We can all agree that Black Friday is an unequivocal evil, right? Many of us spent a significant portion of the day yesterday chuckling at the Day of the Locusts-like stampede of porcine consumers doing flatscreen-judo on the killing floors of Walmarts throughout the country, all the while decrying mindless consumerism even as we echoed the mindless reactionary talking points on our corporate overlord Facebook. Go back and look in your social feeds for evidence of the pontificating outrage. Other, more stridently-political among us stumped for Buy Nothing Day.

On Saturday day the rhetoric shifted focus to a different, albeit still consuming-based, holiday: Small Business Saturday, or come in the frequent reminders about the Shift Your Shopping campaign.

The conceit behind these efforts is that by spending our money at locally-owned businesses we reinvest in our community, keeping our money circulating among our friends and neighbors. This is such an entrenched idea among progressives like myself that it's become universally accepted as dogma. Buy local! Support your community! Wave hello to the milk man on your way to your job at the friendly local factory! Never mind that Small Business Saturday was founded by a little mom and pop shop called American Express; it's still possible for corporations to occasionally bungle their way into good even if their motives are profit-based, right?

There's a disconnect between the types of people who are so vocally supportive of these local-movements, and our traditional approach to the idea of community. I'm frequently espousing the merits of drinking locally in my writing on the subject, saying support brewers and distillers located in Massachusetts; many of us do the same when it comes to our food choices. There's both an argument for quality, health, and an overall carbon footprint to be made there, as well as one of regional pride. I was just drinking a locally made whiskey with the phrase Made In Boston stamped across it's label last night, and I was proud of that for some reason. This is from where I live! Look at me go, getting drunk on the fruits of my specific geography. I'm some sort of hero, right?

But where is the line between local business advocate and provincial rube drawn? I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that most of us who engage in politically-motivated local-consumer practices also happen to hold a conflicting, perhaps hypocritical set of beliefs that shuns the type of people for whom "local=good/outsiders=bad." Why is it OK to shop locally under the veneer of political philosophy, but not out of regular old necessity?

Is there anything more shameful than a fervent pride in the square acreage of land where you happened to be born? Civic pride leads to state pride leads to nationalism. To be a townie is anathema to the type of people in my socio-economic class. It means uneducated with no sense of curiosity about the world, and being generally suspicious of outsiders. Think about the people you know from your own home towns who draw deepest from the well of hometown pride for their sense of self -- small-minded losers, right?

So what's the difference between Buy Local campaigns and jingoism? Why should I be in favor of supporting businesses who produce in Massachusetts, but then scoff at an older generation who looks with xenophobic scorn at products, and people for that matter, from other countries? OK, you might say, it's a pretty big matter of geographic scale, but where exactly do we draw the line then? Exactly how many geographical square miles am I actually allowed to "support" here before I start becoming an "America love it or leave it" type?

And isn't this refocus on the local community something very akin to what conservatives are talking about when they say they want America to "go back to how it used to be"? How about the traditional conservative tent pole of "states rights," where does that come in here? Think of the type of Uncle Sam-iconography often used to argue for Buy Local campaigns. Does buying local actually make me a Republican now? Uh oh.

It's all part of a disconnect between the politics of stridently pro-labor liberals like myself and our distaste for actual, you know, working people. For liberals and young people, supporting local businesses is often couched in a sort of proletariat irony -- Defend Allston, or Keep Austin Weird T-shirts and the like -- it's playacting at a simulacrum of nostalgia misremembered from our youth. When we say we want to have a bounty of local businesses to choose from in the places we live, it's because we treat our environment like a curated museum of funky consumer options that lend credence to our highly-tailored personal brands. Frequenting your locally-sourced, farm-to-table vegan coffee shop is as much an effort in identity politics as it is politics as such. When the working class talk about keeping their communities from changing it's because they want a place to actually, you know, work. Also because they're so often racist, but that's a whole other thing.

That's where the attendant conservative hypocrisy comes into the equation. The disconnect between the working class Republican voter has been well-documented, continually voting against their own economic interests, and regarding any effort to keep corporate influence in check as "socialism," but this is an area on which both progressives and the blue collar classes have a very specific common goal, it's just one that we aren't able to find common ground on because of the framing of the argument. For both sides keeping money and businesses locally is a shared good, but as in so many other overlapping, yet somehow conflicting arguments, we won't admit that we actually agree unless the path to getting there has been tailored to our own sense of self. Perhaps that's because we're all such staunch supporters of the hyper-locally-based factory of the most abundant product in existence: our own individual pride.

NBC News stopped Chelsea Clinton from appearing in an ad supporting same-sex marriage during the 2012 campaign, BuzzFeed reported on Thursday.

In August, Clinton told Vogue magazine that she is ready to embrace the more political aspects of her life, but her status as a "special correspondent" for NBC News appears to be getting in the way. Clinton has been on the NBC payroll since November 2011, working as a special correspondent. Though she has filed very few reports for the network, NBC has reportedly prevented her from making a series of political moves during the past year. In October, the New York Post claimed that Clinton had been virtually absent from the 2012 campaign trail because of her NBC job.

BuzzFeed wrote that Clinton had cut a series of web videos in support of a marriage equality referendum in Washington state, but that NBC "scuttled" the ads.

Read the full report here.

The House results on Election Day 2012 were the only bad things that happened in what was otherwise obviously a pretty great day for Democrats and progressives. The biggest question for 2014 is whether we can find a way of turning that result around. Part of the answer, of course, is dependent on how the economy is doing. If the pessimists are right and things are not looking good, we will lose seats not gain them. But even if the economy is okay, do we have a chance at being the House majority after the 2014 elections?

As many Democratic activists have pointed out, we actually won the overall votes in House races by the same 2% plus margin that Obama did, so re-districting dominated by Republican gerrymandering clearly played a big role in them holding on to the House. Democrats, though, are making a big mistake in attributing our failure solely to gerrymandering and essentially giving up on retaking the House the rest of this decade as many pundits are suggesting. I remember the same points being made after the 2002 and 2004 failures to retake the House, and in 2006 and 2008 we not only retook the House but added considerably to the margin in 2008.

The pundits will be predicting doom and gloom for sure. Not only did we fail to win the House back in a good Democratic year, they will remind us, but in the 6th year of a Presidency the president's party almost always loses seats. But historical trends never would have predicted a lot of things we have seen in politics over the last couple of decades (an African immigrant's son with a Muslim name being elected President for one, and then being re-elected in spite of a bad economy for another), and I've been in the middle of a couple big surprises in terms of the House over the years that are worth recalling here because of the lessons they teach.

The first of these was in 1998. It was the 6th year of the Clinton Presidency, and as every pundit under the sun kept reminding us, no President's party in its 6th year had picked up seats since 1822 (when there was no opposition party). Added to that little historical trend was this wee little thing known as the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Virtually all of the pundits, all the Republicans, and most Democrats were predicting a shellacking for the Democrats- a loss of 30 seats in the House was the average prediction. The DCCC was advising candidates to do anything in their power to change the subject from Lewinsky but an obsessive media and weekly revelations about things like semen-stained dresses made that impossible. But there was a group of us who had a different idea about how to reframe the election: rather than trying to change the subject, lean into the problem and reframe it. I was working at People For the American Way at the time, a group devoted to, as Norman Lear has always put it, being a PR firm for the constitution. We were disgusted with the idea of impeaching a President over having and trying to cover up an affair, and couldn't believe this was all the Republicans and the media wanted to talk about. In talking to my old colleagues from the '92 Clinton campaign Stan Greenberg and James Carville, they confirmed that their poling showed the same thing we were feeling: voters were tired of all this obsession with a sex scandal, and didn't get why you would impeach the President over such a thing. We came up with an ad campaign based on the theme that "it was time to move on". Meanwhile, literally the same week as we launched our ad campaign, out on the West coast, Wes Boyd and his wife Joan Blades, a couple who had never been involved in politics before, had the same idea, and started an internet petition about it being time to "move on" that caught on like wildfire, picking up 500,000 signatures in a matter of a few days by being spread from person to person. Nothing like that had ever happened before in politics and it was a big deal. Wes and Joan's petition and our ad campaign fed off each other, causing a huge stir in the media, and soon we had joined forces and were organizing hundreds of meetings with members of Congress, and were putting ads up in 9 of the most critical media markets in the country.

On election day, we shocked the pants off the punditry and the conventional wisdom DC establishment. Instead of losing 30 or more seats, Democrats picked up 5. We won the big targeted races in 8 of the 9 media markets PFAW and MoveOn targeted.

In 2006, it was another year where initially the pundits and DC establishment were very pessimistic about Democratic chances, saying Democrats had no chances of taking the House back. Redistricting had made it just too tough, they said, and we would be way outspent. A top operative at the DCCC called me very upset early in the cycle because I had written a memo to donors and allied groups saying that I thought we had a decent chance at winning the House, telling me not to get people's hopes up, that there was almost no chance of victory. But again, the pundits and our own party establishment got surprised.

Rahm Emanuel's DCCC did some great work, raising an impressive amount of money, pounding away at Bush and the Republicans every day in the message wars, and deploying a great team of operatives who helped targeted campaigns in all kinds of ways. Rahm and his team deserve a lot of credit for the Democratic victory in taking back the House that year. But the broader progressive community charted their own course on strategy in House races in a couple of key ways, and without them doing that there would have been no Democratic takeover that year.

