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"Outrageous." That's the word on everyone's lips these days. At a White House press conference last Wednesday, President Barack Obama told reporters "Obviously, the whole issue of AIG and these bonuses that have been paid out have been consuming a lot of attention ... But what I think is also important and just as outrageous is the fact that we find ourselves in a situation where we're having to clean up after AIG's mess." Making the rounds on the television yak shows last week, Lawrence Summers, the director of the National Economic Council said, "There are a lot of terrible things that have happened in the last 18 months, but what's happened at AIG is the most outrageous."

"Partisan backbiting may make for good copy, but it's lousy journalism."

Meanwhile, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Blanche Lincoln (D-Nebraska) said, "It is absolutely, unequivocally, totally unacceptable for failed financial institutions that have received taxpayers' assistance to be rewarding its employees with bonus payments at this time. It is outrageous, and it will not be allowed." Tempering his remarks for the Christian Science Monitor, Senate Finance Committee member Charles Grasley (R-Iowa) opined, "It's outrageous. My people ask: 'When are these people going to be put in jail?'" Naturally, the chattering classes have picked up on this latest outrage. Stoking populist rage against the machine, the press and the punditocracy have been venting their special blend of (self-) righteous indignation. After all, it's good for business. Outrageous. It's the phrase that pays. Don't get me wrong. AIG doesn't deserve anyone's pity, let alone the taxpayers' money. But $165 million dollars is chump change compared to the billions of dollars the banking and financial services industry have been siphoning from the U.S. Treasury. Besides, anyone who thinks that this den of thieves would be shamed by any of this is missing the point. Like their fellow architects of economic catastrophe, the executives at AIG don't take it personal. As Michael Corleone might say, "It's strictly business." And what a business! While the Democrats and Republicans start with the finger pointing, the press dutifully records the bickering. Partisan backbiting may make for good copy, but it's lousy journalism. More to the point, political theater of this sort distracts the American people from far more egregious behaviors that demand public attention and media scrutiny.

"$165 million dollars is chump change compared to the billions of dollars the banking and financial services industry have been siphoning from the U.S. Treasury."

In no particular order, then, I offer my top five outrages that the press and the political class just as soon keep quiet about. Re-branding the occupation of Iraq Obama ran on a platform to end the occupation of Iraq. His latest gambit, embraced by the press corps and much of the political establishment, would withdraw two-thirds of the existing forces, leaving some 50,000 troops in Iraq until 2011. The thinking here is that if we don't call them "combat troops" the Iraqis won't mind. More troubling, perhaps, Obama is content to allow Xe -- the private military contractors formerly known as Blackwater -- to continue operating in Iraq, despite vehement objections of the Iraqi government. The crisis of (financial) journalism Notwithstanding the hullabaloo surrounding the "media wars" between Jon Stewart and CNBC, it's quite an indictment of the state of U.S. journalism when a fake newscast, The Daily Show, offers the most trenchant analysis of the failures of financial news networks. Stewart seems to be the only one in the mainstream media who is alarmed by the fact that the financial news journalists are in bed with the very same industries and CEO's they are supposed to be covering. Israeli war crimes Israel's policy of collective punishment in Gaza constitutes a war crime. Through billions in foreign aid, military support and political cover in the United Nations, the United States is complicit in all of this. In January 2009 both the House and Senate passed resolutions in support of Israel's aggression by wide margins. Only five courageous House members voted against the resolution: Ron Paul (R-Texas), Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), Nick Rahall (D-W.V.), and Gwen Moore (D-Wis.). The Obama administration has yet to demonstrate that it can be an honest broker in the Middle East. And U.S. press coverage of Israeli atrocities is virtually non-existent.

"Stoking populist rage against the machine, the press and the punditocracy have been venting their special blend of (self-) righteous indignation." - source

Single-payer health care "off the table" Earlier this month, President Obama hosted a "health care summit" that brought together medical professionals, industry representatives and lawmakers to discuss reform of the nation's health care system. Advocates for single-payer health care plan -- including Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), the California Nurses Association (CNA) and Healthcare-NOW! -- were all but ignored. And despite the fact that a majority of Americans favor such a plan, there is still a press blackout on HR 676, Congressman John Conyers' (D-Mich.) bill supporting a single-payer plan. The "other" war The March 19 edition of the International Herald Tribune reported the following: "A plan awaiting final approval by the president would set a goal of about 400,000 troops and national police officers, more than twice the forces' current size, and more than three times the size that American officials believed would be adequate for Afghanistan in 2002, when the Taliban and Al Qaeda appeared to have been routed." Expanding the war in Afghanistan, and even more ominously into volatile regions of Pakistan, is bound to please the hawks -- but it is an affront to those who supported Obama's "anti-war candidacy." Whether Afghanistan turns out to be Obama's Vietnam remains to be seen. What is clear is this: for all his talk of diplomacy and constructive engagement, Obama's foreign policy is more Bush-like than not. Where is the outrage? Kevin Howley is associate professor of media studies at DePauw University. He can be reached at khowley@depauw.edu.

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What's really outrageous

June 6, 2012, 12:01 AM PDT

Takeaway: User forms make data entry more efficient, reduce errors, and ensure consistency. This walk-through will show your users how easy it is to set up their own forms.

Input forms are a good way to guide users and control input. Most of the time, youll use them to generate routine forms, where the user supplies information to complete some process. This article will show your users how to create these input forms using content controls themselves removing you from the loop! Most input forms dont require any code or specialized knowledge beyond choosing the best control for the job.

