr. NIBRAS NASEER: (Through translator) I told you, I'm just trying to forget what happened to me. I can't say that I can sleep. Sometimes I can; sometimes I can't. But I am trying my best to forget what happened to me.
AMOS: What happened to Naseer has happened to many Iraqis, but very few are willing to talk about it. In 2006, Nibras Naseer was kidnapped from his Baghdad neighborhood; shoved into the trunk of a car; subjected, he says, to weeks of a so-called investigation, along with six other Iraqi men and an 11-year-old boy.
Mr. NASEER: (Through translator) Three of them, they were telling the 11-year-old helped the Americans. Other three - they told them that you're in the Iraq National Guard, and other people - they kidnap them to get information from them about other people.
AMOS: His kidnappers identified themselves as al-Qaida in Iraq, says Naseer, and they made clear that for any of their captives who work for the U.S. military or for the Iraqi government, the punishment would be beheading.
After more than a week of repeated interrogations and beatings, three of the Iraqis were executed says Naseer; the others were forced to watch.
Mr. NASEER: (Through translator) I told you we were together when they took those three guys away from us. And we were watching everything, and they forced us to watch the whole procedure. And for me, I couldn't watch the whole thing. I started to cry, and I collapsed on the floor. And maybe I prefer to die at that moment.
AMOS: Naseer spent the nights talking to his fellow prisoners, Iraqis who shared their life stories and their terror. A few days later, the jailers condemned three more prisoners to the same gruesome death - men he had come to know.
Mr. NASEER: (Through translator) And I remember names, like Hammed, Ali, Omar.
AMOS: And you must have thought by the second time that you were next.
Mr. NASEER: (Through translator) For sure, and I watched the second time, I was thinking, like, I'm the next, and I mustn't have any hope in life, like even less than one percent.
AMOS: U.S. soldiers have dismantled a number of torture houses in Iraq. In places like these, few are spared, says Naseer, including an 11-year-old boy. The kidnappers accused him of spotting for U.S. soldiers; pointing out explosive devices hidden in his neighborhood. They forced him to admit he had helped the Americans.
Mr. NASEER: (Through translator) Well, this little kid, they were beating him, but not like us, because he's a little kid. And what you can expect from a little kid - 11 years old? He was just crying all the time.
AMOS: And what happened to him? What happened to the 11-year-old boy?
Mr. NASEER: (Through translator) They took him out, and they killed him the same way, and I went crazy. I lost my mind.
AMOS: As Naseer tells his story, his shoulders hunch slightly. The only outward flicker of emotion comes when he recounts his unexpected release after his family paid a $30,000 ransom. He has no idea why he is alive or if he will ever get over what happened to him.
Naseer's case is far from unique. U.N. officials say more than 20,000 Iraqis have defined themselves as torture victims when they signed up for refugee status. A more recent study of the refugee community in Syria reveals that the overall numbers are likely to be many thousands more; that means Iraqi refugees will need more than the basics of food and housing say U.N. officials.
(Soundbite of telephone ringing)
AMOS: This clinic opened in December in Lebanon. The United Nations pays for the mental health professionals from a nonprofit group called Re-Start.
Suzanne Jabbour, the chief psychologist, says more than 50 patients are already in the new program.
Ms. SUZANNE JABBOUR (Psychologist): The majority - new, come recently. New Iraqi refugees.
AMOS: But only refugees in Lebanon are treated, says Jabbour. Because of tight border restrictions, she cannot take on cases from Syria where the need is much greater.
Ms. JABBOUR: (Through translator) There is no way that a person who has been through whatever these people have been through can survive unless they have treatment. And even after that, they need people to help them make a life to establish themselves, to find jobs, to - unless that person can find that amount of help, then he will reach a stage where his life will become meaningless, and he might turn suicidal.
AMOS: Jabbour says the people being treated in Lebanon have a chance of recovery. But she is not at all optimistic about the refugees in Syria who have little or no access to mental health services now.
Ms. JABBOUR: (Through translator) The worst is yet to come for these people in Damascus. Yeah, the worst yet to come, yeah. Yeah.
AMOS: And that may be the fate of Nibras Naseer. In a small apartment in Damascus, Naseer ignores his cell phone when it rings. He struggles alone with his nightmares.
There are thousands more like him — refugees who often cut themselves off from the rest of their community.
Mr. NASEER: (Through translator) All the time I am sitting at home, I don't work; I don't do anything. Well, I can't trust anybody, and I don't know what will happen.
AMOS: Deborah Amos, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
We're just two days away from two presidential contests, the Republican primary in South Carolina and caucuses for both parties in Nevada. With the race extending across the country, mass campaigning has eclipsed living-room politicking. And today, we found the candidates more than eager to talk to us.
BLOCK: In this half hour, we're going to hear from Democrat Barack Obama, who's campaigning in Nevada and California, and from Republican Fred Thompson who's pinning his hopes on South Carolina.
SIEGEL: Jumpstarting the economy is a key topic. Today, Senator John McCain added his stimulus plan to the mix. Our co-host, Michele Norris, talks with him elsewhere in the program.
BLOCK: First, to Barack Obama who joins us from San Francisco.
Senator Obama, welcome to the program.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Thank you so much.
BLOCK: And let's start with the economy. What would you say, are we in a recession right now, do you think? Are we headed for one or are you more sanguine than that?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, I'm not concerned about the technical definition of a recession. What I know is that people have been hurting. And they've been hurting for quite some time even before the downturn caused by the subprime lending crisis. You know, when you talk to families who are working harder but haven't seen increases in income, their costs for health care, college, gas at the pump, have all been going up. They can't save for retirement. It indicates the degree to which we're going to have to take some fundamental steps both for short-term stimulus - putting money in the pockets of families so that they can start spending and continue to spur the economy, but long term, structurally. You know, we've got to change the tax code has been so skewed towards the wealthy. And we're going to have to make some investments in energy, in infrastructure, and in the American people to ensure that we continue to stay competitive.
BLOCK: You and your Democratic rivals have come up with plans to try to jumpstart the economy in the short term. And your plan and Hillary Clinton's cost about the same, about 70 to $75 billion. Why is yours any better?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, Senator Clinton, I think, relies on government spending more. My plan relies more on tax cuts, tax rebate to every American, but also a supplement for seniors so that we're getting cash into their hands right away. I think speed is of the essence if you want a stimulus plan.
BLOCK: And those are spending plans too, aren't they?
Sen. OBAMA: Well, they are spending plans, but what happens is there's no government application. You know, for example, on this social security supplement, we would simply attach some additional money to a payment that goes out every month. And so immediately then, you have seniors who can spend more on prescription drugs or, you know, whatever it is that, you know, they're having a tough time paying for.
BLOCK: These things you're talking about, of course, would increase the deficit, which is already huge, and you haven't explained how would you offset that.
Sen. OBAMA: Well, you know, as Chairman Bernanke has planned to testify today, right now, it's more important for us to jumpstart the economy. We will lose so much federal revenue if we plunge into a severe recession that, from a perspective of a one-time temporary boost, it's important for us to just get the money out.
BLOCK: Let's talk a bit about your vision of the presidency. You told the Reno Gazette this week, I'm not an operating officer. My job is to set a vision of here's where the bureaucracy needs to go. I'm wondering why Americans shouldn't expect their president to be somebody who would be intimately involved in those details of governing.
Sen. OBAMA: Oh, it's - what I said was not that I wouldn't be involved in the details. What I said was a very narrow point, which is that, you know, I'm not running for chief of staff, I'm running for the presidency. And the goal of the president, the task of the president is to set a vision for the country, put together an outstanding team, make sure that that team is moving on all cylinders to achieve the goals of providing health care to all Americans, improving our education system, making sure that we have a foreign policy that keeps us safe and retains our standing in the world. You know, those are tasks of a president, not to manage the scheduling in the White House.
BLOCK: Hillary Clinton, of course, has responded to this by saying, we do need a CEO in the White House. We need somebody who's really focused on the nitty-gritty and look at the failures that happened after, say, Hurricane Katrina as an example of what happens if you don't. Do you agree with her on that?
Sen. OBAMA: Oh, there's no doubt that a president has to be on top of things. And so, you know, she's obviously wasn't paying attention to what I said. The problem in Katrina was that that we had an incompetent person in charge of FEMA and a president who is detached. It wasn't because the president wasn't managing paper flow in the White House properly, you know?
This is a broader theme that I think Senator Clinton has been trying to project, you know. That somehow, you know, there's a brisk efficiency to her potential presidency that would be lacking in mine. It's not born out by how we're running our campaigns, and I don't think would be born out in terms of how we would manage the presidency.
BLOCK: You did say the other night in the debate, when you were asked about your greatest weakness, you confessed to a certain lack of organization. You think your desk in your office are not pretty things and you need good staff around you. Do you think that may be the wrong message to be sending to voters?
Sen. OBAMA: It was interesting. I guess I should've listened to the answers that Senator Edwards and Senator Clinton provided. I think John Edwards said that his biggest weakness was he was too passionate about helping poor people. And Senator Clinton indicated she was too impatient to move the country forward. So I thought the question was what's your biggest weakness as opposed to what your greatest strength is disguised as a weakness? I should have said that I like to help old ladies to cross the street.
BLOCK: You want a redo on that one?
Sen. OBAMA: No, I don't, actually. You know, I think one of the hallmarks of our campaign is that I actually answer questions honestly and try not to engage in too much spin.
BLOCK: Senator, I want to ask you about something that your wife, Michelle, said in Atlanta on Sunday when she was talking to voters there. And she talked about fear. She said that there are some people, including some in the African-American community, who focus on might go wrong as you run for president. And those comments have been seen as allusions to you're being put in some sort of danger in this campaign. She's talked about that before. Do you share fears for your safety?
Sen. OBAMA: No. And you know, she was really actually responding to a series of reports, including one on the front page of The New York Times that indicated, not just concerns about my safety, but I think, you know, the African-American community hasn't had a candidate in this position before. And I think that, you know, for obvious historic reasons, there is a level of apprehension sometimes in the African-American community when there are efforts to break through glass ceilings that haven't been broken through before. But I feel very confident about, you know, our ability to move this campaign forward and assuage some of the concerns that people have.
BLOCK: Senator Obama, thanks for talking with us today.
Sen. OBAMA: Thank you so much.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Okay, Tilda Swinton is not a household name and her life is not minutely chronicled in Us Weekly, but she is one versatile performer. This Scottish actor has long been a stalwart of low-budget, art-house movies. In recent years, she's taken a turn toward the Hollywood mainstream, but she still sounds queasy about referring to herself as a movie star.
In the last few years, we've seen her as the White Witch in "The Chronicles of Narnia," as an overprotective mother in "The Deep End," and most recently, as the slowly unraveling, ever-perspiring lawyer in "Michael Clayton."
(Soundbite of movie "Michael Clayton")
Ms. TILDA SWINTON (Actor): (As Karen Crowder) This is totally unacceptable. This is a $3 billion class action lawsuit. In the morning, I have to call my board. I have to tell him that the architect of our entire defense has been arrested for running naked in a snowstorm, chasing the plaintiff through a parking lot.
SIEGEL: Tilda Swinton says she never really set out to become an actor.
Ms. SWINTON: I started working in the cinema in a very, kind of, tangential way because I - even though I was there as a performer, I worked for the first nine years of my filmmaking on seven films with one filmmaker, who was Derek Jarman, who was an English filmmaker.
SIEGEL: And so I went back to look at a DVD of "The Last of England," a Derek Jarman film that you were in, and it's experimental films from the - it's from the 1980s, yes?
Ms. SWINTON: Mm-hmm. 1989.
SIEGEL: And - well, describe it a bit.
Ms. SWINTON: This is a film that was made in the most pre-industrial way I can imagine. It was an experiment that Derek and this group that we worked with - we wanted to make an experiment making a film with absolutely no need to write a script or go to anybody for money. It's really a sort of poetic documentary of our life. And then Simon Fisher Turner, who always used to make the music for Derek's films, made an extraordinary score. And it was only at that point that the film was presented to distributors. And it was only at that point that any money was raised for it. So, it really was an inside-out model.
SIEGEL: So we flash-forward now from your doing these experimental films with Derek Jarman to "Michael Clayton," where we see you becoming identified, in the strangest way, with - among other things - sweating during this movie.
Ms. SWINTON: I love that everyone's so shocked that someone would sweat on screen. It feels like it's an unexpected taboo for me. I didn't realize it was going to have such an impact.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: You're not Tilda Swinton, the one who sweated so much in "Michael Clayton"?
Ms. SWINTON: Yeah, I'm the sweaty one with the fat rolls and the dark hair."
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. SWINTON: Yeah.
SIEGEL: Well, obviously, something changed in your view of what kind of movies you were making between back then and now. What was it?
Ms. SWINTON: You know, the first thing that changed is that, sadly for everyone, Derek Jarman died in 1994; he had AIDS. And it wasn't just that he was, as it were, my day job - that was my life and I kind of lived alongside him also. But it coincided - not entirely, unrelatedly - with a kind of moment in the system, the political system in the early '90s in the U.K. — as here, as I understand it — when the funding structures changed and funding the kind of art film that we were making became really impossible. And there was this hiatus for all of us. And we dealt with it in different ways. I mean, I worked as a performance artist for a while. I made a live piece for a couple of years. And then I had twins, which is, you know, an entertainment, you could say, and certainly of a…
SIEGEL: I bet.
Ms. SWINTON: It takes off a bit of time.
SIEGEL: I bet it does, yes.
Ms. SWINTON: But then a point came when independent filmmakers in America started to contact me. And so I started to make films in America. And the people who asked me - like Spike Jonze, like Francis Lawrence, like Andrew Adamson, like Tony Gilroy — and this is just zeitgeist, you know. Studios were putting these people, people who knew about me and wanted me in their films, in positions of power with huge budgets. And so, that's the reason that I've been cropping up in these bigger-budget films. It's because the studio has been hiring these lunatics who actually want me in them.
SIEGEL: You told an interviewer from The Guardian a while ago, when you were just in one of your androgynous roles, I think this was not "Orlando," but you're playing the archangel Gabriel or someone…
Ms. SWINTON: (Unintelligible).
SIEGEL: Yeah.
Ms. SWINTON: Yeah.
SIEGEL: You said - you just said that…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: You claimed, at least, that coming out that day, someone at the airport had addressed you as sir, and this was…
Ms. SWINTON: It's a theme tune of mine. It follows me everywhere. It's not that hard. I mean, all you have to do is to be merely six-foot, and have short hair, and not wear make up, and wear trousers, and you - you will still be referred to as sir in hotel lobbies and - well, I am, anyway, I mean. Yeah.
SIEGEL: I find - I just find this hard to believe. You - this happens - this happened more than one or twice, you've been addressed…
Ms. SWINTON: Yeah.
SIEGEL: Yeah, really.
Ms. SWINTON: I mean, I'm not suggesting you guys have been referred to as madam, Robert, but I hope I'm not the only person that's ever happened to. It's just business as usual for me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: Another - a fascinating thing about your own background that I read was your family can trace its lineage back to the time of Alfred the Great.
Ms. SWINTON: 876 is the date that they bandy about.
SIEGEL: Before that it's all a mystery.
Ms. SWINTON: It's all just a murk in the city.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. SWINTON: Yeah.
SIEGEL: Well, who is your ancestor in 876 you've been saying?
Ms. SWINTON: Adolf(ph).
SIEGEL: Adolf(ph). Yes.
Ms. SWINTON: Yeah.
SIEGEL: Well, what did Adolf(ph) do?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. SWINTON: Oh, you know, like they all have for all those generations, you know, just bashed people on the head and taken their land and been very greedy and written things down. I mean, everyone comes from an old family. It's just my family wrote everything down. And also, were very lazy and stayed in the same place.
SIEGEL: I want to ask you about something you said a couple of years ago, after making "The Chronicles of Narnia," when you were talking about - which we'd really like to see happen in the movie business - or maybe you wouldn't like to see it called a movie business, but you said you'd like to see distributors with - it's an odd phrase - the kamikaze vision that spreads the long and broad view. The kamikaze vision.
Ms. SWINTON: Well, you know, the idea of art making profit and the idea of making art in order that it made profit and not making art if it looks like it's not going to make profit is anathema to me. It feels really like the wrong conversation to be having. And the really crucial people in the chain are the distributors because they are the ones who get the films out there for people to see and for people to build up their taste and for people to want more of that kind of film. And they do have to have a kind of kamikaze spirit. They have to have a kind of gambler's spirit. They have to be prepared to lose.
And the idea of the opening weekend being the criterion for little films that may have nobody you've ever seen in before, maybe by a filmmaker you've never heard of, whose name you can't pronounce, maybe in a language you've never heard of — the idea of projecting the pressure of having a fantastic opening weekend onto a film like that is just death to cinema and death for the audience. Because it means then that they're only left with the most straightforward, roadside cafe menu of product.
SIEGEL: Well, Tilda Swinton, thank you very much for your time with us today.
Ms. SWINTON: Thank you very much, Robert.
SIEGEL: Tilda Swinton's latest project is the documentary "Derek," about her friend, the filmmaker Derek Jarman. The movie is showing at the Sundance Film Festival, which begins today.
(Soundbite of music)
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And we now turn to the Republican race. One of the contenders in South Carolina, where there's a GOP primary on Saturday, is former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson. Welcome to the program, senator.
Mr. FRED THOMPSON (Former Tennessee Senator; Republican Presidential Candidate): Thank you very much. Good to be with you.
SIEGEL: Today, Fed Chairman Bernanke called for an economic stimulus package. John McCain says cut corporate taxes right away. What do you say?
Mr. THOMPSON: I think that we have to be mindful of where the economy is. We're headed in the wrong direction in some respects, like unemployment is now around 5 percent. That used to be considered almost full employment, but now, it certainly is headed in the wrong direction. I think the credit's tightening. It's being seen in the consumer credit market across the board - automobile loans, credit card rates, and things of that nature. So it…
SIEGEL: So is it time to act? Is it time to act then and to…
Mr. THOMPSON: It's reason to be concerned. I think that we have to be prepared to act. I think it would be good to have another indication from the Fed as to what they're going to do. I think probably they will cut interest rates again -probably is the thing to do - while being mindful of long-term inflation considerations. I think that the stimulus package depends on the contents of it. I think that a lot of times, it becomes a Christmas tree and becomes more of a pork-barrel operation than it does something that really affects the economy. I think, for example, you can do things like take the lower rate, 10 percent tax rate, rebate that for one year, maybe add to the child tax credit $500, take it to $1500. I think that would put money into people's hands in a short period of time. And…
SIEGEL: Senator Thompson…
Mr. THOMPSON: …(unintelligible) effect. But we have to be mindful that everything does not depend on the immediate short run. Let's not do anything that's going to make it more difficult for us long run.
SIEGEL: But it sounds to me, because you were quoted earlier in the day by the Associated Press, the reporter who's traveled with you who's there, saying that there is a case to be made for just not doing anything, leaving the economy alone. It sounds to me like during the day, you've become a little bit more bullish on a short-term stimulus package.
Mr. THOMPSON: No, I think there's a case to be made for that. That's why -that, you know, I'm riding on the bus here between Newberry, South Carolina and Madison, South Carolina. I would prefer to be in the White House, talking to all my economic advisers and making sure that I have all of the indicators on where was - where the country was mostly likely going. The economists that I talk to are divided on this subject.
SIEGEL: Do you think…
Mr. THOMPSON: Of course, a case can be made for not doing things, for example, in the housing market that would create a bigger bubble in the future. If these things were black and white issues and open and shut issues, we wouldn't be having discussions about them. They're not, they're complex. And I think we have to be very mindful of them and do the appropriate thing.
SIEGEL: But…
Mr. THOMPSON: But a case can be made for both sides.
SIEGEL: I want to tell you something that our colleague, Michele Norris, has been hearing reporting in South Carolina this week and talking to conservative Republicans down there. They say they like you, they agree with you on the issues, but they're disappointed with the way you've campaigned. You haven't made the sale with them. And they say you ought to be running for office, not walking is the line we heard.
Mr. THOMPSON: Yeah, well, that's clever. That's cute. That's a new one on me. I'm now talking to the people. I'm getting a bit of response, and we'll see on Saturday night.
SIEGEL: How important is Saturday night to you, by the way, in your campaign?
Mr. THOMPSON: Oh, it's very important. Yeah, it's important that I do well here. No question about it. Three different people have won three major races so far in this primary season. And each needed to do that in order to continue on. And this is very, very important to me. And so we will see. According to the polls, I'm moving up, others are moving down. And you know, some people are more interested in style than substance. And that's understandable, that's fine. There's plenty of people commendable for two(ph). But we're doing our thing. We are - we've always been doing it the way we've always done it, which allowed me to win two races in Tennessee by 20-point margins and do a few other successful things in my life. So we'll see how it works out. We feel good about it.
SIEGEL: Before I let you go, I should ask, how do you think Jack McCoy is doing as district attorney in the…
Mr. THOMPSON: Well, I don't know. I hope the boy is up the job. I've been getting reports on him. I think he's got real possibilities. But I've been sorely disappointed that they've been able to struggle along with that show without me.
SIEGEL: Okay. Well…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: …his character may have to run for office soon too, if he…
Mr. THOMPSON: Well, you know, it's a lot easier to run on television than it is out here in real life, but the rewards are greater in real life, too.
SIEGEL: Okay. Fred Thompson, thank you very much for talking with us today.
Mr. THOMPSON: Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.
SIEGEL: Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson spoke to us from his campaign bus outside Newberry, South Carolina. Barack Obama spoke to us earlier from San Francisco. And you can find a summary of what's at stake in upcoming presidential primaries and what issues are on voters' minds at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Sunny and dry Southern California is home to thousands of swimming pools and lush, green lawns. But here are some surprising numbers. Since 1990, the population of the Los Angeles region's water district has grown by four million people. And in that time, water consumption hasn't increased at all. That's because the district got people to start using water more efficiently. Now, the region faces a looming threat to its water supply - climate change.
KQED's Rob Schmitz reports.
ROB SCHMITZ: If you want to better understand how California's water supply will be affected by climate change, conduct this simple experiment. Get a paper cup, go to the fridge, and fill the cup with ice.
(Soundbite of ice dispensing)
SCHMITZ: Now poke a hole in the bottom of that cup and wait.
(Soundbite of clock ticking)
SCHMITZ: While you're waiting, think about the ice in that cup as winter snow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has used this snow to supply more than 18 million people with water.
Jeff Kightlinger is the district's general manager.
Mr. JEFF KIGHTLINGER (General Manager, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California): The great thing about snowpack is it's like a reservoir just - it melts slowly, gradually as the weather heats up. And we can build our system, and our canals, and our pipes, you know, a smaller size, and take that water as it melts.
SCHMITZ: Do you still have that cup of ice?
Well, mine's starting to slowly drip from the hole in the bottom.
(Soundbite of dripping water)
SCHMITZ: Now, scientists say that if carbon dioxide emissions continue at their current rate, temperatures will rise, and this snowpack throughout the Sierra will be reduced by 90 percent by the end of the century. Snow will become rain. And that dripping you just heard will sound more like this.
(Soundbite of pouring water)
SCHMITZ: This is the future the water district's Kightlinger is preparing for.
Mr. KIGHTLINGER: Now, if you have this much more, you know, sheet-type action -where the water is just coming down, and you have to move it and move it quickly - you have to larger facilities, larger pipes, and you need more storage.
SCHMITZ: This type of future has prompted Southern California's largest water distributor to spend over $1 billion on a gigantic pipeline. It's called the Inland Feeder. At the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains, a huge concrete tunnel protrudes from a brown rock wall. It's hot and dusty. A group of us in hardhats, orange vests, and boots descends a flight of stairs.
I'm standing at the entrance to the western section of the Inland Feeder tunnel. I'm about to get on a train that's going to take me two and a half miles underneath the ground.
(Soundbite of passing train)
SCHMITZ: This train won't be here in a couple of years. That's because it won't be a tunnel anymore. It'll be a huge water pipe. Its large circumference - it's 12 feet high - will accommodate a lot of water. It's designed for a future of isolated storms upstream that'll dump much heavier volumes of water than today's storms. This 44-mile pipeline will carry water from the western Sierra down to the huge local reservoir.
John Bednarski(ph) is the project manager.
Mr. JOHN BEDNARSKI (Project Manager, Inland Feeder): We'll be flowing at full capacity of 1,000 cubic feet per second of water or the equivalent to filling Olympic swimming pool in two seconds.
SCHMITZ: That'll triple the capacity of moving imported water to Southern California. Climate change expert and U.C. Santa Barbara professor Bob Wilkinson thinks projects like the Inland Feeder are good ideas in the face of climate change. But he points out, Californians would also do well to focus on the water storage capacity we have underneath our feet.
Professor BOB WILKINSON (Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara): The myth has been perpetuated that Southern California is a desert. There's no water in Southern California. It's all imported from somewhere else. And without that, everything would dry up and blow away.
SCHMITZ: In fact, half the water Southern California uses is local groundwater, that is, water that's naturally stored in the aquifer, which is made up of water permeable gravel, sand or silt. The aquifer acts like a big sponge absorbing rainwater and snowmelt from the surface. But L.A. has been drawing this water at a faster rate than the aquifer can naturally be replenished. To refill it, Wilkinson says, Los Angeles just has to conserve more water. He says that's what water officials should be concentrating on, not reservoirs or dams.
Prof. WILKINSON: The largest new water supply for California will be coming from urban water-use efficiency.
SCHMITZ: In other words, giving incentives for responsible landscaping and fixing leaky plumbing. Another incentive, says the district's Jeff Kightlinger, will soon be water bills that'll cost the same as cable television bills - a not too gentle reminder that climate change comes with a cost.
For NPR News, I'm Rob Schmitz in Los Angeles.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The inventor of the Hula-Hoop and the Frisbee has passed away. Richard Knerr was 82 years old. He suffered a stroke on Monday.
As NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates reports, Knerr leaves behind a legacy of baby-boomer icons.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES: Early on, Rich Knerr decided he wasn't going into his dad's real estate business. He wanted to have fun.
The motto of the company he built with partner Arthur Spud Melin made sure no one forgot that, says Knerr's son, Chuck.
Mr. CHUCK KNERR: They really were all about fun. In fact, the motto for Wham-O was, our business is fun.
BATES: That was pretty revolutionary for the post-war era, but Knerr and Melin were not your normal American entrepreneurs. Fresh out of USC, the two tried a car business in downtown L.A., then segued into slingshots. Those were used to kill doves to feed the falcons and hawks they were training. People watching them has to buy the slingshots, so Rich Knerr and Spud Melin began selling them one by one. Then, says Chuck Knerr…
Mr. KNERR: Their barber recommended that they ought to put an ad in a magazine and try mail order because it - up until then, they've only been selling them in local department stores around the Los Angeles area.
BATES: Those ads, says Chuck Knerr, changed everything.
Mr. KNERR: And by golly, the dollars - because each slingshot was $1 - started coming in one or two at a time in these envelopes. And it wasn't long before he described sacks of these envelopes coming from the post office.
BATES: And Wham-O Incorporated was off and running. It would become world-famous later on for the Super Ball and the Frisbee, but the Hula-Hoop first put Wham-O on the map.
(Soundbite of Hula-Hoop ad)
Unidentified Woman: (Singing) Hula-Hoop, Hula-Hoop, everyone is playing with the Hula-Hoop.
BATES: Rich Knerr brought armloads of the yard-wide plastic circles home to the neighborhood kids who then took them to playgrounds and schools. Everyone clamored them, even cartoon rodents.
(Soundbite of "The Chipmunk Song")
Mr. ROSS BAGDASARIAN JR.: (As Alvin) (Singing) Me, I want a Hula-Hoop.
BATES: Richard Johnson, author of "American Fads," says the Hula-Hoop was the first toy to cause people to line up around the block.
Mr. RICHARD JOHNSON (Author, "American Fads"): It's the granddaddy of American fads. And you know, 50 years later, people still measure things against the Hula-Hoop.
BATES: Knerr's company was also one of the first to use television to sell toys directly to kids in fun-sounding commercials.
(Soundbite of Wham-O ad)
Unidentified Man #2: Wham-O presents the Firetron Formula Super Ball, and Super Elastic Bubble Plastic, plastic bubbles from a tube.
BATES: TV also made Silly String and the Slip 'n' Slide best-sellers. But Chuck Knerr's favorite of his father's inventions was the Super Ball, the tiny ball that bounces so wildly it put plenty of cracks in, among other places, classroom windows.
Mr. KNERR: I was so proud when that toy was banned from my school.
BATES: Wham-O's Super Ball remains a favorite in birthday party goody bags. And it's often still confiscated at schools around the country, which would probably make Rich Knerr smile.
Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is NPR, National Public Radio.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
In two days, Republican votes will got to the polls in South Carolina. The conservative state has long been seen as a gateway to the GOP nomination. Since the first primary there in 1980, no Republican has won the party's nomination without first winning in South Carolina. Our co-host, Michele Norris, is in South Carolina all this week. She's finding that voters looking for a tried and true conservative aren't finding one.
MICHELE NORRIS: On a cold, rainy night in Charleston, a couple of hundred voters, many with kids and umbrellas in tow, have come to see Mike Huckabee.
(Soundbite of people chanting)
Unidentified Group: We like Mike. We like Mike.
NORRIS: All the Republican candidates, including Huckabee, know the stakes are high in South Carolina. And they're working hard to convince right-leaning voters that they have the right stuff.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Arkansas Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): I don't know what you're going to hear about that I'm not a conservative. But when you cut taxes and you increase the per capita income and you improve the schools and you rebuild the roads and you streamline government, call it anything you want to, but anybody with IQ above broccoli calls that conservative, solid, rock-kind of leadership that America needs. And I'm asking you to help us take it to the White House.
(Soundbite of cheering and applause)
NORRIS: The South Carolina primary is historically a proving ground, testing whether Republicans can appeal to core conservative constituencies. And this year, that's a tough sell, says Lin Bennett, chairwoman of the Charleston County Republican Party.
Ms. LIN BENNETT (Chairwoman, Charleston County Republican Party): Mike Huckabee is not a conservative. He's a wonderful guy.
NORRIS: He's not a conservative? But he stands up and says I'm a conservative all the time.
Ms. BENNETT: He does. But he's — the programs that he is promoting, the issues that he's put forward are not conservative issues.
NORRIS: Is John McCain a conservative?
Ms. BENNETT: John McCain is sort of a half and half.
NORRIS: Is Mitt Romney a conservative?
Ms. BENNETT: In the past, Mitt Romney has not always supported conservative issues.
NORRIS: Mitt Romney emphatically supported abortion rights when he was governor of Massachusetts, a deal-breaker for some religious conservatives. Then there's Rudy Giuliani. He, too, supported abortion rights and gun control and rights for same-sex couples. And there's also the issue of his multiple marriages. Religious conservatives can find common ground with the former Baptist minister, Mike Huckabee, but fiscal conservatives balk at his history of raising taxes.
John McCain is a war hero with foreign policy expertise, but he also supports a path to citizenship for immigrants that many see as a form of undeserved amnesty. Voters here see Fred Thompson as the candidate with the most unassailable conservative record, but many wonder why he seems to be conserving his energy. It's often said here that he looks to be walking instead of running for office. So what's a conservative voter to do? I asked Lin Bennett whether the very definition of what it means to be a conservative is changing with this election.
Ms. BENNETT: Well, it's possible. But I hope it's not true. The Republican Party has always had a platform of principles, ideals and values. Lower taxes, lower government, personal responsibility, the right to make decisions that are best for you and your family. I believe that if we choose a candidate who does not support those basic principles and values of the Republican Party, we may experience a problem in the general election in November.
NORRIS: It sounds like the Republicans are almost in a position - it's like that childhood game - will the real conservative please stand up?
Ms. BENNETT: Yeah, please raise your hand and tell us who you are. We are in that game. And it's going to be a difficult election cycle.
NORRIS: That dilemma might explain why so many voters are still undecided.
(Soundbite of people playing golf)
NORRIS: At the Shadowmoss Plantation Country Club, we caught up with a few midweek golfers on the length despite some unusually cold weather.
Mr. DON HESS (South Carolina Resident): I like it more conservative, yeah. You know, that's why - that's what I mostly vote for.
NORRIS: Don Hess works at Shadowmoss. Unlike others here, he says he has yet to warm up to any one candidate.
Mr. HESS: I think that conservatives changed a pretty good bit since, like, Goldwater and the old, old Republican conservatives. It's a lot of different than I think it was. I think they're more like the Democrats - some or more.
NORRIS: But if you looked at the field of Republican candidates, what is the state of conservatism in America today?
Mr. HESS: It's not very good. I don't think it is. But I was a Reagan man all the way. I like Ronald Reagan. I liked the Republicans when he had people -people he designated at the Supreme Court. I think he did a good job. That's what I'm looking for.
NORRIS: That's what he's looking for. But what voters seem to be finding in 2008 is more Reagan talk than Reagan walk.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Massachusetts Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): And I take my inspiration from Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and great Republicans like…
NORRIS: After a big win in Michigan, Mitt Romney gets an enthusiastic reception at a Waterfront rally.
Mr. ROMNEY: How are you all?
Unidentified Man: Thank you very much for…
Mr. ROMNEY: Thank you.
NORRIS: But the crowd is small and his campaign has struggled in South Carolina. In some ways, this election is a test of whether traditional make-or-break issues - such as abortion, tax hikes or pro-immigrant policies - might become mere kinks in the road instead of a political kiss of death. What is clear, South Carolina voters are proud of their historic role in picking the eventual nominee.
Cyndi Mosteller is a long time Republican activist in Charleston.
Ms. CYNDI MOSTELLER (Republican Activist): Iowa can send us a message and New Hampshire can send us a confirmation or a redirection. But as it starts to get this far into the process and this close to Super Tuesday, I think that we do see ourselves in a very serious position.
NORRIS: Now, there, there was a time when conservative voters would have sort of a checklist of things they would look for in a candidate. Small government, fiscal conservatism, social issues, state rights, and they would want to make sure that they're, you know, that everyone of those boxes was checked.
Ms. MOSTELLER: Yes.
NORRIS: Since they were moving more towards sort of an ala carte option, where people are picking, you know, well, it's okay if I get, you know, one, two and five and skip three and four.
Ms. MOSTELLER: Right. Are you may be saying that Republican parties becoming a little more tolerant? Maybe we are. I think 9/11 made us just look outward and outward in a way that we've never done before. Republicans, in their own individual minds and collectively are saying, what can I live with? What do I actually have to have for my children and I to live with, to continue to live in a country that's protected and free and prosperous?
NORRIS: Here in South Carolina, 28 percent of Republicans are still undecided. The GOP primary is on Saturday.
BLOCK: That was our co-host Michele Norris in Charleston, South Carolina.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
It's Thursday, the day we read from your e-mail. First, though, two corrections. In the commentary this week, Dan Schorr referred to a human rights activist having trouble delivering a petition to the American embassy in the United Arab Emirates. According to The Washington Post, which reported the story, the incident occurred on Bahrain, not the UAE.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Second, in our review of an album by the Dominican musician Puerto Plata, we incorrectly called Santiago the capital of the Dominican Republic. While Santiago is one of the country's largest cities, the capital is Sto. Domingo.
SIEGEL: And now we're going to move straight to some of the lighter topics on our program this past week that brought in most of the mail. First, my extensive investigation into that iconic character, the Lone Ranger.
(Soundbite of "The William Tell Overture")
BLOCK: Well, that theme hugged at the hearts of some listeners. In fact, it appears to have made grown men cry, at least Steve Polcam(ph) of Oakley, Utah.
SIEGEL: When I heard the refrain from the William Tell Overture and your announcement of the story about the masked man and his faithful companion, he writes, tears came to my eyes as I remembered the many evenings my grandfather and I spent listening to "Amos and Andy," "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon," Gene Autry and, of course, "The Lone Ranger." Hi-yo Silver, away. I'm writing this now with tears of happiness in my eyes, remembering what a wonderful time of innocence it was. No one got shot or died in those episodes, just arrested by the sheriff.
BLOCK: Jose Aribe(ph) of Ambler, Pennsylvania was struck by something else. I always wondered how Mr. Fran Striker could come up with the name of Tonto. In Spanish, it could mean stupid, idiot or playing the fool. I believe that the series would not be successful today but an insult to Native Americans. I can tell you that my kids will not read those stories at my house.
SIEGEL: That's good point, Melissa, because since our bosses only allowed me 13 minutes for the Lone Ranger story, there were many fascinating outtakes. And this is one of them. I asked Fran Striker Jr. about where his father got the name Tonto.
Mr. FRAN STRIKER JR. (Fran Striker Sr.'s son): And he opened up the atlas and found a place called Tonto Basin, Arizona. And he said, gee, I like that first name, Tonto. It's hard, it's fast, it's quick, it's easy to remember.
BLOCK: Well, there you go. Now, to the story that has filled up our inbox. Yesterday, we reported on recent UFO sightings in Stephenville, Texas. Police officer Leroy Gatin says he saw it and so did his 8-year-old son.
Unidentified Man: First, my dad saw some bright red lights. And then I came out there with him. We saw, like, some bright red lights flying around, like, dancing around. And then, then they just took off.
SIEGEL: Well, we got all sorts of mail about this story from skeptics, believers and scientists.
Scott Paine works at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
BLOCK: He writes: You missed an opportunity to educate your listeners about the superior mirage phenomenon, which is a likely cause of events like this. Superior, in this case, means overhead. Many are familiar with the more common inferior mirages, such as the sky reflected on a layer of hot air on a roadway. Similarly, Paine continues, a steep temperature inversion in the atmosphere can act as a giant mirror in the sky, reflecting landscape features or the lights of another town over the horizon. Tilting of the inversion will give the impression of rapid movement.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Well, that letter caught our attention. So we called up Christine Pulliam, who is a colleague of Dr. Paine's at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, to find out a little more about how scientists explain what people might be seeing when they think they're seeing a UFO.
Christine Pulliam, you have seen a superior mirage phenomenon?
Ms. CHRISTINE PULLIAM (Public Affairs Specialist, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics): Actually, everybody has. Anyone who has seen a sunrise or a sunset. The same phenomenon occurs to the sun every day and makes it appear to be above the horizon when it's actually slightly below it.
SIEGEL: Well, the folks in Stephenville, Texas, whom Wade Goodwyn spoke with, described seeing a very large red light up in the sky 3,000 feet up, then lights like strobe lights. How would those all be created? How will that illusion be created if that's what it is?
Ms. PULLIAM: It's hard to say for sure since I haven't seen it. But there are a lot of natural phenomena that can make things look unusual in the sky. We get a lot of phone calls from people who see a bright light on the horizon that seems to be shimmering, dancing around and changing colors, and they think it might be an artificial object. But then we look it up on our planetarium software and find out that no, actually, the planet Venus was on the horizon at that time.
SIEGEL: How is it that on one night many people could see this, sort of, superior mirage but not see it on any other night? Why would it happen on one particular day as opposed to happening every week or every month? We do see the sunrise every day and every…
Ms. PULLIAM: That's right.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: Yes. But not this.
Ms. PULLIAM: Something like this, it would have to be unusual weather conditions, something with cooler air close to the surface and much warmer air high up.
SIEGEL: So as for the explanation that some of our listeners prefer, which is that - just a courtesy call from Venus or something like that or some distant galaxy, no point to rush to any such inference from this, you're saying.
Ms. PULLIAM: Right. I would say that extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And if somebody really thinks it is alien visitors or hyperdimensional travelers, they need to come up with a better explanation than eye witness reports.
SIEGEL: Well, Christine Pulliam, thank you very much for talking with us.
Ms. PULLIAM: Oh, you're welcome.
SIEGEL: That's Christine Pulliam of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
You don't have to be and expert to e-mail us. Go to our Web site npr.org and click on Contact Us at the top of the page.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block:
It was another rough day for investors in the stock market. The Dow Industrial's lost more than 300 points, nearly 2.5 percent. The White House, Congress and the chairman of the Federal Reserve all agree the U.S. economy needs a boost right now. The question is how to provide that boost in a way that will be acceptable to everyone.
SIEGEL: Today, President Bush and congressional leaders talked by telephone about what steps the federal government can take to fend off a recession. One idea is a package of quick tax rebates worth a hundred billion dollars or more.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke appeared today before the House Budget Committee, and he said that a stimulus of that size could make a difference.
Mr. BEN BERNANKE (Chair, Federal Reserve): Let's say for the sake of argument that 60 or 70 billion of that was actually spent by, say, early 2009 and that was added to the GDP that the effects on the growth rates in the second half of the year, in early 2009, would be significant.
BLOCK: Bernanke said the current slow down could turn out to be brief, and if government officials take too long deciding what to do, that help may come too late. So he said discussions about whether to extend the Bush tax cuts, which expire in 2010, are pretty much beside the point.
Mr. BERNANKE: Just in terms of the next few months, I think that the evidence suggests that measures that involve putting money in the hands of households and firms that will spend it in the year term will be more effective.
SIEGEL: NPR's Jim Zarroli is following the economics side of this story, and NPR's Brian Naylor is covering the political side, and both join us now. Welcome, guys.
BRIAN NAYLOR: Hello.
JIM ZARROLI: All right.
SIEGEL: And, Jim, Mr. Bernanke clearly endorsed the idea of Congress doing something, but he also seemed to be concerned that it not be done the wrong way.
ZARROLI: Yeah, that's right. I think he sang, you know, tax cuts, the budget deficit. These are important issues, but if you get too caught up in these long drawn out ideological wars over them, you know, time will - too much time will have passed, and then you might as well not even have bothered. I think he's also saying, you know, we don't have - and that much time because the economy is growing weaker. I mean, if you were to compare his words today with what he said last August when this credit crisis began, he just sounds more alarmed. He doesn't say there's a recession, but he says there are downside risks to growth.
SIEGEL: Yeah, what kind of reception did he get on Capitol Hill, Jim?
ZARROLI: Well, Congress is usually pretty deferential to him, which he is probably grateful for. He has faced a certain amount of criticism recently that the Fed hasn't acted quickly enough to address the problems in the economy. The longer this drags out, the louder the criticism gets. He's in a difficult position. He came into office, and a year ago, right away, he faced this mortgage crisis. The Fed has cut rates; it hasn't really worked. The stock market is down; the economy has slowed. The Dow was down more - another triple digit loss today, so he's in a really tough spot.
SIEGEL: Yeah. Brian Naylor, let's hear about the lawmakers' proposed solutions to the economic slowdown. First, what do the Democrats want to do?
NAYLOR: Well, it's interesting, Robert. There's been so much talk about bipartisanship. I think both parties see Congress's low approval ratings and a likelihood of a recession, and let's not forget it's an election year. All of the House and a third of the Senate is up for reelection, so they're pretty much all on the same page. The Democrats mentor has been targeted timely and temporary. They want to see most of the benefits going to low and middle income Americans. And they're talking about some sort of tax rebates, extending jobless benefits, and increasing eligibility for food stamps. There's also some talk about making some money available for infrastructure improvements, not big, new projects, but repairs on existing roads and bridges, projects that don't have long lead times.
SIEGEL: And President Bush - what does he make of this? Or do we know yet?
NAYLOR: Well, in 2001, the president supported individual tax rebates, and I think that we can expect a similar proposal from him this time around. And the congressional Republicans I've heard from don't have much trouble with the idea of tax rebates, though they also - they want to see some tax cuts as well and help for small businesses. And it's likely they'll get some of those. What they're not likely to get is an extension of the Bush income tax cut set to expire in 2010. Democrats are strongly opposed, and as we heard earlier from Chairman Bernanke, he's not so keen on the idea either.
SIEGEL: Jim, I've heard that other politicians actually love this moment because all the things you do in times of a recession are also good. You cut taxes; you throw money out to the economy. Do economists actually agree that a stimulus, properly done, can make a real difference in the economy?
ZARROLI: Well, I, you know, there are - some conservative economists, I think, oppose this kind of government intervention just on principle. I think most economists would say, yeah, it has a value if it's done right; if it's targeted in a way that has a maximum benefit for the economy. You know, at the same time, you don't want to do this in such a way that it's going to make the deficit really worst long-term. But if you do it in the right way, it can give the economy a kick. And, you know, certainly, the Bush administration says - or has long contended - that it was because of the stimulus package - the tax rebates after 9/11 that the last recession wasn't worse than it was.
SIEGEL: Yeah. Well, Jim Zarroli, Brian Naylor, thanks to both of you.
ZARROLI: You're welcome.
NAYLOR: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And you can read about some proposals in the mix for stimulating the economy at our Web site, npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan sounded like a Vegas odds maker this week. He told the Wall Street Journal the chances are better than 50-50 that the U.S. is entering a recession.
With the economy in trouble, Democratic presidential hopefuls are touting their plans to stimulate the economy as they campaign in Nevada before this weekend's caucuses.
But the candidates' prescriptions are not all the same as NPR's Scott Horsley Reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY: John Edwards says he wants to be the jobs president; that's a message that resonates here in Nevada where the unemployment rate is higher than the national average. Edwards told supporters at a Las Vegas union hall last night, the federal government should invest in alternative energy and put the resulting jobs in places where they're needed most.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, South Carolina; Presidential Candidate): I was the first candidate to come out with an aggressive stimulus to get this economy moving again, investing in green infrastructure, modernizing our employment insurance laws so that they cover more people, getting more help to the states, and doing something about this terrible mortgage crisis that exists across America and is most intense right here in your state.
HORSLEY: Nevada has the nation's highest home foreclosure rate. Edwards has proposed a home rescue fund to help struggling borrowers.
Hillary Clinton echoed that theme during a Las Vegas campaign rally on Tuesday.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): I want to ask you, how many of you know somebody who is either losing or at risk of losing their homes?
(Soundbite of crowd)
Sen. CLINTON: Wow. Wow.
HORSLEY: Hands went up throughout the audience. Although many of the homes in foreclosure in Nevada were owned, not by local workers, but out-of-state speculators, Clinton says any time homes are abandoned, it creates problems for the whole neighborhood.
Sen. CLINTON: Pretty soon the weeds start to grow, and then property taxes decrease, then police can't have the same level of patrol because they can't be paid, so this is all interconnected.
HORSLEY: Clinton has proposed a three-month moratorium on home foreclosures and a five-year freeze on adjustable interest rates. She's also suggesting the federal government pump an extra $25 billion into the economy in the form of emergency assistance with home heating costs.
Sen. CLINTON: And I also want to put money in Americans' pockets to pay their energy bills; to pay at the gas pump.
Unidentified Woman: Yeah.
Sen. CLINTON: The average price per gallon in Nevada today is $3.13 a gallon, right?
HORSLEY: Clinton unveiled her economic stimulus plan last Friday.
Barack Obama countered with his own plan two days later, and he's been talking about economics wherever he goes in Nevada.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): People are working harder and harder for less. They've never paid more for health care; college; gas at the pump.
HORSLEY: Obama's plan differs from Clinton's and Edwards' by offering an immediate payment of $250 to nearly every worker and Social Security recipient in America. Those payments, totaling $45 billion, could be doubled if the economy continued to worsen.
University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee is an Obama adviser.
Professor AUSTAN GOOLSBEE (Economics, University of Chicago; Adviser to Senator Obama): There are two basic yardsticks that virtually all the experts agree a stimulus package must include. They must get the money out the door immediately, and they must put it in the hands of the people who can use it right away.
HORSLEY: Goolsbee says Obama's plan would put the money in the hands of consumers more quickly than Clinton's home heating assistance, for example.
Today, Clinton added her own call for direct tax rebates, citing worsening economic conditions.
The plans Democrats have been touting on the campaign trail here in Nevada have now reached the policy-making corridors of Washington where President Bush and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke agree - some sort of stimulus is warranted.
Economist Goolsbee says timing such action is like applying sunscreen - if you wait until you know it's needed, it's too late.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Las Vegas.
BLOCK: And you'll find a guide to what's at stake in the Nevada caucuses at npr.org/elections.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Today on the program, we're speaking with three presidential candidates -Barack Obama, Fred Thompson, and now, John McCain.
SIEGEL: Senator McCain is in South Carolina, where he leads in the polls by a few points. Republicans vote there on Saturday. This afternoon, John McCain spoke to some of his supporters in Columbia.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): I promise you I will lead America in the 21st century and make you proud. I will restore your trust and confidence in government, and I will lead this nation in the challenge against radical Islamic extremism. And we will never surrender - they will. I promise you that - they will.
(Soundbite of cheers)
BLOCK: After that rally, John McCain spoke with our co-host, Michele Norris.
MICHELE NORRIS: Senator McCain, it's great to be with you.
Sen. McCAIN: Thank you. It's nice to be with you.
NORRIS: You know, I've had the pleasure of spending the past week in South Carolina, and it seems here that some of the challenges that you faced back in 2000 have resurfaced again. You've done very well with independents. You've had a steeper challenge in trying to reach out to party regulars, especially social conservatives. I want to put to you one of the things that I've heard from some of the people who label themselves as social conservatives. They say that when they look at your campaign, they say, he's wonderful on matters of fiscal conservatism, but on social values, particularly on issues like immigration, he's not my kind of conservative. What do you say to them?
Sen. McCAIN: Well, I say that in New Hampshire, we were able to get the support of Republicans from all parts of the party. I'm sure we will do that in South Carolina, and we'll win. A major concern of conservatives in our party is our nation's security and the threat of radical Islamic extremism, that's their greatest concern. And I'm pleased to have the support of many social conservatives, such as Senator Mike Fair, Bob McAlister. I'm very happy with the support I have among social conservatives.
NORRIS: One of the things you've been spending a lot of time talking about is the faltering economy, particularly in Michigan. You were very honest, and you were very straight with the voters. You said many of the American jobs - the U.S. jobs that we've lost - are simply not coming back. Mitt Romney seemed to look at that and see a big, fat pitch over the plate. He started saying that, yes, those jobs can come back. In fact, he has a plan to bring them back. And he painted a much more optimistic picture of the future economy. Does that suggest that voters aren't always ready for straight talk? Is that one way to read those results?
Sen. McCAIN: No, I think that voters want straight talk; that's why we won in New Hampshire; that's why we will win here. I'm not pessimistic. I'm optimistic about the future of our economy and growth here in South Carolina. Some of the most noted economists in our party who are conservatives are supporting my candidacy. And I'm very optimistic, particularly here in South Carolina, where we have the BMW plant, Michelin. We have many ways of job creation.
And government matters. We have a great governor and a legislature that have put in education and training programs for new businesses to come here to South Carolina. I'm very optimistic.
NORRIS: That's a courageous stance to take, though, to stand up to voters and say, you know, we have to face up to the fact that some of those jobs might not be coming back.
Sen. McCAIN: The voters are smart. They're not uninformed. Here in South Carolina, the worst is over. Most of the textile mill jobs left a long time ago. And we are attracting new business into - in the state of South Carolina. They cut taxes; they recreate a very business-friendly climate thanks to a great governor and a great legislature. And I'm very optimistic. I can't tell people that old jobs - I can't tell them that buggy whip factories will be built nor haberdasheries. But I can tell them that in this new technology revolution we're in, there's going to be plenty of jobs and plenty of opportunities for some of the most productive workers in America.
NORRIS: I have noticed on the stump vote - after Michigan, you did seem to scale back the jobs are gone forever rhetoric. Is that because of the change in venue, because the economic picture is brighter here in South Carolina?
Sen. McCAIN: No, you may have detected something that I didn't detect. I try to give the same message all the time to all the people. And again, that's why we won, and that's why we'll win.
NORRIS: When you came back to South Carolina, you braced yourself for the possibility of an onslaught of negative campaigning, and you appear to be ready this time. And in fact, this week, there's evidence that there are some scurrilous rumors and efforts and push polling and the like to focus on your first divorce and your record of supporting veterans. Why does this happen? Why does it turn so personal? And why do people think that they can do this to you?
Sen. McCAIN: Oh, I think it's because South Carolina is a pivotal state in this whole nominating process, and I happen to be in the lead in the polls. And - but we've got a very strong political and financial base here. But it wasn't why I lost in 2000, and it won't keep me from winning in 2008. The reason why I lost in 2000 is then-Governor Bush had its solid financial and political base here in the state of South Carolina. It wasn't because of the very, frankly, offensive stuff that went on. It was that he had the political machine behind him and the finances and did a better campaign.
NORRIS: You go through something like that, I imagine you emerge stronger. What did you learn from that?
Sen. McCAIN: I didn't learn anything. I felt sorry for myself for a while after I lost and then we moved on. And I worked as a senator from the state of Arizona. I worked very hard to elect President Bush as president. I worked very hard to get him reelected in 2004.
NORRIS: Senator, thank you very much for your time.
Sen. McCAIN: Thank you. Great.
NORRIS: All the best to you.
Sen. McCAIN: Thanks for having me on.
BLOCK: That's Senator John McCain speaking with our co-host, Michele Norris, in Columbia, South Carolina.
And you can hear our interviews today with Barack Obama and Fred Thompson at our Web site, npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
At the Pentagon today, Defense Secretary Robert Gates worked to smooth over relations with other NATO countries. Earlier this week, Gates described the U.S. allies as unprepared to fight the Taliban in Afghanistan; that upset some NATO members. One British lawmaker called Gates's comments outrageous.
NPR's Guy Raz reports from the Pentagon.
GUY RAZ: The Defense Secretary had a bad day yesterday. In an interview with the L.A. Times, he was quoted as saying that NATO troops in Afghanistan don't know how to do counterinsurgency operations; that comment rippled through defense ministries across Europe and in Canada. The Dutch defense minister summoned the U.S. ambassador, NATO's secretary general held a press conference to defend NATO's forces, and since then, Gates has been working the phones, calling his NATO counterparts trying to say he didn't mean what he said. And he used today's news conference at the Pentagon to underline his point.
Mr. ROBERT GATES (Secretary of Defense): Allied forces have stepped up to the plate and are playing a significant and powerful role in Afghanistan. They have rolled back the Taliban from previous strongholds in the South. They are taking the fight to the enemy in some of the most grueling conditions imaginable.
RAZ: The division of labor among foreign troops in Afghanistan is somewhat complicated. Overall, it's a NATO-led stability operation. There are about 40,000 NATO-led troops there, and more than half of those troops are Americans serving under NATO's command. But then there are another 13,000 U.S. troops serving solely under U.S. command.
Over the past year, as security conditions in Afghanistan worsened, Pentagon officials began to grumble about NATO's commitment to the mission. There was -and is - a shortage of foreign troops there, so the Pentagon hoped NATO countries would fill that shortage. But internal political opposition in places, like Germany, Canada, even Britain, meant that NATO wouldn't be able to do that, so earlier this week, the Pentagon announced the U.S. would meet that shortfall and deploy another 3,200 Marines to the country.
And privately, some Pentagon officials hinted that the move underscored their belief that the United States was doing all the heavy lifting in Afghanistan. But Secretary Gates, now sensitive to NATO's hurt feelings, also shot down that idea.
Mr. GATES: This deployment of Marines does not reflect dissatisfaction about the military performance in Afghanistan of allied forces from other nations.
RAZ: So, bygones be bygones - or so Gates hopes - because in a few weeks, he'll face all those NATO defense chiefs at a summit in Eastern Europe.
Guy Raz, NPR News, the Pentagon.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Next Tuesday marks the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. According to a study released today by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the number of abortions in 2005 fell to near 30-year lows.
NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner is here to talk about the new study. And, Julie, what do the numbers show?
JULIE ROVNER: Well, the numbers show that, pretty much, abortions went down by every conceivable measure. The actual number of abortions - 1.2 million in 2005 was the lowest number since 1976. The abortion rate - that's the percentage of the female population between age 15 and 44 that had an abortion that year -was 1.94 percent; that was the lowest since 1974. And the abortion ratio, which is the percent of pregnancies that end in abortion, was just over one in five; that was also the lowest since 1974.
BLOCK: Now, were these numbers that came out a surprise?
ROVNER: Well, yes and no. All of these numbers have been declining for several years. They peaked in 1990, so it's really just the continuation of a trend. But this is the first time that the numbers have dropped all the way back to the levels that we saw just after Roe was decided.
BLOCK: Julie, what was the methodology for the study? This is done by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, and again, this was back in 2005 - these numbers.
ROVNER: Yes, although they've been working on the same for the last two and a half years. The Guttmacher Institute has been doing this study really pretty much since Roe was decided. This is the 14th study that they've done. It's considered, really, the gold standard by those on both sides, even though Guttmacher is considered more of a reproductive right - a pro-choice-leaning organization, everybody trusts these numbers.
They're actually better numbers than the government is able to get because several states, most notably California, doesn't collect abortion statistics. They actually send out surveys to every known abortion provider and work pretty hard to get some of those surveys back. I think that's part of what takes so long to get these numbers out.
BLOCK: Is there an indication within these numbers, Julie, of why the number of abortions is going down?
ROVNER: Well, it really is just a survey, so you can't tell that much from the numbers. You can tell who's doing abortions and how many abortions that they're doing, but that doesn't stop people on both sides of the debate from speculating. It could be fewer unintended pregnancies from better use of contraception, or less unprotected sex. It could be the state law restrictions that make it more difficult for women to get abortions. It could also be that women are caring more unintended pregnancies to term because they don't have access to abortion 'cause there are fewer providers.
BLOCK: Julie, the survey also tells us - what percentage of abortions are carried out using the abortion pill.
ROVNER: Yes, it found that 13 percent of abortions are now being conducted, not surgically, but medically, using the abortion pill - mostly the abortion pill RU486, which was approved in the year 2000. There's - I guess there's some mixed news on this score for people who had hoped that this would really expand access for women who live in areas where there is no surgical abortion provider. The survey found that 87 percent of counties in the U.S., where more than a third of women live, do not have a surgical abortion provider.
But what the survey found was that even though there is now a significant percentage of abortions being provided via the abortion pill, mostly that's going on in urban areas where there is also access to a surgical abortion provider. So it seems to be expanding the options for women, but not necessarily expanding the access to abortion.
BLOCK: NPR's Julie Rovner, thanks so much.
ROVNER: You're welcome.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Last year, twice as many people as usual - about 1.4 million - applied for U.S. citizenship. The government says it's so swamped it'll take more than twice as long as usual to process those applications - 16 to 18 months. That delay means that the applicants won't become citizens in time to vote in this year's presidential election. And a House panel grilled the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services about the issue.
NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports.
JENNIFER LUDDEN: A lot of things drove immigrants to apply for citizenship. Some responded to an ongoing crackdown against illegal migrants, which they say makes even legal noncitizens feel vulnerable. Advocacy groups also mounted a big citizenship drive, encouraging immigrants to have a voice in this year's presidential election.
When the delay in processing was first announced, some cried foul, accusing a Republican administration of blocking new voters who may lean Democratic. The immigration agency flatly denied that.
But perhaps the biggest reason for the spike was an agency fee hike that took effect July 30th.
Fred Tsao is with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights.
Mr. FRED TSAO (Policy Director, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights): We warned that such a steep increase would create a surge in citizenship and other applications that USCIS must be prepared to handle, and indeed could have seen coming as early as last January.
LUDDEN: Emilio Gonzalez, the director of Citizenship and Immigration Services -or CIS - says he did see a general increase coming…
Mr. EMILIO GONZALEZ (Director, Citizenship and Immigration Services): What we did not anticipate - and I'll be very honest with you - is a 350 percent increase in one month.
LUDDEN: Gonzalez says his agency has added shifts and hired extra contractors. It plans to hire 1,500 new employees, but Gonzalez says there's only so much you can speed up.
Mr. GONZALEZ: We are required to interview every single individual that applies for citizenship; that is something that we will not abdicate; we won't subcontract. So the issue then becomes: How do we get more professional immigration officers to the frontlines?
LUDDEN: Director Gonzalez said he did not want to sacrifice security for speed, and he repeatedly blamed slow FBI background checks. Subcommittee Chair Zoe Lofgren said she would ask the FBI director to answer for that.
Committee members said they'd give Gonzalez whatever extra resources he needed and practically begged him to ask for something, but Gonzalez insisted it was not a question of more resources, which prompted this from Democrat John Conyers.
Representative JOHN CONYERS (Democrat, Michigan): If this isn't an issue of resources, I don't know a resource shortage when I see it. We're real short, and we got to do something about it real quickly.
LUDDEN: Rosemary Jenks of NumbersUSA lobbies for lower immigration levels. She says for years, the immigration agency has lurched from crisis to crisis without solving systemic problems.
Ms. ROSEMARY JENKS (NumbersUSA): This is an agency that's still paper-based. They've had about six plans to change that - it's still paper based. You know, what - we have to get to the basics, a computer system that works.
LUDDEN: Sure enough, back inside the hearing, the immigration agency's Deputy Director said a five-year transformation is under way to computerize the agency's files, and it should start showing results this summer. Immigrant rights groups ask that all those who applied to naturalize last summer be sworn in as citizens by July 4th. Nothing from today's hearings suggest that's likely to happen.
Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Now is some thought on presidents - past and possibly future.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
On this day in 1961, Dwight Eisenhower delivered his farewell address from the White House. It was a speech that looked toward America's future challenges.
President DWIGHT EISENHOWER (United States): We face a hostile ideology -global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.
SIEGEL: Communism - he meant there. He spoke of the need for a strong military, and also the need to guard against its influence. He spoke of a military industrial complex.
Pres. EISENHOWER: The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
BLOCK: And he spoke of a future of world peace and human betterment.
Pres. EISENHOWER: May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle; confident but humble with power; diligent in pursuit of the nations' great goals.
BLOCK: Well, today, 47 years later, we talked with three candidates for president.
SIEGEL: And we wanted to know more about their visions of the future based on presidencies past. Whose legacies do they admire? We asked the trio of current contenders who is the one past president who would be their role model and why.
BLOCK: Democrat Barack Obama told me…
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): I think it would have to be the - our last president from the great state of Illinois, Abraham Lincoln who showed enormous wisdom and leadership during a very difficult time in this country's history, but did so without demonizing the country or his opponents, but rather brought the country together and was able to, you know, project a vision for where the country could be despite evidence that it wasn't possible. You know, that's the kind of presidency I - obviously, all of us would like to see. Somebody who, even during difficult times, is able to rise above it and appeal to what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.
BLOCK: Senator Barack Obama.
SIEGEL: Republican Fred Thompson spoke without hesitation when I asked him about his idea of a model president. He chose…
Mr. FRED THOMPSON (Former Republican Senator, Tennessee; Presidential Candidate): I think George Washington - a man who represented the height of personal integrity, which I think everything else is based upon; a man who was more interested in his country than in personal (unintelligible); a man who served his country and walked away from politics and never even visited the Capitol again. As far as I know, after he left, they were telling him the country could not survive without him. He knew better. He knew the strength of America and our system. And the king said that if he walked away from it, he'd be the greatest man in the world. And in my estimation, he was one of true great men in the world - and because of that.
SIEGEL: That's former Senator Fred Thompson.
BLOCK: Now, Thompson's fellow Republican, John McCain, had no ideal whom senators Obama and Thompson had chosen. But when he spoke today with our co-host, Michele Norris, he said…
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): I think in modern times, we all admire our founding fathers and our early presidents up to Lincoln as our greatest president.
SIEGEL: But Senator McCain had a hard time narrowing his choice to just one.
Sen. McCAIN: I happen to be particularly fond of T.R.
NORRIS: That's Teddy Roosevelt.
Sen. McCAIN: Teddy Roosevelt. He had the - he had the vision of the greatness of America in the 20th century. He - a man of incredible energy and exuberance, and I thought he was just one of the great leaders.
We all admire and love Ronald Reagan, but I'll tell you, another guy that I admire very much, and that's Harry Truman. Harry Truman had the guts to stick to what he believed in, and he stuck to it even at great political costs. And I admire the guts that he showed in a number of areas, but particularly in not pulling out of Korea.
SIEGEL: A stand that ran counter to public opinion. That's Senator John McCain wrapping up our reflections today on presidents past and future.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Scientists are gleefully rummaging through some treasures from outer space. NASA's Messenger spacecraft flashed past Mercury on Monday and took more than 1,200 pictures of the planet - it's still beaming them down to Earth.
NPR's Richard Harris visited the project's lead scientist today.
RICHARD HARRIS: The first thing you notice when you walk into Sean Solomon's office at the Carnegie Institution of Washington is the Millar balloon in the shape of a giant champagne bottle. It celebrates Messenger's first big success at Mercury, the flyby. The next thing you notice is a technicolored globe on the table of some place that's definitely not Earth.
Mr. SEAN SOLOMON (Director, Carnegie Institution of Washington): That's Mars.
HARRIS: Oh, that's Mars. Do you have one of Mercury?
Mr. SOLOMON: Ah, Mercury effects - just look at this.
HARRIS: Solomon picks up a dented brown orb the size of a giant grapefruit. It's a relic from long ago.
Mr. SOLOMON: All the images came from Mariner 10; that's more than 30 years old, and half the globe is a complete blank because Mariner 10 only saw 45 percent of the surface.
HARRIS: That globe is on its way out. Monday, Messenger took breathtaking photos of a big chunk of Mercury including a lot of terrain that's never been seen up close before.
Mr. SOLOMON: In the words of Bob Strom, who is the only member of our science team who was also a participant on Mariner 10, this is a whole new planet.
HARRIS: Scientists haven't even finished downloading all the images yet, but the first glance is providing real food for thought.
Mr. SOLOMON: Let's see.
HARRIS: Solomon pops open a photo on his computer screen. At first glance, Mercury looks like the Moon, but it's actually quite different to a trained eye. He points out a dramatic fault that cuts a dark jag across the surface.
Mr. SOLOMON: This is like a kind of fault that, on the Earth, you might see it at the base of a great mountain range or that - the kind of fault that's sometimes buried underneath basin sediments, like in the Los Angeles area.
HARRIS: Here, it's an important clue about how Mercury formed. One thought is faults, like this, cropped up because Mercury actually shrank as it evolved. Solomon's also puzzled by dark splotches on the surface splashed up by meteor impacts. But at the moment, he says his reaction to the new images is mostly in his heart, not his head.
Mr. SOLOMON: It's a very strongly emotional reaction when even the scientific team sees these images for the first time because it's like being a tourist in a place that no one has gone.
HARRIS: And the exploration has just begun. Solomon is also anxious to see whether there are signs of water ice in the permanently dark craters near the planet's pole; that, however, will have to wait 'til 2011 when Messenger returns to Mercury for a full year of observations.
Richard Harris, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In our series, You Must Read This, authors recommend books they love. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of the novel "Half of a Yellow Son." It's based in Nigeria, her home country. Adichie has picked for our series is a story collection from Ghana that's called "No Sweetness Here" by Ama Ata Aidoo.
Ms. CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE (Author, "Half of a Yellow Son"): When I first came to the U.S. from Nigeria to go to university almost 10 years ago, my roommates were startled by everything about me: that I wore what they called American jeans, that I spoke English, that I knew who Mariah Carey was. They also seemed disappointed, as if they had been expecting a real African and then had me turn up.
Later, I began to suspect that this was because, apart from the Tarzan movies, all they knew of Africa was Chinua Achebe's magnificent novel, "Things Fall Apart," which they read in high school. But their teacher had forgotten to tell them that "Things Fall Apart" was set in the Nigeria of a hundred years ago.
And so I gave them the collection of stories by the Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aidoo called "No Sweetness Here." These stories of Ghana in the 1960s after independence are done so beautifully and so wisely and with such subtlety. The characters lie uneasily between old and new. They live in rural and urban areas, and they struggle to deal with the unpleasant surprises of independence. They have a keen but understated longing for the past. But Aidoo is too good a writer to paint with overly broad brush strokes. She does not at all suggest that the past was perfect, and there is no romanticizing of culture.
"No Sweetness Here" is the kind of old-fashioned social realism that I have always been drawn to in fiction, and it does what I think all good literature should: It entertains you. Aidoo has a fantastic sly wit, and she doesn't hit you over the head with her message. But after you have greedily finished each of these stories, you sit back and realize that you've been through an intellectual experience as well.
This book was particularly meaningful to me during my first alienating months in America. I dislike the idea of literature as anthropology, and yet I unreasonably wanted my roommates to read this book as anthropology — as a follow-up to "Things Fall Apart," as a way of making myself less of an unpleasant surprise. Of course I also hoped that they would love the stories. In the end, only one of my roommates read the book. It took her a while to finish it. And when I asked what she thought, she said, it wasn't very African.
I've always been curious about how much of our cultural baggage we bring to what and how we read. I suspect we bring a lot, although we like to think we don't. I loved my roommate's response because it meant that this wonderful book had challenged some of her stock ideas about Africa. And although she did not say so, I'm certain that it made her think and laugh as well.
BLOCK: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is the author of "Half of a Yellow Sun." She was talking about the collection of stories called "No Sweetness Here" by Ama Ata Aidoo. You can find an excerpt from "No Sweetness Here" and the entire series of You Must Read This recommendations at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
In December of 2002, a 22-year-old Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar was detained and sent to Bagram Air Force Base for interrogation by U.S. soldiers. Dilawar was suspected of involvement in a rocket attack against U.S. troops. Five days after his interrogation began, he was dead.
(Soundbite of film "Taxi to the Dark Side")
Unidentified Man #1: There was, like, four MPs on this guy, and one of the MPs just kept giving him kidney shots. The other two - they had slammed him to the ground, and then the fourth one, like, jumped on his back. He got a big gash on his nose.
Unidentified Man #2: There was no reason to hit him. Let's remember he's shackled.
Unidentified Man #3: Even when the control was an issue, it became, well, I'm just gonna do this to get mine in. And that's probably why they got in trouble.
BLOCK: Those voices of soldiers at Bagram and a prisoner who witnessed the abuse are heard in a new documentary called "Taxi to the Dark Side." It links the abuses at Bagram with techniques used at Guantanamo, and later, at Abu Ghraib.
The film was written and directed by Alex Gibney, who also made the documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," a portrait of another culture that ran amok.
Gibney explains that Dilawar's death might have gone unnoticed if it weren't for one clue.
Mr. ALEX GIBNEY (Director, "Taxi to the Dark Side"): Initially, the Army said he died of natural causes, but an investigative reporter for The New York Times, Carlotta Gall, went to his family's village in Yakubi where the body had been returned. And they had a small document they couldn't read. It was a death certificate. And clipped on the death certificate was a little note that said, cause of death: homicide.
BLOCK: There was a lengthy investigation into that death. There was, ultimately, the prosecution of a number of soldiers involved. The testimony that was taken from the coroner in this case was really startling in terms of what she saw on his body.
Mr. GIBNEY: Yes. Her technical conclusion was, in effect, his legs had been pulpified. She said that had he survived, his legs almost certainly would have had to have been amputated.
BLOCK: You interviewed a number of interrogators, military police who worked at Bagram, were involved in the investigation, at least one who was involved in beating Dilawar. How did you get them to agree to be interviewed?
Mr. GIBNEY: That was very tricky and it took a long time. In part, I think, some of them came forward because they felt they had been scapegoated. I think the best of them felt and admitted that they had done something terribly wrong, but they didn't understand why they were being punished when the people who ordered them to do what they did, or at least condoned it, weren't even investigated, much less punished.
BLOCK: One of the soldiers you talked to is Sergeant Thomas Curtis who is a member of the military police at Bagram. And he talked about the culture of the techniques that were used on prisoners there.
(Soundbite of film "Taxi to the Dark Side")
Sergeant THOMAS CURTIS (U.S. Military Interrogator): Some would say, well, hey, you should have stopped this. You should have stopped that. When you saw he was injured or saw he was being kicked on this, why didn't you do something? Which would be a good question. And my answer would be, well, it was us against them. I was over there. I didn't wanna appear to be going against my fellow soldiers, which - is that wrong? You could sit here and say, that was dead wrong. Go over there and say that.
BLOCK: It doesn't sound to me like a man who is second-guessing what happened there so much.
Mr. GIBNEY: No, but I think he - you know, Thomas Curtis makes a very important point. You know, this is a battlefield environment. These guys are seeing their buddies killed and doing what they need to do. And I think it's a fair comment, but at the same time, it's not an excuse. What was happening at Bagram was that there was an environment established by superior officers that allowed things to go far afield from military regulations. And it was in that context that these guys at the bottom of the chain of command were put into a position to do terrible things.
BLOCK: The notion that these soldiers were following orders or just doing what they were told, you know, there were moments at which I found that just implausible. And I actually went back and looked at a reporting that was done about Damien Corsetti - he was one of the interrogators you interview…
Mr. GIBNEY: Yeah.
BLOCK: …who comes across fairly sympathetically in the movie. But when I went back and looked at the reporting, he was accused of unspeakable acts, ultimately acquitted at trial, but, you know, he was known as the king of torture - had the word monster written across his stomach. I wonder if there was a danger in sanitizing what the lower level soldiers did to make a broader point about the chain of command and who, ultimately, was responsible.
Mr. GIBNEY: Well, I hope I didn't sanitize it in the film. I mean, I did include some details that were pretty graphic about what some of these kids did. And there's also, you know, in the medical technology, in the military - literature, a phrase called force drift, which means that when superior officers remove some of the guidelines and rules and regulations by which you normally operate, suddenly, that person across the room from you you're interrogating - you push the envelope a little bit, then you take it one step further, and further, and further. You know, with some place like Abu Ghraib, you can't say that superior officers ordered the people on the ground to pile naked bodies into pyramids, but I think superior officers set the overall context in which these kind of abuses could occur.
BLOCK: There weren't a whole lot of voices from - within the administration or former administration officials with the exception of John Yu, a very prominent proponent and creator of administration policy at the time. Did you try to get other voices and failed?
Mr. GIBNEY: Yes. I tried very hard. I mean, I tried the obvious people up at the top of the chain of command, but I also tried very hard to get to one woman who, I think, was kind of a key, pivotal figure, a captain named Caroline Wood who was in charge of the 519th military intelligence unit at Bagram. And then Caroline Wood was promoted after Dilawar's death, awarded the Bronze Star for Valor and then sent on to Abu Ghraib just before the scandals at Abu Ghraib broke, but she never agreed to talk to us.
BLOCK: You know, Alex, your film has a lot of images that are iconic now of what happened at Abu Ghraib, but there are a number of others - you know, still images and video - that are far more graphic than, I think, many of us have seen. Did you worry about the effects of including those in your film and what might result from that?
Mr. GIBNEY: Yeah. I worried about the worldwide reaction. Yet at the same time, I felt that in some way, making the film was a kind of patriotic act. I mean, I think after this abuse has taken place, one of the things we as a nation have to do is show the rest of the world that we're capable of investigating ourselves. I felt that it would - in fact, in a peculiar way - enhance our reputation.
BLOCK: Were there any images that you decided you just couldn't use, they were too shocking?
Mr. GIBNEY: Yes. I mean, we argued about this in the cutting room all the time. There were images that were far more graphic than the images that I showed in the film. And my editor, Sloane Klevin, and I would constantly wrestle with this. But over time, we became desensitized. And we would put stuff into the film and we would constantly have to bring in other people to take a look. And sometimes they would just shake their heads and look at us, like, you people have left the building. You know, you can't show that image. And we take it out.
BLOCK: What does that say, do you think?
Mr. GIBNEY: I think it says that we all have a capacity to go over to the dark side, and I think we constantly struggle with where we are. When the bonds are released and there is no kind of net - social net, moral network for us to rudder against, things can get very ugly.
BLOCK: Alex Gibney, thanks very much for talking with us.
Mr. GIBNEY: Thank you, Melissa.
BLOCK: Alex Gibney, director of "Taxi to the Dark Side." He also has a personal connection to the subject. His father, Frank Gibney, was a U.S. military interrogator during World War II.
You can hear Alex talk about how his father's experiences influence the film, and you can hear from Frank Gibney himself at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Tomorrow, voters head to presidential caucuses in Nevada. It'll be the first significant test of where Hispanic voters are leaning. The Republican candidates have nearly ignored the state in favor of South Carolina. The GOP holds it primary there tomorrow.
The Democratic contest in Nevada is fierce and tight. Polls suggest a close race between Barack Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. The economy has been a big topic. All the candidates have proposed economic stimulus packages.
Earlier today, Senator Clinton spoke with us by phone from Las Vegas.
SIEGEL: Senator Clinton, welcome to the program, first of all.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Thank you so much, Robert. It's good to be with you.
SIEGEL: President Bush is proposing tax rebates to stimulate the economy, but is not saying today who should get them or how much. What do you say?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, according to the press reports, they indicate that President Bush is going to be releasing his economic stimulus plan, but that it will shortchange 50 million Americans, who most need the economic shot in the arm because of the way it, apparently, is going to be structured.
Now, I will wait, like all of us, to hear exactly what he proposes. But obviously, I'm going to continue to push hard for what I think we need, because for the White House to propose spending over $100 billion to jumpstart the economy but not including the 50 million families who are struggling the most, is not the best answer, in my opinion.
SIEGEL: Who are the 50 million American families who are struggling the most?
Sen. CLINTON: These are lower income senior citizens living on fixed incomes or under enormous financial stress. This would be, disproportionately, African-American and Hispanic families, who have, on average, lower incomes than white families and would therefore not be even paying taxes. These are people who are eligible for the earned income tax credit. But as, again, what the press report suggests is that this rebate would leave out these 50 million people who are, you know, struggling to pay their energy bills or their prescription drug bills or their health care bills or their rent or their mortgage payment.
SIEGEL: You've proposed also sending $30 billion in federal funds to the states to help them fight mortgage foreclosures. And I'd like you to answer the argument that Mike Huckabee raised in this program a while ago about moral hazard.
He said, if you are a taxpayer and you have responsibly made financial decisions, should you be made to involuntarily pay your house payment and that of your neighbor who bought more house than he could afford even though you acted prudently. What do you say to that?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, I would say three things. First, we have a crisis, so I think we have to stop the bleeding. Certainly, there is enough blame to go around from, you know, the big Wall Street banks that are now laying people off and taking these big write-downs to people who may have bought more house or assumed more debt than they should've in the first place.
But I think we have to recognize that the weakening housing market actually impacts everybody. It's not just those who got in over their head; it's the neighbors and the community who are going to have vacant homes in their midst and it's the communities that won't have the property tax base.
I believe that, you know, if we have a moratorium on foreclosures for 90 days, a lot of people who can stay in their homes, paying the rate they're paying now, would be a lot better off and so would their neighbors and so would the economy than to continue to increase their interest rates, which will force them into foreclosure and losing their homes with all of the adverse consequences.
I also believe that if we froze interest rates for five years, that would have a stimulative effect on the economy. Because right now, we've got the Federal Reserve trying to cut interest rates, while we know that for millions of Americans, their interest rates left untouched for their home mortgages will continue to rise which will, I believe, continue to undermine the economy and further depress the housing market and the housing values across the country. So…
SIEGEL: But what do you say to someone…
Sen. CLINTON: There is a moral hazard, but there's also a very severe moral and economic hazard from standing by and watching this further deteriorate.
SIEGEL: But what do you say to someone who says you're going to freeze somebody's mortgage rate at some pre-reset level. That's the very mortgage rate that I wouldn't buy a house with. I didn't buy with that because I could see it was going to adjust upwards. Why are you paying his - why are you helping that guy out?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, because number one, a lot of the people who were put into these subprime mortgages could have had and should have had conventional fixed rate mortgages. A lot of them actually were catapulted into higher interest rates for trying to do the right thing - something called a pre-payment penalty. In other words, you know, you stick an extra 50 or $100 in the mortgage check, you actually trigger a higher interest rate. And I have to tell you, Robert, I wouldn't have known that in the hundreds of pages of fine print that a lot of mortgage documents represent.
We also know that the investment firms and the bankers, as I told them on December 5th on Wall Street, created these very complex instruments. They packaged into jumbo investment vehicles, you know, millions of home mortgages, and then sold them to investors in Shanghai or Berlin or Hong Kong, with the net result that, you know, I think everybody has egg on their face. And everybody's going to have to give a little. But why should the brunt of this crisis fall on the backs of people who thought they were doing the right thing.
SIEGEL: Let me ask you about something else, though. You have a mailing ad in Nevada now that reiterates the claim that Senator Obama's proposal to increase social security taxes amounts to a trillion dollar tax increase.
Those taxes are now capped at incomes at 97,500. He has said, people who make over 200 to 250,000 can afford to pay more in payroll tax. Do you agree with that? And can you actually sort out the finances of social security without either cutting benefits, raising the retirement age or raising that cap on social security taxes?
Sen. CLINTON: Well, Robert, I think that you've stated one of the many positions that Senator Obama has put forward when it comes to Social Security that's confusing. But on many interviews, in many different settings, he has said, lift the cap.
SIEGEL: But in terms of your own position, is lifting the cap totally off the table? Does that…
Sen. CLINTON: But let me just clarify here. What I have said is there are two conditions to any bipartisan process that I would approve off and push forward. Number one, I will not raise taxes on middle class and working families. Payroll tax is a huge percent of the income of a lot of people…
SIEGEL: And does that include raising the cap? Does that include raising the cap above 97,500?
Sen. CLINTON: It includes lifting the cap completely the way that Senator Obama has, on many occasions, advocated. In fact, it would be a tax increase for school superintendents, for fire department lieutenants, for police captains. You go down and look at people who, in the high-wage areas - like New York, like L.A. and other places, even here where I'm talking to you from, Las Vegas - these are not rich people. It would be 2,000, 3,000 more out of their paycheck.
I will not approve of that. We don't have a crisis in Social Security. We have long-term challenges that I believe can be met with relatively minor adjustments, as long as they are progressive and not imposing further burdens on people who should not be asked to bear the brunt.
SIEGEL: But to paraphrase the first President Bush, you're not saying, read my lips: no new social security taxes?
Sen. CLINTON: I'm not saying anything, and I'm not paraphrasing anybody because at the end of the day, we've got to all hold hands here and make a decision that we can live with that will actually fix the problem. That's what I'm going to do.
SIEGEL: Senator Clinton, thank you very much for talking with us today.
Sen. CLINTON: Great to talk to you. Thanks, Robert. Bye-bye.
SIEGEL: Senator Hillary Clinton spoke to us from Las Vegas.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
What Cooperstown is to baseball, what Nashville is to country music, South Carolina is to the political hit job. This year, practitioners of dirty tricks are using increasingly sophisticated electronic techniques.
NPR's David Folkenflik reports.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK: If you like your smears exotic and exaggerated, you'll love a state where the holiday-season-inspired mass mailings of fake Christmas cards, purportedly from Mitt Romney, that extolled polygamy, a long discarded practice of his Mormon faith.
That not nasty enough for you? How about the targeting of Republican candidate John McCain this month by leaflets that say he betrayed his fellow prisoners of war during Vietnam.
Orson Swindle served in the same cell as McCain for two years in Hanoi.
Mr. ORSON SWINDLE (Former Vietnam POW): I see people besmirching the honor and the character and the integrity and the loyalty and the courage of John McCain. My God.
FOLKENFLIK: McCain's campaign ran aground in South Carolina in 2000, a victim of other smears on his character.
Mr. SWINDLE: I asked somebody, I said, what is it that they come to South Carolina to do all this stuff?
FOLKENFLIK: Here's one theory about that.
Mr. ROD SHEALY SR. (Republican Political Operative): Make no mistake. The consultants here in South Carolina all know how to run negative campaigns. We all trained directly or indirectly from the legendary Lee Atwater, who was a master.
FOLKENFLIK: That's Atwater protege and bad boy Republican political operative, Rod Shealy Sr. But Shealy says it isn't that the state is so rough, it's that the stakes are so high.
Mr. SHEALY: This becomes a do-or-die state for most of the candidates, after Iowa or New Hampshire. The field usually has become narrowed, and it becomes very much a matter of win or leave.
FOLKENFLIK: This time around, computerized phone calls asked recipients to take a survey. Those who say they'll vote for former Senator Fred Thompson in Saturday's Republican primary were asked this question.
(Soundbite of recorded phone call)
Unidentified Man: Does the fact that former Sen. Fred Thompson refuses to sign the no new tax pledge and that Governor Huckabee has supported the Bush tax cuts and is proposing a fair tax reform that eliminates the IRS altogether make you more likely to trust Governor Huckabee on the issue of tax relief?
FOLKENFLIK: Those who said they were backing McCain or Romney heard questions designed to undermine those candidates too. It's a tactic called a push poll, a phony survey used to spread misinformation. Alan Teitleman is a 23-year-old Republican who recorded that call to his home in Ruby, South Carolina.
Mr. ALAN TEITLEMAN (Republican Voter, South Carolina): To get your message out that way and to be so negative and to have to tear down every other opponent, you know, is just - is a bad way of trying to build yourself up.
FOLKENFLIK: Know who else says he doesn't like those calls? Huckabee himself, in the interview with NPR's MORNING EDITION this week.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Republican, Presidential Candidate): To me, of all of the things that are done, push polling is the most offensive to me because it's - I think it's disingenuous. People think they're being a part of a poll and they're actually being sold something.
FOLKENFLIK: The Huckabee supporter behind the calls - more than 1 million in recent days - is Patrick Davis. He's the executive director of Common Sense Issues, which is against high taxes, abortion, and compromise on illegal immigration. Patrick Davis.
Mr. PATRICK DAVIS (Executive Director, Common Sense Issues): By asking questions of people, it keeps them interested and wanting to answer the questions on the survey.
FOLKENFLIK: Huckabee and Davis both told NPR they have no ties - that would be forbidden under election law. But they sure do have a common interest.
Mr. DAVIS: Just like any campaign, we use every opportunity to try to reach people that we think are important to us to achieve our end goal, which is more like-minded folks showing up to vote on Election Day.
FOLKENFLIK: On the other side, an e-mail that effectively libels Democrat Barack Obama as a radical Muslim has gotten so much circulation that NBC'S Brian Williams asked him about it during a debate earlier this week.
Joshua DuBois, an aide to Senator Obama on religious issues, characterized its source this way.
Mr. JOSHUA DUBOIS (Religious Affairs Director, Obama Campaign): Unnamed individuals who are spreading anonymous and false smears.
FOLKENFLIK: He says the campaign responds swiftly each time it hears of someone getting the e-mail. But Republican operative Rod Shealy says people are becoming their own smear tacticians.
Mr. SHEALY: Every one of those Americans has unwittingly become a part of the negative campaign process. Because of this new technology, negative campaigns have taken on a new style.
FOLKENFLIK: And he makes this promise. It'll continue right up until the end of tomorrow's vote.
David Folkenflik, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
He was the youngest U.S. chess champion at age 14, a grandmaster at 15. Bobby Fischer has died in Iceland. He was 64. In 1972, Fischer faced off against Russian world champion Boris Spassky in a match that became a symbol of the Cold War, a showdown between two superpowers - dubbed: The Match of the Century. Fischer won that match, becoming the first U.S.-born world champion. There hasn't been another since. After the match in Reykjavik, he talked about his victory in his typically brash style.
Mr. BOBBY FISCHER (World Chess Champion): The Russians are the ones that started all this and they are the ones who have been using chess as a propaganda weapon and using every, you know, trick to keep the title and all that. Now, it finally turned against them, you know? And probably, they wish they never even started to play chess.
BLOCK: Soon after that match, Bobby Fischer became a recluse and didn't play competitive chess for nearly 20 years. Then, in 1992, he challenged Boris Spassky again in a match in Yugoslavia, defying international sanctions. Fischer was filmed spitting on the order banning the match.
Mr. FISCHER: So this is my reply to their order not to defend my title here. That's my answer.
BLOCK: The U.S. issued a warrant for his arrest. Fischer moved around the world and finally settled in Iceland, where he died. Over the years, Bobby Fischer would occasionally emerge from seclusion to issue venomous rants against Jews and the United States. One of these anti-Semitic tirades came on September 11th, 2001 - a few hours after the attacks - when he called a radio station in the Philippines.
Mr. FISCHER: I applaud the act. Huh. The U.S. and Israel have been slaughtering the Palestinians, slaughtering them for years, robbing them and slaughtering them. Nobody even gave a (censored by network). Now, it's coming back to the U.S. (Censored by network) the U.S. I want to see the U.S. wiped out.
BLOCK: A spokesman for Fischer says he died after a serious but unspecified illness. We're going to talk about Bobby Fischer's influence on the chess world with Russian Grandmaster Garry Kasparov, who joins us from Moscow. And Mr. Kasparov, you are what, about 9 years old during that 1972 Fischer-Spassky match?
Mr. GARRY KASPAROV (Former Chess Grandmaster): Yes, I was 9 years old. I was the rising young star in my native town, Baku, in the Soviet Union. And we're all following Fischer who offered us a new source of inspiration.
BLOCK: New source of inspiration. Why is that?
Mr. KASPAROV: Fischer's chess was very refreshing. And we sensed - we were not great experts yet to understand it fully and appreciate it, but we sensed it was a new style, a new strategy, a new tactic, something that will form in a new type of the game of chess.
BLOCK: And what would that new type of game be?
Mr. KASPAROV: Again, it was very difficult to be specific at that time. It's, it was more of feelings of the 9-year-old boy in Baku and hundreds of sons and fathers who followed Fischer. But we sensed that Fischer played a different chess. He pioneered many new ideas in the openings and also in the middle game. And his style was a combination of chess enthusiasm, full concentration, and also, elements of the psychological warfare. He dedicated himself to the game of chess to be part of the game of chess and to be on the winning side.
BLOCK: That psychological warfare, you talked about, he was known for his demands, his eccentricity, his walking out of matches, coming late, making demands about lighting and cameras. He said he'd like to make his opponents squirm.
Mr. KASPAROV: Absolutely. And - but it, it was part of a chess personality. He was a great individual. And yet, for his chess fans in the Soviet Union, it is not clear - as for his chess fans in America - that the match was an element of the Cold War because we didn't care very much about the ideological differences. But Fischer was seen as an individual who was taking on a very mighty, all powerful sort of chess mission.
BLOCK: Bobby Fischer's name, of course, is also going to be linked to someone who descended into extreme paranoia and vitriol. How damaging is that side of Bobby Fischer to his reputation and his legacy?
Mr. KASPAROV: It is damaging for the game of chess because for many people, it was another sign that the game chess could be potentially detrimental for mental health. But I don't think that today it's going to damage his reputation as one of the greatest chess players. Obviously, up to 1972, when he was just 29, he left my field of expertise. And since I'm not an expert in psychiatry, I, I can offer very little explanation of his sort of actions. It was very sad period of his life. And I think the only good news about the last years of Bobby Fischer was it eventually ended up in Iceland, the country where he is a national hero, the man who've always remembered as the greatest chess player and nothing else.
BLOCK: Well, Garry Kasparov, thanks for talking with us today.
Mr. KASPAROV: Okay. Thanks, Melissa.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Bobby Fischer may be a dubious hero, but after beating Boris Spassky in 1972, he was America's first and only chess celebrity. He was on the cover of Life and Sports Illustrated. The United States Chess Federation underwent a Fischer boom and membership doubled in one year, and his fame extended beyond to the world of chess.
(Soundbite of song "One Night in Bangkok")
SIEGEL: Even after he vanished from public view, Bobby Fischer's mystique persisted for decades. He was the subject of several books, and he even inspired a musical.
(Soundbite of song "One Night in Bangkok")
Unidentified Man: (Singing) Bangkok, Oriental setting. And the city don't know what the city is getting. The creme de la creme of the chess world in a show with everything but Yul Brynner.
SIEGEL: The musical "Chess" had numerous incarnations. It began as a concept album. And this song, "One Night in Bangkok," shot up the charts. In 1985, one version reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100. The musical featured a chess rivalry between an American and a Russian, a love triangle, and a backdrop of the Cold War. One of the leads was loosely based on Fischer. In addition to playing chess, he has a weakness for international night life.
(Soundbite of song "One Night in Bangkok")
Unidentified Group: (Singing) One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster, the bars are temples but the pearls ain't free.
SIEGEL: The show eventually made its way to Broadway in 1988, not very successfully. Frank Richard's review in The New York Times offered this: The evening has the theatrical consistency of quicksand.
But "Chess: The Musical" still has a following with revivals popping up here and there, a musical legacy of a troubled man.
(Soundbite of song "One Night in Bangkok")
Unidentified Group: (Singing) One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble. Not much between despair and ecstasy.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
You can find a photo gallery of Bobby Fischer's life since his days as a teenage chess sensation at npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Tomorrow, an important contest in the Republican presidential race, South Carolina. Historically, the winner of that state's primary has always gone on to win the GOP nomination. Mitt Romney, the winner in Michigan, has not focused as much on South Carolina. But three Republicans - Mike Huckabee, Fred Thompson and John McCain - are vying for a win there. And we're going to hear about the final days' efforts for all three.
Starting with NPR's Debbie Elliott, she's following the McCain campaign.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT: At a rally in Florence this morning, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham reminded voters of the importance of tomorrow's primary for John McCain.
Senator LINDSEY GRAHAM (Republican, South Carolina): John's fate is in the hands of the good people of South Carolina.
ELLIOTT: In a series of town hall meetings around the state, McCain has stuck with his straight talk theme, even when it comes to the issue of the day in Washington: the economy.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): Stop the spending first. If you don't stop the spending, then it's all go out the door no matter what it is.
ELLIOTT: McCain has his own base in South Carolina - the state's large contingent of active duty and retired military. Veterans proudly wear their caps and lapel pins at McCain events and crowd around to shake hands with the former prisoner of war.
Sen. McCAIN: How are you all doing?
Unidentified Man #1: I was in Vietnam '72 and '73. Thank you for your service.
Sen. McCAIN: Thank you for serving, sir.
Unidentified Man #1: I have always won and always be...
Sen. McCAIN: Thank you, sir. God bless you.
Unidentified Man #1: You're going to be the next president. That's for sure.
Sen. McCAIN: Thanks for serving.
ELLIOTT: McCain says veterans should have health cards to get medical care when and where they want rather than waiting for service from the VA. And he positions himself as the candidate best prepared to fight radical Islamic extremism.
Vietnam veteran Clyde Moore of Sumter agrees.
Mr. CLYDE MOORE (Vietnam War Veteran): He's the only man who's running for president that's got military experience and that's what this country needs.
ELLIOTT: Debbie Elliott, NPR News, Columbia, South Carolina.
ADAM HOCHBERG: This is Adam Hochberg in Greenville. Still in search of his first victory this election season, Fred Thompson spent the day before the South Carolina primary playing up his southern roots and his conservative credentials.
Mr. FRED THOMPSON (Former Republican Senator, Tennessee): Good to see you.
Unidentified Man #2: We're going to vote for you in the primary.
Mr. THOMPSON: Appreciate it. Thank you very much.
HOCHBERG: Thompson greeted voters this morning in the small town of Seneca. And speaking at the crowded diner, he portrayed himself as the heir to Ronald Reagan's legacy.
Mr. THOMPSON: I am the only consistent conservative in the race, and those principles are the ones that made this country great and we need a leader that believes in them.
(Soundbite of applause)
HOCHBERG: Only three months ago, some polls showed Thompson atop South Carolina's Republican field. Now he's a running third or fourth behind John McCain, Mike Huckabee, and in some polls, Mitt Romney. Today Thompson criticized his opponents on a number of issues, including immigration.
Mr. THOMPSON: Governor Huckabee's record in Arkansas is one of consistent liberality in terms of illegal immigration. People talk about sanctuary cities, he apparently wanted a sanctuary state. And, of course, Romney has flopped all over the place.
HOCHBERG: Thompson attracted about 200 people at the diner, but several said they remained undecided just a day before the primary. Utility worker Tony Gross(ph) concluded Thompson is too much of a Washington insider to carry the conservative mantle.
Mr. TONY GROSS: The Republican Party had control of the Senate, the House and the Oval Office and they didn't do anything. Fred's part of that system. He is part of the party that had done nothing.
HOCHBERG: But Thompson did win the vote of retiree Donnie Davenport(ph) who considers him the most conservative on issues like gun rights and abortion.
Mr. DONNIE DAVENPORT: He's the best man for the country. And if he doesn't win this primary, I'm going to be at loss as to who to fall back on next.
HOCHBERG: Adam Hochberg, NPR News, Greenville.
DAVID GREENE: I'm David Greene in Greenville where Mike Huckabee told an audience that the battles he fought as Arkansas governor prepared him for the White House. For one thing, he said he wanted to make sure Arkansas understood the meaning of marriage.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas): I'd fight that same battle so that we would make sure that we said that at the federal level, that we affirm that marriage just means but one thing, it means a man and a woman. Not any other relationship. It's not that we are against, but we're for.
(Soundbite of people cheering)
GREENE: The crowd responded, I like Mike.
(Soundbite of people chanting)
Unidentified Group: I like Mike. I like Mike.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Thank you. I like you guys, too.
GREENE: Jean Shoe(ph) isn't sure if she likes Mike.
Ms. JEAN SHOE: I think he's funny. And in our country, funny and upbeat and the Bible - gosh, what a great combination - and then throw Chuck Norris in.
GREENE: But she's torn between Huckabee and John McCain. And she said she's been furious about so-called push-pull calls she's been getting.
Ms. SHOE: It went on about protecting the unborn and how Mike Huckabee was, you know, on that, and that Mr. McCain - and it was just kind of it was worded so intensely that if you said no to it, then you are against motherhood and apple pie. And it was very disturbing I thought.
GREENE: She said she knows Huckabee disavowed the calls that were form an outside group, but she said there must be more he can do.
Ms. SHOE: I'd come down hard because I'm sure he knows those people.
GREENE: Many people like you are getting those push-pulls and are angry about it.
Doug Wovell(ph) was, apparently, listening to my interview. He chimed in to tell Jean Shoe that Huckabee really can't stop the calls.
Mr. DOUG WOVELL: He can't even communicate with them because of the election law, the way that it's been set-up.
GREENE: Wovell said he's voting for Huckabee.
Mr. WOVELL: And from the very first time I met the man, my spirit within me witnessed(ph) his spirit within him that he really is a born again Christian man with the desire to do right.
GREENE: David Greene, NPR News, Greenville, South Carolina.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Every election year, labor unions jump into the fray with money and manpower. They usually endorse Democratic candidates at all levels, especially at the top.
Well, this year, all three leading Democratic contenders for the White House have won union endorsements. As NPR's Don Gonyea reports, that could diffuse the labor movement's power to pick the 2008 nominee.
DON GONYEA: Even with the long term trend showing declining union membership among American workers, labor unions remain a potent force in American politics. But just as important are the other things a union can offer - walkers to go door-to-door, workers to pass out leaflets and handle phones. And then there's the money for ads like this one currently running in Nevada which holds its caucuses tomorrow.
(Soundbite of campaign ad)
Unidentified Woman #1: I didn't know how personal this is for Hillary. What's happening in this country, I just didn't know.
Unidentified Woman #2: We're in a real pickle here in the United States.
GONYEA: This is not an official Hillary Clinton campaign commercial. It's paid for by AFSCME, the big national government employee's union.
(Soundbite of campaign ad)
Unidentified Man: AFSCME people is responsible for the content of this advertising.
GONYEA: Nevada is a good place to look at union clout. It's one place where unions are actually growing, thanks to a booming hotel and service industry.
David Damore is a political scientist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He says the candidate choices that individual labor unions are making seem to reflect divisions within the labor movement nationally in recent years.
Professor DAVID DAMORE (Political Science, University of Nevada): Too many unions that had split from the AFL-CIO a few years ago are sort of trying themselves to be much more progressive and trying to engage the new economy. And largely those unions have supported Barack Obama. The more traditional unions - the teachers' unions, the government employees' unions - those unions have stood with Hillary Clinton.
(Soundbite of people chanting)
Unidentified Group: Obama. Obama. Obama.
GONYEA: These are members of the Culinary Workers Union in Las Vegas, which last week endorsed Barack Obama.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): I am fired up...
(Soundbite of cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: Oh, I just love this union.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: I mean, I love this union.
GONYEA: Meanwhile, Senator John Edwards portrays himself aggressively as the pro-union candidate. He, too, is bringing in endorsements like this Las Vegas announcement from Douglas McCarron of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.
Mr. DOUGLAS McCARRON (President, United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America): There's an old saying amongst carpenters that you measure twice and you cut once. Well, we've taken the measure of the candidates and we've made our cut. We've looked at John Edward's plan and it is strong.
GONYEA: Edwards also has the United Steelworkers working for him. UNLV's Damore said, the fact that it's a caucus could actually affect how people vote. Caucus participants will be in a room with other union members and may be reluctant to break ranks in full view of their leaders and coworkers. He also notes that the culinary union members are about 40 percent Latino.
Prof. DAMORE: Their union, the largest in the city, endorsed Barack Obama last week. But Hillary Clinton, by all indications, has greater support among Hispanic voters. So they may be sort of torn - which way do I go? Do I vote wearing my Hispanic hat or do I vote wearing my union hat? What are the consequences if I choose to break with my - with the union leaders?
GONYEA: Republicans also welcome union endorsements when they can get them. This past week, Mike Huckabee boasted of having won the backing of the International Painters Union. He cited Ronald Reagan's success with union members and predicted there are plenty of rank-and-file workers out there who are looking for a candidate other than a Democrat.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The world's fastest runners will crouch in the starting blocks at the Olympics in Beijing this summer, but Oscar Pistorius will not be among them.
Pistorius is a 21-year-old record-setting, double-amputee sprinter from South Africa, and this week, he was barred from competing against able-bodied runners in internationally sanctioned events. His case is fostering discussion about science, competition and the notion of a level playing field.
And joining me now to take part of that discussion is our regular sports commentator Stefan Fatsis of The Wall Street Journal. Hello, Stefan.
Mr. STEFAN FATSIS (Staff Reporter, The Wall Street Journal): Hey, Robert.
SIEGEL: First, tell us a little bit about Oscar Pistorius and what he's managed to accomplish.
Mr. FATSIS: Well, he's a business student at the University of Pretoria. He was born without fibulas. Before he turned one, doctors amputated his lower legs at the middle of his calves. He didn't begin running competitively until about four years ago, and now he uses carbon fiber prosthetics that are shaped like the letter J, and on them he has set Paralympic world records in the 100, 200 and 400 meters. Of late, he's been competing against able-bodied runners. He actually finished second in the 400 in South Africa's National Championships last year.
SIEGEL: I gather those prosthetics are known as cheetahs, and Pistorius wanted to start competing against able-bodied athletes. The IAAF, the governing organization of track and field, launched an inquiry, no?
Mr. FATSIS: Yeah, that was last summer. And initially, they did let him compete pending scientific testing. Pistorius went to Germany; he was tested for two days alongside able-bodied sprinters who ran as fast as he did. The results showed that the prosthetics returned more energy and lost less energy compared to the able-bodied runners. In other words, Pistorius used less energy to achieve the same results. He used less oxygen to run the 400, and that translates to a physiological advantage.
SIEGEL: Yeah. And the conclusion was that the prosthesis amounted to technical aids for Pistorius and that made him ineligible to try to qualify for the Olympics.
Before we go on to some of the issues raised by this, did he actually have a shot at qualifying for the Olympics or doing well there?
Mr. FATSIS: Not in an individual event. His best time in the 400 is about forty six and a half seconds, which is a second short of the Olympic qualifying time, more than three seconds off of the world record. But because of that second place finish in South Africa's nationals, he did have a chance to make the country's 4 by 400 relay team; that won't happen even though he does plan to appeal. He's going to have more testing done. It just can't happen in time for Beijing.
SIEGEL: So where does this ruling leave us in track and field for the future with - not only prosthesis at issue here, I should think.
Mr. FATSIS: I think there's a lot to sort out. What are the disadvantages of using prosthetics like these? There have to be some. What's the level playing field? What's an unfair advantage? What's the Olympic ideal? Is it stopwatch times? Is it inspiration? And what's going to happen in the future? It's a moving target here. There are going to be new drugs. There are going to be gene therapies. There are going to be other devices that subtly enhance or alter performance.
One way, I think, to think about Pistorius and these prosthetics - there wasn't a need to investigate this until a disabled athlete was able to challenge the best able-bodied athletes in the world. Some of that is science; a lot of it is body and will. I'm not sure how we're going to sort these things out in the future.
SIEGEL: And, of course, the fact that it concerns a sprinter, it means that we're talking about margins of a hundredth of a second, for example. That advantage - the slightest advantage is real in that event.
Mr. FATSIS: And you watch someone like Oscar Pistorius or someone like the American sprinter Marlon Shirley - who's run the 100 meters in under 11 seconds, the only disabled athlete to do that - there isn't that much difference. These are very, very, very minute bits of time.
SIEGEL: Okay. Have a good weekend, Stefan.
Mr. FATSIS: Thanks, Robert. You, too.
SIEGEL: Stefan Fatsis joins us on Fridays to talk about sports and the business of sports.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
I'm Melissa Block.
And we're going to begin this hour in South Carolina where Republicans will cast their primary votes tomorrow. Polls put John McCain in the lead, but we know the story with the polls this year. And Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee are doing their best to bring in conservative voters.
Our co-host Michele Norris has been in South Carolina all week. She joins us now. And Michele, South Carolina is famous for political surprises. How does it look now?
MICHELE NORRIS: Well, the surprise this year is that even people who've closely watched this - the most experienced political hands will tell you with complete honesty, they have no idea who is going to win this race.
Mike Huckabee roared out of Iowa with a big win. He faltered a bid in New Hampshire where he had a hard time reaching beyond his evangelical base. Here in South Carolina, evangelicals account for more than half of our Republican voters, and that values-based message that he's really been pounding is very, very potent here.
John McCain on the other hand seems to be having a much harder time winning support from those values voters, at least according to the latest polls. He is, however, finding a very welcome reception from the large pool of veterans in the state and families who have connections to the military. Also, he's sort of the establishment candidate. A lot of the elected officials - Republican elected officials seem to be supporting his campaign.
We went to a McCain rally this week. We had a chance to talk to some of the voters and we heard something interesting. People who have said they didn't support the senator back in 2000 are now supporting him this year. They say that times have changed. We, for instance, met a 69-year-old Columbia resident named Frank Glen(ph). And Mr. Glen said the most important concerns for him right now were security and the fear of another terrorist attack. And let's listen to what he had to say about John McCain this year.
Mr. FRANK GLEN (Resident, Columbia, South Carolina): I voted for Bush. I don't think McCain could have won at the time, but I think he can win now. We got a war now. Well, he's a big veteran. And I'm a veteran, Air Force. So, I think he's the man for the job right now.
NORRIS: Melissa, that phrase, he's the right man for the job right now is pretty close to McCain's core message.
I have this McCain flier in my hand right now and on the cover next to a very serious picture of him are the words, we know he's courageous, bold, ready to lead. But, as you open the cover it says, here's something you may not know. And when you open it up it says, John McCain best bet to beat Hillary.
BLOCK: So it sounds like John McCain's addressing experience, his readiness to lead as you say. What's the message from Mike Huckabee?
NORRIS: Well, Mike Huckabee, also, I should say, talks about national security issues. He's calling for what he says is a Billy Jack approach to National Security. Mess with America, and he says, you'll find the heel of this boot in your face. But his primary focus is really on values; writing the chorus in America, as he says. And his crowd is very, very different. You see more middle income, even lower-income families, a lot of Christians, a lot of people who talk about their Christian values. A lot of homeschoolers, that crowd really helped him in Iowa.
I met a group of 30-something women at his rally. They'd come together. They'd heard about Mike Huckabee. They liked what they'd heard, but they wanted to hear him in person. And I spoke with a woman named Sally Pasketti(ph), and she told me that it was Mike Huckabee's values, his personality, his charm, that she found appealing.
Ms. SALLY PASKETTI: The thing that they're saying about Huckabee is he is the one who can communicate a vision. You know, I get around listening to Huckabee and I leave - I'm feeling like I'm part of that team. I'm inspired.
BLOCK: You know, Michele, as we head in to this Republican primary tomorrow, we keep hearing this that since 1980, no Republican candidate has won the Republican nomination without first winning in South Carolina.
NORRIS: And I hear that a lot down here too. They're very proud of that. Its position is like sort of gatekeeper to the Republican nomination.
However, there are worries about that now. I spent some time with Lin Bennett. She's the chairwoman of the Charleston County Republican Party. And she tells me that everyone now realizes that it's possible that things may change.
Ms. LIN BENNETT (Chairwoman, Charleston County Republican Party): It could be, but I hope not. I think what will actually happen is that South Carolina might lose its place as a person that makes that determination.
NORRIS: You're worried about that?
Ms. BENNETT: Well, as a South Carolinian, yes, I am. We're very proud of the part that we play in the process.
NORRIS: Lin Bennett also noted one possible other change here. She says the state is not expecting the kind of record turnout or at least very large turnout that you saw in Iowa and in New Hampshire. And the weather forecast is probably not helping that, Melissa. Heavy rain is forecast here for Saturday.
BLOCK: Hmm. So that could have an effect. Now there's a split primary. There are Republicans to vote tomorrow, Democrats don't vote until next Saturday. What's happening on the Democratic side in South Carolina?
NORRIS: Well, polls show that Barack Obama has opened up his lead against Hillary Clinton. It's about an eight-point lead at this point. One of the things that's interesting is Barack Obama doesn't appear to have built the same kind of multi-ethnic coalition that we saw in Iowa and also in New Hampshire. He's built strong support among African-Americans. He's in clear lead there but he ranks third behind Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in terms of support from white voters, at least in this latest poll.
And once again we're seeing - you know, we have to be careful in talking about these polls because so many voters are still undecided. Almost half of all Democratic voters have yet to make up their mind. And we should say that the Democratic contest has been fairly muted this week. The candidates have been spending most of their time focusing on the contest in Nevada, and that will change starting this weekend. The candidates will be heading back this way. And heading back this way along with them is this long list, almost a galaxy of stars from Hollywood that are coming out here to stump for the candidates.
With the list of stars that's headed in this way, it almost seems like South Carolina may start to look a bit like Southern California, Melissa.
BLOCK: Okay. Michele thanks so much.
NORRIS: Thank you.
BLOCK: That's our co-host Michele Norris in Columbia, South Carolina.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
For just about 24 more hours, the Democrats are all Nevada all the time. The Nevada caucuses were moved up in the primary schedule for the 2008 race so they've taken on a new significance.
We have reporters following the leading trio of candidates: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards.
First, to Jeff Brady with the Edwards entourage.
JEFF BRADY: This morning, a few miles east of the Strip, John Edwards broached a subject of intense interest to Nevadans.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina): Because I am dead against the building of any more nuclear power plants.
(Soundbite of cheering)
BRADY: The proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site is just a hundred miles from here. It's not been a significant issue in the campaign, though, because all the Democrats oppose the project. With the caucuses less than 24 hours away, Edwards asked for last-minute campaign volunteers.
Mr. EDWARDS: The one thing that is clear is I am not the $100-million campaign, that's the other two guys. I am the underdog…
BRADY: The United Steelworkers Union has about a hundred of its members volunteering for this campaign in Nevada. Edwards talks a lot about working people and strengthening unions. But the powerful Culinary Workers Union is supporting Barack Obama. That didn't stop Edwards from asking for their support.
Mr. EDWARDS: So, if you hear the sound of my voice and you are a union member in the state of Nevada, I am asking you to show up tomorrow, and to caucus for me.
