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  • Holidays at the White House (time lapse video)

    Behind-the-Scenes Look: Time-Lapse of Holidays at the White House

    In 2011, more than 400 volunteers came together to help decorate the White House and assist with celebrations, and more than 85,000 guests are expected to visit the White House during the holiday season. Get a behind the scenes look at all the action courtesy of the White House Photo Office!

    The section of the website dealing with the holidays: http://www.whitehouse.gov/holidays

     

    Shine, Give, Share

    Our theme for this 2011 holiday season is “Shine, Give, Share,” which offers an opportunity to pay tribute to our troops, veterans, and their families throughout the White House. This year, the official tour features 37 Christmas trees, 30 are natural trees and 7 are made from paper, felt or aluminum; a gingerbread model of the White House made of 400 pounds of gingerbread, white chocolate and marzipan plus 5 different representations of First Dog Bo Obama. Volunteers from 36 states plus the District of Columbia worked for days to get everything ready.

    Blue Room

    The centerpiece of the Blue Room is the official White House Christmas tree — a breathtaking 18-foot-6-inch balsam fir from Neshkoro, Wisconsin — which honors our men and women in uniform and features holiday cards created by military children. Collected from United States military installations around the world, these thoughtful and poignant cards celebrate their parents serving in uniform. Medals, badges, and patches from all of the military branches are displayed on ornaments, historic military images are displayed with volunteer-made pinecone frames and ribbons inspired by the Armed Forces colors represent the brave women and men who protect our Nation and defend our freedom.

  • 2010 Federal Taxpayer Receipt

    Understand How and Where Your Tax Dollars Are Being Spent

    (Editor’s Note: In case you hadn’t seen this earlier in the year, we’re repeating this form from  the WhiteHouse.gov website earlier this year, April of 2011)

    “In his State of the Union Address, President Obama promised that this year, for the first time ever, American taxpayers would be able to go online and see exactly how their federal tax dollars are spent. Just enter a few pieces of information about your taxes, and the taxpayer receipt will give you a breakdown of how your tax dollars are spent on priorities like education, veterans benefits, or health care.”

  • FactCheck.org: The Whoppers of 2011

    The year’s worst political deceptions, from both sides.

    Summary

    Despite what you may have heard in 2011:

    • The new health care law won’t cost many jobs (and they’ll be poorly paying jobs at that).
    • Republicans aren’t proposing to “end” Medicare (and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has signed onto a modified version of the GOP plan).
    • Most of the “millionaires” who would pay higher tax rates under a Democratic proposal aren’t job-creating small-business owners.
    • President Obama’s mother didn’t really fight to get health insurance coverage as she was dying.

    And there was plenty more spin and deception in 2011. Obama claimed he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher. Michele Bachmann endorsed a claim that HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. Joe Biden claimed rapes quadrupled in Flint, Mich., after police layoffs. And that’s just some of the nonsense we debunked.

    For our full run-down of the worst political whoppers we encountered during the year, please read on to the Analysis section. And get ready for more in the presidential election year that is about to begin.

    Analysis: 
    Republican Whopper: ‘Job-Killing’ Health Care Law

    The truth first: The best economic analysis of the new health care law points to the loss of a “small” number of low-paid jobs — starting in 2014. That’s when firms with 50 or more workers will be required either to provide health insurance coverage to their employees or pay a penalty.

    The Congressional Budget Office also says that the law will lead to fewer people who want to work — or who will want to work as many hours as they normally would — because they’ll be better off financially, or won’t feel the need to stay on a job they don’t like just to keep their coverage.

    But you would never know that if all you listened to was the constant repetition of the phrase “job-killing” by Republicans bent on repealing the law before it can take full effect.

