GUY RAZ, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Guy Raz. About one child in every 150 is diagnosed with autism. Eleven-year-old Andrew Skillings is one of those children. He has Asperger's syndrome, a mild form of autism. For Andrew's older sister Marissa, her brother's diagnosis has affected every aspect of her own life. That's what independent producer Erin Davis discovered when she asked Marissa to tell her story.
Ms. MARISSA SKILLINGS: I remember when he was born. I was four and a half. I was waiting in the waiting room, and I was sitting on my aunt's lap. And my dad came down and said it was a boy. And I was so excited because I did not want another girl. I wanted a boy. And then about two weeks later, we had to share a room even when he was that little, and I decided that he needed to go back where he came from because as a baby he never, ever stopped screaming. I didn't understand why he was screaming. And then when we found out that he had a mental disability, I didn't understand.
(Soundbite of music)
Ms. SKILLINGS: My name is Marissa Skillings. I am 15 years old. My brother's name is Andrew. He's 11 and he has autism. I don't hate my brother. I'd kill for him. But I could kill him, too.
Mr. ANDREW SKILLINGS: Here is an alarm clock that if you push it, it tells you the time.
(Soundbite of alarm clock)
Automated Voice: 6:07.
Ms. SKILLINGS: He talks nonstop.
Mr. SKILLINGS: This clock, my mother gave this to me as a present. It's a piggy bank... This thing right here measures the...
Ms. SKILLINGS: Talking and talking and talking.
Mr. SKILLINGS: (Unintelligible)
Ms. SKILLINGS: He'll tell anybody information about any animal, whether they want to hear it or not.
Mr. SKILLINGS: She had a snake that was - if it like laid down on the floor and stretched...
Ms. SKILLINGS: People can tell Andrew has a disability because of his hand gestures and the way he moves when he gets nervous. He moves his hands back and forth, and he'll walk with his arms down by his sides just shaking his hands.
Mr. SKILLINGS: Speaking of Sweetie(ph), here's what happened.
Ms. SKILLINGS: He likes to crack his knuckles when he's nervous. And he'll keep doing the movement of cracking his knuckles even if they don't crack.
Remember to take care of your game.
Mr. SKILLINGS: I take care of it.
Ms. SKILLINGS: You do not.
Mr. SKILLINGS: Chicken legs.
Ms. SKILLINGS: Andrew.
Mr. SKILLINGS: What? Chicken tastes good. Look.
Ms. SKILLINGS: Oh yeah. I've beat the crap out of my brother a few times.
Mr. SKILLINGS: Oh, you forget 24/7.
Ms. SKILLINGS: No, I don't. I take care of my own turmoil too.
Mr. SKILLINGS: You are impossible to...
Ms. SKILLINGS: He freaks out. He, like, if I won't get out of the bathroom, and I tell him to shut up, he'll grab a kitchen knife and come over to the door and open the door and chase me around the house with the knife. And I know he'd never touch me with it. But, you know, when he's running with a knife pointed towards me, and I'm running, if he tripped then, something bad could happen. So I have a curfew, and I basically stay out till then...
Mr. SKILLINGS: She's always with her friends. I don't even - she acts like she doesn't live here anymore.
Ms. SKILLINGS: I come home and deal with it when I have to. And when I don't have to deal with it, I make sure I don't.
(Soundbite of glasses clinking)
Unidentified Waitress: Anything else I can bring to you, ladies?
Ms. SKILLINGS: No, that's it.
Unidentified Waitress: Enjoy.
Ms. SKILLINGS: Thank you.
CHANELLE(ph): Thank you.
Unidentified Waitress: You're welcome.
Ms. SKILLINGS: Well, it is...
CHANELLE: 4:35.
Ms. SKILLINGS: 4:35...
(Laughing) And I'm with Chanelle. We're eating at Applebys(ph). And then me and Chanelle are probably going toward Mayfield. It's a park where we watch really hot guys play basketball. And Cam Newman(ph), he's a babe. And he's really tanned. And I really hope he doesn't hear this, or his girlfriend. OK, anyway...
CHANELLE: OK...
Ms. SKILLINGS: I started staying away from home around five or six. I'd stay outside or go to friends' houses as long as I could until my mom called me home. I can sit down and talk with my parents. But a lot of times, it's like Andrew's always trying to explain something about a cheetah or a jaguar or something in the jungle that has no importance to anybody's life. But he just loves to share that information, yackity yack.
And if I interrupt him, he gets mad, and it turns into a tantrum, and my mom tells me to wait. And then it's just like - I don't even want to talk to you guys anymore. I think they understand that I don't have them enough, but there's nothing they can do. And they know that I know there's nothing they can do. If I stay away from it for a long time, like going out with friends and avoiding to be home till curfew, then I'll have more of a tolerance for it for the rest of the night.
Mr. SKILLINGS: Marissa, she has the guts, and I don't. It's like all of a sudden, we just had this transfer. All of my guts went into her.
Ms. SKILLINGS: When you're at the age of 11, you're going to have kids, and they're going to tease you and say mean things. It's just a stage you go through in school.
Mr. SKILLINGS: I do not stand up for myself. She stands up for me.
Ms. SKILLINGS: Socially he needs help, so I have to protect him and be there for him more than a normal big sister would. The neighborhood we lived in...
Mr. SKILLINGS: Like, back in our old house...
Ms. SKILLINGS: This kid kept picking on him every day and beat him up.
Mr. SKILLINGS: A kid was throwing rocks at me. And I picked a piece of cardboard up to shield myself, and one went over and hit me in the head. I ran in the - to the house crying, get my sister, had her PJs on...
Ms. SKILLINGS: And I just said, who? And he said his name. And then I went and found him. I came outside and I saw him running up the street, so I chased him. And then I cornered him into a fence and I slapped him. He was scared. He was like in tears. My face I'm sure was beet-red, and I was like gritting my teeth. I'm like, just touch him again, and I'll punch you right in your mouth.
Mr. SKILLINGS: Well, I'm just glad to have somebody like that, even though she can clobber me if she wants to.
Ms. SKILLINGS: Yeah, I was really mad because nobody can beat up my brother except me. When we got back from Applebys, we came upstairs. And Chanelle and I walked down to the trampoline.
Want to get on Andrew?
Mr. SKILLINGS: If you won't throw me on it now.
Ms. SKILLINGS: No, no, honey. I wasn't just picking on you...
Sometimes if I get really frustrated, I just wish I could change everything - sell him to the zoo and buy new parents.
Mr. SKILLINGS: (Unintelligible)
Ms. SKILLINGS: But then the times when I'm actually appreciating things and I'm not in the moment when I'm steaming mad, I really do appreciate what I have.
He's laughing and he's trying to hold it in.
I don't think I'd change anything, because this is what I'm used to, and this is my life. And Andrew wouldn't be like the Andrew I know and love if he was different because autism is his whole personality.
Mr. SKILLINGS: I like Marissa. She's hot, and she's the best sister ever. You're the best sister ever and I love you, and I hope nothing happens to you, and I'd give my life for you.
Ms. SKILLINGS: No, you wouldn't.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SKILLINGS: I would, now don't kill me.
Ms. SKILLINGS: Yes.
Mr. SKILLINGS: No.
(Soundbite of music)
RAZ: Our story was produced by Erin Davis at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies. You can see photographs of Marissa and Andrew Skillings at npr.org.
GUY RAZ, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Guy Raz. For nearly 20 years, Blue Man Group has been drawing crowds to its quirky performances. The show features three guys with blue heads who play weird instruments and do crazy things most of us simply can't do. At this point, the group is no longer just three blue and mute men; Blue Man Group is a multimillion dollar international operation. And now, the original founders of Blue Man Group have started a preschool in New York's East Village. It's called - what else? - Blue School. NPR's Margot Adler reports.
(Soundbite of music)
MARGOT ADLER: If you think about Blue Man Group, those three mute guys with the blue heads, wild light displays, and instruments made out of PVC tubes, the Blue School seems normal in comparison.
(Soundbite of people talking through tubes)
Ms. APRIL GRASTI (Teacher, Blue School): Hey, Kai(ph).
KAI (Student, Blue School): Hey, what?
ADLER: Although there are talking tubes that go across the ceiling from one part of the building to another, teacher April Grasti(ph) is speaking with Kai, a four year old, although they are about 75 yards apart.
KAI: I could hear you, though.
Ms. GASTI: What do you see down there?
KAI: I see only tubes. That's it.
ADLER: But most of what you see here is what you'd see at many good preschools - stories being read aloud, music, building with blocks.
Unidentified Student #1: We are making the triangle building.
Unidentified Student #2: Uh oh...
ADLER: And creative art projects. Art specialist Pam Cher(ph) sits with a handful of four year olds.
Ms. PAM CHER (Art Specialist, Blue School): Everybody take a vote. Do you want to do it based on the story of Leonardo(ph), the terrible monster, or do you guys want to make up your own story?
Unidentified Student #3: I want to make up my own story.
Unidentified Student #4: I want to make up my own story.
Ms. CHER: OK.
ADLER: But every once in awhile, there is something a little different. I missed by seconds a girl being taken to the bathroom to bathe because she immersed herself in mounds of shaving cream. Kindergarten Teacher Nancy Simko is cleaning up. She says the class was talking about things that were snow-like.
Ms. NANCY SIMKO (Kindergarten Teacher, Blue School): It was a material that they were exploring, and they ended up exploring it very deeply from head to toe (laughing). Every parent that came in said, my kid could never do that at home, could never have the opportunity to do that at home.
ADLER: To get all covered with shaving cream?
Ms. SIMKO: You know what? It is a little messy; it is a little out of control. But now it is done, now we clean it up.
ADLER: Then there is the Wonder Room. It's padded all over so you can jump around. But if you pull the pads up, there is an interactive light floor with high-tech games. Right now, a group of children have finished building a house.
(Soundbite of students in the Wonder Room)
Unidentified Woman: It's a giant house in there now.
Unidentified Student #5: It's morning time.
Unidentified Student #6: Morning time.
(Soundbite of children screaming)
ADLER: They also use black lights during something they call glow time, when they create a more serene atmosphere. Blue Man Group co-founder Chris Wink says they were trying to create a space...
Mr. CHRIS WINK (Co-founder, Blue Man Group): That can move from almost serene, meditative, and simple; to complex, high-tech, and kind of fast moving.
ADLER: When you talk to the founders, the reason they started the school is clearly very personal. Matt Goldman says he went to fancy schools, a fancy college, graduate school...
Mr. MATT GOLDMAN (Co-founder, Blue Man Group): It wasn't until my last year in graduate school that I started having the excitement and the vigor and the passion for my education.
Mr. PHIL STANTON (Co-founder, Blue Man Group): I think you have to start with our own experience in education, our own feeling like something was missing for us.
ADLER: Blue Man Group co-founder, Phil Stanton.
Mr. STANTON: Then when you add to that that we are parents now. It's like you want to make it right to them, and that ups the ante quite a bit.
ADLER: Stanton says he jokes with people that there were a set of ingredients that they had when they began to perform and create the character of the blue man. They say they could have just as easily squeezed out a school. He says they came together to celebrate curiosity and creativity, a way of putting art and comedy and music and science and technology all together. And even the character of the blue man, he says, is a kind of divergent thinker.
Mr. STANTON: The character's really like an adult child in his innocence. He looks at objects that are common to us and uses them in a different way, but a very creative way.
ADLER: Ian Kerner is a therapist and author. He happened into the play group the founders began for their kids, before there ever was a school and loved the spontaneity and energy. At the time, his son Owen was in a very well-respected private nursery school that was, he said...
Mr. IAN KERNER (Therapist; Author): Tried and true, and I think what's great about the Blue School is it's true and new. They are going for something that's very educational, but it's very new, and that newness attracts me, it attracts my wife, and it attracts our family.
ADLER: It seems to be a mix of child-centered hands-on activities with trying to pull in some high-tech notions. Chris Wink puts it this way.
Mr. WINK: Education's become - it's just replicating itself and based on really old models. Our culture is changing so fast and there's so many incredible ideas out there. What if we cut(ph) into the game and kind of cracked it open a little bit?
ADLER: So, they've brought in educational reformers from Britain; they're incorporating the Italian Reggio Emilia approach which emphasizes exploration and revisiting ideas in many media. They've had more than 200 applicants for 30 places this year, and they're hoping to eventually go up to fifth grade. But this is a New York City private school with private school tuition. Goldman says they took the price of all the private, independent schools in the city, found the mean, took about $10 off, and that was the tuition - hold your hats - $27,000 a year for kindergarten. Elite schools in Manhattan like Trinity and Horace Mann charge as much as $32,000 a year. Goldman says when it comes to kids, you can always spend more.
Mr. GOLDMAN: When we first started looking at all what's out there, and we said $32,000 for kindergarten, are they crazy?
ADLER: Now they say things are more expensive than they thought, but they also say this is an experiment. Again, Chris Wink.
Mr. WINK: You know, the experiment will only be successful if what we do reaches out to, you know, inner city schools or other places that don't necessarily have the facilities that we have here. There's more to it than the gadgets. How do you get kids to be participants in the learning process in a way that turns them on? But then how do you have the teachers than, of course, add the stuff that kids aren't - isn't going to occur to kids.
ADLER: Of course, these are questions that school reformers have been arguing for more than a century. There is clearly a new mix here - a lot of high-tech, a lot of talk about getting kids to think about things in multiple ways, important in a more complex and fast-paced society.
But is this really new? Is it more than very good, well-endowed, progressive preschool? Founder Matt Goldman says they're very much still in process. But he believes that something going on here is very right, and his best proof of that is what takes place at his home every Saturday morning when his kid says, let's go to Blue School. When he says no, he has a very disappointed four-year-old. Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.
GUY RAZ, host.
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Guy Raz. As we begin the New Year, we're looking back at some of the developments of last year in music. It wasn't a great year for CD sales, and several small symphony orchestras had to close down. But there was growth in one corner of the musical universe, American Indian musicians who are embracing classical music. They're drawing as much from the music of Claude Debussy as from traditional American Indian harvest songs. And as NPR's Felix Contreras reports, the music and the musicians are getting noticed.
FELIX CONTRERAS: Composer Timothy Archambault used to play his traditional American wood flute in private, strictly as a way to stay connected with his Kichesipirini Algonquin ancestors.
(Soundbite of wood flute)
CONTRERAS: Then three years ago, he was invited to perform at the first "Classical Native" series sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of the American Indian. There he met other native composers who wanted to write music for his flute, like George Quincy, who wrote "Choctaw Diaries" and performed it with Archambault this year.
(Soundbite of music)
CONTRERAS: Timothy Archambault says he's been intrigued by what he's heard from other American Indian composers at the Smithsonian gatherings.
(Soundbite of applause)
Mr. TIMOTHY ARCHAMBAULT (Composer; Flautist): The compositions are intellectually stimulating. They're not dismal, kind of one-dimensional works. They have studied the Western tradition, and they've studied their own American Indian traditions, which are dying out. You hear them merging with Western tonality and harmony, and that is intriguing, and that is something that's totally new.
CONTRERAS: And that's how it was for Chickasaw composer Jerod Tate until his mother, a professor of dance and professional choreographer, asked him to write music for a ballet she created. He'd been studying European classical piano and composition.
Mr. JEROD TATE (Composer): I didn't mix my identity of being a very classically trained musician with being an American Indian. I never saw that there was even a possible relationship with those two until I started composing. And that's when those two came together in a way that really made me feel just wonderful.
CONTRERAS: Since 1992, Tate has been exploring his culture through classical music, and his work has been performed by orchestras in Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, New Mexico, and San Francisco.
(Soundbite of music)
CONTRERAS: Tate compares his work to that of contemporary Indian painters who abstract cultural icons, like feathers and horses. He recasts American Indian musical icons such as flutes and drums. Like many classically trained American Indians, Tate's gone back to explore his culture. And he says the combination of the two musical worlds has an unexpected benefit for tradition.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. TATE: Not only are American Indians accessing contemporary expressions like this, but they're also going back and learning their traditions very, very well, you know, along with singing and dancing and language. So they're actually both kind of moving parallel with each other.
CONTRERAS: Mixing European classical with indigenous and folk music is not new. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European composers such as Antonin Dvorak and Bela Bartok drew from European folk music. In 1935, Mexican composer Carlos Chavez wrote "Sinfonia India," drawing on his country's indigenous music. In the U.S., white classical composer Theodore Baker was one of the first to seriously study American Indian music in the late 1800s. But it would take another half century before American Indians began to embrace classical music to express their cultural identity.
(Soundbite of music)
CONTRERAS: In the 1950s, composer Louis Ballard was inspired by Bartok to write chamber, orchestral, and choral music as well as ballets that incorporated Ballard's Quapaw and Cherokee background.
(Soundbite of music)
CONTRERAS: Ballard's work gained acclaim, and he continued to compose until his death two years ago. But much of the work of others experimenting with the two styles remained below the radar until 1994 when the first convention of American Indian composers was held in Boulder, Colorado. Since then, composers have received commissions, the American Composers Forum has started a First Nations Initiative, and some tribes have even funded education programs for young composers.
(Soundbite of music)
CONTRERAS: And the music is getting noticed both on and off the reservation by Indians who prefer country, hip-hop, or heavy metal.
Ms. DAWN AVERY (Cellist; Composer): I'm really surprised by how much people have liked it.
CONTRERAS: Mohawk cellist and composer Dawn Avery has studied with John Cage and played classical pop music and jazz.
Ms. AVERY: One of the reasons is because there's a great appreciation for the sounds of the instruments, but also to hear our traditional music being represented in this way, I think people understand that there's an importance to that.
CONTRERAS: For Avery, it was the work of American Indian musical elder Louis Ballard, as well as a rediscovery of her heritage, that inspired her to compose with Indian themes.
(Soundbite of music)
CONTRERAS: But as she's become more intimate with her culture, she's also felt what she called an emotional tug-of-war by honoring her ancestors through a culture largely responsible for their subjugation.
Ms. AVERY: It is tricky because I wonder if I'll be able to always play cello. The more I get back to my roots, I don't know if it's going to feel OK, honestly. I don't know. I've gotten farther away from the typically classical music. As much as it's beautiful music, it doesn't move me the same way. It's a little bittersweet, you know. It's also very exciting, though, because I have all these other sounds in my head now that just vibrate with me better.
(Soundbite of cello music)
CONTRERAS: Back at the Smithsonian Museum of American Indian concert hall, Mescalero Apache composer Steven Alvarez hopes the classical native movement will offer American Indians a new musical voice in much the same way that reggae and hip-hop have for their cultures.
Mr. STEVEN ALVAREZ (Composer): I would really like to see Native America find that fusion that's going to create its own genre. I'm hoping, I'm hoping, maybe before I die, you know.
CONTRERAS: Steven Alvarez and many American Indian composers say the new music they're creating offers a tool to dispel more than 200 years of stereotypes. Felix Contreras, NPR News.
RAZ: And you can hear more of that new music at npr.org.
GUY RAZ, host:
From NPR News, this is All things Considered. I'm Guy Raz filling in today for Robert, Michele, and Melissa. In Gaza, Palestinian doctors say the death toll has topped 400. Israeli fighter jets continued bombing for the sixth day in a row. Today, one airstrike killed a Hamas leader, Nizar Rayan. He is the most senior member to die since the Israeli offensive began last Saturday. Meantime, rocket fire continued to rain down on towns in southern Israel. A senior Israeli Cabinet minister warned that the conflict is far from over. NPR's Eric Westervelt sent this report from southern Israel.
ERIC WESTERVELT: Not long after word of the death of Nizar Rayan, warning sirens sounded throughout Israeli communities within rocket range of Gaza. More barrages were on the way. Here in Ashkelon, people abandoned their cars in the street and fled for cover.
(Soundbite of sirens)
WESTERVELT: Rockets also again struck Ashdod and Beersheba, both cities located some 25 miles from Gaza. No one was seriously wounded in the latest rocket attacks. Inside Gaza, the fire from the air proved far more deadly. Today, at least 17 Palestinians were killed, according to a senior medical official in Gaza, and 92 wounded. Nizar Rayan was an important figure in Hamas' political and military wings. A professor of Islamic law and an imam, or Islamic preacher, Rayan openly advocated renewing suicide bomb attacks against Israel. He was in his house in north Gaza's Jabalia refugee camp when the bombs struck.
The Israeli military said in a statement the house was used as a weapon storage site and Hamas communication center. In addition to Rayan, the airstrike killed at least 11 others including several of his children and two of his four wives. The airstrike also wounded civilians in the densely packed neighborhood. Rami Abu Safeya lives in the Jabalia refugee camp near Rayan's house. We reached him by phone.
Mr. RAMI ABU SAFEYA: (Through Translator) We laid down on the floor. Glass and windows broke all around us. The explosions continued, and then 10 people in my house ran away. Many people in my neighborhood were injured.
WESTERVELT: Back in Ashkelon today, Israel's deputy prime minister, Haim Ramon, said the operation against Hamas was far from over.
Mr. HAIM RAMON (Deputy Prime Minister, Israel): This is not going to be an easy one. Therefore, we have to be very patient - very patient and very determined. And it will take time.
WESTERVELT: Israeli leaders have said from day one that the goal of the punishing air and naval bombardments is to create a new security reality in the south and end Hamas rocket fire - not to overthrow the Islamist group or re-occupy Gaza. But today Minister Ramon argued that regime change in Gaza should be the wider goal of the operation. Ramon said ideally the moderate Palestinian authority leadership led by Mahmoud Abbas - which now controls only the West Bank - should be returned to power in Gaza.
Mr. RAMON: Even to create a Palestinian state is impossible because the Hamas is dominating Gaza. It's impossible. And if the Hamas will continue to dominate Gaza, it will impossible to continue the Annapolis process. Any peace process will be almost impossible to reach. And that's what exactly the Hamas wants.
WESTERVELT: But hardly anyone believes Israel can realistically uproot Hamas' deep support among Gaza's 1.5 million residents and impose a new more moderate Palestinian leadership in the territory. Indeed, a senior Israeli official said later that Deputy Prime Minister Ramon was expressing his personal opinion and not government policy. The official said, quote, "Regime change is not the operation's goal. We have no illusions about that. The goal is to bring about a new quiet in the south," end quote. That stated goal could give Hamas leverage in any cease-fire talks.
Hamas leaders have said they want an end to Israel's stifling economic blockade of Gaza in exchange for a new, informal truce. The conflicting visions among Israeli leaders of what Gaza might look like when the shooting stops is reminiscent of the 2006 Lebanon war. Then Israeli officials seemed frequently at odds over the goals and day-after scenarios of a conflict many Israelis say marked a profound failure of leadership. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Ashkelon.
GUY RAZ, host.
We'll hear now about life in Ashkelon. And in a moment, we'll hear from a Palestinian in Gaza City. But first we turn to Sigal Ariely. She's an Israeli who lives in the city of Ashkelon. Ms. Ariely, thanks for joining us.
Ms. SIGAL ARIELY: You're welcome.
RAZ: Where are you at the moment?
Ms. ARIELY: At the moment I am in my house in Ashkelon.
RAZ: And what do the streets of Ashkelon look like right now?
Ms. ARIELY: Pretty much empty and deserted. A lot of people are in their houses. Some families took the mothers and the children and went to spend some time in - with families out of Ashkelon. It's Thursday. And Fridays and Saturdays, nobody works, so a lot of people took advantage of that and are taking the weekend out of Ashkelon.
RAZ: What do you do when you hear the sirens going off?
Ms. ARIELY: I think people kind of got used to the sound of the siren. We know what to do. Where I work, we don't have a shelter area, so we just run to the stairway, and everybody's crowded there waiting for the siren to be over.
RAZ: And have you heard any sirens today?
Ms. ARIELY: We had seven times, seven sirens. And after each siren, you hear the boom of a Qassam or a Grad falling. And you just try to see if it's near you or far from you.
RAZ: The missile that killed a civilian in your city, in Ashkelon, earlier this week, it struck right next to the building where you work. Is that right?
Ms. ARIELY: God, that was the worst - I think that was the worst experience I had since everything started. It was a hundred meters away from our building. We heard the siren. We ran to where we always ran. And we waited to hear the boom. Only this time it sounded like it was on our heads. And then we ran upstairs back to - there is a big porch where you can see the city. Then we saw the smoke coming from the next building. And it was horrible. It was really - that was the place where one person got killed and a few people were injured. It was just so close to us and so loud. It was very scary.
RAZ: Now, of course, you have the option to leave Ashkelon.
Ms. ARIELY: Yes.
RAZ: To temporarily move to another part of the country. Why don't you just get out of town for a few days or weeks until the fighting calms down?
Ms. ARIELY: I think that if you don't have to be here, it's OK for you to go. I feel that I belong here. I need to update my colleagues and my friends all over the world, just tell them exactly what's happening on real time.
RAZ: Sigal, considering what you've experienced over the past week, have you thought about Israel's attack on Gaza and whether it's changed your mind on whether that's a good thing or a bad thing?
Ms. ARIELY: Well, living in Ashkelon you realize that this has to happen to put an end to all the violence and all the attacks we're getting from the Hamas every other day. And this is, I believe, now the only way to do it because there's nobody to talk to. Unless we put an end to the fact that they have all these weapons, we'll never have a normal life in Ashkelon. We're too close to them, and we need to live normal life like any other citizens all over the world.
RAZ: But haven't the attacks carried out by Israel increased the number of rockets that are coming into Israel from Gaza now?
Ms. ARIELY: Of course, we knew that it was going to happen that if we attack Hamas, the reaction will be what it is now. And after we suffer for a while, we'll go back to peace and have a normal life.
RAZ: And ultimately you think that that will work?
Ms. ARIELY: Yes, I have to believe in that.
RAZ: Yeah. Sigal Ariely joined us on the phone from her home in Ashkelon, Israel. Sigal, thanks very much.
Ms. ARIELY: You're welcome.
GUY RAZ, host:
Now to Gaza City which has been under a sustained Israeli attack for six days now. Eyad Sarajj is a Palestinian psychiatrist and human rights activist in Gaza, and he joins us on the line. Dr. Sarajj, welcome to the program.
Dr. EYAD SARAJJ (Palestinian Psychiatrist and Human Rights Activist): Thank you.
RAZ: Where are you at the moment?
Dr. SARAJJ: I am in my house in Gaza City.
RAZ: Can you describe what the streets of Gaza City look like at the moment? Are people outside?
Dr. SARAJJ: Well, since Saturday morning, Gaza has been under a severe military attack by the Israeli air force. It also was hit by the Israeli navy and the land...
(Soundbite of child talking)
RAZ: Is that one of your children that we're hearing?
Dr. SARAJJ: Yes, sorry, it is.
RAZ: How are you able to protect your family right now?
Dr. SARAJJ: Well, I have to be with them all the time and try to reassure them by our presence, their mother and myself, and to explain things in a way that does not make them more anxious or disturbed.
RAZ: You're a psychiatrist, of course, Dr. Sarajj.
Dr. SARAJJ: Yeah.
RAZ: How do you explain, as you say, explain things to the children? What do you do and what do you say?
Dr. SARAJJ: First of all, they should understand what is going on in a simple kind of terms. It's only natural and normal to be afraid, so they should accept that. And second, we should explain why, what is happening. We are being, you know, attacked. This is a kind of war. And these are - they're far away, but when they send bombs that makes a loud sound, and this sound is disturbing. But we are safe. It's far away from us, so it's not going to hurt us.
And in the practice, of course, of things, whenever something happens, I hold the little one particularly to my chest and give him a sense of security, and my wife would hold the other one also. That is very important, the physical feeling of security and warmth around the children.
RAZ: Earlier we spoke to an Israeli who is living in Ashkelon. Are there air raid sirens in Gaza? In other words, do you have any warning before the attacks begin?
Dr. SARAJJ: No. There is no warning whatsoever. This is why it is more difficult for us. The first attack was on Saturday morning when we were discussing what we were going to eat for lunch, and suddenly there was a series of bombs and explosives around us. It was very disturbing indeed, and we were in a state of panic.
RAZ: Many Palestinians have been critical of Hamas over the past year. But I wonder whether the people that you know in Gaza who might not, you know, ordinarily support Hamas, are they now rallying around Hamas in this time of crisis?
Dr. SARAJJ: When you see the Palestinians' story, it's a story of victimization. And this is why when there is an outside enemy like Israel attacking now, all the Gazans, they aren't attacking Hamas as they claim. They're attacking Gaza and Gazan people. So we come together and - although some people are critical of Hamas. But at this time, this criticism is muted for the sake of sending our country as a whole.
RAZ: You yourself have been very critical of the missile strikes from Gaza into Israel, the missiles that had been launched out of Gaza into Israel. Do you believe that ultimately the Israeli attacks on Gaza will stop the rocket fire coming out of Gaza into Israel?
Dr. SARAJJ: Well, I am a strong believer of the nonviolent resistance, and I'm a strong believer in human rights. And for me, any people killed, any child killed anywhere is like killing all humanity, I mean. So in principle, I'm against violent resistance against the Israelis. But in the same time, I want the Israelis to understand using brutal force can only encourage more military and more extremist attitude.
RAZ: Well, Dr. Sarajj, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. SARAJJ: Thank you very much indeed for having me.
RAZ: That was Eyad Sarajj. He's a Palestinian psychiatrist and human rights activist in Gaza. He joined us on the line from Gaza City. We also spoke with Sigal Ariely. She lives in Ashkelon in southern Israel.
GUY RAZ, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Guy Raz, filling in for the gang on this first day of 2009.
(Soundbite of song "Auld Lang Syne")
RAZ: We begin the year with a look ahead to some events and trends for the New Year. There is, of course, the inauguration of the 44th president, Barack Obama, later this month. 2009 is the year of the Ox in the Chinese calendar. And this year analogue TV is out, digital TV is in. That'll be the only way to watch what's on the airwaves come mid-February. My colleague Melissa Block has been taking a survey of some other things in store for 2009.
MELISSA BLOCK: This year brings two important golden anniversaries. Hawaii and Alaska will celebrate 50 years of statehood. Hawaii celebrates its 50th on August 21st. But first up is Alaska.
(Soundbite of music)
BLOCK: Alaskans are preparing for big celebrations this Saturday, January 3rd. That's the day President Eisenhower signed the proclamation officially admitting Alaska to the union. So how does a state celebrate its 50th? To find out, we're joined by a man who was there when Alaska became a state in 1959. Vic Fischer pushed for statehood and helped draft the state's Constitution. He joins us from Anchorage. Mr. Fischer, welcome to the program.
Mr. VIC FISCHER: Well, thank you very much. It's a delight.
BLOCK: And this was a very long road for Alaskans to get statehood. There was a - first, a state referendum. And then they had to get legislation through Congress. Why was this such a tough fight?
Mr. FISCHER: It was actually a very long and frustrating process. We had the Southern Democrats, we had conservative Republicans, we had President Eisenhower who was concerned about defense issues, so it was pretty tough to get a bill through Congress.
BLOCK: What was the main argument against?
Mr. FISCHER: Republicans assumed that Alaska would send two Democratic senators to Washington and therefore could break up the more or less even distribution of the parties. Southern Democrats did not like the idea of Alaskans coming to the Senate because that would be enough to break up filibusters on civil rights legislation.
BLOCK: Well, it was finally in 1958 when the U.S. Senate did ratify the Alaska Statehood Act. And I gather there were big celebrations in Alaska when that happened. What was that like?
Mr. FISCHER: There was a phenomenal celebration that just spontaneously broke out all around Alaska. There was a giant bonfire in Anchorage. There was a tremendous American flag that was covering one side of the downtown Federal Building, and a fire ladder truck sent Miss Alaska up to the top of the flag with a giant new gold star to celebrate admission. And it was phenomenal. It just - and it's great to still be alive 50 years later and be able to celebrate it together with a lot of young people who are grandchildren of those who participated.
BLOCK: Mr. Fischer, have you thought, this Saturday, coming up on the 50th anniversary, if you might commemorate it in sort of a quiet, personal way?
Mr. FISCHER: No, I couldn't do it quietly.
BLOCK: I see.
Mr. FISCHER: I like to celebrate. This is too exciting to just go off in the corner and contemplate.
BLOCK: You want a big do?
Mr. FISCHER: I would just want to be among them, the mass of people who are celebrating and giving high fives. And I'm just thrilled about where we are as a state and how exciting it's going to be to see the next stage of Alaska begin.
BLOCK: Well, Mr. Fischer, happy 50th.
Mr. FISCHER: Well, thank you very much. And happy 50th to Hawaii.
(Soundbite of song "Auld Lang Syne")
BLOCK: That's Vic Fischer, one of those who fought for Alaskan statehood, talking with us from Anchorage about his state's upcoming 50th birthday. 2009 is the bicentennial birth year of a master of the macabre.
(Soundbite of poem "The bells")
Ms. HELEN MCKENNA UFF (Park Ranger, Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site, Philadelphia): (Reading) Oh, the bells, bells, bells. What a tale, their terror tells of despair. How they clang and crash and roar. What a horror they outpour on the bosom of the palpitating air.
BLOCK: That's from Edgar Allan Poe's poem "The Bells," read by Helen McKenna Uff. She's a park ranger at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia. And 2009 is a big year for her.
Ms. MCKENNA UFF: Oh, boy. January 19th, Poe will be 200 years old. And it's going to be a big year for us. We're going to do it all year.
BLOCK: There are any number of cities that want to stake a claim to Edgar Allan Poe, and I wouldn't have thought immediately or Philadelphia, I have to say.
Ms. MCKENNA UFF: Oh, no. We don't have a football team named after one of his poems. He's not buried in our city. So that covers Baltimore right there.
BLOCK: The Ravens.
Ms. MCKENNA UFF: Yeah, the Ravens. And he's buried in Baltimore. And he was born in Boston. And he was raised in Virginia. So, you know, those places people would tend to think of first. But he spent six years in Philadelphia, and they happened to be the most productive of his life. So we get to claim the highlights of his literary career.
BLOCK: And what would those be?
Ms. MCKENNA UFF: He started to really master the horror genre while he was here. So some of the great classics like "Fall of the House of Usher," "Tell-Tale Heart," "Black Cat," "Masque of the Red Death," "Pit and the Pendulum" - so these were all written here in Philadelphia.
BLOCK: There is, of course, another big bicentennial coming up in 2009, the Lincoln bicentennial.
Ms. MCKENNA UFF: Yeah.
BLOCK: Do you worry that poor Edgar Allan Poe is just going to get kind of lost in the shuffle?
Ms. MCKENNA UFF: No, not at all. Poe has a lot of passionate, devoted fans. And they're just really looking forward to this whole year to have their boy on the map.
BLOCK: Well, Helen McKenna Uff, happy Edgar Allan Poe bicentennial in 2009.
Ms. MCKENNA UFF: Thank you.
BLOCK: And I wonder if you would mind taking us out with some reading of something he wrote in Philadelphia. How about "The Tell-Tale Heart"?
Ms. MCKENNA UFF: Excellent.
(Soundbite of short story "The Tell-Tale Heart")
Ms. MCKENNA UFF: (Reading) I felt that I must scream or die! - and now - again! - hark! louder! louder! louder! "Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed!- tear up the planks!- here, here! - it is the beating of his hideous heart!"
(Soundbite of song "Auld Lang Syne")
BLOCK: From historic anniversaries to more frivolous interests now, some new trends for the New Year. We wondered what 2009 will taste like. So we asked Lynn Dornblaser of the global market research company Mintel for her predictions on flavor trends for the New Year.
Ms. LYNN DORNBLASER (New Product Expert, Mintel): Top five. First one would be lavender. What we're seeing is lavender in food and beverage, usually paired with very familiar flavors, so quite often lavender with chocolate.
BLOCK: Lavender and chocolate sounds - well, it sounds interesting.
Ms. DORNBLASER: It's very yummy. Most of the people I know who've tasted a chocolate bar with lavender in it say that it's very feminine.
BLOCK: OK. Lavender.
Ms. DORNBLASER: Lavender. The next one would be cactus.
BLOCK: Cactus?
Ms. DORNBLASER: Yes. We see cactus in Latin America, of course, in all types of foods and beverages, but it's beginning to expand to North America. So I think what we're going to see is cactus flavors in, let's say, functional waters, think like vitamin water type of drinks, and also in salty snacks.
BLOCK: OK. So we have lavender, cactus. What's third on your list?
Ms. DORNBLASER: Third on my list is persimmon. Persimmon I'm calling the new pomegranate, not because of its functional benefits or because of its nutritional benefits, but because of its uniqueness. Persimmon is a fruit that's native to the Middle East, but also to New England. And we are beginning to see it showing up in a few ways, mostly in beverages right now.
BLOCK: OK. So, we have lavender, cactus, persimmon.
Ms. DORNBLASER: Well, the next one I would say might be masala, which is kind of the kissing cousin to curry. Different flavor profile. Sometimes very hot, sometimes quite mild.
BOCK: And where will we be finding masala? Not in chocolate I hope?
Ms. DORNBLASER: No, absolutely not in chocolate. For now in the U.S., mostly in sauces and seasonings.
BLOCK: So you've ticked off lavender...
Ms. DORNBLASER: One more.
BLOCK: Cactus, persimmon, masala. Your last top flavor for 2009 is...
Ms. DORNBLASER: Chimichurri.
BLOCK: Chimichurri?
Ms. DORNBLASER: Chimichurri, as I'm sure you know, is a Latin American sauce. It's usually used on grilled meat. It's from Argentina. It's parsley, olive oil, paprika, garlic. Sometimes some other seasonings as well. It's a very versatile flavor. As I said, it is designed to be paired with grilled meats. But I think we'll see it extend into new categories. We might see it - why not flavored meat snacks that have this flavor profile with it, as well, for example?
BLOCK: So a global flavor forecast for 2009 is what you're predicting here?
Ms. DORNBLASSER: That's correct.
BLOCK: We've been talking with Lynn Dornblaser of the global research firm Mintel with her flavor forecasts for 2009. Lynn, thanks so much.
Ms. DORNBLASSER: You're very welcome.
(Soundbite of song "Auld Lang Syne")
BLOCK: And the color of 2009, Pantone, a provider of color standards for the design industry, believes that mimosa will be the color of the year. It's a warm golden yellow. The company says that particular yellow embodies hopefulness and reassurance in a climate of change.
Finally, for those of us who love to garden, what does 2009 have to offer that's new in plants and flowers? We put that question to Nicholas Staddon, who travels the world seeking out new discoveries for the plant company Monrovia.
Mr. NICHOLAS STADDON (Director of New Plant Introductions, Monrovia): We're also looking for plants which are more disease and pest resistant and plants which are really easy care. So some of the really exciting things that we're working on for 2009, one is a brand new Agapanthus from Australia, and we've been working on this plant for, oh, three to four years.
BLOCK: And what's an Agapanthus?
Mr. STADDON: An Agapanthus is an annual plant in the colder parts of America, say the Midwest or the East Coast. On the West Coast and the Southern part of America, it's going to be perennial. It's a dwarf plant. This particular plant is about 18 to 20 inches tall and the same wide. It has really nice green leaves in the spring and summer. But the main attribute on this one, it has really pretty blue flowers that rise above the leaves. And they're almost like a ball of flowers. They're actually called an umble.
And what's so important about this plant is that it's almost seedless. And so the blooming time is greatly extended over other Agapanthus. It's really interesting in the last few years, people in the Mid and the East, Midwest and East Coast, have really latched on to Agapanthus as a group of plants because they use them in their containers. So it's really a rewarding plant.
BLOCK: And you said the ball of flowers is called an umble?
Mr. STADDON: Yeah, it's called an umble, yeah.
BLOCK: Umble. And you're not saying humble without the H?
Mr. STADDON: Umble. Oh, no.
BLOCK: (Laughing) OK.
Mr. STADDON: No. It's always one of the concerns in horticulture that people get confused with all the various strange Latin terms we use. So...
BLOCK: So that's one thing you're excited about. And you were saying it can be grown in a pot. I suppose if we're thinking about downsizing in all different ways, this would be an example of that.
Mr. STADDON: One of the real trends in the United States is that gardens are getting smaller. And so one of the tremendous trends is container gardening. Agapanthus is a group of plants who have had this rise to popularity. So we think Baby Pete is going to be an absolute winner because of its compact size.
BLOCK: Baby Pete, you said?
Mr. STADDON: Baby Pete, yeah. We believe this is going to be an absolute hit.
BLOCK: Nicholas Staddon, thanks so much for talking with us.
Mr. STADDON: Thank you, Melissa.
(Soundbite of song "Auld Lang Syne")
RAZ: That's Nicholas Staddon, the man who travels the world for the Monrovia plant company. He was speaking with Melissa Block about some of the things we can look forward to in 2009. For me, it's the birth of my first child in a couple of months. And he or she will be 250 years younger than Robert Burns, Scotland's favorite son, born in 1759, and the man who wrote the New Year's classic "Auld Lang Syne."
(Soundbite of song "Auld Lang Syne")
RAZ: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
GUY RAZ, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Guy Raz, sitting in for your regular hosts. First this hour, to Iraq. Iraqi leaders celebrated today as a new security agreement came into effect. Now, American forces are operating under the authority of Iraq's government. Separately, three Iraqi policemen were killed in the city of Mosul, underlying the security challenges that remain. In Baghdad, the U.S. formally handed over control of the Green Zone. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro attended that ceremony and filed this report.
(Soundbite of marching band)
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO: Dressed in navy blue and red uniforms and holding bagpipes and drums, an Iraqi army marching band opened today's ceremony. Members of Iraq's government and U.S. military officials sat under a tent where food plates were set out on low tables. Baghdad's Green Zone was the symbolic heart of America's occupation of Iraq. Set up after the 2003 invasion, it became home to 14,000 members of the U.S. military, the U.S. embassy and foreign contractors, as well as successive Iraqi governments. The 5.6 square mile area also became a de facto no-go zone for regular Iraqis. Checkpoints manned by the U.S. military allowed only those with proper badges to come inside. Iraq's defense minister, Abdul Qadir Muhammed Jassim, told today's assembled guests that the Green Zone handover is more than a simple transfer of authority; it is a restoration of Iraq's sovereignty.
Mr. ABDUL QADIR MUHAMMED JASSIM (Defense Minister, Iraq): (Through translator) We are building a strong security force to protect this country and bring it back to health. Iraq will be safe, stable and finally protected by its own people and their strong weapons.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Jassim promised to open up large portions of the Green Zone to the Iraqi public. Last night, at the former U.S. embassy, based in Saddam Hussein's Republican Palace, the U.S. flag was lowered. Colonel Steve Ferrari, who oversees American security in the Green Zone, was there.
Colonel STEVE FERRARI (Commander, Joint Area Support Group Baghdad): It was a touching event because my headquarter has been there for many years, so picking up and moving and actually seeing it close now is a good feeling, but it's also a sad feeling because that was where we operated from.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The U.S. embassy has relocated to another spot in the Green Zone. Certain areas, like the new U.S. embassy complex, will remain under American security control. Americans will also still jointly man checkpoints, as they continue to train their Iraqi counterparts. But there are concerns that Iraq's fledgling security forces, which are still riven with divisive sectarian and political loyalties, will compromise security here. Colonel Ferrari says it's likely that this area will come under attack, again, soon.
Col. FERRARI: I think common sense will say that they'll probably test the Green Zone. But again, we don't know that for sure. So, we'll see what happens.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The Green Zone handover is the most visible of the many changes that have come into effect today with the implementation of the security pact. U.S. forces will now legally operate under a government of Iraq mandate. They will, for example, have to get Iraqi authority to launch raids and get warrants to arrest people. Iraq is also taking control of its airspace, and under this agreement, U.S. forces will eventually leave this country. Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says he now wants January 1st to become a national holiday, which he dubbed Sovereignty Day. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Baghdad.
GUY RAZ, host:
Thousands of translators work for U.S. forces in Iraq. Some soldiers say their interpreters help them stay alive. Master Sergeant Greg Cornejo is an Army reservist who has worked closely with translators when he helped train Iraq's police force. Cornejo bonded with one Iraqi in particular and began the maze of paperwork to get him a U.S. visa. Now, as Jessica Jones reports from North Carolina Public Radio, that friendship continues here on American soil.
JESSICA JONES: Greg Cornejo decided to stay on active duty for an extra year after his deployment to Iraq from January to December of 2007. Right now, he and his wife Teresa live in a sprawling apartment complex in Fayetteville near Fort Bragg.
Sergeant GREG CORNEJO (Army Reservist): Welcome to our one little bedroom apartment here. So, we have our little living room. Of course, that's my office here with one table, with two computers.
JONES: Cornejo, a freckle-faced 39 year old, keeps photos from his deployment on his laptop. He pulls up one of himself and his translator. They're dressed in camouflage from head to toe. Cornejo is still concerned about the safety of his translator's family in Iraq, so he refers to him only as Peter. It's estimated that hundreds of translators have been killed, injured and even tortured for working with American troops, although the U.S. government doesn't have exact numbers.
Sgt. CORNEJO: This here is a picture of myself and Peter. Of course, you could tell he's got his mask on and that's how he pretty much, you know, kept himself hidden, and I just threw my mask up to kind of, so we can look at each other the same time, Spiderman twins.
JONES: Peter's visa application was accepted in September. He and his wife Rena(ph) and their two small children left Iraq for Fayetteville the following month with their life savings. Teresa Cornejo says the news was a welcome end to more than a year of worrying.
Ms. TERESA CORNEJO: I knew that he really wanted to get them over here, and it made me feel better to know that he was working so hard to get them over here. I mean, he had me actually praying for them to come.
JONES: The Cornejos depleted their bank account to buy mattresses, a child car seat and a stroller for Peter's family. They even convinced the manager of their apartment complex to let the family stay rent-free. Cornejo says it was the least he could do for someone who, he says, saved his life.
Sgt. CORNEJO: I always felt like he was my angel, my living angel, inside the truck every time we went out together. And when we were in convoy, I always made sure that Peter rode with me; you know, I was just selfish with him.
JONES: Even when Peter went home for the weekend, Cornejo says he would call in with reports of people planting roadside bombs in certain streets.
Sgt. CORNEJO: He would always tell us, you know, hey, that guy right there, he's not - he looks suspicious or he's not doing what he is supposed to be doing or what not, and we would check that out, as well. And nine times out of ten, he's correct.
JONES: Since Peter and his family arrived in Fayetteville in early November, support from the community has been overwhelming. The Cornejos placed notices asking for donations in Fort Bragg's newspaper and on craigslist.
Sgt. CORNEJO: Once the story hit the paper, the phone started ringing at 7:30 in the morning, and it didn't stop until a couple of days later.
Ms. CORNEJO: Well, actually, it still hasn't stopped. We've gotten so much furniture, we can't take anymore.
(Soundbite of baby laughing)
JONES: Inside Peter's spotless ground floor apartment, his wife Rena is tickling their 18-month-old son, Ivan(ph), as he rolls around on a donated queen-sized bed. Peter, a slender 30 year old, says it's still hard for him to accept the outpouring of generosity.
Mr. PETER: If you give me something, I have to give you something back. So, that was really, really hard for me to accept all the stuff.
Sgt. CORNEJO: Like I explained to Peter though, I think most Americans realize what he gave to us, you know, he gave us, you know - he kept us safe.
JONES: Next year, the Cornejos will return to their home in Georgia so Greg can go back to his job as a corrections officer. Peter may stay at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville to teach soldiers Iraqi Arabic. But if that doesn't work out, Greg Cornejo says Peter and his family are welcome to move with them to Peachtree City. For NPR News, I'm Jessica Jones.
GUY RAZ, host:
Today in Cuba, the government is marking the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution. It was on January 1st 1959 that Castro's guerillas ousted U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro eventually imposed a hard line Marxist/Leninist regime on the island. Despite the fall of the Soviet Union and an ongoing U.S. embargo, Cuba remains one of the few communist nations left in the world. NPR's Jason Beaubien is in the eastern Cuban city of Santiago where the official celebration of the anniversary is being held. Jason, how important is this anniversary?
JASON BEAUBIEN: Well, this anniversary is hugely important for the Cuban government. There's sort of an air of defiance here. The Soviet Union is gone, the U.S. has been trying for regime change here for 50 years, and Cuba, under Fidel, has done things Fidel's way. And the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba has really dominated the last five decades. The U.S. broke off diplomatic relations back in 1960 after Castro nationalized U.S. business interests here. Then in 1962, you had the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. You know, the U.S. has tried an outright coup attempt during the Bay of Pigs, and Washington still has tough sanctions and an economic embargo against Cuba. This is the 50th anniversary of this Communist government, and it's a chance for them to say, look, we're still here.
RAZ: Mm hmm. Well, 50 years now after the revolution, what's the state of the country?
BEAUBIEN: You know, 50 years later, much of Havana appears to be falling apart. You've got buildings that are crumbling. You know, in 2004, the National Electrical System collapsed. Infrastructure is just in a terrible condition. The economic minister this week said that Cuba is going through the worst period since the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Soviet Union, its major benefactor, collapsed. You've got a soaring trade deficit. So, things are really tough here. This is a tough time for Cuba.
RAZ: Jason, what about ordinary Cubans? What are you hearing from them about all of this and about how they view the incoming American President Barack Obama?
BEAUBIEN: Well, obviously there's a lot of frustration in some quarters; wages here are about $20 a month, but there's also a lot of pride here. People here feel like Cuba has gone its own way. As a developing country, it has managed to get universal healthcare. It's got free education. It's got a Communist system that guarantees basic food rations for everyone. People complain it might not be enough, but there's a sense of pride that Cuba has accomplished a lot. And there's also a lot of hope that under the new administration, under an Obama administration that the relationship which has dominated the last 50 years will change between the U.S. and Cuba and that it lead to an improvement here on the island.
RAZ: Mm hmm. And Jason, in the middle of these celebrations in Cuba, where is Fidel Castro?
BEAUBIEN: Well, that's a state secret. Fidel has not been seen in public since 2006. He's 82 now. He's had stomach problems. He handed over power to his brother Raul back in 2006; formally, it was handed over this year. And in the past, Fidel had been writing very lengthy articles up until just recently in Granma on all sorts of subjects. And it's striking that today on this 50th anniversary, Fidel had just one line in Granma, on the front page. This is a man who used to give speeches that went on for hours, and today all he said was that he was wishing the heroic people of Cuba a happy anniversary.
RAZ: Mm. Well, NPR's Jason Beaubien, thank you so much for being with us.
BEAUBIEN: You're welcome.
RAZ: That's NPR's Jason Beaubien speaking with us from the eastern Cuban city of Santiago.
GUY RAZ, host:
If you or your kids are fans of "Dora the Explorer," "MTV," or "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," you can breathe a sigh of relief today. Yesterday, we reported that the media giant Viacom was threatening to yank its many channels off Time Warner Cable at midnight. The two companies were in a bitter dispute over the amount of money Viacom wants for allowing Time Warner to carry its cable channels. Well, now we can tell you that they appeared to have reached a New Year's resolution. Viacom and Time Warner are still working at the terms of the deal, but "Comedy Central," "MTV" and, yes, "Dora the Explorer" will not be disappearing from your TV set.
GUY RAZ, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Guy Raz. Our use of fossil fuels appears to be stunting the growth of coral on Australia's Great Barrier Reef. Scientists have predicted that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will be bad for coral, and as NPR's Richard Harris reports, a new study provides some of the strongest evidence yet that coral is already suffering.
RICHARD HARRIS: Living corals literally build the reefs that support some of the most diverse life on Earth. So, researchers at the Institute of Marine Science in Australia have taken a close look at corals along the Great Barrier Reef to check on their growth over the past several decades. Glenn De'ath explains they focused on big, round corals known as parieties.
Dr. GLENN DE'ATH (Researcher, Institute of Marine Science, Australia): They lay down the history of their growth in the skeletons of - just like tree rings.
HARRIS: As a result, scientists can measure the rings and see how fast they've been growing. As they report now in Science Magazine, coral growth slowed appreciably starting around 1990.
Dr. DE'ATH: There have been some other studies now which are showing similar effects, but this one covers basically the whole of the Great Barrier Reef, which is over 2,000 miles long, and that's a huge area, and we've found very consistent results.
HARRIS: Growth is slowing by about one percent per year. And if the trend continues, De'ath says, this critical species of coral could stop growing entirely across the Great Barrier Reef by the middle of this century. The big question is why this is happening. The scientist pointed two factors; one is increasing ocean temperatures apparently as a result of global warming. De'ath says the other factor is that the ocean has been getting more acidic, also as a consequence of all the carbon dioxide we're pumping into the atmosphere.
Dr. DE'ATH: So, the carbon dioxide dissolves in the water, the water becomes more acidic, and that increased acidity is what reduces the rate of growth of the corals.
HARRIS: That change in ocean chemistry makes it much harder for corals and other shell building organisms to build their skeletons. I called coral expert Joni Claipus(ph) at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado to ask her about the study. So, what does this portend for corals?
Dr. JONI CLAIPUS (Coral Expert, National Center for Atmospheric Research): Oh, it's not very good, is it? We've predicted this for a long time and I think most of us would like to be proven, and it seems like this paper is one more notch telling us that maybe this whole problem of climate change in coral reef is really true and we need to do something out it.
HARRIS: But what to do is the question. Carbon dioxide is building up rapidly in the Earth's atmosphere as we burn more and more fossil fuels. Even optimistic scenarios find that a whole lot more carbon dioxide is going into the air and the ocean in the coming decades.
Mr. RON SOLM (Advisor, Nature Conservancy, Hawaii): It looks pretty gloomy. I have to say it, it looks really gloomy for the Great Barrier Reef and I think there'll be major changes there.
HARRIS: That's Ron Solm(ph) in Hawaii, who advises the Nature Conservancy about coral-reef issues. He doesn't cheer the gloomiest scenario which is that corals in the Great Barrier Reef could die off entirely by the end of the century. But he expects the reef will soon be a very different place. Solm says, of course the world needs to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but we also need to find and preserve reefs that are relatively resilient to the effects of global warming and ocean acidification. For example, there are some areas north of Australia, in the so-called coral triangle, that seemed to be doing relatively well right now.
Mr. SOLM: We need to put in place actions that we can take today to help safeguard the reefs. So, that by the time the carbon dioxide emissions are under control and are being rolled back to some acceptable level, that we've got to ensure that there's something that survives.
RAZ: Presuming we can someday repair our atmosphere, young sea born corals can then float throughout the ocean and repopulate the reefs. What's coming clear is that in the face of climate change, the conservation challenges for the ocean may turn out to be even more challenging than for ecosystems on land. Richard Harris, NPR News.
GUY RAZ, host:
At the home of the Chicago Cubs today, it was hockey pucks rather than baseballs. The second Annual National Hockey League Winter Classic was played outdoors at Wrigley Field. A sell-out crowd of more than 40,000 people turned out to watch the Chicago Blackhawks take on the Detroit Red Wings. Chicago Public Radio's Tony Arnold was there.
TONY ARNOLD: I'm standing here under the big famous red marquee of Wrigley Field at the corner of Addison and Clark on Chicago's north side. It's cold, it's windy, it's overcast but that's not stopping people from coming out. Lots of them are out here for the opportunity to see ice hockey on a baseball field, but as I'm finding and talking to NHL fans, they're excited for the game not so much because it's hockey on a baseball diamond, it's because it's hockey on this baseball diamond.
Mr. JEREMY LACHEY (Chicago Cubs Fan): I mean, playing hockey at Wrigley's is just - it's something crazy and, you know, just watching two original six teams play at one of the oldest ball parks in the nation is pretty awesome so - and it's just going to be fun just to watch some hockey.
ARNOLD: Jeremy Lachey(ph) was winding his way through the heavy crowds of Wrigleyville this morning about to meet up with his family. As a hockey and a Cubs fan, Lachey was in sports heaven. The NHL has found a niche in hyping this annual outdoor game, this year using a recording of beloved late Cubs announcer Harry Caray.
(Soundbite of song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game")
STADIUM CROWD: (Singing) Take me out to the ballgame, Take me out with the crowd, Buy me some...
ARNOLD: But as for how the NHL got here - putting an ice rink on top of a baseball diamond, it wasn't easy. Crews were putting in 16 and 17 hour long days getting everything in order and they did it in blistery cold winter weather. Jamie Horne(ph) is with the NHL.
Mr. JAMIE HORNE (National Hockey League): In terms of the weather, it builds the drama. I mean, it's an uncertainty, and I think that we're battling the elements everyday and it's part of the overall story really.
ARNOLD: As for the game, defending Stanley Cup Champions, the Detroit Red Wings proved to be too much for the Blackhawks today, winning six to four on the road in the frigid, friendly confines of Wrigley Field. For NPR News, I'm Tony Arnold in Chicago.
GUY RAZ, host:
This past year has been dramatic politically for Chicagoans. One of the city's politicians is ascending to the White House, and another is descending into scandal. We asked some people at Daily Plaza in downtown Chicago how they're dealing with the transition from Barack Obama's victory to the possible downfall of Rod Blagojevich.
(Soundbite of downtown Chicago)
Ms. MARY HOLLICE (Resident, Chicago, Illinois): It makes us look bad. Like, everybody already thinks, like, oh, you know, gangster city, blah blah blah, and then, like, all of a sudden we have all this crap. It just makes us look even worse.
Mr. JOHN CARNAVAZ (Resident, Chicago, Illinois): I don't think it says anything about Chicago, per se; it's individuals. So, you can't characterize a city by what one person does or doesn't do.
Mr. GARY WILSON (Resident, Chicago, Illinois): Politics is going to be politics, but you know, obviously we should not let this distract from what's happened as far as the electorate overwhelmingly choosing Obama.
Mr. MICHAEL GOLDWATER (Resident, Chicago, Illinois): It bothers me because everyone is all about - everyone was so excited about Chicago. Now it just makes us look like we're a bunch of corrupt - like, state again after we just had all this with Obamas. It's kind of demoralizing, but I mean, what are you going to do? We got fooled.
Ms. MEGAN HORRY (Resident, Chicago, Illinois): Blagojevich represents the old-time Chicago politics. You know that we're all very familiar with and pretty much realize that it's pay-for-play sometimes, and Barack is separate from that and is above that.
RAZ: Some commentary from downtown Chicago. We heard from Mary Hollice(ph), John Carnavaz(ph), Gary Wilson(ph), Michael Goldwater(ph) and Megan Horry(ph).
GUY RAZ, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Guy Raz covering for the regular crew on this New Year's Day. If you made any money in the stock market in the past several years, chances are your gains were wiped out in 2008. This last year, the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its worst showing since the Great Depression. It's down more than 30 percent from its high point in 2007. So, is there any hope for 2009? Well, to help guide us through these turbulent economic times, we turn to Roben Farzad of BusinessWeek, who is in Miami. Is that right?
Mr. ROBEN FARZAD (Senior Writer, BusinessWeek): That's right.
RAZ: So, Roben, is there anything to look forward to in 2009, or more of this sort of same doom and gloom?
Mr. FARZAD: Alas, hopes spring eternal, and the practitioners on Wall Street, at least those who are left, are saying that maybe we can hang our hats on something for the second half of 2009, particularly if the new administration and the new regime in Capital Hill pushes through upwards of maybe $750 billion of stimulus.
RAZ: So, then any positive economic signs are saying, depend on whatever the stimulus package is going to be.
Mr. FARZAD: Well, what else is there driving it right now? I mean, we had a speculative real estate bubble of epic proportions and the stock market has lost its biggest, I think, numbers since 1931, and everything that could fall apart, did fall apart. So, the last thing people want to do is open up their 401k statements, much less, you know, send $10,000 to Fidelity or E*TRADE.
RAZ: What's one of the most depressing things to do is to open up that 401k statement. So, how do you sort of force people not to do that? What do you do? I mean, do you usually(ph) meditate or yoga or something?
Mr. FARZAD: Well, it's interesting that you mentioned the spiritual side, because at a time like this I like to say that in my private life I'm a nice Jewish boy, but when it comes to the stock market, I'm a devout agnostic. And I think that speaks to the fact that Americans have a fundamentally unhealthy relationship with the stock market. They tend to get in when times are hot, hot, hot, it's go go and the hot money is pouring in, and they want to get out conversely when it's probably the most inopportune time to get out. That kind of behavior doesn't really serve you well in the long haul, or the short haul when you need to be much more cold eyed and deliberative and just be averaging in and controlling the things that you can because obviously this year showed us that there are myriad variables that you can't control.
RAZ: But, Roben, this is America. We are supposed to be optimistic, I mean, can you offer us any hope, any sector or stock that might be looking good for this year?
Mr. FARZAD: Well, I tell you this, there's a record amount of cash on the sidelines. And this cash isn't earning squat. It's all bunker mentality. The only bank that's making money now they say is the national bank of Sealy or Serta, you know, you're just tucking it under the mattress. That money I can guarantee you is going to search for a home. And it's going to just sluice into some asset class, whether it's commodities again, real estate doubtful. The thinking man is saying that it's finally going to be the stock market.
The only thing you can do is diversify. I know it sounds cliche, it's like telling you to drink milk and stay in school, but buy as many different asset classes as you can with the lowest possible cost. Do it often, do it in increments, and be dispassionate about it. Because the only millionaires we have in our midst, stock market investors, they are dispassionate ultimately. They don't let their emotions get the best or worst of them.
RAZ: Roben Farzad is a senior writer for BusinessWeek. He spoke with us in from Miami. Roben Farzad, thanks for being with us.
Mr. FARZAD: Thank you for having me.
GUY RAZ, host:
Now, we are going far north to the Canadian territory that sits just east of Alaska. The lure of the Yukon used to be gold hidden in the rocks. Today only a few people still dig and pan. Photographer and independent producer Jake Warga recently braved the Yukon and found not gold, but characters.
JAKE WARGA: Traveling recently from Whitehorse, Canada, up the Yukon River, I came across some interesting folks.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. JIM HOWDEN: (Singing) Well, way up north in a Whitehorse town...
WARGA: First, here is Jim Howden, a busker in downtown Whitehorse.
Mr. HOWDEN: I never read much about the Yukon in the history books. I was always under the impression that Yukon was part the United States when I was growing up. I just fell in love with the place and I never left.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. HOWDEN: (Singing) Yeah, putting down the bottle...
I've only ever made up one song since I've been up here, and it's about when I sobered up.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. HOWDEN: (Singing) Yeah, putting the bottle was the hardest thing for me.
(Soundbite of dogs barking)
WARGA: It's summer and the sun doesn't really set this far north. It's confusing, but it means that even the sled dogs are on summer holiday.
Ms. MARTHA TAYLOR (Owner, Uncommon Journeys): Within our working yard, there are 54 dog houses and that's the perfect number we need to run the programs in the winter.
WARGA: Martha Taylor runs Uncommon Journeys, a dog-sledding outfit just outside of Whitehorse.
Ms. TAYLOR: The lead dogs are often the smartest dog, the most outgoing dog, a real bossy personality.
WARGA: You want to introduce me to one?
Ms. TAYLOR: Sure. Yup. We'll go in to the yard here.
(Soundbite of dogs barking)
Ms. TAYLOR: Hello, Fleece(ph). Hello. So, Fleece is one of our leaders. Fleece has become a little bit of a star. He's the man on campus, and yup, he's a fan of the ladies. So, that's Fleece. Hey, hey.
WARGA: After hosing off my shoe, I continue north heading up the great Yukon River. It's easy to feel alone here, unless you count the mosquitoes, then it's a constant party.
FRAN (Manager, Upper Lake Labarge Lodge): There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who moil for gold. My name is Fran and I'm managing here at Upper Lake Labarge Lodge with Great River Journey. The arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run cold. And one of the things I really like is the Robert Service poem. The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, but the queerest they ever did see was that night on the Marge of Lake Labarge I cremated Sam Mcgee. Oh, I suspect it probably happened just across the lake, that's where some of the paddle wheelers would have pulled in.
(Soundbite of Linda Harvey singing)
WARGA: Across the lake today, a general assembly of First Nations, or of native people of the area, is taking place.
Ms. LINDA HARVEY (Traditional Singer): My name is Linda Harvey and I live here at the Ton Kutchen(ph) Reserve here at Lake Labarge. Indian way, my name is Kooked Klama(ph). I sing traditional songs...
(Soundbite of Ms. Harvey singing)
Ms. HARVEY: If you know your language, you know your culture pretty well. Alcohol and abuse and all that stuff had not part of it. Maybe we did live on, you know, dirt floors and things like that, but it was still a lifestyle that people lived, you know, what we're used to and we're comfortable in.
(Soundbite of Ms. Harvey singing)
(Soundbite of singing)
Unidentified Man: (Singing) Oh, I saw the light...
WARGA: After a few days working up the Yukon River, I arrive in to Dawson City like so many others did by boat. This is the Wild West, wooded sidewalks and dirt streets. Near the town's gazebo, the annual gold panning championships are taking place. I catch up with one of the winners, Dave Miller.
Mr. DAVE MILLER (Winner, Gold Panning Championship, Dawson City): Ah, well, now if I told you my secret it wouldn't be a secret anymore. It's the gold pan. (Laughing) It's quite simply the gold pan.
WARGA: The last place I visit out at the edge of town is Jack London's original cabin rebuilt at the site. I peer through the door of the small log cabin, there's a bed on stilts to be above the frozen air, a stove, a desk. It looks miserable.
(Soundbite of Jack London's cabin)
WARGA: Oops, sorry. Over here.
Mr. DICK NORTH (Jack London Cabin Visitor Center): Yeah, I went looking for it in 1965, came across written on back in pencil, Jack London, miner, author, January 27, 1898.
WARGA: Next to the little cabin is a museum, and maybe part of it is the man who brought the cabin in from the wild back in the '60s, Dick North.
Mr. NORTH: He came up here for the gold. He didn't come up here to write about it. He didn't start keeping notes until he left here. He got a scurvy really bad and had to go back home. Geez, I forgot to bring my teeth here. I left them at home. God, I got to go home and get them. Hey, will you do me a favor?
WARGA: Yeah, sure.
Mr. NORTH: Will you watch for this? I'm going to get my teeth. Just sit there a minute. Just stay in there. I'll be right back.
WARGA: OK.
Mr. NORTH: Yeah.
WARGA: OK. Now I'm alone in the Jack London Cabin Visitor Center. Being alone, feeling alone, waiting to collect money is the closest, I think, I've come to understanding the Yukon. I think I should increase the admission price.
(Soundbite of Ms. Harvey singing)
WARGA: I wait in the museum behind the till, but no one comes.
(Soundbite of Ms. Harvey singing)
RAZ: Our story about Yukon Territory in Canada comes from the collective Hearing Voices and independent producer, Jake Warga.
(Soundbite of Ms. Harvey singing)
RAZ: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
GUY RAZ, host:
Some parts are easier to come by than others. In this case, we're talking about parts for the three original lunar rovers. The rovers are still on the moon, and so are their tires, and that posed a problem for NASA scientists trying to recreate those tires for a new lunar rover. No one at NASA could find instructions for building them. From member station WKSU in Kent, Ohio, Jeff St. Clair picks up our story.
JEFF ST. CLAIR: If sound could travel on the moon, this is what Apollo astronauts might have heard as their lunar rover bounced across the dusty craters.
(Soundbite of tires crackling)
ST. CLAIR: It's the crackling of the original moon tire. Here on Earth, a one-sixth scale moon buggy is crawling across a lunar terrain simulator, NASA-speak for a big sandbox at the NASA Glenn Research Facility in Cleveland. Vivake Asnani heads the research team at NASA Glenn, and he's testing the original moon tires to gain baseline data for the current lunar program.
Dr. VIVAKE ASNANI (Head, Research Team, NASA Glenn Research Facility): We wanted to understand its basic utility for what vehicles can we use these tires directly. And if not, how can we apply the technology and modify it versus going back and reinventing the wheel.
ST. CLAIR: But that's exactly what Asnani and his team would have had to do if original Apollo scientists followed orders to pitch all the spare moon tires. Eighty-year-old Ferenc Pavlics emigrated from Hungary in 1956 and now lives in Santa Barbara, California. Pavlics invented the lunar rover and its unique tires while working for GM's defense research labs in the late 1960s.
Mr. FERENC PAVLICS (Inventor, Lunar Rover): When we asked NASA what to do with the residual equipment which left over from testing and manufacturing, they told us, destroy it.
ST. CLAIR: Still, NASA's Vivake Asnani had a hunch that Pavlics would be the person best able to help recreate the original moon tire. He was right.
Mr. PAVLICS: I have a kind of a walk-in closet and stored it there over the years.
ST. CLAIR: It turns out Ferenc Pavlics stored a moon tire in his house for nearly 40 years. Pavlics brought his tire to Akron where he tutored engineers at Goodyear on the finer points of its manufacture.
Mr. PAVLICS: It is not a simple thing to build here because there are many tricks to it and it's not that mass-produced type of a thing. It is more of an art needed to build it.
ST. CLAIR: Since rubber tires would disintegrate in the harsh environment of the moon, Pavlics' innovation was to use a very ordinary, but durable material instead.
(Soundbite of piano playing)
ST. CLAIR: The 14-gauge wire found in almost any piano. NASA's Vivake Asnani shows how the open woven mesh design made moon travel practical.
Dr. ASNANI: Well, it's one of the most amazing things about the structure. If you push on it, it completely envelops whatever you're placing on top of the tire. So, right now, my fist is being pushed into the tire and it's sinking in. At the same time, it can carry the full load of the vehicle.
ST. CLAIR: The wire mesh also allows fine lunar dust to sift into the wheel providing traction.
Dr. ASNANI: There isn't too much complexity to the final tire design. It's quite elegant.
ST. CLAIR: Asnani admits that the spare closet space of an elderly Apollo scientist isn't the best way to archive specialized designs.
Dr. ASNANI: Obviously, we shouldn't be relying on people's memories, but in this case, that's the way it was.
ST. CLAIR: Vivake Asnani's story made it to NASA headquarters where he was invited to take part in a system-wide review of NASA's record keeping procedures. As Asnani and his team prepare to unveil the next generation of moon tires, he's trying to assure that future scientists won't have to dig around in his closet to find a replacement part. For NPR News, I'm Jeff St. Clair.
GUY RAZ, host:
It's All things Considered from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz. Claiborne Pell, a six-term Democratic U.S. senator from Rhode Island has died at the age of 90. He was the man who created the Pell grant program. It helped tens of millions of Americans attend college. His family noted that Senator Pell defined his job in seven words: "Translate ideas into actions and help people."
Pell won his Senate seat in 1960, and he retired in 1997 after being diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. Scott MacKay is a political analyst at public radio station WRNI, and he joins us from Jamestown, Rhode Island. Scott, what led Senator Pell to start the Pell grant program?
SCOTT MACKAY: Well, Senator Pell was the kind of blue blood from a blue-collar state who believed that social mobility worked through education. And he was a Princeton graduate himself and a well-born man. But he thought that his immigrant state, that if the Portuguese and Italian and Irish immigrant folks would have a shot at higher education, that they too could have a little piece of the American dream. And he really believed that. And he always cared about education.
RAZ: So he was this millionaire - this blue blood, as you say - but seemed to have a kind of common touch.
MACKAY: He did have a common touch. He was an eccentric man, but nonetheless someone who really did care again about the people of Rhode Island. He was a thrifty man such that he would buy his suits from rummage sales. And he wore shirts with cut collars, a Brooks Brothers shirt where he'd turn the collar. I'll never forget his last Senate race in 1990 which I covered. Mary Beth Cahill, who was his campaign manager, said, Senator, do you really want to go out with that shirt on? And he said, oh, Nuala - his wife, who was a charming woman, who survives him - would always say, oh, you look very nice today, Pell. And he really did. He was the kind of person who would just show up at everything. He was probably the only white politician in the old days who could walk through South Providence through a very tough black neighborhood, everybody said hello and came over and shook his hand. And he did this his whole career.
RAZ: And he was almost sort of the last of a generation. I mean...
MACKAY: Yeah, you know, sometimes I thought he should have been a member of the British House of Lords. But on the other hand, he was somebody who understood the interests of his state. And he did a lot for public transportation, Amtrak. And he also understood the environment. And people in New England care a lot about the environment. In Rhode Island there again it's said there he did an awful lot for environmental issues. And he cared about the arts also. The National Endowment for the Arts was one of his pet projects.
RAZ: And he's considered the father of the National Endowment for the Arts.
MACKAY: Certainly he was someone who was very instrumental in arts and he cared about it. And it wasn't just his Newport grandees that he cared about. He was also the kind of person who believed in arts in schools and helping Rhode Island School of Design, for instance, and helping people, believing that arts define us and were something that really made us human, almost. And Senator Pell was always a wonderful supporter of the arts.
RAZ: Well, Scott, thank you so much for your time.
MACKAY: Thank you.
RAZ: Scott MacKay is a political analyst with member station WRNI, and he was speaking about Senator Claiborne Pell. Pell died earlier today after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 90 years old.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. President-elect Barack Obama's first priority is the ailing economy, and one of his economic advisers is someone better known for his prominent position in the tech world: Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google. NPR's Laura Sydell reports that Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Obama share a vision of how technology can revitalize the economy.
LAURA SYDELL: Eric Schmidt came to Google at a time when the company's financiers were a little nervous. Its two 20-something founders - Sergey Brin and Larry Page - were too young for the job.
Mr. DAVID A. VISE (Author, "The Google Story"): He gave Sergey and Larry a degree of credibility they didn't have on Wall Street before they took the company public. He was the grown-up.
SYDELL: That's David Vise, author of "The Google Story." When Schmidt arrived at Google in 2001, he had just been CEO of software maker Novell, a company that wasn't nearly as successful. Schmidt's background hadn't been so much in business; he started as a computer scientist at Sun Microsystems. Schmidt says it was that, and not his stint as a CEO, that made him attractive to Google - and what attracted him to the company.
Dr. ERIC E. SCHMIDT (Chief Executive Officer, Google): When I first came to Google, I was walking along, and all of a sudden I realized that I was hanging out with exactly the same kinds of people, with the same odd behavior patterns, as I did 20 years earlier when I was in the first or second year at Sun.
SYDELL: Odd behavior patterns particular to the offices of Silicon Valley: sleeping on futons under the desk, working for weeks and months on end without a day off. Schmidt set out to professionalize Google, and he did. Today, he looks every bit the Silicon Valley CEO: casually yet professionally dressed in a carefully pressed shirt, a blue sweater tossed neatly over his shoulders. But in humble surroundings: His own office is tiny, cramped, and kind of disorganized. Schmidt says he also connected to the politics of Google. He says he is committed to the unofficial motto: Don't be evil. They also believe that technology can solve the environmental crisis. Google has one of the largest solar installations in Silicon Valley.
Dr. SCHMIDT: The green energy is an example of Google caring about something that touches an awful lot of people, but maybe Google can make a small contribution, but an important one,and we're happy to do that. And as more of these kinds of things up - you know, we expect to speak up.
SYDELL: In his position as CEO, Schmidt already is speaking out. This past year, he publicly made a $3 trillion policy proposal to wean the U.S. off oil. In fact, it was discussions about green technology that first brought him into contact with then-presidential candidate Barack Obama. The two men discovered they shared a vision of how technology could transform the country; both believe that more information is a force for good. Schmidt has been advising Mr. Obama on how to make government more open using the Internet.
Dr. SCHMIDT: Much more use of social networking, much more use of involvement, much more than just Web sites for government programs, which was achieved a decade ago.
SYDELL: Recently, Mr. Obama announced that documents from all official meetings with outside organizations would be available online, and Schmidt has been giving technological advice for this. The idea is to allow Americans to discuss government decision-making, and it's a reflection of Mr. Obama's grassroots organizing background. It's also a reflection of how Schmidt runs Google, says author David Vise.
Mr. VISE: Google, on the technology side, runs a very flat organization, which is quite similar in philosophy. Rather than being very hierarchical and having a lot of layers of management, Google, to this day, has tried to keep the size of project teams very small so that the best ideas could still bubble up.
SYDELL: Both Mr. Obama and Eric Schmidt believe that technology will drive the rescue of the American economy by creating new jobs and new industries. That's a view that people in Silicon Valley think has been dangerously neglected by the Bush administration. Venture capitalist Jon Feiber worked with Eric Schmidt at Sun.
Mr. JON FEIBER (Partner, Mohr Davidow Ventures): We need people with Eric's skills and other people engaged in fundamental discussio ns with the government. So, I was thrilled, both because I have a lot of respect for Eric personally, as well as it's a general statement that people like Eric are going to be a part of the thinking going forward.
SYDELL: Of course, as the CEO of one of the largest tech companies in the world, Schmidt's vision may be more tied up to what's good for the corporate giant he runs rather than what is good for the country. Barack Obama has also announced that he will be the first president to have a chief technology officer, and Eric Schmidt has been mentioned as a candidate for the job. Schmidt has said he would not take it but would like to continue to offer informal advice. Laura Sydell, NPR News, San Francisco.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host.
The growing season is over in all but the warmest parts of the country, but for most farmers, the work goes on. We've been following the Griffieon family of Ankeny, Iowa, through the seasons. They live in a white clapboard house on an 1,100-acre farm that's been in the family since the late 1800s. This year, they've raised a successful crop of corn and soybeans. Craig Griffieon, his wife, LaVon, and their daughter also raise livestock and sell beef, pork and poultry in local markets. Our story is produced by John Biewen of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.
(Soundbite of footsteps)
Mr. CRAIG GRIFFIEON (Farmer, Ankeny, Iowa): We direct market meat at the local farmers market, and then we also sell it right out of our - off of our farm. And we have freezers that we converted the...
(Soundbite of metal door opening)
Mr. GRIFFIEON: The old - this used to be a hog house. And since we don't put hogs in here anymore, we converted it into our meat-storage unit, where we keep the frozen meat that we sell to people.
(Soundbite of stacking meat)
Ms. LAVON GRIFFIEON: Do you have any more hamburger, Adam(ph)? Oh, the one - oh, those are one and a half pounds?
We did nine cattle last year, six hogs, about 500 chickens is what I raised, and then probably 35 turkeys. And out of all that, we netted $5,000.
We had a whole cow cut up into hamburger.
(Soundbite of searching through freezer)
Ms. GRIFFIEON: And I've sure not seen a cow's worth of hamburger here.
(Soundbite of chest opening)
Ms. GRIFFIEON: We used to hear about Mom and her egg money, so I guess it's Mom and her diversified-livestock-operation money around here. And I'm taking a lot of credit there because I'm the one that sells it, but Craig actually raises the cattle.
Mr. GRIFFIEON: This is one of our lots. This is the style calf that we butcher for our meat business. There are probably about 75 percent Limousin and about a quarter, maybe, Angus. They're black because we've got a black Limousin bull. These are raised antibiotic-free and no hormones added. In other words, we don't do any implanting of growth hormones. They're corn fed, and it's all natural-type feed. I don't feed any GMOs to them.
Ms. GRIFFIEON: In a perfect world, he'd also be raising beef that is grass-fed and not eating corn. And - but it'll take a smaller-framed calf than what we - the kind that we're breeding right now. So, we're going to have to look at some different genetics, and then we're going to have to go through the problem of trying to convince Craig that we can take his expensive corn acres and turn them into grass land. That'll take some convincing, too, but...
Mr. GRIFFIEON: We'll have to get the pencil out for that.
Ms. GRIFFIEON: We'll go through lots of pencils.
(Soundbite of laughter)
(Soundbite of turkeys)
Ms. AUTUMN OGDEN: I like the livestock a lot better than the crops. I don't know, I guess it's just all the warm, fuzzy, little animals.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. OGDEN: My name is Autumn Ogden. I'm 25 years old, and I'm the oldest of the four Griffieon children. I got married about three years ago and have, well, about a year ago, I moved back to our family farm, and I'm just helping out around the farm.
(Soundbite of turkeys)
Ms. OGDEN: I guess I really like the turkeys because they have more of a personality than the chickens do. But we raise them for Thanksgiving, and then usually the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, we take them to a locker and have them butchered.
(Soundbite of wings flapping)
Ms. OGDEN: It's hard to get them into the trailer just because they're kind of massive in size.
(Soundbite of trailer door closing)
Ms. OGDEN: They're a little more wily like that. They really wait - they watch and they kind of wait for a moment of opportunity, and then they try to escape. After, I don't know, after I feed the turkeys, you know, I get attached to them. And then I'll see the checks and I'll start to add the checks up, and it'll make it better.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. OGDEN: The price of everything has gone up so much, just the basic cost of living. And it's so hard because you want to - you know, we want to produce food for our neighbors and stuff, but for, like, families that - you know, people my age that have small children, and you know, things are really tight for them anyway. You know, you don't want to just price that meat to where they can't even afford it. But yet, you have to make a profit on the farm, too.
SIEGEL: Our story about the Griffieon family comes from John Biewen at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University. It was recorded by Rob Dillard of Iowa Public Radio.
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: A guitarist struggled to overcome a debilitating neurological disorder; that story is next on All Things Considered.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. Hospitals are supposed to be the place you go when you're sick, but many hospitals are sick themselves, victims of the bad economy. Late last year, the rating service Moody's dropped its assessment of bonds issued by nonprofit hospitals from stable to negative. NPR's Joanne Silberner reports on how the credit squeeze is taking its toll on nonprofit hospitals.
(Soundbite of emergency room)
JOANNE SILBERNER: Five-year-old Jane Sullivan sits cross-legged on a bed at St. John's Hospital in the middle-class suburb of Maplewood, Minnesota. She's still in her plaid school uniform. Her forehead is nearly hidden by white gauze.
Ms. JANE SULLIVAN (Patient, St. John's Hospital, Maplewood, Minnesota): Because I hurt my head. I stepped on a puddle of ice.
SILBERNER: That fall resulted in a lot of blood.
Ms. SULLIVAN: It spilled on my jacket.
SILBERNER: Jane's father, Joe, picked her up at school after the nurse called. The last thing he wanted to do was drive miles and miles looking for an emergency room. St. John's is five miles away.
Mr. JOE SULLIVAN: This was not in Jane's plan today or my plan, so having an emergency room close is really important.
SILBERNER: It's quiet now on a weekday morning, but things can get busy at night and on weekends. About 40,000 people a year come through this emergency department, including, in the past couple of years, patients injured by a nearby tornado, a chemical spill and a bridge collapse. Sometimes the 22 small, sparkling-clean rooms aren't enough. About five hours a month, the hospital has to turn patients away. That's not good, says St. John's chief financial officer, Bob Gill.
Mr. BOB GILL (Chief Financial Officer, HealthEast Care System): That's our job, to be in the community, to serve the patients. So, when we have to turn them away, it's a very uncomfortable feeling.
SILBERNER: Which is why three years ago, the hospital began planning an extension.
Mr. GILL: The biggest thing was the emergency department, the fact that it was going on divert on a regular basis and we were putting a lot of stress into the occupancy of the hospital.
SILBERNER: So, hospital officials made $68 million worth of plans. Among other things, they'd build a bigger, more sophisticated emergency department. They wanted more obstetrics room, because sometimes the obstetrics department has to send women in labor to a hospital 10 miles away. They'd finance it the way many nonprofit hospitals finance construction: by selling tax-free bonds. A few years ago, the interest rate they would've had to pay was an affordable 5.75 percent.
Mr. GILL: We had a viable project; we had something that was going to meet the community's needs and, you know, enable us to provide comprehensive patient-care services to our constituents.
SILBERNER: But by the time the construction plans were finally ready a year ago, the economy was starting to tank. Investment banker David Johnson, who's not connected to St. John's, is an expert on hospital financing.
Mr. DAVID JOHNSON (Investment Banker; Hospital-Financing Expert): The hospital revenue bond market functioned supremely well up until August of 2007. At that time, we saw the first cracks in the performance.
SILBERNER: The cracks started in some of those complicated funding structures Wall Street was pushing, different kind of bonds than what St. John's wanted to offer. Those bonds were having problems because of how they were insured and because their interest rates periodically changed. And that scared buyers away from the routine, fixed-rate type of bond St. John's wanted to offer, a type of bond that usually sold easily. Meanwhile, bond holders were trying to get rid of what they had. All that created a classic case of low demand and high supply. It didn't look good to Bob Gill at St. John's.
Mr. GILL: At that point in time, we realized that, whoa, wait a minute; this is not the time to be issuing bonds.
SILBERNER: For St. John's Hospital, the 5.75-percent rate they were ready to pay rose to eight or nine percent by early spring of 2008, if they could sell the bonds. Each percentage point increase meant the hospital would have to pay an extra $680,000 a year.
Mr. GILL: So, we really did a quick stop and a quick halt to the project, and since things have gotten worse in the credit markets and so on from that point, we have pretty much put the project on a hold.
SILBERNER: The market got even worse after St. John's made its decision. It used to be that in a typical week, $4 to $8 billion in hospital bonds were sold. But from mid-September to the end of October 2008, the hospital bond market essentially closed down, says investment banker David Johnson.
Mr. JOHNSON: There were no sales.
SILBERNER: None?
Mr. JOHNSON: None.
SILBERNER: It's since come back a little, he says, but it's still very erratic. According to a survey this fall by the American Hospital Association, more than half of American hospitals have postponed or canceled capital improvements. Johnson says the only silver lining is that the bond situation helps limit overbuilding and unnecessary spending for redundant technology. Losing the chance to improve St. John's Hospital frustrates CFO Bob Gill.
Mr. GILL: It was a big disappointment to all of us that we were put into a position where we could not do something that we knew was the right thing to do. It's hard; it's, you know, it's uncomfortable. But you know, we have to do what we have to do, and common sense said don't do it and we didn't.
SILBERNER: Meanwhile, Gill has scraped together about a quarter of the money he had been after to do some modernization. And as for Jane Sullivan, who scraped her head? She got stitches put in and went home, her hospital wristband covered in the stickers the ER nurses gave her. Joanne Silberner, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. Imagine if your hands shook so badly that you couldn't even lift a glass of water. That's what life is like for millions of Americans who suffer from essential tremor disorder. The condition can be devastating if you're a musician, and that was almost the case for guitarist Richard Crandell. The musician found a way to continue composing and performing, as Joel Rose reports.
JOEL ROSE: Richard Crandell started playing guitar when he was a kid, but he didn't really take it seriously until the late 1960s, when he heard guitarist John Fahey.
(Soundbite of acoustic guitar music)
ROSE: For Crandell, it was a revelation.
Mr. RICHARD CRANDELL (Guitarist): With an acoustic guitar, you could create a whole orchestra. In other words, I could play these solo pieces that sounded fine just the way there were.
(Soundbite of acoustic guitar music)
ROSE: In the early 1970s, Crandell left his job and his marriage in Buffalo, New York. He moved to the West Coast and started writing songs of his own.
(Soundbite of acoustic guitar music)
ROSE: Crandell settled down in Eugene, Oregon, and eventually opened for Fahey. Crandell's occasional roommate Mark Zorn says his friend's guitar rarely left his hands.
Mr. MARK ZORN: He was always practicing. He was always practicing. It was just a joy to have music in the house like that.
(Soundbite of acoustic guitar music)
ROSE: Crandell went on to record half a dozen albums; one of his tunes was even recorded by another of his idols, Leo Kottke, but Crandell never achieved Kottke's level of fame. And these days, the guitar seems to cause him more frustration than joy.
Mr. CRANDELL: If my life depended on it and I had to play the dance section of "Be Good or Be Gone," this is how it would come out.
(Soundbite of misplayed notes)
Mr. CRANDELL: I can't play it.
ROSE: Richard Crandell was diagnosed six years ago with essential tremor disorder. An estimated 10 million Americans live with the condition, which affects fine-motor coordination. In Crandell's case, his hands shake when he tries to write, use a computer, or play difficult passages on the guitar. It was around this time that Crandell got a job offer; a local concert promoter asked Crandell to drive a tour bus for Afropop star Thomas Mapfumo and his band. But Crandell had never driven a bus before.
Mr. CRANDELL: I was petrified because I was responsible for the lives of 14 Africans. I was not mechanical, I had a terrible sense of direction, but they trusted me.
ROSE: Crandell successfully piloted the tour bus from Oregon to Alabama and back, then parked it in front of his apartment.
Mr. CRANDELL: They had totally cleaned out the bus. I looked under one of the seats and there was - I found this mbira. And I said, oh, what's this?
ROSE: The mbira is a traditional thumb piano from Africa. Crandell's comes from Zimbabwe. It's a flat piece of wood that he holds in his hands, with a row of metal strips across the top that he plays with his thumbs.
(Soundbite of mbira music)
ROSE: To his surprise, Crandell discovered that his hands don't shake when he plays it.
Mr. CRANDELL: I didn't say, oh, I've got essential tremor; I better start playing mbira. I just like the sound of it.
ROSE: Crandell taught himself how to tune and play the mbira. From the beginning, he says, he wasn't trying to play Shona music from Zimbabwe. Still, he was criticized, not by the musicians in Thomas Mapfumo's band, but by other Americans.
Mr. CRANDELL: There are little pockets of mbira players around the country who play traditional Shona music. And they sort of look down on you if you change the instrument around or do anything else. But the guys in Thomas's band, they loved what I was doing. They say, Richard, play us a new song.
(Soundbite of mbira music)
ROSE: Before long, Crandell was performing his new songs in public. Even his longtime friend Mark Zorn was surprised by how quickly Crandell adapted to the mbira.
Mr. ZORN: I didn't take it seriously until I was wandering around the Saturday market, and I heard these shimmering notes, which could only have been from the mbira. As music does, it just turned my head right away, and I moved toward the source, and there was Richard.
ROSE: Crandell's songs also caught the ear of Mark Zorn's younger brother, the MacArthur Genius Grant-winning saxophonist, composer and producer John Zorn, who runs a record label and a club in New York City. In 2004, Zorn brought Crandell to the East Coast to record. He recruited Brazilian-born Cyro Baptista to join Crandell in the studio.
(Soundbite of mbira music)
ROSE: The percussionist says he was impressed by Crandell's sense of restraint.
Mr. CYRO BAPTISTA (Jazz and World Music Percussionist): He plays enough, not more than should be. It's great because he plays leaving space. I could play in the betweens with him.
(Soundbite of mbira music)
Mr. BAPTISTA: The fact that he played guitar before, it's a plus for him because he has a harmonic concept of the instrument. And plus, he have amazing rhythm.
ROSE: Baptista and Crandell made two records together. They've gotten strong reviews and even made a few critics' top-10 lists.
Mr. CRANDELL: I'm grateful to have my little mbira. It turns out that I've gotten more attention on that than I ever got on the guitar.
ROSE: That started to change in the last few years, as more of Crandell's guitar music has been released on CD for the first time.
(Soundbite of acoustic guitar music)
ROSE: Crandell says it's bittersweet to read glowing reviews of his early work.
Mr. CRANDELL: I used to not think I was quite good enough. I didn't realize how special what I was doing was; you know, I just kind of took it for granted. So now, I've got this other gift, you know, of the mbira and being able to do something with that.
ROSE: Crandell isn't taking his second act for granted. He is planning to record a benefit album for the Essential Tremor Foundation, and he has even bigger plans.
Mr. CRANDELL: My mission at this point is to calm the world with this music because it seems to be so soothing. And I'd love to play for the inauguration, if anybody out there is listening.
ROSE: And if anyone is going to need some soothing music, Crandell figures it's President-elect Barack Obama. For NPR News, I'm Joel Rose.
(Soundbite of mbira music)
SIEGEL: You can hear a cross-section of Crandell's music, both on guitar and mbira, at nprmusic.org.
(Soundbite of mbira music)
SIEGEL: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The rock band called Rudely Interrupted comes from Melbourne, Australia. In December 2008, the band kicked off its first international tour, and it played an unusual gig, at the United Nations. That's not because Rudely Interrupted is the next international rock phenomenon. All but one of the six band members have serious disabilities, ranging from Down's syndrome to autism, blindness and hearing problems. NPR's Margot Adler reports.
MARGOT ADLER: As one person put it, if there was ever a building that needed to be rocked, it's the United Nations. The band Rudely Interrupted was introduced by 62-year-old Robert Hill, Australia's U.N. ambassador.
Ambassador ROBERT HILL (Australian Ambassador to the United Nations): We have Josh on drums, 21 years of age; Rory on vocals and guitar, 21 years...
(Soundbite of applause)
ADLER: The band was at the U.N. for the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, but it was also the beginning of Rudely Interrupted's international tour. The band's signature song is called "Don't Break My Heart."
(Soundbite of song "Don't Break My Heart")
RUDELY INTERRUPTED: (Singing) Don't break my heart. Don't break my heart. Don't break my heart. Don't break my heart, My heart...
Mr. ROHAN BROOKS (Manager, Rudely Interrupted): "Don't Break My Heart" was our first song that came from a conversation that me and Rory had, or it was a question Rory had, really. He said to me, do you think you can die from a broken heart?
ADLER: That's Rohan Brooks, the band's manager. Rory is lead guitarist Rory Burnside.
Mr. RORY BURNSIDE (Lead Guitarist, Rudely Interrupted): I lost my favorite teacher at school after she had a 20-year battle with cancer.
ADLER: And so, it was your heart that was being broken, in a way?
Mr. BURNSIDE: It was.
Mr. BROOKS: Rory asked that question. I turned into a bit of a melody, and I played this discordant thing and then Rory goes, that's a malfunction, that's a malfunction.
(Soundbite of song "Don't Break My Heart")
RUDELY INTERRUPTED: (Singing) Malfunction, malfunction, malfunction...
ADLER: Guitarist Rory Burnside is blind. He has had many facial operations and has Asperger's syndrome. Burnside says the name Rudely Interrupted has to do with the way Asperger's affects him.
Mr. BURNSIDE: My behavior can be a bit disruptive, but because of all the challenges in my life, I've also had a number of interruptions to my life. That's why I say I'm the interrupter or the interrupted. And also, I misinterpret situations. For example, if in a rehearsal or a sound check, we have to keep repeating, I misinterpret the repetition as a delay or a waste of time. I want people to be aware that the Asperger's can lead to misinterpretation of situations rather than, oh, he's just impatient; he's obnoxious.
ADLER: Rudely Interrupted started as part of a musical-therapy program led by Rohan Brooks, who in addition to managing the band, does backup vocals. He's the only non-disabled member of the group. The other members include Josh Hogan, the drummer, who has autism; Constance Fitzpatrick, who plays tambourine, has Down syndrome; as does Sam Beke.
Mr. SAM BEKE (Bassist, Rudely Interrupted): I am the bass player.
ADLER: Now, you're Marcus over there?
Mr. MARCUS STONE (Keyboardist, Rudely Interrupted): That's me. I'm the keyboard player. I first started learning piano when I was 14 at Loyola College.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ADLER: The members of Rudely Interrupted see themselves as musicians first and foremost. And they want to be taken seriously, but they still seem to have a lot of fun, and they don't take themselves too seriously, as in this moment, when they're playing with a song they've been working on called "Pimple," clearly not something they would have done at the U.N.
(Soundbite of song "Pimple")
RUDELY INTERRUPTED: (Singing) Got a pimple, got a pimple, Got a pimple on my neck. And if you squeeze it, I will bleed. If you squeeze it, I will bleed...
ADLER: The band members say their disadvantages did help to propel them into the spotlight, and they used those disadvantages to their advantage. But now, they get reviewed pretty much like any other Australian indie band. Burnside and Brooks say they got treated much the same way when they played in New York City.
Mr. BURNSIDE: Double-header yesterday.
Mr. BROOKS: Amazing, really good, and we had an absolute ball. It was just really good to go and play, you know, at a local venue with some other great bands. So - and we were accepted. I'd say that we've been accepted by the New York music community.
ADLER: Scene?
Mr. BROOKS: Yeah, scene.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ADLER: That's great. Rudely Interrupted has performed in Australia, but this is their first international tour. Rohan Brooks, the manager, says that traveling with the group can be challenging.
Mr. BROOKS: It can be mayhem when we're not playing our songs, and we're traveling from here to there and trying to find this park with that car and picking up this car and going to that hotel. But for that three minutes, when we start the song to the end of the song, the world makes complete sense to all of us.
Mr. BURNSIDE: For that, say, 20 minutes, half an hour, that we're on stage playing, that's got to be the best half hour of our lives.
(Soundbite of song "In Our Dreams")
RUDELY INTERRUPTED: (Singing) We don't know why In our dreams, we often fly. Then our minds, it just floats by (we don't know why). The heroes grow from TV shows. So hard to hold control (we don't know why) In our dreams, we often fly...
ADLER: The reviews have been good. Time Out New York called the song genuinely catchy, not to mention affecting. And after the band played in Toronto, one review said, extremely well-crafted music by a bunch of guys who happen to be saddled with slightly wonky sets of genes. Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.
(Soundbite of song "In Our Dreams")
RUDELY INTERRUPTED: (Singing) The heroes grow from TV shows. So hard to hold control.
SIEGEL: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Today, the Environmental Protection Agency said it found arsenic levels more than 100 times the acceptable amount in a river near a massive spill of coal ash. Eleven days ago, an earthen dam collapsed at a Tennessee Valley Authority power plant near Kingston, Tennessee. More than a billion gallons of toxic sludge inundated hundreds of acres. The spill has caused a rift in the delicate relationship between the TVA and people who live nearby. From member station WUOT, Matt Shafer Powell reports.
MATT SHAFER POWELL: The twin smokestacks of the Kingston Fossil Plant loom like monstrous goalposts over Terry Gupton's East Tennessee farm.
Mr. TERRY GUPTON (Farmer, Kingston, Tennessee): We have 240 acres here, and we have had some land leased that we grow hay on.
SHAFER POWELL: For 10 years, Gupton's lived here, raising cattle and horses, growing corn and hay. But a thick, cement-like sludge from the TVA spill has taken over part of his property, pushing a polluted creek into the spring he uses to water his cattle.
Mr. GUPTON: It's backing up over our land, and if it has heavy metals and that kind of stuff in it, we won't be able to use the land, so that's a great concern.
SHAFER POWELL: There's a wooded spot next to the creek along the back of Gupton's property. In the past, that's where he's taken his grandchildren fishing and camping. When we get there, we step out of his pickup truck. His dog, Blue, follows us.
Mr. GUPTON: Blue, get on the truck, son. Get on the truck.
SHAFER POWELL: He sends Blue back to the truck because he's afraid it's not safe.
Mr. GUPTON: Get there. You stay. I don't want him to get in this sludge.
SHAFER POWELL: Gupton stops walking where a stained mat of corn stubble slopes into a foot-thick sea of gooey, gray mud.
Mr. GUPTON: This is about as far as I'm going.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GUPTON: You see the dead fish and no telling what all.
SHAFER POWELL: Gupton says he's not angry, like some of his neighbors. He says he's more disappointed that the TVA let this happen, and he's not sure he can believe everything the TVA tells him. And he's sad, sad that the spill has destroyed some of the farm where he and his wife, Sandy, hoped to spend their later years.
Mr. GUPTON: I don't think, you know, from what TVA says, I don't think they realize those kinds of emotions that the property owners have here.
SHAFER POWELL: Those emotions directed at the TVA range from fury to sadness to sympathy, and in the case of Steve Patterson, gratitude. Patterson's appliance store, across the street from the Kingston plant, has an electric sign that blinks bright red letters - Thank you, TVA.
Mr. STEVE PATTERSON (Owner, Patterson Home Appliance Center, Kingston, Tennessee): The quality of my life and the people in this community are directly related to the efforts of TVA, from their flood controls to their power. You know, I enjoy my electricity being on every morning, noon and night, 24 hours a day.
SHAFER POWELL: These attitudes show how complicated the relationship is between the TVA and the communities throughout the Tennessee Valley.
(Soundbite of TVA advertisement)
Unidentified Announcer: The children of the Tennessee Valley have recaptured the hope of their grandfather. They have learned that the TVA is, indeed, the yardstick, a measure of what men can build in peace...
SHAFER POWELL: The TVA has brought electricity and prosperity to previously impoverished areas of the Southeast, but it's also brought pollution and a legacy of strong-armed control over the region's land and water. Historian and author Bruce Wheeler says the TVA and the people of the valley have a deeply dependent relationship.
Dr. BRUCE WHEELER (History, University of Tennessee): It's like TVA is part of the East Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky family, and families have complex relationships. They're part of our family for good and for ill.
SHAFER POWELL: Some families are better than others at working through conflict. Whether the TVA and the residents of East Tennessee ever resolve this conflict may depend upon how long it takes the TVA to clean up the mess and whether the people living near the Kingston power plant will ever feel safe here again. For NPR News, I'm Matt Shafer Powell.
SIEGEL: It's All Things Considered from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. In the Gaza Strip, it was a day of more Israeli air strikes, and rockets continued falling in southern Israel. The death toll in Gaza now stands at 430; four Israelis have died in the past week. Israel says the air strikes will continue until Hamas stops firing rockets. In Gaza, members of Hamas buried their most senior member killed in the bombing, and the Palestinians protested in the West Bank. In a moment, we'll talk with two people who were closely involved in the Middle East peace process during the Clinton presidency about what the Obama administration might do. First, though, NPR's Eric Westervelt has the latest.
ERIC WESTERVELT: The ongoing air strikes and the death yesterday of Nizar Rayan, a senior figure in Hamas, appear only to have hardened Hamas against any cease-fire and sparked wider calls for reprisal attacks, including suicide bombings. Ismail Radwan is a Hamas spokesman in Gaza.
Mr. ISMAIL RADWAN (Spokesman, Hamas): (Through translator) After this heinous crime, all options are open for the resistance to curb the aggression, including martyrdom operations and striking Israeli interests in all places.
WESTERVELT: Civilians in Gaza were shaken by more bombings, electricity remained spotty, and few ventured out into the rubble-strewn streets except to wait in long lines for bread. Israel struck more than 40 Hamas targets today, the army says. And Hamas fired off more than 30 rockets. Doctors say nine people were killed in Gaza Friday, including five children. No Israelis were seriously injured, police here say. The White House again blamed Hamas for the crisis, but also called on Israel to avoid killing civilians and to boost aid to the territory's beleaguered citizens. Israel today let several hundred Palestinians with foreign passports leave Gaza. Mark Regev is the Israeli prime minister's spokesman.
Mr. MARK REGEV (Spokesman, Office of the Israeli Prime Minister): This morning, Israel facilitated the exit from Gaza of foreign nationals who want to leave. We are acting very energetically with the international community to facilitate the inflow into Gaza of foods and medicine.
WESTERVELT: At the same time, Israel continued to bar foreign journalists from entering Gaza, despite a ruling this week by the Israeli Supreme Court to allow some reporters to enter every time Israel opens up the crossing. Meantime, protests broke out in several Palestinian cities in the occupied West Bank today as Hamas urged supporters to observe a day of rage over the Israeli bombardments.
(Soundbite of riot)
(Soundbite of crowd shouting, chanting in Arabic)
WESTERVELT: In Ramallah, after Friday prayers, several thousand people marched through downtown streets, among them, Omar Barghouti, who said the bombings in Gaza had helped unite Palestinian factions around a common enemy.
Mr. OMAR BARGHOUTI (Hamas Supporter, Gaza): (Through translator) We're pushing for national unity. Without unity, there will be no Hamas and no Fatah. Both factions have the objective of liberating Palestine. Anybody who idealizes one faction over another is mistaken; factionalism will get us nowhere.
WESTERVELT: But while there were chants of unity, unity, Palestinian police worked hard to keep the Fatah and Hamas supporters separated and repeatedly cracked down on pro-Hamas demonstrators. At one point, a Hamas man called a pro-Fatah protester a traitor, sparking a fistfight, and shots were fired into the air.
(Soundbite of gunshots)
WESTERVELT: A few people were injured in scuffles. In an uncharacteristic way, Palestinian riot police and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank were united today in their quest to crack down hard on Palestinians seething over the Israeli bombing of Gaza. After getting roughed up by their own police force in Ramallah, hundreds of Palestinian teens and young adults made their way over to an Israeli checkpoint, where they were greeted with rubber bullets and tear gas. At the entrance to Qalandiya, a massive, walled checkpoint between Ramallah and Jerusalem, teenagers threw rocks, burned tires and taunted Israeli soldiers, who responded with round after round of tear gas.
(Soundbite of tear-gas shots)
WESTERVELT: Israel declared a general closure of the West Bank through the weekend. The move, which severely restricts movements of Palestinians, is aimed at reining in protests and violence. Israel also added mobile checkpoints and bolstered security throughout Jerusalem and entrances to the city, fearing more protests and reprisal attacks over its ongoing bombing of Gaza. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Ramallah.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
What might the Obama administration do about all this? We're going to hear now from two men who were involved in U.S. Mideast diplomacy during the Clinton years. Martin Indyk is co-author of the article "Beyond Iraq: A New U.S. Strategy for the Middle East" in the current issue of Foreign Affairs. He was ambassador to Israel and also assistant secretary of state, and he has recently published the memoir "Innocent Abroad" as well. Welcome to the program once again, Martin Indyk.
Dr. MARTIN INDYK (Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution): Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: And coincidentally, Martin Indyk's book is one of three reviewed by Robert Malley in the article "How Not to Make Peace in the Middle East" in the current issue of the New York Review of Books. Mr. Malley worked on the National Security Council staff in the Clinton White House and later, as a special assistant to President Clinton. Welcome back to the program.
Dr. ROBERT MALLEY (Director, Middle East and North Africa Program, International Crisis Group): Good day to you.
SIEGEL: So far, U.S. policy on the Israeli offensive in Gaza seems to be to accuse Hamas of bringing about Israeli retaliation, urging Israel to take care not to hit civilians, and to press for a durable and sustainable cease-fire. First, Martin Indyk, is the Obama administration likely to do anything different, and should it do anything different?
Dr. INDYK: No, I think that the first requirement is to get a cease-fire in place. And I think that the current secretary of state is setting that up together with the international community, which is also massing around this idea of a U.N. Security Council resolution that, I think, may be even introduced as early as Monday that will be focusing on trying to get at least a call from the international community for a cease-fire and hopefully, pressure on Hamas to stop its rocket attacks, which I think would lead to the Israelis stopping their attacks.
SIEGEL: Robert Malley, do you expect or hope for a different position or different attitude from the Obama administration on the bombing of Gaza?
Dr. MALLEY: Well, I think the real question is, what would the Obama administration find once it comes into office several weeks from now? And the situation in Gaza could range from a cease-fire, which obviously would be ideal, to a war of attrition that continues, or to a situation which Israel has decided it had to occupy Gaza to take care of the situation. Those are very distinct scenarios that the Obama administration may have to face, but we won't know that until January 20th.
SIEGEL: I want to hear from both of you, since you both were active in the Clinton years. The people who will likely be leading Mideast diplomacy in the Clinton years will be led by former first lady, that is, the Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton, and many other veterans of those efforts. Mark, first of all, do you think that the group that was involved in Mideast peacemaking efforts in the '90s thinks that, if you could keep on doing the same sort of things, it could work this time? Is there a sense that dramatically different approaches are required, or that there were inherent weakness in the old approaches?
Dr. INDYK: Well, there were definitely inherent weaknesses in the old approaches. The reality is that we tried for eight years and ended up failing, and so there's obviously a need to rethink that and see how we can learn from those lessons. It's something I just tried to do in this book you mentioned. But we should also bear in mind that we've seen this movie before, and although it's always good to try to come up with new ideas, it's hard to reinvent the wheel in this conflict. It's been raging for a long time, and all the ideas in a sense have been tried.
The - it's interesting to note that the Clinton administration came in, in 1993 with the crisis over Hamas, provoked by a decision by then Chief of Staff Ehud Barak, chief of staff of the army - he is now defense minister - to evict Hamas terrorists to Mount Lebanon. And the first thing that Secretary of State Christopher had to do was to mediate an arrangement which enabled the parties to come back to the negotiating table.
And so, in that sense, I think President-elect Obama has made clear he wants to pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace from day one. He's going to have to try to get a cease-fire in place and then see whether that creates an opportunity to get back to the negotiating table, perhaps in circumstances where Hamas is somewhat humbled, where it becomes possible to garner support for an effort to resolve the conflict, because we've been again reminded in such a bloody way of the consequences.
SIEGEL: Rob Malley, Martin Indyk says you've seen this movie before. You think that fresh, new approaches are required?
Dr. MALLEY: Well, I make a couple of observations. The first is, I think we have to realize this has been 15 years that we've tried a peace process, and we've tried it not simply under one configuration, but almost every configuration imaginable - with strong Israeli and Palestinian leaders and weak Israeli and Palestinian leaders, but who were determined, it seemed, to reach a deal with a U.S. administration that was prepared to go very far in intervening, and a U.S. administration that was prepared to stay on the sidelines, with Arab countries involved or not involved. So, it's not a matter of tinkering because we've tinkered quite a bit. I think there is a need now to reflect deep as to why things have gone so dramatically wrong in the last 15 years.
The second point I'd make is, the situation the Obama administration is going to face is going to be dramatically different from that which President Clinton faced when he took office or even when he left office in the year 2000. We don't have now the kind of Palestinian entity leadership that's capable of negotiating and reaching an agreement because of everything that has happened to it and that it's done to itself. And the notion that now you could have a negotiation between Palestinian leadership, the one that we want to deal with, Mahmoud Abbas and his colleagues, which have been so thoroughly discredited by what's happened now as they sit and see what's happening to their people in Gaza and can't lift a finger. I think we have to question how we're going to put this back together, with what parties and with what ideas so that we don't find ourselves negotiation between Israel...
SIEGEL: Mm-hmm.
Dr. MALLEY: And the Palestine leadership that can't speak for its people.
Dr. INDYK: Rob, if I can just jump in here, I think that there is one significant difference beyond the ones that Rob Malley talked about, which is that the Arab states are prepared to be more active than they were in any time during the ages that we were involved in it. And they have a real need to do so, partly to save their own credibility in these circumstances, but also to help salvage the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, because if it's not possible to show that the way of reconciliation, negotiation, compromise and ending the conflict works, then Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranians supporters are going to be the ones that rule the day in the Middle East, then, and we will rue the day when that happens.
SIEGEL: Rob Malley, do you agree that there's potentially more support in the region for peacemaking efforts?
Dr. MALLEY: I think there may be more support, but unfortunately, by parties that have lost the more credibility at home. I think Egypt, Jordan and others, again, because of what's happened over the last few years and most dramatically over the last week, look more feckless than they did in the past. And I think one of the unfortunate consequences from an American standpoint of what's been happening is that Hamas, even if it's militarily degraded, which I assume it will be, very likely will come out of this politically emboldened and strengthened, because however hit it is, it will be able to tell its people in the region, we withstood the most ferocious onslaught, and we're still standing.
SIEGEL: You thinking of - as Hezbollah did...
Dr. MALLEY: Exactly.
SIEGEL: After the events in southern Lebanon. Robert Malley and Martin Indyk, thanks a lot for talking with us today about what might be the challenge and the policy adopted by the Obama administration in the Middle East.
Dr. MALLEY: Thank you.
Dr. INDYK: Thank you.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Now, from high to low tech: books. Alan Cheuse has this review of four new thrillers.
ALAN CHEUSE: Veteran thriller writer Lincoln Child sets his new novel, "Terminal Freeze," on the ice above the Arctic Circle. As a team of scientists arrive in an old military base, it's the novel that heats up when they dig around in the old lava tubes of a dormant arctic volcano and discover an ancient, apparently flash-frozen carcass of a large cat resembling a saber tooth tiger. Things really begin to get scary when the frozen beast thaws itself out. Child writes clean sentences. He creates plausible characters. He does this without much seeming effort, and makes a great movie right on the pages in front of you.
Things literally warm up in a new novel by best-selling writer and attorney Richard North Patterson. His new book, "Eclipse," takes place in an oil-rich African nation he calls Luandia, which bears a great resemblance to present-day Nigeria. The eclipse of the title comes on a night when a local political leader raises the stakes in the struggle between his movement in the government, and the government brings down a massive offensive of death and savagery against his home village and arrests the leader on the charge of murder.
Another new thriller I think you'll enjoy is "Daemon," a relentless and nearly maniacal first novel by California software consultant Daniel Suarez. It unfolds a relentless and certainly maniacal plot by a dying 34-year-old computer genius, who wants to turn society into one huge computer game. The technological lure that Suarez manages to impart rather smoothly lends this swiftly paced, blood-drenched, cops-against-computer-genius narrative enough depth to keep you cheerfully reading. "Daemon" is a novel for gamers, or something like a computer game for readers, and about 30 pages from the end, you'll cheer when you figure out that there's a sequel in the offing.
One more novel: "Noir" by Olivier Pauvert. It's a French thriller set in the year 2019, a mesmerizing story that opens in the middle of things with an unnamed narrator discovering the mutilated corpse of a young woman, hanging by a wire from a tree. Our hero is almost immediately off and running in a brilliant tour de force that's something like a tour of France. He's on the lam from Nice to Paris to the Alps, in a nation that's mutated into a pharmacological fascist state. Like "Daemon," this novel doesn't bode much happiness for the future, so the best thing to do is read it now.
SIEGEL: Our reviewer is Alan Cheuse. His new novel is "To Catch the Lightning." He was reviewing the following new thrillers: "Noir" by Olivier Pauvert, "Eclipse" by Richard North Patterson, "Daemon" by Daniel Suarez, and "Terminal Freeze" by Lincoln Child.
(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. Atif Irfan is a lawyer from Alexandria, Virginia. Yesterday, he was one of nine American Muslim passengers who were ordered off an AirTran flight from Washington's Reagan National Airport bound for Orlando. Evidently, a couple of passengers overheard a conversation between Mr. Irfan and his sister-in-law and mistook it for plotting some terrorist act. Atif Irfan and the others were questioned by the FBI. The whole group was cleared. But later yesterday, the group still had trouble getting on an AirTran flight. And Mr. Irfan now joins us from Orlando. Welcome.
Mr. ATIF IRFAN (Lawyer, Alexandria, Virginia): Oh, thank you.
SIEGEL: What did you and your sister-in-law say that somebody obviously misconstrued?
Mr. IRFAN: So, the conversation that we were having - normally, we sit in the center of the plane, because I have always been told that it's the safest place. In this situation, because we're traveling with such a large group of my family, I had booked all the tickets for the back of the plane - or when I selected the seats, I booked them for the back of the plane because it was the only place where there was a large amount of seats available. In doing so, we're walking back towards to the plane, and my sister-in-law comments, like, hey, you know, we're by the bathrooms; that's kind of gross. And she's like, well, at least it's the safest place to be by the engines.
And in this plane, the engines were in the back of this particular plane. And so, in saying so, I said to my wife and to my sister-in-law, actually, the safest place to sit in a plane is towards the wings because it's the most structurally sound. And my sister-in-law proceeded to say that, oh, I guess that might be true, you know, considering it's probably not safe to sit by the engines in case something happens. And that was pretty much it. It was a pretty, you know, benign comment. We didn't use any of those, you know, buzz words like bomb or...
SIEGEL: Right, right, right.
Mr. IRFAN: Anything like that, you know, terrorist. And I guess from the reports that I'm hearing, obviously, the people that heard this gleaned something very different from it, that we are about to attack.
SIEGEL: Oh, where you were positioning the explosives to blow up the plane or something like that.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. IRFAN: Something like that, to that effect, or that we were plotting something else, but it's a quite a ridiculous thing to think, considering that we had, you know, three small children with us. And you know - anyways, people, a lot of times, I think, tend to hear what they want to hear.
SIEGEL: The account I read of this in the Washington Post said first of all, since this is a telephone call, I wouldn't know that you were clearly a Muslim family. People were wearing attire that we associate with being...
Mr. IRFAN: Sure, yeah.
SIEGEL: From South Asia, I guess.
Mr. IRFAN: My brother and I both have beards, and all of the women in the family wear headscarves. So, other than that, we were wearing, you know, pants and shirts otherwise.
SIEGEL: Right. So, after this, you're thrown off the plane. And who actually questioned you about this?
Mr. IRFAN: The federal marshals initially questioned us. They sort of had us, well, stand in the walkway from - that leads to the airport to the plane. And just had a very quickly like, do you know what this is, why we're doing this? There were some comments made that people felt uncomfortable with that you shouldn't have said on the plane. We - normally, my wife and I are actually very careful about this kind of stuff, but this was, I guess, some time that we maybe should have been a little more careful. Once the federal marshals spoke to us very briefly, we eventually talked to the FBI agents. And the FBI agents, after a very short amount of questioning, very quickly realized that we not only posed no threat to that airline or that plane, but that, quite frankly, we were somewhat model citizens.
SIEGEL: But by that time, I gather, getting on the AirTran flight was out of the question, according to the airline.
Mr. IRFAN: Oh, they actually had removed everyone from the airplane initially and sort of paraded everyone past us while we stood in the concourse, and everyone was giving all these sort of glaring looks of, like, what was this, you know, terrorist family or what have you. And they had, I think, some kind of a - like, a dog that can sniff out bombs or whatever go through the plane and take off our luggage, quarantined us for awhile, let everyone back on the plane, and they took off, and then they questioned us. And so, obviously, there was no way to get back on that particular flight. We were just hoping that AirTran would fly us out after they realized what a mistake this was.
SIEGEL: And they wouldn't?
Mr. IRFAN: Oh, actually, they wouldn't. After the federal agent spoke to me just for a few minutes, he brought in my wife to question with me because he realized that this was obviously a very, very bad mistake. After that, the FBI agents who had questioned us felt so bad about the situation - and I have to really commend them for this - they actually went to AirTran, to the counter and actually asked them, can you please let these people on the next flight - on to AirTran? They are not a security threat whatsoever, and they should be allowed to fly on this next flight, whatever next flight you have going to Orlando. And the airline refused.
SIEGEL: You made it to Orlando somehow, obviously. You're there now.
Mr. IRFAN: Yep. Actually, again, to commend the federal agents, they actually went to U.S. Airways next, and U.S. Airways, after talking to them, U.S. Airways was more than happy to let us fly.
SIEGEL: Again, let the record show here that the exotic country you come from is called Michigan, I think, if I understand that.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. IRFAN: That's right, born and raised.
SIEGEL: Born and raised. It sounds like an infuriating and humiliating experience.
Mr. IRFAN: Unfortunately, it was somewhat humiliating. We try not to let it be infuriating.
SIEGEL: Well, Mr. Irfan, thank you very much.
Mr. IRFAN: Thank you for your call. I appreciate it.
SIEGEL: That's Atif Irfan, who's one of nine Muslim passengers taken off an AirTran flight yesterday. In a statement, AirTran says when members of the group approached the counter to be rebooked, the airline had not yet been notified the passengers had been cleared to fly. AirTran has now refunded the group's original tickets and offered reimbursement for the U.S. Airways flight they took to Orlando. And AirTran also offered to fly the group home for free and apologized for the incident.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host.
Time now for your comments about our program. A number of you wrote in after hearing 15-year-old Marissa Skillings talk about life with her younger brother Andrew, who has Asperger's syndrome. It's a mild form of autism.
(Soundbite of NPR's All Things Considered, January 1, 2009)
Ms. MARISSA SKILLINGS: He talks nonstop.
Mr. ANDREW SKILLINGS: My mother gave this to me as a present. It's a piggy bank. Thing right he measures this table - how come...
Ms. SKILLINGS: Talking and talking and talking.
Mr. SKILLINGS: He can turn a coin in his hand.
Ms. SKILLINGS: People can tell Andrew has a disability because of his hand gestures and the way he moves when he gets nervous. He moves his hands back and forth, and he'll walk with his arms down by his sides, just shaking his hands.
SIEGEL: Well, listener Cathy Bowen(ph) of Dalton, Massachusetts, also has a brother with autism, and she wrote this: I listened to Marissa's comments and felt I was in very familiar territory. Her maturity and accepting that there are challenges and blessings associated with having an autistic sibling is to be commended. Ms. Bowen adds, I would just say to her, hang in there. There are both better and worse times ahead, but ultimately, your brother is teaching you lessons that will serve you well. My brother is 45 years old now, and I wouldn't trade him for all the world.
We also heard from Doug Ruth(ph) of Amanda, Ohio, and he disagrees with Marissa Skillings' characterization of Asperger's as a disability. He writes, I am 67, and I have Asperger's. Our brains are just wired differently and yes, social skills can be a challenge, but those hurdles can be overcome once we recognize the issue.
Well, finally, yesterday, my co-host Melissa Block spent some time forecasting trends of 2009. She talked with Lynn Dornblaser of the market-research firm Mintel about this year's top flavors, including this.
(Soundbite of NPR's All Things Considered, January 1, 2009)
Ms. LYNN DORNBLASER (New Product Expert, Mintel International Group, Ltd.): Masala, which is kind of the kissing cousin to curry.
MELISSA BLOCK: Uh-huh.
Ms. DORNBLASER: Sometimes very hot, sometimes quite mild.
BLOCK: And where we would be finding masala? Not in chocolate, I hope.
Ms. DORNBLASER: No, absolutely not in chocolate. For now in the U.S., mostly in sauces and seasonings.
SIEGEL: Well, listener Sanjukta Gosh(ph) posted a comment on our Web site to clear up a few things. First, she writes, curry powder and masala are the same thing. In contemporary India, both mean a mixture of spices. Also, she adds, chocolate has already been mixed with masala. In Switzerland, one of the two major grocery chains has a chocolate bar called Hot Masala Chocolate. She writes, I've tasted it; it's got a hint of cinnamon and other spices, too, and it's really wonderful. Well, please write to us about whatever tickles your palate. Go to 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. As Israel's offensive continues in the Gaza Strip, the search goes on for a diplomatic solution. In a moment, we're going to hear the positions of two diplomats, an Israeli and a Palestinian. A hospital official in Gaza said at least nine Palestinians were killed today by Israeli bombs, five of them children, and dozens of rockets were sent crashing into Israeli towns by Hamas today. No one was killed. Today at the White House, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said any agreement must include a commitment from Hamas.
(Soundbite of press conference, January 2, 2009)
Secretary CONDOLEEZZA RICE (U.S. Department of State, George W. Bush Administration): We are working toward a cease-fire that would not allow a re-establishment of the status quo ante, where Hamas can continue to launch rockets out of Gaza. It is obvious that that cease-fire should take place as soon as possible, but we need a cease-fire that is durable and sustainable.
SIEGEL: Riyad Mansour is the Palestinian permanent observer to the United Nations. He's with the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas. It does not control Gaza. Mansour described a solution from his perspective.
Ambassador RIYAD MANSOUR (Palestinian Permanent Observer, United Nations): This aggression against our people in Gaza for seven days needs to be stopped immediately. We need to allow for opening the crossings to address the humanitarian and the economic situation. We need to evacuate the hundreds and maybe thousands of wounded people. And we need to have a sustainable cease-fire, and I believe we can do that by having an international force that will guarantee that the cease-fire would be sustainable.
SIEGEL: That sustainable, durable cease-fire that you speak of would include both Israel halting its attack, but you're saying also Hamas halting all rocket attacks coming out of Gaza.
Amb. MANSOUR: We need that all parties to stop firing at each other.
SIEGEL: When you speak of an international force, is that a way of saying that control of the crossings, for example, into and out of Gaza should pass from Hamas to another force?
Amb. MANSOUR: Well, the control of the crossing is ruled by international agreement. And according to that agreement, there will be a presence on the Palestinian side of the presidential guards of the president, Mahmoud Abbas, and in the Rafah crossing will be a European presence, as well as the Egyptians. So, there is a consensus in the international community for the implementation of that agreement, meaning that things to go back to the situation that existed on early 2006.
SIEGEL: But which is a very - a delicate way of saying, though, one result of all this should be Hamas out of effective power in Gaza.
Amb. MANSOUR: Well, we are talking about the crossings, and we are talking about the implementation of that agreement.
SIEGEL: Mm-hmm.
Amb. MANSOUR: We are not suggesting that for any political party not to exist in our society. But what we are saying, there is only one legitimate authority, under the leadership of President Abbas, and that legitimate authority should represent the Palestinian people everywhere, including in the political process.
SIEGEL: In calling for a cease-fire, in some respects, the Palestinian Authority is calling for a return to the status quo ante, to what was going on before this most recent fighting. On the other hand, there was much about the status quo before last week that was inherently unstable, dangerous and doing no one much good. Is it sufficient, really, to go back to where things were before the Israeli air strikes, or do you have to alter that relationship between the West Bank, Gaza and Israel to have anything remotely, even for the short term, stable?
Amb. MANSOUR: I think that we have to go beyond the situation that existed before the beginning of this aggression. We need to have guarantees, and I think the guarantees would be through the presence of an international peace force, where it will give the Palestinian people the sense of they are being protected, and it would also create deterrent from firing across the borders between Gaza and Israel from anyone.
SIEGEL: Do you think that Hamas would accept either an international presence or the return of guards accountable to President Abbas at the crossings?
Amb. MANSOUR: The interest of the Palestinian people would require an agreement that would contain these elements. Whoever is going to oppose this agreement, from the Israeli side or the Palestinian side, would be the party that is not interested in having a, you know, a solution to this situation, and we have to find solutions in order that the Palestinian people in Gaza to live as normal life as possible while we are engaging the Israeli side to put an end to occupation, to allow for the birth of the independent, sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, to live in peace and security next to our neighbor, Israel.
SIEGEL: Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian permanent observer to the United Nations. Ambassador Mansour, thank you very much for talking with us.
Amb. MANSOUR: You're very welcome. Thank you.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And now, Ambassador Sallai Meridor, who is Israel's ambassador to Washington. Welcome to the program once again.
Ambassador SALLAI MERIDOR (Israeli Ambassador to the United States): Thank you for having me.
SIEGEL: We hear talk of a durable and sustainable ceasefire. Would Israel enter into a ceasefire if you had the assurance from Hamas that they would stop firing rockets?
Amb. MERIDOR: Well, we need to have a new situation on the ground where on the one hand, there is no more rockets and our civilians are not under tremendous barrage of rockets, and at the same time, that Iran is not allowed to continue to build a terror base on our border.
SIEGEL: When we've asked Israeli spokesmen, is the aim here to put Hamas out of power in Gaza, Israel has said that is not an articulated aim of this operation. But it all sounds like the result of this operation, a success by Israel's terms, will be ousting Hamas from power in Gaza.
Amb. MERIDOR: Our purpose is to bring about a different situation. If you ask me about our larger purpose is to live in peace, and we'd love to have peace with our Palestinian neighbors. Our problem is that Hamas is committed to destruction of Israel and refuses to recognize the very existence of the state of Israel. So, in absence of a partner in Gaza that is willing to live in peace with us, the most we can look for is a durable and sustainable calm. And we would take the necessary measures in order to reach such an outcome.
SIEGEL: Would you favor...
Amb. MERIDOR: What - so, our purpose, if I may be more direct to your question, which I'm sure is well-deserved, is our purpose is not to uproot Hamas, even though for the Palestinians, this would have been a very good future. Our purpose is to make sure the people are not every day under barrage of rockets.
SIEGEL: Would you welcome an international force in Gaza that would monitor security and the performance of the armed force there?
Amb. MERIDOR: Well, this is too early to tell. I think that what we've learned from different situations, international or any kind of goodwill ambassadors are basically efficient when they monitor a situation that is acceptable to the parties involved. So, the basic thing is here is not this layer of monitors or observers or whatever one want to call them; it is bringing about a situation that - where Hamas understands that they have to accept that they cannot anymore fire and they cannot anymore build a threat of fire. And this can be created only when they understand that the status quo ante that they were trying to impose on all of us, Israelis and Palestinians alike, is unacceptable.
SIEGEL: Would Israeli permit open passages in and out of Gaza, or at least into Gaza, in exchange for that?
Amb. MERIDOR: Well, I think this is not the issue right now. The issue right now, as I told you, is stopping the acts of terror and preventing the creation of such a terror base with extended ranges and extended threats.
SIEGEL: Is Israel today talking with President Abbas and with the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank? Does Israel see them as interlocutors over what will be negotiated in Gaza ultimately?
Amb. MERIDOR: We have a very significant process with the Palestinian Authority, both in terms of changing the reality on the ground in the West Bank and at the same time having political negotiations for the future, with the hope to reach a situation with two states living in peace side by side, a Palestinian state living in security and peace and dignity alongside the state of Israel. And this is our strategic goal, but part of this effort is to make sure the enemies of this outcome of peace cannot prevail.
SIEGEL: Israeli ambassador to Washington, Sallai Meridor. Ambassador Meridor, thank you.
Amb. MERIDOR: Thank you very much.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Scientists say they've found evidence that the Earth was bombarded by meteors about 13,000 years ago, and they say that triggered a 1,000-year cold spell. Their evidence is a layer of microscopic diamonds. At that time, a sudden fallen in temperature wiped out many large mammals in North America and may have led to the rise of agriculture in the suddenly chillier Middle East. NPR's Richard Harris has the story.
RICHARD HARRIS: Thirteen thousand years ago, the Earth was gradually emerging from the last Ice Age, when all of a sudden, like, in a decade, much of the globe was suddenly plunged back to a deep freeze.
Dr. JAMES KENNETT (Emeritus, Earth Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara): For 30 years, I've been working on this enigmatic abrupt cooling.
HARRIS: That's James Kennett, now Emeritus at UC Santa Barbara.
Dr. KENNETT: It always bothered me. What triggered this major cooling at a time when the Earth should have been warming?
HARRIS: For many years, Kennett focused on the leading hypothesis, that is, a huge ice dam in North America broke as the Earth warmed and all that fresh water rushed into the Atlantic Ocean. That, in turn, interrupted a set of currents known as the conveyor belt, which usually brings warm water and warm air up from the tropics into Europe and North America. There's a good deal of geological evidence for that explanation, but now Kennett is part of a team that has a much more exotic idea.
Dr. KENNETT: What we've discovered - and this is what was just published in Science Magazine - is a layer of nanodiamonds, which is totally remarkable.
HARRIS: That's right, nanodiamonds, billions of them, all in a layer that formed about 12,900 years ago. And where did these diamonds come from?
Dr. KENNETT: There's no other way, in my imagination, my knowledge - and anybody else's, as far as I know - that you can produce a layer of diamonds without having an extraterrestrial impact.
HARRIS: He argues diamonds require lots of heat and pressure. So, he says something big hit the Earth or maybe a fusillade of smaller objects did. But how could that have triggered a cold spell? And a cold spell that lasted more than 1,000 years? It's a matter of conjecture. One idea Kennett is toying with is that a meteor bombardment could have triggered the events that geologists have already discovered to explain the cold spell.
Dr. KENNETT: What we suggest is that the impact broke the dams at the edge of the ice sheet.
HARRIS: As a result, fresh water flowed into the Atlantic, changing ocean circulation and cooling the planet. Now, if all of this is starting to sound a little farfetched to you, you are by no means alone.
Dr. BEVAN FRENCH (Adjunct Scientist, Paleobiology, Smithsonian National Museum of National History): Uh, I'm skeptical.
HARRIS: That's Bevan French at the Smithsonian's Museum of National History. He, like many other scientists, isn't even convinced that the nanodiamonds are proof of an impact.
Dr. FRENCH: The fact that they've reported them here is, I think, a very exciting development, but I think you might be dealing with some kind of a combustion process rather than with an impact event itself.
HARRIS: So, there are a lot of questions Kennett and his colleagues have to answer before scientists will be convinced that there really was an impact 12,900 years ago and that it really was responsible for a big change in the Earth's history. Richard Harris, NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: Our sports contributor Stefan Fatsis on the firing of a Denver Broncos institution, Coach Mike Shanahan; that's coming up on All Things Considered.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. For the hedge-fund industry, 2008 was a year of scandal and decline; a lot of hedge funds lost value. As a result, a lot of investors want to pull their money out. But the hedge-fund business doesn't operate like other parts of the financial market. In some cases, hedge-fund managers can simply decide not to give investors their money back, and that is generating some controversy, as NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
JIM ZARROLI: Over the past few years, investors couldn't get enough of hedge funds. Those are big, private pools of investment dollars popular with rich people. Investors poured more than $1 trillion into them, and hundreds of funds popped up to absorb the cash. But after the stock-market crash and the mortgage meltdown, the good times came to an end. Charles Biderman is CEO of TrimTabs Investment Research.
Mr. CHARLES BIDERMAN (Founder and Chief Executive Officer, TrimTabs Investment Research): The global slowdown has hurt the equity markets; it's hurt the commodity markets; it's hurt all the markets. And so, from everything going up, everything started going down, and without global growth, a lot of these funds are just collapsing.
ZARROLI: Biderman says hedge funds lost on average 20 percent last year. That wasn't bad compared to other kinds of investments. But hedge-fund customers, who include a lot of big institutional investors like pension funds, expect to do better. So, many began pulling their money out, as much as $200 billion during the last four months. And the redemptions would have been even greater if not for the fact that a lot of hedge funds simply stopped letting investors withdraw their money. They slammed shut their gates so no one could get out, even as they kept collecting big fees. Biderman says many funds reserve the right to restrict withdrawals for up to a year in their rules.
Mr. BIDERMAN: Some hedge funds are not liquid, meaning that they invest in strategies that are - take longer to unravel and unwind. And so if someone wants their money out, you can't just sometimes sell what you need to sell and give shareholders their money back.
ZARROLI: In the past, investors agreed to these restrictions because they badly wanted to get into the funds. And in the largely unregulated hedge-fund universe, there was nothing government officials could do. But James Ellman, president of the hedge fund Seacliff Capital, says now that more funds are losing money, a lot of investors are grumbling.
Mr. JAMES ELLMAN (President, Seacliff Capital, LLC): Investors, of course, are usually not going to be particularly excited about being told that they can't get their money out when they need it, especially when they thought it was, in fact, their money in the first place.
ZARROLI: This week, one of the most successful hedge-fund executives, John Paulson, criticized his colleagues for blocking redemptions. Paulson says fund managers have the responsibility to make cash available to investors who want their money back. James Ellman notes that when a hedge-fund manager blocks withdrawals, investors who really need cash may have to pull money out of other funds instead.
Mr. ELLMAN: And that's - those funds that do not have a gate become the ATMs for the investors, and it causes even more of a wind-down and sell-off in assets from the industry and across the markets.
ZARROLI: Ellman says funds that restrict withdrawals can hurt themselves as well, because the when the gates reopen and investors are allowed to take their money out at last, there could be a stampede for the exits. But with many hedge funds facing extinction, they may have little alternative but to bar the doors and try to buy a little time until the market improves. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The National Football League playoffs begin tomorrow, but this week's news was dominated by teams whose seasons have already ended. Four clubs fired their head coaches, none more shockingly than the Denver Broncos. Our own Stefan Fatsis is very familiar with that team; he spent a summer with the Broncos as a placekicker, kind of a gentleman placekicker, for his latest book. And Stefan, Mike Shanahan, the coach, had the second longest tenure of any coach in the NFL - 14 seasons - which alone makes this firing noteworthy.
STEFAN FATSIS: Oh, absolutely, and much more than the other firings this week - Eric Mangini of the New York Jets, Rod Marinelli of the Detroit Lions, Romeo Crennel of the Cleveland Browns - three, three and four seasons respectively with those teams. Shanahan was with Denver for 21 seasons overall, including seven as an assistant coach. He won two Super Bowls, as many as Tom Landry or Don Shula or Bill Parcells. And he won more than 60 percent of his games in Denver. That's impressive.
SIEGEL: But this year and the previous two seasons haven't been so successful for Denver.
FATSIS: No, 24 and 24, 500 record since 2006, which was the summer I spent with the team, so maybe I'm to blame.
(Soundbite of laughter)
FATSIS: And they lost the last three games of this season to blow what looked like a sure playoff berth. They've only got one playoff win since that last Super Bowl victory a decade ago. Still, Shanahan is an institution in Denver. He's identified with this franchise in a way that only a few coaches historically become attached to a team. You think of Vince Lombardi in Green Bay, Don Shula with Miami, Hank Stram with Kansas City, Bill Walsh with San Francisco. Shanahan was that influential on how this franchise operated.
SIEGEL: Well, you got to know him when you were writing the book. What's he like?
FATSIS: He's a workaholic, very serious, controlling. He dictated everything in Denver, from who gets off the team plane first - the players - to where fans stand while watching practice in the summer, to which free agents to sign. He's efficient, meticulous, not a screamer. His favorite phrase imitated by the players is, you have to do the little things right - a little bit of cliche in him.
But he's also got a better sense of humor than you might guess watching him on TV, where he's got those big bug eyes and looks very intense. Still, he wasn't someone open to criticism or even to suggestions, and that fostered a culture of paranoia, I think, inside the team. But he had this enormous power that he was granted by the club's owner, Pat Bowlen, because they had this mutual respect and friendship. Bowlen once told me that their relationship was like a marriage, and in today's instant-results sports culture, that is a rare, rare thing.
SIEGEL: So, he was an institution with great control, and he had a very good close relationship with the owner. Why was he fired?
FATSIS: Well, you know, a year ago, people were calling for his head, and Bowlen told me that the noise was irrelevant. Bowlen understood that teams have poor seasons. It's incredibly hard to win in the NFL. What matters is having this foundation for success, which the Broncos did have. Which is why I don't think this was about wins and losses, and that's what makes it different and, I think, interesting. Bowlen, I think, may simply have decided that the long-term health of his business would be best served by a significant change. Maybe the team had stagnated in the public eye, and maybe he needed to do something to energize the fan base. You create this uncertainty among players and staff and the community, but it does get fans talking, gets them paying more attention to the team, maybe it gets them caring again after these three lousy seasons. Bowlen, I think, is thinking about starting a new era in Denver.
SIEGEL: And would you assume that Shanahan could turn up coaching another NFL team?
FATSIS: I think he'll have a job within two or three weeks. He's only 56 years old. We mentioned those three vacancies, and there will be no doubt others coming in the next few weeks, maybe one created even just for Mike Shanahan.
SIEGEL: I've left you hardly any time to talk about the playoff games this week, and four of them - what's the best matchup you're looking forward to?
FATSIS: I like the rookie quarterbacks this weekend: Matt Ryan of Atlanta, Joe Flacco of Baltimore, the Miami Dolphins under Bill Parcells, great revival. And let's not forget Payton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts; they look pretty good. They won the last nine games of the regular season, and Manning today won his third NFL Most Valuable Player award.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Stefan.
FATSIS: Thanks, Robert.
SIEGEL: Stefan Fatsis, the author of "A Few Seconds of Panic: A Five-Foot-Eight, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL." He joins us most Fridays.
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
It's not surprising to see a lot of competition on prescription-drug pricing. Retailers from Wal-Mart to Target and Safeway have slashed prices for pills to as little as $4 or $5. Well, now, how about free medicine? That's what Giant Foods, a grocery chain based in Maryland, began offering this week for a limited time. And Giant is not the first to try this approach, as NPR's Allison Aubrey reports.
ALLISON AUBREY: Since the Midwestern retail chain Meijer first introduced free antibiotics at their supercenters two years ago, their pharmacists have filled three million prescriptions at no charge, saving customers some $60 million. Now, Giant Foods has a similar giveaway. The company's general manager, Robin Michel, says generic antibiotics will be free through March.
Ms. ROBIN MICHEL (Executive Vice President and General Manager, Giant Food, Inc.) It's not that you don't issue prescriptions or antibiotics year round, but typically, you see a spike in the months of January, February, March. So, how we felt we could help customers is we could help more customers during this timeframe.
AUBREY: Michel says Giant fully expects to lose money on this temporary offer. She says there's no gimmick here, but what the chain may hope to get in return is some customer loyalty and a chance to show that their pharmacists do more than just put pills in a bottle.
Ms. MICHEL: Their job in our stores is to provide, you know, a holistic approach to helping our customers. They can talk to the customers about what works well together, how what you eat will help you in terms of the prescriptions that you're taking.
AUBREY: Slashing prices on prescription drugs or offering them for free is obviously not bad for consumers who need them. In tough economic times, a little help can go a long way. But could free medicine encourage some people to ask for drugs they don't need, say, getting a prescription when you have a bad cold that can't be treated by antibiotics? Physician Sarah Cutrona of the Milford Regional Medical Center, who is not involved in any of these retail offers, says she doesn't think this is a problem.
Dr. SARAH CUTRONA (Physician, Milford Regional Medical Center; Medicine, Harvard Medical School): I can't really imagine that this policy in grocery stores is going to lead to more people going to their doctors and saying, I wouldn't have asked for an antibiotic before, but now that it's free, I'm going to ask you for one.
AUBREY: Cutrona says she's intrigued by the free antibiotics, but she says overall these promotions are not a solution for people who don't have access to care and wouldn't be able to get a prescription, nor do they help the people who are saddled with big prescription drug bills, those with chronic conditions who take medicines over a lifetime.
Dr. CUTRONA: Those medicines are expensive, and many patients are on 10, 15 - a whole lot of medications.
AUBREY: But when it comes to these limited offers of free medicine, they are, perhaps not surprisingly, a big hit with customers. A spokesperson for the Meijer chain says since they launched the giveaway, they've filled nearly 10 times more prescriptions for antibiotics. Allison Aubrey, NPR News Washington.
(Soundbite of music)
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. Picture this: You've spent weeks looking for the perfect gown to wear to a particular formal event. You show up, and someone else is also wearing that very dress. I hate it when that happens. Actually, I couldn't care less, but it's a vital premise of the interview that follows, so let's say I do. If you're planning on going to one of the balls at presidential inauguration time later this month, you don't have to live out that social nightmare - you may not, at least. Andrew Jones tells us why not. He is co-founder of the Web site DressRegistry.com. Tell us about what the Web site tells us.
Mr. ANDREW JONES (Co-founder, DressRegistry.com): The Web site was created about 10 years ago when I was on a plane flight with my wife, and she was mentioning all the efforts that she was going to go through to buy a dress for a local charity ball. So, I thought there had to be a better way to deal with this.
SIEGEL: Now, at the Web site, DressRegistry.com, I can go to a list of all of the inaugural-related events, click on Constitution Ball, which is one of the official inaugural balls, and there are about eight or nine people who've registered what gown they're wearing. It says who the designer is, the color, the length, the neckline, so I guess you can see before you buy it, is the idea, I assume, that somebody is else is taking that dress to the - is going to wear that dress to the ball.
Mr. JONES: The idea is that women who have already purchased a dress would register, so that when other women are out there looking what they're going to get, that they are going to see that, oh, that someone else has already registered that particular garment.
SIEGEL: Now, the people who are selling the gowns would have an interest in more than one person buying the same gown to an event as big as the inauguration in Washington, don't you think?
Mr. JONES: Well, that's true. And the idea of having duplicate dresses is really epitomized by what happened to First Lady Laura Bush in December 2006, where she wore an Oscar de la Renta gown to an event, and three other ladies were wearing the same gown, and she immediately left and changed to a different gown. But it was all over the evening news.
SIEGEL: Now, how far afield are you from your day job here, with this activity?
Mr. JONES: My background is in corporate investment banking, so I'm very far afield from my day job.
SIEGEL: On the other hand, it's a good season to look for a new kind of work, for a...
Mr. JONES: You may be right there.
SIEGEL: Yeah, OK.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: Well, thank you. Thank you very much for describing DressRegistry.com and the thinking behind it.
Mr. JONES: Well, thank you very much.
SIEGEL: That's Andrew Jones. He tells us that even though his wife's experience inspired the Web site, she is not planning to attend any inaugural balls.
GUY RAZ, host:
Frozen cabins in the woods of Wisconsin aren't normally places where legendary music is born. But in the middle of winter two years ago, at one such cabin, the spirits of folk-rock somehow came together to help Justin Vernon record a masterpiece.
(Soundbite of music) (Soundbite of song "Stacks")
BON IVER: (Singing) Everything that happens from now on, This is pouring rain, This is paralyzed...
RAZ: Fans of his story and his style have been clamoring for new music, and Justin Vernon is ready to oblige. A four-song EP by Bon Iver comes out later this month. It's called "Blood Bank." And Justin Vernon joins me now from WHWC in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Welcome to the show.
Mr. JUSTIN VERNON (Folk Singer-Songwriter): Thanks for having me.
RAZ: When did you write these new songs? Were they outtakes from your last album "For Emma, Forever Ago?"
Mr. VERNON: Yeah, actually, the title track, "Blood Bank," was actually completely recorded and written during that same time, kind of amongst all those tracks that made it onto "For Emma." But it just didn't seem to fit the story and the lineage, I guess. And so I had this tune that I really liked and that felt right. So I just sort of surrounded "Blood Bank" with three other songs that were very different from one another. And they all kind of came together as this giant palette cleanser from the last record. And I'm really excited about it.
RAZ: Well, let's hear a new track. It's the title track called "Blood Bank."
(Soundbite of song "Blood Bank")
BON IVER: (Singing) That secret that we know, That we don't know how to tell. I'm in love with your honor. I'm in love with your cheeks. What's that noise up the stairs baby? Is that Christmas morning? And I know it well...
RAZ: You sing, "I know it well, that secret that you know that you don't know how to tell." Justin Vernon, what are you singing about here?
Mr. VERNON: I don't know. I think this is a fictional kind of love story, I guess. And I think that when people are falling in love or when people are experiencing magical things, I guess, in their life, I think that that secret is the answer to all those questions, you know, why is this sacred and why does this feel like larger than myself and larger than what I can even put into words, this experience like, here on earth, if I can say that. I think that that's the secret. I think it's the connection that we have to each other.
(Soundbite of song "Blood Bank")
BON IVER: (Singing) When the snow started falling, We were stuck out in your car. You were rubbing both my hands, Chewing on a candy bar. You said, ain't this just like the present, To be showing up like this? There's a moon waning crescent. We started to kiss...
RAZ: There are parts of this EP that are somewhat experimental. I'm thinking of a track called "Woods." It's a capella. And I think it uses an auto tune machine to sort of warp your voice. Let's listen to some of that.
(Soundbite of song "Woods")
BON IVER: (Singing) I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind, I'm building a still, To slow down the time...
RAZ: And in that song, we hear some of the same lines repeated over and over. And some of the voices are added and subtracted, and a number of effects in the song. How did you decide to sort of come up with this piece?
Mr. VERNON: It is kind of a piece more than it is a song, I guess. And it was just - those words were just sort of a general incantation or repetition or meditation, if you will, on my experience being away from everything. And so, after I left the cabin, I sat down to finish this idea. And I think it was an example of experimentation turning into something musical.
(Soundbite of song "Woods")
BON IVER: (Singing) I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind, I'm building a still....
Mr. VERNON: This, for me, was a way to extend my voice or to experiment with different techniques or just sounds. And it sort of was really freeing for me to do, and I'm really happy that it's the last song on the EP.
RAZ: We're talking with Justin Vernon. He's with the band Bon Iver. His new four-song EP is called "Blood Bank." Justin Vernon, let's go back a little bit to when you recorded your last album, "For Emma, Forever Ago."
(Soundbite of music)
RAZ: What was happening in your life at that time?
Mr. VERNON: Well, I had been living in North Carolina and sort of born and raised in Wisconsin. And I moved down there with all my band mates. And basically, about a year into living down there, I had broken up with a girlfriend and I got really, really sick with this - basically this kind of mono that attacked my liver. And it was really bizarre. I was in bed for three months.
And during those three months, I sort of took toll on the last five or six years previous in my life. And kind of a long story short, it was kind of telling me that I needed to leave there and to kind of become myself. And it was really difficult, like basically leaving a marriage of a band that I had been in for nearly 10 years. And I just sort of cut all ties and I returned to Wisconsin, but to a new place, being my Dad's cabin.
RAZ: You didn't plan to write an album. You were really planning to just sort of hibernate and recover from the things you were going through.
Mr. VERNON: Yeah. It wasn't - I mean, I brought my musical gear with me because I thought, you know, it would be a smart idea to have it with me. But I think I was so confused, it was at a point in my life that I think everybody goes through where something needs to budge and then something needs to change, and you just - you can't really be aware of that because you're so within it, you're so in the present moment. And that present moment seems to be constantly fleeting at the same time.
And so it was just an attempt to still my life, I think. I think you can lose track of your inner voice because there are so many people around, there are so many distractions, there are so many voices and influences. And for me, it was really beautiful to sort of reconnect with this person that I felt like I hadn't really had that much quiet time with since I was a little boy.
(Soundbite of song "The Wolves (Act I And II)")
BON IVER: (Singing) And the story's all over you, In the morning I'll call you, Can't you find a clue, When your eyes are all painted Sinatra blue.
RAZ: You recorded this album yourself in a basement of your dad's cabin in northern Wisconsin in the middle of winter. When you work in such a, sort of, an isolated environment and very few people to sort of bounce ideas off and to get feedback from, were you able to get a sense that you are really putting something remarkable, really special together?
Mr. VERNON: You know, it's hard to discuss that when you're in that moment. The whole thing was just sort of at an excavation site and just sort of digging and digging and building and building. I couldn't really be aware of any of that during that time.
RAZ: Now the critical reaction to this album has been extraordinary. I mean, you were just named Album of the Year by the British newspaper the Observer. Did you expect this kind of reaction?
Mr. VERNON: I mean, it would be silly to have thought of any of this happening. And it was almost silly to think anything would really happen. You know, my plan with the record was to make, you know, what I would usually do with records prior to that, make 500 to a thousand copies, play shows, and do that. And I never really even had that opportunity by the time the record was done and I put it up on MySpace. The wheels were already moving. And that's beautiful and scary all at the same time.
RAZ: You mentioned MySpace. And this is very much of a fan-driven story, as well. Is it sort of scary to have fans come up to you and really sort of talk to you about the relationship that they have with this music that you wrote?
Mr. VERNON: That part is the beautiful part for me. I don't know if I could give you a reason, you know, on a list of why I make music exactly, but that's definitely part of it. When somebody has an experience with something that you've done and they share it with you, and it's important for them to share it with you, I think that's the circuit that you're looking for. You know, at that point, the circuit becomes complete and you're no longer the songwriter and they're no longer the listener. It's like this work has been done. And I really like that. And that's kind of what you live for, I guess.
RAZ: There, of course, have been, you know, plenty of artists who receive massive critical acclaim after their first album. And then there's all this pressure to produce a, sort of, a second album. Do you feel like you sort of have to live up to that first album?
Mr. VERNON: No, I don't. I feel fortunate in how this has all happened because I think I've learned some valuable lessons in how to really just operate your life, not even including how to operate a career in the music industry, so called. I think that by writing this album and the "For Emma" album in the way that I did that was so kind of free of any influence - and I wasn't doing it for anybody but myself - I think that is something that I felt connected with when I was very young, when I first started playing music, why you first fall in love with rock music and what it does to you and the sort of unlatching and the freedom of it. I'm very, very still in knowing that all my job is to do is to sit down and to write songs. And I don't need to write those songs for any other reason than the good reasons.
RAZ: Justin Vernon records under the name Bon Iver. His new EP comes out later this month. It's called "Blood Bank." And he joined me from WHWC in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Justin Vernon, thanks so much for being with us.
Mr. VERNON: Thank you so much. It's an honor.
RAZ: You can hear plenty more of Bon Iver's music, including two entire live concerts at nprmusic.org.
(Soundbite of song "Skinny Love")
BON IVER: (Singing) Come on skinny love just last the year, Pour a little salt we were never here. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, Staring at the sink of blood and crushed veneer. I tell my love to wreck it all, Cut out all the ropes and let me fall. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, Right in the moment this order's tall.
RAZ: Our parting words tonight come from legendary inventor Nikola Tesla who, by the way, had a huge role in the early days of our medium, radio. He said, "The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born."
(Soundbite of song "Skinny Love")
BON IVER: (Singing) Come on skinny love what happened here, Suckle on the hope in lite brassiere. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my...
RAZ: That's All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz. Have a great week.
GUY RAZ, host:
From NPR News, it's All Things Considered. I'm Guy Raz. Israeli tanks and troops continued their push into Gaza today, effectively cutting the coastal territory in two. Israel said it killed several dozen Hamas militants, and Palestinian officials in Gaza said more than 30 civilians also died in the ground invasion that began last night. Israeli officials also said one of their soldiers was killed today and several dozen were hurt. Israel's president, Shimon Peres, rejected calls for a cease-fire.
President SHIMON PERES (Israel): Hamas needs a real and serious lesson. They are now getting it.
RAZ: NPR's Eric Westervelt reports from the Israel-Gaza border.
(Soundbite of explosion)
ERIC WESTERVELT: Billowing smoke and the rattle and thud of machine gun and tank fire marked the day as Israeli ground forces pushed into the eastern and northern outskirts of Gaza City. Panicked civilians describe scenes of exhaustion, fear, and scarcity. Many are without power, running water, and adequate food. Most still don't venture outside. Other families have had to.
Ahmed abu Hamda says he and dozens of families were forced to abruptly flee a large apartment building on the outskirts of Gaza City when heavily armed masked militants set up firing positions on upper floors. His pregnant wife relocated to a relative's house, and he is now unable to get across town to reach her.
Mr. AHMED ABU HAMDA: I'm always worried about her. It's really difficult to reach her on the phone. All my life now came upside down. Some neighbors from the neighborhood, they told me that they are hearing some bombardment over there now, and maybe they heard that tanks, Israeli tanks, are reaching it now.
WESTERVELT: Gaza hospitals continue to struggle. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel today issued an urgent appeal for the Israeli government to open up a humanitarian corridor to facilitate the evacuation of the wounded for better medical care outside Gaza. Human Rights Watch protested that not enough supplies were reaching hospitals and that the Israeli government had, since Friday, denied access to Gaza to a Red Cross surgical medical team, citing security.
Meantime, the West Bank Palestinian leadership, which was run out of Gaza by Hamas 18 months ago, is under grassroots pressure to formally suspend peace talks with Israel over the Gaza attacks, talks that are, in reality, already flagging. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat today said talks would continue, but he urged the world to do more to secure an immediate cease-fire.
Mr. SAEB EREKAT (Palestinian Negotiator): Gaza is the most destabilized area on earth - 1.5 million people facing a dire human catastrophe, no running water, no electricity, no medical supplies. And I believe the international community should do the decent thing and should shoulder the responsibilities by stopping the Israeli attacks.
WESTERVELT: But there are few signs of that. Israeli President Shimon Peres today said it doesn't make any sense for Israel to declare a cease-fire when Hamas will just continue to fire rockets at Israel. Hamas rocket and mortar fire continued from Gaza despite the ground offensive. No Israeli civilians were seriously injured. In the rocket-battered border town of Sderot, army captain and spokesman Elie Isaacson said the ground attack would last as long as necessary to deprive militants of land and ability to launch rockets into Israel.
Mr. ELIE ISAACSON (Israeli Army Captain and Spokesman): It's going - I'd say it's going well so far. We know for a fact we've killed dozens of Hamas terrorists in exchanges of gunfire within Gaza. We are rooting out the Hamas from the rocket-launching areas. We are tracking them down and then taking them on face to face.
WESTERVELT: The Israeli army insists that it hit only Hamas targets today. Doctors in Gaza say, in fact, more than two dozen civilians were also among the dead, including women and children blown up today in Palestine Square, a commercial shopping area in Gaza City. An Israeli tank or artillery round apparently struck the market area killing five people who had dared to venture outside their homes. Shifa Hospital doctors say some 40 other civilians were also wounded in the explosion. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, on the Gaza-Israel border.
GUY RAZ, host:
As Israeli ground forces flooded into Gaza today, dismay and anger spread throughout the Arab world, and diplomats are frustrated. The European Union's foreign policy chief said the international community's inability to end the violence was, quote, "a very serious failure." NPR's Peter Kenyon has more from Cairo.
PETER KENYON: As Israeli troops, tanks, aircraft, and warships continue to pound the Gaza Strip and Palestinian rockets sailed into southern Israel, thousands of demonstrators raised their voices against the violence.
(Soundbite of demonstration, Istanbul, Turkey)
Unidentified Demonstrator: (Turkish Spoken)
KENYON: Most of the demonstrators, as in this gathering in Istanbul, focused their anger on the actions of the Israeli army, although there were scattered calls for Hamas to stop the rocket fire as well. There were very large protests in Morocco, Australia, and many European countries. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's office released a statement condemning the Israeli ground offensive, and Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said some of the blame belongs at the feet of the U.N. Security Council. The Council failed to approve a statement overnight calling for an immediate cease-fire. Abul Gheit said the Security Council's silence, quote, "was interpreted by Israel as a green light." U.N. delegates said it was the United States that had blocked the statement from being approved. Egypt's U.N. ambassador, Maged Abdelaziz, was frustrated.
Ambassador MAGED ABDELAZIZ (Egyptian Ambassador to the U.N.): So at the time that the aggression is escalating and more people are dying and the military attack on the ground is at its full scale, we find regrettably that the Security Council is downgrading its response to the question.
KENYON: Egypt has itself come in for a large share of the criticism in the Arab world for failing to open its border with Gaza except to the most urgent humanitarian aid. The heaviest criticism has come from Hamas' most powerful backer, Iran, where former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, as broadcast by the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, called on Muslims to provide both humanitarian and military supplies to the people of Gaza.
Former President HASHEMI RAFSANJANI (Iran): (Through Translator) There is no shortage of fighters in Gaza. The Islamic nation should extend political assistance and give weapons to the people in Gaza.
KENYON: An Iranian military commander also called on Muslim oil producers to halt sales to Israel's supporters, according to the official Iranian news agency. A European Union delegation is heading for the region in an effort to revive diplomatic efforts. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was blunt about how little diplomacy has achieved so far.
Dr. JAVIER SOLANA (EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy): For the moment, it has been a very serious failure of diplomacy, therefore a failure of the international community to handle this conflict. We will do our best to continue putting on the pressure, with all the efforts to bring a cease-fire, and the sooner the better.
KENYON: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sounded more urgent in his latest comments.
Prime Minister GORDON BROWN (United Kingdom): We need an immediate cease-fire. The blame game can continue afterwards. But this dangerous moment, I think, requires us to act. There are talks that are going on that would actually take us beyond the immediate violence into the sort of solutions we want. But the very events that we're seeing emphasize what the real challenge is. Israel needs to be secure. Palestine needs to be viable.
KENYON: Israeli and U.S. officials, however, insist that any cease-fire must be durable. And military analysts say that suggests that Israel intends to weaken Hamas further before seriously pursuing a cessation of hostilities. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Cairo.
GUY RAZ, host:
New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is pulling out of President-elect Obama's Cabinet lineup. Richardson, a onetime rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, was Obama's choice to be secretary of commerce. But today he withdrew his name from nomination. Why? For that, we turn to NPR White House correspondent Don Gonyea. Don, for most of us, this is a surprise. But in a way it isn't a surprise, right?
DON GONYEA: Yeah, always unexpected when news like this drops on a Sunday midday, like it did. But the basic story has been out there for a couple of months. There has been a grand jury investigation in New Mexico where Richardson is governor. It's been under way for several months. It was certainly under way last month when Richardson was nominated for the Cabinet post by the president-elect.
Now, specifically, it deals with a company called CDR Financial Products. That company had a one-and-a-half-million-dollar contract from the state of New Mexico to do transportation work. After they got that contract, there were big campaign contributions. So we don't know all of the details. The sense for the Obama team had to have been when they announced Richardson last month that it wasn't that big of a deal, that it would blow over and be wrapped up somewhat quickly. Clearly, that's not the case.
RAZ: And Don, how is this being framed by Richardson and then by the Obama transition team?
GONYEA: We've got statements from each, first from Governor Richardson. He said - this is a quote - "Let me say unequivocally that I and my administration have acted properly in all matters and that this investigation will bear out that fact." But he goes on to say that since the investigation was going to be ongoing, it would possibly delay his own confirmation hearings. You know, the commerce secretary is an important part of the economic team in any administration, certainly with the country facing what it's facing now in terms of the economy. So he is stepping down so that President-elect Obama can get somebody else in that spot.
As for Mr. Obama, he said he accepts Richardson's withdrawal with regret. He says it's a sign that Richardson is putting the nation first. We don't know if Richardson did this on his own or if he was nudged or even pushed.
RAZ: Now, Don, President-elect Obama's managed to get through much of this transition without any serious stumbles until now, I guess, right?
GONYEA: Yeah, and it's, you know, it's probably way early to say this is even a major stumble. It is an important Cabinet post that he's got to find a new name for, a new nominee. And it is a distraction. But it doesn't feel earthshaking by any means. Obviously, you know, the big one that's out there is the Blagojevich scandal in Illinois, and this doesn't even begin to measure up to that one in terms of what's out there. But in both cases, I should say that Mr. Obama seems to be way above the fray.
RAZ: And Don, in the remaining few seconds we have, there's another piece of political news out there today, reports that Tim Kaine, the governor of Virginia, will be the next chairman of the Democratic Party. What do you know about this?
GONYEA: Replacing Howard Dean. It hasn't been announced officially. Sources have told the Associated Press that Kaine is about to take over the DNC. He can't run for re-election in Virginia. That's a, you know, one-term state, and then you're off to do whatever else. So he will head the DNC while completing his last two years there. But he's one of the rising stars in the party and was considered a frontrunner to be Obama's running mate before Biden was selected.
RAZ: That's NPR White House correspondent, Don Gonyea. Don, thanks so much.
GONYEA: All right, thank you.
GUY RAZ, host:
Welcome back to All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz, and I'm outside the Hay-Adams Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C., the home for the moment to President-elect Barack Obama and his family. They're in town already because the Obama girls, Sasha and Malia, start school here tomorrow. Now, a small crowd is gathered outside the hotel here to see if they might just catch a glimpse of the Obama family, including Virgie Jones(ph), who is visiting from Oklahoma. Why did you show up here this afternoon?
Ms. VIRGIE JONES: To see if we could get a wave or some type of acknowledgement, but that's wishful thinking. But it's a beautiful day and just to get them started. It's part of history. Very proud.
RAZ: Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Virgie, so much.
Ms. JOHN: Thank you.
RAZ: Now, around the hotel, the streets are closed. The traffic is being redirected. But that's just a prelude to what happens here in town in two weeks and two days when up to three million people are expected to descend on Washington for the inauguration. Now, if you're coming and if you have an interesting story to tell about your journey, we want to hear from you. Go to our Web site. That's npr.org/dctrip.
GUY RAZ, host:
Official Washington isn't waiting for the inauguration to get on with business. Congress reconvenes on Tuesday with a number of new faces and some familiar ones doing new things. One of them is California Democrat Henry Waxman. He's been a member of Congress for more than 30 years. And this week, he takes over as chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Earlier, we spoke with Congressman Waxman, and I asked him about the first major issue Congress will tackle - President-elect Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan and, specifically, how to pay for it.
Representative HENRY WAXMAN (Democrat, California): There's no question that it will provide a greater deficit in the short term, but I think almost all economists understand from the history of the past Depression in the '30s that what was needed was a gigantic stimulus to the economy with public spending. When the private spending is not taking place and people are losing their jobs, that causes deflation and it feeds on itself. In order to turn this around, we have to have a great deal of public spending, public spending most likely in the private sector, so that we can give a boost to the economy and get it going in the right direction.
RAZ: Now Congressman Waxman, I want to ask you about the auto industry for a moment. You, of course, won control over the Energy and Commerce Committee from Michigan Democrat John Dingell. He, of course, has strong ties to the auto industry. You don't. You've called for stricter regulation to protect the environment. So are you planning to tie some of the bailout money for the auto industry to something like higher fuel efficiency standards?
Representative WAXMAN: I think we have to demand higher fuel efficiency standards from the automobile industry, not only because we don't want to help an industry that is going to make our environmental problems worse, but because the cars for the future that are going to sell in this country will be those that are more fuel-efficient.
RAZ: Your last job in the last Congress was as chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and it's fair to say you were probably a thorn in the side of the Bush administration. But now with a Democrat in the White House and with a Democratic-controlled Congress, how do you make sure, how do you guarantee that the Obama administration is going to be held accountable?
Representative WAXMAN: I think that oversight is as important a function of the Congress as is legislation. We need to see how programs are working or not working in order to revise them or eliminate some of these programs. And we have to hold the executive branch accountable.
RAZ: But will you hold them as accountable as you held the Bush folks?
Representative WAXMAN: Well, I think it's important to do that. It shouldn't be a partisan matter. It should be an important function of the Congress to keep our government open and accountable.
RAZ: You, of course, led a five-year investigation into President Bush's allegations that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium from Africa. That, of course, was later found to be false. We can't go into the details of your committee's investigation, but I want to find out, I want to ask you, do you think it's time now to let go of this, to drop it? Or do you think that this investigation needs to continue?
Representative WAXMAN: I think we need to have a continuation of the investigation into wrongdoing by our government. I don't think it's the job of Congress. We have too much else to do. But I'd like to see some independent committees established, as we've just done for checking on expenditures or war profiteering in Iraq. We ought to do that as well for the galling and maybe criminal violations by people in power.
I make no pre-judgment about it. But looking at the argument for getting us into war that Saddam Hussein had possible nuclear weapons, I think we have a good case to make that there were a lot of people lying in the Bush administration, maybe to themselves, but certainly to the American people to get us into war.
RAZ: California Representative Henry Waxman. He is the incoming chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Congressman Waxman, thanks so much for your time.
Representative WAXMAN: Thank you.
GUY RAZ, host:
Excuse me, President Carter, could you please pass the potatoes? Thanks. And can you reach over President Bush's arm and hand me the salt? Oh, great. OK, so clearly I'm living in a fantasy world. But all three living former presidents plus the current one and the soon-to-be-inaugurated one will actually sit down for lunch on Wednesday at the White House. The menu for now is a state secret. The administration isn't talking. So we've asked former White House chef, Walter Scheib, to imagine what he'd serve these five men. Chef Scheib, thanks for joining us.
Mr. WALTER SCHEIB (Former White House Chef): Great to be here.
RAZ: So you cooked for both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, and they like some of the same things - beef, ribs, barbecue - well, maybe President Clinton isn't so discerning.
(Soundbite of laughter)
RAZ: But seriously, how do you figure out how to put together a menu for five men who might all have different tastes?
Mr. SCHEIB: Well, I think the key word there is men. You know, there isn't blue state food and red state food, you know. Food at the White House has a tendency to delineate along gender lines as opposed to political lines. Both First Ladies that I worked with were very discerning palates, very adventuresome, always trying new and different things, very much into nutritional and organics. And both presidents that I worked with, I think, if we'd open up a rib joint, as you said, or a barbecue pit, they would have been just as happy. Kind of dine on a concept if something were good, melt some cheese on it, now we're talking great food.
RAZ: Now you've cooked for most of these men, actually.
Mr. SCHEIB: Yeah.
RAZ: With the exception of President-elect Obama.
Mr. SCHEIB: Right.
RAZ: What would you prepare?
Mr. SCHEIB: I'll tell you, you know, you probably have to get something fairly down to earth. It is going to be a lunch, and it is going to be a get-to-know-you for some of these guys. They know each other fairly well, you know. They're all in the same game, if you will. But I do think that they're going to be more driven by the conversation and the sort of camaraderie at this very exclusive fraternity that they're all in as opposed to what the actual food will be.
It'll probably be something with a southwestern bent. President Bush, being the host, is probably going to be the one who takes a lead in it. So I bet probably my bottom dollar, it's going to be some sort of beef. He loved his beef tenderloin.
RAZ: So take us into the White House for a moment. I understand that all of these presidents have many options about where they can actually dine, right?
Mr. SCHEIB: Right.
RAZ: Where do you think they're going...
Mr. SCHEIB: Well, you know, that's kind of a curious protocol question that you ask, because if it were on the state floor, which is the first floor of the White House, or the ground floor, which is not one of the formal floors, that would denote that it was sort of a political or a policy-driven meeting.
If they're up in the private residence, now, it really is more camaraderie or social interaction. And this is sort of a subtle protocol between the ground floor, the first floor, and then the actual private residence. So, I'd expect they're going to be up in the private residence.
RAZ: Now, of course, President-elect Obama was accused of being an arugula eater during the campaign. Do you think he'd serve an arugula salad?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. SCHEIB: Well, you know, President Bush is funny. He was telling me one day things he didn't care for. He says, I don't like soups, I don't like salads. I don't care for things green, and I don't care for, quote, unquote, "wet fish," which meant anything that wasn't fried or baked. So I would suspect that if there's arugula served, it will be a metaphoric olive branch.
RAZ: Finally, I have to ask. There's been a lot of speculation - and there's always a lot of speculation when a new president comes in - about who the new White House chef is going to be.
Mr. SCHEIB: Ah.
RAZ: Do you have any intel for us?
Mr. SCHEIB: Well, I'll tell you, the woman who's the chef there now and is the first minority chef and the first female chef, much to her credit, is a woman named Cris Comerford. Cris was my assistant for eight years. So obviously, I've got a dog in this fight. I think Cris is a tremendous chef. But that's not the real key to being the chef at the White House. Really, there are three things.
One, first and foremost, you have to be a little bit clairvoyant. You have to know what the first family wants almost before they anticipate. You really need to know them inside out. Secondly, you had to be tremendously discreet and circumspect. You can't talk about anything you do or how you do it. So in an age of celebrity chefs, you had to be the anti-celebrity chef. And thirdly, it doesn't hurt if you can cook a little bit.
I would suspect that for all the political agendas and all the culinary agendas that are being bandied about, about what the Obamas should do with their chef, that Cris has got a leg up on everyone. And secondly, there is only one person then who will make this decision. It isn't Alice Waters or Ruth Reichl. It's Michelle Obama. She'll be the one who makes the decision, not based on any sort of culinary agenda, but on what she perceives to be right for her daughters and her husband in her home.
RAZ: Chef Walter Scheib's memoir about his executive branch cooking is called "White House Chef: Eleven Years, Two Presidents, One Kitchen." Chef Scheib, thanks for joining us.
Mr. SCHEIB: Great to have been here.
RAZ: Head to npr.org to hear about Chef Scheib's most memorable White House menu. The guest: Nelson Mandela.
GUY RAZ, host:
President's Richard Nixon's last breakfast at the White House in August 1974 was poached eggs with corned beef hash. Now, that's not mentioned in the new Ron Howard film about the president's series of legendary interviews with the British broadcaster David Frost. That film, "Frost/Nixon," is up for five awards at the Golden Globes next weekend. Now, if you've seen the movie, you'll no doubt have been charmed or maybe annoyed by one of the main characters, James Reston, Jr., played by actor Sam Rockwell. A year before Frost interviewed Nixon, he hired Reston as his researcher to help him prep for the big encounter. Well, the real James Reston, Jr., joins me now in the studio. Welcome.
Mr. JAMES RESTON, JR. (Author): Thank you.
RAZ: Jim Reston, I want to start with a clip from the Ron Howard film, "Frost/Nixon." And in this scene your character meets David Frost for the first time. He's played by actor Michael Sheen. Frost didn't have a reputation for doing hard-hitting interviews, and you were a little reluctant to work with him. Let's take a listen.
(Soundbite of movie "Frost/Nixon")
Mr. SAM ROCKWELL: (As James Reston, Jr.) Actually, before I sign on, I would like to hear what you were hoping to achieve with this interview.
Mr. MICHAEL SHEEN: (As David Frost) What I want to achieve?
Mr. ROCKWELL: (As James Reston, Jr.) Yeah.
Mr. SHEEN: (As David Frost) Jim, well, I have secured 12 taping days. That's close to 30 hours with the most compelling and controversial politician of our times. Isn't that enough?
Mr. ROCKWELL: (As James Reston, Jr.) Not for me.
RAZ: Jim Reston, Jr., what did you want these interviews to accomplish?
Mr. RESTON, JR.: Well, there's one thing that they had to accomplish and that is that the criminality of Richard Nixon had to be put on display and proven. The real question was whether this fellow, David Frost, could really pull that off, whether he would do the research that was needed for that historic responsibility to be met.
RAZ: Now in the film you're portrayed as almost a kind of a self-righteous, indignant, young man. You'd written some books about Richard Nixon, and it was almost as if you had a personal stake in seeing him, as you say, "put on trial." Is that how you felt at the time? Was it personal?
Mr. RESTON, JR.: Well, I think it was intellectual, mainly. You know, if - I'm interested that people say, or get the impression, of self-righteousness in all of this. Had there been no passion in this, had there been no deep commitment, had it been a straightforward journalistic neutral interview, then that trial, that interrogation could never have taken place.
Normally when you go into an interview - and I've done many of them myself - it's not like an interrogation. It doesn't have a goal at the end. It doesn't have a strategy to move all the way through to a set goal. And that's what I formulated for David Frost. We had to take Nixon chapter and verse through the entire Watergate scandal. Each of his defenses along the way, one after another after another, had to be knocked down.
RAZ: The movie re-enacts only certain moments of the interviews between Frost and Nixon, and there's this climactic moment when Nixon gets pretty close to apologizing to the American public. He says, "I let the American people down and I'm going to have to carry that burden with me for the rest of my life." Thirty years later, it almost seems like of course he would say that. But at that time, that must have been unbelievable to hear Richard Nixon say those words. And you were there. You were watching it.
Mr. RESTON, JR.: You have to understand that apology is not in the American tradition. Politicians don't normally apologize, or they don't apologize with sincerity and authenticity. That's the historian's question that remains over this whole episode as to whether that apology was sincere or whether it was fake.
RAZ: Now this film, and the play, of course, that preceded it by Peter Morgan are based in part by your own personal account of what happened in preparing for the Frost/Nixon interviews. You've been somewhat critical of this film. What do you think is missing from it?
Mr. RESTON, JR.: I'm really not critical of the film as entertainment or as political entertainment. I think it works brilliantly. But there is beyond that, the question of when films are made about real events, about what is the relationship between art and history? And because, you know, I lived through the actual thing, of course I hold on to all kinds of dramatic moments that didn't make it into the final cut of the film.
RAZ: What are some things you feel were left out of the movie?
Mr. RESTON, JR.: Well, it's ridiculous to think that Richard Nixon, as awesome and daunting figure as he was, would have rolled over and acknowledged his criminality and then apologize for it in seven minutes.
RAZ: It didn't happen that way.
Mr. RESTON, JR.: It didn't happen that way. No, it happened over two days and over four-and-a-half hours of grueling interrogation.
RAZ: In the film it's almost difficult not to feel some sympathy for Richard Nixon. He is a sympathetic character in this film in some ways. But when you watch the original Frost/Nixon interviews, he comes across very differently. He comes across as a dark and angry and bitter person. Are you at all concerned about whether, you know, Nixon's legacy will be sort of turned on its head as a result of this movie?
Mr. RESTON, JR.: Well, this is a fascinating question to me because whether one walks out of the theater or away from that television set in 1977 with a sense of sympathy is really up to the viewer. I do not think that in the play or in the movie Nixon is a sympathetic character. I think in - Frank Langella has played it darkly. But it's sad. And there is a difference between feeling sad for a human being and feeling sympathetic as if, you know, somehow he got a bum rap. Often, I think when people are convicted of criminality, one feels a sort of sense of sadness, but it doesn't change the fact that they are the villains and the culprits.
RAZ: James Reston, Jr., is the author of many books, including "The Conviction of Richard Nixon." James Reston, Jr., thanks so much for coming in.
Mr. RESTON, JR.: Thank you.
GUY RAZ, host:
Welcome back to All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Guy Raz. In Iraq, in the area around Fallujah, U.S. marines have introduced a secret weapon in the battle for hearts and minds, a bovine battalion. The marines have recently bought 50 dairy cows for 50 Iraqi women whose husbands have been killed in the fighting there over the past few years. The idea: to help the women become self-sufficient and to keep them from possibly joining insurgent groups. Marine Major Meredith Brown helped put together the cows to widows program, and she's on the line now from the Ramadi area. Thanks for joining us, Major.
Major MEREDITH BROWN (U.S. Marines): Thank you, Guy.
RAZ: And I understand you're there with a civilian colleague who's known as the cow whisperer? Jennifer Vitela, welcome to you, as well.
Ms. JENNIFER VITELA (U.S. State Department Employee): Oh, thank you, Guy. We're happy to be here with you.
RAZ: So, Major Brown, before you left for Iraq, did the military train you how to wrangle livestock?
Maj. BROWN: No, they didn't. They taught me how to do the things that Marines traditionally do, and this is not a traditional role for Marines. But it came naturally because of the overall training that we get.
RAZ: How did this program get started?
Maj. BROWN: Well, I tell you, Guy. This is a project for women by women through women. I was actually approached by two women - one who is a provincial council member which is equivalent to our state legislature, and one who is a city council member in Fallujah - and they said that they had this grand idea to empower women by starting a dairy products factory. First, they wanted to buy cows for local widows, so they would have a milk source for the factory.
RAZ: And how did you get the cows?
Maj. BROWN: We went to a livestock exchange, which doesn't look anything like a livestock exchange. It was more like a parking lot with a lot of animals. And we had a veterinarian, American veterinarian with us, and he began assessing cows and calling out prices. And the owners agreed to the prices. And so that was the first day. And the second day, I'll let Jennifer tell you about because this is when she became the cow whisperer.
Ms. VITELA: Well, when we were at the livestock exchange, we weren't able to buy all the cows that we wanted. And so the second day, we ended up in an abandoned parking lot off the side of a road. We didn't know what to expect. Then we pulled up, and there were a couple of very beat-up vehicles and about 36 cows for us to examine. I knew somebody needed to handle the cows for the veterinarian to examine them, and I thought there was no better way to be a part of the project than just to rope them up myself and chase them down and do anything I could to help the veterinarian get his job done, so we could get out with our 50 cows.
RAZ: And Jennifer Vitela, you work for the U.S. State Department there. Do you have any experience with dairy farms? Do you come from a dairy farm?
Ms. VITELA: Actually, I come from Newport Beach, and we don't have any dairy farms there.
(Soundbite of laughter)
RAZ: How about you Major Brown?
Maj. BROWN: Well, I am from rural Louisiana, but not of the dairy cow sort.
RAZ: And so most of these women live in rural parts of Anbar province. And how have they responded to receiving a cow?
Maj. BROWN: They've been quite excited about it. I've heard stories from the two ladies who proposed the idea that the widows are doing well, the cows are doing well, the cooperative is working quite well, and I think it's going to be successful.
RAZ: So have either of you had a chance to try the milk?
Maj. BROWN: Well, I tell you, we are actually in discussions with Land O'Lakes.
RAZ: Land O'Lakes, the dairy company here in the U.S.
Maj. BROWN: That's correct. Discussion about helping to develop a new collection facility. And so once they bring in the machinery to homogenize and pasteurize the milk, I'll be more than happy to try it.
RAZ: But until then you're going to probably just try to stay safe.
Maj. BROWN: Take a pass, yes.
RAZ: Major Meredith Brown is assigned to the Marines' outreach program for women in Anbar province, Iraq. She works on the cows for widows project with Jennifer Vitela, who is a civilian working for the State Department. She's also known as the cow whisperer. Ladies, thanks to you both.
Ms. VITELA: Thank you, Guy.
Maj. BROWN: Thank you, Guy. It's been a pleasure.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The Obama family has officially moved to Washington, D.C., now, and the transition team has released a photograph of an intimate Obama family moment, a moment that happened this morning. The president-elect and his wife, Michele, are sending their daughters off for their first day of school in Washington. The pictures were taken by photographer Callie Shell of Time magazine, and afterwards she described the scene to us.
Ms. CALLIE SHELL (Photographer, Time Magazine): Yeah, he was just trying to make them laugh. I mean, you know, he is saying, you're going to a new school. You're both really bright. Don't worry about getting everything right. Don't be afraid to answer the questions. And he goes, you guys are great. So just be you.
NORRIS: Callie Shell is one of a handful of photographers who has had personal access to the Obama family. She's been covering Mr. Obama for Time magazine since 2006. Her photos are now featured in a new book, "President Obama: The Path to The White House." I asked her to look back to the days when she started taking pictures of the future president.
Ms. SHELL: Well, actually, the beginning of 2006, I was covering him on the Hill, and then I went out on the road. He was helping state politicians campaign. And so it was the president-elect, a driver, and myself.
NORRIS: Just the three of you.
Ms. SHELL: Just the three of us.
NORRIS: Wow.
Ms. SHELL: So there's a photograph where he's at a truck stop, a rest stop. And he went in, and he came back out, and this couple pulled up, and they're from Illinois. And they're, you know, Senator, Senator. And I love this picture because he is just reaching into the car, and behind it you see the fields and you see a truck. And it means more if you do the whole campaign because that photograph and that life doesn't exist anymore.
NORRIS: Yeah, that moment's gone.
Ms .SHELL: He's not going to - I mean, he made a cell phone call on the side of the road, and then he talked to this couple. And there's nobody around. There are no agents, there's no press, there's no motorcade - just him.
NORRIS: Now, I've got the book with me, and we've seen many of your pictures...
Ms. SHELL: Time will be so excited.
NORRIS: Over time in Time magazine. And just quickly, I'd love to take us inside the scene if you could. There is one picture that was taken in June of 2008, and Barack Obama is on an elevator, and he is surrounded by members of his inner circle. And what's interesting in this picture is the contrast between his expression and all the people who are around him. You see Michelle Obama, and you see Eric Whitaker, and you see Penny Pritzker, and you see Valerie Jarrett. They all have this look of expectation on their face, and he looks like he is in an altogether different place. What's the message there?
Ms. SHELL: Well, this was the night he had clinched the nomination, and you know, my editors were all going, ah, you know, everybody is looking for this high-five picture, and he is not really a high-five person. I knew there was not going to be this emotional moment because I knew that he is a person who until the very day of the election never let his guard down. So I actually have to admit, I was looking for a picture where he just looked at peace. And I love freight elevators because nobody can go anywhere.
NORRIS: I was going to ask how big this elevator was because there are a lot of people on that elevator.
Ms. SHELL: It's big. Yeah, there are. I love freight elevators. Once you get on an elevator, you can't go anywhere. And we got on the elevator, and I knew I had - and he just crossed his arms. And it wasn't like, hey. It was just the satisfaction we got to this point. We've made it.
NORRIS: Callie, I appreciate that you took time to come in and talk to us because you're not actually on book tour, you're still working. In fact, this morning you were on the job at the hotel with the soon-to-be first family as they were getting ready to send their kids off to school.
Ms. SHELL: Yes.
NORRIS: A big move for this family. How did the girls do this morning?
Ms. SHELL: They're amazing. You know, Sasha's the light and funny one who runs around and, you know, is seven and has all the energy. And Malia is just the most graceful, young lady you'd meet. And they're both - I found this whole campaign very wonderful. When they're with they're parents, you can tell how excited they are to be with them, but today was their first day at a new school, and they were more worried about keeping their dad's spirits up because he didn't get to go to school with them this morning, he had to go to Capitol Hill, and he wasn't going to get to go for the first day. And they were like, we'll tell you all about it, dad.
And the thing that is funny, it's probably been the whole campaign, because he and I talked about this - how hard it is to be away from your kids. The kids are half the time fine. It's you that's bad. So I think for him, I think he knows how lucky he is to have these kids that are so supportive of what he does and what his wife does. And he knows that he could not do this if it wasn't for his wife and his kids. And he never forgets that. And it's so obvious. You can tell by the way he looks at Michelle that it's not just his wife, it's his partner, and that one can't do without the other.
NORRIS: Callie Shell is a photographer for Time magazine. She's been covering Barack Obama since 2006. And her photos are featured in a new book called "President Obama: The Path to The White House." Callie, thanks so much for coming in.
Ms. SHELL: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: And you can see a slideshow with several of the photos Callie Shell has taken of Barack Obama since 2006 on the campaign trail and with his family. You'll find that at npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. Every day in Nashville, hundreds of musicians sign timecards and put in nine-hour days in recording studios for whoever is paying the bill. Just as surely as accounting or bricklaying, making commercial music is still work, hard work, which is why most pros spend some of their off-hours playing with bands that remind them why they started playing music in the first place. Craig Havighurst of member station WPLN has this profile of one such band, The Time Jumpers.
CRAIG HAVIGHURST: The Station Inn in Nashville, likely the most famous bluegrass club in the world. Its neon beer signs illuminate vintage posters for shows by the likes of Ralph Stanley, The Osborne Brothers, and Mac Wiseman. But on Mondays for the past 10 years, the club has sounded more like Texas than Tennessee.
(Soundbite of music)
HAVIGHURST: If this were Texas, the floor would fill with two-steppers. But Nashville audiences are more inclined to close listening, so close that the front row could reach out and touch the lizard skin boots on fiddler, Kenny Sears.
Mr. KENNY SEARS (Fiddler and Vocalist; The Time Jumpers): There's 11 of us on a stage that should accommodate five or six. ..TEXT: HAVIGHURST: Sears, a sideman for classic country artists such as Mel Tillis and Ray Price, says during his typical live gigs, he is on giant stages far apart from his fellow musicians. The Time Jumpers, he says, draw their energy from intimacy.
Mr. SEARS: Even when we play the Opry on a big stage, we bunch up together in the middle like a bluegrass band, because it's just much more fun to play that way.
(Soundbite of music)
HAVIGHURST: The Grand Ole Opry is where The Time Jumpers were born. Band members and Opry stars passed time between sets playing Western swing tunes in Dressing Room 6. A tentative Monday-night residency at the Station Inn took root, and a more formalized lineup started looking forward to the shows as the highlight of their week.
Mr. JOE SPIVEY (Recording Studio Owner; Fiddler, The Time Jumpers): If you look at the way our business is now, the so-called country music business, we're about as anti-that as you can get.
HAVIGHURST: Joe Spivey, a recording-studio owner and a member of the three-man fiddle section, says The Time Jumpers draw a crowd that values the group's attentiveness to one another and to genuine musicianship.
Mr. SPIVEY: That's one of the most joyful things about this band, everybody is so conscientious. I mean, you'll notice when somebody's playing solos, everybody's doing whatever they can do to make that soloist sound as good as they can.
(Soundbite of music)
HAVIGHURST: Those musicians are about as good as they come. Bass player Dennis Crouch just finished a tour with Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. Paul Franklin is the most recorded pedal-steel guitarist working today. And seated in back strumming a big arch-topped rhythm guitar the way Freddie Green used to for Count Basie's orchestra is none other than Ranger Doug Green, frontman of the Grammy-winning cowboy band, Riders in the Sky.
Mr. RANGER DOUG GREEN (Frontman, Riders in the Sky; Guitarist, The Time Jumpers): This is my therapy, my relaxation. This is when I get together with the people I really like and play music I really love. And I don't have to front the band, and I don't have to remember jokes and make up the set list and drive 500 miles. I just get to show up and play with people I respect enormously. And it's just inspiring.
(Soundbite of music)
HAVIGHURST: The lines between country music and jazz were blurry decades ago, when Bob Wills and Spade Cooley built the Western swing sound around fiddles, guitars, and driving big band rhythm sections. In Nashville, such session pickers and producers as Hank Garland, Chet Atkins, and Owen Bradley were jazz men when not making hillbilly records. So The Time Jumpers aren't out to break new ground. They are just an increasingly rare example of a band dedicated to group interpretation of classic American songs.
(Soundbite of song "Honeysuckle Rose")
Ms. CAROLINE MARTIN (Vocalist, The Time Jumpers): (Singing) Now, I don't buy sugar, You just need to touch my cup, You're my sugar, And it's oh, so sweet when you stir it up. When I'm takin' sips, From your tasty lips, It seems the honey fairly drips. You're confection, Goodness knows. You're my honeysuckle rose.
HAVIGHURST: That's Caroline Martin. She says the Western swing repertoire and its focus on improvisation is something she appreciates from having grown up in Texas.
Ms. MARTIN: You have the freedom to go out on a limb just like the musicians do. And you know that they're going to be right behind you, that nobody's going to let you drop. It's heaven for a vocalist. It's a perfect situation.
HAVIGHURST: Martin shares lead vocal duties with Dawn Sears, wife of Kenny, the fiddle player. Dawn discovered what's become her signature song when she was a recording artist in the 1990s. Her two record labels never would let her cut "Sweet Memories" by Mickey Newbury. But her performance of the ballad earned the band one of two Grammy nominations last year. ..TEXT: (Soundbite of song "Sweet Memories")
Ms. DAWN SEARS (Vocalist, The Time Jumpers): My world is like a river, As dark as it is deep. Night after night the past rolls in, And it gathers all my sleep.
HAVIGHURST: That recording proved bittersweet because it captured one of the last performances by the band's longtime steel guitarist John Hughey. A veteran sideman for Conway Twitty, Vince Gill, and Loretta Lynn, Hughey died just after the live CD and DVD were released. His protege, Paul Franklin, a veteran of hundreds of hit album recording sessions, stepped in.
Mr. PAUL FRANKLIN (Steel Pedal Guitarist, The Time Jumpers): They could have anybody in this band. I don't think there's a steel guitarist in town that wouldn't jump at this gig. So, I was very honored, you know, that they asked me in. And for me, it's such a step away from what I do on a day-to-day basis. Like today, I just did a project that was more like Matchbox Twenty, you know, than country. And then to come down here, it's just such a nice change of pace.
HAVIGHURST: The Station Inn audience doesn't hold back. They cajole the players and ring the bell by the bar for a particularly good performance.
(Soundbite of music)
HAVIGHURST: Some are old enough to have lived through the golden age of Western swing, but there are also college students who sing along with songs decades older than themselves. Celebrity musicians Robert Plant, Norah Jones, Jack White, and Bonnie Raitt have all gone out of their way to catch a Time Jumpers show.
Mr. ANDY REISS (Lead Guitarist, The Time Jumpers): To me, the beauty of music is the unspoken communication.
HAVIGHURST: Lead guitarist Andy Reiss says the band's aim is not a retro experience or a revival of Western swing. Rather, they see the genre as an ideal vehicle for exploring a state of pure creative communion.
Mr. REISS: When your ears are wide open, your heart's wide open. You're not even really thinking. You're listening. You're part of something, and everybody is doing that. When that happens, it's pure magic. And as a musician yourself, you know how rare that is.
HAVIGHURST: For these 11 musicians, at least it's no more rare than once a week. For NPR News, I'm Craig Havighurst in Nashville.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: And you can hear more music from the Time Jumpers at nprmusic.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. First this hour, we're going to hear from a hospital in Gaza about the impact of Israel's offensive. The U.N. says at least a quarter of the more than 500 people killed in Gaza so far are civilians. That includes 14 people from two families killed today. Most of them were children. This is the heaviest fighting in the Gaza Strip since the 1967 war. Doctors, nurses, field medics, and ambulance drivers are struggling under increasingly dangerous conditions, as NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.
ERIC WESTERVELT: The crowded, chaotic, and bloodstained hallways of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City are now makeshift operating areas. Jasim Bahtete this morning tried to comfort his 10-year-old daughter, Asma, who was sprawled out on the floor of the reception area. She was wounded today, her father says, by shrapnel from an Israeli air or artillery strike. He is not sure which.
Mr. JASIM BAHTETE: (Through Translator) She was doing nothing other than walking in the street. They hit a house in the neighborhood. I don't know if others were wounded. I just grabbed my daughter and ran to the hospital.
WESTERVELT: Dr. Eric Fosse, from the Norwegian Aid Committee, says the hospital has been overwhelmed even more since the Israeli ground attack began Saturday night.
Dr. ERIC FOSSE (Norwegian Aid Committee): There were a large number of casualties and dead people, and this hospital was then turned into some kind of field hospital. We operate people in the corridors. We have people waiting for surgery, lying around in the corridors of the hospital, and they were dying before we could come to them. We saw some terrible scenes.
WESTERVELT: Doctors at Shifa say there is now a severe shortage of intensive care beds. They are sending wounded people home early to free up space and trying to get people to go to local medical clinics. But almost no one wants to move around the city. It's too perilous. Doctors believe some civilians are simply going untreated, and corpses are being left to decay in the streets and homes. The hospital's doctors and nurses are near the point of collapse, says Dr. Haitham Dababish.
Dr. HAITHAM DABABISH (Shifa Hospital, Gaza): (Through Translator) The medical crews are really exhausted. They've been working around the clock with no rest or breaks. Medical teams across Gaza are worn out.
WESTERVELT: The territory's fragile medical system already was facing key shortages of equipment, spare parts, specialists, and some medicine due to the international sanctions against Hamas-ruled Gaza. The problem has only gotten worse during the war. For several days now, hospitals across Gaza have been running entirely on backup generators. The U.N. says there's only enough fuel left for three or four days. John Prideaux-Brune, with the aid group Oxfam UK, says hospitals across Gaza are now rationing electricity.
Mr. JOHN PRIDEAUX-BRUNE (Country Program Manager in Jerusalem, Oxfam UK): Keeping wards in the dark, keeping wards unheated to try and eek out the meager supplies of fuel they have so that they can maintain the operating theaters and the life-support machines.
WESTERVELT: Israel has allowed several tons of medical aid to enter Gaza since the fighting began. And the U.N. says for now there is enough of most medicines. But getting the supplies safely distributed from the warehouses to the hospitals and clinics, aid groups say, has been nearly impossible. Ground fighting is raging across the territory. Gaza has been cut in two by Israeli infantry and tanks. Israeli Army spokesman Elie Issacson says Hamas is to blame for injuries to innocents.
Mr. ELIE ISSACSON (Spokesman, Israeli Army): We know they purposefully decide to locate themselves and rocket launchers within civilian areas. We take every possible care we can in being as accurate as we can to avoid risk to civilians in the vicinity.
WESTERVELT: Gaza ambulance drivers and medical crews dispute that. Many have been unable to secure safe passage into combat areas. Miri Weingarten with Physicians for Human Rights-Israel says six medics and ambulance staff have been killed in recent days by Israeli fire while trying to retrieve wounded civilians.
Ms. MIRI WEINGARTEN (Physicians for Human Rights-Israel): Yesterday, a tank hit an ambulance while it was trying to evacuate a family in the area of Tel al-Hawa, and three medics were killed in that situation. So we're seeing a real crisis with regard to medical conditions in Gaza.
WESTERVELT: The group is calling on Israel to allow more wounded to be transferred out of Gaza for treatment in Israel, Jordan, or elsewhere. So far, the Red Cross says 109 patients have been transferred to Israel and Egypt, but that was before the ground attack. Since then, none of the more than 2,000 wounded civilians has left Gaza. Eric Westervelt, NPR News.
NORRIS: We got help for that story from NPR News assistant Ahmed Abu-Hamdan in Gaza city. Israel continues to bar foreign journalists from entering Gaza.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Museums are not immune from the bad economy. Funding is being cut. Many museums are laying off staff and postponing exhibitions. Some are in life or death situations, and they are considering draconian measures to raise money. As part of our series on the challenges facing museums in the 21st century, NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
Unidentified Man: That's the Bronx Zoo, I think, right down there.
Unidentified Child: You mean that big green patch?
Unidentified Man: Yeah.
JIM ZARROLI: Each year some 200,000 people come to the Queens Museum of Art. And the most popular exhibition, by far, is the "Panorama," a 9,300 square foot replica of the City of New York, containing every building in all five buroughs.
Unidentified Child: Dad, can you see Yankee Stadium?
Unidentified Man: Yeah.
ZARROLI: The museum is housed in an imposing art deco pavilion built for the 1939 World's Fair. In the '40s, it was used for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly. Then in 1972, it became the Queens Museum of Art. Tom Finkelpearl is the museum's director.
Mr. TOM FINKELPEARL (Director, Queens Museum of Art): At that time, there were no cultural institutions in Queens. You have to understand, even Staten Island had some august 19th century institutions, the Bronx, certainly Brooklyn and Manhattan, so there was a feeling of civic pride.
ZARROLI: At first, the museum was funded entirely by the city, but today it gets most of its money from corporate and private donors. And Finkelpearl says the recession has made raising money much harder. Many donors are worth a lot less today because of the turmoil in the stock market. Meanwhile, the hard-pressed city government has cut some $400,000 from the museum's budget.
Mr. FINKELPEARL: When I started at this museum six years ago, we had a $2.5 million budget. And this is what's so frustrating. You grow it one grant at a time, and you build up, and you do more programming, and you have more staff and more audience. And I wouldn't be surprised to see our budget cut down to $3 million, again, which is essentially wiping away almost all the work we've done in terms of growth in the last six years.
ZARROLI: The museum has laid off about 10 percent of its small staff. It's also looking for other ways to cut costs.
(Soundbite of Taiwanese art exhibition)
Unidentified Announcer: (Taiwanese spoken)
ZARROLI: It decided to extend this exhibition of contemporary Taiwanese art, rather than open a new show in the same gallery, as a way of saving money. What's happening here is happening at museums of all kinds. The recession has affected both public and private funding sources, and the pain is being felt by everyone from the large institutions with sizable endowments and hefty ticket prices to the small museums that scrape by on government funding. Bruce Altshuler heads the museum studies program at New York University.
Dr. BRUCE ALTSHULER (Director, Program in Museum Studies, Graduate School of Arts and Science, New York University): It's going to be a difficult time, because as I say, these operating costs are there, can be decreased in certain ways, but there's a limit if you want to keep the doors open.
ZARROLI: This funding crisis has led to some soul searching about how far a museum may go to stay open. The venerable National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts sits on what's called museum row on Manhattan's Upper East Side, near the Guggenheim and the Met. It's a quiet, somewhat fusty place run by artists with a kind of academic bent. And with a tiny endowment and a low profile, it's been losing money for years. Carmine Branagan is the museum's new director.
Ms. CARMINE BRANAGAN (Director, National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts): I think that they were in what could only be described as a monumental crisis. There wasn't money to pay the guards. There wasn't money to buy ink cartridges. I actually worked gratis for many months. They had absolutely no cash flow. All the budgets were frozen.
ZARROLI: To pay off its debts, it sold two paintings from its sizable permanent collection for $15 million. Museums sometimes sell works for certain reasons. They may want to buy a new work that fits in their collection better. But selling them to pay operating costs, as the National Academy did, is a cardinal sin in the museum world, says Graham Beal who directs the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Mr. GRAHAM BEAL (Director, Detroit Institute of Arts): What you're actually doing, of course, is not - you're not so much selling an asset, which is how it's viewed, you're really selling part of what you are. And, I mean, the institution is there to safeguard the art. The art is not there, in a way, to support the institution.
ZARROLI: Beal says that with art prices so high, museums facing funding crises are sometimes tempted to sell works, but he says they're usually able to find a better solution.
Mr. BEAL: The National Academy, as I understand it, voted not to sell their building, which is a very nice location on 5th Avenue. Well, you know, they - the kind of money they could have got for that sort of building would provide an enormous endowment, much more than a couple of paintings, probably.
ZARROLI: For its sins, the National Academy was blacklisted by the Association of Art Museum Directors. That means other museums won't lend it works for special shows or cooperate with it in any way. The move has dismayed Carmine Branagan. She says selling works may be a lamentable act, but it's also sometimes necessary to save an institution as a whole, and the museum world needs to come up with a way to tell the difference.
Ms. BRANAGAN: There are going to be a lot of institutions that are being brought to their knees by the current financial climate. And wouldn't it be better to really understand when a financial crisis is really a financial crisis, and then to really consider how an institution can actually right itself over time and do that in a collegial way rather than pit museums one against the other, which is a very, very, very unfortunate situation.
ZARROLI: If nothing else, the troubles at the National Academy underscore just how much is at stake for museums right now. As funding sources dry up, museums will have to look for new ways to get by. The question is how far they should go to survive and whether they can do it without compromising the trust the public has placed in them. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: It's time for our weekly technology segment, All Tech Considered. Last week, we talked gaming and took you to a bar where the band plugs into an Xbox. This week, we watch a little TV, on the computer. And since we're talking tech, I need to check in with our tech guru, Omar Gallaga. Omar, happy new year.
Mr. OMAR GALLAGA (Technology Reporter, Austin American-Statesman): Hi, Michele. Happy new year to you.
NORRIS: So we're talking about TV on the computer. This is not exactly a new idea. My colleague, Robert Siegel, reported on it in the summer of 2007, quite a while ago. But a lot has changed since then.
Mr. GALLAGA: Right, well, you know, I'm a big TV junkie. Full disclosure, when I'm not talking to you or writing for the Austin American-Statesman, I actually also write for the Web site Television Without Pity, which is owned by NBC. It seems like - kind of like with the music industry, there has been this push and pull between TV networks and the Web. Whenever certain videos would pop up on YouTube, they'd file an injunction or try to get it off the Web. More recently, they've really come to embrace the Internet and gotten a lot more content online where people can view shows whenever they want to.
NORRIS: It seems that they're actually pushing people online. I mean, I remember during the presidential race, it seemed that clips of Tina Fey doing her Sarah Palin impersonation were everywhere.
Mr. GALLAGA: Right, you used to have to really hunt to find clips fron "SNL." Now you can usually find them within hours of the broadcast or the next morning on YouTube, on Hulu.com, a lot of other places. Hulu was actually founded by NBC Universal and News Corp., but you won't find a lot of corporate logos there. There's no NBC peacock or Fox spotlights. Even on other sites, like Joost, you see a lot of shows and a lot of archival stuff from all different places. It doesn't feel branded like that particular network. On Joost, you can find Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" or Showtime's "The L Word." And it's not just new shows. There's an entire online channel devoted just to retro TV.
(Soundbite of cartoon "Betty Boop")
NORRIS: Were we just hearing "Betty Boop"?
Mr. GALLAGA: Boop Boopedoo(ph).
(Soundbite of laughter)
NORRIS: So, a few quick questions. This is all free, and is it all legal?
Mr. GALLAGA: It is on these official sites. For instance, on Hulu, if you're watching a 45-minute TV show, you're going to get commercials every 15 minutes like you would on TV. You can't skip them, you have to kind of sit and watch them, or you can maybe browse in another window while it's playing. But then, on services like iTunes, where you're actually paying for the content, the commercials are gone. You're actually paying for the privilege of not having to sit through those commercials.
NORRIS: Now, if you're someone who watches a lot of television, enjoys watching television, prefers to watch television on television, does the technology on the computer match what you can now see on these, you know, these super-large TVs that have plasma and LED and all kinds of special features?
Mr. GALLAGA: Well no, you're not going to get the same resolution, and there's this whole convergence issue right now of how are we going to watch all this stuff on our TVs. The electronics company LG just announced they're introducing a television with Netflix streaming built into it.
But the thing about online is there's a lot of content that you just can't see on TV. You're not going to see it on your cable or satellite providers list of channels. Fans of "The Office" and "Battlestar Gallactica" have been able to watch special webisodes, as they're called, on the Web. You can't see them on TV. They were produced specifically to be watched online. The Web also opened the door for lots of entrepreneurs who are working outside of Hollywood, kind of using that same example of delivering straight to the people.
NORRIS: Well, Omar, we asked April Baer of Oregon Public Broadcasting to profile two of these people. And let's take a quick listen.
APRIL BAER: Rebecca Gerendasy is ankle-deep in mud, hunched low over her camera at the Ayers Creek Organic Farm. She's on a shoot for her Internet-based show, "Cooking Up a Story."
(Soundbite of show "Cooking Up a Story")
Ms. REBECCA GERENDASY (Producer, "Cooking Up a Story"): Anthony, tell me a little bit of what you've already done today.
BAER: Farmer Anthony Boutard is wrestling with burdock roots and explaining how he farms through wet Oregon winters.
(Soundbite of show "Cooking Up a Story")
Mr. ANTHONY BOUTARD (Owner and Operator, Ayers Creek Farm, Portland, Oregon): You can't operate the machine in the wet soil because it'll just compact it and kill it.
BAER: This is not the kind of stuff Gerendasy would have been able to do in her old job, shooting broadcast TV news. She put 20 years in as a camerawoman before switching gears, and she now produces "Cooking Up a Story" almost single-handedly. The show has become sort of a foody cult favorite with over four million online views. Some webisodes are cooking demos. Others explore food policy or tell stories about sustainable food production. Gerendasy hasn't looked back after leaving traditional broadcasting.
Ms. GERENDASY: I remember I would try to pitch more of a feature-type story here or there, and it got turned down all the time. Now on the Internet, you can really go into a niche and stick with it.
(Soundbite of show "Cooking Up a Story")
Ms. GERENDASY: Bringing the people behind our food to life.
Unidentified Woman: I often explain Food Works as a youth empowerment program that uses food and farming...
BAER: "Cooking Up a Story" isn't making much money yet, but Gerendasy says she's trying several different kinds of sponsorship, and the show has just been added by Hulu. When you watch "Cooking Up a Story" on different sites, you start to see how Internet video is making use of the broadcast business model. On YouTube, you'll notice a tiny text ad at the bottom of the window. On Hulu, the show starts with a commercial that looks exactly like what you'd see on TV.
(Soundbite of advertisement)
Unidentified Woman: Regenerist Eye Derma-Pod from Olay. Love the skin you're in.
BAER: More Internet ads mean more work for Paul Golden. He's a veteran animator and producer who's worked for TV, movies, and the Web. Golden wasn't really sure Internet video was taking off until last year.
Mr. PAUL GOLDEN (Animator; Producer): It hasn't happened successfully everywhere, but I think it's starting to.
BAER: There was a time when no one was asking Paul Golden's company to make commercials for Internet video, but they're asking now.
Mr. GOLDEN: We don't have to create banner ads or very simple things in order for it to play on the Web. Now it can just be the way you'd produce a high-end commercial for anything else.
BAER: Golden says there's one thing Internet video and broadcast TV have in common. People don't want to pay to watch either. So the new media business model may not be so new after all. For NPR News, I'm April Baer in Portland, Oregon.
NORRIS: And we're back now with our tech expert, Omar Gallaga. Omar, April just said that the show that she profiled had four million online viewers. Is that considered a mega hit or do other shows or webisodes have that large an audience?
Mr. GALLAGA: It's considered a hit, but it's not unusual for just some weird viral video to get that many viewers on YouTube. Just something takes off. People start emailing it to each other. It gets featured on blogs and really starts to take off. I think, like the "Saturday Night Live" example, one of their big videos, which I'm not even sure I can say the name of on the air, got about that many within a couple of days of airing on "SNL" and then being put online, one of the Andy Samberg videos.
NORRIS: You know, there's a bit of irony here. Televisions are bigger and better than they've ever been. And now we're talking about going and watching this on computers instead.
Mr. GALLAGA: Right, but I think that the evolution is going to be that all of this content is going to end up on your TV. I think that's the future of televisions. They're all going to be Internet enabled. They're all going to be able to stream Web content.
NORRIS: Omar, it is always good to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Mr. GALLAGA: Thanks for having me. And if you all are curious about Web video, and you want to catch up on your "Betty Boop," I'm going to post links to all of those sites and content that we talked about on the NPR Web site. That's npr.org/alltech.
NORRIS: Omar Gallaga covers technology culture for the Austin American-Statesmen. We also want to encourage you when you visit the All Tech Considered site to register as a member. That way, you can check in on the tech stories we're working on throughout the week, and you can chat with other NPR listeners about all of your tech questions.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. Today is President-elect Barack Obama's first full day in Washington, D.C. He sent his daughters off to their first day of school and then got going with his own work. He made some long-awaited nominations for intelligence positions, and he urged members of Congress to approve a huge economic stimulus plan.
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: It's clear that we have to act and we have to act now to address this crisis and break the momentum of the recession or the next few years could be dramatically worse.
NORRIS: NPR's Scott Horsley spent the day following the president-elect, and he joins us now. Hello, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Good to be with you, Michele.
NORRIS: Let's start with the news that broke this afternoon. Mr. Obama has named a head of the CIA and a national intelligence director. What can you tell us about these two men?
HORSLEY: Well, Dennis Blair, the choice for national intelligence director, was a career Navy man. He retired after serving last as commander in chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific. He also held positions in the CIA and with the National Security Council. Leon Panetta, though, the choice to head the CIA itself, is perhaps a less conventional choice. He is a veteran of the Clinton White House, we know. He served as a budget director and later chief of staff. But he didn't play a big public role in intelligence there or in his earlier life as a California congressman.
He did, however, have an intelligence background from his early days in the military. And news of these intelligence picks comes on a day when the president-elect was devoting most of his time to the economy. But he repeated today what he said before, that a president or a president-elect has to be able to do more than one thing at a time.
NORRIS: Well, let's talk about his economic agenda. President-elect Obama met with leaders in Congress. He also met today with key members of his economic team. What did he have to say about those closed-door meetings?
HORSLEY: Well, he said that there is a great deal of urgency, that the economic news is getting worse. He warned of a dire jobs report that may come out at the end of this week. He says Congress has to act quickly and boldly to pass a massive stimulus package. He spent much of his day meeting with his economic team and with leaders on Capitol Hill trying to build, really, bipartisan support for that measure, which is expected to cost the federal government something like three-quarters of a trillion dollars.
NORRIS: Now he seemed to warn that the economy is not just bad, but getting worse, and he's urging Congress to act fast. But it sounds like this economic stimulus measure may not be ready quite as early as he had hoped.
HORSLEY: That's right. Democrats originally wanted to have a stimulus bill ready for the new president's signature almost the moment he took office. Now, Mr. Obama's advisers and some top lawmakers say that's very unlikely. Instead they're talking about aiming for the end of January, maybe early February. House Speaker Pelosi said today she expects a spirited debate over the package. But the president-elect says he won't let the bill get bogged down in partisan bickering. And if we are talking about late January, early February, Mr. Obama himself may play a bigger role in negotiating the package, not as president-elect, but sitting in the Oval Office.
NORRIS: Well, in terms of negotiating, one way of reaching out perhaps to Republicans is to put some of the stimulus in the form of tax cuts in addition to new government spending. That likely to happen?
HORSLEY: That's right. The Obama team let it be known over the weekend that they are prepared to devote a significant portion of the stimulus package to tax cuts, both for workers and for businesses. That would be on top of the hundreds of billions of dollars they're talking about in new federal spending. Now, in general, tax cuts are more palatable to Republicans than new government spending.
Mr. Obama downplayed that political consideration today. He noted that throughout much of the campaign he was pushing for tax cuts targeted especially to working families, maybe including those who don't pay income taxes, but who do pay payroll taxes. The new line, though, of business cuts does seem to be calculated to win support for the stimulus package from the GOP.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Scott Horsley. Thanks so much, Scott.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
When troops are deployed overseas, they have to make plans for their children, their spouses, their mortgages, and their pets. A group in Pennsylvania is helping the troops by giving their dogs a place to go. From member station WHYY in Philadelphia, Susan Phillips reports.
SUSAN PHILLIPS: Angel(ph) is just 1 and a half years old, a friendly, tan boxer. But his owner, specialist Jim Butz(ph) of the 56th Stryker Brigade, learned back in October that he's heading to Iraq. Today, he's saying goodbye to Angel.
Mr. JIM BUTZ (56th Stryker Brigade): Angel puppy, come here. Now, you behave. You be good. You be good.
PHILLIPS: Butz has three dogs along with an 8-week-old son. His wife can't take care of all of them while he's overseas, so they're leaving Angel at Canine Corps in Perry County, Pennsylvania, free of charge until Butz returns from his third tour of duty in Iraq.
Mr. BUTZ: One last hug, come on. One last hug.
PHILLIPS: Angel will live with about 16 other dogs in a barn-like building with heated floors, couches, and an outside run. This canine foster home is the brainchild of former Marine Kevin McCartin, who says without Canine Corps, many of these dogs would have had to go to the pound.
Mr. KEVIN MCCARTIN (Co-Director, Paw Prints Dog Sanctuary; Creator, Canine Corps): If you're in the Army and it's going - it's saddle up there when they're going to deploy. People are saying goodbye to their mother, their father, their wives, their children. But there's usually one person in there who said goodbye to their best friend two days ago because they had to turn him in.
PHILLIPS: McCartin volunteers his time, 80 hours a week, to care for these dogs. The bulk of the money to build and operate the new facility came from his wife, Sheila(ph), and his partner's family.
Mr. MCCARTIN: This would have been Sheila's condo at Myrtle Beach, but...
Unidentified Woman: It isn't.
Mr. MCCARTIN: But it isn't. So the money went some place. She enjoys this just as much as she'd enjoy Myrtle Beach, though.
PHILLIPS: And along with the help of 20 other volunteers, the dogs get attention 24 hours a day. A local veterinarian donates free medical care. First lieutenant Robert Crone(ph), also with the 56th Stryker Brigade, has three best friends. One went with his father, but Crone's dad is too sick to take his two Labrador Retrievers, Liken(ph) and Credence(ph).
First Lieutenant ROBERT CRONE (56th Stryker Brigade): A month before we were going to leave, the place I thought was going to take them didn't work out. And I was kind of in panic mode because taking them to a shelter wasn't an option.
PHILLIPS: Crone says without Canine Corps, he would have had to pay $30 a day to board the dogs at a kennel. But now Crone can visit with them online from Iraq. For NPR News, I'm Susan Phillips.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. Tomorrow promises to be a dramatic day in the Senate. The 111th Congress will be sworn in. And normally that means everyone who was elected in November or appointed by a governor will be sworn in, but this is not a normal year. The governor of New York has not yet named a replacement to take Hillary Clinton's seat. And today in Minnesota, Democrat Al Franken officially won a very, very, very long recount in a Senate race against Republican Norm Coleman. But Coleman intends to mount a court challenge. And the would-be senator from Illinois, Roland Burris, defied Democratic leaders and caught a plane to Washington, as NPR's David Welna reports.
DAVID WELNA: Before boarding a commercial flight from Chicago to Washington earlier today, Roland Burris held a scrappy news conference near the Southwest Airlines ticket counter. He told reporters he was heading to Washington for just one reason.
Mr. ROLAND BURRIS (Democrat, Illinois Senator-Designate): I am going there to be seated. I am the junior senator from the state of Illinois. That's all I can say.
Unidentified Man: You haven't been sworn in yet.
Mr. BURRIS: Well, I will give - I'll look to be sworn in. But I am the senator.
WELNA: But Burris is, in fact, not a senator until he's sworn in. This morning, a representative of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich presented the paperwork to the secretary of the Senate for Burris's appointment to the vacant Senate seat, but that paperwork was not formally accepted. That's because it lacks the required signature of Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White. He has refused to certify any appointments made by Blagojevich since the governor was arrested nearly a month ago on corruption charges. Burris, nonetheless, seemed upbeat about his prospects, even though Majority Leader Harry Reid has only agreed to talk with him on Wednesday, the day after senators are sworn in.
Mr. BURRIS: Well, I will sit down and talk to Mr. Reid. I'm going to tell him I'm here to take my seat.
WELNA: But Reid this afternoon downplayed any chance of Burris being sworn in anytime soon.
Senator HARRY REID (Democrat, Nevada; Senate Majority Leader): Roland Burris has not been certified by the state of Illinois. When that takes place, we'll, of course, review it. At this stage, we're waiting to see what's going to happen in Illinois.
WELNA: Reid said he expects the Illinois Legislature to conclude impeachment proceedings against Governor Blagojevich early next month. Meanwhile, in a move that buys time, the appointment of Burris is likely to be referred to the Senate Rules Committee for further study.
The other Senate seat still in limbo is the one that's been held by Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman. Today that state's Canvassing Board certified results of a month-long recount that give Democratic challenger Al Franken a lead of 225 votes in the election. But Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie added a word of caution.
Secretary MARK RITCHIE (Democrat, Minnesota State Department): Simply we are certifying the results from November 4th election. We're not doing anything today that declares winners or losers or anything to that effect.
WELNA: That did not keep Franken from calling a news conference in St. Paul this afternoon to proclaim victory.
Mr. AL FRANKEN (Democrat, Minnesota Senator-Elect): I am proud to stand before you as the next senator from Minnesota.
WELNA: And here at the U.S. Capitol, Majority Leader Reid declared that Franken had indeed won the election.
Senator REID: The race in Minnesota is over. Now, it's only a little finger pointing. The certification by the Canvassing Board, which has been in process for a number of weeks now, clearly shows that Al Franken has won. And based upon any of the allegations that Senator Coleman has made, there is no way he can catch up. That race is over.
WELNA: Reid's spokesman said Senate Democrats may try to have Franken sworn in tomorrow, even though it will be at least a week before Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty can sign a certificate of election. But Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly threw cold water on any chance his fellow Republicans would allow Franken to be seated.
Senator MITCH MCCONNELL (Republican, Kentucky; Senate Minority Leader): The race in Minnesota is not over until the people in Minnesota say it's over. And the way you say it's over in Minnesota is somebody shows up here with an election certificate. It's my understanding that isn't going to happen tomorrow.
WELNA: And it may not happen for some time. Coleman has not conceded. Instead, he's called a news conference for tomorrow afternoon after senators are to be sworn in. And Coleman's lawyers issued a statement this afternoon calling the Canvassing Board's recount totals, quote, "invalid and unreliable." They say they will mount a legal challenge to those results. And a certificate of election cannot be issued by Governor Pawlenty until that legal challenge has been resolved, a process that could take weeks or months. David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Michelle Rhee, the chancellor of schools in Washington, D.C., is fast becoming the country's best-known urban school reformer. D.C. schools are among the worst in the nation. To make them better, Rhee wants to do away with teacher tenure and pay teachers for good performance. It's a method that could become a blueprint for struggling school systems across the country. As NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports, Rhee's plan won't succeed unless she can win the support of the teachers union.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ: Michelle Rhee says there are lots of ineffective teachers in the D.C. public schools, and the sooner she can force them out, the better off students will be.
Ms. MICHELLE RHEE (Chancellor, Washington, D.C. Public Schools): I'm not willing to go in front of a group of parents and say that it is worth throwing away a year of that child's life, especially knowing that for poor minority kids in this country, teacher quality is the number one determinant of student success.
SANCHEZ: But Rhee says removing a bad teacher from the classroom under the current contract takes too long. So what Rhee's negotiating with the Washington teachers union is a new contract that will entice teachers to earn more money, lots more, up to a $122,000 a year, on two conditions - that they give up tenure and agree to yearly evaluations that includes students' test scores to determine whether a teacher is doing a good job.
Ms. RHEE: What we're going to finally do is recognize and reward our most highly effective educators in the system. And we need to make sure that we are not putting any child in a position where they are being taught by an ineffective teacher.
SANCHEZ: But the teachers union says Rhee's proposal is part of a larger, more hostile strategy.
Mr. GEORGE PARKER (President, Washington Teachers Union): Fear is what most teachers see as her main mode of operating - fear for your job.
SANCHEZ: George Parker is president of the Washington Teachers Union.
Mr. PARKER: Let's get rid of those bad teachers. And everybody, yeah, let's fire the bad teachers. The union isn't sitting here saying, oh, my God, let's keep bad teachers in the classroom.
SANCHEZ: Parker says Rhee has used what he calls her status as a media darling to attack teachers and turn her negotiations with the union into a national referendum on tenure.
Mr. PARKER: Anyone who believes you can hire and fire your way to an outstanding school system is dreaming. It's not going to happen.
Ms. RHEE: First of all, I would wholeheartedly disagree with some of his assertions.
SANCHEZ: Again, Michelle Rhee.
Mr. RHEE: I think the union is under a tremendous amount of pressure right now because the general public is seeing this. They're saying, wait a second, this is all about tenure. But tenure isn't going to help children learn more.
SANCHEZ: Tenure is about protecting adult jobs, says Rhee. That's why there's an impasse. To resolve it, the union and Rhee are going to have to come to some middle ground. The current contract, for example, allows 90 days for teachers to appeal if they're fired for incompetence. So what should change? The union won't say, while Rhee chooses her words carefully.
Ms. RHEE: We have, on the table, we believe, a very, very fair process. What would be our motivation to set up a system where great teachers could be fired arbitrarily? I would never do that.
SANCHEZ: Besides, says Rhee, many teachers support her proposal. That has split the union along generational and racial lines. Most teachers in D.C. are older, female, African-American, and suspicious of Rhee. The newest hires are white, in their mid to late 20s, and they tend to think of themselves as reformers. Then, there are those teachers who are on the fence. They consider themselves reformers, too, but they're still not sure about Michelle Rhee.
Mr. FRAZIER O'LEARY (English Teacher, Cardozo High School): Let me have your papers please. Get your papers out that you owe me today.
SANCHEZ: At Cardozo High School, one of the city's struggling schools, Frazier O'Leary is about to start his afternoon English class. After 37 years in the classroom, O'Leary says he still loves coming in every morning. His classroom is tidy. His students are well behaved. O'Leary demands and expects a lot of them. When he started teaching, O'Leary earned $7,800 a year. This year, he says, he'll make 87,000, thanks to his union. And if you're getting paid that much, O'Leary says, you better be doing a good job.
Mr. O'LEARY: I wouldn't want my children in someone's classroom who's skating through, who's drawing a paycheck. And if you're not doing what you're supposed to do, then you should be let go.
SANCHEZ: But O'Leary says he's worried about Rhee's plan.
Mr. O'LEARY: Because I don't know what the definition of performance is.
SANCHEZ: If it means evaluating teachers based on their students' test scores, O'Leary says that's not fair. Last year, for example, almost half of the faculty at Cardozo was let go because 10th graders did so poorly on standardized tests. Some teachers who were dismissed didn't even teach 10th grade. O'Leary says the tenure versus more pay question is a little trickier for good teachers because it's so enticing.
Mr. O'LEARY: I have enough confidence in myself that I could say, OK, you can judge me on what I do for a year. And if I do what I'm supposed to do for a year, then pay me a lot of money. But I'm looking at that through 64-year-old eyes and 40 years of teaching experience.
