There's a surprising team at the bottom of the Eastern conference standings. With a record of 8-22, this talented group is finding new ways to define underachievement. The Washington Wizards combination of terrible effort and lackluster execution has negated the substantial skill on their roster. As of December 30th they have yet to win a single road game.

The most baffling thing about Washington's start is they have the talent to be a high-profile playoff team. They have a terrific young frontcourt with springy seven-footer JaVale McGee and brawny power-forward Andray Blatche. McGee is one of the great shot blockers in the league and Blatche has the potential to be dominant force inside, averaging 21 points-per-game in his first three months of real playing time last season. Rashard Lewis at small-forward is a two-time all-star, a terrific three point shooter and one of the highest paid guys in the league. And the Wizards have Kirk Hinrich and John Wall in the backcourt. The wily Hinrich plays the role of veteran defensive stopper while Wall, the exhilarating number one pick, is an explosive offensive presence. Despite all these big names, the best player for Washington this year has been dazzling but previously unknown two-guard, Nick Young.

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This year has been very frustrating for many progressives. The president in whom many progressives placed so much hope, probably too much, proved himself to be largely a disappointment. Some of the most significant legislation for which President Obama can claim credit during 2010, including the health care reform bill and the recent tax legislation emerged from compromises in which Republicans clearly got a lot more than progressives. President Obama, almost literally, frequently added insult to progressive injury by rhetorically attacking not the conservative Republicans who have sought to destroy Obama since the day he took office, but progressives who have expressed disappointment in his compromises.

The election in November further discouraged progressives as Republican control of the House of Representatives beginning in January will all but assure that no truly significant progressive legislation will come out of Washington anytime soon. It was not only the degree of the Republican victory, but the nature of the victory which saw the further consolidation of the Tea Party as the dominant faction of the Republican Party. The acceptance of bizarre assertions that the president is a socialist, and perhaps not even a citizen, become accepted wisdom among substantial proportions of the population. That particularly rankled many progressives.

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Among the myths about leaders is that they are born and not made. When a leadership vacuum appears, there's stress. Chaos threatens to erupt. It would seem that only a unique person, someone whose chemistry mixes ambition, charisma, and ego, can fill the vacuum. But when teaching an approach I call "the soul of leadership," I begin with the opposite assumption, that leaders appear when awareness meets need. A person who knows what a group actually needs -- the group can be a family, business, team, or political party -- must be more aware than those in need. If they had enough awareness on their own, the leadership vacuum wouldn't persist. Once the need is identified, the leader must take steps to fill the role that it demands.

Rather than speak generally, let me name the specific roles I have in mind. They are arranged from lowest to highest (following a scheme widely familiar as a hierarchy of needs). The point is that higher needs can't be fulfilled until lower ones are met. So the skill of a leader is to know which need must be addressed immediately and then begin to raise the group's awareness so that the next need can be fulfilled.

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In late September the FBI carried out a series of raids of homes and anti-war offices of public activists in Minneapolis and Chicago. Following the raids the Obama Justice Department subpoenaed 14 activists to a grand jury in Chicago and also subpoenaed the files of several anti-war and community organizations. In carrying out these repressive actions, the Justice department was taking its lead from the Supreme Court's 6-3 opinion last June in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project which decided that non-violent First Amendment speech and advocacy "coordinated with" or "under the direction of" a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as "terrorist" was a crime,.

The search warrants and grand jury subpoenas make it quite clear that the federal prosecutors are intent on accusing public non-violent political organizers, many affiliated with Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), of providing "material support," through their public advocacy, for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The Secretary of State has determined that both the PLFP and the FARC "threaten US national security, foreign policy or economic interests," a finding not reviewable by the Courts, and listed both groups as foreign terrorist organizations (FTO).

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On the outskirts of Rio lies Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill, where over 7,000 thousand tons of garbage are dumped 24 hours a day. Amongst this trash work 3,000-5,000 catadores (pickers), men and women who sift through the garbage to collect recyclables. While the work pays approximately double Brazil's minimum wage, allows the pickers to help the environment, and keeps them from falling into the traps of drug trafficking or prostitution, the life of a picker is one with no future.

Amidst this world of discarded objects and people, documentarian Lucy Walker (the Devil's Playground, Countdown to Zero) and Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz partnered on a unique project. Muniz, a native of Sao Paulo who has become known for making art pieces out of unconventional materials, traveled to Gramacho with a plan to photograph the pickers, create large-scale portraits of them made out of recyclable materials collected from the dump, and give all the money raised from the sale of the pieces back to the pickers so they could improve their lives. Walker, over a three-year period, captured the process in the new documentary, Waste Land.