The first was on the issues. Having had tough years the past couple of cycles, Democrats started out the 2006 election cycle being very cautious on the issues. Bush's first priority was Social Security privatization, and there was a lot of talk initially among Blue Dog Democrats about working with Bush on some kind of compromise bill. When the Terri Schiavo issue popped up, many Democrats initially were going along with the Republican demands to keep her on life support against her husband's wishes. And on the Iraq war, Rahm was recruiting trying to recruit pro-war candidates thinking that was going to be the better politics in the 2006 elections. In every one of these cases, the progressive community pushed back and demanded strong stands for progressive policies, and in each case, it turned out that the politics ended up showing the progressive community was 100% right, as taking a strong stand against Social Security privatization, against keeping Schiavo on life support against her husband's wishes, and against the Iraq war all turned out to be great for the Democratic. These 3 issues, combined with a slowing economy and Hurricane Katrina, combined to create a wave election that swept Democrats in the House, Senate, and Governor's seats into power.

The other key thing that progressives did was help expand the map. There are two philosophies re how to engage in a venture as big as trying to win back control of the House. The first is the traditional philosophy of the DCCC, one that had been their way of operating for the previous 4 cycles: target the districts which had been the closest in the previous cycle, but keep the targeting pretty narrow and engage in hand-to-hand combat in the districts where everything seems to be coming together in terms of a good candidate, a good campaign manager, and strong fundraising. Any race that doesn't fit the formula in the DCCC's eyes tended to get left by the side of the road to fend for sink or swim, with the vast majority of them sinking. You can see it in the numbers where this strategy had reached its peak, in the years between 1998 and 2004: the number of competitive races (defined as races where the winner got less than 55% of the vote) was 50 in 1998, 58 in 2000, 46 in 2002, and only 34 in 2004. When there are only 40 competitive seats, even if you win 60% of them you're only winning 8 more of them than the Republicans, and through those heavy trench warfare years, we generally weren't winning 60% of the close ones.

Early in the 2006 cycle, a group of progressive donors, groups, bloggers, and strategists was looking at these kinds of trends from the previous several cycles, and the lack of success at taking back the House with that kind of strategy, and we felt like we needed to inject something new into the mix. To give ourselves a better shot at winning the House, we decided we needed to expand the list of competitive races. The goal was to double it, from 34 in 2004 to 70 in 2006. A wave of new candidates got recruited to run; bloggers and MoveOn did early fundraising for House candidates at record levels; progressive donors funded special projects to do different kinds of messaging projects in a wider range of districts around the country. And all the while, we all kept pounding away at the big issues- the Iraq war, Social Security, the Terri Schiavo incident, Katrina, the economy running out of gas, a Republican congress rank with corruption- with the goal of turning the election into a wave election against the Republicans. In the end, there were exactly 70 House races where the winner had less than 55%, with the Republicans forced to play defense, spending time and money in places like Wyoming, Idaho, Nebraska, and Kansas while we won the key races in the purple districts we needed to win. The wave had built so much that we picked up 31 seats, more than double what we need to make Nancy Pelosi Speaker.

So why did we lose the House in 2012 given all the success Democrats had this year, and what are the lessons we can learn from these past elections where innovative Democrats and progressives came together to craft a winning strategy? I looked at the numbers, and was pleasantly surprised to see the competitive race number was 66, in the same range as those bigger target years of 2006 (70) and 2008 (64), because I had guessed that the DCCC had gone back to a grind it out, narrow targeting strategy, and based on that number it doesn't look like they did. One caveat, though: after the last big Republican wave election, there were 90 races that were competitive, meaning Democrats made a serious run in that Clinton re-election year at trying to win a lot of those seats back. The smaller number this time probably has more to do with re-districting than with anything else, but I'm guessing that with limited resources, the DCCC did make a strategic decision to narrow their targeting somewhat.

I was also glad to see the win percentage in the closest races was on the positive side, especially given the huge money edge the Republicans had in House races. Of those 66 most competitive races, Democrats won 35- and of the 20 closest races, the Dems won a very impressive 70%. Kudos to the DCCC and the House Majority PAC for those numbers, it is impressive.

In some ways, though, these numbers are less than comforting: if we had lost most of the close races, or made the mistake of targeting too narrowly, the strategic path to winning a House majority back would be easier to create. To pick up 17 seats given what we have to work with is going to need big thinking, a big strategy. And it will take real resources. Let's face it: one of the biggest reasons we lost the House is that most of the groups, bloggers, money, and talent in the Democratic party and progressive movement was focused elsewhere, on keeping Romney and Republicans in the Senate from running the table and taking over every branch of government. Most people and groups had given up on winning the House months ago and were spending their time, money, and brainpower on the Presidential race and those marquee Senate races like Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Sherrod Brown. We need to create a Manhattan project for retaking the House with the best thinkers, biggest groups, and most influential donors in the party involved.

We also need to stay focused on winning the big picture values debate the way we won it in this election. This election needs to be focused on building a drumbeat as to why House Republicans are so out of touch with basic American values, with everyone on the progressive and Democratic side carrying that message. We need to elevate the battle over the House, make it a case study of the values debate the entire country is having. And by the way, that will help us in Senate and Governor races, too: the most potent weapon Democrats had in the 1990s at all levels of elections was running against Newt Gingrich and the Republican House of that era. In 1996, we won the re-election campaign far more by running against Gingrich than by running against Dole, who was a nice fellow that most people liked. We tied Dole to Gingrich, and made our campaign about opposing the GINGRICH-dole agenda. (The only reason we didn't get the House back that year was the last minute campaign finance scandal- before that broke we were clearly on a trajectory to retake the House.)

Finally, we are going to need Team Obama to get involved in a major way. One of the few things I am critical about with the Obama campaign this time around was that they utterly ignored the House. Especially with Ryan on the ticket, they had a chance to run against not only Romney but against the tea party crazies controlling the House, which is the most unpopular brand in American politics. Had they done that, we might have been able to pick up a bunch more House seats. Obama needs to suit up and get into the game in House races this time around, raising money, using his vaunted field operation. I would think that after 4 years of dealing with this group of dangerous extremists, Obama would be, as he likes to say, fired up and ready to go. If Team Obama is involved from start to finish, the potential for turning out more Obama voters goes way up as well, and we all know how important the demographics of the electorate is to elections.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, gerrymandering did not end Democratic chances to take back the House. It will not be easy in any way; it will take a huge effort and a big strategic vision for how to pull it off; Obama will have to commit fully to the battle. But absent a bad economy (a variable we just can't know for a while), we can do this if we as a party and progressive movement commit to it.

To President Obama:

The millions of Americans who voted for you will likely sit down on Thursday and give thanks that you will be our nation's leader for the next four years. Our thanks will be added to you and your family's thanks for the same thing, I assume. We all sincerely hope you and your loved ones have a very happy Thanksgiving this year.

You will enter your second term as president with a full four years of on-the-job experience, and this too should be something America can be thankful for. If, that is, you have learned some of the lessons from your first term and make a sincere effort to change what needs to be changed in your second.

There are hopeful signs that this may indeed already be happening. The biggest lesson you should have learned from your dealings with Congress over the past four years is to not start negotiating from your compromise position. This is "Negotiation 101" -- any Union leader in the country knows this basic rule for how the negotiating game is played. If you want a trillion dollars, start by asking for three trillion dollars. Allow the other side to "talk you down" to one trillion dollars. That way you not only get what you want, you allow the other side to "save face" and claim they've gotten the better of you in the deal (since they can claim to their followers "we got Obama to cave on two trillion dollars that he wanted!"). This is basic, basic stuff but it was also the source of real weakness in your first term.

Democrats (and most Americans) know that politics requires compromise to get much of anything done -- even in normal times. So while the vocal Left will decry your compromises at times, deep down they know that even incremental progress towards a goal is much better than anything they could have expected out of President (shudder) Romney.

But also, at times, you need to stand firm. Draw a few lines in the sand. Refuse to give in. Not every time, of course, but if you pick your battles and choose issues that the American public is overwhelmingly on your side, you can win these battles even against recalcitrant Republicans. And even if you lose, they'll wind up paying the political price for obstructing you.

The first of these fights will be over ending the Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000. Republicans are going to fight tooth and nail for "closing loopholes" rather than raising the tax rates. This should be your first line in the sand. The American people elected you to raise rates -- you certainly campaigned on it clearly enough. Over sixty percent of the public stands behind you on this issue, and some polls put support for raising rates as high as three-fourths of all Americans. You've already issued a veto threat, so now all you need to do is stand firm. Either the House Republicans can go along with this, or you can just force the issue by vetoing any bill which falls short. But don't back down, or else it will never again be possible for Democrats to raise any taxes for any reason, for the rest of your term. If you back down, you will have done the equivalent of agreeing to Grover Norquist's pledge. This would be a weak way to start your second term indeed.

If Republicans dig in their heels, then use the bully pulpit. One of your biggest weaknesses during the first half of your first term was your inexplicable refusal to do what Ronald Reagan used to call "going over the heads" of those in Washington and the media, and "speaking directly to the American people." You can do this, too. To great effect. Getting the public firmly behind you is crucial to getting Congress to do much of anything.