    We first wrote about this back in January, when we noted that House Republicans were attaching the misleading “job-killing” label to the law, and offering only misrepresentations of the evidence to back up their slogan. But the bogus claim has been repeated over and over all year. On Dec. 10, Rep. Michele Bachmann falsely claimed that a study showed the US will “lose 1.6 million jobs over five years if we keep Obamacare” — referring to a business group’s study that did not examine the new law at all, and showed nothing of the sort. And we also found the worst part of Mitt Romney’s first TV spot wasn’t the out-of-context video editing that caused the Obama campaign to label it “dishonest,” but instead was the more substantive claim that the new law is “killing jobs.”

    It may be that the constant repetition of this false claim will make a lot of voters believe it. But repeating a whopper doesn’t make it true, it just makes it a bigger whopper.

    A ‘Job-Killing’ Law?
    Jan. 7

    More Baloney at ABC/Yahoo! Debate
    Dec. 11

    Romney’s Ad ‘Deceitful & Dishonest’?
    Nov. 22

    Medicare banner
    Democratic Whopper: Republicans Would ‘End Medicare’

    First the truth: The budget plan that Republicans pushed through the House in 2011 would have radically changed Medicare in the future — for workers now under age 55.  Starting in the year 2022,  the GOP plan called for new Medicare beneficiaries to purchase private insurance with the help of federal subsidies.

  • Epiphany

    By Susan Samuels Drake

    Santa Claus drove his sleigh down our street early Christmas morning in 1942. “How could a sleigh drive down Byron Street when it doesn’t snow in Palo Alto?” Ever since that year, when my parents and even my little brother didn’t believe the miracle I was so sure I’d witnessed, I’ve struggled with Christmas.

    Something changed this year. More than anything, I hate to be left out, especially left alone when it’s not by choice. It looks as if I will alone on December 25th for the first time.

    I remember many, many Christmases nearly ruined by earaches and tonsillitis, salvaged by my father’s sudden, short-term hours of playfulness. One year our childless babysitter made dresses for my doll and gave us her tree ornaments in a box that smelled of her perfume.

    A few years later, then a fifth-grader, I snuck into Mom’s closet a week before the big day to see my present, one that she’d proudly been showing all my friends behind a closed door. There’s that left-out feeling. The skirt Mom had sewn for me was her favorite plaid with white rickrack just above the hem.  On Christmas morning, I prayed she wouldn’t know I’d already seen it. “It’s so pretty. And you made it!”

    In high school, I was melancholy for days before Christmas. Where was the good cheer and that extra-special love that supposedly floats around in abundance during the holidays? Who knows why I felt so left-out then, too: sunless skies, too many candy canes? Unrealistic expectations didn’t cross my mind.

    Christmases during my marriage were nice, often shared with my loving in-laws after mornings with our two sons, opening the few gifts we could afford. However, I almost blew Christmas, 1965. December 25th was also my husband’s birthday and I’d waited two weeks to have him all to ourselves after he’d been away at work. He announced, “I invited the Taylors to stay here on Christmas Eve and spend the next day with us. They’ll arrive after you’re asleep.” I whined, “but, but…” He interrupted with, “Hey. Remember the story — no room in the inn?” I cried myself to asleep, ashamed of my selfishness. Thankfully, our guests slept-in Christmas morning and our family had its alone time. I resurrected generosity and grace by the time the other couple, who became our friends that day, sat down to share the dinner I’d had fun preparing.

    Post-divorce, some Christmases were celebrated with two other divorcées over brunch at the top of San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel. Our children had the day with their fathers on the same alternating years. One of those times, before brunch I parked in a deserted alley next to the Greyhound station to drop off my sons for the visit to their dad. I returned to my car to find two men with shoulder-length oily black hair and weathered but young ruddy complexions leaning on the front fender. Their cohort sat on the sidewalk with a bottle-shaped brown paper bag between his legs. In spite of my pounding heart, I smiled my best smile, looked into their watery eyes, and said, “Merry Christmas, guys!” Then to the two against my car, “Sorry, but I have to move your seat.” They apologized and grinned back with a chorus of “Merry Christmas, ma’am.” Suddenly their eyes filled with embarrassment. They’d been caught — caught in a complicated web of life. My dressy clothes and jewelry announced that I’d never been in that same web. I felt immensely sad. And grateful.

