Vogue magazine, that is. Vogue has been ga-ga about the oh so stylish Obama Administration. It has covered Obama’s fashionable advisors, such as Valeria Jarrett and Desiree Rogers, and it gave the cover to Michelle Obama in March.

Now, the June issue includes a profile of Susan Rice, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

Rice tells Vogue “it’s a very exciting time to be the American Ambassador to the U.N. because the amount of hopefulness that much of the world has for the new administration is palpable here.”

She’s going to capitalize on the good will “with concrete policy shifts,” she says. “This is not smoke and mirrors and rhetoric and fairy dust. The change is reflected in many ways that matter to people: in our Iraq policy; our Afghanistan/Pakistan policy; our approach to Guantánamo and torture. It’s a set of policy choices that not only shows some break from the recent past but together combine to manifest a very different philosophy about the nature of American leadership.”

Problem is, the Obama Administration has not created a set of policies that shows a clean break with the recent past, especially on the specific issues Rice names. The Obama Administration is actually giving us the worst of the Bush years when it comes to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Guantánamo.

Iraq: It looks doubtful that U.S. troops will actually leave Iraqi cities on June 30. Obama says he intends to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, but the reality is he plans on keeping a force of 35,000 to 50,000 troops in the country after that date. (And this number does not include mercenaries.)

Afghanistan: Obama’s increased use of drones has led to an increase in civilian deaths. Protesters in Kabul’s streets in early May chanted “Death to America” which doesn’t exactly seem “hopeful.” And Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan, with increased troops and mercenaries, will inevitably lead to more civilian casualties.

As for Pakistan, McClatchy reports that “the White House has asked Congress for - and seems likely to receive - $736 million to build a new U.S. embassy in Islamabad, along with permanent housing for U.S. government civilians and new office space in the Pakistani capital. The scale of the projects rivals the giant U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which was completed last year after construction delays at a cost of $740 million.”

And as for Guantánamo, Obama is reported to be talking about “preventive detention” and a willingness to try terrorism suspects in military commissions.

Given that fashion magazines always have an element of fantasy, perhaps I’m being too hard on Susan Rice. But until there are “concrete policy shifts,” Rice’s contention that the current Administration is different than the previous one remains nothing more than fairy dust.

Yesterday, Congressman Alan Grayson, Democrat of Florida, introduced the Paid Vacation Act of 2009.

We’re the only industrialized country without laws guaranteeing paid vacation time, so Grayson’s bill is an exciting development.

The Paid Vacation Act will require at least one week of paid vacation for employees at companies with at least 100 employees. Full- and part-time workers will be eligible after one year of service.

Three years after passage, the bill extends this requirement to companies with at least 50 employees, and requires two weeks for companies with 100 employees.

“Why are paid vacations good enough for the Chinese, French, Japanese, and German employees, but not good enough for us?” Grayson wrote in a press release. ” In other countries, it’s a matter of right. Everyone is entitled to it. In our country, it is a matter of class.”

It certainly is.

According to Opinion Research Corporation, only 69% of lower-wage workers get any paid vacation leave.

“This is a very modest bill,” says John de Graaf, executive director of Take Back Your Time, a non-profit that studies the overworked American. “But we support it wholeheartedly and congratulate Congressman Grayson for introducing it and helping open a dialogue about why vacations matter, how deprived Americans are when it comes to paid time off, and why we must act now to improve the situation.”

Take Back Your Time is seeking endorsements of the Paid Vacation Act of 2009 from private companies, citizen action organizations, and other groups and institutions. Contact John de Graaf at: jodg@comcast.net for more information.

This legislation comes on the heels of another piece of progressive legislation. Earlier this month the Healthy Families Act, which would require paid sick leave, resurfaced in Congress. Senator Ted Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, first proposed this during the Bush Administration but it went nowhere.

With an Obama Administration, we have the opportunity to pass legislation that will improve our lives. De Graaf met with Obama three years ago as part of a group of people to talk about work/life balance. He came away with the impression that Obama really understands the issue.

“His wife especially is very concerned about the work/life balance issue. But Obama is facing huge pushback from the other side,” says de Graaf.

And so is Grayson. A few weeks ago, Roll Call said Grayson is expected to be a top GOP target.

Mario Benedetti, one of my favorite writers, died this week at the age of 88. He was a novelist, playwright, and poet. He also was a journalist and a committed political activist. He  was a fierce critic of U.S. imperialism. And the man could write a beautiful love poem.

He went  into exile after  the 1973 military coup in Uruguay. Exile was the fate of so many  Latin American writers at that time, including Progressive columnist and fellow Uruguayan Eduardo Galeano.

“Mario Benedetti believed that another world was possible,” said Galeano in a statement on Monday. “And was the rare case of a generous writer who celebrated the success of others.”

The Brachiosaurus dinosaur outside the Field Museum in Chicago is draped in a mock sweater of the Chicago Blackhawks #19 Jonathan Toews.

Tribune photo by Terrence Antonio James / May 19, 2009

Toews demonstrated why he is captain of the young scrappy Hawks: He scored Chicago’s two goals in last night’s crushing 3-2  OT defeat to the Detroit Red Wings.