In your first term, you dropped the ball on using your online bully pulpit as well. The impressive legion of supporters you had built up for your campaign never heard a call to arms (or to the phones, more accurately) on any important issue, after you were elected. Instead, your email list gathered cobwebs, before you dusted it off again in 2012 to gin up campaign contributions. Don't make this mistake again. Again, there are signs that you plan to ask your online supporters for feedback, but even these signs are a bit disturbing, such as requiring day, month, and year of birth to even complete the survey. This isn't exactly "anonymous" feedback, and anyone even slightly concerned with the use of personal data online will not even make it past the first screen. Do you really want our feedback, or are you just data mining your supporters? Please send a clearer message in the future.

Which brings up one other tiny point. When dealing with the vocal Left, please don't allow Rahm Emanuel within 500 miles of the White House. Repeatedly (and graphically) insulting what should have been your strongest supporters was just politically stupid (note: I refuse to use the same term Rahm used about the Left, no matter how appropriate it would be right here).

Finally, allow me to close with a broad suggestion. When you and Congress have a contentious issue that absolutely must be resolved, please show some leadership. Again, you've been doing a much better job of this since your first few years, but it will be crucial with Republicans being able to block legislation in both houses. Don't allow some obscure Senate committee to yammer for months on end over an issue, because you and I both know what the outcome will be -- absolutely nothing, other than a lot of hot air released into the Washington atmosphere.

If you have to compromise, then compromise. If you have to twist arms, then twist arms. But, either way, don't just sit on the sidelines and assume Congress will get it done. They won't. Harry Reid just isn't strong enough (and doesn't have enough leverage) to get it done on his own. The White House has to take the reins -- early -- and drive the negotiating process. This doesn't mean you'll win on every issue, and it certainly doesn't mean we expect you to get everything you want while blocking every Republican idea, but you have to be seen as leading the talks on how to solve problems, even if you fail. The American public will give you a lot more credit if you fail -- but fought as hard as you could to reach an agreement -- than they will if you don't even try.

I don't mean to sound too harsh, Mister President. As I said, there are millions of Americans who are going to start off their Thanksgiving statements with "I am thankful Barack Obama will be our president for four more years..." this Thursday. Because we are looking forward (and, yes, we even have lots of hope) that in the coming years we can sit down and begin with "I am thankful Barack Obama was our president this year because he accomplished the following..." before we feast on turkey with all the trimmings.

Happy Thanksgiving To All!

 

Chris Weigant blogs at:

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant
Become a fan of Chris on The Huffington Post

 

Macy's is sponsoring a big holiday-season event in which empty but glittery baubles are filled with hot air and sent heavenward, then dragged through the streets before cheering and unthinking crowds. You can't miss it: Breathless reporters will devote massive amounts of air and print time to this trivial and meaningless Macy's spectacle.

They sponsor a parade too.

TheThanksgiving Day Parade has been taking place for 86 years and is generally considered a harmless and fun (if increasingly materialistic) way to publicize the store. But this year Macy's is putting its corporate resources behind another overhyped and over-reported spectacle - one that's not harmless at all. Under the leadership of Macy's CEO Terry J. Lundgren, the retail chain is participating in a cynical and self-interest "Fix the Deficit" campaign promoted by Lundgren and roughly 80 of his fellow CEOs.

The proclamations of these self-interested and under-informed parties has received even more coverage than the \parade, despite having less content than a pumpep-up balloon. But a statement signed by 350 economists - experts in the field who, unlike these CEOs, have little personal stake in the outcome -- has received very little coverage.

These economists understand that the deficit must be addressed at some point, but they unanimously agree that our highest priority today is investment in job creation and economic growth. They know that the best long-term cure for deficits is a growing economy. But that's not in the interests of the self-serving signatories of that CEO letter, a group which includes some highly-paid executives who wouldn't be CEOs of anything if the American taxpayers hadn't bailed them out.

Among them is Bank of America's Brian Moynihan, whose fraud-riddled and grossly mismanaged megabank wouldn't exist - and therefore wouldn't be able to overpay him - if not for a combination of massive Federal bailouts, an indulgent Justice Department, and massive giveaways from the Federal Reserve.

And speaking of the Federal Reserve - that's the institution designed to serve the public, not the bankers, and yet has richly served the latter while ignoring the rampant unemployment that is half its mandate. That mismanagement is due in large part to a Board of Directors that's heavily weighted toward the same bankers it so generously rescued, along with big-corporation CEOs like ... well, like Terry Lundgren of Macy's, who's been on the Federal Reserve Board since September of 2011.

The Macy's Corporation may soon be remembered more for the political machinations of its CEO than for the wholesome fun of its parades.

The CEOs' "fix the deficit" campaign is designed to build support for cuts to Social Security and Medicare, along with other destructive reductions to vital government programs. That paves the way for even lower taxes for these CEOs and their mega-corporations. But, as Robert Kuttner notes, if you "fix the debt" you will "destroy the recovery" -- a recovery which has yet to reach more than 20 million under- or unemployed Americans, and which has yet to improve the lives of a middle class battered by stagnant wages, underwater mortgages, and increasingly bleak futures for themselves and their children.

And yet the recommendations of those 350 economists continue to go ignored, while the selfish prescriptions of CEOs like Lundgren get more press coverage that an inflated Spiderman doll on Fifth Avenue. (For a good breakdown of this absurd missive, see Felix Salmon: "CEOs self-serving deficit manifesto." Campaign for America's Future has a facts page about it. And Americans for Tax Fairness addresses selfishness factor in detail.)

Not to be unkind about it, but who cares what these CEOs think about our fiscal situation, anyway? It doesn't take economic know-how to become the top dog at a mega-corporation. Sure, it takes ability. Some, like Lundgren, are sales-driven go-getters. Others are like Bank of America's Moynihan, who previously served as the bank's top attorney while negotiating the bank's massive crime spree into a series of shamefully cushy settlement deals. Those deals addressed misdeeds which the bank continued to commit, and were paid for by often-deceived investors rather than by the perps themselves.

That's a talent, all right -- but it's not one that qualifies you to weigh in on the nation's problems.

These CEOs aren't altruistic, either. Take Macy's: Miriam Krule and Noam Prywes point out that the Macy's Parade squanders massive amounts of helium (not hot air), and that helium is an important substance whose world supply is expected to be used up in the next forty years or so.

Thanks for ruining a little holiday fun, Miriam and Noam. But we need to know these things - among other things, to be reminded how little the nation's big-corporate CEOs care about protecting the planet. Their creation, the US Chamber of Commerce, is dedicated to despoiling it so they can continue their unimpeded pursuit of short-term profits.

And now, just in time for Thanksgiving, America's top CEOs are offering a Hansel-and-Gretel economic menu that would help them stuff their turkeys with even more cash - and featuring you and your future as a side dish. They're fattening us up with economic proclamations that have about as much gravitas as the squeaky voice of somebody breathing helium.

If we fall for it, we're the turkeys.

Sure, these CEOs influence the economy - by their executive decisions, and, increasingly, by perverting the political process with campaign cash. Some of them created the very damage we're trying to recover from today. But that doesn't make them economic experts, any more than being a professional wrestler makes you an expert in orthopedic surgery.

And yet the real experts are being ignored while the WFF wrestlers of our national economy receive massive media coverage. Why? That goes back to Mr. Lundgren's real area of expertise: salesmanship. That, along with tens of millions of dollars, will buy you all the coverage you want.

This is a good time to watch the television coverage of that parade and ask yourself which is filled with more hot air - excuse me, helium: the balloons in that parade, or Mr. Lundgren's self-serving manifesto and those who inflated it until it soared into the holiday skies.

US attorney general Eric Holder has denied feeling "completely screwed" by Theresa May after she blocked the extradition of computer hacker Gary McKinnon last month.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Holder said his relationship with the home secretary "is and remains strong" despite her decision to halt McKinnon's extradition in October.

Asked whether he felt "completely screwed" by the decision he said: "No, not at all.

"We were certainly disappointed by the decision, given the fact that prior home secretaries and judges here in the UK had made the determination that he could be extradited.

Gary McKinnon has Asperger's syndrome

"But the relationship we have with the UK is a special one and the relationship I have with Theresa May is indeed a good one."

McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome, had been accused by US prosecutors of "the biggest military computer hack of all time", but he claimed he was simply looking for evidence of UFOs.

Holder also said the extradition treaty between Britain and America, which many campaigners describe as unbalanced, was "fair."

Theresa May blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon last month on health grounds

"If you look at the relationship in its totality and in a fact-based way, I think you can see the extradition relationship is indeed a balanced one, the appropriate standards are used by both nations, and that we work together in extradition as we do in other areas to foster our common needs," he said.

"We work together with our British counterparts in trying to determine where cases can best be tried. If one also looks at these statistics, you’ll see that there have been 11 times when the UK has refused to send somebody to the United States, one time when the United States has refused to send someone to the UK.

Eric Holder said that the US-UK treaty was 'fair'

"Again, you can focus too much on particular cases and draw too much from some statistical information when, I want to assure the population in this great nation that the relationship is indeed a balance and its one we are constantly working on to make better.

The UK's extradition laws are set to be changed to include a ‘forum bar’, which would mean a court hearing has to be held to decide whether a person should stand trial in the UK or abroad.

Conservative MP Dominic Raab, who sits on the committee, told The Huffington Post UK last month the forum bar would "help to depoliticise these cases and remove a thorn in the side of the special relationship.”

WASHINGTON -- Republican losses in the 2012 elections were not a progressive leap for America or a repudiation of conservatives and the Tea Party -- it was just proof the right ran bad candidates, according to two Republican senators with ties to some of races where their side fell short.

