Voters outraged with debt inaction

Washington (CNN) -- House switchboards have been flooded by phone calls -- nearly twice the normal average -- and hit with an unusual volume of constituent e-mails as voters voice their concern over the worsening debt-ceiling crisis.

At least 104 of 279 congressional websites surveyed by CNN were down or had experienced slow connections on Tuesday, after President Obama's speech Monday night.

House Speaker John Boehner's website responded with a "Server Too Busy" or "Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)" message during parts of the day. His switchboard reported as many as 150-300 callers on hold, wanting to leave their thoughts for the speaker. The average hold time was about 50 minutes, officials said.

In his address to the nation, Obama called on the American people to "make your voice heard."

"If you want a balanced approach to reducing the deficit, let your member of Congress know," he said. "If you believe we can solve this problem through compromise, send that message."

Kyle Anderson, Democratic communications director for the House Administration Committee, said the deluge of calls and e-mails from Americans underlines "the seriousness of default."

"These are the people with Social Security and Medicare benefits at stake, individuals with pensions and retirement accounts invested in the financial markets and business owners whose continued existence is based upon their ability to access capital markets at reasonable interest rates," said Anderson. "Their message, and sense of urgency, are clear."

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/dcGtVs59_m8/index.html

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Lawyer Of Norwegian Shooter Says Client Is Deranged

The lawyer for Anders Behring Breivik, the man accused of the bombing and mass shooting in Norway, says his client is clearly insane. Speaking in Oslo Tuesday morning, the lawyer also said Breivik told him there are more extremist cells in other parts of Europe.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/26/138722347/lawyer-of-norwegian-shooter-says-client-is-deranged?ft=1&f=1004

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House GOP Delays Vote On Debt Ceiling

The postponement is because congressional scorekeepers said the bill won't produce the budget savings promised by House Speaker John Boehner. GOP leaders had promised a vote Wednesday. Now, the measure could come to a vote Thursday after it's modified.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/27/138727530/house-gop-to-rework-budget-plan-after-new-estimate?ft=1&f=1014

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Five Stories To Watch As The TV Networks Roll Out Fall Shows For Critics

It's time again to head out with the rest of the TV-heads to the Television Critics Association press tour. From Buffy's return to the weird gender politics of the fall season, we look at five stories we'll be watching over the next couple of weeks.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/07/26/138700709/five-stories-to-watch-as-the-tv-networks-roll-out-fall-shows-for-critics?ft=1&f=1057

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Five Stories To Watch As The TV Networks Roll Out Fall Shows For Critics

It's time again to head out with the rest of the TV-heads to the Television Critics Association press tour. From Buffy's return to the weird gender politics of the fall season, we look at five stories we'll be watching over the next couple of weeks.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2011/07/26/138700709/five-stories-to-watch-as-the-tv-networks-roll-out-fall-shows-for-critics?ft=1&f=1057

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Dominique Strauss-Kahn's Accuser Goes Public

The hotel housekeeper at the center of the sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn has come forward publicly for the first time since the alleged attack at the Sofitel Hotel. Legal experts talk about her appearance on ABC's Good Morning America and interview with Newsweek magazine.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/07/25/138683236/dominique-strauss-kahns-accuser-goes-public?ft=1&f=1004

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Where Is Now? The Paradox Of The Present

The night sky is a time machine. Look out and you look back in time. But this "time travel by eyesight" is not just the province of astronomy. It's as close as the machine on which you are reading these words. Your present exists at the mercy of many overlapping pasts. So where, then, is "now"?

As almost everyone knows, when you stare into the depths of space you are also looking back in time. Catch a glimpse of a relatively nearby star and you see it as it existed when, perhaps, Lincoln was president (if it's 150 light-years away). Stars near the edge of our own galaxy are only seen as they appeared when the last ice age was in full bloom (30,000 light-years away). And those giant pinwheel assemblies of stars called galaxies are glimpsed, as they existed millions, hundreds of millions or even billions of years in the past.

We never see the sky as it is, but only as it was.

Stranger still, the sky we see at any moment defines not a single past but multiple overlapping pasts of different depths. The star's image from 100 years ago and the galaxy image from 100 million years ago reach us at the same time. All of those "thens" define the same "now" for us.

 

The multiple, foliated pasts comprising our present would be weird enough if it was just a matter of astronomy. But the simple truth is that every aspect of our personal "now" is a layered impression of a world already lost to the past.

To understand how this works, consider the simple fact, discussed in last week's post, that all we know about the world comes to us via signals: light waves, sound waves and electrical impulses running along our nerves. These signals move at a finite speed. It always takes some finite amount of time for the signal to travel from the world to your body's sensors (and on to your brain).