BRADY: In the crowd, Geri Strausser(ph) is a nurse. Her union also is supporting Obama. Backing Edwards is a little tricky for her because she's on the executive board.
Ms. GERI STRAUSSER (Nurse): When we take our oath to our organization, it says that we don't give up any individual rights. So, I'm exercising my individual right to do what's best for my family, what's best for - that I think is best for working people.
BRADY: Edwards was hoping that attitude would take hold as he left the state this afternoon for his next campaign event, in Oklahoma.
Jeff Brady, NPR News, Las Vegas.
SCOTT HORSLEY: And I'm Scott Horsley in Reno.
Barack Obama campaigns on two college campuses, a high school in, and at a Martin Luther King banquet in Las Vegas tonight as he tries to rally supporters for tomorrow's caucuses.
With a whirlwind schedule like that, his wife Michelle Obama was quickly forgiven for the kind of pronunciation faux pas that happens in the crush of a multi-state campaign.
Ms. MICHELLE OBAMA (Wife of Sen. Barack Obama): It is so nice to be back in Nevada. We are so happy to be here. Nevada, Nevada, Nevada. Nevada, I've been in South Carolina too long.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. OBAMA: I know how to bounce back from my mistakes.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HORSLEY: Mrs. Obama assured supporters in Reno her husband is fully prepared to be president. Barack Obama pointed out the supposedly more experienced candidate, Hillary Clinton, amended her economic stimulus plan yesterday. It now more closely resembles his own.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): It is easy to be for policies that help working families when it's popular on the campaign trail. But the American people don't want a president whose plans change with the politics of the moment.
HORSLEY: A lot of students turned out to hear Obama at the University of Nevada in Reno even though school is not in session yet. But the crowd wasn't all young. Retired Teamster Russell Kazersky(ph) woke up at 4:30 this morning and drove 80 miles in order to hear the candidate.
Mr. RUSSELL KAZERSKY (Retired Teamster): He's not like from the old regime, the old party, the good old boy. He's new, fresh, and I just think we need a change.
HORSLEY: Obama told supporters he can't make that change without their help, and he urged them to caucus tomorrow even if they caucus for someone else.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Reno, Nevada.
INA JAFFE: I'm Ina Jaffe in Las Vegas. Remember that campaign slogan from some not so long ago presidential campaign? "It's the economy, stupid" for the Hillary Clinton campaign. It's deja vu all over again. In the crowded backroom of A&B Printing, which is a union print shop owned by women, Clinton noted the economic slowdown has even touched the boomtown of Las Vegas in a casual low key tone, she talked about her stimulus package that would include freezing mortgage interest rates. She talked about how her health care plan would rescue the uninsured and how her administration would do more to help small businesses like this one. The American dream is getting out of reach, she said. The middle class is working harder and harder and still falling behind.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Vice Chair, Democratic Committee Outreach; Presidential Candidate): Contrast that to what happened during the 1990s where a typical family income went up to $7,000.
JAFFE: Oh, the golden 1990s. Clinton mentioned them at least four times. Let's see, who was president then? In any case, her speech was not primarily an exercise in nostalgia. She took the opportunity to contrast herself with her unnamed leading opponent, recalling the debate earlier this week when she and Barack Obama disagreed on presidential leadership style. Again today, Clinton implied that a president has more to do than guide, decide, and inspire.
Sen. CLINTON: We have to have a hands-on leader. We need somebody who will roll up his or her sleeves and get to work on behalf of the American people. That's what I'm offering.
JAFFE: As she has done since her last days in New Hampshire, Clinton stayed and took question after question, and when she was done, posed for picture after picture.
Sen. CLINTON: Caucus for me tomorrow. We can start turning this around.
JAFFE: One last chance to make the sale.
Ina Jaffe, NPR News, Las Vegas.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
A footnote now on how the Nevada caucuses will work.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
For the Democrats, the Nevada Delegate Selection Plan and Affirmative Action Plan is 65 pages long. In essence it says, this will be a lot like Iowa.
BLOCK: Democrats gather at 11 tomorrow morning. Once again, viability is key.
SIEGEL: Caucus goers will break into groups to indicate their preferred candidates. Groups without enough people will be declared nonviable and their members will have to go join the group of a different candidate.
BLOCK: Now, the Republicans will get together earlier at nine in the morning.
SIEGEL: They speak on behalf of their favorites candidates and then vote by secret ballot.
BLOCK: By caucusing, participants are actually selecting delegates to the county convention, who will go on to elect state delegates, who'll go on to the national convention to pick a presidential nominee.
SIEGEL: And you can read more about the issues and politics at stake in Nevada's primaries at npr.org/elections.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
Hollywood has decamped to Utah for the Sundance Film Festival, bringing along worries about the screenwriters' strike. More than 120 films are playing in Park City over 11 days. Sundance has grown into a frenzied event. Sellers are looking for rich deals and film distributors are looking for the next indie sleeper hit films such as "Little Miss Sunshine" or "Napoleon Dynamite." At a press briefing yesterday, Robert Redford, the figure most associated with Sundance, emphasized that often the movies that get a lot of attention aren't the ones that turn out to be hits.
Mr. ROBERT REDFORD (Actor; Founder, Sundance Institute): I've heard a lot of stories about buzz early on in festivals in the past years, and the buzz evaporated, and the surprise was something that was not expected. I think that's great.
SIEGEL: And our own Kim Masters is among those making their way through the snowdrifts at Sundance.
And, Kim, Robert Redford talks about the buzz evaporating. I gather everything's just freezing solid there where you are?
KIM MASTERS: We had actually seen our thermometer going to minus three, and there's quite a lot of snow. So, yes, we're feeling the chill here.
SIEGEL: Okay. Well, onto the - let's say, the labor context for this year's Sundance. The screenwriters' strike remains unresolved. Yesterday the Directors Guild reached a contract agreement with the movie studios. What are you hearing, if anything, about all that in Utah?
MASTERS: Well, I think it's a factor in peoples' minds, that this might move the writers towards settling the strike sooner rather than later. But honestly, the atmosphere here is so manic, and we have so many buyers running to so many screenings, and so many sellers trying to figure out how hot their movie is or isn't, that it's, sort of, part of this discombobulated environment at Sundance.
SIEGEL: Well, over the last several years, the specialty divisions of studios have paid millions of dollars for Sundance films. Is the writers' strike affecting the deal-making at Sundance?
MASTERS: Well, that's the question. Will people pay more than they did before even because they're trying to fill holes in their schedules? And certainly, the sellers are hoping that will be the case. But we talked to Tom Bernard of Sony Pictures Classics - he's one of these buyers - and he was hoping that would not be so.
Mr. TOM BERNARD (Co-president and Co-founder, Sony Pictures Classics): The writers' strike is, to me, hype from the sellers. The more they can get out gees, then no one has any movies. Everyone's going to be coming here with zillions of bucks. People might catch that panic. But I think the buyers here are too smart. If you're going to see anything this year, you're going to see people proceed with caution because of all the disasters last year.
SIEGEL: He spoke of all the disasters last year. I assume movie people know what that means. What was he talking about all the disasters last year?
MASTERS: Last year was the worst in terms of box office results from pictures purchased in the Sundance auction. So, the studios bought 20 movies for $53 million. So far, 14 of those have been released, and they've only grossed $34 million. So, the studios don't get to keep all that money. That's quite a shortfall for the business that was done. The poster child for that was probably a film called "Grace Is Gone," bought for $4 million. It stars John Cusack, and it's vanished pretty much without a trace. So, that's the kind of thing the studios would like to avoid.
SIEGEL: But certain movies at Sundance will probably fetch a big price. Which movies are being talked up this year?
MASTERS: Well, there's a number of them. There's one called "What Just Happened?" which is - with Robert De Niro and Barry Levinson directing. It's about a Hollywood producer and his adventures. And there's a movie called "Sunshine Cleaning," about women who clean up crime scenes. And that movie stars Amy Adams, who was in "Enchanted" and "Charlie Wilson's War," and she's a pretty hot commodity right now. So, that's one that's getting talked up. And there's another one called "The Great Buck Howard," about a mentalist with declining powers. And it is produced by Tom Hanks, and in an astonishing coincidence, it stars his son. And there's also a number of documentaries that are getting talked up, although, they didn't do well last year. There's one on Roman Polanski. There's "Trouble the Water," about Hurricane Katrina. There's one about steroids, one about a baseball player from the Dominican Republic. So, those are also the subject of great interest.
SIEGEL: Okay. Well, stay warm, Kim.
MASTERS: Thank you. I'll try.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Kim Masters at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Last week, we reported on the Internet hype surrounding the new movie from producer J.J. Abrams' "Cloverfield." For months, Paramount kept it shrouded in secrecy, not even giving it a official title. And now our critic Bob Mondello will attempt to review "Cloverfield" without giving too much away.
BOB MONDELLO: What you probably already know from the ads is that a bunch of twentysomethings are at a surprise party in Manhattan.
(Soundbite of movie "Cloverfield")
Unidentified Woman #1: I think here. Let's go.
(Soundbite of people shouting)
Group: Surprise.
MONDELLO: And a guy with a camcorder is wandering among them shooting their farewell testimonial.
(Soundbite of movie "Cloverfield")
Unidentified Woman #2: What is this for?
Unidentified Man #2: It's for Rob. Say something to him before he leaves.
Unidentified Woman #2: Rob - awesome. I'm gonna miss him.
MONDELLO: Then suddenly the whole apartment building shakes and the lights go out and then they come back on.
(Soundbite of movie "Cloverfield")
Unidentified Man #3: What was that noise?
Unidentified Woman #3: I don't think an animal(ph).
MONDELLO: And nobody knows what's happened so they turn to the TV.
(Soundbite of television news)
Unidentified Woman #4: Phone calls are pouring into the New York One news room as a thunderous roaring sound that was…
Unidentified Man #5: Do you see something on the roof?
MONDELLO: They proceed to the roof with the camcorder still running, and up there they see an explosion that sends huge chunks of debris raining all over the city. One of those chunks, when they retreat to the street, turns out to be the head of the Statue of Liberty, around which everyone gathers, snapping pictures with cell phones. Something big is attacking Manhattan, reigning terror and what appeared to be suitcase-sized fleas on the general public. And trust me, you do not want a fleabite. Now, to preserve the suspense, and for a while there is some of a sort, I shouldn't tell you too much about what these various critters do. But let's talk a little about what it looks like when they do it. The video camera thing isn't a one-scene gimmick. It's the whole movie. Like producer J.J. Abrams didn't want to spend his "Lost" money to rent a steady cam. Yeah, I know, "Cloverleaf," or whatever it's called, is all about point of view filmmaking. "The Blair Godzilla Project" - give the man his concept. But a camcorder is, kind of a one-trick pony, where visuals are concerned. Here, I'll approximate it in aural terms.
The jerkiness and the camera whipping around because it's never pointed at the right place, and nothing ever being in focus is constant, even for the special effect. And I've been doing this for what, 10 seconds? And you're already thinking, okay, I get the point, right? It's hardly clear and annoying. Well, imagine if you get the point and all the interesting stuff is happening and he keeps it up, like I'm doing. I mean, if you catch a glimpse of a small part of the creature…
I'm going to stop now. An appendage of some sort. And though presumably they had a decent special effects budget, through the camcorder, what you actually see on screen could almost have been done by smashing an uncooked turkey drumstick into a model of a building. Cue panic.
(Soundbite of movie "Cloverfield")
Unidentified Man #6: Oh, my God. Oh, God.
MONDELLO: Think what Ed Wood could have done with a camcorder and $25 million. There's a little more going on here than in a 1950s B movie, partly because of the locale. For the last seven years, Hollywood's been understandably skittish about knocking down major New York landmarks on camera, but apparently it's okay again. First, "I Am Legend" dynamited all of Manhattan's bridges. Now "Cloverfield" lays waste to, among other things, the Chrysler Building. At least I think it was the Chrysler Building. It was pointy at the top, but as I say, pretty blurry. With people running from a cloud of dust and ash that looks all too familiar from 9/11 footage, that's pretty tacky. I think we can all agree. And so, in its deliberate, uncharacterized, and no doubt enormously moneymaking way is "Cloverfield."
I'm Bob Mondello.
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: This is NPR. National Public Radio.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
This was the week that politicians of all stripes acknowledge that the economy is in trouble. This morning, President Bush attached a dollar figure to the economic stimulus package he's been hinting at all week. He said, he'd like to see as much as $150 billion in tax rebates and other measures to keep the economy from slowing any further. And he says he's ready to work with Congress to make it happen.
But as usual, the devil is in the details, and as NPR's Jim Zarroli reports, one of many unanswered questions, is who would get the rebates and who would not.
JIM ZARROLI: It was as one reporter put it a sort of love fest, at least, in public. Both President Bush and congressional leaders said they really truly were ready to set aside their ideological differences and focus on the kind of measures that will stop the economy's drift.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: And I believe there's enough broad consensus that we could come up with a package that can be approved with bipartisan support.
ZARROLI: President Bush said he thought that in order to be effective, any stimulus package should be about 1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product or a little less than $150 billion. That's the top end of what congressional leaders are calling for.
Not only is the White House ready to work with Congress to get a package out, it's ready to do so quickly, said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
Secretary HENRY PAULSON (U.S. Department of the Treasury): And then I can tell you when we get the legislation, we're going to run like a bunny here to get the relief out.
ZARROLI: Speed is a essential right now because if U.S. officials wait too long, the stimulus will come too late to do any good. David Wyss, the chief economist at Standard & Poor's, says that means both sides have to be willing to set aside their pet projects.
Mr. DAVID WYSS (Chief Economist, Standard & Poor's): So they can keep it simple. They got a shot at getting this thing through quick. The danger is that one side or the other decides to hang a lot of ornaments on the Christmas tree.
ZARROLI: One ornament is the president's tax cuts which are now set to expire after 2010. Democrats have said that demanding an extension of the cuts as part of a stimulus package would be a deal breaker. The president today said he still thinks that the cuts are critical but he's willing to put off a fight to later.
Another potential stumbling block is the question of who should get the rebates. A lot of republicans think the rebates should only go to people who end up having to pay income tax, but Democrats say they should go to everyone who works whether they owe taxes or not. Again, David Wyss.
Mr. WYSS: Politically, as long as everybody gets the same amount, I don't think the Democrats have too much trouble with giving the rich people the same amount as the poor people. But of course, a lot of people on the other side would like it to be more proportional to the taxes paid, which doesn't give you as much boost.
ZARROLI: Today, the Bush administration was tight-lipped. Treasury Secretary Paulson repeatedly refused to answer reporters' questions about what kind of stimulus package the White House wants. The most he would say was this…
Sec. PAULSON: The president, again, is focused on broad-based tax relief for those who are paying taxes.
ZARROLI: Paulson also made clear that the White House wants the stimulus package to go to businesses as well as individuals. For their part, Democrats in Congress seem willing to consider that. Democrats have been working on a broader package of cuts that would be targeted at lower and middle-income individuals.
But New York Senator Charles Schumer didn't want to talk about that today.
Senator CHARLES SCHUMER (Democrat, New York): Other than to say I think there's a pretty strong belief among Democrats that - you know, and among economists, that the UI extension works very well..
ZARROLI: UI is unemployment insurance. And Democrats say they want to make sure it gets extended. Economist David Wyss says they're likely to get their way.
Mr. WYSS: My guess is that's going to be done, one way or the other because it's always done when the economy goes into recession.
ZARROLI: Beyond that, both sides say they're willing to negotiate and they have plenty of incentive to try. There is little political downside to a stimulus package and plenty of risks to doing nothing particularly if the economic slowdown becomes a recession.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News.
BLOCK: You can find more about the Democratic and Republican plans to boost the economy at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This week in Afghanistan, Taliban fighters attack the country's grandest hotel with bombs and guns. Several people were killed at the Serena Hotel in Kabul, including an American contractor and a Norwegian journalist.
As NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Kabul, the attacks suggest the Taliban is changing its strategy, and it has shattered the relative calm for westerners living in the city.
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON: You won't find many foreigners hanging out at Kabul restaurants these days. Many businesses catering to western customers closed following Taliban threats in the wake of the hotel attack. The few that stayed open are pretty much empty. That's because the regulars were evacuated by their employers to Dubai or are restricted to armed compounds here.
A few people thought this could happen and many don't buy NATO and Afghan officials' claims that Monday night's attack on the Serena is a sign of Taliban desperation after losing key battles in southern Afghanistan. Instead the prevailing feeling in Kabul is that if the Taliban can strike a fortified hotel so close to the presidential palace, in a city packed with western troops and afghan security forces, then no where in Afghanistan is safe anymore.
A recent U.S. decision to send 3,200 additional Marines to Afghanistan in the spring hasn't ease the trepidation, says Alex Strick Van Linschoten, a research fellow with the Kabul-based Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies.
Mr. ALEX STRICK VAN LINSCHOTEN (Associate Research Fellow, Centre for Conflict and Peace Studies): I'm not so sure there's a lot that can be done to engage this threat and I'm not sure whether a lot of the things that one might suggest - increase security measures, barring Afghans from entering this and that hotel. I think this is largely going to be counterproductive in the end. This is Afghanistan, there's always going to be a certain amount of risk about things.
NELSON: For years, that risk had pretty much excluded Kabul. Suicide bombings in the capital have escalated in recent months, but the western targets were always soldiers, never tourists, aid workers or journalists. The Taliban prefer to kidnap those civilians for ransom and media attention. At least, until now, Taliban spokesman, Zabil Mushahed(ph) explained why in a phone call.
Mr. ZABIL MUSHAHED (Taliban Spokesman): (Through translator) The idea is to impose civilian losses on the foreigners which in turn will step up pressure on their governments to pull their soldiers out of Afghanistan.
NELSON: Afghan officials acknowledge the attack had the desired effect spreading fear that has paralyzed the foreign community.
Mr. SAYEED ANSARI (Spokesman, Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security): (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: Here, Afghan intelligence agency spokesman, Sayeed Ansari, describes how the four Afghan terrorists - one wearing a police uniform, showed up at the front gate of the heavily guarded Serena Hotel, Monday night.
The terrorists were stopped before they could inflict the death toll they had hoped, that despite two of the bombers detonating their explosives and another going on a shooting rampage in the gym. That attacker - the lone survivor - was arrested inside the hotel. Within hours, three other Afghans who helped the terrorists were also arrested.
Ansari says their investigation shows the attack was hatched two months ago in a Pakistani-border town by militants with links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. But Ansari says Afghan intelligence officials were unaware of any specific threat to the Serena, this despite a report that Afghan police officers in December tried but failed to arrest two suspected Taliban spies who were casing the hotel.
Mr. ANSARI: (Through translator) It's certainly a challenge. I hope that the Afghan security forces and western troops will be vigilant to prevent any future attacks.
NELSON: But Brigadier General Carlos Branco, spokesman for the NATO-led coalition here, says such Taliban attacks are hard to predict.
Brigadier General CARLOS BRANCO (Spokesman, International Security Assistance Force): The only kinetic(ph) activity they are able to carry out during winter is things like these where the civilians are the one targets, you know? And this is clearly an act of desperation because as an insurgent movement, they are facing serious problems.
NELSON: Former Taliban official and author Wahid Mujda disagrees.
Mr. WAHID MUJDA (Former Taliban Official; Author): (Foreign language spoken)
NELSON: Mujda says the Talban is drawing its inspiration from the economic cost and political damage al-Qaida in Iraq has created for the United States, a scenario it would like to duplicate in Afghanistan.
Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News, Kabul.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
The presidential campaign trail has featured famously one former president, Bill Clinton. He has campaigned with his wife. He's campaigning without her. He has spoken to adoring crowds of Democrats. He has delivered red-faced rants to reporters. The Clintons are increasingly being seen and covered as a pair, as though the two of them are running for president.
NPR's national political correspondent, Mara Liasson, reports it's not always clear if that's a good thing or a bad thing for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign.
MARA LIASSON: The toughest tag team in American politics is on the field in full force. This time, Hillary Clinton is the candidate; Bill Clinton is the attack dog. And sometimes he's not just attacking her opponents. Here he is on Wednesday lacerating a reporter who asked him about a lawsuit her supporters filed in Nevada. It objected to caucus rules they believed favored members of a union who had just endorsed Barack Obama.
President BILL CLINTON: Don't be accusatory of me. I had nothing to do with this lawsuit. Some people in Nevada are old fashioned. They think the rules should be the same for everybody, and the vote - everybody's vote should count the same. I had nothing to do with that lawsuit, and you know it.
Mr. MARK MATTHEWS (Reporter, ABC7): But the timing of the lawsuit with the endorsement does look to some people like…
Pres. CLINTON: Do you believe…
Mr. MATTHEWS: …now that they understand the endorsement, they want to change the rules. Your position is that it should be easier for them to vote than for anybody else who works in the afternoon? Your position is their vote should count five times as much? Is that right?
LIASSON: Hillary Clinton said she was neutral on the lawsuit, but Bill Clinton was anything but. In the end, a judge ruled against the Clinton supporters who brought the suit. This was just the latest Bill Clinton tirade. The former president has compared criticism of his wife to Republican swift-boat attacks. He has called Barack Obama's position on Iraq a fairytale, and the prospect of an Obama presidency a roll of the dice. He has excoriated the media for not investigating Obama's past. Sally Bedell Smith, who has written a book about the Clintons, is not surprised by the former president's intense, often emotional, role in the campaign.
Ms. SALLY BEDELL SMITH (Author, "For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years"): Since Hillary's first race for the Senate in 2000, he has been very immersed in her campaign in a way that they've almost become an extension of himself. And that phenomenon has become much more apparent in the past few months, this impulse to justify his own legacy. And at times, it's caused him real problems for his wife when he said, for example, that he had opposed the Iraq War from the beginning. And that was easily disproved within a matter of hours.
LIASSON: And Democratic strategist Anita Dunn thinks the former president's leading role in the attacks on Obama pose potential risks to his reputation.
Ms. ANITA DUNN (Democrat Political Strategist): I think that Bill Clinton always is concerned about his legacy. Clearly, his chief legacy that he would like to see would be Hillary Clinton being elected president. And he's fighting, as only he can, for that end. But a huge part of his legacy also was the extraordinary affection and respect that African-Americans had for him. And he does run a risk with that huge part of the Democratic base if he continue his personal attacks on Barack Obama in this way. Short-term gain, long-term pain.
LIASSON: On the whole, Democrats agree that Bill Clinton is a net asset for his wife. He's a surrogate like no other. Someone who's every word gets maximum media coverage. And Democrats say his attacks on Obama worked in New Hampshire by helping to crowd out Obama's message. It wasn't pretty, said one, but it did help her win. Some Democratic strategists, like Steve McMahon, worry that the attacks could cause serious rifts inside the Democratic Party, a potential problem for a general election.
Mr. STEVE MCMAHON (Democrat Media Consultant and Strategic Advisor): The campaign that Senator Clinton and President Clinton are engaged in right now is a campaign designed to raise doubts about Barack Obama to the extent that that's successful in the short-term. I think it puts them in a position where in a long-term they may do damage if she is the nominee, and they're trying to get the Barack Obama lover back into the fold to support Hillary Clinton as vigorously as they'll need to in November for her to be successful. It's a very tough position to be in.
LIASSON: And then, says Sally Bedell Smith, there's the famous Bill Clinton temper.
Ms. SMITH: One danger for them is that these displays of anger recall a lot of that turbulence from the '90s when they were irate against their enemies. And if going forward, the nation wants to try and repair those sorts of rifts, it's not a reminder that's very helpful.
LIASSON: Barack Obama only mentions these issues obliquely, saying, he doesn't want to re-fight the battles of the '90s. But in the general election, if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, Republicans won't hesitate to be very specific.
Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Presidential campaigns spend millions of dollars on TV ads, consultants, billboards, buttons, all designed to make sure that voters associate certain words and attributes with their candidate, words like change, experience, leadership, readiness.
Well, our co-host Michele Norris wanted to find out if all that expense is really worthwhile so she tried a little experiment in South Carolina.
MICHELE NORRIS: In the course of covering the candidates throughout the state, I also took on the role of game show host with the voters. The game: word association. And let's just say I use that word, game, very loosely here. There were no winners or losers, just responses to a simple request. I asked voters to cite the word or image that immediately springs to mind when they hear a specific candidate's name. This is not scientific; just a sampling of what I found.
Ready, set, go. John McCain.
Unidentified Woman #1: Immigration.
Unidentified Woman #2: Churchill.
Unidentified Man #1: War veteran.
Unidentified Man #2: Courage.
Unidentified Woman #3: Unreliable.
Unidentified Man #3: Not electable.
Unidentified Woman #4: Old.
Unidentified Man #4: He's the same age as me, but he is too old. He's too old.
NORRIS: Mike Huckabee.
Unidentified Woman #5: Great heart.
Unidentified Woman #6: Christianity.
Unidentified Man #5: Baptist minister.
Unidentified Man #6: A Preacher.
Unidentified Woman #7: Untested.
Unidentified Man #7: Radical.
Unidentified Woman #8: Nice.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: Mitt Romney.
Unidentified Woman #9: Proven leader.
Unidentified Man #8: Business.
Unidentified Man #9: Good man, but I'm not sure.
Unidentified Woman #10: Inauthentic.
Unidentified Man #10: Inexperienced.
Unidentified Man #11: Well put together.
Unidentified Woman #11: Plastic.
NORRIS: Fred Thompson.
Unidentified Woman #12: Tennessee.
Unidentified Woman #13: Oh, I don't want to say anything ugly.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Woman #14: Great on paper.
Unidentified Man #12: Ronald Reagan.
Unidentified Woman #15: Not a hard worker.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Woman #16: Sullen.
Unidentified Man #13: Hollywood.
Unidentified Man #14: I see him on television. That's where I see Fred Thompson.
NORRIS: Rudy Giuliani.
Unidentified Man #15: Mayor, New York.
Unidentified Man #16: 9/11.
Unidentified Woman #17: 9/11.
Unidentified Man #17: Tough.
Unidentified Woman #18: Wonderful pragmatist.
Unidentified Woman #19: A card.
Unidentified Woman #20: Can't win.
Unidentified Man #18: I like Giuliani.
Unidentified Man #19: Definitely, not electable.
NORRIS: Ron Paul.
Unidentified Man #20: Libertarian.
Unidentified Woman #21: Libertarian.
Unidentified Man #21: A fluke.
Unidentified Woman #22: Unusual.
Unidentified Man #22: Don't know.
Unidentified Woman #23: Extreme.
Unidentified Woman #24: Gutsy.
Unidentified Woman #25: The blimp.
NORRIS: Hillary Clinton.
Unidentified Woman #26: Politician.
Unidentified Man #23: The White House.
Unidentified Woman #27: Strong.
Unidentified Woman #28: Strong.
Unidentified Woman #29: Driven.
Unidentified Man #24: True.
Unidentified Man #25: Possible future. She's all right, isn't she?
Unidentified Man #26: Was president for eight years.
NORRIS: Barack Obama.
Unidentified Woman #30: Dynamic.
Unidentified Man #27: Upcoming.
Unidentified Woman #31: Actually, he's likeable.
Unidentified Woman #32: Charismatic.
Unidentified Woman #33: Audacity.
Unidentified Woman #34: Really interesting.
Unidentified Woman #35: Compassionate.
Unidentified Man #28: Inspiring.
Unidentified Woman #36: Dedicated.
Unidentified Man #29: Future.
NORRIS: John Edwards.
Unidentified Man #30: Upcoming.
Unidentified Woman #37: Hype.
Unidentified Man #31: Ambulance chaser.
Unidentified Woman #38: Aggressive.
Unidentified Woman #39: Unlikable.
Unidentified Man #32: From South Carolina, I like that.
Unidentified Woman #40: Down home.
Unidentified Man #33: I think he's a pretty good man.
NORRIS: Dennis Kucinich.
Unidentified Man #34: Single payer.
Unidentified Man #35: No idea.
Unidentified Man #36: Strange.
Unidentified Man #37: Odd.
Unidentified Woman 41: Not sure who he is. Just kidding.
(Soundbite of laughter)
NORRIS: Impressions of the candidates from South Carolina voters Lynn Bennett(ph), Onessamus Campbell(ph), Cindy Casta(ph), Lisa Corson(ph), Alexandra Eddings(ph), Sam Franklin(ph), Jonathan Freeman(ph), Jack Giddens(ph), Sy Granger(ph), Cynthia Hardy(ph), Don Hess(ph), Cindy Mastellar(ph), and Brad Warthen(ph).
In Columbia, South Carolina, I'm Michele Norris.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
We take a break from politics now - huh - to consider Ben Allison, a musician who just may be the hardest working man in jazz. He's a bass player and composer. And over the past 15 years, he's released eight records, led four bands, runs his own jazz club and publishes a newsletter. Along the way, he collected praise from critics, awards and a modest income.
From New York, Tom Vitale reports on Allison's latest efforts to build his audience.
TOM VITALE: Ben Allison says he tried to write simple music with simple beats for his new band.
(Soundbite of music)
VITALE: But performing those tunes is not as easy as it sounds.
Mr. BEN ALLISON (Musician): You'd be surprised at how hard it is for some jazz musicians to deal with a simple beat because they want to augment it and modify it and get tricky with it, rather than keep it simple. And that's one thing the older I've gotten, the more I tried to write simpler and simpler music stuff that's just not that complex. I can cut the - trapped on a lot of jazz musicians bond too or we try to, quote, unquote, "add interest" to a tune by making it more complex, you know, as if those were the same things.
(Soundbite of music)
VITALE: Ben Allison combines subtle harmonies with spare melodies then flavors the compositions with electric guitar and a beat. He says the bass vamp on the title track of his new CD, "Little Things Run the World," was inspired by Led Zeppelin.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. ALLISON: That's what I grew up listening to. I mean, it's hard to hear "Good Times Bad Times," you know, any kind of Led Zeppelin without hearing dum, dum. You know, that's part of my history, part of my youth.
(Soundbite of song, "Good Times Bad Times")
LED ZEPPELIN (Rock band): (Singing) In the days of my youth, I was told what it means to be a man.
VITALE: Ben Allison was raised in New Haven, Connecticut, where his father was a psychoanalyst, his mother an English teacher. Like most kids born in 1966, he grew up listening to rock music. Then, he discovered jazz.
Mr. ALLISON: And when I got into jazz and started really pursuing that, it's such a deep music and it requires such a high level of musicianship. It takes a lot of time. It took all my time and all my energy. And for awhile there, I had blinders on. But, you know, in the process I kind of distanced myself from my roots in that way. And then, the older I get, the more I feel like I want to get back to it. And it's just so much fun to rock.
(Soundbite of music)
VITALE: Though you couldn't really call this rock, Ben Allison's new CD was mixed like a rock record, says Matt Balitsaris, who engineered it.
Mr. MATT BALITSARIS (Owner, Palmetto Records): We were more inclined to put the guitar in stereo, put the drums in stereo across the middle and, you know, with the bass drum overlaid the bass so that you really feel that crunch of the rhythm.
(Soundbite of music)
VITALE: Producer Matt Balitsaris owns Palmetto Records, the independent label that releases CDS by Ben Allison and other young composers like Ted Nash and Frank Kimbrough, along with the challenging music of the late Andrew Hill.
Balitsaris says the label's mission is to support jazz musicians whose work exists in the context of today's culture.
Mr. BALITSARIS: One of the messages that's constantly out there in the world today is that jazz is something that already happened. It started, and it ended, and everybody now is just a caretaker of this tradition. And, you know, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as long as people are making jazz records that sound like they were made in the '60s.
(Soundbite of music)
VITALE: Composer Ben Allison comes out of New York's progressive jazz scene. For a dozen years until 2004, he co-directed the Jazz Composers Collective, a group dedicated to promoting new music that might otherwise have had a hard time reaching an audience.
With his new band, Allison says he's getting back to his roots but he's not going back to the electric bass. The only instrument in his Greenwich Village living room is a Prescott upright acoustic bass.
Mr. ALLISON: I started on electric bass way back in the day. But the first time I heard the acoustic bass, what knocked me out about it was the amount of sounds you can get out of it like, I'm a big proponent of kind of pulling up on the street to get kind of a sloppy sound.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. ALLISON: And you can hit the strings and hit the finger board to get a drum sound.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. ALLISON: There's a lot of — not just information, but a lot of emotional content to all of those other sounds. All of the slurs, all the squeaks, all the buzzes, and I want to have that really be a part of my music.
(Soundbite of music)
VITALE: Ben Allison says he wants his politics to be a part of his music, too, in a subtle way. The name of his new band and the title of one of his slippery new tunes is "Man Size Safe."
Mr. ALLISON: I read an article in the Washington Post about the fact that our Vice President Dick Cheney apparently has a man-size safe in his office. And it struck me at first, I'm not humorist. It's an odd collection of words. But also a little bit disturbing.
(Soundbite of music)
VITALE: Allison's seven previous records have all been hits with the critics. But his sales are only a tiny fraction of what a pop artist would bring in.
Palmetto owner Matt Balitsaris.
Mr. BALITSARIS: For a jazz record — for any jazz record — if we sell over 10,000, we're all going out to lunch.
VITALE: Ben Allison says lunch isn't the only reward.
Mr. ALLISON: All the people that listen to my music, by and large, have either heard us live, or come to us, or someone said, Oh, you've got to check this out, I mean, it's real personal. I got people writing from all over the world. They've all found the music in some way. It wasn't beam to their brains by Starbucks or anything. They found it because they like it, and that kind of makes up for all of the petty frustrations that you have to deal with on a day-to-day basis.
VITALE: Ben Allison says in the business of jazz, if you don't keep changing, you're done.
For NPR News, I'm Tom Vitale in New York.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: You can hear full songs from Ben Allison's new album and discover more great jazz at our music Web site, npr.org/music.
Our parting words tonight come from a woman who spent her life fighting for the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony did vote once in November of 1872. She was later tried and convicted of illegal voting. Thirty years later, she received a postcard in the mail from a local political committee, reminding her to register. The card had been sent to S.B. Anthony. And since she was listed as the head of the household, the committee assumed she was a man. Anthony wrote back to the committee, quote, "In 1872, I received a request like this and I did register and vote, for which I was arrested, convicted and fined $100. Excuse me if I decline to repeat the experience."
Susan B. Anthony died in 1906, 14 years before the passage of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: That's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News for this week. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Time now for Science Out of the Box. This week: how the urge to return a landscape to its pristine state can be misguided.
(Soundbite of music)
Billions of dollars have gone to restoring degraded American rivers to what's supposed to be their natural form. Often, the goal is to recreate a river that curves back and forth, winding beautifully. But according to a new study, the idea that a meandering river is natural maybe flawed.
NPR's John Nielsen met the authors of the new study near a winding creek in rural Pennsylvania.
(Soundbite of running river)
Mr. ROBERT WALTER (Geologist): We're along the banks of the Little Conestoga Creek, which flows into the main Conestoga. Now, we're going to walk along the right bank of the stream.
JOHN NIELSEN: Geologist Robert Walter used to think the Little Conestoga was about as natural as the creek can get. It's beautiful, it's tree lined and it wind past tall soil embankment that look like they've been around for thousands of years. In short, this is just the kind of stream that river restoration experts like to use as a model in this part of the East.
But then, about five years ago, geologist Dorothy Merritts, who is married to Robert Walter, started finding strange objects. There are even some of the tall banks that lined its stream.
For example, stumps from giant swamp trees cut by European settlers.
Professor DOROTHY MERRITTS (Earth and Environment, Franklin & Marshall College; Geologist): We also find log roads that early settlers built to get across these marshy bottomlands. They would cut down some of the younger trees' tall, straight trunks and lay them out in a row and lash them all together.
NIELSEN: Those finds made it look like Little Conestoga Creek had changed a lot over the past few hundred years. To find out more, Robert Walter took a bunch of soil samples and then ran tests that were designed to tell him whether the riverbanks were really as ancient as they looked.
He says it turns out that there is nothing at all ancient about big dirt embankments like the one we are now facing.
Prof. WALTERS: Everything that you see basically from my ankles to about 20 feet above it was deposited between 1730 and 1850, about 120 years.
NIELSEN: In other words, whatever the stream used to look like is now buried under 20 feet of mud. And in retrospect, Walter thinks it's obvious where all this mud came from. Three hundred years ago, they started washing down off of deforested hillsides and farm fields, he says. Then, it started pooling up behind small dams colonists had built to cover local grist mills.
He found one of those early dams nearby. A winding creek flowed over the top of it then fell 10 feet into some rocks.
Prof. WALTERS: What they did initially was probably filled a timber-crib structure and maybe fill that with sediment. And then as time went on, they reinforced it with limestone, the Conestoga limestone.
NIELSEN: Walter says more than 60,000 of these dams were turning Eastern Rivers into mill ponds by the end of the 1840s. But by the beginning of the 1900s, most of the ponds behind the dams were full of mud, and the dams themselves were abandoned or destroyed.
In the journal Science, Walter and Dorothy Merritts argued that this is when a lot of supposedly natural winding rivers actually got their start, by cutting deep channels down through the leftover mud.
Walter and Merritts teach geology at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. They say the story of what happened at Little Conestoga Creek shows how quickly people can forget what natural landscapes used to look like.
Other river experts, like David Montgomery of the University of Washington, say the study is also a cautionary tale for everyone involved in the art of river restoration. He says the basic message of this paper is that if you want to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, you need to know exactly what he looked like in the first place.
Prof. DAVID MONTGOMERY (Geomorphology, University of Washington): If you are trying to restore rivers to benefit fish and other organisms in those rivers, if you're not just trying to make them look pretty — the best model for that is the system in which they evolved and thrived.
NIELSEN: Back in Pennsylvania, Robert Walter says the landscape under the Little Conestoga was probably full of swampy streams that split off into lots of little twisted channels. He says wetlands like this were probably found all over the East Coast at one time. Excavating them will not be easy.
John Nielsen, NPR News, Washington.
SEABROOK: Now, this election update. Hillary Clinton has won the Democratic caucuses in Nevada, besting Barack Obama by six percentage points. On the Republican side, Mitt Romney won an overwhelming victory in Nevada. The polls in the GOP primary in South Carolina have closed. John McCain and Mike Huckabee appear locked in a close race.
You can see results from South Carolina as they become available at npr.org/elections. While you're there, read up on what's at stake next week in South Carolina, and the upcoming presidential contest with our interactive election map.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Another day, another primary, and another set of caucuses.
NPR is projecting a victory for Hillary Rodham Clinton in today's Democratic presidential caucuses in Nevada. Barack Obama is a strong second, and John Edwards is far behind in third place.
In the Republican contest, Mitt Romney has won a resounding victory.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Republican Presidential Candidate): I won among Hispanic Americans, which is a very big statement for my campaign. I'm very pleased that I got that kind of support. And I expect that this campaign will cross ethnic and religious and gender lines and will generate the support that I need to win the nomination.
SEABROOK: John McCain and Ron Paul battled for a very distant second place in Nevada.
We'll have updates as they come in and news from South Carolina, where polls are still open for today's Republican primary until 7 p.m. Eastern Time.
We kick off our election coverage this evening with NPR's Scott Horsley in Nevada.
Scott, let's talk about the turnout and the results in the Democratic caucus. What do you know about the turnout?
SCOTT HORSLEY: Andrea, it was a remarkable turnout on the Democratic side. An estimated 100,000 voters took part in today's caucuses. That's more than just about anybody expected. And for some historical context, it's about 10 times what the Democrats turned out in the last election four years ago. You know, unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, Nevada doesn't really have a long history of playing kingmaker in presidential politics. So, candidates of the party here had to do a lot of education about what the caucus process involves.
And, of course, that pitch battle that we've seen between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has generated a lot of interest, and that is probably reflected in the turnout numbers.
SEABROOK: Scott, Hillary Clinton, NPR's projecting that she will win this caucus and - but Barack Obama is a very strong second. What - tell us the numbers here.
HORSLEY: Well, that's right. And the big question has been how influential the unions here in Nevada would be. It's a more heavily unionized state than either Iowa or New Hampshire. And Barack Obama won the endorsement of the biggest union, the Culinary Workers. There was a big controversy over these Nevada's - Las Vegas strip caucus sites were casino workers were allowed to caucus.
The Clinton campaign was concerned that the culinary workers might exercise a little too much muscle there and that would work to Obama's favor. As it turned out, though, these at-large caucus sites on the Las Vegas strip really only attracted 3 or 4,000 of those 107,000 caucus goers. So they were a fairly small fraction of the overall total.
And even here, in the heart of culinary workers' land, if the caucus site I visited at the Mirage Casino, Hillary Clinton eked out a narrow win.
SEABROOK: That's interesting. So wasn't at all what the campaigns were expecting there that over - the overwhelming number of people going to those caucuses would be from that union that endorsed Obama.
HORSLEY: That's right. Although it was - yeah, you have to say, it was a close contest here. And also a close contest with another of the at-large caucus sites that our colleague Ina Jaffe visited. Clinton got the victory there as well.
SEABROOK: So Scott, I know you spent a week talking to voters there in Nevada. Are the results here consistent with what you've heard from them?
HORSLEY: They are. One of the things we're seeing in the interest polls is the economy with the uppermost issue on their minds. And the politicians have been talking a lot about that.
Mitt Romney, on the Republican side, chose Nevada today to unveil his proposal for economic stimulus package. Certainly, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have all been spending a lot of time campaigning in the state, talking about how to protect jobs and how to help people who are facing foreclosure. Nevada has the nation's highest foreclosure rate.
SEABROOK: NPR's Scott Horsley in Las Vegas, Nevada.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Let's turn now to South Carolina, where Republicans, the presidential primary is still going on until 7 p.m. Eastern time.
NPR's Debbie Elliott is in Columbia, South Carolina. She's been out and about the state.
Debbie, weather must have been a concern there.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT: Hi, Andrea.
SEABROOK: Yes. How was the weather?
ELLIOTT: Well, it's cold and wet, even snow in some parts of the usually balmy Palmetto State here. And folks were a little bit concerned about turnout today. But the reports we're getting from around the state, even upstate where there was snow, that people still came out and voted. In fact, there was a heavy early-morning voting upstate because they knew the snow is coming later in the day.
I think that reflects the excitement that people feel about this wide-open race. Some of the voters that I talked to here in Columbia even said they - you know, were undecided up until the last minute, making their decisions at the boot today.
SEABROOK: Fascinating. And, of course, we'll be watching these results and reporting them to our listeners as soon as we get them.
But Debbie, what were voters telling you were their biggest issues in this primary?
ELLIOTT: You know, I went to a large Baptist church, Shandon Baptist on the outskirts of Columbia today and talked to voters as they finished voting. And several themes recurred, including national security.
Let's listen to what this voter had to say. This is 70-year-old Jim Young(ph).
Mr. JIM YOUNG (Voter): Two reasons I came to vote for John McCain: number one, he's somewhat retired military and he is - I think he'll get us out of Iraq quickly and so on. And number two, we need somebody as president who's going to bring people together, and I think he can do that. He's proven that in the past. So I think he'll do a good job if he's elected.
ELLIOTT: Some of the other things that folks were talking about - immigration is a big concern and, of course, the economy. The news here in South Carolina just yesterday, the new unemployment figures showed a 6.6 percent unemployment rate here. That's the third highest in the country.
SEABROOK: Hmm. Well, remind people that the Democratic primary in South Carolina is next week, and, of course, we'll be there as well.
ELLIOTT: Mm-hmm.
SEABROOK: But going into this primary, the polls favored Arizona Senator John McCain and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Two very kinds of Republicans, who were they reaching out to in the state?
ELLIOTT: Well, you know, each of them seemed to have their own natural base here. For John McCain, it's the state's large military contingent - both active duty personnel and retirees, veterans. They turn out at his events. He appeals to their patriotism.
For Mike Huckabee, it's the evangelical voters here, some say up to 40 percent of the Republican electorate here. He's reached out to them. He's taking a more populist approach, hitting on themes that resonate with them. Even this week, picking up on the confederate battle flag issue, which was big here in 2000 and hurt John McCain during that election.
SEABROOK: What does that mean for Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney in South Carolina?
ELLIOTT: Well, you know, Mitt Romney left the state on Thursday. He really was putting his attention in Nevada. From Thompson, you know, he's been on talk, radio, saying he is the real conservative in this race. This is, you know, certainly a race where he has to make a stand if he is going to continue to be a viable Republican candidate.
SEABROOK: Thanks very much. NPR's Debbie Elliott in Columbia, South Carolina.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
And I'm joined now in the studio by NPR senior Washington editor, Ron Elving.
Hi, there, Ron.
RON ELVING: Good to be with you, Andrea.
SEABROOK: What do you make of the apparent Clinton victory in the Nevada caucuses?
ELVING: Well, it's great news for her, of course. It confirms her momentum coming out of New Hampshire. That was critical for her. It also shows her medal as a battler because, you know, she lost the endorsements that everyone went after so hot and heavy from the two big unions. And she battled back, did fine in those caucus casinos that Scott Horsley referred to earlier.
SEABROOK: Mm-hmm.
ELVING: She showed that she could still compete for that vote. She did very well among Hispanics. She brought out a lot of women. It looks as though the vote in Nevada on the Democratic side was 60 percent women, virtually 60 percent women. And, of course, that's a strong group for her.
She also did well among older voters. And people turned out in greater numbers as they got older. The older groups turned out more than the younger groups did and that's, of course, bad news for Barack Obama who did so well among younger people in Iowa.
SEABROOK: But he's not far behind. The numbers at least that we're getting so far, we don't have them all granted. But he's right on her heels there.
ELVING: While this is good news for Hillary, it's not clear yet that there's a lot of bad news in it for Barack. He knows he still has to get better turnout among his stronger groups, and he has to compete better among older people and among people who make less than $50,000 a year and who are not African-American. Looks like he won about four-fifths of the African-American vote.
As for John Edwards, hard to find a silver lining in these Nevada results for him.
SEABROOK: Yeah. Far behind still. Let's turn to the Republicans in Nevada. It seems to have been a cakewalk for Mitt Romney. How big a deal is it for Republicans that they - the other ones that they lost Nevada?
ELVING: Well, here again, it's really a good thing for Mitt Romney. It's a big confirmation of his momentum coming out the Michigan win that he just got and he's going to say, hey, I've got three golds and two silvers so far, referring to Michigan and Nevada and the earlier caucuses in Wyoming, and then, of course, the two silvers from Iowa and New Hampshire.
And he's going to say exactly that, and then they're going to cue the Olympic theme, and we could go right on with that. But how bad is it really for the rivals? Not maybe such a big deal because there was never a lot of question about who is going to win in Nevada. They knew that Mitt Romney was going to have a big Mormon turnout, and they knew that this was going to help him. Apparently, about a quarter of the people who voted today were Mormons and apparently they went overwhelmingly for Romney - no great surprise. And really it was only Mitt and Ron Paul competing here. The other guys were all focusing on South Carolina.
SEABROOK: It was sort of fait accompli. How important is having won Nevada for Mitt Romney?
ELVING: It's a big deal for him because if he had lost here as if he had lost in Michigan, he would be losing the momentum that he's not going to get out of South Carolina, where we're not expecting him to have a big night tonight. And assuming that he doesn't, he's going to have to have an alternative scenario for his nomination because as we know every Republican nominee since 1980 has won South Carolina.
SEABROOK: South Carolina. Democrats go to South Carolina. The polls in South Carolina next Saturday - does the winner in Nevada going to South Carolina with that, you know, the M-word, momentum, that we're always talking about?
ELVING: Yes, she does. But of course, it's a very different situation there and so that momentum may not be absolutely the last word. There are far fewer Hispanic voters in South Carolina, far more African-Americans - about half the Democratic base. And as we saw Obama really dominating that vote in Nevada today. If we see that again, Barack Obama will win in South Carolina. But look for more of a third - three-way race, I should say. Look for more of a John Edwards-comeback a little bit in South Carolina next week, even without the momentum that he, of course, did not get from Nevada today.
SEABROOK: NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving.
Thanks, Ron, very much.
ELVING: Thank you, Andrea. Thank you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Now, an update on politics in Venezuela. Last month, opponents of President Hugo Chavez narrowly defeated a referendum that would have given Chavez limitless opportunity to seek reelection. Now, he's urged his supporters to launch a drive to remove constitutional term limits so he can run again in 2012.
As NPR South America correspondent Julie McCarthy reports, Venezuela's once-fractured opposition is now unified and strategizing on next steps.
JULIE McCARTHY: Venezuela's university students have emerged in six short months as a powerful voice for the opposition with a movement that organizers estimate is 100,000 strong.
(Soundbite of protesters)
McCARTHY: Their first foray into Venezuelan politics came last June. Students clashed with the government over its refusal to renew the broadcast license of one of the country's most popular and anti-government television stations. By November, tens of thousands of Venezuelan citizens had joined this student-led demonstration to denounce the bid by Chavez to expand his powers.
A majority of the voters sided with the students in December, voting down the referendum that would have allowed Chavez to seek reelection as long as he wished. Students are now regrouping.
Mr. FRANK CALVINO(ph) (Student Leader, Venezuela): If I became communist, they're going to kill me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CALVINO: (Speaking in foreign language)
McCARTHY: Student organizer Frank Calvino jokes with his fellow students on the campus at the University of Venezuela as they debate next moves.
Mr. JONATHAN MAYNARD(ph): (Speaking in foreign language)
McCARTHY: It's important to have a new ideology. One is that more inclusive and more ethical, says Jonathan Maynard. The 20-year-old reared in a home of ardent Chavez supporters is now a member of the student opposition.
Senior opposition leader and former presidential candidate Teodoro Petkoff says university students have played a vital role at crucial times throughout Venezuela's history. And in taking on the policies of Hugo Chavez, he says this generation students are no different.
Mr. TEODORO PETKOFF (Director, Tal Cual Newspaper, Venezuela): These are the same students as American students against the Vietnam War or the same students of Kent University, of Berkeley or students in France in May '68. They may be the same thing that students all over the world do when they bump against unjustice(ph).
McCARTHY: The biggest injustice, according to former student leader and Mayor Leopoldo Lopez, is the failure of the Chavez government to safeguard the rights of all citizens regardless of their political views. Lopez points to the myriad Chavez-inspired social programs that the government says have reduced poverty, improved health and lowered illiteracy.
Mayor LEOPOLDO LOPEZ (Chacao, Venezuela): Unfortunately, many of the social programs that are being sold outside Venezuela as miraculous programs are programs that are only for those that support his political ideology. He no longer represents hope. He represents power.
(Soundbite of music)
McCARTHY: Mayor Lopez attends a rehearsal of the student orchestra in his municipality of Chacao, which Transparency International declared a model of good governance. But his outspokenness and popularity - he was reelected with 85 percent of the vote - has attracted unwanted attention. The Harvard-trained 36-year-old with boyish looks says he has been the target of more than two dozens state criminal investigations and three assassination attempts.
Despite that, he remains on the frontlines to form what he calls a new majority.
Mayor LOPEZ: The challenge that we have ahead is to present Venezuelans not with an opposition agenda, but with an alternative. We want a Venezuela where independent of the way you think, your rights as your rights with no exclusion, with no privileges. And that's a Venezuela different from the past and is different from what Chavez has done for a decade.
McCARTHY: Among the young mayor's strongest allies are the students who have been accorded rock star status since helping to defeat Chavez in December.
(Soundbite of crowd)
McCARTHY: Well-wishers at this student-organized concert swarmed Freddy Guevara, a national student leader from the Catholic university in Caracas whose Tom Cruise looks may have as much to do with his popular appeal as his message of national reconciliation.
Freddy autographs T-shirts and bends down to listen to old ladies who pat his cheeks with grandmotherly affection. Seventy-five-year-old Flor Ortega(ph) says.
Ms. FLOR ORTEGA: (Speaking in foreign language)
McCARTHY: The student movement has been like the angels of our democracy. We were very sad, she says, and they inspired us.
Unidentified Woman: (Singing in foreign language)
McCARTHY: Eighty-three-year-old Beatrice Alcantada(ph) joins people a quarter her age on this night of folk music, rock and rap. And she has choice words for President Chavez whom she blames for fanning the flames of divisiveness.
Ms. BEATRICE ALCANTADA: (Speaking in foreign language)
McCARTHY: Power has made him sick, she says. I ask him, as many Venezuelans do, to rectify the situation and look for unity and for peace. He has spoken enough nonsense, she says. This is a democracy, she says in a frail voice, and I am not afraid.
Twenty-one-year-old Freddy Guevara says the students have helped restore a sense of hope among those who believe the opposition was incapable of mounting any genuine challenge to their charismatic president. He says they're doing it by taking the focus off Hugo Chavez and putting it on democracy.
Mr. FREDDY GUEVARA (Student Leader, Andres Bello Catholic University, Caracas, Venezuela): Not much time will pass for the government to do something democratic, and not much time will pass for the students to have to go to the street and fight for their rights.
McCARTHY: You know, each time you go to the streets and you become stronger, the government will push back harder.
Mr. GUEVARA: Yeah. I think that what we have in control is a non-violence. When you go to the street with a non-violence, you can keep the government the excuse to make a big impression.
McCARTHY: Congressman Luis Tascon, a passionate Chavez supporter, is not that impressed by the opposition or its arguments. He stresses that Chavez attained power through democratic election, and reelection, and still enjoys tremendous support especially among the poor.
Nonetheless, Congressman Tascon says Chavizmo itself needs a review in light of the December loss to the polls.
Congressman LUIS TASCON (Venezuela): (Speaking in foreign language)
McCARTHY: The elites, those in high office, are interested in power. They have lost the sense of what the authentic problems are - crime being the biggest one, the congressman says.
The opposition's defeat of Chavez's referendum last month appears to have slowed down his socialist experiment. President Chavez has opened the year emphasizing instead everyday issues such as crime, milk shortages and inflation.
Veteran opposition leader Teodoro Petkoff admits that the anti-Chavez forces ceded power to Chavez when they boycotted earlier elections. But Petkoff says expecting opposition this year to resort to the one tactic left to it - mass protest.
Mr. PETKOFF: Some - if the street, is the real scenario for us.
McCARTHY: The next electoral test for the opposition comes later this year when the country elects mayors and governors.
Julie McCarthy, NPR News.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
We're bringing you the results of the American presidential contests today as they come in.
With most districts reporting, Hillary Clinton has defeated Barack Obama in the Nevada caucuses by six percentage points. Mitt Romney trounced his opponents in the Republican caucuses. The polls have now closed in South Carolina, where John McCain and Mike Huckabee appear to be in a close race. NPR will bring you the results as we have them.
You can follow along with our interactive election map at npr.org/elections.
Now, we wanted to take a moment to talk to you about another political story in South Carolina this week. His name is Joseph P. Riley Jr.
On Monday, he was sworn in as mayor of Charleston for the ninth time. Mayor Riley has served the city since 1975, and he is on the line from his office.
Thank you for joining us, sir.
Mayor JOSEPH P. RILEY JR. (Charleston, South Carolina): Thank you. It's my pleasure.
SEABROOK: First of all, congratulations, sir, on your win. You seem to have this election thing down pat.
Mayor RILEY: Well, the citizens are very patient in Charleston. They've given me time to figure out how to do this job, and I love working with them. It's the best job in public service in America.
SEABROOK: Tell me what Charleston was like when you first were sworn in on December 15th, 1975.
Mayor RILEY: Well, it was very different. The downtown was almost dead, old historic commercial downtown. There was racial division. It's really why I ran for mayor. I was urged by African-American leaders and white business leaders to be a bridge-builder. You know, the future of the city was questionable as was the case of American cities. What - you know, will this work any longer? There was a fear of crime. You know, it was, you know, a real turning point time in this city, and I think the American city in the '70s, many were in that same kind of situation.
SEABROOK: And of course, now it's changed a lot. Charleston is now considered one of the most pretty, sort of picture-postcard and livable cities in the country. How much do you take credit for?
Mayor RILEY: Well, the credit goes to my citizens. I work for them. We've worked very hard. Our goal is to be able to pass the answer to the question: is this the best that can be done? Is anyone doing it better? So whether it was restoring our historic commercial downtown - or when we built public housing, we built it beautifully.
We've won an award from the president of the United States for showing the country that you could build housing for very poor people beautifully and nourish neighborhoods rather than have them take away from neighborhoods. And we built a gorgeous waterfront park on a ugly eyesore, and we said no to the idea of privatizing it and gating it, and high-rising it, and said, no, let's make it a wonderful, beautiful public park first. And that's - was up to make this a great American city, and we've done that.
SEABROOK: From reading about your work, I understand that you have a monthly mayor's night in, where you sit in your office and anyone, any citizen can come talk to you. What kind of things do you hear from your citizens then?
Mayor RILEY: Oh, everything. I hear from unusual personal problems to, you know, to a drainage edge needs to be worked out, but it's wonderful. I love it, because what I know is that I'm never more than a month away from any citizen who needs to talk to me talking to me.
SEABROOK: And, of course, it's manageable to do that since your city is, you know, a pretty small sized, 100,000 people.
Mayor RILEY: Well, we have 121,000 citizens in the city now. And it's - it is manageable, but mayors of largest cities do it as well.
SEABROOK: And, of course, there have been challenges in your 32 years. I think of the fire last year that killed nine firefighters, the biggest death of firefighters since 9/11. You've been criticized personally over how you handled this. What are your thoughts now about that time?
Mayor RILEY: Well, certainly, personally that was the biggest challenge, a terrible tragedy. And we resolved to make Charleston the place of best practices and most professional firefighting. And so that's what we're doing and that's the way that we will honor these nine fallen people. So heaven forbid, when another community has a serious and tragic fire like this, that they will know the day after, the word will be, well, you need to go to Charleston, South Carolina, and see what they did, and how they responded, and how they recovered, and look at their wonderful fire department.
SEABROOK: Mayor Riley, are you going to run again?
Mayor RILEY: Oh, gosh. I haven't decided. That's a few years up. I love my work. I get to work early, but it's not a job that you will ever want to do in some other time. And so I'll know when the time is and hopefully I will know the time to stop before my citizens know the time for me to stop. But I'm so grateful for their support and encouragement through these years.
SEABROOK: Well, today is, in fact, your birthday. Happy birthday.
Mayor RILEY: Well, thank you very much.
SEABROOK: 65 years old. Seems like you spent half your life in city hall.
Mayor RILEY: Well, it's been a great time. It's a very special type of public service in our country and the fact that you're working for every citizen, be it picking up their garbage and attending to their personal neighborhood needs each and every day.
SEABROOK: Joseph P. Riley was sworn in this week for his ninth term as the mayor of Charleston, South Carolina.
Congratulations, sir, and happy birthday.
Mayor RILEY: Thank you very much.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
And now for some more memorable characters. Your homework last week was to tell us about the fictional characters you just can't forget. We thought you'd send us stories that were inspiring, touching, sweet. And we got this e-mail from Shelly Porterfield(ph) in Kansas City, Missouri.
Ms. SHELLY PORTERFIELD (Resident, Kansas City, Missouri): And as soon as Andrea said tell us about your most memorable characters, Guy Woodhouse popped into my head. And it's because, I guess, because it will be really horrible to be married to him.
SEABROOK: That's Guy Woodhouse, the scheming husband in "Rosemary's Baby." He allows his wife to be impregnated by the devil in return for a successful acting career.
Ms. PORTERFIELD: I just would like to smack him myself. So maybe that's - he just kind of gets me riled up.
SEABROOK: At the other end of the spectrum, Devin Tutac(ph) of Arlington, Virginia wrote, although I never carried around a notebook to write skating observations about my friends, neighbors and strangers, I was - maybe still am - "Harriet the Spy."
Ms. DEVIN TUTAC (Resident, Arlington, Virginia): I tend to watch the people around me, and I may not necessarily interact with them in a traditional sense, but I do listen to what they are saying. I observe what they're doing, and sometimes hypothesize about what they may actually be thinking or doing.
SEABROOK: Tutac says she's a little more logical and less brave than the intrepid Harriet, but…
Ms. TUTAC: I really do want to go back and read about Harriet again, because I wonder if that might just be something that pushes me into thinking about getting that courage and losing a little bit of logic. And maybe that's what writing is - maybe writing is just being more creative and a little illogical all at once.
SEABROOK: Here's another good one. Listener Kate Ahern(ph) sent in her memories of Bone, the little girl at the heart of Dorothy Allison's novel "Bastard Out of Carolina."
Bone was the survivor I wanted to be but I didn't think it was possible, Ahern writes. Although she was physically, sexually and emotionally abused, she was powerful. She had a sense of agency. I kept "Bastard Out of Carolina" in my school bag every day to be close to Bone, to be able to run my fingers along the spine of the novel when I felt threatened or powerless and draw strength.
And speaking of characters, one of my all-time favorite is the original misfit - Holden Caufield of J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye."
Tomorrow, in the program, as part of NPR's series In Character, I'll talk with an author and a TV producer about the depths and appeal of Holden Caufield.
Now, for this week's homework assignment. We want you tell us your nickname. How did you get it? Is it embarrassing? Who gave it to you? Send your nickname stories to homework@npr.org. Make sure you include your real name and phone number or call our homework hotline at 202-408-5183.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
In professional football, it's down to the final four teams. The San Diego Chargers will take on the New England Patriots in the early game tomorrow. And later in the day, the New York Giants clash with the Green Bay Packers. The winners of these games square off in the Super Bowl in two weeks.
NPR's Tom Goldman covers sports and joins me now.
Hello, Tom.
TOM GOLDMAN: Hello.
SEABROOK: So as I understand it, only one of the four teams left playing at this point was actually expected to make it this far. The other three are surprises.
GOLDMAN: That's absolutely right, and that one team you're talking about is the New England Patriots, being the ones who are expected to, not only win tomorrow, but win the Super Bowl. But that's - we'll talk about that later.
The other three, yes, you could say they are surprises. The San Diego Chargers beat the Indianapolis Colts last week and now will face the Patriots, as you said. And in the National Football Conference, the Dallas Cowboys were supposed to emerge in playing the Super Bowl but they're nowhere to be seen, beaten last week by the plucky New York Giants, and then the Green Bay Packers, who, a year ago where just kind of an after thought, have had a resurgent season led by their resurgent and aged quarterback Brett Favre and suddenly here they are in the NFC championship game. So there's some excitement there.
SEABROOK: So the Indianapolis Colts getting beaten last week means that Peyton Manning, the famous quarterback is out of the playoffs. He was the favorite to be still in at this point, but his brother, another Manning, continues on in the playoffs much to everyone's surprise.
GOLDMAN: That is perhaps the biggest surprise. Peyton Manning led the Indianapolis Colts to the Super Bowl championship last year and considered by many, certainly, one of the greatest of all time. But here he is - his little brother, Eli - who basically has been out playing Peyton in the playoffs. And here he is on the cusp maybe of going to his first Super Bowl.
Eli has been playing very well and it's really nice to see because he has been battered by the New York media. He was horrible earlier in the season and everyone was about to write him off, but the Giants have come alive. They've won nine straight games on the road, and Eli Manning has been really quite solid, quite good during these playoffs.
SEABROOK: Tom, if we believe the weatherman, these games are going to be rough.
GOLDMAN: Very rough. In Green Bay, it's supposed to be one degree above zero, by game time.
SEABROOK: Whew.
GOLDMAN: And in New England, earlier in the day, the forecast is for highs in the mid-20s, lows in the low teens and windy. It will have an effect, but perhaps not the way people expect. People will think the players are shivering so hard that they can't catch the ball. That maybe the case, but this is a macho game and some of them are going to go out in short sleeves and show that the cold doesn't affect in that way.
The big impact could be on the field surface, particularly in Green Bay. If the field is slippery that's going to be a real problem for the New York Giants defensive line, in particular, which relies on quickness and speed. And so cold will be a factor.
SEABROOK: So, Tom, pull out the crystal ball.
GOLDMAN: In the National Football Conference championship, I believe, Green Bay will win. Brett Favre, the quarterback for the Packers will handle the conditions better. Green Bay's defense and its special teams are playing very well. And, plus, Eli Manning, as good as he's been at quarterback for the New York Giants during this play-offs, he doesn't have a great record playing in cold weather.
So Green Bay is my pick to go into the Super Bowl and lose to the New England Patriots by winning their 18th game tomorrow and then their 19th in two weeks. The Patriots will secure the greatest season ever. And knowing that all these awaits and considering how focused this team has been up to now, they're not going to go out and lay an egg and lose at this point.
SEABROOK: NPR's Tom Goldman. Thanks very much, Tom.
GOLDMAN: You bet.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Another day, another primary, another set of caucuses.
Hillary Clinton beat out Barack Obama in the Nevada Democratic caucuses. Mitt Romney was the Republicans' favorite by far. We'll hear from a reporter in Nevada in a few moments. But first, to South Carolina, where the polls closed an hour ago in the Republican presidential primary.
With results trickling in now, Arizona Senator John McCain appears locked in a tight race with former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. We begin our coverage with NPR's David Greene at the Citadel in Charleston, where John McCain will speak to his supporters later tonight.
And David Greene, what are they saying there at the Citadel?
DAVID GREENE: Well, they're being very cautious, Andrea. The, you know, it's funny the campaign allowed people to come watch this - reporters to come in and watch the poll results come in when McCain was up in New Hampshire and I think feeling more confident. Reporters wanted to come in into the hotel and watch with them tonight and they said uh-uh. So if that's an indication that they're being very, very cautious and watching the results. And, as you said, they're in a very tight battle with Mike Huckabee, it appears.
The lectern is waiting for McCain whenever he arrives, in front of two American flags. We're here at the Citadel. And the people I've spoken with who voted for McCain today are talking about the military. They're talking about experience. They're talking about voting for a commander-in-chief and having someone in the White House who can protect the country, and then that's the point that McCain made in the days here in South Carolina.
SEABROOK: NPR's David Greene in Charleston, thanks. We'll get an update from you later.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
And now to Audie Cornish, who's also at South Carolina at the Convention Center in downtown Columbia, where Mike Huckabee has his headquarters.
Audie, what's the mood there?
AUDIE CORNISH: I think the mood is just as cautious as it is over at McCain's place. Essentially, the campaign managers here are repeatedly bringing up the bad weather, I think maybe downplaying expectations because some of worst weather was in the areas of the state that where the most Republican, the most conservative and the most evangelical.
SEABROOK: Audie, what did you hear from voters this week? I know you spoke to many of them.
CORNISH: Well, there's definitely a divide in terms of you have your evangelical vote, but that's not a monolithic vote. There are folks behind the sort of Bob Jones University people, and fundamentalists who back Mitt Romney. You have the Southern Baptists of there's more than half a million in the state. And they obviously are tends to support a Baptist like Mike Huckabee. So it wasn't obvious which way these votes would go, even though it would seem that Huckabee obviously has a natural constituency here.
SEABROOK: Now, do we have any word that Mike Huckabee will be speaking at all tonight?
CORNISH: He will be speaking, but we don't know when. And I think that's because it's so close right now. We're not hearing a lot from the campaign about exit polls. They're not really wanting to get to details to talk about it.
SEABROOK: It's a nail-biter. NPR's Audie Cornish in Columbia, South Carolina. Thanks very much, Audie.
CORNISH: Thank you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Before we leave you tonight, we want to recap the day's events in politics -the Republican presidential primary in South Carolina, and the caucuses for both the parties in Nevada.
I'm joined by NPR's Ron Elving here in the studio, and NPR's Debbie Elliott who joins us from Columbia, South Carolina.
Let me start with you Debbie.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT: Okay.
SEABROOK: The polls closed nearly two hours ago. As far as we can see, it's close race between John McCain and Mike Huckabee. But I gather we should all be making more coffee here. Is this going to be a late night?
ELLIOTT: I don't know. I wish I could give you a winner, Andrea, but it doesn't look like we've got one just yet. It's a very, very close race right now. About half of the precincts have reported John McCain has a less than 10,000-vote advantage over former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. It looks like about 3 percentage points at this moment. It's been fluctuating between 3 and 5 percent all night.
Now, Huckabee's people have been saying not worry, that he has strong support in the upstate region, in the northwest part of the state, and that some of those precincts have not reported. And that once they do, they expect him to be propelled into the lead. But right now, we just don't know.
SEABROOK: We're also used to insta-politics these days. It's sort of exciting not to know two hours polls close.
ELLIOTT: It is exciting.
SEABROOK: Yeah. We haven't heard from either McCain or Huckabee yet, but Fred Thompson came out. What did he have to say, Debbie?
ELLIOTT: You know, it was interesting. You know, right now, he and Romney are both sort of vying for third place, with half of the votes in. And he came out kind of with a long face, and he started thanking everybody - his wife, his kids, his mother, his grandkids. He said, you know, we will always be bound by a special bond, talking about his supporters and the people that he has been travelling with.
But then, he kind of launched into his stump speech. So you weren't quite sure what to make of it.
SEABROOK: A lot of reporters down there half-writing eulogies, it sounds like.
ELLIOTT: I think so.
SEABROOK: Ron, where did they - let's talk about the state we can't talk about today, Nevada. Hillary Clinton beat out Barack Obama despite his endorsement of an influential union there, the Culinary Workers Union. But what happened to John Edwards?
RON ELVING: Yes. He seems to be the forgotten man in Nevada.
SEABROOK: Mm-hmm.
ELVING: And in fact, it was really not possible for him to compete on an equal footing with the frontrunners in Nevada. It was not possible for him financially, and he just didn't have enough time because he had to concentrate so much of his time on South Carolina. That's coming up next Saturday for the Democrats.
Today, the Republicans - next week, the Democrats will be on the air again here on NPR, providing the exact same coverage for the Democratic side that we did for the Republican side in South Carolina. And that's a must-win for him. It's his birth state. He talks about it all the time. He really needs to revitalize his candidacy there. So, he had to keep his focus there.
He came to Nevada for the debate in Las Vegas on Tuesday night. He stuck around for a few events. But he didn't really have the money to have the number of ads or the spread of ads, the reach of ads that the two frontrunners in Nevada could. So today, he wound up with about 4 percent.
SEABROOK: So the Democrats go on to South Carolina next Saturday. After that, Florida, I believe, for both parties, is that right?
ELVING: January 29th.
SEABROOK: And then we'll be in to Super Duper Tuesday, when most people think of this thing will be - will have an idea of who the nominee should be on each side.
ELVING: We'll certainly have an awful lot more evidence. About half of the country will have voted.
SEABROOK: Hmm. NPR's Ron Elving and Debbie Elliott. Thank you so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Andrea.
ELLIOTT: My pleasure.
SEABROOK: You can get the latest news from today's presidential contests in Nevada and South Carolina by going to npr.org/elections. And you can read up at what's at stake in the presidential races ahead on our very cool interactive election map.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
NPR recently launched a new series exploring famous American fictional characters. It's called In Character. Today, we're going to talk about a character who took teen angst to a whole another level. His story was published in 1951 to immediate acclaim and immediate disdain. It was the target of numerous censorship campaigns. But it's still required reading in schools across the country. Who is this most American of characters? Holden Caulfield, from J.D. Salinger's 1951 novel "The Catcher in the Rye."
We're going to speak with two adult Holden admirers in a moment. But first, we wondered how teenagers today remember Holden. We sent reporter Joel Rose to find out.
Ms. KERA APPLE(ph): He was really annoying. And I kind of wanted to punch him in the face because he wouldn't stop whining.
Mr. JAKE POLOMBO(ph): He's like a pretty disillusioned guy. (Unintelligible) and anything. And he was the one who was like angry about the kids losing their innocence and he was like uncomfortable about, like, embarking in an adult world.
Ms. CATHY REAGAN(ph): I know that I really understood him and felt for him a lot, just because a lot of the time when you're dealing with becoming an adult and just dealing with upsetting things in your life, you do sort of find yourself in that in-between place where you're unhappy but you're not devastated and just really hard to sort through.
Mr. POLOMBO: And like I was sad the day I turned 18. My angst was like - it's like my childhood just is gone. And it's like you try to cling on to it and that's what that book is about.
SEABROOK: Jake Polombo and Kera Apple and Cathy Reagan at the University of Pennsylvania. "The Catcher in the Rye" is Holden Caulfield's own story of his expulsion from boarding school and the, quote, "madman stuff" that follows during a weekend alone in New York.
Written in a teenage slang of the '50s, it becomes the interior monologue of boy pushed to the brink.
Ms. STEPHANIE SAVAGE (Executive Producer, "The O.C.," "Gossip Girl"): I remember being amazed to find this crazy book about a 16-year-old kid having a nervous breakdown. And it was such a revelation to me that there could be books like that and voices like that in literature.
SEABROOK: That's Stephanie Savage, one of two adults we turned to who specialize in stories of tortured youth. Savage was executive producer FOX Television's "The O.C." and is one of the forces behind the new show "Gossip Girl." And Tobias Wolff is the author of the memoir "This Boy's Life" and the novel "Old School."
Tobias Wolff, you were 6 years old when J.D. Salinger published "The Catcher in the Rye" in 1951. Do you remember reading it for the first time?
Mr. TOBIAS WOLFF (Author, "This Boy's Life," "Old School"): Oh, do I ever? I was 15 or so before I came to it. And the reading was made all richer for me by the fact that I was in exactly such a school as Pencey Prep.
I had a bit part in a play called "Room Service" and it was in the winter in a school just like Pencey Prep. And I started reading it backstage between my little appearances and I was laughing so hard I got so caught up in it that I kept missing my cues.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. WOLFF: But there I was. I mean, I was in this place and he knew that world exactly. And these long winter nights in a school like that where the guys get bored and start picking on each other, and every fault of everyone around you becomes magnified to the thousandth degree. And his war against the adult world which all of us were waging. And it was so sweet and subversive to read that book. I will never forget that.
SEABROOK: Help me remind our listeners of who Holden Caulfield is - his story. He's obsessed with phonies. He's been kicked out of prep school, which is full of phonies. He's wondering around New York City in a red hunting hat.
Mr. WOLFF: He's a very, very funny fellow. And he's very acute in spotting phonies. The problem with Holden is that, to him, everyone, after a while, seems phony. As funny the book as it is, and reading through it again recently, I found it devastatingly sad.
Ms. SAVAGE: I found that too, rereading it again. And you forget - the memory you have is of the warmth and the poignancy and the astuteness of the observations. And you forget how truly, truly sad it is and how is that he is through the whole thing. He keeps you bursting into tears. He says at one point that he thinks about killing himself. It's very sad.
Mr. WOLFF: Yeah. His younger brother who he has idolized for his innocence -the way he now does his sister Phoebe - has died. And he ruminates on the - on going to his grave and being caught in a downpour and thinking of leaving his brother there underground in this terrible day. And later, he himself is walking along the street in New York. And it should be festive. It's around Christmastime. The shoppers are out. And he is broken into a sweat. Every time he steps off the curb, he thinks I'm going to go down and down forever. No one will ever see me again. This kind of calls up that image of his brother in his grave. And he starts praying to his brother - Allie, don't let me disappear. Don't let me disappear. There's such terror there. The humor that has sustained so much of this novel begins to unravel at the end and you're left with this naked soul in pain and in conflict. Finally, you see not with the world but with himself.
SEABROOK: Stephanie Savage, you worked on the TV show "The O.C." And your new show is called "Gossip Girl." And they're both, you know, teen soap operas. What do you see in Holden emotionally that connects him to today's teenagers?
Ms. SAVAGE: I think that sense of yearning is very key. And that sense of being trapped kind of between two worlds - between the world of children and the world of adults - which, in Holden's case, I mean, it's really interesting. Holden really is living in the last days before Elvis, when teenagers hadn't really been invented yet. Teenagers were just starting to get a culture of their own back then. And you see that in the book, where you can choose the carousel in Central Park or you can choose the wicker bar. You can go on a skating date or you can have a prostitute come up to your hotel room. And there's not really that sense of teen culture that there is now.
SEABROOK: Is that why you call Holden Caulfield the first teen, Stephanie Savage, because there wasn't really a teen culture before that, in your words?
Ms. SAVAGE: Yeah, the idea of teenagers really kind of emerged in the early '40s. And kind of exploded in the post-war prosperous 1950s. After the war, you had a situation where more people where finishing high school, there was the rise of college, people were marrying later, young people were becoming employed and having their own spending money, and you've got a kind of corresponding teen culture that grew up to support that, the kind of drive-ins and soda shops and cruising. Holden is living before that, trying to pass himself off as an adult in all these situations even though he's still a kid in Manhattan in 1951. I think it's the perfect place to do that.
SEABROOK: Tobias Wolff, you said that you read a different "Catcher in the Rye" as you get older. Have your impressions of Holden Caulfield changed as you've become an adult?
Mr. WOLFF: Oh, yes, of course. When I first read it, I felt as if you were a confederate of mine, you know, a teammate in this skepticism about the worthiness of adult life, and now I look at him, in a way, like his old teacher, Mr. Antolini, who pats his head while he's asleep. Then Holden wakes up from that and imagines that the man has made a pass at him he can't even accept that, that avuncular affection that the man is overcome by. And I have that avuncular affection for Holden and I have a degree of sorrow, really, that I couldn't possibly have felt at that time.
SEABROOK: Hmm. Let me ask you this, Tobias Wolff, you talked about Holden's teacher, Mr. Antolini. Mr. Antolini tells Holden he's riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall.
Mr. WOLFF: Mm-hmm.
SEABROOK: Mr. Antolini says it's the kind of fall designed for men who are looking for something their environment can't provide them with. Do you imagine what Holden Caulfield would be like as an adult?
Mr. WOLFF: I've never been able to imagine Holden as an adult. He is forever Holden within the limits of this novel and it's - that's a really wonderful question because often I - my imagination continues to live in a work that I do have some conception of how, for example, Nick Carraway in "The Great Gatsby," what kind of life he had after that novel?
Holden is - I don't know how he's going to survive the kind of crisis and spirit that he is undergoing here, whether he will be able to accept the little corruptions and compromises that in the kind of lubricant so falsity(ph) that make up our dealings with each other as we get older to some extent or other? Whether if he did accept those things he could ever then live comfortably with himself? That's a very open question for me at the end of this novel.
SEABROOK: Stephanie Savage?
Ms. SAVAGE: Yeah. It's hard to imagine Holden as an adult because I think even if you compare him to James Dean character Jim Stark in "Rebel without a Cause," you feel like in that movie, at the end of the movie he really has grown up and he's had, you know, this terrible tragedies occur - there was two deaths in the movie. But you feel like he comes out the other side of it, a man.
And I feel like Holden comes out of the other side of this journey alive and not necessarily in a particularly different place than he has started just that he survived this crisis and who knows when the next one will be coming. And I think for that reason that's part of why, you know, he lives on in our memories as this kind of original teenager because we've never had to imagine him growing up.
SEABROOK: Television producer Stephanie Savage and author Tobias Wolff, and of course the spirit of Holden Caulfield in absentia. Thanks you all so much.
Mr. WOLFF: Thank you, Andrea.
Ms. SAVAGE: Thank you.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: What great American characters inspire you? Nominate your favorites on our In Character blog. We may put your suggestion on the radio, go to npr.org/incharacter.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Our parting words tonight come from a man whose life we celebrate officially tomorrow and whose lessons we would do well to remember everyday.
Martin Luther King Jr. He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. And in his Nobel lecture that December he said this: Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart.
Makes me think of my daughter. What does it make you think of?
That's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News for this week. I'm Andrea Seabrook. Have a great week.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
For NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Dueling endorsements today in the top Democratic campaigns. After winning yesterday's Nevada caucuses, Senator Hillary Clinton jetted to New York to pick up the support of Reverend Calvin Butts, pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem.
Reverend CALVIN BUTTS (Pastor, Abyssinian Baptist Church): In our quest for change, it's time that we return to the fundamentals - experience, ability, respect and character. It is really time for Senator Hillary Clinton.
SEABROOK: Senator Barack Obama also picked up an endorsement today. And this one's kind of amazing. It came from the Reverend Kirbyjon Caldwell, senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston. What makes it a surprise is that Reverend Caldwell is one of President Bush's spiritual advisers. In fact, he introduced candidate George W. Bush at the Republican Convention in 2000 and gave the benediction at both inaugural ceremonies. Reverend Caldwell says he believes a President Obama would, quote, "bring people together to pursue a common vision."
On the Republican side, the field is a bit narrower today. Congressman Duncan Hunter announced last night that he is pulling out of the race after he barely showed in South Carolina and Nevada. Former governor Mitt Romney picked up an easy win in the Nevada caucuses. And in South Carolina, Senator John McCain just beat out former Governor Mike Huckabee.
We caught up with Huckabee today in Texas on his way to action star Chuck Norris' ranch for a little RnR.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Republican Governor, Arkansas; Republican Presidential Candidate): Well, we're disappointed. I mean, the fact is Fred Thompson, in the race, didn't even get close to us, but he took just enough away from us that probably kept us from the margin. And that, plus the fact that it snowed in Greenville and Spartanburg, where we had a lot of our votes, didn't help us. But it is one of this, you know, we were very tight near the top and, certainly, had hoped to actually win it and thought we would. But we're by no stretch of the imagination out of the picture. In fact, you know, we continue to be a strong contender in every primary that we're involved in.
SEABROOK: Fred Thompson gave a speech last night that has the world speculating on how long he'll be in the race. If he pulls out, are you counting on getting the votes that would have gone to him?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, I think those votes aren't monolithic to go anywhere. But a lot of the votes that I believe he took from us in South Carolina would have definitely been ours. So it appeared that Fred was, in essence, bailing out. But he hasn't made that announcement official. Although both in Iowa, where he said he was in there for a do-or-die and he died, but he stayed in. And then he said South Carolina was do-or-die and he died. And I have to assume at some point that, you know, he really does have to consider not going somewhere.
SEABROOK: The last time you were on our air, Governor Huckabee, you told MORNING EDITION, our sister program, that you were going to win South Carolina, and it would prove that you had broader appeal than the media was portraying you. Does it mean that you don't, that you lost?
Mr. HUCKABEE: No. Again, I think we almost won. And it was unfortunate we didn't. But I think a lot of our appeal comes from my talking about abolishing of the IRS, the fact that we would completely transform our tax system. I do think that issue is beginning to get more traction. People see the economy in trouble. They know that America is in a big problem right now. And it needs a big idea to fix it, not little piddling ideas that many of the candidates are putting forward.
What we need is something much bolder. And the transformation of our tax system, including getting rid of the IRS and having a less strangulating and regulating environment is exactly what many Americans really needs to be done.
SEABROOK: But sir, I wonder if the idea just seems so radical to completely get rid of the IRS, that people don't even know how to imagine what your presidency would look like.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, I think what they do realize is that their tax forms are a nightmare. They know that there in small business, their toughest competition comes from their own government, constantly having to fly with a mountain of paperwork.
I've never sat down ahead a conversation with people who understood the Fair tax who didn't absolutely love it if they understood it. Now, there are some people who don't understand it and some who think they understand it and they'll be very critical of it. But it's not that complicated. I say it's a tax system simple enough that a 7-year-old running a lemonade stand can actually understand. It's one of the things that's most appealing.
SEABROOK: I don't think anybody thought there would be this many Republican candidates - six viable candidates going into Florida, the primary on the 29th.
How do you compete against candidates that have a whole lot more money than you do, and have been in the state longer? I'm talking about Mitt Romney - can finance his own campaign. Rudy Giuliani has been there in Florida all along with a large organization. How do you compete against them?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Same way we used to competed against them all along. No one ever thought I would last this long. No one ever gave me any hope of being a major contender. We've not only lasted this long and become a major contender but we're still very much in this race to win it. And I think when people look at how much money some of these candidates have spent to get so little for it, that's the story. It's not, gosh, how have we gotten here. It's how have they not gotten further. Is their message so weak that they've spent that kind of money and, for it, they really have not garnered a level of support commensurate with the funds having been spent.
SEABROOK: And going into Super Tuesday. Some call it Super Duper Tuesday. Twenty-four primaries on the same day, February 5th - how do you decide where to put your money on a day like that?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, that's something, you know, we'll be looking at over the next several days. And there'll be a lot of strategy meetings that we'll be having to determine exactly what's the roadmap from here - looking at the delegate count, looking at where our whole numbers are strong and (unintelligible) where we need to concentrate.
SEABROOK: Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas.
Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Thank you, Andrea.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
South Carolina, as first-in-the-South primary is considered pivotal for both parties. For the Republicans, it's always been a bellwether. Since 1980, the winner of the GOP primary has always gone on to win the nomination. For Democrats, next Saturday's contest is the first time where they will see a significant African-American vote.
NPR's Debbie Elliott joins us now from Columbia, South Carolina.
And Debbie, you've been looking at the exit polls. What do they tell you about why John McCain defeated Mike Huckabee and the rest of the Republican field?
DEBBIE ELLIOTT: This was a real test for conservative Republicans. Seven in ten of the Republican voters in South Carolina described themselves as conservatives. More than half of them were religious conservative. Now, Huckabee scored nearly 2-to-1 over McCain among that group. But it's not a monolithic group. So you saw other candidates like former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, siphoning off some of Huckabee's base here.
One in four of the South Carolina Republicans were veterans. And McCain have the advantage there. He also did well among moderate Republicans and independent voters.
SEABROOK: The Republicans are now focusing on Florida. Its primary is January 29th. What's the electorate look like there?
ELLIOTT: Well, it's a big state. But you have a lot of these same groups. For example, religious conservatives, particularly strong in the panhandle, in the northern part of the state. You've also got a very strong military presence - a lot of bases in Florida. There are retired military there, a lot of veterans. And like we said, you know, that's where McCain, the former prisoner of war, does very well.
We should also note that Florida is a closed primary. You have to be a registered Republican to vote. So McCain is not going to be able to get that boost that he's gotten elsewhere from independents. It's also an expensive state. You know, it's a big state. You've got the Miami media market. That could benefit Mitt Romney. He alone in the Republican field has the financial wherewithal to run across the state.
SEABROOK: And Debbie, I know Rudy Giuliani has been focused on Florida for a long time.
ELLIOTT: Yes. He is strong there with his national security message. You know, there are also a lot of ports in Florida. There's also a large contingent of what you might call mainline GOP voters, the traditional small government fiscal conservatives. That's a group that Giuliani has targeted, as well as Romney. And we know that the former New York mayor has put all his eggs in the Florida basket. This is a decision that he was defending just this morning on ABC's "This Week."
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York City; Republican Presidential Candidate): Florida is a microcosm of the country. It's a large state. This is a state that reflects America.
SEABROOK: Debbie, lets talk about the Democrats now. They're gearing up for a big fight in South Carolina this week. There's a big debate in Myrtle Beach tomorrow night, the primary is Saturday. The frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have had two contentious weeks with much made about the issue of race in the campaign. How does that play in South Carolina, where more than 50 percent of the Democratic electorate is black?
ELLIOTT: Well, there's clearly some frustration here. When you talk to African-American voters, they sort of roll their eyes and say, oh, please let's not go there again. But it's probably had some impact as well, you know? Late last year, Clinton was perceived to have the advantage here, and that has shifted some when you talk to the political observers. Some credit Obama's Iowa win for that. Clinton does have support here among traditional African-American leaders, whereas Obama is getting his traction among younger generations. In fact, you can see that divide tonight.
Obama is staging his own rally in Columbia - here this evening, at the same time the state NAACP is having a meeting across town. Obama clearly doesn't see the need to go court that traditional base. John Edwards will be at NAACP meeting, and in fact the Clinton campaign is sending a surrogate, former President Clinton adviser Vernon Jordan.
SEABROOK: I'm glad you mentioned John Edwards, Debbie, because he's - it's funny - the South is where he's supposed to get his - gain his traction but you're not mentioning him in those terms.
ELLIOTT: Well, you know, he doesn't seem to be getting anywhere but he keeps talking about South Carolina being very important to him. He's counting on what he considers the home folks - he was born here. And it is the only state he won in 2004. He talked about that a little bit on CBS this morning.
(Soundbite of John Edwards CBS Interview)
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Governor of North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): I'm now in South Carolina. I got my butt kicked in Nevada. What you learn from that is that - all of my life, when that's happened to me - you just got to get up and stand and start fighting.
ELLIOTT: Edwards did admit that, you know, the historical nature of this Democratic race with the first woman and the first African-American, considered to really have a shot. But it's sort of overshadowing his candidacy. But he said he was in it for the long haul and that he would be around come Super Tuesday.
SEABROOK: NPR's Debbie Elliott in Columbia, South Carolina.
Thanks very much, Debbie.
ELLIOTT: My pleasure.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Illinois Senator Barack Obama brought his message of unity and hope to Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta today. He spoke on what's known as King Sunday, on the eve of the holiday that commemorates the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
NPR's Kathy Lohr reports.
KATHY LOHR: Obama's appearance at Ebenezer Baptist Church conveys a great deal of symbolism, especially this weekend. Reverend Raphael Warnock told more than 1,800 churchgoers that Obama is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream realized.
(Soundbite of music)
Reverend RAPHAEL WARNOCK (Senior Pastor, Ebenezer Baptist Church): Because of Dr. King he is here. Because of Dr. King he is here. And that ought to make all Americans, all Americans proud.
LOHR: Invoking Dr. King's legacy, Obama saysthe legendary civil rights leader inspired people all over the country, not with words of anger but with a fierce urgency. He said unity is what will bring about change.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Democratic Presidential Candidate): Not because it sounds pleasant, not because it makes us feel good but because it's the only we can overcome the essential deficit that exists in this country.
Unidentified Group: Yeah.
Sen. OBAMA: I'm not talking about the budget deficit. I'm not talking about the trade deficit. I'm talking about the moral deficit in this country.
(Soundbite of applause)
LOHR: Obama did not directly mentioned the sparring over the past few weeks with Hillary Clinton over a statement she made that suggested Dr. King needed President Lyndon Johnson to help realize his dream of civil rights. But Obama noted division has crept into the race for president, saying none of our hands are clean.
Sen. OBAMA: We can no longer afford to build ourselves up by tearing each other down.
Unidentified Group: Yeah.
Sen. OBAMA: We can no longer afford to traffic lies or fear or hate because the ploy what we must purge from our politics, the wall that we must tear down before the hour grows too late. Because if Dr. King could love his jail room, if he could call on the faithful who once said who are you to forgive those who had set dogs and fire hoses upon them, and surely we can look past what divides us in our time than bind up our wounds.
LOHR: The crowd at Ebenezer Baptist was supportive, giving Obama several standing ovations. They also stood outside the church in bone-chilling temperatures and watched as the candidate placed a wreath at the tomb of both Martin and Coretta Scott King.
Curtis Bratton(ph) from Atlanta said Obama has his vote.
Mr. CURTIS BRATTON: After I've listened to all the candidates, his message really stands out with me. It really resonates. And I feel that he's a candidate that really can take the country in a new direction, in a better direction that he's been going in as far.
LOHR: Several others talked about how Obama inspires them, including Angel Knight(ph) of Atlanta.
Ms. ANGEL KNIGHT: It's the first time I feel like my vote matters, really. I'm - if I have a 7-year-old, I'm a single parent. He's the one, I mean, he's just - I can't even say it deeper than that. He's the one.
LOHR: Obama now looks to Saturday's primary in South Carolina, where more than 50 percent of the Democratic electorate is African-American.
Kathy Lohr, NPR News, Atlanta.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Relations between African-Americans and Latinos have been rocky at times, but there have been efforts to bring the groups together. Martin Luther King, himself, reached out to Cesar Chavez, the head of the United Farm Workers.
NPR's Enrique Rivera recently stumbled on his own families' connection with Martin Luther King and offers this commentary.
ENRIQUE RIVERA: The other day, my grandmother was showing me these old writers she had dug up from a dusty box hidden away somewhere. She wanted to help inspire me with a writing project I had difficulty completing. Some of these short stories were ancient, typed on cellophanes and paper that had turned brown with time. As I went through these family treasures, one essay caught my attention because it was written in English. What I discovered was an assignment my grandmother receives from an English class she had taken years ago. It was a beautifully written poetic oath to Martin Luther King.
Ms. BEATRIZ CHAVEZ: (Reading) Memphis, Tennessee, April 4, 1968. I have a dream from his head and chest bloomed many red spring lilies. .
RIVERA: From his head and chest bloomed many red spring lilies. My grandmother, Beatriz Chavez, came to the United States from El Salvador 14 years ago. In her homeland, she taught history. Here she's still a poet and an artist. Her murals reflect the struggle for people and Latinos around the world. I asked my grandmother about the red spring lilies metaphor she used for Dr. King's blood.
Ms. CHAVEZ: (Speaking in foreign language)
RIVERA: Because for me his blood was planted as lilies in fertile ground which was the spirit of all those disenfranchised people.
My grandmother told me that when she received the word of Martin Luther King's death nearly 40 years ago, she was filled with sadness. In her essay she wrote: The gun that killed him actually strengthened his hopes, energy, and life and made them more meaningful to others. Although he died, his ideas will live forever.
Before I had read my grandmothers words, I had never really thought about Martin Luther King Jr.'s influence on the Latino community. So I thought I'd go speak to some activist around Washington where King delivered his, I Have a Dream, speech.
Juan Pacheco(ph) works with the young at risk Latinos in Northern Virginia. I asked him how Martin Luther King influenced the way he speaks to an audience.
Mr. JUAN PACHECO: You know, one of my dream is that I want to be a doctor and in terms of the medical world people have the choice of you being a good technician but there's a difference between that technician and healer, you know what I'm saying? So those kinds of mechanisms also can be translated into public speaking.
RIVERA: In my immediate neighborhood, where I grew up in D.C., Kerkira Less is a playwright, activist, actor, author and poet. When we spoke, he was carrying a book with Martin Luther King on the cover. He told me it was a collection of speeches from the Civil Rights era which he said mirrored the struggles of Latino immigrants today.
Mr. KERKIRA LESS (Playwright; Activist; Actor; Author; Poet): And when you look at, you know, what Michael Luther King stood for, you know, he was really questioning the morals of the nation, you know? He was questioning the core values of what this nation is supposed to stand for.
RIVERA: Those questions linger today, whether it's the immigration debate or how Latinos fight our way out of poverty. What we need to learn from Dr. King is to speak up, share, organize, and to make our struggle heard. Yes we belong here. Yes we want to be here. It is an American to speak out against government, it is immoral to stare injustice in the face and not speak out.
This takes me back to the end of my grandmother's essay: All dreams are possible if you want to fight for them. Let the red spring lilies bloom again with strong ideas, they are not impossible dreams.
SEABROOK: Commentator Enrique Rivera is an editorial assistant for NPR's TALK OF THE NATION.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
You can't see it, you can't smell it or taste it but it's all around you all the time. We're talking about the wireless spectrum, the waves that ripple through the air around us, transmitting messages to cell phone towers, TV antennas, to the base of your cordless phone for example.
Well, with the coming switch to digital television a part of that wireless spectrum, the 700 megahertz band, will be freed up and beginning this week the government will auction off the rights to use that band.
Timothy Woo is a law professor at Columbia University specializing in communications.
Hi there.
Professor TIMOTHY WOO (Law, Columbia University): Hi there.
SEABROOK: Now, I understand that it's very rare that such a large chunk of the wireless spectrum becomes available for commercial uses, isn't it?
Prof. WOO: There have been good auctions in the past, in the 1990s but this particular band has been occupied by television for about more than 50 years, and so this is a big deal.
SEABROOK: Now the biggest chuck, the one that is national and is going to be used for commercial purposes has attracted all sorts of telecoms giants here, AT&T, Verizon, also Google and other Silicon Valley tech companies. What will they be able to do with this?
Prof. WOO: They will be able to build a nationwide network of some kind, probably for Internet access. And so, you know, people have been talking about wireless Internet for about a decade but no one's really got it. We have these home Wi-Fi units which are fine but no one has cracked the knot on getting a true wireless Internet network that puts the Internet everywhere and this spectrum offers the possibility.
SEABROOK: What about cell phones, how can it change the way cell phones work?
Prof. WOO: The telecom companies own the most spectrums already and so they would like to further their holdings and perhaps corner the market. Verizon is proposing the most aggressively to build a 4G network that is a network that is also like Google, Internet everywhere. They have promised - Verizon has - that if they build this out they will allow anyone to connect anything to it.
SEABROOK: What does that mean allow anyone to connect anything to it, what do you mean?
Prof. WOO: Right now spectrum is regarded more like a private garden or like a living room that is you have to be invited in. You have to use Verizon cell phone to be on Verizon's network. The next - the future is an open access wireless connectivity, that is to say anyone, sort of, inventing a device and selling it to consumers and having that work. And those devices could be anything. They could be cameras that upload pictures, they could be refrigerators that tell the store that they want more milk, and they just could be better cell phones. The point is FCC has stipulated that the spectrum must be open to all devices that don't cause harm to the network and that is a revolution in telecommunications.
SEABROOK: So the analog of that might be when my bell was broken up, and suddenly, you could buy a phone at Radio Shack and plug it into the wall and it worked with whatever phone line you had, right?
Prof. WOO: It's similar to that. The AT&T was forced to open their networks in the late '70s to every single phone that was out there, and that's why you suddenly had Mickey Mouse telephones and race car telephones when before you had a black telephone.
SEABROOK: It sounds like there's some pretty stiff competition here among the different companies. How much do you think this chunk of the spectrum will go for?
Prof. WOO: To quote a friend, this could get crazy. The minimum that people expect is about $10 billion.
SEABROOK: Timothy Woo specializes in communications at Columbia University Law School and he's the co-author of the book "Who Controls the Internet?" He joined us from Park City, Utah.
Thanks very much.
Prof. WOO: It was a pleasure.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
We're going to talk now about an experiment in communications. It does not involve the FCC, but it does involved video cameras, the Internet and two brothers, John and Hank Green. They realized their relationship had become nothing more than a series of text messages and e-mails. So they decided to do something about it. That was just over a year ago on New Years Day.
(Soundbite of "Brotherhood 2.0")
Mr. HANK GREEN (Co-creator, "Brotherhood 2.0"): Starting on January 1st, today, I will send you a video blog. Tomorrow, you will reply to that video blog. We will continue like this until the year is up.
SEABROOK: John and Hank called the moratorium on the written word and began posting their video communiques on YouTube. Gradually, other people started to watch, too, tens of thousands of other people. John and Hank's experiment ended a couple of weeks ago and they join me now, John from Indianapolis and Hank from Missoula, Montana.
Mr. J. GREEN (Co-creator, "Brotherhood 2.0"): Hi. How is it going? This is John.
Mr. H. GREEN: Pretty good. This is Hank. I just want to say that this is not my idea.
SEABROOK: So, John, this is your idea.
Mr. J. GREEN: Yeah, it was - I guess it was my idea, but then neither of us had ever edited a video on our lives. But on January 1st, Hank managed to make something, and on January 2nd, I managed to make something in response and it just kept going for the rest of the year.
Mr. H. GREEN: It should be mentioned that John actually had to call me on January 2nd and have me tutorialize him on how to, you know, use computer.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: How old are you guys?
Mr. H. GREEN: I'm 27.
Mr. J. GREEN: And I'm 30.
SEABROOK: So you are of the e-mail generation.
Mr. J. GREEN: Yeah, very much so.
SEABROOK: Okay. So you were worried about not having that human contact.
Mr. H. GREEN: Yeah. In the end, text is a very empty form of communication. When you go from actual physical presence to spoken word and then another step we moved to text, it becomes a much more shallow way of communicating.
SEABROOK: Well, let's get people an idea of what we're talking about here. Let's play this blog entry from last year. This is you, John.
(Soundbite of "Brotherhood 2.0")
Mr. J. GREEN: Well, Hank, I have now gotten my haircut. Do you like it? Do you like it? I like it. I'm pretty happy with it. I went to a barbershop in Washington, D.C. called Louis, and the guy who cut my hair had cut the hair of both Bill Clinton and Willie Nelson. And when he told me this information, I was like, hmm, Bill Clinton and Willie Nelson are both historical figures whose work I admire, but I'm not necessarily booking to emulate their hairstyles.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: At the risk of being mildly insulting, these aren't exactly deep thoughts that we're talking about here that you were sending to each other. I mean…
Mr. J. GREEN: You're right that it isn't a deep thought, and we were never very sentimental in the videos. I don't think either of us ever said I love you. In fact, just saying that we never said I love you just made me feel awkward.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. H. GREEN: Oh god, yes, I agree.
Mr. J. GREEN: I know. Let's just forget that it ever happened, Hank. You're a good man. But there is a kind of depth to it because there's a familiarity. There's an intimacy that goes along with letting Hank know what I did today. And for many years in our relationship, there was no opportunity for us to go through the things that we did each day with each other, you know. So that was little things do, I think, in the final analysis really bring a kind of intimacy to a relationship.
(Soundbite of "Brotherhood 2.0")
Mr. H. GREEN: I just spent two hours and 30 minutes downloading your 2 minutes and one second video, which can mean only one thing - that I'm in mom and dad's house, the last residence in the United States of America with dial-up Internet.
Mr. J. GREEN: On the upside, it's awfully pretty. Plus, I get to be surrounded by memories of our childhood.
SEABROOK: Were you surprised by the number of people who began to follow your video relationship? Did it change the way you did as adult?
Mr. J. GREEN: I can't speak for Hank, but I don't think it changed the way I did it very much. I feel like in some ways we always knew that there was an audience even if there was just a few people. And when the audience got bigger, it was more people but ultimately the most important person in our audience for me was always Hank.
(Soundbite of "Brotherhood 2.0")
Mr. J. GREEN: Good morning, Hank. It's Friday, October 26th. Today I'm going to discuss the political situation in Nepal while eating five sheets of toilet paper.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. J. GREEN: So I think that's sort of in the spirit of the project that Hank and I have things that we care a lot about but we're also kind of goofy and nerdy.
SEABROOK: Now, you talk a lot about a lot of big issues - microfinance, global warming and you even arranged a charity fundraiser you called Project Awesome.
Mr. H. GREEN: Well, we basically got many of the people who watched "Brotherhood 2.0" to create their own video blogs featuring a charity that they really, really care about and that matters in their lives. So all these people got together and they made these videos about these charities and then we used the power of our fans, which we call nerd fighters, to go on YouTube and feature all of those videos by sort of fooling the YouTube algorithm into thinking that these videos were the most awesome videos for the day, and we pretty much did it. We took over the majority of YouTube for that day.
SEABROOK: But this was mainly an experiment in how to be brothers over the Internet. What did you learn?
Mr. J. GREEN: Well, I think the biggest thing we learned was that it's really fun to have a sibling and know them as an adult. You know, I left home when I was 15 to go to boarding school and so the last time in lived full time with Hank he was 12. And this was our first real opportunity to become grown up siblings.
SEABROOK: Do you miss it now that you're done?
Mr. J. GREEN: Yeah. Hank, do you miss it?
Mr. H. GREEN: I do. I was just thinking yesterday. I don't miss making the videos, but I miss receiving them.
Mr. J. GREEN: Yeah, I feel exactly the same way. I don't miss listening to me but I miss watching you.
Mr. H. GREEN: Yeah.
SEABROOK: Ohh.
Mr. J. GREEN: That was too cheesy.
SEABROOK: No, it's so cute. It was totally…
Mr. J. GREEN: It's too sentimental.
SEABROOK: It was completely sincere and you could tell.
Mr. J. GREEN: It's true, but it's gross.
SEABROOK: Thank you guys very much.
Mr. J. GREEN: Oh, thank you so much.
Mr. H. GREEN: Thank you.
SEABROOK: Hank and John Green make the news daily video blogs all of last year called "Brotherhood 2.0." They joined me from KUFM in Missoula and WFYI in Indianapolis.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
It hasn't quite gotten as bad as it did in 2004 yet, but political attack ads have already begun. Negative spin was key to President Bush's victory over Democratic nominee John Kerry left go around.
(Soundbite of a political ad)
Unidentified Man #1: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.
Unidentified Man #2: He is lying about his record.
Unidentified Man #3: I know John Kerry is lying about his first purple heart because I treated him for that injury.
SEABROOK: That ad even popularized a new verb - to swift vote. As in, wow, the opposition really swift voted that guy. Well, a lot of the damaging information in those ads is dredged up by a campaign team often called the opposition research department.
Stephen Marks spent more than a decade in those departments, from 1994 until recently, and he's written a tell-all book. It's called "Confessions of a Political Hitman." Marks describes his role in creating the powerful brand of family values Republicans. And it was ultimately the financial and sexual shenanigans of the same family values Republicans that led to Marks' disillusionment.
I asked Stephen Marks to explain what exactly a political hitman does when researching a rival Democrat.
Mr. STEPHEN MARKS (Author, "Confessions of a Political Hitman"): The first element is going to the courthouses of wherever they live, where they have done business and see if there's any lawsuits against them - leans, late property taxes, see if he's ever been arrested any criminal thing. And then as the second aspect, which is going through newspaper searches. In those days, Nexus was kind of in its infancy, so we've actually go through the microfilm in the libraries.
SEABROOK: Wow.
Mr. MARKS: Any kind of quote where they said something stupid, anything where they took a position that was political bad in that particular district, like for instance in the South being pro-choice and abortion or being from welfare spending or higher taxes, and then of course, we go through their vote as congressman. And…
SEABROOK: Anything you could use against them.
Mr. MARKS: Anything, anything as long as it really is true, anything that we believe the voters have the right to know about.
SEABROOK: A lot of people say that it has damaged the Democratic process. Now you assert in your book that it actually improved the Democratic process. Tell me about your position there.
Mr. MARKS: No one would begrudge a car buyer, a used car buyer going to car facts to look at the history of that car before they purchased it - accidents, any kind of repairs much the same way. If a voter is going to make an educated, intelligent vote, wouldn't they also have the right to know the background of that person they're voting for, and there may be stuff in there that's negative that's not relevant but the voter has the right to sift through at the (unintelligible) trail, which were not relevant. We need opposition research. It's a necessary evil. Without it, it's the voters that are really in the shadows.
SEABROOK: There are a lot of stories about negative campaigns winning the data in your book. But the most baffling might be the attacks against Democrat Max Cleland who lost the use of three limbs and service to his country, and he was accused of being unpatriotic.
Mr. MARKS: He was elected in 1996 and defeated in 2002. And Cleland made a number of votes. I think it was 10 or 12 votes against military spending, against the creation of Homeland Security. At that time, you've got to remember, it was right after 9/11. Bush was still very popular. And any kind of vote against military spending to fight terrorism was considered to be soft on terrorism. And the voters had the right to know that he made those votes and you can say that the voters were wrong to vote him out on those issues, but you have to remember the context of what year it was.
SEABROOK: But how can you question…
Mr. MARKS: And nobody is questioning - nobody questioned his patriotism, Andrea. They're questioning his judgment as a senator in making those what people considered bad votes.
SEABROOK: But it did come off as questioning his patriotism, didn't it?
Mr. MARKS: I - well, you know, you can look at it that way but you have to separate what we considered a (unintelligible) national security and his patriotism serving in Vietnam are two separate - completely separate things. One happened in the 1960s, one happened in the 1990s or early 2000. It was - again, it wasn't the fact that you're questioning his patriotism in Vietnam - he was a patriot - we're questioning his judgment when he made votes as a senator 30 years later.
SEABROOK: Now, the title of your book is "Confessions of a Political Hitman," and the word confession kind of suggests regret. Do you have any regrets?
Mr. MARKS: I don't have regrets that I did. I'm glad that I did because at least it was an educational experience for me to learn of how the process really works. Sometimes, I thought I was working for the good guys and then I find out years later I'm really working for the bad guys. Its kind of, like, the song by the Who "We Don't Get Fooled Again" where there's this, like, revolution and then at the end, it says meet the new boss, same as the old boss. In other words, you had Democrats running Congress for 50 years and then Republicans took over, and I thought we were going to be different, we were going to be better, we were going to - but you know what, the trappings of power - maybe I agree with their views a little more but personally and professionally and ethically and morally, they were no different and no better than the Democrats. It was meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
SEABROOK: Stephen Marks is the author of "Confessions of a Political Hitman."
Thanks very much, Stephen Marks.
Mr. MARKS: Okay. Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Hurricane Katrina's toll was also environmental. Trees took a wallop, hundreds of millions of them, according to new research. As those uprooted trees decay, they're releasing tons of carbon dioxide, and that makes them part of the climate change problem as well.
NPR's Elizabeth Shogren has that story from Louisiana.
ELIZABETH SHOGREN: Jeff Chambers is one of the lucky ones. He evacuated his house in New Orleans before Katrina hit. He's a biologist. And as he was fleeing, he already was thinking about the research tools he's been using to study the Amazon Forest.
JEFF CHAMBERS: And I thought, you know, this exact same tools would be ideal for quantifying Hurricane Katrina's impact on the Gulf Coast forest.
SHOGREN: Chambers, a professor at Tulane University, uses satellite images and on-the-ground surveys to study the damage caused by wind storms in the forests of Brazil. That put him in a perfect position to study the trees killed by Katrina. To start out, he hunted down two satellite images - one from two years before the storm and one from a year after, both taken the same month on clear days.
CHAMBERS: We'll do this, so we can kind of...
SHOGREN: Chambers shows me how he analyzed those images with expensive software.
CHAMBERS: Okay. So this is the pre-Katrina image. Now, let me show you the post-Katrina image.
SHOGREN: Much of the area that was green, meaning live trees, turns red in the image taken after Katrina. He ran programs to compare the two images, pixel by pixel. Each pixel covers about the size of a basketball court. He picked 25 of them that represent a range of forest damage. Then came the fun part. He zoomed in on each pixel.
CHAMBERS: Punch it into our GPS receiver and went out into the field and located that exact pixel that we had never been to before on the ground. And we measured the number of dead trees and all these data on forest damage.
SHOGREN: One of the most damaged pixels is about an hour's drive north of New Orleans at the Pearl River hunting reserve. I drive there with Chambers to take a look. Wild hogs are about the only thing in season, so there aren't a lot of hunters.
But the ones here, like Paul Noel, say this used to be a gorgeous, wide-open forest with mature hardwood trees.
PAUL NOEL: I'm amazed. I'm absolutely amazed. It is nothing...
SHOGREN: What's changed?
NOEL: There's no trees. You can't walk any place because of the briers.
SHOGREN: Noel just pulled up in his SUV. He's putting on his boots and hunting vest. It's his first time here since the storm.
NOEL: But it ought to be just for the game, you know, it really should be.
SHOGREN: And it is. Not far away, two hunters carry a couple of hogs out of the woods on their shoulders and put them into their red pickup truck. Nearby, we head into the woods. We crawl over, under and around downed trees. Prickly shrubs grabbed at our skin and clothing.
CHAMBERS: This is essentially ground-zero for where Katrina made its final landfall.
SHOGREN: This is what Chambers brought me here to see. The trunks of once massive oaks, sweet gums, pecans and other hardwoods lie in tangles across the forest floor like a massive game of pickup sticks. New growth, trees and sticker bushes, sprout everywhere. Chambers stops at one downed tree that's covered with mushrooms.
CHAMBERS: So here's the fruiting body of some species of fungus that's consuming this piece of dead wood. And as the fungi consume the piece of dead wood, one of their waste products is carbon dioxide.