The most remarkable losses were in Indiana and Missouri, where the GOP had been looking at near-certain wins until their right-leaning standard bearers both took controversial positions on abortion. Missouri Rep. Todd Akin declared women don't get pregnant from "legitimate rape." Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock proclaimed that pregnancy from rape is "something God intended to happen."

Republicans also fell short in other states that had looked like reliable pick-ups for them back at the start of the election cycle, losing races to Democrats in North Dakota, Montana and Wisconsin.

Many analysts, especially those leaning Democratic, declared the country was moving left, especially with the passage of same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization initiatives in some states.

But asked what message the GOP should take from their losses, Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Dan Coats (R-Ind.), argued that the Democrats didn't win on the issues, but rather individual candidates had failed Republicans.

"I think we were a unique situation in which our candidate twice said things that he either didn't intend to say or were very well used by the opposition," Coats said, referring to Mourdock, who -- before weighing in on on rape -- had argued against bipartisanship soon after he trounced long-time Sen. Richard Lugar in the GOP primary.

Mourdock "alienated himself with some supporters of Sen. Lugar," Coats said. "Then there was a statement toward the end that dramatically changed the outcome of the race. I think those two together. But I think that's a unique situation that happened in Indiana."

DeMint, whose PAC, Senate Conservatives Fund, backed both Akin and Mourdock, echoed Coats, saying both failed Senate candidates blew their talking points and allowed the media to portray them as extremists.

"We've got to be disciplined as candidates and talk about federal issues in terms of policy," said DeMint, whose goal is to make his party's contingent in the Senate more conservative.

"When we can get baited by reporters to talk about something that's a personal opinion, it really is not something we'd be debating at the federal level. We haven't even decided at the federal level the personhood issue of the child," DeMint said, referring to efforts in many states to confer full constitutional rights on fetuses. "To go from there to exceptions to rape is just not something we need to be discussing. It's basically opinion."

DeMint saw evidence for his view in the Senate wins of Rep. Jeff Flake in Arizona and Ted Cruz in Texas, although only Flake faced a strong challenge from a Democrat. He also cited the losses of three other Republicans: Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, Rep. Rick Berg in North Dakota and Rep. Denny Rehberg in Montana.

"What I learned is the people who are still out running on bold ideas -- good candidates like Jeff Flake, Ted Cruz running on balancing the budget, repealing Obamacare, cutting spending; [Nebraska's] Deb Fischer did the same thing -- [those] conservatives won," said DeMint. "In the cases of Rehberg, Berg and Tommy Thompson -- having a moderate candidate does not win races for Republicans."

DeMint suggested what his side really needs to do is express itself better.

"We had problems nationwide as Republicans, I think," he said. "We have not communicated in a positive way a vision of where we're taking the country. I think that many thought that Republicans just needed to stand on the sidelines and make Obama the issue. But people need to know what we stand for, what we're going to do, and I don't think we did a good enough job telling people that."

When 2014 rolls around -- another year in which Republicans would seem to have the edge with just 13 senators up for reelection, compared to 20 Democrats -- they have to speak more carefully as well, DeMint said.

"We know the other side talks in sanitized soundbites for a reason, and they don't offer any plans for a reason. If you don't say anything you can't get criticized," DeMint said. "Republicans -- I think it's a good characteristic -- want to explain where they are, but any little soundbite can be used against you. Mourdock was simply trying to say every child is important to God, but the way he said it allowed folks to pound on him."

Democrats certainly disagreed that the election's outcome was an argument for running to the right. But so did Lugar, who fired off a blistering statement after his loss, saying Mourdock's "embrace of an unrelenting partisan mindset is irreconcilable with my philosophy of governance."

Lugar had no doubts his party should be paying better attention.

"I believe there is a message there," Lugar told HuffPost. He declined to elaborate, but pointed to his stinging concession statement and its denunciation of extreme partisanship.

"I still believe what I had to say," Lugar said.

His fellow Republicans don't see it that way, casting the remarks that brought down Akin and Mourdock as essentially irrelevant.

"I think it's just a matter of focus and discipline and letting people know what it is we're planning to do and not [being] carried off in all these other tangent issues" said DeMint. "That's just a gotcha game, and Republicans have to got to be better at not falling for it."

Michael McAuliff covers Congress and politics for The Huffington Post. Talk to him on Facebook.

The Democrats won a major victory on Election Day.

Despite dozens of billionaires spending huge amounts of money to defeat President Barack Obama, he won a crushing victory in the Electoral College and received 3 million more votes than former Gov. Mitt Romney did nationally. Democrats won 25 of 33 seats contested in the Senate and, to everyone's surprise, expanded their majority there by two. They also gained seats in the House.

Now, with this victory behind them, the president and congressional Democrats must make it very clear that they will stand with the middle class and working families of our country. These are the people who, because of the Wall Street-caused recession, have seen a significant decline in their family income. These are the people who worry about whether they can afford health care and whether their kids will be able to attend college. The Democrats in the House and Senate must stand with these people -- not the millionaires and billionaires who are doing just fine.

Most important, in the coming weeks and months, the Democrats must demand that deficit reduction is done in a way that is fair -- and not on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. At a time when real unemployment remains close to 15 percent, we must also focus on creating the millions of jobs that our people need.

In America today, we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country on Earth. Incredibly, the top 1 percent owns 42 percent of the nation's wealth while the bottom 60 percent owns just 2.3 percent. In the last study done on income distribution, we learned that 93 percent of all new income generated between 2009 and 2010 went to the top 1 percent while the bottom 99 percent split the remaining 7 percent. This extraordinary unfairness is not only morally reprehensible, it is bad economics. It will be very difficult to create the jobs that our people need when so many Americans have little or no money to spend.

Congress must pass legislation to create a major jobs program to put millions of people back to work rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure. Throughout our country, we need a massive effort to improve our roads, bridges, water and wastewater systems, airports, rail, broadband and cellphone service. Rebuilding our infrastructure makes us more productive and internationally competitive -- and creates millions of new jobs.

In terms of deficit reduction, let us not forget that in 2001, when Bill Clinton left office, this country had a $236 billion surplus. As a result of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were unpaid for, huge tax breaks for the rich, a Medicare prescription drug program put on the credit card and a significant decline in federal revenues because of the recession, we now have a $1 trillion deficit and a $16 trillion national debt.

Congress must address the deficit situation and the fiscal cliff, but we must do it in a way that is fair. At a time when the wealthiest people in this country are doing extremely well and their effective tax rates are low (think Romney), the people on top must pay their fair share of taxes to help us deal with the deficit. We must also end the outrageous loopholes that allow one out of four large profitable corporations to pay nothing in federal corporate income taxes. Further, it is absurd that current tax policy allows the wealthy and large corporations to avoid paying over $100 billion a year in federal taxes because they stash their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere.

We must also take a hard look at wasteful spending in the Defense Department, where we now spend almost as much money as the rest of the world combined. Significant savings can be found at other federal agencies, too.

What we must not do, however, is move toward a balanced budget on the backs of the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor. Sadly, that is the approach that virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are advocating. As the founder of the Defending Social Security Caucus, I look forward to working with other members of Congress, the AFL-CIO, senior and disability groups and the vast majority of people in our country who want to prevent cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education and other programs vitally important to the working families of America.

In my view, if the Republicans continue to play an obstructionist role, the president should get out of the Oval Office and travel the country. If he does that, I believe that he will find that there is no state in the country, including those that are very red, where people believe that it makes sense to continue giving huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires while cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I have a strong feeling that when large numbers of constituents all across this country start calling and emailing their senators and members of Congress about this issue, the American people will win this fight.

The good news is that we are already beginning to see some Republicans make thoughtful comments showing they understand that elections have consequences. Bill Kristol, the conservative commentator and Weekly Standard editor, said Sunday that the Republican Party should accept new ideas, including the much criticized suggestion by Democrats that taxes be allowed to go up on the wealthy. "It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "It really won't, I don't think. I don't really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer."

Kristol is right. At a time when the gap between the very rich and everybody else is growing wider, common sense and justice require the people who are doing extremely well financially to help us in a significant way to reduce deficits.

Note: Do not read on if you have not yet seen Season 2, Episode 8 of Showtime's "Homeland," titled "I'll Fly Away."

This week's episode of "Homeland" takes its name from an old Christian spiritual called "I'll Fly Away."

Just a few more weary days and then,
I'll fly away;
To a land where joy shall never end,
I'll fly away

Are the writers signaling to us that Nicholas Brody's days are numbered? It doesn't seem possible that Showtime would give Damian Lewis the Sean Bean treatment -- not when he's doing such a bang-up job in those corny ads where everyone falls all over themselves in slow motion. But clearly, the countdown to Abu Nazir's big attack is under way. It's so close that Nazir himself is in town -- but now I'm getting ahead of myself.

Like it or not, we start this episode with sad guilty Dana, who is literally riding the "Blue Route." Is she visiting the daughter of the woman she and Finn plowed into during their momentary escape from the Secret Service? Nope, she's headed to see her backup Dad, Uncle Mike.