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Many years ago before I was a journalist, I was a high school teacher. At the young age of 24, I was teaching 18-year-old Seniors in the public school system in South Carolina. It sounds so ridiculous now, but back then I didn't think twice about it. I was fresh out of graduate school, and ready for my first classroom experience. Honestly, I don't think about it much these days, but I was reminded this week when I saw the new film Waiting for Superman. The film is written and directed by Davis Guggenheim, the same man who brought us An Inconvenient Truth. The title sort of throws you off until you see the film, which highlights the plight of the public school system here in the United States. An educator, featured in the film, who grew up in a poor neighborhood, says he was always secretly waiting on Superman to swoop in and save his family and community.

Looking back on my students, I bet many of them dreamed of the same Superman idea. A majority of them came from broken homes, and communities where education was not a priority, so why should they pay attention and stay in school?

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One particularly enjoyable environmental front group to monitor is Bottled Water Matters, which is funded by The International Bottled Water Association, a trade industry group. With a website, YouTube channel, Twitter feed and Facebook page they present themselves as concerned citizens and good, honest bottled water enthusiasts. As Jason Linkins detailed in his post last March, the group has been working hard to battle the their deserved anti-green reputation:

The bottled water industry, fighting back against accusations that they are a significant contributor to environmental degradation, has released this magical video of glorious greenwashing, redolent of the famous video news releases in which Karen Ryan pretended to a journalist while promoting the Bush White House's "No Child Left Behind" Act.

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Just following the July 4th holiday, the Postal Service quietly announced a rate hike equal to ten times the rate of inflation. The decision to hit their customers with such a steep increase is only the most recent example of Postal management failing to treat the Service like a business - chasing three years of declining revenues with a rate hike that will send customers running and the Postal Service further into its own death spiral.

In addition to defying all logical business sense, the request for these rate hikes is illegal. In 2006, Congress understood that mail volume would continue to decline due to increased usage of the Internet - a fact that had been clear for ten years. In response, Congress passed a law that created incentive-based postal rates, and specified that postage rates could not rise more than the rate of inflation, assuming Americans would benefit from a Postal Service with greater flexibility. If the Postal Service could control costs to be less than inflation, it would reap financial rewards. If it could not, the Service would have to cut costs and improve its business. Gone were the days of just raising postage and expecting customers to pay. Or so we thought.

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From New York to Tennessee to California, mosques and Muslim community centers are meeting a small but fierce swelling resistance from an increasingly vocal minority of local citizens' groups who charge that mosques represent a major threat to America's way of life and central values. Such baseless and hateful attacks are at the heart of a dangerous miscalculation, particularly since many mosque founders and leaders today share a common commitment to promoting an authentic and mainstream vision of Islam that coexists with other faiths in America. In a mid-term election year, and as presidential candidates get ready for 2012, anti-Muslim prejudice is ripe for political pickings.

The anti-Muslim rage-aholics, however, feel that Islam cannot exist within America's pluralism. Ironically, their view is shared by Al-Qaeda -- making right-wing groups and former Republican speaker of the House Newt Gingrich closer to the Al-Qaeda narrative than the local Muslim communities they are fiercely protesting. The vitriol from these anti-Muslim groups plays right into the hands of Al-Qaeda, a group that works tirelessly to prove that America is at war with Islam.

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You don't have to wait until the fall (and the end of the current NFL lockout) to see professional football in Chicago. Not when the city has a pair of professional football teams in the midst of strong seasons. The Chicago Rush and the Chicago Slaughter can keep you fixated on live professional football through the middle of the summer with seasons that extend into June and July, and here are five reasons why you should check them out:

Cheap tickets: Taking your whole family to see the Rush and the Slaughter won't cost you a month's rent or mortgage payment like Bears tickets do. Indoor pro football, on the other hand, will leave you some money for a nice dinner out afterward. Ticket prices for the Rush, which is co-owned by "Da Coach" himself, Mike Ditka, and plays in the Arena Football League, start at $10; tix for the Slaughter, which plays in the Indoor Football League, start at $8.

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Curators have a lot to say about the new Joan Miró exhibition at London's Tate Modern. In the video below, journalist Will Gompertz asks Tate Modern curator Matthew Gale if he could discuss five or six works to sum up the show. Gale hesitates, cracks a hint of a smile, and says, "No." The beloved Spanish Surrealist's career and inspiration is too complicated, Gale claims, and too tied up in his opposition to dictator Francisco Franco, but the curator gives a list nonetheless. The interview, which also touches on the inspiration Miró drew from his family's Catalonian farm and his erratic friendship with Salvador Dali, introduces the artist's first major exhibition in London for nearly half a century.