    The best holidays, on the years I had the boys, were complete with greeting-card ambiance, jokes and lots of hugs. At my married brother Bob’s beautifully decorated home, the scent of pine crackling in the fireplace layered itself with the tree’s evergreen perfume. From the couch, Mom and Dad quietly watched the other nine of us. Why didn’t I talk with them more? Bob served the Martinelli’s Sparkling Apple Cider I’d bring and eggnogs he concocted from scratch. His wife’s feasts assembled annual favorites, from black olives — a four-generation family tradition — to my other brother Perry’s pecan pies. The background to our conversations blended Christmas carols, five squealing cousins, and the sound of gift-wrap being ripped.

  • Mass March by Cairo Women in Protest Over Soldiers’ Abuse

    Thousands of women massed in Tahrir Square here on Tuesday afternoon and marched to a journalists’ syndicate and back in a demonstration that grew by the minute into an extraordinary expression of anger at the treatment of women by the military police as they protested against continued military rule.

    Many held posters of the most sensational image of violence over the last weekend: a group of soldiers pulling the abaya off a prone woman to reveal her blue bra as one raises a boot to kick her. The picture, circulated around the world, has become a rallying point for activists opposed to military rule, though cameras also captured soldiers pulling the clothes off other women.

    The march, guarded by a cordon of male protesters, was a surprising turn. In Egypt, as in other countries swept by the revolts of the Arab Spring, women played important roles, raising hopes that broader social and political rights would emerge along with more accountable governments. But with the main popular focus on preparing for elections and protesting the military’s continued hold on power, women here had grown less politically visible.

    Read the rest of the article at The New York Times:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/21/world/middleeast/violence-enters-5th-day-as-egyptian-general-blames-protesters.html

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot_wU1iZWqs

  • Pro Publica’s Guide to the Best Coverage of Newt Gingrich and His Record

    by Braden Goyette, Pro Publica

    This guide was most recently updated on November 30 by Pro Publica.

    The basics:

    Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich got off to a rocky start. He was behind most of the other presidential hopefuls in terms of fundraising, and his campaign staff also quit en masse earlier this year over concerns that Gingrich was not taking campaigning seriously.

    But since then, Gingrich has been gaining in the polls — and with his new prominence has come increased scrutiny of his record.Newt Gingrich in 2011

    Gingrich is perhaps best-known for his foibles, including his spectacular fall from power in the late 1990s. But he is also a bold ideologue who during his time as speaker in the late 1990s successfully pushed for reducing taxes and scaling back welfare.

    Gingrich also holds some views that do not fit the conservative mold. He has partnered with Hillary Clinton to advocate health-care IT legislation, with Al Sharpton and Arne Duncan to promote President Barack Obama’s education reforms, and with Nancy Pelosi in an ad stressing the importance of taking action on climate change.

    Gingrich angered Republicans by criticizing Paul Ryan’s plan to reform Medicare, prompting the American Conservative to accuse him of never really having been a conservative in the first place.

    Background and views:

    A self-described “ideas man,” Gingrich is the author of 23 books. Weekly Standard Senior Editor Andrew Ferguson has a helpful summary of his oeuvre. The takeaways: Gingrich is fond of saying that the United States is at a crossroads and that technology will lead us away from catastrophe. His earlier books are filled with rapid-fire streams of ideas for bettering society, often without details about how to implement them.

    “Gingrich’s vagueness was always a problem,” wrote Ferguson. “But the books show something more: a near-total lack of interest in the political implementation of his grand ideas — a lack of interest, finally, in politics at its most mundane and consequential level.”

    Gingrich has a Ph.D. in history, and told The New York Times in 2009 that he subscribed to the theory “that certain great leaders must endure a long political exile before returning to power.”