SHOGREN: Three hundred and twenty million trees releasing carbon dioxide over the next 10 to 20 years. That's a lot of carbon dioxide. Chambers estimates that's about as much as all the trees across the United States soak up over the course of one year.
He's not the only scientist who's tried to measure Katrina's carbon footprint. Steve McNulty of the Forest Service used field surveys and aerial photography to make a similar calculation. His estimate was less than half as much, but McNulty doesn't quarrel with Chambers' findings.
STEVE MCNULTY: My estimates are probably somewhat conservative relative to the total damage just because you can't go out and survey all of the damage.
SHOGREN: Some in the forestry industry have criticized Chambers' study. They point out that most of Louisiana's forests are privately owned, and Chambers didn't do any site surveys on private property. And they stress that Chambers didn't take into consideration the trees that were taken to mills and turned into lumber after the storm.
(SOUNDBITE OF SAW MILL MACHINE)
SHOGREN: About an hour's drive to the northwest, loggers are busy cutting down and loading 60-foot-tall loblolly pines at the Jenkins family tree farm.
KIRK CASANOVA: The trees that are salvaged during this operation, the carbon will not be released because it'll stay in the form of boards and be used for construction and housing.
SHOGREN: That's Kirk Casanova with the Louisiana Department of Forestry. The state estimates that about 20 percent of the trees killed by Katrina were harvested. More than 200 acres of them were at the Jenkins' farm.
Margie Jenkins is the 86-year-old matriarch of the business.
What does it look like after the storm here?
MARGIE JENKINS: Well, it was absolutely devastating. You had these trees broke off halfway. A lot of them were leaning, a lot of them was laying on the ground. It was awful. So sad.
SHOGREN: Walking through a field of knee-high loblolly pines, Mrs. Jenkins' granddaughter, Amelia Levin, says Chambers missed something else. Some landowners, like themselves, have replanted. And the saplings already are absorbing carbon dioxide.
AMELIA LEVIN: By planting baby trees, that's a hell of a countermeasure, I think.
SHOGREN: Chambers concedes that new trees will soak up carbon dioxide, but it will take several decades for them to absorb as much as the trees that were lost.
CHAMBERS: The carbon released from all the deadwood and these patches of forests that were heavily damaged will result in a carbon source for many years. It would take much longer for the gains from photosynthesis and new wood production to make up for those losses.
SHOGREN: Besides, Chambers says, it's more important to ponder the big questions. As climate change makes intense storms like Katrina more frequent, will forests be able to absorb and store as much of the world's greenhouse gas pollution as they do now? Probably not. And if they can't, that will make the challenge of keeping climate change in check even tougher.
Elizabeth Shogren, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
Composer Jean Sibelius wrote music in the early 20th century that reflected Finland's struggle for independence from Russia. And Sibelius remains the country's most famous musical figure. Since his time, the country has grown into a progressive, cutting-edge, technological society. And some restless Finns are breaking onto their country's music scene with experimental sounds.
Music critic Chris Nickson has more.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "HARD ROCK HALLELUJAH")
LORDI: (Singing) Hard rock hallelujah. Hard rock hallelujah.
CHRIS NICKSON: Four men in monster masks and bizarre costumes playing heavy metal music and winning Europe's biggest pop competition might seem bizarre, but it happened in 2006.
That song, "Hard Rock Hallelujah," by Lordi scooped the Eurovision Song Contest for Finland. But it's not quite as strange as it seems. Hard rock and heavy metal have been Finland's most successful musical exports in recent years. From Hanoi Rocks in the 1980s to Children of Bodom, HIM and the cello-driven Apocalyptica, Finnish metal has made an international name.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NICKSON: But Finland is a country that likes rock in all its forms, as the charts reflect, although the bands do sing in the international language of English. The trio of 22-Pistepirkko are the perfect example.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PISTEPIRKKO: (Singing) Seen walking down this seedy town, (unintelligible) man in the moon...
NICKSON: They've been fixtures on the Finnish music scene for 25 years, consistently on the charts with an open, slightly psychedelic sound that ultimately doesn't fall into any camp.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
PISTEPIRKKO: (Singing) (unintelligible) sister, bring out your (unintelligible). Hey, sister, go sister, (unintelligible)...
NICKSON: But it's not just older bands who think outside the box. Younger artists too are merging rock with other styles. The curiously named, four- member Don Johnson Big Band played mix and match with several genres. They moved from dub to country on their self-titled, platinum-selling album, platinum in Finland being 30,000 copies. On "Road" they've hit on an interesting, melodic fusion of rock and hip-hop.
(SOUNDBITE OF "ROAD")
DON JOHNSON BIG BAND: (Singing) (unintelligible) on the road. (unintelligible). Key in the ignition, headlights rising, playing with the (unintelligible) but the rhythm is random. I set the (unintelligible) with a hand on the wheel but I'm still unable to (unintelligible) by the memories I only remember to forget like a radio or cinema, like a flash and (unintelligible). You could see without...
NICKSON: That kind of quirkiness is quite typical of Finnish music. It was already there back in the 1970s when the country produced a widely respected crop of progressive rock musicians. Among the leaders of the pack were Wigwam, fronted by Irish singer and keyboard player Jim Pembroke. He laced their music with a heavy dose of good humor to complement the intricate musicianship, but could never move beyond cult status internationally.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
JIM PEMBROKE: (Singing) (unintelligible)...
NICKSON: Wigwam still perform and record, so does their former bass player, Pekka Pohjola, although these days, he's found a home in the country's growing jazz scene. So has his son, trumpeter Verneri Pohjola who is part of the Ilmiliekki Quartet. Like many others in Finnish jazz, the band uses the music as a jumping-off point into experimentation that can range from the raucous to the moodily introspective.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NICKSON: Finnish heavy metal has a global reputation. But more recently, Finnish folk music has been snapping in its heels on the international stage. In part, credit must go to the folk music program at the Sibelius Academy. For more than 20 years, it's allowed a couple of generations of young musicians to develop and hone their skills. Beyond any doubt, the brightest stars to emerge from the Finnish folk scene are the female-led Varttina.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
VARTTINA: (Singing in Finnish)
NICKSON: Varttina have grown from naive teenagers singing regional music into a skilled, groundbreaking outfit. And they've been unafraid to play with their keening vocal sound and take it in unexpected directions. Most recently, they composed the music for the extravaganza stage musical version of "Lord of the Rings." And they're not the only act to make inroads outside their homeland. Wimme, a member of the nomadic Sami or Lapp people, has made an art form of their joik singing style.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WIMME: (Singing in Finnish)
NICKSON: Traditionally sung unaccompanied, joiks are small, impressionistic songs intended to convey the essence of a place or a person. Wimme has revolutionized the style by blending the joik with electronic soundscapes, making it accessible to a much wider audience.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WIMME: (Singing in Finnish)
NICKSON: If there's a single thread running through Finnish music, it's the willingness to subvert the norms. Whether it's the comic book theatricality of Lordi or the iconoclasm of Wimme, artists move naturally and easily outside established frameworks. In this relentless experimentation, they take the past and push it very firmly towards the future.
BLOCK: Our music critic is Chris Nickson. You can find a list of the Finnish band mentioned and more music from around the world at npr.org/music.
You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
An African-American community established before the Civil War is trying to preserve its history. Flat Rock, just east of Atlanta, disappeared from maps during reconstruction, but the community survived. Activists recently dedicated an archive there. Now, they're working to restore a slave cemetery where many of the community's first residents are buried.
From Atlanta, NPR's Kathy Lohr reports.
KATHY LOHR: The oldest map that documents the community of Flat Rock dates back to 1822.
JOHNNY WAITS: Here's another map showing Flat Rock. This one right here is 1822. This one is 1839. This one is 1830.
LOHR: Maps and other faded historic records are spread out all over wooden tables, and old photos hang on the walls inside the Flat Rock archive.
Johnny Waits began the effort to collect the items in the late '70s, and proudly shows them off.
WAITS: That's Flat Rock there. And the last time we appeared on any map was 1865. After that, we wasn't on any maps anymore.
LOHR: The once-rural community is now part of DeKalb County. It was carved out of neighboring Henry County, but Flat Rock was never incorporated. It was home to the first black and white churches in the area. Reverend T.A. Bryant donated his father's historic home so the community could establish an archive in it.
BRYANT: I was born here in this room, and I grew up here. I had three sisters and one brother.
LOHR: Reverend Bryant is 85 years old. He remembers what it was like working on the farm his father owned in the 1920s.
BRYANT: Mainly it was hard work. Doing all the chores, you know? We always had chores to do. Get up in the morning, you had to milk the cows, feed the hogs, feed the horses, the mules or whatever you had, feed the cattle, and - yeah. And mother always fed the chickens herself and gathered the eggs. When my dad didn't need us in the fields, we'd go to school, but if he needed us, we didn't go to school
LOHR: Reverend Bryant's father grew cotton, corn, wheat, oats, and specialty items like watermelon and cantaloupe to sell in town. He likely did the most to preserve this community when he bought 45 acres of land for $600. T.A. Bryant then sold off small pieces to his relatives and other blacks who were willing to remain in the South, when so many migrated north in search of better jobs and better lives.
BRYANT: A lot of people were leaving. A lot of his cousins left for New York and Detroit and Cleveland. And he eventually said that he wanted to keep the community alive. And he - I don't think he realized the impact. You know, we was here and we stayed here. Our people stayed here. And very few black communities, you know, was substantial or stayed in the community where they came out of slavery, you know?
LOHR: The archive is important to families who lived here, to document their history and their struggle to make it in the south. In the recent public television program, "African-American Lives," Henry Louis Gates talks to comedian and actor Christ Tucker who traced his roots back to Flat Rock and Bryant.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV PROGRAM "AFRICAN-AMERICAN LIVES")
HENRY LOUIS GATES: And that's amazing that...
CHRIS TUCKER: He was trying to give them a stake in the south, a reason to stay, because they were not going to own property in Pittsburgh, Detroit or Cincinnati, in Philadelphia or New York.
LOUIS GATES: That's deep. That's deep to think like that. That's something I'll never forget. And this is blowing me away. I can never forget that.
TUCKER: But he kept - in a sense, he kept Flat Rock from moving to the north. He kept Flat Rock together.
LOHR: The town had its own one-room, segregated schoolhouse. The archive has some of its records, including a very old roster and grade book. The school closed in 1948, when another segregated school was opened six miles away.
There's a photo taken of the original Flat Rock United Methodist Episcopal Church taken in 1916. Records show the church dates back to 1870 when it was founded by slaves. And there's the nearby cemetery, also established by slaves.
(SOUNDBITE OF FOOTSTEPS)
LOHR: The cemetery is hidden from the road. We walk up a steep hillside in a fairly new, upscale African-American subdivision. Expensive homes surround and obscure the three-acre plot where more than 250 of Flat Rock's first black inhabitants are buried. Johnny Waits points to a sunken spot in the ground and to small, gray headstones with no markings.
WAITS: This is our great-grandmother's grave right here, Eliza Waits, that was born a slave. There's no headstone. These are all her kids. This is our great-uncle right here, Andrew Waits, that was born a slave died in 1905.
LOHR: Before the subdivision was built, Waits says folks here used to clean the cemetery every year; that's how he says he knows who's buried here. It's been passed down through the generations.
Now, the cemetery can only be accessed by walking a long distance or by getting permission from a homeowner. So Waits says that's why the property is so overgrown with trees, brush and thick leaves.
WAITS: We're trying to preserve this cemetery. We're trying to get a fence around it. We're trying to take all the underbrush out from it. And those who don't have a headstone, we want to get them, finally, a headstone.
LOHR: They'd also like to get an archeologist to locate all the graves and help preserve them. It's been a challenge to document the experience of African- Americans because there are so few records that date back to slavery. Most are not official records, but rather those kept in Bibles, churches and basements.
CLARISSA MYRICK: To have a community - a living, breathing community - that has roots that go back before the Civil War is indeed a rare find.
LOHR: Clarissa Myrick-Harris is with One World Archives, a nonprofit group working to preserve African-American history.
MYRICK: What went on in these antebellum African-American communities, their day-to-day lives, about relationships between the people of the African-American community and the surrounding white communities, and then, of course, the relationships and the institution-building that went on in the community itself.
LOHR: Myrick-Harris says using DNA tests to trace black families back to their African roots is important, but, she says, so many are still missing chunks of their American history.
Johnny Waits in Flat Rock says he hopes he can get the funding to create a national archive here and change that.
WAITS: In 50 years, I want people to come in and, say - put their name in all of a sudden, there's their family history, they'll have pictures, there's places, they'll have maps, and say, wow, now I know my family history. Because there's a lot of black people who can't even go back to one slave. A lot of people can't even go back to their great-grandparents.
LOHR: Waits says it would be a shame for communities like Flat Rock to let their history die after so many generations worked to call it home.
Kathy Lohr, NPR News, Atlanta
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
When Chandler Burr doesn't like a perfume, he doesn't mince words. Here's one acid appraisal: a cologne most appropriately worn by electrical appliances. Or: This is a scent for a woman who has no taste, and absolutely no interest in having any.
Chandler Burr is the scent critic for T, The New York Times' style magazine. And he's quite enraptured by the two perfumes that he writes about in his new book "The Perfect Scent." It's an insider's peek into the perfume industry.
He tracks the creation of a perfume for actress Sarah Jessica Parker, called Lovely; and a scent being developed by the French luxury house Hermes, designed to capture the essence of a garden on the Nile.
OK: OK, you're such a great perfumer. Make me the smell of sweaty socks.
CHANDLER BURR: (Reading) (Speaking foreign language) They would say to him, write us a story in smells. She asked him for the smell of cloud, and he created it for her. We asked him for bizarre things. We ordered up the smell of winter, of the snow, because we lived in the south of France - where it rarely snows.
(Reading) When he got home, and with a flourish unveiled for them this magical scent of snow, she got the idea, she said, that she could do anything, that there were indeed no limits because here, her father had gone and created a scent of a thing that had no scent. You had the story, the story of snow and the (foreign language spoken) say. You simply went and found the elements to tell your story.
BLOCK: You tell the story of Jean-Claude Ellena going to Egypt with his team from Hermes. They're trying to find the story line, basically, the smell that will be this garden on the Nile that he's going to create, and put in a bottle.
BURR: Right.
BLOCK: And they're having a terrible time finding it. They look everywhere, and they can't find this smell that they have somewhere in their brain.
BURR: They got - they had decided: We're going to create the smell of a garden on the Nile. And they got off the plane in Aswan. There was a huge garden there, called Kitchener Garden, which was created by some colonial Brits. And they thought, you know, they were going to have wonderful stuff. They went in, and nothing smelled. And they were on this island; and Ellena looked up, and he realized that this dusty, little desert street in this tiny, little village on the Nile was lined with mango trees. And it was just before mango season, before ripeness, so they were still green. And he reached up, and he smelled one. And he said, that's our perfume.
BLOCK: And what is it about the green mango that it was so iconic for him?
BURR: It's an absolutely astonishing perfume. I'm going to spray this for you, OK?
BLOCK: OK. You brought a bottle of Un Jardin sur le Nil.
(SOUNDBITE OF PERFUME BEING SPRAYED))
BLOCK: It's very green. Even if I didn't know the bottle was green, I would say that's a green smell.
BURR: Absolutely. And it's...
BLOCK: It smells citrusy.
BURR: It's not a perfume in any classic sense. It's really a scent. And you can see how when you put that on, it melts into your skin. It becomes you, and you become it.
BLOCK: The fascinating thing about how this works chemically is that Ellena goes back to his lab in the south of France, and he's not extracting anything from a green mango. He's taking synthetic chemicals, and combining them in a way to get what he remembers as being the smell of a green mango.
BURR: Right. He says - very much - when I create, I do illusions. I do not re-create the smell of a green mango; that's relatively easy. Just in the way you would never re-create the smell of a rose - it's boring. That's not perfumery. It's not art. He does art, and he used a collection of synthetic molecules.
You know how a mango has that sort of resinous, very thick quality that you get between your teeth when you eat it - you know, to get that, he used a natural distillation of baby carrot.
BLOCK: There's a very different process that goes on with Sarah Jessica Parker, which is creating her signature scent - her first signature scent, which comes to be called Lovely. And it turns out, she's someone who has very strong feelings about scent, and had very strong feelings about what she wanted this perfume to be. And it turned out that the perfume that's created is nothing like what she intended.
BURR: Exactly.
BLOCK: She wanted something really dirty and gritty and...
BURR: Body odorish...
BLOCK: Body odorish.
(SOUNDBITE OF PERFUME BEING SPRAYED))
BLOCK: Sugary, maybe?
BURR: ...She doesn't like florals. It's not - I think it's sweet without sugar, which I think is what's so fascinating about it.
BLOCK: But she had to get her mind around the notion that the scent that she thought she would be creating - which would be this gritty, sexy, dirty smell - wasn't going to be.
BURR: Yes, it wasn't going to be. And I think it was very - and we talked about it. She and I talked about it, actually, at a lunch we had one time. And she reconciled herself to the idea that she's not going to create exactly the perfume she had in mind. It was a collaborative process. She's a movie star. She works in the movies. Movies are a collaboration all over the place. You pick battles. You win some, you lose some. And she came out with a perfume that worked for her.
BLOCK: You've brought in with you today two kits from scent manufacturers, containing all sorts of little things inside. What's in there?
BURR: These are beautiful raw materials. These are two kits from Givaudan, which is one of the main scent and flavor manufacturers. Givaudan is Swiss- based. Let me open these up. And you see here all these - the synthetics in this one, and all the natural raw materials in this one. And you have everything from tuba rose(ph) to mandarin oil, elemi resin. There's geranium oil, from Africa. These are the naturals. And in the synthetics, we have wonderful molecules like hexanol 3-cis(ph), coumarin and methyl anthranilate.
BLOCK: You write quite a bit about the notion that the illusion in the perfume world is - given out to customers is that these things are all natural when in fact, nothing could be farther than the truth. These are synthetic scents; they're made in a lab. They're not flowers snipped off of a sunny field somewhere in the south of France, mostly.
BURR: Let me treat that only by - basically, that's correct. The average - and I've, obviously, asked several people in the perfume industry today - what's the synthetics-to-naturals ratio? They say basically, 80-20 synthetics to naturals.
Now, I'm going to show you this. This is a synthetic molecule called hexanol 3- cis. Smell that - and this is a nature-identical. So you can find it in nature, but it's been isolated and created in a laboratory.
BLOCK: Hmm, very - grassy?
BURR: Exactly. Fresh-cut grass with a slight green banana angle.
BLOCK: I didn't get the green banana.
BURR: But smell it now. Do you get that now? Slightly fruity?
BLOCK: OK, maybe.
BURR: OK. This is used to create the green scents, and it's a beautiful green, absolutely wonderful. But there're tons of greens you can use. You also have a material called galbanum, which is a natural. And that also is a green, but it's a more old-fashioned green.
So you have at your disposal, as a a perfumer, all sorts of raw materials with which to create your olfactory painting.
BLOCK: Is that the advantage of synthetics? Is that why people should embrace them and not turn up their nose? Mr. BURR: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yes.
BLOCK: Literally. (Laughter)
BURR: Yes. Literally, not turn up their nose. It's - and there's a movement, an all-naturals movement in perfumery, which is completely crazy. It is anti-scientific. It is anti-empirical. There is no more reason to create perfumes with all-natural products - which completely limits your palette; it's completely inappropriate for modern perfumery - then there is for building a skyscraper out of thatch and mud and wood.
BLOCK: Chandler Burr, thanks so much.
BURR: Thank you very much.
BLOCK: Thanks for bringing in all these amazing bottles of things.
BURR: My pleasure. Your studio is going to smell good.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC))
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
The Central American country of Belize is mourning the death of musician Andy Palacio. Palacio died this weekend after a massive stroke. He was 47. He was dedicated to preserving the culture of the Garifuna people, a mixture of West African, indigenous Carib and Arawak Indians. In this song, he sings, I wonder who will speak with me in Garifuna in times to come.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "AMUNEGU")
ANDY PALACIO: (Singing in foreign language).
BLOCK: The Garifuna live in isolated coastal communities in Central America. And as Andy Palacio told me in an interview last spring, he realized his culture was in danger of fading away when he visited a small Garifuna community in Nicaragua in 1980.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED INTERVIEW)
PALACIO: What I saw was a generation of Garifuna people who no longer knew how to speak our language, in such a way that nobody under the age of 50 was able to communicate with me in our language. And music, being the thing that I love most, I decided to use music as a medium for culture preservation. At least, we'd be able to use the language in songs and keep them alive.
BLOCK: Andy Palacio's latest album, "Watina," was recorded in Belize in a thatch-roofed cabin by the sea. It went to great critical acclaim.
Yasser Musa knew Andy Palacio well. He's the president of the National Institute of Culture and History in Belize. And Mr. Musa, this must be a day of great mourning in Belize.
YASSER MUSA: Yes, it is. Today, Belize is mourning because we have lost our prince of music. Andy Palacio in 2007, with the release of his album, "Watina," proved to the world that Belize is a good country and that Belize has good people. It's not just a place where tourists come and dive and go to see great forests, but it's a place that has people that are rich in their culture, that love their culture, and that are in a frame of development and in the process of development.
BLOCK: You know, when I spoke with Andy Palacio last April, he spoke with great passion about his hopes for what would happen with his Garifuna culture. Let's listen to just a bit of what he said.
MUSA: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANDY PALACIO'S INTERVIEW)
PALACIO: I remember an elderly Garifuna statesman here in Belize saying we cannot stop Garifuna culture from dying, and that all we can do is to delay its death. I hope that's not true. I hope that our efforts will not only preserve Garifuna culture, but also reenergize a generation that will take pride in it to the extent that it will remain vibrant for the next hundred generations.
BLOCK: Mr. Musa, has that started to happen? That revival that he was talking about there?
MUSA: Well, I believe so. Andy has been a light - his example, his humility. And when he came off his world tour in late October, in Belize, we prepared a large concert, an outdoor concert. And over 6,000 Belizeans flocked to that concert. Our population is very small, so the scale of that concert is very huge. And the reason, I believe, that the Belizeans embraced the music and the man, Andy Palacio, is that he spoke to our soul. He spoke to who we are and who we are aspiring to be. And so we are in mourning, but yet we have so much hope. He was a true cultural activist.
You mentioned in the beginning of your interview the song when he's asking the hard questions, will my culture survive? And I think he was doing it as a kind of challenge to his own people and to the entire nation of Belize that we cannot lost our culture because then it - that's when we lose our nation. This is a lost for Belizeans, it's a loss for the family. But it's a loss for the world. The world has lost a great artist.
BLOCK: Well, Mr. Musa, thanks for taking the time to remember your friend and your colleague, Andy Palacio. Thank you so much.
MUSA: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "WATINA")
PALACIO: (Singing in foreign language)
BLOCK: Yasser Musa, president of the National Institute of Culture and History in Belize, remembering the musician Andy Palacio who'll be buried in his Garifuna village of Barranco this weekend. You can find my interview with Andy Palacio and hear more of his music at npr.org.
You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
The presidential campaign continues today in the southeast. The next big stop for Republican hopefuls is Florida which holds its primary next week. The race there is pretty much a four-way tie.
And what sets Florida apart from all the contest to date is that it's the first place former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is playing to win. His strategy has been to run a minimal campaign in the earliest states, focusing on a breakthrough in Florida.
NPR's Don Gonyea reports from Orlando.
DON GONYEA: It's something we've not seen in Iowa or New Hampshire or anywhere else for that matter - a Rudy Giuliani bus tour with the candidate attending rally after rally from morning to night.
Unidentified Man #1: Come on up, Rudy. Come on up here.
RUDY GIULIANI: Thank you very much. Thank you.
GONYEA: This is Giuliani in the Florida city of Celebration, a community built by Disney and located not far from Disney World. It wasn't a massive rally. It was held in the atrium of a building at Stetson University, and about 300 people were packed in pretty tightly. The candidate made it clear right at the top of his speech that a lot is at stake here.
GIULIANI: You're going to make sure that Florida really counts in this election, aren't you?
Unidentified Group: Yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
GIULIANI: Florida counts and I'm counting on Florida - both ways.
GONYEA: Giuliani made his reputation as mayor of New York, most significantly on September 11th, 2001. And Florida has lots of retirees from that region. But his stump speech this week focuses first on his plans for the economy, noting huge, new concerns on that score. He describes himself as the only Republican candidate with a proven record of cutting taxes. Then, about three quarters on the way into his remarks, he switched his topics.
GIULIANI: Most important thing of all is our national security. We...
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
GIULIANI: ...and I believe that I would be the best to keep our country on offense against Islamic terrorism.
GONYEA: Giuliani said the Democrats seem to want to switch to a defensive posture in fighting terrorists by advocating withdrawal from Iraq.
GIULIANI: Our goal in Iraq - plain and simple - should be victory in Iraq.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)
GIULIANI: And our goal with Iran has to be an Iran that is not a nuclear power - no how, no way. And we have to finish the job in Afghanistan and make sure that we have defeated al-Qaida, the Taliban, and that we catch bin Laden.
GONYEA: In the crowd, Giuliani supporter Tom Dall(ph) watches and nods. A 62- year-old retiree from Virginia, Dall is impressed.
TOM DALL: And every time I hear the guy address complicated issues, he has the ability to take a complicated issue, simplify, get to its core, and I don't care whether it's about immigration or Social Security or, you know, world or world economy. The guy is a smart dude.
GONYEA: Standing not far away in the back of the room was fourth year med student Tim Elder(ph) who lives in Celebration. He's undecided on who he'll vote for, but Elder does say he questions Giuliani's strategy to lay low in the early estates, focusing so much on Florida.
TIM ELDER: I don't know, it's definitely risky. I mean, he hasn't been making himself known in the - where the media coverage has been. He's been in Florida, away from it all.
GONYEA: Of course, not all that coverage is coming to Florida, and Giuliani is, once again, in the media mix. But suddenly, all of the other candidates are here as well. Polls show four of them tightly bunched together with John McCain using the bounce he got in New Hampshire and South Carolina to wipe out what was once a solid Giuliani lead in the state.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Orlando.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, the three leading Democratic presidential candidates are at this hour taking part in a debate cosponsored by the congressional black caucus. The event is taking place five days ahead of the South Carolina's Democratic primary. It's the first state in which African- Americans are the focus. At least half of the ballots cast this weekend will come from black voters.
Earlier, I spoke with NPR's Audie Cornish who's in Myrtle Beach. She says Barack Obama has a lot to prove tonight.
AUDIE CORNISH: The last black candidate that South Carolina primary voters got to get a look at was Al Sharpton. And Senator Barack Obama is obviously running a very different race from that Sharpton approach in 2004. After his performances in Iowa and New Hampshire where he did very well with white voters, a lot of undecided black voters here who had questions about his electability, specifically questions about his appeal to white voters, are starting to reevaluate, and you've seen him perhaps rise in the polls as a result.
Now, the risk in this is that Senator Obama's candidacy and message has always been about unity. And there's been a lot of conversation about his candidacy being one that transcends race. So now, he's got to walk a tightrope - appeal to black voters in a state with a large black electorate and acknowledge that he wants their vote and court directly, but also still maintain the sense that he's transcending race and has a broad appeal.
BLOCK: Audie, Hillary Clinton had a lead among black Democrats in South Carolina not too long ago, and that has now dissolved. And we've seen in recent days of her campaign, especially Bill Clinton being quite critical of Barack Obama.
CORNISH: Yes, you have. Today, you actually had Senator Barack Obama actually making some complaints about President Bill Clinton and his attacks on the campaign trail. This is only just days after the two camps had tried to call some sort of truce about perceived racial slights and the comments that were being made out on the stump.
For black voters that I've spoken to here in South Carolina, there is some sense that are the Clintons squandering some of the goodwill they have with the African-American community and should they be a little bit more careful about how they go about dealing with Obama. At the same time, Clinton needs to make it clear that there is a difference between her and Senator Obama, especially for those undecided voters who perceive them as having somewhat similar stances and are sort of torn between the choice, perhaps, of supporting an African- American candidate or a female candidate.
BLOCK: Audie, finally, let's just talk a bit about John Edwards. He hasn't won or come close to winning in the early states. What's at stake for him in South Carolina now? This is the state where he was born.
CORNISH: Yes, well, for former Senator John Edwards, it's really interesting. One pollster described his position as, you know, trying to see a candle between two spotlights. It's not necessarily that voters here are uninterested in Edwards, but that they're really interested in the other two candidates. As a result, Edwards is still in the game, still says that he is pushing forward, and trying to make it all the way to the convention. One thing we'll see in the debate tonight perhaps is a little bit more insight into where Edwards is going with his campaign.
BLOCK: NPR's Audie Cornish in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Audie, thanks so much.
CORNISH: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Now, to our regular political commentators - E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and David Brooks of The New York Times. Welcome back to you both.
DIONNE: Thank you.
DAVID BROOKS: Good to be with you.
BLOCK: And we're going to talk about the Democratic race in a few minutes. But first, let's talk about the Republicans. Do you think there's anything approaching a frontrunner on the Republican side. E.J.?
DIONNE: McCain is a modified, limited frontrunner right now - because of his victories, because of his lead in the national polls - but he faces a real challenge in the coming primaries. The two primaries he won in South Carolina and New Hampshire were places where he got a lot of his vote from moderates, from liberals, from independents, from pro-choice voters, even though John McCain has long been pro-life, anti abortion. And he now goes in the primaries - including Florida on January 29th where independents won't be able to cross over to help him. In South Carolina, he barely - he actually narrowly lost according to the exit polls, those who identified themselves as Republicans. It was independents who saved him.
So this is a really challenging period for him, and he's gong to have Giuliani, at least in principle, challenging him for some of those moderate votes. If he can get out of Florida, if he could win Florida, then we could declare him the frontrunner. But until then, I think it's a very limited role he's got.
BLOCK: And David Brooks, at the same time, it seems like knives are really being sharpened for John McCain. You had Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader, telling Fox News, John McCain had done more to hurt the Republican Party than any elected official I know of.
BROOKS: That's the fight John McCain wants. It's true there are some people in the Republican establishment who are against McCain - and Tom DeLay and Rush Limbaugh are the two primary ones. But I think you're seeing a couple of things. First, you're seeing a lot of establishment Republicans figuring he's the least bad option. And second, I think one of the most fascinating things that's happened this year is that the Republican voters are not following the Republican establishment. And they have gone from McCain even though he's not popular in the Republican establishment.
McCain is, as E.J. said, is the national leader. He's got 71 percent favorability ratings. Among the Romney voters, Giuliani voters and the Huckabee voters, McCain is, by far, the best second choice. And so I think one of the lessons of this year, both with Huckabee doing well and McCain doing well, is the Republican voters are a lot more diverse, a lot more interested in changing the party than maybe some of the Republicans in Washington are.
BLOCK: Let's turn to the Democratic side and think about lessons we might pull from the Nevada caucuses this weekend where Hillary Clinton won with big support from women and also from Hispanics. She got about two-thirds of the Hispanic vote. E.J., do you think this spells trouble for Barack Obama in some of the primaries that are coming up?
DIONNE: I think it could. I think that the Hispanic vote, for example, is going to be very important in California. And Senator Clinton has a lot of support from important Hispanic politicians in California. What Obama has going for him is the capacity to compete in an awful lot of congressional districts, in particular, African-American districts. Given his gains in the African- American vote, he'll carry, I think, virtually all of those.
And he also does very well among upscale voters, and there are a lot of congressional districts that won't send a Democrat to Congress, but will be electing delegates to this convention. So that February 5th is a very different kind of contest; we really will care a lot about delegates. And so I think Obama can keep it relatively close on delegates. At this point, you'd have to give her an overall advantage on winning states. And I think how this is judged afterward will be on both grounds, who wins a lot of states will matter, but in the end, the delegates will matter.
BLOCK: I want to end by asking you both about Bill Clinton's role in this campaign. Today, we had Barack Obama talking on ABC News about President Clinton, saying he was mischaracterizing what Obama has said, making statements that are factually inaccurate. He hasn't quite yet said stop lying about my record, but you get the sense that maybe that's just still to come. E.J. Dionne?
DIONNE: Well, you know, I think that Clinton is, in a sense, using himself wrong in this campaign, because I think his main goal should not be as the attacker of Barack Obama. He can do two things - he can talk in a very powerful way about the merits of Senator Clinton, his wife. And he can also find a way to rekindle nostalgia about the 1990s without making this a campaign that's just going back to the 1990s because, as Audie said, this is a very tricky thing for Democrats. African-American voters are going to be very important to whichever candidate wins this nomination. The Clintons have had a very strong relationship with African-Americans. And I think the president does not want to gamble his or Mrs. Clinton's standing with them, and that I think he would make himself and her look better by focusing more on the positive as his central role in the campaign.
BLOCK: David Brooks?
BROOKS: And I guess I would say Bill Clinton has many skills, but self- effacement, and self-control are not among them. And that has affected the campaign. But to me, and the most problematic thing is, he would affect the administration. I suspect one year into a Clinton administration, you would have Hillary people in the White House and Bill people in the White House because I suspect from the evidence from the past few weeks suggest, there's no way he would control himself. He would get involved in every single policy matter, and you would begin to have a divided White House, which wouldn't necessarily doom the whole White House, but it would make things incredibly messy.
BLOCK: David Brooks and E.J. Dionne, thanks very much.
DIONNE: Thank you.
BROOKS: Thank you.
BLOCK: David Brooks of the New York Times and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and Brookings Institution.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
It's time for Climate Connections, our yearlong series with National Geographic. The nation's meteorologists are meeting in New Orleans this week. Their agenda includes new research on the links between global warming and extreme weather - especially devastating storms like Hurricane Katrina. But scientists aren't the only ones there. People from the insurance industry are attending, too. They were caught off-guard by Katrina, so now, they're trying to calculate the economic risks of climate change.
NPR's John Hamilton has the story.
JOHN HAMILTON: It wasn't just the poor areas of New Orleans that got submerged when the levees failed. The upscale Lakeview neighborhood was underwater, too.
JIM DONELON: We're driving by the ruptured place where the levee wall broke. And that's where the water flowed through. Have you been here before?
HAMILTON: Jim Donelon is the insurance commissioner of Louisiana. He also happens to live near Lakeview. Donelon didn't lose his house, but several of his relatives in this area weren't so lucky.
DONELON: Some of these backed up to this levee were washed off of their foundation and tilted.
HAMILTON: Many of the houses have been rebuilt or repaired. Most people here had insurance, and they still do. But new policies are a lot harder to get these days and premiums have gone up as much as 200 percent. Donelon says that the result of two devastating hurricane seasons that left many consumers without a house to insure or the money for premiums. At the same time, insurers have been dealing with thousands of angry customers and billions in loses.
DONELON: '04 sent a chilling message to them, and our experience in '05 just shut it down. Not just in Florida, not just in Florida and Louisiana, but all across the Gulf Coast and all the way up the East Coast from Miami to Maine - every state is experiencing to some extent the same horrid market condition that we in Lakeview in south Louisiana are experiencing.
HAMILTON: It was a storm warning for the insurance industry. They would have to change along with the climate.
Robert Muir-Wood is the chief research officer for a company called Risk Management Solutions. It helps insurance companies calculate the odds for various catastrophes. Muir-Wood says insurers used to do this by studying history to find out how often events like hurricanes happened. But that doesn't work for catastrophes that are more likely to happen now than they were a century ago. Muir-Wood says New Orleans represents an extreme example of increasing risk. For one thing, the city is sinking.
ROBERT MUIR: Secondly, sea-level rise has been going on and we know sea-level rise is currently accelerating. It's actually gone up since 1990 and it's likely to accelerate further in the 21st century. And third, the population of extreme hurricanes has also seemed to increase in the last few years, so we get more intense storms.
HAMILTON: Those kinds of variables terrify insurance companies, but not climate scientists. Muir-Wood says that's created a new partnership.
MUIR: Every year now, we actually bring together a team of leading hurricane climatologists to advise us on actually what is the best perspective on the activity of hurricanes we can expect on average over the next five years.
HAMILTON: The company also employs its own climate scientists. All that science is suggesting something consumers don't want to hear. Insurance policies in places like New Orleans were way underpriced.
Evan Mills from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California says the new higher rates contain an important message.
EVAN MILLS: Insurance is the industry people love to hate, but really, they're also messengers of risk and of the cost of risk and the nature of risk. And so as risk is changing because of climate change, because of settlement patterns, the price signal that communicates back, hey, to the customers, this is risky.
HAMILTON: And Mills says the risks associated with climate change aren't limited to hurricanes or to New Orleans.
MILLS: From wildfires in the west, in Florida and really almost anywhere in the country, to sea-level rise itself and the inundation of coastal properties and contamination of water supplies. You know, when sea level rises, there's a salinization of aquifers in some places, and so that can adversely affect agriculture and drinking water.
HAMILTON: Mills says climate change is forcing insurance companies to return to their roots - by reducing risks, not just covering losses. That's what they used to do back in the days when they pushed for things like building standards that prevented catastrophic fires. But Mills says, in recent decades, some insurers became little more than investment houses funded by premiums. Now, he says, more companies are using some of the trillions of dollars they control worldwide to support efforts to slow down climate change. They're also trying harder to help customers prepare for the next catastrophe.
Jim Donelon says one example is that companies are making sure homes meet federal flood insurance standards before they'll issue a homeowner's policy. That's one reason houses in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans are getting taller.
That house on stilts, did that used to be on stilts?
DONELON: No, sir. No, that's new construction to the new flood elevation requirement. With steps like that going up, that's new construction, too, to a higher elevation.
HAMILTON: Insurers are also offering discounts to customers who strengthen roofs and walls. And the incentives may grow after companies hear with the meteorologists have to say this week about climate change and the risk of another Katrina.
John Hamilton, NPR News, New Orleans.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
The war of words between the Clinton and Obama campaigns has heated up in recent weeks, with race becoming an issue. Commentator Mary Curtis will be listening carefully to tonight's Democratic debate. While she's pleased there's so much excitement, she warns that too much passion could have unexpected consequences for the Democratic Party.
MARY CURTIS: Will they be naughty or nice? The occasion - tonight's debate of Democratic presidential candidates in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina - certainly calls for nice. It falls on today's holiday to honor Martin Luther King Jr. who brought people together and who deserved some peace. Since the civil rights era, Democrats could be counted on to unite behind his legacy, right? Then why will voters and viewers be holding their breath? Because a little over a week ago, words were exchanged between frontrunners Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that proved race in America and how we view it can still ignite passion.
Somehow, I think Martin Luther King wouldn't be surprised. Forty years after his death, he's still in the middle of it. In America, everyone is afraid to talk about race. Clinton and Obama called a truce that held through a debate in Nevada that was eerily gentile. One couldn't praise the other's civil rights record enough. It was like one of those family agreements. Don't discuss religion or politics at Thanksgiving, so no one gets hit with a turkey leg. Of course, the candidates vowed to take race out of the race. They want do die down the emotion and unite once again.
With an eye toward November, Democrats want to make sure their coalition holds, that women and minorities realize they have more in common, like moving on together after eight years of George W. Bush.
Even if they manage to do that - and we'll be listening tonight to see if the truce holds - their supporters have taken no such pledge. The reenergized young people who came out for Obama, the women who gave Clinton a lift, they have stars in their eyes. You can hear it at the rallies and read it on the blogs - Clinton or Obama. Supporters argue over which one is the savior of the party and the nation. They are standing firm, but only behind their man or woman.
People in love do crazy things. Will voters be able to calmly move from one suitor to the next? And will the talk of race and gender cloud their vision? In life, ambivalent affection is boring. In politics, it could be a plus. GOP voters will have no problem lining up behind the last guy standing. But for Democrats, will the emotion at the moment trump King's dream? When you fall truly, madly, deeply in love, it's so easy to get your heart and party broken.
BLOCK: Mary Curtis is a columnist with The Charlotte Observer.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
Today in Atlanta, dignitaries and preachers paid tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. While they remember the civil rights leader, they also dipped into election year politics. Two former Arkansas governors were there, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and former President Bill Clinton.
NPR's Carrie Kahn reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "BLESS THE LORD, OH MY SOUL)
Unidentified Group: (Singing) Bless the Lord, Oh my soul, and praise...
CARRIE KAHN: As the choir sang "Bless the Lord, Oh My Soul" to a packed crowd at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, President Clinton and Mike Huckabee shared the first pew separated by members of the King family. Rafael Warnock, senior pastor, reminded all in attendance that the King holiday is not about a day off, but a day on. A time to recommit to the fight for social justice.
RAFAEL WARNOCK: And so celebrate Dr. King. Remember his legacy. But then go out from this place saying, "If I can help somebody as I pass along, If I can cheer somebody with a word or a song, if I can show somebody, if I can show Washington that they are travelling wrong, then my living will not be in vain."
KAHN: Presidential hopefuls are stumping throughout the South. Senator Barack Obama spoke yesterday at Ebenezer Church. But it was Atlanta's Mayor Shirley Franklin who steered today's service straight in to the race for president.
SHIRLEY FRANKLIN: Georgia is on the mind of the next president of the United States.
KAHN: Georgia moved up its primary to be included in next month's Super Tuesday. Franklin, who is an Obama supporter, said who would believe that in 2008, America is poised to elect a leader from such varied background.
FRANKLIN: And a mill worker's son, a first lady, a Mormon, a Baptist preacher and even, ladies and gentlemen, a black man.
KAHN: With the crowd on its feet and Bill Clinton politely clapping in the front row, Mayor Franklin commented that Obama's candidacy is not a fantasy or a fairytale, referring to the former president's controversial remarks about the Obama campaign. But as Bill Clinton took his turn at the pulpit, he easily defused any residual tension with the African-American community. And cognizant of his delicate position as an invited orator and his wife's campaign surrogate, he continued undeterred.
BILL CLINTON: Mayor Franklin already took care of whatever political dilemma I have. She's got all of it. I wouldn't have said it quite the way she did, but she got it all out there, that is sure.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
KAHN: Bill Clinton reminded those gathered that it was because of King's vision of the beloved community that so many different people could be vying for the U.S. presidency.
CLINTON: Governor Huckabee may be getting his votes because he's a Baptist preacher, but there as I can tell, he's not losing any. In Nevada, Governor Romney probably won because he was a Mormon, but there as I can tell, he hadn't been eliminated because he's a Mormon. And Hillary and Senator Obama (unintelligible), they may be getting votes because of race or gender, but near as I can tell, they're not losing any. This is a great thing.
KAHN: Bringing it back to the message of the day, Bishop Vashti McKenzie urged the crowd to stir up the consciousness of people everywhere. With the congregation on its feet, McKenzie called on people to value their roots but also to widen their circle of concern to include those who don't look like them or speak their language.
VASHTI MURPHY MCKENZIE: Every year we come to rehearse the dream, nurse the dream, research the dream, massage the dream, revise the dream, remember the dream. I dare you to come back next year not in the same place where you are this year.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
KAHN: As McKenzie, the first female bishop elected in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, close to thunderous applause, President Clinton and former Arkansas Governor Huckabee shook hands and exchanged a quick hug.
Carrie Kahn, NPR News.
DANIEL SCHORR: As the issue of race hovers over the Democratic primary campaign, the Martin Luther King holiday takes us back in history.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
NPR's senior news analyst, Daniel Schorr.
SCHORR: One time Kennedy aide Peter Edelman speaking in a Washington, D.C. synagogue said that President Kennedy could not have gotten civil rights passed over Southern opposition - it took a movement, he said. One time, aide to President Johnson, Bill Moyers, told a story on public television that I had never heard before. Johnson once told Dr. King, I want you to go on doing what you're doing, including civil disobedience, and make it possible for me to do the right thing. I cite these remarks because Hillary Rodham Clinton has gotten into trouble for saying that King's dream became a reality only after the president said, we are going to do it.
The controversy points of the growing tension over race issues as the campaign moves into states with sizable numbers of African-American voters, where opinion polls give Barack Obama a significant lead. Obama delivered a speech in the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta yesterday that resounded with a cadence of a civil rights preacher. Senator Clinton countered with a speech in a Baptist church in Harlem. I felt, lately, Obama base his campaign on the unity theme transcending race. That's changing.
Speaking from Dr. King's pulpit, Obama delivered a King-like appeal for unity as an end to segregation. He appealed to Americans to look past what divides us. His audience responded by chanting amen and singing "We Shall Overcome," like old days. There is no doubt about the effectiveness of donning the civil rights mantle with black voters. A Washington Post-ABC poll indicates that Obama is now weighing 60 percent of the black vote nationally. The issue becomes immediately important because of the Democratic primary next Saturday in South Carolina, with 60 percent African-American voters.
What remains to be seen is whether Obama's new civil rights stance will cost him with other constituencies. This is Daniel Schorr.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
It was a horrible day for stock investors around the world. The single worst day for losses in many places since 9/11. In Asia, Europe, Latin America and Canada, almost all major stock indices were down by a significant amount. U.S. exchanges weren't open because of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but around the world, the main topic was the U.S. economy. Investors everywhere spoke of a fear that the U.S. is heading for a much deeper recession than previously thought; a recession that may hurt economies around the world.
NPR's global business correspondent, Adam Davidson, has been keeping tabs on this.
And Adam, why did we see such an acute dip today? We've been hearing talks about a recession for months now.
ADAM DAVIDSON: Yeah, it's true. The phrase of the day is, the markets are trading on sentiment. And that is a fancy way of saying that people are scared. They are scared of what is happening to the global economy and they're scared of what other people think is happening to the global economy. They're not necessarily selling off stock because of specific analysis of data. They're selling off stock out of panic, out of fear. Now, there was bad data last week. There was a lot of bad data. Housing market in the U.S. continues to get worst.
President Bush acknowledged that the economic problems are more severe than he had previously. Also, President Bush and some of the leading Democrats presented their suggested solutions to get us out of this potential recession. And I think it's safe to say that markets around the world were particularly unimpressed by any of those proposals.
BLOCK: And how unimpressed were they? How big were these losses today?
DAVIDSON: I mean, the numbers are pretty big. In England alone, hundreds of billions - or over a hundred billion, let me say, was lost. France lost a huge amount. Its stock market is down something like 15 percent over the last few weeks. Similarly sized losses in Japan. And India had - I think its largest loss ever in a single day on its stock market. Now, this is a one-day event. And all the usual cautions apply that, you know, these are paper losses so far for most people and most people who are investing for the long term. The markets usually bounce back. But we are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, maybe over a trillion or two dollars lost in one day of trading.
BLOCK: You were talking before about the impact of fear and how that ripples through these stock industries around the world. Why does bad economic news in the U.S. lead to so much fear in Asia, and Europe, and these other markets?
DAVIDSON: This is kind of a surprise. I mean, it wouldn't have been a surprise a year ago or five years ago. The U.S. has been the center of the global economy. And U.S. consumers buying stuff is what fuels - the factories and other economic activity in China, and Europe, and Japan, and around the world. But a lot of people have been talking about 2008 as the year of what is called decoupling, that this would be the year that the U.S. would shrink in importance, that Asia, and Europe, and Latin America, and the Middle East would sort of create their own financial energy.
And if the U.S. were to lose economic steam, those other places could carry on without us. Today suggests that the decoupling is not happening as dramatically as people had expected, that investors in every corner of the world see the U.S. economic slowdown as crucial to their financial success. Again, it's one day. We'll see at the end of 2008 if people are talking about this having been the year of decoupling. But right now, today, the evidence of today suggests that the world still really depends on U.S. demand for their goods in order for them to do well.
BLOCK: So, that buffer that people thought might be there didn't appear today, at least?
DAVIDSON: At least today, right. I mean, these things happen slowly over time, so we'll see.
BLOCK: Mm-hmm. Adam, it does seem like there is a lot more bad financial news coming all the time - housing prices falling, unemployment rising, fears of inflation. Where do economists say we are in this cycle? Is there any consensus on that?
DAVIDSON: The growing consensus is that either the U.S. will go into recession or it will have a dramatic slowdown that sort of feels like a recession. I think, to the average person, the statistical or data difference really doesn't matter that much. The argument now is how long will that slowdown or recession be. Some say three to six months, some say longer and more painful.
BLOCK: Of course, all of this is coming in the middle of the presidential primaries. And it's starting to have an impact to certainly on what the candidates are saying right now.
DAVIDSON: Yeah, this is really becoming the economic presidential race. It's not the Iraq presidential race we were all predicting six months ago. And I think this is all good news, in a sort of cynical way, for Democrats because when the economy takes a downturn, the party in power usually loses.
BLOCK: Okay. NPR's Adam Davidson, thanks so much.
DAVIDSON: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
Environmental activists want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to stop allowing aging power plants to stay open unless the agency beefs up safety inspections. They say the government should start at Oyster Creek in New Jersey - one of the oldest nuclear plant still in service.
Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE: Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station went online in 1969. The fight over the plant really started in the 1980s - that's when water apparently seeped into the reactor where it wasn't supposed to and caused corrosion. How much corrosion is the subject of debate, but it's clearly too much for Janet Tauro who lives about 12 miles from the plant.
JANET TAURO: Any person, any rational person hearing that the steel containment of the nuclear reactor is rotting and corroding, you would think they would be up in arms.
ROSE: For a while it looked like Oyster Creek's owner would simply shut the plant down when its original license expires next year. But then a new company bought this plant on the Jersey's shore and three years ago, Exelon decided to apply for a 20-year extension which would keep the plant operating until 2029.
Company Vice President Mike Gallagher says the corrosion problem was fixed years ago.
MIKE GALLAGHER: Basically, every component can be replaced. And as long as we can, you know, be anticipatory, we can continue to safely operate the plant.
ROSE: Gallagher says the length of the original 40-year license was based on economics, not technology. But Janet Tauro and other activists are not convinced. They raised the corrosion issue at a hearing last year, although a government panel ruled against them. And that left the plant's opponents with few options. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission only looks at the aging physical plant and environmental concerns when it decides whether to relicense a power plant.
For Janet Tauro, that's not enough.
TAURO: The NRC is left sight of its mission. Its mission is to safeguard our public safety, and instead, they're safeguarding the profit margins of the nuclear industry.
ROSE: They are just over a hundred commercial nuclear plants in the country. The NRC has extended the original licenses of 48 of them without rejecting a single application.
Richard Webster is an attorney for the Eastern Environmental Law Center in New Jersey.
RICHARD WEBSTER: That to us tends to indicate that the NRC is not looking too hard for problems.
ROSE: But NRC Spokesman Neil Sheehan says the numbers are misleading. For one thing, a handful of plants have decided to go offline and Sheehan says those that do seek an extension, invest millions of dollars in safety upgrades and years of effort.
NEIL SHEEHAN: We can send dozens and dozens of request for additional information to the companies; they have to respond to those. If we're not happy, we'll ask more. So, a lot of issues get resolved along the way.
ROSE: Yet, even the NRC's internal auditor has raised concerns about ties between the commission and the nuclear industry.
In a report released in September, the office of the inspector general found that NRC staff members were apparently copying big chunks of their safety reports from the very people they were supposed to be regulating.
Environmental lawyer Richard Webster says that doesn't look good.
WEBSTER: You know, (unintelligible) of the report samples they reviewed, 42 percent were word for word; the same as the application. So, there's just no evidence that the inspectors, when they go in, are really doing a thorough job.
ROSE: This month, Webster filed a petition urging the NRC to stop the relicensing process for Oyster Creek, along with plants near New York City and Boston, until it can show that it's doing rigorous inspections.
NRC Spokesman Neil Sheehan admits the safety reports have been, quote, "less than ideal." But he says the problems are in the writing, not the quality of the inspection.
SHEEHAN: NRC has about 3,000 employees and they take their jobs very seriously. To imply that they would somehow just rubber stamp an application because this is something that the industry is interested in, I think, really, self-insure.
ROSE: Sheehan says the NRC inspectors even crawled into the reactor at Oyster Creek during a temporary shut down to inspect for corrosion.
The NRC could reach a decision on whether to extend the plant's license in the few months. Though, everyone seems to agree that a federal appeals court may have the final say.
For NPR News, I'm Joel Rose.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Florida holds its presidential primary next Tuesday and many felons, recently released from prison, won't be going to the polls. That was supposed to have changed. Last year, Florida Governor Charlie Crist fulfilled a campaign pledge to push through new rules. Felons convicted of non-violent crimes who had served their time would now have their civil rights, including voting rights, automatically restored.
But as NPR's Greg Allen reports, the process is anything but automatic.
GREG ALLEN: It's a Saturday afternoon, and in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood, Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church is a busy place.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD)
ALLEN: More than a hundred people filled the church sanctuary and the parish hall. It's a workshop offered by state and local agencies and non-profit groups for former felons.
Many, like 24-year-old Chaz Greene(ph) are here to have their civil rights restored. Greene's a big guy with tattoos, his hair in braids and a gold grill on his teeth. He says he filled out a bunch of forms at the workshop and had to his fingerprints taken for one reason, so he can reclaim the right to vote.
CHAZ GREENE: You should be able to have a right to voice your opinion about who's going to run your country and who's going to set the rules for you and your standards in America. So, you know, voting is very important in our lives.
ALLEN: Workshops like this are held a couple of times per month through out Florida. They become very popular since April, when the process of restoring civil rights of former felons changed. Instead of having to petition the state on a case by case basis, the approximately 3,000 non-violent felons who complete their sentences each month, now have their cases automatically reviewed, and if approved, have their rights restored.
Elton Edwards with the Florida ACLU says the demands for these workshops have been huge. More than a thousand people showed up for one held last year.
ELTON EDWARDS: We basically try to get people back on line because, you know, if a person has a felony conviction, he can't vote, he can't sit on a jury, they can't run for public office. And a lot of times, when it comes to employment, they are discriminated or outright excluded.
ALLEN: Under Florida law, former felons are banned from receiving certain state-issued occupational licenses which has limited their opportunities in fields like heath care and construction.
All these were suppose to change. Disenfranchisement of former felons withholding their right to vote is written into the Florida constitution. It's a principle that dates back to reconstruction. But when he campaigned for governor, Charlie Crist pledged to change the rules that allow for rights restoration, making it easier for felons to regain the right to vote.
Since voting rights is typically a Democratic issue, when the new Republican governor actually did it, even some activists were surprised.
MUSLIMA LEWIS: We can't deny the fact that it was a significant step and it was.
ALLEN: Muslima Lewis heads the Florida ACLU's Voting Rights Project. Although Governor Crist wanted to make restoration of civil rights automatic for non- violent felons who completed their sentences, he faced opposition from others on the state clemency board. The compromised rules that were adapted still lead many obstacles in the ways of rights restoration.
Nine months after the rules changed, Lewis says, as many as 950,000 former felons are still unable to vote.
LEWIS: It's a slow process. It's slow going. And individuals who were initially very encouraged in April of last year are now seeing that it's taking them a bit longer. And with the - of this being an election year, people are getting more and more impatient.
ALLEN: The problem is that after decades of disenfranchisement, the number of former felons who suddenly are eligible to have their rights restored has overwhelmed the system. Florida's parole board says that although some 45,000 people had their restored last year. There's backlog of at least 130,000 former felons who are still waiting for their cases to be reviewed. Lewis says, people applying for rights restoration are being told it will be several months or a year before their cases will be considered.
LEWIS: That's very problematic. And again, this is a big election year and we are concerned about whether folks will actually be getting on the roll in time to vote in November.
ALLEN: The parole board recently received additional funds for rights restoration. Staff there say they're working to process as many former felons as possible before the general election in November.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
The current presidential hopefuls have children ranging in age from infant to adult. Commentator and military father Frank Schaeffer wants the candidates to consider their children as possible service members in future military interventions.
FRANK SCHAEFFER: My son served in Afghanistan for many long months that stretched into years. As this presidential campaign unfolds, I've been thinking about how military parents like me should think about this election. Here's what I came up with. Where will each potential commander-in-chief's children be when our troops are ordered to make additional sacrifices?
I was resentful when my son was deployed while President Bush's daughters seem to be on a perpetual spring break.
This country doesn't have a draft. The freedom not to volunteer extends to presidents children too. I don't want to suggest supposedly ambitious parents should push their offspring to serve. That said, presidents and potential presidents are free to encourage or discourage their children to volunteer and voters have every right to demand an especially high standard from those claiming they're fit to lead our country in war time.
So, how do the candidates stack up? My question doesn't apply to Senator Obama - his children are both too young. Senator Biden, who withdrew from the race, has a son in uniform, that he would be willing to serve in a war his father disapproves of, shows that service trumps politics in the Biden family. Senator McCain has two children in the military - 19-year-old Jimmy is a Marine and 21- year-old Jack is at the Naval Academy. The fact that his sons are willing to fight a war McCain has vowed to win lends moral credibility to his words no matter what you think of his stand on the war. Governor Romney has five military-age sons. They're all helping with his campaign. And when CBS' Mike Wallace asked them whether any of them had thought about serving, the answer was a universal no.
I feel guilty having not done it, said 32-year-old real estate developer Josh Romney. His 29-year-old brother Ben admitted, I've seen a lot that has made me say, my goodness, I hope I never have to do that.
Governor Huckabee has three grown children, John Mark, David and Sarah. None serve in the military. Senator Clinton's daughter, Chelsea, has had a similarly privileged and protected life. And Clinton, like Romney and Huckabee, also talks tough on national security and seems prepared to send other peoples' children to war. So where is Chelsea?
Now 27, exactly my Marine son's age, she works as a hedge fund manager and make cameo appearances with her mother's campaign.
There's nothing wrong with Chelsea Clinton, the Huckabee children or the Romney sons making a buck instead of serving their country unless Clinton, Romney and Huckabee are going to ask other peoples equally gifted children to sacrifice. Maybe it's time we take a page from Eleanor Roosevelt. She wrote, I think my husband would have been very much upset if the boys had not wanted to go into the war immediately, but he did not have to worry very much because they either were already in before the war began, or they went in immediately.
If the next president has military-age children, it will be easier for military parents like me to take the president's inevitable call for sacrifice seriously if he or she can honestly say we're all in this together.
BLOCK: Commentator Frank Schaeffer is author of "Keeping Faith: A Father-Son Story About Love and The United States Marines Corps."
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
David Greenberger travels around the country talking with older people, listening to their stories. Then, he retells them to us. Today, a story David Greenberger heard from Helen Carver as she remembered her husband.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
DAVID GREENBERGER: I was just married once to my two-legged buck. We lived 48 years in Gallup, New Mexico. My husband worked 35 years for the fire department. I didn't work, I was just a squaw. Then we moved to Thoreau, that's near continental divide. Then we moved to Blue Mountain Lake, that's miles south of Thoreau. Then we had his heart attack, we moved to Grants, new Mexico. And then, we came to Pennsylvania, me and my husband.
After his heart operation, the doctors in Albuquerque couldn't do no more, so my daughter and my son-in-law transferred us both here. They thought the hospital here would take better care of him.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GREENBERGER: Four years ago, I lost my two-legged buck. I lost him at St. Vincent's Hospital. We were married 48 years. He had a big heart operation and they said it might go to his head, and it did. They had him in an ice box, and I had to look at him. And they said, don't touch him or kiss him, because he's cold as a popsicle. That was the end of my two-legged buck. He was cremated and I want to be cremated, too.
He was in the Navy and he said he wanted to be thrown out in the water. I want my ashes scattered out in the mountains, not in the water, because I can't swim. Scatter me in the country, I'm a country girl. Just not in the coal mine even though I'm a coal miner's daughter. It's too dark in there. We had him cremated. I couldn't tell you what day it was because I was too much in stress. Now, I'm coming out of stress and I joined the senior citizens.
On Memorial Day, I got a dozen red roses. He loved them. And I took them down to the dock and threw them in the lake. I said, wherever you're at, honey, they were real fresh roses. And they came back because the wind blew them in.
BLOCK: The words of Helen Carver as retold by our commentator, David Greenberger.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Almost two and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, tens of thousands of homes in New Orleans remain damaged and empty. Right after the storm, the Army Corps of Engineers bulldozed thousands of buildings. Now, the city has been demolishing more houses that are deemed a public health threat or are in imminent danger of collapse. But now, some residents are claiming that some of these homes are salvageable, and they're being knocked down without the owner's knowledge.
NPR's Jason Beaubien reports from New Orleans.
JASON BEAUBIEN: The Rev. Louis Adams had a dream. His church in the Lower Ninth Ward was going to be a beacon for struggling single mothers, alcoholics, the destitute.
Reverend LOUIS ADAMS (Holy Ground Baptist Church): This is it - over.
BEAUBIEN: What used to be Holy Ground Baptist Church is now an empty, muddy lot. It's on a block in which only one house remains standing. Empty lots stretch for blocks in every direction. The muddy, post-urban landscape is broken only by weeds, piles of debris, the occasional shell of a house or a FEMA trailer.
Rev. ADAMS: Because the others moved back in here. They'd rather move back in here.
BEAUBIEN: Reverend Adams spent most of 2006 trying to get a building permit to repair his church. In October, while he was still negotiating with officials at City Hall, a demolition permit was issued and contractors bulldozed his sanctuary.
Rev. ADAMS: And someone was supposed to have met us out here. We came. No one came. We came two days later and our church was completely demolished.
BEAUBIEN: Like most buildings in the Lower Ninth Ward, the Holy Ground Baptist Church was damaged by Katrina and the extensive flooding that followed. Adams, however, says the damage to his church was minor compared with many of his neighbors. He had the building gutted and boarded up as required by the city. He got city inspectors to re-characterize his damage as being less than 50 percent. He submitted pictures, plans and proof of ownership.
Rev. ADAMS: The procedure that the city had set up, we followed that procedure.
Ms. STACEY HEAD (Member, New Orleans City Council): We don't do good a job. I can tell you what the procedure is supposed to be. It doesn't work this way at all.
BEAUBIEN: City council member Stacey Head says the city's law to deal with property severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, on paper is a good one. It requires public notice and a hearing before a demolition takes place. In 2006 and 2007, FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers demolished thousands of severely damaged homes. Now, almost two and a half years later, the city has taken over the task. Officials estimate that roughly 20,000 derelict structures remain. Of that group, more than 1,000 are on a list for potential demolition. Stacey Head at the City Council acknowledges that abandoned, blighted properties remain a huge problem in New Orleans, but she said the process to deal with them right now is too rushed and too chaotic.
Ms. HEAD: Perfect example is, either Thursday or Friday before New Year's, a large number of properties were put on the list for demolition consideration to be heard on Monday, New Year's Eve. I don't think that that is very good notice, when you're talking about demolishing someone's house and also destroying a treasure that you can never get back.
BEAUBIEN: Chanel Debose almost lost such a treasure. Chanel grew up in the Calliope Housing Projects of New Orleans. She went to Louisiana State University and became a lawyer. In 2001, Chanel and her husband, Stanley, bought a rambling old Victorian in Mid-City for $15,000. Stanley restored the pine floors, the leaded glass windows, the carved wooden mantels. He built the kitchen cabinets himself from scratch. Then last year, contractors hired by the city showed up at their house, shut off the gas, clipped the power lines and were getting ready to knock it down.
Ms. CHANEL DEBOSE (New Orleans Resident): What I don't understand is how do you not inquire? How do you not knock on the door? How do you not see that - to see - you know, I just don't get it. I don't get it.
BEAUBIEN: Chanel got the contractors to go away and her power restored, but their house remains on the city's demolition list. Their house flooded during Katrina. They actually escaped in Stanley's boat, and their house did suffer some damage. But you'd never know it now. Stanley has painted the outside bright yellow and restored the 100-year-old woodwork inside. Bold Afro-centric art adorns their walls.
Ms. DEBOSE: Oh, man. It is priceless. I would not sell it, even if I was Oprah rich.
BEAUBIEN: Chanel and Stanley Debose were lucky. They were in their house and were able to stop the demolition. But more than 100,000 former New Orleaneans who fled after Katrina still haven't returned. And tens of thousands of them are still waiting for state compensation so they can afford to rebuild.
Davida Finger, a staff attorney at the Katrina Clinic at Loyola Law School, has filed suit against the city of New Orleans over the demolition process. The main demand of this suit is that individual adjudication hearings be held before demolition, because in the past, bureaucratic mistakes were made.
Ms. DAVIDA FINGER (Staff Attorney, Katrina Clinic at Loyola Law School): Those mistakes weren't caught and homes were actually demolished — structurally sound homes, homes that were in the process of being rebuilt, homes that were almost totally rebuilt.
BEAUBIEN: One common complaint from people who are trying to stop demolitions is that they're unable to get information or help from city hall about the entire process. Repeated phone calls by NPR to the city's code enforcement department, which is responsible for demolitions, went unanswered.
Jason Beaubien, NPR News, New Orleans.
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Next Tuesday, Florida hosts a big state Republican primary with four major candidates all running hard - John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani. Florida is where the former mayor of New York City hopes to catch the field. And it's where our co-host, Robert Siegel, caught up with him.
ROBERT SIEGEL: So much is said about Rudolph Giuliani's unprecedented wait-until-Florida strategy, you could almost forget about something equally unprecedented about his campaign. Giuliani is trying to translate success in New York City politics to a national platform. And that just doesn't happen. But if it can happen anywhere in the vast expanse of America that New Yorkers regard as out of town, it should happen here in Palm Beach Gardens on Florida's Gold Coast.
(Soundbite of crowd)
SIEGEL: Statewide immigrant New Yorkers are not the dominant force in Florida voting that they're sometimes depicted as. But in TooJay's Original Gourmet Delicatessen, the cuisine is New York style deli, many of the people are northeast transplants and the place is as packed as a Triple J deli combo: Corned beef, roast beef, turkey and Swiss cheese with lots of coleslaw.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Presidential Candidate): You got to tell me where they are. Can I look at this now? You're all over the place.
SIEGEL: After touting his experience at turning around an economy, New York City's, Giuliani sat down for an interview at the West Palm Beach Airport.
Mr. Mayor, welcome to the program.
Mr. GIULIANI: Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: If you were president today — the markets have fallen, the Fed has cut interest rates and you're going to meet with Democrats at the White House who want a stimulus package to include direct aid for those who are hurting most, people who don't even benefit from a tax rebate, what do you tell them and what do you tell the country about the state of the economy today?
Mr. GIULIANI: What I'd say is that it is important to do the things that create a sound fiscal situation in this country. And those are fundamental things. We have to lower taxes, we have to reduce government spending and we have to moderate our regulations so that we don't drive businesses and jobs and money out of the United States. And if we do those things, our economy will grow.
SIEGEL: You're talking long term, though. Everyone else in the room is talking short term. We got to stimulate things right now. What would you do right now?
Mr. GIULIANI: Well, the monetary policies that the Fed are pursuing, I think, are the right ones. I think the Fed is doing the right thing, short term. I think there has to be some parts of the short-term stimulus package that the president is discussing with Congress. But I guess the part you're asking me, what would I emphasize, I would emphasize some of the long term permanent changes, because I believe that effects investment. I believe it affects who puts more money in the United States as opposed to putting money somewhere else, who puts more jobs in the United States rather than putting more jobs somewhere else.
If people see a picture, businesses and international financial institutions, see a picture of an America that is based on sound growth fiscal policies, you will see a lot more investment in America.
SIEGEL: But if you were dealing with the Democratic majority in the Congress, which the next president may well have to do, what do you say to the argument stimulus has to include also direct support to people who don't stand together in income tax rebate? A good thing to do and unnecessary compromise? How would you describe it?
Mr. GIULIANI: I would say that looking at the President's package, that's probably in the area that I describe as a compromise. What is he going to have to compromise in order to get the long term package that I think will be the more significant one.
SIEGEL: You would make that sort of compromise at that?
Mr. GIULIANI: Well, I would look at it. I would look at it and I would leave the president the room to accomplish that.
SIEGEL: We asked you about a story — I'm sure you've at least heard about it if not read on the front page of The New York Times today. It's a story about your style of dealing with critics when you were mayor. And I'll read one paragraph from it or one sentence.
Mr. Giuliani was a pugilist in a city of political brawlers. But far more than his predecessors, historians and politicians say his toughness edged toward ruthlessness.
Why did you come up with the reputation of being ruthless, mayor?
Mr. GIULIANI: Well, you have all different kinds of reputations. There are people who look at different aspects of what you did and exaggerated one way or the other. Sometimes you get more praise than you deserve. Sometimes you get more blame than you deserve.
The simple fact is I got very extraordinary results as mayor of New York City. I took a city that was the crime capital of America, turned it into one of the safest cities in America. I took a city that was the welfare capital of America and turned it into the welfare-to-work capital of America. I took a city where people, a lot of them felt a certain degree of hopelessness. Sixty, seventy percent thought the city was going in the wrong direction and turned it to a city where most people thought it was going in the right direction.
SIEGEL: But the incidents that the Time story includes, well, one is about a man who called up your radio show to complain about a red-light sting, and the next thing you knew, the cops arrested him on a 13-year-old traffic warrant that was then thrown out. Somebody - he shot accidentally by the police, somehow his juvenile record gets unsealed. The impression of the story builds up to is payback with something you've expected you crossed…
Mr. GIULIANI: The reality is stories have all different twists to them. They have all different turns to them. People emphasize different things. I believe my time as mayor of New York City led to a city that was safer, city that was stronger; certainly led to a city that was more prosperous. Unemployment, when I started, was 10.5 percent. By the time I ended, it was five percent. If I could make the same kind of changes in stimulating the economy of the United States that I did in stimulating the economy of New York, then the United States would be in a very, very good condition.
SIEGEL: Question about abortion. I want you to clarify this. On the one hand, you are routinely described as pro-choice. On the other hand, you have said that you would appoint judges who'd be strict constructionist. Which is it? If you were a president, would you support a woman's right to have a legal abortion? Would you oppose it? Would you be neutral on the question?
Mr. GIULIANI: My position on abortion is that I would prefer to see a society where there were no abortion, where people made that decision for themselves. But ultimately, I believe, that that decision cannot be made by government that a woman has to have room to make that decision with her conscience, with her doctor in her own way. I do support, however, a ban on partial birth abortion, parental notification. I support parental notification. I support limitations on abortion that would not eliminate…
SIEGEL: But what was called the cynical holding of Roe versus Wade.
Mr. GIULIANI: But ultimately, ultimately, I would not make that decision a litmus test. What I would say is, I would appoint judges who I believed restrict constructionist judges. Judges who would interpret the constitution based on what it means, not what they would like it to mean. And ultimately, I would leave it to them to decide on a whole wide variety of issues. There'd be no one litmus test. It wouldn't be a litmus test about any one particular amendment. And judges who are strict constructionist judges on some of these things could come to somewhat different opinions.
SIEGEL: But just to understand it, it shouldn't be government deciding that? It shouldn't be the federal government or a state government, you're saying?
Mr. GIULIANI: I believe that ultimately, there has to be room left for individual decision making.
SIEGEL: One last question. What do you say to the Florida voter who was at the delicatessen this morning who told me he was interested in you earlier, but by now, he sees you drop in the polls in Florida, you've even dropped in the polls in New York, the strategy isn't going to work and he doesn't think you can win?
Mr. GIULIANI: Well, I think — tell him to take another look. We're doing very well in Florida. On…
SIEGEL: You used to be (unintelligible) last year.
Mr. GIULIANI: But we're doing very well now. And our message is getting through. And the election is going to happen real soon. I believe we're going to win here. And I think that will revive our whole, whole election. It'll take us into February 5th with a tremendous amount of momentum. This is a very fluid race. It's wide open. I would vote, for my choice, I'd vote for the candidate that I thought could do the best job for me. And I would vote for the candidate that I thought would give America the best leadership.
SIEGEL: What do you make of that New York, those New York polls which shows Senator McCain catching you in the Republican primary?
Mr. GIULIANI: Oh, this is function of the horse race and momentum that I think our winning in Florida will turn all that around.
SIEGEL: Mayor Giuliani, thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. GIULIANI: Thank you.
BLOCK: That was Rudy Giuliani speaking in Florida with our co-host, Robert Siegel. Giuliani was at the West Palm Beach Airport campaigning for next week's Republican primary.
NORRIS: Tomorrow on MORNING EDITION, you can hear Barack Obama talk about what he would do about the economy and about his sparring with the Clintons.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
There was more turmoil in the financial markets today, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average losing more than 100 points. For a time, it was down some 400 points. We're going to begin this hour with the reaction from Washington. The Federal Reserve Board cut a key interest rate by three-quarters of a point, expressing its concern about the possibility of a recession. And President Bush met with congressional leaders to try to build a consensus on legislation to stimulate the economy.
NPR's Brian Naylor begins our coverage.
BRIAN NAYLOR: Mr. Bush, seated between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, said he was confident that all sides would be able to reach agreement on an economic stimulus proposal.
President GEORGE W. BUSH: I believe we can find a common ground to get something done that's big enough and effective enough so that an economy that is inherently strong gets a boost.
NAYLOR: When Capitol Hill lawmakers continue to discuss the parameters of the stimulus package, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer praised the Feds' earlier action and said Congress should follow suit.
Representative STENY HOYER (Democrat, Maryland; House Majority Leader): It is obvious from today's news that both the markets are volatile. The Federal Reserve has taken very significant action today and the way I put it is, we need to do something that's simple that everybody can understand that's fast and it's focused.
NAYLOR: And while lawmakers are focused on the idea of putting cash in the hands of consumers, there are still no consensus on how best to do that.
Democratic Senator Max Baucus of Montana, who chairs the finance committee, suggested not only giving rebates to individuals and couples but giving more to families with children.
Senator MAX BAUCUS (Democrat, Montana; Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance): So, a couple and two or three children to get additional, say, a $400 bonus per child in addition to the, say, $400 or $500 payment an individual can get or say, $800 or $1,000 check with a couple (unintelligible).
NAYLOR: There were some notes of caution being heard on the Hill today. One was that people shouldn't head to their mailboxes just yet. The director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, told the Senate Finance panel that while any stimulus should be approved quickly to get money into the economy as soon as possible, the IRS might not be able to cooperate.
Mr. PETER ORSZAG (Director, Congressional Budget Office): A major administrative issue with rebates involves when the checks could go out given that the IRS is busy with tax filing season. It will be a major challenge to issue checks before May or June at the very earliest.
NAYLOR: Orszag said distributing rebate checks later in the year would likely have a more pronounced effect on spending for next Christmas spun(ph) to a little in the short term.
Meanwhile, fiscal conservatives in Congress are warning their colleagues not to get carried away. Here is Republican Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire.
Senator JUDD GREGG (Republican, New Hampshire; Ranking Member, Senate Committee on Budget): And so I just wanted to raise this sort of red flag of reason before we step onto this slippery slope of a stimulus package, which could easily end up being primarily a spending package for the purposes of addressing whatever anybody happens to deem to be a good political spending issue.
NAYLOR: Gregg also said that boosting consumer spending would likely have the effect of stimulating the Chinese economy, which produces many of the consumer goods that might be purchased with tax rebates.
Mr. Bush said he was realistic about how much time it will take Congress to send him a stimulus proposal. Senate Majority Leader Reid said he hoped it could be accomplished in the next three weeks.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, the Capitol.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Not surprisingly, the stock market and the economy were hot topics on the campaign trail. Democrats, here's the opportunity to criticize President Bush, and all the candidates took time to call attention to their economic plans and credentials.
NPR's Mara Liasson has that story.
MARA LIASSON: Here's Democrat Barack Obama at an event today in Greenville, South Carolina.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): We woke up this morning to a bad news from Wall Street…
LIASSON: Part of the reason for the plunge is the wide perception that the Bush administration's initial stimulus proposal would not do enough to avoid a recession. And although Obama said he hoped the interest rate cut announced by the Federal Reserve today would help restore confidence, he blamed Washington for the market tumble and other economic problems.
Sen. OBAMA: What started as a crisis in the housing market has now spilled over to the rest of the economy. Banks are facing a credit crunch, leaving businesses with less money to invest and more Americans unable to get loans. Now for years, we were warned that this might happen, but Washington did what Washington increasingly does: It looked the other way.
LIASSON: Hillary Clinton, back in Washington this morning, repeated a suggestion she made in last night's debate in South Carolina, one that showcased her knowledge of how the White House works.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): I think it's imperative that the following steps be taken. The president should have already and should do so very quickly convene the president's working group on financial markets. That's something that he can ask the secretary of the Treasury to do.
LIASSON: John Edwards, in a conference call with reporters this morning, used the R-word.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina; Presidential Candidate): The truth is that our country's no longer on a brink of a recession, I think we're in one. And it looks like it could be a serious one. The tragedy of all this actually is that this could have been largely avoided.
LIASSON: The economy has already become the number one issue in the campaign, edging aside Iraq and terrorism even for Republicans, and it's a more complicated one for the GOP since they are the incumbent party and traditionally seen by voters as weaker on this issue than Democrats.
During the Michigan primary, Mitt Romney said only he, a former businessman, could fix the mess. Today, he released this new ad.
(Soundbite of political ad)
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): Today, our economy is slowing. Many feel anxious about the future. I know how America works because I spent my life in the real economy. I ran a business, turned around the Olympics and I led a state. My plan will make our economy strong. We need to invest in people and businesses with tax cuts.
LIASSON: Rudy Giuliani has been emphasizing his fiscal stewardship of New York City as he campaigns across Florida. Today in an interview with NPR, he said that he agreed with the president's short-term stimulus plan but…
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York; Presidential Candidate): I would emphasize some of the long-term permanent changes because I believe that affect investment. I believe it affects who puts more money in the United States as supposed to putting money somewhere else, who puts more jobs in the United States rather than putting more jobs somewhere else.
LIASSON: John McCain, who like every other candidate has a stimulus package of his own, told the mostly military audience in Florida that the economy is in tough shape.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): I believe that we have to do a lot of things. We have to cut spending, we have to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 to 25, we need to make these tax cuts permanent.
LIASSON: None of the candidates wants to be seen as indifferent to the economic plight of people hurt by the market plunge or the mortgage crisis. But from the campaign trail, none of them can do much about either.
Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The economy, health care, Iraq - all were discussed during last night's Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina.
But Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama spent as much time getting personal as they did talking policy.
For a little help sorting fact from fiction, we've got Brooks Jackson, director of the Annenberg Political Fact Check, here in the studio.
Welcome to the program.
Mr. BROOKS JACKSON (Director, Annenberg Political Fact Check): Hello.
NORRIS: Now, perhaps the most heated exchange - I know there were several of them last night, but the most heated exchange last night began with Senator Obama on the defensive responding to charges from the Clinton camp that he had praised Republican ideas.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interest to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to because while I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shipped overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Wal-Mart. I was fighting these strikes.
NORRIS: Not long after that, Senator Clinton fired back with this.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Yes, they did have ideas and they were bad ideas - bad for America. And I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Rezko, in his slum landlord business in inner city Chicago.
(Soundbite of applause)
NORRIS: But from this, this question of appraising, not necessarily Republican President Ronald Reagan but his ideas on stage last night, Senator Obama fired back at Senator Clinton and said, you too have said nice things about Ronald Reagan. Is that true?
Mr. JACKSON: Right. Well, Hillary Clinton definitely has praised Ronald Reagan's political acuity, as so as Bill Clinton. But more to the point, when she says you - Obama - praise Republican ideas like privatizing Social Security, she is really misrepresenting what he told a Reno newspaper editorial board. What he said is that Republicans or the party ideas - we should become the party of ideas. He never - he said specifically he thought many of them were bad ideas.
NORRIS: And what did she say?
Mr. JACKSON: Well, Hillary Clinton is quoted by Tom Brokaw in a book that's on the stands now, quote, "he played the balance and the music beautifully." So essentially, she's praising his political abilities just as Obama was praising his political abilities.
NORRIS: And that's when the Brokaw book boom about the 1950 generation(ph).
Mr. JACKSON: Correct.
NORRIS: So Reagan and Republicans and Republican ideas aside, let's take into those personal barbs, particularly when it comes to the candidate's experience. First, Senator Clinton and that Wal-Mart charge. What did she do on the board at Wal-Mart?
Mr. JACKSON: Well, she was a board member. She was paid 18,000 a year for six years plus 1,500 a meeting; came away with maybe a hundred thousand dollars worth of Wal-Mart stocks. She says she was pushing for change. And there's New York Times story that reported on this and said, indeed, she did. Didn't accomplish all that much change. But she did push for it.
NORRIS: And that's something she talks about. She says that she was supporting the rights of women, women pushing the company to hire more women, pay them an equal wage.
Mr. JACKSON: Right. No record from what he can find that she pushed for Wal-Mart to unionize. That would be probably too much to hope for for anybody who's a trade unionist. But she did push for some change there. There's no question about that.
NORRIS: And to Senator Obama, what do we know about his dealings with this fellow named Rezko?
Mr. JACKSON: Well, this idea that he was somehow the consigliore of a slum lord is just non-sense. He did, as a young law - legal associate do work for - not for Rezko, directly, but for community housing group that was going to partner with him to put up some low-income housing. He says it was about five hours of work. I don't know if it was more or less than that.
He ran into trouble later. Rezko became a big campaign contributor. And along the way, became indicted. After which, Obama has given back at least some of that money - maybe all. I'm not quite sure.
NORRIS: Now, last night - I just want to move on to the third person who was on the stage last night - former Senator John Edwards speculated that John McCain is the likely Republican nominee. And he said that he, Senator Edwards, is better suited to stand up against McCain in a head-to-head contest. He mentioned specific polls that said that in a head-to-head contest, that he could beat John McCain. Is he right about that? Because Senator Obama is basically on the campaign showing us the same thing.
Mr. JACKSON: Well, this is something that is literally true but you really got to listen carefully. He said, in your last poll that had the three of us - and he's referring to CNN's last poll - that he was the only one - he was the one who beat McCain. And that's true - Obama tied. But that was in early December. That was the last time CNN had a poll that had all three of them in trial heats against McCain. The much more recent poll, about 10 days ago, didn't even have Edwards in it. And both Hillary and Senator Obama beat McCain handily.
NORRIS: Brooks Jackson, thanks so much for coming in to talk to us.
Mr. JACKSON: Thank you.
NORRIS: Brooks Jackson is the director of the Annenberg Political Fact Check.
One last political item to mention. Republican Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race for his party's nomination. In a statement, Thompson said he hoped the country and his party benefited from this effort. He did not endorse any of the other Republicans running for the White House.
You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Almost two decades have passed since the worse oil spill in North American history. The Exxon Valdez slammed into a reef, spilling millions of gallon of heavy crude oil into the waters of Alaska's Prince William Sound. The impact has lingered in the surrounding areas ecologically, financially and legally. Exxon is still fighting with those affected by the disaster. And this week, the case reaches the Supreme Court.
Elizabeth Arnold reports.
ELIZABETH ARNOLD: Mike Webber, an Alaskan native, has carved a seven-foot totem pole out of yellow cedar. It's called a ridicule or shame pole.
Mr. MIKE WEBBER (Resident, Alaska): You know, ridicule pole is to shame a person of well, to pay unpaid debts.
ARNOLD: Webber, a quiet man whose eyes are always on the sea, is one of 33,000 fishermen, cannery workers, landowners and natives still seeking recompense from Exxon. He points to a likeness of former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond on the pole.
Mr. WEBBER: My main idea was to get this oil spill coming out of the mouth of Lee Raymond's. Kind of like oil is breaching out of a tanker. And then in the middle of the oil slick, and to put in this quote, we will make you whole again.
ARNOLD: We will make you whole again is what Exxon spokesman assured a hall packed with fishermen in Cordova 19 years ago. He was shouted down.
(Soundbite of shouting)
ARNOLD: The beaches were black and oil-coated eagles, sea otters and harlequin ducks were washing up the thousands. People look out at the slick which spread over 3,000 square miles and knew their lives had changed forever. Mike Webber was 30 years old at the time, a successful fisherman like his father and grandfather before him.
Mr. WEBBER: And I was a happy camper because, you know, you get a lot of pride and a lot of dignity to accomplish things that you shoot for. But basically, the oil spill really taken all those goals, and those are dreams that we've lost.
ARNOLD: To date, Exxon has paid almost $3.4 billion in fines and restoration. $300 million of that also was paid in out-of-court settlements for economic injury. But Mike Webber and thousands more seeking compensation haven't seen a dime.
(Soundbite of boat engine)
ARNOLD: The once thriving fishing town of Cordova has never quite recovered economically from the spill. It's a one-sided story here. At the outset, there was money to be made. Many hired out their boats and planes for Exxon and the media. These self-described spillionaires made top dollar. But it was short-lived. Webber painted dollar signs out of his own blood to represent them on his totem pole.
Mr. WEBBER: In a way, the people made a lot of money out of the oil spill. But then there again, whatever they made, they reinvested it into fishery. And then the fishery declined.
ARNOLD: Lucrative herring fishery here has been closed 12 of the 19 years since the spill due to lack of fish.
(Soundbite of waves)
ARNOLD: Just how much the oil impacted beaches like this and the sound's entire ecosystem from kelp beds to killer whales has been argued in courtrooms for nearly two decades now. Government and industry scientists continue to disagree. Exxon maintains the sound has been restored to its former self. Spokesman Mark Boudreaux.
Mr. MARK BOUDREAUX (Spokesman, Exxon): It is. And there have been 350 peer-reviewed studies since about we believe resoundingly demonstrate the recovery of Prince William Sound.
ARNOLD: It was widely believed just after the spill that the oil would dissipate over time due to normal forces - tides and storms. And most of it did. But Jeff Short, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric researcher, has conducted long-term studies of what's called lingering oil - oil that's been trapped in intertidal areas. What he discovered last year surprised even him.
Mr. JEFFREY SHORT (Researcher, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): What's there now is going to be there for decades. And it's not too different chemically from what it was the summer of 1989. I suspect you'll find traces of it on more heavily impacted beaches at the end of the century.
ARNOLD: Exxon doesn't disagree but maintains that this lingering oil is insignificant and not a threat. Again, spokesman Boudreaux.
Mr. BOUDREAUX: The oil residue is not bio accessible - that means it's not having any - posing any ecological risk to any of the species that remain in the sound.
ARNOLD: Still, those who once harvested wildly from the sound now pick their spots warily. It may look Sierra Club calendar perfect but there's oil just beneath the surface. John Devens has been angry for 18 years. He was mayor of Valdez at the time of the spill.
Mr. JOHN DEVENS (Executive Director, Prince William Sound Regional Citizens' Advisory Council): Exxon can say all they want. And I mean they have bought a lot of scientists who have said it's not causing any more problems. But the people that live out there and used - I mean, subsistent users - they know damn good and well there's oil on those beaches.
ARNOLD: But along with lingering oil and lingering anger, there are other more positive byproducts of the spill. It was the catalyst for new regulatory legislation like OPA, the Oil Protection Act. Nearly a billion dollars of the civil settlement went to restore, replace and enhance or acquire the equivalent of injured natural resources. And that's meant new protected habitat, new science and new oversight.
Today, there isn't a tanker that moves in Prince William Sound without a tug escort and close monitoring. Devens, the former mayor of Valdez is now the executive director of the Prince William Sound Regional Advisory Council, a powerful citizen's oversight group that, among other things, takes a hard look at every company's oil spill response or contingency plan.
Mr. DEVENS: So today, we're arguing regularly with the shippers over their contingency plan. Back in '89, you had one barge, got a hole in it. It was up on the beach, and it was covered with snow. I mean, today, that sort of thing wouldn't happen.
ARNOLD: But talk of any silver lining from the spill brings scowls from some who scrub the oil from the hulls of their boat they could no longer use to make a living. New laws, new science and new monitoring haven't been enough to heal those wounds. And most doubt even the settlement with Exxon over damages will do that.
Mike Webber doesn't fish much anymore. But from his home in Cordova, you can see the sea from all three directions. And piles of nets still sit in his yard. He says he thought that carving the shame pole would bring some kind of resolution but it hasn't.
Mr. WEBBER: There really wasn't much healing in it. As a carver, when I was carving the pole, I think the only thing that I felt good about was the four people that were standing together on the bottom of the pole. Now, they still had strength. Speaking for myself, (unintelligible) still got pride and still got a lot of heart. We're still hanging in there. And that, you know, says something.
ARNOLD: The Supreme Court is expected to decide case in the coming months.
For NPR News, I'm Elizabeth Arnold in Anchorage.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf is in Europe this week, trying to shore up support for his regime. Musharraf says he wants to correct perspectives about the political chaos that has gripped Pakistan over the past few months. But while Musharraf tries to convince European leaders that Pakistan is stable, back home, the anger and opposition to the autocratic ruler is growing.
NPR's Jackie Northam reports from Islamabad.
JACKIE NORTHAM: President Musharraf arrived in Europe on a PR campaign to show that Pakistan is stable and well on the road to democracy. But cracks soon appeared in his highly polished presentation. He became defensive when asked hard questions about terrorism in Pakistan, human rights, whether the country would have free and fair elections next month and democracy. Speaking in Brussels, Musharraf warned western countries that Pakistan was not yet ready for their standards of democracy.
President PERVEZ MUSHARRAF (Pakistan): You have taken centuries in reaching wherever you have come. Allow us time of going for the values that you have established for yourself. We are on the right course, but our environment and your environment is very, very different.
NORTHAM: While Musharraf tried to woo skeptical European leaders, back home in Pakistan, the timing of his tour was met with astonishment, says political analyst Kamran Shafi.
Mr. KAMRAN SHAFI (Pakistan political analyst): This country is literally on fire. I can't, for the life of me, imagine how he could leave the country in this state and go off.
NORTHAM: Political intrigue is almost a national sport in Pakistan. But over the past year, the political climate has become toxic. Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated last month. It's unclear whether the February 18th parliamentary elections will be postponed. And there are regular suicide bombings across the country. Tariq Fatemi, a former ambassador to the U.S. and Russia, says this is a critical period in Pakistan.
Mr. TARIQ FATEMI (Former Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S. and Russia): There is great deal of uncertainty. There is turmoil. And one has not showed us to the direction in which the country's moving. And therefore, one expected the president to stay on in Pakistan and look at these problems.
NORTHAM: Musharraf is deeply unpopular in Pakistan and was forced from its powerful rule as army chief of staff. Other leaders in his position would likely think twice about leaving the country at such a sensitive juncture. Fatemi says he sees two reasons why Musharraf would risk leaving Pakistan now.
Mr. FATEMI: He believes that his power of persuasion, that he's very articulate, very intelligent, very persuasive person, and therefore, he will be able to sway public opinion in these major European capitals. The other explanation is that the president is totally unaware the extent to which the situation has deteriorated in Pakistan.
NORTHAM: There is increasing opposition and anger toward Musharraf now in Pakistan. Today, more than 100 retired military officers wrote a letter calling for Musharraf to resign. Retired Lieutenant General and defense analyst Talat Masood was one of those officers who signed the document.
Mr. TALAT MASOOD (Retired Lieutenant General, Pakistani Army; Defense Analyst): I think there is now such a groundswell of opposition to him from every segment and every sector of the society. There is practically unanimity about the fact that he is a very major problem for Pakistan and he has to leave.
NORTHAM: Masood says Musharraf is also being blamed for other problems beyond the political turmoil such as severe shortages of basic necessities.
Mr. MASOOD: They are not available or they are available at a price which is unacceptable. Like, for instance, I mean, you know, food stuff - ordinary wheat and rice and, you know, cereals.
NORTHAM: And there are widespread electricity blackouts. Some rural areas are without power for up to 16 hours a day. Masood says those real, practical hardships will likely increase the antipathy toward Musharraf, who does not plan to return to Pakistan for another week.
Jackie Northam, NPR News, Islamabad.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck's latest joint venture might not have some of the dramatic suspense of today's Oscar nominations, but the story itself has plenty of tension. The movie, a documentary about Howard Zinn's book, "A People's History of the United States." Since its publication more than two decades ago, the book changed how history is taught. And it started more than its share of arguments. Mix in a little Hollywood star power and Oscar-winning clout, and it shouldn't be too surprising that the film version would have some drama of its own.
From Boston, WBUR's Andrea Shea has the story.
ANDREA SHEA: Progressive liberals embrace "A People's History" for its populous take on social and political descent when it was first published in 1980. But it also drew criticism for being anti-establishment and preachy. "A People's History" still sells almost two million copies so far, and it's a cult favorite. Actor Matt Damon's working class character sings its praises in the 1997 movie "Good Will Hunting."
Mr. ROBIN WILLIAMS (Actor): (As Sean Maguire): If you're gonna read a real history book, read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States." That book (bleep) knock you on your ass better than Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent." Do you think that's a good book?
SHEA: Damon himself is a fan of "A People's History." The Boston-area native grew up next door to Zinn and may have been trying to make movies based on the book for 10 years. Howard Zinn says he, Damon, Ben Affleck and "Good Will Hunting" producer Chris Moore struck a mini-series deal, first with Fox television that fell through, then with HBO.
Mr. HOWARD ZINN (Author, "A People's History of the United States"): And HBO went so far as to hire scriptwriters that he had chosen. And John Sayles wrote the script, Howard Fast wrote the script, Paul Laverty, who works with Ken Loach, wrote a script. They turned them down. And since, we send them in other attempts, and finally this year, Chris Moore took matters in hand and said, I'm going to do it. And so he's doing it.
SHEA: He's doing it as an indie documentary of mini-series called "The People Speak."
Mr. CHRIS MOORE (Executive producer, "The People Speak"): You know, it's hard to make people pay attention to history, period. It gets even harder when it's history with a point of view.
SHEA: So executive producer Chris Moore says they'll add archival footage and historical context to the film to counter criticism that it's overly simplistic or bias. Fast paced editing and contemporary music will help sell "The People Speak" to audiences, he says. And so will having hot Hollywood actors read excerpts from Zinn's book.
Mr. MOORE: Fame matters today. Whether it should or not is an argument for another day. But today, fame matters. And Viggo Mortensen and Josh Brolin and David Straithairn and Marisa Tomei and Kerry Washington and John Legend and Matt Damon and all the people who are going to be part of this, they give us the opportunity to be able to make this, you know, something that people will go see.
SHEA: On this day in Boston, it's working. The Emerson Majestic's theater is filling up for the first in the series of stage readings being filmed in front of a live audience. Actor Danny Glover takes the stage to read "Ballad of Roosevelt," a poem by Langston Hughes.
Mr. DANNY GLOVER (Actor): (Reading) The rent was due and the lights were out. I said, tell me, mama, what's it all about? We're waiting on Roosevelt, son. Roosevelt, Roosevelt. Just waiting on Roosevelt. Sister got sick and the doctor wouldn't come because we couldn't pay him the proper sum. A-waiting on Roosevelt. Roosevelt. Roosevelt. Yes, I'm waiting on Roosevelt.
SHEA: But star power like Glovers could distract from the impact of the words, says Georgetown University history professor, Michael Kazin.
Professor MICHAEL KAZIN (History, Georgetown University): There can be this confusion, sometimes, in a mind of the viewer that the actor who is speaking these lines is much more real to them than the personal who actually wrote those lines.
SHEA: Kazin has criticized the book as bad history, an overly selective string of accusations against the powerful. But he applauds the use of actual words of people who witnessed or played a part in that history.
Mr. JOSH BROLIN (Actor): I'm reading Christopher Columbus. I'm reading Mark Twain.
SHEA: Actor Josh Brolin is also reading anarchist Bartolomeo Vanzetti's statement from his controversial murder trial in 1927, a trial that ended in his execution. Brolin, who stars in the film "No Country for Old Men," says playing fictional roles doesn't carry the same weight as delivering real speeches by real historical figures.
Mr. JOSH BROLIN: The main thing with all of these is that people actually got up and said something, you know? In the worst situations, with Venzetti, he was going to the death chamber, basically, and they say, you have any last words? And to this day, they look back and it's very obvious that he was innocent. But what he said was amazing, you know? He didn't sit there and cry for help. He made sure that his words had weight to them and that people would veer them from that point on even after his death. And they do.
SHEA: On stage, wearing jeans and a button down, Brolin reads Venzetti's words from a script propped on a music stand with gray-scale, life-sized silhouettes in the background.
Mr. BROLIN: I am suffering because I am a radical, and indeed I am a radical. I have suffered more for my family than I have for myself. And realize this, you can only kill me once. But if I could be reborn, I would live again to do what I have done already.
SHEA: Brolin, the other actors and much of the audience have believed wholeheartedly with Howard Zinn's prospective. Historian Michael Kazin wonders if in the end, "The People Speak" will be another comfort documentary that preaches to the choir.
Mr. KAZIN: Zinn certainly has higher aspirations then. He wants to change the country. If you want to change the country, you have to make film which is going to speak to people who are not converted already. And I don't think that Zinn's book does that very well. Whether the film does it real well or not is an open question.
SHEA: At 85, Howard Zinn, a professor emeritus at Boston University says he's ready for the same sort of roasting his book received almost 30 years ago.
Mr. HOWARD ZINN (Author, "A People's History of the United States; Professor Emeritus, Boston University): Sure, because the film is going to be in your face. The film is going to be unabashed in what it says about war, about our class system, about the treatment of women, about the treatment of black people and Native Americans in this country. Some people will be outraged by the point of view. They'll say, this is not objective; this is biased. Well, of course it's not objective. It's biased like all of history.
SHEA: For now, the producers and crew are hitting the road to catch up with celebs, including Matt Damon, who couldn't be in Boston for the film's inaugural shoot. The goal is to finish "The People Speak" before the presidential election. And if TV networks, cable channels and film distributors turn it down, they say, there is always YouTube.
For NPR News, I'm Andrea Shea.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
It wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be. When traders went to work on Wall Street this morning, there was plenty to worry about - the huge selloff in foreign stock exchanges, fears of a recession. But shortly before trading got underway today, the Federal Reserve announced a surprise cut in interest rates, helping to keep the losses relatively small considering. After plummeting early, the Dow regained some of the lost ground and finished down 128 points.
NPR's John Ydstie has the story on how it all played out.
JOHN YDSTIE: As the day broke on U.S. stock markets, fears of panic selling by U.S. investors were foremost. After all, they'd already weathered the worst January in U.S. stock market history. Futures Market suggested U.S. indexes could lost another 5 percent today on top of the 15 to 20 percent they'd lost since they peaked last October. Before the market opened, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson tried to reassure investors in a breakfast speech to the Chamber of Commerce in Washington. He expressed confidence that the president and Congress shared a sense of urgency about passing an economic stimulus package to head off recession.
Secretary HENRY PAULSON (U.S. Treasury Department): I am optimistic that we can find common ground and get this done long before winter turns to spring.
YDSTIE: As Paulson continued his speech, an even bigger economic player made a move. Here's how it played out on the cable business channel CNBC.
(Soundbite of show "Squawk Box")
Unidentified Man #1: They have been hit themselves.
Mr. JOE KERNEN (Host, "Squawk Box"): This is live, let me break in here. Hampton Pearson live in Washington with breaking news.
Mr. HAMPTON PEARSON (Reporter, CNBC): Joe, the information we have is an announcement from the Federal Reserve. It has decided to lower its target rate by 75 basis points to…
YDSTIE: The Fed said it was making the three-quarters of a percentage point rate cut because of continued deterioration in financial markets and a weakening economy. It was the largest single cut since the federal funds rate became the Fed's principal tool for monetary policy, bigger than after 9/11 or the 1987 stock market crash.
Unidentified Man #4: No. Now that information does have…
YDSTIE: As the opening bell sounded, the market plummeted more than 460 points in the first few minutes despite the Fed's forceful action. But almost immediately, investors started clawing their way back. Just after 10:00 A.M., the Dow Jones Industrial Average had recovered about half its initial loss.
Ed Craig was on the trading floor at Jefferies & Company in Midtown Manhattan.
Mr. ED CRAIG (Managing Director of U.S. Cash Equities Trading, Jefferies & Company): We caught buyers very quickly, probably within the first five to 10 minutes. It seems everybody caught their breath, let the market opened, and then buyers came in.
YDSTIE: So at this moment, a little after 10:00 in the morning, you're relatively optimistic about today?
Mr. CRAIG: Not necessarily. I'm cautious, that's all. I mean, I would expect the volatility this swings to be great today.
YDSTIE: About a half-hour later at nearby Avatar Trading, day trader Peter Fidelhols(ph) stared at blinking lights on his computer screen but was holding back.
Mr. PETER FIDELHOLS (Day Trader, Avatar Trading): My experience has been that I'm not the most profitable on this type of days. So I'll wait for it to slow down a little and then I kind of get in.
YDSTIE: His colleague, Romeo Guerra(ph), approached the day quite differently.
Mr. ROMEO GUERRA (Day Trader, Avatar Trading): This is what us, day traders, momentum players live for. We live for the volatility, for the volume, for the action. You know, if you're scared of the market and scared of coming in, then this is not really for you.
YDSTIE: And Guerra was looking at some of the most distressed shares - stocks in financial companies that were participants in the subprime debacle.
Mr. GUERRA: I'm taking a look at Merrill, Lehman, JHG, Capital One. They've been in the news with all the subprime write-downs.
YDSTIE: Those stocks will be among those who benefit most from the Fed's big rate cut. Retailers will benefit, too, and their shares also helped the market recover today. Just before the market closed, Ed Craig of Jefferies & Company expressed relief.
Mr. CRAIG: I am pleasantly surprised that we are able to hold on to most of these gains. I think what you'll see - a lot of the bigger players digest the news. And even if it's a day later, then you'll have the bigger money come into the market the next day.
YDSTIE: In the end, the Dow finished down 128 points or about 1 percent. But that was 336 points above its low for the day. It's a testament to the market's problems that this outcome is viewed as something of a victory.
John Ydstie, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
With all the instability on Wall Street, investors on Main Street are wondering what, if anything, they should be doing to protect themselves. For one perspective, we turn now to a financial adviser. Michael Farr is president of Farr, Miller & Washington, an investment counseling firm in Washington, D.C. Welcome back to the program.
Mr. MICHAEL FARR (President and Chief Investment Officer, Farr, Miller & Washington): Thank you very much. Glad to be here.
NORRIS: This must have been a very busy day from - for you. We just heard from day traders, those so-called momentum players.
Mr. FARR: Right.
NORRIS: What are you hearing from your clients right now?
Mr. FARR: We heard a fair amount of concern from our clients, which is a bit odd. Our clients are usually focused more on the long term. They don't get upset by the short-term moves. Today was very unique, particularly with overseas markets in Asia and in Europe, down five and 10 percent. It had a lot of them nervous.
NORRIS: Nervous enough to pull back or do most of them saying they'll ride this out? Did they see opportunities perhaps?
Mr. FARR: Well, most of them asking if they should pull back. Very few asking if we were seeing opportunities. So one of the things we do is go back to our experience in 1987 and we can think about the drop in 2002. The people that really got hurt were those that get so uncomfortable that they sold out at the bottom. If you, in 2002 for instance, looked at the market down at 7800 and said, I need to go to bonds, you wouldn't have run, owned stocks when they went back up above 14,000. So patience and a calm head really are the most important order of the day.
NORRIS: How does the real estate market factor into their thinking? The downturn in the housing market - the subprime mortgage mess - does that change the way that your clients think about their finances?
Mr. FARR: I think that essentially, yes, but not a whole lot in that the U.S. consumer - their biggest asset is their house. Real estate is our biggest asset, and for many years, it's been a piggy bank. We could go and get home equity loans. We could get lower mortgage rates, and we had more cash to spend. That was really inflated housing prices. So as those housing prices are now coming down, people feel sort of the reverse of what we call the wealth effect.
You hear that your neighbors' price is - house has been on the market for a long time and they're lowering the price. You don't feel really good. You have things that are more expensive now at the supermarket, at the gas pumps for heating fuel and everything else. Consumers are kind of stretched right now. And investors are concerned because the consumer really has been supporting the economy, supporting business and expansion for some time.
NORRIS: Let me just ask you quickly about different kinds of investors. What if you're looking to retire, say, within the next 10 years? What should you do if you fall in that category?
Mr. FARR: If you're looking to retire 10 years from now, you're in great shape. If your investment plan is intact, it's - you shouldn't really do a thing. In 1987, we got through it, 2002 we got through it, you'll get through this, too. Long term, investors really make money and earn their stripes by enduring times like this. Now, if you're facing a retirement in 10 years and you hadn't done much for it, you really need to meet with a counselor or planner and figure out what you're going to do to get your ducks in a row. You need a strategy. But to think that you need to make some shift short-term because of today's gyrations would probably be a mistake. Emotion is the foe of the long-term investor. If you can stick with your plan and try and be somewhat dispassionate about it, you'll do well over the long term.
NORRIS: Very quickly, Michael, before we let you go. What about the small-time investor, those that only have a little bit of money to put in the market? Is this a good time to get in?
Mr. FARR: I think it probably is. Now, that said, this market could continue to go lower. The economy is weakening and it could continue to drift down, so this might be something of a trap. But I would say that after a 20 percent pullback, five years from now, you'll be pretty happy with prices you paid today.
NORRIS: You sound very optimistic.
Mr. FARR: Well, I think, as an investor, you're optimistic. You expect things in the future to be better than they are today. So I expect that at a 20 percent discount, we'll be happy five years from now.
NORRIS: Michael Farr, thanks so much.
Mr. FARR: Thank you.
NORRIS: Michael Farr is president of Farr, Miller & Washington. That's an investment counseling firm here in Washington, D.C.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Easter is arriving especially early this year. And in Bolivia, early Easter means early carnival. And even though the annual street fair officially falls on the first week of February, in La Paz, it's already time to strike up the band.
NPR's Julie McCarthy reports from the party where residents inaugurate the celebrations by raising a dead man from the grave.
(Soundbite of band playing)
JULIE MCCARTHY: Pepino is carnival's most beloved character. Each year, it opens with his resurrection from the dead and closes with his burial. A simple pine box symbolizing the buried Pepino is borne through the streets of La Paz by harlequins dressed in the tricolors of Bolivia - red, gold and green. As a crowd presses in, the clowns stopped the procession before the gates of the city's historic cemetery. The music turns lachrymose while they turn on the tears.
(Soundbite of people crying)
MCCARTHY: Overcome by the fact that Pepino is still interred, they passed the coffin off to gray-suited pole bearers who include the vice minister for culture, whom newspapers faulted for wearing blue jeans. Amid much anticipation, they place the pine box on a stage swirling with blue and yellow smoke.
At this point, Pepino is actually being lifted out of the coffin to a burst of confetti. He's meant to be a jester, like a court jester, dresses in costume, and he wears a mask. And he could go up and poke the patron. He could go up and poke the important people in town and get away with it on this day, the only day.
Dressed in a disheveled suit he had on since his burial last year, the fun-loving Pepino quickly changes costumes and plunges into the crowd with acrobatics and antics, his identity unknown until he removes his mask. Two years ago, Bolivia's first indigenous president, Evo Morales, delighted the parade by playing the part.
Local folklorist Javier Escalier says when Pepino first arrived with a traveling circus from Europe, Bolivians made him their own.
Mr. JAVIER ESCALIER (Folklorist): (Speaking in foreign language) Here in Bolivia, Pepino reflects the mestizo mix in the culture. He's an urban figure, but we also have given him campesino, peasant, characteristics. So he really reflects the combination in Bolivia of the urban and the rural.
MCCARTHY: Pepino was a classic ladies' man who competes for attention along with the Chuta, the folkloric (unintelligible) male character that struts around with two chuletas(ph). The stylized (unintelligible) women, their bright skirts, beautifully embroidered shawls and bowler hats help define the landscape of the Bolivian highlands.
One of this year's official Chutas, Franz Guido Maldonado(ph), wears, not just two women on his arm, but the frills and finery that recall the Spanish colonizers.
Mr. FRANZ GUIDO MALDONADO (Chuta): (Speaking in foreign language).
MCCARTHY: This is the complete satire of the traditional mores - customs - and the Spanish crown, Maldonado says. Everything that the colonizers brought we're poking fun at. The dances, he says, are all rebellion, an alcohol-soaked rebellion.
Unidentified Man #1: (Speaking in foreign language).
MCCARTHY: By mid-afternoon, local spirits have slurred the speech and unsteadied the step of many Pazenos, as La Paz residents are known. Drooping eyes flutter open for the fireworks that blazed just feet from the over-served patrons of the parade.
Unidentified Man #2: (Speaking in foreign language).
(Soundbite of fireworks)
MCCARTHY: Even the music starts to sound slightly off key as inhibitions fade and men grab women to dance. Before long, the streets are drenched in alcohol. Male suitors manage to twirl their petticoat-clad partners and still reach for a beer, taking pains to pour some out. Parade organizer Romero Lazo(ph) says the ritual of pouring liquor on the ground before drinking dates back to the Incas.
And once again, Pepino inaugurates the opening of carnival season with his mischief and merrymaking, releasing the happiness that locals say is buried in the subconscious of every citizen and that awaits to be awakened by the cacophony of carnival each year.
Julie McCarthy, NPR News, La Paz, Bolivia.
BLOCK: From NPR news, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
NORRIS: And I'm Michelle Norris.
In Miami, a Federal judge today sentenced Jose Padilla to more than 17 years in prison. Padilla was convicted, along with two codefendants, of supporting terrorism and conspiring to commit murder abroad.
NPR's Greg Allen reports.
GREG ALLEN: The sentence, while stiff, was considerably less than the life sentences the government asked for. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke said the evidence and testimony presented at trial did not support the government's request for such a harsh sentence. Today's sentencing comes five months after a jury found that over an eight-year period, Padilla and his two codefendants, Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi, operated a terrorist support cell in South Florida - sending money, supplies and recruits to jihadist groups fighting in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and other countries.
Padilla was just such a recruit. At Hassoun's urging, he traveled first to Egypt before making his way to Afghanistan, where he attended an al-Qaida training camp. When he was arrested nearly six years ago, government officials said he was plotting to set off a radioactive dirty bomb in the U.S. He was declared an enemy combatant and held in a military jail for three years before being transferred to civilian custody and indicted in this case, which made no mention of the earlier dirty bomb allegations. Outside the federal courthouse in Miami, after the sentencing hearing, Padilla's mother, Estella Lebron, was smiling.
Surrounded by reporters, she said she was pleased the judge didn't give her son the maximum sentence and the fact, she said, that we're now clear.
Ms. STELLA LEBRON (Jose Padilla's Mother): He's not a terrorist. He's not an enemy combatant. He's not the Puerto Rican Taliban. He is just a human being, an American citizen, and that's what made me happy.
ALLEN: Although it wasn't part of the trial, an issue that loomed large in pretrial motions and in the sentencing phase was the treatment Padilla received while he was held in a Navy brig in South Carolina. At today's sentencing hearing, Judge Cooke described what she called the prison's harsh conditions. Padilla was held in extreme isolation, she said, subjective to environmental stresses, such as loud noise and temperature extremes, even his access to an attorney was denied.
Even though she didn't allow testimony about that treatment be introduced at trial, Cooke said she did take it into account in this phase and reduced Padilla's sentence accordingly.
In court, prosecutor John Shipley called the sentences given to Padilla and his two codefendants unreasonably light. Defense attorneys for all three men disagreed. While they were pleased Judge Cooke did not give the defendants life, they said they plan to appeal the convictions and the sentences.
