the Bay Area DJ

the “Yes We Can” Mixtape

1. Intro
2. David Banner,Busta Rhymes,Talib Kweli “Black President” Rmx pt1*
3. Barack Obama “Stand Up”*
4. Nas Speaks on Politics
5. Styles P and Cassidy “Make It Out”*
6. Jay-z Speaks “The American Dream”
7. Barack Obama “One Mic, One People”
8. Russell Simmons Speaks on Obama
9. Joe Budden,Twista,John Mayer “Waiting on the World to Change 2008″
10. Angie Martinez “Yes We Need A Mixtape!!”
11. Kanye West,Malik Yusef “Promised land
12. Wale,Rhymefest,Christina K, Royce 5′9 “Black President” RMX Pt2*
13. Barack Obama “My Life”*
14. Jay-z “Lick a Shot”*
15. Russell Simmons on Change
16. Wyclef “Obama for President”
17. Charles Hamilton “The Moment”
18. Find ur Dreams (interlude) *
19. George Bush’s Highlight Reel
20. Mikkey Halsted “King George” *
21. Obama on Hip-Hop
22. Joel Ortiz feat Dante Hawkins “Letter To Obama” *
23. Akon , U.M. “Aint No Sunshine” *
24. Qadir, Dwayne (Invasion) “Its My Time
25. Johnny Polygon (Invasion),Amanda Diva “Colorblind” *
26. Mavado “We Need Barack” *
27. Jay-Z / Gabe Real “What We Need” (Speech)
28. Qadir “Yes We Can” Outro

Obama Runs Ads in 'Madden'

Barack Obama's ads are now appearing in several sports video games, including the granddaddy of them all, Madden football.

The Obama campaign has purchased space in the popular Xbox 360 game "Madden NFL 09″ and nine other titles by video game maker Electronic Arts, said Holly Rockwood, the company's director of corporate communications.

Only gamers playing online in 10 states can see the ads, which appear as stadium signage or billboards, Rockwood said. (The ads are downloaded when gamers log on to the Xbox Internet service.) Unsurprisingly, all 10 states are swing states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio and Wisconsin. President Bush won all of those states in 2004 except for Wisconsin.

The ads began running Oct. 6 and will be visible until Nov. 3, the day before Election Day, Rockwood said.

The other Xbox games where the ads appear are "Burnout Paradise," "NASCAR 09," "NHL 09," "NBA Live 08," "Need For Speed: Carbon," "Need For Speed: ProStreet," "NFL Tour," and "Skate."

Technology blogs this week had reported on ads popping up in the racing game "Burnout Paradise." In the game, racers drive by a billboard that features the Obama's mug next to the words "Early Voting Has Begun/VoteForChange.com."

GamePolitics.com has a screenshot of the billboard.

Rockwood said that Obama's ads are the first presidential advertising to run in Electronic Arts games, which has an audience made largely of young males between 18 and 34. She said that the company accepts ads from "credible advertisers" and that the messages do not reflect the views or policies of the company. She added that one advertising agency that works with Electronic Arts had contacted the McCain campaign about advertising, but that the Republican's camp passed.

FIGHT THE POWER

'Secret Life of Bees' brings issues of love, redemption and racism to the screen.

By Jackie Burrell Contra Costa Times

On Friday, the indie movie based on Kidd's story about a motherless child and a trio of honey-making sisters will finally make its way to the silver screen. But despite its book-club-favorite status and a star-studded cast — headed by Dakota Fanning, Queen Latifah and Jennifer Hudson — the movie's path has been nearly as poignant and serendipitous as the book itself.

Sitting in a plush lounge in San Francisco's Ritz-Carlton Hotel recently, director/screenwriter Gina Prince-Bythewood relaxed with her young star before the Mill Valley Film Festival opening. The novel, which sold 4.5 million copies, is on many schools' reading lists. Fanning, 14, calls it "a great book for people my age."

She and her director talked about what it was like filming a story set against powerful civil rights-era themes just as Barack Obama was racking up his first big triumphs. Prince-Bythewood also addressed the motifs of motherlessness, abandonment and redemption that run through the characters' lives — and her own.

"The Secret Lives of Bees" tells the story of a young girl, 14-year-old Lily Owens, who runs from an abusive father and the deeply held belief that she is, somehow, "unlovable."