    As The New York Times detailed, Gingrich has pushed to reinvent himself in part by putting a new emphasis on faith. He recently told supporters that he believes America is becoming too secular. Gingrich converted to Catholicism after marrying his third wife, Callista, in 2000. In a 2009 Weekly Standard opinion piece co-authored with Callista, Gingrich wrote that religion was key to the triumph of the capitalist West in the Cold War. In his words, “the spiritual nature of man and the freedom to know God were central to defining humanity and decisive in defeating tyranny.”

    Gingrich has been outspoken about his opposition to same-sex marriage. (An activist glitter-bombed him earlier this year to protest Gingrich’s stance.)

    He set himself apart from other Republican candidates in November by endorsing what he called a “humane” approach to illegal immigration, which would create a path to legal status for immigrants who have been in the US for decades.

  • Trolling for Christmas

    by Julia Sneden

    The word troll is an interesting word. It comes from the Middle English trollen, and it has many meanings, among them:

    — singing loud and lustily, or celebrating in song, as in “…troll the ancient Yuletide carol…” 
    — sitting quietly with a hook on a line, waiting for a fish to strike   
    — an unappealing creature from Scandinavian folklore, given to lurking under bridges and in caves, with nasty intentions to humankindGood King Wencelas on a biscuit tin

    I can find good use for all three meanings at this time of year:

    A dear friend who suffers miserably every Christmas season talks about how depression stalks him, waiting to jump out, grab him, and pull him under. His seasonal misery can’t be dispatched. The cheerier the rest of the world becomes, the blacker his mood: a true troll-and-bridge situation.

    Singing loud and lustily, or course, goes without saying during the holidays. I remember the years when my family and the neighbor’s daughters went caroling each Christmas Eve, walking our California hilltop in the black December dark, flashlights playing along the rough edges of the road. In those days, no one thought to offer us money or refreshments, and we would have been insulted if they had. We must have been a raggedy crew, at least vocally. My poor brother’s was the only male voice; we three little girls piped away, trying to carry the melody like true sopranos, but we were inevitably pulled off key by my mother’s strong, trained contralto.

    If we didn’t sing beautifully, we sang completely, every word of every verse. I don’t remember setting out to learn all those words, but somehow we just did, because we never had to carry a song sheet. To this day, I can render up every part of Good King Wenceslas or all six verses of The First Noel.

    One year it rained with a vengeance, but we put on our slickers and put up our umbrellas, and did our rounds anyway. At each house, we started with “Deck The Halls” because the last verse seemed to fit:

    “…sing we joyous, altogether, falalalalalalalala,
    heedless of the wind or weather, falalalalalalala”

    The last house we came to was newly built and we didn’t know the owners. We had a huddled conference about whether or not we should sing to them, as we had heard that they were elderly and in ill health, and we didn’t want to alarm or disturb them.

    More at …. http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/julia/articlesJulia121199.html

  • Jurors on the Internet: a dilemma for courts

    By Maggie Clark, Stateline Staff Writer
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    iStockphoto
    Most jurors are prohibited by judges or by state law from using cell phones, laptops or other electronic media to communicate about a case while they are trying it. But some just ignore the warnings.

    This month the Arkansas Supreme Court overturned a guilty verdict in a capital murder case because a juror was tweeting about it while the case was being heard. A few days earlier, a California juror was dismissed after the court discovered she had posted extensively about the case and about the other jurors on her Facebook page. 

    This is a troubling time when it comes to the use of the Internet in the courtroom. Faced with rapidly changing technology, judges are struggling to keep jurors from getting and spreading information about current cases online. Doing online research on the defendant’s criminal record or consulting Facebook friends on a vote for sentencing might seem acceptable to some jurors, but it violates the oath “to base your verdict solely upon the evidence” as presented in the courtroom. 

