The Baumgarten Report

Spillar

You’re a teenager or young adult who finds herself in the unfortunate position of being pregnant and unwed. You go to a pregnancy counseling center for help. Only to find that you’re in an anti-abortion clinic that encourages you to keep the baby.

Federal dollars fund these centers. But should they? And will funding, under a pro-choice Obama administration, continue?

Joining us on News Talk Online on Tuesday November 18 to discuss this issue will be Katherine Spillar and Nicolette Tomaszewski.

Spillar, executive editor of Ms Magazine has been overseeing coverage of anti-abortion groups that target women’s reproductive health clinics such as Planned Parenthood. She is also executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation where she has coordinated field operations in three statewide campaigns for women’s rights.

Tomaszewski is a woman who was pressured by a a local crisis pregnancy center in Tennessee where she was warned of horrible side effects of abortion by a volunteer who, she says, was not a medical professional. She says she was also told that, if she were to have an abortion, she likely would suffer side effects because the physicians employed in abortion clinics were from the “bottom of the barrel.” She was not actually pregnant when she went in for counseling, but wanted to experience for herself the treatment she would receive after a pregnant friend, looking for an abortion, told her she was discouraged when she went to the clinic.

Spillar says many crisis pregnancy centers, like this one near Tomaszewski’s college campus, masquerade as women’s health clinics often luring young women by offering free pregnancy tests. In reality, an FMF study reported on by Ms concludes that the vast majority of CPCs are not medical facilities.

To talk to Spillar and Tomaszewski on at 5 PM Tuesday November 18 CLICK HERE. There is no charge.

Paltalk is the largest multimedia interactive program on the Internet with more than 4 million unique users.

News Talk Online is also syndicated by CRN Digital Talk Radio to an additional 12 million households.

Path to prosperity?

Layoffs continue across the United States and many people suddenly out-of-work are wondering how they will provide for themselves and their families.

Author Paul Facella believes an entry-level position in a low-paying job, such as working at a McDonald’s, can actually lead people back to a life of financial solvency.

That’s the premise of Facella’s book, Everything I Know About Business I Learned at McDonald’s. Facella will join me on Monday December 15 to discuss his concept of individual bottom up economics on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com.

Facella’s book is, in large measure, based on his own experiences. He first walked into a Mickey D’s as an employee, working behind the counter, when he was 16-years-old. He says in his book that McDonald’s has produced more millionaires from within its ranks than any company in history.

Facella’s 34-year career saw him promoted to counterman to grill cook to regional vice president. The book explores, with interviews from entry-level employees to founder Ray Kroc how a fast food restaurant’s corporate culture encourages workers to succeed in business.

He parlayed the lessons learned at McDonald’s to now operate a successful New York consulting firm.

He believes the concepts he learned at McDonald’s can be applied to any business enterprise.

To talk to Facella on at 5 PM December 15 CLICK HERE. There is no charge.

Paltalk is the largest multimedia interactive program on the Internet with more than 4 million unique users.

News Talk Online is also syndicated by CRN Digital Talk Radio to an additional 12 million households.
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Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iirraa/235471342/

New scanners at airports which permit security officers to virtually strip search passengers are raising concerns among many in the flying public.

Budgettravel.com senior editor Sean O’Neill was my guest on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com to discuss the scanners. He says they were put into place as an alternative to patting down passengers in several airports because tests have shown that TSA personnel have missed contraband during those one-on-one searches.

Some people find both the pat-downs and the scanners intrusive, including a Muslim woman who called the show who believed both to be affront to the modesty dictated by her religion.

Murphy

Of all the problems, domestic and foreign, that face President-elect Obama, none is more perennially critical than the quest for peace in the Middle East.

Joining us to talk about the prospects for a solution to that quagmire on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com Monday November 10 will be former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy.

Murphy spent 34 years as a career foreign service officer. After service in the U.S. Army he joined the foreign service of the State Department and from 1955-68 served in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

In 1971, President Nixon nominated him as ambassador to Mauritania and in 1974 he became ambassador to Syria. He then served as ambassador to the Philippines and Saudi Arabia. From 1983-1989 he served as assistant secretary of state under President Reagan. During that period he was. particularly active in the Israeli-Arab peace process.

Murphy has received the president’s Distinguished Service Award three times and the State Department’s Superior Honor Award twice. In 1985 he was named career ambassador, a title held by only five officers serving at any given time.

Retiring from government service in 1989, Murphy joined the Council on Foreign Relations in New York as senior fellow for the Middle East and has continued to visit that region several times a year.

Murphy is a frequent commentator for NPR, CNN, BBC and FOX News. He has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor. He is a trustee of the American University of Beirut, on the Board of the Near East Foundation and former chairman of the Middle East Institute in Washington.

To talk to Murphy at 5 PM New York time Monday November 10 CLICK HERE. There is no charge.

Paltalk is the largest multimedia interactive program on the Internet with more than 4 million unique users.

News Talk Online is also syndicated by CRN Digital Talk Radio to an additional 12 million households.

New body scanning technology slowly being introduced into airports in the United States and elsewhere in the world is causing some to raise concerns of privacy. And once again the issue of how to balance security and civil liberties is being raised.

Publications such as Germany’s Der Spiegel have published photographs depicting what security officers see as people pass through the scanners. Virtually everyone I’ve shown those pictures to say the scanners, which clearly show genitalia and even details of a person’s buttocks is way too intrusive.

In the United States, the technology, which basically is tantamount to virtual body searches, is being employed at airports in New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Miami and elsewhere.

Reporter Sean O’Neill, who has reported about the full-body scanners for Newsweek’s Budget Travel site will be my guest on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com tomorrow, November 7.

O’Neill’s article questions if the TSA is violating the privacy rights of those who go through the scanners.

