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

[THP]

OTTAWA - Tightening a belt is tricky when you have to wrap it around 39 people.Stephen Harper's biggest cabinet ever will have to do some sucking in of its collective gut if the Conservatives are serious about trimming the fat.More...

Source: Harper's New Cabinet Most Expensive On Record

[THP]

I believe the main reason we struggle with epidemic sleep disorders is our failure to examine fundamental misconceptions that inform our understanding of and approach to sleep. These misconceptions are rooted in a tendency to define sleep negatively -- that is, in terms of what it's not. Like our conception of health, which is generally understood as the absence of disease, we naively conceive of sleep as the absence of waking. When we are asleep, we are "dead to the world" -- to the waking world. Even scientific and medical definitions of sleep cast it in terms of what it's not. Sleep specialists refer to sleep as "non-REM." It's not dreaming.Waking has become a synonym for consciousness; and sleep, considered its opposite, unconsciousness. Someone who exhibits limited awareness while awake may be accused of being 'asleep.' Noted sleep specialist, William Dement writes, "It is impossible to have conscious, experiential knowledge of non-dreaming sleep." Because it's unconscious, sleep is believed to lie outside the realm of subjective experience and, therefore, to be devoid of personal meaning. It's reduced to a functional physiological process. Nothing personal.More...

Source: We Don't Get Sleep Because We Don't 'Get' Sleep

[THP]

With young people revolutionizing the good food movement, it's slightly ironic that at 29, I'm farming on one of the oldest agricultural landmarks in Missouri. I first visited the Mueller Farm as a teenager, when my dad took me there to visit Al and Caroline Mueller, who had been working the land since FDR was president. Since I was his "vegetable-eating" kid who grew food in our backyard, my dad thought I might like to see a "bigger garden." It seems only fitting that now I'm back, trying to help the Mueller's legacy grow into even bigger "gardens" throughout St. Louis.I've had vignettes of EarthDance dancing around in my head for more than a decade -- a sometimes fuzzy image of using food and farming (and some good music, too) to organize communities to live more sustainably. But it took traveling to farms on the other side of the world to realize that my food calling was here at home in St. Louis, right on the Mueller's farm. By 2008, Al Mueller had long since passed, and Caroline was quickly nearing 90 years-old, without any children to carry on the farm. It was clear that if someone didn't step forward to steward the farm, it would soon fall victim to cement and bricks -- in fact, today it's surrounded on all sides by housing.More...

Source: Old Roots Spring Anew in Young Farmers

[THP]

Tim Pawlenty may not be looking for support from Hollywood Avenue or Madison Avenue. But his campaign ads borrow liberally from their playbook.In my review for Pawlenty's "New Direction" YouTube video, I noted visual and tonal similarities to the TV show 24, movies like Independence Day and The Matrix, and Chrysler's Superbowl commercial about Detroit.More...

Source: Tim Pawlenty vs. LeBron James

[THP]

When Trudie Styler -- the multi-talented actor, filmmaker, eco-activist, UNICEF ambassador, mother of four and Sting's partner for 29 years -- first started school in the English Midlands, she had trouble learning to read. School officials sent her to get her eyes tested. When it turned out that the problem wasn't with seeing the blackboard, the diagnosis was simple: She must be "backwards.""Backwards" is the British word for what we now call cognitive impairment, and it was the kind of thing kids who have dyslexia and ADHD, including Styler, got labeled with in the 1960s. While she didn't get a real diagnosis until many years later, when she had children of her own with the same symptoms, she did have a mom who came forcefully to her defense -- "a large lady given to speaking her mind," Styler said, "who went to school and said, 'Our Trudie is not backward, she's just slower learning to read.'"More...

Source: Trudie Styler on Living with ADHD and Dyslexia: Don't Give Up, Do Reach Out

[THP]

Here's an incentive to buy the physical disc version of Lady Gaga's new album, "Born This Way": the liner notes may just be delicious.Gaga continued her media blitz on Monday, promoting her new album and discussing her egg-vessel on "The Late Show with David Letterman." She gave a very spiritual answer to Dave's question about the egg, saying, "It's a place where I can meditate and experience rebirth, so I just get inside of it and close it, and then when I feel that I have been reborn spiritually, I just, whoo, come out."More...

Source: Lady Gaga Eats Letterman's Paper Notes: 'Born This Way' Star Gets Funny (VIDEO)

[THP]

ANAHEIM, C.A. -- Philanthropist and CNN founder Ted Turner has turned his sights to renewable energy -- and he had some fighting words for the wind industry at the kickoff to its annual convention on Monday.Turbine manufacturers and clean energy utilities can't sit idly by while the coal industry touts its "clean coal" plan and oil companies flood the airwaves, Turner said. He noted that he had "nightmares" caused by clean coal advertisements.More...

Source: Ted Turner Says Coal, Oil Industries Need 'A Good A** Kicking'

[THP]

WASHINGTON -- Officers with the Transportation Security Administration know a thing or two about feeling under appreciated and belittled in the workplace.As do players for the perennially underachieving Washington Redskins football team.More...

Source: Washington Redskins, TSA Agents Find Unlikely Solidarity

[THP]

Lawrence O'Donnell said on his Thursday show that the New York Times has "jumped the shark" in its coverage of a potential run for the presidency by Sarah Palin.An article in Thursday's paper set off a renewed round of speculation that Palin might actually jump into the race after all. For O'Donnell, it was more evidence that, as he put it, the "political press ... learned absolutely nothing" from its experience with Donald Trump.More...

Source: Lawrence O'Donnell: New York Times 'Jumped The Shark' With Palin Coverage (VIDEO)

[THP]

Faced with a rapidly growing groundswell for Elizabeth Warren to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency, the Senate Republican leaders employed the ultimate obstruction on behalf of their Wall Street donors. It's up to us to make sure the public knows whose side they are on.On Thursday, the Campaign for America's Future delivered 20,000 petition signatures to the White House, urging the President exercise his constitutional authority to appoint Warren during next week's Senate recess, circumventing the Senate GOP's stated intention to block any nominee to the post. A broader coalition effort, led by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which includes CAF, has garnered more than 150,000 signatures.More...

Source: Republicans Try To Shut Down Groundswell For Warren: Will We Let Them?