SANCHEZ: O'Leary says teachers should think twice about giving up their tenure rights for more money.
Mr. O'LEARY: What is the old saying about, you know, be careful of what you wish for?
SANCHEZ: Chancellor Rhee and the union, meanwhile, know that as they seek common ground in their negotiations, the stakes couldn't be higher.
Mr. JOE WILLIAMS (Executive Director, Democrats for Education Reform): All eyes are on this district right now.
SANCHEZ: Joe Williams is head of a partisan national group called Democrats for School Reform. He says an agreement on pay for performance and tenure could have a far-reaching impact on public education.
Mr. WILLIAMS: This is instantly something that people start proposing around the country. I think, though, this ratchets up the pressure on management for public schools to prove that they're up to the task and that they can be trusted to pull this thing off.
SANCHEZ: Rhee and the union won't return to the negotiations until later this month. Both agree they may need a mediator to reach an accord. Claudio Sanchez, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
What if the slave trade had happened in reverse with African slave traders raiding Europe? British writer Bernardine Evaristo asked that question in her new novel, "Blonde Roots." Alan Cheuse has this review.
ALAN CHEUSE: The main character is a woman named Doris Scagglethorpe. She's a house servant with a body worn by childbirth, but in whose heart the desire for freedom still burns. Her tale begins on a dark night when she, with the help of some abolitionist Aphrikans - that's spelled A-P-H-R-I-K-A-N - makes her escape from Londola(ph), the African capital of the UK of Great Ambosa(ph). But this only lands her in deeper trouble. She's recaptured and shipped to the New World.
While Doris suffers the middle passage, Evaristo enlightens us with an entertaining parody of a slave master's rationalizations of his inhumanity. "Dear reader," he states, "suffice to say that running a slaver meant having to be responsible for the welfare of the cargo rather as a parent for its children." In the New World, off the coast of America in the colonies of the west Japanese islands, Doris finds herself condemned to work in a dangerous sugarcane mill on an isolated plantation. In this part of the world, you try to escape and get caught, and you lose your foot.
Doris's flight, her re-enslavement, and her ultimate struggle to be free move along with the liveliness of a B movie. Evaristo's themes are important, slavery at its root. And she wields language and messes with history and geography with the gusto of someone having a great time with a great subject. A lot of that fun rubs off on the reader. Evaristo works very close to farce, but none of what she does ever seems nonsensical.
NORRIS: That's Alan Cheuse reviewing the new novel "Blonde Roots" by Bernardine Evaristo. Alan has his own new novel. It's called "To Catch the Lightning."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. The bookstore chain Borders has announced a major management reorganization. Sales are down, and the company's stock is at bargain basement prices. As NPR's Lynn Neary reports, Borders is trying to turn itself around.
LYNN NEARY: When superstores like Borders first hit the scene, they were viewed as aggressive competitors who would put the neighborhood bookstore out of business. And indeed, Borders did make life hard for a lot of independents. But now it is Borders itself which is in jeopardy. Even before the latest economic crisis, Borders has been struggling to survive in an industry facing increased competition from online retailers, most notably Amazon.
Today, with holiday sales down almost 12 percent over last year, the company announced that it is bringing in new management. Ron Marshall, whose experience includes helping to drive the financial turnaround of major retailers in the food industry, has been named the new president and CEO of Borders. Marshall also has experience in the book retail industry, a combination the company hopes will be effective in helping it climb out of its current troubles. In addition to sinking sales at its stores, Borders' stock has been selling below a dollar a share for more than 30 days. And as a result, it has been notified that it could be delisted by the New York Stock Exchange. The company has six months to improve its stock price in order to avoid being delisted.
In addition to appointing Marshall as CEO, the board of directors also made several other changes at the top. In announcing the decisions, Borders Group Chairman Larry Pollock said the company had to move aggressively in this challenging economy to address its long-term future. In taking over as CEO, Marshall sounded a positive note, describing Borders as a powerful brand with millions of loyal customers who love to shop in its stores. Marshall said these are assets that can be built upon once the company is on a more solid financial footing. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
That border crossing between Gaza and Egypt remains officially closed, but a trickle of aid is getting through. Today, NPR's Peter Kenyon rode with one Egyptian convoy that tried to deliver medicine and supplies. He sent this report.
PETER KENYON: Dr. Ala Masrud(ph) is looking a bit groggy, but he's smiling. He's been up all night, loading trucks with medical supplies in the port city of Alexandria on Egypt's north coast. Well before dawn, he and his colleagues climbed in for the eight-hour drive to the Gaza border town of Rafa. Just before the bridge across to the Sinai Peninsula, the convoy stops to gather intelligence about the upcoming checkpoints. Masrud says some aid trucks have been stopped by Egyptian authorities for reasons that are still not entirely clear. For that matter, with the ground offensive under way inside Gaza, who knows what will happen to their donation if it does reach the border crossing.
Dr. ALA MASRUD: We are going, and we don't know what is the situation, so we'll wait maybe one day, two days, one week. Whatever it will take, we will be here until we deliver this help to the people there in Gaza.
KENYON: His concerns proved well-founded. At every checkpoint, the convoy is forced to stop, show papers, and explain its mission one more time. The sun is now high in the sky, and the radio reports from inside Gaza continue to paint a picture of hospitals in which exhausted physicians, nurses, and volunteers grapple with a never-ending wave of patience.
Farther along, at one of the last checkpoints in the Sinai, the police get especially bureaucratic. Phone calls are made to headquarters. Voices are raised. The drivers turn off their engines and slump down in their seats. Suddenly, there's a flurry of action. The police have decided to escort the aid convoy to the border.
A line of ambulances is waiting at the border crossing. And police are directing tractor-trailers loaded with donations from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Libya, Malaysia, Indonesia, and elsewhere into haphazard lines. The activity is punctuated by deafening blasts as the Israeli Air Force targets the southern Gaza Strip.
(Soundbite of blasts)
KENYON: In the crowd massing at the black metal border gate, Jordanian doctor Muhammad Hawaldi(ph) hovers purposefully, but without much hope of getting in. He's a neurosurgeon, someone whose skills are probably desperately wanted just a few miles from here inside Gaza. He says there are several doctors here just waiting for a chance to help.
Dr. MUHAMMAD HAWALDI (Jordanian Neurosurgeon): We are here from two days, but no chance to go inside. And now, it's a maximum emergency to be inside.
KENYON: Inside the no man's land between Egypt and the southern edge of Gaza, Egyptian and Palestinian trucks maneuver into position to transfer goods from one to the other as the whine of an Israeli unmanned drone fills the air. All at once, Dr. Masrud appears. Against the odds, his trucks are next in line to send their supplies into Gaza.
Dr. MASRUD: But I think we achieved our target today at least. Yes, a small success. Our success, our real success? We need peace.
KENYON: Peace seems far off today. And with the Gaza Strip cut into three sections by the Israeli army, the chances of this aid getting through to Gaza City seem slim. But Dr. Masrud looks content that on this day at least he's done all he can. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, at the Gaza-Egypt border.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
President-elect Barack Obama has finally settled on his choices to lead the nation's intelligence agencies. Two officials close to the presidential transition team say Mr. Obama has picked Leon Panetta to lead the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta is a former congressman and chief of staff to President Clinton. He would report to retired Admiral Dennis Blair. That's Mr. Obama's choice for director of national intelligence.
Joining us now is NPR intelligence correspondent Tom Gjelten. Tom, Admiral Blair's name has been floating around for weeks as the intelligence director, but what about the choice of Leon Panetta to lead the CIA? That's surprising.
TOM GJELTEN: Michele, I think this is easily the biggest surprise of the whole Obama transition period. Leon Panetta, in addition to serving in Congress, was head of the Office of Management Budget, and he was chief of staff at the White House under President Clinton, but he has no direct intelligence experience.
In fact, no one that I spoke to today saw this pick coming at all. And the chairman - incoming chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, said she did not know anything about it. And she made it clear she wasn't entirely happy with it. She said, she put out a statement today saying, "My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time." One other interesting point about Leon Panetta, he is 70 years old. He will be, would be, the oldest director that the CIA has ever had.
NORRIS: That's interesting because she's a fellow Californian. What was the thinking here?
GJELTEN: I think, in the end, apparently, the Obama people felt they had no choice but to go with an outsider. So many of the intelligence professionals, the insiders, were seen as being in some way tainted by some of these controversies that have surrounded the CIA in recent years - wiretapping, secret CIA prisons, coercive interrogation techniques. When it appeared for a while that the Obama people were heading toward an insider, there was a firestorm of reaction of criticism, so they apparently decided to go with someone from the outside.
They may have felt that someone like Leon Panetta could be helpful in restoring the standing of the agency within Washington. He's got a lot of stature. One former agency official with whom I spoke said Panetta could do an effective job of representing the agency in the quarters of power. One other point, even though he doesn't have intelligence experience, he was, as chief of staff at the White House, he did sit in on the president's daily intelligence briefings, and therefore does understand how intelligence informs and shapes policy making.
NORRIS: So those people who were stoking the fires of criticism, will they be satisfied by the selection?
GJELTEN: Well, there is a bit of a dilemma here, Michele, which is that on the one hand, yes, you've got somebody from the outside. On the other hand, precisely because he is from the outside, he's going to have to defer to a lot of the people at the agency now on some of the more technical aspects of running the agency. And those who see that technical part of the agency operations as being the area where change needs to take place, he might be hampered. He could be sort of run over by some of these insiders who are staying on.
NORRIS: I'm interested. You've been speaking to intelligence professionals. I'm interested in hearing a little bit more about they're reacting to this.
GJELTEN: Well, wait and see is, I think, the prevailing attitude. In the past, they've been somewhat standoffish to outsiders who are coming in.
NORRIS: Finally, retired Admiral Dennis Blair was the name we expected to hear as director of national intelligence. Can you quickly tell us a little bit about him?
GJELTEN: He's been overshadowed, but he is a far less controversial choice, a lot of experience as commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific that made him a consumer of intelligence. He was also the Pentagon's liaison to the CIA under President Clinton. A brainy guy, former Rhodes Scholar. So his choice is less controversial.
NORRIS: That's NPR intelligence correspondent Tom Gjelten. Tom, thanks so much.
GJELTEN: Thank you, Michele.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. Congress returned to Washington today, and the marquee visitor was President-elect Barack Obama. Mr. Obama was all over the Hill today. He held face-to-face meetings with congressional leaders. They're trying to work out a giant economic stimulus package. The president-elect wants to sign it into law shortly after taking office. NPR's congressional correspondent, Andrea Seabrook, also spent the day on Capitol Hill.
ANDREA SEABROOK: Mr. Obama kicked off the year with no fewer than three photo-ops with various congressional leaders.
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: Hey, guys.
Unidentified Woman: Good morning.
President-elect OBAMA: How are you? Good to see you.
SEABROOK: Capitol Hill was a scurry with cameras and microphones and reporters cramming into tight little offices to catch the president-elect's words. He met first with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
President-elect OBAMA: Well, let me just say how thrilled I am to be sitting here with the speaker. Obviously the inauguration stand is being built in the background. But the reason we're here today is because the people's business can't wait.
SEABROOK: He called the times ahead an extraordinary economic challenge and said he's expecting another sobering job report at the end of the week. And so the first order of business for Congress, an economic stimulus package meant to rev up the economy. Speaker Pelosi said it's being put together now.
Representative NANCY PELOSI (Democrat, California; Speaker of the House): We pledged to work together in a bipartisan way with great civility, with great fiscal discipline, and I know the debate will be spirited. We welcome it.
SEABROOK: Speaker Pelosi is coordinating much of the negotiations over the package, and they're complex. Mr. Obama's economic advisers, his transition team, House and Senate leaders, and of course, the chairmen of several committees are hammering this thing out, and there is a lot of negotiation still to do. One important figure in all of this is Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen. He's opening up a new leadership office in the House dubbed "The Assistant to the Speaker." So he can give us a little peek into what this package will have in it.
Representative CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (Democrat, Maryland): The major components are actually coming into some definition now. I mean, you've got obviously a big infrastructure piece on the transportation side with roads and bridges and public transportation, including transit.
SEABROOK: That part could be as much as a hundred billion dollars.
Representative VAN HOLLEN: You got a major component of assistance to the states, primarily for health and education.
SEABROOK: Aides say that will be around $200 billion.
Representative VAN HOLLEN: There is going to be tax relief following through on Barack Obama's commitment on the campaign of providing middle-class tax relief, and then there will be some business tax incentives.
SEABROOK: This tax cut portion of the stimulus bill will likely cost the most money, up to $300 billion, according to leadership aides. What does this mean for you? Well, most working people are expected to get a $500 tax cut, a thousand for couples. Right now, negotiators are working out how much people can earn and still qualify for those cuts. There is also about a hundred billion dollars in business tax cuts. They're meant to spark new investment and to give companies an incentive to stop laying off workers and even hire new people. All of this together will push the entire package close to an $800 billion price tag, according to congressional leadership aides. That's even bigger than the already big numbers that were being thrown around before Christmas. So Capitol Hill today was like the first day of baseball season, and everything and everyone seemed to be signaling play ball. Andrea Seabrook, NPR News, the Capitol.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Inaugural balls are tony affairs in Washington. You have to get invited to the official balls, and they are expensive. But today President-elect Obama announced plans for a new inaugural ball that will be a bit more accessible. It's called the Neighborhood Ball. Tickets won't carry that big price tag, and a portion of them will be reserved for D.C. residents. The president-elect wants to make sure that there is an event that, as he said, would be "open to our new neighborhood here in Washington, D.C." Eleanor Holmes Norton is Washington, D.C.'s elected delegate to Congress, and she joins me now. Welcome to the program and Happy new year.
Representative ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON (Democrat, Washington, D.C.): Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: Is this a sign that the new president will have a very different relationship with his so-called neighborhood than previous presidents?
Representative HOLMES NORTON: Well, the Neighborhood Ball is a sure sign that Barack knows where he is. He is in another big city just like Chicago, understands both the problems and the possibilities of big cities. I am not surprised he would do that. They spoke out about reaching out to the District from the beginning. We're very pleased, of course, because, we've not had a president who felt quite at home here as Barack Obama, but that's because he is one of the - in fact, he is the first big city president in memory.
NORRIS: Now, if he really intends to be a good neighbor, how might he demonstrate that? What are you looking for from this White House?
Representative HOLMES NORTON: Well, the first thing we're looking for is the other meaning that his coming has for the residents of the District of Columbia. He was a co-sponsor of the District of Columbia Voting Rights Act. So the first thing we need from him is to sign the act when we get it over there. So we feel pretty sure, particularly with the larger majorities in both the House and the Senate, that we're going to get our bill to his desk very soon.
NORRIS: When you visit the District of Columbia, you notice that the license plates here have a following phrase, "Taxation Without Representation." Now, George Bush traveled in vehicles that carried D.C license plates, but they did not carry that phrase. At the end of Bill Clinton's term, he did use license plates that did carry that phrase. Are you expecting that the motorcade that President-elect Barack Obama will travel in will include license plates that carry that phrase, "Taxation Without Representation"?
Representative HOLMES NORTON: I am hardly in a position to speak for the motorcade. I can say to you that the council wrote directly to the president-elect, and I know how to communicate to the president-elect. And that's about all I am willing to say at this point.
NORRIS: What would that mean if he did?
Representative HOLMES NORTON: (Laughing) Well, it would really bring great joy obviously to the residents of the District who are second per capita in federal income taxes. And interestingly now, many more people know about voting rights than they knew just a few years ago. So we think a lot of people will get the point.
NORRIS: Now, do you expect that you're going see Barack Obama wearing a Redskins cap?
Representative HOLMES NORTON: I do not, not coming from Chicago.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Representative HOLMES NORTON: That may be a bit much to ask. Nor a Nationals cap for that matter, for our baseball team. But that's all right. He can root for whoever he wants. Look, this man and his family choked up when they left Chicago. I'm a third generation Washingtonian. I spent early years after law school in New York. Don't think I didn't miss my hometown. That's too much to ask. All we ask is that he treat this as his hometown away from his hometown and love us the way he loves Chicago.
NORRIS: Eleanor Holmes Norton is D.C.'s delegate. Thanks so much for speaking with us.
Representative HOLMES NORTON: Thank you.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. Now to the drama in Illinois over Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich. A federal judge is giving prosecutors three more months to obtain a grand jury indictment against the governor. The same judge is giving defense attorneys for Blagojevich three days to decide how they feel about tapes of their client being played in impeachment hearings. Blagojevich, a Democrat, was arrested last month on charges of corruption. Members of the Illinois General Assembly could vote later this week to impeach the governor. Meanwhile, Roland Burris, the man Blagojevich defiantly appointed to the Senate, headed to Washington today. NPR's David Schaper reports on this complicated situation in Chicago and beyond.
DAVID SCHAPER: A crowd of reporters, onlookers, and a few supporters surrounded former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris at Chicago's Midway Airport this afternoon as he prepared to board a flight to Washington, D.C. Burris says he intends to go to the Capitol building tomorrow and begin serving as Illinois' junior U.S. senator.
Mr. ROLAND BURRIS (Democrat, Illinois Senator-Designate): Well, I'm hoping and praying that I will be seated.
SCHAPER: But when he gets there, all indications are Burris will be turned away. Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid says the U.S. Senate won't seat anyone appointed by Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich who is facing an array of corruption charges. Chief among them is that Blagojevich allegedly tried to sell or trade the Senate seat for campaign contributions, a Cabinet appointment, or a high-paying job for himself or his wife. Blagojevich denies any wrongdoing and is fighting the charges. But prosecutors say Blagojevich is caught on surveillance tapes, calling the Senate seat "golden" and vowing to get something in return.
Illinois lawmakers would like to play excerpts from some of those tapes when hearings resume tomorrow before a special Illinois House committee investigating whether the governor should be impeached. A federal judge today ruled Blagojevich's attorneys can review those recordings and must decide by Thursday if they plan to file a motion to suppress the tapes. Chicago State Representative John Fritchey says the Impeachment Committee is ready to go forward, one way or the other.
Assemblyman JOHN FRITCHEY (Democrat, Chicago, Illinois): The committee is not prepared at this juncture to delay our work any longer. Should we get the tapes immediately, we will incorporate them. Should the judge say that we will not have the access to those, we'll proceed with our job as we have been.
SCHAPER: That means meeting again tomorrow to begin putting the final touches on a committee report that will likely recommend impeaching Governor Blagojevich. The full Illinois House has been called back into a special session later this week and could vote to impeach by Friday. Representative Fritchey says Illinois is facing a budget deficit in the billions. It can't pay vendors like hospitals, day care providers, and social service providers on time, and several other issues hang in the balance.
Assemblyman FRITCHEY: I think having Governor Blagojevich in office has been somewhat of an impediment for quite a while now. Given the existing circumstances, he's taken the government in gridlock and brought it to a complete standstill. I believe that in order for us to move forward in the manner that we need to and the speed that we need to, we need to change the executive office.
SCHAPER: If the Illinois House votes to impeach this week, the proceedings would move to the Illinois Senate for a trial. Some suggest the Senate could conduct its trial in just two weeks, but Loyola University political scientist Alan Gitelson suggests that scenario is unlikely.
Dr. ALAN GITELSON (Professor of Political Science, Loyola University): I think between legal charges and challenges by Governor Blagojevich certainly to the state Supreme Court and very likely to the U.S. Supreme Court, Illinois is still going to be stuck with this dilemma - the dilemma of a sitting governor who is tainted - for some time to come.
SCHAPER: And federal prosecutors now have more time to assemble their corruption case against the governor. A federal judge granted the prosecution's request for a three-month extension for a grand jury to indict the governor. That grand jury was set to expire this Wednesday, but now has until April Seventh. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Griffin Bell passed away today. He was Attorney General in the Carter administration and he is credited with helping to restore faith in the Justice Department after the Watergate scandal. Bell also made a significant impact as a judge during the civil rights movement. He was 90 years old. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg has this remembrance.
NINA TOTENBERG: Griffin Bell served in the eye of the civil rights hurricane of the 1960s and '70s. Beginning in 1961, he served for 15 years on the federal appeals court in the Deep South, the court that dealt with school desegregation and the many other legal questions that exploded during the civil rights revolution. Acting as a bridge between the court's states rights advocates and its more liberal members, Bell was both a strong opponent of busing and a strong advocate of desegregation. His talent, according to historian Jack Bass, was a shrewd pragmatism.
Dr. JACK BASS (Historian): He was a very practical man. When Bell wanted something done, he was very good at figuring out, OK, how do we get it done?
TOTENBERG: In 1970, for instance, when the Supreme Court ordered massive school desegregation in Mississippi, Bell met with the school boards and civil rights lawyers to come up with a plan. As Bass put it, Bell understood that the local school boards needed the protective cover of a court order that forced them to act. In an interview with NPR shortly before his death, Bell recalled that he told the Mississippi school boards that the Supreme Court had ruled schools must be desegregated immediately.
(Soundbite of archive NPR interview)
Mr. GRIFFIN BELL (Former Attorney General): And then, therefore, there were no escape for them. They had to carry out the court's order.
TOTENBERG: In 1976, after returning to private practice, Bell was tapped by his childhood friend President Carter to be attorney general. There were howls of protests from both sides of the aisle. Some Republicans worried that Bell would not be independent. Some Democrats objected because Bell belonged to private clubs that notoriously had no minority members. But within a year of taking over the Justice Department, Bell was the Carter administration's star performer on Capitol Hill. Republican Senator Orrin Hatch.
Senator ORRIN HATCH (Republican, Utah): I trusted him. His word was his bond. He was absolutely honest, straightforward. He kind of talked, you know, in a very low-key, but intelligent way that you just couldn't help but like.
TOTENBERG: At the Justice Department, Bell soon earned the trust and admiration of the career lawyers. He always included them in the decision-making process. And even the ever-skeptical press corps was at least partially won over by two Bell practices. Every day, the attorney general published the previous day's schedule and phone log. As Bell put it in our recent interview:
(Soundbite of archive NPR interview)
Mr. BELL: Trust is the coin of the realm. If the public doesn't trust the Justice Department, we're in trouble. You need to let people know what's going on, and who you're meeting with, and who's influenced you, who's had the chance to influence you.
TOTENBERG: Bell fiercely, and usually with President Carter's agreement, protected the independence of the Justice Department. His fights with the White House staff, however, were constant. On some things, like letting the White House have a say in Supreme Court briefs, he relented. On others, he did not.
(Soundbite of archive NPR interview)
Mr. BELL: And I had to fight all the White House staff. I always won. If it had to go to the president, I'd win every time. But it was just a nuisance to have to do that.
TOTENBERG: In one case, when the president promised Latino groups that the Justice Department would bring a federal prosecution for police brutality, Bell went ballistic, telling the president he had two choices - butt out or fire the attorney general. The president swallowed hard and butted out. There was no federal prosecution.
On the national security front, Bell was viewed as a hardliner within the administration. But he pushed hard for a requirement that electronic surveillances for foreign intelligence be authorized by court warrant. Inside the administration, his argument won out over objections from the CIA and Defense Department. The resulting Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act remained enforced until more than two decades later when President Bush in the wake of 9/11 began circumventing the court authorization requirement.
Upon leaving the Carter administration in 1979, Bell returned to law practice in Atlanta where he ran a large law firm, represented the first President Bush in the Iran contra-investigation, and conducted internal investigations on behalf of major corporations. He continued working until this year when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Tomorrow, President Bush is expected to announce that he's creating three vast ocean reserves way out in the Pacific. They'll be designated as marine national monuments, and they will encompass more territory than the state of California. For a president not known for being an environmentalist, this is a significant part of President Bush's conservation legacy. Joining us to talk about this is NPR's Richard Harris. More territory than California? That's a lot of space. Where is this?
RICHARD HARRIS: It absolutely is. And it's way, way out there. The first of these three spaces is the Northern Mariana Islands which are north of Guam. So we're, you know, get to Guam and you're only beginning your trip out there. But this includes the Marianas Trench which is the deepest part of the world's ocean. You can take the Mount Everest and put it into Marianas Trench and it would disappear under the ocean's surface. We're talking a really dramatic structure. And that's one reason they're protecting it. It's not just because of the fish and so on, but it's just this amazing geological and geographical site. So that's the first one.
The second one is closer to American Samoa. It's an atoll, called Rose Atoll, which is apparently this gorgeous pink coral area that has got this - is really pristine and untouched, and it's just supposedly a fantastic place if you could, again, ever get out there to see it. And the third one is part of the U.S. Central Pacific islands. Again, these are scattered over thousands and thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean, and there are seven islands in total. And the idea is these marine preserves are sort of the first 50 miles of sea around each one of these islands, and the same is true of the other places, so, yeah...
NORRIS: You've done such a good job of describing this, I can almost picture all of these areas. Two quick questions. Can the president do this with just a stroke of a pen? And what does this mean for these protected areas?
HARRIS: Yeah, the answer is he can. Teddy Roosevelt actually first used the Antiquities Act back in 1906 to create protected areas. And in fact, President Bush used the same act back in June of 2006 to create a similar reserve in Hawaii, somewhat smaller sized. This is - in total, this is even bigger than the reserve he created in Hawaii. And he got such good response for doing that, he decided to do it again. And the answer is: It's kind of like a national monument on dry land which is, they are protected, you can't extract stuff by-and-large, there's no commercial fishing allowed...
NORRIS: No commercial fishing, yeah.
HARRIS: There's no mining allowed, almost. There are a few little potential loopholes for doing a little bit of fishing. But basically, it's - the idea is to really protect this for posterity.
NORRIS: So, you said that President Bush got good marks when he did this near Hawaii. What do conservationists think of this?
HARRIS: They are generally quite happy with this because it vastly expands marine protected areas. The oceans are very under-protected compared with the land. Some - even with these huge additions to ocean protection, it's still less than a hundredth-of-a-percent, or about maybe two-hundredths-of-a-percent of oceans are protected. It's tiny. One thing that conservationists notice is that he could have made these reserves go out to 200 miles, which is the federal limit, and he decided just to keep it to 50 miles. So there's certainly room for expansion, a little elbow room. But generally, I think people are really happy.
NORRIS: Just quickly, on land, a national monument is almost an invitation for tourists to take to the road and actually go see these places. Likely to happen in this case, even though they're so remote?
HARRIS: Not likely to happen because they are so remote. I think it's really hard to get out there. Most of these islands are actually uninhabited. And so even if you could get out there - there are volcanoes, essentially, by-and-large and you could, you know, maybe pitch a tent if you're lucky, but basically, you probably just stay on a boat. So they are way out there. They're really to protect the land for the creatures that live there much less for us to enjoy, except knowing that they're there should be a sense of enjoyment for us.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Richard Harris. Richard, thanks so much.
HARRIS: My pleasure.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This week, the biggest TVs will meet the smallest phones in Las Vegas. They'll compete for attention with the coolest game consoles at the biggest gathering of consumer electronic buyers and sellers. It's the annual Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. NPR's Laura Sydell reports that the recession is the number one worry, but the consumer electronics industry is in better shape than many others.
LAURA SYDELL: If there is a recession on, you wouldn't know it by standing here at this Best Buy in San Francisco.
Mr. BRYAN DOBBIE(ph) (Customer Experience Manager, Best Buy, San Francisco): My name is Bryan Dobbie. I'm a customer experience manager for Best Buy in San Francisco on Harrison Street. I've seen a lot of gaming systems going out, so people are looking a lot for the Wiis. I've seen a lot of PlayStation3s go out. I've seen a lot of laptop sales and a lot of television sales.
SYDELL: It isn't that customers here aren't feeling the pinch of the recession. Take this guy, Tyler Bradford. Although he just downsized to a smaller apartment to save money, he's about to take out his credit card.
Mr. TYLER BRADFORD: So now I'm justifying myself, so I can get nicer things, a flatter TV, if I go to a smaller apartment, right?
SYDELL: Maybe during a recession, a good TV is a good thing to have?
Mr. BRADFORD: Well, you know, that way I'll spend more time at home and not on other things.
SYDELL: There is a marketing term for what Bradford is doing. He's nesting. Stephen Baker, analyst with NPD Group, says when the economy is bad, people nest.
Mr. STEPHEN BAKER (Analyst, NPD Group): We saw this after 9/11 in 2001, as well, where people took that money that maybe they would have spent on things outside the home, and reallocated it towards products that gave them some kind of an enjoyment or entertainment in their own home.
SYDELL: Still, for an industry that's used to double-digit growth, this isn't going to be a great year. Steve Smith of This Week in Consumer Electronics says they are still counting up the holiday sales, but he expects that compared to last year, the numbers will be flat or down around 3 or 4 percent. But Smith consoles himself.
Mr. STEVE SMITH (Editor In Chief, This Week in Consumer Electronics): It has done better than the car business. It's done better than men's and women's clothing.
SYDELL: As Smith sees it in this environment, not having double-digit losses is something to be happy about. He also expects that post-holiday, there will still be plenty of people in stores buying televisions because of the national conversion to digital TV in February. Now, as companies get ready to go to the Consumer Electronics Show, the current economy is certainly having an impact on how they plan to pitch their products.
(Soundbite of Ooma ad)
Unidentified Man: Hello. I'm interested in getting free home phone service.
Automated Voice: It sounds like you said, fee for home service.
SYDELL: This is an ad for a device called Ooma.
(Soundbite of Ooma ad)
Unidentified Woman: The big phone companies can't even say free home phone service. But you can with Ooma.
SYDELL: An Ooma is a white plastic box that connects a regular home phone to a broadband Internet connection. It costs $250 upfront. Then you can get rid of your home phone line and the monthly bill. Tami Bhaumik, the marketing director for Ooma, says in this economy, that's their big pitch.
Ms. TAMI BHAUMIK (Marketing Director, Ooma): We do talk a little bit more about how much people are saving on a monthly basis. So, I mean, we are playing that up from a sales standpoint more.
SYDELL: Ooma is a 1-year-old start-up, but Bhaumik says as the economy gets worse, their sales are going up. This is their first year at the Consumer Electronics Show. Despite her company's growth, she says they aren't going to make their display too lavish.
Ms. BHAUMIK: Every item that I choose to select to be either in my booth or part of my booth, I think long and hard about whether or not the cost makes sense.
SYDELL: Other companies are doing the same. CES has always been as much about selling gadgets as it has been about partying with colleagues and competitors. This year, the parties will be smaller. It's an industry that's nervous about its future and in a little bit of shock because a decade of double-digit growth has come to an end. Laura Sydell, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Washington, D.C., is better known for its suits than its creativity. But the city's been home to a diverse range of music - from Duke Ellington's jazz to hard-core punk to go-go. Today, in the latest installment of our series "Home Grown Music," NPR's Neda Ulaby introduces us to a different D.C. scene: experimental music.
NEDA ULABY: I'm watching a slim, young woman named Bonnie Jones manipulate circuit boards and digital delay pedals at the Velvet Lounge, a dark, little bar with blood-red walls that lurks on the fringe of D.C.'s super trendy U Street corridor. Tonight, it's hosting an experimental music festival called "Sonic Circuits."
(Soundbite of musical piece "Sonic Circuits")
ULABY: Bonnie Jones was born in South Korea and raised by New Jersey dairy farmers. She's one of 60 musicians from eight different countries performing at the festival. Music writer Marc Masters is my guide to the scene this evening.
Mr. MARC MASTERS (Music Writer): There's going to be stuff here that actually sounds like a rock band but not like a rock band that writes songs.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. MASTERS: There's going to be stuff here that sounds like something you would hear in a movie, except it's not trying to mimic the images. It's just trying to generate moods on its own.
(Soundbite of music)
ULABY: If this kind of music happens to be your thing, D.C. is a surprisingly good place to live.
Mr. JEFF SURAK (Director, Sonic Circuits Festival): It's a very strong, close-knit community that's very open.
ULABY: Jeff Surak directs the Sonic Circuits Festival. He says about half of this year's talent comes from around D.C.
Mr. SURAK: We're not limited to genres. People play in different types of groups, everything from sort of free-noise rock to very harsh noise, ambient electronic music to drone and everything in-between.
ULABY: In D.C., these types all mix together, unlike New York or Chicago, where the scenes tend to be cliquey, says Surak. His own solo project, called "Violet," makes music he describes as irrational.
Mr. SURAK: My acts, per se, if you want to call it that, would be an autoharp that has been - has seen better years. It's pretty much warped. And I removed all the keys on it, and it's never been tuned.
(Soundbite of music)
ULABY: Jeff Surak says D.C. benefits from a sophisticated, international audience willing to take chances on music like his. And because the city itself lacks a major music school, it's not jammed with students and professional musicians competing for fame and gigs.
Mr. JONATHAN MATIS (Guitarist; Composer): When the stakes are low, everybody can get along.
ULABY: Jonathan Matis is a guitarist and composer who also runs two small nonprofits that support experimental music in D.C.
Mr. MATIS: There is no incentive for anyone to not be welcoming or encouraging or open to whatever anyone else is doing.
ULABY: After all, it's not like anyone is making any money on this. Case in point - a monthly gathering of diehard experimental music junkies. The Electric Possible meets in a basement at the music department at George Washington University. About 20 guys are thoroughly involved with their gear - modular and analogue synthesizers, theremins and electronic didgeridoos. They are swapping tips and cables, and helping each other find the all-important wall outlets. Jeff Bagalo works at a law library. He's the group's organizer.
Mr. JEFF BAGALO (Organizer, Electric Possible): It's a really friendly scene, and it's really like the nicest music scene that I've ever been part of here in D.C.
ULABY: Some of the musicians here tonight are former punks who've aged out of the hard-core club scene. Some are pocket-protected, Popular Mechanic-type hobbyists. Some are both, like Dave Rickert, a 43-year-old dad with a very D.C. day job.
Mr. DAVE RICKERT (Government Contractor): I am a government contractor working with devices that keep people safe from roadside bombs in Iraq.
ULABY: Rickert plays in a Moog-heavy duo called RDK with another musician named Davis White.
(Soundbite of music)
ULABY: One of the things Rickert appreciates most in D.C.'s experimental music scene is its lack of trendiness or pretension.
Mr. RICKERT: There's just a lot of people that kind of do their own thing, which kind of keeps it interesting because it's more of - just an extension of their personalities rather than trying to do what other people are doing.
ULABY: And that's what makes it fun, Rickert says. Whether or not you like the music or even consider it music at all is secondary. This scene values imagination, ingenuity and originality, all things this capital city could use a lot more of. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
(Soundbite of music)
BLOCK: And you can hear more melodies from D.C.'s experimental bands at nprmusic.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
For the last year, two men - one Israeli, one Palestinian - have been blogging about their lives on opposite sides of the Israeli-Gaza border. Online, they call themselves Hope Man - that's the Israeli - and Peace Man - he's the Palestinian. They live about 10 miles apart. We were unable to reach Peace Man in Gaza today, but we did reach Hope Man. He is Eric Yellin, and he manages a computer software company in the Israeli town of Sderot. Mr. Yellin, welcome to the program.
Mr. ERIC YELLIN (Israeli Blogger): Hi.
BLOCK: Have you heard from your Palestinian blogger friend? He hasn't posted in about a week and a half.
Mr. YELLIN: Well, the last I heard from his was this morning. I received an SMS from him after three days of not hearing anything. I was pretty worried because I stopped hearing from him right after the ground incursion by the Israeli forces into Gaza. So, I sent him an SMS message, and it took a couple of days, but he returned one today saying he's OK. But I haven't been able to reach him on the phone.
BLOCK: Where does he live in relation to the most serious fighting going on?
Mr. YELLIN: Well, I'm not sure because I don't where this most serious fighting is going on, but I know that he lives in a militant area, I guess - an area where there are militants. It's a neighborhood called Sajaiya. And just recently, he said that if ever this area were attacked, there would be great danger for many people there because there are homes with 20, 30, and even up to 50 people in one house. Very, very dense.
BLOCK: I would think that you would - that your perception of this conflict would be shaped a lot because of your relationship with your friend on the opposite side of the border?
Mr. YELLIN: Well, definitely. I think that, for me, living in Sderot, not knowing anyone, it just seemed like, well, another, you know, refugee, another area of the world which people suffer. There are so many other places in this world. But as soon as I started meeting people, it created a real connection and understanding that on the other side of the border, there are people exactly like us who are suffering. We are suffering, too, through this conflict. But the only way to end this was through some kind of connection and dialogue.
BLOCK: And is that, do you think, the experience of Peace Man in Gaza?
Mr. YELLIN: Well, absolutely. I think - Peace Man has told me this so many times that, first of all, for him it was the first time ever to meet Israelis. And for him, they were always the enemy, always the oppressor. It took a while to create trust even between the two of us. And I think that over time, we have really become friends. And I think there is full and complete trust. I'd trust him with my life, and I think vice versa.
BLOCK: We've been calling your blogging counterpart in Gaza Peace Man. Does he not use his real name out of safety concerns?
Mr. YELLIN: Yeah, well, Peace Man, as I said, he lives in a pretty difficult area. And he has some fear for his safety. And his voice might be misunderstood as a person who's speaking with the other side, with the enemy.
BLOCK: He might be seen as a collaborator, in other words?
Mr. YELLIN: Well, I don't even know as a collaborator. For some people, even speaking to an Israeli, even if you're not collaborating with him, is something you should not be doing. And for some Israelis, as well, I think there are some people who see what I'm doing as something that should not be done. I'm not in any personal danger because of that, but I certainly might be scrutinized for it.
BLOCK: You know, you mentioned earlier that you had gotten a text message from Peace Man saying that he's OK. What did you message him back when you got that message?
Mr. YELLIN: I said that, first of all, that I am very glad to hear from him after such a long time and just, please, just send me an OK once a day, so I know you're OK.
BLOCK: Well, Mr. Yellin, it's good to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Mr. YELLIN: Yes, thank you and good day. Bye.
BLOCK: Eric Yellin on his blog. He's called Hope Man. His Palestinian counterpart goes by Peace Man. You can find a link to their blog at our Web site. And you can also read about other ways people in the conflict zone are using social media to reach out. Those are at npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. It's no secret the bad economy has sent vehicle sales plunging. For Hyundai, based in South Korea, sales dropped 14 percent in 2008 compared to 2007. So now, Hyundai is gambling that in these hard times, a new ad campaign might help.
(Soundbite of Hyundai Assurance Program advertisement)
Unidentified Announcer: A decade ago, Hyundai gave people confidence with America's best warranty. Today, we're providing another kind of confidence. Buy any new Hyundai and if in the next year you lose your income, we'll let you return it. That's the Hyundai assurance. We're all in this together, and we'll all get through it together.
NORRIS: Now, as always, there is fine print in the deal, but you don't have to squint. We've got John Krafcik, the acting president and CEO of Hyundai Motor America, to help explain that. He joins us from Fountain Valley, California. It's so good to talk to you.
Mr. JOHN KRAFCIK (Acting President & CEO, Hyundai Motor America): Great to be here, Michele.
NORRIS: Now, you're calling this offer the Hyundai Assurance. Give us the basics. I can return the car if...
Mr. KRAFCIK: Well, it's basically a complimentary vehicle return program. If within the first year of purchase you have an involuntary loss of income, we'll take the car back. Pretty simple.
NORRIS: There have to be, though, some qualifications here. Any loss of income?
Mr. KRAFCIK: Yeah, if it's - so if you quit your job, we don't cover you for that one. But you know, if you're laid off, if your job causes you to relocate to another country, we cover that as well - those kinds of involuntary loss of income, yeah.
NORRIS: Has anyone ever done anything like this before with a purchase this large?
Mr. KRAFCIK: Michele, as far as we know, we're the first automaker to have a program like this one that actually allows you to return the car with very few questions asked within the 12 - first 12 months of ownership.
NORRIS: Twelve months. So it's up to one year.
Mr. KRAFCIK: Up to one year, yeah.
NORRIS: Now, this is interesting because the moment - if you purchase a car, the moment that you drive it off the lot, it immediately loses value. Are the owners on the hook for all that lost equity?
Mr. KRAFCIK: That's essentially what we're covering, is up to the first $7,500 of vehicle equity. So, a consumer buys a $20,000 car. If within the first year they return it and the value of the car is determined to be $12,500 or more, that whole difference will be covered by Hyundai. If the value of the car after one year is determined to be $12,000, then the consumer would be responsible for the $500 extra.
NORRIS: So it sounds like you are signed on. You thought this was a good idea. Were the accountants or the bean counters within the company worried about this, worried that Hyundai might take a bath?
Mr. KRAFCIK: You know, we're - as far as the U.S. market goes, we're a fairly small player. We've got a 3 percent market share - although interestingly, that makes us the seventh biggest brand in the U.S. But we're still small enough to be pretty nimble. And we very quickly rallied around this idea and had it in market January 2nd. And I have to say, Michele, we had pretty strong support throughout the company.
NORRIS: Mr. Krafcik, are you at all worried that this ad, while interesting - certainly would get a customer's attention - might also smack of desperation that buyers might think, whoa, Hyundai must really be in trouble. I'm not sure that I want to purchase one of their vehicles.
Mr. KRAFCIK: Well, actually, I think we think of it as a way to differentiate ourselves. You've probably heard this definition of insanity - if you keep doing the same thing that you've always done and expect a different result. We wanted to try a different kind of program that seemed to address people's fears during these uncertain times. And what we like about assurance is it goes right after that concern that folks have. And so far, it's still early days. We're only three or four days into the program. But the response we've had from consumers, from dealers, has shown the program's resonating for us.
NORRIS: Well, John Krafcik, it's been good to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Mr. KRAFCIK: Thanks, Michele.
NORRIS: John Krafcik is acting president and CEO of Hyundai Motor America.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. First this hour, to the latest in Gaza and southern Israel. Palestinian doctors say more than 30 people were killed at two schools run by the United Nations. They had taken shelter there. U.N. officials condemned the violence and demanded an Israeli investigation. Israel says it has agreed to an idea first raised today at the U.N. to set up a humanitarian corridor for delivering vital supplies to the people of the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, rocket fire by militants continued from Gaza today, and Israel announced the death of five soldiers, four of them killed by friendly fire. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.
ERIC WESTERVELT: Witnesses say three Israeli artillery or mortar rounds landed about 10 yards away from the Jabaliya Prep Girls School in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in northern Gaza run by UNRWA, the U.N. Refugee Agency for Palestinians. U.N. officials, as well as doctors at two hospitals, say at least 30 people were killed and 15 critically wounded, all of them civilians who'd sought refuge in this U.N. facility. Witnesses say bodies were scattered in pools of blood amid pieces of clothing and shoes. Earlier in the day, another U.N. school was hit by Israeli tank fire, killing three displaced civilians.
Mr. JOHN GING (Director of Operations in Gaza, UNRWA): I'm extremely worried. The population here are terrorized by the situation.
WESTERVELT: That's Gaza's U.N. director, John Ging. We reached him in Gaza City. He says the deaths at the U.N schools reinforce the feeling among civilians that there are no protected areas in Gaza today.
Mr. GING: Because they know from the numbers that have been killed and injured already that, you know, they are not safe. And they can't even now be assured of safety in United Nations locations, which are identified to everybody, including the Israelis. We've given them the GPS coordinates of all of these locations. They know perfectly well where they are. They're clearly marked. They've got U.N. flags flying and so on. And yet this is what is happening.
WESTERVELT: In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces said late today that several mortar rounds were fired from within the Jabaliya U.N. school. The army claims two Hamas militants were among the dead when they returned mortar fire. The U.N. denies any rounds were fired from its school. Today, at still another U.N. school in Gaza City, angry, displaced civilians huddled hungry and scared in classrooms. Salahaddin Sultan(ph) says he fled the fighting in Beit Lahia in the north. He calls the Israeli invasion of Gaza a war crime.
Mr. SALAHADDIN SULTAN: (Through Translator) You see the U.N. attacks? Don't they see that this is a U.N. area? Is this logical? Should all of Gaza be punished because of a few rockets?
WESTERVELT: The overall Palestinian death toll is now well over 600, with the U.N. saying at least a quarter of the dead are civilians. Four Israelis have been killed by Hamas rocket fire in the 11-day-old war. Major Michael Oren, an Israeli military spokesman, says the majority of those killed in Gaza have been armed Hamas gunmen. He insists the army takes great pains to avoid civilian casualties, but he cautions that fighting in crowded, built-up areas such as Gaza is inherently complicated and risky.
Major MICHAEL OREN (Spokesman, Israel Defense Forces): We are fighting, again, against an enemy that is using civilians as a shield, that for its own purposes would like to maximize civilian casualties. That generates international pressure on Israel. With that, civilian casualties in any war, and certainly a war that's fought in a densely populated urban area, civilian casualties become virtually unavoidable.
WESTERVELT: The heaviest Israeli casualties overnight and today, meantime, came from the army's own deadly errors. Four Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza in two separate friendly fire incidents, including one in which a tank fired at a building after mistaking fellow soldiers for militants. A fifth soldier was killed today by Hamas fire.
Israeli leaders continue to say their objective is to neutralize the Hamas rocket threat, and that the operation will continue as long as it takes to do that. But with civilian casualties mounting, political and diplomatic pressure for an immediate cease-fire is almost sure to increase. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, on the Israel-Gaza border.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The world of contemporary classical music is mourning one of its most passionate champions. Betty Freeman died Sunday in Los Angeles. Freeman was an arts patron who used her wealth to support some of the most innovative composers of the 20th and 21st centuries. Joel Rose has this appreciation.
JOEL ROSE: By her own count, Betty Freeman made more than 300 grants of assistance to dozens of composers.
(Soundbite of violin work "Freeman Etudes")
ROSE: John Cage expressed his gratitude by naming a solo violin work in her honor. Freeman tried to talk him out of it, as she told Charles Amirkhanian on public radio station KPFA in 1991.
Ms. BETTY FREEMAN (Music Patron): John wrote me that he was writing a piece called the "Freeman Etudes." So I called him up. I was in Los Angeles. I called him in New York, and I said, thank you very much for calling it the "Freeman Etudes," but I never use my name in public.
ROSE: Freeman's longtime friend, Los Angeles music critic Alan Rich, says she was adamant about remaining behind the scenes.
Mr. ALAN RICH (Music Critic): She didn't look for fame. She did not want her name up on marquees. She just liked spending money on contemporary music.
ROSE: As a result, Freeman's name didn't mean much to the general public, but composers certainly knew who she was. She rescued aging American maverick Harry Partch from poverty and obscurity. And she helped support up-and-comers too, commissioning John Adams to write his opera, "Nixon in China."
(Soundbite of opera "Nixon in China")
Unidentified Vocalist: (Singing) News, news, news, news as a, as a, as a, as a kind of mystery...
ROSE: Betty Freeman was born in Chicago and grew up in New York. She trained to be a concert pianist, but gave up the idea in the 1960s. Not long after, she started supporting composers financially.
Mr. NORMAN LEBRECHT (Author; Assistant Editor, Evening Standard): The music that we hear today would not be the same without Betty Freeman.
ROSE: Norman Lebrecht is an author and assistant editor of the London Evening Standard. He was also a friend of Freeman's. He calls her, quote, the midwife of postmodernism.
Mr. LEBRECHT: She ignored all the existing barriers. She just went after the stuff that appealed to her. And in doing so, she put a whole load of composers on the map.
ROSE: One of those composers was Steve Reich.
Mr. STEVE REICH (Composer): I got a letter from Betty out of the blue saying that she'd heard my piece "Come Out" and that she really liked it and - but she wanted to help me. I was completely amazed that a person like that could exist. She was a music lover in the absolute basic meaning of that phrase.
ROSE: Reich says Freeman supported him throughout his career without asking anything in return. And she commissioned his piece, "Different Trains," suggesting he write it for the Kronos Quartet.
(Soundbite of music)
ROSE: Betty Freeman didn't just commission new music. She also hosted composers and musicians at a series of private salon concerts in her house in Beverly Hills, where she would often take photographs of them at work. If Freeman's approach recalls the classical patrons of the past, she insisted on applying it to the music of the present.
Ms. FREEMAN: I don't hear Beethoven and Cage differently. I just listen. ..TEXT: ROSE: Betty Freeman continued listening and photographing right up to the end. She died Sunday of pancreatic cancer. She was 87 years old. For NPR News, I'm Joel Rose.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In San Francisco today, Apple unveiled its latest products and software upgrades at the annual Macworld Expo. But the man on stage showing off the new wares was not Apple CEO Steve Jobs, but instead a senior vice president with the company, Phil Schiller. While the new products and features are sure to create some buzz, much of the talk at this year's Macworld has been about Steve Jobs and his health.
Yesterday, Jobs released a letter explaining that he's experiencing a hormone problem that explains the visible weight loss over the last year. Joining us from San Francisco is Tom Krazit of CNET News. And Tom, this was the first time in 12 years that Steve Jobs has not delivered that keynote speech. How much was that weighing on people's minds today?
Mr. TOM KRAZIT (Reporter, CNET News): You know, it's not clear. It had to be a little bit. Steve has been the main attraction at Macworld for a very long time now, as you mentioned. And half the fun, it seemed, for a lot of the people who attend this event was just seeing him speak in person. So, yeah, I mean, you know, there was a familiar face that was not there on stage this morning.
NORRIS: Mr. Schiller, I take, did not wear a black turtleneck?
Mr. KRAZIT: No, he went with the blue shirt and jeans, of course. I think that's a requirement at Apple that all executives have to wear jeans.
NORRIS: And of course, I mentioned the turtleneck because Steve Jobs is usually up there with that signature black turtleneck. I want to turn now to the announcements that were actually rolled out today by Phil Schiller. There is usually a lot of anticipation about some new, big, now, wow product that's going to be rolled out. What did you see today?
Mr. KRAZIT: Well, I think the two most important things that we saw today were the new MacBook Pro, and the decision to change up the pricing structure and technology used in the iTunes music store. The MacBook is interesting simply because it is going to use an integrated battery - battery that cannot be easily replaced by the user, which Apple said was a design concession it needed to make to keep the laptop thin and light as well as to extend battery life to what they're claiming can be up to eight hours.
NORRIS: In there, also, some news about iTunes?
Mr. KRAZIT: That's correct. For the first time in the history of the iTunes store, Apple will offer all of the songs on that store, by the end of April, without DRM technology, or digital rights management technology. And what that basically means is you'll be able to do whatever you want with those songs. You know, DRM technology, it's something that frustrates users, you know. They can run into problems switching songs between computers or devices, and it also has required that any song you buy from the iTunes store be played on an iPod or an iPhone. And so with this move, Apple will basically be allowing anybody who buys a song on the iTunes store to do whatever they want with it.
NORRIS: People watch Macworld for a lot of different reasons. People who are maniacal about the products follow along for one reason, and people who are interested in the health of the company follow along for another reason. What do we learn about Apple this year?
Mr. KRAZIT: Well, I think we learn that Apple is getting ready for a new era in which Steve Jobs isn't necessarily the most important person at the company or the person that people look to for guidance and leadership. You know, I think we're getting to the point in Apple's history where they realize that they're going to have to figure a way to have a leadership strategy at the company that isn't completely and totally dependent on one man because, you know, eventually, Steve Jobs is going to decide that he needs to move on from Apple, for whatever reason, and Apple, the corporation, is going to have to find a way to keep going.
NORRIS: Tom Krazit, thanks so much.
Mr. KRAZIT: You're welcome.
NORRIS: Tom Krazit is with CNET News, and he was speaking to us from San Francisco.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And now for your letters. On yesterday's program, Claudio Sanchez profiled Michelle Rhee. She's the chancellor of the school system here in Washington, D.C. Rhee has drawn the ire of teachers unions for her proposal to do away with tenure for teachers and introduce merit-based pay.
Ms. MICHELLE RHEE (Chancellor, Washington, D.C., Public Schools): I am not willing to go in front of a group of parents and say that it is worth throwing away a year of that child's life, especially knowing that for poor and minority kids in this country, teacher quality is the number one determinant of student success.
BLOCK: Well, Steven True(ph) of Newark, New York, wrote to disagree with Rhee's assessment. He points to a different barrier to improving education. I have taught for 15 years, 10 in a low-income district, writes Mr. True, and I have found that often the missing determinate is parents. My number one problem is students not doing their homework, which requires parents to get them to do it. Even if I was the best teacher around, it wouldn't matter without the support from parents.
Perhaps, not surprisingly, quite a few of you who wrote to us about this story are educators or former educators, and your letters illustrate just how contentious the question of teacher tenure is. Anne Marie Volke(ph) of Santa Clarita, California, thinks Ms. Rhee's opponents have got it all wrong. She writes, Thank you, Ms. Rhee, for pushing your ideas. What other important profession protects the jobs of those not doing their jobs? Any good teacher will jump at the chance to make more money and have the ability to change school districts at will, instead of being stuck because of tenure.
Finally, we had several of you thank us for our piece on the Canine Corps yesterday. That's the kennel in Perry County, Pennsylvania, that provides a free home to pets of soldiers serving abroad. Jen Schurry(ph) of Miami writes, I can only imagine how gratifying it is for these soldiers to return home to their most loyal companions. Thanks for bringing me this encouraging story during my drive home.
And Pat Summer(ph) of Laguna Beach, California, chimed in with this thought. She writes, Thanks for highlighting the fact that many of us hold self-evident. All family members count - young, old, or four-legged.
And of course, all your letters count to us. So write to us with your compliments or your criticisms. Go to npr.org, and click on "Contact Us" at the top of the page.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Ask teenagers how they feel about high school, and you're likely to hear a variation on this theme.
Unidentified Student #1: High school was just boring.
Unidentified Student #2: And I was bored out of my mind.
Unidentified Student #3: Public school was really boring.
BLOCK: Those students found a way out of their boredom. They went straight to college without ever getting a high school diploma. NPR's Larry Abramson paid a visit to Bard College at Simon's Rock, where 15-year-olds can start work on a bachelor's degree.
LARRY ABRAMSON: The concept of Simon's Rock is simple. The last two years of high school are a waste of time, so go straight to college. Robin Kaskee(ph) is only 18 years old, and she's about to get her associate's degree.
Ms. ROBIN KASKEE: In high school, you're done, basically, with your education junior year for the type of student I was, and then senior year is about writing your applications and sending them out during Christmas break, and then waiting and crossing your fingers and hoping you'll get in.
ABRAMSON: Kaskee is sitting in the student union, which looks out on this beautiful, wooded campus in western Massachusetts. She is proof of the Simon's Rock concept. Kaskee felt totally ready for college-level work when she arrived here after her sophomore year in high school. Like other kids here, Kaskee says moving away from home that young was not a big deal. But one thing did surprise her.
Ms. KASKEE: I don't know, it was a bit of an adjustment coming freshman year and realizing that you're not the smartest kid in the room anymore. I was used to being the girl that dominated the conversation, or got the top score on any test that I was taking. And here, that's just not the case, and I don't think that's the focus either.
ABRAMSON: The focus is on small classes and strong teaching.
(Soundbite of English class)
Dr. HAL HOLLADAY (Professor of English, Bard College, Simon's Rock): Who else lets go of the great wheel?
Unidentified Student #4: Goneril and Regan.
Dr. HOLLADAY: Goneril and Regan, OK.
ABRAMSON: Before Hal Holladay arrives to teach, his students tell me he is awesome. For 90 minutes, he and 10 students discuss the play seminar-style, the way they would on any college campus. This is clearly college, not high school. No time is wasted on discipline, on announcements or attendance. Simon's Rock dean, Sam Ruhmkorff, says kids here are treated like adults, so that's how they act.
Dr. SAMUEL RUHMKORFF (Dean of Academic Affairs, Bard College, Simon's Rock): Taking our students absolutely seriously intellectually. And we recognize that they are 15, 16 or 17, but we respect their opinions. We let them argue with us, overrule us. We want to know what they think.
ABRAMSON: Kids may be treated like adults academically, but when it comes to dorm life, they're treated more like teenagers, with closer supervision than at a typical college. But administrators say discipline is less of a problem when nearly everyone on campus wants to be here. That's the real force that holds things together. Oh, and there's no time to get into too much trouble. So what do you do on the weekend?
Unidentified Student #5: Homework.
ABRAMSON: A gaggle of girls is picking at the food from the school cafeteria. There is only one place to eat here. Leah Solitsky(ph), 16, is eating lunch with her fur hat on. She says many of the social pressures of high school disappear at Simon's Rock.
Ms. LEAH SOLITSKY (Student, Bard College, Simon's Rock): In high school, everything is grades, or everything is marijuana. And here, the kids who work really hard don't do it for grades. They do it because they love learning. The difference is huge.
ABRAMSON: Mindy Eisser(ph) was an honor student in high school, but she says she was getting terrible grades. Then at Simon's Rock, she met her adviser, who is apparently some sort of superhero.
Ms. MINDY EISSER (Student, Bard College, Simon's Rock): She is the smartest, most amazing woman, nicest, most - her brain is like this big. I feel like if I don't know something or if I didn't do the reading, I would be personally letting her down.
ABRAMSON: All these small classes and close relationships cost money. Tuition is $50,000 a year. Eighty percent of kids get some sort of financial aid, but many students said they weren't sure their parents could afford to keep them here. Now, this place is not for everyone. That goes for teachers, too. They are intimately responsible for a small group of students. For Gidon Eshel, who came from the University of Chicago to teach environmental science, the difference was day and night.
Dr. GIDON ESHEL (Bard Center Fellow, Environmental Science, Simon's Rock): Well, at Chicago, I mean, they can tell you whatever they want. But really, teaching is totally irrelevant. I mean, nobody spends any innovative effort to teach. Here, it's very different.
ABRAMSON: Different and a little lonely. Gidon Eshel says at Chicago, he could find bright people in his field around every corner.
Dr. ESHEL: There isn't anybody in my field here. I am totally alone.
ABRAMSON: Simon's Rock sees itself as a unique outpost, a quirky survivor from the '60s reform efforts that gave birth to this school. In recent years, the school has helped to foster dozens of early college programs around the country. Simon's Rock teaches seminars on early college pedagogy. But the school remains an odd duck, an enduring experiment that's tough to replicate. Larry Abramson, 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. Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially swore in the 111th Congress of the United States. The first day of a legislative session is always full of pomp and circumstance, and today was no exception. But the House also got right down to business, as NPR congressional correspondent Andrea Seabrook reports.
ANDREA SEABROOK: The Capitol was decked out in full regalia. Freshly pressed suits and little girls in dresses and white tights packed the floor as Speaker Pelosi administered the oath of office to the new House.
Representative NANCY PELOSI (Democrat, California; Speaker of the House): And that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you are about to enter, so help you God.
Unidentified Group: I do.
Representative PELOSI: Congratulations. You are now members of the 111th Congress.
(Soundbite of applause)
SEABROOK: Off the floor, out of view of the cameras, the first day of Congress looks, well, different.
Representative TIM RYAN (Democrat, Ohio): Tim Ryan, yeah. Do I get my pin here, too?
SEABROOK: Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan lined up at a strikingly unceremonial folding table. He's here to pick up his opening day packet.
Representative RYAN: It's like school, you know what I mean? Where is the bathroom, and where is the cafeteria? You know, it's always important. You've got to figure out what the new color is going to be, what the new pins are going to look like.
SEABROOK: Those congressional lapel pins are a little bigger, a little fancier this year. Members fiddled with their jackets in front of the gilded mirrors just off the House floor. Pennsylvania Republican Bill Shuster finally got his pin attached, and he was carrying a small leather-bound book, obviously well-worn.
SEABROOK: Hey, what's this? What do you have there?
Representative BILL SHUSTER (Republican, Pennsylvania): It's my family Bible, my grandmother's Bible. My father was a member of Congress, served 15 terms. Every time he was sworn in, he had the Bible. And I've - and it's my fifth term, so I bring it, and we put a little inscription in the Bible. And so, a little bit of history - Shuster family history.
SEABROOK: And especially keyed up on this day: leading Democrats, hot off a banner election. What was New York's Charlie Rangel doing?
Representative CHARLES RANGEL (Democrat, New York): Signing in for the most exciting session in my political life.
SEABROOK: Really?
Representative RANGEL: Yes.
SEABROOK: You've been here a little while, too.
Representative RANGEL: Thirty-eight years. When I was sworn in, George Washington had white hair.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SEABROOK: A new mandate, Democrats say, a new direction, led by the woman who will be at the helm of this Congress.
Ms. LORRAINE MILLER (Clerk of the House of Representatives): The honorable Nancy Pelosi of the state of California, having received the majority of the votes cast, is duly elected speaker of the House for the 111th Congress.
SEABROOK: House Clerk Lorraine Miller called the vote. It's Pelosi's second term as speaker of the House, and this time she commands a significantly bigger majority: 256 Democrats and 178 Republicans. That's a comfy, 78-seat advantage. And by all indications, she plans to use it.
Representative PELOSI: Together with our new president, we, as a Congress and a country, must fulfill the rest of America's promise, with spirited debate and without partisan deadlock or delay.
SEABROOK: But first things first. Democratic leaders laid out a new set of rules for House debate. They repealed term limits for committee chairmen, for example. Perhaps the most important change is one that sounds, well, a little silly. In certain floor motions, Democrats will bar members from using the word "promptly" and require, instead, the word "forthwith." You heard me right. Promptly is out, forthwith is in. Sounds small, but the effect is to block a parliamentary maneuver minority Republicans used successfully last session to kill legislation they didn't agree with.
Representative JIM SENSENBRENNER (Republican, Wisconsin): What are you afraid of?
SEABROOK: Wisconsin Republican Jim Sensenbrenner heated up the first debate of the year.
Representative SENSENBRENNER: Shame on you because you're shutting down the process, and you are going to result in more partisanship, not less. You're going to result in having the country even more divided, not less.
SEABROOK: So, by the end of the day, wives and husbands filed out of the Capitol. Kids were falling asleep on their father's shoulders. And the real work of Congress had begun. Andrea Seabrook, NPR News, the Capitol.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
President-elect Barack Obama has urged Congress to enact an economic stimulus package that would be ready by the time he takes office on January 20th, but it's increasingly unlikely lawmakers can meet that deadline. To find out why, we are joined by House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland. Congressman Hoyer, welcome to the program.
Representative STENY HOYER (Democrat, Maryland; House Majority Leader): Hi. Good to be with you.
NORRIS: Now, it seems like Democrats and Republicans agree that an economic recovery package needs to be worked out, and quickly. So what's the hold-up?
Representative HOYER: Well, I think there is agreement, and we've been working very, very hard since the election, since November 4th. So, it's a very big package. It's a complicated package. And it's important to do it soon, but it's also important to do it right. And we have determined that we need to take the time to make sure that happens. We will, and intend to, pass it before the president's break and have it to the president well before the middle of February.
NORRIS: I want to ask about some of the details of this package. The number that we've seen thrown around is around $775 billion. Is that likely to grow, and how does that need to be carved up so the stimulus package actually stimulates the economy?
Representative HOYER: Michele, what we've been talking about is a package anywhere as low as 500 billion, as high as 1.5 trillion. Many economists have different views on that. But I think when you mentioned 700 to $800 billion, that is certainly the ballpark in which we are now talking. The components of that will be, first of all, it's critical that we get this economy moving and create jobs, but we need to help those who have been hurt by this economy, make sure that unemployment insurance is available, make sure that food stamps are available to people.
Secondly, we need to create jobs. Infrastructure is one of the ways to do that and create jobs here in our country. There's going to be a very substantial component of this bill that will deal with infrastructure. Lastly, there's going to be a very substantial component which will deal with a tax cut so that average working Americans, some 95 percent of the taxpaying public, will have more dollars in their pocket to put back into the economy. We think that will help get the economy moving and help working families who are struggling.
NORRIS: There's still some wrangling over the price tag. The price tag has not been set. But even the numbers that are discussed at this point, the Republicans are saying that the numbers are too high. Are you willing to make some sort of downward adjustment in order to bring the GOP into the fold so you can move forward with these negotiations?
Representative HOYER: Well, you know, I think some Republicans may be saying that the number is too high, but there are an awful lot of Republicans and Republican economists who are saying the number is too low. But the fact is that almost everybody believes that it needs to be a very substantial number. And I think the 700 to $800 billion is probably where we're going to be, which is deemed by almost all the economists I talk to, to be a sum necessary if we're going to have the positive effect on the economy that this is designed to do.
NORRIS: Congressman Hoyer, it seems that it wasn't all that long ago that the big debate on Capitol Hill seemed to center around balancing the budget or deficit reduction. As you well know, the numbers in the deficit just keep growing and growing and growing. Is there any hope that you might be able to sort of chip away at that deficit or hope to get close to balancing the budget within an Obama term?
Representative HOYER: Michele, I think balancing the budget within the next four years, frankly, is not fiscally possible. Every economist understands that we're going to go into deeper debt in the short term to try to get this economy moving. And if we don't get the economy moving, the debt is going to get deeper simply because revenues are going to plummet and our economy is going to slow down even further. So, frankly, you're damned if you do, and you're damned if you don't. So we need to incur this debt. But we are very focused on, in the medium term and long term, making sure that we get back to fiscal balance.
NORRIS: Congressman Hoyer, thanks so much. Always good to talk to you.
Representative HOYER: You bet.
NORRIS: Steny Hoyer is a congressman from Maryland. He is the Democratic majority leader in the House.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
North Carolina is the promised land for people who want to make fast cars go faster. The Charlotte area is a major NASCAR hub, home to more than 60 racing teams. They employ engineers, welders, fabricators and mechanics. And over the past decade and a half, there have been lots of job opportunities. But the slow economy has hurt NASCAR, as it's hurt so many things, and corporate sponsors have pulled back. From member station WFAE in Charlotte, Lisa Miller reports.
LISA MILLER: This is one of dozens of shops in the area where crews turn frames and parts into race cars that can go more than 180 miles per hour.
Mr. TONY PRICE(ph) (Shop Foreman, Gates Racing): We've got Ryan(ph) over there. He's assembling dashes, wiring. We got Sean(ph). He's doing all the oil tanks for every car.
MILLER: Tony Price is a shop foreman at Gates Racing. There have been job cuts here, like at many other race teams. Over the past decades, sponsors were quick to write checks, and crews expanded as the money came in. Last year, nearly half the industry's estimated $3 billion in revenue came from sponsorships. Corporate spending has declined, but no one in the sport is saying by how much. Attendance at races has also dropped. Up to 1,000 racing employees have now lost their jobs. Dave Quasniac(ph) became one of them when two of the sport's longstanding teams, Dale Earnhardt Inc. and Chip Ganassi Racing, combined.
Mr. DAVE QUASNIAC (Unemployed Mechanic): They had six teams when they merged, and they basically had to get rid of two teams. So I was one of the lucky few that got let go.
MILLER: Since November, Quasniac's looked for a job at other shops, but nobody wants to talk to him. He moved to the Charlotte area six years ago to work as a mechanic at Joe Gibb's Racing, which meant he had hit the big time. Before that in New York, he toiled on the dirt track circuit. Quasniac hopes this latest turn means he won't have to leave racing. He loves it and the money, up to $100,000 a year. As more stock car employees find themselves out of work, one found an opportunity to lend a hand.
Mr. DON GEMMELL (Creator, DontCheckUp.com): This pile are the ones that we've already sent out to several people to help us.
MILLER: Don Gemmel sorts through a stack of 300 resumes he's received just in the last month. He created a free Web site, DontCheckUp.com, as a way to get out-of-work racers working again. He and a few others spend hours each week posting the resumes.
Mr. GEMMELL: When there's been a contraction or a team has had to cut back, you know, usually word of mouth was able to get you another position, or you just walked down the street to the next race shop and say, hey, I can do this, this and this. And pretty soon, the guys were back at work. But we aren't in that kind of situation right now.
MILLER: Gemmell says these guys aren't used to writing resumes. The documents require reworking before he can post them. One resume on his desk takes a third of a page to describe a decade in the racing business. Another is four pages long. So far, Gemmell has heard from about a dozen companies interested in the resumes, but only a couple of them are in racing.
Mr. GEMMELL: Some of these people worked for 10 years in order to qualify themselves to come down here and work for the man. And sometimes, you just have to console them now that that's over and say, hey, you got the opportunity to do that.
MILLER: Along with hundreds of others, Dave Quasniac hopes he'll have one more shot at racing. Before the NASCAR season starts next month, teams have another round of hiring. If he doesn't get a job then, Quasniac might return to New York to work as an excavator. He realizes it won't be racing, but it'll be a job. And in a rough economy, he considers himself lucky to have that option. For NPR News, I'm Lisa Miller in Charlotte.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. This was a day of great ceremony here in Washington, D.C., even if it was marred by the strange case of Illinois' Roland Burris. On Capitol Hill, the 111th Congress was sworn in.
(Soundbite of Senate swearing-in ceremony)
Vice President DICK CHENEY (United States): The Senate will come to order.
BLOCK: Dick Cheney is still vice president, so he did the honors in the Senate.
(Soundbite of Senate swearing-in ceremony)
Vice President CHENEY: If the senators to be sworn in will now present themselves to the desk in groups of four as their names are called in alphabetical order, the chair will administer their oaths of office.
BLOCK: The result of the Senate race in Minnesota is being contested, so neither Republican Norm Coleman nor Democrat Al Franken was sworn in.
NORRIS: The senators who were sworn in were escorted by other senators, often a serving or retired colleague from the same state.
(Soundbite of Senate swearing-in ceremony)
Vice President CHENEY: The clerk will read the names of the first group.
Unidentified Woman: Mr. Alexander of Tennessee, Mr. Barrasso of Wyoming, Mr. Baucus of Montana, Mr. Begich of Alaska.
NORRIS: Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy, who had surgery this year to remove a brain tumor, did double duty. He escorted both his fellow Massachusetts senator, John Kerry, and Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. For the time being, Senator Durbin, who is number two in the Senate Democratic leadership, has no junior colleague from Illinois. The seat vacated by President-elect Obama is also the subject of a dispute, and our colleague Robert Siegel has that story.
ROBERT SIEGEL: The absence was noteworthy before the clerk was through the B's.
(Soundbite of Senate swearing-in ceremony)
Unidentified Woman: Mr. Biden of Delaware, Mr. Chambliss of Georgia, Mr. Cochran of Mississippi.
SIEGEL: The slot between Biden and Chambliss would have been for Burris.
Mr. ROLAND BURRIS (Democrat, Illinois Senator-Designate): I'm going to learn how to walk backwards.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: Roland Burris is the Illinois politician appointed by Governor Rod Blagojevich over the protests of all the Senate Democrats, who vowed not to seat him.
Mr. BURRIS: Well, who - it's a red light, you guys.
SIEGEL: This morning, shortly after 10, Mr. Burris set out from a Capitol Hill hotel and walked through a chilly drizzle to the Capitol building. He was surrounded by a troop of journalists, a couple of dozen strong, a mobile scrum that multiplied in size by the time he reached his destination.
Mr. Burris was en route to hear firsthand the news that he learned yesterday. The secretary of the Senate and the parliamentarian had looked at his certificate of appointment and found it lacking. After his trip to the Capitol building in what was now a more considerable rain, Mr. Burris told reporters what had happened inside.
Mr. BURRIS: I presented my credentials to the secretary of the Senate, and advised that my credentials were not in order, and I would not be accepted, and I will not be seated, and I will not be permitted on the floor. And therefore, I am not seeking to have any type of confrontation. I will now consult with my attorneys, and we will determine what our next step will be.
SIEGEL: Senate rules require a signature from both a governor, in this case Rod Blagojevich, and a secretary of state, in this case Illinois' Jesse White, who refused to sign Burris' certificate. Inside the Capitol on the Senate floor, Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada acknowledged that Burris is already challenging that.
Senator HARRY REID (Democrat, Nevada): A court case in Illinois is pending to determine whether Secretary of State Jesse White is obligated to sign the certification. We're awaiting that court decision. Mr. Burris takes possession of valid credentials, the Senate will proceed in a manner that is respectful to Mr. Burris, while ensuring that there is no cloud of doubt over the appointment to fill this seat.
SIEGEL: Ensuring there is no cloud would be up to the Senate Rules Committee, and that could take weeks. Mr. Burris himself is determined to be seated and figures that he has the law on his side. In an interview at his hotel last night, I asked Roland Burris about his scheduled meeting tomorrow with Senator Reid, who has spoken of room for negotiation. What will he tell the majority leader?
Mr. BURRIS: Certainly, I'm going to tell Senator Reid that I'm the duly elected - duly appointed United States senator under our Constitution. And Senator, I should be seated.
SIEGEL: And he is - we think he's going to say, you were appointed by somebody who was already arrested and who had been recorded talking about selling the Senate seat. It's simply unacceptable in the view of the Senate Democrats for somebody to come by a seat in the Senate in that way. It will be something to that effect.
Mr. BURRIS: Would you think that Senator Reid would be accusing me of some kind of way of being a part of that?
SIEGEL: I don't know.
Mr. BURRIS: I am not a part of that.
SIEGEL: He's going to say, we said we wouldn't seat such a person before we knew whom Blagojevich would seat.
Mr. BURRIS: And I think that Senator Reid and my distinguished colleague Dick Durbin made a tremendous error in trying to, you know, make that type of a blanket statement and prejudge, because they didn't know - they hadn't taken away the authority of the governor. So how could they then just blanketly make that charge and indict everyone who the governor may appoint? So that - I hope that they are rethinking their position on that, to say that they would not accept anyone who is legally and constitutionally appointed.
SIEGEL: Is there anything here that is negotiable? I mean, I am trying to see whether you regard something (unintelligible) negotiated.
Mr. BURRIS: No. I negotiate by taking my seat. That's what's negotiable, recognizing that this is a legal appointment. It's legal.
SIEGEL: Today one senator did come forward in support of Roland Burris. Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California, the outgoing chair of the Rules Committee, said the Senate should seat Burris. Blocking him, she said, would have ramifications for other governors' appointments. This is Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
More now on this question of intelligence experience. Tim Wiener is author of the book "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA." I asked him whether most CIA directors have come to the job with backgrounds in intelligence.
Mr. TIM WEINER (Author, "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA"): Most of them have had either military, military intelligence or intelligence experience. It is not a prerequisite, but it certainly helps with the officers of the CIA.
BLOCK: Helps with the officers?
Mr. WEINER: Well, the CIA is an organization with a military ethos, especially the spies who work overseas. They will respond to presidential commands, but they want to have someone that they trust. And experience cements that trust.
BLOCK: Is it at all a predictor of success within the agency?
Mr. WEINER: It doesn't have to be. President Eisenhower famously said that it takes a strange kind of genius to run the CIA. That genius has been hard to find. People who are counted as successes within the intelligence community - for example, Richard Helms, who ran the CIA under Presidents Johnson and Nixon - have not always been successes with the White House. Helms was fired by President Nixon.
What, clearly, Obama is looking for is a break from the past policies of the Bush administration. And he's also clearly going to give some decision- making authority here, probably a lot, to Bob Gates, who is the secretary of defense and a former director of Central Intelligence, and Admiral Blair, who is going to run the superstructure that now runs American intelligence, the Directorate of National Intelligence. The CIA is likely to be, as it has been ever since the end of the Cold War, more and more a second-echelon agency that provides support for military operations.
BLOCK: If the appointment of Leon Panetta does go through, would you see him as a tough agent for change, as a real advocate for reform within the CIA?
Mr. WEINER: He is on record as opposing the past practices of the Bush administration with extraordinary renditions and with harsh interrogations deemed tantamount to torture. That will be a clear break.
BLOCK: You know, another aspect of all of this is that apparently, Barack Obama's original choice was John Brennan, a former CIA official. But because of his ties with controversial interrogation and detention programs, he was scrubbed. And they were looking for somebody basically with clean hands here. In other words, you might not be able to have it both ways.
Mr. WEINER: Clearly not. And the challenge here is going to be, how do you find that clear reporting authority that runs both ways? The agency's rank and file in the clandestine service have been pushed to absolute extremes. You've got a very young workforce compared to the past, relatively inexperienced. President Bush ordered the CIA to increase by 50 percent the ranks of its clandestine service officers and analysts. To get that many people that fast has been a real, real challenge.
BLOCK: You know, you wouldn't have to look too far back to the case of Porter Goss, who was a former CIA officer, also a former congressman with extensive experience in intelligence, and widely seen as having a pretty disastrous, I think, tenure at CIA, no?
Mr. WEINER: He did because he came in with the feeling that the CIA had somehow subverted President Bush in its analysis of and predictors of what was happening in Iraq. And he tried to clean house but in the end, the house cleaned him. He lasted less than two years.
George Bush the elder came in with very little experience in these fields and built morale. But in terms of satisfying presidents, that is the goal here. You have to look at the record and see that experience in intelligence operations - Bob Gates is a prime example, who served under President Bush in 1991 and 1992 - of getting the intelligence harmonized with American military and diplomatic goals is the toughest job. It has taken somebody with experience, generally, to serve those high purposes.
BLOCK: Well, Tim Weiner, thanks so much for talking with us.
Mr. WEINER: Thank you.
BLOCK: Tim Weiner is author of "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The man Burris is hoping to replace, President-elect Barack Obama, spent his second full day in Washington this year once again huddling with his economic advisers. The president-elect is looking for ways to rein in the budget deficit, even as he calls for a massive economic stimulus package. NPR's Scott Horsley has our story.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Barack Obama's choice to head the White House Budget Office warns the federal government is on track to post a trillion dollar budget deficit. No one expects to change that in the short term while the government is frantically trying to stop the downward economic spiral. But eventually, Mr. Obama says, the government must get its own fiscal house in order.
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: We're going to have to bring significant reform, not just to our recovery and reinvestment plan, but to the overall budget process to address both the deficit of dollars and the deficit of trust.
HORSLEY: Mr. Obama says the new government spending in the stimulus package will be carefully monitored and will not include any earmarks. The president-elect was also asked today about his choice of Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency. The nomination has not been formally announced, but some lawmakers are suggesting the former congressman and Clinton White House chief of staff doesn't have the necessary intelligence background for the post. Mr. Obama defended Panetta as a man of extraordinary management skills and integrity. He says he's putting together a topnotch intelligence team that will tell him not just what he wants to hear, but what he needs to know to keep the American people safe.
President-elect OBAMA: I think what you're also going to see is a team that is committed to breaking with some of the past practices and concerns that have, I think, tarnished the image of the agencies - the intelligence agencies as well as U.S. foreign policy.
HORSLEY: Panetta himself has criticized the CIA's use of harsh interrogation tactics. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. I confess, I don't remember much about trying to learn to play the piano. But I do remember, some 40 years later, that the lines on the treble clef staff correspond to the first letters of every good boy does fine. For the bass clef: great big dreams for America. These are mnemonic devices, memory jogs. And Christopher Stevens has compiled a bunch of them in his small book, "Thirty Days Has September." For example, if you're ever called on to name the main royal families who have ruled England over the last millennium, keep this mnemonic in mind.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER STEVENS (Author, "Thirty Days Has September: Cool Ways to Remember Stuff"): No point letting your trousers slip halfway. It's slightly rude, and it's very silly, and it's very simple.
BLOCK: You'd probably remember it.
Mr. STEVENS: (Laughing) It sticks in the mind, doesn't it?
BLOCK: Well, then, though, you have to remember, well, OK, so P...
Mr. STEVENS: And now you have to translate it.
BLOCK: P is Plantagenet. And L is Lancaster.
Mr. STEVENS: Exactly. The key is that it's the first letter of each word. So, no point is N-P. And that reminds you that the first two royal families were Norman and Plantagenet, which is a great English name.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. STEVENS: It's with a P. The next one, letting, for Lancaster, your for York, trousers, T, for Tudor - Henry VIII and his lot - slip, Stuart, and then the Hanovers for halfway. The Hanovers are still here but with a German name. They decided that it was a little bit politically incorrect to have a German name. They changed it to the much more English Windsor.
BLOCK: And that's where you are with the last word, way.
Mr. STEVENS: Yeah. They are Windsors now. So, that's where no point letting your trousers slip halfway - that's where that gets you.
BLOCK: And did you make up that mnemonic, or is this something that school kids around Britain would be taught from the...
Mr. STEVENS: Most of these mnemonics are things that have been handed down for a long time. Some of them are centuries old. I'll tell you the quick one. If you need to know the four heads on Mount Rushmore, think, we just like Rushmore. That's W - Washington, J - Jefferson, L - Lincoln, and a R - Roosevelt.
BLOCK: Where did the idea for this book come from? And what demographic are you aiming this toward?
Mr. STEVENS: It's aimed primarily at children because it's come out of quite an intense educational experience which my family has gone through over the last 10 or 15 years. My older son, James, is sitting with me at the moment, very quietly in the studio.
We haven't brought his younger brother, who is 12 years old, who wouldn't be sitting quietly. He's a very profoundly autistic boy named David. He's a lovely lad, but he can't communicate. He can't understand spoken language or sign language. And learning to educate him has been a very steep curve for us indeed.
What we discovered was that different parts of his brain do work very well. And one of the parts that works well is his musical intelligence. He can recognize thousands of tunes. Despite the fact that he can't understand what the words of the songs might be, he can imitate the sounds of the songs, including the words, by reproducing them with that musical part of his mind.
And the psychologist suggested that we should start applying music to everything in his life. And that began with very, very simple things like when he was to take a bath, he always enjoyed his bath, but it always started with a terrible panic because he didn't know what was coming next.
And the same happens with going out of the house and getting into the car. Stepping outside of the house was like stepping out of the air lock in a rocket ship for him and going into outer space. He had no idea what was coming next. For all he knew, it was the most desperate peril that he was being taken into. What we did was we sang a song which applied only to that situation.
Mr. STEVENS: (Singing) David's riding in the blue car. David's riding in the blue car.
Mr. STEVENS: It was a Woody Guthrie song originally. And for having a bath, it was just as simple as...
Mr. STEVENS: (Singing) Splish, splash, splish splash, splosh, take a bath.
Mr. STEVENS: And we'd sing that as we were going up the stairs. After he'd done that once or twice, he tweaked, he got it completely. And he started doing the same, applying songs to virtually every situation you can imagine. Even though he wasn't communicating with us, we could tell what he was thinking because of what he was singing.
So, there was a song from a favorite puppet show that went...
Mr. STEVENS: (Singing) Windy Miller, Windy Miller.
Mr. STEVENS: And that meant it is 3 o'clock in the morning, and I'm sneaking downstairs to find something to break.
BLOCK: (Laughing) I see.
Mr. STEVENS: So, when you heard Windy Miller, you knew you had to move fast.
BLOCK: That was your mnemonic device.
Mr. STEVENS: That was - exactly. That's a mnemonic device. And through learning to apply these to David, we realized that all children can use the whole of their brains. David, unfortunately, can't use the spoken word, but that doesn't mean that a child who can use spoken word should only use spoken word.
Why not switch on all those other parts of the brain, the bits that are working so well with David, and let an ordinary child access that kind of intelligence. And it's amazing how much easier it is to learn and to remember if you use a wide spectrum of your mind.
BLOCK: You know, one of my favorite - it's not really a mnemonic, but it's a sort of a trick in your book, is for kids who are learning their nine times tables.
Mr. STEVENS: Oh, that's brilliant.
BLOCK: And if I was taught this when I was little, I don't remember it. But it's great.
Mr. STEVENS: Yeah. James taught me this one. My oldest son taught me this one. This is astonishing. Hold out your hands, palms down. Stretch your fingers and thumbs out. Now, if you want to know the answer to any of the nine times table, count your fingers off from left to right.
Curl down your little finger, your pinky finger on your left hand so that you're left with nine fingers up, yeah. So you've got one down and nine up. So one times nine is nine. That's simple. But then, fingers out, stretched out again, and now curl down your ring finger, the second finger. You've got two down and that leaves, to the right of that, that leaves eight up.
BLOCK: Right, so this is nine times two.
Mr. STEVENS: Yeah.
BLOCK: Which will - of course, 18.
Mr. STEVENS: And then the third one down gives you two, seven. Fourth one down gives you three and six, which is 36. Four nines are 36, and so on.
BLOCK: Right, so it's the fingers to the left of the one that's down that make the tens column, the fingers to the right that make the ones column. And you sort of - your fingers get kind of crampy trying to do this, but it works.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: It's a fun way to learn your nine times tables.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: Well, Christopher Stevens, thanks very much for sharing your mnemonics.
Mr. STEVENS: Lovely to talk to you, Melissa.
BLOCK: Christopher Stevens, his book is "Thirty Days Has September: Cool Ways to Remember Stuff."
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. As the Israeli ground attack on Gaza continues, so do concerns about the impact on the people who live in the territory. Israel said it has agreed to set up a humanitarian corridor to deliver vital supplies to Gaza.
BLOCK: More than a week ago, we heard about the situation in Gaza from a news producer who works with NPR and other foreign news organizations. Then, Ahmed Abu Hamda spoke about constant Israeli bombing and fears of a ground attack. Well, we reached him again today after at least 30 people were killed in a United Nations school where they were taking shelter. The U.N. is calling for an investigation. The Israeli military issued a statement saying they were responding to mortar fire from militants hiding in the school. Ahmed Abu Hamda works with reporters. He's also been affected personally by the fighting. He and his family left their home in Gaza, fearing it was not in a safe area. He's now at his uncle's home near the beach refugee camp.
Mr. AHMED ABU HAMDA (Palestinian News Producer): The people now - because now they have been under attack for a long time, they're out of food, out of supplies. Plus, I saw, for the last two, three days - and I am myself one of them - a lot of people evacuating from their houses, going other relative's houses, especially the people who are living on the hot spots or hot lines where there are clashes and so on. So, everyone is really panicking from that and trying to stay in a safe place.
BLOCK: How do you try to figure out what a safe place might be?
Mr. HAMDA: Let me be more honest. There isn't a safe place in Gaza now. But there is what's called less dangerous, less risky place for the people.
BLOCK: The claim from the Israeli military has been that Hamas uses the population within Gaza basically as human shields, that they infiltrate what would be civilian sites. And that's why some of these places have come under attack. What do you think about that?
Mr. HAMDA: I think this is totally wrong. It's a war media. It's an advertising for themselves. Why? Because UNRWA School has been targeted by the Israeli fighters.
BLOCK: This would be the United Nations school that was targeted.
Mr. HAMDA: Exactly, exactly. And innocent people, most of them are wounded and killed. There are no fighters in the UNRWA schools. I challenge them if they have - they say that even they have on tube - that they shoot each rocket and they have it on video, on the YouTube, why they shot that rocket or whom they were targeting. I bet them, if they can't approve that if there was a militant or a rocket launched from that school.
BLOCK: You mentioned earlier that there's no place that is safe right now in Gaza.
Mr. HAMDA: Exactly.
BLOCK: How do you make the calculation, then, of where you can try to go? You went to the hospital yesterday. You got to the refugee camp today.
Mr. HAMDA: I'll tell you something, my dear. Now in my flat, I'm not safe, OK? If I go out, I'm not safe. I will choose the less threat. For example, I had to go to the Shifa Hospital while I knew it might be risky. But why I went there? I am a Palestinian citizen who live in Gaza Strip. In such a crisis, I need money to bring food for my family. I have to risk my life to provide this food for my wife, for my family. This is how we are living here.
BLOCK: When you were at the hospital yesterday, who were the wounded and the killed whom you saw there?
Mr. HAMDA: Honestly, most of what I saw were kids, women, some young guys. But I stayed there for almost like two and a half hours, I didn't see one single militant.
BLOCK: You saw young men. You did not see Hamas militants. How do you know when a young man is or is not a Hamas militant?
Mr. HAMDA: OK, when someone, Hamas militant, is targeted, where do you think he'll be targeted? Now they are on alert, on war alert. Each Hamas member will be wearing his weapons, will be wearing his war uniform. It will be very clear. But what I see, a mother crying next to a young guy, OK? So it's very, very clear, very obvious. You can recognize that. A fighter is a fighter.
BLOCK: Well, Mr. Hamda, thanks very much for talking with us again.
Mr. HAMDA: You're welcome again, my dear. You're welcome. Thank you, bye-bye.
BLOCK: Ahmed Abu Hamda works as a news producer for NPR and other news organizations. He spoke with us from Gaza.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The famous Khyber Pass is a vital supply corridor for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan. It crosses through Pakistan's tribal belt. Over the past week or so, Pakistani forces have been deployed in the area to stop attacks on truck convoys by Taliban militants. As NPR's Philip Reeves reports, trucking in the area has become an increasingly dangerous business.
PHILIP REEVES: Shah Iran Khan(ph) has one of the world's more miserable jobs. He's sitting outside, clutching a Kalashnikov, trying to keep out the cold by swaddling himself in a blanket. Khan is a guard at the entrance to a big, muddy truck depot just outside the Pakistani city of Peshawar. It's for trucks that haul fuel, food, and other supplies through the Khyber Pass just a few miles away to American and NATO forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Yet, if you walk down into the depot, you wonder why Khan's there. There are dozens of wrecked vehicles. Those vehicles were among several hundred destroyed in a recent wave of attacks by the local Taliban. The militants torched dump trucks, Humvees, containers. Khan says they swarmed in, cordoned off the area, and systematically set fire to practically everything. The neighborhood's terrified.
Mr. SHAH IRAN KHAN (Pakistani Guard): (Through Translator) The local people who live around these terminals, they are not happy. They are angry. They want these terminals to be removed because there is always danger that the Taliban could also, you know, when they start our day here, houses would also be damaged.
REEVES: NATO and the U.S. military use two routes through Pakistan to carry supplies to their troops in landlocked Afghanistan. One road's a long way south of Peshawar and runs through the town of Chaman. That presents security problems. It means trucking supplies for long distances through southern Afghanistan, Taliban territory. So, most of the supplies go through the Khyber Pass. Khyber is in Pakistan's tribal belt. Its people have a long record of disrupting foreign forces. Way back in the 19th century, mountain tribesmen wiped out a retreating British Army. They're still causing havoc. Yet defense analyst, Talik Masud(ph) a retired Pakistani general, says there are few land routes available to the U.S. and NATO.
General TALIK MASUD (Retired Pakistani General): This is the most vital route, and there are few substitutes, and they are very expensive, and they may not be politically viable, either. The other routes would be that, you know, the Uzbekistan and the Tajikistan, Central Asia. And that's very expensive and also a very difficult route. And, of course, the Iranian route is not feasible because of the relations between the U.S.
Mr. SHAKIR ULAJAN AFRIDI (President, Khyber Transport Association): (Foreign language spoken)
REEVES: That's Shakir Ulajan Afridi(ph), head of the Khyber Transport Association.
Mr. AFRIDI: (Foreign language spoken)
REEVES: Sixty of our drivers have been killed over the past seven years, he says. He says his organization provides more than half the trucks that have been hauling supplies through the Khyber Pass. Afridi says his association's decided to stop sending trucks to Afghanistan for now. He thinks as long as American drones keep firing missiles at suspected militant targets in Pakistan's tribal areas, the Taliban will keep on attacking the supply line. The U.S. military hopes the problem of recruiting truckers will be resolved once the Pakistani military's got rid of the militants and assorted criminals who've been attacking and looting trucks.
Just before New Year's, the Pakistanis closed the road through the Khyber Pass and sent in tanks and combat helicopters to root out militants. That offensive is now winding down. The road's reopened, though only in daylight. The U.S. and international forces say supplies aren't impacted and that the Pakistani army seems to be making headway. They hope the Khyber Pass will soon become and remain secure, though they are looking at alternatives. Others question whether Pakistan's offensive will make much long-term difference. They include Pakistani security analyst Aisha Sadhika(ph).
Ms. AISHA SADHIKA (Pakistani Security Analyst): We've had a war in the tribal areas so very long. There have been no results. I don't think it's going to bring about any more results than we have seen in the past.
REEVES: Sadhika says when the heat's on, the Taliban can simply melt away and later return. After all, isn't that what they did when American forces arrived in Afghanistan? Philip Reeves, NPR News, Islamabad.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
A well-known name has surfaced to serve as the next surgeon general. You may have seen him on TV.
(Soundbite of CNN broadcast)
Dr. SANJAY GUPTA (Chief Medical Correspondent, CNN): We talk about epidemics, and I'll just put a little bit of perspective for you. You have about 19 states that have about a quarter of their citizens that are now obese. So 25 percent of the citizens in 19 states are obese. In the early '90s, you had no state that had obesity rates that high. So, the numbers are definitely getting worse, Heidi.
BLOCK: That's Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent. President-elect Barack Obama will reportedly nominate him for surgeon general. That word comes from Washingtonpost.com. CNN says that when discussions about the new job began, the network removed Gupta from stories dealing with health-care policy and the administration. NPR's Julie Rovner is here in the studio with us to talk about this apparent pick. And Julie, Sanjay Gupta doesn't just play a doctor on TV. He is a doctor on TV, a neurosurgeon.
JULIE ROVNER: He is indeed. He has accomplished an awful lot in a very short time. He is only 39. If he, in fact, is to become the next surgeon general - I haven't been through all of them going back to 1871 - but I'm fairly confident he would be the youngest surgeon general ever. He's from Michigan. He's a graduate of the University of Michigan, my alma mater. In fact, he wrote editorials about health policy for the Michigan Daily.
And while he was studying to become a neurosurgeon, he actually was a White House policy fellow. So he worked in the Clinton White House for a year, wrote speeches for Hillary Clinton. So he has dabbled in policy along the way while he was becoming a neurosurgeon and before he went into journalism.
BLOCK: And what would qualify him for this job, which is - it's a public health job.
ROVNER: It is a public health job. It's the chief public health spokesman, really, for an administration. Over the years, it's actually had less and less power, but it has had a higher and higher profile. So he, in some ways, would be kind of a natural fit for this job, which really is, you know, having the bully pulpit and going out and really pushing a public health message, whatever public health messages that administration and really, that surgeon general wishes to put.
BLOCK: And some experience on TV certainly wouldn't be a hindrance in that.
ROVNER: No, I certainly think not.
BLOCK: This job of surgeon general has elicited a lot of controversy with surgeons general in the past. Why don't you tick through what some of the problems have been?
ROVNER: Yeah, well, starting, I think the first surgeon general who really made a mark was Luther Terry in 1964, when he came out and said that smoking was bad for you. That was really quite controversial at the time. And in the 1980s, we had C. Everett Koop, a Ronald Reagan surgeon general, who also came out against smoking, but was then brave enough really to the, really, dismay of a lot of conservatives, was very vocal about the AIDS epidemic and how it was spread. Then we had President Clinton's first surgeon general, Joycelyn Elders, who was a little bit too, perhaps, candid about children and masturbation and lost her job over it.
BLOCK: Yes.
ROVNER: Then most recently, we had Richard Carmona, who was President Bush's surgeon general, who said - who was actually fairly quiet. And we found out only after he left that he was quiet because he said he was muzzled by the administration.
BLOCK: If Sanjay Gupta were to become surgeon general, where do you think he would fit in with President-elect Obama's health-care reform plans?
ROVNER: Well, what we're hearing is that in the discussions that he had with incoming HHS secretary Tom Daschle, or now HHS secretary-nominee, is that he's been told that he would play a role in developing policy for, you know, health-care overhaul. Now, there's going to be a lot of people with a lot of sharp elbows who expect to be also playing that role, so we would see if that would come to pass. But certainly, he would, you know, have a high profile as someone who knows what they're doing when it comes to talking to the public about health policy.
BLOCK: And what's the nomination process for the surgeon general?
ROVNER: He would go before the Senate - before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Now, I should say, that has been really a graveyard for a lot of surgeon general nominees in the past. I don't anticipate there would be a problem. But again, this has been a controversial selection in the past, and we would have to see how it would go forward.
BLOCK: OK, NPR's Julie Rovner, thanks so much.
ROVNER: You're welcome.
BLOCK: NPR's Julie Rovner talking about the apparent choice of CNN's Sanjay Gupta to be the next surgeon general of the United States.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
BLOCK: African American Women Write to the New First Lady."
T: Correct reference is University at Buffalo.] And those two women join us now. Welcome to Barbara Seals Nevergold and Peggy Brooks-Bertram. Hello to both of you.
BLOCK: Hi, Michele.
BLOCK: Hello. It's great to be here.
: Now, I understand that you got this idea in part when you saw that New Yorker magazine cover where Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are portrayed as fist-bumping terrorists.
BLOCK: Yes, that's right. You know, I think that that was kind of the spark, perhaps, but I think that the idea was growing, really, throughout the primary as we followed everything that was going on - you know, watching Michelle coming forward and taking on a more active role, and becoming more of a person that we could identify with and that we liked. And so, after the election, one day - and maybe about a week after, I think I said to Peggy, now, Peggy, what if we ask women to write letters to Michelle? Letters of support, letters of love, you know, letters of adulation, if you would, because we think she's going to need that when she gets to the White House.
BLOCK: And I should add that they really turned out to be letters that were really very complex, in addition to those other adjectives.
: You know, when you talk about complex letters, Peggy, I'm thinking about one letter in particular. It's on page - I've got the book right here - it's on page 239. It says, dear Michelle, open the closet door on mental illness. And it's a woman who describes a situation she recalled when she was a child walking home from school with three friends. And she says, as we walked down Stanton Street, we saw this woman walking toward us. She was disheveled, disoriented, limping along. My friend started to laugh and point saying, look at that lady. She looks crazy. I looked at the lady. It was my mother. That's what the writing said.
BLOCK: Yes, and it's the power of letters like this where women are, you know, expressing their deepest feelings about problems that we see in the overall society that - but that we can make them personal. And that's what this letter did for us as well.
: Barbara?
BLOCK: And I think in many ways that women use their own personal experiences to address issues that they would like to see Michelle spend some time on.
: It's one thing to offer advice. I certainly have heard an earful of this almost everywhere I go, from women who wind up talking about Michelle. And people say things like, don't forget where you came from or, you know, watch the kind of colors you wear because the world is watching. But it's another thing to put that on the page and actually put this in a book that I assume you hope that Michelle Obama will read one day. That takes a lot of gumption.
BLOCK: And one of those themes has to do with the issue of the intraracial color line and women who very clearly point out that it was very important for them that Michelle Obama was a recognizably black woman, for example, that she wasn't light-skinned with blue eyes and still classified as black, but rather she was a black woman and that it gave them a whole new feeling about their own lives. I really thought that was very powerful, because that tends to be a subject that we don't go towards so readily because it has such deep pain associated with it.
: Peggy, you know, it seems like many of the women seem to be saying in their letters that the world might see them differently, might see them through a new lens, because of Michelle Obama.
BLOCK: Oh, absolutely. You know, and this is particularly for women who were dark-skinned women who thought, oh, my goodness. Like one woman who said, I now believe I can bring my black babies into this world. That this had enormous meaning, and it really is something that we need to explore even further after this book.
: I'm interested in the letters that stand out to you, the ones that still sort of live with you now that the book has been published, Peggy.
BLOCK: I should tell you the letter that continues to cause me to weep, which is our front bookend, is an absolutely striking poem written, called "In Anticipation of You." And she opens her poem saying that: We vomited, swallowed, and engorged oceanic passages, sardined inside the darkness of carriers that moved culture, kindred and home from tribal remembrance to insulated reality. We unlocked New World words and hid learning, seldom to be uttered aloud or mistaken as schooled vessels, bright, deep, and full of knowing.
BLOCK: And all we carried, dreamed, hoped, dared and desired would at last be lifted and delivered from the shoulders of Sojourner Truth, the soapbox of Maria Stuart, the feat of Harriet Tubman, the words of Phillis Wheatley, the song of Marian Anderson, the church women's education of Nannie Helen Burroughs, the court and newsrooms of Mary Anne J. Carrie(ph), the sacrifice and service of Anna Murray Douglass, the spiritual awakening of Jarena Lee, Amanda Berry Smith and Julia Foote - all armed, armored and amazing foremother ancestors, all in anticipation of you.
: And we should give credit to the woman who actually wrote that beginning letter. Her name is Arlette Miller Smith(ph).
BLOCK: Yes.
: And she's an associate professor in the department of English, and she's co-director of the African-American studies department at John Fisher College in Rochester, New York.
BLOCK: Right. And the one that ended it was written by Janine Wilkins(ph). And it is called, "We Are Going With You." And that just stands out for me because it is so, again, inclusive and meaningful in that women are saying to Michelle, you may be going on this journey, but you're not going alone. We are going with you. We'll be there with you, beside you, behind you. Perhaps sometimes, even in front of you. But we want you to know that we are standing here with you. And we're, you know, going to accompany you on this journey. So that letter has stood with, you know, has resonated with me and has stayed with me as being very powerful.
BLOCK: It was - that was the closing. And in between all of that, all these letters saying some other things about this historical journey that some of these women took us on. And the final one concluding that we are all with you. We're all going with you. And that was stunning for me.
: Peggy Brooks-Bertram, Barbara Seals Nevergold, thanks so much for spending time with us.
BLOCK: Well, thank you, Michele.
BLOCK: Thank you.
: Barbara Seals Nevergold and Peggy Brooks-Bertram are co-founders of the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women at the University of Buffalo. They're also editors of a new book called "Go, Tell Michelle: African-American Women Write to the New First Lady."
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. With President Bush on the verge of becoming former President Bush, there's a lot of focus on what his legacy will be. The president and his advisers suggest history will judge him better than the current analysis, given the economy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To consider the Bush years, I'm joined by NPR White House correspondent Don Gonyea. Don has covered Mr. Bush since he was Governor Bush. Good to talk to you, Don.
DON GONYEA: Glad to be here.
NORRIS: Now, when you consider the Bush legacy - boy, there's a lot to get your arms around.
GONYEA: (Soundbite of George W. Bush's inauguration ceremony, 2001)
P: I, George Walker Bush, do solemnly swear...
BLOCK: That I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.
P: That I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States.
GONYEA: That was January 20, 2001. On the surface that day, it was all ritual and routine, the peaceful transfer of power masking the rancor over the 2000 Florida recount and the intervention of the Supreme Court in Mr. Bush's favor. Once in office, he proceeded as though he'd won a mandate. With narrow Republican majorities in Congress, he immediately won approval for education reforms known as No Child Left Behind, and for a series of huge tax cuts.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH, 2001)
P: We recognize loud and clear the surplus is not the government's money. The surplus is the people's money, and we ought to trust them with their own money.
GONYEA: Still, by that first summer, there was a growing sense of public indifference toward Mr. Bush. A Republican senator defected, costing his party control of that chamber. The president's job-approval ratings began to slip. Then came September the 11th.
(SOUNDBITE OF 9/11 ADDRESS TO THE NATION, 2001)
P: These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat. But they have failed. Our country is strong.
GONYEA: Three days later, the president stood with rescue workers amid the rubble of ground zero.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH AT GROUND ZERO, 2001)
P: I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE CHEERING)
P: And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
GONYEA: And a week later came a speech to a joint session of Congress, where he brandished an aggressive foreign policy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ADDRESS TO CONGRESS, 2001)
P: Every nation in every region now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
GONYEA: The president's approval ratings soared, exceeding 90 percent. American forces went to war in Afghanistan and toppled the Taliban government. Then, Mr. Bush turned his attention to Iraq. There was no evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and the September 11th attacks, but the administration repeatedly made the link. The president warned of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, though none would ever be found. Mr. Bush even included this line, known to be false at the time by the CIA, in his 2003 State of the Union address.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS, 2003)
P: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
GONYEA: Six weeks later, the war in Iraq began. Baghdad fell. In May, President Bush landed in a fighter jet on the USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast of California. A giant banner proclaimed, "Mission Accomplished."
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH ABOARD THE USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, MAY 2003)
P: My fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD OVATION)
GONYEA: Still, Osama bin Laden eluded capture, and it became clear that the mission in Iraq was far from over. The insurgency grew, violence and chaos ensued. In July of '03, the president was undeterred.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH, JULY 2003)
P: There are some who feel like that, you know, the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation.
GONYEA: In 2004, the president campaigned for re-election on the need to fight terrorists to prevent another 9/11. He barely eked out a victory, despite a weakening economy and growing discontent over Iraq. Once again, he claimed a mandate.
(SOUNDBITE OF ELECTION DAY SPEECH, 2004)
P: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style.
GONYEA: And he used that capital to push for something big: an overhaul of the Social Security system, promoting changes allowing younger workers to divert some of their Social Security taxes into the stock market. For months, the president pushed the idea, which got no traction in Congress or in the nation at large. But in the summer of '05, Mr. Bush also got his first chance to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. He nominated a highly regarded conservative, John Roberts.
(SOUNDBITE OF ANNOUNCEMENT OF JOHN ROBERTS AS SUPREME COURT NOMINEE, 2005)
P: He has profound respect for the rule of law and for the liberties guaranteed to every citizen. He will strictly apply the Constitution in laws, not legislate from the bench.
GONYEA: Roberts, 50 at the time, would become chief justice and soon be joined by another conservative appointee, Justice Samuel Alito - lifetime appointments whose impact will long outlive the president's term. But at around that same time came one of the low points of the entire Bush presidency.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVE NEWS REPORT, 2005)
U: Hurricane Katrina is battering the Gulf Coast and is now swamping New Orleans. The huge...
GONYEA: New Orleans was devastated. The administration seemed completely unprepared. And one moment seemed to sum it all up: when the president lavished praise on Michael Brown, the embattled head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH, 2005)
P: Again, I want to thank you all for - and Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA director is working 24...
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
P: They're working 24 hours a day.
GONYEA: Through it all, Iraq continued to get worse. There was pressure on the president to fire one of the leading figures in his administration, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. This was in April of '06.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH, APRIL 2006)
P: I hear the voices, and I read the front page, and I know the speculation. But I'm the decider, and I decide what is best. And what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.
GONYEA: Later that year came the midterm elections, when Democrats captured both the House and Senate for the first time in a dozen years. Mr. Bush reacted.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH, NOV 8, 2006)
P: If you look at race by race, it was close. The cumulative effect, however, was not too close. It was a thumping.
GONYEA: Then this fall, another blow - an economic crisis more severe than any since the 1930s. The president stayed mostly in the background as appointees struggled to deal with the financial meltdown. At year's end, President Bush made his final visit to Baghdad as commander in chief, where an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the president as a gesture of defiance and protest. Mr. Bush managed to duck, then joked that it was a size 10.
(SOUNDBITE OF INTERVIEW, 2008)
P: I didn't feel the least bit threatened by it. These journalists here were very apologetic. They were - you know, they were - said this doesn't represent the Iraqi people. But that's what happens in free societies, where people try to draw attention to themselves.
GONYEA: A final indignity and a metaphor for the reversals the president has seen in his second term.
NORRIS: Don, all this leads to this overall question of the Bush legacy. The early reviews have not been very kind. Could that verdict change, as the presidents' allies suggest? Has it happened for other presidents?
GONYEA: Well, it has happened for other presidents. Harry Truman is the one that the Bush White House likes to point to most often. Left office not popular - now revered. Woodrow Wilson - there are others, you know. But there are also some who left office very unpopular and remained so. I can say Nixon. I can say Hoover. So...
NORRIS: And there are some that just sort of fade into history.
GONYEA: And there are some that, literally, just kind of disappear. And, you know, generations later, you talk to young people, they barely even know who it was. There is a massive reconstruction that has to happen given that this president leaves office with two wars going, messy wars, and obviously the mess that the economy is today.
NORRIS: Now that President Bush is passing the baton to President-elect Obama, could the new president help burnish his image?
GONYEA: Well, here's the interesting irony. Iraq will be one of those things this president is judged on. If President Obama manages to navigate some kind of a soft landing and things turn out not so awful there, that will reflect positively on President Bush. Of course, if things continue to go bad, then it's bad for President Bush, and possibly bad for President Obama as well.
NORRIS: Same might be said of the economy.
GONYEA: Indeed.
NORRIS: Thank you, Don.
GONYEA: Thank you.
NORRIS: And NPR's Don Gonyea will continue to cover the White House in the new administration.
BLOCK: You can find an interactive timeline of the Bush years at npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Now to the hottest ticket in Washington, D.C. There are huge wait lists for the presidential inauguration and even a last-minute contest for tickets. It's as if Willy Wonka were coming to town.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY")
U: And now details on the sudden announcement that has captured the attention of the entire world. Hidden among the countless billions of Wonka bars are five gold tickets. And to the five people who find them will come the most fabulous prize one could wish for.
BLOCK: If only inauguration tickets came in chocolate bars. Tamara Keith reports on the frenzy for tickets.
TAMARA KEITH: Ken Oplinger is president and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce in Bellingham, Washington. He's the kind of guy who can call his congressman and actually get him on the phone.
BLOCK: So, I called Congressmen Rick Larsen from the 2nd District in Washington, where we live.
KEITH: And Oplinger was told when it comes to inaugural tickets, there would be no special treatment. Congressman Larsen was having a drawing. And everyone who put their name in would have an equal chance. So Oplinger says it was a pleasant surprise when he got a call in mid-December from the congressman's chief of staff.
BLOCK: I was very excited when she told me. And of course, the first thing I did was to call my wife and tell her, but I think the second thing was to jump on Facebook and change my status so everyone knew I was going.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
KEITH: San Francisco-based writer Chris Colin says that as soon as Barack Obama won the election, he started researching tickets to the inaugural and put in a call to his congresswoman, who happens to be the speaker of the House.
BLOCK: We called Pelosi's office, and that's when they told us that there would be like a million people on the list, but we put our name on the list anyway.
KEITH: Colin says he plays the lottery, and the odds aren't great with that, either. So when he got an email from Congresswoman Pelosi's office telling him where to pick up the tickets, Colin says he felt like he had won big, even if the prize is just a chance to stand outside in the middle of winter in Washington, D.C.
BLOCK: We've heard there's going to be like a gazillion people, and it's going to be one degree out, and we're going to have to walk seven miles to get there. But that's OK. We're very excited.
KEITH: And he should be excited. One Maryland congressman got more than 4,000 requests for tickets, and he only had 198 to distribute. Oh, and his own ticket was included in the 198. Now, the Presidential Inaugural Committee has announced a last-chance opportunity for folks who haven't been able to score tickets. It's an essay contest called "Your Ticket to History." Chief spokesperson Linda Douglass says 10 lucky winners will be chosen, and they'll each be able to bring a guest.
BLOCK: We'll pay for their transportation here. We'll put them up. They'll be able to go to the swearing-in, the parade, and an inaugural ball.
KEITH: Cue the music.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "I'VE GOT A GOLDEN TICKET")
BLOCK: (As Grandpa Joe) (Singing) 'Cause I've got a golden ticket...
KEITH: It isn't a lifetime of free chocolate. But Douglass says for many, getting a chance to attend the inaugural is golden.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "I'VE GOT A GOLDEN TICKET")
BLOCK: (As Grandpa Joe and Charlie Bucket) (Singing) And with a golden ticket, it's a golden day.
BLOCK: People are actually describing them as golden tickets. There is such a great sense of excitement about this. And it is optimistic. It is hopeful. It is exciting. And that's why people want to be here.
KEITH: Douglass says the essays have been pouring in, like this one from a teacher.
BLOCK: (Reading) The election of Barack Obama has reaffirmed my faith in this country. This inauguration, more than any other in history, is history, and it's something I want to bring my students.
KEITH: Douglass promises the winners will be chosen based on the strength of their essays alone, and not the optional donation that can be made at the same time the essay is submitted. The deadline is Thursday at midnight. The committee has already announced one winner, and the rest will be announced January 16th. And for all those who don't get their hands on a golden ticket, there's always the National Mall. It will be free and open on Inauguration Day, and the swearing-in will be broadcast on JumboTrons. For NPR News, I'm Tamara Keith.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "GOLDEN TICKET/I WANT IT NOW")
BLOCK: (Singing) For me. 'Cause I've got a golden ticket, I've got a golden twinkle in my eye, Now, I never had a chance to shine, Never a happy song to sing, But suddenly half the world is mine, What an amazing thing.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
There were three blue ties and two red ones.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Plenty of smiles.
BLOCK: And these remarks from President-elect Barack Obama shortly after he arrived at the White House for lunch with President Bush and every living former president: Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
P, Host:
I just want to thank the president for hosting us. This is an extraordinary gathering. All the gentlemen here understand both the pressures and possibilities of this office. And for me to have the opportunity to get advice, good counsel and fellowship with these individuals is extraordinary. And I'm very grateful to all of them. But again, thank you, Mr. President, for hosting us.
NORRIS: President Bush has just two weeks left in the Oval Office, and he offered these thoughts to the next commander in chief.
P: One message that I have, and I think we all share, is that we want you to succeed. Whether we're Democrat or Republican, we care deeply about this country. And to the extent we can, we look forward to sharing our experiences with you. All of us who have served in this office understand that the office itself transcends the individual. And we wish you all the very best, and so does the country.
P: Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. President.
P: Thank you all.
BLOCK: The meeting was the first gathering of U.S. presidents at the White House since 1981. Then-President Ronald Reagan was joined by former Presidents Nixon, Ford and Carter. The four came together after the murder of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.
NORRIS: As for what was discussed at today's meeting, a spokesman for Mr. Obama reports that the conversation was constructive, and that President Bush and the former presidents offered, quote, advice on managing the office as well as thoughts on critical issues facing the country.
BLOCK: There were no surprises with four men in one Oval Office that they've all called their own, and one man about to move in. However, before leaving the photo op, Bill Clinton did pay this compliment.
F: I love this rug.
NORRIS: I love this rug, he said. That's the presidential rug. One of the perks of being president is getting to choose the carpet in the Oval Office. Laura Bush picked the one that's there now.
BLOCK: Reporters who've gotten Oval Office tours from President Bush say he always points out the rug and its yellow, sunbeam design. He told ABC's Elizabeth Vargas he wanted the rug's design to symbolize an optimistic person.
NORRIS: He also said when his term is up, the rug will head not to his new house but to a warehouse, since it is government property.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Those phone exchanges were intercepted and recorded by Indian authorities. Siddharth Varadarajan of the newspaper the Hindu has read the full dossier of evidence. He joins us from New Delhi. And explain for us, please, how India was able to intercept and then trace these calls.
BLOCK: I suspect that they probably had the assistance of the United States, perhaps the National Security Agency, because the kind of capabilities involved in monitoring calls of such a huge scale would require enormous amount of computing power, which perhaps the Indian side would not have had by itself.
BLOCK: And they were recording these calls, obviously, too.
BLOCK: Absolutely, the calls were being recorded. And I think once they were able to latch onto numbers, they were, I think, actively listening to some of these calls even as they were being placed.
BLOCK: What's the evidence that the handlers on the other end of these phone calls were actually in Pakistan?
BLOCK: So that's one element of why the government is saying that the handlers were in Pakistan. And in addition, I think, they have evidence - there was a satellite phone recovered from the trawler that these guys used to get to Bombay, which had numbers that more directly were traced to Pakistan.
BLOCK: There is a telling moment in these transcripts where one of the attackers admits on the phone to his handler, we made a big mistake. What was that mistake?
BLOCK: So they seem to have left the trawler in a great hurry, and they didn't open the lock. I don't know what exactly that means, I presume some way to sink the boat. And they told the handlers that this was a big mistake they did. We forgot the satellite phone of one Ishmael(ph) on the boat, and that seems to have been quite a big blunder for them.
BLOCK: Now that this dossier of evidence has been given to Pakistan, what do you expect to happen now?
BLOCK: You know, the signals are a bit confused. I think, you know, we've had a rather unfortunate exchange of angry statements by the foreign ministries on both sides. So I don't know what's going to happen. I mean, it's possible that the Pakistani authorities might begin to investigate some of the leads that the Indian side has come up with, but I think a lot will depend on the kind of international pressure that the United States and other, you know, friends of Pakistan are able to bring to bear on Islamabad.
BLOCK: Mr. Varadarajan, thanks very much for talking with us.
BLOCK: Thank you.
BLOCK: That's Siddharth Varadarajan with the Indian newspaper the Hindu, speaking with us from New Delhi.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. Each year, the federal government gives hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of contracts to companies owned by native Alaskans. These Alaskan-native corporations receive special preferences when they bid on those contracts. And that's thanks primarily to Alaska's Ted Stevens, the former senator. After more than 40 years in the Senate, Stevens lost his race last year. Now, there is talk on Capitol Hill of reconsidering some of those programs. As NPR's Jeff Brady reports, the companies could lose income that many native Alaskans have come to depend on.
JEFF BRADY: Based in Kodiak, Alaska, Afognak Native Corporation runs contracts for the federal government around the world. In 2004, it finished a $54 million renovation of a U.S. consulate in Brazil. It provides law enforcement to the army in the Marshall Islands, and it helps young people find work for the Job Corps program. These are just some of the government contracts that bring in over a half-billion dollars a year in revenue. Afognak owes much of its success to a contracting set-aside program for small, disadvantaged businesses, called the 8(a) Program.
BLOCK: I am a perfect example of the success of the 8(a) program and what it means for native communities and native people.
BRADY: Sarah Lukin is Afognak's vice president of external relations. Her company is one of over 200 Alaskan-native corporations created by Congress in 1971 to settle land and financial claims.
BLOCK: I grew up very poor, and it was through scholarships from my native corporation that I was able to go to college. And I was - my sisters and I were the first in our family to ever earn college degrees.
BRADY: The corporations distribute money and services to shareholders, all descendants of native Alaskans. Over the years, former Senator Ted Stevens successfully pushed through Congress a series of bills that helped ensure the ANCs were successful. Today, they are allowed to bid on all kinds of contracts and in some cases, they don't have to compete with anyone else. That bothers some other small-business owners.
BLOCK: There has got to be a time period when the subsidy ends.
BRADY: Barbara Hennessy is president of a company called Command Decisions Systems and Solutions. She works primarily with the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Education. She says 8(a) contractors like her have difficulty competing with Alaskan-native corporations. In some cases, especially early on, Hennessy says it appears the ANCs didn't even perform most of the work but were just fronts for larger companies. Her biggest complaint is the sole-source contracting benefit. That means a federal agency can go directly to an ANC without the hassle of a competitive-bidding process.
BLOCK: Instead of dealing with 65 bidders, they're dealing with one sole source, and they come to the table, and let's craft a contract. That's a very hard thing to compete with.
BRADY: And, Hennessy says, that costs taxpayers more. A 2006 Government Accountability Office report concluded that an Army contract for security guards awarded to an ANC cost the government 25 percent more than if the contract had gone through the competitive process. But this isn't just about saving money, according to Karen Atkinson. She heads the Native American Contractors Association and says the federal government has a duty to help natives who gave up their rights to millions of acres of land.
BLOCK: Part of that includes, you know, self-determination and economic self-sufficiency. And so, the federal government does have an obligation to support policies that will promote both of those values and those principles.
BRADY: Most critics won't argue that the federal government owes something to Native Americans. They just don't think preferences in federal contracting is the way to pay that debt. Steven Schooner is co-director of the Government Procurement Law Program at George Washington University.
P: If the government believes it has a duty to native Alaskans, then Congress should appropriate whatever amount of money to the individual Alaskans they believe the duty entails.
BRADY: Schooner says mixing up social policy with the federal procurement system is inefficient, but he understands why lawmakers do it.
P: The true cost of the programs are invisible. Nobody has to budget the subsidy to the Alaskan population that's basically skimmed off the top of the procurement process.
BRADY: Congress may take up this issue relatively soon, and that clearly has the ANCs worried. They've recently launched a letter-writing campaign to win new allies on Capitol Hill, and show lawmakers how individual native Alaskans have benefited. Jeff Brady, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And Mike Shuster is just one of many reporters who cannot get access to Gaza. That's because Israeli authorities won't let them in, as NPR's David Folkenflik reports.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK: This is a real-world test about how to do journalism in real time. Israeli missiles struck schools in Gaza over the past few days, reportedly killing scores of refuges seeking shelter. The video is compelling, as in this from the BBC.
(SOUNDBITE OF MEN SHOUTING AND SIRENS)
FOLKENFLIK: But how do you know what really happened?
(SOUNDBITE OF SIRENS)
FOLKENFLIK: Morbid as it sounds, you test the allegations by sending reporters to morgues to view the bodies, and to hospitals to interview survivors. But that's a lot harder to do when your reporters aren't allowed on the scene. Roy Gutman is the foreign editor for the McClatchy newspaper chain.
BLOCK: It's very difficult to be able to do more than pretend that we're telling the real story of the events there.
FOLKENFLIK: There was steady rocket and mortar fire from Gaza aimed at Israel civilian targets at and near the border. As Roy Gutman says, some of those attacks may well have been launched from sites near schools or hospitals as a way of drawing Israeli bombs.
BLOCK: I think we're missing a lot of not just the human story, but the real story of what is going on in Gaza.
FOLKENFLIK: The Foreign Press Association sued the Israeli military. Last week, it won a limited ruling from the country's Supreme Court requiring that a small pool of international reporters be allowed into Gaza. NPR News is part of the press association and it, too, has protested the restrictions. But despite the legal win, groups of journalists have been turned away every day. Jonathan Peled is the chief press aide at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, and he says the invasion over the weekend undermined the Supreme Court ruling.
BLOCK: That was before the ground operation began. And obviously, the situation at the moment is such that the passages are in harm's way. And therefore, as I said, nobody is entering Gaza, including journalists.
FOLKENFLIK: Peled notes that Egypt is not allowing journalists to enter Gaza from the territory's southern border, either.
BLOCK: So it is very clear at the moment that this is a very precarious situation, and the minute the conditions in the passages are such that people can enter and exit, journalists obviously will be the first to enjoy that safety.
FOLKENFLIK: But that doesn't quite seem to be the case. Israel has, in fact, allowed humanitarian aid and United Nations officials into Gaza as recently as during a several hours cease-fire earlier today, but again, no journalists. Among those kept out are reporters who work for Joe Floto, the deputy editor for the BBC's Middle East bureaus.
BLOCK: In my experience of covering conflict and violence in Gaza, which I've done since 2001, there has never been a period like this in which international journalists were prevented from entering and from covering events inside Gaza, even during major military operations by the Israeli military.
FOLKENFLIK: Israeli officials have long complained that Palestinian activists and terrorist groups manipulate foreign journalists by claiming Israeli atrocities. But journalists, such as the BBC's Floto, argue they can only piece together the truth by reporting it for themselves.
BLOCK: It's the nature of broadcast news that we want our correspondents to report what they see. That is the essence of broadcast journalism, and we're incapable of doing that.
FOLKENFLIK: Floto, Gutman and other news editors acknowledged the very real danger of reporting from Gaza, both from the military crossfire and the threat of kidnapping there. But journalists say they should have the right to assess that danger, and everything else in Gaza, for themselves and for the public. David Folkenflik, 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. Roland Burris had a better day today than yesterday. On Tuesday, he arrived at the Senate in hopes of being sworn in as the new junior senator from Illinois, but the Senate rejected his credentials. Today, Burris sat down at the Capitol with the Senate's top two Democrats. As NPR's David Welna reports, their earlier stance against seating Burris appears to have softened.
DAVID WELNA: Yesterday, Roland Burris only got as far as the secretary of the Senate's office before being shown out of the Capitol by the sergeant at arms. Today, he made it all the way to Majority Leader Harry Reid's office. At a photo op there, Burris sat smiling between the senior senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, and Reid, who had this to say.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
BLOCK: I'm happy to have the opportunity to meet him. We're going to have a productive discussion, and we'll talk to you guys later.
WELNA: A half hour later, Reid and Durbin emerged from the closed-door meeting. Reid spoke of the encounter with Burris almost as if it had been a job interview.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
BLOCK: He obviously is a very engaging, extremely nice man. He presents himself very well.
WELNA: And to counter critics who say this Illinois politician has had his Senate appointment held up because he's African-American, Durbin cited what he said were Burris' own words.
BLOCK: And at the outset, he said I want to make it clear that this - I understand this controversy has nothing to do with my race. And I understand that both of you have excellent records when it comes to racial relations.
WELNA: Durbin and Reid said two matters must be cleared up for Burris to be seated. First, he needs the signature of Illinois' secretary of state on his certificate of appointment, a matter being considered by Illinois' Supreme Court. Second, it has to be clear that his appointment was not part of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's alleged efforts to sell the Senate seat. Once those matters have been cleared up, Reid said the Senate could take up Burris' appointment.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
BLOCK: The Senate's going to have to make a decision on this, the entire Senate. Mr. Burris understands that, and we're going to do the best we can to make sure that the state of Illinois has two senators, not one senator.
WELNA: At a separate news conference two hours later at a Washington hotel, Burris seemed confident of his prospects for being seated.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
BLOCK: I'm happy. My whole interest in this experience has been to be prepared, Roland, to represent my great state. And that is my love. That is my desire. And very shortly, I will have the opportunity to do that as a junior senator from the fifth largest state in this great country of ours. Isn't it great?
WELNA: Tomorrow, Burris is to testify before an Illinois legislative committee weighing Blagojevich's impeachment. Chicago Democratic Congressman Danny Davis, who himself turned down Blagojevich's offer of the Senate seat, says it's a chance for Burris to clear the air.
NORRIS: His willingness to do that is an indication that he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to fear, he has nothing but the highest level of integrity. And I think the people of the state of Illinois know that about Roland Burris and respect him for it.
WELNA: A growing number of Democratic senators are now calling for Burris to be seated, both to end what's been a major distraction for the Senate and to have one more vote in their caucus. Asked what she thought will happen, California's Dianne Feinstein was succinct.
BLOCK: I think it's going to work out.
WELNA: David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
The flow has stopped at Husker Ag, an ethanol plant in Plainview, Nebraska. The company has stopped taking deliveries of corn while it tries to renegotiate the price it's paying. It's a symptom of the big problems for the ethanol industry lately. Start-up projects are on hold. Some plants are in bankruptcy. Husker isn't one of them, but its troubles come from the same volatile market conditions. And Chris Hurt joins us to talk about that. He's professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University. Professor Hurt, welcome back to the program.
D: Always great to be with you.
BLOCK: If you had to give the ethanol industry a health assessment at the start of this year, what would it be? What kind of shape is ethanol in?
D: Well, the ethanol industry is in a period of excess capacity, a situation where there was, perhaps, over-optimism for biofuels, perhaps over-optimism that the gold rush days of 2006 would continue for a long time. And it's really a symptom of too much production capacity when we have crude oil, gasoline, diesel fuel prices much lower, and it makes it very difficult for some of these biofuels to compete with cheap gasoline.
BLOCK: Well, let's break this down just a little bit. And let's start by talking about corn prices. What's happened to that over the last year?
D: We've seen a Jekyll and Hyde kind of a year in 2008. The first half, absolute boom period for prices. Second half of the year, just an absolute bust. We saw futures prices drop from $8 a bushel at their very highs in the June time period all the way down to about $3 a bushel. So, massive, massive declines putting producers into loss situation. And those lows came about early December. So in the last month, we've actually seen some recovery in prices, but ethanol margins still remain negative.
BLOCK: But if I'm an ethanol producer and corn is cheaper than it was, that seems to me would be a good thing. I can get a lot more corn.
D: Well, they also are energy producers selling ethanol as a substitute for gasoline. And all of us know how dramatically gasoline prices fell. So, what they're facing is much lower revenues from the ethanol that they produce. And still, while corn is much cheaper, it hasn't been low enough for them to have a profitable margin.
BLOCK: So in other words, the ethanol producers are selling their ethanol - the price of the ethanol they're selling has gone down as well.
D: And unfortunately, right now it looks like the demand for ethanol will be about 10 and a half billion gallons. So this is potentially an excess capacity. That is, more production capacity than there is demand. It generally means there's going to be a lot of battling for those existing producers to try to maintain their production and probably have low margins, and you have to discourage out that 15 to 25 percent that the industry thought would be needed in '09. It's just not going to be needed.
BLOCK: Why were those projections out of whack? Why is demand lower than they thought?
D: With much lower gasoline prices, ethanol is priced high relative to gasoline. In other words, we would pay more per mile that we drive for that E85. So what we're going to see in '09 is, yes, the mandatory 10.5 billion gallons of demand will be there, but what we're not going to have, as long as energy stays relatively low-priced, as we see now, is - the demand for these higher blends, like E85, are going to be very, very small in 2009.
BLOCK: Well, Professor Hurt, thanks so much for talking with us.
D: It's been my pleasure.
BLOCK: Chris Hurt is professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. In Gaza today, the guns fell silent for about three hours. Both the Israeli army and Hamas briefly paused their fighting to allow humanitarian aid into the territory. And late today, it appeared some progress has been made in persuading Israel and Hamas to sign on to a cease-fire agreement, an agreement pushed by Egypt and France. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today the U.S. supports that proposal.
NORRIS: For more, NPR's Mike Shuster joins us now on the line from Jerusalem. Mike, first tell us more about that three-hour lull.
MIKE SHUSTER: So for the following three hours, about 80 trucks crossed the border from Israel into Gaza, bringing food, fuel and medical supplies. And I think just as important, it gave an opportunity to Palestinians to get out of their houses and try to buy what they need. There were long lines at grocery stores. Merchants were selling staples from the back of their trucks. This certainly wasn't enough time for the entire population to get what it needed, so there is going to be a repetition of this. At first, the word was that there would be a lull at the same time every day, from now on. But now, some Israeli officials are saying it will be every other day, so this part isn't clear.
NORRIS: Now, three hours is not a lot of time. What happened once that pause in the war ended?
SHUSTER: Well, pretty soon after 4 o'clock, the war started again. There are reports now of significant bombardments in south Gaza. Tonight, Israel has been dropping leaflets in Rafah at the border with Egypt, telling residents to leave their homes by 8 o'clock in the morning tomorrow. And apparently, hundreds of families have left their homes already. It's an indication that Israel is going to target those areas pretty heavily tomorrow morning. And of course, there have been more Hamas rockets into Israel.
NORRIS: So Israel's possibly preparing to target these areas, but what about this French-Egyptian cease-fire initiative? It sounds like Israel has at least agreed to the principles.
SHUSTER: Israel, it seems, doesn't want to commit to any deal that would leave Hamas in the position to re-arm and begin the rocketing of Israel again. So the Egyptian-French proposal is trying to address how to prevent the smuggling of additional arms into Gaza through those tunnels at the border with Egypt. Part of the solution, according to this plan, would be the stationing of a small international force along the Egyptian-Gaza border. I have to say Hamas hasn't signed on to this, not by any means so far, so it's definitely not a done deal yet.
NORRIS: What would it take to get Hamas to sign on?
SHUSTER: It's not clear. Hamas officials are speaking mainly from Beirut, and they say different things at different times. And it is not at all clear what they like about this proposal and what more they demand.
NORRIS: We hear there was a very long meeting of the Israeli government security cabinet. What came out of that?
SHUSTER: There were a lot of indications that the security cabinet of the Israeli government was going to authorize Phase 3. That they haven't may mean that they are wanting to see what happens on the diplomatic side.
NORRIS: Thank you, Mike.
SHUSTER: You're welcome.
NORRIS: That was NPR's Mike Shuster speaking to us from Jerusalem.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. We begin this hour with presidents plural. In a moment, we'll hear about the lunch meeting of all four living presidents and the president-elect. First, Mr. Obama announced another member of his administration today. It wasn't one of the highly anticipated announcements of CIA director or surgeon general. It was a new post - chief performance officer - to keep a close eye on spending. As NPR's Scott Horsley reports, that appointment came on the same day that the Congressional Budget Office predicted the deficit this year will balloon to nearly $1.2 trillion.
SCOTT HORSLEY: The gap between what the federal government spends and what it takes in is not so much a gap anymore, but a yawning chasm. The deficit, as a share of the overall economy, is forecast to be the biggest it's been since World War II. President-elect Obama today tried to underscore the seriousness of that budget shortfall, while at the same time taking pains to say it didn't happen on his watch.
P: We're going to be inheriting a trillion-plus-dollar deficit. And if we do nothing, then we will continue to see red ink as far as the eye can see.
HORSLEY: Mr. Obama warned that the deficit is likely to get even bigger in the short run as the government pours money into new roads and bridges and tax cuts in an effort to jump-start the economy. He said in these tough economic times, it's especially important that government dollars are spent wisely.
P: Our problem is not just a deficit of dollars. It's a deficit of accountability and a deficit of trust. So change and reform can't just be election-year slogans. They must become fundamental principles of government.
HORSLEY: As part of that effort, the president-elect named Nancy Killefer to be the federal government's first chief performance officer. Killefer has been a senior director at McKinsey Company, a big management-consulting firm. She also held a management role at the Treasury Department during the Clinton administration.
BLOCK: I know from my experience bringing about change in the private and public sectors that government has the capacity to deliver services more efficiently and effectively. I have seen it done.
HORSLEY: Mr. Obama says he'll be counting on Killefer and the rest of his budget team to identify cost savings to help offset some of the hundreds of billions of dollars he plans to invest in the economic-stimulus package. The president-elect has yet to specify a price tag for that package. But he said today he expects it to be at the high end of the range his advisers have cited - that is, about three-quarters of a trillion dollars. That would still fall short of what some economists have recommended. Mr. Obama says he's also looking for stimulus projects that will provide an immediate boost for the economy but won't create long-running obligations for the government.
P: Part of our stimulus package is going to involve revamping all federal buildings so that they're energy efficient. If we do that effectively then over the long term, we are going to save billions of dollars in energy costs for the federal government and for taxpayers.
HORSLEY: During his news conference, Mr. Obama refused to weigh in on the conflict in Gaza. He said the principle of one president at a time is especially critical when it comes to foreign policy.
P: The day that I take office, we are prepared to engage immediately in trying to deal with the situation there, and not only the short-term situation but building a process whereby we can achieve a more lasting peace in the region. But until I take office, it would be imprudent of me to start sending out signals that somehow, we are running foreign policy when I am not legally authorized to do so.
HORSLEY: The president-elect also steered clear of the fight over whether Roland Burris should occupy his old Senate seat after being appointed by Illinois' scandal-plagued governor. Mr. Obama called that a Senate matter.
P: I know Roland Burris. Obviously, he's from my home state. I think he's a fine public servant. If he gets seated, then I'm going to work with Roland Burris just like I work with all the other senators to make sure that the people of Illinois and the people of the country are served.
HORSLEY: Mr. Obama says part of his challenge will be to provide that service with greater efficiency and transparency. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Recession got you down? Has a lack of entertainment dollars made you a prisoner to cable television? Then, most likely you've heard the following pitches over and over and over again.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV COMMERCIALS)
U: Pedicures are expensive. With the Ped Egg, I save money, and my feet look and feel great.
U: Now, there is the Snuggie, the blanket that has sleeves.
U: ShamWow holds 20 times its weight in liquid. Look at this, it just does the work.
NORRIS: Any tub big or small, Mighty Putty repairs them all. Fill cracks and...
NORRIS: A.J. Khubani is president and CEO of TeleBrands. That's a direct response company. So, Mr. Khubani, the economy is down and the number of infomercials is up. Is that coincidence or a cunning move by all those companies that are trying to sell all those products?
NORRIS: Take the car companies, for example. Automobile makers have cut their advertising budgets in half. They typically represent 40 percent of all TV advertising. They're now down to 20 percent. That leaves a lot of open TV time, and a big opportunity for infomercial companies. So we can go in now and buy prime-time spots where we could never get them before, at the price we used to pay for late-night spots. I like to say that we're getting beachfront property at trailer park prices.
NORRIS: (Laughing) Boy, you do sound like a happy man.
NORRIS: Yeah.
NORRIS: Now, I mean no disrespect in asking this question, but are you the advertisers of last resort?
NORRIS: Yes, we are. They call us the bottom feeders in advertising. We send our tapes out to all the stations and whatever unsold time they have, they stick our spots in and charge us a very low rate. Well, that amount of unsold time has gone up dramatically.
NORRIS: Now, do I sense a bit of opportunism in some of the products that are actually being pitched? The Ped Egg, for instance, shaves the calluses off the bottom of your feet, maybe saves you some money in terms of pedicures. The Snuggie maybe helps you cut down on heating costs. Are these products tailored for these times?
NORRIS: Certain items do much better in a bad economy. Take lipstick sales, for example. It's a known fact that lipstick sales go up when there's a bad economy because they're inexpensive mood enhancers. And I see our products in very much the same light. They're inexpensive. For 10 or $20, they enhance your mood, they solve a common problem, and they save money. And that's another reason why the sales have gone up so dramatically.
NORRIS: Mr. Khubani, thanks so much for talking to us.
NORRIS: OK. You're welcome.
NORRIS: That's A.J. Khubani. He's the president and CEO of TeleBrands. That's a direct response marketing company.
BLOCK: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
: Joe the Plumber. Yup, the man made briefly famous during the presidential elections, Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, will cover the Gaza conflict from Israel. He told Toledo's NBC affiliate, WNWO, that he'll be talking to average Israelis.
: I'd like to go over there and let their average Joes share their story - what they think, how they feel - especially with, you know, world opinion, maybe get a real story out there.
: Wurzelbacher says he'll be in Israel for 10 days.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And now to your comments about yesterday's program. We begin with a postscript to our coverage of the possibility that CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta will become the next U.S. surgeon general.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
We mentioned that Dr. Gupta, if nominated and confirmed, could be the youngest surgeon general ever. He's 39. Well, we went back through our country's medical records and discovered that ever since the job was created, two U.S. surgeons general have been younger than Dr. Gupta.
BLOCK: Our very first surgeon general, John Maynard Woodworth, was 33 when he reported for duty back in 1871. And his successor, John B. Hamilton, was 31 when he began service in 1879.
NORRIS: And we have one correction. It's for yesterday's story about Bard College at Simon's Rock. That's the Massachusetts college where 15-year-olds can began classes without a high school diploma.
BLOCK: In the story, we heard Professor Hal Holladay as he taught his English class.
(SOUNDBITE OF ENGLISH CLASS)
HAL HOLLADAY: Who else lets go of the great wheel? Goneril and Regan.
BLOCK: We went on to imply that Goneril and Regan were characters in Shakespeare's play "Twelfth Night." Well, you could call that our comedy of errors.
NORRIS: Steven Olsen(ph) of Belfast, Maine, wrote that we surely stumbled upon a totally awesome English professor at Simon's Rock College, one who is able to transplant Regan and Goneril into "Twelfth Night." Did King Lear make the switch as well? Mr. Olsen is right, and it is our mistake and not the professor's. Goneril and Regan appear in "King Lear," not "Twelfth Night."
BLOCK: Several of you also wrote to tell us that you could relate to the feeling of boredom that motivates students to leave high school early and attend Simon's Rock.
NORRIS: Carl Harris(ph) of Olympia, Washington, writes: I, too, was bored to tears during my last two years of high school, and that was 28 years ago. He points out that Simon's Rock is expensive and writes, although the folks at Bard College are to be commended for filling the high school boredom void, the story begs the broader question of why changes aren't being made in high schools to stimulate these young minds into wanting higher achievement.
BLOCK: And finally, yesterday we aired my interview with Christopher Stevens, author of a book called "Thirty Days Has September: Cool Ways to Remember Stuff." It inspired some of you to send in your own cool ways to remember stuff.
NORRIS: Well, we certainly welcome all your tricks, tirades and thoughts. Just visit npr.org and click "Contact Us" at the top of the page. Be sure to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
More Israeli air strikes in Gaza today, and more Hamas rockets fired into southern Israel. And the diplomatic back and forth continues. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met today with Arab and Israeli leaders at the United Nations. She said the U.S. supports a cease-fire proposal offered by Egypt and France. Of course, Secretary Rice's days in her job are numbered. Senior news analyst Daniel Schorr has some thoughts on what the conflict means for the next U.S. administration.
DANIEL SCHORR: Mr. Obama would surely prefer to put the Middle East situation on a back burner while he wrestles with the economic crisis. But events may not permit him to. And so the 44th president will become the latest to try to deal with the oldest established conflict in the world. This is Daniel Schorr.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
German billionaire and respected businessman Adolf Merckle took his life by throwing himself in front of a train earlier this week. His holding company had lost millions in the global recession. In Chicago, real estate mogul Steven L. Good was found dead Monday, also an apparent suicide. And two days before Christmas, Wall Street fund manager Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet slit his wrists with a box cutter after losing more than a billion dollars in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme.
T: The Epic History of American Financial Power." And he joins me now. Mr. Gordon, we've always heard of stock market suicides when Wall Street takes a tumble. Is this myth or reality?
NORRIS: It's pretty much myth. The joke started right away with the crash. Will Rogers said that people had to line up in order to jump out of windows. But it simply didn't happen. The suicide rate in New York in the last three months of 1929 was perfectly normal, about a hundred people, and only four of them were caused by jumping. And only two of those took place on Wall Street, and neither of them were bankers or stock brokers.
BLOCK: So let me get this straight. All this lore, all those songs that were written, that old movie footage that we've seen portraying people jumping to their deaths after the great crash, that's all based on bunk?
NORRIS: It's all based on bunk. There were some reports of it in the tabloid newspapers, especially in Britain. And one of the reporters was Winston Churchill, who was on Wall Street that day and himself lost a bundle. And he reported of somebody thudding to the street just close to where he was standing. But apparently, he was just adding a little artistic verisimilitude to his report.
BLOCK: Now setting aside, then, the myth of the stock market suicides, do suicides increase during tough economic times?
NORRIS: Apparently not, according to psychologists. I mean, what does happen is that people tend to go back to bad habits that they'd broken. Ex-smokers become smokers again and, you know, people who had given up drinking suddenly are hitting the bottle. But the suicide rate does not appear to be noticeably correlated with market swings.
BLOCK: Now, we've been talking about the current downturn and comparing that with the great crash following 1929. There have been other downturns and recessions in the economy. What have we seen in terms of the suicide rate in those downturns?
NORRIS: Well, in 1987, the last really great crash on Wall Street, when it went down 22 percent in one day, there were only two suicides that seemed to be related to that crash.
BLOCK: Now can you say that with confidence, after Black Thursday, only two? Or is it only two that we know about, only two high-profile suicides?
NORRIS: Well, there's only two that we know about. Suicide, up until very recently, was, you know, very much not socially acceptable. So, people would try to get the coroner to rule that it was not a suicide. Also, insurance might be involved in that.
BLOCK: After all these years, why hasn't there been more done to correct the record?
NORRIS: Well, because sometimes factoids - things that look like facts, but aren't - are harder to kill than vampires. You won't find it in respectable histories of Wall Street, but you find them in newspaper stories and things like that because they're just good stories.
BLOCK: Well, John Steele Gordon, thanks so much for talking to us.
NORRIS: Thank you.
BLOCK: John Steele Gordon is a financial historian. He's also the author of "An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Financial Power."
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
..TEXT: From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
The standoff between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas is causing energy shortages across Europe. The two countries are in the midst of a price dispute. Russia's gas company, Gazprom, has now stopped all shipments of natural gas through Ukraine. And it's through those pipelines that lots of gas reaches Europe. Eleanor Beardsley reports from Paris.
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Europe is in the grip of a bitter cold spell. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was closed because of snow and ice. And in Berlin, temperatures dropped to minus four Fahrenheit. So, the news that Gazprom had shut off the taps got as much attention here as the fighting in Gaza. Speaking on French Radio, historian Pierre Marie Crespar(ph) fulminated about the crisis.
(SOUNDBITE OF RADIO INTERVIEW)
BLOCK: (Through Translator) Russia is deep in debt. It needs money, but the Ukrainians don't have any. More than that, Moscow can't stand the fact that its former territory wants to join NATO. So now, Russia is turning Gazprom into what the Red Army used to be for the Soviet Union, an instrument of intimidation and pressure.
BEARDSLEY: France gets less than 20 percent of its gas from Russia. But in Germany, Europe's largest economy, the figure is twice that. German energy firms warned today that there could be gas shortages if the dispute drags on and subzero temperatures persist. But the countries worst hit by the gas feud are those in central and southeast Europe. And Bulgaria and Slovakia, which get all their gas from Russia, have declared states of emergency. In Bulgaria, at least 10,000 people have no heat in their homes. Galina Tosheva is Bulgaria's deputy energy minister.
BLOCK: We have lost 100 percent of the gas supplies coming through the route from Ukraine. We have gas storage, so we could use some quantities from the gas storage. But the quantities cover not more than 30, 35 percent of the daily demand in the country.
BEARDSLEY: The European Union is furious. The EU accused both Russia and Ukraine of using consumers across Europe as pawns in their quarrel. Johannes Laitenberger is an EU spokesman.
BLOCK: Without prior warning and in clear contradiction with the reassurances given by the highest Russian and Ukrainian authorities to the European Union, gas supplies have been cut. This situation is completely unacceptable.
BEARDSLEY: Just two years ago, a similar dispute between Russia and Ukraine cut off gas supplies to Europe for three days. That crisis led to criticism of Russia as an unreliable energy partner, and spurred talk of finding ways to diversify the continent's energy supply. But nothing has really been done, says Ian Cronshaw, an analyst with the Paris-based International Energy Agency.
BLOCK: Up until recently, Russia has been an extremely reliable supplier of more than 40 years, starting back in the 1960s almost at the height of the Cold War. Now Europe is making efforts to build more pipelines, but Europe does need to do much more in terms of diversifying its power supply, to diversify its sources of imports, and to make its market work much, much more efficiently so that gas can be moved around between different countries in the event of shortages.
BEARDSLEY: Cronshaw says a perfect example of Europe's inaction is the Nabucco Pipeline. The project would bring natural gas 2,000 miles from central Asia to Europe without going through either Russia or Ukraine. The pipeline was due to be completed in 2013, but construction hasn't even begun. For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
The conflict in the Gaza Strip may not seem like rich material for jokes, but last night, a bunch of comedians gave it their best shot. In New York City, the Gotham Comedy Club hosted a night of Israeli and Palestinian humor. NPR's Robert Smith went to the show to see who's laughing during wartime.
ROBERT SMITH: If you are going to joke about tragedy, pick your audience carefully.
NORRIS: Comedy is hard enough. You don't want an angry crowd - you know, people like, we don't want these guys, now bring him on.
SMITH: Dean Obeidallah is a standup comedian from a Palestinian family. As the co-creator of StandUp for Peace, he has taken a show of Israeli and Palestinian humor around to mostly college campuses. But a Jewish group in New Jersey just canceled the show for this weekend.
NORRIS: Their email to us that due to the loss of life, hundreds of civilians being killed, that they didn't think it was appropriate.
NORRIS: They felt that this wasn't the time.
SMITH: That's Scott Blakeman, a Jewish comedian who is the other half of StandUp for Peace.
NORRIS: This is when you really need it, when times are tough and things are tense and people are marching and yelling. That's when you need to bring people in a room together and say, hey, let's talk, let's laugh. And hopefully, that'll carry over in what they're doing in the Middle East.
SMITH: That's a tall order for a bunch of jokes, but what the heck? The group Seeds of Peace, which brings together Palestinian and Israeli youth, sponsored the night as a fundraiser. Usually at a club, somebody warms up the crowd, but in this case, Leetha Horrie(ph) from Seeds of Peace sort of cooled the place down.
NORRIS: We're having blood being shed every day, so if you guys right now or maybe later can take a moment of silence...
SMITH: It would not be the only sober moment of the night. Whenever the comedians try to directly tackle the situation in Gaza, you could hear crickets. Like when Scott Blakeman talked about Israel's foreign minister.
NORRIS: When Tzipi Livni said there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. That's what she said. There's no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Then she - right after that she said, and the earth is flat. So, she's really in tune with things happening, but...
SMITH: Oh, that's an unintentional moment of silence right there. Maysun Zayad(ph), a Palestinian comic who just got back from Gaza, also ventured into uncomfortable territory.
NORRIS: The real reason I went to Palestine was because I wanted to catch a husband, and I felt like Gaza was the best place to do it. It's kind of like shooting fish in a barrel. Ask the IDF, they'll swear by it.
SMITH: IDF is Israel Defense Forces. The comedians all had better luck when they joked about the situation more obliquely. You have to twist the joke at the end so it doesn't make you wince. Dean Obeidallah talked about just getting back from a Middle Eastern tour.
NORRIS: Do you guys know this? All the American chains are through the Middle East, the Arab world, like, Starbucks, McDonald's, KFC. The one American chain not in the Middle East - and it kind of makes sense to me - Target. There's nobody wants the word target and a bull's eye in the front of their store in the Middle East.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SMITH: And the easiest way to get through the night is to act like comic Eugene Merman: Make a joke about how uncomfortable the whole situation is.
NORRIS: Do you think, what are the chances, though, when we get home and turn on the TV, we'll be like, holy [BLEEP]. It worked. Peace. It's peace.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SMITH: And then segue into your usual routine.
NORRIS: I saw that Linens 'n Things is going out of business. I know, it's so sad. My first thought was, should have been more specific.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SMITH: OK, it's not world peace, but it was a decent laugh for the Jewish and Muslim audience, who, let's face it, don't mind the distraction. Tallison Derwich(ph) from Israel loved it.
NORRIS: It's great. It's great. It's releasing. You know, the war is so depressing, and you need something to laugh at.
SMITH: Consider it a mental cease-fire for the evening. Robert Smith, NPR News, New York.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. These are unprecedented times on Broadway. In the next two weeks, four shows will close. That's after nine shows closed last Sunday. Reporter Jeff Lunden got together with a veteran producer and a young investor to find out why so many Broadway theaters have gone dark.
JEFF LUNDEN: So here we are on...
NORRIS: On 52nd Street between Broadway and 8th at the takeout. It's when the scenery comes out of the theater. This is "Hairspray," or this was "Hairspray."
LUNDEN: January and February are notoriously bad months for Broadway's box office. And with the economic downturn, their producers decided it would be better to close than to continue to sustain losses. Azenberg and I walked into the wings of the theater. Carpenters were disassembling flats and putting bubble wrap around the props.
(SOUNDBITE OF CARPENTERS DISASSEMBLING STAGE SET)
NORRIS: This is what it looks like. Used to be scenery.
LUNDEN: Azenberg says shows are loading out all over the theater district right now.
NORRIS: There are, what, seven or eights shows coming out of theaters right now.
LUNDEN: Nine shows closed this week.
NORRIS: And a few more next week and the following week. Probably coming to a total of somewhere between 16 and 20 since September. There was a time, I think in the '70s, when there were only eight or nine shows on Broadway. And that was a crisis. And this will be a crisis, as well. And probably a more significant one because the economics are much harsher - ticket prices are too high, costs are too great. And so replacing what has left town will not be simple.
LUNDEN: Since those dark days in the early 1970s, Broadway's three dozen theaters have more or less been filled. And there are several productions lined up to open in theaters where shows have recently closed: revivals of "West Side Story," "Hair" and "Guys and Dolls;" Dolly Parton's new musical version of "9 to 5;" and quite a few plays. But Manny Azenberg says investment capital on Broadway is getting tight. It's a risky business, where only one out of five shows turn a profit.
NORRIS: You can ironically say that the theater is a better investment than the stock market at the moment. On the other hand, that cavalier money that was around to invest in the theater has certainly diminished. There are major investors that I know that - they used to put in a half a million dollars, so they'll put in a $100,000. That's going to affect a lot of things.
LUNDEN: While there are those big investors who make Broadway hum, there are also lots of smaller investors who chip in from 10 to $25,000 for a piece of the Broadway dream, like Brad Rubenstein.
NORRIS: There was a wonderful song in "[Title of Show]" that talks about being part of it all. And I think that that's the motivation for a lot of smaller investors, is that this is their opportunity to be a part of that life and that glamour and that key part of what makes New York, New York.
LUNDEN: Rubenstein has invested in 15 shows. Most, like "[Title of Show]," were flops. But a couple, like "Hairspray," were hits. He says he's still getting pitches from producers though lately, he's been feeling the pinch.
NORRIS: There's less capital for me to invest that, you know, for me and a lot of other investors, constrains our - in a sense, our vanity investments or our charitable contributions or our philanthropy. All of those things contract with the economy.
LUNDEN: Still, as soon as he's able, Rubinstein says he'll likely give in to the seductive pull of being part of it all.
NORRIS: There will always be room in New York City for theater. There will always be an audience for theater in New York City. And so, I'm pretty optimistic.
LUNDEN: For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. On this day, 50 years ago, Fidel Castro and his guerillas marched into Havana. That day marked the end of U.S. domination over Cuba and the beginning of Castro's reign. These days, many Cubans struggle just to put food on their tables. Government officials say 2009 could be even worse. NPR's Jason Beaubien recently visited Cuba and found some people frustrated by the communist system and others who still feel a sense of pride and loyalty to the revolution.
JASON BEAUBIEN: Parts of Havana look post-apocalyptic. Ornate art nouveau buildings crumble in on themselves. Sixty-year-old cars, overloaded with passengers and belching smoke, lumber through the streets. The grass in public parks is overgrown. At times, bright red, white and blue Cuban flags fluttering from balconies are the only sparks of color in this drab landscape.
(Soundbite of music)
BEAUBIEN: Yet, music thumps out of apartment buildings. Kids play stickball and soccer in the streets. Young couples kiss on the ocean boardwalk that looks north towards Florida. Julio Casanova, sitting in a rather barren park in central Havana, says Cuba faces many problems.
Mr. JULIO CASANOVA: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: But you live, he says. You live. You live. You live. You live. You live.
Casanova is 60 years old. When Fidel Castro toppled the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, Casanova was shining shoes on the streets of Havana. Under Fidel, he was able to go back to school and eventually became an officer in the army. Under the communist system, he, and everyone else, gets health care, shelter and basic food.
Mr. JULIO CASANOVA: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: It's different than in the United States, he says. In the United States, if you don't work, you don't eat. Here, everyone eats.
As a country, however, Cuba has struggled recently to meet everyone's basic needs. Government bodegas that sell heavily subsidized food rations regularly run out of meat, eggs, and cooking oil. In a market on the west side of Havana, crowds push in to buy tomatoes, limes, papayas. There is fresh produce here, but the overall agriculture system on the island has declined so dramatically that Cuba now imports roughly 60 percent of its food - much of it from the United States.
A soaring trade deficit and three hurricanes in 2008 have pushed the communist nation into its toughest financial crisis since the fall of the Soviet Union. An ailing Fidel handed power to his younger brother, Raul, in 2006 after running the country for 48 years. And as president, Raul Castro has made only minor changes to the Marxist-Leninist system.
(Soundbite of Cuba's President Raul Castro's speech)
BEAUBIEN: At a ceremony, last week, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Fidel coming to power, Raul Castro said the Cuban Revolution is stronger now than ever. But dissidents say the revolution has evolved into a dictatorial system that traps Cubans in a bizarre form of poverty. For instance, Cubans are paid in national pesos, but many necessities are only sold in convertible pesos, CUC, the currency available to tourists.
Ms. BELINDA SALAS (Director, Latin American Foundation of Rural Women): (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: How am I going to buy in CUC when I don't get paid in CUC, asked Belinda Salas?
Salas runs an organization advocating for the rights of rural women, and she says the Cuban economy needs a radical overhaul. She says U.S. policy towards the island hasn't helped. Food in the markets now comes, often times, from the U.S., but she says the government still gets to blame all its problems on the embargo.
Ms. SALAS: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: If there's no plaster, it's because of the embargo, she says. If the lights go out, it's because of the embargo. If there's no rice, it's because of the embargo. And the embargo has become a justification for them to stay in power for 50 years.
Salas also accuses the government of crushing dissent. Human Rights Watch says more than 200 people remain imprisoned in Cuba for political reasons. In many parts of Cuba, there is frustration. People still flee the island in boats. The majority now try to get to Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula as the U.S. Coast Guard has made reaching Florida more difficult.
But as the country commemorates the 50th anniversary of Fidel coming to power, many others say the revolution has accomplished a lot. In the south of Havana, in an area called San Miguel, dirt footpaths wind through a maze of cobbled-together fences and wooden shacks.
Mr. JASMAN RODRIGUEZ ESTABLE: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: Jasman Rodriguez Estable is 29 years old. He lives in a rustic house in which cloth curtains serve as doors to the bedrooms. He says before the triumph of the revolution, poor people like him couldn't go to school. Now, even though Cuba is a developing country, he says it has high-tech hospitals. It sends doctors and teachers throughout Latin America. In the 1980s, it had one of the most powerful armies in the world. Rodriguez attributes all of this to the 82-year-old Fidel.
Mr. ESTABLE: (Spanish Spoken)
BEAUBIEN: Fidel is young, he says. And he will remain young forever. Fidel will remain young because he has strength, ideas and confidence in his people. Rodriguez acknowledges that the monthly salaries in Cuba aren't enough to live on, but he says life is hard in many parts of the world. He's proud that Cuba, for all these years, has stood up against its rich, superpower neighbor, that it still opposes capitalism. Despite the mounting hardships and calls by dissidents for radical change on the island, Rodriguez thinks Fidel's communist system is in Cuba to stay. Jason Beaubien, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Car sales are in the tank, and two of the Detroit Three automakers, GM and Chrysler, are teetering on the brink of collapse. But that won't stop hundreds of thousands of people from flocking to Detroit this weekend, as they do every year, for the North American International Auto Show. If you're not into cars, take heart. This story isn't really about cars. It's about professional auto show models, the women who use their talents and yes, their looks to make the cars on display look much more appealing.
Margery Krevsky runs an agency that selects and trains auto show models. She's been doing it for years, and she's also the author of a new book about the business. It's called, "Sirens of Chrome," and Margery Krevsky joins me now. Welcome to the program.
Ms. MARGERY KREVSKY (President, CEO, Productions Plus; Author, "Sirens of Chrome: The Enduring Allure of Auto Show Models"): Thank you very much.
NORRIS: Margery, your book is full of photos of women in various stages of undress. In one case, she's got a silver jumpsuit on. In another, she's got a nude bathing suit on. There's all kinds of pictures of women wearing all kinds of things. But when you got into the business, it seemed like you were trying to make sure that this was a business that wasn't just about eye candy. How did you do that?
Ms. KREVSKY: Well, we have to understand that there is a great culture with the automobile, and when people come, they wanted to see attractive women. But as the natural progression of women, education, going into the workplace, happened, that just came along with the history of the auto show. When I got into this business initially, I saw it, and this was in the mid-'80s.
Actually, I had friends and models that worked for my company that did the auto show, and I would go to see them. And I would ask them questions about the car, and they would say, oh, I am not allowed to talk about the car, but I do know about it. And so, I presented to several automotive manufacturers an idea of product specialists, highly trained men and women and people of diversity who could talk about cars and become real gearheads. They would be well-dressed. They would be well-groomed. They would be attractive, but they sure could talk cars.
NORRIS: Now, in your research you found all kinds of photos. You found a picture of women swimming in the bed of a dump truck that was filled with water. A model dressed as a mermaid on the hood of a Plymouth Barracuda that graces the cover of the book, even a BMW model posing with a great big lion. What was the strangest modeling stunt you came across in your research?
Ms. KREVSKY: That was the strangest modeling stunt. In 1966, there was a BMW press conference in New York, and Miss BMW was posing with a lion, and the lion was a very bad kitty because he, all of a sudden, sunk his jaws into her thigh. Fortunately, the handlers removed the jaws of the lion from her thigh, and from that moment forward, you do not see many wild animals at press conferences anymore.
NORRIS: Does the model really make a difference if you're selling a car that might be somewhere close to mediocre? I mean, can a great model make a difference for a car that otherwise wouldn't go flying off the lot?
Ms. KREVSKY: Well, let's answer it this way. The cars are great and gorgeous, but none of them can talk. They can't tell you what's under the hood. They can't tell you what makes them special, and that's what the products specialist do. And these are not the magnets that are running the companies. These are the people that are right there, to use the saying, where the rubber meets the road, with the American public.
NORRIS: Margery Krevsky, thanks so much for your time.
Ms. KREVSKY: Thank you.
NORRIS: Margery Krevsky runs a talent agency. She is also the author of, "Sirens of Chrome: The Enduring Allure of Auto Show Models," and to see photos of auto show models over the years, go to our Web site, npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
When the giant bank Washington Mutual failed in September and was bought by JPMorgan, not much changed for the bank's clients, but its employees were laid off by the thousands. This week, some of the workers in Seattle where the bank has its headquarters decided to throw themselves a party, a WaMu Wake. And reporter Chana Joffe-Walt was there.
CHANA JOFFE-WALT: Iris Glaze told me to find her at the bar before the party. Look for the short, gray, round, and very cute woman, she told me. And there she was, hugging me and telling me she really hopes she won't cry like an idiot all night.
Ms. IRIS GLAZE (Employee, Washington Mutual): I wanted so much to retire with this company. And to think that I am going to be unemployed soon with so many other wonderfully qualified people, I have to tell you honestly that I have my bad thoughts. But why bother? Why would I want to dwell on the bad thoughts?
JOFFE-WALT: Thoughts, for instance, about her job in investor relations where people used to call her to thank her, and now they call to say things she can't say on the radio. End of January, Iris is out of a job. JPMorgan will lay off 9,200 Washington Mutual people this year. So, Iris says, time to have fun together, relax, get drunk with your boss. She heads off dispensing hugs, and a Beatles cover band takes the stage. Now, as it turns out, when your company fails and you're jobless in a recession, the Beatles is apparently just the thing.
(Soundbite of song "Help")
Unidentified Cover Band: (Singing) Help, I need somebody. Help, not just anybody.
JOFFE-WALT: The club fills up with WaMu casualties, and they are shouting along, bouncing. Throughout the set, they are literally high-fiving each other while yelling, "Tell me why you cry, and why you lied to me." In a break, the emcee even makes up his own words.
Unidentified Emcee: (Singing) I should have known better than to hold that stock.
(Soundbite of people cheering)
JOFFE-WALT: This room is full of people who lost their jobs in the most dramatic way. Their employer disappeared overnight in the middle of a global economic collapse. They're hundreds of HR people, tech support, investor relations who, for the most part, had really nothing to do with the subprime loans that brought the bank down. But this party is full of love and sentimental affection for the company that gambled these people's savings and jobs on risky loans, a company that many of them really loved and devoted their lives to. So when the emcees start auctioning off Washington Mutual paraphernalia, people are rushing to bid.
Unidentified Emcee: OK. This is quite a collector's item. So, let's start the bidding at $25...
JOFFE-WALT: A "free checking sign" goes for $55. A Kerry Killinger bobble head - that's the former WaMu CEO - fetches 225. And a bidding war starts over 20 years of annual reports. Really, they go for more than $200, too. The money will all go to a WaMu alumni fund for education. Perhaps, the emcee says, your kids really will be able to go to college. Kaisa Sidell is sitting towards the back of the club. She's been with Washington Mutual 27-and-a-half years.
Ms. KAISA SIDELL (Employee, Washington Mutual): I think most people need a way to have some closure when they've invested a lot of time in their lives, and I have. A lot of my identity has been associated with this company. I've been proud of it for most of its existence, and I'm sad to see it go.
JOFFE-WALT: For WaMu lifers like Kaisa and Iris, their legacy is now attached to the largest bank failure in history. Tonight seems to be about reclaiming that story and leaving with heads held high.
(Soundbite of music)
JOFFE-WALT: The very last act of the night is more music - two employees with a special song written for tonight.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Vocalists: Goodbye, WaMu, goodbye. Goodbye, WaMu, goodbye.
JOFFE-WALT: This is when Iris starts to cry. She's up on stage with the band, covers her mouth, and turns her back to the audience.
(Soundbite of music)
Unidentified Vocalists: Goodbye, WaMu, goodbye, WaMu, We'll all remember you.
JOFFE-WALT: A teary woman leans to my ear and whispers, we all needed a different ending. This one is way better. For NPR News, I'm Chana Joffe-Walt in Seattle.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Martial Solal is one of the greatest European jazz musicians alive. His life at the piano ranges from lessons with his opera singer mother, two collaborations with Django Reinhardt and Sidney Bechet to composing music for dozens of films. And at age 81, he keeps a schedule of concerts and club gigs that would tire out someone half his age. Reporter Frank Browning visited Solal at his house in suburban Paris and found the pianist working on a different sort of keyboard.
FRANK BROWNING: Macs. Martial Solal keeps one in almost every room of the rambling suburban house he finally had the money to buy at age 60.
Mr. MARTIAL SOLAL (Jazz Musician): I am crazy about those machines. I have five computers in the house.
BROWNING: Solal uses them to compose.
(Soundbite of piano playing and typing)
Mr. SOLAL: I just wrote this.
BROWNING: Aside from his relentless jazz performances, he has composed 15 piano etudes and more than 35 film scores. When Apple came up with composing software, it was a kind of deliverance for Solal.
Mr. SOLAL: It's fantastic to write music and to hear the music you just composed. You can change a part of the music. I can show you some of the music...
BROWNING: Sitting at the piano, he spins his chair toward one of the computer keyboards. The written score of a new etude he's composing opens up.
Mr. SOLAL: See? This page and I can - like you hear what is written.
(Soundbite of piano music)
BROWNING: Solal's music is as complex as his life. Born of Algerian Jewish parents, he immigrated to France in 1950 when he was only 23. Began playing in the underground jazz dives around St-Germain-des-Pres. Before long, he was recording with great jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.
(Soundbite of music)
BROWNING: Fame came to Solal for the music he composed for Jean-Luc Godard's 1960 breakthrough film, "Breathless."
(Soundbite of song "La Mort")
BROWNING: In a new memoir, Solal describes his experiences in the American black jazz world, in the film industry and as a classical composer. His manner betrays an almost childlike sense of curiosity and playfulness. That comes from his lifelong fascination with freedom and structure, says Claude Carriere, a jazz historian and longtime programmer at Radio France.
Mr. CLAUDE CARRIERE (Jazz Historian; Programmer, Radio France): He goes in every direction and comes back and breaks the tune. He plays with, more than he plays the tune, he plays with the tune.
BROWNING: You could say that's true of all jazz improvisation, and Carriere agrees, to a point.
Mr. CARRIERE: Yeah, but perhaps more with somebody like him because he's so brilliant.
(Soundbite of piano music)
BROWNING: What sets Solal apart from other musicians, as Claude Carriere sees it, is his mind, how his conscious brain is always engaged in the notes he plays.
Mr. CARRIERE: He is one of the rare musicians, I think, who can exactly play with his fingers what his brain asks him to do.
(Soundbite of piano music)
Mr. CARRIERE: Many, many piano players, they have so many things under the fingers, they can almost sleep and continue to play. Martial - everything he thinks, he can play it. That's because he has worked, worked, worked on it, every day, hours and hours.
BROWNING: At least two hours and sometimes six, even today at 81.
Mr. SOLAL: I play exercises every morning, but my specialty is to play exercise only with one hand and improvising in the right hand. I give you an example.
(Soundbite of piano music)
Mr. SOLAL: You see what sort of music it is? It's very enjoyable because it's never the same. I can do with different things like this.
(Soundbite of piano music)
Mr. SOLAL: I could play for 100 years, it would be never the same, because right hand is very free to do what she wants, and left hand plays just the melody.
(Soundbite of piano music)
BROWNING: Solal spends 20 minutes on his exercises. Then he turns to Rachmaninoff or Chopin or Schumann.
Mr. SOLAL: I never play jazz at home except this exercise where right hand plays, sort of, jazz.
BROWNING: Why do you not play jazz at home? Rachmaninoff is very difficult, in the morning, particularly.
Mr. SOLAL: Well, because I keep my inspiration for the concerts. If I play much improvisation at home, I would maybe have nothing more to say. That's a sort of attitude to keep the best for the concerts.
BROWNING: Martial Solal says this will be the last year of giving concerts, though it's hard to imagine he won't make an exception, at least now and then. No matter what, to wake up in the morning, take his coffee and not touch his fingers to the keyboard, that's just not something Solal can imagine. For NPR News, I am Frank Browning in Paris.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: And you can hear full tunes from Martial Solal's catalogue at nprmusic.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Since he came to Washington this week, President-elect Barack Obama has spoken every day about what he wants from Congress - a huge economic stimulus package. In a speech today, he also issued a call to the American people. Mr. Obama echoed Presidents Roosevelt and Kennedy and urged Americans to restore their confidence in government and the U.S. economy. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY: President-elect Obama painted a frightening picture of a worsening economic crisis with more than two million jobs lost and manufacturing at its lowest level in almost three decades. He said it's not too late to stop the downward spiral, but warned soon it could be. Mr. Obama says Congress should have an open and honest debate about his economic stimulus package, but be quick about it.
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: For every day we wait or point fingers or drag our feet, more Americans will lose their jobs, more families will lose their savings, more dreams will be deferred and denied. And our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.
HORSLEY: As part of his plan, Mr. Obama wants the federal government to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building roads and bridges, digitizing medical records and investing in clean energy. He says the goal is not only to create jobs in the short run, but to put people to work in ways that pay long-term dividends.
President-elect OBAMA: It's not just another public works program. It's a plan that recognizes both the paradox and promise of this moment - the fact that there are millions of Americans trying to find work even as, all around the country, there's so much work to be done.
HORSLEY: The president-elect acknowledged new spending on such a massive scale will deepen the deficit, at a time when the government is already expected to run in the red by more than a trillion dollars this year. He said skepticism is understandable, given how much money the government's already spent on financial bailouts with little to show for it. He said given the dire economic situation, the government has no choice but to act.
President-elect OBAMA: It is true that we cannot depend on government alone to create jobs or long-term growth. But at this particular moment, only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe.
HORSLEY: In addition to new government spending, Mr. Obama's stimulus proposal will include hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts, including the thousand dollar cut for working families he promised during the campaign. He's also calling for a sweeping effort to prevent home foreclosures and an overhaul of the nation's financial regulations.
His message today was aimed partly at lawmakers, but also at the American people. His tone borrowed from another new president who spoke during an even deeper economic crisis, rallying the public to look beyond their fears.
Dr. DAVID WOOLNER (Executive Director, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute; Assistant Professor, History and Political Science, Marist College): Part of what Roosevelt really felt he had to do was to restore the faith of the American people in democracy itself and in our government.
HORSLEY: David Woolner is executive director of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, New York. He says it's no accident the incoming president is echoing President Roosevelt.
Dr. WOOLNER: Part of what leadership is all about is restoring and maintaining confidence of the people in their government and in their leadership, and that's a good deal of what President-elect Obama is going to have to do.
HORSLEY: Mr. Obama also hearkened back to President Kennedy today, urging Americans to ask not what's good for them, but what's good for the country their children will inherit.
President-elect OBAMA: More than any program or policy, it is this spirit that will enable us to confront these challenges with the same spirit that has led previous generations to face down war and depression and fear itself.
HORSLEY: If Americans adopt that spirit, Mr. Obama said, 2009 will be remembered as a new and hopeful beginning, hard as that may be to imagine in the midst of the worrisome present. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And as you heard in this worrisome present, one number that jumps out is that trillion dollar deficit for 2009. It's got fiscal conservatives, including some in Mr. Obama's own party, fretting about the dangers of even more red ink in the future. And NPR's John Ydstie is here to talk with me about this. First of all John, we're talking really big astronomical numbers. How dangerous is this deficit? Should we be spending all this money?
JOHN YDSTIE: Well, I think most economists and policy makers think the stimulus is necessary. Even some big deficit hawks like David Walker, the former comptroller of the United States, say the government needs to spend money to stimulate the economy. And the reason is that if we don't, the economy could struggle for years. That would mean fewer people have jobs and fewer businesses are making profits so there'd be less tax revenue, and the government would be spending more on things like unemployment benefits. All that would boost deficits, too. So, being stingy now could leave us with high deficits and a sluggish economy for years.
NORRIS: Now, John, let's put that trillion dollar deficit in context. We have to get used to saying that trillion with a T. How do they compare with previous deficits?
YDSTIE: Well the $1.2 trillion deficit for 2009 is a record both in terms of dollars and as a percentage of gross domestic product, which is the total economic output of the country. That percentage is the number economists focus on. The previous post-World War II high was reached back during the Reagan administration when deficits reached six percent of GDP. This year's is projected to be about 8.3 percent of GDP, and that doesn't count spending for the stimulus package.
NORRIS: Now when you talk about eight percent or even just a little bit more, that really doesn't sound like such a huge number.
YDSTIE: Well, it doesn't, but just think about it in terms of your family budget. If you spend eight percent more than you earn every year, you could end up with a lot of debt, and debt is what's important to the U.S. government, too. All the annual deficits end up as part of the government's total debt, and as we know in our personal lives, if our debt gets too high compared to our income, that's not good.
NORRIS: So is the U.S. government's debt now at dangerous levels?
YDSTIE: I think most economists would say not yet. Right now, it's equal to about 40 to 45 percent of GDP, and that's about the same as European countries like the U.K. and France. Germany's is a little less, but it's a level that bears watching because the higher it gets, the more investors who lend the government money begin to worry. Is the government going to be able to pay them back? Is it going to begin to print money to make the payments, causing inflation and reducing the value of the payments to the investors?
NORRIS: So if you're talking about 40 to 45 percent of GDP, if that's not dangerous, what would be considered a dangerous level of debt?
YDSTIE: I think a couple of good examples are Greece and Italy. They have debt levels that equal about 90 percent of the output of their economies, and that means investors require both the governments and the people in those countries to pay higher rates of interest on loans. That means there is less investment by businesses, fewer jobs created, lower wages, higher mortgage rates, and that's not a situation Americans want to face.
If we continue to have trillion dollar deficits for years to come, we could face that situation, especially if the economy isn't experiencing healthy growth. What Barack Obama is betting is that by spending government money now, he'll get the economy growing, again. People will go back to work, tax revenues will rise, and the ratios of deficits and debt to GDP will go down, again.
NORRIS: We don't have a lot of time here, but what about this argument that spending on entitlements, Medicare, Social Security and the like, will actually force deficits up, again, in the future?
YDSTIE: Well, that's right, they will, and Mr. Obama surprised some people yesterday saying he's going to address that problem head on. He said he'll outline a framework for controlling spending on entitlements next month.
NORRIS: Thank you, John.
YDSTIE: You're welcome, Michele.
NORRIS: That's NPR's John Ydstie.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency suspended its operations today in Gaza after a truck driver in a UN humanitarian convoy was killed by Israeli fire. The UN noted the increasing hostile actions against its premises and personnel. John Ging is UNRWA's director of operations in Gaza. And Mr. Ging, let's talk about this attack on the aid convoy. Was the Israeli military aware of that convoy and where it was going?
Mr. JOHN GING (Director of Operations, UNRWA, Gaza): That's the whole point. They were fully informed, and they had given the green light for it to proceed through their liaison office in real time. And that's not just the first event. These incidents is happening(ph), occurring at an alarming and repetitive rate over the last period of time. And we have been receiving assurance and reassurance after assurance, again, that they would not reoccur. Today, tragically, a contractor of ours lost his life because we took, at good faith, the green light that was given, and moments later, he's dead.
NORRIS: And it's absolutely clear to you that this fire was coming from Israeli soldiers, not from Hamas?
Mr. GING: Well, that's the information that I have. And all day today, nobody on the Israeli side has denied, in the liaison branch that we deal with, that the fire wasn't from their soldiers on the ground.
NORRIS: What explanation have you gotten from Israel about this attack?
Mr. GING: None, that's also part of the problem. The Red Cross has had the same experience today as well. And they too have suspended all staff movement until this matter is resolved.
NORRIS: You've described conditions in Gaza right now as hell on earth. What do you mean?
Mr. GING: Well, 750,000 people without water, (unintelligible) days and nights without sleep, incessant bombing, traumatized, nowhere safe, 670 dead, over 3,000 injured, a million people in Gaza already destitute and food aid dependent on hand outs and food from the U.N., not getting their food at the moment. The power plant has been closed down since 31st of December, no electricity for a million people. You know, the list goes on and on.
NORRIS: I want to ask you about the Israeli strike earlier this week that killed about 40 Palestinians at a UN run school and in nearby houses. Israel has said that gunmen were firing mortars from the school. I know you dispute that, but there are people from the area who've told reporters there were, in fact, Hamas fighters nearby. Isn't it likely that Hamas is using UN facilities for cover, using civilians as human shields?
Mr. GING: This is something that we need to have investigated, and that's why we've called for an independent investigation. What we need to have is a proper process of accountability, get the facts established and then hold accountable those who are responsible.
NORRIS: As the fighting goes on, though, doesn't this complicate your mission in areas as dense as Gaza City, where Hamas fighters are blending in with the civilian population?
Mr. GING: This is a challenge that we've always known about and are very alert to. We have good systems and procedures in place to vet the people as they come in. It's a shelter for civilians, not for militants, and everybody is fully aware of the consequences of any violations of that.
NORRIS: If Hamas fighters, given that they're not in the school, but if they are all around your facilities, doesn't that put your civilians in jeopardy?
Mr. GING: Yes, that's the problem here. The combat zone is actually a city. So wherever you're going to have the combat in Gaza, you're going to have civilians. And that's been our whole point. Conducting military operations in a built-up, densely populated city is going to result in lots of civilian casualties. This is why there has to be an imperative to go the political route rather than the military route to solve this conflict.
NORRIS: Mr. Ging, thanks for talking with us.
Mr. GING: Thanks a lot.
NORRIS: That's John Ging, director of operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, speaking with us from Gaza City.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And now to your letters. On yesterday's program, we walked through some highs and lows of the Bush presidency.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And as expected, our inbox was flooded with your reflections on the past eight years. Steven Teids(ph) of Milwaukee wrote in to say that while he found the report interesting, it was too short. He writes, "History will indeed judge Mr. Bush harshly for many things, including using the Justice Department as a playground and litmus test for political hacks, for pitting science versus religion in the debate over climate change and other serious issues facing the planet." And Mr. Teids' list goes on. He concludes by saying, "No, this man will not be forgotten in the dustbins of history. He will be an object lesson as to what not to do once in office."
NORRIS: On the other hand, Ken Jones(ph) of Lilburn, Georgia was, in his words, reduced to tears of laughter by our story. He writes, "You covered a lot of President Bush's decisions and their results fairly until Iraq. I spent a year there in 2005 and saw some of the beginnings of an unexpected improvement in the country. To not mention this at all, especially as nearly everyone considered the cause lost and the country rushing into chaos with no possibility of stability, ignores what history will surely see as one of the most astonishing successes of the president."
BLOCK: We'd like to hear from you. You can write to us by going to npr.org and clicking on Contact Us at the top of the page. And please, please tell us where you live and how you pronounce your name.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS: host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The streets of downtown Oakland, California are calm today after a riot last night. Roving bands of young people smashed storefront windows and set cars on fire. They were protesting the killing of an unarmed man. He was shot by a police officer with the Bay Area Rapid Transit or the BART. The incident occurred a week ago, on New Year's Day. Now, a video posted on the Internet appears to have inflamed passions, as NPR's Richard Gonzales reports.
RICHARD GONZALES: The video of the killing of 22-year-old Oscar Grant, a supermarket worker and father, is chilling.
(Soundbite of people fighting)
GONZALES: It shows him being detained by BART cops who were trying to settle a dispute between Grant and his friends and another group of young men. Grant is sitting against the wall, appears to have his hands up and seems to be cooperating with the police. Then the cops push him, face first to the ground. He is surrounded by three officers. One cop has a knee in his back. The same officer rises, pulls his gun from his holster and shoots Grant at pointblank range.
(Soundbite of gun fire)
GONZALES: The video was shot with a cellphone camera from a BART train directly across the track. It's been posted on YouTube and on the Web sites of local TV stations, where it's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. At least two other videos of the shooting are also available on the Internet. That helped draw hundreds of peaceful protesters yesterday afternoon to the site of the shooting.
But soon, the word spread that the officer who had shot Grant, 27-year-old Johannes Mehserle, had resigned from the force. He was scheduled to meet with BART's internal affairs unit in the afternoon, but the resignation made that moot. Come nightfall, a group of about 200 rowdy protesters marched to downtown where they were ordered to disperse by police.
(Soundbite of policeman)
Unidentified Man: If you do not do so, you may be arrested or subject to police action.
GONZALES: Not long after that, the crowd began breaking windows, setting small fires and vandalizing cars.
(Soundbite of protestors)
GONZALES: This morning, there was an uneasy calm in downtown. One of the protest organizers, Mandingo Hayes, said through distressed vocal cords, he had hoped the crowd last night would stay peaceful, but he understood the anger of many.
Mr. MANDINGO HAYES: I mean, how many times can you just watch - expect African-Americans to watch what's going on in our community, not just black on black crime, but police on black crime, and expect for us to just go along with the system. So, you saw frustration there.
GONZALES: Hayes spoke outside a meeting of the BART board of directors, which had met to hear the public's complaints about what has been widely interpreted as a slow investigation. Most speakers were black elected officials and clergy who condemned last night's violence. They also condemned rumors that the shooting may have been an accident, perhaps caused by Officer Mehserle believing that he was firing his Taser rather than his gun. But Reverend Amos Brown, as the head of the NAACP in San Francisco, he called Grant's killing an execution.
Reverend AMOS BROWN (President, NAACP, San Francisco chapter): That was murder. I'm not trying to explain it away as being a mistake. I'm not trying to explain it away as being he didn't know whether or not he had his Taser or he had his gun. The evidence is there, and we should all say that was murder. And this gentleman needs to be brought to justice.
GONZALES: There are two investigations into the killing of Oscar Grant by BART and the local DA. Meanwhile, his family is filing a $25 million wrongful death suit against BART. Richard Gonzales, NPR News, Oakland.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Here's one place you will not see visible proof of the recession - Miami, tonight, at the Super Bowl of college football. Oklahoma and Florida are playing for the national championship. Before the game, and during it, lots of corporate dollars will help to take good care of fans, athletes and even media people. Still, all is not well financially with the nearly three dozens bowls played over the last month. From Miami, NPR's Tom Goldman reports.
TOM GOLDMAN: In the days leading up to tonight's game, reporters staying at the media headquarters hotel ate filet mignon, stone crabs and key lime brulee - for free. If they had time, they could shake their collective booties on the beach at the media party which offered more stone crabs, freshly rolled cigars, open bar - no charge.
Mr. PAUL HOOLAHAN (Chairman, Football Bowl Association): There's a level of hospitality that's extended, and I think what you're experiencing here today is the top of the line.
GOLDMAN: Paul Hoolahan heads the Football Bowl Association. That's an organization that oversees all the college bowl games. I talked to him yesterday in the lobby of the Key Biscayne Ritz Carlton, where he was staying, after he got back from a lunchtime cruise and a few hours before he would attend a gala dinner party. Elsewhere, though, there were indicators of the hard economic world outside the corporate backed hospitality bubble.
Unidentified Man: This is almost like Oklahoma in there.
GOLDMAN: Last night in downtown Miami, groups of Sooner fans braved an Oklahoma style downpour to take in an outdoor event called the fanfest - food, music, lots of alcohol. It was notable not so much for those who were there...
(Soundbite of interview)
Mr. JACKIE D. WILLIS(ph): Willis, Jackie D. Willis.
GOLDMAN: Jackie D. Willis and Jackie, where are you from?
Mr. WILLIS: Snyder, Oklahoma.
GOLDMAN: But those who weren't.
(Soundbite of interview)
GOLDMAN: Do you happen to know anyone who wasn't able to make the trip just because, you know, times are a little tight?
Mr. WILLIS: Oh yeah, well, I know several people who've cut back. Oh, absolutely, you know, I have some friends who're supposed to go, but they didn't want to spend the money right now.
GOLDMAN: The biggest bowls, like this one in Miami, are selling their tickets, but because of the no shows, even the top games have chunks of empty seats. Attendance at the FedEx Orange Bowl, just a week ago here in Miami, was 16,000 less than the number of people who paid for tickets. TV cameras couldn't avoid showing sections of seats covered by tarps, not the kind of thing corporate sponsors and advertisers like to see, says Paul Hoolahan of the Football Bowl Association.
Mr. HOOLAHAN: You always want to have the perception that it's a hard ticket to get, and it's a sold-out venue. And that always, you know, promotes your marketing in the process.
GOLDMAN: And if no shows at the games weaken your marketing, corporations will think twice about paying up.
Mr. HOOLAHAN: The number of sponsorships that we've been able to obtain in the past are not going to be as free and available as they are, you know, now, as we go forward.
GOLDMAN: With bowls struggling in a down economy, with low TV ratings reported for even the highest profile bowls this season, is it time to bring up the "P" word, again? A playoff might generate more national interest in the college football post-season and more revenue, like college basketballs dramatically popular tournament. Paul Hoolahan and his Football Bowl Association were ready for this kind of rabble-rousing talk.
(Soundbite of interview)
GOLDMAN: Hold on here. Where did that go? I'm not going to say this is propaganda, but this was in the media room.
Mr. HOOLAHAN: Yes.
GOLDMAN: This lovely, glossy thing.
Mr. HOOLAHAN: And we're very proud of this lovely, glossy thing which is our marketing piece.
GOLDMAN: The brochure I waved in front of Hoolahan is entitled, "College Bowl Games Where Everybody Wins." It, indeed, appeared to be a preemptive strike to counter the inevitable talk of playoff that happens at every championship game. The current system of bowl games works, the brochure says, with schools and fans and bowl hosting communities all benefiting, and the college football powers that be are staying on message even with the economic hits, even with President-elect Obama and a bill in Congress calling for a playoff, and even with the Utah attorney general threatening to sue because the University of Utah, the only unbeaten major college team, was left out of tonight's game which will, for some, decide the national champion. Tom Goldman, NPR News, Miami.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The Bush administration, key Arab states, and European powers have reached an agreement at the United Nations to call for an immediate, endurable cease-fire between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza. The Security Council is voting tonight on the resolution hammered out after lengthy negotiations. The deal was reached on the same day that the U.N.'s aid agency in Gaza had to suspend its operations because one of its truck drivers was killed at a time when there was supposed to be a lull in fighting.
BLOCK: So far the death toll among Palestinians has risen well above 700. Three thousand have been wounded. At least 11 Israelis have died. Among Israel's key bombing targets are the tunnels between Gaza and Egypt. NPR's Mike Shuster reports from Jerusalem.
MIKE SHUSTER: No humanitarian aid reached Gaza today even though Israel again halted its military operations for three hours this afternoon. Shells from an Israeli tank hit a truck carrying humanitarian supplies for UNRWA, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. The driver was killed.
Late this afternoon, the agency announced it was suspending its operations. Christopher Gunness, a spokesman for UNRWA, said the truck convoy had been approved by the Israeli military. He wants to know what happened.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER GUNNESS (Spokesman, UNRWA): An aid worker is killed by two Israeli tank shells. Did something go wrong? Was it targeting, as the company believes? Was it deliberately brought under fire? I don't know the answer. It disturbs me deeply that a human being contracted effectively by UNRWA, working in a company that was contracted by UNRWA, has lost his life.
SHUSTER: As a result, UNRWA was unable to deliver any aid to Gaza. This was the second day that Israel stopped its military activities to permit delivery of humanitarian supplies. So far it hasn't worked well and has only frustrated aid workers, like John Ging, an UNRWA official in Gaza.
Mr. JOHN GING (Director of Operations in Gaza, UNRWA): Why three hours? Why not four, five, 24 hours? Why do the military get 21 hours out of 24 for their work, and we are only given three for ours?
SHUSTER: Before the humanitarian break this afternoon, Israel intensified its bombardment, especially in the southern sector of Gaza. The focus last night and today appeared to be the extensive network of tunnels along Gaza's southern border with Egypt, tunnels that had been used to bring weapons into Gaza. This morning, fear spread that the war might spill over to Israel's north after three rockets landed in the Israeli city of Nahariya about eight miles south of the Lebanese border on the Mediterranean.
Israel responded with artillery fire against targets in Lebanon. Initially, many worried that the rockets were launched by Hezbollah which fought a war with Israel in 2006, but Hezbollah denied it launched the rockets. Although Israel's forces have been on alert in the north since the war in Gaza began, the government of Israel did not seem overly concerned by the rockets, said Isaac Herzog, Israel's social welfare minister.
Mr. ISAAC HERZOG (Minister of Welfare and Social Services, Israel): We look at it as a local event, as something which was predicted. And right now, we don't have any specific - we're not making any specific effort in this respect.
SHUSTER: Israel sent representatives to Cairo today to discuss the cease-fire agreement proposed earlier this week by the presidents of Egypt and France. The Israeli government said it welcomed the initiative, but wanted to know more. Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said the proposal needed to address Israel's security concerns seriously before it could sign on and withdraw its troops from Gaza.
Mr. DAN GILLERMAN (Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations): We will not leave until this is a real agreement. And what we will expect is no more missiles, no more terror, no more smuggling. We need international guarantees. We need the Egyptians to cooperate. If all that happens, believe me, we will be very happy to leave Gaza. We had no intention of going in there in the first place.
SHUSTER: Israeli officials are saying they are prepared to expand military operations in Gaza if the diplomacy fails. In a statement released in Damascus today, Hamas said the proposal was too risky for the Palestinian resistance. Hamas' leaders in Gaza are believed to be more open to cease-fire negotiations. Mike Shuster, NPR News, Jerusalem.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
More now on those tunnels in southern Gaza that Mike mentioned along the border with Egypt. Israel says Hamas has used hundreds of tunnels as conduits for weapons as well as other supplies. Reporter Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor got a close-up view of one of those tunnels, and he joins us now. And Dan, this was, what, about a year ago, I guess, you actually crawled partway through one of these tunnels from the Palestinian side.
Mr. DAN MURPHY (Reporter, Christian Science Monitor): Almost exactly a year ago. And again, tunnel is sort of a grand word. I mean, these are really very rudimentary affairs in very sandy soil. They open one up and use it for a few weeks or months. It collapses or perhaps gets bombed by the Israelis, or the Egyptian police decide to stop turning a blind eye to that location, and they make another one. So, that stretch of the border between Egypt and Gaza is riddled. You know, it's like giant ants are constantly tunneling in that whole area.
BLOCK: Oh, well, describe what it was like to drop down into this tunnel?
Mr. MURPHY: Well, it was probably one of the dumber things that I've done because, again, they don't have any supports in these things. It's about two feet high, maybe a little bit shy of that. You're crawling. You're cramped. Every time your head bumps the top of it, there's sand collapsing on your head. So when you hear about the tunnels being destroyed by air power, as we've been hearing in the past few days, that's not a very difficult thing to do. You know, any sort of bomb in those general areas will probably collapse a lot of those tunnels.
BLOCK: And how long are they?
Mr. MURPHY: They run about, I would say, half a mile at maximum. I mean, really, they are not very long under the border, although they do extend both inside Gaza sometimes to come out in houses, although that isn't always the case. And they also extend further into Egypt into a grove of trees or somewhere where it's less obvious that they're doing what they're doing because when these things are open, they're moving tons of goods through these things - cigarettes, maybe weapons, you know, everything from milk to illicit booze to chocolate wafers goes through these things.
BLOCK: You say maybe weapons. But Israel has been quite emphatic that weapons are absolutely coming through shipped from Iran and from Syria.
Mr. MURPHY: Well, I do want to emphasize that I haven't been there in quite some time. It's possible that this has changed. But after Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah, they took all Fatah's weapons which had been supplied by the U.S. more or less in Egypt. So, a lot of the tunnel smugglers at that time were telling me that unfortunately, as far as they're concerned, they're just businessmen. They're capitalists red in tooth and claw, that the gun business wasn't a good business anymore. Gaza quite simply was awash in weapons and they were shifting to other uses. I'm sure that a lot of explosives do move in and out of those tunnels from Egypt that are used to make the rockets that are fired in Israel, and so forth. But I do think that the level of weapons that are coming through those tunnels and the notion that if those tunnels are shut, there would be no weapons in Gaza is at best overstated.
BLOCK: Dan, what did you learn about how these tunnels are dug and where they're actually digging to on the other side, on the Egypt side?
Mr. MURPHY: Well, I mean, they're digging to, I mean, areas that have people all over them. Lots of folks on both sides of that border, just like, you know, any sort of Mexican border town in the U.S., are highly relying on that trait. The tunnel operations themselves are usually gangs of, you know, 10 to 15 guys working. It's hand digging. They have pails on winches to take the sand out as they get deeper and deeper. Usually, I think they can put a tunnel in, I think, in a couple of months or faster. And that's why when anybody talks about, you know, definitively closing the quote, unquote, "tunnels," this isn't like bombing the Holland Tunnel, you know, in New York and then not having it be rebuilt for years. They can reconstruct these things very quickly.
BLOCK: Dan Murphy of the Christian Science Monitor, thanks very much.
Mr. MURPHY: Oh, my pleasure.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
In the Illinois state Capitol today, the most pressing question was did Roland Burris pay to play? Lawmakers are holding a hearing on the possible impeachment of Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, and Roland Burris testified today, since he's the man Blagojevich chose to fill Barack Obama's Senate seat. Blagojevich is accused of trying to sell the seat to the highest bidder. Today, Burris once again denied making any deals with the governor.
Mr. ROLAND BURRIS (Democrat, Illinois Senator-Designate): I would not participate in anybody's quid pro quo. I've been in government for 20 years and never participated in anybody's quid pro quo.
Unidentified Man: All right. I guess the point is would you have gone to the federal authorities if you were aware of that?
Mr. BURRIS: I have no response to that.
Unidentified Man: OK.
NORRIS: U.S. Senate Democrats say they want to hear what Burris has to say today before they decide whether to let him into the Senate. NPR's David Schaper is covering the hearing in Springfield, Illinois. David, what happened?
DAVID SCHAPER: Well, Burris was on the hot seat, so to speak, answering questions about how he became the person appointed to the Senate seat that had been held by Barack Obama by Governor Blagojevich. And he explained that even though he wanted the appointment as soon as he realized Mr. Obama would be the Democratic Party nominee and that he mentioned his interest in the Senate seat last summer, Burris says that he didn't have any contact with anyone close to the governor about the Senate seat until well after the governor's arrest, a couple of weeks after really.
Now, in this next exchange we're going to play for you between Chicago State Representative Mary Flowers and Roland Burris, Burris again emphatically denied that he was asked for anything or that he engaged in any pay-to-play with the governor for the Senate seat.
(Soundbite of hearing)
Mr. BURRIS: I can before this committee state that there was nothing legal - what were the three points?
Assemblywoman MARY FLOWERS (Democrat, Illinois): The three points were legal...
Mr. BURRIS: Legal.
Assemblywoman FLOWERS: Personal.
Mr. BURRIS: Personal.
Assemblywoman FLOWERS: Or political.
Mr. BURRIS: Or political exchange for my appointment to this seat.
Assemblywoman FLOWERS: There was no conversation, none to that effect, no quid pro quo, none of that.
Mr. BURRIS: Absolutely, positively not.
SCHAPER: When it was all over, Burris declared that he thought he passed this test with flying colors and that he legally will be seated as Illinois' junior senator.
NORRIS: David, when asked, though, if he knew about any pay-to-play schemes, whether he would have gone to federal authorities, he said he had no response to that. What should we read into that?
SCHAPER: Well, he says that that's hypothetical because it didn't happen. And legally, he couldn't say because he wouldn't - he couldn't say how it was framed to him. And he had attorneys with him on either side helping him try to deflect that question in particular. But there are some folks who wonder if he would have gone to the authorities had he been proposed with some sort of quid pro quo.
NORRIS: The same House committee also released a draft report today on that question of whether Blagojevich should be impeached. What does that report say?
SCHAPER: Well, the report recommends that the governor should be impeached and the Illinois - full Illinois House is expected to vote tomorrow on the question of whether or not the governor should be impeached. And that is expected to be a yes. The report documents all kinds of ways that the Illinois Legislature, the Illinois House in particular, feels that the governor has abused his authority, his power of office.
And this is not just in regards to the criminal charges that the governor has faced. There has been a very contentious relationship between Governor Blagojevich and Democratic - the Democrats, the same party, in the Illinois House for quite some time. They feel like the governor has circumvented the Legislature in a number of matters and that he's abused his authority. And so it's not just the criminal charges against him. That's just adding to the case, they feel, on why Governor Blagojevich should be impeached.
NORRIS: Thank you, David.
SCHAPER: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: That's NPR's David Schaper speaking to us from the Illinois state Capitol in Springfield.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The practice of scheduling an elective cesarean birth can increase the risk of complications for infants, particularly if the mother has had a cesarean delivery in the past. The study finds that these babies face increased risk of health problems if they're delivered before 39 weeks into the pregnancy. Dr. Catherine Spong is the chief of the pregnancy and perinatology branch at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. She's also the co-author of the study that appears in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Welcome to the program, Dr. Spong.
Dr. CATHERINE SPONG (Chief, Pregnancy and Perinatology Branch, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development): Thank you.
NORRIS: First, let's qualify who participated in this study. These were not women who actually required a C-section at the time of delivery. Is that correct?
Dr. SPONG: That's exactly right. So these are women who had a cesarean delivery in the past and opted to have another cesarean delivery. They had no indication for their cesarean, no obstetrical reason, no medical reason requiring a cesarean birth, and they did not experience labor. So, they're termed elective repeat cesarean deliveries.
The American College of OB/GYN recommends that when you're going to schedule an elective repeat cesarean, you wait until 39 weeks. What we found in this study was that when a baby was born early, at, say, 37 weeks or 38 weeks, by an elective repeat cesarean for no indication, they had a doubling of their risk of an adverse outcome.
NORRIS: And when we talk about adverse outcomes, what exactly are we talking about?
Dr. SPONG: The primary outcome that was studied was a composition of neonatal death as well as other adverse problems such as difficulty breathing, low blood sugar, infections such as newborn sepsis where there is an infection in the baby's blood or an evaluation for sepsis, and admission to the intensive care unit. This occurred in 15 percent of the babies who were born at 37 weeks, 11 percent of those who were born at 38 weeks, eight percent of those who were born at 39 weeks, and 7.3 percent of those who were born at term.
NORRIS: And because anyone that's heading for a cesarean will probably be listening to this conversation very carefully, I just want to be clear, there was only one death in the study, though, in 13,000 deliveries. Is that correct?
Dr. SPONG: Yes. Yes.
NORRIS: Now, these complications, how might they affect the health of the child over the long term?
Dr. SPONG: In the majority, these babies are all going to be healthy. They are from pregnancies that are uncomplicated. This study only evaluated them in the short-term outcome. Most of these outcomes would be easily treated. Some may require longer stays in the intensive care unit. Not only are there implications for the baby because of the risks, but also the interaction between the bonding of the mom and the baby, and the family and the baby and, of course, the costs required for these stays in the intensive care unit.
NORRIS: Doctor, I just want to ask you a question about the timing here. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends that elective C-sections not be performed before 39 weeks. A baby is considered due at 40 weeks. So, why are women and their doctors opting to schedule their surgeries earlier at 38 or even 37 weeks?
Dr. SPONG: We didn't study why these babies were born early. It may be for, as an example, if a mom were to turn 39 weeks on a Sunday and she wanted a specific doctor to deliver her and she wanted to be delivered on that Friday, one might think that it was OK to do that delivery because you're very close to the 39th week. You're two days away from it.
One of the things from this study that we found, though, we looked at those last three days - the 38 and four, 38 and five, and 38 and sixth days of pregnancy - and found that there was actually a 20 percent increase in risk, even delivering that late, that close to the 39th week.
NORRIS: Dr. Spong, thank you very much for your time.
Dr. SPONG: Thank you so much.
NORRIS: Dr. Catherine Spong is co-author of a study on the risks of early elective repeat C-sections that appears in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The leading scorer in college basketball had another big night last night. Stephen Curry scored 29 points, although his team still lost to Duke. Curry is an unlikely star, and he plays for the tiny North Carolina school, Davidson. From member station WFA, Scott Graf has this profile.
SCOTT GRAF: After Davidson's latest win this past weekend, a few dozen people waited near the Wildcats' locker room to get autographs. Among them was eight-year-old Johnson Crujesky(ph). Stephen Curry is his favorite player, but for a different reason than most.
Mr. JOHNSON CRUJESKY: I like him because he goes to our church.
GRAF: In the last 10 months, Curry's fame has landed him on late night talk shows and the covers of numerous magazines. But at Davidson, he's still one of 1,700 students.
Mr. STEPHEN CURRY (Shooting Guard, Davidson Wildcats): I don't do anything differently. I handle myself the same way. And people are kind of surprised when, I guess, they can approach me and I'm still, I guess, a guy you can talk to. I think nothing has changed since the tournament and with the success we've had.
GRAF: During last year's NCAA tournament, Curry's flashy skills made him the darling of March Madness. The 6'3" guard caught fire and led Davidson on one of the most improbable tournament runs ever. The school was one shot away from the final four. The excitement has carried over this season.
(Soundbite of basketball game)
Unidentified Man #1: Here come the Wildcats. Curry stops, pops two.
(Soundbite of audience cheering)
Unidentified Man #2: Basket by Stephen Curry.
Unidentified Man #1: The quickest jump shot release in America, Stephen Curry.
GRAF: Sporting News Magazine just named Curry its college athlete of the year. He's so big, NBA superstar LeBron James comes to his games. Curry has a textbook jump shot and can make just about any play, anywhere on the court. This year, the junior leads the country in scoring despite playing a new position, point guard, one that normally doesn't score a lot of points. The man who recruited him to Davidson, Coach Bob McKillop, says Curry doesn't surprise him much anymore, but there was a time when he did.
Mr. BOB MCKILLOP (Coach, Davidson Wildcats): I was absolutely shocked how good he was. I thought he was very good. I thought he was going to start as a freshman, be a very good player for us. After a month of watching him in individual workouts, I went publicly and told a lot of our alums, this is a special young man.
GRAF: Curry ended up at Davidson because the bigger schools he wanted to play for didn't want him. Curry was scrawny, and other coaches overlooked his athletic lineage. Stephen's mom was a standout volleyball player at Virginia Tech and his father, Dell, spent 16 seasons in the NBA. Though Curry settled for Davidson, it quickly became home.
Mr. CURRY: I knew that when I made that decision that it was the right one to come here, and never had any doubts either when I got here or since then. So, I actually like being on the other side, beating those teams instead of maybe having a different experience, instead of playing for them.
GRAF: Before Curry came along, Davidson was best-known for its academic rigors. There's a joke here that Woodrow Wilson transferred from Davidson to Princeton because Davidson was too tough. College President Tom Ross says Curry is superb in the classroom and the sociology major hasn't changed since he became a star basketball player.
Dr. THOMAS ROSS (President, Davidson College): On campus he's the same kid. You know, this is, I think, in some ways his escape because he comes back here and he's treated by other students as Steph Curry just like he was before last March, which is great for him because I think it gives him a place where he can be himself.
GRAF: Curry will have to decide if he wants to continue being an athlete and a student. His play has caught the attention of the NBA, and soon he'll have to choose whether to stay at Davidson for his senior year or turn pro. For NPR News, I'm Scott Graf in Charlotte.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Today a new report shows that people seeking unemployment benefits reached a 26-year high in the last week of December. The number jumped to 4.61 million. That adds to yesterday's bad news from another job-related report, one from the payroll firm ADP which said private jobs fell by more than had been expected. But according to NPR's Adam Davidson, there is a silver lining in these numbers. And Adam, with all this grim economic news, where is the silver lining?
ADAM DAVIDSON: All right. So, it's a very thin silver lining.
BLOCK: OK.
DAVIDSON: The people newly seeking unemployment benefits, people going to the office and saying, hey, I just lost my job, that number was less than economists expected, less than it had been the previous month, and that month was less than the previous month. So, December was a little bit less than November. November was a little bit less than October, which might make you think, OK, so maybe there's a pickup. If fewer people are losing their jobs each month, maybe this crisis is beginning to heal. Not so fast, though, say the economists.
BLOCK: Yeah, and it seems to directly fly in the face of this - what we said in the introduction here - that unemployment benefits are at a 26-year high.
DAVIDSON: Yeah, here's the thing. If you don't spend a lot of time with the numbers, you sort of think, well, there's a number of people who have jobs and then there's a number of people who don't have jobs, and the government has some way of figuring that out, and then they tell us. But it's a lot more complicated. We have this huge economy with 300 million people, 150 million in the workforce, and the government doesn't really have an easy way to figure it out, so they try a whole bunch of different things.
One thing they do is they tell every company, tell us how many people are on your payroll, that's the non-farm payroll number that we'll get tomorrow. Another way they do it is they call every state and county and say, how many people are looking for unemployment benefits? That's what we got today. They also - the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls people every month. They call 50,000 or so households and say, hey, do you have a job? Are you looking for a job?
And they compile all of this data. And very often the data is completely conflicting. It shows different pictures. And the data also doesn't include everything that you and I might think of as unemployed - for example, discouraged workers. When they call you up on the phone and say, are you out of a job?, they'll also ask you, have you looked for a job in the last year? And if you say, no, they say, you're not unemployed because you're not on the workforce.
BLOCK: And that can account for some of these discrepancies, right? People who've just given up looking for a job.
DAVIDSON: Right. And that causes even more confusion because some people say, wait, that's a really bad sign. If there's a lot of people who are discouraged and so depressed they're not even looking for a job, that tells you the economy is in really bad shape. But then other economists say those are people who can afford to take a year out of the workforce. If they were truly desperate, they'd be looking for a job. All of these ways of analyzing the data, ways of assessing the data, every single one of them has its benefits and its problems.
BLOCK: Well, how did it happen, Adam, that we have all of these different ways to measure these data?
DAVIDSON: What's interesting is before the Great Depression, the government really wasn't that interested in how many people had jobs. They had other concerns, you know, international trade and sort of the overall performance of the economy. During the Great Depression, they started seeing that this was a crucial question. They began to build models to understand the economy. And there was a general agreement, a shift in economic thinking, to think the purpose of an economy is to employ the largest number of people possible. To do that, we need to know how many people have jobs or don't have jobs. But it wasn't until the Truman administration after World War II, that it was an official rule of U.S. government policy that we want to employ the most number of people possible.
BLOCK: And Adam, more unemployment data coming out tomorrow?
DAVIDSON: Yes, we'll get a lot of data tomorrow. We'll know a lot more about the jobs picture. But we do know that economists are guessing that the unemployment rate is going to rise. It's currently at 6.7 percent. It'll rise to seven percent. That's a huge jump for one month if that does turn out to be true. And it's the highest it's been in many, many years. Although, I should note, nowhere near the 25 percent unemployment we saw during the Great Depression.
BLOCK: OK, Adam. Thanks so much.
DAVIDSON: Thank you, Melissa.
BLOCK: That's NPR's Adam Davidson. And there is more on the jobs data at the Planet Money podcast and blog. That's at npr.org/money.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The head of the Tennessee Valley Authority faced tough questions today from a Senate committee. The TVA runs the power plant near Knoxville where billions of gallons of coal ash were spilled last month. The toxic sludge covered 300 hundred acres, destroyed three houses, and polluted a river. NPR's Elizabeth Shogren reports on today's hearing.
SHOGREN: Committee Chairwoman Barbara Boxer started off the hearing with some stern words for TVA President Tom Kilgore.
Senator BARBARA BOXER (Democrat, California): We want to work with you, but you've got to clean up your act there, literally.
SHOGREN: She said TVA knew that its coal ash storage system was faulty after smaller spills in 2003 and 2006. But it opted for a minor fix instead of an expensive overall.
Senator BOXER: It's just like if you have a problem with the roof in your house and you take the cheapest solution, which is put a little patch over there, but you ignore the fact that there were some cracks that seemed to be in the roof that were spreading, and then one day, you know, you have a massive flood.
Mr. TOM KILGORE (President, Tennessee Valley Authority): The most expensive solution wasn't chosen. Obviously that looks bad for us. I would like to get the failure investigation complete and know exactly what the cause was.
Senator BOXER: OK.
SHOGREN: Boxer, a Democrat from California, passed around a jar of sludge from the accident and showed huge photos of the coal ash slide and the damage it did to several local homes. She asked Kilgore why he would not commit to restoring two coves in the Emory River that are covered with coal ash from the spill.
Mr. KILGORE: I didn't want to make a promise on that particular one until I know what the best options are for the environment and for the neighbors.
Senator BOXER: But at this time, you have no plans on the books to restore those coves the way they were before, is my point.
Mr. KILGORE: But I also don't have plans not to, Madame Chair.
Senator BOXER: Well that's not an answer.
Mr. KILGORE: OK.
SHOGREN: A new senator, Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, questioned Kilgore about the height of the coal ash heap. It was 60 feet high before it collapsed.
Senator JEFF MERKLEY (Democrat, Oregon): Is that a factor at any way in this disaster?
Mr. KILGORE: It could be. I will say this is the only facility we have that is like that where it has a ring dock above ground.
SHOGREN: Several senators questioned why the federal government does not regulate coal ash. Even though it's full of heavy metals like arsenic and mercury, the government does not consider it a hazardous waste. Environmentalists think it should. Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy testified at the hearing.
Dr. STEPHEN SMITH (Executive Director, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy): The lack of regulation we have right now is unacceptable, and that is one of the reasons why this accident has happened.
SHOGREN: Smith says the federal government should phase out the use of wet storage systems like the one that failed at the TVA plant. Kilgore said that TVA is considering several options including switching all of its six wet storage systems to dry ones. The senators made it clear that this is just the beginning of the renewed attention they plan to give to TVA to try to make it a much cleaner operation. When Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee questioned Kilgore about what TVA is doing to cut air pollution from its plants, Kilgore said he was focused on the recovery effort.
Senator LAMAR ALEXANDER (Republican, Tennessee): But the recovery brings to question the true costs of using coal to make electricity.
SHOGREN: Alexander says at least in the short term, the country is going to have to keep using coal to make electricity. But a lot must be done to make it cleaner and safer. Elizabeth Shogren, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host: ..TEXT: From NPR News this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Billions of years ago, the first life on Earth emerged from a primordial stew of chemicals. Exactly how that happened is a central question in biology. Now, two researchers have created some molecules that can do remarkably lifelike things, as NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce explains.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE: If you ask biologist Gerald Joyce to describe the fateful day in Earth's history when non-living chemicals first transformed themselves into life, he'll say, oh, yeah, that day.
Dr. GERALD JOYCE (Biologist, Scripps Research Institute): Yeah, it was a late Tuesday afternoon and the sun was a little dimmer in those days. But no, I mean, we don't know exactly how it happened or even nearly exactly how it happened.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says it had to have been roughly four billion years ago. Somehow, a bunch of chemicals came together into something that could copy itself and evolve.
Dr. JOYCE: That's what we and others are interested in because that's sort of, you know, the tipping point between chemistry before and biology after.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He and his colleague Tracey Lincoln work at the Scripps Research Institute in California. They've now come up with some simple molecules that actually can replicate and sort of evolve, at least within the limits of their little test tube world. I asked Joyce if he felt they had synthesized life.
Dr. JOYCE: No. So, you know, we need to be really careful here. This thing is not alive.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Do you think someone could argue that it is alive?
Dr. JOYCE: I think someone could. In fact, I know people who have, you know. But most - and I'm not trying to be cute here - most, including myself, very strongly believe this is not yet, or at least not yet it.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The reason he says it's not life is that it doesn't have the capacity for open-ended evolution. The molecules can't develop any totally new tricks. But what they can do has got scientists pretty excited. The molecules are short bits of RNA. That's a chemical cousin to DNA, and it may have existed before DNA in life's history. The first thing Joyce and Lincoln managed to do was develop a couple of short stretches of RNA. They were actually able to make copies of each other over and over, as long as they were given the right parts to put together. Joyce says he remembers the day when his colleague realized that the molecules really were replicating.
Dr. JOYCE: Well, she just came, you know, running into my office with, you know, with the data in her hands. So, it was one of those kind of, oh boy, moments.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: But even though no one had done this before, he says something that just copies itself over and over again is, well, kind of boring. He wanted to see if the molecules could be a bit more creative. So Joyce and Lincoln developed more self-replicating RNA pairs. They made a dozen of them all slightly different but similar enough that their basic parts could mix and match.
Dr. JOYCE: OK, so now there are lots of replicators. And then we put the whole mix of replicators in a pot at the same time with a whole collection of parts and let them compete to see who can use the parts the most efficiently.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The RNA pairs got busy making exact copies of themselves, but sometimes an RNA molecule would grab a different part and make a new combination, a kind of mutant replicator that then copied itself. And a few of these mutants were really, really good at making copies.
Dr. JOYCE: And then as many generations of growth proceeded, the fit ones dominated the population.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: A report on this experiment was published this week by the journal Science. It's impressed other scientists interested in early life. Andy Ellington is a biochemist at the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. ANDY ELLINGTON (Biochemist, University of Texas): The significance here is the events that Gerry has shown in the test tube is equivalent in many ways to an event that must have happened many billions of years ago.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: An event, he says, that led to us.
Dr. ELLINGTON: We are descendants of a long path that started with some molecules that are doing exactly what Gerry's molecules have done, which is replicate and acquire functionality.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Ellington says people who doubt evolution have argued that simple molecules could never do those things, but this experiment shows they can. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
We've all heard the tales about hardy Minnesotans and their ability to withstand the cold, but a story in the Star Tribune suggests that it's more than just a myth. When 64-year-old Janice Goodger arrived in the emergency room at a Duluth hospital not long ago, doctors said she was the coldest living person they'd ever seen. Goodger's body temperature was in the 70s. Her heart had stopped beating. Her skin was white as snow.
She had slipped on some ice outside her daughter's home around 5 p.m. Then she couldn't get up because of arthritis. Darkness was falling, so was the temperature, and Janice Goodger's family was away. She spent four hours there in the snow sprawled on her back until her daughter returned home and called for an ambulance. And from there, the effort to save Goodger's life is right out of a television medical drama. Dr. Chris Delp led the emergency room team at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth. When Janice Goodger arrived, Dr. Delp says...
Dr. CHRIS DELP (St. Luke's Hospital): She actually did look dead, and by all signs. There was no absolutely no signs of life. She wasn't breathing. She wasn't moving. Her skin was absolutely white. And she literally did look like a corpse.
NORRIS: So when she arrived, her body temperature was around 70, but it continued to drop, even after she arrived at the hospital.
Dr. DELP: Yeah. It did. And we're measuring the important portion which is the core temperature. Now her extremities were even colder. So as that blood starts to circulate through those ice-cold extremities, it chills the blood even further, which drops the core temperature even lower.
NORRIS: Now, you had to work very carefully to try to warm her body. And it sounds like you had to go through a very complicated process to do this. It took quite a lot of time.
Dr. DELP: Yeah, it's a kind of a coordinated effort. It starts in the emergency department where we put a breathing tube into her windpipe and start with just very, very warm air. And at the same time we start warmed IV fluids running into her body as fast as possible. And we actually have heated lights in an emergency department bay that warms her as we're doing those other things. Then eventually we get her up to the operating room where the cardiothoracic surgeon can literally remove all of her blood, re-warm it, and put it back into her body to continue that re-warming process.
NORRIS: So, the newspaper reported that this was literally the coldest living person you'd ever seen, the coldest.
Dr. DELP: I've seen cold people before, but nothing this cold. And I've never heard of anyone being this cold and having their heart stopped for this period of time and recovering without any problems.
NORRIS: How long did it take for you to bring her temperature back to normal and then how long did it take for her to get back to her old self?
Dr. DELP: It took about an hour of chest compressions before her heart was warm enough to be restarted. And once her heart was restarted, we really didn't know what her brain function was going to be. As shocked as I was at seeing her looking like a corpse, it was even more shocking the next morning when I went up to check on her and found her bright and smiling and chatting with me. I fully expected her to still be on some sort of life support, and I certainly didn't expect her to be chatting me up the way she was.
NORRIS: Janice Goodger sounds like a remarkable woman. She sounds like good, old Minnesota stock. I love the way that she described her own hardiness in the paper there. She said that she's just a good old Norwegian.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. DELP: Yeah, there's a lot of legends about how tough these people are, and I think this is a real living evidence that they're not just legends.
NORRIS: Well, Dr. Delp, thank you so much for your time. Good to talk to you.
Dr. DELP: Thank you.
NORRIS: That's Dr. Chris Delp. He's an emergency room doctor at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth, Minnesota.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
U.S. counterterrorism officials tonight say two top al-Qaeda operatives have been killed in Pakistan. One is said to be al-Qaeda's chief of operations in Pakistan, the other his top lieutenant. The two men are identified as natives of Kenya and both have been wanted for years in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Joining us now for more on this breaking story is NPR's Tom Gjelten. Tom, what more can you tell us?
TOM GJELTEN: Well, Michele, first I need to say that it was the Washington Post that broke this story. We have, however, confirmed it on our own. U.S. counterterrorism officials tell me that two men were killed in a strike on an al-Qaeda facility in Pakistan. They've been identified as Fahid Msalam and Sheikh Ahmed Salim Swedan. If, in fact, this report is correct, Michele, it would be a significant strike.
We know something about the histories of these two men because both of them were indicted for those alleged roles in the embassy bombings in East Africa. Msalam, who's said to be 32 years old, is the younger of the two, but U.S. officials say he's been the chief of al-Qaeda operations in Pakistan. In fact, they're said to have been behind the bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September where more than 50 people died. So if true, Michele, this would be a big deal, very significant, in the words of a counterterrorism official.
NORRIS: Now, Tom, if they were wanted in connection with the embassy bombings in Africa all the way back in 1998, they've been pursued for a very long time. Why did this take so long?
GJELTEN: Indeed. In fact, Michele, they've been on the FBI's most wanted list of 32 most wanted terrorists. For each of them, the U.S. government has offered a five million dollar reward, but no information was provided. There was no successful pursuit of them. We don't know how they were killed. Evidently they were - according to U.S. official, they were killed in a strike on a building used for explosives training. U.S. counterterrorism officials won't say more than that. We do know, Michele, that since August, the CIA has been conducting rigorous missile strikes on al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan from unmanned aircraft.
NORRIS: And despite the operation that actually led to the killing, how might the CIA actually put together the pieces to track them down in Pakistan?
GJELTEN: Well, the CIA and the Pentagon have been working very closely, especially since last summer, on coordinated actions that involve, in a couple of cases even ground troops as well as sophisticated surveillance of telephone communications, Internet trafficking, and human sources on the ground who have been able to identify where some of these al-Qaeda operatives are hanging out.
NORRIS: Tom, what is the significance of this taking place in Pakistan?
GJELTEN: Well, one of the things that I think it shows, Michele, is that the targeting of al-Qaeda, the war against al-Qaeda in these border areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan, is still going ahead full-blast. You know, there was some concern that Pakistan was sort of losing its interest in this battle. This, if it's true, this would show that this war against al-Qaeda is going ahead full-blast.
NORRIS: Should we assume that Pakistan authorities may have assisted in some way in this?
GJELTEN: I think inevitably they had to have some role.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Tom Gjelten. Thanks so much, Tom.
GJELTEN: You're welcome, Michele.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
I've been playing around with a new computer game that went on sale this week. It's not a blockbuster like "Halo" or "World of Warcraft." There's no gun, no guitar or microphone. Instead, there's a crayon. "Crayon Physics Deluxe" is a simple, mesmerizing game created by a 25-year-old independent game designer from Finland named Petri Purho.
Here's how it works: You draw shapes on the computer screen. It could be a line or a stair of steps, a square or a hammer, anything you want. Then you use those shapes to propel, roll or otherwise maneuver a crudely drawn red circle over to a crudely drawn yellow star. My six-year-old daughter had a blast with the game, even though we both got snagged as the levels got more intricate. It's easy to show the appeal on a computer screen, and if you're near one, I would encourage you to visit npr.org, where you can see a demo of the game. But it is kind of hard to put into words, as I asked Petri Purho to do when he spoke with me from Helsinki.
Mr. PETRI PURHO (Designer, "Crayon Physics Deluxe"): Well, it's a game where your crayon drawings come to life. You draw stuff, and as soon as you release the mouse button, the laws of physics are applied to your drawing. So, gravity kicks in, and the thing starts falling down until it hits something according to the laws of physics.
BLOCK: You know, if I think of the world of video and computer games - and I probably don't think about that world very often, but when I do - I'm thinking about really elaborate, high-production-values stuff that, you know, costs a lot of money to develop, probably costs a lot of money to buy. This seems like a really different model to me.
Mr. PURHO: Doing games that look like they were drawn by five-year-olds?
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: Your words, not mine.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PURHO: Yeah. Well, actually, it's the words of my mother.
BLOCK: I see.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. PURHO: When I showed her the game, she was really disappointed because she thought it was this elaborate fantasy game, and then she told me that it looked like something that was made by a five-year-old.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: But it does seem like you're sort of standing that tradition on its end of it, no?
Mr. PURHO: Yeah, and I don't think I'm the only one. There's been a lot of really small games that have come out in the recent years, like "World of Goo" and "Braid" and "Aquaria," and these are small games made by using one or two people.
BLOCK: How long did this take to create, "Crayon Physics Deluxe"?
Mr. PURHO: The original idea was, this was a game that I'd do during my summer holiday from school and that failed, so I took six months break from school. And it wasn't done after that, so I had to take another six months break from school, and then another one. So, it's now taken me about a year and eight months.
BLOCK: I gather this all started with a project that you're involved with where you have to create a game in less than a week around a single simple theme. What's the appeal of that kind of game-making?
Mr. PURHO: Well, the idea of that experiment was to try to find out new game mechanics. So, instead of, like, doing all the same stuff that has been done up to now, the idea was to find awesome game mechanics that could actually be awesome games.
BLOCK: And to do it fast.
Mr. PURHO: Yeah. Well, the idea of doing it fast is so that you don't end up spending too much time working on a single idea. If you spend too much time working on something, then you cannot - it becomes too precious for you so you cannot actually try out wacky ideas.