Tribune sports columnist Rick Morrissey sums it up best: “Is it over? It feels over. You lose the opening two games to the methodical, crazily talented Red Wings and your survival rate is right up there with rattlesnake handlers who smoke three packs a day.”

See more dino pix here.

Going to a good friend’s wedding this weekend in NYC. Found a gift on their registry that I really like.

Weird, huh? Had to take a closer look. Guess what’s inside–mulch!

There’s not much talk these days about Iraqi refugees even though the numbers haven’t changed much.  About 2 million Iraqi refugees live in the neighboring countries of Syria and Jordan. Another 2 million are internally displaced.

“The majority of Iraqi refugees come from urban areas—Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk—and those are still volatile areas,” says Tim Irwin, senior media officer at the United National High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR). “You see in the news that there are fairly regular suicide bombings, particularly in Baghdad. So the majority of Iraqi refugees do not feel like it’s safe enough for them to return.”

Most Iraqis, especially Baghdadis, are “prima facie refugees,” says Irwin. “We know the situation they fled was one of violence and persecution.”

Conditions for Iraqis in Damascus and Amman are difficult. They are living in rented accommodations, for the most part. They are not able to work legally and often have trouble getting their children into schools. They have been living off of their savings for several years but now funds are running low.

The UNHCR surveyed a group of Iraqi refugees who returned home and asked them why they did so. “Most of them said they were returning home because they had run out of money,” says Irwin. “They had run out of options in their countries of asylum. They could no longer support themselves so they needed to go home and try to find work.”

“While the host governments are very generous in allowing Iraqi refugees to stay, they still face hardships,” he says.

A year ago I visited Iraqi refugees living in Zarqa, Jordan, a bleak industrial city forty minutes north of Amman. The squalor of some family’s living quarters was shocking. (Several refugees were quite critical of the UNHCR, saying the agency wasn’t doing enough for them.)

One woman, Athra Al-Duleimi, fled Baghdad due to death threats. She said her family was targeted by Shias after the U.S. invasion. She had a cousin in construction in Baghdad. His neighbors said he was a spy and he was shot in the head in front of her house. Her husband was shot and she was, too, but they both survived. Her cousin did not.

Athra said her husband had a grocery store near a palace taken over by U.S. troops. He sold goods to everyone. People said he was a spy and became a target for Shiite militias.

Days after her cousin’s death, she found a threatening letter and four bullets—one each for her, her husband, and two sons—outside her house. So they left everything and went to Jordan in October 2006.

I bet that Al-Duleimi is still living in Zarqa. She told me she had applied for immigration to the United States but was denied.

In 2007, the United States had only admitted 1,608 Iraqi refugees, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. For fiscal year 2008, the number jumped to 13,823, though it’s still is a pretty small number considering the Iraq War has displaced at least 4 million Iraqis. As of February 4, 2009, the United States has admitted 4,479 Iraqi refugees, 0.1 percent of the refugees its war created.

(The quotes from Tim Irwin come from an interview on the 8 O’clock Buzz, a radio program I work on at WORT-FM. Click here to listen. It starts about 10 minutes in.)

Providers of low-income housing that are fighting to keep their tax-exempt status organized a rally and mini-tent city at the Capitol in Madison yesterday. About 100 people gathered at lunchtime under beautiful sunny skies.

Organizer Dean Loumos, executive director of Housing Initiatives, said that by not guaranteeing tax-exempt status, the legislature will make  “affordable housing unaffordable, which increases homelessness.”

Increased homelessness is the latest in a string of Wisconsin woes.

“According to the city’s Community Development Block Grant office, the estimated homeless population increased 17 percent in 2008 to more than 7,500,” reports WISC-TV. “Officials said that the number of people served by county shelters rose 13.5 percent, but shelters turned away more than 3,600 people—a 22-percent increase. The number of children in homeless shelters also rose 55 percent, which is the highest level in a decade.”

And 2009 looks like it could be worse: The Bureau of Labor Statistics says Wisconsin has lost a record number of jobs in the first three months of the year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics report says Wisconsin companies cut more than 14,200 jobs in the first quarter.

Barb Lindsay, director of social services at Salvation Army in Dane County, told WISC-TV that, “People are coming in. They had jobs, they don’t have jobs now or they just can’t get a job. It’s getting harder and harder,” she said.

So why create policies that will lead to an increase in homelessness now? People are having a tough time as it is. And it’s the most vulnerable people who will end up homeless.

“One of the biggest reasons people with disabilities have been forced into institutions is the lack of affordable housing,” said a wheelchair-bound Steve Verriden of Wisconsin Adapt, a disabled-rights activist group, reports Isthmus. “They’re taking away one of the only tools we have left.”

Loumos and his crew of “citizen lobbyists” planned on speaking to elected officials after the rally. “We don’t have the suits. We don’t have big checkbooks,” Loumos told the crowd. “And they’re not going to get a dime from us. We’re not going to give them nothing to ask them to do what’s right.”