One of the iron rules of negotiation is that it takes more than one buyer to raise the price. For a week now, in the final stages of capitulating to Rupert Murdoch, the owners of Dow Jones have been trying to use their reluctance as a lever to get him to up his offer.
No sale. Conning the most relentless media acquirer of our age is a waste of time, especially when his bad reputation is your only tool. Murdoch has stood fast, and now the deal is back on track, if the soon-to-be-his Wall Street Journal has got it right.
But in an act of largesse, Murdoch will leave the Bancroft family a tip by picking up the $30 million tab of their advisers on the deal.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Health Care Slum: Tear It Down!
If Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon were deciding who dies and who gets maimed in Iraq, there would be a public outcry. Why, then, is it acceptable for HMOs and insurance companies to make those decisions for Americans at home?
In all the talk about health care, none of the ’08 White House aspirants has been willing so far to take a wrecking ball to the termite-infested structure that has been deteriorating for half a century.
The slum lords, who take one out of every three dollars collected from the victims, are interested only in profits, some of which they use to lobby against any attempt to provide decent public housing instead,
As Clinton, Obama and Edwards duel over their palliative remedies and the Republicans snarl about “socialized medicine,” there is no serious debate about extending the Medicare model, which works well for older Americans, into a single-payer system that would provide better care at far less cost.
If all the moviegoers who are enjoying their righteous outrage after seeing “Sicko” would demand it, we could have a serious discussion instead of sound bites.
Will any network will step up and offer the time for it? From the sampling of YouTube videos so far, there would be no shortage of good questions.
In all the talk about health care, none of the ’08 White House aspirants has been willing so far to take a wrecking ball to the termite-infested structure that has been deteriorating for half a century.
The slum lords, who take one out of every three dollars collected from the victims, are interested only in profits, some of which they use to lobby against any attempt to provide decent public housing instead,
As Clinton, Obama and Edwards duel over their palliative remedies and the Republicans snarl about “socialized medicine,” there is no serious debate about extending the Medicare model, which works well for older Americans, into a single-payer system that would provide better care at far less cost.
If all the moviegoers who are enjoying their righteous outrage after seeing “Sicko” would demand it, we could have a serious discussion instead of sound bites.
Will any network will step up and offer the time for it? From the sampling of YouTube videos so far, there would be no shortage of good questions.
Audiences with the Imperial Vice-President
Brace yourself, they’re unleashing Dick Cheney this week. He snarled a bit for CBS yesterday. Tonight he should be in full-throated mode on CNN with Larry King.
If Cheney is the Administration’s answer, how desperate must the public relations problem be? From his usual darkness and silence, there are now glimmers and grunts. So far this week we have these emanations:
*He is a “big fan” of Alberto Gonzales: “I think the key is whether or not he has the confidence of the president--and he clearly does."
*Scooter Libby: “I disagreed with the verdict,” but conceded "I thought the president handled it right. I supported his decision."
*Is he part of the Executive branch of government? “Well, I suppose you could argue it either way. The fact is I do work in both branches.”
*Invading Iran: A report in the London Guardian claims Bush, under pressure from Cheney, is agreeing to “carry out military action against Iran before he leaves office.”
How did we get to this Imperial Vice-Presidency from a position that used to involve no more than getting up every morning and asking about the President’s health? In the Washington Post last weekend, Walter Mondale offered a few clues by describing his experience:
“Carter saw the office as an underused asset and set out to make the most of it. He gave me an office in the West Wing, unimpeded access to him and to the flow of information, and specific assignments at home and abroad. He asked me, as the only other nationally elected official, to be his adviser and partner on a range of issues.”
So the Democrats are to blame for Cheney gone wild, kicking over the “bucket of warm piss,” as John Nance Garner described the job, and splattering us all.
If Cheney is the Administration’s answer, how desperate must the public relations problem be? From his usual darkness and silence, there are now glimmers and grunts. So far this week we have these emanations:
*He is a “big fan” of Alberto Gonzales: “I think the key is whether or not he has the confidence of the president--and he clearly does."