BLOCK: Well, I have the game open here, and I'm going to just try it here.
(Soundbite of music)
BLOCK: This is the - the screen shows what looks like a piece of brown paper folded up. The red circle's in the upper left-hand corner. The yellow star's on a box in the lower right. And if I just draw a sort of sloping line connecting them and touch the circle - there it goes. It's rolling down this little hill. It's touched the star, and I've earned, I guess, a point. Now, that's a really easy one. They do get much more complicated.
Mr. PURHO: Yeah, they do. You're going to start doing really weird stuff with the game once you get a hold of all the mechanisms, So, you can start drawing - well, catapults are pretty obvious. You can build up ramps and cars and actually end up doing all this crazy and wacky solutions to the puzzles.
BLOCK: What was the inspiration for this? How did you come up with the idea?
Mr. PURHO: Well, there's this children's story called "Harold and the Purple Crayon."
BLOCK: Sure.
Mr. PURHO: By Crockett Johnson.
BLOCK: Yeah.
Mr. PURHO: And it's this story about this kid who has this magical crayon, and anything he draws becomes real. And he has this great adventure where he draws everything.
BLOCK: Mr. Purho, thanks so much for talking with us. It's been fun playing your computer game.
Mr. PURHO: Thank you.
BLOCK: Petri Purho is the creator of "Crayon Physics Deluxe." He joined us from Helsinki.
(Soundbite of music)
MICHELE NORRIS, 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.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The war in Afghanistan is the first war in U.S. history where no soldiers have been listed missing-in-action. One reason, the military insists on bringing back everyone, and they have the search-and-rescue teams to do it. NPR's Pentagon correspondent, Tom Bowman, has this report of a single dangerous mission to recover a fallen soldier.
TOM BOWMAN: It happened just over a year ago. Captain Ed Blanchet and his helicopter crew were sitting down to dinner at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
Captain ED BLANCHET (U.S. Air Force, Afghanistan): We were eating at the dining hall when they called us on the radio. And we stopped eating and just ran.
BOWMAN: Ran to their helicopters, specially designed Black Hawks called Pave Hawks. They were loaded up with sophisticated navigation gear, infrared systems that can peer into pitch black night, hoists capable of lifting 600 pounds. Within minutes, they were flying north through the rugged peaks of northeast Afghanistan. Flight reporters capturing the radio chatter.
(Soundbite of radio chatter)
BOWMAN: The two helicopters flew in lights-out to avoid being spotted by the enemy. Two hours later, they arrived at the ravine where American soldiers had clashed with Taliban fighters. The two helicopters circled. Aboard Blanchet's helicopter, Master Sergeant Tom Ringheimer scanned the ground through his night-vision goggles.
Master Sergeant TOM RINGHEIMER (U.S. Air Force, Afghanistan): There wasn't a lot of moonlight, so it was really, really dark. You couldn't see a lot of shadows. It was just a lot of black spots. You just kind of pick the spots in between it.
(Soundbite of radio chatter)
BOWMAN: Hundreds of feet down in the ravine, they spotted a human form on a ledge surrounded by emergency glow sticks. The helicopters dropped off four rescuers high up in the valley. The men rappelled with ropes down to where the soldier lay. Blanchet says they didn't have much time.
Capt. BLANCHET: We wanted to do this before the sun came up, because a hovering helicopter is an easy target during the daytime.
BOWMAN: They could see Taliban campfires not too far away. The soldier had fallen into the ravine after a skirmish with Taliban forces. His unit was ambushed after a meeting with tribal leaders. Then things got complicated for the rescue team. The men on the ledge couldn't climb out of the ravine with the dead soldier. They came to recover one soldier; now, the crew had to pull out the rescuers as well.
Capt. BLANCHET: They were basically trapped. They couldn't get back out of there; they couldn't get back up the terrain. So, that's when it was necessary for us to have to go in and then try to hoist them out.
BOWMAN: The two helicopters worked as a team. Captain Blanchet pulled up. The second helicopter flew into the narrow space. The ravine was shaped like a wedge, and its walls narrowed toward the valley floor. The crew dumped fuel to make the helicopter lighter and easier to maneuver. Master Sergeant James Karmann was a flight engineer on that second helicopter. He said it was like parallel parking; on three sides were sheer rock faces.
Master Sergeant JAMES KARMANN (U.S. Air Force, Afghanistan): We had about 10 feet on the front and the right side and the tail of the aircraft.
BOWMAN: Karmann leaned out the door, trying to position the hoist to lower a litter to the rescuers below. That's when the wind picked up.
Master Sgt. KARMANN: It started pushing the aircraft backwards. And we managed to stop the aircraft just with a matter of inches between our tail rotor and the rocks there.
BOWMAN: The helicopter pulled away. It hovered nearby to provide cover for the second helicopter.
(Soundbite of radio chatter)
BOWMAN: Then it was Captain Blanchet's turn again. The 30-year-old pilot from Florida with six years in the cockpit angled his helicopter toward that wedge of rock. He tried something new.
Capt. BLANCHET: We actually had to turn the helicopter around and back it in. It was the only way to fit it in.
BOWMAN: So, that's how you eventually got to him?
Capt. BLANCHET: Yes, we actually backed the helicopter kind of around the corners of the cliff.
BOWMAN: In that position, the helicopter began to descend lower, between those narrow walls, so the cable could reach the men on the ledge.
Master Sgt. RINGHEIMER: It was a shale. It was really loose shale rock, so their footing was really precarious. So, we had to be really careful not to blow those guys off the rocks.
BOWMAN: Sergeant Ringheimer moved to the other side of the helicopter to help with the cable. That's when he got his first look at the rock wall, 10 feet away. He remembers just one thought crossed his mind.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Master Sgt. RINGHEIMER: We better not screw up. Otherwise, it'll be a bad day for everybody.
BOWMAN: It took 45 minutes and several attempts, but the crew pulled the rescuers and the dead soldier into the helicopter.
(Soundbite of radio chatter)
Capt. BLANCHET: (Unintelligible) we will be able to extract our entire team with one American hero.
(Soundbite of beep)
BOWMAN: With little time to spare, says Captain Blanchet.
Capt. BLANCHET: We had just enough gas to try to get them out that one last time before the sun came up.
BOWMAN: The troop carefully placed the fallen soldier in the back of the helicopter for the long flight back to Bagram Airbase.
Capt. BLANCHET: During the flight, it's very quiet. During that flight as you start to think, and you really start to identify and relate with that soldier.
BOWMAN: That soldier's name was Sergeant Jeffrey Mersman. He was just 23 years old and on his fourth combat tour. He left behind a wife and four stepchildren. His father, Robert Mersman, says he never heard the full story of the recovery until now.
Mr. ROBERT MERSMAN: I don't know how to say it. I guess words can't describe the thanks I have for them for doing that, for retrieving him.
BOWMAN: On that night, more than a year ago, the helicopter crew returned to that same dining hall where they'd gotten the emergency call six hours before. They ordered meals and ate in silence. Tom Bowman, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In less than two weeks, Barack Obama will be sworn in as the next president of the United States. All Things Considered has commissioned some of the country's finest poets to commemorate the moment in verse. Starting us off today is Calvin Trillin.
Mr. CALVIN TRILLIN (Author; "Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme"): (Reciting) Inauguration is the day The nation's hopes go on display -When through one man we all convey Our dream that things will go our way. His resume we can't gainsay. In politics, it's clear, his play Is worthy of the NBA. He proved that in the recent fray, Though he had help from Tina Fey. And now this solemn matinee Awards his country's top bouquet. First, Pastor Warren's going to pray For everyone who isn't gay. Obama then will stand and say, I take this oath that I'll obey The statutes of the U.S.A. In his address, he might portray The dragons he intends to slay: How Wall Street's sky will turn from grey To blue as blues are chased away; How workers will collect good pay For turning out a Chevrolet; How in Iraq we'll end our stay With shortest possible delay; How pay-to-play will be passe So, K Street suits will not hold sway. Yes, how we'll triumph, come what may, And rise up like a good souffle 'Til life's just like a cabaret. Obamacons will shout hooray And toast their man with chardonnay As commentators all make hay, Comparing him to JFK. The Beltway types, those still blase, Might think that soon, with some dismay, We'll wonder if his feet are clay. But that's all for another day.
BLOCK: Calvin Trillin is also the author of "Deciding the Next Decider: The 2008 Presidential Race in Rhyme." This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Father Richard John Neuhaus, a well-known conservative Catholic theologian, has died. He was a writer and founder of the journal First Things. NPR's Lynn Neary has this remembrance.
LYNN NEARY: Father Richard John Neuhaus seemed to go through more change that most. Born in Canada, he spent most of his life in the United States. A Lutheran minister, he converted to Catholicism and was ordained into the priesthood. An anti-war and civil-rights activist in the '60s, he later became known as a conservative theologian. But Joseph Bottum, the current editor of First Things, says Father Neuhaus didn't necessarily view is own life as others did.
Mr. JOSEPH BOTTUM (Editor, First Things): He was a radical in the 1960s in some ways. And later, of course, he was the confidante of George W. Bush, and that looks like a change. But the internal narrative of his autobiography, as he understood himself, he didn't perceive the change to be that great.
NEARY: Bottum says Neuhaus felt it was liberalism that changed, not him. He began moving away from the left because he was a firm anti-communist and a staunch opponent of abortion.
Mr. BOTTUM: He said it ought to be those heartless Republicans who want to kill babies, and it ought to be we on the left who are expanding the community of care to protect the unborn.
NEARY: George Weigel, a close friend and colleague, said the suggestion that the pro-life movement should be an extension of the civil-rights movement is one of the two big ideas Father Neuhaus will be remembered for. The other was his promotion of the role of religion in public life. In his 1984 book, "The Naked Public Square," Father Neuhaus argued that it was a mistake to drive religion from public discourse. In so doing, says Weigel, he reignited a still ongoing conversation about religion and politics. Weigel says Father Neuhaus was motivated by his devotion to democracy.
Mr. GEORGE WEIGEL (Senior Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center): Because he was a genuine Democrat with a small D, and he recognized that 90 percent of the American people affirm a belief in the God of the Bible, and that if you tell those people that they can't bring their most deeply held convictions into the deliberation on how we ought to live together, then you have done a profoundly undemocratic thing.
NEARY: Neuhaus became a Catholic in 1990 and was ordained a year later. But Weigel believes his Lutheran background helped him with one of his other great passions: trying to bridge the gap between Evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics.
Mr. WEIGEL: And Evangelicals understood that he understood their language and their issues. By the same token, I think he displayed Catholicism to Evangelicals in a way that Evangelicals could really wrap their heads around.
NEARY: In announcing his death, the magazine First Things reprinted an article Father Neuhaus wrote about dying. In it, he says, it is death in the singular that shatters all we know about death. And indeed, says Joseph Bottum, those who knew him well will be shattered by the death of this singular man.
Mr. BOTTUM: The whole fabric of life has been torn, and it can't be repaired until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.
NEARY: Father Richard John Neuhaus died yesterday. He was 72 years old. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: A videogame that looks simple but illustrates the basic laws of the universe; that's coming up on 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. The U.S. economy lost another half million jobs in December, and the nation's unemployment rate jumped from 6.8 to 7.2 percent. That's according to a grim report issued this morning by the Labor Department. It said businesses cut 2.6 million jobs in 2008. Most of those jobs disappeared over the past few months, which suggest that the downturn in the labor market is worsening. NPR's Jim Zarroli reports.
JIM ZARROLI: As 2008 drew to a close, the country was hemorrhaging jobs at a rate not seen since 1945, when the wartime economy was sputtering to a finish. Nearly every sector of the economy lost jobs, except for healthcare and education, and even there the growth was anemic. For President-elect Obama, the report was another sobering reminder that his first term in office is likely to be dominated by the kind of economic crisis not seen in many years. He spoke to reporters today.
(Soundbite of speech)
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: Clearly, the situation is dire. It is deteriorating, and it demands urgent and immediate action.
ZARROLI: The numbers made clear how much the labor market has deteriorated in recent months. Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight, says for much of last year, the economy was losing jobs, but there were pockets of strength like the service sector. Things grew much worse, he says, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
Dr. NARIMAN BEHRAVESH (Chief Economist, Global Insight): It really does look like both the U.S. economy and the jobs market sort of fell off a cliff starting in September sometime.
ZARROLI: The collapse of Lehman shattered investor confidence in the financial markets and made the credit crunch a lot worse. Companies could no longer borrow the money they needed to operate. Consumer spending fell. And Campbell Harvey, professor of finance at Duke University, says companies responded by shedding jobs at a faster rate.
Dr. CAMPBELL R. HARVEY (Finance, Duke University): The acceleration is a direct result of corporations going into survival mode, which means they're going to slash employment, they're going to slash capital spending, and whether a discretionary spending will also be slashed.
ZARROLI: And there is still slashing, Harvey says. Like a lot of economists, he says this is no ordinary recession, and he believes it will take a while to play itself out.
Dr. HARVEY: Usually, you can see a few pieces of information that suggest the light at the end of the tunnel. Right now, all you see is evidence of deceleration.
ZARROLI: For instance, today's report showed a drop in the length of the average work week, which fell to its lowest level since the government began keeping records in 1964. Nariman Behravesh notes that companies will often reduce their employees' hours before laying them off altogether.
Dr. BEHRAVESH: A decline in the work week is actually an early warning of much more trouble to come in the sense that a lot of businesses will cut back hours first and then cut back jobs.
ZARROLI: So, when the average work week drops, Behravesh says, it's a sign that the pace of layoffs could increase. Behravesh says he's not sure what it would take to stop the erosion of U.S. of payrolls. He notes that if Congress and the new administration enact a big, bold stimulus plan and do it quickly, the job market could begin to turn around by the end of 2009. But there are already signs of disagreement between Congress and the new administration over the stimulus package. Behravesh says, if they get bogged down in political fighting, then fixing the economy will take a lot longer. And in that case, the unemployment rate could keep climbing for the foreseeable future. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
It may not seem like it, but there are companies out there doing everything possible to avoid layoffs. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports now on how some companies are going to great lengths to hang on to their workers.
YUKI NOGUCHI: The last year wasn't stellar for airlines. Many made bad bets on fuel, plus people cut back in general on travel. So, it wasn't surprising that carriers like United and American laid workers off. But Southwest did not and says it will not.
Mr. JEFF LAMB (Vice President, Human Resources, Southwest Airlines): There are a number of options that you can choose before you do that.
NOGUCHI: Jeff Lamb is vice president of human relations for Southwest. He says between early retirement, hiring freezes and retraining employees for new positions, the airline has never had to lay people off.
Mr. LAMB: We haven't done it in 37 years...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. LAMB: So, it's kind of - the precedent certainly is, is that we're not going to use that as a means to cut costs.
NOGUCHI: Employees are generally an organization's largest expense. So, normally companies facing a dramatic slowdown have little choice but to crunch the numbers and decide how many positions have to go. According to a survey by consulting firm Watson Wyatt, 40 percent of companies have already laid off workers; these include Lehman Brothers, Alcoa, Dell and Circuit City. Another 23 percent of employers say they plan layoffs in the next year. Even companies that merge do so in part to save money on overhead, which includes people as well as their desks and office space, but in a handful of cases, companies decide it's a priority to avoid layoffs. So, they find creative solutions around the pink slip. Dick Couch is chief executive of a company called Hypertherm that makes metal-cutting machines. His company has kept its no-layoff promise for 40 years.
Mr. DICK COUCH (Founder and President, Hypertherm, Inc.): I started the policy for a bunch of reasons, but the primary one was fairness.
NOGUCHI: He says, Wall Street culture conditions investors to expect profits to increase every quarter with a kind of consistency that he says doesn't actually exist in the real world. Hypertherm is private, so it's easier to resist these pressures. So, in the early 1980s when business declined, Hypertherm had the flexibility to go to a four-day work week with reduced salaries.
Mr. COUCH: Then you're essentially saying to people, look, we're all going to share in the pain of this downturn together.
Mr. BILL COLEMAN (Chief Compensation Officer, Salary.com): There definitely seems to be more of a buzz around avoiding layoffs or not having layoffs.
NOGUCHI: That's Bill Coleman; he's chief compensation officer for Salary.com, a site that help companies track pay and performance reviews. He says, when they can, companies increasingly try things like forced shutdowns over the holidays, which can be more popular with employees.
Mr. COLEMAN: You know, a week of unpaid vacation versus a layoff...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. COLEMAN: You know, what would you go for?
NOGUCHI: Laurie Bienstock is practice director for Watson Wyatt. Bienstock says avoiding layoffs sounds very humane, but it's not done out of pure corporate altruism either. It can save money because hiring new talent is three time more expensive than retaining veterans, and as baby boomers retire, an existing workforce becomes more valuable. Bienstock says sustaining the payroll even when it's painful has other benefits, too, like continuity with customer service.
Ms. LAURIE BIENSTOCK (Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Inc.): This is part of their looking at, how can we protect our employment brand as well as our consumer brand?
NOGUCHI: Melanie Holmes is vice president for Manpower, a temp agency that's seen a huge downturn in its business, and along with it has come some noticeable cuts.
Ms. MELANIE HOLMES (Vice President, World of Work Solutions, Manpower North America, Inc.): Things like travel, we don't cater internal meetings anymore; like, we don't order coffee and buns and things like that for internal meetings. If we have a meeting that goes over lunch, people go down to the cafeteria and get their own.
NOGUCHI: And all of these changes are just fine with Holmes. Even though Manpower had to do a few layoffs, it was a very small number of their 33,000-person workforce.
Ms. HOLMES: And I'm thankful every day that my badge works when I swing it by the door to come in this building.
NOGUCHI: If they were to freeze your 401k plan or say no raise for 2009, would you be OK with that?
Ms. HOLMES: Absolutely, positively, there is no question about it, because I've got a job.
NOGUCHI: And at a time when 7.2 percent of the employable population can't say that, that's payment enough. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In Gaza, the International Committee of the Red Cross is scaling back its rescue work, after a convoy came under fire yesterday at an Israeli checkpoint. The gunfire narrowly missed the driver of a Red Cross truck. The Red Cross says the trip had been cleared in advance with the Israeli army. The convoy of ambulances carrying intensive care patients from Gaza to Egypt had to turn back.
On Wednesday, the Red Cross reached a neighborhood of demolished homes south of Gaza City. There, rescue workers found 16 bodies, mostly women and children, and they found survivors, including children next to their dead mothers. They were too weak to stand on their own. The wounded were taken by donkey cart to ambulances half a mile away. The Red Cross says it had requested safe passage for ambulances to get to the area, but had been denied permission for four days. Katharina Ritz is head of mission for the Red Cross in Jerusalem. I asked her what sorts of injuries the rescue teams in Gaza are treating.
Ms. KATHARINA RITZ (Head of Jerusalem Mission, International Committee of the Red Cross): What we can see is that most of the injured coming in, especially the civilians, they have mainly blast and burn injuries. So, we can see many lower-limb amputation and chest, head traumas, many children.
BLOCK: Your head of delegation there called this incident shocking, and the Red Cross issued a statement saying Israel had failed to meet its obligation under international humanitarian law to care for and evacuate the wounded. How unusual is it for the Red Cross to make a statement like that?
Ms. RITZ: It's very unusual. I think this expresses as well a little bit the scenes we have found there. We do still say to the Israeli army, well, look, there are still families in this neighborhood; they need assistance until we can get to them; the wounded should be looked after; they should be evacuated. It doesn't necessarily need to be a humanitarian organization. The army should at least give them the water, the food and the medical treatment until we can move in and evacuate the wounded.
BLOCK: When the Red Cross said that Israel's conduct here was unacceptable, does that still apply to the position of the Israeli military now, or have things improved?
Ms. RITZ: Listen, let's - I mean, I will be very honest. We didn't find this scene again. Let's hope that this is not something which hopefully have happened in other areas. I think we say we should leave this behind us, and the Israeli army has called us as well to help them to bring in food and water. But you know, there is fighting on the ground, and then we do whatever we can, and in the meantime, they should assist the people. And when we get in, we will assist them and we will evacuate them.
BLOCK: There is a three-hour suspension of fighting every day. How much are you able to do in that three-hour window?
Ms. RITZ: Yesterday, before it was actually quite successful. And I think it was successful because, for the first 10 days, I think it was - we were practically not able to achieve anything. We couldn't bring in ambulances. Whenever we got an approval by the army, we run into fighting and we had to abort the ambulance mission. And you know, the situation changed since you have ground forces inside Gaza. During the air raid, it's the big risk to be a collateral damage, but not really the target.
Now, we have soldiers inside the Gaza Strip. We have checkpoints. There is fighting going on, and whatever the soldier doesn't know is coming is potentially an enemy, and the same thing probably for the Palestinian side too. On the other hand, we have to stress we are an organization working in war. We have emblems; we have flags. We still think that if we arrive with such a marked convoy stopping in front of a checkpoint, approaching very slowly, that, OK, they just shouldn't shoot in front, in the windshield and in the truck itself. We have to go back to the drawing book with the army and say, OK, this happened. Now what? How can we work? And we need to work.
BLOCK: We've been talking with Katharina Ritz, head of mission for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem. Ms. Ritz, thanks very much for talking with us.
Ms. RITZ: Thanks to you, too.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. President-elect Barack Obama completed his national security lineup today. He named former Congressman Leon Panetta to head the CIA and retired Admiral Dennis Blair to be the new director of national intelligence. The CIA selection has not gone smoothly for the Obama team, and it raises a question; is it wise for a new president with limited experience in foreign affairs to pick a CIA chief with almost no experience in the field of intelligence? NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.
TOM GJELTEN: Mr. Obama's selection of Leon Panetta to direct the CIA came only after weeks of indecision. During his presidential campaign, he had turned to a CIA veteran John Brennan for intelligence advice, and Brennan appeared for a time to be the Obama choice to lead the CIA. But Brennan soon got into trouble because of statements he had made defending controversial CIA interrogation and detention policies. He then withdrew his name from consideration. The selection this week of Leon Panetta for the CIA position was also controversial, however, because of his lack of intelligence experience. But he's been in public life for about 40 years, and President-elect Obama today said the CIA, under Panetta's leadership, would have strong White House backing.
(Soundbite of speech)
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: In Leon Panetta, the agency will have a director who has my complete trust and substantial clout. He will be a strong manager and a strong advocate for the CIA. He knows how to focus resources where they are needed, and he has a proven track record of building consensus and working on a bipartisan basis with Congress.
GJELTEN: Members of Congress from both parties have been angered by the CIA's wiretapping, secret prison and interrogation controversies and what they see as its lack of accountability. Leon Panetta could rebuild its reputation. As for his lack of experience, the Obama team has already said the Deputy CIA Director Stephen Kappes and several other top CIA officers will stay on ensuring continuity. But is this really a reform scenario, an inexperienced outsider on top with insiders running the ship? Amy Zegart, an intelligence expert at UCLA, says the situation can be seen in two ways.
Dr. AMY ZEGART (U.S. Foreign Policy and Public Management, University of California, Los Angeles): If you're an optimist, what you might argue is that with Panetta at the helm, CIA now has the confidence of the president to be taken more seriously in policymaking decisions, and that's good for the agency, and it's good for national security generally. If you're a pessimist, what you see is Panetta's kind of a figurehead, and careerists inside the agency know that they can outlast him and he won't be able to actually forge reform agenda, whatever that might be, inside the building.
GJELTEN: Mr. Obama says he'll insist that his new intelligence team avoid anything that looks like torture and implement policies consistent with U.S. values. But Art Brown, a retired CIA veteran and former Asia division chief in the Clandestine Service, says Barack Obama or Leon Panetta could outlaw torture at the stroke of a pen. The real challenge, he says, is improving CIA performance, and he's not sure what Panetta will set out to accomplish there.
Mr. ART BROWN (Former National Intelligence Officer, East Asia): The torture argument goes away in 30 minutes. What does Leon Panetta do on day two if he - if he's being sent out there to stop torture, to make sure that the president's concerns over wiretap are followed, he can do that on day one. What does he do on the second day?
GJELTEN: In discussing his agenda this week, Mr. Obama said he wanted his advisers to give him unvarnished intelligence: not what they think the president wants to hear, but what they think he needs to hear to make critical security decisions. CIA veteran Art Brown is still wondering what that means.
Mr. BROWN: Every new president that comes in has that discussion, and every new CIA director says, yes, sir, I'll be telling you the unvarnished truth. What's going to be tricky now is to figure out what is it that he, quote/unquote, "needs to hear."
GJELTEN: What will Leon Panetta be able to tell a president about the situation in Pakistan, for example, where he may have to choose between supporting a weak government or directing the CIA to undertake more unilateral assassination missions? Mr. Obama did announce another intelligence appointment today. John Brennan won't be the CIA director, but he will be the president's top counterterrorism adviser and, therefore, someone who can help both Mr. Obama and Leon Panetta work through thorny issues. Still, Leon Panetta faces tough challenges. The CIA has had directors come in from outside the intelligence world before - George H. W. Bush, for example - but Amy Zegart notes that this was during the Cold War period, when the United States was focused on a predictable threat, Soviet communism, as opposed to al-Qaeda terrorism.
Dr. ZEGART: This is a much faster-paced environment. It's a much more difficult threat. It's a much more complex threat environment. And I think it's going to be unbelievably difficult for Panetta to deal quickly with this kind of threat and to get up to speed coming in from the outside.
GJELTEN: Still, the clear inclination in Washington is to give Leon Panetta an opportunity to prove himself at the CIA. After all his years in public service, he has many friends here, and Republicans and Democrats alike today praised his selection. Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Leaders of the Mormon faith took an unusual step this week. They invited a few national reporters to join them for a chat and for a tour of a new Mormon Temple opening soon in a Salt Lake City suburb. The Mormon leaders are alarmed by two years of negative publicity. It stemmed in part from Mitt Romney's presidential bid and from Mormon support of the measure that banned gay marriage in California. They also want to challenge their reputation for secrecy. NPR's Howard Berkes was among the invited reporters.
HOWARD BERKES: We began with dinner 10 stories high in a meeting room in a Mormon Church office building in Salt Lake City, with a picture-window nighttime view of the State Capitol Building. It's a dead ringer for the nation's capital, and it was the mix of politics and faith that brought us together.
Unidentified Man #1: Plates are hot, so don't burn yourself.
Unidentified Man #2: Where do you feel the churches and the media and...
BERKES: Eating the teriyaki chicken was a challenge for the two Mormon leaders at the table, with four reporters there asking questions. But Russell Ballard and Quentin Cook patiently responded. They're two of the 12 apostles in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and they're responsible for the Mormon image, which they've tried to address with reporters and editors in the last two years.
Mr. QUENTIN COOK (Apostle, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): We were astounded by people saying, you're secret, we don't know what's going on, and that they felt like that there was a level of secrecy which we just don't think exists.
BERKES: The notion of secrecy originates with Mormon temples. Don't confuse them with the 18,000 chapels Mormons pray in every Sunday; they're open to all. But the 129 temples around the world are reserved for the faith's most sacred practices, and only worthy Mormons can enter after they've been dedicated to religious use. New temples open for public tours before dedication. The newest temple is in the Salt Lake City suburb of Draper.
Mr. RUSSELL BALLARD (Apostle, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): When a temple is dedicated, it's then dedicated to the work of the Lord. It becomes a house of the Lord.
BERKES: Ballard stands in the lobby of the new temple. It, and the rest of the building, is ornate with crystal chandeliers, limestone floors, stained glass windows and cabinets, paneling and doors cut from Central African wood. Images are posted at npr.org. Ballard and Cook want to show that the temple is not secret but sacred.
Mr. BALLARD: We're in the baptistery, and what we're looking at is a baptismal font that sits on the back of 12 oxen. The Savior said that everybody had to be baptized to enter into the kingdom of heaven. The purpose of this is to provide proxy baptisms for those who are deceased.
BERKES: This sacred practice is controversial. It first stems from the Mormon belief that Christianity went astray after Christ and that the Mormon faith is Christianity restored. Baptisms since essentially didn't count. So, Mormons are out to baptize those who didn't have these restored baptisms, and that has included deceased presidents, scientists, entertainers and victims of the Holocaust. Some see this as insulting, especially for those who died for their faith. But Mormons believe the dead can reject the attempt.
Mr. COOK: This baptism is not binding on them unless they accept it. But they are given the opportunity, so we consider this a great effort of love to accomplish our father in heaven's plan for his children that are deceased.
BERKES: We head to another sacred room, which also facilitates a fundamental Mormon practice.
Mr. BALLARD: We're in a sealing room, where husbands are sealed - or married - to their wife and the wives to their husbands for time and for all eternity.
BERKES: That sense of eternity is symbolized by two massive mirrors on opposite walls. Couples look in them and see cascading reflections that seem infinite. Eternal marriage for Mormons always involves a man and a woman. That's God's intention, Ballard says. It's the only way to bring children into this world from what Mormons believe is a pre-life existence, and it's why Mormon doctrine conflicts with gay marriage. Ballard answers a political question: Is there room in Mormon theology for gay partners, shared health and death benefits and protection from discrimination?
Mr. BALLARD: There is some very careful study, very careful evaluation being made as to what would be appropriate and what isn't, doctrinally. But if it interferes with the basic, fundamental principle of marriage being between man and a woman, doctrinally we're locked in.
BERKES: There is one more room we visit. It's too sacred, I'm told, for questions inside. So, we stand outside and peer in. It's called the Celestial Room, and it represents a Mormon impression of the glory of heaven. Bright and three stories high, it has the biggest chandelier and stained glass windows, along with plush couches and chairs for contemplation. Ballard's already planning another tour when the next temple is ready later this year.
Mr. BALLARD: We want to have the facts come from us and not perceived facts. That's what's driving this; we want to be on the front end of the conversation about what the church is.
BERKES: Ballard admits that some of what takes place in the temple is too sacred to share, and he won't say how much this or any other temple cost. There are still secrets. Howard Berkes, NPR News, Salt Lake City.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In New Orleans, a rebirth.
(Soundbite of song "Down to New Orleans")
THE PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND: (Singing) Let's fly down or drive down To New Orleans. That city, so pretty, Historic scene...
BLOCK: The Preservation Hall Jazz Band helped reopen the Mahalia Jackson Theater last night. The 2100-seat venue is the home of the city's symphony, ballet and opera.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The building was shuttered after Hurricane Katrina. It lost its roof and was flooded by 14 feet of water. The electrical wiring was wrecked; the carpeting and upholstery covered in mud and mold. More than three years and $27 million later, it's a lift for a community still struggling.
Ms. JUDY JEWEL (Resident, Slidell, Louisiana): I think it's kind of a feel good-thing for the city in New Orleans.
NORRIS: Judy Jewel(ph) of Slidell first attended the theater after it originally opened 35 years ago. She says it looks about the same as it did back then.
BLOCK: Jewel was among the people admiring the new Mardi Gras-inspired interior, gold stage curtain and purple seats. What they couldn't see? New electrical wiring and plumbing and new hydraulics beneath the stage. Rosario Beasley(ph) moved to New Orleans after Katrina. She's pleased to see the restoration of the theater and its surrounding Louis Armstrong Park.
Ms. ROSARIO BEASLEY (Resident, New Orleans, Louisiana): When we came here, it was just really dirty and you know, you can tell the storm had torn it up. And we would, you know, walk over there on the other side and listen to the bands every other Sunday. So, to see this renovation take place, it just makes us know that New Orleans is thriving and back. And I love that. I love that.
NORRIS: New Orleans has yet to draw back all of its tourist trade, and officials hope the Mahalia Jackson Theater as a big venue might just help.
(Soundbite of song "Down by the Riverside")
THE PRESERVATION HALL JAZZ BAND: (Singing) I'm gonna lay down my burden Way down by, down by the riverside. I'm gonna lay down my burden Way down by the riverside. Ain't going to stand...
NORRIS: Home Depot ends its sponsorship of athletes chasing Olympic gold. We'll talk with one of the athletes next on All Things Considered.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. It's been quite a week for bobsledder Bree Schaaf. On Sunday, she won the woman's title at the U.S. National Bobsled Championships, putting her in contention for a spot on the 2010 Winter Olympic team. But on Wednesday, she found out she would lose her sponsorship. Home Depot has sponsored hundreds of Olympic athletes over the years, paying them full-time wages and benefits for part-time work. And it's announced it is ending its sponsorship program because of the poor economy. Bree Schaaf joins us from the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York, and Ms. Schaaf, first congratulations on your championship, and sorry to hear about the more recent news.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. BREE SCHAAF (Bobsledder, U.S. National Bobsled Championship): Yeah, thank you. It's kind of like getting socked in the gut with a trophy.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: With a trophy. Well, how did you find out about Home Depot's stopping its sponsorships?
Ms. SCHAAF: You know, we've been curious for awhile, because they had stopped hiring athletes, and we knew that the sponsorship was up for renewal after Beijing, but hadn't really heard anything since. You know, they said, no, everything is going great; keep working. So, a bunch of us here at the Olympic Training Center, we had gotten - we received an email that said, congratulations, you fulfilled your requirements for the 2008 OJOP program - as it's called, the Olympic Job Opportunities Program - and it said, please join tomorrow at 3:30 p.m. for a conference call.
BLOCK: And that's never a good sign.
Ms. SCHAAF: No. I mean, all of us were thinking, ah - so, we, you know, we spent so much time analyzing that email, thinking, wow, it sounds good, looks like, you know, they're being really positive. There's an exclamation point here.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: Don't be fooled.
Ms. SCHAAF: Yeah, exactly. And so, then we all signed onto the conference call, where they told us, well, hey, congratulations, you guys have filled your requirements. We have sober news: Home Depot has chosen not to continue sponsorship.
BLOCK: And what went through your mind when you heard that?
Ms. SCHAAF: Ugh. It was a low blow. It's a really tough timing with the Olympics just around the corner, because now is when things get kicked into high gear. It's very rough timing.
BLOCK: Well, the sponsorship for you has meant, what? A half-time job at Home Depot, right? What were you doing?
Ms. SCHAAF: Yeah, it was part-time work with full-time pay, and the biggest part was the flexible hours - that's what huge for athletes - and I got hired on in the flooring department as a flooring specialist. You know, it's just an absolutely fantastic program for us, because we're training so much and, you know, doing - in the offseason, working out two or three times a day, you know, makes it tough to work a nine-to-five job when, you know, you'd only get a half-hour lunch break.
BLOCK: Are there other corporate likely sponsors, you know, just begging, wanting the opportunity to sponsor a bobsled team, do you think?
Ms. SCHAAF: You know, we're looking into it, but on a positive note, we're lucky enough that the U.S. Olympic Committee is actually going to help us out for a little while up until the games.
BLOCK: Well, is that going to be enough to get you through?
Ms. SCHAAF: No.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. SCHAAF: It's definitely not, and I actually was just working on my sponsorship packet before we got on the phone here. It's definitely going to take some luck and some help in order to succeed next year.
BLOCK: You mentioned you were doing a sponsorship packet.
Ms. SCHAAF: Yeah, just trying to put together a bio and summary here, trying to see if anyone might be interested...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. SCHAAF: In having logos, you know, on a bobsled, on a suit.
BLOCK: There is some vacant space on your bobsled and on your uniform right now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. SCHAAF: Yes, there are some vacancies. There is a fresh your-logo-here spot on my Home Depot jacket.
BLOCK: How are you feeling about the 2010 games?
Ms. SCHAAF: I feel great.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. SCHAAF: You know, I am still just as excited and plan, you know, plan on attending and plan on being successful. It's just another kind of challenge along the path to the games.
BLOCK: Well, Bree Schaaf, best of luck to you. Thanks for talking with us.
Ms. SCHAAF: Thank you so much.
BLOCK: That's bobsledder Bree Schaaf, one of dozens of aspiring Olympic athletes who will lose the sponsorship of Home Depot. On Sunday, she won the women's title at the U.S. National Bobsled Championship in Lake Placid, New York.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
To the world of college football now; Florida defeated Oklahoma 24 to 14 in Miami last night to win a crystal trophy and the title of national champ. But try telling that to fans at the Universities of Utah, Southern California and Texas. What we've got here is another imperfect ending to the college-football season. Joining us he does most Fridays is sportswriter Stefan Fatsis. Stefan, I am curious to know what you think. Who's actually the best team in the land? Is it really Florida?
STEFAN FATSIS: Beats me. I mean, they won last night. They had a strong second half from quarterback Tim Tebow. So, congratulations, happy times in Gainesville. Whether that makes them the best, I don't know. Given the current structure of college football, we'll never know, and it's almost irrelevant at this point. The issue here is that this remains the one sport that almost inevitably leaves you unsatisfied at the end of the season, and that's not only because there is no playoff in college football, as there is in virtually every other American sport - professional and collegiate; it's the flawed way that this current system is structured.
NORRIS: Stefan, I think I heard you say, the current structure of college football. It seems like there's not much of a structure at all.
FATSIS: Yeah, well, there is one that is controlled by the elite of the NCAA's top division, not by the NCAA itself, and that's a historical anomaly that has to do with the bowl games and the piles of money that the big conference schools generate at the expense, often, of the smaller schools in the NCAA. Now, we've got this system, human polls and computer polls that are used to determine who gets to play in the so-called BCS Championship game, Bowl Championship Series. The problem isn't that these polls exist. The AP Poll has been around since 1934. The problem is that for the last decade, they've been used to decide what to do prospectively on the field. And the methodology of the computer polls is deeply flawed.
NORRIS: And methodology is at least very curious, if you need two separate polls to figure this whole thing out. How do these computer polls work, Stefan? Or maybe I should say, how don't they work?
FATSIS: Well, baseball analyst Bill James examines that very question in a piece on Slate.com this week. The synopsis: One, the computer polls aren't programmed to have a clear goal for what they're trying to measure when they rank teams; there's no meaningful, empirically grounded guidelines. Two, there's been constant tinkering with the components of these polls when the results haven't jived with what the humans say. And three, the features that are included in the computer polling, they're simply bad; they're not at the cutting-edge of quantitative football analysis. Bill James called on everyone in his field to have nothing to do with the BCS.
NORRIS: Now, polls aside, Stefan, Utah, Southern Cal and Texas all say they should have had a chance to play for that title. What do you say?
FATSIS: Yeah, Utah didn't lose a single game; they thumped Alabama in the Sugar Bowl, Alabama, which lost to Florida for a de facto berth in the championship game. Utah also beat the only team the beat Southern Cal, Oregon State, and Texas beat Oklahoma, and some people say whatever, arguing is part of the fun in college football, but every year, we come back to the question of a playoff. And here's what I say: play one last regular-season game; find ways to compensate schools for the lost revenue - and the TV money from a playoff would do that and then some - keep however many of the bowl games you want; just make four or eight of them part of a short playoff tournament spread over the six weeks from Thanksgiving to New Year's. but this will take legal, political strong-arming of the big universities and the NCAA, to which I say don't hold your breath, go out and enjoy the NFL playoffs tomorrow and Sunday.
NORRIS: Finally if you are someone who watched a lot of bowl games over the holidays, it was hard not to notice that some of the sponsors were spending money they don't seem to have.
FATSIS: Yeah, the GMAC Bowl, and GMAC lost $8 billion in five quarters before they were bailed out by the federal government. And then you had the Rose Bowl, which was presented by Citi, and Citigroup in November got $360 billion of U.S. federal government guarantees for troubled mortgages. And finally my favorite is the Meineke Car Care Bowl because, you know, if you can't afford a car or gas, you've got to go to Meineke to get some car care.
NORRIS: Thank you, Stefan.
FATSIS: Thanks, Michele.
NORRIS: That's sportswriter Stefan Fatsis. He talks to us most Fridays.
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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.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The controversial TARP financial rescue plan took a few more knocks today and appears headed for some serious reworking. Incoming Obama administration officials and House Democrats say they intend to change the $700 billion program. As NPR's John Ydstie reports, they want to provide more help for struggling homeowners and more accountability for how the rest of the money - about $350 billion - is spent.
JOHN YDSTIE: Criticisms of the huge financial rescue package flared within weeks of its passage last fall. First, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson changed the focus of the program away from buying up toxic mortgage-backed securities in favor of injecting hundreds of billions of dollars of capital into the nation's banks. Some lawmakers called it a bait-and-switch and also complained that no TARP funds were being used to help homeowners avoid foreclosures. Today, a TARP Oversight Panel released its first substantial report on the rescue program. It, too, was critical. Harvard law Professor Elizabeth Warren, the panel's chair, said that among other things, the panel was concerned that Treasury had no systems in place to see if banks were actually using the government's money to make new loans.
Professor ELIZABETH WARREN (Bankruptcy and Commercial Law, Harvard Law School): It's not a claim the money has been used wrong; it's a claim that the money is not being accounted for properly. And look, if you're going to use American taxpayer money, American taxpayers have a right to know how you're using it and why you're using it that way. That's all you're asking for. You can't evaluate if you can't see what's happening.
YDSTIE: Warren's panel was also highly critical of the Bush administration's decision not to use the TARP money to help homeowners avoid foreclosures.
Prof. WARREN: These are huge numbers, and we have to remember, it's not only the families that go into foreclosures. It's their neighbors; it's their communities; it's everybody in the construction industry. The echo effect of having that kind of foreclosure rate is just staggering for the whole economy.
YDSTIE: Even as Warren was making those criticisms on CNN, on Capitol Hill, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank was announcing a new bill to revise and strengthen the TARP.
Representative BARNEY FRANK (Democrat, Massachusetts): I mean, a lot of what we're talking about is making them do, or having them agree to do, what was in the original bill.
YDSTIE: Frank echoed the two main criticisms of Treasury Secretary Paulson's stewardship of the TARP.
Rep. FRANK: First of all, the refusal - inexplicable to me - to use any of the money for foreclosure only when it was explicitly mandated; secondly, he dispersed the money in the capital program, I think, with good purpose, but without safeguards as to what they would do with it. So, yeah, I share those criticisms.
YDSTIE: The bill Frank is proposing would require greater accountability on both those matters, mandating, for instance, that some of the remaining bailout money be used to help prevent foreclosures. Frank's bill would also retroactively put limits on compensation for executives of financial institutions who have already accepted TARP funds.
Rep. FRANK: It is setting some rules about what is and isn't appropriate. I don't regard the denial of a bonus to someone who is making millions of dollars and whose institution is benefiting from taxpayer funding as a punishment. If they don't like it, they can give the money back.
YDSTIE: For his part, Secretary Paulson said in an appearance earlier this week that he has no regrets about the actions he's taken.
(Soundbite of press conference)
Secretary HENRY PAULSON (U.S. Department of the Treasury, George W. Bush Administration): As I look at the major issues, the issues where we intervened, going to Congress to get the authorities for the TARP, I believe we made the right decisions.
YDSTIE: Congressman Frank said his bill to revise TARP would be voted on by the middle of next week. He said he has been working with members of the Obama team, including Treasury Secretary-designate Tim Geithner, on ways to strengthen the financial rescue program. A transition official told Reuters today that Geithner is developing a comprehensive set of principles for the TARP. The officials said they will include measures to address foreclosures and place tougher conditions on financial institutions that receive money, including limits on executive compensation. John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
President-elect Barack Obama's plan to revive the U.S. economy has run into some unexpected resistance from Senate Democrats. They're telling Mr. Obama's top advisers that they want to see some changes in its so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan. As NPR's David Welna reports, the president-elect appears ready to revise.
DAVID WELNA: If President-elect Obama was put off by pushback from his former Senate colleagues on his economic recovery plan, you'd never know it from what he told reporters today.
(Soundbite of press conference)
President-Elect BARACK OBAMA (Democratic Senator, Illinois): Just show me. And if you can show me that's something's going to work, I will welcome it. If it works better than something I've proposed, I'll welcome it.
WELNA: Mr. Obama was responding to questions about what, by all accounts, was a lively closed-door meeting last night at the U.S. Capitol involving Senate Democrats and some top members of Team Obama. Among them was Larry Summers, who'll be Mr. Obama's top White House economic adviser. California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer today sought to play down reports that Summers got an earful from her colleagues last night.
Senator BARBARA BOXER (Democrat, California): Please don't get the idea that there's some breakdown here. Actually, it was a wonderful meeting; it was productive. They said they came to hear our ideas. Larry Summers, one of the words he said - uttered was, I get what you mean. I'm going to go back. I hear you.
WELNA: One of the major complaints Summers heard, according to participants, was that 40 percent of what's expected to be at least an $800 billion stimulus package goes to tax breaks. That may help secure some Republican support, but it clearly annoys Iowa Democrat Tom Harkin.
Senator TOM HARKIN (Democrat, Iowa): I'm a little concerned by the way Mr. Summers and others are going on this, in that it's - to me it still looks like a little bit of - more of this trickle down, that we just put it in the top, it's just going to trickle down. A number of people in there said, look, we've got to have programs that actually create jobs and put people to work.
WELNA: Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad takes aim specifically at a $3,000 tax credit that Mr. Obama would give employers for each new job created.
Senator KENT CONRAD (Democrat, North Dakota; Chairman, U.S. Senate Committee on Budget): The automobile industry is not going to hire more people even if they got a jobs credit, a tax credit, if people aren't buying cars. So, we think that the better use of the money is in investment, things that are going to be spent that are going to improve the economic efficiency of our society.
WELNA: And the investment, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden says, is most needed is in the energy sector.
Senator RON WYDEN (Democrat, Oregon): There is more interest in energy investment and the opportunity to create jobs in energy than, I think, the Obama administration has really picked up on.
YDSTIE: Iowa's Harkin says the president-elect should be using this as an opportunity to make good on what he's proposed.
Sen. HARKIN: He said he wanted to double renewable energy in three years. Well, we can do it. But we've got to start on it right now, and that ought to be a big part of the stimulus package.
YDSTIE: There is also concern among Senate Democrats that the stimulus package may not do enough to shore up the battered housing sector. New York's Chuck Schumer praised Citigroup's agreement yesterday to back legislation allowing bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages.
Senator CHUCK SCHUMER (Democrat, New York): And this should pave the way, hopefully, to getting this in the stimulus bill, which we have all been fighting for, and then finally finding a floor to the housing market and seeing the economy turn around.
YDSTIE: Piggybacking that bankruptcy provision onto the stimulus package, though, might also anger Republicans who've staunchly opposed the measure. Still, Mr. Obama today seemed confident his first big legislative initiative as president won't get derailed.
(Soundbite of press conference)
President-Elect OBAMA: I think that there're going to be a lot of different opinions out there. We're going to take all of them in, and at the end of the day, we're going to have a package that Congress passes and I sign.
YDSTIE: On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Obama's advisers will once again meet behind closed doors with Senate Democrats to try to iron out differences. David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
"Dear Chairman Rockefeller." So began a letter sent by the chair of the Obama-Biden presidential transition team to the Senate Commerce Committee this week. During the transition, the letter says, we have discovered major difficulties in the preparation for the February 17th conversion from analogue to digital broadcasting. In short, the letter is saying, there is no way the switch to digital TV is going to happen smoothly by the middle of next month. The Obama team is asking for a delay. Joel Kelsey is a policy analyst for Consumers Union, and he also thinks a delay is needed, and he joins us now. Mr. Kelsey, remind us; what is supposed to happen on February 17th?
Mr. JOEL KELSEY (Policy Analyst, Consumers Union): Well, the federal government has mandated that on February 17th, all full-power broadcasters stop broadcasting in analogue and switch over to exclusively digital broadcast. That means if you are a consumer with an older analogue television set that's not hooked up to cable or satellite, you're either going to have to buy a converter box that stands on top of your television set and will translate the new digital signals, buy a new digital television set with a tuner, a digital tuner, inside of it, or sign up for cable or satellite service.
NORRIS: So, this has been on the works for some time now since the bill was passed in Congress back in 2005. Why the need for a delay? Why the problem?
Mr. KELSEY: That's right. This has been around for a long time. And there's been quite a bit of public and private money invested in publicizing this, and a lot of consumers have taken action. However, there's still quite a bit of confusion out in the marketplace. For example, in a poll Consumer Reports conducted not too long ago, we found that 29 percent of Americans believe that everyone has to go out and buy a brand new television set; 25 percent of Americans believe that this means everyone has to sign up for cable or satellite. These are misconceptions that all would cost consumers more money than they need to spend.
NORRIS: It seems like there have been multiple problems, however, and consumers were supposed to be able to get some sort of coupon to defray the cost of the digital-to-analogue conversion. But the agency responsible for providing those coupons has run out of funds. How could that happen?
Mr. KELSEY: That's right. To make matters worse, the coupon program that was created to offset the cost of this transition for consumers has hit its $1.34 billion cap. What that means is now millions of consumers are waiting on a waiting list to get access to the funding that they need to go out and get the right equipment to make sure there's still a picture on their television set. So, essentially, right now, what we see is the government, who's making $19 billion clearing the spectrum, asking rural, low-income, elderly consumers to dig deeper into their own pockets, and we see millions of households throughout America still unprepared.
NORRIS: Millions, how many millions?
Mr. KELSEY: I believe the latest assessment by Nielsen Media Research was somewhere around seven million households. Consumer Reports conducted a poll about three months ago, and we found that 19 million Americans were living in households that had yet to take action for this transition.
NORRIS: Now, the office of the president-elect is asking the committee to consider some sort of delay. But it seems like a delay might just require a whole new advertising initiative that might, in the end, create more confusion and cost more money.
Mr. KELSEY: Well, if the goal of an education campaign is to get folks understanding a date, then that might be true. But if the goal of an education campaign is to get folks to understand how to navigate this transition, then I think a delay is necessary.
NORRIS: How much of a delay do you think it would take?
Mr. KELSEY: Well, you know, I would say that until you can prove that everyone who needs access to coupons can get one before the transition, and until there's not millions of people that aren't ready for this transition yet, it's not time to take it.
NORRIS: Three months, a year?
Mr. KELSEY: I don't think we're talking a year. But you know, we do want to leave it up to a new administration and a new Congress to figure out how much time we need for the solutions going forward.
NORRIS: Joe Kelsey, thanks so much for talking to us.
Mr. KELSEY: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: Joel Kelsey is a policy analyst for Consumers Union.
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MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Heated reaction in the Arab world to Israel's ongoing incursion into Gaza; that's just ahead on All Things Considered.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Israel today rejected the call for a ceasefire adopted by the UN Security Council last night. The Israeli government issued a statement saying the ceasefire was unworkable. Israel emphasized that its military operations in Gaza will continue, even as more information emerges about mounting casualties among Palestinian civilians. NPR's Mike Shuster reports.
MIKE SHUSTER: Israel's response to the Security Council was short and blunt: The ceasefire resolution is not practical, a statement said; Israel will continue its military operations in Gaza. And then Israel promptly intensified its ground and air offensive. To be acceptable to Israel, the UN ceasefire resolution would have had to lay all the blame for the current crisis on Hamas, explained Danny Ayalon, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S.
Former Ambassador DANIEL AYALON (Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S.): Hamas would be responsible not just for the violence, but also for the bloodshed and all the victims. And secondly, there should be a very specific enforcement regime, than inspecting regime, on Gaza. So, Hamas will not be able anymore to smuggle explosives and the terrorists in.
SHUSTER: The UN ceasefire resolution was adopted by a vote of 14 to zero, with the United States abstaining but speaking in its favor. The U.S. action surprised and disappointed many Israeli officials, but so far, it hasn't convinced Israel to curtail its offensive. For its part, Hamas showed little interest in the UN action as well. Mousa Abu Marzook, one of Hamas' top figures in Damascus, told Al Jazeera English satellite television that Hamas would cease its rocket attacks only after Israel stopped its offensive.
Mr. MOUSA ABU MARZOOK (Deputy Chief, Hamas Political Bureau): If the Israelis stopped the fire and their aggression against the Palestinian in Gaza Strip, Hamas should answer directly about the United Nation resolution.
SHUSTER: Hamas is sending a delegation to Cairo tomorrow to participate in talks with Egypt, which has been pursuing a ceasefire plan of its own. But the group, which is the effective government of Gaza, seems to be in no hurry to sign on to a ceasefire, despite the thousands of Palestinian dead and wounded because, Marzook suggested, it is winning just by continuing the rocket attacks.
Mr. MARZOOK: They said in the beginning, we're going to Gaza Strip and hit each launcher and stop the rockets coming from Gaza Strip to Israeli cities. And until now, we have 14 days they didn't disturb any launcher from Gaza Strip to Israel.
SHUSTER: More than 800 Palestinians have lost their lives in the fighting, with 3300 wounded. At least 14 Israelis, mostly soldiers, have died. Over the past 24 hours, information has emerged about a deadly incident in the town of Zeitoun, south of Gaza City. Several days ago, the Israeli defense force ordered more than 100 people into a single building there, according to Allegra Pacheco of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Ms. ALLEGRA PACHECO (Deputy Head, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs): And the next day, the house was shelled. People were killed, about 30 people according to these eye-witness testimonies, including several children. There were also many people injured, again, a lot of children, and it took about two and a half days until ambulances were allowed into the area to evacuate the wounded.
SHUSTER: Several other buildings were demolished in Zeitoun with up to 40 people killed. Scores were trapped in the rubble. Rescuers finally got to them yesterday, according to Eyad Nasser of the Gaza Red Cross.
Mr. EYAD NASSER (Spokesman, International Committee of the Red Cross, Gaza): We managed to rescue 105 civilians - women, children, men - who were trapped in a house for more than a week with hardly sufficient amounts of water and food.
SHUSTER: The Red Cross was not permitted to drive its vehicles into Zeitoun, which have been shot at by Israeli soldiers. Allegra Pacheco says no civilian or relief worker is safe in Gaza.
Ms. PACHECO: We are experiencing now a very severe protection crisis. There is no safe space left in Gaza. There are no bomb shelters, no safe havens. And as long as the violence continues, we can expect more and more civilians to be killed and injured.
SHUSTER: Israel continued its bombardment of Gaza all day today, with dozens of airstrikes as well as operations on the ground. There was supposed to be another three-hour humanitarian halt to allow the delivery of supplies, but that was ignored by both sides. Late today, a pall of dark smoke enveloped much of Northern Gaza punctuated by the thunder and flash of numerous explosions. Mike Shuster, NPR News, Jerusalem.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the Israeli attacks in Gaza. Demonstrations were staged across the Arab and Muslim world, revealing what appear to be new levels of anger at Israel, America and pro-U.S. Arab states such as Egypt. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Cairo.
PETER KENYON: Residents of the wealthy and tightly controlled Gulf state of Qatar have rarely seen passionate political protest in their own streets. But when Sheikh Youssef Alkaradawi called for a day of rage against Israel's continued pounding of Hamas targets in Gaza, a huge rally developed. Local journalists called it an unprecedented display of public animosity toward the Jewish state.
(Soundbite of protests)
Unidentified Speaker: (Arabic spoken).
KENYON: Stop supporting the Jews, says this speaker, who added, quote, "stop giving them weapons so we can fight the Jews." This is a war from the days of our grandfathers, he said, that will never end because it knows no boundaries. Analysts said it was shocking to hear such sentiments in a normally quiet Gulf state that has had trade relations with Israel since 1996. Themes of violence and revenge were woven through a number of today's rallies. Despite the desperate situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, there were large anti-Israeli demonstrations in both of those countries today. Tens of thousands of people rallied in Iraq, and they heard a statement from Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, calling for revenge attacks against the United States, which Sadr described as the biggest partner of the Zionist enemy. In Turkey, tens of thousands gathered at Istanbul's majestic blue mosque.
(Soundbite of protests)
Unidentified Speaker: (Turkish spoken).
KENYON: Some carried signs equating the Israeli Star of David with the Nazi swastika, a particularly hateful insult to many Israelis. The anger was not aimed solely at Israel. In Jakarta, Indonesia, some 200 protesters were arrested trying to reach the Egyptian embassy. Egypt has faced scathing criticism for refusing to open its border with Gaza except to certain medical and humanitarian aid. That sentiment was echoed here in Egypt in a surprisingly large protest in the port city of Alexandria. Demonstrators apologized to Gazans for their government's inaction, saying the decision to open the border was not in their hands.
(Soundbite of protests)
KENYON: In Amman, Jordan, riot police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse stone-throwing protesters marching on the Israeli embassy. Clashes with security forces also occurred in the Palestinian West Bank, in addition to fights between Hamas supporters and backers of the secular Fatah movement. Police also quelled protest in Cairo. Even as Egypt finally relented on one front, journalists at the Egypt Gaza border reported that more than two dozen doctors, many of them Egyptian, were finally allowed to cross into Gaza to provide a bit relief to their exhausted and overwhelmed Palestinian colleagues. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Cairo.
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MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. In Illinois today, lawmakers impeached the Governor Rod Blagojevich. The historic vote was nearly unanimous. The Democratic governor was arrested last month on political corruption charges, including allegations that he tried to auction off the state's vacant U.S. Senate seat for personal gain. The governor will now be tried by the Illinois State Senate; if convicted, he will be removed from office. Again, this afternoon, Blagojevich insisted he has done nothing wrong. NPR's David Schaper reports from the state capital, Springfield.
DAVID SCHAPER: In a state notorious for its political corruption, with one former governor currently sitting in federal prison, this is the first time in Illinois history state lawmakers voted to impeach a sitting governor.
State Representative MICHAEL MADIGAN (Democrat, Chicago, Illinois; Speaker of the State House): On this question there are 114 people voting yes, one person voting no. The House does adopt House Resolution 1671, and Governor Blagojevich is hereby impeached.
SCHAPER: Before the vote announced by House Speaker Michael Madigan, lawmakers said Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich has betrayed the public trust and violated his oath of office. The article of impeachment approved by the House isn't limited to the federal criminal charges that alleged Blagojevich try to sell or trade official duties of his office. Chicago Democrat Barbara Flynn Currie, who chaired a special committee to make the case for impeachment, says Blagojevich is not fit to govern.
State Representative BARBARA FLYNN CURRIE (Democrat, Chicago, Illinois; State House Majority Leader): The evidence we gathered makes it clear that this governor tramples on the legislative prerogative. He breaks state and federal laws. In his own words, he expresses a willingness to barter state official acts and state taxpayer money for personal and political gain.
SCHAPER: While many legislators rose to declare this a sad day for Illinois, Republican Minority Leader Tom Cross told his colleagues they shouldn't just be disappointed.
State Representative TOM CROSS (Republican, Plainfield, Illinois): When we become the laughing stock of the country, and in fact the world, and people joke about the state of Illinois on "Saturday Night Live" or on late-night TV, I'm not sad; I'm not disappointed. I'm mad; I'm angry. This is an embarrassment.
SCHAPER: And Democrat Jack Franks calls his vote to impeach Blagojevich his proudest moment as a legislator, because he says lawmakers are finally standing up to greed and graft in Illinois politics.
State Representative JACK FRANKS (Democrat, Woodstock, Illinois): It's our duty to clean up the mess and to stop the freak show which has become the Illinois government.
SCHAPER: But as angry as state lawmakers are with the governor, Blagojevich appears just as angry with them, and he tried to turn the tables in an afternoon news conference in Chicago. He surrounded himself with some of the families the governor says he is trying to serve with the programs House lawmakers accused him of creating illegally.
(Soundbite of press conference)
Governor ROD BLAGOJEVICH (Democrat, Illinois): I took actions with the advice of lawyers and experts to find ways, creative ways, to use the executive authority of a governor to get real things done for people who rely on us, and in many cases, the things we did for people have literally saved lives. I don't believe those are impeachable offenses.
SCHAPER: Blagojevich reasserted his innocence, saying he's confident he will be exonerated both in the impeachment trial that will take place in the Illinois Senate possibly later this month and in the criminal case that has made headlines around the world. On another front, the Illinois Supreme Court today ruled there is no law that requires Illinois Secretary of State Jessie White to certify Blagojevich's appointment of Roland Burris to the U.S. Senate and that that appointment is legal. Burris says the ruling means he has now met all of the Senate's conditions, and he expects to be seated soon. David Schaper, NPR News in Springfield, Illinois.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Whenever you're talking about the American auto industry, here's what someone's sure to say: For the Detroit Three to compete, they've got to be more like Toyota. Well, look at the foreign-owned plants in the American South. They've got low production costs and no unions to deal with; just what Detroit needs. Well, as NPR's Martin Kaste found out, it's not all sweet tea and magnolia blossoms for the foreign carmakers in the South. They have problems of their own.
MARTIN KASTE: Rick Hesterberg gives a lot of tours here at the enormous Toyota plant in Georgetown, Kentucky.
(Soundbite of door opening)
KASTE: It's usually a little more exciting here, Hesterberg says.
Mr. RICK HESTERBERG (Spokesman, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc.): In the normal situation, you know, you would see - this mimics an actual city. We have traffic lights. You see tuggers, forklifts delivering parts line side.
KASTE: And right now?
Mr. HESTERBERG: Right now, it's idle.
KASTE: Idle because Toyota saw a 37-percent drop in sales last month. So, management extended the Christmas break by a week. The effect is spooky; a building the size of 150 football fields with the lights off. In the gloom, half-built Camrys sit waiting for the assembly line to start up again, and when it does next week, it'll be moving more slowly than usual. At the elevator, we meet the Toyota executive who is in charge here.
Mr. STEVE ST. ANGELO (President, Toyota Motor Manufacturing, Kentucky, Inc.; Senior Vice President, Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing, North America, Inc.) I have had my nose broken three times.
(Soundbite of laughter)
KASTE: Steve St. Angelo is a hockey player, and today, he's limping.
Mr. ST. ANGELO: Yeah, I have to have fun, and one-hour hockey, that's a heck of workout.
KASTE: The hockey stick in his office also signals his Michigan roots. He worked at GM for 30 years before coming to Toyota's outpost here in horse country, and that background of his makes him unwilling to gloat over what's going on back in Detroit.
Mr. ST. ANGELO: I have many relatives still work at Ford Motor Company. You have a feeling - it's kind of an empty feeling; you want them to succeed; you want all of us to succeed. We're all Americans.
KASTE: St. Angelo seems oddly eager to talk about Toyota's troubles. It's almost as if the company doesn't want to be seen right now as capitalizing on Detroit's pain. In fact, St. Angelo says seeing the Big Three begging for government help last month made him think about his own position.
Mr. ST. ANGELO: I kind of drifted in a thought process of - that I'm the captain of the ship. And this ship happens to be the Titanic, but not Titanic I, but this is Titanic II. And I am getting ready to take this ship through the same waters, and that same iceberg is still there.
KASTE: Of course, Toyota is in better shape. It doesn't have anywhere near the same debt load as the American companies, but it still faces some dangers. For instance, what happens if one of the Big Three does goes under?
Mr. PAUL BLUE (Owner, Perfection Components, LLC): I think that would send a huge ripple through the industry.
KASTE: Paul Blue owns Perfection Components, one of the hundreds of small auto-parts makers that dot the countryside here in central Kentucky. He molds plastic.
(Soundbite of plastic-molding machine)
KASTE: This machine just pressed out the cover for the shifter on a Mitsubishi. These days, most of Blue's business goes to Toyota, and he's glad of that. But he says Detroit's trouble still affect him. The Big Three are dragging down some of his suppliers. When one goes under, he has to scramble to find a new source of chrome or plastic, you name it. The bigger parts companies, he says, have it even worse.
Mr. BLUE: We are constantly dealing with some company that's either on the brink or has filed already or is going in that direction.
KASTE: Toyota is well aware that a Detroit bankruptcy might tear a hole in America's web of auto-supply companies. It's keeping a watch list of suppliers in trouble and even lending Toyota managers to some of them to help keep things running.
So, should the Southern auto industry worry about a Big Three bankruptcy?
Dr. KENNETH TROSKE (Economics, University of Kentucky): Short term I think that would cause some serious pain.
KASTE: But long term, says University of Kentucky economist Ken Troske, a Big Three bankruptcy would be good, because it would hasten what he sees as the industries inevitable march toward the Southern model of lower labor costs.
Dr. TROSKE: Whether there is a union presence, I don't know, but it would a less powerful union. I think wages, real wages of those workers, would probably be lower. We've been moving in this direction for 40 years, and at some point, we're going to get there.
KASTE: Back at the Toyota plant, Steve St. Angelo is focused on getting his operation through this recession, and he has become obsessed with cutting costs. He'll talk your ear off about how much his staff is saving on colored copies, and when we visit the idled assembly line, he warns his public-relations guy not to turn on any lights. St. Angelo actually seems excited about the chance to make his plant more Spartan.
Mr. ST. ANGELO: If we use the creativity of all our members to identify ways to eliminate waste, we're going to come of this pretty powerful.
KASTE: That's probably Toyota's American competitors, those that survive, are afraid of. Martin Kaste, NPR News.
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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.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. In Oakland, California, the recent police shooting of 22-year-old Oscar Grant resulted in protests earlier this week. Wednesday night, after shop windows were smashed and cars burned, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums tried to calm the crowd.
(Soundbite of protest, January 7, 2009)
Unidentified Protestor: Why are you firing teachers? Why don't you fire police?
Mayor RON DELLUMS (Democrat, Oakland, California): I'm just asking people to disperse. Let's leave in a spirit of peace. I don't want anybody hurt. I don't want anybody jailed.
NORRIS: Youth Radio commentator Leon Sykes lives in Oakland. He says many young people are upset about Grant's killing, but uncertain how to react.
LEON SYKES: I decided not to join in the protests in Oakland this week, even though a lot of my friends were there. I was worried random protesters would be there, looking for trouble. I felt like their voices will be louder than the people looking for justice. I stayed home and watched the news. I saw two different stories unfold. The first channel I watched: senseless violence, people running around with unfocused anger, causing chaos. Later on, I saw riot police grabbing kids and dragging them off by their necks. Just seeing police in riot gear can be a provocation. But we all know you can't touch the police. It's like being a child on punishment; you can't hit your parent, so you hit a wall, flip over a desk. Unfortunately, innocent people's cars and businesses became that wall this week in Oakland.
Being a black man who's lived my whole life in the town, I see the violence as the boiling point of our frustration with police abuse of power. This is 2009, you know, the year of change? But we're still facing problems like police brutality, the same problems my mother and father faced more than 40 years ago. The difference now is Oaklanders are enraged by a crime that can't be covered up. Oscar Grant's killing was recorded with bystanders' cell phones. Anyone with the Internet connection can witness the whole scene. You hear the crowd yelling at the officers just before Grant is shot in the back, pointblank. With the BART police officers still on the streets, I'm feeling like I'm watching one of these cliche gangster movies, where the bad guy is so powerful, no one wants to touch him. I know if I shot someone in front of a crowd, or even pulled out a gun, for that matter, there'd be no walking away. That's why those kids rocked police cars and broke windows.
Don't get me wrong; Oakland's not a model city. Unfortunately, citizens are shooting each other too. But I saw something different on Election Day. I didn't hear about one shooting that night. We were in the streets like 500 deep, singing GObama, GObama(ph). People were playing capoeira and djembe drums. There were, like, barely any police and no problems, absolutely none. The presidential inauguration is days away, a dream come true for black Americans, for the country. And Oakland citizens take great pride in knowing we helped make it real by voting and grassroots action. But here in the town this week, we don't even know if we'll accomplish something simple: accountability for a publicly witnessed murder. The young people I know say, we're going to be about that action until justice is served. For NPR News, I'm Leon Sykes.
NORRIS: And that commentary comes to us from Youth Radio in Oakland, California.
(Soundbite of music)
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
If this doesn't sound quite like a live rock concert, it's because I am playing the song "Less Talk More Rokk" by the band Freezepop in Guitar Hero 2. And I must admit, not actually playing it very well. Freezepop has developed a following among people who play their songs and dance to their songs in video games like this one. Freezepop band members Jussi Gamache and Kasson Crooker joined us from WGBH in Boston. Oh, now I'm on a roll.
(Soundbite of music) ..TEXT: ROBERTS: Before we get started, I should mentioned that you guys actually don't use those names on stage. Your alter egos are Liz Enthusiasm and the Duke of Pannenkoeken.
Mr. KASSON CROOKER (The Duke of Pannenkoeken, Freezepop): That's correct. That's me.
ROBERTS: Do you mind if I use those names because I prefer them?
Ms. JUSSI GAMACHE (Liz Enthusiasm, Freezepop): Oh, please do. Yeah.
Mr. CROOKER: You could probably not.
ROBERTS: How often do I get a chance to call someone...
Ms. GAMACHE: We prefer them as well.
ROBERTS: Good. Oh, I'm so glad to hear it. So, Duke, you work for Harmonics. That's the company that created Rock Band and Guitar Hero. How did you get your songs in the games?
Mr. CROOKER: Years ago, I was actually hired to write songs for some of the very first games that Harmonics made, and they knew that I was in kind of a fun, quirky synth-pop band. And they're like, well, why don't you include one of your songs in there, as well? And it kind of took off from there. And we've had a song in almost every single music game that Harmonics has made since then.
ROBERTS: The song "Less Talk More Rokk" which - you created it just for Guitar Hero 2, is that right?
Mr. CROOKER: I had already started that song, and it was kind of in its infancy. And then when I knew that we had a possibility of having it be in the game, it kind of like took a little bit of a left turn. And I think that's where the main synth part was kind of custom-tailored for the game because I knew it would be really fun to play.
(Soundbite of song "Less Talk More Rokk")
ROBERTS: What changed after your song started being in video games? Did you notice it in your crowds at live shows?
Ms. GAMACHE: Oh, yeah, definitely. Before, when we would play shows locally, there'll be a lot of people there. But you know, nobody outside of Boston had heard of us. And then suddenly, people from outside of Boston had this way of hearing about us and these people would come to our shows and have us sign their video game cases. And it was pretty crazy. We were like, oh, wow. This is actually kind of working.
Mr. CROOKER: Yeah.
(Soundbite of song "Science Genius Girl")
FREEZEPOP: (Singing) When I clone a human being, It will be a member of my band. It will be a member of my band.
ROBERTS: The releasing songs through video games model, is it becoming more common? I know that Guns N' Roses released one of the cuts from "Chinese Democracy" through Rock Band 2. Do you think it's sort of the next great music platform?
Mr. CROOKER: I truly think that this is actually kind of a paradigm shift for music, because this experience and engaging with these songs in these music games is an interactive experience. And I think people are just used to the traditional passive experience. And in the case of these games, you're interacting directly with it. And I think it gives you a kind of insight into what it's like to make music. I think for a brief moment in time you actually get to feel like a rock star.
ROBERTS: Can you actually make money by distributing music through video games?
Mr. CROOKER: Actually, surprisingly, you can. You know, there's been a lot of press about how, you know, bands that are in these music games and how it impacts their sales. And it's pretty much true. And it's happened to us, you know. It's been very helpful. I mean, we're not earning millions of dollars from it.
Ms. GAMACHE: Well, you're not.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CROOKER: Yeah.
Ms. GAMACHE: I flew here in my private jet this morning.
Mr. CROOKER: From Allston? From right down the street?
Ms. GAMACHE: Yeah.
Mr. CROOKER: But yeah, I mean, it's definitely a new avenue for bands to help get their music out there.
(Soundbite of song "Stakeout")
FREEZEPOP: (Singing) I know you work across the street, In the Indie record store. I'm thinking someday that we'll meet, I'm thinking we'll do something more. I hide behind my magazine, Then I see you walk on by. I'm not ready to be seen, I'll just sit right here and spy.
ROBERTS: Now, when you're performing that live, there are so many samples and things in there. How much are you actually playing? How much are you pressing buttons?
Mr. CROOKER: Oh, it's all pressing buttons.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CROOKER: Well, you know, we're an electronic band. And a fair amount of our music is on some sort of like backing track, reel to reel, or iPod. So it's kind of a mixture of live and, you know, there is some canned stuff.
Ms. GAMACHE: Yeah, we definitely want the shows to feel exciting. I mean, everybody kind of has that image of an electronic band just kind of standing there behind their laptop and not doing anything. And we, you know, we want our shows to be high energy. The boys have guitars, so they can actually run around, that they're not, you know, stuck behind big keyboard stands.
Mr. CROOKER: Yeah, that's key.
Ms. GAMACHE: Yeah. So, yeah, we want things to be fun.
(Soundbite of song "Chess King"
FREEZEPOP: (Singing) I'm at the mall, I'm cutting school, And it's the middle of the day. I'm in the Spencers, But I'm scoping on the girls over at Rave.
ROBERTS: I was listening to one of your songs, "Chess King," and I was a teenager in the '80s and all those references about hanging out at the mall and wearing Esprit and - it's just, you know, I'm just having some bad high school flashbacks. I was wondering if you all were part of that generation as well.
Mr. CROOKER: Oh, yeah.
Ms. GAMACHE: It's entirely possible.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CROOKER: Yeah, I was definitely channeling some of my teenage youth and, you know, trying to meet girls in malls.
(Soundbite of song "Chess King")
FREEZEPOP: (Singing) I'll be your Chess King. (He'll do anything) I'll be your Chess King. (He'll wear anything) I'll be your Chess King. (He'll do anything) I'll be your Chess King. (He'll wear anything)
Mr. CROOKER: You know, we all grew up listening to Depeche Mode and Duran Duran, Human League, all those kind of bands. So I consider us to be timeless now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. GAMACHE: We're 18 years old.
Mr. CROOKER: Beyond a time.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ROBERTS: Well, I've been playing your music all week, often with my office door open. And reactions have been mixed. Have you experienced some of that?
Mr. CROOKER: So, some people are like amazed by it and some people are just astounded by it kind of mix?
ROBERTS: Right. That's the mix, exactly. All A adjectives.
Mr. CROOKER: That's a good mix. I've known all along that the music we make could have a kind of a love it or hate it kind of appeal for people. And which actually I'm not super-bothered by, because I think what we found is that the people who love it really, really love it. And then the other people just kind of move on and, you know, listen to Norah Jones or somebody else.
(Soundbite of song "Pop Music Is Not A Crime")
FREEZEPOP: (Singing) Pop music, pop music is not a crime. Pop music, pop music, we write it all the time.
ROBERTS: "Pop Music Is Not A Crime" is kind of a mission statement for Freezepop. Where did this song come from?
Ms. GAMACHE: It guess it kind of is. Actually, oddly enough, I wrote it while I was stuck in jury duty.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. GAMACHE: They make you - you know, when you're waiting to be selected, and they make you sit in that room and there is nothing to do. And I was like, huh, maybe I will use this time to write some lyrics. And there you go. And yeah, I mean it is kind of a mission statement, I guess. It's - you know, we're sort of unapologetic about being kind of goofy pop, light-hearted, fluffy.
Mr. CROOKER: It sets us apart.
(Soundbite of song "Pop Music Is Not A Crime")
FREEZEPOP: (Singing) Listen to me, Give me a minute of your time. Listen to me, And sing along with what you know. Listen to me. Pop music is not a crime. Listen to me. Now I'm on the radio. Listen to me.
ROBERTS: That's the Duke of Pannenkoeken, also known as Kasson Crooker, and Liz Enthusiasm, also known as Jussi Gamache. They joined me from WGBH in Boston. Thank you both so much.
Mr. CROOKER: Oh, thank you.
Ms. GAMACHE: Thank you for having us.
ROBERTS: You can hear more of Freezepop at nprmusic.org.
(Soundbite of song "Pop Music Is Not A Crime")
FREEZEPOP: (Singing) Now I'm on the radio. Now I'm on the radio. Come dance with me. We've got a beat you can't deny. Come dance with me. And you just can't tell me no. Come dance with me. Pop music is not a crime. Come dance with me. Now I'm on the radio.
In the angsters(ph) overrated spirit of Freezepop, our parting words tonight come from a book put together by Sarah Bynoe. Her publisher describes her as an actress and recovering teen angst poet.
ROBERTS: (Reading) As my teen angst is over, my life has moved on. A quarter life crisis is now my song. It's like teen angst except with bills. I now know we feel the same and climb the same hills. It helps to know I'm not alone, that others wrote those poetic groans.
(Soundbite of song "Pop Music Is Not A Crime")
FREEZEPOP: (Singing) Pop music is not a crime. Come dance with me. Now I'm on the radio. Listen to me. Come dance with me. Now I'm on the radio.
ROBERTS: That's all Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Rebecca Roberts.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
At the grocery store these days, a dozen eggs will run you a couple of dollars. If you pick the organic cage-free kind, you're looking at three or even four bucks. Fed up with the price of eggs or milk or honey, some city dwellers and suburbanites are skipping the store entirely and turning instead to their own backyards. Megan Verlee of Colorado Public Radio got a taste of this trend in her own Denver neighborhood. Here's her story.
MEGAN VERLEE: Living in a city, you expect the occasional siren to wake you up at night or maybe the roar of a jet coming in low for the airport. It goes with the territory. But the nocturnal disturbances in my neighborhood have a slightly more agrarian feel.
(Soundbite of rooster crowing)
VERLEE: That'll wake you up. The little guy behind that big voice makes his roost in my neighbor's yard. When I started hearing about a trend toward more cities allowing livestock, there was only one logical place to start researching.
BRAD: Hi, Megan.
VERLEE: Thanks for letting me come by and see the chickens.
BRAD: Sure. I've been out there with the geese.
(Soundbite of geese honking)
VERLEE: Did I mention they also have a pair of geese? What my neighbors don't have are any permits for this minor menagerie. Denver does allow chickens, but you have to pay an annual fee. Roosters, though, are entirely outlawed. And as an outlaw rooster keeper, Brad doesn't want us to use his last name, but he is happy to introduce me to his flock, scratching around in a converted sun porch.
Do they have names?
BRAD: Yeah, Maybelline, Avon, and Noxema.
VERLEE: Many of the folks pushing for urban livestock ordinances do it from trendy, modern ideas about sustainability and local food - you know, locavores. For Brad, it's a bit simpler. He just loves chickens. He had them as a boy in the countryside and just kept on raising them, even after moving to Los Angeles as a teenager.
BRAD: So, I was walking around L.A. streets with a Rhode Island Red.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BRAD: And people would say, whoa, my god, that's a beautiful bird! What is it? Oh, it's a chicken. A chicken? You know, city folk had never seen them before.
VERLEE: That seems to be changing. Forget growing your own vegetables. Cutting-edge locavores are now pushing backyard honey, eggs, and milk. Researchers with the American Planning Association say in the last six months they've fielded more questions about livestock ordinances than almost any other topic. Zoning consultant Christopher Duerksen is trying to simplify some of the answers. He's putting together a model sustainability code for cities trying to green up their rules.
I'm curious, when you say to your average city planner - when you to say them the word "chicken," what do they tend to say?
Mr. CHRISTOPHER DUERKSEN (Colorado Zoning Consultant): They tend to squawk. I think most planners, like most people, don't think of urban areas as food producing areas, but that's changing with the cost of food and questions about the health of food. And so we're seeing a real change in mindset among urban planners.
VERLEE: Which means you can now keep bees in Denver or raise a mini-goat in Seattle. But the real rock stars of this movement are chickens. Urban livestock researcher Jennifer Blecha says in recent years a dozen cities or more annually have joined the pro-chicken flock. And she's seeing chicken advocates starting to get more organized.
Ms. JENNIFER BLECHA (Urban Livestock Researcher): When I over the last year or two have done presentations at various conferences on urban agriculture, a swarm of people comes afterward and says, oh, I'm from Cleveland. We need to get our regulations changed. Can you please help? Could you give me some advice?
VERLEE: Some municipalities have bucked this agrarian trend, though. Just north of Denver, the planning board for the city of Longmont recently gave the thumbs-down to a chicken ordinance. According to Board Chair Jon Van Bentham, concerns ranged from unsightly chicken coop construction, to noise and smell, to slightly more dire topics.
Mr. JON VAN BENTHAM (Board Chairman, Longmont, Colorado): Avian flu came up. That's maybe kind of a nightmare scenario, but that's one of the places where folks are concerned that it comes from.
VERLEE: But backyard farmers seem to have one ace in the hole for defusing any local objections - bribery. Certainly, on my street I know plenty of Brad's eggs end up on my neighbors' breakfast plates.
(Soundbite of conversation)
BRAD: I ask them every now and then if it's bothering them. And they say, oh, no, it doesn't bother us at all. And besides, you wouldn't mess with the one that feeds you.
VERLEE: Or kill the goose with the golden egg, I guess.
BRAD: Right.
VERLEE: For the record, no eggs - goose, chicken, or otherwise - changed hands in the reporting of this story. For NPR News, I'm Megan Verlee in Denver.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Welcome back to All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Rebecca Roberts. It seems like new species are discovered pretty frequently, but they're usually tiny things like insects. So how did scientists miss a four-foot-long pink iguana that's been around for a few million years? It's "Science Out of the Box."
(Soundbite of music)
ROBERTS: The Galapagos Islands have been famous for their wildlife ever since Charles Darwin hatched his theories on evolution by studying Galapagos finches. But even Darwin didn't get everywhere on the Galapagos Islands. And more than 20 years ago, scientists hiking on an island known as Isabela spotted an iguana that was, well, pink. What they didn't know was whether the pink lizard was a genetic mutation or a whole new species. Now that's been cleared up by a team led by Italian researcher Gabriele Gentile. Howard Snell of the University of New Mexico is one of the co-authors of a new article about this pink iguana. It was published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Howard Snell joins us now from member station KUNM in Albuquerque. Welcome to the program.
Dr. HOWARD SNELL (Professor of Biology, University of New Mexico): Thank you. Glad to be here.
ROBERTS: Describe the pink iguana for us.
Dr. SNELL: They are large, relatively slow animals. And these ones are beautifully pink.
ROBERTS: And the pink color, it's sort of a pale, fleshy pink from the pictures. Can you describe it for us?
Dr. SNELL: When we first saw them, some of us thought that they were just normal land iguanas that perhaps lacked pigment and therefore had this pinkish color. And we still think that that might be the mechanism of the pink. Because if you squeeze the skin of the pink iguana, it's kind of like squeezing the tip of your finger and it'll turn white. And then when you release it, sort of, as the blood flows back in, it turns pink again. And when you get that kind of a coloration, it may be due to the underlying capillaries, the underlying blood in the skin which could be visible, because normal pigment in land iguanas, which makes them show up as being yellow or sort of brownish, might be missing. But that's all very, very hypothetic, and it's just an idea at this point.
ROBERTS: I, of course, haven't spent nearly as much time studying or squeezing iguanas as you have. But just looking at the pictures, it's pretty unforgettable. It's - how did it take so long to figure out that this was a distinct lizard?
Dr. SNELL: Sure. That's a good question. You might say, well, a place like Galapagos where a hundred thousand tourists a year go, how could that happen? And the point is that these occur on the most remote side of the most remote volcano on the largest island in the Galapagos. It's a very difficult place to visit. And the first time I was up there, which was in the late '70s, I was probably the 10th or the 15th person who'd ever been to the summit of that volcano. So, it's not an area that's visited very much.
ROBERTS: And scientifically, how do you confirm that it is a new species?
Dr. SNELL: Cruz Marquez, the Ecuadorian man who first realized that these things were something special, he was saying, Howard, this is a new a species. And I was saying, well, Cruz, you know, I don't really think so. I think this is a normal land iguana that just has something wrong with it, and therefore there is an environmentally induced variation that has caused this coloration. And so Cruz and I would go round and round about that.
And about the same time we started working with Gabriele from Italy. And Gabriele starts to look at the genetics and the blood and things like that, and that's the work that was just published in the PDS paper which shows that these lizards are very, very distinct from Galapagos land iguanas and therefore are a distinct species.
ROBERTS: I understand the species doesn't yet have a Latin name?
Dr. SNELL: Discovering a new species is one thing, and then naming it is a practice of taxonomy, and that's a very formal process, as it should be. And so the next step then is the formal naming of the organism.
ROBERTS: Iguana researcher extraordinaire Howard Snell of the University of New Mexico, thank you so much for joining us.
Dr. SNELL: Thank you. Very glad to be here.
ROBERTS: And if you want to get a look at that pink iguana, go to our Web site, npr.org. While you're there, let us know what you think scientists should name this species. Just drop it in the comments area.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
We're back with All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Rebecca Roberts. This is day 15 of Israel's war with Hamas. The Israeli military keeps attacking by ground and air in Gaza. And today the Israeli air force dropped a different kind of message from its planes in the form of leaflets threatening an escalation.
More than 800 Palestinians have died since the war began, according to medical authorities in Gaza. At least 13 Israelis have been killed, most of them soldiers. Both Israel and Hamas are ignoring a U.N. Security Council demand for a cease-fire. Diplomatic talks continue in Cairo on a separate cease-fire plan.
NPR's Mike Shuster joins us now from Jerusalem. Mike, what can you tell us about these leaflets? What do they say exactly?
MIKE SHUSTER: Well, the leaflets are written in Arabic. There are thousands of them that the Israeli air force has been dropping over Gaza. They say the Israeli Defense Force will escalate the operation in the Gaza Strip. The IDF is not working against the people of Gaza, but against Hamas and the terrorists. And they warn people in Gaza, stay safe by following our orders.
Now the question is, what does an escalation mean? And here the speculation is that an escalation could mean that Israel is moving into the third phase of its operation in Gaza, the first phase having been the air war which lasted for a week. The second phase was the initial ground invasion which has lasted for the past week. But Israel's political and military leaders have been talking about a phase three whereby they put many more ground troops into Gaza, thousands more. And they push more deeply into the population centers like Gaza City and other densely populated areas of Gaza which inevitably will bring much more fighting and many more casualties on the Israeli side and on the Palestinian side.
ROBERTS: Meanwhile, for the last couple of days, Israel has created this three-hour window - a lull in the fighting to let humanitarian aid get through. Is anything getting into Gaza?
SHUSTER: Well, not much is coming from outside Gaza into Gaza because these three-hour lulls are not working. A couple of days ago, there was an attack on one of the aid convoys, and one of the truck drivers for the U.N. was killed. And the main relief group from the U.N. has decided not to send additional stuff in until all of that is worked out. The three hours do give aid workers inside Gaza an opportunity to distribute some of the stuff that's in warehouses inside Gaza. But both sides continued the war during the lull today, both the Israelis and Hamas.
ROBERTS: And what's the latest on the Egyptian cease-fire effort?
SHUSTER: Well, there's a lot going on in Egypt, but it's not clear that it's really moving or progressing. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, met with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. Hamas sent a delegation to Cairo. Turkey is also there. The Turkish government is trying to mediate. The real hard issue is what to do about the Egyptian-Gaza border. Israel wants it sealed before it agrees to a cease-fire. Hamas won't allow that. There's talk of an international force either in Gaza or in Egypt. Neither side wants that. So, these talks in Egypt aren't making much progress.
ROBERTS: NPR's Mike Shuster in Jerusalem. Thanks, Mike.
SHUSTER: You're welcome.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Rebecca Roberts. President-elect Barack Obama put a little more meat on the bones of his economics stimulus plan today. His main focus - this week's dismal unemployment numbers.
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: In the past month alone, we lost more than half a million jobs, a total of nearly 2.6 million in the year 2008. Another 3.4 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs.
ROBERTS: So many people are applying for unemployment help that this week computer systems crashed in several states across the country. The computers worked here in Washington, D.C., but when I dropped by the One-Stop Career Center, a case worker named Claudia Serrano(ph) was near overload at the front desk.
Ms. CLAUDIA SERRANO (Case Worker, One-Stop Career Center, Washington, D.C.): We were not prepared to deal with such large crowds. It is frustrating, I mean, to see that many people coming, and you can't help them as fast as they want help. We're short staffed.
ROBERTS: The center's manager, Cherie Finley(ph), says this week was unprecedented.
Ms. CHERIE FINLEY (Manager, One-Stop Career Center, Washington, D.C.): I have been working in workforce development and employment services for the last 12 years, and I've never seen anything like this.
ROBERTS: So far, details of the Obama stimulus plan have been pretty vague. Today, we got a slightly clearer look. At six o'clock this morning, his transition team released an analysis of what sorts of jobs the plan might create. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has been skeptical about what he's heard until now. Professor Stiglitz, thanks so much for joining us.
Dr. JOSEPH STIGLITZ (Professor of Economics, Columbia University): Nice to be here.
ROBERTS: I want to start by playing a couple of clips from the president-elect's weekly address today. Let's start with this one.
(Soundbite of Obama's weekly address)
President-elect OBAMA: The report confirms that our plan will likely save or create three to four million jobs.
ROBERTS: Professor Stiglitz, you have read the report. Does it really confirm that the stimulus plan would produce that many jobs?
Dr. STIGLITZ: Well, I think it's a very carefully done report in the sense that it is very honest about the large uncertainties. But the report actually helps frame, but only partly, the nature of the problems going forward. In the 2008, '09 and '10, there'll be almost six million new entrants into the labor force. So clearly, a stimulus package needs to create far more than the three, four million jobs that this package promises.
ROBERTS: Let me play you another clip from Obama's address today.
(Soundbite of Obama's weekly address)
President-elect OBAMA: Ninety percent of these jobs will be created in the private sector. The remaining 10 percent are mainly public sector jobs we save, like the teachers, police officers, firefighters, and others who provide vital services in our communities.
ROBERTS: So 90 percent private jobs, 10 percent government. What do you make of that proportion?
Dr. STIGLITZ: Well, I think I would put more - a little bit more emphasis on saving jobs that would be lost in the public sector and particularly in the stakes in localities. The fact is that the stakes in localities are facing an unprecedented budget crunch as a result of the economic slowdown. I would suspect that if we devoted more money to stakes in localities, the number of jobs saved would be far greater, and this would, in fact, be some of the most effective way of spending the stimulus money.
ROBERTS: Professor Stiglitz, on the federal level, a big part of the stimulus plan is tax cuts. How effective do you think tax breaks are in terms of creating jobs?
Dr. STIGLITZ: Well, the report is actually very honest that they are not as effective as other forms of expenditure. A particular concern to me is the tax cuts for businesses, some of which are oriented around allowing a carry back of losses in previous years which will be effectively doing little more than another bailout. We don't have the details, and so it may not be true. But unless a great deal of care is taken, that kind of a program is likely to have very little stimulus.
ROBERTS: Today's report was also the first time we've gotten something of a look at specifically which industries would be targeted to add jobs. And construction is number one, which isn't a surprise. But the second and third biggest sectors were retail and hospitality and leisure.
Dr. STIGLITZ: I think that is really reflecting the fact that those are sectors that tend to be really badly hit when you go into a downturn. And so their hypothesis, I suspect, is that if we can forestall the downturn, it will reverse those effects, and people will start to spend more. But again, many families in America are faced with a huge burden of debt. The value of their retirement savings has been eroded. In that kind of circumstances and with the limited availability of credit, I'm not sure that Americans will be running down to the shopping mall to spend more money. And of course if they don't run down to the shopping mall, that means the jobs that were forecast to be saved or created in retail won't materialize.
ROBERTS: Joseph Stiglitz is a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University. He joined us from his apartment in Manhattan. Thanks so much.
Dr. STIGLITZ: Thank you.
(Soundbite of bell)
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
That bell signals the end of second period at Fairfax High School. Before the 2,100 students here completely flood the hallway of this Virginia school, one grabs the chance to hand college recommendation forms to guidance counselor Renee Service.
Ms. RENEE SERVICE (Guidance Counselor, Fairfax High School): Did you send your applications out yet? You did? OK. All right, we'll get it out.
ROBERTS: Here at Fairfax High, winter break just ended, and seniors and a few juniors are trying to figure out where they'll go to college and, in these tough economic times, how they'll pay for it. Renee Service says in an ideal year, she gives students a six college rule.
Ms. SERVICE: Pick two schools that are reaches, two schools that are maybes. You pretty much fall in the range of what the school wants. You should get in, but you never know what's going to happen when you get the application to the admissions office. And then your last two are your definites.
ROBERTS: But nothing about the future seems definite this year. For our series "Faces of the New Economy," Service introduced us to six kids - James Lee(ph), Catherine Johnson(ph), Nicole Bane(ph), Jose Abarca(ph), Mitch Bowen(ph), and Ryan Larson(ph). They're all good students. They all hope to go to college and study everything from architecture to politics.
Unidentified Man #1: When I got my letter from Dartmouth, they broke it down, tuition, room and board, transportation, miscellaneous fees, student costs, textbooks, all that stuff, and it adds up to about 52,000. It's scary sometimes to look at it in that sense.
Ms. CATHERINE JOHNSON (Student, Fairfax High School):: My name is Catherine, and Hampton University is a private institution, and it's about 27,800 and, I think, 40 dollars a year. And I've been talking about this school since I was in 10th grade, and the price never really got to me until like this year, and I was like, oh, this is a lot of money. OK, where am I going to get this, from the sky? No? OK. And so I broadened my horizons, and I applied for Old Dominion University. I got in, and it's literally half the tuition. So it's either my dream school or the school down the street. It's me who has to figure out which one do I want to do.
Ms. NICOLE BANE (Student, Fairfax High School): My situation is almost identical to Catherine's. Like, I got into Charleston, and it's $35,000 a year. It's kind of hard. I almost, almost wish that I, like, hadn't gotten into Charleston because it's like harder, like, I'm good enough to go to my dream school, but I can't pay for it.
Mr. JOSE ABARCA (Student, Fairfax High School): My name is Jose Abarca and things in my house are a bit different. I mean, I'm only a junior. I haven't applied to any colleges. But it's kind of discouraging knowing how the economy is, where should I apply? Should I just go to a community college or join the military? Those are my options right now.
Ms. BANE: I have a job. It's a part-time job. I put 15 percent of my check away. I've been doing it since I was 14, so I have about $3,000 saved up. But that'll cover what? Like two books.
Mr. ABARCA: For the past month, my Dad has been out of work for about a week or so. So, his hours are cut down. My Mom's hours are cut down.
Ms. BANE: And my Mom took on a third job just to help.
Unidentified Man #2: My Mom had stayed home ever since I was born for me and my brother, and now, just this last year, she's had to go back to work. And my dad retired last year, and now my dad's going back to work, just to get me through college. And then, they're going to have to worry about my brother also.
Mr. ABARCA: And my mom, she has five kids, and the youngest being six and they're twins. And even if I do get accepted to a college and they give me financial aid, she has to take care of them. I have to take care of myself. So, this is when we need to, like, stick together the most.
Ms. JOHNSON: I have two little sisters, and they're both brilliant, like, they're smarter than I am. And they're both going to go to really good schools. And if the economy keeps, like, going on this decline, I don't want to take money away from them, like, to go to college now, like, just in case because then they might not have a chance so.
Mr. ABARCA: My mom keeps saying we can just get a bunch of loans. And my dad just says, just join is the easiest thing to do. But I don't know how the military works. I don't know, you know, if the war is going to get any worse.
Ms. BANE: Yeah, my mom has three jobs, so it doesn't work for us when it comes to, like, scholarships because it's like, oh, yeah your mother makes about $75,000 a year. Well, yeah, that's with three jobs. And then she just - she's a first-time homebuyer. We just bought a condo. And so she has that new mortgage to pay, which is a lot different. And it's just really hard to find out where we are going to get the money. I applied to about three scholarships. Didn't get them. So, I'm like, great, and I'm not - I mean, like I'm a good student. But I'm not - I don't have like a 4.444.
Unidentified Man #3: Like, I emailed the swimming coach, and he was like, oh, well, if you get these times, I can help pull for you. And of course that would get you more money or get you in even more. But the times that they have are like ridiculously fast, like Olympic times. So, I was like, well, I guess I'm not doing that now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. JOHNSON: The months are like going by quickly. And I'm like, this is a really hard decision. I thought that I'd be like, Hampton, woo, let's go. And now I'm like, wait a minute, let's rethink this. And I'm kind of glad I'm here because I thought I was the only person struggling. And I'm not. I'm so happy about that.
ROBERTS: That was Fairfax High School senior Catherine Johnson. She was joined by classmates, Ryan Larson, Jose Abarca, Nicole Bane, Mitch Bowen, and James Lee.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Now we'll turn to Cambodia. The murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge ended 30 years ago, but the rule of law can still be a hit or miss affair. That's why a recent court ruling seems so unusual because, as NPR's Michael Sullivan reports, the good guys seem to have won.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Nobody saw this one coming.
Ms. SARA COLM (Senior Asia Researcher, Human Rights Watch): We were surprised by the decision, to be frank. It's a bit rare in Cambodia to have a human rights victory, I'd have to say.
SULLIVAN: That's Sara Colm from Human Rights Watch in Phnom Penh. Someone who may have been even more surprised is 28-year-old Born Samnang. He's one of the two men released on New Year's Eve, freed by the Supreme Court after spending five years in prison for the 2004 murder of labor activist Chea Vichea, an outspoken critic of Prime Minister Hun Sen and his government. Born Samnang says he and the other man charged had nothing to do with the murder, and almost everyone in the city seems to know that. But Born Samnang says he was still shocked when the judge gave him his freedom and ordered a new investigation into the murder.
Mr. BORN SAMNANG: (Through Translator) When the judge said we're to be released, I didn't believe it. I thought it was some kind of a trick. But then I saw, he was serious, and tears started rolling down my cheek.
SULLIVAN: It was that rare day when the Cambodian judicial system delivered in a country where the culture of impunity is so deeply ingrained. Sara Colm.
Ms. COLM: Two men essentially being framed by someone very high up in the national police force who later admitted that the two men had been framed. The key witness to the murder who saw the whole thing carried out said that these two men were not the ones. Yet, these two men have spent five years in prison when they shouldn't have spent a day in prison.
SULLIVAN: Five years that began, Born Samnang says, with his forced confession while in police custody.
Mr. SAMNANG: (Through Translator) They had a confession all written up and told me to sign. I was sitting with my arms cuffed behind my back. When I refused to sign, they started hitting me from behind. Then, they took my cuffed hand and forced my thumbprint onto the paper.
SULLIVAN: He won't talk much about how he was treated in prison, afraid he might be sent back again. Chea Mony, the brother of slain activist Chea Vichea, says the young man has reason to be worried.
Mr. CHEA MONY: (Through Translator) I'm sure that neither of these men had anything to do with my brother's murder, he says, but they could still be sent back to jail at any time. And the real murderers, the ones sent by the government, he says, are still out there.
SULLIVAN: The government denies any involvement in the murder, and it's not really clear why the court chose to release the two men. But Human Rights Watch's Sara Colm says pressure from human rights groups and the international community may have helped. It probably didn't hurt that the two highest ranking police officials involved in the case are now gone. One in prison himself, the other died in a helicopter crash a few months ago. Sara Colm.
Ms. COLM: We don't see this as sort of solving the problem of impunity and lack of an independent judiciary here in Cambodia. Maybe it's a step in that direction and something we really applaud, but there will need to be ongoing vigilance and monitoring and pressure, particularly from the international community, which I think does have an impact at times here.
SULLIVAN: Born Samnang, meanwhile, has a few new year's resolutions, the first to be a better son to the mother who kicked him out of the house shortly before he was picked up by police. She disapproved of his late nights and his partying. Both regret what happened between them and say it probably helped convince the police who framed him, he wouldn't be missed.
Mr. SAMNANG: (Through Translator) I thought about it every day while in prison. If I had only listened to my mom, I would not have been involved in all of this. I would not have been charged by the police.
SULLIVAN: His mother, Nuon Kimsry, says the blame is hers.
Ms. NUON KIMSRY: (Khmer Spoken)
SULLIVAN: I made a quick decision, she says. I shouldn't have been so hard on him. Both say they'll do better this time around. I'm closing the book on my old life, Born Samnang says, and opening a new page to start a new life with my mom. Michael Sullivan, NPR News.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Glitz and gadgets, those are the staples of the annual Consumer Electronics Show, or CES, which wraps up tomorrow. There is still some glitz. The show is set in Vegas, after all. But it's tough to move those gadgets in an economy that's stuck in neutral. NPR's Laura Sydell tagged along with one retailer who's got a very different view of CES this year.
LAURA SYDELL: Televisions are blaring, speakers are booming in a cacophonous battle for the attention of Tony Kennedy.
(Soundbite of woman talking)
Unidentified Woman: There's something here for everybody, and it's all made possible by the new Intel...
SYDELL: Kennedy is here to buy stock for his three stores back in North Carolina. Elite Audio and Video sells and installs televisions, stereo systems, entertainment servers, and a variety of home entertainment products. He's not one of the big players like Best Buy or Costco. He's just trying to support his wife and 19-month-old twins. Usually the big box retailers get a lot of attention from the vendors here. But this year, he's feeling more important.
Mr. TONY KENNEDY (Owner, Elite Audio and Video, North Carolina): In the past, I was just coming and seeing what's the new stuff and knowing that we were going to have to commit ourselves to so much inventory for these guys to even look at us. This year has been a little nice knowing that they're needing us more so than we're needing them.
SYDELL: Kennedy is enjoying the attention, but the truth is he hasn't got much to give back. He didn't have a great Christmas. He downsized all three of his stores, and he isn't stocking up as much this year. Part of his business is installing the home entertainment systems that he sells.
Mr. KENNEDY: It's not really like depression, but you start thinking that way, you know. How can you save every little bit? Where it used to be, if you were doing a pre-wire and you dropped a screw, oh well, it's a screw. Now you're like getting down and looking for that screw.
SYDELL: Kennedy goes from booth to booth carefully examining TVs and speakers. Some companies he knows. Others are unfamiliar. He stops to examine some film screens for people who want home movie projectors. He's never heard of this company, although its name, Elite, is the same as his company's. Kennedy likes the look of the product. Right now, he stocks screens by Draper and Stewart. He approaches a salesman.
Mr. KENNEDY: As far as price point, how do you guys compare with, like, you know, Stewart and Draper?
Unidentified Man: As to be honest to you, Stewart is overcharging too much.
SYDELL: There are words that perk up Kennedy's ears. He's got other questions.
Mr. KENNEDY: How long should it take you, on average, to put like that screen right there together?
Unidentified Man: Assembly, we are - I would say, 15 minutes.
SYDELL: Assembly time is important to Kennedy. He has to factor in how long it takes staff to install. He examines the screens, asked questions about delivery time and support. He likes what he sees.
Mr. KENNEDY: Him saying that the price quoted is half of what Stewart is, is pretty impressive.
SYDELL: So, do you think given the current economy, that you're going to consider a company like this one?
Mr. KENNEDY: I think I'll be considering that and a lot more.
SYDELL: Kennedy is not completely happy about Elite screens. They aren't manufactured in the U.S., and he'd rather support American workers.
Mr. KENNEDY: This is just a bad time, but we're trying to do all the right things to weather it. Just going to depend on how long the storm is, you know.
SYDELL: He may have to buy goods made outside the U.S. He employs nine people, and he doesn't want to lay them off. The way he sees it, these times are about survival. Laura Sydell, NPR News, Las Vegas.
(Soundbite of telephone ringing)
Unidentified Woman: Good morning, Congressman Kratovil's office.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Frank Kratovil had officially been the Democratic congressman from Maryland's 1st District for about 24 hours when we met him in his brand new office on Capitol Hill. There is nowhere to sit in the front room. The walls and bookshelves are totally bare, and the folks on staff here don't even have business cards yet, so they're handing out little slips of paper to guests.
Representative FRANK KRATOVIL (Democrat, Maryland): All right. Well, thank you very much guys. Sorry, it's kind of a little bit awkward here…
ROBERTS: A lot about Frank Kratovil's experience is common to any freshman member of Congress - the process of picking an office, learning the ropes. But Kratovil is breaking out of the pattern a little bit, too. For one thing, he's decided to commute across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge back to his district every night.
Representative KRATOVIL: This morning, it took me about an hour and 15 minutes.
ROBERTS: Kratovil is the first Democrat in 18 years to take this conservative district on Maryland's eastern shore, and he only won by a few thousand votes. So he figures enduring a big commute is the least he can do to convince skeptical constituents he's got their interests at heart.
Representative KRATOVIL: From a practical side of it, you have the opportunity to go home every day, experience the same thing your neighbors are experiencing. If there's a traffic jam, you see the traffic jam. If there is some problem, you see it. Equally important in my view is the ability to maintain some sense of normalcy with my family. I've got four young boys - 11, nine, seven, and five -and, you know, the thought of leaving them for four or five days, it would be very, very difficult. So I'm blessed in the fact that I can go home every night, even if it's late, and, you know, tuck my kids in and give them a kiss goodnight.
ROBERTS: Well, having little kids is also a pretty good way to deflate any self-importance you might have accidentally taken on.
Representative KRATOVIL: That's putting it mildly.
ROBERTS: You ran, in part, by saying Washington was broken. Partisanship had taken over the process. That professional politicians were taking the government away from the people. How do you balance those criticisms with now being part of that system and taking pride in it?
Representative KRATOVIL: I think you demonstrate independence. You make sure you're doing your best to look at both sides of issues, as I did as a prosecutor. You don't believe everything you're told. One of the great benefits I have in terms of being a prosecutor is I was constantly faced with the total opposite views of a particular situation. And the key was sifting through all the facts in getting, you know, getting to the truth. And what I found is that the truth was somewhere in the middle.
ROBERTS: Because you're in a swing district, you have to assume the RNC would love to have your seat back in 2010. How much attention do you pay to re-election?
Representative KRATOVIL: You know, right now, I'm focused on listening and learning, doing the best I can to make decisions on the legislation that I'm going to be voting on. I haven't spent too much time yet thinking about the re-election. But listen, you have to run every two years, so. And this is to say it's a - in a sense, it's an ongoing process.
ROBERTS: One way Congressman Kratovil can help his re-election chances is by staying to the right of the Democratic majority. He's already taken steps in that direction by joining the Blue Dog Coalition of moderate-to-conservative Democrats. And he knows he won't be following the entire agenda of the Democratic leadership. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for instance, is not particularly popular in his district.
Representative KRATOVIL: Whether you agree or don't agree, our leaders deserve respect. And so I may not agree with her on every issue, and there are certainly going to be issues where I'm going to be opposing the majority. But that does not mean that at any time I would lose any respect for her. I think she's - she seems very personable. She's obviously had an incredible career. And she is the speaker of the House of Representatives.
ROBERTS: What sort of issues do you expect to be breaking with the majority?
Representative KRATOVIL: Well, we talked about, you know, legal immigration. I think that that may be one. I think the Blue Dogs on certain issues as it relates to financial responsibility may break with the rest of the party. So those are a couple.
ROBERTS: Meanwhile, Congressman Kratovil is plenty busy. He's already been named to the Armed Services Committee, but he's waiting to hear his other assignments. He's not convinced about the value of President-elect Obama's economic stimulus plan, and he wants to learn more. He's hoping to get a chance to pick up some boxes from his old job as county prosecutor, so he has something to put on those empty bookshelves. And he needs to keep from getting lost. TEXT: Representative KRATOVIL: I was talking to some members that had been here for years, and they still get lost. It is overwhelming when you get down in the basement area. But I'm getting better.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
I'm here on the west side of the Capitol, right near where they're building the stage for Barack Obama to take his oath of office in a little more than a week. The view from here is down the National Mall to the Washington Monument, a mile-long stretch that will be packed with people coming here to see history. Then there's another stretch between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial that will also be packed with people. If you plan to join all those crowds, we want to hear from you. Go to our Web site, npr.org/dctrip.
Tell us about how you're getting here, who you are traveling with, and any important stops you plan to make along the way. And then when you're actually on the road, give us an update. If you're Twittering or posting your photos on Flickr or videos on YouTube, tag your posts so we and our listeners can get a look. The tag to use is dctrip09. That's dstrip09, no spaces. And in the next week, NPR will introduce even more cool tools you can use to document your journey. You could find it all at npr.org/dctrip.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Tonight, Hollywood holds its annual cocktail party for the masses, the Golden Globes. And NPR's Bob Mondello is here - Bob tragically without a tuxedo.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BOB MONDELLO: And without drinks, which is even more tragic. This always strikes me as one of the silliest parties of the year. It is essentially a bunch of people who are foreign journalists who don't know all that much about film, who have decided to give awards. And because they come out before the Oscars, Hollywood takes them seriously and sends big stars. And so they have this television show that gets big ratings. It doesn't actually have very much to do with whether the movies are good, bad or indifferent. And I always find it crazy that people watch them.
ROBERTS: You know, the other thing that strikes me looking at the nominees is that all of the nominees for best drama came out just in the last couple of weeks in December. Why is everything so backloaded to the end of the year?
MONDELLO: Well, the old theory was that the Oscar voters were so old that they didn't have enough memory to ...
ROBERTS: Is that true?
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONDELLO: Yes. I don't - they wouldn't remember the stuff early on. I don't think that that's actually the reason. I mean, it's become structural in the industry that they release movies that they think have a shot at the Oscars towards the end of the year, so that they will be fresh in everyone's mind. And the result of that is that if you have a serious movie, and you're thinking about releasing it in January or February, you hold it because all the movies it's competing with are going to be those Oscar nominees that are - that have, you know, 12 Oscar nominations in their advertising. And your picture isn't going to have any of that because it just opened and isn't eligible. The exception to that rule is documentaries and foreign films. They get released early on. And those are most of the good pictures that come out in the first part of the year.
ROBERTS: Like what?
MONDELLO: There was this amazing documentary called "U2 3D." Now, I would not have said that a concert film is going to do what it did to me. But boy, did it do it.
(Soundbite of documentary "U2 3D")
MONDELLO: There was a point in the middle of this picture where I was about to tap the guy in front of me on the shoulder to tell him to stop waving his arms. And then I realized they weren't his arms. The shot was from in the crowd of the movie and they were on screen. The 3D effect is so realistic that I felt like those arms were right in front of my face. It was really remarkable. And I don't know if it happens for all of the concert films that they make these days, but this one was really, really well-designed and one of the best pictures of the year, and it came out early. So, it's not inconceivable that a movie of that sort will come out.
ROBERTS: So, documentaries, foreign films - did Hollywood offer anything decent in the first part of the year?
MONDELLO: Oh, yeah, a couple of pictures. Not a lot. But there was one I thought was going to do a lot of business. It was a teen comedy called "Charlie Bartlett," and I expected it to make a big star of Anton Yelchin, who is this kid from "Huff." In the picture, he plays a kid who has always been to prep schools, but who always gets kicked out of them. He's the most polite kid in the world, and now he's going to go to public school.
(Soundbite of movie "Charlie Bartlett)
Mr. ANTON YELCHIN: (As Charlie Bartlett) Mom, I think I might take the bus in tomorrow.
Ms. HOPE DAVIS: (As Marilyn Bartlett) Really? I was going to have Thomas drive you.
Mr. YELCHIN: (As Charlie Bartlett) I know, but I don't think anybody else is gonna show up with a chauffer.
Ms. DAVIS: (As Marilyn Bartlett) You're probably right.
Mr. YELCHIN: (As Charlie Bartlett) Have you taken your Klonopin today?
Ms. DAVIS: (As Marilyn Bartlett) I haven't. Where do you suppose I put that?
Mr. YELCHIN: (As Charlie Bartlett) Probably in your purse.
Ms. DAVIS: (As Marilyn Bartlett) Oh, there you are. What would I do without you, Charlie?
MONDELLO: Now, you may be getting the impression that he knows his way around psychopharmacology.
ROBERTS: Right.
MONDELLO: It's very interesting. He becomes the school's shrink, in a way. He sets up his office in the restroom, and kids come to him with their problems. They sit in the adjoining stall. It's almost like a confessional. And it's sort of a counterculture picture, very appealing. Did no business. It didn't even crack $4 million. So no one went to see this picture, but it was really quite engaging.
ROBERTS: Now, here's the risk to being on the radio: You get yourself quoted back to you.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ROBERTS: So, we actually did go back through your files to find some movies from the first part of the year that you liked.
MONDELLO: OK.
ROBERTS: And you said nice things about this movie called "The Visitor." We're going to play a scene where a middle-aged widower and a young Senegalese drummer have a kind of bonding moment over music. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: The drummer in the movie was Syrian, not Senegalese.]
(Soundbite of movie "The Visitor")
Mr. HAAZ SLEIMAN: (As Tarek Khalil) Walter, I know you're a very smart man, but with the drum you have to remember not to think. Thinking just screws it up, OK?
Mr. RICHARD JENKINS: (As Professor Walter Vale) OK.
Mr. SLEIMAN: (As Tarek Khalil) Now, give it a couple of bangs.
(Soundbite of drum beating)
Mr. SLEIMAN: (As Tarek Khalil): Not so hard, you are not angry at it.
Mr. JENKINS: (As Professor Walter Vale) OK.
(Soundbite of drum beating)
Mr. SLEIMAN: (As Tarek Khalil) Better. Did you think?
Mr. JENKINS: (As Professor Walter Vale) No.
Mr. SLEIMAN: (As Tarek Khalil) Good. C'mon, follow me.
(Soundbite of drum beating)
MONDELLO: It's a really, really touching story that ends up being very much about immigration and immigration issues in the country, but isn't at all preachy about them and is a quite fascinating picture. I actually think this one might be remembered at Oscar time, but you can never tell what the Oscar folks will do. It's really just hard to predict.
ROBERTS: NPR's Bob Mondello. We've got a list of Bob's favorite movies from early last year up on our Web site, npr.org. Thanks, Bob.
MONDELLO: It's a pleasure, always.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
With a little more than a week until the Bushes say goodbye to the White House, the president's admirers and detractors agree on just one thing. Memories of this presidency will be dominated by a single day: September 11, 2001. NPR's Don Gonyea has covered the Bush White House for the past eight years, and he has this look at how the terrorist attacks changed the Bush presidency.
DON GONYEA: The pictures of that day are still vivid - the World Trade Center, the panic in New York City, the smoke billowing from the Pentagon, the crash site in Pennsylvania. For President Bush, the first moments of the crisis seemed halting. He was reading to school children in Florida. His chief of staff whispered in his ear. His face seemed to go blank as he processed the horrible news. A half-hour later, he made his first statement to the nation.
(Soundbite of speech, September 11, 2001)
President GEORGE W. BUSH: I have ordered that the full resources of the federal government go to help the victims and their families, and to conduct a full-scale investigation to hunt down and to find those folks who committed this act.
GONYEA: That day, the president flew, for security reasons, to a base in Louisiana, then to one in Nebraska before getting back to Washington that night where he addressed the nation again, more formally, from the Oval Office. The public rallied behind him. Days later, he delivered a moving speech at a prayer service at the National Cathedral, and he traveled to ground zero.
(Soundbite of speech at ground zero)
President BUSH: I can hear you. The rest of the world hears you. And the people who ..
(Soundbite of people cheering and whistling)
President BUSH: And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.
(Soundbite of people cheering)
GONYEA: The White House went on war footing after 9/11. Tight security got tighter, public tours were curtailed, presidential schedules were less detailed, secrecy flourished - all in the name of national security. Responding to the attacks, framing every policy in terms of the attacks, became the theme of the era. It's hard to overstate how different this was from what candidate Bush had foreseen. Less than a year earlier, in the final weeks of the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush described himself as promoting a, quote, humble foreign policy.
President BUSH: I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you.
GONYEA: Now compare that to what he told a joint session of Congress the week following 9/11 with this message to nations around the world.
President BUSH: Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.
GONYEA: Historian Robert Dallek says 9/11 had a profound impact on how the president was viewed.
Dr. ROBERT DALLEK (Historian): It gave him, initially, a surge of influence and of standing, not only in the United States but around the world.
GONYEA: Then there was this warning a few months later to Iraq, Iran and North Korea in the president's State of the Union Address in early 2002.
(Soundbite of State of the Union Address, 2002)
President BUSH: States like these and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world by seeking weapons of mass destruction. These regimes pose a grave and growing danger.
GONYEA: The axis-of-evil speech was a sign of things to come. It signaled the coming of the so-called Bush doctrine, which represented a major change in the U.S. approach to the world. The Bush doctrine embraced the concept of a pre-emptive war, an attack on a country deemed to pose a threat to the United States, even if that threat remained theoretical.
(Soundbite of State of the Union Address, 2002)
President BUSH: Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike?
GONYEA: The concept of pre-emptive war would become reality in Iraq. The administration said Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was a threat to use weapons of mass destruction, implying that these might soon include nuclear weapons. Though allied forces invading Iraq found no such weapons, Mr. Bush would continue to justify the incursion by talking about 9/11, even as he eventually admitted there was no evidence of a connection between Iraq and the September 11th plotters. The Iraq war also increased tension between the U.S. and its allies. And the president took a new, tougher stand with the United Nations.
(Soundbite of speech)
President BUSH: We will consult. But let there be no misunderstanding. If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him.
GONYEA: Immediately after 9/11, the U.S. received an outpouring of support from around the world. With the Iraq war, that changed to doubt and then to outright opposition. Back in the U.S., however, the president continued to ride a wave of support. The list of things he got from Congress after 9/11 includes the Patriot Act, the controversial measure that gives law enforcement enhanced powers to track potential terrorist activity, including access to email, telephone, health, financial and other records. The president also established the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
And he created a sprawling, new Department of Homeland Security, which included a powerful, new Transportation Safety Administration. Later, we all learned the administration had set up secret prisons for terror suspects in Eastern Europe. In the same vein, the Justice Department redefined what it means to torture, allowing waterboarding, which has long been considered torture. When any of these measures drew criticism, the administration would invoke 9/11.
The same kind of leverage was used to increase executive authority, fulfilling a cherished goal of Vice President Dick Cheney going back decades, to the time when he was President Gerald Ford's chief of staff. This is from Fox News in 2002.
(Soundbite of Fox News broadcast, 2002)
Vice President DICK CHENEY: Time after time after time, administrations have traded away the authority of the president to do his job. We're not going to do that in this administration. The president's bound and determined to defend those principles and to pass on this office, his and mine, to future generations in better shape than we found it.
GONYEA: The first president to inherit these enhanced powers will be Barack Obama, who spoke out against them in his campaign for the White House. He's pledged to close Guantanamo, and to reduce the U.S. presence in Iraq. But no new occupant of the Oval Office can escape the grim legacy of 9/11 and all the presidential actions that followed. Don Gonyea, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERTS: You can retrace some of the highs and lows of President Bush's eight years in office through an interactive timeline on our Web site, npr.org. You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
Fifty years ago, Berry Gordy took an $800 loan from his family and turned it into Motown Records.
(Soundbite of song "Baby Love")
Ms. DIANA ROSS (Singer, The Supremes): (Singing) Ooh, baby love, my baby love, I need you, oh, how I need you. But all you do is treat me bad...
ROBERTS: At Motown, stars didn't just fall from the sky. They were made. And one of the creators was Maxine Powell. She ran Motown's finishing school. Berry Gordy found the voices; Maxine Powell made them ready for the stage. To mark Motown's 50th birthday tomorrow, Ms. Powell is joining us from member station WDET in Detroit. Thank you so much for being here.
Ms. MAXINE POWELL (Former Etiquette Consultant, Motown Records): You're perfectly welcome.
ROBERTS: You ran a modeling school in Detroit before working full time for Motown. How did you meet the Gordys and end up as their etiquette consultant?
Ms. POWELL: This is what happened. Mr. Gordy was very busy with the writers and learning how to run the business. His sister Gwen, who had been one of my models, anytime something happened that wasn't up to par, she'd say to Mr. Gordy, if you had Maxine Powell here, that wouldn't happen. And I closed my finishing school and opened a finishing school in Motown. And I said, well, we're going to develop the artists. They're like flowers. That's how I teach. I think of people as flowers. They're all different, but all somebody and have something to offer. He began to see the difference because I teach class, and class will turn the heads of kings and queens. Class, style and refinement - it's outstanding wherever you go.
ROBERTS: Let me ask you about an artist like Diana Ross. Tell me how she was when she first came to you, and what sort of things you were able to teach her.
Ms. POWELL: Well, when Diana Ross came in, she knew where she wanted to go. So she came in a bit snooty. And I worked with her to show that there was a vast difference than being snooty, and being gracious and classy, because snooty people are insecure, and that's what I worked with her. She brought me, Diana Ross, on stage with her Broadway show, a rhythm and blues on Broadway that had never been heard of before. I was in New York there in the audience. I just wanted to see if she was doing the same thing that I taught - that certain class and certain style you have to have to continue to move forward.
And when she ended her show, she brought me on stage: Ms. Powell, come up here. She introduced me to her audience as the person that taught her everything she knew. And I won't forget that. And when I went backstage, she said, Ms. Powell, every time I'm on stage, you're out there with me.
ROBERTS: What sort of tips do you give an artist on stage?
Ms. POWELL: Body language. Everybody walks, but I teach how to glide. I teach how if you drop something, how to pick it up. If your slip comes down around your feet, how to stand in the basic standing position and step out of it smiling, with your hip bones pushed forward and the buttocks pushed under. You never, never protrude the buttocks because it means an ugly gesture, you see? They learned all of those things. I was turned loose to do whatever was necessary to make the artist look first-class. Now class is difficult to come by, white or black. I had the Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye. I didn't do anything for Stevie. Stevie was always beautiful. Everybody doesn't have class, but you can develop style and then refinement.
ROBERTS: Maxine Powell is the creator of the Maxine Powell System, and she ran the finishing school for the stars associated with Motown Records. Thank you so much.
Ms. POWELL: And thank you for inviting me.
(Soundbite of song "You Are The Sunshine of My Life")
Mr. STEVIE WONDER: (Singing) You are the sunshine of my life, That's why I'll always be around.
ROBERTS: And there's more from Motown's 50th on our Web site, nprmusic.org, where Detroit music critic Gary Graff shares his playlist of overlooked Motown gems.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Israel's military pressed deeper into Gaza today, the 16th day of the offensive. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told his cabinet that the incursion is nearing its goals. But he gave no sign that Israel would end its operations in Gaza anytime soon. Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that controls Gaza, also gave no indication that it was ready to cease its rocket launches against Israel. The number of dead among Palestinians is now closing in on 900, according to United Nations figures, with more than 3,700 injured. Israel's death tolls stands at 13. NPR's Mike Shuster reports from Jerusalem.
MIKE SHUSTER: It's been a particularly bloody weekend in Gaza. According to figures compiled by United Nations agencies, at least 70 Palestinians died since Saturday, with more than 200 injured. Most of those killed were non-combatants, according to medical workers in Gaza. They died as a result of Israel's relentless air bombardments, and as a result of some intense ground operations involving infantry and tanks along the southern edge of Gaza City. U.N. officials said today that of the almost 900 Palestinians killed so far in this war, more than 40 percent have been women and children.
Israeli military and political leaders believe the offensive has severely eroded Hamas' military capabilities. It may have reduced the number of rockets launched against Israel from Gaza as well, but it has not ended them. The Israeli offensive appears to have reached a crossroads. Israeli newspapers are filled with speculation about what the next phase will be - whether Israel will increase the number of its troops in Gaza and press the fight against Hamas more deeply into Gaza City and other heavily populated areas of the territory, or whether comments like Olmert's today, that Israel is nearing its goals, may be laying the groundwork for an Israeli decision to declare an end to the offensive.
Late today, a spokesman for the Israeli military said additional units of reservists have now been deployed to Gaza, a possible sign that Israel intends to widen its operations there. Mike Shuster, NPR News, Jerusalem.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
We turn now to the difficult relationship between Iran, the United States and Israel. The New York Times reported today on Iran's nuclear program and an unusual exchange between the Bush administration and Israel. At issue: whether Israel should attack Iran's nuclear facilities. NPR has confirmed that Israel asked the United States for special bunker-busting bombs as well as permission to fly through Iraqi airspace on the way to Iran. The United States turned Israel down. NPR's Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman joins me now. Tom, what have you learned?
TOM BOWMAN: Well, we've learned that the Israelis asked for additional bunker-buster bombs. They already have some from the United States, but for this type of mission - multiple targets, hardened facilities - they would need a lot more. Some of these bunker busters are 5,000 pounds. Now, the overflight rights are important because the quickest way to get from Israel to Iran is straight through Iraq. And now, the Americans control Iraqi airspace. But both the additional bunker busters and overflight rights have been denied.
ROBERTS: And why is the U.S. military against it?
BOWMAN: Well, the U.S. military doesn't think that this kind of operation would work. And the other thing is there are so many U.S. forces now in Iraq, right next door to Iran, that those troops would be vulnerable to Iranian missiles, Iranian sabotage. Also in the region, you also have the American Fifth Fleet not too far away from Iran. They, too, could be vulnerable to missile attacks or sabotage. Also, they don't want to widen - have another war in the region. They're already faced with Iraq, already faced with Afghanistan. And Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, talked about this last spring.
Admiral MIKE MULLEN (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff): Opening up a third front right now would be extremely stressful on us.
BOWMAN: Now, Mullen also went on to say that, you know, I don't need it to be more unstable in the region. And he wants diplomacy to come forward here. He doesn't want any attacks against Iran.
ROBERTS: One of the things I noticed in the Times story was this idea that the Americans are actually trying to covertly delay or sabotage the Iranian nuclear power by working with manufacturers who supply them.
BOWMAN: That's right. What they would do is - computers, electronic equipment, any hardware, they could sabotage this by, let's say, having the equipment off specifications, sending faulty equipment, maybe put computer viruses in these. There are many, many ways you can sabotage some sort of a construction effort like this.
And actually there was precedent for this. During the Cold War, American intelligence agents were able to learn the secret messages of top officials in Iran, Iraq and Libya by going to the manufacturer, a Swiss manufacturer of encryption equipment, and they were able to secretly rig these machines so they could easily break the codes and read the messages of these officials.
ROBERTS: So where does all this leave the new president-elect?
BOWMAN: Well, he said - Obama has also said, of course, that what he would like to see is more diplomacy in the region, particularly talking with Iran. He would like to see economic sanctions continue. And clearly, he has the support of Defense Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen in not having any sort of military action at this point.
ROBERTS: NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Tom, thanks so much.
BOWMAN: You're welcome.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Rebecca Roberts. In nine days, millions of people will be crowding the streets of Washington listening to this:
(Soundbite of brass band)
ROBERTS: The soundtrack of a presidential inauguration. The people behind the inauguration took a test drive really early this morning through Washington's otherwise quiet streets. We'll revisit that dress rehearsal in a few minutes. First, though, another unusual Sunday event just up the Hill. U.S. senators holed themselves into session this afternoon. NPR's senior Washington editor Ron Elving was watching, and he joins us now. Ron, why did they actually go into session on a Sunday?
RON ELVING: Rebecca, it's all about breaking one huge logjam created by one lone senator, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. He's been using the filibuster threat to block nearly 160 different land-use bills going back through last year. So now the Democratic leader, Harry Reid from Nevada, has rolled all these bills together, and you've got something like 2 million acres of wilderness protection here, a lot of earmarks and pork in the package, something affecting nearly every state. And that's why, in the end, we didn't have any trouble getting enough votes to cut off debate. The vote was 66 to 11. So even though about 20 senators didn't show up, there were plenty of votes over the three-fifths required.
ROBERTS: Do you think that's a sign of how well Democrats are going to be able to counter filibusters going forward?
ELVING: Not necessarily. This was not really an ideological issue or a Republican-Democrat thing. You know, Tom Coburn has been objecting for some time to the way federal spending is done - the log rolling, the one hand washes the other. And he also objects to a lot of the wilderness designations, some of the other specifics. But in the end, because there was something for everybody, you had a lot of Republican senators, conservatives from places like Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, voting for this.
ROBERTS: And finally, we have the curious case of Roland Burris, whether he'll be seated this week as Illinois' junior senator. On "Face The Nation" this morning, Illinois senior Senator Dick Durbin seemed to soften his stance against Burris.
Senator DICK DURBIN (Democrat, Illinois): Certainly, all of the Democratic senators said, we don't want anything to do with Rod Blagojevich's choices. And then came his nomination of Roland Burris, and many members stepped back and said, well, let's be fair to this man. He has been elected four times statewide in Illinois. Let's make sure we're fair to him as well.
ELVING: Yes, he's still trying to make the case, isn't he, Rebecca, that maybe Roland Burris isn't the greatest choice being tied as he is to Rod Blagojevich. But you know, they're done in. They're hemmed in. There is really no more legal maneuvering that the Senate Democrats can do. All the legal technicalities that they've raised, the possibilities for delays, seemed to have been exhausted. So at some point now, I think they're going to have to give in. You hear some resignation there in Dick Durbin's voice. I think you heard it, too, from President-elect Barack Obama on this subject last week. So they're going to have to vote. And when they do, he'll be seated. And that could be this week.
ROBERTS: NPR's senior Washington editor Ron Elving. Thanks, Ron.
ELVING: Thank you, Rebecca.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Well, all this talk about the precarious future of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich got us wondering just how unusual his situation is. It turns out only seven governors have been impeached and removed from office in U.S. history. The very first? William Holden of North Carolina in 1871. N.C. State University Professor Emeritus William Harris literally wrote the book on Holden, and he says the governor was impeached for suspending the writ of habeas corpus.
Dr. WILLIAM HARRIS (Professor Emeritus of History, North Carolina State University): He had suspended this to put down the Ku Klux Klan in two central North Carolina counties in 1870. And then when the opposition party, the Conservatives, gained control of the Legislature, then they moved forward and impeached him on the grounds that he had usurped the constitution of the state, and he was removed from office.
ROBERTS: This gubernatorial rogue's gallery also includes David Butler of Nebraska, and William Sulzer of New York. Both were removed for misappropriation of state funds. Arizona's Evan Mecham was the most recent member. He was convicted of obstruction of justice in 1988. In Texas, farmer Jim Ferguson was impeached in 1917 after an ugly political fight for control of the University of Texas. His most notable accomplishment might have been his replacement. His wife, Miriam "Ma" Ferguson, became Texas's first female governor.
And then there were two Oklahoma governors impeached in the 1920s. John Walton ordered the National Guard to disband the grand jury that was investigating him. And just six years later, Henry Johnston ordered the Guard to surround the state Capitol and keep the legislature from getting in. Not too many lessons learned for those guys.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Next, we introduce you to the American ambassador to Libya, someone you don't hear from very often - largely because there hasn't been an American ambassador to Libya in more than 35 years. The U.S. pulled its ambassador in 1972, a few years after Muammar Gaddafi came to power on a wave of anti-American sentiment.
In the last few years, though, Gaddafi has tried to make amends. He's renounced terrorism, he's abandoned his country's nuclear program, and he paid into a fund for the families of those killed in the 1988 PanAm bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. Gene Cretz is the new U.S. ambassador to Libya. He flew to Tripoli just after Christmas to get started, and he's on the line now. Congratulations, Ambassador Cretz.
Ambassador GENE CRETZ (U.S. Ambassador to Libya): Well, thank you very much.
ROBERTS: You've only been in town a couple of weeks. How were you received when you arrived?
Ambassador CRETZ: Well, it's been a very good experience so far. I only presented my credentials, actually, today. So, in effect, I was not the official U.S. representative here until that happened. But at approximately 11:15 this morning, Tripoli time, I did present my credentials. And so I am now a fully functioning ambassador. I would say that the welcome from Libyans, in general, has been very warm. There are several people here who - of the older generation who studied in the United States, in fact, and who harbor a strong affection for the United States. And in addition, just as there is a lot of excitement throughout not only the Arab world, but in the world in general about the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Obama, it's a good time to be an American diplomat overseas.
ROBERTS: Did you present your credentials to Muammar Gaddafi? Have you met with him yet?
Ambassador CRETZ: No, I haven't. No. Since the credentialing only happened several hours ago, I will now begin to make my rounds of the Libyan officials with whom I was basically, officially barred from meeting until that credentialing ceremony happened.
ROBERTS: And why establish an ambassador there now? What's the benefit to re-establishing diplomatic contact while Gaddafi is still in power?
Ambassador CRETZ: Well, we've been through a very difficult period with the Libyans. At some point, this government, under the leadership of Colonel Gaddafi, took some fairly significant steps - including, as you said, the renunciation of terrorism, giving up its weapons of mass destruction. In addition to that, we have a lot of interests, similar interests with Libya - for example, in combating terrorism. So it was only natural that we would take the final step of sending an ambassador.
ROBERTS: You were most recently at the embassy in Tel Aviv. As you watch what's happening in Gaza now, what is the reaction in Libya? Gaddafi was extremely anti-Israel at one time. What's going on now?
Ambassador CRETZ: Well, you know, just as we've seen demonstrations across the Arab world and the Islamic world, in Europe, and even in the United States, we have also seen demonstrations here. They're very strong, obviously, in their criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza. But so far, there's been no major threat to our facilities. There have been several demonstrations, as I said, but we remain on a high security alert here, as we do in several places around the globe. But there's a lot of anger here.
ROBERTS: Gene Cretz is the first United States ambassador to Libya in three decades. Mr. Ambassador, thanks so much.
Ambassador CRETZ: Thank you.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Protests against Israel's Gaza offensive turned violent in several cities around the world today. In Pakistan, demonstrators tried to attack a U.S. consulate. Security forces had to use tear gas and batons to stop them. And in Brussels, Belgium, 30,000 people clashed with police. Ten of them were arrested. That country has become a flashpoint in the past several weeks, and Jewish residents are living in fear. Teri Schultz reports from Antwerp.
TERI SCHULTZ: The violence in Gaza is reflected in the streets of Europe, where the perception among Muslim populations that Israel is being favored has boosted support for the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
(Soundbite of protest)
SCHULTZ: Belgium has seen some of the worst unrest. It started New Year's Eve with a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Antwerp that degenerated into a downtown rampage headed toward the city's Jewish area. While police stopped it, this set the stage for a surge of anti-Semitic attacks, mostly in Antwerp, which, with some 22,000 Jews, has one of the largest Jewish populations outside Israel. People have been beaten in the streets. A Jewish home has been set on fire. Synagogues have been attacked.
(Soundbite of telephone ringing)
Ms. TERRY DAVIDS (Publisher, Joods Actueel): (Foreign language spoken)
SCHULTZ: For Terry Davids, who publishes the Jewish magazine Joods Actueel, the situation has hit very close to home. She and her staff have received death threats, including one warning, you Jews are not safe, suggesting a suicide attack to avenge the lives of Gaza children by killing Jewish children. Davids says unfortunately, while this is a bad situation, it's not a new one.
Ms. DAVIDS: We are used to this. It's very, very sad. But we are always used to being scared.
SCHULTZ: She acknowledges that many Jews are making adjustments in their daily lives. In her family, that's meant men foregoing the traditional skull cap in certain areas of the city.
Ms. DAVIDS: I feel horrible about it. But it still affects, and I don't want to take any unnecessary risks.
SCHULTZ: One group often blamed for inciting conflicts here is the Arab-European League, AEL, which defines itself as a political and social organization supporting Arab and Muslim causes, and encouraging rallies for Hamas and Hezbollah.
(Soundbite of rally)
SCHULTZ: Mohammad Ben Hadu(ph), president of AEL's Antwerp Chapter, insists his group had nothing to do with the riots of December 31st, or actions like death threats. But he does think Belgians are overreacting to these incidents and under-reacting to what's happening to Palestinians in Gaza.
Mr. MOHAMMAD BEN HADU (President, Arab-European League's Antwerp Chapter): People having bombs over a thousand pounds dropped on their roof, that's what you should get frustrated about and not about some 18 cars who got their side mirror, you know, kicked off.
SCHULTZ: Antwerp politician Hicham El Mzairh, a Muslim, agrees that Gaza suffering must be put higher on the European agenda, but says what's happening here is not helping that cause. He and Mikhail Freilich of the Jewish magazine Joods Actueel last week issued a joint call for the Muslim and Jewish communities to focus on what they have in common.
Mr. HICHAM EL MZAIRH (Politician, Antwerp, Belgium): I'm convinced that the people of Antwerp are strong enough to come over this. It's just a period that's going to pass, and we have to just learn and get over it and live together.
SCHULTZ: But the Arab-European League's Ben Hadu says unless European leaders do more to stop Israeli attacks, they will see more conflict at home.
Mr. BEN HADU: We will escalate. People are getting more and more angry. Things will get hotter here in Antwerp and in Brussels, and in the whole of Europe.
SCHULTZ: Terry Davids says while she may be nervous, she won't be intimidated.
Ms. DAVIDS: I believe in God, and I hope he'll protect me. I'm sure he will.
SCHULTZ: And the Belgian government has posted thousands of extra police officers around Jewish neighborhoods, shops, schools and religious sites to help maintain peace and restore peace of mind. For NPR News, I'm Teri Schultz in Antwerp.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Welcome back to All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Rebecca Roberts. If you'd been wandering through downtown Washington in the wee hours this morning, you might have gotten a bit of a surprise - a presidential inauguration, or at least a rehearsal for one. NPR's Allison Keyes was there bright and early, or at least early.
ALLISON KEYES: On the south lawn of the Capitol under the brightest full moon of the year, with temperatures in the 20s, stand-ins beamed as they looked out over the National Mall to the Washington Monument in the distance.
(Soundbite of announcement)
Unidentified Man: Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, the honorable George Walker Bush and the Vice President...
KEYES: The swearing-in ceremony came first. Military personnel wore placards around their necks with the names of dignitaries who will be on stage on January 20. Navy Chief Petty Officer Lucy Quinn calls it a logistical rehearsal.
Chief Petty Officer LUCY QUINN (Spokeswoman, Armed Forces Inaugural Committee): The president is supposed to be taking the actual oath at noon, so we rehearse it to make it as perfect as we can.
KEYES: For the swearing-in ceremony, musicians will range from the United States Marine Band to Aretha Franklin. Supreme Court justices, former presidents and first ladies must be escorted to the stage and introduced in the proper order.
(Soundbite of announcement)
Unidentified Man: Ladies and gentlemen, the president-elect of the United States, Barack H. Obama.
(Soundbite of applause)
KEYES: Major Andrew Higgs(ph) of the Armed Forces Inaugural Committee says it is important for people to see a peaceful transition of power.
Major ANDREW HIGGS (Armed Forces Inaugural Committee): In the world that we live in today, to be able to see that here, for our leadership in this country to effectively pass the baton, if you will, from one president to the next really gives, I think, hopefulness to people all over the planet.
KEYES: Army Staff Sergeant Derrick Brooks stood in for President-elect Obama on stage, looking pleased and excited to be there. Higgs says Brooks and the other stand-ins were chosen by the military, who sent out an email asking for specific ethnicities, heights and weights.
Major HIGGS: And the people responded who fit that criteria, and they were then screened by leadership, and selected for what I think is a great opportunity, a great honor for them on that day.
KEYES: Brooks is 6 feet, 2 inches tall, like Mr. Obama, and weighs the same as well, 165 pounds. Part of the reason for that is visual, to make sure that everyone, including the young first daughters, can be seen. It also helps them nail down the timing, as someone shorter might walk faster and throw the whole thing off.
The biggest issue this year is the sheer number of ticket holders attending the ceremony, plus the million or so people expected to be on the National Mall. Carole Florman is spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.
Ms. CAROLE FLORMAN (Spokeswoman, Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies): It is of great concern because we have to make sure that the 240,000 people who are attending the event on the Capitol grounds know how to get here.
KEYES: Florman says she wishes she had the option of following in the footsteps of fictional wizard Harry Potter, and using supernatural means to help people get through the maze of closed streets, crowded sidewalks and Metro trains.
Ms. FLORMAN: I actually thought we should utilize the Floo Network, but not everybody is a Harry Potter fan.
KEYES: She says using the Capitol building's fireplaces would make organizers' lives a lot easier. Allison Keyes, NPR News, Washington.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Welcome back to All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Rebecca Roberts. The Detroit Auto Show opened its doors today, and the outlook for the auto industry is almost as bleak as the snowy weather outside. GM and Chrysler are still in business, but just barely, thanks to billions of dollars in taxpayer loans. At a show that's usually glitzy with big trucks and pyrotechnics, those are out. Electrics, hybrids and frugality are in. NPR's Frank Langfitt is one of the reporters who got a first glimpse of the show. And he joins us now from the convention. Frank, you know, if people haven't been to the auto show before, it's huge, it's a huge production. Is it different this year?
FRANK LANGFITT: It's very different, Rebecca. You know, the spectacles are gone. I mean, last year, Chrysler had this cattle drive through the streets to support the Dodge Ram, and a waterfall.
(Soundbite of laughter)
LANGFITT: This year, it's just a screen of hanging electric cords signifying the electric cars. And Chrysler, you know, it's the weakest of the Detroit companies. Many think it could be broken up, and pieces could be sold off like Jeep. When I went to their presentation today, there were a lot of empty seats. It was almost funereal. And instead of talking about cars, they actually started talking, first off, about how many jobs they cut and the cost of savings they've had. It was really more like a Wall Street analysts' meeting.
ROBERTS: And what are you seeing with General Motors?
LANGFITT: Well, with GM, they've also had to borrow from the government, but they were a lot more upbeat. They had workers with signs cheering, saying, you know, 40 miles per gallon, we're electric. You can hear them right here.
(Soundbite of GM workers cheering)
LANGFITT: They've got some interesting offerings. They've got a Chevy Spark. It was - it looks like a Smart Car. It's this lime-green, little car; you can put your groceries in the back. They've got the Cruze. It's a smaller car that'll compete with the Toyota Corolla. Ford is sort of in the strongest position of the three. They have more money, and they kind of are little further along in their turnaround. One thing, they have a new Taurus. It's quite sporty-looking, very different from those old, 1980s, oblong cars.
ROBERTS: And General Motors begins contract talks tomorrow with the United Auto Workers. They're going to be asking for some more concessions to meet the terms of the federal loan agreement. Are the auto workers there at all, at the convention?
LANGFITT: Well, they're not in the convention, but they're right outside, picketing out front. Some of them say they want to fight some of these concessions. They seem to accept some changes, but they feel that they've already made a lot of concessions over the years, and they also feel like scapegoats. There were people out there who had placards saying, you know, no cars, no country. And it was an interesting contrast with these salaried GM workers inside, these cheerleaders, who we just heard from. And so, you know, whether you're inside the hall or outside the hall, you sort of can't escape the economic reality that these companies are facing.
ROBERTS: Another odd reality: The show opened with the North American Car of the Year Award and this year, it went to this luxury sedan from Hyundai. Really - Hyundai?
LANGFITT: Absolutely, yeah. I mean, what's really interesting about that is that's kind of the story of the car industry over the years. There's this intense global competition. I mean, you go back to when Hyundai first came here. It was like a punchline. But they improved their cars. They offered 100,000-mile warranties. And it's kind of a reminder that these Detroit companies don't just have to compete with the Japanese. They have to deal with the Koreans and who knows? Maybe soon the Chinese.
ROBERTS: NPR's Frank Langfitt at the Detroit Auto Show. Thanks, Frank.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Rebecca.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
Those auto makers might want to consider another revenue stream - like, say, bobsleds. The Bobsled World Championships take off next month in Lake Placid, New York. The American team will be riding a new generation of sleds designed by engineers who once built cars for NASCAR. As North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann reports, the project is helping the U.S. compete in a sport that's long been dominated by the Europeans.
BRIAN MANN: Lake Placid's Olympic sled track snakes for a mile down the side of a mountain, a twisting chute of ice. A bright-yellow, bullet-shaped sled whips around the banking turn. When U.S. bobsled coach Brian Shimer first raced here in the '90s, Americans were buying their sleds second-hand from the Europeans, or cobbling them together from scraps.
Mr. BRIAN SHIMER (Coach, U.S. Bobsled Team): Usually in the past, when they're built one at a time in a garage using spare parts, you might build one. Build a second one you think is identical, and it'll be a second faster than the other one.
MANN: Or a second slower. At the '92 Winter Olympics, Shimer got creamed by the better-funded Germans and Swiss. His struggles caught the attention of a very different kind of racer.
Unidentified Announcer #1: You're riding down for the finish. Checkered flag is out, and you are with Geoff Bodine as he wins the 1986 Daytona 500.
MANN: Geoff Bodine, one of the top NASCAR drivers in the U.S., was watching the '92 Olympics on TV. He says it was clear the Americans didn't stand a chance.
Mr. GEOFF BODINE (Former Winner, Daytona 500): My first thought was maybe I could help be a driving coach. Well, I ended up coming up here to Lake Placid, rode on the old track, and realized real quick driving a race car and a bobsled are pretty different.
MANN: So, Bodine started looking at the way these sleds are built. His crew developed a more aerodynamic shell and rebuilt the American sled suspension systems.
Mr. BODINE: We've changed the way sleds are built around the world. That's really - we're proud of that. We've brought a lot of NASCAR technology into it.
MANN: That initial research cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And each new sled that rolls off the line comes with a price tag of roughly 40 grand. To pay the bills, Bodine recruited friends, like drag racer Bob Vandergrif, to drive the new bobsleds in a series of sponsored exhibition races.
Mr. BOB VANDERGRIFF (Drag Racer): The top fuel dragster and the bobsled, they have a lot of the same steering characteristics. You really have to think about where you're headed, and not where you're at. If you try and drive where you're at, you're going to get in trouble.
MANN: This race will air on a motor sport cable channel called SpeedTV. But with the cameras rolling, Vandergriff does get into trouble.
Unidentified Announcer #2: Oh, we've got an 81 on the X of the 10. Vandergriff just cannot hold it together as he comes through, pulling a Dukes of Hazard from the straightaway from 10...
MANN: His sled flips and grinds along the track upside-down for half a mile. But Vandergriff climbs out uninjured. Despite occasional bumps and bruises, support from the car-racing world seems to be paying off. Brian Shimer rode an early version of the NASCAR-inspired sled to a bronze-medal win at the Salt Lake Olympics, the first medal for the U.S. team since 1956.
Mr. SHIMER: We still struggle a bit to be at the same level as the Germans do with their R&D and the money that they put into their program. We're not quite there yet, but we'd like to be, because I think we need to get even get faster.
MANN: The next big test will come in February, when the world's best sledders and best bobsled designs come to Lake Placid to compete. For NPR News, I'm Brian Mann.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I am Melissa Block. The current U.S. Army is one of the most battle-hardened in the nation's history. The Army may also be at the breaking point. Seven years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq have taken a toll on troops, on tanks and trucks, and on the Army's leaders. All this week, we'll be examining the state of the Army. Today NPR Pentagon correspondent JJ Sutherland reports on how soldiers train and whether by preparing to fight the last war, they'll be ready for the next war. He went looking for answers at the Army's premier training ground.
JJ SUTHERLAND: As the troops start their day, the sunrise casts light across more than a thousand square miles of sand, and rocks, and dust. This is the National Training Center. It sits high in California's Mojave Desert.
(Soundbite of helicopter)
SUTHERLAND: From the sky, the landscape seems almost empty. The occasional patrol raises plumes of dust that hang suspended in the dawn air, a still life of brown cloud and blue sky. But not too many years ago, hundreds of tanks rumbled through this open desert, mass artillery boomed.
Lt. Col. STEVE SMITH (Artillery Officer, U.S. Army): The center of gravity of our enemy then was mechanized forces - his artillery. It was pure force on force.
SUTHERLAND: Lieutenant Colonel Steve Smith was here a decade ago. He's an artillery officer, the branch of the Army known as the King of Battle.
Lt. Col. SMITH: It was purely our Army and our Air Force is going to destroy your army and your air force and your equipment, and when we do that, we win and we go home.
SUTHERLAND: Now Smith is back at the National Training Center preparing for a very different kind of war. Where there used to be 10 massive tank exercises each year, now there are none. Instead, the Army has built a little piece of Afghanistan. In this exercise, one of Colonel Smith's small combat outposts has just come under attack from the Taliban - mortars and machine guns.
(Soundbite of Army training exercise)
Lt. Col. SMITH: Roger. Counter fire at grid location …
SUTHERLAND: Smith is with the 25th Infantry Division. He's commander of Task Force Steel, that's about 800 soldiers. He is leading his troops from a tactical operation center, or TOC, a couple of miles from the fight.
(Soundbite of Army training exercise)
Unidentified Man: We have a total of six U.S. WIA and six enemy KIA at this time. Over.
(Soundbite of handheld radio)
SUTHERLAND: Six wounded Americans and six enemy killed. At the command post, about a dozen men sit at two rows of tables. Computers and radios are scattered about. The soldiers talk with each other and other units over the Internet, in a special chat room called the jabber. Sometimes Col. Smith just uses his cell phone.
(Soundbite of cell phone call)
Lt. Col. SMITH: Hey, is anybody on the radio down there, on the re-ab(ph)? OK, is that re-ab down there.
(Soundbite of Army training exercise)
Lt. Col. SMITH: Imagine that it's a 105-mm howitzer and you're the section chief, OK?
Unidentified Man: Yes, sir.
Lt. Col. SMITH: When we get in contact you are on the freaking weapon system, OK?
SUTHERLAND: In this kind of warfare, the radio is your most powerful weapon. Col. Smith wants it to be second nature for his troops. When you make contact with the enemy get on the local airwaves. The idea is to get the message out that the enemy Taliban are the problem.
Lt. Col. SMITH: The center of gravity now is the people. So we have to think and be a lot smarter in how we do business and understand not only their culture but their problems, their issues, and how we can best help them solve those problems and issues, and not so much concentrated on destroying enemy forces.
SUTHERLAND: Smith said that change wasn't easy for him or for the Army.
Lt. Col. SMITH: If you were to ask me five years ago, I would say absolutely it's a hard choice you make, but I think now five years into it, it's not so hard to make. I think we've been down the road enough times, we've had enough deployments not - speaking for myself, I know I have to make that switch.
SUTHERLAND: That switch has sparked a debate inside the Army over what missions it can perform and how it should train its soldiers. The training lately is all about counterinsurgency. Some in the Army are wondering if the pendulum has swung too far.
Major NEAL SMITH (Operation Officer, Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center): We Obviously can't go back to the extreme we were in 2003 where the force knew virtually nothing about advising in counterinsurgency and all these other things. But we also can't go to a force where if a tank division is needed someday that nobody knows how to defend, attack, or move to contact anymore.
SUTHERLAND: That's Major Neal Smith. I met him 1,500 miles from the NTC in a quiet office at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, the heart of the Army's educational system. Major Smith is the operations officer of the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center. He teaches people how to fight the kind of wars we're in now in Iraq and Afghanistan. But even he worries about what today's soldiers are not being taught - how to fight a classic ground war.
Major SMITH: The risk we run as a force is we have a generation of officers that will have spent five to six years and never have done their conventional competency, and that if we were expected on a short notice at this point to fulfill that conventional competency, we would struggle very hard to do it as well as we did in 2003 during the attack to Baghdad.
SUTHERLAND: The problem, there simply isn't enough time to teach people how to fight both conventional and unconventional wars. The soldiers are simply at war too much. Troops now only have about 12 months between deployments. Lt. General William Caldwell runs the Combined Arms Center for the Army. He oversees 18 different schools and training centers including the NTC.
Lt. General WILLIAM CALDWELL (Combined Arms Center, U.S. Army): The reality is we've really only have enough time to prepare soldiers for the next mission that they're about to face. Then as time permits, we in fact, will ensure that we operate across the whole continuum of intensity of operations.
SUTHERLAND: The Army says they won't be able to really begin training for all kinds of warfare until 2010 at the earliest.
(Soundbite of helicopter)
SUTHERLAND: So for now the focus is on hearts and minds, not tanks and artillery. Flying over the National Training Center, it could be Afghanistan. The rocks are the same. The mountains look the same. The dust - that ever-present talcum-fine powder that gets into everything, that's the same, too. Helicopters are loaded up with water and food and ammo, even howitzers. They are lifting supplies to remote bases in the mountains.
In Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Steve Smith's task force will be spread out in small bases, too, with just a few dozen troops in each.
(Soundbite of Afghani music)
SUTHERLAND: The soldiers will operate near Afghan villages. To get the troops ready, the NTC has built a dozen towns in the California desert. One of them is called Medina Wasl. It's Hollywood's version of an Islamic village, but it does the trick: there is a mosque, a market, a battered hotel, even a butcher shop. They're made out of shipping containers, but plastered with authentic-looking brick and concrete. It's here that Lt. Eric Hall is learning counterinsurgency. His patrol found a bomb on a market street. Good job, he thought, then he tried to convince the local shopkeepers to stay away from it.
(Soundbite of Army exercise)
Lt. ERIC HALL (U.S. Army): Do you understand the danger from this bomb on the street?
Unidentified Man: (Arab spoken)
Lt. HALL: The bomb could still hurt you from where it is.
Unidentified Man: He said I don't care. They want to die. So I just…
Lt. HALL: He said that?
Unidentified Man: Yeah.
SUTHERLAND: Lt. Hall is coming to appreciate just how complicated and frustrating the art of irregular warfare can be. For now, it's the only thing the Army is teaching. JJ Sutherland, NPR News.
BLOCK: Tomorrow we'll visit West Point where the Army's next generation learns about fighting insurgencies from peers.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Unidentified Man #1: I believe in adaptation.
Unidentified Woman #1: I believe in a silver lining.
Unidentified Woman #2: I believe that being flexible keeps me going.
Unidentified Man #2: I believe every single person deserves to be acknowledged.
Unidentified Man #3: This I believe.
(Soundbite of music)
BLOCK: Today's This I Believe essay comes from a man one of our staff members met in Paris. Each Sunday, Jim Haynes holds a supper at his apartment and the door is open to anyone who wants to come. Haynes estimates over a hundred thousand people have joined him for dinner. Here's our series curator, independent producer, Jay Allison.
JAY ALLISON: Jim Haynes was born in Louisiana, but he has lived in Europe since he was 20 in Edinburgh, London, Amsterdam, and for many years now, Paris. He considers himself an entrepreneur in the arts. He has helped found theaters, bookshops, galleries and magazines, but he finds his belief in the non-professional setting, his dinner table. Here's Jim Haynes, recorded in his Paris apartment with his essay for This I Believe.
JIM HAYNES: Every week for the past 30 years, I host a Sunday dinner in my home in Paris. People, including total strangers, call or Email to book a spot. I hold the salon in my atelier, which used to be a sculpture studio. The first 50 or 60 people who call may come, and twice that many when the weather is nice and we can overflow into the garden. Every Sunday, a different friend prepares a feast. Last week, it was a philosophy student from Lisbon. And next week a dear friend from London will cook. People from all corners of the world come to break bread together, to meet, to talk, connect and often become friends. All ages, nationalities, races, professions gather here, and since there is no organized seating, the opportunity for mingling couldn't be better. I love the randomness. I believe in introducing people to people. I have a good memory, so each week I make a point to remember everyone's name on the guest list and where they're from and what they do, so I can introduce them to each other, effortlessly. If I had my way, I would introduce everyone in the whole world to each other. People are the most important thing in my life. Many travelers go to see things like the Tower of London, the Statue of Liberty, the Eiffel Tower, and so on. I travel to see friends, even or especially those I've never met. In the late'80s, I edited a series of guidebooks to nine Eastern European countries and Russia. There were no sights to see, no shops or museums to visit, instead, each book contained about a thousand short biographies of people who would be willing to welcome travelers in their cities. Hundreds of friendships evolved from these encounters, including marriages and babies, too. This same can be said for my Sunday salon. At a recent dinner, a six-year-old girl from Bosnia spent the entire evening glued to an eight-year-old boy from Estonia. Their parents were surprised, and pleased, by this immediate friendship. There is always a collection of people from all over the globe. Most of them speak English, at least as a second language. Recently, a dinner featured a typical mix, a Dutch political cartoonist, a beautiful painter from Norway, a truck driver from Arizona, a bookseller from Atlanta, a newspaper editor from Sydney, students from all over, and traveling retirees. I have long-believed that it is unnecessary to understand others, individuals or nationalities. One must, at the very least, simply tolerate others. Tolerance can lead to respect and, finally, to love. No one can ever really understand anyone else, but you can love them, or at least accept them. Like Tom Paine, I am a world citizen. All human history is mine. My roots cover the earth. I believe we should know each other. After all, our lives are all connected. OK? Now come and dine.
ALLISON: Jim Haynes with his essay for This I Believe. We warned Haynes that after this airs, he'll probably get a lot more requests to dine. He said, "that's a good thing." Visit npr.org/thisibelieve to get Jim Haynes' address and Email, or to hear any of the essays in our series or submit one of your own. For This I Believe, I'm Jay Allison.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is All Things Considered. From NPR News, I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. For the past seven weeks, we've been exploring the challenges facing American museums. There's the architect's challenge: How do you design museums that are both beautiful and functional? The challenge for art educators: How do you get students in the door when field trips are becoming more and more expensive? And the business side: How do you keep a museum afloat in a recession? Today we end our series with a look at the future. Here's NPR's Elizabeth Blair.
ELIZABETH BLAIR: On a recent evening at Washington's Newseum, about a hundred rather somber-looking museum professionals went to hear a lecture by Jane McGonigal from the Institute for the future in Palo Alto. McGonigal didn't talk about funding or curatorial responsibility, she talked about games.
Ms. JANE MCGONIGAL (Institute for the Future): Because I think that games will be one of the most important materials of the future.
BLAIR: Jane McGonigal has been called the guru of alternate reality games, which millions of people play on their computers several hours a week. She says games make people happy, and she takes happiness very seriously. She's come up with four things she believes we all need to be happy - one, satisfying work to do; two, the experience of being good at something; three, time spent with people we like; and four, the chance to be a part of something bigger. McGonigal says these games do all of those things.
Ms. MCGONIGAL: Games work better than most of reality because they give us clear instructions. We know exactly what we're supposed to do when we start to play. They give us better feedback. You can't be good at something unless you're getting feedback. And for gamers, what's really interesting is gamers don't mind criticism. Getting told why you suck is actually a really fun part of the game experience because that's when you're really engaged in learning and getting better. So games provide better community because everybody is a part of the same mythology and cooperating, and finally games provide better emotions.
BLAIR: Jane McGonigal says museums should take some cues from game designers, perhaps turn visitors into players.
Ms. MCGONIGAL: When people show up at museums, can't we give them a mission or a goal? Can we give them feedback? Are there virtual honors that you can show to your friends online afterwards depending on what exhibit you were interacting with? Is there a better community that we could provide real-time interaction with other visitors?
(Soundbite of visitors talking in the Smithsonian Gallery)
BLAIR: About 50 teenagers from New Jersey are practically running around a pristine Smithsonian Gallery, the Luce Foundation Center for American Art in Washington. They've broken up into teams to play a multimedia scavenger hunt where objects in the collection are part of the clues and you need cell phones with text messaging to solve them.
(Soundbite of teenagers playing multimedia scavenger hunt)
Unidentified Man #1: New text message, OK.
Unidentified Man #2: Find the biggest screen in the Luce Center.
Unidentified Man #1: Biggest screen in the Luce Center.
Unidentified Woman: OK, oh, that's where we came in.
BLAIR: This game is a scaled-down version of something the Luce Foundation Center tried earlier this year, an alternate reality game called "Ghosts of a Chance." For about three months, the players have to solve clues that were planted on Facebook, Web sites, YouTube. Instead of advertising the game, they sent a tattooed bodybuilder to a conference for hard-core gamers.
Ms. GEORGINA GOODLANDER, (Program Coordinator, Smithsonian's Luce Foundation Center): We think we're the first museum in the world to host an alternate reality game, and we haven't yet been challenged on that claim.
BLAIR: Georgina Goodlander of the Smithsonian's Luce Foundation Center.
Ms. GOODLANDER: Alternate reality games have a very distinctive narrative. They have beginning, middles, and ends. They take place in real time. So that was very appealing to us because the Luce Foundation Center has over - around 3,300 objects. We have 3,300 stories associated with those objects. So the idea of bringing in a narrative and using it to engage people with the collection was fantastic.
BLAIR: The game was designed for the museum by the company City Mystery. It revolved around restless spirits who are haunting the museum.
(Soundbite of the museum game)
Unidentified Voiceover: Please repeat the following incantation with as much fuertso(ph) as you can muster. And if you have any trouble with the lines, refer to your screens. Double, double, toil and trouble...
BLAIR: The object of the game was to learn the stories of these spirits and put them to rest. Now, it's unclear just how much these museum gamers are actually learning about the art itself. One teenager said he liked the scavenger hunt because he got to see a lot of art in a little bit of time. But Georgina Goodlander isn't worried about that at all.
Ms. GOODLANDER: I think just kind of changing the mindset and having them think about art museums in a more positive way is our main goal.
Ms. BETH MERRITT (Center for the Future of Museums): Because biologically play games are how we're hardwired to learn. That's its evolutionary role.
BLAIR: Beth Merritt heads up the Center for the Future of Museums. She's a big believer that in 10, 20 years, the best museums will be as interactive and fun as alternate reality games, and they'll be for kids and adults.
Ms. MERRITT: Why shouldn't adults play a game? It's still the most effective way to learn and to punch our biological buttons to get something inside our heads.
BLAIR: Beth Merritt is also excited about the possibilities for museum researchers. She points to Jane McGonigal's work using games to try and solve real world problems. Since millions of people are playing these games, McGonigal figures, why not harness that energy towards something that will benefit society? One of the games she helped design was called "World without Oil." Eighteen hundred people around the world played. They made videos, they blogged, they wrote research papers.
Ms. MCGONIGAL: We asked our players to act as if peak oil had already arrived, and this was in the spring of 2007. So we set up a Web site where you would receive information about a fictional oil shortage. And when we started the game, we were at this dramatic price of like $4.07 a gallon. At the time it was still under $2.00. So this is, like, really crazy land - we'll never be in a situation like that. And, of course, a year later we were, and the players who played were like super happy. So you had this...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. MCGONIGAL: Because they were ready.
BLAIR: Now the Institute for the Future has created "Superstruct," a game that asks people to imagine all kinds of different scenarios for the year 2019 - business, the environment, food. And some players are coming up with ideas for museums. A player in Amsterdam came up with the Museum of Impossible Things.
Ms. MCGONIGAL: And this is a museum where you would propose something impossible and then the museum would bring people in to try and create it. And then as soon as it had actually been created, it would get moved out because it was no longer impossible.
BLAIR: Other gamers came up with ideas for what would be in the Museum of Impossible Things, like a coat that would measure your body temperature and the Calvin and Hobbes Transmogrifier. Jane McGonigal believes the ideas people imagine today are the keys to the planet's future, and that games have a way of pushing people to be creative problem solvers. McGonigal thinks museums need to get on the bandwagon, that they can no longer afford to simply be places that house collections.
Ms. MCGONIGAL: Basically the fate of humanity hangs in the balance over whether we're going to get crowds to do anything useful or not. Are they going to put all of their cognitive bandwidth into virtual worlds or are they going to contribute? And nobody is better poised in the world to sort of - we have all this pent-up knowledge in museums, all this pent-up expertise, and all of these collections that are designed to inspire and bring people together. I think the museum community has a kind of ethical responsibility to unleash it.
BLAIR: That is, of course, if museums can first make people happy. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.
BLOCK: And you can find the other stories from our museum series at npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
You would expect a big U.S. automaker at the North American International Auto Show to tout its prospects, but this year in Detroit the task is more elemental for Robert Nardelli. He's the CEO of Chrysler. Nardelli has to convince a skeptical audience of journalists at the show's press preview that Chrysler is actually trying to stay in business, that it's not just being readied for sale. Nardelli talked this morning with our co-host, Robert Siegel.
(Soundbite of the Cobo Center in Detroit)
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
By 8 a.m., the exhibition floor here at the Cobo Center was already buzzing with television reporters doing stand-ups and auto company flaks squiring star executives to their interviews. So for some quiet, Mr. Nardelli and I sat inside a Chrysler concept car, more concept than car at this stage.
Mr. ROBERT NARDELLI (Chief Executive Officer, Chrysler): And we're sitting in the Chrysler 200 which we revealed yesterday and, I think, caught most of the industry by surprise.
SIEGEL: This car looks like it could be, you know, car of the year in 2015 or something like that.
Mr. NARDELLI: We're hoping for car of the year this year relative to concept cars, but I would say this is much closer to pre-production than concept.
SIEGEL: Is Chrysler still going to be around for this car to make it from concept to pre-production?
Mr. NARDELLI: The short answer is yes. If you look at Chrysler, we were never that big relative to certainly the other two in Detroit, but the fact is we've loss less share over the past decade. Where we are is we're facing the same adversity that all auto manufacturers are facing relative to a downward spiraling economy, a financial crisis that's really impacting our consumer's ability to buy our vehicle.
SIEGEL: Right now the factories are idle.
Mr. NARDELLI: But still employed.
SIEGEL: When are they going to open up? When will the money actually go not to just to employ people, but to employ people who are making cars and trucks?
Mr. NARDELLI: Well, as you know, the money right now that we have gotten from the government is part of our general operating funds. Throughout this period, we continue to pay our suppliers. We continue to fund our dealers providing them the incentive money to move cars at retail. So this has been a very important bridge. The way the model works - if you're not producing, you're not generating revenue, you're not generating cash so you have to fill this trough.
SIEGEL: So the federal $4 billion is doing what - in for a healthier company, reserves might actually accomplish, what you're savings might do to you...
Mr. NARDELLI: Or in a normal economy where there was access to financial credit for consumers. Our dealers are telling us that consumers are being turned away, that we could about 20 to 25 percent more volume if they had access to the credit market.
SIEGEL: I just want to hear, though, about Chrysler's future right now. One version of what's happened to this company is that if it's not for sale right now, it's only because all the buyers have said no. It's only because GM and Nissan didn't see something worth buying. True?
Mr. NARDELLI: No, I wouldn't say - I would say that's not true. As you know, we have forged some alliances already. We're producing all of Volkswagen's minivans. Nissan has asked us to be the single-source producer for their trucks by 2011. We are already producing trucks for Mitsubishi. We have a number of component arrangements. So I would say that, you know, the general perception out there that we have been rejected is not true. To go through a massive merger with one of the other manufacturers, maybe the timing just wasn't right.
SIEGEL: But in a way that should be simplest for Chrysler given the private ownership of Chrysler. This should be the easiest deal to consummate.
Mr. NARDELLI: Well, I would say that our owners are very open. They have publicly said that if it means a reapportionment of the equity, they're more than willing to do that as part of our restructuring plan. And we have to go back and submit that plan preliminary on February 17th and then we have a final review on March 31.
SIEGEL: I just want you to explain that February 17th when you come back to the federal government, it's not that $4 billion will do the trick. The assumption is that the $4 billion in loan from Washington permit Chrysler to get to the point to borrow another $3 billion.
Mr. NARDELLI: We originally asked for seven at the first Congressional hearing. The $4 billion was the first traunch, if you will, of that seven billion and it was tied to come back and again demonstrate the viability of Chrysler.
SIEGEL: And to survive Chrysler still needs that other $3 billion?
Mr. NARDELLI: Yes, sir.
SIEGEL: Robert Nardelli, thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. NARDELLI: Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: Robert Nardelli is the CEO of Chrysler. Tomorrow, we'll hear from his counterpart at General Motors, Rick Wagner.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News. Our co-host, Robert Siegel, is in Detroit for the Auto Show. The hot topics this year are different from past years -topics such as the survival of U.S. automakers and government oversight, but one thing remains unchanged at the auto show. There's still candy for the gear head, plenty of new concepts that may never reach the market, but to use a technical term, are really, really cool. And Robert is intrigued by one of them.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
I was looking at the Chevy Spark. It's a concept car that's as small as a Smart Car. It's designed in South Korea. And where the rearview mirrors should be, instead, there were attachments that look like slender flashlights pointing backwards. They are cameras. You know, that backup camera in Prius or Mercedes or Lincoln Navigator, it shows what's behind you when you're backing up? Well, imagine cameras that are always on and that completely do away with the rearview mirror. Ed Welburn is GM's head of design.
Mr. ED WELBURN (Vice President of Global Design, General Motors): The outside rearview mirror has been with us since the early-teens when the first one was put on a race car, and outside rearview mirrors do a great job. But because of their size, they hurt the aerodynamics of the vehicle and as we try to improve the fuel economy, doing everything you can to improve the fuel economy, if you can eliminate those big aero-drag mirrors and just put a little camera there, it can help to improve the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. So, you put a camera on the outside and you put a nice screen on the inside. Cadillac Converj has two screens, one for each side of the car, and it's a very natural way of viewing - having, I think, an even better view of what's around you than the conventional mirror.
SIEGEL: The Chevy Spark that we're standing next to right now.
Mr. WELBURN: Yeah. We're here at the Chevrolet Spark.
SIEGEL: And there isn't even an inside rearview mirror on this…
Mr. WELBURN: Yeah, and they're using the cameras to kind of - the feel of view is really good with it. So, we explore - that's why we build concept vehicles, to explore things like this and others.
SIEGEL: Now, to somebody who's driving 40 years with rearview mirrors, driving without rearview mirrors sounds a little bit challenging.
Mr. WELBURN: Well, it is, depending on how you execute it. In the Cadillac, we placed those screens that are in the inside in locations that are very similar to turning your head to look at a rearview mirror. But, I think in some ways, once you get used to it, it's actually a whole lot easier.
SIEGEL: It sounds like you're picking up on the way that a generation processes information. You're talking to people who are on computers.
Mr. WELBURN: Yes.
SIEGEL: And with video games.
Mr. WELBURN: Yes.
SIEGEL: And this is how they see things.
Mr. WELBURN: Yeah. And I think if you're a young driver who has never experienced a conventional mirror, this would just make so much sense to you. If you've been driving with conventional mirrors for years, there'd be a bit of a learning curve but it is - trust me, it doesn't take long to make that conversion.
SIEGEL: That's Ed Welburn, General Motors' vice president of global design, describing what may be a feature of the GM car of the future, which of course, begs a central question of this year's Auto Show in Detroit - what kind of future does General Motors have?
NORRIS: That's our co-host, Robert Siegel, who's at the Detroit Auto Show this week. We'll be hearing more from him tomorrow.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Time was the big auto show in Detroit was all about glamorous gas guzzlers on turntables and models pointing suggestively at fins and fenders. Not this year. The North American International Auto Show in Detroit is about to open to the public. It's part high-tech expo and part pep rally for the U.S. auto industry. It is such a bad time for the industry that some familiar exhibitors aren't even there - Nissan, for example. But our colleague Robert Siegel is there, and he reports today on the stakes for the biggest U.S. automaker, General Motors.
(Soundbite of auto show)
Unidentified Announcer: Please welcome the chairman and CEO of General Motors, Rick Wagoner.
ROBERT SIEGEL: GM's auto show exhibition is all about battery-powered vehicles like the plug-in Chevy Volt. So this morning, GM's top exec announced that the company will partner with the South Korean firm LG Chem to make lithium-ion battery packs.
(Soundbite of auto show)
Mr. RICK WAGONER (CEO, General Motors): And this morning, I'm pleased to announce that GM will manufacture this battery pack right here in the United States.
SIEGEL: At the very soonest, the Volt will hit the market in late 2010. So GM's success in the short term is a lot more dependent on conventional automobiles like the family sedan that GM vice chair Bob Lutz showed me yesterday.
Mr. BOB LUTZ (Vice Chairman, General Motors): This is the Chevy Malibu which was 2008 Car of the Year, selected by a jury of 50 independent North American journalists. And I think basically it has a very long wheelbase which makes it extremely roomy. And if you look in the backseat here, you'll see really incredible amounts of leg room, almost limousine-like proportions. And people really appreciate that when they're traveling with the family.
SIEGEL: Bob Lutz at the auto show is like Jack Nicholson at the Oscars or Ted Kennedy in the Senate. At 76, he is trim and tanned. He still epitomizes the swagger of the car business as it used to be. He was Phi Beta Kappa at Berkeley. He was a Marine Corps aviator. He's been a big deal at Ford, Chrysler, BMW, and GM, where he has returned from retirement to be vice chair. If GM is to survive, Americans who've been buying Camrys and Accords have to start buying more of his Malibus. The car did get good reviews. I test drove one last week, and it's certainly comparable to driving a Camry. And Lutz insists it is beautifully designed.
Mr. LUTZ: We set out to give it a style that is reminiscent of German luxury cars, so it's got a lot of sort of a Volkswagen Phaeton feel. And we added a lot of chrome trim, which is typical usually on luxury cars that cost quite a bit more than this vehicle, but all in an effort to make it look like a $40,000 car that sells at $22,000. And visual value counts for a lot.
SIEGEL: But in all likelihood, selling Toyota and Honda owners on a Chevrolet is going to be a hard sell. A few days ago, I asked some people who were near the car rental counter at Washington's Reagan National Airport about American cars. There were a couple of staunchly American car owners. One woman who works for a labor union considers it a point of solidarity. But most of the people whom I asked, would you buy an American car?
Mr. SERGIO RODRIGUERRA: Are you serious?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. RODRIGUERRA: I don't think I've owned an American car in my whole life.
SIEGEL: That's Sergio Rodiguerra of Washington, D.C. Here's Lester Goins of San Antonio, Texas.
Mr. LESTER GOINS: Buy an American car. Right now, the way I feel about buying American cars is somewhat unreliable.
SIEGEL: Unreliable.
Mr. GOINS: Unreliable.
SIEGEL: Do you own an American car?
Mr. GOINS: Yes, I do.
SIEGEL: What kind?
Mr. GOINS: I've got a Ford Explorer. And I've had three Fords. And its like, OK, that's going to be my last one.
SIEGEL: Justin Crauter of Houston told me he owns both foreign and domestic cars, a Nissan and a Jeep.
Mr. JUSTIN CRAUTER: I drive the Jeep in most cases, but it all depends on if I'm going to higher-end to like a luxury-type vehicle, then I prefer foreign.
SIEGEL: Prefer foreign, why?
Mr. CRAUER: Better quality in my opinion just by the - simply by just the feel of the leather in the seats. That's the main thing in the interior, because to me, the engines, the break, everything outside of the vehicle is American comparable. But once you get into the interior, to me that's where the difference is when you're looking at luxury vehicles.
SIEGEL: And Jaime Kraft of Washington, D.C., said the American carmakers lost her over safety.
Ms. JAIME KRAFT: At a certain point, Volvo started installing safety features and General Motors did not. And they simply abandoned, as far as I was concerned, their consumers. And I've been buying Volvo cars ever since.
SIEGEL: So there is a sampling of skeptics saying what I've heard Americans say about American cars for 15 years. And back here in Detroit, here is Bob Lutz, like many Detroit execs, saying, read the reviews, test drive the cars. They're much better now. Why the gap between what the automotive press says and what the public says?
Mr. LUTZ: These are just perceptions that die hard.
SIEGEL: But...
Mr. LUTZ: And it's the trickledown effect, you know? Back 15 or 20 years ago, it was the people who really knew about cars and knew what they were doing who made those statements. And then it filters down to the less and less knowledgeable. And now it's the whole cycle is starting it again at the top where the knowledgeable people who truly understand the business now say the new range of General Motors cars are probably the best vehicles of their types in the world, and that's going to trickle down, but it takes time.
SIEGEL: But it's not as though GM doesn't advertise. I mean, we're constantly hearing about Chevrolets.
Mr. LUTZ: No, no frankly we don't do enough.
SIEGEL: You don't do enough.
Mr. LUTZ: No we can't. We just can't afford it right now. And there is not enough advertising dollars in the world to change the perceptions of people who are, you know, absolutely locked in and who basically block you out.
SIEGEL: But when they let you in, it helps to actually have cars for them. A year ago, Lutz's Malibu was heavily advertised. General Motors generated real consumer interest in the Car of the Year, but it underestimated its own success and sent Chevrolet dealers far fewer Malibus than they could sell. Did GM under-produce, I mean, given the success of the cars?
Mr. LUTZ: Well, yeah, we under-produced. But, you know, that's better than overproducing. Our history has been our plans were always too grandiose, and then we built too many cars. And then you have to incentivize them to get rid of them, and that destroys the value of the car. It's much better to be behind demand and trying to catch up than the other way around. And the car is still gaining momentum. It is an extremely well-accepted car.
SIEGEL: In all of 2008, GM sold 177,000 Chevy Malibus, Toyota sold 436,000 Camrys. Being here at the auto show with GM and Chrysler on federal life support and Ford only slightly better off, I wonder will Washington second-guess questions like, how many Malibus is the right number to produce? I asked Bob Lutz, who's been in the car business 45 years, what it's like to be operating on Washington's nickel.
Mr. LUTZ: Well, I've never quite been in this situation before of getting a massive pay cut, no bonus, no longer allowed to stay in decent hotels, no corporate airplane. I have to stand in line at the Northwest counter. I've never quite experienced this before. I'll let you know a year from now what it's like.
SIEGEL: Apart from the comforts that this has cost you, in terms of the decisions that you make at GM, how are they different?
Mr. LUTZ: We don't know.
SIEGEL: Because he says Washington has not yet appointed a car czar, the government's designee to oversee the loans to GM and Chrysler. In an interview this morning, GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner told me that he hopes that person will dig deep into GM's finances and get a real understanding of its costs. Wagoner also talked about the Chevy Volt and how GM can survive with just a fifth of the U.S. auto market. We'll have that interview at the auto show in Detroit on tomorrow's program. This is Robert Siegel.
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 music)
BLOCK: It's time now for our weekly technology segment, All Tech Considered. Consumer electronics is usually all about catering to the young and hip. But this year at the industry's big showcase, the Consumer Electronics Show, there was a spotlight on the market for seniors. The show ended yesterday, and NPR's Laura Sydell is just back. And Laura, tell us about this new focus on seniors. What's going on?
LAURA SYDELL: Well, you know, at a time when consumer electronic companies pretty much like everybody else are facing a shrinking market, they see aging baby boomers and they see a big market. So this year for the first time they set aside an area of the show floor for technology that caters to older people, and I went along to check it out.
(Soundbite of music)
SYDELL: Nothing unusual about a man in a suit trying to sell a computer game at the Consumer Electronics Show. But Dan Mitchell, CEO of Dacom, says this isn't really a typical game. It's for people over 60 who want to keep their minds alert and avoid dementia. So, no music from the latest Coldplay album.
Mr. DAN MITCHELL (CEO, Dacom): We have movie clips and music and images all from the period of time when these people were younger.
(Soundbite of movie clip)
SYDELL: In one game, players watch a scene from a movie with Jimmy Stewart and they're asked to remember details.
Mr. MITCHELL: How many people did Jimmy Stewart greet in this scene?
SYDELL: In one way or another, most of what is on the CES show floor for seniors is related to health or its deterioration.
(Soundbite of talking pillbox)
Automated Voice: Twenty-one hours, 18 minutes till your next dose.
SYDELL: This is a talking pillbox. And if the patient, say, your elderly grandmother, fails to take her pills, it will send you a notification.
Mr. JERRY HAHN (MedSignals): And you would be able to call your grandmother, for instance, that's living in Florida and you're in New Jersey, and you can call her and find out what the problem is.
SYDELL: Jerry Hahn is selling this pillbox for MedSignals. Hahn says they're also working on alerts that will tell a patient when to take their blood pressure or check their weight or blood glucose. Larger companies like Microsoft are also trying to spin their products to make them more appealing to seniors.
Mr. DANIEL HUBELL (Technical Evangelist, Microsoft): So when I push the little key that looks like the Windows logo and the plus button, you'll see that I'm actually just zooming in the screen.
SYDELL: Daniel Hubell is one of Microsoft's technical evangelists. He's showing Windows software that has the ability to zoom in and make images and words larger and easier to read. Mary Furlong who consults with tech companies on the elderly market points out that there are 78 million boomers in the U.S. and 450 million worldwide.
Ms. MARY FURLONG (Tech Consultant): Every dissonance of aging is a market opportunity. So when the boomers turned 40, Nordstrom's started having designer glasses. And we started seeing, well, maybe I'll take a computer with a little bit bigger screen.
SYDELL: OK, that was Mary Furlong. She's a tech consultant to companies who want to reach out to the elderly market. Now, did you hear what she said? She said, every dissonance of aging is a marketing opportunity.
BLOCK: Yeah, that's some phrase, dissonance of aging.
SYDELL: I know. And I think it's important to remember that phrase because I think people have to be a little bit skeptical about this stuff, too. Although some of the products are good, the evidence that playing a video game is actually going to ward off dementia is not exactly conclusive. So, the only thing that is conclusive is that it's going to make you better at the game, and that's about it.
BLOCK: Right, and they think there's an avid market out there. Laura, what else caught your eye, or ear maybe, at the electronic show?
SYDELL: One thing I really loved was there was this mat, and you plug the mat in, and you can drop your cell phone or your BlackBerry or your laptop on it. It's called a Power Mat, and it costs about $100, and it will recharge all of these things for you.
BLOCK: How does that work?
SYDELL: Well, it's something called magnetic induction. And I'm not a physicist, so I can't actually fully explain how that works. But you just put a little - there's a little thing you put on the back of it, a little pad, and you just drop your stuff down, and it charges it. It's kind of amazing. Another cool thing I saw, which a lot of people might like, you know how long it takes to boot up your computer. It can drive you...
BLOCK: Crazy.
SYDELL: Absolutely crazy. Well, this will allow you access. It's called Hyperspace, and it'll actually allow you access to certain Web programs and things like that while your Windows is taking forever to boot up. So in this case, you can do IM, you can browse the Web, you can do all that within like, you know, 30 seconds, as opposed to waiting there for two minutes. And that one's a - it's a downloadable subscription model, so you have to pay, unfortunately, like 40 or 60 bucks a year.
BLOCK: Laura, you've been going to these electronic shows for a long time. Did you see really obvious signs of what's going on in the economy and the downturn that we've been seeing all over the place?
SYDELL: Yes. There were definitely fewer people this year. I mean, the lines were shorter, and there wasn't as much emphasis on some of the more expensive products. You know, every year I've been going, there's always a big deal about, this is the biggest TV. Last year I think it had reached 150 inches, so they had 150-inch plasma TV. This year, I didn't see them talking about the big TVs, you know. So you definitely felt the difference. The economy was there. Still, as you heard, there was still a lot of innovation and, I think, a sense that people need the technology and there's all kinds of interesting things developing.
BLOCK: OK, Laura. Thanks so much.
SYDELL: You're quite welcome.
BLOCK: It's NPR's Laura Sydell just back from Las Vegas and the annual Consumer Electronics Show. Also be sure to tune in next Monday when we check in with the big cell phone carriers here in the nation's capital as they prepare for what could be one of the busiest minutes of cell phone use ever - when President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office and the many thousands of people watching on the National Mall use their phones to mark the moment.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
At the end of this month, there will be one more election for a big Washington job. This one is to decide who will be the next chairman of the Republican National Committee. The Republicans are facing an uphill climb after the November election, but still six men are competing to lead the RNC. NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson is here to tell us about this race. Mara, first of all, tell us about the contenders.
MARA LIASSON: Well, as you said, there are six men. Two of them are African-Americans. That's the first time that's ever happened in the Republican Party. Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland; Ken Blackwell, the former secretary of state of Ohio; and then there's Mike Duncan who is the incumbent RNC chair; and there's Katon Dawson who's the current chair of the South Carolina State Republican party; Chip Saltsman, the former Tennessee state chair; but also campaign manager for Mike Huckabee's presidential race, Saul Anuzis, who's the Republican state chair of Michigan.
NORRIS: So, what are, I mean, the essential issues in this race?
LIASSON: Well, you know, it's interesting. This has not been an ideological battle. It's not been about taking the Republican Party in a different direction. It's really been about mechanics. A lot of the language that these men use when they get together and debate is reminiscent of the Democrats and Howard Dean. They talk about reconnecting with the grassroots, having a 50-states strategy, also using technology, catching up to the Democrats. Better they were asked in the debate that happened last week how many of them Twittered, and they all boasted about how many followers they had on their Twitter accounts and how many Facebook friends they had. So it's about kind of getting the Republican Party caught up to the Democrats and bring it into the 21st century.
NORRIS: So they're trying to raise their cool quotient when it comes to the Internet. They were also asked about a much more traditional Republican concern, guns and gun control. Let's take a listen before we go on.
(Soundbite of RNC candidates' debate)
Mr. GROVER NORQUIST (Moderator; Republican Activist): How many guns do you own?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. MIKE DUNCAN (Incumbent RNC Chairman, Kentucky): Four handguns and two rifles.
Mr. KATON DAWSON (South Carolina GOP Chairman): Too many to count.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. KEN BLACKWELL (Former Ohio Secretary of State): Seven, and I'm good.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. CHIP SALTSMAN (Former Tennessee GOP Chairman): In my closet at home, I've got two 12-gauges, a 20-gauge, three handguns, and a 30-06. And I'll take you on anytime, Ken.
LIASSON: What you just heard was Grover Norquist, who was the moderator of that debate, a Republican activist, asking the assembled candidates at a debate at the Press Club last week. As you can see, there really isn't any desire to depart from Republican orthodoxy, certainly not on the social issues like guns. But that also isn't one of the most important issues in this race.
NORRIS: Yeah, in the RNC, you better have an answer for that question.
LIASSON: Right.
NORRIS: Mara, the voting is done in secret, in this case. So it sounds like it's hard to figure out who has the inside track.
LIASSON: It's very hard. This is a very opaque process. It's only 168 voters, the members of the RNC. It will be done in secret, as you said. And it'll be done with multiple ballots. If somebody doesn't win decisively on the first one, so already you have candidates competing to be the second or third choice of these RNC members. But I do think that Michael Steele, who is the most prominent candidate running, because he was the lieutenant governor of Maryland, he's on television a lot, he's considered one of the top candidates. Ken Blackwell has strong support from social conservatives. And Mike Duncan, who is the incumbent RNC chair and you would think would be kind of the symbol of the past, could end up being a default choice for a lot of people if their first choices don't make it.
NORRIS: Who is seen as the person who can rally the troops for a party that has had some rough sliding after the 2008 election?
LIASSON: I think that's what this election is about. The RNC members have to decide who's going to be the best person to not just rally the troops, but organize the party and do all of the mechanical things that you need to do to get ready for the next cycle. The RNC is going to be pretty important because not only does it have to take a party that just was very badly beaten, but just today, we've gotten news of the fourth Republican retirement in the Senate, George Voinovich of Ohio. And he joined Sam Brownback of Kansas, Mel Martinez of Florida, and Kit Bond of Missouri. That's four open seats that the Republicans are going to try to defend, and that's a pretty uphill climb.
NORRIS: Thank you, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Mara Liasson.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
On Friday's program, we considered a few other new tidbits of technology, and you chimed in with your thoughts.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Many of you wrote to say that my conversation with video game designer Petri Purho of Finland provided you with some new entertainment. Purho designed Crayon Physics Deluxe. It's a computer game where you can draw shapes like circles, squares, the shape of a car - whatever you want. And those shapes then follow the rules of physics.
NORRIS: Well, that story helped brighten Friday night at the Valentino(ph) home. Listener Tony Valentino(ph) of Itasca, Illinois, writes, I heard your story about Crayon Physics on my drive home. When I arrived, my three boys were playing their new Wii, of course. After we finished, I downloaded the demo. All three were so interested they did not want to leave the computer. I had to force them to go to bed. My seven-year-old came out to find me still playing, and we had a great time for another hour.
BLOCK: On Friday, we also brought you a story about the change to digital TV that is slated to happen on February 17th. The Obama transition team has requested a delay so that more people can prepare for the switch.
NORRIS: Well, Christopher Schramm(ph) of Tempe, Arizona, sums up several emails we received with this suggestion for TV viewers who might get left in the dark. He writes, maybe all the millions of people who aren't equipped to make the switch can just go without television. I promise they are all going to live. Instead, they could read a book, spend time with a friend, exercise, practice a hobby, or listen to NPR.
BLOCK: We like your thinking, Mr. Schramm. As always, we're grateful to you for your compliments.
NORRIS: And your criticisms. So write to us. Visit npr.org and click on Contact Us at the top of the page.
BLOCK: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. More than a year ago, Pakistan's army went into the Swat Valley in the northwest of that country. The army promised to get rid of Taliban militants there. Many Pakistanis thought the military would win in a few weeks, but the war is still going on and the Taliban is stronger than ever. As NPR's Philip Reeves reports, the conflict is taking a nasty turn. In the last two weeks, there has been a spike in the number of corpses dumped in the streets - victims of tit-for-tat assassinations.
PHILIP REEVES: Sometimes it's just one body found lying in the open as the sun rises over the valley. Sometimes it's more. Sometimes the bodies are beheaded. Sometimes they come with a note, threatening death to anyone who moves the corpses before a stated hour. It's not easy for Western journalists to visit Swat. The militants have a strong presence, but you can call people there albeit on a crackling phone line.
Mr. SIUDIN YUSATSA(ph) (Peace Activist, Mingira, Swat Valley): Yeah, yeah, yeah, (unintelligible) please.
REEVES: Siudin Yusatsa is a peace activist in Swat's main city, Mingora. He's heard about the bodies. He says the daily killing is adding to the mood of deep fear.
Mr. YUSATSA: The situation is very much horrible and very much uncertain, and the people are thinking to migrate from this area.
REEVES: Swat Valley is beautiful. Tourists used to come from across the country to relax amid the mountains and apple orchards. Then the Taliban moved in. The militants are led by a rabble-rousing cleric called Mullah Fazlullah, also known as the FM Mullah because he uses radio broadcasts to rally support. Professor Kadeem Hussein(ph) belongs to a think tank studying the conflict in Pakistan's northwest.
Professor KADEEM HUSSEIN: Yeah. Well, I have got a list here of the statistics, and it shows us a few patterns. Civilian killed - 1,250. Security forces, civil servant killed - 289. Militants killed - 77.
REEVES: Hussein's gathered details from media and military reports, itemizing the violence in Swat during 2008.
Professor HUSSEIN: The displaced are 700,000 people. The number of children who are out of school now are 400,000. Now this tells us about the expansion of Fazlullah's influence in Swat, 2008. So it tells us very clearly that Fazlullah is actually winning war in Swat.
REEVES: Pakistani security sources claim some of these figures are exaggerated. Others believe the Pakistani authorities are understating the civilian death toll. They include Bushra Gohar.
Ms. BUSHRA GOHAR (Senior Official, Awami National Party): We are not getting correct assessments of the losses. The devastation is far more, I feel. And also those who've been injured, those who've been maimed, those who've been displaced.
REEVES: Gohar is a senior official in the Awami National Party, or ANP.
Ms. GOHAR: It's on a daily basis that our activists or our elected representatives who were voted in by the people are now being targeted.
REEVES: The ANP sees itself as a secular and progressive party for the Pashtuns. That's the main ethnic group in northwest Pakistan. It was elected to run the provincial government last year, defeating Islamist parties on a promise of negotiating peace. But the militants have set about trying to wipe out the party, literally. Gohar says she knows of at least 50 party officials or their relatives who've been killed in Swat, though she suspects the number is higher. Almost all the ANP's leaders have been forced to flee the area.
Ms. GOHAR: They can't go back to their areas because they know for sure that they'll be killed. Their family members have been killed. Even if they've left their homes, their homes have been destroyed.
REEVES: Many in Swat Valley accuse the Pakistani security services of widespread human rights abuses, saying that this has made the conflict worse. Gohar feels the Pakistani army has let down her party.
Ms. GOHAR: The Awami National Party was expecting an effective, sharp operation from the military. It didn't get that. And instead it appeared as if they were hitting civilian targets. One started wondering whether our own security agencies had the capacity to deal with militancy and insurgency, you know, at that scale.
REEVES: Security sources say the number of bodies dumped and put on display on the streets of Swat over the last several weeks is 36. Nearly half were from the security services. Four were Taliban. That's led to speculation the security forces are retaliating by adopting the Taliban's tactics. However, Pakistani officials suggest the four were killed in revenge by relatives of the Taliban's victims. The picture is getting worse. Kadeem Hussein says in 2007 the Taliban only held a small pocket of territory in Swat. Now, he says, they run Islamic courts, they decide who buys and sells properties, and they've hooked up with other militant networks in Pakistan's tribal belt.
Professor HUSSEIN: Actually, what is happening is that the militants' writ is established in the whole valley.
REEVES: Philip Reeves, NPR News, Islamabad.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
With Barack Obama's victory, the Obama brand has become attractive to people who market all kinds of things, even hairdos. In downtown Chicago, in an area called the South Loop, there used to be a hair salon called Ossama's. Well, that sign now reads Obama's Hair Design. Mike Elsheikh is the proprietor. He used to work in Ossama's shop as a stylist. When it closed, Mr. Elsheikh leased the property and changed the name. He tells us he licensed the name Obama last year before the election, and he does think Obama is a more marketable name than Ossama.
Mr. MIKE ELSHEIKH (Proprietor, Obama's Hair Design): After what happened to September 11, we're having a little bit of problems with the business and everything, business going down to probably 50 percent, maybe more than that. But a lot of people, they know the location. It was Ossama before. And now it's Obama, so they making a little bit - talking about it and stuff like that.
NORRIS: So now that you're called Obama's Hair Design, do you have any special Obama cuts? Do you do a special Michelle Obama do?
Mr. ELSHEIKH: Well, it's actually very, very similar to what is Miss Michelle wearing her hair right now, and we're styling the hair with a curling iron. We'll make it soft and bouncy and everything like that. The way she wear it, you know, in the whole, you know, in the campaign, it was, her hair was down and beautiful and nice like that.
NORRIS: Have you ever done Michelle Obama's hair?
Mr. ELSHEIKH: No. Honestly, not. Yeah, I wish.
NORRIS: And have you ever met Barack Obama?
Mr. ELSHEIKH: Yeah, actually, I used to live in the Hyde Park, and I met him a couple of times.
NORRIS: Now listen, I'm not trying to make trouble for you, but George Bush was very popular when he was elected. He's much less popular, according to polls, as he's leaving office.
Mr. ELSHEIKH: Right.
NORRIS: So you've named your shop for a president-elect that's quite popular right now. But if things go bad, if he has a rough patch, might that be a problem for you?
Mr. ELSHEIKH: No, actually not. I stick what I please and I never again put the name down. It doesn't matter what. I really like it. But personally, if there's going to have any kind of issue with Mr. Obama, I will it take it down. But it has to come personally from him because I like him.
NORRIS: Well, thanks so much for talking to us. All the best to you.
Mr. ELSHEIKH: Thank you very much.
NORRIS: That was Mike Elsheikh. He's the owner of Obama's Hair Design. That's in the South Loop in the city of Chicago.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
There's no shortage of things bearing Barack Obama's name or likeness these days. From visors to sneakers, golf balls to coffee mugs, you can get just about anything you want emblazoned with his face, name, or the inaugural seal. But is it legal? For that, we've asked intellectual property lawyer Margaret Esquenet to come by. Thanks for coming in.
Ms. MARGARET ESQUENET (Intellectual Property Lawyer): Thank you for having me.
BLOCK: And if I want to print up, you know, a onesie or thong underwear with Barack Obama's name or face on them - I've seen both of this on the Internet - can I do it?
Ms. ESQUENET: Well, it's an interesting question because on one hand, everybody has a right of publicity. That is that everyone can - has some control over whether their image can be used for commercial purposes. Can you sell a product with that image? On the other hand, politicians probably have the least right to control this of anybody. So - and Mr. Obama sort of positioned himself as the man of the people. I think he might have even a more particularly difficult time stopping some of this. It will come down to some extent whether the uses are covered by the First Amendment or whether they are really just strictly commercial uses, uses where his image is being used in such a way that people will assume he endorsed the product.
BLOCK: And has this been litigated before?
Ms. ESQUENET: It has in some circumstances. Giuliani tried to stop New York Magazine from using his name on the side of a bus.
BLOCK: This was when Rudolph Giuliani was mayor of New York City.
Ms. ESQUENET: Exactly, exactly. And he lost that case. The Southern District of New York said that this was fair game and that - I believe the quote was that to the extent that the mayor found himself dressed in drag on "Saturday Night Live" just the week before, that this use of his name wasn't going to make anyone believe that he endorsed the product. It was simply a way of showing New Yorkers that New York Magazine was in touch with what was going on in New York.
BLOCK: We were reading about these issues today in the Washington Post in Al Kamen's column. And he was talking about the new incoming White House counsel, Gregory Craig, and how it will be his job to try to stop the exploitation of the new president's image. Would that really be his purview if ever they were mentioning, you know, Barack Obama chocolate chip cookies and chocolate bars.
Ms. ESQUENET: Well, in my opinion, I think it would really depend on the nature of the use and that they would probably have to be very targeted in making sure that they're only going after the most egregious cases where people really might believe that Obama is endorsing that product. Or that more importantly, since we're talking about White House counsel, so a government job on some level, that it's - that people think that the government or the president is endorsing that product.
I think it needs - it will need to go beyond the commemorative plate and to something that - where almost a level of fraud would be involved, that consumers would be defrauded by believing that they're buying something endorsed by the president.
BLOCK: And what might that be?
Ms. ESQUENET: You know, I was thinking of examples on my way here, and I was trying to figure out what could it be that somebody couldn't argue has First Amendment protection on it. You mentioned onesies. Would that be covered? And I think, well, a change for Obama.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. ESQUENET: That was my first thought. I think to some extent you can make legitimate arguments about a lot of products that they are in fact actually political commentary, either excited about the incoming president or somehow critical of the incoming president. I think my - where I would come down is maybe food products. If somebody is saying, well, Obama eats this candy, so you should eat it, too, that sort of thing might be of particular interest to Obama himself.
BLOCK: Is there a separate issue with the White House seal or the presidential seal?
Ms. ESQUENET: There is a separate issue with the White House seal and the presidential seal. Those are governed by criminal statutes. It's not part of copyright or trademark law or right of publicity law, but actual criminal statutes. And at that point the government looks for fraud. Are you trying to show or imply that you are sponsored by the government or that you were somehow speaking on behalf of the government? And the standard for enforcing that criminal statute is really your intent and how people will perceive the use of the seal.
BLOCK: So, if I'm hearing you right, at the end of the day, we do not think that the incoming White House counsel, Gregory Craig, is going to be spending hours and hours every day writing cease and desist letters to T-shirt manufacturers and onesie makers and coffee mug producers.
Ms. ESQUENET: I'd be very surprised if that turned out to be a large portion of his White House duties. I think that they would be looking for the most egregious cases where the consuming public might really believe the president or the government is endorsing a product, whereas that's not the case.
BLOCK: Margaret Esquenet, thanks for coming in.
Ms. ESQUENET: Thank you.
BLOCK: Margaret Esquenet is an intellectual property lawyer with the law firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett, and Dunner 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. First this hour, we're going to hear what President Bush had to say in an unusually personal press conference. The White House says it was the president's last official meeting with the Press Corps. He spent 45 minutes with reporters, at times relaxed and joking, and other moments firm and even angry. Mr. Bush defended decisions he's made over the past eight years, and he also laid out a list of regrets. NPR's Don Gonyea was there.
DON GONYEA: President Bush has never liked news conferences. He hasn't had one in the White House in nearly six months. But today, he did use a brief opening statement to thank the reporters who've covered him.
(Soundbite of President Bush's final news conference)
President GEORGE W. BUSH: Sometimes I didn't like the stories that you wrote or reported on. Sometimes you misunderestimated me. But always the relationship, I have felt, has been professional, and I appreciate it.
GONYEA: The questions that followed covered both current topics and the sweep of Mr. Bush's eight years in office. On the current front, he said he would release the remaining $350 billion in emergency funds for the economy if President-elect Obama asked him to do so - something that happened immediately after the news conference ended. It was yet another sign that in this area, the current president is already deferring to the man who'll oversee the spending of that money. And on the economy, despite the loss of two and a half million jobs this past year, Mr. Bush still found positive news to promote as part of his legacy.
(Soundbite of President Bush's final news conference)
President BUSH: In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I'm ending on a recession. In the meantime, there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth. And I defended tax cuts when I campaigned. I helped implement tax cuts when I was president, and I will defend them after my presidency as the right course of action.
GONYEA: The president was also asked about mistakes he has made. After years of refusing to acknowledge any, Mr. Bush has in recent interviews offered a few things he regrets. He repeated them today - the mission accomplished banner that hung above him on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as he declared major combat operations to be over in Iraq. That was in May of 2003, and that was not all.
President BUSH: There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. You know, not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don't know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were things that didn't go according to plan. Let's put it that way.
GONYEA: He also noted the response to Hurricane Katrina, but he got angry when he recalled how people say still that the federal response was slow. He pointed to 30,000 people rescued from rooftops as a counterargument.
Inevitably, the president turned to 9/11, saying his top priority and the top issue facing his successor was always to prevent another attack. Mr. Bush was asked to respond to accusations that in his so-called, War on Terror, the U.S. has lost moral standing.
(Soundbite of President Bush's final news conference)
President BUSH: I strongly disagree with the assessment that our moral standing has been damaged. It may be damaged among some of the elite, but people still understand America stands for freedom, that America is a - is a country that provides such great hope.
GONYEA: Asked about President-elect Obama, Mr. Bush said there will come a time shortly after taking the oath next Tuesday when Mr. Obama will suddenly feel the weight of the presidency on his shoulders. But he also said this…
(Soundbite of President Bush's final news conference)
President BUSH: I believe the phrase burdens of the office is overstated. You know, it's kind of like, why me? Oh, the burdens, you know. Why did the financial collapse have to happen on my watch? It's just pathetic isn't it - self pity. And I don't believe President-elect Obama will be full of self pity.
GONYEA: The president also said he, too, is caught up in the historic nature of Obama's election, and said he's pleased that he'll have a front row seat when the nation's first African-American president takes the oath. Then, the president said he'll be happy to step out of the public eye while the klieg lights find a new subject. Don Gonyea, NPR News, the White House.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
If it were pro wrestling, they might be called a tag team. As we heard from Don Gonyea, today Barack Obama asked President Bush to formally request the second installment of the TARP funds. Well, this evening that request was sent to Congress by the Bush White House specifying that the additional money will be used in part to help homeowners facing mortgage foreclosure and to expand existing programs. As far as actually getting that additional money, NPR's John Ydstie reports that wrestling the $350 billion from Congress could be difficult.
JOHN YDSTIE: Today, in his news conference, President Bush defended his administration's use of the first $350 billion of TARP funds. He said the actions taken during his watch helped to thaw the frozen credit markets. But lawmakers from both parties are unhappy. Many complained that banks who got hundreds of billions from the program aren't lending, that home owners facing foreclosure have gotten nothing, and that the automakers who got a bailout aren't deserving. Today, President-elect Obama said he would use the TARP differently.
(Soundbite of news conference)
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: We're going to focus on housing and foreclosures. We're going to focus on small businesses. We're going to focus on what's required to make sure that credit is flowing to consumers and businesses.
YDSTIE: Mr. Obama, who made the remarks during a photo opt with the president of Mexico, went on to say that he had asked Mr. Bush to request the money now because the financial system is still fragile.
(Soundbite of news conference)
President-elect OBAMA: And I felt that it would irresponsible for me with the first $350 billion already spent, to enter in to the administration without any potential ammunition should there be some sort of emergency or weakening of the financial systems.
YDSTIE: Mr. Obama didn't say it but another reason he wants President Bush to ask for the money is a hope that Mr. Bush will take the political heat. In fact, a resolution to block the second $350 billion has already been filed in the house by Virginia Fox, a Republican from North Carolina. If TARP opponents get a majority and pass the resolution, the president could veto it.
Democrats hope the vote happens quickly so President Bush wields the veto pen and spares Mr. Obama the prospect of having to override Congress be one of his first to act as president. Given the broad grumblings in Congress over TARP spending and warnings of trillion-dollar deficits, a veto override is not of the question, say House Minority leader John Boehner.
Representative JOHN BOEHNER (Republican, Ohio): The president is going to have to hold a third of the Senate or a third of the House, and have them in favor of this. If the money is going to be released - I mean, at this point, I think that's going to be a pretty tough sell.
YDSTIE: Boehner was speaking yesterday on CBS' Face the Nation. Today, Larry Summers, who will head Mr. Obama's National Economic Council, sent a letter to the leaders of the House and Senate detailing Mr. Obama's plan for using the second $350 billion of TARP funds. Those plans include help for struggling home owners, small businesses and municipalities, and more limits on executive compensation. John Ydstie, NPR News Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. On the 17th day of the war in Gaza there is still no sign of a cease-fire. Israeli troops and Hamas militants fought sporadic and at times, fierce gun battles. But the Israeli military appears, for the most part, to be holding back from an all-out ground assault into Gaza City. The UN says there are now tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza struggling to find shelter from the fighting. NPR's Eric Westervelt sent us this report.
ERIC WESTERVELT: Twenty-six-year-old Numir Sultan(ph) left his home on the eastern edge of Gaza City with 18 family members after he was wounded by shrapnel that he says was from an Israeli air strike. Al-Shifa Hospital staff now want him to leave. They need his bed for more urgent cases, but Sultan is now homeless and like tens of thousands of Gazans is scared and unsure what to do and where to go.
Mr. NMIR SULTAN (Gazan Resident): (Through Translator) May God help them, there are so many injured people here. My leg is hurt and they gave me first aid but now the hospital released me to make space for others. Where can I go? I can't go out there from here. My whole neighborhood is destroyed and there is bombardment all the time and anyone who walks there will be targeted. I'll wait for God's mercy. Where can I go?
WESTERVELT: Sultan says he's afraid to go to a UN shelter because two have been hit by Israeli fire. That sense among Gaza civilians, if there is no place to run to gets worse every day as the war grinds on. The UN today said there are now more than 30,000 civilians in U.N. shelters with tens of thousands more waiting to get in and thousands of others who fled to homes of relatives or friends. Unlike most conflicts, civilians in Gaza are not being allowed to cross borders to escape the fighting. Fred Abraham is a Senior Emergencies Researcher with Human Rights Watch.
Mr. FRED ABRAHAM, (Senior Emergencies Researcher with Human Rights Watch): Israel with the complicity of Egypt has not been letting civilians flee from the conflict zone so essentially there is no safe place to go. Israel's been dropping these leaflets warning civilians to flee their homes. Where are they supposed to go? I spoke today with a family that is trapped up in northern Gaza - it's about 30 people with food for three days and water for three days. They cannot leave the area.
WESTERVELT: Palestinian doctors say the Gaza death toll is now above 900. Three Israeli civilians and 10 soldiers have been killed. While ground fighting in Gaza and Hamas rocket fire into Israel continued today, it appears the Israeli army for now is holding off pressing its assault deeper into Gaza City - what Israel has called "Phase Three" of the attack.
Mr. ZE'EV LIVNA, (Retired Major General, Israeli Defense Forces): We can capture and kill every Hamas soldier but I don't think that we should do it. I think it's a waste of life among both sides.
WESTERVELT: That's Israeli retired Major General Ze'ev Livna, a former Israel ground forces commander and senior military adviser to two prime ministers. General Livna does not think it would be worth the diplomatic and political damage or the destruction and continued loss of life to press deeper into densely populated Gaza.
Mr. ZE'EV LIVNA: I believe that we don't want to control the Palestinian population in Gaza which is possible, but it means that there is a big risk that many people who are not involved are going to be held from among the Gazan population and I am not sure that it is in our interest to do it. We want only to make sure that the Israeli population along the border is not terrorized again like it was before.
WESTERVELT: But the question for Israel now is whether it can halt the rocket fire without pushing deeper or reoccupying Gaza. Israeli media is reporting splits within the Israeli leadership over what to do now militarily and how to achieve a durable cease-fire that also prevents Hamas from rearming. Hamas leaders in Gaza are underground hiding from Israeli air strikes. Hamas officials in exile, however, say they will not stop launching rockets until Israeli forces withdraw and all borders are reopened. Eric Westervelt NPR News.
NORRIS: And we get help with that story from NPR News assistant Ahmad Abu Hamda in Gaza city. Israel continues to bar foreign journalists from entering Gaza.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The war in Gaza is scrambling the fortunes of political parties in Israel with parliamentary elections less than a month away. Among those jockeying for position are the current foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, and also the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu who's leader of the hard-line opposition party Likud, and the current defense minister Ehud Barak, leader of the Labor Party. We called columnist Akiva Eldar today to talk about how Israeli politics are affecting the war and vice versa. He is chief political analyst for the Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz.
Mr. AKIVA ELDAR, (Chief political analyst for the Israeli News Paper Ha'aretz): If you look at the polls, it seems that Ehud Barak and the Labor Party are the big winners. When the war started, the polls show that they were down from 19 to 11 seats in the Knesset and right now, they are at around 16 or 17. And since this war is supported by a very clear majority of more than 80 percent of the Israelis and since Ehud Barak is not only the chairman of the Labor Party but also the Minister of Defense, he's getting the credit for a war that seems to be the most just thing that Israel has been doing for a long time.
BLOCK: You mentioned the overwhelming popular support among the Israeli Jewish population for the war in Gaza, how much do you think that popular support will erode over time as the war goes on, as casualties mount on both sides, potentially?
Mr. ELDAR: Yeah, I - I think that this is what worries Ehud Barak who is in favor of ending this war now. He hopes that we can reach some kind of agreement and I've just heard that Prime Minister Haniyeh of the Hamas government is willing to reach a truce agreement with Israel. And I think this is what Barak is looking at right now because his supporters will not tolerate major fatalities, casualties in this war. And it seems that right now, the marginal advantage that you can gain from a few more days in Gaza is much less than what you can lose - both in the battlefield, losing the lives of soldiers and the international support. It seems that Israel would like to end this before President-elect Obama is sworn in. The common wisdom is that you don't want to start your relationship with the new administration with this kind of a risk and a conflict that will require the United States to tell Israel enough is enough.
BLOCK: So, that would anticipate that something would need to happen in the next week before January 20th?
Mr. ELDAR: Yeah, I believe that this is the deadline, the deadline for the end of this war is when Barack Obama will be sworn in.
BLOCK: So assuming there were to be some sort of agreement in the next week, or so, as you're describing, it would still leave in place Hamas in control of Gaza. Do you think the Israeli people would agree to that? Do they not think that there is a higher goal here that the end result of this would be that Hamas would be destroyed?
Mr. ELDAR: Well actually if you listen carefully to what even Prime Minister Olmert is saying who has been the tougher guy in this game, is that we don't expect to get rid of the Hamas regime. Actually, if you even - let's assume that we will be able to remove them from power, nobody expects Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah to get back to Gaza riding Israeli tanks because this will not be tolerated by the Palestinian people. And you don't want the Gaza Strip to become a kind of no man's land lead by warlords. So, even though Hamas is a bad address, in the view of most Israeli, bad address is better than no address. Yes, we will have to live with Hamas hoping that we can go back to the truth regime that more or less was working in the last six months before this war started.
BLOCK: Well Mr. Eldar, thanks very much for talking with us.
Mr. ELDAR: Thank you so much and I hope that next time we'll talk about how we can reconstruct Gaza.
BLOCK: Akiva Eldar, Chief Political Analyst for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, in Jerusalem.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. With eight days until President-elect Barack Obama takes the oath of office, President Bush is saying his goodbyes. Today, it was farewell to the White House press corps.
President GEORGE W. BUSH (United States of America): As I looked to the room, I see Jake, Mike, Herman, Ann Compton. Just seemed like yesterday that I was on the campaign trail and you were analyzing my speeches and my policies.
BLOCK: They tried a bit more of that analysis at the president's final scheduled news conference.
Unidentified Man: I'm wondering if you plan to ask Congress for the remaining $350 billion...
Unidentified Woman: Do you believe that the Gaza conflict will have ended by the time you leave office?
Unidentified Man: Do you think the Republican Party needs to be more inclusive? Who needs to hear that message inside the Republican Party?
NORRIS: Mr. Bush took on some of those questions, but at turns, he was jovial, even a little punchy, calling on reporters by name one last time.
President BUSH: Yeah, Suzanne. I finally got your name right after...
Ms. SUZANNE MALVEAUX (Reporter, CNN, White House Correspondent): Yes.
President BUSH: ...how many years? Six years.
Ms. MALVEAUX: Eight years.
President BUSH: Eight years.
Ms. MALVEAUX: Thank you.
(Soundbite of laughter)
President BUSH: You used to be known as Susanne, now you're Suzanne.
Ms. MALVEAUX: Suzanne. Thank you.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. MALVEAUX: Oh, you're...
President BUSH: I'm George.
(Soundbite of laughter)
NORRIS: President George Walker Bush's administration turned out to be one of the more closed administrations. One-on-one interviews were rare. Questions have gone unanswered.
BLOCK: Remember this exchange with reporter John Dickerson, then with Time magazine? This was April, 2004.
(Soundbite of Time magazine's interview with President George W. Bush, April, 2004)
Mr. JOHN DICKERSON (Reporter, Time Magazine): In the last campaign, you were asked the question about the biggest mistake you've made in your life and you used to like to joke it was trading Sammy Sosa. You've looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made after 9/11. What would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?
President BUSH: Hmm. I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I can plan for it. Aah...
BLOCK: President Bush paused.
President BUSH: You know, I just - I'm sure something will pop in my head here in the midst of this press conference after all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but I hadn't yet.
BLOCK: That was 2004. Today, the answer flowed.
NORRIS: Sheryl Stolberg of The New York Times pressed President Bush about his mistakes and he said this:
President BUSH: Clearly, putting a "Mission Accomplished" on an aircraft carrier was a mistake.
NORRIS: And this.
President BUSH: I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the 04 elections was a mistake. I should have argued for immigration reform.
NORRIS: Abu Ghraib was a "disappointment," President Bush said, as was the belief that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
BLOCK: Mr. Bush's verdict on those missteps? Wait and see.
President BUSH: There is no such thing as short-term history. I don't think you can possibly get the full breath of an administration until time has passed.
BLOCK: That's President Bush at his last scheduled session with the White House reporters today.
President BUSH: I wish you all the very best. I wish you and your families all the best. God bless you.
Unidentified Man: Thank you, Mr. President.
(Soundbite of applause)
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Last week Roland Burris, chosen by embattled Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to fill Barack Obama's senate seat, was turned away. This week he'll get a hearty welcome as the junior senator from Illinois. NPR's David Welna joins us to discuss the about-face by Democratic leaders. And David, quite a turnaround. What happened to the Democrats on this issue?
DAVID WELNA: Well, Melissa, I think something that everyone knew was going to happen and had to happen finally did happen because all those involved in this whole embarrassing and hugely distracting episode finally found some way to save face. Democratic leaders had raised questions earlier about whether this appointment was tainted since Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested on charges of trying to sell this Senate seat. Burris settled that one by testifying last week before an impeachment panel in Illinois saying there was no deal.
An even bigger issue, at least here in the Senate, was that Burris did not have the signature of Illinois' secretary of state on his certificate of appointment to the Senate. It only had Blagojevich's signature, since the secretary of state had refused to sign anything the governor signs. So today, Burris' lawyer showed up here at the capital, went into the secretary of the Senate with what seems to be a Solomonic solution. And Dick Durbin, the Senate's number two Democrat and the senior senator from Illinois told me, it was a bit like Illinois sending the Senate a 10-dollar bill instead of two five-dollar bills.
Senator DICK DURBIN (Democrat, Illinois): Instead of one piece of paper with the signatures of the governor and secretary of state, which is the normal document filed by everyone elected and appointed, we received today two pieces of paper - one with the signature of the governor, Rod Blagojevich, and the second with the signature and seal of the secretary of state saying the other document is authentic and complies with Illinois law.
BLOCK: So maybe two fives instead of a 10.
WELNA: That's right, yes.
BLOCK: Well, let's rework this, go - work backwards here. About two weeks ago, the majority leader in the Senate, Democrat Harry Reid, basically threw down the gauntlet and said, look, Governor Blagojevich, if you send us an appointee, forget it. We're not going to seat him. And now, here we are, and Roland Burris will be the junior senator from Illinois. What happened?
WELNA: Well, and then Burris showed up here last Tuesday, the day new senators were being sworn in. He was told by the secretary of the Senate his papers were not in order, and he was quickly escorted out of the Capitol. and he proceeded to hold a news conference outside in driving cold rain. He vowed he'd be back, and he did return the next day and met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senator Durbin. And by then, another Senate Democrat, California's Dianne Feinstein, was publicly demanding that Burris be seated.
Then Burris testified in Springfield and the Congressional Black Caucus unanimously endorsed seating him. And it had become pretty clear that Senate Democrats were no longer going to stand in the way of this appointment. They simply had to find a way to walk back their earlier categorical statements that Burris would not be seated.
BLOCK: And what happens now with the Senator-designate Roland Burris?
WELNA: Well, he will come to the Capitol and be welcomed this time as a senator-designate, which means he can go on the Senate floor but not vote yet. And because Senate Democrats have decided to drop earlier plans to have his appointment reviewed by the Rules Committee, it now appears he may be sworn in before the full Senate as soon as this Thursday. Now, that's assuming of course that nobody objects to his being sworn in.
And Senate Republicans have given no sign that they intend to block Burris' seating. You know, they've just been enjoying seeing the new big Democratic majority in the Senate spend its first week completely tied up in knots over the Burris imbroglio. So if all this proceeds as planned, Burris will have his wish fulfilled to be sworn in before the man he is replacing in the Senate, Barack Obama, is himself sworn in as president next Tuesday.
BLOCK: And briefly, David, any broader takeaway lesson here for Democratic leaders?
WELNA: Well, I think the biggest lesson here may be that when the Senate has only one black member and that member, Barack Obama, resigns, and the governor of his state duly appoints another black man to take his place, you risk alienating a lot of your own constituency and to some even appearing racist by standing in the way of that appointment. This really was a checkmate by Governor Blagojevich. He left those Senate Democratic leaders no other move on this political chessboard than to seat Roland Burris.
BLOCK: OK. NPR's David Welna, thanks so much.
WELNA: You're welcome.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
One week from today, President George W. Bush will leave office. When Mr. Bush entered the White House eight years ago, his party controlled the House and the Senate. Now, the Republicans have lost them both, not to mention the White House. NPR's Mara Liasson reports on President Bush's political legacy.
MARA LIASSON: When George W. Bush was asked by ABC's Charlie Gibson what happened in the 2008 elections, he didn't mince words.
(Soundbite of TV show "World News with Charles Gibson," December 1, 2008)
President GEORGE W. BUSH: I think it was a repudiation of Republicans - you know, I'm sure some people voted for Barack Obama because of me.
LIASSON: And that is a remarkable reversal from the president's decisive re-election victory in 2004 and his hopes for a lasting Republican majority.
Professor DAN SCHNUR (Political Science, University of California, Berkeley; Director, Jesse Unruh Institute for Politics, University of Southern California): It's almost frightening at how quick the political landscape has turned.
LIASSON: Dan Schnur is a longtime Republican strategist who directs the Jesse Unruh Institute for Politics at the University of Southern California.
Prof. SCHNUR: Four years ago, there were books being written by very smart people from all political ideologies about an enduring Republican political majority.
LIASSON: Today, Republicans must contemplate some sobering political facts: on electoral geography, where they just lost Republican strongholds like Virginia, Indiana and North Carolina; and on electoral demography, where Democrats beat them two-to-one among Hispanics, the fastest-growing voting group in America, and young voters, who are forming what could be lifelong political preferences. Even Karl Rove, the architect of the Bush political strategy, admits his Republican majority was short-lived.
Mr. KARL ROVE (Former Deputy Chief of Staff, George W. Bush Administration): Well, not very durable in the short run, but let's see what happens.
LIASSON: Rove looks back on three key factors in 2008.
Mr. ROVE: We had an unpopular war, we had an erratic and lackluster campaign on the part of the Republicans, and we had then the worst financial crisis in at least 50 years, if not more.
LIASSON: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who engineered the great Republican victories in Congress in 1994, puts the blame elsewhere.
Former Representative NEWT GINGRICH (Republican, Georgia; Former Speaker of the House): The Bush failures to implement starting, really, with Katrina; the Rove model of focusing on base mobilization; and the House and Senate Republicans losing total touch with their own voters - all of those things came together to be a disaster. And '06 and '08 will be looked back upon as a period where we went from the potential for a governing majority, which we had as late as the summer of '04, to throwing it all away, which is a pretty remarkable achievement. Democrats had almost nothing to do with it.
LIASSON: Rove rejects that analysis.
Mr. ROVE: I love how everybody gets it wrong; 2000 and 2004 were not base elections. Compassionate conservatism was about energizing the base and allowing the governor of Texas to go out and get people who would not normally vote Republican. And the campaign in 2004 was aimed at maximizing the strength among existing Republicans, and then getting 16 percent of the black vote in Ohio, getting working-class Democrats, getting 44 percent of the Latinos. All of these things were aimed at reaching outside the normal Republican base.
LIASSON: And that's the root the Obama campaign followed, increasing turnout among Democrats while pulling over small but important bits of the Republican vote. Ironically, part of President Bush's political legacy may be the model of grassroots campaigning that carried him in 2004, one the Obama team went to school on and then took to a whole new level. In 2004, Rove helped generate an army of volunteers, mostly drawn from the evangelical community, who campaigned neighbor to neighbor and expanded the electorate in ways that surprised and overwhelmed the Kerry campaign.
Mr. ROVE: I don't want to diminish Obama's very thoughtful and skillful and tactically brilliant campaign. They said, we're going to study what Bush did in the army of persuasion and duplicate it, and we're going to go out and try and get small but significant slices of what the other guy's coalition was in the past two elections.
LIASSON: Although President Bush's party may be in retreat for now, Newt Gingrich says Mr. Bush wrought other political changes that will last for a very long time.
Rep. GINGRICH: He brought social conservatism much further into the center of power than it had been in 70 years. He appointed two very solid- conservative Supreme Court justices who will shape policy for a generation. There are some things George W. Bush can go home and feel pretty proud about.