Prince-Bythewood, a Pacific Grove native, was on a journey of her own, seeking her birth

mother and trying to understand why she had been given up as a child when her older brother had not. But when she was offered the project seven years ago, she hadn't read the book and turned the picture down.


Two years ago she heard that another director had signed on, and suddenly she was consumed with "this overwhelming feeling of 'That's my movie!'" She read the novel that night.

"The book just wrecked me," she says. "Oh my God, I gave up this opportunity. It's about motherhood, sisters, learning to love yourself. I said those same words — 'I'm unlovable' — when I found my birth mother."

Then, almost miraculously, everything fell into place. The movie's director walked, and all that was left was the book and its star, Fanning, who was finally old enough to play the role.

"In retrospect, it happened at the right time," she says. "You grow a lot in five, six years. Being adopted was part of my journey. To pour myself into this script (helped me) get over the last vestiges of that tough time."



In a matter of weeks, Prince-Bythewood had her stars — all working for virtually no pay — and a steady stream of cast and crew showing up with dog-eared copies of the book.

"Construction guys coming in with the book," the filmmaker says. "You don't expect that at all. Everyone came in with this love of the project." The idea was to merge Kidd's vision as a white woman who grew up in the South, with Prince- Bythewood's African-American perspective, while remaining true to the book.

And it's all there, from the Pepto-Bismol-pink Boatwright house to the Black Madonna honey jar labels, designed by renowned African-American artist Charles Bibbs. The one noticeable change is in the character of June Boatwright, the tightly controlled, cello-playing sister portrayed by Alicia Keys as a younger, more politically savvy character living in this pivotal time in American history.

"I really infused myself into June," says Prince- Bythewood.

She worked to get her young cast into the mind-set of a historical period most of them were too young to have experienced firsthand. She sent her actors giant gift bags crammed with study materials, including Spike Lee's documentary, "4 Little Girls," about the racially motivated 1963 bombing of a Birmingham church.

"'4 Little Girls' was an amazing, amazing film," says Fanning. "You can't help but feel it."

And then there was the matter of bees, who play a recurring role in the book and movie. It was so cold, says Prince-Bythewood, the crew had to truck in 60,000 bees from Florida and stash the hives in a greenhouse.

"We called it Bee-lagio," she says.

Intellectually, there were plenty of reasons not to worry about being surrounded by swarms of buzzing, hovering bees. Bees don't sting unless they feel threatened.

"I can say all this," says Prince-Bythewood, "but it's still bees."

So Fanning, Latifah and Tristan Wilds, who plays August Boatwright's godson, Zachary Taylor, were sent to bee school to train with Julian Wooten — dubbed "the bee whisperer" on the set — to prepare them for their scenes working with hives, honey and 60,000 fuzzy, buzzing extras.

"They threw me in," says Fanning, with a grin. "You kind of separate yourself from your body. They can't get to you."

Fanning was fine with it, but Latifah and Wilds had to learn to work with the bees barehanded.

"All my research," says Prince-Bythewood, "said that real beekeepers did not wear gloves. Latifah and Tristan were like, 'Yeah, right.'"

Wooten had Tristan's gloves off in a matter of days, and Latifah's hands were bare within an hour. In the end, only three people were ever stung at Bee-lagio. And the scenes that unfold onscreen are ethereal and magical. Bees swirl and spiral around Fanning's face as her eyes fill with wonder.

But stinging insects were nothing compared with the challenges facing the cast in a drugstore-improv exercise in 1960s racism. Despite her Oscar for "Dream Girls" and her role in "Sex in the City," Hudson is still a newcomer to acting. She didn't know what "improv" meant and had no idea that the extras hired by Prince-Bythewood were behaving according to a harsh 1964 script.

"She was getting more and more upset," says Fanning. "She didn't know it wasn't real."

It was only the director's strict admonition not to hit anyone that saved an extra who used the N-word when he told Hudson to get down from the whites-only ice cream counter. It was a potent exercise in ostracism and being demeaned, not only for Hudson but for everyone who watched.

But what occurred in the real world during the whirlwind 34 days of filming in North Carolina was pure serendipity. As Obama racked up his South Carolina primary triumph, suddenly the set came alive with the same sense of possibility that took place with the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 — the idea, says Prince-Bythewood, that "someday" might be "today."

They weren't just making a movie about a girl and the nurturing women aided her, says Prince-Bythewood, they were "making a film about a time when the world was changing, at a time when the world is changing."