William Swor represented Kifah Jayyousi, who received the sentence of 12 years and eight months. Swor said one issue he'll challenge on appeal would be the way the government - in his words - injected al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden into this case.
Mr. WILLIAM SWOR (Kifah Jayyousi's Attorney): The government's attempt to frighten the jury clearly bore fruit, and we will raise that as an issue.
ALLEN: In Washington, the Justice Department released a statement today thanking the prosecution team for its hard work, saying, quote, "the defendants' North American support cell has been dismantled and can no longer send money and Jihadist recruits overseas."
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Will he or won't he? Political junkies had been engaging in fierce arguments about whether New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg will enter the presidential race as an independent candidate. Well, before Bloomberg makes his decision, political consultant and Republican strategist Mike Murphy has some advice he'd like to give the mayor.
Mr. MIKE MURPHY (Political Consultant and Republican Strategist): Hey there, Mike Bloomberg. If you are listening - and deep down, I know you are, I mean, come on, it's NPR and you're not exactly a country music kind of Republican - I got a proposition for you. I hear talk on the political street that you're about to spend $1 billion of your vast personal fortune running for president as an independent. Well, as a political consultant, I'd say this. Please, send me a check for 1$ million.
No, I don't want a job. I'm just here to help. If you send me that million bucks, Mike, I can save you a billion. Because the fact is, you just can't win. Look, I know it's tempting to run. You've been a great mayor and a total wizard in business. You must look at all these other candidates scuttling around and think, I could beat those clowns. I mean, people hate the two parties. And I've got real solutions. Well, maybe. But politics is a game of arithmetic. So, let's start adding up the votes.
In a hypothetical race for president, I'll give you New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. I'll give you 85 percent of the Jewish vote. I'll give you every upper middle-class, pro-choice Republican voter with a family income of $250,000 a year or more. I'll give you every SUV driver, every Volvo driver, every CEO of the Fortune 500, every one of their board members, their families. I'll give you Arnold, but you're not going to get Maria. And I'll even throw in everybody listening right now to NPR.
Congratulations, Mike, it's Election Day, and you just got maybe 17 percent of the vote. You see, Mike, the problem is it's a big country, and there are just not enough of your kind of voters out there. You're a niche candidate. And if you were an ice cream, Mike, you wouldn't be chocolate or vanilla, you're French vanilla. Liberal in social issues, conservative on fiscal matters. Sure, they love it in New York City. In fact, the people who live within walking distance of (unintelligible) love your kind of moderate politics. But there's a lot more country in between.
So, don't feel bad. I'm sure you'd do much better than other independent candidates, like John Anderson in 1980, or Ross Perot, or George Wallace, but you're still going to lose. And the odds are you'll pull more votes from Democrats than from Republicans because, well, Mike, we both know the fact is being the liberal Republican mayor of New York City actually means you're a conservative Democrat. And worse yet, you'd be up against the iron rule of D.C. politics, which is this. While the Democrats might hate the Republicans, and the Republicans may hate the Democrats, everybody hates an independent troublemaker who shows up with $1 billion and tries to steal their franchise.
So, save your billion. Instead, use your piles of cash to speak up loudly on the issues during this campaign. Impress a lot of people this time, then switch over to the Democrats and run for real next time. Now, that plan could work. And one more thing, please send me my check by overnight mail, if you can. I've had a very rough day in the market.
NORRIS: Commentator Mike Murphy is a political consultant and Republican strategist.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The nominees for the 80th Annual Academy Awards were announced today in Beverly Hills. Leading the Best Picture category with eight nominations overall are "There Will Be Blood."
(Soundbite of movie "There Will Be Blood")
Mr. DANIEL DAY-LEWIS (Actor): (As Daniel Plainfield) I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
NORRIS: And "No Country for Old Men."
(Soundbite of movie "No Country for Old Men")
Mr. JAVIER BARDEM (Actor): (As Anton Chigurh) What's the most you ever lost on a coin toss? Call it.
Mr. GENE JONES (Actor): (As Gas Station Proprietor) Call it?
Mr. BARDEM: (As Anton Chigurh) Yes.
Mr. JONES: (As Gas Station Proprietor) I didn't put nothin' up.
Mr. BARDEM: (As Anton Chigurh) Yes, you did. You've been putting it up your whole life, you just didn't know.
NORRIS: Two violent films set in the American West. Also nominated, the World War II romantic drama, "Atonement," the legal thriller, "Michael Clayton" -each with seven nominations - and rounding up the list of surprise announcement, "Juno," a quirky comedy about a 16-year-old who surprises their family when she announces that she's pregnant.
(Soundbite of movie "Juno")
Mr. J.K. SIMMONS (Actor): (As Mac MacGuff) Did you see that coming?
Mr. ALLISON JANNEY (Actress): (As Bren MacGuff) Yeah, but I was hoping she was expelled or into hard drugs.
Mr. SIMMONS: (As Mac MacGuff) Or a DWI - anything but this.
NORRIS: Our film critic Bob Mondello's in the studio to talk about the upcoming Oscars. Hello, Bob.
BOB MONDELLO: Hi, good to be here.
NORRIS: Let's begin with that Best Picture list. A lot of very dark films there.
MONDELLO: It's true. Three of those actually qualify as outright tragedies. "Michael Clayton," which is supposedly affirmative, is about corporate corruption. And "Juno," which is the one comedy in the group, is about a teenage girl, a 16-year-old who gets pregnant and have to tell her parents about it. I mean, it's a - this is not a cheerful bunch of pictures.
NORRIS: You know, stellar performances by several actresses this year. But when you look at this, this listing, a lot of dark films - maybe dark days for female actresses as well because they're so male-oriented.
MONDELLO: Oh, well, that's possible. I - although I think actually the women's categories are more competitive perhaps than the male ones. I think people sort of generally think that Daniel Day-Lewis is likely to be the main man in the Best Actor category. He is up against George Clooney, Johnny Depp, Tommy Lee Jones and Viggo Mortensen. And I think the general consensus is this is his year.
In actress, you've got Julie Christie and Marion Cotillard, both really extraordinary. Julie Christie is a patient with Alzheimer's who has to go into a nursing home, and Marion Cotillard playing Edith Piaf's fabulous songs. And then Cate Blanchett got nominated for both Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," a picture that nobody much liked, and she was Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There" - one of six Bob Dylans. So those are going to be pretty competitive categories, even if they're rather not on the radar screen quite as much as the men are.
NORRIS: Any surprises in these categories?
MONDELLO: Well, I think it was reasonable to be surprised that Emile Hirsch wasn't nominated for "Into the Wild." He's extraordinary in the picture. He has to carry the whole film. Actually…
NORRIS: But Hal Holbrook did get a nomination for this film?
MONDELLO: Well, that's true. Although, to some extent - I mean, he's 84 years old. He is the oldest actor ever to be nominated in that category. And I think, to some extent, they want to give him something, you know? It - that may have affected - Ruby Dee got a nomination. She was nominated in the Best Supporting category for "American Gangster."
NORRIS: You mentioned "Into the Wild," other shutouts or films that were - didn't get the recognition that you might not expect?
MONDELLO: Well, I kind of thought "Sweeney Todd" was going to do better. It's nominated in several categories, but it wasn't nominated for Best Picture. I'm pretty astonished that "Charlie Wilson's War," which got a lot of attention and is doing pretty well at the box office. You see, one of the things is that a lot of these pictures aren't doing all that well at the box office. And, you know, unless you have movies that have done well at the box office, people don't tune in to the Oscars. And so, you know, ordinarily, there's at least one blockbuster in the bunch, and the biggest one right now is "Juno," which is the little picture that could (unintelligible).
NORRIS: So, we're talking about the Academy - nominations for the Academy Awards. What about the awards ceremony itself? Will there be a ceremony?
MONDELLO: Oh, let's say that's still up I the air. No, I - actually, they will have a ceremony of some sorts, sort of like the Golden Globes did, even if it ends out just being…
NORRIS: Really? Just a press conference?
MONDELLO: Well, just a press conference. They have a problem in that the actors are extremely unlikely, even though this is their only chance to wear gowns this season, apparently. They're extremely unlikely to show up and cross picket lines when they're involved in a big argument with the studios. So, frankly, I think they're going to find an excuse to settle it before then because this would be too bad for the industry. You kind of need the Oscars to push these pictures, especially in a year when the pictures are not pushing themselves.
NORRIS: So this might be the beacon that brings both sides back to the bargaining table?
MONDELLO: Well, let's hope.
NORRIS: Maybe. Thank you, Bob.
MONDELLO: It's always a pleasure.
NORRIS: Our movie critic, Bob Mondello, talking about this year's Oscar nominees. And you'll find a full list, plus reviews and interviews, at our Web site, npr.org/movies.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michelle Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
If you bought diamond jewelry between 1994 and 2006, you could get some of your money back. The giant South African diamond producer, De Beers, has agreed to a class action settlement worth $295 million. That money is to be divided between consumers and diamond sellers who have to file claims to recover some of what they paid. The lawsuits alleged that De Beers conspired to monopolize the diamond market and inflated prices.
Russell Shor is senior industry analyst with the nonprofit Gemological Institute of America. He says for nearly a century, De Beers controlled about 80 percent of the rough diamond production in the world.
Mr. RUSSELL SHOR (Senior Industry Analyst, Gemological Institute of America): And they marketed these diamonds through a system of sales called sites - which are ten sales yearly to a preselected group of clients. And essentially, De Beers sets the prices.
BLOCK: And is the idea that because they control so much of the market, they artificially inflated that price?
Mr. SHOR: Well, that was the allegation. De Beers - in my dealings with them - said that they priced according to what they thought the market would bear.
BLOCK: Now, De Beers has agreed to settle, but at the same time, they have not admitted wrongdoing. They say they're settling to put the matter behind them.
Mr. SHOR: Yes. And my interpretation is that they would like the settlement to sort of put the past behind them and allow them to move forward with doing business in the United States.
BLOCK: Let's talk about what this might mean for consumers who bought a diamond in this period. They have to file a claim. About $135 million of this $295-million settlement is set aside for consumers. How much do you think somebody might get back?
Mr. SHOR: Well, obviously, it would depend on how much they spent on the piece in the first place. But, you know, in doing the math, there are millions of diamond jewelry pieces sold each year. So, when you start dividing $135 million into the millions of consumers, I don't think they can look forward to a big payday.
BLOCK: Mr. Shor, because of this settlement, will it have a broader impact on the diamond market? I mean, do prices now come down?
Mr. SHOR: Prices probably will not come down for a number of reasons. One of these reasons that oil prices are so high, you have emerging economies - like India and China and the Middle East - which is not an emerging economy, but they're soaring right now because of oil prices - they are heavily into diamond jewelry. Sales in these countries are growing 20 to 30 percent a year. So, a lot of diamonds that would have been sold here are actually going to the emerging markets. I mean, having said that, with the economy the way it is, we may see some decline in diamond prices, but it probably wouldn't be a great deal.
BLOCK: Well, Russell Shor, thanks so much for talking to us.
Mr. SHOR: You're welcome.
BLOCK: Russell Shor, the senior industry analyst with the Gemological Institute of America in Carlsbad, California.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The actor Heath Ledger has died. The New York Police Department reports that the star of "Brokeback Mountain" was found dead earlier today in his Manhattan apartment. They say drugs may have been a factor. Ledger was 28 years old.
Our film critic, Bob Mondello, joins us to talk about Heath Ledger's career. And, Bob, for a lot of people, Heath Ledger will be that character in "Brokeback Mountain," Ennis Del Mar, this tortured, closeted gay cowboy.
BOB MONDELLO: Yeah, and as somebody who almost didn't speak. He was very quiet as opposed to the other character in the film. And he was agonized. I mean, it was a tortured part. He had been sort of building up to that for a little while in other tortured parts. If you remember from "Monster's Ball," for instance, when he played the son of Billy Bob Thornton who committed suicide, if I'm remembering the film correctly.
BLOCK: Heath Ledger's character did, yeah.
MONDELLO: Yeah. It's a - it was something - it's odd to think that he burst on the scene as such a kid. He was quite young. In Australia, he began his career playing teen heartthrob types. And that's sort of how we met him too in a picture called "10 Things I Hate About You," which was essentially a remaking of "Taming of the Shrew" in a high school setting. He played Petruchio. And he was kind of wonderful, but you didn't really think of him as a major actor. I don't think anybody did. Everybody thought he was handsome and had a deep voice.
BLOCK: He did play a number of dark characters, dark roles. What did you see in him on the screen? What sort of actor was he for you?
MONDELLO: Well, he kind of smoldered once he got past - you know, the one thing he was not great at was comedy most of the time. And when he - he did a lot, initially, in films like "Four Feathers" and just silly pictures. When he - what he was really good at, I think, was looking tortured. He looked like there was something really there. And I don't know to what extent that was helped by the fact that his voice was so deep, that he was - he seemed more substantial somehow than a lot of other actors do at his age. He felt as if he had classical training. I don't know if he actually did, but he felt that way because of the projection that he could get into his voice. I thought of him in terms of stage actors I had seen like him.
BLOCK: And we will be seeing him on screen this summer.
MONDELLO: Yeah. He had already finished playing the part of the Joker in the new "Batman" movie that's coming out shortly. He's essentially a young Jack Nicholson, I suppose, in that picture. That'll be a sad thing to see.
BLOCK: Our film critic, Bob Mondello, talking about Heath Ledger, the actor who was found dead today in New York. He was 28.
NORRIS: And this is NPR, National Public Radio.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The Republican field of presidential candidates has shrunk to five now that former Senator Fred Thompson has dropped out of the race. But to many, it seemed that Thompson said farewell to his campaign on Saturday after he finished third in the South Carolina primary and delivered what sounded like a valedictory speech.
Mr. FRED THOMPSON (Republican; Former Tennessee Senator): You know, it's never been about me. It's never even been about you. It's been about our country and the future of our country. Of our country, about the future of our country and about our party's role in that future. And because of your efforts and because of our working together, our party is being required to look itself in the mirror, decide where it's going, decide who it is.
BLOCK: We're joined by Rich Galen who is senior adviser to the Thompson campaign. Thanks for coming in.
Mr. RICH GALEN (Former Senior Adviser to Fred Thompson's Campaign): How did I do on that job?
BLOCK: Not too bad, I guess. I don't know. You'd have to ask Senator Thompson. There are a lot of expectations when he entered the race in September. He was hailed as the genuine conservative, the heir to Ronald Reagan. What went wrong?
Mr. GALEN: Well, I think what happened, if you go back, the high point of the hype was probably earlier than that, May and June. He chose not to get in until September. There was just some structural things in the campaign that needed to get fixed. I think one of the issues with getting in in September in a cycle when people had been running essentially for a year in a half…
BLOCK: For a long time, yeah.
Mr. GALEN: …yeah - is that it was the equivalent of missing spring training and being unable to hit a major league slider or be able to execute a double play because you didn't have the time to kind of get your campaign up to speed and the kind of things that you do in the exhibition season.
BLOCK: But then even when he did get into the race, the line on Fred Thompson was he was running a lazy campaign. He kept a very light schedule. I wonder, as his adviser, did you worry about that? Did you felt there were times that his heart just really wasn't in this race?
Mr. GALEN: No, I never thought that at all. The campaign schedule was what it was. And a lot of the campaign schedule was - he was working, it just wasn't public events. For instance, the number of position papers that he had, that he put out that were fairly sophisticated in terms of their thinking - Social Security, tax reform, military, those sorts of things - required him to meet with advisers, to meet with people that were experts in these areas to come up with a position that weren't necessarily on the public schedule. But we weren't - the campaign wasn't nimble enough to be able to push back, and that - and it really stuck.
BLOCK: You know, Mike Huckabee now says he would have beaten John McCain in South Carolina if Fred Thompson weren't in that race.
Mr. GALEN: Yeah, but we would have beaten John McCain if he hadn't been in the race. There is that.
BLOCK: Well, we keep thinking if Fred Thompson had dropped out a week ago, Mike Huckabee would have won in South Carolina.
Mr. GALEN: So no. But I mean, the - in all of these things, the fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars, but in ourselves. So if Huckabee couldn't win in South Carolina, he doesn't need to look at us. He needs to look at himself.
BLOCK: Will Fred Thompson endorse one of the other Republican candidates?
Mr. GALEN: That will probably happen when there is a nominee or nominated for president.
BLOCK: Well, what about before then though?
Mr. GALEN: I think probably not at this point. He's…
BLOCK: Why not? He's been very close with John McCain in the Senate.
Mr. GALEN: Well, but you know, he was their opponent. So, I mean - he campaigned for John McCain in 2000, but times go on, times change. I don't think that Thompson believes that his endorsing anybody will have any effect. If - I mean, my position on this stuff is if you can't get somebody to vote for yourself, how are you going to get people to vote for somebody else?
BLOCK: Well, very briefly, whom - which candidate do you think stands to benefit most? Who will Thompson's supporters follow?
Mr. GALEN: I suspect that, for the most part, they'll go to Romney. People that wanted to vote for Huckabee already voted for Huckabee. A lot of the Thompson voters are not McCain fans. My e-mails would be evidence of that. And Giuliani is just not in the mainstream of Republicans. So I suspect that Mitt Romney, to the extent that anybody benefits, will be the beneficiary.
BLOCK: Okay. Rich Galen, thanks so much. Rich Galen, former senior adviser to the Fred Thompson presidential campaign.
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This winter has been hard across much of the nation. Between the frigid temperatures and punishing snowstorms, even the most die-hard fans of the season are getting a bit worn out. Our commentator, Laura Lorson, is one of them.
Ms. LAURA LORSON (Commentator): And here we are in deepest, darkest JanuFeb. That time of the year where everything looks crummy and you're sick as snow. That part of the year that straddles the end of January and beginning of February which may as well come with a warning sign on the calendar that says, abandon hope all ye who enter here. I feel obligated to eat root vegetables like turnips and parsnips. I tried to make hot things in slow cookers that will be ready to eat when I come home from work.
Regrettably, the only slow cooker recipes I know have been handed down from my mother, which means that they invariably involve ingredients that seem designed to create parodies of food. Take a can of beans(ph) and sausages. Combine a half a jar of grape jelly with a cup of ketchup. Cover and cook for six hours on low. Serve stew. Or they involve some kind of mixed frozen vegetables cooked for 12 hours in coca-cola and chicken broth and consumed on crackers with mayonnaise. Trust me on this. If my mother gives you an all-day cooker recipe, throw it away and go get take out.
This year's crazy weather has not helped my mindset any at all. Thunders now, regular snow, fleet, rain, mud up your truck axles, which then freezes and screws up your differential. Lather, rinse, repeat. The dogs are tracking in snow, mud, unspeakable green slop that I don't even want to know where it came from. I don't want to mop because I know I'll just have to do it again tomorrow. And I don't want to turn on the television either because then I'll just see someone else's beautiful home or beautiful car or beautiful campaign speech.
I'm wallowing in JanuFeb reading Charles Dickens by the freaky light of a 40-watt, compact fluorescent bulb and wearing fingerless gloves, fretting about the ice buildup on the Lecompton Bridge and wishing I knew a good recipe for stew. I finally decided that my mom's slow-cooker recipes can't be all that bad, and I try another one. Take six pieces of bacon, a whole chicken, a jar of horse radish and a can of beets. Combine. Cook for eight hours on low. Throw in trash. Eat a sandwich. Play with dogs. Think about the lilacs in April. Watch the snow fall. Wish for spring.
NORRIS: Laura Lorson lives in Prairie, Kansas, where tonight's weather forecast is for blustery conditions with a low of one degree.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The Israeli blockade of Gaza was aimed at stopping rocket attacks into southern Israel by Palestinian militant groups. The most frequent target of those rockets is the town of Sderot, less than a mile from the Gaza border. Thousands of residents have fled the town, and many businesses have closed. Israeli psychologists say many residents who've decided to stay are suffering from trauma.
NPR's Linda Gradstein reports from Sderot.
LINDA GRADSTEIN: The daily Qassam rocket fire has taken over Chava Gad's life. She says she used to be an efficient, upbeat person who managed a local office. But she hasn't worked in two years and can't concentrate long enough even to fold a load of laundry. Sitting in her small living room, she panics when an alarm signals an incoming rocket.
Ms. CHAVA GAD (Sderot Resident): We hear the alarm.
GRADSTEIN: Chava rushes to the hallway at the back of the apartment and cowers, her hands over her face. Her 16-year-old daughter, Shai, puts her arm around her mother and tries to calm her down.
Ms. SHAI GAD (Sderot Resident): (Speaking in foreign language)
GRADSTEIN: In less than a minute, it's over. The rocket has landed somewhere in or near the town. Chava returns to the living room, opens her purse, and swallows another valium.
Ms. GAD: I'm shaking.
GRADSTEIN: She says the tranquilizers are her only way of coping.
Ms. GAD: The last month, it was worse - more rockets, more - and the rocket with a lot of more explosives. So they give me - my doctors gave me more tablets. So if I was taking three different tablets, now I take five or, sometimes, six.
GRADSTEIN: Last week alone, more than 200 Qassam rockets were fired from Gaza, many of them landing in or around Sderot. The crude, homemade rockets are notoriously inaccurate. But Chava says her 9-year-old son, Yanai, is terrified.
Ms. GAD: Last Thursday, I take him to the trauma center because the rocket fall 50 meters from here, and all the house was shaking. And he start to be breathless and shaking. He's not able to stop.
(Soundbite of people talking)
GRADSTEIN: At Sderot's open-air fruit and vegetable market, Benny Yakubu says business is way down. He blames the Israeli government for not doing enough to stop the rocket fire.
Mr. BENNY YAKUBU (Market Vendor): (Through translator) Israel gives the Palestinians in Gaza electricity, gas, food. Why are they doing that? They should cut off everything until the rockets stop. Our government is useless.
GRADSTEIN: Three years ago, before Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, there were 24,000 Israelis living in Sderot. The municipality doesn't have exact figures, but residents say that only about 18,000 remain. Last year, more than 2,000 rockets landed in Sderot and the surrounding area. Two Israelis were killed, and dozens were wounded.
Some here try to find humor in the rocket attacks. Shimon Buskila, a hairdresser, has invented a Qassam hairdo. It's a model of a Qassam made out of synthetic hair that can be attached to a customer's real hair. He's put a poster of it on the salon's front door.
Mr. SHIMON BUSKILA (Hairdresser): (Through translator) We can't go on like this. Either sign a peace deal or go into Gaza and get rid of the people who launch rockets.
GRADSTEIN: Shimon recently spent almost $20,000 to build a reinforced room in his home to protect against rocket attacks. Last week, he says, a rocket careened off his roof and crashed into his backyard. Luckily, he says, it didn't explode.
Linda Gradstein, NPR News, Sderot.
NORRIS: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Last month on this program, we introduced you to a man in New Orleans who had become homeless after Hurricane Katrina. When the story ran, it was the first time in five years that Chris Turnbow's family, back in Arkansas, had heard from him. So just before Christmas, some of Turnbow's closest family drove to New Orleans to try to find him.
Mr. CHRIS TURNBOW (New Orleans Resident): What in the world are you all doing here?
Mr. DAVID TURNBOW (Chris' Son): We've looked hard and hard and hard for you. It's Christmas miracle, dad. We love you.
Mr. C. TURNBOW: I love you, guys.
Ms. JEAN AARON (Chris' Sister): I know, honey. I know. It's okay. It's okay, though. We got you. That's all that matters.
BLOCK: After their reunion, Chris Turnbow returned to Marion, Arkansas with his family.
NPR's Joseph Shapiro paid them a visit.
(Soundbite of people singing "Happy Birthday")
Unidentified Group: Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you.
JOSEPH SHAPIRO: On January 11, the day Chris Turnbow turned 53, Jean Aaron baked his favorite, a strawberry cake with pink frosting. Chris calls Jean his mother, she's really his sister. She raised them after their mother died when Jean was 16 and Chris was just two weeks old.
Ms. AARON: Happy birthday, Chris.
SHAPIRO: On the streets of New Orleans, other homeless people sometimes called him Old Man Chris because of his long white beard and graying hair. That's not what his mother calls him now.
Ms. AARON: What do you say, Young Man Chris?
SHAPIRO: Now, the beard is gone, his hair trimmed. He looks years younger.
Mr. C. TURNBOW: The most memorable birthday a man could ever have.
Ms. AARON: Happy birthday.
SHAPIRO: Chris is living, for now, in his son David's house, where he shares a room with his 11-year-old grandson. In the garage behind the house, David has built a gym.
Mr. D. TURNBOW: Oh, yeah. It's kind of like a little - our own little house of pain, I guess.
SHAPIRO: David works out with his father, Chris. In New Orleans, Chris was gaunt. In just three weeks since coming home, he says, he has put on 30 pounds.
Mr. C. TURNBOW: I come out three nights a week just trying to get my strength back, I'm losing 80 pounds next year. Incredibly weak.
SHAPIRO: Chris spent 16 days in a hospital in New Orleans last October. He had part of his intestine removed. He got a colostomy. Now, he needs another operation to reconnect his colon. He and his family thought when he came home to Arkansas, he'd get that surgery pretty quickly. But it's not so easy when you don't have health insurance.
Ms. TERESA TURNBOW (Chris' Daughter-in-law): It gets kind of discouraging. It's been hard, but we're determined.
SHAPIRO: Teresa Turnbow is Chris' daughter-in-law. On this day, she's just taken Chris to a state office to try to sign him up for Arkansas' Medicaid program, the health insurance for the poor and disabled. It's not clear whether Chris will even qualify for Medicaid.
Mr. C. TURNBOW: Everywhere we go, we hit a brick wall.
Ms. TURNBOW: We have hit a lot of walls. And I did get kind of upset, but I want his surgery. I want him fixed. That's what I thought I was coming here for.
SHAPIRO: In New Orleans, doctors, nurses and social workers helped Chris get free, charity care. And that's what he may need to find in Arkansas. He's optimistic.
Mr. C. TURNBOW: God just keeps sending people to me to help me and help me and help me. And I have faith that within the next month or two I'll be healed and ready to carry my life on. And I just feel like things will work out. They have to. Too much is going my way.
SHAPIRO: In New Orleans, when he was lying in a city park, too weak to move, feverish and in pain from perforated diverticulitis, an ambulance took him to a public hospital. When he got out, he went to a free health clinic, where he saw a psychiatrist, got his medications and colostomy pouches. Now, unless he finds help, he has to pay for those himself.
Mr. C. TURNBOW: These bags, what is it, 60 bucks for 10 of them? You know, that's not including 10 bucks for the glue and the medication that goes with it. My antibiotics, my pain medicine, my nerve pills - I have nothing. I can't work.
SHAPIRO: He wants to get well and work again. Before Hurricane Katrina, he took odd construction jobs doing carpentry, painting, laying floors. In the storm, his tools and truck were stolen, and he became homeless. Now, even safe with his family, he can't forget the people he lived with on the streets.
Mr. C. TURNBOW: I cry. I wake up many nights crying, worrying about those folks.
SHAPIRO: After his surgery in New Orleans, when he was discharged from the hospital, he had nowhere to sleep but a city park. Other homeless men and women cared for him.
Mr. C. TURNBOW: These people that society had marked as lowlifes, they would save their food and they would save their water to clean my incision. And I feel like I've abandoned them.
SHAPIRO: He knows that most of them are still living on the streets without a family to take them home.
Joseph Shapiro, NPR News.
BLOCK: You can hear our original broadcast of how Chris Turnbow is reunited with his family at npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
(Soundbite of guitar playing)
BLOCK: You listen to John Jorgenson play guitar and you realize he's got a ridiculous amount of talent in those fingers. And then you realize he's also gifted on mandolin, Dobro, banjo, piano, clarinet, saxophone, bassoon and more. But it's guitar music in his latest CD called "Ultraspontane," gypsy jazz guitar in the style of Django Reinhardt.
(Soundbite of guitar playing)
BLOCK: John Jorgenson cofounded the country Desert Rose Band in the '80s. He spent six years touring with Elton John. He's played with everyone, from Benny Goodman to Johnny Cash to Bob Dylan. But his passion is gypsy music from all over the world, especially the sound created in Paris in the 1930s by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli on violin.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. JOHN JORGENSON (Musician): Django sounded like Jimi Hendrix or something on an acoustic guitar - fiery and really vibrant and nice, you know, in your face. And it's really amazing because was the first guy, as a guitarist, to be the upfront lead instrument. It was a rhythm instrument before that. And he was not only bringing it upfront, but playing his stuff that no one had even been thought of to play and beat - probably couldn't technically play it, anyway.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. JORGENSON: You know, as a guitarist and as a curious person, immediately, I started to try to figure out, okay, how is he doing this?
BLOCK: And was there a moment when you realized, this is going to be a lot harder than I thought?
Mr. JORGENSON: It's kind of always (unintelligible) with me - always.
BLOCK: Really?
Mr. JORGENSON: Yeah. It - and I think that's what's exciting about it is it's always challenging.
(Soundbite of music)
BLOCK: How would you describe how the sound on a guitar, like a Django Reinhardt-style guitar, how is it different from another guitar?
Mr. JORGENSON: Well, it's more percussive. There's really a sharp attack to it. It has a more vocal quality about it. It's not as pretty and sweet and full as a normal Martin Style guitar that you kind of strum to play (unintelligible) or folk music. It's very penetrating. I mean, I've got this guitar here. I can…
(Soundbite of guitar playing)
BLOCK: Penetrating, you say?
Mr. JORGENSON: Yeah. It cuts through, you know? If there's a band playing all pretty loud, I can come in…
(Soundbite of guitar playing)
Mr. JORGENSON: …and it'll pop right above the noise created by the band.
BLOCK: Let's take a listen to one of the songs on the CD. This is "El Camino Del Che." And this is a song that you composed.
(Soundbite of song "El Camino Del Che")
BLOCK: This is that attack you're talking about?
Mr. JORGENSON: Yeah, to hear that melody, it's really punchy. And in order to be able to do this kind of fast articulation, you need a guitar that speaks really quickly. You'll hear it when you're going into this next section, very, very fast chromatic round(ph) which is idiomatic of Django.
BLOCK: That right there?
Mr. JORGENSON: Yeah.
BLOCK: How many notes per second was there?
Mr. JORGENSON: Hmm. I don't know. I don't know.
BLOCK: Come on.
(Soundbite of "El Camino Del Che")
BLOCK: You have one tune on the CD which - in which you're a double player. You play guitar, but you also play clarinet. This is "Lucky Sevens."
(Soundbite of song "Lucky Sevens")
BLOCK: Is it a different part of your brain that you're using, do you think, when you're switching from guitar to wind?
Mr. JORGENSON: Kind of. It's almost like once I get the clarinet in my hands, and I'm making a sound on it, the sound, that kind of just leads me there. And of course, I can sustain on the clarinet, you know?
BLOCK: Right.
Mr. JORGENSON: So that changes everything. And then also, I have to breath, so that…
BLOCK: It helps?
Mr. JORGENSON: …changes the phrasing, too. I mean, one - a joke that people talk about guitarists is that they're - you know, why does wearing glasses help a guitar player's phrasing? It's because they have to stop every now and then and push their glasses up their nose. You know, because some guitar players will tend to just play and play and play and play and play and never take a breath because they don't need to. But it's actually good for the phrasing if you take a breath.
(Soundbite of song "Lucky Sevens")
BLOCK: What would you say gypsy jazz is to you?
Mr. JORGENSON: Well, it's a style that incorporates so many things that I like. It has a little bit of advanced harmony that I like from jazz, not too complex. It has that fantastic swing from swing music. It has the edge and the drive of rock music. It has the beautiful acoustic string instrument sounds of bluegrass music. It has the romanticism of classical music. And it's technically challenging, always challenging and joyful, very melodic and joyful. So it's very fulfilling for me to play it because I love all of those other styles that I mentioned, and I feel like I can incorporate all of that into the gypsy jazz.
BLOCK: It's all wrapped in there?
Mr. JORGENSON: Yeah.
BLOCK: Well, John Jorgenson, thanks so much for coming in.
Mr. JORGENSON: Melissa, my pleasure.
BLOCK: The CD from the John Jorgenson quintet is "Ultraspontane." John played two solo pieces in our studio. You can hear those recordings at npr.org/music.
(Soundbite of guitar playing)
Mr. JORGENSON: My hands.
NORRIS: It's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In February and March of 2006, the Irish rock band U2 visited Latin America on the final leg of its "Vertigo" tour.
The band played stadiums sitting up to 80,000 fans. Also in attendance were more than a dozen 3D camera rigs. The result is a film that opens today on IMAX screens across the nation. It's title should fit easily on theater marquees, just four characters: "U2 3D."
According to our critic, Bob Mondello, that title says it all. It's somehow not nearly enough.
BOB MONDELLO: The opening shot is of the stage in a giant stadium, an image familiar from dozens of concert films but it doesn't look familiar because hanging in the air seemingly 10 feet out in front of your screen is the film's title.
(Soundbite of music)
(Soundbite of cheering)
MONDELLO: When the band takes the stage, the camera swoops around the stadium, giving the movie audience some real-life vertigo. It flies from the nosebleed seats in the second tier at Buenos Aires' River Plate Stadium to a sprawling stage where it zips behind Bono's microphone, pass The Edge on guitar to circle Adam Clayton's bass and then hover over drummer Larry Mullen's (unintelligible).
(Soundbite of music)
MONDELLO: A process called three-ality(ph) was used for filming "U2 3D." It's digital and high-def using double cameras and lots of them, you still need glasses to watch it but they're quite an advance over those flimsy cardboard things with red and blue lenses that gave people headaches at House of Wax screenings in the 1950s. These are more like sunglasses - polarized, comfortable but you'll still be slipping them off to see what's real and what isn't, especially during shots were stadium crowds blend with the movie theater crowd.
At one point, I was about to tap the shoulder of the guy in front of me to get them to stop waving his arms in the air when I realized they weren't his arms. Seriously cool.
(Soundbite of music)
MONDELLO: Now, this 3D thing is a gimmick and at first, the film just plays with it. U2's stage has two curbing runways that put Bono out in the middle of the crowd, giving the cameras plenty of depth to exploit and the filmmakers have fun soaring away from the sky-high Jumbotron that backs the band and poking microphones out into the movie theater. And wait until you see what happens when the directors do a dissolve(ph) in three-dimensions and can materialize one band member inside another band member. After the 3D parameters are established, though, the camera settled down a bit and let U2's music take flight on its own.
(Soundbite of song "One")
BONO (Vocalist, U2): (Singing) You gave me nothing now it's all I got we're one, but we're not the same, well, we hurt each other then we do it again, you say love is a temple…
MONDELLO: It helps that U2 has a social conscience to go with its musicianship. International anti-hunger appeals and stance on peace and justice have long given their shows depth of a sort that has nothing to do with 3D. They deliver a pretty mesmerizing show complete in "U2 3D" with IMAX sound. No three-hour parking mess at the stadium and the feeling that you'd barely have to stretch out your arm to high-five Bono from your theater seat. Better than a rock concert? Well, I let you decide on that. But let me tell you, it's close.
I'm Bob Mondello.
(Soundbite of song "Vertigo")
BONO: (Singing) Uno, dos, tres, catorce. Lights go down, it's dark, the jungle is your head, can't rule your heart, I'm feeling so much stronger than I thought your eyes are wide, and though your soul, it can't be bought, your mind can wander. Hello, hello…
Unidentified Group: Hola.
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
In Monday night's debate between the Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards attacked Barack Obama's voting record from his days as an Illinois lawmaker.
(Soundbite of political debate)
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): In the Illinois State Senate, Senator Obama voted 130 times present. That's not yes, that's not no. That's maybe.
BLOCK: The actual number of Obama's present votes was 129 in his eight years in the Illinois Senate. Obama's campaign says anyone criticizing those votes doesn't understand how voting present is sometimes used in the rough-and-tumble give-and-take of the Illinois legislature.
NPR's David Schaper reports.
DAVID SCHAPER: To register a vote in the Illinois General Assembly, lawmakers have a choice of three buttons on their desks.
Mr. RICH MILLER (Writer, Publisher, The Capitol Fax): The yes button is green. The no button is red, and the present button is yellow.
SCHAPER: Rich Miller writes and publishes The Capitol Fax, a daily newsletter and blog on Illinois politics.
Mr. MILLER: And there's a saying in Springfield that there's a reason why the present button is yellow.
SCHAPER: But Miller says that not all present votes are cowardly, including those cast by State Senator Obama.
Mr. MILLER: After having put some thought into it, I don't think that Barack Obama was necessarily a coward for voting present on those bills. In fact, I think he believed that he was doing, you know, the right thing, because, you know, something may have been, to his mind, unconstitutional or not right.
SCHAPER: Miller points out that, at times, Obama was the only lawmaker voting present on bills winning near unanimous support. He did it even on issues he supported and on one he sponsored.
Chris Mooney is a political science professor at the University of Illinois, Springfield.
Professor CHRIS MOONEY (Political Science, University of Illinois, Springfield): A person, you know, as cerebral as Senator Obama might be prone to such a thing, thinking things through a little bit too carefully
SCHAPER: Mooney and other state capitol watchers and players say Illinois lawmakers often vote present as part of a larger party or issue bloc strategy.
Pam Sutherland, president and CEO of the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council, says Obama voted present at least seven times to provide cover to other abortion-rights supporters on bills such as the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
Ms. PAM SUTHERLAND (President, CEO, Illinois Planned Parenthood Council): Senators didn't want to vote pro-choice anymore because they knew these were being used against them in their campaigns.
SCHAPER: Potentially more damaging for Obama is the Clinton debate attack about Tony Rezko. He's an indicted Chicago real estate developer and political fundraiser, whom Clinton characterized as a slumlord for whom Obama did legal work.
Billing records from Obama's former law firm show he did do five hours of legal work in the late '90s for community groups partnering with Rezko's development company, but not for Rezko directly.
Still, the two have known each other since Rezko tried to recruit Obama out of law school for a job. Cindy Canary of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform explains Rezko's place in Illinois politics.
Ms. CINDY CANARY (Executive Director, Illinois Campaign for Political Reform): He's kind of been like a virus in our political culture, if you will. And he has given money to candidates on both sides of the aisle.
SCHAPER: And that includes Obama's early state legislative campaigns. When Obama bought a mansion in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood in 2004, Rezko's wife bought the lot next door and then sold a portion of it to Obama to expand his yard. It happened at a time when Rezko was under federal investigation for his fundraising activities on behalf of Illinois Governor Rob Blagojevich and for his role on a couple of state boards and commissions.
Though there are no allegations of wrongdoing by Obama, Cindy Canary says the relationship may hurt him.
Ms. CANARY: You know, I think this will stand out in Senator Obama's, you know, career as the date he wishes he'd never gone on, you know?
SCHAPER: Tony Rezko goes on trial February 25th, three weeks after much of the country votes in the Super Tuesday Democratic primaries.
David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
BLOCK: For more analysis and fact-checking of the Democratic candidates' recent accusations, visit npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
In the Gaza Strip today, they traveled any way they could. Tens of thousands of Palestinians streamed over the border into Egypt. This, after militants destroyed huge stretches of the seven-mile-long barricade in the divided border town of Rafah. Israel built the wall as part of a broader effort to seal off the region before Hamas seized control last June. But the blockade has made many essential goods scarce and has driven up prices. Soon after the barricade came down, elated Palestinians rushed into Egyptian border towns to buy supplies.
NPR's Eric Westervelt reports from the Gaza-Egypt crossing.
ERIC WESTERVELT: Thousands of jubilant Gazans came by foot, taxi, bus, and donkey cart to cross the destroyed border fence into Egypt to visit relatives or stock up on consumer goods and food and return back to Gaza. Today, boys and men loaded donkey carts with big boxes of cheese, olive oil, jugs of cooking oil, cartons of cigarettes, new tires, and 100-pound bags of Egyptian cement.
Umm Fahdi, a 40-year-old mother of five, was crossing into Egypt with her 11-year-old son to visit close friends near the Egyptian city of El-Arish. Let us live, let us live, she said. We're human and we want to live.
Ms. UMM FAHDI (Mother): (Through translator) We've been choked, choked. Tell the Jews to leave us alone and give us mercy, and let the whole world look at how we are living.
WESTERVELT: In an apparently long and well-planned demolition, locals here say unknown militants, several days ago, began using blow torches to cut away parts of the metal border fence. Last night, militants used explosives, blow torches, and heavy equipment to methodically topple most of the seven-mile-long metal and cement barricade between Egypt and Gaza.
At the border, Umm Mohammed precariously stacked some eight suitcases stuffed with clothes and household goods onto a wobbly donkey cart. The 40-year-old mother of four said she's been trapped in Egypt for nearly seven months - since last June's Palestinian civil war - unable to go home until today.
Ms. UMM MOHAMMED (Mother): (Through translator) I'm so happy after suffering and being so tired for so long. We did not believe the crossing had really opened.
WESTERVELT: For many in Gaza, it amounted to a giant, frenzied shopping trip. Families and businessmen stocked up on items that have grown more and more scarce and expensive since the militant Islamist group Hamas won elections in the Palestinian territories two years ago. Things got even worse after Hamas violently ousted the rival Fatah movement in Gaza last June, prompting Israel to further seal its borders.
Naim Hijazi held two new electric heaters under his arms and tried to flag down a donkey cart or taxi to help him transport a new washing machine he'd just purchased.
Mr. NAIM HIJAZI (Gaza Resident): (Through translator) It's gold. I'm very happy. Thanks to God. Because we didn't have enough food, drink. We didn't have electronics, nothing.
HIJAZI: The Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said Israel looks to Egypt to solve the problem and to live up to its signed agreements to control the border. He voiced concern militants could now more easily smuggle weapons and explosives. Anyone can enter now, Mekel said.
Ahmed Yousef, a senior member of Hamas here, said, today is like paradise, and predicted the border would remain open for at least three days. Near the destroyed border crossing, members of Hamas' Executive Force militia tried to control the chaotic traffic. Most Egyptian soldiers just stood aside, smiled, and let the crowd of people pass through.
23-year-old Gaza resident Mohammed Zorro.
Mr. MOHAMMED ZORRO (Gaza Resident): Yeah, they say welcome, but don't do any problem for anyone. Just go and buy anything.
WESTERVELT: John Ging is the Gaza director of the United Nations' refugee agency here, which provides food relief for more than one million of Gaza's 1.5 million residents. Ging says a recent partial shipment from Israel of industrial fuel for Gaza's power plant eases the crisis a little. But he calls today's breach pathetic and a sign of desperation.
Mr. JOHN GING (Director, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East): We've been teetering on the brink here for the last seven months. And before that, we already had a very desperate and miserable existence for the population here in terms of food, medicine, electricity, water, sanitation. It's all teetering on the brink.
WESTERVELT: Palestinians we talked to here say they're not sure if this is just a one-day shopping spree or the end of what they call the siege by Israel. One person said to me, we hope this remains open. We're brothers with the Egyptians. In any event, it's going to be a huge effort to try to restore any semblance of security here or rebuild the wall. Giant stretches of the wall are completely destroyed, and people continue to stream across.
Eric Westervelt, NPR News, on the Gaza-Egypt border crossing.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
After losing ground for five straight days, U.S. stocks rallied today. All three of the major indexes were up. The Dow added about 300 points. The story in Europe today could not have been more different. Stocks plunged in Paris, Frankfurt and London.
This week, there has been a gradual realization that the rest of the world may still dependent on a strong U.S. economy. But the approach taken by central bankers in the U.S. and in Europe is diverging.
And as NPR's Jim Zarroli reports, that could cause more problems.
JIM ZARROLI: It was the kind of opening that could take an investor's breath away. Once again, the day started with a steep plunge. The Dow and the Nasdaq composite indexes lost 2 percent of their value. But just like yesterday, they rebounded, and by the end of the day, stocks had reversed course and finished the day a lot higher.
At the offices of the trading firm Miller Tabak in Manhattan, technical analyst Phil Roth is trying to make sense of the week's gyrations.
Mr. PHIL ROTH (Technical Analyst, Miller Tabak & Co.): We have seen for the last two days, sharp sell-off, sharp rally, sharp sell-off, sharp rally, and it reflects uncertainty and nervous traders but still willingness(ph) to bargain on.
ZARROLI: Roth says the Federal Reserve's unexpected three-quarter point interest rate cut yesterday had helped the market. But there's also been a lot of bad news about corporate earnings. Most recently, both Apple and Motorola issued disappointing forecasts.
Mr. ROTH: We have fourth-quarter earnings coming in and they're bad. And they're having an impact. So both elements are present. Bad earnings, declining interest rates, and the market is just going to flip-flop back and forth from one to the other.
ZARROLI: The good news today was that oil prices fell again to a little over $87 a barrel. But that wasn't enough to satisfy investors in Europe, and the main German stock index fell nearly 5 percent. The fact that yesterday's big rate cut hasn't helped the European market more is something many analysts are puzzling over.
Economist David Resler of Nomura Securities International says it may be that the remarkable nature of the cut coming between Fed meetings may have made some people nervous.
Mr. DAVID RESLER (Economist, Nomura Securities International): Some interpret that as an indication that the Fed knows things now that we're only going to learn down the road.
ZARROLI: Resler says he doesn't believe that's the case but it's a reflection of how nervous a lot of investors are and of how mixed the economic picture is.
Even as the Federal Reserve is cutting rates, the head of the European Central Bank said today he'll do no such thing. The economy is stronger there, and he's worried it will lead to higher inflation.
Adam Posen of the Peterson Institute for International Economics says the disparity in interest rates will cost investment dollars to flow toward Europe and away from the United States.
Mr. ADAM POSEN (Deputy Director, Peterson Institute for International Economics): This will, over the near term, make it harder to get credit in the U.S., but it will, over the longer term, create demand for U.S. assets because U.S. assets will cheap.
ZARROLI: And it will cause U.S. exports to grow because it will make American goods less expensive overseas. Posen says despite the European Central Bank's position, there is a growing sense overseas that the problems in the American mortgage market can't be contained, and that sooner or later, the euro soon will slow down as well.
That is one big reason behind this week's sell-off overseas. And it also suggests just how volatile the weeks ahead could be.
Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Now, the thoughts of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. He is currently director and chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup. We spoke with him today as he left Washington after speaking to the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Robert Rubin joins us now from Dallas Airport. Thanks so much for being with us.
Mr. ROBERT RUBIN (Former Treasury Secretary; Director and Chairman, Citigroup, Inc.): Happy to be with you, Michele.
NORRIS: In the Financial Times today, billionaire financier George Soros writes that a recession in the developed world is all but inevitable. Do you agree with that assessment?
Mr. RUBIN: Well, there are a lot of different views on that, and there are some who think that it is a high probability. Other people who think that it's more likely we'll have a relatively sharp slowdown but it will avoid recession. I really don't know, Michele. I've been around these things for a long, long time. And I think it's very hard to judge exactly what's going to happen. But what I do think is that the risks have gotten high enough. So that what our political system should be doing is acting very proactively to try to minimize the probability of recession. And if we have recession, to try to keep it as short and shallow as possible.
NORRIS: So if we are headed into a downturn - I mean, you hear the word recession batted about almost every day now - how severe might it actually be?
Mr. RUBIN: Yeah. But I think people need to be careful about the language they use. I think almost all economists agree that the economy is slowing down. Where people differ is whether that's going to remain a slowdown but something short of the kind of more serious slowdown as often characterized as a recession, or whether we really do get into a serious difficulty. And I think it's impossible to have a judgment that you can have a very high level of confidence in.
But I think what one can say with a fair measure of confidence is that the risk has increased and has gotten to the level, which calls for policymakers to very active in all the various ways they can be to try to address these risks and minimize the probability of serious difficulty. Or if we have it, minimize the severity in length of that difficulty. And that means that the Reserve Board and it also means the administration and Congress and the whole host of areas including but not limited to the stimulus that's now being discussed.
NORRIS: So if - you know, we are talking about what the government can do. I guess, it's a question about whether they're actually reaching for the right remedy. If we can turn to Washington and this movement toward economy stimulus packages, is it possible that a stimulus package, in this case, just won't get things done?
Mr. RUBIN: Oh, I think that as they put in place the stimulus that is well-constructed, and if they do it quickly, and if it's really focused on trying to have an effect now and getting the greatest effect that they can get for the dollar they spend, I think it will almost surely have a meaningful effect.
NORRIS: I just want to be clear, I understand you. If you were whispering into the president's ear as you have done in the past, what would you be telling him?
Mr. RUBIN: I would say to him that we should have a stimulus in the area that they're talking about, which is somewhere - they're talking about $140 billion, I believe, and it worth hundreds to hundred forty billion. I believe a good part of it should be tax rebates that are focused predominantly on lower and middle-income people. I think it should include those - the full rebates should go to the 50 million low-income workers who pay payroll taxes. But in some case who don't pay any income taxes. In other case, pay very small income taxes.
And I think you probably also should have some measures in there that would also have very immediate effect such as extending the unemployment insurance time, additional food stamps, measures of that kind, Michele, that will have an effect on the economy, on demand of the economy right away.
NORRIS: A difficult question to ask you in particular, but do you feel any personal responsibility for what we're seeing right now because of Citigroup's involvement in the mortgage market, or because of Wall Street's involvement or posture overall?
Mr. RUBIN: No, Michele. Look, I'm sorry I wasn't involved in this activity at Citigroup. But this is really sort of a current manifestation, if you will, of what has been the whole history of financial markets, which is one of excess leading disruption. And then, it seems to me the key once these things happen is to focus quickly both within each institution and also systemically in terms of our overall economic system and try to address the immediate problems.
NORRIS: I asked the question not necessarily because your hands were on the levers…
Mr. RUBIN: Yes.
NORRIS: …but you're seen as one of the wisest of the wise men on Wall Street. And I wonder if you ever - wished that you had perhaps spoken up or raise this issue?
Mr. RUBIN: I actually did raise them for years in my speeches, Michele.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. RUBIN: Oh, if you go back over the speeches that I gave for the three, four years before this occurred, you'll see a lot of reference to the underweighting of risk and the developing of excesses. But if you're running trading rooms, you've got to run them every day and you've got to be in the business every day. And the kinds of views that others have around you of that kind may factor into what you're doing. But fundamentally, you can't go out of business. You can't stop doing business. And that's how the system just continues to move along that way.
Also, you know, you can be very wrong about those judgments. Alan Greenspan in 1996 very famously said the markets are experiencing irrational exuberance. I happened to agree with him at the time. I thought so, too, but the Dow went up 50 percent from that level and never came back down to that level again. So I think the answer to your question is there were quite a few people, and I was one of them, who had these concerns and expressed them. But if you're actually running businesses, which I did at one time, like it was back 20 years ago or more - you can listen to all that. But fundamentally, you got to be in there every day, engaging in what's going on. Otherwise, you're not in the business.
NORRIS: Robert Rubin, thank you so much for talking to us. Safe travels to you.
Mr. RUBIN: You are more than welcome. Thank you.
NORRIS: Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin is chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The South Pole, it conjures images of stark ice sheets, numbing cold and intrepid adventurers. It's also become a popular destination for scientists who study climate change. Because when it comes to the world's weather, Antarctica is a major player.
NPR's Daniel Zwerdling is in Antarctica, reporting for NPR's Climate Connection series with National Geographic. He reached us today by satellite phone from the South Pole. And he joins us now.
Hello, Danny.
(Soundbite of laughter)
DANIEL ZWERDLING: Hey, Michele. Wish you were here.
NORRIS: Well, I'm not. So you'll have to describe it for us. Just how cold is the South?
ZWERDLING: (Unintelligible) First of all, I am standing, literally, next to the geographical South Pole. In fact, my hand is clutched around this brass marker. And I'm pretending that I'm implanting it on behalf of NPR.
NORRIS: I hope someone is taking pictures.
ZWERDLING: And the landscape, Michele, it is spectacular. I mean, I'm looking at this endless, pristine, austere, brilliant light, expanse of snow and ice stretching in every direction to the horizon. And one of the most astonishing things down here is that we can actually begin to see the curve of the Earth because the end of the globe is a little squeezed, and we're up on an elevation. So it's like we're standing on top of the world. Well, we're on the bottom of the world. And the sky above us is brilliant blue and there's nobody. I mean, there's nothing. There are not - there aren't caribou herds that wander past. There aren't polar bears. There aren't penguins. This is an empty wilderness. It is an amazing feeling to be standing here.
NORRIS: You know, I was thinking about how cold your hands get when you're out in the cold. How do you keep your hands warm right now, since you're holding on to that pole?
ZWERDLING: Michele, they're not warm. They're starting to tingle.
NORRIS: Oh, no.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ZWERDLING: But I have on two layers of gloves and they even gave me these chemical hard warmers, but I have to say my hands are getting a little heavy.
NORRIS: Now, you're down there with the National Science Foundation. What kind of science goes on at the pole?
ZWERDLING: This is something else, you know, (unintelligible). There is a huge amount of money being spent down here and the most spectacular kinds of science. And basically, scientists want to study what has happened to the Earth over the last several hundred thousand years in terms of climate change. This is the best place in the world to do it because it is the driest place on Earth. It's the coldest place on Earth. And so that means it's the cleanest place on Earth. You know, there's almost no pollution or even moisture that would interfere in the background of scientific experiments. So there are some heavy-hitter scientists down here with hundreds of million of dollars worth of telescopes and, you know, all kinds of high-tech equipment who are trying to figure out how the universe was born and where the Earth might end up.
NORRIS: That was NPR's Daniel Zwerdling at the South Pole, reporting for NPR's Climate Connection series. His reports on that series will be airing on NPR throughout the month of March.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr is following the Democratic presidential contest closely. And he has these thoughts on the most famous spouse on the campaign trail.
DANIEL SCHORR: In a moment of introspection on the campaign trail in South Carolina, Bill Clinton said think what being president is like. They play a song every time you walk into the room. After I left the White House, nobody played a song anymore. I didn't know where I was.
Clinton may not understand where he is these days as his campaign support of his wife adopts an increasingly striking tone. The man who was once described by Toni Morrison as America's first black president wages a personal war for the defeat of the candidate who would indeed be the first black president.
Clinton says that he's not standing in the way of Barack Obama's becoming the first black president - just not this year. I think Hillary would be a better president at this point in history, he says. But Bill Clinton's sharp criticism of Senator Obama with phrases like fairy tale and rolling the dice on the presidency may have alarmed some in the Democratic camp. They fear it may boomerang against Senator Clinton in the crucial primary next Saturday in South Carolina with its large African-American Democratic electorate.
Former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle says that Bill Clinton's conduct is not in keeping with the image of a former president. I think it destroys the party, Daschle said. And indeed, the tone of Bill Clinton's stump speeches does not seem to be in keeping with the ex-president who has written a book on giving and has joined high-minded bipartisan ventures with former President George Bush.
Many think that Clinton's current position as his wife's attack dog is a departure from his image as a philosopher philanthropist. He has provided an opening for Obama to say - as he did on ABC on Monday - that the ex-president has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling.
Bill Clinton has become more than a surrogate for his wife. Asked about the prospects for his wife in South Carolina, he said, this is a state I won in 1992. And I like it here and love being here. Some people are asking what's gotten into Bill. Whether Clinton yearns for the sound of "Hail to the Chief," well, that's something it'll take more than a journalist to analyze.
This is Daniel Schorr.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Now to Kenya where former U.N. Chief Kofi Annan is trying to mediate an end to the crisis sparked by last month's disputed presidential election. He got off to a good start, persuading the opposition party to call off street protests planned for tomorrow. But as he began talks with Kenya's political rivals, fresh violence erupted.
In Nairobi, police fired tear gas at youth throwing stones. But some gas canisters landed in the middle of an opposition funeral ceremony.
NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton was there.
(Soundbite of crying)
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON: Women wore strips of red and black cloth to show they were bereaved. And they wailed at Nairobi City mortuary as the caskets of their loved ones and friends were hoisted on to trucks to be driven to the venue of the funeral prayer service. The ceremony was organized by the main opposition party headed by Raila Odinga. He claims he was robbed of victory by Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and is challenging the December 27 vote tally.
Kibaki maintains that he won. And the government has accused Odinga and the opposition of inciting violence and ethnic divisions.
(Soundbite of cheers)
QUIST-ARCTON: Waving branches, leaves and banners, opposition supporters held a peaceful but noisy procession along the main road leading to the park. That's where the coffins were laid out with the name of each person written in bold letters. The dead were mainly from one of Nairobi's notorious trouble spots, the sprawling Kibera slum.
(Soundbite of music)
QUIST-ARCTON: The opposition says they were all shot dead by riot police. Opposition leaders joined hundreds of mourners for the memorial service in the park. After prayers and hymns, the leaders spoke, including Raila Odinga.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Mr. RAILA ODINGA (Kenyan Politician; Opposition Leader): I've been warned that brothers and sisters who have died here, we want to say that their lives were not lost instead(ph) in vain; that their blood is going to be the water which is going to - going to water the tree of independence on field with the people of this country.
QUIST-ARCTON: But just as Raila Odinga was about to end his speech…
(Soundbite of shots fired)
QUIST-ARCTON: …police fired teargas canisters from outside the grounds, sending a haze of white smoke into the park, causing pandemonium. (Unintelligible) had earlier confronted the riot police. Politicians and mourners were caught up in the fracas. Such incidents are raising tensions in Kenya, and the opposition leaders, including Odinga, were driven away at speed.
(Soundbite of speeding vehicle)
QUIST-ARCTON: A group of angry young men took out their frustrations on a nearby post office, setting fire to and vandalizing the building and torching two cars.
(Soundbite of opposition supporters shouting in foreign language)
QUIST-ARCTON: That's the opposition supporters' mantra, no Raila, no peace, and many mean it. It's this explosion of anger and unrest that the former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan is trying to calm, but positions are polarized.
The opposition is determined to fight on, while the government is refusing to back down. Annan is the latest international peace worker to try to resolve the political standoff. Post-election violence has killed hundreds of people, leaving a quarter of a million more displaced. The turmoil has shaken Kenya's image as a staple nation in a volatile East African region.
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Nairobi.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Turning to Iraq now, where there have been big security improvements over the past year. But old wounds are hard to heal, and fears of fresh sectarian bloodshed persist.
In one part of Baghdad, a bridge spanning the Tigris River marks an especially fragile fault line. It links Sunni and Shiite areas, both with important religious shrines. Two years ago, more than 900 Shiite pilgrims were killed on that bridge in a stampede prompted by rumors of a suicide bomber. The bridge has been closed since then.
NPR's Anne Garrels reports that residents on both sides are debating whether it should now be reopened.
ANNE GARRELS: In the Sunni neighborhood of Adamiya, blast walls and barbed wire line the streets. Houses are pockmarked with bullet holes, the scars of recent terror when bodies were regularly dumped here.
Fifty-five-year-old Kulud al-Dayini(ph) lights a cigarette, one of her only pleasures. She had to quit her job as a magazine editor because the commute was simply too dangerous. She's still not working. Kulud fears Shiite militias, but she says fellow Sunnis in the form of extremist groups, like al-Qaida, were just as bad. Her two nephews were kidnapped last year by Sunni gangs and haven't been seen since. She's encouraged, though, that the new U.S.-backed Sunni militias from a movement known as the Awakening are now standing up to all extremist groups in their midst.
Ms. KULUD AL-DAYINI (Sunni): (Through translator) Al-Qaida and others like them killed everyone. They didn't spare Sunnis or Shiite in their desire to build their version of an Islamic state.
GARRELS: Peace here is still fragile, but Kulud thinks security is good enough to open the Imam's(ph) bridge with the Shiite area of Khadamiya across the river.
Ms. AL-DAYINI: (Through translator) Of course, we're so afraid of shadowy groups behind the scenes who want to stoke sectarian violence. But opening the bridge would boost trade and help people make a living.
GARRELS: Mahmud(ph), a stylish young man sells food in the small Adamiya shop he recently reopened. He, too, credits the Awakening groups with helping to secure Adamiya. He says the Shiite-led government is just plain wrong when it says the Sunni militias are a cover for insurgence.
MAHMUD (Sunni): (Through translator) In the beginning, there were some bad people who joined up - true. But they have been weeded out. The terrorist groups have completely lost the trust of the people who now hate what they did to our city.
GARRELS: But Mahmud thinks it's still too early to open the bridge. For him, it remains a symbol of fear. He'd like nothing more than to make the quick trip across the bridge to buy supplies instead of making a long detour to other markets. But he worries Shiite and Sunni extremists would also use the opening to race across and strike again, leading to another explosion of tit-for-tat killings.
Thirteen-year-old Bakar al-Razaq(ph) flipped through his Arabic language homework. He's finally back in school. He has many Shiite pals there, where teachers will not permit any sectarian fights. But he says he's still afraid of the Shiite militias and the predominantly Shiite police who joined them in killing Sunnis. He doesn't want them in Adamiya, and he doesn't want the bridge opened yet.
Mr. BAKAR AL-RAZAQ (Sunni student): (Through translator) When they entered Adamiya, the police treat us like the enemy. They kill, beat, and then sold people. We can only think about opening the bridge when security is better.
GARRELS: The empty bridge has become a symbol of the contest between the contradictory impulses competing to determine Iraq's future, the tensions between Iraq's two main religious groups and the common national culture, which in spite of everything, still has some power to bind Iraqis together.
(Soundbite of street music)
While the streets of Sunni Adamiya were quiet this weekend, just a few hundred feet away across the bridge in Khadamiya, thousands reenacted the death of one of the most revered Shiite saints. Reflecting on the violence that's ripped his city apart, Aymad Razaq(ph), a Shiite tailor, says it was a mistake for the Shiite-led government to stack the police with an overwhelming number of Shiites.
Mr. AYMAD RAZAQ (Shiite tailor): (Through translator) Security forces must include people from all sects in order to coexist. In the past, Sunnis and Shiites aid and fought together. After Saddam, the way the security forces were created was wrong.
GARRELS: It's coming from a devout Shiite. Aymad set up a tent to feed the Shiite pilgrims, relieved there was no violence this year. The emotional display of mourning for the murder of the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, 13 centuries ago marks the split between Sunni and Shiite Muslims over who is the true heir to Mohammed. And these public processions banned under Saddam are dramatic sign of Shiite ascendancy in today's Iraq. Aymad can understand how some Sunnis are threatened by this, but he says he and his friends bears Sunni's no ill will. He wants the bridge opened so people can easily visit one another again as they used to. He says it must be a bridge of trust.
Mr. RAZAQ: (Through translator) Sunnis had shown they don't support al-Qaida, so I don't think the violence will resume as it once did. And we need the bridge to build that trust again. It was an important trading link to the city. At the heart of the problem now is the economy. If the government would only attend to the economy, I think 99 percent of this terrorism would go away.
GARRELS: Today, Mahdi(ph), a Shiite policeman, guards a checkpoint by the bridge. Over the past nine months, he says Iraqi security forces have become a lot more even-handed.
MAHDI (Shiite policeman): (Through Translator) Ministry of Interior forces in the past has behaved badly in Adamiya. But now, we work for Iraq, just for Iraq, away from sectarian battles and militia.
(Soundbite of unidentified man singing in foreign language)
GARRELS: These kinds of comments were rare just a few months ago. Even more extraordinary, the Shiite policeman says he grieved with Sunnis when the head of the Awakening in the west of the country was assassinated late last year. He thinks security is good enough for the bridge to reopen. He would like to enjoy again the delicious food in Adamiya and he says he is ready to welcome Sunnis who want to eat bazha(ph), a traditional dish of boiled goat's head here in Khadamiya.
Anne Garrels, NPR News, Baghdad.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Tomorrow night may be the beginning of your wireless future. The FCC is beginning to auction off a big chunk of the wireless spectrum. It's likely to be the last time that any significant piece of the airwaves will be available for cell phones and computers. And the FCC says a large portion of it must be open. That means for the first time, you could buy a phone from Verizon and keep it when you switch to, say, in AT&T plan.
NPR's Laura Sydell reports.
LAURA SYDELL: That cell phone may be just the beginning. Imagine this…
(Soundbite of music)
SYDELL: At the supermarket, you can't remember if you're out of milk.
(Soundbite of cell phone being dialed)
SYDELL: You, without your phone to call your fridge you are out of milk and eggs.
(Soundbite of alarm clock)
SYDELL: Your alarm clock goes off that connects to the Internet and gives you a personalized traffic report for your commute.
There are delays on your usual route down Highway 4. Better use I-126 for the next…
(Soundbite of TV distortion)
Professor TIM WU (Law, Columbia Law School): Ten years ago, you'd read these articles about refrigerators that called for milk and, you know, things like that and they haven't really materialized and I think one of the reasons is that there is excessive control of the airwaves.
SYDELL: Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu. The wireless airwaves have been controlled by large providers like AT&T and Sprint. Now, they have a say in everything that gets connected to their networks.
Jason Devitt is an entrepreneur who founded Vindigo, a company that develops applications for mobile phones. He says when you have to get your invention approved first by a big company, it dampens the entrepreneurial spirit.
Mr. JASON DEVITT (Founder, Vindigo): Frankly, I wouldn't try and launch a wireless refrigerator but if you are crazy enough to try that yourself, you can be certain that Verizon and AT&T and others would be extremely reluctant to spend the money required to test that equipment.
SYDELL: Devitt and Wu are hoping that tomorrow's auction is going to change the process. The FCC is requiring whoever wins some of the most coveted wireless spectrum to open it up to any device. That means you wouldn't have to get Verizon to approve your fridge before you sell it.
Despite the FCC's requirement, Tim Wu has concerns that if one of the big players, like Verizon or AT&T, wins the auction, they will find ways to keep that milk-scanning fridge off the market. Verizon recently announced it would open its networks but it still says independently-developed devices must go through a trial before it hooks them up.
Prof. WU: Trials can either be a routine inspection to make sure the product is safe or a trial can be something that last for five years and a product never gets out of.
SYDELL: None of the companies planning on participating in the auction would comment for this story because the FCC requires a quiet period before the bidding. But major wireless carriers have said they object to open networks because a badly-designed refrigerator could take down the cell phone network when you ask it if you're out of milk. But the bidding will be fierce because it is high-quality spectrum. It's a bit like Superman's X-ray vision it can go through walls and mountains.
Ms. GIGI SOHN (Director, Public Knowledge): It makes signals go further, go clearer, it's what people call a beachfront property.
SYDELL: Gigi Sohn, director of the consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge. Google is expected to bid on the spectrum. Google is interested because it wants to, say, put its own ad for milk on your wireless refrigerator without having to go through Verizon. But Sohn says Verizon or AT&T will bid high because they can't afford to lose their market dominance.
Ms. SOHN: They will spend above market rate in order to keep desirable spectrum out of competitors' hands.
SYDELL: The auction itself could take weeks or even months and the spectrum won't be available for use until 2009. So it's likely to be awhile before you see that wireless alarm clock or refrigerator.
Laura Sydell, NPR News, San Francisco.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Next Tuesday's Republican primary in Florida represents the single biggest delegate price so far in the presidential race. It's shaping up to be a three-man contest between Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and John McCain. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has all but pulled out of the state. He's saving his scarce financial resources for Super Tuesday one week later. Coming up, we'll hear what's on the minds of voters in northern Florida.
First, NPR's Don Gonyea was with Senator John McCain in Orlando where the economy was a big issue.
DON GONYEA: Senator John McCain walked along the dusty cement floors of a company called Baker Manufacturing, located in an industrial section of Orlando, a town known more for its tourism.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): How are you?
GONYEA: Over the noise, the senator greeted workers and watched as a team of three put a hot sheet of flat, white acrylic over a mold. In just seconds, the suction from a vacuum underneath turned it into a perfectly-formed bathtub. This company has 20 employees making between $9 and $10 an hour. There's a small sale staff as well. The owner says a slumping market for new homes in Florida has meant a 65 percent drop in sales from the same time last year. It's that kind of news that makes the economy a top issue here. Here's Senator McCain.
Sen. McCAIN: Let's have some straight talk. Our economy is experiencing significant challenges. And let me just begin by saying I believe the fundamentals of our economy are still strong and nothing is inevitable. And I am convinced that we can make a comeback.
GONYEA: On the shop floor, McCain sat at the head of a table for a discussion with a dozen business owners, bankers, health care providers and educators. He called for keeping taxes low and for making the tax cuts enacted during the Bush administration permanent.
Sen. McCAIN: If we don't do that, then every business, including this one, will have to plan for (unintelligible) in effect the tax increase beginning in 2010.
GONYEA: He called for reining in wasteful government spending and said it's critical that the nation have an energy policy that reduces dependence on foreign oil. He said part of the answer is nuclear power. But he also made a pitch for green fuel technology. He said businesses can be given incentives to use alternative clean power. And McCain said that would help address greenhouse gas emissions which, he stated flatly, are hurting the planet. Members of the panel had more on their minds than just tax cuts and economic policy.
Mark McHugh's is the CEO of a long-time Florida attraction called Gatorland.
Mr. MARK McHUGH (CEO, Gatorland): If I may, I'll tell you, I've been watching you wrestle alligators and crocodiles inside the Beltway for years. I think you can do very well down here in Florida, senator. Because you're well equipped.
GONYEA: McHugh wants the U.S. to do more to promote tourism to people around the world. McCain answered that he thinks that's better handled by the private sector. But another questioner suggested that the poor image of the U.S. abroad significantly hurts tourism in places like Florida. McCain acknowledged the problem.
Sen. McCAIN: There's a perception out there, as you know. Don't bother to come to the United States, you may get hung up at the airport. You may get strip searched. You may, you know, all of those things. And unfortunately, in these kinds of things, perception is reality. Now, our image in the world in some ways has suffered because of the war in Iraq.
GONYEA: McCain added, quote, "we have lots of friends abroad, but we have lots of work to do." The senator has been in Florida all week after wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina. His campaign feels that a victory here will make him the clear favorite going into Super Tuesday on February 5th. He also couldn't resist noting that Democratic presidential candidates in a debate this week looked ahead to the possibility that McCain will be the Republican they'll face in November.
Sen. MCCAIN: I look forward to the debate between me and our — whoever the Democratic candidate is. We have stark differences and I want them to keep talking about me as what a great American I am. Thank you very much.
GONYEA: With a wry smile, McCain waved and headed outside to his bus and to his next Florida stop.
Don Gonyea, NPR News, Orlando.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And our next stop is Jacksonville, Florida. NPR's Linda Wertheimer spoke with voters there about the candidates and next week's Republican primary.
LINDA WERTHEIMER: The Northside Business Leaders Club meets regularly for lunch at the Jacksonville Zoo north of town. The zoo has public meeting space often borrowed by local organizations, and it comes with the opportunity to meet some of the zoo's inmates. Yesterday, it was the blue-tongued skink, a very large lizard from Australia. They also met Republicans and a few Democrats who expect to be voting Republican in the general election. The meeting began with a prayer from Chaplain Ray Turner, pastor of the Vision Baptist Church.
Mr. RAY TURNER (Pastor, Vision Baptist Church): Here, you might as well go ahead and (unintelligible) and stand. I think most of you can do that without falling down. All right. Let's bow our heads together. Father and God, as we come into this building, we are truly blessed. It maybe a little cool outside to thank you for the sunshine.
WERTHEIMER: Our group of business people want the U.S. borders closed. They oppose universal health insurance. They don't like the Democratic candidates. And they've already cut the Republican field down to three they are interested in. But they also make it clear they're not in love. Steve Burnett runs a tax-preparing business. He's hoping for a brokered convention.
Mr. STEVE BURNETT (Jacksonville Realtor): I kind of like to see another Republican win and continue this roulette of different candidate winning in all the different primaries so there is no clear-cut leader. And so that some real strong Republicans will gather together and put in a candidate that really will be a conservative Republican.
WERTHEIMER: So do I take it that your answer is none of the above?
Mr. BURNETT: Except for — as a voting American, I think you have to select the best candidate that's available. So that, in my opinion, that's why I'm going to vote for Rudy.
WERTHEIMER: The idea that a group of Republican elders, presumably at the convention, would choose someone new who's not running now had appealed to some of our group. But several, like John McCain, including Gerri Jones, a realtor, who's president of this club.
Ms. GERRI JONES (President, Northside Business Leaders Club): I don't see a clear-cut winner in any of them. John McCain is very strong and I agree with a lot of what he's got going on. But one thing I'm concerned about is age, second, I'm not thrilled about his abortion siding. I am for stem-cell research, and he's the more liberal than some of the others on that. The majority of them are not looking at what I'm looking at.
WERTHEIMER: Patricia Hahn(ph) owns a cleaning service. She says she is still undecided and disturbed about it.
Ms. PATRICIA HAHN (Jacksonville businesswoman): If I was going to vote strictly on values, I would have to go for Mitt Romney. But other than that, I can't say that I'm excited about anybody that I've seen.
WERTHEIMER: Would you say that you are excited about Romney?
Ms. HAHN: No, ma'am. I can't say that I'm excited about any of them. But the lesser of three evils, maybe would be Romney in my opinion.
WERTHEIMER: Hahn says she likes Romney because he's a Christian and not ashamed of it. The chaplain, Ray Turner, sort of agrees. He says one candidate doesn't stand out more than another, but it's Romney by a hair. I asked if Romney's Mormonism is a problem.
Mr. TURNER: Not too much so anymore than Johnson was a Baptist, you know? Or Kennedy was a Catholic. We're looking for people that have more of a balanced view and doesn't really put their religion ahead of their politics, but at the same time, their religion tempers their politics.
WERTHEIMER: In this group of business people, we had only one clear preference expressed, from Jim Fair(ph), who owns a facilities management business.
Mr. JIM FAIR (Jacksonville Businessman): I think Romney is head and shoulders above all of them. I mean, one strange reason is, to me, he's presidential. He just looks presidential. He acts presidential. He talks presidential. He has done things with the state of Massachusetts that nobody has ever done. And I know that Giuliani has done things in New York City that nobody has ever done. So it's down to the two of them. But I think I like Romney the best.
WERTHEIMER: Despite the Baptist presence and commitment to values voting, not one of these groups was with Mike Huckabee, the Baptist preacher from Arkansas who seems to be fading as Florida's voting day approaches. One thing our group made perfectly clear, come November, they will be there for the grand old party.
Linda Wertheimer, NPR News, Jacksonville, Florida.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
A group of companies that designed and managed Boston's Big Dig highway project have agreed to a $450 million settlement. State and federal authorities sued Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff and a few smaller firms after the ceiling in a tunnel collapsed. That 2006 accident killed a passing motorist.
NPR's Tovia Smith reports.
TOVIA SMITH: Besides being overdue and over budget, the $15 billion Big Dig has been plagued with problems from relentless water leaks to the $26 tons of concrete that fell from the tunnel ceiling and fatally crushed Milena Del Valle, a Boston mother of two. U.S. attorney Michael Sullivan blames the Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff consortium that was hired to oversee design and construction of the Big Dig.
Mr. MICHAEL SULLIVAN (U.S. Attorney, Massachusetts): The citizens of Massachusetts entrusted Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff to act as the eyes and ears on the Central Artery Project. They grossly failed to meet their obligation and responsibilities.
SMITH: Authorities say they have enough evidence to indict the firms on manslaughter, but penalties for corporations in Massachusetts are just $1,000. So the state is not pressing criminal charges. Attorney General Martha Coakley called the settlement imperfect, but the best possible deal for the state.
Ms. MARTHA COAKLEY (U.S. Attorney General, Massachusetts): We can't send corporations to jail. The only thing they understand as an entity is how much is it going to cost me and what is the behavior I have to change?
SMITH: Coakley says Bechtel has agreed to reforms from better training to tougher standards that would address what she called sloppy work from the design phase through construction and inspection.
Ms. COAKLEY: There was cutting of corners, there was failure to follow up, there was lack of oversight. I think there was desire to move along and get it done.
SMITH: The deal also leaves Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff on the hook for any future catastrophes. The company declined to comment beyond a prepared statement from Chairman John McDonald.
Mr. JOHN MCDONALD (Chairman, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff): We understand and acknowledge with this resolution that our performance did not meet our commitment to the public or our own expectations. Above all, we deeply regret the tragic death of Milena Del Valle in the I-90 tunnel.
SMITH: The firm is still facing a civil suit from Del Valle's family. Those lawyers were deposing a Bechtel engineer today as the government settlement was being announced.
Mr. BRAD HENRY (Milena Del Valle's Attorney): In some ways, it's like the elephant in the room.
SMITH: Del Valle's attorney Brad Henry says Bechtel settlement with the state will make it harder for the firm to claim it's not liable for civil damages.
Mr. HENRY: It's a genuinely odd position to be in where a company is prepared to pay hundreds of millions of dollars essentially for the broken property and yet is less willing to step forward and do the right thing for the woman who is killed as a result of their misconduct.
SMITH: Of the dozen or so companies sued by the Del Valle family, only one has settled with them so far. The family got $6 million from Powers Fasteners, who supplied the epoxy and bolt systems that failed to hold up the tunnel ceiling. Powers is also still facing criminal charges.
Tovia Smith, NPR News, Boston.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Organ transplants have saved thousands of lives over the past 50 years. To prevent rejection of those organs, patients have to take toxic drugs for the rest of their lives. Several papers in this week's New England Journal of Medicine shed light on a new experimental alternative for some transplant patients.
NPR's Richard Knox reports.
RICHARD KNOX: Jennifer Serle can tell you all about the complications of anti-rejection drugs. She got her first kidney transplant at the age of 13, and then suffered drug side effects ranging from weak bones and memory loss to viral warts that made her feet so painful she couldn't walk.
Ms. JENNIFER SERLE (Kidney Transplant Patient): I knew I had to do something drastic because, you know, I was young. To think of 20, 30, 40 years living like that, I didn't want any part of it.
KNOX: So Serle, now 28, volunteered for a study at Massachusetts General Hospital. After years of experiments in animals, researchers were ready to see if they could dispense with immune-suppressing drugs and all their side effects in people. To Jennifer's delight, it worked.
Ms. SERLE: So now, it has been five years, and I have not taken any medications that a normal transplant patient would take.
KNOX: Her bones have strengthened, she's mentally sharp, and the warts disappeared.
Ms. SERLE: I'm definitely walking. I actually ran two marathons in October. It's basically been the healthiest that I've ever been in my life.
KNOX: Jennifer Serle marks a turning point in getting patients to tolerate genetically different transplants. In her case, she got a kidney from her mother who was only a partial match.
Dr. DAVID SACHS (Transplantation Biology Research Center, Massachusetts General Hospital): This is the first time when it was done intentionally in a human being, and we are delighted with the outcome.
KNOX: That's Dr. David Sachs who led the Mass General team. He says the key for Jennifer was transplanting not just her mother's kidney but also a bit of her mother's bone marrow. That gave Jennifer an immune system that was essentially a blend of her own and her mother's. So immune cells called T-cells that normally attack anything foreign are fooled into ignoring the transplanted kidney or tolerating it.
Dr. SACHS: So now, you end up with T cells that can react against everything else in the environment - bacteria, viruses, any other antigen - except recipient and donor. So that's what we call tolerance.
KNOX: The trick succeeded in three other Boston patients. Other patients in the same journal detailed two patients who achieved tolerance by other maneuvers. Those patients also are doing without immune-suppressing drugs. That doesn't mean this approach works for all transplant patients. It's still experimental. And Sachs says the treatment his patients require before the transplant takes several days. That precludes organs from brain-dead donors. There's too little time.
Dr. SACHS: The only requirement right now is that it has to be from a living donor. We haven't yet got this procedure working in a situation where it's a deceased donor, which is, of course, the usual case for many other transplants, such as the heart.
KNOX: Dr. Tom Starzl, a transplant pioneer at the University of Pittsburgh, doesn't see the Boston group's method as a breakthrough.
Dr. TOM STARZL (Transplantation Surgery, University of Pittsburgh): I think the preparations that they used is too complex to be used clinically.
KNOX: In Pittsburgh, Starzl says, they're fine-tuning their transplant regimens to achieve partial tolerance.
Dr. STARZL: When we get somebody down to one dose a week or two doses a week of a conventional drug - and this would be a patient who normally would be on maybe two or three drugs in high doses every day or twice a day - we see no real reason to go from one dose a week to nothing.
KNOX: But the Boston group has another big goal in mind. David Sachs says achieving tolerance in mismatched human transplants is a step toward the day when animal organs might be safely put into people.
Richard Knox, NPR News, Boston.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
British writer Pat Barker is best known for her regeneration trilogy of novels about the British during World War I. Her new novel, "Life Class," takes place during that same conflict.
Alan Cheuse has a review.
ALAN CHEUSE: Barker's central character is Paul Tarrant, a drawing student at London's famous Slade Gallery. He is studying under renowned British surgeon-turned-art teacher and his teacher tells him that his sketches seem to lack passion. Paul drifts through nights in cafes with the Slade crowd, yearns for remote Elinor, the daughter of a high-society doctor, trades ideas with the Slade school proteges and falls into an affair with an artist model from the Midlands with a vindictive husband.
Only when England slides into war does this narrative and the back-and-forth of Paul's companions in art begin to take on meaning. As the shells whistle overhead, they learn the value and insignificance of human life and the resiliency of art on the Belgian battlefield, where Paul volunteers as an ambulance driver.
Barker's depiction of pre-war London's bohemia is interesting enough. But her portrayal with the field hospitals where Paul finally realizes how passion consumes a person marks this novel as distinctive and harrowing. Take this depiction of a shelling ground where Elinor, who has traveled to Belgium to be with Paul, notices bodies not yet covered, a woman with a little dog in her arms, three other women, two men and then lying on the cobbles, a child. She thought how strange it was to lie on the cold ground looking up at the sky with rain falling into your eyes and not blink or turn your head away.
Pat Barker refuses to turn her head away. She writes with clear, straightforward realism, showing her debt to British writers such as D.H. Lawrence and George Orwell and reserving a place for herself in English letters as the peacetime novelist who knows best how to write about war.
BLOCK: The novel is "Life Class" by Pat Barker. Alan Cheuse teaches writing at George Mason University in Fairbanks, Virginia.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The Train Wreck of the Old '97, the plane crash that killed Knute Rockne, the Mississippi Flood of 1927 — those are a few of the many debacles captured in song on a Grammy-nominated box set. It's called "People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs, 1913-1938."
Music critic Meredith Ochs has a review.
MEREDITH OCHS: There's a cliche about the news business that goes like this: If it bleeds, it leads. But if you think that our collective fascination with bad news is an unfortunate byproduct of modern culture, take a listen to this song. It's one of hundreds written about the Titanic. The sinking of the great ship is now a major historic event, not to mention a major motion picture. But when it happened in 1912, it was headline fodder. And songwriters at the time took notice.
(Soundbite of "Titanic Blues")
Mr. HI HENRY BROWN (Singer): (Singing) Titanic taken in the deep blue sea. Titanic taken in the deep blue sea. And a band playing (unintelligible).
OCHS: The very title of this collection of music — "People Take Warning!" sounds like an utterance of caution against the looming industrial age when these songs were written. Much like newspaper men and women, musicians knew that sensationalistic songs would sell, especially if there was a morality tale involved. Plane and train crashes fueled the people's mistrust of modernity. Devastating fires and epidemics were surely God's way of ridding the world of evil. But nothing would prove as timeless as the murder ballad. There's a disc devoted entirely to shocking tales of inhumanity, like this true story about a young woman who axe-murdered her husband.
(Soundbite of song "Frankie Silvers")
ASHLEY & FOSTER (Group): (Singing) (unintelligible) I know I've seen (unintelligible) all his place in misery. With flaming eyes, he'll say to me, why did you take my life away.
OCHS: This three-CD box set of murder ballads and disaster songs is filled with misfortune and horror. But hidden amongst the chronicle of wretched events are some rare pre-war roots music gems, including what may be the very first truck-driving song. I'm a huge fan of trucking music, and I'd always thought that "Truck Driver's Blues" launched the genre in 1939. But this song, "Wreck on the Mountain Road," by a North Carolina group called The Red Fox Chasers, predates it by 11 years.
(Soundbite of "Wreck on the Mountain Road,")
THE RED FOX CHASERS (Group): (Singing) I don't wanna be (unintelligible) foot off the mountain, (unintelligible) out, it fill on the aisles and I (unintelligible) and he thought about (unintelligible) on the ground. Now with all other men (unintelligible) left to see a warning to you, (unintelligible) I see you.
OCHS: The notion of turning reportage into song is anachronistic in an era when information is immediate and disposable. Even songs about recent events like Hurricane Katrina were mostly prayers for the aftermath, not documents of the tragedy. But our connection to the past represented on this box set is right there on the evening news: Calamity still sells. Perhaps it gives us a little comfort that our lives aren't so bad after all. Or maybe it's because people just can't resist a good story.
(Soundbite of music)
BLOCK: Our critic is Meredith Ochs. She reviewed the box set "People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs 1913-1938."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELLE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michelle Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Oscar nominations were announced this week. And one film that did not make the cut is titled, "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days." The Romanian movie stirred considerable buzz last year at Cannes. They won that festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or. There are some speculation among critics that the film was overlooked for an Oscar nomination because of its subject — abortion. "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" takes its title from the length of the pregnancy of one of its characters.
Howie Movshovitz of Colorado Public Radio reports.
HOWIE MOVSHOVITZ: The word abortion puts many people on edge. But Cristian Mungiu wanted viewers to experience what it was like to try to get one in a country where it was illegal. Mungiu focuses on the details. From the surreptitious efforts to book a hotel room for the abortion, to the procedure, to a shot of the fetus on the bathroom floor. While the images may be shocking, nothing is overdramatized. The story just unfolds.
Mr. CRISTIAN MUNGIU (Director, "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days"): I don't think there is anything for anybody to feel offended about. It's just the way the story goes. And it's just that people need to face it with all the details that I knew. And then I can say it's up to them to — I don't know, may their own choices. But things should be seen the way they are.
MOVSHOVITZ: Mungiu won't go into personal details, but he says the film is based on the experience of someone he knows. He says half a million women died getting illegal abortions during the reign of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. The country he shows in "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" is a place of dark hallways and cramped rooms.
French director Bertrand Tavernier, best known for his films, "A Sunday in the Country" and "'Round Midnight," says these images give the Romanian movie tremendous emotional power. He first met Cristian Mungiu in 1995 while he was shooting his World War I drama, "Capitaine Conan," in Romania. Mungiu served as Tavernier's assistant director.
Mr. BERTRAND TAVERNIER (Director, "A Sunday in the Country" and "'Round Midnight"): I find him very devoted, very passionate. And it was one of the real find I made during "Conan."
MOVSHOVITZ: Tavernier says the younger filmmaker gets audiences to feel what the young girls' lives are like in their crowded college dorm right from the opening shot.
Mr. TAVERNIER: It gives you the whole place where the two girls are living, their rooms — what it is to get one cigarette. What you have to deal to negotiate the importance of money. I mean, you get that in one shot.
(Soundbite of movie "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days")
Unidentified Woman #1: (Speaking in foreign language)
MOVSHOVITZ: As the two girls pack for their meeting with the abortionist, one scrounges for cotton balls and soap.
(Soundbite of movie "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days")
Unidentified Woman #1: (Speaking in foreign language)
Unidentified Woman #2: (Speaking in foreign language)
(Soundbite of movie "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days")
MOVSHOVITZ: The other hunts through the echoey halls of the dorm and the crowded common bathroom for a hair dryer and cigarettes.
(Soundbite of movie "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days")
Unidentified Woman #1: (Speaking in foreign language)
Unidentified Woman #2: (Speaking in foreign language)
Unidentified Woman #3: (Speaking in foreign language)
MOVSHOVITZ: Bertrand Tavernier says they live in a world of obstacles and restrictions.
Mr. TAVERNIER: It's one of the first time that you are physically in an impression of knowing what it is to live in a country which has dictatorship-like Ceausescu. Everything gives you a feeling of the time, of the period. It's a period film. But you're never in the impression of looking at a period film. You have an impression of looking at a contemporary film. And yet, it captures the spirit of the Romania of yesterday. I think it's one of the greatest film I've seen in the last years.
MOVSHOVITZ: When the dictator fell in 1989, filmmaker Cristian Mungiu was 21 and a literature teacher. He didn't make his first full-length film until 2002. He waited another five years before starting "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days." When he was making it, he says he wasn't thinking about issues like the end of Romanian communism or even abortion. He was trying to build a story about two college girls — one who lies to herself and those around her about her pregnancy and a friend who comes to understand what has happened and bails her out. Mungiu says his approach was dictated by the story, not a message.
Mr. MUNGIU: I try to just choose the scenes which are going to be allowed in the film, considering just one thing: Would this reasonably have happened and does it make sense to the story to keep it? And apart from this, I am trying not to have any things that would mean something else from the beginning. I don't want to make a metaphor of anything, because I am convinced that if I respect the complexity of life the way I see it, the film is going to have a lot of layers and of meanings at the end, much more than if I just write down the message of my film. And I try to follow it all the way in the story.
MOVSHOVITZ: The layers of meaning that come out of day to day life have provided the material for a flowering of Romanian cinema.
Ms. PEGGY PARSONS (Film Programs Curator, National Gallery of Art) Some of the critics talk about a new wave in Romania. That's probably a very apt phrase. I mean, new wave is overused. But any time you see a lot of experimentation, a lot of good ideas that work coming out of a national cinema, you call it a new wave. And at the moment, that's what's going on in Romania.
MOVSHOVITZ: Peggy Parsons heads the film program at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Ms. PARSONS: Romania didn't really have the kind of Renaissance that some of the other Eastern European communist countries had back in the '60s and '70s where there was this quiet rebellion, quiet understanding among the artists that they were going to use symbolic language and certain kinds of signs to make movies about what they were going through. There wasn't that strong tradition of let's do something artistic and get away with it. But you know, you can make art over anything. And I think the fact that they're making art out of the life that they know so well in Romania and using their friends and using things that are right there in front of them, that's a very, very powerful drive. And reality is a lot richer than fantasy in many ways.
MOVSHOVITZ: The reality of time is what Cristian Mungiu explores throughout "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days." Each scene of the film is made from one long, unedited take. Some run 10 minutes without a cut. Compare that to some Hollywood blockbusters which can average an edit every 3 seconds. Mungiu says that long takes allow the feelings of his actors to deepen as the scene progresses.
Mr. MUNGIU: And I think that much of the emotion of the film comes from this. I don't create emotion with the parts with, you know music or close-ups. And I don't make the rhythm from the editing. It's all what we could do with our bare hands, if you want. It's your skill regarding what the actors can do.
MOVSHOVITZ: For Cristian Mungiu, it's also a question of atmosphere and sense of place. He uses his camera to take audiences into the cluttered rooms and out on to the dimly lit streets. What happens to the two girls happens in a world with its own oppressive character. It's a place and a time which he says he had to expose.
Mr. MUNGIU: Once you decide to make a true film about this and to make an honest story about this, you have to decide from the beginning that if you have the courage to show everything the way you remembered, then you have to make the film. If not and you feel ashamed or guilty or politically correct and you won't offend people with showing them the truth, then you should just better make a romantic comedy or whatever.
MOVSHOVITZ: Despite Cristian Mungiu's subject matter and his decidedly uncommercial approach, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days" has been one of the most popular attractions at film festivals. General audiences in this country will get a chance to see it as it opens in theaters over the coming months.
For NPR News, I'm Howie Movshovitz.
BLOCK: You can see a clip from "4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days" at npr.org/movies.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
After their meeting, I spoke with opposition leader Raila Odinga. He did not strike a conciliatory note - far from it. Instead, he gave Kenya's president two options.
Mr. RAILA ODINGA (Kenyan Politician; Opposition Leader): The one is Mr. Kibaki will just step aside and allow me to be sworn in as the president. The second one is a rerun of the presidential elections. If there's any doubt who won the elections as the election commission would like people to believe. Then we are ready for a rerun of the presidential elections.
BLOCK: So you're ruling out power-sharing. If Mr. Kibaki stays as president, you're saying the only two options that are acceptable to you would be if he steps down as president or agrees to rerunning the presidential election.
Mr. ODINGA: Yes, presidential elections within three months' time will settle this issue once and for all.
BLOCK: But Mr. Kibaki is insisting that he is - whether you agree with him or not - the duly elected president of Kenya. What would possibly make him agree to step down or have new elections?
Mr. ODINGA: His country's aflame, and there'll be no peace in Kenya until this matter is settled satisfactorily.
BLOCK: Mr. Odinga, you said that Kenya is aflame and there will be no peace. Those words could be interpreted by your followers as essentially license for them to go and keep on with the violence that your country has seen since this elections in December. Why not send a message of this is a time that we need to be looking for peace and putting down our weapons?
Mr. ODINGA: That's exactly what I've been doing all the time. So even today, when (unintelligible). I even called for peace and that the people should handle themselves peacefully, but, as you know, there can really be no true peace without justice.
BLOCK: Mr. Odinga, you know well that the human rights group, Human Rights Watch, has accused your party - the Orange Democratic Movement - of orchestrating attacks on members of Mr. Kibaki's ethnic group - the Kikuyu. They say the attacks were not spontaneous, that they were planned, they were incited by opposition leaders. What do you say to that accusation?
Mr. ODINGA: No, nothing could be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that this is most unfortunate and we have condemned it in the strongest tone possible. But I want to say that there has been no premeditation. What you have seen countrywide has been spontaneous reaction of the people to the rigging of elections, and this is what will need to be addressed.
BLOCK: But in terms of the violence between ethnic groups, what you're saying flies in the face of what human rights groups are saying, which is that opposition leaders arranged for trucks, for bands of youth to go around attacking members of other tribes, supplied them with weapons, paid for the weapons, that this was not just a passionate outpouring of anger. It was orchestrated by the opposition.
Mr. ODINGA: Where is the evidence? This is a propaganda put out by the government, talking about genocide. The people have just reacted angrily. It was nothing that was premeditated or preplanned at all.
BLOCK: Mr. Odinga, I want to ask you about an editorial that ran this week in the leading newspaper in Kenya - The Daily Nation. The writer is saying that this basically is all about power. And he faults President Kibaki but he also faults you. And he says this.
(Reading) Climbing over the bodies knee-deep in blood with his arm outstretched to grab the throne, I see opposition leader Raila Odinga still furious that he was denied the biggest prize of all.
Mr. ODINGA: Every Kenyan knows that I won the elections. I mean, there's no doubt in the mind of the people here. Now, what you want to ask is what does this portend for democracy in Africa? You know, democracy has a price; dictatorships, they don't go out easily. And unless it is sorted out to the satisfaction of the people of Kenya, I am sure that it will spell doom to democracy in our country.
BLOCK: Mr. Odinga, thanks for talking with us.
Mr. ODINGA: Thank you very much.
BLOCK: That's Raila Odinga, leader of Kenya's opposition party, The Orange Democratic Movement, speaking with us from Nairobi.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
The stage is set in Boca Raton, Florida. Tonight, the Republican presidential candidates square off one last time before Tuesday's big primary. Fred Thompson is now out of the race, and Florida could further narrow the field.
Rudy Giuliani has all but staked his candidacy on the strong showing there. State polls suggest a close race among Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Mike Huckabee, who won Iowa and came close in South Carolina, is short on funds. He's mostly looking beyond Florida to Super Tuesday.
NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson reports.
MARA LIASSON: The theme of the Republican race this year could be called nomentum(ph). There are now four Republican candidates who can claim to have won something but none of them seems to have any momentum going into Florida. The man with the most to lose is Rudy Giuliani who hasn't won anything yet. He's staked his campaign on winning Florida.
Mike DuHaime is Giuliani's campaign manager.
Mr. MICHAEL DuHAIME (Campaign Manager, Rudolph Giuliani's Presidential Campaign): We have focused a lot on Florida. Rudy's been campaigned here a lot. There's no denying this will be an important state for us. But for us, it's just beginning, really.
LIASSON: Most observers believe if Giuliani doesn't win Florida, it will really be just the end.
Already, his lead in national polls has evaporated, and the new Florida poll shows Giuliani dropping to third behind John McCain and Mitt Romney.
The path ahead for McCain is also complicated. He came back from the political dead to win New Hampshire and South Carolina, and a win in Florida would certainly make him the front-runner, although that title has been almost meaningless this year.
But if he does win Florida, he will face an army of enemies: Republican conservatives who the maverick McCain has crossed over the years on issues like campaign finance overhaul, immigration, torture, global warming, taxes and stem-cell research.
Here are just two of them.
Mr. TOM DeLAY (Former House Majority Leader): I think McCain has done more to hurt the Republican Party than elected official I know of. He has fought the Republican Party in everything that we've done.
Mr. RUSH LIMBAUGH (Host, "The Rush Limbaugh Show"): McCain, frankly, has shown conservatives little but contempt over many years.
LIASSON: That's former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and talk show host Rush Limbaugh. Their anger illustrates one of McCain's biggest obstacles in Florida. It's a close primary. Only Republicans can vote and McCain won't be able to rely on the independent voters who helped him win the open primaries in South Carolina and New Hampshire.
And what if he manages to win Florida? Will McCain be able to unite the party behind him? There's a raging debate about this question in Republican circles right now.
Strategist Scott Reid thinks he can.
Mr. SCOTT REID (Political Strategist): At the end of the day, McCain has the ability to transcend all that. As he wins primaries, it shows that he can be victorious in the fall. And at the end of the day, Republicans and conservatives, they're still going to rally around the McCain candidacy because the liberal alternative is unacceptable. And that's probably what McCain has gone for invest.
LIASSON: In hypothetical head-to-head matchups, McCain does do better against Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama than any other Republican candidate. But first, he'll have to defeat Mitt Romney, his strongest opponent who has shown no hesitation to spend his own personal wealth in pursuit of the nomination. His senior advisor, Vin Webber, says Romney has worked hard to position himself as the candidate who can unify the party.
Mr. VIN WEBER (Mitt Romney's Senior Advisor): He has systematically and carefully gone out to build bridges and appeal to all the different factions of the Republican Party - economic conservatives, national security conservatives, social conservatives. Here, anybody else will have to work to pull the whole party together. But in his case, there are no overriding obstacles.
LIASSON: There are two outcomes in Florida that could help Romney. One, of course, is a victory for himself, the other is a Giuliani win, which would leave the former New York city mayor alive to battle John McCain over moderate votes in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere on February 5th, giving Romney a clearer shot at conservative support.
But Romney, too, faces doubts among Republicans about electability. On paper, he's broadly acceptable to all the GOP factions. But in national polls, he's the weakest Republican against both Obama and Clinton. Just one of the many reasons this year's Republican race will probably remain muddled long after Florida votes.
Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In the presidential race, there's the popular vote and then there's the delegate count. And numerically, the two don't always match up as we saw in the Nevada caucuses where Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but Barack Obama ended up with 13 delegates to her 12. Each state has its own often arcane rules for how delegates are awarded. In a close race, that can lead to endless confusion and speculation about who is truly ahead.
We're going to decipher the delegate rules with Burdett Loomis. He is professor of political science at the University of Kansas. He joins us from Lawrence.
And Professor Loomis, we should say of this right from the start that this is complicated even for someone like you who follows this stuff all the time.
Professor BURDETT LOOMIS (Political Science, University of Kansas): Absolutely. And it is arcane and I think is something of a changing target certainly from election to election.
BLOCK: Well, let's start at the beginning. We're talking about delegates. And this would be delegates who go to the parties' national conventions this summer, although it's not quite as simple as all that because in a couple of places where they're having caucuses, they're nominated to county conventions, not national conventions.
Prof. LOOMIS: Right. And you aggregate up to this - the state level so it can be unclear, particularly, as candidates drop out, someone who might have had support, those supporters would go some place else. So it's never completely clear.
BLOCK: Well, are these delegates pledged to a candidate? I mean, once they say or they're pledged to say Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, is that binding?
Prof. LOOMIS: Indeed, they are pledged, and yet, it is not totally binding. No. These are private organizations, the political parties. So legally binding would be difficult. By and large, the party rules say that if you have been elected or selected, pledged to a delegate, you are expected to support that candidate. And if someone drops out, however, you can move your vote.
BLOCK: Mm-hmm. But if the candidates stay in, you're supposed to stay with whom you signed on with?
Prof. LOOMIS: You're supposed to.
BLOCK: Another way that this all gets confusing is that in these states, it's not necessarily winner-take-all, or that sometimes delegates are allotted proportionally and that's what happened in Nevada where we saw that split between the popular vote and then a different delegate count.
Prof. LOOMIS: Certainly. And I think that that's the Democratic rule is to select proportionately in caucuses, in primaries. In Nevada, what was interesting is that Hillary Clinton won substantial numbers of votes in particular caucuses. But Obama had support more broadly through the state. And so hence, his support ended up with a little more delegate count as opposed to Clinton.
BLOCK: Another layer of complication here is something called the super delegates. Tell us about super delegates. Who are they?
Prof. LOOMIS: The super delegates are mostly in the Democratic Party. And the name, I think applies to them only in the Democratic Party. They are governors, elected officials, members of Congress, senators, national party members and a few others who have been accorded the status of getting to go to the convention and at the beginning, they're uncommitted. And they can commit to individual candidates anywhere along the way.
BLOCK: And there are lots of these. It is about 20 percent of all the Democratic delegates are super delegates.
Prof. LOOMIS: Right. About 20 percent of the delegates do represent party elites in one way or another.
BLOCK: You know, I was looking at the Web site realclear.politics.com today and they have a running delegate count.
Prof. LOOMIS: Right.
BLOCK: And if you look at the totals with the super delegates totaled in, Hillary Clinton has a big lead. She has 236 delegates total. Barack Obama has a 152. John Edwards has 50. But if you take away those super delegates, it's a very different story. Barack Obama actually has 38; Clinton behind him with 36; John Edwards with 18.
So which number is more meaningful?
Prof. LOOMIS: That's a great question, I should say. I think that both numbers are meaningful. Certainly, the electoral count demonstrates how close this race is. I do think that the super delegate count is also quite significant. Clearly, a lot of people have long term ties to Hillary Clinton. She has a strong super delegate operation. She has gotten those commitments. And so there is this delegate lead. And I think that's important as you go to Super Tuesday because if you can maintain that and broaden her electoral lead, she might have some kind of broad momentum that would carry her, perhaps, to the nomination.
BLOCK: You know, what if we come out of Super Tuesday with just a jumble? What do you see happening then?
Prof. LOOMIS: With a jumble, I think that it then goes into a kind of trench warfare, state by state and super delegate by super delegate. And there are a lot of super delegates who have held back. Most of them, as a matter of fact, have not committed to one candidate or another. And many of those folks have very different interests in the political candidates themselves - individual members of Congress in a tough race, for example. So they may have very good reasons for holding back and waiting to see which way the tide will turn.
BLOCK: Well, Professor Loomis, thanks for taking the time to try to sort through all of this with us.
Prof. LOOMIS: I hope it's slightly more clear.
BLOCK: It is. Thanks a lot.
Prof. LOOMIS: My pleasure.
BLOCK: Burdett Loomis is professor of political science at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The University of Texas at Austin has lost perhaps its most devoted sports fan and its most memorable.
William "Rooster" Andrews was short in stature but a towering personality. He died earlier this week at the age of 84.
NPR's John Burnett has this remembrance of how Andrews became a legend among the Texas Longhorns.
JOHN BURNETT: He may have been the most famous water boy in the annals of college football. During the 1943, '44 and '45 seasons, Rooster Andrews, who stood just under five feet, was sent in to the game not to offer a drink to the players from his five-gallon bucket but to drop kick the football for extra points. In other games, he even faked several kicks and passed the ball to his best friend Longhorn quarterback Bobby Layne who went on to join the NFL and make the Pro-football Hall of Fame.
Rooster Andrews acquired his name not because of a cocky attitude, he told the story of how, as a freshman, he once scrambled up a tree to seize a rooster for his buddies who needed a bird for a cockfight. He fell out of the tree and broke his arm but never turned loose of the game cock and the nickname and legend were born.
After Andrews graduated, he became a salesman for a Texas sporting goods distributor, the self-described jockstrap peddler. After two decades on the road, he was said to know just about every high school coach in the state. Later, Andrews owned a chain of sporting good stores in Austin, full of equipment emblazoned with the burnt orange logo of his beloved Texas Longhorns.
Andrews counted among his friends Presidents Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush, and was a regular confidant of legendary UT coach Darrell Royal and the current coach, Mack Brown. Brown told The Dallas Morning News a few years ago, the first phase after a loss, I always see is Rooster. He comes out to practice just to say he loves us. That's the kind of friend he is.
His funeral and the public reception for Rooster Andrews are planned in Austin on Saturday.
John Burnett, NPR News, Austin.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
In Kenya, today, the sitting president and his main rival held their first talks since the disputed December 27th presidential election. Both men, along with mediator Kofi Annan, emerged from the meeting, shaking hands and promising to work toward peace; a hopeful sign after nearly a month of violence. But within hours of the meeting, both sides were again crying foul.
From the capital Nairobi, NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton reports.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON: President Mwai Kibaki and his political rival Raila Odinga were all smiles when they shook hands after an hour-long meeting with the former U.N. secretary general turned peace broker. Kofi Annan succeeded where other international mediators had failed. He got the two to sit down and talk.
Mr. KOFI ANNAN (Former U.N. Secretary General): The two leaders are here to underline their engagement, to dialogue. Time is of the essence. And I want to join my brothers in appealing for calm and an immediate end to the violence.
QUIST-ARCTON: Annan said this process could take weeks or even months. Now, while politics and a disputed presidential vote was a trigger for weeks of deadly violence and 650 deaths in Kenya, there has also been ethnic bloodletting between different tribes.
Mr. RAILA ODINGA (Kenyan Politician; Opposition Leader): Today, we are taking the first vital steps in resolving the lesser disputes and conflicts.
QUIST-ARCTON: Odinga insists Kibaki robbed him of the presidency. But now, he's talking peace.
Mr. ODINGA: I pledge to all Kenyans that my team and I will spare no effort to resolve this crisis.
QUIST-ARCTON: The Kibaki-Odinga meeting was a significant development in Kenya after a tense political standoff. But the choice of words used by President Kibaki angered the opposition. The Kenyan leader appeared to be saying his job as head of state was not negotiable.
President MWAI KIBAKI (Kenya): After being sworn in as your duly elected president of Kenya, I will personally lead our country in promoting unity, tolerance, peace and harmony among Kenyans.
QUIST-ARCTON: Raila Odinga's opposition party pointed to the phrase duly elected president as evidence of Kibaki undermining Kofi Annan's mediation efforts. Almost immediately after the handshakes and smiles, the feel-good atmosphere soured into recrimination, which each side accusing the other of insincerity and trying to sabotage the negotiations.
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Nairobi.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Candidates spent a lot of time toting their credentials on the campaign trail. When Hillary Clinton says she would be ready to lead on day one, she points to her experience. Just how much experience?
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): What I want to do is take not only my 35 years of experience into the White House but I want - I have fought for more than 35 years for early childhood education - Oh, I don't think based on my 35 years of fighting for what I believe - ending poverty, particularly ending poverty for children has been the central core cause of everything that I've been doing for 35 years - So I'm offering 35 years of experience making change.
NORRIS: Thirty-five years of experience, she says. But Hillary Clinton is a little less specific about what she was doing in all those years before she went to the Senate in 2001.
To help fill up that resume, we called Suzanne Goldenberg. She's author of the book "Madam President: Is America Ready to Send Hillary Clinton to the White House?" I asked Susan Goldenberg to take us back to the beginning of those 35 years of experience to Clinton's days at Yale Law School.
Ms. SUZANNE GOLDENBERG (Correspondent, The Guardian; Author, "Madam President: Is America Ready to Send Hillary Clinton to the White House?"): She actually had a very early interest in children's rights. That's interesting because that was the time when a lot of women were running away from anything to do with children. But Hillary Clinton began taking extra courses in that field.
NORRIS: And she graduated Yale Law School in 1973. She went to work on Capitol Hill in 1974?
Ms. GOLDENBERG: That's right. But in between, she went to work for the Children's Defense Fund and I think here, that's just sort of crucial period because she did work exclusively on children's issues in that time, specifically trying to get kids who were excluded from the public education system into schools.
NORRIS: And then when she went to the Hill, she worked for the House Judiciary Committee.
Ms. GOLDENBERG: That was a really prestigious appointment. She was part of the team that was helping to prepare the case against Richard Nixon.
NORRIS: So in the mid-70s, she moved to Arkansas?
Ms. GOLDENBERG: That's right. She moved to join Bill Clinton when he was fighting his first campaign, which he lost. But she stayed on at Fayetteville and got a job teaching law at the university in Arkansas.
NORRIS: She was the first female partner at the Rose Law Firm. What kind of work did she do there?
Ms. GOLDENBERG: Well, the Rose Law Firm was Arkansas' biggest law firm. It represented some of the biggest businesses in Arkansas, like Wal-Mart, like Tyson Foods, and she represented their corporate clients.
NORRIS: Give me an example of the kind of cases she worked on.
Ms. GOLDENBERG: Well, one of her first cases, I think, was probably as embarrassing as it gets. She had to defend a food manufacturer in a suit that was brought by a man who opened up a can of pork and beans that he had bought and he found the hindquarters of a rat inside. So she had to go to court and fight that case.
NORRIS: How long did she work for the Rose Law Firm and did she maintain that job while she was the first lady of Arkansas?
Ms. GOLDENBERG: Hillary Clinton's longest job anywhere has, was for the Rose Law Firm. I mean, she joined in 1977, she did take breaks to campaign full time for Bill Clinton when he ran office and she took time off when Chelsea was born. But otherwise, she stayed at the Rose Law Firm until she left Arkansas to go to the White House.
NORRIS: And at the White House?
Ms. GOLDENBERG: Well at the White House as we've all seen, you know her first foray into policy, the healthcare reform effort ended badly. I mean, it was a catastrophe, it was a failure and the health reform stalled. Hillary Clinton then retreated from the policy arena, at least from the arena of big ideas and sweeping changes and she took on a much more traditional first lady role. Later on, she came out of her shell and began to push on issues of international development especially on women's issues.
NORRIS: You know, when you describe this more traditional first lady role, that's not the way she describes it on the campaign trail. She describes someone who is very active in public policy, very active in foreign policy.
Ms. GOLDENBERG: Well, I mean, she was active in foreign policy bid. I mean, she also wrote a book about White House pets. She did a balancing act there because she felt that she had gone out on a limb and gone too far in the public policy arena when she was first lady and that she had been punished for it by the failure of the healthcare reform. So she really did take a backseat for a period of time and then slowly began to try and work on those issues again.
NORRIS: Now overall, the repetition of that statement that we heard, 35 years of experience, inference there is that she has decades of public policy experience. When she says this over and over again, is she making a fair or an accurate claim?
Ms. GOLDENBERG: It's hard to see really how it adds up especially if you listen back to that claim about at being the central core of her work for 35 years because in fact, her full-time job for a lot of those years in Arkansas was working for a corporate law firm.
NORRIS: How does that strike you?
Ms. GOLDENBERG: Well, you have to remember that every candidate on the campaign trail is going to embellish the record. I mean, John Edwards is 54 years old and we hear him talking about 54 years of working for little people and for poor people. So Hillary Clinton does it as well. Does she do it more than other people? Maybe slightly because she does leave, you know, that corporate law work off her resume. But I think this is what politicians do. They sort of play up the good parts of their resume and play down the bit, say it rather people forgot about.