Meanwhile, Jess is panicking about Dana's absence -- and blaming Brody for not following through on his promise to bring their daughter up on felony charges the way any truly caring parent would. He says it's not his fault, the CIA made him do it, eliciting what might be Jess' best line of the season: "National security. You invoke that more than the fucking president!" (Not difficult: The president in this series doesn't seem to exist.) Her demand that Brody call the CIA and tell them to "back off" snaps something inside him. "I CAN'T, I CAN'T, I CAN'T!" he shouts in a moment that you can't help thinking will wind up being presented to Emmy voters next year.

Naturally, Carrie and Virgil are outside in the van listening to this charming domestic interlude and stressing out because Brody is running late for his latest powwow with terrorist glamour-puss Roya. Inevitably, she decides that the only way to salvage the situation is for her to risk exposing Brody's CIA connections to the entire neighborhood by barging in as soon as Jess leaves. She finds Brody curled up in a corner, his Marine-tough facade utterly shattered. "Everything's falling apart -- this is a nightmare," he tells Carrie.

"It's almost over" is her ominous reply.

And so Brody, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets, eyes darting in every direction, arrives late for his meeting with Roya and winds up telling her off. "Quitting is not an option," she informs him threateningly, but he doesn't care anymore. He's done. Realizing that her lover/asset is now in danger of either (a) Having his skin peeled off by Nazir's henchmen or (b) Being packed off to Gitmo by the CIA, Carrie springs into action. She has Virgil cut the tracking on Brody's phone and then runs out to intercept him for an impromptu reenactment of their sex-and-manipulation fest in "The Cabin."

This time, the setting is a no-tell motel rigged with CIA surveillance sensors. Brody confides in Carrie that he's never felt more alone: "I've finally done it. Burnt every bridge -- with Nazir, with the CIA, with my family. I'm more alone now than I was at the bottom of that hole in Iraq." He's relieved that, whatever else lies ahead, he won't have to lie anymore. He's been cracking under the pressure of playing the hero, playing the future vice president, playing the upstanding husband and father when he knows deep down that he is none of those things. But Carrie knows his secrets and still loves him. As that realization is sinking in, she shares her vision of their future, where they join forces to stop Nazir and that act of heroism erases the stain of everything that's come before. "You know how crazy everyone says you are?" Brody asks her. "You're crazier than that." Classic neg, Brody!

Next thing you know, they are humping away like jackrabbits as Quinn, Saul and the rest of the CIA's pervert squad listen in. Quinn wants to haul Brody in, but Saul urges him to give Carrie more time: "She's turning it around." Quinn, keeping up his streak of great comebacks, replies, "Is that someone turning something around or is that a Stage 5 Delusional Getting Laid?"

We all know how this works by now, of course: Carrie goes rogue, Quinn and Estes freak out, Saul buys her time and she winds up being proven right. The exact same thing happens again when Brody winds up driving with Roya out to some god-forsaken spot in the middle of nowhere. After promising Quinn to "stay the fuck back," Carrie insists on doing a ride-by, which reveals that Brody and Roya have been joined by the mystery terrorist who shot up the tailor's shop in Gettysburg. This time, Carrie wants to move in, but Quinn insists on waiting. They've got the targets surrounded -- the smart move is to wait and see what they do next. But no sooner has Saul noticed that the clearing would be a great place to land a helicopter than a chopper lands, scooping up Brody, Roya and their anonymous friend. "They're just gone!" Carrie shrieks, unable to bear the burden of being so irredeemably RIGHT all the time.

Meanwhile, Dana has been busy bonding with Uncle Mike, who is apparently the type of home chef who wears a kitchen towel over his scrupulously toned shoulder. Dana musters the courage to ask him about his relationship with Jess -- was it hard for him to step back when Brody emerged from his spider hole after all those years? "Yes, it was," he admits, but "there was no question in my mind about what was the right thing to do." Dana lets that sink in for a moment. "And you actually did it," she muses. Now she's more determined than ever to disturb the peace of that poor girl whose mother she killed.

Mike gives her a lift in his muscle car, which idles outside as Dana knocks on the door. Somehow, the girl immediately knows what this means: "It was you. I should have known." She then warns Dana not to say anything to anyone because it will just muck up the lucrative arrangement she put together with Walden's goons. Dana receives this news as if it were the worst outcome imaginable when in fact, it is the luckiest, most convenient thing that could happen to her. She gets to claim the moral high ground and remain on the streets. Let's hope this is the very last we hear of Operation: Get Yourself Unnecessarily Arrested.

Just before the end of the episode, we see Brody being escorted through what is presumably some kind of villain's hideout as a black car pulls up. Care to guess who's inside? That's right, it's Nazir himself. I had to rewind to figure out what he says to Brody: "Ni-cho-las."

Can Nazir turn Brody back against the CIA? Will Roya ever have a bad hair day? Will Quinn and Carrie come to blows? Will Saul shave his beard in honor of Movember? Will Jess and Mike be able to keep their hands off of one another while Brody is having his finger nails extracted in an undisclosed location? Did I miss any good or bad moments in this episode? Let me know in the comments!

"Homeland" airs Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on Showtime.

Depending who you ask, the outcome of this year's election was either decided by women, people of color, or the LGBT community. But regardless of which group can truly claim credit, the conclusion is clear: for the first time in all of American history, national elections can no longer be won by pandering to straight white men. And demographic trends suggest that this paradigm shift will only loom larger in the years to come. The implications of this change should not be underestimated; this is an incredible moment for progressive politics, and 2012 simply marks the beginning.

While the demographic breakdown of votes in this election was staggering, it was not at all surprising. The Republican Party has long been the last vestige of many older white men, clinging to the basest aspects of American history while claiming a monopoly on patriotism. But both parties must recognize that none of these groups are monoliths; all of these labels encompass incredible diversity that often goes unacknowledged. The category of "women," particularly, is grossly over-generalized -- extending across all other categories with tremendous intersectionality therein. However, the key to last week's Democratic victory is the one characteristic that does unite all of these groups: a common history -- and persistent reality -- of subordination in American society.

Although experiences of subordination vary greatly, dealing with oppressive treatment tends to foster two important values: community and compassion. Of course, these are the very characteristics a group must develop to resist and survive subordination. Community is necessary because the ideal of each individual pulling herself up by her bootstraps does not work as well when your entire group is denied boots in the first place. Compassion naturally follows from this, as subordinated communities are reminded every day that personal struggles rarely exist in a vacuum.

While compassion and communitarian ideals are central foundations of the progressive platform, many Republican values are clearly opposed to both. It is no wonder that the GOP has alienated the demographic groups who were systematically oppressed throughout the very same "good old days" they wish to return to -- especially since many conservative policies enforce this same subordination today. What progressives view as necessary remedial efforts, Republicans see as "gifts." But given our new electoral majority, the conclusion is simple: either the Republican Party needs to make massive changes to both their policies and messaging strategies, or they will keep losing national elections. As a progressive myself, I am perfectly content with either of those options.

Yet while there are clear reasons that women, people of color, and the LGBT community tend to skew liberal, there are no guarantees in American politics. If Republicans step back from their oppressive policies, then we will likely see a more equal party split among these very diverse groups. This is especially true since the Democratic Party is often a default choice rather than a true home for subordinated communities, unable to fully take over the mantle left behind after Republicans abandoned their abolitionist roots.

To truly become the party that represents the interests of our new electoral majority, Democrats must stop perpetuating the narrative that subordination is strictly a relic of the past. After all, what better way to distinguish themselves from Republicans, who seem to think that after hundreds and hundreds of years of unabashed subordination of women, people of color, and LGBT folks, we now have a perfectly level playing field; it's just a convenient coincidence that straight white men are still winning. To maintain both their electoral advantage and their integrity, Democrats must acknowledge that we cannot simply will ourselves to overcome America's long history of subordination; this troubled legacy is something we must actively fight against every day. In short, Democrats must simply become the party of progress -- not an instant fix, but a constant march toward a better America.

Yet, even if Democrats' electoral dominance is short-lived, the 2012 election is still an incredible moment for progressive politics. Appealing to women, people of color, and the LGBT community is now the starting point of any national election; these groups are now the norm, around which both parties will need to reconstruct their policies and messaging. Even if Democrats have to work harder for these votes in years to come, it is a major progressive victory just to have these groups playing a more active and welcome role in the process. Again -- for the first time in history -- our electoral landscape will not be structured around straight white men. The impact of that alone is going to drastically change the way we view issues, the way we craft policy, and the direction America takes in the foreseeable future.

I, for one, can't wait.

Jim Epstein, Reason
Three years ago, Dr. Keith Smith, co-founder and managing partner of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, took an initiative that would only be considered radical in the health care industry: He posted online a list of prices for 112 common surgical procedures. The 51-year-old Smith, a self-described libertarian, and his business partner, Dr. Steve Lantier, founded the Surgery Center 15 years ago, after they became disillusioned with the way patients were treated at St. Anthony Hospital in Oklahoma City, where the two men worked as anesthesiologists. In 1997, Smith and Lantier bought the shell...

Paul Mulshine, NJ Star-Ledger
There is a way to handle defeat gracefully.But Mitt Romney never does anything gracefully.That speech in which he blamed his loss on "gifts" Barack Obama gave to voters certainly had some truth to it. But  that truth was better left uttered by others.For Romney to engage in excuse-making just makes him look like a sore loser.

Nancy Cook, National Journal
President Obama cast himself as an open-minded negotiator during his first, postelection press conference—even as his words amplified the administration’s increasingly tough stance on taxes.The president seemed unwilling to back down in any way on his call to raise taxes on the top 2 percent of American taxpayers roughly one week after the general election. “What I have told leaders privately as well as publicly is that we cannot afford to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy,” Obama told reporters on Wednesday. 