LIASSON: In the long run, says Dan Schnur, Mr. Bush's political legacy will depend on how successful President-elect Obama will be in cementing his own majority.
Prof. SCHNUR: I guess the question that can't be answered for another four years is whether Barack Obama's victory this past November was an aberration or a forerunner of things to come. If he does cement this type of support, these various voter groups become Democrats for election cycles for many years to come, and that's something that obviously looks very poorly toward the Bush political legacy.
LIASSON: But if in four years voters turn back to the GOP, George Bush's political legacy may look very different, indeed. Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
(Soundbite of music)
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.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. First, this hour, to the auto show in Detroit and the future for General Motors. GM sold 23 percent of the new vehicles bought in the U.S. last year. That's more than any other car company, but it's still about half of what GM's market share was back in 1980. The nation's biggest auto maker is staying alive, thanks to $13.4 billion in federal loans. Our co-host Robert Siegel is at the auto show, where he spoke with the man in charge of GM.
ROBERT SIEGEL: I asked Rick Wagoner, who is GM's CEO and chairman, about the project that his company is promoting most enthusiastically here, the Chevrolet Volt. It's a plug-in. It's scheduled for production in late 2010. I asked him how long it could be before it's a major-selling GM car, not just a niche product.
Mr. RICK WAGONER (CEO and Chairman, General Motors): Well, this is, in some sense, an all-new technology for our industry. And we have a lot of things that we need to do to make that technology not just meet the quality and durability standards, but also to be cost competitive. And my own view is that the opportunity for these to develop into high-volume vehicles is quite good, but to be honest, it's going to depend on our ability to work on things like getting the cost down. And it's going to be very much dependent on government policies which support the growth of electricity in vehicles.
SIEGEL: Let's say the Chevy Volt that you're showing off here, if that car hit the market in 2010 or 2011, how expensive of a vehicle is it?
Mr. WAGONER: It's a very expensive vehicle. We're going to have to price it in a way that tries to balance the fact that it is a new technology, great features, will be eligible for certain government tax credits, which will help the consumer to defray the cost. But from our standpoint, obviously, it's a new technology. It's going to cost significantly more than the consumer will be willing to pay for it. So, we're going to have to take some losses on that vehicle for a while in order to advance the technology.
SIEGEL: I read that at the 1997 auto show, an automotive writer was interviewing you about GM's market share, and you were dismissing the possibility of getting back to majority of the cars sold in the U.S. But 33 percent market share seemed, you said, seemed to be a reasonable share to be talking about. It's more than 10 years later; you're more than 10 points lower than that. It makes one wonder, have the past 10 years really been this turnaround that we've heard about at GM? Or if we sustain you, being the kind of car company that you are, are we just deferring the date of your demise?
Mr. WAGONER: No, I actually feel confident that GM is going to be very well-positioned to compete in the future in the U.S. and around the world. I mean, during that same 10-year period, we've grown from basically no business in the fastest-growing market in the world, now the second largest, China, to be the number one manufacturer there - number-one non-Chinese manufacturer. We have the leading position in important growth markets in South America, like Brazil. We moved to be the number one, from a position of basically almost no sales, to be the number one non-domestic player in a big-growth market like Russia. So, I think we've demonstrated that on a level playing field, we can compete with anybody.
It's fair to say that in the U.S. over that 10-year period or little longer, the last 15 years, we've put $103 billion to fund post-retiree health care and pensions. And that has been a drag on our ability to invest in all the things we would like to do in the market to support our brands and products. But the good news is - we think that is, with the agreements that we structured with our unions over the last several years, something that is now pretty much behind us. And so I think going forward, we'll be able to compete on more of a level playing field.
SIEGEL: What do you seem - to think back on that figure of 33 percent from more than a decade ago, that indeed GM can survive in the U.S. market at 23 percent of the market share, is that sufficient to keep a company of this size in business?
Mr. WAGONER: It is. We've structured - as we put our plans together, we're structuring the business in a way, whether it's our manufacturing capacity or the number of dealers that we need to support, is being structured on the basis that we can be not only competitive in the marketplace, but profitable financially at that kind of market share - and conservative forecast of the U.S. market as well.
SIEGEL: It illustrates a criticism of GM, of GM's structure. When I look at the columns of the sales figures for all of the brands and models of GM and then Toyota, the list of all the GM brands and models is more than twice as long as the list of Toyota brands and models that they're selling in the U.S. And I've read critics saying, you've inherited a structure from the days when this was the 60-percent share of the market. You're selling too many different kinds of cars and too many different kinds of dealerships, and too many different models. Is that true? Do you think that that's a structural problem that you have to change at GM?
Mr. WAGONER: Yes, well, I mean, as we indicated in our submission to Congress, one of the things reflecting a reality of a lower U.S. industry, it does require us to not just consolidate the number of manufacturing plants and engineering centers, but also dealer networks, and we indicated we were reviewing several brands and deciding what their future is going to be. And as part of that, also, reducing the number of product entries. I still think it's important. This is a huge market, and there is a diversity of demand for different kind of vehicles. So, GM is going to offer a full range of vehicles. But certainly from the perspective of being efficient and competitive from a cost perspective, we do need to narrow the range.
SIEGEL: Rick Wagoner, thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. WAGONER: Thanks, great to be with you. I really appreciate it.
SIEGEL: Rick Wagoner is chairman and CEO of General Motors. I spoke to him at the auto show in Detroit.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The TV show "Lost" has some obsessive viewers, and Jen Chaney is one of them. The show's new season premiers next week, and in anticipation of that big moment, for our series "Three Books," Chaney suggests this is the perfect time to discover the "Lost" literature connection.
JEN CHANEY (Film Columnist, Washington Post): I am a "Lost" addict. I think constantly about the ABC drama - when I'm in the shower, walking my dog, even when I'm watching other TV shows. I also frequently visit my local library to dig up copies of the books that have appeared on the show. Hold up, you say; there's literature on "Lost"? Oh, yes, there is. "Lost" may center around a mystical island, but it's also about larger themes like religious faith and the importance of community, the stuff of memorable novels. Happily, the show's writers weave in so many literary references that each installment also opens up a world of transcendent reading. Here are three books I re-fell in love with courtesy of "Lost."
"Watership Down," the first book ever prominently featured on "Lost," is technically a story about bunnies. But there is nothing cuddly about it. Like "Lost," the story focuses on the members of one community forced to scrap and struggle their way toward survival. But what makes it a joy to read is the way author Richard Adams personifies those bunnies, endowing them with stubbornness, fear and resourcefulness, as well as a unique, melodic vocabulary.
It's also easy to get buried in "The Turn of the Screw," the 1898 novella written by Henry James. Well, that is, after you adapt to the author's sometimes flowery Victorian prose. Once that relatively minor adjustment is made, the eerie power of this classic ghost story will inevitably creep up on you. In this twist-filled tale, a skittish governess begins to care for two spookily well-spoken young charges at an isolated country estate in England. Almost immediately, she sees visions of a seemingly sinister couple. Is this mysterious pair a danger to the children? Or is the governess truly mad? The reader is never quite sure whether the version of events she's being told in "Turn of the Screw" is gospel, a trait it shares in common with "Lost." Another connection? In both James's book and the ABC drama, people from the past often return in spectral form to tidy up unfinished business.
There are no ghosts in Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five," but there is a plane crash, a former soldier who gets unstuck in time, and a group of characters connected to each other in ways they don't initially understand. If that all sounds very "Lost"-esque, it is. Also like "Lost," "Slaughterhouse" defies genre. Is it a war novel? Science fiction? Social commentary? Yes, yes and yes. As protagonist Billy Pilgrim attempts to revisit the events of the bombing of Dresden during World War II, he hops backwards and forward through the major events in his life. The result is a complicated, thought-provoking and absurd look at the choices that define one man's time on earth and, briefly, away from it. Vonnegut doesn't follow the standard, linear approach to storytelling. For that, I salute the late author. And as a "Lost" addict, I feel grateful that the writers of my favorite show have the courage and the latitude to shake up their narrative every week, too.
BLOCK: Jen Chaney oversees film coverage and, with her colleague Liz Kelly, blogs about "Lost" at washingtonpost.com. Her fiction suggestions are "Watership Down" by Richard Adams, "The Turn of the Screw" by Henry James, and "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut. You can comment on your favorite books inspired by "Lost" or other things by posting a comment at npr.org.
(Soundbite of music)
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. One of the big honors at the North American International Auto Show is Truck of the Year. This year's winner is the Ford F-150. It's a pickup favored by the construction industry. The award is a boost for Ford, but the company is still facing major challenges. The auto show started this week and our co-host, Robert Siegel, was there in Detroit. He's been talking with auto executives and today, one of Ford's key leaders.
ROBERT SIEGEL: At Ford, Mark Fields is in charge of an entire hemisphere, and he has a title worthy of Simon Bolivar, the South American liberator. He is president of the Americas. Ford's message at the auto show in this season of distress? Well, Mark Fields says, it's simple.
Mr. MARK FIELDS (President of the Americas, Ford Motor Company): Probably can't do it in a sentence, but it's a pretty simple message. We want to talk about and communicate how we're accelerating our electrification plans for a number of our products. We want to talk about how we're developing and delivering affordable fuel economy for millions, and we want to show how we are strengthening our car lineup with our new Taurus.
SIEGEL: I looked at the F-150. It's out on the floor, and one message of that particular vehicle is, those really high gasoline prices of 2008, it's a one-off problem. They came, they went, don't worry about it. Look at a pickup truck and it says, business is booming in America. Construction and landscape gardening are going high. People need pickups. It just doesn't sound right to me. It doesn't sound true to me.
Mr. FIELDS: Well, the message that - we're actually not communicating that message here. What we're communicating as a corporation is that what's very important is - truck leadership is very important, but also, at the same time, balancing our product portfolio with smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles. At the same time, the truck segment still remains one of the largest segments in the industry.
The difference in the truck segment now than it was a year ago is most buyers who are buying a truck are doing so because they use it for work. It's a tool. It needs to perform certain functions for them, and our new F-150 is the most capable out there in terms of the tool that those folks need, and it has unsurpassed fuel economy in the segment.
SIEGEL: But it sounds, therefore, that it's going to be a product that'll be hard hit by the recession.
Mr. FIELDS: Well, the segment overall has been hard hit. The segment overall is down anywhere between 25 and 30 percent. And obviously, it's very highly correlated to the construction industry, and we all know what's happened with housing prices and the construction business.
SIEGEL: I want you to try to explain something to me - which for me, is the overarching question that I bring to the auto show - which is, people say the U.S. auto industry has made significant improvements. Ford can cite its own improvements. I went out the other day, asked a couple of dozen people what they think about American cars. I heard exactly the same things that I've been hearing for the past 10 or 15 years. There isn't a perception of a great change that's taken place.
It's not as though you don't advertise a lot. I mean, you can hardly avoid auto ads. Where's the disconnect? Why aren't you convincing people of what you are convinced of?
Mr. FIELDS: Well, I think we have to be very realistic that perceptions take time to change. And the way you change that is be very disciplined and consistent in, you know, things like the products that you bring to market, the type of technology they have, the quality that they have, the fuel efficiency that they have. But we are out there every day asking customers to put us on their shopping list. And we know we're headed in the right direction but clearly, we can't dictate perception to the public. But in the same time, we can be very consistent and disciplined in getting that message out, and we're starting to see some improvementsin our brand metric.
SIEGEL: For the former Taurus owner - you're looking at one, actually.
Mr. FIELDS: Oh, thank you for your business.
SIEGEL: I'm a former Taurus owner, yes, it's been a while, but for the former Taurus owner who's owned a couple of Hondas or Toyotas since, how do you get that person back? I mean, they've been driving other cars. They may be happy with them. How do you win that person back to an American car?
Mr. FIELDS: The first way, I think, you win them back is as you set out to develop a new program, you have to have what's driving you the mantra that good is not good enough because we realize that we just can't be as good as a Toyota or a Honda in the car business. We have to be better, to give people, you know, the willingness to come and check us out. And that's why, when you look at vehicles like our new Fusio - most fuel-efficient midsize sedan in the segment - that we're introducing, the new Taurus out there, the fuel economy, the design, we have to be better than the competition.
SIEGEL: Mark Fields, Ford's president of the Americas. Thank you very much.
Mr. FIELDS: Thank you.
NORRIS: That's our co-host, Robert Siegel, who's been reporting from Detroit this week.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. West Point is the premier school and training ground for new Army officers. For decades, cadets there learned military tactics to defeat large armies. Now, in Iraq and Afghanistan, they're faced with guerilla fighters, and they need new skills. For our series on the state of the Army, NPR's Tom Bowman traveled to West Point. He has this report on how cadets are being prepared to lead the Army in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond.
(Soundbite of marching cadets)
Unidentified Man #1: Company, attention.
TOM BOWMAN: Cadets assemble near the Plain, the wide lawn where MacArthur, Patton and Eisenhower marched when they were cadets a century ago. Eisenhower's statue stands there today, and a West Point professor, Colonel Matt Moten, stops at the base of the monument to talk about one of the school's most famous graduates.
Colonel MATT MOTEN (History, West Point Military Academy): When Eisenhower was going to school, it was rote memorization. So, there would have been a lot of math; there would have been a lot of engineering; he would have had a history course or two, mostly about memorizing facts and being able to recite them back to the instructor.
BOWMAN: As a history instructor, Moten is not interested in just reciting facts. He's trying to prepare West Point cadets to lead on complex battlefields.
Col. MOTEN: This type of warfare puts a premium on the ability to think on one's feet, to be able to understand political and cultural issues at the same time that you're leading young Americans who are 18 and 19 years old. So, one needs to be thinking on several different levels at the same time, and that requires a great deal of mental agility.
(Soundbite of classroom)
Captain BOB MIHARA (Irregular Warfare Professor, West Point Military Academy): Everyone ready? Everyone have a sheet of paper? Pull up the essay question real quick...
BOWMAN: Captain Bob Mihara is trying to teach agility in his class on irregular warfare. A dozen or so cadets sit in a semicircle, discussing the British experience in Northern Ireland. Captain Mihara says the British lost support of the local population in the 1970s. They rounded up too many detainees, innocent and guilty alike. One cadet quickly sees the British mistake.
(Soundbite of classroom)
Unidentified Man #2: They didn't really fight an unconventional fight. They were fighting it as a conventional force trying to win militarily and...
Capt. MIHARA: A lot of them just sort of shake their heads and think, well, that sounds a lot like Iraq.
BOWMAN: Captain Mihara.
Capt. MIHARA: They say it for themselves, and I try not to impress upon them any particular understanding, because I think that stunts their development as mature military professionals, which is really the principal core of what I'm doing - I'm trying do here is to make this a class of education rather than training.
BOWMAN: Mihara served in Iraq a few years after graduating from West Point. He left here with little preparation, he says, for what he would encounter on the battlefield.
Capt. MIHARA: The way I got out of my experience here is, I came out more as a technician than as a mature professional, in that regard.
BOWMAN: A technician, someone able to take a hill, flank an enemy, read a map. The West Point curriculum says that's not good enough now, given what officers will be called upon to do in the war zone. Alex Bolan is a West Point senior. His brother, Andrew, graduated just before the teaching began to change. He is now serving in Iraq.
Mr. ALEX BOLAN (Student, West Point Military Academy): So, he showed up right when stuff was happening in Afghanistan, that Iraq hadn't even started until he was actually cadet, so the curriculum, I think, changed drastically.
BOWMAN: What are you learning that your brother didn't learn?
Mr. BOLAN: Foreign languages, and how what a lot of the manuals say is not the way you have to conduct things.
BOWMAN: The cadets practice what they're taught at Camp Buckner, a few miles down the road. It's a sprawling training area of woods, streams and mountains. Not long ago, cadets here practiced their combat skills. Now, locals play tribal sheiks, civilians and even reporters at makeshift villages meant to simulate Iraq. Many of the scenarios are based on actual incidents in Iraq or Afghanistan, says Major Chad Foster, a trainer at Camp Buckner.
Major CHAD FOSTER (Trainer, Camp Buckner, U.S. Army): You have villagers showing up, tribal leaders showing up, at your patrol base asking you if you can help with a water problem or with some medical support for his - the people of his village, and having to deal with that on top of fighting a hostile force.
BOWMAN: The Army has been trying to teach counterinsurgency on and off since before Vietnam. Seniors like Samuel Aidoo wonder if the new training and courses will work this time.
Mr. SAMUEL AIDOO (Student, West Point Military Academy): Whenever I read about the insurgencies and how so many people have fell down, it just strikes me as, like, gosh, are we ever going to get this right? Are we ever going to figure this out?
BOWMAN: Aidoo has a reason for his, let's say, more jaded view. He's a combat veteran, one of about 100 among the 4,000 cadets. And there are more professors with combat experience than at any time in a generation. Aidoo says his classmates have lots of questions for him.
Mr. AIDOO: What are the sounds of war? What are the feelings of being in war? Very, very curious because they know what they're getting into. They know as soon as we graduate, we're going right back.
(Soundbite of marching cadets)
BOWMAN: After class, cadets line up for lunch outside Washington Hall, a massive, Gothic building of stone. Jackie Horchak walks along the Plain and talks about how she noticed classmates who have been in combat.
Ms. JACKIE HORCHAK (Student, West Point Military Academy): One of my classmates actually has a combat jump, another one that has a Purple Heart, and pretty sure he told me he still has shrapnel from it in his shoulder. So, they're kind of quiet about it, to be honest. There's a lot of humility.
BOWMAN: Horchak will be graduating in the spring and will soon be leading a team of soldiers. Her former classmates email her from the war zones.
Ms. HORCHAK: You can't help but think about people being killed and the prospect that maybe you or someone you know will be that name being read over the loudspeaker someday.
BOWMAN: So far, the names of 66 West Point graduates killed in Afghanistan and Iraq have been read over the loudspeaker at lunchtime. That continuing toll, and the long and repeated combat deployments, give some cadets pause about making the Army a career.
Ms. HORCHAK: Could I feasibly make it a career very easily? You know, yes, at this point, because I have no one else to worry about pretty much but myself. But who's to say, three years down the road, that there won't be a situation that changes?
BOWMAN: West Point graduates are required to give five years of service after they finish school, but more and more leave after that five years. They're leaving at a time when the Army needs even more of them. It's trying to expand its ranks by 65,000 soldiers. Squeezed between an exodus and a need, the Army expects to be short 3,000 captains and majors at least until 2013.
Major CHRISTIAN TEUSTCH (Military History Professor, West Point Military Academy): I had roommates who have gotten out that I wish had stayed in, but you know, I know guys who are, in my opinion, better officers than me, it would have been great if they'd stayed in.
BOWMAN: Major Christian Teustch teaches military history. He graduated from West Point in 1997, and served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
(Soundbite of history class)
Maj. TEUSTCH: And what becomes known as the lost-cause mentality among former Confederates once the South is brought back into the Union ...
BOWMAN: The cadets in his classroom are starting the Civil War. Soon, they'll find themselves facing the stress of combat and the tug of family and duty.
Maj. TEUSTCH: So if you understand Shiloh, you can understand the Civil War...
BOWMAN: In the meantime, Major Teustch can only hope his students are better prepared for what they'll face than he was. Tom Bowman, 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. Justice Department investigators have spent years looking into claims that the Bush administration politicized parts of that department. Today, they released their report on the Civil Rights Division. It says one powerful manager illegally hired attorneys based on partisan credentials and then lied about it to Congress. NPR's Ari Shapiro has the details.
ARI SHAPIRO: For people who follow the Justice Department, today was a bit like the release of the final Harry Potter book: the end of a dramatic saga that has stretched on for years. The inspector general and the Office of Professional Responsibility have released their reports in four installments. Each shows how Bush appointees at Justice broke the rules to put conservatives in positions that were supposed to be apolitical. Today's report, the last one, focuses on the Civil Rights Division and a man named Brad Schlozman.
(Soundbite of Scholzman on Capitol Hill in 2007)
Unknown Woman: These individuals, senator, were not hired because they were Republican…
Mr. BRADLEY SCHLOZMAN (Associate Counsel to the Director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys): I didn't ask that.
SHAPIRO: That was Schlozman defending himself on Capitol Hill in 2007. Justice Department investigators now say he lied at that hearing. They say Schlozman did hire people because they were Republican. The report portrays Schlozman as a brash, self-important manager who tried to build an idealogically pure team of conservatives. He called civil rights attorneys pinkos and commies.
In a voicemail to a colleague, he once justified hiring people with no record of civil rights experience. Quote, I just want to make sure we don't start confining ourselves to, you know, politburo members because they happen to be a member of some, you know, psychopathic left-wing organization designed to overthrow the government, Shlozman said.
Mr. MARK CORALLO (Co-founder, Co-principal, Corallo Comstock; Schlozman's spokesman and former colleague): Let's not confuse inartful comments with, you know, breaking the law.
SHAPIRO: This is Mark Corallo, Schlozman's spokesman and former colleague. He was the Justice Department's communications director under John Ashcroft.
Mr. CORALLO: I mean, the United States attorney's office looked at it, they did a very thorough investigation, and they said there is nothing here, and they moved on.
SHAPIRO: The U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., spent about six months investigating the allegations before deciding not to prosecute Schlozman. Republican former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh says that doesn't exonerate Schlozman.
Mr. DICK THORNBURGH (Republican, Former Attorney General; Former Governor, Pennsylvania): There is a real difference between not prosecuting someone criminally and yet still finding that actions undertaken were improper. So I wouldn't put too much stock on the U.S. attorney's decision not to prosecute.
SHAPIRO: Thornburgh ran the Justice Department under President Reagan.
Mr. THORNBURGH: The kind of overt and blatant partisan considerations that were apparent from this report really have a harmful effect on the operations of the department.
SHAPIRO: Schlozman hired 112 attorneys in his time at Justice. The report says two-thirds were clearly conservative. Almost all the others had no obvious ideology. Schlozman's spokespeople dispute those numbers. They say Schlozman hired at least two dozen liberals. Joe Rich was at the Civil Rights Division for almost 40 years. For his last two years running the voting section, he worked under Brad Schlozman.
Mr. JOSEPH RICH (Former Chief, Voting Section, Civil Rights Division, Department of Justice): He had a disdain, a real vendetta, to get Civil Rights Division attorneys - really to harass them and to drive them out of the division. And so it made working conditions for any career lawyer dealing with him extremely difficult.
SHAPIRO: Is he one of the reasons you left the division?
Mr. RICH: Oh, yeah, without a doubt. Some of the stuff in this report is really quite despicable. For a government official to be discussing things the way he discussed, I think, is a real travesty of justice - to say the least.
SHAPIRO: In one email, Schlozman wrote to a former colleague: I, too, get to work with mold spores, but here in Civil Rights, we call them Voting Section Attorneys. In 2006, Schlozman left the Civil Rights Division to be interim U.S. attorney in Missouri. While he was there, he wrote an email saying, perhaps the division will name an award for me or something. How about the Brad Schlozman Award for Most Effectively Breaking the Will of Liberal Partisan Bureaucrats? I would be happy to come back for the awards ceremony. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. And first this hour, the most widely anticipated confirmation hearing of the day .
Senator HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (Democrat, New York; Appointee, Secretary, U.S. Department of State, Barack Obama Administration): It is an honor and a privilege to be here this morning as President-elect Obama's nominee for secretary of state.
BLOCK: Hillary Clinton appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mrs. Clinton promised to, as she put it, fire on all cylinders and put a new face on American diplomacy. As NPR's Michele Kelemen reports, it was a polite hearing, despite concerns about conflicts of interest with the fund-raising activities of Clinton's husband.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Former President Clinton was not in the room, but his presence was felt as senators raised concerns about the donations his foundation has received from foreign countries. The ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, said he doubted this issue would get in the way of Hillary Clinton's confirmation, but he encouraged her to make sure it doesn't get in the way of her work.
Senator RICHARD LUGAR (Republican, Indiana): The only certain way to eliminate this risk going forward is for the Clinton Foundation to foreswear new foreign contributions when Senator Clinton becomes secretary of state. I recommend this straightforward approach as the course most likely to avoid pitfalls that could disrupt United States foreign policy or inhibit Senator Clinton's own activities as secretary of state.
KELEMEN: Most senators chose to press this issue in private in written questions, but David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, and Senator Lugar did try to get Mrs. Clinton to consider tougher rules. The secretary of state-designate said she thinks the arrangements that have been put in place already go above and beyond what the laws and ethics rule require.
Senator CLINTON: My career in public service is hardly free of conflict, senator. So I have no illusions about the fact that no matter what we do, there will be those who will raise conflicts. But I can absolutely guarantee you that I will keep a very close look on how this is being implemented.
KELEMEN: That was about as tough as the questions got for Hillary Clinton, whose daughter, Chelsea, sat behind her for support. The secretary of state-designate spoke broadly about her plans for a smart power approach to the world and would not get pinned down on what exactly she's going to do about Iran, for instance.
Senator CLINTON: We don't want anything I say today or anything the president-elect says to take our friends and allies by surprise. So, we cannot tell you with specificity exactly the steps we will take. But I think it's fair to say that the president-elect, as recently as this weekend, has said that we're going to be trying new approaches because what we've tried has not worked.
KELEMEN: She did not take military options off the table and said a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable. Clinton also promised to carry out tough negotiations with North Korea and follow up on what the Bush administration has done on that front. A few anti-war protestors from the group Code Pink sat silently during the hearing, holding signs that read, Invest in Peace and Cease-fire for Gaza Now.
Secretary of State-designate Clinton brought up the conflict in Gaza, saying it increases her determination to seek a just and lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Senators on both sides of the aisle praised her. Lugar called her a big leaguer, and Democratic Chairman Senator John Kerry said Clinton has the right qualities for a tough job ahead.
Senator JOHN KERRY (Democrat, Massachusetts; Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee): Hillary Clinton has shown the intelligence to navigate the complex issues that we face, the toughness and the tireless work ethic that this job will require, the stature to project America's world leadership and the alliance-building at home and abroad that will be vital to our success in the years ahead.
KELEMEN: Kerry is asking the committee to decide on her candidacy on Thursday, the same day that it will hold a confirmation hearing for President-elect Obama's choice for U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice. If all goes as planned, the full Senate could vote on Clinton soon after Mr. Obama's inauguration. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
There were four other confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill today. It was smooth sailing for each of them as well.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
But behind closed doors, Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner met with senators amid reports that he did not pay some personal taxes and failed to check the immigration status of a housekeeper.
NORRIS: The Obama transition team says these issues were honest mistakes that were quickly addressed by Geithner. Geithner is the head of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, and he has his confirmation hearing later this week.
BLOCK: During today's hearings, one big topic was the current financial crisis. Peter Orszag is Barack Obama's choice to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget. He spoke to the Senate Budget Committee and was blunt about the grim state of the economy.
Dr. PETER ORSZAG (Appointee, Director, White House Office of Management and Budget, Barack Obama Administration): In the short run, we face the most severe economic crisis that has occurred since the Great Depression. Over the medium and long run, we face the prospect of large and growing deficits that are unsustainable. These twin challenges of economic recovery and fiscal responsibility will make the job of OMB particularly challenging. But again, if confirmed, I relish and look forward to attempting to meet those challenges.
BLOCK: That's Peter Orszag, nominated to be director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
NORRIS: Shaun Donovan talked about another part of the faltering economy. He's New York City's housing commissioner, and President-elect Obama's choice for secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Mr. SHAUN DONOVAN (Appointee, Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Barack Obama Administration): In the past, owning a home was emblematic of financial success. Sadly, we know that the landscape has changed. As President-elect Obama has said, the housing crisis has shaken not only the foundation of our economy, but the foundation of the American dream.
NORRIS: That's Shaun Donovan, nominee for secretary of Housing and Urban Development, on Capitol Hill today.
BLOCK: To education now and Chicago's schools chief, Arne Duncan. He's Mr. Obama's pick for education secretary. At his hearing today, Duncan talked about what he calls the Obama Effect.
Mr. ARNE DUNCAN (Appointee, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, Barack Obama Administration): What we have with the president-elect and his wife are two people who are living symbols, who embody the value of education. And children throughout our country today look at those two and say that if they worked hard, I can do it, too. And what you see is children saying not just that I want to be the president like the president-elect, they're saying, I want to be smart like the president-elect. And so we have a time collectively as a country to capitalize on something I think is simply extraordinary. Never before has being smart been so cool.
BLOCK: That's Arne Duncan, the president-elect's choice for secretary of education.
NORRIS: Finally, to the nominee for energy secretary, physicist Steven Chu. Chu won a Nobel Prize for his work on renewable energy and climate change. Today, he emphasized engaging other countries on those matters.
Dr. STEVEN CHU (Physicist; Appointee, Secretary, U.S. Department of Energy, Barack Obama Administration): We need to start working with China and India to, actually, concurrently develop some of the technologies, starting with efficiencies. If we can develop, invent new methods of - for example, building efficiencies that China can use as they build their new cities, it's important that the United States and others help China do it right. I think all the countries of the world have to be part of this overall thing because it is the world we're talking about.
NORRIS: Physicist Steven Chu, Mr. Obama's pick to head the Department of Energy.
BLOCK: All five nominees on Capitol Hill today faced specific questions about policy, and each received a largely friendly reception.
NORRIS: All are expected to be confirmed by the full Senate next week after President-elect Obama is sworn in.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The first openly gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, has been chosen to deliver the invocation at Barack Obama's kickoff inaugural event this Sunday. The New Hampshire bishop will offer a prayer at the "We Are One" concert at the Lincoln Memorial.
The announcement follows controversy over Mr. Obama's choice of the conservative, evangelical pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration itself. Pastor Warren has angered gay-rights supporters, most recently by his support of the ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage in California. Well, Bishop Gene Robinson joins us to talk about this. Bishop Robinson, welcome back to the program.
Bishop GENE ROBINSON (Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire): Hi, Melissa. It's great to be back.
BLOCK: Do you think that Barack Obama is, in essence, balancing the scales here, I mean, choosing you to mitigate the anger in the gay community and beyond over his choice of Rick Warren?
Bishop ROBINSON: No, not really. I think Barack Obama is turning out to be exactly who he told us he was going to be, which is a person under a very large umbrella that will include all Americans. And while I, too, was concerned with the naming of Rick Warren as the person to give the invocation at the inauguration, the whole inauguration wasn't yet planned, and I am simply delighted to be a part of it.
BLOCK: Does the timing indicate to you that they responded to the criticism of Pastor Warren? That announcement came on December 17th. When did you get your own invitation to speak?
Bishop ROBINSON: I was actually invited about two and a half weeks ago, but I'm told, and I believe it's true, that this was in the works actually quite a long time. And it's really based on the brief but important relationship that I established with then-Senator Obama very early on in the New Hampshire primary. And then I continued to work behind the scenes in the campaign, advising the campaign and Senator Obama, particularly around gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues.
BLOCK: Well, what is your message going to be this Sunday when you deliver the invocation?
Bishop ROBINSON: Well, I'm not exactly sure I will know until that moment…
BLOCK: You probably wouldn't want to spoil the surprise by telling me right now.
Bishop ROBINSON: Well, exactly. I think it will be a surprise to me. And I expect to be somewhat overwhelmed by the setting. You know, the Lincoln Memorial is my favorite place in all of Washington. I have always wept at those words of Abraham Lincoln inscribed there, but of course, it was also the scene of the "I Have a Dream" speech. It was where Marian Anderson sang at the request of Eleanor Roosevelt. So to be there with President-elect Obama is just an incredible honor.
I plan to pray both for the new president, of course, but also for the country. You know, this will be a very happy event, but it's important to pause and remember that we're entering a very difficult time in the life of our country, and a lot will be asked of us, as well as of this new president.
BLOCK: Have you been finding inspiration in the words of other invocations that were delivered?
Bishop ROBINSON: Actually, I've mostly found caution in the words of others. I've actually read back over the inaugural prayers of the last 30 or 40 years and frankly, I've been shocked at how aggressively Christian they are. And my intention is not to invoke the name of Jesus, but to make this a prayer for Christians and non-Christians alike.
Although I hold the Scripture to be the word of God, you know, those Scriptures are holy to me and to Jews and Christians. But to many other faith traditions - they have their own sacred texts. And so, rather than insert that and really exclude them from the prayer by doing so, I want this to be a prayer to the God of our many understandings, and a prayer that all people of faith can join me in.
BLOCK: The God of our many understandings.
Bishop ROBINSON: Yes. You know, I was in treatment for alcoholism three years ago and am grateful to be sober today. And one of the things that I've learned in 12-step programs is this phrase, the God of my understanding. It allows people to pray to a God of really, many understandings, and let's face it, each one of us has a different understanding of God. No one of us can fully understand God or else God wouldn't be God.
BLOCK: I'm not sure that that God of many understandings has ever been invoked in an inauguration before.
Bishop ROBINSON: Well, I've done a lot of things for the first time in my life, and I will be proud to do this one.
BLOCK: Well, Bishop Robinson, thanks for talking with us.
Bishop ROBINSON: It's been my pleasure. Thank you.
BLOCK: Gene Robinson is the Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and the first openly gay bishop. He'll be giving the invocation at Barack Obama's kickoff inaugural event this Sunday.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And now to our mailbox, which is overflowing with your reactions to our stories from the auto show in Detroit.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Chrysler and GM got billions of dollars in financial aid from Washington and yesterday, my colleague Robert Siegel asked the vice chairman of GM, Bob Lutz, what it's like to work on government life support.
Mr. BOB LUTZ (Vice Chairman, General Motors): Well, I've never quite been in this situation before, you know, getting a massive pay cut, no bonus, no longer allowed to stay in decent hotels, no corporate airplane. I have to stand in line at the Northwest counter. I've never quite experienced this before…
NORRIS: Those comments from Mr. Lutz struck a nerve with many of you.
BLOCK: Laura Rost(ph) of Nashville writes, my 14-year-old and 11-year-old children were appalled right along with me. She goes on, Welcome to the real world, Mr. Lutz. It's the same one the rest of us have been living in all along, and you know what? It's really not so bad.
NORRIS: We also received this from Phil Essington(ph) of Minneapolis. He writes, Wow. I found Mr. Lutz to be emblematic of what is wrong with today's auto industry. He acknowledges that domestic autos of the past were lacking in quality, but assures us that not only are today's domestic cars up to par, it's our fault for not knowing it. Mr. Essington continues, Surely the rebounding of the domestic autos begins by driving out, pun implied, people like Mr. Lutz.
BLOCK: We also got some criticisms aimed at us, not Mr. Lutz. David Ruscheer(ph) of Virginia Beach called our story about GM, quote, irresponsible, perhaps even unpatriotic. He writes, Mr. Siegel does his best to further the popular, uninformed opinion that American cars are inferior to those of foreign auto makers. Mr. Ruscheer sent us a long list of the cars he's owned, including these: Our Ford Escape is a phenomenal car. Both my wife and I like driving it as much as our Range Rover. Give the American car makers a chance.
NORRIS: And finally, while Robert was at the auto show, he also brought us a story about the Chevrolet Spark. That's the concept car that has replaced rearview mirrors with cameras so you can see behind you by looking at a screen inside the car.
BLOCK: Well, listener John Suey(ph) posted a comment on our Web site. He says, There's nothing very innovative about vehicle cameras. Tens of thousands of us old folks have been using them for years in motor homes. My Winnebago View has one. Mr. Suey adds this jab: By the way, my motor home sleeps five, has a kitchen, a TV and a toilet. To keep up, GM needs at least a urinal in its mini car.
NORRIS: OK. You can write to us by visiting NPR. Please click on "Contact Us" at the top of the page.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
President-elect Barack Obama made clear this week that he intends to keep his campaign pledge to close the prison at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: I don't want to be ambiguous about this. We are going to close Guantanamo, and we are going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our Constitution. That is not only the right thing to do, but it actually has to be part of our broader national security strategy because we will send a message to the world that we are serious about our values.
NORRIS: The president-elect was speaking there during an interview Sunday morning on ABC. Obama is expected to issue an executive order, possibly on his first full day in office, to close the prison that houses suspected terrorist picked up mostly on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.
But closing Guantanamo is not as easy as freeing the prisoners and turning out the lights. It's far more complicated than that. And so this week, we're holding a series of conversations about why shutting Guantanamo down is so complicated, and what options are open to the Obama administration as it formulates a new policy toward the so-called enemy combatants.
Today, we hear from Scott Silliman. He's a professor of law at Duke University and the executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. He joins us from Durham, North Carolina. Professor, thank you so much for being with us.
Professor SCOTT SILLIMAN (Law, Duke University; Executive Director, Center on Law, Ethics and National Security): It's a pleasure to be with you, Michele.
NORRIS: How complicated is this going to be? What are the biggest obstacles that will prevent the swift closure of Guantanamo?
Professor SILLIMAN: The major problem, Michele, is what do we do with those detainees that are currently at Guantanamo Bay? If, in fact, you close it, you've got to find a place to put them. You can put them in the United States. You can hopefully move them to other countries. But so far, neither one of those options has really worked.
NORRIS: U.S. lawmakers in some of the states that might possibly hold the detainees have said that they don't want them here. If the new administration finds that it's difficult to find a partner overseas, might they have to look at a U.S. location?
Professor SILLIMAN: Well, that's a possibility, Michele, and a couple of options have already surfaced. There's a Supermax prison in Colorado, and Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. But again, when you bring them into the United States, I think it's arguable that Congress would have to specifically pass a law authorizing it. There are security interests. Some of these folks are very, very dangerous, and if they weren't dangerous when we put them in to Guantanamo Bay, when we bring them out seven years later, they are more dangerous now. So, I'm not sure that that's clearly a good option, if an option at all.
NORRIS: The administration plans to direct a team to examine each case to determine which of the detainees can be released and which of them must be held in another location, location yet to be determined. How long will that process take, and how do they determine who's worthy of release?
Professor SILLIMAN: It's going to take a long time. The process of closing it will probably take eight to 10 months at the earliest. You have got to go case by case, make an evaluation on first, whether that terrorist is subject to criminal charges. And in that case, you are going to have to prosecute him in some kind of a forum, probably not a military commission.
But there are those for whom there is no evidence of a crime and yet, they are dangerous. And they've got to make a decision: Should they be released, or should they continue to be held? And it's going to be a slow process.
NORRIS: So it sounds like we're not just talking about closing Guantanamo, we're talking about making real adjustments in the U.S. legal system, the military legal system.
Professor SILLIMAN: That's correct. Obviously, the courts, over the last four years, have dealt the Bush administration several defeats. The Supreme Court has told the Bush administration these detainees have legal rights that can be heard in our federal courts, and they are being heard right now. The issue is, when you move them to some other country, then that issue goes away. But if you put them anywhere else - in Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan - the same issue of their legal rights stays alive and well, and it's a difficult one for the new administration to deal with.
NORRIS: President-elect Obama is a man who uses words very carefully. He's a trained lawyer. If you listen to what he said this Sunday in that interview, he said, we're going to close Guatanamo. And we're going to make sure that the procedures we set up are ones that abide by our Constitution. So he's acknowledging that there are certain limits and obstacles. What are the biggest obstacles they face?
Professor SILLIMAN: Well, again, what he's saying is what the courts have already ruled - that if we are holding folks at Guatanamo Bay, that we must accord them the opportunity to come into our federal courts and challenge that detention. So I think President-elect Obama is basically reaffirming that never again will we be a pariah of the international community by denying folks the right to challenge their detention. And so that will hopefully allow us to have more cooperation from those countries that are yet to accept back their citizens.
NORRIS: Scott Sillliman is a professor of law at Duke University, and he's the executive director of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. He joined us from Durham, North Carolina. Professor Silliman, always good to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Professor SILLIMAN: Thank you, Michele.
NORRIS: And our discussions on the closure of Guantanamo Bay continue tomorrow. We'll examine how the U.S. might prosecute some of the Guantanamo detainees.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Tomorrow, General Eric Shinseki will return to Capitol Hill, where his reputation for candor was made. Shinseki is President-elect Obama's choice to be the next secretary of veterans affairs. He is best known as the general who gave testimony on the Hill in 2003 in which he questioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's planned strategy in Iraq. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly has this profile.
MARY LOUISE KELLY: Eric Shinseki first distinguished himself in an earlier war -Vietnam. He served two combat tours there and was awarded the Purple Heart twice. He lost part of his foot when he stepped on a land mine. After that, Shinseki had to fight to stay in the military. He did fight, and he stayed and eventually, he rose to become the first Asian-American four-star general.
But for all his achievements, Shinseki's career has come to be defined by one moment. It was February 25th, 2003, a month before the invasion of Iraq. And at a Senate hearing, Democrat Carl Levin asked him a question.
(Soundbite of Senate Armed Services Committee meeting, February 25, 2003)
Senator CARL LEVIN (Democrat, Michigan): General Shinseki, could you give us some idea as to the magnitude of the Army's force requirement for an occupation of Iraq?
General ERIC SHINSEKI (Former Chief of Staff of the Army; Appointee, Secretary, U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs, Barack Obama Administration): In specific numbers, I would have to rely on combatant commanders' exact requirements. But I think...
Senator LEVIN: How about a range?
General SHINSEKI: I would say that what's been mobilized to this point - something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers are probably a figure that would be required.
KELLY: Several hundred thousand soldiers - that was way above Secretary Rumsfeld's estimates. And Rumsfeld quickly administered a public scolding.
Mr. DONALD RUMSFELD (Former Secretary of Defense): The idea that it would take several hundred thousand U.S. forces is far from the mark.
KELLY: Out of that clash was born something of a legend - the soft-spoken General Shinseki as the one man who stood up to Rumsfeld and lost his job for it.
Retired General ROBERT SCALES (External Researcher, Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College): I think all of us understood at the time that he was confronting the Rumsfeld administration face-on.
KELLY: That's retired Army General Bob Scales. He's known Shinseki since the '80s, when they first worked together. Scales says that when Shinseki was picked last month to run veterans affairs, it helped set the record straight on Iraq.
General SCALES: It was a clear vindication that, at the end of the day, Rick turned out to be right. His prognostication of how that war would evolve over time turned out to be correct. And Rick comes down on the right side of history.
KELLY: Rumsfeld aides have disputed that version of history. They deny General Shinseki was forced from office, pointing out he retired as scheduled, months after that testimony and with full honors. And they argue that if Shinseki had real concerns about troop levels, he could have spoken up earlier and more forcefully. Instead, Shinseki mostly kept quiet. There is no public record of him objecting to the war plans.
Tomorrow, at his Senate confirmation hearing for the veterans' affairs job, General Shinseki will surely be asked about the episode. But Paul Rieckhoff, for one, is hoping he doesn't dwell on it. Rieckhoff is head of the group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Rieckhoff believes that Shinseki has the potential to be a transformative figure at the VA, but that political baggage from six years ago won't help him.
Mr. PAUL RIECKHOFF (Founder and Executive Director, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America): He's going to have to show that he's not just the guy who challenged Rumsfeld. He's not just the guy who would have been right on troop numbers inside Iraq. He's got to make it clear that that political element is behind him, and that now he's focused on caring and supporting our veterans coming home.
KELLY: If confirmed, Shinseki would face the challenge of fixing a broken agency at a time when budgets are tight and the number of wounded veterans growing. The consensus so far, though, appears to be that Shinseki is up to the challenge. Senator Daniel Akaka, who is chairing tomorrow's hearing, has already gone on record praising his judgment and calling the general a great choice. Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
If brevity is the soul of wit, what is the soul of a terrific inaugural address? It could be brevity, but it usually isn't. Well, the National Constitution Center and Smith Magazine, an online home for storytelling, held a contest asking for six words to inspire a nation - six memorable words in a phrase that people would want to hear in the inaugural address. And now they've picked their six winners.
Joe Torsella, the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, joins us to tell us about them. And Joe, before we get to the grand prize winner, why don't you give us one of the runners-up that caught your eye?
Mr. JOE TORSELLA (President and CEO, National Constitution Center): One of the runners-up that I thought was nice and clever and it was, "These are testing times, study hard."
BLOCK: Study hard. And who's that from?
Mr. TORSELLA: That's from Dianne Titchnal(ph), who is one of our - we had about 3,000 entrants overall - although I will say we had this judged by a panel of celebrity judges, and they made some good choices. And I think I agree with the overall choice, but my all-time favorite did not make their list.
BLOCK: Oh, what was your all-time favorite?
Mr. TORSELLA: My all all-time favorite was, quote, "I shall put my BlackBerry aside."
BLOCK: (Laughing) I see.
Mr. TORSELLA: That might be the Secret Service's all-time favorite, too.
BLOCK: You know, Smith Magazine, your co-sponsor in this, has published a whole book before this, "Six-Word Memoirs." So clearly, they love the idea of brevity. What's in it for the Constitution Center?
Mr. TORSELLA: Well, our reason for being is to promote and foster a kind of civic engagement. And when we came to this notion with Smith, it seemed like a way to do it that would cause people to think in the process about what it is they want to hear the president say and that, in a six-word nutshell, is the essence of what this is all about.
BLOCK: Yeah, and looking at a bunch of the entries on your Web site, you know, inspirational can sort of start sounding like those posters you see advertised in the magazines you get on an airplane. And I mean, you can take that pretty far in the wrong direction.
Mr. TORSELLA: They, interestingly, fell into different kinds of categories. There were the inspirational ones, which clustered around the ideas of, kind of, hopefulness and unity and change. And then there was the whole humorous category.
BLOCK: Apart from the BlackBerry one, other funny ones that stick in your mind?
Mr. TORSELLA: Oh sure. "Fellow Americans, meet our new dog" was good.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: I think, maybe Malia or Sasha submitted that.
Mr. TORSELLA: Yeah, yeah. And then there was one that was both funny and clever and policy and that was, "Invest in civic energy, it's renewable."
BLOCK: Yeah, I like that one.
Mr. TORSELLA: So at the Constitution Center, we liked that a lot. And then there were the more classic ones that sounded more like a speechwriter had written them, and sounded like they could plausibly be in an inaugural address - which, by the way, there have been more than a few memorable six-word clauses. A lot of the ones that stick in our collective memory are, in fact, six words or pretty close to it - to bind up a nation's wounds or like a thousand points of light. The memorable bits of many inaugural speeches end up being those little chunks.
BLOCK: Well, but think about, you know, probably - maybe the most iconic inaugural line ever, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Seventeen words, wouldn't have made the cut.
Mr. TORSELLA: But still, it's the spirit of the thing.
BLOCK: Well, Joe, let's end the unbearable suspense here. Who is the grand prize winner?
Mr. TORSELLA: All right, drum roll, please. The grand prize winner is Donna Formica-Wilsey from Philadelphia. And her winning entry is, "Divided by fear, united in hope." I think it captures a theme of the campaign and the time, so I think it's pretty good.
BLOCK: Maybe a little bit of a play on "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Mr. TORSELLA: That's true, but let's not start pointing pleasures and fears.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: This is not the time or place.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: What happens to these submissions? I mean, do they get - are you planning to send any on to the Obama speechwriters, just in case they need a little dose of inspiration?
Mr. TORSELLA: Well, as a matter of fact, we are. First of all, these will live forever, as things do these days, on our Web site. But we are also planning on sending the six finalists to the Obama transition team. They, though, have resisted every effort to acknowledge that they'll take receipt of them, so I can't make any promises there.
BLOCK: They're getting them whether they want them or not.
Mr. TORSELLA: They're getting them whether they want them or not. And the winners are getting a membership to the National Constitution Center. And the grand-prize winner is getting a leather-bound pocket Constitution - which, maybe more than any of these entries, testifies to the fact that a few words can save some very important things.
BLOCK: Well, Joe Torsella, thanks so much for talking to us.
Mr. TORSELLA: My pleasure.
BLOCK: It's Joe Torsella of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, co-sponsor of a contest to write six words for Barack Obama's inaugural address.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Despite some of the gloom at this year's show, the industry is hoping to rekindle car lovers' passion, a passion driven by great design. But for designers, it's not a good time to break into the industry, as Michigan Radio's Dustin Dwyer reports.
DUSTIN DWYER: To become an automobile designer, you have to have a deep love for cars, a love so deep you'll work long hours, evenings, weekends, drawing lines over and over until you get it just right. You'll turn those drawings into models made out of foam, and you'll sand those models like a maniac.
(Soundbite of sanding)
Mr. PHILIP MUSCAT (Automotive Design Student, College for Creative Studies): I heard stories about people wearing their skin down and, like, little pieces - seeps of blood coming through it.
DWYER: Philip Muscat is at work in the automotive design studio at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. He is covered in faint-blue dust from a foam model that he and his fellow students have been sanding for too long now.
Mr. MUSCAT: How long have we've been sanding, Andrew? Probably a couple of days, three days now? Just constantly, 10, 12 hours a day.
DWYER: Yeah, it takes a deep love of cars to do this job. It also takes talent. The College for Creative Studies, or CCS, is one of the top auto-design schools in the country, with the kind of close connections to the industry that help its students get jobs. But out of 50 students admitted into the program, only about 10 percent or so can expect auto-industry jobs when they graduate; that's five people in an average year. And this year, there might not be any jobs. Dong Tran is a senior. He grew up in Vietnam, where he says most people drove mopeds or rode bicycles; seeing a car was rare.
Mr. DONG TRAN (Automotive Design Student, College of Creative Studies): I saw one because my grandpa drove a taxi for the presidential-elect in Vietnam. And when I saw that, I fell in love with the car, and it's been like that ever since.
DWYER: After three and a half years at CCS, Tran has built up an impressive portfolio. He's interned with some of the best companies in the business: Toyota, General Motors and BMW. But in today's market, he says that might not be enough. So, he might have to design something other than cars.
Mr. TRAN: I really want an automotive job, but I'm considering other options. I mean, product(ph) is an option, you know, transportation, mass transit, motorcycles an option, boats.
DWYER: But cars are your passion?
Mr. TRAN: Yes, definitely. So, I cross my finger and hope I get something in May.
DWYER: And it helps that Tran has two models on display here at the Detroit Auto Show. Usually, CCS students have a space in the Cobo Hall basement during the show. This year, they're on the main floor. While that means more exposure, it won't necessarily mean a job. Jim Hall once worked as an engineer in the design department at GM. At the auto show, he leads me away from the CCS booth toward the Lexus stand, where he says we can find a quiet place to talk.
(Soundbite of car door closing)
DWYER: And here, shut inside a Lexus GS 450H hybrid, Hall confirms what students like Tran already fear.
Mr. JIM HALL (Former Engineer, GM Design Department): It's going to be tough for them finding jobs, actually, on a global basis, for probably the next two years.
DWYER: Hall says while the auto companies have been shedding jobs, they've tried to avoid cutting their design staffs because those jobs were too important to lose. So, right now, there are no open positions. Hall says many of the students who grew up with that deep love for cars will, indeed, end up designing something other than cars. But for some, that just won't cut it.
Mr. HALL: If you want to draw cars, if you've got gasoline in your blood, the only thing that's going to satisfy that is drawing cars.
(Soundbite of sanding)
DWYER: Or sanding down foam models of cars. For NPR news, I'm Dustin Dwyer in Detroit.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Finally, back to the auto show for one last discovery about car design from our co-host, Robert Siegel.
ROBERT SIEGEL: I met a proud, expectant papa at the GM exhibit at the Cobo Center in Detroit.
Mr. TIM GREIG (Designer Manager, GM): Well, my name is Tim Greig. I'm the design manager for the Volt interior.
SIEGEL: Volt, as in the billion-dollar Chevy Volt, GM's gestating plug-in car, due date November 2010. This is the car that goes 40 miles on a single battery charge without relying on its back-up engine. To recharge, you plug it in at home overnight, when electricity is cheapest. Tim Greig's project was the interior.
Mr. GREIG: And we wanted to make sure that when you look at the interior, it immediately looked like an electric vehicle. But at the same time, it also looked inviting and still warm, so you would want to sit down and continue to explore the depths of the technology instead of being kind of like turned off by them.
SIEGEL: And so the displays look more like computer monitors than like dashboard displays.
Mr. GREIG: Exactly, kind of a like a laptop.
SIEGEL: This should feel like I'm about to open the Mac and I should - about to do some program on my...
Mr. GREIG: That's great, I...
SIEGEL: On my laptop.
Mr. GREIG: I think that's a compliment.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: You've got enough cup holders for a party in here in this...
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: In this car. In the rear, you have the seat divided that comes down with lots of cup holders.
Mr. GREIG: Well, there was the fear that, you know, it's a regular car, let's say, but it has this battery running down the center of the vehicle, and it Ts out underneath the rear occupants...
SIEGEL: So, you've got to do something over it.
Mr. GREIG: Absolutely, and we were afraid that would take away space. But at the end of the day, you know, you have to have dual cup holders, right? You have to have places for people to store their, their mobile devices, their cell phones, or what have you.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: But it's so funny. If it actually works, I mean, if this car takes off...
Mr. GREIG: And it will.
SIEGEL: I've got a car - yeah, you say it will - you've got a car that you can plug in overnight. For 75 cents you can commute back and forth, and it will be, where are the cup holders? How many...
Mr. GREIG: That's still probably one of the highest priorities.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: How many cups of coffee can we put in this car while we're driving?
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: The moral of this story? You can send a man to the Moon, but if he doesn't have space for his Starbucks venti, who's going to go? This is Robert Siegel.
(Soundbite of music)
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Coming up: New approaches to training cadets at West Point; that's when we continue with All Things Considered.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Today on Capitol Hill, the president-elect's nominee to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development was welcomed with open arms by senators from both parties. The nominee is Shaun Donovan, the New York City housing commissioner. And with his appointment, Barack Obama pledged to bring fresh thinking to HUD. The current economic crisis was partly caused by the collapse of home mortgages, but HUD has been largely absent from the debate. NPR's Brian Naylor reports on today's confirmation hearing.
BRIAN NAYLOR: Democrats on the Housing Committee made clear their dissatisfaction with HUD's actions during the Bush administration. The panel's chairman, Connecticut Democrat Christopher Dodd, said the agency has, in his words, been mismanaged and ridden by scandal in the last several years.
Senator CHRISTOPHER DODD (Democrat, Connecticut; Chair, U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs): Fundamentally, HUD has been left adrift at a time when bold leadership and clear direction were never more important.
NAYLOR: New Jersey Democrat Robert Menendez said HUD has been relegated to junior status.
Senator ROBERT MENENDEZ (Democrat, New Jersey; Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs): While HUD never seems to gather the press attention as other agencies do to American families, your future role at this agency may be far more important. And I agree with those who say that HUD has been sitting at the kids' table, and it is time for that to change.
NAYLOR: Donovan, a boyish-looking 42, is something of a housing wunderkind. A Harvard-trained architect, he's worked on both sides of the housing issue. He was deputy assistant secretary for multifamily housing at HUD during the Clinton administration. He worked at Prudential Mortgage Capital Company. And since 2004, he's been New York City's housing commissioner, where he's led a multibillion dollar effort to build and preserve some 165,000 units of affordable housing. At HUD, he'll have his hands full, as he acknowledged today.
Mr. SHAUN DONOVAN (Nominee, Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Barack Obama Administration): It is estimated that approximately 2.2 million homes went into foreclosure in 2008. One in 10 American families who owns a home is in financial trouble. Housing is at the root of the market crisis we are now experiencing, and HUD must be part of the solution.
NAYLOR: The senior Republican on the housing panel, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, said he wants Donovan to spend some time investigating what went wrong with subprime mortgages. He said the federal government may have made things worse.
Senator RICHARD SHELBY (Republican, Alabama; Ranking Republican, U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs): If we don't deconstruct what went wrong and how to fix it, we'll never fix it, will we?
NAYLOR: Donovan said there was blame to go around among lenders and homeowners, promising to make a system that was open, transparent, fair and flexible. That seemed to satisfy Shelby, who said he looks forward to supporting the nomination. Senators also asked Donovan to ensure HUD makes better use of a program, approved last summer, to help homeowners facing default to refinance with lower-cost, government-backed mortgages. So far, only a fraction of those eligible to take part in the program have applied. Donovan also pledged to address the problem of homelessness, especially among families who have lost their homes due to foreclosure.
Mr. DONOVAN: There has been a dramatic, really, movement across the country over the last decade or so that has focused energy around the problem of homelessness among individuals. And so, I think if we can focus the same kind of energy and partnership, we can make the same kind of progress on family homelessness.
NAYLOR: In the end, there was nary a dissenting voice heard from Housing Committee senators about Donovan, and Chairman Dodd said he was hoping for a committee vote on the nomination by the end of the week. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. When it comes to something you buy, you can usually tell where it came from. But it's less common to meet the person who actually made it. A man in Brooklyn is trying to do just that. He spent an entire year meeting the makers behind every item he buys - or at least someone along the production chain. Rebecca Sheir has his story.
REBECCA SHEIR: So perhaps you've made the acquaintance of your local butcher or baker, but what about your local athletic-shoe maker?
Mr. CLAUDIO GELLMAN (Plant Manager, New Balance, Lawrence, Massachusetts): So this - in this factory, to our left is - this is (unintelligible) what we call the cut-through-stitch, the shoes that are made in USA that we cut from scratch.
SHEIR: Claudio Gellman(ph) is the plant manager at New Balance, which claims to be the country's last domestic manufacturer of athletic footwear. Scott Ballum has driven up from Brooklyn to Lawrence, Massachusetts, to meet him.
(Soundbite of conversation)
Mr. SCOTT BALLUM (Creator, Consumer Reconnection Project): Where were you before?
Mr. GELLMAN: I'm from Argentina.
Mr. BALLUM: Why the move to the States?
Mr. GELLMAN: I was an exchange student in 1980.
Mr. BALLUM: Really?
Mr. GELLMAN: Yeah, I just fell in love.
SHEIR: Scott Ballum has been making trips like this since March 2008, when he turned 30 years old. He calls it the Consumer Reconnection Project. And on the ride back from New Balance, he explained why.
Mr. BALLUM: Nothing is what it is. I think we've become pushed further and further away from the people who actually produce, and I think that both the producers and the consumers would feel better about things that they do if they had an idea of how their actions were affecting other people.
SHEIR: Of course, spending an entire year only buying stuff that you can trace it back to an actual person whom you've actually met, that's kind of a tall order. Which is why, right from the get-go...
Mr. BALLUM: I gave myself two kind of outs, you know, over the course of the year that, you know, I wasn't going to starve, and I wasn't going to socially ostracize myself.
SHEIR: To preempt the first, Scott met the farmers who supply his local food co-op, where he now buys all his groceries. He also met the chefs at a handful of restaurants. And by handful, I actually mean...
Mr. BALLUM: There are three restaurants that we can eat at.
SHEIR: Three.
Mr. BALLUM: I get a little bit sick of it.
SHEIR: Joe Hankins has been dating Scott since before the project began.
Mr. JOE HANKINS: Right now, he's away, and I get to go out to all sorts of restaurants. Earlier today, I was at a Cuban restaurant and texted him and said, ha-ha-ha, I'm out at a Cuban restaurant, which we never get to enjoy.
SHEIR: Scott claims he's been so busy tracking down other makers, he hasn't had time to meet more chefs. Once, he went to dinner with some friends, and he actually brought his own sandwich since the restaurant wasn't on his reconnections list. So, in terms of that second out, the one about not socially ostracizing himself, let's just say that some people in his life aren't sure how well he's succeeding.
Mr. MARK ROSENBERG: I think my immediate response was, are you crazy? Are you nuts?
SHEIR: Mark Rosenberg learned of Scott's project last March, when he emailed his friend suggesting they go out for Scott's 30th birthday.
Mr. ROSENBERG: And he was like, great, but I'm doing something new, and we're going to have limitations - or something of that nature. And I wrote him back; I'm like, what are you talking about?
SHEIR: Scott knows it's been hard on the people in his life. Heck, it's been hard enough for him. But he says it's worth it because now he can tack a human face onto a tube of toothpaste, a bushel of tomatoes, or a pair of running shoes.
Mr. BALLUM: Just knowing a little bit about other people and how that person is - it's just such a completely different life than mine, but I'm connected in some way, and it's nice to explore that.
SHEIR: But when the project officially ends in March, Scott Ballum says he'll be ready to pick a restaurant, call up his friends, and leave the sandwich at home. For NPR News, I'm Rebecca Sheir.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Now, the story of a boy, a dentist and a hockey stick. On New Year's Day, 14-year-old Kalan Plew attended the winter classic match between the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Black Hawks. Plew is a major Red Wings fan and after his team won, he rushed down to the ice and the Red Wings' star winger, Henrik Zetterberg, caught his eye. And Kalan, why don't you explain what happened next?
Mr. KALAN PLEW (Fan, Detroit Red Wings): Well, he looked around and he saw me, and he kind of gave me a little wink, and you know, handed the stick right to me. And I just lit up; you know, I was really excited. And we already had made it outside, and a guy in what appeared to be the NHL official gear, or jacket and hat, came up to me and said, sir, you can't have that without an adult. And I said, can I get an explanation why? And he said, you just need to come with me. I'll have - we can have your parents come and get you from the ticket office.
BLOCK: Hmm.
Mr. PLEW: He took the stick, and we were walking towards, apparently, what was supposed to be the ticket office. He started walking pretty slow and started trailing behind me and my friend. And I turned around one time, and he was gone. He ran...
BLOCK: Oh, he just took the stick and ran.
Mr. PLEW: Yeah, he just took it and ran.
BLOCK: So, you are left without your stick. And let's bring the dentist from North Carolina - Charlotte, North Carolina, Robert Pappert in, because at this point, Robert, you were in Chicago for the game. And around this time, you were in the men's room at Wrigley Field. What happened?
Dr. ROBERT PAPPERT (Fan, Detroit Red Wings; Dentist, Charlotte, North Carolina): Yeah, it was up in the upper decks, and the game finished, so I went to the bathroom. I was over by where the toilets were, and there was a guy standing by one of them in a blue jacket and a white hat, and he was holding the hockey stick. I had no idea, you know, whose stick, or what it was, so I kind of looked at him and said, I'll give you 50 bucks for that hockey stick. And he said, not this hockey stick; I'm going to sell it on eBay.
And I actually went to the bathroom and came back out, then he came out, and I said, whose hockey stick you got? And he spun it around and said, this is Henrik Zetterberg's stick. And that's my wife's favorite player. She is born and raised in Detroit. I'm born and raised in Chicago. That's why were up at the game. You know, I had about a minute to make a decision, and I took a $100 bill out of my wallet and I said to him, why don't you take $100 and have a great new year; I'll have a great souvenir for my wife. And he sold it to me.
BLOCK: Mr. Pappert, you end up going back to Charlotte, North Carolina, with your hockey stick, and one thing leads to another. You find out from friends that the Chicago Tribune has posted this story in its "What's Your Problem?" column about this kid who had his hockey stick taken away. What did you think when you read this column and realized that stick that I have seems to have been taken from a 14-year-old kid?
Dr. PAPPERT: It didn't belong to me. Kalan just had a real bad end to what should have been a great day.
BLOCK: And Kalan, you now have that stick back.
Mr. PLEW: Oh, yes, I do. I received it yesterday in the mail.
BLOCK: And what are you going to do with it now?
Mr. PLEW: Oh, I'm definitely going to hang it in my room there for the rest of my life. And I get to pass that down on to my kids and have the article to go with it, and definitely keeping this stick.
Dr. PAPPERT: Hey, can I ask Kalan a question?
BLOCK: You bet.
Dr. PAPPERT: Kalan, did you notice a hole drilled in the top of it?
Mr. PLEW: Yeah, I did, actually.
Dr. PAPPERT: That hole is drilled the entire shaft of that stick. Could you believe how light that hockey stick is?
Mr. PLEW: Yeah...
Dr. PAPPERT: I can't believe those guys don't break those on a single slap shot.
Mr. PLEW: Yeah.
Dr. PAPPERT: You're a hockey player, too, aren't you?
Mr. PLEW: Yeah, yep.
Dr. PAPPERT: That's really cool. What position do you play?
Mr. PLEW: I play a defense.
Dr. PAPPERT: Yup, I was a defense - I was number two growing up. That's really neat. I'm sorry, Melissa. I didn't mean to...
BLOCK: No worries. Well, I'm glad we could bring the two of you together. Mr. Pappert and Kalan Plew, thanks so much.
Dr. PAPPERT: Oh, it was wonderful. Kalan, I hope you certainly enjoy that stick, and I am really glad you got it back.
Mr. PLEW: Yeah, thanks again, I mean, I can't tell you how much.
Dr. PAPPERT: That's cool. I go to Chicago Black Hawk games now and then, and I - actually, my wife and I go to Red Wing games. If I get the opportunity and I'm in Chicago to meet you at a game, it would be my pleasure to say hello to you in person.
Mr. PLEW: OK. OK.
Dr. PAPPERT: Thanks.
Mr. PEW: Thank you.
BLOCK: Bye-bye.
Dr. PAPPERT: Bye-bye.
Mr. PLEW: Bye.
BLOCK: That's 14-year-old Kalan Plew in Gurney, Illinois, and dentist Robert Pappert in Charlotte, North Carolina. They're now linked by one very special hockey stick.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
It's All Things Considered from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. He could be anywhere at all. Those are the words of the police chief in Harpersville, Alabama, today, about the dramatic disappearance of Marcus Schrenker.
NORRIS: Schrenker is an Indiana businessman who was in trouble. His financial management company was being investigated for fraud. And police say it looks like Schrenker tried to fake his own death on Sunday by bailing out of a private plane over Alabama and letting it fly on to crash in Florida. Today, police released some new details about their investigation. Carol Robinson is with the Birmingham News. She joins us now. Ms. Robinson...
Ms. CAROL ROBINSON (Senior Reporter, Birmingham News): Hello.
NORRIS: Police now say they think when Schrenker landed, he made his way to a rental-storage facility where he had a motorcycle waiting for him, is that correct?
Ms. ROBINSON: That's correct. Apparently, he put the motorcycle in storage on Saturday. When authorities went to search the storage unit yesterday evening, it was gone. And they found the clothes he had last been seen wearing. I think it was some tennis shoes and some damp pants.
Because when they first had contact with him, the Childersburg police did not know of the plane crash. Schrenker had approached them in a store, said he had been in a canoeing accident. He was only wet from the waist down.
NORRIS: And again, we think he actually got out of the plane by parachute?
Ms. ROBINSON: Yes. There seems to be little doubt that that is how he escaped.
NORRIS: And when he presented himself to Childersburg police and said he had been in this canoeing accident, what, if anything, did police do at that point?
Ms. ROBINSON: They took him to a motel in Harpersville, the Harpersville Motel, and he checked in under the name of his brother.
NORRIS: So he checks into a hotel and then at some point, he disappears, makes his way back, and allegedly gets on the motorcycle and takes off.
Ms. ROBINSON: Correct. And from there, it's anyone's guess.
NORRIS: Now, Marc Schrenker is 38 years old. As we said, he is an Indiana businessman who was facing a bit of financial turmoil. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you've been able to find out about him?
Ms. ROBINSON: Yeah, there seems to be mixed reports. I mean, by all accounts he at one time was a very successful businessman, had several companies that he was operating, you know, in and around Indiana. Published reports have said that he was in the middle of a divorce, that his companies had been searched by the Feds, you know, for all sorts of securities violation. I spoke with his mother, and I think there was a great deal of personal turmoil as well. His longtime stepfather was buried on Friday, and you know, in her words, there was a lot going on.
NORRIS: Indiana authorities have just issued two felony warrants against Marc Schrenker. Could you tell us about that?
Ms. ROBINSON: Sure. They have been working on this investigation, apparently, for several weeks. The warrants charge Schrenker with letting his license as an investment adviser lapse, and then the second charge says that he continued to operate as an adviser without a license.
NORRIS: Tell me about the manhunt.
Ms. ROBINSON: I'm not sure you could actually call it a manhunt in the traditional terms of a manhunt, where you see hundreds of law-enforcement officers actually in a specific, targeted area searching for him. The U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force, both in Alabama and in Indiana, are not necessarily on his heels, but whatever secret mechanisms they have to track people, I think, are being done 24/7 at this point.
NORRIS: Carol, thank you very much.
Ms. ROBINSON: You're welcome.
NORRIS: Carol Robinson is a reporter with the Birmingham News. She was talking about the disappearance of Marcus Schrenker. Authorities say he tried to fake his death in a plane crash on Sunday.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
President-elect Obama's choice for Treasury secretary has made some mistakes paying his taxes. Tim Geithner, the Treasury nominee, was on Capitol Hill today in a private meeting with the Senate Finance Committee, explaining why he had failed to pay $34,000 in taxes from 2001 to 2004. NPR's John Ydstie is here and John, Tim Geithner has been president of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. He's the guy who's supposed to help get us out of this financial crisis. What's the explanation for this lapse in taxes?
JOHN YDSTIE: Well, it's being described as an honest mistake by the chairman of the Finance Committee, Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana. But it's certainly got to be more embarrassing for Geithner than it might be for the rest of us making some tax mistake. During this period, he did do his own taxes, at least part of the time, but he also faced some complexities because he worked for the International Monetary Fund during this period. And employees of the IMF face different tax rules than the rest of us.
BLOCK: And what's the difference in those tax rules if you work for the IMF?
YDSTIE: Well, as I understand it from documents the Senate Finance Committee provided, the IMF doesn't withhold money for U.S. taxes, but it adds the approximate amount to the employee's pay. And then the employee has to forward the tax payments to the IRS. It appears that Geithner forwarded some tax payments, but not others. For instance, he owed Social Security tax to the U.S. government. He did forward the employee portion to the IRS, but he did not send in the portion of the Social Security tax normally paid by the employer - in this case, the IMF - which he was supposed to do.
BLOCK: And how did this all come up? Who discovered this?
YDSTIE: Apparently, the $34,000 error was discovered by the Obama transition team that was investigating Geithner's background. And according to documents from the Senate Finance Committee, the IRS had previously examined Geithner's 2003 and 2004 tax returns, and he had agreed to pay additional amounts on them, but the IRS waived any penalties there.
BLOCK: And we should say he has now paid these taxes plus interest and penalties.
YDSTIE: He's paid up. Exactly.
BLOCK: How much of a hurdle is this going to be for Tim Geithner, John?
YDSTIE: Well, given what we know now, I don't think it's going to be a big hurdle as long as it's concluded it was an honest mistake. That's what Senator Baucus is saying, that's what the Obama camp is saying. Unless it's demonstrated otherwise, this shouldn't block his confirmation. Even Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah said as much today.
BLOCK: And there was another issue that came up today. Apparently, a housekeeper who worked for Tim Geithner a few years back had working papers that had expired.
YDSTIE: Right. And Mr. Geithner asked her for her papers when she was hired. They expired three months before her employment ended. She subsequently got a green card and apparently, Geithner paid all the required taxes on her employment.
BLOCK: And the response from the Obama campaign to all this?
YDSTIE: Well, Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama's spokesman, said that upon learning of his mistakes, Geithner quickly addressed them, so his record of serving his country with honor and distinction shouldn't be tarnished by this.
BLOCK: OK. NPR's John Ydstie, thanks so much.
YDSTIE: You're welcome.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
People who are self-employed are falling through a hole in the system as more Americans lose their jobs. Almost two-thirds of all people who are out of work do not qualify for unemployment benefits and that includes the self-employed. NPR's Kathy Lohr has that story.
KATHY LOHR: Most people believe if they're laid off , downsized or simply out of a job, they will get unemployment insurance benefits. While each state has different guidelines on the amount paid and the length of time people can receive benefits, the federal system, created in 1935, simply does not cover the majority of today's workers.
Mr. Howard Rosen (Resident Visiting Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics expert): The largest group of people that do not qualify for unemployment insurance are the non-traditional employees.
LOHR: Howard Rosen is a labor market expert with the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He says millions who are not full-time, permanent employees are out of luck.
Mr. ROSEN: There has been a kind of a growing number of people who are either consultants, self-employed, temporary employees, part-time employees - a whole plethora of different kinds of arrangements, these people are not currently eligible for assistance.
LOHR: Among this group, Barbara and Gary Ratner. He just received a PhD in biochemistry from Emory University. Barbara has been a self-employed architectural illustrator since 1990, when she was laid off from a company here in Atlanta. ..TEXT: Ms. BARBARA RATNER: And I actually never had to worry about work - the phone just kept ringing. It was, it was like magic.
Mr. GARY RATNER: Not even during the very recession in which she was laid off did she suffer for lack of work.
LOHR: Ratner had so much work, she didn't apply for unemployment benefits back then. Now, because she's self-employed, she doesn't qualify for them. She says business began slowing down last spring, and by December, Ratner finished her last job.
Ms. RATNER: I'm beginning to identify with the frog in the pan of water where someone turned the heat up, and you know, it took me a while to realize that yes, this isn't like it has been before, and I don't know where it's going.
LOHR: We talked at the couple's cozy dining table in their Depression-era home where they have lived for more than 20 years. Barbara, who usually makes between $80,000 and a $100,000 a year, then showed me her office and her handmade drawings.
Ms. RATNER: These are the latest set of watercolors. I change my palette a lot. I'm constantly looking for new combinations.
LOHR: Barbara Ratner has created architectural drawings for some big projects, including Atlanta's Olympics, a financial center in Taiwan, retail shops in China, even the L.A. and Portland Zoos. Now that new construction has slowed dramatically, there is no demand for her drawings.
This couple has already pulled nearly $10,000 out of their retirement account. They're cutting back where they can, eliminating a phone line and canceling memberships to civic groups. Gary decided to retire late last year and because they're in their 60s and do not have a group health plan, the couple pays $1,500 a month for health insurance.
Ms. RATNER: I've actually been considering getting rid of the medical insurance. It's huge. And so, if we wanted to gamble, we could just drop the health insurance.
LOHR: The couple is using their retirement savings now and that worries them. As we talk about the future, the Ratner's giant red doberman, Rudy, gets restless, so Barbara feeds him.
Ms. RATNER: I guess you see who runs the house here.
LOHR: The couple is looking for creative ways to get by, and Barbara says she is seriously considering raising chickens in her backyard like her parents did way back when.
Ms. RATNER: They lived through the Depression, and my father always felt like his family basically did better than other families because they had a chicken coup, and they had a big garden and they, you know, they lasted it out.
LOHR: Gary Ratner is hoping to get a biochemistry fellowship. Barbara continues to look for work. Both hope that President-elect Barack Obama's economic plan will create new jobs and ultimately, turn the economy around. Kathy Lohr, NPR News, Atlanta.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. President-elect Barack Obama still has a handful of days before he moves in to the White House, but he is one house of Congress closer to his first legislative victory. Today, the House overwhelmingly passed a four-and-a-half year extension of the State Children's Health Insurance Program or SCHIP. It could potentially add four million more children to health insurance rolls. The legislation was vetoed twice by President Bush. NPR's Julie Rovner explains.
JULIE ROVNER: The thing about the SCHIP program, as it's known, is that just about everyone, Democrat and Republican, says they support it. The program currently provides health insurance to about 6.7 million children and families who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private coverage.
But the last time Congress tried to renew it in 2007, the effort collapsed in discord. In the end, it was extended until this March, leaving its fate to the new Congress and president and what a difference an election makes. That was the theme as the House debated the bill today. Chris Van Hollen is a Democrat from Maryland.
Representative CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (Democrat, Maryland): President Bush twice vetoed this legislation on children's health. We will soon have the new president who - one of his first acts as president will sign this legislation, a president who understands the hardships American families are struggling under at a time when more than two million of Americans have lost their jobs in just two months.
ROVNER: But Republicans also felt the difference since the last time Congress debated the children's health issue, and they weren't happy. They complained that with larger majorities and no need to worry about a presidential veto, Democrats made too many changes to the bill. Dave Camp is the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee.
Representative DAVE CAMP (Republican, Michigan): A children's health program should not be used to cover adults, non-citizens, potentially illegal immigrants and those making $80,000 a year.
ROVNER: Republicans were particularly unhappy about a provision that would loosen strict rules they imposed three years ago. Those rules require all applicants for the Medicaid program to prove their citizenship with original documents. Several studies have shown that the new rules have not deterred many undocumented immigrants, but have prevented many eligible citizens from getting coverage they're actually entitled to. Still, Republicans like Steve Scalise from Louisiana insisted the change would backfire.
Representative STEVE SCALISE (Republican, Louisiana): Taxpayers, who will be footing this bill, will be having to pay for illegal aliens that will now be able to get benefits under this bill that under current law they're not able to get because there is a verification process.
ROVNER: Another change to the bill concerning immigration prompted somewhat less controversy. It would repeal a provision originally imposed in 1996 that requires a five-year waiting period for legal immigrants to get Medicaid or SCHIP. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that simply makes no sense when it comes to children.
Representative STENY HOYER (Democrat, Maryland; House Majority Leader): It doesn't make moral sense to deny those children health services when their parents already pay payroll taxes. It doesn't make public health sense to keep those kids from getting the basic care they need. As a parent, as a grandfather and as a great-grandfather, very frankly, I want my child in school with healthy children.
ROVNER: And some Republicans, like Florida's Lincoln Diaz-Balart, said he was only voting for the bill because the waiting period was dropped.
Representative LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART (Republican, Florida): We're going to have a vote on this program that is going to include thousands of children and their moms who unfairly have been excluded.
ROVNER: The bill now goes to the Senate where Democrats have offered a similar bill, but without the provisions on legal immigrants. Leaders are hoping to get it to the newly-inaugurated president by late next week. Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Seven years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan have taken a huge toll on the Army. In our series this week on the state of the Army, we've heard how soldiers are adjusting to the new reality. The past seven years have also taken a toll on equipment. A lot of it is broken, and it costs a lot to fix. The U.S. Army puts that price tag at about $17 billion a year. NPR Pentagon correspondent JJ Sutherland traveled to Texarkana at the Texas-Arkansas border to find out how that money is being spent.
JJ SUTHERLAND: The Red River Army Depot is building after building of World War II-era structures, massive and hulking. This is where the Army fixes many of the vehicles - Humvees, trucks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles - that have been damaged in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They're parked everywhere around the base, wherever there is space - in parking lots, along roads, in fields, even among the trees.
(Soundbite of repair shop)
SUTHERLAND: For Humvees, it starts here. They're stripped to bare steel. Everything is taken off. Fluids are pumped out. Parts that can be saved are, others are thrown away. Trucks and carts and Humvees in pieces move around in a carefully orchestrated ballet.
Mr. HAL ISENBY (Mechanic, Red River Army Depot): Normally we'll run on a 16-minute 'tac time. That means every 16 minutes you'll see a Humvee go out that door and another one come in this door to be rebuilt - every 16 minutes.
SUTHERLAND: Hal Isenby is the guy in charge of the Humvee line. At every workstation, there are digital countdown clocks set to 16 minutes. They tick away relentlessly. If anything slows down, lights start going off, alerting everyone to what's going wrong.
Mr. ISENBY: And all the supervisors come out and troubleshoot the problem and get the line moving again.
SUTHERLAND: Isenby has worked here for almost 25 years, ever since he got out of the Army. He's seen how the Army and Red River Depot have been forced to adapt because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Mr. ISENBY: We went for years, when it was kind of a slow time, there wasn't a lot of change. But in the last five years, it's changed more than they had in the previous 20 years of my experience.
SUTHERLAND: It used to be the depot could fix up maybe two or three Humvees a week. Now, 32 roll off the line every day. The sheer number of damaged vehicles forced the Army to look for a better way of doing things. They found it at Toyota and the idea of lean manufacturing. Men load parts onto a cart at the side of the line. When they're needed, they're ready.
Mr. ISENBY: In order to produce one every 16 minutes, we couldn't have eight people working on the back of one Humvee. So we have these sub-assemblies that are brought on here. And again we have all the manipulators and stuff that actually tilts them. The old way, we had jack stands and elbow grease.
SUTHERLAND: At times, it looks like the massive pieces of the Humvee - engines, tires, armor - float through the air and marry up with each other to create the vehicle.
(Soundbite of electric drill)
SUTHERLAND: Last year, the Army repaired 128,000 pieces of equipment at its five repair depots - everything from Humvees and rifles to tanks and trucks. It's not only that the equipment is used hard, it's the conditions - sand and heat - that take their toll. But these repairs don't come cheap - about $17 billion a year. And the Army says they'll need that level of money for three to four years after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over.
Lieutenant General STEPHEN SPEAKS (Deputy Army Chief of Staff): I'd argued that $17 billion a year, given the substantial amount of formations that are deployed, is really a very reasonable cost.
SUTHERLAND: Lt. Gen. Stephen Speaks is a deputy Army chief of staff. He's responsible for the funding of the repair program, what the Army calls reset. But the Army isn't just fixing gear. That would actually be a lot cheaper - three or four billion a year. The big cost is they make it better.
Lt. Gen. SPEAKS: So the great credit of the reset program is advances in things like body armor. The ability to see at night, the ability to apply battlefield surveillance and robotics have all been very, very well supported. And they have been a part of an ongoing program that is both reset to take existing equipment and continue to repair and improve it, and then also to bring modernization to the force. You see, I deliberately mixed reset with elements of modernization.
SUTHERLAND: And that's a problem, say critics of the Army.
Mr. STEVE KOZIAK (Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment): It may be good stuff to do, but a lot of this stuff is being stuffed into war-related supplementals when it really has more to do with long-term modernization.
SUTHERLAND: That's Steve Koziak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. He argues modernization should be funded by normal budget procedures where pros and cons are debated and trade-offs with other programs are balanced. Instead, the Army is using emergency war funding - those supplementals - to upgrade its gear.
Hal Isenby of Red River doesn't care where the money comes from. He just knows he has got another Humvee to fix, and he just might know who is going to drive it.
Mr. ISENBY: Some of my employees have just returned from Iraq on active duty, with the Guard and stuff. Most of us have family members that are maybe over there now. So this is more like a family type deal than it is just an employer.
SUTHERLAND: Isenby and his crew put a sticker on every vehicle they work on. It reads, "We build it like our lives depend on it because theirs do." The sticker also has an 800 number. A troop with a problem can call any time. JJ Sutherland, NPR News, Washington.
NORRIS: Tomorrow, our fourth and final report on the state of the Army. We'll meet the top Army officer, General George Casey, who previously commanded the coalition forces in Iraq. Now he has the difficult job of fixing the force.
General GEORGE CASEY (Chief of Staff, U.S. Army): We have to have an Army that the nation feels that it can afford. So that's why I say, how much are you willing to pay?
NORRIS: A profile of General Casey tomorrow on the program.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
For fans of online word games, an old friend is back, sort of. Last year, the popular, if unauthorized, Facebook version of Scrabble called Scrabulous disappeared in a puff of lawsuits. Hundreds of thousands of word freaks were left somewhat in a lurch, but now the people behind the game have quietly relaunched a somewhat adulterated version of the game called Lexulous. Joining us now to talk about the move is our resident Scrabble guru, Stefan Fatsis, and Stefan, it's good to talk to you, and it's not Friday.
STEFAN FATSIS: Yeah, I do exist on other days.
(Soundbite of laughter)
NORRIS: So what happened here?
FATSIS: Well, Scrabulous became this huge hit, as you said on, on Facebook particularly. There was a craze, hundreds of thousands of users, people obsessing about it, a video tribute and the game was exactly Scrabble, same board, layout, colors, tiles. Scrabble is owned in North America by the toy and game company Hasbro.
Hasbro absolutely had to protect its ownership of the game here. So, last summer, it sued the Argawalla brothers in India who created the game, on intellectual property grounds. The brothers reportedly wanted several millions dollars to sell the game to Hasbro. Hasbro declined, and it created its own version of Scrabble, an authorized version, that you can get on Facebook.
NORRIS: So, word freaks, Stefan, have lots of choices. They can play the game sanctioned by Hasbro, but I'm curious about this new version of what we used to call Scrabulous that I guess we now call Lexulous. How is that different?
FATSIS: Well, as part of the settlement, they were allowed to create a disemboweled version of Scrabble. There's a grid and tiles and premium squares, double and triple words and letters, but it's not Scrabble. You play with eight tiles instead of seven. The premium squares are in different places. The tiles have different values. The Q and the Z are worth 12 points instead of 10, for instance, and the number of each letter has been tweaked. Now, this matters not only aesthetically, but it also matters in terms of what your brain does when you play this game.
NORRIS: So what does your brain do differently when you play this new version of the game?
FATSIS: Well, eight is a weird number to have in terms of the number of letters. And we are so used to seeing Scrabble the way it is. It was invented during the Depression by this architect named Alfred Butts. He experimented for years with all of these issues - the size of the board, the number of letters and blanks - and he didn't realize just how right he got it. It was like how 90 feet is the perfect distance between the bases in baseball.
Seven turns out to be the number of pieces of information that our brains are built to process well. So when you see eight letters on a rack, and I just played a game of Lexulous today, it feels unnatural and trying to anagram those eight letters feels more difficult.
NORRIS: So I guess Scrabble fans can vote with their fingers. And which game are they choosing?
FATSIS: Well, you know, for a lot of people, I think this is less about the specifics of Scrabble the game than it is about loyalty to the old Scrabulous - and there is some anger at Hasbro for shutting down the game in the first place. Scrabulous was, indeed, cleaner, sleeker, more user-friendly than Hasbro's online application. But if you're a hardcore Scrabbler who's used to the real game, you're going to want to find a place to play Scrabble.
NORRIS: So why did it take a couple of guys in India to demonstrate that there was this untapped demand for Scrabble?
FATSIS: Well, you know, entrepreneurs see what giant companies often don't, especially when you have an old analog company like Hasbro trying to navigate a digital world. Hasbro has been unable to develop a game that satisfies the competitive player, the person like me who memorizes words, as well as the casual but Internet savvy player, while at the same time meeting what it considers its own commercial needs.
I've been playing the Facebook application because I like Facebook, and I want to play against my friends, but we competitive players also go to a renegade site that's operated out of Romania that has not been shutdown as of yet. And there are no bugs there, like the one I encountered yesterday when the Hasbro game refused to let my friend Austin play, and I'm serious about this, play the word, scarabaei - S-C-A-R-A-B-A-E-I, which is the plural form of scarab, a beetle. And it was remarkable play, but it didn't go down because the computer wouldn't let it. It was a glitch.
NORRIS: And we should say that the old fashion boxed version of this game is just fine, too.
FATSIS: And it turns 60 years old this year.
NORRIS: Happy birthday. Good to talk to you, Stefan.
FATSIS: Thanks, Michele.
NORRIS: Stefan Fatsis is the author of "Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. By the end of this month, more than a dozen Broadway shows will have closed, but tonight there's a new beginning off Broadway. Audiences in Brooklyn will get their first glimpse of a new theater company. It's made up of prominent British and American stage actors, including Ethan Hawk, and the company is directed by Sam Mendes, a winner of both the Tony and the Academy Award. The company's first production, Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard." Jeff Lunden has the story.
JEFF LUNDEN: It all came about because Joe Melillo was obsessed.
Mr. JOSEPH MELILLO (Executive Producer, Brooklyn Academy of Music): I could say, affectionately, I stalked Sam Mendes.
LUNDEN: Melillo is executive producer of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He fell in love with Sam Mendes' work when he imported several of the director's London productions, including Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" and Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya."
Mr. MELILLO: Those became a legendary success here at BAM, and that's how it began.
LUNDEN: It is the Bridge Project - a three-year collaboration between BAM, London's Old Vic Theatre, and director Sam Mendes. The idea is to create a repertory company, evenly divided between American and British actors, to perform classic plays. This season, it's "The Cherry Orchard" and Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale."
Mr. SAM MENDES (Director, The Bridge Project): The Bridge is named The Bridge, obviously, because it's a bridge between those two particular theatrical communities, and, you know, it's based in a belief that a good actor is a good actor. It doesn't matter where they come from, or what accent they speak in, and that there's a lot to be learned and shared between the two theatrical cultures.
LUNDEN: Mendes handpicked several actors he wanted to work with - among them veterans like British theater star Simon Russell Beale and American film and stage star Ethan Hawke, as well as up-and-comers like Rebecca Hall, who recently starred in Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona." But Mendes had to get them to commit to almost a year of work between rehearsals and performances in Brooklyn, London, and on tour through Asia and Europe.
Mr. MENDES: Step one in trying to persuade them to do it is, you know, you've got to pay them, which is very awkward (laughing). I expected them to do it for nothing, but, you know, they're doing it instead for next to nothing (laughing). Certainly a good deal less than they could earn on the movies that they would be making at the same time.
LUNDEN: Actor Ethan Hawke has made the commitment to spend most of this year on stage. He's playing Trofimov, an eternal student in "The Cherry Orchard," and Autolycus, a singing con artist in "The Winter's Tale." Hawke says part of the Bridge Project's appeal is its variety, performing two plays side-by-side with the same actors.
Mr. ETHAN HAWKE (Actor): For me, the worst element of theater, the only negative element of it, is the repetition. There's a kind of joy of doing rep where you're not actually doing the same play every night.
(Soundbite of play "Cherry Orchard")
Ms. SINEAD CUSACK: (As Madame Ranevskaya) Let me look at you, Petya. Why have you lost your looks? How did you get so old?
Mr. HAWKE: (As Trofimov) An old woman on the train yesterday called me, that mangy gentleman.
Ms. CUSACK: (As Madame Ranevskaya) You were only a boy, a nice young student. Now your face is lined and you're wearing glasses. Are you really still a student?
Mr. HAWKE: (As Trofimov) I expect that I will die a student.
LUNDEN: Ethan Hawke with Sinead Cusack in a scene from "The Cherry Orchard." Director Sam Mendes insisted on an extra long rehearsal period of over two months to help the actors bond into a company. At the beginning of the process, he sat all of them in a circle, with carpets in the middle, as a playing space.
Mr. MENDES: I think that actors act differently when they don't know where the camera-slash-audience is. And I think they look only at each other, which is the beginning of every, you know, decent day's rehearsal, is to act with the person that you're onstage with, as opposed to with the audience.
LUNDEN: Mendes says he wants to disprove the cliche that Americans are suited for Chekhov because of their naturalistic acting traditions, while English are suited for Shakespeare because of their training.
Mr. MENDES: There's a lot to be shared in one actor watching another work. And watching them all together in the room has actually been incredibly moving because, of course, they're all equally good, and they're all equally skilled in different ways. But they are very interesting about their own insecurities in relation to the other one - well, I can't do movies, I'm English, you know. Or I can't do Shakespeare, I'm American. Both of which, of course, are rubbish.
(Soundbite of play "Cherry Orchard")
Mr. SIMON RUSSELL BEALE: (As Lopakhin) Your brother here thinks I'm vulgar, that I jumped out too loud(ph) but I don't care. He can think what he likes. All I care is that you trust me as you used to. When you look at me with those heartbreaking eyes, you see me as you always do. Merciful god, my father was a serf in your father's time. And before that, he belonged to your grandfather, but you, you (unintelligible), you're always been so good to me that I no longer think about that and I love you like my own flesh and blood, more than my own flesh and blood.
LUNDEN: The company has gone back and forth in rehearsal - one week on Chekhov, then one week on the Shakespeare. Simon Russell Beale, who plays pivotal roles in both plays, says after some initial nervousness, the process felt completely organic.
Mr. RUSSELL BEALE: So, after a week of doing "Cherry Orchard," you think, oh my god, I can't remember "Winter's Tale" at all and you go back. Actually, you did remember quite a lot of it. And the other thing is just that, I suppose any two plays infect each other, you know. And these two plays that are so much about children and loss and time and growing old and having regrets, both of them deal with the same areas, but they do feed each other.
(Soundbite of play "Winter's Tale")
Mr. RUSSELL BEALE: (As King Leontes) Inch-thick, knee deep, o'er head and ears a fork'd one. Go play, boy, play. Thy mother plays, and I play, too, but so disgraced a part whose issue will hiss me to my grave. Contempt and clamor will be my knell. Go, play, boy, play.
LUNDEN: Simon Russell Beale as King Leontes who believes incorrectly that he's been cuckolded. Beale says one of the things that both of his characters share is anger. For actress Rebecca Hall, the two roles she plays are almost polar opposites. She's the drab Varya in "The Cherry Orchard" and the witty, but put-upon queen Hermione in "The Winter's Tale."
Ms. REBECCA HALL (Actress): It's quite nice for me in both of these plays because on a very reductive level, I get to play someone who's terribly repressed and miserable - and then, in the other play, I get to play someone who's kind of the opposite of that. Everyone kind of likes Hermione, until Leontes starts messing about with her.
(Soundbite of play "Cherry Orchard")
Ms. HALL: (As Varya) Her (unintelligible) is asleep and the sun's up. It's not cold at all now. Come and see mama. Come and look at the orchard. Isn't it beautiful? Oh God, breathe the air.
LUNDEN: Rebecca Hall as Varya in "The Cherry Orchard." Sam Mendes doesn't know yet what plays he'll choose for the next installment of the Bridge Project, but he does know that he wants to continue presenting work in repertory. And he'd love to add an American classic to the mix.
Mr. MENDES: I'd be very interested to see how O'Neill reflects Shakespeare or Williams reflects Ibsen or, you know, I don't know. I mean, there's going to be lots of possibilities in the future.
LUNDEN: "The Winter's Tale" begins performances on February 10th and "The Cherry Orchard" opens in Brooklyn tonight. For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in New York.
NORRIS: At our Web site, you can hear Simon Russell Beale and Ethan Hawke on how Shakespeare and Chekhov differ. And you can watch the Bridge Project perform one of the pivotal scenes from "The Cherry Orchard." That's at npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Israelis go to the polls on February 10th. They'll be electing a new parliament and a new prime minister, but the election has taken a back seat to the war in Gaza. Two of the leading candidates for prime minister have been key players in the war effort - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni of the centrist Kadima Party and Defense Minister Ehud Barak of the left-wing Labor Party. The other candidate comes from the right, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And as NPR's Mike Shuster reports, the outcome of the war in Gaza could have a profound effect on all three.
MIKE SHUSTER: Elections in Israel are usually boisterous affairs with lots of rallies, reams of posters, attack ads on TV and often fiery rhetoric. This time around, the election campaign has gone quiet. The three leading candidates are well aware that any misstep during this war could sink their electoral prospects, says Reuven Hazan, a political analyst at Hebrew University.
Professor REUVEN HAZAN (Political Science, Hebrew University): We know that the operation in Gaza and the way that it ends will impact on who's going to win these election results. And therefore, the politicians are making decisions with one eye looking at Gaza and the other eye at the public.
SHUSTER: Benjamin Netanyahu looks like he's the candidate to beat. Recent polls suggest his Likud Party, which is not part of the current government coalition, could win a plurality of 30 to 35 seats in the Israeli 120-seat parliament, known as the Knesset. Netanyahu has been quiet, and there is nothing else he can do, says Efraim Inbar, the director of the conservative Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.
Dr. EFRAIM INBAR (Director, Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies): He's playing the statesman role, and he doesn't want to be seen as playing, you know, narrow politics and maybe taking advantage of difficulties in the war, and this will benefit him when the war ends.
SHUSTER: Nothing that Netanyahu does can determine the outcome of the war, in contrast to Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister, and Ehud Barak, the defense minister. Barak's Labor Party is trailing, with recent polls showing him likely to win only about 15 seats in the Knesset. Barak may get a boost from the war, but not enough to leap to victory.
Livni is Netanyahu's real challenge. Her Kadima Party may win close to 30 seats in the Knesset, so if she is perceived to be a real leader during the war, voters may reward her with victory. The war has turned Netanyahu, uncharacteristically, into a passive candidate, says Reuven Hazan.
Professor HAZAN: Netanyahu is simply sitting it out, hoping that something will go wrong politically so that he can continue to capitalize in the polls. He simply has to wait, be magnanimous now, and then turn around once the operation is over and say, I told you so. We should have never gone out of Gaza; we should have gone after them in a much better way.
SHUSTER: Israel pulled its settlers and soldiers out of Gaza in 2005 after occupying the territory for 38 years. Netanyahu opposed that decision then, and he has advocated coming down hard on Hamas ever since. Netanyahu says he approves of the government's war to end the rocket attacks from Gaza.
Mr. BENJAMIN NETANYAHU (Former Prime Minister, Israel): The government has had and will continue to have my support to achieve this objective. I have also said that Hamas, a terror organization that is committed to our destruction, must ultimately be removed from Gaza. Should the government decide to complete that objective, it will also have our support.
SHUSTER: One other significant development in the election campaign, on Monday, the Central Election Committee banned two Arab parties from running candidates. The committee accused Balad and the United Arab List of supporting terrorists and refusing to recognize the Jewish state of Israel. Right now, they hold three seats each in the Knesset.
Arabs comprise about 20 percent of Israel's seven million people. Jafar Farah, of the Mossawa Center, an advocacy group for Arab citizens of Israel, says the ban is an indication of the limitations of democracy in Israel.
Mr. JAFAR FARAH (Director, Mossawa Center): We are Palestinians, we are Arabs, and we are citizens of the state of Israel. And this unique status, the international community and the Israelis should listen to our voice. We know the suffering in Gaza better than any Israeli. This voice is a complicated one, and this is reality because everybody wants to see black and white here. We are not black and white. We are in a unique status, and I don't think that the Arab political parties are supporting any kind of terror.
SHUSTER: The two Arab parties will appeal the ruling to Israel's High Court, which has overturned similar bans in the past. Mike Shuster, NPR News, Jerusalem.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
The confirmation hearing for treasury secretary nominee Timothy Geithner has hit a snag. The Senate Finance Committee has postponed that hearing until next Wednesday, the day after the inauguration. The committee chairman, Max Baucus, says it's a given that Geithner will be confirmed, but Republicans on the committee forced the delay after revelations that Geithner failed to pay $34,000 in self-employment taxes when he worked at the International Monetary Fund or IMF. He has since paid those back taxes plus interest.
We've called on accountant Donald Williamson to walk us through the ins and outs of taxes and the IMF, and how what the Obama team is calling a common mistake might have happened. Williamson is the chair of the accounting department at American University. Welcome to the program.
Professor DONALD WILLIAMSON (Taxation; Director, Graduate Tax Program, Kogod College of Business Administration, American University; Principal, LaMonaca and Williamson): Thank you for having me.
BLOCK: And help us understand this, IMF employees receive a W2 form for tax purposes, but they're considered self-employed. Why is that?
Professor WILLIAMSON: That's because the International Monetary Fund, being an international organization, by statute is exempt from withholding tax and the need to pay employment tax on their U.S. citizens who are employees. So then, the law then requires the U.S. citizen, who is an employee, to file on their own to pay the equivalent of what a regular U.S. employer would have withheld for Social Security and Medicare.
BLOCK: And if I understand this right, IMF employees are paid extra to more or less cover these tax payments. On their paystub, you'll see the line self-employment tax allowance.
Professor WILLIAMSON: That's right. There is, what's called in the trade, a gross up because the employee is paying both the employee's half and the employer's half of the employment tax. The bank or the IMF grosses up, as they say, the wage of the U.S. person to make them whole.
BLOCK: How common a mistake do you think this is for employees like Mr. Geithner, IMF employees, for example?
Professor WILLIAMSON: Well, that's an interesting question. I would have thought that someone in Mr. Geithner's role and in his position would have been aware that this responsibility was upon him, particularly since he acknowledged that in a statement that he signed, authorizing IMF to gross up his wages. That said, those returns that he did were self-prepared, and sometimes it's difficult to properly prepare them and a mistake was made.
BLOCK: Yeah, he did do these himself for some years using, I guess,a tax program on the computer. Would a program like that typically kick out to you, and say, hey, you forgot to pay your self-employment tax?
Professor WILLIAMSON: Yes, it would have. Even the standard things that you'd buy at a drug store would have given you what we call them in the trade a diagnostic that when you went to print the return, they would have said, hey, wait a minute, there's no employment taxes being withheld.
BLOCK: He also apparently - Mr. Geithner also used a tax preparer for two of the years in question and it was the years that he was later audited for. And according to talking points from the Obama team, his accountant advised him in writing that he was exempt from self-employment taxes on his IMF income.
Professor WILLIAMSON: Well, if that's the case, that's his pass because I could understand a lay person not appreciating some of these technical rules that the IMF and the Internal Revenue code have. But if the accountant did give an opinion, I can understand Mr. Geithner accepting that opinion and not paying the tax.
BLOCK: Do you think the take-away lesson here is that, look, even a man who is likely to become treasury secretary has problems understanding the tax code.
Professor WILLIAMSON: The take-away on this, Melissa, as one who does tax returns for a living, is that you need to pick your tax return preparer very carefully.
BLOCK: Well, Professor Williamson, thanks so much for talking with us.
Professor WILLIAMSON: Thank you very much.
BLOCK: That's Donald Williamson, chair of the Accounting Department at American University. He also runs a private accounting practice.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. On Capitol Hill today, General Eric Shinseki aced his job interview for a cabinet post in the Obama administration. Shinseki is up for the top job at the Department of Veterans Affairs, and as NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports, he appears to be a shoe-in.
MARY LOUISE KELLY: You didn't have to sit through much of today's hearing before you got the distinct sense that Eric Shinseki enjoys something close to hero status on Capitol Hill. One after another, senators from both parties were falling over themselves to praise him.
Senator RICHARD BURR (Republican, North Carolina): You have the experience. You have the leadership skills. You have the determination needed to serve.
Senator KAY BAILEY HUTCHISON (Republican, Texas): I want to tell you that I admire and respect you as much as anyone I have ever known in the armed services.
Senator JOHN TESTER (Democrat, Montana): In my perspective, your reputation is impeccable and it's …
KELLY: That's Democrat John Tester and before him Republicans, Kay Bailey Hutchison and Richard Burr. Senators were so determined to sing General Shinseki's praises that it was a full hour and fifteen minutes into his own hearing before he got the chance to speak.
General ERIC SHINSEKI (Appointee, Secretary of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Barack Obama Administration): Thank you very much Mr. Chairman - Chairman Akaka, Senator Burr and distinguished members of this committee on Veterans Affairs. I am deeply honored by ..
KELLY: Shinseki is a retired four-star general and the first Asian-American head of the Army. But he's famous as the general who questioned Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's strategy on the eve of the Iraq war in 2003. Today, Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat, remembered the moment as pivotal.
Senator JAY ROCKFELLER (Democrat, West Virginia): The effect that that had on the American people was magical.
KELLY: But Rumsfeld and his deputies found it less than magical, they rebuked him. And Shinseki quietly retired from the Army a few months later. Since then, he's mostly kept his own counsel, giving few speeches or interviews, never stepping forward to say, I told you so, and it was the same today. The general never mentioned the episode with Rumsfeld. He gave no clues as to whether he feels vindicated by the nod to return to public life.
Instead, he appeared entirely focused on the matter at hand, how to fix the VA. It is a big job. Veteran Affairs is the second largest bureaucracy in the government, only Defense is bigger. The VA is plagued by everything from a rising suicide rate among vets to a backlog in disability claims. General Shinseki.
General SHINSEKI: There is, in my opinion, no reason why a veteran submits a claim and then takes a number and waits for six months. We need to do something about this.
KELLY: Democrat Patty Murray agreed. She noted that the VA has developed a reputation for trying to cover-up problems. There was, for example, the VA's mental health director who got caught in a private email trying to hide from the public the alarming increase in suicide attempts. Today, Senator Murray pressed Shinseki, how would he go about transforming a bureaucracy that, as she put it, has been more focused on avoiding public relations disasters than on actually helping vets.
Senator PATTY MURRAY (Democrat, Washington): How do you change that culture and what will we see under your administration?
General SHINSEKI: Senator, good question, and I do think it's about leadership.
KELLY: Leadership was a recurring theme in General Shinseki's testimony today, more so than specific solutions. He said if he could deliver one message to his future colleagues at Veterans Affairs, it would be this...
General SHINSEKI: Treat our veterans with respect and dignity. They're not here begging for a hand-out. They are truly our clients. They don't have anywhere or else to shop.
KELLY: Gen. Shinseki may himself have the chance to act on that advice in the very near future. Senator Daniel Akaka, who chaired today's hearing, said he anticipates the general will be confirmed next Tuesday, the same day Barack Obama is sworn in as president. Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
There were confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill today for three high level positions in the Obama administration. Retired General Eric Shinseki, who's been selected to run the Department of Veterans Affairs, met with a friendly reception from senators. Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, the nominee for secretary of agriculture and perspective EPA chief Lisa Jackson also had a pretty easy time at their hearings. ARI SHAPIRO: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy had a conference call for reporters yesterday. He brought with him some Republican former congressmen who have endorsed Eric Holder for attorney general. When Leahy asked for reporters' questions, the first was, what's with the full-court press?
Senator PATRICK LEAHY (Democrat, Vermont; Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman): That's a valid question. Normally, I would have expected it to be just an easy nomination because everybody knows Eric Holder and everybody knows how extraordinary qualified he is.
SHAPIRO: But it is not an easy nomination. Leahy's Republican counterpart, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, delivered a speech on the Senate floor last week. Specter listed Holder's academic and professional accomplishments and then said...
Senator ARLEN SPECTER (Republican, Pennsylvania): But aside from these qualifications on Mr. Holder's resume, there is also the issue of character.
SHAPIRO: Specter asked whether Holder has the stature and courage to tell the president no. Under President Bush, Democrats repeatedly accused Attorney General Alberto Gonzales of failing to tell the president no. Republicans plan to ask tomorrow about instances when Holder was deputy attorney general and sided with President Clinton over career prosecutors.
For example, Holder supported granting clemency to some members of a violent Puerto Rican nationalist group. And Holder oversaw the president's last minute decision to pardon fugitive billionaire Mark Rich.
Republicans may also push Holder on work he did at a private law firm. He represented Chiquita on charges the company paid-off Columbian terrorists. And in 2004, he briefly had a contract with Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for some legal work. That contract was canceled before the governor was impeached and before any money changed hands.
Senator SHELDON WHITEHOUSE (Democrat, Rhode Island): I think it's fine to ask the question, but to suggest that his nomination as attorney general depends on it strikes me as a stretch.
SHAPIRO: Senator Sheldon Whitehouse is a Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. At confirmation hearings for the last attorney general, Whitehouse pointedly asked about the definition of torture.
Senator WHITEHOUSE: I think we do have to get that question answered both to protect people going forward, so that they know that they're acting within the law, and so the people who may have acted pursuant to Bush legal opinions that were faulty, to know what their real legal situation is.
SHAPIRO: Republicans may want different kinds of assurances on national security. Rachel Brand ran the Office of Legal Policy at Justice and shepherded President Bush's Supreme Court nominees through confirmation hearings.
Ms. RACHEL BRAND (Director, Office of Legal Policy): I think what the Republicans might be looking for from him is some guarantee that he is going to make it his first priority to protect America and that he's not going to cave-in to those who would, you know, like to see those sorts of protections weakened.
SHAPIRO: Holder has been critical of some Bush administration national security policies. All three of President Bush's deputy attorneys general wrote letters urging Congress to confirm Holder. That includes Jim Comey, who was the chief prosecutor in the Marc Rich case. Former Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty called Holder one of the most qualified attorney general nominees in the nation's history.
Mr. PAUL MCNULTY (Former Deputy Attorney General): Having been a U.S. attorney, a judge, a deputy attorney general - and even his private practice experience is very helpful in being able to make good judgments as an attorney general.
SHAPIRO: McNulty's letter to Congress said, we learn more from our mistakes than our triumphs. By that measure, Holder supporters hope tomorrow's hearing is not much of a learning experience. Ari Shapiro, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. Labor unions are hoping they might regain their strength after eight years of an administration that was no friend to organized labor. Now, labor's top priority is passing a bill called the Employee Free Choice Act which would make it easier for workers to organize. Business groups oppose the legislation as NPR's Peter Overby reports.
PETER OVERBY: This is all about letting unions into the workplace. For a union, step one is getting workers to sign cards saying they want to organize. Usually if more than 30 percent of workers sign the cards, things go to step two - an election with secret ballots. The bill says that if more than half of the workers said yes on the cards, the union could come in without an election. For arcane reasons, this is called card check. If your state had a big senate race last fall, you've already heard all about it.
(Soundbite of a campaign advertisement)
Unidentified Man: Franken says eliminate the secret ballot for workers.
Unidentified Man #2: My pal Al...
OVERBY: That ad featured a supposed union thug. Its target was democratic challenger Al Franken in Minnesota. It was produced by the Coalition for Workplace Democracy, a group of 500 plus members ranging from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Maine Innkeepers Association.
The Minnesota Senate election still isn't certified. If Franken takes that seat for the Democrats, corporate America's last line of defense on card check becomes perilously weak. But while the business coalition used a comedic union figure for its ads, the union alliance, American Rights at Work, produced a real one at a press conference yesterday.
Joe Sorrentino works on a unionizing campaign at the supermarket chain where he's employed in Rhode Island.
Mr. JOE SORRENTINO: I don't see what the big problem with giving Americans better pay, medical coverage and a secure job - I mean, we're incredible people. We organize, we can do anything, and I don't see why we couldn't do this.
OVERBY: Unions have steadily lost strength in the private sector, but each side has statistics to show it's the underdog. Those stats were flying last week at a senate hearing for labor secretary designate Hilda Solis. Utah Republican Orrin Hatch says the bill just isn't needed. He says unions win more than 60 percent of contested elections these days.
Senator ORRIN HATCH (Republican, Utah): Now, if employer interference is so prevalent, how can unions win such a high percentage of elections?
OVERBY: Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, supports the bill.
Senator BERNIE SANDERS (Independent, Vermont): Today, if an employee is engaged in a union organizing campaign, that employee has a one in five chance of getting fired.
OVERBY: The two sides agree this bill is a top priority. Besides the card check provision, it would also end a commonly used stalling tactic. Companies often drag out negotiations on a union's first contract. Under the bill, federal arbitrators could impose a two-year contract.
Ms. RHONDA BENTZ (Spokesperson, Coalition for Workplace Democracy): We think, you know, this is not a pro-worker piece of legislation.
OVERBY: Rhonda Bentz speaks for the business group, The Coalition for Workplace Democracy.
Ms. BENTZ: Effectively removing secret ballot elections doesn't seem pro-worker. Supporting a provision that forces, you know, government bureaucrats to dictate contracts doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
OVERBY: She predicts a fight of monumental proportions. Labor has enlisted a phalanx of liberal allies, among them, the NAACP, Sierra Club and National Organization for Women. Mary Beth Maxwell, director of American Rights at Work, is among the top strategists.
Ms. MARY BETH MAXWELL (Director, American Rights at Work): I am incredibly hopeful about the momentum that we have right now for restoring some balance and fairness for workers' rights. Voters have spoken up, they want change.
OVERBY: Now, labor and business are ramping up lobbying campaigns including more TV. Both sides insist there is no room for compromise. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Citigroup spent the past decade getting bigger and bigger. Now the giant financial services company is about to get smaller. On Friday, Citigroup is supposed to unveil its latest plan to turn its fortunes around. The company is expected to announce it will be selling off major parts of its business. As NPR's Jim Zarroli reports, it's a key turning point in the world of finance.
JIM ZARROLI: For several years now, Citigroup has been the problem child of a troubled industry, a company plagued by management turmoil and eroding investor confidence. Now it may finally be facing its day of reckoning. Nancy Bush is a banking analyst.
Ms. NANCY BUSH (Banking Analyst): There are a number of decisions that are going to have to be made about whether they're going to continue to try to be a, quote, "universal bank," or whether they're going to just come down to several niche businesses.
ZARROLI: At one time, Citigroup was the biggest financial services company in the world by assets, and it got that way, in large part, through lots and lots of acquisitions. The biggest by far was the merger with the insurance giant Travelers more than a decade ago. At the time, Citigroup chairman John Reed said customers no longer wanted to go from place to place for banking and insurance services. They wanted one-stop shopping. Here he is at the press conference announcing the deal.
(Soundbite of press conference)
Mr. JOHN REED (Former Chairman, Citigroup): We have an opportunity to put together a business proposition for that customer. They aren't going to think we're a conglomerate. What they're going to think is, you know what, I can go to this company and get my needs satisfied in a way that provides for what I want.
ZARROLI: But as with the merger of AOL and Time Warner, putting all those disparate pieces together proved a lot tougher than anyone expected. NYU adjunct management professor Robert Lamb served as a sometime adviser to former Citigroup Chairman Sandy Weill who masterminded many of the mergers.
Professor ROBERT LAMB (Adjunct Professor of Management, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University): The concept with Sandy was simply acquisition, acquisition, acquisition. He did not have that much interest in sticking around to organize the thing or, you know, make it work.
ZARROLI: The company struggled for years to right itself, and it might have prevailed had it not been for the housing bust. Citigroup was a big player in the market for risky mortgage-backed securities. Again, Nancy Bush.
Ms. BUSH: We've had bad management at that company for years. We've had an incoherent strategy. You've had, obviously now, nonexistent board oversight. And you overlay that with the worst economy in years, and bingo, this is what you've got.
ZARROLI: As the company's share price tumbled, investors pressured Citigroup's management to address what was happening. Last year, the company announced it was eliminating 15 percent of its enormous global workforce. It got a huge injection of capital from the federal government. Citigroup insisted its fundamental mission hadn't changed, but CEO Vikram Pandit told Charlie Rose last year the company was reexamining its size and scope.
(Soundbite of PBS interview)
Mr. VIKRAM PANDIT (CEO, Citigroup): It's a company that is being refocused on its uniqueness. A company where we're slimming down, we're simplifying, we're getting it more efficient and going back to our core purpose. And our core purpose is to be a bank.
ZARROLI: Still, faced with the prospect of another large financial institution failing, federal officials have reportedly been pressuring Citigroup to do more. And so Citigroup has begun divesting itself of some of its businesses. Not everyone is convinced Citigroup can find its footing.
Professor LAMB: I fear they have further to drop.
ZARROLI: Robert Lamb says Citigroup still has massive exposure to a lot of bad debt.
Professor LAMB: A number of pieces of Citigroup have not yet been looked at in, you know, under a microscope. And those have yet to be investigated.
ZARROLI: Even though the government has guaranteed some of those debts, Lamb says a lot of potential buyers of its assets will be afraid to do deals with Citigroup. That will make it a lot harder to unravel the vast financial empire that Citigroup spent years building up. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Today, a federal judge ordered the release of one of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Mohammad el-Gharani was one of the first prisoners to be brought to the U.S. facility in Cuba in 2002. He was 14 at the time and was arrested in Pakistan on suspicion he was a member of al-Qaeda. The U.S. district court judge ruled he is not an enemy combatant.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The fate of the more than 200 detainees left at Guantanamo may be about to change. President-elect Barack Obama has said closing the detention facility will be one of his first orders of business. This week, we're looking at what will happen to those detainees. Yesterday, we examined the issue of where they might go after the prison closes. Today and tomorrow, how the United States might prosecute those charged with acts of terrorism.
John Bellinger is legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He's worked extensively on the legal and international issues relating to the detainees. He says there are several options for how to prosecute the remaining detainees who are suspected of terrorism.
Mr. JOHN BELLINGER (Legal Adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice): Three models are essentially the federal criminal system, a court-martial system, or the existing military commissions system that we have right now. The problem about trying to try these individuals or future individuals captured outside the United States and federal courts is that with respect to the people at Guantanamo, many of them really were outside the jurisdiction of our federal laws to begin with, that the laws on the books on 9/11 didn't even cover their activities outside the United States.
Second, most of them were captured by our soldiers outside the United States. So the evidence relating to them, the witnesses relating to their conduct, is all outside the United States. So it would be very difficult to try them in federal courts.
NORRIS: Are you saying that it would be very difficult or impossible?
Mr. BELLINGER: In some cases impossible. As we capture additional people going forward, maybe some of them could be tried in our federal courts. Although it's a good question as to whether President-elect Obama wants to say to the military that if they capture a terrorist, that that person has to be brought back to the United States and then tried in a federal court. And is that really what our military is for?
NORRIS: The Pentagon said yesterday that 61 former detainees who were released, quote, "returned to the fight against the U.S.," meaning that they had turned to some form of terrorism. So for those detainees who are deemed dangerous or for whom no clear evidence exists for prosecution, what should be done with the prisoners that fall in that category?
Mr. BELLINGER: Well, that is the most difficult question. There is going to be some number of people, as I understand it from the Defense Department, who cannot be tried, but we deem are too dangerous to release. And so they would need to be - continued to be held. Now, one of the biggest questions right now about closure of Guantanamo, and indeed with respect to any detention at all, is what is the legal framework for holding the Guantanamo detainees or frankly for people who may be captured in the future?
This administration has held people who are captured as enemy combatants, people who are fighting us in a war. The next administration will need to decide both with respect to the people who are in Guantanamo now, and again with respect to people who they may capture in the future, are they holding those people as enemy combatants or will they say we're only going to hold people who we think that we could try in a federal criminal court?
NORRIS: Why is that distinction important?
Mr. BELLINGER: Well, because the enemy combatant label has been one that has been controversial both inside the United States and outside the United States. On the other hand, if that legal theory of holding people because they're enemy combatants is jettisoned, then the next administration will have to have a different legal theory for holding people. Many people, and I'll have to say myself included, have supported seeking congressional legislation that clarifies who can be held, even if in some cases they couldn't be tried.
NORRIS: With the clarity of hindsight, as you look at Guantanamo where you started, or you've wound up now, as the Bush administration is shutting the doors and closing out the lights. Are there things that you would do differently from the start?
Mr. BELLINGER: Well, certainly I think we've made many mistakes along the way. One of them was certainly not to involve the international community earlier on by holding the individuals ourselves, even though they frankly posed a threat to the world. And this is something that we've had a very difficult time explaining to the rest of the world. But because Guantanamo was set up initially solely as a U.S. operation, we have allowed other countries to distance themselves from Guantanamo. They don't acknowledge that, in fact, there is a benefit to the individuals who are being held there. And that really has been one of the unfortunate byproducts of Guantanamo is by not having greater international involvement.
NORRIS: John Bellinger is legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Thanks so much for being with us.
Mr. BELLINGER: Thank you.
NORRIS: And tomorrow, in the final part of our series, we'll take a look at the argument for trying the detainees in a federal court. And you can hear the first part of our series at npr.org.
DANIEL SCHORR: As the days of the Bush presidency dwindle to a few, demands are rising among critics with some sort of grand inquest into administration missteps and misdeeds.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Senior news analyst Daniel Schorr.
SCHORR: These center on surveillance and wiretapping under the counterterrorism program and the abusive interrogation of suspects at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. The departing president and vice president are unapologetic about the use of these techniques. At his farewell news conference on Monday, Mr. Bush said that after 9/11 it was necessary to find out what the enemy is thinking. Dick Cheney told Bob Schieffer of CBS that waterboarding was not torture and that he would make the same decisions again.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have introduced a bill to create a nine-member war-powers commission to investigate the broad range of Bush administration policies. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says that he will press for the declassification of CIA interrogation documents. But those hoping for broad investigations are getting little support from the incoming president.
Barack Obama told ABC News, we're going to be looking at past practices. On the other hand, we need to look forward. It is characteristic of Mr. Obama that he would wish to concentrate on the future, especially considering his heavy agenda, starting with the crisis of the economy. But each day seems to bring new word of improprieties during the Bush tenure.
Today's papers tell of Susan Crawford, a Pentagon official, who refused to bring charges against a Saudi detainee because he had been tortured. And Darrel Vandeveld, a former military prosecutor, who said in a court filing that the handling of evidence on detainees was so chaotic that it was impossible to prepare a fair prosecution. The inquests into recent administrations like Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and Iran-Contra, have long been an American tradition and have had a purgative effect, often leading to needed reforms. There is something to be said for not burying the past too soon. This is Daniel Schorr.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Now it's time for your letters.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
First a correction. On yesterday's program, we brought you a story about the day's confirmation hearings on Capitol Hill. Some of you may have heard us say that Stephen Chu, who is President-elect Obama's nominee for energy secretary, won the Nobel Prize for his work on renewable energy and climate change.
NORRIS: Well, as Roland Dunbrac(ph) of Philadelphia correctly pointed out, Mr. Chu actually won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 for his work on, as the prize officially stated, the development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light.
Yesterday we also brought you the story of the boy, the dentist, and the hockey stick. The boy is 14-year-old Kalan Plew. After the recent Winter Classic at Wrigley Field, a Detroit Red Wings player gave him his hockey stick. Kalan Plew was then stopped by a mysterious man who claimed to be a security guard who then took Kalan's stick and ran. And this is where we got the dentist, Robert Pappert of Charlotte, North Carolina. He bought the stick form the mysterious man in the bathroom at Wrigley Field. But when he learned of what happened to Kalan Plew, he mailed the hockey stick back to its rightful owner.
BLOCK: John Mazer(ph) of Detroit writes that he was reminded of his own hockey stick story. He writes, in 1959, following a game at Detroit's old Olympia Stadium between the Red Wings and the Montreal Canadians, Jacques Plante, Montreal's Hall of Fame goaltender, gave me the stick he had won the game with. I was a 15-year-old aspiring goalie, and it became my greatest treasure. I hung it on my bedroom wall in a place of honor.
Three years later, when I left home for my freshman year at the University of Michigan, the stick stayed home. Unbeknownst to me, one day my little brother took the stick down to show it off to his friends and play street hockey. Somehow, they smashed it. It's now 50 years later, and I've never let him forget his misdeed. Note to Kalan, beware of little brothers.
NORRIS: Well, thank you for your stories and your comments. Write to us at npr.org. Click "Contact Us" at the top of the page. And don't forget to tell us your name, how you say it, and where you're from.
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 a ruling today from the Supreme Court. The Court split five to four and ruled that when a person is wrongly arrested because of a record-keeping error, any evidence found at the time of the arrest can still be used to prosecute the defendant. NPR's Nina Totenberg explains.
NINA TOTENBERG: Nearly a century ago, the Supreme Court created a rule that excludes from trial evidence that is illegally obtained. The so-called exclusionary rule was created to ensure that there was no premium for police in violating an individual's constitutional right to be safe from unreasonable searches. Thus, in most instances if police conduct an illegal search, the evidence obtained cannot be used for a prosecution.
Critics of the rule have long lamented that because the constable errs, the criminal goes free, and three years ago the Supreme Court's four most conservative justices said they were willing to get rid of the exclusionary rule. The four, however, were one vote shy of a majority. So today there was a five-justice majority for a more modest approach undercutting one aspect of the exclusionary rule. For the first time, the Court said that when police record-keeping is erroneous, the evidence may still be used to prosecute.
The facts are these: Bennie Dean Herring had a history with an Alabama policeman named Mark Anderson. Herring had told the local DA that Anderson had been involved in the killing of a local teenager. The policeman had visited Herring trying to get him to drop the accusation. And weeks later when Herring was at the sheriff's department to retrieve his belongings from an impounded vehicle, the policeman asked the department's warrant clerk to see if there were any outstanding warrants for Herring's arrest. The answer was no.
Anderson then asked the clerk to check the neighboring county. This time the answer was yes, whereupon Officer Anderson arrested Herring, searched him, and found methamphetamine residue in his pocket and a pistol which because of Herring's previous criminal record was illegal for him to possess. Within minutes, though, it turned out that there was in fact no outstanding arrest warrant from Herring. It had been withdrawn five months earlier and the database had not been updated. So, the arrest was illegal and therefore so was the search. But could the evidence still be used against Herring?
The lower court said yes, and today the Supreme Court agreed. Writing for the five-justice majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said, in essence, that a police screw-up in record-keeping does not justify suppressing otherwise valid evidence. The exclusionary rule, he said, serves to deter deliberate reckless or grossly negligent conduct or in some cases systemic negligence. The error in this case, he said, did not rise to that level, since Officer Anderson thought he was conducting a search incident to a valid arrest warrant. Stanford law professor Pam Karlan, who represented Herring, sees the Court's ruling as limited but...
Professor PAM KARLAN (Stanford Law School): The handwriting on the wall for the future is the Supreme Court is not very committed to the exclusionary rule, and when it can find ways of getting around the exclusionary rule, there seemed to be five justices who are prepared to give the rule lip service and then whittle it down to a doorstop. And I think that's actually a characteristic, in some ways, an emerging characteristic of the Roberts court is there are a lot of areas where they are not overruling the precedents that are on the books, but they are narrowing them down so that they are, you know, to quote an old Supreme Court case, like "railroad tickets good for this train and this day only."
TOTENBERG: George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg, author of a leading criminal law textbook, agrees.
Professor STEPHEN SALTZBURG (Law, George Washington University): The door is open for all arguments that police behavior, while it was mistaken or it was wrong, is not so egregious as to warrant exclusion. I think that's where we are, that the battle will be fought on how bad the police behavior was. And you see a lot of that in Chief Justice Roberts' opinion.
TOTENBERG: Joining Roberts in the majority were Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy. Writing for the four dissenters, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that in the modern era of interconnected databases, there is little recourse for erroneous records except through constitutional protections. The result of today's ruling, she said, would likely be more innocent people wrongly arrested, handcuffed, humiliated, and searched. This, she said, is evocative of the unlimited search powers that so outraged the founders of the republic that they adopted the Fourth Amendment requiring judicial warrants and banning unreasonable searches. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
In Oakland, California, a former transit policeman was charged with murder today for shooting an unarmed man. The New Year's Day incident on a train platform was caught on video by witnesses with cell phone cameras. Those pictures have prompted angry and at times violent demonstrations in the Bay Area. Today the district attorney in Oakland, Tom Orloff, explained the charges against the former policeman.
Mr. TOM ORLOFF (Alameda County District Attorney): Murder charges were filed because at this point what I feel the evidence indicates is an unlawful killing done by an intentional act. And from the evidence we have, there is nothing that would mitigate that to something lower than a murder.
NORRIS: NPR's Richard Gonzales has been covering the story. He joins us now from San Francisco. Richard, we mentioned the angry demonstrations over the shooting. Lots of people have been calling for the officer's arrest. So what's finally happened?
RICHARD GONZALES: Well, 27-year-old Johannes Mehserle was arrested last night on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe about four hours from here. Now, he had left the state fearing for his safety. He is not believed to have been trying to hide or to run, but word had circulated that he had - he left after receiving death threats. Mehserle quit the police force of the Bay Area Rapid Transit rather than answer any questions from Internal Affairs about the incident leading to the death of Oscar Grant. Mehserle is now back on his way to the San Francisco Bay Area, and he will be arraigned tomorrow.
NORRIS: I want to take you back to that incident involving Oscar Grant. Remind us what happened on that train platform on New Year's Day.
GONZALES: Well, Grant, he was a 22-year-old supermarket worker. He was with some friends returning to Oakland from San Francisco early New Year's Day. There were reports of a fight between two different groups. He apparently was among that group of one of the groups of young men. They were subdued by police. They were sitting down. And there are videos of the action showing Grant being pushed faced down. Officer Mehserle has his knee in Grant's back. Then the officer rises, pulls out his gun, and shoots Grant in the back.
The officer, according to the video, looks momentarily stunned. And all this was captured, as they say, on cell phone video and viewed by hundreds of thousands of people on the Internet. And in fact, had it not been for the distribution of this video, many here in the Bay Area believe that this investigation may have taken a very different turn.
NORRIS: Now, we mentioned the angry demonstration, the violence in the streets. Some of that seems to have calmed down. But it appears that the racial tensions that have flared up continue.
GONZALES: Well, you know, there is a long history of tense relations between the police and Oakland's black community, and there have been several emotional community meetings. The BART Board of Directors has been listening to public comment. And by the way, the board has issued a public apology to Grant's family. But there is certainly a chill, an abrupt awareness that just as a community is set to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama, this happens - another black man killed by police. And I've heard it said dozens of times. Basically, this brings us back to reality.
NORRIS: We saw the demonstrations last week. What are they doing in the city, particularly the police department, to prevent that kind of thing from happening again?
GONZALES: Tonight there is an action set for City Hall. Community and labor groups are in charge of this action. They have been working with the police to try to prevent more violence. And they're basically hoping for the best.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Richard Gonzales. Thanks so much, Richard.
GONZALES: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
A lot of people have unkind things to say about cars made in Detroit. The auto companies say most of the criticism is unfair and out of date. NPR's Frank Langfitt has spent the week in Detroit at the North American International Auto Show, and he set out across the exhibition floor to try to separate fact from fiction.
FRANK LANGFITT: This was General Motors' CEO Rick Wagoner in a recent interview with our own Robert Siegel.
(Soundbite of NPR interview)
Mr. RICK WAGONER (CEO, General Motors): Our vehicles are, in many cases, leading or at parity with the best of the nine U.S.-based manufacturers.
LANGFITT: Really? I talked to some independent experts at the auto show to see if that was true.
Mr. DAVID CHAMPION (Senior Director, Auto Test Division, Consumer Reports): My name is David Champion. I'm director of automobile testing for Consumer Reports.
LANGFITT: Consumer Reports is the bible for car buyers, so Champion ought to know if Wagoner's claim holds up.
Mr. CHAMPION: GM has produced some really, really good cars - the Cadillac CTS, the new Chevrolet Malibu, the GMC Acadia, Outlook, Enclave SUV, all really good cars. Up there with Honda and Toyota in terms of how they perform.
LANGFITT: Wow! Sounds good. But Champion says there's something else.
Mr. CHAMPION: Unfortunately, reliability has been their big problem.
LANGFITT: In the 1970s and 1980s, Detroit cars often broke down and stranded customers. That poor quality cost the companies a generation of buyers. Today, Champion says Detroit's cars are more reliable, but overall, he says, they haven't caught up with the Japanese.
Mr. CHAMPION: It's probably a cultural thing in some ways that the Japanese put a lot of emphasis on making sure that every single detail is looked at, developed, validated.
LANGFITT: In some cases, GM has matched the Japanese on reliability and then slipped back. Champion and I strolled over to the Saturn exhibit. I asked Champion about Saturn because of my own experience.
In 1994, I went to Consumer Reports, and I saw that Saturn and the Toyota Corolla were dead even for reliability. And I bought one.
Mr. CHAMPION: Yeah.
LANGFITT: Then I went back to Consumer Reports 2004, and the reliability had just completely dropped off. What happened?
Mr. CHAMPION: Saturn, really, at its inception was exactly what GM needed. But I think due to internal infighting with the other divisions of who gets what and what car goes where, you know, they actually starved Saturn of new product. Until today it doesn't really exist on the consumer's radar screen.
LANGFITT: Next I met up with Karl Brauer. He's editor in chief of Edmunds.com, the consumer auto Web site. Brauer acknowledges that the Detroit companies still lag a bit on reliability. But he says the range has narrowed so much that he doesn't think it's a big deal.
Mr. KARL BRAUER (Editor In Chief, Edmunds.com): The experience, even 10 or 15 years ago, between the best-built car and the worst-built car from the consumer's perspective was pretty drastic. You know, it was a difference between never going to the dealer and being left on the side of the road. Now the difference is, did I have to go to the dealer once in a two-year period when I wasn't supposed to because something happened or never in a two-year period?
LANGFITT: I asked Brauer what domestic car he would recommend to his mom? He takes me to see this.
Unidentified Man: Taurus is a very important product of the Ford Car Company.
LANGFITT: It's a major redesign. Long gone is the car's iconic egg shape. The new version is a sporty sedan with a raised hood and sleek lines.
Mr. BRAUER: This does not look like - well, let's be honest - a Hertz special. It doesn't look like a rental car that escaped from the line.
LANGFITT: New models like this are important to Detroit because, as Brauer says, even though consumers talk about reliability, many are still moved by looks. And that may be one of the best ways for Detroit to lure skeptical customers back to their showrooms. Frank Langfitt, NPR News, Detroit.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. During the winter's cold and flu season, parents may be more confused than ever about how to ease their child's cold. Experts say cough and cold formulas don't work and may even be harmful for children under four. Now a study this week raises concern about the safety of the popular ointment Vicks VapoRub, as NPR's Patti Neighmond reports.
PATTI NEIGHMOND: Researchers examined the safety of Vicks VapoRub after an 18-month-old girl was brought to the hospital ER with breathing problems. Doctors speculated it might have to do with Vicks, a menthol and eucalyptus ointment being rubbed under her nose. To test this theory, they looked at how the ointment affected ferrets, which have airways similar to humans. Scientists concluded it did the opposite of what might be expected, causing more, not less, nasal congestion and inflammation. But pediatrician Ian Paul of Penn State Children's Hospital takes issue with the study because it was based on only a single child and 15 animals. Paul is heading his own study looking at the effectiveness of Vicks in 150 children.
Dr. IAN PAUL (Pediatrician, Penn State Children's Hospital): People for a hundred years have been using Vicks VapoRub, and I hear it from parents that they used it when they were kids, and their parents used it when they were kids. So people asked me the question. So we decided we wanted as our next study to see whether it works or not.
NEIGHMOND: Vicks manufacturer, Proctor & Gamble, has some evidence the ointment might help adults, but there are no recent studies with children. The company is funding Dr. Paul's research, but Paul says the company has agreed to publish findings even if they're negative. Paul hopes to have some answers by next year. Until then, he says, parents should heed current recommendations from both federal government and the industry. Don't give your kids over-the-counter cough or cold formulas if they're four years old or younger. That includes cough suppressants, antihistamines, decongestants, and expectorants. Studies show the medications don't work and in rare cases can cause severe side effects. Dr. Paul.
Dr. PAUL: They can range from mild things like excessive drowsiness to things that are more severe like heart rhythm abnormalities or, especially with overdose, they can even be fatal when people take too much.
NEIGHMOND: So, what can parents do? Wait it out, says pediatrician Daniel Frattarelli of Oakwood Hospital in Dearborn, Michigan. Frattarelli says let your child know the cold will go away in a few days. And in the meantime, he says, use home remedies.
Dr. DANIEL FRATTARELLI (Pediatrician and Advisor, American Academy of Pediatrics): Keeping the children well-hydrated, keeping lots fluid in is good. Some people find that, you know, humidifying the air will help also just to kind of loosen up the secretions and make it easier for the kids to, you know, to clear this gunk out of their noses. Honey has been shown to help also decreasing the frequency of cough, as well.
NEIGHMOND: Frattarelli cautions that babies under the age of one should not be given honey. It can be dangerous for them. As for Vicks, Frattarelli says he'll wait to see the conclusions of Dr. Ian Paul's study. In the meantime, the Vicks label is clear. Vicks VapoRub should not be used in children under two or in the nostrils. The label says it can be rubbed on the chest or throat or aching muscles. Patti Neighmond, NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Like thousands of fishing boats off America's shores, the Infidel has giant nets that catch all kinds of sea creatures. But unlike most, the Infidel is a ghost ship, a sunken wreck 150 feet below the surface. And for about two years now, the trawler's tangled nets have snared and killed sharks, dolphins, sea lions, and fish off Southern California's Santa Catalina Island. Now volunteer divers are taking on the dangerous work of removing those nets. Kurt Lieber is one of them. He's also head of the Ocean Defenders Alliance. It's a nonprofit devoted to cleaning up abandoned fishing gear. Mr. Lieber, thanks for being with us.
Mr. KURT LIEBER (Founder, Ocean Defenders Alliance): Nice to be here.
BLOCK: And you've been diving down to the Infidel. Tell me what it's been like to try to cut away these nets.
Mr. LIEBER: Well, first of all, when you drop down on it, it's a very disturbing site. It's a very eerie site to see a very large trawler completely encased in a series of nets. Now, this is only one net, and it's a big billowing net. So, when the ship sank, this net just was floated around the top of the mast and drapes down from there to the sand. Every time I go down there, it just feels like an open graveyard because you're seeing scattered bones and skulls all over the place.
BLOCK: How big is this net and how do you go about trying to cut it away?
Mr. LIEBER: It's - we estimated right now that it's 9,000 pounds. We were hoping to be able to take it away in one section, but that proved to be way out of whack. There's no way we're going to get out in one cut. So we are just really systematically going around various parts of hull, seeing what will come up easily, and then we take our cutting tools, which are knives and surgical shears, and cut around the area where we can free it. Obviously, this wreck has a lot of rigging on it, and the rigging is what's catching a lot of the net. So, we place lift bags in various corners of the net, raise those lift bags up - we fill them with air and it raises them up a little bit - and then we can see where we can cut and not snag anything.
BLOCK: What's the most dangerous part of all of that?
Mr. LIEBER: Just what I described. The divers are putting those lift bags on this net. And as the lift bags go towards the surface, when the net gets cut free, if the diver is near that area and they get snagged on the net - and it's easy to do - that's when the diver can become, you know, entangled in it and be flown to the surface very fast. And that will cause the bends and possibly die.
BLOCK: Do you have a sense of how long it's going to take to get rid of this massive net down there?
Mr. LIEBER: I've been on these projects for quite a while, and they all take on their own life. I removed an 800-pound net which is one-tenth the size of this. And that 800-pound net took us three months because of weather conditions. And we're a nonprofit. We all have day jobs. So we can't go out during the week. But that one 800-pound net took us seven dive days. Now this net, I would have to say it's going to be at least 15 dive days.
BLOCK: How big a problem are nets like these, do you think?
Mr. LIEBER: Well, there's been a study up in Washington where they analyzed a net that had been down for 10 years. They were doing a study on the amount of animals killed in that. And 30,000 animals died every year in that. Now that's mammals as well as the fish and invertebrates. So when you compound that over the thousands of nets that are out there, it's a huge problem. All our fisheries are severely depleted. I can't think of one that's sustainable, even though the government will tell you there are a couple of them. But all of them are severely reduced. So anything we can do to minimize that impact on the fisheries is a big benefit.
BLOCK: And these are nets, I'm sure, that are designed to last an extremely long time.
Mr. LIEBER: That's the unfortunate part. These are made out of hemp, which deteriorates over time, but they're interwoven with polypropylene. And those will be down there for hundreds, if not thousands of years.
BLOCK: Well, Mr. Lieber, thanks for talking with us. Appreciate it.
Mr. LIEBER: So do I. Thanks for the invite.
BLOCK: Kurt Lieber is the founder of the Ocean Defenders Alliance. He's one of the divers working to remove nets from the Infidel which sank off the California coast.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, has announced that he's going to take a leave of absence. It's a medical leave. Jobs is a survivor of pancreatic cancer. He sent a memo to employees today saying his current health problems are more complex than he had originally thought. Today's news is renewing questions about the future of Apple's leadership, and NPR's Laura Sydell joins us to talk about that from San Francisco.
Laura, first, tell us more about this memo from Steve Jobs today.
LAURA SYDELL: It was a short memo, and basically, he said he wants to take the limelight off his health. He'll be back in June, and he says he'll remain involved with strategic decisions for the company.
BLOCK: And take the limelight off of his health? This has been a big issue in recent days and going back some time.
SYDELL: Yeah, he has had pancreatic cancer. He was diagnosed with it in 2004. He was treated for it. He seemed to be doing well. Our science reporter, Richard Knox, says that, basically, the type he has is a recurring problem, but it can be managed. So, experts believe, you know, it's not clear because they haven't examined him, but they believe that what he has is treatable, and that what's happening to him right now, in fact, is not completely unpredictable.
BLOCK: Right, and he was seen, though, looking very thin, and he explained that by saying he had a hormone imbalance. Now, unclear exactly what's going on.
SYDELL: It is unclear because this is what he tells us, but again, that would be something that could in fact happen with the type of pancreatic cancer that he has.
BLOCK: Steve Jobs, of course, very closely identified with Apple and its success. What do you think this will do to the perceptions of Apple?
SYDELL: Well, every time he gets sick, the stock price goes down - as it did, again, today. Jobs is so closely identified - he may be one of the few CEOs, maybe the other one is Bill Gates, who really is completely identified with his company. After leaving the company, he returned in 1997, and he pretty much brought it back from the brink.
I mean, most notably under his direction, the iPod was created and the iPhone. And Apple created this complete system with the iTunes store, which is now the number one music retailer and of course, now the iPhone. And Apple computers now have 10 percent of the market. All of this happened under his watch.
BLOCK: Steve Jobs, just 53 years old, and as we said, expects to be back at work in June, but lots of questions being raised about the future of Apple, eventually, without Steve Jobs, what that would look like.
SYDELL: Well, that is a billion-dollar question, really, literally. The management that is there now was hand picked by him and trained by him. So, there's certainly a sense that if he doesn't come back, you know - if he really does come back in June, you would think these people could handle it. I mean, they're people like Jonathan Ives, and he's the industrial designer who's behind the iPod, the iPhone, the PowerBook and the Mac Pro. Tim Cook, the guy who's going to be in charge while Steve's away, has been working very closely with him for the last three years.
That said, if you talk to anybody inside Apple, it's a very top down organization. Pretty much every decision goes through Steve Jobs. So in the long term, I think that is a question. This is a guy who really has a handle on the market in a way very few people have.
BLOCK: OK, Laura, thanks so much.
SYDELL: You're quite welcome.
BLOCK: That's NPR's Laura Sydell in San Francisco talking about news that Steve Jobs is taking a medical leave of absence from Apple until June.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Actor Ricardo Montalban died today. He was 88. He played Fantasy Island's Mr. Rourke and the title villain in the Star Trek movie "The Wrath of Khan." NPR's Bob Mondello notes that Montalban's career on stage and screen spanned six decades and many nationalities.
BOB MONDELLO: In the 1950s and'60s, when there weren't many Latino actors working in this country, Ricardo Montalban was Hollywood's go-to guy whenever producers were looking for a Mexican gunslinger or a hot Latin lover or an Indian brave, or for the Oscar winning film "Sayonara," a Japanese kabuki actor. He seemed to be everyone's dashing foreign fantasy figure, which may be why a couple of decades later, he got to preside over "Fantasy Island" as the audience's guide Mr. Rourke.
(Soundbite of TV show "Fantasy Island")
Mr. RICARDO MONTALBAN: (As Mr. Rourke) Sally is one of the contestants. And in the end, she will be crowned the most beautiful of all, queen of Fantasy Island, don't you see?
Mr. HERVE VILLECHAIZE: (As Tattoo) You mean the contest is fixed?
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. MONTALBAN: (As Mr. Rourke) I like the word predetermined.
MONDELLO: Montalban grew up in Mexico City and retained both his Mexican citizenship and that rich Spanish accent throughout his life. It helped him sell songs on Broadway opposite Lena Horne in the 1957 musical "Jamaica" and also to sell the Chrysler Cordoba in ubiquitous '70s commercials.
(Soundbite of Chrysler advertisement)
Mr. MONTALBAN: I request nothing beyond the thickly cushioned luxury of seats available even in soft Corinthian leather.
MONDELLO: That line became a staple for Montalban impersonators. But he presented those who would mock him with a moving target, turning in comic performances in such films as "Naked Gun," and past the age of 60 becoming the muscular villain in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan."
He was also a founder of Nosotros, a nonprofit organization established to improve the image of Latinos in Hollywood and to fight the stereotypes that he himself had had to overcome. I'm Bob Mondello.
BLOCK: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Artists who write songs about American presidents aren't all that unusual. Artists who write songs about every president, that's a different story. Before the election of Barack Obama, we reported on a collection of original songs about all 43 U.S. presidencies. The three-CD set is called "Of Great and Mortal Men" and it ends with the presidency of George W. Bush. Now, just in time for the inauguration, its creators are debuting their 44th song. Joel Rose has the story.
JOEL ROSE: The songwriters behind "Of Great and Mortal Men" had hindsight on their side when it came to setting the first 43 presidencies' music. But that wasn't an option this time.
NORRIS: Because I didn't have an actual presidency to write about, the only thing I could write about is his effect on people.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ROSE: So Christian Kiefer started out exploring where the country has been.
NORRIS: We've spent eight years basically sitting on our hands and complaining around the watercooler.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "SOMEONE TO WAKE")
NORRIS: It could have been easy to, after the last eight years, write a little more embittered type of song.
ROSE: Will Johnson of Texas band Centro-matic volunteered to sing the lead vocals, joining a long list of indie-rock performers who made guest appearances on the original project.
NORRIS: Instead, I think it focuses on putting it to rest and looking forward as opposed to looking back anymore, which, you know, that's something I've been a little guilty of for quite some time now and I'm kind of tired of feeling that way. You know, you get tired when you're angry. (Laughing)
ROSE: It's more than three minutes into the song before the character of Barack Obama finally makes an entrance.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "SOMEONE TO WAKE")
NORRIS: (Singing) What can one say? What can one say? I'll take it. I'll make it mine. If you answer, you (unintelligible). Everything will be just fine. This place is mine. Everything is all right. Everything is all right.
ROSE: Songwriter Christian Kiefer admits it might be premature to suggest that Mr. Obama will be able to fix all of the problems confronting the country. Kiefer is a history teacher in Sacramento, California. He's also the father of five kids, ranging in age from 2 months to 14 years. In his song, Kiefer says the president-elect is playing the part of the grownup.
NORRIS: He says everything is all right in the same way that you might hold a child in your arms who has an ouwie and you stroke that child, and you say everything is all right, everything is all right, you know. That's essentially, I think, what Obama has done for us as a nation. He's taken this basically broken child and said, hey, come on, everything is good. We're tough, we can do this. Let's move forward.
ROSE: For a while, Christian Kiefer considered leaving the song untitled - a nod to all of the open questions facing Mr. Obama once he takes office. But in the end, Kiefer decided to call it "Someone to Wake." For NPR News, I'm Joel Rose.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "SOMEONE TO WAKE")
NORRIS: (Singing) This place is mine. Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right. Everything is all right.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
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. General George Casey was the top commander in Iraq before he became the Army's top officer two years ago. The war he once led has stretched, some say broken, the Army. Now it's Casey's job to repair it. We conclude our series now on the state of the U.S. Army with a profile of the officer in charge. NPR's Tom Bowman met General Casey in his Pentagon office for a rare interview and a bit of a guided tour.
TOM BOWMAN: A four-star general's office tells the history of a career. The walls and bookshelves filled with souvenirs from past missions came from the soldiers who came before.
GEORGE CASEY: Omar Bradley's coffee cup, Douglas MacArthur's staff badge that he designed. This is really an Iraqi harp, a gift from Prime Minister Maliki.
BOWMAN: What did he say when he gave that to you?
CASEY: Oh, he thanked me profusely for what I'd done.
BOWMAN: And on the wall, there's a pen and ink portrait of Ulysses S. Grant, one of General Casey's favorite officers.
CASEY: He's the one. He had the tenacity and the perseverance to press through in hard times, and he ultimately succeeded.
BOWMAN: And a lot of people doubted him, too.
CASEY: Oh, they sure did, they sure did.
BOWMAN: There are now those who doubt this general. During General Casey's time in Iraq, two critical years from 2004 to the end of 2006, the violence spun out of control. And then General David Petraeus replaced him and oversaw the so-called surge of U.S. troops, which helped bring the violence and bloodshed under something like control. Senator John McCain has been one of Casey's harshest critics. He confronted him about Iraq in 2007 after Casey had been nominated to the top Army job.
JOHN MCCAIN: We're not winning, and we had a failed strategy. We had a failed policy and we are not winning.
CASEY: Senator, I do not agree that we have a failed policy. I believe...
BOWMAN: You're seen as the Westmoreland of Iraq. Westmoreland failed in Vietnam, went on to become chief of staff. That's what they're saying.
CASEY: I don't feel like I failed. I feel like I laid the foundation for our ultimate success in Iraq. And frankly, I think, the success of the surge demonstrates that the foundations were set.
BOWMAN: If the surge made Petraeus the hero of Iraq, Casey is seen as the one who bungled it by focusing on training Iraqis in order to bring Americans home.
CASEY: If I had got some different guidance to bring violence levels down faster, you know, I certainly would have done that.
BOWMAN: Different guidance. What Casey means is that he was following the president's strategy and yet he is being blamed for its failure. To this day, Casey says he doesn't know, doesn't really care, who is to blame.
CASEY: We're running an Army here. We're fighting a war. And I don't want to be distracted by petty bickering.
BOWMAN: It was Iraq what Casey calls his searing experience that made him realize the Army must be remade, but how? The Army is split into two camps. General Casey is on one side. General Petraeus is on the other. Petraeus wants the Army to focus on small wars, counterinsurgencies like Iraq and Afghanistan. Casey wants a balance between conventional and irregular warfare, saying the Army must be prepared to do it all.
CASEY: Now, the guidance that I gave the Army last summer was focused on major conventional training so that you rekindle some of the skills that you've lost.
ANDREW KREPINEVICH: General Casey talks about an era of persistent conflict. I think, really, we're looking at an era of persistent irregular conflict.
BOWMAN: Andrew Krepinevich is a retired Army officer and defense analyst.
KREPINEVICH: The big challenge before the Army right now is irregular warfare - Afghanistan, Iraq. The Army is anxious to reorient itself back to a more traditional, comfortable kind of conflict, conventional war, the kind of war it fought in 1991 in Operation Desert Storm.
BOWMAN: Some officers side with Casey, saying the Army's tilted too far to counterinsurgency. If Casey is to win this fight and build an Army that can do it all, he has to start by taking care of the Army's people.
CASEY: We can't continue to do 12 months out, 12 months back and then hold this force together. I think people would start voting with their feet, and the stressors on families are already difficult. Twelve months is not enough time to recover, especially when you're doing it for a second and a third and a fourth time.
BOWMAN: You're already seeing that, aren't you? You're seeing people voting with their feet.
CASEY: Well, people are leaving the Army. There's no question about that. Part of the perception that captains are leaving in droves is because we're increasing the size of the Army, so we're creating a demand internally.
BOWMAN: There are a lot of people worried about recruiting and the quality of the recruit coming in, more waivers for medical reasons, criminal waivers, and then fewer with high school diplomas.
CASEY: The only quality measure last year that we did not meet in terms of recruits is the high school diploma graduates. So it's about 7 percent below the standard. What I see, after these young men and women go through basic training, I'm pretty satisfied with. I think we're going to get some help from the economy. In fact the last, the first two months of this fiscal year we have met our high school diploma graduate rates.
BOWMAN: Some say Casey is downplaying the Army's troubles. Here's Larry Korb, a Pentagon official in the Reagan administration.
LARRY KORB: Desertion rates are up, suicides are up, cases of spousal abuse are up. So if you look at all of those indicators, this is an Army that has many more problems than it had five or six years ago.
BOWMAN: Casey will acknowledge that the Army is in for what he calls two more tough years. Not until 2011 will soldiers get 22 months at home, still not quite reaching that necessary two years he says is needed for rest and training. Still, Andrew Krepinevich says Casey deserves credit for his time as Army chief. He is doing more to help combat veterans with mental health problems and more to help families.
KREPINEVICH: He's focused very much on trying to ensure that the families are well cared for while the soldiers are overseas.
BOWMAN: Families who have lost a loved one in battle are of particular concern to Casey. Recently the Army made a mistake. It sent information packets to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last seven years. The families were all addressed as John Doe. To Casey, that was inexcusable, so he began signing letters to all 7,000 family members.
CASEY: My dad was killed in Vietnam, and so I took that personally, and I felt that I needed to respond to the families directly.
BOWMAN: Casey still wears the stars his dad wore as a general. A few days ago, he mailed the letters to the families of those fallen soldiers, many of whom he led. And then he turned back to the job of fixing the Army. Tom Bowman, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
It was widely expected to be the most contentious confirmation hearing for any of President-elect Obama's cabinet picks. Senators questioned Eric Holder today, the man Mr. Obama nominated for attorney general. Holder took the opportunity to make a forceful break from the Bush administration's national security policies, and he apologized for what he called mistakes of the past. NPR's Ari Shapiro has this recap.
ARI SHAPIRO: At every confirmation hearing for an attorney general since 9/11, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, or one of his colleagues, has asked this question.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
NORRIS: Do you agree with me that waterboarding is torture and illegal?
SHAPIRO: Today was the first time a nominee gave this answer.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
NORRIS: I agree with you, Mr. Chairman, waterboarding is torture.
SHAPIRO: Eric Holder then went further. Senator Leahy asked...
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
NORRIS: Do you believe that the president of the United States has the authority to exercise a commander-in-chief override and immunize acts of torture?
SHAPIRO: Again, Holder gave a more direct answer than his recent predecessors.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
NORRIS: It's my belief that the president does not have the power that you've indicated.
SHAPIRO: Leahy said...
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
NORRIS: I'm glad to see we now have a nominee for attorney general who's unequivocal on this.
SHAPIRO: If confirmed, Holder will inherit a Justice Department that has relied on legal opinions crafted by Bush justice appointees. Those opinions have authorized some of the most controversial policies of the Bush administration about spying and torture. Holder promised to review, and if necessary, correct or withdraw all of those opinions by the Office of Legal Counsel.
NORRIS: It is important that these OLC opinions which are so important, as you described, that they truly reflect what the law is, that they reflect our values and I want to ensure that any OLC opinions that are in effect are consistent with those two purposes...
SHAPIRO: Holder also broke with his predecessors on the issue of media shield legislation. This is a proposed law that will protect journalists from being forced to reveal their sources in federal court. The current attorney general has said it would undermine national security. Holder told the committee, he wants to check with career Justice Department attorneys about the details, but in theory...
NORRIS: I'm in favor of the concept of such a law.
SHAPIRO: Republicans have expressed concern about decisions Holder made when he was deputy attorney general under President Clinton. Holder obliquely acknowledged those concerns in his opening statement when he said, I will adhere to the precepts and principles of the Constitution...
NORRIS: ...and I will do so in a fair, just, and independent manner.
SHAPIRO: It's that independence that Republicans doubt. They fear Holder won't be able to say no to the president. Exhibit A is the Marc Rich pardon. Rich was a huge Clinton donor. The billionaire was wanted on tax fraud charges. He'd fled the country. President Clinton pardoned Rich on his last day in office. Holder oversaw pardons. Today, he called that a mistake. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In fact, it was Rich's ex-wife who donated more than $1 million to Democratic causes, including the Clinton Presidential Library.]
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
NORRIS: That was and remains the most intense, most searing experience I've ever had as a lawyer. There were questions raised about me that I was not used to hearing. I've learned from that experience. I think that as perverse as this might sound, I will be a better attorney general, should I be confirmed, having had the Marc Rich experience.
SHAPIRO: The committee's top Republican, Arlen Specter, was not satisfied.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
NORRIS: When you take a look at the hard facts, it's a little hard for me to see how you came to the conclusion you did, even conceding the fact that none of us is perfect.
SHAPIRO: Specter asked...
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
NORRIS: Were you aware of this kind of a record this man had?
NORRIS: No I was not, and that was one of the mistakes that I made, I did not really acquaint myself with his record. I knew that the matter involved, it was a tax fraud case, it was a substantial tax fraud case. I knew that he was a fugitive, but I did not know a lot of the underlying facts that you have described. And as I said, that was a mistake.
SHAPIRO: Holder's confirmation seems almost certain. He would be the first black attorney general in the country's history. Holder noted that today would have been the 80th birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and he said, I feel privileged just to stand in his shadow. Ari Shapiro, NPR News Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Eric Holder also answered questions today about the fate of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. President-elect Barack Obama says shuttering the facility is one of his priorities and today Holder said some of the detainees could be charged and jailed in the United States.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
This week, we have been exploring the options for closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Yesterday we heard from John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He told us that bringing Guantanamo detainees to justice in criminal court would be difficult.
BLOCK: The problem about trying to try these individuals or future individuals captured outside the United States in federal court is that, with respect to the people at Guantanamo, many of them really were outside the jurisdiction of our federal laws to begin with, that the laws on the books on 9/11 didn't even cover their activities outside the United States.
NORRIS: Today, we hear from Sarah Mendelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In September she wrote a report called "Closing Guantanamo: From Bumper Sticker to Blueprint." It advocates prosecuting suspected terrorists in U.S. courts. Mendelson has since passed her recommendations on to the Obama transition team and she says the case of each detainee needs to be carefully examined.
BLOCK: We're hoping that a panel will review all the files and they will sort the files of those detained into two categories, one to be released which involves a lot of diplomacy and another to be brought to prosecution to the U.S. criminal justice system. Now there is tainted evidence for some of these people or let's say that it's not evidence, there is information that has been derived through torture that can't be used in the U.S. criminal justice system. So in some cases you'll probably going to need to have teams of prosecutors and FBI agents gathering new evidence in order to be able to put together an indictment and bring people to justice.
NORRIS: Now, I want to make sure that I get this is right. The current administration uses a military tribunal court so you're talking about a big difference there, the rules of evidence are different, the - it's not an easy transition that you're talking about.
BLOCK: Well, so the Bush administration put together the military commissions and since 2001, they've had 3 convictions. In the U.S. criminal justice system since 2001 there have been 145 convictions of international terrorist cases. So, on balance I think it's safe to say the U.S. criminal justice system has a much better record. Plus, in the military commission system, it has repeatedly come under tremendous question, pressure, it seems illegitimate, cases go up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court strikes them down. Overall our sense is that the U.S. criminal justice system, with all its flaws, is a better, more reliable and more valued way in which to deal with this situation.
NORRIS: Where will the U.S. house detainees who are awaiting trial? The wheels of justice move very slowly and so it's possible that Guantanamo will be closed, these detainees will be moved someplace else. Where will they be housed while they wait for their trials?
BLOCK: Well, just like any criminal that is before the criminal justice system, they'll be held in pre-trial detention facilities associated with whatever court they're going through. We know that there are, you know, 145 convictions that have happened and that there were facilities that held very dangerous people.
NORRIS: Is that something that's widely known or understood, though, that these men who have been detained at Guantanamo Bay will probably be held, in some cases, for quite long periods of time in facilities on U.S. soil?
BLOCK: Well, the Obama transition team has not been explicit with what their plans are, but I think it's also that the American population is not terribly aware that there have been all these other cases that have gone before the U.S. courts and that people have been put away. And if you contrast that with the kind of attention, I mean the white hot lightning that Guantanamo has received - the kind of recruitment tool that it has become, the way it has delegitimized American authority, I think you can see that putting them through the U.S. criminal justice system has a way of washing away the armor and the martyrdom and making them into criminals.
NORRIS: Sarah Mendelson, thanks so much for coming in.
BLOCK: Thank you.
NORRIS: Sarah Mendelson is the director of the human rights and security initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Her study is called "Closing Guantanamo from Bumper Sticker to Blueprint," and you can hear our previous conversations about closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay 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. Next week, Barack Obama and his family move into the White House. He will be the first black president to live in the White House, but not the first black person to live there. Slaves helped construct the building. Black men and black women of bondage worked in the White House as servers, cooks, and maids, sometimes as property of U.S. presidents. From that shameful past arose a proud tradition - the Butler Corps. Until recently, almost all the White House butlers were black. Lynwood Westray was part of that tradition. He's 82 now. He spent 32 years as a part-time butler in the White House. I recently visited Mr. Westray in his Washington, D.C., home.
BLOCK: Because they had other cakes and they had this all prepared for each of the guests.
NORRIS: Where we sat down with the giant folder of memorabilia - a boxed piece of Tricia Nixon's wedding cake, letters and photos of the butlers in their formal wear.
BLOCK: Those were the days we wore tails and the guests, perhaps, would be in tuxedos. And we looked better than they did. That's why they took us out of our tails.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
NORRIS: At the White House, men like Mr. Westray worked behind the scenes in domestic jobs. But in black neighborhoods outside official Washington, they are pillars of the community.
BLOCK: And then it became so people didn't understand why they were all black. It was a prestige job, and they didn't realize it. Well, the butler was an honorable job. It was a good job. And the benefits, they were there.
NORRIS: I talked with Mr. Westray in the living room of his bungalow. Even though he was wearing simple slacks and a dress shirt, he still has quite a distinguished air. His pride is evident as he talks about his White House years. He served eight presidents, going back to John F. Kennedy.
BLOCK: I guess my 32 years of seeing everybody who was anybody from all circumstances. The Russians, the Chinese, everybody who was coming in there, you saw them.
NORRIS: You also see the presidents in moments of great joy...
BLOCK: Well...
NORRIS: And moments of great stress. I imagine that you see a side of them that most other people never see.
BLOCK: Yeah, true. I'll never forget this. John F. Kennedy, two days before he was assassinated, had his last party, and I served it. And that was the last time I saw him. And this was, you know, upstairs. It wasn't like he invited guests from this country or that country. It was a little private party that he had, because he knew he was going away. I'll never forget that, because that's the last time I saw him.
NORRIS: What are your fondest memories of the White House?
BLOCK: So I said, Your Majesty, would you care for a cordial? He says, I'll take one if you let me serve it. I said, oh, my, what do you do? I didn't do all that because I had the stuff in my hand. And he says, if you let me pour it, I'll have one with you. I looked at Wash and Wash looked at me. All right. So he poured it. You know, the one he wanted. And we took the same thing that he had. And we had our drink there together and had a little talk...
NORRIS: Oh, my.
BLOCK: You know, while we were there. He told us if we were ever over there in London to stop at Buckingham Palace and see him. Can you imagine the prince serving you?
NORRIS: That must have been some...
BLOCK: I enjoyed it.
NORRIS: You enjoyed a cordial with Prince Philip.
BLOCK: Well, you know, we're not supposed to drink and carry on at that time. We're not guests. Anyway, I drank my little cordial. We all drank. And then we had our little conversation. But that was one thing I'll never forget, having been served by royalty.
NORRIS: On January 20th, Barack Obama and his family will move into the White House. Can you imagine what that day will be like for the butlers and the stewards that...
BLOCK: Who are there.
NORRIS: ...that are working at the White House now when they greet...
BLOCK: No, I don't have any idea.
NORRIS: This family?
BLOCK: But I'll put it this way. A lot of black folks, especially, were wondering if it was going to ever happen. And here it is happening. And they're tickled to death. I'm surely happy. I wish I was 30 years younger, so I would be down there now when he came in. Because, let's see, I worked for eight presidents, so - and the ninth wouldn't hurt. And I would like to have been there.
NORRIS: Mr. Westray, it has been such a pleasure to spend time with you.
BLOCK: Oh, I'm glad I was able to do something for you.
NORRIS: Thank you for your time and your memories.
BLOCK: OK. Thank you for taking that much interest in us old butlers.
NORRIS: Former White House butler, Mr. Lynwood Westray, says he liked to serve just one more inaugural. But at 82, carrying trays and clearing dishes is hard for someone not quite steady on his feet. So he and his wife are happy to watch this one at home on their television.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. When a president leaves office after eight years, journalists typically write retrospectives about his time in office. The vice president is barely mentioned, if at all. But President Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, is like no other vice president in American history. So, in the first of two parts, we're taking a look back at his role and what it means for the office he leaves behind. Here's NPR's Nina Totenberg.
NINA TOTENBERG: Before Cheney, discussion about the vice presidency focused on how to make the office stronger, more effective. Not anymore. Joel Goldstein, author of "The Modern American Vice Presidency."
JOEL GOLDSTEIN: Vice President Cheney has been the most powerful vice president that we've ever had.
TOTENBERG: Washington Post reporter Bart Gellman, author of "Angler," an extraordinary book on the Cheney vice presidency, reports that Cheney was a sponge for details, a skilled bureaucratic in-fighter, and at least in the first term, drove policy on the issues he cared about. In the second term, with a more experienced and wary President Bush, Cheney's influence waned but hardly ceased. Throughout the Bush years, on Capitol Hill, for the first time, the vice president sat in on the Republican caucus meetings. Former Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson tried to do that when he became vice president in 1961, but as former Vice President and Senator Walter Mondale reports, Johnson was quickly rebuffed. Having the vice president attend, Mondale contends, undermines the notion of a separate and co-equal branch of government. It inhibits free discussion among senators and he adds...
WALTER MONDALE: It's a tip-off to the executive branch about what the Senate's going to do.
TOTENBERG: Nothing better defines Cheney's influence than his domination of policy on the war on terror - setting up Guantanamo, getting waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques authorized, and circumventing established laws on domestic surveillance. Author Bart Gellman.
BART GELLMAN: It all boiled down to two things, fundamentally. It was, how do you spy on people who you think may be terrorists and what can you do to them once you catch them?
TOTENBERG: In establishing these programs, Cheney made sure to limit input from others who might disagree, including top legal officers in the military, top intelligence officials at the National Security Council and the State Department, even the national security adviser herself, Condoleezza Rice. Again, author Bart Gellman.
GELLMAN: Cheney created a new doctrine in which the president was accountable to no one for his decisions as commander in chief. What was new and innovative here, and quite radical, was the notion that the president's interpretation could not be challenged, that because the executive is a separate branch, courts and Congress could not tell the president, in any way, how to exercise his powers as commander in chief.
TOTENBERG: The torture authorization was finally revoked, and the domestic surveillance authorization had big problems. The Attorney General John Ashcroft, the Deputy Attorney General James Comey, and others agreed that the president was exceeding his constitutional authority. And with Ashcroft critically ill in the hospital, Acting Attorney General Comey refused to reauthorize the program. That led to the now-famous hospital scene with top White House officials pressuring a resistant Ashcroft to overrule Comey. In his book, Bart Gellman describes how, prior to this face-off, Cheney kept President Bush in the dark for three months so that the president was unaware his Justice Department believed the program was illegal. When Comey finally went to the White House after the hospital scene, both he and Bush were in for a rude shock. Bart Gellman.
GELLMAN: The president says to the acting attorney general, "I just wish you weren't bringing up this objection at the last minute."
TOTENBERG: And then Comey told the president it wasn't just he who was objecting, but the top ranks at Justice, even the FBI director, Robert Mueller, was about to resign. When Mueller confirmed that in a meeting with the president, Mr. Bush reversed course. Again, Bart Gellman.
GELLMAN: You had the FBI director, the attorney general, the next five levels of officials - which is a couple of dozen people - in the Justice Department, the general counsel of the CIA and of the FBI, were all going to resign, in principle, because they believed this program was unlawful. And George Bush didn't know it until about an hour before it was going to happen.
TOTENBERG: Faced with a wholesale resignation that would have made the Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre" look like a picnic, the president relented, withdrew his authorization, and told Comey to fix the program to make it legal. Had he not changed course, some of Bush's top aides believe he very likely would have been impeached. Again, Bart Gellman.
GELLMAN: I think from that moment, Bush understood more clearly than before that he had to take Cheney's advice at arm's length. That was the beginning of a gradual loss of influence by the vice president over George Bush, because Bush realized Cheney could lead him off a cliff.
TOTENBERG: Instead of promoting policies, Cheney now worked to prevent the undoing of policies already in place. He managed to stop the closure of Guantanamo, for instance, but the Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners there had the right to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts. Whereas, in the first term he managed to prevent negotiations with North Korea, in the second term, President Bush went ahead with them and negotiated at least a partial deal on nuclear weapons. And this fall, when the president refused to give bunker-busting bombs to the Israelis for use against Iran's nuclear sites, the president's decision was made over Cheney's objection, according to a high-ranking former administration official. In the last analysis, says former Vice President Dan Quayle, it is the president who decides how powerful the vice president is going to be.
DAN QUAYLE: Well, look, the job of vice president is what the president wants it to be, pure and simple.
TOTENBERG: And by the end of the Bush presidency, Mr. Bush had come to trust his instincts more than his vice president's. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. There's a major rescue operation underway on the Hudson River near midtown Manhattan. A U.S. Airways plane crashed into the frigid water this afternoon. More than 150 people were on board Flight 1549 that took off from New York's LaGuardia Airport headed to Charlotte, North Carolina. New York firefighters are on the scene. Passengers have been seen on the wings of the aircraft being pulled on to ferryboats. There are reports the plane hit a flock of geese before it crashed into the water. For more on the situation, NPR's Mike Pesca joins us and Mike, what more can you tell us about what happened this afternoon?
MIKE PESCA: Well, there have been some conflicting numbers about how many people were on board but right now, people are saying that there were 146 passengers and five crew on board. The story about the flock of geese has been attributed to sources but an FAA spokesperson, Laura Brown, has said that it might have been geese. They said something showed up on the radar and birds do show up on radar, that's how sensitive radars are. Many eyewitnesses and there have been many eyewitnesses interviewed on all of the local news channels, they seem to describe a similar phenomenon. The eyewitnesses describe what seem to look to them as if these were an emergency landing as opposed to a freefall crash into the Hudson River. The plane - for the last 20 minutes has been, the local TV has been showing the plane, it is still - most of the plane is still floating above water and like you said, there have been reports and we have seen with our eyes through the TV, many passengers getting off the plane onto lifeboats and being rescued by ferries that have responded.
BLOCK: Are reports of injuries, Mike, of this on the plane.
PESCA: Right now, we don't know that. Twenty minutes - this flight was said to have taken off at 3:26, I believe, from LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte. And it was 20 minutes ago that I think the public became aware that it was in the water and since then we haven't had reports of injuries. But we do know that 20 minutes or so ago, there were six or seven boats surrounding the plane. Some of those boats, which include New York water taxis, not just official rescue boats, have moved away from the plane and right now, the plane, which is still in the water, is surrounded by four boats, one in each direction and then in the circumference larger than that, those four initial boats, there are more rescue boats that are in the vicinity.
BLOCK: Mike, can you tell if there still seem to be people standing on the wings of that aircraft waiting for rescue?
PESCA: I don't see that right now, and I'll tell you where my vantage point is. Right now, the New York bureau of National Public Radio is on 42nd Street. Many emergency responders were streaming west so we could see the Hudson docks, but not exactly the plane. So just going by TV images, I don't see anyone on the wings still, but we were seeing that a little while ago.
BLOCK: OK. Again, to recap, a U.S. Airways flight taking off from LaGuardia airport in New York headed for Charlotte, Flight 1549 has landed in the Hudson River; a rescue effort is underway from watercraft on the Hudson to rescue about 150 people on board that plane. We've been talking with NPR's Mike Pesca in New York and we'll being you more on this story throughout the program.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Capitol Hill lawmakers are wrangling over a future stimulus package and also over the economic rescue package passed last year. The latter debate is over how to use the second half of the $700 billion TARP funds. Eric Cantor of Virginia is the House Republican whip and he wants restrictions imposed. He says the TARP money hasn't been used in the way it was intended.
NORRIS: Given the track record with some of those TARP monies going to specific industries like the auto industry, it gives me a great deal of pause, because the TARP funds is not supposed to be a pool of money available for ailing industries. That TARP money is supposed to be there to try and insure that our credit markets are functioning.
BLOCK: Are you hearing assurances from either the incoming Obama administration or from the House Democratic leadership that in fact the restrictions you're talking about, the oversight you're talking about would apply?
NORRIS: No, I'm not and that is the difficulty that I'm having in seeing my way to approving the further use of the TARP funds and that's why I believe you've got a lot of doubt on the part of House Republicans as to whether we should support the further expenditure of these monies.
BLOCK: Congressman Cantor, I want to ask you about a separate financial package heading your way, and that's the stimulus package. The Democrats' proposal looks to be about $825 billion; it breaks down as about two-thirds of spending, one-third in tax cuts. Do you see that as being about the right balance?
NORRIS: I think that that question is the wrong jumping-off point.
BLOCK: Uh-huh.
NORRIS: We ought not be focusing necessarily on the size of the package, although that does give me great pause when you're talking about close to a trillion dollars, but the real focus of any stimulus bill should be the protection, the preservation and the creation of jobs. And it doesn't necessarily happen from government spending and this is, I think, the focus of what the battle of ideas is going to be over the next several weeks through out the country, not just here in Washington. I am very concerned about the level of spending and this notion that somehow, if we just unleash hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure projects or whatever type of projects, that that necessarily is going to create jobs. I know a big part of the, you know, the reporting now of what this package will look like will go towards states and local governments. Again, that is going to fill the shortfalls that those governments are experiencing - instead I would ask, why aren't those governments and those entities tightening their belt the way that every American family is having to do in these difficult times?
BLOCK: I'm sure the governors of those states would say they've tightened their belts to the point of extreme pain, but let me ask you a separate question - I mean, there certainly is a robust counterargument, which would be that if you're looking at creating new jobs, then increased government investment in public works and construction, things like that, are far more efficient than tax cuts. Tax breaks for businesses, things like that.
NORRIS: I think you will find so much evidence to the contrary. There is a CBO report that has just been released that 24 cents on every dollar spent in the first year in an infrastructure project is all that gets into the economy. And then overall, these are temporary moves. We want long-lasting changes that will promote job creation.
BLOCK: The speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, has said that they need this stimulus package passed and signed before Congress leaves for the President's Day recess in February or she says she won't dismiss the House. Do you think that actually will happen?
NORRIS: I think that, you know, that is the spirit in which President-elect Obama spoke to us when I met with him last week, and there is no reason in the world nor should the American people have to wait for us to drag our feet to try and do the people's business. Of course we should be able to produce a package that is transparent, that is full of accountability, by then. And one of the suggestions that I had for the president-elect last week was that he post online every bit of public expenditure that he is proposing, because there is no quicker way than to engage the American people in a national debate than by putting it online.
BLOCK: And how did he respond to that?
NORRIS: He committed to it - he said that's a great idea, that he and his administration were already in thought process to design such a program to promote transparency. I thought we'd already have seen it by now. I'm anxiously awaiting it.
BLOCK: We've been talking with Congressman Eric Cantor of Virginia. He is the House Republican Whip. Congressman, thank you so much.
NORRIS: Thank you.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
The United Nations and the Palestinian Red Crescent both came under fire from Israeli forces in Gaza today. The U.N. Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, demanded a full explanation. Initially, the Israeli Defense Minister called the attack on the U.N. compound a grave mistake. But afterward, Israel's Prime Minister said Hamas militants had launched attacks from the U.N. facility. NPR's Mike Shuster has more from Jerusalem.
MIKE SHUSTER: It was a very violent day in Gaza. Last night and much of today, Israel intensified its bombardment of the territory, concentrating fire on structures in central Gaza City which until now had not been targeted. The shelling of the U.N. compound caused a massive explosion, according to John Ging, director of the U.N.'s Relief and Works Agency speaking earlier today from Gaza.
NORRIS: The warehouse now is on fire. And this is where there are thousands of tons of food and medicine. This is our hub for the whole operation. It's right here in the center of Gaza City.
SHUSTER: The shelling of the U.N. compound came on the day that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was meeting with key Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Ban expressed outrage at the Israeli attack and Barak told him it was a grave mistake. The U.N. secretary general demanded that Israeli military activities should stop.
NORRIS: Civilian sufferings has reached an unbearable point. That is why I have urged an immediate and durable and truly respected ceasefire. The rockets must stop and Israel's offensive must end.
SHUSTER: Secretary General Ban met later with Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert. Olmert insisted Israeli forces hit the U.N. compound because Hamas militants were launching attacks from inside. With the U.N. secretary general present, however, Olmert expressed his regrets.
P: I'm very sorry. Although, as I said, the Israeli forces were attacked and as it happened, the response was harsh and I'm very sorry. We certainly, absolutely don't want that to happen.
SHUSTER: These attacks were all part of the intensification of Israel's operations over the past 24 hours. Iyad Nasser(ph) of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza said the military situation had become much more volatile.
NORRIS: Another wave, another scale of violence that is going on here last night and today for all day.
SHUSTER: Among the targets was Hamas' Interior Minister Said Siyam. Hamas' television station in Gaza tonight confirmed that Siyam was killed today in an Israeli airstrike along with his son and brother. Siyam was one of the most important Hamas leaders killed in the war so far. One of the Red Crescent's hospitals was also the target of Israeli shelling. It, too, was set ablaze, Iyad Nasser said.
NORRIS: And it's been extremely difficult to organize the putting off this fire with the fire brigade. And finally, we were allowed to escort fire brigades to put off the fire.
SHUSTER: Through 20 days of the Israeli offensive, rockets launched from Gaza have continued to fall on Israeli territory, at least a dozen today. Medical workers now believe more than a thousand Palestinians have died in the conflict, with over 4,000 injured. The number of Israeli fatalities has held steady for two weeks at 13. There's been much talk here that Israel and Hamas are close to an agreement on a ceasefire. Today, Israel sent a senior representative to Cairo to continue talks with the Egyptian government. He returned to Jerusalem this evening to brief the triumverate that has been running the war: Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. There is much speculation that Israel's intensified bombardment of Gaza today is meant to send a signal to Hamas, a demonstration of just how far Israel is prepared to go if Hamas does not agree to a ceasefire and the fighting continues. Mike Shuster, NPR News, Jerusalem.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Also on Capitol Hill today, some comings and goings. Democrats Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Ken Salazar are leaving for top positions in the Obama administration.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Vice president-elect Biden represented Delaware for 36 years. Today he recalled his first visit to the Senate as a 21-year-old tourist.
V: I walked into the chamber and the lights were still on and I was awestruck, literally awestruck, and what in God's name made me do it but I walked up and I sat in the presiding officer's chair. (laughter) and I was mesmerized and next thing I know I feel this hand on my shoulder and a guy, I think a Capitol policeman picked me up and squeezed me and said, what are you doing? And just nine years later, 10 years later, I walked through those same doors as a United States senator. A Capitol Hill policeman stopped me walking in, and he said, do you remember me, sir? I said, no sir. He said, I welcome you back to the Senate. He was retiring two weeks later and he said, welcome to the floor legally.
BLOCK: And that's soon to be vice president, and of course president of the Senate, Joe Biden.
NORRIS: Hillary Clinton has been the junior senator from New York for eight years. Today, she reminds her colleagues that she was new in the Senate when the U.S. came under attack on September 11th, 2001.
NORRIS: The toll was devastating and New York bore the heaviest burden. I well remember the rallying of support and sense of common purpose that all of my colleagues and the citizens of all the states represented here showed toward me personally and toward New York.
BLOCK: That's former first lady and soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton remembering her first year as a senator.
NORRIS: Also the Senate is bidding farewell to Ken Salazar of Colorado who served just one term. If confirmed, he will be the secretary of the Interior. And so Michele, three goodbyes and also one hello today.
BLOCK: That's right. Nine days after being refused his seat, Roland Burris was sworn in as the junior senator from Illinois. Outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney administered the oath.
V: Do you solemnly swear that you will support and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that you will bear true faith and allegiance to the same...
BLOCK: Now Senator Roland Burris is replacing President-elect Obama.
V: And that you will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which you're about to enter, so help you god?
NORRIS: I do.
V: Congratulations.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
NORRIS: Thank you.
BLOCK: The scene on the U.S. Senate floor today.
NORRIS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
The incoming Obama administration views the United Nations as an indispensable, if imperfect, institution. That was one of the messages Susan Rice brought to senators at her confirmation hearing today. The president-elect has tapped Rice to become the next US ambassador to the UN. The job will now be a cabinet-level position. The incoming administration says that change is a sign of renewed commitment to multilateralism. Here's NPR's Michele Kelemen.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Up till now, Susan Rice has mainly worked on Africa, in the Clinton administration and at Brookings, a Washington think tank. She told senators today that one of her priorities will be to do more to stop what she called an ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan. And she made it clear that her past experience with Rwanda has taught her some powerful lessons.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
BLOCK: We need to be prepared to build the sort of international support and consensus that is necessary to challenge the international community so that we see no more Rwandas, and no more Darfurs, and God forbid, what may come in the future.
KELEMEN: Committee Chairman John Kerry expects she will find many frustrations on the job when it comes to conflicts in Africa, from Zimbabwe to the Democratic Republic of Congo.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
BLOCK: It seems somehow that the entire international community has lost the ability to act on its outrage.
KELEMEN: Several Republicans, including South Carolina's Jim DeMint, pressed Susan Rice to do more to shake up U.N. officials and member states.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
BLOCK: They are ineffective, they've been wasteful, there's corruption, and there is deep concern that there is a lot of anti-American sentiment within the United Nations, which I think undermines the trust and confidence that many Americans have with the United Nations and our role there.
KELEMEN: Democrat John Kerry said UN officials should take advantage of the incoming Obama administration's commitment to the UN and stop making excuses to avoid painful reforms. Susan Rice, the would-be ambassador, pledged to refresh and renew America's leadership.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONFIRMATION HEARING)
BLOCK: I will listen, I will engage, I will collaborate. I will go to the UN convinced that this institution has great current value, even greater potential and still great room for improvement.
KELEMEN: It was a quick hearing and the Senate is expected to move equally fast on Susan Rice's confirmation process. A full Senate vote could come a day or two after inauguration. The committee already voted this morning, 16 to one, in favor of Hillary Clinton as secretary of State. Only Louisiana Republican David Vitter said no, saying he thinks former President Bill Clinton's foundation and fundraising activities are a multimillion-dollar minefield of conflicts of interest. Michele Kelemen, NPR News Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
NPR's Robert Smith spent the afternoon and part of the evening out at the scene of the rescue efforts. He joins us now from our New York bureau. And Robert, what more can you tell us about what happened to this flight soon after it took off?
ROBERT SMITH: Now there's enough time that the pilot, we've heard, called in to to see if could make a landing at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey. But as he's turning around, and at this point, he's over one of the most densely packed parts of the nation, New York City, he apparently can't make it to Teterboro and makes a landing in the Hudson River. And you notice I didn't say crash landing because from all indications, this man set down this plane, if not in a gentle way, at least a controlled way, and that was one of the things that helped save lives.
BLOCK: Yeah, one of the passengers on the plane is quoted as saying, "The impact wasn't a whole lot more than a rear-end collision." Robert, dramatic scenes today of rescue of the people on this plane as the plane was partly submerged in the water.
SMITH: And I talked to some of the captains there. They train for this every single month - pulling people out of the water. And when they arrived, they were taking people off the plane wings, off of a rescue raft that had come out of the plane, and there were a couple of people in the water. There were also some police divers, they had to go in the water and pull people out of the water. But despite all of that, very few injuries - some hypothermia, a couple of broken legs, but that's about it.
BLOCK: That's remarkable. And what more can you tell us about the pilot on this plane?
SMITH: His name is Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, that's what we're hearing, from Danville, California. He's 58 years old. He's a 29-year employee of US Airways, and get this - he's a safety consultant. He has his own firm called Safety Reliability Methods. We talked to one safety expert who said, if I was on that airplane, I would want Sully on the flight deck in charge.
BLOCK: NPR's Robert Smith speaking with us from New York. Robert, thanks very much.
SMITH: You're welcome.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. The FAA is reporting that all of the passengers on a U.S. Airways flight that crash-landed in the Hudson River today are off the plane and are safe. According to preliminary reports, that U.S. Airways jet collided with a flock of geese before it landed in New York's Hudson River. Bird collisions are one of the most common causes of airplane crashes. According to a committee that's been set up to study this problem, bird collisions have killed more than 200 people worldwide since 1988. And NPR's Richard Harris joins us to tell us more. Richard, that's awful lot of fatalities based on bird crashes. How frequent are these?
RICHARD HARRIS: It is. Well, those are - that's globally. Let's not forget. And many - and of course, millions and millions of people fly, so we have to put that in perspective. But in fact, for example, in 2007, there were 5,000 military aircraft that ran into birds and more than 7,000 commercial craft hit either birds or deer or other things wandering across the runway. And obviously, most of these do not lead to crashes, but a group called Bird Strike Committee U.S.A. estimates that birds do cost $600 million of damage every year on average to aircraft. And in fact, they said many incidents aren't recorded. I do want to add a historical note here, which is the first incident was reported in 1905 by the Wright brothers. So, it goes way back.
BLOCK: Yeah. We should mention that the reports of a flock of geese being responsible for bringing this U.S. Airways jet down are still unconfirmed. The FAA is investigating. But in general, what happens when a bird collides with an airplane? What can happen there?
HARRIS: Well, it can fly into many different parts of the plane and the most damaging place and dangerous place in many incidents is if it goes into the engine. Now, modern airplanes are designed to keep flying if they lose one engine. But if you get a flock of birds, you could clog up multiple engines and obviously, there's a certain point the plane just simply can't stand up. So that's - so it is potentially a very serious situation.
BLOCK: Yeah. And specific types of birds that are usually involved?
HARRIS: Well, waterfowl are very common. Geese, ducks, other birds like that, which tend to be near airports, which tend to be near the water. Seagulls also, and also birds of prey are a problem. Most of these incidents happen pretty close to takeoff or landing because most birds are pretty close to the ground, so it tends to be a problem around the airports.
BLOCK: What do airlines try to do to mitigate harm from birds or to keep birds away from airports in the first place?
HARRIS: Well, they first of all look around the airport and see what is it that's appealing to the birds that's there and if there's standing bodies of water that might attract waterfowl. They will try to make the airport less appealing to that. They - sometimes airlines actually modify their schedules if there are times of day when birds are a particular problem, dawn and dusk and so on. And they also installed soundmakers or some airports have trained dogs or other methods of these just to scare away birds. And in instances where there's - where none of that actually works well enough, they sometimes get permission to go and shoot the birds or find other ways of killing them to just get them out of the way.
BLOCK: And in terms of airplane construction itself, is there anything they can do to make engines, for example, less vulnerable to bird strikes?
HARRIS: That's a subject of study. They do throw frozen turkeys and so on into moving aircraft engines to try figure out ways of designing them. But really, there's - I think that's a fairly limited course of action. Really, the best thing is to avoid the collisions to begin with as much as you can.
BLOCK: OK. We've been talking about bird strikes, which are believed to be responsible for the downing of a U.S. Airways jet landed in New York's Hudson River this afternoon. Apparently, all the passengers on that plane are off the plane and are safe, including the crew. Thanks. NPR's Richard Harris, thanks very much.
HARRIS: My pleasure.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. New York Governor David Paterson is calling it a miracle on the Hudson. More than 150 passengers and crew of a US Airways jet have all been rescued after their plane made an emergency landing in the Hudson River off Manhattan today. Flight 1549 had just taken off from LaGuardia Airport on route to Charlotte, North Carolina, when the pilot reported a double bird strike. The plane then eased down out of the sky, splashing into the water, then floating. Boats took the emerging passengers to safety. Police divers pulled a few people from the water. Christopher Butler works for Nickelodeon in Midtown, and he was in his office when he saw the plane out the window.
NORRIS: I was sitting at my desk on the 33rd floor at 1515 Broadway.
BLOCK: And what caught your eye?
NORRIS: Well, it caught my ear, actually. It was the woman I sit next to saying, um, um, um. And she said, there's a plane. And we turned around. And sure enough, there was a plane coming in slow and level, and it touched down in the Hudson River.
BLOCK: Now when you say slow and level, did it - I mean, did it exhibit signs of distress? Or clearly just where it was, was a sign that something was terribly wrong here.
NORRIS: Oh, it just seemed - well, obviously something was clearly wrong, but it was not evident from the manner in which it was flying. It was just touching down. It seemed oddly uneventful.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
There were some injuries. The extent is unclear. One hospital spokesman said patients would have to be treated for exposure. The sight of a plane slowly coming down so close to the city evoked memories of 9/11 for many witnesses, but the Homeland Security Department says there is no indication of terrorism. In fact, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union says the pilot reported a double bird strike soon after takeoff. Stay with us as NPR continues to cover this story throughout the evening. You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
NPR's Robert Smith is on 40th Street by the Hudson River in Midtown Manhattan, and he joins us now. And Robert, you've been there as some of the survivors have been coming in off the water. Can you tell us what sorts of injuries they seem to have sustained?
ROBERT SMITH: Well, so far, some people have been treated for hypothermia. The water, as you can imagine, was extremely cold. It's one of the coldest days of the winter here in New York City. There was one woman whose leg was injured. Another man I saw come out on a stretcher. We don't know what his injuries were, but he was moving around. We heard from one of the people who actually walked off...
(SOUNDBITE OF POLICEWOMAN GIVING INSTRUCTIONS TO CROWD)
SMITH: You got it. Police officers moving me now, gives you the sense that they're still trying to herd reporters around and they're still trying to keep us away from the ambulances that are coming out. But as we heard from one survivor who came off of it, he saw people who were covered in blood who had hit their heads, but that everyone had gotten off the plane, as you said.
BLOCK: You spoke with one of the passengers on this US Airways plane. What did he say about what led up to this crash, what he felt and what he saw?
SMITH: But still, he said the pilots were absolute heroes to take it on as they did. And you have to realize they - how fortuitous they were to land where they did in the Hudson River. They were right next to the ferry boat terminal here at 40th Street, and almost immediately ferry boats were able to surround this plane and help get people off the plane and keep the plane from drifting downriver into the main channel.
BLOCK: What did this passenger say about the procedure for getting off this plane? There were these images - TV images - of passengers standing on the wings of this aircraft as it floated in the river.
SMITH: He said people were fairly calm. He saw one woman who was with a baby, he said, was trying to climb over (unintelligible) and people just started to shout, women and children first. And they got them off to life rafts. At one point, he said that the life rafts had been tied to the plane and the plane was starting to move and go down a little bit and one of the ferry boat captains gave him a knife to cut the raft away from the plane. But he said it was fairly orderly and people were pretty respectful considering the circumstances.
BLOCK: And as we said, everyone is now off that plane.
SMITH: Everyone is off that plane and the plane continues to float down the river. From what we hear, it's sort of approaching Battery Park City, so it's gone, you know, a good 40, 50 blocks downriver. No word yet. We're just awaiting the mayor about to give a briefing and the governors here. They're going to give a briefing on what's going to happen to the plane, the details of the rescue, how many fire trucks and such were here for the rescue, and we're going to hear that in a few minutes.
BLOCK: OK. NPR's Robert Smith by the Hudson River in Midtown Manhattan. Robert, thanks so much. We've been talking about the emergency landing of a US Airways passenger jet this afternoon in the Hudson River. More than 150 people onboard that plane and all are reported to be safe.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
News flash, it's cold in North Dakota. OK, it's winter and it is the great plains. But an item on the Associated Press caught our attention. A wave of severe cold - minus 20 during the day, minus 30 and lower at night - is forcing police officers in North Dakota to test drunk drivers indoors. Officer Mike Erbes is with the Fargo Police.
BLOCK: As you'd expect, if you're out breaking into cars, that's not nearly as much fun when it's seventy below windchill, I'd say, as where - during the summertime when it's seventy degrees.
BLOCK: Yeah, it will be a little deterrent, I think.
BLOCK: Correct. And so we see those types of crimes, they drop off significantly when the weather is cold.
BLOCK: You know, we were intrigued by this story that in North Dakota, there where you are in Fargo, it's too cold to test drunken drivers outside.
BLOCK: Yeah. And it does happen here occasionally and what they're talking about are our standardized field sobriety tests. And now when the weather is so severe as it is, somebody who hasn't been drinking at all, who isn't dressed appropriate for the weather, they likely won't do as well.
BLOCK: So you're saying, if it's 30 below and the wind is blowing, somebody may not be able to stand on one leg whether they're sober or whether they're drunk.
BLOCK: Sure. You know, a typical person who let's say, they went out for the evening and they had dinner and they - you know, whether they drank or not, I mean, if they're dressed for a nice evening out, they have dress shoes or high heels on, they maybe don't have a heavier coat or hats and gloves and face masks, things of that nature, just from you being cold, you may not perform as well on that test.
BLOCK: You were telling me before about when you first came to live in Fargo.
BLOCK: Yeah. When I first came to live in Fargo and I moved here to go to college from Southern - southwestern part of Minnesota, there's a period of - and I don't remember the exact number, but it was like 35 days in a row where the temperature never got above zero and I - it made me really wonder about my decision to move here. Usually, about this time every year, I make a vow to move someplace where it doesn't get quite so cold and then the next year, I'm here making the same vow.
BLOCK: (Laughing) Well, Officer Erbes, good luck out there. Stay warm.
BLOCK: All right. Thank you very much.
BLOCK: Thanks for talking with us.
BLOCK: You betcha.
BLOCK: Bye-bye.
BLOCK: Bye-bye.
BLOCK: That's Mike Erbes with the Fargo Police.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg held a news conference early this evening alongside the governor, David Paterson. Here's some of what the mayor had to say.
BLOCK: It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river and then making sure that everybody got out. I had a long conversation with the pilot. He walked the plane twice after everybody else was off and tried to verify that there was nobody else onboard and assures us there were not. I also talked to a passenger who said he was the last one up the aisle and that he made sure there was nobody behind him.
BLOCK: NPR's Margot Adler joins us now from New York. And Margot, tell us more about what the mayor had to say in this news conference today.
MARGOT ADLER: Well, that description of the pilot was certainly the most interesting new piece of information. In general, I would say that Mayor Bloomberg was extremely careful. He kept on saying, we believe, we think. He didn't want any speculation. So he would say, we believe that everyone is, you know, out. We believe that there are 150 plus crew. He would, for example, not speculate on birds hitting the engine, which has been talked about by a lot that a flock of birds may have disabled one or two engines. He would not speculate on that.
BLOCK: And apparently there was communication from the pilot to air traffic control that he was reporting a double bird strike. Margot, what can you tell us about injuries among these passengers after this remarkable rescue and landing?
ADLER: Well, passengers were taken to several different hospitals, some of them in New York and some of them in New Jersey. And we don't actually know everything. There have been reports that at least seven people were treated for hypothermia at St. Luke's Hospital, that at least 10 people were treated for similar injuries at St. Vincent's. There was a report that one flight attendant was being treated for a fracture. But one of the things that everyone said was that's remarkable is it looks like none of the injuries so far - again we don't know everything - but none of the injuries seem to be life threatening.
BLOCK: Quite extraordinary and quite a performance by this flight crew, clearly. Margot, there were, as we've heard, images for quite some time of this plane floating - at least most of the plane floating - on the surface of the river, the fuselage was intact. Where is the plane now?
ADLER: The plane now is apparently right around Battery Park. I guess it's been tugged there. And I think you're right that these images of people standing on the wings and standing on top of the plane, I think the thing that's most amazing about those images is that their feet were clearly in 40 degree water in 20 degree weather.
BLOCK: NPR's Margot Adler in New York. Margot, thanks so much.
ADLER: Thank you so much.
BLOCK: And again, to recap, that was a US Airways flight 1549 headed from LaGuardia to Charlotte, North Carolina, apparently hit birds while in flight soon after takeoff, and the pilot managed to get the plane over the Hudson River and land there. All 150 or so passengers and crew onboard are reported to be safe.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Joining us now is Fred Beretta of North Carolina. He was on flight 1549. He was traveling home. Mr. Beretta, did you get any warning from the pilot about this emergency landing?
BLOCK: We did. The left engine failed, and there was a loud explosion, and there was a bit of silence. The pilot made a very gradual left turn, and then he came on, and the only words he said were prepare for impact. And at that point, we pretty much knew that we were going into the Hudson River.
BLOCK: Now, you were near Manhattan so there are very large buildings all around you. You were certain that you were going to land in the water?
BLOCK: Well, at the moment that he said those words, we were already over the river, and we could pretty much deduce from the level of altitude that we were at that we were going in the river.
BLOCK: Where were you seated in the plane?
BLOCK: I was in seat 16A. It was, I believe, just behind the left wing.
BLOCK: And - and so you were actually one of the first passengers then able to get to that door and get out on the wing.
BLOCK: Not actually. The exit row was a few rows ahead of me. I had to go forward. I think some of passengers might have gone to the rear doors. And I initially got off and we were standing on the left wing, and that was kind of getting overcrowded, people were going into the water so I went out back up into the right front of the plane. So I had to go back into the plane and then got on a raft on the right side of the front of the aircraft. And at that point, I looked back and just the pilot and the attendants were on the plane, and it looked like everyone had gotten off which I was very grateful for at that point.
BLOCK: I'm trying to image what the scene must have been like inside that plane as people are trying to get out.
BLOCK: It really was, I think, amazing. I mean people were remarkably calm. The only time there was really shouting was when we were just about to hit the water, and people were yelling to the folks in the exit row to prepare to get the doors open. There just wasn't a lot of time, and I think that everyone was just stunned. I don't think people really had time to panic.
BLOCK: Were there children or older people on board? Were they able to get easily to safety?
BLOCK: There was an elderly lady because when I had to go back in the plane, she was one of the last ones off. I think she - I don't know if she was slightly injured, but she was walking kind of slowly. People were trying to help her get off. There was a mother with an infant. I know they got off the plane. I don't know which boat she got on, but she was sitting kind of on the raft, I believe, kind of half-submerged in the water, but I believe she was rescued.
BLOCK: Mr. Beretta, we have been able to follow along by watching some of these pictures, and there's one incredible image with the plane partially submerged, and passengers standing on both wing,s looking almost like they're standing on water. I'm trying to imagine what it must have been like for you while you're standing there waiting for these boats to come and get you to safety on land.
BLOCK: Well, it was pretty incredible. I was just - I think we're all grateful that the plane was not sinking rapidly. I think that was the first thought. We survived the crash, and then you're thinking this is going to go down pretty quickly. We're going to all be in the water, and we just hoped that the boats were going to get there soon, and they did. It was remarkable how quickly all those - you know, the boats got there, helicopters. They just worked extremely - almost flawlessly from that point on.
BLOCK: How did you get to land?
BLOCK: Well, most of the passengers were able to get to the rafts which extended off the doors. So we stayed on a raft until one of the ferry boats came and then exited on to that. At one point, we were concerned because the raft was tethered to the plane. The plane was sinking, and there was no way to get it untethered. So we had someone throw a knife down from the boats so we were able to cut the raft from the plane. That was another interesting moment, but (laughing) it all worked out fine.
BLOCK: Fred Beretta, I must say you sound incredibly calm given what you've been through today.
BLOCK: Well, I'm sure it's just adrenaline and shock, but just glad to be here talking to you.
BLOCK: Well, Mr. Beretta, so glad you're safe. Thank you very much for speaking with us.
BLOCK: Thank you. Have a good night.
BLOCK: That's Fred Beretta of Weddington, North Carolina. He was a passenger on board US Airways flight 1459 when it landed in the Hudson River this afternoon.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
More now on the emergency landing of U.S. Airways Flight 1549. The flight had taken off from LaGuardia Airport and was headed to Charlotte. It's been reported that the plane hit a flock of birds. The pilot reported a double bird strike. The pilot landed the plane in the Hudson River, and within minutes, the rescue of all 150 passengers and 5 crew members was under way. Janis Krums was crossing the river on a commuter ferry when the plane came down...
NORRIS: Someone yelled, there's a plane in the Hudson. And, you know, we all looked up. And I took one picture before we pulled up to the plane. And then, you know, after that, we were just pulling people up from the wing and then from the raft up into the ferry. And we tried to get them coats and whatever else we had to keep them warm. I think we rescued around 30 to 40 - our ferry did - and we brought it back to the Manhattan side.
NORRIS: Did you actually see the plane hit the water?
NORRIS: I did not. We did not see that. We just pulled up, and it was three-quarters submerged. There were two rafts completely full, and then there were - the wings were - everyone was on the wings standing and waiting in around waist-deep in the water, freezing. We were the first ferry. After, I'd say, five or six minutes, there were five, six other ferries all surrounding the plane and getting people out of there, so it was a very quick rescue. Very impressed. And then one of the main things that the passengers who I had talked to, they said the pilot did a great job. He told them, you know, brace yourself for a crash landing. And after that, it was as smooth as a crash landing as they could ever ask for.
NORRIS: What kind of state were the passengers in when they boarded your ferry?
NORRIS: They were in a little bit of shock. They were freezing, but they were, you know, they were happy to be on the ferry, obviously. And they said we were there within five minutes, so they kind of didn't have time to react too much. Everything happened so quickly. And there was one injured woman - and actually, the only one that had an injury that we saw.
NORRIS: You say there was one injured woman?
NORRIS: She had a foot injury. And we - they got her on our ferry and relocated her into one of those - to sit down. And then there was a doctor who did a splint on her leg so she was (unintelligible) so that she was, you know, as good as she could be on the ferry.
NORRIS: Mr. Krums, do I have this right? You were trying to help at least one passenger stay warm. You gave up your overcoat and your gloves.
NORRIS: Yeah, my overcoat. I had another jacket. And then I had a couple of hats that I lost, but - yes, so they were all freezing. So I was giving my clothes away.
NORRIS: When you say a couple of hats you lost, you gave those away to people that were on the plane.
NORRIS: Yeah, they got lost in the commotion.
NORRIS: If you go online, if you turn on the television, you see all kinds of pictures of this partially submerged plane in the Hudson River. You were there snapping pictures, also.
NORRIS: Well, I took one picture, and I put it on Twitter. And that one, I guess, blew up, because I had - it just exploded with everyone. That's how people contacted me, actually, through Twitter. They messaged me and then - now, it's been pretty crazy with everyone, you know, a lot of interviews and whatnot. But yeah, that's one picture, I guess, that has circulated quite a bit.
NORRIS: Tell me about that picture. What do we see?
NORRIS: From what I remember, it was the nose of the plane with one raft and people standing on the wing, but I haven't even looked at it since, you know. I think that's what I took.
NORRIS: Well, Mr. Krums, thank you very much for speaking to us. All the best to you.
NORRIS: Thank you.
NORRIS: That's Janis Krums. He was crossing the Hudson River on the Midtown Ferry, and he helped in the rescue of passengers from US Airways Flight 1549. You can see that photo that Krums posted to Twitter at our Web site, npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
California is drowning in a sea of red ink, and today, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said the state is facing insolvency within weeks. He gave his annual State of the State address at the capitol in Sacramento, and he did not offer a list of solutions to California's $40 billion budget deficit. Instead, the Republican governor spoke in strong and broad terms about the crisis and how it's viewed by people outside California.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATE OF THE STATE ADDRESS)
G: In recent years, they've seen more gridlock in Sacramento than on our roads, if that is possible. I will not give the traditional State of the State address here today because the reality is that our state is incapacitated until we solve the budget crisis. The truth is that California is in a state of emergency.
BLOCK: John Myers covers the state capitol for member station KQED, and he joins us from Sacramento. John, you hear the governor there calling this a state of emergency. Is California really on the brink of insolvency?
MYERS: Well, Melissa, I think it's as close as any state may have gotten in modern times. You know, California's $40 billion deficit is larger than any deficit any state faces in the nation, at least in dollar terms. And really, it's a real double whammy. It's the result of the real major economic crisis we're all suffering through, and from California's long-running political fight about how to balance a budget for a state with 38 million people.
BLOCK: We mentioned that Gov. Schwarzenegger didn't provide solutions in this speech, but at the same time, there is an ongoing effort to deal with this huge budget deficit.
MYERS: The Democrats here in California want more of the solution to be taxes, the Republicans want no new taxes. And I think the real question is which is worse - deep cuts in state spending which would affect the social safety net in these economically troubling times, or a tax increase during bad times that could further slow the economy. The governor seems to be stuck in the middle of a battle where everyone sees what to do differently.
BLOCK: And I gather that the governor also had some suggestions for the legislatures themselves.
MYERS: He did, he obviously has substantive ones as we've been talking about, but this is Arnold Schwarzenegger and he does enjoy a little bit of the anti-government rhetoric every now and then. He told the legislatures today that perhaps they should consider some self-sacrifice, even if it's only symbolic.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
G: We should make a commitment that the legislatures and the governor, too, lose meal(unintelligible 2:12) expenses and our paychecks for every day that the budget goes past the constitutional deadline which is June 15th. I mean you have to admit this is a brilliant idea.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
G: I look at the happy faces this evening now. I love that. I mean if you call a taxi and the taxi doesn't show up, you don't have to pay the driver. So if the peoples' work doesn't get done, I think the peoples' representatives shouldn't get paid either. That is common sense in the real world.
BLOCK: John, a little theatrical flourish there from the governor. (Laughing) When he was elected more than five years ago, Arnold Schwarzenegger was promising to fix another budget crisis and so is there palpable sense there now that he has failed?
MYERS: Well, I certainly think there's a sense that the work is far from finished, you know, he's easily the most recognizable governor in America, not to mention the world. The audiences often hear that Arnold Schwarzenegger, I think nationally, that they hear that he's transcended traditional politics, that he's a Republican that's fighting global warming, and that he's post-partisan, but I think here in California, the record's a lot more mixed. And this budget deficit has been several years running. And I think, you know, what his legacy will hinge on is the budget deficit in a way, and as people say in his old career, the reviews are, I think, mixed.
BLOCK: Thank you, John.
MYERS: Thank you.
BLOCK: John Myers covers the California state capitol from member station KQED. He spoke with us from Sacramento.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Tonight President Bush gave his farewell address to the country. Mr. Bush spoke in front of a live audience from the East Room of the White House. Although he leaves office with a very low approval rating and a dismal economy, tonight the president claimed some successes, and he spoke about guiding principles for the future.
P: If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led as we address these challenges and others we cannot foresee tonight. America must maintain our moral clarity. I have often spoken to you about good and evil. And this has made some uncomfortable. But good and evil are present in this world, and between the two, there can be no compromise.
BLOCK: NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson joins me now. And Mara, the message from the president today - tonight a lot of hope and pride, also resilience, and some caution for the future.
MARA LIASSON: He talked about Iraq going from a brutal dictatorship now to a sworn friend of the United States. Every taxpayer, he says, pays lower income taxes. Sam Alito and John Roberts are on the Supreme Court. And he said even with the economic crisis, he said that facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard the economy, and it would have been worse if we had not acted. So although there is obviously a big debate about his view about all of those achievements, that's how he sees his presidency.
BLOCK: And there is a longstanding tradition of the farewell address. Is this basically legacy burnishing or...
LIASSON: Well, sure.
BLOCK: For somebody who had such an unpopular presidency.
LIASSON: Well, sure. I mean, he's given a flurry of press conferences and interviews. He's been talking a lot in these final days. And I think this address and all those other conversations were really an attempt by President Bush to define his presidency on his own terms with no filter. The media filter for him has been pretty harsh. I mean, people have been rendering some pretty negative judgments about his two terms, and this is a chance for him to give a different view of the record. And of course as he said many times, history will take quite a long time before the final verdict on his presidency is in.
BLOCK: Yeah. Mara, in the past, presidents have used this opportunity to warn the nation about dangers they saw on the horizon with President Eisenhower, he was warning about the military industrial complex in his farewell. Similar - a different kind of warning, but also a caution from President Bush tonight.
LIASSON: Yes. President Bush warned about isolationism and what he called its companion, protectionism. He said retreating behind our borders would only invite danger. He said if America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led. So that was the warning that he left the country with.
BLOCK: OK, NPR's Mara Liasson, thanks for joining us.
LIASSON: Thank you, Melissa.
BLOCK: And let's go out on the end of the president's address from his farewell speech to the nation tonight.
P: It has been the privilege of a lifetime to serve as your president. There have been good days and tough days. But every day I have been inspired by the brightness of our country and uplifted by the goodness of our people. I have been blessed to represent this nation we love, and I will always be honored to carry a title that means more to me than any other - citizen of the United States of America. And so my fellow Americans, for the final time, goodnight. May God bless this house and our next president. And may God bless you and our wonderful country. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. "Notorious" is the name of a new biopic about the life and early death of the rap star The Notorious B.I.G. It's co-produced by his friends, by people involved in his music and his mother. It portrays Christopher Wallace as a complicated character, a young Brooklyn hustler, then a budding rap star who was very close to his mom.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "NOTORIOUS")
ANGELA BASSETT: (As Voletta Wallace) Christopher, are you not still lying in that bed, are you?
JAMAL WOOLARD: (As Christopher "Biggie" Wallace) No.
BASSETT: (As Voletta Wallace) Christopher, what are you doing? You're saying you're prayers?
WOOLARD: (As Christopher "Biggie" Wallace) Praying that God teaches you how to knock.
BASSETT: (As Voletta Wallace) Please, don't you mock your prayers.
WOOLARD: (As Christopher "Biggie" Wallace) You don't think Jehovah has a sense of humor?
BASSETT: (As Voletta Wallace) He must have, if he made you. (Laughing)
WOOLARD: (As Christopher "Biggie" Wallace) We always got to listen to this corny old country music.
BASSETT: (As Voletta Wallace) I happen to like this music. It tells good stories.
NORRIS: The film "Notorious" opens today. Reporter Corey Takahashi visited the site of the rapper's murder in Los Angeles, and he went along with the writers of the movie.
COREY TAKAHASHI: This is the site of one of L.A.'s most famous unsolved murders.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRAFFIC TAKAHASHI: It's the intersection Wilshire Boulevard and)
REGGIE ROCK BYTHEWOOD: It really was like the shot that was heard around the world, in terms of hip-hop.
TAKAHASHI: Reggie Rock Bythewood co-wrote the screenplay for "Notorious" with Cheo Hodari Coker. Coker had followed the rapper's rise in the hip-hop world, reported on his murder for the L.A. Times and was the journalist to interview him at length.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG)
NOTORIOUS B: (Rapping) We used to fuss when the landlord dissed us. No heat, wonder why Christmas missed us. Birthdays was the worst days. Now we sip champagne when we thirst-ay. Damn right, I like the life I live 'cause I went from negative to positive and it's all...
CHEO HODARI COKER: How does a Catholic school kid, who's a straight-A student, become a drug dealer, almost by accident, become a rap legend, go through all the trials and tribulations of being a superstar and then, right at the moment he gets it all together, it just gets snapped away?
TAKAHASHI: More than a decade after his death, his music still resonates. On a recent afternoon, Marlon Blakley(ph) was getting off a bus near the 1997 murder scene.
MARLON BLAKLEY: He wasn't just a hardcore rapper. People loved him. The women loved him, you know. He even say, I'm ugly, like he would say, I'm ugly as ever. However, I stay Gucci down to the socks.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "ONE MORE CHANCE")
B: (Rapping) However, I stay Gucci down to the socks, rings and watch filled with rocks and my jam knock in your Mitsubishi. Girls pee pee when they see me. Navajos creep me in they teepee as I lay down laws like Island Carpets. Stop it - if you think they gonna make a profit. Don't see my ones, don't see my guns - get it? Now, tell ya friends, Poppa hit it...
TAKAHASHI: Screenwriter Coker says The Notorious B.I.G.'s lyrics continue to distinguish him from other rap stars.
HODARI COKER: He's relevant to hip-hop in the same way that Charlie Parker or John Coltrane is relevant to jazz or the way that Michael Jordan or Dr. J are still relevant to basketball. It doesn't mean that people aren't playing every day. It just means that he put a mark on it, and a certain signature that is just indelible.
TAKAHASHI: His influence echoes throughout the work of pop stars like Sean "Diddy" Combs - his former producer - as well as Jay-Z, a fellow Brooklynite, who's carried forth the B.I.G. formula of wit, verve and humor. But B.I.G.'s celebrity in the mid-'90s came with what the rapper called "Mo' Money/Mo' Problems."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "MO' MONEY/MO' PROBLEMS")
SEAN: (Rapping) From the d-to-the-a-to-the-d-d-y. Know you'd rather see me die than to see me fly. I call all the shots, rip all the spots, rock all the... ..TEXT: TAKAHASHI: Screenwriter Reggie Rock Bythewood.
ROCK BYTHEWOOD: This was still the height of this media-induced East Coast-West Coast war between East Coast rappers and West Coast rappers.
TAKAHASHI: Tupac Shakur represented the wild West Coast sound. B.I.G. was East Coast tradition. And what had been a competition for record sales took on menacing tone after the California superstar, Tupac, was robbed and shot at a New York recording studio in 1994. Tupac suspected that members of The Notorious B.I.G.'s camp were involved. In 1996, Tupac was shot again, fatally, in Las Vegas.
Six months later, The Notorious B.I.G. traveled to L.A. to promote and work on music and to try to ease tensions between the East and West Coasts. That's when he was killed. The movie "Notorious" trends toward the positive. It doesn't ignore gritty aspects of his 24 years, but it's clearly the perspective of family, friends and fans. Cheo Hodari Coker says one key chapter of the story remains open.
HODARI COKER: I hope, if anything, this movie spurs interest to demand his murder be solved.
TAKAHASHI: So far, this is one L.A. story without a clean Hollywood ending. For NPR News, I'm Corey Takahashi in Los Angeles.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
We have one more political note, a poetic one. Only three poems have been read at presidential inaugurations, and they've been serious and sweeping. Well, Nikki Giovanni has a different style. She's one of the poets we've commissioned to write unofficial inaugural poems. Giovanni is an award-winning poet and spoken-word artist, and she has written an inaugural rap. She says it's for President-elect Obama to deliver himself. But until that day, here's Nikki Giovanni.
NIKKI GIOVANNI: (Reciting) I'm Barack Obama And I'm here to say: I'm President Of the USA.
I'll walk the streets And knock on doors Share with the folks: Not my dreams but yours.
I'll talk with the people. I'll listen and learn. I'll make the butter, Then clean the churn.
My wife is pretty. My children are sweet. We need one puppy To be complete.
I represented in Springfield, Senated in D.C., Articulating all the while What change means to me.
Some folk said "wait." Some said "not now." But here I am quite ready To take that president vow.
The time is now For us to stand Because we all know Yes We Can, Yes We Can, Yes We Can.
BLOCK: That's Nikki Giovanni. Her most recent collection of poetry is called "Bicycles: Love Poems." She's a professor of English at Virginia Tech.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. For scientists, it's hard to think of a discovery that would be more exciting than finding life on Mars. Just to be clear, they aren't making that claim now. But scientists say the Red Planet is venting plumes of methane gas, which could be a sign of life, or maybe not. As NPR's Richard Harris reports, it's a puzzle that says, at the very least, Mars is not as dead as it might appear.
RICHARD HARRIS: Most methane on earth comes from living things, especially microbes, living in swamps, cows and termite guts, for example. So, scientists sat up and paid attention when astronomers found it on Mars a few years ago. Now, a study that Michael Mumma is publishing in Science magazine takes this business up a notch, a big notch.
MICHAEL MUMMA: We not only provided definitive detection of methane on Mars, but we also can quantify local sites where it is actively being released.
HARRIS: Methane isn't just circulating in trace amounts in the Martian air; it's actually burbling up from the ground, from a few specific locations.
MUMMA: And whether it's a single geyser or vent or an area of multiple vents, we really couldn't tell.
HARRIS: Mumma, who's at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, says, the methane is only coming out during the relatively warm summer months and only a tiny amount is emerging, about a pound of gas per second. That's more than enough for your stove but barely a wisp, when you think of being diluted in the entire Martian atmosphere. And the rock formation where it's emerging from is reminiscent of Earth's geology, which adds to the intrigue.
MUMMA: This is a very interesting region already because it suggests that conditions were right in early Mars at this site for biology to perhaps have originated, and now that we have found this to be a site of abundant methane release, this perhaps raises that possibility to a higher level.
HARRIS: The methane could conceivably be coming from microbes living below Mars' frozen surface. Or it could hypothetically be the Martian equivalent of fossil fuels laid down by Martian life forms millions of years ago, when the planet was more hospitable. But Mumma doesn't want to oversell these possibilities.
MUMMA: We must be extremely careful not to jump on a bandwagon of biology, exclusively for its production.
HARRIS: It's true that here on earth, methane is mostly the product of living organisms, but Christopher Oze says, it has other sources as well.
CHRISTOPHER OZE: I'd love to see life on Mars. I mean, everyone is just hoping to see life on Mars. But, you know, you have to go with what you know so far.
HARRIS: Oze is a geologist at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. He says, there are chemical reactions during mineral formation that can also generate methane gas. So, sure, it would be fantastic to prove that living organisms are the actual source.
OZE: But unless you find the bacteria doing something or some sort of fossil, you know, you just can't sort of play that card quite yet.
HARRIS: Whether the methane is coming from living organisms or from chemical reactions, Sushil Atreya, from the University of Michigan says, the findings suggest strongly that there is liquid water under the Martian surface.
SUSHIL ATREYA: Whether it's geology that's producing methane or it's biology - in either case, you require liquid water to do it. And that, I believe, in itself is a pretty exciting result.
HARRIS: Whatever the case, Mumma says, his findings suggest that there's stuff happening on Mars. If not actual life, well, at least some surprising and unexpected chemistry.
MUMMA: The idea of being able to actually sample the gases from the interior of an active planet other than Earth is actually extremely exciting.
HARRIS: A lander that's supposed to get to Mars in 2012 could solve the mystery, but only if it happens to touch down in a spot where the methane is actually burbling out from underground. Richard Harris, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
There's a mystery in California over what's causing the sickness and death of hundreds of brown pelicans. Yesterday, the California Department of Fish and Game released a preliminary report, suggesting that the cold snap in the Pacific Northwest might be part of the problem. More tests are pending. In the meantime, wildlife rescuers are trying to save the remaining birds, as Gloria Hillard reports.
GLORIA HILLARD: This fishing pier is a popular hang put for California brown pelicans. About a dozen of the long-necked birds are perched here. As wildlife rescuers Dave Weeshoff and Bob Beckler approached the feathered assemblage, the birds gently take to the air. Weeshoff and Beckler are here for the ones that are sick and unable to fly.
BOB BECKLER: Dave.
DAVE WEESHOFF: Yeah?
BECKLER: Let's get this guy.
WEESHOFF: OK. We need a net?
BECKLER: Maybe.
HILLARD: Another bird is in trouble.
BECKLER: He's a little weak.
HILLARD: This is one is in the water.
WEESHOFF: You got it?
HILLARD: Weeshoff, drapes a small white sheet over the bird to calm him. In his arms, it looks as if he's holding a small child in a makeshift Halloween ghost costume. Gently, the bird is folded into a carrier.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE TALKING)
HILLARD: At the International Bird Rescue and Research Center in San Pedro, they've taken in more than 45 ailing pelicans in the last two weeks. Rehabilitation manager Julie King and her staff have been working around the clock trying to save them.
JULIE KING: To see what we're seeing now is very out of the ordinary.
HILLARD: In previous years, the endangered pelicans have been plagued with domoic acid poisoning, a neurotoxin found in algae blooms, King says.
KING: Generally, birds that come in with domoic acid poisoning have some fairly severe neurological symptoms. And none of the birds that we've been seeing necessarily exhibit any of those symptoms, other than the general disorientation.
HILLARD: Initial blood and tissue tests have shown trace amounts of domoic acid, but researchers believe it may be playing a secondary role to a larger problem. What that is, they don't know yet. Hundreds of birds from Baja to Washington State have been found dead or sick, far from their coastal home, including a pelican found wandering in the snow at an elevation of 7,000 feet in New Mexico.
(SOUNDBITE OF PELICAN CALL)
HILLARD: The federal government wants to remove the bird from the endangered species list, but wildlife rescuers on the ground say, that's a mistake. Longtime volunteer Dave Weeshoff says, the majestic bird has not had an easy go of it.
WEESHOFF: Every day, we see fishhooks. Almost every day, we see gunshots - pellet guns, BB guns, that sort of thing - monofilament fishing line. So, there's just a lot of different pressures on these birds, in terms of being able to survive out in the wild.
HILLARD: For now, the two dozen or so pelicans rehabilitating in the center's large aviary and water pool are the lucky ones. These birds, King says, are showing signs of improvement.
KING: Yeah, that we'll actually be able to release all the ones that we have is definitely our biggest hope. And also, that we're releasing them into a safe environment.
HILLARD: Which is not necessarily the case, is it?
KING: Right, right. So, I think we'll definitely be taking them. Our main goal is to do what we can for them as quickly as we can and get them back out into the environment.
HILLARD: Even with all its perils. For NPR News, I'm Gloria Hillard.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Vice President Dick Cheney was the most powerful vice president this nation has ever had, but when he leaves office next week, will he leave the vice presidency stronger or weaker? That's the question NPR's Nina Totenberg explores in part two of her report on the Cheney legacy.
NINA TOTENBERG: Dick Cheney was, by all accounts, the closest thing this nation has had to a deputy president. On everything from the law of terrorism to energy and tax policy, he led the way for a new president. In the first term, driving policy and in the second term, when his influence waned, blocking policy changes. Prior to Cheney, it was President Carter's vice president, Walter Mondale, who was seen as the transformative figure. Vice presidential scholar, Joel Goldstein.
JOEL GOLDSTEIN: The Mondale vice presidency was really the big bang that transformed the office.
TOTENBERG: But Cheney got more than access to the president, access to all information the president saw and a mandate to be a troubleshooter throughout government. Former cabinet members, reporters and scholars all report that, at least in the first term, he framed the options the options for a president who disdained details. He sometimes suppressed information, not just from Congress and the press, but from key executive branch players and, on occasion, from the president himself. Former Vice President Mondale is bluntly dismissive of the Cheney model.
WALTER MONDALE: The problem is that they use the unique position of a vice president to go beyond the law and turned the vice presidency almost into government within government, beyond accountability to the Congress, or to the press and to the law.
TOTENBERG: Former Vice President Dan Quayle believes Cheney did the job a new and uncertain president wanted him to do. At least, until the president gained confidence in himself and perhaps, lost some of his confidence in Cheney.
DAN QUAYLE: It's what the president wants. It's not what the vice president wants.
TOTENBERG: Vice presidential scholar Goldstein points out that Cheney's goal was never to strengthen the vice presidency, but to strengthen the presidency - something Cheney was never shy about saying.
DICK CHENEY: Time after time, administrations have traded away the authority of the president to do his job. We're not going to do that in this administration.
TOTENBERG: Cheney's belief in a powerful presidency has been consistent throughout his career. Not so his belief in a powerful vice presidency. When he was defense secretary, he refused, amid an international crisis, to attend an emergency meeting called in the situation room by Vice President Dan Quayle, when the president was in the air, en route to a summit meeting. When Quayle relayed the president's orders, Cheney refused to carry them out, unless he heard them directly from the president himself. Most observers believe that Cheney's vice presidency was idiosyncratic - that without his persona, and President Bush's, his power won't be replicated in the future. Former Vice President Mondale isn't so sure.