*Scooter Libby: “I disagreed with the verdict,” but conceded "I thought the president handled it right. I supported his decision."
*Is he part of the Executive branch of government? “Well, I suppose you could argue it either way. The fact is I do work in both branches.”
*Invading Iran: A report in the London Guardian claims Bush, under pressure from Cheney, is agreeing to “carry out military action against Iran before he leaves office.”
How did we get to this Imperial Vice-Presidency from a position that used to involve no more than getting up every morning and asking about the President’s health? In the Washington Post last weekend, Walter Mondale offered a few clues by describing his experience:
“Carter saw the office as an underused asset and set out to make the most of it. He gave me an office in the West Wing, unimpeded access to him and to the flow of information, and specific assignments at home and abroad. He asked me, as the only other nationally elected official, to be his adviser and partner on a range of issues.”
So the Democrats are to blame for Cheney gone wild, kicking over the “bucket of warm piss,” as John Nance Garner described the job, and splattering us all.
Newest Middle East Adventure
When faithful Robert Novak starts blowing the whistle on a “dangerous and questionable new secret operation” by the surviving Neo-Cons, we are deep in the Twilight Zone.
With terrified Congressmen as his obvious sources, Novak reveals that “high level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.”
This brilliant plan, Novak reveals, is being shepherded by none other than Assistant Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman, a Cheney protégé, fresh from his triumph of insulting Hillary Clinton, who briefed lawmakers about using U.S. Special Forces to help the Turks.
Novak reports their reaction: “Edelman's listeners were stunned. Wasn't this risky? He responded he was sure of success, adding that the U.S. role could be concealed and always would be denied.”
Terrific. Unless sanity suddenly sets in, the Bush Boy Scout Brigade is off on another Middle East adventure that could work out at least as well as toppling Saddam Hussein.
With terrified Congressmen as his obvious sources, Novak reveals that “high level U.S. officials are working with their Turkish counterparts on a joint military operation to suppress Kurdish guerrillas and capture their leaders. Through covert activity, their goal is to forestall Turkey from invading Iraq.”
This brilliant plan, Novak reveals, is being shepherded by none other than Assistant Secretary of Defense Eric Edelman, a Cheney protégé, fresh from his triumph of insulting Hillary Clinton, who briefed lawmakers about using U.S. Special Forces to help the Turks.
Novak reports their reaction: “Edelman's listeners were stunned. Wasn't this risky? He responded he was sure of success, adding that the U.S. role could be concealed and always would be denied.”
Terrific. Unless sanity suddenly sets in, the Bush Boy Scout Brigade is off on another Middle East adventure that could work out at least as well as toppling Saddam Hussein.
Monday, July 30, 2007
A War We Might Just Win--or Maybe Not
After all the gabble today over the Times’ OpEd piece about “winning” in Iraq, it turns out to be a misunderstanding--or more accurately, a mis-titling.
This evening, co-author Kenneth Pollack told Wolf Blitzer on CNN: “Mike and I did not choose the title. We had nothing to do with it...we came back optimistic--but very guardedly optimistic...
”It's not necessarily the title Mike and I would have chosen for it. But when you write for the Times, the Times gets to choose the title...
”As we say in the piece, I don't know what victory really means. You know, if victory means that we're going to create a country like Switzerland, you know, Iraq is at least 50 or 60 years away from that.”
So a more accurate title, if the writers of the piece were to choose it, would have been “A War We Might Just Win in 50 Years.”
Oops.
Great reporter that he is, Wolf failed to ask Pollack what the original title was. It would have been nice to know.
This evening, co-author Kenneth Pollack told Wolf Blitzer on CNN: “Mike and I did not choose the title. We had nothing to do with it...we came back optimistic--but very guardedly optimistic...