    Personal Internet research can be just as dangerous a problem as social media use. In January of this year, a judge in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, was forced to acquit a man charged with homicide and first-degree murder in the death of a one-year-old, and declare a mistrial on a number of other counts, after the court found out a juror had independently done online research about injuries sustained by the victim, and possibly offered to share her knowledge with the other jurors. 

    All of this has happened in the wake of the 2009 “Google mistrial,” in which a Florida judge discovered that nine jurors in a federal drug case had been doing Internet research on the case, forcing the judge to declare a mistrial. Following that case, more than 30 states adopted new model jury instructions specifically barring jurors from researching or communicating about a case on the Internet while they are serving. But the problem remains widespread. In 2009 alone, judges granted new trials or overturned verdicts in 21 cases as a result of Internet-related juror activity, according to an analysis from Reuters Legal. 

    This month’s Arkansas Twitter episode was a complicated one. The State Supreme Court reversed the decision of a lower court judge, who allowed the murder conviction of Erickson Dimas-Martinez to stand even though a juror tweeted about the case several times after the lower court judge asked him to stop. (Another juror was observed sleeping through portions of testimony.) At 3:45 p.m. on April 1, 2010, the day of sentencing, Juror 2 tweeted, “It’s over.” But the jury did not announce that it had reached a sentence until 4:35 p.m., according to the Arkansas Supreme Court opinion. 

    Thoughts and musings

    “Because of the very nature of Twitter as an online social media site,” wrote Associate Justice Donald Corbin in the Arkansas opinion, “Juror 2’s tweets about the trial were very much public discussions … it is in no way appropriate for a juror to state musings, thoughts, or other information about a case in such a public fashion.” Arkansas had updated its jury instructions in 2010 to prohibit Internet communication and research about an ongoing case, and the Court determined that Juror 2’s actions showed that he was willfully disregarding those instructions. 

    Even though a majority of states now prohibit Internet research or communication by jurors, studies have found that many jurors misconstrue the instructions or simply refuse to limit their Internet use during a trial. In a pilot study of 500 jurors across the country conducted by the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), researchers found that even after jurors had been instructed that they could not tweet, email, use Facebook, or communicate electronically with friends or family members about a case, one-third of respondents either didn’t understand or incorrectly understood what they could and couldn’t do when it came to using the Internet while acting as a juror.

  • We’ll Always Have Frances, Emma, The Little Prince and Middlemarch

    We have read that author Russell Hoban has died in London. It was another realization, that our Christmases still revolve around the books we give each other, that came from that sad death notice and provoked this post about our own holiday choices, now still being ordered today.

    One of the Frances books we bought was Image from AmazonA Baby Sister for Frances , which came in handy when baby sisters arrived in our house, but it was no more popular than Bedtime for Frances, A Birthday for Frances and Bread and Jam for Frances. There are seven books in the series, all but one illustrated by his late first wife Lillian; the first was done by the equally famous Garth Williams.

    The most treasured present  for any occasion in our family is a book. Immediately, the recipient opens it and usually has difficulty going to another gift, so captured by the world that is opening in their hands. This year we’re giving a ‘threads’ version of Image from Amazon
    Emma: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Jane Austen both to ourselves and granddaughters.

    This Penguin reissue is called the ‘threads’ edition as it’s sketched out in a traditional illustrative manner, then hand stitched using needle and thread. The final covers are sculpt embossed textured. We also bought the Black Beauty and Secret Garden books done in the same fashion with cover art by Jillian Tamaki. Although very grateful to our daughter for giving us a Nook for our birthday, the presentation of these classics were just irresistible.

    So was the pop-up version of Image from Amazon The Little Prince Deluxe Pop-Up Book by Antoine de Saint-Exupery and two copies this year’s Wonder Struck by Brian Selznick  … one for grandchildren and one for ourselves signed by the author. We have a number of bookshelves in our playroom that we hold aside for books that we haven’t given directly to a grandchild so they can remember enjoying them in our house, in that room.