MONDALE: Precedents are dangerous things. They're like leaving, as they say, the loaded pistol on the kitchen table. Somebody might pick it up and use it.
TOTENBERG: So, while Vice President-elect Biden has disdained the Cheney model, he might eventually look to some of the Cheney precedents to enhance his power. Biden, like Cheney, is anomalous in modern times in that, at 65, he likely is too old to be harboring presidential ambitions. When Cheney was picked, a lot of people thought that lack of ambition was a good thing, because Cheney wouldn't have a personal political stake in decisions. But vice presidential scholar Goldstein thinks that notion is backwards.
GOLDSTEIN: A vice president who doesn't have presidential ambitions is more likely to be able to be a freelancer, to say, I can pursue my own agenda, because I don't have to worry about getting the president's support down the line when I want to run for president.
TOTENBERG: The conundrum is well-illustrated by this exchange Cheney had with ABC's Martha Raddatz, who questioned him about Iraq.
(SOUNDBITE OF ABC NEWS INTERVIEW)
RADDATZ: Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting.
CHENEY: So?
RADDATZ: So? You're not - you don't care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No, I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.
TOTENBERG: Again, Professor Goldstein.
GOLDSTEIN: We're in a democracy, and the premise is that public opinion matters a great deal and that public officials have a responsibility to try and develop support for their policies and to persuade the public and not really to just to take an attitude of, in effect, stiffing the public.
TOTENBERG: Nobody who knows Cheney disputes his skill, his hard work or his genuine belief that he acted in the best interests of the country. But most of his actions as vice president have remained secret. He even developed a new classification stamp for his office, quote, "Treat as Classified." Using that, he sought to keep secret even documents that were already public. So, it may be that his last legacy is a largely secret vice presidency, with documents from his office kept under seal for decades to come. Nina Totenberg NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
If you're suffering from post-holiday blues, consider this. We may be two weeks into 2009, but Chinese New Year is fast approaching. The first day of the Lunar New Year is Monday, January 26th. For food writer Grace Young, that means it's time to start pulling out all sorts of Chinese traditions.
GRACE YOUNG: One thing that's really important is that the Chinese feel that you really have to clean your house. It's this whole concept that you have to sweep out the old in order to usher in the new. And one of the great traditions of Chinese New Year's is making offerings to the kitchen god.
BLOCK: And who's the kitchen god?
YOUNG: So, the kitchen god is a domestic god that resides behind the stove, and he watches over everything in your home. And the Chinese believe that the heart of the family resides in the kitchen. So, one week before Chinese New Year's, the house is completely scrubbed clean, and then the family always puts a food offering in front of this little altar that they have right by their stove. And everyone's offering is slightly different, but the main purpose is to bribe the kitchen god so that when he goes up to see the Jade Emperor, his report will be favorable.
BLOCK: Bribing him, OK.
YOUNG: Bribing him with food. So, my grandmother on New Year's Eve used to put out a whole chicken. Maybe it was Chinese soy sauce chicken or salt roasted chicken. It doesn't matter what kind, but the whole chicken represents a proper beginning and end to the year and the wholeness of life on Earth. She would also put out roast pork because pork signifies prosperity. And then she would always put out a stir-fried lettuce dish because in the Chinese tradition, lettuce in Cantonese is saang choi, which sounds like rowing fortunes. And she'd also put out some rice wine. So, the feeling is that you feed the kitchen god to make him happy, and that the wine will either make him so drunk that all of your bad deeds, he won't be able remember...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
YOUNG: Or that he'll slur his words so that the Jade Emperor won't be able to understand what he's saying about you.
BLOCK: Well, what if he's reporting your good deeds? Then that doesn't get through either.
YOUNG: Oh, well, I guess then you could just put, like, a teaspoon of wine...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
YOUNG: But I don't think anyone is that perfect these days. But there are so many different ways that you can bribe the kitchen god, and hopefully, if the report is good, then you'll have a prosperous New Year.
BLOCK: And then could you, with all good conscience, eat the whole roast chicken and lettuce?
YOUNG: Oh, absolutely.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
YOUNG: Nothing is wasted. Nothing is wasted in a Chinese household.
BLOCK: What would be some other things you might eat on New Year's Eve?
YOUNG: On New Year's Eve, the Chinese love to eat scallops or clams. My family used to love to make stir-fried clams with black bean sauce because the opening of the shell represents a fresh beginning for the New Year, and also scallops and clams look like ancient coins. Some people eat a mushroom dish because mushrooms grow very quickly so they represent prosperity. Shrimp is a very popular dish because the word for shrimp is ha, which sounds like the word for laugher. So, it represents happiness. The list goes on and on. And there are specific dishes that you would never eat, such as melon, because the word for Melon, gua, sounds like death.
BLOCK: Oh.
YOUNG: And some people won't eat tofu because the word fu - the fu rhymes with negativity.
BLOCK: What about dumplings?
YOUNG: Dumplings are actually very, very important. My family do not eat them because we're Cantonese and from the south, but in the north boiled dumplings, giao zha(ph), are very, very important. Most families make it on New Year's Eve, and they start to eat them around 11:30, 11:45 at night into the New Year. So, again, it's the idea of bringing abundance from the previous year into the New Year.
BLOCK: It sounds like it's a complete feast, we are talking about here.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
YOUNG: Yes. You never stop eating.
BLOCK: And we are heading into the year of the ox in the Chinese Zodiac.
YOUNG: Yes. It's going to be the year 4707, year of the ox. And there are 12 animals in Chinese astrology, and each represents different characteristics. So, the ox seems to be the perfect animal for the times that we lived in. It's a persistent, undaunted animal who works very hard despite difficulties.
BLOCK: Well, Grace Young, Happy New Year. Kung Hei Fat Choy.
YOUNG: Kung Hei Fat Choy, wishing you much prosperity and good health.
BLOCK: Grace Young is author of the book "The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen." You can find recipes for traditional New Year's dishes, including Good Fortune Stir Fried Garlic Lettuce, at our Web site, 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. Israeli leaders say their offensive in Gaza is close to ending. The cabinet plans to vote tomorrow on a unilateral ceasefire. Israel has demanded that Hamas stop firing rockets from Gaza into Israel.
NORRIS: One place those rockets have landed is Kibbutz Gevim. The Kibbutz is in the Negev Desert just two miles outside the Gaza border. The Sa'ar family raised five children there. As NPR's Anne Garrels reports, the family has spent the past eight years living in fear.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVING CAR)
ANNE GARRELS: A ceasefire may be in the works, but security is increasing here. The gardens and green spaces have been dug up in preparation.
KLOK SA: (Through translator) You see the houses with the marks on them? That's where we're going to add a security room.
(SOUNDBITE OF HAMMERING)
GARRELS: Until recently, this kibbutz had only a few temporary communal shelters. Now, each modest cement house will have its own. Sixty-two-year-old Klok Sa'ar, who's in charge of security, chose one of the rooms under construction, a small box about 12-by-10.
BLOCK: (Through translator) I hate to say this, but we built this to protect against atomic, chemical and biological threats because we don't know what the future will bring us.
GARRELS: Klok Sa'ar says the safe rooms are long overdue. He complains the government did little to help protect people here. As the rocket attacks from Gaza continued, his wife Simona, who works as a high-school guidance counselor, says residents felt abandoned.
SIMONA SA: In eight years, we want that something will be done because we felt like Israel country forgot us.
GARRELS: With Israel's attacks on Hamas, they no longer feel that way. Their 21-year-old son is fighting in Gaza. They have two older sons in the reserves. This is not what they thought life would be like 48 years ago when they moved to the Negev as young pioneers and started their family.
BLOCK: When my oldest boy was born, my father told us, thank God, he will not go to the army. Now, we are very realistic. I pray, but I even don't believe that my grandchildren will not go to the army.
GARRELS: They believe Israel made serious mistakes after the '67 war by occupying Gaza and the West Bank. They were longtime members of Peace Now, opposing the settlements and pushing for negotiations for a two-state solution. Klok hoped that Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 would be a step towards that peace. He said Hamas blew up those hopes. The years of rocket fire from Gaza have taken a physical and psychological toll here. Several buildings have been hit. Simona says many people here are traumatized. Many young families have moved out.
BLOCK: Every days, sometimes that's only five times a day, but sometimes it 20 and 30 and 40 bombs, and then we have to run. It can be in the middle of the night, in the middle of lunch, in the middle of love, in the middle of exams.
GARRELS: She hopes the offensive in Gaza will force Hamas to change.
BLOCK: First of all, I want to believe there is not one Hamas. Maybe some are more progressive or more like the Fatah, and I don't know.
(SOUNDBITE OF PHONE RINGING)
BLOCK: Just a minute. Maybe a call from my son. Hello?
GARRELS: Her son in Gaza. It isn't him. Unlike his wife, Klok has no faith Hamas can change. He worries Hamas will remain powerful.
BLOCK: (Through translator) It doesn't make me happy to say this, but I want Hamas gone from here.
GARRELS: Yet despite his disillusionment over Hamas, Klok still hopes that peace talks with other Palestinians can succeed. He doesn't believe hardliners like Bibi Netanyahu, who's running for prime minister, would be good for Israel.
BLOCK: (Through translator) He would not bring us peace. He is dangerous. He believes in a greater Israel. I don't see a difference between him and Hamas.
GARRELS: For this Israeli couple who believe in peace, their country's growing isolation in the world pains and confuses them.
BLOCK: (Through translator) I feel the world doesn't understand us enough, that right now, this is a war for our existence.
GARRELS: To critics who say Israel has used unnecessary force, Simona is unapologetic.
BLOCK: We have to apologize that we have a strong army? I have not to apologize that we have not so many deads.
GARRELS: Even with a possible ceasefire, their future remains uncertain, and they don't expect their fears or tension will go away anytime soon. Anne Garrels, NPR News, Kibbutz Gevim on the Israeli/Gaza border.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Last month, our co-host, Robert Siegel, spoke with cellist Yo-Yo Ma about an online contest. The cellist invited musicians to download a track of him playing this traditional song, "Dona Nobis Pacem," and then record an accompanying part. The winner would have a chance to record with Yo-Yo Ma. More than 300 people submitted entries, and Yo-Yo Ma has picked a winner. He sat down today with Robert to unveil who won.
ROBERT SIEGEL: Yo-Yo, welcome.
YO: Thank you, Robert.
SIEGEL: And you've come, not only with the announcement of a winner, but more than one winner.
MA: Absolutely, because I don't believe that there's always only one person, and competitions for me don't really work unless you can recognize individuality, and you can't compare apples and oranges.
SIEGEL: So, you have an apple and an orange?
MA: Exactly.
SIEGEL: OK. We will now hear the first of the two winners Yo-Yo Ma will announce. Can we have a drum roll, please?
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUM ROLL)
MA: And the winner is: Kevin McChesney.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DONA NOBIS PACEM")
SIEGEL: Kevin McChesney and the Pikes Peak Ringers of Colorado Springs. Tell us what you like about this.
MA: Well, having played hand bells in second grade, I know how difficult it is to actually coordinate a whole bunch of people. The arrangement is phenomenal, and the professional quality of what this group has done is absolutely stunning.
SIEGEL: Mr. McChesney, by the way, is a composer and arranger of hand bell music and I've also learned that he is the hand bell editor for Jeffers Handbell Supply and the Ringing Word Catalog. And now, for the second winner.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRUM ROLL)
MA: Toshi O. And I know nothing about this group.
SIEGEL: Except that he plays mean guitar.
MA: Absolutely.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "DONA NOBIS PACEM")
SIEGEL: Tell us what you like about Toshi O.
MA: First of all, it is really surprising. For "Dona Nobis Pacem," you get this amazing, virtuosic guitar playing, very well constructed piece, and it's fun.
SIEGEL: We learned that Toshi O. is Toshi Osawa, born in Tokyo, but now lives in - near Vancouver, British Columbia, where he's a member of a heavy metal rock band called Antiquus. There we have the two winners, Yo-Yo. Any honorable mentions?
MA: Yes. I heard so many wonderful people, but there're five that I don't I can leave the studio without mentioning their names - Jim Gross(ph), Kevin Olecela(ph), Lisbett Scott(ph), Sally Burton(ph), and Tina Gwo(ph).
SIEGEL: Well, you can hear the two winning entries, and also links where - which will lead you to all the others at, out Web site, npr.org. Yo-Yo Ma, thank you so much for coming in.
MA: Robert, it's great to be with you.
(SOUNDBITE OF "DONA NOBIS PACEM")
BLOCK: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Inflation for 2008 was lower than it's been in 50 years. The Labor Department said today that consumer prices only went up one-tenth of one percent. But the average price of a movie ticket went up approximately four percent. That got our film critic Bob Mondello thinking. Bob says the amount of money in the wallets of movie audiences is often reflected in movie titles.
BOB MONDELLO: It started with a dumb joke. I was looking at my 401k and seeing desolation, emptiness, a parched landscape and mumbling to myself about how my fistful of dollars was becoming a fistful of dimes.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS")
RAF BALDASSARRE: (As Juan De Dios) You can't get rich like that. At most, you will only succeed in being killed.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MONDELLO: Truer words never spoken. Maybe I should have invested overseas so I'd at least have a fistful of euros, which led me to wonder what Clint Eastwood's fistful of 1964 dollars would be worth now. So, I checked with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Each 1964 dollar would now have the buying power of almost $7. Well, you know where that took me. 1974's "Six Million Dollar Man" would cost 25 million to build now. Those romance-starved secretaries who threw three coins in the fountain? They'd have to throw two dozen coins today. And while diamonds are still the girls' best friend, about the only other commodity holding its value is that precious metal that 007 worked so hard to protect from - what was his name again?
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "GOLDFINGER")
SHIRLEY BASSEY: (Singing) Goldfinger...
MONDELLO: Right. "Platinum finger" just doesn't sing. But as I kept looking at movie titles, I stopped turning pennies into nickels from Heaven and started thinking about what the titles meant to audiences back then. The first money title I could find was from the days of storefront nickelodeons, an 1897 half-minute short called "Scrambling for Pennies," a title perfect for audiences who'd recently survived the Panic of 1893. And for a couple of decades after that, silent films often had titles like "His Last Dollar" and "The Five Dollar Baby."
But in the 1920s, the stock market zoomed and Hollywood sent titles zooming, too. "Million Dollar Mystery," for instance, though there were was also "Her Fatal Millions," "Vanishing Millions," "Melting Millions," as if screenwriters could see the stock-market crash coming. And sure enough, after 1929, you start getting titles like "Dollar Dizzy," "Too Many Millions" and "Million Dollar Swindle." Also, a whole set of down-and-out titles like "The Nickel Nurser" and "A Dime a Dance."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MONDELLO: Now, let's note that what I'm doing here is the world's least scientific survey. I haven't gone back to watch these pictures to see what they're about, but their titles do say something about the public's moody relationship with money. There are about 100 titles containing the words "million dollar," for instance. And while there are a few from every decade, they tend to cluster when times are good, as do other phrases. Take the title "Money Talks." In 1997, it was attached to a flick starring Chris Tucker as a small-time conman.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "MONEY TALKS")
CHRIS TUCKER: (As Franklin Hatchett) Oh, oh, wait a minute. You're talking about the money, the money that I owe you. I'm going to pay you, man. Look at me, man. You know, I'm going to pay you.
MONDELLO: That's 1997. But "Money Talks" had long been a popular title. There had been films called "Money Talks" in the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s. But intriguingly, the title fell out of fashion during the mid-1970s, when the U.S. was experiencing high interest rates and inflation. In other words, when people thought money kind of didn't talk, "Money Talks" didn't strike producers as a good title. Those same inflationary years instead brought titles like "Take the Money and Run" and "Billion Dollar Bubble." Also, "Tango and Cash," but I don't think that means much. So, what's the trend going to be from here? Well, Hollywood seems optimistic. Nicole Kidman recently bought the rights to 1953's "How to Marry a Millionaire," apparently, because she wants to play the Marilyn Monroe part.
(SOUNDBITE OF MOVIE "HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE")
MARILYN MONROE: (As Pola Debevoise) Do you know who I'd like to marry?
BETTY GRABLE: (As Loco Dempsey) Who?
MONROE: (As Pola Debevoise) Rockefeller.
GRABLE: (As Loco Dempsey) Which one?
MONROE: (As Pola Debevoise) I don't care.
MONDELLO: For the record, to match Marilyn's catch from 1953, Nicole Kidman will need to marry a millionaire worth at least $8 million. I'm Bob Mondello.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
If any bird remains are found on that US Airways jet, they'll be sent here to Washington, to the feather identification lab at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, and that's where I am now - I'm with the lab's program manager, Carla Dove.
CARLA DOVE: Hi, Melissa.
BLOCK: And you have a more colorful description for yourself, besides program manager, you call yourself?
DOVE: Well, I don't call myself the snarge expert, but other people do. (Laughing)
BLOCK: Snarge, snarge. Now, S-N-A-R-G-E...
DOVE: G-E...
BLOCK: Meaning?
DOVE: Meaning it's bird goo that's wiped off of an aircraft after a bird strike.
BLOCK: And this comes in the mail, you're holding an envelope right here.
DOVE: Yeah, every day we get bird strikes in the mail, and we have a whole team here. And we have a couple of tools in our toolbox here to help us do bird IDs. We have the whole feathers that we use to match up with samples in the museum collection. We sometimes have DNA samples that we send to our DNA lab here, and sometimes they're microscopic samples.
BLOCK: Now, what you got here? Where's this from?
DOVE: Here's a package. This is from McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas.
BLOCK: And it's a plain old manila envelope.
DOVE: Yeah, and here's the report. It has some whole feathers.
BLOCK: And there's a plastic envelope with - what? - about six, six feathers. White and brown and - can you tell just by looking at them what that is?
DOVE: Well, because we have experience in doing this for, you know, a lot of years now, we have an idea of what it might be. But before we can do that, we have to go out to the collection and match it up with a specimen. But also in here are two little cards that were use to collect DNA samples.
BLOCK: So, there's a little smear of something on that card.
DOVE: Yeah, there's a little bit of snarge on there, and then we have whole feather to go with it. So, the more evidence we have, the more confident we are of our IDs.
BLOCK: This envelope says, number two ring cowl(ph) down bypass. I think that means this feather got sucked into part of an engine. And I have to say that, considering what this bird must have gone through, those feathers look like perfectly good feathers.
DOVE: That's true.
BLOCK: Very intact.
DOVE: Feathers are very resilient, and even if the whole bird, you know, is ingested in the engine and there's just some little pieces of down - of this fluff at the base of this feather - we can often look at the microscopic characters in there, and it will give us an idea of what group of birds we're dealing with.
BLOCK: How many of these samples do you get a year at this lab?
DOVE: Last year, we received somewhere around 4,000 samples.
BLOCK: And why is it helpful for aviation to know, you know, the bird that struck the plane was not a turkey vulture, in fact, it was a short-eared owl?
DOVE: Yeah, that's good because, if you think about pest management - and that's really what this is, is like a safety issue - you can't do anything about the problem until you know what the species that's causing the problem is. So, if you know it's a turkey vulture, as supposed to a short-eared owl, you know where they like to eat, you know what kind of habitat they like to hang out in, you know what time of day they're active. So, you can go out onto the airfield environment and do some kind of mitigation to keep the birds and the airplanes from colliding. And that's what they're trying to prevent happening, you know, some kind of bird causing some damage to an aircraft.
BLOCK: Of course, the aircraft is causing all kinds of damage to the birds.
DOVE: Exactly. (Laughing) And that's another thing - I mean we like to think that we're helping improve aviation safety, but we're also helping save birds by, you know, trying to identify what - what's causing the problem, so that the FAA and the USDA and the Air Force and the Navy can go onto their airfield and cut the grass, or they may move a pond from one area to another area or even fill in the pond totally, if they're having problems with ducks or waterfowl near the airport. So, the only way they can solve the problem is to, first of all, know what is causing the problem, and that's where our lab comes in to the whole picture.
BLOCK: Well, Carla Dove, thanks for telling us about feather identification and teaching us about this new word, snarge - S-N-A-R-G-E - bird goo.
DOVE: Thank you for coming over.
BLOCK: And Michele, you know me and birds. I could have spent, I think, all day down there at the Smithsonian feather identification lab. They have a room that is filled with drawers - floor to ceiling - filled with bird specimens. They have something like 630,000 dead birds, and they use those to help make these feather identifications, along with all the microscopic and the DNA work that they do.
MICHELE NORRIS: And that's how they actually identify this thing called snarge, this new term we've used today?
BLOCK: The snarge, yeah, the microscopic stuff. That's the gooey stuff and my new favorite word. Here are a few more things I learned down at the lab, Michele. Most bird strikes, they say, are not damaging, but they said the smallest bird that they have seen do damage to an aircraft was a golden crowned kinglet - weighed just about four grams, did $74,000 worth of damage to an Air Force aircraft.
NORRIS: Oh, my goodness.
BLOCK: Their busiest time is fall migration season; they might get 40 to 60 samples of feathers or snarge - you guessed it - snarge every day. The most the common bird specimens they receive are from horned larks and mourning doves - that was a surprise to me. And I asked the appropriately named Carla Dove if they've ever been stumped by a snarge specimen, and there is actually a great story there that we do not have the time to tell here on the air but, Michele, guess where you can hear it?
NORRIS: Oh, let me guess, let me guess. Would it be our Web site? (Laughing)
BLOCK: It is our Web site, you bet - 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. It was bit of deja-vu. Today, a politician toured a factory that makes bolts and fasteners for wind turbines, and he talked about his vision for economic recovery and alternative energy. This sort of event used to happen every week during the presidential campaign, but today it was President-elect Barack Obama, four days away from taking the oath of office. NPR's Don Gonyea traveled with Mr. Obama to the Cleveland area.
DON GONYEA: This trip to a hard-hit city in what is so often referred to as America's rustbelt is symbolic, meant to send a message to American workers that the new president understands and is going to work hard to turn things around. But it's also practical. This plant, called Cardinal Fasteners, is a parts supplier to the wind-turbine industry. It's a 25-year-old business, but it got into the alternative-energy side of things two years back. At the time, it employed 50 workers. Today, it has 65. Mr. Obama said it represents the potential for job growth that exists if America invests in renewable energy.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE, JANUARY 16, 2009)
BARACK OBAMA: The story of this company - which began building wind-turbine parts just two years ago and is now poised to make half its earnings that way - is that renewable energy isn't something pie-in-the-sky. It's not part of a far-off future. It's happening all across America right now. It's providing alternatives to foreign oil right now.
GONYEA: But the president-elect said that companies such as this one will step up only if there is an opportunity and if the government makes the needed commitment to invest in such technologies.
OBAMA: If we don't act now, because of the economic downturn, half of the wind projects planned for 2009 could end up being abandoned. Credit markets have frozen up. It's very difficult, because of the capital-intensive nature of these projects, for them to move forward if they can't get loans, if they can't get access to credit. And think about that; think about all the businesses that won't come to be, all the jobs that wouldn't be created, all the clean energy that we wouldn't produce.
GONYEA: The president-elect said he was pleased to see that the Congress is moving ahead already on shaping a massive economic stimulus plan, totaling some $825 billion in new spending and tax cuts. He promised the creation of 400,000 new jobs rebuilding the nation's infrastructure. But he also said he recognized that there are people who are in crisis right now and need immediate help. To that end, he pledged to find bipartisan backing for extended jobless benefits and health-care coverage, tax cuts for 95 percent of working families, and he pledged to aid states to help them avoid having to slash budgets for services like police, fire, education and health care.
OBAMA: Given the magnitude of these challenges, none of this is going to come easy. Recovery is not going to happen overnight. It's likely that even with the reinvestment package that we're putting forward, even with the measures that we're taking, things could get worse before they get better. I want everybody to be realistic about this.
GONYEA: These are President-elect Obama's final days before he moves into the White House. The economic crisis has made this an unusually busy transition period for an incoming U.S. president. This weekend, the inaugural festivities kick into high gear with a whistle-stop train tour Saturday, with Vice President-elect Joe Biden traveling from Philadelphia down to Washington. The real work for Mr. Obama starts Tuesday at noon. Don Gonyea, NPR News, Cleveland.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And for more now on the transition from the Bush to the Obama White House, we're joined by our regular political watchers, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and the Brookings Institution and David Brooks of the New York Times. Welcome to both of you.
DAVID BROOKS: Thank you.
DIONNE: Good to be with you.
NORRIS: Now, we need to say that you are both in that rare class of Washington scribes right now. You both had a face-to-face meeting with the president. He met first with conservative writers and then with more liberal-leaning writers. I know it was an off-the-record session, so you're not supposed to talk about what happened inside the room, but I'm just curious about your sense of Obama during this moment. E.J.?
DIONNE: Well, we compared notes and everything he said to the conservatives, he said exactly the opposite to us.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
DIONNE: Now, in fact, I mean, the striking thing about him is that you - he was an extremely popular professor when he taught at the University of Chicago Law School, and you know, our session was at one of those seminar tables. We didn't have to serve him food, and it was like a seminar in a course on how to be a calm president in the middle of a whole series of crises, and he was very...
NORRIS: So, he was doing most of the talking?
DIONNE: Yeah. And it was mostly a Q&A - in our case, it was mostly Q&A. And he was very direct, he was good humored, and when you thought about it, he was extremely calm, given the problems he was describing, both here and abroad.
NORRIS: David, you did share meal with him in your meeting with the president. Your sense of him?
BROOKS: Well, he's an incredibly impressive man. I mean, with the conservatives, he had a very sophisticated meal, a very complicated policy discussion. I'm sure with liberals he used a much smaller sentences, more simple words. But I think he's competent at both levels. And no, I think what comes across probably in our private conversations, and in the public conversations he's had this week, is an intense empiricism, a pragmatism. And I think, you know, he's been emphasizing this publicly and privately, the evidence-based idea, governing on the evidence, not having a grand ideological vision where he wants to go, just whatever works to get us out this problem. And then the second thing, which, I guess, is really reassuring for a lot of us, is we're going to be spending a lot of money in the next couple of years, and we understand that, but he's clearly demonstrated this week that he's committed to tackling the big entitlement projects - Medicare, Social Security - that are the real fiscal disaster waiting to happen. So, it's not only short-term spending, but there's long-term fiscal balance, that's very much in his mind, which was not in his mind, or at least not talked about as much, during the campaign.
NORRIS: David, I hear you said that the conservatives were reassured by the incoming president?
BROOKS: I think it's fair to say that in the group - not to say what he said at the dinner, but the conservatives at the dinner were deeply impressed with the man and came away thinking, A, it was impressive that he would meet with us, and B, we had a very sophisticated policy discussion of the sort you could not have had with the current president.
NORRIS: I want to look beyond Inauguration Day, if we could, and look at the agenda that awaits the president. E.J., you wrote this week about the future president's ideology. We spent years listening to him talk as Obama, the candidate. What do we expect from Obama, the president?
DIONNE: Well, you know, I think, it's very hard to pin him down ideologically. I think the - that what he is, is someone whose leanings are broadly progressive, center left. But as David said, he is a pragmatist and an empiricist, and I think somewhere in the zone between broadly progressive objectives and a real desire to do what works is what we're going to see. I think one striking example of that was just this week in his own stimulus plan, where he had a business tax cut, this tax credit to create - supposedly to create jobs. It didn't really work. It didn't have much of an economic kick, and empiricism led him to drop his own campaign promise out of the economic package, and I think that kind of fact-based approach is going to be very much what his presidency is about.
NORRIS: And he had a victory out of that, something they are saying was similar to an 80-yard pass completion.
DIONNE: Right, and I think there's a very good chance that the stimulus will go through with quite a few Republican votes. And the group where I think we need to pay attention to, are not, you know, moderate Republicans, Republicans from states Barack Obama carried. I think he's going to get more support, even if they're fairly conservative, from those than we might expect.
NORRIS: Before we turn to the outgoing president, I just want to ask you a quick question about the Republicans. Barack Obama spent a lot of time on the campaign trail, talking about leading America past the politics of division. What happens now that that high-minded rhetoric meets the reality of governing from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
BROOKS: So far, he's lived up to it, and that's only - not only in conversation with conservative columnists, but I've had Republican senators say they've had more conversations with Barack Obama in the past couple weeks than they did with George Bush in a couple years. So, so far, he has lived up to it. There's a significant tax cut in that stimulus package, which Republicans like. So far, the change in tone - and it's early - the change in tone has been remarkable.
NORRIS: Now, we don't have much time left, but I'm curious to hear both of you talk a little bit about what struck you about the endnotes of the Bush presidency.
DIONNE: I was struck in his speech by how much he wanted to relive probably the best moment of his presidency, which were the couple of months after September 11th. It was a time when he was very popular. It was a time when he really - partisanship really was pushed aside for a few months. I was also struck that he wants us to remember that we weren't attacked after September 11th, and I think that's going to be a large claim, and he had some warnings there. It was a warning, if you get rid of some of these policies I had that you don't like for civil-liberties reasons, watch out. He didn't say that directly, but I think that was the subtext.
NORRIS: David?
BROOKS: There was a lot of self-knowledge. I mean, on this point, he said, you know, a lot of people have moved on from 9/11; I never moved on. And that is true. When you go in to interview him or people around him, they are still very much in the 9/11 mentality. There's no sense that we overreacted or anything like that. They still think many more people would have died if they hadn't taken the actions they took. It's very much like going back - stepping away from the mainstream American culture and going back to a 2001 world, where I think he still lives and feels he needs to live.
NORRIS: We've only got - very, very briefly, does he still, in these last days, have a chance to put a certain punctuation on his presidency?
BROOKS: Well, he's handled the transition well, but I don't think he's going to change anybody's mind about him. He's changed the tone in Washington, but by leaving (unintelligible).
NORRIS: David, E.J., thank you very much.
DIONNE: Thank you.
BROOKS: Thank you.
NORRIS: That's David Brooks of the New York Times and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and the Brookings Institution.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. Investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board say both engines on the US Airways jet that splashed down on the Hudson River yesterday are missing. The plane was forced to make an emergency landing after reportedly hitting a flock of birds. The NTSB says the plane will be removed from the river tomorrow, and only then can the black box recorder be retrieved. President Bush called pilot Chesley Sullenberger III, and he thanked him for saving the lives of the passengers. Today, Sullenberger's wife, Lorrie, spoke to reporters outside their California home and described her husband this way.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE, JANUARY 16, 2009)
LORRIE SULLENBERGER: He's a pilot's pilot, and he loves the art of the airplane.
BLOCK: The remarkable performance by the flight crew prompted us to call pilot Ben Berman for his reaction. He's a 737 captain and a former NTSB chief of major investigations. And Mr. Berman, let's talk first about the apparent cause of this, the bird strikes in both engines. As a pilot, when you're sitting up there in the cockpit, how often do you see birds flying all around the plane as you're taking off?
BEN BERMAN: Birds are seen almost all the time, and many times, you'll get a warning that there are birds in the vicinity of an airport when you're coming in. I think it's, I would say, more than half of the time the airports are issuing a common warning about birds. Birds are just about everywhere. It varies with the time of year. When they're in their migratory seasons, they're much, much more common, and that's when, actually, a lot of the bird strikes occur.
BLOCK: And what are you told to do when you get those warnings?
BERMAN: Well, there isn't really all that much you can do because you come upon the birds so fast. You really can't maneuver around them, and in many cases, they will duck away or maneuver away from you. What the most useful purpose of the warnings there, if you see a lot of birds that are near the runway before takeoff, you will delay your takeoff until the birds have left or are chased away by airport personnel.
BLOCK: What kind of training do you get about bird strikes as a pilot?
BERMAN: We're trained in how to be aware of bird conditions around, heeding the warnings, trained in what to do if a compressor stall occurs with the engine. There are some things you can do to get the engine producing thrust again if it isn't too badly damaged inside. And we're trained what to do in terms of assessing conditions or in-flight damage if you have had a bird strike.
BLOCK: Yesterday, with this US Airways jet, the pilot lost power in both engines. I wonder, have you put yourself in that cockpit in your mind, thinking about flying over New York City, no power, what do you do?
BERMAN: I think every pilot has put him or herself in the position of the pilot yesterday, who did such a great job to get the airplane down onto the Hudson River. We put ourselves in the position of doing the thing that you have prepared yourself mentally for, but was considered so unlikely that it's not really one of the things that we get trained for in the high-fidelity flight simulators, where we do so much of our airline training now. I imagined the expanse of the Hudson River out to my left and seeing that that's the only flat spot ahead and deciding to put the airplane down there.
BLOCK: You think that would look like a pretty good option at that point.
BERMAN: Ditching's never a good option because it's much more problematic than landing on any flat piece of land. That's a lot better than landing on ground that isn't flat.
BLOCK: You mentioned you don't get trained on flight simulators for something like this.
BERMAN: Yes, it's true. And the main reason is, the flight simulators are programmed based on the data that the manufacturers and the operators have about how the airplane really performs and behaves. So, the simulator is made to behave and perform just like the real airplane. Well, they don't test ditching airplanes, so there's really no experience for most aircraft types on exactly what the airplane will do when it touches the water, and therefore, it's impossible to program a flight simulator for it. I think if we had data to program the simulators for, we might do well to practice ditching and practice multiple engine failures more often.
BLOCK: What are pilots taught to do if they are going to ditch, land the plane in water? What do you do?
BERMAN: Well, there's a set of procedures to follow for ditching just like for most other emergencies on aircraft, and what you would do would depend on how much time you have. You'd go anywhere from closing off all the openings in the fuselage that you can control, mainly related to the pressurization systems, slow down the flow of water into the aircraft; you would notify the cabin attendants to prepare the passengers in the cabin for a ditching, and they have a set of procedures they would then follow. And then you would bring the airplane down to the water probably with the landing gear retracted for a smooth belly with the best flap setting that will give you the best contact with the water, and then touch down just as slowly as you can. The key would be keeping the airplane under control. That's what this captain did yesterday. He brought that airplane down under great control, and it worked out wonderfully well.
BLOCK: Ben Berman, thanks so much for talking with us.
BERMAN: Oh, you're very welcome.
BLOCK: Ben Berman is a 737 captain and also former NTSB chief of major investigations.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Much of the email we received yesterday concerned the possible cause of the splashdown of US Airways flight 1549 and our coverage of it. Fred Stoll(ph) of West Chester, Ohio, was one of a few of you, who took note of the term "bird strike."
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
As we've been reporting, the plane's pilot said he experienced a double bird strike just after takeoff. Mr. Stoll wrote: Let's be clear about who is doing the striking. The bird is doing what birds do, flying at two or three dozen miles per hour. The aircraft is traveling at 200 or 300 miles per hour. I'd say it's the aircraft that is striking the bird.
NORRIS: On to other topics. We received a number of comments about my interview yesterday with a former White House butler.
BLOCK: Until recently, the White House Butler Corps was compromised mostly of African-Americans. It was a proud tradition that emerged out of the shameful past of slavery. Lynwood Westray worked for eight presidents.
(SOUNDBITE OF NPR'S ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, JANUARY 15, 2009)
LYNWOOD WESTRAY: It became so people didn't understand why they were all black. It was a prestige job, and they didn't realize it. The butler was an honorable job. It was a good job. And the benefits, they were there.
NORRIS: Douglas Cridesmore(ph) of Redding, Connecticut, had this to say about Mr. Westray: A more joyous and respectful humility and humanity I have not heard in my lifetime. This interview trumps all those with the famous - the stars, the public figures - and brought to my ear the real, the genuine. Let's do more interviews like the one with Lynwood. So rare.
BLOCK: And finally, listener Amy Picar(ph) heard my interview with Fargo Police Officer Mike Erbes yesterday about how temperatures far below zero are affecting his day-to-day duties.
NORRIS: Officer Erbes told us people who are cold are more likely to fail field sobriety tests. So, police who make traffic stops sometimes have to find an impromptu spot indoors to perform the test.
BLOCK: Amy Picar writes that the story made her chuckle. She says, my dad, who grew up in Dunseith, North Dakota, has a story of one Christmas when he was trying to get home. He took the train to Grand Forks and set out to hitchhike from there on a frigid night. At one point, a sheriff drove by. When the same sheriff drove by a few hours later and saw dad still at the same place on the road, he picked him up and put him in a cell at the local jail just so he wouldn't freeze to death.
NORRIS: Well, whether you're a little cool to our coverage or something we say warms your heart, send us your thoughts. Go to npr.org and click on Contact Us at the top of the page.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Bank of America and Citigroup announced financial results today. Normally, those results are called earnings reports, but both Citigroup and Bank of America have been losing money at a furious pace, so much money that today the Treasury Department said it was providing another $20 billion to Bank of America, and Citigroup said it's breaking into two pieces in an effort to contain its losses. NPR's Jim Zarroli has our story.
JIM ZARROLI: Last year, while other banks were collapsing all around it, Bank of America went on a shopping spree. It announced it was acquiring two of the biggest casualties of the mortgage downturn: Countrywide Financial and Merrill Lynch. And it looked very much like Bank of America would emerge from the carnage in banking stronger and more powerful than ever. Today, as CEO Ken Lewis spoke to investors, much of the confidence he once displayed was gone.
(SOUNDBITE OF INVESTOR MEETING, JANUARY 16, 2009)
KEN LEWIS: I don't need to tell you what extraordinary times we're experiencing. The economy and subsequently the credit markets literally hit a wall starting in September and culminating late in December, with the greatest impact of my almost 40 years in banking.
ZARROLI: The company said it lost money last quarter for the first time since 1991. It also said it was getting $20 billion from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program in addition to the $25 billion it's already received. It needs the money in part because the write-downs at Merrill Lynch have been so much greater than expected. Gary Townsend, who runs a hedge fund that invests in financial companies, says that if Bank of America hadn't agreed to buy Merrill last year, Merrill might have collapsed, which would have devastated the financial markets. So, the Merrill deal made a lot of sense.
GARY TOWNSEND: On the other hand, if you're a common shareholder of Bank of America, you have taken large paper losses, at least, and so, there's plenty of reason to be quite unhappy with the leadership of Bank of America.
ZARROLI: The fact that Bank of America has had to absorb losses like these has helped erode the already shaky confidence that investors have in U.S. banks right now. And it isn't the only piece of bad news that the markets had to contend with today. Citigroup said it, too, lost money for the fifth straight quarter during the last three months of the year. It also said it would restructure itself, creating a new division called Citi Holdings, where its most troubled assets would be housed. It's an attempt to build a wall around the healthy parts of the company to persuade investors not to give up on Citigroup. Still, Simon Johnson, an economist and professor at MIT, says investors remain deeply worried about banks. Johnson says they're also worried that government support for the sector may be wobbly.
SIMON JOHNSON: I think the market is taking the view that unless there's some big, new governmental program, they're going to face some big, significant difficulties. And I think partly it's because the discussions on Capitol Hill make it clear that Congress is a bit fed up with the way that the bailout programs have been handled, and there's presumably some impending limitation on the amount of money that can be spent to bail out all these banks.
ZARROLI: U.S. officials watched Lehman Brothers go under and they understand the ramifications of another big Wall Street collapse, which is why they ultimately agreed to shovel more money Bank of America's way. But with even the best banks losing money, the rebound in the industry seems just as elusive as ever. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The plane that made the incredible landing yesterday in the Hudson River is still in the water, but not for long. Investigators have brought in two giant cranes, divers and a barge to pull out the half-submerged jet. As NPR's Robert Smith reports, they want to have a look at the flight data recorder and see what caused the two engines to fail in the skies over New York City.
ROBERT SMITH: After all the people onboard flight 1549 were rescued, the jet liner continued its journey south. The strong current pulled the plane down the Hudson River to lower Manhattan, where tugboats pushed it to shore. Today, a stream of New Yorkers and out-of-towners, like Gregory Shepard(ph), came to gawk.
GREGORY SHEPARD: We see a wing tip sticking out of the Hudson River, which, I guess, is something you don't see every day.
SMITH: It's a new tourist attraction here in New York.
SHEPARD: Yeah, it seems like it. I mean, look at it - there's people everywhere. It's really impressive, and it's a great human interest story, definitely.
SMITH: It's also a mystery. Even though the pilot told air traffic controllers that he hit a flock of birds, the National Transportation Safety Board isn't willing to assume that it was the cause of the accident. Instead, they're beginning the slow process of getting the plane on to dry land and putting it all back together again. Both of the engines are now missing and assumed to be on the bottom of the Hudson some place. Divers have been in the water around the plane, looking for them. This afternoon, NTSB investigators held a briefing and said that the recovery process has been slowed by the strong current and cold temperatures in the Hudson. But there are other reasons the agency is moving carefully. Peter Goelz is the former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board.
PETER GOELZ: Part of their challenge is the plane was loaded with fuel, so they need to be very careful when they lift it not to spring one of the fuel tanks.
SMITH: Goelz says, after investigators find the engines and the flight recorders, the biggest task will be to check if birds really did disable both engines. And even then, the NTSB has to ask if the flock could have been avoided.
GOELZ: Did they show up on any radar? Was there any warning that could have been issued to the crew, or was there any delay that they could have taken till the birds cleared?
SMITH: Goelz now said, in the crowded air space over New York City, there isn't much room to maneuver. So, there's another question to ask. Jet engines are supposed to be able to take the impact of a small bird.
GOELZ: And in this case, it looks like it was - the engines were tested up to about a four-pound bird.
SMITH: But Canada geese can weigh over 10 pounds. Goelz says the NTSB will eventually have to ask if the standards need to be raised for jet engines. It will be a sensitive investigation, especially after all the media attention on the landing and the celebration of the flight crew as heroes. At City Hall today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg held a ceremony to salute the rescue workers and especially the pilot.
MICHAEL BLOOMBERG: And his brave actions have inspired millions of people in the city and millions more around the world.
SMITH: But Captain Chesley Sullenberger III was not around to hear the praise. The NTSB has forbidden him, and the rest of the crew, from talking to the media while the investigation is ongoing. So, that left Mayor Michael Bloomberg without anyone to present the city's highest honor to.
BLOOMBERG: I have a key to the city right here, and I'm going to hold on to it until we have the opportunity to present it to the incredibly brave pilot, co-pilot and the crew of US Airways flight 1549.
SMITH: The NTSB says they will interview the pilot tomorrow. They also hope to get the plane out of the water on Saturday. But until then, they can't really talk about the theories about why the plane went down. Robert Smith, NPR News New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. In India, researchers have found a long-lost speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The Indian government, along with the U.S. State Department, has been planning a 50th-anniversary celebration of King's visit to the country. They found a recording of a broadcast King made to the people of India on that trip in 1959. It's widely known that Dr. King was a great admirer of Gandhi and borrowed his philosophy of nonviolent resistance. Gandhi relied on peaceful protest to help free India from British rule; Dr. King used it to promote equality for African-Americans. King took a month-long tour of Gandhi's homeland to see the results of civil disobedience firsthand. By the end of the visit, he said his commitment to nonviolence as a vehicle for change was deeper than ever.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
MARTIN LUTHER KING JR: Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. In a world since Mahatma Gandhi embodied in his life certain universal principles that are inherent in the moral structure of the universe, and these principles are as inescapable as the law of gravitation.
NORRIS: And King developed an even greater appreciation for Gandhi.
LUTHER KING JR: Many years ago, when Abraham Lincoln was shot - and incidentally, he was shot for the same reason that Mahatma Gandhi, was shot for, namely, for committing the crime of wanting to heal the wounds of a divided nation - and when he was shot, Secretary Stanton stood by the dead body of the great leader and said these words: Now he belongs to the ages. And in a real sense, we can say the same thing about Mahatma Gandhi, and even in stronger terms: Now he belongs to the ages. And if this age is to survive, it must follow the way of love and nonviolence that he so nobly illustrated in his life. And Mahatma Gandhi may well be God's appeal to this generation, for in a day when sputniks and explorers dash through outer space and guided ballistic missiles are carving highways of death through the stratosphere, no nation can win a war. Today, we no longer have a choice between violence and nonviolence; it is either nonviolence or nonexistence.
NORRIS: Next month, a delegation led by Martin Luther King III will travel to India to celebrate the intertwined legacies of his father and Mahatma Gandhi.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
We're going now to McCain country, to American Legion Post II in Tempe Arizona. It's John McCain's post. As McCain's former rival prepares to move into the White House, NPR's Ted Robbins stopped by to talk to post members about their hopes and their worries.
TED ROBBINS: Just inside the entrance of American Legion Post II, a table is set up so members of the auxiliary can collect money for Friday night dinner. Auxiliary members are wives and daughters of vet, like Ethel Gillespie, a tiny woman originally from New York. She says she'll be watching the inauguration at home with her husband, who fought in World War II. They were McCain supporters, but she's willing to give Obama a chance.
ETHEL GILLESPIE: It's over, it's done. They voted him in, you know?
ROBBINS: All right, well, so, you're willing to accept him as your president?
GILLESPIE: Of course, what can I do?
ROBBINS: Many of the other 40 or so members refused to talk. They sit drinking at the bar in the long, dark, smoky room. Some open up reluctantly. Among them, a group of long-haired and bearded Legion Riders - a motorcycle club made up of sons of veterans.
BARNEY MULLINS: My name's Barney Mullins.
MAD DOG: My name's "Mad Dog" Mike, father was in the coast guard.
ROBBINGS: Barney Mullins and "Mad Dog" Mike were also McCain voters. Obama's going to have to prove himself to Mullins.
MULLINS: Everything that he was for, I was against. Now that he's president, I'm praying that next election he does such a good job that I'll be - just can't wait to vote for him. That's what I'm praying for. He's our commander-in-chief now, we got to take it.
ROBBINS: "Mad Dog" Mike's biggest worry is that Obama will not live up to certain campaign promises.
BENNETT: Like his claims that he's not against the Second Amendment and gun rights.
ROBBINS: He pats a patch on the back of his vest. It says, benefactor - National Rifle Association.
BENNETT: My ancestors supplied arms for the continental army. Without the Second Amendment, we have no other rights.
ROBBINS: Linda Topham(ph) has very different political views. She sits way down at the end of the bar. She volunteered for Obama during the elections, so she's delighted to see inauguration day arrive.
LINDA TOPHAM: Absolutely, I can't wait. I'm sorry that he couldn't jump right in at the time he was elected, because I think that we're wasting time on this economic thing.
ROBBINS: The economy is the biggest concern here. Back up front, Ethel Gillespie has seen hard times before. She says, Obama voters - all Americans - better have patience.
GILLESPIE: I was born in '27. I was 2 years old when the stock market crashed. Do you know when - how long it took us to come out of that Depression? (Laughing) I was 12 or 13 when we started to climb out. That's a long time to have to pinch pennies and everything.
ROBBINS: If it comes to that, Friday nights might get more crowded at American Legion Post II in Tempe. Dinner is a roast beef sandwich, chips and coleslaw for a very reasonable six bucks. Tedd Robbins, NPR News.
NORRIS: And we have a request for you. We would like to hear from people across the country on inauguration day, whether you're braving the cold in Washington, D.C., or watching it on TV in Arizona. Send us text messages, tweets, photos, videos and audio. You can find out how to send any one of those things at npr.org/inaugurationreport.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
As members of Congress and the new administration work on developing renewable energy, they'll have a number of states to turn to for advice. More than half the states already require utilities to get a percentage of their electricity from renewable resources. NPR's Jeff Brady has five lessons learned from one state - Colorado.
JEFF BRADY: Even before he was director of the governor's energy office in Colorado, Tom Plant was a big fan of wind turbines and solar panels. As a state legislator, he tried to get his colleagues to pass a renewable energy requirement but failed. Plant was pleased when, in 2004, voters sidestepped the legislature and passed a law on their own.
TOM PLANT: The arguments that we heard against the amendment when it was being run are the same ones that we hear at the national level - it'll cost too much, you know, it'll disrupt our electrical supply, blah, blah, blah, all those sorts of things.
BRADY: The state's largest utility, Xcel Energy, let that opposition, but then something interesting happened. After the law passed, Xcel found it was meeting the 10-percent target well ahead of schedule. A few years later, the utility actually supported a bill doubling the requirement. That's lesson number one from Colorado. Renewable energy advocates say, the initial target should be pretty aggressive, because it's likely utilities will find a way to meet it.
Now, we're on to lesson two. The requirement should be somewhat flexible. This is especially important to Frank Prager, he's Xcel Energy's vice president of Environmental Policy. He says, a utility needs to find ways to use renewable sources of energy and still be profitable, all the while keeping rates reasonable. Prager says, flexibility will be very important in the Southeast, where they don't have as many renewable energy options as Colorado.
FRANK PRAGER: We're situated in a really great part of the nation for purposes of wind, for example, because we've got the best wind in the nation right in our backyard. It's sort of wind alley across our entire system.
BRADY: Xcel has become the nation's largest wind energy provider in the last few years, and for that reason, Prager has another piece of advice for policy makers.
PRAGER: It's going to be very important - and from our perspective, this is extremely important - to make sure that you get credit for what you've already done.
BRADY: Now, this is a sticking point between utilities and renewable energy advocates. But Prager says, early adopters, like Xcel, shouldn't be penalized for being ahead of the curve. Issues like that and whether hydropower dams should be considered renewable resources likely will get plenty of debate in Congress.
The original backers of Colorado's law have a fourth piece of advice. This is directed at their national colleagues - bring new allies to the negotiating table. They found it valuable to woo the business community. Keith Hay with Environment Colorado says, his group commissioned reports touting the economic benefits of renewable energy.
KEITH HAY: We can take those kind of reports and say to people, look, we get the environmental benefits. That's important to us. But here's what you care about, and here's the benefit to you on those grounds. That's a really significant step that we as the environmental community here in Colorado took, and at the national level, it's absolutely a step we'll need to take.
BRADY: Finally, there's an issue that everyone interviewed for this story agrees on, but it's almost always an afterthought - electricity transmission. Most of the poles and wires in the U.S. today were built to service traditional power plants, not the vast open spaces where wind and solar energy are abundant. If renewable energy is going to work in the U.S., advocates say, you need a way to get it from the source to where people live. Jeff Brady, NPR News, Denver.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
One of this country's best known artists has died. Andrew Wyeth passed away in his sleep in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. He painted iconic images of rural America, realistic but imbued with hidden meaning. And he drew inspiration from the places he spent his entire life - Chadds Ford and Maine. NPR's Lynn Neary has this remembrance.
LYNN NEARY: When you hear Andrew Wyeth talk about painting, there's an excitement in his voice that belies the sense of melancholy that seems to permeate some of his best known paintings. In this 1995 NPR interview, Wyeth, then in his late 70s, described his own artistic process.
(SOUNDBITE OF NPR INTERVIEW, 1995)
ANDREW WYETH: It's an enlightening, it's a flash. And then, after you have that flash, of course, comes the hard work of finally pulling it together and putting it down with as great simplicity as you can.
NEARY: Andrew Wyeth was a sickly child who was home-schooled and had lots of time to play imaginary games and wander in the countryside. Wyeth biographer Richard Meryman says, that sense of childhood wonder never left him.
RICHARD MERYMAN: I think to understand Wyeth is to understand that in that body is a 10-year-old boy and at the same time, the body is occupied by an intensely serious artist.
NEARY: The son of the well-known illustrator N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth began his artistic training under his father's tutelage. It was after his father's death in 1945 that Wyeth really came into his own as an artist. Kathleen Foster is the curator of American art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which had an exhibition of Wyeth's work in 2006. She says, he was more vulnerable, but also more serious, after his father's death.
KATHLEEN FOSTER: His work got deeper, his themes became more profound, and in many cases became much darker.
NEARY: In pictures like "Trodden Weed," "Geraniums," "Groundhog Day" and perhaps most famously, in "Christina's World," Wyeth painted the people, landscapes and buildings near his homes in Pennsylvania and Maine. Well-liked by the public, Wyeth's paintings were dismissed by some art critics as too sentimental and mere illustrations. In 1986, when his "Helga" paintings - more than 200 sketches and paintings of the same woman - were revealed, he was even accused of staging a media event. But Foster says, his critics should look again. He wasn't just a realist; he was a magic-realist.
FOSTER: His pictures are just shot through with memory and fantasy, with every storybook that he has read. And they come out - it comes out in the magic of the image, because his pictures are fascinating. You want to come back and look at them again.
NEARY: Wyeth's life was organized around and energized by his need to paint. Biographer Richard Meryman says, painting was probably the one thing that Andrew Wyeth could not live without.
MERYMAN: I always thought that the day he could no longer paint, he would die. And in a sense, this is what's happened. I wouldn't doubt at all that he was ready to go.
NEARY: Artist Andrew Wyeth died last night in his sleep. He was 91 years old. Lynn Neary, NPR News, Washington.
NORRIS: You can see a gallery of Andrew Wyeth's paintings at npr.org.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
There's a new novel in stores that spotlights Westerners descending upon the Middle East. In author Barry Unsworth's story, their motives are sometimes less than honorable. The year is 1914, World War I is on the horizon, and the Ottoman Empire is about to fall. These characters are competing for one small plot of land south of Baghdad. They're prospectors of varying stripes. They're seeking oil, new railroad routes, artifacts of ancient Assyria, and the Garden of Eden.
Barry Unsworth is a Booker Award-winning Brit. "The Land of Marvels" is his 16th book. And what attracted him to this patch of desert was the Baghdad Railway.
BARRY UNSWORTH: (Author, "The Land of Marvels"): This was a line, which was going into the future. I mean, the line to Baghdad and then - and the extension to Basra was a line towards the disasters that we're familiar with now.
ROBERTS: So you've set out with this time period with full understanding of the implications for modern-day issues.
Mr. UNSWORTH: Yes, it was in my mind. The Land of the Two Rivers was - as it was called then, the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates. You know, this is - mainly, this is now modern Iraq. New empires were being forged as the Ottoman Empire was in its declining phase. My novel is mainly, I suppose, about empire, about imperial ambition, the urge to dominate, power and the misuse of power, which is a theme I've always been interested in, anyway.
ROBERTS: The Baghdad Railway is bearing down on this archaeological site, which is where most of the action in the novel takes place.
Mr. UNSWORTH: Yes.
ROBERTS: The head archaeologist is named John Summerville.
Mr. UNSWORTH: Summerville, yes.
ROBERTS: He's there with his wife, Edith. At one point in the story, an American character named Elliott comes into it. Elliott is posing as an archaeologist, but he's actually looking for oil. Given America's oil interest in the Middle East today, was making him American intentional?
Mr. UNSWORTH: Yes. I think he combines two American qualities rather well: a kind of totally sincere faith in the commercial future, together with a totally sincere desire to profit from it, even to the extent of telling lies and so on and so forth. So that he's, perhaps not just American, either, but he's a mixture of truth and falsehood, inextricably combined together.
ROBERTS: And it so starkly contrasts with John Summerville, who is so earnest, so eager to really add to the world's knowledge about ancient Assyria. Reading the book, it also feels like you fell in love with stories about the Assyrian Empire a little bit.
Mr. UNSWORTH: The Assyrian Empire was the greatest - in its day, it was the greatest the world had ever seen. It had a military machine unprecedented, and it collapsed within a generation. And that seemed to me, in a way, to sum up the nature of power - that it goes up in flames or just leaks away. It's always the same story.
ROBERTS: The book is called "Land of Marvels."
Mr. UNSWORTH: Yes.
ROBERTS: Of the many marvels these characters find in this land, which ones did you find most marvelous?
Mr. UNSWORTH: (Laughing) Well, I think probably turning up artifacts that might mean totally new evaluation of the history of the Middle East. That is really marvelous. I mean, I think it - you know, it's a treasure trove, isn't it? It's finding marvelous things below the earth. It's a kind of childlike dream as well as an adult one.
ROBERTS: What sort of connections do you hope readers of this novel make to today's political, geopolitical situation?
Mr. UNSWORTH: Well, that's hard to say. I really want to ask questions, and that's what novels usually do. They ask questions rather than provide answers. But the language that was used in those days to justify imperial ambition, to justify this aggrandizement, those in power always find language, they always find the right language. I wanted, I think, the modern reader to ask himself or herself, what use is being made of language now in our time? How is language being manipulated to justify political ends that are not in themselves very praiseworthy or respectable? And I think if the reader starts to ask that kind of question, that would make me pleased, and I would feel the book had fulfilled its purpose. ..TEXT: ROBERTS: Author Barry Unsworth's new novel is called "Land of Marvels." Head to npr.org and read an excerpt.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Rebecca Roberts. Israel's announcement today that it would impose a cease-fire in Gaza was greeted with relief by American officials. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a statement urging both sides to end their attacks immediately. Rice, just like everyone working for her boss, President Bush, is just three days from leaving office. Some of those Bush administration officials, such as the director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, still have urgent issues on their plates, like getting aid to the Palestinians in Gaza or to cholera victims in Zimbabwe. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN: As both the director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Henrietta Fore has been spending her final days on the job making sure trucks with food, fuel and plastic sheeting make it into Gaza during the brief, daily breaks in Israel's military offensive against Hamas. She's also trying to raise alarms about a humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe, where, she says, 1,700 people have died of cholera, a treatable disease.
Ms. HENRIETTA FORE (Director, U.S. Foreign Assistance, USAID): The death toll in Zimbabwe is needless. It was a failure of the state, pure and simple. And we have been working very hard there, but all 10 provinces now have cholera in Zimbabwe. This is something that the government must take action on.
KELEMEN: Trying to get Robert Mugabe's government to deal with this health crisis has been one of her major frustrations. In an exit interview in her office at the State Department, Fore said there have been other difficult times, especially when a cyclone hit Myanmar last year and the military junta initially blocked foreign assistance for an impoverished population.
Ms. FORE: They had so little, and they lost all of it. So how do you, as a nation halfway around the world, come to help?
KELEMEN: In that case, it took a lot of outside pressure. Fore has been on the job for only a couple of years, but worked in other capacities in the Bush administration. She credits the administration for paying a lot of attention to humanitarian issues and development.
Ms. FORE: We have tripled foreign assistance worldwide, doubling it in Latin America and nearly quadrupling it in Africa. It has been creative with the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the president's initiative for emergency relief in HIV-AIDS, in malaria. And there are some very good, new models.
KELEMEN: Models that the incoming Obama administration are planning to build on, though it's likely to reorganize the bureaucratic structures of these programs. Development was a major topic at Tuesday's Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton. She stressed the moral and strategic reasons to continue aiding the world's poor.
Ms. HILLARY CLINTON (Nominee, Secretary of State, President-elect Obama Administration): Then, a particular concern to me is the plight of women and girls who comprise the majority of the world's unhealthy, unschooled, unfed and unpaid.
KELEMEN: Hillary Clinton also talked about how the Defense Department has taken on too much of the job of rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan. The outgoing head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Henrietta Fore, says the incoming team will find that the civilian capacity in the U.S. government is far too small for the world's demands.
Ms. FORE: I don't think a day has gone by when I have not noticed how small our staff is. There are skills that you need in the world of development, economists and engineers, and environmentalists and health workers, and education specialists, and economic specialists for micro-enterprise, and budding entrepreneurs and humanitarian-crisis specialists. We have needed all of them.
KELEMEN: Right now, she says, USAID has just 1,000 foreign service officers. Fore has laid the groundwork to double that. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
Unidentified child: Hey, you guys!
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
No, it's not the old school "Electric Company." It's the 2009 version, which switches on this Monday.
(Soundbite of song "The Electric Company")
Unidentified Woman: (Singing) It's Electric, Electric Company...
ROBERTS: The modern version of this much-beloved, 1970s PBS kids' show is both familiar...
(Soundbite of song from "The Electric Company")
Unidentified Man: (Singing) "(unintelligible) changes everything."
ROBERTS: And new.
(Soundbite of song from "The Electric Company")
ROBERTS: That is by design, according to executive producer Karen Fowler, who joins me now from our New York bureau. Welcome to the program.
Ms. KAREN FOWLER (Executive Producer, "The Electric Company"): Thanks for having me.
ROBERTS: Why don't we start with what is different about the 2009 version of "The Electric Company"?
Ms. FOWLER: Today's "The Electric Company" is made for kids who grew up in a very different world than back in 1971. Our kids are - you know, they're dealing with cell phones and TVs and broadband and all that kind of stuff, so this project, the new "Electric Company," is really driven by the need to bring something to kids across all those mediums. It's a storyline, and it's short-formed bits that come together to create a half-hour TV show that brings kids music and dancing and literacy in a package that I think really will light them up.
ROBERTS: Why bring back "The Electric Company" now?
Ms. FOWLER: There is a literacy crisis in the United States. And, you know, the facts are that 27 percent of fourth-graders are not reading on target. That means that there's a whole bunch of kids who are not likely to become literate adults.
ROBERTS: The storyline revolves around these four kids in a health-food diner.
Ms. FOWLER: (Laughing) Yeah. Yeah, it's four friends who have literacy superpowers, and who live in a neighborhood. So, there's moments that occur within this whole-foods diner, the Electric Diner, and then there's a whole bunch of stuff that occurs on the streets of New York, which appears as any urban center.
ROBERTS: Describe an episode, a typical episode for our audience. How do you balance, say, the narrative story with the interstitials, and when do they sing and dance, and how does it look?
Ms. FOWLER: Each episode is built around the domain of language. So a domain could be space. Inside that storyline, there are five words and the words - one of the words will be orbit. We've got this group of characters that live in the neighborhood called the Skalakian(ph), and the Skalakians are a group of people that come from another planet. They've emigrated to Earth, and they live here. And they're pretty much the same as us, except they never lie. And when they reach the age of 14, they get a special talent. And that moment occurs when the Earth orbits around the sun. So it's at an eclipse. And so, in that moment - so we've got a story of a girl who's about to get her special talent, but it's against this time clock of this orbit, and so that's how we teach the idea of the word against this emotional story of this girl who's about to get the most special thing of her life.
ROBERTS: Were you a fan of "The Electric Company" as a kid?
Ms. FOWLER: Hey, you guys. Who wasn't? (Laughing) Absolutely.
ROBERTS: And what's your favorite part of the new version?
Ms. FOWLER: OK. I love the core cast. They're brilliant. There's also this other piece of the show called "Music Man," these series of one-minute animations that are stunning. And they are a groove tune that just won't leave me.
(Soundbite of song from "The Electric Company")
Unidentified Man: (Singing) Let me tell you about my love of the silent E.
ROBERTS: Do you expect when the 2009 version airs that you'll hear from a lot of nostalgic parents?
Ms. FOWLER: (Laughing) I hope so. Actually, I really hope we hear from nostalgic parents who say, you know what? It's not my "Electric Company," but it is "Electric Company" for my kid. That's what I hope.
ROBERTS: Karen Fowler is executive producer of the new "Electric Company," which debuts Monday on PBS. Thank you so much.
Ms. FOWLER: Thank you.
(Soundbite of song from "The Electric Company")
Unidentified Man: (Singing) Sometimes I have a plan. When I add an E, it becomes plane. And I can take that plane and fly away.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
The crowds are already starting to pour in to Washington, but the big question for traffic planners is: How do you get a million-plus inaugural visitors out? The secret weapon: something called four-dimensional imaging. This is Science Out of the Box.
(Soundbite of music)
ROBERTS: I'm on the road headed towards the University of Maryland, where researchers have developed what they call a four-dimensional map. It shows how road accidents, bad weather, stupid drivers, and even a million or so extra tourists affect city traffic. The transportation departments of D.C., Virginia and Maryland are going to use the technology for the first time this week, which is a little bit like testing your parachute in midair.
Traffic on Route 50 slowed me down, and I was late getting to UMD, but the university's Michael Pack already knew that before I walked through the door.
Mr. MICHAEL PACK (Director, Center for Advanced Transportation Technology, University of Maryland School of Engineering): We actually saw there was a vehicle fire along your route. It might have been a little past where you were getting off, but the traffic congestion may have backed up.
ROBERTS: Pack is the director of the university's Center for Advanced Transportation Technology. In the labs, students sit around computer screens of various sizes. The biggest screen is attached to a video-game joystick. Pack takes the controls and calls up a virtual world of cars buzzing past D.C. monuments.
Mr. PACK: Some of it's satellite photography, some of it's aerial photography. It's the same type of images that you might see on something like Google Earth.
ROBERTS: But on this image, when the weather changes, rain and snow starts to fall. And when the traffic bogs down, large street signs pop up into the virtual sky. They say things like traffic hazard, construction, and one ominous sign just displays an exclamation mark. It all happens in real time, hence, the fourth dimension.
Mr. PACK: This is a way to help the emergency management officials comprehend quickly what's going on throughout a wide area. Normally, these emergency management officials might have a - on just, on a normal day, a list of 70 or 80 accidents or traffic problems that they're having to monitor through e-mails, paging alerts, and if you forget something, the consequences of not being fully aware of what's going on could be pretty bad.
ROBERTS: Tuesday will be anything but normal, and one accident could mean a lot of diverted traffic. And Michael Pack says this is the first time his 4-D map has been tested.
Mr. PACK: This program is really brand new. This is the first time this visualization is ever going to be used by anyone operationally, so it's exciting. The students are excited. I'm excited about it. They've been in here working around the clock to try to get things ready.
ROBERTS: It's a little bit like having your first football game be the Super Bowl, you know?
Mr. PACK: (Soundbite of laughter) That's a really good analogy. I have to go in the locker room and throw up now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ROBERTS: Seeing the 4-D map is a lot cooler than just talking about it. There's video of the display at npr.org.
REBECCE ROBERTS, host:
Now to the inaugural journey of Patricia Lowther. She's from Springfield, Virginia. Patricia and her mother both demonstrated in the March on Washington in 1963. Her mother didn't live to see Barack Obama run for president. But Patricia plans to honor her memory by bringing three pictures to the inauguration.
Ms. PATRICIA LOWTHER: One is them is of my great-grandmother, who was born here in Virginia in 1821, and was taken as a slave to South Carolina with the family that she actually stayed with all her life; and her son, my grandfather, who was born a slave; and then of my mom. And I think the three of them could never, ever imagine this person could be elected and would become president. I hope somewhere that they are looking, and I figured the best thing that I could do would be at least in spirit, they can be there, and the four of us will enjoy this event, and it will just be very, very special.
ROBERTS: You can see Patricia Lowther's three pictures, and catch up with other listener's inaugural journeys, on our Web site, npr.org.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
An Amtrak train runs from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., to Union Station, right next door to the Capitol. Rhonda Hodge will be riding that train. It's the last leg of her inaugural journey, all the way from Murphy, Texas. She writes for the hometown paper. It's called the Murphy Messenger. The paper's tiny, publishing just twice a month, but she managed to get credentials to cover the inauguration.
Ms. RHONDA HODGE (Reporter, The Murphy Messenger): This will be the absolute biggest thing I've even dreamt of covering, actually.
ROBERTS: And just for the occasion, she's created a special hat.
Ms. HODGE: My hat is a hand-knit, 100-percent wool and mohair hat. It's in the Jackie Kennedy Onassis pillbox-style with a tiny, turned-up brim.
ROBERTS: And the color, bright orange.
Ms. HODGE: I was thinking, if I'm going to be able to go, I want to be able to be seen. First, in a crowd of millions of people, I want to be seen there in the crowd, as well as on TV, as well as if I get stampeded, people can say, well, the orange hat just went down...
ROBERTS: You can see Rhonda's orange hat at npr.org.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
Now, to some children's television where the kids go behind the camera. It's our final inaugural journey today, and it starts in the northern California town of Carmel by the Sea. One night at a restaurant there, Chris Sanders saw his niece grab a video camera and start to interview the customers.
Mr. CHRIS SANDERS (Resident, Carmel by the Sea, Northern California): And we noticed right away that everyone engaged her, and I thought, I could never get up and walk through a restaurant with a video camera and get anybody to talk to me. ..TEXT: ROBERTS: So, Chris and his wife, Bev, came up with a plan to take four of their nieces and nephews, give them each a high-definition video camera and microphone ,and set them loose - with adult supervision - on the Mall in Washington on Tuesday. They don't have tickets, but they don't care.
Mr. SANDERS: We needed to come up with a team name, and we came up with the Inauguraiders.
ROBERTS: These Inauguraiders are booked on a red-eye from San Francisco. They have the entire Row 36, window to window. And as Bev puts it, God help the people in Row 35. Preparing the kids to interview strangers wasn't easy. Some of their original questions...
Mr. SANDERS: What's your name? What's your favorite color? If you could change your name, what would you change it to? And these have nothing to do with it, but I thought, well, these could be icebreakers. You know, to start off in completely different tangents and warm up the subject, and then hit them with your zinger.
Ms. JULIET (Member, Inauguraiders; Chris and Bev Sander's Niece): Are you happy with the president choice?
ROBERTS: That's Chris and Bev's niece, Juliet, age 11, the original Inauguraider. We also want to see the inauguration from your point of view, wherever you are over the next few days, whatever you're doing. If you have a cell phone, iPhone, digital camera, laptop, whatever, you can send us your reports. Go to npr.org/inaugurationreport to find out how.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
(Soundbite of choir singing)
Mr. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (Singer): Beautiful. That's good. I can use more of that choir in my mind(ph). I want them to sound so loud, so big...
That's Bruce Springsteen, rehearsing today for the first massive inaugural event: tomorrow's concert at the Lincoln Memorial. The lineup is packed with the biggest names in music: Bruce and Beyonce, Stevie Wonder and Bono, Shakira and James Taylor. I talked with James Taylor earlier and asked what this event means to him.
Mr. JAMES TAYLOR (Singer): Well, it's a celebration. I'm not used to feeling in step with everybody, but I feel as one with everybody in Washington today. It's just an amazing buzz, an amazing sense of excitement.
ROBERTS: What do you mean when you say you are not used to feeling in step with everyone?
Mr. TAYLOR: Maybe what I mean is that I've felt alienated, somewhat, for about a decade now, and became set in a certain feeling about my country and the government and where were headed. And I didn't realize how powerful that was until it was relieved, I think.
ROBERTS: It's not the first time you've sung at an Obama event. You gave some free concerts in North Carolina. What were the audiences for those like? Are they different from your traditional concert audiences?
Mr. TAYLOR: No, I don't think so. I think they were like my usual audience, it seemed to me. You know, I grew up in North Carolina and have maintained a strong feeling of attachment for the state, and they sent me down to do a series of six rallies in North Carolina. And my wife and - Kim - and I felt so fortunate to play an active part in the movement, and to meet the people involved, and to feel this thing happening in the country, this change taking place.
ROBERTS: Unlike a lot of star-studded concerts, this one has a theme, "We Are One." And I understand you were each asked to choose a song that fits that theme?
Mr. TAYLOR: Yes. I offered a song called "Shower the People," which is sort of anthemic and was the one they chose, and I think it's a good choice.
ROBERTS: James Taylor, thank you so much for joining us.
Mr. TAYLOR: Rebecca, thank you.
ROBERTS: There is only one place to hear tomorrow's concert on the radio: here at NPR. Our live broadcast kicks off at 2 o'clock Eastern time. The actual concert starts a half-hour later. Listen on your local station, or to our live stream at npr.org.
(Soundbite of song "Shower the People")
Mr. JAMES TAYLOR (Singing)
Shower the people you love with love Show them the way that you feel Shower the people you love with love
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Rebecca Roberts. Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, has announced a unilateral cease-fire in Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. It will begin Sunday morning. Olmert appeared on Israeli national television, and spoke directly to the people of Gaza.
(Soundbite of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's speech)
Prime Minister EHUD OLMERT (Israel): We regret very much the fact that there were so many who, in spite of the genuine efforts made by the Israeli army, suffered from this confrontation.
ROBERTS: The decision was made after several hours of discussion inside Israel's security cabinet, which includes top political, military and intelligence officials. Olmert stressed that Hamas was not part of this decision. Israel will silence its guns for several days, but it reserves the right to resume its offensive if attacks by Hamas don't stop. NPR's Mike Shuster is with us now from Jerusalem. Mike, give us some more of the specifics from the cease-fire announcement.
MIKE SHUSTER: Well, it turns out that Prime Minister Olmert wasn't very specific about it. He did say that the cease-fire will take hold in the middle of the night tonight. He said that Israeli troops would hold their positions in Gaza for some days. It was expected, actually, that he might say it would be a five-day period or a 10-day period before they decided, perhaps, to pull out from Gaza, but he didn't say that. And he said that Israel would respond to any continued attacks on Hamas's part. Beyond that, we don't really have much detail about the way that this cease-fire is going to be implemented.
ROBERTS: So what does Israel expect from Hamas?
SHUSTER: Israel expects Hamas to stop firing its rockets into Israel, and to stop attacking Israel's troops inside Gaza. Prime Minister Olmert made it clear that if Hamas reacts in that way, then Israel will take further steps to diffuse this conflict. But it looks like the Israelis are going to stay in Gaza for a while and see whether Hamas does that.
ROBERTS: And has Israel achieved the goals that it set out at the beginning of this offensive?
SHUSTER: Well, Prime Minister Olmert believes so. His announcement of a cease-fire was preceded by a long list of achievements that he believes Israel and the Israeli Defense Forces in Gaza have accomplished. He said that Israel has, in effect, regained its notion of its strength and deterrence in the Middle East, sending a signal to its enemies not to attack again because Israel is capable of defeating them.
He argued strenuously that Israel had reduced the number of rocket attacks from Gaza into Southern Israel. But at the same time, he acknowledged that not all those rocket attacks had stopped, and Hamas had not been destroyed inside Gaza. So from the Israeli point of view, maybe things have been accomplished, but not entirely clear.
ROBERTS: Has there been any response from Hamas?
SHUSTER: Yes, there has been a very quick response from Hamas. A number of different spokesman in Beirut and elsewhere have said that Israel must withdraw its troops first before Hamas enters into a cease-fire. One Hamas leader said if Israel does pull back its troops, Hamas may decide to stop fire, but not until then.
ROBERTS: NPR's Mike Shuster in Jerusalem. Thanks, Mike.
SHUSTER: You're welcome.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
This is a weekend of journeys, inaugural journeys. From across the country, around the world, people are streaming to the nation's capital to witness history: Barack Obama taking the oath as the 44th president of the United States. Throughout the show today and tomorrow, our listeners will share their inaugural journeys. One is bringing family photos.
Ms. PATRICIA LOWTHER: My great-grandmother, my grandfather and then my mom.
ROBERTS: Another is wearing a bright orange, handmade hat.
Ms. RHONDA HODGE (Reporter, The Murphy Messenger): I wanted to be seen in the crowd of people.
ROBERTS: There's even a gaggle of pre-teens armed with video cameras and tough questions.
Unidentified Child: Are you happy with the president choice?
ROBERTS: We'll start with the man making the ultimate inaugural journey: President-elect Barack Obama. He's just finished a whistle-stop train trip from Philadelphia to Washington, and NPR's Don Gonyea rode the rails with him. I asked Don about the president-elect's message during the trip.
DON GONYEA: It's been an interesting hybrid. This looks and feels like a campaign. Of course, he takes the oath on Tuesday, but he's really focusing on the troubled economy and the challenges that he faces. His speeches that he's given really do, though, echo the message that he had for two years on the campaign trail. Give a listen, this is from Baltimore late this afternoon.
(Soundbite of President-elect Barack Obama's speech in Baltimore)
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: No matter what we look like, no matter where we come from, no matter what faith we practice, we are a people of common hope, a people of common dreams, who ask only that what was promised us as Americans, that we might make of our lives what we will and see our children climb higher than we did, that that promise is fulfilled.
ROBERTS: And I understand the vice president-elect hopped on board your train in his home state of Delaware.
GONYEA: He did. Our first stop was in Wilmington, which is where Vice President-elect Joe Biden has commuted to the U.S. Senate for so many years. He got on board there at the same Amtrak station where he's always started and ended that regular commute, and he spoke, as well. And again, he, too, kind of echoed the same themes. Give a listen.
(Soundbite of Vice President-elect Joe Biden's speech in Wilmington)
Vice President-Elect JOE BIDEN: Our economy is struggling. We're a nation at war. Sometimes, just sometimes, it's hard to believe that we'll see the spring again. But I tell you, spring is on the way with this new administration.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
ROBERTS: And Don, as the train has traveled south from Philadelphia to Washington, what have you seen outside the window?
GONYEA: Well, that's probably been the most interesting part of it. As the train rolled south, we would go through many tiny, little towns. And it seemed like every intersection we rolled through, there would be maybe just five or six - a family or some people who stepped out of a local business - or maybe it'd be a large group of several dozen or even a hundred people. They'd be on the overpasses. Even, at one point, as we were going past a refinery in the southern edge of Pennsylvania, saw a guy on top of one of those giant fuel tanks in his coveralls and his hard hat, just kind of taking a moment to stop and watch the train go by. So, a lot of people knew this train was going to be on this track, and a lot of them came out just to get a glimpse and hopefully, maybe get a wave from the incoming president.
ROBERTS: NPR's Don Gonyea onboard the president-elect's train heading to the inauguration. Thanks, Don.
GONYEA: Thank you.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Welcome back to All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Rebecca Roberts. What is that awful noise, you ask? Why, it's me, trying and failing to fly the Apache helicopter simulator at the new Army Experience Center in Philadelphia.
(Soundbite of helicopter simulator)
ROBERTS: What is that?
Unidentified Man: Bad guys shooting you.
ROBERTS: A better question might be why I was flying an Apache helicopter simulator. I was checking out the Army's 14,000-square-foot, virtual educational facility, built last year for about $12 million in a mall on the north side of town. It's as slick and gadget-heavy as an Apple store. You can climb in the simulators - a Humvee and a Blackhawk helicopter as well as the Apache - you can plan a mission in the high-tech tactical operations center, or just play a lot of video games, both Army-issue and standard-issue Xbox games.
The center's only been open for a few months, and some have criticized it for bait-and-switch tactics, masquerading as an arcade when it's really an Army recruiting station. So when I met program manager Major Larry Dillard at the center, that's where we started.
ROBERTS: Do you consider this a recruiting center?
Major LARRY DILLARD (Program Manager, Army Experience Center, Philadelphia): It's really much more than that. So if you look at a traditional recruiting center, there is really not a lot of ways to get a virtual experience about what the Army might be like. It's really is just an office to process applicants into the Army. And what we're really trying to do here is use this as a vehicle to communicate a lot about the Army. Now certainly, if someone comes in, and they're interested in what they see, and they want to join the Army, we can do that here.
ROBERTS: Philadelphia has almost no local Army presence. For one thing, the Army prefers to build bases where there is lots of cheap, available land. And when the Army is not around, Dillard says, recruiting numbers suffer.
Major DILLARD: People who have some relationship to the Army growing up, whether it's because they live close to a base or because they're from a ,military family, are far more likely to join our ranks. If you understand the Army, then you're inclined to think highly of it and join the Army, but if you've never had that exposure, you're probably not going to join the Army. You're not going to consider that as an option when you're either getting out of high school or college.
ROBERTS: There are a lot of big cities without a big Army presence; why did you choose Philadelphia first?
Major DILLARD: Frankly, because it was about the worst - one of the very worst recruiting markets we had. And so, we want to come in and see if we could make an impact here, and our hypothesis is that if we can do that here and it works here, then it would probably be effective elsewhere, as well. When we built the Army Experience Center, we shut down five recruiting stations and halved the number of recruiters. In the last couple of months, we've had the same number of recruits that the old recruiting stations in this area did.
ROBERTS: Do you consider that a success?
Major DILLARD: Yeah, I think for just getting started, that's a great success. I mean, fundamentally, what we are trying to do from the business side of this is really, kind of trade capital for labor, and try to get to a point where we have fewer soldiers committed to this job of recruiting and more soldiers out there doing what soldiers do.
ROBERTS: But of course, a large part of what soldiers do is fight wars. And if this center aims to represent Army life accurately, violence and danger must be part of it. On the other hand, kids as young as 13 come through here who aren't soldiers, and they might not be ready for all that reality.
Major DILLARD: We are not trying to hide the fact that sometimes, what we do as soldiers is dangerous. We want people to understand, you know, if you join the Army today, you're probably going to deploy somewhere, whether it be Afghanistan, Iraq or somewhere else, and so we want to make sure we're consistent and honest and transparent about that. That's the reality today. You've got to be careful about making it too violent and inappropriate for some people and so, it is a fine line. But I think we tend to err on the side of trying to be as realistic as we can.
ROBERTS: Of the 6,000 folks or so who have come through here, who's the average visitor? I am guessing more men than women.
Major DILLARD: It's about 80 percent men - 82 or 3 percent men. The average age is about 17 to 18. So for the Army's perspective, we're really hitting our target demographic exactly where we want to be.
ROBERTS: So can you give us a quick tour?
Major DILLARD: Love to.
ROBERTS: We start at the front desk, where kids sign in and give their contact information and a little demographic data. The Army collects a lot of data about what recruiting methods work, which fail, and what misconceptions potential recruits have.
Major DILLARD: I think a lot of the attitudes about the Army, or ideas about what the Army is, are really shaped by legacy information about a draft Army from the Vietnam era when people weren't volunteers, they didn't get paid much money, the living conditions were probably pretty poor, a lot of drug abuse in the Army. And this is night and day from that Army of the 1970s.
ROBERTS: And Major Dillard shows me some of the tools designed to counter those misconceptions: two giant video displays, one called a career navigator, the other called a global base locator. Think of them as huge, plasma-screen rumor debunkers.
Major DILLARD: So this is our global base locator. Again, one of the misperceptions we've found is that people think, oh, the Army is only in Iraq, that's all you can do in the Army. So we built this Google Earth interface where you can actually zoom all around the globe and see the different Army bases. Where are you from?
ROBERTS: I'm from Washington, D.C.
Major DILLARD: All right, let's go check out the D.C. area.
ROBERTS: OK, so we start with the entire Earth and zoom in, and you're doing all this just with a touch screen.
Major DILLARD: Yeah, so you can see the Army's got a handful of bases right in the metropolitan D.C. area, and you can touch on any one of these and learn a little bit more about those bases.
ROBERTS: There wasn't exactly a line for the base locator. The center wasn't very crowded in the middle of a school day, and the kids that were here were mostly playing video games. But 20-year-old Jake was intrigued.
JAKE: I like the little global maps. I never knew about that, that's nice.
ROBERTS: Jake said he's considering the Army more seriously, especially if he gets to drive…
JAKE: The Humvee, yeah. I could do that one day.
ALEX: Oh, got him. Oh, got him.
ROBERTS: A teenager named Alex wasn't so convinced. Taking a quick break from blowing bad guys away on screen in Tom Clancy's "Rainbow Six," he said the center had answered the big question: What was the Army really like?
ALEX: Yeah, it's scary.
ROBERTS: How so?
ALEX: It was the dying, I guess, because you die in here a lot. So I guess you would die on real combat. All right, follow me. Oh, wait, I'm dead, actually. Never mind.
ROBERTS: Major Dillard says the Army doesn't plan to open anymore Army Experience Centers just like this one. Instead, they're measuring how popular and successful each element in Philadelphia is, and figuring out what Army Experience Center 2.0 might look like.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
While I was in Philly, a cold wind of anticipation blew me down to Drury Street. The oldest pub in Center City is McGillin's, and it's a mecca for sports fans. Now, Philadelphia fans have a reputation. Last fall, my colleague Andrea Seabrook spoke with one just before the World Series.
Unidentified Man: No matter what happens, in the back of your mind is the feeling that things are going to go wrong, that they can't go right, that the team somehow will always let you down.
ROBERTS: But the Phillies won the World Series, and Philadelphia went crazy. The City of Brotherly Love was like Times Square at New Year's except better because people were surprised at midnight. Now, the Philadelphia Eagles are one game away from the Super Bowl. If they beat the Arizona Cardinals tomorrow, they advance to the title game and a chance to bring home the city's first-ever Lombardi trophy.
But Eagles fans are still Eagles fans. Chuck Stanley and Eric Grigg produce a weekly podcast called "Eagles Fancast." They met me at the bar in McGillin's, and both these guys actually think the Eagles will win on Sunday.
Mr. ERIC GRIGG (Podcaster, Eagles Fancast): Yeah, this is Eric. There is - right now, there is no doubt in my mind that they'd win this game, really isn't.
ROBERTS: All right, that is uncharacteristically optimistic for Eagles fans.
Mr. GRIGG: Yes and no. Eagles fans are die-hard, absolutely, but one of the traits about Eagles fans is, is when the coaches or players don't perform to where we think they should, we let them know.
ROBERTS: With the Eagles, it's not that the fans believe the team will fail. What they believe in is negative reinforcement. Eric teaches this important skill to his kids.
Mr. GRIGG: Our seats are in the visitors section. So I will say, OK, now, in a couple of minutes, the other team is going to come out. The first thing that you have to do is boo at the top of your lungs - and this was when they were 6. I started teaching them then. You boo the visiting team. And I also tell them, when they would ask, well, you know, is that the ones who we boo? I'm like, well, if the Eagles are playing crappy, we're going to boo them, too.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. GRIGG: So there is no sparing them. I mean, it is what it is. We expect them to play hard and to perform well, and if they're not performing well, and they're not trying hard, they're going to get booed.
ROBERTS: And in Philadelphia, the hometown fans even boo each other.
Mr. GRIGG: At halftime of the Eagles games at home, they have - a local sporting good store will trot out three people from the stadium who's attending the game, trying to kick, like, a 20-yard field goal. If they miss, I boo, the whole stadium boos. These are people who are just plucked out of the stands. They probably had 10 beers in them, if not more, you know. You know, they got construction boots on and they got a jersey on, and they're out there trying to kick a field goal, and if they miss, we boo the crap out of them.
ROBERTS: But let's be clear, the right, the responsibility to boo the Eagles rests exclusively with Eagles fans. Visiting fans engage in that kind of behavior at their own risk.
Mr. GRIGG: The first thing we do when we sit down is, we'll do a full 360 in the seat, and we will look for the other people, the fans of the other people, so we know where to direct the venom, so.
ROBERTS: And is it just venom or you also, you know, pouring beer on them?
Mr. GRIGG: No, no, no. I would never, I would never pour my beer on anyone. It's too valuable.
ROBERTS: Right, it's like an $8 beer.
Mr. GRIGG: Why would I throw it on someone?
ROBERTS: Yeah. And then there's Andy Reid. He's the Eagles head coach, a position no one would have envied a few months ago.
Mr. GRIGG: Well, a couple episodes ago in our podcast, we were, I think, all unanimous in calling for his head. We were completely fed up with how the offense was being run, and there was certainly a growing sentiment that he needed to go, that he had run his course. It had been 10 years. Obviously, they went on this run, and now, he could probably run for mayor.
ROBERTS: Eric goes on to point out that Philly fans don't really connect with Reid. He doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve like beloved, past Eagles coach, Dick Vermeil. But there is one thing about football season in Philly that will outlast any coach.
Unidentified Men: (Singing) Fly Eagles, fly, on the road to victory. Fight, Eagles fight...
ROBERTS: The Eagles play the Cardinals in Arizona tomorrow afternoon. Tomorrow morning on Weekend Edition, you can hear from Cardinals fans. Sunday's second game pits the Baltimore Ravens against the Pittsburg Steelers, which could set up an all-Pennsylvania Super Bowl.
Unidentified Men: E-A-G-L-E-S, Eagles!
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
Rhonda's landing spot in Washington, Union Station, is already hopping with the president-elect headed that way. Among the crowds today: Obama fans on the prowl for swag. A few of them took a moment to speak with us.
Ms. ELEANOR LASKY(ph): We got all kinds of stuff. We're just going now to get T-shirts and anything we can with his face on it. We've got the card to travel with, the Metro Card, yeah, with his picture on it. But we don't want to use it, because we don't want to mess it up.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. LASKY: So we went and got another card that we can mess up.
Ms. KIM FRITZ(ph): I love this magnet with the smile. I actually had that as a button, but now it says - mine was before - now, it says president. So it's very exciting to see. I actually cried for the first time over an election, when Bush was re-elected. So it was so nice to have tears of joy in November. So it's a very big deal for me.
Mr. MICHAEL BRADSHAW: It's historical. I think if you have the opportunity to come and you don't come, you're doing yourself a disservice.
Ms. ELSA LATHEN(ph): I wouldn't miss this for anything. Even if I don't make it onto the Mall, I just had to be near to feel the electricity in the air.
ROBERTS: That was Elsa Lathen from the Bronx, and before her, Michael Bradshaw from Raleigh, North Carolina, Kim Fritz from San Diego, and Eleanor Lasky from Los Angeles. They spoke to NPR's Allison Keyes at Union Station in Washington.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
Matt Jessup is almost as excited about the inauguration as an 11-year-old with a video camera. Matt, though, is a burly 30-something with a tattoo needle. NPR's Amy Blaszyk visited his Washington, D.C., tattoo parlor. And oh, by the way, don't call him Matt.
Mr. MATTHEW JESSUP (Owner, Fatty's Custom Tattooz): Oh, well, my name is Fatty. That's the name I go by.
AMY BLASZYK: Fatty's Custom Tattooz is located in a four-story walk-up in D.C.'s Dupont Circle. It's a busy, vibrant neighborhood before the 2 million people expected to deluge the city for Tuesday's big event. Right now, Fatty is doing a full-sleeve tattoo on Washington resident Jason Benetti(ph). The tattoo starts with a massive skull at his shoulder, and continues down the arm to his wrist. Though Fatty appreciates repeat customers like Benetti, he's trying to attract new customers this weekend.
Mr. JESSUP: We're hosting an event that I'm calling "The Obamathon." ..TEXT: BLASZYK: This tattoo parlor, like others in the area, is trying to entice customers with a permanent souvenir of the occasion. At Fatty's, when you buy a $200 tattoo, you get one free - a free Obama or Inauguration tattoo, that is. But there's more.
Mr. JESSUP: The big prize of the weekend is, I'm going to be offering a portrait of Barack Obama's face for free.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. JESSUP: We have a party on Monday and do Barack Obama's face tattooed on somebody. That'd be the coolest, man.
BLASZYK: As Fatty smears petroleum jelly on areas he's worked on, wiping ink from the skull design, he admits that in the heat of the moment, people do a lot of things they regret later.
Mr. JESSUP: If Obama tanks everything and people want to get their Obama tattoos covered, I'm sure I'll be able to help them with that, too. ..TEXT: BLASZYK: After all, change is more than a campaign slogan. Amy Blaszyk, NPR News.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
Tonight's Parting Words come from another indomitable character, Winston Churchill, who said, I am an optimist. It does not seem to be much use being anything else. Then again, if you're planning to get a quotation tattooed somewhere on your body, you might want to heed this advice from Sir Winston: The short words are the best. That's All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Rebecca Roberts.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
You might have heard of the guy sitting backstage at the concert, Abraham Lincoln's the name. He's a fairly well-known Republican. And Chuck Latimer from Memphis, Tennessee also knows a Republican or two.
Mr. CHUCK LATIMER: Everybody in my family is a Republican. I mean, absolutely everybody.
ROBERTS: Except Chuck. And as part of our series this weekend, it's called Inaugural Journeys, we'll hear from Chuck and several other folks venturing to Washington in the next few days. Chuck Latimer had planned on staying at his sister's home for the inauguration.
Mr. LATIMER: When I travel there, I'm always able to stay with her. But this time she said no. She's really, really opposed to Obama being elected, and I'm not. Now, I've never been - felt outcast from my family for my political beliefs. It really was political oppression.
ROBERTS: So Chuck has two plans for where he might stay.
Mr. LATIMER: If I drive, then my plan is to sleep in the car. If I fly, I'll just have to drink a lot of coffee, the most I can, or try to find a nook and cranny to sleep in.
ROBERTS: It sounds, frankly, like an awkward family situation, but Chuck still hopes he and his sister will get over it.
Mr. LATIMER: Divisions come between families, but in the end, you know, she's still my family.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Sue Koehler is making an inaugural journey from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She's traveling a relatively short distance, but her story represents how far we've really come. In 1958, Sue was a sophomore at an all-white high school in North Carolina. And she remembers the day Brown versus Board of Education was decided.
Ms. SUE KOEHLER: My mother, who was a very traditional southern lady, born in 1905, she said, well, you know, this is right. This is the right thing. And I went off to school and there was just furor. All these kids were saying, my parents were saying I'll never have to go to school with a - and then the "N" word came out. And I'll just never forget it.
I'm really lucky that I had parents who inspired me to understand that this separate society that I lived in was not quite right. I don't think there are a lot of things in this country that have gotten better in 50 years, but that's one thing that has. And that's just the thing I want to celebrate.
ROBERTS: She'll be celebrating with a long-distance guest. Her sister-in-law is flying in from Germany for the festivities.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
All weekend we've hearing stories of folks coming to Washington for Tuesday's inauguration, stories about history and family and friends and long distance travels. Well, our final inaugural journey has all of that, plus it's a love story. Christopher Kilday is in the studio with me. He's a guitar teacher from San Francisco. Thanks so much for joining us.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER KILDAY (Guitar Teacher, San Francisco, California): Thanks, Rebecca.
ROBERTS: Your story starts in Cuba, actually, where you were studying classical guitar?
Mr. KILDAY: That's right. I was. I wanted to go to Cuba because I'd heard that the musicians there were the best in the world. So, I took a trip there, and I went to the Institute of Superior Art which is in Havana. And I remember that at the ensaya(ph), everybody was playing and I was outside. And I remember there was this beautiful girl I had seen there, and I began talking with her and it seemed that she was single. And in the course of our conversation, after about another hour, I had realized that she was the girlfriend of the bass player, and so I had to kind of become a friend. And that was OK.
And two days later, I was there in the same ensaya and I saw her and I greeted her and she poked her head around the corner and the second after she poked her head around the corner, her identical twin sister, Yaremys, appeared. And ever since that moment, I, you know, I fell in love with her. And that basically was it for me.
ROBERTS: Well, Yaremys Rodriguez Gonzales is also here in the studio. I understand you've been in America for about 12 hours now (laughing).
Ms. YEREMYS RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: Yeah, like 24 hours.
ROBERTS: Twenty-four hours. And do you have any impressions, so far?
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: Yeah. I'm adjusting to everything, to the weather because it's very cold, in here. There, it's very warm, very hot, is in Cuba. So here it's very cold, and I miss my family there too, very much.
ROBERTS: How long have you two known each other?
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: Three years and a half.
ROBERTS: So, you're planning on getting married.
Mr. KILDAY: Oh, you know what? That's one thing I need to take care of. Yaremys, will you marry me?
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: Of course, yes.
ROBERTS: You hadn't done that before?
Ms. RODGRIGUEZ GONZALES: No.
Mr. KILDAY: No.
ROBERTS: We're taking a little break for the bride to kiss the groom here. (Laughing) I feel like I'm intruding.
Mr. KILDAY: No, no, not at all.
ROBERTS: So, what are you going to do tomorrow and the next day and goodness, for the rest of your lives? (Laughing)
Mr. KILDAY: Tomorrow's Monday we're going to the Black Tie and Boots Ball.
ROBERTS: That's the Texas Inaugural ball.
Mr. KILDAY: That's the Texas Inaugural ball. A friend of mine gave me tickets to that, a die-hard Republican who could just not - he couldn't go. (Laughing) So, he gave us the tickets, which was very nice. We'll do that and on the day of the inauguration, we have friends who we're going to meet, and we're going to put on our triple coats and go out there in the cold and brave it and try to see what is to see, yeah.
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: I will freeze.
ROBERTS: I mean, I'm from here, and I freeze.
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: Really?
ROBERTS: Yeah, it's cold.
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: I think I'm not going.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ROBERTS: Now, conducting a long-distance romance and planning the future, it's all overwhelming under the best of circumstances, why throw the chaos of the inauguration into it, it's almost like you're borrowing trouble?
Mr. KILDAY: Well, we are trouble. That's true.
ROBERTS: (laughing)
Mr. KILDAY: The K1-visa process is a long and complicated process.
ROBERTS: What is a K1-visa?
Mr. KILDAY: Yeah, the fiancee K1-visa.
ROBERTS: Got you.
Mr. KILDAY: I applied for this visa about 16 months ago and only recently did we know that she would be able to come in January, and then maybe possibly, February. You really do not know what the exact date you're coming until the very, very end, and she was very lucky to get the opportunity to have her ticket on the 13th. So, we knew she was coming, but we didn't know when, and we really hedged our bets, and we're just lucky that it happened during this time, and it's really an auspicious time.
ROBERTS: Chris, you teach guitar in San Francisco?
Mr. KILDAY: Yeah, I'm a performer and a teacher.
ROBERTS: And so, how is this all going to work? Are you going back to San Francisco? What's your plan?
Mr. KILDAY: Yes, I'm going back to San Francisco.
ROBERTS: And is Yaremys going to join you there?
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: Yes.
ROBERTS: Have you been to San Francisco, yet?
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: No, no, no.
ROBERTS: So you're moving to a city you've never been into before. What are you going to do?
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: Well, I'm going to help Chris and everything, and I don't know, to get a job.
ROBERTS: This is such a big change for you.
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: Yeah, it is in every way, everything is different.
ROBERTS: Well, Christopher Kilday and Yaremys Rodriguez Gonzales, thank you both so much for joining us. Congratulations.
Mr. KILDAY: Thank you.
Ms. RODRIGUEZ GONZALES: Thank you.
ROBERTS: Felicidades.
Mr. KILDAY: Gracias.
ROBERTS: Really, honestly, I did not see that one coming. After an exhaustive check of our archives, we feel pretty confident in saying that is the first ever on-air proposal on NPR News. Our Inaugural Journey series was produced by Travis Larchuk.
Parting words today from a writer who knew something about journeys, John Steinbeck, author of "The Grapes of Wrath." He wrote, "A journey is a person in itself, no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip, a trip takes us." That's All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Rebecca Roberts, have a great week.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
In this country, thousands of buses will be headed to the capital. One of them will be coming from Birmingham, Alabama, filled with aging veterans of that city's civil rights campaigns. Jacki Lyden visited with these pioneers as they prepared to complete a trip that began nearly a half-century ago. Quick warning, one of these folks uses a bit of harsh, racial language. Here's Jacki.
JACKI LYDEN: They call themselves the "Civil Rights Foot Soldiers." Theirs is a smoke-filled office, plastered with the photos of hundreds of regular folk who marched in the 1960s and were beaten and torn by police commissioner Bull Connor's snarling dogs and water cannons. Their business manager is Shirley Gavin Floyd. She decided the night after an election rally that she wanted to do something for these historic demonstrators.
Ms. SHIRLEY GAVIN FLOYD (Business Manager, Civil Rights Foot Soldiers): When I looked at the screen, I was at the rally, and I looked at the screen and it said "President-elect Barack Obama," I really couldn't believe it. And I still think, and I was just like, this can't be real. I thought he was capable of winning, but I never thought he would really win it, right out like that. And I said, this is what the foot soldiers really marched for.
LYDEN: And so a bus trip was born - a no-frills, all-night trip that doesn't even start until late Monday because many of the foot soldiers want to attend festivities for Martin Luther King's birthday Monday morning. They weren't able to get inauguration tickets. They're not sure where they'll end up, but the foot soldiers say they don't care how close they get.
Ms. GAVIN FLOYD: Well, most people that's on the bus with us have stated to me they don't care if they even don't get the chance to see him. They just want to put their feet on that land at that particular time. And that'll be good enough for them.
Ms. GLORIA LEWIS RANDALL: It's like history being in the making, again. It reminds me of being a part of something that's good. And I'm just so glad that I'm going, you know. I am really glad.
LYDEN: Gloria Lewis Randall is 61, and her desire to go is shaped by a childhood defined by segregation.
Ms. LEWIS RANDALL: They had ducks out at the parks, and I wanted to see a duck. But the color of my skin was black, so I wasn't allowed to see a duck. I mean, how do you deprive a child from seeing just things that come so naturally? But, my father took me out to the park at East Lake to see that duck. And the police beat him with billyclubs and said, called him all kind of racist names like "nigger, nigger," you know, you know, you don't come here. And he said, "Well, my child wanted to see a duck."
LYDEN: Later, Gloria Lewis Randall would brave fire hoses. She still recalls how they stung her skin. The Reverend Jonathan McPherson remembers a different sting, the literacy test that black people had to take in order to vote.
Reverend JONATHAN MCPHERSON: Name the senators from Alabama in the house of Senate?
LYDEN: Reverend McPherson tutored people to pass those tests.
Reverend MCPHERSON: How many states are there in the United States? 50. Name the president of the United States? Lyndon Baines Johnson. What is the term of office for the president? Four years. Name the capital of the United States? Washington, D.C. The governor of Alabama at that time was the infamous George Corley Wallace. And they would even ask you some other questions not related to political, for instance, how many bubbles are there in a bar of soap?
LYDEN: Reverend McPherson also bought a ticket for the foot soldiers' bus. He's 74, he's had four back surgeries and his doctor advised him against going. He gave his ticket to someone else. For 40 years, he's been the pastor at St. John's Baptist Church just outside Birmingham. He recalls going to jail with Martin Luther King. It was on Good Friday, 1963, Birmingham Jail.
Reverend MCPHERSON: I never will forget it. When they put me in the cell, there was an elderly black gentleman there. The cell is cold, and there's a concrete floor. His name was Brother Meadows. And I asked him, I said, Brother Meadows, I said, what are you doing? This cell is cold, hard concrete. I said, you shouldn't be in here. And his words were to me, son, I'm going all the way, because I want to see what the end would be like. And sometimes I think, my God, if he had been allowed to live, he could have seen what the end was like.
(Soundbite of an electric razor)
LYDEN: Shaving a customer at his barbershop before a wall papered with the yellowing portraits of black leaders, James Armstrong, at age 85, is the very oldest of the Civil Rights Foot Soldiers making the bus trip.
Mr. JAMES ARMSTRONG: My daughter went to jail when she was 13 years old, sitting at the lunch counters. My boys went to jail sitting at the lunch counters. They didn't put them in jail, they put them in juvenile court because they were too young for jail. My wife in jail, I'm in jail, everything in the Armstrong house was in jail but the dog (laughing).
LYDEN: Frankly, his kids are worried over their father's making such a grueling journey. He has a pacemaker, but his doctor has cleared him, and he is going.
Mr. ARMSTRONG: I just want to be there, I just want to be there. And I can tell the story if I'll be there, that I was here, yes, indeed. It looks like my work has been done, because I listened to Dr. King when he speak, he said, he had been to the mountaintop and he looked over and saw the promised land, that he may not get there with us. When I look at the young man up there - promised land. That's what he was talking about.
LYDEN: He means of course, President-elect Barack Obama. And so, without even knowing quite where they'll wind up in Washington, the Civil Rights Foot Soldiers hope to arrive Tuesday morning and Reverend McPherson sends them off with this prayer.
Reverend MCPHERSON: We pray that almighty God will give them his traveling mercy and grace, that he will keep the driver alert and awake, and that he would be in the automobiles, the tires, and also the opposing drivers, that they will have a safe journey there, a safe stay while there, and a safe return to Birmingham, Alabama.
LYDEN: As these elderly foot soldiers shuffle along with the crowd this week, they'll know the steps they took decades ago culminate in one man's striding to the inaugural podium Tuesday. I'm Jacki Lyden, NPR News.
(Soundbite of gospel song)
Unidentified Singers: Satisfied with Jesus, satisfied with Jesus. I'm satisfied with Jesus in my heart, amen.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Rebecca Roberts. On a historic day in Washington, stars take to the stage and hundreds of thousands take to the Mall to officially open inauguration weekend. America's favorite Irishman, Bono, led the celebrity charge with an international riff on the American dream.
(Soundbite of inauguration concert)
BONO (Lead Singer, U2): Not just an American dream, a European dream, African dream, Israeli dream, and also a Palestinian dream. Sing!
(Soundbite of song "In the Name of Love")
U2: (Singing) In the name of love...
ROBERTS: First, though, we'll turn to the Gaza Strip, relatively calm today for the first time in more than three weeks. Both Israel and Hamas are observing a cease-fire. Israel moved first, last night, and early today, Hamas leaders declared a one-week cease-fire to give Israel a chance to withdraw from Gaza. Some Israeli tanks and soldiers were seen leaving the territory today, but it's not clear when the rest will pull out.
Foreign journalists were allowed into Gaza today for the first time since the Israeli offensive began. NPR's Eric Westervelt crossed over from Egypt in the town of Rafah. He's in Gaza City now, and I asked him what he saw on the drive.
ERIC WESTERVELT: Well, at the Rafah crossing itself, I saw mostly Egyptian ambulance Red Cross workers. They were busy unloading wounded civilians for treatment in Egypt. Many of them were in very bad shape. I then drove up the main coastal roadway, and it was a bit ghostlike and deserted. Most of the other cars on the road coming north from Rafah this afternoon were ambulances. People are still very afraid. This is the first full night of calm. They're being very cautious. Very few people were venturing out as the sun was setting tonight.
The coastal road was bombed out in several places. We had to drive off-road into the sand a few times where Israeli air and naval strikes had blasted holes and craters in the road. I also saw giant scars in the road and sand burns where Israeli tanks had, until just last night's cease-fire, taken up fighting positions.
And when you get closer to Gaza City, the scale of the destruction is everywhere. Multiple Hamas buildings and police compounds have been reduced to rubble. The Red Cross today recovered dozens more bodies buried in the rubble. The destruction is just massive.
ROBERTS: At least for tonight, anyway, the cease-fire does appear to be holding. What's your sense of how strong this truce is?
WESTERVELT: Well, people are afraid that it's not going to last. There's a constant buzz of military - Israeli military unmanned drones flying overhead. You talk to people in the streets and they say they just don't believe that it will hold.
I interviewed a Hamas official tonight in Rafah. His name is Gati Hamed(ph). He said if Israeli forces aren't out of the territory in a week, we will resist, of course. And while he conceded that Hamas fighters were clearly no match for the Israeli military and heavy armor, he pointed out that, you know, Hamas fighters were still able to fire rockets into Israel throughout this three-week conflict, although in fewer numbers over the course of the war.
And one aid official here tonight said to me, you know, we're back at square one. There's a shaky, uneasy truce. The crossings are not open, and people are scared of more violence.
ROBERTS: Israeli leaders have said that this military operation was a big blow to Hamas, both militarily and politically. Have you seen any signs of Hamas trying to reassert itself?
WESTERVELT: A little bit. On the drive up from Rafah tonight, there was a Hamas presence at some key roadways and intersections. But these Hamas fighters are in civilian clothes as were the policemen. They were not brandishing weapons. They were laying low, and I think it'll be an important test and something to follow up on to see if in coming days, Hamas policemen and other institutions do try to reassert themselves visibly out in public in coming days.
ROBERTS: NPR's Eric Westervelt in Gaza City. Thanks, Eric.
WESTERVELT: You're welcome.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
It's a perfect storm of symbolism - the inauguration of the first African-American president who happens to be from Illinois, just like Abraham Lincoln, the president who ended slavery, Lincoln's Memorial, site of the famous "I Have A Dream" speech by Martin Luther King, whose birthday the nation celebrates tomorrow. All those themes converged at the Lincoln Memorial this afternoon along with hundreds of thousands of people.
(Soundbite of policeman screaming)
Unidentified Man: Move back please if you do not have a ticket.
Ms. VASHALI CUTRY(ph): I'm very excited.
Mr. MARK JOHNSON(ph): The military police is kind of cramping our style, but other than that, we're good. We're really pumped, yeah.
Ms. KAREN MOHILL(ph): I came here to catch a glimpse of Stevie Wonder and Obama. So I hope I get lucky.
ROBERTS: That was Karen Mohill from Washington, D.C. and before her, Vashali Cutry from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Mark Johnson from Aletha(ph), Kansas.
They were joined on the Mall today by several dozen superstars. The theme of the show - "We Are One." That was the mesasge of musicians ranging from Stevie Wonder...
(Soundbite of song "Higher Ground")
Mr. STEVIE WONDER: (Singing) People keep on learning, Soldiers keep on...
ROBERTS: To Garth Brooks.
(Soundbite of song "American Pie")
Mr. GARTH BROOKS: (Singing) Bye, bye Miss American Pie Drove my Chevy to the levee But the levee was dry And good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing this will be...
ROBERTS: Big-time actors also took the stage, giving dramatic readings. Most of them stuck to the script, like actress Laura Linney.
(Soundbite of speech)
Ms. LAURA LINNEY (Actress): When Franklin Delano Roosevelt arrived at the inaugural stand on the steps of the Capitol in 1933, 25 percent of workers had lost their jobs. Banks were closed, foreclosures were mounting, and the American people were frightened.
ROBERTS: Although Jamie Foxx took the opportunity to poke a little fun at the man of the hour.
(Soundbite of speech)
Mr. JAMIE FOXX (Actor): This was the most incredible moment of my life and all of your lives when our president-elect said to the American people, and he said it very smooth and calmly, he said, if there's anyone who still doubts that America is not a place where all things are possible, tonight is your answer.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
The star attraction, Barack Obama and his family, did make the scene at the Lincoln Memorial today. NPR's Debbie Elliott was there, too. I spoke with her earlier and asked her to describe the crowds.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT: Well, you know, hundreds of thousands of people had lined the Mall for this historic occasion, lined up all along the Reflecting Pool, stretching all the way from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument. And the Lincoln Memorial itself had been turned into this elaborate stage. President-elect Barack Obama and his wife Michelle coming down the steps with Abe Lincoln sitting behind them. The symbolism you mentioned earlier, you know, Abe Lincoln, the great emancipator, as the nation's first African-American president-elect walks down the stage.
ROBERTS: And what was the president-elect's role?
ELLIOTT: You know, for a good part of the show, he just enjoyed it - you heard Garth Brooks singing "American Pie" there. Garth Brooks also did a rendition of "Shout." I looked over at the little glass enclosure where the Obamas were sitting along with the vice president-elect Joe Biden and his wife and some other members of their party, and they were on their feet. And the girls were throwing their hands up to "Shout." So, they enjoyed the show.
But then, the president-elect came and made a speech toward the end, certainly recognizing the theme here. All the great presidents who had come before from Abe Lincoln to FDR to John F. Kennedy.
And in his speech, he acknowledged that, you know, only a handful of generations have faced the challenges that the United States faces today. He said, you know, this is serious. We're a nation at war where we have an economy that's in crisis. And he warned that it wouldn't be fast or easy to address these issues. But while he gave that warning, he also offered a little hope. Let's listen to a bit.
(Soundbite of President-elect Barack Obama's speech at the Lincoln Memorial)
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: Despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead, I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure, that it will prevail, that the dream of our founders will live on in our time.
ROBERTS: And Debbie, Mr. Obama has been giving a lot of speeches. He's going to give a lot more before this inauguration celebration is out. I want to play another bit from him standing at the Lincoln Memorial.
President-elect OBAMA: What gives me the greatest hope of all is not the stone and marble that surrounds us, but what fills the spaces in between. It is you, Americans of every race and region and station who came here because you believe in what this country can be and because you want to help us get there.
ELLIOTT: Yes, certainly this is part of the whole them of today's event, "We Are One." You know, time and time again, speakers took to the stage and quoted Barack Obama from the campaign - you know, that famous quote saying, you know, there is no such thing as red states and blue states, we are the United States of America.
ROBERTS: NPR's Debbie Elliott in Washington. Thank you so much, Debbie.
ELLIOTT: Thank you, Rebecca.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Rebecca Roberts.
Former President FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: I, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, do solemnly swear...
Former President JOHN F. KENNEDY: I, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, do solemnly swear...
Former President RONALD REAGAN: I, Ronald Reagan, do solemnly swear...
Former President BILL CLINTON: I, William Jefferson Clinton, do solemnly swear...
ROBERTS: The Presidential Oath of Office - it's laid out in the Constitution. But did you know this? When Barack Obama takes it on Tuesday, he can choose not to swear, as NPR's Andrea Seabrook reports.
ANDREA SEABROOK: Article Two Section One of the Constitution actually reads like this.
Unidentified Man: Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation. I do solemnly swear or affirm that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
SEABROOK: Did you catch that? It was read here by an actor. It says, I do solemnly swear or affirm. The president has the option not to swear, but to affirm, instead. The root of this affirmation? Paul Lacey of the American Friends Service Committee says it comes from one of the basic tenets of the Religious Society of Friends, the Quakers.
Mr. PAUL LACEY (Clerk, American Friends Service Committee): The Quakers were among some of those groups that took very literally the injunction in Scripture in the Sermon on the Mount that you should swear not, just period. You swear not.
SEABROOK: Here's what the Bible says.
Unidentified Man: But I tell you, do not swear at all, either by heaven for it is God's throne or by the earth for it is his foot stool. Simply let your yes be yes and your no, no. Anything beyond this comes from the evil one.
Mr. LACEY: The meaning behind that for Quakers was not only the sense that if the Sermon on the Mount gives you an ethical principle, you ought to take it very, very seriously, but also that if you swear, you are suggesting that maybe other times you don't tell the truth.
SEABROOK: Still, affirming has been very, very rare. President Franklin Pierce chose to affirm his oath in 1853. But it's not just some antiquated relic of a bygone century either, says Paul Lacey. These days, secular humanists, atheists, and agnostics for whom swearing by God is actually against their consciences, as well as many religious conservatives and Quakers, choose to affirm in oath rather than swear it. Andrea Seabrook, NPR News.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
This morning, in the historic church that nurtured the young Martin Luther King, Jr., the current pastor preached about Barack Obama and the people who came before.
Senior Pastor RAPHAEL G. WARNOCK (Ebenezer Baptist Church): He sits on the knees and stands on the shoulders of Medgar Evers who died in his driveway fighting for freedom. He sits on the knees and stands on the shoulders of Martin Luther King, Jr., who said I may not get there with you, but we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So keep on moving...
ROBERTS: Senior Pastor Raphael G. Warnock speaking this morning at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has put out a call for sermons like this one. It's asking churches, synagogues and mosques nationwide to send in recordings of speeches that mark Obama's inauguration. Peggy Bulger is the director of the American Folklife Center.
Ms. PEGGY BULGER (Director, American Folklife Center): We expect that a lot of these speeches and sermons coming in will have the traditional speech patterns and the reactions from the congregation or the audience that will serve to be a piece of history and a piece of folk art, if you will.
ROBERTS: How often does the Folklife Center issued this kind of a call?
Ms. BULGER: Well, actually, not that often, but we do try to respond to extraordinary events in history by getting the voices of ordinary Americans, the ones who perhaps might be overlooked by major media outlets.
So on the day after Pearl Harbor, which would have been December the 8th, 1941, the head of the Folklife Archive was Alan Lomax, and he realized that this was a moment that wouldn't happen, again. It was an extraordinary time. And he sent out a telegram, which was the best way of getting a hold of people quickly at the time, he sent out a telegram to 12 folklorists around the country, including his father and said, stop what you're doing and if you would, please collect man-on-the-street interviews about how people feel about Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war.
ROBERTS: I want to play one of those. This was recorded by Alan Lomax' father, John Lomax. And we're going to hear from Edward Crain(ph) of Dallas, Texas.
Mr. EDWARD CRAIN: Frankly, my view is, and I include the Hun or the Germans, so-called, in what I have to say about the Japanese, that is we ought to exterminate both of them. There is no place for either of those races in the world today.
Ms. BULGER: It's kind of astounding to listen to what people on the street were feeling, the absolute fury and the fact that that kind of speech, which we would consider total hate speech, would have been acceptable. It's kind of astounding, and I think that, in history, if we don't get these voices, then we don't get the full picture of how people really responded and why history played out the way it did.
ROBERTS: After Pearl Harbor, was it the next time you issued this sort of call to folklorists was 9/11?
Ms. BULGER: Luckily, we had a listserv of 400 folklorists around the country, and we sent out on the listserv a call saying again, stop what you're doing where you are and interview people about what they're feeling.
ROBERTS: We're going to listen to one. Tell us what we're about to hear.
Ms. BULGER: Well, this is Janet Freeman(ph), and she was in Iowa City, a woman at home who turned on the television. And we all had coping mechanisms, and this is how she coped.
Ms. JANET FREEMAN: I was in my bare feet and my pajamas at that time. And what I did was start cleaning my kitchen. I took the screens down off the windows, washed the windows, washed the window sills, cleaned out the sink, cleaned out the cupboard, took everything out of the cupboard under the sink, scrubbed the surface of the stove, removed everything from the oven and cleaned out the oven.
About three o'clock in the afternoon, I realized that my pajamas were filthy. My hands were all cut up. My fingernails were quite vile, but my kitchen was cleaner than it had been in a long time. I was watching CNN that whole time.
ROBERTS: Why did the Folklife Center decide that the inauguration of Barack Obama rose to the level of historic events like Pearl Harbor or September 11th?
Ms. BULGER: The American people have elected an African-American president which is kind of astounding when you look back even 30 years ago where we were. So we thought this would be a time, a much happier time, to collect people's reactions than, of course, 9/11 and the day after Pearl Harbor. But that this is a time when all people will have an opinion and all people can kind of take pride in the fact that in some way, we've reached a milestone in how we think of ourselves as Americans.
ROBERTS: Have you gotten any submissions yet?
Ms. BULGER: Yes, and we were so surprised. Our very first submission has come in, and it's from a mosque in Montana. Who knew?
ROBERTS: Peggy Bulger directs the American Folklife Center. Thank you so much.
Ms. BULGER: Well, thank you.
ROBERTS: The American Folklife Center's goal is to create an oral history. We're trying to do something similar with a high-tech twist. You can share your story. Find out how on our Web site, npr.org/inaugurationreport.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Rebecca Roberts.
(Soundbite of song "Lean on Me")
Ms. MARY J. BLIGE: (Singing) Lean on me, when you're not strong. I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on...
ROBERTS: And that is Mary J. Blige carrying on today's massive concert on the Mall here in Washington. Despite the huge crowds, it was something of a dry run for the really big show - Tuesday's inauguration and parade. NPR's Laura Sullivan has been monitoring the logistics of handling the millions expected in town on the big day. I talked to her earlier outside the Foggy Bottom Metro Station.
LAURA SULLIVAN: What we have here is a Metro station on the brink of chaos.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SULLIVAN: There are probably a thousand people, if not more, lined up all the way down the street, filling the entire street, just trying to get into the Metro station. And then at every point - at every point down the way and there are three levels going down, they're stopping people and holding people because they simply cannot fit one more body on the Metro platform, one more body in the ticketing area, one more body in the waiting area in between. And so, it's been pretty crazy.
ROBERTS: How has it been working out logistically, so far?
SULLIVAN: So far, this morning, it worked out pretty well. It looked like a heavy rush hour, you know. It was a situation where just tons of people were coming, but it was staggered over about eight hours. And at that point, you know, they've seen about half a million people so far ride the Metro today which is - that's a very, very heavy use for the Metro. And at that point, it was working OK.
The problems started when they would end up in line at the security checkpoint in order to get into the Lincoln Memorial. That took about two hours, and then some people weren't even able to get into the Lincoln Memorial at that point, because it was so full that they had to send people back. So it was at that point that we started seeing a little bit of frustration with people.
And here again, what I'm looking at now at this crowd of people is, you know, some frustration and a little bit of patience waning. I'm looking, you know, at six officers right now barricading the escalator entrance to the Metro. And people who are halfway down the block don't understand why the crowd isn't moving forward. So it's got that sort of, you know, panic sense about it when you've got this many people trying to get into one area.
ROBERTS: And are people starting to get kind of grouchy?
SULLIVAN: I mean - yeah, because it's been a long, cold day. I mean it was this remarkable festive feeling, but now people are tired, and they want to go home, and they're cold and their handwarmers aren't working anymore. And they don't understand why they can't get into the warm Metro where, you know, where a thousand other people are standing (laughing). It looks like, you know, when the trains come, the problem is that the trains are full, and so, the people on the station platform, there isn't anywhere for them to go. So, I think that that's sort of what's backing all of this up here.
ROBERTS: Now, this concert today has been billed as kind of a prelude, a dress rehearsal to the big event. What do you suppose this means for Tuesday?
SULLIVAN: This is a problem. If this is what's going to happen after the concert at one Metro station, and they're expecting even more people for the inauguration, they're going to have some serious Metro problems on Tuesday. They're also going to have some serious problems with their checkpoints. I've seen the Fourth of July a number of times here in D.C. It runs pretty smoothly. They can get a lot - hundreds of thousands of people onto the Mall with their bags checked.
Today, for some reason, it was simply more people than they could handle, and they just couldn't get the people moving through the line fast enough. They're going to have even more people and security checkpoints along the entire parade route. Hopefully, people will know that they can come in the back side without having to go through security. If people are aware of that, it might ease it up, if not, they're going to be looking at a lot of what I'm looking at right now.
ROBERTS: NPR's Laura Sullivan standing outside the fabulously named Foggy Bottom Metro Station, just off the Mall in Washington. Thank you, Laura.
SULLIVAN: Thank you.
REBECCA ROBERTS, host:
Have you heard? It's the weekend that never ends in D.C. right now. Night after night. Friday out to dinner, Saturday at the club - we just heard Jeannie Jones at Club Ibiza last night. The balls starts tonight and it all gets dressier as it goes along.
The other day, one of our producers complained that her husband got invited to one of the black tie parties, but he didn't want to wear a tuxedo. Was a brown suit OK? No way, our style mavens replied, and one of them, Marcus Rosenbaum, came to the tuxedo's defense.
MARCUS ROSENBAUM: Come on, guys. It's just a black suit with a bow tie with the added advantage of a cummerbund to hide that bulge around your middle. And if you wear a pleated shirt with nifty studs instead of buttons, I promise no one will mistake you for a waiter. You won't look funny, you'll look great. Well, maybe we all won't look great, but as one female colleague put it, we'll certainly look better.
So if you're heading out to an inaugural ball on Tuesday, or just to a neighborhood do, put on your tux with gusto. Just follow these simple tips and you won't regret it.
First, make sure you get a nice one, one that's made out of finely woven wool. Skip the polyester, spring for the real thing. Second, make sure it fits. A little loose is better than a little tight as long as it doesn't hang all over you. You'll probably be downing some pretty good food and drink. Third, stick to simple black and white. No plaid bow ties with matching cummerbunds that will look like you're going to the junior prom. Fourth, forget the patent leather shoes. Wear some nice black shoes, instead. Your feet should be as comfortable as the rest of you. And finally, a real bow tie please, not a clip-on. Bow ties are actually easy to tie. You do it just like your shoe laces, though you'll probably want to practice a few times before the big event.
Here's the secret, you want a real bow tie not so you can tie it, but so you can untie it at the after-party. I promise you, you'll be the coolest-looking dude in the place. My son will tell you it's one of the best lessons I ever taught him.
After my mother died, my father used to go on cruises to various parts of the world. He said he dressed for dinner every night. It's so easy, he said, all I have to do is to take one suit, his tuxedo, and two shirts. I can wear it every night and no one says he wore the same thing yesterday. I feel so sorry for women. They've got to bring so many different clothes.
My father was a wise man about many things, tuxedos included. They make you look elegant and feel elegant at the same time. Don't think penguin, think James Bond.
ROBERTS: Marcus Rosenbaum is a long-time NPR editor, although he's usually less formally dressed here in the office.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
It's not the kind of line you usually read in a presidential memoir.
(Soundbite of Barack Obama reading from "Dreams From My Father")
President-elect BARACK OBAMA: Winter came and the city turned monochrome - black trees against gray sky above white earth. Night now fell in mid-afternoon.
ROBERTS: That, of course, is Barack Obama, the writer in his memoir, "Dreams From My Father." He wrote the book in 1995, well before his presidential campaign. Since then, he's published one other book. Both have been bestsellers. So, Mr. Obama never quit his day job, but the man can write and what might that mean for his term in the Oval Office? To find out, we have assembled a panel of literary pundits - authors who have all read his memoir. Here they are in their own words.
Dr. AZAR NAFISI (Iranian Academic and Writer): My name is Azar Nafisi. I come from Iran. I'm a new U.S. citizen, and I know myself mainly as a writer and a teacher.
Mr. RICK MOODY (Author, "The Ice Storm"): My name's Rick Moody. I'm a novelist. I'm the author of "The Ice Storm."
Ms. EDWIDGE DANTICAT (Author, "Brother, I'm Dying"): My name is Edwidge Danticat. and I'm a writer. And my most recent book is a memoir called "Brother, I'm Dying."
Dr. NAFISI: The essence of a writer is curiosity.
Mr. MOODY: Many presidents past have published books. And in fact, from "Profiles of Courage" on, it's become sort of something that presidential candidates want to do and indeed, have to do. However, in Obama's case, he's a completely different order of writer.
Ms. DANTICAT: I was right in the middle of starting my own memoir and was reading many, many memoirs, and this one, I just absolutely loved because it involved this incredible journey back to Kenya, to this family. And it gave voice to these people in a way that I thought was so distinct.
(Soundbite of "Dreams From My Father")
President-elect OBAMA: After a long pause, Granny looked at me and smiled. Hello, she said. Mosawa, I said. Our mutual vocabulary exhausted, we stared ruefully down at the dirt until Alma(ph) finally returned. And Granny then turned to Alma and said, in a tone I could understand, that it pained her not to be able to speak to the son of her son. Tell her I'd like to learn Luo, but it's hard to find the time in the States, I said. Tell her how busy I am. She understands that, Alma said. But she also says that a man could never be too busy to know his own people.
(Soundbite of music)
Dr. NAFISI: Every book is a search and that is the journey he's on, and it is a search for an unknown, but also the essence of a good writer is to turn that search both into something very personal, which can have universal connotations. That is what a memoir should be.
Mr. MOODY: Perhaps we're lucky Obama has written a memoir of his early life prior to being in public office. This really is a book where he digs in.
(Soundbite of "Dreams From My Father")
President-elect OBAMA: I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.
Ms. DANTICAT: Well, I think what I would gather from this in link to his word of governance is honesty. I mean, it's extraordinarily honest, and perhaps he wouldn't write in the same way, now.
(Soundbite of "Dreams From My Father")
President-elect OBAMA: I discovered that it didn't make any difference whether you smoked reefer in the white classmate's sparkling new van, or in the dorm room with some brother you'd met down at the gym, or on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids who had dropped out of school and now spent most of their time looking for an excuse to brawl. Nobody asked you whether your father was a fat cat executive who cheated on his wife, or some laid-off Joe who slapped you around whenever he bothered to come home. You might just be bored or alone. Everybody was welcome into the club of disaffection.
Mr. MOODY: It's impossible to say, of course, how he's going to govern. However, what struck me as really relevant about reading his writing is his unvarnished devotion to speaking the truth. That's the president that I'd hope that we'd see - the one who's willing to say, this is where we really are, and let's start governing with the truth of our situation, rather than some pie-in-the-sky version.
Dr. NAFISI: What I would expect of him is as a writer, as a person who knows how much having a vision and thinking poetically about life is a way of revealing life and changing life. My expectation of him is to not only promise us what we are imagining, but to actualize it. So, he should do what seems impossible.
ROBERTS: That was author Azar Nafisi with fellow writers Rick Moody and Edwidge Danticat. They spoke with my colleague, Jacki Lyden.
REBECCA ROBERTS, Host:
Parting words today from a writer who knew something about journeys, John Steinbeck, author of "The Grapes of Wrath." He wrote, "A journey is a person in itself, no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip, a trip takes us." That's All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Rebecca Roberts, have a great week.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is All Things Considered. From NPR News, I'm Melissa Block. President-elect Obama has criticized the Bush administration's expansion of presidential power, and pressure is building on Mr. Obama to undo many of President Bush's decisions. That's the topic of our final Memo to the President-elect. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports on the structure of government power set up by the outgoing president, and how it will affect the new president.
NINA TOTENBERG: Separation of powers - it's a phrase bandied about without thinking, like M&Ms at a party. In the context of the American form of government, it means this: The founders of this nation learned to be afraid of concentrated government power, and so they constructed the government as a three-part system, with none of the three branches having the upper hand, and each with the power to check the other.
President Bush, for almost his entire time in office, maintained that he had powers as chief executive that could trump the other branches of government, that he could - to cite just one example - without telling Congress or the courts, disregard longstanding laws because he interpreted them to be unconstitutional. Thus, he secretly declared that he was not bound by the federal law requiring him to get approval from a specially created court in order to conduct electronic surveillance of American citizens.
On another front, he asserted the power to detain indefinitely both American citizens and foreigners without charge and without court review. The Supreme Court would eventually shoot down these claims of unlimited executive power, but some 250 prisoners remain at Guantanamo, some of them believed to be extremely dangerous, and some of them already declared by the courts to have been detained without justification.
So how is the new president to deal with those assertions of unlimited executive power, assertions which Mr. Obama has long denounced? He has said he plans to shut down Gitmo. But what to do with the prisoners there? It's widely believed that the new administration may have more success in getting other countries to accept detainees who are not believed to be dangerous, or who were low-level fighters picked up in Afghanistan.
But what about people who are thought to be really dangerous? Some can be tried in regular U.S. courts for their crimes. But as to others, the evidence against them is often the product of harsh interrogation techniques, like waterboarding, or from intelligence sources that cannot be cited in open court. So, then what do we do?
Ms. JAMIE GORELICK (Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General): When we started down this path, I asked, what are you going to do with these people in the end?
TOTENBERG: Former Deputy Attorney General and 9/11 Commission member Jamie Gorelick.
Ms. GORELICK: The decision was made by this administration to emphasize prevention at the price of what you do with them at the end. And now we're at that conundrum.
TOTENBERG: The consensus seems to be to wait and see how many of these cases cannot be resolved. Still, the problem is unlikely to go away since in the future, we are likely to capture terrorists who pose a similar dilemma. Gorelick and many others think that, in the end, Congress will have to create some sort of special terrorism court with the power to detain people we cannot try.
That's not something we have ever done in this country but increasingly, talk is focusing on how it could be done: what the standard for detention would be, for how long, and to require some sort of independent and periodic judicial review so that people are not just locked up and forgotten forever - in short, a system set up by one branch of government, the Congress, allowing the executive power to detain, with a check by the judiciary.
Civil libertarians still hate this idea, seeing it as anathema to our system of proving charges with evidence. But it's something President Obama will undoubtedly have to, at least, consider.
Everyone we talked to for this broadcast, conservatives and liberals alike, said it's important that there be more transparency about the decisions being made by the president. The Bush administration only informed eight members of Congress about key intelligence matters - when Congress was informed at all. Senator Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, says that's a clear violation of the law.
Senator ARLEN SPECTER (Republican, Pennsylvania): The intelligence committees, plural, should be informed, and that means telling them all.
TOTENBERG: Congress was also repeatedly rebuffed in its efforts to see the legal opinions rendered by the Office of Legal Counsel, opinions that in the Bush years, authorized unprecedented actions, including waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques previously considered torture. Once in office, the new administration is likely to review all of these opinions and to withdraw some - among them, an opinion that allows the president to disregard a duly enacted law without telling Congress.
Walter Dellinger, who headed the Clinton Office of Legal Counsel, reflects a widespread view that the legal counsel's opinions do need to be public wherever possible.
Mr. WALTER DELLINGER (Former Administrator, Office of the Legal Counsel): You can't have government by consent of the governed unless the citizenry knows what government's doing. It's really the heart of democracy that you can as a citizen express your opposition to it.
TOTENBERG: The Obama administration will also have to deal with the repercussions of various Bush administration scandals, everything from so-called torture tactics used by the CIA to the mass firing of U.S. attorneys. Expect the new administration to take a fresh look at past interrogation tactics. But few expect there to be criminal prosecutions, since officials and operatives alike relied on Bush administration legal opinions that such tactics were legal.
Also outstanding are congressional subpoenas for information about the U.S. attorney firings. And it is the new president, not the former president, who can either continue to refuse those congressional requests for information or agree to them. Leading Republican and Democratic members of Congress expect the new administration to turn over much of that information.
There seems to be universal agreement, too, that tough congressional oversight helps an administration. Prior to the Bush administration, for instance, Justice Departments run by presidents of both parties gave quite detailed briefings to the House and Senate judiciary committees about how the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was being carried out. That's the law that set up a special court to review requests to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans for intelligence purposes. Former Deputy Attorney General Gorelick…
Ms. GORELICK: There was a dialogue. I know this because I used to do it. I would sit with the chair and ranking member and go through the report and say, here are the issues. When you do that, A, it does sometimes prompt oversight and questions; but, B, it gives you a sense of joining hands between the two branches around a tough issue at the intersection of liberty and security.
TOTENBERG: While Barack Obama has often spoken out strongly about the value of tough oversight and presidential restraint, the view from the Oval Office is very different from the view from Capitol Hill. Brad Berenson, who served as associate White House counsel in the Bush administration, warns the new president that less is often better than more.
Mr. BRAD BERENSON (Former Associate Counsel, Bush Administration): If I had two minutes to put a bug in his ear about what to do, it would all be directed toward having the strength and the wisdom to realize that he shouldn't necessarily use all the power he's going to have. That was one of Bush's big mistakes. But self-restraint is so hard.
TOTENBERG: Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. Tomorrow, we'll hear Elizabeth Alexander deliver the official inaugural poem. Here on our show, we've commissioned some inaugural poems of our own. From lyrics to limericks, raps to rhymes, our poets express what the inauguration means to them, in verse. We've heard from Calvin Trillin and Nikki Giovanni. Today, the playwright and poet Suzan-Lori Parks.
Ms. SUZAN-LORI PARKS (Poet, Novelist, Playwright): (Reading) You being you Mr. President-elect Makes me wanna get my stuff correct I feel like starting with something radical Like, love my neighbor Like share what I've got Like think for myself Like ask the hard questions Like lean toward the good and help keep the peace
You being you Makes me wanna do something new Like go green, or at least try to.
You being you, Mr. President-elect Makes me wanna look on others with respect Makes me wanna practice radical inclusion, you know, Open my heart wide, especially in the presence of folks who Are not like me, you know, work to see my brother in the other You make me want to entertain all my far-out ideas Make me wanna represent the race, as in the human race, And know that, like you, I, too, am prized.
And to those who say you are a magic Negro, I love them just the same And my love helps us weave a United States.
Mr. President, heaven sent Since heaven is just a place where possibility becomes possible And where hostility holsters its hostile, I feel like picking up the trash in the park or on the beach I think I'll teach, and learn, from all I meet I think I'll apologize in person for all our faults And try to make amends for our shortcomings And also, I think, I'll brag, Just a little bit, About how cool we the people are.
Oh, I just had to sing you something Because you, Mr. President, You are embarking with us on an awesome and beautiful And potentially perilous journey And so I am giving you All the Love All the Love All the Love All the Love Mr. President that I've got Because I believe in the dream And I am ready to wake up and live it.
BLOCK: Suzan-Lori Parks, a poet, novelist and playwright reading her inaugural poem. To read our other commissioned inaugural poems, go to npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
One yardstick for measuring the Obama presidency will be his first 100 days in office. The template for that is Franklin Roosevelt's administration. FDR took office as the Great Depression weighed upon the country. With that in mind, NPR's Margot Adler visited the Roosevelt home in Hyde Park, New York.
MARGOT ADLER: The paint may be peeling on the columns and balustrades of FDR's home, and on a winter day, with snow and ice on the ground, there are relatively few tourists. But everybody notices it. There's something about actually being here as opposed to opening a book. I step into the garden, where snow covers the grave sites of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt. Sarah Olson is the superintendent of the Roosevelt-Vanderbilt Historic Site.
Ms. SARAH OLSON (Superintendent, Roosevelt-Vanderbilt Historic Site): I'm always struck by how moved people are by the memory of FDR. I think most people will stop at the grave site, not go just directly to the home.
ADLER: Whether you're looking at the old phones in his bedroom, the wheelchairs he adapted, FDR's 1941 metal library shelving that still houses the archives or...
Ms. CYNTHIA COOK (Director, FDR Library and Museum): We're looking toward the Oval Office desk.
ADLER: The original desk in the White House, shown to me by Cynthia Cook, the director of the FDR Library and Museum. The house, run by the National Park Service, and the library, run by the National Archive, still feel lived in somehow. Many of the visitors who have come today are here for the First 100 Days exhibit.
Herman Eberhardt is the curator at the FDR Library and Museum. You first enter a room where you are enveloped in photographs and film footage of the Great Depression: soup kitchens, hungry farm children, people standing in line, just waiting. Eberhardt says it sets the stage for FDR's inauguration.
Mr. HERMAN EBERHARDT (Curator, FDR Library and Museum): He comes into office in March 1933, at the real low point of the Great Depression. Unemployment is approaching 25 percent when he takes the oath of office and generally, it's seen as another 25 percent of the population could only find part-time work. So you had half the population that was either underemployed or unemployed.
ADLER: Then you enter a room that's set up like a poor person's home. There's a sink, some laundry hanging from a makeshift clothesline. And in the most central place, there's a radio.
(Soundbite of song "Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams")
Mr. BING CROSBY: (Singing) And dream your troubles away...
ADLER: Commercial radio began in the 1920s. And by the time of FDR's inauguration, it was in the hands of most people. There are chairs, so you can sit in this room and listen to the first Fireside Chat.
(Soundbite of Franklin Roosevelt's first Fireside Chat, March 12th, 1933)
Former President FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT: I can assure you, my friends, that it is safer to keep your money in a reopened bank than it is to keep it under the mattress.
ADLER: Four thousand banks have failed; people are taking their money out of the banks. So Roosevelt closed the banks, declaring a bank holiday.
Mr. EBERHARDT: Roosevelt used the radio, right from the beginning of his presidency, in a very effective way, to communicate directly with the public, go over the heads of Congress, go over the heads of the newspapers and other media, and take his case directly to the people. And the very first time he does that is a week after he comes in to office. They've passed the Emergency Banking Act, and he wants to explain this rather complicated bill to the public.
(Soundbite of Frank D. Roosevelt's first Fireside Chat, March 12th, 1933)
Former President ROOSEVELT: After all, there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people themselves. You people must have faith. You must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear.
ADLER: Thousands of letters of support were sent to the president. One said, until last night, the president of the United States was merely a legend, but you are real. People lined up to return their money to the banks.
The exhibit also focuses on the 15 pieces of legislation that were passed in the first 100 days and led to the foundation of the New Deal. David Woolner, a professor of history at Marist College in nearby Poughkeepsie, says FDR fundamentally changed the relationship between the American people and their government, and between the United States and the world.
Professor DAVID WOOLNER (History, Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York): When you look at things like the banking legislation, the establishment of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Social Security, you're looking at a subset of reforms that have really guided the American government in its exercise of social and economic policy for decades and decades.
What I like to say is that we live in the house that Roosevelt built. We've been remodeling the house, we've moved the furniture around. But essentially, he built the house we live in, and we are still living in it.
ADLER: As visitors walk through this exhibit, it's clear that many came because, they say, there's something about this moment. Here is Tess McKellen and Shari Reider.
Ms. TESS MCKELLEN: We wanted to see the First 100 Days, particularly since we are in the first 100 days. So it seemed very appropriate.
Ms. SHARI REIDER: He was a president who was paralyzed. He was so different than what you would expect a president to be, and our new president-elect is also so different than what you would expect a president to be.
And I think the other compelling similarity is the use of the Fireside Chat and now, with YouTube, this president-elect has really gone out of his way to connect with the people the way they're so now used to connecting, getting their information.
ADLER: But the exhibit leaves you with something else - the power of psychology, the force of positive thinking, and the upbeat presence FDR clearly radiated at every moment. That may be more difficult for a President Obama to replicate. Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
A Washington, D.C., charity got its start 20 years ago this week by collecting leftover food from the inaugural balls of George H.W. Bush and feeding the homeless. Now, D.C. Central Kitchen's culinary students, many of whom have been homeless themselves or in prison, are cooking for this inaugural. NPR's Pam Fessler reports.
PAM FESSLER: Jerome Girardot is the pastry chef at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington. He's greeting a half-dozen students from D.C. Central Kitchen, here to bake Michelle Obama's favorite shortbread cookies.
Mr. JEROME GIRARDOT (Pastry Chef, Ritz-Carlton Hotel): Are you guys ready? There's a lot to do.
FESSLER: Girardot takes the students, all wearing black chef jackets and caps, into the hotel's walk-in refrigerator, where large, metal trays hold slabs of dough.
Mr. GIRARDOT: So, we started already making it. So, one of you is going to roll it out. One of you is going to egg-wash it, put the dried fruit and nuts on top, bake it. Two of you are going to carry it. We have to make about 8,000. So, that's a lot of cookies.
FESSLER: Yes, that is a lot of cookies. Jars of them will be handed out as gifts to the hotel's inaugural guests.
Ms. MAKEISHA DAYE (Student, D.C. Central Kitchen): I'm rolling out the dough for the cookies.
FESSLER: Makeisha Daye bends over the conveyor belt of a large, metal machine used to flatten the dough into sheets. She lost her job and faced eviction from her home before entering the D.C. Central Kitchen's culinary program. And she's thrilled to play even a minor role in the inauguration of the nation's first black president.
Ms. DAYE: This is his wife's recipe, so it's an honor and a privilege, actually. I can share with my 4-year-old that I'm a part of history.
Mr. CURTIS CUNNINGHAM (Student, D.C. Central Kitchen): We're on our way.
Ms. DAYE: We're on our way.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM: Mine stay perfect, don't they? Every time.
FESSLER: Student Curtis Cunningham flips a sheet of dough onto a tray, then takes a paintbrush to cover it with egg so the toppings will stick.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM: I'm sprinkling the orange and lemon first, and then I'm placing the pistachios.
FESSLER: He presses the toppings down before the sheets go in the oven. Cunningham and the others from D.C. Central Kitchen are almost finished their 12-week culinary course, and are helping with several inaugural events. They've also begun to look for jobs. The group has placed about 98 percent of its graduates, more than 700 over the years. And like Cunningham, many are ex-offenders. He got out of prison last year after 15 years for attempted robbery and a long criminal record.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM: I had 33 arrests and 13 convictions. You look surprised.
(Soundbite of laughter)
FESSLER: Thirty-three is a lot.
Mr. CUNNINGHAM: Yeah, it is, you know. So - but I have totally changed from what I used to be. When I first came into the program, I had this attitude like the world owed me something. They turned me around. They talked to me, they worked with me, you know, my people skills.
FESSLER: And his cooking skills, too. He can't wait to start making meals. Robert Egger, who founded D.C. Central Kitchen, says a lot has changed since that first inauguration, when he shuttled bowls of lobster bisque to homeless shelters. And the culinary excesses of the time kept his operation alive.
Mr. ROBERT EGGER (Founder, D.C. Central Kitchen): For the first five years of the kitchen, I was up almost every night at 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning, because caterers were calling. It was roast beef and shrimp, and keep it coming, all over the city.
FESSLER: He says these days, there are few leftovers. Caterers have gotten smarter and more efficient. That's why nonprofits have to be smart, too, about how they help people, which is one reason for the culinary arts program and the opportunities it provides.
Mr. EGGER: First, it was give us your food. Then it was, hey, can we get students involved in preparing meals for the inauguration? Our goal now is, we want students to go to the White House and prepare a meal for a state dinner.
FESSLER: And he's optimistic that might happen. One of the program's graduates now cooks at Blair House, where the Obamas are staying tonight. Pam Fessler, NPR News, Washington.
BLOCK: And Pam mentioned Michelle Obama's shortbread cookies. We have that recipe at our Web site, npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block. In the Gaza Strip today, exhausted Palestinians surveyed the devastation following more than three weeks of attacks by the Israeli military. Those attacks left some 1,300 Palestinians dead, and large parts of many neighborhoods destroyed. Thirteen Israelis were killed in the fighting, including 10 soldiers. A fragile truce appears to be holding for now. Throughout Gaza, anger mixed with sorrow as families took stock of their losses and in some cases, buried their dead. From Gaza, NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.
ERIC WESTERVELT: Mariam Soboh died this morning, 20 days after she was born in a Gaza hospital soon after the start of the Israeli offensive against Hamas. Her parents, Bilal and Kamilia, decided that same day to flee their Gaza home in the face of Israeli air strikes. Mariam's grandfather, Mohammed Soboh, spoke about the family's ordeal today as an unmanned Israeli drone buzzed overhead.
Mr. MOHAMMED SOBOH: (Through Translator) Imagine: On that Saturday morning, she gave birth and in the afternoon, on the same day, we had to flee our home. A small baby couldn't stand the cold weather and the smoke from the bombs.
WESTERVELT: The newborn fell sick as her parents tried to weather the war at a U.N. school that was turned into a refugee shelter. There was limited water and food. It was cold and unbearably stressful. Bilal says he and his wife couldn't get the baby girl to a health clinic for six days. It was just too dangerous.
This afternoon, at a cemetery in the Beit Lahia district, Bilal wrapped his baby daughter in a white, cotton shroud, cradled her in a small blanket, and kissed her forehead. The 19-year-old farmer then lowered his daughter's corpse into a makeshift burial chamber of cinderblocks dug into the sand, with a piece of scrap metal for a cover. Bilal was silent and morose. Mariam's grandfather, Mohammed, was upset he couldn't afford a suitable burial.
Mr. MOHAMMED SOBOH: (Through Translator) We can't afford a proper cover for the coffin. We didn't even pay for the cinderblocks, and I was afraid the cemetery guard would charge me for them.
WESTERVELT: Mariam was Bilal and Kamilia's first child. After the burial, they returned to find their home completely destroyed. We have no place to stay. We have nothing, the grandfather said. There were scenes of loss and devastation across Gaza today, the first full day of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
In the Tuam neighborhood of Gaza City, 36-year-old Imad Wahbee loaded scraps of splintered wood and mangled kitchen pots on to a horse-drawn cart. It's all that's left of his house that was leveled in Israeli air and artillery strikes. The neighborhood is decimated. Whole apartment buildings are destroyed.
Mr. IMAD WAHBEE: (Through Translator) We found nothing. Nothing is left for us. Nothing. It's like a very strong earthquake happened here. Even a very strong earthquake wouldn't destroy as much as they did.
WESTERVELT: Just up the debris-choked road, Maha al-Sultan stood in front of her ruined home, weeping, angry and broken. Mrs. Sultan belittled Hamas' claims of victory in the confrontation with Israel, and she lashed out at the Islamist group's top leaders, who live in exile in Syria.
Ms. MAHA AL-SULTAN: (Through Translator) Where is the victory Hamas is talking about? Show us the victory. We are the only ones dead and destroyed. Where are the burned Israeli tanks and dead soldiers? All I see is our dead. Where is Khaled Mashaal? He's living in a castle in Syria. Let him see our destroyed houses.
WESTERVELT: As she spoke, two Israeli fighter jets suddenly swooped low overhead.
(Soundbite of fighter jets)
WESTERVELT: The American-made jets shot off defensive flares and tilted their wings, as if to remind Sultan and others here who still controls the air, sea and land borders into this battered sliver of coastal land. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Gaza City.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block. Tomorrow's inauguration could be the biggest gathering ever here in Washington. So today, security and transportation authorities were in high gear.
Tens of thousands of police and military personnel are already patrolling the streets. Metal walls and barricades are in place, controlling access to the U.S. Capitol and the inauguration parade route. NPR's Andrea Seabrook reports that despite the high security, the city feels like one, huge, block party.
ANDREA SEABROOK: I'm standing in Union Station on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., and it looks as if someone has opened a fire hose of people coming out of the Metro station, coming out of the train station, and swarming on to Capitol Hill, where there are just dozens and dozens of people hawking souvenirs of all different kinds - T-shirts, flags, everything.
(Soundbite of vendors selling souvenirs)
Unidentified Man: Shirts here, guys, inauguration shirts.
SEABROOK: You might not notice, but mixed in among the crowd are security officials of all kinds: police, Army, National Guard, air marshals. The Transportation Security Administration has deployed an untold number of what it calls VIPER teams. They specialize in terrorism prevention and response on trains, planes, ports - all modes of transportation.
But this crowd looks more exhilarated than wary. An escalator carries smile after smile up into the station. I hang my microphone over the side and yell out, where are you all coming from?
Unidentified Woman #1: Georgia.
Unidentified Woman #2: Texas.
Unidentified Man #2: Oklahoma City.
Unidentified Man #3: San Diego.
Unidentified Woman #3: New Jersey.
Unidentified Man #4: New Hampshire.
SEABROOK: Where are you coming from?
Unidentified Woman #4: North Dakota.
Unidentified Woman #5: Portland, Oregon.
Unidentified Woman #6: New York.
Unidentified Man #5: Louisiana.
Unidentified Man #6: Durham, North Carolina.
Unidentified Woman #7: Nebraska.
Unidentified Man: #7: Kansas.
SEABROOK: As far as transportation, so far so good. Metro is running smoothly. Roads are still open into the city. The traffic does get snarled down by the National Mall. Of course, the true test will come tomorrow.
Mr. MALCOLM WILEY (Special Agent and Spokesman, United States Secret Service): There will be security that you can see, and there will be security that you cannot see.
SEABROOK: Malcolm Wiley is a special agent with the Secret Service.
Mr. WILEY: We want for this event to be secure but at the same time, we don't want for security to be the story. The democratic process here is the story, and the celebration is the story.
SEABROOK: The Secret Service is coordinating security for inauguration. No fewer than 58 different government agencies are working it. They've also brought in backup: cops and soldiers from all over the country, deputized to enforce D.C. laws. So far, the only people coming close to disturbing the peace are the California high school kids keeping warm by playing a game called Chop Suey.
Unidentified Group: Oh, Chop Suey, Chop Suey, Chop Suey, oh yeah, Chop Suey.
SEABROOK: While partiers gathered in the D.C. streets, the man of the hour spent today focused on the National Day of Service. At a local high school, he cheered on volunteering students.
President-Elect BARACK OBAMA: I can't do it by myself. Michelle can't do it by herself. Government can only do so much.
SEABROOK: On his last day as president-elect, Mr. Obama also visited wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital, and helped paint a wall blue at a teenage homeless shelter. Andrea Seabrook, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Today's National Day of Volunteer Service goes back to 1994, when Congress passed a bill designating the King holiday as a day of citizen action. We're going to hear about several volunteer projects around the country today, and we start here in Washington, D.C., where volunteers have been sprucing up Marvin Gaye Park. Steve Coleman is a founder of Washington Parks & People and Steve, you're in Marvin Gaye Park right now. How does it look?
Mr. STEVE COLEMAN (Founder and Executive Director, Washington Parks & People): It looks a lot better than it did this morning.
BLOCK: And how so?
Mr. COLEMAN: Well, we had one of the largest turnouts we've ever had of individual volunteers just showing up because they wanted to help out. We had, in all the parks we worked on today, over 400 people come out to clean up, to open up sight lines, to pull trash out of the streams. And they worked on an African-American cemetery and a bladed, vacant lot right here in the hub of Marvin Gaye Park.
BLOCK: And why is it named for Marvin Gaye?
Mr. COLEMAN: Because he began his life of music, literally, sitting beside this stream. And so when you think about songs like "Mercy, Mercy Me" and "What's Going On," those themes are still very relevant in this sort of more forgotten end of the capital.
BLOCK: And not too long ago, I gather, Marvin Gaye Park would have looked really different from what it looks like right now.
Mr. COLEMAN: Yes, it was actually just about the worst park in the capital, and it's become the biggest community park revitalization in D.C. history. And the place where I am standing is actually the old nightclub where he had his first performance at the hub of the park.
BLOCK: When was that?
Mr. COLEMAN: Back in the late 1950s, before anyone knew who he was, and before he went to Motown. In fact, some of the people who performed with him back in the day now come back out to the park to perform in his honor.
BLOCK: What were some of the volunteers there today telling you about what made them come out?
Mr. COLEMAN: We had people from churches, from schools, The Root, which is an online African-American magazine. We had the Latin American Youth Center, a variety of service groups of all kinds, but mostly just individual people saying, I really want to help. I'm inspired. I'm fired up.
BLOCK: And is this true, there actually is a Martin Luther King connection to that park?
Mr. COLEMAN: There is, in fact, and today, folks were working on what we call the Martin Luther King Nature Sanctuary, which is the part of the park where Dr. King gave a speech back in 1961. It wasn't anything famous, just what he was doing every day of his life, exhorting people to stand up against injustice with the downtown lunch counter sit-ins. And we've named it after him as a permanent tribute.
BLOCK: Well, Mr. Coleman, thanks for talking to us today.
Mr. COLEMAN: Thanks so much.
BLOCK: Steve Coleman is founder of Washington Parks & People here in Washington, D.C. And we go now to Spencer, Iowa, in the northwestern corner of the state and to Rhonda Dean, who joins us from a shelter for women and children who are victims of domestic violence. Rhonda, tell us about your project today.
Ms. RHONDA DEAN (Executive Director, Centers Against Abuse and Sexual Assault): Well, today we're calling it the Spencer Spirit of Service, and it started at 10 o'clock this morning Central Time, in about 10 degrees. Individuals started bringing non-perishable food items and personal care items to Shaky Tree Coffee here in town at 5 West Second St. And then a group of individuals then ventured over to the shelter and did a couple service projects for us.
BLOCK: And you do this every year?
Ms. DEAN: Yes.
BLOCK: And how does the turnout this year compare?
Ms. DEAN: Well, it has been cold, so the turnout was a little light. But they had their overalls on, and they are ready to go.
BLOCK: What kind of work are the volunteers doing in the shelters?
Ms. DEAN: We started out in our garage, which serves two purposes: a storage area, and a place to hide vehicles if a person needs to have safety. And we just needed to straighten that up a little bit so that we were able to get more vehicles in there.
And then we have our pantry storage area that just needed to have some organization to it, and so we spent about two hours working on that. They just finished up a few minutes ago, and are looking forward in a future time to come back and paint a room for us.
BLOCK: Have they been talking to you about what brought them out today?
Ms. DEAN: Yes, a lot of them said that they're very, very motivated by President-elect Obama and his call for Americans to volunteer in their communities. One lady basically said that she feels such an honor to do this, and inspired by his words, to go ahead and serve the community.
BLOCK: We've been talking with Rhonda Dean. She's executive director of the Centers Against Abuse and Sexual Assault in Spencer, Iowa. Rhonda, thanks so much.
Ms. DEAN: Thank you.
BLOCK: And now to Lexington, Kentucky, where volunteers are delivering emergency preparedness kits to low-income housing complexes. The kits, with first-aid supplies, matches and emergency radio, were headed to senior citizens. Dwayne Edwards is the director of marketing for the Bluegrass Area chapter of the American Red Cross. Dwayne, how's the day so far?
Mr. DWAYNE EDWARDS (Marketing Director, Bluegrass Area Chapter, American Red Cross): It's been a great day so far. We've just completed passing out all the kits .
BLOCKS: And how many kits were there?
Mr. EDWARDS: There were 600 kits total that went to four different apartment complexes that are kind of tailored toward our seniors.
BLOCKS: And what's the idea behind this?
Mr .EDWARDS: It was an idea that kind of came from Katrina about making sure our community is prepared to take action to kind of help themselves, actually.
BLOCK: And the call for volunteers, is it pretty easy to find people or what?
Mr. EDWARDS: It was, and we were able to kind of do a composite where, for example, a fraternity at Transylvania University, the Delta Sigs, they went out and got the donated items, brought them to the Red Cross. Then we partnered with the Knights of Columbus. They assembled the kits. Then we used Red Cross disaster volunteers, who helped distribute the kits to the different apartment complexes.
BLOCK: Did you deliberately tie this program today, delivering these kits, to the Martin Luther King holiday?
Mr. EDWARDS: Yes, we did. It was kind of a whole thing about encouraging volunteerism in the Lexington area. This is our second year at it. Last year, we had 12 smaller projects going on in the Lexington area. This year, we had this primary project plus 25 other small projects going on in Lexington.
BLOCK: When you were delivering these kits today, did anybody say anything that stuck in your mind?
Mr. EDWARDS: The one thing that stuck in my mind was, we got to one housing complex, and there was a sorority there assisting the seniors, and another volunteer organization helping with a small project - helping the seniors organize their closets. So, what stuck in my mind were how many different groups were in the community helping people today.
BLOCK: And you really feel that?
Mr. EDWARDS: Yes.
BLOCK: Well, Dwayne Edwards, thanks so much for talking with us.
Mr. EDWARDS: OK, thank you.
BLOCK: Dwayne Edwards is head of marketing for the Bluegrass Area chapter of the American Red Cross in Lexington, Kentucky. And finally, we end up in Austin, Texas, where we're joined by Jonathan Lyle(ph). He's at St. Mary's Church, and he's helping out with a Day of Wellness for the Homeless, sponsored by AmeriCorps. Jonathan, what's going on where you are?
Mr. JONATHAN LYLE (Volunteer and Barber, Day of Wellness, Austin, Texas): Hello.
BLOCK: Hi.
Mr. LYLE: There's approximately - about 75 of us volunteers out here assisting. We have a foot-care clinic, we're giving out eye exams, haircuts, feeding them food. They had coffee this morning, socks, shoes, underwear, toiletries. There's even live entertainment, and we're doing a community art project as well. We're making a big quilt that everybody's putting some input into it.
BLOCK: Now, your part in all of this is that you are a barber, is that right?
Mr. LYLE: That is very much correct.
BLOCK: And you've been giving some haircuts today?
Mr. LYLE: I have.
BLOCK: How's that going?
Mr. LYLE: It's actually going pretty well. I actually stopped like in the middle of a haircut and ran over here.
BLOCK: To talk to me?
Mr. LYLE: I did.
BLOCK: We've got to let you get back to that poor person who's waiting for the rest of his hair to be cut - or hers.
Mr. LYLE: We have more than one barber so somebody else can kind of finish it up for me.
BLOCK: I see.
Mr. LYLE: But it's been going pretty well.
BLOCK: How many people do you figure have come through St. Mary's Church today?
Mr. LYLE: Right now, we're probably in midday, and I'd say there's been about 200. Wow, I was just told that we are at 400 already, and we're only halfway through the day.
BLOCK: Uh-huh(ph). And how many haircuts have you given?
Mr. LYLE: I have personally probably given out about four haircuts an hour. I have given out about 12 haircuts today.
BLOCK: That's, I would think that at the end of the day, that would be a pretty good feeling.
Mr. LYLE: Yes, I mean, it feels really good to be able to assist and help in the community, especially doing something that I love to do.
BLOCK: You've been listening in as I've talked with the folks here in Washington and Spencer, Iowa, and Lexington, Kentucky. Does it make you feel connected to something bigger going on? I realize that's a leading question.
Mr. LYLE: It really does. I was just sitting here thinking in my head, like wow - there are people doing service projects like mine or similar to mine all over the country today. It just makes me feel good to be a part of something.
BLOCK: Well, Mr. Lyle, thanks for taking time out from your barbering to talk with us. We appreciate it.
Mr. LYLE: You're welcome.
BLOCK: Jonathan Lyle, a barber helping out at the AmeriCorps Day of Wellness for the Homeless today in Austin, Texas. Just one of many projects going on around the country for the National Day of Service.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block. It's time now for our weekly technology segment, All Tech Considered. Today, technology and the inauguration. Washington, D.C., is, of course, bracing for record crowds, traffic jams on the roads, and pedestrian jams on the sidewalks. And yesterday, it became clear that we can expect traffic jams of another order - on cell phones.
Hundreds of thousands of people converged at the Lincoln Memorial yesterday for the inaugural concert, and many of those people found that their cell phones weren't working. Well, that doesn't bode well for tomorrow, when more than a million people are expected to crowd on to the National Mall, many with cell phones or Blackberrys in hand wanting to share the moment with friends and family across the country and the world. NPR's Tamara Keith reports on how cell-phone companies are preparing for the invasion of the mobile devices.
TAMARA KEITH: Freelance journalist Renee Gettel(ph) was out on the National Mall yesterday, interviewing tourists at the "We Are One" concert.
Ms. RENEE GETTEL (Freelance Journalist): I tried to make some phone calls, and I just got a message saying immediately that the call failed.
KEITH: One of the people she was calling was me. Renee is a friend who's staying at my house to cover the inauguration, and she's been worrying about the cell-phone situation for weeks. Yesterday's failed calls pretty much confirmed her worst fears.
Ms. GETTEL: I'm going to be using my cell phone for just about everything, I'm going to be filing live reports for various radio outlets, as well as Twittering the events that are happening. If my cell phone doesn't work, I'm going to be in a world of hurt.
KEITH: She's warned her editors she might not be reachable.
Mr. JOHN JOHNSON (Spokesman, Verizon): The Verizon wireless network in the area of the Lincoln Memorial carried as much as 10 times the normal call volume of an average day.
KEITH: John Johnson is a spokesman for Verizon, and says the vast majority of calls on his company's network went through yesterday on the first try. He says cell networks are kind of like highways, and cell providers have added as many lanes as they possibly can.
Mr. JOHNSON: We were able to do some fine tuning in the network yesterday that I think is going to help us perform even better on inauguration day. But millions and millions of customers could still have a traffic jam if they head out at the same time, and that still is the case.
KEITH: All of the major cell providers have spent millions in recent months boosting their networks in Washington, and they've all brought extra fire power into the area around the National Mall.
Mr. KEVIN HEDRICK(ph) (Executive Director of Network, AT&T Mobility): You see the antennas poking above the trees there.
KEITH: Those antennas belong to a COW; that stands for Cell on Wheels. Kevin Hedrick is the executive director of network for AT&T Mobility. He says the COWs will help.
Mr. HEDRICK: We know where the folks are going to be, and we supplement and augment our coverage with the COW.
KEITH: In addition to just the sheer number of people expected, at least part of the congestion comes from people using their phones in new ways. For instance, on election night, Steve Hodges, AT&T president of the Northeast region, says his company's networks saw a 44 percent spike in text messaging.
Mr. STEVE HODGES (AT&T Regional President, Northeast Region): Just about the time that President-elect Obama was selected, we saw one of the biggest spikes we've ever - actually, the largest spike we've ever seen in our text messaging network.
KEITH: This was much bigger than any "American Idol" finale. And now, many of the same people who texted their friends on election night are going to be crammed into the National Mall tomorrow. They'll be calling, texting, sending pictures and video, and updating their Facebook status - all to say, hey, look where I am. That is, if there's enough room on the network for all that data. For NPR News, I'm Tamara Keith.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
We are joined now by our technology expert ,Omar Gallaga. Omar, welcome back to the program.
OMAR GALLAGA: Thanks very much for having me, Melissa.
BLOCK: And help me understand something really simple here. If I'm making a phone call or downloading something, how does that affect maybe the person standing right next to me using the same provider?
GALLAGA: Well, you're sharing bandwidth with the person next to you who's on the same cell-phone carrier. If you're on AT&T or Verizon, everyone that's on AT&T and Verizon around you is sharing that same amount of data bandwidth. So, it's like if you have high speed Internet in your home, and a bunch of people got on your network and tried to download YouTube videos all at the same time, your network could get bogged down because you're all sharing that - only a limited amount of bandwidth.
BLOCK: And cell-phone companies are concerned about this, not just for tomorrow's inauguration, but more broadly.
GALLAGA: Yeah, exactly. They have been spending tens of billions of dollars over the years to expand the so-called 3G and 2G networks, which are the most common ones for cell phones today. 2G is kind of akin to dial-up networking speeds at home. 3G is more of a high-speed Internet experience, and as we have these smarter phones - Blackberrys, iPhones - people are expecting to be able to do full Internet browsing, being able to send photos immediately or stream video, even, online.
BLOCK: And with more and more technology eating up more and more bandwidth, how much do you figure the companies have to invest in expanding bandwidth?
GALLAGA: Well, it's definitely in the tens of billions of dollars nationwide. I spoke to Verizon last year before the Democratic National Convention. They had invested $700 million in Colorado alone, and about 45 billion nationally since 2000.
BLOCK: And are these short-term fixes, or really long-term structural things they are doing?
GALLAGA: For big events like this, they're definitely short-term fixes. These are mobile units that are brought in to try to just handle that bandwidth, and then taken away when the event is over. But the cell-phone carriers are trying to expand to larger coverage areas, and kind of expand the networks nationwide, for day-to-day operations as well.
BLOCK: Well, Omar for the inauguration tomorrow, you'll be there in Austin, Texas, experiencing the inauguration online. What are you looking forward to checking out tomorrow?
GALLAGA: Yeah, I'll be checking it out online and working at the newspaper but, I mean, in addition to just seeing what people are saying on Twitter and you know, seeing the live video feeds, I'm really excited about something CNN and Microsoft are partnering on called a 3D Photosynth.
And what they're asking people to do is to send in photos of the moment that Barack Obama does the oath, and what they're going to do is a 3D photo collage, collecting all of the photos they receive. They're asking people to either send in a photo of the moment of the oath, or send in three photos: something close-up, at mid-range and then a wide-angle shot. And this is going to be part of a huge, 3D collage that they are saying is going to be the most recorded moment in human history. It's going to be at cnn.com/themoment.
BLOCK: Assuming people can get their calls through to send those pictures.
GALLAGA: Yeah, and - but with photos, there is more likelihood of your emailing a photo, that it will be queued and sent later. So there may be a delay, but it's less likely to get dropped than, say, a live call.
BLOCK: Omar, thanks so much.
GALLAGA: Thanks very much, and I'm going to be posting links to a lot of the live inauguration events online at the NPR community site. That's npr.org/alltech.
BLOCK: Great. Omar Gallaga covers technology culture for the Austin-American Statesman.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block. Tomorrow, there will be a carefully orchestrated dance at the White House - one family moving in as another moves out. And the nation's business segues from one presidency to another.
We've asked two presidential aides to talk to us about that last day in office, to share their personal memories of a presidency in its final hours. And first, we'll hear from Jody Powell. He was press secretary for Jimmy Carter for all four years in the White House. Mr. Powell, welcome.
Mr. JODY POWELL (Former Press Secretary, President Jimmy Carter): Thank you.
BLOCK: Tell us about the last moments of the Carter administration. This came at a turning point in the hostage crisis with Iran.
Mr. POWELL: I think those last few days of the Carter administration are probably unique in the sense that seldom has a president been so intensely involved in an issue of such delicacy and importance right up until just the final hours. We were, of course, working to get our hostages released from Iran. That was done, and they were on their way out shortly after President Carter left office.
BLOCK: And you're saying President Carter was really in the Oval Office for that - for the duration as these last details were worked out?
Mr. POWELL: He was in the Oval Office for the entire last 48 hours, as were a number of the rest of us, either in the Oval Office or in the White House.
BLOCK: When did you sleep?
Mr. POWELL: We didn't, really. I slept some in my office. I don't think he slept at all for those last 48 hours.
BLOCK: You know, I'm trying to picture this because as President Carter was involved in these last-minute negotiations, at the same time, there had to have been a cast of characters around the White House, packing things up in the Oval Office, getting ready for the new administration.
Mr. POWELL: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you need to be out of there by noon on inauguration day. And so, as we were doing that work, we were also packing up our offices and our papers. We were helping our staff members find jobs, and we were doing the best we could to help the incoming administration learn the ropes, help them get - be ready to hit the ground running.
BLOCK: Mr. Powell, do you look back and wish you maybe had had a bit of a calmer stretch there so you could've, you could have savored those last minutes, and President Carter could have as well, in the White House?
Mr. POWELL: Actually, I've thought about it both ways. I certainly wish there had never been a hostage crisis, but I really do think it was better to be busy. It was better to be working up to the last minute than to be sitting, sort of twiddling your thumbs and thinking about what might have been, and all of that. It was the way I would have chosen to walk out of that building.
BLOCK: And you think President Carter felt the same way?
Mr. POWELL: I think that's exactly right. I think that's exactly right. And I think all of us that were so immersed in that issue ended up feeling that way - that way, too.
BLOCK: Mr. Powell, thank you.
Mr. POWELL: Thank you.
BLOCK: Jody Powell was press secretary for President Jimmy Carter.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Jump forward eight years, to the last day of Ronald Reagan's presidency. Jim Kuhn was an assistant to the president during both terms, and he joins us now. Thanks for being with us.
Mr. JIM KUHN (Former Executive Assistant, President Ronald Reagan): Good afternoon, Melissa. Thank you for having me.
BLOCK: And on that last day, you were the executive assistant to President Reagan. You were, what, at his side that whole day?
Mr. KUHN: Yes, that was the job. You were the one constant in the president's life.
BLOCK: And what was going on?
Mr. KUHN: Things were calm. Things were very upbeat. They were winding down, and Reagan was ready to leave. He had had two successful terms, and he was ready to let go and head back to his beloved California.
BLOCK: Well, walk us through that morning in January of 1989, leading up to the inauguration of his successor, George H. W. Bush.
Mr. KUHN: That final morning, Reagan came down to the Oval Office, and he came down to an office that had only his desk in it. Everything else had been taken out the night before. He came down one last time to - just to, you know, reflect a little bit, take one last look at the office, see some of his staff such as - Colin Powell came in, national security adviser then, Marlin Fitzwater, press secretary, Kathy Osborne, his secretary, myself - just to kind of say goodbye.
And one of the other things he did was - before he left, he opened the drawer of the desk to the Oval Office because the day before, he had put a special note in - as all departing presidents do, they leave a note. It's tradition that you leave a note for the incoming president. And he opened the desk to make sure it was still there, and it was.
And in that note, there were a couple of special things that he said, such as, you and Barbara will always be in my prayers, and George, I'll always miss those Thursday lunches that we had over these eight years at the White House.
BLOCK: The reports I've seen about that briefing from Colin Powell say that his message was, the world is quiet today, Mr. President.
Mr. KUHN: That is correct. And those were Colin's final words to President Reagan in the Oval Office that day. And at that time, Reagan reached in his pocket, and he pulled out the special card that all presidents carry with the nuclear codes and said, hey, Colin, what am I supposed to do with this? And I said, sir, you're still president. You need to hang on to that. We have a plan for that later this morning, which we did.
And I can tell you right before we left to go to the Capitol for the swearing-in, I took Reagan into the Blue Room at the White House, got the military aide, the Air Force aide that day, and I said, this is where you hand off the card. So that was - that was our last act as president, essentially.
BLOCK: Hmm. Mr. Kuhn, were you on the helicopter with the Reagans after the inauguration of President Bush as they left Washington?
Mr. KUHN: Yes, and that was the final ride on the presidential helicopter known as Marine One but technically, not Marine One when we lifted off because Reagan was no longer president. It had the designation of Nighthawk One.
But it was an interesting ride because the Marine pilots flew over the White House so that the Reagans could look down one last time. And Ronald Reagan said to Nancy, there's our little bungalow down there, as they flew over for the last time on the way to Andrews Air Force Base to board the presidential Air Force One, technically not Air Force One now, since Reagan was not president, for the flight to L.A.
BLOCK: Mr. Kuhn, thanks so much for talking with us.
Mr. KUHN: It's been a pleasure, Melissa. Thank you.
BLOCK: Jim Kuhn, longtime aide to President Ronald Reagan. We also heard from President Carter's former press secretary, Jody Powell.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
You can't have a parade without music. And tomorrow, after the presidential swearing-in, marching bands from around the country will parade along Pennsylvania Avenue. The largest band is 440 members strong - never mind that it's called the Marching 100. It's the band from Florida A&M, a historically black university that's no stranger to inaugural parades or to Barack Obama. NPR's Greg Allen spent time with the band in Tallahassee as they prepared for the big day.
GREG ALLEN: There are marching bands larger than the Marching 100, but not many. In the band room on the Florida A&M campus in Tallahassee, it's a sea of brass - trumpets, trombones, French horns, saxophones and, as band associate director Shelby Chipman confirms, more tubas than you've ever seen in one place, at least 40.
Dr. SHELBY CHIPMAN (Associate Director of Bands, Florida A&M University): We have the world's largest sousaphone or tuba section, and we received this year 23 sousaphone freshmen. Now, that's a sousaphone section in itself.
(Soundbite of marching band)
ALLEN: Dr. Chipman and all the band members say being picked to march and play in the inaugural parade is a thrill. But to be perfectly honest, for many, it wasn't completely unexpected. The Marching 100 - the name comes from an era when the band was much smaller - performed in both of Bill Clinton's inaugural parades. And with Barack Obama, band members put in their bid to play at his inauguration early, back when he spoke on campus in 2007. Junior Jeremy Battles(ph), a snare drummer, is one of the band members who played and had their pictures taken that day with Mr. Obama.
Mr. JEREMY BATTLES (Snare Drummer, Marching 100 Band): It was one of the guys, he's in my section, his name is Gene. He said, Barack, you're going to invite us to the inauguration, right? And Barack was like, no doubt about it.
(Soundbite of marching band)
ALLEN: Florida A&M is one of five historically black universities marching in Barack Obama's inaugural parade. His election to the presidency is something many black marching bands have already commemorated. The Marching 100's lead drum major, senior Michael Scott(ph), takes pride in the routine his band put together and performed last fall, just weeks after Mr. Obama's victory.
Mr. MICHAEL SCOTT (Lead Drum Major, Marching 100 Band): We did the United States formation with his name in the middle. And so, you know, most bands may just do his name, or may just do one aspect. We did both.
ALLEN: But now, who was it? Was it Bethune-Cookman did actually - the picture?
Mr. SCOTT: They actually did the picture face, and that was actually kind of neat, also. But it still wasn't better than us.
(Soundbite of marching band)
ALLEN: At Florida A&M, the level of musicianship is high. Nearly three-quarters of the band members played first chair in their high school orchestras. But on the field, they're known as much for their innovative, high-stepping routines as for their music. Sophomore Taheeda Adbullah(ph) says learning those routines can be grueling, but it's worth it.
Ms. TAHEEDA ABDULLAH (Member, Marching 100 Band): One of the major things that the band instills in you is like a lot of pride, you know. Like, we call it shamming on the field when you're not doing as good as you could be. So everybody - you know, we all encourage each other like, you know, no shamming. So it's like, they encourage you to do your best at all times, and never to settle for anything less.
(Soundbite of band practice)
Unidentified Male: Face the trombone. Hold it, drum major. Face the trombones. OK, first-ranked trombones, hold your instruments up. And let's get these lines straight, folks.
ALLEN: Out on the drill field, it's 9 p.m. on a school night. The lights are on, and the Marching 100 is practicing for the inaugural parade and an important competition coming up just a few days afterward: the Battle of the Bands. Drum major Michael Scott is putting band members through their paces.
(Soundbite of band practice)
ALLEN: Band members are swaying to the music, going up at times on one foot, even leaping into the air, all without missing a note. They've been given 30 seconds for a routine on Pennsylvania Avenue. But what they're planning, they won't say. But no matter what they do, Taheeda Abdullah says, she knows it will be a day to remember.
Ms. ABDULLAH: It's like history in the making, and you're really proud to be there, and you're really proud to contribute. You're kind of doing a good deed to the country, you know, like - I don't know. It just gives you like, a nice, warm, tingly feeling inside.
ALLEN: Abdullah and the rest of the Marching 100 will need to hold onto that warm, tingly feeling. These are mostly Floridians, remember. And the forecast tomorrow calls for a high temperature in the 30s. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
In his final full day in office, President Bush commuted the sentences of two former Border Patrol agents. The agents were convicted of shooting an alleged drug dealer near the U.S.-Mexico border. The agents' case became a cause celebre among anti-immigration groups, and they cheered the president's action today. NPR's Brian Naylor reports.
BRIAN NAYLOR: Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean were patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border east of El Paso, Texas, in February 2005. They were after a man who had jumped from a van. The van, it turned out, was stuffed with marijuana. The agents shot the suspect in the buttocks as he was fleeing, believing, they said, he was armed.
But a federal prosecutor brought a case against the two. He said no gun ever turned up. The agents wrongfully fired their weapons, failed to report the shooting, and then tried to cover up what they had done by picking up spent shell casings. A jury agreed, finding the pair guilty of a number of crimes, and the judge sentenced the men - Compean to 12 years, Ramos to 11.
Conservatives were outraged, arguing the pair were only trying to enforce the law. Congress held hearings, and activist groups sent petitions to the president urging a pardon. Today, in what could be his final act of clemency, the president commuted both sentences. Their supporters are ecstatic. Ron De Jong of grassfire.org said the two former agents were scapegoats.
Mr. RON DE JONG (Director of Communications, Grassfire): They were doing their job. Were mistakes made? Yes. But those mistakes shouldn't have ever gotten the kind of punishment that these guys got.
NAYLOR: Still, there is some grumbling that the pair will continue to be held until March, when their commutations take effect. The two will also have to pay their fines and submit to three years of supervised release. T.J. Bonner of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing Border Patrol agents, hopes the U.S. Supreme Court will still take up the agents' case.
Mr. T.J. BONNER (President, National Border Patrol Council): These men did nothing wrong. They've defended themselves against an armed drug smuggler, and I'm hopeful that when the Supreme Court looks at all the facts there, they will reach the same conclusion.
NAYLOR: White House officials reportedly say these are likely to be the last acts of clemency by President Bush. Mr. Bush has used his pardon and commutation powers less often than his predecessors, and it appears he will not be granting pardons in two high-profile cases: former White House aide Lewis Libby, and former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska. Brian Naylor, NPR News, Washington.
MELISSA BLOCK, host:
We last spoke with 10-year-old Damon Weaver, a student journalist from Pahokee, Florida, last month when he was pushing to interview President-elect Barack Obama. Now he's here in Washington, D.C., for the inauguration. He had hoped to be credentialed as a journalist at the U.S. Capitol. Damon Weaver, thanks for coming in.
Mr. DAMON WEAVER (Fifth Grade Student Journalist, Canal Point Elementary School, Florida): You're welcome.
BLOCK: And did you get your credential?
Mr. WEAVER: Yes.
BLOCK: Where are you going to be?
Mr. WEAVER: Yesterday, I went to the opening ceremony and today, I will be going to the kid's concert.
BLOCK: And what about tomorrow on Inauguration Day?
Mr. WEAVER: I - we're going to the inauguration.
BLOCK: And where will you be standing?
Mr. WEAVER: I'm going to be closer where he doesn't look like a dot.
BLOCK: He won't look like a dot.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: Yeah, you're going to be closer than a whole lot of people, I know that. Well, you went to a ball last night, is that right?
Mr. WEAVER: Yes.
BLOCK: Which one?
Mr. WEAVER: The Root Ball.
BLOCK: The Root Ball.
Mr. WEAVER: Yes.
BLOCK: And what did you see? What did you do?
Mr. WEAVER: I saw a lot of people. I interviewed Oprah, Chris Tucker, T.D. Jakes, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, and some more people.
BLOCK: That's a pretty busy night right there.
Mr. WEAVER: Yes, and I was tired.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLOCK: You were?
Mr. WEAVER: I went to sleep on the carpet.
BLOCK: On the carpet at the ball?
Mr. WEAVER: Yes, the red carpet at there.
BLOCK: Well, what did you ask Oprah?
Mr. WEAVER: What is it like being on a talk show? Can I get some advice for the students at my school? And then she took my mic, then interviewed me.
BLOCK: Oh, she did?
Mr. WEAVER: Yes.
BLOCK: And what did she ask you?
Mr. WEAVER: How do I feel about Barack Obama being president? What am I doing in a week of Washington, D.C.? And that's about all I know of.
BLOCK: Well, you have this interview request, this longstanding interview request, with Barack Obama. Any progress on that?
Mr. WEAVER: Nah. There is no yes, and there is no no. So, we don't know if we're going to get an interview or not.
BLOCK: Now if, by some chance, Barack Obama happens to be listening to this program right now, do you have a message for him, anything you'd like to tell him?
Mr. WEAVER: Hi, Barack Obama. I'm Damon Weaver. I already interviewed your vice president, Joe Biden, and I also called him my home boy. So if you want to be my home boy, too, please let me interview you - and that rhymes.
BLOCK: Damon Weaver, thanks so much for coming in.
Mr. WEAVER: You're welcome.
BLOCK: Damon Weaver is a fifth grader and a reporter for his school's TV station at Canal Point Elementary School in Florida. He's here in Washington for the inauguration, and still hoping to score an interview with the president-elect.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
When Barack Obama is sworn in tomorrow, bells will ring out from churches across the country. Possibly the most ambitious performance will be at Trinity Church, at the end of Wall Street in Manhattan. Ringers there will attempt a full peal. That's 12 ringers pulling on 12 bells in a precise combination that lasts three and a half hours. One of the master ringers takes us to the top of Trinity Church for a demonstration.
Mr. TONY FURNIVALL (Tower Secretary, Trinity Wall Street): There's 99 steps up, and they just keep going and going and going and going and going. I'm Tony Furnivall, and I'm the tower secretary here at Trinity Wall Street. On Tuesday, when Barack Obama is inaugurated as president of the United States, we are planning on ringing a peal of bells.
(Soundbite of peal of bells practice)
Unidentified Man #1: We are putting the four up.
Unidentified woman: He's taking up the four.
Unidentified Man #2: Four goes up.
Mr. FURNIVALL: What I do is just swing the bell.
(Soundbite of a ringing bell)
Mr. FURNIVALL: In each swing, it goes a little bit higher. And then you can hear the other side of the bell ringing, and it will gradually slow down. And as you can see, when my hands reach the bottom, it's about a second before the bell actually sounds. Though - you may hear church bells all the time, but nine times out of 10, you're probably just hearing one bell. What you're going to hear is 12 bells ringing, and they're ringing in a very, very different way.
(Soundbite of bells ringing)
Mr. FURNIVALL: And you can just ring bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom. That's very exciting for about four seconds. We can swap every other pair of bells - bom bom bom bom bom bom bom bom - and each pair of bells has just swapped position, and now we have a different change. A peal is a big deal for ringers, and it consists of at least 5,000 changes.
(Soundbite of bells ringing)
Mr. FURNIVALL: After ringing for three and a half hours, you feel exhausted. If you're ringing a peal and you succeed in getting the peal, you feel exhilarated. It's always exiting to be able to do it for any president. That's how we like to express our joy at a new beginning. That's why people have bells for weddings. Fifty percent of weddings end in divorce; 50 percent of presidencies end up in disillusionment. But the beginning is always a good thing, and that's what we're celebrating.
NORRIS: Tony Furnivall is one of 12 bell ringers at Trinity Church in Manhattan. Tomorrow, they will ring for three and a half hours to mark the inauguration of a new president. Our story was produced by NPR's Robert Smith.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block. Untold throngs of people are headed to Washington for tomorrow's inauguration. NPR's Ina Jaffe is riding with one group, a four-bus caravan from Louisville, Kentucky.
INA JAFFE: The trip began in pre-dawn darkness, with the snow coming down and the amens rising up.
(Soundbite of people shouting "Hallelujah")
JAFFE: At a little send-off ceremony, the Reverend Thomas French asked God to watch over the inauguration and protect the travelers until they return home.
Reverend THOMAS FRENCH (Louisville, Kentucky): When we touch this ground again, we're going to say thank you, Jesus. Thank you. You have heard our cry.
JAFFE: That the inauguration of the nation's first African-American president is a historic event went without saying. Yet the people here couldn't say it enough. Also, because this is the day commemorating Martin Luther King, his legacy and especially, his "Dream" speech, were on everyone's mind. Nine-year-old Vickie Dennis(ph) has memorized a portion and will recite upon request.
Mr. VICKIE DENNIS: I have a dream that my four little children will live in a world that they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
JAFFE: With his gift for gab and outgoing manner, it was easy to picture Vickie running for office someday. His mother, Sheila Dennis(ph), said that the election of Barack Obama made it possible to imagine anything for her son.
Ms. SHEILA DENNIS (Mother of Vickie Dennis): Well, I tell him he can do anything he puts his heart to. As long as he studies, he can achieve his goals just like Barack did. You got to work hard.
Mr. DENNIS: Just like Martin Luther King did.
JAFFE: Like the Dennis family, nearly everyone in the caravan was African-American. The pride and wonder they felt that a black man becoming president was evident, but no more so than their belief that Barack Obama would unite the nation.
Ms. DEBBIE RUSSELL(ph): He's thinking about everyone, not just one, specific group.
JAFFE: Said Debbie Russell.
Ms. RUSSELL: Everybody. The United States of America - not black, white - everybody. And so I'm just happy. I want to cry.
JAFFE: All of the travelers know that tomorrow will be challenging - the crowds, the cold. But Debbie Russell said it was so important for her to be at the inauguration, she was ready for the hardships even though she has multiple sclerosis.
Ms. RUSSELL: I've got my wheelchair underneath the truck and my cane right here. And I've got people around me that's helping me. So I'm going to make it.
JAFFE: No matter how hard tomorrow is, she still can't wait for the day. Ina Jaffe, NPR News, on the bus to Washington, D.C.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
More proof that the newspaper industry is shrinking: Starting today, the Chicago Tribune is publishing tabloid editions for commuters. Chicago Public Radio's Tony Arnold reports.
TONY ARNOLD: I have in my hand this morning's edition of the Chicago Tribune. Now, to understand why the Chicago Tribune made this switch to go with the tabloid look, you need to look no further than a crowded train station, which is where I am right now on Chicago's North Side. The idea being, the more compact the paper, the more elbow room they'll have on the way to work, and the more willing customers will be to buy the print edition.
Mr. ASHELY RILEY (Former Tribune Customer): Seeing that I'm in the habit of using public transportation, I know the ills of trying to use a large- format newspaper. So for me, I think it would be of some use, and I would probably give it a second go, for sure.
ARNOLD: Ashley Riley fits the profile of who the Tribune is targeting, to a T. He says he used to read the Tribune regularly, and the new tabloid look might get him back onboard as long as the content isn't affected. That's a point the Tribune has been adamant about - that the stories will remain the same in the tabloid edition; it's only the look that's changing. And for the traditionalists out there, the Tribune is keeping the familiar broadsheet editions for home delivery. But Mark Fitzgerald, an editor with a newspaper trade magazine in Chicago, says the new tabloid speaks to the financial crisis the entire newspaper industry is facing.
Mr. MARK FITZGERALD (Editor at Large, Editor & Publisher): The sense of urgency among newspapers is just palpable. Everybody understands that there's a lot on the line. And that's why they take risks like this. That's why they make a big leap, as the Chicago Tribune is doing in introducing this tabloid version.
ARNOLD: Fitzgerald also says the switch to tabloid can be seen as an attempt to lay some groundwork against the Tribune's main competitor, the Chicago Sun-Times, which has been a tabloid for years. The war between the two papers is nothing new. And if you need any proof that the Tribune is moving in on the Sun-Times' turf, look no further than today's front page. Both papers ran nearly identical pictures of Barack Obama with nearly identical headlines. For NPR News, I'm Tony Arnold in Chicago.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe. He gave us "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," and many other macabre and spooky works. The cities of Baltimore and Philadelphia both stake a claim to Poe, but the city where he was born, Boston, has mostly overlooked him. Reporter Matt Largey has the story from Boston.
MATT LARGEY: The only evidence of Poe being born here is this weathered plaque outside a burrito shop near Boston Common. A four-inch bust of Poe stares out blankly from what's supposedly the building where he was born in 1809, but the actual building was torn down long ago. So it kind of looks like he was born in an alley.
Mr. MATTHEW PEARL (Author, "The Poe Shadow"): On top of the fact that almost nobody notices that plaque, it's also probably the wrong location.
LARGEY: That's Matthew Pearl. He wrote a novel called "The Poe Shadow." He says Poe's relationship with Boston was a difficult one. Poe was orphaned soon after his birth, and taken to Virginia by a foster family. As an adult, he struggled to make a living as a writer and an editor. He wrote terrible reviews of Boston writers like Emerson and Longfellow, accusing them of being too preachy or moralistic. But to some degree, he was probably jealous of their success, says Paul Lewis. He's an English professor at Boston College.
Dr. PAUL LEWIS (Professor of English, Boston College): He called Bostonians "frog-pondians." He said that our hotels were poor, and our poetry not so good. And he said - I have to admit it - that he was ashamed to have been born here.
LARGEY: In October of 1845, Poe was invited to read his work and lecture at the Boston Lyceum.
Dr. KENT LJUNGQUIST (Professor, Worcester Polytechnic Institute): And for Poe, this was kind of a big deal.
LARGEY: Kent Ljungquist teaches literature at Worcester Polytechnic Institute just outside Boston.
Dr. LJUNGQUIST: At that point, Boston was the literary establishment of the United States, at least in his eyes. It was the Boston of Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes and other, more celebrated literary figures than he.
LARGEY: But things didn't go well. Poe decided to read "Al Aaraaf," a really long poem that Kent Ljungquist says most of the audience probably didn't understand. He completely bombed. The critics savaged him.
Dr. LJUNGQUIST: This was the so-called Boston Lyceum Fiasco, which, after the fact, he claimed that his reading was a hoax. He also acknowledged that he may have been drunk when he read the poem, but it led to a kind of to-and-fro between him and Bostonian editors.
LARGEY: Matthew Pearl says Poe tried to play it cool, but...
Mr. PEARL: More likely, Poe actually was, in his heart, hoping for a warm response in Boston. When he didn't get it, he was very hurt by it.
LARGEY: But now, Paul Lewis and some of his students at Boston College think it's time to make amends. They've gotten Boston's mayor to declare January Edgar Allan Poe Appreciation Month. The city plans to dedicate an intersection in his honor. Last week, Lewis and other Poe admirers commemorated Poe's birthday with readings and a cake. Lewis says it's about time Boston paid its respects, despite the bad blood.
Dr. LEWIS: I think of Poe as being like an adolescent who says, I don't like my parents, and they had no influence on me. I'm nothing like them. But if you hear someone make that kind of claim, you would think, well, probably they were formed in very important ways against the values which they reject in their parents. So, I would say Boston is the most important city in terms of the formation of Poe's own practice as a writer and a critic.
LARGEY: Who knows what Poe would think about burying the hatchet with the city he claimed to hate so much. But maybe the greatest revenge he could have hoped for was to finally be celebrated in Boston after all these years. For NPR News, I'm Matt Largey in Boston.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block. We're looking ahead to tomorrow's inauguration of Barack Obama. My co-host, Michele Norris, talked with one of the participants in that ceremony, who says it's an honor beyond his wildest dreams.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
In the 1920s, Reverend Joseph Lowery was born in Huntsville, Alabama. In the '30s and '40s, he attended segregated schools. In the '50s, he was active in the civil rights movement, and he paid a price for his involvement. His family was threatened, and his property was seized by the state. By the '60s, he'd become one of Martin Luther King Jr.'s most trusted advisers. In the '70s and '80s, he was still agitating, protesting apartheid in South Africa. He's seen a lot. Tomorrow, he'll be on stage at the U.S. Capitol, standing with the nation's first black president. When I spoke with Reverend Joseph Lowery, he wouldn't say much about the benediction he'll give, but he did say this:
Reverend JOSEPH LOWERY (Minister, United Methodist Church): They told me I only had two minutes, so it won't be a long prayer.
NORRIS: And that...
Rev. LOWERY: It will be a brief prayer.
NORRIS: That must be difficult for a pastor...
Rev. LOWERY: It may...
NORRIS: To be told you have two minutes.
Rev. LOWERY: It may even prove to be impossible.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Rev. LOWERY: I don't know whether they've got a switch, where they plan to - but the fellow who's giving - Brother Warren - who's giving the invocation, I'm going to time him and see how long he goes. And I'll - I can take my cue from him. If he goes a little over, I won't feel bad about going a little over. But they don't want us to go a little over. Besides, it'll be cold. So, I suspect everybody will be prepared and anxious to hear a brief prayer.
NORRIS: Did President-elect Obama ask you personally to do this?
Rev. LOWERY: Yes, he did. He called me on my cell, and I didn't answer. He left a message on my voicemail. So, I returned the call, which was on his cell, and I caught him. And he answered the phone. And I said, I'm trying to reach the 44th president of these United States. And he said, "Brother Lowery, I believe that would be me."
(Soundbite of laughter)
Rev. LOWERY: So, we laughed. And then suddenly, I was silent and so was he. I don't know why he was silent, but it struck me forcefully that, hey, you're talking to - you really are talking to the 44th president of the United States, and he's a fellow that looks like you. And that took me into a moment of strong meditation, and I was deeply moved to recognize what was going on at that particular moment. Not only that, he's inviting me to participate on the - in the inaugural ceremony, and I never dreamed I would see the day when we inaugurated a black president. And certainly, I didn't anticipate the time when I would participate in the ceremony.
NORRIS: Have you allowed yourself to imagine that...
Rev. LOWERY: Yeah. Every time I think about what I'm going to say...
NORRIS: ...experience of standing up on that stage.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Rev. LOWERY: Every time I think about what I'm going to say, I get a little stage fright, because you folks keep telling me there're going to be two, three, four million people out there. And then beyond that, there'll be people watching and listening all over the world. And I admit that that has unnerved me just a little bit. But that's why I pray that God will give me strength, courage, and perception and sensitivity, and I can do what he would like for me to do. But it's an awesome thought, just the occasion itself is an awesome - when we were fighting for voting rights back in the '60s, we all felt that one day, there might be a black president. But I don't recall any of us saying that we'd live to see it.
NORRIS: I bet you've been spending a lot of time thinking about your friends right now, people like Fred Shuttlesworth and Ralph Abernathy and Reverend Martin Luther King. What's the...
Rev. LOWERY: Well, particularly Martin and Ralph because they've gone on. Fred is still here. I'm especially thinking about those who did not live to see this day. And because I did, I think I'm obligated to think of them and to pray for them and to pray that they, too, might be a witness in some way. As a matter of fact, when I'm on the Capitol steps, I'm going to look down that Mall. They tell me you can see the Lincoln Memorial. And if I do see it - and I hope I do - I think in my mind's eye, I will also see a profile of Martin, calling the nation to move from the restrictions and limitations of color to the higher ground of character and content of character and competence. And I believe I'll see him smiling, and that inauguration will be the nation's response to Martin's call.
NORRIS: Reverend Lowery, you are known for your speaking style. You're also known as someone who tells it like it is. And I'm thinking about the funeral for Coretta Scott King. You stood in front of the former U.S. presidents and the one sitting president in that hall, and you said, at that point, that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there, speaking about Iraq. But you said that there were weapons of misdirection here in the U.S. You wagged a finger at them at Coretta Scott King's funeral. You talked about millions of people in this country without health insurance, about poverty in this country. I'm wondering if you're going to use the stage to speak truth to power, if we're going to see Joseph Lowery the rabble rouser as well as Joseph Lowery the preacher.
Rev. LOWERY: (Laughing) I hope we're one and the same. I hope I always will speak truth to power. That's what I feel called to do. I believe that my responsibility at the closing prayer is to hopefully, try to petition God to send us home from that mountaintop experience with a sense of solidarity, with a sense of purpose that's directed toward supporting the president that we've put in office, for he comes to office at a tough time in the nation's history. I want to see us build a solidarity that will understand the tough task he's got, and to give him all the support that we possibly can, and ask God to work through him to restore the nation's stability.
NORRIS: Reverend Lowery, thanks very much for speaking with us. Always good to talk to you.
Rev. LOWERY: Thank you for having me.
BLOCK: The Reverend Joseph Lowery, speaking with my co-host, Michele Norris. You can hear Michele and Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep hosting NPR's special coverage of tomorrow's inauguration on most NPR stations and at npr.org.
MELISSA BLOCK: Were going to step away from our Inauguration coverage now to tell you about two other stories. First, to the Gaza Strip where a tenuous cease-fire is holding. Hamas is acting triumphant after three weeks of intense Israeli attacks. For many civilians, the destruction across Gaza presents a different reality. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports from Gaza.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD AT A RALLY)
ERIC WESTERVELT: At a well-attended rally through the devastated streets of Gaza City today, the ruling Hamas movement reasserted its authority and declared victory after three weeks of war with Israel. On the sidelines of the rally, Hamas spokesman, Fouzi Barhoum told reporters President Obama must change U.S. policy toward Hamas and the Palestinians after what he called the terrorism of the Bush administration.
BLOCK: Obama must take a lesson from all of these mistake and the crimes committed by American administration against the civilian people inside Afghanistan, and Iraq and Somalia, and Lebanon, and Palestine.
WESTERVELT: Few people in Gaza seemed to care about the inauguration of Barack Obama. One Gazan returning to his ravaged home was asked if he knew what was happening in Washington today. He shook his head no and walked on. Many ordinary civilians struggling to rebuild shattered lives sneered at Hamas' assertion of victory. Water and power problems are extensive. Hospitals are still clogged with the wounded. The UN here estimates that some 50,000 homes in the territory were damaged or destroyed in the Israeli attacks. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today, visited Gaza and called the destruction shocking and heartbreaking. He also said the Israeli shelling of several U.N.-run schools and an attack that set fire to the UN's main warehouse were disgraceful. [POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: Actual figures of home destruction appear to have been much lower. Estimates by the Palestine Central Bureau of Statistics established that about 4,100 Gaza homes were destroyed and 17,000 were damaged, for a total of 21,100 - a figure cited in subsequent NPR reports.]
BLOCK: It is an outrageous and totally unacceptable attack against the United Nations.
WESTERVELT: Ban Ki-moon pledged that the UN will do all it can to mobilize international aid to help rebuild devastated homes and lives here. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Gaza City.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHANTING)
SIEGEL: Washington, D.C., swollen with well-wishers, a city celebrating despite a daunting array of national crises, was festive witness to history today. A new president was sworn in, our country's 44th and the first who is African-American. With his hand on Lincoln's bible, Barack Obama took the oath of office, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts.
JOHN ROBERTS: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear...
BARACK OBAMA: I, Barack Hussein Obama do solemnly swear...
ROBERTS: That I will execute the office of President to the United States faithfully...
OBAMA: That I will execute...
ROBERTS: Faithfully the president - the office of President of the United States...
OBAMA: The office of President to the United States faithfully...
ROBERTS: And will to the best of my ability...
OBAMA: And will to the best of my ability...
ROBERTS: Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
OBAMA: Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
ROBERTS: So, help you, God?
OBAMA: So, help me, God.
ROBERTS: Congratulations, Mr. President.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING)
ROBERTS: All the best wishes.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD APPLAUSE, BAND PLAYING AND FIREWORKS)
SIEGEL: In keeping with recent tradition, the swearing in was the on the west terrace of the Capitol building. The massive crowd stretched for more than two miles from the west front lawn down the National Mall to the Washington Monument and beyond. People came from all over braving the cold and wind and heard a purposeful new president declare that America is ready to lead once more.
OBAMA: My fellow citizens, I stand here today humbled by the task before us.
SIEGEL: He spoke of homes lost, businesses shuttered, costly health care and schools that failed too often. The ways we use energy, he said, strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet. The challenges, he said, are real.
OBAMA: They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America, they will be met.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
OBAMA: On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.
SIEGEL: President Obama spoke also of restoring science to its rightful place. He spoke of American greatness as something achieved by the risk takers, the doers and the makers of things. He dismissed what he called stale political arguments that have occupied the country in recent years in favor of a pragmatic, results-oriented administration.
OBAMA: And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
SIEGEL: Mr. Obama dismissed what he presented as other false choices between regard for the market and the obligation to regulate it. A nation, he said, cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. And alluding to torturous interrogations and illegal detentions, he dismissed the notion of having to sacrifice either our safety or our ideals.
OBAMA: Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake. And so, to all the other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born, know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
SIEGEL: At times, this was also a defiant speech. Mr. Obama spoke of leaving Iraq to its people, but he also spoke of forging a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan.
OBAMA: For those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
SIEGEL: President Obama's inaugural address often evoked echoes of President Franklin Roosevelt speaking in 1933, as he inherited the Great Depression when he said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. But the American leader he invoked was George Washington, not yet president, leading revolutionary troops across the Delaware River in 1776.
OBAMA: America, in the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter. And with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
SIEGEL: Later in this hour, we will re-broadcast President Obama's inaugural address in its entirety. From the Capitol terrace, he moved inside for lunch with congressional leaders, former presidents and others. And from there, a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue to Mr. Obama's new home and office - the White House.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From the Capitol terrace, he moved inside for lunch with congressional leaders, former presidents, and others. And from there, a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue, to Mr. Obama's new home and office, the White House.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And our co-host Michele Norris joins us from along President Obama's parade route. She's just west of the U.S. Capitol, outside the Canadian Embassy on Pennsylvania Avenue. And Michelle, you're overlooking the inaugural parade right now. Tell us what you see.
MICHELE NORRIS: I am. Right now there's a lull in the action. Right in front of this building, we've had a number of military bands go by and we're waiting to see most of the states. They all sent entertainers and equestrian crews and bands. But the big news is actually, Melissa, just a few blocks away from me, where the presidential motorcade has already moved passed the Canadian Embassy and where President Obama and Michelle Obama hopped out of the car, walked, it looked to be about a block or two stretch of the parade route, to the delight of the crowd, and probably the great heartburn of the secret service agents that are protecting them. But they walked hand-in-hand, waved for a while, it looks like it's that stretch that's near the Department of Justice and the old post office building. And then now they're back in that motorcade and they're inching, moving very slowly, closer to their new home.
BLOCK: Uh-huh. No sign of the daughters Malia and Sasha walking along with them.
NORRIS: No, they were, from what I can see, again this is a bit a ways from me, I'm seeing this on Jumbotrons, I just saw the two of them, the daughters at this point are still in the car. Now in the past presidents have, I believe, gotten out of the car more than once. So, you may see them, all four of them, the new first family, jump out again along the parade route. But certainly when they get closer to the White House where they will view the rest of the parade in this very elaborate viewing stand that is positioned right in front of the White House and they view the parade behind this sort-of Plexiglas glass partitioned viewing stand right there in front of the White House in Lafayette Square.
BLOCK: Michelle, tell us about the mood from where you are right now.
NORRIS: Well, it's celebratory. I mean it's what you would expect at a parade. And you felt that all day long. When I say all day, I mean all day, beginning in the very early, early hours of the day. I was making my way through Washington about 4:30, 5 this morning. I have never seen so many people out, in force, in this city that early in the morning. It looked about like what it does at about 4:30 in the afternoon. People already making their down to the mall. And Melissa, I've covered a lot of inaugurations, but one thing that struck me, is that there are a lot of people that you don't normally see at inaugurations. A lot more families. A lot more young people. A lot more people of color - not surprising given what we've seen today, with this historic breakthrough.
BLOCK: Sure. Your impressions, Michele? You watched the swearing-in up close during NPR's live coverage of the event. What do you take away from today?
NORRIS: Well, I was 100 feet away. It really was a wonderful vantage point. What I noticed in the president is a very somber tone. He's not the person that you saw on the campaign trail. The fiery rhetoric seems to be toned down a bit, a bit closer to the ground. The only thing that really struck me, is the, again, the first family. There was this moment - a little moment, if you hadn't really paid attention you might have missed it - but when he walked forward with his family to take the oath of office, the two girls were behind him, and they were literally skipping up to the podium. It was just a sweet little moment that came out.
BLOCK: OK, Michele, thank you.
NORRIS: Thank you, Melissa.
BLOCK: That's our co-host Michele Norris. She's out along the parade route, watching as it moves up from Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol toward the White House.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Our staff canvassed the National Mall today, and we found people in the crowd of varying political backgrounds. They were all cold, but jubilant.
LEROY WRIGHT: My name is Leroy Wright. I'm from South Carolina. And it's a great day because I believe in this country. If we all come together, we can become as one people, as God wants us to be.
DARRYL WALTER: My name is Darryl Walter from St. Louis, Missouri. My great grandfather died at a hundred, and I have a living grandmother who's 93, who voted - and they never thought that they would see it. And for them, I came today.
BRITNEY WESSON: I'm Britney Wesson from Colorado, but I go to school here in D.C. The speech was wonderful. I mean, I was a Hillary person. Hopefully, it will be my time next time, but for now, I think it was really awesome.
DAVID PALL: My name is David Pall. I live here in Washington, D.C. I'm a Republican, and I have to say that speech was beautiful. It's awesome to be among this many people.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Voices from the inauguration here in Washington today. 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:
And I'm Robert Siegel. There was a medical emergency today after the inauguration. Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy became ill at the luncheon in the Capitol. Kennedy is fighting a brain tumor. He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. He is now reportedly conscious and answering questions. NPR's David Welna has the story.
DAVID WELNA: John Kerry, who's Ted Kennedy's fellow senator from Massachusetts, told reporters as he left this afternoon's luncheon that the 76-year-old senator got sick while everyone was still eating.
JOHN KERRY: We got the medical emergency team there, and they gave him immediate attention. And we just left him now, sending him off to the hospital with Vicki.
WELNA: Vicki is Kennedy's wife. Connecticut Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, who is also a close friend of Kennedy's, said nobody suspected anything was amiss with the Massachusetts senator, despite his having had surgery last year after being diagnosed with brain cancer.
CHRISTOPHER DODD: It was just about the end of lunch, I think the desserts were just being served, so towards the end of lunch. And we had talked. I talked to him several times. Jackie, my wife went over and had a nice chat with him and I know the president went over and chatted with him, so he was feeling pretty good.
WELNA: Several other sources in the room say Kennedy had a seizure that lasted at least 10 minutes and that he showed signs of that seizure as was wheeled out of the lunch by paramedics. Again, Senator Dodd.
DODD: It was tough. It took a lot out of him. Those seizures are exhausting. But the doctors were great, they did a good job. They were in there and knew what to do. Vicki was with him and - Mrs. Kennedy, and she knows what to do as well. And so they were very satisfied that things were looking fine for him.
WELNA: President Obama rose at the end of the lunch and called Kennedy a warrior for justice.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA LUNCHEON SPEECH, JANUARY 20, 2009)
BARACK OBAMA: I would be lying to you if I did not say that right now, a part of me is with him. And I think that's true for all of us. This is a joyous time, but it's also a sobering time.
WELNA: There were also reports that West Virginia Democratic Senator Robert Byrd had fallen ill during the lunch. But those attending said the 91-year-old senator, who uses a wheelchair, was only showing concern for Senator Kennedy's condition. David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Before that luncheon, hours before, crowds of people holding tickets for the inauguration lined up outside checkpoints. As NPR's Neda Ulaby found, some of those people never made it to their allotted places.
NEDA ULABY: Darian Singer(ph) and Christopher Roland(ph) thought they had it made. The two had scored a pair of tickets to the blue section, right on the grounds of the Capitol. The got in line this morning at seven a.m., and they waited and waited and waited.
CHRISTOPHER ROLAND: It was ridiculous. And they over-ticketed. At the end of the day, there's no way all these people could have fit in this space on the Mall that was designated blue. It was just over the top.
ULABY: A massive crush of people held the streets around First and Constitution in human gridlock for hours. They included Judy Holmes(ph) and her daughter Madeleine Middlebrooks(ph) from St. Louis, Missouri.
JUDY HOLMES: We were purple ticket holders, and there's supposed to be two gates open. And now they've only opened up one gate, so those who were up against the first gate, we just never got in. We're just in the huge crowd and no information. Police officers wouldn't talk to us, security wouldn't talk to us. There was no information.
ULABY: Police on the scene would not verify any of the stories circulating through the crowds that overflow from more expensive sections took up room in the purple, silver and blue. Or that mobs pushing past barriers resulted in gates being sealed. Capitol Police Chief Phillip Morse told the Washington Post that the crowd was cut off after a surge at the end. Mark Peters(ph) was among those turned away at the purple gate.
MARK PETERS: I feel like we just were - I don't know, just doomed or cursed with these tickets that were supposed to be great, and we were just really shut out.
ULABY: Peters, like many other inaugural ticket-holders, says he wishes he'd bailed earlier and stood with the masses further down on the National Mall, or even at a bar. For that, it's not too late, says frustrated ticket-holder Christopher Roland.
ROLAND: We're going to go watch the reruns on TV and drink.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
ULABY: Roland says, at least, the crowds were generally orderly. And he says, although he participated in a cold, unfun part of history, at least he was sort of there. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL: From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
: And I'm Melissa Block. Today's Inaugural celebrations extended beyond the U.S. to Kenya, the homeland of Barack Obama's father. NPR's Gwen Thompkins reports.
GWEN THOMPKINS: Southwestern Kenya is the kind of place where there are more bicycles than cars. Kogelo, Kenya is where President Obama's father and grandfather are buried. It's normally a quiet place - sleepy, the kind of farming village populated mostly by old people. The children have long since dusted off their suitcases and moved away, chasing a different kind of life. Today, hundreds and hundreds of people are out in force, wearing Obama t-shirts, Obama belts, Obama bracelets, Obama skirts and waving American flags that have the name Obama printed on them.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESIDENT OBAMA'S SPEECH)
OBAMA: And so, to all the other peoples in governments who are watching today from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born...
(SOUNDBITE OF CROWDS CHEERING)
OBAMA: Know that America is a friend of each nation...
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
THOMPKINS: In the regional capital of Kisumu at the sporting ground, there's a warm breeze filtering through the crowd. The night sky has been made dull by clouds and there are no stars out, but the young people here - and there are thousands of them - don't mind standing in the dark. They had their eyes trained on the local hero who looks so presidential on television in the frosty snap of a bright Washington afternoon. Maybe it's because expectations here are unreasonably high, that an American leader can bring electricity, schools, hospitals to faraway hamlets along Lake Victoria, or maybe it's because people here are used to their own system. The presidents in Kenya have the power of kings, but they have already begun to call him Obama the Great. Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, Kisumu.
ROBERT SIEGEL: Some of Barack Obama's Kenyan relatives traveled to Washington to witness his swearing in and we've been hearing today from many people who traveled some distance who overcame a few hurdles to attend this Inauguration.
JUDIDAH ISLER: My name is Judidah Isler, I'm a graduate student at Yale University. I traveled down by bus today. We have just seen so many people of so many different persuasions and backgrounds and hues just come together, just even standing there singing all the songs together before Inauguration was amazing.
IKE SMITH: Ike Smith. Right here, Washington, D.C. area, Northern Virginia down about Mount Vernon. We were planning to catch the shuttle, got to the Pentagon, they said, No, you can't get there. Somebody told them that they can't bring the buses across the bridge. And then we went to catch the Blue Line. It was all crowded. I mean, jam packed. So, we decided to walk.
MINERVA FRANCIS: I'm Minerva Francis, Brooklyn, New York. So we were walking from Crystal City across the bridge. It's been exiting. The train somehow broke down and fortunately we get to walk and burn some calories, toward the change, yeah, a healthier America.
SIEGEL: Voices from Washington today.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And I'm Melissa Block. Today, President Barack Obama declared a new era of responsibility. We're going to listen now to his inaugural speech in its entirety.
SIEGEL: Mr. Obama spoke in front of a shimmering sea of people waving American flags as far as the eye could see. Here is President Barack Obama.
OBAMA: America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over)
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ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
President Barack Obama and his Inaugural Address to the nation. As we heard, Mr. Obama spoke of this moment as the winter of our hardship. Melissa, I've heard this speech a couple of times now. It certainly is a speech crafted for hard times. The words that General Washington had read to the troops that President Obama cited were the words of Tom Paine and "The Crisis, " the essay that begins, "these are the times that try men's souls." Hard times, and yet, you were out in the crowd earlier today, not a crowd of people gritting their teeth for crisis.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Well, no, but I have to say, you know, throughout the speech, this was not a crowd of jubilation, it was a crowd of people listening very intently to the message. There were moments of tears, although those - the people who I saw crying at times were when Barack Obama actually took the oath of office when he said those words, So help me God. But during the speech, people seemed very committed to listening to what he had to say and when I asked them afterward about the tone, because it struck me the same way, you know, gathering clouds, raging storms, icy currents - this was a pretty sober message for people to hear on a day of celebration. And people seemed to think it was completely appropriate that these are the times we're living in, this is the reality we're living in. And they're willing - the people I talked to and people in this crowd - to give him the time that it takes, and of course, if you look at the opinion polls, people seemed to be saying, Barack Obama, we are going to be patient with you.
SIEGEL: That's right.
BLOCK: We're going to give you the time you need to fix these many problems that we have.
SIEGEL: It shows an electorate that is patient but also that has an incredibly high opinion of the new president and his prospects. Some of the things President Obama said today, we are ready to lead once more. That was America's message to the world. Clearly, a departure - he intends a departure from what the policies have been under President George W. Bush.
BLOCK: Yeah, that was clearly well-received by the crowd and some of the biggest applause lines, I'm talking about challenges - the challenges we face are real. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time, but know this America, they will be met. And partly in the way he delivered that line, he got a big cheer and also when he said, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America. I do have to say, Robert that...
SIEGEL: Almost an old song...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: And start all over again.
BLOCK: Would be - the biggest laugh line came actually after the Inaugural Address. It was during the benediction by Reverend Joseph Lowery, the veteran civil rights leader, 87 years old, and in that benediction he said, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around, and as people started hearing this, there was a knowing chuckle through the crowd and he went on, when yellow will be mellow, when the red man can get a head man, and when white will embrace what is right. And it was a sort of a light moment to end what was a very sober day and celebratory but sober at the same time.
SIEGEL: Another part of the speech that struck me was President Obama dismissing the false choices that he listed between security and our principles, referring to anti-terrorism, the policies.
BLOCK: That you can have both.
SIEGEL: That you can have both between pro-market economics and an unregulated economy, that you can't be prosperous if only the wealthy prosper. It was a speech that emphasized a pragmatic administration to come, I thought, in saying we're not going to judge whether it's right ideologically or philosophically, but does it work.
BLOCK: And too, as we've mentioned elsewhere in the program, a very pointed message implicit in the sitting administration and what was done before and what will follow.
SIEGEL: A review of President Barack Obama's Inaugural Address today in Washington, the Inaugural Address of the 44th president of the United States of America, and of course, the first African-American to hold that position. 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. A couple of miles of people stretched across the Washington Mall today as President Barack Obama gave his inaugural address. Throughout our program, we're hearing voices from among the crowd.
BLOCK: He had one line where he said, you know, we will defeat you. I mean, he's not a - you know, he's a nice guy for hope, and you know, we love him, but he still wants to have the backbone to say, you know, we will defeat you.
BLOCK: I like his phrase, the patchwork of America, which represents everybody in this country and that we got to stand up. We got to pick ourselves up and do something about this economy. So that stuck with me.
BLOCK: That's Maurice Butler of Washington, D.C. and George Rowlands of Fairfax, Virginia. In a moment, we'll hear from more people who poured onto the National Mall. First, here's NPR's Don Gonyea on the inaugural address and the day in Washington.
DON GONYEA: The day started with reflection. It's one of the rituals that plays out on Inauguration day. The new president attends a service at St. John's Episcopal Church, just one block from the front door of the White House. That was followed by another ritual, a White House visit with President Bush who rode with his guest in a car to the Inauguration at the Capitol.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC BAND)
GONYEA: The crowd that stretched the entire length of the National Mall roared when the president-elect made his entrance on the West Front of the Capitol just before 11:30. Then the program began with a prayer by a controversial choice, evangelist Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in California, whose presence was criticized for his strong opposition to gay rights.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRAYER SERVICE)
P: May we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes even when we differ.
GONYEA: Just after noon, the oath of office was administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. It was the first time Roberts has played this role at an inauguration and he stumbled over the words of the oath.
BLOCK: That I will execute the Office of President to the United States faithfully.
GONYEA: Obama paused, Roberts restated the line correctly and the oath continued. The crowd roared its approval of the history-making moment, the new president kissed his wife, his two daughters before stepping up to the lectern.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL SPEECH)
P: That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
GONYEA: He said they will not be met easily or in a short period of time.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL SPEECH)
P: But know this, America, they will be met.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
GONYEA: The president called for bold and swift action on the economy. He promised to create new jobs rebuilding the infrastructure, to use technology to develop a new energy economy and to modernize the healthcare system and lower costs.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL SPEECH)
P: Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short, for they have forgotten what this country has already done, what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage.
GONYEA: The new president spoke of America's position in the world, again, looking to an end to the Iraq war and to a peace in Afghanistan, and in taking on the threat posed by terrorism, he said he rejects as false the choice between our safety and our ideals as a nation. At the end of the speech, Mr. Obama addressed his race. His mother was white, his father from Kenya. He looked out over the crowd on the Mall. He spoke of the promise of the country, how challenges are met through hard work and honesty and fair play and patriotism.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL SPEECH)
P: This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
GONYEA: Then it was a luncheon with congressional leaders and a slow-rolling and walking tour of Pennsylvania Avenue and the crowds that were still waiting to watch the Inaugural parade roll by. Tonight, the new president and first lady are to attend each of the Inaugural balls; there were 10 on the schedule, as of yesterday. And tomorrow, the work of this White House will be underway in earnest. Mr. Obama will meet with military advisors at the White House. The topic - how to end the Iraq war? At the same time, administration officials including the president will be working with Congress on the $825 billion economic stimulus package. If the new chief executive is to have a political honeymoon, it will have to be a working one. Don Gonyea, NPR News, Washington.
BLOCK: And one of President Obama's first official acts today: the White House issued an order to halt all pending regulations until his administration can review them.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Well, now from President Obama's day to the day of at least the hundreds of thousands of people on the National Mall. Melissa earlier today, you were in that sea of people. Where did you end up?
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
Way in the back, (laughing) way in the back between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial, probably a mile and a half from the Capitol, no view of the Capitol itself. I was in with the ticketless hoi polloi, what one in the crowd called the Great Unwashed. I got there about nine in the morning, and there were people rolled up in blankets sleeping on the ground - they may have been there all night - kids playing cards, watching Sunday's Inaugural concert on Jumbotrons as they waited for the events to begin. Everyone, of course, wearing Barack Obama buttons and hats and shirts. It was a bitter cold day as you know and I could find no warmer greeting on the Mall today than this one.
BLOCK: Good morning everybody. How are you? Oh, what a wonderful day. Good morning and welcome to Moving Day at the White House. Good morning.
BLOCK: That's volunteer Richard Byrd of Camp Springs, Maryland, out spreading good cheer.
BLOCK: Oh, this is a monumentous occasion. I wouldn't miss this for any thing in the world. It doesn't get any better than this.
BLOCK: At the foot of the Washington Monument, I found David Sheets(ph) of Calais, Vermont, the state curator. Even at nine in the morning, he said, this was an emotional day already.
BLOCK: I love this country. I have felt that we've been on the outside, a lot of us, for over eight years. We have not felt very proud of our country and I'm tremendously proud of it today.
BLOCK: David Sheets was there with several friends including John Newby(ph), who grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, and remembers well the segregation of the Jim Crow South. The signs on the bathrooms - white men, white women, and then just colored. He said part of the dream of Dr. King may be materializing today. John Newby looked out at the landmarks on all sides - the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, the Capitol, the White House and thought of history.
BLOCK: Many of these building were built with the help and assistance of slaves. And it's just so magnanimous to be able to look around now in terms of what has been accomplished over the last many years, you know, which makes you very proud.
BLOCK: Do you think there is a danger, maybe, of setting hopes too high?
BLOCK: Yes, I do, because also we set our hopes too high then the falls can be pretty dramatic.
BLOCK: People have to be realistic, John Newby said. After all, Barack Obama is the president. He isn't the messiah.
BLOCK: My turn or your turn?
BLOCK: Susan Williams was sitting on the ground with her young sons playing a round of crazy-eights looking forward to what she sees as a shift in the world.
BLOCK: I think the world will see that we are going to resume putting diplomacy first before military might. I think we'll look at ourselves, that we voted for the best possible person regardless of race or sex, that we are voting for hope and inspiration. We're willing to take that leap of faith for a nation that believes again.
BLOCK: Mark Duffie(ph) came down from New York. He works for the Port Authority, was at the World Trade Center for the attacks in 1993, then in 2001, and he was reminded of that time today but now in a joyous context.
BLOCK: People kind of, you know, breaking down the barriers between people - post-9/11. I remember in the subways of New York City where people actually looked across at each other and asked if you were OK, and you'd see the same thing here where people are just kind of talking to each other and bonding and asking each other where they're from, and I think everybody is really joyful.
BLOCK: I'm with about two or three million of my closest friends. (Laughing)
BLOCK: That's Thad Jackson. He and his wife Leslie left 85-degree San Diego to shiver in the D.C. chill. I asked what their expectations are for the new president.
BLOCK: Well for one, you know, I don't want to be the most hated country on the earth, you know. It's time for all of us to, to turn this economy around, I mean that's, that's first and foremost. I mean, we're on the verge of being owned by China and some of the other countries. I mean, we used to be the biggest superpower there is and now, you know, we're basically been bought out.
BLOCK: You know, in some ways this is a really lousy time to becoming president. I mean, it is.
BLOCK: You almost need your head examined just to want this job right now. (Laughing)
BLOCK: It's not going to happen overnight - we know that it's going to take some time but we're willing to wait.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "AMERICA")
BLOCK: (Singing) Land where my fathers died...
BLOCK: During the Inauguration itself the crowd was mesmerized, holding up cell phones and cameras, children perched on shoulders, flags waiving.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "AMERICA")
BLOCK: (Singing) From every, every mountainside...
BLOCK: People floated on Aretha Franklin's soaring rendition of "America," and when Barack Obama took the oath of office and these words reverberated across the National Mall...
BLOCK: So help you God.
P: So help me God.
BLOCK: Congratulations, Mr. President.
BLOCK: Many in the crowd wiped away tears. As the multitude streamed from the Mall, I found Judy Dallas(ph) in from Columbus, Ohio with her family including four grandchildren, ages five to 10. What have you been telling your grandchildren about this day?