NORRIS: Susan Goldenberg, thanks so much for talking to us.
Ms. GOLDENBERG: Thank you.
NORRIS: Suzanne Goldenberg is a U.S. correspondent for The Guardian newspaper. She's also author of a book called "Madam President: Is America Ready to Send Hillary Clinton to the White House?"
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Now, some Florida Republicans on the presidential primary there next Tuesday. They were gathered for a monthly luncheon at the Bear Lakes Country Club in West Palm Beach.
Our co-host Robert Siegel spoke with four of them after lunch.
ROBERT SIEGEL: It's a small gathering. A couple of dozen people - Republicans, conservatives, many with roots in the northeast.
Mr. SID LANEER(ph) (Vice President): Let me welcome you this morning. I'm Sid Laneer. I am the newly-elected vice president. Thank you.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. LANEER: We want to start with our pledge and blessing and Blanche(ph) will come and lead us in that, so if we all stand, please?
SIEGEL: The Romney and Giuliani campaigns are both running strong here in southeastern Florida. Among these Republicans, John McCain is not. They don't like his independent take on immigration and other issues.
Here are four club members: Fran Hancock(ph) is an enthusiastic Romney supporter. She owns an insurance agency and she's a state committee member. Bill Diamond is a former New York City commissioner who's with Giuliani. Patrick Moody, a Baptist minister, is for Huckabee. And Cheryl Carpenter-Climick(ph), who runs her own PR firm, remains undecided. I asked them about the statement they heard at lunch from a Romney spokesman. Republicans win when they nominate a real conservative and all the parties constituencies coalesce.
Fran Hancock said she agrees.
Ms. FRAN HANCOCK (Insurance Agency Owner; Mitt Romney Supporter): I very much support people who support the Republican Party principles and I don't believe that we win by changing our principles to fit the other party. I don't want to be Democrat-lite, L-I-T-E, if you will.
SIEGEL: For you, Mitt Romney is real, real Republican…
Ms. HANCOCK: No. I think he's the - he fits the bill best in all the categories as far as I'm concerned. I think we have some wonderful candidates but I do believe Governor Romney does meet the qualifications across the board.
SIEGEL: And Cheryl, what do you think? Which way does the Republican Party went?
Ms. CHERYL CARPENTER-CLIMICK (Public Relations Firm Owner): I don't think it hurts us to have a conservative candidate. It hasn't in the past. We've elected George W. Bush twice and I think what resonates with people is you stand for something. And you need to take a stand and be steady with it because that's what people are looking for is someone strong to make decisions.
SIEGEL: And Patrick Moody, your thoughts on the…
Reverend PATRICK MOODY (Minister, The Village Baptist Church; Mike Huckabee Supporter): I think that core convictions are integral. I think that the American people see that. I think they respect that. They may I completely agree with the position but I think they're looking for someone who's got their feet on the ground solidly. You have to have a position where people know your core convictions and they know you're not going to waver from that.
Mr. BILL DIAMOND (Former Commissioner, Department of Citywide Administrative Services, New York; Rudy Giuliani Presidential Campaign Volunteer): I'm Bill Diamond. I work as a volunteer for Rudy Giuliani in Palm Beach County. I'm his county co-chair here. I had worked with him in New York for eight years, known him for 25 years.
I haven't thought on the matter, if I may. I want to say that I do not believe the majority of the American public are ideologically oriented. They are people on the, you know, conservative side and there are people on the liberal side. But the basic majority of the people of this country want results. And that's frankly what Rudy Giuliani has given them in the city of New York under most difficult circumstances that one can imagine. So while we're all conservatives, that is not an ideological banner that we should carry into the election. We should carry it, our principles, yes, but at the same time, we have to be in mind that only results count for the people. And most of the people would like the parties not to brandish their ideology but to brandish the results.
SIEGEL: Two things, skills of leadership and executive talents that bring about results might be more important than coming across as ideologically pure.
Mr. DIAMOND: Yes, exactly. Maybe not in particular circumstances of the parties, but what basically in the general election, yes, and I think that's where Rudy will shine.
SIEGEL: What do you think about that, Patrick Moody?
Rev. MOODY: That's still an argument of pragmatism versus ideological positions. I think when push comes to shove, when there is a crisis, people have to know where you stand. And people can get results. Bill Clinton got a lot of results. It weren't necessarily the best for the country, in opinion, as I think we'll all agree.
SIEGEL: Bill Diamond is resisting that comparison.
Mr. DIAMOND: Yes, I don't think President Clinton got such great results. I never - he passed up the opportunity to get Osama bin Laden. He had certain results that none of us want to remember or talk about. So I don't think it's just that kind of a background that counts.
Rev. MOODY: The results were results still. And they were results from an ideology that Bill Clinton stands for. And so that's where it comes back again to ideology as opposed to results.
SIEGEL: I have to ask Fran Hancock because when people talk about consistency and poor convictions in primary debates, very often, there's a veiled illusion there to Mitt Romney saying he's the one who's evolved a little bit too sharply over the course of this query. He used to think differently or speak differently about abortion and…
Ms. HANCOCK: Well, that's very true. Others have flip-flopped on many issues but it seems that Governor Romney is always the one that's hit on that, on the one issue in his life. And I personally feel that when he flipped or flopped, he flopped to the right direction. And he's…
SIEGEL: So you're okay with the flip. Would the flip-flop would worry you if there are (unintelligible)?
Ms. HANCOCK: Well, yeah. If people want back the other way at some point.
SIEGEL: Cheryl, how are you going to decide this? You only have a few days left.
Ms. CARPENTER-CLIMICK: I'm going to ask my three-year-old.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. CARPENTER-CLIMICK: I'm going to do a little more research. You know, I'm watching the polls but I'm trying not to let that make my decision for me. I just really want to do some more research on - as I said, the economic issues and the homeland security issues are my biggest concerns. We taught our kids about voting. And as a matter of fact, we were just up in New York and took them to Susan B. Anthony's house. And my young girl talks about, you know, how she helped the ladies vote, that we really made an impression. But my son says we need to vote for Huckabee because I think he just likes the way the name sound.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. CARPENTER-CLIMICK: Huckabee, Huckabee, Huckabee.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: Palm Beach Republican and mother of three-year-old twins, Cheryl Carpenter-Climick. We also heard from Bill Diamond, Fran Hancock and Reverend Patrick Moody.
By the way, before they left the country club, they all exchanged some wistful thoughts about a candidate they would like to see run - former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
BLOCK: That's our co-host Robert Siegel reporting from West Palm Beach.
On the Democratic side, the field of presidential candidates is shrinking. Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich says he's quitting the race and will make a formal announcement tomorrow.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Congressional leaders in the White House announced today they have reached a rare compromise. The deal comes on a package of tax rebates for individuals and tax cuts for businesses. Both are meant to give the economy a much needed jolt. The measure would mean up to $600 for individuals and twice that for couples who filed jointly. Families with children will get an additional $300 per child. Neither side was totally happy with the agreement. And it's likely to be changed once the measure reaches the Senate. Still, both sides predicted quick passage by the House.
NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR: The agreement was largely hammered out yesterday in a series of meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader John Boehner and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. It was a remarkable display of speed and willingness to compromise — rare commodities in this Congress. Speaking less than an hour after the formal agreement was announced at the capital, President Bush said the deal met his criteria for a stimulus package that was robust, effective and temporary.
President GEORGE W BUSH: This package has the right set of policies and is the right size. The incentives in this package will lead to higher consumer spending and increased business investment this year. (Unintelligible) this package recognizes that lowering taxes is a powerful and efficient way to help consumers and businesses.
NAYLOR: Republican leader Boehner called the deal a big win for the American people.
Representative JOHN BOEHNER (Republican, Ohio; House Minority Leader): You know, many Americans believe that Washington is broken. But I think this agreement will show the American people that we can fix it and it will serve to move along other bipartisan agreements that we can have in the future.
NAYLOR: The tax rebates will go to some 117 million Americans. Those individuals who don't make enough to pay income taxes will get rebates of $300. The rebates will start to phase out for those who earn over $75,000, or for couples, $150,000. Business will get tax write-offs, double what they can take now on new investments and incentives to invest in new equipment. The measure also contains changes to federal mortgage programs aimed at helping homeowners facing foreclosure to refinance their loans. Still, Democrats were clearly less than jubilant about the deal. Here's Speaker Pelosi.
Representative NANCY PELOSI (Democrat, California; House Speaker): I can't say that I'm totally pleased with the package, but I do know that it will help stimulate the economy. And if it does not, then there will be more to come.
NAYLOR: The biggest complaint among Democrats was over what was left out, especially extended unemployment benefits. Charlie Rangel, a Democrat from New York, said he did not understand the resistance from President Bush and Republican congressional leaders to those additional benefits. Still, Democrats in the House are expected to swallow their disappointments and overwhelmingly approve the package. Senators, meanwhile, made it clear they would go their own way. Majority Leader Harry Reid said there were a number of programs Senate Democrats would like to add to the measure, and that he consider the bill's $150 billion price tag negotiable.
Senator HARRY REID (Democrat, Nevada; Majority Leader): That's not a magical figure, and a lot of things that we're talking about here are fairly small. For example, the summer employment program for $500 million.
NAYLOR: Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York also said that as far as he was concerned, the House stimulus package needs more.
Senator CHARLES SCHUMER (Democrat, New York): Those spending stimuli should focus on unemployment insurance, but could be other things — money for summer jobs, money that can be spent quickly for infrastructure, money for nutrition assistance, things like that.
NAYLOR: Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have made it clear they're unwilling to let the stimulus measure become a vehicle for everyone's pet spending program. The House is expected to take up the measure the first week in February, the Senate soon after, depending on the outcome. Treasury Secretary Paulson says consumers could start getting their checks this May.
Brian Naylor, NPR News, the capital.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
We're joined by the House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Congressman Hoyer, welcome to the program.
Representative STENY HOYER (Democrat, Maryland; House Majority Leader): Thank you very much. Glad to be with you.
BLOCK: As we just heard, Democrats did have to drop some of the things they wanted to get this deal - increases in food stamps, extension of unemployment benefits. Do you think you sacrificed too much?
Rep. HOYER: Well, I think we didn't get what we wanted. But very frankly, the need to move quickly, if we're going to have a stimulative effect, was felt by all of us to dictate that we have a compromise that all sides could support. That's the definition of compromise. And although we have not achieved an extension on the unemployment insurance or an increase in the payments made or on food stamps, which economists tell us will get into the economy very quickly and would in fact be a stimulus, and for that matter, giving some additional assistance on the Medicaid side for states who are going to be sorely stretched, we didn't get that.
As speaker Pelosi said earlier in the comments she made, that does not mean they are off the table, we're now focused on them. They're not in this particular package, however. The proposal that has been made, though, we think made some great strides towards the objectives that we were fighting for on the Democratic side of the aisle. That was for the…
BLOCK: But when you said they're not in this particular package, are you saying…
Rep. HOYER: …broad inclusion…
BLOCK: Excuse me?
Rep. HOYER: …of people in this program. And as you indicated earlier, some 35 million who are not covered under the president's proposal will be covered under the proposal that I - that is going to be presented to the House.
BLOCK: But when you said they're not…
Rep. HOYER: From that stand point, we made a very, very substantial step forward, we think, in making sure those working Americans who are the hardest hit and under the greatest stress will get significant relief.
BLOCK: When you say these - they're not in this particular package, are you implying that this will go, undergo some pretty radical revisions before it becomes law?
Rep. HOYER: No, no, no. But we hope that this will stimulate the economy, turn the downturn around and that unemployment will again drop and that the economy will start to regenerate itself. But if it does not and if it continues its downward trend, we have been very critical of this administration's economic programs which we believe have not produced the kind of economy, for instance, that we had in the '90s. Having said that, this package, we think, is a package which can pass quickly, which is focused on working people who need money and who will spend it quickly to stimulate the economy, and as you know, it's temporary.
So I'm hopeful that the Senate will take this package and pass it quickly. I know that the senators are looking at other alternative as we did. We fought very hard for unemployment insurance and food stamps, in particular. The Republicans were simply not going to support that kind of program. But they did come back and did come to a point where - at our urging, and we indicated in order for us to support a program, it was going to have to have those at the lower end of the economic spectrum just as it was helping those at the higher end in business. And we support that - this stimuli, to try to spur investment and expensing by small businesses being substantially increased as a tax deduction.
BLOCK: Excuse me, congressman, you just heard senator…
Rep. HOYER: (unintelligible)
BLOCK: You just heard Senators Harry Reid and Charles…
Rep. HOYER: …of this program could really have done more and we wanted to do more. But this is a compromise, and we think it's a compromise that we could support.
BLOCK: Congressman Hoyer, thanks for being with us.
Rep. HOYER: You bet. Thank you.
BLOCK: Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland. He's the House majority leader.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The last time the government issued tax rebates to stimulate the economy was in 2001. The country was in a recession. About $38 billion of rebate checks were sent out to two-thirds of U.S. households. Typically, individuals received $300, married couples, $600. So where did that money go? And did the stimulus actually work? Those are the questions we asked Jason Furman of the Brookings Institution. He was a White House economic advisor in the Clinton administration.
Mr. JASON FURMAN (Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution): As far as the economy is concerned, the most important question is did people spend it or did people save it? And it seems as if people spent about two-thirds of those rebates within six months of receiving them.
BLOCK: And when you say that's the most important question, that's because the whole idea behind this is put money in people's pockets, they'll go out and spend it, and that will stimulate the economy, right?
Mr. FURMAN: That is exactly the economic theory. And in a good year, that type of theory doesn't work because the only way to grow the economy is to have more productive capacity. But in a bad year, when the economy is in a downturn and there's spare capacity, that it really can work to basically pull yourself up by your bootstraps by spending more money.
BLOCK: You know, of the people who spent the money and didn't save it, where did they spend it on?
Mr. FURMAN: The number one item that people spent money on was clothing. The second biggest item - which I think would be a surprise, but it shows up in the statistical evidence - was on health care items, and that is something that would include glasses and, and items like that. And the third biggest was food.
BLOCK: Now, would it matter - if you're looking at a stimulus package and the results of that - would it matter what people spent it on or is it all good?
Mr. FURMAN: To a first approximation, what matters is are you spending it on domestically-produced goods or are you spending it on imports. So, spending on health care or food at home would be a little bit better for the economy than spending on apparel, where a bunch of that money ends up disappearing outside of the U.S. economy.
BLOCK: One of the studies that I've seen ended up concluding that the rebates provided a substantial stimulus helping to end the recession. Do you agree?
Mr. FURMAN: Well, the recession was about halfway over by the time the checks went out, and they certainly provided a big boost to consumption. I think it might have ended the recession a little bit earlier as well.
BLOCK: How long did it take for the checks to go out?
Mr. FURMAN: The checks were mailed out over a 10-week period. This time around, it'll take longer to get that process started because the IRS is busy processing everyone's tax returns. But once the IRS gets started, they're going to be faster about actually getting the checks out this time because so many more people have electronic accounts that the money will be sent directly to.
BLOCK: Uh-huh. The rebates back in 2001 amounted to about 0.4 percent of GDP. Do you get a sense of how this $150-billion package would compare?
Mr. FURMAN: Well, first of all, only about two-thirds of that package is for the rebates, the rest of it is for business tax breaks. But it is somewhat larger of a share of the economy than the rebates we had in 2001.
BLOCK: Jason Furman, thanks so much for talking to us.
Mr. FURMAN: Thank you.
BLOCK: Jason Furman is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR NEWS, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michelle Norris.
Thursday is the day we read from your e-mail.
BLOCK: And with lots of political news, we've received quite a few comments on our political coverage. So that's where we'll start.
NORRIS: John Becker(ph) of Oakdale, Minnesota was unhappy with our interview with Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani.
BLOCK: I don't like Mayor Giuliani at all, Becker writes, but the way Robert Siegel bantered him made me feel sympathy for poor Rudy. Sure, he was unresponsive, but your audience is sufficiently sophisticated to pick up on that. Recent interviews with Barack Obama and Fred Thompson were excellent because they gave us personal portraits. And if a candidate wants to waste his conversation time constantly evading issues and fussing(ph) about his record, that tells us something too. No doubt this is frustrating for the interviewer, but just let him talk. We'll figure it out.
NORRIS: My story about conservative voters in South Carolina last week brought a number of e-mails, all asking about the absence of any talk about Republican candidate, Ron Paul.
BLOCK: This is from Christopher Harley(ph) of Portland, Oregon. Did you purposely exclude Ron Paul to create a vacuum in the story that purports to describe the lack of true conservatism in the upcoming presidential election? Shame on you, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm a conservative voter, and I seldom go a day without tuning in to NPR programming. I've always thought it's my duty to contribute to your organization's distinctively objective character. Your blatant omission of Ron Paul has sullied your once good name.
NORRIS: And we've got many more e-mails like that. Turning to our coverage of the economy, Tom Hester(ph) of Silver City, New Mexico was happy to hear my discussion with former treasury secretary Robert Rubin. A first-class interview, Hester writes, the most perceptive question was that if Mr. Rubin, as a leader of Citigroup, felt any responsibility for the subprime crisis. And Hester says he found this part of Rubin's answer particularly revealing.
Mr. ROBERT RUBIN (Chairman and CEO, Citigroup; Former Treasury Secretary): If you're running trading rooms, you've got to run them every day and you've got to be in the business every day. And the kinds of views that the others have around you, that kind may play a factor into what you're doing. But fundamentally, you can't go out of business and you can't stop doing business, and that's how the system just keep - continues to move along that way. Also, you know, you can't be wrong about those judgments.
BLOCK: Here's what Tom Hester took away from that. He writes, Mr. Rubin gave an answer he thought somehow absolved him of responsibility, and yet actually established his culpability. You know mortgage vendors are cooking data to qualify homebuyers and obscuring the amount that buyers will owe after the teaser rates are reset. But because you played a game, you don't have to do anything to stop the fraud and misdirection and untruth.
NORRIS: A number of various listeners heard a small untruth yesterday in our conversation with NPR's Daniel Zwerdling from the South Pole.
DANIEL ZWERDLING: There's nobody. I mean, there's nothing. There are not - there aren't caribou herds that wander pass. There aren't polar bears. There aren't penguins. This is an empty wilderness. It is an amazing feeling to be standing here.
BLOCK: Well, Chad Skaggs(ph) of Decatur, Georgia and many others were quick to point out that there are no polar bears or caribou in the Antarctic, but you would find them in the Arctic. We'll forgive Danny, Michelle. He must have been very excited to be there in the South Pole.
NORRIS: No kidding. And while we're in that forgiving mood, we're joined by a very contrite Bob Mondello. He's a movie critic. And he's here in the studio. And Bob, how long has it been since your last correction?
BOB MONDELLO: Well, probably since the last time I talked about anything remotely technical. And that was the problem here. I was talking about "U2 3D". And I was talking about the process that's used to make 3D images. And I suggested in my piece that the polarizing of the lenses is what is different now. And I talked about the old red-green or red-blue glasses that we got with - the cardboard ones that we used to wear in the '50s. Well, apparently, we didn't wear those in the '50s for movies. We wore those to look at comic book images, and things like that, that were printed that way. And they actually distributed them in comic books.
The glasses that we used for movies were polarized back then. They were in a - that whole process was invented by Dr. Edward Land of Polaroid fame way back in the 1930s, and it's been used all along. What this process uses in the IMAX theatres is much more sophisticated than the old ones. And it really - I mean, the 3D effect is astonishing, it's really cool to watch.
We got an e-mail from Peter Anderson, the 3D director of photography on "U2 3D," to correct us on this. And I had spent about 15 minutes talking to him, and I can now do a 17-minute speech about this process. Essentially, this process uses two prints, two lenses, in the IMAX theatres, two lamp houses, and projects the images on the screen. There's going to be another process, this is shown in a second kind of theatre very shortly, and there's going to be a third process later that is a little bit more like the anaglyphic 3D that I was describing - the red-blue lens. But in any event, this is a marked advance. The way that I was remembering is probably from "Sports Illustrated" swimsuit issues and things like that.
BLOCK: Well, thanks for clearing that up. And that correction from somebody who should know. Bob, thanks a lot.
MONDELLO: Thank you.
BLOCK: Whether we've got it wrong or right, if you're impressed or displeased, we want to hear from you. Go to npr.org and click on Contact Us at the top of the page.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Finally, an obituary for a person and an entire language.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Chief Marie Smith Jones of Anchorage, Alaska died earlier this week. At 89, she was the last full-blooded member of Alaska's Eyak tribe, and she was the last fluent speaker of the Eyak language. Here's a clip of her reciting an Eyak prayer.
(Soundbite Eyak prayer)
Chief MARIE SMITH JONES (Eyak Tribe, Alaska): (Speaking in foreign language)
BLOCK: Around the world, a language dies every 14 days, according to National Geographic, which means by the end of the century, half of the world's nearly 7,000 languages will be extinct.
NORRIS: Many of those dying languages are in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. And Smith Jones spent much of her life trying to preserve the language of her people and others. She helped researchers create a dictionary and formalize grammar. And she helped make recordings like this one.
(Soundbite of recording)
Chief JONES: (Speaking in foreign language)
BLOCK: The voice of Chief Marie Smith Jones reciting a prayer in the Eyak language. She died in her sleep at her home in Anchorage this week. Her native language passed away with her.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
There was a political shakeup in Italy today. Prime Minister Romano Prodi handed in his resignation to Italy's president. This after he lost a vote of confidence in the Italian Senate. Now, the president will have to choose -either create an interim government to reform the election law or call an immediate election as demanded by the opposition.
NPR's Sylvia Poggioli joins us from Rome. And Sylvia, Romano Prodi was about 20 months as prime minister. What led to his government's collapse here?
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: Well, the crisis was triggered by last week's resignation of Justice Minister Clemente Mastella after magistrates began a corruption investigation against him and his wife. He also withdrew his party's support from the government, claiming it had not shown him sufficient solidarity. But the situation really is much more complex than that.
The Prodi government was a very shaky nine-party coalition that ranged from Catholic centrists to extreme leftists. And throughout its 20 months of existence, Prodi had to constantly mediate between these ideological extremes over fiscal issues, over welfare benefits, over the deployment of Italian troops in Afghanistan and Lebanon.
And the crisis really exploded as the government was about to tackle electoral reform that would favor big parties. And so many of the smaller parties were afraid they'd be left out of parliament. And several deputies voted against Prodi today in the hopes of early elections with the current law.
BLOCK: And is there any indication of whether the Italian president will actually call a snap election?
POGGIOLI: We don't know that. President Napolitano, who has the sole power to dissolve parliament and call a vote, has made it very clear in the past that he does not want Italy to go into another election with the current law, which was passed by the previous government of media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi. And it - which - it has created this unprecedented political instability. The law is so awkward that the Prodi government had a wide majority in the lower house but just barely scraped through in the senate.
It's possible that Napolitano will want an interim government with the sole task of passing a new electoral law before going to elections. He might even tap Prodi for this job or choose an institutional figure, someone above the political fray.
BLOCK: You mentioned former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi there. If there were to be elections now, is it possible he could return to power?
POGGIOLI: Well, some polls suggest that he is in the lead, but Berlusconi will not have smooth sailing to the next elections because he has strongly alienated his two major former allies on the right. They're tired of Berlusconi's showy antics and the way he hogs the stage and dismisses his junior partners in the coalition. And there've been some pretty heated public arguments. The other right-wing parties are kind of reluctant to have Berlusconi again as their coalition leader.
And now, Berlusconi also is under investigation for attempted corruption. He's suspected of having tried to buy the votes of several MPs in Prodi's coalition. But you know, Berlusconi can take advantage of Prodi's failure to pass a law on conflict of interest, which he had long promised. Berlusconi is a very powerful man. He has total control over, at least, 50 percent of Italian TV and immense wealth. So he can pretty much call the shots in the political arena.
BLOCK: Sylvia, whichever way this works out, what will be the major problems that this new government has to face?
POGGIOLI: Well, first of all, the economy. Prodi takes credit for lowering Italy's huge debt and for cracking down against tax evasion. But despite these improvements, Italy still has the world's third largest debt after the U.S. and Japan. The economy is stagnant. Organized crime is stronger than ever. Bureaucratic red tape is suffocating many small businesses. The Financial Times has written that while foreign investment is growing throughout Europe, it has dropped 28 percent in Italy. Italy's international image has suffered a lot recently due to the garbage crisis in Naples. And Italians' trust in all major institutions, from parliament to the Catholic church, is at a record low.
Italians are in the grips of a serious malaise. People are insecure about the future. And polls suggest that they are the most unhappy people in Europe.
BLOCK: Sylvia, thanks so much.
POGGIOLI: Thank you.
BLOCK: That's NPR's Sylvia Poggioli in Rome.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
A young European futures trader has pulled off one of the biggest bank frauds in history. The French bank Societe Generale says that a rogue trader admitted to pulling off the $7 billion scheme. His name is reportedly Jerome Kerviel and he was quickly fired. It's a mystery, though, why he did it. The trader seems to have gotten no personal financial gain from his efforts.
Jeff Cane has been following the story. He's a deputy news editor for Portfolio.com. While the bank hasn't released the name of that trader, Cane says, we do know a little about him.
Mr. JEFF CANE (Deputy News Editor, Portfolio.com): We know that he is 31 years old. He is a graduate of the University of Lyon. He has master's degree in finance. He joined the bank in 2000. And he appears to be a very low-level trader in the bank, not a star, not a big executive. He was someone who was engaged in a rather mundane world of equities trading, what the bank referred to as plain vanilla futures indexes. And how he did this was probably because he had previously worked with the bank, working in its back office, so he was very familiar with the bank's procedures, its controls. And somehow, you know, through his knowledge of computers and the systems, he was able to create large trading positions in ways that the bank did not detect until this past weekend.
NORRIS: Large trading positions? So how many of these transactions, these fraudulent transactions, did he have to put together to get to that $7 billion figure?
Mr. CANE: That's right. Well, when the bank first uncovered it this weekend, they said that they estimated that the position would represent a $1 billion loss. But on Monday and Tuesday, we had very sharp falls in stock markets. And that's how the loss ballooned to $7 billion as the bank tried to unwind or sell positions that this trader had created without any authorization.
NORRIS: Because this is a bank that is known for managing risk and for dealing in this - in trading in this complex derivatives, did that help this trader actually put together this scheme? I'm trying to understand the difference between, you know, betting on these derivatives and actually moving into, you know, the area of outright fraud.
Mr. CANE: Right. Well, I guess his genius was creating fictional countertrades that made it appear as if he was not actually making the bet but hedging it in some way. You know, you're making counter bet. But those trades were fake. I think his genius is in figuring out a way to make it appear that he was doing what he's supposed be doing, which was, essentially, mitigating risk, and instead taking on even more risk by a big trading position. So he was someone who knew what things that someone supervising the trading would look for. So he could create these fictional elements that would - to persuade them that everything was being done properly.
NORRIS: And on a trading floor where a certain degree of risk was the norm?
Mr. CANE: Exactly, yes.
NORRIS: And $7 billion - how do they make that up?
Mr. CANE: The bank is going to have to raise further 8$ billion in capital by selling securities to shareholders. The bank still managed to report a small profit for last year. It had been doing fairly well, but fraud is a real blow to it. Mainly a blow, though, to its reputation more than its finances. It's a bank that it known for its prowess in trading of equity derivatives. So the fact that one person was able to circumvent all the controls, given all the oversight they have - they have thousands of people who are doing nothing but, you know, checking their books, making sure everything is done properly, how he was able to circumvent that, the systems in place, is a real blow to their reputation.
NORRIS: This is said to be the biggest bank fraud in history. Put this into context for us. How big was this fraud as compared to others?
Mr. CANE: Sure. Sure. I think it's by far the biggest bank fraud ever. I mean, the only comparable bank fraud we've had in recent years has been 1995. Nicholas Leeson, a British trader in Singapore lost 1.4 billion for the British bank Bearings that wiped out the cash reserves at Bearings, forcing the bank to collapse. And this is more in the six themes that. We've had some bigger trading losses, but they have not involved banks or involved rogue traders. So this is really the record by far.
NORRIS: Jeffrey Kane, thanks so much for talking to us.
Mr. CANE: Thank you.
NORRIS: Jeffery Kane is a deputy news editor for Portfolio.com. He joined us from New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Last summer, under pressure from the Bush administration, Congress passed a law expanding the government's wiretapping powers. It's due to expire a week from tomorrow. Now, the pressure is on lawmakers to enact a longer-lasting revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. President Bush wants legal immunity for phone companies that collaborated in warrantless wiretapping. He says he won't sign the bill without it. In a key test vote today, the Senate showed it's inclined to give him what he wants.
NPR's David Welna has this report.
DAVID WELNA: When Congress passed the so-called Protect America Act last August, it put a six-month sunset on that legislation. Leaders vowed, in the meantime, they'd come up with a new electronic surveillance law with better protections for civil liberties. Well, those six months are almost up. And while the House has passed a revised FISA law, the Senate has not. Majority Leader Harry Reid says he could use another 30 days.
Senator HARRY REID (Democrat, Nevada; Majority Leader): As I've indicated, I sent a letter to the president asking for brief extension. I've heard from many sources that's not going to be granted. Senate will work as quickly as we can. But I think it's going to be very difficult for both houses to negotiate and pass a final bill prior to the February 1st expiration date. But that's what we have to do and so we have no alternative.
WELNA: The Senate has had to deal with two competing bills. The intelligence committee's version provides immunity for phone companies. The judiciary committee's bill does not. Because the intelligence committee acted first, its bill is on the Senate floor. And it's what that panel's top Republican, Kit Bond, says the country needs to be safe.
Senator KIT BOND (Republican, Missouri): If we attempt to change key painstakingly constructed provisions, or to add back bad provisions, however, we could hinder the intelligence community's ability to do its job and thus, jeopardize the DNI's support for this bill and the chances of it becoming law.
WELNA: Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold sharply disagrees. He says the judiciary panel's bill does a far better job of protecting civil liberties than the one approved by the intelligence panel.
Senator RUSS FEINGOLD (Democrat, Wisconsin): The differences between these two bills have nothing to do with our ability to combat terrorism. They have everything to do with insuring that the executive branch follows the rule of law and doesn't unnecessarily listen in on the private communications of Americans who are doing absolutely nothing wrong.
WELNA: Some 40 lawsuits accuse U.S. phone companies of having violated privacy by facilitating warrantless wiretaps. Senate Democrats are divided over whether they deserve immunity. Intelligence committee chairman Jay Rockefeller argues those companies should not be blamed for helping the government.
Senator JAY ROCKEFELLER (Democrat, West Virginia): They did because they were told so by the highest authorities in the land. And they did so because I believe it is possible to say that there are a lot of big corporations that are very patriotic.
WELNA: Still, one phone company, Quest, refused to go along with the warrantless wiretapping. Florida Democrat Bill Nelson, as a member of the intelligence panel, has seen the classified documents requesting the phone company's cooperation.
Senator BILL NELSON (Democrat, Florida): I'm not sure that the telecommunications companies were tending to their knitting as to whether or not they were getting legal orders from the United States government.
WELNA: Still, the intelligence committee's immunity provision will likely prevail since, today, the Senate voted 60 to 34 to shelve the judiciary panel's immunity-free FISA update. The House bill has no immunity provision. And it's not clear the two chambers can sort out their differences before the current legislation sunsets next Friday.
David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
Scientists say they have reached an important milestone in their quest to actually build a life-form. They have synthesized a bacteria's entire chromosome from its chemical building blocks.
Soon, they hope to activate those genes and create living, multiplying bacteria. Eventually, synthetic organisms may help produce fuels, chemicals and medicines.
NPR's Richard Harris has this story.
RICHARD HARRIS: There's a whole new field starting up called synthetic biology. The idea is to take biotechnology to the next level, by not just moving genes around but building biological machinery from scratch. Scientists have already assembled virus genomes from chemical building blocks. Now they're onto bacteria.
A research team at the J. Craig Venter Institute outside Washington, D.C., has set its sights on a bacterium called Mycoplasma genitalium. This simple organism has just a few hundred genes to begin with, and a complete genetic code that's about half a million letters long — more than a thousand times smaller than a human's. Venter says the idea was to synthesize this genome by assembling those half-million letters in gene-making machines.
Mr. J. CRAIG VENTER (Founder, J. Craig Venter Institute): And this entire process started with four bottles of chemicals containing what's represented by A, C, G and T.
HARRIS: That is the chemical building blocks of DNA. Gene machines turned out a hundred and one relatively small snippets of DNA, each representing about 1 percent of the genetic code of this bacterium. Venter's colleagues then put those snippets in bacteria, which multiplied like crazy and served as copy machines for those pieces.
Then gradually, using bacteria and finally yeast cells, they stitched together those 101 pieces in the correct order. They then read back the genetic code to make sure they had made a true copy of the natural chromosome. They reported that success in the online edition of Science Magazine.
But what they have not been able to do as yet is to put this chromosome into a cell and get the cell to use that genetic information to start functioning and reproducing. Venter says this is the next big hurdle in the research.
Mr. VENTER: There are multiple barriers for this. It's not just a slam dunk or we would be announcing it today.
HARRIS: But his lab has some ideas about how to do this. Venter says he'd be surprised and disappointed if he can't succeed sometime this year. And he has quite an impressive track record in science. Most famously, he was instrumental in the effort to sequence the human genome. Eventually, Venter wants to use this method to create radical new versions of this bacterium so he can ultimately understand how its genes all work. And if the Venter lab can do that, they can then start to build radically different organisms from the ground up.
Mr. VENTER: We could enter into a new design phase of biology by actually constructing chromosomes of a more specific nature for a more specific purpose.
HARRIS: Venter's lab, like others, is focusing now on designer bacteria that can help combat global warming by creating more environmentally friendly fuels from plant materials.
George Church, at Harvard Medical School, is also interested in engineering bacteria that can do this. But he is not convinced that you need to build them from scratch.
Professor GEORGE CHURCH (Genetics, Harvard Medical School): And in fact, most of the proposals on the table really involve somewhere less than a hundred changes.
HARRIS: And making individual changes to the bacteria's genes isn't too tough, he says. Church sees a great deal of potential in synthetic biology. But he says that technologies also have risks, so we need to be sure this one doesn't end up being used for nefarious purposes such as engineering more deadly germs.
Richard Harris, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
We're joined by Democratic senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. He is chair of the Budget Committee. Senator Conrad, welcome to the program.
Senator KENT CONRAD (Democrat, North Dakota; Chairman, Senate Budget Committee): Good to be with you.
BLOCK: This stimulus package seems to be moving on a very fast track from the House to the Senate. Would you vote for this package in the form that it's in now?
Sen. CONRAD: Well, I would prefer to add some things to it. For example, there are a number of things that we know are more stimulative than what's in this package, at least in terms of timeliness. One of the concerns about this package, while there are many good things about it, that is tax rebates - we know are stimulative. Tax rebates especially targeted to middle and lower-income people are the most stimulative. And this package certainly passes that test.
BLOCK: What would you add to this package to make it more palatable to you?
Sen. CONRAD: What we know is the things that - according to the Congressional Budget Office and also economists have analyzed previous packages, the things that get out fastest, it turns out, are things like food stamps, things like unemployment insurance, those things actually take effect in about two months. And if we're worried about weakness now, we've got to find ways of getting additional lift into this economy sooner rather than later.
Now, there is one other thing that could occur with these checks and that is - on the rebate checks, if companies like H&R Block step up here and provide loans in expectation of the checks like they do for tax refunds, in other words they have expectation loans, that could get money into the system more quickly.
BLOCK: But senator, if you start adding on some of the things you're talking about - I mean, this was worked out between the House and the White House, they got a deal, both sides gave something up. If you throw this back into the punt, don't you think that's going to just scuttle the whole deal and will be nowhere?
Sen. CONRAD: No. Look, I've been here 21 years. The way Congress and the White House works is negotiation. What you have is a deal on the House side with the White House. The Senate has not been part of this, and the Senate will have a chance to be part of it. And look, these are fairly modest changes, but there are things that have proved to work the best. I just don't think you want to leave on the cutting room floor those things that have proved to work the best in previous stimulus packages.
BLOCK: But you're counterparts in the House - the Democrats at least - wanted some of those things too and they agreed to leave them on the cutting room floor because they had to to get this deal.
Sen. CONRAD: Well, look, there was an agreement between the House and the White House. The Senate has a role to play here and hopefully we can take this package and improve upon it. Again, we know there are things that worked better in terms of stimulus, and we shouldn't lose the opportunity to do those things.
BLOCK: Senator, how much pressure do you feel to get this done fast?
Sen. CONRAD: A lot of pressure. Look, it is important to get this right. And I applaud what they've done so far. I think that fact that these are going to be rebates that go to people who not just have income tax liability, but payroll tax liability, is exactly the right thing to do. Having a mix of business incentives as well as rebates is certainly positive. But we also should learn from the past, and we know from the previous stimulus package that there are other things that could be done here that have a quicker effect.
BLOCK: Okay. Well, Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota, thanks for talking with us.
Sen. CONRAD: You bet.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Now to Iraq, where some of the hardest fighting is taking place in rural areas north of Baghdad. In Diyala province, insurgents are trying to regroup after being forced from the capital. Last week, an Army unit lost three of its men there in a firefight with insurgents.
NPR's Corey Flintoff was embedded with the unit, and reports on how the soldiers dealt with their loss.
COREY FLINTOFF: The first word that there had been casualties came over the radio in a convoy of armored trucks on its way to the battlefield.
U: Was there KIAs? Oh, so we can have up to five people taken out of the fight.
FLINTOFF: Just a short time before, soldiers from the Army's 1-32 Cavalry clambered out of helicopters into the predawn darkness of a place in north-central Iraq called Bichigan. One team edged out over the cold, broken ground of a farmer's field and run into a barrage of fire from fighters hidden nearby.
Capt. Mike Loveall is the commander of Charlie Troop, a man with a blunt football player's face. He said the whole firefight took only 15 minutes.
NORRIS: You really don't have time to think. You're not really thinking as much as you're reacting and going off of your training, your instincts and your adrenaline.
FLINTOFF: That training says you keep fighting until the enemy is dead. Lt. Tim Cunningham is a platoon leader.
NORRIS: We assaulted through their position. We confirm by kicking or moving their bodies to make sure that they're dead. And then we secure the site around our casualties.
FLINTOFF: Cunningham says there were six bodies sprawled in the trench where the insurgents ran after the first ambush. By now, it was clear that two of Charlie Troop's soldiers were also dead. Three were wounded. One of those men would die soon after. Charlie Troop had no time to mourn or even consider its losses. There were wounded to treat, houses to search, and acres of orange groves where insurgents were known to camp and stash weapons.
Staff Sgt. Matthew LeVart.
NORRIS: All of my soldiers reacted very well. They were able to compartmentalize. Obviously, it's not something that you can completely forget and just overlook, but we were able to continue to fight.
FLINTOFF: On the afternoon after the fight, Capt. Tammy Phipps got a call from Camp Paliwoda where Charlie Troop is based.
NORRIS: You hope they're just calling because they want a stress-management class. But you always know, there's that pit in your stomach that said, I hope that there wasn't any KIAs.
FLINTOFF: Phipps heads a combat stress team. She's an occupational therapist by training, a mom from South Dakota. Her job here is to try to help soldiers deal with death.
NORRIS: The main focus is teaching people to watch their buddies, understanding that this is going to hurt. It sucks, and it's a lifelong process to really get through this.
FLINTOFF: Tammy Phipps and her team were waiting a day later when the helicopters brought the men back. She says that once the pressure is off, soldiers begin to face their feelings.
NORRIS: When you mix in a pot of guilt, anger, sadness, and then also joy - I'm alive, and that's very, very confusing for all those emotions.
FLINTOFF: Capt. Mike Loveall is the man who has to make phone calls and write letters to the family members of the men whose lives were lost. He said it's the hardest part of his job.
NORRIS: The family wants to know exactly how it happened, what happened. Unfortunately, this is not the first time I've had to do this, so sometimes they ask questions, you know, about how was he? Very, very personal stuff.
FLINTOFF: Several days ago, the Department of Defense released the names of the men killed at Bichigan: Private First Class Danny Kimme, 27 years old, from Fisher, Illinois, Private First Class David Sharrett, also 27, from Oakton, Virginia, and Specialist John Sigsbee of Waterville, New York. He was 21. Sgt. Matt LeVart says there will be a memorial.
NORRIS: You try and honor them. And you use that day to pay your respects and to remember them. And you use that day to find out how you're going to carry on.
FLINTOFF: Lt. Col. Bob McCarthy commands the squadron of which Charlie Troop is a part. He'll speak at the memorial and try to make sense of the loss. His eyes well up when he talks about it.
NORRIS: You've got to look forward, okay. Every single loss is a tragedy, period. But we've got to make it matter.
FLINTOFF: The stress management people say that leaders are often the first to give comfort to their men and the last to seek it for themselves. The question is who Col. McCarthy talks to.
NORRIS: That's - I talk to my boss. I spent 20 minutes on the phone with him this morning.
FLINTOFF: The remains of the dead soldiers have been sent home. At least one of the wounded men will return to duty with Charlie Troop in a relatively short time. They'll keep going back to Bichigan and the farm country where their comrades fell for the much of the coming year.
Corey Flintoff, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
The Pentagon and its NATO allies aren't seeing eye-to-eye. The dispute is over the number of Western troops in Afghanistan, and it's provoked some sharp exchanges in recent weeks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates backed off criticism of NATO for not sending more troops, but tensions remain. And NPR has learned that the U.S. is itself falling short on the number of trainers it's pledged for Afghanistan.
NPR's Tom Bowman reports.
TOM BOWMAN: Afghanistan needs more of its own soldiers and police. Training them has become a major job for the U.S. and its NATO allies.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says it's a struggle to find trainers.
NORRIS: I think that the principal shortfall, continuing shortfall, will be in having as many trainers as we would like for the security forces, but we have responded.
BOWMAN: Responded somewhat. Here are the numbers. The United States calculated that to help build the Afghan army, it would need more than 1600 American military personnel. So far, it has come up with less than half that number. For the Afghan police, the United States has sent 860 trainers. That's one-third of what it promised to field. Now, the Pentagon last week announced it will deploy 1,000 Marine trainers to Afghanistan this spring to help fill that gap. But even with those added Marines, the Afghan training effort will still be hundreds of trainers short.
BLOCK: We are short, particularly in the police training. Based on the situation, we have moved people from army requirements to police requirements.
BOWMAN: Brig. Gen. Andrew Twomey oversees the training effort for Afghan soldiers and police. He says the lack of police trainers means a yearlong delay. Now, it won't be until sometime in 2009 before the full 82,000-member Afghan police force is trained. The general says it's critical to build a strong Afghan security force.
BLOCK: I think they are essential to the long-term U.S. interests and the long-term stability in the region.
BOWMAN: The Americans are having trouble meeting their commitments in Afghanistan. The Pentagon's top military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, told lawmakers recently it's because of Iraq.
BLOCK: It is simply a matter of resources, of capacity. In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.
BOWMAN: That wasn't good enough for Congressman Joe Sestak. He's a Pennsylvania Democrat and a recently retired admiral. The congressman reached into another wartime era to sound the alarm.
NORRIS: I would think that the better approach might be what Winston Churchill said, sometimes it's not enough to do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required.
BOWMAN: Sestak worries about a growing Taliban threat, a view shared by retired officers and defense analysts. Besides trainers, they say, more U.S., NATO and Afghan combat troops are needed. Taliban attacks have increased over the past year.
But the top NATO commander in Afghanistan dismisses those concerns.
G: I don't see the insurgents as a resurgent force as some people give them credit to be.
BOWMAN: General Dan McNeill, speaking from his headquarters in Kabul, says the reason for increased attacks is this - American and NATO troops are taking the fight to the Taliban.
G: We're pushing our noses into some areas where the force has not been in Afghanistan before. And McNeill says he will soon be getting more help. Besides those 1,000 Marine trainers, another 2,000 U.S. Marines will deploy for combat duty this spring, pushing their noses into the Taliban stronghold of southern Afghanistan.
Tom Bowman, NPR News, the Pentagon.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
Scientists in Southern California are still estimating the toll from last fall's massive wildfires. Those fires destroyed over $1 billion worth of property. Now it's clear the fires and the mudslides that followed also wiped out populations of native fish and amphibians.
NPR's Carrie Kahn reports on efforts to save some of the creatures that are still left.
CARRIE KAHN: In California, fires and mudslides go together like Paris Hilton and paparazzi. Whenever you have one, the other isn't far behind.
Just ask Adam Backlin, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. He's an expert on California's ecology, not Paris Hilton.
NORRIS: In Southern California, the fires generally occur in the fall. When the fires go out, it's usually a matter of weeks to when we get our winter rain.
KAHN: Backlin says the fires burn all the vegetation off the steep hillsides, and then, just a few weeks later, boom, the rains arrive.
NORRIS: And those rains create mudslides and debris flows. Those move very quickly through the canyons. And anything that's an aquatic species really has no chance in those situations.
KAHN: Such was the fate this winter of the Santa Ana speckled dace. That's a fish about the size of a minnow.
NORRIS: We're going to try to go here through this little rift of the canyon and see if we can go under the fence easily, otherwise, we'll have to go over it.
KAHN: Just off a two-lane highway in eastern Orange County, Robert Fisher, another biologist with the USGS, climbs down the embankment, crawls under a barbed wire fence, and hikes out to a wide, dry creek bed. Everything here is burned.
NORRIS: So the spring is right up here or was right up here.
KAHN: Fisher heads towards several large boulders that form the walls of a deep pool once fed by a natural spring. It was a quiet oasis for the tiny fish just feet from the busy road and downstream from the densely populated Orange County canyons. Now it's entirely filled in with junk.
NORRIS: It's all kinds of material that's washed down from the upper canyons. It's probably got chunks of house that burned up up there.
KAHN: Fisher says nothing can survive under that solid mass. He was planning to come to this pool right after the October firestorms to remove the fish, but the rains and all the debris came much quicker than expected. Nearby habitats for the Harding Canyon trout and the Arroyo turtle were also wiped out.
Mr. FISHER It's a sad story because we're - we weren't able to kind of do anything in time. And partly, you know, these are unplanned events. And so now that they are happening more regularly - every four years, it seems like. We need to be able to have a plan in place to save them.
KAHN: Fire and flooding have long been part of Southern California's ecology. But as people and homes move deeper into the national forests, and fires burn more fiercely and frequently, biologists say species can't recover like they used to. Take the case of the California native mountain yellow-legged frog.
NORRIS: So this is the Applied Animal Ecology lab here at CRES, where we're working with the mountain yellow-legged frogs. They're a critically endangered species. There's only eight populations left in Southern California.
KAHN: Frank Santana is a research assistant at the San Diego Zoo's conservation facility. About two years ago, USGS biologists brought him 80 mountain yellow-legged tadpoles rescued from a burned out region of the San Bernardino Mountains.
NORRIS: They're getting so big that we're really running out of room for them. We had to add - we started off with only four tanks. We had to add four more. And we're just really - you know, they're growing so well. And you know, we didn't really anticipate that they would do so well.
KAHN: Santana says he's hoping other zoos will take half of the frogs for a captive-breeding colony, and biologists will return the other half to their habitat in the local mountains. That's if another fire doesn't come through first.
Biologist Adam Backlin says authorities need to do more to save California's threatened animals. He said officials know where the endangered species live. And they know where the mudslides will flow after a fire. People are routinely evacuated from those areas.
NORRIS: Forward planning up to this point has been for people, and safety, and loss of property, and not for any natural resources. We haven't had any of this forward planning. And I think it's time that they have to start or we're going to start losing species pretty quickly.
KAHN: He says he hopes such planning can be up and running before California's next fire season. Because it's a given when there's fire, mudslides will follow as sure as paparazzi after Paris Hilton.
Carrie Kahn, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
The Federal Reserve's decision this week to cut a key interest rate was designed to help jolt the sagging economy. It remains to be seen just how well - or how quickly - it will work.
But there was an immediate burst of activity in the mortgage market. Across the country, mortgage brokers reported a deluge of calls from people wondering whether it was a good time to refinance.
Russell Rothstein is one of the people who was fielding those calls. He's the director of mortgage lending for Beacon Mortgage in Rockville, Maryland. He joins me now in the studio.
Welcome to the program.
BLOCK: Thank you for having me.
NORRIS: Could you help us understand the link between a drop at the Fed and how that actually affects the mortgage market?
BLOCK: Well, what the Fed did was they cut short-term interest rates; short-term interest rates affect prime lending, monthly adjustables, and it trickles up to long-term interest rates. But it is not a direct effect always. The mortgage industry and the bond market has taken into consideration that the Fed was going to be cutting rates at half percent hopefully next week. They were surprised by a three-quarter percent drop in the rates. The bond market reacted very positively to it originally. And the rates actually did go down.
And we saw rates on Tuesday drop from around 5-7/8 percent to around 5-3/8 percent, but then once the market settled down, we actually saw mortgage rates settle back up into the 5-3/4 to 5-7/8 range in the past day.
NORRIS: So there was a small window there of a few days where it actually sounded like it was a good time to refinance.
BLOCK: Well, that's correct. It's still a good time to refinance. What people have to look at is there is no one specific good time; they've got to look at their individual situation. Maybe they thought they were going to be in their home for three to five years and now with the values of houses having come down some, they're going to end up staying in their house longer and they want the security of a fixed-rate mortgage.
NORRIS: Is there any clear category of homeowner, a person that should not refinance?
BLOCK: I think you have to look at how long you're going to be in the home for. If you're looking to sell your home, you know, in the next year or two, you have to look and see if economically it make sense because there are cost involved in it.
So if your payments are going to go down, but the amount that you're going to save is not going to recoup the cost of the refinance, that's where you have to do a break-even analysis. On the other side, if you have an adjustable that's coming up for renewal right now, even if you're only going to be there for two years - it depends how high your rate could go to - then you look at the difference in payments.
NORRIS: For people who are caught up in the subprime problems - they're carrying a mortgage that has a value that's actually larger than the value of their home, is it possible for them to refinance now? Was this good news for that homeowner?
BLOCK: It's going to be very tough for them because if you're upside-down on your mortgage, meaning, your mortgage is worth more than the value of your home, most lenders are not going to refinance you. Your best option at that point is to go back to the existing lender that is servicing the loan for you and explain to them your situation. They are trying to do workouts. They don't want to foreclose; they don't want your property. What they want to do is they want their payments, and maybe you can restructure your loan. With rates having dropped down, it is possible that they may do a loan modification for you and change the terms of it, so that you could afford to stay in your home. You know, everyone thinks that the big, bad lenders want to come and take their homes. The lenders don't want the homes. The lenders want you to be able to make your payments.
NORRIS: So what if you're not in what you call one of these upside-down situations where the home value is more than the worth of the mortgage but you just found that once the arm hit, once the mortgage payments increase significantly that you just weren't able to make those payments? What about that homeowner?
BLOCK: There are people out there who took adjustable-rate mortgages where the rate is adjusting to higher than what a fixed-rate mortgage is today. So that's an opportunity to either go back to their current lender or to check what's out there in the marketplace. It's very competitive today between lenders. And it's important to check who has the best rates, but not only the best rate, because the best rate doesn't always mean the best mortgage. You have to make sure the terms and the closing costs - the entire package - makes sense for you.
NORRIS: Was there some expectation or perhaps even disappointment that the rate cut was not steeper, that there wasn't a bigger rate cut?
BLOCK: From what I have been told, this is the biggest rate cut that they've seen at one time since the 1980s. So it was a surprise, and we're expecting a half percent next week. And I think the industry is still expecting a half-percent cut, so I think the mortgage rates will settle down and there's a good chance that they can come back down further. And I think when people look at these rates, at some point they've just got to make a decision. You're never going to find the bottom of the market. At some point, you just have to decide this is where it makes sense for me, and you have to at that point, you know, move forward.
NORRIS: Russell, thank you so much for coming in to talk to us. I'm going now to let you get back on the road and get back to work.
BLOCK: Thank you.
NORRIS: Thank you very much.
Russell Rothstein is the director of mortgage lending for Beacon Mortgage that's at Rockville, Maryland.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I?m Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I?m Melissa Block.
Tomorrow, it?s the Democrats? turn in South Carolina. Last Saturday, the Republicans held their primary and the focus was on veterans and evangelical voters. For the Democrats, South Carolina is the first state where black voters will be key. It?s expected that at least half of tomorrow?s electorate will be African-Americans.
NORRIS: After more than a week of sometimes nasty attacks between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, both campaigns made an effort today to tone down their rhetoric. But the bad blood could benefit the third candidate in the race, John Edwards. He was born in South Carolina and won the primary in 2004. We have reporters tracking all three candidates.
First, we turn to Audie Cornish. She?s with the Obama campaign in Charleston, South Carolina.
AUDIE CORNISH: Senator Obama, who is leading in the polls here, spent this last day before the primary not sparring with the Clintons for a change, but reaching out to female voters.
NORRIS: All these issues - changing our tax code, expanding Family and Medical Leave Act, making sure that people have health care they can count on. All these issues are issues that we can fix, but we?re going to have to fix how Washington operates in order to do it.
CORNISH: Mostly known for speaking before large crowds, Obama has been holding a series of intimate, some might call them staged events, like this one at a Charleston deli. The restaurant was empty, except for several reporters as well as three voters who engaged the candidate in a conversation about health care.
About a dozen people, who heard Obama was in town, were standing outside the deli hoping to catch a glimpse.
NORRIS: I tried to get in. I tried to tell the Secret Service, I was an educator. Please let me in.
CORNISH: Didn?t happen. But the senator did come over to shake Judy Trotter?s hand.
NORRIS: I like that his energy, his youthfulness, the young family, reaching to young people. I think he?s able to reach out and bring more people in.
CORNISH: Trotter says she?s definitely supporting Obama. But Sandra Turner(ph), a manager at a nearby toy store who is also standing outside, remains undecided. She says she?s torn between Obama and Hillary Clinton, but she adds she?s been turned off by the squabbling between the two campaigns.
NORRIS: Wasn?t that unfortunate- That got ? that just wasted breath, you know- It really wasted breath and it sent me to an Internet to see where John Edwards is voted.
CORNISH: Turner says Barack Obama still has a chance at her vote, but she?s not the only one wavering.
Polls show that while he?s still leads in the state, Obama?s support among white voters has declined.
Audie Cornish, NPR News, Charleston, South Carolina.
ADAM HOCHBERG: This is Adam Hochberg in Greenville.
As John Edwards completed a four-city tour on the eve of the South Carolina primary, the former senator was counting on voters in his native state to help revitalize his campaign.
NORRIS: We?re going to surprise the country tomorrow. We?re going to say, we want somebody as president of the United States who comes from South Carolina, who understands our lives.
HOCHBERG: Edwards spoke this morning at a Greenville restaurant called the Country Ham House, a Southern diner that symbolized the down-home persona he?s adopted in his campaign here.
NORRIS: You know, I have to tell you I?m proud of South Carolina. I?m proud of having been born here because you need a president of the United States who will never forget where they came from. That?s me.
HOCHBERG: Even in his native state, polls show Edwards running third behind Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But some of those surveys suggest his support is growing as the primary nears. And today, the former senator cast himself as an earnest outsider in the race.
NORRIS: Senator Clinton and Senator Obama this week have brought their New York and Chicago politics to South Carolina. While they?re intent on tearing each other down, I?m intent on building up the people of South Carolina, and I think that?s what people in South Carolina deserve from a presidential candidate.
HOCHBERG: It was a message that went over well with many voters at the Ham House.
Gary Mallard(ph) came away from the event, feeling that Edwards is the most electable Democrat.
NORRIS: Obama gives you the impression of being a tad detached. And a lot of people just hate Hillary. And John Edwards is warm and he connects with people as individuals.
HOCHBERG: Edwards has poured millions of dollars into his South Carolina campaign and he?s advertising heavily on TV here. And his staff says regardless of what happens tomorrow, he?ll continue on to Super Tuesday and beyond.
Adam Hochberg, NPR News, Greenville, South Carolina.
DAVID GREENE: I?m David Greene in Columbia, South Carolina.
Hillary Clinton?s been speaking to mostly white audiences in the state. But today, she came to historically black Benedict College, where vice president and dean Stacey Jones got things started.
NORRIS: Good morning.
CORNISH: Good morning.
NORRIS: Oh, Benedict College, we could do better than that. Good morning.
CORNISH: Good morning.
GREENE: Jones told the audience of mostly students that she thinks Hillary Clinton is the best qualified candidate in the race. The dean said she knows many African-Americans are feeling uphold(ph) to Obama.
NORRIS: For some of us, it may take a very, very bold step to walk into that voting booth focused on our community?s future, rather than acting on pure emotion. Let?s do the right thing and elect Senator Hillary Clinton the next president of the United States.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
GREENE: Clinton, for her part, said the voting tomorrow is not necessarily about the people who are running.
NORRIS: I don?t think this election?s about me or, frankly, my opponents on either side. I think this election is about you.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
NORRIS: I think it?s about your lives, your futures, and your families.
GREENE: Outside, freshman Marquette Banks(ph) said he was spending the afternoon in the library studying two Democratic candidates.
NORRIS: I?m going to make my decision after history of their background. They reform a plan what they feel to do to change America.
GREENE: Banks said he?s been feeling torn for weeks.
NORRIS: It?s like Hillary and it?s like Barack. It?s like ? I just think I have to have - my left side say Hillary; my right side say Barack.
GREENE: Whichever side he goes with, Banks said he feels like he?ll be paving the way for a historic inauguration come January.
David Greene, NPR News, Columbia, South Carolina.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
For more on how the race is shaping up in South Carolina, we called Bruce Ransom. He's a professor of political science at Clemson University. Clemson released a poll yesterday and Ransom says it shows a tightening race with a large swing vote.
P: Barack Obama is ahead with 27 percent, followed by Senator Clinton at 20 percent, and John Edwards at 17 percent, with 36 percent undecided. And clearly, this is some tightening of the race because many other polls had Obama ahead but around 10 percent or so, and we see a slight narrowing, if you will, here.
NORRIS: If there is some movement there, where is the shift happening? John Edwards seems to be making a move there?
P: Well, you know, what we have here is that John Edwards, who's at 12 percent in our poll in November, is in January, now, at 17 percent, which is an increase of 5 percent. And - but Barack Obama, who's at 17 percent in November, is now at 27 percent, which is a 10-point increase. And Hillary Clinton, who was at 19 percent in November, is now at 20, which is a 1 percent increase.
We also in our poll have a still a sizeable number of undecideds - or those who refused to give an answer, which was 49 percent in November, and now 36 percent. In January, a decline of 13 points.
NORRIS: This is the first of the early contests where the candidates are trying to court a large African-American electorate.
P: Right.
NORRIS: And there's an interesting racial dynamic here. Barack Obama does not appear to have put together the multi-ethnic coalition that we saw in these other early states, in Iowa or New Hampshire. In terms of white support, he ranks third behind Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.
P: In South Carolina, yes, he does. This is not new. In terms of our previous polling, he was also in that third slot. And we continue to see that the white vote, if you will, is being split between Senator Clinton and John Edwards. And perhaps even in the Democratic primary, looking at likely Democratic voters in South Carolina, race relations and environment in terms of racial matters is somewhat different in South Carolina given its history and legacy than it is in Iowa and New Hampshire. And perhaps, there are some residual effects that we see unfolding in the ratio polling numbers for South Carolina.
NORRIS: If Barack Obama does not pull a significant percentage of support from White voters there in South Carolina, what might that mean for him going forward as he tries to compete in other Southern states?
P: Well, you know, one of the things that could come out of South Carolina that would not serve his campaign well is that if the results show that he's unable to really pull together a biracial voting coalition, then what we've been, been hearing in some quarters already about whether or not, for example, he might win in South Carolina, but do so largely with black voters. And what undercut his campaign's ability to suggest that there is this biracial coalition, he may find himself at a disadvantage.
NORRIS: Unity is an important message in his campaign.
P: Yes, yes.
NORRIS: There has been a lot of rancor among the candidates, particularly between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the last 10 days. Charges back and forth, charges from one campaign that there's some push polling being done, calls to homes with negative things being said about one candidate over the other.
P: That is definitely unfolding and taking place.
NORRIS: How does all of this affect the voters and the dynamic of the campaign down there in South Carolina?
P: Well, I think it's somewhat difficult to get a handle on that because that is happening - the push polling, other messages that raise negative evaluations of each of the candidates. I think as the campaign, which already has entered its closing hours, that if the campaigns can put forth a positive foot in terms of their positive message, that I think it would serve them well. And I'm not certain that what we see in terms of the controversy and the dustup and the fierce exchange that we saw in the debate on Monday night, you know, might deter individuals who are inclined to vote for the candidates to change their minds. And I don't think we can point to any one factor as, you know, the determining one.
NORRIS: What's the mood down there in South Carolina? If you go to a diner or a car dealership or almost anywhere, what kind of conversations are you likely to hear?
P: Well, you, you're hearing individuals who are partisans on both sides, really still talking very favorably about the candidates that they support. Some, on the other hand, are expressing some displeasure with the back and forth, and what they saw on Monday evening or what they heard about or maybe they didn't see the debate, but saw some clips. And it has had some effect but I'm not certain just how deep that effect might be. It seems to me that we're going to get a good turnout. And there are some that will be turned off, but I'm not certain that it will make a serious dent in what's going to take place tomorrow.
NORRIS: Professor Ransom, thanks so much for talking to us.
P: Well, thank you for having me.
NORRIS: Bruce Ransom is a professor of political science at Clemson University in Clemson, South Carolina.
BLOCK: You'll find more about the issues at stake in Saturday's democratic primary in South Carolina at npr.org/elections.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block.
The Army is attracting fewer high school graduates now than at any time in the last 25 years. That's the finding of a new study by the National Priorities Project, a group that studies military trends. But the Army insists it's still drawing some of the most talented young people in the country.
NPR's Guy Raz reports.
GUY RAZ: The Army can offer an 18-year-old something the civilian world can't. A socialist-style benefits package that might put people in Denmark or Sweden to shame. Listen to this Army commercial.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARMY AD)
RAZ: The benefits for my wife and child are health care assistance from the Army. Education, also, and child care. Everything is pretty much covered.
RAZ: If you add it up, starting pay plus benefits, and this is for an 18-year-old, now approaches $30,000 a year. And that doesn't include the opportunity to earn up to $40,000 more in signing bonuses. Combine it, and the money starts to rival the average national salary of a lawyer. And yet...
NORRIS: The kind of kids going into the Army are the ones with the fewest options.
RAZ: This is Anita Dancs, research director for the National Priorities Project. A couple of months ago, she petitioned the Pentagon to release raw data on the kinds of people who signed up to join the Army in 2007. Now, last year, the Army announced that not only did it meet its recruiting goals, it actually exceeded those goals. But Dancs was curious about who those new recruits are.
NORRIS: What we found is that there is a correlation between high recruiting rates and low educational attainment.
RAZ: According to her study last year, only about 70 percent of new Army recruits had high school diplomas. Now the Pentagon disputes this number. It says the number is closer to 80 percent. But both numbers are far lower than the Pentagon's own benchmark. The Defense Department wants 90 percent of new recruits to have a diploma. Recruits with diplomas are less likely to drop out of the Army, and they tend not to get into trouble. And the Pentagon acknowledges this.
NORRIS: True, we are taking a number of recruits that perhaps we wouldn't take three, four, five years ago.
RAZ: This is Curtis Gilroy. He is the director of recruiting at the Defense Department, and a career civil servant. He says the recruiting environment is difficult today for two reasons: one, the Iraq War; and two, low unemployment. But overall, he's not too worried about the drop in high school diplomas.
NORRIS: That high school credential itself, in it of itself, is not what's important. It's the behavior of a potential recruit that's important.
RAZ: Except critics of the Army's drive to fill the ranks rapidly argue the Pentagon isn't thinking about the long term. Retired Lieutenant Colonel Charles Krohn was part of the team that helped revive Army recruiting standards in the 1970s. Remember the Be all you can be ads? Well, Krohn was one of the guys behind it. And today, he's alarmed about dropping standards and what it will mean in the future.
NORRIS: Accepting subprime soldiers now is somewhat equivalent of subprime mortgages. You get a short-term gain, but ultimately, the issues have to be addressed.
RAZ: And they may be soon. With a possible recession looming, unemployment will go up, and it could, paradoxically, help the Army. Here's Curtis Gilroy.
NORRIS: Now, if there's an economic slowdown and unemployment rises, we can actually measure to some degree the effect on military recruiting.
RAZ: In other words, recession is actually good for the military.
NORRIS: Well, one could argue that.
RAZ: Guy Raz, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Federal agents executed four unusual raids yesterday in Southern California. They were looking for stolen antiquities in museums. The raids are part of a multi-year effort to track down Asian and Native American artifacts in the collections of public museums.
From member station KPCC in Los Angeles, Adolfo Guzman Lopez reports.
ADOLFO GUZMAN LOPEZ: Nearly every store on this west Los Angeles block sells contemporary art, furniture or antiques. The Silk Roads gallery specializes in East Asian antiquities. A 300-year-old wooden Chinese Buddha stares through the window. Its price tag is close to $20,000. But yesterday, the gallery's doors were locked. In the alley behind the store, federal agents carted away items and placed them in a trailer labeled A-Sharp Piano Movers. Internal Revenue Service investigator, Peter Lu, read from a prepared statement that listed the federal agencies involved, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE.
NORRIS: IRS Criminal Investigation in conjunction with other federal law enforcement agency, including ICE, National Park Service, is present at the location, executing a federal search warrant.
GUZMAN LOPEZ: Affidavits filed in support of the warrants say the owners of the gallery, Cari and Jonathan Markell, received looted artifacts smuggled out of Thailand and China by an associate named Bob Olson. William Webber, a cultural property expert in the London office of the Art Loss Register, which tracks stolen art, says demand for Asian artifacts is growing.
NORRIS: Cultural properties from the Southeast Asia and East Asia is becoming far more collectible. And the objects that are particularly collectible were usually the objects that have come from burial sites and excavations that would have ideally have full providence. But that's not often the case.
GUZMAN LOPEZ: The investigation appears to have begun about five years ago when an undercover National Park Service agent was looking for Native American artifacts looted from sites in New Mexico. According to the affidavits, Bob Olson and the Markells sold artifacts from Thailand to the undercover agent and then arranged to have the agent donate the antiquities to the museums. The affidavits state that the artifacts were appraised for more than their sale price so that the agent could claim tax deductions to which the agent wasn't entitled.
The scheme involved the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena, The Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, San Diego's Mingei International Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The affidavit claims that Jonathan Markell said the L.A. museum had found a loophole to accept questionable antiquities. At a press conference yesterday, the museum's director, Michael Govan, responded to that allegation.
NORRIS: There is no loophole that we know about. If anyone could identify one, we would be the first to close it. We know nothing, nothing about that at all.
GUZMAN LOPEZ: But the museum knows quite a bit about the Markells. They're members of the museum, and they've donated about 60 works of art in the last decade. Govan says his institution has policies to track the origins of donated antiquities. But William Webber of the Art Loss Register says some works can be untraceable.
NORRIS: If objects have come freshly out of the ground and moved over to the collecting market, then it's impossible to, to track them down. In areas like Cambodia and Myanmar, objects will often be excavated and pulled across the border, in this case, to Thailand, where laws are a little more relaxed and exporting objects is slightly easier.
GUZMAN LOPEZ: San Diego's Mingei Museum and Santa Ana's Bowers Museum say they're cooperating with the investigation. The Pacific Asia Museum did not return calls seeking comment. The U.S. attorney's office has not filed charges or made arrest. It could take more than a week, according to one federal official, to comb through the seized items.
For NPR News, I'm Adolfo Guzman Lopez in Los Angeles.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
The global meltdown of financial markets thrust Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke into the spotlight this week. He responded with a large and surprising rate cut. Bernanke took over from the legendary Alan Greenspan two years ago, but he's still a bit of a mystery on Main Street and Wall Street.
NPR's John Ydstie reports on the Fed chairman and his approach to the job.
JOHN YDSTIE: Ben Bernanke came to Washington with the intention of dissolving the cult of personality created around recent Fed chairman, including Alan Greenspan. Vincent Reinhart worked closely with both men before retiring this fall from his job as secretary of the Fed's policymaking Open Market Committee. He says Bernanke, a former career economics professor at Princeton, wants to make the Fed's decisions about the economy a group effort, not a one-man affair.
BLOCK: His goal is to have the committee be more actively involved in the deliberation of U.S. monetary policy. He doesn't want to be the iconic figure that Alan Greenspan was. That really is an unselfish act in Washington. That doesn't happen very often.
YDSTIE: And up until this week, Bernanke had largely succeeded in blending into the crowd of Fed governors and regional bank presidents who make up the Fed's Open Market Committee. In fact, just this past Thursday, even a 20-year veteran of the Congress, Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat, was confused about exactly who he was.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONGRESSIONAL HEARING)
R: Seeing as how you were the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, what percentage level of investment, were you not...
BLOCK: No, no, no. No. You're confusing me with the Treasury Secretary.
R: I've got the wrong firm?
BLOCK: Yeah.
R: Paulson. Oh. Okay. Where were you, sir?
BLOCK: I was a CEO of the Princeton Economics Department.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
R: Oh. Princeton. Oh, all right. Sorry. Sorry, I got you confused with the other one. I'm sorry.
YDSTIE: As chairman of the Princeton Economics Department, Bernanke presided over departmental meetings. They were often free-wheeling discussions, say colleagues, with sharp exchanges of opinion among very smart people. That experience probably contributed to Bernanke's decision to make the development of monetary policy, a committee affair, says Vincent Reinhart.
BLOCK: It has some good parts to it and the bad parts to it. The good parts are basically - believe in the wisdom of crowds. More people deliberating on policy, maybe on average, will make a better a decision.
YDSTIE: The bad part is that during a fast-moving crisis, you can't always get a crowd headed in the same direction. And you can get different voices giving different signals. That's what happened this summer and fall when multiple Fed governors publicly voiced their views on what direction the Fed ought to take as the subprime crisis unfolded. It drove Wall Street traders a little crazy, including the host of CNBC's Mad Money, Jim Cramer.
(SOUNDBITE OF SHOW "MAD MONEY")
BLOCK: Bernanke is being an academic. It is no time to be an academic. It is time to get on the Bear Stearns call. Listen. Open the darn Fed window. He has no idea how bad it is out there. He has no idea.
YDSTIE: Wall Street veteran and longtime Fed watcher, David Jones, of DMJ Advisors, is a bit calmer in his analysis.
BLOCK: The Fed was giving mixed signals and seemed to be reluctant as to how much it was really going to cut rates. I think, in part, that's because Fed Chairman Bernanke has a lot of book smarts. He came from the academic side, but really didn't have the kind of street smarts that Chairman Greenspan, his predecessor had.
YDSTIE: Vincent Reinhart acknowledges Bernanke doesn't have the market experience Greenspan had, but argues other members of the Open Market Committee do. And he points out Bernanke is the leading academic expert on central banking in the world. He says, Wall Street will have to adjust.
BLOCK: For markets, they have to understand that there's no single father figure; that monetary policy is a process made by a group of individuals, and they're going to have to listen to more voices.
YDSTIE: But Reinhart says, Bernanke has to learn that during a crisis, the chairman must take control. Bernanke's former colleague at Princeton and former Fed governor himself, Alan Blinder agrees.
BLOCK: Taking the bull by the horns and exercising the levers of power, the country does need now on the economic front. And I think the Fed didn't seem to be quite doing it after a while but now it does seem to be doing it, and led by Bernanke, for sure.
YDSTIE: Wall Street also seems happier. That's helped by the fact that since the surprise Fed rate cut on Tuesday, U.S. market indexes and global indexes have recovered.
John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Yesterday, Democrats and the White House reached a deal on a fiscal stimulus package to stave off a U.S. recession. Commentator Marc Acito has been following the news closely. He's no economist but he already has a plan for his stimulus check if he qualifies for one.
NORRIS: My mother taught me that the proper response when receiving a gift is to simply say thank you whether you wanted it or not. But it's hard to be grateful for this latest gift from our government. For starters, whether you get $300 or $1,200, it's either going to put fuel in your Ford or food in your family but not much else.
So what is this stimulus package supposed to be stimulating? This promise of a chicken in every pot is a turkey of an idea. It's the same solution the Bush administration came up with after 9/11. Do your part for our country, not by making sacrifices, but by spending. It's as if the president and Congress were taking financial advice from the Home Shopping Network.
Look, I understand that the standard economic wisdom is that you spend to get out of recession. But one of the reasons we're headed toward recession is because mortgage lenders extended credit to people who couldn't afford it. Day is now night, and up is down. What's more, the last time the government moved this fast, we sanctioned torture. As far as I can make out, the majority of people receiving this so-called rebate don't really need it. And those who do aren't getting it because of the compromise on food stamps and extending unemployment benefits.
Meanwhile, the national debt is over $9 trillion. That's a 13-digit number, not a lucky one. Divided equally over the United States population, that's over 30,000 each. Now, I know this is going to make me sound nuttier than a hot fudge sundae, but I actually like paying taxes. In fact, I think it's patriotic, even though this country was founded by a bunch of people who didn't want to pay them. Every time I drive on a well-paved road or slow down because I see a police officer, I think, I paid for that. I'm not sure I'm going to qualify for a rebate, but if I do, I'd like to send my check back and ask the government to start paying off my 30 grand.
And if I have to do my patriotic duty by spending to stave off recession, I'm going to try to do it in a way that contributes to the greater good, not the greater greed. I keep waiting for someone in charge to say it, but they don't, so I guess I'll have to. It's time we live within our means, much in the way that going green has been made a virtue, sexy even. Conspicuous consumption needs to be seen as the hollow promise to nowhere that it really is. I know it seems like an antiquated idea, but my father told me to subscribe to the Shakespearean notion, neither a borrower nor a lender be. Both leave you worrying about money. This rebate isn't a gift at all. It's borrowed money, and it's time we started paying it back.
NORRIS: Marc Acito developed his macroeconomic theories by having a micro income. He's also author of the forthcoming book, "Attack of the Theater People." He lives in Portland, Oregon.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
As winter continues, homeowners put more effort into feeding their feathered neighbors. But essayist Julie Zickefoose realized her bird feeder might be attracting birds who are looking for more than just a few seeds.
NORRIS: When we feed birds, spread seeds on the ground and pour them into various feeders, we expect finches and chickadees to show up. Here in southeast Ohio, a good snow may bring 70 northern cardinals to our feeders, stunning testament to the ecological impact of our little seed restaurant.
Sometimes, though, a customer swaggers into our vegan bird restaurant, plops down and orders a steak, rare. The waitress, in her table-waiting uniform of flannel pajamas and rubber boots, is taken aback. She puts down a bucket of seed she was carrying. I'm sorry, sir. We don't serve meat here. That's all right, he grunts. I'll get it myself.
Perched on the crossbar of our feeding station, he stares me down, this pint-sized sharp-shinned hawk. He showed up here in mid-October, and he clearly likes what we're serving - goldfinch, junco, titmouse. His back is brown, broadly spangled with bright white spots, his breast streaked with teardrops of rust. His eyes are yellow. His wicked, needle-tipped feet are the color of grapefruit rind. He likes it here.
About a month ago, I heard a tremendous thunk on my studio window, and looked up to see the hawk go cartwheeling off to land clumsily in our pines. I didn't see him anymore that day, but he was back the next, leaving little crimson piles of cardinal feathers on the ground.
Now the hawk has settled into a routine. He bombs around the corner of the house like a brown arrow. Startled, the flocks fly up from the feeders and ground. And sometimes, a panicked bird or two hits the windows in our house. Then, he has his pick of them.
Over the years, I've had three other sharp-shinned hawks learn to use our windows to their advantage in just this way. One could almost classify it as tool using, if a sheet of glass could be called a tool. At the very least, it's a hawkish innovation.
All over the country, sharp-shinned and Cooper's hawks are becoming feeding-station regulars along with chickadees, jays and juncos. Like it or not, we're feeding them too. Seventy cardinals festooning a single backyard is an undeniably beautiful sight, enough to make a seed-toting waitress proud. But there's nothing natural about it. But for my bird restaurant, there might be one-tenth that number. The quick talon, the hard yellow glare of the sharp-shinned hawk, the rush of panicked wings, and the drift of plucked feathers beneath the birch - that's natural, a balance to the imbalance I've created.
NORRIS: Essayist Julie Zickefoose writes and paints on Indigo Hill, a private sanctuary near Whipple, Ohio. She's the author of "Letters from Eden," and tells us she'd rather paint a hawk than a cardinal any day.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
On Wall Street today, stocks lost ground, but things were relatively calm. A stark contrast to the last week of big drops and dramatic recoveries. We spent a lot of time lately talking with economists and analysts who follow the markets closely. But today, we thought we'd review the week from the business trenches. That's where NPR's Adam Davidson found a couple of guys from New Jersey. Entrepreneurs who say it was a pretty scary week.
ADAM DAVIDSON: J.B. Blanchard can tell you where he was on Monday the moment he first heard that stock prices all over Asia and Europe were falling ridiculously fast.
BLANCHARD: I was driving into the city when I heard that. I got back out as quickly as possible.
DAVIDSON: Did you feel a thing in your chest? What were you thinking?
BLANCHARD: Chest, sphincter, all kinds of - kinds of ways that that stuff hits you on a visceral level, absolutely.
DAVIDSON: Is Blanchard some high-powered investor with huge exposure to Asian stocks or Euro bonds? No. He's a small businessman. He owns StoneDeck Northeast. They put in high-end roof decks in New York penthouses. He did Jon Stewart's, Bette Midler's, Tyra Banks'. In fact, his clientele is so exclusive, no one would give him permission to show me any of the decks.
BLANCHARD: The one I wanted to show you does have a hot tub that cascades into a pool that has a skylight coming up from the kitchen. So it's really astounding stuff.
DAVIDSON: In Manhattan?
BLANCHARD: In Manhattan. In Manhattan. People are absolutely trying to escape the feel of Manhattan on their little rooftop.
DAVIDSON: So the question still stands. Why does a New York roof deck installer care so much about stock prices in Asia?
BLANCHARD: There's absolutely no reason on Earth why you would have to have a roof deck outside your house. And my, my initial concern when this market started getting scary was that we would become an excess expenditure.
DAVIDSON: Now, Blanchard's business probably wouldn't exist, except for the fact that money from all over the world has been pouring into New York in recent years - to Wall Street investment bankers and global media stars. A tiny bit of that money was filtering down to the New York roof deck business. Blanchard says he has a sense that he's part of the global economy, but he doesn't understand many of the details. That's not his job. So on Monday, he was thinking...
BLANCHARD: What the heck is going on? Holy smokes. What's going on and why?
DAVIDSON: What was going on is that those investors selling all their stocks in Shanghai and Tokyo and London, the guys Blanchard was worried about, well, they were worried about him - small businesses, entrepreneurs like Blanchard are a big part of what moves the U.S. economy.
Take Blanchard. He had this idea for a business and it worked. Now, he buys roofing materials from Latin America and Europe. He hired four employees. They use their salary to buy TV's and T-shirts from China. It's a global feedback loop. Blanchard depends on those investors for his business. Those investors depend on Blanchard and every other American entrepreneur. And this applies just as much to small business people far away from globally connected New York.
Mike Michalowicz runs Obsidian Launch.
MIKE MICHALOWICZ: I literally got a call Monday night, I think it was 2:00 a.m., saying, oh my God, we're going to collapse.
DAVIDSON: Michalowicz is an investor and adviser to Blanchard and others. Like the guy in Missouri who woke him up late Monday night. The owner of Hedgehog Leatherworks.
MICHALOWICZ: They make sheaths for survivalists. These are guys that live out off the woods for weeks and it's just them and their knife. And they learn how to kind of blend in and work with nature. He makes the sheaths that carry those type of knives.
DAVIDSON: There's enough of those guys to make a living doing that?
MICHALOWICZ: Absolutely, absolutely. It's surprising. It's not just those guys. Then you have people that want to be like them. So you have the hunters and the fishermen and so forth.
DAVIDSON: Those sheaths costs around 180 bucks. A small luxury for the core customer in the Midwest. The past few years, plenty of Midwesterners were feeling flush enough to treat themselves. Home values were going up in part because of cheap mortgages funded by investors in Asia and Europe. Now, global investors are nervous, pulling back. Credit is tightening. Housing prices are falling. A fancy knife sheath may start looking superfluous. Until a week ago, Michalowicz says, some of his clients were still hoping they could avoid this economic downturn they've heard pundits talk about. Now, they're not so sure.
MICHALOWICZ: I can say it's like a schoolyard fight. There's all that nasty talk going on six months ago. This was the first punch, dead center in the gut. And now, the crowd's coming around looking. Is there going to be a fight? And some people are chanting fight. Some people are calling for the teachers. But the bloody noses and the broken bones haven't happened yet.
DAVIDSON: This week, Michalowicz says, none of his clients lost money. The loss was psychological. They lost confidence. They felt, in their guts, just how chaotic and vulnerable the global economy can be. That feeling didn't go away even when the market started recovering. Everyone feels more cautious, including him. Michalowicz is telling all his clients to save money, to put off making big purchases for their businesses just in case bad times are coming. But of course, if small business people in the U.S. stop spending, maybe some layoff a few workers who also stop spending, then Asia and Europe will be hurt. It's that global feedback loop again.
All these people in Shanghai and Frankfurt and Missouri and a rooftop garden in Greenwich Village are looking at each other nervously. Everyone is afraid that someone else somewhere in the world will stop spending or investing and the economy will slow down. And everyone's fear feeds everyone else's.
Adam Davidson, NPR News, New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
We're going to review this past week of economic news with two columnists. Sebastian Mallaby, who writes for The Washington Post and is a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Welcome, Sebastian.
BLOCK: Good to be with you.
BLOCK: And Newsweek columnist Daniel Gross, who joins us from Davos, Switzerland, where he's attending the annual World Economic Forum. Daniel, thanks for being with us.
BLOCK: Glad to be here.
BLOCK: And Daniel, I'm going to start with you. In your upcoming article for Newsweek, you call this the great global market freakout of 2008. That's a scientific term, I assume?
BLOCK: Oh yeah, I think Keynes made that one up.
BLOCK: How do you measure this - the freakout that you're talking about, there where you are in Davos? What are the signs?
BLOCK: The sign was that, you know, everybody comes here from around the world. A lot of business people, I think, they're going to kind of check out from the, you know, daily part of their life and focus on things like malaria and these really big picture issues, maybe do a little skiing. But basically, all everybody was doing was looking at their BlackBerrys, calling portfolio managers, looking at stock charts. In other words, they couldn't really leave the office because things were moving so quickly in their absence.
BLOCK: They couldn't decouple, I guess. And that's what I wanted to turn to Sebastian Mallaby with. We keep hearing this word, decoupling, referring to whether economies in Asia or Europe can keep on growing even if the U.S. economy slows down or is in a recession. Do you think, Sebastian, that this week provides an answer to that question?
BLOCK: Hmm, I'm not sure it really does. I mean, this week, quite separately to the financial markets, did produce a growth statistic out of China, which was that China is still growing at a rate of more than 11 percent a year. So a pretty healthy growth there. But I think what we really learned from last week is more that the focus of the concern is not so much on the real economy, not so much on whether house prices are going to go down by five percent or 10 percent or what. It's really on the financial market reverberations from that real estate market bust and whether things blowing up in the financial markets will then feed back on to the real economy.
BLOCK: Daniel Gross, what do you think?
BLOCK: Well, I think, here in Davos, the vibe I've been getting, especially from Indian and Chinese leaders and business people, is that the decoupling has already happened. There is this sort of presumption that the U.S. may have stalled. They look with us at a little bit - with a little bit of pity and scorn at the way we've mismanaged our financial affairs. And there's a great deal of optimism among these emerging market economies that they will continue to do well even if demand from the U.S. drops off.
BLOCK: Sebastian Mallaby, we saw the global market chaos this week tempered, at least in part, by an aggressive interest rate cut by the Fed on Tuesday. Some are seeing this as a very smart move by Ben Bernanke to try to save the global economy, and others say this was a move of desperation. Well, what do you think?
BLOCK: Well, there was a famous amendment in Alan Greenspan's tenure when the markets were also swooning and there's a meeting of the Fed where Greenspan said, we have a choice here, if we cut very aggressively, we risk making it obvious that we are setting up a policy as a tool to stabilize financial markets. What if that fails? I would rather cut by less, get the blame myself, and people can say that policymakers don't understand. That's better than saying that the policy tool is broken.
And I think Bernanke's risk was he held this very, very dramatic meeting which was not a scheduled meeting, he offered the biggest interest rate cut in one fell swoop that we've had in a quarter of a century. And so if it hadn't worked, he was risking the perception that the Feds interest rate tool was too weak to fix the problem.
BLOCK: And Daniel Gross, your perspective on that interest rate cut from there in Davos, what are you hearing?
BLOCK: Well, again, I think that's what makes this the great market freakout. From here, it looks as if Bernanke saw the Dow futures were down 600 points, about 5 percent, and came out with the 75 basis-point cuts. Now, we're getting word that it may have been inspired - this whole downturn - by the unwinding of some trades in France due to a fraud perpetrated by a trader...
BLOCK: This is the $7 billion worth of fraudulent trading at Societe Generale, the French bank.
BLOCK: Yes. And had the perception that the activities of a midlevel rouge trader in Paris are in effect triggering really dramatic actions by the most powerful central bank in the world. And I don't think that reflects well - certainly not on Societe Generale, not well on France, and not particularly well on the Feds.
BLOCK: This week, there was an economic stimulus deal worked out here in Washington - tax rebates, tax breaks for businesses. Do you think this will work in easing concerns about the U.S. economy and where its headed? Sebastian Mallaby?
MR: Well, this stimulus package is not going to take effect immediately, even if Congress can pass it fast and the president signs it fast. It won't be until May that the first checks go out, and it won't probably be until the summer, July, although bad, until the last ones reach people. So the effect on the economy is going to be bunched pretty much into the second half of the year. Of course, there could be a psychological effect before that, but I don't think we should expect too much from this stimulus.
BLOCK: I'm curious, Daniel there in Davos, are people talking about the stimulus package? Are they seeing this as a sign that the United States is moving back on track?
BLOCK: Well, again, I think the striking thing for me is the sort of absence of really intense discussion about U.S. fiscal policy. It's more exciting to talk about the places that are growing rapidly than to talk about the places that you think might be slipping into recession.
BLOCK: You're saying we've become last year's news or last decade's news?
BLOCK: I think we were last forum's news.
BLOCK: Daniel Gross and Sebastian Mallaby, thanks to you both.
BLOCK: Thank you.
BLOCK: Thank you.
BLOCK: We were talking with Daniel Gross, who writes about business and finance for Newsweek and Slate. He's at the World Economic Forum in Davos. And with Washington Post columnist, Sebastian Mallaby, who's also with the Council on Foreign Relations.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And you can follow a timeline in the past week's economic trouble and learn about the steps to allay investor worries. That's at npr.org
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
In an election where voters can make history by electing the first woman or first black president, some Democrats face a tough choice. It's a quandary that has pitted pastor against parishioner, employee against boss, and in some cases, husband against wife.
BLOCK: Christopher Edley and Maria Echaveste. They both worked in Bill Clinton's White House - that's where they met. Now, they both teach law at U.C. Berkeley. But they went their separate ways in choosing a candidate. She's an adviser for Hillary Clinton; he's advising Barack Obama. Still, they agreed to talk to us, together, and walk us through their tough choice.
BLOCK: I looked at the candidates and I just came to the conclusion that I thought on balance, on their merits - when I ask the question, who did I think would be the most capable person to take office on day one - I know we've heard that phrase, but it really means something to me - I just concluded that she really was the candidate.
NORRIS: And Christopher, what about you? Tell me about your decision process.
BLOCK: For me, it's not ready on day one, it's a question of compass - the moral compass to make tough decisions and to provide a sense that there are things that you care about that you're willing to take political risks for. And that sense of strength, I think, is something that I see in Barack, and matters a lot to me.
NORRIS: Your dinner table conversations must be very interesting.
BLOCK: Well, when she's not throwing things at me.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BLOCK: No, we've actually - we met in the White House in '97,'98, so we've had from the beginning very interesting policy debates. It's sort of like waking up discussing policy in the world and the need for change and the various ways in which we feel we can contribute.
BLOCK: It's nonstop. It's nonstop.
NORRIS: How has the discussion changed now that you're on opposing camps?
BLOCK: Well, it hasn't changed in...
BLOCK: Substance...
BLOCK: ...in any substance way at its core. But one thing that we have tried to do very much is focus on how can we try to minimize the conflict, the antagonism that arises naturally in a campaign.
BLOCK: I think for the entire country, the fact that we have a woman and an African-American has really caused us to look at our language, our tone, out words, in ways that just we've never had to. And it's really uncharted because as we know issues of race are unresolved in this country. And it's been a learning experience for the media, for voters, for everyone - from campaign operatives. And I think mistakes have been made in both camps about how one speaks sometimes or how one perceives and the real challenge, I think, especially as this turns into a longer march for delegates, is to really ensure that we are united. But it's often very easy to go to the race and gender and sort of stop the analysis there.
BLOCK: I think one way that we've been thinking about this is is that there is so much within so many people that's either the potential for prejudice or the potential for paranoia. And in this extraordinary occasion, with a woman and an African-American competing at the very top, the possibility that phrases, that nuances will trigger either the prejudice or the paranoia, it's just out there and it's powerful. And we need new rules of the game so that everybody involved - both the politicians and all of their surrogates and all of their operatives - have a hypersensitivity to the risk of triggering those prejudices or that paranoia.
NORRIS: But it seems like in recent weeks, we've been wading through that minefield, and I'd like to hear from both of you, Chris and Maria, about your feelings about the tone of the campaign right now and some of the statements that have been made and this whole injection of the issues of race and gender sensitivities.
BLOCK: Well, certainly, that week or 10 days where race in particular was really being fought out was really being talked about, it was very painful in our household. Because we found ourselves really talking through how do I raise what I believe to be legitimate questions about experience with regard to Obama in which I don't trigger the race card. How come there seems to be a heightened awareness in terms of race and yet some of the real dismissiveness of - in the campaign towards Hillary in ways in which she's constrained that she can't, at times, use the gender card because that will be perceived as unfair.
I mean, it's a very complicated arena. I will say that I think that we got through that bump and it was the candidates - and which was really important - the candidates both issued statements, made statements that really appeal to the better side of everyone involved.
NORRIS: Chris?
BLOCK: Boy, we had some very tough conversations. I mean, let me be honest about it. I think that Maria as a Latina doesn't have the same set of, what do we say, deep-tissue bruises that I have around some of the race conversations. She has always been the - more hopeful immigrant narrative moves Maria. And that's not me. So some of the dismissiveness directed at Obama resonates with me as the familiar uppity nigger narrative, to put it bluntly.
And the hard question is at what point do you draw the line between paranoia on, let's say, my part versus saying that, well, yes, this is - whether intended or not - the race card. It's an effort to actually appeal to some underlying anxiety about his race that infects a chunk of the electorate. And because it's so hard to draw the line, that's why we need rules in which everybody just steps back is exceedingly careful.
And I'll say on the gender side, I got the same thing. I've heard people - not Obama - but I've heard people speak dismissively about Hillary's experience as first lady that drives me nuts. Because having been in the White House, I know that she was very involved in an enormous range of policy issues. She was a player. And to dismiss her experience as first lady as somehow immaterial, I think it's playing to a gender stereotype like she was just a glorified housewife or something. And then she's in a box, because how does she combat that without sounding like it's back to the I'm-no-cookie-baker, sort of, redux.
I know that from the heated discussions Maria and I have had, drawing these lines is very, very hard to do especially while we're moving along at 7,000 miles an hour in a high-stakes political campaign.
NORRIS: Maria and Chris, thanks so much for talking to us.
BLOCK: We enjoyed it. Thank you.
BLOCK: Thank you.
NORRIS: Maria Echaveste is a lecturer at U.C. Berkeley, and Christopher Edley is the dean of the law school there. Thanks so much for being with us.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
President Bush today urged Republican members of Congress to act immediately on the new economic stimulus package. House leaders and the administration worked out the rare compromise earlier this week. Mr. Bush spoke to lawmakers at their annual retreat at the historic Greenbrier resort in West Virginia.
NPR's Debbie Elliott reports.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT: Secluded in the mountains of West Virginia, the stately Greenbrier resort was occupied by both Union and Confederate forces during the Civil War. It turned into an Army hospital during World War II. And during the Cold War, the U.S. government set up an underground bunker from which to operate in the event of a nuclear attack.
Today, Republican Congress members worked above ground in the hotel's grand lobbies and elegant ballrooms. President Bush came to give them a pep talk in advance of Monday's State of the Union Address. He highlighted two major pieces of legislation.
GEORGE W: Two issues I'm going to talk about in the State of the Union require our immediate attention, and that's an economic growth package that will keep this economy of ours healthy; and legislation making sure our professionals, our intelligence professionals have the tools they need to protect the United States of America.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
ELLIOTT: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance bill is now before the Senate. Up first in the House is the economic stimulus package negotiated this week by House leaders and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. President Bush's main message: Congress needs to move fast on the collection of tax rebates, business incentives and mortgage lending reforms.
BUSH: It's a sound package. It makes a lot of sense. It's needed. And you need to pass it as quickly as possible to get money in the hands of the people who are going to help this economy stay strong.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
ELLIOTT: Mr. Bush expressed confidence in the long-term strength of the economy, but said there are uncertainties, and the stimulus would reduce the risk of an economic downturn this year. He acknowledged both sides wanted more from the legislation but said it would be a mistake to delay or derail the bill by tying to add those provisions now.
BUSH: And I want you - I'll make sure you understand in the State of the Union that this package certainly doesn't mean we ought to do something else on taxes. And the best thing we can do to deal with uncertainty in the economy is make the tax cuts we pass permanent.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
ELLIOTT: After the speech, House Republican leader John Boehner said he and Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are committed to moving the stimulus package at the earliest possible time. Some House Republicans are concerned it will add to the federal budget deficit. Florida Congressman Jeff Miller is among them.
JEFF MILLER: In my opinion, a lot of it is very similar to what may have gotten some people in the financial difficulties where you try to borrow your way to prosperity. I'm one of those fiscal hawks in Congress that doesn't feel like we need to continue to borrow, borrow, borrow.
ELLIOTT: But Republican leaders say without a fix, federal tax revenues would decline. Republican Conference Chairman Adam Putnam.
ADAM PUTNAM: To the extent that you can put a short-term infusion of policies into the economy right now, I think it staves off a recession or prevents it from being worse which has a much bigger impact on revenues than the cost of that short-term stimulus. But it doesn't add nearly as much to the deficit and it's doing nothing in allowing the economy to spiral out of control.
ELLIOTT: Republican leaders believe the measure will be approved by the House, but they acknowledge things could slow down in the Senate. Some senators have said they want to see more in the bill such as extending unemployment benefits and more investment in public infrastructure.
Debbie Elliott, NPR News, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris.
There are only three days left at the Sundance Film Festival. Sundance has long been a showcase for small independent films. But for the distributors looking to buy their next indie hit, the stakes can be in the millions of dollars. Nobody wants to pay big bucks for a dud.
NPR's Kim Masters went to Park City, Utah, where she found studio suits facing off against filmmakers' hard-driving lawyers.
KIM MASTERS: You probably don't remember a 1999 film called "Happy, Texas."
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "HAPPY, TEXAS")
ILLEANA DOUGLAS: (As Doreen Schaefer) Well, I like to welcome you both to Happy. I'm Ms. Schaefer.
MASTERS: But for the people who do deals at Sundance, the film is an object lesson about overpaying for a film that seems hot in Park City but dies in the real world.
TOM BERNARD: I call it the "Happy, Texas" booby prize.
MASTERS: Tom Bernard wasn't the one to spend millions on "Happy, Texas." He's co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, the company that released "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and this year's "Persepolis." He knows that when the bidding starts at Sundance, it easy to make a mistake.
Bernard huddles with his staff in the lobby of an out-of-the-way Park City hotel to avoid running into his competition. There's a big picture window with a view of skiers racing down the slopes. But the small team from Sony Pictures Classics is focused on the screening schedule.
The company's co-president, Michael Barker, sets a game plan.
MICHAEL BARKER: This is what we'll do. Joan(ph), you go to "The Great Buck Howard," I'll go to Roman Polanski, Tom will go to "The Wackness."
BERNARD: Okay.
BARKER: And we'll all meet up at "Sunshine Cleaning."
MASTERS: "Sunshine Cleaning" is a movie about two sisters who clean up crime scenes. It's supposed to be a hot property, and it's screening at the Racquet Club, pressed into service as a theater.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM SCREENING)
Unidentified Man: It's a great pleasure to welcome you to the world premiere of "Sunshine Cleaning."
MASTERS: Only Barker gets to that screening, and just barely.
BARKER: It's very hard to get into. I have to get someone to sneak me in. It was full by the time I showed up. And I showed up, like, 15 minutes before.
MASTERS: After the movie, Barker is cautiously noncommittal.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE CHATTING)
MASTERS: For one thing, all his competitors from other studios could be circling. And at Sundance, there are other causes for concern.
Back at the hotel lobby office, Tom Bernard explains that many films aren't completely finished and need a lot of time and money to get into shape for theatrical release. Even if he wants to buy, Bernard says it can be hard to figure out who really controls the film.
BERNARD: Who made it, who financed it, who is selling it, and then who decides who gets it. They could be completely different people. I know of one movie last year where it was a dentist on the Eastern Shore of Maryland who made the call and everyone was pursuing all these other people, because he was the money behind it.
MASTERS: That's true for some movies, but many filmmakers have put themselves in the hands of tough and experienced sellers.
BERNARD: There's like five companies, I think, right now that have giant houses up there in the hills, and they come with about 25 people. In fact, one company now has two houses - one to house the lawyers and one to house the people working for them. We like to drive by and see who's parked on the driveway, but it's really not a healthy place to visit.
MASTERS: The company with two houses is called Cinetic. Inside one of their houses, Cinetic's team is up early tweaking plans for selling 19 films. Young and restless sellers are gathered at the dining room table and clustered in the living room.
John Sloss is master of this domain.
JOHN SLOSS: We're selling Polanski. We've got this film, "American Teen." We have this British film, "The History of My Sexual Failures," which is really wonderful.
MASTERS: Every year, Cinetic throws a party during the festival. Last time, Sloss tried to fend off meetings with bidders until the following day so he could take a break and toast his prospective victims.
SLOSS: The filmmakers were at the party, the buyers were at the party. The buyers are starting to say, you know, we may not be interested in your film tomorrow, we're going to buy tonight. And the filmmakers start freaking out. And before you know it, we're back at the condo, you know, with two films that have to close that each have four suitors.
MASTERS: There are worse problems for a seller, of course, and in these situations, Sloss sees his company as the one that will protect inexperienced filmmakers from the studio sharks.
SLOSS: We were born out of the fact that distributors are tremendously sophisticated. And for them it's war. Woe unto the filmmaker who doesn't have someone who has the kind of experience that distributors have on their side.
MASTERS: Back down the hill at the hotel lobby, the Sony Pictures Classics team doesn't see Cinetic quite that way.
Tom Bernard thinks some sellers have their client's interest at heart, taking pains to find a buyer who cares enough to make sure that a film gets a proper release.
BERNARD: Whereas maybe a company like Cinetic, they want the cash. It's not about the movie, it's about the deal.
MASTERS: Regardless of Bernard's feelings about Cinetic, the company represents a movie that interests him. "American Teen" is a documentary about a group of high school kids, and it's screening at the library in Park City.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "AMERICAN TEEN")
Unidentified Woman: Take your seats right now.
MASTERS: Sloss is lurking in the hallway where he and Bernard meet. We asked Sloss how things are coming.
SLOSS: I don't think I'm going to talk substance about anything in front of Tom Bernard.
BERNARD: Why? I think you're a great guy, man.
SLOSS: I think you're a great guy, too.
MASTERS: Bernard's company bids, but after 4 days of intense negotiations, the price climbs too high, and he drops out.
In the end, the film goes for more than a million dollars, but Bernard is philosophical.
BERNARD: You never lose money at Sundance on a movie you didn't buy.
MASTERS: A couple of days later, Bernard's company snaps up "Frozen River," a movie about a struggling single mother. The seller is not Cinetic and the price is less than a million dollars.
Kim Masters, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Another bit of movie news about a huge Hollywood franchise - James Bond. The 22nd Bond film is being filmed right now. Up to this point, the studio, Sony, has just been calling it "Bond 22."
But yesterday, at Pinewood Studios in England where the movie is in production, the director, Marc Forster, announced the real title of the movie, the "Quantum of Solace."
MARC FORSTER: The "Quantum of Solace," that's a Fleming short story. It means a measure of comfort. And it's very appropriate for this film because based on what happened to James Bond in the last film, he needs that quantum of solace considering his mental state.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
The last film was "Casino Royale." It ended with James Bond avenging the death of his girlfriend, the love of his life. Bond creator, Ian Fleming, wrote the original short story for the "Quantum of Solace," but it's definitely not your typical Bond adventure. He's in it, of course, but there are no car chases, no fancy gadgets, no elaborate fight scenes, no international intrigue. Instead, Bond is at a boring dinner with a stuffy colonial civil servant.
BLOCK: Over cigars and drinks, the man tells the devastating story of a young couple. The wife cheats on her husband, who, in turn, refuses to speak to her for a year. Finally, he abandons her and she's left destitute, divorced and far from home.
NORRIS: Here's where the title comes in. Bond's drinking companion offers his theory of a "Quantum of Solace." He says, it's the minimum amount of human compassion you need to maintain a relationship. To which James Bond replies...
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "QUANTUM OF SOLACE")
DANIEL CRAIG: (As James Bond) It's a splendid name for it, quantum of solace - the amount of comfort. Yes, I suppose you could say that all love and friendship is based, in the end, on that. Human beings are very insecure. When the other person, not only makes you feel insecure, but actually seems to want to destroy you, it's obviously the end. The quantum of solace stands at zero.
NORRIS: And don't be surprised if that's how much of the story ends up in the film - zero. At Pinewood Studios, producers showed off footage of Bond swinging on a rope after an explosion in an art gallery. And the film will have, in their words, twice as much action as the previous one. It's scheduled to open in November.
(SOUNDBITE OF JAMES BOND THEME)
BLOCK: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Vinicio Capossela is often called the Italian Tom Waits. The two artists share a growl vocal quality and a love of floppy piano ballad, sea shanties and fuzzed out rock. But then, again, Tom Waits has never performed in a Medusa mask or a gigantic fur hat.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. VINICIO CAPOSELA (Singer): (Singing in foreign language)
SEABROOK: That's part of the charm of Vinicio Caposela, his flair for the dramatic. In Italy and much of Europe, he's a mega star, the kind that sells out arenas. But in the United States, he's still a well-kept secret.
In his 17-year recording career, Vinicio Capossela has only played three shows here. And I was lucky enough to see one of them a few weeks ago at the Kennedy Center here in Washington.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Capossela walks onto the stage unceremoniously. When he begins to sing, you totally forget that you don't understand Italian. Capossela growls out his music from behind the mask of a Minotaur. He creeps around the stage, jagged horns and protruding snout. He drags along a string of cowbells, raising them up and dropping them to the floor again and again in time with the music.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: The site causes the little girl in front of me to bury her head in her father's shoulder. But by the end of the show, she was the rest of us, on our feet and dancing, yet, another American convert.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Luckily, there was a day to recover between the show and the interview.
Vinicio Capossela, welcome.
Mr. CAPOSSELA (Musician): Grazie, grazie molto (unintelligible). It's an honor to be here.
SEABROOK: Massimo Arranque(ph), our interpreter, thank you very much for being with us.
Mr. MASSIMO ARRANQUE (Translator): Thank you for giving this opportunity to meet my great hero.
SEABROOK: Let me first say to Vinicio Capossela, I saw your show at the Kennedy Center here in Washington. And it was absolutely wild. You were…
Mr. CAPOSSELA: Wild. Wild.
SEABROOK: There's all these theatrics and dirty like lurching sound.
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: I have an attitude towards these dirty sounds and the grotesque in my shows, and I like to scare people a little, but then to make them feel safe again, and let them go home hugging each other like friends.
SEABROOK: What do the theatrics add to it like in this song, "Medusa Cha Cha Cha"?
(Soundbite of song, "Medusa Cha Cha Cha")
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: Now, this song is born from a mask from a Swedish friend who learned how to make masks in Venice.
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: I looked at this portrait and my friend, she told me, don't worry, she's not a monster; she's just a little nervous…
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: Because every time she looks at someone, she likes, they become a stone. And so she becomes nervous.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: And the only thing that she can do to let it out is to dance the cha cha cha.
(Soundbite of song, "Medusa Cha Cha Cha")
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Singing in foreign language)
(Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: He says it would be difficult to explain all these to people. I just put on the Medusa mask and I tell people…
Mr. CAPOSSELA: Touch me, touch me, don't watch me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: I'm speaking with Italian singer and songwriter Vinicio Capossela. His most recent CD is called "Ovunque Proteggi," which means may you protect me everywhere.
The title cut sounds like a little prayer almost. Let's hear a little bit of it.
(Soundbite of song, "Non Tratare")
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Singing in foreign language)
SEABROOK: Here's the English translation. The old already know the reason so do the sad hotels that too much is only for a short while and it's still not enough. And it's only once. Still, protect the grace of my heart now and for whim spell returns, the spell of you beside me.
Is there a story behind the song?
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: The story is always the same. As we walk, we always have to leave behind us something or somebody, and this separation always opens a new wound. So the invocation - protect the grace in my heart, but that we invoke the possibility to return to unity, and to keep within us the things that we love, the things that help us belong to humanity.
(Soundbite of song, "Non Tratare")
SEABROOK: I've read that you're influenced by American themes. What attracted you about this country?
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: Whether we want to or not, we all grow into a bit of America in us. You made us. We have no choice.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: I've loved - I have been fascinated with many American artists.
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language) Jack Kerouac, John Infante(ph), Louis Prima, Tom Waits and Charles Bukowski.
SEABROOK: Is there a particular song of yours that you can point us towards that reflects this American fascination?
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: Yes, I just wrote the song. It's called "Dirty Windows of America."
SEABROOK: You brought with you a toy piano. Would you play that for us?
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
(Soundbite of song, "Dirty Windows of America")
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Singing in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: Bravo.
SEABROOK: That was wonderful. It's sounded like - I don't speak Italian - but it sounded like that was about the silence of America.
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Singing in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: Mm-hm.
SEABROOK: And what does that mean?
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: Silence of America gives a feeling of the vastness and the solitude, the feeling of a sense of silence it's something that it hits me immediately in America.
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking in foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: In some ways, this silence belongs to me.
SEABROOK: Why have you played so rarely in the United States?
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Speaking foreign language)
Mr. ARRANQUE: It's difficult for me to explain. I think what I write - I don't know if in my songs there is something that can go beyond the language that can be understood by people who don't know Italian. And when I saw the public of the Kennedy Center stand up not to applaud but to live these minutes of joy, I understood at least the things that go beyond the language itself.
SEABROOK: Vinicio Capossela is an Italian singer, songwriter. His most recent CD is called "Ovunque Proteggi" or May You Protect Me Everywhere.
Thank you so much. And I do hope you come back.
Mr. CAPOSSELA: Grazie.
(Soundbite of song, "Una Giornata Perfecta")
SEABROOK: You can hear Signore Capossela perform the "Medusa Cha Cha Cha," hear whole tracks and discover new music at npr.org/music).
This sweet little tune you're hearing is called "A Perfect Day," "Una Giornata Perfecta." Capossela says it's the perfect thing to whistle while shaving in the morning, and it brings us our parting words this evening.
Capossela sings: It's a perfect day. It's a sunny day. I'm on my own, whistle, wave, buy a cocktail with an umbrella. The sky is near enough to touch, clouds of perfumed water. The dreamy air kisses me because it's a perfect day.
That's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Andrea Seabrook. Ciao.
(Soundbite of song, "Una Giornata Perfecta")
Mr. CAPOSSELA: (Singing in foreign language)
Goodbye.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Today, it's the Democrats' turn in South Carolina. After a rancorous campaign, voters are making their choices among Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and native son, John Edwards.
The polls in South Carolina are open until 7 p.m., Eastern time. NPR and npr.org will have updates as they come in. And we'll have a preview of Tuesday's Republican primary in Florida.
NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving is here with me in the studio.
RON ELVING: Good to be with you, Andrea.
SEABROOK: Great to have you here. Let's begin with NPR's Audie Cornish, who joins us now from the Convention Center in downtown Columbia, South Carolina.
Audie, tell us about turnout, and how was the weather?
AUDIE CORNISH: The weather was actually great, considering what it was like last week. I was out for the GOP primary, and it was cold and rainy, and it was snowing in some areas that some people think it's dampened the expectations for the turnout.
Today, it was a little bit chilly, but it was sunny, and people were out. There were a lot of long lines at polling stations. And state Democrats here are really excited to have this level of excitement for their race.
SEABROOK: How about the candidates, Audie? What were they up to today?
CORNISH: Well, Barack Obama was campaigning right up until the last minute here in Columbia. He visited the Bethlehem Baptist Church. He met with voters there. He went to a polling station at a college in the area. He did a lot of local interviews. And whereas Senator Hillary, really, there - that campaign has lowered expectations for this state. And while she was - made a stop in Columbia today, this week, she's managed to sneak in trips to Arizona, California, New Jersey. You know, her attention has been divided.
And also…
SEABROOK: In fact, tonight, during the election return, she won't even be in South Carolina, will she?
CORNISH: That's right. She'll be in Tennessee. Unlike John Edwards, who was born here. He actually visited his parents today as well made some stops at polling stations.
SEABROOK: Audie, you've covered lots of these primaries now as many as there have been. And I want as the results come in, where shall we be looking to sort of assess the candidate's strengths?
CORNISH: Well, here in South Carolina, it's interesting. I mean, it is a heavily Republican state. And so what we're going to look for are places like Beaufort County, a coastal country where you may have heard the name last week as a place that may have been a place for votes for Senator John McCain because there were a lot of independents there.
And it's also a place where they had some voting problems last week. So keep an eye out what's coming at Horry County as well as a county like Orangeburg, which is rural, has mostly black voters and has had a lot of concerns about the economy, higher joblessness rates in other parts of the state. And it's a place where a lot of the candidates have been visiting throughout the week.
SEABROOK: Audie, I know Ron Elving has a question about the debate this last Monday night.
ELVING: Hi, Audie.
CORNISH: Hi, how are you?
ELVING: Good to have you with us. Audie, I'm wondering if the level of acrimony that we saw in that Democratic debate this week was sustained throughout the week or if they backed off that a little bit.