Even if historical context is required to discuss Miró's life, his paintings' speak for themselves. Although often politically charged, the intricate, whimsical images often conceal their spirit of protest. For those who can do without the context, the interview shows several important images, including one of Miro's "Constellations." Painted during the German invasion of France in 1941, the canvas does not give up its origins easily, portraying an unease more in line with the spiritual alienation of Swiss painter Paul Klee than the violence of Picasso's wartime works.

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On April 13, 2011 President Obama gave a speech at George Washington University about the budget (and forgot to wish Thomas Jefferson a 'Happy Birthday!'). April 14, 2011 progressive talk radio shows like The Stephanie Miller Show and The Thom Hartman show hailed the speech, calling Obama a visionary, or as one caller put it, "Kennedy-esque" I began to wonder, "Did I hear the same speech?"

I dissected the speech on air, playing it in its entirety on my own radio show April 13, 2011. I heard a lot about cuts. I heard a lot about Medicare and Medicaid and I heard a lot about bipartisan efforts to cut trillions from the budget over the next 12 years. I heard about taxing the rich but sadly missed the part about taxing corporations as if they were people, since the U.S. Supreme Court said in the Citizen's United ruling that they have the same rights as people, I assumed that meant the same responsibilities as well and same tax liabilities. I heard a lot about sacrifice and visions of the future. What I didn't hear was any real Democratic principles or how America is going to really take care of itself or its people; just its budget.

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One is struck in the study of saints, angels and gods by a pattern that seems quaint and harmless. Yet, it is so common that I know there must be a deeper meaning. There always seem to be guardians and spirits of doors, bridges, exits and entranceways. I saw it all over Asia. I read about it in Egypt and Mesopotamia. And I am familiar with it in Greek mythology, guardian angels and Catholic saints like St. John Nepomuk, St. Christopher and even St. Peter. What is going on here?

Ancients knew that you need guidance, patronage and protection as you move from one place or state to another, whenever you cross a bridge. You had better know what you are doing when you leave one group or place to join another. There are boundary issues that must be dealt with, dues and respects that must be paid, and you better not enter or leave anything until you know what you are doing. "Don't move your boundary markers before you know the price and you have the right inspiration." Even Charon, who ferried the dead Greeks across the River Styx into Hades, would not do it unless the dead had been properly buried and they

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President Bush once said that marriage is a sacred institution and should be reserved for the union of one man and one woman. If this is the case -- and most Americans would agree with him on this -- then I have to ask: Why is the government at all involved in marrying people? If marriage really is a sacred institution, then why is the government controlling it, especially in a nation that affirms separation of church and state?

Personally, as a Baptist minister, I always feel a bit uneasy at the end of the weddings that I perform when I have to say, "And now, by the authority given unto me by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I pronounce you husband and wife." Having performed a variety of religious exercises, such as reading scripture, saying prayers, giving a biblically-based homily and pronouncing blessings on the marriage, why am I required to suddenly shift to being an agent of the state? Doesn't it seem inconsistent that during such a highly religious ceremony, I should have to turn the church into a place where government business is conducted? Isn't it a conflict for me to unify my pastoral role with that of an agent of the state?

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Hey, Open Government covers a lot of ground; it's about how a democratic government gets the job done increasingly well. That's been a big challenge in an environment where there had been no incentive for gov't workers to provide good customer/citizen service.

Open government includes disclosure of what's going on inside government, where the money goes, really tough getting there having started from a culture of secrecy. Beth's work, along with a very strong team including Aneesh Chopra and Vivek Kundra, has disclosed a lot. Check out what's on data.gov. (Disclosure: I'm on the board of Sunlight Foundation, for real the leaders in transparency and accountability, and I've seen how hard it is to get real data.)

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The tragedy in Arizona was a perfect illustration of how our emergency trauma system works in the United States. Everyone marveled at the speed at which Congresswoman Giffords was treated. It took only 38 minutes from transport to the operating room (OR) of a Level I Trauma Center at University of Arizona. This, in no small part, has probably contributed to her amazing progress that we hear about daily in the news. But this intricate coordination that was so eloquently described this past weekend by Dr. Peter Rhee, Director of the Trauma Center at University Medical Center was not a chance happening. It was a perfectly executed mass casualty disaster plan that has been practiced and drilled to ensure it runs smoothly when needed.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about 116 million patients seek emergency care every year in the United States with almost 27 million visits attributed to injury-related trauma. Trauma is the leading cause of death for younger people under the age of 45 and it is the fourth leading cause of death for all ages. Studies have found that you can reduce mortality by 25 percent if severely injured trauma patients are quickly seen and cared for at Level I trauma centers.