BLOCK: Um, just telling them that this is our history and that 200 years ago, this wasn't even imaginable and like we're cold now, the kids are cold and they're complaining and I'm saying, hey, our forefathers worked in the cold, you know, running for freedom from slavery, crossing mountains, going through woods in dark and night for our freedoms. So, you can stand two hours. This is the day that I want you to tell your children that you were there.
BLOCK: And do they understand that?
BLOCK: No, probably not.
BLOCK: I also stopped to talk with Ron Ford(ph) of Washington, D.C. You know the message, time and time again in the Inaugural Address today you heard the raging storm, hard work, icy currents. I mean this was a pretty dark message, I think in a lot of ways, did you read it that way.
BLOCK: It was very real. He made people understand the hardships that we were going to face and the hardship that we currently face and the silver lining that's going to come.
BLOCK: Robert, just a few of the people in that on the National Mall today speaking about this Inauguration and about the future.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Well, we have one more note on the day in Washington. Two of the country's elder statesmen suddenly left the Inaugural luncheon this afternoon. Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts became ill. Kennedy has been battling brain cancer, and he reportedly suffered a seizure. He was taken to the hospital in an ambulance and he's reportedly awake and speaking now. Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia also left the luncheon. Byrd is 91. His staff later said that he is in fine health and that Senator Byrd left out of concern for his colleague.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
We wondered how today's speech and the advent of the Obama administration look to a GOP political pro. So we've asked one of the best we know, Republican media consultant Mike Murphy, who joins us from Culver City, California. Hi, welcome to the program, once again.
MIKE MURPHY: Good to be here.
SIEGEL: To what degree do you think the politics of the country have been rewritten or redirected today?
MURPHY: And I think he's been very, very shrewd in moving to the center to try to grab all that and now use up political capital to get a lot of stuff done. So, time will tell to see if his successes are really going to be beyond the normal amount of the success a president has in their first six months.
SIEGEL: Mm hmm. Before looking ahead, I'm just wondering what you made of the look back in the speech. Mr. Obama thanked President Bush personally, but he was at least implicitly scathing about Mr. Bush's policies on the economy, on detentions. We are ready to lead in the world once more, he said - saying, we haven't been leading so far.
MURPHY: And I think the big question is going to be not looking backward to rehashing the fights of the campaign, but will the American public accept the reality of responsibly as easily and happily as they have accepted the rhetoric of talking about responsibility. That is going to be the acid test of Obama. When it gets tough, are people going to like what he's doing and support him? And I thought the speech set the table perfectly for that. He's controlling expectations.
SIEGEL: Do Republicans have a coherent rebuttal to President Obama?
MURPHY: So I think you will see a working bipartisan partnership with Republican pressure to question excess, to question speed and rashness in some of these policies. So I think we can be a constructive break on parts of it without being implacable, pure partisan, you know, opponent.
SIEGEL: Well, thanks for talking with us, once, again.
MURPHY: Thank you.
SIEGEL: It's Mike Murphy, Republican media consultant speaking with us from Culver City, California.
ROBERT SIEGEL: And now news from the auto industry. Chrysler has reached a non-binding agreement with the Italian auto maker Fiat. The agreement would give Fiat a large stake in Chrysler which has received billions of dollars in Federal aid. NPR's Sylvia Poggioli reports from Rome.
SYLVIA POGGIOLI: The two companies said in a joint statement that they would share technologies and open access to each other's market. Fiat would also provide engine and transmission technologies to help Chrysler introduce new fuel-efficient small cars. Under the agreement, the Turin-based Fiat would not invest cash in Chrysler. The statement said Fiat will take an initial 35-percent stake, suggesting the deal could be broadened to 55 percent. Fiat vice president, John Elkann, also heir to the Fiat founding Agnelli family, welcomed the agreement as an important step in strengthening both companies in a rapidly changing auto market.
JOHN ELKANN: (Through Translator) I think this is a good deal. There are still many things happening. We have said before that consolidation of the auto industry is very important in the current market conditions.
POGGIOLI: Chrysler and Fiat each produce about the same quantity of vehicles per year, just over two million cars and trucks, but they have very different markets. Chrysler is mainly concentrated in North America, while Fiat, whose models include Lancia and Alfa Romeo, is well-entrenched in Brazil and Europe particularly in its home market, Italy. It now wants a bigger share of the American market. Fiat is well-know in Italy for its production of compact and relatively environmentally friendly cars. Its most popular models are small cars whose spare parts are cheap, easy to find and easy to install. But the Turin company also owns luxury sports car makers Ferrari and Maserati. The auto maker was founded in 1899 and has always remained in the hands of the Agnelli family. Sylvia Poggioli, NPR News, Rome.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is 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 Seigel. NPR's Frank Langfitt followed the transportation situation today and spent most of the day at Washington's RFK Stadium. That's about 2 miles from the side of President Barack Obama's swearing in, and it's where more than a thousand buses parked. And Frank, what kind of day was it at RFK?
FRANK LANGFITT: Well, Robert it was a long one. It started at about 3 a.m. with those buses you just mentioned circling the parking lot in the dark. They were waiting to get in. And then, people - about over 50,000 people poured onto shuttle buses to make their way to the Mall. Now even before the event, some people began straggling back because they were just freezing. It was to cold for them. And then right after the speech, you know, the tide turned and people began pouring back up here and into RFK.
SIEGEL: Now you've also been gathering information on the general logistics of this Inauguration Day in Washington. Where were the trouble spots?
LANGFITT: Well, one was right in front of the Capitol grounds, around First Street and Constitution. That's where there were a lot of really good seats - good tickets and people, but people were stuck there for hours and many couldn't get in. I talked to Christine Hues(ph) - she's 35 years old and Meagan Bear(ph) - she's 17, a high school student. They're both from Ereskine(ph), New York. They had tickets from their congressman but they couldn't get into the area. And here's how Christine and Meagan described it.
BLOCK: We were there with, I'd say hundreds of thousands of other people and we moved probably almost a city block and then we were deadlocked.
LANGFITT: Okay. And where did you end up watching the show?
BLOCK: At a McDonald's.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHING)
BLOCK: On a 14-inch fuzzy black and white TV.
BLOCK: 1970 fuzzy black and white TV (laughing)
BLOCK: With about 500 other people.
SIEGEL: But that 14-inch black and white TV was in the nation's capital, Frank? There were other places where the pedestrian traffic moved smoothly?
LANGFITT: Much better. I think Memorial Bridge is a good example. That of course goes from the District in to Northern Virginia and it was shutdown to traffic. But our own Allison Aubrey was there and she said people were moving very smoothly. It looked like there were a lot of locals, knew where they were going, no jams ups at all.
SIEGEL: Now how did those buses do at RFK station? Did many of them get out of town quickly after the swearing in?
LANGFITT: No they didn't. You know, remember those school field trips we all used to go on. Well, this was like one with tens of thousands of people. And when people got back to RFK, instead of getting on the bus they went shopping. They went to see the vendors here - buy Barack Obama buttons, T-Shirts, air-fresheners and the bus drivers had to wait for them. I met a guy named Gary Gambel - he's 63, a bus driver from Connecticut - and he was waiting on a lot of people for his bus and I asked him how his drive home was looking and here's how he put it.
BLOCK: Are you kidding me? We went straight up 95, Connecticut, Jersey turnpike and all of that stuff. So, that's where the trouble starts. You know, so it's not - it won't be pretty.
LANGFITT: How long do you think it's going to take you?
BLOCK: At least 12 hours.
SIEGEL: Sounds like a very long night but after a very memorable night. NPR's Frank Langfitt at RFK Stadium. Thanks very much for talking with us again.
LANGFITT: Happy to do it, Robert.
SIEGEL: Now, to our two regular political observers, David Brooks of the New York Times and E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and the Brookings Institution. Welcome to both of you.
DIONNE: Thank you.
DAVID BROOKS: Good to be here.
SIEGEL: And I'd like to begin by continuing a conversation that the two of you had earlier today. You heard the Obama speech, and you heard different President Obamas emerge from that speech. David Brooks, what did you hear? You heard a pragmatist.
BROOKS: Yeah, well, I remember interviewing him a couple of years ago, walking out thinking, you know, he agrees with everything I think. And I'm sure E.J. could have had the same reaction. And after the speech today I went on the Web site of the New Republic, a liberal magazine, and I found some pieces that were very laudatory and some that were very negative. Then I went to the National Review site, a very conservative magazine, and some pieces loved the speech, thought it was one of the greatest speeches ever. Some thought it was flat. So everyone gets to have their own private Obama. And my Obama - the Obama I thought I heard was one who had a wintry version of what's wrong with America, which is, we have been making tough choices. We've been irresponsible. And he struck that theme and said it's time to put away childish things. And to me, that's a renunciation of a whole political era - an era of old debates, of big government vs. small government, and really the emergence of what he hopes is a post-baby-boomer pragmatism.
SIEGEL: E.J. Dionne, you heard a bit of the return of FDR in this speech.
DIONNE: I did, indeed. I was very struck by a couple of passages and how much they represented a break, yes, with stale arguments, as he put it and as David suggested, but also a break with a lot of the thinking since Ronald Reagan became president. On the economy, he actually asked the question, is the market a force for good or ill - not even a question that has come up much until, say, the last six months. And he acknowledged the market's power to generate wealth and expand freedom. But he also said that without a watchful eye the market can spin out of control, and we cannot prosper if it only favors the prosperous. That's a very progressive thought, and there is clearly an indication of a new foreign policy, and I think a pretty sharp, though indirect, critique of President Bush when he said that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. He called for humility and restraint. So I think this is very much a break with the recent conservative past. Yes, there's a lot of pragmatism here, but if I may paraphrase Barry Goldwater, pragmatism in pursuit of progressive goals is no vice.
SIEGEL: David Brooks, I wonder. When you heard President Obama raise the question about the market and acknowledge its power to generate wealth, is he in that instance just communicating to conservatives, I understand your ideas? I disagree with them in the end, but I understand your ideas.
BROOKS: No, I really don't think so. I mean, we need - the market generates wealth, we need some regulatory structure to keep it under control. I think everybody on earth this side of Ayn Rand believes that. I certainly believe it. There is certainly nothing I would disagree with. I suspect if you took the Republicans on Capital Hill, with a few exceptions, none of them would disagree with that. The question is in the pragmatics and how you actually play out the regulatory structure. And on that, he really did not tie him down. One contrasting inaugural speech was Ronald Reagan's in 1981 where he said, here are three things - exact things I am going to do. Reaganism had a clearly planned out government philosophy. I don't think Barack Obama is like that. If there is an Obamaism, it's not necessarily that he has a complete vision of what he wants to do. He has a complete vision of how he wants to go about it.
SIEGEL: Mmm hmm. What about that, E.J., that there may be a style or a method more than a vision here?
DIONNE: No, well, I think there were quite a few specifics in this speech, certainly about what's in the stimulus plan, but I think it's wrong for us to try to put Obama into some old conservative-liberal argument. I think he is trying to break that mold. But I think the question is, where is he trying to move us? And I think Obama is someone who cares more about the destination than the path there. He's willing to zig a little this way and a little that way if it will get him to his end. But there was a lot of powerful talk about equality in this speech, including economic equality, and we haven't heard that in a long time. That doesn't mean that Joe the Plumber is right and that he's a socialist. He's not a socialist, but he does believe in much great social and economic equality than we've seen in a while, and I think he signaled very strongly that that's the direction in which he wants to move. He does like old values. So do I. So do most people. I think using old values on behalf of new departures is in the great tradition of American progressives.
SIEGEL: E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and the Brookings Institution and David Brooks of the New York Times. Thanks to both of you once again.
DIONNE: Thank you.
BROOKS: Thank you.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
I read some past inaugural addresses to prepare for listening to this one, and for me, there were some historical echoes.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL ADDRESS)
BARACK OBAMA: That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood.
SIEGEL: Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL ADDRESS)
OBAMA: Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shattered. Our health care is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
SIEGEL: Values have shrunken to fantastic levels, taxes have risen, our ability to pay has fallen. Government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income. The means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade. The withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL ADDRESS)
OBAMA: The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our Gross Domestic Product, but on the reach of our prosperity.
SIEGEL: And the measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values, more noble than mere monetary profit. Well, the lines that I recited are all from the inaugural address that Franklin Delano Roosevelt made in 1933 as the country faced a Great Depression. A speech that Barack Obama told U.S.A. Today he found kind of clunky. Those were his words. Historian William Leuchtenburg is the author of "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal." Welcome to the program.
WILLIAM LEUCHTENBURG: Good to talk to you again.
SIEGEL: And I wonder, did you hear any echoes of FDR in today's speech?
LEUCHTENBURG: Oh, I do. And I was a little bit surprised to hear that reference to clunky because during the campaign and in his writings, Obama has gone out of his way to quote Roosevelt directly, but in fact he quoted no president by name in the address. But certainly, when Franklin Roosevelt took office at a time of some 15 millions unemployed, almost all the banks in the country closed, there was a sense of crisis to which he eluded that Obama was clearly making reference to without spelling that out in his inaugural address.
SIEGEL: At the beginning of Roosevelt's presidency, was it widely evident? I guess that's impossible, but would people have been greatly surprised to learn how dominant a figure this man would be in our national politics?
LEUCHTENBURG: Oh, absolutely astonished. He was regarded - there was a famous phrase of a leading columnist of the day, Walter Lippmann, that this was a charming man of no particular talent or ability. And after that inaugural address, and more particularly after the end of the first 100 days in June of 1933, one commentator after another said, was I mistaken about him all along? I thought he was a kind of a run-of-the-mill pretty good governor of whom we've seen many in the past, but not that kind of outstanding leader that we've been witnessing.
SIEGEL: So by way of contrast, Mr. Obama took the oath of office today, it's almost impossible to say that he'll be underestimated as president.
LEUCHTENBURG: I cannot recall any time in my lifetime - and I can barely remember FDR's inaugural in 1933 - anyone's entering office, whose election created such a sense of national exhilaration and who carried such a hopes and expectations with him. So this is a great advantage for Obama, and at the same time it's a great burden that he is carrying into office.
SIEGEL: Well, Professor Leuchtenburg, thank you very much for talking with us.
LEUCHTENBURG: Good to talk to you again, Robert.
SIEGEL: William Leuchtenburg who is the author of "Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal" spoke to us from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
All Things Considered continues in a moment.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. Former president George W. Bush is back home in Texas tonight, in Midland, surrounded by well-wishers. In his eight years in office Mr. Bush posted some of the highest and lowest job approval ratings of any modern president. He spent much of this morning alongside his successor, now President Obama. The two men shared coffee at the White House and a limo ride to the Capitol, and then after the swearing in Mr. Bush headed back to the Lone Star state. NPR's David Greene spent years covering Mr. Bush's presidency, and he reports on his farewell.
DAVID GREENE: (Soundbite of George W. Bush speech, Send-Off Rally in Texas, January 17, 2001)
GEORGE W: In a way, Laura and I will never quite settle in to Washington because while the honor is great, the work is temporary.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
BUSH: I'm leaving Texas, but not forever.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
BUSH: This is my home.
GREENE: Eight years later, and Mr. Bush has returned home. He landed back in Midland tonight and spoke at a welcome home ceremony.
BUSH: Laura and I may have left Texas, but Texas never left us, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
GREENE: From Midland, the former president and first lady were flying on to their ranch outside Crawford. Earlier, Mr. Bush began the day sticking to his old routine. He arrived in the Oval Office, just before 7 a.m. But this day was different. The walls of the White House were bare. All the photos of Mr. Bush had come down. Most the former president's staff had already moved out. In the late morning, Mr. Bush left the White House for the last time. He accompanied Barack Obama to the U.S. Capitol and Mr. Bush sat outside, listening to a speech that didn't exactly celebrate the last eight years.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL ADDRESS)
BARACK OBAMA: On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.
GREENE: After the speech, Mr. Bush smiled and greeted President Obama. The Bushes boarded a helicopter outside the Capitol and were on their way to Andrew's Air Force Base. They took off for Texas on that familiar 747, only it wasn't called Air Force One anymore because the nation's commander-in-chief was not aboard. David Greene, NPR News, the White House.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And now to Oklahoma, NPR's Howard Berkes spent the day at Esther's Kountry Grill in Coal County, Oklahoma. Seventy-four percent of the voters in that county cast ballots for Republican John McCain. And Howard, clearly not Barack Obama country where you are. Did people at Esther's watch the inauguration today?
HOWARD BERKES: Well, you know, there were two big flat screen TVs going all day here, and some people were glued to the inauguration coverage, but others didn't pay any attention. One man was placing an order for parts on a cell phone, another was focused on his chicken-fried steak and he told me he didn't vote for Barack Obama, he didn't like his liberalism, especially on issues like abortion, gun control, gay marriage. And he didn't want to hear what the new president had to say. But Barbara Elkins, the owner of Esther's, she told me through tears that this is a historic day. She probably wouldn't have been allowed to serve a black man in a restaurant a few decades ago, she said. But now, a black man is president.
BLOCK: Sounds much like what Barack Obama said today in his inaugural address, that his father, less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant here in Washington. Howard, what are people there, in Oklahoma, saying about the transition and how it might affect their lives?
BERKES: Some people are worried that a liberal Democratic president will cost them more money, will take positions on social issues that they feel immorally unacceptable. The economy here has been relatively good. There's a boom in natural gas drilling, but there's concern that that boom might wane. I spoke with postmaster Ken Braddock, who was here eating this morning, and he told me that he's worried that President Obama will be weak on national security, in protecting the nation from terrorists. But even he and almost everybody else I spoke with, they were willing to give the new president a chance. Wanda Utterback is the local newspaper editor here, and she said that regardless of how people here voted, Mr. Obama is still the president. It's like a new beginning, a turnaround in the country, she said, and then she added hopefully, hopefully.
BLOCK: OK, Howard, thanks so much.
BERKES: You're welcome.
BLOCK: That's NPR's Howard Berkes speaking with us from Esther's Kountry Grill in Coalgate, Oklahoma.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Back in Washington, D.C., there were speeches, spectacle and celebrities, and also vendors. Out among the inaugural entrepreneurs was NPR's Art Silverman.
ART SILVERMAN: Unidentified Man #3: And you know, once you open it up, it smells like hope.
(SOUNDBITE OF TALKING VENDORS)
SILVERMAN: Or if you don't want to inhale hope, you could go for an Obama calendar, an Obama wallet, or maybe a hat, scarf, or God forbid, an Obama condom. And if your first reaction to all this is that low commerce is spoiling the high tone of the day, well, it's not as callous as it first seems. Street vendors are satisfying a real need here. Ask the Delores Warren of Virginia Beach, Virginia. She sells her wares with a nod toward history.
DELORES WARREN: These are keepsakes. These are what you share with your children for many generations to come. You were there in 2009 for the first black president of the United States of America.
SILVERMAN: Unidentified Man: He's actually getting a chance to actually be - set a foot in the White House because they had us out there doing all of that hard labor.
SILVERMAN: And there's Jenus Fann(ph) and her 15-year-old son Brian Perry debating what to buy from vendor Brian Mar(ph) before they left for home.
JENUS FANN: We're buying T-shirts.
BRIAN PERRY: Obama T-shirts.
FANN: I want to take some home and have it for my brother, our son and everything. So, we're doing good.
BRIAN MAR: I'm trying to get rid of these Obama license plates, man. Everybody is skimming on these though. These are hot commodities out here.
SILVERMAN: A hot commodity indeed. But let's face it, on a cold inaugural day in Washington, D.C., there was no souvenir better suited than the Obama hand-warmers. Art Silverman, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Finally this hour, we'll take a moment to reflect on the historic day in Washington, D.C., a day of celebration that was filled with the pomp and ceremony that marks a new administration every four years.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
It was also marked by the incredible excitement and unprecedented crowds that came with the swearing in of this president, Barack Hussein Obama, the first African-American to lead the United States. It was also a solemn day. The nation faces many problems, an economy in distress and wars on two fronts. Barack Obama called this a moment that will define a generation.
SIEGEL: The message from the new president today was one of hope and determination.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL ADDRESS)
BARACK OBAMA: What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world. Duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
SIEGEL: President Barack Obama speaking today after he was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.
BLOCK: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
And that's where we go now. NPR's John Ydstie is outside the White House, on Pennsylvania Avenue. He's across from where President Obama and his family are watching the inaugural parade. John, what's going on right now?
JOHN YDSTIE: Well, the Grambling State University Marching Band just marched by. The Obamas waved and smiled at them. Both Mr. and Mrs. Obama there, but Malia and Sasha, I think, have given up.
BLOCK: Yeah, it's been a long parade, a long day.
YDSTIE: It's been a long parade and a long day. Joe Biden is there, the new vice president, but Mrs. Biden seems to be missing. And a lot of the dignitaries have taken their leave, actually, from this reviewing stand. I suppose people have gone home to get into their party clothes and head for some of the balls.
BLOCK: Yeah, I wanted to ask about that. But I do have to ask you about the lawn mower brigade that went by just a while ago. Who were they?
YDSTIE: Yeah. A lawnmower brigade from Arcola, Illinois. I guess because they're from Illinois they got into the parade, but it was the strangest unit in the parade so far. A bunch of guys dressed up in red capes and pushing lawn mowers with American flags decking them out, so...
BLOCK: Why not, why not?
YDSTIE: Why not.
BLOCK: OK, on to the balls. What's ahead for the First Couple tonight?
YDSTIE: Well, the neighborhood ball, I think, is the first ball that comes up tonight over at the convention center. And I think it's, as I understand it, an open ball, so there'll be a lot of people there anxious to see President Obama and Michelle Obama as they make their rounds of all the balls.
BLOCK: And many more to follow that one.
YDSTIE: Yes, indeed.
BLOCK: John, after all of these celebrations today and tonight, tomorrow the hard work begins.
YDSTIE: It does begin, and President Obama alluded to the hard work in his speech today. The economy, probably first on the agenda. Tomorrow his treasury secretary-designate goes before Congress for the Finance Committee for confirmation, and he's had his troubles, so I'm sure the president will be crossing his fingers. He's waiting for other cabinet members to be confirmed. He's got a stimulus package that he's trying to work out. Luckily he got some TARP money before President Bush left, so there's $350 billion for him to use to deal with financial crises. But he has a full plate on his desk - mixed metaphors.
BLOCK: John, you're competing with the trumpets and horns behind you there. But I did want to ask you about this. You've been covering all these efforts to bolster the US economy, including the stimulus package that you mentioned. What is on the president's immediate agenda with those moves?
YDSTIE: Well, the president, the stimulus package is first up. I mean, he's got a $775 billion package that he's been talking about. The House Democrats have proposed something in the neighborhood of 825 billion. There's disagreement over what the mix should be, whether there should be tax cuts or there ought to be spending. The House Democrats have left some tax cuts out, much to the consternation of House reps. We'll see what happens, there's going to have to be a negotiation. A lot of people are suggesting we're going to get to a stimulus package close to a trillion dollars in the end.
BLOCK: OK. And the president to meet with his senior economic advisers tomorrow. John, thanks so much.
YDSTIE: You're very welcome.
BLOCK: That's NPR's John Ydstie on the parade route in front of the White House as the parade goes on and on.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Tonight, the president is visiting the inaugural balls. Of course, celebrations have been unfolding around Washington for days, but tonight, it's the official parties, a lot of them. NPR's Elizabeth Blair joins us from the Washington Convention Center where six of the 10 official inaugural balls where underway. Elizabeth, what's the scene there?
ELIZABETH BLAIR: The scene here, I'm actually in the Home State Ball for Obama. That's the ball where people from Hawaii and Illinois, two states that are dear to Obama, are attending, and people are still filing in. It's not packed, and it's a nice scene. You know, the Washington Convention Center is this huge, huge building, and this particular room looks like it's a big room made for big functions. But it's a good scene. It's quite nice.
SIEGEL: Now, tell us about who typically comes to these events?
BLAIR: Mostly, it's big donors to the campaign, people who are politically connected. There are other balls here tonight. For example, there's the Neighborhood Ball. And there, you have a lot of people who just were volunteers on Obama's campaign.
SIEGEL: Now, as you said, the Washington Convention Center is an extremely big place, so we're not talking about intimate settings for parties tonight?
BLAIR: No, not really. Although I have to say I'm a little bit surprised at this particular ball. They haven't let us visit the other balls, but it's got this sort of deep-blue carpeting, and the lighting is kind of in this nice indigo blue. So, it's a little bit warmer than I was expecting because from the outside, the Washington Convention Center is just this mammoth building, fairly nondescript.
SIEGEL: Yeah, now this is, as we said, this is one of the big official balls, but what about all of the unofficial events across the city tonight?
BLAIR: There's just a wide range of activities. There's also an event, The Soccer Moms for Obama, which is at a women's club in Maryland. So it's - there are activities throughout the city.
SIEGEL: Yes, as you mentioned tuxedos, and for the women gowns, are de rigueur for these events. And I think it's events like these that, at least, keep the tuxedo companies in business in this city.
BLAIR: All that, yes. I'm sure.
SIEGEL: People seem to be having a good time?
BLAIR: For the Neighborhood Ball, I spoke to a woman who was a volunteer on Obama's campaign, and she just paid $25 for her ticket, so she was thrilled.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Elizabeth Blair, hard at work tonight, covering the inaugural balls. Thank you, Elizabeth.
BLAIR: Thank you, Robert.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Now, a review of some music that is difficult to categorize. The group Animal Collective uses drones, loops, sound collages, and unusual vocal harmonies. Here's our critic Will Hermes to decipher Animal Collective's new album, which is called "Merriweather Post Pavilion."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
WILL HERMES: One of the things I love most about Animal Collective is how hard it is to pin their music down. I guess they're a rock band. But nothing ever sounds as simple as a singer with a guitar, bass, and drums. Instead, by using electronics to process natural sounds and unnatural ones, their songs create fantastic spaces where voices dart like dragonflies and sound fields roll through like fog or thunderstorms.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "IN THE FLOWERS")
ANIMAL COLLECTIVE: (Singing) Feeling envy for the kid who danced in spite of anything, I walk out in the flowers and feel better. If I could just leave my body for a night...
HERMES: What keeps me coming back to Animal Collective's new record, "Merriweather Post Pavilion," is that despite all the electronics and the otherworldly sounds, they make music that feels strangely organic. Like this track called "Summertime Clothes," which captures the palpable delirium of a heat wave and maybe the fizzy joys of love.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "SUMMERTIME CLOTHES")
COLLECTIVE: (Singing) Sweet summer night and I'm stripped to my sheets, Forehead is leaking, my A/C squeaks, And the voice in the clock says you're gonna get tired, The bed is a pool and the wall's on fire. Soak my head in the sink for a while, Chills on my neck and it makes me smile, But my bones have to move and my skin's gotta breathe, You pick up the phone and I'm so relieved, You slide down the stairs and I hear you scream, The sun is laughing it's a slippery feeling, And I want to walk around with you, And I want to walk around with you, With you, with you, with oh...
HERMES: It's a new thing for Animal Collective songs, which are always emotional, to also be intelligible. That's one of the refinements on their new record, along with some startlingly sticky melodies. As in the past, you hear traces of electronic dance music in the repetitive beats and loops. But the group's curious vocal arrangements are more straightforward than ever here. They may actually remind you of the Beach Boys, had Brian Wilson gone down a more psychedelic road after "Pet Sounds."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
HERMES: I doubt it's because Animal Collective aspire to be arena-rockers, although they have played major festivals, and fans are starting to follow their tours and record their shows like Grateful Dead fans used to. Instead, I think the record is more about the arena inside a person, that huge space which contains multitudes. And to me, this record is the sound of those multitudes rushing out.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: The new album from Animal Collective is called "Merriweather Post Pavilion." Our reviewer is Will Hermes. And at the music section of npr.org, you can stream the entire album along with others, including the new album from Bruce Springsteen.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
F: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." Gwen Ifill is a senior correspondent on the "NewsHour" and moderator of "Washington Week in Review," both on PBS. Hi, welcome to the program.
M: Hello, Robert.
: First, tell us who is in the group you write about?
M: Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, Artur Davis, a congressman from Alabama, Barack Obama, of course, and Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark. They all have in common, they have Ivy League backgrounds, they have huge post-racial, post-civil rights ambitions. I argue a little bit about those terms, but basically these guys have all of that in common.
: One experience that some of them have in common is challenging older black politicians to get their foothold in office.
M: Cory Booker ran twice before he became mayor of Newark and at both times he ran against entrenched black politicians, the first time, Sharpe James, who is now in prison, sadly, but who was someone he challenged and took on and was taken down the first time and won the second time only because Sharpe James stepped aside. Artur Davis won his seat in Congress by challenging an entrenched member of the Congressional Black Caucus when he was told by all the leaders in politics in Alabama that he should step aside and wait his turn. So these guys take on the establishment which we usually take to mean the white establishment, but often the black establishment, too.
: There were also, I say, there were cynics who saw Jesse Jackson with a tear in his eye on the night of Barack Obama's election and said he was crying over his generation being displaced from power in black politics. Do you buy that?
M: There was a lot of discussion among the black folks I know about whether that was a real tear, or not. Having talked to Reverend Jackson for this book and understanding having covered his campaign when he ran for president, that he's a more sophisticated and complicated figure than people give him credit for. I believe it was a genuine tear. I don't think it was the fact that he was thought he was being pushed off the stage, because I don't believe he believes that he is. But, you know, this was a man who was there at the beginning and had to be taking in this moment for what it was. That aside, he had a complicated relationship with Barack Obama throughout this campaign, and so did a lot of other entrenched and traditional black leaders because they just didn't see it coming.
: I want to play for you a little - a very brief montage of voices here which to me illustrates something that you write about or when writing about the politicians and also in writing about yourself in the book. Here they are.
P: We start 2009 in the midst of a crisis unlike...
U: The financial turmoil around the world has now hit home.
U: It is important to both respect the court's authority.
U: Millions of Americans are facing foreclosure or are in foreclosure.
M: I don't think it's a time for blame.
: That last voice was Cory Booker of Newark. I played that because there's the voices of men who, on the radio, if I don't say those are African-Americans, you wouldn't know it.
M: Yeah, that's interesting, Robert because people have an entrenched notion about what an African-American voice is or what they talk about. People who don't see me don't necessarily know that I'm an African-American. When I was a newspaper reporter I used to play little tricks that way because they had these entrenched notions of who we are and how we speak and what we speak to. And I should add that a lot of African-Americans have those same entrenched notions which is why so many of these black leaders, these new black leaders, have first to answer questions from their own community. Who are you really? Are you really that black? Are you really for us? So, we have to first and foremost break out of some of our little traps that we have set for ourselves in this country about what race is.
: The story of Deval Patrick, Governor of Massachusetts - it's not an entirely successful governorship when he got elected and he has had many misadventures in office. But one of them, you write about, is that the black caucus in the state legislature figured post-racial business. Who cares? One of ours is governor right now. We want access. We demand service, and one of Patrick's aides complains about this. So, is that going to be a problem for Barack Obama?
M: Well, we're all waiting to see because this is true in every single case. In Deval Patrick's case in Massachusetts and in Cory Booker's case and Artur Davis's case and so it's got to happen as well for Barack Obama. Black officials say, well, OK, you're here now. Now what about us? And if you don't snap to right away, questions are raised and the friction begins. You're often questioned far more quickly from members of your own community than you are from the other communities. So, all of them bemoan this fact and say, listen, I'm here. I'm speaking to health care disparities. I'm speaking to recidivism. These are issues which all disproportionately affect the black community. Let me do the job for everyone, and it will affect you, too.
: But the corollary to that during the campaign, certainly for the Obama campaign and I think for some of the others you write about was some black voters saying, well, he's got to say this stuff right now to get elected. And he's got to talk about not being black or white or whatever. But, once he gets into office he'll be their voice.
M: Michael Eric Dyson described it as a wink and a nod toward the black community. Just understand that once we get there, we'll do what we need to do but what was interesting to me is I heard this from mayors, I heard this from attorneys general, I heard this from district attorneys - people of all level of government throughout the country, African-Americans who are answering exactly the same questions from their own communities and dealing with skepticism from the larger community, as well.
: With all told, do you think that Americans should look at the successes of Cory Booker, Deval Patrick, Artur Davis and above all, Barack Obama and be self-congratulatory about it and say, wow, I mean, there is a high-flying group of African-American politicians who are succeeding, including the number one?
M: Well, I think they should be a little cautious about that. There are a lot of cautionary tales in these tales of success. As you pointed out, Deval Patrick had a lot of stumbles out of the gate. When you get the new, sometimes they don't know where they're going exactly.
: But not necessarily about his being black. I mean, this wasn't the issue.
M: Well, except that, it's possible that people hold less forbearance for you when you fail, if you're the first one, if you are the first. If you are the first black quarterback and you fail, people say, uh, blacks can't be quarterbacks. If you're the first black talk show host and you fail, people say, uh, blacks can't host talk shows. So, it becomes a big - a much higher platform from which to fall if you fail. And some of them will.
: Gwen Ifill, thanks a lot for talking with us today.
M: Thank you, Robert.
SEIGEL: Gwen Ifill of PBS is the author of "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama."
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
President Obama today made his concern about the Middle East clear. Mr. Obama phoned the leaders of Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority. On his first full day in office, the last Israeli troops left the Gaza Strip. But the fragile truce in Gaza has left much unresolved. As NPR's Ann Garrels reports from Jerusalem, Israelis are now debating what the Gaza offensive achieved.
ANN GARRELS: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has said Israel achieved its goals and more. But many Israelis are deeply disappointed that Hamas is still in power. Efraim Inbar, Director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, says it was not an unequivocal victory.
M: What was missing was some clear pictures of victory - Hamas coming out of the bunkers with their hands up.
GARRELS: Instead, Israelis saw Hamas leaders emerge largely unscathed. Some Israelis, especially those who have been threatened by rockets, wished the offensive had continued. Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior researcher with the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, says absolute victory would have resulted in many more Palestinian casualties.
M: Israel knew this, and the voices for relative restraint were coming more from the army than to some extent from the government, although the government was divided on this. The army chief of staff delivered a message to the government saying, in effect, we have the capability to re-conquer all of Gaza. We can destroy Hamas, but the price in civilian life will be terrible. And then the question is, to whom do I give the keys? We were not going to re-occupy Gaza.
GARRELS: The one thing Israelis agree on is that Israel showed after what many consider a humiliating defeat in Lebanon two years ago, it can forcefully respond. According to Halevi, Israel's only mistake was waiting so long to respond to Hamas rocket attacks. He says Israel has learned restraint in this region is perceived as weakness. Prime Minister Olmert has said undermining Hamas in Gaza ultimately depends on strengthening its rival Fatah in the West Bank. So far though, Avi Issacharoff, Arab Affairs Correspondent for Ha'aretz, says Hamas has gained there.
M: It's almost absurd, let's say. You know, that people in the West Bank became more supportive of Hamas, while people in Gaza Strip became less supportive of Hamas.
GARRELS: Efraim Inbar agrees, saying Fatah and the Palestinian Authority are in serious trouble. These analysts who cover the political spectrum here believed there is little the Obama administration can do quickly to change the situation as long as the Palestinians remain divided. Efraim Inbar says the best that can be hoped for is conflict management. He calls it "mowing the grass."
M: We go in, do some damage to the terrorist infrastructure knowing well that this type of hatred toward Israel cannot be totally eliminated, and we have to do it again. Totally uprooting Hamas is beyond the power of Israel, the onus of responsibility is indeed on the Palestinians.
GARRELS: Yossi Klein Halevi says international condemnation of Israeli military action is hypocritical.
M: I don't believe any nation would have done any differently in our place, and I think that given the circumstances, we did as well, if not better, than American forces in Fallujah, or NATO in Kosovo, in terms of civilian casualties. That's cold comfort but nevertheless, it does put it in proportion.
GARRELS: In anticipation of possible war crimes charges, Israel is taking precautions. It's ordered all media not to publicize the names of battalion commanders who took part in the offensive, so as not to facilitate their potential prosecution. Halevi warns any attempt to drag Israelis into international courts while giving Palestinians a pass will only harden Israeli attitudes and make Israel less likely to compromise. Ann Garrels, NPR News, Jerusalem.
ROBERT SIEGEL: In case you really hate some bamboo that's growing in your yard, if it seems impossible to get rid of it, indestructible, well, The National Zoo in Washington, D.C. might like to take that epidemic of bamboo off your hands. The zoo can't seem to get its bamboo to grow back. And as NPR's Brian Reed reports, it's looking to people like you to help feed the animals.
BRIAN REED: As head nutritionist at the National Zoo, not a day goes by that Mike Maslanka doesn't deal with bamboo. He has three giant pandas to feed, so almost everyday, he and his team cut down bamboo from their groves out in Virginia. It's enough to fill a small flat-bed truck.
M: On any given day, those pandas are going through 300, 350 pounds, 400 pounds of product, at least of what's going into their exhibit. Hey, you're talking a fair number of stems on a daily basis.
(SOUNDBITE OF CUTTING BAMBOO)
REED: Who would have thought grocery shopping for pandas was such grueling work? The stalks are long and awkward to carry. There are pointy stumps all over the ground, and they jab the soles of your feet. And if it's a blustery day, the wind can catch the bamboo like a sail and pull you with it.
M: We are finishing this stand off today. We've been cutting on this for seven or eight months, cutting once every couple of weeks. We have managed to make it through all the green stuff.
REED: Maslanka's team has a mantra written on their truck: "The bamboo never stops" but this year, it did. Maslanka says, he needed more bamboo because the youngest panda, three-year-old, Tai Shan, is now eating as much as an adult. But, they harvested so much that they're on the verge of running out.
M: We would have expected there to be more, larger stems that grew back and instead we have a bunch that comes up to our chins and it's real bushy, but isn't real tall. That works for some animals in the park, but the pandas tend to prefer a little bit larger mature product.
REED: So, the zoo sent out a plea. They asked landowners in the Washington area with at least an acre of bamboo to let them harvest it.
M: If the zoo needs it, I am happy for them to have it.
M: I hate the bamboos. It never stops. Never stops.
REED: Within 24 hours, Maslanka got more than 70 responses. That was Mary Sullivan and Kara Danner, two of the first callers. Danner says, no matter how hard she tries, she just can't get rid of her bamboo.
M: One summer, we spent a full 40-hour workweek just cutting bamboo in my yard and trying to haul it away and just trying to - it didn't help, actually.
REED: So, why isn't the zoo's bamboo growing back? Kurt Bluemel has been a horticulturist for nearly 50 years and he grows bamboo commercially in Maryland. He says that even though bamboo is notorious for spreading quickly, it can still be overharvested. His advice? Give the grass a few seasons to rejuvenate.
M: It's a misunderstood plant. Bamboo can be very invasive but if you really depend on the growth of the bamboo, then you might have to rethink this whole process of cultivating it.
REED: Nutritionist Mike Maslanka says he does plan to eventually research what happened so that he can prevent future shortages, but before he does that, he's got to find enough bamboo to get three ravenous pandas through the winter. Brian Reed, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel. In his inaugural address, President Obama talked about the big problem facing his administration - the recession.
(SOUNDBITE OF INAUGURAL ADDRESS)
P: The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act, not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
SIEGEL: That phrase "action, bold and swift" raises some questions. What kind of action - public works spending and tax cuts? Is $800 billion too bold or not bold enough? And how swift is swift? We're going to put some of those questions now to two economists, a liberal and a conservative. And we start with the former, New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate, Paul Krugman. Welcome to the program once again.
D: Hi, there.
SIEGEL: In a recent column, you advised, deal with the threat of doing too little by doing more. How?
D: All of these things are ways to do good, but also help support the economy. And I have to say that Obama's numbers, although they sound huge by any normal standard, don't actually sound big enough to me.
SIEGEL: And you talk about spending - you're against tax cuts. Is that because it's not doing good - that there's an ethical problem with it, or is it actually not so effective in making the economy grow?
D: But the thing is, we do desperately need to repair those bridges and build those mass transit lines. So tax cuts are not your priority. I hope that they aren't too much of the program.
SIEGEL: If 800 and whatever billion dollars is modest, given the scale of the problems, should it be 900 billion? Should it be a trillion dollars? What's the amount?
D: When I try to do the numbers, I easily come up with a two-year program of a trillion dollars or more. The number they pulled up sounds rather like they sort of said, we need a big number, but it needs to be somewhere well short of a trillion because otherwise people say, you're spending a trillion dollars. And unfortunately, what the economic arithmetic says is a trillion dollars is in the right vicinity.
SIEGEL: I understand the case for not worrying right now about deficits. But when we talk about adding a trillion dollars plus, at a time when we have failed to address entitlement spending in any serious way, isn't there some point at which the fiscal damage really gets pretty serious for the economy?
D: Yeah, you know, a trillion here, a trillion there, and eventually you're talking about real money, but the U.S. is a very big economy. A trillion dollars is not that much. And one thing we ought to say is that to the extent that you help the economy, you do also help tax revenue. And the true cost of a dollar of spending - not zero, but it's more like 60 cents or 50 cents. We're really talking about if we did the program I would like to see, we're talking about a headline cost of a trillion dollars, but a true addition to the national debt of 600 billion, which is not good, but is worth it as precaution to rescue the economy from this very, very dire threat it's under.
SIEGEL: Just one last question. Let's say you were on the inside, or for that matter, writing the column, and you're trying to measure the success of the stimulus program. What's the bottom line? Is it all in economic growth? Is it in the unemployment rate? What are you looking for as your sign that it's working?
D: I'm looking for the unemployment rate. I want to see the unemployment rate stay safely below 10 percent, which is by no means a foregone conclusion. And I want to see it coming down notably next year.
SIEGEL: Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, thank you very much for talking with us.
D: Thanks a lot.
SIEGEL: Well, now to the views of economist Russell Roberts, professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Welcome to the program.
D: Good to be here.
SIEGEL: And you would say - you describe yourself as a free market economist. I used conservative earlier, but...
D: Free market is fine.
SIEGEL: OK. Paul Krugman says for a stimulus to work, try a trillion dollars and easy on the tax cuts, if you must. What do you say?
D: The money is going to be borrowed, which encourages people to be more worried about the future and their future taxes down the road. And I don't think it's going to be particularly well-spent. So I see a hurried project financed by borrowing on stuff that's probably going to be wasteful.
SIEGEL: But Krugman and others would argue that the other - an alternative proposed remedy to stimulate the economy, tax cuts, tend not to get spent but to get saved.
D: What we want to do is change incentive. So if we're going to have tax cuts, it would be nice to have tax cuts that change tax rates.
SIEGEL: As you contemplate grading the Obama - or once it gets approved by Congress, the Democratic stimulus plan, what's going to be your bottom line? What number are you going to look at to see whether it's working or not?
D: We seem to assume that it's just a question of finding the right stimulus. But it's very possible that the lack of confidence that people have in the future right now is not easily fixed, either by spending or by tax cuts. Some businesses are going to have to fail. Some people are going to have to have problems with their debts. Wages are going to have to change. That may be the reality.
SIEGEL: Let me just ask you this question...
D: Yeah.
SIEGEL: I mean, there's an argument for a big infrastructure spending which is at worst, you know, no matter what effect it has on the overall unemployment rate, at worst, you have better roads and bridges when it's all over. I mean, there are things that we need.
D: Have you ever been in Huntsville, Alabama?
SIEGEL: Yes.
D: We didn't get a lot of benefit from that, so that's - you've got to be careful. It's nice to fill in holes. It's good to make sure bridges don't fall down. But I don't think there's hundreds of billions of dollars of that waiting to be done.
SIEGEL: Professor Roberts, thank you very much for talking with us.
P: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And it's Russell Roberts of George Mason University. We also heard from Paul Krugman of Princeton and of The New York Times.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
SIEGEL: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, it's All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. A photograph of President Obama taken today in the Oval Office reveals a nearly empty desk. But Mr. Obama's first full day as president was a busy one. It included issuing an executive order that sets new ethics rules regarding his staff's dealings with lobbyists. He met with military advisers, and he made phone calls to leaders in the Middle East. As NPR's Don Gonyea reports, the day began with prayer.
DON GONYEA: After a long historic inauguration day and night, President Barack Obama was at the National Cathedral this morning participating in a Washington tradition dating back to George Washington, the presidential inaugural prayer service.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "HE'S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS")
CHILDREN OF THE GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing) He's got the whole world in his hands, He's got the whole world...
GONYEA: That song, performed by Washington's Children of the Gospel Choir, is one we've all heard countless times. On this day, its words took on even greater meaning as Mr. Obama watched from the first pew.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "HE'S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS")
OF THE GOSPEL CHOIR: (Singing) He's got the little bitty baby in His hands, He's got the young and the old ones in His hands. He's got the rich and the poor ones in His hands.
GONYEA: The service featured prayers and readings by Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu religious leaders. The theme of the program was renewal. There were blessings from Mr. Obama and his family. In the sermon delivered by the Reverend Sharon Watkins, there was a recognition in a playful, but still appropriate way of the many serious problems now his to confront.
(SOUNDBITE OF SERMON)
SIEGEL: Mr. President, tag, you're it.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG "AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL")
OF THE GOSPEL CHOIR: America, God shed his grace on thee...
GONYEA: He followed that action today with a gathering of senior staff in an auditorium at the Eisenhower Executive Office building. There he announced several moves, including one designed to send a symbolic message to the American people during hard times.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OF THE GOSPEL CHOIR: During this period of economic emergency, families are tightening their belts and so should Washington. That's why I'm instituting a pay freeze on the salaries of my senior White House staff.
GONYEA: The freeze will affect about 100 White House employees whose salary is more than $100,000 a year. And there was another presidential memorandum regarding transparency and open government. During the campaign, candidate Obama often criticized the secrecy and behind closed-doors dealings of the Bush administration.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OF THE GOSPEL CHOIR: That era is now over. Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known. To be sure, issues like personal privacy and national security must be treated with the care they demand. But the mere fact that you have the legal power to keep something secret does not mean you should always use it.
GONYEA: Mr. Obama also signed an executive order setting guidelines for all administration employees regarding dealings with lobbyists.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
OF THE GOSPEL CHOIR: If you are a lobbyist entering my administration, you will not be able to work on matters you lobbied on or in the agencies you lobbied during the previous two years. When you leave government, you will not be able to lobby my administration for as long as I am president. And there will be a ban on gifts by lobbyists to anyone serving in the administration as well.
GONYEA: Mr. Obama then asked Vice President Joe Biden to swear in senior staff officials.
(SOUNDBITE OF SWEARING-IN)
V: I, your name, repeat your name please, do solemnly swear or affirm.
GONYEA: So it was a first day of substance and symbolism from Mr. Obama, even as he and his staff adjust to their new surroundings. Don Gonyea, NPR News, the White House.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
As we heard from Don Gonyea, President Obama has requested that all pending military hearings at Guantanamo be suspended for 120 days. Mr. Obama wants a complete review of the military commissions there. They were setup by the Bush administration to try detainees. As NPR's Jackie Northam reports, the president's order is viewed as a first step towards closing Guantanamo.
JACKIE NORTHAM: Throughout the presidential campaign, Mr. Obama pledged to close the detention camp and signaled he was not happy with the commissions.
MATTHEW WAXMAN: I think, clearly, the new administration's legal review of military commissions began long before yesterday's inauguration.
NORTHAM: Matthew Waxman is a law professor at Columbia Law School and is a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. Waxman says it's important that Mr. Obama made the decision to suspend the commissions quickly.
WAXMAN: Because the longer procedures go on there, and there are some ongoing proceedings up until today that were occurring, the longer those went on, the more difficult it would be for the new president to later pull them back.
NORTHAM: Mr. Obama's decision effectively brings all 21 pending cases at Guantanamo to a halt, at least until May 20th, while the new administration studies the process. Eugene Fidell, the president of the National Institute of Military Justice, says it's unlikely the commissions will be reconstituted.
EUGENE FIDELL: Obviously, the military commissions have been severely discredited everywhere - in our legal system, in the court of public of opinion and around the world. So, I find it hard to imagine that the Obama administration would exert itself to preserve their viability.
NORTHAM: According to news agencies, the administration today circulated a draft executive order that would close Guantanamo within a year. The camp currently holds roughly 245 detainees. People involved with the Obama transition team say the order would also include repatriating some of the detainees and transferring others into the U.S. Ireland and Switzerland also signaled today that they may be willing to take some of the prisoners. Geneve Mantri with Amnesty International says these moves by the Obama administration are positive steps.
GENEVE MANTRI: What we're really looking forward to see is what the administration puts in its place - what human rights safeguards it has, whether it has the safeguards that we would like to see in any legal system, and all the things that most people have criticized this process is lacking.
NORTHAM: The Obama administration will have to decide what legal system should be used to prosecute the detainees and where they will be detained, says Fidell.
FIDELL: The Bush administration left the Obama administration with a mare's nest of legal and practical problems. And it's going to take some time and the best minds that the legal profession has to sort those problems out.
NORTHAM: The new administration will also have to decide what to do with detainees for whom there is not enough evidence to try them, but the U.S. intelligence agencies say are too dangerous to release. Former detainee affairs official Waxman says, President Obama will have to strike the right balance.
WAXMAN: In trying to navigate these policy dilemmas, the new president needs to balance on the one hand security, with on the other hand, not just civil liberties, but also legitimacy.
NORTHAM: Waxman says it's more important now to move competently rather than quickly in deciding what to do with Guantanamo. Jackie Northam, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Today at the White House, a historic do over. At yesterday's inauguration, we witnessed two super high-powered Harvard Law graduates, the president and the chief justice, manage to muff the oath of office. First, there was the simple case of missed cues.
(SOUNDBITE OF SWEARING-IN CEREMONY)
C: I, Barack Hussein Obama...
P: I, Barack...
C: Do solemnly swear.
P: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear.
SIEGEL: And then, there was this.
(SOUNDBITE OF SWEARING-IN CEREMONY)
C: That I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully...
P: That I will execute...
C: Faithfully the office of president of the United States...
P: The office of president of the United States faithfully...
SIEGEL: President to the United States or to the faithfully United States? Not a thing of beauty, that oath, and a handful of law professors said, redo it. And after dismissing that idea, the Obama White House went ahead and did precisely that. NPR's Scott Horsley is at the White House. Scott, what did they do?
SCOTT HORSLEY: Robert, it was a much smaller crowd that witnessed...
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
HORSLEY: The second...
SIEGEL: I bet there was, yes.
HORSLEY: But because the oath is spelled out explicitly in the Constitution itself, in an abundance of caution, Chief Justice Roberts came here to the White House, and here in the Map Room, in front of a small group of reporters, he once again administered the oath to President Obama And this time, they got it right.
SIEGEL: Now, I thought that the president becomes president at noon on January the 20th according to the Constitution, and this business of the oath being defective was just nonsense, according to some.
HORSLEY: Yes, I've been getting a lot of emails from Constitutional scholars about what's in Article Two of the Constitution and what the amendments spell out. And I guess that's the kind of thing that academic lawyers like to argue about.
SIEGEL: Well, this is a bit reminiscent - I mean, the idea that, in an abundance of caution, the White House went ahead and redid the oath of office and brought the chief justice back over. To me, it's a bit reminiscent of that lawsuit that was brought against Barack Obama's eligibility for the presidency, claiming that he wasn't actually born in Hawaii, that he was born in Indonesia. It seems like one of those things that you just don't want to have that kind of lawsuit being litigated.
HORSLEY: This evening, Chief Justice Roberts said to Barack Obama, are you ready to take the oath? And Obama replied, I am, and we're going to do it very slowly.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: And this was after Gibbs had dismissed the idea of doing it over again and after Vice President Biden had made a joke about it when they were swearing in senior White House staff today.
HORSLEY: That's right. The Vice President was taking no chances. He said his memory is not as good as the chief justice's, and so he read the oath for the senior staffers off of a piece of paper.
SIEGEL: OK, the bottom line is Chief Justice Roberts went to the White House today, and I gather, in the Map Room, re-administered the oath, this time properly, to President Obama so no one can say the he did not swear to the actual Constitution oath of office
HORSLEY: And there was a smattering of applause, after which the president joked with reporters that now they have to go to 12 more inaugural balls.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: NPR's Scott Horsley at the White House. Thanks a lot.
HORSLEY: Good to be with you.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Will that message be heeded? Pakistan has been a key ally of the U.S. in the war against Islamist militants, but anti-American sentiment among people in that country has been growing. NPR's Philip Reeves has just visited Pakistan, and he sent us this report about how people view America's new leader. His story begins in a taxi cab.
(SOUNDBITE OF TAXI RIDE)
M: It's OK. It's OK and the glass is broken so that why (laughter).
PHILIP REEVES: No worries.
M: So we move now?
REEVES: Yes.
REEVES: Assif Hussein Sha has driven the same taxi for 22 years. Like most of the world's cab drivers, he holds an opinion about many subjects, including Barack Obama.
M: It's not change for only the American, it's also change for the world. And especially will Pakistani also looking towards Obama because America is a superpower so he have a role to pave the world in a peaceful way.
REEVES: These are difficult times for Pakistanis - their democratically elected government is weak, their economy is in a mess, the Taliban controls parts of their country. Sha is concerned. In fact, he's so concerned, he's just published a book, a kind of taxi driver's guide to coping with such problems including violent Islamist militancy.
M: I think the best way is to talk. War is no solution. The best way is to talk with broad mind and with broad heart.
REEVES: Open heart?
M: Open heart, exactly. I'm sorry. I can't speak good English (laughing).
REEVES: Sha has had enough of conflict. So have many of his countrymen. In less than two years, many hundreds of Pakistanis have been killed by suicide bombers. The victims include Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister. She died in Rawalpindi, near the capital Islamabad, just over one year ago. That's where we're going now. At the makeshift shrine marking the place of Bhutto's assassination, Kamrin Haider(ph), a mechanical engineer, has come to pay his respects.
M: (Through Translator) We are not concerned either with Obama or Bush. Whoever rules in America, they are definitely going to harm and damage Pakistan.
REEVES: But today, these men want to talk about the U.S. strategy of firing missiles from unmanned drones at suspected militant targets in Pakistan's tribal belt. A laborer called Watam Kan(ph) is chosen to speak on the men's behalf.
M: (Through Translator) We tribal people actually are very much concerned about the American drone attacks because they are attacking the civilians and women and children are being killed.
REEVES: Kan says if President Obama wants to win the support of Pakistan's tribesmen in driving out the Taliban, the missiles need to stop.
M: (Through Translator) Once he stops his attacks, then we will say, OK, Obama is a good president for us.
REEVES: We head back to Islamabad in Sha's taxi. Soon, we're outside the Marriott Hotel. Four months ago, 56 people died when the hotel was attacked by a suicide truck bomb.
M: My name is Zulfiqar Malik, and I am the general manager of Islamabad Marriott Hotel.
REEVES: Malik and his colleagues have firsthand experience of the horrors of the violence plighting Pakistan. He thinks Pakistanis are hopeful, though, that Barack Obama will make a difference.
M: Yes, I mean people have a lot of expectation from Mr. Barack Obama. And what a common person expects of when Mr. Obama comes, not only will continue to fight against these people, but at the same time we are going to try to engage their hearts and minds.
REEVES: This is just a flicker of hope against the bleak landscape. But Assif Hussein Sha, the cab driver feels it, too, as he rattles around in his ancient taxi, planning his next book. Sha clings to the belief that Pakistan will eventually come right.
M: Normal life is hard in Pakistan, but I think if we play our role, everybody when he play his role, I think we can find the solution.
REEVES: Thank you very much.
M: Thank you sir. You are welcome. Thank you.
REEVES: Philip Reeves, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF TAXI DRIVING OFF)
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And now, to your letters about our coverage of President Obama's inauguration. Many of you sent us personal reflections, but some of you wrote about specific parts of our coverage.
(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)
P: Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
SIEGEL: If you have questions or comments about something on the program, we'd like to hear from you. Write to us at npr.org. Click contact us at the top of the page.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. Sold out trains and buses have departed Washington, D.C. heading home after the inauguration, and NPR's Margot Adler said farewell to one busload of people whom she got to know. It was a group from Rochester, New York made up of barbers, preachers, sanitation workers, and nurses. Margot has the story of their inaugural visit.
MARGOT ADLER: The bus trip was organized by Willy Joe Lightfoot(ph), father of four, local district leader, preacher, firefighter, barber and for all I know, more.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUS RIDE)
WILLY JOE LIGHTFOOT: Unidentified man #1: Good.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE CHATTING)
JOE LIGHTFOOT: You feel all right? Did anybody get any sleep? You been watching this stuff on TV?
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE CHATTING)
OK: OK.
JOE LIGHTFOOT: It's incredible, ain't it?
ADLER: Unidentified man #3: Hallelujah.
(SOUNDBITE OF BUS RIDE)
ADLER: The bus was about 80 percent African-American and many like Byron Smith(ph), pastor of Crossroads Church of God By Faith, wanted to be part of history.
BYRON SMITH: I just wanted to be in the place. I wanted to be in the house.
ADLER: For the older people, President Obama's election and inauguration still seems impossible. As one civil rights veteran told me on the Mall, I marched and sang, we shall overcome, but I never thought, in my lifetime, we would overcome. But many on the bus were younger like Willy Davis(ph), a sanitation worker, and Rebecca Washington(ph), who works at local community college. And they said they had a sense this was going to happen.
WILLY DAVIS: When President Obama said that he was going to run for president of the United States, at that moment. I knew that he was going to be president of the United States.
REBECCA WASHINGTON: When I saw him speak at the Democratic Convention, I think it was four years ago, for the first time, I really sensed and felt like I had seen the first black man who could be president of our country. And I just knew he was going to be it.
ADLER: And you knew that at that time?
WASHINGTON: At that time, I knew it. I knew it.
ADLER: On the Mall, they dispersed in all directions. Ten, 12 cold hours later, Rebecca Washington climbed back on the bus.
WASHINGTON: This is it. It's real.
ADLER: She's taking back history, a story for her grandchildren, and something else.
WASHINGTON: When I look at what King did, and I look at it today, it's like full circle. We're finally here. We're in that place that he saw.
ADLER: The other thing that people took away is a renewed sense of service and responsibility. Amy Goldberg(ph) said she's of mixed black and white heritage. She's a nurse at what she calls a troubled inner-city school in Rochester. It's already starting, she says, the day after the election.
AMY GOLDBERG: The one thing I noticed was driving to work, the boys, young African-American men, were at the bus stop. They showed up in droves, and that was the first time I'd seen them in weeks and weeks and weeks.
ADLER: You mean the bus stop to go to school?
GOLDBERG: Yeah, to come to school.
ADLER: Inaugural bus trip organizer Willy Lighfoot said the president in his speech was not trying to be a great orator like Martin Luther King. He was trying to say enough is enough. We're moving on. It's going to take all of us to do the work.
JOE LIGHTFOOT: When I went away, that's what people were saying. It's going to take all of us. And I thought that really was great that that message was actually captured by the American people, that it's going to take each and every one of us to make America the great country that it is.
ADLER: And in fact, if you listen to people on the Mall, at that moment when Barack Obama finished taking the oath of office, that's exactly what you heard.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE SHOUTING)
ADLER: Here's retired San Francisco police officer, Billy Smith(ph).
BILLY SMITH: It is done. Complete. Now, let's get to work.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
ADLER: Margot Adler, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered, I'm Robert Siegel. Timothy Geithner began his confirmation hearing this morning with an apology. President Obama's nominee for Treasury Secretary said this to the Senate Finance Committee about the tax issues that have delayed his confirmation.
(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE HEARING)
M: These were careless mistakes but they were unintentional. I want to apologize to the committee for putting you in the position of having to spend so much time on these issues when there is so much pressing business before the country.
SIEGEL: Well, if an apology right off the bat was intended to defuse the situation, as NPR's John Ydstie reports, it did not.
JOHN YDSTIE: Geithner's tax issue involved failing to pay $34,000 in taxes during the years 2001 through 2004. Until the Senate Finance Committee revealed the problem last week and his hearing was delayed, it was assumed the highly respected Geithner would be quickly confirmed. After all, the former Treasury official, who was president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank during this financial crisis, seemed uniquely qualified. But Republicans remain troubled by the tax issue today, including ranking Republican, Charles Grassley of Iowa.
(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE HEARING)
M: Not discussing your tax returns, Mr. Geithner, would be like sweeping them under the rug.
YDSTIE: Grassley went on to ask a series of questions about Geithner's failure to pay the full amount of Social Security tax required while he worked at the International Monetary Fund. The IMF does not withhold and pay taxes for employees, as most US companies do. It does regularly inform workers that they are responsible for paying both their portion and the employer's portion of Social Security. From the years 2001 through 2004, Geithner paid the worker's portion but not the employer's. Geithner was audited by the IRS and required to pay the shortfall for 2003 and 2004, but ultimately he told lawmakers he didn't have to pay a penalty.
(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE HEARING)
M: And that just goes to the point, I think, that they felt this was a common enough problem that it wasn't unusual in my circumstance. Now, having said that, this was completely my responsibility.
YDSTIE: But, here's what's troubling Republicans. The IRS statute of limitations had run out for 2001 and 2002. So the IRS could not require Geithner to pay taxes for those years. And Geithner did not pay those taxes until the Obama transition team discovered the situation as Mr. Obama prepared to nominate him. Only then did Geithner pay it in full. Today, Arizona Republican Jon Kyl tried to get the Treasury nominee to explain why he waited.
(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE HEARING)
SIEGEL: It's legal to rely on the statute of limitations. There's nothing wrong with relying on the statute of limitations. I think what some people find implausible is that that isn't what you're saying you did. What you're saying is that you didn't think about it until it was brought to your attention in connection with your nomination. Is that correct?
M: I said, Senator, that I did not - looking back on it, did not think about it carefully enough, did not ask enough questions, and I regret not having done that.
YDSTIE: But Kyl continued to press Geithner, asking whether he'd thought about paying the taxes prior to being nominated. Geithner did not give him a direct yes or no answer.
(SOUNDBITE OF SENATE HEARING)
M: I did what I thought was the right thing to do at that time, which is, the IRS told me what I owed...
SIEGEL: Yeah, I'm sorry to take extra time here. But, would you answer my question rather than dancing around it, please?
YDSTIE: Aside from his taxes, Geithner defended his role in the government's response to the financial crisis, saying the actions were necessary to avoid financial collapse. He also said within weeks, President Obama will present a detailed plan on dealing with the financial crisis to the Congress and the nation. John Ydstie, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Well, NPR's Jim Zarroli joins us now from New York and, Jim, Bank of America was down more than 20 percent yesterday and up more than that today. What accounts for that kind of volatility?
JIM ZARROLI: The big surprise yesterday was State Street Corporation, which is a money manager for big institutional investors, it reported big losses. And it's not just American banks - the Royal Bank of Scotland came out this week and reported the biggest loss in British corporate history. British banks are - they're just in so much trouble right now that it's hurting the value of the pound which fell to an all time low against the yen this week.
SIEGEL: Jim, are the problems of British banks due to the same factors affecting American banks?
ZARROLI: Another example was Bank of America, which was a healthy bank that decided to capitalize on the banking crisis by buying Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial. Well, it said last week Merrill's losses were a lot bigger than it thought and it had to ask the government for $20 billion to complete the deal, and that was on top of the $25 billion it had already received.
SIEGEL: Well, let's talk about what Geithner might do as secretary of the Treasury. As head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was at the table as the Bush administration worked on financial rescue plans here for the best. What could he do on behalf of the Obama administration that hasn't already been tried?
ZARROLI: This is what happened in Sweden, which basically took over its banking system in the early '90s. Sweden was undergoing a financial crisis. It wanted to stabilize its banks, and what it did worked. Sweden was later able to come back and re-privatize its banks. The problem is U.S. banking sector is a lot bigger and more complicated. But, if this banking crisis keeps up, the government might not have a lot of choice and might have to consider what Sweden did.
SIEGEL: That's NPR's Jim Zarroli in New York. Thank you, Jim.
ZARROLI: You're welcome.
ROBERT SIEGEL: From NPR News, it's All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. The Senate indulged in some bipartisan boosterism today and overwhelmingly confirmed Hillary Clinton to be President Obama's Secretary of State. No one objected to Clinton's qualifications, but some Republicans had delayed the vote over questions of potential conflicts of interest posed by former President Bill Clinton's charitable foundation. NPR's David Welna watched today's proceedings and he sent us this report.
DAVID WELNA: There never was any doubt Senator Clinton would be confirmed by her colleagues as the nation's chief diplomat, but Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry made clear on the Senate floor, he would prefer having had Clinton among the cabinet members as Senate approved by acclamation yesterday.
SIEGEL: We're a day overdue and we're ready to proceed.
WELNA: Texas Republican John Cornyn was not ready to proceed though, not until the senate held a three-hour debate followed by a roll call vote on Clinton's nomination. Cornyn's issue was the fundraising restrictions and disclosure statements Clinton had agreed to regarding foreign donations to her husband's foundation. For Cornyn, they simply fell short of what was really needed. He said he would vote for Clinton's confirmation.
SIEGEL: But we should not let our respect for Senator Clinton or your admiration for the many good works of the Clinton Foundation blind us to the danger of perceived conflicts of interest caused by the solicitation of hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign and some domestic sources. The perception in reality must be that the Office of the Secretary of the State is viewed around the world as beyond reproach.
WELNA: Just two senators, both of them Republicans, voted against confirming Clinton. One was Louisiana's David Vitter, the other was South Carolina's Jim DeMint, who too, had problems with Bill Clinton's donors.
SIEGEL: I believe this problem can be very easily fixed. If the foundation agrees to refuse all foreign donations and fully disclose all contributions online immediately as long as Senator Clinton is Secretary of State. Today, Senator Clinton has not agreed to do this.
WELNA: DeMint had raised objections during Senator Clinton's confirmation hearings to the Clinton Foundation's promise to annually disclose its donors. So too, had the top Republican on the panel Richard Lugar, even Chairman Kerry acknowledged today that he shared their concerns about the disclosure arrangements.
SIEGEL: I understand that Senator Lugar and some others have requested that large donations from foreign entities ought to be disclosed more frequently than the once-a-year requirement outlined in the agreement. I happen to agree that that would have been preferable.
WELNA: But Senator Clinton has many allies on both sides of the aisle and today some leading Republicans rush to her defense. Here is South Carolina's Lindsey Graham downplaying the need for new disclosure requirements.
SIEGEL: Any concerns about conflict of interest, there will be a process in the future if that happens to be a concern to go through the committee. I have a lot of confidence in the committee to provide oversight.
WELNA: Clinton's strongest endorsement came from another colleague who like her once had hopes of becoming president yesterday. It was Arizona Republican John McCain.
SIEGEL: I, like all good politicians, pay attention to the president's approval ratings are very high but more importantly, I think the message that the American people are sending us now is they want us to work together and get to work. I think we ought to let Senator Clinton who is obviously qualified and obviously will serve - get to work immediately.
WELNA: Majority Leader, Harry Reid was quick to praise McCain's mega-endorsement.
SIEGEL: I want to spread on the record my appreciation for John McCain coming before and saying, let's just approve her.
WELNA: In the end, the vote to confirm Clinton as Secretary of State was 94-2. A judiciary committee vote on the nomination of Eric Holder to be Attorney General that was to have taken place today was instead, held over until next week at the request of committee Republicans. David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
ROBERT SIEGEL: The person most commonly mentioned as the next Middle East Envoy is former Maine Senator George Mitchell. Mitchell was the Democratic leader in the Senate and before that a federal judge. Between his more noteworthy service mediating a peace agreement in Northern Ireland and later investigating steroid abuse in major league baseball, Mitchell put in a short stint of Mideast diplomacy. James Bennet, now editor of the Atlantic, was the New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief back in 2001 and 2002, and James Bennet, if there is such a thing as the Mitchell Plan, what was it?
M: There is, and not to be confused with the plan on steroid use in major league baseball. The Mitchell plan grew out of an international conference at Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, held at the tail end of the Clinton administration and Mitchell was sent to the region as part of a very high-level group to assess the violence at the outset of what turned out to be the second intifada and to try to figure out a way to stop the violence and restart the Oslo Peace Process.
SIEGEL: Mitchell, I gathered, proposed a halt to settlement construction by Israel and a halt to violence by the Palestinians and like many other agreements didn't exactly bear fruit.
M: Yeah, these agreements are of course only as good as their implementation. The implementation hasn't been terribly impressive in recent years. It called for - those were the biggest bullet points that came out of the report and also called for a number of so-called confidence building measures. But what really happened is that none of the steps where really taken and there was a succession of envoys after Mitchell who created reports that were to get you back to the Mitchell report. First came George Tenet of the CIA who produced the Tenet plan to get back to the Mitchell report to get back to Oslo. Then, came General Zinni who produced the Zinni plan to get back to Tenet and so forth and then finally the diplomatic quartet that produced what's called the road map which has really become kind of the touchstone document that everybody now refers back to which was also supposed to get us back to Mitchell and thence on to Oslo but the parties have been stuck.
SIEGEL: Which do you think is more true if indeed George Mitchell is going to be the new Middle East Peace Envoy? Has the Obama administration in that case turned to somebody who's an old hand at this, turned to somebody who would be essentially new at it, or something in between?
M: It's something in between and it strikes me as very smart, depending on what, of course, the larger plan is and what the president's real intentions are here. I mean, George Mitchell is a guy who has not spent, as I understand it, a huge amount of time in the region, but he has spent some time there. There were two fact-finding missions that the Mitchell report grew out of. He's thought about this problem and he's not likely that he'd be snowed by either side.
SIEGEL: If indeed Dennis Ross, longtime Middle East peace negotiator doesn't get this portfolio but rather is assigned to deal with Iran, which is something else he's been reported or rumored. What does that say about the Obama administration?
M: It's a very bold and interesting combination if that is in fact what they have in mind because Dennis Ross would dispute this characterization. No doubt the Palestinians would view him largely as tilting a little more towards Israel and if he is sent to Iran to deal with the Iran Nuclear Program, I think that would be very reassuring to Israelis. George Mitchell is of Lebanese descent on his mother's side. That is actually going to be reassuring I think to Palestinians who have perceived a strong tilt in the Bush administration over the last few years toward Israel. Now, what you'll then have is two heavyweights who are essentially addressing one very big problem from different perspectives. I mean you cannot separate, I think, the Israeli Palestinian conflict from Iran's activities in the region. And so these two guys will then have to figure out a way to work together which is a whole - another set of problems that the Obama administration will have to deal with but assuming that they can, it could be a very effective combination.
SIEGEL: And again the choice of George Mitchell to be Middle East envoy is not officially confirmed at this point, but that's what we've been talking about with James Bennet, editor of the Atlantic. Thank you very much for talking with us.
M: Thank you.
ROBERT SIEGEL: From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. And finally this hour, we're following up on President Obama's Inauguration, on some unusual people who attended and some who couldn't and are not happy about that. But first, our senior news analyst Daniel Schorr has been reflecting on the broader meaning of the new president's words.
DANIEL SCHORR: Internationally, the president has reached out to the Muslim world and offered to extend a hand to those who will unclench their fists. The proffered hand is soon to be tested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in Pakistan and in one or more countries in Africa.
SIEGEL: The time is out of joint. Oh, cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right. This is Daniel Schorr.
ROBERT SIEGEL: Some people yesterday did not get to witness President Obama's speech, at least not in the location their tickets suggested. Thousands of people holding Inaugural tickets were turned away. And as NPR's Laura Sullivan reports, they remain let down and angry.
LAURA SULLIVAN: The coveted color-coded tickets to the Inauguration offered a close-up view. They were fancy, delicately engraved on expensive cardstock and without any hint of what was to come for many.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE CHANTING "LET US IN!")
SULLIVAN: Wall-to-wall people jammed into a tunnel, a mob scene on the streets and in the end, only a distant echo of Inaugural music. At least 5,000 people with tickets and possibly thousands more were turned away from security checkpoints. Christopher Roland(ph) trekked down from New York City and spent the rest of the day wandering around Chinatown trying to find a television to see reruns of the event he missed entirely.
CHRISTOPHER ROLAND: There were no cops or anyone taking accountability for this or trying to organize groups.
SULLIVAN: The biggest problem occurred in the tunnel under the Capitol where many purple ticket holders waited for six hours in the cold without restrooms. Many of the purple tickets were for campaign volunteers and staff who paid their own way for this one little thank you from the new administration. Brent Messenger was Obama's campaign field manager in New Mexico and flew out from San Francisco. Deep in the tunnel, people sent forward on scouting missions came back with grim news.
BRENT MESSENGER: They said you wouldn't believe what it's like up there. It's chaos, there's no line. People are just cutting in. No one's controlling the line.
(SOUNDBITE OF PEOPLE SHOUTING)
SULLIVAN: The street outside the gate was a mob scene. The gates were shut. Even a day later, Messenger can't stop thinking about his staff and all the young volunteers.
MESSENGER: Someone who worked for me had his father and his mother who he packed out, got them up at 4:30 in the morning. There they were and - oh, his parents were so proud, you know, to watch this moment, and then he was treated like, you know, he was treated poorly and pushed around and then - I'm sure he felt a little humiliated and it's awful.
SULLIVAN: D.C. Police say, it wasn't their security checkpoint or lines. The Secret Service say they have no comment. The Capitol Police did not return phone calls. This afternoon, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies put out a statement saying they were sorry and promised to get to the bottom of what happened in time for 2012. In the meantime, almost 2,000 people have joined a Facebook page called Survivors of the Purple Tunnel of Doom. Laura Sullivan, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL: Even for the hundreds of thousands of people who were not turned away yesterday, things weren't exactly comfortable, it was chilly and hard to move among the crowds, but that did not stop Elizabeth S. Hutchinson. She's 88, a native of Palestine, Texas, although she lives part of the year in the D.C. area, and she has attended every Inauguration since the 1953 swearing-in of Dwight D. Eisenhower - that is 56 years, 15 inaugurations. Elizabeth Hutchinson joins us now. And first of all, we just heard that some people had a hard time getting in with their tickets. Did you make in easily?
ELIZABETH HUTCHINSON: Yes, we did. We had wonderful seats in the orange section. But I was in a transport chair and when we got there, they told us, we needed to sit in the handicapped with all the other wheelchairs. So, we were actually very close. They were wonderful seats that they furnished for handicapped people.
SIEGEL: Well, given what - we'll just assume as a record that you're holding right now for attending presidential inaugurations, how did yesterday's Inauguration compare well with that first one back in 1953, or did any others compare especially?
HUTCHINSON: Well, of course, the first one was so exciting. You know, here was a little girl, grew up in Palestine, Texas (laughing) and going to an inauguration in Washington, D.C., where I'd never been and it was just lots and lots of fun. And yesterday, it was very stimulating and emotional in a way because my record was kept and I loved it. (Laughing)
SIEGEL: Is it a very different experience for you when the person being sworn in as president is somebody whom you voted for or supported or somebody whom you didn't vote for or didn't support?
HUTCHINSON: Well, I did not say who I voted for. As a matter of fact, I really didn't care who won and maybe read this. I just didn't want my record to be broken.
SIEGEL: (Laughing) I see. I see. At a certain point, that's all that counts, I guess.
HUTCHINSON: (Laughing) Yes, that's right.
SIEGEL: But just thinking back over all this inaugurations you've been to, is it a very big difference when it's somebody whom you personally had favored for the office, or not, it's just the ceremony that makes it just as exciting, either way.
HUTCHINSON: Well, it's the ceremony that is very emotional and whether you were for him or against him, we did inaugurate a new president and also I consider an inauguration of the American people to enter into a new era for our country.
SIEGEL: Well, you know, it's obviously just the dawn of a new administration but January 2013 would be the next one.
HUTCHINSON: Oh, well, call me then.
SIEGEL: OK. (Laughing). We'll do. Elizabeth S. Hutchinson, thank you very much for talking with us.
HUTCHINSON: Thank you so much for calling. I appreciate your interest.
SIEGEL: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Scientists who study global warming are especially interested in Antarctica - that's because the melting of Antarctic ice could obliterate coastlines around the globe. The continent's peninsula that jets towards South America has been warming rapidly, but scientist have been puzzled in the past by findings that the rest of the continent seem to be getting cooler. Well, now a study suggests that large parts of Antarctica have in fact been heating up, as NPR's Richard Harris reports.
RICHARD HARRIS: Antarctica is so remote, scientists didn't even put permanent weather stations there until 1957 and even those were in just a few scattered places. Eric Steig at the University of Washington says that made it hard to take the continent's temperature.
HARRIS: I like to say it's a bit like having data in San Francisco and New York and trying to say something about Arizona. You really need some more information if you're going to say anything reasonable about Arizona.
HARRIS: Steig and his colleagues have done just that for Antarctica, taking the sparse temperature records of the past 50 years and combining them with satellite records that cover a much greater area, but don't go so far back in time. The result, as they now report in the journal Nature, is that a big chunk of Antarctica, the western part of the continent, has in fact been warming up like the rest of the world, where temperatures have risen by about a degree near the equator to more than five degrees near the North Pole.
HARRIS: It's much less than Arctic warming, but it is pretty much is on par with global average warming.
HARRIS: Now, Steig says warming isn't necessarily all bad news. Up to a point, Antarctic warming can actually reduce sea level. Warming can take water out of the ocean through evaporation and deposit it on the continent in the form of increased snowfall.
HARRIS: West Antarctica should be getting more precipitation along with this increased temperature. But I think the data to demonstrate that are not really available.
HARRIS: In fact, the best data from Antarctica showed that the continent is putting slightly more water into the ocean than it's taking out. Now, the fact that Antarctica is in fact warming up is reassuring in a way to Arctic scientist Richard Alley at Penn State University.
HARRIS: The world looks a little more sensible to me than it did before.
HARRIS: Scientists expect that Antarctica should be heating up according to what they understand about global warming. And the consequence of warming Antarctic air is not cause for panic, Alley says.
HARRIS: For now, most of the Antarctic is still so cold that it's very hard to melt it from above. The big question for Antarctica for the near future is what happens to the ocean because the warm ocean waters can circulate under the floating extensions of the Antarctic - the ice shelves.
HARRIS: David Vaughan from the British Antarctic Survey is on the peninsula right now, keeping a close eye on the Wilkins Ice Sheet, which was once larger than Connecticut, but could soon be gone entirely.
HARRIS: We landed on the ice shelf just two days ago, flimsy looking piece of ice, and that appears to be hanging on by the skin of its teeth.
HARRIS: It could collapse in the next few weeks, he says.
HARRIS: Not all of Wilkins will disappear overnight, but a large part of it could.
HARRIS: That ice sheet is already floating on the ocean, so when it melts it won't raise sea level. But it's a powerful reminder that change can come quickly and dramatically in this land of ice. Richard Harris, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL: As Hillary Clinton goes to the State Department, the question is who will replace her in the Senate? The most prominent name on the list to replace Clinton has been that of Caroline Kennedy, and now she has withdrawn her name from consideration. To help try to sort what's going on, we're joined by Fred Dicker, who is state editor of the New York Post. He's in Albany. Welcome to the program, once again.
FRED DICKER: Thank you and greetings from Albany.
SIEGEL: NPR is reporting that Kennedy withdrew for personal reasons. What have you found out?
DICKER: Well, this is really a bombshell story here in New York. We found out that Governor Paterson, who has the right to make the decision, apparently had decided not to pick her. So, people are saying that perhaps Caroline Kennedy's citing personal reasons is a kind of cover story to explain the fact that she was being passed over.
SIEGEL: Now, there was a recent poll showing that most New Yorkers thought that David Paterson, the Governor who became governor upon the resignation of Eliot Spitzer, that he would pick Caroline Kennedy, but more of them favored the state's Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, the son of the former governor, Mario Cuomo. Is it assumed that Andrew Cuomo would be the leading candidate to succeed Hillary Clinton, if it's not going to be Caroline Kennedy?
DICKER: It's assumed he's a leading candidate, but it's not even clear that he wants the job. Governor Paterson has not indicated any great warmth towards Andrew Cuomo. He's indicated he'd like to have a woman succeed a woman. And there are a couple of female congress members here in New York who've been mentioned as being close to the top of the list. But I would think Andrew Cuomo certainly will be seriously considered.
SIEGEL: Who are the members of congress, the women that you're talking about?
DICKER: Carolyn Maloney of Manhattan, she's a veteran congresswoman who's achieved a good deal of positive reputation with the New York delegation and Kirsten Gillibrand, a very new congress member from upstate Columbia County in Hudson. She has the distinction of having won election twice in a heavily Republican district showing that she has really cross-party appeal.
SIEGEL: Would it matter to Governor Paterson that Representative Gillibrand is from upstate and the other Senator, Chuck Schumer, is from New York City? And to pick either, well, to pick Caroline Kennedy or for that matter, Representative Maloney would have two down-state senators.
DICKER: Yeah, I think it would matter. There are right now no representatives of upstate New York anywhere on a statewide ticket for the Democrats or the Republicans, so there is a concern in upstate communities that they're not represented and I think the governor who hopes to win on his own next year running as governor would like to balance the ticket with someone, for instance, from upstate New York.
SIEGEL: Now, take us back to the story of Caroline Kennedy which is quite remarkable. She has not held a high profile at all, in politics over the years. But she very prominently, and perhaps significantly, endorsed Barack Obama for the nomination, and then how did she express her interest in the Senate seat?
DICKER: Well, she expressed it through leaks from people who are close to her. Once it became clear - once it was known that Hillary (unintelligible) becoming Secretary of State, very quickly Caroline Kennedy's name appeared in the press in our publication. First, it was leaked by people close to her and it became clear that Mayor Bloomberg, who is not Democrat, but certainly has a lot of clout in the city seemed to be favoring Caroline Kennedy and he dispatched his deputy mayor, Kevin Sheekey, to help carry the campaign for her, and it was a campaign. All of a sudden, aides who were political aides to Mayor Bloomberg also appeared as the advisers to Caroline Kennedy. So, it was really through the backing of Mayor Bloomberg and some other people that she emerged really as the front-runner very quickly.
SIEGEL: And perhaps her greatest stumble was in expressing support for Mayor Bloomberg who is not a Democrat.
DICKER: Correct, and had defeated a couple of Democrats. Now as she then back-tracked on them and said that she would likely back whoever the Democratic candidate is against him later this year, but that angered a lot of Democrats. And then she toured upstate New York and didn't do very well. Then she did a series of interviews in which she said: 'you know,' 'you know' - I think the average was once every 10 seconds, and it made her sound inarticulate. And she didn't seem all that familiar with New York issues, so her sallies into the open out to be interviewed by the press didn't go well for her.
SIEGEL: Fred Dicker of the New York Post in Albany. Thanks for talking with us.
DICKER: OK, my pleasure.
SIEGEL: And once again, the news Caroline Kennedy has told Governor David Paterson to withdraw her name from consideration to succeed Hillary Clinton in the Senate.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. A small group of musicians is trying to save American folk music one recording at a time. They're not professional archivists, but they've collected thousands of old rare cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes. And they want to introduce those recordings to a new generation of musicians online, as NPR's David Gura reports.
DAVID GURA: Judy Hyman plays fiddle in a band called The Horse Flies. In her living room in Ithaca, New York, there's a pine-wood dresser right next to the couch. It's not for shirts and sweaters, she keeps her socks elsewhere. This dresser, which she bought used many years ago, is full of cassette tapes.
Ms. JUDY HYMAN (Fiddle player, The Horse Flies): And we'll just open this up here and here, let's see, I have Jim Bowles from 1973. We have Mount Airy from 1982 here.
GURA: There are hundreds of cassettes.
Ms. HYMAN: Oh, this is a precious tape to me. This is Harold Hausenfluck and the Dixie Bee Liners at Galax, and I don't have a year on here, but this would have to be about 1981, I would think.
(Soundbite of folk song)
Mr. HAROLD HAUSENFLUCK AND THE DIXIE BEE LINERS: (Singing) I know something, something I don't need. A crosscut saw, and mother-in-law, and 44 chickens to feed Won't you come and go, Won't you come and go, I've made my friendly love I'm going to cross the sea Yeehaw
GURA: Now, you may not have heard of Jim Bowles or Harold Hausenfluck. They're fiddlers from Kentucky and Virginia, respectively. And Mount Airy, North Carolina and Galax, Virginia are two towns in the Blue Ridge Mountains known for, among other things, their annual fiddlers conventions.
Judy Hyman's dresser is an archive of rare recordings that spans more than three decades. She recorded many of them. The rest were gifts from other musicians and collectors. The music is called old time or old-timey. It's what came before bluegrass.
(Soundbite of folk music)
GURA: It's been passed down from generation to generation, from musician to musician by ear. Versions of songs are particular to different regions, to different families even. Field recordings like these are essential tools for anyone who wants to play this kind of music.
Mr. RAY ALDEN (Retired Math Teacher; Banjo Player; Field Recorder): When you go down South and try to study with someone, they don't say, well, you know, the first measure you play such and such. They just play the tune. (Laughing)
GURA: Ray Alden is a banjo player, a friend of Judy Hyman's, and a retired math teacher. During his summer vacations, he scoured the South, looking for musicians.
Mr. ALDEN: Unless you've got photographic memory, you have to record it, take it home, try to play, and then try again, then try again and just keep trying and trying until you finally, hopefully, you get it.
(Soundbite of folk music)
GURA: One of the people he studied with was Fred Cochram(ph), a musician from Surry County, North Carolina.
(Soundbite of folk music)
GURA: A few years ago, Ray Alden began to wonder what he was going to do with his collection of field recordings.
Mr. ALDEN: People such as myself are getting older. I'm in my mid-60s at this point. At some point, you say to yourself, well look, what am I going to do with all this stuff? And the logical thing or the thing that most people do is they donate it to archives.
GURA: He thought about giving his collection to the Library of Congress or to a university. But Alden worried that they'd be hard for musicians like him to access, that they'd gather dust on a metal shelf somewhere. And besides, what librarian in his or her right mind would let someone into the stacks with a banjo or a fiddle to learn a rare ballad or breakdown?
Mr. ALDEN: If the people who are really interested and want to play it, for example, or hear it, have such difficulty accessing it, you know, what good is that?
GURA: Alden talked to a few of his friends, like Judy Hyman, and they came up with an idea. They'd preserved their old recordings themselves, and they'd used the Internet to bring them to a new audience. Alden says it's music democratization.
He and his friends call their ad hoc group the Field Recorders' Collective. Every year, they re-master and release 10 to 15 old recordings. They use their home computers to edit audio, and they package every CD in a simple cardboard sleeve. Liner notes are available online with photos.
(Soundbite of folk music)
GURA: Tapes come from backyard jam sessions, house concerts and music festivals. Music that probably wouldn't interest most commercial labels, of everything from the Roan Mountain Hilltoppers from Shell Creek, Tennessee to Wade Ward(ph) from Independence, Virginia.
(Soundbite of folk music)
GURA: Most of the musicians on these recordings were not professionals, and many of them are dead now. Peter Hoover made this tape of Wade Ward, with Uncle Charlie Higgins and Dale Poe, a few years after he dropped out of Harvard in the 1950s. He did his best to make them feel comfortable. He shared meals with them, he listened to them play music in their living rooms, and he didn't bring out his suitcase-sized reel-to-reel recorder until late at night.
Mr. PETER HOOVER (Member, Field Recorders' Collective): You have to sit, and you have to visit, and you have to explain yourself and say, well, you know, I want to learn this music, and I hear you play it. Could you play me a few tunes? And after we got through that, I said, well, you know, could I record some of this stuff?
GURA: Today, Hoover, Ray Alden, and the other members of the Field Recorders' Collective - almost two dozen of them - do everything on the cheap or as inexpensively as they can so that other musicians can learn from the likes of Haywood Blevins, John Ashby, and Manko Sneed(ph).
Mr. HOOVER: Some of the names are so obscure that even aficionados of this music, who know a tremendous amount, have never heard of these people. But the music is just absolutely tremendous.
(Soundbite of folk music)
GURA: After the Field Recorders' Collective pays for production and shipping, its members give the rest of the money to the families of the musicians. Men and women, who in many cases still play the tunes their parents and grandparents did. Ray Alden hopes the Field Recorders' Collective will help a new generation share the experiences he and his fellow collectors had decades ago, without all the work. David Gura, NPR News.
(Soundbite of folk music)
NORRIS: And you could hear more music from the Field Recorders' Collective and see videos of the musicians they've recorded. That's at npr.org.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Oscar nominations came out this morning. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" had the most nominations with 13, and "Slumdog Millionaire" had 10. Joining those movies in the Best Picture category - "Milk," "Frost/Nixon," and "The Reader." And there's a complete list of Oscar nominees at our Web site npr.org/movies. Please check that out, but first we wanted to check out what our film critic Bob Mondello has to think about all this, and he joins us now in the studio. Hello, Bob.
BOB MONDELLO: Hey, it's good to be here.
NORRIS: Let's first talk about a big surprise - small movie, "Frozen River."
MONDELLO: That's true, it's a very small movie to have gotten two major awards. A lot of people haven't seen it yet. It's about a Mohawk woman in upstate New York who sort of coerces a white woman into helping her smuggle illegal immigrants across the Canadian border.
(Soundbite of movie "Frozen River")
Ms. MELISSA LEO: (As Ray Eddy) You're not going anywhere until those people get out of my trunk.
Ms. MISTY UPHAM: (As Lila) I'll give you half, now let's go. Let's go.
Ms. LEO: (As Ray Eddy) I'm not taking them across the border. That's a crime.
Ms. UPHAM: (As Lila) There is no border here. This is free trade between nations.
Ms. LEO: (As Ray Eddy) This isn't a nation.
Ms. UPHAM: (As Lila) Let's go.
MONDELLO: Melissa Leo got a best actress nomination for playing Ray, the white woman, and Courtney Hunt, who also directed, got an original screenplay nomination. I actually - between that and - I've been walking around all day saying, "The Reader," "The Reader"?
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONDELLO: How did that get in there? And I finally realized it's the Weinstein Brothers' movie, and they're the guys who at Miramax used to be able to turn small movies into big award pictures, and they've done it again.
NORRIS: So we move now from small films and big surprises to big films. And Bob, you don't seem to like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" quite as much as the Academy does. Why not?
MONDELLO: Well, I think it's all right. This is life is like a box of digital effects...
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONDELLO: Is my reaction to that one. It's OK. It's fine. But I - you know, I think the reason that the Academy seems to be so excited about it is that it's a romance, so it can get lots of acting nominations, and it's also a special effects movie, so it can get all that little stuff. You know, the best special effects and costumes and...
NORRIS: We're talking about a man who ages backward and all the effects that go along with doing that.
MONDELLO: That's right. The only times that a picture's gotten more than 13 nominations were "Titanic" and "All About Eve." Well, think about "Titanic." It's a romance with special effects, so that follows that. "All About Eve" came out in 1950 at a time when they split everything between black and white and colored pictures. There were a whole lot more awards back then, that's why it got 14. So they're anomalies, and I think this one fits into the pattern of that.
NORRIS: I, for the record, happened to like the "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," so...
MONDELLO: I'm really glad. I didn't dislike it. I just, you know, I think life is like a box of digital effects.
(Soundbite of laughter)
NORRIS: Now what was left off the Academy's list?
MONDELLO: Well, the one that everybody is talking about got left off for Best Picture and Best Director, "Dark Knight," the Batman movie, which is the most popular movie of the last decade. It had made more money, almost a billion dollars, worldwide.
And then, also people are talking about how "Wall-E" got left off the Best Picture because you got this category now of Best Animated Picture, and otherwise it probably would have been in there. This category, which has become some sort of a ghetto for animated films, is now a Pixar category to lose, it seems to me. Every time they have a picture come out, it ends up there and it ends up winning. So I think "Wall-E" will be no exception. It's an extraordinary movie.
NORRIS: February 22nd is the big night. So what if someone hasn't seen many of these movies who wants to study up before the Academy Awards on February 22nd, what should they go out and see?
MONDELLO: Well, actually the Academy, through its choices, has made that really easy this year. You'll be comfortable in all of the major categories if you see just eight movies. Four of them are the Best Picture nominees, excluding "The Reader," which I don't think has a chance. And if in addition to that, you see "Doubt," "Rachel Getting Married," and "Frozen River" for Best Actress and "The Wrestler" for Best Actor, I think you will have seen everything that you need to see to win your office pools.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONDELLO: The major categories are like that. You know, the one thing that I think you should not leave off that list because you think you might not enjoy it is "Slumdog Millionaire," which I know people are coming to it late. You know, they're sort of discovering it late. It hasn't opened all over the country yet. But when it does, it is just this wonderful picture - a fantastical romance about a kid who's from the Indian slums, gets on the TV show, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire."
(Soundbite of movie "Slumdog Millionaire")
Unidentified Man: It's getting hot in here.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DEV PATEL: (As Jamal Malik) Are you nervous?
Unidentified Man: What?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Man: Am I nervous? It's you who's in the hot seat, my friend.
Mr. PATEL: (As Jamal Malik) Oh, yes.
NORRIS: That's Dev Patel in "Slumdog Millionaire," playing Jamal, the lead character, who's supposed to be in the hot seat on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire," but seems to be the calm one there.
MONDELLO: He does seem to be.
NORRIS: But there probably aren't a lot of calm people in Hollywood, right now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONDELLO: Well, not at this point, no.
NORRIS: Waiting for the big day. I know you don't like to make predictions so I won't even ask you.
MONDELLO: Thank you.
NORRIS: But I will encourage listeners to go to our Web site. Again, that's npr.org/movies, if they want to find out more about these nominations. Thanks so much, Bob.
MONDELLO: It's always a pleasure.
NORRIS: And that was our film critic, Bob Mondello.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Yesterday, President Obama instructed federal agencies to be more responsive to Freedom of Information requests. It's part of Mr. Obama's pledge to make government more transparent. Tom Blanton has a lot of experience with FOI requests. Just last year, his research institute, the National Security Archive, filed over 2,000 of them. His mission is to open up secret government files.
In this commentary, he says the Freedom of Information Act isn't only important to researchers like him or historians or journalists.
Mr. TOM BLANTON (Director, National Security Archive): Every military veteran, every senior citizen, every private business ought to be cheering the president on because those are the folks who really use the Freedom of Information Act. Now, I know what you're thinking - that Freedom of Information, it's just for journalists, isn't it?
But I am here to tell you, that reporters and researchers like me only file about five percent of the information requests that come in to the federal government. The real glory of the Freedom of Information Act is how it gives ordinary people, all of us, ownership over government records.
The largest single group of people who use the law to get information are actually senior citizens, millions of request last year, asking for copies of their Social Security earnings record or their benefits package or that Medicare prescription drug program.
Military veterans and their families are next, upward of two million requests a year, mainly about their health coverage, disability benefits or service records.
And commercial businesses filed about two-thirds of the rest of the Freedom of Information requests. These companies were trying to find out about government contracts they could bid on or regulations that are coming down the pike or what their competitors are up to. And all that scrutiny makes the market work a lot better, bidding come cheaper, corruption less likely.
But journalist and research groups like mine, well, we were only about five percent of the total. Our requests did make a lot of front page news, like the government's Iraq war plans that assumed everything would be just fine afterwards or inspection data at a Minnesota turkey processor that showed salmonella in more than half the samples.
So, you definitely want folks like me to stay on the case. And as the head of the largest collection of former government secrets, I can say the last eight years were a constant struggle. Washington created record-setting numbers of secrets these last eight years. And a lot of bad decisions hid under that shroud of executive privilege and information control.
This year, I'll be filing more requests about how the United States will get out of Iraq and how we can make sure taxpayers get their money back in the financial bailout. So, yesterday's announcement at the White House was really good news.
President Obama told the country every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known. We'll see how many agencies stand up and salute, but just remember that you, we - all of us have the power to make government more open. Let's make it known.
NORRIS: Tom Blanton is the director of the National Security Archive.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
President Obama promised to speed up the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq, but the American Ambassador to Iraq has warned that a quick U.S. withdrawal could, as he said, "run very severe risks." Ryan Crocker gave his final news conference today before retiring, and he said he's given that assessment to President Obama. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports from Baghdad.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO: Ambassador Ryan Crocker arrived in Iraq during the darkest days of the sectarian conflict, just before the so-called surge when U.S forces pushed into Baghdad to stop the violent bloodletting. Along with General David Petraeus, he's credited with changing American policy here, helping to bring Iraq back from civil war. In his final months, Crocker helped negotiate a security agreement with Iraq that stipulates the total withdrawal of U.S. forces from this country in three years. President Obama has indicated he wants to speed up that timetable. In his last press conference, though, Ambassador Crocker sounded a note of caution.
Ambassador RYAN CROCKER (U.S. Ambassador to Iraq): The president has spoken repeatedly of a responsible withdrawal. There will be a withdrawal, and that's what the agreement says. If it were to be a precipitous withdrawal, that could be very dangerous.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: There are currently about 140,000 American troops deployed in Iraq. And Crocker said they are fulfilling a vital mission.
Ambassador CROCKER: Iraq is a far more stable place than it was 18 or 24 months ago, but there are still ways to go. And clearly, I think, still a continuing need for our security support, because as we have tragically seen, there are still elements out there, particularly al-Qaeda, capable of delivering devastating attacks.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Crocker said this year is going to be a key one in Iraq. Provincial elections will be taking place next week followed by a planned series of other votes, culminating in national elections at the end of the year.
Ambassador CROCKER: It is a year of elections. And the conduct and outcome of those elections I think are going to be very important for the country, in particular that they be and be perceived as free and fair in at least a general sense. I mean, they're not going to be perfect elections, I think we all know that. But it is important that they be credible elections.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Other areas of concern, Crocker noted, are Iraq's continuing problem with corruption, Iran's role in Iraq, and the rule of law here. A veteran diplomat and Arabist, Crocker's final assessment of Iraq was couched in his characteristically careful tones.
Ambassador CROCKER: As I wind down my time here, I'm not going to leave you with any sweeping prophecies or claims of millennial developments. Dramatic as some of these things have been, there is still a substantial distance to go. It's going to be three yards at a time.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Crocker will leave Iraq in February. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Baghdad.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. Today, President Obama signed three executive orders that could significantly alter the way the U.S. treats suspected terrorists. The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is to be closed within one year.
Mr. Obama also ordered a high-level review of how detainees are handled, and he prohibited the CIA from using interrogation techniques that are not allowed in the Army Field Manual. The three orders appear sweeping in scope, but as NPR's Tom Gjelten reports, they left many questions unanswered.
TOM GJELTEN: These are probably the most anticipated actions of the Obama administration. Closing Guantanamo and outlawing torture were promises Barack Obama made throughout his campaign. He followed through 48 hours after taking office, insisting he'd still be tough on terrorists.
President BARACK OBAMA: The United States intends to prosecute the ongoing struggle against violence and terrorism, and we are going to do so vigilantly, we are going to do so effectively, and we are going to do so in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals.
GJELTEN: The first executive order requires the closure of the Guantanamo facility within one year, but the new administration still doesn't know what to do with the roughly 245 detainees there now - nor with suspected terrorists detained in the future. Those are questions that will be reviewed.
A second order establishes a task force co-chaired by the attorney general and the secretary of defense to come up with some options. Some House Republicans were quick to weigh in, introducing legislation today that would bar Guantanamo detainees from coming into the United States.
The third order would put an end to the coercive interrogation techniques used by the CIA to get information from high-value detainees. One of those techniques, waterboarding, has already been categorized as torture by Mr. Obama's pick for attorney general, Eric Holder. That and other so-called enhanced interrogation techniques will be off limits, though President Obama had some trouble making himself clear on this point.
President OBAMA: Anybody detained by the United States, for now, is going to be - any interrogations taking place are going to have to abide by the Army Field Manual.
GJELTEN: The key words here are, for now. President Obama is apparently leaving the door open to some techniques not outlined in the Army manual. The interrogation order sets up a task force to evaluate whether the interrogation, quote, "practices and techniques" in the Army manual provide, quote, "an appropriate means of acquiring the intelligence necessary to protect the nation."
If, for example, Osama bin Laden is captured, can the CIA only use Army techniques on him? Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, the president's pick to be director of national intelligence, addressed such questions at his Senate confirmation hearing today.
(Soundbite of Senate confirmation hearing for Retired Admiral Dennis Blair)
Retired Admiral DENNIS BLAIR (Appointee, Director of National Intelligence, Barack Obama Administration): The choice of what we do in the future is a subject of another review for apprehension, detention, interrogation.
GJELTEN: This could be a loophole. A senior administration official said today the task force will not suggest different interrogation techniques, even though the executive order said it could. The apparent contradiction has not yet been explained.
On Capitol Hill, the new executive orders brought a mixed reaction. Democrats praised them, but some Republicans were skeptical. Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said the new guidelines, quote, "put hope ahead of reality."
And the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kit Bond of Missouri, speaking at Admiral Blair's confirmation hearing, criticized those who he says are content to go back to the old way of doing counterterrorism business.
Senator KIT BOND (Republican, Missouri; Ranking Member, Senate Intelligence Committee): They call for terrorists to be given the same constitutional protections as our citizens. They forget that our entire way of life is just a few minutes away from annihilation if terrorists were to succeed in obtaining a weapon of mass destruction or carry out an unrecoverable attack on our nation's infrastructure.
GJELTEN: The outgoing CIA Director says the enhanced interrogation techniques that would now be prohibited have produced valuable intelligence and saved American lives. Admiral Blair says he is familiar with those arguments, but he is not convinced they should dictate interrogation policies from here on.
Retired Admiral BLAIR: I've heard stories. I've gotten phone calls from people who've been in the business. You've got to sort this out and look at it objectively and find out what the right answer is.
GJELTEN: Blair said the immediate tactical benefit gained through harsh interrogations is one thing, but then he raised the larger question - what about the effect on America's reputation? Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
There are many questions left unresolved in President Obama's executive orders to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and to review the military commissions. To explore some of those, we're joined by John Bellinger, former legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Bellinger says he's glad to see an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay signed.
Mr. JOHN BELLINGER (Former Legal Adviser to Secretary of State): This is a welcome executive order. It's something, frankly, that I've long supported, and it was sad that we could not order the closure of Guantanamo during our administration.
But that's about as far as this order actually goes - is to order the closure of Guantanamo within a year. That's really the one thing that's new. The rest of it is to order a review of all of the detainees to determine whether they can be released, whether they can be transferred or whether they can be prosecuted.
But it does not prejudge any of that. It doesn't order them to be released or to be transferred. It does not say how they ought to be prosecuted. It simply says that there shall be a review.
NORRIS: A review that probably would need to take place pretty quickly if they want to hit that one-year mark.
Mr. BELLINGER: Yes. It's - and they're going to have a difficult time with this. I think that there is expectation that, as soon as the new team comes in and looks at all of these files, that they're going to find a lot of easy cases. But I think, you know, we had started with about 770 people in Guantanamo. We're down to about 240, of whom 60 have already been approved for release. And there's a perception that there are still low-hanging fruit.
You know, Michele, there's been extreme rhetoric on our side about the worst of the worst. But I do worry that there's become a little bit of extreme rhetoric on the other side about, most of these people were wrong place at wrong time. And so to the extent that there's an expectation that the review will immediately determine that there are a bunch of shepherds there, I don't think that's going to happen either.
NORRIS: Let's talk venue. You are a strong proponent for trying these prisoners within the military tribunal system. President Obama has hinted that he's open to looking at federal court or to some other kind of military system. Where do you think that ball is most likely to land?
Mr. BELLINGER: Well to be clear, I think that simply the federal courts for the people who are in Guantanamo now will be difficult because either our federal courts didn't have jurisdiction over their activities that took place prior to 9/11 or because these people were picked up by soldiers on the battlefield. There's difficulty with witnesses and evidence.
I think it's certainly worth looking at going back to the court martial system. And I think what this executive order suggests is the individuals will be reviewed to determine whether they can be prosecuted at all and then, two, what kind of a system, including the federal courts or some other systems, that they can be prosecuted in.
And that's a wise thing for President Obama to do is to look at all of the options. Personally, I think he's going to be under huge pressure to scrap the military commissions. If he goes back to a court martial system, though, and there are merits to doing that, that could take quite a long time. He'll have to seek, I believe, new legislation, start all over. There could be a year or more delay.
NORRIS: What about the cases that are in process? The people who are yet to stand trial for activities associated with 9/11, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, for instance. How does this order affect those cases?
Mr. BELLINGER: Well, they would be part of the group at Guantanamo, the 240 or so, whose cases would be reviewed to determine whether they would be released, transferred or prosecuted; if so, in what system; or otherwise detained. I have to think we can certainly assume they are not going to be released or transferred. The question will then be, could they be prosecuted and if so, in what system?
And it may be that the Obama administration will find that it is just too difficult, particularly given the interrogation techniques that they were subject to, including waterboarding, may be too difficult to try them.
On the other hand, they have had statements that have been given to FBI clean teams, and maybe the Obama administration will be able to find that they can be prosecuted, but they will be amongst the difficult cases for review.
NORRIS: John Bellinger, good to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming in.
Mr. BELLINGER: Nice to be back, Michele.
NORRIS: John Bellinger is the former legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. Today, three more companies recalled products containing peanuts because of concerns about salmonella food poisoning. More than 125 companies have recalled peanut products this month.
And since the outbreak began last September, nearly 500 people have been infected with salmonella. The outbreak sounds large, but these cases are only a tiny proportion of the salmonella infections in the U.S. each year. NPR's Joanne Silberner explains what makes this outbreak special.
JOANNE SILBERNER: When you get infected by salmonella, when you suffer the nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, and fever - you know you're sick. Maybe a food preparer didn't wash his hands, or maybe you used the same cutting board for raw chicken and vegetables. Or maybe you ate some widely available product that contained salmonella.
The investigation starts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention where Dr. Ian Williams heads the outbreak team.
Dr. IAN WILLIAMS (Chief, OutbreakNet, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention): When people get ill, they go to their doctor, and they get diagnosed. And the samples that are taken from those people with diarrheal illnesses are forwarded on to the state public health laboratories that further characterize them and actually do a genetic fingerprint of the bacteria that made them sick.
SILBERNER: There are more than 2,000 types of salmonella. When the CDC sees the same bacterium from people in different states, it gets moving.
Dr. WILLIAMS: Our job is to figure out what do all these people have in common, and then try to see, if we can figure that out, how we actually stop the outbreak from happening.
SILBERNER: There are an enormous number of options to consider, says William Schaffner. He's an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University. Salmonella, he says, can come from anywhere.
Dr. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER (Professor and Chairman, Department of Preventative Medicine, Vanderbilt University): It's in animals, and so, being in animals, it can get in meat that we consume, but we've increasingly been aware that it's in fruits and vegetables.
SILBERNER: And it can spread through contaminated water. No one is sure yet how the salmonella got into the peanut butter and peanut paste. The current investigation started last fall when two related types of salmonella bacteria showed up across the country. State and federal officials asked hundreds of patients what they ate.
Many of the people were in nursing homes or had eaten at school cafeterias or other places that used large containers of peanut butter. A joint effort by the CDC, Food and Drug Administration and state officials traced the bulk peanut butter to a plant in Blakely, Georgia. Again, the CDC's Ian Williams.
Dr. WILLIAMS: We started to trace it backwards, to sort of say, where did this come from? And as we understood the distribution chain, we then realized the company that produced this peanut butter also produced a number of other peanut butter and peanut paste which went in to a number of products. So, we traced it back and then started to look forward.
SILBERNER: And that explained how people who had not eaten in institutional settings, but had eaten peanut butter crackers or cookies or cake or ice cream had gotten sick. The FDA began warning about the outbreak earlier this month. And nearly every day, more products show up on its recall lists.
The outbreak isn't over. Reports of new infections are still coming in. Meanwhile, the government's advice remains the same - don't worry about the peanut butter you buy from retail stores, but avoid products like crackers, cakes, cookies, ice cream, and even dog biscuits that contain peanut butter or peanut paste, unless you know they weren't made with peanut products from that Blakely, Georgia plant. Joanne Silberner, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
A giant of Wall Street is stepping down. John Thain has had an illustrious career. Most recently, he served as CEO of Merrill Lynch. Last fall, he helped broker the deal that delivered Merrill Lynch into the hands of Bank of America. And Thain emerged with a top position at Bank of America.
But today, came word of what's being called a resignation. But as is often the case, there's a lot more to the story than meets the eye. And so NPR's Jim Zarroli joins me now to help explain what's going on. Hey, Jim.
JIM ZARROLI: Hi, Michele.
NORRIS: What's the reason that Bank of America gave for Thain's departure?
ZARROLI: Well, the company just issued a very terse statement. They said he had met with Ken Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America. The two of them decided together that things weren't working out, and he should go.
You know, the fact is, the departure comes after some pretty negative stories about Thain. Bank of America's in a sensitive spot right now. It lost money last quarter for the first time in many years. And it had to go hat in hand to the federal government to ask for $20 billion in financial assistance to make sure the deal went through, and that was on top of the money, the $25 billion, it has already gotten.
NORRIS: You mentioned some negative stories about Thain. Tell us what you're talking about there?
ZARROLI: Well, one of them was that Thain spent $1.2 million to redecorate his office at Merrill Lynch last year. Now, you know, that's a lot of money for a company that was losing money at the time. I think a more significant story is that he granted about $4 billion in bonuses to Merrill executives in December, rather than wait until January as was customary. Now, I'm told that's not illegal. So, what is wrong with that?
Well, if he had decided to wait, then the takeover would have gone through, the takeover by Bank of America. The bonuses would have had to be approved by Bank of America, and they would probably have rejected them. So, it looks like Thain was trying to sort of get these bonuses under the wire. We should also point out here that these were bonuses for other executives, not for Thain and not for several other top executives.
NORRIS: Profligate spending may help explain his departure, but is it possible that there might have been other reasons?
ZARROLI: Well, the decision about bonuses is a pretty serious matter in that, you know, Bank of America doesn't just have financial problems right now, it also has political problems. It's gotten a lot of money from the federal government, from the Troubled Asset Relief Program. And there are lot of members of Congress who are just very unhappy now about the way the money from the program has been spent.
So, if it comes out now that Merrill Lynch did this, you know, little maneuver to get bonuses through right before Bank of America went to the government to ask for more money, it just looks really bad. So, Bank of America may have felt like it was just too risky to keep Thain on, and given how much money Merrill lost, I'm sure they weren't all that sorry see him go.
NORRIS: Jim, what more can you tell us about John Thain and his reputation on Wall Street?
ZARROLI: He is very well respected. He's very smart, seen as a good deal maker. He was the CEO of Goldman Sachs. Then on two occasions, he was called to rescue a troubled institution - one was the New York Stock Exchange after the Richard Grasso pay scandal. Then he was called in to take over Merrill Lynch after it was caught up in the mortgage downturn.
Now, he clearly tried very hard to keep the company going, and then, finally, when the losses proved to be too great, he helped broker this big acquisition by Bank of America in one weekend last September. Things, at first, went OK, but I think Bank of America began to realize that the losses were just a lot worse than it had realized, and the relationship, you know, soured. It also has to be said CEOs often leave companies that get taken over, but in this case there were a lot of reasons for him to go.
NORRIS: Thank you, Jim.
ZARROLI: You're welcome.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Jim Zarroli.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: This is NPR, National Public Radio.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. There's a new guy on the scene standing at the lectern in front of the White House logo. We don't mean President Obama, we're talking about Robert Gibbs, the new White House spokesman. Today, he held his first news conference as NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
SCOTT HORSLEY: President Obama is used to drawing huge crowds. But Robert Gibbs had a sizeable audience of his own this afternoon when he stepped in front of the White House press corps for the first time.
(Soundbite of press conference)
Mr. ROBERT GIBBS (Press Secretary, White House): How are you all?
(Soundbite of laughter)
HORSLEY: Gibbs was quickly pressed to defend the president's new executive orders - directing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison and issuing new limits on the way detainees can be interrogated.
(Soundbite of press conference)
Mr. GIBBS: The president believes that what he did today will enhance the security of the American people, that it lives up to our values as Americans, and that it will protect the men and women that we have in uniform.
HORSLEY: On a day marked by alarming new unemployment claims, Gibbs also talked about the president's meeting with economic advisers this morning. In a nod to the severity of the situation, Gibbs says Mr. Obama has asked to be updated on the economy every day, just as he is on national security.
Although some Republican lawmakers are challenging the government spending in a proposed economic stimulus package, Gibbs says the administration is pleased with the level of bipartisan support.
(Soundbite of press conference)
Mr. GIBBS: We have to do everything in our power and Congress does, too, to get that package moving, to get that money into the economy, to begin to create those jobs.
HORSLEY: Gibbs fielded some tough questions about exceptions the administration has made to its new policy against lobbyists in government, and about why TV cameras were excluded from last night's retake of the presidential swearing-in ceremony. Gibbs cracked a couple of jokes during the press conference, and he answered a softball about how the president is settling in.
(Soundbite of press conference)
Mr. GIBBS: I know that at the end of the first night, he had to ask somebody where he was supposed to go next. (Laughing) It's a pretty big house. You know, I've known the president a long time, and he looked very comfortable in his surroundings yesterday.
HORSLEY: Still, the incoming staff has faced some challenges. Some new staffers had trouble making it through security in their first days, and it took a while to figure out the P.A. system that summons reporters when the president's about to do something important.
Press Deputy Jen Psaki knows that unlike most offices, there aren't a lot of White House veterans hanging around to ask where the office supplies are kept or where the restroom is.
Ms. JEN PSAKI (Deputy Press Secretary, White House): We're pretty sure that the security staff has had a good laugh about, you know, staff wandering around and trying to find offices or see where people sit and trying not to accidentally walk into the Oval Office, and all those adventures you have when you first start at a job like this.
HORSLEY: Psaki herself confessed at getting lost a few times, and this afternoon, she had to ask a puzzled co-worker how to make her computer print - a bit of comeuppance for the technically savvy Obama troops.
Ms. PSAKI: A lot of us didn't get on to computers until today, so it's certainly been an adjustment, but, you know, we know this is the process, and we respect that and I hope - we're hoping everybody bears with us, I guess.
HORSLEY: The president himself will get to hang on to one piece of familiar technology. Gibbs announced today that Mr. Obama will get to keep a souped-up version of his beloved Blackberry. But only a few senior staff and some personal friends will have access to it. Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
New York state has been abuzz with speculation about just who might fill Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat. Clinton was confirmed yesterday as secretary of state. But David Paterson, the Democratic governor of New York, has yet to name a successor. He's expected to do so very soon. Caroline Kennedy was said to be a top contender, but word came last night that she was dropping out. She cited personal reasons.
The New York Times is now reporting that problems involving taxes and a household employee surfaced during her vetting. And Nick Confessore of the New York Times broke that story, and he joins us now. Nick, you've been reporting this story for days now. Bring us up to speed on what you know about just what derailed Caroline Kennedy's bid.
Mr. NICK CONFESSORE (Reporter, New York Times): Well, there's actually a dispute about that, and that's where we are right now. You have the governor's camp and Caroline's camp offering similar, but importantly different accounts of exactly what went down. On the governor's side, you have news today from people in his circle saying that during the vetting process for this job, information turned up about Caroline Kennedy's household employees and possibly taxes. That these accounted for the governor's desire to decide to not pick her and - which is where we are now.
Now, when you talk to people in her camp what they say is, look, there are problems along those lines, but they came out in the questionnaire that was submitted on January 8th by all the candidates, that the governor's known all this for weeks. This is not new - that, in fact, a totally different personal reason, which is as of yet undisclosed, not related to her uncle being ill, is the real reason why she took herself out of the running.
So you have the governor's people sort of saying that it was his decision that he decided not to pick her. You have people in her camp saying he had all but picked her, and that they were even planning a press conference, and he'd all but decided it was her. And then what happened yesterday is a big mess.
NORRIS: Well, regardless of who actually pulled the plug, it appears that she is now out of the running. So who is still on Governor Paterson's short list? Who are the other contenders for the seat now?
Mr. CONFESSORE: People who are still on the short list - Kirsten Gillibrand is a representative from New York from a district outside the capital region, outside Albany here. She's on everybody's short list. The rest of the short list seems to evolve depending on who's making it.
Steve Israel is a congressman from Suffolk County in New York. He was very active in the 2008 congressional campaigns. He's a good fundraiser. He's well liked by other members. Caroline Maloney is a congresswoman from Manhattan who has been campaigning extremely aggressively for this job, probably as aggressively as Caroline Kennedy had been. You have Tom Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, I would say is on the short list. And you have a bunch of other people who probably aren't on the short list, but you can tell that Kirsten Gillibrand's on the short list by the fact that everybody is firing bazookas at her right now.
NORRIS: Does David Paterson have a particular affinity for any one of these people?
Mr. CONFESSORE: He has - he has very carefully mentioned each of them in turn as exceptional in the last two weeks, and we have a source as you may have seen in our story...
NORRIS: So there's a Lake Wobegon effect with these candidates, I guess.
Mr. .CONFESSORE: Exactly, exactly they're all above average and, you know, a person with ties to Paterson, and this is denied by his spokesman - told us that in fact he had decided on Kennedy last week, but he had decided to use a few days to spread some misdirection and keep the suspense up, which is perhaps, if you buy that person's story, that is perhaps why every couple of days he would mention a new person in an interview or at a press availability. Oh, Kirsten Gillibrand's really great. Steve Israel is really great. He would do this in turn so it makes you wonder really who is great.
NORRIS: And a decision is expected by the end of this week. Is that right, Nick?
Mr. CONFESSORE: Yes, we are now hearing that in fact there will be a news conference tomorrow, Friday.
NORRIS: Thank you so much. That's Nick Confessore of the New York Times. Thanks, Nick.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
President Obama is expected to issue an executive order soon that will rescind restrictions on international family planning groups. It bars organizations from receiving U.S. aid if they perform or promote abortions. It's known as the global gag rule. The policy has been changed every time a different party has taken the White House since 1984. That's when President Ronald Reagan first announced the policy at a conference in Mexico City. Here's NPR's Brenda Wilson.
BRENDA WILSON: Under the Mexico City policy, U.S. groups didn't lose the right to make the case for access to abortions because it would have violated rights to free speech. But it's called the global gag rule because foreign groups that associate with those who do abortions, abortion counseling, or advocacy could lose U.S. aid. Susan Cohen is the director of the advocacy group the Alan Guttmacher Institute.
Ms. SUSAN COHEN (Director, Alan Guttmacher Institute): It says that if you want our family planning aid, you can't even use your own money to provide abortion services, or money you get from the British government or the Swedish government. And beyond that, it says you can't use your own money to counsel pregnant women who come in looking for safe abortion services. You can't refer these women.
WILSON: For eight years, she says, organizations have been forced to choose between abortion services or family planning, even in countries like Ghana where abortion is legal.
Ms. COHEN: They've had to close down entire parts of their family planning programs, especially the programs that were focused on outreach into the rural areas providing contraceptives to women who had no other source of obtaining those methods. They lost the U.S. government family planning assistance, and they were not able to find any replacement funds.
WILSON: Without the gag rule, organizations can apply to have family planning funds restored, even if they make abortion referrals. Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council says it means President Obama has gone back on his word to find common ground and ways to reduce abortions.
Mr. TOM McCLUSKY (Family Research Council): By reversing the Mexico City policy, we're saying that the policy of the United States for family planning includes abortion or killing the child.
WILSON: Changing the rule, however, does not mean that U.S. funds can be used to perform abortions. But McClusky doubts the government can keep track of how funding will be used.
Mr. McCLUSKY: Money is fungible. If the taxpayers are paying for anything from receptionists to lobbyists for Planned Parenthood, the more the taxpayer money that goes to Planned Parenthood, that frees up more money for abortions.
WILSON: One clinic affected by the gag rule is in Debre Berhan, a little college town that I visited in Ethiopia a couple of years ago. Abera Alemne(ph), the coordinator of the Marie Stopes Family Planning Center, says several women show up every month seeking an abortion.
Mr. ABERA ALEMNE (Coordinator, Marie Stopes Family Planning Center): We never encourage anyone to have abortion. But unwilling or willing, they can't.
WILSON: Because they're afraid of being found out, the women - schoolgirls really, he says - often take matters into their own hand. Up to 80,000 women around the world die from the complications of unsafe abortions. Berhan refers them to a local hospital.
Mr. ALEMNE: It's very sad. It's very bad to hear this. They keep on crying, help us. But because of the restrictive law, we can't answer all they need.
WILSON: For doing abortion referrals alone, family planning centers like this have been off-limits to groups that get U.S. funds. Lifting the global gag rule will change that. Brenda Wilson, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Today is the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and around the country, as happens every year, there were demonstrations. Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, addressed thousands of people on the National Mall.
(Soundbite of address)
Senator SAM BROWNBACK (Republican, Kansas): Are you ready to march for life?
Crowd: Yes.
Senator BROWNBACK: Are you ready to say no to FOCA?
Crowd: Yes.
Senator BROWNBACK: Are you ready to say yes to life?
Crowd: Yes.
Senator BROWNBACK: Are you going to stop saying yes for - to life?
Crowd: No.
Senator BROWNBACK: We are going to continue this fight. We may have lost an election. We have not lost the war.
NORRIS: Senator Brownback mentioned FOCA, the Freedom Of Choice Act. That legislation would write Roe v. Wade into law and strike down most legal restrictions to abortion. When Barack Obama was a presidential candidate, he promised to sign it. Well, now that he is president, we wondered what Democratic control of the White House and Congress means for the Republican Party when it comes to the issue of abortion. Rich Galen is a Republican strategist. He says it probably won't change all that much.
Mr. RICH GALEN (Republican Strategist): The rhetoric that comes out during campaigns and the actual policies that come out of legislation are quite different. Sam Brownback, as an example, the clip you just played, is retiring from the Senate to go home and run for governor. So I think we can put that in that context. There is a good political reason for him to have led that rally today, because he's going home to Kansas to run for governor, and he wants those people, at least at the primary level, to be on his side.
NORRIS: The protests and the debate over abortion continues. But there is a debate within the GOP as to the role this issue should play within the party. It seems like there is a bit of a backlash within the party with some social conservatives who are now saying that abortion shouldn't be so closely associated with the GOP brand.
Mr. GALEN: I think that's something that's been going on for a long time. The evangelical wing of the Republican Party has not been the same since the Christian Coalition days when they really could mobilize and change an election. I can tell you that John McCain was pro-life - as was, of course, Sarah Palin. But it was never central to his political standing, and a lot of Republicans weren't even sure where he stood.
NORRIS: Now, there were other forces at work in this election. John McCain spent more time talking about earmarks and Joe the Plumber, frankly, than he spent talking about abortion, but there is a broad belief that he chose Sarah Palin, in large part, because she was acceptable to social conservatives because of her stance on abortion.
Mr. GALEN: But that's a different - that's a little different. I mean, that's balancing the ticket.
NORRIS: How is that different?
Mr. GALEN: Well, it's different because McCain didn't change his position or the way he spoke about it. But here is the thing that matters and the only thing that matters, you know, at this level of politics is, does it move votes? In America, everybody over the age of, pick a number, 14 has a very strong position on abortion. You're not going to change people's minds very much. So, what you do in politics at this point is you say, OK, it's about the same, the people who are one-issue voters that they will never vote for somebody who is pro-choice ever, ever, ever, pretty much are balanced in a general election with people who will never ever, ever vote for somebody who is pro-life. So, what you as a candidate do is you decide what your position is and then, you just, you're going to win some, you're going to lose some. It will more or less balance out in most places.
NORRIS: With the shift in this election cycle changing to focus primarily on the economy, going forward, can you imagine with this shift a Republican candidate for president who supports abortion?
Mr. GALEN: No, neither could I believe a Democratic candidate for president who is pro-life. Of course, I didn't think we'd ever have a black president in my lifetime, and happily, I was proved wrong. So, maybe those things will happen. But I think when you come down to the primary voters, the true believers in the parties, that those lines are pretty well and brightly drawn. Democrats will never nominate a pro-life candidate for president and the opposite is true. If that were not the case, I think Tom Ridge probably would have been the vice presidential pick for George W. Bush in 2000. Governor of a state, extraordinarily popular, a state that they really did want to win, Catholic but pro-choice, and they wouldn't put him on the ticket.
NORRIS: I want to go back to where we began with the Freedom of Choice Act. If Barack Obama makes good on that promise, would that inflame the forces of the right?
Mr. GALEN: Of course it would. It gives - what it does is it gives you a reason to go out and raise money. I mean, a lot of what happens on these issues, both conservative and liberal, is you look for something that can help you write the next email and say, we need money so we can fight back the forces of evil, whatever that particular view of evil is. But if he were to urge the Congress to do that, then I think that would become a big deal, but it would only be a big deal until it wasn't a big deal. And my guess is that it would be blocked in the Senate and would go back on the shelf again.
NORRIS: Rich Galen is a Republican strategist and a cyber-columnist for mullings.com. Richard, it's always good to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Mr. GALEN: Thank you for having me.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. First this hour, the economic downturn has hit one of the most successful companies in history - Microsoft. Today Microsoft announced plans to eliminate 5,000 jobs, the first major layoffs in its history. And 1,500 of those employees were told to pack their bags today. From Seattle, NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.
WENDY KAUFMAN: Rumors of layoffs at Microsoft have been swirling for weeks, so the layoffs, though unprecedented, were not a big surprise. What was surprising was how quickly things deteriorated in the company's revenue and profit picture. In its quarterly earnings released today, Microsoft said its revenue of more than $16.5 billion was $900 million below the company's own expectations. Net income was down 11 percent from a year ago, and the company said the outlook for the next year or two isn't pretty. In a conference call with analysts and reporters, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the perspective should not be one of recession.
(Soundbite of Microsoft conference call)
Mr. STEVE BALLMER (CEO, Microsoft): What I would say, rather, is the economy is resetting to a lower level of business and consumer spending that's based largely on the reduced leverage in the economy.
KAUFMAN: In addition to job cuts totaling more than five percent of its current employee base, Microsoft is making big cuts in its vast contract worker ranks. Staff hiring will continue in certain areas, including online search where Microsoft continues to trail Google. Microsoft says it expects total employee headcount will be two to three percent lower by the middle of next year.
As CEO Ballmer noted, lower PC sales are a big problem for the company. Analyst Matt Rosoff of the independent research firm Directions on Microsoft points out that the company was caught off guard by the decline.
Mr. MATT ROSOFF (Analyst, Directions on Microsoft): Microsoft actually expected that PC sales would continue to grow in the fourth quarter of last year compared with the previous year. That obviously didn't happen. And because Microsoft earns so much money from Windows, which ships on over 90 percent of PCs, when PC sales slow down, Microsoft slows down.
KAUFMAN: Chipmaker Intel is also feeling the pinch. Just yesterday, the company said it would cut up to 6,000 jobs, more than six percent of its workforce. But Microsoft has another big problem - the boom in so called Netbook computers, small inexpensive machines. Mary Jo Foley, the editor of ZNet's All About Microsoft Blog explains that Microsoft's revenues and profits could be squeezed if it has to sell its operating system to Netbook computer makers for substantially less than it would charge a traditional PC maker.
Ms. MARY JO FOLEY (Editor, All About Microsoft Blog, ZDNet): They've always been able to always count on increasing the amount of money they charge PC makers for every new release of Windows that comes out. But, say, if a Netbook only costs $300, you can't go to a PC maker like an Acer and say, OK, we want $100 for Windows when the whole PC only costs $300.
KAUFMAN: Microsoft's quarterly earnings were a big disappointment to financial analysts. Many were expecting, or at least hoping, for even bigger job cuts. And there was something else Wall Street found troubling. Citing the volatility of market conditions, the company said it would no longer offer predictions for its revenue and profit. Wendy Kaufman, NPR News, Seattle.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
With layoffs, foreclosures, and scary financial statements arriving in the mail, there's a lot of economic doom and gloom out there. But have you heard anyone recently say something like this?
Mr. STEVE ST. ANGELO (President, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Kentucky, Inc.): I hope no one gets hurt from this, but I believe once this is all over I think we're going to be a better nation as a result of this.
NORRIS: That's Steve St. Angelo, a top executive with Toyota. Our reporter Martin Kaste interviewed him recently at a Toyota plant in Kentucky. It struck Martin as a gutsy thing to say, but then he started noticing the same sentiment cropping up in advertising. As Martin soon found out, there's a growing effort to sell Americans on the notion of the virtuous recession.
MARTIN KASTE: Some ads just hint at it. Take this one for a $99-a-month cell phone plan.
(Soundbite of Sprint ad)
Mr. DAN HESSE: It's no surprise that people are trying to be smarter with their money these days. I'm Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint, and we have a plan for you.
KASTE: Here, Sprint is just trying to flatter our new-found love of thrift. But Allstate takes things further. The pitch man in one of its ads tells us that Allstate was founded during the Great Depression.
(Soundbite of Allstate ad)
Mr. DENNIS HAYSBERT (Actor): And through the 12 recessions since, they've noticed that after the fears subside, a funny thing happens. People start enjoying the small things in life.
KASTE: School children gaze at a gallery of Depression-era photos, absorbing the lesson of dignified deprivation.
(Soundbite of Allstate ad)
Mr. HAYSBERT: It's back to basics, and the basics are good. Protect them. Put them in good hands.
KASTE: It almost makes you proud to be part of an economic downturn, but it doesn't work on everybody.
Mr. IAN BAKER(ph): I hope it backfires on all of them.
KASTE: Ian Baker is strolling through downtown Seattle with his young daughter. He hasn't lost his job, but he knows plenty of people who are nervous.
Mr. BAKER: There's nothing to romanticize about the Depression. I mean, economic meltdown isn't a positive, no matter how you look at it.
KASTE: It doesn't help that Baker is standing in the shadow of the Washington Mutual Tower. It's one of the places where this crisis started and where thousands are now losing their jobs. But even some of them buy the idea that the meltdown might be good for us. Laura Bateson(ph) is taking a smoke break outside her soon-to-be former place of employment.
Ms. LAURA BATESON (Employee, Washington Mutual): If it lets people take more serious actions with money and their financial responsibility and corporations and their ethics and their standards, then I'm all for it.
KASTE: And that's the feeling that businesses are now trying to harness. Market researcher Lia Knight(ph) says she has several clients who are considering what she calls "transparent messages" - simply put, ads that acknowledge hard times.
Ms. LIA KNIGHT (Market Researcher): What their trying to do is seek the good in what is usually termed with negative terms like "crisis" or "economic downfall."
KASTE: But what the companies don't know yet, she says, and what one client has hired her to find out, is whether Americans are really serious about embracing the thrifty values of the Great Depression. Twenty stories above the streets of downtown Seattle in an office resembling the Genius Bar at an Apple store, ad man Dan Gross predicts a change in tone.
Mr. DAN GROSS (Advertisement Professional): You'll probably see less - we may see less of Paris Hilton.
KASTE: Instead, we'll be treated to pitches that are more what he calls "grounded." To illustrate, he opens his Mac and cues up a new ad for a credit union.
(Soundbite of credit union ad)
Unidentified Announcer: We are a half-million credit union members who are looking out for each other, instead of Wall Street. And we are turning the financial world right side up.
Mr. GROSS: "Turning the financial world right side up." That means something now. I don't think a year ago that would have made quite as much sense, because culturally we all know what that means now.
KASTE: Yes, we do. Or at least we think we do. Right side up, back to basics, as always advertisers are inviting us to project our hopes onto whatever it is they are selling. And right now we're hoping we'll somehow get through all this and be better off for it. Martin Kaste, NPR News, Seattle.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris. This week, Michigan hit a grim economic milestone. It became the first state to register double-digit unemployment in the current recession. For more, here's Michigan Public Radio's Rick Pluta.
RICK PLUTA: Michigan's jobless rates inched upward by fractions of a percent each month until December when it jumped up by a full percentage point to 10.6 percent. Sixty-eight thousand jobs lost from November to December, and that rate's expected to get worse when January's numbers are made public. These numbers are not as bad as the early 1980s, though, when the jobless rate hovered around 17 percent. But back then, the turnaround came fast. One economist put it this way. "This isn't the coldest economic winter Michigan's endured, but the winter just doesn't seem to end." Patrick Andres(ph) is scraping snow and ice off playground equipment at his children's day care center. He's been volunteering here since he lost his job in June. He was a carpenter employed by the state.
Mr. PATRICK ANDRES (Unemployed Carpenter, Michigan): Six, seven months here, it's been really bleak out there. I've had one interview the entire time, and I've had - I can't even count how many resumes I've had out.
PLUTA: One of the part-time workers at the center is a former bank branch manager. Another worker says her husband applied for a job with a moving company, but was told there were already more than 2,000 resumes on file.
Dr. CHARLES BALLARD (Professor of Economics, Michigan State University): And remember that in Michigan, it's not just something that started in the last year, or so, as it has been in so many other parts of the country. ..TEXT: PLUTA: Charles Ballard is an economist at Michigan State University. He says Michigan began shedding jobs nine years ago. Six hundred thousand jobs lost since the year 2000, most of them tied to the beleaguered domestic auto industry. He says the unemployment numbers don't include people who are underemployed or have simply stopped looking.
Dr. BALLARD: I think if you were to include those people, you might reasonably want to add another couple of percentage points to the official unemployment rate. ..TEXT: PLUTA: Michigan's governor, Jennifer Granholm, blames the decline in U.S. manufacturing, the financial sector meltdown, and the freeze on credit for prospective car buyers. And she blames members of the U.S. Senate for their harsh attacks last month on Detroit's car companies. She says that needlessly scared people away from buying cars and trucks and put more workers on her state's unemployment line. For NPR News, I'm Rick Pluta in Lansing, Michigan.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Well, times are tough in Michigan and almost everywhere else, but that's not true for every state. Dave Thompson of Prairie Public Radio has the story of one state with an overflowing treasury.
(Soundbite of State of the State address)
Governor JOHN HOEVEN (Republican, North Dakota): Ladies and gentlemen, the state of our state is strong.
(Soundbite of applause)
DAVE THOMPSON: That's North Dakota Governor John Hoeven, delivering his early January State of the State address. Compared with other states, North Dakota is doing quite well. The state has a $1.3 billion surplus. It has low unemployment. And the economy continues to expand.
Mr. SHANE GOETTLE (Director, North Dakota's Department of Commerce): Well, we're not unaffected by the national recession and the global recession. North Dakota is faring much better than other states.
THOMPSON: Shane Goettle is North Dakota's director of commerce. He says one big reason the state is doing so well is it diversified its economy.
Mr. GOETTLE: Whether it's energy or value-added agriculture, the commodity prices have been good. That's helped boost up Main Street. Tourism's been good with Canadian traffic coming down across the border this year, and that helped boost up retail. And even with - in the energy sector, we've got a lot of diversity, as well. We've been focused on both traditionals and renewables.
THOMPSON: During the late 1980s when farm prices were dropping and farm foreclosures rising, the state embarked on a plan to diversify the economy by supporting agricultural processing, attracting high-tech business, and touting the state's quality of life and low cost of living. It also encouraged instate entrepreneurs. That led to the Great Plains Software company, which is now a part of Microsoft. In fact, it's the second largest Microsoft facility in the U.S., sitting on 80 acres in south Fargo. Even with today's announcement of layoffs, Microsoft is still expanding here, although a small percentage of jobs in Fargo will likely be affected.
Mr. DON MORTON (Site Leader, Microsoft Fargo Campus): We have close to 1,600 people in Fargo.
THOMPSON: Don Morton is site leader for the Microsoft Fargo campus.
Mr. MORTON: We're adding 60,000-square-foot addition onto our original building, and we're adding a brand new office - a brand new 120,000-square-foot office building.
THOMPSON: Morton said the Midwest and especially North Dakota is a low-cost place to do business.
Mr. MORTON: We also have very high productivity and very low attrition. Attrition is what really hurts a company, in particular a technology company where you have to do a lot of training. There's a lot of learning. High attrition is very costly.
THOMPSON: North Dakota has also seen tremendous growth in energy, specifically oil production. Lynn Helms is North Dakota's Mineral Resources Director.
Mr. LYNN HELMS (Director, Department of Mineral Resources, North Dakota): We happened to be located above the largest onshore oil resource that the USGS has ever evaluated in the lower 48 states.
THOMPSON: Helms is talking about the Bakken Shale Formation. The Federal government estimates it holds more than four billion barrels of recoverable oil. North Dakota's economy is also benefiting from some smart banking decisions. The state's lenders generally did not make subprime mortgage loans and still have money to lend. But business and government leaders say North Dakota will still likely feel the effects of the national recession, though not as harshly as other states. State Budget Director Pam Sharp says she's watching the consumer confidence index.
Ms. PAM SHARP (Director, Office of Management and Budget, North Dakota): In North Dakota, as well as the rest of the nation, people have lost money in their 401(k) accounts, their investments. And people could start feeling - because their investments have decreased - they could start feeling like they don't want to spend as much money. And so we're kind of watching to see if that happens. We have not seen any indication of that here in North Dakota.
THOMPSON: Business leaders here say they're optimistic that North Dakota will hold its own in the recession and be likely to come out of it even stronger. For NPR News, I'm Dave Thompson in Bismarck, North Dakota.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
We just heard the governor of North Dakota saying the state of his state is strong. Since the beginning of the month, the nation's governors have been delivering their annual state of state addresses. And in most places, states are in not such good health, at least when it comes to the economy. Each governor, it seems, has a different way to use words to reveal or to cloak the bad news - one way, a "money is not all that important" approach.
(Soundbite of State of the State address)
Governor KATHLEEN SEBELIUS (Democrat, Kansas): The state of our state is not defined by ending balances or revenue receipts. It's about the quality and character of the Kansas people.
NORRIS: Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, reports that by that measure, her state's never been stronger. An even more muscular approach came from California's Republican Governor.
(Soundbite of State of the State address)
Governor ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (Republican, California): Well, we meet in times of great hope for our nation, although we hear the drumbeat of news about bailouts, bankruptcies, and Ponzi schemes.
NORRIS: No, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger did not say "bouncy schemes." He was talking about Ponzi schemes. But you get the point he was making. Things are dreadful here and everywhere. That gloves-off language was also heard in Connecticut.
(Soundbite of State of the State address)
Governor M. JODI RELL (Republican, Connecticut): We will not soon see an end to bankruptcies and to foreclosures, to pink slips or to red ink. Families in Connecticut and across the nation are rightly fearful and angry.
NORRIS: Governor M. Jodi Rell, a Republican, held nothing back from the folks in Hartford. In Little Rock, Governor Mike Beebe, a Democrat, phrased his speech as "hey, America might be hurting, but Arkansans are OK."
(Soundbite of State of the State address)
Governor MIKE BEEBE (Democrat, Arkansas): Despite our nation's struggle with an economic slide unmatched since the Great Depression, Arkansas continues to make advancements in education and to attract new businesses.
NORRIS: Republican Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana, a state in the middle of the country, might win this year's award for the best use of a nautical allusion. He suggested the right combination of leadership can pull his state through the economic hard times this way.
(Soundbite of State of the State address)
Governor MITCH DANIELS (Republican, Indiana): In high seas, the best crews bring their ships to port safely and first. Just as we guarded against these economic times better than other states, so we will wade through them now with greater success.
NORRIS: Bottom line, in bad times, some of the nation's governors have to speak of and find that elusive silver lining.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. It may seem to you as if we're flogging a dead horse, but there are new numbers out today that tell us the housing market is in dismal shape. The Commerce Department said new housing starts plunged to their lowest level since 1959, back when they started tracking this figure. Separately, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said home prices fell nearly nine percent last year. So, is there any bottom to all this? NPR's Yuki Noguchi has been asking economists that question.
YUKI NOGUCHI: Sometimes, even a gloomy economic report contains some bright spots. Not so with this latest housing news, says Patrick Newport.
Mr. PATRICK NEWPORT (Economist, IHS Global Insight): Not only were the numbers really bad, but the leading indicator in the report tells us that the numbers over the next two months will be ugly.
NOGUCHI: Newport is an economist with IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm. He says the number of housing permits, which is a leading indicator of future building, remains very low. Five years ago, cheap loans fueled demand for new homes. Now all that's slammed into reverse, and there's already a huge glut of homes on the market.
Mr. NEWPORT: People are losing their jobs. They're losing their homes. And they're moving in with relatives. And so you have an extra home that's added into the market. There are just too many homes for sale.
NOGUCHI: Newport and others estimate there are roughly one million excess homes on the market. And actually, that oversupply stands to get worse.
Mr. RICK SHARGA (Senior Vice President, RealtyTrac): There's a shadow inventory that a lot of people aren't talking about.
NOGUCHI: That's Rick Sharga, senior vice president of RealtyTrac, a research firm. He says the market right now is underestimating the supply. That's because there's a block of homes that are in foreclosure and had been taken over by banks but are not yet put up for sale on the Multiple Listing Service.
Mr. SHARGA: You have hundreds of thousands of bank-owned properties that aren't yet showing up on those inventory reports.
NOGUCHI: So, when finally can we say we hit bottom? Sharga says that happens when prices stabilize, inventory and foreclosures decrease, and home sales increase.
Mr. SHARGA: In a normal market cycle, you'd already see people coming back into the market to buy these properties.
NOGUCHI: But, he says, both banks and consumers lack confidence. So, even bargains aren't tempting. If there is any bright spot, Sharga says, it's this.
Mr. SHARGA: One glimmer of hope I can give you is that right now we believe the peak year in terms of new foreclosure activity will probably be this year. And that, at least by itself, should start the healing process a little bit.
NOGUCHI: The good news, in other words, is that things are so bad, it simply can't get too much worse. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris. One day after a Senate confirmation, Hillary Clinton took charge of the State Department. She emphasized defense, diplomacy, and development as the three key elements to American foreign policy. And she told the hundreds gathered to welcome her that America has to be smarter about how it exercises power.
Secretary HILLARY CLINTON (State Department): Well, at the heart of smart power are smart people, and you are those people. And you are the ones that we will count on and turn to for the advice and counsel, the expertise and experience to make good on the promises of this new administration.
NORRIS: President Obama later stopped by the State Department. And Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton named two high-level envoys with familiar names, one to work on Middle East peace, the other to focus on Afghanistan and Pakistan. NPR's Michele Kelemen joins us now from the State Department. Michele, tell us about these two envoys.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Well, first is George Mitchell. He's a former senator who helped broker peace in Northern Ireland. He's going to be the envoy on the Middle East working on the Israeli-Palestinian issue but also more broadly on Arab-Israeli peace efforts. President Obama said he's going to send Mitchell out to the region soon and that the violence in Gaza and southern Israel are a reminder of the challenges at hand. The second one was Richard Holbrooke. He's a former U.N. Ambassador, longtime diplomat, and probably best-known as the architect of the Dayton Peace Accord that ended the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s. He called his new assignment a daunting one. He's going to be in charge of coordinating government efforts on Afghanistan and Pakistan.
NORRIS: What did it mean to all the people who work there at the State Department that Barack Obama on day two of his administration took the trip over there to Foggy Bottom?
KELEMEN: I think it was a big deal. I mean, Hillary Clinton pointed out several times today that his presence at the department this early on shows that the administration is going to be committed to diplomacy. That was a message that was very clearly well-received here.
NORRIS: Earlier, Mr. Obama signed executive orders to close Guantanamo Bay and to provide new guidelines on interrogation methods. He spoke about that at the State Department today. Let's take a listen.
(Soundbite of State Department address)
President BARACK OBAMA: I can say without exception or equivocation that the United States will not torture.
(Soundbite of applause)
NORRIS: Michele, we hear applause there. Does that reflect the general mood at the State Department?
KELEMEN: It does. I mean, President Obama was speaking mainly to a select group, several hundred people. These were top State Department officials and some ambassadors and others that are coming into the department. But the comments where broadcast broadly throughout the building, and he did linger around and talk to people in the room today. And, you know, he talked about that and closing down Guantanamo. These are both issues that have really tarnished America's image abroad. And by doing this so early on, deciding to close it down, close Guantanamo down, he's trying to show that diplomacy is going to matter and we're going to work to rebuild America's image. And that was an important message that diplomats here got.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Michele Kelemen, speaking to us from the State Department. Thanks so much, Michele.
KELEMEN: Thank you.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
(Soundbite of "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)" by Beyonce)
Ms. BEYONCE KNOWLES: (Singing) All the single ladies. All the single ladies. All the single ladies. All the single ladies...
NORRIS: We're going to go a little scientific now about pop music. One man has a theory about a possible correlation between volatility on the trading floor and what's hot on the dance floor. Phil Maymin is assistant professor of finance and risk engineering at New York University. He's analyzed songs from the Billboard Hot 100 using computer software. And what he's found involves beat variance - songs with a more steady beat or a low beat variance seem to be hot when the market is volatile, and vice versa. Songs with high beat variance are popular when the market is calm. He recently explained his theory to us.
Dr. PHIL MAYMIN (Assistant Professor of Finance and Risk Engineering, New York University): I think the key linking idea is mood. The mood of the people is probably influenced by the market. If you think market volatility is high, you might choose to then listen to what kind of music? More volatile music or less volatile music? What would you listen to?
NORRIS: I would think less volatile. You'd want to calm down.
Dr. MAYMIN: And that seems to be what happens. People tend to want to calm down. People use music in a sense as an escape.
NORRIS: We need to listen to some music to explain this concept called beat variance. And so before we go on, please define that term for us. What exactly is beat variance?
Dr. MAYMIN: Variance is just a measure of how far a number deviates from its average. So a low beat variance song does not deviate from its average beat very much. It doesn't matter whether the average beat is slow or fast, but it's a constant boom, boom, boom, boom. Whatever it is, that's a low beat variance song. Meanwhile, a high beat variance song probably has changes in tempo and beat. Maybe it starts off slow and then it gets really fast for a while and then it comes back slow again. That would be a high beat variance song.
NORRIS: So, why don't we do a little of bit of show and tell. And since we're on the radio, maybe a little hear and talk. Let's listen to some music. First a song with very low beat variance. This is a song that's actually at the top of the charts right now by Lady Gaga. It's called "Just Dance."
(Soundbite of song "Just Dance")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) Red one, convict, ga-ga.
NORRIS: A fairly consistent beat there.
Dr. MAYMIN: Yeah, you can really hear it, right?
(Soundbite of "Just Dance" by Lady Gaga)
LADY GAGA: (Singing) I've had a little bit too much, much. All of the people stop to rush, stop to rush by.
NORRIS: If you're doing that disco head bopper thing, I could see how you'd be almost like a metronome.
Dr. MAYMIN: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm doing.
NORRIS: Those "Saturday Night Live" guys.
Dr. MAYMIN: Exactly.
(Soundbite of laughter)
(Soundbite of song "Just Dance")
LADY GAGA: (Singing) Keep it cool, what's the name of this club? I can't remember, but it's all right, all right. Just dance, gonna be OK.
Dr. MAYMIN: And you can't do that to a more complex song. These songs that you nod your head to it, there's something physiological about that. It really does calm you down. And it can only happen with a low beat variance song.
NORRIS: Now, we have an example of a song with a very high beat variance. This is from an artist John Legend. The song "Ordinary People."
(Soundbite of song "Ordinary People")
Mr. JOHN LEGEND: (Singing) Girl, I'm in love with you. This ain't the honeymoon, Past the infatuation phase.
Dr. MAYMIN: If you're trying to do the, as you said, the "Saturday Night Live" head bopping thing, it's much harder to do to "Ordinary People." There are points when you kind of get it, but then it changes.
(Soundbite of song "Ordinary People")
Mr. JOHN LEGEND: (Singing) And though love sometimes hurts, I still put you first and will make this thing work, But I think we should take it slow. We're just ordinary people.
Dr. MAYMIN: I find it engages the mind a lot more. It's more intellectually draining, I think, to listen to such a song.
NORRIS: So, does this theory hold up over time? If you - I know that the software is new. But if you went back and looked at the Billboard 100 and mapped that against highs and lows in the market, what will we find?
Dr. MAYMIN: That's exactly what I did. I analyzed all 5,000 top 100 songs over 50 years from 1958 through 2007. For each of the 100 songs in each year, I calculated its beat variance using the software. Then I take the average for all of the songs for that year to get a sense of what was the average sort of beat variance that people were exposed to in popular music for that year. And that sequence of numbers we look at the correlation between that and the market volatility of the appropriate time period, and it turns out that the relationship persists for 50 years.
NORRIS: Now, we talked about pop music, but I'm wondering if this same theory applies to other genres - punk music, jazz, country?
Dr. MAYMIN: Those are wonderful questions. Obviously this is - you know, that'll require further research. The reason I started with pop music was by definition it's popular. It's what people are listening to. Or at least it's the best proxy that I could find for what people are actually listening to.
NORRIS: So when you go out and buy music or you decide what you're going to download on your iPod, are you cognizant of this research?
Dr. MAYMIN: I am now. But on the other hand, a lot of the music that I listen to is driven by my baby daughter. She likes, you know, "Wizard of Oz" music and you know, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," so I don't really have a choice. I like listening to what she likes listening to.
NORRIS: "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" - high variance or low variance?
Dr. MAYMIN: Actually, I didn't analyze it. I'm not sure.
NORRIS: Get to work.
Dr. MAYMIN: I will.
NORRIS: All right. Thank you very much.
Dr. MAYMIN: Thank you.
NORRIS: Phil Maymin is an assistant professor of finance and risk engineering at the Polytechnic Institute at New York University. And Professor Maymin, since we here at NPR report the news, and since this has been a year of high volatility, we might as well go out with a song that, at least according to you and your research, seems to reflect the market. So let's cue Beyonce with "Single Ladies"
(Soundbite of song "Single Ladies")
Ms. BEYONCE KNOWLES: (Singing) If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it. If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it. Don't be mad once you see that he want it. If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it. Wo oh ooh.
NORRIS: 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. The economics of a network television show used to be pretty straightforward: Get high ratings in the right demographic, and you can charge lots of money for commercial time. But network television is losing viewers to cable and the Internet, so the business model is changing, too. "Friday Night Lights," on NBC tonight, represents the change. Its ratings are low, but the show about a small-town football team is earning money through a one-of-a-kind deal with the satellite TV provider. Nate DiMeo reports on the remaking of the network television business model.
(Soundbite of TV show "Friday Night Lights")
Mr. KYLE CHANDLER: (As Eric Taylor) All right, listen up.
NATE DIMEO: Coach Taylor needs a miracle. His Panthers have gone into the locker room down 27 at the half. His offensive line is being steamrolled.
(Soundbite of TV show "Friday Night Lights")
Mr. CHANDLER: (As Eric Taylor) Coach Biden, we're going to readjust, base defense, press coverage. We are not going to allow any more big plays tonight, gentlemen.
DIMEO: "Friday Night Lights" premiered to great reviews three years ago. The story of a football-obsessed Texas town was praised for its realistic portrayal of lives in the American working and middle classes, which is a surprisingly hard thing to find these days on American television. But so is an audience. And head writer Jason Katims says the show needed a miracle of its own.
Mr. JASON KATIMS (Head Writer, "Friday Night Lights"): It seemed fairly certain that the show was going to be canceled. And what happened was, through what I consider sort of a stroke of genius, they came up with this idea.
DIMEO: The satellite television company DirecTV was looking for a cheap way to bring an exclusive show to its lineup. NBC had a good show that wasn't making any money. So DirecTV bought the rights to air the new season of "Friday Night Lights" before anyone, even NBC. And the network took that money to prop up a program that was otherwise doomed. The show's third season recently completed its run on DirecTV and has now started up all over again, from its first episode, on NBC.
(Soundbite of TV show "Friday Night Lights")
Mr. JESSE PLEMONS: (As Landry Clarke) Tyra, why do you hate this paper?
DIMEO: In this scene from the show, Landry, the smart and sensitive Panthers bench warmer, helps Tyra, the one-time bad girl trying to make good, with her college entrance essay. And Landry manages to defer some of the show's production costs along the way.
(Soundbite of TV show "Friday Night Lights")
Ms. ADRIANNE PALICKI: (As Tyra Collette) Well, OK, like what?
Mr. PLEMONS: (As Landry Clarke) Would you explain to me why every paragraph has to tie back into Applebee's and outline into...
Ms. PALICKI: (As Tyra Collette) Because I use it as a metaphor. It works.
DIMEO: It seems that everything on the show ties back to Applebee's or Gatorade or Vaseline for Men. Writer Jason Katims explains that integrating products into shots and storylines has become part of his job, and he says it's been OK so far. It feels realistic to have Gatorade on the sidelines on a football show. One of his main characters is a don't-mess-with-Texas guy who owns a car dealership. It makes sense he'd sell Chevys.
Mr. KATIMS: We kind of feel like we want to do everything in our power to keep the show going.
DIMEO: In between the product placement, the DirecTV deal and some production belt-tightening, "Friday Night Lights" is getting another crack at finding an audience beyond its cult fan base. But how is that going to happen if that fan base has already had a chance to see it on DirecTV? Alan Sepinwall is the TV critic at the Newark Star-Ledger.
Mr. ALAN SEPINWALL (TV Critic, Newark Star-Ledger Newspaper): They've created this odd situation, which really only has precedent in the case of shows that aired previously in England and then came here, like "Dr. Who," where the entire season was available for - to pirate - download in advance. So I think a lot of the really hardcore "Friday Night Lights" fans have already found a way to see it, even if they don't have DirectTV.
DIMEO: The hope is that those fans will proselytize on the show's behalf. Eric Shanks of DirecTV points out that the show is now getting two sets of reviews in articles and radio stories written about it. This could turn out to be the TV equivalent of something that already works really well for the movie industry.
Mr. ERIC SHANKS (Executive Vice President for Entertainment, DirectTV): It's awards season, right? There is an enormous amount of buzz for movies that have been in very limited release right now. When they win awards, those movies become hugely popular.
DIMEO: For his part, Jason Katims would probably accept slightly popular. He's seen too many good shows get canceled before their time.
Mr. KATIMS: If this experiment works for us but also can sort of be an answer to other shows that are really good shows but are struggling to find an audience right now, that would be an amazing thing to be part of.
DIMEO: But meanwhile, he'll hope that the NBC run is good enough to allow him to keep a show going that he - and at least a few people - love. Even if it also means that you can expect more characters driving to Applebee's in their Chevys while chugging Gatorade. For NPR News, I'm Nate DiMeo.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
We often talk about how the financial crisis has led to a worldwide recession. Iceland has nearly gone bankrupt; factories in China are shutting down; even Toyota has announced its first operating loss since 1941. So, our Planet Money team wondered, are there any places you can go and not feel like the economy is collapsing around you? Here is what NPR's David Kestenbaum found out.
DAVID KESTENBAUM: If you look at a globe, it can be hard to believe that this is truly a planetary recession. There are so many countries and at the beginning, didn't this just look like a problem with some U.S. mortgages? Well, there are some countries that are less affected.
Mr. IAN BREMMER (President, Eurasia Group): Yeah, sure there are, and I think that they're some of the most interesting places.
KESTENBAUM: Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, a consulting company.
Mr. BREMMER: One would be the Persian Gulf.
KESTENBAUM: Yes, he says, oil prices have gone down a lot, but the Gulf States still make a profit - unlike, say, Venezuela.
Mr. BREMMER: Venezuela actually runs a deficit when oil gets under $90 a barrel. In the Gulf States, you basically stick a straw in the sand; the oil comes out. It's a lot cheaper.
KESTENBAUM: That is one way to survive in a downturn. Produce something the world absolutely, positively cannot do without. You can be a one-trick pony. It's just got to be a good trick. Another way to escape the global crisis would be to live somewhere totally isolated. And for sure, you could go to some remote village in the Amazon or to the mountains of China and find people who haven't heard the words subprime mortgage, and haven't been affected by this whole thing. But it turns out most countries depend on other countries for something. Cambodia, for instance, sells us a lot of pajamas. Ken Rogoff, an economist at Harvard, says if he had to pick one major economy not as affected as it might be, it's India.
Mr. KEN ROGOFF (Economist, Harvard University): India is a relatively closed economy. It has much more trade restrictions, really, than any other big economy in the world. It's much harder to import anything. If you want to import a laptop there, there are all sorts of papers to fill out. Putting money into India is incredibly complicated.
KESTENBAUM: So despite the fact that your tech-support guy may be in Bangalore, India is somewhat insulated economically, though isolation is not a strategy Ken Rogoff recommends.
Mr. ROGOFF: They have a lot of poor people in India. It's a country with a population more than four times the United States, and a good two-thirds of them really still live in poverty, and a lot of that has to do with cutting themselves off from the world.
KESTENBAUM: This story would be a lot easier if there were some book that just listed how the economies of the world are doing. And oh, there is one: "The "World Economic Outlook," published by the International Monetary Fund. The report lists one country with a bright forecast: Liberia. GDP is predicted to jump from 8.6 percent growth to 14.3 percent in 2009. But they're a special case. Liberia is coming out of civil war. Charles Collins is deputy director in the IMF's research department. And even though the IMF produced that report, don't believe the numbers, he says. Most are being revised downward.
Mr. CHARLES COLLINS (Deputy Director, IMF Research Department): We are expecting most industrial countries to contract quite severely in 2009 - in fact, the largest synchronized downturn, really, in the post-war period. We can not find a parallel since the Second World War.
KESTENBAUM: I suppose on one hand, that's sort of to be expected. On the other hand, is trade really such a big deal that we all get dragged down together?
Mr. COLLINS: This is a massive crisis, and it's a crisis with many different tentacles, many different channels of transmission. Many countries are being affected by the drop in demand for their manufactured exports, but other countries are being affected by the drop in commodity prices. Other countries are being affected by the drop in availability of financing. So, if it don't get you one way, it will get you another way.
KESTENBAUM: Trade ties us together, so do the financial markets. People and institutions in one country investing in another, lending to each other - well, they used to lend. I asked Ken Rogoff at Harvard if he thought the crisis would have spread so far, so fast, a decade ago. And he laughed, because we had a crisis 80 years ago that also went global very quickly.
Mr. ROGOFF: The Great Depression was very similar in that the United States was the epicenter. We had this incredible boom, the roaring '20s. And we handled it very badly, and it collapsed, and we really took down everybody else with us.
KESTENBAUM: Even 80 years ago, the world was tied together by trade, and many countries were linked financially - not through mathematically complex derivatives, as they are today, but because they had pegged their different currencies to the same thing: gold. David Kestenbaum, NPR News.
SIEGEL: And you can learn more about how the global economy is measured at our Planet Money podcast and blog. That's at nrp.org/money.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Pete Nelson started getting in trouble with tree houses when he was 6 years old. Back then, the tree house was where he hid his stash of candy.
Mr. PETE NELSON (Tree House Builder, Fall City, Washington): My sister knew about this, so I sabotaged the ladder. And it worked like a charm, and she fell and she got this enormous, deep, gouge -bscrape on her back, and it was bad, and I was in deep trouble.
NORRIS: Well, Nelson's sister is fine now. But Nelson got in trouble again in 2006. This time, it was with building regulators in King County, Washington. And it involved an unusual tree house. From member station KUOW in Seattle, Phyllis Fletcher has the story.
PHYLLIS FLETCHER: Pete Nelson has made a living building solid little cabins that look big up in the trees. He builds them for other people, and he teaches how to do it at his compound, Treehouse Point near Fall City, Washington. Some people might call them luxurious. Nelson calls this one a love shack.
Mr. NELSON: There's just one, big, queen-sized bed and sits up high. It's got windows all around so you can look out and see the river almost below you. We're about 70 feet off of the high water here.
FLETCHER: The floor is black walnut. The touches of redwood are from wine casks. The whole thing is held up by six bolts in two trees. He wants to turn it into a bed and breakfast, and he wants to build more.
Mr. NELSON: Between these trees that you see right out in front of us, I've got this plan for kind of a California bungalow style. Imagine getting REI out here with their budget meetings and looking over the raging river. That's kind of the stuff I love to think about and get excited about.
FLETCHER: But here's the thing: He didn't get a permit.
Mr. NELSON: It probably wasn't the right thing to do, but I decided that I'll just build one of these and show them what it is, as opposed to drawing it and talking about it, you know, with hand gestures.
FLETCHER: The county found out after Nelson cut down a tree and was caught doing it by a neighbor. That neighbor reported Nelson to the county, and all the truth came out. That's when Joe Miles got involved
Mr. JOE MILES (Building Permit Inspector): This is an aerial photograph of Pete Nelson's property.
FLETCHER: Joe Miles oversees building permits. He has a file on Pete Nelson.
Mr. MILES: Oh, it's a couple inches' thick.
FLETCHER: It's Miles' job to make sure buildings are safe and don't harm the environment.
Mr. MILES: The tree house was located in what we call the channel migration zone, where the raging river, which is next to, is anticipated to move into this area.
FLETCHER: That's right, move. The river's changing course has already taken out several homes, so the county doesn't want people to build next to it. But Pete Nelson hired his own land-use consultant. He got positive press in Seattle, and the support of his representative on the King County Council. So Joe Miles and his department decided to go into mediation with Nelson, and it seems to have worked. So far, they have settled on a few modifications. The county says well, maybe the flood hazard is far enough away that the tree house can stay for the moment. But it does want Nelson to install a sink for his incinerating toilet, and sprinklers in case of a fire. And although Nelson has generated a thick file and hours of work for Joe Miles, it's not for nothing. Miles says the whole thing could help people across the country.
Mr. MILES: We think we are blazing new ground here and maybe creating an opportunity where we could create a standardized method to build tree houses in King County that maybe other jurisdictions could adopt.
FLETHCER: But for Nelson's tree house, eventually, Mother Nature will weigh in. He says the raging river did flood this month.
Mr. NELSON: There's a whole new channel that just - that river just cut right through.
FLETCHER: Some ferns between the tree house and the river washed away. But the trees holding up the house are fine, for now. For NPR News I'm Phyllis Fletcher.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
At Arlington National Cemetery today, a young soldier was laid to rest, Specialist Joseph Hernandez, who was 24 years old. He died two weeks ago when a roadside bomb hit his vehicle in Afghanistan. Arlington handles burials for soldiers like Hernandez every day, about 7,000 ceremonies every year. But today's was different, as NPR's Mary Louise Kelly explains.
MARY LOUISE KELLY: It was clear, blue skies today at Arlington. Frost on the grass...
(Soundbite of drumbeat)
KELLY: And the drum from an Army band. The band, along with a colors team, an escort platoon and a horse-drawn caisson, are reserved for full-honors military funerals. And before now, Hernandez wouldn't have qualified. That's because he was an Army specialist. That's a junior enlisted rank, not an officer. But late last year, the Army changed the rules to allow all soldiers killed in action to receive full military funeral honors regardless of their rank. Today, Joseph Hernandez of Hammond, Indiana, was the first to be buried under the new rules.
Mr. JOE DAVIS (Member, Veteran of Foreign Wars): This is the right thing to do.
KELLY: Joe Davis, from the group Veterans of Foreign Wars. He supports the new policy. He says it makes sense that any soldier killed by hostile fire in a war zone should get full honors. So why wasn't the policy changed sooner?
Mr. DAVIS: We don't think anybody ever asked the question. And that's the big thing. Sometimes it takes one person to get noticed on the right issue.
KELLY: On this issue, the right person turned out to be Sergeant 1st Class Robert Durbin. Durbin is currently deployed in Iraq. But he used to serve as a casket squad leader at Arlington. He carried President Reagan's casket. And Durbin says he just got to wondering why only officers received full honors.
Sergeant 1st Class ROBERT DURBIN (Former Casket Squad Leader, Arlington): Rank has nothing to do with honor. And my hypothetical example is that a second lieutenant can graduate Officer Candidate School. He could hypothetically die in a car accident, receive full honors at Arlington, whereas an enlisted service member with 20 years in the Army could be killed in action over here or Afghanistan and receive a standard honors funeral. To me, that just doesn't pass the common-sense test.
KELLY: Durbin caused a stir last spring when he convinced the Military Times to publish a letter about the disparity in honors. Then he kept pushing, writing to the Army secretary and to congressmen and senators. Finally, last month, the Army announced it was changing the policy to create, quote, a common standard for all soldiers killed in action and buried at Arlington. For Joseph Hernandez's widow, Alison Hernandez, the Army policy is personal. She's proud of her husband and argues that any soldier - whether specialist or sergeant or general - should be eligible for full honors.
Mrs. ALISON HERNANDEZ (Widow, Specialist Joseph Hernandez): What is the difference? Just because the rank is smaller - they were still doing the same job. They were killed for freedom, for our country, and for us. Everyone should be allowed to be given that same service. That just seems right to me.
KELLY: Alison and Joseph Hernandez met when she was 15. They were married four years and had two boys: Jacob, 2, and Noah, 9 months. While he was away in Afghanistan, Joseph called home every other day - right up until two days before he died.
Mrs. HERNANDEZ: And he just started talking about all these things he wanted to do. He said I want to take Jacob bowling. And I want to take you to a Cubs game. And we'll go out to Chicago, and we'll do this and we'll do that. And it was like, he's making all these plans. And I was just waiting for him to come home so we could do those things. And now it's like, OK, those are things that I won't get to do with him. It's so hard.
KELLY: At the ceremony today, Joseph Hernandez's two sons took turns on their mother's lap and were each presented with a carefully folded American flag.
(Soundbite of gun salute)
KELLY: Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News, Washington.
(Soundbite from cemetery service)
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The sleeper hit of the season is "Slumdog Millionaire," a film set in the slums of one of the world's most densely populated cities, Mumbai. Today, the film opened in India and yesterday, it was nominated for 10 Oscars. When director Danny Boyle accepted his Golden Globe for Best Picture, he thanked his line producer in India, Tabrez Noorani. Noorani was in charge of all the logistics - scheduling, meetings, permits - and many other responsibilities while the film was shot in India. He was born in India, and he got his chops in film school in Los Angeles. I asked Noorani, what's different about shooting in India?
Mr. TABREZ NOORANI (Line Producer, Slumdog Millionaire): Indian sentiments are very - they're very emotional people. So if they say you're shooting at a school, and if the principal has not been informed that you're going to be shooting there for the whole day, it becomes a respect thing and an ego thing. And you can have every single permit but that's pulled, and you're unable to shoot. Obviously, there's lot of things that happen under the table.
NORRIS: You mean envelopes are passed.
Mr. NOORANI: Exactly. But a lot of the time, it's not only about money. It really ends up being about respect and the way that you treat people. And in this case, absolutely, I think, it's one of the reasons why we were able to do what we did is because Danny and Christian Colson were the way that they were, which is enormously respectful wherever we went. And immediately that's recognized, especially in the slums.
NORRIS: It's that simple. You show a little bit of respect to...
Mr. NOORANI: Absolutely, it comes back. (Laughing)
NORRIS: Doors start to open. It sounds a bit like you're almost a diplomat. Like, the U.N. could come calling and perhaps use your services in some heated republic.
Mr. NOORANI: I get enormously - sometimes I get enormously frustrated, and my partner is in Delhi, and he is very, very good at this. And he keeps telling me whenever we're in situations like this, he's like, you have to forget that you're in L.A., and you have to go there physically, you can't pick up the phone. And that's another thing that - if there's a problem at a location, and you have to go and talk to a government official, it's not cool to pick up the phone and talk to them. You have to go. They'll make you wait, but it's the very act of you going to them that will solve your problem.
NORRIS: So that the whole L.A. idea of I'll-have-my-person-call-your-person, that wouldn't work in India.
Mr. NOORANI: Exactly. No, absolutely not. And that is why the preproduction is usually a lot longer in India than in other countries because things take a lot of time, and it really requires you to physically go pretty much everywhere.
NORRIS: What was the biggest challenge for you in working on "Slumdog Millionaire," perhaps one of the scenes that you read in the script and thought to yourself, how in the world am I going to be able to pull this off?
Mr. NOORANI: There were few of those when I first read the script, but what scared me was always the train station. We're shooting at VT Station.
(Soundbite of music)
NORRIS: What we're hearing here is music. It sounds like you could be in a dance club. So maybe you could - for those who haven't seen the film, describe what it is that we're actually seeing on screen.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. NOORANI: Basically, this is the end sequence where the couple kiss and two trains arrive and literally, thousands of people come out of the train, and they all break out in this amazing dance sequence.
NORRIS: It's a line dance. They're all dancing in unison.
Mr. NOORANI: Yeah, they're all dancing together, and everything is lit. And on the white shot, you see pretty much six platforms, which means that you need to light every single platform. And in order to light all the platforms, we actually have to light only when the railway station wasn't working, which was from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. every morning. So that took about eight to 10 days to do, and it was, again, slightly risky because the lights had to be placed in between electrical wires. So our crew had to go in every night and very carefully place lights in between the wires.
NORRIS: And they couldn't cut the electricity to do that.
Mr. NOORANI: No, they weren't allowed to cut the electricity. And then once that was done, it was physically hard to get these thousands of extras, first have them rehearse somewhere else, then have then come in and get the sequence done in a matter of two hours. So we shot over a few nights, but it was quite an ordeal.
NORRIS: How important was it to have a certain authenticity in this film when the brothers confront each other in the skyscraper? How important was it they actually be high above the ground in a skyscraper? When they went to a red-light district, how important was it that you actually went to a real red-light district in Mumbai as opposed to just re-creating one in some other neighborhood?
Mr. NOORANI: The truth is, I thought that we were going to re-create it. I, at times, encouraged Danny to re-create it because you do not want to go and shoot in the red-light district.
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. NOORANI: It borders on being unsafe, especially with the foreign crew, and so...
NORRIS: When we talk about a red-light district, tell me what it is we're talking about. Why is it so unsafe?
Mr. NOORANI: You're talking about hundreds and hundreds of brothels, and you have a lot of gangsters, you have unruly crowds. They don't really want people being there. They don't want photographs being taken. The cops will not encourage you to get a permit there. They'll make it very, very difficult for you to shoot there. Just because it's not a conducive place setting up a camera, it's not really a friendly place. And also the - you have a mob mentality that can very, very quickly emerge if anything bad happens. And in this case, we had lots of pushing and shoving and at some point, someone was shoved, and one of the English crew retaliated to protect our crew members. And that was it, we had to stop shooting. That, you know, that was the last take. But at that point, we stopped, and we went inside. But it's things like that that can very quickly spiral out of control.
NORRIS: Hollywood has a certain fascination with Indian film right now. What do you say to a Hollywood producer or director that's considering shooting in India?
Mr. NOORANI: I think that the key thing is to have patience, and to be able to change your way because you cannot come to India and expect things to run the way they do in L.A. - or anywhere else in the world. And when the certain directors, you know, who come here and they have, a few have, and they're very rigid and they want to work in a particular way, and that they want that piece of equipment and they want the trailer to be a particular way, it's just not going to work. They'll have a miserable time. So I would say, it really is a fantastic place to shoot, especially now because things are getting so much easier; the government is relaxing a bit. But you need to trust and have the patience to shoot in India as well.
NORRIS: Tabrez Noorani, it's been a pleasure to speak to you. Thanks so much.
Mr. NOORANI: You're most welcome. Thank you so much.
NORRIS: Tabrez Noorani is the line producer of the Oscar-nominated film, "Slumdog Millionaire." He joined us from Mumbai.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. In Israel, international aid agencies are increasingly frustrated and angry. They've been trying to deliver supplies and personnel into the Gaza Strip after Israel's three-week bombardment. Today, Israel eased its blockade of Gaza. It opened the border, but only under pressure and only to a few organizations. NPR's Anne Garrels traveled to the Erez crossing into Gaza today, and she sent us this report.
ANNE GARRELS: Aid organizations need to get into Gaza to assess needs and relieve colleagues who are exhausted after the three-week Israeli offensive. But Mike Baily, with Oxfam International, says for six days since the cease-fire, the Israeli government has given them the runaround.
Mr. MIKE BAILY (Oxfam International): We had had every reason under the sun given to us for not going in: that it was security, that it wasn't the right day, that is was closed for holiday, that the right people were not available, that we would hear tomorrow.
GARRELS: In addition to supervising deliveries of items like food, medicines and plastic sheeting, Baily says Oxfam urgently needs to help Gazan farmers restore their destroyed fields and clear them of unexploded ordinance.
Mr. BAILY: If we don't plant crops now, we're not going to have any harvest in three or four months' time, and the one and a half million people in Gaza are going to be completely dependent on food aid that's coming in from outside.
GARRELS: Evonne Frederickson, with Sweden's Palestinian Solidarity Association, has been trying to get mental-health experts and doctors into Gaza. She says Israeli policy toward aid agencies has been capricious for a long time.
Ms. EVONNE FREDERICKSON (Sweden's Palestinian Solidarity Association): Sometimes you get in, sometimes you don't get in, so they are playing with those who are working with aid to Gaza.
GARRELS: Since the cease-fire last weekend, Cassandra Nelson of Mercy Corps has called Israeli authorities every day.
Ms. CASSANDRA NELSON (Senior Communication Officer, Mercy Corps): We are really just pressing and pressing on all sides of this argument, but have not gotten any clear response or any logical response as to why we're being denied. So we can't respond and have a proper dialogue about it. We're simply told no, no humanitarian aid workers.
GARRELS: Several aid organizations finally decided to go to the border today, in a convoy accompanied by the press, to publicize the blockade. After several hours, some aid representatives were let through. But Nelson says there was no explanation for who got in and who was denied access. Major players like Save the Children were turned away, and Nelson says there are no guarantees about the future.
Ms. NELSON: This is going to be over a billion-dollar reconstruction project for Gaza, and it simply can't be run by people sitting around and waiting every day for hours at a border point, wondering if their name is on a list or not on a list. You know, there has to be, you know, clear process and procedures.
GARRELS: U.N. humanitarian chief John Holmes says Israel has promised cooperation, but he is pushing for clarification.
Mr. JOHN HOLMES (Chief, U.N. Humanitarian): We need to see that demonstrated in practice so that people actually do get in there on a reliable basis, so that they know they'll get in not only today but tomorrow.
GARRELS: In addition to permitting humanitarian personnel, Holmes called on Israel yet again to open more crossing points for supplies. He says Gaza desperately needs generators and construction materials as well as pipes to repair damaged sewage lines.
Mr. HOLMES: The local water authorities raised with us the prospect not only of the immediate health risks, but the damage that could be done to the aquifers in that area by the accumulation of such large quantities of raw sewage seeping down into the aquifers. So I think this is a really time-critical situation.
GARRELS: Israel has blocked all construction materials from reaching Gaza since Hamas took control of the territory 19 months ago. Holmes has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to persuade Israel international aid will not be diverted to Hamas. Asked about the continued limits on aid, Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev would not directly address the issue of aid workers. And he gave no promises the borders would be open for anything more than immediate aid anytime soon.
Mr. MARK REGEV (Spokesman, Israeli Government): We will be part of a reconstruction effort, but an effort that helps the people of Gaza, not an effort that will help Hamas.
GARRELS: But with 4,000 homes destroyed and another 17,000 badly damaged, the U.N. and other aid organizations say the civilians of Gaza cannot afford to wait for regime change. Anne Garrels, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
A work of sculpture in Brussels recently provoked an international incident of sorts. The sculpture was commissioned by the Czech Republic to honor its role as the current head of the European Union. But the artist, David Cerny, took a cheeky approach with Entropa, as the sculpture is called. He depicted the countries of Europe in unflattering stereotypes. And our commentator, Andrei Codrescu, thinks the artist took the right approach.
ANDREI CODRESCU: There was Luxembourg depicted as a tiny lump of gold marked by a for-sale sign; Bulgaria as a series of holes-in-the-floor toilets; Romania as a Dracula theme park; and England missing entirely. The artwork was intended to signify the wonder of uniting the marvelous, individual riches of each member state. Bulgaria immediately withdrew its ambassador from Prague, and the Czechs are probably wondering how long it will take Germany, represented in the mosaic by intersecting highways that look a bit like a swastika, to reach Prague.
The 1983 sculpture "Shoot-Out" by Red Grooms, commissioned by the Denver Museum of Art, was quickly hidden by that institution in a back alley because its cartoon version of Western history, showing a cowboy and an American Indian shooting at each other, outraged institutional sensibilities. In the next few decades, artists continued to enrage the state with various media: Karen Finley with words in chocolate, Robert Mapplethorpe with photos of naked men, Andres Serrano with a blasphemous construction. When Western countries, including the U.S., seemed to calm down somewhat, mostly by withdrawing funding from controversial artists, the rest of the world got into the act. The Ayatollah Khomeini condemned Salman Rushdie to death for being unflattering to the Prophet. Dutch Islamists killed a documentary filmmaker, and rioting crowds in Pakistan, protesting writing on the bottom of some U.S.-made sneakers, trampled to death some of their own. All those things seem to have occurred a long time ago, so it was about time that art struck back. Thank you, David Cerny, from the country of Soldier Svejk and Franz Kafka, for keeping European states, united or not, from blowing too much hot, symbolic air.
NORRIS: Our commentator, Andrei Codrescu. His latest book is "The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess." And the artist behind the sculpture in Brussels did issue an apology for misleading the Czech government. But he added that he wanted to find out whether Europe is capable of laughing at itself.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. This morning in Alabama, across the front page of the Huntsville Times, is this headline: NPR exaggeration revs up residents. It refers to a conversation that I had on Wednesday with George Mason University economist Russell Roberts. He says tax cuts would be a better economic stimulus than infrastructure spending. I said, it's argued that even if highway projects don't bring down the overall unemployment rate, they do leave you with good roads, to which professor Roberts said...
Mr. RUSELL ROBERTS (University Economist, George Mason University): Have you ever been to Huntsville, Alabama?
SIEGEL: Yes.
Mr. ROBERTS: Yeah, my parents live there now. There's a highway. It's about 12 or 14 lanes. Its stretches that way for about three miles, then it shrinks down to a sort of a civilized six. Why? Why is there this remarkable lake of asphalt? There is no traffic generating the need for a 14-lane highway or 12, whatever. It is just unbelievably wide. I assume some senator in Alabama that was politically powerful got that passed.
SIEGEL: Well, we heard from some indignant listeners in Huntsville. There was this from Dan Price. Imagine that: roads designed to handle the traffic flow. Enjoy your drive home on the Beltway, professor. My commute is now only 15 minutes. That was cruel. Well, we're joined now by the mayor of Huntsville, Tommy Battle. Mayor Battle, is there a 14- or 12-lane lake of asphalt in Huntsville, Alabama?
Mayor TOMMY BATTLE (Huntsville, Alabama): No, there isn't. We have about 105,000 cars a day traveling on that roadway, so it's a necessary part of Huntsville, and it's also one of our economic drivers.
SIEGEL: We're talking about Interstate 565 here.
Mr. BATTLE: Right.
SIEGEL: How wide is it at its widest?
Mr. BATTLE: At one point, it might hit eight lanes.
SIEGEL: Our guys have looked at the Google Map photos, you know...
Mr. BATTLE: Right.
SIEGEL: Of the stretch. What they find is, at its widest point, 10 lanes. And then if you add entrance and exit ramps, maybe you get up to 12 at some points.
Mr. BATTLE: Well, we kind of wish that it was as wide as Mr. Roberts was talking about because when it started to hit capacity at this point, 10 percent of our workforce works 30 miles or more from the workplace, and if you don't have a way to get people to and from work, you don't have that economic stimulus that you need for your community.
SIEGEL: I read that it was roughly a half-a-billion dollar project, completed in the early 1990s.
Mr. BATTLE: Yes, sir.
SIEGEL: Did a legislator from Alabama get an appropriation for that?
Mr. BATTLE: We fought long and hard to be able to get that. We were the largest city in America who didn't have an interstate connection. That highway borders the second-largest research park in America. It also borders Redstone Arsenal, which has 35,000 workers who work on missile defense in NASA, and it's very important to our community.
SIEGEL: Well, if it's - even if it's necessary, would it qualify as a nutritious pork?
Mr. BATTLE: I wouldn't say it's pork in any way. If you traveled on it during the day, it's almost to capacity right now.
SIEGEL: Mayor Tommy Battle of Huntsville, Alabama. Thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. BATTLE: Thank you.
SIEGEL: And by coincidence, Russ Roberts is at NPR today. Hi.
Mr. ROBERTS: Good to be here.
SIEGEL: Or shall we call it the woodshed right now where you're visiting?
Mr. ROBERTS: (Laughing) Yeah, the sheepish Russ Roberts is here today.
SIEGEL: OK. Your reply to the mayor of Huntsville.
Mr. ROBERTS: Well, I'm looking forward to that speeding ticket I'm going to be getting next time I'm on I-565. I exaggerated. I feel bad about it. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that I-565 was an unnecessary road. I have no idea about that, and I exaggerated how wide it was. But the real question, which I think is the important question, is whether there is additional infrastructure available in the United States to spend money on that would be productive.
SIEGEL: That's the chastened economist, Russell Roberts. And if you want to see the Google map of I-565, the link is at npr.org
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
It's now two days since President Obama issued new ethics rules for administration appointees, and one day since the White House started talking about waivers to the rules. As NPR's Peter Overby reports, this raises questions about how effectively Mr. Obama can fulfill one of his longstanding campaign promises.
PETER OVERBY: The rules themselves are a bit complicated. Here's how the president framed them as he signed the executive order on Wednesday.
(Soundbite of speech)
President BARACK OBAMA: As I often said during the campaign, we need to make the White House the people's house. And we need to close the revolving door that lets lobbyists come in to government freely, and lets them use their time in public service as a way to promote their own interests over the interests of the American people when they leave.
OVERBY: One stark example of the problem he referred to - energy industry lobbyist Steve Griles. In 2001, President Bush named Griles the number two official at the Interior Department. Griles pushed hard to lease federal lands to oil and gas companies, and he did favors for corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who allegedly enticed him with a job offer. The Abramoff case landed Griles in prison, and generally trashed whatever reputation lobbyists had left outside of Washington. But now, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended William Lynn III, recently a lobbyist for Raytheon, as deputy defense secretary. The job needs Senate confirmation. Yesterday, Gates told reporters that Lynn was impressive in person and highly recommended by people Gates respects.
Secretary ROBERT GATES (U.S. Department of Defense): And I asked that an exception be made because I felt that he could play the role of a deputy - of the deputy in a better manner than anybody else that I saw.
OVERBY: Such waivers are possible under the new rules. But it's just not clear what the standards are, or how many waivers will be allowed, as White House press secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged at today's briefing.
Unidentified Man: Do you have any estimated - I mean, limited numbers that should we expect...
Mr. ROBERT GIBBS (Press Secretary, White House): I don't know anything more than limited number.
OVERBY: Now, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin wants more information from the White House before he sends Lynn's nomination to the Senate floor. And a watchdog group, a project on government oversight, has called on President Obama to withdraw the nomination or risk undermining his own executive order. Longtime lobbyist Robert Kelner says the order is meaningful, but he also says this.
Mr. ROBERT KELNER (Lobbyist): I don't think it goes nearly as far as people expected from President Obama's campaign rhetoric, or nearly as far as the administration is suggesting it goes.
OVERBY: Kelner sees another loophole besides the waivers. The order says departing administration officials can't lobby the administration until President Obama leaves office. Kelner says it's the difference between lobbying, that is, registering as a federal lobbyist, and engaging in lobbying activity. The executive order just refers to lobbying.
Mr. KELNER: One could make very strategic calls to senior political appointees. But if it did not constitute more than 20 percent of your activity for that client, you generally do not have to register.
OVERBY: Advocates of stronger government ethics rules praised the executive order as the toughest yet from any administration. Still, at the Campaign Legal Center, policy director Meredith McGehee says lobbying itself - the networking, the providing of information and so forth - isn't really the biggest problem.
Ms. MEREDITH MCGEHEE (Policy Director, Campaign Legal Center): Some of the questions arise because of the role that lobbyists play in the money game, not because of the actual lobbying activity.
OVERBY: But changing the way money is used in Washington would require an act of Congress. This executive order, Mr. Obama did with just a few strokes of his pen. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Bill Gates is issuing his first annual public letter, but don't expect him to write about the company he founded, or the 5,000 layoffs announced by Microsoft this week. Gates is still chairman at Microsoft, but he now works full time on the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and that's the focus of his 11-page letter. It's due out Monday. Earlier today, I asked Bill Gates what made him take to the keyboard?
Mr. BILL GATES (Chairman, Microsoft): Well, my friend Warren Buffett encouraged me to share in a frank way where things are going well, what I was excited about, how I was finding the foundation world, and also talk about the setbacks, you know, be frank in the way that somebody coming from the business world would be used to about what wasn't going well. And when he said that, I got very excited that I could start a dialogue, you know, let people send back email, and frame things for people who care about these issues. But it's always daunting to get in and say, you know, what's going on with AIDS, what's going on with polio, you know, share my view of where the advances have come and my basic optimism that the additional resources going into these things are going to lead to some brilliant successes.
NORRIS: Some are comparing your letter to the Gospel of Wealth, Andrew Carnegie's letter to urge or even shame America's captains of industry to share their wealth. Did you read his letter before you wrote yours, and is shame something that you're trying to use here?
Mr. GATES: I, certainly, have read all the Carnegie things. Warren Buffett shared with me the Gospel of Wealth a long time ago, before I even had much wealth. And I agree with his philosophy. You know, people of talent should try and get their money back to society while they're still alive. And what I'd like to share with people is not shame but rather that - how exciting it can be and how - if you picked a few things where you really get to know them, that you can have a huge impact.
NORRIS: You talk in your letter about AIDS and the effort to develop a vaccine for AIDS and a microbicide, a gel that women can use to protect themselves. And you compare the rush to develop these things to the time that you were at Microsoft when your company was involved in very fierce competition. In this case, I'm wondering if the foundation, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is part of the hold-up. that perhaps people might be less inclined to commit money because they think that Bill and Melinda Gates are already pouring their fortune into the effort.
Mr. GATES: Well, fortunately, people are being more generous. There's a group called IAVI, the International AIDS for Vaccines, that does AIDS vaccine research, that's got more private donors to come along. And I think as we make scientific progress and people see the success coming along, that makes them more interested in being involved. So, by increasing the visibility of the issues, we've had the effect we'd hoped for, which is that people really do care about these deaths.
NORRIS: I'm curious about your thoughts on the timing of your departure - just before the global economy collapsed. Is that a good thing, perhaps, that maybe you dodged this disaster? Do you wish that you were still at the helm of Microsoft to help shepherd the company past the storm? I mean, some look at what happened this week with the first major layoffs announced by the company, 5,000 people given pink slips and assume that the company's best days might be behind it.
Mr. GATES: Well, Microsoft's best days are certainly ahead because the research and products and customer connections they have and the strength of leadership, starting with Steve Ballmer. It's definitely not immune to this huge downturn that's taking place and, you know, Steve is doing the right things. I, you know, I don't think I would do it any differently or any better, so, you know, I picked a time. I announced it several years in advance, and I always knew that the company would have all sorts of twists and turns that they'd take on and do well with without my being there full time.
NORRIS: Biggest challenge for you in the next year?
Mr. GATES: Well, you know, making sure that the crisis doesn't distract our partners from these critical, long-term goals, and getting the success stories out so that the momentum continues.
NORRIS: Mr. Gates, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks so much for making time for us.
Mr. GATES: Thank you.
NORRIS: Bill Gates is the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. In the past few months, the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been the site of widespread violence and a humanitarian disaster. Hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped in the crossfire between the Congolese army, a variety of militias and rebels led by the Tutsi Ethnic group. Those rebels and their powerful leader, Laurent Nkunda, control much of the region. But today, Nkunda is under arrest. NPR's Gwen Thompkins explains the significance of this one man.
GWEN THOMPKINS: Some generals have a knack for dramatic effect. Napoleon Bonaparte used to bring portrait artists on his military campaigns so they could capture him looking his best as he trounced whomever he was trouncing on a particular day. George Washington designed his own uniforms, and General Laurent Nkunda, the Congolese Tutsi rebel leader, knew how to strike a pose almost better than Madonna. He wore the nicest fatigues, carried a silver-tipped cane, preened for the cameras, danced a little bit, and played both victor and victim with reporters. Nkunda's rebels thrashed the Congolese army late last year. He said he was taking over much of Eastern Congo to protect the area's Tutsi minority from Hutu militias that have taken part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide. Back in November, Nkunda told reporters that he's had to sacrifice family life to save his tribe in Eastern Congo.
Gen. LAURENT NKUNDA (Rebel Leader, Tutsi): I'm not with my family, I'm not with my children. I have six children. I'm suffering.
THOMPKINS: Trouble was, the Nkunda-lead rebellion helped destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Most remained displaced. Francois Grignon is a chief analyst with the International Crisis Group in Nairobi. He's been watching Nkunda for years. Grignon says that one of the general's favorite words is genocidaire. He means someone who supports genocide against Tutsis.
Mr. FRANCOIS GRIGNON (Chief Analyst, International Crisis Group): You know, from Nkunda, anybody not supporting him is a genocidaire. If you don't feed his men, you are genocidaire, if you don't, you know, let your daughter being raped by his men, you are genocidaire. This is the logic and of course, he himself is never responsible for, you know, any, any of the problems of the country.
THOMPKINS: To be fair, all of the parties involved in the conflict are believed to have perpetrated war crimes. Nkunda denies any wrongdoing, but he says civilians must suffer for the cause.
Gen. NKUNDA: That's the cost of freedom. You have to suffer for sometimes and be free forever.
THOMPKINS: But part of what made Nkunda doubly dangerous to the Congolese government is that he apparently had the support of the Tutsi-led government in neighboring Rwanda. The international community has reportedly been pressuring Rwanda to stop Nkunda, so the Rwandan and Congolese government took away in Nkunda's reason for fighting. They created their own, combined force to destroy Hutu militias in Eastern Congo. And on Thursday night, the joint force reportedly went after the general himself. Nkunda then crossed into Rwanda, where he was arrested. But whether these events lower the curtain on the general is another matter entirely. The Rwandan government is reportedly concerned that Nkunda may make dramatic revelations exposing Rwanda's full involvement with the rebels, and with Congo's lucrative, illegal mineral trade. Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, Nairobi.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
There is change in the air at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Barack Obama's executive orders to close Guantanamo and review options forgiving the detainees will certainly affect the fate of the men held at the prison. But their futures remain murky as the details are worked out. We've had a series of conversations on the program recently about changes at Guantanamo. Today, someone who works with the detainees.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Joining us now is Emi MacLean. She's an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Thanks so much for being with us.
Ms. EMI MACLEAN (Attorney, Center for Constitutional Rights): Thanks so much for having me.
NORRIS: Now, you represent a number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay; in fact, you were there yesterday. Could you tell us briefly what the status is?
Ms. MACLEAN: The Center for Constitutional Rights directly represents a number of individuals - around eight - and we also have been involved in the coordination of the representation of the overwhelming majority of detainees at Guantanamo. And none of our clients are charged. We are hopeful that President Obama will implement a policy where individuals are either charged and tried in federal criminal courts, or released - either to their home countries or to safe third countries. And we hope that that happens sooner rather than later because indefinite attention for seven or more years is obviously unacceptable.
NORRIS: We have talked to people in the previous administration. We talked to John Dillinger yesterday, the legal adviser to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and he says this assumption that the detainees that have not yet been charged, the notion that they may have been swept up erroneously, is somewhat overblown, that some of these detainees have not been charged because there are questions about evidence, not because they did nothing wrong.
Ms. MACLEAN: Well, there have been approximately 800 individuals who have been detained at Guantanamo since its inception about seven years ago. About 500 of those individuals are released. And if you look at who is there at Guantanamo now and who was there before, you can see very clearly that an individual's fate right now, whether they're at Guantanamo or whether they were released long ago, has far more to do with their nationality than with anything else - certainly than with threat assessments. All the Europeans were among the first to be released from Guantanamo because the European countries said that it is unacceptable for our citizens to be detained in indefinite detention. On the other hand, we have 100 Yemenis who are in Guantanamo now. Yemenis are not being released because the U.S. hasn't come to an agreement with the Yemeni government to transfer the Yemenis. We have 60 individuals who are stuck there from countries that are human-rights abusing countries, who can't go to their home countries because of the fear of torture or persecution. So that's the reality, and I think where there are suggestions otherwise, it is just further justification for a system that President Obama has frankly said is an unacceptable system and that it doesn't - denies credibility to the United States.
NORRIS: Now, President Obama has said that this is an unacceptable system, but Emi, you no doubt are aware of a recent report that found that a certain percentage of the detainees that were released returned to either their home country or to the receiving country and quote, took up the fight again, meaning that they were once again involved in acts of terrorism. What would you say to that?
Ms. MACLEAN: I would say, actually, listen to the press conference and not just the headline. If you listen to the press conference, the Department of Defense spokesman who gave that report and said number of people returned to the fight, when he was asked who are those people, what are the details, he said, I don't have any details, I'm not prepared to respond to that. There are a very, very, very small number of individuals who may have engaged in any anti-American activities. Frankly, most of the people just want to get on with their lives and overcome the abuse that they have experienced.
NORRIS: Do the detainees at Guantanamo know that President Barack Obama has signed these orders calling for the closure of Guantanamo Bay?
Ms. MACLEAN: Well, one of the great ironies at Guantanamo is that I cannot tell you what the detainees have told me until that information gets declassified. So, I write down all of my notes, I transfer it to a secure facility, and a review team tells me what information I can actually talk about publicly, and what information I cannot talk about publicly.
NORRIS: Because you were there over the inauguration and a period when these orders were signed, if you can't talk about the conversation with the detainees, what is the mood like at Guantanamo right now?
Ms. MACLEAN: It's a good question, and I think, you know, the guards don't really talk about politics all that much; understandably, we're not really supposed to talk about politics with them. But, you know, there was someone who was responsible for changing the picture at Guantanamo from President Bush to President Obama, which I find quite significant. And the guards, especially, sensed that change is in the air. The sense that I get from detainees is that detainees at this point feel that they will believe things when they actually see it. So, there is, I think there is, you know, some sense that there is a greater possibility of the closure of Guantanamo now than there had been before. But there is also a caution, I think, about too much hope in a place like Guantanamo.
NORRIS: Emi MacLean is an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Thanks so much for coming in to talk to us.
Ms. MACLEAN: Thank you.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
At Tuesday's inaugural, as President Obama waited to be sworn in, we heard an all-star quartet play a piece written for the occasion by John Williams, "Air and Simple Gifts." It used the theme from an old Shaker song that Aaron Copland used in "Appalachian Spring."
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: Violinist Itzhak Perlman, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, pianist Gabriela Montero, and clarinetist Anthony McGill performed in the frigid midday air - or so it seemed. Now, it turns out that what people on the Mall and at home actually heard was a recording. Yo-Yo Ma is on the line from New York. Welcome back to the program.
Mr. YO-YO MA (Cellist): Yes. Hi, Robert. Thank you.
SIEGEL: And I just can't resist. I'm sorry. Say it ain't so, Yo-Yo.
Mr. MA: OK. I'll say it ain't so, but it is so, and I'll tell you this is standard operating procedure for the Marine Band that performs at every inaugural. And what they do is because it's on January 20th, you never know what the weather is going to be like. So we recorded on Sunday and on Monday, we had the - a sound check. So I think somewhere between that rehearsal and realizing that all of our instruments were not really functioning - in fact, during the sound check on the 19th, Gabriela would be playing the keys, and then the keys would just stay down.
SIEGEL: But was there - if I had been standing in the middle of the quarter during the programs, would I have heard an actual performance from the four of you or...
Mr. MA: You would have heard sounds from the monitors that were on the stage with us, and you would have thought that those sounds came straight from us.
SIEGEL: So you were not putting bow to string as you were doing this.
Mr. MA: We were.
SIEGEL: You were.
Mr. MA: If you put soap on the bow...
SIEGEL: Ah, I see.
Mr. MA: There is no friction.
SIEGEL: You had greased the bow.
Mr. MA: Because actually, usually rosin, which is, you know, the resin that you put on the horsehair of the bow, that friction, those little grains of resin is what makes the strings vibrate.
SIEGEL: I thought that I saw Gabriela Montero playing the keyboard. I mean...
Mr. MA: You did.
SIEGEL: Yes.
Mr. MA: And the piano technician was wonderful. Actually, he was able to decouple the keys from, actually, the hammers hitting, you know, the inside of the - the hammers hitting the strings. Hence, you have a silent piano.
SIEGEL: So what we saw, as we heard this very lovely recording of the John Williams piece, we saw an impeccable pantomime of the piece that the four of you were doing.
Mr. MA: Yeah. I think what you saw is what actually, routinely happens in film, and it's obviously standard for very large events where the unpredictability of whether - where you can't afford a mishap.
SIEGEL: Now, was there any discussion of whether there should be any tipping of the hand about what was going on here or any...
Mr. MA: I think - let me put it to you this way. If we had not done that, we would have had four and a half minutes of absolute disaster. Everything would have been out of tune. We would have had broken strings. Basically, you would have had a very poor, "American Idol "rendition of what, you know, what John Williams had created, which is a beautiful piece of music. And we really knew that our purpose there was to serve the moment just before the swearing-in of the president.
SIEGEL: Well, thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. MA: Robert, it's always a pleasure to talk with you.
SIEGEL: Yo-Yo Ma, thanks a lot.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. First this hour, we're going to hear about the woman who's replacing Hillary Clinton in the Senate, and we'll talk with a member of Congress who is not happy about that choice. Today, New York Governor David Paterson made his long-awaited announcement and he chose a relatively unknown Democrat. North Country Public Radio's Brian Mann has our story.
BRIAN MANN: Governor Paterson spent weeks sorting through a half-dozen high-profile candidates, including Caroline Kennedy and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. Speaking at a ceremony in Albany, Paterson said he's settled on Kirsten Gillibrand, a woman from upstate who could help knit New York together.
Governor PATERSON (New York): We have talked about how the downstate region often condescends to the upstate area. They will never condescend to Kirsten Gillibrand in the United States Senate.
MANN: As she stepped to the podium, Gillibrand seemed a little startled by her own, meteoric rise. A little over two years ago, she was a private attorney, albeit from a family with deep political connections.
Senator KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND: I realized that for many New Yorkers, this is the first time you've heard my name, and you don't know much about me. Over these next two years, you will get to know me but much more importantly, I will get to know you.
MANN: Gillibrand, who's 42 years old with two young children, appeared on stage with her husband and the phalanx of New York's top Democratic leadership, from Congresswoman Nita Lowey to Senator Charles Schumer.
Governor PATERSON: This morning, I spoke to a New York City journalist who said, why do we need someone from upstate? That got me angry. Upstate New York has 7 million people. It would be one of the 10 largest states without New York City and its surrounding suburbs.
MANN: That unified front up on the stage was necessary not just because Gillibrand is a newcomer who leapfrogged past other more senior Democrats. Her centrist political record has also raised alarms among some democratic constituencies. Hispanics were angered when she opposed issuing drivers licenses for undocumented workers; gun-control advocates are alarmed by her A-plus rating from the National Riffle Association. Gillibrand spoke directly to her critics, saying she would work to find compromise. But she repeated her support for gun rights.
Senator GILLIBRAND: My mom is probably the best shot in my family. You know, in upstate New York, you typically shoot the Thanksgiving turkey, so I've always wanted to protect hunters' rights because it's such an important part of our culture.
MANN: One Democratic lawmaker from Long Island, Caroline McCarthy, has already announced that she'll challenge Gillibrand in the primary before next year's special election. But one of the reasons Gillibrand's name rose to the top of Paterson's list was the fact that she's earned a reputation as a tough political fighter. Two years ago, she ran against a veteran upstate Republican, John Sweeney, hitting him hard with ads like this one, which compared her opponent to Joseph McCarthy.
(Soundbite of advertisement)
Mr. DAVID STRATHAIRN (Actor): Someone once stood up to the biggest bully America has ever known and asked, have you no decency sir?
MANN: Gillibrand won one of the nastiest campaigns in the country, scoring one of the biggest upsets. Governor Paterson, who will run for election next year, acknowledged today that he wants someone who can help Democrats like himself win outside of New York City.
Governor PATERSON: She goes into a district of the opposite party, she beats an over-20-year incumbent; she comes back the second time, she wins by 24 points.
MANN: Governor Paterson apologized for the apparently clumsy process that led to this pick. He also said publicly for the first time that he formally asked New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo not to seek the Senate seat. Paterson said that naming Cuomo would have started a new round of musical chairs in New York government at a time when the state faces a massive economic crisis. For NPR News, I'm Brian Mann in Albany, New York.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
As you heard, one New York Democrat has already said she'll challenge Kirsten Gillibrand for the Senate seat in 2010, and that's Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, and she joins us now. Welcome to the program.
Congresswoman CAROLYN MCCARTHY (New York): Thank you very much for having me on.
NORRIS: Why are you so strongly opposed to this appointment?
Congresswoman MCCARTHY: Well, number one, we are New Yorkers, and I do believe that having somebody that's going to be the NRA poster child is not the right way to send a message to the rest of the country. I certainly have been fighting against gun violence for 15 years, now and I think that we had many, many qualified people that could have taken this seat, and I'm very disappointed that the governor has picked her.
NORRIS: Well, pardon me for reaching into your history here, but you have long been a vigorous supporter of gun control. Your husband was killed and your son was terribly injured on a commuter train shooting back in 1993. This sounds like it's a very emotional issue for you.
Congresswoman MCCARTHY: It is an emotional issue, and I think that's where the politicians are having a very hard time understanding on why I'm doing what I'm doing right now. This is personal to me, and I think that, you know, when you look at New York State and you look at the work that I've been working with on - Mayor Bloomberg and certainly every other governor since Governor Cuomo trying to reduce gun violence - so to have someone that basically is a NRA poster child, I feel it's a slap not only in my face but certainly, the face of many victims here in New York and across the country. Now, my colleagues are from the Senate side, and now I'm getting calls from the leadership side saying that I should give her a chance. Well, I certainly will always give everybody a chance, and I certainly will be looking at every vote that she makes between now and a year from now.
NORRIS: Do you think that Kirsten Gillibrand would accept your characterization of her as an NRA poster child? She received praise from the podium at today's press briefing by Robert Gibbs at the White House.
Congresswoman MCCARTHY: Well, yes, absolutel,y and what do you expect for a politician to do? Of course, they were all going to say yes, she's going to be the next senator - she is the next senator from New York. The only one who's probably going to get hurt on this is certainly from me speaking out. Obviously, I have ticked off a number of senators, and now I've ticked off my own leadership and certainly, I'm sure Governor Paterson is not happy with me. But this is beyond politics. This is personal for me. I represent the voice for victims across this country, and I felt very strongly that my voice had to be heard on this issue.
NORRIS: I just want to reach into the future because you say that you plan to challenge her. Let's say this is 2010; what do you have to offer that she doesn't as a politician?
Congresswoman MCCARTHY: I have a lot to offer. I mean, people throughout New York know me to be an honest person. They see me fighting for the average person on a daily basis, and they see that I tell people how it is. If I'm wrong on a vote, I will come out and say hey, I made a mistake. I know that when I came into Congress, I have a plate here and in D.C. that says integrity. And I liked who I was when I came to Congress, and I'm going to like who I am when I leave Congress. I'm not your typical politician, I understand that, and that's OK with me. There are worse things that can happen to one's life than lose an election.
NORRIS: Congresswoman McCarthy, thank you very much for taking time to talk to us. All the best to you.
Congresswoman MCCARTHY: Thank you so much for having me.
NORRIS: That's Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy of New York, a Democrat.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich kicked off a media blitz today, a preemptive strike before his impeachment trial next week. The trial in the Illinois Senate stems from charges of corruption against the Democratic governor. Blagojevich held a news conference today and told his story on talk radio programs in Chicago. The governor continues to maintain that he's done nothing wrong, as NPR's David Schaper reports.
(Soundbite of radio broadcast)
Mr. DON WADE (Talk show host, WLS-AM Chicago): The governor has arrived and welcome, governor.
Governor ROD BLAGOJEVICH (Illinois): Good morning Don. Good morning, Roma.
Ms. ROMA WADE (Talk show host, WLS-AM Chicago): It's great to have you here.
DAVID SCHAPER: Governor Rod Blagojevich started his day on talk radio on the morning show hosted by the husband and wife team of Don Wade and Roma on WLS in Chicago. And he portrayed himself as the victim in this vast public-corruption scandal.
Governor ROD BLAGOJEVICH (Illinois): There are several elements to an experience like this that's painful and very unfortunate and sad, and the silence of some of your friends, the silence of political allies who the day before all this came down, which we call our personal Pearl Harbor Day.
SCHAPER: Blagojevich says for him and his family, what happened on December 9th, when the FBI arrested him at his home, is similar to what the entire country felt December 7th, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He says just as the U.S. prevailed in World War II, he will prevail. In addition to seeking sympathy, the governor is launching a counterattack on the state senators who will put him on trial next week and could remove him from office. In his news conference, Blagojevich sharply criticized the rules lawmakers adopted for the impeachment trial as unfair, and he called the trial a sham. And in making that case, the governor invoked his fondness for old Western movies.
Gov. BLAGOJEVICH: There was an old saying in the Old West. There was a cowboy who was charged with stealing a horse in town, and some of the other cowboys, especially the guy whose horse was stolen, were very unhappy with that guy. One of the cowboys said, let's hang him. And the other cowboy said, hold on; before we hang him, let's first give him a fair trial, then we'll hang him. Under these rules, I'm not even getting a fair trial. They're just hanging me.
SCHAPER: Blagojevich contends the impeachment trial rules deny him his right to call certain witnesses, and he claims the rules allow the Senate to accept the Illinois House's impeachment charges against him as fact, and not as allegations. He says he and his lawyers will boycott the trial. Blagojevich says there is a reason both his fellow Democrats and Republicans in the Illinois legislature want him out of office.
Gov. BLAGOJEVICH: Political figures in Illinois are just waiting to get me out of the way to raise the income tax by either 66 percent or 33 percent during a time of economic depression.
SCHAPER: Republican State Senator Matt Murphy calls the governor's news conference theater of the absurd, and a cynical attempt to undermine the impeachment process. He says the governor is misrepresenting the rules, rules he says are fair and patterned after former President Bill Clinton's impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, which Murphy notes resulted in an acquittal. A federal judge ruled late Friday, senators will be allowed to hear excerpts of some of Governor Blagojevich's conversations that were secretly recorded by the FBI, and allegedly include him discussing schemes to sell or trade his official duties for personal gain. And in another late-breaking development, Blagojevich's lead criminal defense attorney, Ed Genson, says he is now planning to withdraw from the governor's case.
Mr. ED GENSON (Defense Attorney): I never require a client to do what I say, but I do require them to at least listen to what I say.
SCHAPER: Genson says he's not been privy to recent discussions between Blagojevich and other defense lawyers about how to fight the impeachment trial. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The state of Colorado has a new senator. Yesterday, Michael Bennet was sworn in to replace Ken Salazar, who's taken the job of secretary of the Interior. Bennet is 44 years old; he's worked as a lawyer and businessman, and since 2005 as Denver's superintendent of schools. He won national attention for his efforts to turn around the city's most underperforming schools, but he's never been elected to public office. I talked to Mr. Bennet just before he was sworn in, and I asked if he's breaking new ground going from superintendent to senator.
Senator MICHAEL BENNET (Colorado): Somebody told me the other day that the last one was Strom Thurman, who apparently served as an elected superintendent of schools in his home state.
NORRIS: I guess since you're coming to the senate straight from the Denver school system, there is an assumption that schools will top your agenda, that education issues, at least, will top your agenda. Is that true?
Senator BENNET: Well, I'm certainly extremely interested in education reform, but that's only one of a number of issues that I'm going to be working on, and whether or not it's a lead issue will depend a lot, I think, on my committee assignments. But it's certainly the - what I've learned from the teachers and the principals in Denver and across the state is something that I want to carry to the people that will be working here on education.
NORRIS: One of the things that is certain to come up is the reauthorization for No Child Left Behind. For most senators, this is something that they understand largely through reading briefing books. This is something that you've actually lived. Do you agree with many of your Democrats that this is a program that needs to be ended, or is it possibly something that perhaps just needs to be mended? Are there some benefits to the No Child Left Behind program?
Senator BENNET: I'm much more in the mended category than the ended category, and I'll tell you why. The best thing I can say about No Child Left Behind, and I believe this is true, is that it's called the nation's attention to the enormous gaps that exist in this country between kids that are poor and kids that are middle-class. Right now, I think it's too much of a blunt instrument that is focused very much on labeling schools but hasn't given people solutions to be able to make them better. And that's what I think the administration is committed to.
NORRIS: Now, if we listen closely, you might hear the sighs of disappointment from educators all across the country who thought that maybe you, if anyone, would raise sharp questions about No Child Left Behind, people who've been complaining about this for years.
Senator BENNET: I do have very sharp questions. I don't think people in our schools object to external accountability, and I think they see the purpose for it. They're just asking for something that makes sense. And most places across the country right now are comparing apples and oranges, they're asking this question: How did this year's fourth graders do compared to last year's fourth graders? The question we need to be asking is: How did this group of fifth graders do compared to how they did as fourth graders last year? It needs to be much more focused on growth, and I think educators are right to say that many of our kids start very far behind, and we need to find a way to acknowledge the growth that kids have. And it's only if you start to measure like that that we're going to start to see progress.
NORRIS: Michael Bennet, as an appointee, you're in an unusual position. You have been named to fill Senator Ken Salazar's seat, and then you're up for election in 2010. And there are some in your state that are a little bit concerned about this, worried that you'll be, by necessity, trying to build a name and a reputation and a portfolio that will help you run and win in 2010. And the worry is that you might, in some cases, be in a position where you will choose politics over principle.
Senator BENNET: Well, I think that that won't be the case. I'm not surprised that there might be people who hold that view. First of all, if I can be half as good as Senator Ken Salazar, I think we're all going to be just fine. The other thing that I'm doing is trying to make sure that the transition for the people of Colorado is as smooth as possible. That's the most important thing for me to do, is to represent our people well. And I think the politics will take care of themselves.
NORRIS: Yeah, I've talked to Senator Salazar about his frustrations in trying to maintain a connection with his constituents because Colorado is a good distance from Washington, D.C. As someone - as a superintendent who tried hard to maintain a connection with students and teachers, you were known as someone who would visit schools, walk the halls - how do you try to do that, to maintain sort of a personal connection with your constituents when you're here in D.C.?
Senator BENNET: I think it's really important, and I've got to do exactly the same thing here. It is going to be a challenge, but that's work that will never feel to me like wasted time. Every time that I've spent - had a chance to talk to people actually doing the work, I learned from that. We were able to readjust our reform and make it make more sense, and that's what the people of Colorado expect from me. And my hope is that by the time this two years is over, they're so tired of me, they're willing to send me back to Washington.
NORRIS: Michael Bennet, it's been good to talk to you. Thanks so much for making time for us.
Senator BENNET: Thank you. I appreciate it.
NORRIS: That's Michael Bennet, Democrat of Colorado.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host,
The latest major company to announce job cuts is an iconic one. Harley-Davidson says it will close plants and cut about 1,100 jobs over the next two years. Today's announcement is expected to hit hardest in the motorcycle company's home city of Milwaukee. And from Milwaukee, Chuck Quirmbach of Wisconsin Public Radio, sent us this story.
CHUCK QUIRMBACH: During its 106 years in business, Harley-Davidson has survived the Great Depression, several recessions and stiff foreign competition. Still, the firm has enjoyed strong sales for most of the last 25 years with large and dedicated groups, happy to ride their bikes and wear their Harley colors. But domestic sales of Harley's have been sliding over the last year or so. At the same time, the foreign market has fallen off. Harley spokesman Bob Klein says while the company still posted a profit of $654 million last year, job cuts are necessary.
Mr. BOB KLEIN (Spokesman, Harley-Davidson): We are making the moves that we announced today to deal with the current economy and what we see for the year ahead, as well as to right-size the business going forward.
QUIRMBACH: Harley plans to cut production by 13 percent this year. To do that, it'll combine two engine plants, close a Wisconsin parts distribution center, and cut some jobs in Pennsylvania. Harley workers contacted for the story say they were advised not to talk to the media today. But dealers and customers did talk about the dent in Harley's carefree image.
(Soundbite of engine starting)
QUIRMBACH: The house of Harley-Davidson in suburban Milwaukee services and sells hundreds of motorcycles a year, including the Street Glide model. Goran Zadrima is the sales manager here, and says the slide in sales during this recession is worrisome.
Mr. GORAN ZADRIMA (Sales Manager, Milwaukee House of Harley-Davidson): Everybody at this point, everywhere freaking out, everything is slow. But I think also has lot to do with how you set up your attitude towards that. If we go after every customer and do the right thing and - I think we'll be fine.
QUIRMBACH: But because Harley finances more than half of all bikes it sells, some of the financial pain comes from customers not paying their loans. With the average cost of a bike at about $15,000, monthly loans can pinch the family budget. Even so, this dealership plans to increase it sales force in the spring, hoping the upper-middle-class customers it depends on will keep buying. As she left the store this morning, Rayland Foitte(ph) clutched her bag of Harley jewelry and said, she's not giving up on Harley- Davidson.
Ms. RAYLAND FOITTE (Customer, Harley-Davidson): Because I've been riding for 10 years and like the culture, like the people that we've - meet, that we meet so I want to help Harley keep their jobs.
QUIRMBACH: The expected loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs does mean more financial pain for the Milwaukee area, which still has an unemployment rate below the national average. Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett says the Harley layoffs will hurt but that the local economy is resilient.
Mayor TOM BARRETT (Milwaukee): This is a blow. I'm not going to disguise this and say it's not a blow. But I believe that because we have so many different sectors in this economy, that we will not be hit as hard as other parts of this country.
QUIRMBACH: But Mayor Barrett says he isn't sure just how quickly laid-off motorcycle workers will be able to switch to building the very roads and bridges that those still riding Harley-Davidsons will need. For NPR News, I'm Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. In this first part of the program, we're going to hear from Bill Gates about the state of his foundation, and about complications with President Obama's strict new ethics rules.
SIEGEL: First, to the president's efforts to build a bipartisan support for a massive economic stimulus package. Mr. Obama met today with lawmakers from both parties. Some Republicans have voiced concern about the size and the shape of the stimulus. They want less government spending and more tax cuts. After the meeting, both sides said they expect to have a bill ready for the president's signature by mid-February. And joining us now from the White House is NPR's Scott Horsley. Hi, Scott.
SCOTT HORSLEY: Good to be with you, Robert.
SIEGEL: Tell us about the meeting first.
HORSLEY: This was called a working meeting. The president said he wanted to hear lawmakers' ideas for the stimulus - including those Republicans who've complained about being left out of the drafting process. The GOP lawmakers came armed with their own suggestions for boosting the economy, mostly in the shape of tax cuts. And the president acknowledged at the top of the meeting, but tried to downplay, the differences around the table, saying were united in their commitment to getting something done quickly. After the meeting, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she expects to see more bipartisanship, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said he does expect to see a bill passed by that self-imposed deadline of the President's Day weekend.
SIEGEL: Mr. Obama also said today that the stimulus package is just one of several measures that'll be needed to prop up the economy and the financial system. What else is he talking about there?
HORSLEY: That's right. He's been monitoring the economic news, and it's not been good. We had another bad report on initial unemployment claims this week and a sharp drop in housing starts. So besides pumping money into the economy to try to create jobs, the government also plans to funnel more money into the financial system to try to unstick those clogged credit markets. And the president expressed frustration today with reports that some of the companies that got taxpayer money from the first half of that $700 billion financial rescue plan were spending money on things like office renovation. So he wants to make sure the second half of that rescue money is spent very differently. And finally, he wants changes in the way the financial system is regulated so that we don't find ourselves in this situation again.
SIEGEL: Now, I wonder. Are there any things that the president can do to deal with the economy that are comparable to the kind of executive orders he can issue in other matters like dealing with detainees, say, or policy on birth- control projects?
HORSLEY: Yeah, it's a good point. You know, the government is obviously much more directly involved in the economy than it used to be, but this is not like closing the prison at Guantanamo. With a stroke of a pen, the president can close a prison, but he can't open a factory. He can't order Harley- Davidson to keep workers on the payroll. He can't even necessarily carrel the Democratic Congress to follow his ideas about the stimulus package. So he is sort of doing what he did during the campaign. He's trying to persuade lawmakers and trying to build confidence in the American people, while at the same time cautioning that the economy is likely to get worse before it gets better.
SIEGEL: I saw you ask at today's White House briefing about these new briefings that the president is getting on the economy. Tell us about that.
HORSLEY: Yes. He's asked to be briefed every day by his economic adviser Larry Summers in a way that's similar to the intelligence briefing he gets every day. Of course, the economic news, unlike the intelligence briefing, is not top secret. He could probably learn the same thing just by looking at the front of the business section. This is, in some ways, just a symbolic way to let the American people know that the president is on top of the economic news, and this is an important part of his day.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Scott.
HORSLEY: My pleasure.
SIEGEL: It's NPR's Scott Horsley, speaking to us from the White House.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Finally this hour, some inside baseball. In a big win for the Dodgers, Eamon Lewis Turner entered the world yesterday. His dad, a passionate Dodgers fan, is our producer Cory Turner. Congratulations to Cory and his wife, Rachel.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And Thomas Richard Argroves may be the world's newest Braves fan. In fact, his parents, our producer Melissa Gray and her husband, James, had some of their first dates at Braves games. Thomas was born last Saturday. Congratulations to Melissa and Jimmy.
NORRIS: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
If we're about to enter the age of responsibility, it might be fun, we thought, to trip through the lanes where the age of irresponsibility began. Celebrity coverage and individual excess reigned supreme.
(Soundbite of music)
LYDEN: It was the '20s in London, the age of the titled people behaving badly. They lived large and furnished the press with a stream of snippets and invented youth culture. They were called the Bright Young People. That's the name of author D.J. Taylor's new book, and he joins us now. Welcome, David Taylor.
Mr. DAVID J. TAYLOR (Author, "Bright Young People"): Hello, very nice to talk to you.
LYDEN: Tell us more about the Bright Young People. You called them "gilded triflers." And they come to the fore after World War I is over.
Mr. TAYLOR: They do. And they are a very curious and eclectic set of people. Some of them were very aristocratic, very wealthy young men and women with no particular need to earn a living. Some of them were much more what we would call middle-class adventurers, people like Evelyn Waugh and Cecil Beaton...
LYDEN: The writer and photographer.
Mr. TAYLOR: That's right. That climbed onto the backs of the Bright Young People to accelerate their careers. And beneath this, you have a level of what I would call almost very bohemian people - artists and minor writers who were patronized by their sort of wealthier sponsors. And it's a very, very interesting group. And they were all people - certainly the men were people who were just too young to fight in the First World War and whose brothers, perhaps, or whose fathers had fought in it. Through all the frivolity and all the sparkle, it was a very pessimistic age that was always looking over its shoulder at the black dog trailing it, so to speak.
LYDEN: Tell us about this scene that they inhabited - the scavenger hunts they had, the car chases at midnight, the balls.
Mr. TAYLOR: Like most youth movements, it all started with just a small group of friends who were setting out to enjoy themselves, simply decided they wanted to pass the later part of the evening by having a treasure hunt. They would be given a list of items to collect. And as they were all terribly well-connected and knew everybody in upper British society, these items would be things like the Prime Minister's pipe or a pair of corsets belonging to a celebrated actress. And they would be sent off to gather them. And by the mid-1920s, when the newspapers had taken it up in a big way, then gradually the movement spread out beyond central London.
LYDEN: Newspapers embraced them. It's a symbiotic relationship.
Mr. TAYLOR: Oh, absolutely. I'm very suspicious of what might be called historical fast-forwarding, you know, of only looking at the past if it seems of any relevance to our own contemporary arrangements. But I've always thought that when you look at the 1920s - the 1920s in Britain - you can see the very beginnings of what we would call modern celebrity culture in that there were the - it was the beginning of the "it" girl. There were several British "it" girls. There was a marvelous woman called - well, not marvelous. She died a very tragic death. Brenda Dean Paul - she was known as the society drug addict. She was an "it" girl.
And they were famous merely for being famous. Their lives were followed on an almost daily basis by the society newspapers. And so when, for example, Brenda Dean Paul was on one of her drunk escapades, there would be newspaper headlines on every corner simply saying, "Brenda Jailed Again," or, you know, "Brenda In Trouble." And everybody would immediately have known who Brenda was and sort of followed her career. And as you say, it was a symbiotic relationship. And I think, as I said, that we can see the sort of glimmerings of the celebrity culture that now seems to rule the western half of the planet.
LYDEN: So how did the public react to these flamboyantly excessive displays?
Mr. TAYLOR: It was, I think, very sort of subtly nuanced in a way, because on the one hand, newspapers and their proprietors were very interested in youth. Newspapers were changing. They were becoming brighter and more brasher and much less staid than they had before the First World War. And on the one hand, people wanted to be titillated. They wanted to read about extravagance. They wanted to read about frivolity, about extraordinary parties that went on until 3 o'clock in the morning where all the food was either red or white. So you had - you know, you ate lobsters and strawberries on the one hand and chicken and sort of lemon puddings on the other. They wanted to have a kind of vicarious satisfaction out of this. And yet as soon as it went too far, when it was thought that people had overstepped the mark, then they wanted to disapprove of it. So there's a lot of sort of residual English Puritanism involved as well when they did something disreputable.