Contact Jackie Burrell at jburrell@bayareanewsgroup.com.

McCain tussles with Palin over whipping up a mob mentality

With his electoral prospects fading by the day, Senator John McCain has fallen out with his vice-presidential running mate about the direction of his White House campaign.

McCain has become alarmed about the fury unleashed by Sarah Palin, the moose-hunting “pitbull in lipstick”, against Senator Barack Obama. Cries of “terrorist” and “kill him” have accompanied the tirades by the governor of Alaska against the Democratic nominee at Republican rallies.

Mark Salter, McCain’s long-serving chief of staff, is understood to have told campaign insiders that he would prefer his boss, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, to suffer an “honourable defeat” rather than conduct a campaign that would be out of character – and likely to lose him the election.


Palin, 44, has led the character attacks on Obama in the belief that McCain may be throwing away the election and her chance of becoming vice-president. Her supporters think that if the Republican ticket loses on November 4, she should run for president in 2012.

A leading Republican consultant said: “A lot of conservatives are grumbling about what a poor job McCain is doing. They are rolling their eyes and saying, ‘Yes, a miracle could happen, but at this rate it is all over’.

“Sarah Palin is no fool. She sees the same thing and wants to salvage what she can. She is positioning herself for the future. Her best days could be in front of her. She wants to look as though she was the fighter, the person with the spunk who was out there taking it to the Democrats.”

McCain, 72, has encouraged voters to contrast his character with Obama’s. The campaign launched a tough television commercial last week questioning, “Who is Barack Obama?”

Frank Keating, McCain’s campaign co-chairman, last week called the Democrat a “guy off the street” and said he should admit that he had “used cocaine”.

McCain believes the attacks have spun out of control. At a rally in Lakeville, Minnesota, the Arizona senator became visibly angry when he was booed for calling Obama “a decent person”. He took the microphone from an elderly woman who said she disliked Obama because he was “Arab”, saying, “No ma’am, no ma’am”.

When another questioner demanded that he tell the truth about Obama, he said: “I want everybody to be respectful and let’s be sure we are.”

However, his campaign has stepped up its negative advertising against Obama, accusing him of lying about his relationship with William Ayers, the leader of the Weather Underground group responsible for bombing the Capitol and the Pentagon in the early 1970s, who is now a Chicago professor.

Palin has continued to lead the charge against Obama’s alleged lack of candour. At a rally in Wilmington, Ohio, she mocked him for attending a supporters’ meeting in Ayers’s home when he was seeking to become an Illinois state senator in 1995. “He didn’t know he launched his career in the living room of a domestic terrorist until he did know,” Palin said.

“Some will say, jeez Sarah, it’s getting negative. No it’s not negativity. It’s truthfulness.” The crowd bellowed its appreciation with chants of “Nobama” and “Go Sarah Go!”

John Weaver, a former senior McCain adviser who left the campaign when it almost imploded in the summer of last year, questioned the purpose of the attacks.

“People need to understand, for moral reasons and the protection of our civil society, that the differences with Senator Obama are ideological, based on clear differences on policy and a lack of experience compared with Senator McCain,” he said.

“And from a purely practical political vantage point, please find me a swing voter, an undecided independent, or a torn female voter that finds an angry mob mentality attractive.”

A McCain official confirmed that there was dissension in the campaign. “There is always going to be a debate about the costs and benefits of any strategy,” he said.

“After November 4, the feelings of individuals will come to light. It is only natural and will be expected.”

Palin’s frustration with McCain has led to clashes over strategy. When she learnt he was pulling resources from Michigan, an industrial swing state leaning heavily in Obama’s favour, she fired off an e-mail saying, “Oh come on, do we have to?” and offered to travel there with her husband Todd, four-times winner of the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snow-mobile race.

She also told Bill Kristol, the conservative New York Times columnist, that she wished the campaign would make more of Obama’s 20-year association with the Rev Jeremiah Wright, his controversial former pastor, who said, “God damn America”.

“To me, that does say something about character,” Palin said. “But you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring it up.”

McCain’s allies responded by suggesting that she had her own pastor problems, such as the African minister who prayed to Jesus to protect her from witchcraft when she was running for governor.

McCain has told his campaign that attacks on religion are out of bounds. He declined Palin’s advice to “take the gloves” off in his debate with Obama last week and did not refer to Ayers. It enabled Obama to rile McCain by asking why he did not have the nerve to attack him to his face.