”It's not necessarily the title Mike and I would have chosen for it. But when you write for the Times, the Times gets to choose the title...
”As we say in the piece, I don't know what victory really means. You know, if victory means that we're going to create a country like Switzerland, you know, Iraq is at least 50 or 60 years away from that.”
So a more accurate title, if the writers of the piece were to choose it, would have been “A War We Might Just Win in 50 Years.”
Oops.
Great reporter that he is, Wolf failed to ask Pollack what the original title was. It would have been nice to know.
Horny Billionaire
New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg once described being a single, straight billionaire in Manhattan as a “wet dream.” Now he may be having nocturnal emissions about moving to Washington.
While feigning disinterest, Bloomberg is nonetheless out there talking like a Presidential coach if not a candidate, most recently on “Good Morning America” rebuking current contenders for pandering to the public and not confronting what he believes are the big issues: public education, guns and crime.
"Nobody's willing to...say explicitly, 'This is what I believe. This is how I would improve education, for example,'" he said.
He may not go for a four-year lease on the White House, but he certainly sounds like a man hoping for some sleepovers there.
The gossip on Mayor Mike’s pre-City Hall years is that he would ogle an attractive woman and say, “I’d like to do her.” If he goes for the Presidency with his billions, Americans will have to make sure he is not trying to “do” us all.
While feigning disinterest, Bloomberg is nonetheless out there talking like a Presidential coach if not a candidate, most recently on “Good Morning America” rebuking current contenders for pandering to the public and not confronting what he believes are the big issues: public education, guns and crime.
"Nobody's willing to...say explicitly, 'This is what I believe. This is how I would improve education, for example,'" he said.
He may not go for a four-year lease on the White House, but he certainly sounds like a man hoping for some sleepovers there.
The gossip on Mayor Mike’s pre-City Hall years is that he would ogle an attractive woman and say, “I’d like to do her.” If he goes for the Presidency with his billions, Americans will have to make sure he is not trying to “do” us all.
Iraq's Battle of the Bulge
In December 1944, when World War II seemed all but over, the Germans launched a furious last-ditch offensive to try to change the outcome. It lasted a month, cost many lives but failed.
That memory comes back today as proponents of the war in Iraq now mount their attack on the widely held belief that all is lost there.
In a New York Times OpEd, titled “A War We Might Just Win,” Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack claim: “We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily ‘victory’ but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.”
Their first-hand report on signs of improvement seems from this distance to be based more on hope and optimism than hard reality, but it deserves a hearing.
Meanwhile Gen. David Petraeus is working hard to dispute last week’s reports from many sources that Prime Minister al-Maliki wants him out: "He and I have truly had frank conversations but he has never yelled or stood up. This is really, really hard stuff, and occasionally people agree to disagree."
We are in half-full-or-half-empty terrain here. Those of us who love our country but hate the war and see it through the glass darkly can only hope some of this is true.
But it will take a lot more to persuade us to bear the continuing loss of American lives because, as the Brookings Institution warriors put it, “there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.”
Bush, Cheney et al have begun their Battle of the Bulge, but Congress should have the good sense and guts to see a last-gasp counterattack for what it is.
That memory comes back today as proponents of the war in Iraq now mount their attack on the widely held belief that all is lost there.
In a New York Times OpEd, titled “A War We Might Just Win,” Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack claim: “We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily ‘victory’ but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.”
Their first-hand report on signs of improvement seems from this distance to be based more on hope and optimism than hard reality, but it deserves a hearing.
Meanwhile Gen. David Petraeus is working hard to dispute last week’s reports from many sources that Prime Minister al-Maliki wants him out: "He and I have truly had frank conversations but he has never yelled or stood up. This is really, really hard stuff, and occasionally people agree to disagree."
We are in half-full-or-half-empty terrain here. Those of us who love our country but hate the war and see it through the glass darkly can only hope some of this is true.