A distant galaxy, a distant mountain peak, the not very distant light fixture on the ceiling and even the intimacy of a loved one's face all live in the past. Those overlapping pasts are times that you — in your "now" — are no longer a part of.

Signal travel time constitutes a delay and all those overlapping delays constitute an essential separation. The inner world of your experience is, in a temporal sense, cut off from the outer world you inhabit.

Let's take a few examples. Light travels faster than any other entity in the physical universe, propagating with the tremendous velocity of c = 300,000,000 m/s. From high school physics you know that the time it takes a light signal moving at c to cross some distance D is simply t = D/c.

When you look at the mountain peak 30 kilometers away you see it not as it exists now but as it existed a 1/10,000 of a second ago. The light fixture three meters above your head is seen not as it exists now but as it was a hundred millionth of a second ago. Gazing into your partner's eyes, you see her (or him) not for who they are but for who they were 10-10 of a second in the past. Yes, these numbers are small. Their implication, however, is vast.

We live, each of us, trapped in our own now.

The simple conclusions described above derive, in their way, from relativity theory and they seem to spell the death knell for a philosophical stance called Presentism. According to Presentism only the present moment has ontological validity. In other words: only the present truly exists; only the present is real.

Presentism holds an intuitive sway for many people. It just feels right. For myself, when I try and explore the texture of my own experience, I can't help but feel a sense of the present's dominance. Buddhism, with its emphasis on contemplative introspection, has developed a sophisticated presentist stance concerning the nature of reality. "Anyone who has ever mediated for anytime" the abbot of a Zen monastery once told me "finds that the past and future are illusions."

Yes, but ...

The reality that even light travels at a finite speed forces us to confront the strange fact that, at best, the present exists at the fractured center of many overlapping pasts.

So where, then, are we in time? Where is our "now" and how does it live in the midst of a universe comprised of so many "thens"?

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/07/26/138695074/where-is-now-the-paradox-of-the-present?ft=1&f=1057

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Gergen: Slouching toward a solution?

My sense is those calculations won't hold. Yes, Reid will never pass the House and may not even pass the Senate. (Where will Reid find seven Republican senators for cloture?) But by the same token, the Boehner plan doesn't have a bright future, either. Enough hard-line Republicans are coming out against it that it could fail in the House, and if it gets to the Senate, the president and Democrats are so dug in against it that it won't pass there.

What all of this means is that both the Reid and Boehner plans are likely to die by the end of the week, and congressional leaders will then be under intense pressure to unveil yet a new compromise -- that's why they are talking so much. Perhaps the new compromise will blend elements of Reid and Boehner. Perhaps Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- unrecognized as the key figure in this drama? -- will come up with a variation of his old plan, which would have allowed Congress to agree tacitly to increasing the debt ceiling while casting symbolic votes against it.

But there is yet another possibility that intrigues: Will Obama then try to persuade Boehner to go back to the "grand bargain" they nearly reached several days ago. (Question: Was that deal blown up by the sudden announcement of the "Gang of Six" plan? Maybe.) In any event, Obama clearly harbors a hope for a grand bargain.

Indeed, his prime-time TV speech was a strong appeal to his base and to independents to flood Congress with demands for a "balanced," grand approach -- and a rejection of Boehner's new plan. Indications early Monday night suggest that it may have worked: Electronic messages were reportedly pouring in, and Boehner's website (among other congressional pages) reportedly crashed. But it remains to be seen whether the heavy traffic was a grass-roots surge begging for compromise -- or a tea party-led clamor to hold the line.

Still, it seems that partisans in both parties will kill the idea of such a grand bargain -- after all it contains both higher taxes for some and Medicare cuts. Much more likely is a more modest agreement with all the danger that brings for our credit rating -- a blend of Reid/Boehner or a McConnell special.

Finally, what more deserves to be said about the two television speeches Monday night? Very little, frankly. Had they been given a few weeks ago, they would have been welcomed as standard rhetorical fare. But to have such political speeches -- both containing partisan barbs -- on the eve of a crisis struck me as one more reminder of how far we have drifted from the statesmanship of yore.

Americans are rightly angry, frustrated and more than a little scared by this debt fight. It has only confirmed that our politics have taken a terrible turn. And how striking it is to have an emergency that has not been caused by our foes -- but is entirely a self-inflicted wound. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we didn't have to listen to more arguments from politicians -- as well as pundits -- and could actually wake up to a bold, courageous, bipartisan solution?

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Gergen.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/rjn0GVtiF6Q/index.html

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