Thursday's Daily Brief

Thursday, May 19, 2011 Arianna Huffington: Dear Class of 2011: Good Luck... You're Really Going to Need It! Arianna Huffington: On Friday morning, I'll be taking part in that annual rite of passage -- the commencement speech. I'll be delivering mine at Sarah Lawrence, one of the great colleges in America. My speech, of course, will be imbued with all the optimism and hope about the future that the occasion is steeped in. But, after looking at all the data, there is no question that "commencement" has taken on an ironic twist. For many of the graduates spilling into the job market throughout the nation, there isn't going to be much to commence. Economically at least, this is an especially rough time to be graduating from college. Consider: the average graduate will enter the job market with a debt load of over $27,000. And the unemployment rate for those 16 to 24 is the highest it's even been. There is, however, a silver lining to graduating in such tough economic times... WORLD Obama Will Announce Billions In Economic Aid To Support Middle Eastern Democracy POLITICS GOP Donors Deserting Newt Gingrich DIVORCE Busted! Documents Expose Schwarzenegger Cover Up GREEN Monster Floods And Killing Droughts Are 'New Normal' In U.S. Weather WORLD Plane Crash Over Argentina's Patagonia Leaves No Survivors BLOG POSTS Daoud Kuttab: What Obama Should Say When US President Barack Obama makes his scheduled speech today, he will have to deal with a totally different kind of Arab world than when he took office or when he made his famous Cairo speech. Paul Abrams: The "Sane and Easy" $4 Trillion Deficit Reduction The IRS reports that there is ~$300B in uncollected taxes annually. Republicans de-fund the IRS so the money cannot be collected. This is an unvoted upon tax-cut of massive size that goes mostly to the wealthy. Dr. Nalini Chilkov: Breast Cancer: Another Government Agency Fails the Safety Test The FDA forgot to test the safety of the silicon tungsten shields. Oops. Thirty women who received this treatment are left with metal deposits of tungsten in their breast tissue that show up on their mammograms. Larry Magid: Online Safety Tied to Real World Behavior I've been working in the field of Internet safety for 17 years, and the deeper I get into it, the more I realize that Internet safety for kids and teens isn't about the Internet or really even about safety. Michelle Rhee: Joining Forces With Former WTU President George Parker to Benefit Kids I recently shared my views on unions with the former head of the Washington Teachers Union, and he said he thought the unions had to become more reform-minded. "Huh," I thought. "That doesn't sound like the standard union line."

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