When McCain finally got round to mentioning the Weatherman at a rally last week, he described him mildly as “an old washed-up terrorist”.

Despite the attacks, Obama, 47, increased his average poll lead last week to eight points over McCain. The assaults on his character have enabled him to criticise McCain for “stoking anger and division” when the economy is collapsing.

McCain’s nosedive in the polls has closely tracked the collapse of Wall Street and the US economy, but he has yet to find a winning economic policy. His proposed emergency $300 billion (£180 billion) buy-out of distressed mortgages has been harshly criticised by Republicans.

Karl Rove, the former White House aide, claimed the housing bailout “came across as both impulsive and badly explained” when McCain suddenly announced it during last week’s debate with Obama.

A spokesman for McCain denied he and Palin had fallen out over her aggressive attacks. “Vice-presidential candidates are typically the tip of the spear and further out in front than the candidate for president. This is pretty standard fare,” he said.

However, Palin is no longer helping to attract women and independent voters to the Republican ticket. A poll for Fox News last week showed that while 47% of voters regard the Alaska governor favourably, 42% now have an unfavourable opinion of her.

Palin remains far more popular than McCain with the Republican party base. He regularly has to endure the spectacle of members of the audience leaving for their cars when it is his turn to speak at joint rallies.

In Wilmington, Palin’s many admirers were in no doubt that she should run for president next time. Nancy Ross, a hairdresser, 45, said if the Republicans lost the election, she would be cheered up by the thought of Palin as the 2012 nominee.

“I would absolutely love her to run in four years’ time. By then most of her kids will be grown,” she said. “I’d like her to run against Hillary [Clinton]. She would squash her. She is a real person and we need people like her in Washington.”

Mary Ann Black, 58, a human resources director, said: “I love her. She’s so authentic.” Although she thought highly of McCain as well, Black added: “Her career is just beginning and his is in the twilight.”

STOCKS EXPLODE

The Dow surges an unprecedented 900+ points Monday– more than 11%– snapping an 8-day losing streak.
General Motors’ stock leaps 33%. Move comes as countries around the world step up efforts to ease the credit crunch.

Democrats call for massive U.S. economic stimulus plan

By David Lawder

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States needs a new economic stimulus plan that pumps billions of dollars into infrastructure projects and budget relief for cash-strapped state and local governments, Democratic lawmakers said on Sunday.

U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told ABC television he will put together an economic stimulus bill when Congress returns to Washington after the November 4 elections, while a key Republican said he would support an effort that "makes sense."

Rep. Roy Blunt, the Missouri Republican who serves as House minority leader, said he would support a stimulus plan if it did not include massive public works spending and budget bailouts for states that overspent on health care and other social programs.

"A stimulus plan that makes sense is something that I'll be helpful with," Blunt said, also on ABC television.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last week said a $150 billion economic stimulus plan was needed to help counteract a faltering economy shaken by a paralyzed banking system and steep stock market falls.

On Monday, Pelosi and House Democratic leaders will meet with key economists to discuss a jobs creation and recovery plan that will complement the recently passed $700 billion rescue legislation for financial institutions. Participants will include former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt and former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alice Rivlin.

The Congress earlier this year passed a $152 billion stimulus package that provided tax rebates of up to $600 per adult to support consumer spending at a time of rising energy and food costs.

Most of that money has already been spent, and many economists say financial turmoil will squeeze the economy into recession in the fourth quarter.

"Not only is Wall Street frozen, but Main Street is in real trouble. A stimulus aimed at Main Street makes sense," New York Sen. Charles Schumer told CNN.

He said the plan should "get into the guts of the economy" by boosting spending on infrastructure such as roads, sewer and water projects.

Former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who served under President Bill Clinton, told CNN that an infrastructure plan that could quickly pump money into the economy was the most important action that U.S. authorities could take to help deal with the current economic crisis.

"I would put in place an infrastructure piece... bridges, water systems roads, highways, but not new projects that are going to take a long time to set up," Rubin said. "There are a lot of existing projects where states and cities are having a hard time finding a lot of financing where you could funnel that money right into existing activities where you would be able to act very very quickly."

Schumer also urged the Treasury to move quickly on its plan to buy equity stakes in banks.

"I am hopeful that tomorrow the Treasury will announce that they're doing it. And they have to do it quickly," said Schumer, a New York Democrat.