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Via Curbed LA: This 1929 Spanish Revival home in Los Feliz has four bedrooms, three-and-a-half baths, and over 3,000 square feet of living space. It's hard to know what details to highlight first when it comes to this handsome home. Are the modern features like a media room and spa-with-fountain more of a draw, or is it the period details like the original stained glass, handcrafted wrought iron, and monogrammed fireplace?

The property has changed hands many times in its short life. Current owners are restaurateurs Mark Gunsky of Aroma Coffee & Tea Company and Tom Trellis of The Alcove. The official listing also lists "Oscar contenders, world-renowned musicians and [an] iconic puppeteer" as former residents, while the realtor adds tween singing sensation Joe Jonas. A tipster says that the real estate photos provide a clue to another former resident, does anything else in the slideshow tip you off to another big star in the home's pedigree? Double points for anyone who can name the puppeteer.

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I didn't talk about my diabetes at all during the years I danced with the New York City Ballet. A ballerina is an athlete and psychologically I needed my directors and co-workers to perceive me as healthy. Most importantly, I needed my body to be in optimal working order. As a person with diabetes that meant I needed to keep my blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible with insulin injections. Exercise increases the effectiveness of insulin, and dangerous low blood sugars could result, which they did. Experiencing a low blood sugar episode is not only scary as your body shakes and you lose focus, but it can be extremely dangerous with the risk of many side effects including the possible loss of consciousness. Thankfully this never happened to me.

My directors at that time, Peter Martins and Jerome Robbins, knew I had been diagnosed with diabetes, but I did not share any information about my disease or the constant efforts it took to control it. And I wanted it that way! Every dancer had some complaint, some obstacle that might have been affecting their performance. My challenge was to show that I was the same dancer I had been before my diagnosis.

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Throughout my career, I've had one foot planted in the Heartland, working with women and girls across America to strengthen their self-confidence, and I've had one foot in Hollywood, working with media executives to develop more empowering, honest stories that truly speak to the girls I've come to know. No matter where I travel or whom I speak with, the core issue we end up addressing is always the same: today's young woman is feeling more conflicted and concerned about her image and value than ever before.

Here's a sobering fact: when girls feel bad about their looks, 70 percent disconnect from life, avoiding normal activities like attending school or even giving their opinion. Sure, we all have bad days and moments when we want to pull the blanket over our heads, but when an entire generation of future leaders, thinkers and mothers disconnects from life because they are unhappy with their appearance, the possible repercussions on our society are profound.

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The Fine Brothers are back playing role of spoiler. They've taken on and ruined (in the best possible way) Oscar nominees, TV shows, and now they're here to spoil...your childhood. Okay, most likely you already know the outcome of these classic Nintendo games, so this will be more like a trip down memory lane as they give away the endings to Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 2, Super Mario Brothers 3, Rampage, Contra, Rygar, The Legend of Zelda, The Legend of Zelda 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Metroid, P.O.W., Final Fantasy, Bad Dudes, Adventures in the Magic Kingdom, Back to the Future, Mega Man, Mega Man 2, Mega Man 3, Mega Man 4, Mega Man 5, Mega Man 6, Little Nemo: The Dream Master, Paperboy, Adventures of Lolo, Bubble Bobble, Castlevania, Double Dragon, Double Dragon 2, Battletoads, Battlestoads & Double Dragon, Metal Gear, River City Ransom, Ninja Gaiden, Ninja Gaiden 2, Ninja Gaiden 3, Shadowgate, Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Ducktales, Bionic Commandos, Kid Icarus, Silver Surfer, A Boy and his Blob, Robocop, The Punisher, Kirby's Adventure, Yo! Noid, Deja Vu, Wizards and Warriors, Wizards and Warriors 2, The Three Stooges.




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Via Curbed LA: Calling all cinephiles! A piece of LA film history has hit the real estate market -- and it comes with a price chop. This is the house where Ben Affleck (an Occidental College alum) and Matt Damon lived while writing the script for their Academy Award winning film, "Good Will Hunting." Originally, the farmland was purchased by Eagle Rock pioneer, Albert Brasch who commissioned architect Jean L. Egasse to design the "chalet" like property.