LYDEN: There are enduring works of art that come out of this period. On the cover of your book, just to name one, you've got a picture of Cecil Beaton's sister dressed as a shooting star. And she's so beautiful.
Mr. TAYLOR: Oh, she's extraordinarily beautiful. Yes, I mean, the thing is that the Bright Young People began to be memorialized in quite serious works of art and fiction from a very, very early stage. I mean, the classic text is Evelyn Waugh's "Vile Bodies" which pretty much dramatizes the sort of social life he was living in the late 1920s and in addition puts a lot of the Bright Young People in it.
LYDEN: I want to tell you, I actually posses a copy of "Vile Bodies" by Evelyn Waugh, but I couldn't get my hands on it last night, so I went and called the local library. And they said that "Vile Bodies," that there were 17 people ahead of me for that novel. I couldn't believe it.
Mr. TAYLOR: It's extraordinary, isn't it, to think that a book that Waugh wrote very, very quickly in late 1929 should be so extraordinarily popular nearly 80 years later? But I think this thing has an extraordinarily enduring fascination. It's the idea of sort of slightly depraved and debauched young people having a wonderful time while the economic recession is looming. There they all are sort of playing away as the Titanic is beginning to sink beneath them. And there's a kind of - it does turn, I think, into a kind of morality tale.
LYDEN: Author, D. J. Taylor. His new book is called, "Bright Young People: The Lost Generation of London's Jazz Age." D.J. Taylor, thank you very much.
Mr. TAYLOR: Thank you.
LYDEN: And if you want to see this era depicted on the big screen, you can check out the 2003 film "Bright Young Things" which happens to be written and directed by Stephen Fry. And it's also where you can hear more of this toe-tapping jazz.
(Soundbite of jazz music)
LYDEN: Book reviewer Troy Patterson calls "Bright Young People" a lasting party favorite. Read the full review on our Web site, npr.org.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
Tomorrow at Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the American Symphony Orchestra will perform an unusual program of works from East Germany, the other Germany. Most of these works will be U.S. premieres. The composers and their works are unknown to most Americans with one exception - the hauntingly beautiful strains of the East German national anthem. NPR's Margo Adler has more.
MARGO ADLER: Leon Botstein, the musical director of the American Symphony Orchestra since 1991, says he had the idea for a concert focusing on East Germany after he saw two films: the searing drama "The Lives of Others" and the brilliant comedy "Goodbye, Lenin." And he thought...
Mr. LEON BOTSTEIN (Musical Director, American Symphony Orchestra): Can we give a concert that is a kind of musical equivalent of these two very popular films? What can we retrieve from obviously a terrible repressive regime? What can we retrieve from the East German tradition that is worth remembering?
ADLER: And Botstein reminds us that the German Democratic Republic had a great musical life.
Mr. BOTSTEIN: Fantastic publishing houses. You know, some of the best editions of the classical works. And fantastic orchestras - the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Austrian Dresden. The Opera House in Berlin under Felsenstein was, you know, clearly one of the great innovative theaters in opera theater. And there was a kind of flourishing musical life that sustained itself all the way through.
ADLER: And while much of East German culture has been seen as tainted because of the huge presence of the Stazi, the secret police, music is often politically ambiguous. Someone like Shostakovich in the Soviet Union could be loved by the authorities most of the time, but still have messages for dissidents.
Mr. BOTSTEIN: So, music has a way of pleasing the authorities and telling the truth at the same time. So the question was, is there East German music that qualifies in this way?
ADLER: He picked five composers, some dead, some still living and working in a unified Germany. He starts with the most well-known in this country, Hanns Eisler. Eisler lived in the United States, wrote film scores for Hollywood. Like Kurt Weill, he wrote songs with Bertolt Brecht and the music for many Brecht plays. He was deported after his brother, Gerhardt Eisler, fingered as a Communist agent, fled this county. The piece is the "Goethe Rhapsody," which sets poetry from the second part of Faust to music. This is a rehearsal without the singer.
(Soundbite of orchestral piece "Goethe Rhapsody")
ADLER: Eisler had studied 12-tone music with Schoenberg, but the question he wrestled with his whole life was how to write good music that is also accessible and popular, a middle road between the arcane and kitsch. In this piece, says Botstein, he puts everything in there.
Mr. BOTSTEIN: He quotes from Mozart. He has jazz in there. He's got salon music. He's got agitprop music in there in a beautiful orchestral setting of Goethe. So he's taking the highest most arcane poetry in all of German language and setting it into this very populist, lovely, accessible sound, beautifully written.
ADLER: The most important piece in the repertoire is probably "Responso" by Siegfried Matthus. It contains very modern music.
(Soundbite of orchestral piece "Responso")
ADLER: But its' third movement seems to reference Bach, who hailed from that part of Germany.
(Soundbite of orchestral piece "Responso")
ADLER: Botstein says that for most artists in the West there is a premium on being different and original, and a real gap between popular culture and high art.
Mr. BOTSTEIN: East Germany and the Communist regimes believed something different. They believed Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach were for the masses and the masses would love them. Therefore, the modern music always made reference to tradition. Eisler quotes Mozart. Matthus quotes Bach. What's great about these pieces is they never forget the audience. They are writing for someone who is actually listening.
ADLER: There is one piece in this concert program that is familiar to millions.
(Soundbite of the national anthem of the German Democratic Republic)
ADLER: It's by Hanns Eisler. ..TEXT: (Soundbite of the national anthem of the German Democratic Republic)
ADLER: It's the national anthem of the German Democratic Republic. When I asked Botstein if such a piece, however beautiful - some have called it one of the most beautiful national anthems ever written - can ever be disassociated with the repression of East Germany and the memories of East German athletes on steroids on the Olympic podium? He says we live in a world of collective Alzheimer's. People's memories are very short.
(Soundbite of the national anthem of the German Democratic Republic)
ADLER: It will probably take a long while, but it could happen. Margot Adler, NPR News, New York.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Jacki Lyden. The space shuttle has been flying for more than a quarter of a century. Its boxy, white shape, and bright orange fuel tank are instantly recognizable. But NASA is scheduled to retire its aging fleet of shuttles next year, and the space agency wants to replace them with something totally different - a small crew capsule that will perch on the top of a long, skinny rocket. Think of it as the supermodel version of the space shuttle. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce spoke with some NASA workers who are getting ready for its first test flight.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Bob Ess is standing in an aircraft hangar at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia. He says back when the space shuttle made its first flight, he was a high school student.
Mr. ROBERT ESS (Manager, Ares I-X Mission, Langley Research Center, NASA): The shuttle flew in April of '81, and I was watching it. I was obsessed with it for months and months before that.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Now the shuttle's replacement is about to make its first test flight. It's just months away. And again, Bob Ess is obsessed. But this time, it's his job to be. He's the manager of a NASA mission called Ares I-X. Ares I is the name of the rocket that will carry a crew capsule into space. The X stands for experimental.
Mr. ESS: This is the first time that NASA's gone through and done an unmanned test flight in a long, long time, since the Apollo era.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says, when the space shuttle blasted off for the first time, there were two people inside.
Mr. ESS: So that was unprecedented for something like that. But there really was no other way to do it. The space shuttle required a lot of human intervention to fly it, and we needed people inside to actually do it.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This time, the crew capsule will be empty during the first takeoff. The capsule is really just a carefully engineered dummy. It's here in the hangar along with Jonathan Cruz who worked to build it.
Mr. JONATHAN CRUZ (Project Manager and Engineer, Langley Research Center, NASA): There is no crew intended to fly, and this is a pure experimental craft that its only passenger are sensors.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He points to the sensors. They're all over the outside of the white, bell-shaped capsule. At the moment, they're covered up with bits of bright blue tape.
But when this thing's on top of the rocket, somebody's going to pull off the blue tape?
Mr. CRUZ: Absolutely.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Hopefully, hopefully someone will remember.
Mr. CRUZ: That is on a checklist - remove prior to flight.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: All around us, workers are getting this capsule ready to be shipped down to Kennedy Space Center in a big military plane. There it will join other pieces of hardware - some real, some just fake stand-ins. Bob Ess says if all goes well, this spring workers will stack them all up to create a rocket that stands over 320 feet tall.
Mr. ESS: This vehicle is almost twice as tall as the space shuttle.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: But it's not fat like the shuttle with its fuel tank and booster rockets. The widest part of Ares-I is only about 18 feet in diameter.
Mr. ESS: So it's very long and it's very thin. In fact it's the longest, thinnest rocket that's ever been flown. And it's part of our test is to see if a very long, skinny and therefore somewhat flexible vehicle, can our flight control system and our control nozzle really control it the way that we think we can?
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The test is scheduled for July. The flight will only last about two minutes, and the capsule isn't going to go into orbit. Jonathan Cruz says it will plunge down into the ocean and won't be recovered.
Mr. CRUZ: Two years of work and we give it to the fish.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: What the engineers will get is real world data. Bob Ess says even though the test is short, it will show how the overall design responds to the stress of takeoff.
Mr. ESS: The hardest part of space flight is the first two minutes, going through the atmosphere. When it gets high enough, then a lot of things get a lot easier.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: The idea is that this test flight will be followed by several more, with the first astronauts flying in their new vehicle around 2015. But with a new president and a new administration in Washington, it's not clear if that plan will change or how many Americans would even notice if it did. Bob Ess says even some members of his own family were perplexed at first to hear what he's been working on.
Mr. ESS: It's hard to explain going from a space shuttle to this new vehicle. Our minds are so used to the space shuttle for 20 years and before that Apollo.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: So when he tells people that NASA is working to replace the shuttle with a new rocket, he says their main reaction is surprise. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
There was The Who and the rock opera "Tommy." There was Tom Waits with "The Black Rider" and Elton John with "Aida." But when Duncan Sheik's sensitive crooning climbed the charts in the early '90s, you wouldn't have assumed he'd follow the rock opera route.
(Soundbite of song "Barely Breathing") ..TEXT: Mr. DUNCAN SHEIK: (Singing) 'Cause I am barely breathing and I can't find the air...
LYDEN: Sheik's hit single "Barely Breathing" propelled him to fame back in 1996, when the song began an amazing 55-week run on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. But over the past two years, it's his work as a composer that put him back on top. Sheik's rock musical, "Spring Awakening," has earned him a whole new horde of devoted teenage fans, not to mention eight Tony Awards.
(Soundbite of song "Mamma Who Bore Me")
Ms. IRIS WATTS: (Singing) Mama who bore me? Mama who gave me no way to handle things, who made me so sad...
LYDEN: Good things can't last forever, especially in this economic climate. "Spring Awakening" closed on Broadway this month, some say ahead of its time. But Duncan Sheik has another rock musical waiting in the wings called "Whisper House." The show was set to premiere at a Delaware theater this year, but the run was canceled because of finances before it even opened. So on Tuesday Duncan Sheik will release "Whisper House" as a solo album - his first since 2006. Duncan Sheik joins us from the studios of member station KPCW in Park City, Utah. Thanks for being with us, especially when you're at Sundance.
Mr. DUNCAN SHEIK (Singer; Composer): Thank you so much. It's great to be here. I just snowboarded off the mountain into the radio studio, so that worked out well.
LYDEN: Oh, we love that event. We'll see you snowboard out. So listen, you started out in the '90s, you know, with "Barely Breathing," which was an astonishing feat for its longevity on the charts. But now people are recognizing you for something so different - musical theater. How do you make the transition?
Mr. SHEIK: Well, what happened for me is that in, let's say, 1999 - if you remember, that was when Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys kind of happened in the culture. And so, the music that I was doing really didn't have a lot of kinship with that other kind of pop music. So while on the one hand, I was like, musical theater wasn't my real house either at all, I was definitely ready to try something new and different.
(Soundbite of song from the album "Whisper House")
Mr. SHEIK: (Singing) Here are your lines. Now stick to the page. Like the wise men say, Sll the word's a stage.
LYDEN: So, "Whisper House" is an unusual story. This is a story about a young boy - Duncan Sheik, right - during the Second World War. His father has been shot down by a Japanese pilot, and he's sent to live with his spinster aunt in a haunted lighthouse in Maine. Now, how did that capture your attention?
Mr. SHEIK: You know, I grew up on Hilton Head, South Carolina, and the logo of Hilton Head is this big red-and-white lighthouse that as a kid I was running up and down all the time. And then also, you know, when I was 10 or 11 years old, myself and my group of friends would go over to Daufuskie Island on little camping trips. And one or the other of our parents would tell these ghost stories and try and completely freak us out. And so this idea of doing something with lighthouses and ghosts actually seemed very natural to me.
LYDEN: Bright memories of being terrified by the campfire.
Mr. SHEIK: Yeah.
LYDEN: Let's listen to a song from "Whisper House" called "We're Here to Tell You."
(Soundbite of song "We're Here to Tell You")
Mr. SHEIK: (Singing) We're here to tell you, ghosts are here for good. Even if it doesn't terrify you, it should, it should.
LYDEN: Now, most of this narrative is being sung by the ghosts. And I love that idea, but I also wondered why. Why an all-ghost chorus?
Mr. SHEIK: "Chorus" is a good word because the ghosts operate in a certain way as a kind of a Greek chorus. They're kind of commenting on the pathos of the lives of these human beings that they're kind of watching. I think the ghosts really are the manifestation of Christopher's internal fears, and so...
LYDEN: That's the little boy in this piece.
Mr. SHEIK: That's the protagonist of the piece. And they're kind of whimsically malevolent. And they'll sing songs like "It's Better to be Dead" and "We're Here to Tell You There is Such a Thing as Ghosts" and lots of other things to be afraid of. And so, we're kind of playing with this idea of what it means to be terrified. And, you know, if you're constantly living in fear, then it's very easy for other people to control you and it's very difficult to have agency(ph) yourself and to act responsibly in the right kind of enlightened way. And I think those are the kind of the deeper themes that are operating in the piece.
LYDEN: Let's hear another track from the CD. And this one is called "It's Better to be Dead."
(Soundbite of song "It's Better to be Dead")
Mr. SHEIK: (Singing) I present to you a story set upon the northern shore. The denizens of lighthouse during times of war, The foolish things they did, the foolish things they said, I'm sure you will agree they would be better off dead.
LYDEN: Now, "Whisper House" takes place in the U.S. during World War II. Your earlier work, "Spring Awakening," was set in late 19th century Germany. What appeals to you about these historical settings?
Mr. SHEIK: When you see a story set in a timeframe different from your own, you're kind of - you look at the world through this other lens, and it's actually, it's very enlightening. You kind of cast this light back on your own time, and I think you're able to see things differently about the reality in which you live. And also there's a richness to different time periods that I think can create something visually exciting onstage.
Certainly, in the case of "Spring Awakening," you had this very kind of stark straight-jacketed kind of woolen breeches German Lutheran environment, you know, during the scenes. And then that allowed you to have this huge shift when the songs happened and they pull microphones out of their jacket and there was neon lights and there's rock music, you know.
So that - you can play with these different aesthetic styles and create something that I think is really visually exciting. I think this idea of having a lighthouse in Maine in the 1940s, you know, there's something really bleak about that. But then when you open up and there's music and people in costumes in the context of this bleak environment, there's a lot of visual fun to be had.
LYDEN: One of the songs from it, "Whisper House," has been made into an animated music video. And that tells the story that kind of precedes the show. I'd like to listen to that with you. It's called "Earthbound Starlight." It's a really great music video.
(Soundbite of song "Earthbound Starlight")
Mr. SHEIK: (Singing) I can't dry your eyes. Say it's all right even though he might, Snd she can't kiss your cheek as the days become weeks.
LYDEN: Now, this is very interesting. You were meant to stage all of this as a musical. I mean, my understanding is that you were pretty much all the way there, but when that didn't work out, you released this as a CD and a music video. And of course, we're wondering if that is intended to help create an audience for the musical when it does get staged?
Mr. SHEIK: This used to happen quite often in musical theater where they put out the record and then later the stage production would happen, and then the people who went to go see the show would know the music already because they'd already gotten the album. So there is a kind of a precedent for this. And, you know, I was going to put out the record no matter what happened with the stage piece because, well, it was just time for me to put out a record. And, you know, I was really happy with how the material turned out.
LYDEN: So what's next after Sundance? Any other projects in the works?
Mr. SHEIK: Well, yes. Steven Sater and I have two other musicals that are very long in development. One of them is an adaptation of "The Nightingale," which is a Hans Christian Andersen short story. And then the other one is about Nero, the Emperor Nero, and it's extremely debauched and intense and, you know, I shouldn't say this, but it kind of makes "Spring Awakening" look like "The Wedding Singer."
(Soundbite of laughter)
LYDEN: OK, I'm putting dibs on that one right now.
(Soundbite of laughter)
LYDEN: Duncan Sheik's new album is called "Whisper House." It'll be released this Tuesday, the 27th. Duncan Sheik, it was really fun to talk to you, and it's a beautiful album.
Mr. SHEIK: Thank you so much.
LYDEN: And if you want to see that music video we talked about, "Earthbound Starlight," then just go to the music section of our Web site on npr.org.
(Soundbite of song "Earthbound Starlight")
Mr. SHEIK: (Singing) Steal your heart.
LYDEN: And that's All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Jacki Lyden.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
In the northern Iraqi town of Hawija today, a husband and wife were killed and their young daughter was wounded during an American raid. The Americans say the operation was conducted with and approved by Iraq security forces, as stipulated by an agreement that went into effect at the beginning of the year. But a senior Iraqi government spokesman says there were no Iraqi forces present and is calling for an investigation of the deaths. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports from Baghdad.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO: Contacted by NPR by phone, Hussein Ali, the father of the Iraqi man who was killed, described what happened at 2 a.m. this morning this way.
Mr. HUSSEIN ALI: (Arabic spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The Americans were on foot, he says. They threw percussion hand grenades at the door. Then they started shooting. When I got inside the house, he says, the Americans were gone. I found the two of them in the bedroom, dead beside each other. They shot my son at close range. His blood was all over the wall, he says.
His son, Dhia Hussein Ali, was a former colonel in Saddam Hussein's army, but the father says that after the U.S.-led invasion, he became a farmer. When the killings took place, he was asleep at his home with his wife and five children, one of whom, a girl, was injured.
The U.S. military says the slain man was targeted because it received information that he was a member of al-Qaeda in Iraq. A U.S. military statement described what happened this way. When coalition and Iraqi forces were clearing the building, they entered a room and saw a woman reaching under the mattress, the statement says. The force repeatedly gave instruction in Arabic for the woman to show her hands, but she failed to comply. Perceiving hostile intent, forces engaged the woman, killing her, the statement says.
After American forces killed his wife in front of him, the U.S. military statement said that the man, also in bed, physically attacked them. They then killed him, too. The Americans say only a pistol was found afterwards under the mattress where the couple were sleeping.
The U.S. military says that the operation was, quote, "fully coordinated with Iraqi authorities who were also present for the operation." But speaking by phone to NPR, the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, Brigadier General Abdul Kareem Khalaf, says that it was not a joint operation.
Brigadier General ABDUL KAREEM KHALAF: (Arabic spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: He says, we have asked for a full investigation, and we have asked for an explanation from the Americans regarding what happened. There were no Iraqi forces with them.
Under the security agreement that came into effect on January 1, American forces can conduct raids alone, but only with Iraqi approval. General Khalaf told NPR it wasn't clear yet whether that approval had actually been granted. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Baghdad.
LYDEN: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Jacki Lyden. President Barack Obama took office this week amid pomp and circumstance and an economic cloud of massive proportions. Last week, unemployment claims hit a 26-year high, while homebuilding in December dropped to its lowest pace since 1959. And in his weekly address, President Obama warned that the situation is likely to worsen.
President BARACK OBAMA: Our economy could fall a trillion dollars short of its full capacity, which translates into more than $12,000 in lost income for a family of four.
LYDEN: He went on to argue the merits of his stimulus plan, an $825 billion package of spending programs and tax cuts. For a wrap-up of the week's economic news, I spoke with Mark Zandi. He's the chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, and he says the situation remains dire.
Dr. MARK ZANDI (Chief Economist, MoodysEconomy.com): The job market continues to erode. We lost 2.6 million jobs last year in '08, and we're on track to lose just as many this year.
LYDEN: This week, of course, Microsoft announced its first mass layoffs ever - 5,000 people over the next 18 months. And Intel had a virtually identical message - another 5,000 people. Now, the high-tech sector had been thought to be at least somewhat more recession-proof.
Dr. ZANDI: Yeah, and that's one of the disconcerting aspects of what we're going through here. There's no refuge. This is a very broad-based downturn. It's touching every industry, including technology. There is really no area in the country that's doing well. In other recessions, there were jobs to go to if you wanted to move. This go around, that's not the case. And obviously, that's pretty hard on the collective psyche.
LYDEN: We just heard a clip from the president's talk this morning and his remarks. He is asking for an $825 billion stimulus plan. You've analyzed it. What do you think its strengths and weaknesses are?
Dr. ZANDI: Well, if I were king for the day, I would advocate making the plan bigger - go from 825 billion to almost a trillion, and the increase would be tax cuts. Now, the problem with tax cuts is that they don't pack the same economic punch. They don't create as many jobs because people can save it, they can pay debt with it, they can buy imported goods with it. And so it doesn't provide the same economic punch as a spending increase does. But you can get it into the economy quickly, and goodness knows the economy needs help right now. So I would expand the tax cuts so that we can get some aid to the economy this summer.
LYDEN: The columnist David Brooks, who appears on NPR, argued in the New York Times this week that this package lacks a unifying strategy. And he said, quote, "It's a sloppy profusion of 152 different appropriations, off-the-shelf ideas that mostly create costlier versions of the status quo." Do you agree?
Dr. ZANDI: No, I don't. I think there is a strategy to it. There's income support for people who are losing their jobs, unemployment insurance, food stamps, COBRA payments for people who are losing health insurance. There's aid to state governments, which is key because these governments are under extreme pressure and because of their constitutional requirements will be cutting employment and programs, and this will help them forest(ph) all that.
The infrastructure spending - I think that's a good combination of things that the Romans built, like roads and bridges and dams, but also spending on new things like electric grids and the Internet backbone.
LYDEN: Is there a problem that some of the prescription for getting us out of this mess also talks about spending? What happens when all these bills come due?
Dr. ZANDI: Well, that is, you know, clearly an issue. But I think the broader point is that if we don't respond aggressively, the economy will slide away. People won't have jobs. They won't be able to pay income tax. They won't be buying things, so they won't be paying sales tax. House prices will fall, so they won't be paying property tax. So our budgetary problems will be even worse. It's, you know, obviously, a bitter pill to swallow, but a pill we're going to have to swallow.
LYDEN: Mark Zandi is the chief economist of Moody's Economy.com. Thanks very much for joining us, Mr. Zandi.
Dr. ZANDI: Thanks so much for the opportunity. ..COST: $00.00
JACKI LYDEN, host:
On Thursday, President Obama issued an executive order to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within one year. But the debate over the controversial camp and its suspension of habeas corpus, one of the principal rights enshrined in the American Constitution, is likely to last a lot longer than that.
One of the people President Obama met with on Thursday is John Hutson. He's a former Navy judge advocate general, or JAG, and dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire. He's also a retired rear admiral. Admiral Hutson, welcome to the show.
Rear Admiral JOHN HUTSON (Former Judge Advocate General, U.S. Navy; Dean, Franklin Pierce Law Center, New Hampshire): Hi. Thank you for having me.
LYDEN: You've been in Washington this week, and I'd like to know your immediate reaction to President Obama's decision.
Rear Admiral HUTSON: Well, of course, I was elated. This is something that I have been working on with other retired admirals and generals in an organization called Human Rights First for, I don't know, four or five years.
LYDEN: You're a longtime military man. Why were you opposed to the military tribunals proposed by the Bush administration to begin with?
Rear Admiral HUTSON: Well, initially, I wasn't. Initially, I was an ardent supporter of military commissions. But then when I realized what they really were going to look like in fact - you know, the concept I supported - it's historical, it's legal, it could be done right. In fact, it wasn't done right. And what happened was that essentially the administration set them up to reverse engineer a conviction.
LYDEN: So I guess the big question that remains, though, is what does become of these roughly 245 people still in Guantanamo. Do you think they should be given civil trials here?
Rear Admiral HUTSON: That's certainly a possibility and that would work. We've got the best system of justice in the world. U.S. district courts and courts martial have tried terrorists for decades now quite effectively, so that would work. What the president has done is set up a taskforce. They're going to go through each and every file, figure out who it is that we can release, who should be prosecuted, and then there may be a third category of people that can't be prosecuted but we don't want to release. And this taskforce has been tasked with the responsibility of figuring out what to do with them.
LYDEN: Let's say there's captured senior al-Qaeda leaders with information about future attacks. Should they be brought to the U.S. and given lawyers if - I mean, I realize this is a hypothetical - but perhaps...
Rear Admiral HUTSON: Sure.
LYDEN: ...not so hypothetical.
Rear Admiral HUTSON: Well, if you've got senior people that you want to prosecute, you have to give them lawyers. The third executive order that the president signed sets up a very high-level taskforce to look at what we're going to do with detainees in the future. If we believe that they've got information, they need to be interrogated. If we believe that they've done bad things, they need to be prosecuted. ..TEXT: LYDEN: There has been some concern, though, amongst relatives of those killed in, say, 9/11, who supported military tribunals and Guantanamo. What do you say to them?
Rear Admiral HUTSON: I say that we are not trying to release people that are guilty. The question is do we have the right people?
LYDEN: You know, there is news this week of a Saudi detainee who had been released, went to Yemen, and has been associated with bombings against the U.S. Embassy there. What about the release of some of these people who go back to commit acts of terrorism?
Rear Admiral HUTSON: Well, I have a couple thoughts about that. One is if we knew he was dangerous, why did we release him? Why didn't we prosecute him? The other is, people are dangerous. There are tens of thousands of people in that part of the world who hate us - more than that probably. The 245 people at Guantanamo are a drop in the bucket. And as long as we detain them without prosecuting them, without justifying the detention in any way, all we're doing is turning those potential enemies into real enemies.
You know, it's a cruel world out there. Life's tough. People hate us. We need to look over the horizon with a long view strategically, rather than just to the end of our nose tactically with regard to 245 people at Guantanamo, some of whom are dangerous.
LYDEN: Admiral John Hutson is a former Navy judge advocate general and the dean of the Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire. Thanks very much for talking with us, admiral.
Rear Admiral HUTSON: Thank you.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
Now, your runny nose may not seem like rocket science, but it does involve a bit of thermodynamics. What is it about the chilly winter breeze that makes tissues a cold weather essential? Earlier, I braved the great outdoors - and I know you can tell - to bring you this week's "Science Out of the Box."
(Soundbite of music)
LYDEN: I'm standing on the roof of NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. It's chilly. It's about 35 degrees or so. But earlier this week, especially on the National Mall, it was really cold. And I was suffering from what the experts call cold-induced rhinorrhea, and that colloquially is known as a runny nose.
We wanted to know why our noses always run in cold weather. So we called on Dr. Andrew Lane. He's the director of the Johns Hopkins Sinus Center, and he's standing outside his office in Baltimore. Welcome, Dr. Lane.
Dr. ANDREW LANE (Director, Sinus Center, Johns Hopkins University): Hi, Jacki. Thanks.
LYDEN: Well, I have been wondering this, really, since the first of the year. Why is it that our noses run in the cold whenever we step outside?
Dr. LANE: Well, it's really a combination of two things. It's part respiratory biology and part of it is physics, or thermodynamics. One of the main functions of the nose is to warm and humidify the air that we breathe so that when it reaches your lungs, it's nice and conditioned. And in order to do this, the nose has to add some moisture to it.
When it's very cold out, the air is usually dry as well, and the nose is really working overtime to add some fluid. And there are reflexes that are in place that allow the nose to increase its fluid production. And if it really makes a lot of fluid, then it starts to run out of the end of your nose.
LYDEN: So, it's a good reaction. It should happen.
Dr. LANE: Right. It's a normal reaction sort of taken to the extreme. Now the other side of it is the physics part. And this is sort of a good day for this, I suppose. Can you see your breath when you breathe there?
LYDEN: I can.
Dr. LANE: What's happening is that the warm air that you're breathing is condensing in the cold air, so you see it as little droplets of water. And that's because cold air can't hold as much moisture as warm air. When you breathe that air back out, it comes to the very tip of your nose where the nose is cold and that fluid is going to recondense onto the surface of the nose and that will also run out.
LYDEN: So kind of a double whammy on the old nose between the biology and the physics.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. LANE: Yeah.
LYDEN: Andrew Lane is the director of the Johns Hopkins Sinus Center. Thanks so much for joining us. I think we should both go inside and get warm now and have a cup of cocoa or echinacea.
Dr. LANE: I'm with you, Jacki. Thanks.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
OK. Thanks to the magic of radio, I'm back in the warm studio now, but my guest is not. As a matter of fact, he's in Cedar Falls, Iowa, enjoying an extreme winter sport that will definitely get your nose running - ice climbing.
(Soundbite of ice crunching)
What you're hearing is ice climber Don Briggs getting ready to scale the side of a frozen grain silo. And yes, you heard right, he's in Iowa. Of course, there are no natural ice formations in the Hawkeye state apart from the frozen bits in the driveway. So if you live amongst the cornfields but dream of ice climbing, Don Briggs is your man.
Briggs is a climbing instructor at the University of Northern Iowa, and he's been creating manmade ice walls on the side of silos for a decade. And about now, he should be midway up. Hello, Don Briggs, you crazy man.
Mr. DON BRIGGS (Climbing Instructor, University of Northern Iowa): Hi, Jackie.
LYDEN: How far up are you?
Mr. BRIGGS: I'm about 30 or 40 feet up right now.
LYDEN: Are you worried about falling?
Mr. BRIGGS: No, I'm actually attached to a rope that goes up to the top of the climb - up to the top of the silo - and then back down to a belayer who's taking the rope up as I ascend.
LYDEN: What's the view like up there, Don?
Mr. BRIGGS: Well, the view is really nice. I can see all the way to our campus, which is about six miles away. As I look the other way, I can see my own home, which - I live about a mile from the silo here.
LYDEN: How do you create an ice wall on the side of a silo?
Mr. BRIGGS: Well, actually what we do is we run a garden hose - just a regular garden hose up the silo and put a spray nozzle in the end of it - it's a shower head actually. And then what we do is we turn the water on and keep the water flowing and going. It doesn't freeze up until it hits the silo. And then when it hits the side of the silo, those steel bands that go around the concrete keep the ice on, and it forms up and it gets about four feet thick. And that's plenty of ice to work with and get yourself up.
LYDEN: This is what I love about the Midwest. People are off the rails in these completely low-key ways. And give me a description of the curtain of ice coming over the silo. Is it two feet thick, four feet thick?
Mr. BRIGGS: It's - well, at the top right now, it's about, oh, maybe three feet thick. And it's just a clustery - it looks like a great, big, huge pillow.
LYDEN: You mentioned you had climbed other ice formations in northern Wisconsin. How does climbing the side of a silo compare to, say, cliffs?
Mr. BRIGGS: This - silo ice climbing is a lot more difficult than any other ice I've been on. And the reason why is because this is straight up.
LYDEN: Right.
Mr. BRIGGS: Whereas all the other ice that we climb is what we call waterfall ice. It has a little bit of cascading effect to it and that - there you go - and that makes it a little bit easier to climb that type of ice.
LYDEN: I'm sure Everest is easy after you've done the silos of Iowa, no doubt. Do you ever climb at night?
Mr. BRIGGS: Yes. In fact, we've got a whole group of people coming out today. We're going to climb until midnight. We're going to turn some lights on. And this thing really illuminates the sky. It's really beautiful at night. And then find a hot tub somewhere and enjoy that. Well, I'm at the top here.
LYDEN: Fabulous. Congratulations. Well, Don Briggs, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you. And I wish you many, many more successful climbs.
Mr. BRIGGS: Well, thank you very much. You're welcome to come out and climb anytime and join us.
LYDEN: I would very much like to do that. Don Briggs is an instructor at the University of Northern Iowa. You can see pictures of some of these frozen silos and Don Briggs making his way up them on our Web site. That's at npr.org.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Jacki Lyden. Since Tuesday's inauguration of President Barack Obama, Washington, D.C., has echoed with the wails of people who couldn't get to their ticketed spaces. More than 5,000 of those people have found solidarity on a Facebook page called "Survivors of the Purple Tunnel of Doom." But today on Capitol Hill, a small group gathered to re-watch the ceremony on their laptops. NPR's Allison Keyes was there.
Unidentified man: We would have been right there.
ALLISON KEYES: They stood in the wind on the west side of the Capitol building. The festive red, white, and blue bunting from Inauguration Day has gone. So are the chairs where VIPs sat. All that's left is the scaffolding.
Ms. JULIE MARX(ph) (Obama Campaign Volunteer): We arrived where we were told to arrive at 6 a.m., and a very official looking police person pointed us to the tunnel, and we got in line in the tunnel.
KEYES: Obama volunteer Julie Marx is talking about the so-called Tunnel of Doom, where she and many of President Obama's campaign workers and volunteers were stuck for hours. She says only the spirit of the day kept it from getting ugly.
Ms. MARX: People were there for hours without water, without accessibility to the bathroom, without food. There were people there with little kids and elderly people kind of crushed together.
Ms. AVIA KEMPNER(ph) (Obama Campaign Volunteer): I was hoping Barack might - would have read in the paper today about this and showed up, or Michele would have invited us all into the White House.
KEYES: Volunteer Avia Kempner had a purple ticket and said she bailed from the line once she realized it wasn't moving.
Ms. KEMPNER: I went to a hotel nearby and listened and watched on TV the inauguration with a roomful of strangers, mostly African-American, and all we did was hug each other. So, at least I witnessed it.
Ms. ANNE MORRISON(ph): We couldn't get in except behind a big blockade of porta-potties.
KEYES: Washington, D.C., resident Anne Morrison was among those who brought a laptop today, so those who missed out could see the ceremony up close and personal.
Ms. MORRISON: The point is to listen to it again and watch it again and hopefully do more than get a commemorative picture. I think it's fair to be invited to hear him, meet him as a result of this. We worked on the campaign.
KEYES: Everyone here agreed that the main thing is the man they worked so hard for is now president of the United States. And despite the chaos of trying to get into the event Tuesday, the only injuries were their wounded souls. Allison Keyes, NPR News, Washington.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
President Obama may have a powerful new tool at his disposal in his dealings with Congress - the long list of supporters and donors that his campaign built, some 13 million email addresses. It's being transformed into a permanent grassroots organization based at the Democratic National Committee. NPR's Peter Overby reports.
PETER OVERBY: Just as no other presidential candidate ever had so many volunteers, just as none of them ever collected so much money from so many donors, now President Obama will have a grassroots network of unprecedented size and enthusiasm backing him up. It's going to be called Organizing for America, just a few letters' change from the campaign committee Obama for America, which made the announcement during the inaugural weekend. As usual, it came in an email containing a short video of Mr. Obama.
President BARACK OBAMA: You built the largest grassroots movement in history, and shaped the future of this country. And the movement you built is too important to stop growing now.
OVERBY: And in a second video Friday, campaign manager David Plouffe said members of the new organization will work on such issues as the economy, energy and health care. He said it will be different from a political campaign.
Mr. DAVID PLOUFFE (Democratic Campaign Manager): It's going to be an exciting thing to see moving forward to connect Americans to the debate here in Washington. And I think that that's not only good for our democracy in our country, but will also help President Obama succeed in bringing about the change that we all fought for in the campaign.
OVERBY: Tom Matzzie is a consultant and former Washington director of the liberal online group MoveOn.org. He sees great things ahead for Organizing for America.
Mr. TOM MATZZIE (Political Consultant): We've never had a political leader who has continued their organizing while in office like this at this scale.
OVERBY: Matzzie says it will have effects beyond just grassroots lobbying.
Mr. MATZZIE: For the next 40 years, those people will be involved in their communities in a way that was inspired out of the Obama campaign, and they will go on to run for school boards and city council and maybe president some day.
OVERBY: But there are potential problems.
Dr. JAMES THURBER (Director, Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, American University, Washington): This can backfire fairly easily.
OVERBY: James Thurber is director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington. He says members of Congress might not want to hear from the president's support base.
Dr. THURBER: If they overuse the lists, if they flood the Hill with huge mobilization campaigns and it irritates people, so they have to be very careful the way they use this resource.
OVERBY: Thurber also points out that the people who signed up for Mr. Obama's campaign might not all feel the same way about specific pieces of legislation. And what's more, the Democratic National Committee is as partisan as you can get.
Dr. THURBER: And many of these people in this 13 million list may not be that partisan. They liked his theme of bipartisanship.
OVERBY: A DNC spokeswoman said the arrangement is just starting to get worked out. One question: whether Organizing for America will be part of the DNC, or a free-standing entity under the same roof.
If there are any private-sector counterparts to Organizing for America, one of them would be AARP, the organization for over-age-50 Americans. It claims 40 million members overall. About 10 percent of them get involved in express advocacy, according to AARP's Jim Dau. He says people choose to get on the email list, just like the Obama campaign, and he says each name has a multiplier effect.
Mr. JIM DAU (Senior Manager, Media Relations/Health, AARP): Because you're not just talking to, you know, me sitting at home, but you're talking to someone you know has demonstrated their ability to talk to their neighbors, their friends, their family, and enroll them at the task at hand.
OVERBY: But Dau says activists like these need more than constant calls to action. The organization has to engage them in other ways, too, encouraging get-togethers, asking for opinions, making them feel like part of something bigger.
Mr. DAU: When you're asking for feedback, people are going to know that you're listening. Otherwise, you're going to be relegated to either the spam filter or just, you know, mass deletions.
OVERBY: That's a lesson that the Obama campaign took to heart. What remains to be seen is if the wisdom transfers with the list. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
This story contains graphic hospital scenes that may be difficult to hear. I first met the Hanoudis as a war correspondent in 2003. Dr. Najeeb Hanoudi was a widely respected, Christian, 68-year-old ophthalmologist who trained at Oxford. He supported the American invasion and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and so did his grown son, Nazar.
Najeeb told some American officers where there was a secret cache of Saddam's weapons. Nazar worked for the American military. I lived with this family in the Mansour neighborhood of western Baghdad in the spring of 2004. In 2007, they came as refugees to the suburbs of Detroit. When I visit them now, the only place we go is a nursing home.
Dr. NAJEEB HANOUDI (Iraqi Ophthalmologist): Jacki, we are not very far from where we're going. It's something like half a mile. It's the place where Nazar has been staying for almost a year now. It's called Greenfield Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Center.
LYDEN: Nazar is Najeeb's oldest son. Nazar is the Hanoudi's whole world now. Najeeb, his wife, Firyal, and their son Samer complete the foursome. They have a daughter in Canada who isn't permitted to cross the border.
Hi, Samer.
Mr. SAMER HANOUBI: Hey, Jacki.
LYDEN: Maybe Nazar knows he's in a hospital bed and that I'm here, maybe not. Samer, speaking over the oxygen pump, can't decide.
Mr. SAMER HANOUBI: I'm not going to be 100 percent sure because the only way that he can do any response is laughing, not more than that, you know, or having some sad face or happy face or, you know. Because he's here, you know, but he doesn't have the tools to explain the - but he cries, too, you know, sometimes of the news or the situation is very sad, you can see some tears on the back of his eyes.
LYDEN: Nazar had been working as a contractor for the American military after the invasion. He went in and out of checkpoints every day.
Dr. HANOUDI: But on that fateful day, he was trying to get into the camp through a different checkpoint. And apparently, the fellow who was manning the checkpoint didn't know him, so he shot him.
LYDEN: It was a gunshot wound to the stomach. But it was the transfer in and out of hospitals that weakened Nazar. On his way back into the Green Zone from an Iraqi hospital, where they couldn't complete dialysis, his heart stopped. The Iraqi ambulance ran out of oxygen. For 14 minutes, he was in cardiac arrest. When the American doctors in the Green Zone brought him back, he was a changed man. Nazar is now nearly 40. He's been stretched out on tiny cots for almost five years, unmoving. He still has the widest, bluest eyes with long, long lashes. Sometimes, they blink. Sometimes, the Hanoudis have to add eye drops.
Dr. HANOUDI: Actually, he is a fairly advanced case, I mean, this is the reality of thing. He is what we call a vegetative state. Vegetative state is not death. When we were students, they used to tell us that this is clinical dead. But this is not clinical dead, and the boy is not dead. I mean, he is certainly not dead. He listens very nicely. His hearing ability is almost perfect. I'm sure he also sees with his eyes, but we cannot say how much function there is there because assessing a visual capacity is something subjective. You have to have a response from your patient. But I have a feeling that he sees a good deal.
LYDEN: Najeeb, who is Christian, is the sort of man who speaks of life as a generous gift. He does not dwell on what he calls the tragedy.
Dr. HANOUDI: We have been helped by a bunch of people we never knew before, and they provided, and they gave us, actually, at least sometimes, immense...
(Soundbite of gurgling noise)
LYDEN: This is the sound the Hanoudis live for now. It's the most overt physiological response Nazar produces, the sound of phlegm building up in Nazar's throat. He can't expel it himself, so he begins to cough and then to choke. If no one were here with him, well then, he'd die. So, they are always with him, suctioning out the secretions when he gags.
(Soundbite of suctioning machine)
LYDEN: Najeeb and I return home. I never see the family all together, and no one is with Nazar more than his mother, Firyal. She sleeps by his bedside every night. She barely sees her husband, who takes a shift from mid-morning 'til afternoon. They've managed this way for over a year now. Having cooked an enormous meal for him, she puts on her coat while Najeeb wolfs down supper.
Ms. FIRYAL HANOUDI: I go to nursing home from my son because he is need me. Because I give him medicine and to speak with him because he's my - and listen for me, and when he look for me, he is fine.
LYDEN: What do you say to him?
Ms. HANOUDI: My love, how are you? You are very good.
(Crying) I can't - you look your daughter. She is very beautiful.
LYDEN: You show him pictures of his daughter.
Ms. HANOUDI: (Crying) Yes. She is now 5 years. I always - I - 5 years now, I am 24 hours with him.
LYDEN: Nazar has never seen his 5-year-old daughter, nor she him. He was just about to join his wife in Australia when the accident happened. With meat and cheese for her meals, Firyal leaves Najeeb at home.
Dr. HANOUBI: Now, I feel a great responsibility. When we are coming here and staying the nights and staying the days and having our life changed absolutely upside-down, and me having to stop my work and forget about my excellence in ophthalmology, I'm doing it because I have to do it. I feel like we have to do this. When he was discharged from the American Hospital in Baghdad, you see, one of the doctors said this situation is probably going to last a very long time. I said, this is why we are here, and we are prepared to stay beside him because he is our responsibility for the next few months, for the next few years, even for the next few centuries.
LYDEN: Over a week ago, Firyal Hanoudi was forced to leave her son's side. She is 65, and was treated for a blockage of her carotid artery. Then, she suffered a heart attack. She underwent open-heart surgery and is recovering in the hospital. Samer is with her most of the day. That means Najeeb must care for Nazar himself. When I left him, he was sitting in his modest, two-story townhouse that he shares with his wife and son, reading. He reads and thinks about everything that has happened to them.
Dr. HANOUDI: I've always believed in fate. Actually, there is a saying in Arabic which translates very badly into something like, what you are going to see with your eyes has been written very early on your forehead. I am a very strong believer in this philosophy. I have been through - especially during the last few years - I have been through some episodes which are impossible to explain on anything less than something which has been written on the forehead - fate.
(Soundbite of music)
LYDEN: But this is not the fate I imagined for an old friend now in his mid-70s, whose path I followed for years. It's not the fate his military friends who have honored him imagined. It's something bigger and more silent and crushing. And I can only wish that I could change it.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
Howard Levy's house in Evanston, Illinois, is filled with musical instruments - ocarinas, percussion and especially, harmonicas. When he was just a teenager, Levy took a regular, dime-store harmonica and figured out how to play a full chromatic scale. His virtuosity has since landed him gigs with everyone from Tito Puente to Garrison Keillor to Bela Fleck. Independent producer David Schulman went to interview Levy for the series "Musicians in their Own Words." Levy pulled up in his car, and to David's surprise, the interview started en route.
Mr. HOWARD LEVY (Musician): So, I always drive with at least one harmonica in the car, and I've written a bunch of tunes driving.
Mr. DAVID SCHULMAN (Independent Producer): Really?
Mr. LEVY: Yeah. Because, you know, harmonica is the only instrument you could really play while you drive, because you'd only need one hand to play it.
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy playing the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: I mean, you know...
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy playing the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: You know, I fantasized hooking up a mike and pretending I'm a Honda. I am a Honda, but...
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy imitating a Honda car horn with the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: Fiat, you know...
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy imitating a Fiat car horn with the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: Cadillacs...
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy imitating a Cadillac car horn with the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: You know, all different kinds of cars. But I mean, I could play while I drive. It's no problem. There's one tune of mine called the "Tri-State Boogie," which I wrote while I was driving on the tri-state expressway.
(Soundbite of song "Tri-State Boogie")
Mr. LEVY: That's the basic idea of it, and it does do better driving faster. I'd probably play it faster when I'm driving faster, too.
(Soundbite of piano music)
Mr. LEVY: We are at Leviland Studios, which is also my house. And it's a relatively small dining room in this brick bungalow that I live in, but it's got my 1923 Steinway, a piano, which is a beautiful instrument. When I'm playing a solo on the harmonica, I'm singing through the harmonica, seeing it as a piano keyboard, you know.
(Soundbite of piano and harmonica composition)
Mr. LEVY: I mean, that's how I think.
(Soundbite of piano and harmonica composition)
Mr. LEVY: When I picked up the harmonica, that really changed my personality because the piano is a machine. And playing a wind instrument is just so personal. You're breathing the notes directly from your body, and the instrument comes alive, and it sings.
This diatonic harmonica here was invented to play German folk music and was turned into a blues instrument, which is one of the greatest accidents in the history of musical instruments. They intended it to be played...
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy playing the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: They left out a bunch of notes in the bottom octave, but if you wanted to play the melodies on the top, you'd just put your mouth over it. The melodies would all be harmonized.
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy playing the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: And then when African-Americans got a hold of the instrument, and some genius realized that instead of playing it based on the exhale, if you played it based on the inhale, you got the blues scale, basically.
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy playing the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: Not only could you get...
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy playing the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: ...the chords, you can get all the single notes that you need in the blues.
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy playing the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: By an amazing accident of design.
(Soundbite of Mr. Levy playing the harmonica)
Mr. LEVY: They say that music is a universal language, but it has a lot of dialects, and you've got to be able to speak either very, very strongly in your own dialect so that people can just dig it. Or if you're trying to reach out to people, then you have to learn their dialects. And you don't pronounce German with an English accent. You pronounce it with a German accent. So that if I'm playing Cuban-style Latin stuff, I will try to play it with a Cuban accent.
(Soundbite of Cuban-style piano and harmonica composition)
Mr. LEVY: A bunch of smaller orchestras around Chicago area got in touch with me about playing a harmonica concerto with them. I said, well, do you want me to write one? And they said, yes. And then I was really up the creek. I had no idea how to write a harmonica concerto. I never studied orchestration or composition - although, I have a lot of experience listening to orchestras, partially because my girlfriend is a violinist in the Chicago Symphony.
(Soundbite of harmonica concerto)
Mr. LEVY: The more I learned about classical musicians, the more I realized that the greatest of them were great improvisers. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, all improvised at their own concerts. After they played a few concertos and conducted their symphonies, etc., they would do a free improvisation.
(Soundbite of harmonica concerto)
Mr. LEVY: So, I left myself room to improvise so that I would never get bored playing my piece.
(Soundbite of harmonica concerto)
Mr. LEVY: It could be everything, man. Music can be a political act. It can be a mating call. It can be a mathematical equation. They're notes, but you can imbue those things with any shade of meaning or emotion that you're capable of.
(Soundbite of harmonica concerto)
(Soundbite of applause)
LYDEN: Harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy. Our feature was produced by David Schulman as part of his series "Musicians in Their Own Words." And you can hear more of Levy's music on our Web site at npr.org.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Jacki Lyden. President Obama and his advisers worked through the weekend trying to convince lawmakers to support his economic stimulus plan. The president wants to see the $825 billion package on his desk by the middle of next month, but the proposal faces a rocky ride on Capitol Hill. NPR's Allison Keyes reports.
ALLISON KEYES: The Obama administration continued its PR blitz touting the stimulus package today, with top adviser Lawrence Summers ticking off positives about the recovery plan in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press." First, he said, President Obama's proposal had bipartisan input from Democrats and Republicans.
(Soundbite of TV show "Meet the Press")
Mr. LAWRENCE SUMMERS (Director, National Economic Council): Frankly, some of them think the stimulus should be larger. Some of them think the stimulus should be smaller. The president balanced the different views.
KEYES: The $825 billion package focuses two-thirds on new government spending, and the rest on tax cuts. And Summers says the government could afford to spend the money to revive a faltering economy.
(Soundbite of TV show "Meet the Press")
Mr. SUMMERS: It's balanced between very substantial new investments that I referred to, between very important protections to prevent teachers and cops from being laid off. And also - this is a substantial part of the package - tax cuts.
KEYES: The tax cuts are a point of concern for both parties. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told ABC's "This Week" that spending historically does more to stimulate the economy than tax cuts.
(Soundbite of TV show "This Week")
Representative NANCY PELOSI (Democrat, California; Speaker of the House): Economists have told us from right to left there is more bang for the buck - is the term they use - by investing in food stamps and in unemployment insurance than in any tax cuts. Nonetheless, we are committed to the tax cuts.
KEYES: And Republican Senator John McCain disagrees with the Obama administration's plan to allow tax cuts for the wealthy, passed under former President George W. Bush, to expire, telling "Fox News Sunday"...
Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arizona): We need to make tax cuts permanent. We need to make a commitment that there will be no new taxes. We need to cut payroll taxes. We need to cut business taxes.
KEYES: McCain and House Republican Leader John Boehner say their party isn't likely to support the plan without major revisions. Boehner told "Meet the Press" he has issues with some of the spending contained in the bill.
Representative JOHN BOEHNER (Republican, Ohio): Two hundred million dollars to fix up the National Mall, $21 million for sod, over $200 million for contraceptives - how is this going to fix an ailing economy?
KEYES: Boehner says he cannot support the bill as it stands today.
Representative BOEHNER: Right now, given the concerns that we have over the size of this package and all of the spending in this package, we don't think it's going to work.
KEYES: President Obama will make the case himself when he visits Capitol Hill this week. Allison Keyes, NPR News, Washington.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
The impeachment trial of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich begins tomorrow in the Illinois State Senate. He's already been impeached by the House for his alleged attempt to sell Barack Obama's old seat in the U.S. Senate. But rather than defend himself in person, Blagojevich will be in New York courting public opinion, appearing on "Good Morning America" and "The View." NPR's David Schaper reports.
DAVID SCHAPER: Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich, who was arrested in December and charged with what the U.S. attorney in Chicago calls a political corruption crime spree, is making some pretty interesting analogies to his plight.
In interviews on sympathetic talk-radio programs and in a news conference Friday, Blagojevich first referred to December 9, the day FBI agents woke up him up and took him from his home in handcuffs, as his own Pearl Harbor Day. He then likened himself to the Jimmy Stewart character in the Frank Capra classic "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," saying he's fighting against a political industrial complex. And then there was this...
Governor ROD BLAGOJEVICH (Democrat, Illinois): I like old movies, and I like old cowboy movies.
SCHAPER: Blagojevich compared his situation to a Gary Cooper-like character in an old Western, wrongfully accused of cattle-rustling or stealing horses. But he says even in the old Wild West, someone usually called for a fair trial before hanging the accused.
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: Under these rules, I'm not even getting a fair trial. They're just hanging me.
SCHAPER: Governor Blagojevich says the rules adopted by the Illinois Senate to be used in his impeachment trial this week are unfair and a total sham.
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: To be part of a process that doesn't allow for calling of witnesses, and worse than that, it doesn't allow for me or any citizen to challenge charges that are brought against me, is a fundamental violation of the Constitution. It is a trampling of the Constitution.
State Senator JOHN CULLERTON (Democrat, Chicago, Illinois; President, Illinois Senate): I think he's misreading the rules.
SCHAPER: Democrat John Cullerton is president of the Illinois Senate, and he chaired the committee that drafted the rules for the impeachment trial.
State Senator CULLERTON: It is not a criminal case. It's not about his liberty. It's about his job. And there are definitely different rules in a criminal trial.
SCHAPER: Cullerton says because there has been no impeachment trial in Illinois in well over a century, the Illinois Senate used as a model for its rules the trial of President Clinton by the U.S. Senate a decade ago.
Blagojevich complains that he cannot call his own witnesses in his defense. But the rules state that the governor can call whomever he wants as long as they are willing to appear voluntarily. But the rules state that neither side can subpoena anyone whose testimony might undermine the federal criminal case against the governor, per the request of the U.S. attorney's office.
Blagojevich also complains that the transcript of the House committee that brought the impeachment charges against him will be entered as evidence, even though they are just accusations and not proven. But Cullerton says the rules also allow the governor to introduce whatever evidence he wants to contradict what is in the House record.
State Senator CULLERTON: The rules of evidence are actually, unlike a trial, are very broad, they're very wide open. The governor can introduce evidence like that or any other, even hearsay evidence if he felt it would help him.
SCHAPER: Cullerton says the impeachment trial will be as fair as it can be. But Jeffrey Shaman, a constitutional law professor at DePaul University in Chicago, says impeachment trials are really political procedures and are not unbiased. Under Illinois' constitution, senators only need to find cause to remove the governor from office, and they get to define what cause is. But Shaman says there is a remedy for the governor.
Professor JEFFREY SHAMAN (Constitutional Law, DePaul University, Chicago): If there is any unfairness here, instead of boycotting the procedure, the governor and his attorneys should go to the trial, and they should on a charge-by-charge basis argue to the Senate that there's not sufficient evidence to convict on this particular charge.
SCHAPER: Instead, Governor Blagojevich will try to salvage what's left of his flagging political career through a media blitz of national TV appearances. David Schaper, NPR News, Chicago.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Jacki Lyden. Pope Benedict XVI revoked the excommunications of four conservative bishops Wednesday, hoping to heal a bitter, internal wound in the church. But the move threatens to open a new rift between Catholics and Jews. The British bishop, Richard Williamson, is a Holocaust denier.
Bishop RICHARD WILLIAMSON: I believe that the historical evidence is hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.
LYDEN: That's Richard Williamson in an interview that aired Wednesday on Swedish television, the day the Vatican made its decree to rehabilitate him. For more on the controversy, we've called John Allen. He's a senior correspondent with the National Catholic Reporter, and he joins me now. Welcome, John Allen.
Mr. JOHN ALLEN (Senior Correspondent, The National Catholic Reporter): Hello, Jacki.
LYDEN: Could you tell us a bit more, please, about these bishops and why they were excommunicated to begin with, in 1988?
Mr. ALLEN: Well, this goes back to the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s, which had the effect of sort of dragging the Catholic Church, kicking and screaming into the modern age. And in reaction to that, a number of camps grew up in the church that had different opinions about the way things were going.
But only one of them went into formal schism - that is, you had a group of bishops, priests and rank-and-file Catholics who sort of lock, stock and barrel cut their ties with Rome and set up, in effect, a parallel church. And these were the traditionalists who grouped around a French archbishop by the name of Marcel Lefebvre, and they came to be known as the Lefebvrites.
And Bishop Williamson and the other three bishops were the four men that Archbishop Lefebvre ordained as bishops to carry on his work. And this is, it has to be said, something of a nightmare scenario for the Vatican. The Vatican fears schism like almost nothing else because you have legitimate bishops who are able to ordain other legitimate bishops, and in effect, kind of reproduce the schism.
Over the centuries, popes have moved heaven and earth, literally, to heal these wounds in the body of the church. And I think Benedict XVI's decision to lift the excommunication of these four would be a case in point.
LYDEN: Does the reinstatement signal that the church itself may be moving away from Vatican II, which was when the Vatican absolved Jews from the guilt of killing Jesus?
Mr. ALLEN: The spin coming from the Vatican in these days clearly is that this decision does not betoken anything broader about the direction of the church. This has been presented as an act of peace on the part of Benedict XVI to heal this internal wound. But I think a lot of even moderate and even some conservative Catholics would look at this as symbolic of a kind of course change in Catholicism.
And what many would see is an overly kind of permissive outreach to a group of traditionalists who not only reject the celebration of the Mass in the vernacular languages as opposed to the older Latin, but who have much deeper objections to a lot of what the Catholic Church in the last 50 years has come to stand for - one of those things being the effort to promote unity with other Christian churches and other religions, the other being the recognition of religious freedom and a separation between church and state. These Lefebvrites, or traditionalists, tend to, on principal, reject all of that.
LYDEN: Well, reaction to this from various Jewish groups has been pretty forceful. In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League said it was obscene. And so it would seem that it could have disastrous implications for relations between the two groups.
Mr. ALLEN: Clearly, this move, at least in the short term, is a catastrophe in terms of Catholic-Jewish relations. Now, you know, let's be clear - I mean, at the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church made clear its respect for Judaism. In the years since, John Paul II was in many ways a historic pioneer of Catholic-Jewish relations. Benedict XVI has continued that work. When he was in the United States last April, he went to the Park East Synagogue in New York.
But at the same time, you know, I think the Vatican, like any global institution, has to be sensitive not merely to internal reality, but also to external perception. And in terms of those external perceptions, this decision is a disaster for Catholic-Jewish relations.
LYDEN: John Allen is a senior correspondent with The National Catholic Reporter, and he joined us from Denver. Thanks very much.
Mr. ALLEN: A great pleasure.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
In Iraq, higher education has been one of the worst casualties of the war. A once-proud tradition of academics is in tatters. This past week, the Iraqi government launched a program that hopes to send up to 10,000 students to universities abroad, including the United States.
Mr. ZUHAIR HUMADI (Executive Director, Iraq Education Initiative): It is really a full scholarship, and the Iraqi government is paying for that.
LYDEN: That's Zuhair Humadi, executive director of the Iraq Education Initiative. He organized a kind of college fair at the Al-Rashid Hotel in Baghdad this past week. More than 20 American universities attended, including Humadi's alma mater, Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. Larry Dietz is the school's vice chancellor, and I asked him to tell me about his first Baghdad recruiting trip.
Mr. LARRY DIETZ (Vice Chancellor, Southern Illinois University Carbondale): Well, it was certainly unique. You had to go through security to get into the - several levels of security to get into the Green Zone and then on into the hotel. But I'd say the sameness is about their eagerness to pursue further education for themselves and in many cases, for their family, and then return to the country and make it a better place.
LYDEN: So tell me about the students who stopped by at the college fair. Are there stories you remember?
Mr. DIETZ: There's one young lady, in particular, whose name I may mispronounce, but I'll call her Sunny(ph). Sunny was interested in pursuing a Ph.D. And she would go around to some of the other tables, and about every 30 minutes, she would check back and she would say, don't forget me. And I would say, I won't forget you - the first couple of times.
The fair was about a four-hour time frame, and so I saw her multiple times during all this. And her last time, she came over and she said, I really want to come to your university. I really want to come to your country because I want to make a difference in my own country, and you can help me with that. I want to do that for myself, and I want to do that for my mother. I want my mother to see me improve my own education, and come back and make a difference here.
And so it's that kind of passion, I think, that we really felt throughout our entire visit there, hope for the future. And so that, to me, was very positive.
LYDEN: I understand there's something of a tangential relationship between Iraq and the school mascot at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
Mr. DIETZ: Yes, there is. Our mascot is a saluki. A saluki is an Egyptian hunting dog. And one of the things that I took with me, which was kind of fun to talk with students about - I'd left them with a little refrigerator magnet that had a paw print on it, and the descriptor behind all of that was about the saluki hunting dog.
This region of Illinois is called Little Egypt. Well, the saluki Egyptian hunting dog is one of the most ancient dogs in the world, and its handlers were typically from Mesopotamia and also from Iraq. And that was in the description.
And so people that I shared that with, I think automatically thought that, well, from a fun perspective, I mean, that doesn't define our academic programs, but it does define the spirit on the campus. Now, a lot of people there didn't know what a mascot was for a university, but once you had an opportunity to explain that, that was kind of a curiosity for them.
LYDEN: Larry Dietz is vice chancellor for student affairs at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and he joined us from member station WSIU. Thanks very much, Mr. Dietz, and good luck.
Mr. DIETZ: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Jacki Lyden. In most countries, it's not a good idea to insult the king. In Thailand, it's more than a bad idea. It's the law. Thailand is a constitutional monarchy where the king has little formal power. Yet, Thailand's laws against defaming the royal family are among the toughest in the world. And as NPR's Michael Sullivan reports from Bangkok, the new government seems intent on making their lese-majeste laws even tougher.
MICHAEL SULLIVAN: Giles Ji Ungpakorn teaches at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University - a longtime, unrepentant lefty with a penchant for provoking those in power.
Dr. GILES JI UNGPAKORN (Associate Professor of Political Science, Chulalongkorn University): (Laughing) I try.
SULLIVAN: But he is not laughing about the charges filed against on him Tuesday, which could land him in jail for 15 years for insulting the monarchy in his 2007 book, "A Coup for the Rich," in which he argued the coup that opposed the democratically elected Prime Minister Thaksin Shinowatra in 2006 was unjustified and undemocratic.
Dr. UNGPAKORN: It obviously had to deal with the role or the use of the monarchy, because the coup claimed royal legitimacy right from the beginning.
SULLIVAN: The book was pulled from the shelves of the university bookstore, but no action was taken against Ungpakorn until this week, when the special branch of the Thai police formally charged him with lese-majeste. Ungpakorn denies the charges, and accuses the new government of playing fast and loose with the law in order to crush political dissent.
Dr. UNGPAKORN: Well, the message they're sending to me, and I think the message they're sending to people similar to me, because there are a number of people opposed to the coup who are facing these charges now, is that we have staged a military coup, we have intervened in politics, and we are doing it with the legitimacy of the palace, so shut up. And if you don't shut up, you go to prison.
SULLIVAN: Ungpakorn says Monday's conviction of an Australian author on lese-majeste charges is the most dramatic example yet. Writer Harry Nicolaides was sentenced to three years in prison for a line in his novel describing the marital troubles of an unnamed Thai prince. The judge ruled the passage caused dishonor to the king and his son. Nicolaides was led away shackled and in handcuffs, his self-published book having sold just seven copies.
Dr. UNGPAKORN: There's a Thai saying: You slit the throat of the chicken so the monkey can see. In other words, it's to create fear among Thai people. And he is being sacrificed to bolster this climate of fear that they have created.
SULLIVAN: Thailand's new Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva says he's working to ensure the lese-majeste laws aren't abused, but says the monarchy must be protected because of its immense benefit to the country as a stabilizing force. And the government seems to be approaching that task with zeal, blocking Web sites it deems critical of the royal family. The police are also investigating several dozen lese-majeste cases, the highest number in years. But government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn says those cases are not politically motivated.
Mr. PANITAN WATTANAYAGORN (Government Spokesman, Thailand): The law is the law. And of course, 1 percent are charged with cases. I think that's up to the court, and up to the people who are involved in the law, to determine. We are in the political, obviously, and not able and cannot interfere.
SULLIVAN: Accused professor Giles Ungpakorn begs to differ. He says the monarchy is being used as a symbol by the military and the political elite to justify their removal of the last democratically elected government last month. If the new government was serious about upholding the rule of law, he says, he wouldn't be facing charges, and the hapless Australian novelist wouldn't be in jail, while at the same time...
Dr. UNGPAKORN: The people that shut down the airports, the people that used violence on the streets, the people that took over Government House, none of them are in prison. None of them are facing charges. And some of them are even in the government.
SULLIVAN: Ungpakorn says it's now up to the prosecutor to decide whether to bring his case to trial. His lawyer thinks it will happen. Yet another warning, Ungpakorn says, for those who might be thinking about challenging the status quo. Michael Sullivan, NPR News, Bangkok.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
The Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, came to an end today. And even though people are snapping up movie tickets despite the recession, film distributors at the festival were still hoping for bargains in a cost-conscious economy. To talk about the wheeling and dealing at Sundance this year, we called on two guests. Adam B. Vary is a staff writer at "Entertainment Weekly," back in L.A. after the festival. And Andrew Herwitz is the president of the Film Sales Company, which has arranged distribution for many films, including the Oscar-winning "Born into Brothels." I asked Adam Vary if there were any bidding wars this year like the one that resulted in a $10.5 million price tag for "Little Miss Sunshine" in 2006.
Mr. ADAM B. VARY (Staff Writer, Entertainment Weekly): Nothing at that level, no. Last year, the movie that got the most money was "Hamlet II," which sold to Focus Features for $10 million. And then when it made it to theaters, it made about half that money. So, this year, I think people have learned their lesson. And the highest amount of money spent, at least by all reports, was $3.5 million for a movie called "Spread," which stars Ashton Kutcher as a kept man.
Mr. ANDREW HERWITZ (President, The Film Sales Company): This is Andrew speaking, Adam is right that prices didn't reach astronomical levels as they have in many past years, but it also needs to be remembered that as technology changes, the cost of producing a movie declines. And so it's more possible for a production to be in profit at a lower number than it may have been in years past.
LYDEN: Now, Andrew Herwitz, your company sold the film "Adam" to Fox Searchlight at this year's festival for reportedly close to $2 million. How hard a deal was that to make?
Mr. HERWITZ: Fortunately, we were able to, before the festival, really engage Fox Searchlight into being very interested in the film. So at the initial screening, Fox Searchlight was already in a position to make a decision and make an aggressive offer and then continue negotiating with us.
LYDEN: Adam Vary, besides selling the movies for less money, did you see changes in the kinds of deals filmmakers struck with distributors?
Mr. VARY: Yeah, there were a couple interesting deals. There were a few deals in which the theatrical rights and the DVD rights were split between two companies. That happened with "Brooklyn's Finest," which is a violent cop drama. And then there was another film called "Humpday," which was about two heterosexual men who decide to make an artistic pornography film with the two of them. That sold to an outfit called Magnolia, and their plan is to release it into video on demand first, and then give it a theatrical release.
LYDEN: Andrew Herwitz, what does all this mean for filmmakers in the way they make and market their movies, if you're going to be splitting up the rights afterward?
Mr. HERWITZ: What that ends up meaning is that the filmmaker needs to be very much more engaged in the process of distribution, which is, I think, for the filmmakers, sort of a relief because in past times, they often feel concerned that they've spent however many years working on a film, they sign a deal, and then they show up at the premiere.
LYDEN: And Adam B. Vary, what do these trends mean for an audience that may want to see independent films debut in a theater and not, say, on pay-per-view?
Mr. VARY: Well, they'll still be able to find that. I mean, theatrical release is not going anywhere anytime soon. But, you know, one of the larger complaints about independent movies sometimes is that a movie that you've read about in, say, "Entertainment Weekly" only makes it to theaters in New York and L.A. and maybe Chicago, and then kind of disappears. And for people that are really interested in independent film, these new, alternative ways of distributing them and exhibiting them will give a wider audience access to those films. At least, that's the hope.
LYDEN: Adam B. Vary is a staff writer at "Entertainment Weekly," and Andrew Herwitz is president of the Film Sales Company. Thank you both very much.
Mr. VARY: Thank you.
Mr. HERWITZ: Thank you.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
Tonight, we close our program with a master of the written word. Today marks the 250th birthday of Scottish poet Robert Burns. Ask a Scot to name the country's most important figure, and you'll probably get this answer.
Ms. ALISON JONES (Scottish Poet and Founding President of the Local Robert Burns Youth Club): I think Burns comes in number one. There is no one else apart from "Braveheart."
LYDEN: Alison Jones lives about 500 yards from the cottage where Burns was born in Alloway, Scotland. She is the founding president of the local Robert Burns Youth Club. Tonight she's co-hosting the annual Burns Supper. It's a tradition Scots around the world celebrate with poetry readings and haggis dinners. Robert Burns was christened the ploughman poet. He composed mostly in Scottish dialect and wrote about freedom, equality and love.
Ms. JONES: Although Burns was such a great poet, he was quite a womanizer as well, and I think he had about 12 illegitimate children. And that makes me think how real he was because he just - he liked the ladies.
LYDEN: And the ladies liked him. And with verses like these, it's easy to see why.
(Soundbite of poem "A Red, Red Rose)
Ms. JONES: (Reading) My love is like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June. My love is like the melodie, That's sweetly play'd in tune. So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in love am I. And I will love thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry. Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun. And I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only love, And fare thee weel, a while! And I will come again, my love, Tho' it were ten thousand mile.
LYDEN: That was Alison Jones reading "A Red, Red Rose" by Robert Burns. Happy birthday, Robbie Burns.
(Soundbite of music)
LYDEN: That's All Things Considered from NPR News. Fare thee well, I'm Jacki Lyden.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Almost everyone in need of a financial bailout heads to Washington. But in southern California, a couple of troubled car dealers went straight to City Hall. They told officials in the town of Norco they needed some help to stay afloat. And as NPR's Ina Jaffe reports, they got it without having to beg.
INA JAFFE: After four decades in the automobile business, Mitchell Frahm can still get excited about a car like the new Dodge Challengers on his lot.
Mr. MITCHELL FRAHM (Owner, Chrysler-Jeep-Dodge Dealership): Kind of the old school hotrod from the '70s. It's kind of a remake off of that only with all of the new technology in it. So it rides and handles a lot better. It's a lot quieter.
JAFFE: Frahm has had this dealership in Norco for 20 years, and it's been a good business until recently. Now, he has twice the number of cars sitting on the lot as usual. His would-be customers don't have the money to buy them. And as you've heard just about everywhere, the banks aren't making loans these days. Frahm was in real danger of going out of business...
Mr. FRAHM: If I didn't receive some working capital. I mean, I don't think anybody has a crystal ball, but, you know, everybody knows it's going to be a tough year.
JAFFE: But the city of Norco has come riding to the rescue. That's probably how they'd put it here in the place known as Horsetown USA.
Mayor KATHY AZEVEDO (Norco, California): And we received that honor because we have so many horses here in town.
JAFFE: Says Mayor Kathy Azevedo. Her office in City Hall is decorated with horse paintings, horse statuettes, and horse photographs.
Mayor AZEVEDO: That picture in the center is me on my horse running the city flag in the rodeo.
JAFFE: The rest of inland southern California may be crammed with suburban subdivisions, but Norco has a rule that all homes must be built on no less than half-an-acre, so residents have room to keep their horses. The roads are lined with bridle paths instead of sidewalks, even downtown.
Mayor AZEVEDO: You can tie up your horse and go shopping or, you know, dine and then get back on your horse and hit the 120 miles of horse trail to head home or to a friend's house or wherever.
JAFFE: This lifestyle is supported to a great extent by the sales taxes generated by the auto dealerships, says Azevedo. So in late November, the city tapped into its redevelopment money and gave Mitchell Frahm and another auto dealer in town lines of credit worth half a million dollars.
Mayor AZEVEDO: We need them and they need us. As a matter of fact, the auto mall is 40 percent of our sales tax revenue here in the city, and we just thought it was the perfect use of our redevelopment agency funding to give them this line of credit. And hopefully it'll get them through the storm.
Mr. JOHN HUSING (Economics Consultant, Southern California): This is a very smart thing to be doing...
JAFFE: Says consultant John Husing, an expert on the economics of inland southern California.
Mr. HUSING: In city government, the largest share of the discretionary budget comes from the sales tax, and the biggest share of the sales tax comes from automotive. If a dealership closes, it means the city is going to ask to pare back what they're doing in parks, what they're doing for seniors - the sorts of things that the city councils can control.
JAFFE: In just the past few months, the region has seen 11 of its car dealerships shut their doors. So Husing says other cities in the area may follow Norco's lead. Mayor Kathy Azevedo thinks her town is already a trendsetter.
Mayor AZEVEDO: We kind of like to jest and think that maybe the federal government wanted to pattern themselves after Norco when they decided to help with the bailout.
JAFFE: Meanwhile, Mitchell Frahm knows he's now personally responsible for a half-million-dollar loan. But he seems to be taking it in stride.
Mr. FRAHM: Sincerely, if I didn't believe that I could take care of the debt then I wouldn't do it. I have all the faith in the world in our business that we're going to be here. We're going to get through it.
JAFFE: Both Frahm and the city of Norco have too much riding on this venture to think of it any other way. Ina Jaffe, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Well, from bad kid cop to kid do-gooder, in Southern California, a high school sophomore has been on a crusade to convince young people everywhere not to use swear words. Fifteen-year-old McKay Hatch, a sophomore at South Pasadena High School, started what he calls the No Cussing Club. His Web site, YouTube video, and media appearances have earned him fans around the world. As NPR's Mandalit Del Barco reports, he is also getting some foul mouth threats.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO: McKay Hatch is a skinny 15 year old with braces on his teeth. The middle of seven children, he plays soccer, rides a unicycle, and he says he likes Disney movies, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Bee Gees. But there's one thing he doesn't like - cussing.
Mr. MCKAY HATCH (Founder, No Cussing Club): It just makes me feel really offended and stuff. It just doesn't make me feel good.
DEL BARCO: You have to know that McKay's parents are authors of a book entitled, "Raising a G-Rated Family in an X-Rated World." Profanity was frowned on at home. McKay says none of his friends in elementary school ever swore, either.
Mr. HATCH: But it seemed like when they got to middle school, everyone just started cussing - my friends, just everybody that I knew. The reason why it bothered me the most is because it was something they were using every other word, it was like, kind of like the word the. They kept using it and using it.
DEL BARCO: When he started high school last year, McKay screwed up his courage and asked his friends to stop cussing around him. He thought he'd be shunned, but surprisingly, they agreed. Then he started up a no-cussing club at South Pasadena High School. Ana Victoria Pumphrey, a 16-year-old member, says the goal is to discourage students from swearing.
Ms. ANA VICTORIA PUMPHREY (Member, No-Cussing Club): It's vulgar, and it provokes violence, and people who cuss hurt other people by saying it. It's a form of verbal abuse.
DEL BARCO: In his quest, McKay Hatch has issued a no-cussing challenge through his Web site, an upcoming book he has written, and a music video he posted on YouTube.
(Soundbite of YouTube video)
Mr. HATCH: (Rapping) Every other word was burning in my ears So I took a new stand, and I challenged all my peers If you want to hang with us, I don't want to hear you cuss. If you want to hang with us, I don't want to hear you cuss. Don't cuss. Don't cuss.
DEL BARCO: McKay says he knows it's not easy.
Mr. HATCH: So if someone slips up at school, you know, they're like aw(ph), dang it, why? You know, but it's just doing better and better so.
DEL BARCO: But dang is OK?
Mr. HATCH: Yeah, dang is OK.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. HATCH: You know, when you first try to stop cussing, you can't stop right away. You got to have the transition words or substitutes. You can use oh, pickles, sassafras, dang, darn, flip - just anything you can think of.
DEL BARCO: Pickles?
Mr. HATCH: Pickles.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. HATCH: Yeah.
DEL BARCO: The no-cussing club has gotten a lot of attention.
(Soundbite of "The Tonight Show")
Mr. JAY LENO (Host, "The Tonight Show"): From Pasadena, California, please welcome McKay Hatch. McKay, come on out.
(Soundbite of cheering)
DEL BARCO: One of his recent appearances was with Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show."
(Soundbite of "The Tonight Show")
Mr. LENO: So now, you've written a book.
Mr. HATCH: Yeah.
Mr. LENO: Which is - and how many people in your club now?
Mr. HATCH: Worldwide, we have about 30,000 members now worldwide.
Mr. LENO: Wow.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. LENO: Wow. OK.
DEL BARCO: Those members, McKay's parents and teachers may be proud. But the squeaky-clean message also has sparked plenty of hate. McKay says some people go out of their way to curse him at school, on the Web, and on the phone. Not long ago, someone ordered $2,000 of pizza delivered to the Hatch's house.
(Soundbite of phone call)
Unidentified Man: Hi, Dominoes pizza calling back. Just to let you know that somebody is ordering, again, with your name on it.
DEL BARCO: And McKay has been the target of more than just pranks.
(Soundbite of phone call)
Unidentified Man: We're going to kill you.
DEL BARCO: This death threat has prompted local police and the FBI to get involved.
Mr. HATCH: Yeah, it's really scary because, you know, people are calling us - all night. Sometimes we have to unplug the phone. At first, you know, it was really kind of scary, but, you know, they're just bullies and they want you to be scared. And so I'm not going to let them win.
DEL BARCO: So McKay Hatch plans to continue expanding his club, writing books, and public speaking. He swears, though not in a bad way, that he's not trying to take away anyone's freedom of speech, he's just challenging them to come up with cleaner language.
Mr. HATCH: I'm not, you know, forcing anyone not to cuss, I'm just trying to, you know, a kid just trying to make a difference.
DEL BARCO: Mandalit Del Barco, NPR News.
(Soundbite of YouTube video)
Mr. HATCH: (Rapping) Don't cuss. Don't cuss. All across the nation, we'll start a new sensation. Don't cuss. Don't cuss. Let me...
NORRIS: You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Here's another story about a change environmentalists hope the Obama administration will make. It has to do with the 670 miles of fence being built along the U.S.-Mexico border. Ninety percent of the barrier is finished with, but one part, in far south Texas, has run into opposition from conservationists. Here's NPR's John Burnett.
JOHN BURNETT: From the road, it's not obvious there's much down here to protect. The great river delta that comprises the southern tip of Texas, known as the lower Rio Grande Valley, is a vast patchwork of citrus orchards and vegetable fields, shopping centers and car lots. Yet, down here on the banks of the muddy, torpid Rio Grande, it feels wild.
Ms. SONIA NAJERA (Program Manager, The Nature Conservancy): It's a jungle. It's incredible with incredible wildlife and vegetation and habitats.
BURNETT: That's Sonia Najera with the Nature Conservancy. They own the Lennox Foundation Southmost Preserve - a thousand acres that includes one of the largest remaining forests of native sabal palm.
Here, imperiled wildcats like the ocelot and jaguarundi still skulk through the underbrush. Birdwatchers come from around the world to check green jays, chachalacas and black-bellied whistling ducks off their life lists.
So last month, when the Department of Homeland Security announced its intention to erect an 18-foot tall, concrete-and-steel barrier for a mile through the preserve, the Nature Conservancy was not happy. Though the wall would be built on mainly nonforested land, Najera says it would sever the refuge.
Ms. NAJERA: If the fence is constructed, it will trap three-quarters of the preserve between the fence and the river. That includes all of our facilities, includes the home of our preserve manager who lives there full-time.
BURNETT: The conservancy refused to accept the government's offer of $114,000 in compensation for the land under the fence. Now, Homeland Security has sued in federal court to force the sanctuary to let it build the barrier. Other landowners, farmers and cities along the river, have also said no to the fence. But a spokesperson with the federal agency says they've been able to work out a deal with most of the holdouts.
Further, says Dan Doty of the Border Patrol's Rio Grande sector, the new wall, though industrial in appearance, will be permeable and allow the passage of wildlife. He says people who live and work along the river will also be able to get through the wall by means of secure gates.
Mr. DAN DOTY (Spokesman, U.S. Boarder Patrol, Rio Grande Valley): The Rio Grande river is a beautiful resource. Our farmers depend on it, the communities here depend on it. Our goal is not to deny access to the river to anybody.
BURNETT: The fence is part of congressionally mandated border security measures that include physical barriers, more agents and high-tech detection devices. Though there's widespread skepticism among border residents whether the fence will do any good, the government reports that arrests of illegal crossers are down 19 percent since the fence went up, which it claims is significant, even accounting for the sour economy.
But conservationists worry that a more secure border comes at a high price for habitat. The Nature Conservancy refuge is part of a 30-year effort to piece together public and private lands into a continuous wildlife corridor along the lower Rio Grande. Betty Perez is a rancher and environmentalist in the area.
Ms. BETTY PEREZ (Rancher and Environmentalist): Some estimates are that there's one percent of native natural land left along the river. And the wall is fragmenting that.
BURNETT: On a recent note, the Nature Conservancy is hopeful the new Obama administration may consider alternatives to the final stages of the border barrier. John Burnett, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
I'm Robert Siegel. And it's time now for our weekly technology segment, All Tech Considered.
(Soundbite of music)
SIEGEL: Last week, cell phone users clogged up the servers in Washington as they twittered and texted the inauguration. This week, we're going to talk about another cell phone function that is growing in popularity, the built-in global positioning system or GPS.
GPS technology is evolving way beyond that dashboard navigation system, and to help us navigate the new, we're joined, as always, by our tech expert Omar Gallaga. Hi, Omar.
OMAR GALLAGA: Hi, great talking to you, Robert.
SIEGEL: What's happening with GPS?
GALLAGA: Well, it's becoming cheaper and much easier to embed in smaller devices like cell phones. We're seeing it a lot, especially in the newer smart phones, and really, it's going to change the way we not only communicate with each other and travel and catch up with friends, but what I'm finding most interesting is how it might actually influence our behavior as we're using it.
SIEGEL: That sounds very intense, and we'll talk about that. But first, we're going to hear about one kind of GPS mobile phone application, the brave new world of traffic prediction. Here's David Gorn of member station KQED in San Francisco.
DAVID GORN: The newest and coolest traffic prediction system is based on a simple assumption that every car has a driver and every driver has a cell phone. One of those drivers and cell phone users is Lisa Alvarez-Cohen, a professor at UC Berkeley. As she gets into her Toyota Prius, she sets her cell phone on her dashboard and flips it on.
(Soundbite of traffic update)
Unidentified Man: Here's the traffic for the major roadways.
GORN: Alvarez-Cohen is an early adopter of a new system and says that for her, the daily commute around town is less important than the weekends, when she says, it becomes invaluable.
Dr. LISA ALVAREZ-COHEN (Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Berkeley): My two sons are on traveling soccer teams. And so, we are often taking long trips out into all kinds of parts of California that we haven't been to before.
GORN: That's when Alvarez-Cohen needs something called the Mobile Millennium. Her cell phone tells her when traffic is bottled up, right when it's starting to bottle up. The new system uses cell phones to both distribute and gather traffic information. UC Berkeley engineering professor Alex Bayen heads the project.
Dr. ALEX BAYEN (Systems Engineering, University of California, Berkeley): Because of the high penetration rate of people with phones on the road, we hope to be able to gather information at a much, much larger scale than ever before.
GORN: That is Bayen is using everyone's cell phone as a data point. The software works by determining the location and speed of a person's cell as it passes specific GPS coordinates. The information from those thousands of data points on the roads is sent back out to the phones in the form of a traffic report. So changes in traffic are updated constantly, and you can see it online, on your small GPS screen, or you can hear a computerized voice announcing traffic conditions.
(Soundbite of traffic update)
Unidentified Man: On I-80 skyway, eastbound, there's construction in both directions.
GORN: There is money to be made here. This new gizmo might eventually persuade consumers to pony up for a phone with a more costly global-positioning feature, the kind with an unlimited data plan. But if you already have all of that, Bayen says...
Dr. BAYEN: This technology is free. Anybody who has a GPS-equipped phone that will support can download the software for free.
(Soundbite of people talking)
GORN: At the recent unveiling of the Mobile Millennium project, dozens of people crammed into one of the halls at UC Berkeley to try out the new devices. The dean of engineering, Shankar Sastry, stood back and observed the technology scrum like a proud papa. With three billion cell phones worldwide, he says, the applications of cell phone technology are endless.
Dr. SHANKAR SASTRY (Dean, College of Engineering, UC Berkeley): I think you can imagine a world where everything, you know, entertainment, news, you would be doing on a computer today, would be on a cell phone.
GORN: Sastry sees a future where you don't even have a desktop computer, you just walk into your office and put your memory-packed cell phone into a docking station and use it as your computer. And one of the first applications of this unlimited potential, monitoring traffic.
Project director Bayen says he's got good results in a trial period with just 100 users. He estimates that to cover every section of every highway, and even most surface streets, he'll need about 10,000 users in the Bay area. If all goes well, he says, he should accumulate that many users by early spring, and he eventually expects this traffic-warning system to go national within a year.
SIEGEL: That's David Gorn of member station KQED in San Francisco. We're back with Omar Gallaga. And Omar, I somehow can't get past the problem of people who have such a system we just heard David report on, park their cars in the garage, walk around with their cell phones on and a crowd of pedestrians would translate just like a huge traffic jam from what I would figure.
GALLAGA: Right. Well, generally you wouldn't be running the traffic application while you're walking or once you were done with your trip. But you know, if you do happen keep it on, yeah, it is a problem, and they've said that a lot of that is going to be solved just by making the software smarter, by being able to detect whether you're actually on the road or whether you're off to the side of the road...
SIEGEL: Right.
GALLAGA: Or if you're walking somewhere for instance.
SIEGEL: Oh, so be it. What are some other ways that GPS will seek us out in our daily lives?
GALLAGA: Well, one of the fastest changes I've seen is how quickly people have adopted so-called location based services on their cell phones. There are programs that let you figure out where you're friends are at any given time if you want to meet up with them. Or you can find nearby restaurants based on where you're located. You can read reviews and skim the menu before you go.
SIEGEL: Is this really something that we want? Do we want to have a device on us that lets many, many people know exactly where we are at any moment?
GALLAGA: Well, you're able to disable that feature on these phones, but even if you do, I mean, it seems like the cell phone providers and some of the companies that want to market to you may be able to find ways around it. They might be able to text message you or find other ways to get to you. You might be walking down the street and receive a text message for a two-for-one drink special to a bar that you're walking closed to.
SIEGEL: Are we talking about applications that presently exist? That is, are there places where you could get that come on for the two-for-one drinks offer at the bar?
GALLAGA: Right. A lot of it right now is applications that you might be using and you're seeking out that information, but definitely, it's the direction that advertising and marketing is going.
Definitely, Google is going to be part of this. I mean, a lot of people believed that's why they have made such a big push in the mobile market where their android platform is this will be an installed based for Google's advertising.
SIEGEL: But haven't the mobile phone people with the GPS heard about spam, and what the public's reaction generally is to spam?
GALLAGA: Yeah, definitely and that's the danger, and that's why a lot of privacy advocates are very worried about this, that this is going to be kind of a new frontier for new ways of annoying us. But on the other hand, I mean there are people who may want that information, there are people who would like to receive that kind of information based on where they are at any given time.
If you're walking by a snow cone stand and you all of a sudden get $2 off a snow cone, you make take advantage of that. You may be like, hey, bonus (laughing), so some people will actually appreciate that. And if there's even slight interest in that, you can bet that marketers and advertisers are going to jump all over it.
SIEGEL: Well, Omar, as always, thanks for your help and guidance.
GALLAGA: Thanks so much for having me.
SIEGEL: That's Omar Gallaga who covers technology culture for the Austin American-Statesman. And next week, Omar will help us try to make sense of the coming conversion to digital TV, and if you have a question about that, we'll take a crack at answering it for you. Go visit us at npr.org/alltech, and post your question on the blog.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. President Obama is starting to make good on his campaign promise to change direction on environmental policy. Today, he ordered the environmental protection agency to review California's request to set tougher emission standards for cars and light trucks.
The Bush administration rejected that request last year. Just ahead we'll talk with a top California official who's been pushing for that change. First, here's NPR's Elizabeth Shogren on what environmentalists call a victory.
ELIZABETH SHOGREN: President Obama says America has been dependent on foreign oil for too long.
President BARACK OBAMA: It bankrolls dictators, pays for nuclear proliferation, and funds both sides of our struggle against terrorism. It puts the American people at the mercy of shifting gas prices, stifles innovation, and sets back our ability to compete.
SHOGREN: And he says these urgent challenges are compounded by the long-term threat of climate change.
President OBAMA: It falls on us to choose whether to risk the peril that comes with our current course or to seize the promise of energy independence. And for the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change.
SHOGREN: The president says that's why he's ordering the EPA to reconsider whether to permit California to cut greenhouse gas emissions from cars 30 percent by 2016. Thirteen other states have adopted California's standards, and others are moving in that direction. About half the nation's auto sales are in those states.
The president also told the Department of Transportation to write new rules for national fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. And he highlighted several steps he plans to take as part of an economic stimulus package to reduce energy use. They include making federal buildings more energy efficient and doubling the capacity to create energy from alternative sources like wind within three years.
President OBAMA: We'll save working families hundreds of dollars on their energy bills by weatherizing two millions homes.
SHOGREN: This afternoon, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger applauded Mr. Obama's announcement, and he predicted it will lead to cleaner air and cheaper gasoline bills.
Governor ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (Republican, California): For too long, Washington has been asleep at the wheel when it comes to the environment. Now, California finally has a partner and an ally in Washington at the White House.
SHOGREN: The auto industry has fought in federal and state courts to kill the California standard. Gloria Bergquist from the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers says the auto industry is happy that the president did not say he would OK California's plan, but just said he'd reviewed it.
Ms. GLORIA BERGQUIST (Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs, Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers): It isn't written, yet.
SHOGREN: Bergquist says California's program puts too heavy a burden on the industry at a time when it is laying off workers and closing plants. She says it opens the door for different requirements in each state.
Ms. BERGQUIST: What we're really looking for is one program and not multiple programs.
SHOGREN: Car companies have supported tougher fuel efficiency standards Congress passed a year ago and hope they can be the basis of a new discussion with the administration. But environmental activists who attended the White House ceremony say the announcement is a clear signal that the new administration will approve California's plan. Michelle Robinson represents the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Ms. MICHELLE ROBINSON (Washington Director, Clean Vehicles Program, Union of Concerned Scientists): The important thing we heard today is that this administration is making a clean break from the last administration in saying that science should be behind good policy, not politics.
SHOGREN: Later in the day at the State Department, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton named a new climate change envoy, Todd Stern. He'll help change the direction of the United States' international global warming policy. Elizabeth Shogren, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Joining us now is Mary Nichols. She is the chair of the California Air Resources Board. Ms. Nichols, welcome to the program.
Ms. MARY NICHOLS (Chairman, California Air Resources): Thank you.
NORRIS: California has long been out front on this issue, and you've been there for much of this time. How significant is today's move out of the White House to sign this memorandum?
Ms. NICHOLS: Well, it's a tremendous victory for California in our many year-long struggle to establish standards that will force the automakers to produce and sell us cars that we know they can make because they're already selling them in some parts of the world that are cleaner and more efficient.
But it's also important I think for the future because it really sets our country on a path to begin working, hopefully, with the auto industry to transform our domestic auto manufacturing into something that is more in keeping with the needs of the 21st century.
NORRIS: Now as we heard in Elizabeth Shogren's piece, the automakers are not very happy about this. They're still fighting the proposed standards. They say that this whole process is somewhat chaotic and confusing with a patchwork of laws to apply to some states and not to others.
Ms. NICHOLS: I don't think it's a patchwork. There is one standard which has been adopted by California, and because of the Federal Clean Air Act, now 16 states are joining with us to adopt our standards. So, states that represent a majority of the consumers in the United States will, in fact, be using the exact same standards for cars and light trucks.
Of course, the car companies can also sell those very same cars - there's nothing weird or exotic about them - everywhere in the United States. So, you know, if they have a concern about enforcement or working with the various states, we've invited them to come in and talk with us. We're eager to talk with them, but this is not going to be a tough thing for them to do.
NORRIS: Polls show that environmental issues are of concern to the American public, but they're farther down on the list, below the economy and health care and some other issues. Will a program like this make cars more expensive?
Ms. NICHOLS: Well, this is one of the areas where I think the auto companies have been shooting themselves in the foot because they continually argue that this new program is somehow going to add thousands of additional dollars to the price of a vehicle. That's just not true.
We think that, on average, the additional cost of compliance, which get us to a 30 percent improvement in fuel economy by the year 2016, the cost of that is going to be less than $400 on the price of the vehicle. And even with low gasoline prices which, frankly, we and every body else think is not going to last all that long, this is going to be paid back in a matter of a couple of years. So, we're talking about a solid investment.
NORRIS: The president's decision to sign this order and to do so so early in his administration, what do you think that signals about this new administration and its approach to environmental policy?
Ms. NICHOLS: Well, I think the first thing that it signals is that this is a president who intends to make good on the big commitments that he made in the course of his campaign. He's done a number of things in his first week or two in office to signal that he means to reverse bad decisions from the previous administration and set us on a different course. This one is from our perspective, of course, a no brainer, but really it is a very significant move. And I think...
NORRIS: Can I just jump in here, though? Is it a signal of the direction that he intends to follow, or could it possibly be interpreted as a poke in the eye to Republicans?
Ms. NICHOLS: Oh, I don't think so. I think that there were many Republicans, including former administrators of EPA, who agreed with California - not to mention my boss, Governor Schwarzenegger, who's also a Republican in good standing.
The Bush administration's position was opposed by their entire career staff, and I think it's a signal that he intends to honor the technical and scientific advice that he's hearing from all of his staff that this is something that needs to be done.
Even more significant, I think in some ways, is the fact that he's also ordered the Department of Transportation to take another look at their fuel economy standards and to take a more aggressive stance on those, as well. So, this is not just a one shot deal or a political move in my opinion. It's a sign of a real shift.
NORRIS: Mary Nichols, thanks so much for talking to us.
Ms. NICHOLS: Thank you.
NORRIS: Mary Nichols is the Chair of the California Air Resources Board.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. In the midst of the recession, there is a mega-deal to report today. The largest drug maker in the world, Pfizer, has agreed to buy a smaller rival, Wyeth. The price tag - $68 billion in cash and stock.
There aren't many companies lining up that kind of money these days. The patent on Pfizer's cholesterol drug, Lipitor, runs out in two-and-a-half years, and that may be one reason Pfizer is so eager to gobble up Wyeth. NPR's Yuki Noguchi reports.
(Soundbite of Liptor ad)
Dr. ROBERT JARVIK (Scientist, Researcher and Entrepreneur): I've studied the human heart for a lifetime...
YUKI NOGUCHI: In the pharmaceutical industry, you always need geese laying a steady supply of golden eggs in the form of lucrative drugs that treat common problems like arthritis, obesity, or high cholesterol.
(Soundbite of Lipitor ad)
Dr. JARVIK: And Lipitor is clinically proven to reduce your risk of heart attack.
NOGUCHI: Lipitor has been Pfizer's big golden goose. The drug came to market in 1997, then Pfizer bought the company that developed it, and now it makes up a quarter of Pfizer's total sales. The problem for Pfizer is that there's no heir apparent when the Lipitor patent expires. And chief executive Jeffrey Kindler said that's part of what's driving this deal.
(Soundbite of press conference)
Mr. JEFFREY KINDLER (Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Pfizer): Investors have rightfully been concerned about the clarity of what happens when Lipitor goes off patent. I have no doubt that's weighed on the stock price. Today's announcement definitively addresses that issue that has been on shareholders' minds.
Mr. IRA LOSS (Senior Health-Care Analyst, Washington Analysis Corporation): Well, it's necessary. I'm not so sure it's smart.
NOGUCHI: That's Ira Loss, senior health-care analyst with Washington Analysis Corporation, a research firm. He says the pharmaceutical industry in general has had trouble developing a pipeline of new promising drugs, including Wyeth.
Mr. LOSS: Development of these things takes a lot longer than initially anticipated in almost every case.
NOGUCHI: And merging won't necessarily solve both companies' problems. Pfizer had to pull tests on a cholesterol drug in development, and its profits plummeted last quarter as it settled litigation related to marketing of its pain drug, Bextra.
But Wyeth has drugs to treat arthritis and vaccines to prevent meningitis. And Wyeth also has a consumer products business with brands such as Advil and ChapStick. Pfizer just exited that business two years ago when it sold its consumer products division to Johnson & Johnson. That, Ira Loss says, proved to be a mistake because even in bad times, consumers buy those products.
Daniel Ruppar is a pharmaceutical analyst for Frost & Sullivan, a research firm. He says business-wise, the merger makes sense which is why Pfizer got a hard-won loan to complete the deal. Ruppar also says this deal may spur a fresh round of drug company mergers following the last wave nearly a decade ago, and that could spell major changes for the industry.
Mr. DANIEL RUPPAR (Pharmaceutical Analyst, Frost & Sullivan): So you have to ask that question - is what's good for their business good for the drug development industry over all?
NOGUCHI: Ruppar says likely not. He says creating bigger pharmaceutical giants could make it harder for smaller companies to get support to develop newer drugs, and less diversity and development could mean fewer new breakthroughs in the future.
Both Pfizer and Wyeth dispute that. They say by combining, they'll be able to bring new drugs to market faster while saving money on overhead. The deal is expected to close later this year. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Now, a talk with one of President Obama's sounding boards on matters of science, biologist Harold Varmus. The president named Dr. Varmus a co-chair of the Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, which could be a busy area. In his inaugural address, Mr. Obama said this.
(Soundbite of Barack Obama's inaugural address)
President BARACK OBAMA: We'll restore science to its rightful place and wield technology's wonders to raise health-care's quality and lower its cost.
SIEGEL: Harold Varmus won a Nobel Prize for his cancer research. He was Bill Clinton's director of the National Institutes of Health, and he is now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. He's also the author of a new book, "The Art and Politics of Science." It's part memoir, but also part layman's introduction to retroviral oncogenes. Welcome to the program, Dr. Varmus.
Dr. HAROLD VARMUS (Co-Chair, Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, Barack Obama Administration; Author, "The Art and Politics of Science"; President, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center): Thank you.
SIEGEL: And first, President Obama spoke of restoring science to its rightful place. A restoration sort of implies there's been a user-patient(ph) at work for the past few years. A fair image?
Dr. VARMUS: Perhaps, although most of us who are in the scientific community are looking to the future. We believe that science has the power to do many good things for our society, helping to control disease, and to improve sources of energy, and reactivate the economy. And we're not going to look back and lament what happened in the last two administrations. But we do like the forward-looking positive attitude that the new president has spoken of directly in his inauguration address.
SIEGEL: By the last two administrations, you mean, the two Bush administrations, you're speaking of.
Dr. VARMUS: Yes, I do.
SIEGEL: How do you think of science's rightful place in federal government?
Dr. VARMUS: Well, the relationship between the scientific community and government has become much larger over the last 50 years than it was right before the Second World War. The scientific community feels that it has the power to discover important things that help us fight wars, grow food, make water potable, to create inventions that help our industries, and it is in the realm of the public interest for society to help support our efforts.
At the same time, we know that many important decisions that are made, whether it's about nuclear weapons treaties or about selection of new means of generating energy or supporting health-care efforts are going to be informed by science. And it's the responsibility of scientists not simply to work in a lonely tower on the pure exercise of curiosity, but also to connect with societal goals.
SIEGEL: I want you to talk a little bit about life in that lonely tower. It isn't so lonely, first of all, as you write.
Dr. VARMUS: It's not lonely at all.
SIEGEL: Life science is a team sport, I gather.
Dr. VARMUS: Exactly. It's not just life sciences - actually all sciences are team sports and all of us wave the banner of collaboration and interaction very forcefully. And I think that's a common misconception that we're geeks and social misfits who don't enjoy the camaraderie of one of the most exciting adventures that human beings can experience these days.
SIEGEL: We know the end of the story when you relate your own work in oncogenes, I guess is the simplest way for me to say it, we know in the end that you and your colleague will share a Nobel Prize for it. When you're actually doing the work, do you know that you're doing productive or successful science at the time? And if not, when do you receive the validation to know that something that is taking years is actually leading to some successful result?
Dr. VARMUS: Well, it's an interesting question. I would actually somewhat contest the assumption that the Nobel Prize is the end of this story, because indeed it isn't. It's something that happens along the way. You don't expect it. One of the things that I tried to emphasize in the book is that there are discoveries that are instantaneously recognizable as being fairly profound. I think ours was probably not quite in that category. It was viewed as important, but it was only with time and with the work both collaborative and independent of our own, that established the significance of what we had discovered.
But all of us who were involved in the discovery of the cellular genes that are often responsible for human cancer realize that we are very far from the end of the line. That while some people have won prizes and many people have had exciting careers, that indeed, the progress we've made against human cancer has been confined to a much greater understanding of the disease.
It's only now that we're beginning to see new ways forward to control the disease that have - that's based on the kind of discoveries that were made 30 years ago. And it's the application of those discoveries that really will matter in the long run and get us to the real goal, which is controlling a dread disease.
SIEGEL: But for scientists, is the understanding itself - is that an end in itself? And is the application almost a justification for why you should keep me doing my real pursuit, which is the pursuit of knowledge about what this life thing is all about.
Dr. VARMUS: Well, this is the crux of the traditional argument that occurs over how we proceed with the funding of the national effort. And I think it's important that the public understand that on the one hand, the simple joy of discovery is not something that should be suppressed, that it does lead to knowledge that is applicable to many problems in our society.
I think most people who pick up their cell phones and iPods and take a new medicine have a poor understanding of the science behind these applications. And I think it's a responsibility of scientists to use their talents as explainers, as teachers, to make the public understand that our country, our society, our world is going to deal with the enormous threats it faces in almost every direction only by understanding how the world works in a more profound way.
SIEGEL: Harold Varmus, thank you very much for talking with us.
Dr. VARMUS: My pleasure. Thank you very much, Robert.
SIEGEL: Harold Varmus, who was the director of the National Institutes of Health and is currently president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has written a book called "The Art and Politics of Science."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
The conflict in Gaza has created a political feud between two British TV networks and a group of leading humanitarian organizations. The charities want to broadcast a two-minute appeal for donations on behalf of victims of the war. Both the BBC and a satellite channel called Sky News have refused to put it on the air. They say it would compromise their impartiality as they cover the conflict between Israel and Hamas. NPR's Rob Gifford reports from London.
ROB GIFFORD: Thirteen of Britain's main charities including the Red Cross, Oxfam, and Save the Children constitute the Disasters Emergency Committee, or DEC. The committee has raised up to $30 million in the past in a series of urgent appeals to the British public for a variety of countries.
The DEC had asked broadcasters to air an appeal during primetime tonight seeking donations for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, but the BBC has declined to show the appeal. Mark Thompson is the BBC's director general.
Mr. MARK THOMPSON (Director General, BBC): We are passionate about defending the BBC's impartiality. You know, we do want to cover the humanitarian story. We want to cover it in our news programs where we can put it in context. We can do it in an even, carefully, carefully balanced, objective way. And we worry about being seen to endorse, you know, something which could give people the impression that we were backing one side.
GIFFORD: Thompson denied his arm had been twisted, as he put it, by pro-Israel lobbyists. The BBC was joined in its decision not to broadcast by a satellite channel Sky News, but three other domestic British networks said they would broadcast the film.
Most of the public's anger, though, has been directed at the publicly funded BBC with 11,000 viewers registering complaints. Nearly 60 politicians are backing a motion in parliament urging the corporation to reverse its decision. Richard Burden is one of them. He says the BBC has aired appeals for victims of other conflicts.
Mr. RICHARD BURDEN (Member of Parliament, Labor Party, United Kingdom): If what Mark Thompson and the BBC management are saying is that they don't want to broadcast this appeal because it's controversial, then I would completely disagree with that. But that, I guess, would be an honest position.
But what they're saying is that they don't want to broadcast it because they want to retain their impartiality. What they seem to be saying is that impartiality means treating suffering children in Gaza different from suffering children in Congo or Darfur.
GIFFORD: But supporters of the BBC say that aid sent to Gaza is a particularly sensitive and political issue, not least because its distribution could be controlled by Hamas which runs the territory. The Middle East conflict is especially sensitive for the BBC, which has in the past been criticized for being too pro-Palestinian in its coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Adrian Lovett of Save the Children said his charity and the others involved were deeply disappointed by the BBC and Sky News' decision.
Mr. ADRIAN LOVETT (Director of Campaigns and Communications, Save the Children): Whatever the - what we acknowledge are deeply complicated issues around this crisis, at the heart of it are 400,000 people today without running water, 50,000 people who are homeless today, raw sewage running down the streets, and children who tell us on the ground in Gaza that they are afraid, that they're traumatized. And they are deeply vulnerable. And those are the children that we're there to help.
GIFFORD: A number of senior politicians and even the archbishop of Canterbury have joined in criticizing the BBC. The archbishop of York, John Sentamu, said the BBC should consider humanity first and show the television appeal. Rob Gifford, NPR News, London.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. There was a court hearing today in Chicago to address an unusual case. On Saturday, a young man reported for duty at the Grand Crossing district of the Chicago Police Department. He was dressed in full uniform and even though nobody recognized the officer, everyone bought his story that he was a transfer from another district.
He was assigned a partner and sent out on duty. Five hours later, the officers returned to do paperwork, and someone noticed the rookie wasn't wearing a badge or a gun, and he was only 14 years old.
Joining me now is Angela Rozas who's been covering the story for the Chicago Tribune. Angela, 14 years old, how did he pull this off?
Ms. ANGELA ROZAS (Reporter, Chicago Tribune): Well, he's five foot three, muscular and my colleagues who've been working on this with me, tell me that he looks mature. He apparently had a great love of police. He had been watching "Cops" for years and was also a member of - something we call the Explorers here. It's a program through our community policing office in which the youth are supposed to get to know police officers, and I guess he took his homework a little far.
NORRIS: Where did he get the uniform?
Ms. ROZAS: The police are still investigating that, however, a pastor, who was a guardian to the boy - he's had a troubled life, said that he was told that in the past, the boy had stolen a uniform from a locker room at some point. The interesting part that we've learned today was that he's been arrested several times before for impersonating a police officer in the last year.
So, police are looking into how he got the uniform. The idea is you're supposed to present a badge when you get a uniform, but obviously, police are looking into those security measures at this point.
NORRIS: What's the penalty for impersonating a police officer?
Ms. ROZAS: That's a great question that - I don't know the answer to that. They charged him as a juvenile, and in juvenile court, it operates very differently from adult court. We know that the judge today asked that the boy be held and also that an evaluation be done of him, a psychological evaluation.
NORRIS: The notion that someone could so easily infiltrate the Chicago Police Department, does this raise real security issues for them?
Ms. ROZAS: Yes, it does. The deputy superintendent, speaking at a press conference yesterday, raised that issue and said, you know, we've identified an egregious security breech, and I'm hearing this morning that commanders are meeting and talking about this.
The ability of anyone who hasn't shown proper identification to be able to get into a police vehicle and check out a ticket book as he is alleged to have done, it does raise an issue that Chicago police tell me they are looking into it. Because, all right, so it's funny, it's a 14 year old boy. But what if it was somebody else with less innocent intentions? The top brass are meeting to discuss, you know, how did this happen, and how can we prevent this from happening again?
NORRIS: Do you have any idea what he actually did during those five hours that he was on duty?
Ms. ROZAS: That's the other interesting tale is - my colleagues and I were talking about this, talking to Chicago police and yet pretending to be a Chicago police officer, any police officer for that matter - it's pretty baffling how he was able to pull that off for a number of hours.
NORRIS: Oh yeah, they have their own vernacular, I mean.
Ms. ROZAS: Exactly. They have their own way of speaking. I've been covering cops for 10 years, and I come up short, even though I talk to cops all the time. We have some conflicting reports on what happened. Chicago police insists he was not behind the wheel of the vehicle. He went out with a partner, but we're told from other sources that he did so much as to write tickets and respond to a domestic battery call.
So just the extent of his involvement, that's something that we're pursuing to figure out just who he was talking to and what he was doing.
NORRIS: Angela Rozas, thank you so much.
Ms. ROZAS: You're welcome.
NORRIS: Angela Rozas is a reporter with The Chicago Tribune.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, it's All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The governor of Illinois is living up to his pledge to fight hard as his impeachment trial gets started in the state Senate. But Rod Blagojevich isn't making his case to the lawmakers. He's making it to the public.
SIEGEL: The Illinois House impeached Blagojevich earlier this month following his arrest on corruption charges. They accused him of official misconduct and abusing the power of his office. If convicted by the Senate, the governor will be immediately removed from office.
NORRIS: But Blagojevich refused to attend his trial, and instead he went to New York to make his case on national television. Here's NPR's David Schaper.
DAVID SCHAPER: In making the rounds at network and cable TV studios, Blagojevich is facing the most pointed questions yet about the allegations he tried to illegally sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Obama to the highest bidder. On "Good Morning America," Blagojevich was asked about his alleged comments caught on FBI surveillance tapes that the Senate seat is, quote, "bleeping golden," and that he's just not giving it up for bleeping nothing.
(Soundbite of TV show "Good Morning America")
Governor ROD BLAGOJEVICH (Democrat, Illinois): They took snippets of conversations completely out of context, did not provide all of the tapes to tell the whole story, and when the whole story comes out, you will see that the effort was to work to have a senator who can best represent Illinois and one that could help us create jobs and provide health care.
SCHAPER: The Democratic governor seems to be suggesting that there was nothing more than political horse-trading going on and that he was trying to leverage the Senate seat to the benefit of the people of Illinois. Blagojevich also continues to rail against the rules established for his Senate impeachment trial and against his critics, including Chicago Mayor Richard Daley who calls Blagojevich "cuckoo."
(Soundbite of TV show "Good Morning America")
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: Here's a question I have to you, to Mayor Daley and everyone else. Whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? How is it that you can make a couple of allegations, take some conversations completely out of context?
SCHAPER: In recent days, Blagojevich has compared his own plight to those of world leaders of the past who were jailed for their convictions, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, and Gandhi. Blagojevich says he is going to the airwaves instead of defending himself in Springfield to let the rest of the world know what he is up against, which he contends is a bipartisan conspiracy to remove him from office. On "The Today Show," he complained that the fix is in because the impeachment trial rules are unfair. He contends they don't allow him to call witnesses in his defense.
(Soundbite of TV show "The Today Show")
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: You can conceivably bring in 15 angels and 20 saints led by Mother Theresa to come in and testify to my good character and my integrity and all the rest. It wouldn't matter. There's no chance whatsoever to have a fair hearing.
SCHAPER: Meantime, a somber mood fell over the chambers of the Illinois state Senate.
(Soundbite of Senate hearing)
Chief Justice THOMAS FITZGERALD (Illinois Supreme Court): President Cullerton moves that the Senate resolve itself into an impeachment tribunal for the purpose of commencing the trial of the impeachment of the governor.
SCHAPER: Illinois Supreme Court justice Thomas Fitzgerald is presiding.
Chief Justice FITZGERALD: Seeing no objection, it is so ordered. The Senate is now resolved into an impeachment tribunal.
SCHAPER: As Illinois state senators began the first impeachment trial of a governor in the state's history, they said Blagojevich is wrong about the trial rules and that he is misstating what they do and don't allow. Before the House prosecutor began to present his case, Republican Senate Minority Leader Christine Radogno said the rules will provide the governor with a fair trial even without him being here.
(Soundbite of Senate hearing)
State Senator CHRISTINE RADOGNO (Republican, Lemont, Illinois): We will work expeditiously, but efficiently, and we will be fair and thorough. That is the only way that we can move beyond the immense challenges that we face today and to deal with the business of the state.
SCHAPER: The House prosecutor then began laying out the case saying this trial will deal with the chief executive who has, quote, "repeatedly and utterly abused the privileges of his office." With the governor and his attorneys boycotting the impeachment trial, it will likely last less than the two weeks planned. And Blagojevich could be removed from office before the week's end. David Schaper, NPR News in Springfield, Illinois.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
So a governor who has been impeached faces a trial in the state Senate while bitterly protesting the rules of that trial. Does he have a point? We're going to ask Professor Mark Rosen who teaches constitutional and state and local government law at Chicago-Kent College of Law. Welcome to the program.
Professor MARK ROSEN (Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law): Thank you very much.
SIEGEL: What's wrong with Governor Blagojevich's claim that he should be able to summon witnesses for his defense?
Prof. ROSEN: Well, he does have the power to summon many witnesses for his defense. The primary problem with his claims is that he's trying to draw an analogy between the impeachment process, which is a political process, and the very different judicial processes of civil and criminal trials.
SIEGEL: But the basis of his impeachment would appear to be a criminal complaint that the U.S. attorney issued, and it isn't the basis of an adversarial proceeding, and there hasn't been a trial that would be an adversarial proceeding. So at some point, shouldn't he have a chance to present his side of it?
Prof. ROSEN: He certainly should have a chance to present his side to it. But the basis for the impeachment proceeding is a whole array of activities, not just the U.S. attorney's criminal allegations, but all sorts of other actions that according to the articles of impeachment constitute an abuse of power. And with respect to those other matters, the governor has the power to call other witnesses.
You know, the main difficulty is this. Everybody knows that civil and criminal trials take a long time, and that's appropriate because we don't want to take somebody's money away or throw them in jail unless there's been a very careful view to see if they deserve that. But impeachment really is quite different. A high official of government serves at the pleasure of the people, and if there's reason to remove that official, it has to be done in a process that moves considerably faster than a civil or criminal trial would.
SIEGEL: But we in the press and people in the public generally will be very careful to speak of alleged offenses of things that have been charged against Governor Blagojevich. They're not proved at this point. And I guess my question is, if it really is a political proceeding, isn't it implicit in that that the criminal complaint filed by Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney, is almost coincidental here - that if the governor had done anything sufficient to embarrass two-thirds of the state Senate so much they wanted him out, that's impeachable.
Prof. ROSEN: That's correct. I mean, there's a tremendous amount of discretion that is vested in the legislature to move forward with impeachment when they think to be appropriate. Ultimately, the check of whether there's been abuse by the legislature of their impeachment power is how the people of Illinois respond.
SIEGEL: Is there any cause for concern that any federal prosecutor, or conceivably as they prosecute, I suppose, by indicting a public official could effectively bring about that person's removal from office because nobody wants an important public official to be preoccupied with his own trial for months?
Prof. ROSEN: In theory, yes. That could open the door to that. In practice, a discretion-filled process like impeachment relies on the good judgment and good faith of the legislature. And one would hope that going forward with impeachment in this context would not open the door overly fast to impeachment in the future. I mean, if that happened, that would be problematic because that would enfeeble governors and make them mere puppets of the legislatures.
SIEGEL: Or puppets of prosecutors.
Prof. ROSEN: That's correct. You know, the check ultimately on potential abuse by prosecutors or potential abuse by legislatures is the public's disapprobation.
SIEGEL: Professor Rosen, thank you very much for talking with us.
Prof. ROSEN: You're very welcome.
SIEGEL: It's Mark Rosen, who teaches constitutional and state and local government law at Chicago-Kent College of Law.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
It is illegal retaliation for a company to fire a worker for cooperating in an internal investigation looking into allegations of sexual harassment. That is the unanimous ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court today. The decision plugs a major loophole in federal civil rights law. NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg reports.
NINA TOTENBERG: Vicky Crawford worked for the Nashville, Tennessee, Metropolitan Government for 30 years. She was the payroll coordinator for the school system and in her last job evaluation had gotten the highest overall job performance rating. In 2002, she was asked to cooperate in an investigation of sexual harassment allegations made against a man named Gene Hughes who was director of employee relations. Crawford and two other women in the central office answered questions during the probe. They said that Hughes had frequently acted inappropriately, grabbing his crotch, touching them, and making lewd remarks.
Hughes, however, remained in his job. No formal action was taken against him. The three women, however, were all fired, each for alleged misconduct unrelated to the investigation. Crawford sued the city of Nashville for illegal retaliation, but her claim was thrown out by the lower courts because she had never brought a sexual harassment claim on her own. Thus the lower courts said she was not covered by the federal law that bans retaliation against those who, quote, "oppose discrimination or harassment in a workplace."
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed. Writing for the court, Justice David Souter noted that both federal law and past Supreme Court decisions have encouraged employers to conduct internal investigations of sexual harassment and other discrimination complaints. The purpose of these investigations, the court has said, is both to protect employees and to deal with complaints before they become lawsuits. But if workers are afraid to cooperate for fear of losing their jobs, the court observed today, the civil rights laws will be seriously undermined.
What's more, the court said, under the literal wording of the existing law, a worker who answers questions put by an investigator has indeed taken action to oppose misconduct and is covered by the provision that bans retaliation. The court said there is nothing in the federal law that would require what the justices called a freakish rule that would protect an employee who reports sexual harassment on her own initiative, but would not protect an employee who reports the same harassment when asked about it by her boss. Eric Schnapper, who represented Vicky Crawford in the Supreme Court, said the court is sending a clear message about retaliation.
Professor ERIC SCHNAPPER (Law, University of Washington): This is the third time in a year the Supreme Court has had a retaliation case and emphatically directed the lower courts that these sorts of claims are supposed to be taken seriously.
TOTENBERG: Ray Van(ph), who filed a brief in the case on behalf of an employer group, notes that retaliation claims at the EEOC are accelerating dramatically.
Ms. RAY VAN (Attorney): The court's decision will potentially open the floodgates. That's really the risk here that employers are going to have to defend many more potentially frivolous retaliation claims.
TOTENBERG: Eric Schnapper disagrees.
Professor SCHNAPPER: This is a good decision for employers. At the end of the day, employers want the victims of sexual harassment to come forward and complain about it. That the employer in this case was asking for the right to fire people who object to sexual harassment made no sense at all. It would be like the police chief objecting to the witness protection program.
TOTENBERG: Today's decision does not end the Crawford retaliation lawsuit. The case was thrown out by the lower courts before any jury trial took place. So the case now goes back to the lower courts for further action. NPR called the chief counsel for the city for reaction today. Those calls were not returned. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELL NORRIS, host:
These are hard times for an area known as peanut country in southwestern Georgia. Consider the town of Blakely, an agricultural town that considers peanuts and cotton as its lifeline. Blakely is home to the Peanut Corporation of America, a plant that was temporarily shut down after a recent outbreak of salmonella was traced to the factory. A majority of the factory's employees were laid off. And to add the town's woes, a newspaper production plant based there, Georgia Pacific, will lay off 100 employees. Like we said, these are tough times in Blakely.
Ric Hall has been the mayor of Blakely for five years. He's on the line with us now. Mayor Hall, what was your reaction when you found out about the closing of the peanut plant? It must have been bad news.
Mayor RIC HALL (Blakely, Georgia): Well, it was bad news, Michele. And it was one that we weren't prepared for coming on light of the announcement that they were closing one of the machines down at the Georgia Pacific Plant. So that's a total of about 150 to 170 employees who are going to have their paychecks adversely affected, if not cut off completely.
NORRIS: Now, as we said, this is considered peanut country. Just how important are peanuts to the way of life down there?
Mayor HALL: We are an agricultural community, and peanuts have been the mainstay ever since the boll weevil made his presence known back in the late '40s and people converted to peanuts as their primary cash crop. We've seen that cotton and peanuts now probably equal out at about 50-50 as far as the largest cash crop that is planted by our farms.
NORRIS: So if I were to drive in through the town of Blakely, would I see peanuts on the town's sign? And are you proud of your peanut heritage?
Mayor HALL: Actually, you would. We even have a monument on the square to the peanut.
NORRIS: What's that monument look like?
Mayor HALL: Well, it's just got a big peanut across the top of it, and the inscription on it describes the importance that peanuts played in the recovery for our farmers after the devastation caused by the boll weevil.
NORRIS: The Peanut Corporation of America is at the center of the salmonella outbreak, an outbreak that has sickened hundreds. What are you going to do to make sure that people turn back to peanut butter or peanut products at the end of this?
Mayor HALL: I'm sure for a while there'll be some people who will be cautious. But it will recover. And so many byproducts of peanuts - peanut flower and peanut oil and things of this nature - have become so important to the lives and the diets of Americans that they will come back to it. There will be a slump for a while.
NORRIS: Now I know you're a busy man, so I'm going to let you go. But I just have one last question for you. There are a lot of people in your town that are out of work right now facing hard times. What if anything can you do to help them out?
Mayor HALL: One of the most unfortunate things about being a small community is we don't have a lot of resources. And so, primarily the churches will step up. We have a food bank and we have a clothing bank. We're a very close-knit community, and I'm sure the people will reach out to assist in any way possible that we can to try to get these folks through this very tough time.
NORRIS: Mayor Hall, thank you very much for your time. All the best to you.
Mayor HALL: Thank you for your consideration of our plight.
NORRIS: That was Mayor Ric Hall. He's the mayor of Blakely, Georgia.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. Read today's job cut announcements and you'd be tempted to call this "Black Monday." But nowadays, there seem to be any number of Mondays vying for that honor. Here's today's claim to bleakness - 20,000 jobs cut at Caterpillar, 8,000 jobs cut by Sprint Nextel, 7,000 at Home Depot, 8,000 job cuts expected from the merger of Pfizer and Wyeth, and 2,000 jobs at GM plants in Michigan and Ohio. That's 45,000 jobs in this country. And in Europe, there's also bad news: 7,000 jobs cut at the financial services company ING and 6,000 at the electronics company Philips. Well, joining us is Barry Ritholtz who founded the financial blog "The Big Picture." He's also a CEO at Fusion IQ, an online quantitative research firm. Mr. Ritholtz joins us from the NPR New York bureau. Welcome to the program. Forty-five thousand U.S. jobs cut in a day. What does that say to you?
Mr. BARRY RITHOLTZ (CEO and Director, Fusion IQ; Financial Blogger): Well, it tells us that we're going to continue to see some layoffs for some time to come. It's not just the job losses today. You look at the entire month of January and we're up to 150,000. And that means that we're in a very serious downturn in the job market that's likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
SIEGEL: And do those numbers tend to conform to expectations of policymakers or do they suggest a more dire and deep recession than they might have thought?
Mr. RITHOLTZ: I always take policymakers' expectations with a grain of salt. If you recall in - for most of 2008, most of the policymakers at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department were telling us that the housing issues were contained, the credit problems were contained, and that we'll, you know, hopefully avoid a recession. Their expectations tend to be very, very optimistic - overly optimistic. And that's the way it usually is.
SIEGEL: When you add to the announcement today by a company like Caterpillar and Home Depot, for that matter, last week's announcements of layoffs by Microsoft and Harley Davidson, we were talking about brands that connote quality in this country.
Mr. RITHOLTZ: Well, but these are brands that are not insulated from the broader economic cycle. If we're looking at Caterpillar, we're looking at a company that makes the bulk of its money through development of commercial and residential real estate. Obviously, both of those areas are doing very, very poorly. If you're talking about Microsoft and Intel or any of the other tech companies, we've seen some very, very bad earnings and a general warning from most of the people, most of the companies in this sector that things aren't going well. When was the last time Microsoft and Intel both announced layoffs of 5,000 people? We know PC demand is weak, mobile phone sales are poor, and discretionary consumer spending is weak. That means technology is going to suffer just like the rest of the economy.
SIEGEL: Well, what do you make of the layoffs announced in Europe by Philips, which doesn't make expensive discretionary things?
Mr. RITHOLTZ: You know, it's pretty clear that everybody is sitting down and looking at their bottom lines and their total revenue numbers and saying, gee, you know, we are going to be running at a negative rate of return. We have to get our costs down. You can't maintain the same workforce if you're putting out a hundred widgets when you're only putting out 50 widgets. So, they start cutting back where they can. And unfortunately, a lot of the cuts fall on the labor force. That's - you know, when you look at a box of cornflakes, the most expensive ingredient isn't corn or sugar, it's the labor that goes into it. And that's why it's the first place where companies look to start saving a little cash flow.
SIEGEL: Is there anything about job cut announcements that can tell us whether we are heading for the bottom of a recession, whether we're already at the bottom of the recession, or whether there is much, much worse to come?
Mr. RITHOLTZ: You know, the interesting thing about labor data is - and employment data is that it tends to very much lag the economic cycle. If you look at the past five recessions, layoffs and headcount reductions took place six to nine months into the recovery. So the strange thing about these big layoff numbers is that they very often occur even after the economy has bottomed and has began to move higher. So, unfortunately, you can't draw any specific conclusion that things are getting better, the economy is picking up, when based on the pace of layoffs. In fact, things will be getting better, and we'll still be seeing significant layoffs. At least that's what history has shown us.
SIEGEL: Mr. Ritholtz, thanks a lot for talking with us.
Mr. RITHOLTZ: Thanks for having me.
SIEGEL: It's Barry Ritholtz, who is the founder of the financial blog "The Big Picture."
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
In Minnesota, the race for the U.S. Senate is now before a panel of three judges. The vote in November was very close. The final tally put Republican incumbent Norm Coleman ahead. Then a recount gave Democrat Al Franken the lead by 225 votes. So Coleman is now contesting the recount. Minnesota Public Radio's Tom Scheck has our story.
TOM SCHECK: After nearly three months of waiting to find out just who is Minnesota's other senator, the feeling here can largely be summed up in four words - when will it end? Even the candidates sense the frustration. Republican Norm Coleman urged patience when he spoke with reporters inside the state Capitol last week. He alleges that some of Democrat Al Franken's ballots were counted twice in the recount. He also wants some rejected absentee ballots included.
Senator NORM COLEMAN (Republican, Minnesota): Minnesotans need to have a sense of confidence that whoever is their senator got elected fairly and that nobody's ballot was counted twice. That's an affront to each and every voter in this state. So, it's going to take a little while. I hope it goes very quickly.
SCHECK: This trial is just the latest turn in a rollercoaster Senate race that had Coleman barely leading after votes were counted on Election Day. But following a tedious hand recount of nearly three million votes, Franken took over the lead. No one knows how long this trial will take since it could lead to more hearings, more ballot inspections, and even another recount. Franken attorney Marc Elias is confident though that Franken will keep his lead. He calls Coleman's strategy a "dollar and a dream."
Mr. MARC ELIAS (Attorney, Al Franken): It's kind of like buying a lottery ticket. They have to hope to find some category of ballots and then hope that when they open that category of ballots, they find some cache of votes that will allow them to make up what is right now a fairly comfortable lead of 225 votes.
SCHECK: For his part, Al Franken has largely stayed out of the public eye. He did appear at a photo-op last week with Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, but avoided election talk. Instead, he was trying to sound senatorial.
Mr. AL FRANKEN (Democratic Senate Candidate, Minnesota): We've got to get to work and to address the problems that we have. And so that's what we're doing here today. We're talking about the stimulus package, about the calendar here in the Senate, so that when I do get here we can - I can hit the ground running.
SCHECK: Franken and the Democrats appear to be running out of patience though. They want the state Supreme Court to order Minnesota's Republican governor and its Democratic secretary of state to sign an election certificate declaring Franken the winner. But both politicians say state law prevents them from doing that. As the candidates wrangle over each and every vote, Minnesota is playing shorthanded. University of Minnesota political science professor Larry Jacobs says that means one fewer politician to push the state's agenda.
Dr. LAWRENCE JACOBS (Professor of Political Science, University of Minnesota): This is particularly the case as we see perhaps a trillion dollars of stimulus dollars flowing out of Congress. You'd like to be at full strength to make sure that Minnesota's interests are protected.
SCHECK: But there's not guarantee that this trial will close the chapter on the 2008 election. The loser can still appeal to the state Supreme Court or make an argument before federal court. Those actions could prompt a frustrated electorate to demand an end to an election night that's stretched to 84 days. For NPR News, I'm Tom Scheck in St. Paul.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. For six years, the anti-war movement has been going strong in the little village of Potsdam, New York. Every week, peace activists have gathered there for a vigil to protest the Iraq war. They held another gathering this past weekend, and it was their last, at least for a while. The group is taking a hiatus. They say they're giving the new president a chance to bring the troops home. North Country Public Radio's David Sommerstein reports.
DAVID SOMMERSTEIN: It's two degrees at 10:59 in the morning. Roger Cunningham is the first to arrive. Just his eyes peek out from a coat and scarf and hat.
Mr. ROGER CUNNINGHAM (Peace Activist): Well, we're in front of the United States Post Office in Potsdam, New York. I'm carrying a very well-tattered peace flag here that has just about shredded from use.
SOMMERSTEIN: Cunningham is among the couple dozen regulars who have demonstrated on this corner every Saturday from 11 till noon. Often just a handful of people show up, but today a crowd of forty assembles. People hug and laugh and congratulate each other that their guy's in the Oval Office now. Someone fires up a propane heater. A few people carry "Honk for Peace" signs. Kim Bouchard(ph) unfurls a big banner that reads "War is Over! If You Want It."
Ms. KIM BOUCHARD (Peace Activist): The beginning of the Barack Obama administration really heralds the prospect, the promise, the hope that there is going to be a difference in terms of how we handle our grievances with each other.
SOMMERSTEIN: This group's placing a lot of faith in President Obama, so much faith that this corner will be empty next Saturday for the first time since before the Iraq war began. Rob Jewett is a member of the local Veterans for Peace chapter.
Mr. ROB JEWETT (Member, Veterans for Peace): We figured, why should we be out here holding a peace vigil if the chief executive is promoting the very values that we stand here for. So, we're going to give him that chance. And if the war fever builds back up, we're going to be out here promoting peace again.
SOMMERSTEIN: Some liberals are a little nervous about President Obama's first foreign policy moves. He stuck with Bush appointee Robert Gates as secretary of defense. His timeline for withdrawal from Iraq is little different from President Bush's plan as he left office. Drones are still dropping missiles on Pakistan. Still, Kim Bouchard says it's just time to wait and see.
Ms. BOUCHARD: Will I drop my criticism or will I not be stopping looking critically? No, but I'm ready for that hope.
SOMMERSTEIN: And they're ready for a break. Rob Jewett says early on they were sometimes jeered or flipped the bird.
Mr. JEWETT: The cutest thing that ever happened was a young person going by in a pickup yelling at all these people that - I'll bet the average age was 67 years old here, when they said, "Get a job."
SOMMERSTEIN: There were high points like when 200 people showed up for the first anniversary of the Iraq invasion. The rallies nearly fizzled when President Bush won a second term.
(Soundbite of cars honking)
SOMMERSTEIN: No one chants at these vigils. There's no shouting or singing. That was the approach of the 80-year-old woman who started the whole thing, Ruth Beebe. Beebe died two years ago. Robin McClelland(ph) laments she's not here.
Mr. ROBIN MCCLELLAND (Peace Activist): It was such a joy to work with her. I learned so much about being effective, not getting discouraged and walking away, and not getting all excited and getting arrested.
SOMMERSTEIN: The Potsdam peaceniks haven't settled on exactly what it would take for them to reinstate the vigil. But by noon, toes are numb, noses are red, people are ready to go. They roll up their banners, say goodbye, and head home to give peace a chance. For NPR News, I'm David Sommerstein in Potsdam, New York.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
For months, we've been bringing you stories of the subprime crisis, the credit crunch, the recession. They're all aspects of one enormous economic downturn. We know it's historic in its severity, but so far it's also nameless. Reporter Chana Joffe-Walt has been wondering what will we call it?
CHANA JOFFE-WALT: No one struggles with nameless happenings more than journalists who have to talk about nameless happenings day after day after day. Here are two of them. First, Jonathan Wald. He's senior vice president of business news at CNBC.
Mr. JONATHAN WALD (Senior Vice President of Business News, CNBC): We started by calling it the subprime mortgage crisis and then the credit crisis, the credit crunch, when we officially entered a recession, causing some - not on our air - but to call it a "Crecession."
Mr. JOSEPH NOCERO (Reporter, The New York Times): Pandemic, contagion, crisis, catastrophe...
JOFFE-WALT: Joe Nocero covers business for the New York Times.
Mr. NOCERO: I'm not a big crunch fan. It's not a scary enough word. It's sort of almost like a sports term. But meltdown is pretty good.
JOFFE-WALT: Jonathan Wald, the CNBC guy, he says it's really hard when you're in the middle of something to know what it will be called. So all you can do is brand the hell out of it. Wald says in the media, if it's not branded, it basically doesn't exist.
Mr. WALD: When it was clear that this was a big moving target, we created a franchise, a heading for a lot of our coverage on the economy, we called it the New Economy.
JOFFE-WALT: Try to imagine saying this at a bar. He lost his job, you know, because of the New Economy. Or imagine 60 years down the road, yeah, my grandpa has this thing about buying a house. I think because he lived through the Crecession. Maybe what we're living through right now is just too fresh, too much in still-happening mode to be labeled. That's definitely what a historian will tell you.
Dr. ALAN BRINKLEY (Professor of History, Columbia University): I'm Alan Brinkley and I'm a professor of history at Columbia.
JOFFE-WALT: Brinkley says before the Great Depression, economic downturns were generally called panics, the panic of 1837, panic of 1873, '93. So, 1929 comes around, it doesn't become the Great or even Depression right away. It takes a couple of years.
Dr. BRINKLEY: Herbert Hoover thought that panic was too incendiary and would, you know, encourage people to panic. And so he decided to use what he thought was a gentler and less alarming word, and that was Depression.
JOFFE-WALT: Which is funny to think about now, depression being a gentle word? It's not just bad economies that have needed historic labels. What about World War I? It was called the Great War while it was happening. Although Andrew Cohen, he's a historian at Syracuse, he says the Woodrow Wilson administration really tried to name it something else.
Dr. ANDREW COHEN (Professor of History, Syracuse University): In order to convince Americans that the war was a good thing, they gave it a series of labels: the War to Save Democracy, the War to End All Wars.
JOFFE-WALT: World War I didn't get its name until World War II rolled around. So it's probably for the best that the whole "war to end all wars" thing never really stuck. Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Illinois, he says politicians, reporters, historians they are not the experts on naming. He is.
Dr. ALLAN METCALF (Professor of English, MacMurray College): The book I wrote is called "Predicting New Words: The Secrets of Their Success."
JOFFE-WALT: Metcalf says individuals can throw out ideas for names, but it will ultimately be decided by all of us collectively permitting new words into our vocabulary. And to get in, names will need to follow certain rules.
Dr. METCALF: The basic rule for the success of a new word or term is that it doesn't look new. I call it camouflaged or stealth words, a word that you hear for the first time and doesn't strike you as something strange, odd, or funny. Maybe it's not in your vocabulary, but it certainly seems normal and natural.
JOFFE-WALT: So that rules out cute and clever names. Credit crunch, Metcalf says, no chance. Same with the Great Recession. He points out rhyming is a form of cuteness. Several journalists I talked to liked the Great Unwinding because it's descriptive yet still broad. But Metcalf says it's not specific enough, certainly not stealth. And those historians you heard from earlier, they declined to weigh in at all. They're not comfortable until names for cataclysmic events have had at least two generations to prove themselves. For NPR News, I'm Chana Joffe-Walt.
SIEGEL: And if you want to suggest a name for this economy, and you can keep it clean, tell us at our "Planet Money" blog at npr.org/money.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. There is some sobering news to report today from a new study on climate change. There is no going back. Climate change is essentially irreversible. The study says as carbon dioxide emissions rise, the world will be committed to more and more long-term environmental disruption. And the damage will persist even if and when emissions are brought under control. More now from NPR's Richard Harris.
RICHARD HARRIS: Susan Solomon is one of the world's top climate scientists, and the more she studies global warming, the more it becomes evident to her that this is not just another pollution problem.
Dr. SUSAN SOLOMON (Climate Scientist, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration): We're used to thinking about pollution problems as things that we can fix, you know, smog, we just cut back and everything will be better later. Or haze, you know, it'll go away pretty quickly.
HARRIS: That's true for some of the gases that contribute to climate change, such as methane and nitrous oxide. But as Solomon and colleagues now show in a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it's not true for the most abundant greenhouse gas - carbon dioxide.
Dr. SOLOMON: People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate change would go back to normal in maybe 100 years, 200 years. What we're showing here is that's not right. It's essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years.
HARRIS: That's because right now the oceans are soaking up a lot of the planet's excess heat and a lot of the carbon dioxide we're putting into the air. Even assuming we could stop putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, that would not solve the problem. Carbon dioxide will eventually start coming out of the ocean, and the heat will come out too. And that will take place for many hundreds of years.
Solomon is a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Her new study looked at the consequences of this long-term effect in terms of sea level rise and drought. If we continue with business as usual for just a few more decades, she says those emissions could be enough to create permanent dust-bowl conditions in the U.S. Southwest and around the Mediterranean.
Dr. SOLOMON: The sea level rise is a much slower thing, so it will take a long time to happen, but we will lock into it, based on the peak level of CO2 that we reach in this century.
HARRIS: The idea that changes will be irreversible has consequences for how we should deal with climate change. We can't turn down the global thermostat once it's been turned up, so scientists say we need to proceed with more caution right now. Michael Oppenheimer is at Princeton University.
Professor MICHAEL OPPENHEIMER (Geosciences, Princeton University): These are all, by the way, changes that are starting to happen in at least a minor way already. So the question becomes, where do we stop it? When does all this become dangerous?
HARRIS: The answer is sooner rather than later. Scientists have been trying to advise politicians about finding an acceptable level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The new study suggests that it's even more important to aim low. If we overshoot, the damage can't be easily undone. Oppenheimer feels more urgency than ever now to deal with climate change, but he says, in the end, setting acceptable limits for carbon dioxide is a judgment call.
Prof. OPPENHEIMER: That's really a political decision because there's more at issue than just the science. It's the issue of what the science says, plus what's feasible politically, plus what's reasonable economically to do.
HARRIS: Now, it might be tempting throw up your hands at this point and say, forget it. If changes are irreversible and emissions are already running out of control, the situation is hopeless. But Susan Solomon doesn't see it that way at all.
Dr. SOLOMON: I guess if it's irreversible, to me it seems like all the more reason that you might want to do something about it. Because committing to something that you can't back out of, seems to me like a step that you'd want to take even more carefully than something that you thought you could reverse.
HARRIS: To her, that's means stepping up action to prevent the situation from getting much worse than it is already. Richard Harris, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Halliburton Corporation announced today that it will make $560 million in payments to the SEC and the Justice Department to settle an international bribery and bid-rigging investigation. Halliburton's former subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root, known as KBR, negotiated the contracts under investigation.
Investigative journalist and filmmaker Lowell Bergman has been tracking the story. He joins me now. Lowell, before we get to that settlement, tell us about the actions that led up to today's announcement. What kind of bribery are we talking about here?
Mr. LOWELL BERGMAN (Investigative Journalist and Filmmaker): We're talking about the bribery of the president, late president of Nigeria and his closest associations. And we're talking about bid-rigging, apparently, in countries ranging from Egypt to Oman to Indonesia - all involving multibillion-dollar liquefied natural gas projects, some of the largest construction projects in the world.
NORRIS: And this case involves the former CEO of KBR, a man named Albert Stanley, known as Jack, primarily. Is this the primary character in this, or were there other people involved?
Mr. BERGMAN: Well, there's a wide variety of characters involved, many of whom are yet to be charged. But the investigation has been going on for five years, actually, since someone blurted out in a French courtroom that there was a really big scandal no one knew about. And that centered on, that scandal, on Mr. Stanley, who was the CEO of Kellogg Brown and Root when it was created by Halliburton Corporation when Dick Cheney was the CEO.
NORRIS: Could this case, if it does continue, could it ultimately touch the former Vice President Dick Cheney?
Mr. BERGMAN: So far he doesn't seem to be implicated. Sources close to - Mr. Stanley is now cooperating. He started cooperating last June. And we believe that this has resulted in further investigations for the grand jury testimony in the case, which may go up the chain of command in the corporation. ..TEXT: NORRIS: Five hundred and sixty million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but Halliburton is a huge company with holdings all over the world. Is it possible that this could be viewed not so much as a large settlement, but really as more of a slap on the wrist?
Mr. BERGMAN: When you look at the overall value of Halliburton Corporation, this doesn't look like a lot of money, but it's significantly embarrassing for any - particularly publicly traded - company to admit that the way they were getting business was through bribery.
This is the biggest case of its kind that's ever been proven. It's had an impact in various places around the world about the way business is done. I think one of the bigger questions that's been raised in some of the reporting we've done is that as these fines are collected, do the countries where these crimes were committed, do they get any of that money back? Does Nigeria get any of that money for probably being overcharged in the building of a $6 billion liquefied natural gas plant? So there are other issues that are emerging out of this.
The other thing to keep in mind is that this is a growing international movement, led in part by certain multinational corporations who've decided that this was no longer the way to do business, as well as a number of governments who figure this is the only way to level the playing field in a global marketplace that's becoming increasingly more difficult to do business in.
NORRIS: Lowell Bergman, good to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Mr. BERGMAN: Thank you.
NORRIS: Lowell Bergman is an investigative journalist and a filmmaker. He's been tracking this story for an upcoming documentary on the PBS show "Frontline."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Every year, thousands of North Koreans try to escape a life of brutal hardship by slipping across North Korea's 900-mile long border with China. They're often aided by smugglers who charge thousands for their service and in some cases, are almost as oppressive as the government the defectors are trying to flee. The escapees live in constant fear of arrest and deportation back to North Korea where they can face torture, imprisonment or even execution.
National Geographic magazine reporter Tom O'Neill followed the underground railroad journey of three North Korean defectors. For their protection, he gave them code names: Red, White and Black. And he tells those story in the current issue of National Geographic. Tom O'Neill joins me now in the studio. Thanks so much for being with us.
Mr. TOM O'NEILL (Journalist, National Geographic): You're welcome, hi.
NORRIS: Can you give me a quick snap shot of these three defectors, Red, White and Black?
Mr. O'NEILL: OK. Two women, Red and White, are in their 20s, and they both came across from brokers that were going to sell them for sex trade. And a missionary helped them escape, and that's how we found them.
Black was a college graduate, which is rare for a defector. The two women were not, and he had actually a job in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and he got disillusioned with North Korean life and a missionary found him, and he was converted. So, when we came upon them, they were all on the run.
NORRIS: Is the goal to get to China and then beyond China to go to South Korea or elsewhere - a nation?
Mr. O'NEILL: They'd prefer being in China, if it was legal, if the Chinese didn't hunt them down. But I think why most of them decide to leave is that pressure and the living in fear of just if they're caught, they have no documents, and they're really exploited.
NORRIS: How are they treated in China? How are they viewed in that country?
Mr. O'NEILL: When they first started coming over in the late '90s, after the famine or during the famine, I think a lot of the Korean-Chinese and the Chinese welcomed them, almost out of a humanitarian impulse to...
NORRIS: Because they knew what was going on in North Korea.
Mr. O'NEILL: Yes and they said...
NORRIS: Where almost two million people died.
Mr. O'NEILL: Right. So they said we'll feed you, we'll give you clothing, and then they got caught up, I think, in the geopolitics of China and North Korea. North Korea complained that China was harboring its people. China needs North Korea's iron ore and other things. China needs a secure border so they started agreeing with North Korea and started cracking down and some of the crackdowns, especially right before the Olympics, were fierce.
NORRIS: Tom, I know you wanted to, through this story, to shed light on what's going on inside North Korea and also the way that these defectors are treated in China and even elsewhere, but do stories like this really make a difference when you're talking about a government that is so isolated, so oppressive, so unconcerned about what the world thinks of them?
Mr. O'NEILL: I don't think it will have any effect on North Korea. I think the purpose of this story partly is to show the world the borders that China has. China is very nervous about keeping its borders taunt, like in Tibet, Mongolia, North Korea. I'm hoping China will, if this gets good response, they'll say we have to let the U.N. into the border because right now, they're keeping them out.
And the other influence might be on the South Korean government. South Korea welcomed the defectors in the '90s because it was like the ultimate PR coup. We've got the enemy. They have come to us. They prefer to live with us. But the thing is, most of the defectors now are poor, no skills. Seoul is so hypercompetitive, so dependent on advancement on education. And when they get to - the defectors get to South Korea, it's not the promise land. They start at the bottom.
And I'm hoping South Korea people have been writing about this - I'm hoping they will give more training to the defectors, somehow bring them into mainstream because that's the final irony. They were hiding in China and then when I met them in Seoul, they were hiding there.
And the weirdest thing - they're homesick. We want to think, oh, if you live in a horrible place that's had, you know, where your parents have died of starvation or where you're given dead-end jobs or where there's no food, many of these miss their homeland. And if you don't feel at home in Seoul or somewhere else, you're going to miss a place that everyone else on earth is going that's living hell, you should leave. But it's not a Hollywood ending, that's for sure, for them.
NORRIS: Tom O'Neill, thank you very much for coming in to talk to us.
Mr. O'NEILL: You're welcome.
NORRIS: All the best to you.
Mr. O'NEILL: Thank you. Yeah, thank you.
NORRIS: Tom O'Neill is a reporter with National Geographic magazine, and if you want to know more about the story and see photos, you can go to our Web site. That's npr.org.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Another thorny foreign policy problem before the new Obama administration is the Middle East peace process. President Obama gave his first interview since taking office today, and he spoke to the Arab television network Al Arabiya. He talked about his instructions to his new Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, who is on a trip to the region.
(Soundbite of Al Arabiya broadcast)
President BARACK OBAMA: What I told him is start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating in the past on some of these issues, and we don't always know all the factors that are involved. So let's listen. He's going to be speaking to all the major parties involved. And he will then report back to me. From there, we will formulate a specific response.
SIEGEL: Mitchell is in Egypt today and Israel tomorrow trying to build a durable cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Meantime, one of Washington's most powerful Arab allies is sounding a warning about the importance of Mitchell's task. NPR's Peter Kenyon reports from Cairo.
PETER KENYON: President Obama's willingness to engage early in Mideast peacemaking has been welcomed around the world. But among America's Arab allies in the region, concern is growing that Washington won't move forcefully enough to repair what they see as the serious damage done by the Israeli military operation in Gaza. Writing in the Financial Times on Friday, Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the U.S. and Britain and longtime Saudi intelligence chief, used startlingly strong terms to describe the situation Mitchell is stepping into. Prince Turki wrote of the Bush administration's, quote, "sickening legacy in the region" and accused it of, quote, "contributing to the slaughter of innocents" through its "arrogant attitude about the butchery in Gaza."
He added that if Washington wants to keep playing a leadership role in the Mideast and maintain ties with Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, it must, quote, "drastically revise America's policies" regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mideast analysts say such warnings reflect the sense of betrayal and insecurity felt by Arab regimes that aligned with the U.S. despite its staunch support of Israel. Dia Rashwan at Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies says there have been three earthquakes in the past five years: the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and Israel's wars in 2006 against Hezbollah in Lebanon and against Hamas in Gaza.
Mr. DIA RASHWAN (Senior Analyst and Researcher, Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies): We are in the face of a dangerous situation inside Arab world. The regimes now, I think they are out of validity. They cannot defend the United States policies and they cannot defend themselves.
KENYON: In his warning to the Obama administration, Saudi Prince Turki revealed that during Israel's ground offensive in Gaza, Iran's president had written to Saudi King Abdullah urging him to lead a jihad, or Muslim holy war, against Israel. Turki acknowledged that such an event would lead to unprecedented chaos and bloodshed in the region, but warned that the kingdom would not be able to resist such calls for long without dramatic changes in U.S. policy. Analyst Issandr el Amrani with the International Crisis Group says it's possible this rising hostility to Israel is just a flare of anger at the suffering of Palestinians, but it could also reflect a crucial shift in Arab opinion away from negotiating with the Jewish state and back to fighting against it.
Mr. ISSANDR EL AMRANI (Analyst, International Crisis Group): So we are seeing an intensification of this cold war, if you want, between this new resistance front - Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah - and those Arab states that are not only concerned about the rise of Iran, but also concerned about the way politics in the region is changing.
KENYON: El Amrani says the so-called moderate Arab states led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia are threatened by the blossoming support among their own citizenry for Hezbollah and Hamas, groups that reject the past three decades of slow, stumbling progress toward recognizing Israel's right to exist and trying to negotiate a Palestinian state alongside it. By 2002, when the Saudis floated a comprehensive peace initiative promising normal ties between all Arab states and Israel if it withdrew to its 1967 borders, momentum seemed to be on the side of diplomacy. But since then, analysts say, all Arabs have seen is powerful states resorting to violence, from the U.S. in Iraq to Israel in Lebanon and Gaza. El Amrani says that while the Bush administration may have intended to isolate Iran and Syria, a case could be made that what it achieved within the region was the isolation of its own Arab allies.
Mr. AMRANI: There is this sentiment that countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which have been pushing since 2002 this Arab peace initiative that's been ignored so far by the Israelis, have failed. The diplomatic initiatives have failed, and they're not coming up with new ideas, whereas this resistance front at least is doing something.
KENYON: That is the atmosphere into which George Mitchell is stepping as he seeks to convince Israelis and Arabs that they can best defend both their people and their political interests by negotiating, not fighting. Peter Kenyon, NPR News, Cairo.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. Afghanistan, not Iraq, presents the greatest military challenge facing the United States. That's the assessment of Defense Secretary Robert Gates. He was testifying on Capitol Hill today. The last time he did that, Gates worked for President Bush. But as the sole Cabinet member to keep his job under President Obama, Gates is now speaking for a new administration, one with different defense priorities. Here's NPR's Mary Louise Kelly.
MARY LOUISE KELLY: It was John McCain who set the tone for today's hearing. McCain is the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee and his first question to Gates was on Afghanistan.
(Soundbite of Senate Armed Services Committee hearing)
Senator JOHN MCCAIN (Republican, Arizona): Mr. Secretary, I think it's important - the most important thing that I have to say to you today. American people must understand this is a long, hard slog we're in in Afghanistan.
KELLY: That phrase - a long, hard slog - was famously used by Gate's predecessor as defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. But the Rumsfeld era felt very distant today. His name never actually came up at the Senate Hearing, and Secretary Gates made plain that Iraq, the word that came to define the Bush presidency, is no longer the top military priority.
(Soundbite of Senate Armed Services Committee hearing)
Secretary ROBERT GATES (Defense Department): There is little doubt that our greatest military challenge right now is Afghanistan.
KELLY: So, how to meet that challenge? For starters, more troops. The U.S. has more than 30,000 troops in Afghanistan already. The top ground commander there, General David McKiernan, has asked for 30,000 more. And Gate says he supports that request.
(Soundbite of Senate Armed Services Committee hearing)
Secretary GATES: We could have two of those brigades there probably by late spring and potentially a third by mid-summer.
KELLY: But Gates says he's, quote, "very skeptical" that sending any more troops beyond what General McKiernan has asked for would do much good. Senators didn't press Gates too hard on the interesting pivot he's having to make from serving President Bush who frequently cited Iraq as the central front in the war on terror, to serving President Obama who clearly sees Afghanistan as the top overseas military priority. Gates did say, however, that Americans need to be realistic about what the end goal should be for Afghanistan.
(Soundbite of Senate Armed Services Committee hearing)
Secretary GATES: My own personal view is that our primary goal is to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists to attack the United States and our allies. And whatever else we need to do flows from that objective. Afghanistan is the fourth or fifth poorest country in the world, and if we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose.
KELLY: Because nobody has that kind of time, patience, and money, Gates added. Several senators praised Gates for his directness. Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina asked point blank about the consequences of putting more troops in Afghanistan.
(Soundbite of Senate Armed Services Committee hearing)
Senator LIDNSEY GRAHAM (Republican, South Carolina): Is it fair to say that casualties in Afghanistan are likely to go up?
Secretary GATES: I think that's likely.
Senator GRAHAM: And the amount of money we spend is likely to go up in the short term, maybe the foreseeable future?
Mr. GATES: Yes, sir.
KELLY: Senator Graham wasn't done.
(Soundbite of Senate Armed Services Committee hearing)
Senator GRAHAM: Bottom line is this is going to be tough, it's going to be difficult, in many ways harder than Iraq. Do you agree with that?
Secretary GATES: Yes.
KELLY: Not that Iraq is easy. Gates noted there's still the potential for setbacks there and that Americans should expect to stay involved in Iraq on some level for, quote, "many years to come." Gates said the Pentagon is working on a range of options for pulling troops out of Iraq. Some would have combat troops out within 16 months - some significantly later. There are pros and cons to each of the plans. President Obama will have the chance to hear more tomorrow when he makes his first trip to the Pentagon to meet with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
President Obama finally convinced the Secret Service to let him keep his BlackBerry, with a lot of strings attached. Only a tiny group of friends and staff will have his email address. Commentator David Shipley is the co-author of a handbook for email users. It's basically a "Strunk and White" for the Web. He suggests some more rules for the new emailing president.
Mr. DAVID SHIPLEY (Author of "SEND: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better"; Opinion-Editor Page Editor of "The New York Times"): So there's been a lot of change in Washington - historic events. We now have a president with a BlackBerry. It's been called BlackBerry One. I'd like to call it something else - a teachable moment. Given those Inaugural crowds, it's pretty safe to say that lots of people admire President Obama. We're trying to heed his example. We're volunteering, we're befriending people whose views may differ from our own. We're renewing our commitment to pick-up basketball.
That's a lot, but perhaps the president can set one more example for us to follow and lead us out of BlackBerry temptation. This is not a comment on the previous administration, but the last eight years did see the growth of a certain digital lawlessness. With BlackBerrys, Treos, iPhones and the like, we learned that we could email anywhere, anytime, and we did. People pulled out their BlackBerrys at weddings, parent-teacher conferences, school plays, confirmations, bar mitzvahs, funerals. We BlackBerryed while we walked. We BlackBerryed while we talked.
What can Mr. Obama do to be an electronic role model? Here are a few tips.
No White House photos of you emailing while someone is talking. You know the crossword puzzle rule? Those situations where it would be rude or inappropriate to do a crossword? Well, it would probably rude or inappropriate to use a BlackBerry, too.
Also, make it clear you're writing from a hand-held. Keep the disclaimer in. It helps people to know that you're typing with your thumbs. Otherwise, they might be offended when you respond to their 20-page, 50-point budget plan with an "OK" or a "Nope."
And keep in mind, your BlackBerry is not a Game Boy. Too often, we use our hand-helds to kill time. You're in the limo heading to Andrew's Air Force Base, you don't have anything to read, so you send an email. Remember, every email you send is a message someone has to read and respond to.
And even though it's really easy to do this with a BlackBerry, you don't want to be emailing at 4 a.m. after that 3 a.m. phone call. If you do, people will stay up all night because they think you expect them to. Plus, lack of sleep could interfere with their decision-making skills.
For many of us, it's the dream of a lifetime to be in the presence of a president. The encounter is something we treasure forever. To have you pull out your hand-held the minute we step in the Oval Office or try to share a word or two would be soul-crushing.
Actually, Mr. President, maybe the most important BlackBerry example you can set is to not use it. Show us that you can put that thing away, turn it off. Lock it in its holster. Think about it. What a lesson for the rest of us if the leader of the free world can power-down his BlackBerry and have a conversation - take a moment for genuine human connection. Well then, so can we.
NORRIS: David Shipley is the Op-Ed page editor for "The New York Times." He's also the co-author of "Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better."
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. It's day two in the impeachment trial of Rod Blagojevich in the Illinois Senate. Senators heard from the Democratic governor himself. He's still not there in person. He's been pleading his case in national media interviews. But the governor's voice is being played from audio tapes recorded by the FBI as part of its corruption probe. NPR's David Schaper is at the state Capitol in Springfield.
DAVID SCHAPER: Special prosecutor David Ellis called to the witness stand FBI agent Daniel Cain who oversaw the wiretapping of the governor. Ellis read from the 76-page criminal complaint against Blagojevich, quoting from conversations the governor allegedly had with aides and associates, and then asking Cain to verify that they are true and accurate. He recited many of Blagojevich's infamous quotes related to his efforts to allegedly try to cash in on the Senate seat vacated by President Obama.
Mr. DAVID ELLIS (Prosecutor): Later, Rod Blagojevich stated that the Senate seat, quote, "is a f-ing valuable thing, you don't just give it away for nothing," close quote. Agent Cain, was that paragraph true and accurate to the best of your knowledge and belief at the time you executed this affidavit?
Agent DANIEL CAIN (FBI): Yes, it was.
SCHAPER: Prosecutor Ellis also went over charges outlined in the criminal complaint that alleged Blagojevich solicited hefty campaign contributions for his official acts, such as signing legislation. He then played audio recorded from FBI wiretaps, excerpts of conversations in which prosecutors say Blagojevich is trying to extract a big campaign contribution from a lobbyist for the horse racing industry before he would sign a bill benefiting the horse racing industry. On this tape, Blagojevich is talking with his brother, Rob, who chairs the governor's campaign fund and had talked with the lobbyist about when the governor could expect that campaign contribution.
(Soundbite of wiretap recording)
Mr. ROBERT BLAGOJEVICH: He's going to give you - no, he didn't get it, but he's, you know, I'm good for it. I've got to just decide what accounts to get it out of. And Ron is going to talk to you about some sensitivities, legislatively, tonight when he sees you, with regard to timing of all of this.
Governor ROB BLAGOJEVICH (Democrat, Illinois): What, before the end of the year, though, right?
Mr. BLAGOJEVICH: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SCHAPER: Later in that phone call, Blagojevich appears agitated that it is taking so long to get the contribution.
(Soundbite of wiretap recording)
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: It's so - but it's clearly before the end of the year, right?
Mr. BLAGOJEVICH: Yeah.
SCHAPER: Federal prosecutors and the Illinois House in its impeachment charges allege Blagojevich was in a rush to collect as much campaign cash as he could before January 1 when a new law took effect drastically restricting campaign contributions. In a later conversation with a lobbyist acting as an intermediary and still no contribution in hand, Blagojevich is asking whether he should talk with the horse racing lobbyist.
(Soundbite of wiretap recording)
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: You want me to call him directly, I will - whatever is the best thing (unintelligible).
Mr. BLAGOJEVICH: I think it's better if you do it.
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: OK.
Mr. BLAGOJEVICH: It's better if you do it just from a pressure point of view.
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: Yeah, good. I'll call him and say, yeah, well - and we want to do an event downstate. So, we want to do it and we hope to do this, so we can get together and start picking some dates to do a bill signing, right?
SCHAPER: After the last tape, Prosecutor Ellis wrapped up his questioning of FBI agent Cain by asking him again to verify that what is heard on the tapes is accurate and that the voice is that of Governor Blagojevich. There was no cross-examination of the witness because Blagojevich and his attorneys continue to boycott this impeachment trial. As he pleads his case in the national media, Blagojevich maintains he has done nothing wrong and that excerpts of a few conversations don't tell the whole story. David Schaper, NPR News, in Springfield, Illinois.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
So, what about that money for the NEA? Singers, actors and dancers might stimulate audiences, but can they stimulate the economy? NPR's Elizabeth Blair has a little more on that debate.
ELIZABETH BLAIR: The Sacramento Ballet has canceled performances. The administrative staff of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra took a 20 percent pay cut. The Austin Museum of Art is postponing plans for a new museum downtown.
Arts groups, large and small, are hurting just like every other industry. Some are shutting down altogether. The Milwaukee Shakespeare Theater Company closed its doors in October when its main supporter, the Argosy Foundation, cut its funding.
Ms. PAULA SUOZZI (Artistic Director, Milwaukee Shakespeare Theater): I have never filed for unemployment in my life, but now I am officially eating off of the system.
BLAIR: Paula Suozzi was Milwaukee Shakespeare's artistic director. She was one of six full-time people who lost their jobs. Like arts organizations everywhere, the company also employed dozens of freelancers, around 60 actors, designers, directors.
Ms. SUOZZI: It was a lot of people, and it affects the whole economy of, you know, our city.
BLAIR: It's hard to get a handle on exactly how many other arts organizations around the country are in similar straits, but there are enough warning signs that some arts leaders are calling for government help. Michael Kaiser, head of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, says the arts industry is made up of thousands of small organizations.
Mr. MICHAEL KAISER (President, John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts): And so they don't get headlines when they go bankrupt because they might put three people out of work or 10 people out of work, but the arts as a totality in this country employs 5.7 million people. So we're not a small sector of the economy. Our employment levels are important to this economy.
BLAIR: The Obama administration seems to agree. Bill Ivey, director of the Curb Center at Vanderbilt University, was on the president's transition team. He is also a former chair of the NEA. He says the agency is included in the package because it already has a system in place for moving money into the economy.
Mr. BILL IVEY (Director, CURB Center, Vanderbilt University; Former Chairman, NEA): The NEA really can give away money efficiently and effectively and quickly through a very responsible peer reviewed grant-making process.
Mr. BRIAN RIEDL (Senior Policy Analyst, Heritage Foundation): There is absolutely no way that this will stimulate the economy.
BLAIR: Brian Riedl is a senior federal budget analyst for the Heritage Foundation. He believes funding for the NEA, like several other items in the stimulus package, will not grow the economy.
Mr. RIEDL: The only way to increase economic growth is to increase productivity. And government policies that make people and workers more productive will increase productivity. But simply borrowing money out of the economy in order to transfer it to some artists doesn't increase the economy's productivity rate, it doesn't help workers create more goods and services, and it won't create economic growth.
Dr. MARK ROSENTRAUB (Dean, Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University): When you're having massive layoffs of this level, you've got to get people back out to work so there's money to spend.
BLAIR: Mark Rosentraub is dean and professor of urban affairs at Cleveland State University. He says the current stimulus contains both long-term initiatives that will increase productivity, but also short-term projects, like the NEA, that will get money into circulation now.
Dr. ROSENTRAUB: We've got to create and get some projects in the pipeline now. If NEA can deliver some, then that's a good thing. But it doesn't mean that therefore we're not going to put any money into long-term productivity, of course, that has to be done.
BLAIR: Some members of Congress have said that while it may be worthwhile to spend an additional $50 million on the NEA, it does not belong in an emergency stimulus package. Republican Congressman Mike Simpson of Idaho is the ranking member of the interior subcommittee that funds the NEA.
Representative MIKE SIMPSON (Republican, Idaho): None of the subcommittees have had a hearing on any of these appropriations in this bill, including the funding for the arts. Maybe that's an appropriate place to spend it. Maybe there are other places that it could be more effective in terms of economic stimulus.
BLAIR: Whatever happens with the stimulus package, Bill Ivey believes a healthy arts community is important, especially during hard times.
Mr. IVEY: We're not going to be able to think about happiness and quality of life only in terms of the next vacation or the bigger house or the new car. Once we move away from a consumerist view of a high quality of life, once we're forced away from it, arts and culture, creativity, homemade art - those things can begin to come to the fore.
BLAIR: And Bill Ivey hopes government will play a role in making sure that happens. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News, Washington.
BOB MONDELLO: Man, what I wouldn't give for a peek at the list of movies on Rod Blagojevich's Netflix queue.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Our film critic Bob Mondello.
MONDELLO: Since being arrested last month, the governor's been tossing around Hollywood references like a film critic on a bender, each reference tailored to his own story.
Governor ROB BLAGOJEVICH (Democrat, Illinois): I like old movies and I like old cowboy movies. And I want to explain how these rules work in a more understandable way.
MONDELLO: That would be the rules of impeachment.
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: There was a cowboy who was charged with stealing a horse in town. And some of the other cowboys, especially the guy whose horse was stolen, were very unhappy with that guy. And one of the cowboys said, let's hang him, and the other cowboy said, hold on. Before we hang him, let's first give him a fair trial.
(Soundbite of movie "Silverado")
Mr. BRIAN DENNEHY: (As Sheriff Cobb) And we're going to give you a fair trial followed by a first class hanging. Or you could ride out of here before dawn.
MONDELLO: That, says Blagojevich, is essentially what the state Senate is telling him, and he's not riding out of here until he's had his say. For the having-his-say part, he has another cinematic image in mind, as he told WLS Radio's Don Wade and Roma.
(Soundbite of WLS Radio interview)
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: This is a 21st century Frank Capra movie. You know those old black-and-white movies...
Mr. DON WADE (WLS Radio): Sure.
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: ...from the '30s and '40s, how the good guy was up against the establishment, and yet they tried to make him look like he had violated rules.
(Soundbite of movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington")
Mr. JAMES STEWART: (As Jefferson Smith) Well, I guess the gentlemen are in a pretty tall hurry to get me out here. The way the evidence has piled up against me, I can't say I blame them much. And I'm quite willing to go, sir, when they've voted that way. But before that happens, I've got a few things I want to say to this body.
MONDELLO: Heroic casting, Jimmy Stewart. And again it would be hard to come up with a clearer image than "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," which has not kept the governor from trying. Earlier this month when reporters caught up with him during a morning run, he likened his situation to the Alan Sillitoe story "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" about an authority-defying teenager.
(Soundbite of movie "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner")
Mr. TOM COURTENAY: (As Colin Smith) They'll have to stick a rope around my neck. That's a job they don't mind doing.
MONDELLO: This reference, though, is a little trickier than the others. The lonely long distance runner is a convicted criminal running marathons in reform school. And while the governor's point was that he would go the distance to defend his reputation, in the story the runner does not go the distance. But, never mind, it's British and from the 1950s - who's going to know that? Actually, one movie that maybe should have been on the governor's list apparently wasn't. If he'd seen "The Great McGinty" recently, he would have been much more circumspect about selling President Obama's old Senate seat. As the great Preston Sturges makes clear, McGinty knew how to cut an underhanded deal without ever mentioning money. All he needed was the right photo on the wall of, say, a baseball stadium.
(Soundbite of movie "The Great McGinty")
Mr. BRIAN DONLEVY: (As Daniel 'Dan' McGinty) How many people do you think there are in that photograph?
Mr. THURSTON HALL: (As Mr. Maxwell) Ten thousand.
Mr. DONLEVY: (As Daniel 'Dan' McGinty) Guess again.
Mr. HALL: (As Mr. Maxwell) Twenty thousand.
Mr. DONLEVY: (As Daniel 'Dan' McGinty) You're not even warm, Mr. Maxwell.
Mr. HALL: (As Mr. Maxwell) Well…
MONDELLO: And Mr. Maxwell realizes they're talking payoff money, not people.
(Soundbite of movie "The Great McGinty")
Mr. HALL: (As Mr. Maxwell) You mean it's more like 40,000?
Mr. DONLEVY: (As Daniel 'Dan' McGinty) That's more like it, but that ain't it.
Mr. HALL: (As Mr. Maxwell) Fifty thousand?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DONLEVY: (As Daniel 'Dan' McGinty) There was 75,000 people in that stadium. Ain't that wonderful?
MONDELLO: A federal prosecutor could have been right in the room and not have proved a thing. Of course, "The Great McGinty" is more likely to be in the Netflix queue of Governor Blagojevich's critics. So, let's grant him the casting he likes better - Jimmy Stewart, standing up to the elected mob as Mr. Smith.
Governor BLAGOJEVICH: I've been a congressman. I've been a governor of the fifth largest state. That movie is not inaccurate. That's what my story is. It's a Frank Capra movie.
(Soundbite of movie "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington")
Mr. JAMES STEWART (As Jefferson Smith): You all think I'm licked. Well, I'm not licked. And I'm gonna stay right here and fight for this lost cause even if this room gets filled with lies like these. Somebody'll listen to me.
MONDELLO: In the movie, you don't find out where there's somebody does listen to him until the last minute of the last reel. And the governor, in real life, well, we're not quite there yet. I'm Bob Mondello.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. The nation's new Treasury secretary moved into his office today. The Senate approved Timothy Geithner last night after dealing him a few bruises in the confirmation process, and once they had the go ahead...
(Soundbite of oath of office)
Vice President JOE BIDEN: I, Timothy F. Geithner.
Secretary TIMOTHY GEITHNER (United States Department of the Treasury): I, Timothy F. Geithner.
Vice President BIDEN: Do solemnly swear.
Secretary GEITHNER: Do solemnly swear.
Vice President BIDEN: That I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States...
SIEGEL: Vice President Biden led Geithner in the oath of office in the Treasury's ornate cash room. With the economy still suffering from a lack of credit and confidence, Geithner has major challenges ahead. And NPRs John Ydstie is here to talk about how Geithner and his colleagues plan to deploy the second half of the $700 billion TARP financial rescue package. Hi, John.
JOHN YDSTIE: Hi, Robert.
SIEGEL: How is the approach going to be different from that of the Bush administration?
YDSTIE: Well, let's just start by saying that during the Bush administration, Treasury Secretary Paulson used most of the TARP funding to inject capital in the banks. There's a pretty broad agreement that the banking system is still shaky and that Timothy Geithner will have to do more of that.
That said, there'll be significance differences from the Paulson approach. First, President Obama has said that the 50 to 100 billion in TARP funds will be used to help homeowners struggling to avoid foreclosures. He's also promised more oversight, including a requirement that participating banks increase their lending.
And there's one more big change. Officials in the Obama administration say they're looking at ways to get the toxic assets, those nasty-mortgage back securities, separated from the banks in some way.
SIEGEL: Which was the original Paulson plan for the TARP when it first began until they moved to become preferred shareholders. I mean, it seems as though that was tried and didn't work. So, why would you go back to it now?
YDSTIE: Well, there's a growing consensus that these toxic securities still a huge problem and that they're undermining confidence and bank lending. Private investors don't want to put up new capital into banks because they still don't know how much banks are going to lose on these bundles of mortgages.
And as foreclosures soar, banks are having to take more and more write downs on the securities, eroding what little capital they have left. As a result they're afraid to make loans and that chokes the economy. So the thinking is that banks need to get rid of or isolate these toxic assets somehow.
SIEGEL: So, how is the Obama economic brain trust going to solve that problem?
YDSTIE: Well, we don't know the details yet and they may not either, though Secretary Geithner has said that they'll have a comprehensive approach within a couple of weeks. We do know broadly that the idea of creating a bad bank is on the table. That would be a government entity that would purchase the toxic assets from the banks and hold them and sell them off overtime, hopefully, making some money for taxpayers or at least not losing too much.
SIEGEL: Mm hmm.
YDSTIE: The theory is that not all of the mortgages in these securities are toxic. Many of the mortgages are being paid on time, but nobody knows their value so there aren't many buyers for them out there.
SIEGEL: Well, how would the government figure out what the value is if the government would buy them?
YDSTIE: Well, that's the hard part. They don't know what to pay so much the taxpayers lose lots of money. They don't want to pay so little that the banks are hurt even more. One possibility is to use companies like PEMCO, the biggest investment firm, which already buys some of these assets to help find a market price.
There's one other idea - something called a Ring Bank where a bank cordons off its bad assets and then the government doesn't buy them, but takes part of the risk if the losses on these securities go above a certain level. This is basically what happened with Citigroup.
SIEGEL: Is it assumed that $350 billion, what's left in TARP, is enough to do it what the Obama administration and Secretary Geithner want to do?
YDSTIE: You know, probably not. It's likely that the Obama administration is going to have to go back to Congress some time in the next few months and ask for few billion dollars more.
SIEGEL: Thank you, John.
YDSTIE: You bet.
SIEGEL: NPR's John Ydstie.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said he's issued subpoenas to the former CEO of Merrill Lynch and a top Bank of America executive. Merrill Lynch officials admitted last week that they'd paid out several billion dollars in bonuses right before the company was sold to Bank of America, and that outraged a lot of people.
The sale was possible only after Bank of America received billions of dollars in federal bailout funds. But Merrill's former chief, John Thain, denies any wrongdoing. Here's NPR's Jim Zarroli.
JIM ZARROLI: As head of the troubled financial giant Merrill Lynch, John Thain helped broker the sale of the company to Bank of America. Then, just four months later, he was forced out of the company he'd helped create.
The pre-text for his departure was Thain's decision to pay $4 billion in bonuses to employees in late December, just days before the sale of the company. Yesterday, Thain appeared on CNBC to insist that he had discussed the bonuses with Bank of America executives before approving them.
Mr. JOHN THAIN (Former CEO, Merrill Lynch): There was complete transparency and complete agreement with Bank of America as to what levels that bonus pool would be and how it would be paid out.
ZARROLI: Thain also defended the decision to pay out so much in bonuses at a time when Merrill was losing huge amounts of money. He said Merrill had lost money in the mortgage business, but many other parts of the company were profitable. And he said the people in those divisions expect to receive bonuses.
Mr. THAIN: If you don't pay your best people you will destroy your franchise. Those best people can get jobs other places. They will leave.
ZARROLI: Bank of America officials said they couldn't do anything to stop the bonuses from being paid because they were approved before the merger was completed.
The firing of John Thain shines a light on Wall Street's unusual bonus culture. At top financial companies like Goldman Sachs, even the lowest paid employees get bonuses and for top employees, they can easily run into the million of dollars. Executive compensation consultant, Steven Hall.
Mr. STEVEN HALL (Managing Director, Steven Hall and Partners): Wall Street has a very bonus-intensive environment, and what they attempt to do is pay salary through on the lower side and the bulk of the compensation that they get comes from bonuses.
ZARROLI: But at a time when banks are receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer funds, the pay out of lavish bonuses has become a source of public indignation. So far, the Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly investigating the Merrill matter, and today New York Attorney General Cuomo stepped into the fray. Cuomo said the way the bonuses were paid out is troubling. Jacob Frenkel is a former SEC enforcement lawyer.
Mr. JACOB FRENKEL (Shareholder, Shulman, Rogers, Gandal, Pordy and Ecker; Former SEC Enforcement Lawyer): For the first time you have a prosecutor who is saying, I find it as reprehensible, as offensive as does the general public. And for that reason, I'm going to take a posture and decide whether there may be a violation, at least, of state law.
ZARROLI: Frenkel says New York law gives state officials wide subpoena power, but he said it's not really clear that Cuomo has a case that will stand up in court nor is it clear whom authorities can really go after.
Steven Hall says there's been a lot of attention focused on the roll that Thain played in distributing bonuses, but Hall says at big companies like Merrill Lynch, decisions about bonuses are typically made by committee.
Mr. HALL: It seems odd to me that it would have just been Mr. Thain going out and deciding to issue checks all over the place on his own.
ZARROLI: But after a long career in financial services, including a stint as head of the New York Stock Exchange, Thain has suddenly become the poster boy for Wall Street excess. Part of that is because of recent stories that he paid more $1.2 million to redecorate an office suite at Merrill Lynch last year.
Thain acknowledged yesterday that the story was true, but said he'd approved the redecoration last year before the extent of Merrill's losses were clear. He also promised to reimburse the company for the money he'd spent. Jim Zarroli, NPR News, New York.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Yesterday, a woman gave birth to seven babies in Bellflower, California. That went as planned. With 46 doctors, nurses and assistants on hand for the delivery by C-section, the staff at the Bellflower Medical Center was ready for just about anything, including an unexpected eighth baby, which makes yesterday's delivery the second set of live octuplets born in U.S. history.
Joining me from the Bellflower Medical Center is Dr. Harold Henry. He's the chief of maternal and fetal medicine and one of the 46 that was on hand yesterday. Dr. Henry, welcome to the program.
Dr. HAROLD HENRY (Chief, Maternal and Fetal Medicine, Bellflower Medical Center): Thank you.
NORRIS: Now, with all the preparation that you did, how easy is it to miss an eighth baby if you think that you're expecting seven?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Dr. HENRY: Well it turns out, it's quite easy to miss the - if you would just consider the fact that the uterus is really designed to hold no more than two babies for the most part. Now, with septuplets, you have seven heads, seven spines, 28 extremities, so you can really get a feel that it's a difficult assessment tool to use to try to determine if, in fact, there was a additional baby there.
NORRIS: Now, there were eight children born. They were nine weeks premature. They're all in incubators, how are they doing?
Dr. HENRY: They are doing surprisingly well at this point. Their condition is still guarded, but the last two were on - they were breathing by tube. As of this morning, all of the babies are on room air.
NORRIS: The mother has not been identified. The children have been identified as babies A, B, C, D all the way through baby H.
Dr. HENRY: Correct.
NORRIS: Can you tell us how mom is doing?
Dr. HENRY: Mom is actually doing very well. We observed her overnight in labor and delivery in anticipation of any possible complications due to an overly distended uterus. But she has done very well through the night. She's just about now to be reunited with her kids.
NORRIS: I understand that you had a few rehearsals...
Dr. HENRY: Absolutely.
NORRIS: Leading up to this. What do you do to prepare for this kind of birth?
Dr. HENRY: Well, what happens is is you assemble the team and we walk through it step by step, and so even the morning of the delivery, we had one final walk through - a dress rehearsal so to speak.
NORRIS: A drill, essentially.
Dr. HENRY: Exactly.
NORRIS: With 46 people.
Dr. HENRY: Exactly.
NORRIS: How do you do that? Forty-six people, four operating rooms is that correct?
Dr. HENRY: Yes, and so the main operating room was where the patient was and with two bassinets. And then the - each additional delivery room had two bassinets present. We started with baby A or let's say, nurse A and she would approach the table, identify herself as A. We would in turn echo baby A. That nurse would then take the baby into the room where bassinet A was.
And likewise and went all the way down the line until we got to baby G. We thought we were concluding at that point until we discovered that there was a baby H.
NORRIS: This obviously was quite tiring for the mother. How about the 46 people that were involved in the delivery?
Dr. HENRY: Oh, they're just jazzed. Everybody is just on cloud nine with the success of the delivery and really how well the babies are doing and how well mom is doing.
NORRIS: Well, Dr. Henry, it's been good to talk to you. Thanks so much.
Dr. HENRY: Thank you.
NORRIS: Harold Henry is the chief of maternal and fetal medicine, and he was one of the 46 people who participated in the delivery of eight children at the Bellflower Medical Center in Bellflower, California.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. As the Obama administration enters its second week, it's taking a fresh look at U.S. foreign policy. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is reviewing everything from North Korea to Iran. And she says Iran has an opportunity to engage by taking a less confrontational approach. NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.
MICHELE KELEMEN: Secretary Clinton came into the press room at the State Department to offer reporters a bit of insight into how the Obama administration will do things differently from its predecessor when it comes to diplomacy, and she says she's been getting lots of good feedback from the world leaders she's been calling.
Secretary HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON (United States Departmnet of State): There's a great exhalation of breath going on around the world as people express their appreciation for the new direction that's being said and the team that's put together by the president to carry out our foreign policy goals.
KELEMEN: Already the administration's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is on his first trip to the region. Secretary Clinton says he's focused, for now, on short-term objectives, consolidating a shaky cease-fire in Gaza.
On Iran, Secretary Clinton echoed the comments that President Barack Obama made in an interview with Al-Arabiya. That is, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fists, then they will find an extended hand from the Obama administration.
Secretary CLINTON: There is a clear opportunity for the Iranians, as the president expressed in his interview, to demonstrate some willingness to engage meaningfully with the international community. Whether or not that hand becomes less clenched is really up to them.
KELEMEN: The secretary of state did not suggest any quick movement on that front, and she signalled some continuity on U.S. policy toward North Korea. Clinton said that the six party talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament have been essential, though all of this is under, as she put it, a vigorous review. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, the State Department.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. The economic stimulus bill hits the House floor tomorrow, and President Obama was on Capitol Hill today hoping to whip some Republican votes. Listen in to the debate and you'll hear about the bill's huge tax cuts and spending meant to pump new life into the economy.
And you'll also hear Republican anger about some smaller provisions like $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts or $200 million to plant grass on the National Mall. NPR's Andrea Seabrook reports on whether there is pork in this bill.
ANDREA SEABROOK: Democrats say this bill is clean - no special projects, no earmarks, no pork-barrel spending. But if you listen to Republicans, you might ask, what's in a name? That which we call pork, by any other name, would smell as porcine.
Representative JEFF FLAKE (Republican, Arizona): It's chock full of it.
SEABROOK: Jeff Flake of Arizona, perhaps the most pork-conscious member of the Republican Party.
Rep. FLAKE: There aren't congressional earmarks, which is a good thing, but when you get down to the city level and elsewhere, yeah, it's chock full of pork.
SEABROOK: No earmarks in the bill means no members of Congress managed to get specific amounts of money doled out to special projects in their district. That's what is often called pork in big congressional spending bills. But Flake says even without earmarks, this bill is made of bacon and not because of the Obama administration, says Flake.
Rep. FLAKE: But because it's gone through the congressional Democrats, it's basically a grab bag for every program that they've wanted to see funded for years.
SEABROOK: The bill pushes tens of billions of dollars into education, for example, and not just for building and renovation projects, but for everything from Head Start to college loans and Pell Grants. Some Republicans ask, how does that stimulate the economy? Or says, Flake.
Rep. FLAKE: For example, $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, I mean, there's no better example than that. How that stimulates the economy, I don't know.
SEABROOK: And then there's the grass. This bill includes $200 million to reseed the National Mall here in D.C. So, according to Republicans, the bill is full of pork, right?
Representative DAVID OBEY (Democrat, Wisconsin; House Appropriations Committee Chairman): No. There's not pork in this bill. There is not a single earmark in this bill.
SEABROOK: House Appropriations Committee chairman David Obey. Every cent of government spending goes through his office.
Rep. OBEY: We are trying to find every possible constructive way to put people to work, and if one of those ways is to repair the Mall, I see no harm in doing that if it accomplishes a good public purpose.
SEABROOK: Obey and other Democrats also say this bill will have some of the toughest oversight of any government spending in years and not just by Congress. After it passes, the public will be able to track every penny of it on a Web site, recovery.gov.
Still, there are some odd bits in this legislation. For example, it specifically bars local governments from using the infrastructure money to build zoos, casinos, swimming pools, golf courses. Arizona's Jeff Flake asks if there's no pork in this bill, why ban these things - to which Obey answers.
Rep. OBEY: Because we don't want to be cheap-shot at to death by people who will simply pick out something that sounds like a funny title and using it to ridicule the entire package.
SEABROOK: Even so, Flake will introduce an amendment on the House floor tomorrow that would ban spending stimulus money on duck ponds, ice rinks, ski hills and dog parks. So the question remains, is there pork in this bill?
Mr. ROBERT BIXBY (Executive Director, The Concord Coalition): Pork is a very subjective definition.
SEABROOK: This is Robert Bixby of the nonpartisan budget watchdog The Concord Coalition.
Mr. BIXBY: One man's idea of pork is another man's vital federal program.
SEABROOK: And that's the rub. When you have two parties with strong ideological differences, especially when it comes to spending taxpayer money, a big ham on the dining room table can look like two different things. To some it's pork. To others it's a nourishing meal. Andrea Seabrook, NPR News, the Capitol.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
A significant art collection is going to be sold - works by Wilhelm de Kooning, Jasper Johns, Roy Liechtenstein, James Rosenquist and many others. It's the collection of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.
Brandeis is running a deficit, and it's reported could reach $10 million. University President Jehuda Reinharz spoke of this as a difficult, but necessary step for the school whose endowment has lost a great deal of its value.
This might also be in part a spin off of the Bernard Madoff scandal. Over the years, Brandeis's most generous donor has been Carl Shapiro and the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family Foundation. And Mr. Shapiro, whose now in his 90s, made a fortune in the garment business. He sold his company, Kay Windsor dresses, to Vanity Fair and invested much of the proceeds with an associate of his son-in-law, Robert Jaffe. That associate was Bernard Madoff.
In any case, back to the art collection at Brandeis. David Genser has donated art to the Rose Museum and joins us now from Waltham in Massachusetts. I read in the Boston Globe that first you donated a James Rosenquist print last year. Can you describe it for us a bit?
Mr. DAVID GENSER (Art Donor): Yes, it is a print that was done at Tyler Graphics during the '80s. My wife who's really the expert, she felt that this was one of the most major prints that he had ever done. And this particular piece was at least 10-feet long. And in discussion with the Rose, they said they would very much love to have the piece. And so, last year, Joan and I donated it to Brandeis.
SIEGEL: Well, what's your reaction to learning that the Rosenquist, along with thousands of other works, will be sold to restore the university's endowment?
Mr. GENSER: Well, my reaction is one of extreme disappointment, and I think that it's a great travesty. The Rose, as described by its president, is a jewel, and their collection is one of the finest collections of contemporary art, particularly artists of the '60s, the pop artists, in the country.
SIEGEL: I've read that the Rose Museum collection has been appraised at perhaps $350 million. It's the property of the University whose endowment had been, I gather, as much as $700 million. we don't know what it is...
Mr. GENSER: Right.
SIEGEL: Right now. But when the university is looking at greatly increasing tuition costs, reducing course offerings or cutting faculty if the mission is teaching - can you sympathize at all with the decision to, say, we have this asset which is secondary to our purpose, we must, alas, sell it.
Mr. GENSER: Obviously, Brandeis is very important to my wife and myself, and if this is something that they must do in order to survive, and I sympathize and I understand. However, take a look at the collection and determine how they can save the collection. Perhaps it can be sent on tour and raise money. Perhaps they can borrow against the art. There are many, many banks that will take this art as collateral.
SIEGEL: Not a great time to be trying to borrow money.
Mr. GENSER: There is no question it's not a great time, but it should be looked into.
SIEGEL: The act of donating a valuable work of art, it is obviously done so that it can be displayed. But the work also has value and isn't it always implicit when one makes such a gift that when it's giving that value to the institution and one thing that institution might do is swap it or sell it.
Mr. GENSER: Well, (laughing) one doesn't expect that today, because museums are selective in what they are taking from donors. And in this particular case, there is no way that this piece would be sold other than the fact that they obviously are talking about liquidating the entire institution of the Rose. And so, that's a different story.
SIEGEL: Well, Mr. Genser, thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. GENSER: Thank you. It was a pleasure talking to you.
SIEGEL: It's David Genser of Boston, Massachusetts. He and his wife Joan donated a piece to the Rose Museum, the Art Museum at Brandeis University. The entire collection is to be sold to recoup loses of Brandeis' endowment.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host: MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
NORRIS: This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
SIEGEL: And I'm Robert Siegel. President Obama has promised to run a transparent government, and media advocacy groups are hailing some early moves. Still, White House reporters say they're getting mixed signals. NPR's David Folkenflik has this story.
DAVID FOLKENFLIK: White House spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki asks for patience. It's early days, yet, but she says the marching orders are clear.
Ms. JENNIFER PSAKI (White House Spokeswoman): We want to make information available to the press and, of course, to the public - transcripts, information about meetings, and what our focuses are on a day-to-day basis and, you know, what we're doing to help govern.
FOLKENFLIK: They'll be communicating directly, too. There's already a new YouTube channel for Mr. Obama's video addresses. The administration has named a White House blogger, and Psaki says...
Ms. PSAKI: We are going to be launching a Web site where people can search by their home area, by their state, for projects and see how we're investing in their communities and how we're using the money in the stimulus package.
Mr. BILL NICHOLS (Managing Editor, "Politico"): In the communications aspect, I think it will be radically unlike any presidency that we've ever seen.
FOLKENFLIK: Bill Nichols is managing editor of the online and print publication, "Politico," and he says that's great, but...
Mr. NICHOLS: I just also want to be sure that the president and the people who work for him are being subject to people who are trained as journalists and who are asking the questions that perhaps, some of the people watching things from out there in the country are not able to ask.
FOLKENFLIK: And that's been a sore spot. When President Obama's errant oath of office was administered a second time by Chief Justice John Roberts, it was behind closed doors. Only a few reporters were whisked inside and no photographers or cameramen were allowed. Officials released stills taken by the White House staff photographer, but the three big wire services refused to distribute them. Veteran CBS White House reporter Bill Plante says news outlets needed to draw the line.
Mr. BILL PLANTE (CBS White House Reporter): Do you originate the material, or do you function as a transmission belt for handouts from the government? The whole idea of an independent press as guaranteed by the First Amendment is that it would serve as a watchdog and check on the power of government.
FOLKENFLIK: When President Obama dropped by the press room to schmooze last Thursday, he brushed off a "Politico" reporter who asked about a controversial nominee. And White House spokesman Robert Gibbs found himself defending the decision not to allow reporters to identify senior administration officials who had spoken to them, though, as "The Wall Street Journal's" Jonathan Weisman pointed out...
Mr. JONATHAN WEISMAN (Reporter, "The Wall Street Journal"): Could you use the name of the - one of the senior official's first name several times in this briefing?
FOLKENFLIK: Lucy Dalglish is giving the Obama camp the benefit of the doubt. She's the Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. During the transition, she asked Mr. Obama's aides to have him pledge publicly to run the most open White House in history and to reverse Bush-era policies that led Federal agencies to block the release of documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
Ms. LUCY DALGLISH (Executive Director, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press): I was floored. His first full day in office, that's precisely what he did. So, we were walking around with pretty big grins on our faces.
FOLKENFLIK: There may be a culture clash here. Taken at its word, the Obama administration would appear to be following a "Google" model of openness - making information and communication available to anyone through a few keystrokes. In a conventional model of news gathering, think of what The Washington Post does. Journalists are supposed to be watchdogs and surrogates for the public, trained to see patterns in data and asking informed questions, though some critics argue there's more bark than bite. And Obama spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki says the president understands that model, too, even when he's schmoozing.
Ms. PSAKI: This is not his first trip to the rodeo. I mean, he spent two years on the campaign trail. It's not unexpected to him that, you know, members of the media are going to ask a question when he's around.
FOLKENFLIK: Yesterday, media pools following President Obama included photographers and cameramen. Journalists on the beat say they'll watch for other moves toward openness, as well. David Folkenflik, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. And in this segment of the program, the new president tries to set a new precedent. Rather than seeking out fellow Democrats today, Barack Obama went to Capitol Hill to make a pitch to the Republican minority. Mr. Obama is pushing for bipartisan support for the gigantic economic recovery package. In a moment, we'll hear from a Republican House member about whether they were sold at that meeting. First, NPR's David Welna at the Capitol.
DAVID WELNA: If there's a word to describe how Republican lawmakers feel about the $825 billion stimulus package working its way through Congress, it's "skeptical." Here's Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn today contrasting his view of that package with how Democrats see it.
Senator JOHN CORNYN (Republican, Texas): And what I hear is a lot of certitude, but an amazing lack of real certainly about whether this bill is likely to work. And I have questions, serious questions, and doubts about whether it will.
WELNA: And listening to such questions and doubts is how President Obama spent several hours at the Capitol today.
President BARACK OBAMA: Hello, everybody.
WELNA: The president was in good spirits as he came out of a closed-door session with House Republicans.
President OBAMA: I recognize that we're not going to get 100 percent of support, but I think everybody there felt good about - that I was willing to explain how we put the package together and how we were thinking about it and that we continue to work with some good ideas.
WELNA: Moments later, House Minority Leader John Boehner confirmed it was, indeed, a good meeting he and his fellow Republicans had had with Mr. Obama.
Representative JOHN BOEHNER (Republican, Ohio): We had a very good conversation with the president. He reiterated his desire to work with us, to try to find common ground where we could. Clearly there are some differences that were expressed.
WELNA: Without going into details, Minority Whip Eric Cantor made clear that one of those differences was over the spending that makes up two-thirds of the House stimulus package.
Representative ERIC CANTOR (Republican, Virginia): Because we feel that so much of the spending that's in the bill frankly, although it may be laudable in and of itself, has no place in the stimulus bill, which ought to be focused like a razor on the preservation, protection, and creation of jobs.
WELNA: Republicans are pushing for a stimulus bill that includes even more tax cuts. And they also feel that, unlike President Obama, congressional Democrats have turned a deaf ear to their demands. Indiana's Mike Pence accused them today of completely ignoring the president's call for bipartisan cooperation.
Representative MIKE PENCE (Republican, Indiana): The bill that is scheduled to the come to the floor this week will come to the floor without any consultation among House Republicans and with categorical opposition to the kind of Republican solutions that we believe are necessary to truly get this economy moving again.
WELNA: President Obama went from the House to the Senate where he joined Republican senators for their weekly closed-door luncheon. Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl said while the president made no commitments, he did agree to look at a lot of things suggested by Republicans. Kyl, too, laments that congressional Republicans don't get an equal hearing from the big Democratic majorities that control both chambers.
Representative JOHN KYL (Republican, Arizona): Somebody said, well, but they won. And that's true. And the question is how do you want to govern? You could govern with 100 percent Democratic solution. I don't think President Obama wants to do that. In that regard, he may have to work with House and Senate leaders to be a little more solicitous of Republican views.
WELNA: Despite their complaints, Republican lawmakers today seemed genuinely pleased and touched that a new Democratic president would make a trip to Capitol Hill just to hear their views. President Obama may not need many of their votes to get a stimulus package passed, and it's not clear how much he's willing to compromise to bring more Republicans onboard, but as he left the Capitol, an aura of goodwill seemed to linger behind. David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Well, now one of the Republicans who was at the meeting with President Obama today, Representative David Camp of Michigan, who is the ranking minority member that is the most senior Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. Welcome to the program, Congressman Camp.
Representative DAVID CAMP (Republican, Michigan): Robert, it's great to be with you.
SIEGEL: We've heard that House Republicans asked the president if there might be some common ground on tax relief. Did President Obama suggest that he was at all flexible on that square?
Representative CAMP: Well, actually, that was a question I was able to ask the president directly. And let me just say, it was very impressive that he came to the Congress and met with us. He was certainly very forthright. He's clearly, you know, very straightforward, very likable. I think that meeting today actually could pay off long term for him. But we had - we really got his attention, I think, in terms of talking about the need to really stimulate the economy. And economic experts of all political stripes really think that tax relief really gets into the economy more quickly and has a greater effect.
And really the signature piece of their tax program really refunds more to seven million more Americans than they pay in taxes. Now it's a trend that has started a few years ago to actually refund more than people pay in, in payroll and income. But we think it's a trend that shouldn't be accelerated, and this proposal does that.
SIEGEL: Now, we should just say here that there are liberal economists who, by the way, say that tax cuts tend to be saved rather than spent. So there are arguments on either side. But you're saying the problem is not only with the size of the tax cuts but with who is benefiting from the tax cuts.
Representative CAMP: Absolutely, because I don't think that it's right for people to receive more than they pay in. Now, unfortunately, this is not a bill President Obama negotiated. This is Nancy Pelosi's bill. No input from Republicans, no meetings, no amendments accepted in committee, and we vote tomorrow in the House on this legislation.
SIEGEL: But what I hear you saying is there could be, as you say, long-term payouts for the president in dealing with House Republicans. But I'm not hearing any short-term payoff here.
Representative CAMP: I do think in the long term, I think it really means a lot that he would come and speak with us. And in fairness, the president wasn't even in office when much of this was put together.
SIEGEL: Well, how many Republican votes do you think it'll get in the House?
Representative CAMP: You know, I think it will get a few. But I think two things. Really, the mix between spending and tax cuts could be better from our standpoint of view - from our standpoint, I mean. And then the overall size of the package - it's really a $1.2 trillion package. And I think many of us have a concern that that will really put too large a burden on our children and grandchildren.
SIEGEL: Representative Camp, in the Senate it's conceivable that the stimulus package will actually require Republican votes. At least if there's a cloture vote, there might have to be some Republican support for it to be passed. But in the House, it could pass without any Republican votes. How important is it to you that the stimulus bill have some kind of bipartisan support to it? Or are you perfectly happy being completely outside the tent on this one?
Representative CAMP: Well, I think going forward, large bills like this do better if they have bipartisan support. I don't think in the House you're going to see a lot of Republican support for this, simply because we've not been able to have input on the priorities.
SIEGEL: Just one last point about tax cuts for people who in effect would be getting back more taxes than they pay. Aren't those precisely the people who instantly spend the money and put it into the economy because frankly they are in no position to save? And they'll go spend it on the store which might be owned by somebody who pays taxes at a higher rate, or they might spend it and buy a car from a car dealer who pays taxes at higher rate. That's part of the argument for...
Representative CAMP: Well, the analysis shows that it really doesn't create the kind of long-term growth and economic effect we need right now that we need quickly.
SIEGEL: Well, Congressman Camp, thanks a lot for talking with us.
Representative CAMP: Thanks a lot, Robert. Take care.
SIEGEL: That's Representative David Camp, Republican of Michigan, who is the ranking minority member on the House Ways and Means Committee.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Here's in Washington, D.C., a popular pastime for tourists is to pose for a picture next to a life-size cardboard cutout of a smiling U.S. president. Interest in the Obama presidency has been so intense that large cardboard cutouts of his likeness have been popping up well beyond D.C. - at airports in London, on street corners in Africa, in local businesses throughout the country. The cutouts are meant to look so real that the resulting snapshots look like someone hammed(ph) it up with the real commander in chief.
But a recent story on the Root.com Web site points to a slight problem. The headline reads "Black President, White Hands." Steve Hoagland is the vice president of licensing and sales for Advanced Graphics, a company that calls itself the home of cardboard people. And Mr. Hoagland joins me now to explain what this might mean. Welcome to the program, Mr. Hoagland.
Mr. STEVE HOAGLAND (Vice President for Licensing and Sales, Advanced Graphics): Thank you, Michele. I'm glad to be here.
NORRIS: So, what happens if you look closely at that Obama cardboard cutout from the neck down?
Mr. HOAGLAND: In the original one, if you look closely, we have discovered that the hands are not his, although we didn't know that until a couple of weeks ago.
NORRIS: Ah, the hands are not his because they do appear to be slightly lighter in color than his...
Mr. HOAGLAND: Yes, ma'am.
NORRIS: His facial skin tone.
Mr. HOAGLAND: Yes, ma'am.
NORRIS: How did you discover this?
Mr. HOAGLAND: Actually, we discovered it because a retailer called us and said that he had heard that. At which point we pulled the product off the line and have now replaced it with one that we know is our president because the original is of him standing next to Secretary of State Clinton.
NORRIS: So, I just want to scale back. You had no idea - no one noticed that the hands reaching out of that dark suit were white?
Mr. HOAGLAND: Well, because they're not - I mean, I'm Caucasian, and they're not as white as my skin. And we've sold tens of thousands of them and had every nationality purchase them and never had any black people call and say that it wasn't a black person's hands. So, we had no idea.
NORRIS: So help me understand the process and how this could happen - how Barack Obama's head could wind up atop someone else's body in one of these cardboard cutouts.
Mr. HOAGLAND: Well, in this case we didn't have an actual image of him, and so it was Photoshopped onto another image. And oftentimes you're buying images of bodies and you don't even know who the head is because you're in the process of buying that image - that's what you're buying is a body shot or a hand shot. They have models that that's all they do is show their hands or show their feet. And that's what we do in these - often is just buy body doubles. And in this case, it wasn't the correct one.
NORRIS: So it was Barack Obama's head...
Mr. HOAGLAND: Yes, ma'am.
NORRIS: Atop someone else's body. Why not use just a full-size picture of him?
Mr. HOAGLAND: Trying to get a full-size picture of them is very, very hard. Most photography that's taken, people don't take someone from the feet to the top of their head. And so it's hard to not have to Photoshop in feet or whatever.
NORRIS: Did someone fess up to this?
Mr. HOAGLAND: Ah, yes.
NORRIS: And I'm wondering if you know who that person is.
Mr. HOAGLAND: I do.
NORRIS: OK.
(Soundbite of laughter)
NORRIS: And you've talked to that person...
Mr. HOAGLAND: Yes, I am.
NORRIS: OK.
(Soundbite of laughter)
NORRIS: I understand.
Mr. HOAGLAND: More than once.
(Soundbite of laughter)
NORRIS: Well, Mr. Hoagland, thank you so much for speaking with us. It's been a pleasure talking to you.
Mr. HOAGLAND: Thank you. It's my honor.
NORRIS: Steve Hoagland is the vice president of licensing and sales for Advanced Graphics, a company that calls itself the home of cardboard people.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And now, we turn to your letters. Yesterday, we brought you the story of McKay Hatch. He's the 15-year-old from South Pasadena, California, who has launched a personal crusade against swearing, calling his movement the No Cussing Club, a movement that includes this rap video.
(Soundbite of rap video)
Mr. MCKAY HATCH: (Rapping) Every other word was burning up my ears, So I took a new stand and I challenged all my peers. If you wanna hang with us, I don't wanna hear you cuss. If you wanna hang with us, I don't wanna hear you cuss. No cuss...
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Well, our coverage of McKay's campaign provoked a colorful debate on the Web page.
SIEGEL: Jonathan Harrowitz(ph) posted this. Maybe it's because I'm from New Jersey. But I love profanity. When used sparingly and appropriately, it sounds beautiful. It can feel great, it can be very funny, and it's never hurt anyone. Don't get me wrong, I'm a very nice guy with a good job in the helping profession, but I love to curse. Language without cursing is like mild salsa, light beer, or a flag football. It's an intentionally weakened bastardization of the real deal.
NORRIS: But several commended McKay's efforts. Keith McDiffit(ph) of Mount Gilead, Ohio, writes, it was refreshing to hear your story on the anti-cussing crusader yesterday afternoon. Kudos to this young man and the group who is joining him.
SIEGEL: Well, it wasn't all cursing on our show yesterday. We also invited listeners to chime in on a more serious concern, the economic crisis and what to call it. Steven Diamond(ph) of Joshua Tree, California, took a page from history with the greater Depression.
NORRIS: Well, Jason Deitrick(ph) of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, offered the great comeuppance, and Barbara Webster(ph) of Burnsville, North Carolina, says, let's just call it what it is, the big adjustment.
SIEGEL: Well, now a note of remembrance for a woman whose story we followed over the past few years. Ethel Williams(ph) of New Orleans never lost hope about moving back into her home in the Upper Ninth Ward. It had been ravaged by flood waters when the levees broke after Hurricane Katrina.
NORRIS: In the spring of 2006, a year and a half after the storm, President Bush stood with his arm around Mrs. Williams and she became a national symbol of hope that help finally would come.
Former President GEORGE W. BUSH: We've got a strategy to help the good folks down here rebuild. Part of it has to do with funding, part of it has to do with housing, and a lot of it has to do with encouraging volunteers from around the United States to come down and help people like Mrs. Williams. So we're proud to be here with you, Mrs. Williams, and God bless you.
Ms. ETHEL WILLIAMS: I'm proud to be here, Mr. President. And I won't ever - I can't ever forget you.
Former President BUSH: Well, you need to forget - remember those people a lot quicker than remembering me because they're the ones who are going to help. She promised to cook me a meal.
Ms. WILLIAMS: Oh, yes. I'm going to...
(Soundbite of laughter)
Ms. WILLIAMS: And I...
Former President BUSH: Once they get the house up and going.
Ms. WILLIAMS: Thank all the volunteers and everybody that's helping to make this - everything work.
SIEGEL: Well, never bitter, Mrs. Williams visited the White House at the president's invitation. Even last year, her home still in ruins, she considered herself to be one of the lucky ones. She finally got a check for more than $100,000 to rebuild her home on Pauline Street, and she was talking about cooking that Gumbo for President Bush.
NORRIS: The house was completed and furnished last month at Christmas time. But by that time, she was too sick with cancer to move in. Ethel Williams' daughter called to let us know that she had died this past Saturday at the age of 75.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. American literature has lost one of its greatest voices. John Updike died this morning. The two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author died from lung cancer at a hospice near his Massachusetts home. He was 76. NPR's Neda Ulaby has this remembrance.
NEDA ULABY: John Updike was the type of man who decided to write a book a year and surpassed that goal easily. He produced some 60 volumes, novels, criticism, essays, poems, even an opera libretto, and he was nothing short of an idol to younger writers. Nicholson Baker wrote an entire book about his Updike fandome.
Mr. NICHOLSON BAKER (Author): It's just shocking when a very intelligent person is no longer looking out at the same world that you are.
ULABY: Updike's world was one of carefully manicured suburbs in briny New England villages.
(Soundbite of poem "An Oddly Lovely Day")
Mr. JOHN UPDIKE (Author): (Reading) The kids went off to school, the wife to the hairdresser, or so she said, in Boston. He takes forever. Bye.
ULABY: That's Updike reading from his 1979 poem "An Oddly Lovely Day."
(Soundbite of poem "An Oddly Lovely Day")
Mr. UPDIKE: (Reading) I read a book, doing my job. Around 11, the rat man came, our man from pest control, though our rats have long since died.
ULABY: Updike was educated at Harvard where he edited The Lampoon. He fearlessly wrote his way into unfamiliar terrain ranging from terrorist cells, a Marxist kingdom in Africa, to the world of computer programming. But Updike is surely best known for his four "Rabbit" novels. They track the passage through life of Harry Rabbit Angstrom, a former high school athletic star who never again achieves that level of success. The first Rabbit book was made into a film. So was "The Witches of Eastwick." It stars Jack Nicholson as a particularly frustrated devil.
(Soundbite of movie "The Witches of Eastwick")
Mr. JACK NICHOLSON: (As Daryl Van Horne) You deserted me. We had a deal.
CHER: (As Alexandra Medford) That's no reason.
Mr. NICHOLSON: (As Daryl Van Horne) Yes it is. You pissed me off. What was I supposed to do? Take it like a man? Christ, I gave you everything I got. I gave you more than anybody has ever given you, and what do I get in exchange? A little thank you, a little gratitude? I'll tell you what I get. I get screwed.
ULABY: Updike told NPR last year he was invited to consult on the film, but declined.
Mr. UPDIKE: I figured that a writer is really a moth lost in the bright lights of Hollywood, and I'd do better to try to write another book than to in any way advise or correct the movie. A movie has to be quite unlike the book.
ULABY: The book "The Witches of Eastwick" was intended as something of an apologia to feminist critics who found his portrayals of women to be consistently contrived.
Mr. UPDIKE: A writer can't really worry too much about their critics because there's no pleasing some of them and there's no displeasing others. But I was startled enough to be told that I was a misogynist to reflect and try to write "Witches," and I hope that would placate my critics, but it didn't.
ULABY: Fellow novelist Margaret Atwood was among the book's defenders. Updike became known for exploring America's shifting mores from gender roles to adultery, says John Irving. He is also a bestselling author whose novels are also often set in New England.
Mr. JOHN IRVING (Author): In the '60s when I was first being introduced to Updike, I was impressed by the humor that was in tandem with the explicitness of the sex.
ULABY: Made possible, Irving says, through the energy and grace of Updike's language. Author Nicholson Baker says Updike could wrap language around an idea better than practically anyone.
Mr. BAKER: What you've got to hold on to with Updike is that he was an old-fashioned - not a pro stylist, but I don't know, a violist or something. He was somebody who could really conduct and make the words work together.
ULABY: Updike developed his melodic English at the New Yorker. His career began there, and he continued at the magazine for much of the rest of his life. His book reviews gleamed with the same observational acumen he brought to his novels.
Mr. UPDIKE: I do think the big problem in a way for a fiction writer is how do you deal with ordinary life that is not extraordinary, that does not involve heroism, that does not involve a crisis really? But the way in which we are alive is meaningful and it does have a certain radiance.
ULABY: The beauty of the actual, as John Updike put it, and he held a literary lens to that beauty with an anthropologist's curiosity and a statesman's nobility. Neda Ulaby, NPR News.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
We'll end this hour with the words of John Updike in his own voice. In April of 2005, Updike wrote an essay for our series "This I Believe." He composed his thoughts in three parts, first the art of fiction, followed by his thoughts on politics, and then faith. Here's John Updike reading his essay.
Mr. JOHN UPDIKE (Author): A person believes various things at various times, even on the same day. At the age of 73, I seem most instinctively to believe in the human value of creative writing, whether in the form of verse or fiction, as a mode of truth-telling, self-expression, and homage to the twin miracles of creation and consciousness. The special value of these indirect methods of communication as opposed to the value of factual reporting and analysis is one of precision. Oddly enough, the story or poem brings us closer to the actual texture and intricacy of experience.
In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy, and pity. I find in my own writing that only fiction and rarely a poem fully tests me to the limits of what I know and what I feel. In composing even such a frank and simple account as this profession of belief, I must fight against the sensation that I am simplifying and exploiting my own voice.
I also believe, instinctively, if not very cogently, in the American political experiment, which I take to be, at bottom, a matter of trusting the citizens to know their own minds and best interests. "To govern with the consent of the governed": this spells the ideal. And though the implementation will inevitably be approximate and debatable, and though a totalitarian or technocratic government can obtain some swift successes, in the end, only a democracy can enlist a people's energies on a sustained and renewable basis. To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
Cosmically, I seem to be of two minds. The power of materialist science to explain everything from the behavior of the galaxies to that of molecules, atoms, and their sub-microscopic components seems to be inarguable and the principal glory of the modern mind. On the other hand, the reality of subjective sensations, desires, and may we even say illusions composes the basic substance of our existence, and religion alone, in its many forms, attempts to address, organize, and placate these. I believe, then, that religious faith will continue to be an essential part of being human, as it has been for me.
NORRIS: Writer John Updike from our series "This I Believe" in 2005. John Updike died today of lung cancer. He was 76 years old.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Well, today the president's budget director urged passage of a bill with the authorization to spend most of the money very quickly. Peter Orszag sent a letter to the House Appropriations chairman and says 75 percent of the $825 billion stimulus package should be spent in the next year and a half. Peter Orszag joins us now. Thanks so much for being with us.
Dr. PETER ORSZAG (Director, White House Office of Management and Budget): Thanks for having me.
NORRIS: Now, David Camp just told us that tax breaks are a much more efficient way to stimulate the economy. And a lot of economists and even the Congressional Budget Office seem to agree. What do you say to that?
Dr. ORSZAG: Yes and no. If you look at the Congressional Budget Office testimony that was released today, it said that in terms of bang for the buck, so in terms of how much kick you get from a dollar of budget costs, direct spending, like investing in roads and schools and other - the electricity grid is actually more effective than tax revisions. I think the tension is that some of that stuff spends out somewhat slower, and so a balance in which you have both direct spending and tax revisions gives you the ideal mix of high bang for the buck provisions and faster acting provisions which typically don't have as high a bang for the buck.
NORRIS: When you ran the Congressional Budget Office, this is what the office had to say about public works spending intended to stimulate the economy. It was in a 2008 report. It said large scale construction projects of any type require years of planning and preparation, even those that are, quote, "on the shelf" generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy. Isn't that the basic argument that Republicans are using to push back against the proposal?
Dr. ORSZAG: I think that's right during a normal period of normal economic downturn. We are facing the worst economic downturn or crisis since the Great Depression. It's expected to last for a significant period of time. If this were a very short-lived recession, the normal concern about getting infrastructure projects out the door quickly would be salient, and that's what motivated the quotation you just read. That was a different context in which the depth and severity of the economic crisis that we're facing I think was less apparent.
When you are facing something that's both a deep economic downturn and one that's expected to last for a significant amount of time, the fact that something doesn't spend out immediately over, say, two or three months, is much less of a concern, especially if the bulk of it can spend out over a year and a half or so.
NORRIS: With all the spending that this administration is building up, it seems like you are heading toward a very large deficit. Will you be able to avoid some sort of tax increase midway through Barack Obama's first term or perhaps into the next presidential term?
Dr. ORSZAG: Look, we as a nation face a very serious medium and long-term fiscal problem. We are inheriting deficits that are likely to be a trillion dollars or more, as far as the eye can see. And the president's budget that will be released in about a month will put forward specific ideas for getting that number down as we emerge from the current economic downturn. So we have the need to address the current downturn by jumpstarting the economy, and that will necessarily mean some increase in the deficit even beyond the large deficit that we're inheriting. And then it's our responsibility and the nation's responsibility to come together and bring the out-year deficits down, which will involve many painful choices and we need to keep everything on the table.
NORRIS: What kind of painful choices?
Dr. ORSZAG: Well, the key to our long-term fiscal future is actually improving the efficiency of the health care system, and I think there's a lot that can be done there to bring - to bend the curve on health care costs. If we do that, we will put the nation on a much different fiscal trajectory. And if we don't, we will face large and growing deficits over time that will become unsustainable.
NORRIS: Thank you so much for speaking to us. It was good to talk to you.
Dr. ORSZAG: Thank you very much.
NORRIS: Peter Orszag is the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He joined us from his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. A new book takes a look at the immigrant experience of Eastern Europeans in London. British journalist and novelist Linda Grant delves into the world of the Hungarian Jewish refugee community in her acclaimed new novel, "The Clothes on Their Backs."
As a journalist, Grant writes about trends in fashion. As a novelist, clothes play an important role in lives and identities of her characters. Alan Cheuse has our review.
ALAN CHEUSE: First generation Londoner, Vivien Kovacs, the main writer, is the ill-at-ease daughter of Hungarian immigrants. We see Vivien in childhood in the stuffy apartment where her timid parents established their new lives soon after they arrived from their native Hungary.
Grant beautifully dramatizes the tension between the generations. Her parents shield her from the life they put behind them when they arrived in Britain, keeping her from her Uncle Sandor. He's a notorious London slum lord who emigrated from Hungary after serving time in a Communist labor camp and who's also served time in a British prison.
Vivien, of course, resents being kept at arm's length from the past. After the accidental death of her young husband, she launches a feeble masquerade as a stranger. She approaches her uncle and takes on the job of helping him write his memoirs in the hopes of learning something more about her family history.
Uncle Sandor is a piece of work. A vividly drawn rough and tumble survivor. He goes along with Vivien's charade in order to make his story and the family's known to her.
Yes, I am Sandor Kovacs, it's me, Vivien eventually writes on his behalf, the one you read about, that terrible person. What she learns about him and her parents, the news about their difficult lives in Hungary and how they came to make their own ways in London changes her life and allows her over time to become the woman who can tell her own narrative - a first-generation British coming of age tale that blazes new trails in immigrant literature.
SIEGEL: "The Clothes on Their Backs" is the latest novel by writer and journalist Linda Grant. Our reviewer, Alan Cheuse teaches writing at George Mason University, and Alan has a new novel. It's called, "To Catch the Lightning."
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Children with autism encounter many difficulties. Some have trouble recognizing emotions. So British scientists have come up with a DVD to help these children interpret facial expressions and the emotions behind them. NPR's Jon Hamilton reports.
(Soundbite of music)
JON HAMILTON: The DVD features nine cartoon vehicles including a tractor, a ferry and a cable car. They're called, "The Transporters."
(Soundbite of "The Transporters")
Unidentified Man: Sally was in the cable car wash. Sally was happy. She loved being clean and shiny.
HAMILTON: "The Transporters" were developed by a team that includes Simon Baron-Cohen, an internationally-known autism researcher.
Dr. SIMON BARON-COHEN (Developmental Psychopathology, University of Cambridge; Director, Autism Research Center, Cambridge, University): Children with autism love to watch mechanical objects, like vehicles, probably because they're so predictable, especially vehicles that move down tracks like trains or trams or cable cars.
HAMILTON: Baron-Cohen directs the Autism Research Center at Cambridge University in the U.K. He says one reason kids with autism have trouble recognizing emotions is that they tend to avoid looking at human faces.
Dr. BARON-COHEN: So we wanted to design a children's television series where we had human actors, human faces grafted onto these mechanical vehicles.
HAMILTON: So children would have to look at human expressions.
Dr. BARON-COHEN: Even if the child is focusing on the wheels going around on the vehicles or on the levers and mechanical aspects of the vehicles, even without realizing it, they're going to be looking at the faces.
HAMILTON: Each five-minute episode deals with a single emotion - happy, sad, afraid, angry. Between episodes, kids who want to can take a quiz.
(Soundbite of "The Transporters")
Unidentified Man: How is William feeling? Is he sad or happy?
HAMILTON: Get the wrong answer and you see a train car full of stinky fish. "The Transporters" began as a project funded by the British government. The goal was to use what's known scientifically about the disorder. And Baron-Cohen says when the team got done, they used scientific tests to see how well the approach worked.
Dr. BARON-COHEN: After just one month watching the DVD for 15 minutes a day, the children with autism who had gotten that experience improved significantly in their ability to recognize emotions.
HAMILTON: The original British version was so successful that Baron-Cohen decided to do a North American version, complete with American voices. It was released this month. Karen Ewert, a physician in Maine, heard about the original version more than a year ago. She began using it with her son who was six then. He didn't have to be coaxed.
Dr. KAREN EWERT (Obstetrics and Gynecology, Maine): From day one, he has loved moving vehicles of any sort, but trains were his first love. He loved the Thomas train videos.
HAMILTON: And he loves Sally the cable car, Barney the tractor and Oliver the funicular railway. She says the DVD made a huge difference.
Dr. EWERT: He started watching people's faces just a few days after he started watching the program, and he would try to figure out how people were feeling. And the more episodes that he watched, the more different emotions he learned, the more he was just aware of other people having emotions and his own emotions.
HAMILTON: Ewert says her son got so good at the DVD quizzes, he started deliberately giving wrong answers just to see the stinky fish. And one day, she noticed her son looking at himself in the mirror. He told her he was practicing his faces. But Simon Baron-Cohen says recognizing facial expressions isn't the same thing as fully understanding emotions or feeling empathy for another person.
Dr. BARON-COHEN: Emotion recognition is really only one part of the empathy. You know, it's obviously a prerequisite. If you can't recognize what someone is feeling, how are you going to respond emotionally to what they're feeling?
HAMILTON: And Baron-Cohen says "The Transporters" can help a child with autism take an important first step in that direction. Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
In Iraq, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was once one of the country's most powerful men. At his word, tens of thousands of young men would flood the streets for demonstrations. His militia, known as the Mahdi Army, battled U.S. forces, Iraqi government troops, and Sunni militiamen. His supporters in the Iraqi Parliament once were considered kingmakers. But for the upcoming provincial elections, Sadr's allies are not even on the official list of candidates. NPR's JJ Sutherland in Baghdad examines Sadr's changing fortunes.
(Soundbite of man praying)
JJ SUTHERLAND: The men stream in, in their thousands. Everyone is searched by grim-faced young men as they approach. Huge Iraqi flags are joined by Palestinian ones this Friday, a show of solidarity with the people of Gaza.
(Soundbite of man praying)
SUTHERLAND: Friday prayers in Sadr City is still the heart of the Sadrist movement. Though not officially participating in Saturday's provincial elections, Sadrist leaders are endorsing two so-called independent lists. Ahmed Hussein is a young, poor Shiite like many of Sadr's followers. He says they will all follow Sadr's orders.
Mr. AHMED HUSSEIN: (Through Translator) If you ask me to vote for any other party, I will not, because I have to follow my leader, and Sadrists will do the same.
SUTHERLAND: Sadr, himself, hasn't been seen in public in Iraq since the fall of 2007. He's said to be studying Islamic theology in the Iranian holy city of Qum. Sadr's official spokesman in Iraq is Salah Obeidi. He says Sadrists aren't fielding candidates themselves, but do want their followers' voices to be heard.
Mr. SALAH OBEIDI (Official Spokesman for Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraq): We think that we are not a political party, but we are a powerful, popular movement that we have to participate in such important events to balance the situation.
SUTHERLAND: Some Iraqi analysts believe the Sadrists could tip that balance. The two large Shiite parties - Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Dawa party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq - are vying for control of the Shiite south. And Sadrist voters could make the difference in that fight. The issue that concerns Obeidi the most is a proposed vote to make much of southern Iraq into a separately governed region, such as the Kurds have in the north - a move that would weaken the power of the central government in the area and something the Sadrists strongly oppose. The Islamic Council is the main force behind the push for an autonomous region. One of its leaders, Hasan al-Zamahly, doesn't think the Sadrists pose much of a threat now.
Mr. HASAN AL-ZAMAHLY (Leader, Islamic Council): (Through Translator) When they say we Sadrists don't participate in the political process, it's because they know that their participation will expose their real weakness.
SUTHERLAND: The Sadrists once had both political and military arms. Their Mahdi Army militia targeted American soldiers. They also inspired fear among Iraqis. During the worst of the sectarian violence in 2006 and 2007, death squads linked to the Mahdi Army left dozens of bodies in Baghdad's streets every day - most of them Sunnis in what are now mostly Shiite neighborhoods. But the militia's power was shattered last year. Iraqi and American forces fought pitch battles with the Mahdi Army in southern cities like Basra and in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood. Now, both American and Iraqi officials say the Mahdi Army is a broken force. Ibrahim Samaidai is a political analyst.
Mr. IBRAHIM SAMAIDAI (Political Analyst): The Sadrists now, just like the orphans, some of them dismissed by Mr. Sadr, and those people are wanted for the Iraqi government and wanted for the coalition forces and hated by all of Iraqi's people.
SUTHERLAND: Obeidi, Sadr's spokesman, gets angry when he hears such things, saying the Mahdi Army was the main defender of the Shiite community.
Mr. OBEIDI: We have fought against al-Qaeda. We have defended the millions of visitors to, for example, the holy shrine in Najaf or the holy shrine in Karbala when there were weak Iraqi army, when there were weak Iraqi police.
SUTHERLAND: Obeidi adds that the Sadrists haven't completely given up on an armed force. And he and other Sadrists are confident the candidates the movement supports will do well in the upcoming elections. JJ Sutherland, NPR News, Baghdad.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And here is more of what you don't want to hear. The frenzy of residential foreclosures is spreading to the commercial real estate market. Owners of commercial real estate, shopping centers, and office buildings, face many of the same problems as homeowners. Property values are down and tight credit market makes refinancing difficult or even impossible. Add rising vacancy rates and it points to a commercial real estate crisis. From Miami, NPR's Greg Allen report.
GREG ALLEN: Strolling around downtown Miami, it certainly doesn't look like commercial real estate is in trouble. There are currently three big office buildings under construction, including this one, a 47-story tower called Met 2.
In two years, when the entire Met complex is completed, it will also include condos, a hotel, and a 120,000-square-foot retail center, what Tim Weller of the MDM Development Group calls a shopping and entertainment destination.
