Springsteen, Jay-Z put the pop in Obama rally

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Someone has to introduce the president.

On Monday, the final day of the presidential campaign, President Barack Obama, however, didn’t bring along an opening act. He brought along two main acts.

Bruce Springsteen. Jay-Z. Theirs wasn’t an introduction, it was pop culture moment.

The Boss was spending the entire day with Obama, traveling on Air Force One from Madison, Wis., to Columbus, Ohio, and then to Des Moines, Iowa, where Obama planned a coda for his campaign, a finale where his run for the presidency began five years ago.

Jay-Z boomed his way into Columbus‘s Nationwide Arena, performing a rendition of his hit “99 Problems” with a political twist for a crowd estimated by fire officials at more than 15,000 people. He changed a key R-rated word to make his own political endorsement. “I got 99 problems but Mitt ain’t one,” he sang.

“They tell the story of what our country is,” Obama said of the two performers, “but also of what it should be and what it can be.”

Springsteen added a whole new sense of vigor, even giddiness, to the Obama entourage, with many of the president’s aides and advisers clearly star-struck by the rocker’s presence.

Springsteen, in jeans, black boots, a work shirt, vest and leather jacket, was not wearing the typical Air Force One attire. But the Obama camp has left formality aside; many aides are growing beards through Election Day and ties have been left behind in favor of sweaters for the chilly outdoor events during the last hours of the campaign.

Asked if there was any downside to using celebrity glitz instead of substance to drive voters to the polls in the final days, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki laughed. “I think Bruce Springsteen might be offended by you calling him glitzy,” she said.

“Bruce Springsteen, and some other celebrities who have been helping us, reach a broad audience that sometimes tune out what’s being said by politicians,” she said.

As Psaki spoke to reporters at the back of the plane, Obama was up front and on the phone with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie discussing the recovery from Superstorm Sandy. Christie, who says he has attended more than 100 Springsteen concerts, said Obama then handed the phone to Springsteen, a New Jersey native whose songs often have been tributes to his youth in the state.

Upon landing in Columbus, Springsteen told a reporter that it was his first trip on Air Force One. Grinning, he said, “It was pretty cool.” As for New Jersey, he said, “I’m feeling pretty hopeful” that the state’s hard-hit shore will recover.

In Madison and Columbus, Springsteen serenaded audiences with renditions of top anthems “No Surrender,” ”Promised Land” and “Land of Hope and Dreams.” But he also has a custom-made campaign song named after the Obama motto “Forward” — which he acknowledged was “not the best I’ve ever written.”

“How many things rhyme with Obama?” he asked.

Obama, no doubt, didn’t mind.

“I’m going to be fine with Bruce Springsteen on the last day that I’ll ever campaign,” he said above the din of the crowd.

“That’s not a bad way to bring it home. With The Boss. With The Boss.”

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Doctor and Patient: The Mental Fallout of the Hurricane

In the small Connecticut town where I grew up, the tornado of 1979 remains the storm, a freak tornado packing 86-mile-per-hour winds that churned through the streets, killing three people, injuring hundreds and destroying several hundred homes and businesses, including many in my neighborhood.

I was 15 at the time, at home alone looking after my 10-year-old sister and 5-year-old brother. For months afterward, like others caught in the surprise storm, we struggled with memories of that afternoon. During the first few days, I kept reliving the moments huddled with my siblings in the corner; later, I had recurring nightmares and became paralyzed with fear whenever I heard a clap of thunder.

Even today, I tend to worry more than most whenever the sky looks odd or when the weather suddenly turns muggy and dark, the slightest hint of what my sister and I have come to call “tornado weather.”

For almost three decades now, health care experts have been studying the psychological effects of natural disasters and have found that disasters as varied as the 1994 earthquake in Northridge, Calif., and Hurricanes Katrina (2005), Andrew (1992) and Hugo (1989) left significant, disabling and lasting psychological scars in their wake. While individuals with pre-existing mental health issues were at particular risk, everyone was vulnerable. In New Orleans a month after Hurricane Katrina, for example, 17 percent of residents reported symptoms consistent with serious mental illness, compared with 10 percent of those who lived in surrounding areas and only 1 to 3 percent in the general population.

Most commonly and most immediately, the survivors suffered post-traumatic stress symptoms like recurrent nightmares, flashbacks, a hair-trigger temper and an emotional “numbing,” much of which could be considered normal in the first couple of months after a disaster. “It’s a pretty natural thing to have nightmares after living through a natural disaster,” said Ronald C. Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School who has studied the effect of natural disasters on the mental health of survivors. “It would almost be abnormal if you didn’t.”