In 1923, shortly after the home was built, California Southland stated, "To design a house for a hillside as one would plan an ornament for a crown or sword hilt: to make the hill a picture or a tapestry of houses and gardensâ€"this is the craft of J.L. Egasse who seems able to grasp the ensemble of a hillside and to build his house and garden as a part of the landscape." The four bedroom, two bathroom property features fireplaces, crown molding, stone floors, a detached garage, and treetop views. The Hansel and Gretel-style house was also anthologized by the "Los Angeles: An Architectural Guide."

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A week ago, Kay S. Hymowitz had a piece featured in the The Wall Street Journal entitled "Where Have All The Good Men Gone?" The column argues that women in their 20s and early 30s are having trouble finding suitable mates because men of the same age group are living a sort of "extended adolescence," as she puts it. Now, I usually stick to technology or health related issues, but this time I decided to make an exception. Someone has to speak for the opposition.

Being in the age group in question myself and also being single, I am in a unique position to provide a counterpoint to the claims made by Hymowitz. I have been on a number of dates in the past year, and have been doing so for a significant amount of time now. Why? Well, because I desire the same things Hymowitz claims that most men lack: to find a partner who loves me as much as I love them, and eventually start a family. Shocked? We'll you shouldn't be. There are many of us "men" out here who are not just looking for the next warm bed.

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Bruce Springsteen does not need our help, but he deserves our attention. His new album The Promise returns to his Darkness at the Edge of Town sessions, where we hear and see (there's an accompanying DVD) the agony and exhilaration of songwriting. The Boss was young then, and struggling to find his voice. But throughout his career, what distinguishes Springsteen from most other rockers is his understanding of the American ethos -- the ebb and flow of our collective spirit. His best songs take the pulse of America in the same manner as John Steinbeck and Walt Whitman -- whom Springsteen has clearly read.

Springsteen's 1995 cut "The Ghost of Tom Joad" was his reminder of recent American failures. During Steinbeck's Dust Bowl era our country failed its people in fundamental ways -- food, shelter and hope. Nowadays it's not dust storms and grasshoppers but institutional failure and cultural decay. Tom Joad's impassioned speech about injustice at the end of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath is the heart of Springsteen's song. ("Tom Joad" was later covered by Rage Against the Machine, with Zack de la Rocha channeling an angrier Joad: "Shelter lines stretchin' around the corner/Welcome to the New World Order.")

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I was pretty surprised while watching Countdown with Keith Olbermann to hear Olbermann, in a rather matter-of-fact way, tell his viewers that tonight would be his last show. It takes years to build up a TV news show "brand." And Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show dated back to the darkest days of the one-party Republican state. It was Olbermann's principled and sincere outrage at the warmongering and lies coming from the George W. Bush administration as it pushed the nation into war and recession that established his "brand." But the fact that Olbermann was a "brand" in the first place points to the intrinsic limitations of corporate media.

The only winners in the Comcast/MSNBC decision to drop Countdown with Keith Olbermann are Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and all the other bloviators over at Fox News. Their noise machine just got a lot louder. And just in time for CNN and the networks to focus the bulk of their attention on John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and Darrell Issa. The Federal Communications Commission should have blocked Comcast's buyout of NBC. The one thing the corporate media didn't need was more consolidation regardless if the move had anything to do with purging Olbermann.

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I get President Obama's "regulatory review" plan, I really do. His game plan is a straight steal from President Clinton's strategy after the Republican's 1994 congressional triumph. Clinton's strategy was to steal the Republican Party's play book. I know that Clinton's strategy was considered brilliant politics (particularly by the Clintonites), but the Republican financial playbook produces recurrent, intensifying fraud epidemics and financial crises. Rubin and Summers were Clinton's offensive coordinators. They planned and implemented the Republican game plan on finance. Rubin and Summers were good choices for this role because they were, and remain, reflexively anti-regulatory. They led the deregulation and attack on supervision that began to create the criminogenic environment that produced the financial crisis.

The zeal, crude threats, and arrogance they displayed in leading the attacks on SEC Chair Levitt and CFTC Chair Born's efforts to adopt regulations that would have reduced the risks of fraud and financial crises were exceptional. Just one problem -- they were wrong and Levitt and Born were right. Rubin and Summers weren't slightly wrong; they put us on the path to the Great Recession. Obama knows that Clinton's brilliant political strategy, stealing the Republican play book, was a disaster for the nation, but he has picked politics over substance.