CORNISH: Well, it's certainly carried throughout the week. It's not because it wasn't just between Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, but also between Barack Obama and the former president, Bill Clinton. Being with here today, he was at the polling station this morning. And he made his presence very much known throughout the week.
And it wasn't until very week - the very end of the week when you had both candidates pointing at that both are - were too negative.
SEABROOK: NPR's Audie Cornish in Columbia, South Carolina.
Thanks very much, Audie.
CORNISH: Thank you.
ALISON STEWART, host:
Now as we're waiting for the polls to close in South Carolina and some returns for the evening, let's check in now with what's going on in Florida. Republicans are competing in a primary this Tuesday there.
NPR's Scott Horsley is following the campaign and joins us now from Tampa.
Scott, what were John McCain and Mitt Romney talking about today? I know they're in Florida today.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Well, that's right, Andrea. And there are all sorts of fireworks. In fact, you may hear some real fireworks behind me. Tampa is hosting its annual Mardi Gras-style Gasparilla parade today. But there's also been a parade of Republican presidential hopefuls through Central Florida, and they're generally playing for their strengths.
For Mitt Romney, the businessman-turned-politician, that means talking about his background in the private sector. He was out visiting local businesses today, saying he has the business savvy to prop up a sagging U.S. economy.
Meanwhile, John McCain just spoke a little while ago at the Sun City Center retirement community. He talked about his determination to win the war in Iraq and to capture Osama bin Laden.
You know, at the town hall meeting, though, you'll never know what's going to happen. And the very first question John McCain got was about immigration, which is still a hot-button issue for some Republicans and not one that works in John McCain's favor. In fact, the senator joked that as soon as the question is asked, this town hall meeting is over.
(Soundbite of laughter)
HORSLEY: It wasn't, though. He went on and answered the question and said he would secure the border, first thing of them all.
SEABROOK: Hmm.
RON ELVING: Hi, Scott. It's Ron. And can you tell us what are we hearing from Rudy Giuliani? I think a lot of people have been waiting to hear more from the former mayor, not just in the debates but on one of these voting days.
HORSLEY: Well, that's right. I heard Rudy Giuliani addressed a Republican dinner in Sarasota last night. That's a heavily Republican community south of here. Even though - I mean, polls show him now in third, or in some cases, fourth place here, he's urged his supporters not to count him out.
Remember, Rudy Giuliani has spent months cultivating Florida voters, building an organization on the ground here. And keep in mind that in Florida, as many as 40 percent of the people will cast their ballots actually before Tuesday's election day. In some cases, well before. So some Giuliani supporters may have already voted for the former New York mayor before John McCain even won the New Hampshire primary and sort of started his comeback.
SEABROOK: Hmm. Scott, what's at stake for these candidates in Florida? Is this the end of some stories, the beginning of others in this campaign?
HORSLEY: Andrea, we got an indication of that actually during this town hall meeting I've just come from. John McCain was asked who's on his shortlist of vice presidential running mate. He said it would be premature to talk about that having won just two primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina. But he said, if he wins here on Tuesday, he will start to think about it. That tells you how big Florida is, not only for John McCain but for all of the Republicans. It's the biggest batch of delegates so far. It's also the state where all the Republicans have competed unlike some of the earlier contests. And whoever wins here on Tuesday is going to get a big boost for the Tsunami Tuesday contest in 21 states a week later.
SEABROOK: I call it Super Duper Tuesday, but, you know…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: You call it what you want, Scott.
NPR's Scott Horsley in Tampa. Thanks very much.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Now, let me turn to you, Ron. Is Florida really the make-or-break contest for the Republicans? Is this critical for all of them or just Rudy Giuliani?
RON ELVING: I think it's critical for all of them, and I think it's by far the most important state we've seen so far on the Republican side. Of course, Rudy Giuliani has put all of his chips here. He has got to win. If he doesn't win, he's got to be awfully close to winning. He has to come back from his current third place, fourth place position and nearly win in order to have momentum for those big primaries on February 5th, which include, by the way, winner-take-all events in New York, the state, New Jersey, the state, and Connecticut. The whole metropolitan New York area is going to weigh in, and all three of them are going to be winner-take-all as Florida is.
He could suddenly leap to the fore. He could be in the front of the pack in terms of delegates if he could pull this off. And that's been a strategy all along, and it was working until it stopped working. And other states started voting and he did not get any kind of response from any other state. And as a result, he has spiraled down.
SEABROOK: Very interesting here. Now, we aren't just talking about Republicans in Florida. Why are we just talking about Republicans in Florida?
(Soundbite of laughter)
ELVING: Well, we pretty much are just talking about Republicans in Florida because the Democrats in Florida have been penalized by their national party for leaping ahead of the February 5th date that was proposed to be the limit. You couldn't go any sooner on the calendar. And because they violated that, the national party gave them the death penalty. They are getting no delegates at the national convention whatsoever as it stands right now.
Do we expect that to change at some point? Yes, but not between now and Tuesday. So that vote will have no effect on choosing delegates, and the candidates have agreed not to campaign in Florida. So they haven't been running ads down there and they haven't been doing anything other than raising money down there. They haven't been having events.
SEABROOK: I see. Okay. But let's turn then to South Carolina, because the Democrats do have this, you know, make-or-break for some, it would seem contest today. The returns we expect again tonight after the 7 p.m. Eastern time close of the polls. We will report those returns as we get them. But of course, how critical is this, Ron Elving, for the Democrats?
ELVING: I would not say that it is quite as important for the Democrats as South Carolina was for the Republicans because South Carolina has become the trigger primary for Republicans. Everyone who has won the nomination of the GOP since 1980 has won South Carolina first and then triggered a tremendous domination in the South. We haven't seen anything like that in the Democratic Party. It just has not been that important.
On the other hand, it was given special permission - unlike Florida - to have its primary in January up there with Iowa and New Hampshire, the traditional early starters, because specifically the national party wanted a heavily African-American state. And South Carolina is about 29 percent black. And they are heavily concentrated on the Democratic side, so more than half of the Democratic voting base today is expected to be African-American. And the party specifically wanted that.
This, of course, has become particularly important because as it also turns out this is the first time we have had a frontrunner or near frontrunner who was African-American himself.
SEABROOK: Ron, there is so much handwringing about whether these early contests were in January. As you just said, we moved up Super Tuesday, move the contest leading up to that. What has been the effect of early voting in January? I mean, almost Christmas voting, it seemed like.
ELVING: Well, I think it's too early in the opinion of most every American that I've ever talked to. People would just assume that this contest began a little closer to the November 2008 finish line. But it's going to begin as early as the candidates begin jockeying. And the states are going to begin jockeying to be as early as possible in imitation of Iowa and New Hampshire, which have tremendously increased their importance in American politics, and also, reaped real economic benefits from having these early events.
Now, I don't think any of these other early events has done as much for any of these other states as for Iowa and New Hampshire. They still get special benefits. But a few other states, I think, are getting into the act and we're going to see a lot more of these in the future if the national parties don't figure out a way to organize this whole a lot better.
SEABROOK: NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving. Thanks very much for joining me here.
ELVING: Thank you, Andrea.
SEABROOK: And we should remind listeners that they can learn more about what's at stake in today's Democratic primary in South Carolina and all of these races as - then they can follow results after the polls close tonight at 7.pm. at npr.org/elections.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Survivors of last year's bridge collapse in Minneapolis have until tomorrow to file paperwork that would keep open the option of suing the state for damages. At this point, no one has actually filed a lawsuit. Everyone's waiting to see if Minnesota lawmakers create a compensation fund for survivors and families of victims of the collapse, because under state law chances are the victims and families would get more from a special fund than from suing.
From Minnesota Public Radio, Tom Weber reports.
TOM WEBER: It sounds cliche but Mercedes Gordon really thought she'd never be her old self again.
Ms. MERCEDES GORDON (Survivor, Minneapolis Bridge Collapse): I remember being in the hospital, thinking - I wonder if I'll walk again. I mean, I could barely move my toes.
WEBER: Gordon's legs were crushed when the bridge and her car fell seven-stories and crashed into one of the walls that held up the span. Photos on a Web site she's set up show how close she was.
Ms. GORDON: So this is my car, and this car landed just on this backside of my car.
WEBER: So that you were up here?
Ms. GORDON: Yes, that's me.
WEBER: You were almost off the bridge.
Ms. GORDON: The car in front of me made it over.
WEBER: Wow.
Ms. GORDON: I was the first one to go down in the north end.
WEBER: Being one car off resulted in a month-and-a-half-long hospital stay and four months in a wheelchair. And Gordon will soon have her eighth surgery since the bridge collapsed. She says her medical bills are nearing a half million dollars, 75,000 of that has to come from her. And she might have been out of a job by now if her co-workers hadn't donated their own sick time so she can spend her days in physical therapy.
Gordon is one of more than 70 survivors who filed paperwork, allowing them to sue the state at some point, if it comes to that. Ryan Winkler hopes it doesn't.
State Representative RYAN WINKLER (Democrat, Minnesota): It's time for the state of Minnesota to be responsible to these survivors for what happened.
WEBER: Winkler is the state representative who's proposed legislation to have the state set up a compensation fund.
State Rep. WINKLER: One of the first duties of government is to provide for public safety and then Minnesota to provide a transportation network. The state of Minnesota failed to do that and these people paid the price.
WEBER: They haven't worked out all the details at this point, lawmakers don't even go into session until next month. But legislative leaders say they want some kind of bill passed by mid-March. If all goes smoothly, people could have their money from that fund before the new bridge is scheduled to reopen in December.
And you'd be hard-pressed to find someone in state government who does not think the survivors deserve some kind of compensation for medical bills or lost wages and property. The key is how to get the money. Without a special compensation fund, survivors could still sue, but the cases would likely last years, not months, and lawsuit awards against the state are capped. That means all the survivors would have to share $1 million.
Mr. CHRIS MESSERLY (Lawyer): It would be a greater insult to tell them to share a million than not give them anything at all.
WEBER: That's Chris Messerly, one of a number of lawyers who are representing bridge survivors. He says tomorrow's deadline is important to keep options open, but he hopes no one has to sue.
Mr. MESSERLY: Essentially, all of Minnesotans, the governor, legislators are holding hands, saying let's create a fund. There are some discussions on how to do it, but I think it says a lot for Minnesotans that they rally around a tragedy like this. I mean, it's a one-of-a-kind disaster.
WEBER: I'm standing on a bridge that's right next to where the old bridge used to stand, which means I have a clear view of all the workers who are building this new structure. Right now, there's just a few supports up so it doesn't look like a bridge yet, but everyone's still out here despite how freezing cold it is. It's about two degrees right now. They have to be out here because they have a very tight timeline - if they want the new bridge open by Christmas Eve.
For NPR News, I'm Tom Weber in Minneapolis.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
And now an update on another story from last summer. You remember how federal authorities raided the dogfighting operation that was funded by NFL star Michael Vick. Forty-seven of the 49 dogs seized in the raid were assigned to rescue organizations. Now, as Vick begins a 23-month prison sentence, those pit bulls are getting a second chance, and they're getting something they've never had before - loving homes.
NPR's Richard Gonzales reports on one rescue effort in California.
RICHARD GONZALES: At a dog park near the bay in Berkeley, trainer Tim Racer directs about a dozen dogs and their handlers through a series of simple obedience exercises.
Mr. TIM RACER (Co-Founder, Bad Rap): Let's put our dogs into a sit. Good dogs. Remember, reward your dog. It's all positive.
GONZALES: All of these dogs are pit bulls, and about half were rescued from Michael Vicks dogfighting operation.
Ms. DONNA REYNOLDS (Director, Bad Rap): You won't know unless I point them out to you which dogs are the Michael Vick's dogs and that's because they act like all the others.
GONZALES: That's Donna Reynolds, director of Bad Rap, an Oakland-based pit bull rescue and education group. Working with other rescue organizations, Bad Rap helped convince federal authorities that the dogs from Michael Vick's notorious Bad News Kennel should be spared.
Ms. REYNOLDS: Normally, in the past, dogs that are confiscated in a dogfight bust are destroyed. They're held as evidence and then destroyed. There is an idea, there is a belief that they are, you know, damaged beyond belief; that they're uncontrollable; that they're going to be violent. So the fact that this happened is landmark. It's a landmark animal welfare case.
GONZALES: All of the Vick dogs were neutered and microchiped. About half of them were sent to a sanctuary in Utah, the other half have been placed in foster homes alongside other pets and even children.
One of the stars of the program is a massive, rust-colored, 52-pound pit bull named Hector.
Ms. LESLIE NUCCIO (Hector's Foster Parent): That's Hector, the Latino heartthrob of the group. Hector.
GONZALES: Viva Hector.
Ms. NUCCIO: Viva Hector. Yey(ph).
GONZALES: Leslie Nuccio volunteered to be Hector's foster parent. She points at his scarred chest and a portion of his tongue that's missing - grim reminders that he had to fight to survive. Now, Nuccio says, Hector is gentle, but still learning to be a pet.
Ms. NUCCIO: Clearly, he had never been in a house. He didn't know what things like peanut butter were. He didn't know what dog toys were. He didn't know what dog bed were. He didn't know what music was. And it turns out that he likes Yo-Yo Ma and Frank Sinatra. So, I don't know, so deep down I guess Hector is kind of high-class guy waiting to come out. As soon as he learns his manners, he'll be out to the country club in a tuxedo.
GONZALES: But for now, Hector is still required to attend this canine good-citizen class.
Mr. RACER: So, this is a distraction exercise. We're going to distract your dog intentionally by circling it with another dog. Your job: To keep your dog into a down.
GONZALES: Trainer Tim Racer says he hopes the government's decision to let the Vick dogs live helps eliminate stereotypes of pit bulls as bloodthirsty.
Mr. RACER: I hope America learns to look at these dogs as victims that they are. They just need what they never had. As far as rehabilitation, they really don't need to be rehabilitated. They just need what never had to begin with. It's really not rocket science.
GONZALES: These Vick dogs are finally getting what other canines enjoy, says Racer: structure, training and guidance in a second life.
Richard Gonzales, NPR News, San Francisco.
Mr. RACER: Let's get this dog out of there. Down and into a sit, and we're going to end class with that. Good work, you all.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
One of the pleasures of winter is strapping blades onto your feet and skating out onto a frozen sheet of ice; the cool puffs of air on your face, the silent joy of gliding, almost frictionless.
But have you ever thought about how weird it is? Listen to what I just said, strapping blades onto your feet and skating out onto on a sheet of ice. What human started that behavior?
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: This week in Science Out of the Box, researchers at Oxford University have just released a paper on the origins of ice skating. Federico Formenti is an expert in human locomotion at Oxford University, and he's one of the co-authors of the paper, "The First Humans Traveling on Ice: An Energy-Saving Strategy?"
He joins us from the studios of the BBC in Oxford.
How are you, sir?
Dr. FEDERICO FORMENTI (Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford; Author, "The First Humans Traveling on Ice: An Energy-Saving Strategy?"): I'm fine. Thanks. Hi, Andrea.
SEABROOK: So, who was it? Who was the first person to strap on the skates and go out onto the ice?
Dr. FORMENTI: Well, there's not a definite agreement on where the ice skates may have first started, but it seems that the first person who put on some skates did that in Finland. And that apparently happened at least 4,000 years ago. And from our perspective, it seems that they first did this to save energy during their daily journeys.
SEABROOK: Interesting. Finland is a pretty cold place; lots of ice there, so that all seems to make sense to me. But there are lots of cold places. Why Finland?
Dr. FORMENTI: Well, especially in the southern area, there's the highest density of lakes, and consequently wherever you are in that area and wherever you need to go to, you will surely find at least one lake on your route. And consequently, by finding a way to cross the lake, you would save much more time and much more energy than you would by using ice skates anywhere else in the world.
SEABROOK: Does the archeological evidence show that it's Finland?
Dr. FORMENTI: No. What we found from archeological and historical evidence was that bones skates were in use at least in 2,000 B.C. And they were spread in quite a few countries in Central and Northern Europe.
SEABROOK: So, by 2,000 B.C. or BCE, the skates were all across Northern Europe.
Dr. FORMENTI: Yes.
SEABROOK: What kind of animal bones are the skates made of?
Dr. FORMENTI: Most of their remains, which were found, are from horses and cow bones. But, indeed, people would use bones from any animal which they could find in the area where they lived. And it's probably worth mentioning that the skates for the first - about 2,000 years were completely different from what we see today. So, basically, they were animal bones and people would just stand on them with their knees slightly bent. And, apparently, a stick was used to push on the ice and that was the means of propulsion (unintelligible).
SEABROOK: Oh, like cross-country skiing kind of a punting in a boat.
Dr. FORMENTI: Like that or like a gondola(ph) or same sort of movement but on the ice. The bones were flat at the bottom because, otherwise, it would be perhaps dangerous for the ankles which could bend laterally and…
SEABROOK: We know about that for modern skating.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. FORMENTI: Yeah. So they did make them flat at the bottom from, like, the very beginning. And because of the fatty nature of the bone, the sort of resistance to motion, the so-called dynamic gravitation to fiction, was quite limited compared to what we expected. So gliding on a straight line was very easy. What was quite difficult, compared to modern skates, was making turns…
SEABROOK: Uh-huh.
Dr. FORMENTI: …because, of course, you don't have blades and consequently when you want to turn you need to use the stick again.
SEABROOK: Have you tried doing this? It sounds like you may have tried doing this.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. FORMENTI: I tried and I didn't manage the first few turns, but…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. FORMENTI: …it was safe, eventually.
SEABROOK: Frederico Formenti is a doctor of human locomotion biomechanics at Oxford University. He joined us from the studios of the BBC in Oxford.
Thanks very much, sir.
Dr. FORMENTI: Thank you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Last week in our Homework segment, we asked listeners to tell us their nicknames, and so many responded. Today, we share three of our favorites. The first, from listener Larry Benz(ph), who called in with a story about his twin sister and her new born son, Michael(ph).
Mr. LARRY BENZ (Caller): And given that we were competitive our whole lives, it was very important to me that Michael would say my name first, instead of his mom's. So we're going to his room and sit there, literally, for like an hour, two hours and just keeps saying Lala(ph), Lala, Lala because my name is Larry. And I would say Uncle Lala, Uncle Lala. So, anyway, because I would do that, his first words were Lala. And from that day forward, my nickname has been La or Lala.
Mr. LES CAMERAMAN(ph) (Caller): My name is Les Cameraman. And I live in Atlantic City, New Jersey. And my nickname is Kub or more properly Kubla from Kubla Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan. My father loves the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem. "In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea." And that's where my name came from. But when I introduce myself to new acquaintance, I simply use the name Les because whenever I say Kub, they go, what? I go Kub. They go, what? I say Kub. They say, what? I say, Les.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CAMERAMAN: He almost named my brother Xanadu. Thank God, he didn't.
Ms. MELISSA WHEELER(ph): My name is Melissa Wheeler and I live in Oakland, California, and my nickname, my childhood nickname is Giggi(ph) because I giggled at lot. Both my parents were writers, and my letters from them always started out with Dear Gig. Gig turned to be the more adult name of Giggi.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. WHEELER: Little did I know that - I mean, it took me completely by surprise that my nickname would be something that I miss with my parents. And by the -year after my mother died, I saw a note that I had saved from her and it started out, Dear Gig, and it really hit me that my nickname died along with my parents.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Thanks to everyone who called or wrote in.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: That's including you, Pooky(ph) and you, Andy Pants(ph) and, yes, even you, Stink Pot(ph).
Next week, we offer you a chance to fulfill your Hollywood dreams. While the screenwriters' strike continues, make up a plotline for the TV show you've missed the most, and sent it to homework@npr.org or call our Homework hotline at 202-408-5183. That's 202-408-5183. Please include your real name and phone number.
Speaking of TV dreams, Miss America struts the runway tonight in Las Vegas. This is not your mother's Miss America. Bert Parks is long gone. The festivities are no longer in Atlantic City and in an attempt to lure viewers after years of sagging ratings, the 87-year-old pageant have adopted a reality show format, and a snarky brand of humor.
The contestants were put through four weeks of challenges reminiscent of other reality shows, "Survivor"-style obstacle courses and dressmaking ala-"Project Runaway." Style gurus pick to part their classic big hair and sequence beauty queen looks and, tonight, the contestants will wear blue jeans on the stage as the judges choose the winner. But, will she be crowned so that all chestnuts there she is, Miss America. NPR has not been able to confirm.
(Soundbite of song, "There She Is, Miss America")
Mr. WAYNE BERNIE (Singer): (Singing): There she is.
Unidentified Group: (Singing) There she is.
Mr. BERNIE: (Singing) Walking on air, she is fairest of the fair she is, Miss America.
Coming up, the lyrical theatrics and theatrical lyrics of Vinicio Capossela.
This is NPR News.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Eyes are on South Carolina for today's Democratic primary. We'll give you updates as we have them.
This story now about the legacy of one of the states own politicians: "Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, a Democrat from the post-Reconstruction era.
State Representative TODD RUTHERFORD (Democrat, Columbia): In South Carolina, as in most of the south, we are deeply rooted in history and, especially history as it relates to civil rights and the lack thereof.
SEABROOK: That's Representative Todd Rutherford. He's introduced a resolution in the state legislature to remove a statue of Ben Tillman from the statehouse grounds in Columbia, where it stood for more than 60 years.
Tilllman was a populist. He earned his nickname by railing against President Grover Cleveland, telling voters, send me to Washington, and I'll stick my pitchfork into its old ribs. He was also a fiery white supremacist. So, perhaps, it's no surprise that people like Representative Rutherford wants his statue taken down.
State Rep. RUTHERFORD: I can tell you that no different than our division over the confederate flag and moving the flag off to its own. I expect that same division to arise in trying to move the statue from the statehouse grounds. I've already gotten several phone calls where people telling me don't change history. Well, the position I take is that they change history by putting Ben Tillman's statue up there and putting a plaque on there that seems to indicate that he was an all-around good guy. And that's just not the case.
SEABROOK: Tillman often spoke in scorching language, advocating the rule of the white men in America through violence against blacks. In 1902, he cried on the Senate floor: We hope you will help us of the South to get rid of the threat of Negro domination, which hangs over us like the sword of Damocles. Lynchings will continue as long as those fins rape our wives and daughters.
Professor Lacy Ford of the University of South Carolina told me how Tillman rose to power.
Professor LACY FORD (History, University of South Carolina): He was quite a flamboyant speaker, and he was able to affect the sort of tune, the language and the position that a hard-pressed white farmers of the 1880s could identify with. And he gave them a series of, in their minds, plausible scapegoats for their economic problems, and those were essentially a sort of insensitive aristocracy, a nonresponsive state government and the burden of the state's black population as those scapegoats.
SEABROOK: He was kind of a rabble-rouser.
Prof. FORD: He was a rabble-rouser. But this was an era in which politics, essentially, consisted in two things: organization at the grassroots level and stamp speaking. In his political speeches, which were earthy, salty, profane, were very different from the sort of flowery, almost classical speeches that the elite politicians typically gave. And he really caught on with the directness and earthy style of his speech and with the power of the indictment. He leveled against the people he blamed for the problems of what he would call the common white farmer.
SEABROOK: Hmm. Now, after he was elected, he seems to have been pretty calculating and tactical in the ways in which he stripped black citizens of their rights. For example, he asked governor to change the Constitution of South Carolina. What did he do?
Prof. FORD: Well, you're right to say that he was extraordinarily calculating. What Tillman's political movement had done was divided the white population into two different camps: the people who supported Tillman and a group known as the conservatives who opposed him. And even though the conservatives had earlier disfranchised in 1882 approximately 80 percent of the state's African-American population, Tillman saw that even the 20 percent of the state's African-American population who were still able to vote could become an important factor in this factional contest between Tillmanites(ph) and conservatives.
So he was determined to disfranchise the remaining fraction of the black population, and he did so by supporting a call for constitutional convention, which was ultimately held in 1895 in which did, in fact, complete the disfranchisement of state's black population.
SEABROOK: Now, this statue of Ben Tillman on the statehouse grounds was erected in 1940. The plaque on the statue reads in part, quote, "In the home, loving and loyal. To the state, steadfast, true. For the nation, the country belongs to us all and we all belong to it."
Do you, as a historian, Professor Ford, have any opinion on what should be done with this statue, if anything?
Prof. FORD: Well, I think at a minimum, that plaque doesn't capture the real Ben Tillman at all and needs to be changed. He did lead to - his gubernatorial administration did create the Clemson College, now Clemson University and Winthrop, two institutions of higher education. That was for his principle achievements as governor. Because of that, his role at state government is going to be remembered that it really should be remembered for the disfranchisement clause in the Constitution of 1895 as well. And for the really vitriolic version of racism that he used to succeed in politics, that information about Ben Tillman should be well publicized, too.
SEABROOK: Lacy Ford is a historian at the University of South Carolina. Thanks very much, professor.
Prof. FORD: Thank you for having me.
SEABROOK: Well, the weather was sunny for today's Democratic presidential primary in South Carolina. Illinois Senator Barack Obama campaigned up to the last minute in Columbia. Senator Hillary Clinton was also in the state today, though she's been campaigning elsewhere this week.
NPR and npr.org will have results after polls close at 7.pm. Eastern time.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Polling places have just closed in South Carolina, and NPR is projecting that Barack Obama will win based on early returns and exit polls. Those same early returns and exit polls have Hillary Clinton and the state's native son John Edwards in a contest for second place.
NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving is with me here in the studio for our coverage of the South Carolina contest.
Hello, Ron.
RON ELVING: Good to be with you, Andrea.
SEABROOK: And we have reporters in the state with the candidates. Let's go first to NPR's Audie Cornish with the Obama campaign in the state capital of Columbia.
Audie, what's the mood there? Are the Obama supporters feeling confident, celebrating?
AUDIE CORNISH: Well, there's, of course, a lot of cheering going on because there are other outlets besides NPR that are talking about Obama winning this, and so there is - so, people are definitely in good spirit. I should say the place is pretty empty because there are some serious security provisions. And so, people are still being wanded and going through very stringent security lines outside.
SEABROOK: Mmm, interesting. Any word, Audie, on when Senator Obama will speak at this point?
CORNISH: No, there isn't. He is watching the returns in a hotel just up the road. His primary watch party was slated to begin at 7:30. The race is being called quite soon. I mean, compared to last week at the GOP where we didn't hear real, definitive results until quite late in the night. So, there's no word yet about when he'll come out and address the crowd. And the crowd is not fully in the building, yet.
SEABROOK: Ron?
ELVING: Audie, there's been a lot of talk all week about loyalty among black Democrats in South Carolina. Did they feel competing loyalty here to the Clintons that perhaps was overcome by an even greater affinity with Barack Obama?
CORNISH: When I talked to voters, I put this question to them. What they told me is that they felt that the candidates were pretty equal; that they were similar in a lot of issues. And I guess that's where this issue of affinity comes in, because if all things being equal, I guess, why not Barack, which is the response I sort of got from several voters today. And some who - I had one woman say to me, you know, I hate to admit this but his being African-American was a big deal for me. And I like them both, but I ended up going for him when I finally hit the button in the voting booth.
SEABROOK: NPR's Audie Cornish in Columbia.
Thanks for speaking with us and have a good night down there.
CORNISH: Thanks.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
We go now to NPR's David Greene, who's been traveling with Hillary Clinton in South Carolina today.
David, where are you and where is Senator Clinton now?
DAVID GREENE: Well, Andrea, I am at a bar called the Element Nightlife in downtown Columbia. And this is a place where Hillary Clinton's supporters have gathered. There aren't many; maybe a couple of dozen or so. And it's pretty quiet here. There are, you know, red, white and blue balloons up and a lot of Hillary Clinton posters, but no music playing. And people are just sort of watching CNN and the coverage of Obama's victory.
And I was speaking with one campaign staffer from Florence, South Carolina, who was a little disappointed that there was no showing by the candidates here. Hillary Clinton was at a hotel up the street, and there was some expectation among the people here at she might stop by and give a few thank yous, but she has moved on. And she's still on the ground in South Carolina, but is getting a flight and on her way to one of the February 5th states, the state of Tennessee. She's doing an event there later tonight.
SEABROOK: David, if there's any surprise tonight, it is that Senator Clinton is in a - looks like a death heat with John Edwards for the second place here, at least. You know, they're polling neck and neck in the polls now. Should we expect to hear anything from Senator Clinton tonight, and where will she be?
GREENE: We'll have to see. I think she's trying to move the story forward to a February 5th state both physically since she's going there tonight, and that might be where we hear her talk about South Carolina. She does - but her campaign is playing the expectations game, saying that they thought Obama would probably win South Carolina. Also trying to move the story forward and talk about the next state, including Florida, a place where the campaigns had all agreed not to do campaigning, you know, because the party punished Florida for moving up its primary. But nevertheless Hillary Clinton's campaign is saying that is the next state where voters will be going to the polls.
So, I think, we're going to be getting into a big dispute between Hillary Clinton in trying to put this story in Florida over the next couple of days for their Tuesday primary. And that the other candidates saying, hey, we made a deal, we're not going to be campaigning in that state.
RON ELVING: Hey, David, this is Ron. Before we go into that debate and move on into the future, let's keep it just for a moment on these results here in South Carolina. There's been a lot of debate all week about just how much of an investment the Clinton campaign was making in this state. They've said that it wasn't that crucial for her, but then they wound up spending more money on ads there than Barack Obama did. And she was there most of the week.
GREENE: Sort of playing it both ways. You know, they made a big deal out of the fact that she wasn't here the entire time, since she spent a couple of days outside South Carolina. But she was here a lot. She did a lot of events, a lot of advertising, as you said, Ron. And Bill Clinton and Chelsea Clinton both here, so it's hard to make the argument that Clinton campaign that you weren't paying attention to South Carolina. They poured a good deal of money in. They had a staff here. And I think they wanted to win.
ELVING: And Bill Clinton…
SEABROOK: Yeah.
ELVING: I think he was in the state a good part of the week.
GREENE: Quite a bit. We saw a lot of him.
SEABROOK: NPR's David Greene in Columbia, South Carolina.
Thanks very much.
GREENE: Thanks, Andrea.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Ron, let's move it back to you here. I have a few questions for you. It seems we should be hearing now from the Clinton campaign. Are they going to have any reaction to this? I assume they'll have to react.
RON ELVING: Well, I think we'll get some of sort of a release, and that will await whatever the result is between Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. It appears that from the exit polls, John Edwards has won the vote among white voters in South Carolina, and that Hillary Clinton may come out ahead of him however because she is getting a share of the black vote. She's probably getting about 1-in-5 black votes.
SEABROOK: Speaking of John Edwards, let's check in with our reporter that is with the Edwards campaign.
NPR's Adam Hochberg.
I understand, Adam, you were at a party at Gillian's Restaurant in downtown Columbia.
ADAM HOCHBERG: Yeah, in fact, I'm right across the alley from the place where David Greene is with Hillary Clinton. All three of the candidates here are within about two blocks from each other tonight. Columbia is not a very large town.
SEABROOK: This is a really important state for Edwards. He run lots of ads there. And what were his hopes for tonight, Adam?
HOCHBERG: Well, his hopes really were pretty modest. They may have started out at the beginning of the campaign, and I'm talking like a year ago because he did, in fact, win South Carolina in the 2004 primaries. But in the last several months, there's been very little hope on the campaign that he could finish first. There was maybe a glimmer of hope in the last week or so that he could challenge Hillary Clinton for second place. There was at least one poll that showed Edwards with a bit of a surge. But really the issue here now for this campaign is just about accumulating some delegates, not finishing first, maybe not finishing second, just getting a few delegates maybe in South Carolina, enough to have some kind of input on the nominating process of the Democratic convention.
SEABROOK: Let me just take one second here, Adam, hang on.
And let me ask you, Ron, what do we know about how close the race for second place is between Hillary Clinton and John Edwards right now?
ELVING: It's certainly much closer than the race between number one and number two. So, this is probably going to take us a little bit of time to sort out in the poll. But it's quite clear that Obama is going to finish in a strong first place.
SEABROOK: Adam, back there in Columbia. Do we have any indication of whether and when Senator Edwards will speak tonight?
HOCHBERG: You know, we do expect Senator Edwards to come down and speak at some point. We don't know what time. The polls just closed about 14 minutes ago by my watch. So, it's going to take awhile for a significant number of precincts to come in and for Senator Edwards to speak. And he is planning to hit the road from here, and be in two other Southern states tomorrow, Tennessee and Georgia - an indication that, at least, (unintelligible) schedule was put together a couple of days ago. He plan to continue on and continue his Southern strategy.
SEABROOK: NPR's Adam Hochberg with the Edwards campaign in Columbia, South Carolina.
Thanks, Adam.
HOCHBERG: Thank you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Now, updating our top story tonight. Barack Obama has won by a wide margin in today's Democratic primary in South Carolina. With more than 75 percent of the vote counted at this point, Obama has 54 percent of the vote, Hillary Clinton has 27 percent, and John Edwards 19 percent.
Earlier in the hour, former President Bill Clinton responded to the results from the town of Independence, Missouri, the hometown of Harry Truman. Here's a little bit of what he had to say.
President BILL CLINTON: We just finished in South Carolina today. Senator Obama won there. Hillary congratulated him, and I joined that. Now, what a minute, no. He won fair and square. We went there and ask the people to vote for us. They voted for him. We congratulate him. Now, we go to February 5th, when millions of Americans finally get in the act. I was saying that.
SEABROOK: There were no primaries or caucuses today on the Republican side. The GOP primary in South Carolina was last Saturday. The next Republican vote comes this Tuesday, the 29th, in Florida.
Watching the returns with me in the studio is NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving. Hi, there, Ron.
RON ELVING: Good to be with you, Andrea.
SEABROOK: It's great always to have you here. And we've been talking all evening with NPR's Audie Cornish in Columbia, South Carolina. First, Audie, let me ask you, we're waiting for the winner to come out at this point and talk. What's the - how's the excitement level there right now?
AUDIE CORNISH: Well, between the marching bands and the gospel music and the occasional beach balls that are going back and forth over the crowd, I would say it's pretty festive at this point and it's currently getting towards the goal.
SEABROOK: It seems as if, Audie, that the vote today was pretty racially polarized - big majority of blacks for Obama, big majority of whites for Clinton and Edwards. What does the crowd look like at the Obama event tonight?
CORNISH: Well, I think the crowd and the vote is actually very reflective of the state. We're comparing these both at New Hampshire and Iowa, first of all, where population of African-American is up around 2 percent.
Here, African-Americans dominate the Democratic Party. They are the Democratic Party in a lot of ways. And the crowd reflects that. I always say, very much, it's a majority African-American crowd. And that there are many whites here, and all the whites here, I noticed that they are on the younger side - that these are college-aged students who are out there in front, mixing it up with the crowds.
ELVING: You know - Audie, this is Ron. Barack Obama has tried to make his campaign about everything but race so far. Is this result tonight going to make harder for him?
CORNISH: Well, it's interesting. What is the chance of (unintelligible) besides fired up Obama-Obama is race doesn't matter. That's one of the things that the crowd is really yelling at the top of their lungs. And they're trying to make the argument that he's - the campaigns are trying to make the argument their that he's done well in Iowa, that he's done well with independents in New Hampshire, and that he can move forward. And that this vote should not be seen as something that should hold him back, the presumption that African-American's support for him, something that people, you know, were concerned that he wouldn't get.
SEABROOK: NPR's Audie Cornish tonight with the Obama campaign in South Carolina. Audie, it sounds pretty exciting down there.
CORNISH: It is. It seems that they're fired up.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: Also joining us is NPR's David Greene, who was also in Columbia, but without a candidate at the moment.
David, the Clinton people who you were with before have tried to spin this as an Obama state from the start. But was it a month ago?
DAVID GREENE: I don't think it was, Andrea. You know, Hillary Clinton was leading in the polls here as late as December and her campaign was speaking confidently about South Carolina. She invested a lot of money and a lot of ads in the state. And even in the final days, she was here. Bill Clinton was campaigning across the state. They were splitting up to try and cover more ground. So even though they put out a memo today, suggesting that Barack Obama had the state wrapped up for a long time, I don't think if you would ask them that, a few weeks ago, that's exactly what they would've exactly said. But certainly, the expectations came today.
SEABROOK: David Greene, what do you make of having Hillary Clinton's most famous surrogate, Bill Clinton, come out tonight and congratulate the winner?
GREENE: It's hard to say. I mean, Hillary Clinton didn't even react to the result in South Carolina. You know, she got out of dodge and went on to one of the February 5th states, Tennessee, leaving a lot of her supporters at a bar downtown without her. But the decisions - have Bill Clinton come out, you know?
One thing we learned in South Carolina is the last week or two, the Clinton campaign is not going to hesitate to bring former President Bill Clinton out. I don't think that's going to change after these results and I think they might be sending a message that he's going to be a big part of their campaign team and a big part of the message as we go on to these huge states next week.
SEABROOK: NPR's David Greene with the Clinton supporters in South Carolina. Thank you, David.
GREENE: Thanks, Andrea.
So Ron Elving, senior Washington editor NPR, let me ask you. Let's just walk through the results and the effect on each major candidate.
First off, Barack Obama.
ELVING: Barack Obama has had a chance tonight to pull even. It's two-to-two in Democratic events. He has a little bit of his momentum back from Iowa, and he's in a better position to compete when we go on to February 5th.
SEABROOK: Hillary Clinton.
ELVING: Hillary Clinton is, I think, still in the driver's seat, because going into those states, she has more ground game, she has more proven appeal across the board, she has more states where we think she can win, but (unintelligible) the delegates or at least the majority of the delegates. So while this week in sort of somewhat, she is still the dominant position going into February 5th.
SEABROOK: And South Carolina native son John Edwards.
ELVING: John Edwards is the third man in a two-person race. And nothing that happened tonight is going to make it any easier for him to get into that race. Now, he has to ask himself the question what role is he playing as the campaign goes forward.
SEABROOK: What about Florida now? There was news there today ahead of the Tuesday vote, wasn't there?
ELVING: Pretty good sized news, really. The popular Republican governor there, Charlie Crist, has been courted by all the major Republican contestants in that state. And he has decided tonight to endorse John Mcain. Now, that goes with the endorsement John McCain had already won from the state's one Republican senator, Mel Martinez, who is…
SEABROOK: And three Republican members of Congress, also important especially in the Cuban American community.
ELVING: That's right. And of course, Mel Martinez being the highest-elected Cuban American official in that state. So all of those things strongly suggesting that the Republican establishment is beginning to get behind John McCain and his very close race with Mitt Romney in that state.
SEABROOK: NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving. Thank you very much for being in the studio.
ELVING: My pleasure, Andrea.
SEABROOK: And thanks to all our correspondents out in the field.
From NPR News, that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
John Grisham has sold more than 60 million books. His back-to-back best-sellers made him the bestselling author of the 1990s. And then there were the movie adaptations. "The Firm" has grossed more than $270 million worldwide.
But before his prodigious career as a writer of popular fiction, John Grisham was a lawyer and a politician, a member of the state legislature in his native Mississippi. His new novel, "The Appeal," is set in Mississippi. It's the story of a dirty political campaign for a seat on that state's Supreme Court.
NPR's Jacki Lyden spoke with him earlier this week.
JACKI LYDEN: John Grisham joins me now. And welcome to the program.
Mr. JOHN GRISHAM (Novelist): My pleasure.
LYDEN: This book is a gripping read. Two trial lawyers have basically leveraged everything to try a case against a big chemical company. Lots of people have been hurt and killed by this company. And they win a local verdict, but then comes the appeal. So what does the big chemical company have to do?
Mr. GRISHAM: After the big verdict, obviously, there are going to be a lot more lawsuits. And so the chemical company looks around. They survey the political and judicial landscape and they realize that in Mississippi, like a majority of the states in this country, the appellate court judges on the Supreme Court are elected by the people. So they dive headlong into Mississippi politics with the goal of replacing a judge they consider to be unfriendly with one that they think will be more sympathetic to the chemical company.
LYDEN: So I gather, John Grisham, that you would think that state Supreme Courts in this country are in danger of being bought and sold.
Mr. GRISHAM: Yes. And it's a terrible problem. It's not unusual in a lot of states for litigants - people with cases on appeal to the state's Supreme Court - Ohio, Texas, Alabama - it's all over the place - where the litigants - the big corporations on one side, the big trial lawyers on the other, make huge campaign contributions to the elections of the very judges who are going to be deciding the case. And oftentimes, these judges do not recuse themselves. It is a terrible system.
LYDEN: You know, there was a time when novelists were really known for writing about social issues. I'm thinking of people like Upton Sinclair who wrote about the meatpacking industry in Chicago or Lincoln Steffens, Bret Harte, others, who, as the country became more industrialized, wrote about a lot of what happened to workers and what used to be called the common man. Do you see yourself in that tradition?
Mr. GRISHAM: Occasionally. The last book was "The Innocent Man," published a couple of years ago. And it was a story about wrongful convictions and exonerations. And it...
LYDEN: A non-fiction book.
Mr. GRISHAM: Non-fiction book. And there was a lot of anger in that book, because once I've researched the story and realized what had happened at these two guys, and how it could have easily been prevented and the way they were abused by the system, and also the death penalty system. You know, I think I write two different kinds of books. Some books are just pure entertainment. Others deal with an issue. And I think those are the better books because they make the reader stop and think about something that he or she may not be thinking about.
LYDEN: Let's go back into "The Appeal," your novel. You've written a real love letter here to trial lawyers in the book. May I just quote?
(Reading) "Trial lawyers, always a colorful and eclectic bunch. Cowboys, rogues, radicals, longhairs, corporate suits, flamboyant mavericks, bikers, deacons, good old boys, street hustlers, pure ambulance chasers, faces from billboards and yellow pages and early morning television - they were anything but boring."
Mr. GRISHAM: Listen, I still love them. They are...
LYDEN: Come through.
Mr. GRISHAM: Now, they're outrageous and they drive you crazy. I was a member of the trial lawyers for 10 years. I would go to state conventions and we're going to almost have fistfights. But it's a group of independent individualists, cowboys, eccentrics, but they love a good fight. They love a good courtroom battle. And they are united in their belief that they are representing little people who have been injured by corporate wrongdoers.
LYDEN: I'm just wondering if there's times when you missed the sort of passion and drama, the crucible that the courtrooms can have and wish you were in there. Or does writing fiction sate that for you?
Mr. GRISHAM: I don't think I have ever missed practicing law. I never had any fun in a courtroom. It is very, very stressful work. You know, I'm fortunate enough to be able to sort of do it vicariously through novels. And there are a lot of people who want to write legal thrillers and I can usually read the first chapter and tell whether or not that person is a lawyer. Because, you know, you have a certain body of knowledge that it's hard to go research if you don't have it. That's one reason that the books, for me, are not difficult to write because it's just something I know.
LYDEN: You know, I've looked through some of the information on you. And you said, well, the book wasn't hard to write. But I can't believe that you don't look at a sentence and think is that exactly where I wanted to go with that thought. So when you say it's not hard to write...
Mr. GRISHAM: When I say they're not difficult to write, sure, it's a lot of hard work. But I never - once I got into "The Appeal" - and I really got into the rhythm of the story and the pacing of the plot, there's never a down day. There's never a day when I sit down and look at the blank screen and say what am I going to write today. Because by the time I wake up that morning and, you know, have the first cup of coffee, I know where it's going to be. And I can't wait to go do it.
LYDEN: I can imagine that writers listening to this all over America are smacking their foreheads and wishing for a little of that.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Well, it's been a real pleasure talking with you.
Mr. GRISHAM: My pleasure, too.
LYDEN: John Grisham's latest novel is called "The Appeal."
Thanks ever so much.
Mr. GRISHAM: Thank you, Jacki.
SEABROOK: "The Appeal" will be released on Tuesday. You can read an excerpt about the verdict that set the whole story in motion at npr.org/books.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Our parting words tonight are fittingly about the act of writing. There is a wealth of great writing about writing. Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American writer Alice Walker said: Writing saves me from the sin and inconvenience of violence. American aphorist Mason Cooley said: Writing is a refuge from unhappiness, but has its own sorrows. And British novelist Iris Murdoch wrote: Writing is like getting married. One should never commit one's self until one is amazed at one's luck.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: And that's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Andrea Seabrook. Have a great week.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
The Republican delegates from Tuesday's Florida primary will be counted, however. That contest is just two days away. And it's the first state where all the candidates are competing at full speed.
Rudy Giuliani has spent the most time in Florida in recent weeks, while Mitt Romney has run the most television ads. Still, it was John McCain who scored the endorsement of the state's Republican governor over the weekend.
NPR's Scott Horsley has more.
Governor CHARLIE CRIST (Republican, Florida): Hi. How are you? Good to see you as well. Have a good day...
SCOTT HORSLEY: Florida Governor Charlie Crist accompanied John McCain in a visit to a downtown Tampa restaurant this morning. Crist is the latest in a string of Florida politicians to throw their support to the Arizona senator. Crist called McCain an American hero.
Gov. CRIST: You talk about somebody who is tenacious and unyielding and persistent. John McCain defines all of that in so many ways.
HORSLEY: McCain says Crist's backing could give his campaign some extra momentum heading into Tuesday's primary here. But he also took the long view, saying Crist's popularity and the strength of the Republican Party in Florida will be an asset in the general election, come November.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): I know that in November, I can carry the state of Florida, which is vital to the success of a Republican nominee.
HORSLEY: McCain's professed ability to carry Florida and other swing states by attracting independents could be a critical factor with some voters here, even those who disagree with the senator on certain issues like immigration.
Political analyst Susan MacManus of the University of South Florida says many voters here are as concerned with electability as they are with ideology.
Ms. SUSAN MacMANUS (Political Analyst, University of South Florida): Everybody here has got one eye on Tuesday and one eye on November. So for some Republicans, the fact that he attracts independents - as have been shown in other states - may be exactly a reason that they vote for him now, the electability in November.
HORSLEY: Republican rival Mitt Romney has been making the counter argument, saying McCain's appeal to independents won't help him in Tuesday's primary. That's because, unlike the contest in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Florida's primary is open only to Republicans. In fact, the Romney camp has been using McCain's moderate appeal as a club this weekend, branding the Arizona senator Democrats' favorite Republican, and hyping Bill Clinton's comment that McCain and Hillary Clinton are very close. Romney is campaigning as a Washington outsider, hoping to appeal to both fiscal and social conservatives.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Republican Governor, Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): We're going to come together and change Washington for the better, deal with the problems we have, make sure that we have strong families and a strong military and a strong economy again to make sure that America is always the hope of the Earth.
HORSLEY: Polls show one-time frontrunner Rudy Giuliani has slipped behind both McCain and Romney here, and possibly behind the cash-strapped Iowa caucus winner Mike Huckabee as well. But thanks to early voting, some Giuliani supporters have already locked in their choices. Giuliani reminded backers at a Republican dinner in Sarasota, Friday, his own unconventional bid for the nomination is also based, in part, on electability, even in places where Republicans don't ordinarily do well.
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York City; Presidential Candidate): The day after I'm nominated, we are not going to close down the offices in New York and in California and in Illinois and in Michigan. We're going to fight for the votes there. We're not going to win every state. But we're going to have a competitive fight in every state.
HORSLEY: And no one knows more about competitive presidential fights than the voters here in Florida.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Tampa.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
Tomorrow night, President Bush will deliver his last State of the Union Address. Afterwards, the Democratic Party's response will be delivered by Kathleen Sebelius. She's the extremely popular Democratic governor of Kansas, a state dominated by Republicans. The Democrats are once again putting forward one of their rising stars from a red state to give their rebuttal.
NPR's Jason Beaubien reports from Kansas City on who Sebelius is and how she governs.
JASON BEAUBIEN: Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius is a moderate Democrat who's not only survived but thrived among members of the opposition. In a state in which only 26 percent of voters are registered Democrats, Sebelius won her second term in a landslide. Her poll numbers peaked last fall with roughly 70 percent of Kansans approving of her job performance.
Professor BOB BEATTY (Political Science, Washburn University): Governor Sebelius is one of the smartest politicians I've watched and studied.
BEAUBIEN: Bob Beatty is an associate professor of political science at Washburn University in Topeka. Beatty says Sebelius understands where the majority lies in Kansas politics.
Prof. BEATTY: She downplays the fact that she's a Democrat. And she just says I want the government to work. And then she stresses things that are very popular in Kansas. One is education. The second is patriotism and concern for Kansans who are in the military.
BEAUBIEN: Beatty says the governor is a cautious politician. She's pro-choice but rarely mentions this in a state where anti-abortion sentiment is strong. She opposed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, but wasn't going to fight about it. During her 2006 reelection campaign, her television ads never mentioned party affiliation. They call her independent as she touts herself as a no-nonsense-get-things-done politician.
Governor KATHLEEN SEBELIUS (Democrat, Kansas): Ensuring a prosperous future and great schools in every corner of Kansas, early childhood learning, a university system that's second to none and making Kansas a national leader in energy independence - these are our goals and the reason I'm eager to keep Kansas moving forward.
BEAUBIEN: Her moderation comes in part because she comes from a mixed political family. Her father, John Gilligan, was a Democratic governor of Ohio, her father-in-law, Keith Sebelius, was a Republican congressman from Kansas.
Beatty of Washburn University says this tells you a lot about Sebelius.
Prof. BEATTY: She had to learn to get along with Republicans in the state.
BEAUBIEN: Sebelius not only got along with Republicans, she also got several high-profile members of the GOP to change their party affiliation and join her administration. Both her lieutenant governors were such converts; one of them, Mark Parkinson, was the former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party. Needless to say, Sebelius has driven state GOP officials crazy.
Mr. CHRISTIAN MORGAN (Executive Director, Kansas Republican Party): She and I have been basic political opponents for the last couple of year, maybe a few years.
BEAUBIEN: Christian Morgan is the executive director of the Kansas Republican Party. He managed the campaign against Sebelius' reelection in 2006. In his office in a strip mall in Topeka, Morgan says Sebelius is an expert politician, but he doesn't mean this as a compliment.
Mr. MORGAN: She ducks the hard issues. She holds press conferences where she doesn't take any questions. She does not show much leadership in the legislature unless the polls really direct her to.
BEAUBIEN: While there's criticism from GOP stalwarts in Topeka, praise has been heaped on her by Democrats in Washington. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in announcing that Sebelius would give the Democratic response to the State of the Union address, calls her a forward-thinking leader who demonstrates the power of reaching across the political aisle.
Last year, Sebelius chaired the Democratic Governors Association and helped raise millions of dollars for Democratic gubernatorial candidates. And adding to her national exposure, the 59-year-old Sebelius also appears in the current issue of Vogue magazine. The lead photo is of her in a sleeveless Oscar de la Renta dress in front of a mural of the lady of justice. The article is just as flattering.
Jason Beaubien, NPR News, Kansas City.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
New fighting today in Kenya. Rival tribes have been burning homes and going on murderous rampages since last month's disputed presidential election. The death toll is now estimated at more than 700.
NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton flew by helicopter today over the area of most of the clashes. She got a first-hand look at the fighting, much of it led by gangs of youths.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON: So I'm flying over the Rift Valley heading back to the capital of Nairobi about 100 kilometers away. What I'm looking at now we can see a dense cloud. You hardly see anybody on the street, but it looks as if there are youths who are engaged in running battles. I didn't quite believe it. It's hard to know the numbers, but it seem that youths especially are forming themselves in sort of a rolling gang and then going into different communities. And it will be pushing people, driving them out of their homes, burning their homes and burning their belongings.
SEABROOK: Ofeibea Quist-Arcton is now back in Nairobi and joins us.
Welcome, Ofeibea.
QUIST-ARCTON: Hello and greetings from Nairobi.
SEABROOK: The Rift Valley that you flew over today in the helicopter is known to many people as a tourist destination, it's full of wildlife. What you saw today must have created quite a contrast.
QUIST-ARCTON: Indeed, I mean, the rolling hills of the Rift Valley, the pink flamingos, zebra and even rhinoceros. And just - not even 30 miles away both sides of the lake, in Naivasha first and then in Nakuru, there is a scene that is absolutely devastating.
We actually touched down in Nakuru, where for the past 48 hours there has been fighting or at least killings. And it was there in this stadium which we saw from the air full, chock-a-block, absolutely full of especially women and children because they've been chased from their homes. People were asking for their husbands, saying we're going to kill them. People who have been displaced - those are, in fact, the lucky ones, those who have got away with their lives. Others have died. And we're talking about hundreds of deaths now in Kenya since the disputed election results.
SEABROOK: As you say, Ofeibea, this violence began after the presidential election. Kofi Annan, a former U.N. secretary-general, has been trying to mediate between President Kibaki, who had himself sworn in for another term, and Raila Odinga, his rival who's challenged the election results. Kofi Annan also toured the Rift Valley yesterday, and he said, quote, "Let's not kid ourselves and think that this is electoral problems." What did he mean, Ofeibea?
QUIST-ARCTON: Exactly that. That the catalyst for what's going on in Kenya now was this disputed election that Raila Odinga, the opposition leader, said he won and President Mwai Kibaki said he won. But in a very short time all the old enmities between Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe and Raila Odinga's Luo tribe allied to the Kalenjin and others have all bubbled to the surface. So now, what we're seeing is not just a political problem, but it's old vendettas over water rights, over position, over privilege that go back generations. So Kofi Annan, who's trying to mediate between the two political rivals, is saying, Kenya, address these issues now, otherwise they'll come back to haunt you.
SEABROOK: Let's listen to Kofi Annan from yesterday.
Mr. KOFI ANNAN (Former Secretary-General, United Nations): We cannot accept that periodically, every five years or so, this sort of incident takes place and no one is held to account. Impunity cannot be allowed to stand.
SEABROOK: So, Ofeibea, what is the Kenyan government doing to control this or to attempt to?
QUIST-ARCTON: In the Rift Valley, where I was, there was police backed up by the military. And for the first time in this current conflict, the military has entered into this, trying to calm things down. But most Kenyans will tell you the problem is our politicians, when it suits them, they use us and we fight against one another. Whereas, in normal times, we live in peace, Kikuyu by Luo by Kalenjin by Maasai by Turkana by the Luhya. But the politicians, when they feel that they need us to show that they are powerful, they use us. And I think that is one of the core problems here in Kenya. But it doesn't absolve, of course, the civilians themselves because it's civilians who are taking up arms to kill the people they see as their enemies and their rivals.
SEABROOK: NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton in Nairobi.
Thanks very much, Ofeibea.
QUIST-ARCTON: Always a pleasure.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
A Kenyan human rights official came to Washington this past week to make sure the Bush administration is paying attention to the crisis in his homeland. It's a country that is key to security across Africa.
NPR's Michele Kelemen has that story.
MICHELE KELEMEN: After meetings at the State Department, Maina Kiai roamed the halls of Capitol Hill with a message. He says the conflict in Kenya is complex and the U.S. should not simply gloss over the need for fundamental political and judicial reform in his homeland.
Mr. MAINA KIAI (Chairman, Kenya National Commission on Human Rights): We are at a turning point in the history of Kenya that needs to be dealt with seriously and comprehensively and to avoid ideas of a quick fix. This is not just about elections. It's about deep cleavages in our society that are political.
KELEMEN: Political, he emphasizes, not simply ethnic. Kiai is the chairman of the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights, a body set up by President Mwai Kibaki. But he's not siding with the president in this crisis. In fact, he says the Bush administration and the international community as a whole needs to be doing much more to get Kibaki to negotiate in good faith with opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Mr. KIAI: He believes that the longer it takes, the longer he draws this out, then maybe people will forget, maybe a crisis somewhere else in the world will happen and the world will turn its attention away from Kenya. So we're saying no, this is the time for considered action, the time to put pressure on President Kibaki, and to sustain this over the long term no matter what else happens in the world.
KELEMEN: The Bush administration embraced Kibaki early on. President Bush even hosted a rare state dinner for the Kenyan leader back in 2003, so Kiai thinks the U.S. should have the influence it needs. If that doesn't work, he says, the U.S. should consider imposing travel bans on those he describes as the intransigent hardliners in Kibaki's government. Kiai says he's now being targeted by those hardliners. He's been under surveillance at home and receiving threatening calls.
Mr. KIAI: I happen to come from the same village as President Kibaki. And in a sense, there's now a circling of the wagons, if you wish, and there's an expectation that because of the levels of fear that have been generated on all sides in this debate, there's a sense that you must speak the same line so the community can survive.
KELEMEN: He sees an attempt by both sides to isolate and eliminate moderate voices in Kenya and groups like his, which now has a heavy load investigating human rights abuses on the part of the government and the opposition. Another group, Human Rights Watch, blame the opposition for orchestrating some of the post-election violence. Kiai says all of this should matter to the U.S.
Mr. KIAI: And if Kenya is unstable, as it's likely to be if we don't fix this and fix it properly, is going to be immeasurably bad for the United States government on the war on terror - their policy - because unstable government means easy movement of people who want to cause harm. So it's in the U.S. interest to take this thing seriously.
KELEMEN: Maina Kiai says he's trying to disabuse the U.S. of the idea of simply pushing for a power-sharing arrangement between Kibaki and Odinga. He says what's needed in Kenya is an overhaul of the political system away from what he calls the imperial presidency or the winner-takes-all system, which he says has led to the violence Kenya is seeing today.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
George Habash died this weekend. Habash was the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was the mastermind of a campaign of airline hijackings and other terrorist attacks in the 1960s and '70s.
One scholar who followed his career is Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University.
Thank you for joining me, Professor Khalidi.
Professor RASHID KHALIDI (Director, Middle East Institute, Columbia University): You're most welcome.
SEABROOK: What made George Habash so important?
Prof. KHALIDI: Well, he was the founder - before he founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, he was the co-founder of a group called the Arab Nationalist Movement or the Movement of Arab Nationalists, which was one of the first Palestinian groups to arise after the defeat of 1948. So it played an enormously important role in the resurrection of Palestinian nationalism.
The second reason was that he was quite charismatic. He won people over with the persuasiveness of his rhetoric rather than by tubthumping. I guess the last reason he was important is that he was associated with people like Wadih Haddad, who was the actual mastermind of the hijackings that brought notoriety to the PFLP and the Palestinians.
SEABROOK: He was a Marxist.
Prof. KHALIDI: He was, indeed, later on in his career. When he started out, he was a nationalist.
SEABROOK: What was his relationship later with Yasser Arafat and others in the Palestinian movement? It wasn't a comfy one.
Prof. KHALIDI: No, it was quite contentious. They were rivals. And in the early years, really, I would argue that Habash, with the support of the Egyptian government, was probably more popular in many ways than Arafat and Fatah, and it was only in the late '60s that Fatah became ascendant in Palestinian politics.
SEABROOK: George Habash died in Amman, Jordan this weekend, but didn't Jordan expel Habash's Palestinian guerrillas back in 1970 after...
Prof. KHALIDI: '71.
SEABROOK: '71.
Prof. KHALIDI: Absolutely, yes, after Black September. In September 1970, there was a terrible battle between the Jordanian army and the Palestinians dug in in the refugee camps with very heavy casualties among the refugees. In the following spring, the Jordanian army closed in and expelled the PLO and all of the factions of the PLO, including Habash's. He was allowed to return much later. He had left leadership of the PFLP in 2000. He was old and infirm, much respected in his old age, and the Jordanian government considered him harmless.
SEABROOK: I just want to tick through a few of the things that at least partial responsibility...
Prof. KHALIDI: Mm-hmm.
SEABROOK: ...lay with George Habash - the 1968 hijacking of an El Al airplane.
Prof. KHALIDI: The first major Palestinian hijacking was carried out by the PFLP.
SEABROOK: A 1969 bomb in a Jerusalem supermarket. And 1970, you spoke of hijacking three Western jets to an airstrip outside Amman...
Prof. KHALIDI: Yup.
SEABROOK: ...holding hostages...
Prof. KHALIDI: That was an action, if I can interrupt, that was an action that was much criticized by other Palestinians because it provoked the Jordanian army into its crackdown in Black September.
SEABROOK: 1972 machine gun attack by Japanese Red Army on Tel Aviv airport, 1976 hijack of Air France plane to Entebbe, Uganda. That may be the one most people remember.
Prof. KHALIDI: Mm-hmm. There are many others, actually. Those were the most prominent, I think. In all of these, there was deep division especially after Black September. There was enormous criticism, mainly from other groups but also from within the PFLP, of what was seen as the adventurism and the irresponsibility of Habash and his closest comrade Wadie Haddad, who was really the operational mastermind of these attacks. And later on, the PFLP split in 1972 over just these opportunistic operations, which Habash had criticized eventually. He came around to agreeing with his critics within the PFLP but secretly he and Haddad continued them until, as you say, Entebbe in '76.
There's one other thing that I think should be said about Habash, which is that he was a fierce secularist. It's interesting to go back and look at the degree to which he and his comrades in the PFLP argued for the separation of religion and politics and the degree to which in effect, I think, it has to be argued, sort of Cold War imperatives led these secular Marxist leftist radical groups to be seen as enemies by people like Israeli intelligence and American intelligence services who in the case of the Israelis cultivated their Islamic rivals, giving us later on groups like Hamas.
SEABROOK: Rashid Khalidi is Edward Said professor of Arab studies at Columbia University. He's also the author of "The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood."
Thanks very much for speaking with us.
Prof. KHALIDI: A pleasure.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
It has stood for 170 years, withstood a revolution and two World Wars. It has long outlived the empress for which it was named and the empire she helped rule. But now, the famous Sisi palm in Vienna must lose its head, like so many royals. The tree named after Austrian Empress Elizabeth has grown too tall for its home in the palm house of Vienna's Schoenbrunn Palace Gardens. It must be chopped down before it breaks through the glass-paneled roof.
Bethany Bell of the BBC has been following the story, and we have her on the line now. Hello there, Bethany Bell.
Ms. BETHANY BELL (Correspondent, BBC News): Hi.
SEABROOK: Tell us the history of this fabulous tree. I understand that thousands of tourists come to see it every year, the Sisi Palm.
Ms. BELL: Yes, it's the centerpiece of what's believed to be the largest and one of certainly the most ornamental greenhouses in Europe. And the Sisi Palm has been the centerpiece of it for many years. In fact, it was the successor to another tree, which was named after another empress of Austria, Maria Theresia, which was the centerpiece from the time when the greenhouse was built in 1882. But right now, if you go, like many of those tourists and you visit the place, you see that the palm is right up against the roof, 82 feet high and it's sort of really banging against the glass. And if they leave it any longer, it's going to break right through.
SEABROOK: Now the Sisi palm was named for the famous Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Hungary and planted, we think, in 1938 and brought into the palm house in the 1880s. Empress Elizabeth was a character, huh? She was sort of like the Princess Di of the day.
Ms. BELL: Very much so. She wrote poetry. She was believed to suffer from eating disorders, again rather like Princess Diana. She rebelled very much against the very strict rules of the court and she use to like spending time in the Mediterranean, she used to like escaping to Hungary. And in fact, legend has it that she was extremely fond of possibly even this palm tree because it reminded her of the Mediterranean.
Now, we're not quite sure how this palm tree came into the Hofburg collection, but it certainly belonged to the Hofburg for a good 40 years before the greenhouse was built. So it's likely that the Empress Sisi knew it even in an earlier incarnation. And it became the centerpiece of the palm house after the Second World War because a number of the palm trees didn't survive that period because it suffered bone damage. But then this palm tree has been the centerpiece since 1950s but now, of course, it's getting just too tall.
SEABROOK: Why can't they just prune it? Why do they have to chop it down? I mean, I'm starting to get sad they're going to chop this palm down.
Ms. BELL: Well, unfortunately, gardeners say that you can't cut back a genuine palm tree, that if you try and prune a palm tree, it's just going to die. So they said they have two terrible alternatives before them, either that the glasshouse is - this fantastic glasshouse breaks or they'll have to kill the tree. So the tree, unfortunately, is going, and the date to that is 18th of February. So people have a very short time to go and pay their respects to the Sisi palm tree.
SEABROOK: Bethany Bell is the BBC correspondent in Vienna. Thanks so much.
Ms. BELL: Thank you very much.
(Soundbite of music)
SEABROOK: Now as devastating as the lost of the Sisi Palm will be for horticulturalists, it pales with the losses felt now by the French bank, Societe Generale. Bank officials gave new details today about the schemes of a low-level employee who managed to carry out fraudulent trades that cost the bank more than $7 billion.
Jerome Kerviel used other people's computer access codes and falsified documents to enter fictitious trades. The bank won't rule out the possibility that he did have accomplices. Kerviel's lawyer says incredibly that his client did not profit from the schemes.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
The Sundance Film Festival is wrapping up today. As usual, it was a sprawling affair that brought what appeared to be several armies into the small town of Park City, Utah. There were the studios and filmmakers doing business, the film lovers sampling flicks, and then there were the people selling mountains of stuff that had nothing at all to do with movies.
NPR's Kim Masters had a look around.
KIM MASTERS: The consensus seems to be the movies with the biggest buzz were disappointments and film sales were slow. The trade paper Variety said there was even a bit of a swag backlash with celebrities seeming to avoid the many gifting suites.
(Soundbite of noise)
MASTERS: But that doesn't mean there weren't plenty of marketers vying for attention.
Unidentified Woman #1: Come on by, you get $500 off on Lasik surgery.
Unidentified Woman #2: And in about 4 to 6 weeks, you'll see results longer, thicker, fuller lashes.
Unidentified Woman #3: My invention called Song Pods(ph). Here's the one to hear.
MASTERS: The madness of the scene does not gratify John Cooper who's in charge of selecting the films that will show at Sundance.
Mr. JOHN COOPER (Director of Programming, Sundance Film Festival): It's part of it. Does it always feel good? No. You wish sometimes that you could keep it more pure, but, you know, that's the way the world is now.
(Soundbite of music and crowd noise)
MASTERS: All along the main streets, storefronts have been transformed into places where products are on display, and in many cases being given away.
Ms. KARYN RASA(ph) (Event Producer, Project Greenhouse): So this is Project Greenhouse, and we are all about showcasing the latest in eco design, everything from food to fashion, to travel, decor, transportation, you name it.
MASTERS: That's Karyn Rasa, the event producer for Project Greenhouse. Like many others at Sundance, her event emphasizes environmental correctness. Here, cocktails like pomegranate cosmopolitans and lavender lemon drops are flowing freely. There are swag bags full of eco-friendly bathrobes and candles.
Ms. RAVA: These are organic facials and massages. We have these awesome products that smell fantastic and feel great. Our guests are loving it, being pampered.
MASTERS: Andrew Ruff(ph) is an agent here to sell movies.
Mr. ANDREW RUFF: I never like stopping and getting these things done, but it smells so amazing.
(Soundbite of music)
MASTERS: Late Saturday night, Motorola throws a party in a warehouse a bit off the main drag. David Pinsky is director of entertainment marketing.
Mr. DAVID PINSKY (Director of Entertainment Marketing, Motorola): The relationships that we have with the celebrities in addition to the writers, producers, directors, they sort of act as ambassadors of our brand. When they walk around with our products, it's a way to market your product and brand your product without essentially doing traditional advertising.
MASTERS: The seemingly ubiquitous Paris Hilton drops by. Pinsky says Hilton isn't paid to show up but she doesn't need to be - she gets free merchandise.
Mr. PINSKY: You know, a couple of years ago, when we introduced the pink Razr, we gave it, you know, perfect example, like, Paris and Nicky. They walked around it everywhere with that product. They were photographed with it over and over and over.
(Soundbite of music)
MASTERS: At this point, Main Street is jammed with people. There are parties going on inside many of the shops and gatekeepers with lists are posted outside, trying to keep out the uninvited. The crowd does not include John Sloss(ph). He's one of the most active sellers of film at Sundance with 19 movies on the block. And he says the orgy of swag doesn't even impinge on his consciousness.
Mr. JOHN SLOSS: There are two festivals here. There is the sort of ambush marketing festival that exists on the periphery and then at its core there's the film festival. People who are at the core of this festival as a festival are largely oblivious to the hucksterism.
MASTERS: Apparently, having millions of dollars at stake goes a long way towards focusing the mind.
Kim Masters, NPR News.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
It didn't get much notice this past week in the conventional media anyway, but a battle has been raging on the Internet.
Mr. RYAN SINGEL (Blogger, Wired.com): Currently, the Church of Scientology Web site is being attacked by a group of, kind of a loose confederation of online troublemakers who call themselves Anonymous. And they are using various pieces of software to kind of flood that Web site with fake traffic in an attempt to keep it down.
SEABROOK: That's Ryan Singel of wired.com. He says this group, Anonymous, mostly pulls off technologically sophisticated pranks on the Web, like blitzing chat rooms with spam and ordering dozens of pizzas for people they don't like. But this time, it appears, Anonymous means business. They declared war on the Church of Scientology in a most fitting way - a YouTube video.
(Soundbite of a YouTube video)
Synthesized Voice: Leaders of Scientology, we are Anonymous. Over the years, we have been watching you, your campaigns of misinformation, your suppression of dissent, your litigious nature - all of these things have caught our eye. Anonymous has, therefore, decided that your organization should be destroyed.
SEABROOK: What's their beef with the Church of Scientology? Ryan Singel says it's not actually the controversial nature of Scientology itself, which critics say is more a cult than a religion, but the tactics the Church of Scientology uses to control information about itself on the Internet. The organization has sent dozens of legal notices to Web sites that host documents, blogs and videos about Scientology, including a recent video of Tom Cruise, the organization's most famous convert.
Anonymous and other loose groups of hackers say they are staunch advocates of the free flow of information online. And so they target any organization they decide is impeding this. Ryan Singel describes how these online rebels are attacking the Church of Scientology Web site.
Mr. RYAN SINGEL (Writer, Wired.com): They're using what is called a denial of service attack, which is, essentially, you're sending so much bad traffic to a Web site that it's impossible for the servers to stay up. And the legitimate users who want to see the Web site can't get to it.
SEABROOK: The term, as you heard Ryan Singel of Wired.com just say, is denial of service attack or DDoS. It's a tactic used widely.
Keith Laslop heads an internet security company called Prolexic that tries to stop these cyber attacks. I spoke with him yesterday.
Your firm specializes in protecting other companies' sites from these denial-of-service attacks. First, can you give us a sense of how serious these kinds of attacks are or can be?
Mr. KEITH LASLOP (President, Prolexic): There is prank denial of service attacks, which tend to not be too serious. However, there's also extortion-based denial of service attacks. There's competitive sabotage-type denial of service attacks. And also, you know, governments launch cyber-censorship denial of service attacks. And these are different motivations. As you go up the ladder, the organizations that are launching them tend to become much more professional, so criminal organizations launch extortion-based DDoS attacks.
We have a customer in London - a major newspaper in London - The Daily Telegraph, who ran a quite a nasty article against Putin.
SEABROOK: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Mr. LASLOP: Yes. And the article was about Litvinenko, the KGB agent who was assassinated in London with polonium. And it was essentially pointing the finger at Vladimir Putin. Next thing you know, that Web site - the online presence of this newspaper - was taken offline for a week, until they found us, and we brought them back up. So cyber-censorship is actually - and cyber-terrorism is where DDoS is going. And it's getting much more scary.
SEABROOK: So it sounds like there are lots of different motivations for groups for using this form of attack on organizations.
Mr. LASLOP: Correct. There is, of course, money is a major motivation for extortion-based DDoS attacks. And how extortion-based DDoS attacks work is that the extortionist will say, pay me anywhere between ten and a hundred thousand dollars - sometimes more, sometimes less - or I will take your Web site offline. And as you can imagine, many small and medium-sized businesses today, they rely on their online presence. If they are taken offline, then they're out of business.
I used to refer to the Internet as the Wild West because of all this stuff going on. But lately, it's becoming much more of a 1930s Al Capone era, where criminal organizations are actually getting stronger on the Internet.
SEABROOK: How widespread is this kind of thing? I mean, is - are denial of service attacks going on every day somewhere on the Internet or - can you give me a sense of the scope?
Mr. LASLOP: Every day, you don't tend to hear about them, but there's anywhere between five and ten thousand denial-of-service attacks going on in the world at any one point in time.
SEABROOK: That many.
Mr. LASLOP: That many. Now, a lot of them are what we refer to as script kitties, which are just trying to make a reputation for themselves. They might have gotten kicked off of a game server or a chat room and they want to take revenge. But the much more vicious attacks, much more professional attacks, don't happen that often. But when they do, the results are - can be devastating.
SEABROOK: I understand that these are often used against financial and banking industries, that Mafia organizations can use them. Can you give me some other examples?
Mr. LASLOP: Yeah. One of the most prevalent ones in the last six months has been the Russian elections. And in Russia, these denial of service attacks are really almost used as a tool for cyber-censorship. They use this as a tool to silence critics, silence opposition parties. In fact, Kasparov, the leader of the opposition - is also the chess player from a while back - he mentioned that the only way you can get a political message out of Russia is actually through YouTube. Because if you actually try to create your own opposition Web site and put a political message on that, they will actually take it offline.
SEABROOK: Keith Laslop is the president of Prolexic, an Internet security firm. Thanks for joining us, sir.
Mr. LASLOP: Thank you.
ANDREA SEABROOK, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Andrea Seabrook.
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Yes we can heal this nation.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: Yes, we can seize our future.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
SEABROOK: Illinois Senator Barack Obama now gets to bask in the sunshine of his big victory in South Carolina's Democratic primary. New York Senator Hillary Clinton is regrouping from the beating she took yesterday. And former North Carolina Senator John Edwards insists he's in the race to the finish despite another dismal showing, this time in a state he won in 2004.
The Democrats have held just four major primaries and caucuses so far. Obama has won two and Clinton has won two, plus the vote in Michigan that did not award any delegates.
NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving joins me to survey the Democratic political landscape today beyond South Carolina.
Ron, can the results from this one state be that important?
RON ELVING: Andrea, they can if that one state represents a broader shift in spirit or attitude toward the candidates and if we then see that replicated elsewhere. Now, Hillary Clinton still has a national polling lead and she still looks strongest in the big states voting on February 5th. We've seen a pattern, though, of big Clinton leads disappearing as the actual vote approaches even in states where she's wound up winning. So if that should continue and if Obama's momentum builds, then, yes, South Carolina will have been that important.
SEABROOK: Barack Obama had a big victory in raw numbers in South Carolina. When you look at how the vote broke down by demographic groups, though, what does that tell you?
ELVING: Obama did well across age groups, losing only among those over 60. He did well across income groups - somewhat better than he did in some of the earlier states. And he won among men and women by about the same percentage. But you know, no one's going to pay any attention to any of those facts because all anyone's going to remember from this vote is the color line.
The good news for Barack Obama is that he won the battle for African-American votes. And just a month or so ago, that was quite an open question. And the bad news is that by winning 80 percent of the black vote and only about 25 percent or less of the white vote, he risks becoming trapped in the role of being the black candidate, which is why you heard Bill Clinton yesterday comparing Obama's showing in South Carolina to Jesse Jackson, who did well in that state in 1984 and 1988, which is a way of saying it's a black thing; that's all it is.
SEABROOK: Hmm. Ron, let's turn to Hillary Clinton now. She has said all along that she is running a national campaign. She's particularly looking forward to February 5th Super Tuesday, when the Democrats have contests in 22 states. How is that strategy looking now in light of this defeat?
ELVING: The first thing she does is she goes down to Florida. And that's another Michigan situation where the national party has given them the death penalty, taken away the delegates. After she comes out ahead, as everyone expects her to do in that straw poll, she has a big victory celebration. And then she has some momentum of her own. And, you know, when you get through a day when more than 20 states are voting all at once - most of them states where Obama has not spent very much time - well, she ought to win most of the 1,600 Democratic delegates that are at stake that day. And if the delegate split is lopsided, she's really going to be in the driver's seat from there on out.
SEABROOK: NPR senior Washington editor Ron Elving. Thanks very much, Ron.
ELVING: Thank you, Andrea,
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
Sergei Tretyakov was an operative of the KGB, the old Soviet intelligence service. When the Soviet Union dissolved, the agency changed its name, but its mission remained the same. Tretyakov was nominally a press officer at the Russian mission to the United Nations. In reality, he was running a number of intelligence agents who, in turn, were trying to get information out of Americans and others at the U.N.
He defected in 2000, and four years later - with both FBI and CIA agents present - he met with Pete Earley, the author of books about several Americans who had spied for Russia. And the result of their meeting is Earley's book, "Comrade J." It's the story of Tretyakov's career.
And both Pete Earley and Sergei Tretyakov are here to talk about that story. Welcome to both of you.
Mr. PETE EARLEY (Author, "Comrade J"): Thank you.
Mr. SERGEI TRETYAKOV: (Former KGB Spy): Thank you.
SIEGEL: First, Sergei Tretyakov, why did you want to have a book telling your story?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: I think that this book can be kind of wake-up call for the Americans. Americans are a little bit naive when they say Cold War is over, and right now, we can relax. It's not the case for the intelligence. In Soviet military doctrine, there was a definition of potential main enemy - it was United States, NATO and China. In today's intelligence doctrine, there is definition of main targets - United States, NATO and China.
SIEGEL: Same three?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: Same three.
SIEGEL: And you're a colonel?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: One of the youngest colonel in the - in Russian system.
SIEGEL: When you were the deputy resident - we would say deputy station chief -in New York…
Mr. TRETYAKOV: It's the same.
SIEGEL: …and you defected to the U.S., that was the highest-level defection by a Russian intelligence officer actually in the United States in that time.
Mr. TRETYAKOV: Yes, I was deputy resident in New York. It's second largest Russian residency in the world, first in Washington, second in New York.
SIEGEL: Peter Early…
Mr. EARLEY: Well, New York is important. Look, in Washington, they had walk-ins. They had Walker, they had Ames, people who walked in and volunteered. But recruitment really happens in New York. Why? Because you have the United Nations, and it's a fertile ground of people who won't betray their own country, but are easily prone to giving up the United States.
SIEGEL: Sergei Tretyakov, I'd like you to tell the story of the source of yours, originally from Ottawa and later in New York, named Arthur. What kind of relationship did you have with the man code-named Arthur?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: People like Arthur and many others, they were trusted contacts. I, personally - I don't like very much the word spy. I can tell you that when I worked in Canada, we are not that interested in Canadian issues. The main target is the United States.
SIEGEL: That Canada can be a window on…
Mr. TRETYAKOV: Exactly.
SIEGEL: …the U.S. and you might find Canadians who don't think that much of Washington? They'd be best here?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: Exactly, people who don't like America that much.
SIEGEL: Peter Earley…
Mr. EARLEY: Well, with Arthur, like so many of the people that Sergei was able to recruit, they didn't see themselves as deceiving their country. They were targeting the United States. They didn't like the United States. And in Arthur's case, as we say in the book, he went on to Vienna and the U.N. to be an arms verification expert. And that, of course, puts him in an extremely valuable position for the Russian intelligence.
SIEGEL: And Sergei Tretyakov, when you started spying for the United States - I know you - spying is a word you don't like, but when you were in fact the number two Russian intelligence agent or operative in New York and you'd started working for the U.S. - was that the biggest gem that you passed to U.S. authorities?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: I don't discuss if I worked for the American government or for how long. One of the reasons, I don't want my former colleagues to have this food from me. My defection was the major failure of the Russian intelligence. Probably you see it in all history. And no one approached me, no one bought me. It was my decision, it was our family decision because finally, I understood that I must doing something good in my life.
SIEGEL: It was a decision motivated, in part, by what you made of the changes in Russia and the changes during the Yeltsin, and later, the Putin era?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: Starting from Gorbachev. When Gorbachev came into power, we became optimistic. Then, oops. Then Yeltsin came. We became optimistic. And Yeltsin happened to be just a professional alcoholic. Putin came. Some people were optimistic. I don't see any reasons for optimism. I call this process genocide of Russian people. And if I returned back to Russia, I was supposed to be among this two, three, whatever percent people who are eating Beluga caviar and drinking champagne. And I thought that it's immoral. I didn't want to be the part of the genocidal team.
SIEGEL: But you estimated at the moment of your defection that your estate -and you've been a career KGB/SVR person all this time - that your estate amounted to about or in excess of $2 million at that point. How did you accumulate that much property being an intelligence agent?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: Family.
SIEGEL: Inherited wealth?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: Inherited. Yes, it's a - we inherited a lot of property. And we lost everything. We lost it and what?
SIEGEL: You - it's - you write in the book and it's been said that you were given the best compensation package by the U.S. government for coming here. Not why you did it - I know you're not saying that - but was that in part because of what you were giving up (unintelligible)?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: I don't discuss my package. Please don't count my money.
SIEGEL: Okay.
Mr. EARLEY: I was told by the FBI that he had the highest settlement package, over $2 million, and that he brought us more than 5,000 top-secret cables. And he exposed all the operations in New York, including who the Russian contacts were. And then one of the stories in the book that shows - can understand why he feels the way he did was he got this Alexander Cramer(ph) in the Food for Oil Program who was one of his deep-cover officers. And that guy stole -helped Russia steal $500 million.
SIEGEL: Let me ask both of you one last question. Because Pete Earley, you've written books about Aldrich Ames, the Russian mole in the CIA. You also wrote about the Walker family, who were spies within the Navy. First, Sergei Tretyakov, do you find anything in common with those people?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: First of all, as far as I know, they worked for money. They were bought. No one bought me. It was my ideology. I think this is the main interest. I was fighting the system back. I was never worked against my colleagues. And actually, none of my colleagues suffered in any way. And I consider myself American patriot, not American catch.
SIEGEL: The difference being, the others, the Walkers or Ames, you see as mercenaries in what they're doing?
Mr. TRETYAKOV: Absolutely.
SIEGEL: What do you think, Pete Earley?
Mr. EARLEY: One difference with Sergei is, not only did he give us their secrets - he risked his life by working for them - but then he came here and became a U.S. citizen by choice. He didn't flee to another country. And Walker and Ames never wanted to go to the Soviet Union.
SIEGEL: Well, Pete Earley and Sergei Tretyakov, thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. TRETYAKOV: Thank you.
Mr. EARLY: Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: Pete Earley's book is "Comrade J." And you can read more about why Sergei Tretyakov defected and why he decided to tell his story in an excerpt of the book. That's at npr.org.
You are listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
Time now for our series Climate Connections with National Geographic.
Climate change means, among other things, an inevitable rise in sea level. And that's going to make it increasingly difficult for some low-lying countries to control flooding.
Well, now architects in Holland are turning adversity into opportunity. They are designing a new Holland, one that could actually float. The Dutch government seems willing to try this scheme, and other countries are interested as well.
NPR's Joe Palca visited Holland, and he reports now on how they're responding to climate change with creativity.
JOE PALCA: With the exception of the major highways, it feels like you can't drive more than a mile or so in the Netherlands without running into water.
(Soundbite of GPS)
Unidentified Woman: In 400 meters, turn left.
PALCA: It could be the sea; it could be a river.
(Soundbite of GPS)
Unidentified Woman: In 500 meters, turn right.
PALCA: It could be a canal. But getting from here to there means making a lot of turns.
(Soundbite of GPS)
Unidentified Woman: Prepare to turn right.
PALCA: On this gray day last November, my producer, Rebecca Davis, and I are going to a town called Maasbommel on the Maas River.
(Soundbite of GPS)
PALCA: We're going to see a lady who owns a floating house.
REBECCA DAVIS: Actually, it's not really a floating house.
PALCA: I guess that's a misnomer. It's a house that if the water level…
(Soundbite of GPS)
Unidentified Woman: When possible, make an authorized U turn.
PALCA: I thought she wanted me turn here.
Anyway, as I was saying, it's not really a floating house. It's a house that can float because it has a unique foundation. So we turn around and eventually find the driveway that takes us down to our cluster of these cool-looking houses along the river. They have a nautical feel, with curved lines and colored wooden planking. We're looking for number 2-31, the house of Anne Van Der Molen, but we can't find it. So we start knocking on doors. We want to see the inside of one of these houses.
Finally, we find someone who is home.
Ms. MARIANA SMITS: My name is Mariana Smits.
PALCA: S-M-I-T-S.
Ms. SMITS: T - yes.
PALCA: Ms. Smits is a delightful, energetic woman. If I had to pick one adjective, I'd pick perky.
Ms. SMITS: Look, the water, we like the water. We have a boat.
PALCA: She invites us in for a tour.
Ms. SMITS: So the house is fairly big inside.
PALCA: It has the look of a typical split-level house. A living room faces the river; stairs lead to a bedroom in back and to a master bedroom above the living room.
Ms. SMITS: We are two of us, me and my husband, so it's big enough for us.
PALCA: I would like to see the foundation. Is that okay?
Ms. SMITS: Yes. Well, it's no problem.
PALCA: Okay.
Ms. SMITS: Come. Watch the head. I, not so tall so for me, it's no problem. This is under water.
PALCA: This is under water.
Ms. SMITS: This is under water. The temperature is always goes here. And…
PALCA: Good for storing your wine.
Ms. SMITS: You have seen my wine.
PALCA: Well, I saw some wine you were just drinking.
Ms. SMITS: Yeah, we are making our own wine. Yes.
PALCA: Nice.
Ms. SMITS: Yeah.
PALCA: This is actually - so we're in an enclosed basement with a low ceiling.
Ms. SMITS: Yeah.
PALCA: And, really, the Maas is around us.
Ms. SMITS: Yeah. Yes.
PALCA: I mean, you poke a hole in the wall.
Ms. SMITS: Yeah.
PALCA: And you're going to have water come in.
Ms. SMITS: No, there's come - there's no water come in.
PALCA: No, but I mean if I were drilling a hole, water would…
Ms. SMITS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's correct. Yes. Yeah.
PALCA: You see, Mariana Smits's foundation actually sits in the river. If the river level rises to flood stage, the house and the foundation float up with the water level. Flexible pipes keep the house connected to electrical and sewer lines. The house hasn't floated yet, but the prediction is that with global warming, the river will flood about once every 12 years. This ability to cope with floodwater rather than be devastated by it is why Smits moved here.
Ms. SMITS: In the other village we have lived, there was always the water. I was very scared. Two times, we have evacuated to leave our old house because very scary for us. And we got the opportunity to buy this house. It's a safe place.
PALCA: In fact, global warming and the increased risk of flooding it brings is causing some architects in Holland to change their philosophy.
Chris Zevenbergen is with Dura Vermeer, the company that built Mariana Smits's house.
Mr. CHRIS ZEVENBERGEN (Dura Vermeer): So the whole idea is that in our designs, we should always take into account what will happen when there's an extreme event
PALCA: In the past, the Dutch only built homes in places where dikes made flooding unlikely.
Mr. ZEVENBERGEN: The concept that in fact you build in an area where a flood may occur is completely new.
PALCA: New and attracting attention. Go ahead and build houses in areas that might flood — just build them on floating foundations.
Mr. KOEN OLTHUIS (Co-founder, Waterstudio): (Dutch spoken)
PALCA: At his office in the Hague, Koen Olthuis drums his fingers on his desk while he is fielding calls from all over the world, from people interested in water architecture. Olthuis is bursting with energy. He's the co-founder of a firm called Waterstudio. It's a small office with a dozen or so youngish employees.
Olthuis's projects go beyond the idea of simply keeping the house and its contents dry. He starts sketching on a pad.
Mr. OLTHUIS: The next step is that we not only make the house floating, but we make the complete garden floating.
PALCA: Why not, he says. Why lose all those pretty Dutch tulips just because it floods? After all, Olthuis says, building floating foundations is a snap. Just fill a concrete box with some kind of plastic foam, flip it over, and you've got a stable platform that's ready to float. And the more of these platforms you join together, the more stable they are. Olthuis doesn't plan to stop at single-family homes.
Mr. OLTHUIS: You see, a floating foundation with a garden on top of it, a swimming pool on top of it, and a house on top of it. And you can fix those gardens - floating gardens to each other and make a floating village of it.
PALCA: All the projects Olthuis has been describing are still on the drawing board. But the Dutch government has set aside some money and space to try building some of these floating architectural concepts. And Olthuis is confident that people are ready for a new way of living.
Mr. OLTHUIS: The momentum is just right. Because of the climate change, because of the Al Gore story, because of New Orleans, because of the financials of this moment, and everybody is waiting for new innovations.
PALCA: And those innovations are coming. Chris Zevenbergen's company has already built floating greenhouses and has designs for floating roads, even houses that not only float, but move.
Mr. ZEVENBERGEN: You can move them along the river, and go to a city which is close to the river, and park your home there in a special harbor which is constructed for this type of boat, so that we call a nomadic way of living; that you can change the area where you live depending on the season or whatever.
PALCA: If this sounds a bit like turning the lowly houseboat of yesterday into tomorrow's design for living, well, basically it is. But the point is, suddenly, climate change is no longer a dire threat, but an opportunity for innovation.
Mr. ZEVENBERGEN: There are infinite possibilities. That's the idea It's -everything is, in fact, possible. Nothing is impossible. Sounds crazy, eh?
PALCA: Or not.
Joe Palca, NPR News.
SIEGEL: You can see how rising seas could change coastlines around the world and get the latest Climate Connections features from National Geographic magazine at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
There's an old saying that dead men tell no tales. But the forensic experts at the FBI's special projects lab in Quantico, Virginia, would beg to differ. They could write volumes on the information they get from one skull. In the third part of our series on high-tech forensics, NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports on the stories bones tell.
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: Lisa Bailey looks like your favorite high school teacher — petite, brunette and bubbly. So it's a little startling when she tells you that she is obsessed - and obsessed is the right word - with skulls.
Ms. LISA BAILEY (Forensic Artist, Federal Bureau of Investigation): My husband can tell whenever I am working on a reconstruction because I will be talking to him, and I will be staring at him, and he'll say, you are looking at my skull again, aren't you? And I'm like, I'm just studying. I'm just looking.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Bailey and the man giggling in the background are forensic artists. They call themselves visual information specialists. And they are taking me on a tour of their section of the FBI Crime Lab. This is a place where there are skulls stashed away in drawers and clay heads sitting attentively on the counter. Bailey does visual reconstructions, creating drawings or three-dimensional representations of people based on their skull remains. And, she says, laughing, she takes her work with her wherever she goes.
Ms. BAILEY: And I have to stop myself from looking at people in grocery lines because I'm just going, what is going on under there?
TEMPLE-RASTON: No one is safe from Lisa Bailey's slightly ghoulish scrutiny. But I'll get to that part later. Bailey's preoccupation is actually a good thing. She's part of a team that teases vital information from slightly deformed eye sockets or unusual tooth shapes. She comes up with those drawings of missing people you see on the news or those clay models you've seen on cop shows. Facial reconstruction is part science, part art. And FBI experts will tell you that the trick is getting that balance just right.
New advances have made the job a little easier, but when people like Bailey or her boss, Eugene O'Donnell, get a skull, they all start the same way. They start by talking to an anthropologist.
Mr. EUGENE O'DONNELL (Forensic Artist, Federal Bureau of Investigation): They're talking about ancestry, whether or not they're Middle Eastern or whatever country they're from. It may be a blend - part Indian, part white, part black, whatever. They usually can tell, you know, shovel-shaped teeth might indicate an American Indian. And I take all of that information and any evidence that was found, like hair, and I try to adapt that into the drawing.
TEMPLE-RASTON: The anthropologist is looking for clues about where the deceased lived and, by extension, what his or her life might have been like. A Floridian, for example, would likely have skin that had aged more quickly than normal. Features on the skull, like a brow ridge, can reveal whether it is a man or a woman. The anthropologist's job is to provide any snippet of information that might help the special projects team put together a likeness of a John or Jane Doe.
Consider the case of Cynthia Vanderbeek, who went missing in 1995. Robert Nichols is a Montgomery County, Maryland, police detective. He had been working on the case for 10 years when he stumbled on an FBI reconstruction photograph in 2005. It looked just like Cindy Vanderbeek.
Mr. ROBERT NICHOLS (Montgomery County, Maryland detective): I mean, you just look at the photograph and you just froze. It was exactly what I would envision Cindy to look like, you know, from a reconstruction. I mean, the hair was almost to a tee.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Nichols had Vanderbeek's mother send a DNA sample to the lab, and it was a match. Vanderbeek's husband ended up pleading guilty to third-degree homicide. The FBI's facial reconstruction was one of the keys to cracking the case. Those reconstructions built right on bone, right on the skulls, can give the dead new life.
Mr. O'DONNELL: You can see the three-dimensional reconstructions over here.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Eugene O'Donnell guides me over to some reconstructed faces on the counter. They look like real heads, only gray.
Mr. O'DONNELL: Those are done in a clay that's — that never dries. So if they actually work on the remains, they can remove all the clay after they photograph it and send the remains back to the contributor.
TEMPLE-RASTON: He beckons me to come in closer. There are little round tabs peaking through the clay.
Mr. O'DONNELL: These markers on the face are indicating the average skin depths for that particular skull, all right? And they…
TEMPLE-RASTON: They look like little cigarette butts.
Mr. O'DONNELL: In actuality, those little erasers you push through the pencils, you know, you can push it? That's what they are. And they measure by millimeter for that particular area of the face, cut them and put them on as marker.
TEMPLE-RASTON: So here's the new high-tech, cool part. The FBI is using a laser to scan actual skull remains and build a replica of them.
(Soundbite of beeping)
Ms. BAILEY: That beeping you hear, that's letting you know that the scanner's active and when you get close to the skull.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Bailey aims the laser gun at the skull perched on the wooden stand.
Ms. BAILEY: The red line that you see, that's where the laser's hitting the skull. You can actually see it on the skull itself. And that's reflected on the monitor. So when we start the scanning, that tone changes depending on how far away you are from the skull. So we're going to hit go…
TEMPLE-RASTON: Almost magically, an outline of the skull begins to appear in luminous green on the computer monitor. It looks like one of those CAD/CAM systems construction firms use that allow you to stroll around a virtual building. Except in this case, you are poking around a three-dimensional view of a skull.
Why, it looks like you're painting the skull.
Ms. BAILEY: It is. It would be similar to if you're spray painting. You just go very smoothly and evenly over the skull and it's capturing all the fine detail. This will be so detailed you can see the sutures in the skull and the fillings in the teeth.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Once the scan is complete, and it takes about an hour, Bailey sends it to a special machine that builds a 3D, full-scale model of the skull out of resin. So now, specialists like Bailey don't have to put the clay right on bone. Instead, they use a skull copy, which is less fragile and easier to work with. Wes Neville is one of the FBI's visual information specialists who builds a face on the resin replica.
Mr. WES NEVILLE (Forensic Artist, Federal Bureau of Investigation): You kind of know how, where the muscles wrap around the skull, where they attach to and then you start laying strips of clay, taking into consideration the movement of the muscles, the way they lay on the skull. Then the artistic part of it comes in.
TEMPLE-RASTON: Neville, like Bailey, finds himself looking at people differently than you or I might. He narrows his eyes and seems to be looking right through your skin. And he and Bailey turn their gaze on me.
Ms. BAILEY: Like what causes dimples?
Mr. NEVILLE: Yeah. We're discussing how dimples…
Ms. BAILEY: We're trying to figure that out.
TEMPLE-RASTON: They are asking this because, well, I have big dimples.
Ms. BAILEY: Was it the structure on the skull that might cause dimples? We were looking at some skulls the other day, we have several. We have — I mean, it's a split. It's actually a split in the muscle.
TEMPLE-RASTON: I know it's a deformity in the muscle.
Ms. BAILEY: It's deformity in the muscle, but is it possible…
Mr. NEVILLE: But what's causing it?
Ms. BAILEY: …what's causing that deformity? Is it possible that there is some structure on, on the zygomatic bone on your cheeks that is causing that muscle to split? And we're hoping if we look at enough skulls and the live photos, we can figure it out. I just gave myself goose bumps. We talk about this all the time.
TEMPLE-RASTON: So apparently, my bones would tell a story, too. They weren't exactly licking their chops to get to my skull and to unravel the mystery of dimples, but almost.
Dina Temple-Raston, NPR News.
SIEGEL: And you can catch up on the previous reports in this series at our Web site, npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
For more than 70 years, Scarlett O'Hara has been an icon of female charm and determination.
(Soundbite of movie "Gone with the Wind")
Ms. VIVIEN LEIGH (Actress): (As Scarlett O'Hara) As God is my witness they're not going to lick me. I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again.
SIEGEL: A southern belle and daughter of the confederacy, the heroine of "Gone with the Wind" has been revered and reviled through the decades. NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates is a Scarlett fan, which surprises a lot of people because Karen is black. For today's installment of In Character, our series exploring famous fictional characters, she examines Scarlett O'Hara and her controversial legacy, especially among black women.
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES: I first read "Gone with the Wind" in the summer of 1966. At the time, several American cities were erupting into flames as black communities protested decades of police brutality. And the Vietnam War was becoming a national obsession. Me, I was a 15-year-old in New Haven, Connecticut. My parents were still referring to themselves as Negroes, but I was already calling myself black. Despite that, I was also immersed in the mid-19th century south, where another teen was railing against the preoccupation of her day.
(Soundbite of movie "Gone with the Wind")
Ms. LEIGH: (As Scarlett O'Hara) War, war, war. This war talk's spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream.
BATES: Scarlett O'Hara was the founding mother of the Me Generation. And frankly, my dear, I found her unabashed self-interest delicious. My mother, on the other hand, was mystified. Why would her child, who would eventually sport a 2-foot wide Afro, be so interested in a plantation belle? She couldn't know it, but I wasn't the only black girl who was mesmerized by Scarlett.
A thousand miles away, writer Pearl Cleage was growing up in a Detroit household that was Afrocentric before Afrocentric became popular. Her mother, like mine, didn't get the Scarlett attraction, either.
Ms. PEARL CLEAGE (Writer): The idea that I could be reading this book about the lives of slave owners just drove my mother crazy. And she, you know, really kind of said to me, if you're going to read this book, you need to be identifying with Prissy and with Mammy, not with Miss Scarlett. Which, of course, was not possible. No 11-year-old girl on the West Side of Detroit wants to identify with people who are owned by a little white girl.
BATES: People like Prissy and Mammy, devoted house slaves to Scarlett's family.
(Soundbite of movie "Gone with the Wind")
Ms. BUTTERFLY MCQUEEN (Actress): (As Prissy) Mammy, here's Miss Scarlet's vittles.
Ms. LEIGH: (As Scarlett O'Hara): You can take it all back to the kitchen. I won't eat a bite.
BATES: Pearl Cleage loved that Scarlett insisted on living life on her own terms.
Ms. CLEAGE: She had such a strong self definition that she didn't really care what other people thought.
(Soundbite of movie "Gone with the Wind")
Ms. HATTIE McDANIEL (Actress): (As Mammy) Oh now, Miss Scarlett, you come on and be good and eat just a little, honey.
Ms. LEIGH: (As Scarlett) No. I'm going to have a good time today. And do my eating at the barbecue.
Ms. McDANIEL: (As Mammy) If you don't care what folks says about this family I does. I is told ya and told ya that you can always tell a lady by the way that she eats in front of folks like a bird and I…
BATES: The girl kept slaves, for God's sake. So what was it about this story and this woman that Pearl and I found so alluring? I think we both liked that Scarlett was feisty and stubborn. She allowed herself to be what every nice girl, from her day to ours, was told not to be - selfish. Like here, when she and Rhett Butler have just married and he tells her he'll spend as much as she wants on the new mansion she's planning in Atlanta.
(Soundbite of movie "Gone with the Wind")
Ms. LEIGH: (As Scarlett O'Hara) Oh, Rhett, won't everyone be jealous? I want everybody who's been mean to me to be pea-green with envy.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BATES: What a brat. But you've got to love her insistence on payback, kind of like flipping off the "Mean Girls'" table in the school lunchroom. The bravery of the heroine Margaret Mitchell originally named Pansy O'Hara - her publisher asked her to change the name - was enticing to many girls in the pre-feminist '60s. Back then, we were still expected to defer to boys, to look nice and stay sweet. Scarlett wasn't having it. Remember, this is a girl who killed a Yankee.
(Soundbite of movie "Gone with the Wind")
Ms. LEIGH: (As Scarlett O'Hara) And I guess I've done murder. I won't think about that now. I'll think about that tomorrow.
BATES: But while she might symbolize resilience for some, for others, especially for southern women who are black, Scarlett is something else altogether. Novelist and Georgia native Tina McElroy Ansa says the Scarlett everyone else admires leaves her cold, because her character is rooted in an assumption of racial superiority.
Ms. TINA McELROY ANSA (Novelist): There is a possibility that people just take the best parts from her character to identify with. But for me, it's, you know, it's very difficult to take, you know, take some things and let the rest rot because it was so clearly that her higher place in society meant my place had to be lower.
BATES: Protecting the sanctity of white women who had led, in part, to the birth of the Ku Klux Klan. Ansa believes there's a lot of unspoken stuff to work through before honest discussions about race can occur.
Ms. ANSA: And I think, you know, that Scarlett O'Hara iconic figure sort of stands in the way of that.
BATES: I think she's right. I'm very clear that the specter of who owned whom and its nasty aftereffects will be with us for a long, long time in this country. My adult self still likes Scarlett, but I understand missy is part of a painful, complicated history we're still trying to work out. Even so, some parts of Scarlett transcend race. It might be a stretch for some people, but Pearl Cleage says civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, a black Mississippi sharecropper who insisted on her right to vote, is also an inheritor of Scarlett's ambition.
Ms. CLEAGE: Fannie Lou Hamer is as much a quintessential southern woman as Scarlett O' Hara because they both stepped forward and said, no, I'm not going to do what you think I'm supposed to do, you know, I'm free. Because that's the thing I still think about Scarlett that we like, is that she was always determined to be free.
BATES: Margaret Mitchell once said "Gone with the Wind's" overriding theme could be boiled down to survival. Well, love her or loathe her, Scarlett O'Hara is a survivor. She has that ability to struggle through trauma to reach tomorrow, which, of course, is another day.
Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.
SIEGEL: Our In Character series continues online today, where Karen will be blogging about Scarlett O'Hara. And you can also find clips from the movie "Gone with the Wind" and the parodies that it inspired at npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
There was some more bad economic news this morning. New home sales fell 26 percent last year; that's the biggest drop on record. Some economists say this is yet another sign the U.S. economy is headed for a recession. But here's a paradox. When the stock market heard the news on housing, it went up. The Dow Jones closed more than 170 points up on the day.
NPR's Adam Davidson joins us from New York to make sense of that confusing picture.
And, Adam, let's start with something basic. Why is it that new home sales number is so important? How does it affect the rest of us who aren't in the business of selling homes?
ADAM DAVIDSON: I was thinking earlier today how to think about new home sales, and I imagined an imaginary neighborhood. Let's say there's a guy named Arnold(ph) and his house is a little small, he wants to move. Well, what we learned today is he didn't move. He didn't buy a new house. And that actually is bad news for the rest of us. Because that means first of all, Arnold is probably pretty pessimistic about the economy. Maybe he lost his job or he's not making as much. It also means he's not going to buy carpeting, he's not going to buy a new fridge or a new stove. He's not going to spend money that will stimulate our economy. This is the fiscal stimulus thing we keep hearing about.
SIEGEL: Mm-hmm.
DAVIDSON: So that is bad news for us. There's a second person, let's call her Betty(ph).
SIEGEL: Okay.
DAVIDSON: Betty is the one who was going to sell her home to Arnold, and since Betty didn't sell the home, she didn't make money. That's bad news. But there's a third person, let's call him Claudio(ph). He lives down the block from Arnold and Betty. He had no intention of selling his home. He loves his home. But he's affected, too, because what he learns is that when Arnold doesn't buy Betty's home, when there are fewer people buying homes, the price of his home, the value does not go up. In fact, it might go down. And Claudio uses the value of his home, he gets a loan from the bank against the value of his home and that funds him buying TVs, buying a new car, taking his wife on vacation.
So Arnold is sad. Betty is sad. But Claudio is sad, too, and there are a lot more Claudios out there who are affected.
SIEGEL: So it's a bad day for Arnold, Betty and Claudio. Why, then, should those investors Durwood(ph) and Eleanor(ph), why would they see the stock market go up in response to the bad news for Arnold, Betty and Claudio?
DAVIDSON: Well, Durwood and Eleanor are looking at a fifth, sixth guy - I forgot where we're up to, Ben - Ben Bernanke. And what they realize is that all this bad news about Arnold, Betty and Claudio is bad news from last year. This data is a month old.
So what they know is Ben Bernanke is looking at this and thinking, wow, the economy really was doing poorly even though I had a surprise interest rate cut last week, a dramatic move, I might do that again this week. He's meeting tomorrow with the Federal Open Markets Committee, these are the people who set that benchmark Fed funds rate. And now, Durwood and Eleanor, the investors, are thinking that he is going to lower interest rates again. Maybe half a percentage point, maybe three-quarters of a percentage point, very big moves. And that means there's going to be a lot more cash out there, companies are going to be able borrow and spend more. And that means stock prices might continue to rise.
SIEGEL: Yes, Ben, of course, is at the Fed, which begins with F. This is a busy week for financial information. Every day we're getting some new data here. What else will we learn this week after the housing numbers?
DAVIDSON: It's possible that by Friday, we will have a much better picture of how this economy is doing. This might be a pivotal week. We're going to know a lot more about employment, how many people are working, how much money they're making, how they're spending that money. That is crucial information. We're obviously going to find out what Ben decides, and we're going to get consumer confidence numbers, which will give us a sense of how all these people are feeling about the economy, which gives us a sense of how much they're going to be spending next week and the week after that.
SIEGEL: Adam Davidson, thank you very much for talking with us.
DAVIDSON: Thank you so much, Robert.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Tonight, President Bush delivers his final State of the Union Address. It's a moment that two-term presidents often use to frame their legacies and to rally their supporters.
The president is expected to highlight his package of tax rebates and business incentives aimed at jumpstarting the economy. He'll also take aim at congressional earmarks and for more of what he's likely to say, we're joined by NPR's Brian Naylor.
Brian, we've been getting some early word about what will be in the president's speech. What else can you tell us?
BRIAN NAYLOR: Well, Robert, a couple of things this afternoon were released by the White House. The president is going to propose spending some $300 million to help faith-based and parochial schools in inner-city neighborhoods. He's going to propose eliminating some 150 federal programs and will call on lawmakers to cut by half the number of earmarks or face a veto of their spending bills. These last two are kind of, you know, chestnuts to come up every so often. And I think it's indicative of the fact that this is the president's final year in office and there are not going to be a lot of big new initiatives.
SIEGEL: Well, in terms of the big picture, a theme perhaps, what should we be listening for?
NAYLOR: Well, I think the president is going to try to redirect attention on his presidency. Frankly, there's a lot of focus on who is going to succeed him, a spirited race on the part of both parties, and there's a lot of discouragement or disincentive to pay attention to the White House. People are not - are tired of the war in Iraq, they're worried about the economy and all, by all accounts, they're ready for a change. So the president I think is going to be trying to get the attention back to his agenda, focusing a lot on the economy and concerns about a recession.
SIEGEL: Congress takes up the president's economic stimulus package tomorrow and the Senate tellingly sends it to committee. Does that mean that the Senate will not do what the president would like, which is pass it very quickly with no changes?
NAYLOR: I think that's right. The Senate says they want to put their two cents into or probably a whole lot more than that. It looks like the Senate is going to add on spending to seniors, low-income seniors who are not included in this original stimulus proposal. They're going to extend unemployment benefits by all accounts. I think though that this is going to - so this will have to go back to the House. But I think that the changes if they keep them to that level are probably not going to slow the package down significantly. And I don't think that they'll provoke a presidential veto.
SIEGEL: Okay. Let's take up some other things we're likely to hear about. Obviously, spending earmarks and what's wrong with them will be something the president will talk about, I assume.
NAYLOR: Right. He'll talk about the earmarks. He's also going to talk, of course, about Iraq. He's probably going to say that progress is being made in Iraq and warn Congress against trying to put a timetable on for further withdrawal of U.S. forces.
He's also expected to push Congress to approve the FISA program that authorizes the warrantless wiretaps of suspected terrorists. That program is authorized only through the end of this month, and Congress is currently debating whether to extend it temporarily or permanently.
SIEGEL: Here's a president, though, who has given State of the Union addresses fresh from electoral victories, just a couple of months after 9/11 in one case. This time, he's appearing in the last year of his presidency and not a very popular president. Does he have any political capital left to put behind these ideas of his?
NAYLOR: Yeah. It certainly is a different picture than what we've seen in the past. And I don't think he does have much capital. His poll numbers are abysmal. It's the final year of his administration. He's facing a Democratic Congress that doesn't want to implement a lot of Republican proposals.
Having said that, though, that's not to say that he's not relevant, he proved that last year. He was able to keep Congress from cutting troops in Iraq. He was able to keep the budget at about the level that he wanted. So he does have the veto pen. But this is an election year. Congress doesn't want to get involved in a lot of new programs. They're more worried about their reelection and who's going to succeed George Bush.
So you're not going to see a lot done this year, I don't think.
SIEGEL: Well, we'll stay tuned. Thank you, Brian.
NAYLOR: Thanks, Robert.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Brian Naylor at the Capitol. And you can hear President Bush's State of the Union speech tonight on many NPR stations and at npr.org, where we'll also be fact-checking the president's remarks.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The economy tops the list of concerns among Republicans and Democrats alike as they consider who will be the next president. That's certainly the case in Florida.
NPR's Greg Allen reports on some of the economic issues that Floridians face as they prepare to vote in Tuesday's primary.
GREGORY ALLEN: Although the primary is not until tomorrow, Floridians have been voting for nearly two weeks, mailing absentee ballots and at special early voting sites across the state.
In Miami-Dade County, Angel Alamager dropped into Coral Reef Library last week to cast his vote for Republican Rudy Giuliani. His main concern: the economy, in particular, the downturn in the housing market.
Mr. ANGEL ALAMAGER (Resident, Miami-Dade County): I've seen the price of houses drop significantly. I've seen my neighbor lose over $100,000 in selling their house just over an eight-month period. So it's impacted a lot of people.
ALLEN: Florida ranks second in the nation behind California in the number of foreclosures. Following the hurricanes of 2004 and 2005, homeowners insurance skyrocketed. At the same time, property taxes have been rising dramatically, making homes and even modest neighborhoods unaffordable. What's made the property tax issue especially problematic in Florida is an amendment to the state constitution passed more than a decade ago. That limited increases in property tax assessments to 3 percent a year for longtime homeowners.
It has shifted an increasing share of the tax burden onto new residents, first-time homeowners, and owners of commercial property. A referendum aimed at fixing the growing inequity is on the ballot Tuesday. Florida's governor, Charlie Crist, is spearheading a campaign for its passage.
Governor CHARLIE CRIST (Republican, Florida): What people need is more of their hard-earned dollars in their pocket. And this tax cut amendment, January the 29th, will do exactly that.
ALLEN: Efforts to make Florida's other pressing problem, the high cost of homeowners insurance, part of the selection have been less successful. When Florida's legislature voted last year to move up the state's primary to January 29th, one motivation was to build support among presidential candidates for a national catastrophe insurance fund. The fund would help lower insurance costs for homeowners in high-risk coastal areas. Politicians here hope to make it Florida's version of ethanol, a parochial issue that presidential candidates could not fail to embrace as they campaigned in the state's early primary. But it hasn't quite turned out that way.