Mr. TIM WELER (Vice President, MDM Development): The combination of creating some open plazas, nice outdoor seating, very pedestrian-friendly part of our project right in the core of downtown - it has an atrium, it's like four-stories high, it's all open, a lot of glass. So it's very visible and so we think it will be a real draw here.
ALLEN: This is the Miami where, in the past two years, more than 25,000 new condominium units have come on the market. Gleaming new condo towers have reshaped the city's skyline, but sales have been slow and foreclosures are common.
With the glut in the condo market, some developers converted their projects to office towers. Next year, when Met 2 is completed, nearly two million square feet of new office space will be coming on the market.
Mr. JONATHAN KINGSLEY (Managing Director, Grubb & Ellis Company): That is way more square footage than can ever be absorbed at one time, even in a good economy in good times.
ALLEN: Jonathan Kingsley is with Grubb & Ellis, a commercial real estate company. The development of new office buildings downtown comes as firms in Miami and around the country are making cutbacks and closing offices.
In this economic environment, anchor tenants for new buildings are hard to come by. MDM suffered a blow recently when Whole Foods Market announced it was pulling out of the Met project. Kingsley says the declining demand and the oversupply of office space suggest this will be a tough year for commercial real estate.
Mr. KINGSLEY: We project that in the next three to four quarters, we could see vacancies go from what's now, you know, eight to 10 percent threshold, to 14 to 16 percent.
ALLEN: The vacancy rates are expected to be even higher in cities like Atlanta, Phoenix, and Las Vegas. But in every crisis, there is also opportunity.
Mr. MICHAEL FAY (President, Colliers Abood Wood-Fay): This is really our world.
ALLEN: Michael Fay recently set up a new distressed property services group at Colliers Abood Wood-Fay, a real estate company in Miami. Fay got started in the business back in the '80s, helping the Resolution Trust Company and other government agencies liquidate property during the S&L crisis.
He sees many of the same opportunities emerging in this downturn. With declining property values, plus rising vacancy rates - Fay says commercial landlords are facing tough decisions.
Mr. FAY: Now that the music has stopped, there are a lot of people, banks, investors, lenders, that are caught with this way overvalued property that has got highly leveraged land, and it's gone into foreclosure, and now they're trying to sell it. And it's going for literally 40 cents, 50 cents, 30 cents on the dollar in some areas.
ALLEN: As bad as all that is, it's not the biggest problem facing commercial real estate. What many commercial landlords are worried about is the same thing that's bedeviling homeowners, businessmen, and the economy at large. That is the lack of available credit. ..TEXT: Banks and other institutions that back commercial real estate are calling on Congress to use some of the federal TARP money to help restart an important part of the system - commercial mortgage-backed securities. These are close relatives of the mortgage-backed securities that are blamed, in part, for the housing meltdown.
Christopher Hoeffel of the Commercial Mortgage Securities Association says the commercial securities are more highly regulated than their residential counterparts, and they're vital to the industry, accounting for more than half of all financing before the downturn. Hoeffel says something needs to be done because many commercial property owners will soon be in dire need of refinancing.
Mr. CHRISTOPHER HOEFFEL (President, Commercial Mortgage Securities): Well, the biggest concern is balloon maturities, i.e., the loans are coming due, and there's no lending to take out the loans and replace them with new loans.
ALLEN: An industry group, the Real Estate Roundtable, estimates that $400 billion in commercial mortgages will come due within the next several months. Unless there is government action to revitalize the commercial mortgage market, the group warns of severe consequences for investors, workers, local governments, and the economy as a whole. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
In this Super Bowl week, it's reasonable to think that many NFL fans are replaying in their minds the key plays of the season. Those scenes probably play out in high definition, freeze-frame, and from multiple angles. Replays long have been a part of the TV viewing experience. But as NPR's Mike Pesca reports, changes in rules and advances in technology have taken replay to new levels.
MIKE PESCA: In 1967, the French theorist and filmmaker Guy Debord wrote that everything that was lived directly has moved away into a representation. 1967 was also the year that the first Super Bowl was played. I know, I know that talking about the Super Bowl and a French theorist and filmmaker Guy Debord in the same breath is so cliched. But Guy turned out to have been a pretty prescient guy when it comes to the NFL, especially since the institution of a rule that allows for a referee's on-field decision to be overturned based on video.
(Soundbite of NFL game)
Unidentified Sports Commentator: Is it in the endzone? It is in or outside? They're going to mark it outside. And I guarantee that people are going to want to look at this one.
PESCA: This is the CBS broadcast of December's game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers. The hard-fought contest came down to one play, a pass that may or may not have been a touchdown. Within two minutes, the CBS broadcast team had shown nine replays from at least five different angles in slow motion of that one play. Harold Bryant is the vice president of production for CBS Sports.
Mr. HAROLD BRYANT (Vice President of Production, CBS Sports): The average viewer now is used to that. They want that. And they feel they're missing something if they don't get that. So, we're going to push and show you the angles.
PESCA: On a game-changing play, a football fan wants nothing more than to engage in the intense scrutiny of videotape. But with the rise of video technology, even mundane plays are being turned into an exercise close to forensic video analysis. Georgia State University professor Harper Cossar studies sports on television.
Dr. HARPER COSSAR (Professor, Moving Image Studies, Georgia State University): It's more like we're sitting in the producers' truck, watching these series of monitors, and let's watch that again and again and again like the Zapruder film, you know, that we're just watching over and over and over again, trying to reconstruct what happened, rather than just sort of getting into the poetry, the flow, the beauty of the game.
PESCA: Like a coach with bag of trick plays, the football producer has to know when to use his technology. Fred Gaudelli is the producer of NBC's "Sunday Night Football." He'll be producing the Super Bowl.
Mr. FRED GAUDELLI (Producer, "Sunday Night Football," NBC): I have a big toy box, but, you know, I rarely play with a lot of these toys because unless there is a specific relation to what just happened on the field, I'm just breaking it out to say, look at my toy and look how I can play with it. You know, I mean, it really doesn't enhance anybody's enjoyment of what they're watching.
PESCA: The digitally superimposed yellow line to indicate the first down, the small graphic to constantly remind viewers of time, down, and distance - these are the types of toys that NFL viewers demand on every play. But to avoid the Zapruder effect with instant replay, producers have to be judicious, and sometimes their hands are forced. After a disputed play, the league does not have its own video to review. They rely on the network feed. So when there is a close call, the broadcasters feel a responsibility to show replay after replay. Harold Bryant has a phrase for that.
Mr. BRYANT: You're what we call emptying the bucket whenever we can if there's a challenge.
PESCA: The networks are also emptying the replay bucket on any close play that may be challenged. Fred Gaudelli says it's their responsibility.
Mr. GAUDELLI: You have this obligation to provide as many looks at what could be, you know, something controversial or something the officials may not have gotten right, you know, for the benefit of the coach because you are the, quote, unquote, "replay system" for both teams.
PESCA: Yet, even with the benefit of all those replays, the officials analyzing the Steelers' pass play had a daunting task.
(Soundbite of NFL game)
Unidentified Sports Commentator #1: (Unintelligible) possession of the ball - we have a touchdown.
Unidentified Sports Commentator #2: It's a touchdown for Pittsburgh.
PESCA: The announcers criticized the decision, and a great many viewers thought the referees got it wrong. So much time and technology spent and still no definitive answer about that particular touchdown. What can you say to a disappointed fan except that tough breaks, like lots of instant replay, are just a part of the game? Mike Pesca, NPR News, New York.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. When President Obama signed an executive order to close Guantanamo Bay, he ordered a review of what to do with the roughly 245 detainees who are still held there. Coming up, we'll examine what's happened with rehabilitation programs aimed at Jihadists.
For the current detainees, some may be returned to the home countries or to a third country. Others likely will be prosecuted. And there's a third category which may be the most problematic. Here's NPR's Jackie Northam.
JACKIE NORTHAM: Among the remaining detainees at Guantanamo Bay are roughly 100 men whom the Pentagon says are too dangerous to release and yet can't be tried for a lack of evidence.
Mr. SABIN WILLETT (Partner, Bingham McCutchen, Boston): I have one question. What are their names?
NORTHAM: Sabin Willett is a Boston lawyer and has represented Guantanamo detainees for nearly four years. He criticizes the Pentagon for not naming the detainees who fall into this category or state what kind of threat they represent. Pentagon officials simply say the threat is high. Willett sharply questions the assertion that there are detainees who can't be tried and can't be released.
Mr. WILLETT: And who's decided that they're too dangerous to hold and on the basis of what? Or are they really saying that we have these people down there and the only evidence on them is what we tortured out of them, which we can't use in a prosecution.
NORTHAM: Willett says there is little reason to believe statements that these men are too dangerous to let go. After all, about 500 Guantanamo detainees - men whom the Bush administration referred to as terrorists, have already been released.
And while the majority melted into obscurity, the Pentagon claims that several dozen of those freed are now in terrorist operations. Bradford Berenson is a Washington lawyer who helped draw up the policies for the military commissions at Guatanamo.
Mr. BRADFORD BERENSON (Litigator, Sidley Austin LLP): We've been tricked into releasing people that we have captured and held at Guatanamo who are, in fact, senior al-Qaeda operatives and who, after release, have gone back to the battle and back to planning attacks on the United States and its allies.
NORTHAM: Many analysts, military and civilian, say there has to be a better way to gauge the risk posed by these so-called dangerous detainees. There is increasing concern among human rights groups and defense lawyers and others that the approximately 100 men may fall into some legal black hole.
David Rittgers, a legal policy analyst at the Cato Institute, says the U.S. doesn't really have to let the men go or prosecute them under the law of war.
Mr. DAVID RITTGERS (Legal Policy Analyst, Cato Institute): We know that we can hold these people until cessation of hostilities. The law of war supports that. I don't take credibly claims that that's somehow inhumane to hold these people who clearly are combatants.
NORTHAM: Rittgers says the troubling part is that no one knows when the war on terrorism is going to end. That's just one of the variables that President Obama's task force on Guatanamo is going to have to consider.
Rittgers says he'd like to see Guatanamo closed and some of the detainees tried in federal court, but he says it's likely the members of the Guatanamo task force may very well agree that there are some men the U.S. cannot try in any courtroom. If so, Rittgers says President Obama will need to explain it fully and carefully to the American public.
Mr. RITTGERS: And if that's done right, if that's done openly and just with an eye to convincing people that we can't let them go, then we will end up keeping some of these people under those conditions.
NORTHAM: Brad Berenson says the new administration will have more luck explaining the situation than the Bush administration.
Mr. BERENSON: I don't think that people around the world or interest groups in our own country are nearly as suspicious of the new administration's intentions and basic background beliefs as they were of those of the Bush administration.
NORTHAM: But holding someone without charge or trial goes against the grain of everything the U.S. is supposed to stand for, says lawyer Sabin Willett.
Mr. WILLETT: And let's also be honest about what it means. When does a person stop being too dangerous to release? I mean, if it's a life sentence, we better be honest with ourselves in saying we've become a country that holds people in a prison for life because somebody in intelligence has a suspicion.
NORTHAM: The Pentagon says a comprehensive inter-agency review of each detainee will be conducted. After that, the prisoner's fate will be determined on a case-by-case basis. Jackie Northam, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Many Americans are suffering emotionally and economically amid the financial crisis, but for some people, life always has been full of big ups and downs. It's true for farmers, for instance, and especially fishermen. Fish populations boom and bust, and people who fish for a living have learned how to manage. NPR's Richard Harris talked to some of them to learn how they do it.
RICHARD HARRIS: Imagine for a minute trying to make a living by catching Dungeness crabs in the waters off far northern California. It's the most dangerous fishery on the West Coast. There are lots of other fishermen all rushing out at the same time to compete for a limited resource. And to top it off, the crab population goes through natural cycles of boom and bust. Welcome to John Brunsing's life.
Mr. JOHN BRUNSING: All these variables that, you know, they're almost impossible to calculate so you really never know what's going to happen. And that's what kind of makes it interesting.
HARRIS: Yes, to this 64-year-old fisherman, the topsy-turvy life he leads is interesting. But interesting ups and downs are not what most people are looking for when they look at their jobs, home values, or investment statements.
Professor ARTHUR MCEVOY (Historian; Law, Southwestern Law School, Los Angeles): We're so shocked, right.
HARRIS: Arthur McEvoy is a historian at Southwestern Law School.
Professor MCEVOY: The value of my house went down. I'm shocked, shocked. And a lot of us are completely unprepared to deal with this.
HARRIS: McEvoy has studied California fishing culture and admires the philosophy that fishermen have developed to ride out their continual ups and downs. And if you hang around on John Brunsing's dock in Crescent City for a little while, you'll start to learn what makes this life not only survivable but enjoyable.
(Soundbite of conversation)
HARRIS: The white-haired Brunsing offers friendly advice to his younger neighbor, Brett Fahning. Sure, they're competing for the same crabs, but they're also friends. And those bonds of cooperation run very deep in the fishing community. They swap advice and tips all day by radio and cell phone while they're out at sea. So cooperation is one survival strategy, so is diversification. A few fishermen go after crabs exclusively, Brunsing says, but not many.
Mr. BRUNSING: The rest of these guys do other things during the year, you know. They fish salmon or albacore or shrimp or trawl for bottom fish and stuff so - yeah, I mean, there's other ways to make a living.
HARRIS: Brunsing, like other fishermen we met, married a school teacher, with a steady job and health insurance, so his family income is diversified as well. And Brunsing takes the long view about money. He knows that he needs to save during the good years to get through the inevitable bad ones.
Mr. BRUNSING: You know, you've got to manage your money right, you know. If you manage your money right, it's fine, you can do it. We all do it.
HARRIS: But fishermen don't only try to average out their ups and downs, they are often comfortable taking on big risks. For example, some fishermen don't even insure their boats against catastrophic loss. Some lose everything and can't keep on fishing. That's part of the fishing culture, says historian McEvoy.
Professor MCEVOY: It's a scary business. It's very dangerous, and it's very strenuous work, and it calls a certain kind of person to it. People who are committed to it by nature, I suppose, or it's been in their families for generations.
HARRIS: One thing he's noticed in his studies is that fishermen aren't doing this hard and dangerous work to get rich.
Professor MCEVOY: They stay in the business because they're attached to the livelihood. They're committed to the way of life. They're committed to the - their communities and the other people who are doing it.
HARRIS: In fact, they depend upon their communities. They rely on their neighbors and their families, along with their savings to weather the ups and downs.
Mr. MCEVOY: All those are historically tried and true and very effective means of self-insurance. What makes them different from other kinds of people is that they don't purchase that insurance through markets.
HARRIS: In fact, unlike farmers who can buy crop insurance to reduce their risk, there's no such thing as fish insurance.
Mr. TOM ESTES: We've never had that luxury of a guaranteed anything.
HARRIS: Tom Estes lives down the coast from John Brunsing in Fort Bragg, California. Like Brunsing, he's on the verge of retirement, and he spent his life riding the ups and downs of not only fish populations, but of the greater economy. Fuel prices up? Tough luck. Fish prices down? Too bad.
Mr. ESTES: It seems like we're kind of like with the farmers, we're the first ones to get hurt and then the last ones to recover.
HARRIS: But through the years, Estes has earned enough to buy a comfortable ranch-style home along California's coast highway and to raise a family. In fact, his sons are carrying on the family tradition.
Mr. ESTES: It has been a good life for me. And I think both of my boys will be all right, hopefully. I mean, they're both go-getters. Of anything I've taught them is a good work ethic. So I'm sure they're going to be fine.
HARRIS: His secret to success, perhaps as much as anything, is an attitude we heard from a lot of people in his business.
Mr. ESTES: I think it's going to get better. I have high hopes. But that's what a fisherman runs on is high hopes.
HARRIS: Optimism certainly doesn't guarantee success as investors have painfully discovered. But as a coping skill, it seems to work OK. Richard Harris, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Much of the economic stimulus bill that'sworking its way through Congress involves cutting taxes or adding money for existing programs. But when it comes to health care, the bill includes at least one brand new concept - providing government subsidies for people to keep their health insurance when they lose their jobs. NPR's Julie Rovner reports.
JULIE ROVNER: Way back in 1985 during consideration of a huge budget bill, lawmakers decided to add a tiny provision aimed at helping people who lose their jobs keep the health insurance that came with that job for 18 months, as long as they paid the entire premium themselves.
Over the years, that one provision has come to be known by the name of the entire bill COBRA. COBRA can literally be a life saver, says Karen Pollitz, an insurance expert at Georgetown University.
Ms. KAREN POLLITZ (Project Director, Health Policy Institute, Georgetown University): Because it is a continuation, right? Your coverage doesn't stop, you don't have to start a new annual deductible, you don't have to change doctors in a different network. All of your benefits are the same.
ROVNER: But there is a big problem with COBRA, says Pollitz. Having to pay the full premium is simply more than most people can handle.
Ms. POLLITZ: The combination of losing that employer subsidy and losing your job usually means the sticker price for COBRA is too much.
ROVNER: That's exactly what happened to Bernadette Hicks of Warren, Rhode Island. She and her husband are the parents of nine children, two of their own and seven adopted foster children. Her husband is self-employed. He runs a driveway ceiling and repair business. So until two years ago, the entire family was covered through her job as an administrator at a nursing home.
Ms. BERNADETTE HICKS: Unfortunately, the nursing home owners decided to close the nursing home. It would have cost us a little over $800 a month for the COBRA insurance to kick in for us to keep this insurance. And there are just - there was no way we could come up with that kind of money.
ROVNER: The children were eligible for Medicaid, but Bernadette and her husband were not. They gambled that they wouldn't need expensive medical care, and they lost. Bill Hicks, who has diabetes, suffered a cerebral hemorrhage last February.
Ms. HICKS: Spent five days in the hospital, three days in intensive care and it was only five days in the hospital because I talked them into letting him come home because we had no coverage.
ROVNER: After they were unable to get Bill timely follow up care, he later had another stroke. And now, the couple has a hundred thousand dollars in medical debt and still no insurance. Looking back, Bernadette Hicks says if the COBRA coverage had been much less expensive when she lost her job, say, $300 dollars a month, she would have jumped at it.
Ms. HICKS: Three hundred dollars is so much better than $800. Eight hundred dollars to a family like mine is like a national debt. But bringing it down to 300, you can manage that so much better.
ROVNER: That's pretty much what the House and Senate stimulus bills envision - a 65 percent subsidy for COBRA premiums for laid-off workers for between nine and 12 months. And it would be retroactive, so people who had lost their jobs as long ago as last September could qualify.
The business community has been cautiously supportive of the short-term subsidies. Helen Darling of the National Business Group on Health which represents Fortune 500 companies says, as a stop gap measure, it's not too bad.
Ms. HELEN DARLING (President, National Business Group on Health): It is something that works and people are familiar with. And as often happens in a crisis, you want to find mechanisms that are easy to execute.
ROVNER: But not everyone is sold on the idea. Tom Miller of the conservative American Enterprise Institute says it may not be wise to help people stay with their very expensive employer plans, when a more bare-bones policy might be more appropriate.
Mr. TOM MILLER (Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute): People are moving out of houses they can't afford. They're taking jobs they otherwise would prefer not to take. It's a necessity. In the same way, every single dollar we have can't go to health insurance first over other competing needs.
ROVNER: Even with the subsidies, COBRA will remain too expensive for many who are losing their jobs and their health coverage, which will lead to Congress' next fight over a health-care overhaul. Julie Rovner, NPR News, Washington.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Joining us now is Gregory Johnsen with Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies department. He's also the editor of the forthcoming book, "Islam and Insurgency in Yemen." And he joins us to talk about rehabilitation programs that are designed to deprogram Jihadists. Welcome to the program.
Mr. GREGORY JOHNSEN (PhD candidate, Princeton University; Editor, "Islam and Insurgency in Yemen"): Thanks.
NORRIS: How exactly do these programs work? How do they rehabilitate former Jihadists?
Mr. JOHNSEN: Well, the idea is essentially that you have state-approved scholars who will talk with these Jihadists who have been released or brought back from Iraq or from Guantanamo, and that they'll be able to convince them that their understanding of Islam and what Islam preaches about Jihad and about defending Muslim lands is actually incorrect. And that they shouldn't be engaged in this sort of activity.
NORRIS: It sounds almost like a tutorial of some kind of. It's hard to believe that people who would pledge to take up the fight against the U.S. would put down their arms and just shed their ideology based on some sort of classroom tutorial.
Mr. JOHNSEN: Right, and I think that's the problem that you're seeing with a lot of people who come out with these programs who've returned to the fight. The idea being that the state's scholars will convince them that they've made a mistake and that their understanding of Islam has been twisted and perverted, but what we're finding is that these scholars are so tied up with the state that their association almost invalidates what it is that they're trying to tell the detainees.
NORRIS: Now, there are rehabilitation programs in Yemen and also in Saudi Arabia. The program in Yemen has had a mixed record of success. The program in Saudi Arabia seems to be much more successful and is held up as a model. Why does one work, and why does the other not work?
Mr. JOHNSEN: Well, the Yemen model, which ran from September 2002 to December 2005, was really the first model. While the Yemeni state is very weak and it doesn't have the money or security forces or infrastructure to really kind of follow through on the 364 individuals that it released, the Saudi state kind of took the Yemen initial idea and almost made it rehab 2.0.
Saudi has a better infrastructure. They can follow up better, and also they're able to keep a much better track of some of the individuals who they've released. But again this is - it's far from perfect.
NORRIS: As someone who's studied these, looked closely at both programs in Yemen and Saudi Arabia, can these rehabilitation programs work?
Mr. JOHNSEN: I believe while the one in Saudi can be fairly successful, and we have to remember that the reason the Saudi program has had the success it has had is because it's dealing with the easiest cases. So most of the hard individuals - the people who they think and they have more suspicions that will go back and fight, haven't went through that program.
In the Yemeni case, I just don't see a rehabilitation program working. It might be something that would kind of almost pass the buck from the U.S. to Yemen, but then, in the long run, it'll come back to, I think, haunt the U.S. because these individuals, when they get out, a few of them at least, will go on to carry out attacks or attempt to carry out attacks. And so the U.S. will be put in a position where they have to re-arrest individuals for attacks that claimed lives that they once had in custody.
NORRIS: I don't mean to belabor this, but there's a very basic question. Can a Jihadist be rehabilitated?
Mr. JOHNSEN: An individual can be rehabilitated and reintegrated into society if they only went along with Jihad kind of because it was something that the group of friends that they were involved in was doing or something that their relatives or brothers may have been doing, but they didn't feel very strongly.
However, the people who feel quite strongly and have made this a life choice, there's nothing that you can say that's going to get them to change their minds.
NORRIS: Gregory Johnsen, thank you very much for speaking with us.
Mr. JOHNSEN: Thanks so much for having me.
NORRIS: Gregory Johnsen is with Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department. He's also the editor of a forthcoming book called, "Islam and Insurgency in Yemen."
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. It was icy and cold in Washington today as former Vice President Al Gore urged Congress to act fast to counter an overheating planet. The Nobel Peace Laureate shared a number of his inconvenient truths with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He also urged that lawmakers now have an opportunity to act. NPR's David Welna has today's story.
DAVID WELNA: In welcoming Al Gore to sit in the hot seat before the foreign relations panel, Chairman John Kerry recalled how he and then Senator Gore teamed up 21-years-ago at the first climate change hearing ever held by the Senate. It was a sweltering June day, Kerry recalled, and Senate staffers opened up the windows in the hearing room to underscore the threat of global warming.
Senator JOHN KERRY (Democrat, Massachusetts): We're obviously not going to repeat that gesture today. But I speak for everyone on this committee when I tell you how much we appreciate your being here today, Mr. Vice President, and particularly on a day in what passes down here as tough winter weather.
WELNA: And Kerry had a message for what he called the nay sayers and the deniers out there - a little snow in Washington does nothing to diminish the reality of the crisis. Gore followed that with a Cassandra-like warning.
Former Vice President AL GORE: We have arrived at a moment of decision. Our home, earth, is in danger.
WELNA: Carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere, Gore said, have shot up from 280 parts per million at the start of the industrial revolution to 386 parts per million today - and rising, which is why the earth's average temperature keeps going up.
Former Vice President GORE: If we continued at today's levels, some scientists have said it can be an increase of up to 11 degrees fahrenheit. This would bring a screeching halt to human civilization and threaten the fabric of life everywhere on the earth. And this is within the century, if we don't change.
WELNA: Idaho freshman Republican Jim Risch noted that scientists have projected what would happen if societies do cut back on their greenhouse gas emissions.
Senator JAMES RISCH (Republican, Idaho): Has anybody predicted what will happen if we don't, if we just stay on the course that we're on? Has anybody predicted how long we're going to be around?
Former Vice President GORE: I think the scenario that those scientists warn us about is not for any, you know, extinction of the human species, but rather of the risk of the collapse of the basis for civilization as we know it.
WELNA: Gore said there's one thing lawmakers can do immediately to improve the planet's prospects.
Former Vice President GORE: I urge this Congress to quickly pass the entirety of President Obama's recovery package. The plan's unprecedented and critical investments in four key areas, energy efficiency, renewables, a unified national energy smart-grid and the move to clean cars, represent an important downpayment and are long overdue.
WELNA: The next step, Gore said, would be for Congress to pass a cap and trade bill that would mandate reduced greenhouse gas emissions. This, he said, would be crucial for giving the U.S. the credibility it needs to lead efforts in Copenhagen late this year to come up with a new global climate change treaty. Committee Chairman Kerry agreed that this is the year for Congress to act.
Senator KERRY: This is going to be a tough sell(ph), but we're going to try to do it. We're going to do everything in our power to keep the pressure on and keep the focus on.
WELNA: As Kerry noted, there's now a president in the White House who will sign climate change bills into law. David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
More now on that much remarked on wintry weather in the capital today. The ice and freezing rain in Washington, D.C. closed 447 schools in the area. And this puzzled our new president who has just moved his family in from the Windy City.
President BARACK OBAMA: My children's school was canceled today because of - what?
Unidentified Woman: Ice.
(Soundbite of laughter)
President OBAMA: Some ice?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Man: ...as Chicago.
(Soundbite of laughter)
President OBAMA: As my children pointed out, in Chicago, school is never canceled.
(Soundbite of laughter)
President OBAMA: In fact, my seven year old pointed out that you'd go outside for recess on a day like this.
(Soundbite of laughter)
President OBAMA: You wouldn't even stay indoors. So, it's - I don't know, we're going to have to try to apply some flinty Chicago toughness to this town.
(Soundbite of laughter)
President OBAMA: I'm saying when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Well, welcome to Washington, Mr. President. Though we note that the District of Columbia public schools were open today, though, they started two hours late.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
In Springfield, Illinois today, a surprise announcement from the state Senate president - Governor Rod Blagojevich has asked to speak during the closing arguments of his impeachment trial. Those closing arguments are set to begin tomorrow.
Today's testimony centered on allegations that he broke state hiring laws, wasted taxpayers' money and acted without proper authority. It was a break from the intense focus on the allegations that he tried to sell President Obama's U.S. senate seat. And that's what's on the mind of our senior news analyst Daniel Schorr.
DANIEL SCHORR: There are four new Democratic senators who have constituencies of one - namely the governors who appointed them to fill vacancies. It is time to recognize that the practice is inherently undemocratic and subject to political manipulation.
The naming of Ted Kaufman in Delaware and Michael Bennet in Colorado didn't create much of a stir. But the designation of Roland Burris by Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, himself facing allegations of corruption, tied the system into knots and became a national scandal.
And in New York, Governor David Paterson made a spectacle of himself as he dilly-dallied over the candidacy of Caroline Kennedy before lurching into the appointment of Representative Kirsten Gillibrand.
Clearly, the framers of our Constitution did not intend to leave the selection of a senator in the hands of a politician with an agenda of his own. Originally, the Constitution provided for senators to be elected by legislatures. To bring the process closer to the people, the 17th Amendment in 1913 provided for direct election of senators with vacancies to be filled by special elections.
As a sort of afterthought, the amendment empowered governors to make temporary appointments pending elections. That was clearly not meant to last up to two years. No doubt an election is costly, but less costly than making a mockery of the process of filling vacancies.
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, chairman of the judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, wants a constitutional amendment requiring that Senate vacancies be filled only by the voters. The time to end the practice of governors appointing senators has surely come. This is Daniel Schorr.
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 soldier on the frontlines of the housing crisis. It's not good out there. Yesterday, the Standard and Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city housing index showed a drop of an annual rate of 18.2 percent through November.
This is more than just personal for Gus Kramer. He is the county assessor in Contra Costa County, California which is in the East bay area just outside San Francisco. On the basis of his assessments, the county takes about one percent in real estate taxes.
In California, the basis can't go up by more than two percent a year until the house is sold, but at the moment, the problem Mr. Kramer, as I understand it, is not assessments that are going up but rather assessments that are going down.
Mr. GUS KRAMER (Assessor, Contra Costa County, California): That's absolutely correct. The values in Contra Costa County and the larger East bay are falling precipitously. There are something like 80 percent of the houses for sale in some depressed areas are bank-owned, if you can imagine that.
SIEGEL: Because they were in foreclosure, you're saying...
Mr. KRAMER: These homes were in foreclosure. They were taken back by the bank, and now the bank has listed them with a local real estate agent for sale. And the banks' attitude is their first loss is their best loss, so they're deep discounting these properties and driving the values down in entire neighborhoods.
SIEGEL: So as the assessor, what kind of changes are you seeing in the values of properties that are now being bought, from what to what?
Mr. KRAMER: We're seeing properties from two-and-a-half, three years ago, some properties are down as much as 70 to 80 percent in value.
SIEGEL: You mean, say like a $200,000 house might be going for $40,000 you say?
Mr. KRAMER: There are single family homes selling in Antioch and Pittsburgh for under a $100,000. In fact, the joke in town is you can almost put it on your credit card.
SIEGEL: That means, though, that the county's revenues - every time a house changes hands, the county's property tax revenues can be expected to go down by, if it's 70 percent of the house, it would be 70 percent of the real estate tax.
Mr. KRAMER: That's right. We estimate about five percent of the homes in the county change hands in a given year. The estimate for this year is our property tax revenues will be down approximately eight percent.
SIEGEL: So today, for example, you saw some properties today?
Mr. KRAMER: We saw some properties today, properties that were listed - that sold in 2005 for about $800,000. Today, they are selling in a very nice neighborhood on the golf course, all tricked-out with granite countertops, beautiful swimming pool, and they are selling for around $300,000.
SIEGEL: Three hundred thousand dollars.
Mr. KRAMER: Yes.
SIEGEL: Well, how is the county coping with the loss of revenue that it is...?
Mr. KRAMER: The county is coping by having to cut back on discretionary services, and unfortunately, the people that are suffering the most are the elderly and the poor. The only place the county has discretionary income, really, is in the health services, basically the county hospital and services to the elderly and or social services which mostly affect the poor.
SIEGEL: In your experience, in terms of what you're seeing in real estate, has it been getting steadily worse with every month or do you see any uptick or silver lining at all?
Mr. KRAMER: I have not seen any uptick, to be honest with you. It's still falling - I didn't think it would fall this far. We had the same experience during the mid 1990s, but the properties fell precipitously, but nobody sold their properties. We didn't have foreclosures then. The market came back, we restored the values, and the public agencies basically got most of their money back.
This time we're actually having change of ownerships, and with change of ownerships, that locks in that lower value for that person for tax purposes as long as they own the house under Prop 13. So the public agencies are really going to have to do more with a lot, lot less. It's actually a financial crisis to be quite frank with you.
SIEGEL: Well, Mr. Kramer, thank you very much for talking with us.
Mr. KRAMER: You're very welcome. Thanks for having me on the show.
SIEGEL: That's Gus Kramer who is the county assessor in Contra Costa County, California.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. The House of Representatives has passed its version of President Obama's economic stimulus bill. The more than $800 billion measure is the first major action of a government now controlled by Democrats. It was a test of bipartisanship in Washington and on that score it failed. No Republicans voted for the bill. The vote was 244 to 188. NPR's Andrea Seabrook reports.
ANDREA SEABROOK: It was just one week and one day ago, the freshly minted president looked out over a crowd that stretched from the Capitol lawn beyond the White House lawn and outlined his blueprint for economic recovery. Today it came to the House floor. Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Representative NANCY PELOSI (Democrat, California; Speaker of the House): Today, we are passing historic legislation that honors the promises our new president made from the steps of the Capitol, promises to make the future better for our children and our grandchildren.
SEABROOK: At first glance, the debate seemed to have the kind of bipartisan tone President Obama called for. After all, the numbers don't lie - millions of cut jobs and layoffs, plummeting home values, a stock market wallowing in bad earnings reports. The government needs to act, said California Republican David Dreier.
Representative DAVID DREIER (Republican, California): And there is total agreement on that, total agreement on that. We all know, both sides of the aisle, that in our districts, whether it's Georgia, New York, California, our constituents are hurting. We're all feeling the pain of this economic downturn. The question is what action will we take?
SEABROOK: And with that, bye-bye bipartisanship. The two parties have really different ideas about how to jumpstart the economy and each has its own roster of experts to back them up. This bill pumps hundreds of billions of dollars into infrastructure, education, health care, and local governments. It cuts taxes for most working Americans and for many businesses, too. Democrats say it will create jobs, millions of them over the next year and a half. And that, said Connecticut Democrat John Larson, will mean some relief for Americans who are suffering.
Representative JOHN LARSON (Democrat, Connecticut): We face, as they do, here in this chamber, this day, at this moment, a rendezvous with reality, the crushing reality of what the last eight years has brought to our American citizens.
SEABROOK: Republicans? They say this bill spends way too much and doesn't cut taxes enough. And furthermore, said California's Jerry Lewis, the top Republican on the Appropriations Committee, his party was locked out of all negotiations over the bill.
Representative JERRY LEWIS (Republican, California): Do not for one minute believe that this bill reflects the input of House Republicans or even many House Democrats.
SEABROOK: Lewis said as far as he could tell, the legislation was written in Speaker Pelosi's office. Democrats say, no, it wasn't.
Representative DAVID OBEY (Democrat, Wisconsin; Chairman, Appropriations Committee): The minority continually spouts the myth that the minority was not allowed to be involved in the development of this legislation.
SEABROOK: That's David Obey, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee. He said minority Republicans were given plenty of opportunities to affect the bill, but he said they preferred to play the victim.
Representative OBEY: So if someone says, I'm sorry I was shut out, but it is they who turned the key in the lock that kept them on the outside, that certainly isn't our fault.
SEABROOK: So much for bipartisanship. In the end, though, there is still room for cooperation. Maybe not between scrappy House leaders, but as this bill moves on to the Senate, Republicans are working directly with the Obama administration to put their two cents in, or take them out as the case may be. And Speaker Pelosi said it's difficult to turn the giant ship of state - difficult, but not impossible.
Representative PELOSI: We are moving the ship of state in a new direction in favor of the many, not the few. With this vote today, we are taking America in a new direction.
SEABROOK: The bill now goes to the Senate where more change is certain. Andrea Seabrook, NPR News, the Capitol.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
While the stimulus plan aims to get the economy moving in the future, the Treasury Department still has the legacy of our subprime past to sort out and a few hundred billion dollars of TARP funds to work with. Today, Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner met with senior officials to discuss how to overhaul the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. After the meeting, Geithner told reporters that his department is looking into a range of options to get banks lending again and to stabilize the economy. But to find out about that range of options and what overhaul is expected at Treasury, we called on Krishna Guha, who is U.S. economics editor for the Financial Times. Hi, thanks for joining us.
Mr. KRISHNA GUHA (Economics Editor, The Financial Times): My pleasure.
SIEGEL: Are there strong indications yet of how Secretary Geithner will proceed with the TARP?
Mr. GUHA: Well, I think we need to divide that into two points. In the first instance, what Tim Geithner is trying to do is to restore public confidence in the process by which the government puts capital into banks. He's trying to reassure the public that it's going to be done in a transparent way with objective criteria and that the money that goes to the banks isn't going to be wasted, it's going to be used to support new lending. At the same time, he and his colleagues are working on plans for a comprehensive cleanup of the banking system, something that will almost certainly require more public funds.
SIEGEL: So, on the first point, I guess getting the city to not buy a new corporate jet would have been an example of that, what happened yesterday?
Mr. GUHA: Absolutely. There's concern among officials here that the public really has lost all faith in the TARP program. That's the program created by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to initially buy troubled assets, then diverted into bank recapitalization. If the Obama team is going to really overhaul the banking system, the first thing they need to do is to win back the public's confidence that this money isn't wasted and that money that's going into the banks ultimately benefits everyone.
SIEGEL: Now, there have been hints at least that Secretary Geithner and the Obama administration is interested in the original strategy of the TARP, that is to go in and actually buy up the toxic assets. Secretary Paulson and his group found that impractical or exceedingly difficult. Is there anything different now that would make it any easier?
Mr. GUHA: It remains a very challenging job. The plan under consideration would involve some way of taking out the toxic assets that are clogging up the bank's balance sheets and deterring them from making new loans to households and businesses. Now, one of the ideas under consideration is to create a so-called bad bank. That's a special purpose bank which would exist just for the purpose of acquiring those bad assets.
Now, some of the problems that Mr. Paulson faced last fall haven't gone away. It's going to be very hard to value those assets to make sure that the banks are getting a fair price for them, but the taxpayer is not overpaying. And of course, this bad bank will have to raise quite a lot of funds potentially by issuing its own debt as well as taking money from Treasury in order to buy assets on the scale required. Plus, when we're all said and done, once the banks have gotten rid of their toxic assets, we may find they don't have enough capital, in which case we'll need to put more in.
SIEGEL: And we, the taxpayers, would be the owners of this Yucca Mountain for securities - this bad bank?
Mr. GUHA: That's right.
SIEGEL: Now, something else happened today which I want to ask you about, and that is that the Federal Reserve said it's standing by its virtually zero percent interest rates. It's hard to foresee anything that would force an increase in rates in the next few months. So what does the Fed do now, just issue the same statement every month?
Mr. GUHA: Well, as you say, it's a little bit tricky for the Fed because it's now in the realm of so-called unconventional easing. That's taking steps other than reducing the interest rate which is already set at virtually zero. And these steps don't lend themselves to adjustments every time the Fed meets, which is about every six weeks or so. But the statement today gives us some clues about its thinking.
The Fed wants to take further steps to reduce the actual borrowing rates. And its inclination is to try to do so through more targeted lending operations that are aimed to revitalize the securitized markets where a lot of loans are bundled up and sold on to investors. Those markets have been, by and large, frozen now for the best part of a year or year and a half. The Fed wants to get them going again.
It's also considering the possibility of extending a program by which it buys securities issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to keep mortgage rates low. And it's also said that it's prepared under certain circumstances to actually buy securities issued by the government, as well.
SIEGEL: Now, Krishna Guha, thank you very much.
Mr. GUHA: My pleasure.
SIEGEL: Krishna Guha of the Financial Times.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. Yesterday, we noted the decision of Brandeis University to sell much of its highly prized collection of modern art to address its financial problems. The collection at Brandeis's Rose Museum is valued, according to newspaper accounts, at about $350 million. The president of Brandeis, Jehuda Reinharz, considers this a painful, but necessary step, and he joins us from Waltham, Massachusetts. Welcome to the program.
Dr. JEHUDA REINHARZ (President, Brandeis University): Thank you.
SIEGEL: And first, to clarify, you do not intend to sell the entire collection of the Rose Museum, I guess.
Dr. REINHARZ: Absolutely not. The decision of the board of trustees did not mandate in any form or shape how much to sell, when to sell, if we decide to sell. If the economy, God help us, changes quickly, we will need to sell much less or perhaps none of the art.
SIEGEL: How big is Brandeis's financial problem right now?
Dr. REINHARZ: We have a $10 million hole right now which we have taken care of. The problem is not this year or next year. The problem is that because the endowment has lost much of its value and because fundraising is down, even when the economy recovers and the stock market recovers, it's going to be reset at a much lower level, which means that we are not going to have any gains for at least five or six years.
SIEGEL: When you speak of the losses of the endowment, what have the losses been of the Brandeis endowment?
Dr. REINHARZ: Well, we are sort of in the middle range of the institutions. We are at about 25 percent.
SIEGEL: Twenty-five percent of your endowment has been lost?
Dr. REINHARZ: That's correct. On June 30th of 2008, we were at $712 million.
SIEGEL: So, your endowment has gone the way of many of the 401(k)s of your faculty, I assume, and of the parents of your students, as well.
Dr. REINHARZ: Absolutely. And that's the other problem. Many students have parents who lost their jobs or are unable for one reason or another to pay tuition because they lost money in the market or elsewhere. Our commitment is to make sure that we do not send any student home who can't pay his bills right now. And we will do everything in our power to make that possible.
SIEGEL: Among Brandeis University's most generous supporters, if not the most - I believe the most generous supporters of the university have been Carl and Ruth Shapiro who were thought to have lost more money than anyone else that they invested with Bernard Madoff. Their foundation and their personal investment combined, more than half a billion dollars. To what degree is this a Madoff problem that you're experiencing?
Dr. REINHARZ: I don't know that we can attribute anything to Madoff right now. It's much too early to speculate on that.
SIEGEL: We had a conversation here yesterday with one man who had donated - he and his wife had donated a Rosenquist print to the Rose. And while he understood that if it must be done, it must be done, he wasn't happy about it. Have you had many conversations with people who gave works of art to the Rose in the past 24 hours?
Dr. REINHARZ: I had a call - you know, it's funny that you should say this - I had a call from an art dealer who gave us an extremely valuable painting, a Warhol, a seven-figure piece. He said to me, look, if you have to sell it, sell it. It's more important to keep the first-rate faculty intact. It's more important to give scholarships to students than to keep this work of art, as great as it is. And I must tell you, it was the best one I got yesterday.
SIEGEL: Well, let me ask you a question. As you consider what to do with that Warhol painting over the next couple of years, how much does it condition your decisions that 2009, while it may be a terrible year to try to borrow money, could also be a terrible year to try to sell a painting? It could be the worst market just because there isn't so much money around?
Dr. REINHARZ: We are not compelled to sell the art quickly. We will not violate donor's intent, and we don't intend to simply give the paintings away. We realize, of course, the market is depressed, the art market is depressed, and this is not a good time to sell.
SIEGEL: Jehuda Reinharz, president of Brandeis University, thank you very much for talking with us.
Dr. REINHARZ: Thank you.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
State governments across the country are facing tough calls on how to balance their budgets. Arizona is among them. In Phoenix, outside the state Capitol building today, students protested a plan to slash millions from the university system. From member station KJZZ in Phoenix, Rene Gutel filed this report.
Unidentified Man: Welcome, guys.
RENE GUTEL: Bus after bus from Tucson and Flagstaff pulled up to the protest. Nearly all students were dressed in black.
(Soundbite of protest)
GUTEL: Earlier this month, GOP lawmakers proposed $240 million in reductions to Arizona's three public universities. University of Arizona Student Body President Tommy Bruce rallied the students from a podium.
Mr. TOMMY BRUCE (Student Body President, University of Arizona): I've got one question. WTF.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. BRUCE: Where's the funding?
GUTEL: Arizona certainly isn't alone grappling with what might be called a state budget catastrophe nationwide. New York, California, Minnesota, just to name a few of the many states facing huge shortfalls. Here in Arizona, university officials said $240 million in cuts was impossible. The state board of regents countered that they could cut less than half that, $100 million. And state House Republicans have proposed a counter-counter-offer at 129. Even at that level, University of Arizona President Robert Shelton says the impact will be gut-wrenching.
Dr. ROBERT SHELTON (President, University of Arizona): Class sizes will certainly grow. They will grow significantly. Course offerings will be reduced. All of these impacts will make it longer and more expensive for students to complete their studies and to then return their graduation knowledge to the economic power of the state.
GUTEL: Shelton was speaking at a press conference before the rally. Also watching the scene unfold today was Republican lawmaker John Huppenthal, the chair of the Senate Education Committee and a supporter of the proposed budget cuts. He admits the money crisis has put all politicians in the hot seat.
State Senator JOHN HUPPENTHAL (Republican, Phoenix, Arizona): I wasn't really looking forward to being reelected, to be honest with you, because I fully anticipated this environment was going to happen.
GUTEL: Huppenthal says the state has few alternatives to the education budget cuts, and raising taxes should be out of the question.
State Sen. HUPPENTHAL: And that's what they did at the start of the Great Depression and it lasted for a decade when it showed historically before that the recoveries had been two years or less. So the Great Depression teaches us some lessons, and the number one is don't do tax increases when you're in a downward spiral.
GUTEL: Protesters, estimated at more than 2,000, walked from the state lawn to the Capitol building. University of Arizona student Paige Bo(ph) said she was here to save Arizona schools. But she also admitted that her professors, whose jobs are on the line, did encourage her to attend.
Ms. PAIGE BO (Student, University of Arizona): Actually, pretty much all of my professors did because it's so important to the University of Arizona.
GUTEL: Did any of them offer extra credit or anything like that?
Ms. BO: No, they didn't, but a lot of them canceled classes just because they knew that a lot of students weren't going to be coming so that they could give us the opportunity to come out here without any detriment to our education, you know?
GUTEL: More than 25 buses were used to drive students from universities outside Phoenix to the protest at a cost of more than $20,000 paid for by student associations. For NPR News, I'm Rene Gutel, in Phoenix.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
And I'm Michele Norris. A CIA officer who was based in Algeria is being investigated on allegations of rape. The officer, who was the station chief in Algeria, has been relieved of his position and has been suspended from the CIA. The story was first reported by ABC News. NPR has confirmed the report and has details of what is alleged to have occurred. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston has been following the story. She joins me now. Dina, what have you learned about the allegations?
DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, essentially, according to a source close to the investigation, the station chief in Algeria has been accused of date raping at least two women. Allegedly, he spiked their drinks with some sort of date rape drug, and they woke up in these comprising positions, naked, clearly confused of how they ended up in bed with this man. It's unclear if there's more than two women involved. There might be more.
NORRIS: And who's investigating the case?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Now, ABC News is reporting that the Justice Department is investigating. But as I understand it from someone close to the case, it's the State Department's diplomatic security service that's looking into it. They searched his apartment in Algiers in the fall. They had actually had the official go to a conference in Cairo, so he'd be out of town and this wouldn't raise any suspicions for him, and they looked through his apartment.
NORRIS: And when they looked through the apartment, what kind of evidence do the investigators have as a result of that? And is this contained just to Algeria?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, I don't know if it's contained to Algeria, or not. What I do know is that they allegedly found the drugs, and the FBI has apparently tested and confirmed that those drugs were some sort of date rape drug. And apparently the diplomatic security service also found videotapes of all of this. They also have at least two women who came forward, so presumably they would be witnesses in the case. Apparently, the CIA has known about this since last fall, and the officer was brought back to D.C. under the guise of some meeting, and then he was presented with the allegations and was immediately relieved of his Algiers post, and he's also been suspended.
NORRIS: So this reaches back to last fall, something that the new administration has inherited. Now, what is the CIA saying about this?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Now, they won't confirm or deny anything because it refers to an officer who was undercover. But spokesman Mark Mansfield did say, and I'm going to quote him here, "I can assure you that the agency would take seriously and follow up on any allegations of impropriety."
NORRIS: Because we're talking about very, very serious charges, allegations of rape, is there any indication that the government is going to be treating this any differently because of the obvious sensitivities within the Muslim world?
TEMPLE-RASTON: Now, that's a very good question, and it's unclear. I mean, there were jurisdictional problems to start. I mean, this occurred on embassy property, so technically, this is a U.S. crime that occurred on U.S. soil. So there were a lot of questions as to who would end up actually being the person to investigate this. And under that particular system, the deputy chief of mission in the embassy is the one who decided that the diplomatic security service would come in. Where it goes from here is really unclear. Apparently it's still being investigated.
NORRIS: Dina, I just want to clarify something. Did this all start because the women came forward?
TEMPLE-RASTON: That's what my understanding is, that the women actually reported this much after the fact. One of the women was actually married and apparently was friends with him and was shocked to suddenly wake up and find herself naked with him.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Dina Temple-Raston. Dina, thank you very much.
TEMPLE-RASTON: You're very welcome.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Concern is growing around the world about what's happening in Sri Lanka. Aid agencies say a quarter of a million civilians are trapped in the north of the island in the middle of a war zone. There are reports that several hundred civilians have been killed and hospital records suggest more than 1,100 have been wounded. Sri Lankan forces are trying to defeat the Tamil Tigers separatists they've been fighting off and on for a quarter of a century. NPR's South Asia correspondent Philip Reeves reports.
PHILIP REEVES: The long war in Sri Lanka has reached a watershed. The Sri Lankan army has pushed the Tamil Tigers out of their strongholds in the islands north and east, bottling them up in a pocket of jungle. As the army advanced, a lot of civilians, Tamil farmers and fishermen and their families, fled their villages to escape the fighting.
Mr. GORDON WEISS (United Nations Spokesman, Sri Lanka): Now, there's really nowhere for them to go, so they've become pretty much mixed up with a very ferocious battle that the Tamil Tigers are fighting for their own survival.
REEVES: That's Gordon Weiss, spokesman for the United Nations in Sri Lanka.
Mr. WEISS: This is obviously the most critical point I think we've arrived at in this conflict in a very, very long time. This is a huge proportion of people who are trapped in very dangerous circumstances.
REEVES: They're trapped in Sri Lanka's northern region of Vanni, in the middle of the conflict zone. Simon Schorno is a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.
Mr. SIMON SCHORNO (Spokesman, International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva): Basically, we see a humanitarian crisis unfolding. About 250,000 people have been trapped in a fairly small area of 250 square kilometers, intense fighting there, hospitals hit by cross-fires, ambulances hit.
REEVES: The Red Cross says hundreds of people have been killed in recent fighting. It says ill-equipped medical facilities in the war zone are being overwhelmed by the wounded. The situation is worrying Sri Lanka's giant neighbor, India. India has a large Tamil population. Its foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, went to Sri Lanka to meet the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa. Mukherjee says he raised the issue.
Mr. PRANAB MUKHERJEE (Indian Foreign Minister): We are concerned with the civilians. I requested the president to take care of the civilians.
REEVES: Allegations are flying over whether blame for civilian deaths lies with the Tamil Tigers or the Sri Lankan army. The government has created a no-fire zone in Vanni for civilians seeking refuge and promises to respect it. A Sri Lankan military spokesman told the Associated Press today that no civilians have been killed, but Gordon Weiss of the United Nations says U.N. staff saw at least 20 killed last weekend.
Mr. WEISS: There were barrages of artillery fire coming into this area which had been declared a no-fire zone by the government. Our own staff, who happened to be trapped up there in that pocket of territory, witnessed the killing and injury of dozens of people.
REEVES: The U.N. is hoping to bring a convoy of seriously injured people out of the war zone tomorrow. It says they include 50 children. Philip Reeves, NPR News, New Delhi.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
I'm Robert Siegel. And let's turn now to your feedback. Yesterday, we examined the Obama administration's plan to include $50 million in the economic stimulus package for the arts. We heard in our piece from people for and against that idea.
Mr. BRIAN REIDL (Senior Federal Budget Analyst, Heritage Foundation): The only way to increase economic growth is to increase productivity. And government policies that make people and workers more productive will increase productivity. But simply borrowing money out of the economy in order to transfer it to some artists doesn't increase the economy's productivity rate.
SIEGEL: That was Brian Reidl of the conservative Heritage Foundation. And yes, he was against setting aside stimulus money for the arts.
NORRIS: Well, a lot of listeners were unhappy with Mr. Reidl's comments. Ellen Whitmore(ph) of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, summed up a commonly expressed view and Ms. Whitmore takes it personally. She writes, as always, I am surprised at the Heritage Foundation and others who refuse to recognize workers in the arts as small business entrepreneurs. We are not in a lofty tower begging for the government dole. Artists and art organizations are small businesses producing objects and entertainment for the consumption of everyday Americans. As any other sector of American business enterprise, we deserve support in these tough economic times.
SIEGEL: Also, on the subject of the arts and the economy, we focused yesterday on Brandeis University's plan to sell part of its priced art collection to make up for a deficit, and we returned to that topic in another part of today's program. Well, Jeff Kruger(ph) of Albuquerque immediately saw a link between that story yesterday and our coverage of stimulus funding for the arts. Mr. Kruger writes this. Art is a cultural commodity with as much relevance to the economy as any durable good or other product. That Brandeis could readily benefit from its art collection when its stock portfolio went south is not surprising at all.
NORRIS: And Don Cameron(ph) of Golden, Colorado, chimes in with this. I would suggest that artists, being relatively poor in general, will recycle the money very quickly in the economy. And secondly, who's to say they won't create a piece of art later sold to support an endowment and worth much more money? I often see such links in your stories and appreciate how All Things Considered shows all things connected.
SIEGEL: We do strive to stay connected and connected to you. So write to us at npr.org. Click on "Contact Us" at the top of the page. And please make sure to tell us where you're from and how to pronounce your name.
MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Every year, heads of state, international business leaders, and a collection of celebrities gather in the village of Davos, high in the Swiss Alps. They're there for high-profile hobnobbing at the World Economic Forum. Not surprisingly, this year's meeting has a more somber tone, given the global financial collapse. There are no big-ticket goodie bags or free iPods, and there are fewer champagne-and-caviar soirees, and the focus this year is really on the economy. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is a regular at Davos, and he said the mood is uneasy.
Mr. TOM FRIEDMAN (Columnist, The New York Times): Everyone's kind of looking for the answer. You know, that panel that they can go to, that person they can have a one-on-one with who will give them the answer to this economic crisis and where, you know, their company should build, where they should personally invest. There's almost an urgency of people trying to find the answer right now, and I'm not sure the answer is here or anywhere, but people are sure looking for it.
NORRIS: I imagine they're looking for solutions also with 40 heads of state and hundreds of political and business leaders there. Is there a chance that there might be an effort to find a collective solution to the global financial mess?
Mr. FRIEDMAN: No. I really don't think so. In some ways, the most important person that everyone really wants to know what he's thinking, of course, isn't here, and that's Barack Obama. And I think everybody understands that, you know, what's so unique about this economic crisis is that it began in America. It didn't begin in Thailand, didn't begin in Korea, it didn't begin in Mexico, it didn't begin in Russia. It began in America.
When it began in other years in all those other places, everyone could insulate themselves from it. But when we get it in America, no one can protect themselves from it. And so there's only anyone senior Obama administration official here, and I think really, you know, the big question on everyone's mind is, you know, when is Washington going to get well, because until we get well, really, it's going to be very hard for anyone else to really get well.
NORRIS: Do you suspect that there might be a certain amount of finger-pointing at the U.S. or anger that the Obama administration didn't send a larger delegation?
Mr. FRIEDMAN: You know, I think people understand. He just got in the office, and he's still finding where the rooms are. And his people, his Treasury secretary was just confirmed. So I don't sense that. You know, I was at - I'm just recalling, I was at a dinner, you know, last year when really - when this economic crisis was just getting under way here. And I remember a prominent banker coming in saying, you know, you Americans gave the world financial SARS, you know, the disease that got exported out of China you'll recall and got kind of coughed around the world. And you know, I think people are over the finger-pointing now, and I think they're in a much more, I would say, nervous and anxious state, and that's just, give me the solution.
NORRIS: A lot of business has taken place at Davos over the years, meetings between North and South Korea with F.W. de Clerk sitting down with Nelson Mandela for the first time. But some say the forum has lost its bearings in recent years. It's become much more of a celebrity confab. Is there sort of a recalibration at Davos this year?
Mr. FRIEDMAN: You know, hard to tell. You know, anything as big as Davos, everyone has their own Davos, you know, and this place is so easy to caricature it's not even funny, you know. I didn't do the caviar parties in the good years, so I won't miss them this year.
NORRIS: Tom, thanks so much for talking to us.
Mr. FRIEDMAN: My pleasure.
NORRIS: Tom Friedman is the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times. He's also the author of "Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America."
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
..TEXT: It's All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And I'm Michele Norris. In Iraq, the relative lack of violence has opened the way for a new kind of campaigning ahead of Saturday's provincial elections. The streets of Baghdad are festooned with political posters. Candidates in the thousands are out doing retail politicking. NPR's JJ Sutherland spent some time in the Iraqi capital with two newcomers to politics in Iraq.
JJ SUTHERLAND: People crowd around candidate Farik Hai Al-Ghazali at an outdoor market here. They ask him what he's going to do about jobs, about the displaced, about services. In the midst of the scrum, Ghazali is handing out fliers and calendars with his name and picture emblazoned upon them.
FARIK HAI AL GHAZALI: (Arab spoken)
SUTHERLAND: Please take some, brother, take some sister, he says. He tells them he just wants them to vote. That's the kind of thing politicians do the world over - get out among the people and press the flesh. But here in Baghdad, it's something new. Ghazali used to be a hospital administrator until he got into politics. He is a secular Shiite who is running a nonsectarian campaign. He doesn't have much of a staff. Only eight people work for him, mostly family. It's a small party, too, a new one, as are more than 70 percent of the parties listed for Saturday's vote.
HAI AL GHAZALI: We as liberal parties, we feel optimistic in this elections because the negative reaction from people from the Islamic parties, Shiite or Sunni.
SUTHERLAND: Ghazali may feel optimistic, but his chances as a complete newcomer and in a small secular party at that, may not be good. On the other side of the political spectrum, and the other side of Baghdad, a few hundred women are gathered on plastic lawn chairs in a field. This is Fahama, a farming village on the outskirts of the city. Once one of the most dangerous places in Baghdad, this is where Sunni insurgents would leave the bodies of people they kidnapped and decapitated. Now, these Sunni women are gathered to hear one of their own who is running for office.
AYESHA GAZAL AL MESARI: (Through Translator) My dear sisters, my ambition as a candidate for the provincial council of Baghdad is to help you. I'm from you and belong to you. May God help me to serve you to the best of my ability. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
SUTHERLAND: Ayesha Gazal Al Mesari is a conservative Sunni. She wears a pale green hijab, carefully covering her hair as she addresses the crowd. She's running on the ticket of the Iraqi Islamic Party. An offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, it's one of the few Sunni parties that participated in the 2005 elections.
GAZAL AL MESARI: (Through Translator) You know, our participation in the last elections was very weak. Women do not understand the importance and how to take part in elections. That's why I decided to run for office this time.
SUTHERLAND: Among the crowd is Amna Majeed Ahmad. She says she has never even heard of Mesari. But she is not optimistic about the elections. She says politicians have done nothing to help her and other women like her.
AMNA MAJEED AHMAD: (Through Translator) We do not know her. We do not know what is inside her heart. We want something concrete.
SUTHERLAND: Mesari ran a charity helping widows and orphans before she decided to run for office. It's obvious, standing in a field that was once a no man's land, that she is enjoying the crowds.
GAZAL AL MESARI: (Through Translator) I notice how people react to me, how people accept me. Thanks to God, these people love me.
SUTHERLAND: But while retail politics is a new thing in Iraq, it's also a dangerous one.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR HORNS)
SUTHERLAND: Again, Shiite candidate Farik Hai Al Ghazali.
HAI AL GHAZALI: I had four times threats in my phone. We will kill you. Prepare your coffin. We will kidnap one of your children.
SUTHERLAND: But Ghazali seems unfazed by the potential danger. Like politicians everywhere, he seems to feed off the people who approach him in the market.
HAI AL GHAZALI: They told me, you are our cousins. We are the same tribe. It is my pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SUTHERLAND: Ghazali quickly runs out of fliers and turns to his staff for more. He wants to stay a little longer. JJ Sutherland, NPR News, Baghdad.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. John Maynard Keynes has been in the news a lot lately. He is the economist whose work inspired President Obama's plan to save the U.S. economy. Keynes is an unlikely hero for our time. He died more than 60 years ago and for years his ideas appeared to be discredited. As part of an ongoing collaboration, This American Life producer Alex Blumberg and NPR's Adam Davidson explain why Keynes is back.
ALEX BLUMBERG: Keynes published big theory, the theory underpinning President Obama's fiscal stimulus in 1936. And many would argue that 73-year-old theory is being tested right now for the very first time. And Adam, you've been carrying around Keynes' thousand page biography for weeks now getting ready for the story.
ADAM DAVIDSON: Yeah, it's the abridged version by the way. It's by this guy Lord Robert Skidelsky. It is a great read because Keynes is a totally fascinating character. Every few pages, I'm switching between thinking he's an amazing, charming, genius, and thinking he's a narrow-minded jerk. He raw with the Bloomsbury group, you know like Virginia Wolf and all those painters and poets. They were all into free love and raunchy language, and they used to complain in letters to each other that Keynes was just way too dirty for them.
BLUMBERG: He loved hurling himself on the public stage with some outrageous shocking opinion. And he was really all over the place. Sometimes he's almost a socialist, then he's fanatically defending free markets.
DAVIDSON: But there is a common thread.
BLUMBERG: A thread of elitism.
DAVIDSON: Yeah, elitism. Exactly. He generally felt that almost any problem could be solved by getting together a bunch of young men who had gone to Cambridge and asking them to run things. Every once in a while, he might be OK with an Oxford man but really Cambridge was best. He even wanted Cambridge men to run America. He didn't think anyone in the U.S. was smart enough. He also didn't like Jews, the French, the working class...
BLUMBERG: And he wrote that these Cambridge-led government boards should do everything from running individual companies to determining how many babies should be born. And he wrote cryptically, of what quality. He was after all on the board of the British Eugenics Society.
DAVIDSON: So here we are in modern day America, millions of working men and women in peril and this is the guy we're turning to? A bigoted Americaphobe who hates working men and women?
BLUMBERG: The short answer is, yes. And it's all because of this book he wrote in the 1930s - his prescription for how to get out of a global depression. It was his masterpiece published in 1936, "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money."
TYLER COWEN: I've read the general theory five times I would guess. I think the first time I read it, I was maybe 18.
BLUMBERG: Tyler Cowen is an economist at George Mason University. And he's very publicly reading Keynes' masterwork again, this time writing notes and conducting a discussion on his blog, Marginal Revolution.
DAVIDSON: Cowen says in the general theory, Keynes corrected what he saw as a fundamental error in the economics that had come before. Under classical economics, if there's a downturn, the economy will sort itself out. If people aren't buying enough, prices will drop to where people start spending.
BLUMBERG: Keynes' radical insight was to look out the window in the 1930s and see that sometimes things don't right themselves.
DAVIDSON: And the economy goes into a downward spiral. Everything just gets worse and worse. And it looked in the 1930s as if that's what was happening and to some extent, it was.
ALAN BLINDER: A failure of effective demand he called it.
BLUMBERG: This is another economist, Alan Blinder at Princeton, who was an economic adviser to President Clinton. A failure of effective demand he says is basically that people aren't spending enough money, either because they don't have any or because they got laid off or are afraid they're about to get laid off.
DAVIDSON: And if people aren't spending enough money, there's no way for the economy to automatically adjust. And in the 1930s, nobody else had figured out how to get people spending again.
BLINDER: The Keynesian prescription is if all else fails, the government can spend the money. So normally, we don't say in a free-market economy, well the government, we say well, people in businesses should do it. But Keynes' idea, which was revolutionary at the time, is if the private sector won't do it, then the public sector can do it as a fill-in stopgap.
BLUMBERG: Alan Blinder, the Keynsenian economist at Princeton, says that there was a triumphant sense among Keynesians that by carefully tweaking taxes and spending, government could overcome booms and busts. Master the business cycle, permanently eliminate recessions.
BLINDER: There was a view that developed in the 1960s and developed excessively, one must admit in retrospect, that we could steer the national economy pretty well, not perfectly, but pretty well. If you pick up Walter Heller's book that was written in the 1960s, Walter Heller was the head of the council of economic advisers for Kennedy. The amount of optimism exuded there is - seems almost laughable. This is a watch we're repairing.
DAVIDSON: One way the economy is not like a watch - to repair a watch you don't need politicians. Politicians took the Keynesian message that government spending can be good and they basically went nuts. They paid for the war on poverty and the Vietnam War. They sent a man to the moon, convinced that Keynes gave them a free pass for all this spending. For Keynesians, this is always a problem. Prescribing Keynesianism to some politicians is like prescribing crack to a coke addict. And in the 1970s, the patient hit rock bottom. We had high unemployment, and the Keynesian solution stopped working. We spent and spent, and unemployment only got worse. And we got inflation, something Keynesians had no answer for. After that, it was the Keynesians' turn to walk in the wilderness.
CHRIS EDWARDS: When I took macroeconomics in the 1980s and early 1990s, the textbooks explained the basic Keynesian system, but then spent a few chapters showing why the Keynesian system did not work.
DAVIDSON: This is economist Chris Edwards, with the avowedly anti-Keynesian Cato Institute. The think tank was founded in 1977, near Keynesianism's lowest point.
EDWARDS: I thought the debate was settled in the '80s and I thought we all agreed that Keynesianism doesn't work. But now with the new stimulus package before Congress, all these Keynesians have come out of the woodwork and I'm wondering where all the theorists are that oppose the Keynesian system.
DAVIDSON: Did you know there were Keynesians around?
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
EDWARDS: Sure. But I thought this sort of kindergarten Keynesianism, as I call it, the simple idea that the government could spend more money to grow the economy, I thought that really sort of simple Keynesian idea had died in the 1970s, but I was wrong.
DAVIDSON: Chris is part of a school of thought that replaced Keynesianism. That school says government spending causes more problems than it solves. To control an economy, these people think, the best way is to have the Fed, the Federal Reserve, control interest rates. And this view has held pretty much until exactly one month ago, December 16th, 2008 to be precise. That's the day the Fed tried to stabilized the economy by lowering interest rates all the way down to zero percent. They can't go lower. But the economy kept getting worst. Their main tool seemed to have stopped working. So economists and policy makers started looking around for some other way to fix things. They found that there's this one guy in particular who'd given a lot of thought to get out of a situation like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAN WRITING ON CHALKBOARD)
BLINDER: OK, so, here's the way Keynes would have done it. So you measure here output and then you have to have an estimate of what economist like to call potential GDP.
DAVIDSON: We're in Alan Blinder's office at Princeton which conveniently has a blackboard and he's up there applying Keynes' formula to figure out exactly what the Obama administration should spend to get us out of the mess we're in. It's actually pretty simple, you start with some estimates where the economy should be, where it actually is - you throw in something called the "Keynesian multiplier." Blinder does the math in about 14 seconds.
BLINDER: So, that would lead you to conclude that you needed about 650 billion as a stimulus. Voila!
DAVIDSON: Have you done this more rigorously for yourself?
BLINDER: I've not, but I hope they have.
DAVIDSON: Right now, a lot of economists are supporting the idea of a stimulus package. There are people you'd expect like Paul Krugman, a proud Keynesian at the New York Times and some surprises like President Ronald Reagan's chief economic adviser, Martin Feldstein.
BLUMBERG: But many of the economists say they just don't know. Financial catastrophes don't happen often enough to prove anything. In fact, as Alan Blinder will tell you, this is the problem with economics.
BLINDER: The biggest problem with learning things in economics is the inability to do controlled experiments. So we don't have, unlike what is the case in many but not all scientists - sciences, the definitive experiment, right? This experiment they did in the 1920s proved that Einstein was right about the perturbation of Mercury. They proved it. We can never do that in economics.
BLUMBERG: The best you can have is a really good theory.
BLINDER: The best you can have is a real good theory. It's not going to work perfectly all - in a textbook manner all the time.
DAVIDSON: The anti-Keynesians, they say this massive stimulus package is too risky an experiment on an unproven theory. It might not get us out of the recession. It might cause a vicious inflation, a bloated government, and we'll have a trillion more dollars in debt as a constraining burden on our kids and grand kids.
BLUMBERG: The Obama administration is betting this won't happen. They're trusting this theory. They're trusting Keynes. For This American Life, I'm Alex Blumberg.
DAVIDSON: And I'm Adam Davidson, NPR News.
NORRIS: There's more on Keynes and the stimulus on our Planet Money podcast and blog at npr.org/money.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
If you take anti-depressants, you might be interested in some new research on locusts. That's right, locusts, these swarming grasshoppers that have plagued farmers since biblical times. Scientists say that they have found the chemical trigger that makes locusts gather together and it's the same brain chemical affected by Prozac. NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce has more.
NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE: A swarm of locusts can have billions of insects and stretch for miles. Back in 2004, my NPR colleague, Richard Harris, went to West Africa and stepped out of his car into a cloud of the big bugs. Listen closely.
(SOUNDBITE OF LOCUSTS SWARMING IN WEST AFRICA)
RICHARD HARRIS: They carpet a rice field and an adjoining pasture, and they even land on our clothes. Locusts don't vocalize, but we hear their wings and we hear the sound they make as they eat these plants down to their bare stems.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: This kind of voracious swarm is why locusts are famous. But, it's actually not their usual routine.
STEVE ROGERS: The swarming is something the locusts only do very occasionally.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Steve Rogers studies locusts at the University of Cambridge in England.
ROGERS: The fact locusts can spend many generations in a form that not only doesn't swarm, but is actively repelled by the other locusts.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says locusts are usually solitary creatures, just harmless mild-mannered grasshoppers. But, if something like a drought forces locust to crowd together at a dwindling food source, and they start to smell and see other locusts and touch them...
ROGERS: This is the exactly the point to which behavior changes dramatically.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: First, they found that inside insect's nervous system there was steep rise in a brain chemical called serotonin. But was this causing the change? Michael Anstey is a researcher at the University of Oxford. He says they decided to find out and this week, in the Journal Science, they report on what happened when they gave locusts drugs that alter serotonin levels.
MICHAEL ANSTEY: You know, it was absolutely startling to see the effect that these drugs had.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: He says drugs that block serotonin made solitary locusts stay shy, they never became gregarious, even in conditions that would normally make them swarm.
ANSTEY: This really was the Eureka moment.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: And drugs that boosted serotonin made solitary locust be suddenly attracted to other insects.
ANTSEY: Watching those locusts actually go and behave as if they'd been in a crowd, or were born in a crowd, is absolutely remarkable. So, it's quite exciting and truly - truly fun to do.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Besides being fun, researchers hope this new insight might lead to new forms of pest control. That's a long way off. But Steve Roger says it is surprising to see just a single chemical making such a difference.
ROGERS: Using models like these in wasps, we know that as they change behavior, as they leave the nest and things, there is a whole stew of different chemical changes going on. So the thing that we found is generally quite unusual.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: Still, serotonin is known to affect behavior in other species, and boosting serotonin is what drugs like Prozac do.
ROGERS: Serotonin is implicated in a lot of aspects of mood and well-being in humans as well as causing this change in locusts.
GREENFIELDBOYCE: A solitary locust may seem far removed from a depressed person, but Roger says at a very, very deep level there may be some interesting similarities. Nell Greenfieldboyce, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
NORRIS: 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. The news about peanut butter contamination just gets worst. So far, at least eight people may have died and more than 500 have been sickened by the salmonella outbreak. Officials say the outbreak is slowing but it's not over yet. All the cases are linked to a single plant. The peanut butter was sold only to institutions. Peanuts paste was sold to food manufacturers. NPR's Joanne Silberner has the latest.
JOANNE SILBERNER: Every foodborne outbreak is a detective story. The E. coli O157 illnesses fifteen years ago were mysteries until investigators linked to them to undercooked hamburger meat. Last summer, salmonella outbreak went on for months with tomato as the chief suspect until inspectors discovered it was really Mexican serrano and jalapeno peppers irrigated by contaminated water. The current outbreak comes from a peanut processing facility in Blakely, Georgia. Investigators from the Food and Drug Administration just got back from a two-week inspection. Stephen Sundlof heads the FDA's food safety division.
STEPHEN SUNDLOF: A lot of the infractions that were identified in the report were things such as failure to maintain proper cleanliness. They would find for instance dirt on some of the equipment that shouldn't have been dirty.
SILBENER: Hand washing sinks being used to wash mops, at least one cockroach, but what concerned Sundlof most?
SUNDLOF: In going through the firm's records, we learned that on full separate occasions the firm had tested their product, peanut butter or peanut paste, and found salmonella.
SILBENER: The manufacturer, Peanut Corporation of America, simply sent samples to a second lab that failed to find salmonella and carried on production. Sometimes salmonella shows up in a single product, but this time it's a contaminated ingredient and that makes the consumers job complicated says food scientist Bob Gravani of Cornell University.
BOB GRAVANI: That product is going to be present in many, many, many other products, and then consumers will have to kind of spend a little bit more time and effort thinking about do I have anything in my cupboard or in my shelves that contain this peanut butter from this particular plant.
SILBENER: The only way to know if you shouldn't eat the peanut butter cookie, cracker cake, or other peanut product is to check on the FDA's recall list. When in doubt, the agency says, don't eat it. Caroline Smith DeWaal is with the consumer group Center for Science in the Public Interest. She says the FDA doesn't have enough money or personnel to properly monitor food production facilities.
CAROLINE SMITH DEWAAL: So it really acts more like of fire department waiting for the crisis to occur, and then sending scientists and investigators out to explain what's happening even as the crisis is ongoing.
SILBERNER: The FDA, Sundlof says, the agency can't have investigators in every plant all the time.
SUNDLOF: What I would like the public to understand that there is a responsibility on the part of industry to produce a safe product. And when they don't, we will take immediate and aggressive corrective action.
SILBERNER: Meanwhile, some legislators on Capitol Hill think the solution is to move the food out of the Food and Drug Administration, to create an agency solely focused on food. Democratic congresswoman Rosa DeLauro plans to reintroduce legislation in the next couple of weeks that would do just that. Joanne Silberner, NPR News.
SIEGEL: As we just heard, the number of products affected by the salmonella outbreak is extensive so if you're concerned about peanut butter products on your shelves at home, here are some of the things to look for out for. It's in some cake products, cookie products, ice cream, and candy.
NORRIS: It's in snack bars, snack packs, and crackers, and it can be found in pet foods. Jars of consumer peanut butter are not affected, only peanut butter sold to big institutions. Again, the list is too long to read on our air but you can go to our Web site, npr.org for a link to a complete list of products and foods that the FDA says could be contaminated.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
But first, for all the talk of changing the tone in Washington, last night's vote was starkly partisan. NPR's national political correspondent Mara Liasson examines the strategy of House Republicans as they settle into the role of loyal opposition.
MARA LIASSON: President Obama himself clearly expected more support from Republicans. Here's what he said on the eve of the vote.
BARACK OBAMA: We're not going to get 100 percent agreement, and we might not even get 50 percent agreement.
LIASSON: A coalition of outside pro-Democratic groups predicted dire consequences for the Republicans. "Political Suicide" was the headline on one emailed press release. But Congressman Jim Gerlach wasn't scared. And if there's a Republican who should be, it's him.
JIM GERLACH: My district is a Democrat district in southeastern Pennsylvania. And President Obama did very well there. He won 58, 59 percent.
LIASSON: But Gerlach hasn't been getting pressure from his constituents. On the contrary...
GERLACH: On the particular economic stimulus package we voted yesterday, the calls and emails we got into our offices were really about three or four to one against the bill.
LIASSON: And Gerlach got some high-powered backing today. Conservative economist Martin Feldstein, who gave the White House a big boost when he came out in favor of a huge stimulus, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post today calling the bill as currently written an $800 billion mistake. And the man who used to run the House Republican campaign committee, former Congressman Tom Davis, sees absolutely no risk to Republicans to oppose this iteration of the bill.
TOM DAVIS: For the base, in terms of defining Republicans, a no vote here allows you to go back to our old deficit hawk mantra. I don't think there's any downside in voting against that. They may take a little heat today because the polls say one thing, but I guarantee you, 18 months from now, public opinion will have moved somewhere else. And if this doesn't work, they're going to look like heroes.
LIASSON: In the Senate, the bill will change. There's always more bipartisanship there, where 60 votes are needed to break a filibuster. Already the White House is talking about ways the bill can be, quote, "strengthened" to get more Republican votes. And when it comes back to the House, some GOP members may get to have it both ways. Here's Tom Davis, again.
DAVIS: I think there will be some members, particularly in states that are really hard-hit in the Northeast and the Midwest, may end up going along with this. You can get bragging rights to pieces of this if appropriate modifications are made.
LIASSON: For now, the Republican strategy is to praise President Obama and aim their fire at the House Democratic leadership. Here's Michigan Republican Dave Camp.
DAVE CAMP: It was very impressive that he came to the Congress and met with us. He was certainly very forthright, but this is Nancy Pelosi's bill, no input from Republicans, no meetings, no amendments accepted in committee.
LIASSON: All that praise for the president isn't just political spin says Davis, it's sincere. Mr. Obama could end up being more personally popular among House Republicans than his predecessor.
DAVIS: After Bush, Obama is a breath of fresh air. He's going to do more entertainment of Republican members, and not just leaders, rank-and-file, I think, over the first two or three weeks than Bush probably did in a year.
LIASSON: If Republicans said no to everything every step of the way, they could be vulnerable. But no one expects that to happen, as both sides, the president and the congressional minority, settle into their new roles in the unfamiliar world of civilized partisan warfare. Mara Liasson, NPR News, Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa is a Republican, in fact, he is the senior Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and he joins us from the Capitol Hill. Welcome to the program once, again, senator.
CHUCK GRASSLEY: Yeah, I'm glad to be with you, of course.
SIEGEL: No House Republicans, as we've just been hearing from Mara, voted for the stimulus bill. Is it legislation that you as a Republican senator can imagine voting for without some major revisions?
GRASSLEY: And you fight together, shoulder to shoulder, through the whole legislative process, and on this issue the reason why it tends to be partisan is because it is started out partisan. The Democrats put together a bill and said, here it is, you know, there was not the negotiations that normally go on.
SIEGEL: We should say you're referring to Senator Max Baucus, the chairman?
GRASSLEY: Yes.
SIEGEL: Montana Democrat, chairman of the appropriations...
GRASSLEY: And a friend of mine.
SIEGEL: Which is of the Finance Committee. Well, tell me something, just give us an example of something - one thing that has to change about this bill that you'd expect will change for it to win a few Republican votes.
GRASSLEY: I think separating the appropriations part of it from stuff on money that is really stimulus and will be spent in the two years and it's not intended - continuous spending. So much in this bill is expenditures that are not going stop at the end of two years. They are increasing the level of expenditure forever. That's not stimulus, that's using stimulus as a subterfuge for the normal appropriation process.
SIEGEL: We've been hearing that the bill was getting vigor as it was heading for the senate. Is it actually getting much smaller in that case? Do you think it has to be a $500 billion bill...
GRASSLEY: You know, government consumes wealth. It doesn't produce wealth. So, you got to have the private sector, people like you working to produce wealth that create the real progress in standard of living that we have always had in this country.
SIEGEL: By the way, senator, we always just assume that anything in the Senate requires 60 votes because there'll be a filibuster threat. Is that right? Does this bill need 60 votes to pass?
GRASSLEY: Yes.
SIEGEL: It does.
GRASSLEY: Yeah.
SIEGEL: Why? Why? Why couldn't do something ever pass without a threat of a filibuster in the senate?
GRASSLEY: Well, listen, not every bill that comes up has a threat of a filibuster. It's always a possibility. But most legislation go through without the worry about 60 votes or not. It usually comes down to people working things out. That's what unique about the Senate. It forces bipartisanship when you have to have 60 votes.
SIEGEL: Well, short answer question because we're running out of time. What are the chances from zero to 100 percent that there will be some economic stimulus bill that passes the Senate and that President Obama gets to sign?
GRASSLEY: Well, there's going to be a bill for the president to sign, and whether or not it's broadly supported in a bipartisan way is going it go back to those things that I said. If everything in the bill is stimulus and not just an excuse for increase spending that's unrelated to stimuli, then it will get a broad bipartisan vote...
SIEGEL: Senator Grassley...
GRASSLEY: Short of that, it won't.
SIEGEL: Senator Grassley, thanks a lot for talking with us.
GRASSLEY: OK. Goodbye.
SIEGEL: Chuck Grassley, Republican senator of Iowa.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
It's not unusual for reporters at the Detroit News to get calls about dead bodies. Murders are all too common in the motor city. But a call to reporter Charlie LeDuff recently had nothing to do with homicides or police reports.
F: Life Goes On Around Body Found in Vacant Detroit Warehouse." Charlie LeDuff joins me now. Charlie, when did you get that call?
CHARLIE LEDUFF: You know what? It seems like a million years ago, maybe three days, let's say three.
NORRIS: Three days ago?
LEDUFF: Yeah.
NORRIS: And why did the caller phone you instead of the police?
LEDUFF: Because he was a friend of the guy that actually found it who was afraid that the police would haul him in, question him, maybe consider him a suspect. He was also trespassing. In Detroit, we have thousands of abandoned buildings. This just happened to be one, very big basement of it, very large warehouse filled with about five feet of water, so they were actually playing hockey down there. So this is one of the hockey players, and he sees this legs and figures he got to do something about it, so I get the call.
NORRIS: And you went to check it out?
LEDUFF: Went to check it out, yeah, out of curiosity. But I'm also not going to call the police if it's a hoax, so sure enough, there they were.
NORRIS: Do you mind telling us what you saw?
LEDUFF: He was living next to - there was a - I started inquiring about him, a lot of homeless people live in this building, and people knew he was there for a month, nobody called the police.
NORRIS: A month?
LEDUFF: So I'm trying to figure out who he is. I mean, he's somebody's baby, right?
NORRS: Mm hmm. Yeah, everybody is somebody's son.
LEDUFF: Yeah, he is.
NORRIS: You know, sometimes a story like this, as painful as it is, it can get people to wake up, pay attention to something, take action. Do you get the sense that that might happen?
LEDUFF: I hope so. I'm getting a lot of emails which, you know, it struck people, so that's good. Maybe he sparked something. We'll see. I'll stay on it, you know. We'll find out who he is, you know, he'd be more than just a media sensation. Let's get him a nice obituary. He was somebody.
NORRIS: Please stay on it, Charlie.
LEDUFF: I will.
NORRIS: Thank you. Thanks for taking time for us.
LEDUFF: My pleasure.
NORRIS: Charlie LeDuff is a reporter for the Detroit News.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. The Ford Motor Company reports that it lost nearly $6 billion in the last quarter of 2008, and still, the company continues to insist it will not need federal bridge loans. Michigan Radio's Tracy Samilton reports on why Ford is optimistic that it can take a different path to recovery than its rivals Chrysler and GM.
TRACY SAMILTON: American flags flap over Varsity Ford's lot in Ann Arbor on this cold, sloppy January day. In the best of years, January is not a good month for car sales, and this is far from the best of years. Today, salesman Noel Walsh helps two long-time Ford customers who want to trade-in their current Escape for a new Ford but with better gas mileage.
NOEL WALSH: I can tell you when you drive the Flex, you're going to fall in love with it, you really are.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
NORRIS: Should I save it for last then?
WALSH: Probably save it for last, right.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
WALSH: So, why don't we do that then. We'll do the Escape, we'll do an Edge, and then we'll do a Flex.
SAMILTON: The customer is even asked to drive a Taurus, even though they're clearly interested in the crossovers. Salesman Matt Stanford, the nephew of the owner, watches the transaction. His family has owned dealerships for decades and bought this one from a dealer who went bankrupt in 1981, another very bad time for the auto industry. Stanford was only six then, but says older family members talk about those days a lot at the dinner table.
MATT STANFORD: So, yeah, there's a little, I wouldn't say fear, but there's a little tension when it comes to the future of Ford Motor Company, the Big Three, but we're standing strong, we're here six days a week, and we're going to sell cars, that's what we do.
SAMILTON: The news that arrived today from headquarters was not good. Ford reported a record $14.6 billion loss in 2008, yet the company maintains it will not need to ask for bridge loans from the federal government. Instead, Ford will take out $10 billion in private loans, and Ford CEO Alan Mulally says the company will keep cutting costs.
ALAN MULALLY: Clearly, the recovery is going to be longer and a little bit deeper than everybody thought. And so, the most important thing is continue to size our production of the new vehicles to the real lower demand.
SAMILTON: But Mullaly insists there is good news buried in the headlines. For one, Ford increased its market share in October, November and December. Sales of the new Ford F150 truck were brisk last month, and the company is rolling out new and redesigned vehicles. Auto industry analyst Eric Merkle says it's not all spin. He thinks Ford's strategy is just about perfect.
ERIC MERKLE: The plan has been executed flawlessly in terms of lowering their overhead cost structure, getting rid of brands that really don't matter and focusing really on one global Ford.
SAMILTON: There's just one big threat to this seemingly flawless plan - the U.S. and global economies are fragile as egg shells right now and are outside Ford's control. Ford thinks U.S. vehicle sales will rebound in the second half of this year, reaching an anemic12.5 million for the year. If that happens the company says it has the liquidity to make it on its own. If the economy becomes a worst case scenario, Ford, too, could find itself knocking on the door of the U.S. Treasury for a bridge loan. For NPR News, I'm Tracy Samilton in Ann Arbor.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
With the dark news from Ford, many of its workers are anxious about the future of their jobs. Laura Ziegler reports from Kansas City on one of those workers about what he and his family are doing to cope with the uncertainty.
LAURA ZIEGLER: Troy Foote has worked at the Ford Claycomo Plant in north Kansas City for 15 years, and he's seen his pay reduced by about $20,000 over the last few years because of less overtime, among other things. He says he tries hard not to let his family see how much he worries.
TROY FOOTE: There's another bucket in there.
ZIEGLER: Last fall, he married a woman named Brandy and joined her four children with his four. They moved into a rural ranch house outside Lawson, Missouri. Brandy took a job driving a school bus to make some extra money. About a month later, she asked her husband if they could take in four brothers who rode on her bus. Their dad had just committed suicide.
FOOTE: We were struggling as it was, but I couldn't say no.
ZIEGLER: A rugged outdoors man, Troy's muscles swell as he splits a piece of walnut and two perfect triangle logs fly in either direction. Jake Hunter(ph) is the oldest of four brothers living with the family now. A 16-year-old in camouflage jeans, he grins as he stacks the wood that will be burned for heat in a wood stove. Troy says it will save the family thousands of dollars in heating bills this winter. As for food, they tried to be as self-sufficient as possible, a huge vegetable garden in the summer and 18 chickens for the two dozen eggs the family might eat in one sitting.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHICKEN CROWING)
ZIEGLER: The Footes buy practically no meat. Troy hunts deer. They raise and butcher some hogs and have several head of cattle behind the house for beef. As Jake rounds them up on a frigid afternoon, he stops to take a picture of a calf with his cell phone. The kids named him Drizzle because he was born in the rain.
FOOTE: You know, the kids they name him and (unintelligible). They are pretty acceptable, you know, they know what their purpose is.
ZIEGLER: On a recent Sunday, two of the boys, Tyler(ph) and Jake, are on eBay searching for a used vacuum cleaner. Vacuums break often here. With 12 kids, laundry is a daily routine. There's a mountain of white socks on the floor and a sofa full of clean, folded clothes. Austin(ph) Foote is proudly explaining the chore chart that tells each child what his or her job will be for the day.
(SOUNDBITE OF INTERVIEW)
AUSTIN FOOTE: I did the bathroom.
ZIEGLER: You scrub the tub?
FOOTE: Not the tub.
ZIEGLER: Toilet?
FOOTE: Toilet, yeah.
ZIEGLER: Imagine a house that smells of French toast or pot roast and wood smoke. There's always someone to do homework with and play with. All and all, say the kids, it's not a bad life.
NORRIS: Unidentified Child #2 I like to carry Atticus(ph) around and give people wet willlies. It's fun.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
NORRIS: And one of the things I also like is you have your own football team.
ZIEGLER: The Foote family is trying hard to play like a team on and off the field with all the unknowns at Ford these days. Brandy and Troy say they're making a conscious effort to keep their game faces on.
FOOTE: It's been tense at times, you know, but overall, it's worked out. .
FOOTE: Right now, we tell them your responsibility is to be a kid, to be 16, you 14, you 12, you 11, you know, and not to be an adult. We're here to take care of them.
ZIEGLER: Three of the four Hunter kids will go back to live with their mother next month, but finish up the school year where they are now, while their stepparents wait anxiously to see how Ford's financial crisis will affect them. For NPR News, I'm Laura Ziegler in Kansas City.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
We're also hearing a lot from listeners about the economic crisis, and some of your letters offer observations about the new financial reality.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Here's one that caught our attention. Dewitt Kimble of Brunswick, Maine has his owns stimulus package. He writes, I've been listening to the various experts, pundits, bailout promoters, and detractors as well. It seems that one of the biggest concerns is that the money is not getting to the people that need it most. Mr. Kimble says divide up the money among taxpayers. They could choose to have their mortgage paid down, their credit cards paid down, auto loans paid, down, or any other outstanding loan. With these payments, banks would not need to foreclose on homes. Credit cards companies would avoid the debacle of having credit cards go into default, and people would be able to pay down monthly bills for one year. So, if jobless they would have less stress.
SIEGEL: And Stan Heney of Longmont, Colorado writes to tell us that he is suffering from TMNPR syndrome that's Too Much NPR syndrome. Not too much exactly, more like too much that's too dark with all the bleak economic news. He writes, there is so much opportunity out there even with all of the trouble. People are reevaluating their consumption, beginning to correct spending habits, often paying down debt, making their businesses more efficient and smarter. Tough times help us correct the bad, sloppy, even somewhat corrupt ways of being. A lot of good can come from all of this as well. And Mr. Heney concludes, keep up the good reporting you're known for it, but give your listeners some upside as well. Please stamp out TMNPR syndrome in your lifetime.
NORRIS: So keep your economic stories coming, we'll use some of them on our program. As always, please write to us at npr.org and click Contact Us at the top of the page.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Michele Norris.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
And I'm Robert Siegel. It's official. Rod Blagojevich has been removed from office.
THOMAS FITZGERALD: The article of impeachment having been sustained by the required constitutional majority, I now pronounce the judgment of conviction against Rod R. Blagojevich, thereby removing him from the office of governor, effective immediately.
SIEGEL: The Illinois governor made a final dramatic pitch to the state Senate today to try to keep his job. He delivered a defiant closing argument in his impeachment trial, but the Senate still voted 59 to nothing to remove him from office. NPR's David Schaper reports from the state Capitol in Springfield, Illinois.
(SOUNDBITE OF GAVEL)
FITZGERALD: The Senate is back in session. We're informed that the governor will be here momentarily. We'll see.
DAVID SCHAPER: Illinois Supreme Court Justice Thomas Fitzgerald slyly noted how Governor Blagojevich has thumbed his nose at this historic impeachment trial all week long and that he has refused to put up a defense before today. Blagojevich has been trashing the proceedings on TV talk shows as biased and unfair. And when he finally stood before the 59 silent, stoic, and solemn members of the Illinois state Senate, he picked up on that theme again telling them he wanted to present the unadulterated truth.
ROD BLAGOJEVICH: And have a chance to be able to show you here in the Senate, show the people of Illinois, and show anybody else who's listening that I have done absolutely nothing wrong, that I followed every law, that I never ever intended to violate any law.
SCHAPER: In a fast-pace statement that lasted close to an hour, Blagojevich went through the 13 articles of impeachment brought against him by the Illinois House. Those articles charge the governor with abusing the power of his office, breaking state and federal laws, and betraying the public trust. Blagojevich says none of those allegations is proven.
BLAGOJEVICH: You haven't proved a crime, and you can't because it hadn't happened. How can you throw a governor out of office with insufficient and incomplete evidence?
SCHAPER: Blagojevich criticized audio recordings played during the impeachment trial. Those tapes recorded from FBI wiretaps are of conversations in which the governor is talking about a $100,000 campaign contribution he allegedly tried to extort from a horse race track owner. Prosecutors say Blagojevich was withholding his signature on a bill the horse racing industry wanted until he got that hefty contribution. Here is how Blagojevich tried to refute those allegations.
BLAGOJEVICH: You guys are in politics. You know what we have to do to go out and run - and run elections. There was no criminal activity on those four tapes.
SCHAPER: He did not address at all what some senators consider the most damaging evidence against him - the federal corruption charges that alleged Blagojevich tried to sell or trade the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Obama to the highest bidder. His silence on that issue is a point hammered home by special prosecutor David Ellis in his rebuttal to Blagojevich.
DAVID ELLIS: He doesn't think for one minute about the people. He just thinks about himself.
SCHAPER: Ellis says Blagojevich can make a good speech when the cameras are on and he knows people are listening. But it's a different story when the lights and cameras are off, that he thinks no one is listening. Then the governor focuses on what he can get for himself, Ellis said. And it happened 60 times in 60 conversations recorded by FBI wiretaps.
ELLIS: He has abused the power of his office. He has traded it for personal gain time and time again. I think the people of this state have had enough.
SCHAPER: Most Illinois senators seem to agree and were unmoved by Blagojevich's speech, including Republican Matt Murphy.
MATT MURPHY: The governor is a very able speaker, and he gave a very good presentation. But the truth of the matter is the man lies exceedingly well, and he did it repeatedly in his remarks.
SCHAPER: After deliberating for close to three hours, senators voted unanimously to convict Blagojevich and remove him from office. Blagojevich had already returned to his Chicago home while he still had use of the state plane. After the vote, he told reporters he's disappointed but not surprised.
BLAGOJEVICH: I'm going to keep fighting to clear my name. I guess I'll just have to wait until I have my day in court.
SCHAPER: David Schaper, NPR News, in Springfield, Illinois.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Unidentified Woman: I, Patrick Joseph Quinn.
(SOUNDBITE OF SWEARING IN OF GOVERNOR PAT QUINN)
PAT QUINN: Unidentified Woman: Do solemnly swear.
QUINN: Do solemnly swear.
NORRIS: That I will support the Constitution of the United States.
QUINN: Unidentified Woman: And the Constitution of the state of Illinois.
QUINN: And the Constitution of the state of Illinois.
NORRIS: And that I will faithfully discharge.
QUINN: Unidentified Woman: The duties.
QUINN: Unidentified Woman: Of the office of governor.
QUINN: Unidentified Woman: To the best of my ability.
QUINN: Unidentified Woman: Congratulations, Governor Quinn.
QUINN: Thank you very much.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
NORRIS: Quinn is considered a reformer and a political maverick, an outsider even in his own party. When the corruption scandal began, Quinn urged Blagojevich to temporarily step aside. And later he called for his resignation. After taking the oath today, Governor Quinn said the state's ordeal is over.
QUINN: In this moment, our hearts are hurt, and it is very important that all of us understand that we have a duty, a mission to restore the faith of the people of Illinois in the integrity of our government and to make sure that all of our elected officials have the confidence of the voters.
NORRIS: NPR's Cheryl Corley joins us now from Springfield. Cheryl, tell me more about Pat Quinn. What specific credentials does he bring to this office?
CHERYL CORLEY: Now he is the governor. He has served, like I said, in several positions in the city, as a revenue director for the city of Chicago, he served in a Cook County position on the tax appeals board, been the Illinois state treasurer, and lieutenant governor, of course, here in Illinois. And has made a name for himself working with families of the Illinois National Guard and reservists helping members of the armed services.
NORRIS: Cheryl, you noted that he's a political maverick, but is he at all tainted by having run with Governor Blagojevich?
CORLEY: And in 2006, it's interesting that then-Governor Blagojevich said at one point that Patrick Quinn wasn't even a part of his administration. And Pat Quinn has said recently the relationship that they've had has been estranged at best. He said that that they haven't even spoken to each other for about a year.
NORRIS: What are the biggest challenges that he's going to face now as governor?
CORLEY: Well, what he says is the first problem he's going to face is restoring the state's integrity and really making sure that the state has honest government. One of his hugest problems, though, is going to be the state deficit. By some accounts, it's as high as five billion dollars. Apparently Governor Quinn is going to ask the general assembly to push back the annual budget address by a month in order to get some breathing room to work on this problem, but it's something that he has inherited. And the state has a huge stack of unpaid bills that he's going to have to work with other state elected officials here to solve.
NORRIS: Cheryl Corley, thanks so much.
CORLEY: You're quite welcome.
NORRIS: That's NPR's Cheryl Corley speaking to us from Springfield, Illinois.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
Federal immigration officials are being accused of racial profiling of Latinos. Advocates for day laborers in Maryland said today that they have proof, and they released a video tape. Immigration officials deny the charge and say they've already done their own investigation. NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports.
JENNIFER LUDDEN: So at mid-morning, the report says agents were, quote, "ordered back out into the field to make more arrests." Justin Cox, an attorney with CASA of Maryland, says the videotape shows that first, just one unmarked vehicle pulled into the parking lot of the convenience store, which was an informal day labor site.
JUSTIN COX: This first ICE vehicle pulled up right next to the men who were waiting on the corner. And they had their windows rolled down and they began saying that they were looking for about 10 guys to do some sheet rock and drywall work.
LUDDEN: Soon, the video shows two more ICE vehicles arrive and agents begin rounding up the day laborers, all Latino men, and order them to sit on the curb. In all, 24 were arrested. Attorney Cox says in sworn affidavits, ICE agents said they were simply targeting day laborers, not any particular ethnicity.
COX: The problem with that is on the video, you can actually see an African-American day laborer approach the first vehicle of ICE agents. And then once they start rounding everyone up, he's still hanging out on the corner. They don't bother him at all.
LUDDEN: Even when the black man approaches another car for work, Cox says he is ignored, just as he says other black and white store customers are ignored. Yet, Cox says agents entered the store to arrest three Latino men inside. It's not clear on the video, but he says agents also crossed the street to arrest several Latino men at a bus stop and ordered two Latino men out of a car to be questioned.
COX: These men had done nothing. They were simply sitting in a private vehicle in this parking lot and they were detained for simply being Latino men in a parking lot.
KELLY NANTEL: I couldn't speak to the specific allegations.
LUDDEN: Kelly Nantel is a spokeswoman with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
NANTEL: I can tell you that there was a very lengthy investigation into those allegations. And based on the testimony that the investigators had, they determined that those allegations were not substantiated.
LUDDEN: Much of ICE's report made public so far has been redacted. But Nantel says that before the arrests, some of the day laborers in the parking lot actually admitted to ICE agents that they were in the country illegally while others had no documentation to prove legal status.
NANTEL: That's part of what our agents and officers are trying to do, is to determine alienage. And so they utilize their training and their experience to make those decisions.
LUDDEN: This is hardly the first such allegation of racial profiling. Numerous other suits have been directed at local law enforcement agencies who've been deputized to carry out immigration enforcement. Lucas Guttentag of the ACLU says such cases can be difficult to prove, but he's not satisfied with internal agency reports.
LUCAS GUTTENTAG: These are serious charges that need to be pursued by the Department of Justice not only in individual cases, but more broadly in terms of the policies and practices and incentives that were put in place by the Bush administration.
LUDDEN: Three of those detained at the Baltimore convenience store have filed wrongful arrest claims asking for damages. CASA of Maryland is also asking for the immigration agency to make public all of its report on the incident. Jennifer Ludden, 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 Obama signed his first major piece of legislation today, making it easier for victims of workplace discrimination to challenge their employers in court. The measure was cheered as a victory for women and families. NPR's Scott Horsley reports.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIGNING CEREMONY)
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
SCOTT HORSLEY: The White House East Room was packed at the president's first big signing ceremony. The vice president and first lady were there along with a dozen or so top lawmakers. But the star of the show was Lilly Ledbetter, the Alabama grandmother who inspired the new law and stood by the president's side as he signed it.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIGNING CEREMONY)
BARACK OBAMA: Lilly Ledbetter did not set out to be a trailblazer or a household name. She was just a good hard worker who did her job and she did it well for nearly two decades before discovering that for years, she was paid less than her male colleagues for doing the very same work.
HORSLEY: Ledbetter sued the Goodyear plant where she worked, but the Supreme Court rejected her claim, ruling that workers can only sue within six months of their first unequal paycheck. The new law reverses that decision. Mr. Obama, the law professor turned politician, said justice isn't about some abstract legal theory, but about people's daily lives. A festive crowd celebrated with orange and cranberry juice in the state dining room. While it won't help Ledbetter recover more than $200,000 in lost wages, she says the legislative victory is an even richer reward.
(SOUNDBITE OF SIGNING CEREMONY)
LILLY LEDBETTER: Your daughters and your granddaughters will have a better deal. That's what makes this fight worth fighting. That's what made this fight one we had to win.
HORSLEY: As Mr. Obama signed the bill, he was surrounded by a beaming and bipartisan group of lawmakers including the first female House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who battled her own glass ceiling during the primary. Mr. Obama gave one of the ceremonial pens to Ledbetter herself saying the new law will help others get the justice she was denied. Scott Horsley, NPR News, the White House.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
This week, we've heard a steady beat of bad economic news. There have been tens of thousands of jobs cut at companies like Caterpillar, Kodak, GM, Sprint, Cessna, Home Depot, Boeing.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
And we got word that the state of California is holding tax refund checks to 2.74 million citizens and businesses.
SIEGEL: Another indicator of the economic crisis, yesterday, the postmaster general said huge deficits could force cutting the delivery of mail by one day a week.
NORRIS: Well, if you live in California, this could mean you won't notice as quickly when your tax refund has not come.
SIEGEL: A cup of coffee has not been immune. Starbucks said yesterday it would cut almost 7,000 jobs. The coffee company is also closing more stores.
NORRIS: And to make matters feel worse, Starbucks says it will no longer brew decaffeinated coffee after noon. We would have figured that more decaf was ordered in the latter part of the day, but we've never attended barista school. So Starbucks says the demand for decaf is greatly reduced in the afternoon. Go figure.
SIEGEL: We could go on, of course, but we won't. We can easily find examples of the downward economic spiral from major announcements, but we suspect that that's really part of the picture and we'd like your help to tell the broader story.
NORRIS: We're willing to bet that there are small signs in your town or your city, maybe even in your own actions. And we'd like you to tell us about them. So please, drop us a line about what you have been experiencing locally that points to the current state of the economy.
SIEGEL: To tell us about it, go to npr.org, click on "Contact Us," and be sure to put the words "hard times" in the subject line. And always, tell us where you're from and also how to say your name.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
The Rooneys, who have managed to hold on to the team all this time, are royalty in the city. And joining me to discuss the relationship between team, family, and city is Bob Dvorchak, columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette who is in Tampa. Hiya.
BOB DVORCHAK: Good afternoon, Robert.
SIEGEL: The Steelers aren't the only team closely identified with the city. The Greenbay Packers owned by Greenbay citizens come to mind. But Steeler fans seemed to be especially obsessed with their team. Why is that?
DVORCHAK: Well, you know, a lot of people think that the Steelers in Pittsburgh are like a religion. But that's absurd. It's way more important than that.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SIEGEL: I see.
DVORCHAK: You know, when the steel industry was booming and the city was a dirty, smelly place, you know, they still loved their football. But when the mills shut down and the workers were dislocated and scattered all over the country, people kept their connection to Pittsburgh via the Steelers. It's an amazing phenomenon, it's worldwide. Actually, this year, it's gone inter-galactic because the commander of the International Space Station is from Pittsburgh.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
DVORCHAK: And he took a terrible towel up in outer space.
SIEGEL: Yes, a terrible towel. Now you have to describe the most visible symptoms of Steelermania.
DVORCHAK: Right. And it goes back to 1975 when a broadcaster and writer, Myron Cope, wanted to have a playoff gimmick. And he suggested that fans bring a gold or a black towel from home. Since that time, it's become a symbol of the Steelers, but also sort of like a visual applause. It's the perfect blend of color and motion. And you'll see them everywhere. There was one at Barack Obama's inauguration actually.
SIEGEL: Now, the Rooneys have been pretty inventive in keeping the Steelers in the family since 1933. They merged briefly, actually, with the Philadelphia Eagles and then with the Chicago Cardinals at separate times during the Second World War. But this year saw yet another success by the Rooneys to block an outsider trying to acquire the team. Explain what happened.
DVORCHAK: Well, yeah. They, you know, to keep the Steelers in the family, the shares of the Steelers were split among five brothers. And the NFL stipulates that they wanted a single owner with somebody with at least 30 percent stake in the team. So, Dan and his son, Art Rooney II, actually ended up buying out two of the brothers and buying up shares from two others so that they would meet the NFL stipulations on ownership and who has control.
SIEGEL: Now, a Super Bowl in Tampa for, say, an Arizona Cardinals fan, that just might be a trek from one end of the sunbelt to the other. But a weekend winter trip from Pittsburgh to Florida sounds like it could draw more than a few Steelers fans this weekend.
DVORCHAK: Oh, listen, the snow birds are descending. I think some sociologists who could study the migration patterns of this fan base would really have the makings of a good study. There are going to be a lot of people from Pittsburgh. And even if they don't have tickets, they'll come here just to be part of the experience to say I was there when it happened.
SIEGEL: Bob Dvorchak, thanks for talking with us about it.
DVORCHAK: You're welcome.
SIEGEL: That's columnist Bob Dvorchak of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette speaking to us from Tampa, Florida, where, as you might have heard, the Steelers are playing in the Super Bowl against Arizona on Sunday.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
In France, as in the United States, thousands of people have lost their jobs amid a global economic downturn. But unlike here in the U.S., hundreds of thousands of French workers have staged a national protest. They demonstrated today in cities across France protesting against the government's handling of the financial crisis. The workers said the crisis is not their fault and they should not be the ones to pay the price. Eleanor Beardsley sends this report.
(SOUNDBITE OF STRIKERS SHOUTING)
ELEANOR BEARDSLEY: Today's general strike was a warning shot at President Nicholas Sarkozy. The eight major French unions held their biggest strike in 10 years to tell Sarkozy to temper his reforms and to change the course of his bailout plan. In Paris, tens of thousands of train drivers, hospital workers, teachers, mailmen, and regular citizens amassed in Paris's Place de la Bastille to begin their all day march through the streets of the city. Teacher Nadia Busharas(ph) says the message is clear. French workers are not about to pay for the financial crisis with their jobs or their rights.
NADIA BUSHARAS: I'm here because it's important for all the French to say that we are not in America. You know, France it's - we have a lot of rights and we need them.
BEARDSLEY: One of the protesters is Mamud Ahmili(ph) who usually drives a train on the Paris Metro. His seven-year-old daughter holds up a sign from her seat on the back of his bicycle. "My father supports the workers," it says. The union's main demand is job protection. Ahmili says there's no point in governments giving financial help to companies that lay off their workers.
MAMUD AHMILI: (Through Translator) When you see that the French, Spanish, and other governments are investing millions in companies like Airbus and carmakers Renault and Peugeot that are doing nothing for workers, it's scandalous. A government's first job should be to protect workers and jobs.
BEARDSLEY: Sarkozy has proposed a $34 billion stimulus package that aims to encourage investment and protect major industries. But union leaders say it doesn't do enough to save jobs and help consumers.
(SOUNDBITE OF STRIKERS SHOUTING)
BEARDSLEY: Chanting "Workers shouldn't have to pay for the folly of bankers," Retired steelworker Albert Michel(ph) expresses another common sentiment here.
ALBERT MICHEL: (Through Translator) This isn't a crisis about France or its workers. It's the capitalists who got us into this situation. We're not responsible, and we just want to keep our rights and keep working.
BEARDSLEY: Michel and other strikers say they are also fighting to keep their retirement benefits in a government-managed pay-as-you-go system where the current workforce supports retirees. No one here wants to lose their retirement gambling on the stock market, he says. While millions of commuters may have been inconvenienced by the strike today, a poll showed that two out of three French people support the strikers' demands. For NPR News, I'm Eleanor Beardsley in Paris.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
To Davos, Switzerland, now and the annual of the meeting of the World Economic Forum. The gathering of political and economic leaders is known for its friendly atmosphere, gracious dialogue, and consensus-building spirit, but today included something very different at a session on the recent fighting in Gaza.
SHIMON PERES: President Mubarak accused Hamas, not us, and President Mubarak knows the situation, not less than you, Mr. Prime Minister.
SIEGEL: That's Israeli President Shimon Peres addressing Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The two were on stage together, and Erdogan condemned the killings of some 1,300 Palestinians and tried to get in a few last points before he was cut short by moderator David Ignatius.
DAVID IGNATIUS: Mr. Prime Minister, we can't start the debate again. Please, we just don't have time.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN: Excuse me...
NORRIS: Erdogan stomped off the stage with these remarks spoken through an interpreter.
TAYYIP ERDOGAN: (Through Translator) Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So, I don't think I will come back to Davos after this.
SIEGEL: Later, at a news conference, President Peres said he regretted how the session ended and he commended Prime Minister Erdogan for his diplomatic efforts in the Middle East.
MICHELE NORRIS, Host:
Two years ago, NPR exposed efforts by insurers and others in the used car industry to block the creation of a national car-titling system. It's a database that would allow car buyers to find out about a car's history, specifically, whether it was wrecked or stolen. Now the Justice Department is about to launch the titling system. NPR's Jeff Brady reported the original story and has this update.
JEFF BRADY: Buying a used car without knowing there's hidden damage from a previous wreck or even a flood can be a big pain. There's bound to be huge repair bills. But for Robert Ellsworth, the cost was even higher. His son was killed riding in such a car.
ROBERT ELLSWORTH: He was a passenger in a salvaged vehicle that had a head-on collision, and we later learned that the air bags did not deploy and were actually stuffed with paper.
BRADY: With a national car-titling system, it'll more difficult to do that because when one state reports a car is damaged, all the states will have the same information. The details will be attached to the vehicle identification number. The Department of Justice estimates the national system will save consumers up to $11 billion a year. So tomorrow, consumer advocates like Kansas City attorney Bernard Brown will be celebrating when the new system is officially launched.
BERNARD BROWN: It's a red-letter day.
BRADY: One that was 17 years in the making. Congress created the system in 1992, but it never got off the ground because of opposition from insurance companies, businesses that issue car history reports, auto dealers, junkyard owners. Just about the only fans were law enforcement agencies and consumer advocates like Brown.
BROWN: It took all of that. No amount of persuasion would do. Foot-dragging, politics - it's quite an awful story. But at least we're here now.
BRADY: Tomorrow isn't the end, though. The national car titling system still is missing some key data from insurance companies and junkyards. And only about half the states are submitting their data. Jim Burch is with the Department of Justice.
JIM BURCH: It will take us some time to get to the point where, you know, everyone is complying and all of the data is in the system. But once we reach that point, consumers should feel very comfortable that the critical data is in the system and available to them.
BRADY: Companies like AutoCheck and Carfax offer car history information now. Larry Gamache with Carfax says the government database is limited only to cars that have been totaled. Gamache says it'd be nice to also have information about fender benders and less serious wrecks.
LARRY GAMACHE: The big nut for all of us to crack will be insurance claims information, and the insurance industry does not seem amenable to sharing claims information with anybody.
BRADY: A spokesman for the insurance industry says doing that would cost a lot of money and that would have to be passed onto policyholders. Consumer advocates say it'd be worth it. It looks like another battle over the new national car-titling system may be shaping up. Jeff Brady, 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. Today at the White House, President Obama held a signing ceremony for a new law to try to halt age, race, or gender discrimination in the workplace. It's called the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
(SOUNDBITE OF APPLAUSE)
NORRIS: Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, accompanied by Mrs. Lilly Ledbetter.
(SOUNDBITE OF CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
SIEGEL: The signing was followed by a reception hosted by the first lady. Invited lawmakers and dignitaries munched on fruit and pastries.
NORRIS: Somewhere in the background, a tall woman in a belted black velvet jacket was making sure everything was just so in the state dining room - from the yellow orchids on the tables to the apricot coffee cake. Her name is Desiree Rogers and she is the new White House social secretary, responsible for planning events from state dinners to the annual Easter egg roll. She comes to the White House armed with a Harvard MBA, a long resume in the corporate world, and a keen knowledge of the first family's tastes as a longtime member of their Chicago inner circle. Desiree Rogers says she's proud to be the first black woman to serve as the White House social secretary. Just don't dare refer to her as the official party planner.
DESIREE ROGERS: In my mind, there are multi-layers to this position. So I put party planning at kind of E, letter E. Starting with letter A is the overall strategy for the events at the White House. You know, what are we trying to accomplish? How are we supporting the initiatives of the West Wing? So, the other piece to our work will be what kind of events can we create? You know, what makes sense?
NORRIS: What do you have in mind?
ROGERS: Well, there are things - and I don't know that we'll do all. I mean, an American hero dinner. You know, having the American public select who their heroes are and having a dinner to honor the American spirit and to salute people that communities have chosen. We could possibly have, you know, something where the president reads, the nations reads. You know, how do you share the White House even though people may not be able to visit here? Can we do something on the Internet? You know, of course we'll have state dinners, and we're going to make those as exciting as can be. But, you know, maybe an everyday American is selected via the Internet to come to one of those state dinners. I mean, the sky's the limit.
NORRIS: But your to-do list is quite long.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
NORRIS: Expansive.
ROGERS: We won't get it all done in the first year. But you start - if you were able to start something, I mean, it starts the ball rolling, I think. And then people just have even more ideas, you know, of what can be done.
NORRIS: How do you balance that big appetite to do new things and take the White House in new directions, how do you balance that with the financial times that we find ourself in, the austerity that perhaps is required as the world goes through this global financial meltdown?
ROGERS: Right. Just because there's a new spin on something doesn't mean that it necessarily costs more. You know, I think that we do have to be frugal. But at the same time, I think celebration is very important. We saw that with the inaugural. We saw that people were just wanting to celebrate. We're not canceling birthdays and anniversaries. And so as we go through our struggle, there is a need to be prudent, but I think at the same time there's a need to continue with the celebratory spirit that is part of our lives.
NORRIS: Now, I've read that you wanted to make sure that the House, the White House, was more open, more inclusive, more inspirational when you set out to entertain. Inspirational - how are you going to do that? What does that mean?
ROGERS: And so to me that's inspirational. You know, this long fight, this long waiting, and you're not just rushed out after a press conference, but you have a moment to talk, to think, to think about what's next. So if I can have people think about things in a different way or even improve upon their thinking, I mean, that to me is the benefit of this job. That's why I want to be here.
NORRIS: When you walk through the corridors of this majestic building, you see the nation's history and its culture reflected in the art, in the furniture, in - even in the rugs that are on the floor. You don't always see African-American culture, though, reflected in this building. How will that change?
ROGERS: Well, I'm happy that you mentioned that. We are already working on that. One of the things that is very important to the president and the first lady is that the art be reflective of all Americans. And so one of the things that is already being looked at is the possibility of how can we diversify the art collection. So, that is definitely under way and definitely something that you'll continue to see as we move forward.
NORRIS: And I'm so curious about the reception that the first family got when they first arrived here, that you got when you first arrived here, when you met butlers, stewards, servers who were looking at a first family that look like members of their own family.
ROGERS: Right.
NORRIS: What was that like?
ROGERS: You know, emotional, really. I think - I think for one - one gentleman said to me, you know, 44 years I waited for this. You know, so I think for them, they are just so happy. So, it's tough.
NORRIS: It's tough.
ROGERS: It's tough at a certain level, because you know what these guys have been through.
NORRIS: Have things changed for them?
ROGERS: You know, I think in...
NORRIS: Do they have a different kind of relationship?
ROGERS: In many respects, I think, you know, there are - people say, oh, I'm just so happy that you're even speaking to me, you know, or taking the time to ask me my opinion, you know. And so you know they've been through some things. You know, so it's - we're settling into it.
NORRIS: When you talked to previous social secretaries, did they say anything to you that terrified you?
ROGERS: No.
NORRIS: You're not easily shaken.
ROGERS: I'm not.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
ROGERS: You can't be and be in this job. I mean, I think the - probably the most difficult piece that people have hinted at is this whole idea of not being able to get everyone in and having people be disappointed. I think, you know, that's a hard part. That is a hard part.
NORRIS: Desiree Rogers, you have been very generous with your time. Thank you very much.
ROGERS: Thank you.
NORRIS: Desiree Rogers is the new White House social secretary. And by the way, the president hosted a cocktail party for lawmakers of both parties last night. Desiree Rogers says the White House plans to hold regular Wednesday evening congressional cocktail hours. Whether bipartisan relations are neat or on the rocks, the events are yet another break from the Bush years.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel. 2009 finds us awash in bicentennials. We celebrate the accomplishments 200 years ago of Mrs. Lincoln, Mrs. Darwin, Mrs. Poe, Mrs. Tennyson. And 200 years ago next Tuesday, Leah Solomon Mendelssohn gave birth in Hamburg, Germany to baby Felix, who grew up to be one of the foremost composers of the 19th century.
(Soundbite of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto performed by Anne-Sophie Mutter)
SIEGEL: Mendelssohn was a child prodigy, and he was a traditionalist. In addition to this Violin Concerto, he wrote incidental music to Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream," which gave us the wedding march. He wrote the Italian symphony, and he was also instrumental in reviving the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Mendelssohn's life also foreshadowed the tragic end of Germany Jewry. His grandfather had been the leading philosopher of the German-Jewish enlightenment. His parents converted to Christianity and yet, no less an anti-Semite than Richard Wagner seized upon his music as proving the aesthetic limitations of the Jews. Mendelssohn's reputation suffered in his native land, and his music was later banned by the Nazis.
This recording is from a new CD by Anne-Sophie Mutter, the violinist, which includes two chamber pieces as well. And Anne-Sophie Mutter stopped by today to talk to us. Hi, ya.
Ms. ANNE-SOPHIE MUTTER (Violinist): Hi.
SIEGEL: How involved in Mendelssohn are you this year?
Ms. MUTTER: More than ever. And it has obviously to do with the big birthday. For me, it's a very exciting moment in my artistic life because I've rediscovered Mendelssohn. I haven't played his Violin Concerto for more than a decade, and by reading more about Felix Mendelssohn, by finding out what an incredibly broadminded, cultivated human being he was, how he had shaped the culture in Germany. Not only that, as you mentioned earlier on, he was the one who resurrected Bach's music, 80 years after Bach's death. He founded the music school in Leipzig, because he knew that music is for everybody, not only for the very well-to-do.
SIEGEL: Well, when you returned to your piece...
Ms. MUTTER: Yes.
SIEGEL: Like, in this case, the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto after some years...
Ms. MUTTER: Quite a while, yeah.
SIEGEL: And after having studied a good deal about Mendelssohn in between…
Ms. MUTTER: Yep.
SIEGEL: Is there a difference in the way you play it? Are there things in this recording that you would point to and say, I feel that differently, I relate to that part of the music differently than I did when I was younger?
Ms. MUTTER: Mendelssohn was the Sturm and Drang composer of his time. When he uses tempo markings, for example, you can see this kind of forward-moving musical gesture, but also the inner impatience, the youthful passion. I think that inner heartbeat, which never allows the music to stand still, which gives it a fluidity and a kind of impatience.
SIEGEL: I'm just curious because, I mean when I listen to you perform or see you perform - and I'm impressed by the virtuosity of your performance, you've mastered the music - to you, is there a different dimension to the way you play the piece now, say than when you were younger or…
Ms. MUTTER: I mean, I loved it when I was 11 as much, as you can love music when you are 11 years old.
SIEGEL: How much can you love music when you're 11 years old?
Ms. MUTTER: Oh, with all your heart, but I guess your heart gets larger with life. Hopefully, you are a more sensitive and sensible musician, and I would say I'm willing to really be even more risk-taking in making music these days than 30 years ago, just because I know so much more about the composers' lives. And either you throw yourself totally into the music, or, you know, you should go into another profession.
SIEGEL: So, this Sturm und Drang quality...
Ms. MUTTER: Yup.
SIEGEL: Of Mendelssohn you talked about - now in your life, you're willing to go with it, to say, I'm in there.
Ms. MUTTER: Absolutely. Yeah.
SIEGEL: It may be over the top, but I'm over the top with him.
Ms. MUTTER: (Lauging) Probably, yeah.
(Soundbite of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto performed by Anne-Sophie Mutter)
SIEGEL: You get very deeply involved in the composers whom you play.
Ms. MUTTER: Yup.
SIEGEL: And we talked to you not too long ago about Mozart, when you recorded all the Mozart sonatas. As a non-musician, I'm always curious, how - really, how important that is to you that is, could you just as easily go to the music, read it, play it, and could somebody who didn't know if this was written by Vivaldi or Aaron Copland…
(Soundbite of laughter)
SIEGEL: Just as easily play the piece because they're virtuoso performers?
Ms. MUTTER: You know, being a virtuoso performer has never appealed to me. Music is more than just showing off your skills, you know. For me, it has a deep message, it has a message, you know, from soul to soul, and therefore, Mendelssohn is one of the very unique composers who are able to couple the virtuosity with the soul of the music.
SIEGEL: In addition to the Violin Concerto, your recording includes Mendelssohn's Trio for Violin, Cello, and Piano, which you perform with Lynn Harrell on cello and Andre Previn on piano.
Ms. MUTTER: Yup.
SIEGEL: And then this Sonata…
Ms. MUTTER: Yup.
SIEGEL: Which you performed with Previn.
(Soundbite of Mendelssohn's Violin Sonata in F performed by Anne-Sophie Mutter and Andre Previn)
SIEGEL: What do you feel about this piece?
Ms. MUTTER: Oh, it's so gorgeous, you know. I just love it. It's such wonderful music. I mean, doesn't it make you smile. I can see you opposite me (Laughing) looking totally happy.
SIEGEL: Yes. So, in celebrating Mendelssohn, we're celebrating classicism and…
Ms. MUTTER: A great man.
SIEGEL: Restraint and great humanism.
Ms. MUTTER: Yes. I think the last is even more important, because I've always been interested in artists who, in an ideal world, are not only great performers or great composers, but great humanists.
SIEGEL: Well, Anne-Sophie Mutter, thank you very much for talking with us.
Ms. MUTTER: Great pleasure.
SIEGEL: You can listen to excerpts from Annie-Sophie Mutter's new Mendelssohn recording at our Web site at nprmusic.org. You're listening to All Things Considered from NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Every so often, public television finds itself at the center of drama. A few years ago, the PBS children's show "Postcards from Buster," featured an episode with gay parents. The secretary of the Department of Education, which funded the series, threatened to cut its grant. Well now, that incident is the storyline for a new play, one that premiers tonight at the Denver Center Theater Company. As NPR's Elizabeth Blair reports, the play is fictional but the playwright knows of what she speaks.
ELIZABETH BLAIR: When it comes to children's programming on public television, playwright Cusi Cram says the stakes are high. Cusi Cram has been writing for the PBS show, "Arthur" for almost 10 years. She says people might be surprised to find out what goes on behind the scenes. She says the concerns of the audience can be a mine field for writers.
Ms. CUSI CRAM (Writer): They're like, please do something about peanut allergies, you know, please do something about lactose intolerance. So all of the writers on the show, it's like, how can we make a story about this that would be in the least bit funny and intriguing to kids?
BLAIR: So in her play, Cusi Cram made the writers of the fictional kids show "Dusty" very high strung.
(Soundbite of play "Dusty and the Big Bad World")
Unidentified Woman: Well I guess we could make Spuds allergic to radishes.
Unidentified Man: Well, Spuds already has some kind of allergy, citrus or muffins.
Unidentified Woman: Plus he's lactose intolerant.
Unidentified Man: Everyone on this show is allergic to something.
Unidentified Woman: Because allergies are huge issue.
BLAIR: "Dusty and the Big, Bad World" tells the story of what happens when the show asks young viewers why the animated dust-ball hero should come visit them. One who writes in is an 11-year-old girl with a not-so-traditional family.
(Soundbite of play "Dusty and the Big Bad World")
Unidentified Woman: People say the dumbest stuff like it's really, really you have two dads, and the Bible says this and that about gay people. And mostly I don't care about the Bible or what other people because we're agnostic Buddhists anyway. But I thought if we were on TV, then maybe people would stop saying stupid stuff.
BLAIR: Cusi Cram got the idea for the play in 2005 when her colleagues at WGBH in Boston - including her husband, who also writes for children's TV - found themselves embroiled in controversy over an episode of the PBS show "Postcards from Buster." Buster visited two families in Vermont, both with parents who are lesbians.
(Soundbite of television show "Postcards from Buster")
Unidentified Woman #1: These are all pictures our family.
Unidentified Woman #2: Is that James?
Unidentified Woman #1: James, David and I and Gillian...
Unidentified Woman #2: So Gillian's your mom, too?
Unidentified Woman #1: She's my stepmom.
Unidentified Woman #2: Boy, that's a lot of moms.
Unidentified Woman #1: Yup.
BLAIR: The episode was not about the fact that these kids had gay parents. It was about making maple syrup in Vermont. But it ignited a national firestorm. U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings sent a threatening letter to PBS President Pat Mitchell. Many parents, she wrote, would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode. "Postcards from Buster" came up in a Senate hearing. Pat Mitchell testified that PBS management decided not to distribute the episode.
Mr. PAT MICHELL (PBS President): But when this subject came in, we felt that it was of such controversial nature for some of our communities that it was best to go back to what you've heard us all say all morning.
Unidentified man: Do you share, do you share, do you share...
Mr. PAT MICHELL (PBS President): Public broadcasting is a local...
Ms. CRAM: It kind of went to the top.
BLAIR: Playwright Cusi Cram.
Ms. CRAM: I'm always intrigued by the absurd in storytelling until that you think, like Buster's this little animated bunny, and somehow something that he did goes to the Senate. It's very much the stuff of plays, you know?
BLAIR: Now you might think Cusi Cram's villain would be the U.S. education secretary, but that character, loosely inspired by Margaret Spellings, is a little more complicated. She's very thoughtful and very charming, but she does plan to use her personal opinions to shape public policy.
(Soundbite of play "Dusty and the Big Bad World")
Unidentified Woman: I've never cared for that show or the main character Dusty. Well, he seems a little too tolerant of just about everything.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Unidentified Woman: And I know he is an inanimate object, but honey, he seems like a homosexual dust ball me.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BLAIR: Cusi Cram says in writing this play, she tried not to insert her own views. Ultimately, she wants "Dusty and the Big Bad World" to make people laugh. But also to consider the issues.
Ms. CRAM: What's at stake here is like what we teach kids. And the little girl in the play is a character who, you know, whose episode is not being aired. What are we telling her about her life, and how do we talk about these things to kids?
BLAIR: In a scene towards the end of "Dusty and the Big Bad World," the 11-year-old girl meets the education secretary who has implied that her family's lifestyle is immoral.
(Soundbite of play "Dusty and the Big Bad World")
Unidentified Woman #1: You seem like a great kid.
Unidentified Woman #2: Sometimes, I do wish my family were more traditional.
Unidentified Woman #1: Of course, you do, honey.
Unidentified Woman #2: Nobody signs on to be an outsider. I mean, maybe if you're born goth or something, but sure. I think about a mom who tells me all about her bad perms and dumb dates. That sounds good to me. I'm not going to lie. But for some reason, I didn't get that. I got something more complicated. But it doesn't mean it's wrong.
Unidentified Woman #1: I never said it was wrong, Lizzie.
BLAIR: "Dusty and the Big Bad World" opens tonight at the Denver Center Theater Company. Cusi Cram says she worked as hard on this fictional TV show, the story within the story, as she did on the play itself. So someday she might turn Dusty into a real show for kids. Elizabeth Blair, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The United States and Iran are talking about how to move forward after a hostile relationship for over 30 years. President Obama said he'll reach out a hand to Iran if, in his words, that country unclenches its fist. Iran's president was not impressed. In a nationally televised speech, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad suggested that the new American president would have to do more than talk. Still, many Iranians hope that their government will respond to American overtures. NPR's Mike Shuster reports from Tehran.
MIKE SHUSTER: Since the election of Barack Obama, there has been uncertainty, if not outright confusion, among Iran's leaders about what to make of him and how to respond to his offers of more open dialogue - until now. On Wednesday, Iran's President Ahmadinejad made it clear that as far as he was concerned, the U.S. would have to remove the perceived threat to his nation before Iran could believe the new U.S. president was serious about engagement.
President MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD (President, Iran): (Arabic Spoken)
SHUSTER: Wherever there is war, Ahmadinejad told a crowd in the western city of Kermanshah, it is either because of America's military presence or America's improper interference. When they say the policy is going to change, Ahmadinejad said, it means they should remove their military forces and take them to their own borders.
Ahmadinejad went on to enumerate a well-known list of grievances that Iran has with the United States. The U.S. will have to apologize for the CIA-organized coup that put the Shah of Iran back in power in 1953 and apologize for backing Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s and much more. Ahmadinejad all but overlooked the language of engagement and dialogue that President Obama has used this week.
Conservative supporters of Ahmadinejad were quick to pick up on what they see as the negative comments coming from Washington, especially the all-too-familiar refrain heard here during the past eight years - "all options are on the table" - in connection with Iran's controversial nuclear program. Mohammed Marandi is a conservative professor of American studies at Tehran University, who argues that leaders in the U.S. must stop demonizing Iran.
Professor MOHAMMED MARANDI (English Literature, Tehran University): People in Iran were hoping that, now that Bush has gone, there may be an opportunity for change. But I think as long as the demonization of Iran continues and threats are made, I don't think that the Iranians will believe that the United States government is really looking for real change with regard to the Middle East and Iran in particular.
SHUSTER: Within the reformist camp, there is more openness to dialogue with the U.S. But first, says Issa Saharkhiz, a reform-oriented journalist who is banned from publishing here, political change must come to Iran as well.
Mr. ISSA SAHARKHIZ (Journalist, Iran): I think it depends on the next election and who will win in that election.
SHUSTER: Ahmadinejad faces re-election in June, and the presidential campaign is only now getting under way. His re-election is not a foregone conclusion, because the economy has been damaged by his populist policies. Plus the price of oil has dropped dramatically, and western financial sanctions have begun to bite. All good reasons why Iran might want to engage with the U.S., say the reformers and not just the reformers. Some conservatives as well have soured on Ahmadinejad. Amir Mohebian, a conservative political analyst, would like to see Iran respond to the new American president.
Mr. AMIR MOHEBIAN (Political Analyst, Iran): It makes a new opportunity for United States, I think, but the Muslim countries, and especially Iran, wants to see new steps from Mr. Obama.
SHUSTER: Mohebian used to support the Ahmadinejad government, but now he has turned quite critical of its economic and foreign policies. He suggests one step Mr. Obama might take is to write personally to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Mr. MOHEBIAN: Mr. Obama can say in this letter to the supreme leader that in our relation, we have some obstacles, and we both - we can make a bridge on this gap for the good future. I think after this kind of writing a letter to the supreme leader, the situation is ready for the future.
SHUSTER: There have been reports that President Obama is considering such a step, but yesterday, the White House said no firm decision has been made yet on just how to approach Iran. Mike Shuster, NPR News Tehran.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The starting quarterbacks for Sunday's Super Bowl have something in common - both have suffered repeated concussions on the field. These type of head injuries can lead to severe brain damage, sometimes years or decades later. Scientists are still trying to figure out whether brain problems will affect a lot of NFL players down the road or just a few of them. NPR's Jon Hamilton has our story.
JON HAMILTON: Impacts that violently shake a player's brain are a part of football, a part that helmets can't prevent.
(Soundbite of CBS NFL coverage)
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
Unidentified Man: A wide hit, ball's out.
(Soundbite of crowd cheering)
Unidentified Man: Recovered by Timmons. Ryan Clark is still down. So, too, is Willis McGahee, and they say, fumble recovery, Pittsburgh.
HAMILTON: That was from the CBS broadcast of a playoff game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Pittsburgh Steelers just a couple of weeks ago. Willis McGahee, the Baltimore player, was knocked unconscious and spent the night in a hospital. He says, he's fine now. But Doctor Ann McKee of Boston University worries about players who take repeated blows to the head. She's examined the brains of seven former NFL players who died of various causes before they reached 50. The most recent was Tom McHale of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who died at 45. McKee says, six of the players she examined had the same sort of damage found in some aging boxers. The brain tissue shrivels, and tangles begin to appear.
Dr. ANN MCKEE (Associate Professor, Neurology and Pathology, Boston University): We don't see anything like this in the normal population. This is something significant.
HAMILTON: McKee says, the research on boxers suggests that at least one in five who suffer multiple concussions experience a slow degeneration of their brains later in life.
Dr. MCKEE: You know, once it's triggered, it just keeps on progressing, even though most of the time, the athlete has stopped getting the injuries, they've retired from the sport, but unfortunately, the process continues in the brain as long as they live.
HAMILTON: And it leads to memory problems, depression, incoherent thoughts and eventually, dementia. But McKee says it's hard to use research on boxers to draw conclusions about football players.
Dr. MCKEE: There's so little we know about this, and everything needs to be found out. We need to find out how many hits. Do the hits have to come in close succession? Does it matter how old a person is when they get their injuries? And we think there's probably a genetic susceptibility, but we really just don't know what that is yet.
HAMILTON: McKee hopes to know a lot more after studying at least 100 brains from former football players. That will take years, though, because the studies can only be done on players who have died after agreeing to give their brains to science. Mark Lovell runs the Sports Medicine Concussion Program at the University of Pittsburgh. He also works as a consultant to the NFL. Lovell says, it's not easy to assess the risk from concussions to an individual player.
Dr. MARK LOVELL (Director, Sports Medicine Concussion Program, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center): You can see athletes who've had numerous concussions who seem to be functioning perfectly well. You can see athletes who have had one concussion who aren't functioning.
HAMILTON: Lovell says, it's not even clear how many players actually sustain concussions during the season. Many won't say anything that might get them removed from a game. And medical technology doesn't offer trainers and coaches much help in getting a quick answer.
Dr. LOVELL: The problem is is that the traditional ways of detecting brain injuries, such as CAT scans and MRIs and things like that, are really not at all sensitive to concussion. So, they really don't tell us much, other than the fact that there hasn't been a more serious brain injury, such as bleeding, et cetera, in the brain.
HAMILTON: Lovell says, that may change in the next decade. In the interim, he says, teams appear to be keeping players off the field longer than they used to after a blow to the head. Even so, Ann McKee says, she'll be thinking about head injuries while she watches the Super Bowl on Sunday. Dr. MCKEE: You worry about all the hits. So, you really worry about it, and you know, you wonder what's going to pop up in 10 or 20 years.
HAMILTON: Jon Hamilton, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
The grim financial numbers got even worst today. The last three months of 2008 brought the worst performance of the U.S. economy in more than 26 years. Now that may not be news for most Americans, but the troubling details were all there today in the government's report on the fourth quarter gross domestic product. NPR's John Ydstie has more.
JOHN YDSTIE: The headline in the government's report was that the U.S. economy was shrinking at a 3.8 percent annual rate at the end of last year. At the White House, President Obama took note as he was launching a task force to focus on helping the middle class.
President BARACK OBAMA: This isn't just an economic concept. This is a continuing disaster for America's working families. As worrying as there numbers are, it's what they mean for the American people that really matters and that's so alarming. Families making fewer purchases, businesses making fewer investments, employers sustaining fewer jobs.
YDSTIE: Indeed, families making fewer purchases and businesses making fewer investments were a huge reason for the sharp downturn in the economy at the end of last year. For the second straight quarter consumer spending fell more than three percent. It's the first time that's happen since the government started keeping track back in 1947. Businesses closed up their wallets, too. A collapse in business investment and things like buildings and new machines was responsible for shaving almost two percentage points off of GDP.
Mr. DYKE MESSENGER (President, Power Curbers Inc., North Carolina): The last quarter of 2008 was awful.
YDSTIE: Dyke Messenger is the president of Power Curbers, a North Carolina company that manufactures machines that makes street curbs and gutters.
Mr. MESSENGER: We cut investments to basically to zero, only what we needed to make to repair machine or vehicles to keep things going. There was no need for any capital investment at all.
YDSTIE: Demand from Messenger's curb-making machines had already fallen in the United States by the middle of last year because the housing crisis halted the construction of streets for subdivisions. But developers the government overseas, especially in oil-rich economies, did continue to buy the machines until the credit crunch and the collapse of commodity markets stopped those orders at the end of 2009. Finally, Messenger was force to layoff 30 employees, more than a quarter of his workforce.
Actually, the top line in today's report, a 3.8 percent drop in output, wasn't quite as disastrous as had been expected. On average, analysts had expected a huge five and a half percent plunge. But Bill Cheney, chief economist to John Hancock Financial, says there's no reason to be relieved.
Mr. BILL CHENEY (Chief Economist, Bill Hancock Financial): The only reason why it came in less awful than it was expected was because of a large item called inventory investment, which basically means goods were piling up unsold.
YDSTIE: Those piles of unsold goods mean there'll be even less demand in the coming months and so fewer jobs for workers. Cheney believes the U.S. economy has not yet hit bottom, and in fact, that the decline is still accelerating. At this point, says Cheney, stimulus from the federal government is the only hope.
Mr. CHENEY: We've got consumers cutting back, businesses cutting back, foreigners aren't spending money, our exports are going down, state and local governments are cutting back. The only potential spender out there is the federal government.
YDSTIE: But Cheney thinks the stimulus package working its way through Congress needs more bang in the early months. He recommends bigger tax cuts and more funding for current government programs like student loans and research grants that have an infrastructure in place to spend the money immediately. John Ydstie, NPR News Washington.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
It began as an unlikely rumor whispered in the halls of the Capitol, and today it was confirmed. President Obama is considering a New Hampshire U.S. senator to head the Commerce Department, which isn't such a big deal until you consider that the senator is Judd Gregg, and Gregg is a Republican. And if he took the job, not only with his seat be filled by the Democratic governor of New Hampshire, but if the seat where to switch from Republican to Democrat, that could change the game in the Senate. NPR's Andrea Seabrook reports.
ANDREA SEABROOK: Warning. The story you're about to hear is almost entirely speculation. OK, here's Senate Democrats' golden scenario, and do yourself a favor, count the ifs here. If Democrat Al Franken wins a vote-count court battle in Minnesota and if Republican Judd Gregg takes the job of Commerce secretary and if New Hampshire Governor John Lynch appoints a Democrat to fill Gregg's term, then Senate Democrats would finally get what has so far been painfully just out of reach - sixty votes in the Senate, the exact number it takes to override a Republican filibuster. You could almost feel the pipe dreams wafting through the Capitol today, and you could hear Republicans gnashing their teeth at the idea.
Senator ORRIN HATCH (Republican, Utah): I would not begrudge Judd Gregg anything, but I'd hate to lose him. I'll put it that way.
SEABROOK: Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah. Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander said he went so far as to threaten Gregg.
Senator LAMAR ALEXANDER (Republican, Tennessee): I told him he was going to have to hard time getting confirmed if he left. I would have to go organize a friendly Republican filibuster.
SEABROOK: Some Republicans wondered if getting those 60 votes for Democrats was in fact the goal of Gregg's possible nomination. Check out this wink, wink nudge, nudge from Senator Hatch.
Senator HATCH: And I would never presume that the Obama administration would want to play politics. They have made it very clear that they're above politics.
SEABROOK: But you almost have to admire what a brilliant strategic maneuver it would be to snare Gregg as Commerce secretary. In a swell of bipartisanship, President Obama could add another Republican to his administration and at the same time commit an act of hard core partisanship. But remember, all those ifs. Andrea Seabrook, NPR News the Capitol.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
It's been an eventful week in politics, and here to talk about it are E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and the Brooking's Institution and David Brooks of the New York Times. Welcome back, guys.
Mr. E.J. DIONNE (Brooking's Institute; Political Commentator, Washington Post): Good to be here.
Mr. DAVID BROOKS (Columnist, The New York Times): Good to be here.
SIEGEL: Let start with the number zero, which was the number of Republicans in the House who voted for President Obama's economic stimulus bill. Does it tell us as White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs would say, that it takes a while for Washington to change it ways, or does it tell us that it's going to take very little time for the Obama administration to change its expectations of bipartisanship in Washington? Who wants to go first?
Mr. DIONNE: Well, I think that the Republicans in the House are first of all, a more conservative group than the Senate, they tend to represents safe seats and they've have been reduced to more to their conservative core, so that's one. But even moderate Republicans voted no. I think in the long run this is going to be a mistake for them. In the short run it may be simply a negotiating maneuver, that Barack Obama said he wants bipartisanship. This raises the price of bipartisanship to Obama, and we're going to see how much he is going to be willing to give up in the Senate out of the stimulus package.
SIEGEL: We'll go over for drinks to the White House, David, but you get no votes?
Mr. BROOKS: Well, if you can - that's the difference between style and substance. Obama was great on style, and he was great in having a conversation. He had the Republicans over, he went to see the Republicans, they had a serious conversation. The problem is the bill was written by the old bulls in the Democratic Party, the old chairmen. They allowed no input by the Republicans. They created a bill which was - which took the stimulus ideas, which were good ideas and were bipartisan, and they married it onto, basically, on old, quite liberal and quite sprawling permanent government-spending package, which no Republican could sign on to. And I think they, you know, I'm the biggest big-government conservative you can possibly imagine.
SIEGEL: Mm hmm.
Mr. BROOKS: And I hated this bill. So if I hated it, believe me, every elected Republican is going to hate it.
Mr. DIONNE: I'm glad we can disagree again after this brief period of comedy between us.
SIEGEL: Yeah, the era of good feelings is over here.
Mr. DIONNE: You know, number one, the Republicans chose not to play in this game. It wasn't like they were completely locked out. Number two, a lot of the spending that the Republicans dislike the most is spending for Obama's core programs, notably to expand health coverage and a lot of education spending. And so, I think that this is not just about, you know, spending that Pelosi and David Bonior, who helped write the bill, put there. A lot of this is Obama's program, and it's going to be interesting to see what he's going to fight for.
Mr. BROOKS: Larry Summers, who is Obama's chief economist, has been spending the year talking about what should we have in stimulus package. It should be timely, targeted and temporary.
SIEGEL: Mm hmm.
Mr. BROOKS: If they had put together that kind of bill, it would get bipartisan support. They put together a bill that had a wish list that was sprawling, that will increase the deficit, no Republican can support that.
Mr. DIONNE: Any bill is going to increase the deficit.
SIEGEL: Different question about the Republicans, E.J. The Republicans today picked a new Republican national committee chair, Michael Steele, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland. He's the first African-American to be the chair of the Republican party. What does it say to you, David?
Mr. BROOKS: Well, it's certainly a good step. He's from a democratic state. He talked today about winning back the northeast. That means you can't have a Republican party that's all southern, very conservative, very Barry Goldwatereque. Now, having said that - so I think it's a good step.
SIEGEL: Mm hmm.
Mr. BROOKS: Whether this party is ready to make a significant move, I'm dubious. It's going to take a while. You look at the way they attack the stimulus. They attack it on stupidest grounds, that it'll help illegal immigrants. And that is the dumbest possible way to attack the stimulus package because there are still a lot of bad habits in the party.
SIEGEL: E.J., what do you make of this?
Mr. DIONNE: Hey, I think this is a good sign for the Republican party. They desperately need to broaden out from what has become a narrower and narrower base. Steele is quite conservative, but he's a more moderate conservative than some of the people who were in the running for this job. And you know, I'm thinking - I've been thinking that strong leaders changed the opposition party. Margaret Thatcher spurred changed in the British Labor party. This might be the beginning of a sign that Barack Obama could force the Republican party to change at least a little bit.
SIEGEL: You think?
Mr. BROOKS: Well, I think they know they have to change. But getting to a point where you can have positive role of government to solve education, to solve health care, that takes more than a leader. It takes an intellectual evolution.
SIEGEL: Let me ask you about something else that happened this week. President Obama took out after Wall Street executives who got big year-end bonuses and it was noted that - I think it was the sixth biggest year ever for bonuses, and no one would claim it was the sixth best year on Wall Street by any means. Was he right? Was it wise of him to go after people who were getting very highly compensated in an awful year, or is it what Republicans often called class warfare?
Mr. BROOKS: Oh, the big defenders of Goldman Sachs are going to rise up in the streets and protest.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. BROOKS: No, of course, it was right. I mean, what the people on Wall Street don't understand is they work for us now. They work for the American people because we are supporting them, and they've got to do things that don't seem morally offensive to 99 percent of Americans. They have to do it, and to be realistic about this, they have to do it in a way in which they keep their superstar employees. So I understand why there are the bonuses. But Obama was right to crack that.
SIEGEL: Which is the tougher uphill fight, E.J. - for the Republicans to win the northeast or for Obama to convince Wall Street that they now work for the people of United States?
Mr. DIONNE: I think it may be easier for Republicans carry the northeast. This was a smart move. And I love it when David sounds socialist. I think that this is not only an echo of FDR but it's a sort of toughness - a little bit of populism which Obama has shown very little of. But also I think it's a tactictal move on the stimulus. The stimulus bill has been tarnished by the failure of the TARP, the bailout of the big banks, and I think he wants to draw a big bright line between the stimulus, which is supposed to create jobs for ordinary people, and what's going on on Wall Street.
SIEGEL: Well, on that note, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and David Brooks of the New York Times, thanks once again for talking politics with us.
Mr. BROOKS: Good to be with you.
Mr. DIONNE: Thank you.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled his preliminary budget for next year. And unless something changes, Bloomberg predicts, New Yorkers will pay more in taxes, and more than 20,000 city employees could lose their jobs. Here's NPR's Robert Smith.
ROBERT SMITH: There is a classic strategy to presenting a proposed city budget. You have to make it realistic enough to actually implement but frightening enough so that hopefully someone, somewhere will come to your rescue. Mayor Bloomberg has the scary part down.
Mayor MICHAEL BLOOMBERG (New York City): New York City, we're forecasting 300,000 job losses. It is very worrisome. If you have these number of jobs lost, revenues go down.
SMITH: Luckily, the city saw it coming and last fall cut $2 billion from its budget. Now comes the really hard part, Bloomberg has to make up $4 billion more in next year's budget.
Mayor BLOOMBERG: You can only get so much blood out of a stone and after that, this is a headcount thing.
SMITH: Which of course is a polite way of saying layoffs. Mayor Bloomberg painted the picture of New York City in the year 2010 - a smaller police force, fewer sanitation workers picking up more garbage on every route, fire engines with four men instead of five. And as for the classrooms - well, the state of New York will cut hundreds of millions of dollars in school funding for New York City and Bloomberg says, he has little choice on how to make that up.
Mayor BLOOMBERG: What does the $770 million translate to? Well, it translates to roughly 14,000 teachers.
SMITH: Holding a budget gun to the head of city teachers has a way of getting people's attention, and Bloomberg did have some ransom demands. The Federal government or the state could step up and provide more money. City unions could make concessions on health care and pensions, and he could raise the city sales tax by a quarter of a percent. But the future of those 14,000 teachers and the other city workers, Bloomberg said, is essentially out of his hands.
Mayor BLOOMBERG: Nobody knows what the economy is going to do, what the state is going to do or the Federal government is going to do.
SMITH: At least New Yorkers can't say they weren't warned. Robert Smith, NPR News New York.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News this is All Things Considered, I'm Robert Siegel. F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. And yesterday the IRS proved once again how right Fitzgerald was. The agency calculates that in 2006, the average income of the 400 wealthiest Americans was $263 million. 2006 of course was the good old days. And it turns out that the good old days were really good for the very rich. Two hundred sixty three million was 23 percent increase over the average in 2005. Bill Gale is co-director of the Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institution here in Washington. Bill Gale, what do you make of that eye-popping figure from 2006?
Mr. BILL GALE (Co-Director of Policy Center, Brookings Institution): Well, I think there's two things going on, one is as you said 2006 was really the good old days in terms of the market in general and the economy as a whole, and so we've seen for a while that there's been a big rise in the income of - and wealth of the wealthiest individuals in the country, and this is just sort of stunning confirmation that continued at least through 2006. The other aspect of it is that the relatively low tax burden that this households paid, and that is due to the fact that almost - well, most of their income is in the form of capital gains which are taxed at very low rates relative to wage income.
SIEGEL: Yeah, the IRS said that the average tax bill for the 400 wealthiest was $45 million, which while a tremendous amount to pay in taxes, amounts to an effective tax rate of only 17 percent. How do you get your tax rate down to 17 percent when you make that much money?
Mr. GALE: Well, there's only two ways to get your tax rate down that low. One is to have an enormous amount of items that you can deduct from your income. The other is to get your income in a form like capital gains that already taxed that are very low rate. It's hard for me to believe that deductions can account for that low tax rate. And the fact that almost two-thirds of their income was capital gains provides a pretty solid explanation of why their effective tax rate is so low.
SIEGEL: Because the highest rate for capital gains is significantly lower than the highest rate for other kinds of income.
Mr. GALE: That's right. Now, the highest rate for capital gains is 15 percent, the highest rate for wage income is well into the 30s, and a lot of people, well everyone of course pays payroll tax from their wages, too, although those - that's not included in this calculation.
SIEGEL: When we hear about how much money the 400 wealthiest Americans paid in taxes, while it may get to our sense of equity, I wonder how a big a practical issue it is for collecting revenues. This is actually a fairly wealthy group. I mean their share of American income has been growing over the past decade.
Mr. GALE: Well, and the top 400 is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the top one percent of the five percent. Generally what we've seen is - over the past 20, 25 years up until this past year is much more rapid income growth at the high ends of the income distribution than at the middle of the low ends of the income distribution. And it looks like in the middle of this decade, incomes really skyrocketed at the very top.
SIEGEL: Obviously we won't get the score card for 2008 for another couple of years, but we can only assume it will be a lot different from this. Or should we?
Mr. GALE: It has to be different from what we just saw, again because of the capital gains component, you know, the market fell 35-40 percent last year, it's going to be hard to see the types of capital gains that we saw in 2006. So, you know, the bigger they come, the harder they fall, is sort of the lesson here.
SIEGEL: The Bush tax cuts are about to expire in another year or so. Does that change things much for this folks?
Mr. GALE: That will change things a little bit if they actually expire, but the main driver here is the low rate on capital gains and the huge amount of capital gains that we had in the middle of decade.
SIEGEL: Bill Gale, co-director of the Tax Policy Center at the Brookings Institution. Thanks a lot for talking with us.
Mr. GALE: Thank you.
SIEGEL: I guess before proceeding, to make sure there's no conflict of interest, are you one of the 400 wealthiest people in the United States?
Mr. GALE: I can categorically say that I am not one of the 400 wealthiest people in the United States.
SIEGEL: OK, me neither.
(Soundbite of laughter)
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Alaskans are bracing for Mount Redoubt to blow her top imminently. So say scientists at the Alaska Volcano Observatory. In fact, it's all hands-on deck 24/7 at the observatory. Ash could spew 50,000 feet into the air across south central Alaska and reaching Anchorage, 100 miles away. That means goggles and dust masks are flying off the shelves in local stores. Tom Miller is a scientist emeritus at the observatory and he joins us now. Mr. Miller, how imminent is imminent? When are you expecting an eruption?
Dr. TOM MILLER (Scientist Emeritus, Alaska Volcano Observatory): Based on the increase in the micro-earthquake seismicity, and the increase heat and gases we know that the mountain is very restless based on the occurrence of eruptions at other volcanoes and most recently - the most recent Redoubt eruption in 1989. We think that an eruption is more likely to occur than not, and we think it could occur any time within a matter of hours to a matter of a few weeks, so we're currently on a 24/7 watch and waiting for developments.
SIEGEL: What kind of a threat, what an eruption of Mount Redoubt pose, either to property in the vicinity, or for that matter to the health of Alaskans nearby?
Dr. MILLER: Well, of course Redoubt is in a National Park and Wilderness area, so it's remote. However, about 25 miles away from the volcano is the Drift River Oil Terminal, a facility that collects oil from offshore platforms in Cook Inlet near Anchorage. They're not under direct threat from any lava or ash, but they are in some risk to mudflows and flooding and so on. And they have prepared for this over the years and have encountered the problem before, like in 1989-90. So those are that closest people, otherwise there are about 300,000 people in south central Alaska that could conceivably have ash fall in on their heads at one time or another over the next several weeks if indeed it does start an eruption. This ash is not deadly, but it could be a problem to people with asthma and problems like that. And of course, it's a real hazard to electronics, can bother automobile engines and it's an incredible hazard to jet aircraft - high flying jet aircraft because it can stop the engines, and it's done that in the past.
SIEGEL: And do we just assume that an eruption of a volcano like Mount Redoubt is one big blast that happens, and then the dust settles or might there be...
Dr. MILLER: Well, indeed...
SIEGEL: More than one?
Dr. MILLER: It could be that. But generally, it hasn't been and indeed 1989-90, there were over 20 major explosive events that occurred between December 14th and April 21st. And all of those sent ash plumes to heights of any where from 30 to 50,000 feet, but it could easily be episodically erupting on the scale of every weeks for some few months.
SIEGEL: Tom Miller, scientist emeritus at the Alaska Volcano Observatory. Thanks for talking with us about the imminent eruption of Mount Redoubt volcano.
Dr. MILLER: You're welcome.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel. And in case you haven't heard, the championship game of the National Football League will be played on Sunday in Tampa. The Pittsburgh Steelers are hoping to win a record sixth Super Bowl, while the Arizona Cardinals are aiming to win their first. Joining me now, as he does most Fridays, is sportswriter Stefan Fatsis. I guess, we have to spell six and first with roman numerals because it's Super Bowl. (Laughing) The two teams in this game have deep roots in the NFL, although we tend to think of the Steelers as the old fashioned club, not the Cardinals, but they are.
STEFAN FATSIS: Yeah, that's the most history combined we've ever had in the Super Bowl. The Steelers were formed in 1933. The Cardinals they took the founding of the NFL in 1920 when they played in Chicago. And the ownership of both teams also goes all the way back to their respective starts, and we tend to know about the Rooney family's deep ties the Pittsburgh, influential role in league business, not much about the Bidwell family from the Cardinals. It's an ownership that's been far less involved in NFL affairs and maligned over the years for a poor stewardship of the team.
SIEGEL: Yeah, a part from getting to a championship game last time in 1947 why else were they criticized?
FATSIS: Well, of late, cheap when it came to players, not especially competent when it came to business matters, and almost indifferent it seemed to whether the team won or lost. And usually it lost. That began changing with a new generation in the front office in recent years. They've got this gleaming new stadium outside of Phoenix and the fact that the team is in the Super Bowl is obviously a sign of better management.
SIEGEL: Yes. One explanation that's made the rounds this week is that the Cardinals have actually modeled themselves very consciously on the Steelers.
FATSIS: Yeah, they have. You look at the head coach Ken Whisenhunt, he spent six seasons on the Steelers' coaching staff. His assistant head coach is a guy name Russ Grimm. He had the same title when he was in Pittsburgh. So, practices in Arizona are patterned in part after those in Pittsburgh. In the front office, the Cardinals executives talked openly about emulating the Steelers in the way they draft players and treat players and approach the business and listening to the reverential way the Steelers players talk about the Rooneys and the organization, you can understand why.
SIEGEL: And the Arizona coach was actually passed over a couple of years ago for the coaching the job in Pittsburgh, but he and the man who was hired, Mike Tomlin, seemed to be similar in some ways.
FATSIS: Yeah, they're modern coaches. Tomlin is 36, Whisenhunt is 46, they're both low-key, approachable, by all reports reasonable in the way they deal with their employees, the players, which is not always the case in the NFL. In fact it's the exception in the NFL, and both of these guys are in their second year as head coaches and in the Super Bowl, so may be the approach does work.
SIEGEL: The Steelers were mentioned all season long as a possible Super Bowl champion, not the Cardinals, who won just nine regular season games. Can Arizona actually win this game, or would it be a huge upset if they did?
FATSIS: I don't think it will be a huge upset, and there's been a lot of moaning in the media that the Cardinals shouldn't even be in the game. They only won nine regular season games, as you said, compared to 12 for the Steelers. I think this talk is stupid, and here's why. Despite what Detroit Lions fans might believe, the differences among NFL teams are marginal. Things change very, very quickly in this league. The Cardinals played very well for the first six year - first six weeks of this season. They played terribly in weeks 13 to 16, and then they played terrifically over the last four weeks, the last game of the regular season, and then the three playoff games that they've won.
SIEGEL: Mm hmm.
FATSIS: Does that mean that they're going to win the Super Bowl? No it doesn't, but there's no compelling evidence that they end the riding(ph) the great play of Larry Fitzgerald, the wide receiver in the playoffs, and that's going to be the match up to watch.
SIEGEL: Well, Stefan, thanks for humoring me by answering these questions about the Super Bowl. I know it's not the big game that you're really concerned about, so go ahead and tell us about that.
FATSIS: No, no, the big game, Robert, is of course the World Team Handball Championship final on Sunday in Zagreb, Croatia. ESPN has been streaming games on its Espn360.com Website. I watched the two semi-final matches this afternoon, Robert. It's going to be France and Croatia in the final and the home team, of course we'll have the advantage. It's worth mentioning too, officials from a reorganized U.S. Team Handball Federation are there. They are attempting finally as I've been lobbying for for years as you know to get this country on the path...
SIEGEL: (Laughing) Yes.
FATSIS: To team handball greatness. Yes, we can, Robert.
SIEGEL: And a Hollywood note here. We'd like to say the greatest team handball scene that we know of in any Hollywood movie is in "The Reader." Nineteen seconds of team...
FATSIS: Nineteen seconds of team handball, set in the 1950s, but 19 seconds of team handball nonetheless. We'll take it.
SIEGEL: Stefan Fatsis' lastest book is a "Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-Foot-8, 170-Pound, 43-Year-Old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL." Thank you, Stefan.
FATSIS: Thanks, Robert.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
Kurt Warner started his first NFL game at the late age, 28. He went to two Super Bowls by the time he was 30. And for the next half dozen years he struggled with injuries, and teams brought him in to back up their rising stars. Well, now, starting for the Arizona Cardinals, he is using that high profile to spread the word of his faith. Warner is one of the most outspoken players in sports on the subject of religion. That wins him praise, but it also causes discomfort for some, as NPR's Mike Pesca reports from Tampa.
MIKE PESCA: If Kurt Warner were a crooner he'd be Tony Bennett. Hf he were director, he'd be Quentin Tarantino, if he were a mortgage he'd be the 30-year fix rate. The pattern with all is the same. Early success followed by a down period but resurgence in the end. Ask Kurt Warner to assess his life's journey and the answer always comes back to one thing.
Mr. KURT WARNER (NFL Player, Arizona Cardinals): I'm in a position to change the world around me because the platform that I've been given. I realized that a long time ago, that God put me in this place for particular reason and I'm going to try to live up to what God's called me to.
PESCA: Warner does not actually answer every question by evoking the Almighty, though sometimes it seems that way because when he's on the biggest stage having just won a big game, a God reference is always at the ready. His devout Christianity leads him to evangelize and also led him to a nomination as NFL Man of the Year announced earlier today. At that press conference, Warner's wife and mother of their seven children, Brenda, was asked if sometimes people who don't know her husband find his faith off-putting.
Ms. BRENDA WARNER (Wife of Kurt Warner): He is a man that wears his faith on his sleeve, he proclaims it proudly and, you know, you'd have to ask his teammates, but from what I've heard, they're pretty inspired by this man, and we all should be because she's a good man.
PESCA: Brenda added a thought that you rarely hear a woman proclaim - I married up, she said. Warner's teammates have publicly credited their quarterback for being a good leader and an inspiration. Their coach talks about his generosity. But earlier this year, ESPN reported that few of Warner's teammates showed up when he invited the team to a pool party with their families. Marshall Faulk, who played alongside Warner on the Super Bowl champion Rams explains his old teammate.
Mr. MARSHALL FAULK (NFL Player, St. Louis Rams; Warner's Former Teammate): He's selfless. And you get around and then sometimes you just feel bad, you know, and guys understand him like, OK, of course, he's a very religious guy. You know, maybe I'm not ready to like walk in this guy's house and pray over my dinner or attend Bible study. But that's not Kurt.
PESCA: On the field, Warner has most of the attributes of a great quarterback including an incredibly accurate arm and the ability to read defenses. Warner has said that all his physical tools are by God's will. A locker room skeptic might appreciate the gifts without worrying who put them there. Doug Williams, like Warner, a former a Super Bowl MVP, says that Warner's faith shouldn't matter to his team. What should matter is that the team can draw inspiration from Warner.
Mr. DOUG WILLIAMS (MVP and Former Super Bowl Player): When they see their quarterback get knockdown and knocked around but still get up and face all the defenses and everything and get the job done, he gains respect right there.
PESCA: Boomer Esiason, another former NFL Quarterback calls Warner a leader and says his beliefs are irrelevant.
Mr. BOOMER ESIASON (Former NFL Quarterback): Well, it all depends on how you, you know, perceive the religion angle. I always say to each their own and I'd much rather have a guy that's going to be preaching religion as oppose a guy who's going to be shooting himself in the leg.
PESCA: Clerics and coaches would both agree. Mike Pesca, NPR News Tampa, Florida.
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. The Republican National Committee has a new chairman today. Former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele was elected after six ballots. He's the first African-American to lead the party, and Steele told party members to get ready to do battle.
Mr. MICHAEL STEELE (Chairman, Republican National Committee): We're going to bring this party to every corner, every boardroom, every neighborhood, every community. And we're going to say to friend and foe alike, we want you to be a part of us, we want you to work with us. And for those of you who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over.
(Soundbite of applause)
SIEGEL: Republicans are facing an uphill climb to regain power in Washington and around the country. Electing a new RNC chairman, they say, is one of the first steps on that road. And joining me now is NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Hi, ya.
MARA LIASSON: Hello, Robert.
SIEGEL: What happened today? Why six ballots to elect an RNC chair?
LIASSON: Well, there were six candidates, and they needed 85 votes to win. And there were 168 members of the RNC who were voting, so they had to keep on voting until somebody got 85, and the candidates basically fell like dominoes until finally it was down to two - Katon Dawson, the South Carolina state chair, and Michael Steele. And Michael Steele finally got over 85.
SIEGEL: Well, tell us about Michael Steele and what he represents.
LIASSON: Huge, huge change is what he represents. You know, the Republican Party got 4 percent of the African-American vote in the last election. He's not only African-American, he's relatively moderate, he's from the East Coast, he's a Roman Catholic. As you said, he was the former lieutenant governor of Maryland, also a Senate candidate. He's a fluent television performer, a new face for the Republican Party in the age of Obama. And as Steele himself said today, it's time for something completely different, and we're going to bring it to them. He has a huge nuts-and-bolts job to do to rebuild the party after two terrible cycles.
SIEGEL: Yeah. How would you describe what the party has to do to - well, to reposition itself?
LIASSON: Well, they've gone from a 30-seat majority in the House in 2004, now they have a 77-seat deficit there. They went from a 10-seat majority in the Senate, now they barely have enough for a filibuster - 41 votes, and they could lose that if Al Franken wins the recount in Minnesota and if in New Hampshire, Judd Gregg, the Republican senator there, accepts President Obama's offer to be commerce secretary.
But I think the short answer is what Steele promised today. They need to avoid becoming a Southern, white, regional party. They have to start appealing to Hispanics and young people, the fastest-growing segments of the electorate, and, while staying true to their small-government principles, they have to come up with Republican answers to the big problems of the 21st century, which are income inequality, global warming and the economic crisis.
SIEGEL: Well, when you talk about the margins that the Republicans have lost in both houses of Congress, the problems the Republicans face are easy to see. Are there any bright spots for this party?
LIASSON: Well, there are some bright spots. Republicans are feeling that the worst may be over - 2006 and 2008 were so bad for them, but now George Bush is not on the ballot anymore. That was a great source of Democratic anger and it drove Democrats to the polls in large numbers. Obama isn't on the ballot either, and you saw what happened to Democratic turnout in the post-Election Day runoff in Georgia, for instance, in the Senate race, where Democrats didn't turn out once he wasn't on the ballot.
They've also won a special election in Louisiana for William Jefferson's seat. They're very optimistic about winning back Kirsten Gillibrand's house seat in New York State. She's just been named to take Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. And historically, the first mid-term after a presidential win, that party that has the White House usually loses seats in the House. So, those are all things that Republicans are kind of hanging on to to boost their optimism.
SIEGEL: NPR national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Thank you, Mara.
LIASSON: Thank you, Robert.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
And in the $820 billion stimulus package, about 10 percent of that money is for building or rebuilding roads - roads, highways, bridges. With the Senate getting underway next week, interest groups are jockeying for their share of those projects. And NPR's Yuki Noguchi has this report on what they're saying.
YUKI NOGUCHI: Las Vegas's city center is a towering mix of buildings that, when complete, will span nearly 70 acres and employ some 12,000 people. It's the largest private construction project in North America. But around the rest of the country, cranes and backhoes lie mostly idle. Here in Washington, I asked Tom Carter to recall the last time he saw a cement mixer.
Mr. TOM CARTER (Senior Vice President, Government Affairs, National Ready Mixed Concrete Association): Well, there's not (Laughing) there's not a lot of building right now.
NOGUCHI: Carter is senior vice president of government affairs for the National Ready Mixed Concrete Association, because in and around Washington, you can find associations representing just about every interest group. Carter's the pitchman arguing for as big a piece of the stimulus for the concrete industry as possible.
Mr. CARTER: There was a study that was done in Atlanta that estimated that replacing all the dark-colored pavement in the city with light-colored pavement would reduce ambient summer temperatures by seven degrees.
NOGUCHI: Carter says vehicles get better gas mileage on concrete, whereas cars tend to sink into asphalt. And concrete lasts longer. But he's up against other lobbying shops making competing arguments, like the National Asphalt Pavement Association.
Mr. JAY HANSEN (Vice President, Government Affairs, National Asphalt Pavement Association): Well, if you have a problem with concrete, you need to take the whole thing out. That's the problem.
NOGUCHI: Jay Hansen is Carter's equivalent for the asphalt industry. Ninety-four percent of U.S. roadways already use asphalt, he argues, which means his stuff is better for patch ups.
Mr. HANSEN: You know, Congress wants to see this money go out quickly to create jobs, create them quickly, and that's going to be a lot of maintenance and rehabilitation work. That's going to be mostly asphalt.
NOGUCHI: Making these points to Congress is somewhat moot, because state and local governments decide which material to use. So, the real sell for both groups on the Hill is this - for every billion dollars invested in infrastructure, 30,000 jobs are created or saved. The impact, they say, will be immediate. New equipment orders will help ailing companies like Caterpillar, money will flow for work clothes, materials, even lunches, to supply work sites. Speaking today, President Obama called the stimulus...
(Soundbite of speech by President Barack Obama)
President BARACK OBAMA: A plan that will save or create more than 3 million jobs over the next few years and make investments that will serve our economy for years to come.
NOGUCHI: But both the asphalt and concrete lobbies say there's a larger issue of how far the stimulus will go in solving the construction industry's ongoing problems. The backlog of under-funded highway and bridge improvement projects is already massive. State and local governments are feeling a severe pinch, which means they've cut back or are planning to cut back on spending. Given the scope of the need, the asphalt industry's Hansen says, even the $90 billion under discussion won't amount to much.
Dr. ROBERT FRANK (Professor, Business Ethics, Stern School of Business, New York University): The stimulus money is nice, but that's a one-shot deal. How are you going to sustain that? That's the issue Congress has to grapple with.
NOGUCHI: Robert Frank is a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. He says, with so many projects and so few funds to go around, projects may still end up in limbo.
Dr. FRANK: Nobody's really addressed the problem of how we pay for an ongoing program of infrastructure upgrading.
NOGUCHI: Kick-starting the economy with jobs may be critical at this stage, but a stimulus alone won't pave the whole way to better highways and bridges. Yuki Noguchi, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
There's a special election in March in Illinois to fill the congressional seat vacated by Rahm Emanuel, who's now White House chief of staff. This is the seat that was held by Dan Rostenskowski, who went to prison for misconduct, and Rod Blagojevich, who went on to become governor, with newsworthy results. We're taking note of the election only because one of the local hopefuls, economics professor Charlie Whelan, has a TV commercial that wins the prize for taking a current figure of speech literally.
(Soundbite of TV ad Mr. Charlie Whelan)
Mr. CHARLIE WHELAN (Democrat, Congressional Candidate, 5th District, Illinois): Underwater. That's where a lot of us are financially, thanks to the Bush administration and greed on Wall Street.
SIEGEL: Whelan is pictured in business attire, submerged. Being underwater on your house is a common way to describe owing more on your mortgage than your property is now worth. This commercial could probably cover tanking and also going down the tubes. Another way to describe that condition is being upside-down. Political commercial producers - take note.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. Christmas was lousy for retailers, and then for some, January simply was unsurvivable. NPR has been following the fortunes of one housewares store called Bowl & Board in suburban Boston. When we last checked in, the 40-year-old business was struggling to stay open. NPR's Tovia Smith picks up the story.
TOVIA SMITH: Mark Giarrusso never thought Christmas was going to save him. Sales had been down for months, especially at his Brookline store, but Giarrusso did think that with a little more cash and a little more time, the store might survive.
Mr. MARK GIARRUSSO (Owner, Bowl & Board, Massachusetts): You want to unwrap that, wipe it down.
SMITH: He has spent months now bringing in new merchandise to Brookline and slashing prices to try and gin up business.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Four ninety-five to $3.45? Nah, you can go deeper - $1.75.
SMITH: But by mid-January...
(Soundbite of cash register)
Unidentified Woman: So, it's $4.20.
SMITH: Sales are still abysmal, barely covering the heat, let alone the rent.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Midday, we're at like $70 in Brookline. It's insane.
SMITH: Giarrusso has been calling his landlord, hoping to get a reduction on his rent. A year and a half ago, it went up 30 percent, and Giarrusso is now six months behind.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: You know, I try to be an honorable man, and, like, to owe someone money sucks.
SMITH: But Giarrusso and his landlord are at a stalemate. The landlord won't talk about a deal till Giarrusso pays off some of his back-rent. But Giarrusso won't pay the back-rent till he knows he has a deal for the full five-year lease.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: There's no customers in here. So, you know, we've been working with my landlord here.
SMITH: Feeling stuck, Giarrusso starts to prepare his Brookline staff for the worst.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: D-Day comes Tuesday.
Unidentified Woman: Wow.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Yeah, the perfect situation is we stay. Another situation may be we could be closed up as soon as next week.
SMITH: Meantime, Giarrusso continues to hack away at every expense he possibly can - both at work and at home.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Sylvia?
SMITH: How are you?
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Oh, yeah.
SMITH: Good to see you. I think I'll leave my coat on.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: There's no heat in this side of the house. There's just this little...
SMITH: Giarrusso and his three kids are huddled around a fireplace in their kitchen.
(Soundbite of wood being chopped)
SMITH: Chopping wood for the fire, Giarrusso can't help but laugh at the irony as he tosses in some scrap wood paneling that he pulled off the walls of what was once his flagship store in Cambridge.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: How's business? We're going up in flames - literally.
(Soundbite of laughter)
SMITH: Even Giarrusso's dad, Bill Giarrusso, who founded Bowl & Board 40-plus years ago, says this is the worst he's ever seen.
Mr. BILL GIARRUSSO (Founder, Bowl & Board): Oh, boy. Talking about it. I don't like to talk about it.
SMITH: The elder Giarrusso ran Bowl & Board through multiple recessions, several building fires and countless student riots. But that, he says, was easy, compared to dealing with rents that have been soaring now for years.
Mr. BILL GIARRUSSO: You can't - you can't do it. You're just working for the landlord. It's all they're doing. It's frustrating.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: I have a truck lined up to start pulling out tonight.
SMITH: With talks still going nowhere with his landlord, Mark Giarrusso reluctantly gets ready to call it quits. But at the last minute, an uncle, who's a big real estate guy in New York, convinces him to try negotiating one last time. Every landlord, the uncle says, is slashing rent just to get something rather than nothing. Giarrusso calls off his trucks and drafts a new offer, but he can't seem to get his landlord to return his call.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: It's driving me nuts. Stressful.
SMITH: Then, just when he thought it couldn't get any worse, Giarrusso gets an urgent call from his bookkeeper. All five of their bank accounts are suddenly empty.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: They cleaned out the business account - $28,974. They went into the money market account, commercial checking...
SMITH: All the bank will say is the money's been put on hold by court order, and they give Giarrusso the name and number of an attorney.
(Soundbite of phone being dialed)
SMITH: Giarrusso gets her on the phone.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: It's Mark Giarrusso at Bowl & Board. Well, not so good.
SMITH: Turns out, the attorney represents Giarrusso's landlord, who's legally frozen all his money because he hasn't paid his rent.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Well, the position you've taken now is to put Bowl & Board out of business. (Unintelligible) Non-responsive? I was calling you guys.
SMITH: Then, the real shock. The lawyer makes a passing reference to the lawsuit in place.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: What? Huh? Was I notified of this lawsuit? You say there's a lawsuit in place. Why wasn't I notified of this? I was served? With what? I never got anything. The only thing that...
SMITH: Turns out, all the legal papers were sent to an old address, starting more than a month ago.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Pissing me off.
SMITH: Giarrusso gets on the phone with his attorney, his big brother Roy.
Mr. ROY GIARRUSSO (Attorney): How much they got?
Mr. GIARRUSSO: They got everything. Basically, a hiccup away from being bankrupt right now.
Mr. ROY GIARRUSSO: You know, I think I need to have you talk to my buddy who does bankruptcy work.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Yeah.
Mr. ROY GIARRUSSO: I mean, we got to at least think about that option. I don't want you to keep on throwing good money after bad, you know?
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Yeah.
SMITH: But first, Mark insists, he wants to try and settle. Roy sends the lawyer an e-mail, offering most of the back-rent, but the lawyer e-mails right back.
Mr. ROY GIARRUSSO: Then she wrote, frankly, I don't think that's going to do it, but it's just my opinion. I'll let you know. Because she's saying, you know, even if I get 50 cents on the dollar in bankruptcy...
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Yeah, I hear you.
Mr. ROY GIARRUSSO: I might just take my chances in bankruptcy. You know, I'm going to try to convince her not to.
SMITH: And so begins Giarrusso's agonizing limbo. Meantime, he and his bookkeeper, Polina Paunova, start calling the dozens of vendors who have checks from his frozen accounts.
Ms. POLINA PAUNOVA (Bookkeeper, Bowl & Board): Hi, I'm calling from Bowl & Board. We just sent you a check for the full amount that we owe. Yeah - no, it's not really excellent...
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Margaret, it's Mark. You're going to get a check from us.
MARGARET (Vendor): I got it.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Please.
MARGARET: Thank you.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: You have to sit on that. There's trouble with our accounts.
MARGARET: Well, I don't - I gave it to the lady to deposit. I don't know.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Oh.
SMITH: Then, from his cell phone, more trouble.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Hey, Joe. When I have it, Joe. I got a situation on hand right now. It's a long story. I know you hate stories, but they attached...
SMITH: Now, it's the landlord from his Providence Store. The money for that rent is also in Giarrusso's frozen account.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Got to throw up.
SMITH: Squeezed now from all sides, Giarrusso desperately needs cash. Even if Brookline has to close, he doesn't want that store to take his others down with it. He gets his Brookline staff on the phone.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: Tom, we changed gears a little bit.
TOM (Employee, Bowl & Board): OK.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: I want to do a sale.
SMITH: An email blast needs to go out, Giarrusso says, and the sale signs need to go up.
Mr. GIARRUSSO: It's deal time, OK?
Unidentified Woman (Employee, Bowl & Board): OK. So basically, everything's on sale.
Mr. GIARUSSO: Yeah, make a deal.
SMITH: But Giarrusso knows even the best bargains may not entice buyers these days. So, after everything that's happened, he's actually come full circle to the same place he started. Like so many other retailers, he's desperately trying to get shoppers in the door. Tovia Smith, NPR News.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Robert Siegel. The worsening conflict in Afghanistan is causing new tension between President Hamid Karzai and the new administration of his most powerful ally, the United States. And they're blaming each other for the way things are going in that country. Officials in Kabul and the Obama administration insist the tensions are a sign of frustration, not a permanent rift. But as NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports from Kabul, the bickering is a source of concern.
SORAYA SARHADDI NELSON: That there wasn't going to be a honeymoon for the Afghan president and his new American counterpart was clear from day 1. Even before the inauguration, news reports hinted at Mr. Obama's plans to take a hard line with President Hamid Karzai over corruption and the drug trade. Karzai seems determined to push back. On the eve of the U.S. inauguration, his office announced that Afghanistan and Russia had agreed to cooperate more closely on defense matters. The next morning, Karzai, in a speech to Afghan lawmakers, made it clear he was fed up with the western approach to the war on terror.
President HAMID KARZAI (Afghanistan): (Arabic spoken)
NELSON: Afghan civilian casualties top the list of his complaints. A missive to Washington and NATO headquarters followed, with Karzai demanding that his government be given more control of western troops in his country. This week, the Afghan president renewed his criticism of the U.S. military over several recent raids in eastern Afghanistan. Karzai spokesman Humayun Hamidzada says, his president is frustrated. His administration is struggling with an insurgency and economic turmoil, as well as international partners who prefer to do things their own way.
Mr. HUMAYUN HAMIDZADA (Spokesman, President Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan): He said, it's like a marriage. After seven years in a marriage, sometime you speak with a loud voice with each other.
NELSON: But U.S. Ambassador Bill Wood, like Karzai's spokesman, is adamant that the relationship between the two administrations is a solid one.
Mr. BILL WOOD (U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan): The problem set that President Karzai wakes up with every morning is daunting and difficult, and sometimes we agree with his decisions, and sometimes we don't. But his readiness to make those decisions, his insistence that his government do its best to govern in an environment where there has been no meaningful government for so long is something that we strongly support.
NELSON: Others here say they are not convinced the recent public conflict is benign. Faizullah Zaki is a lawmaker from northern Jowzjan province.
Mr. FAIZULLAH ZAKI (Lawmaker, Jowzjan Province, Afghanistan): Through the words of a president, people can see the future. And when they see instability in mind of their leaders and instability in expressions of their leaders, it of course damages their trust.
NELSON: He and others accused Karzai, who is seeking re-election this year, of maligning his Western allies in a bid to boost his nationalist credentials with voters. They are also worried that Karzai's overtures to Russia could trigger international tensions that, like the Cold War, would be played out on Afghan soil. Many here are also critical of the Obama administration. They say it, like its predecessor, is too focused on finding a Pashtun leader it can work with, rather than working with the Afghan government as a whole. Joanna Nathan is the senior analyst in Kabul for the International Crisis Group.
Ms. JOANNA NATHAN (Senior Analyst, International Crisis Group, Kabul): I think far too much was always thrust on the shoulders of President Karzai early on, and I very much hope that the same mistake is not being made again, in terms of looking around for just another miracle man and somehow bringing in another individual will fix everything.
NELSON: Lawmaker Ahmad Behzad, who serves on the international relations committee in parliament, agrees.
Mr. AHMAD BEHZAD (Member, International Relations Committee, Parliament, Afghanistan): (Arabic spoken)
NELSON: He says, if Americans can elect an African-American like Mr. Obama to be president, then they ought to engage Afghans of all ethnic backgrounds to move the country forward. Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson, NPR News Kabul.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
If you're like me, you probably spend hours typing on your keyboard - working, reading, googling. So, take note. NPR's Martin Kaste reports that a tiny company is making what some fans call the one true keyboard.
MARTIN KASTE: If you're 30-something and slightly geeky, this might be music to your ears.
(Soundbite of computer keyboard)
KASTE: That's the IBM model M, a tank of a keyboard whose distinctive racket once reverberated through the offices and computer labs of the land. This one belongs to Cheryl Lowry, a technical writer at Microsoft.
Ms. CHERYL LOWRY (Technical Writer, Microsoft): People tend to stop in the hall and look in and say, wow, that's an old school keyboard because it's fast and it's clattery, and people haven't heard that in 15 years.
KASTE: IBM stopped making these in the early 90s. Since then connoisseurs have come to the conclusion that the Model M was the best keyboard ever, certainly better than the mushy cheapness that standard issue today. The M was the last computer keyboard that still tried to feel like a typewriter. In this case the old IBM Selectric.
Ms. LOWRY: I think this is it. Model M is the end of the line. (Laughing)
KASTE: The end of the line? Not quite yet. They're still cranking out new Model Ms here in Lexington, Kentucky. Not at the former IBM plant, which once upon a time produced millions of keyboards a year. That kind of manufacturing is long gone to China. This operation is a little more modest.
Mr. NEIL MUYSKENS (Electrical Engineer, Unicomp): This building started as a furniture factory back in the 40s.
KASTE: Neil Muyskens is an electrical engineer who used to work at that IBM plant. He founded Unicomp in the mid 90s to try to keep making the Model M's using IBM's old moulds and tools. It really is the exact same keyboard, except for updated electronics and a USB plug. And most important, Muyskens still puts a spring under each key.
Mr. MUYSKENSIEGEL: We manually insert the magic if you will and that is a what we call pivot-plate assembly, the magic. Well, this is the buckling spring.
KASTE: The buckling spring. Most keyboards today use rubber domes, little mushy blisters under all the keys. They're quiet, cheap, and good enough, but there's not much for your finger to feel on its way down. But with buckling springs, the feel is everything.
Ms. BONNIE(ph) COLLINS (Employee, Unicomp): So you hear the the clicking in it?
KASTE: Yup.
Ms. COLLINS: That means it's good. If you don't hear it clicking then it's not really good.
KASTE: Got it. Bonnie Collins checks the new keyboards, making sure every key produces that distinctive metallic ping.
You don't like that one?
Ms. COLLINS: Uh uh.
KASTE: The N key is no good there, eh?
Ms. COLLINS: No, it's not picking on(ph), put the button back on. It's a lot better now. You got to click it in, and when you click down you hear it clicking?
KASTE: I do. When Collins is finished with the keyboards, it's time for the pneumatic fingers.
(Soundbite of rapid typing)
KASTE: That's the robotic super typist that rechecks the keys' response times to within a fraction of a second. This is what American computers used to be. Machines, and springs, and switches that had to be assembled just so and were built to last. That old school-industry is still alive in this converted furniture factory and it has the appreciation of certain aging nerds. But those guys just don't make Unicomp enough money. The trouble with Model M is they rarely break down, and Neil Muyskens says he's having a hard time getting the attention of potential new buyers.
Mr. MUYSKENS: The Office Depot of the world, or the Best Buys of the world, they won't stock our product because our product is $69 product.
KASTE: Price is everything in consumer electronics, and there's no Muyskens is ever going to undercut his Asian competitors.
Mr. MUYSKENS: We put two dollars worth of medical insurance in every keyboard we sell. Now, I can tell you, I mean I can buy a keyboards from the Far East vendors today for three bucks.
KASTE: So, like other American manufacturers, Unicomp has retreated to niche markets. It makes customized keyboards for banks, hospitals, even tire shops. But in the last few months those big customers have stopped buying.
Mr. MUYSKENS: It's bad. We sell into banks, we sell into large retail...
KASTE: Just the industries that are taking the biggest hit in this recession. Since the start of the year Muyskens has laid off a third of his workforce and things look grim. Still, he's got the pocket protector optimism of an old school IBMer. He says he wants to engineer his way out of this by selling more customized keyboards to individuals, say the gamers who want their flame thrower keys positioned just so. And Muyskens is even reconsidering some old designs for what he calls silent buckling springs...
(Soundbite of computer keyboard)
Though really it's hard to see the point of that, I mean, listen.
(Soundbite of computer keyboard)
KASTE: Isn't that what a keyboard is supposed to sound like? I'm Martin Kaste, NPR News.
SIEGEL: And you can peer inside those keyboards and learn what makes them click at npr.org.
JACKI LYDEN, Host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Jacki Lyden. Name a few musicians who've sold more than 100 million albums, Elvis, yeah, sure. The Beatles? Absolutely. Here's one to add to your list, A.R. Rahman. Rahman composed the music for more than 130 films in India and yes, he has sold over a 100 million records worldwide. But here in America, many are hearing his music for the first time in the smash hit film, "Slumdog Millionaire."
(Soundbite of "Jai Ho" by A.R. Rahman)
Unidentified Men: (Singing) Jai Ho, Jai Ho
LYDEN: This is a song called "Jai Ho" from A.R. Rahman's score to "Slumdog Millionaire" He's already picked up a Golden Globe for his work and he's up for three Oscars next month. A.R. Rahman joins us from the studios of NPR West. Thanks for stopping by.
Mr. A.R. RAHMAN (Music Composer): My pleasure.
LYDEN: This film has taken everyone in America by surprise with its success. How about you? Are you surprised that you're winning major awards here in United States?
Mr. RAHMAN: It's a big surprise. I think, I never even thought about awards when I did this movie. It was just - I just wanted to get away from what I was doing, and I just wanted to have fun.
LYDEN: But when I think about this music and what you've done with it, all the hooks in it, I mean, it grabs me in so many ways. It's impossible to sit still.
Mr. RAHMAN: I was very clear that nobody would understand most of the lyrics in Hindi. So, I need to have certain kind of syllables which will attract any audience and they could sing. So, "Jai Ho" is OK in that way. It means "be victorious." It was like a blessing, and it also could be pronounced very easily that any audience could sing that.
(Soundbite of "Jai Ho" by A.R. Rahman)
Jai Ho, Jai Ho, Jai Ho, Jai Ho Jai Ho, Jai Ho, Jai Ho, Jai Ho Aaja Ke Tale
LYDEN: Let's get a little background from you, you sort of came of age, I guess, with the whole curve of Bollywood music, haven't you?
Mr. RAHMAN: My first movie which I did in '91 called "Roja" was the turning point in my music career.
LYDEN: How old were you then?
Mr. RAHMAN: I was - I think 23, 24 or something.
LYDEN: Mm hmm.
Mr. RAHMAN: And that got me a national award which was really a surprise at that time. Usually - national award comes to people who are really old and about to die (laughing).
(Soundbite of music)
Mr. RAHMAN: And so, people said that don't you think that's too early for you and don't you think that you - you'll lose your motivation in life? So, I think music in my opinion, is not about motivation in the way it's - it's not a running base. It's art. And my whole philosophy of music is different. It's almost like cooking and serving to people, seeing them smile and enjoying the food, really.
(Soundbite of "Chinna Chinna Aasai" by A.R. Rahman)
Chinna chinna aasai siragadikka aasai Muththu muththu aasai mudindhuvida aasai...
LYDEN: We talked a moment ago about wanting to sort of almost like cook for people and you're known for combining these wonderful eclectic forms of music - reggae, Brazilian drumming, did you feel you wanted to deliberately expand upon traditional styles?
Mr. Rahnman: Look, at the time when I was composing, it was all very regional and folk and classical - Indian classical, so young kids were listening to other stuff, which they love like, you know, western bands or other big stuff. And then they were neglecting film music. So, since I was doing a film, I said why can't film music have this? It will be cool for me to listen to it in the car. And I didn't want to do movies. I just want to do like one movie and get out. So, it started like a joke and it became like a bread and butter (laughing).
LYDEN: I want to ask you, A.R. Rahman, Bollywood is known for turning out movies, and you have been a pillar for the Indian film industry. You scored dozens and dozens of films. Do you work very quickly?
Mr. RAHMAN: In India, I'm the slowest (laughing) compared to other composers, like some of the composers have done 30 movies, 25 movies a year. And when I came and I started doing a movie for six months and feels that this guy won't survive, he's too slow. He's too slow for the industry. So - but I wanted to enjoy my process here.
LYDEN: I'd like to talk about directors. What was your approach with Danny Boyle on "Slumdog?" Would he show you the rushes each day? Or did he say, here's the script, score me something that shows, you know, the principal actor trying to answer a question. How does that collaboration work?
Mr. RAHMAN: Yeah, what happened was he sent me the script on email before, but I couldn't read it. And when I met him, he had a copy of the DVD, a very basic cut, and I took it home and watched it and I was very excited. I thought it was a fabulous movie. Then I started sending him ideas on email and he would respond with like, I like number one and number three and number four. So, things like that. Every day we would meet for an hour, like from seven to eight in the evening after he finished editing, and then like that, two weeks we worked and finished all the songs.
LYDEN: In two weeks?
Mr. RAHMAN: The whole thing was done in probably two, three weeks, yeah.
LYDEN: Oh. Are there any other cuts on this CD that you'd like to talk about?
Mr. RAHMAN: There's one song called "Mausam & Escape," which is, there's a sitar player, and sitar for me could get very sad when we play. But here, it's a completely, radically different use and I really love the track.
(Soundbite of "Mausam & Escape")
LYDEN: Did you have two sitars or were you layering it somehow or, what's going on here? What am I hearing?
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. RAHMAN: Some of them are layered, actually, so that's almost like a pulse which keeps going on and that's why we didn't use the traditional tambourines and all that stuff.
(Soundbite of "Mausam & Escape")
LYDEN: This seems like a studio-created piece. You couldn't do this live, could you?
Mr. RAHMAN: We could do it with a lot of electronic loops and stuff.
LYDEN: Yeah?
Mr. RAHMAN: But most of my shows, like about 70, 80 people on stage. Since I do film repertoire stuff, it varies. Like sometimes I have this full string section and we have these dancers, like 20 dancers on stage and all kinds of ethnic instruments and 12 to 18 singers coming - all superstar singers from India.
LYDEN: Hmm. Well, as I mentioned, you've collected three Oscar nominations and two of them are for best song. At the Academy Award Ceremony in three weeks, are you going to get 70 people up on stage performing some of your music?
Mr. RAHMAN: No. I don't think I can afford that (laughing).
LYDEN: How about you, will you be up on stage, performing?
Mr. RAHMAN: Well, I think they're still a bit unsure about what's going to happen because of various reasons. So, we'll be informed very soon.
LYDEN: I can't imagine they're going to turn you down (laughing).
(Soundbite of laughter)
LYDEN: A.R. Rahman composed the score to "Slumdog Millionaire" and he joined us from the studios of NPR West. Mr. Rahman, congratulations. Truly, it's fantastic to talk to you, and we wish you very good luck on the Oscars.
Mr. RAHMAN: Thank you.
(Soundbite of music)
LYDEN: To hear more of A.R. Rahman's work, go to the music section of our Website at npr.org. And tomorrow morning on Weekend Edition, Liane Hansen talks with the star of "Slumdog Millionaire," 18-year-old Dev Patel. Now, it may surprise you, but he told Liane that he had no idea what Mumbai was really like until he went there to work on the movie and stepped off the plane.
(Soundbite of interview clip)
Mr. Dev Patel (Actor, "Slumdog Millionaire" Main Character): Bang, you're hit by this wall of heat and your clothes become sweaty all of a sudden and the air smells different. It's got this smell of sweat to it, because there's so many people around.
LYDEN: That's "Slumdog Millionaire's" Dev Patel tomorrow morning on Weekend Edition Sunday.
(Soundbite of music)
JACKI LYDEN, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Jacki Lyden. While the American economy is still struggling to find a foothold, the nation of Iraq took a major political step today. More than 14,000 candidates vied for 440 seats in provincial elections. Polls are closed now, and little violence was reported. NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro spent part of the day in two once dangerous Baghdad neighborhoods. Here's her report.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO: There was an extraordinary security effort across the country. Iraqi police, army, and the U.S. military were out in force. Polling centers were surrounded by barbed wire and in some cases, blast walls. For most of the day, vehicles were banned, leaving roads open for children to play impromptu soccer matches, giving much of Baghdad a festive air.
(Soundbite of men talking)
So I'm at a polling center in the vast Shiite slum of Sadr City in Baghdad. It's home to over two million people.
Coffee-table sized Baghdad ballots are stamped and handed over to voters. After an offensive against the followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr here last year, his political base was weakened, so the votes here are up for grabs. Salim Fahad says he will be voting for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's party.
Mr. SALIM FAHAD (Voter): (Arabic spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: He gave us safety and helped us change our bad situation, he says. He deserves our vote because he is an honest man, and he's the right man in the right place, he says.
His vote is crucial for Maliki who, as head of a smaller Shiite party, is trying to increase his political support. Other voters, though, said they would were gravely disappointed by the Shiite parties who gained power in the last elections. Even though security is better, they said, corruption and a lack of services made them want to empower a new generation of leaders. Sa'ad Radhi is a tobacco shop owner.
Mr. SA'AD RADHI: (Arabic spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: He says, last time, my voting was sectarian. This time, I will vote against the sectarian ideology, against those who want to partition Iraq. This time, I'm voting for my country. I will vote for a nationalist party.
Across town…
(Soundbite of crowd of people talking)
So, I'm now in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Adhimiya, and this is really one of the most important places in Iraq to be today because, of course, in the last elections, the Sunnis boycotted the vote by and large. This is the first time that they have really come out in force to exercise their vote.
Fifty-year-old housewife In'aam Faleh Mahdi says the Sunnis were foolish in the last elections.
Ms. IN'AAM FALEH MAHDI: (Arabic spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: She says, it was a mistake that we didn't vote. We never made such a mistake in our lives, but now, this mistake will not be repeated. Last time they scared us. They told us not to go and vote. We were betrayed, she says.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Sunnis are the majority in three of Iraq's 18 provinces, but because of the boycott, they had little say in their local government. That is expected to change this time around.
Imad Abdul Latif says he's not voting for a Sunni party, though. He wants to move beyond the sectarian politics of the past few years.
Mr. IMAD ABDUL LATIF: (Arabic spoken)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: He says, we want new faces - faces that will serve the country in spite of their sect or religion. The most important thing is that any politician be an Iraqi patriot, efficient and well-meaning.
There were some problems, though. At the voter check in desk in Adhimiyah, many people could not find their names on the voting list, causing anger and suspicion. Organizers said it was because only half of the internally displaced in Iraq registered to vote in time, leaving many unable to cast a ballot. Over two million Iraqis who are refugees were also barred from participating today.
The independent high electoral commission said that it had received some reports of irregularities which it will investigate. The stakes couldn't have been higher today for Iraqis or for the American war effort here. The vote was pretty much free of violence, but the result must be credible and power has to be transferred peacefully between groups before these elections can be declared a success. Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, NPR News, Baghdad.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
It's January 31st, the last day of the month, and what a month it's been for American workers. On Monday alone, American companies slashed nearly 60,000 jobs - Caterpillar, Home Depot, Sprint Nextel, Pfizer. As one economist said, there is no refuge now.
The last day of the month finds record numbers of people staring down the first of the month with no job in sight. Here in Washington, 32-year-old Will John(ph) is one of them. We found him in the cold outside.
Mr. WILL JOHN: This is the Department of Human Development, 645 H Street.
LYDEN: The place where you sign up for food stamps. He was steeling himself to go in.
Mr. JOHN: Well, this is my very first time applying for food stamps. And basically, I've always felt that those that actually needed food stamps are the ones that, you know, should come down and apply. But as it turns out, I'm currently one of those in need, so there you have it.
LYDEN: Will John, laid off from his job in food services, is terrified, he said, about his chances of finding work. We'll talk to two more of the recently laid off in a moment.
Across the country, a record 4.8 million people are collecting unemployment benefits. It's the highest number in 40 years, and the mounting layoff have analysts conjuring the ghost of an even deeper past.
Richard Sylla is a financial historian at New York University. With so much talk about the Great Depression, I asked him how apt that comparison is.
Dr. RICHARD SYLLA (History of Financial Institutions; Economics, New York University): Well, there's still a big difference. I mean, there were many more people unemployed in the 1930s, especially as a percent of the population. We got up to well above 20 percent unemployment in 1932, so this is not nearly as bad as that.
The big thing that I see that's different about today and in the 1930s is that when the financial problems became evident, our authorities sprang into action, particularly the Federal Reserve and then it was joined by the Treasury, adding liquidity and coming up with innovative schemes to help bail out the financial system.
In the 1930s, the big problem was that the bottom fell out of the economy before the authorities did very much. So that's a real big difference between now and the Great Depression era.
LYDEN: The other major spectre that's raised is 1982 when unemployment hit 10 percent, and we do seem to be accelerating in that direction as we mentioned a moment ago. How much did that recession resemble this one?
Dr. SYLLA: Well, it was the worst recession, we said at that time, since the 1930s. And the major difference is we sort of had that recession on purpose. That is - if one remembers the 1970s, inflation rose throughout the 1970s and was really getting out of control by 1979-80. We had double-digit inflation. We let interest rates go through the roof to stop inflation, and as a by product of that, unemployment went up to the highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
LYDEN: I'd like to ask the historian in you as much as the economist, you know. Are people panicked in the way that they were back in the '30s when we did see the long lines and people riding the rails, and you know, it seems it's a different America now, but people speak of these things and you wonder if the fear isn't somehow similar?
Dr. SYLLA: I would say it is similar. I get around and talk to a lot of groups. In New York, I talk to a lot of financial groups, and of course, the epicenter of the crisis is in the financial sector. These people are really scared.
I actually try to cheer them up a little and say that financial crises do happen, they've been happening for 300 years. They are terrible when you're in the middle of them, but they always do go away. And, you know, somehow that is comforting to people today because they think, gee, we're in a crisis, and there doesn't seem to be any way out of it. So, they feel a little comforted when I say, you know, they always do come to an end, and this one will, too.
LYDEN: Richard Sylla is professor of economics, entrepreneurship, and innovation at the Stern School Business at NYU, and he joins us from our New York studios. Thank you very much.
Dr. SYLLA: You're welcome.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
Workers across the country are pushing back the kitchen chairs and sitting down with their kids to talk about what's next.
Mr. STEVEN SILVERMAN: We've started to look at all of the expenses in the house. We are cutting back on the phone line that I'm on right now. Actually we'll probably not be here for a while - we're going to using only our cell phones. I went to Costco last week and bought a number of things that will last a very long time, I hope.
LYDEN: That's Steven Silverman. He got laid off from a high-tech company in Seattle last Friday. He lives with his girlfriend, a working nurse in the city, and his daughter and her daughter, both in the sixth grade.
In Rochester, New York, Cathy Storms also had to sit down with her two middle-school daughters.
Ms. CATHY STORMS: I'm going to be home now, more than I was and, you know, they're upset, they're scared, they're worried about it.
LYDEN: When she heard the rumors that lay offs were coming to the Delphi Auto Parts plant, Cathy went downstairs to the labor relations office. At the plant, people are cut according to seniority, and people who started on the same day are laid off in reverse alphabetical order. Cathy found out that she was number 22 on the bump sheet, a list that had 25 people being cut.
Ms. STORMS: So, I brought in all the documentation. I changed my last name from Cathy Warrack(ph) to Cathy Storms, and I thought I was safe for at least another week to a month. So that next day, the bump sheet came out, 44 were on it. So, it kind of hit me like a brick wall.
LYDEN: That was last Friday, too. Storms is Cathy's maiden name, and she hasn't used it in years. She's officially divorced now and the family's sole breadwinner.
Ms. STORMS: I'm definitely going to be losing, probably, my house and my car, and just definitely downsizing a great amount in life.
Mr. SILVERMAN: Right now, my major expense is my home. I don't foresee that I will have to skip a payment on that for many months to the extent that I can stretch out my 401(k), but before the end of the year is up, if I don't have some decent flow of cash, we're going to be facing some issues there.
LYDEN: Steven Silverman's got his eye on the stimulus bill moving through Congress with billions in there for renewable energy projects. He's already got plans to start his own company.
For Cathy Storms in Rochester, New York, looking for work this week has been daunting.
Ms. STORMS: Every place I talked to, everybody has a freeze on their hiring or they're closing down. It's just crazy, it's so crazy out there right now.
LYDEN: One hundred thousand jobs lost just this last week. Buckle down for February. After the break, wrapping with the economic crisis from the Swiss Alps to Haiti. It's All Things Considered from NPR News.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Jacki Lyden. With the week of devastating layoffs at home and angry workers striking and demonstrating across the globe, it's clear people are looking for answers. The world's economic leaders wrap up their annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland tomorrow, and it is still unclear whether those answers will be here anytime soon.
Today in nearby Geneva, hundreds of protesters clashed with riot police. Their argument? The leaders of the conference are responsible for the crisis and not the ones to solve it. Daniel Yergin is in Davos. He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and chairman of Cambridge Energy Research associates. He's been attending the Davos Conference for more than 15 years. And he said the change this time around was palpable.
Dr. DANIEL YERGIN (Chairman, Cambridge Energy Research Associates): In past years, the focus has been on globalization and pretty much confidence in it. This year, it's all about what's gone wrong in the world economy and how bad the crisis is. And really it's also a fundamental challenge in a way I've never seen it before to capitalism American style.
LYDEN: One panel was called, "The Death of the Washington Consensus," and that refers to the free market philosophy that the U.S. and international organizations forced on East Asia and Russia decades ago. This year, China and Russia really had a lot to say about that.
Dr. YERGIN: Yeah, I think that it was a really across-the-board critique of what was seen as American capitalism and holding the United States responsible, in one form or another. Some were more strident in it than others.
Russian President Vladimir Putin attacked what he called the economic egoism of the United States and described the whole credit system as basically a giant pyramid scheme. The Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was more polite and diplomatic, but as he went through his list of the reasons for the crisis, every one of them was basically, without quite saying it, laid at the doorstep of the United States.
LYDEN: Globalization, of course, was supposed to be the new greater good that would lift the fortunes of many countries around the world and certainly developing countries. Is globalization itself as a concept now somewhat diminished?
Dr. YERGIN: Well, I think it is somewhat on the ropes, but on the other hand, if you look at a China, hundreds and millions of people in China are no longer poor, they are in the middle class, middle income, and that's because of globalization.
And I think the recognition here is you can't go back very easily to a more fragmented world, or if you do you'll end up with lower economic growth, but that it's not acceptable to have a kind of system without the kind of appropriate regulation and understanding of the risks that are being carried.
LYDEN: In recent years, Davos has come to have almost the feeling of the Oscars for certain business leaders and countries with swag bags of iPods and that sort of thing. This year, I can only imagine that there had to be a lot more sobriety. Could you sort of take us into the hallways and tell us at a granular level what it felt like?
Dr. YERGIN: Yeah, I think that the discussion in the hallways was people swapping impressions about how was your business doing? How hard has it been hit? What is going to happen to the banking system? And the kind of celebration that was marked in fancy parties and lots of goodies and things like that, you didn't see very much of that at all. About the only thing that one really got was here and there was a small box of Swiss chocolates.
(Soundbite of laughter)
LYDEN: Daniel Yergin is the author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power." He's just released an updated paperback version of that book, and he joins us from Davos, Switzerland. Thanks for taking the time, and enjoy those chocolates.
Dr. YERGIN: Thank you, indeed.
JACKI LYDEN, host:
Some leaders at Davos took a few moments this week to talk about the problems of the world's poorest nations. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon all said the world cannot forget its commitment to "the bottom billion," the one sixth of the population that lives on less than a dollar a day.
The man who coined that term, "the bottom billion," is economist Paul Collier. He wrote a book with that title, and I spoke to him yesterday at a United Nations office here in Washington, D.C. I asked Paul Collier whether those leaders who have their own economies to worry about are really interested in fixing what's wrong in developing countries.
Professor PAUL COLLIER (Economics, Oxford, University; Director, Centre for the Study of African Econmies; Author, "The Bottom Billion"): It's too early to say whether this will just go back down the pile of things to do next year or whether they'll stick to it.
The truth is that the cost of doing these things is small, and it's actually - the cost has fallen as a result of the global recession because what we need to get out of this recession is to create demand. We need to be able to give money to people who will actually spend it. That's why, within our own societies, we want to skew money towards poor people because they're more likely to spend it.
The poorest of the poorest of the poor are the people in the bottom billion. Targeting money to them, in whatever form, is a sure way of getting it spent quickly, and the only place that dollars can be spent that are to give them to these countries is in America basically.
Dollars - they're going to come back to the rich country's markets, and so scaling up our giving to these countries is not, as it were, money down the drain, it's actually cheaper now than it was before the recession started.
LYDEN: The Davos Conference typically doesn't really look at developing nations, and some would argue that when it comes to the G8, they've never been a priority, should they be?
Prof. COLLIER: Yes. In a good year, it gets on to the edge of Davos. So, I was at Davos last year as one of the light entertainment bits. They were mainly worried about other things, but something about the bottom billion got on to the edge of the conference.
This year, of course, yeah, they worried themselves, and that's understandable, but for all our problems, we're facing hardship in the context of overall prosperity whereas the societies at the bottom billion are facing accentuated hardship, deepened hardship from the base of poverty. And so they're being hit probably harder than we are, and they're not in a position to withstand that.
LYDEN: How is the global crash affecting the bottom billion people in this world?
Prof. COLLIER: Well, it's affecting them hard. They're, in a sense, only peripherally affected by the financial crisis itself because most of these countries weren't borrowing anyway. They're affected partly by the crash in the price of commodities, their exporting commodities, and so that's really cut their revenues, and then other places, one example is Haiti, are really hit because they depend upon remittances - the money that people send back home to their families.
There are a lot of Haitians in America and in Canada. And they're in the front of the queue to lose jobs, and so the first thing they cut back on is money sent back. And so, across Haiti, there's going to be a big crunch of that vital lifeline of money coming in is going to fall.
LYDEN: You just went to Haiti for the United Nations. What are you going to be saying in your report?
Prof. COLLIER: Well, I'm going to be saying that this actually a situation of hope. It's a hard message because Haiti has been pretty well stagnant or in decline for the last 40 years, and so, people have got an overwhelming sense of despondency and failure.
But actually, although Haiti is conventionally grouped with sort of failing states like Afghanistan and Sudan, its opportunities are radically different. This is a society that shouldn't be a failing state, needn't be, and if we do the right things together it won't be. We can actually get transformation here.
LYDEN: You almost always hear in referencing Haiti the line poorest country in the western hemisphere, and why do you think it should not be a failing state, and what can be done?
Prof. COLLIER: Well, one reason, actually, you've just given yourself, right? If you're the poorest country in a rich neighborhood that means the neighborhood is actually pretty favorable. On top of that, Haiti has got a remarkable trade deal with America which was given last year, HOPE II. And so, that is a real opportunity on which to build an export industry, a light industry which could create jobs in Haiti.
And so, our task now is to build on that opportunity, to harness that opportunity and turn it into a reality.
LYDEN: It's been a great pleasure talking to you, Paul Collier. Thank you very much.
Prof. COLLIER: Thanks very much for inviting me.
LYDEN: Paul Collier has a new book out next week. It's called "Wars, Guns and Votes."
JACKI LYDEN, Host:
Mr. ROY RODMAN (Owner, Rodman's Gourmet Stores): Can you show this young lady the Moroccan sardines? Oh, really? We're out?
LYDEN: Meet Roy Rodman. he's the owner of Rodman's, a small gourmet grocery chain here in Washington, D.C. His customers are about to get a rude shock at the check-out counter. The Bush administration, on its way out the door earlier this month, tripled the already stiff tariffs on French Roquefort cheese to 300 percent. It also jacked up duties on other European Union luxury items like chocolate, mineral water and - sit still - foie gras. It's the latest salvo in a trade dispute over the E.U.'s ban on hormone-treated beef from America. The Roquefort rumble has been getting a lot of press, but Roy Rodman says what really worries him are the tariffs on things like sparkling water and chocolates.
Mr. RODMAN: This is Niederegger imported chocolate, dark chocolate-covered marzipan. My understanding is that all filled chocolates will have the duty on them, which is a lot of high-end delicious imported candies.
LYDEN: That little bar of chocolate-covered marzipan sells for $4.49 now and with the new duties, it could cost nine bucks. To find out more about this tempest in a shopping bag, we called Chad Bown. He's an economics professor at Brandeis and a fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in just this sort of trade dust-up. And Bown says there's logic behind the new tariffs.
Dr. CHAD BOWN (Professor of Economics, Brandeis University and Fellow, Brookings Institution): What the U.S. government would like to do is to generate some pressure within Europe to get these policies removed and they want to pick out relatively high-profile products that are going to make media attention and receive news headlines and not anger - the American public by picking products that everybody consumes.
LYDEN: So, for example, you wouldn't perhaps go after olive oil in the same way which many, many people buy?
Dr. BOWN: That's correct. Of course, there are certain high-end olive oils that you might be able to differentiate between and just like in this instance when they decided to retaliate against cheese, they didn't pick popular brands of French cheese like brie or even Camembert, but they went for the really high-end stuff, Roquefort, which really only a handful of consumers in United States buy.
LYDEN: Mm, hmm. Is this a common tactic? Can you think of other times that something like this as the retaliatory sorts of measures have been at play?
Dr. BOWN: It isn't that common. The World Trade Organization has been in existence since 1995. There have been close to 400 now, these kinds of disputes that have erupted, but only 10 of which have actually reached the stage where countries like the U.S., in this instance, have been authorized to retaliate, and even fewer instances in which they actually followed through and do so. One relatively high-profile instance of this was back in 2003 where the United States had imposed trade barriers on European products. In this case, it was steel. And the Europeans took their dispute to the WTO. They won all the legal arguments. The U.S. was thinking about complying and to put pressure on them, the Europeans identified a list of products that they would target if the U.S. refused to get rid of the trade barriers. In that instance, this was right before the 2004 presidential election. And so, the Europeans identified politically sensitive products from important swing states in Florida because they picked citrus products from Florida and other swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio and Wisconsin. Harley Davidson motorcycles comes to mind, so...
LYDEN: Mm hmm.
Dr. BOWN: There aren't a lot of instances in which this has happened, but this is a relatively common approach when the disputes actually do reach this stage.
LYDEN: Well, what are Roquefort lovers to do? President Obama has reversed a number of Bush's late-term decisions. Do you think there's any chance he's going to roll back the cheese and mineral water tariffs?
Dr. BOWN: It's tough for consumers, you know, probably the best bet is to try and find some sort of alternative...
LYDEN: Stilton.
Dr. BOWN: Exactly.
Dr. BOWN: Or just simple blue cheese, maybe.
LYDEN: Chad Bown. He's an economics professor at Brandeis University and a co-editor of an upcoming book on what else? Trade wars. Thanks very much.
Dr. BOWN: Thank you, Jacki. ..COST: $00.00
JACKI LYDEN, Host:
Think back to the first time you read "The Great Gatsby." Think about this scene in Gatsby's mansion.
(Soundbite of music)
LYDEN: (Reading) He took out of a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one before us. Shirts of sheer linen and thick silk and fine flannel, which lost their folds as they fell and covered the table in many-colored disarray. Suddenly, with the strange sound, Daisy bent her head into the shirts and began to cry stormily.
(Soundbite of music)
LYDEN: When we're sitting, reading for a book like this, our bodies may be still, but our brains are working hard to paint a mental picture. Fluttering shirts, Daisy's crying, Gatsby's exaltations. So, how does that work? It's "Science out of the Box."
(Soundbite of "Science out of the Box" theme)
LYDEN: Jeff Zacks is an associate professor of psychology. He's one of the co-authors of a new study about what happens to our brains when we read. And he joins us now from Washington University in St. Louis. Welcome, Jeff Zacks.
Prof. JEFF ZACKS (Professor of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis): Thanks for having me, Jacki.
LYDEN: Set the scene for us here, you and the lead author, Nicole Speer had people read inside an MRI machine, which I will do for you anytime you like. How did that work?
Prof. ZACKS: So, they're lying in the dark, looking at a computer screen and words are appearing one at a time at a rate that's comfortable such that they can read and understand what's happening. The stories are about a little boy name Raymond living in a town in the Midwest in the '40s.
LYDEN: You took pictures of these people's brains while they were reading. What did you see?
Prof. ZACKS: So, if you pick up a can of soda, your brain goes through a whole cascade of processes having to do with the motor commands to your arms. What it looks like to grab the soda can, what it feels like in your hand and arms. If you run in to another person in the hall and start interacting with them, your brain goes through a whole different cascade of processes. And what we found is that as people are lying in the scanner reading about picking up a can of soda or bumping into a friend, their brain processes differ in ways that are similar to the differences that we see in responses to real experiences.
LYDEN: Well, does that mean they're actually exercising their brains to do those functions?
Dr. ZACKS: Well what it suggests to us is that when they're reading the story, they're building simulations in their head of events that are described by the story. And so, there's an important sense that as they build that simulation that it's significantly like being there.
LYDEN: Now, what does this tell us about the brain, Jeff Zacks, that we didn't know before?
Prof. ZACKS: We're used to thinking that virtual reality is something that involves fancy computers and helmets and gadgets. But what these kind of data suggest is that language itself is a powerful form of virtual reality, that there's an important sense in which when we tell each other stories that we can control the perceptional processes that are happening in each other's brains.
LYDEN: Jeff Zacks is an associate professor of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. Thank you for joining us today.
Prof. ZACKS: Thank you.
JACKI LYDEN, Host:
That flurry of Oscar nominations paid off for "Slumdog Millionaire" artistically, to be sure, but also where it really counts in Hollywood, and of course, that's at the box office. Last weekend, the movie soared into the top five on the weekly box office charts for the first time. That's partly because of those 10 nominations it got and also, because theater owners had bet big on what's called "the Oscar bump," more than doubling the number of screens showing "Slumdog." Our movie maven, Bob Mondello, is here to break down the bump. Which bets paid off, which didn't? It sounds like we're going skiing. Hi, Bob.
(Soundbite of laughter)
BOB MONDELLO: Hi, it's good to be here.
LYDEN: So I understand the inauguration also had an impact on the bets this year?
MONDELLO: That's right, and that's because the nominations are usually announced on a Tuesday, but this year, there was an Inauguration that got in the way, and while politics doesn't very often interfere with what Hollywood is doing, this time, they decided to bow to President Obama. And so what they did was they announced them on Thursday. Well, that doesn't give the theater owners enough time to book pictures for Friday. So, they had to guess as to what was going to win Oscar nominations.
LYDEN: Hmm. So, they had to actually use their imaginations. How did those guesses pan out?
MONDELLO: Well, pretty badly in some cases. A lot of people guessed that "The Dark Knight," the Batman movie...
LYDEN: With Heath Ledger.
MONDELLO: Was going to get nominated, everybody was talking about it was almost guaranteed to be nominated for Best picture, did not get a nomination. And so 350 theaters booked it and it didn't do very well. And then a lot of people guessed "Revolutionary Road," which was again, supposed to do really well at the top end of the Oscar nominations, and it didn't. And it raised theaters alot, but it's per-theater average, in other words, how much it takes in on each screen...
LYDEN: Mm hmm.
MONDELLO: Went way down, basically because it did not get the nominations. And so not everybody succeeded with this.
LYDEN: All right. Well, I've got the envelope right here and I'm going to ask you…
(Soundbite of laughter)
LYDEN: Which films got the biggest Oscar bump?
MONDELLO: Well, predictably enough, it was all the ones that actually got nominated for best picture. "Slumdog" did really well, as we've said. It doubled the number of theaters and it did not dilute the audience per theater very much. "Benjamin Button" went up slightly but it's all - it's getting played out now. "Frost/Nixon" went from 100 theaters to a thousand and halved its per-theater take. "Milk" and "The Reader" did OK. "The Reader" actually - 50 theaters dropped it because it wasn't expected to get nominated for best picture. And so its per-screen average went way up, and the theaters that got it dropped it must be feeling really stupid at the moment.
LYDEN: Can you rebook them?
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONDELLO: Well, I assume they will this week. I predict it will go up markedly.
LYDEN: So, beyond best picture, do best actress and actor nominations also make a difference? It seems as if they do.
MONDELLO: Well, they make a slight difference. "Doubt" got lots of those acting nominations. It went up slightly per screen. "The Wrestler" went wide and its average dropped a little bit. Yes, it helps, but it doesn't help nearly as much as best picture.
LYDEN: I know there are people that can do this much better than I, but what's the lesson that we draw from all this?
(Soundbite of laughter)
MONDELLO: Well I think basically, it is that Oscars are really only designed to punch-up box office. They are a device for publicity for major movies. The Hollywood studios spend a lot on these prestige movies that they don't really expect to do all that well at the box office, and then they give themselves awards for having been so brilliant, and that is suppose to pump up the box office and it usually does. Interestingly, they've been timing it differently lately because movies earn so much more money very quickly in theaters these days that they've moved the Oscar nominations closer and closer to the end of the year and they've moved the show itself closer and closer to the Oscar nominations so there's a shorter window. The bump has to happen very quickly.
LYDEN: Hmm. Sounds like a big bump.
(Soundbite of laughter)
LYDEN: You know, there should be a new category, the cashbox award because of always searching Oscar favorites, the reigning number one film right now in any of them it's Paul Blart "Mall Cop," one of the worst-reviewed films and movies according to people like you.
MONDELLO: (Laughing) Well, that's true, and not only was it not well reviewed, but it stayed at number one for two weeks running now. The rule of thumb in January is that any picture that gets up there is going to stay there because everything else that comes out against it is going to be worst than it is. So, that's basically what's happening, it'll stay up for a couple of weeks and then it will fade away into...
LYDEN: The sequel.
MONDELLO: Maybe not (laughing) you know, that's probably true, isn't that sad? Yes.
LYDEN: Well, Bon Mondello you remain our movie champ, you could have been a contender. Thanks for stopping by.
MONDELLO: (laughing) Thank you so much.
JACKI LYDEN, Host:
Tomorrow is football's big day, of course, the Super Bowl, and Pittsburgh Steelers fans are already cheering. Today, the day before the Steelers face-off against the upstart Arizona Cardinals, one of the beloved heroes of Pittsburgh entered the Hall of Fame. Rod Woodson is one of six inductees this year. He was a star defensive back with Pittsburgh for over a decade and later he got a Super Bowl ring with the Baltimore Ravens. The other five new Hall of Famers are "Bullet" Bob Hayes, Randall McDaniel, long-time owner Ralph Wilson, the late Derrick Thomas, and the NFL's all-time sack leader, Bruce Smith. Dozens of Hall-of-Famers are in Tampa for the big game tomorrow and autograph seekers are in hot pursuit. But these aren't just kids hoping to get their heroes John Hancock. NPR's Mike Pesca has been tracking guys who make a career out of this. Call them the signature stalkers.
MIKE PESCA: On the edge of ESPN's outdoor set in Tampa, there's an all-out blitz of the passer underway.
(Soundbite of people talking)
PESCA: The q.b. in question is Steve Young, Hall of Fame quarterback who is now paid ESPN to offer commentary on the game he once won. Standing behind the barricade are about three of four dozen autograph seekers, who, knowing Young would be on set, have brought footballs, Steve Young jerseys, and mini 49er helmets awaiting the touch of his felt tip. Some of these fans have amateur autograph-seeking status - not Nick Novinski. He flew down from Milwaukee as part of a professional crew.
Mr. NICK NOVINKI (Autograph Hunter): I'm pretty tired right now. You get here at seven in the morning, and depending on if the players are out we'll stay out till three in morning.
PESCA: Novinski is a house painter whose business dries up in the cold Wisconsin winter. As a child, he and a friend hang out at Brewers games trying to get autographs. The friend turned his hobby into a full-time job and pays for Novinski to go to events like the Super Bowl -well not into the Super Bowl, but around the people who get into the Super Bowl. Novinski has been trudging around with his bag of footballs awaiting autographs.
Mr. NOVINSKI: They sell for about a 100. I'm on commission, I get a fully expense trip. My boss pays for me to be here, so I'll get $10 per ball.
PESCA: It works out to less than $10 an hour. Higher up on the professional autograph food chain is Mike McCaskall(ph).
Mr. MIKE MCCASKALL (Professional Autograph Seeker): It's pretty much paparazzi with pens instead of cameras.
PESCA: McCaskall lives near Tampa. This week, he's coordinating a crew of about 20. He says he makes $50,000 just during the six weeks of spring training baseball. McCaskall knows he's the hunter, but he doesn't see his prey as entirely vulnerable.
Mr. MCCASKALL: It's a dirty game, but the players, that's why they don't like to sign for the public, because they get paid to do it.
PESCA: Big collectible companies like Upper Deck and Mounted Memories do extend lucrative contracts to star athletes. McCaskall, himself, is not above extending semi-lucrative inducements.
Mr. MCCASKALL: Santonio Holmes, when he was a rookie with the Steelers two years ago, I called up his hotel room, I said, Santonio we want to pay you, he said, All right how much you want to pay? I said $10 each, he said come up here to the room. We came up to the room with 250 pieces, we paid him, you know, $2500, and he signed every single one of them.
PESCA: But on this day, McCaskall and all the other autograph seekers can only wait to see if Young will give his graph away for free. He has a little girl in his arms, which seems like a ready-made excuse not to, but no, he's coming over.
Unidentified Man #1: Thank you Steve so much.
Unidentified Man #2: You're the best Steve. That's a golden arm, don't touch his arm, guys.
(Soundbite of laughter)
PESCA: Still holding his little girl, he signs and signs for just about everyone some two or three times. Afterwards, Young explains that he was a fan before he was a player and he always wanted Roger Staubach's autograph. Young says he's paying it forward, and it's fine if sometimes his autograph literally is payment.
Mr. STEVE YOUNG (NFL Player): If I can take 20 seconds to help them make their rent, if I knew that story, then I'd do it everyday, right? I mean that's easy.
PESCA: It must be an odd thing to know that with a flick of a pen you can make someone a $100, unless, once upon a time with the toss of a ball, you made someone millions. Mike Pesca, NPR News, Tampa, Florida.
JACKI LYDEN, Host: And we have parting words today from the 19th-century satirist Ambrose Bierce, who wrote, Mark how my fame rings out from zone to zone, a thousand critics shouting, He's unknown. But we hope we're not unknown in your end zone. That's All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Jacki Lyden.