The president says he wants $1.6 trillion in tax hikes. Republicans say they won't raise tax rates but might be willing to close some loopholes and limit some deductions and tax credits. Is compromise in the air?

Not a chance. True enough, such "base broadening," as Republicans like to call it, could conceivably generate $1.6 trillion in additional tax revenues over the next decade.

But, wait. Didn't the president just win a second term? The major issue decided in last week's election was that the rich should pay more. So, presumably, that $1.6 trillion should come out of the pockets of the wealthiest Americans.

"Broadening the base" has nothing whatever to do with the rich paying more. That's because a lot of tax credits and deductions help the middle class and the poor.

If we end the Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, some of the poorest Americans will end up sacrificing. That tab was $63 billion last year.

Or if the "loophole" is tax-free employee health care, or the home mortgage tax deduction, or tax-deferred 401K accounts, most of the added tax revenues will come out of the pockets of the middle class.

So when Republicans talk about "broadening the base," watch your wallets. Now that the president has set his goal on $1.6 trillion in additional taxes, the question is whether the rich are going to cough up $1.6 trillion more.

There's no way that $1.6 trillion can come out of the pockets of the wealthy merely by capping the deductions the wealthy take advantage of.

If Republicans won't budge on raising tax rates but insist on broadening the base, Democrats should take aim at the biggest tax loophole of all for America's wealthy: the preference for capital gains.

Capital gains are now taxed at only 15 percent (the major reason Mitt Romney pays a rate of under 14 percent on over $20 million of annual income). Capital gains should be taxed the same as ordinary income. That way, under a progressive tax system, the wealthy would pay far more -- on the way to $1.6 trillion.

ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

A growing number of Republican senators are expressing skepticism about the possibility President Barack Obama could pick Susan Rice to replace Hilary Clinton as secretary of state for his second term.

Rice, currently the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is considered a leading contender to replace Clinton in the Obama administration. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is one of several members of his party in the Senate who have signaled opposition to the prospect of Rice being nominated for the role over remarks she made about the recent attack in Libya that resulted in the death of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

During an appearance on Fox News on Wednesday, McCain said, "Susan Rice should have known better, and if she didn't know better, she's not qualified," adding, "I will do everything in my power to block her from being the United States secretary of state."

He continued, "She has proven that she either doesn't understand or she is not willing to accept evidence on its face. There is no doubt five days later what this attack was and for."

In September, Rice connected the Benghazi attack to a controversial anti-Muslim video, rather than regarding the fatal incident as a premeditated act of terrorism.

"How could we, knowing that our intelligence officials in Libya in real time while the event was taking place were letting our folks know back here that this was a terrorist attack -- it's beyond me that we would be out publicly talking about the event in that way," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said on Tuesday, according to Foreign Policy. "It's beyond belief."

Foreign Policy reports:

Rice has explained that her comments were based on the intelligence community assessment at the time, but Corker said that is contradicted by the acknowledgment of senior officials that there was real-time reporting during the attack that clearly identified it as a terrorist attack, with no protest beforehand.

"I'm concerned about the fact that she went on Sunday shows and said it was the product of a spontaneous uprising as opposed to a terrorist attack," Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said on the matter, the Associated Press reports. "Why did they wait so long to publicly ... change their position on it? I think she'd have to answer questions about that, no doubt about it."

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said during an appearance on CBS over the weekend, "I think Susan Rice would have an incredibly difficult time to get through the Senate," explaining, "I would not vote for her unless there's a tremendous opening up the information explaining herself in a way she has not yet done." He added, "I'm not going to promote somebody who I think has misled the country or is either incompetent."

NewsOK reports that Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) said "a poor record of leadership, management and judgment lead [him] to oppose Susan Rice as a possible nominee for the State Department."

Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) told The Hill that "obviously, there’s concern" about the possibility of Rice being tapped to serve as secretary of state. He explained, "And so before I jump, I want to do more examination."

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Administration officials said that Rice, a pillar of Obama's foreign policy team since the 2008 election campaign, was a leading candidate for the post, and that they would not be deterred by Republican warnings. Officials and some others familiar with the process predicted that the GOP would eventually end its resistance to Rice because it would become clear that her disputed comments after the attack were prepared by other U.S. officials for her appearances on Sept. 16 talk shows.

According to the Times, outgoing GOP Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona characterized Rice as "tainted" by her involvement in the White House's response to the Sept. 11 Libya attack. He suggested Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) -- the other leading candidate to replace Clinton -- would be a better choice.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) predicted that Kerry would survive the Senate confirmation process should he be picked to replace Clinton, according to The Hill.

Wonder Woman is more excited than when she bought her first shipment of steroids on line, because there's now lots of lesbians in the senate! Or just one? Well, one OUT lesbian is more than enough, right Hillary? Baby steps, or to put it senatorially, legislative processes are complicated. Fairness isn't easy, especially when politicians in Washington have been re-elected to continue the US's downward spiral. Sometimes suicide takes time. Ask Dennis Miller.

I'm glad a gay lady won something. Makes meals on queer cruise lines less victimy and more conversational. And I don't want Iraq to think women on women action is limited to harems and hair salons. Ladies with manicures and shoulder pads can now serve the country in other ways, no matter how misguided is the stale, expensive US Senate.

Why do we pretend the English were right, when they set up a second legislative body to pimp-slap the other? Checks and balances was a good idea hundreds of years ago, I guess, when the public was too stupid or busy feeding themselves to keep an eye on corrupt politicians.

But now, in about three minutes I can locate nearby suspected paedophiles. I'm sure politicians aren't far behind. Their graft, insincerity and fake workout schedules are all at my fruited fingertips.

With this knowledge, the uninformed electorate recently proved that we ain't puttin' up with no more bullshit Washington, so do what you were meant to do when we voted this same way in 2008. Show up at work, answer your calls and memorize Paul Krugman.

Senatorial ladies, will you be any different from the past dudes? Or will you just rest on your cellulitic laurels, pretending to be stern when minorities approach with their needs for food and housing? Why accommodate senators, drooling over contributions while swallowing their pride, when a family of Asians can turn one senatorial storage closet into a successful Calvin Klein workshop?

Americans are praying for jobs. Let's employ 20 of them, rather than an incumbent from Wyoming County with equal political power to a senator from broken California who is slightly scary but bilingual. Sort of. Sorry, un poquito. Now empty the spittoons, por favor.

When we abolish the Upper House, it will be like eliminating the Nazis on the Eastern Front. Not that the senate are similar to the Fascists, because the Nazis knew how to dress. Was Elizabeth Warren actually wearing a black blouse and a dark blue jacket on election night? I thought she wanted to win the gay vote. Say what you will about Himmler, he mixed his shades properly.

And better still Himmler got things done, maybe because he had only one vegetarian to answer to. The ladies in the senate would like to save the world, but they're lactose intolerant. They can't feel their feet. It's tough to fix Orange County when you're munching on bowls of bean sprout and cat litter just to please hairy forearmed activists, whilst courting failed CEOs from IBM.

I'm frankly sad for the senate, its members are so desperate to be liked by everyone who DIDN'T elect them. Diane Feinstein and her coterie want to have dinner with Log Cabin Republicans, but those queens won't be caught dead with those other queens. Country Western without the letter 'o' is both high camp and Paul Ryan's nickname for the West Coast. Ryan's got his finger up someone's pulse.

Has he always been a fella? I only ask because he tears up so easily.

Everyone knows Obama won because voters require a monarch. The senate's wheel chair is in the way of America's happiness, like an armed, angry old man with a colostomy bag, a disposable income and no enemy except the dirt. The battle left. The left won, so GET ON WITH IT, Obama. The voter spoke and we've eliminated discussion. No one's working, except the senate and they're working against a more direct Democratic process.

I don't want their oxygen cut off. That would be pointless, as several senators stopped breathing decades ago. Obama, take away their credit cards, the way Romney did to his loyal staff on the midnight he lost his way last week. Without credit, senators will fade away like the stern resolve in Romney's wife's eyes.

Imagine a world without senators on Sunday morning talk shows barking at one another about raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens or whatever special interests their representing while I'm forced to fart to warm my NYC apartment.

Abolish the senate before chicks take it over and a needy McCain has a sex change, while blathering on about his refurbished Mekong Delta.

Obama, downsize, before the voters send Harry Reid a pink slip. He's got boney ankles.

Next week: Senator Reid's carpet burns.

Mickey Kaus, The Daily Caller
Let your friends help you discover the best news, features and videos on TheDC. Publish what you read and maintain full control.We’ll dilute our way out of it! Republicans did poorly among Hispanics last week. How to address that problem? The answer, they’re told by Washington savants, is to back an immigration reform that … increases the number of Hispanics! It’s a plan so crazy it just might be crazy.

I recently overheard the following conversation:

X: "Obama won a solid victory. The people have made their views clear. They stand with the Democratic Party."

Y: "Not so fast. Remember that the Republicans won a big margin in the House of Representatives. It's really a split-decision."

This is interesting. How could the Republicans have won 55 percent of the House seats at the same time that Mitt Romney received only 48 percent of the popular vote? Did that many people split their vote? It turns out the answer is "no."

