Latest News and Politics from the U.S. - Huffington Post [May ‘11 Series]

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Did you know that the word "millionaire" in Hindi is masculine? What does that mean for women in India who wants to grow a multi-million dollar business? I learned about this conundrum from a colleague Nalini Mehta who attended our Make Mine a Million $ Business event in San Francisco last Fall.I often hear from small business owners who are looking for advice on how to break into and navigate international markets like China, India or even Vietnam. It's a hot economic trend and with good reason. A report released this week by TD Economics revealed that from 2004-2009, exports by small U.S. firms to all countries grew 30%, while exports to China and India doubled.More...

Source: Expanding Into Foreign Markets: Advice, Caution and Building a Strategy

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I recently appeared on three sports-radio programs from across the country to break down the NBA Playoffs and the upcoming NBA Draft.The first interview from WCCO Sports Radio in Minnesota, entails a full Lakers' breakdown, specifically how Kobe Bryant simply cannot carry a team like the Kobe of old.More...

Source: Breaking Down the 2011 NBA Playoffs and NBA Draft (AUDIO)

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You may not have heard about it yet, but you will. Actress and mother Jessica Alba is traveling to Washington DC next week to lend her name and star power to an extremely worthy cause: reducing our exposure to unsafe chemicals by reforming the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).  She will be lending her support to the Safer Chemical Healthy Families coalition, which is leading the campaign. NRDC is a member of this broad coalition to pass smart federal policies that protect us from toxic chemicals.One of Jessica Alba’s movie roles was Sue Storm Richards in the Fantastic Four, part of a quartet with individual super powers.  Among Sue Storm’s powers is that she can create an invisible force field to protect herself and others from bullets, lasers and other weapons.  But even a super hero with an invisible force field wouldn’t be able to prevent herself, or her children from being exposed to hundreds of toxic chemicals, most of them untested and unregulated.  Like flame retardants.  This week a report was released that found flame retardants suspected of causing cancer are widespread in household and children’s products, including infant carriers and nursing pillows.  Sue Storm and her family would probably have been exposed to a lot of flame retardants around the house, particularly since her brother Johnny’s signature superpower was being able to burst into flame, on self-command (“Flame On!”).More...

Source: Jessica Alba: Super Mom

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It's rare to find anyone who cheerfully admits to liking attorneys.On May 6, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, the mind behind Super Size Me and Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, told a crowd of roughly 210 lawyers and journalists in a ballroom of the basement of the InterContinental Hotel on the Plaza that he not only likes attorneys but that without their sage advice, his career wouldn't have been nearly as successful without good legal advice.More...

Source: A Little Legal Help: Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock Gives Lawyers Love in KC

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Americans turn to their government for all sorts of advice, at times.  Most especially during a crisis or natural disaster of epic proportions, citizens want solid information from experts in the government as to what they should and shouldn't do to keep their families safe.  Forward-looking folks will even check out disaster-preparedness information before disaster actually strikes, in order to get their families through such an event, should worse come to worst.  And now all Americans can breathe a huge sigh of relief because the Centers for Disease Control (C.D.C.) just posted instructions so we can all adequately prepare for "Zombie Armageddon."You just can't make this stuff up, people.More...

Source: Friday Talking Points -- Zombie Attack!

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MADRID - Tens of thousands of Spaniards angry over joblessness protested for a sixth day on Friday in cities all over the country, and the government looked unlikely to enforce a ban on the demonstrations, fearing clashes.

Dubbed "los indignados" (the indignant), tens of thousands of protesters have filled the main squares of Spain's cities for six days, in a wave of outrage over economic stagnation and government austerity marking a shift after years of patience.

The electoral board ruled on Thursday that protests would be illegal on Saturday, the eve of elections when Spaniards will choose 8,116 city councils and 13 out of 17 regional governments.

But Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who has failed to contain the highest unemployment in the European Union, at 21.3 percent, said he may not enforce the ban.

"I have a great respect for the people protesting, which they are doing in a peaceful manner, and I understand it is driven by economic crisis and young people's hopes for employment," Zapatero said during a radio interview.

He said the Justice Ministry was reviewing the electoral board's ruling to determine whether it should stand.

Source: Spain Protests Rock Nation, Tens Of Thousands Fill The Cities Over Joblessness

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Belovéds, here's a little something to recognize and to honor the real work yet to be done -- υστερήματα -- for which no one is getting off the hook.  The poem is one in a series called "Disciplinary Treatises," which first appeared in my Figures for the Ghost (1994), and subsequently in my Compass of Affection (2006).I'm hoping that we might glimpse in every day the responsibility we share for the reconciliation of the world, its "fabulous bouquets of persons" (as Mona Van Duyn has called them), its every creature, and the wildly spinning earth itself.More...

Source: A Modest Offering for the End of the World

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Could there be any more perfect illustration of the Kinsley gaffe theorem than Newt Gingrich's killer criticism of Paul Ryan's Medicare plan last week?In the political arena, as premier political commentator Michael Kinsley enunciated many years ago,  a gaffe occurs "when a politician tells the truth." And, indeed, what could be truer than Gingrich's observation that he had reservations about the Wisconsin Republican congressman's proposal to replace Medicare by a voucher system for the elderly because he didn't think that "right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering"? Indeed, the former speaker added, he had his doubts about the wisdom of "imposing radical change from the right or left."More...

Source: The Gingrich "Gaffe"

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OTTAWA — Freebie trips for members of Parliament that supposedly are not on the public dime may in fact be paid for by taxpayers after all.Public records show some groups which sponsored MP junkets got millions of dollars in government funding.More...

Source: MP Freebie Trip Sponsors Received Millions From Government

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Talk of a manufacturing revival is in the air.  America has, in fact, gained a quarter-million industrial jobs (source) since the start of 2010.  Unfortunately, this is less than 15 percent of the number lost during the recession. Furthermore, after this teasing uptick, U.S. manufacturing output seems to be stalling again.  So it worth revisiting a much  denied fact I have written about before here and here: American manufacturing is in a state of profound crisis.  To get past the slew of analysis out there claiming everything is fine, it is crucial to understand why the usually quoted statistics that seem to show that American manufacturing is healthy are wrong.More...

Source: The Manufacturing Rebound Is a Myth