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In a beautifully crafted movie poised for awards and holiday box office, Blue Valentine puts a wacky mirror on that fragile thing: marriage.

Moving back and forth in easy yet thrilling fluidly from the present problems to past passions, Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) try to repair their romance in a future themed motel room with a rotating bed that gets a lot of laughs. As illustrated here, between these two people who are at times mature, at others infantile, marriage on the fritz is not funny, but wrenching. Flashbacks to their courtship feature some of the sweetest sex ever shown in movies; the raw magnetism is important to understanding their connection, earning this finely wrought, sensitive movie a punishing NC-13 rating. Even at the premiere earlier this month at the Standard Hotel -a place, I'm told, where peeping toms line up on the Highline to see occupants in "the act" --director Derek Cianfrance and his stars Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams were sweating their appeal of this rating which was finally overturned the next day to an R. Everyone agreed, you can show violence and sleaze with no untoward consequences, but just try a little tenderness to grab those censors by the throat.

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Some people argue that climate change is a left wing conspiracy intended to scare people into willingly accepting a new enviro-tax called cap and trade. Yet it shouldn't take a scientist or prophet to know that controlling our carbon emissions is about a lot more than climate or taxes. The carbon we emit from our tailpipes, wood stoves, furnaces, factories and power plants is black and sooty and damages our health whenever we breathe it in.

While CO2 has grabbed all the headlines, carbon black particles are the backstory that is making the most immediate impact. And while we have taken steps to control pollution, we are driving more miles per capita and there are more of us so that we continue to fill up this fish bowl with particles and gases that threaten public health. Building new highways has been likened to an obese person loosening his belt. All we are doing is making room for more consumption (driving or eating as the case may be), a non-sustainable fix because we will just consume to the limit and end up with clogged arteries down the road. And of course atmospheric belt loosening is not possible; there is no extra space to put our carbon emissions.

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As the geopolitical chess games and drive for competitive advantage in the Middle East continue to generate winners and losers, fueling instability and rising tensions, one is inclined to ask how much longer before this regional dynamic will push the region towards an all-out war or contribute further to its collective decline.

On March 26, 2010, the Huffington Post published an exclusive piece advancing the following thesis: states in Middle East (Western Asia) can foster and attain lasting peace and progress, protect and advance their collective interests, and once again rise to prominence on the world stage through the creation of an all-inclusive regional union; one modeled on the strong elements of other regional amalgamations of states. This proposition may prima facie seem far-fetched, given the reality on the ground. But is it really? A closer examination and real understanding of the anxieties and interests that are driving state actors in the region paint a picture depicting a chaotic, Hobbesian regional existence that can drastically improve through an all-inclusive supranational organizing framework.

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In the wake of the publication of a Pew poll showing an increase in the false belief that Barack Obama is a Muslim, misperceptions have reached a new level of prominence in the national discourse, including a mention of the Muslim myth on Newsweek's cover. In addition, MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky released some new public opinion data on the topic Monday, so it seems like a good time to review what we do -- and don't -- know about misperceptions.

Belief in the Muslim myth has increased

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When we first met Ed Potosnak last winter he really wanted to talk about how important education is in terms of keeping America a healthy and vibrant society. And, half a year of campaigning later, it's still what he seems to have the most passion for. And that makes sense: he's a chemistry teacher. Ed teaches high school science in his native New Jersey and he's challenging right-wing banking shill Leonard Lance in that state's 7th congressional district. Following Boehner's lead, Lance referred to New Jersey teachers as "negligible." That didn't sit well with candidate Potosnak-- nor with dedicated teacher Potosnak. And today he launched a new section on his website with videos of constituents reacting to Lance's shameful perspective.

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Cruising through Huffington Post's 8 Jobs In Which Women Make More Than Men left me more crestfallen than keyed up for women's advancement in the workplace. The slideshow, based on the June 2010 women's earnings report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is meant to offer a glass-half-full perspective on the stagnant gender wage gap. Instead, it's a sad roundup of female-dominated industry sectors doling out paltry pay in comparison to the median men's earnings.

For starters, only three of the jobs - clerks, dieticians/nutritionists and science technicians - pay above women's median weekly income of $657, which is 20 percent less than what the middle-earning man takes home. And although female bakers, kindergarten teachers, beauticians and the rest typically make more than their male counterparts, their income boost is negligible compared to that overall wage gap. In fact, the pink-collar wage gap is less than 5 percent for all of these sectors, except one: dining room and cafeteria attendants/bartender helpers.

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