Although the Republicans won 55 percent of the House seats, they received less than half of the votes for members of the House of Representatives. Indeed, more than half-a-million more Americans voted for Democratic House candidates than for Republicans House candidates. There was no split-decision. The Democrats won both the presidential election and the House election. But the Republicans won 55 percent of the seats in the House. This seems crazy. How could this be?

This answer lies in the 2010 election, in which Republicans won control of a substantial majority of state governments. They then used that power to re-draw congressional district lines in such a way as to maximize the Republican outcome in the 2012 House election.

To give a simple example, imagine four neighboring congressional districts, two of which are 60 percent Democratic and two of which are 60 percent Republican. One would expect that each party would win two seats in the House. But if the Republican state legislature re-draws the district lines so as to make one district 100 percent Democratic, and the other three districts each 67 percent Republican, then instead of each party winning two representatives, the Republicans will win in three of the four districts.

It was by engaging in such "partisan gerrymandering" that the Republican Party was able to turn a Republican defeat in terms of the national popular vote for members of the House into a significant Republican "victory" in terms of the number of Republicans elected. In Pennsylvania, for example, although citizens cast almost 100,000 more votes for Democratic than Republican candidates for the House, partisan gerrymandering enabled Republicans to 12 of the 18 seats in the House of Representatives.

Thus, that the Republicans will control the House for the next two years tells us nothing about how the American people voted on Tuesday, and a lot about how the Republican Party misused its political power in the state legislatures to manipulate the election and frustrate the will of the people.

I hasten to add that the partisan gerrymander is hardly the distinctive province of contemporary Republicans. Politicians of all parties have used the gerrymander from the very beginning of the republic to gain political advantage. Indeed, the word "gerrymander" was used for the first time almost exactly two hundred years ago in the Boston Gazette on March 26, 1812. The term was invented to mock Governor Elbridge Gerry's redrawing of Massachusetts' election districts to benefit his political party. The word was a combination of the Governor's last name and the shape of one of his more oddly shaped districts, which resembled a salamander.

Long-standing or not, partisan gerrymandering is -- and always has been -- an unhealthy part of our political process. As illustrated by the fact that John Boehner will be Speaker of the House for the next two years -- even though his party lost the election by half-a-million votes, partisan gerrymandering undermines democracy. Our constitutional system is premised on the assumption that elected officials should not use the powers of governance in order to manipulate the rules of the game to ensure their own perpetuation in power. Such conduct threatens the very integrity of democratic governance.

Although partisan gerrymandering has been with us from the beginning, it is now worse than ever, because computer modeling enables legislators to design districts that almost precisely maximize their political advantage. The question is: What can we do about it?

The obvious solution is to take the responsibility for drawing district lines out of the hands of elected officials. Several states have already done this by establishing independent commissions that perform this task. This is the approach used in other nations, such as England and Australia. This is clearly a preferable system.

The problem, though, is that the party in control of a state government at any particular moment in time is not eager to change the rules in this way. After all, why should they enact a neutral system that would cause them to lose the power to draw district lines in a way that works to their own advantage? Needless to say, it is unfortunate that legislators put short-term partisan interest above the long-term interest of their citizens, but that, sadly, is too often the nature of politics.

This is a perfect situation for the Supreme Court to break the gridlock. The Court faced a similar situation in the 1960s with the issue of malappportionment. At that time, many states had legislative districts with widely varying numbers of residents. In the typical situation, district lines had been drawn decades earlier when many more people lived in rural areas.

As the population gradually moved predominantly to cities, the lines should have been withdrawn, but legislators from rural districts refused to do so. As a result, situations arose throughout the nation in which an urban district might have ten times as many residents as a rural district, but both had one representative. It was impossible for the states to fix this situation themselves, because the rural districts refused to draw new lines that would reduce their power.

In this situation, the Supreme Court stepped in and held that the Constitution guarantees equal voting rights. It therefore required states to redraw district lines in conformity with the principle of "one person, one vote." All districts in a state, in other words, would have to have approximately the same number of residents. Without the Court's intervention, this dilemma might never have been solved.

The Court should intervene in the context of partisan gerrymandering, where the underlying problem is similar. As Justice John Paul Stevens has observed, the government cannot constitutionally "gerrymander for the purpose of helping the majority party; the government should be redistricting for the purpose of creating appropriate legislative districts."

In fact, the issue has often been before the Court, but although the more liberal Justices like Brennan, Marshall, Stevens, and Ginsburg have consistently argued that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, the conservative majority -- Rehnquist, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Roberts and Alito -- have steadfastly refused to invalidate partisan gerrymanders.

Why did the Republicans win the House of Representatives? Don't ask the American people. They didn't do it.

Ralph Peters, FOX News
The Latest Politics, News & Election VideosTweet${title}LT. COL. RALPH PETERS: The timing is just too perfect for the Obama administration. Just as the administration claimed it was purely coincidence that our Benghazi consulate was attacked on the anniversary of September 11th. Now it's purely coincidence that this affair -- extra-marital affair -- surfaces right after the election, not before, but right after, but before the intelligence chiefs go to Capitol Hill to get grilled. As an old intelligence analyst, Neil, the way I read this -- I could be totally wrong, this is my...

John Dickerson, Slate
Mitt Romney says he is a numbers guy, but in the end he got the numbers wrong. His campaign was adamant that public polls in the swing states were mistaken. They claimed the pollsters were over-estimating the number of Democrats who would turn out on Election Day. Romney’s campaign was certain that minorities would not show up for Obama in 2012 the way they did in 2008. “It just defied logic,” said a top aide of the idea that Obama could match, let alone exceed, his performance with minorities from the last election. When anyone raised the idea that public polls...

President Barack Obama handily won a second term largely because he ran a superior campaign. Republicans expected a late Reagan-esque surge to propel Mitt Romney to victory. This made Tuesday's defeat an even more crushing blow.

As Romney was conceding defeat, already indignant Republicans were pointing fingers and assessing blame. They were intensely angry, overwrought, and consumed with personal animus for the president. Highly paid Republican consultants cried foul. After all, consultants must protect their reputation and future income.

Republican strategist Mary Matalin blew a fuse and personally attacked President Obama in an article for the conservative National Review. "What happened? A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform," Matalin wrote. "Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama used it as a vehicle for character assassination, replete with unrelenting and destructive distortion, derision, and division."

Her hate and bitterness toward the president oozed through every word. To call him a sociopath is to call him a person whose behavior is, "often criminal, and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience." Outrageous.

Perhaps Matalin suffers from a case of Romnesia because the Republican primary was filled with negative and personal attacks on Romney. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich even called the governor a "liar" on CBS. All the Obama campaign had to do was repeat the attacks on Romney from fellow Republican candidates earlier in the year.

For Instance, last year Texas Gov. Rick Perry told the National Journal, "There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business, and I happen to think that's indefensible." Gingrich told Mediate last December, "If Governor Romney would like to give back all the money he's earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years, then I would be glad to then listen to him." And last March Rick Santorum told CBS This Morning, "He doesn't have a core... He's been on both sides of almost every single issue in the past 10 years."

But when it comes to mendacity, Gov. Mitt Romney set the standard. Apart from the constant flip-flopping on issues, Romney regularly leveled dishonest attacks against the president throughout the campaign. The worst lie, which probably cost him a win in Ohio, was the false ad about Jeep moving its operations to China.

Matalin's vituperation was not the least of the GOP blowback to President Obama's reelection. Donald Trump's Twitter response was emphatic: "We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty... Let's fight like hell and stop this great and disgusting injustice! The world is laughing at us." The aging rocker Ted Nugent tweeted, "Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav (sic) a president to destroy America... Goodluk (sic) America u just voted for economic & spiritual suicide. Soulless fools."

Tuesday's biggest loser, Republican strategist Karl Rove, who spent $365 million of donor money trying to defeat the president, had the best excuse. He actually accused the Democratic and African American president of interfering with the election. "He succeeded by suppressing the vote, by saying to people, 'you may not like who I am, and I know you can't bring yourself to vote for me, but I'm going to paint this other guy as simply a rich guy who only cares about himself," Rove told Fox News Thursday.

But the most disturbing reaction to the president's reelection may have come from Peter Morrison, the Hardin County Texas Republican Party Treasurer. "We must contest every single inch of ground and delay the baby-murdering, tax-raising socialists at every opportunity," he wrote on his Facebook site. "But in due time, the maggots will have eaten every morsel of flesh off of the rotting corpse of the Republic, and therein lies our opportunity." That "opportunity" is secession, "Why should Vermont and Texas live under the same government? Let each go her own way in peace."

Everybody hates to lose. Yes, the Republican party went though a brutally divisive primary that nominated Mitt Romney. Yes, Romney was gaining momentum, while President Obama remained vulnerable because of a weak economic recovery. But somewhere along the line Republicans lost touch with reality. Their expectations blew way out of proportion. And suddenly their balloon popped on election night.

President Obama's resounding victory has exposed a core problem within the Republican Party: It is filled with anger and hatred brought on by an identity crisis. Republican leaders will be meeting over the next few weeks and months to determine what went wrong this election and what can be done to fix the problem.

Perhaps a great first step would be to stop the whining and the ridiculous personal attacks. Tantrums and snit fits will not win over any converts. Nobody likes a sore loser.

Saying no has been the modus operandi of the 112th Congress. For too many of our elected representatives, it has been either my way or no highway. Progress for the American economy and Americans has been compromised because there have been few attempts at compromise.