"This cannot be two, three, four weeks. The markets are waiting, the country is waiting, and we're beginning a downward spiral, not just in finance ... but in the whole economy. We need quick action," he added.

(Reporting by David Lawder, Editing by Andrea Ricci)

The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama

The most persistent falsehood about Senator Barack Obama’s background first hit in 2004 just two weeks after the Democratic convention speech that arguably set him on the path to his presidential candidacy: “Obama is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.”

That statement was contained in a press release and it spun a complex tale about the alleged ancestry of Mr. Obama, who is Christian.

The press release was picked up by the conservative FreeRepublic.com Web site and spread virally and steadily as others elaborated on its claims over the years in e-mail messages, Web sites and, ultimately, books. It continues to be an engine that drives other false rumors about Mr. Obama’s background to this day, with one finding national, public voice on Friday, when a woman told Senator John McCain at a town-hall-style meeting, “I have read about him,” and “he’s an Arab.” Mr. McCain corrected her.

Until this month, the man who is widely credited with starting the cyber-whisper campaign that still dogs Mr. Obama was a secondary character in news reports, with deep explorations of his background largely confined to liberal blogs where he is a bête noir.

But an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people last week thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The Fox program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government.

An examination of legal documents and election filings, and interviews with those from Mr. Martin’s past, revealed a man with a history of scintillating if not always factual claims, who has left a trail of animosity – including anti-Jewish comments -- among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over the course of more than 30 years.

A law school graduate, his admission to the Illinois state bar was blocked in the 1970s after a psychiatric finding of “moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character.” Though he is not a licensed lawyer, Mr. Martin went on to become a prodigious filer of lawsuits, and he also made various unsuccessful attempts to run for public office in three states, as well as for president at least twice, in 1988 and 2000. Based in Chicago, he now identifies himself as an author and writer who focuses on his anti-Obama Web site and press releases.

Mr. Martin, in a series of interviews, did not dispute his influence in Obama rumors.

“Everybody uses my research as a take off point,” Mr. Martin said, adding, however, that some take his writings “and exaggerate them to suit their own fantasies.”

As to his background, he said, “I’m a colorful person, there’s always somebody who has a legitimate cause in their mind to be angry with me.”

When questions were raised last week about Mr. Martin’s appearance and claims on “Hannity’s America” on Fox News, the program’s producer said his views were expressed as his opinion and not necessarily fact, and, as such, were not unwarranted.

It was not his first turn on national television.

The CBS News program “48 Hours” devoted an hour-long program to his legal prowess in 1993 entitled, “See You in Court; Civil War, Anthony Martin Clogs Legal System with Frivolous Lawsuits.” He has filed so many lawsuits – and paperwork containing anti-Semitic slurs – a judge barred him from doing so in any federal court house without preliminary approval.

He prepared a run for Congress in Connecticut – where paperwork for one of his campaign committees listed as one purpose “to exterminate Jew Power.” He ran for the Florida State Senate and the United States Senate in Illinois. When running for president in 1999, he showed a television advertisement in New Hampshire that accused George W. Bush of cocaine use.

In the mid-1990s he was jailed in relation to an assault case in Florida.

His newfound prominence, and the persistence of his line of political attack -- updated regularly on his Web site and through press releases -- amazes those from his past.

“Well, that’s just a bookend for me,” said Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida Republican Party who says the party spent hundreds of thousands of dollars defending against lawsuits Mr. Martin brought for Mr. Slade’s refusal to support his bid for state office. “He’s crazy as a run-over dog. But he’s fearless.”

Given Mr. Obama’s unique background, which was the focus of his first book, it was perhaps bound to become fodder for some opposed to his candidacy.

Mr. Obama was raised mostly by his white mother, an atheist, and his grandparents, who were Protestant, in Hawaii. He hardly knew his father, a Kenyan from a Muslim family who variously considered himself atheist or agnostic, Mr. Obama wrote. For a few childhood years Mr. Obama lived in Indonesia with a stepfather he described as a nonpracticing Muslim.

Theories about Mr. Obama’s background have taken on a life of their own. But every independent analyst seeking the origins of the cyberspace attack winds up back at Mr. Martin’s first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.

Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obama’s heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including “Obama Nation,” the widely discredited best-seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome S. Corsi. Mr. Corsi, who has made anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic slurs for which he later apologized, opens with a quote from Mr. Martin.

