According to a survey of nearly 70 chief executives and presidents conducted by the National Association of Corporate Directors, most CEOs in the US believe executives are overpaid. The Financial Times reports that, “Nearly 60 per cent of the directors polled by the NACD said the reason for excessive pay packages was the absence of objective ways to measure an executive’s performance.”

UPDATE: A recent study found that “the income of a top CEO is about 364 times that of the average worker, and the earnings of U.S. CEOs far outstrip those of government leaders, nonprofit executives and even their European counterparts.”

In today’s New York Times, Stephen Colbert guest-writes Maureen Dowd’s column. Colbert offers penetrating insights, for example,”winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don’t need to care about science, literature or peace.” Check out the whole column HERE.

In today’s New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman weirdly and unfairly criticizes American college students for not being “radical and politically engaged” enough, and suggests they lack “courage.”

Friedman’s meandering op-ed calling for mass youth protest is odd considering his early, consistent, and stubborn support for the war in Iraq. As this Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting article and this Center for American Progress interactive graphic show, Friedman argued over a dozen times between 2003 and 2006 that “the next six months” would be crucial to success in Iraq. This led to the creation of a term popular in the blogosphere: the Friedman Unit. The term, coined by Atrios, describes the perpetual reference by war supporters to “the next six months” during which the success of our mission in Iraq will be determined. Finally, in September 2007, Friedman admitted on The Colbert Report that “we’re out of six months” - long after this became clear to most of the American public.

As Friedman himself notes, current college students are “volunteering at AIDS clinics in record numbers” as they “quietly pursuing their idealism, at home and abroad.” Meanwhile, the “Greediest Generation,” which currently holds the reins of power, “just keep piling [problems] on them.”

Sadly, in criticizing this generation of young Americans supposed lack of “courage,” Friedman confuses loudly proclaiming one’s own viewpoint with actually getting to work on the country’s problems without feeling the need to call attention to oneself. In doing so, Friedman illustrates the foundations of the very problems his generation has been so successful in generating.

According to a U.S. Census Bureau report, “Almost 40% of the people displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina were below the poverty line last year.” The survey notes that those displaced in “the biggest mass migration since the Dust Bowl” face an unemployment rate of about 30 percent.

During NFL football games yesterday, 4parents.gov, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, ran a taxpayer-funded ad promoting abstinence. The ad suggests that teens who do not delay sex until marriage will not be happy or successful. 4parents.gov has a history of providing one-sided information, for example placing “biased and misleading ideological claims about abortion” on its website earlier this year.

UPDATE: Here is the video:

A review has found that “tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the system’s huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush administration.” The problems include “the improper termination of coverage for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, huge backlogs of claims and complaints, and a failure to answer telephone calls from consumers, doctors and drugstores.”

The Washington Post reports that “the massive U.S. embassy under construction in Baghdad could cost $144 million more than projected and will open months behind schedule because of poor planning, shoddy workmanship, internal disputes and last-minute changes sought by State Department officials, according to U.S. officials and a department document provided to Congress.” Last month, a U.S. military report warned that our “national footprint” in Iraq, particularly the colossal embassy, conveyed the “opposite impression” of “what is needed.” 

The Washington Post’s Capitol Briefing recently investigated Sen. Larry Craig’s (R-ID) version of the events leading to his arrest. The Post notes, “Craig usually passed by four other restrooms on his way to the North Star Crossing restroom,” where he has said he regularly stops when he flies to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, “including one sitting right at the gates he usually arrived at, literally a hundred or so feet from the gate.” The Post also notes that Craig’s explanation for pleading guilty - that he was “anxious” about missing his flight - is “completely implausible.”

The editors of BodyPolitik clarify an earlier post about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech at Columbia University.

To paraphrase Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a brutal, “petty[,] and cruel dictator.” He routinely denies the Holocaust took place, has “called for the destruction of the state of Israel,” provides aid to terrorists, treats women abominably, and executes teenaged homosexuals. We think it is fair to say that Ahmadinejad is a scourge of humanity.

Yet, we think Columbia University was right to invite Ahmadinejad, not because of any of his own qualities, but for two other overarching reasons.

First, preventing Ahmadinejad from speaking only enhances his stature. As NPR notes, this type of condemnation “may be just what the Iranian president needs to shore up a shaky political position at home.” Yet, allowed to speak, Ahmadinejad “elicited laughter and boos from the audience” of Columbia students, and quickly illustrated the emptiness of his rhetoric of benevolence and peace. This demonstrates that Americans should not fear losing a public relations war with a dictator who publicly proclaims his horrible acts frequently and with pride. We believe Americans, like the Columbia students in the audience, are fully capable of listening to such a figure and dismissing him on their own - without college presidents or politicians telling them how and what to think. As Bollinger noted, Ahmadinejad’s speech “is consistent with the idea that one should know thine enemies, to have the intellectual and emotional courage to confront the mind of evil and to prepare ourselves to act with the right temperament.”

Second, Ahmadinejad’s speech sparked an intense, in-depth dialogue on the meaning of free speech and liberty on college campuses and across the nation. Countless news outlets and pundits debated the virtues and drawbacks of Columbia hosting such a figure, as did many college newspapers. In fact, on our own campuses of William and Mary and the University of Pennsylvania, we observed more passion and activism on this particular issue than on the 2008 election, the genocide in Darfur, and even the war in Iraq. We ask, what better way to demonstrate the superiority of liberty and freedom to a violent, repressive figure than to show him that his appearance will not only fail to win converts to his side, but will actually strengthen the very civil society that allows him to speak?

-Jordan Grossman and Ryan Powers, Editors, The Body Politik

UPDATE: Over at AlterNet, two Columbia students argue that “Columbia’s invitation to Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad not only shows the world the importance of free speech, but also demonstrates what free speech means. ”

Those who oppose Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia argue that we are giving him a soapbox. Ahmadinejad is clearly not challenged for venues in which he can promote his twisted ideology. His ability to spread his heinous views is evidenced by the fact that Americans are well aware of these positions. If we didn’t let him speak here, he could just as easily spread hate from Iran. The difference in bringing him to Columbia is that we will have the opportunity to challenge his claims, whereas we can only cringe when he speaks from Iran. What Columbia has chosen to do is to put him in a context where he cannot take advantage of the bully pulpit, where he must defend his actions to students and academics, where, for once, he is in a conversation rather than a monologue.

The infamous “Obama Girl” came out with a new video today, a tribute to U.S. troops fighting overseas. Watch it HERE.