Now that the country has a newly elected Congress, we hope those congresspersons and senators who will take part in the lame duck session and who will take office after the first of the year will realize that they are in Washington, DC to do the people's business. They are there to solve problems and craft pragmatic legislation rather than to impose their own personal and partisan agendas and ideologies. They are there to negotiate not to negate.

We don't expect the members of Congress to be able to move directly from saying no to Getting to Yes (the title of Roger Fisher and William Ury's classic book on negotiations). But, perhaps they can start by getting to maybe.

Getting to maybe establishes a framework for meaningful discourse and dialogue and the consideration of a range of acceptable alternatives, options and trade-offs. From there, it should eventually be possible to get to yes and by doing so to restore citizen respect for this badly tarnished and increasingly reviled institution.

We are not delusional or naive enough to expect that getting to maybe will be an easy task. We recognize that over the past few years, compromise in Congress has become an oxymoron and bipartisanship a dirty word.

On the other hand, we are not skeptical or jaded enough, to think that getting to maybe is impossible. That's because getting there is a necessity for continuing our democratic system of governance and our country. Put us in the camp of former defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, who, speaking at an event in September sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and other organizations said, "My hope is following the presidential elections whatever adults remain in the two political parties will make the compromises necessary to put this country back in order."

It takes courage to compromise -- especially when you are reaching across party lines and defying conventional party wisdom. We saw that courage demonstrated by the five senators: Tom Coburn, (R-OK), Mike Crapo (R-ID), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Kent Conrad (D-ND) on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform who voted for approval of the Commission's full report.

Unfortunately, this type of compromise is becoming more and more unusual. That's because, as E.J. Dionne pointed out in a recent column, "Democrats, a more moderate and diverse party, believe in compromise far more than Republicans do." Dionne explains this is true for both the Democratic Party faithful and their candidates for office and indicates that the tea party influence has changed the composition of the Republican Party and their candidates to make them extremely more conservative and unwilling to compromise.

Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, two of the foremost scholars on the operations of Congress, make a similar but much more strongly expressed point in their book, It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism published earlier this year. In it, they write, "Today's Republican Party... is an insurgent outlier. It has become ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition, all but declaring war on the government.'

This is a harsh assessment and possibly overstates the case. We do know unequivocally, however, that the Republicans and Democrats are at very different points on the compromise continuum. The majority of Democrats tend to be in the middle, malleable and movable while the majority of the Republicans are far right, intractable and intransigent.

If that's the situation, how do we begin getting to maybe? We recommend the following as starting points:

1. 1. Change the mindset
   


2. 2. Change the rules
   


3. 3. Change the methods

Change the Mindset: Today many legislators believe aligning themselves with those from the other party on an issue is an act of cowardice and surrender. As long as this attitude prevails and leaders punish those who cross-over, the journey to maybe cannot start. We need to replace it with the understanding that compromise is an act or courage and success. It is a necessary pre-condition for achieving shared solutions not a capitulation or sacrificing of principles. The subtitle of Fisher and Ury's book Getting to Yes is "Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In." That says it perfectly. Negotiating to reach a common ground is getting things done not giving in.

Change the Rules: Steve Kroft did a 60 Minutessegment titled "The Broken Senate" on the Sunday before Election Day. During that segment, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) pointed out that when Lyndon Johnson was leader of the Senate he had to try to override one filibuster compared to 248 for Reid. The filibuster allows the minority to thwart the will of the majority because it requires 60 votes to get a piece of legislation passed. Scholars Mann and Ornstein place it at the top of the list for reform in a chapter they devote to "Reforming U.S. Political Institutions" in their book. The nonpartisan group No Labels also has the filibuster near the top of its 12 proposals to Make Congress Work. We are not in complete agreement with the No Label proposals nor with all of the Mann/Ornstein recommendations. We are in absolute agreement, however, with the need to change the rules and to make Congress work.

Change the Methods: One of the main reasons that Congress doesn't work is that is has become so balkanized. There is virtually no effort at coming together to work together. It didn't used to be that way. As Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) said in the Sixty Minutes segment when Bob Dole was majority leader, "He would say go to my office at 8:30 in the morning and work it out. He was so intent on making sure that we came up with a solution to the issue that was before the Senate."

In contrast, today the Senate and House members often convene in private and purely intraparty meetings and sessions where the emphasis is on competition not collaboration. One such gathering is Democratic caucus lunches. A lot of which, according to former Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) are about, "OK, we're a team. We gotta stick together. We got to beat the daylights out of the other side. We can't afford straying from the team. If you do, that doesn't help us."

These one-sided meetings in which a group develops and hardens its own positions without input or participation from the other are counterproductive and conflict-producing. They lead to what Fisher and Ury call "positional bargaining" in which each side opens with a position and then the two positional combatants struggle mightily and frequently futilely trying to reach a common agreement.

To correct this, Fisher and Ury recommend "principled negotiation" as opposed to positional bargaining. The four principles of this approach are: (1) separate the people from the problem; (2) focus on interests not positions; (3) generate a variety of options before settling on an agreement; and (4) insist that the agreement be based on objective criteria.

As we stated, changing the mindset, changing the rules and changing the methods are starting points for getting to maybe. There are other governance areas such as fair districting, open primaries and expanded voter participation that need to be addressed in order to get to yes. We discuss them in our Huffington Post blog "Overcoming Electoral Rigor Mortis" that we posted after the elections of 2010.

Our focus here, however, is on getting started on getting to maybe. The good news is that what is required is not costly in financial terms. It is elected men and women of good will with the courage to compromise. The bad news is that getting started requires true leadership (both official and unofficial).

When Senator Coburn, was asked why it has been so difficult to compromise, during the Sixty Minutes interview, he responded, "It's leadership. It's pure leadership. When the goal is always to win the next election, rather than to put the country on the right course, whether it's a Republican leading it or the -- a Democrat leading it, the Senate is not going to work."

If the Senate doesn't work and the Congress doesn't work, the country doesn't work. With this election, we will see if we now have courageous leaders who realize this and are prepared to begin the journey to Maybe and to compromise by putting country first rather than party first. The future of America and the American dream depends on their doing so.

To get regular updates on what Ed, George and Frank are writing and reading, subscribe to their newsletter by going to the following link: http://bit.ly/pivotsignup.

The Discomfort of Inaction.

I was strung tightly Tuesday night listening to election results come in -- knowing that while I'd voted, and had been relatively vocal supporting others to get out and do the same -- I knew I had not done all I knew to do to honor what I care deeply about.

In the final moments before polls closed -- my awakeness to the stakes finally drove me to increase my participation and volunteer -- something I'd been telling myself to do for many weeks.

This was literally in the F-I-N-A-L moments.

The absurdity was laughable, uncomfortable and poignant.

While an election can be like a hot horserace to begin with, that I'd gone so long not doing something I'd been telling myself to do was what tightened the strings for me.

If it didn't go the way I hoped, I was sitting there knowing I didn't do what I wished I had.

It's so easy for all of us to fall into an, "I'll get to it" paradigm, until the moment is upon us... even when we know better.

The learning:

1. If we say "it" to ourselves twice, in all likelihood, we care about it. Whatever "it" is... lending a hand to someone struggling, checking in with a friend going through a tough time, pursuing the help we need to get over an obstacle, etc. If we're talking to ourselves about "it" in our minds more than once, we probably care.


2. Give 60 seconds to consider how we will feel if we never do the thing, if the gamble doesn't go in our favor (e.g. if I choose not to check in on my relative and she happens to take a turn for the worse, or if I don't find out how I can help that acquaintance who is still suffering from Sandy's aftermath) -- then consider this in the framework of the realities of our time and calendar.


3. If it is, in fact, of importance in our hearts, and we can find the way to accommodate it in the landscape of our calendar, in spite of all the other things grabbing at our attention, schedule it. Even if you haven't done it until now.


4. Helpful, but not mandatory: find someone to chat with who cares like you do. This breeds power and action.


5. Period.

Meredith Haberfeld is an Executive Coach and co-founder of the Institute for Coaching, a wife and mother of two young children.

This week’s vote on Puerto Rico’s status, in which the largest share of votes supported statehood, got a lot of people wondering whether the island territory may become the 51st state.

But don’t hold your breath -- it isn’t likely to happen.

The United States first colonized Puerto Rico in 1898. Since then, Puerto Ricans have voted several times on whether to become a state or not, but the idea has never become popular enough to sway a majority of voters.

When statehood received the largest share of votes on Tuesday’s two-part status referendum, it led several U.S. outlets to report that a majority of Puerto Ricans had finally opted for statehood.

It’s a misleading impression. The referendum consisted of two questions. First, it asked voters if they wanted to keep their current U.S. commonwealth status. Dissatisfaction emerged victorious with 52 percent of the vote. The referendum then asked if voters wanted to become a U.S. state, an independent country, or a freely associated state -- a type of independence in close alliance with the United States. Some 61 percent of those who answered the second question chose statehood.

That 61 percent wasn’t the majority, however. Over 470,000 voters intentionally left the second question blank, meaning that only 45 percent of those casting ballots supported statehood.

“The media in the United States have really taken it the other way, that statehood won, and that’s not true,” historian Angel Collado-Schwartz told the Huffington Post.

Even without a majority, Puerto Rico is forwarding the results to Congress and the White House, which will decide whether to launch the process of turning Puerto Rico into to the 51st state in the union.

Check out our five reasons why this probably won’t happen in the gallery above.