O’Neill reports that Germany has banned the scanners because of privacy concerns. But the TSA argues that they aren’t invasive at all. Here in the United States, the American Civil Liberties Union opposes their use.

On its Evolution of Security website, the TSA says the millimeter wave devices produce a, “three-dimensional image of the body, with facial features blurred for privacy” which is displayed on a remote monitor for analysis.

“The image,” the TSA says, “is not saved – once it’s off the screen it’s gone forever.”

To talk to O’Neill about the virtual strip searches at 5 PM New York time tomorrow, Friday November 7 CLICK HERE. There is no charge.

Paltalk is the largest multimedia interactive program on the Internet with more than 4 million unique users.

News Talk Online is also syndicated by CRN Digital Talk Radio to an additional 12 million households.

In this era of fractured partisan politics it was heartening to hear a Republican and a Democratic strategist agree over why the John McCain presidential campaign failed.

Democrat Hank Sheinkopf and Republican Steve Goldberg both believe McCain lacked a simple, direct message to present to the American people. While Barack Obama was clear, concise and consistent.

Both agree that McCain allowed the party to dictate how he conducted himself and that hurt him in the long run. The race, Goldberg suggests, might have been closer had McCain been permitted to be himself.

The two were my guests today on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com.

Goldberg says McCain failed to define himself. Sheinkopf said Obama told the truth to the American people, while McCain, he believes, “didn’t want to tell the truth.”

Veracity, they agreed, is what a voting public, dissatisfied with the current administration and even more discontented over the performance of Congress, sought.

Both believe Obama faces immense obstacles. But both believe that and failing he has in delivering promises can be attributed for a long time to the state of the nation when President Bush left office.

All he has to do, says Sheinkopf, is be successful in several key areas to be considered an effective president.

Once again, the Catholic vote proved to be representative of how the rest of the nation voted in the presidential election.

Fifty-four percent of voting Catholics cast their ballots for Barack Obama.

Elizabeth Bagley, who was responsible for getting out the Catholic vote for Obama, says, around the world, people are celebrating his election. Because they feel he represents a return to diplomacy by the United States.

Bagley, who served in the diplomatic corps in both the Clinton and Carter administrations, believes the Bush administration repeatedly squandered opportunities to diplomatically solve some of the most serious problems of the world. A former U.S. ambassador to Portugal, Bailey, during an appearance on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com, said Clinton left office having brought the Israelis and the Palestinians close to resolution. Yet the Bush administration refused to build on those efforts, against the wishes of Secretary of State Colin Powell.

She believes one of Obama’s first orders of business will be to attempt to help broker a lasting peace in the Middle East. She also believes Obama will try to initiate diplomatic efforts with Iran.

Bagley

An official of the Barack Obama campaign will be my guest on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com Wednesday November 5 at 5 PM New York time.

Elizabeth Frawley Bagley will discuss how the campaign was so successful in resonating with voters and what President-elect Obama now faces as he looks forward to at least four years in the White House.

Bagley was senior advisor to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright from 1997-2001. Prior to this appointment, she served as the U.S. ambassador to Portugal from 1994-1997.

An attorney specializing in trade and international law, Bagley was adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University in Washington until January 1993. She served as diplomatic liaison for the Clinton-Gore Presidential campaign. She was the State Department’s congressional liaison officer during the Carter administration and served as special assistant to Ambassador Sol Linowitz for the Camp David Accords.

To talk to Bagley on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com at 5 PM New York time Wednesday November 5 CLICK HERE. There is no charge.

Paltalk is the largest multimedia interactive program on the Internet with more than 4 million unique users.

News Talk Online is also syndicated by CRN Digital Talk Radio to an additional 12 million households.

Sheinkopf

Two political strategists, one a Republican, the other a Democrat, will be my guests on News Talk Online on Thursday November 6 to analyze the presidential election and take a look at what the two parties must do now moving forward.

Democrat Hank Sheinkopf makes a return engagement to the show. Sheinkopf has been a political, public affairs and governmental relations consultant for nearly 30 years. He has worked on political campaigns and issue campaigns in four continents, 10 foreign nations, in addition to more than 600 domestic political and issue campaigns in 46 American states.

Sheinkopf was a member of President Clinton’s re-election media team producing ads for the only Democratic president re-elected since FDR.

Joining Sheinkopf will be Steve Goldberg, who pioneered some of the most successful consumer outreach and voter contact strategies employed today by candidates across the country.

Goldberg was recruited by Lee Atwater to work on President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign in 1984. Following his involvement in Reagan’s landslide victory in 1984, Goldberg was asked to join then Vice President George H. W. Bush’s campaign for the presidency in 1988. He helped devise and implement Bush’s comeback victory in the New Hampshire primary, the contest that is credited with securing his party’s nomination.

During 1988’s general election contest, Steve became the architect of a controversial direct-marketing telecommunications program which proved to be the largest voter contact program ever performed in the history of U.S. politics.

To talk to Goldberg and Sheinkopf at 5 PM New York time Thursday November 5 CLICK HERE. There is no charge.

Paltalk is the largest multimedia interactive program on the Internet with more than 4 million unique users.

News Talk Online is also syndicated by CRN Digital Talk Radio to an additional 12 million households.

The founder and executive director of the University of Denver’s Center for African American Policy says this race for president of the United States his historic in that skin color and gender are no longer an issue in politics.

Peter Groff, who is also the Democratic president of the Colorado State Senate and the first black person to hold that post, says, while there are some people who will vote for Obama because of race, and while there are some who will not vote for him for the same reason, most Americans are looking at what the candidates stand for, not skin color. Likewise, he says, those who support or oppose Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy are not taking that position based on gender.

Groff, speaking on News Talk Online on Paltalk.com, said American voters have moved “past race.”