To have been editor of the Harvard Law Review and a Professor of Law, President Obama is a slow learner. By the time President Obama raised his hand to take the oath of office, President Bush and the Federal Reserve had increased the debt $7 ½ trillion in eight years and household debt had increased $7 trillion in the same period. The economy had been stimulated $14 ½ trillion and we were still losing 799,000 jobs a month. Stimulation was spent. Everybody was saving, not about to consume. But President Obama stimulated the economy $1.3 trillion last year and already this year $1.1 trillion. Last month we still lost 125,000 jobs. President Obama proposed stimulation to Congress, which Congress promptly killed. But off to Canada goes the President, insisting on stimulation. The rebuff of stimulation by the G-20 countries in Canada has finally taught the President that stimulation is spent. Stimulation saved China profits for Wall Street, Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Citicorp - not the economy.

There's no mystery to the loss of jobs. Princeton economist, Alan Blinder, in February 2007, long before the recession, estimated that in ten years the United States would be losing on an average of 300,000 jobs a year to off-shoring. But President Obama has yet to learn to compete in globalization. He furiously bails out the economy boat with stimulation but fails to plug the off-shoring hole in the bottom.

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Today the hate is raining on Lebron James, and make no mistake, on one level, he has earned every drop. The self-proclaimed King turned his free agent journey into reality television with all the subtety of Paris Hilton. He abandoned his hometown team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, gutting the value of the franchise, not to mention the economy surrounding the stadium. And he did it all to join superstar Dwyane Wade in Miami, becoming Robin to Wade's batman, A-Rod to Wade's Jeter, and telling the world he is forfeiting the chance to be recognized as the greatest to ever play the game. His ambitions are now capped at becoming Scottie Pippen 2.0. Short of sporting an "I Love BP" t-shirt, it's difficult to imagine how James could have handled this in worse fashion. Yet, this morning, many of us woke up feeling far more sympathetic than we felt when we went to sleep. That's because on the day after "the decision," we were all introduced to the odious man behind the Cavs, team owner Dan Gilbert. After Lebron made his announcement, Gilbert took to the Internet and penned a deranged open letter to Cleveland fans that would have made the Unabomber proud. Written in a creepy comic sans font, Gilbert wrote,

Dear Cleveland, All Of Northeast Ohio and Cleveland Cavaliers supporters wherever you may be tonight;

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Miss America turned Broadway actress Kate Shindle isn't exactly mad as a hatter that her most recent Broadway show Wonderland -- a continuation of the Alice in Wonderland story -- didn't get a chance on Broadway, but she's definitely disappointed. "Given time, I think it would've found its audience," the Ohio native said earlier this week. "In hindsight, it probably would have helped to push the show back to the summer instead of opening in the middle of the awards-season chaos."

The Frank Wildhorn venture closed last month after playing its 33rd performance, and was completely shut out of the Tony Awards. That said, the actress, who has appeared on the Great White Way in Cabaret and Legally Blonde, notes the show had its loyal followers and she's extremely proud of the work she did. "The people who loved that show -- and there were more than a few -- really loved it. Intelligent, educated friends of mine said without hesitation that it was going to run for a long time, and that as soon and prom/graduation/first communion season was over, the families would be coming out of the woodwork," she explained.

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A litmus test of democracy is civilian control of the military enshrined in the constitution and exercised through representative institutions -- a test which to date no Arab state has passed. Tunisia appears to be on the verge of achieving this historic breakthrough, an outcome that paradoxically the military itself has made possible.

The Jasmine Revolution has followed a course heretofore unknown in the Arab world, but common in transitions to democracy elsewhere, especially in Eastern Europe. Mass protests there, for example, typically exacerbated tensions between security forces, on the one hand, and militaries on the other. Tunisian ex-President Zine al Abidine Ben Ali, just as many of his East European dictator equivalents, relied on the former to maintain control, while politically neutering the military, in part by encouraging development of professional norms. To this end he dispatched a remarkably high percentage of Tunisian officers for training in US military institutions, while inviting numerous US military training missions into the country. A standard objective of such US military training is development of professional norms for officers, a component of which is civil-military relations in democracies. It is interesting to note that the primary external source of training and supply for security forces was France, a fact possibly related to President Sarkozy's loyalty to Ben Ali virtually to the moment his plane appeared in French air space.

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Last Friday, December 3, marked the one year anniversary of Alan Gross' imprisonment in Cuba. At the time of his imprisonment, Gross was a subcontractor for DAI's civil society program in Cuba, funded by the United States Agency of International Development. It is now known that Gross was working with Cuba's small Jewish community, providing them with reading materials, access to information, possibly even internet access. During a week in which companies sold more than $1 billion on Cyber Monday, it is sad but true that the Cuban government's holiday wish list for its citizens excludes Wi-Fi access in homes, Kindles with global 3G or even the latest 4G smartphone with web-based gadgets.

Behind closed doors, Cuba has suggested a prisoner swap for Gross. Cuba will hand over Gross if the United States returns the "Cuban Five," a group of Cuban nationals who were convicted of espionage in the United States. Cuba admits the Five are intelligence officers who were, at minimum, gathering information for the Cuban government while living in the United States. The Obama administration denies that Gross was a spy and therefore refuses to discuss a prisoner swap. All of this, however, confuses the more fundamental issue.

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Lots of people are doing really good stuff to help vets, including a big program from the folks behind Sesame Street. The deal is that families of deployed troops go through a lot, and need a hand.

Talk, Listen, Connect (TLC) is a groundbreaking, bilingual (English/Spanish) multimedia outreach initiative designed to help military families with young children coping with challenging transitions in their lives. Through video, music, and print materials, beloved Sesame Street characters including Elmo and Rosita address issues such as deployment, a parent's return home changed due to combat related injury, and the death of a parent. TLC harnesses the power of the Sesame Street Muppets to aid the communication between adults and children through strategies and language that are child-appropriate and useful for the whole family.

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