“Martin gets credit for the idea of, call it ‘the sound bite narrative mien,”’ said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University who has investigated the e-mail campaign’s circulation and origins. “What he’s generating gets picked up in other places, and it’s an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.”

Ms. Allen said that Mr. Martin’s original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended “Jakarta’s Muslim Wahabbi schools. Wahabbism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.”

Mr. Obama for two years attended a Catholic school in Indonesia, where he was taught about the Bible, he wrote in “Dreams of My Father,” and for two years went to an Indonesian public school open to all religions where he was taught about the Koran.

Mr. Sampley, coincidentally, is a Vietnam veteran and longtime opponent of Senator John McCain and Senator John Kerry, both of whom he accused of ignoring his claims that American prisoners were left behind in Vietnam. He previously portrayed Mr. McCain as a “Manchurian candidate” and again opposed him this year in a primary-season campaign that was roundly denounced as a smear.

Speaking of Mr. Martin’s influence on his Obama writings, Mr. Sampley said, “I keyed off of his work.”

It is perhaps ironic that Mr. Martin’s depictions of Mr. Obama as a secret Muslim have found resonance among some Jewish voters who have received e-mail messages containing various versions of his initial theory, often by new authors and with new twists.

In his original press release Mr. Martin wrote that he was personally “a strong supporter of the Muslim community.” But, he wrote of Mr. Obama, “It may well be that his concealment is meant to endanger Israel,” and, “His Muslim religion would obviously raise serious questions in many Jewish circles.”

Yet in various court cases, Mr. Martin had impugned Jews.

A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the overseeing judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.”

In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”

During an interview, Mr. Martin denied some statements against Jews attributed to him in court papers, blaming malicious judges for inserting them.

But in his “48 Hours” interview in 1993 he affirmed a different anti-Semitic portion of the affidavit that included the line about the Holocaust, saying, “The record speaks for itself.”

On Friday, when asked about an assertion in his court papers that “Jews, historically and in daily living, act through clans and in wolf pack syndrome,” he said, “That one sort of rings a bell.”

He said he was not anti-Semitic. “I was trying to show that everybody in the bankruptcy court was Jewish and I was not Jewish,” he said, “and I was being victimized by religious bias.”

In discussing his denied admission to the Illinois bar, Mr. Martin said the psychiatric exam listing him as having a “moderately severe personality defect” was spitefully written by an evaluator he clashed with.

11 tips to better communication

Every word you speak within earshot of your man can bring you a step closer, or wedge you further apart. You can choose to lace those words with honey or with venom. With compassion or contempt. We can reach inside and bring our words forth from a place

1. Ya' heard? We've learned to use words as a shield, as a sword and as a way to take care of business. But listening is a tool we've overlooked-one that will bring us closer to the men we love, the psychologists say.

Most of us don't listen with the intent of understanding. We listen with the intent of replying.

2. Explain, don't blame. Black men see finger-pointing as a put-down, Wade says. To keep him receptive to what you're saying, "always come from I, not you," advises Wade. She suggests framing your statements like this: "I feel upset when you...," "What I'd really like..," "I get depressed when..."

3. Don't nag, brag. What our men crave is positive reinforcement, emphasizes Cornish. Nagging is just the opposite. With you continually focused on what he doesn't accomplish, he may unconsciously be living down to your diminished expectations of him. Praising him for doing what he should be doing anyway may seem silly and unnecessary to us sisters, whose own extraordinary efforts ordinarily go unsung. But brothers are wired differently. They identify with achievement, with action, with getting it done.



4. Give him time to understand your feelings - and his own. You come to him with a serious concern. It's important, and you need to talk it through - here and now. He puts you off, grabs his keys, his tools or a basketball and saunters off. When he's the one with the problem (he's got that troubled look), you ask him what's up and he shuts you out the same way.

This distancing by the man you love isn't a dis, says Elmore, it's his method of discovery: "Women process their emotions verbally. For men, words distract. Men have the feelings, but they have them a long time before they know what they are." Your man can't share with you what he hasn't accessed himself, Elmore adds. "Brothers are criminalized for turning around and picking up the keys, washing the car. But I guarantee you, 1 percent of him is washing that car, the other 99 percent of his mind and soul is occupied on solving that problem. Activity creates an environment for men to focus," Elmore explains. The more you let him do, the better he can respond to you. Simply request of him, "When you can, would you please get back to me," advises Elmore.