But it will take a lot more to persuade us to bear the continuing loss of American lives because, as the Brookings Institution warriors put it, “there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.”
Bush, Cheney et al have begun their Battle of the Bulge, but Congress should have the good sense and guts to see a last-gasp counterattack for what it is.
Ingmar Bergman
For a generation whose childhood was shaped by Hollywood movies, he opened the door to a new world of film as art. In the years after World War II, Bergman taught us how to think and feel and see in a new way.
He was an artist of images, but ideas were always there. All the words in books about existentialism came into focus for me only after watching “The Magician” in the 1950s.
His obituary in the New York Times today tells about the fifty films he made in the course of a long dream-like life, but behind the names and numbers is the story of an artist who helped shape the sensorium of several generations.
“I have maintained open channels with my childhood,” he once told Michiko Kakutani. “I think it may be that way with many artists. Sometimes in the night, when I am on the limit between sleeping and being awake, I can just go through a door into my childhood and everything is as it was--with lights, smells, sounds and people...”
For new generations, Ingmar Bergman’s dreams will always be there on DVDs and cassettes. Start with “Fanny and Alexander.”
Once on an airplane ride I sat next to a Jesuit priest who wrote best-selling books. We spent the entire time talking passionately about Bergman. It was what we had most in common.
He was an artist of images, but ideas were always there. All the words in books about existentialism came into focus for me only after watching “The Magician” in the 1950s.
His obituary in the New York Times today tells about the fifty films he made in the course of a long dream-like life, but behind the names and numbers is the story of an artist who helped shape the sensorium of several generations.
“I have maintained open channels with my childhood,” he once told Michiko Kakutani. “I think it may be that way with many artists. Sometimes in the night, when I am on the limit between sleeping and being awake, I can just go through a door into my childhood and everything is as it was--with lights, smells, sounds and people...”
For new generations, Ingmar Bergman’s dreams will always be there on DVDs and cassettes. Start with “Fanny and Alexander.”
Once on an airplane ride I sat next to a Jesuit priest who wrote best-selling books. We spent the entire time talking passionately about Bergman. It was what we had most in common.
Where Terrorists Could Go Nuclear
Our “vital ally in the War on Terror,” as President Bush describes Pakistan, is on the brink of a crisis that could make Iraq look like a Sunday picnic.
To stabilize his situation, President Pervez Musharraf is negotiating a power-sharing arrangement with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who is taking a hard line about her return from self-imposed exile, insisting that Musharraf give up control of the army that brought him to power.
"The Red Mosque was just a warm-up for what will happen if the religious schools are not disarmed," Bhutto said this week about the recent bloody occupation in Islamabad, adding that Islamist extremists plotting the overthrow of Musharraf's government had converted madrassases into military arsenals.
All this unrest and uncertainty comes amid the Bush Administration’s increasing doubts about Pakistan’s role in rooting out Al Qaeda and the imminent passage by Congress of an aid bill that would be tied to Pakistan’s progress in cracking down on terrorist safe havens.
Add to this volatile political mixture Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons, and it may soon make our worries about Iraq and Iran look simple by comparison.
To stabilize his situation, President Pervez Musharraf is negotiating a power-sharing arrangement with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who is taking a hard line about her return from self-imposed exile, insisting that Musharraf give up control of the army that brought him to power.
"The Red Mosque was just a warm-up for what will happen if the religious schools are not disarmed," Bhutto said this week about the recent bloody occupation in Islamabad, adding that Islamist extremists plotting the overthrow of Musharraf's government had converted madrassases into military arsenals.
All this unrest and uncertainty comes amid the Bush Administration’s increasing doubts about Pakistan’s role in rooting out Al Qaeda and the imminent passage by Congress of an aid bill that would be tied to Pakistan’s progress in cracking down on terrorist safe havens.