Over time, when those symptoms abated, survivors were able to move on. When they didn’t, or when other mood disorders like anxiety and depression appeared, mental health issues quickly became a leading cause of disability for survivors, further hampering other efforts at recovery.

But the research has also revealed that we can mitigate the psychological fallout, even after the disaster has occurred. Studies from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have shown that what communities, governments and even elected officials do in the weeks, months and years that follow can have a significant effect on how individuals fare psychologically.

For example, among Hurricane Katrina survivors, there were striking differences in the rates of mental health disorders, depending on how people felt about the difficulties they had finding food and shelter. Survivors who continued to face such adversity because of the government’s slow response had significantly higher rates of mental health problems.

“There’s no question that the best thing the federal, state and municipal governments can do to protect against psychopathology in these kinds of situations is to restore the day-to-day functioning that keeps everyone healthy,” said Dr. Sandro Galea, lead author of the study and chairman of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.

For now, experts are predicting that the psychological fallout from Hurricane Sandy will be less severe than that from Hurricane Katrina. But their optimistic predictions rest in part on the response thus far of government officials and the larger community.

“People pull together at times like this,” Dr. Kessler noted. “To the extent that those affected by Sandy can build on this sense of community and get back to normal, it could be an opportunity for people to grow and even develop a sense of accomplishment because of what they’ve been through.”

What I remember today as clearly as the blinding whiteness of the tornado winds that enveloped our house and the terror that gripped my siblings and me back in 1979 are the state and local officials and rescue workers who appeared almost immediately, the churches and community organizations that organized shelters and fund-raisers, and the neighbors, sleeves rolled up, who cleared debris and cooked for one another.

When the new homes finally began to emerge from the rubble the following spring, it wasn’t the cookie-cutter skyline of raised ranches and colonials that was restored. Instead, the neighborhood became a showplace of modest but quirky family abodes — a brown, modern geometric house on one corner, a yellow, partly subterranean one a few doors down.

From a devastating storm, my neighbors had managed to build new dreams.

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Suzuki to end car sales in U.S.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Suzuki Motor Corp will pull the plug on its unprofitable automobile sales business in the United States after nearly three decades, hurt by a strong yen and a limited choice of vehicles that failed to excite consumers.

Suzuki said on Tuesday it would use a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by its U.S. subsidiary in federal court in California to shut down the auto business and to focus instead on sales of motorcycles, All-Terrain Vehicles (ATV) and boats.

The departure of Suzuki ends a 27-year effort to gain traction in the world's second-largest auto market and should most benefit Kia Motor andNissan Motor , the two brands that car shoppers most compared to Suzuki, according to car shopping website Edmunds.com.

The bankruptcy could allow Japan's No.4 automaker to step away from its contractual responsibilities to the more than 200 dealers who maintain franchises, much asGeneral Motors and Chrysler were able to drop dealerships in their 2009 bankruptcies.

Suzuki models did not catch on in the United States, and the company suffered from a lack of investment in new vehicles. It also struggled from the strong yen that makes it more expensive to export products from Japan.

It sold 21,188 vehicles in the United States through October this year, a 5 percent drop from the previous year at a time when the overall market was up by 14 percent. That made the brand the second worst-selling mainstream brand, behind the Smart micro-car.

Suzuki, which had marketed the Kizashi sedan and the Grand Vitara SUV in the United States, said it would continue to honor warranties during the bankruptcy and did not see the need for outside financing during the restructuring.

American Suzuki Motor Corp, the sole distributor of Suzuki vehicles in the continental United States, will file for bankruptcy with $346 million in debt, of which $173 million is owed to Suzuki group companies, the company said.

The Japanese parent company plans to buy the motorcycle, ATV and outboard engine operations out of bankruptcy and shift its auto business to service existing vehicles on the road. The new U.S. operating unit plans to keep the American Suzuki name, it said.

Suzuki's failed tie-up with Volkswagen on vehicle development had raised questions about its commitment to the U.S. market and whether it would be able to invest in a revamped product line-up months before Tuesday's announcement.

Shares of Suzuki sunk in early morning trade but were up 0.38 percent at 1842 yen as of 11:01 a.m., slightly outperforming theNikkei index that was down 0.3 percent.

(Reporting by Mayumi Negishi, Kevin Krolicki and Yoko Kubota in Tokyo, Sharanya Hrishikesh in Bangalore; Editing by Steve Orlofsky and Ken Wills)

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