5. Speak to all his senses. Don't forget body language. Does your facial expression and tone of voice communicate openness, love and respect? Wade recalls a woman in couples therapy who would arrive, slink into the chair, fold her arms and glare. "This is what I get at home," her husband pointed out. Though she hadn't yet said a word, her body language spoke volumes about why the couple was in trouble.

Gaze into his eyes. Touch him. Kiss him hello and good-bye each day. Even if you say nothing, he'll hear you loud and clear, says Wade, who offers many more tips for effective nonverbal communication in her six-set audiotape series, Love Lessons: A Guide to Transforming Relationships, available for $49.95 by calling (888) DOC-WADE.

6. Listen for "I love you," but watch for it, too. He brings home his paycheck. He buys your tampons. He walks the dog late at night. Are you getting the message? A Black man's "language" has no vowels, consonants or verbs. Brothers use actions to convey more than words, says Elmore. "If you're not trained to 'hear' his language, you'll miss out on all the heartfelt 'I love you' messages he's constantly sending you," psychologist Elmore notes. Don't forget to praise him for those things. Behavior rewarded is behavior repeated, adds Elmore.

7. Ask for what you want. Myth: If he loved me, he'd know what I want. Reality: Your silence means one thing to your man-that everything's all right. "To him, if you're not requesting, demanding or protesting anything, nothing's broke; and if it ain't broke he won't try to fix it," Elmore explains. "Ask for what you want. Men love to satisfy their women's desires. It makes them feel capable and needed."

8. Choose your opportunities; choose your battles. It may be a cliché, but timing really is everything. Look for opportunities-such as car trips-when you have his undivided attention. Better yet, build them into your lifestyle. Daily walks, weekend excursions and other couple time will create that space and bring you closer.

Sometimes, the best time to bring up that issue is never. Sisters in successful long-term relationships say they've learned to let some little things go.

9. Ask his opinion. By asking and valuing his opinion, you boost your man's self-esteem and "make love" to the intellectual part of him, he adds.

Conversely, when you offer your opinion, especially about some area in which he could improve, tread lightly: "Boo, can I make a suggestion related to your career?" If he says yes, continue. "I heard that this company is a great place to work. I'm wondering if you're interested in checking it out." Leave it there-no follow-up questions, no nagging. Your honey's career choices must be his own. If he's serious about change, he'll do the right thing.

10. Have a three-way with God. "There is nothing you can do with the man you love that is more intimate than to pray," observes Elmore, who is also an ordained minister. "We talk to God about that which is most important to us in all the world. When you pray with, and for, the man you love, you hear from each other's mouths what your most profound yearnings are for each other."

How you pray is up to you. You can attend a mosque or church service or walk in the woods - communing with nature. Keep in mind that couples who reported a high degree of satisfaction in their marriage after 20 years were more likely to have a shared spiritual life."

11. Laugh. Lighten up and let yourself go, Elmore advises. "Your laughter mingling with his is the most passionate form of lovemaking," he says. Keep it both frequent and intense. "Tell him a joke or a funny story," Wade adds. "Laughter is a great healer."

Overfeeding on Information

By ALEX WILLIAMS
YANA COLLINS LEHMAN, a film production accountant who lives in Brooklyn, knew something was amiss when her 5-year-old son, Beckett, started to announce to no one in particular, “I’m John McCain, and I approved this statement.”

But it is hard not to, she said, with the financial markets in meltdown, and that crisis increasingly intertwined with a frenzied presidential campaign entering the homestretch. This is why her own news diet has spiked to where it feels as if it’s taking over her life. And maybe her son’s, too.

“It’s such a drain on productivity,” Ms. Collins Lehman said. “It’s a compulsion.”

For many, the hunger for information is reminiscent of those harried, harrowing months after Sept. 11, 2001. But seven years ago, there was no iPhone, no Twitter, no YouTube. There was no Google Reader to endlessly feed people updates on their favorite Web sites. Social networking sites, blogs and TiVo were in their infancy.

This explosion of information technology, when combined with an unusual confluence of dramatic — and ongoing — news events, has led many people to conclude that they have given their lives over to a news obsession. They find themselves taking breaks at work every 15 minutes to check the latest updates, and at the end of the day, taking laptops to bed. Then they pad through darkened homes in the predawn to check on the Asian markets.