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): In all due respect, the bill that was passed through the United States House of Representatives, it means $200 billion a year. Somebody's going to have to tell me where that comes from.
ALLEN: Coming off his win in South Carolina, Arizona Senator John McCain is in a neck-and-neck race with former Massachusetts senator Mitt Romney here in Florida. Neither candidate has embraced the idea of a CAT fund. Though both say they would consider some sort of regional pool that would help spread out the risk. Rudy Giuliani is the one Republican candidate who has endorsed it. And he's been running ads in Florida to try to use the issue to his advantage.
(Soundbite of political ad)
Unidentified Man: Some say we don't need a national catastrophe fund, that FEMA can handle disasters. Others say they haven't looked at it yet and want to sit down with insurance companies first. Only one Republican candidate has proven experience dealing with disaster.
ALLEN: But even while he's been talking up his support for a national CAT fund, Giuliani has watched his poll numbers continue to drop in the state. Lance deHaven-Smith, a political science professor at Florida State University, says while a national CAT fund should be appealing to Floridians, the issue has not resonated with voters.
Professor LANCE DEHAVEN-SMITH (Political Science, Florida State University): In Florida, everything is media-driven. It's all done on television. And if you can't say it in four or five words, it's a very difficult message to get out. It takes a long time. This is not something you can start talking about a week before the election and expect to make a difference with it.
ALLEN: On the other hand, it took Iowa politicians years to build support for ethanol subsidies. And while Republicans are divided, support for a national CAT fund is an issue that all the leading Democratic candidates for president agree on.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
A record number of Americans are now dying from drug overdoses. And researchers say it's not just illegal drugs. Prescription pain medicines such as Oxycontin and Vicodin now kill five times as many people as heroin and almost twice as many as cocaine. The abuse of prescription painkillers is rampant in rural states like West Virginia. There, overdoses are the leading cause of death for young adults. Scott Finn of West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports.
SCOTT FINN: Like a lot of parents who have lost a child, Kim Garner keeps a sort of shrine to her son, Justin. He died two years ago when he was just 16.
Ms. KIM GARNER (West Virginia Resident): I have this hat that he wore all the time hanging up in his room. And then I've got a little (unintelligible) wall here.
FINN: Justin's death came without warning. A friend of his stole a powerful painkiller called Fentanyl from his grandfather, who had cancer. Justin took some, then came home and fell asleep in a chair.
Ms. GARNER: And he was sitting there. You know, actually, he was sitting up; he wasn't laying down. He wasn't in bed. So it looked liked he were - had just fallen asleep. He fell asleep and just didn't wake back up.
FINN: In West Virginia, drug overdoes have become the leading cause of death for adults younger than 45. More so than car wrecks, heart attacks or cancer. People here are more likely to die from drug overdoses than residents of any other state. The vast majority of overdoses involve legal prescription drugs, mostly narcotic painkillers. And it has become a nationwide problem. The number of overdose deaths in the United States doubled between 1995 and 2005, when more than 32,000 people died. Federal researchers have tracked the increase in overdose deaths with alarm.
They call them poisonings. But nearly all of them are blamed on drugs. Lois Fingerhut is a researcher with the National Center for Health Statistics.
Ms. LOIS FINGERHUT (Special Assistant for Injury Epidemiology, National Center for Health Statistics): What most people think of when they think of poisoning is a child getting into the drain or under the sink. That's the smallest part of poisoning deaths.
FINN: In fact, Fingerhut says the nation has passed an important milestone. For as long as they have kept statistics, the leading causes of death from injuries were: number one, car accidents; number two, guns; and trailing far behind, drug overdose. But in 2004, drug overdoses and other poisonings killed more Americans than guns.
Ms. FINGERHUT: Who would ever have thought that poisoning would have risen that quickly to surpass firearms?
FINN: Fingerhut and other researchers get their information from death certificates, which give them clues as to who is dying and why. The victims are mostly young and middle-aged adults, are more likely to live in rural states, and usually overdosed by accident. Some victims have valid prescriptions for the drugs that killed them. A 2005 study showed an increase in accidental poisonings and liver failure in patients who combine a narcotic painkiller, like Vicodin, with over-the-counter acetaminophen, better known as Tylenol. It's been tough for police to crack down on the misuse of prescription drugs.
West Virginia State Police sergeant Mike Smith says that unlike illegal drugs, the mere possession of a prescription painkiller is not a crime.
Sergeant MIKE SMITH (West Virginia State Police): Let's say you're dealing with cocaine. Everybody knows that crack cocaine is taboo. If you have crack cocaine, or marijuana, or whatever in your pocket, then you know, you have marijuana - you have a drug in your pocket.
FINN: Sgt. Smith leads a three-person unit that investigates prescription-drug abuse. He says the pills are stolen from medicine cabinets, pharmacies and nursing homes, and they can be ordered illegally on the Internet. Patients also can convince doctors to write them a prescription, then sell the drugs on the street.
That's something Charleston pain specialist J.K. Lilly works hard to avoid. Lilly makes each patient fill out 18 pages of background information, and he puts them through a battery of tests. One involves an unlikely device - a tuning fork that he hits against his desk and places on a patient's wrist to gauge sensitivity to pain.
Dr. J.K. Lilly (Pain Specialist): Let me whack it.
(Soundbite of tuning fork)
Dr. LILLY: And then with the vibration, you put it against a bony prominence, and the person feels it or not.
FINN: Lilly says doctors in West Virginia have a tough job. Their patients are getting older, and many work in mining and construction, where injuries are common. Compared to 10 years ago, West Virginians now consume four times as much of the top painkillers that contribute to deaths. Pain experts agree that for years, many patients suffered because some physicians were too cautious in prescribing relief. Now, Lilly says, doctors find themselves torn between treating their patients and covering themselves.
Dr. LILLY: They're caught in a pretty tight bind. They want to treat the patients well, they want to make a decent living, and they don't want to be criminals.
FINN: And doctors don't want the drugs they prescribe to end up in the hands of teenagers, like Justin Garner. His mom says Justin wasn't a perfect kid, but he was a good kid who led his own band and planned to go into computer networking someday.
Ms. GARNER: And then just when it finally hits you, it just - bam. And it hits me pretty much every day, I can tell you. I mean, just the other day - I mean, if I start crying, you know?
FINN: For two years, Garner kept her grief to herself. Now, she's starting to speak out in the hope that others will hear her warning.
For NPR News, I'm Scott Finn in Charleston, West Virginia.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
On the presidential campaign trail, the competition is heating up among candidates in both parties. Democrats are battling over some big endorsements, and Republicans are placing big bets on Florida. That state's voters go to the polls tomorrow. More on Florida in a few minutes, but first, we go to the nation's capital, where Barack Obama collected the endorsements of three prominent members of the Kennedy family. It was a moment Hillary Clinton fought hard to prevent, and it took place during a noisy rally at American University.
NPR's David Welna reports.
DAVID WELNA: Caroline Kennedy, who's the sole survivor of President John F. Kennedy's immediate family, told a mostly young crowd here she sensed a profound longing for the kind of inspiration and hope people got from her father.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Ms. CAROLINE KENNEDY (Former President John F. Kennedy's Daughter): I'm happy that my three children are here with me because they were the first people who made me realize that Barack Obama is the president we need.
WELNA: That endorsement was echoed by her cousin, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, and by her uncle, Edward Kennedy, who became a senator when Obama was not yet 2 years old.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator EDWARD KENNEDY (Democrat, Massachusetts): I'm proud to stand with him here today and offer my help, offer my voice, offer my energy, my commitment to make Barack Obama the next president of the United States.
(Soundbite of cheering)
WELNA: As Obama sat with the Kennedys, basking in their praise, Senator Kennedy, without naming the former president, assailed Bill Clinton's questioning of Obama's record on the Iraq War. It's reported to be one reason why Kennedy decided not to remain neutral in this race.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Sen. KENNEDY: We know the true record of Barack Obama. There is the courage when so many others were silent or simply went along. From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq.
WELNA: To which Kennedy pointedly added…
(Soundbite of political speech)
Sen. KENNEDY: And let no one deny that truth.
WELNA: When he spoke, Obama pointedly compared Kennedy to certain politicians he did not name, though it seemed clear he was alluding to the Clintons.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): Ted Kennedy stands apart from the prevailing wisdom in Washington that has reduced politics to a game of tactics and transactions in which no principle is beyond sacrifice. And his public life is a testimony to what can be achieved when you focus on lifting the country up rather than tearing political opponents down.
WELNA: Obama then said he would offer the kind of leadership to be found in the dreams of John and Robert Kennedy and in their sense of common purpose.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Sen. OBAMA: So make no mistake. The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It is not about rich versus poor, young versus old, and it is certainly not about black versus white. It is about…
(Soundbite of cheering)
Sen. OBAMA: …it is about the past versus the future.
(Soundbite of cheering)
WELNA: It was enough to lure at least one independent - 48-year-old Marcy Franz(ph) - into Obama's camp.
Ms. MARCY FRANZ (Independent Voter): I really would love to see if he won. You know, that would be great because it's such a different, outside the box, not politics as usual thing. I remember, like a lot of people in my generation, where I was when Kennedy was shot and that family has - it was a big part of all of our dreams about America.
WELNA: David Welna, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
No Democrat can actually win their party's primary tomorrow. Florida moved up its date in violation of Democratic Party rules. So the DNC stripped the state of its delegates. Still, that hasn't stopped the leading Democratic candidates from trying.
NPR's Mara Liasson reports.
MARA LIASSON: In a Democratic race that has turned into trench warfare, the campaigns are now fighting over a state with no delegates at stake.
Hillary Clinton is casting herself as the candidate who really cares about Florida's disenfranchised Democrats.
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): Florida will once again be a battleground state, and I want the voters in Florida to know that I hear them. Hundreds of thousands of Floridians have already voted, so clearly they are taking this seriously, and they believe their voices are going to be heard and should be counted, and I agree with them
LIASSON: Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards all signed pledges not to campaign in Florida before the primary. But they are allowed to fundraise in the state. Clinton showed up for two fundraisers yesterday and one today. They were closed to the public and the press in accordance with the rules. But that didn't stop her from posing for pictures in front of a palm tree and getting plenty of media coverage.
Tomorrow night, she'll be back again after the polls close, holding what she says is an event to thank her supporters but what will probably morph into a, quote, "victory celebration."
Ms. JENNY BACKUS (Democratic strategist; Former Democratic National Committee Official): It's sort of like a sports team showing up at an arena three-quarters of the way into the game but the other team's not there.
LIASSON: That's Jenny Backus, a Democratic strategist and former DNC official.
Ms. BACKUS: The Clinton campaign definitely is playing hardball in this presidential nomination.
LIASSON: For their part, the Obama campaign has placed ads on national cable television, which will also air in Florida. And on the ground, there is a vigorous shadow campaign for both candidates; Clinton has AFSCME, the public sector union, out in full force for her. And, says political scientist Susan McManus, Obama has a strong grassroots presence, too.
Ms. SUSAN McMANUS (Political Scientist): The Obama people are extremely well organized, particularly in highly urbanized areas, where you have college campuses and well-educated populations and large minority populations. And, of course, the whole bantering started last week when Obama put out a press release complaining that Hillary Clinton was going to rent the Miami Beach Convention Center and violate the rules. And then Hillary campaign started attacking Obama for running the CNN ad that reached the whole state. It's all in the voters' minds of Florida a facade that they are ignoring Florida because we don't really see a whole lot of signs that they are.
LIASSON: Still, McManus says, the result of the DNC sanctions on Florida was to freeze the race in Clinton's favor. Obama, who has shown he can go from single digits to victory in states where he actively campaigns, has been effectively shut out.
Ms. McMANUS: No question about it. The inability of Obama to actively campaign in a state which is very interested in his campaign has only helped Hillary Clinton maintain her double-digit lead in the polls.
LIASSON: And right now, Clinton is fighting hard for every advantage she can get — even in a state that awards no delegates at all. She is hoping that she can spin her showing there as a victory — something that will take the sting out of her big loss in South Carolina and give her at least the perception of momentum going into the big February 5th contest, where nearly 1,700 real delegates will be elected.
Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And now to Florida, where the Republican presidential campaign is moving at jet speed. Candidates are flying up and down the state today in a last-minute appeal for support before Florida voters go to the polls tomorrow. Florida is the biggest prize so far in the GOP presidential contest, and polls suggest a tight race. We'll get reports on three of the leading candidates this hour.
And we begin with NPR's Scott Horsley, who was with Mitt Romney in central Florida.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Mitt Romney donned a guayabera shirt over the weekend while campaigning with the Cuban community in south Florida. But this Monday, it was back to the button down. And Romney's message was all business as he addressed an airport rally near Orlando.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Republican, Former Massachusetts Governor; Presidential Candidate): When I came to Florida, people began asking a lot about the economy. And that's something that's in my wheel house. You see, I think it's helpful, if you want to run the economy, to have actually had a job in the private sector, which I've had.
HORSLEY: Earlier today, Romney visited a gas station in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he criticized his Republican rival John McCain's proposal to combat global warming. Romney says it would raise gasoline prices by 50 cents a gallon without making a dent in greenhouse gas emissions from other countries. He'd repeat that message throughout the day.
Mr. ROMNEY: They don't call it America warming, they call it global warming. And we don't need a president who thinks that you can charge $1,000 to a family in Florida, and think you're solving problems. I'd never do that.
HORSLEY: This is one of five Florida rallies Romney is holding today from Panama City to West Palm Beach. But he'll still meet only a tiny fraction of voters in person, so Romney is also taping television interviews. And volunteers were busy in a corner of the hangar, making phone calls to get out the vote.
JASON(ph) (Volunteer for Mitt Romney): Hi, my name is Jason, and I'm a volunteer calling on behalf of Governor Mitt Romney.
HORSLEY: For some voters, all this last-minute campaigning comes too late. Some 600,000 Floridians have already voted.
Scott Horsley, NPR News, Sanford, Florida.
GREG ALLEN: I'm Greg Allen, covering the McCain campaign in Jacksonville.
This is a town John McCain knows well. It's where he landed after returning from Vietnam, and where he was stationed in the mid-1970s when he commanded a Navy attack squadron. McCain held a roundtable event at a facility where pontoon bridges and Marine landing craft are readied for service. It was designed to play to his strength - his experience in dealing with national security. Joining him were high-level supporters such as former CIA head James Woolsey and former Navy Secretary John Lehman. As the economic news has turned from bad to worse in recent weeks, McCain has been on the defensive. Leading opponent Mitt Romney has challenged McCain's economic credentials. McCain said today, yes, the economy is important. And as a member of Congress, he said, he's been a leader in dealing with the nation's economic issues.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arizona): And I led, and I didn't manage. But the point is that our nation's security is our foremost obligation to our people. We all know that.
ALLEN: And that was just the beginning. McCain lost no time in returning Romney's attacks, taking umbrage especially at Romney's characterization of his policies as liberal. McCain returned the compliment.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Sen. MCCAIN: As the liberal governor of the state of Massachusetts, he raised taxes by $730 million. We now have - the state of Massachusetts is now saddled with a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar debt over his government-mandated health care system.
ALLEN: As the race here in Florida goes down to the wire, McCain is hoping last-minute endorsements from Florida's Republican senator, Mel Martinez, and Governor Charlie Crist may help put him over the top.
Greg Allen, NPR News, Jacksonville.
ROBERT SMITH: I'm Robert Smith, following Rudy Giuliani in central Florida.
The good thing about campaigning in only one state is you can pretty much tell the audience exactly what they want to hear.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Republican, Former Mayor of New York City; Presidential Candidate): I've learned a lot being in Florida for the last - month? Something like that.
SMITH: Giuliani still hasn't ditched the dark suit, but he now knows how to talk like a native about hurricanes and the space program.
Mr. GIULIANI: We've got to make sure we put a person on Mars, and I am committed to getting that done as well.
SMITH: But the biggest applause comes when he mentions his time as mayor. It's an easy sell. The audience is usually filled with former New Yorkers, now sporting tans and reminiscing.
Mr. GIULIANI: Where from New York are you from?
Unidentified Woman: The Bronx.
Mr. GIULIANI: What road?
Unidentified Woman: Dyre Avenue, do you know that?
Mr. GIULIANI: Oh, yes, I do.
Unidentified Woman: Good, good.
Mr. GIULIANI: I have (unintelligible) in the number-five train.
Unidentified Man: There you go.
Unidentified Woman: Yay.
SMITH: Over the last few days, Giuliani might as well have been traveling on the number-five train. He stopped at a synagogue in Boca, a pizza joint in Port Saint Lucie. He was surrounded by guys in Mets and Yankees caps in a phalanx of guardian angels. It was like a reunion.
Mr. JEFFREY SILKEN(ph) (Boca Raton Resident): South Florida is the sixth borough, so…
SMITH: Jeffrey Silken lives in Boca Raton by way of Brooklyn. He loves Giuliani, but he's not totally sure he's going to vote for him.
Mr. SILKEN: You know, the one thing that I don't understand is why Rudy didn't campaign in Michigan, New Hampshire, Iowa unless he's going to be a spoiler just by trying to take Florida here.
SMITH: You can understand how a New Yorker might be skeptical of the mayor's motives. Giuliani used to be known as this pit bull campaigner. But at a surf shop in Cocoa Beach, he seemed almost mellow.
Mr. GIULIANI: Senator McCain and Governor Romney are doing such a good job of attacking each other. How about voting for somebody who's not attacking? Vote for Rudy Giuliani.
(Soundbite of cheering)
SMITH: Giuliani as Mr. Nice Guy - must be that month he spent in the Florida sun.
Robert Smith, NPR News, Orlando.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Robert Siegel.
President Bush has often said that Iraq is the central front in the war on terrorism. But lately, U.S. military and intelligence leaders are talking more about Pakistan. That's where Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders were said to have gone after fleeing Afghanistan in late 2001.
Earlier this month, the top two U.S. intelligence officials traveled to Pakistan. They pushed for a stronger role for the CIA there in going after al-Qaeda. As NPR's Tom Gjelten reports, they met with mixed results.
TOM GJELTEN: In the last six months, al-Qaeda in Iraq has gotten weaker, U.S. officials say, while in Pakistan, bin Laden and his network have grown stronger, mainly along the border with Afghanistan. By November, the Bush administration had drawn up a plan to equip and train the Pakistani government's frontier corps - a paramilitary force that operates along the boarder with Afghanistan. Then came the killing last month of Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader.
U.S. intelligence officials now say the assassination was the work of militants tied to the Pakistan-based al-Qaeda network. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, speaking at the Pentagon last week, underscored the danger that al-Qaeda now represents in Pakistan.
Secretary ROBERT GATES (U.S. Defense Secretary): Al-Qaeda has threatened to try and destabilize Pakistan. We have the impression that they have allied with other groups, other extremist groups in the border area. Some of this lacks real clarity. But they clearly are much more active and working with other people.
GJELTEN: Within a few days of the Bhutto assassination, senior U.S. officials gathered at the White House to discuss the possibility of new covert actions aimed at al-Qaeda in the Pakistani border area. The CIA was to take the lead. On January 9th, according to a U.S. intelligence official, General Michael Hayden, the CIA director, and Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, traveled secretly to Pakistan to meet with President Pervez Musharraf to review the plan. Among the topics discussed was the possibility of more missions by unmanned predator surveillance aircraft. Predators carry missiles that can be fired remotely.
Another was how U.S. intelligence agencies could supply the Pakistani's frontier corps with more information about suspected militant activity. But according to U.S. officials, Musharraf resisted the idea of a more direct CIA role.
One senior U.S. intelligence official says, quote, "We're trying to be more aggressive there, but it's very frustrating," end quote.
Hayden and McConnell met separately with General Ashfaq Kiani, the new Army chief of staff in Pakistan. U.S. officials have high hopes for Kiani, but on the issue of U.S. operations in Pakistan, he, too, has taken a hard line.
In Europe last week, President Musharraf said Pakistani forces were themselves capable of dealing with the threat from al-Qaeda. But at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Gates said the danger al-Qaeda represents is not to Pakistan alone.
Secretary GATES: We're all concerned about the reestablishment of al-Qaeda safe havens in the border area. And I think it would be unrealistic to assume that all of the planning that they're doing is focused strictly on Pakistan.
GJELTEN: Pakistan has long been a difficult area for U.S. forces because of the sensitivity there to any U.S. presence. In the past, the CIA has undertaken a number of secret missions with Pakistani cooperation. A missile strike last November that killed five militants was widely believed to be a CIA operation. Teresita Schaffer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, says the rebuff that Hayden and McConnell received from the Pakistani government is likely to mean that secret CIA actions in Pakistan will be harder to arrange.
Ms. TERESITA SCHAFFER (Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia): We've now had the government of Pakistan specifically say no, we will not allow this to happen. So that this slightly hazy middle ground of operating with the implicit approval of the government of Pakistan is going to become a lot more difficult to occupy.
GJELTEN: It's a very dangerous turn of events, she says.
Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Senator Barack Obama received several high-profile endorsements today including one from a Nobel Laureate, writer Toni Morrison. It was Morrison who famously dubbed Bill Clinton America's first black president.
In a letter to Obama, she wrote this: In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender. And something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination, which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.
Well, Senior New Analyst Daniel Schorr agrees with Morrison in part. He says Senator Obama's appeal seems to transcend race.
DANIEL SCHORR: Welcome to the latest buzz word in the political lexicon, post-racial. It is what Senator Barack Obama signals in his victory speech in South Carolina when he tells of the woman who used to work for segregationist Strom Thurmond and now, knocks on doors for the Obama campaign.
It is what makes Bill Clinton seemed disconnected when he compares Obama's campaign to the campaigns of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and '88. The post-racial era, as embodied by Obama, is the era where civil rights veterans of the past century are consigned to history and Americans begin to make race-free judgments on who should lead them.
Post-racial began to come into vogue after Obama won the Iowa caucuses and faired well in the New Hampshire primary.
The Economist called it a post-racial triumph and wrote that Obama seemed to embody the hope that America could transcends its divisions. The New Yorker wrote of a post-racial generation and indeed, the battle-scarred veterans of the civil rights conflict of 40 years ago seemed less enchanted with Obama than those who were not yet alive then. Ambassador Andrew Young, a one-time aide to Martin Luther King, argued that former President Bill Clinton was every bit as black as Senator Obama.
The nation may have a way to go yet to reach colorblindness. Exit poll data in South Carolina indicates that Senator Obama won 78 percent of the black vote, but only 24 percent of the white vote. But perhaps equally significant, Obama won 67 percent of voters in the 18-29 age group. The post-Selma generation, you might say.
The wish for a post-racial politics is a powerful force and it rewards those who seem to carry its promise, says Peter Boyer in The New Yorker. It may still be too early to speak of a generation of colorblind voters, but maybe color blurred?
This is Daniel Schorr.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
A few minutes now on the state of the states. President Bush may plug an economic stimulus in tonight's State of the Union address. But if you are a governor bound by your state constitution to balance the budget, your annual message is likely to be short on stimulus for growth and long on response to a revenue shortfall.
Governor ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (Republican, California): Talking about fiscal responsibility sounds so cold. Many have a representative for AIDS patients or poor children or the elderly sitting across from you. It's one of the worst things about being governor.
Governor ELIOT SPITZER (Democrat, New York): Where's the money to come from? We should unlock some of the value of the New York state lottery either by taking in private investment or looking at other financing alternatives. As we do this, we will assure that the state continues to receive the more than $2 billion annually for K-to-12 education the lottery now provides.
Governor TIM KAINE (Democrat, Virginia): Virginia has been affected by the cooling national housing market. Today, too many Virginians face the threat of foreclosure. Rising energy prices, tightening credit requirements, a turbulent stock market continue to make our economy very volatile, and we must monitor and will monitor the situation very closely.
SIEGEL: Governors Schwarzenegger of California, Spitzer of New York, and Kaine of Virginia are not the only trio singing the state budget blues. The Center on Budget and Policy Priority says at least 25 states face budget shortfalls this year, and many states haven't yet reported on their fiscal outlook.
And we're going to hear about four states now from reporters who cover the budget in three state capitals and also from the governor of Ohio.
And first to Reno, Nevada, and reporter Geoff Dornan of the Nevada Appeal. Geoff Dornan, how big a shortfall does Nevada face and what does Governor Jim Gibbons, the Republican, intend to do about it?
Mr. GEOFF DORNAN (Reporter, Nevada Appeal): The shortfall, as of last week, was $564.7 million, and Governor Jim Gibbons has already gone ahead in making cuts. Primarily, he's taken a 4.5 percent across-the-board general fund reduction. And we have rainy day fund, which is going to give us about another 230 million of that total.
SIEGEL: And to put this in some perspective, Nevada talks about a budget shortfall in the hundreds of millions of dollars. You compare to what Governor Schwarzenegger is facing in Sacramento, it's - it may be a rainy day fund but it's a mere drop in the bucket.
Mr. DORNAN: Well, I think Governor Schwarzenegger's budget cuts are greater than the state of Nevada's budget.
SIEGEL: Where is the revenue shortfall? Why is it that Nevada's tax income is so much lower this year than had been anticipated?
Mr. DORNAN: It's primarily the sales tax numbers. Sales taxes are down significantly. Over the biennium, the projection is about $168 million. Then the other problem is gaming taxes, which have fallen off in the past couple of months. Gaming taxes plus the entertainment taxes that companies account for - just about another third of the state's general fund revenue.
SIEGEL: That's Geoff Dornan, who is a reporter for the Nevada Appeal. He spoke to us from Reno.
And now on to Florida, where Governor Charlie Crist and his fellow Republicans in Tallahassee are looking at perhaps $2 billion in budget cuts to makes this year.
Jim Ash is capital bureau chief for the Tallahassee Democrat. Jim Ash, how are Floridians experiencing revenue shortfall in Florida?
Mr. JIM ASH (Capital Bureau Chief, Tallahassee Democrat): Well, the Floridians that rely on state services are looking at $2 billion in budget cuts coming up next year. So right now, if I were living in Florida and depending on Medicaid or state-sponsored health care, I would be real nervous.
SIEGEL: Florida is a state that doesn't have an income tax, so when it comes to revenues, you're really talking about sales taxes there?
Mr. ASH: That's correct. They make up practically the entire revenue picture of what lawmakers get to spend in the general revenue budget.
SIEGEL: So a downturn in the economy is felt rapidly in Tallahassee in that case.
Mr. ASH: Especially when people stop buying homes and large-ticket items like automobiles, appliances - the sales taxes that come in from them make up a hefty portion of our revenue.
SIEGEL: That was Jim Ash of the Tallahassee Democrat in Tallahassee.
Now on to Trenton, New Jersey, and Joe Donahue, who is state budget writer for The Star-Ledger.
And, Joe, Governor Jon Corzine, a Democrat, seems to be taking the drive-by approach to find more state revenue. Do I have that right?
Mr. JOE DONAHUE (State Budget Writer, The Star-Ledger): Yeah, much to the consternation of a lot of New Jersey drivers. If the governor's plan went through as is, which the Senate president recently said would not happen, tolls would go up about 800 percent between now and 2022.
SIEGEL: Eight hundred percent.
Mr. DONAHUE: Yeah.
SIEGEL: We're talking about the New Jersey Turnpike, and…
Mr. DONAHUE: Turnpike.
SIEGEL: Garden State Parkway?
Mr. DONAHUE: The Garden State Parkway and Atlantic City Expressway.
SIEGEL: Do you think Governor Corzine is onto something here? That in the age of what in the east is known as Easy Pass and so many motorists have a transponder attached to the inside of their windshield and you drive by and just rack up a bill on the turnpike as you're driving on it; that it may be easier to get away with toll increases than if every motorist has to fumble for change every few miles on the highway?
Mr. DONAHUE: Oh, there's no doubt about that. I mean, for one thing, this is what Europe has been doing for decades - and Australia and South America. So to a large extent, the North American politicians are just sort of waking up to this. You know, Chicago and Indiana did outright private takeovers of their toll roads. And - I mean, that - this is definitely going to be something that a lot of states in chronic fiscal trouble are going to have to seriously consider because, you know, the options are limited.
SIEGEL: Joe Donahue of The Star-Ledger - and you and I know it's really the Newark Star-Ledger (unintelligible) - thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. DONAHUE: All right. Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: And now we turn to Columbus, Ohio, and one of the governors who actually has to deal with one of these revenue shortfalls. Ted Strickland is a Democratic governor.
Welcome to the program.
Governor TED STRICKLAND (Democrat, Ohio): It's good to be with you.
SIEGEL: Tell me about the problems you face and how you're going to deal with them.
Gov. STRICKLAND: Well, we face a budget shortfall ranging from $733 million up to the possibility of a budget shortfall of $1.9 billion depending upon what happens with the economy in the weeks and months to come.
SIEGEL: You served several terms in the House of Representatives in Washington.
Gov. STRICKLAND: Yes.
SIEGEL: I'd like you to describe the difference between federal budget policy and economic policy, where you can indulge in more deficit financing, if you want, and state government fiscal policies where most governors have to balance a budget.
Gov. STRICKLAND: Well, I have a constitutional responsibility to maintain a balanced budget, and so there's no wiggle room. We're either going to have to get more assistance, more revenue, or we're going to have to cut services to the people. And the states are absolutely operating where the rubber meets the road, so to speak, and the federal government, I believe, needs to be fiscally responsible in ways that perhaps they haven't been.
SIEGEL: In New Jersey, we have heard, where the rubber meets the road, Governor Corzine wants increased tolls on the turnpike; bring in more money on people who are driving on the highways. Can you do that?
Gov. STRICKLAND: Well, we do have a turnpike, and that's something that, you know, obviously we can look at, but it is not something that is going to, at least in Ohio situation, meet the, you know, the need that we have.
SIEGEL: In Nevada, the gaming tax brings in a lot of money. You've been against slot machines. Maybe some more slot machines would bring in some more revenue to Ohio.
Gov. STRICKLAND: You know, I just don't think that, for Ohio at least - other states can make, you know, make choices which seem to be best for them, but the people of Ohio have been rather firm in stating on numerous occasions that they do not think that the way to meet government's responsibility to its people should come from greatly expanded casino-type gambling.
SIEGEL: Well, Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio, thank you very much for talking with us.
Gov. STRICKLAND: Thank you so much.
SIEGEL: And in addition to Governor Strickland, we heard from reporters in New Jersey, Florida and Nevada - three states among more than two dozen facing budget shortfalls.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
Next week, the Pentagon will send its annual budget to Congress. The request totals about $500 billion. If approved, it will be the largest military budget adjusted for inflation since World War II. But one thing is missing - most of the money needed to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
NPR defense correspondent Guy Raz reports.
GUY RAZ: Every year, the United States spends more money on defense than the rest of the world combined. And this year's Pentagon budget will account for around a third of all federal spending. Or put another way, add up total spending on education, veterans' benefits, housing, transportation, agriculture and energy, and you still don't reach the total spent on defense in one year. So this year, the Pentagon will try something different. It'll ask Congress for $500 billion, the amount it takes to run the military, and then on top of that, another 70 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But that $70 billion is only a quarter of what it actually costs to fund those wars each year. And Chris Hellman, an analyst with the Center for Arms Control, says it's a deliberate move to obscure just how much money the Pentagon will actually spend in total.
Mr. CHRIS HELLMAN (Analyst, Center for Arms Control): If you bundle those together and you send Congress a three-quarter-of-a-trillion-dollar budget request, even the American people are going to go ugh.
RAZ: So the Pentagon will ask Congress for just enough money to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - again, that $70 billion - through roughly February 2009, just a few weeks after the next president takes office.
And Winslow Wheeler, a budget analyst with the Center for Defense Information, says it…
Mr. WINSLOW WHEELER (Budget Analyst, Center for Defense Information): Stiffs the next president with a urgent requirement to scrounge for money to pay for war expenses that will be unavoidable.
RAZ: Now, last year, Congress required the Pentagon to request all war funding upfront. The idea was to make it easier to track just how much money the wars cost. But this year, the Pentagon decided not to ask for all of it at once. And Chris Hellman believes it'll put the next president in an awkward position.
Mr. HELLMAN: Whoever the next president of the United States is going to be, is going to be forced for budgetary reasons to make some very important policy decisions about the future U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they're going to have to do it right at the beginning of their administration.
RAZ: Even, he says, if that next president takes a completely different position on the wars.
Mr. HELLMAN: Even if an administration, be it Democrat or Republican, were to pull our troops out the day after the inauguration, they were going to announce the troops were coming home, money for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan wouldn't stop that day.
RAZ: Because money would still be needed to pay for salaries and supplies and food and maintenance for the troops in the field, not to mention the cost of bringing them home.
Guy Raz, NPR News, the Pentagon.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
We've also asked you to nominate fictional characters and to write personal essays on why he or she or it inspires you. We've received well over 300 submissions, and we'll post the best essays in our In Character blog.
Here's one example, it's from Mike McCabe(ph) of Richmond, Virginia, who has nominated Jack Bauer, the character played by Kiefer Sutherland in the Fox TV series "24."
Mr. McCabe writes this: If someone were to ask me what I think of when someone says America, I would say red meat, power tools and Jack Bauer. Jack Bauer has struck a chord with die-hard patriots in our country along with people who love explosions and firefights. I fit into both of these categories. Jack, says McCabe, is the quintessence of what every starry-eyed, small town boy dreamt of as a child: a real-life superhero.
Of course, Jack Bauer is a work of fiction. We'll hear about him later in the series. If you'd like to tell us about your favorite American fictional character, go to npr.org/incharacter.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Critic Tom Moon says when you listen to the music, all that paranormal talk feels eerily real.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
TOM MOON: As origin stories go, this one's a doozie. While on tour, The Mars Volta bought an Ouija board at a Jerusalem curio shop. The board was just a game, just part of the band's after-show wind-down ritual. Then, according to guitarist and songwriter Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, things got strange.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MOON: Through the board, the same spirits visited The Mars Volta night after night. Rodriguez-Lopez says their communications partially inspired the lyrics and even the sounds the band had been developing for its new album.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "TOURNIQUET MAN")
CEDRIC BIXLER: (Singing) Let me be your tourniquet man. Let me keep you as a favor.
MOON: When The Mars Volta went into the studio to record, chaos ensued. Rodriguez-Lopez says the messages coming through the Ouija board got scary. The studio flooded. There were a series of weird equipment malfunctions. Fearing that the spirits were behind the problems, the songwriter says he broke and buried the board, so the band could finish the album. It sounds preposterous, but spend some time with "The Bedlam in Goliath" and those visitations begin to seem almost plausible.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "METATRON")
BIXLER: (Singing) In the dead plot you dream in, ten go away, ten born of pray, ten go away. Folding wormholes. My time is riding in the alphabet.
MOON: At times, it does sound like The Mars Volta is getting paranormal assistance from some of music heaven's luminaries. On this tune, an eight- minute head spinner called "Metatron," there are collisions of instruments that modernist composer Charles Ives would love, and hiccuping odd-meter high jinks straight out of the Frank Zappa songbook. And check out this transition. In a heartbeat, The Mars Volta goes super-fast rock into a Charles Mingus-style prayer-meeting gospel groove.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "METATRON")
BIXLER: (Singing) Eye of Fatima, I've kept all your dreams in a waking isolation of indictment. Maybe I'll breakdown. Maybe I'll try. Circumvent inoculation and I just want a cut. When will I breakdown? Lately I might unconnect the fascination.
MOON: When Rodriguez-Lopez hears the album now, he says he's taken back to its fitful birth, those 37 straight days he spent in the studio without seeing the sun, and the unwelcome spirits that were flying around the room while his band was trying to work. That's audible. "The Bedlam in Goliath" is thrilling and a little bit terrifying at the same time. It's like some kind of sinister amusement-park ride. You get in and discover that Satan is at the controls, and he's smiling and has no intention of slowing down until everybody is screaming at the top of their lungs.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NORRIS: The CD is "The Bedlam in Goliath" by The Mars Volta. Our reviewer is Tom Moon.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR'S Ina Jaffe has that story.
INA JAFFE: Nearly one-fifth of California voters have no party affiliation. They're called decline-to-state voters. And here's what we know about them. They tend to be younger than partisan voters and a bit better educated. A study from the Public Policy Institute of California also finds that they're generally liberal on social and environmental issues, but fiscally conservative. They sound a lot like 27-year-old graduate student Megan Rawlins of Menlo Park.
MEGAN RAWLINS: My mother's a Democrat and my father's a Republican and during all of the political discussions that I have participated in, I had a very difficult time fully agreeing with either side.
JAFFE: Like many independents these days, Rawlins say she leans Democratic. But she has no particular preference among the Democratic presidential candidates. She likes them all. What worries her is the Democrats might lose in November. That's why she wanted to hedge her bets and help pick the Republican nominee.
RAWLINS: Among the Republicans, I have much stronger opinion. I don't think that they can all do a good job. So it was more important for me to put my say, my vote in that arena.
JAFFE: But independents like Rawlins are not allowed to vote in California's Republican presidential primary, explained state party chairman Ron Neering.
RON NEERING: That's why we wanted to encourage everyone to register as a Republican and join our party so that they can vote in the primary and help us nominate the next president of the United States.
JAFFE: California Democrats have a different philosophy and allow decline-to- state voters to help choose the Democratic nominee. And with good reason, says party chairman Art Torres.
ART TORRES: Because usually when you invite decline-to-state voters to vote in our primary, they end up voting for our Democratic nominee in November.
JAFFE: Republicans and Democrats have made different decisions about independent voters partly because they have different ways of awarding delegates. The Democrats do it by a candidate's statewide percentage of the vote. Republicans, on the other hand, apportion delegates by congressional district. Jack Pitney, government professor at Claremont McKenna College, says Republicans are afraid that in districts with relatively few GOP voters the independents might engage in so-called mischief voting.
JACK PITNEY: They might vote maliciously to support the weaker candidate and thereby control the general election outcome.
JAFFE: However...
PITNEY: There is very little evidence for mischief voting. For the most part, ordinary voters just don't decide that way.
JAFFE: Before he was a professor, Pitney worked for the Republican National Committee and the GOP congressional caucus. And he thinks that barring independent voters from California's Republican presidential primary could be damaging to the party in the long run.
PITNEY: In California, Republicans have been in bad times lately. They have very week position in statewide office, the state legislature. And they have to find some way to get more people into the tent otherwise they're going to be a permanent minority.
JAFFE: So it should be good news for the California GOP that decline-to-state voter Megan Rawlins took the trouble to change her registration just so she could vote for a Republican in the primary.
RAWLINS: But as soon as the primary is over, I will re-register and go back to being a decline-to-state voter.
JAFFE: Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
I'm Robert Siegel. And this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
NORRIS: And it's Nelson's debut as an author. Nelson joins me now to talk about his book, a book that I understand was eight years in the making?
KADIR NELSON: Just about. About seven and a half. A little over seven and a half years.
NORRIS: Why so long?
NELSON: It started off as a few paintings and it grew into over 40 paintings and - but each painting, there's a tremendous amount of research to do, just to make sure that everything is accurate.
NORRIS: How do you do the research for your paintings?
NELSON: In the beginning, I read a number of books on the Negro Leagues. I also interviewed a number of former Negro Leagues players specifically a man by the name of Walt McCoy who lives in San Diego, where I do. And it helps a lot to hear the history directly from someone who've lived it rather than reading it in a text book.
NORRIS: You know, a lot of the players have very stern expressions. They look - not necessarily mean, but they're all about business.
NELSON: Yeah. Here, you have a group of men and women who were confronted with discrimination by way of a ban from Major League Baseball. And rather than give up, this group of individuals decided to create their own grand stage by which they could showcase their talents. And that grand stage became the Negro Baseball Leagues.
NORRIS: And it was a league without rules. They played rough ball.
NELSON: They had a number of rules, but they really found ways around them. Base runs would slide into base with their cleats and spike showing. They threw all types of pitches that were banned in the major leagues. But - I mean, you know, as a result of that, they learned how to hit everything. So by the time integration came, when Jackie Robinson crossed the color barrier in 1947, African-American ballplayers were prepared to hit anything and to play at that high level of play.
NORRIS: Now, I'm looking for a passage, but chapters are actually called innings. And there is an inning where you described - it's the third inning - and you described life in the Negro Leagues. And I was hoping that you could read a stretch of this for us.
NELSON: We did an awful lot of traveling, mostly in buses. They were nice buses to begin with, but they weren't the kind that were made for riding every day. We ran those poor busses ragged. Many a time, we'd ride all day and night and arrive just in time to play a game. Then we get back on that hot bus and travel to the next town for another game, often without even being able to take a bath. And I got to say, that cramped bus would get pretty ripe on some of those summer nights after a double hitter. Phew. This was all season long. All that traveling would wear on you.
NORRIS: There's a music in your voice when you read that passage, that you don't necessarily hear in your speaking voice. Who is that man who's telling the story?
NELSON: This man is the grandfather of all of us. But I have to say that when I was writing this manuscript, I was trying to talk in the voice of someone like Walt McCoy, who was my official consultant. But mostly in the voice of Buck O'Neill, who was a former player and manager in the Negro Leagues. And he became the first African American coach in the major leagues. I didn't really consider myself a writer. But as I continue to work, I figured, you know, I think I can do this, I'll give it a shot, and it worked out.
NORRIS: I want to ask you about some of the pictures in the book. And I want to begin with the picture that is on page 27. It's Willie Foster and young fans, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, circa 1932. He's standing and he's so tall and powerful, he looks almost like a statue. Tell me about this picture.
NELSON: They are standing on Wiley Avenue in Pittsburgh during the Depression, and you have streetwise guys. And everyone's attention is on this group, specifically the African-American player. He dominate the position. The perspective is very low. You're looking up at him as if you were a child revering him. That's really what I aim to share in this image.
NORRIS: Kadir, how long does it take you to finish one of your paintings?
NELSON: Well, that is a secret.
NORRIS: Oh, you can't tell me?
NELSON: I'm just kidding.
NORRIS: Oh, okay.
NELSON: No, I'm just kidding.
NORRIS: Now, you're pulling my leg.
NELSON: I'm pulling your leg. It really - it varies from - some of them are very simple, and it take maybe a week. Some may take three months. It really depends what it is. Many of these paintings in the book are rather large paintings. Six feet wide, one is about eight feet wide. Many of them are about three feet by three feet.
NORRIS: That title, where does that come from?
NELSON: The title "We Are The Ship" comes from a quote by the founder of the Negro Leagues, Rube Foster. The full quote is, "We are the ship, all else the sea." And it was, in essence, the declaration of independence of the Negro Leagues from the Major Leagues since they were banned from playing in the Majors. The players and owners decided to create their own grand stage to showcase their talents - because I felt that it was appropriate to title this book "We Are The Ship" because this story is presented in the first person plural. We play baseball. This is how we lived. And this is what we did to enable African-Americans and people of colors to follow in our footsteps.
NORRIS: Kadir Nelson, it has been a pleasure to talk to you. All the best to you. Thanks so much.
NELSON: Thank you for having me.
NORRIS: Kadir Nelson is the author and illustrator of "We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball." And you can see that fabulous painting of "Willie Foster and His Young Fans" at npr.org. There, you can also read more about life in the Negro Leagues.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton is in Nairobi and she has the story.
OFEIBEA QUIST: Melitus Mugabe Were was a newly elected opposition legislator. Gunmen pulled up behind his car right outside the gate of Were's house, dragged him out and shot him dead. It was not immediately clear whether the killing was politically motivated or criminal. But the opposition described it as an assassination.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE WAILING)
QUIST: Unidentified Woman: We are ready to die (unintelligible)...
QUIST: At Were's house in a bourgeois Nairobi suburb, Police fired teargas into the compound to disperse mourners and supporters, some of whom were taunting officers.
(SOUNDBITE OF GUNSHOTS)
QUIST: Gunfire could be heard in nearby Kibera slum, an opposition stronghold and notorious flashpoint. More bloody protests also broke out in Kenya's Rift Valley. An hour's drive from Nairobi, firing rubber bullets, military helicopters dive-bombed mobs wielding machetes and clubs at refugees of a different tribe trying to flee the violence.
KOFI ANNAN: It is absolutely essential and urgent that violence be stopped.
QUIST: Today, he launched formal mediation efforts to end the post-election crisis.
ANNAN: To the leaders gathered here today, I say this. The people need you, they want you to take charge of the situation and do whatever possible to halt the downward spiral into chaos that is threatening this beautiful and prosperous country. You have to act with urgency.
QUIST: Raila Odinga spoke first.
RAILA ODINGA: The national fabric has been broken. The very foundation of the state is crumbling. Violence is spiraling out of control. Unless we ourselves here resolve to act quickly to save our nation, there might be no nation left to save.
QUIST: And from President Mwai Kibaki...
MWAI KIBAKI: It is unfortunate that in some parts of the country, neighbors who have lived side by side peacefully for many years have been incited to hate one another and view each other as enemies. I feel deeply saddened to see Kenyans confronting one another violently.
QUIST: Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Nairobi.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Anne Garrels has this report.
ANNE GARRELS: It wasn't supposed to be this way. That's what journalist Khalzar Abdul Amir(ph) says again and again.
KHALZAR ABDUL AMIR: (Through translator) I have big dreams that after Saddam, it would be better off. But everything is much worse than before.
GARRELS: She was specifically targeted because she's a female reporter. This 29-year-old received a letter. It was a threat - quit or die.
ABDUL AMIR: (Through translator) It was a declaration but it was lawful to kill me. My family sent me north to Kurdistan for safety.
GARRELS: But Khalzar felt like a foreigner there, alone without family, friends or a job. She felt like she was already dead. And her family in Baghdad needed her financial support. She came back. She does her job as best she can. She's more careful. But every day, she's scared.
ABDUL AMIR: (Through translator) If I were free to wear what I like, I would not be wearing this long skirt and head scarf. I don't feel comfortable. But a woman now has to give up the fight and dressed the way the conservatives want to stay alive.
GARRELS: You don't have to get a personal threat to get the message.
ABDUL AMIR: (Through translator) Millions of Iraqi women share my fears. At least, I have the will and determination to defy circumstances and venture outside my house. Others cannot do this.
GARRELS: Unidentified Woman #1: (Speaking in foreign language)
GARRELS: Amir Alukabi(ph) was kidnapped last year and held for seven days because she defended women's rights. One of the lucky ones, she was released when her tribe paid a hefty ransom.
AMIR ALUKABI: (Through translator) Today, the religious movements controlling Iraq are the real stumbling block in the way of women. When we brought up the killings of women in Basra, there were actually members of parliament who supported the killings. They want to lock a woman up in her house. Keep her blindfolded and backward.
GARRELS: And she had harsh words for the women in parliament who, by law, make up 25 percent of the seats.
ALUKABI: (Through translator) These women members of parliament are ghosts. They say nothing. The parties fooled the people. They say, look, we've given women a role when they have no role at all. It's pure propaganda.
GARRELS: Outside Baghdad in the countryside, women are even more restricted, controlled by the men of the family, dependent on their dictates with no recourse. Lamyah Rabiya Saffat(ph) says the trappings of modern life are an illusion.
LAMYAH RABIYA SAFFAT: They have their cars. They have everything. But still, inside, they are restricted to the tribe, to the habits of the old.
GARRELS: Lamyah moved from Baghdad to the provincial town of Hila when she married her first cousin. Arranged marriages within family are common. The transition to provincial life has been difficult. She describes the female cousin who dared to become a pharmacist.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
RABIYA SAFFAT: She's not married until now. And they thought she's mixed with men and so on. And she's having her free thoughts.
GARRELS: What is it that the men fear? They don't trust the women?
RABIYA SAFFAT: Yeah, they don't trust the women. They don't take their point of view. She does not have to make an opinion. If she does, they say to her she's not a good woman. So she'd rather to be silent. Yeah, it's better for her.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
GARRELS: Naharwan(ph) is another cousin. And Lamyah, sister-in-law. She is bright and hungry for life. But there was not relative her age for her to marry. Now 31, Naharwan is little more than a family slave. Lamyah can't bear what Naharwan's life has become.
RABIYA SAFFAT: It's a horrible thing, you know? Like a prisoner and somehow restricted according to the family. But she wants to get out of this cage as if, you know, I feel but she does not say that. But I feel what pain she's living. I see it inside of her. And this is killing me. Sometimes I cry for her.
GARRELS: She's an extraordinary woman.
RABIYA SAFFAT: Yeah, she's a powerful woman. Yes, tough, you know. From - outside but inside, I've felt her pain.
GARRELS: Unidentified Woman #2: Hello, Mama. (unintelligible).
GARRELS: Back in Baghdad, 37-year-old Fatima Red(ph) had hoped her education as an architect would finally be of use when Saddam was ousted. She hadn't been able to get a job not because she was a woman but because she was a Shiite. And at first, she and her husband locked out.
FATIMA RED: (Through translator) We succeeded in finding lucrative and interesting jobs working for foreigners. So the first time we had money, some money. But then the bitter reality set in. We could not enjoy our new money because of the bad security situation.
GARRELS: They bought a car but Fatima's dream of driving never materialized.
RED: (Through translator) Fewer and fewer women drive these days. You no longer see women driving the street compared to the old days because they are targeted.
GARRELS: Her husband received a death threat and fled the country. Fatima is trying to earn enough money to join him. She continues to work but tells no one - not even her children - who she works for and what she does. She says her prayer each morning, hoping she will return alive.
RED: (Through translator) Alone as a woman, I can't go out with friends or visit relatives. Life dies at sunset when I leave the office. I just want to get home safely.
GARRELS: She doesn't believe in the future here. But she knows her future abroad will also be limited.
RED: (Through translator) I don't want to leave my country because this means the death of my dreams. I can't work as an architect abroad. For me and my husband, this is - it's a huge loss.
GARRELS: Anne Garrels, NPR News, Baghdad.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Sixty years ago, an only child living in the White House had to endure this...
M: Unidentified Woman: How do you like the Secret Service men following you around on tour?
MARGARET TRUMAN DANIEL: Unidentified Woman: Do you want to take a bet on that?
TRUMAN DANIEL: Oh, I'm positive they don't. I've put my foot down on that in the beginning.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Margaret Truman Daniel, the daughter of President Harry Truman, died today in Chicago. She was 83 years old. In 1950, she embarked on a singing career and was panned by a Washington Post critic. Her father famously pans back, sending the critic this handwritten threat.
SIEGEL: Someday, I hope to meet you. And when that happens, you'll need a new nose.
NORRIS: Margaret Truman survived both her first daughter status and her failed music career. In later life, her name appeared on a string of successful mystery novel.
SIEGEL: And to our knowledge, "Give Him Hell Harry" never again corresponded with his daughter's critics. Margaret Truman Daniel died after a short illness. Again, she was 83 years old.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR: There was little suspense over the outcome of the House vote. The measure, after all, was hammered out in talks between Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republican leader John Boehner and the Bush administration. Boehner said it was an example of how Congress is supposed to work.
JOHN BOEHNER: Republicans gave a little, the speaker gave a little, and at the end of the day, we came to an agreement of that I think represents what the American people expect of us. They expect us to find ways to work together, not reasons to continue to fight with each other.
NAYLOR: House leaders are wary. Speaker Pelosi says any Senate changes should ensure rebates for low-income workers are kept in place.
NANCY PELOSI: We want that to be intact in the bill. Whatever they can - if they can come to agreement in a bipartisan way and with the administration on some additions to that, we're happy to look at that as we reconcile the two bills.
NAYLOR: Senators from both sides of the aisle are looking at a lot of additions. Republican Susan Collins of Maine says she'll co-sponsor an amendment to expand the low-income heating assistance program known as LIHEAP.
SUSAN COLLINS: It sends high-energy costs that are a partial cause of the downturn in the economy. And since the people having to cope with high-energy costs, this meant that they had less money for discretionary spending. I think that it's a very clear nexus between energy cost and the downturn in the economy.
NAYLOR: Other senators are talking about adding money for road projects, aid to the states and food stamps. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus downplays the changes his panel is planning to make to the House measure.
MAX BAUCUS: We don't substitute it; we build upon it. We take the same structure, make a couple of changes - some basic changes - and so that 20 million seniors now get the benefit, too. And then seniors are going to spend that money. And that could help stimulate the economy.
NAYLOR: But Baucus is meeting opposition from some of his own party as well as Republican Senate leaders. North Dakota Democrat Byron Dorgan questions the wisdom of giving tax rebates to the likes of Bill Gates.
BYRON DORGAN: It's preposterous, however, to be sending rebate checks to those at the top of the income ladder that are making millions of dollars a year. That doesn't make any sense, you know. I mean, we just have to use a little common sense here.
NAYLOR: Brian Naylor, NPR News, the Capitol.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
He says his plan improves on both the House-White House compromise and the tax rebates Americans saw seven years ago.
MAX BAUCUS: Back in 2001, only people who earn income tax got the rebate check. Almost as much revenue is paid in payroll taxes as is paid at income taxes. So I'm saying that we should improve upon the 2001 if you have payroll taxes, you get the rebate.
NORRIS: But imagine the idea of the stimulus package is to help those who are hurting. Why extend these kind of benefits to the extremely wealthy, especially when it means providing money to those who are least likely to spend them?
BAUCUS: And that's because into the House-passed bill, if you have only payroll taxes but no income tax liability, you don't get the full 600 bucks, it's down to 300 bucks. And so we're saying no, no. If - even if you don't pay income taxes, you pay payroll taxes, you get the full rebate check. And also by inclusion of seniors - 20 million seniors picked up in the Senate bill - 20 million seniors excluded in the House bill.
NORRIS: Now, the idea of the stimulus package is to provide a quick jolt to a sagging economy. There's some question or some worry that this might slow things down. We heard that from President Bush last night in the State of the Union Address. Before we go on, let's just listen to the State of the Union Address real quick.
(SOUNDBITE OF "STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS")
GEORGE W: The temptation will be the load off the bill. Now, we delay it or derail it and neither option is acceptable.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
NORRIS: Will your additions delay or potentially derail the stimulus act?
BAUCUS: No, I very much agree to the president. In fact, I applauded that line. I was sitting on the House chamber. We should not delay or derail this bill by loading it up with lots of pork and whatnot. And we're not going to do that. My goal is to basically take the House bill and just approve upon it without loading it up.
NORRIS: You're saying improve upon it. I imagine that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi doesn't see it quite that way.
BAUCUS: Well, I think privately, she does, honestly. And she understands that this - the House is one body and there's a co-equal body called the United States Senate. And senators are going to wind up - put their imprint on this and we've done it away which very much helps put more money in people's pockets with a higher propensity to spend.
NORRIS: Senator, a very simple question that I imagine is on the minds of many of our listeners. Where does this money come from?
BAUCUS: This is in a nature of an emergency so this is going to have to be covered later. This is going to be borrowed money, there's going to have to be spending else - cuts elsewhere, I mean, rather increase some place else. This is going to not be paid for.
NORRIS: So...
BAUCUS: I mean, it's not going to be paid for immediately.
NORRIS: ...with the listener in mind so they might get this if we follow your plan, the $500 rebate check but it may mean that they sort of taken on the other end if they don't have access to some sort of government funding for another program that they rely on.
BAUCUS: Well, that's the House version. That's exactly what the House does. That's exactly what President Bush is recommending. And that would apply it to both versions of the House and Senate.
NORRIS: But wouldn't that apply to your version off? I mean, you're talking about, you know, borrowing money from the government, potentially happy to make cuts elsewhere.
BAUCUS: Well, we're not making cuts elsewhere. The Bush plan - the House- Bush plan does not make cuts elsewhere and this plan also does not make cuts elsewhere. This is - we're not offsetting it.
NORRIS: And will this stimulus package in the end add to the nation's deficit woes?
BAUCUS: Well, that's - it's - my fond is it probably will a little bit initially, but it's - all economists say we should do this. All - I'm not going to say all, the vast majority of economists say we should do this. We need to give the economy a little bit of a stimulus, a little bit of increase. This is advice we're given by economists. It's advice we're given by business people. It's, I think, the right thing to do at this point. So that people have this money, spend it, and that's going to help the economy going into recession and oh, it's going to help the economy rebound.
NORRIS: Senator Baucus, thank you very much for speaking to us.
BAUCUS: Thank you.
NORRIS: That was Senator Max Baucus. He's a Democrat from Montana. He's the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and he's proposing an alternative stimulus plan to be drafted by the Senate committee tomorrow.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And you can learn more about Senator Baucus' plan to jumpstart the economy as well as the one House leaders in the Bush administration of proposed at npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Rob Gifford reports from London.
ROB GIFFORD: Speaking after several hours of talks, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown emerged to read a text full of diplomatic words about cooperation, but not very full of concrete suggestions.
GORDON BROWN: Faced by this uncertainty and always vigilant to risk, we're agreed that the fundamentals of the European economies remain sound. And we have committed to cooperate closely to maintain economic stability, to strengthen and deepen economic reform, and to support enterprise. We're agreed that at this time of global uncertainty, we need to signal our commitment to an open economy.
GIFFORD: Perhaps with that and the subprime mortgage meltdown in the U.S. in mind, the one word that Gordon Brown repeated over and again was the word transparency.
BROWN: Authorities need to cooperate and exchange information effectively within the European Union and internationally to prevent and manage crises and contagion. Based on these principles, we are calling for greater transparency to secure better informed markets.
GIFFORD: Professor Ian Begg of the London School of Economics says today's meeting did not amount to much.
IAN BEGG: Well, it does look to me as though they're engaging in a confidence-building exercise. In short, the announcements about new measures to increase transparency and to regulate better are smack very much of bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted.
GIFFORD: Rob Gifford, NPR News, London.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson has the story from Kabul.
SAYED YAQUB IBRAHIMI: (Speaking in foreign language).
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON: Paul Fishstein heads the Afghanistan Evaluation and Research Unit, a local think tank.
PAUL FISHSTEIN: Most people I talk to, or in Kabul anyway, look at this as an example of their concerns about the justice sector and public institutions more generally. There are questions about motivation, what's behind the case. There are questions about transparency, how was it handled, how was the case presented, and also about due process.
SARHADDI NELSON: Yaqub Ibrahimi has similar questions, especially since he and many others here believe he, not his younger brother, is the real target. Ibrahimi is a journalist who has written controversial stories over the past year about corruption and kidnapping by warlords in the main northern political party, Jamiat-e Islami. His stories appeared on the Web site of the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, a British-run organization that trains Afghan journalists.
YAQUB IBRAHIMI: (Speaking in foreign language).
SARHADDI NELSON: Ibrahimi says he started getting threatening phone calls telling him to back off, but he persisted. Then in October, police arrested his brother. He and the institute's director, Jean Mackenzie, say the day after the arrest, Afghan intelligence agents raided Ibrahimi's home and went through his computer, notebooks and address book. Family and friends say strangers started asking about Ibrahimi's whereabouts, so Ibrahimi went into hiding. He never stays in the same place more than one night.
YAQUB IBRAHIMI: (Through translator) I didn't tell my brother that I was the real reason he's in this mess. I just tried to cheer him up and tell him he'd be released.
SARHADDI NELSON: The governor denied any link between Ibrahimi's articles and the death sentence against his brother. He also denied involvement in the court case. But he suggested in a phone interview that the sentence was a bit much.
ATA MOHAMMAD NUR: (Through translator) He's a young man, a sapling, if you will. It would be better if we forgave him rather than condemn him.
SARHADDI NELSON: Afghanistan's information and culture minister, Abdul Karim Khurram, agreed.
ABDUL KARIM KHURRAM: (Through translator) I'm hopeful that in the next stages, justice will be served. And even if it isn't, any death warrant has to be signed off by President Karzai.
SARHADDI NELSON: Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News, Kabul.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This is NPR, National Public Radio.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Senior news analyst Ted Koppel is not impressed with the stimulus plans put forth so far. He says they speak to a larger problem in our troubled economy, that we like lending and spending money that just isn't there.
TED KOPPEL: This is Ted Koppel.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
NPR's Anthony Kuhn joins us from Beijing to discuss what's happening. Anthony, what's the extent of the storm so far and what's it like for all those travelers who are trying to get home for the holiday?
ANTHONY KUHN: And over a half a million passengers were stranded at that railway station, packed into that station and in tents outside that the army set up. And the government is now trying to get those people to stay in Guangzhou and not go home for the holidays. A trip home for Chinese New Year for many Chinese is pretty rough anyway. It means a battle to get tickets and then a long ride in a packed train. So all in all, it's a very, you know, auspicious prelude to the year of the rat.
NORRIS: Anthony, Chinese leaders are taking this situation quite seriously. What are they doing to try to calm people that are stuck in these train stations trying to get home?
KUHN: Well, they're treating it like a very serious national disaster. And the top leaders themselves went out into the field. Premier Wen Jiabao, the head of the government, went to Hunan province in southern China. And he appeared at a jam-packed train station with a bullhorn. And he actually apologized to the people who are stranded there. And this is what he said.
WEN JIABAO: (Speaking in foreign language).
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
KUHN: He said, I apologize to you all for being stranded here. We're working hard to get the electricity back up. That will get the trains running. And before long, you can go home for the holiday. And he ended by wishing everybody a happy Chinese new year in advance.
NORRIS: Now, this is the heaviest snow in decades. But eventually, this weather will past. But what are the deeper implications for the severe weather?
KUHN: And this has also sparked fears of hording of supplies, including electricity and shortages of food and other things. So people are looking at the implications and seeing trouble ahead for the Chinese economy this year.
NORRIS: Thanks so much, Anthony.
KUHN: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: That was NPR's Anthony Kuhn speaking to us from Beijing, China.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Since he's not available, we're asking James Fallows about it instead. He lives in China nowadays and he writes for the Atlantic Monthly. Welcome.
JAMES FALLOWS: Thank you. I'm approximately as old as Aesop, so I'm glad to be here.
SIEGEL: In the January-February issue of the Atlantic, you write an article called "The $1.4 trillion question: What do we owe China?" And the first question is, when some Chinese enterprise sells some widgets at Wal-Mart and the latest wad of dollars go overseas, who gets to decide where to spend the money?
FALLOWS: But in many real economies, banks would just be able to do whatever they want with this. They could exchange it for dollars, they could use it overseas. But the Chinese government is in control of the exchange system, and that's how they're able to decide how much they'll send back to us, how much they'll meter out for the domestic uses, et cetera.
SIEGEL: So what the Chinese do with all these dollars they're making is not a market-driven decision by millions of Chinese entrepreneurs. This is national Chinese policy?
FALLOWS: Correct. Now, if you look at the Chinese economy as whole, it is seeding more of its total output probably than ever - any economy ever has before. It's roughly half of the total output of China is not consumed by Chinese people. And that's not because individual Chinese families are not wanting more things or more clothes or more cars or bigger apartments. It's because the way the Chinese central government manages the big inflow of foreign currency is a crucial decision to send it back, you know, for foreign investments, largely in the U.S.
SIEGEL: Let's examine that decision, because it's sort of easy, if not very flattering, to understand what's in this relationship for us, we Americans. In effect, we get to live on credit. We get - as a people, we get to live beyond our means off it. What's in it for China to have its people live effectively below their means?
FALLOWS: You know, inflation is the great bogeyman that people in the Chinese government are afraid of. And so, since both of those problems seem worst to them than having constraint in Chinese consumers, they solved the problem by parking it in U.S. assets even though those dwindle year by year in value compared to Chinese currency.
SIEGEL: Thereby take the bump side of the business cycle that might otherwise effect economy.
FALLOWS: Exactly.
SIEGEL: How long can this go on? I mean, it's in the U.S. interest, I suppose, to buy more things. But is there some obvious limit to this cycle?
FALLOWS: The way China would be hurt is if it stops sending us dollars is that all the assets it has now in dollars would become worth much less to a fall of the dollar. So as long as there's no extrinsic shock to the system, it can go on for a while. The things that might change it are some shock that we can't foresee. You know, policy disagreement over Taiwan or some strain inside China where people there think, wait a minute, we need more of our own money because we're getting older, because we need more sewers, we need more of the stuff that China doesn't have. And so it's been stable month by month, but it looks unstable in the long run. I just can't say exactly when.
SIEGEL: Well, James Fallows, thanks for spending a part of your home leave with us.
FALLOWS: My pleasure, thank you.
SIEGEL: That's James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly whose article in the January/February issue is titled "The $1.4 Trillion Dollar Question." Well, where's it at right now?
FALLOWS: Yes. The way the stat shows, it's now $1.53 trillion and going up a billion a day.
SIEGEL: Thanks a lot.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
NPR's Brenda Wilson has the story.
BRENDA WILSON: PEPFAR, as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is often called, was first announced by President Bush at his State of the Union address in 2003. At the time, it got a lot of good press for being one of the largest commitments by any government to a single disease. It wasn't all sweetness and light. Conservatives wanted part of the money set aside for programs that preach abstinence before marriage. And last night, in calling for a continuation of PEPFAR, which has paid for life-sustaining anti-AIDS drugs, the president also quietly asked Congress to maintain funding for abstinence prevention.
GEORGE W: I ask you to maintain the principles that have changed behavior and made this program a success. And I call on you to double our initial commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS by approving an additional $30 billion over the next five years.
WILSON: Stephen Morrison of the Center for Strategic and International Studies praised the president's proposal last night as a highlight of the Bush legacy.
STEPHEN MORRISON: It's calling for the enlargement to 2.5 million people of the numbers of persons who will be put on life-sustaining therapy for HIV/AIDS.
WILSON: In other words, nearly twice as many people with AIDS in developing countries as were covered before. What's more, Morrison says, the president's AIDS plan has helped preserve America's good standing in the world and restore a reputation that had been tarnished by Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other events related to the war in Iraq.
MORRISON: The achievements in global public health centered in HIV/AIDS are a standout set of achievements in this period in which we've seen in the broader picture a dramatic slide and a need to really recover from that.
WILSON: But David Bryden of the Global AIDS Alliance, a frequent critic of the administration, says the president is playing tricks with the numbers. Sure, he is calling for $30 billion for the next five years, Bryden says, that's twice as much as he asked for in 2003. But Congress is already funding the global AIDS plan at that level.
DAVID BRYDEN: I think that it's really quite ironic that in the last year of his presidency, he's, in effect, pulling the rug out from under his own program by proposing that it be flat-funded for the next five years at a time when the epidemic is still expanding and when we really should be aspiring to expand our response to meet the needs of children who have really been left out.
WILSON: The U.S. isn't the only country contributing to AIDS relief. And the head of U.S. Global AIDS Program, Mark Dybul, says that President Bush has used the program to get the rest of the world to respond.
MARK DYBUL: But he took that commitment and went to the G8 and got them to commit to double it. So because of the American people's commitment, the world is now committed to $60 billion over the next several years.
WILSON: Brenda Wilson, NPR News.
NORRIS: And you can read NPR's fact-checking of the president's State of the Union comments on health care and other topics at npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Howard Berkes introduces us to the next likely Mormon president.
HOWARD BERKES: Unidentified Group: (Singing) Sing of his goodness and mercy. We'll praise him by day and by night.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE SINGING)
BERKES: Bundled up against the cold, mourners praise the man they believe was a prophet of God. Twenty-year-old Shantry Steele(ph) had mixed emotions.
SHANTRY STEELE: You know, I'm cheering up, but I'm sad. But at the same time, he lived such an amazing life, and he touched so many people. I mean, even with the Olympics, we had so many people here that wanted to (unintelligible) faith and that were being exposed to the faith for the very first time. And I can't think of a better person to educate people and to show people what they LDS Church is all about than President Hinckley.
BERKES: Pamela Atkinson is a non-Mormon advocate for the homeless who has worked with Monson for two decades.
PAMELA ATKINSON: President Monson will build on the legacy left by President Hinckley in reaching out to everybody. He includes everybody, and he's very much at ease with anybody of any faith.
BERKES: Monson described the impact of this approach in a rare news conference three years ago.
THOMAS MONSON: It's just when you work together and you serve together, you understand each other and all of the animosity that people think exists evaporates. And once you've worked together, I believe each one will defend the other and correct any misconception.
BERKES: Atkinson and others say humor is another attribute Monson shares with his predecessor. Here he is at a gathering of Mormon women last fall.
MONSON: I'm reminded of a man who walked into a bookstore and asked the clerk, a woman, for help. Have you got the book titled "Man, the Master of Woman"? The clerk looked at him straight in the eye and said sarcastically, try the fiction section.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BERKES: He got a good laugh, but Monson did not have hopeful words for women looking for a greater role in their patriarchal faith or lives. He urged Mormon women to seek an education because...
MONSON: Statistics reveal that at some time, because of the illness or death of a husband or because of economic necessity, you may find yourself in the role of financial provider.
BERKES: Jan Shipps is a non-Mormon historian who has studied Mormons for 40 years.
JAN SHIPPS: President Hinckley is a hard act to follow because he was so beloved, and he was so effective as a spokesman for the church, and he was so able to control the message that the church wanted to put forth to the world.
BERKES: Howard Berkes, NPR News, Salt Lake City.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And Greg, how would you describe the mood there.
GREG ALLEN: Well, the people are starting to arrive here. The campaign supporters of Senator McCain, and they seem kind of expectant, milling around. I don't think they know as much as a lot of people in the media about the polls, you know, and they're looking at the - and what we're seeing coming in on the television monitors; we know that it's a very tight race. I don't think anybody really knows what to expect here tonight and you get that sense when you talk to people.
SIEGEL: Senator McCain appears to have benefited from some late endorsements in the Florida campaigns, some important ones in Florida.
ALLEN: Yeah, that's right, Robert. He, of course, last Friday, he had a big endorsement from Senator Mel Martinez who's a Republican senator from Florida, and he happens to be the highest ranking Cuban-American official in the state. That had to carry some weight. But even maybe more importantly was their endorsement from Governor Charlie Crist, a very popular governor here. His ratings are very high. And Governor Crist campaigned a little bit with Senator McCain and appeared with him, and we'll see what effect that might have with him. McCain campaign is hoping that last-minute, a little endorsement might help put him over the top.
SIEGEL: Okay, kind of tough exchanges between McCain and Romney today in Florida.
ALLEN: It gives you a sense of what's at stake, doesn't it? You know, we got 57 delegates here which is the largest of any contest up to now on the Republican side. And it's winner take all, so really there's no, you know, there's no consolation prize for the second-place winner, second-place finisher here. And you can tell how tight it was because when Senator McCain was - when Romney started push, say that it was all about the economy, and Senator McCain was not a good economics steward, Senator McCain hit back very hard, said it was the economy was important and he was a very good economics steward, but said national security is also an important issue. And as we're seeing tonight from the voters, I think both those issues were really important for Republican voters when they went to the polls today.
SIEGEL: Hello, Scott. What's going on there?
SCOTT HORSLEY: Well, I guess, you would have say the mood here is - it's somewhat on edge, Robert, that both the bar and the buffet table are well stocked, and I think the people here are expecting a long night. We've been saying for days now that this is going to be a tight contest between John McCain and Mitt Romney, and it's shaping up just as we thought it would.
SIEGEL: The exit polls have shown what issue's that have great concern to people, to voters in Florida, and the economy was by far and away, the greatest issue, I gather that the Romney camp thought that would benefit them a great deal.
HORSLEY: And as you said, the exit polls suggest Florida voters were in agreement, at least, or half of that, they were very concerned about the economy. But whether they buy the argument that Mitt Romney is the best steward for the U.S. economy, I guess, they tell the tale of how this comes out tonight.
SIEGEL: And Scott, we'll be checking with you as the evening progresses. Take care now.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you.
SIEGEL: Ron, it looks like judging of what we're seeing in the vote count and from what we've seen of exit polls, I think we could learn who wins this the old-fashion way by seeing the votes counted?
RON ELVING: Delightful in a way...
SIEGEL: Yeah.
ELVING: ...I believe. It's fun to watch the vote pile up, as long as it doesn't take all-night long or (unintelligible)...
SIEGEL: Weeks (unintelligible).
ELVING: I don't think we'll have to wait quite that long. And because the vote is coming in rather quickly, I believe, we'll probably see a result her in the next hour or so. The exit polls really are only meant to tell you when there's a definitive winner, a crushing winner perhaps. And in this particular instance, the polls have been showing us and everything else has been showing us, all the reporting has shown us, that this race is absolutely, between these two men, too close to call.
SIEGEL: Yeah, however, on the Republican side, it's probably shown us a couple of definitive losers. For one, Rudolph Giuliani, who staked his entire campaign after he pulled out of his mother states early on Florida, making a big showing in Florida, he is nowhere close to these two.
ELVING: Well, he's trailing behind by more than 10 points. He really has met, kind of, 15 points. He's not going to be in the running for number one or number two and he's fighting hard just to be number three.
SIEGEL: And Mike Huckabee. Florida is a southern state, a state with lots of voters who would fit the description of pro-Huckabee voters but he's not challenging Romney or McCain (unintelligible).
ELVING: Mike Huckabee really never had a chance to compete in Florida because he's broke. He has no money, he couldn't buy ads. Mitt Romney overwhelmed the other candidates in terms of how many ads he could put onto TV in recent weeks. And he has been on television in Florida beginning in March of 2007, but Mike Huckabee was just flat broke and had to go to states where he could compete with less money.
SIEGEL: And talk about the Democratic race where Hillary Clinton is running so far, ahead of Barack Obama with almost a third of the vote counted. It's clear that she's going to come out in front but this is a primary that conveys no delegates and there was supposedly no real campaigning for it.
ELVING: We saw and analogy here. In Michigan, a couple of weeks ago, another situation where the state had jumped ahead of its assigned area for the calendar, and was holding this early primary; they were given the death penalty by the Democratic National Committee. And not only were they given no more delegates or just zeroed out for delegates but all the candidates were asked not to campaign there. They all signed up a pledge not to do so, including Hillary Clinton. But in the last couple of days, she has began making statements about how she doesn't like this arrangement and things that Floridians should have there votes count for delegates.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Ron. And we repeat on the Republican side, it's winner take all for 57 delegates. It is very close about 30 percent of the vote has been counted, 34 percent for McCain, a 33 percent for Romney at this point, a fewer than 10,000 votes separating the two leading candidates in the Republican presidential primary in Florida.
MICHEL NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And, Robert, Rudy Giuliani, really, his strategy was all about doing well in Florida, how would you describe the mood on this evening when he obviously isn't doing very well in Florida.
ROBERT SMITH: Well, I met one woman and she had a button that says choose to be happy, and I think that's what the hundred or so people here are doing. They're making the best of it. They're trying to sort of celebrate what they've manage to accomplish here. You know, they're holding their event at a - it's what they call the Portofino Bay Hotel, which is a fake Italian villa. So at least, there's this vacation sense here that they're hanging out on a piazza looking at a beautiful fountain and waiting for Rudy to come speak.
SIEGEL: Giuliani, of course, campaigned heavily on his having been the mayor of New York City at the time of 9/11 and having been some called him on those days, America's mayor, did you get the sense that he was having any traction with Florida voters other than New York (unintelligible) to Florida?
SMITH: I have to say, I don't think I spoke to a single person here who didn't at some point live on Long Island or Connecticut or one of the five boroughs. And it was really his base of support, and there's a lot of former New Yorkers here in Florida. The bad news, for Rudy Giuliani, is a lot of them are Democrats. And even worse news is those that are Republican, you know, I spoke to some out on the campaign trail, they said, I love Rudy Giuliani, I love what he did as mayor, but I just don't think he can win this nomination anymore. And they started to talk about all things about strategy and he should have won earlier. This was his base - the New Yorkers in Florida who are Republicans, and even they started to have doubts over the last few days.
SIEGEL: What do you think he goes from here?
SMITH: Well, that's the question that everybody's asking tonight. He says that he's going to attend the debate in California. This is what he said earlier today. All that may change. It becomes a very, very distant third. We're asking ourselves now. Does he go back to New York? Does he go on to California? Does he announce something tonight, or think about it? He has official said that he's going to wait until tomorrow morning and sort of assess what's going on.
SIEGEL: Thanks a lot, Robert.
SMITH: You bet.
SIEGEL: And we should say that it's not altogether clear that Rudy Giuliani is going to run third in the Republican presidential primary, he's only a couple of points, 16 percent to 14 percent ahead of Mike Huckabee. And some of the latest areas, counties in Florida to report their votes are from the Panhandle where the polls were open until 8 p.m. Eastern time, 7 Central. And those votes could very well benefit Mike Huckabee and push Rudy Giuliani down to fourth place.
A: Welcome to the program once again.
FRED SIEGEL: Thanks for having me, Robert.
SIEGEL: How does Rudy Giuliani handle moments like this - a loss, a disappointment?
SIEGEL: When he lost in New York in 1989, lost for mayor in New York in '89, he handled very well. He handled it with a plum. And I suspect he'll handle this with a plum. He sees to it when winding down these last few weeks, going through the motions. I think, after New Hampshire, the only chance he had was if Huckabee won South Carolina. When McCain won South Carolina, I think, was functionally over.
SIEGEL: Because he would be vying for the same kinds of voters that McCain would be going for. What do you think he'll now drop out? What does your gut tell you?
SIEGEL: God know - to judge by the tone of the people's, the flat tone of people's voices, yes, but I'm not sure what, you know, what they're thinking. If they finish behind Huckabee, most certainly, though.
SIEGEL: Do you think Giuliani would conceivably endorse another candidate. Or if he did, who do you think it might be?
SIEGEL: Well, he has enormous respect for John McCain, and he has a little use for Mitt Romney. In New Hampshire, Romney and Giuliani mixed it up vigorously. But in New Hampshire, Giuliani rarely said anything critical of McCain. He has enormous personal respect for McCain.
SIEGEL: Tell us about what he might do in public life, I suppose if there's a Republican administration, he might conceivably want to be part of it, but he has a pretty active life in the private sector.
SIEGEL: I think being rich and famous might well occupy him. I don't know if he'll want to go into administration, but I wouldn't rule it out, but I don't think it's likely.
SIEGEL: Many decades ago, JFK said something about the light and back of the cabinet secretary's limousine, if that was worth tens of thousands of dollars a year, right? But, you don't think Rudy Giuliani would be lured away from riches in the private sector.
SIEGEL: I'm not sure, I think he's grown accustom to the good life, and it would be - he's have to be very hungry for it, and I don't see it right now.
SIEGEL: I just want to get your judgment of something - Giuliani, whatever else he is, he's a shrewd man, he's an able man, his strategy of ducking a fight in one early state after another to try to stand in Florida has been regarded by political pros as just nuts, to put it very simply. No one - I mean, people were prepared for the miracle that would prove everyone wrong but it just seem to be a very odd strategy. How do we reconcile this rather extremely able and bright man with a not very bright campaign strategy?
SIEGEL: I wont think the analysis of this is very good.
SIEGEL: Okay.
SIEGEL: He was always drawn to the inside street because he always had a problem with social conservatives. That ruled out in Iowa. In New Hampshire, that's where they were mistakes. He should have stayed in fought Ne Hampshire, he might have come in third, ahead of Huckabee. But in New Hampshire, there was this funicular relationship between McCain and Giuliani. What I mean by that is, for every vote that McCain rose with Giuliani drop with. It was the same pool of voters. And what happened was, several things occurred simultaneously. McCain staunched the bleeding over immigration. The surge began to kick in politically. And those two things began to hail McCain up exactly the same time as there was series of negative stories about Giuliani and Judy Nathan. And that relationship, that McCain's rise is exactly proportional to Giuliani's fall. It's a story they campaign so far.
SIEGEL: So it looks - it doesn't look as bright in hindsight as it might have looked at things not worked out a little differently.
SIEGEL: But then, they made a bad decision, they left New Hampshire then they came back. They should have stuck it out in New Hampshire. The last shot they had was South Carolina. They needed Huckabee to win in South Carolina. Had Fred Thompson drop out and Huckabee at one, they wouldn't look so bad today. The underlying problem, not just a (unintelligible) to an inside street but being independent on the street but being dependent on the campaigns of others to determine you fortunes.
SIEGEL: Well, Fred, thank you very much. Thank you for talking with us about it today.
SIEGEL: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: As of right now, 41 percent of the precincts have been counted in Florida. The lead is 3 percent, McCain, 35, Romney 32, and Rudy Giuliani pretty far back at 15 percent.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
First, to NPR's Greg Allen, who's at McCain election night headquarters in Miami. Do you hear anything at all there? Or have you heard anything from people at headquarters about where the balance of the votes might be coming from and whether the McCain people are confident this three point lead can hold up as the second half of the vote is counted?
GREG ALLEN: No one is willing to say that at this point that I can tell, Robert. They do know they did very well with Hispanic vote, which is something they made a play for. Of course, every candidate did, including - Rudy Giuliani and, of course, Mitt Romney. But McCain seems to have done very well there, talking to some voters in a little event. And one man said, he's a good man - talking about McCain - he's a good a man, someone we can trust; that's the kind of sentiment you get. People - they feel that they've known him for a long time. And I think that really kind of paid off for him, certainly in the Hispanic community here in Miami Dade County.
SIEGEL: Do we know other things about which groups of voters in the Republican primary favored John McCain or what their interest were and how he did well?
ALLEN: Well, what we understand is that he did well among moderate voters - no surprise there. Something that kind of maybe also shouldn't be a surprise - he did very well among older voters, voters in their 60s and older. And that, maybe, is good news. I don't know. But it certainly is where his votes came from here for him in Florida State which has a lot of senior citizens and older people.
SIEGEL: Well, Greg, we'll talk later in the evening, I'm sure. And thanks a lot.
ALLEN: Sure thing, Robert.
SIEGEL: And we're going turn now to NPR's Scott Horsley who is with Mitt Romney. Scott, any sense of mood there among Romney supporters?
SCOTT HORSLEY: Very early, as the results trickled in, there was a little teeter-tottering. And I think, at one point, we saw a very slight lead for Mitt Romney. But in general, John McCain has led so far tonight. And as you pointed out, it's going to get harder for Romney to make up that difference.
SIEGEL: The single issue that voters in Florida identified as most important by quite a margin was the economy, and if all had gone well for Mitt Romney that should have propelled him into first place. It still might, for we all know, as they count the balance of the votes. But his argument was, I'm from the private sector. I know business. I turn things around.
HORSLEY: But what we know from looking at the exit polls is that actually, John McCain did slightly better among that almost 50 percent of the vote who thought the economy was the biggest issue. So it was affected in a sense that Romney was right that people thought that was very important, but he may not have been right that that would be an issue that he would dominate in.
SIEGEL: Okay, Scott. Look forward to hearing more from you this evening.
HORSLEY: Talk to you later.
SIEGEL: First, do results in, say, Florida or, for that matter, in prior primaries in South Carolina, do they tend to have any impact on voters' opinions in California?
MARK D: Oh, I think they do. I think we've been seeing changes in the polling as different events have occurred - after Iowa, after New Hampshire, and now on the Democratic side, anyways after South Carolina. So the Florida results will be very interesting, and we'll be polling and try to see what effect they'll have.
SIEGEL: Now, I'm going to interrupt right now to introduce our national - our Washington - Ron Elving. We have some news here, Ron.
RON ELVING: Yes, Robert. The news is that NPR is prepared on the basis of the count to date to call this race for John McCain. We are projecting that he will be the winner in Florida tonight over Mitt Romney.
SIEGEL: Mark DiCamillo, I mean, does that change the scene in California much? Or does it fortify Mr. McCain's position in California?
CAMILLIO: I think it might. He has been leading in the pre-election polls. And Romney was trying to win from the conservative side. I think in California, you really have a tug-of-war between voters on the Republican side who are very conservative, who tend to favor Romney versus all other Republicans who are, I guess, I would call moderate conservatives who tend to favor McCain. They're about evenly split in terms of the size of those two groups, but I think with McCain's success in Florida, maybe some of the strong conservatives might be tempted to reconsider McCain; that maybe more voting with their heads rather than their hearts. But they - their natural instincts are not to go with McCain. But as McCain shows success in other states, I think that adds to his advantage in California.
SIEGEL: What about on the Democratic side? What do the polls in California show there? And are votes there equally fluid and possibly capable of reacting to results elsewhere?
CAMILLO: Oh, I definitely think they could be in play. All of the - polls that had been done to date, the public polls had been done prior to the South Carolina win for Obama, so there are yet, is yet to be any read in California of what effect that win has, and then, obviously, what effect the Kennedy endorsement has. So the next round of polling will be very significant. If Obama is going to be competitive in California, I would think that the next round of polling would show that he's closing in on Clinton. If, however, Clinton maintains her double-digit lead, I think it's pretty safe to say she will carry California.
SIEGEL: And when would the next round of polls come out, do you think?
CAMILLO: Well certainly, our organization will be out this coming weekend. There may be others, but certainly, you need some time to do the post- South Carolina field period, so we've been interviewing all week.
SIEGEL: Mm-hmm. Now I want you to ask you about, something which must give you, folks, headaches in doing polls for a primary, and that is the role of independent voters and the different rules of the two parties in their California presidential primaries.
CAMILLO: And we'll see what effect, you know, having the closed primary has on the outcome. But, you know, the Florida results, because it's similar to California being a closed primary, it's probably very encouraging for the McCain side here in California.
SIEGEL: Well, Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll - that actually isn't the formal name of the highly-respected Field Poll in Calfornia.
CAMILLO: California - founded by Mervin Field, and I think he deserves most of that credit.
SIEGEL: Mark, you're the director of the Field Poll in California. Thanks, Mark, for talking with us...
CAMILLO: Thank you.
SIEGEL: ...today. And the news, of course, here is that in the Florida Republican primary, at which there are 57 delegates at stake, John McCain, the Arizona senator, is the winner, and Mitt Romney is running second. They're still counting the votes, and they will be for another - at least another hour or more. But the gap seems to be more than 50,000 votes. Our editor, Ron Elving, is with me. And, Ron, this - should one now say in this very subjective business of reporting on primary campaigns John McCain is now clearly the Republican frontrunner for the nomination?
ELVING: I think you have to say that at this point, Robert. He has the monkey of South Carolina off his back from 2000. He has the sense that he cannot win among Republicans only off his back. This was an event where only Republicans could vote. And while it is a narrow victory, it is a victory over a field that had already been winnowed to people who, it seemed, had McCain hemmed in on several sides. For him to emerge from this is really his most impressive showing as a politician to date.
SIEGEL: His people have remarked that he spends more time fundraising nowadays because there's actually - he can raise funds now, which wasn't the case a while ago. I would assume a couple of big wins - the one in South Carolina, and this bigger win, I suppose, in Florida - makes it much easier for McCain to raise money.
ELVING: In addition to that, there is going to be a series of endorsements. Perhaps Rudy Giuliani, tomorrow, as some people are now reporting, will pull out of the race himself and endorse John McCain. I believe there will be a series of endorsements for John McCain from other figures in the Republican Party. There will be people who are in the establishment, people who are outside, what is sometimes thought of as the Republican establishment - all of them suddenly jumping on the McCain bandwagon.
SIEGEL: And again, to repeat, in the Democratic primary, at which - in which no delegates will be awarded, Hillary Clinton winning with ease, and in fact, winning more votes than anybody else in Florida today. In the Republican primary, which was a field contested by all the major candidates, the winner is John McCain.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Here's some of what Mitt Romney is saying.
MITT ROMNEY: (Soundbite of cheers)
ROMNEY: (Soundbite of cheers)
ROMNEY: Unidentified Man: Yeah.
ROMNEY: (Soundbite of cheers)
ROMNEY: (Soundbite of cheers)
ROMNEY: (Soundbite of cheers)
SIEGEL: A few moments ago, the former mayor of New York City addressed his supporters, and he, like Mitt Romney later, congratulated the winner today.
RUDOLPH GIULIANI: I want to congratulate each of my opponents on a hard-fought campaign here in Florida. I want to congratulate Senator McCain, who, I believe has been declared the winner. I spoke to Mitt Romney and told him my regard for him as well. These are honorable people. They're accomplished public servants, and they're good men, and we should - and as well as Mike Huckabee.
SIEGEL: And while we're waiting for Senator McCain, what better than to hear from our two regular political observers, E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and the Brookings Institution, and David Brooks of The New York Times. Hi.
DIONNE: Hey.
DAVID BROOKS: Howdy.
SIEGEL: David, Republican primary - is John McCain now a - is he a juggernaut headed straight to the White House in November?
BROOKS: He's a mini-juggernaut. And it is clearly the most decisive night at the Republican side so far. If Mitt Romney was going to change the momentum, this was the place he had to do it. It's the primary where only Republicans can vote. It's the primary - it's a state where he can outspend, which he did, John McCain, I think eight to one or ten to one. And it's a state where the moderates are split between Giuliani and McCain; that won't happen anymore. And McCain is far ahead in many of the big states on Super Tuesday. So he goes in with quite a lot of momentum, and you wouldn't - you'd be foolish to bet against him at this point.
SIEGEL: E.J., do you agree?
DIONNE: The question is: Can Romney demonize him as a kind of liberal? He tried to do that in Florida, and it didn't work.
SIEGEL: David, when you were going out and covering the campaigns a year ago, I remember, you came back and said, you go to these events, people are talking about immigration - a lot of people talking about it.
BROOKS: Yeah.
SIEGEL: Has it just been eclipsed by other things? Or - why doesn't it motivate more people to vote one way or the other?
BROOKS: And let's face it. I think the polling data suggests here that when we ask people, are you voting on this issue or that issue, that doesn't get at the real thing they're voting on. They're voting on character. And that's why they voted for McCain over Romney, not that they agree with him, but because they basically think he's trustworthy, and they're not sure about Mitt Romney.
SIEGEL: You agree with that, E.J.?
DIONNE: I think character certainly had a lot to do with it. It's also worth noting that Florida is one of those rare states where Latino voters, the Hispanics play a significant role in Republican politics. About one in ten of the voters today, according to the exit polls, were Hispanic. And they voted pretty strongly for John McCain, so that clearly helped him. But I think the consistency of the immigration issue - it's one in five Republicans, not more than that - suggests that it may not have the reach that many thought it did earlier in the year.
SIEGEL: One brief question before I let you guys go for now. And that is this: On the Democratic side, an odd primary in which no delegates were awarded, and yet, the results of who got how many white votes and how many black votes -very similar to what happened in South Carolina except there are far fewer black votes in Florida - is Barack Obama in the box he didn't want to be put in going into South Carolina?
BROOKS: Well, I really don't think so. I don't think this result means much, A, because they didn't campaign there; B, because in every state we've had so far, the Democrats - the Democratic voters outnumber the Republicans in huge margins, and here they have not. That means there's a lot of Democrats who just weren't mobilized this time. And if they had come out, especially African-Americans and younger voters, Obama would have done a lot better.
SIEGEL: E.J., you have the last word here.
DIONNE: This will mean something if voters in the 22-odd states that vote next week decide - it means something, otherwise, it doesn't mean that much. Obama does better in states he campaigns in, and he didn't have a chance to campaign here. The Clinton people will say this really matters.
SIEGEL: E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post and the Brookings Institution, David Brooks of The New York Times, thanks to both of you.
BROOKS: Thank you.
DIONNE: Thank you.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
With just 190 days to go until the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese capital is making good progress on its major projects. The hotels, stadiums and subway lines are all on schedule. However, one issue remains, and it's a big one - pollution. Beijing admits it has an uphill fight to solve its air pollution problem before August.
As NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports, the government is preparing to order cars and trucks off the streets to help.
ANTHONY KUHN: There are some days here after a big wind or rain when you can stand on the street and look all the way across town and see the mountains to the north and west. And then there are days when the smog is so bad, you wipe your nose and your tissue turns black, your eyes and throat burn. And government notices in the newspapers advise you not to go outside if you can possibly help it. Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau official Wang Xiaoming shows us where the government gets its information.
Mr. WANG XIAOMING (Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau official): (Speaking in foreign language).
KUHN: "What you're looking at here is an air quality monitoring station," he says. "There are 27 of these around the city, and each one sends data in real time to our control center." Inside the control center, huge screens on the wall show levels of pollutants at different place throughout the city.
Mr. XIAOMING: (Speaking in foreign language).
KUHN: Wang explains that today's air pollution index is 68 on the scale of zero to 500, with zero being the cleanest. Upstairs, the bureau's deputy director, Du Shaozhong, admits that the city still has a long way to go to clear the air.
Mr. DU SHAOZHONG (Deputy Director, Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau): (Speaking in foreign language).
KUHN: "We're facing up to the fact that Beijing's air quality really needs improvement. But we can definitely say that in recent years, Beijing's air quality has constantly gotten better."
Du says that Beijing has spent nearly $14 billion over the past decade to fight air pollution. The city met its clean air targets on 245 days last year, compared with 177 days in 2000. Du adds that last summer, the city conducted a dress rehearsal for the Olympic Games. It ordered a third of the city's three million cars off the streets and significantly reduced pollution.
Mr. SHAOZHONG: (Speaking in foreign language).
KUHN: "This was also a test of the public's support for traffic controls during the Olympics. Beijing's residents are willing to make this effort for the sake of better air quality."
Mr. DAVID STREETS (Senior Scientist, Argonne National Laboratory): I think they will do a lot of things when it comes to the crunch, and the games are, you know, coming up.
KUHN: David Streets is a senior scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. He has studied Beijing's air pollution and says beating it will require cooperation from other parts of North China.
Mr. STREETS: Our modeling showed that at ground level, concentrations of pollutants from provinces that are fairly close to Beijing are very significant.
KUHN: Already, construction sites and factories in Beijing are preparing to stop work ahead of the Olympics. Lai Ching(ph) is a worker helping to build a new expressway around the city.
Mr. LAI CHING (Chinese worker): (Speaking in foreign language).
KUHN: "We'll take three or four months of vacation," he says, "and go back to work when the Olympics are over. We just have to go with the flow. Everybody will have to take a vacation then whether they want to or not." In a worst-case scenario, some Olympic events may have to be put off for a day or two until the pollution clears. Jill Geer is director of communications for USA Track & Field, a national governing body. She says that athletes are preparing, at least mentally, for some bad air.
Ms. JILL GEER (Director of Communications, USA Track and Field): We're very confident that the Chinese will take the measures necessary to make sure that the air is clear by the time the Olympic Games rolled around. That said, we're working with our athletes to make sure that they know they need to train for possible heat and pollution.
KUHN: The U.S. track team will be training ahead of the games in northeast China's Dalian City, where the air is cleaner. But Geer says that's standard procedure and not related to the pollution. And she adds that the U.S. team has always thrived in adverse conditions, including four years ago in the intense heat of Athens.
Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Beijing.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
This next story is about a blind man who discovers he can still see. Here's the twist: What he sees isn't there.
This little mystery comes to us from our science correspondent Robert Krulwich.
Mr. DAVID STEWART: It's such a bore, (unintelligible). Don't ever do it.
ROBERT KRULWICH: Okay.
David Stewart went totally blind when he was around 70, about 10 years ago. So I wonder…
Mr. STEWART: Oh, how did I get blind?
KRULWICH: Yeah.
Mr. STEWART: I became blind because I'm the unlucky winner of a genetic sweepstakes called retinitis pigmentosa. It's a dying off of rods and cones of the eye.
KRULWICH: And it runs in his family. It happens gradually.
Mr. STEWART: And slowly, slowly, everything eventually disappeared.
KRULWICH: Until one day, something kind of odd happened.
Mr. STEWART: I was reading, which in my case, means listening to a book on tapes.
KRULWICH: "1776" by David McCullough, which describes in part how American sailors helped George Washington during the revolution.
Mr. STEWART: And I found that very intriguing. In any event…
KRULWICH: Just as he was thinking about those sailors, he suddenly had a vivid hallucination. A man wearing a sailor cap just appeared in his head.
Mr. STEWART: There he was, he had on a cap, a blue cap with a polished black beak, and he had a pipe in his mouth.
KRULWICH: Kind of wavy ghostly or kind of vague…
Mr. STEWART: No.
KRULWICH: …or was he a precise…
Mr. STEWART: No, he's quite precise.
KRULWICH: And then this very real-looking man looked right at David somehow and blinked.
Mr. STEWART: Yes.
KRULWICH: Did you like freak? Did you go…
Mr. STEWART: No, no, no. No. It wasn't spooky, whatever. It was just that he was there. I acknowledged his presence. He acknowledged mine, so.
KRULWICH: And you knew that this guy wasn't real. Some part of you knew he…
Mr. STEWART: I knew that it wasn't real. That's right.
KRULWICH: How come?
Mr. STEWART: I don't know.
KRULWICH: So, how long did the sailor stay in your head?
Mr. STEWART: He stayed for, oh, I suppose, half an hour.
KRULWICH: Half an hour.
Mr. STEWART: And then he faded away. But I don't recall the fade, you see.
KRULWICH: But after he faded, later on David then saw imaginary patterns. Then, imaginary paintings, imaginary curtains. They kept coming.
Mr. STEWART: At least once a day.
KRULWICH: So, of course, he went to the doctor. And he was told, no, you're not crazy.
Mr. STEWART: You have almost certainly Charles Bonnet syndrome.
KRULWICH: Charles Bonnet is a condition that affects people with macular degeneration or diabetic eye disease. When you lose your sight, says Jonathan Trobe, a neuro-ophthalmologist of the University of Michigan, some people start seeing things. It is, he says…
Dr. JONATHAN TROBE (Neuro-ophthalmologist, University of Michigan): Very common.
KRULWICH: Sometimes scary…
Dr. TROBE: But more often, patients describe rather pleasant hallucinations like flowers or pictures or beautiful blue sky.
KRULWICH: Astonishingly vivid people like David's sailor are not really typical.
Dr. TROBE: The winking at him, that's not usually something that we hear.
KRULWICH: But there are enough cases. Dr. Trobe thinks maybe 10 percent of all people who go blind will hallucinate. And the explanation, he says, is that when cells in your brain dedicated to seeing aren't getting information -because after all, you are blind, your eyes aren't working - since nothing is coming in to the seeing part of your brain, the cells up there look for something to do, so they hallucinate. They take memories and mix them into fantasies that aren't there.
Dr. TROBE: That's right. The brain is doing a mash-up of stored visual memories. And they come out when the external stimuli are taken away.
KRULWICH: As evidence, in 2004, scientists at Harvard University blindfolded normal-sighted people. And within hours, many of them began to see imaginary landscapes and patterns. One woman, he says…
Dr. TROBE: After being blindfolded for a day or two, said that she saw Elvis…
(Soundbite of laughter)
KRULWICH: Of course.
Dr. TROBE: …appear in front of her.
KRULWICH: And these hallucinations, by the way, are often in color. So after years of being blind, David had almost forgotten what color was like. But when he saw his sailor…
Mr. STEWART: There it was. The first color I had seen for a considerable amount of time.
KRULWICH: And he loves color. So his hallucinations are now such a pleasure, he has figured out how to have them more often. When he was losing sight, his eye doctor advised him to eat fish so he wouldn't get worse. And that's when he discovered that tuna sashimi helps him hallucinate.
Mr. STEWART: Yeah. Not all the time.
KRULWICH: What else? So you can eat your way into your hallucinations?
Mr. STEWART: Yes, so it appears.
KRULWICH: But when I asked Dr. Trobe is there any scientific support for sashimi-induced hallucinations, he said…
Dr. TROBE: No. How about that for a short answer?
KRULWICH: But I couldn't resist. And how could you not try? So, midway through our interview…
Dr. TROBE: You do come equipped, I have to say.
KRULWICH: Yeah.
I gave him some sashimi.
Mr. STEWART: Okay. Hmm. Lovely.
KRULWICH: And we kept on talking. And then about 10 or 12 minutes later, while discussing his green curtain hallucination…
Dr. TROBE: If you have multiple-curtain hallucinations?
Mr. STEWART: Yes. Yes, I have. I did a lot of work in a theater and that may…
KRULWICH: Very matter-of-factly, he said…
Mr. STEWART: There is my curtain right there.
KRULWICH: I knew the fish would work.
Mr. STEWART: Right. Yes. By golly, you're right.
Dr. TROBE: Don't be frightened, Robert.
KRULWICH: This was so strange. Where did these hallucinations come from? A minute later, he saw a pink dress.
You don't wear dresses?
Mr. STEWART: Not anymore. No, I never did.
KRULWICH: So, where would a pink dress - why a pink dress?
Mr. STEWART: I have no idea where that comes from.
Dr. TROBE: I think that what you hallucinate often has to do with what you got in you and what you've experienced and what you're able to report.
KRULWICH: These hallucinations, as vivid and strange and common as they are, are so personal, says Dr. Trobe, they become a comfort. So I asked David, if I could give you a pill that would make these hallucinations go away completely and totally, would you take the pill?
Mr. STEWART: No. But if you have one that prolongs, I would take it in a minute.
KRULWICH: Because for David, these hallucinations have become his new way to see.
Mr. STEWART: It's not much.
KRULWICH: But he'll take what he can get.
Robert Krulwich, NPR News in Washington.
NORRIS: Robert Krulwich points out that blind people aren't the only ones who have hallucinations. Deaf people hallucinate sounds that aren't there. Amputees hallucinate limbs that aren't there. Brains make stuff up. In fact, Herman Melville, in his novel "Moby Dick," tells a hallucination story. His sea captain, Ahab, is missing a leg because a whale ate it. And at chapter 108 in the book - and you can look this up - he says to a friend, "I know my leg is missing, and yet for some reason, it feels like it's still there, still part of me." "You can feel your leg, right?" he tells his friend. It feels attached. And then he says - and I'm quoting here - "Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to a hair, do I. Isn't it a riddle?"
A riddle indeed. Captain Ahab's brain was behaving just like David Stewart's brain - compensating for a loss.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Our series, "You Must Read This," features authors talking about the books they love. Today, we're going to hear from Michael Chabon. He wrote "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay," among other things. He recommends a lesser book known by the man who created Sherlock Holmes.
Mr. MICHAEL CHABON (Author, "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"): By 1893, as you might know, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was heartily sick of Sherlock Holmes. So he arranged to have his great creation tangle with a murderous arch-villain named Professor James Moriarty beside a high waterfall on a convenient Swiss Alp. You may also know that 10 years later, Conan Doyle was obliged by financial pressures to reveal to a grateful world that Holmes had merely staged his own death.
But did you know that in between gleefully killing off and somewhat reluctantly reviving him, Arthur Conan Doyle created another great fictional character, one who easily rivals Holmes, if not for intelligence, then for heroism, bravery and dash? A character who exceeds Holmes in the one trait in which the great detective, by his own admission, was always deficient - a rich and lovable humanity. This hero, a handsome, charming and resourceful cavalry officer serving in the Grand Army of Napoleon, has only one tragic flaw, though in his own eyes, of course, it is his glory and his single greatest advantage in life - he is a Frenchman.
His name is Brigadier Etienne Gerard, and he starred in 17 short stories that Conan Doyle wrote, with a palpable sense of liberation, after pushing Holmes off that Alpine ledge. In their day they were almost as popular as the Holmes stories, but I have to confess that even though I'm a lifelong Sherlockian, I had never heard of the good brigadier. In its pages you will find adventure, action, romance, love and self-sacrifice, hair's-breadth escape and reckless courage, gallantry, panache and a droll, backhand humor that rivals PG Wodehouse. Etienne Gerard, like all Frenchmen ever conceived of by Englishmen, is vain, conceited, self-important and blind to anything that does not touch directly on his honor.
He is also tender, affectionate and sensitive. Conan Doyle placed himself imaginatively into the heart, soul and boots of a French cavalry officer, a man sworn to fight and kill Englishmen. With humor, affection and real insight into a soldier's life, Conan Doyle bridges the gap between him and his dashing popinjay of a hero. His artistry bridges the gap between our century and his, between a world lit by torches and whale-oil lamps and our own, between a time when war was still conducted face to face and our dehumanized era of collateral damage and target-rich environments.
That act of imaginative sympathy is the requirement and blessing of literature, and it calls forth a similar act in the mind of the reader. It's one that few writers have ever pulled off more touchingly and winningly than in these unjustly forgotten tales by a great master.
NORRIS: Michael Chabon is the author of "The Yiddish Policemen's Union" and "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
We're going to look now at the economy and politics. Concerns about the precarious state of the economy has emerged as a key campaign issue. In a moment, we'll hear how the presidential candidates say they will fix it. First, we going to hear about the cloudy economic picture in Southern California, especially in the housing market.
My co-host, Melissa Block, is in California, and she's been traveling around the area known as the Inland Empire.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Janice Rutherford is on the prowl in her Toyota Forerunner, looking for signs of trouble.
Ms. JANICE RUTHERFORD (Councilwoman, Fontana, California): You notice that the lawn isn't kept anymore; the rest of the garden is overgrown.
BLOCK: Here in Fontana, a brown lawn stands out like a bruise, a clear marker that a house has gone into foreclosure.
Ms. RUTHERFORD: Clearly, you don't want to live next door to that. And that's why when the people move out of the house next door to me, I'll water the lawn, my husband will probably mow it because I don't want to see that every day, and these people shouldn't have to look at it every day.
BLOCK: Janice Rutherford's neighbor has lost their house to foreclosure. She figures they paid about $250,000. By the time the bank repossessed the home, the neighbors owed more than twice that. They had borrowed repeatedly against its inflated value. You hear about people using their houses out here like ATM machines.
Ms. RUTHERFORD: Some of the houses in this neighborhood have even had signs like plywood spray-painted by the owners, you know, "Please help," "For sale by owner," "Going into foreclosure," "I'll take any offer."
BLOCK: Janice Rutherford is a city councilwoman in Fontana. That's in San Bernardino County, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Fontana has been booming. It's a thick sprawl of closely-packed subdivisions. People who couldn't afford a home in L.A. or San Diego could buy one here.
Ms. RUTHERFORD: There's two more for-sale signs just down the block here.
BLOCK: As housing values tumbled and subprime mortgages ballooned, Fontana became one of the many epicenters of foreclosures in Southern California. In San Bernardino County last year, more than 7,700 homeowners lost their homes to foreclosure. That's a 719 percent increase in just one year.
Ms. RUTHERFORD: I feel bad that people got themselves in over their heads. People in these houses borrowed against the future, spent money they didn't have. Our government does the same thing, so it's no surprise that people think, hey, this is the way to do it.
BLOCK: And with housing tanks, everyone feels the pain.
Mr. STEVE BELANEY(ph) (Sales Manager, Honda, Fontana): (Unintelligible). Free gas mileage? We got 36 mile for you.
BLOCK: But nothing's selling well these days at the Rock Honda dealership in Fontana. Sales last year were off at least 20 percent.
Sales manager Steve Belaney has been in the business for 35 years. He's never seen it this bad.
Mr. BELANEY: If somebody has a house that's in foreclosure, they're not really thinking about buying a car. And if they are, I mean, they're going to be moved from the house into the car. It would be a one-bedroom Accord. (Unintelligible)?
BLOCK: A one-bedroom Accord?
Mr. BELANEY: Yes.
BLOCK: Do you think this might get worse before it gets better?
Mr. BELANEY: I don't see a light at the end of the tunnel at all.
BLOCK: And there weren't many rays of light in an economic forecasting conference yesterday in Riverside, California. Hundreds of people in the building industry gathered to hear this forecast: recessionary forces gaining momentum, unemployment projected higher. How bad is the housing slump? Ask Marty Stout. He's chief operations officer for Mayer Roofing.
Mr. MARTY STOUT (Chief Operations Officer, Mayer Roofing): At the peak of our business in '05, we had 850 roofers working for us. And right now, we have about 200.
BLOCK: Wow. How hard was it for you to lay all those people off?
Mr. STOUT: Oh, that's never easy. You know, people just look at you with a dead stare and how am I going to pay my rent and how am I going to feed my family and you reassure them that there's jobs out there, and everyone that we have talked to that was working for us has found a good job.
BLOCK: Up on a well-tended hillside development in Moreno Valley in Riverside County, I went to visit Betty Larkins in her beige stucco home.
Ms. BETTY LARKINS (Resident, Moreno Valley, California): It was in August when I learned that I was not supposed to live here, but the repo guy mentioned that, "Oh, I'm going to see if I can let you stay. I'm going to hold up on the eviction," that's what he said. So I said, "Oh, you can do that?"
BLOCK: Betty Larkins fell victim to what she calls a ridiculous refi. Her mortgage payments soared from $1,700 to $3,000 a month. And with just her Social Security and pension income, she couldn't keep up. She fended off foreclosure for a while, but now, her house is sold at auction. She has to be out by next Wednesday.
Betty Larkins says she recognizes her own story when she reads about foreclosures in the paper.
Ms. LARKINS: I say, "Gosh, here's another one of me. Gosh, what's happening with the world?" You know, all of it is not necessary, that's my thought.
BLOCK: After the movers come next week, Betty Larkins says she'll stay with a friend for a while then she'll rent an apartment nearby. You do hear this in California's Inland Empire that people expect the foreclosure rate in 2008 to spike again with a batch of adjustable mortgages due to reset at higher rates.
NORRIS: That's my co-host Melissa Block in Riverside, California.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Now to a different kind of health story. Football fans are gearing up for Super Bowl Sunday. And just in time, The New England Journal of Medicine is playing spoil sport with a study on the hazards of being a fan.
NPR's Richard Knox reports.
(Soundbite of fans cheering)
Unidentified Woman #1: Take it up Salem(ph). Take it up.
Unidentified Woman #2: Go get them (unintelligible).
Unidentified Woman #3: Shoot it. (Unintelligible).
RICHARD KNOX: These fans are really into the game, in this case, a youth hockey match in Saugus, Massachusetts.
(Soundbite of fans cheering)
KNOX: Jim Madison coaches a youth hockey team in Andover, Massachusetts.
How emotional do people get?
Mr. JIM MADISON (Hockey Team Coach): Very emotional. It's like the Stanley Cup every game. In a close game, it's exciting. It's just part of the game. It always happens, it seems like, in this game because of the contact, and the physical play, and referees calling things. And you lose a shootout, it's heartbreaking. You play a good game, and it all comes down to that. The heartbeats go right up.
KNOX: That thrill, that involvement, is what being a fan is all about. That's true whether you're a hockey parent of a diehard fan of pro soccer or football. But German cardiologist Gerhard Steinbeck wondered whether there's a downside, a higher risk of heart attacks and cardiac arrest. Earlier studies produced mix results, but the 2006 World Cup soccer games in Germany gave Steinbeck and his colleagues a perfect opportunity to test the theory.
Doctor GERHARD STEINBECK (Cardiologist): These were really extraordinary events in Germany - the national team playing, putting the whole nation in stress.
KNOX: The researchers monitored Munich-area hospitals for heart attacks, chest pain, and major heart-rhythm disturbances during the World Cup games. They compared heart emergencies on days when Germany played, and days when they didn't, and similar periods in other years. The results were striking.
Dr. STEINBECK: There was a penalty shootout in the game against Argentina, and Germans where very lucky to win this game, so we all just were happy, and apparently, you have to pay for that.
KNOX: Within two hours of the start of the game, heart attacks and other cardiac problems spiked.
Dr. STEINBECK: We saw a three to fourfold increase in the number of cardiovascular events.
KNOX: A week later, Germany lost to Italy.