    The New York Times’ review of Wonder Struck, A Deaf Boy’s New York Quest, referred to the book (which it named one of the ten best children’s books of 2011) as “engrossing, intelligent, beautifully engineered and expertly told both in word and image.”

    And yes, we’re getting a couple of DVDs for the holidays. One as a gift from a daughter, The Cazalets (the series we’ve mentioned before on these posts) and Middlemarch, the George Eliot Masterpiece Theater series from the book (which we’re thinking of re-reading, too).

    We’d also recommend The Buccaneers (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) and the Image from Amazon
    Masterpiece Theater version of The Buccaneers.

  • “Women Were In It From the Beginning”

    Reviewed by Jo FreemanImage from Amazon
    Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC

    by Faith S. Holsaert, Martha Prescod Norman Noonan, Judy Richardson, Betty Garman Robinson, Jean Smith Young and Dorothy M. Zellner
    Published by Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010, 616 pp

    Of all the Sixties civil rights organizations, the Student Non-Violent Co-ordinating Committee was the one which most inspired young people all over the country. SNCC — pronounced snick — grew out of the sit-ins that started in Greensboro, North Carolina, on February 1, 1960, and rapidly spread throughout the South to protest race discrimination.

    Women were in it from the beginning. Ella Baker, an experienced activist in her fifties, had had a heavy taste of male chauvinism in her three years with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. When she invited the student protestors to come together at her alma mater, Shaw University, in April, to co-ordinate their actions, she did not want them to follow the same path.

    During the next few years SNCC expanded from protesting segregation to organizing communities. Staff went farm to farm and door to door persuading some of the most oppressed people in the US that the time had come to throw off their shackles. For this they were beaten, jailed, and sometimes killed. The risks they took created a camaraderie which has remained to this day.

    In this book 52 women who worked in SNCC in the 1960s tell their stories. They come from many walks of life: black and white, North and South, farm and city. They organized in the field and worked in the office. They demonstrated in the streets and went to jail. Some came and went, some stayed for years. Their stories flesh out a civil rights history which has emphasized the heroics of men.

    Those who contributed to this book chose what to write about. The editors organized their recollections into ten sections, each with a preface. Geography and chronology roughly structure the book, but only roughly.

    While the common theme is that all the authors are women, this is not a book about women. We don’t learn much about women as a group and only a little about them compared to men — not even the ratio of males to females, or the gender dimensions of work. There is no discussion of “the role of women in SNCC” or any attempt at feminist analysis. It is, as the subtitle says, accounts by women in SNCC.

    Nonetheless, there are enough paragraphs on women to fill about six of the 616 pages.

    Women were a major presence in the local communities in which SNCC worked. One of them, Victoria Gray Adams of Hattiesburg,* Mississippi, wrote that “Women were out front as a survival tactic. Men could not function in high-visibility, high-profile roles where we come from, because they would be plucked off …. The white folks didn’t see the women as that much of a threat …. They didn’t know the power of women, especially black women.”

    Annie Pearl Avery of Birmingham,**Alabama, writes:  “In the South, black women were more able to exercise their rightful privileges than black men. On SNCC projects there was sexism toward women, because this was a way of life for all women. Sometimes I felt limited because we weren’t allowed to drive the cars…. The male chauvinism was there, but I don’t think it was intentional. It wasn’t as dominant in SNCC as it was in SCLC, which Miss Baker told us about.”

    ___________________

    * The current Mayor of Hattiesburg is Johnny Dupree, an African-American who was also the Democratic Party nominee for Governor of Mississippi last fall. He received 39 percent of the vote. A prior poll showed that there was a 3 percent gender gap, with women favoring Dupree. Blacks favored Dupree by a ratio of four to one.

    ** Birmingham has only had black mayors since 1979. All were male except for Carole Smitherman who was Acting Mayor for two months in 2009.