Despite having a job that obliges her to keep up with the latest movies, Ms. Collins Lehman recently downgraded her Netflix subscription to two movies a month, she said, because she was spending so much time following the news.

Raymond L. Roker, 40, who runs a music magazine called Urb and lives in Los Angeles, said that his media diet has swollen to nearly unmanageable proportions because of the turbulent current events. He sets his DVR to record more than 10 daily political shows, which can take four to five hours to sit through every night, and posts about politics continuously on his personal blog (he also blogs occasionally for The Huffington Post).

In addition, Mr. Roker said, he spends much of his remaining free time swapping political views with friends on Facebook. “And meanwhile, I should be running my mini media empire,” he said in an e-mail message. “If that’s not addiction, I don’t know what is.”

Mary Beth Caschetta, 42, an advertising copywriter who lives in Provincetown, Mass., said she has been so concerned about the direction of the country that she has been taking her Kindle to bed so she can track the headlines. In recent weeks, Ms. Caschetta said, the news has even invaded her dreams. A recent one had her grilling the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, about the economy over cocktails, she said.

“It’s just the last thing I think of every night before I go to sleep,” Ms. Caschetta said, referring to the news.

This spike in news interest is reflected in Web traffic figures from Yahoo’s political and financial news sites, according to the company. “Both sites are experiencing record traffic over the last few weeks,” said Brian Nelson, a Yahoo spokesman. “Finance has been operating at near capacity.”

Traffic on the financial channel jumped by 27 percent during the week of Sept. 15, when Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch imploded as the simmering crisis boiled over, company figures showed.

ERIC KLINENBERG, a sociology professor at New York University, said people are unusually transfixed by news of the day because the economic crisis in particular seems to reach into every corner of their lives. Usually, he added, people can compartmentalize their lives into different spheres of activity, such as work, family and leisure. But now, “those spheres are collapsing into each other.”

And the news is not just consequential, but whipsaw-volatile. Financial markets swing hundreds of points within an hour; poll numbers shift. This means that news these days has an unbelievably short shelf life, news addicts said. If you haven’t checked the headlines in the last half-hour, the world may already have changed.

Jeff Slate, a songwriter who lives in Manhattan, said that he has found himself logging on to the Internet in the middle of the night to check the Asian financial markets, something he had not done for years. And a quick scan of the headlines usually leads him down an information rabbit hole, since almost every blog or news article links to a half-dozen others, which link to others. Even music blogs these days are filled with links to political news and commentary.

“There’s just been a glut of information that even four years ago that wasn’t the case,” said Mr. Slate, 41. In times when people think their fate is tied to enormous events that are out of their hands, stockpiling information can give some people a sense of control, social scientists said.

For others, information serves as social currency. Crises, like soap operas or sports teams, can provide a serial drama for people to talk about and bond over, said Kenneth J. Gergen, a senior research psychologist at Swarthmore College who studies technology and culture. “It gives us the stuff that keeps the community together,” he said. And for those whose social circles think of knowledge as power, having the latest information can also enhance status, Dr. Gergen said. “If you can just say what somebody said yesterday, that doesn’t do the trick,” he said.

Indeed, Michael Palka, who lives in Manhattan and is the president of SheFinds.com, an Internet fashion publishing company founded by his wife, Michelle Madhok, said that he feels a sense of “one-upmanship” among those in his social circle to know the latest details about, say, credit default swaps and how they may affect the election. An Obama supporter, he said, he uses any means at his disposal to stay ahead of the curve. He downloaded an application onto his iPhone to feed him up-to-the-minute polling data; during presidential debates, he and his wife sit around at home, using Twitter to exchange political updates with friends.

“The more you know about what’s going on,” Mr. Palka said, “the better case you can make for your candidate.”

To combat the sense of information overload, some find it tempting to pull back. Michael Davidson, the founder of Citypl.com, an expedited delivery service, who lives in Potomac, Md., said he and his wife attended a recent dinner party with three other couples where “each individual sat wringing their hands and telling in their own way how they can’t keep up anymore with all of the news and current events,” he said in an e-mail message. Mr. Davidson, 57, argued that the Rip Van Winkle approach was still the best.

That Washington Irving tale, he said he explained to them, concerns a man who went to sleep under a tree for 20 years, only to wake up and find that on the surface everything had changed, but on another level, nothing had.