Dr. STEINBECK: And of course, this was a very bad experience. Nevertheless, the increase in the cardiovascular events was exactly as high as when Germany beat Argentina. So it's not winning or losing. It's just the stress produced by both these games.
KNOX: On days when Germany played, cardiac emergencies were nearly three times higher. Men were apparently more vulnerable, so were those with known heart trouble. On days when Germany played, nearly half the cardiac emergencies were among people with prior heart disease, much higher than on other days.
Dr. Robert Kloner is a heart specialist at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles. He showed a similar spike in cardiac problems in the wake of L.A.'s Northridge earthquake in 1994. You'd think being in a major earthquake would be a different order of stress than watching a big game, not necessarily, says Kloner.
Doctor ROBERT KLONER (Heart Specialist, Good Samaritan Hospital): The fans are emotionally connected to the team. And I think what happens is there is a sympathetic surge that occurs in the fans.
KNOX: Sympathetic, not only in the usual sense, but because the sympathetic nervous system, which controls the body's reaction to stress, leaps into action.
Dr. KLONER: So heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up. This increases the oxygen demand on the heart. Coronary arteries can actually decrease in size. So at the same time you have an increase in oxygen demand, you have a reduction of oxygen delivery, which is, you know, a bad thing.
KNOX: Peter Libby is chief of cardiovascular medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. He was in Europe during the '06 World Cup games.
Doctor PETER LIBBY (Chief of Cardiovascular Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital): Having witnessed the crowd's responses in World Cup playoffs, I'm not at all surprised by the results. That's the fighting spirit, much like we in Boston will have during the Super Bowl.
KNOX: So what about the Super Bowl? Is it hazardous to some fans' health? Clearly, lots of excitable sports fans don't have heart attacks. Kloner looked for a spike in heart attacks in Los Angeles during Super Bowl games from 2000 to 2004.
Dr. KLONER: We didn't see anything. There was not even a hint of a signal of an increase of cardiovascular events around the Super Bowl.
KNOX: He admits that doesn't prove anything. The L.A. area hasn't had a pro football franchise since 1994.
Richard Knox, NPR News, Boston.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
In Los Angeles, one of the city's medical marijuana storefronts has come up with a way of selling its product, a new way of selling its product. It's installed a heavily-armored, heavily-guarded vending machine that dispenses prescription pot - that's legal under California law.
But as NPR's Karen Grigsby Bates reports, Federal drug agents may have other ideas.
(Soundbite of song "In A Gadda Da Vida")
KAREN GRIGSBY BATES: That's the vibe a lot of people still think of when you say marijuana. And the inside of this Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensary, the Health Nutrition Center, would only reinforce that stereotype. In the back room, large canisters of marijuana gleam in glass cabinets. A menu describes the kind of pot the center is dispensing. Cherry bomb and OG Kush seem to be popular choices. A slightly limp banner hangs on the wall proclaiming different smokes for different folks.
Vincent Mehdizadeh is not that. Dressed in a business suit and looking like the lawyer he is, the 29-year-old is showing me the business venture that has made him temporarily famous.
Mr. VINCENT MEHDIZADEH: So that's verifying me. It says approved for vending.
BATES: The it he's talking about is a very sophisticated vending machine he's designed that will dispense marijuana recommendations. They're not called prescriptions. Mehdizadeh's creation looks like Darth Vader designed it. It's heavily armored and all black with cool blue LED buttons, and it relies on a unique system that identifies the patient via a swipe card and a biometric finger scan.
Mr. MEHDIZADEH: And that click was the medicine dropping.
BATES: At the base of the machine, where you'd normally retrieve your can of Coke or your bag of pretzels, Mehdizadeh holds a palm-sized green box with a snap closure. It almost looks like a tiny briefcase. Open it up, and the Nutrition Health Center's business card is inside with, of course, the dope.
So this in an eighth of an ounce right here of marijuana?
Mr. MEHDIZADEH: That's correct.
BATES: Which ironically enough, this package is kind of the way they did in the '60s in a Ziploc bag before it goes into your new high-tech little briefcase here.
Mr. MEHDIZADEH: Exactly.
BATES: In order for the patient to get his weekly or monthly allotment of marijuana, he first has to consult a doctor. Then, the patient takes the doctor's recommendation to a dispensary. There are several here in Los Angeles. And there's no shared database, so in theory, someone could game the system by going from place to place, accruing quite a stash. Vincent Mehdizadeh has designed a computer program that syncs with the swipe card to prevent double dipping, even if he's sometimes conflicted about what to call the product the machine dispenses.
Mr. MEHDIZADEH: Each time, if I click on my name, it literally shows me a picture of when I was at the machine - dates, times, everything, the increments, the type of weed, marijuana...
BATES: Product.
Mr. MEHDIZADEH: ...product, medicine, is shown there.
BATES: Outside Mehdizadeh's business, patient Robert Miko says getting marijuana from a machine instead of a person will be very appealing to some people. Robert is taking marijuana instead of pharmaceuticals to help him with anger management.
Mr. ROBERT MIKO (Patient): I'm friendlier, I love people, no anger. You know, I look at, I look at life and I love life now, you know?
BATES: That's fine with the local authorities. Since 1996, it's been legal to use marijuana medically here with a doctor's recommendation, but the federal government has a different philosophy. They say it is illegal to use marijuana in the United States, period. So that shiny new machine dispensing marijuana in Vince Mehdizadeh's center may be there for only a short time. The Feds always confiscate marijuana after a raid, even when they have to use bolt cutters and a can opener to get to it.
Karen Grigsby Bates, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
For the Democrats, it's down to two. Former Senator John Edwards dropped out of the presidential race today and he made the announcement in the same place he launched his campaign, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans. The location was chosen, obviously, to highlight a main theme in Edwards' campaign - poverty. And as he's saying to his supporters and urged his party to fight for the disadvantaged, Edwards refused to endorse either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama.
Coming up, we'll talk about the voters Edwards attracted and how they might be targeted.
First, here's NPR's Carrie Kahn from New Orleans.
(Soundbite of applause)
CARRIE KAHN: With his wife and three children, John Edwards climbed upon a stage erected in front of dozens of homes draped with American flags. The houses are being built by volunteers in one of New Orleans' most devastated neighborhoods.
Mr. JOHN EDWARDS (Former Democratic Senator, North Carolina): Today, I am suspending my campaign for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. But I want to say this to everyone - this son of a mill worker is going to be just fine. Our job now is to make certain that America will be fine.
KAHN: Edwards said he called both Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and received their pledges that ending poverty would be a central theme of their campaigns.
Mr. EDWARDS: America's hour of transformation is upon us. It may be hard to believe when we have bullets flying in Baghdad; it may be hard to believe when it cost $58 to fill your car up with gas. It's hard to speak out for change when you feel like your voice is not being heard.
KAHN: Edwards was addressing his supporters, but he could very well have been talking about his own campaign. Poverty as a central theme failed to rally the electorate as much as Edwards had hoped. He was always at a funding disadvantage against Clinton and Obama. He expended much time and energy and money in the Iowa caucuses but could finish no better than second. And in South Carolina, his birth state, and the only primary carried four years ago, he finished a weak third. On his way to make his announcement today, Edwards stopped by a highway underpass to talk with hundreds of homeless camped out in tents. One woman begged him to keep fighting for the disadvantaged. In his final remarks today, Edwards urged his supporters and the Democratic Party to keep fighting for the poor in America.
Mr. EDWARDS: Do not turn away from these great struggles before us. Do not give up on the causes that we have fought for. Do not walk away from what's possible because it's time for all of us, all of us together, to make the two Americas one. Thank you. God bless you, and let's go to work.
KAHN: Many supporters in the crowd like Chris Rimes(ph) of Monroe, Louisiana, said they thought they were coming to see a campaign event, not the end of Edwards' candidacy.
Mr. CHRIS RIMES: I'm really disappointed but, you know, I kind of knew it was a long shot to begin with when I first started to volunteer for the campaign, so.
KAHN: Rimes said he backed Edwards because of the former senator's record on labor. He said he didn't know who he would support now.
But Lila Murphy(ph), who was in town to help build houses, said the smaller field is good for her candidate, Hillary Clinton.
Ms. LILA MURPHY: I'm actually glad that they're starting to drop out. And this way, you know, it won't (unintelligible) up the votes, you know.
KAHN: Edwards declined to endorse either candidate and did not answer questions about whether he would like to be considered for a vice presidential slot. As for the 56 national convention delegates that John Edwards has won, most will be free to support any candidate of their choosing.
Carrie Kahn, NPR News, New Orleans.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
So, the big question now is, what happens to those voters who were supporting John Edwards?
For a clearer picture of those voters and the issues they care most about, we're joined by Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center.
Welcome, Andy.
Mr. ANDY KOHUT (President, Pew Research Center): Glad to be here, Michele.
NORRIS: So, if we look at this block of people who voted or caucused for Edwards in these early contests, what kind of demographic profile do we see?
Mr. KOHUT: Well, it's not a matter of so much what we see; it's a matter of what we don't see.
NORRIS: Hmm.
Mr. KOHUT: What we haven't seen, given his populist appeal, was his having any greater attraction or appeal to voters who are less affluent, poorer people. What we do see is a little more support for Edwards among white males than among other demographic categories. We don't see much in terms of issues, I mean, he doesn't get a bigger constituency among the people who are concerned about the economy. But you know, the real surprise about the Democratic race is that issues don't matter. There's almost no correlation in the exit polls between the issues people say they prefer and the candidates that they vote for. They seem almost irrelevant even though these are very important issues to Democratic voters. It's more about personal characteristics and qualities.
NORRIS: Yeah, it's interesting, the economic issue, because he hammers that message about, you know, vowing to fight for the middle class. That was the core of his message.
Mr. KOHUT: It was the core of his message. And there was a little resonance, particularly in Iowa, of voters saying he cares about people like me - I remember he did pretty well in Iowa; he came in second in Iowa. But by the time to New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton took a fair number of those people who said that they were vote - looking for a candidate who cares about them. That hurt Edwards there. So, the compassion, the populism hasn't seemed to work for him.
NORRIS: Is there any indication that the voters who are supporting Edwards or who were supporting Edwards were motivated not just by their impression of him but also by their version to one of the other candidates. Is there an anti-Obama or anti-Clinton factor here?
Mr. KOHUT: Well, I looked at that, and if anything, you get the sense that Obama is liked a little better by the Edwards supporters - 60 percent of the Obama supporters had a favorable view of Hillary Clinton, 67 percent a favorable view of Obama. So, there - a majority said they like both of them. When we asked the direct question, who would be your second choice if Edwards were not available, which he is now not? Obama 44, Clinton 31. Now, this was two weeks ago; that may be quite different. The real puzzle here is what happens to white males who have been more inclined to vote for Edwards than other categories of Democratic voters? Whites have not been voting for Obama, and males have not been voting for Hillary Clinton, so which way do they go? The answer is I don't know.
NORRIS: Andy Kohut is the president of the Pew Research Center.
Thanks so much for coming in, Andy.
Mr. KOHUT: You're welcome.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
One thing we do know, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will try hard to woo former Edwards' supporters.
Democratic strategist Dan Payne says it may be tough, especially with that key group we just talked about - white men.
Mr. DAN PAYNE (Democratic Strategist): There isn't really a place for the white male to find a candidate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. All you have to do is look at them and see they're not like white men. And so there'll be an attempt, I think, on the part of both Obama and Clinton to woo key people for Edwards, some his key supporters, his union supporters especially, and they'll be so complementary to John Edwards in the next couple of days. It'll be sickening.
NORRIS: You know, when you actually attended Edwards' rally, some of the biggest applause lines, the moment where the crowd really got fired up, was when he talked about two things: bringing all the troops home within a year and fighting for the middle class. Where do voters, who are fired up when they hear those things, go now?
Mr. PAYNE: Well, my guess is that they split a little bit more in favor of Obama. Obama did not vote for the war; Hillary Clinton did. So, that will give Obama a point to make. And the middle class is the ongoing argument in both campaigns. I'm not sure that anyone is going to make a distinction. But there is implicit in the Edwards candidacy an unhappiness with Hillary Clinton because she was the default position before John Edwards officially got in the race. He knew she was going to run, so his getting in implies that he was not happy with what she stood for. That gives Barack Obama a little bit of an opening.
NORRIS: You know, even as - it stands out now into a national contest, the candidates and the campaigns know quite a lot about voters and their tendencies and the issues that they care about and the candidates that they support. Will the campaigns now aggressively go after the Edwards vote? Will they, you know, specific mailers try to hit them on the phone?
Mr. PAYNE: No, I don't think so. Edwards didn't accumulate enough of a vote to matter in most places, and it's enormously expensive to do mailings. If you can cover California one time with a mailing, that's a multiple-million-dollar effort.
NORRIS: And the unions. John Edwards had picked up endorsements from carpenters, steel workers, service employees in Iowa, teachers in South Carolina. What about those voters? Are they free agents now or will the unions re-endorse?
Mr. PAYNE: Oh, that - my guess is that Obama and Clinton have been on the phone to those unions as we speak, trying to arrange meetings, trying to have calls put through by maybe politicians that they favor. There's going to be a furious fight for unions' support because unions in the Democratic primaries can make a difference.
NORRIS: Dan Payne is a Democratic strategist. Thanks so much for talking to us.
Mr. PAYNE: You're welcome.
DANIEL SCHORR: Upstaged by the election campaign and economic stimulus, a low-intensity war is going on between congressional Democrats and the Bush administration.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
NPR's senior news analyst Daniel Schorr.
SCHORR: They're fighting over actions and policies related to the so-called war on terror, and it's happening on three fronts: first, the issue of waterboarding. Attorney General Michael Mukasey testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today and maintained his refusal to define waterboarding as illegal. He would only say that the practice is not currently being used. Obviously, had he said otherwise, he might have exposed interrogators, who did use waterboarding, to legal action.
And then there is a matter of hundreds of hours of videotapes CIA interrogations of terrorist suspects. The tapes were destroyed on orders from - well, that's the question.
Attorney General Mukasey has named a U.S. attorney to conduct a criminal inquiry. And that has enabled Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA clandestine services chief, to invoke the Fifth Amendment and refuse to testify before the House Intelligence Committee without immunity from prosecution.
Next, the issue of wiretapping. The administration is fighting for reauthorization of a massive surveillance program that's (unintelligible) called the Protect America Act. And issue between the White House and congressional Democrats is the demand for retroactive immunity for communications companies that have cooperated with the eavesdropping program.
The present act was due to expire this Friday but has been extended for another 15 days while the skirmish just goes on.
In his State of the Union Address, President Bush asserted a solemn duty to stop the terrorists from carrying out their plans. And that, he said, meant liability protection for companies that have cooperated with the eavesdropping program.
Well, I can imagine Mr. Bush, if nothing else avails, issuing a blanket pardon for phone companies that may have broken the law. I can see these backstage battles spinning on for the rest of the president's term.
This is Daniel Schorr.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And it's not just California.
Around the country, the collapsing housing market has been spreading to the rest of the economy. Last night, Florida voters said the economy is their number one issue. Just this morning, grim numbers show the economy slowed dramatically at the end of last year. The economy is leading the news, and it's a leading issue for the presidential candidates.
(Soundbite of past political speech)
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): We have to stimulate the economy. I began calling…
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): We have not made the kind of progress that we need in having a balanced economy, and George Bush…
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Former Governor Massachusetts; Republican Presidential Candidate): If you want to turn an economy around, the key thing is to...
Senator JOHN McCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Republican Presidential Candidate): ...economists thought that I could handle the nation's economy best.
NORRIS: NPR's Adam Davidson covers the economy. He's been talking with the economic advisors to the leading candidates. And let's first talk about mortgages, which Melissa Block heard so much about in California. Do the candidates address the mortgage crisis? Do they have specific plans?
ADAM DAVIDSON: All the candidates have at least used the word mortgage. They talk about mortgages. I think that on the Democratic side, there are more specific plans. On the Republican side, only Romney has really proposed a plan, and it's a relatively modest plan to extend the number of people who are able to qualify for certain federal help in times of crises. On the Democratic side, there really is a distinction between the way Senators Clinton and Obama approach it that tells you a bit about how they think about the economy. I think we have Senator Clinton talking about this.
Sen. CLINTON: I want to have a moratorium on foreclosures for 90 days so we can try to work them out. I want to freeze interest rates for five years, and I want to have a $30-billion package that will go in and try to stabilize the housing market and stabilize communities.
NORRIS: There, Senator Clinton talking about stabilizing communities, but foreclosure rates, we're told, are likely to increase with each quarter. What happens to this issue as we get closer to the general election in November?
DAVIDSON: If you trust the economic forecasters, this foreclosure issue is going to grow and grow. We're expecting March to have a whole lot of foreclosures because that's a month where there's a lot of these resets where people who are paying low interest rates will suddenly have to pay much higher interest rates, and a lot of people, we expect, will foreclose. What's ironic is by January 20th, 2009 when the next president is sworn in, there's a decent chance this issue will be resolved or nearing a resolution. But we can learn from how they talk about mortgages, how they think about the economy.
We heard Senator Clinton talking very specifically. When Senator Obama talks about it, there's less of that specificity.
Sen. OBAMA: We've got to open up bank branches; we've got to give people access to financing so that they're not going to a payday loan operation. I, two years ago, introduced a provision that would eliminate predatory lending, something that I had already helped to get past the state level.
NORRIS: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, do they have a very different economic philosophies?
DAVIDSON: Very different? No. Absolutely not. Their philosophies are pretty close to each other and pretty close to a sort of center-left Democratic economics of the last, say, 20 years. But within that, there are little differences. For example, Senator Obama, as a general rule, has what you might call a slightly more libertarian approach. He is for cutting taxes on poor and middle-class people. He is for eliminating tax cuts, certain tax cuts, on wealthier people, which is standard Democratic stuff. But he wants to get that money into the hands of the poor and middle class and let them decide how to spend it, which is a slightly more libertarian approach.
Senator Clinton is much more likely to say you should spend this amount on housing, you should spend this amount on savings, you should spend this amount on energy, you know, for lack of a better word, a slightly more left of center view, I would say, but only slightly.
NORRIS: Adam, let's now turn to the Republicans. John McCain, Mitt Romney, the two Republican frontrunners, how different are they?
DAVIDSON: Both of them, McCain and Romney, are battling hard to be the heir to Reagan, to say that their economic philosophy is the same as President Reagan's economic philosophy. Here's John McCain talking about it.
(Soundbite of past political speech)
Sen. McCAIN: I was there at the Reagan revolution. I was there when we enacted the first or just after we enacted the first tax cuts and restraints on spending.
DAVIDSON: So he's saying, I am the Reagan of the 21st century. I'm for cutting taxes, cutting spending. But here's Romney saying very similar things.
Mr. ROMNEY: I'm going to make sure that we straighten this country, and we do it the old-fashioned Republican way, the Ronald Reagan way of pulling together economic conservatives, social conservatives and foreign policy, national defense conservatives.
DAVIDSON: Now, the problem for both McCain and Romney is they have a pretty lousy record to prove that they truly are Reagan economic conservatives. Senator McCain has supported a whole host of things that folks who call themselves the heirs to Reagan the Republican economic conservatives really hate. McCain was for campaign finance reform. He voted against some of the tax cuts, including President Bush's tax cuts. He voted forced mandatory health care spending. These are kind of bedrock economic conservative issues where he was on the wrong side.
And of course, Mitt Romney, when he was governor of Massachusetts, endorsed a whole host of programs that economic conservatives really can't stand. So now, each one is sort of trying to outpace the other to be the standard bearer of tax cuts, spending cuts, old-fashioned Republican values.
NORRIS: We've been talking about the frontrunners, but I want to ask you, Adam, about Mike Huckabee. When he talks about the economy, it's often very personal, and from a voter's standpoint, it's almost situational.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Republican, Presidential Candidate): It may be doing great if you're at the top. But if you talk to the people at the bottom of the economy, the people who are handling the bags, people who are serving the food, you'd have a very different picture.
NORRIS: And it sounds like he has a very different prescription for the economy as well.
DAVIDSON: His tax plan is the single most radical idea of this whole election season, at least among the frontrunners, which is to completely eliminate income tax, completely eliminate the IRS, and the government to be funded almost entirely through sales tax. Now, for a whole host of technical reasons, I'd say the vast majority of economists and policy wonks say it's an unworkable proposal, but it certainly counts as the most radical and most unlike even President Reagan's vision for the economy.
NORRIS: I just want to ask you quickly, Adam, about Ron Paul and his economic philosophy.
DAVIDSON: If the other leading candidates live in a world, their economic world is a world we know, Ron Paul's is world we don't know. It has a much smaller federal government, even smaller than President Reagan's vision. It is a government that does not have any engagement with the outside world, except economic. We don't have military engagement with the outside world. In other words, this is a radically different world that we would live in. It's hard to say that about any of the other leading candidates.
NORRIS: NPR's Adam Davidson covers the economy. And if you want more information about the candidates and the issues, go to our website, NPR.org. Thank you, Adam.
DAVIDSON: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: And tomorrow on the program, we'll report on the candidates' positions on health care.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
We're going to hear about John McCain in his home state of Arizona now. McCain's independent streak has often put him at odds with Arizona's hardcore conservatives often over the issue of immigration. But as Arizona votes on Super Tuesday, some of that animosity may be set aside.
NPR's Ted Robbins has the story.
TED ROBBINS: As a favorite son, you might expect Arizona's Republican leadership to support John McCain regardless of the issues. But to some of them, the favorite son is more like the family's black sheep, especially when it comes to immigration.
State Representative RUSSELL PEARCE (Republican, Arizona State Legislature): So, yeah, very upset, very disappointed with John. I think John is a hero in a lot of ways, but he's misguided on this.
ROBBINS: That's state representative Russell Pearce, the head of the House Appropriations Committee and author of Arizona's strict new law imposing sanctions on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. Pearce is supporting Mitt Romney, as are a number of Republican activists, especially in the Phoenix area where the majority of Arizona Republicans live.
Arizona State University professor and political pollster Bruce Merrill.
Professor BRUCE MERRILL (Arizona State University; Political Pollster): Maricopa County Republicans had a convention here about a week ago. And they had a straw poll, and it showed that they supported John McCain fifth.
ROBBINS: Not only that, this group of party activists also took a poll of which Republican candidate they found most objectionable, and McCain came in first. This rift is long-standing and rooted in McCain's refusal to tow the party line, not just on immigration, but on other issues. For instance, he voted against President Bush's tax cuts and opposed the administration on interrogation methods, like waterboarding.
But immigration really tears it. Hardliners are angry with McCain's support of what they call amnesty, a guest worker program and what he calls earned citizenship. McCain has balanced his position during the campaign, saying the border needs to be secured first, but he's also been rejecting the amnesty label since this interview before the campaign began.
Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arizona; Presidential Candidate): This is a $2,000 fine. This is six years of having to work before becoming even eligible for green cards. That is - it is no more amnesty than I am a Martian.
ROBBINS: Some would argue that it's the party activists who are from another planet. Bruce Merrill looks to the polls for an answer.
Prof. MERRILL: The average Republican that, you know, it's pretty far removed from politics in many ways, has always respected him. He polls very high. And when we ran him against his nearest and only competitor here, Romney, he beat Romney two to one.
ROBBINS: Kennan Strann(ph) describes himself as a typical Arizona Republican. He owns a McDonald's in north Phoenix and supports a more moderate immigration policy.
Mr. KENNAN STRANN (Arizona Resident): My opinion is the average Republican is not to throw everybody out of here. I think it's to, let's have some reform (unintelligible), close the border down, and then get some control.
ROBBINS: And have a guest worker program?
Mr. STRANN: Me, personally?
ROBBINS: Yes.
Mr. STRANN: Kennan Strann? Yeah, absolutely.
ROBBINS: Hard-line anti-immigration voters could make it close in Arizona next Tuesday, especially if total turnout is low. But with McCain now the national frontrunner, it's likely most Arizona Republicans will want to be with a favorite son.
Ted Robbins, NPR News, Tucson.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
With economic growth grinding to a halt, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates again today, this time, by half a percentage point. Just before it did, the Commerce Department reported some dismal growth figures for the end of last year. The economy grew just six-tenths of a percent in the last quarter of 2007.
As NPR's Chris Arnold reports, the Fed is hoping its aggressive move will help avoid a full-blown recession.
CHRIS ARNOLD: The U.S. economy has been laid flat on its back. In an unprecedented rapid series of cuts, the Fed has slashed rates two-and-a-quarter percentage points in recent months. That's thought by many to be good medicine, but it's not an overnight fix. Stuart Hoffman is chief economist of PNC Financial Services Group.
Mr. STUART HOFFMAN (Chief Economist, PNC Financial Services Group): Well, the Fed's medicine is sort of like an antibiotic. It actually - it accumulates in the system, it doesn't, you know, (unintelligible) the economy or the patient, so to speak, doesn't respond right away.
ARNOLD: Lower interest rates make it cheaper for companies and people to borrow money, but it takes months for loans to actually get made and, say, for companies to decide to hire more people. Hoffman says the economic stimulus package emerging in Washington would work more directly since it puts money right in people pockets.
Mr. HOFFMAN: That's more like a shot of adrenaline or a booster shot to the economy.
ARNOLD: Hoffman thinks the two together will help a lot. As far as what all this means for most people, rate cuts by the Fed affect various types of loans in different ways. Holden Lewis with Bankrate.com says some of the savings do come right away.
Mr. HOLDEN LEWIS (Bankrate.com): Variable-rate credit cards and home equity lines of credit. Both of those tend to be tied to the prime rate. And the prime rate goes up and down with the federal funds rate. So, Fed rate cuts, they do make money cheaper.
ARNOLD: The big tamale of loans for many people is their mortgage. And mortgage rates are not directly tied to the Fed funds rate, but they do tend to move together. Mortgage rates certainly reacted when the Fed started this latest round of cuts last week.
Mr. LEWIS: Mortgage rates plunged, but very briefly.
ARNOLD: Lewis says mortgage rates are usually pretty stable throughout the day. But following the rate cut, they jumped all over the place as the markets digested the news. He says take for example 30-year fixed loans.
Mr. LEWIS: If you locked a rate in the morning, you might have gotten five percent. And if you waited 'til 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon, it might have been five-and-three-quarters or five-and-five-eighth percent.
ARNOLD: The rate cuts won't solve the problems of all the people about to lose their homes to foreclosure these days, but lower rates eventually should provide something of a boost to the housing market and make it less of a drag on the economy. Nariman Behravesh is chief economist of Global Insight.
Mr. NARIMAN BEHRAVESH (Chief Economist, Global Insight): Anything that's a shot in the arm to housing will help. Anything that's a shot in the arm to people who might want to refinance their homes or take some equity out of their home, or buy a new home, and any of those people, again, assuming their credit's good, these rate cuts will benefit all of those people.
ARNOLD: Now, there is some concern from critics who think the Fed is being too loose with monetary policy here and is running the risk of spurring inflation. That would create an even bigger mess. But if it does nothing, the Fed risks letting the economy fall into a nasty recession. And Behravesh, like Hoffman, thinks the rate cuts combined with the stimulus package will rescue the economy.
Mr. BEHRAVESH: The combination of those two will be enough to make the difference between recession and no recession. So bottom line, yes, the Fed's right to cut rates.
ARNOLD: For its part, the Fed says it expects inflation to moderate in coming months, and it hasn't closed the door to further rate cuts.
Chris Arnold, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
In Israel today, some sharp criticism for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the country's army. It came in a long-awaited report on the 2006 war with Hezbollah guerillas in south Lebanon. The report stopped short of calling on Olmert to resign.
And as NPR's Linda Gradstein reports, most analyst say the prime minister is expected to survive the coming political storm.
LINDA GRADSTEIN: In its more than 600-page report, the government-appointed commission said there were, quote, "serious failings and shortcomings in how decisions were made." A hundred and fifty-five Israelis, most of them soldiers, and more than 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the month-long fighting. The report said the war ended without a clear Israeli military victory, and that a few thousand Hezbollah guerillas were able to resist the strongest army in the Middle East. An earlier interim report focused on the decision to go to war. This report focuses on the last few days of the war.
Israel launched an extensive ground operation deep into south Lebanon even though it knew a United Nations-brokered ceasefire was imminent. Thirty-three Israelis were killed in that operation.
In a news conference, retired district court Judge Eliyahu Winograd said the ground operation did not achieved its objectives.
Mr. ELIYAHU WINOGRAD (Former Acting Supreme Court Judge, Israel): (Through translator) The ground operation did not stop the rocket fire or change the overall result of the war. All know the idea failed to provide an effective military response.
GRADSTEIN: In a statement, the army spokesman said the army is, quote, "fully aware of the failures and lessons that were revealed, and is already engaged in a process of correction." Soon after the war ended, both the chief of staff, Dan Halutz and Defense Minister Amir Peretz resigned. That leaves Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The interim report had accused Olmert of a, quote, "severe failure in judgment and responsibility and of rushing into war after eight Israeli soldiers were killed and two others captured on the border between Israel and Lebanon." There has still been no information on the fate of those soldiers.
Today's report said Olmert's decision to launch the extensive ground operation at the end of the war was reasonable and have legitimate goals. Olmert's office said he would implement all of the report's recommendations. Although easier on Olmert than expected, the report is still likely to lead to pressure on the prime minister to resign. Taking the lead are a group of parents whose sons were killed during the war. Riva Muskal told Israel television she originally supported the war and the prime minister. But she said she soon changed her mind.
Ms. RIVA MUSKAL (Slain soldier's mother): Suddenly, we heard what's happening in the war. It was when my friends came to us and told how things were going on the war. And neighbors' friends, family - and we understood that something very big happened. That it's not a war that we thought that it was.
GRADSTEIN: She said Olmert should resign - a call echoed by the opposition Likud party. The key will be Defense Minister Ehud Barak, head of the center-left labor party. He had promised to pull his party out of Olmert's coalition if the final report was critical, causing the government to fall. But analyst say Barak knows that the Israeli public doesn't want a new election. And if one were held, his labor party has little chance of winning. So despite the criticism and despite Olmert's low popularity rating, his government is expected to hang on.
Linda Gradstein, NPR News, Jerusalem.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
To Pakistan now, where the U.S. wants a bigger presence on the ground. Over the past few months, administration and military officials have been trying to convince Pakistan to allow one. They're concerned about a resurgence of Taliban and al-Qaida militants in Pakistan's tribal region along the Afghan border. But the idea of a larger American presence is widely unpopular in Pakistan.
As NPR's Jackie Northam reports.
JACKIE NORTHAM: For the past six years, Pakistan has been a crucial but reluctant ally for the U.S. in its fight against terrorism. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has allowed, among other things, some U.S. troops on its soil and the use of several air bases in the tribal region for the war in neighboring Afghanistan. But the anger in Pakistan against Musharraf for forging ties with the U.S. is worsening. Washington also hasn't been satisfied. U.S. intelligence agencies say that the Taliban and al-Qaida have grown in strength and numbers. Now, the U.S. wants to strengthen its alliance with Pakistan to deal with the resurgence. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Secretary ROBERT GATES (U.S. Department of Defense): We remain ready, willing and able to assist the Pakistanis and to partner with them, to provide additional training to conduct joint operations should they desire to do so. The problem is there isn't any desire by Pakistan's government, its military or its public to increase cooperation with the U.S. Certainly not conduct joint military operations with American troops. Retired Brigadier Javed Iqbal Cheema is a spokesman for Pakistan's interior ministry.
Mr. JAVED IQBAL CHEEMA (Director General, Interior Ministry, Pakistan): I think the government response is absolutely clear. And I think it has been made clear a number of times that we would not allow anybody to come and operate in other areas.
NORTHAM: Cheema says Pakistan may be open to getting more surveillance equipment, some training or advising from the U.S. But no more American troops or CIA operatives on the ground. Cheema says Pakistan's military is fully capable to fight extremists in the tribal areas.
Mr. CHEEMA: We know the people, we know the terrain, we know the dynamics of the area. So I think nobody is more competent to operate in the tribal areas than the Pakistani troops and Pakistani forces.
NORTHAM: Pakistan's military has launched several major offensive recently in the rugged and remote regions where militants are active, in part, out of pressure by the U.S. Rahimullah Yusufzai is the editor of a Pakistani newspaper, The News, in the frontier city of Peshawar. He says Pakistan's army is geared more for a major war with India than it is for rooting out Taliban and al-Qaida extremists.
Mr. RAHIMULLAH YUSUFZAI (Editor, The News): Almost 1,100 Pakistani soldiers have been killed in the last three or four years fighting in (unintelligible) and other trouble spots. So I think that they need counterinsurgency skills and training.
NORTHAM: Yusufzai says the war on terrorism is seen as America's war, not Pakistan's war, with many people in Pakistan viewing Musharraf as a puppet of Washington. Retired Brigadier Mahmood Shad says Musharraf understands that allowing in more U.S. soldiers or operatives could jeopardize his future.
Mr. MAHMOOD SHAD (Former Secretary of Security, Federally Administered Tribal Areas): The people are ready. The anti-American feelings are very high in Pakistan. In fact, if American troops intervene here, the — I don't want to prophesize, but I think President Musharraf was wrong.
NORTHAM: Retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul is a former head of Pakistan's intelligence service and has close ties with the Taliban. Gul says the U.S. needs to thread carefully. If it goes against the will of the people of Pakistan, it could be counterproductive in its fight against terrorism.
Mr. HAMID GUL (Former Director, Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan): It's an odd way to lessen their problems, it is going to increase — it is going to be incremental to the resistance that is going on the war against terrorism. So the (unintelligible) that do you want — or do the Americans want a hostile Pakistan? Do they want a Pakistan on the lines of Iraq?
NORTHAM: Gul says he wouldn't be surprised if the U.S. takes action into its own hands and launches a set of surgical strikes on suspected militant bases. Some here said that has already happened.
Jackie Northam, NPR News, Islamabad.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
CIA interrogators have waterboarded terrorism detainees in the past. There is a process to authorize waterboarding in the future, but the CIA's interrogation program does not currently authorize waterboarding. And for that reason, Attorney General Michael Mukasey told a Senate committee today he will not discuss whether the practice is legal. That did not satisfy Democrats at the Judiciary Committee's oversight hearing, as NPR's Ari Shapiro reports.
ARI SHAPIRO: Committee chairman Patrick Leahy wanted to know why won't Mukasey discuss whether waterboarding is legal. After all, former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell have both said they believe the practice of controlled drowning is torture.
Mukasey told Leahy…
Mr. MICHAEL MUKASEY (United States Attorney General): The one thing that separates me from them is that I'm the attorney general and they're not.
SHAPIRO: Mukasey said when he makes a statement on the reach of legal principles, that's taken as the definition of those principles. Mukasey has said there are some circumstances where current law clearly would appear to prohibit waterboarding.
Other circumstances would present a far closer question, so Delaware Democrat Joseph Biden said…
Senator JOSEPH BIDEN (Democrat, Delaware): It appears as though whether or not waterboarding is torture is a relevant question.
SHAPIRO: Mukasey replied that the Detainee Treatment Act sets out a balancing test to determine whether an interrogation technique shocks the conscience.
Mr. MUKASEY: The heinousness of doing it, the cruelty of doing it balanced against the value.
Sen. BIDEN: Balanced against what value?
Mr. MUKASEY: The value of what information you might get.
SHAPIRO: So, Biden said, waterboarding to save humanity from nuclear weapons would be okay but waterboarding to find out someone's commanding officer would not? The senator said he finds that analysis unique.
Sen. BIDEN: I didn't think shocking the conscience had any relationship to the end being sought. I thought shocking the conscience had to do with what we consider to be basic societal values, things that we held dear, what we consider to be civilized behavior. You're the first person I've ever heard say what you just said.
SHAPIRO: Later in the hearing, Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin tried to clarify Mukasey's position.
Senator RICHARD DURBIN (Democrat, Illinois): I assumed that - and correct me please - that you were arguing that the use of such techniques to discover nuclear weapons would not shock the conscience.
Mr. MUKASEY: No. What I was saying was that the use of such techniques to discover information that could be not used to save lives and was simply of historical value would shock the conscience.
Sen. DURBIN: Well, that's half the answer, so let's go to the other half. What about the circumstances where the information would save lives, many lives?
Mr. MUKASEY: Those…
Sen. DURBIN: Would that justify it?
Mr. MUKASEY: Those circumstances have not been set out. That is not part of the program. We don't know concretely what they are, and we don't know how that would work.
SHAPIRO: Mukasey said one reason he's reluctant to discuss classified interrogation techniques is that it could tip off America's enemies as to how the U.S. applies its laws.
Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold said that argument seems inconsistent with the principle that laws are public.
Senator RUSS FEINGOLD (Democrat, Wisconsin): Every time we prosecute a crime in this country, we tip off people as to how we apply our laws.
SHAPIRO: So Feingold asks Mukasey, would you be reluctant to prosecute a government official accused of torture? Mukasey said he sees no inconsistency because the CIA program requires an elaborate set of authorizations to make sure that what goes on is not illegal. This was Mukasey's first oversight hearing as attorney general. Chairman Leahy said it would give some indication, quote, "whether we have begun a new chapter at the department or whether we are just finishing the last one."
Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
Hardly a week goes by without a story about some new genetic discovery or advance. Newspapers, magazines, TV and radio shows are full of items about genetic breakthroughs, even some ads for home genetic testing.
For family physician and preventive medicine specialist Douglas Kamerow, this can be a little bit much, and he offers these words of caution.
Doctor DOUGLAS KAMEROW (Family Physician; Former Assistant Surgeon General): The sequencing of the human genome was completed with much fanfare in 2003. Since then, we've been told that we're living in the genomic era: the biggest revolution in human health since antibiotics, the beginning of scientific, personalized medicine. But what does all this actually mean?
First of all, it means that we have made tremendous technical advances in isolating and analyzing DNA, dramatically decreasing the difficulty and cost of doing this kind of research. Second, we're starting to use some of these genetic techniques every day to screen for or diagnose human diseases, for instance, human papillomavirus infection, which can lead to cancer of the cervix in women. And third, and most exciting, we're at the beginning of using genomics in pharmacology, both to tell us which drugs will work best in which people and even to design drugs specifically targeted to certain populations.
But unfortunately, the main thing that most of us hear about the genomic revolution comes from news stories about discoveries that associate specific genes with an increased risk for specific diseases. You know, if you have this gene, you have an increased risk of prostate cancer. If you have another group of genes, you are more likely to have a heart attack and so on.
Some companies are even advertising to sell these genetic tests directly to the public, to tell you your risk for a certain disease or for dozens of diseases. There are flashy new Web sites where, for about $1,000, you spit into a tube or scrape your cheek, send in your sample, and in about six weeks, view your genetic destiny on a special website. These so-called personal genomic services promise to unlock the secrets of your DNA. They say they can tell you your risk for lots of common and less common diseases compared to the rest of the population.
The rub, of course, is what to make of these data. What are you supposed to do with the knowledge that you have a 30 percent increased risk of Alzheimer's disease or a 40 percent decreased likelihood of developing atrial fibrillation? Get really depressed? Start taking medicines? Change your behavior? How? This is a very tricky business. There's precious little research that tells us what to do with the results of these tests. And what about all of the legal and ethical challenges involved in genetic testing, especially broad genetic surveys? What will happen when the insurance companies get a hold of our genetic profiles?
All of which is not to say that tremendous progress hasn't been made or that these discoveries won't someday revolutionize health care. But the day when personalized medicine is a reality rather than a catchphrase, when the information we get from these tests is useful and not just interesting, still seems a long way off.
Bottom line? Be wary. Examine claims carefully. If you're not an expert in genetic testing, talk with someone who is before getting tested and especially before acting on any genetic test results. It's a jungle out there, and we all need reliable guides.
NORRIS: Family physician Douglas Kamerow is a former assistant surgeon general.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
Republican presidential candidates are debating at this hour at the Ronald Reagan Library in California. That's the biggest of one of more than 20 states that hold nominating contest next Tuesday. And there's one less Republican on this stage than there was in the last debate. Rudy Giuliani officially ended his presidential bid today after a disappointing third-place finish in yesterday's Florida primary. He threw his support to the Florida winner, John McCain.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Mr. RUDY GIULIANI (Former Republican Mayor, New York City): Today, I'm officially announcing my withdrawal as a candidate for president of the United States. And so deciding who to endorse, in my particular case, is not difficult because if I endorse anyone else, you would say, I was flip-flopping…
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GIULIANI: …after having already endorsed John. John McCain is the most qualified candidate to be the next commander in chief of the United States.
NPR's Scott Horsley joins us now from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.
Scott, any sparks from that debate so far?
SCOTT HORSLEY: Michele, there's been a lot of talk about economics - the number one issue in the Florida primary and the candidates were given a chance to respond to Ronald Reagan's famous question, are Americans better off than they were four years ago or eight years ago. That gave John McCain a chance to challenge Mitt Romney's record as the former governor of Massachusetts. It also gave Romney a chance to argue that Washington is broken, and the implicit message there that McCain's a part of that.
The two also squabbled over who's entitled to the mantle of conservative. And former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee argued, hey, I'm a conservative too. Huckabee's trying to combat the notion of this is now a two-man race between McCain and Romney.
NORRIS: Now, the big news of the day came several hours ago when Rudy Giuliani appeared alongside John McCain and endorsed the Arizona senator. Tell us what happened.
HORSLEY: That's right. He said he spent a lot of time while running for president, thinking about what kind of person should be the president. He hoped it would be him but since the voters had other ideas, he says, he's backing John McCain, he called the Arizona senator, an American hero, and he promised to campaign for McCain in states like New York, New Jersey, Connecticut - those are all winner-take-all states, by the way.
Giuliani also joked that he would be willing to keep quiet if that would be more helpful to John McCain. He also said he hopes the senator can secure the GOP nomination quickly so he can unite the Republican Party and begin to unite the country.
NORRIS: Now, it sounds like John McCain is going to get another high-profile boost out there in California tomorrow when he campaigns alongside Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, how big would that be?
HORSLEY: That's right. Governor Schwarzenegger will appear with John McCain at a campaign event here in California tomorrow, an event with an environmental theme, which is something that's important to both men. Governor Schwarzenegger stopped short of endorsing McCain today but he hinted that an endorsement could be coming tomorrow. Schwarzenegger said one reason he stayed neutral in the race, so far, is that he's had two friends running, McCain and Giuliani.
Now that dynamic has changed, he says, even if he doesn't go so far as to endorse McCain, he is lending McCain's campaign some star power by campaigning with him. Remember in Florida, Governor Charlie Crist came out in support of McCain just a few days before that state's primary as did Senator Mel Martinez, and that may have tipped some votes in the senator's direction.
NORRIS: That was NPR's Scott Horsley speaking to us from Simi Valley, California.
Thank you, Scott.
HORSLEY: My pleasure.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, it's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
The military is trying to improve conditions for the nearly 20,000 inmates it's holding at Camp Bucca, a prison in the desert of far-southern Iraq. U.S. commanders see the effort as part of the counterinsurgency strategy.
As NPR's Corey Flintoff reports, they say it's a chance to win over the most disaffected Iraqis and the people closest to them.
COREY FLINTOFF: The family waiting room at Camp Bucca is crowded, mostly with women and children. The women's flowing garments drape the wooden benches in black. The surroundings aren't fancy but there, at least, as good as anything the Americans here have for themselves.
Colonel James Brown, Camp Bucca's outgoing commander, is proud of this waiting area, and he wants to make it even better.
Colonel JAMES BROWN (Outgoing Commander, Camp Bucca): We want to bring them here, treat them like royalty, make them know how welcome they are. And that's one of the comments of families will make is to say, I don't get treated this well anywhere else, but I get treated this well here.
FLINTOFF: Col. Brown says he wants Camp Bucca to reflect the American values of fairness and generosity. Zack, the Iraqi cultural adviser at the waiting area, introduces one example — the wife of a detainee. She is holding her son, an 18-month-old boy with a hole in his heart.
ZACK (Cultural Adviser, Iraq): You see the face is blue, completely. And before 24 months, if he gets the surgery, he had opportunity to live. After that, it will be too late.
FLINTOFF: Col. Brown explains that one of the doctors who came to assess prisoner health at the camp happened to be a pediatric cardiologist.
Col. BROWN: And she said, well, this is easy. I've already got six babies I've gotten medical care for already, and we can do this again. We can do this here, say, you do it.
FLINTOFF: Brown says his team has arranged to get the family to Jordan, where the surgery will be performed.
As much as Brown strives to improve the family experience at the camp, there are external factors that he can't do much about.
Zahra Mahdi has visited Camp Bucca twice to see her husband.
Ms. ZAHRA MAHDI: (Through Translator) We suffered a lot on our trip down to Basra. My mother-in-law is an old woman. She's sick, and she suffered a lot just to see her son.
FLINTOFF: Zahra Mahdi lives in the Baghdad slum called Sadr City with her five children. She and her mother-in-law took the 10-hour bus ride down to Camp Bucca in the stifling heat of summer, only to find that she was not on the list of those authorized to see her husband.
Ms. MAHDI: (Through Translator) On my first visit, I took all my children with me, but they did not allow me to see him. They only let the kids inside I started to scream, cry and beat my head because I had gone through so much to get there.
FLINTOFF: Mahdi didn't know that the Red Cross pays the expenses of families who visit the detainees, so she paid the cost of bus fare, food and three days in a cheap hotel out of her own pocket. Another problem is that security measures the U.S. military regards as normal and necessary are frightening and humiliating for Muslim women.
(Soundbite of crying)
Zahra's mother-in-law, Ameen.
Ms. AMEEN MAHDI (Mother-in-Law of Zahra Mahdi): (Through Translator) They stripped me of my scarf and searched my hair. I didn't know how to stand in the screening machine. I was sick, but they forced me to stand inside that machine.
FLINTOFF: The place where visitors get to meet their loved ones is a white-walled room with a partition, through which inmates and their families can talk.
Col. BROWN: You can see here, we have our detainees. We allow the children to cross the line and dads can hold their kids. We do allow them, you know, contact hugs.
(Soundbite of unidentified men speaking in foreign language)
FLINTOFF: Zahra Mahdi did get into this room to see her husband on her last visit just three months ago.
Unidentified Child: (Speaking Foreign Language)
FLINTOFF: She doesn't remember the pleasant amenities so much as the shortness of the visit.
Ms. A. MAHDI: (Through Translator) We had to go through all this, just to see him for two hours. Time pass so quickly and afterwards, they ordered us out.
FLINTOFF: Col. Brown wants the visits to transform the families' view of Americans, but that's not what Zahra remembers.
Ms. Z. MAHDI: (Through Translator) We were trembling all the time, so afraid of the Americans. The Americans just yelled at us and we could not understand what they were saying.
FLINTOFF: Brigadier General Robert Hipwell, who is taking over as commander of Camp Bucca, says he's just as committed to making the visitation program as successful as it can be. But like Col. Brown, he'll face the difficulties of running a volatile detention camp and the cultural barriers between Iraqis and Americans. It may be that no amount of good will and hard work can make the experience a happy one.
Corey Flintoff, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
With Barack Obama's candidacy, some Americans and more than a few journalists, have posed the question - is America ready for a black president? Voters are about to answer that question, but Hollywood weighed in long ago.
(Soundbite from movie "Deep Impact")
Mr. MORGAN FREEMAN (Actor): (President Tom Beck) At some point over the next 10 months, all of us will entertain our worst fears and concerns. But I can also promise you this - we will prevail.
(Soundbite from TV show "24")
Mr. DENNIS HAYSBERT (Actor): (President David Palmer) This is gonna be the second most important day of my life.
Ms. PENNY JOHNSON (Actress): (Sherry Palmer) And what would the first one be?
Mr. HAYSBERT: (President David Palmer) Well, I think you know. It's when I hit the game-winning three against DePaul at the Final Four.
Ms. JOHNSON: (Sherry Palmer) You just lost my vote.
(Soundbite of movie "Head of State")
Mr. CHRIS ROCK (Actor): (Mays Gilliam) And we got nurses that work in hospitals that they can't even afford to get sick in. It ain't right. It ain't right. It ain't right. It isn't right.
NORRIS: That was actor Morgan Freeman in the doomsday film "Deep Impact," Dennis Haysbert in the popular television show "24," which served up not one but two black commanders-in-chief, and Chris Rock in the comedy, "Head of State."
Of course, Hollywood has produced all kinds of presidents we've yet to see in real life - women, Latinos, handsome, single dads who date beautiful, brainy lobbyist. But we wanted to test the question about a black man in the Oval Office. After voters have seen several black presidents on screen, are they more likely to elect one in real life? We put this to Todd Boyd, professor of critical studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
Professor TODD BOYD (Critical Studies, USC School of Cinematic Arts): I'm a bit hesitant to say that because James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman, you know, or Dennis Haysbert played a president in a television show or in a movie, that, you know, it means Barack Obama can be president. I think that's a bit of a stretch.
NORRIS: When it comes to presidential portrayals, does it make a difference if we're talking about portrayals in film or on television, on television, in particular, in the case of "24," for instance, where David Palmer and later his brother Wayne Palmer were portrayed in that series as black presidents beamed into people's homes every week for a period of time?
Prof. BOYD: When you talk about, you know, a popular television program, it's not, you know, simply the representation on "24," but it's that representation in a larger context where we've seen African Americans do things in the last 10, 15 years that we've not seen before. For people watching a program like "24," perhaps this representation, you know, may have unconsciously made some things in society seem less troubling than it may would have been had this representation not beamed in in the first place.
NORRIS: Let's look back, if we could, and reach way back to that 1972 film, "The Man," where James Earl Jones actually portrayed the president. This was released during a time where America was roiled by the Vietnam War. It was the height of the black power movement. Women's movement was also in full blow. How does Hollywood present this film when it was released and how was it received by the public?
Prof. BOYD: I think, if you look at popular culture in the early '70s, particularly around black representations in Hollywood and on television, you saw a number of things presented as possibilities that no one really considered to be very timely. It was all about, you know, what could happen in the future. You look at that film, "The Man," and it was a film representing a black president. But at the time, you know, you had a lot of groundbreaking imagery taking place, a lot of radical imagery in some cases.
You know, this is the era of, you know, "Deep Throat" and "Super Fly" and "The Exorcist," and so looking back on it, "The Man" didn't necessarily represent any radical representation on the part of Hollywood because you saw representations that were out of the ordinary on a fairly consistent basis because it was, you know, very much a part of that moment.
NORRIS: Now, just for the sake of argument, let's flip that idea around and say - if there is a black man elected as president of the U.S. and then - 2008 or some, at some point in the distant future, instead of looking at how culture might have lead to that, how would that event, then, impact American culture?
Prof. BOYD: Well, you know, the most visible image of America at that point, particularly to the rest of the world, is going to be the president. And if that president is an African-American, what this means is that you're going to see this person's face on television, on the Internet, on the front page of national and international newspapers every day. So it's symbolism. And symbolism is, you know, very important. But it's not the be all and end all. There are things beyond symbolism at some point. Symbols have to be grounded in reality.
And that's when we really start to see and understand the impact of something like this and how it might, in turn, affect, you know, people's perception of American culture.
NORRIS: Todd Boyd, thanks for talking to us. Good to talk to you.
Prof. BOYD: Thank you.
NORRIS: Todd Boyd is a professor of critical studies at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
The two remaining candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination are debating this hour in Los Angeles. It is their first one-on-one debate. And it's also the last time they will face off before Tuesday when voters and nearly two dozen states go to the polls. More than half the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination are up for grabs on Super Tuesday. And there's no indication that the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be resolved by then.
There's plenty of tension in the contest now, thanks to some nasty rhetoric during the South Carolina's primary, and the end of John Edwards' run for the nomination.
NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson is in Los Angeles. When I spoke to her earlier today, she said the stakes are high for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama at tonight's debate.
MARA LIASSON: The debate is a lot like a general election debate. We're on the eve of a national primary. And I think what you're going to hear tonight is in effect their closing arguments against each other. From Barack Obama, expect to hear his new sharp message about why Hillary Clinton is the past, not the future. I think you can expect from her mostly positive message. But any criticism she gets from him, she's going to say is not the politics of hope, it's the politics of personal destruction.
NORRIS: In the past week, Barack Obama seems to have really sharpened his criticism about Hillary Clinton in his campaign and his campaign message. What is it that he's saying?
LIASSON: Well, I think you're right. He has struggled with how to frame the argument against her. But in Denver, the big rally yesterday, he said it's tempting to want to build a bridge back to the 20th century that was as big as Bill Clinton's bridge to the 21st century. He talked about how he needs a nominee who can unite the party, not unite the other party against us. He's starting to make an argument about electability. He said you can't be John McCain with someone who agreed with him, meaning on the war. All these, of course, without mentioning Hillary Clinton's name.
NORRIS: Hillary Clinton, at some degree, seemed to be on defensive this week. There are some backlash against her husband and some of the comments that he made reaching back to that South Carolina primary. We haven't heard much from the former president in recent days.
LIASSON: No. There's no doubt that Bill Clinton's role has been changed. His rhetoric has been toned down. He gives shorter speeches. He talks more about her and she less about I. And Hillary Rodham Clinton told ABC News that his attacks may have caused her votes in South Carolina. She said this is my race. And I think you can expect her to strike a more positive tone. I think the Clintons have had to adjust their rhetoric in South Carolina.
NORRIS: Barack Obama goes into Super Tuesday having won a big win in South Carolina. Clinton also won in Florida, didn't pick up delegates but did win there. So who has a sense of momentum right now?
LIASSON: Well, I think that neither of them really have any momentum right now. Hillary Clinton does have a lead in the polls in the big February 5th states, but they're very evenly matched, especially in money. Barack Obama just raised $32 million in January. That is the most money ever raised in one month by a presidential candidate in a contested primary. He's going to advertise in 20 out of the 22 February 5th states. Hillary Clinton is advertising in 12, including her own state of New York, which tells you how competitive this is.
The New York Post endorsed Obama. And don't forget they're both going to get delegates everywhere, no state is winner take all and everyone assumes that no one will end up with 2,025 delegates, the number that you need, on February 5th, and this race is going to go on and on.
NORRIS: That was NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson, speaking to us from Los Angeles. Thank you, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you, Michele.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Not to be upstaged, there was also a big Republican political event in Los Angeles today.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Governor ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (Republican, California): I'm endorsing Senator McCain to be the next president of the United States.
NORRIS: That, of course, is California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger during his political star power behind John McCain.
(Soundbite of political speech)
Gov. SCHWARZENEGGER: There are people out there to talk about reaching across the aisle, but he has shown the action over and over again. He's also a crusader to end wasteful spending in Washington which is so important. And he's a crusader, has a great vision in protecting the environment and also protecting simultaneously the economy.
NORRIS: Sharing the stage with John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger today, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. He endorsed McCain yesterday after dropping out of the race. Despite those endorsements, McCain's rivals, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul, showed no signs of backing down ahead of Super Tuesday.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And if there was ever a time when Super Tuesday deserves that title, it is this year. Today, we're going to hear from four of our reporters in Super Tuesday states.
To get a sense of the races there, we're going to start with NPR's Jason Beaubien in Missouri.
JASON BEAUBIEN: Over the last week, in the heart of Kansas City, presidential yard signs have started to pop up. But here in the conservative suburb of Lee's Summit, Missouri, there are almost none.
Mr. RICK RAINS(ph) (Owner, Barbershop, Lee's Summit, Missouri): Now that you mentioned it, I haven't really noticed any campaign signs for the presidential.
BEAUBIEN: Rick Rains runs a barbershop on 3rd Street in downtown Lee's Summit. Despite few visible indications that an election is less than a week away, Rains says customers are talking about it.
Shawn Mitkiff(ph) who also cuts hair at the shop says the two most prominent issues customers are grappling with are religion and health care.
Mr. SHAWN MITKIFF (Barber, Lee's Summit, Missouri): Even though these families are conservative, they're caught in a loop of wanting to side with the more non-conservative ideas about health care to get health care, and they're wresting with their morals versus their budget, you know?
BEAUBIEN: University of Missouri-Kansas City political scientist, Elizabeth Moore(ph) says this year, residents of this purple state are still waiting to be wooed.
Ms. ELISABETH MOORE (Political Scientist, University of Missouri-Kansas City): So far, it seems as if the candidates have all but ignored Missouri outside of a few fundraising events.
BEAUBIEN: In the Republican primary, Moore says any of three candidates could win it. Mike Huckabee is hoping to do well among socially conservative voters in rural areas. Mitt Romney and John McCain, both are potentially appealing to fiscal conservatives around St. Louis, Columbia and Kansas City. And in the election season that's lacked direction, it may be fitting that the state's most prominent Republicans, Senator Kit Bond endorsed Rudy Giuliani who's no longer in the race.
Jason Beaubien, NPR News, Kansas City.
KATHY LOHR: I'm Kathy Lohr in Atlanta.
Support here for Democratic candidates is split between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. African-Americans made up 43 percent of the vote in the southern state in the last Democratic presidential primary.
Many older civil rights leaders support Clinton and younger blacks, including Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin are going with Obama.
Mayor SHIRLEY FRANKLIN (Democrat, Atlanta): I was just moved emotionally, intellectually and spiritually by his courage, his smartness, his experience and his willingness…
LOHR: But the Clinton name has strong poll in the state. Georgia is the first primary that Bill Clinton won in his 1992 bid for the nomination. That has translated into support for Hillary Clinton.
Atlanta Councilman Kwanza Hall says people are worried about the economy.
Mr. KWANZA HALL (Councilman, Atlanta): And they want to see a person who can lead and run and make it happen because people are already ready for it, they're just waiting for somebody to kind of be the conductor. I think Hillary Clinton is that conductor.
LOHR: Just east of Atlanta, Stonecrest Mall draws lots of middleclass African-Americans. In an unscientific poll, voters here were either undecided or like Tony Griffin(ph) said they were behind Obama.
Mr. TONY GRIFFIN: He's a great guy. I mean - and we're watching debates on TV and he struck me like he's a great guy. So I mean I like Hillary, too, also. It'd be beautiful to have a woman as a president but is she going to be there to do what we need for her to do?
LOHR: Obama held a rally in Atlanta earlier this week. And thousands turned out to see Clinton last night at the state Democratic Party's annual fundraising bash. Among the Republican presidential hopefuls, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee is the only one who has spent time in Georgia lately, attending the King Day services and a pro-life rally at the state capital. Huckabee has reached out to evangelical voters across the country and in Georgia, they're (unintelligible) behind him.
Kathy Lohr, NPR News, Atlanta.
JEFF BRADY: I'm Jeff Brady in Denver.
The environment has played a prominent role in the Colorado civic life lately. There's a controversial gas drilling boom in the Rocky Mountains and the governor has made renewable energy a centerpiece of his year-old administration.
Matt Elder(ph) says the environment will factor into his decision on Tuesday.
Mr. MATT ELDER: Well, I'm probably going to scale them one to 10 with environmental issues, I'd probably say it's five, about seven or seven. I know now they say like global warming is not there now, it's really something that we really need to pay attention to.
BRADY: Elder is a Democrat. But in this state, where outdoor recreation is big business, the environment is an issue across the political spectrum.
Colorado Republican Party Chair Dick Wadhams has some advice for his party's presidential candidates when they visit the state.
Mr. DICK WADHAMS (Chair, Colorado Republican Party): Republicans who present a positive agenda on the environment that is responsible and that protects the environment without killing the economy, those Republicans do well.
BRADY: While the environment is a topic in Colorado, nationally, it doesn't get as much play. The League of Conservation Voters analyzed more than 2,000 questions posed on television, found only a half-dozen about global warming -slightly more than the number of questions about UFOs.
Matt Garrington is with Environment Colorado.
Mr. MATT GARRINGTON (Field Organizer, Environment Colorado): You know, pundits are asking the hard questions on global warming and renewable energy. It means that the public isn't getting engaged on these important issues.
BRADY: Garrington's group is trying to raise the profile of climate change one phone call at a time.
BEN(ph) (Environment Colorado): Hi, Shawn(ph). My name is Ben. I'm working with Environment Colorado. How are you doing this afternoon?
BRADY: The group is encouraging people concerned about the environment to show up at their local caucuses on Tuesday.
Jeff Brady, NPR News, Denver.
DAVID SCHAPER: I'm David Schaper in Chicago, where many Illinois voters are thrilled about the chance to elect their own senator president. Waiting for a commuter train at the Randolph Street Station, Kathy Marcov(ph) of Chicago can hardly contain her excitement for Barack Obama.
KATHY MARCOV (Resident, Chicago): What he's trying to bring at the table is just so refreshing. It's so energizing. It really brings such electricity back into politics.
SCHAPER: Carrie Anderson(ph) of Chicago shares that enthusiasm.
Ms. CARRIE ANDERSON (Resident, Chicago): Oh, yes. Yeah. For first time in a long time, very excited.
SCHAPER: The reason.
Ms. ANDERSON: Just tired of the old-school politics and needs something new. And he possesses that.
SCHAPER: But Susan Cooper(ph) of suburban South Village(ph) supports…
Ms. SUSAN COOPER (Resident, South Village): Hillary.
SCHAPER: Because…
Ms. COOPER: I think she can use today's experiences along with what she hopefully learned in the past from when her husband was in office.
SCHAPER: The Clinton campaign is not ceding Illinois to Obama whatsoever. After all, Mrs. Clinton was born and raised here. And she and her husband maintain close ties to much of the Democratic Party establishment. One hundred and eighty-five Democratic delegates are up for grabs here. And though it is a reliably blue state, there are 70 Republican delegates available in Illinois Tuesday. GOP political consultant Chris Robling.
Mr. CHRIS ROBLING (Political Consultant, GOP): I think, actually, it's a very mixed picture for everybody.
SCHAPER: With issues like national security and the economy in the fore, Robling expects Illinois to be tight between John McCain and Mitt Romney. Much of the Republican establishment had been backing Rudy Giuliani. It is now shifting to McCain. But Robling says that doesn't mean much these days for a state organization still weakened by the scandal that landed its most recent governor in jail.
Mr. ROBLING: The Republican Party of Illinois is supine. It is really on the ground. And I would say that it's begging for life support.
SCHAPER: Still, there are too many Republican delegates here for the candidates to ignore.
David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
American Airlines is in the middle of difficult contract negotiations with its pilots union. Four years ago, American's unions took large salary cuts to keep the airline from going bankrupt. Their sacrifice was instrumental in turning the nation's largest carrier around. Now, executives are receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses. And that's infuriated the company's rank-and-file employees.
From Dallas, NPR's Wade Goodwyn reports.
WADE GOODWYN: In order to understand the current contract negotiations between American Airlines and company's pilots, it helps to know a little history. Travel back in time to the year 2003. It's two years after the 9/11 attack. And except for Southwest Airlines, most of the airline industry is in the tank. United and USAir have already gone bankrupt. And it's just a matter of time before Delta and Northwest follow suit. American Airlines, too, is hemorrhaging money.
Captain BILL HAUG (Secretary-Treasurer, Allied Pilots Association): We stepped to the plate and kept this airline out of bankruptcy.
GOODWYN: Captain Bill Haug is an officer with the Allied Pilots Association and a 19-year veteran who flies American's workhorse - the MD-80.
Capt. HAUG: We not only kept the airline out of bankruptcy. We kept the guys who are running the company from losing millions of dollars worth of stock and options that they held at the time. So we bailed out a lot of people financially.
GOODWYN: Nearly 3,000 pilots were laid off immediately. The 10,000 survivors took pay cuts of at least 23 percent. But hundreds of pilots saw their take-home pay reduced even more. That's because the downsizing forced them into smaller jets - the smaller the jet, the less you make. Haug says the pilots felt they had little choice.
Capt. HAUG: We are the ones that have the most to lose long-term because we're tied to this company. The seniority system is such that we can't leave American Airlines and go and be a captain somewhere else or be a first officer somewhere else. We start at the bottom wherever we go.
GOODWYN: The pilots blame the airline's financial predicament on poor management. Beginning in 1998, American executives went on a spending spree. They bought TWA, Reno Air, hundreds of new regional jets, and made more than a billion and a half dollars in terminal improvements. The company's long-term debt exploded. And when the economic downturn came, American was overextended.
A newly minted young CEO named Gerard Arpey had just taken the helm and he turned to his employees for help. Arpey called it pull together, win together. And four years later, American's top executives acknowledged that the nearly $2 billion in annual employee concessions saved the airline.
Mr. JEFF BRUNDAGE (Senior Vice President, American Airlines): Look, it would be foolish to minimize the contributions of or employees in the restructuring. Had we not had the restructuring, we would have been in bankruptcy.
GOODWYN: Jeff Brundage is a senior vice president at American Airlines. Yes, he says, the give back saved the company. But Brundage claims management should get credit too.
Mr. BRUNDAGE: The company is operating today with about $5.4 billion in structural cost throughout of the company, not just the 1.8.
GOODWYN: Once the airline started making money again. American's executives started earning millions of dollars in bonus compensation. That's the way their contracts were set up. That's infuriated American's workers. Some of whom believe it's all been an underhanded exercise to transfer wealth from the rank-and-file into managers' pockets. Brundage says he's sympathetic to their feelings.
Mr. BRUNDAGE: Very empathetic. Recognize this is an issue that is very emotional and not happy about it. But at the same time, we have a responsibility to make sure we try to make the company successful long-term because that's what's going to get people's pensions funded.
GOODWYN: And Brundage says being successful means paying American's executives competitive salaries.
Mr. BRUNDAGE: We compete for talent. We've lost three CFOs since the year 2001. And none of them have gone to other airlines.
GOODWYN: In 2006, American's 900 executives took home nearly $100 million in stock-based compensation. In 2007, the bonuses added up to more than 163 million. Drew Keith advises the pilots union on financial issues.
Mr. DREW KEITH (Director, Industry Analysis, Allied Pilots Association): These people that were told pull together, win together; these people were told shared sacrifice. But when we hit 2006, we found that that was nothing more than rhetoric.
GOODWYN: Keith says management, the bond holders, the creditors, all the other stakeholders have recouped their losses except for one group.
Mr. KEITH: All of those entities but for the employees have recovered. They have recovered handsomely. So how does that leave you feeling?
GOODWYN: It leaves the 12,000 pilots feeling like they want a new contract, say a 45 to 50 percent increase over their current one. But with fuel prices what they are, the company's profit margins are hardly set in stone. In fact, in this most recent quarter, the airline lost money again.
Nevertheless, management has not exactly positioned itself atop the moral high ground as it prepares to lecture its pilots about the necessity of financially responsible compensation packages. But vice president Jeff Brundage says they're going to have to do it anyway.
Mr. BRUNDAGE: The agreement that we end up negotiating is going to have to be a competitive agreement or it does threaten the company long term. I can't speak to the demands. But I can speak to the product that we're going to need to produce with each of the unions. And if we can't create a competitive company with competitive cost structure long term, it threatens the company.
GOODWYN: Come this spring, Americans executives are expected to receive millions of dollars more in 2008 bonus compensation. It's not expected to do much for the atmosphere at the bargaining table.
Wade Goodwyn, NPR News, Dallas.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
I know you'll forgive us for a guilty pleasure, a little tabloid top and some music.
(Soundbite of song "Piece of Me")
Ms. BRITNEY SPEARS (Singer): (Singing) I'm Miss American Dream since I was 17. Don't matter if I step on the scene or sneak away to the Philippines. They still gonna put pictures of my derriere in the magazine.
NORRIS: And in case you didn't catch it. That's Britney Spears singing there from her hit song "Piece of Me." It's currently number 18 on charts. And Britney is back on top of the tabloid headlines. She was taken from her home by ambulance again last night. We'll spare you the details of Britney's troubles but this is NPR so there is one angle to this story we feel sufficiently competent to tell you about.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: There's a ballet about Britney's life about to hit the stage in London. "Meltdown" has its world premier tomorrow at Queen Elizabeth Hall. Now, the score is not quite this refined and there's definitely plenty of too short shorts, paparazzi and dirty dancing - just the kind of thing that gets a choreographer thinking.
Mr. HUBERT ESSAKOW (Choreographer, "Meltdown"): I thought this would make a really interesting story, you know? I became fascinated. I've, in fact - we're also fascinated with her. You know, you can't open a newspaper without having her in it.
NORRIS: That was Hubert Essakow speaking to the BBC. This is not the first time the Brits have been inspired by a modern American tabloid figure. The composer of "Meltdown," Richard Thomas, also scored "Jerry Springer: The Opera" five years ago. That show was exported to the U.S. It played two nights this week at Carnegie Hall. We'll have to wait and see if he can do it again with Britney's story "Meltdown."
(Soundbite of song "Piece of Me")
Ms. SPEARS: (Singing) You want a piece of me. You want a piece, piece of me.
NORRIS: And this is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
To Kenya now, where a second opposition politician was shot death today.
His party claims it was a political murder. The police say the lawmaker was killed in a quarrel over a woman. Either way, this did nothing to defuse the tension in Kenya. An estimate 900 people have died since the disputed presidential election last month.
NPR's Ofeibea Quist-Arcton has this report on the roots of the conflict.
OFEIBEA QUIST-ARCTON: Kenyans are still reeling from the shock and the intensity of the explosion of violence and hatred that has shaken this country. The crisis has turned Kenya from one of Africa's most stable and prosperous nations into the continent's latest crisis. The brutality has pitted neighbor against neighbor in scenes reminiscent of Rwanda. Kenyans are using machetes, daggers, bows and arrows, and clubs to settle scores.
Some people have been burned alive. The conflict was sparked by last month's presidential election, which returned Mwai Kibaki to the presidency. Local and international observers said the vote tally was fraudulent. Kibaki insists he is Kenya's rightful leader.
His opposition rival, Raila Odinga, insists he would have won in a legitimate count. Author and playwright Binyavanga Wainana lays the blame for the current troubles at the feet of both men.
Mr. BINYAVANGA WAINANA (Author; Playwright): Right now, what's happening is our political leaders are dancing on a stage with matches and gasoline. The intensity of the plea from the public for this to stop is incredible. But Kibaki's head seems to be in the sand. Raila seems to be positioning himself for brinkmanship so Kenya is in the hands of Mr. Raila and Mr. Kibaki, who've got the gas and who've got the matches. And it's looking like they're prepared to go as far as they can go and they can continue dancing simply for the sake of themselves.
QUIST-ARCTON: But Gladwell Wazonio Otieno(ph), a political activist who heads the Africa Center for Open Governance based here in Nairobi, says that's why politics have played a central role in the crisis, the issues go much deeper.
Ms. GLADWELL OTIENO (Executive Director, Africa Centre for Open Governance): I would say that you can damage a lot with poisonous politics but obviously, you also have a situation of economic inequity, you have a very, very small class in Kenya that's own a large part of the economy. Kenya is the 10th most unequal country in this world and…
QUIST-ARCTON: Otieno says historically, Kenya has failed to address crucial issues and grievances over land, wealth, power and privilege dating back many years. Kenya is a country suffering from what she calls chronic land hunger, a problem which first surfaced during colonial rule but which has never been properly addressed since independence in 1963.
Much of the worst violence has occurred in the slums surrounding Nairobi and the Rift Valley; a fertile region that was dominated by the British during colonial times. Much of the Rift Valley was divvied up amongst Kikuyu under Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, himself a Kikuyu.
Again, Gladwell Otieno.
Ms. OTIENO: So there are deep underlying reasons but poisonous politics plays a role because our politicians views ethnic differences to buttress their claims to power.
QUIST-ARCTON: Kenya's 36 million people are made up of more than 40 different ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Kikuyu. They make up about a fifth of the population and traditionally, the most powerful, dominating in politics and business. Kibaki is from the Kikuyu tribe while Odinga is a Luo. In the current crisis, it is tribe against tribe with Luo and allied groups against the Kikuyu and vice versa.
Political scientist and social commentator Wambui Mwangi of Toronto University says politicians have taken advantage of historic tensions.
Professor WAMBUI MWANGI (Political Science, University of Toronto; Social Commentator): Oh, well, that's the basis level. Politicians want votes and there's nothing easier to campaign on vent fear and hatred. It is really a very simple, very base, very venal and excessively callous and ruthless way of doing business, which is not to say that there are not real issues underlying these clashes; they certainly are.
QUIST-ARCTON: Outside mediators are trying to resolve some of these issues.
Former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has been mediating in talks between Kibaki and Odinga's negotiating teams. Annan succeeded in bringing together the two men to talk. He had talks with Kibaki at the African Union Summit in neighboring Ethiopia, and is due to talk to Odinga, the opposition leader, here tomorrow. But Kenyan observers say the peace talks have not quelled the vicious ethnic rivalry. This includes hate radio and text messages. Veteran journalist and columnist Kwamchetsi Makokha.
Mr. KWAMCHETSI MAKOKHA (Journalist; Columnist): Those SMSs, those so-called hate messages are finding resonance within a certain large section of the population. I think we must go back and find out what is it that is so wrong with our social relations that makes it possible for those hate messages to find such huge resonance within the population.
QUIST-ARCTON: Kenya's people are desperately hoping that the negotiations between the two sides will end the deadly violence and restore peace.
Ofeibea Quist-Arcton, NPR News, Nairobi.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Thursday is the day we read from your e-mail. And our inbox received a handful of complaints from listeners unhappy with our analysis of John Edwards' withdrawal from the Democratic race. These comments, in particular, got people's attention.
Unidentified Man #1: The real puzzle here is what happens to white males who have been more inclined to vote for Edwards…
Unidentified Man #2: There isn't really a place for the white male to find a candidate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. All you have to do is look at them and seem they're not like white men.
NORRIS: I'm thinking racists and sexists, writes listener Kate Williams(ph). For how many years have women and people of color voted for middle-aged, white men who definitely do not look like them? Shouldn't campaign coverage discuss the candidate's issues and beliefs instead of their gender and ethnicity?
James Lily(ph) of Louisville, Kentucky, who calls himself a certified white male, 65-years-old, sent this: I have hoped and prayed for the possibility of voting for someone other than a middle-aged white man for president for over 40 years. I am most thankful that I have not one but two choices this year.
Christopher Hahn(ph) of Titusville, Florida was happy to hear this week's installment of our series Climate Connections. Joe Palca told us about architects in Holland who are designing houses with floating foundations to deal with the rising sea levels. Mr. Hahn writes, It was a pleasure to hear a piece on global warming that was not focused on an apocalyptic scenario.
Finally, Patty Shelton(ph) of Richmond, Virginia tells us she was inspired by my interview with Kadir Nelson. He wrote and illustrated the children's book, "We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball."
Shelton writes, before the interview was over, I pulled into the parking lot of Books-A-Million, went inside and purchased the book. While waiting for my dinner companions, I became absorbed in the magnificent paintings. This morning, as I stood on duty in a school hallway, I shared the book with anyone who would stop, look and listen - teachers, parents, children. None of the children have ever heard of the Negro League. Several said they would be going to the bookstore tonight.
We want to know what you think, so write to us. Go to npr.org and click on contact us at the top of the page.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Pollster love to come up with clever names for blocks of voters - soccer moms and NASCAR dads, Starbucks Republicans and yellow dog Democrats.
Commentator Daniel Hernandez is Mexican American. And he's amused by recent attempts to lump all Latino voters together.
Mr. DANIEL HERNANDEZ (Commentator): Super Tuesday is on its way, February 5th. And that means in some states, Latino votes will be the price to be won if Senators Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama want to make it to the White House. That also means, yet again, that race may become a campaign issue. What's been troubling me is the way that issue is being framed, the assumptions that are being made by the pundits. The media, for example, has been reporting that Obama will have to deal with tensions that apparently exists between blacks and Latinos.
One story even quoted someone saying that Latinos will support Clinton because they are family-oriented and love a mother figure. Maybe the results in he Nevada caucuses, which showed more than 60 percent of Latinos went with Clinton, satisfy those images. But I find such generalizations lazy and offensive. The more Latinos and African-Americans gain ground in our country, the more we're going to see hapless attempts to explain away our differences, to simplify our realities into digestible boxes that usually pick one group against the other.
Those boxes are no longer relevant, because if there is one thing that Latinos have in common, it is a complete lack of commonality. A Latino can be white, black or Asian. Latinos are wealthy and poor, Catholic and protestant, Jewish and Muslim, red state and blue state. There are also probably many Latinos who dislike families and mothers, but that's only a guess. So there is no great brown truth to be drawn from the fact that Latino heavyweights like Henry Cisneros and Antonio Villaraigosa are supporting Senator Clinton. There is another kind of symbolism bubbling beneath the surface.
It's not a question of race, dude. It's a question of generations. Look at it this way - prominent Latinos and African-Americans who are endorsing Senator Clinton are mostly older, more seasoned politicians. They tend to be baby boomers like the Clintons themselves. And the Latinos and African-Americans who are supporting Senator Obama seem to be younger or more grassroots-oriented, more idealistic like their candidate. Indeed, in Nevada, half of voters under 45 went with Obama. And there's the real story.
It's no wonder many young people like me, people in their 20's, are tired of older folks who claim to speak for us just because we're the same color or have similar last names. And we've grown tired of a mainstream structure that is comfortable with reducing us to groups defined by stereotypes and silly cultural touchstones like tacos or Mama Sitas. My generation sees a future where racial and social minorities are no longer ghettoized into tribes that compete with one another instead of cooperate. Because, generally speaking, each of us is fiercely individualistic. And it's individuals, not dated stereotypes, who decide elections.
NORRIS: Daniel Hernandez is a blogger from California. He's working on a book about young people in Mexico City.
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
It's no longer good enough to declare that you're an American or a Canadian citizen when crossing the border into the U.S. Tough new rules went into effect today in all U.S. land ports, requiring proof of citizenship from all travelers 19 and over. Customs agents worry that the new requirement for additional documents might cause major delays. But so far, problems today have been minor.
We have two reports from the northern and southern borders, beginning with NPR's Ted Robbins near San Diego.
TED ROBBINS: The San Ysidro port of entry, which borders Tijuana south of San Diego, is the busiest land crossing in the world. The government says 17 million vehicles and 50 million people cross here every year, mostly Mexicans working in the U.S. But the traffic goes the other way too for shopping and entertainment. All those people squeezed through a pedestrian entry and just 24 vehicle lanes.
Customs agent Patricia Walman(ph) is checking documents in one of those lanes.
Ms. PATRICIA WALMAN (Customs Agent): You got your passport?
Unidentified Woman #1: Yeah, and my (unintelligible) certificate.
ROBBINS: On a sign above the entry booth, there's a listing of acceptable IDs. Effective January 31st, 2008, all U.S./Canada citizens 19 years and older are expected to present a photo ID and proof of citizenship.
Ms. WALMAN: Anything to clear up today?
Unidentified Woman #1: Nothing. (Unintelligible). Thank you.
ROBBINS: Proof of citizenship means any document showing which country you're a citizen of. For Americans or Canadians, that's a passport or military ID, or lacking that, a birth certificate and a photo ID.
Gordo Dylan(ph) heads Customs operations for the California border. He says the object is to improve security by requiring documents and by winnowing down the number of acceptable documents. Before today, border agents would accept up to 8,000 different documents, like any driver's license for instance.
Mr. GORDO DYLAN (Customs Operations, California Border): So what we're doing is reducing that 8,000 documents to a manageable of less than, let's say, 20 documents.
ROBBINS: A number of critics worry that the new requirements would slow commerce. Jorge Montada(ph) has been sitting in line at San Ysidro with his wife and baby for 90 minutes.
Mr. JORGE MONTADA (Mexico Resident): One hour and a half. I cross probably twice a month. It's a long time to wait. Yeah, it's a couple of times, it's hard.
ROBBINS: As a Mexican citizen, he has a U.S. visa. Nothing changed for him and other foreign citizens today. Frankly, with normal waits that long, it was difficult to tell whether the new requirements made the long wait even longer.
Ted Robbins, NPR News, on the U.S.-Mexico border south of San Diego.
CATHY DUCHAMP: I'm Cathy Duchamp at the Peace Arch border crossing in Washington state. This is the third busiest crossing on the northern border with Canada. More than two million people cross here every year. But this morning, with the new ID requirements in effect, there are hardly any lines.
Mr. MIKE BOLES(ph) (Customs Security Officer): Good morning, sir. How are you today?
Unidentified Man #1: Good.
Mr. BOLES: Where are we going.
Unidentified Man #1: I'm going to Seattle to catch a plane today.
Mr. BOLES: Great. Can I get your ID, please?
DUCHAMP: Mike Boles is a Customs security officer on booth duty.
Mr. BOLES: If we do find somebody that's noncompliant, it's going to be somebody that's not a frequent crosser, that's probably from a place that, you know, they haven't heard yet.
DUCHAMP: You know, the people who cross only a few times a year, Canadians coming south for bargain shopping, Americans coming home from a ski vacation at Whistler Mountain, oh, and maybe journalists.
Mr. BOLES: We've been waiting for somebody that didn't have what they were required to have. This is great.
DUCHAMP: Out of 18 people I witnessed coming through, the only one to slow down the line was a Canadian television journalist. He had only a driver's license, and that's not scannable. Border agent Boles had to type his information in a computer manually, which took at least a couple minutes longer. This delay could become a real concern on weekends when the wait already averages two hours, and the number of people without proper ID could mushroom.
Canadian traveler Chris Oldinger(ph) has another concern. He references the inscription on the Peace Arch here. It reads, children of a common mother dwelling together in unity. Oldinger says it doesn't feel that way anymore with the proof of citizenship requirement.
Mr. CHRIS OLDINGER (Traveler): Well, we're neighbors. We're just going across the border, right? You know, I understand that if it's someone coming overseas, then it's required, but not for a neighbor. That's what I think.
DUCHAMP: The Department of Homeland Security is doing its best to pump up the P.R. on the ID requirements. Maybe this new jingle will make travelers feel better.
(Soundbite of information ad)
Unidentified Woman #1: (Singing) If you're going across the border into the USA…
DUCHAMP: Or maybe not.
For NPR News, I'm Cathy Duchamp in Blaine, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
Next week, almost half the states will vote or caucus to choose a Republican and a Democratic presidential nominee, 24 to be exact. Polls tell us many Americans remain undecided, so we're looking at a handful of the issues in the campaign. Today, the subject is health care. It's always an important issue for Democratic voters, but this year, Republicans are also worried about rising costs, so every candidate has a health care plan.
Mr. MITT ROMNEY (Republican, Former Governor of Massachusetts; Presidential Candidate): A lot of people have ideas about health care and improving health care.
Representative RON PAUL (Republican, Texas; Presidential Candidate): People in this country are actually going to India and getting their heart surgery done…
Senator BARACK OBAMA (Democrat, Illinois; Presidential Candidate): If we didn't have a system in which employers had typically provided health care, I would probably go and…
Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): Will be able to go out and choose their insurer anywhere in America, and they will be…
Senator HILLARY CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Presidential Candidate): I'm proposing health care tax credits that will make health care for everyone affordable.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Republican, Former Governor of Arkansas; Presidential Candidate): We won't give you deductions for going to a gym or health club, but we'll pay 100,000 bucks if you have a quadruple bypass.
NORRIS: With us to sort through some of these is NPR health policy correspondent Julie Rovner. Hello, Julie.
JULIE ROVNER: Hi, Michele.
NORRIS: Let's start with the Democrats. What's the rub between senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?
ROVNER: Well, as you mentioned at the top, health care is a huge issue for Democratic primary voters. And even though their plans are actually pretty close, there is an effort to exploit any differences they can find.
NORRIS: They had quite a dustup over health care during a debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Let's listen to Senator Clinton.
(Soundbite of Democratic debate)
Sen. CLINTON: Because if we don't have everybody in the system, we know what will happen. We will begin to have more and more people who are uninsured. The health insurance companies will continue to cherry-pick. The hidden tax that comes when someone does finally show up at the emergency room will be passed on to everyone else. So I am adamantly in favor of universal health care, and that means everybody is covered.
NORRIS: Everybody is covered. So Julie, it sounds like Hillary Clinton's plan would require people to have health insurance.
ROVNER: Yes, that's correct. It's called an individual mandate. John Edwards, who just dropped out, also had one. And Obama has one too, at least for children. Now, this is not a really coincidence. All three of those plans actually came from the same source, Yale University political science professor named Jacob Hacker. And all three were based on the concept of something called shared responsibility, where the government and individuals and employers all get to pay something. It's actually quite similar to what they're doing in Massachusetts. Although, kind of interestingly, then-governor-now-Republican candidate Mitt Romney is sort of running away from that.
Now, the big difference among the Democrats, in fact, really the only meaningful difference, is that while Senator Clinton's plan, until a few days' ago, Senator Edwards's plan would have required everyone to have coverage, Senator Obama's plan wouldn't.
And here's how he defended that decision in the debate last week.
Sen. OBAMA: My core belief is that people desperately want coverage. They desperately want it. And my plan provides those same subsidies. And if they are provided those subsidies and they have good quality care that's available, then they will purchase it.
ROVNER: What he's saying here is basically that if you build it, they will come, that you don't have to have a mandate to get people to buy insurance.
NORRIS: Julie, let me make sure that I have this right. Both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama would let all people keep their existing coverage, if they want to, or buy into a government-sponsored plan, like Medicare, and the government would then subsidize small businesses and the poor? Is that correct?
ROVNER: That's exactly correct. And while economists do agree with Senator Clinton that you won't get everyone covered without some sort of mandate - in fact, the Urban Institute, just this week, put out a study that said without a mandate, you'd probably still have 15 million people uninsured, which is the number Senator Clinton's been using all along - it is still clear that both Democrats' plans would likely cover a lot more of the 47 million uninsured than the plans being offered by the Republicans.
NORRIS: Let's round the corner and turn to the Republicans. They're also more alike than they're different, aren't they?
ROVNER: Yes, they are, although they're not quite as alike as the Democrats' plans. The Republicans, like President Bush, want to rely more on the free market to create more competition to push down the cost of health care. And they want to use the tax code to encourage more individuals to buy their own insurance rather than to get it from their employers. Here's how former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee puts it.
Mr. HUCKABEE: You own the health care and it stays with you for a lifetime, hopefully, but certainly for a much longer period of time. So now you and the insurance company are partners in trying to keep you healthier because you're going to be financially rewarded for that and so will they. Once you change that model so that it's profitable for you and profitable for the insurance company to prevent your illness, there's a greater chance they'll put the coverage in.
NORRIS: It seems that personal responsibility is a theme running through all these Republican plans.
ROVNER: Yes, it is. Huckabee, who's probably best known for losing more than 100 pounds, also has another provision in this plan that would allow people who live, quote, "healthy lifestyles" to pay lower health insurance premiums. And John McCain is proposing to pay doctors in hospitals based on how well their patients do.
Sen. MCCAIN: We have to have outcome-based results for health care. We have to emphasize wellness and fitness. One of the most disturbing things in America is the increase in diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure amongst younger Americans, so we have to reward wellness and fitness.
NORRIS: Julie, what about the candidate who's actually implemented a major health reform plan, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney? Where is he at now?
ROVNER: Well, he's in a pretty awkward place. On the one hand, as you point out, he has done what none of the other candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton, can claim. He has signed a major health reform into law. On the other hand, the Massachusetts plan has a mandate attached to it, which is something Republican primary voters aren't really thrilled with.
Here's how tried to put a conservative spin on it just before the New Hampshire primary.
Mr. ROMNEY: I want to underline this. We don't have to have government take over health care to get everybody insured. That's what the Democrats keep by hanging out there. The truth is we can get everybody insured in a free market way. We don't need Hillary-care or socialized medicine.
NORRIS: So he's saying you don't need Hillary-care. So what would Mitt Romney do if he doesn't want to replicate the Massachusetts model on a national scale?
ROVNER: Well, his plan for the nation is to basically let states do whatever they want. If they want to do what Massachusetts did, that's fine. If they want to do something else, that's fine too. He'd actually rolled back the federal standards that are now in place for the Medicaid program for the poor and let states take that money and figure out how to cover the uninsured however they want, which would in fact be a pretty dramatic change.
NORRIS: So candidates from both parties proposing fairly far-reaching health care plans. Could you sum things up for us?
ROVNER: Yeah. I think one of the things that's really interesting is that even though the Democrats' plans would probably cover more of the uninsured, the Republicans' plans would actually probably change the health system more. More people would actually change the way they get their health insurance. But in the end, I think we're really back to the fundamental debate that's been going on for generations, which is that the Democrats' plans would rely more on government and the Republicans' plans would rely more on the free market.
NORRIS: Julie Rovner covers health care policy for NPR. Julie, thank you very much.
ROVNER: You're welcome.
NORRIS: And if you want to learn more about the candidates and the issues, please go to our Web site, npr.org/elections.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michele Norris.
There is word today that one of al-Qaida's top commanders in Afghanistan has been killed. The death of Abu Laith al-Libi was announced on an Islamist Web site today. One U.S. intelligence official said the death would be good news, though he wouldn't confirm it. He said al-Libi was involved in activities along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The news came on a day when U.S. lawmakers and State Department officials debated some of the gloomy assessments about the war in Afghanistan. Reports by academics describe the country as a failed state and a haven for terrorism.
NPR's Michele Kelemen has that story.
MICHELE KELEMEN: At the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, former NATO Commander James Jones said one of his main concerns is that the international community is losing momentum when it comes to helping Afghanistan deal with crucial issues from narcotics to police and judicial reform.
General JAMES JONES (Retired, USMC; Former NATO Commander): I worry about a loss of momentum. I worry about the fact that the safe havens for the insurgents are more numerous now than they were one or two or three years ago.
KELEMEN: Jones was an author of two reports out this week, one for the Atlantic Council and one for the bipartisan Afghanistan Study Group, which also included retired diplomat Thomas Pickering.
Mr. THOMAS PICKERING (Member, Afghanistan Study Group; Retired Diplomat): The U.S. and the international community have tried to win the struggle with, in our view, too few military, insufficient economic aid, and without a clear and consistent strategy. We now have to deal with the reconstituted Taliban and al-Qaida both in Afghanistan and Pakistan and a runaway opium economy and severe poverty faced by most Afghans.
KELEMEN: Both men lamented the fact that British politician Paddy Ashdown had to give up in the idea of being a U.N. envoy after Afghan President Hamid Karzai opposed him. They said the international community needs a strong person like Ashdown to help coordinate strategy.
As for U.S. strategy, Democrats and Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee said they didn't see one despite the attempts by Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher to explain how the U.S. is trying to help Afghanistan's government gain control of the country.
Mr. RICHARD BOUCHER (Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, United States Department of State): The overall strategy is to win on the battlefield and win a war, really, by providing governance at the local level, and that's being done more and more every day. I think there are places where you can see it definitely working.
KELEMEN: But Indiana Republican Richard Lugar says the sense he gets is that Afghanistan's government isn't functioning out in the provinces. Massachusetts Democrat John Kerry said Afghanistan is on the wrong trajectory in other areas as well, with more bombings blamed on the Taliban and a booming narcotics industry.
Boucher urged Senator Kerry to take a longer view.
Mr. BOUCHER: Any snapshot is going to show a terribly underdeveloped country with a weak government, a raging insurgency, and an enormous poppy crop. But you can take that picture most anytime.
Senator JOHN KERRY (Democrat, Massachusetts): No, it's bigger than it was when we started.
Mr. BOUCHER: I know that.
Sen. KERRY: And the conditions are worse than they were when we started, going the opposite direction.
Mr. BOUCHER: I don't think that's generally true.
Sen. KERRY: Excuse me?
Mr. BOUCHER: I don't think that's generally true.
KELEMEN: Senators on both sides of the aisle remain skeptical of the administration's optimistic spin, and they push for better police training and a more coherent strategy overall. The Afghanistan Study Group offered another bit of advice, saying the Bush administration needs to stop linking Afghanistan and Iraq, so that Congress can consider the budget separately and make sure Afghanistan is getting the resources and the attention it has been lacking.
Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
An investigation is underway in the Central Asian Republic of Kyrgyzstan. Authorities want to know why a train traveling to Iran was carrying radioactive cargo. It was not enough to make a weapon, but the Kyrgyz government says it still doesn't know how it happened.
From the capital, Bishkek, NPR's Ivan Watson reports.
(Soundbite of train passing)
IVAN WATSON: Every day, cargo trains roll out of Belovodskaya station. Many of these rusting locomotives are headed across the border to other Central Asian states, which were also once part of the Soviet Union.
Unidentified Man: (Speaking in foreign language).
WATSON: This station is where emergency workers gathered on December 31st to greet one train that was turned back after it set off radiation detectors in Uzbekistan while en route to Iran.
Specialists pinpointed one wagon, which was emitting radiation at levels 1,000 times higher than normal. Emergency workers say the source lay in a pile of dirt and garbage beneath 50 tons of scrap metal.
Captain Almanbek Adakeyev(ph) led a team of four who volunteered to clean up the radioactive muck by hand.
Captain ALMANBEK ADAKEYEV (Kyrgyzstan Resident): (Speaking in foreign language).
WATSON: To avoid contamination, we went in one a time for periods of less than a minute each, Adakeyev says, adding, it was not a pleasant operation.
Kyrgyz newspapers report this is the third time in three years authorities have intercepted trains leaving Kyrgyzstan with radioactive cargo. In this case, Kyrgyz officials say the substance consisted of several grams of caesium-137. They say it's still a mystery how and when it got onboard the train. Caesium-137 is often used in medical and industrial instruments.
Alexander Melikishvili of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies says in powder form, caesium-137 could also be used to make a dirty bomb.
Mr. ALEXANDER MELIKISHVILI (James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies): From the perspective of a terrorist, the ideal device would entail caesium-137 with some sort of conventional explosive.
WATSON: There was not enough caesium-137 aboard the train for a weapon, prompting some to conclude it accidentally got mixed in with the scrap metal. The Central Asian republics are littered with former Soviet nuclear test sites, uranium-processing plants, and radioactive waste dumps.
Roger Kangas of the National Defense University in Washington says cash-strapped governments like Kyrgyzstan's have a hard time securing this radioactive legacy of the Soviet Union.
Dr. ROGER KANGAS (Professor of Central Asian Studies, National Defense University): When you come up against porous borders, problems of corruption, the profitability of perhaps shipping some of this material out, you can see they're really up against a tall challenge here.
WATSON: Last spring, two former government officials stood trial in neighboring Tajikistan for allegedly trying to sell canisters of plutonium and caesium-137 on the black market. Watchdog organizations say nuclear smugglers are arrested in this region every year.
To combat the trade in radioactive goods, the U.S. and Russia have distributed radiation-detection equipment for use at Central Asian border checkpoints. But before it was stopped last month, Kyrgyzstan's radioactive cargo train apparently passed through at least two of these borders undetected.
Again, nuclear nonproliferation expert Alexander Melikishvili.
Mr. MELIKISHVILI: The radiation control at the borders is the line of defense that allows - in effect, if it's properly carried out, allows the - stops the illicit trafficking.
WATSON: Today, the Kyrgyz government announced it would request help from the International Atomic Energy Agency to install more radiation detectors on its borders.
Ivan Watson, NPR News, Bishkek.
NORRIS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
There were four candidates on stage at last night's Republican presidential debate, but it's looking more and more like a two-man contest between frontrunner John McCain and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee got a big bump in support following his surprise win in Iowa back in December. Still, his campaign is short on cash and he had trouble getting in a word in, edge-wise, last night. We caught up with Governor Huckabee earlier today by cell phone. He was on the road in San Francisco. And he says the focus on McCain and Romney isn't slowing him down one bit.
Mr. MIKE HUCKABEE (Former Arkansas Governor; Republican Presidential Candidate): It's only a two-person race if the national media tries to pick the president for the people. It's absurd to let this become a play-yard shouting match between John McCain and Mitt Romney. I have almost as many delegates as either one of them. This is a delegate race. It takes just under 1200 delegates to get the nomination. And nobody has more than 90. I think it's absurd for the media to say, oh, this is a two-man race. And frankly, I think it's the American people getting cheated if that's their spin on this.
And that's why last night, I tried to step in and say, and if you're looking for a true conservative in this race, he's down here in the end of the table. And you might throw him a few pitches, because I'm ready to get down.
NORRIS: But you are going up against some significant challenges. Romney has a deep war chest. It's much easier for him to mount a national campaign to pay for all the advertising that he's going to need. With each day…
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, you know, Michele, he can spend all the money in the world, he can't change the fact that he's got a very, very tough message to sell because he's had so many different products out of the same box. And, you know, he has had a lot of money and he's spent a lot of money. But for the amount of money that he's spent, he hasn't done that well. And if people look at the money that we've had and how well we've done with it, I think that's the story that really gives us some credibility to say we're in this thing for the long haul.
NORRIS: As you look towards February 5th, just a few days now, where do you expect you can actually win on Tuesday?
Mr. HUCKABEE: The key states for us are clearly the ones in the south and Midwest like Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia. All of these states are in play along with Montana, West Virginia and some others where we feel like we've got a real shot to win and pick up significant delegates. These are big states for us. We have a big day next Tuesday, and actually be in a lead position with delegate count.
NORRIS: You know, when — you did very well in Iowa and, in part, because you were all over the place. You blanketed the state like a strong winter snow. It's harder to do that when you're running in more than 20 states. How much money do you have in the bank and how are you able to actually pay for ads for all of those people who are just now tuning in this race?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Well, one of the things we've done is bought national ads on many of the major news networks. So we're actually running in the black. We've never gone into debt. People always want to makes this, how much money have you raised. But the question is, look what we've done with our limited resources. We've had a frugal operation in large part because we have an amazing number of volunteers that we couldn't have afforded. More than look at how much we've raised, look at how much Mitt Romney has spent. He's barely ahead of us in delegate count. I think that's an amazing story.
What does that say about his message and mine? He's having to do a heck of a lot more marketing to sell his product than we are.
NORRIS: It seems that you have, if I may say so, a certain amount of animus toward Mitt Romney.
Mr. HUCKABEE: It's not personal, but I find it very difficult. And I know John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and others have when we hear him speak with such boldness about him being a conservative. And we all know. We've seen the videos of him saying, look, I'm not part of that Reagan/Bush thing, when he was talking about how he was an independent voting for Paul Tsongas. We've all seen the video clips of him saying that he would do more for the gay and lesbian agenda than Ted Kennedy.
For him to come along now and to try to suddenly step in front of many of us who have been conservatives when he obviously was not one, it's just a little difficult to take. And when you add that to stories like, I'm a lifelong hunter, but he never had a hunting license. For many of us, we find it a little bit hard to believe that a person has just hit political puberty at age 60.
NORRIS: Do you feel any pressure at all to get out of the race, if I may ask that?
Mr. HUCKABEE: Not for me. I mean, I've spent my life always having people doubt that I could get somewhere and do something. And my whole life has been one of watching people who kind of looked down their collective noses and thought there's no way this boy is going to make it. And so whether it's my political life or all the way back to childhood, that's part of the deal. But I can tell you this, I'm not going to quit. Somebody's going to have to beat me to get me out of the game. And that's, you know, that's my nature. I'm just not one that walks off the field, because the only way you know you're going to lose is if you quit.
NORRIS: Governor Huckabee, thanks so much for talking to us.
Mr. HUCKABEE: Glad to do it.
NORRIS: That was Republican presidential candidate and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Commentator Ty Burr is the film critic at The Boston Globe. He says the presidential race is the best drama on TV.
Mr. TY BURR (Film critic, "The Boston Globe"): I love the writer's strike. It gets my family out of our TV rut. I know, the Golden Globes went dark. But it's the 21st century, and we can watch stars get drunk on YouTube anytime. And of course, there are still the reality show contests. My daughters love to watch "America's Top Model" and say rude things about Tyra Banks. But the TV program our whole family's really been getting into, the one with the craziest plot twist, the nuttiest characters, the biggest payoff, is the race for the presidency of the United States.
It's a little show I like to call "Primary Reality." And you don't need TiVo. It's on at all hours and on almost every channel. Everyone's watching, too. Ratings for the debates and coverage of the state primaries have been triple, even quadruple those at previous elections. And the cable channels are rushing to add more talking heads and play-by-play analysis. Well, sure they are. It's a wide-open race, and the direction of our country hangs in the balance. But "Primary Reality" is as ridiculously entertaining as a season of "Survivor: Washington, D.C."
On the left side of the island, we've got Queen Hillary and her consort, the man who used to be eldest, upstaged by Kid Obama, surfing in to the heartland on waves of hope. On the right side is a grizzled, but likeable veteran, call him Sergeant Rock McCain, in a tussle with preacher Huckabee and a smooth-talking suit named Mitt. What happens when the two teams get winnowed down and come together for the final contest? Even my kids are hooked. During the last debates, they subjected the candidate's body language to the same comedic scrutiny they give in "Gossip Girl" episode.
The supporting players and the castoffs look even further back to the Hollywood studio stock companies of the 1940s. Rudy Giuliani, he's a Elisha Cook Jr. - the tightly-wound tough who goes kabloey in the final reel. Ron Paul? Dennis Kucinich? Mike Gravel? They're all those colorful characters filling the edges of classic screwball comedies. Maybe this sounds like heresy, until you realize how many people are hanging onto each new episode. The TV executives call them viewers, but let's call them voters. They're addicted. Involved. Engaged.
Of course, the news media ran the footage of Hillary Clinton getting (unintelligible) into the ground, because they understand it as a narrative turning point, the twist that goes in the clip reel, the commercial, the blog and the history books. The funny part is that the race for the American presidency has always been a reality contest - the only one that matters. This year, the election has become not just the sole entertainment in town, but the best. Why root for somebody that has become top chef, "American Idol" or "America's Next Top Model" when you can pick the leader of the free world without even calling a 900 number.
NORRIS: Ty Burr is the film critic at "The Boston Globe" and the author of the Best Old Movies for Families: A Guide to Watching Together."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The bipartisan economic stimulus plan has run into a partisan wall in the Senate. Democratic leaders say they'll force votes next week on a number of amendments - they deal with food stamps and unemployment benefits and whether to extend a tax rebate program to low income seniors.
NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR: If House leaders and the President seriously believed their $146 billion stimulus package was going to sail through the Senate, today they received a splash of cold reality. Democratic Senate leaders unveiled plans to have as many as five votes on the package next week in an effort to make it more to their liking. Senate majority leader Harry Reid said one of the votes will be on a bundle of proposals.
Senator HARRY REID (Democrat, Nevada; Senate Majority Leader): It will be things that we really believe in. There will be unemployment compensation. There will be food stamps. There will be LIHEAP. There will be weatherization. There will be money for counseling, for foreclosure problems we have.
NAYLOR: LIHEAP is the program that helps low-income people pay their heating bills. If the Democrats' bundle fails, leaders will force a separate vote on the LIHEAP proposal. They also want to expand the tax rebates in the House bill to include disabled veterans and low-income seniors who live on Social Security. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus.
Senator MAX BAUCUS (Democrat, Montana; Senate Finance Committee Chairman): These 20 million seniors will be left out of the House-passed tax rebate, why? Just because they don't have at least $3,000 in earned income, as in wages, or enough tax for income to meet the tests set up by the House bill.
NAYLOR: Giving rebates to those seniors is at the center of the stimulus bill that the Finance Committee approved yesterday. The committee package will also come up for a vote next week. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell denounced the measure as being weighed down with giveaways.
Senator MITCH MCCONNELL (Republican, Kentucky; Senate Minority Leader): As soon as the bill hit the Senate, it started to look a lot like Christmas over here. Chairman Baucus added 10 new provisions before the bill was even considered in committee. Three more amendments were added in the committee. You could almost hear Bing Crosby's voice coming out of the finance committee. And so, the stimulus train is slowing, grinding to a halt here in the U.S. Senate.
NAYLOR: The finance committee bill would give rebate checks of $500 to individuals, twice that to couples. It would extend those rebates, not only to low-income seniors, but to everyone earning up to $150,000, double the income cap in the House bill. Its cost has put it $161 billion, some $15 billion more than the House-passed plan. The Bush administration is worried that the Senate, by insisting on its own measure rather than simply adopting the House bill, is delaying the stimulus package and its effect on the economy. But Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York said that wasn't the case.
Senator CHARLES SCHUMER (Democrat, New York): We are right on track to do that. And we are not delaying or slowing down this package. Congress is working, the Senate is working, the Finance Committee is working with great speed. We will have a package on the president's desk.
NAYLOR: Democratic leaders hope pressure from outside groups, such as AARP, will force moderate Republicans to back the extension of rebates to seniors. But in the end, the Senate may wind up approving the House bill without changing it. Republicans are likely to insist that any amendment win 60 votes to be adopted. So Democrats will need not only some GOP defections, but support from all of their own senators, including those out on the campaign trail. Brian Naylor, NPR News, the Capitol.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Michelle Norris.
It could become the biggest medical facility in the Middle East. Construction is underway on the first phase of the International Medical Center in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. It focuses on issues critical to health care in the region. In the coming years, it will include a nursing school and a medical college.
NPR's Peter Kenyon paid a visit.
PETER KENYON: The first impression one gets of the International Medical Center is the cool, spacious reception area. There is no crush of patients and family members trying to figure out where to go, just the high-ceilinged, marble-covered room with huge windows looking out onto a leafy garden. Behind the garden is a mosque.
Marketing director Abdul Shaban(ph) says this is part of the founders' approach to healing. And while it may seem extravagant and cost-inefficient, he says the center is seeing positive results.
Mr. ABDUL SHABAN (Marketing Director, Jeddah's International Medical Center): And, you know, I was talking to the Dr. Fariq(ph) yesterday telling him that every square meter counts in a hospital because this is a profit-making private hospital. So basically, investing in a garden would not seem to be the best logical thing, but yes, it really promotes healing. It really decreases the time that a person will stay in a hospital. So the average stay in the hospital is less in this hospital than other benchmarks in the region.
KENYON: The center was founded as a partnership with the Cleveland Clinic, ranked by U.S. News and World Report as one of America's best hospitals. A distinctive feature of the center here in Jeddah is its willingness to combine traditional medicine with alternative treatments, such as reflexology. Every new hire is introduced to the center's philosophy of healing mind, body and soul. Traditional medicine is hardly shortchanged here, however. The center incorporates cutting-edge medical technology with some innovative design features. Sheban points out one small example in the intensive care unit where each nursing station has a window into two rooms.
Mr. SHEBAN: Now here, as you see, in the ICU, it's - the biggest in the Middle East. And as you know, there is a - I think, it's a worldwide crisis in terms of nursing. And what we have here is a very beautiful system that one nurse can watch over two patients in the same time without diverting the attention on one patient more than the other.
KENYON: No expense seems to have been spared at the International Medical Center, which Sheban hopes will lead Saudis to look here for first-class health care instead of traveling abroad. But the optimist also raises the obvious question, will only wealthy Saudis and foreigners be able to afford to come here?
Former journalist Khaled al-Batarfi(ph), now with the center's public relations department, says the founders established a multimillion-dollar fund to subsidize health care for the poor.
Mr. KHALED al-BATARFI (Public Relations Officer, IMC; Former Journalist): Another part of our mission here is to help the needy. And that's why the partners of this organization put fund. If somebody unable to pay part of his bill, we'll cover that for him. If he couldn't pay anything, we'll still heal them.
KENYON: On the other hand, this is not an altruistic enterprise. One of the six centers of excellence at the International Medical Center is the highly lucrative field of cosmetic surgery. A more important area of focus, however, may be diabetes, which Abdul Sheban says is plaguing the kingdom.
Mr. SHEBAN: Because, as you know, the prevalence of diabetes in Saudi Arabia is the highest in the world. One of every four people over 25 years old is either pre-diabetic or diabetic. So that's a very high ratio. So diabetes is one of the centers of excellence that we have.
KENYON: In the coming years, plans call for a nursing school, medical college and an 85-storey hotel, and perhaps additional medical centers in Riyadh and Dubai.
Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Jeddah.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Doctors at a Canadian hospital have discovered something new about the human brain. They were trying to treat an obese man with the procedure using electrodes called deep brain stimulation, when something remarkable happened. Professor Andres Lozano was one of the doctors involved.
Dr. ANDRES LOZANO (Neurosurgery, Toronto Western Research Institute): As we were introducing the electrodes in the hypothalamus and as we first started to run some currents through the electrode, he was able to recall an event that had occurred 30 years earlier. And so we new immediately that this was something quite extraordinary.
NORRIS: What exactly do you mean by that? Was it a very vivid memory?
Dr. LOZANO: Well, it was as if we had unlocked a memory of an event that had occurred three decades earlier. He reported that he had a sensation of deja vu, a sensation where he was in a park with his friends. He recognized his girlfriend at that epoch. He saw their clothes. He could see the colors. He could hear certain words that they were saying. He could tell it was a sunny day, and so on. And remarkably, as we increase the current, the richness of the experience increased, it became more vivid.
NORRIS: So you did this a second time?
Dr. LOZANO: Well, we stopped stimulating. We moved along. We went back to the same place. And again, as soon as we turned it on at a certain intensity heat, we provoked exactly the same scene, the same memory. We stimulated in several places, and we found that if there was a memory provoked, it was always the same event, the same scene in the hypothalamus.
NORRIS: How important was that scene to that fellow's life? What was so significant about that memory?
Dr. LOZANO: It wasn't particularly a significant memory. He had no control or he could not, you know, change the channels and change to another scene or another event in his life. It was locked.
NORRIS: That ability to unlock that memory using electrical stimulation, what does this tell you about how our brains work?
Dr. LOZANO: Well, it tells us that, you know, we know very little about the circuitry of memory in humans, and it tells us that these circuits can be accessed. We feel like we're driving the activity or turning up the volume quite high with the current, and this is indeed producing a spontaneous recollection of a past event.
NORRIS: What kind of benefit might that provide to patients who have memory disorders?
Dr. LOZANO: Well, we feel that if we can safely reach these circuits in the brain that regulate memory, and as we've shown in this particular one case, that one can drive the activity of these circuits and we may also be able to access these circuits and increase their activity in patients with memory disorders. What we don't know is whether we'll be able to take someone with disease circuits in the brain, as in Alzheimer's disease, and enhance memory under those circumstances, and that's why we're doing a study.
NORRIS: A technical question. You're talking about electrodes that are implanted in the brain even while the patient is awake. How were you able to do that?
Dr. LOZANO: The patients are operated under local anesthesia. And this procedure that we're doing is exactly the same one that we do for Parkinson's disease. And I should let you know that approximately 40,000 humans with Parkinson's disease already have these electrodes in place.
NORRIS: Boy, this sounds like a remarkable moment of accidental discovery for you when you realize what you had done, you could actually control the vividness of that memory. What was that like for you?
Dr. LOZANO: Well, it, it was a eureka moment for us. We knew it was something extraordinary, something totally unanticipated. My personal philosophy in science is that the best discoveries are always serendipitous. And I think this is an example where we were looking for something and didn't find it, but instead, we found something that was interesting, and we pursued it. And we hope that it may lead to a better understanding of how memory works in the brain and how one day we may use this knowledge to improve memory function.
NORRIS: Congratulations to you. Dr. Lozano, thank you very much.
Dr. LOZANO: You're very welcome.
NORRIS: That's Professor Andres Lozano at the Toronto Western Research Institute.