Word 2007 introduced content controls, which replace form fields in earlier versions. Although you can use 2003 form fields to collect data, theyre a more complex tool and not interchangeable with content control behaviors. This article doesnt include instructions for using Word 2003 form fields.

The first step is always about design. Take a minute to consider the forms purpose and the type of information that will be entered. If the form is complex, you might want to sketch a quick design. This step wont take much time, and it will help you produce the right form the first time.

In this context, the term shell refers to the permanent labels and formats that wont change with usage. For instance, in this example, well work with the simple order form shown in Figure A. It contains a few descriptive labels and simple formatting.

Most of the time, youll want to save the shell as a template. After entering the descriptive labels and applying formatting, save the form as follows:

You dont have to save these forms as templates, but doing so is consistent with most usage conventions.

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10 steps to creating a Word input form

By LISA LEFF Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - A federal appeals court in San Francisco plans to announce Tuesday if it will rehear a legal challenge to California's same-sex marriage ban or send the landmark case on to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said Monday it was ready to reveal whether a majority of its actively serving judges has agreed or refused to reconsider a February ruling by two of its member judges declaring the ban unconstitutional.

The decision is important because it affects how much longer the issue, which is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court no matter what the 9th Circuit does, will take to resolve.

Same-sex marriages briefly were legal in California before voters approved Proposition 8 in November 2008, which barred gay and lesbian couples from marrying.

Two unmarried couples sued to overturn the ban in May 2009, and their lawsuit gave rise the next year to the first federal trial to examine if states can prohibit gays from getting married without violating the constitutional guarantee of equality. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ultimately sided with the couples.

After the ban's sponsors appealed, a 9th Circuit panel by 2-1 affirmed Walker's finding that Proposition 8 violated the civil rights of gay and lesbian Californians. But, instead of finding any gay marriage ban would be unconstitutional, the panel limited its decision to California, saying Proposition 8 improperly took away an existing right.

The ban's backers asked the full 9th Circuit to review the decision instead of appealing directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. If the full appeals court decides to rehear the case, it will go before the chief judge and 10 randomly selected judges, delaying a final resolution from the Supreme Court.

The 9th Circuit does not agree to such banc reviews very often. The practice is reserved for "a question of exceptional importance" or when the original panel's decision appears to conflict with Supreme Court or 9th Circuit precedents.

Several other high-profile same-sex cases also are making their way toward the high court. A three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declared last week that the federal law that prohibits recognition of same-sex couples unconstitutionally denies Social Security and other federal spousal benefits to married gay couples.

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Next word in Calif. gay marriage case due Tuesday

Compromise has always been a holy word for the Washington establishment. But against the backdrop of ever-increasing anxiety over our fiscal dysfunction, most particularly the next budget showdown, the word has taken on a tone of anger, desperation and even panic.

By Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images

Not eye-to-eye: House Republican leader John Boehner and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

By Mandel Ngan, AFP/Getty Images

Not eye-to-eye: House Republican leader John Boehner and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.

Columns

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.

Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.

We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY's founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.

But in all its usages these days, "compromise" remains a word for bludgeoning Republicans. "Congress isn't just stalemated, it's broken, experts say," proclaims the typical headline, this one in TheMiami Herald. And the experts say it's all the Republicans' fault.

Excerpt from:
Column: 'Compromise' is not a dirty word

The two most recent versions of Microsoft's word processor let you paste plain text rather than formatted text and graphics when you press Ctrl-V or click the Paste button.

In the annals of computer history, no two keystroke combinations have done more to boost worker productivity than Ctrl-C to copy to the clipboard whatever you've selected on the screen, and Ctrl-V to paste the contents of the clipboard to wherever you've placed the cursor.

What often follows the paste is the laborious process of reformatting the pasted material to match the look of the destination document. Microsoft Word lets you apply the formatting of the destination document when you paste, but by default Ctrl-V retains the original formatting of the pasted text.

Back in 2007 I described how to create a keystroke combination for pasting plain text in Word. One of the welcomed changes to Word 2007 was the ability to change the program's default paste setting to plain text, which I explained in a post from 2010.

Word 2007 also added a third paste alternative: in addition to retaining the selection's original formatting or pasting only plain text, you can choose to "match the destination formatting" when you paste (Word 2010 renames this option as "merge formatting"). This setting adopts most of the formatting of the destination document but retains bold, italic, and other emphasis formatting of the selection.

More helpful is the preview Word 2010 provides of the three paste options: hover over the buttons in the Paste dialog to see how the clipboard contents will appear after the paste.

Pass your mouse over the three buttons in Word 2010's Paste dialog box to preview the pasted selection with original formatting, merged formatting, or unformatted.

Make plain text the paste default in Word 2010 Previewing your paste avoids unpleasant surprises when adding material to a document from another source, but nine times out of ten I just want to paste plain text via Ctrl-V: no preview or mouse action required. To change the default paste setting in Word 2007 and Word 2010, open the program's Advanced options.

In Word 2007, click the Office button, then Word Options, then Advanced in the left pane. In Word 2010, click File > Options > Advanced. In both programs, scroll to the "Cut, copy, and paste" section of the Advanced settings.

In the drop-down menus to the right of "Paste between documents" and "Paste between programs," choose Keep Text Only. You can also change the placement of images you paste (the default is to set pasted images in line with the text).

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Change MS Word's default paste setting to plain text