Add to this volatile political mixture Pakistan’s possession of nuclear weapons, and it may soon make our worries about Iraq and Iran look simple by comparison.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Clinton-Obama, the Bickersons Ticket
The Democrat sitcom had a rocky week. Starting with the YouTube dustup, Hillary and Barack did several rounds of Alice and Ralph Kramden. Then the week's episode ended with a crowd-pleasing to-do about the lady of the house’s cleavage.
Family brawls are good theater but, if the protagonists are going to wind up together as the perfect ticket, they may have to tone down the hostility. Fist-shaking and “To the moon, Alice!” are good for a few laughs, but the Republican clowns, who are shying away from The Tube, are hoping the Clinton-Obama show will take a dive in the ratings.
Judging from the pilot episode, they may have a point. The lovey-doveyness of the early TV debates was a little boring, but the audience laps up close families. Think “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie” before the script writers get carried away with punch lines.
Family brawls are good theater but, if the protagonists are going to wind up together as the perfect ticket, they may have to tone down the hostility. Fist-shaking and “To the moon, Alice!” are good for a few laughs, but the Republican clowns, who are shying away from The Tube, are hoping the Clinton-Obama show will take a dive in the ratings.
Judging from the pilot episode, they may have a point. The lovey-doveyness of the early TV debates was a little boring, but the audience laps up close families. Think “The Waltons” and “Little House on the Prairie” before the script writers get carried away with punch lines.
Nerd Alert, Yo Mama!
The youth culture just keeps getting more complicated. Now we learn that nerdiness is an admirable “hyper-white” reaction to cool European-American kids who appropriate African-American culture.
You follow? According to academic linguist Mary Bucholtz, “Being a nerd has become a widely accepted and even proud identity, and nerds have carved out a comfortable niche in popular culture...By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white.”
Bucholtz finds this admirable. By pushing white-bread Young-Republicanism to the point of parody, the new nerds are “refusing to exercise the racial privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded.”
The nerds may be, in the language of another era, putting us on, or perhaps their chronicler Bucholtz is. At any rate, the subject of whites trying to act black and vice versa is very much in the air.
When Hillary Clinton drops her “g”s in gerunds for an African-American audience or Barack Obama is accused of being “too white,” racial styles are definitely in play.
You follow? According to academic linguist Mary Bucholtz, “Being a nerd has become a widely accepted and even proud identity, and nerds have carved out a comfortable niche in popular culture...By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white.”
Bucholtz finds this admirable. By pushing white-bread Young-Republicanism to the point of parody, the new nerds are “refusing to exercise the racial privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded.”
The nerds may be, in the language of another era, putting us on, or perhaps their chronicler Bucholtz is. At any rate, the subject of whites trying to act black and vice versa is very much in the air.
When Hillary Clinton drops her “g”s in gerunds for an African-American audience or Barack Obama is accused of being “too white,” racial styles are definitely in play.
Bush's Twit of the Year
In the competition inspired by the immortal Monty Python skit, we now have a winner--a second-generation Bushie who sat on the Surgeon General’s report on world health because it wasn’t political enough.
The censored document, according to the Washington Post, dealt with “the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate.”
Written and vetted by public health experts, the report was suppressed by William R. Steiger, a political appointee with no experience in the field. He is a godson of President Bush’s father, who appointed Steiger’s mother to the Federal Trade Commission.
Steiger’s complaint about its failure to praise the Administration enough is consistent with the recent Congressional testimony of former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona that he was “muzzled” on public health issues, ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches and discouraged from attending the Special Olympics for disabled people because of its ties to the Kennedy family.
The strange stuff the Chinese are putting into toothpaste and pet food is beginning to look innocuous compared to what Bush’s twits have been injecting into our political bloodstream.
The censored document, according to the Washington Post, dealt with “the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate.”
Written and vetted by public health experts, the report was suppressed by William R. Steiger, a political appointee with no experience in the field. He is a godson of President Bush’s father, who appointed Steiger’s mother to the Federal Trade Commission.
Steiger’s complaint about its failure to praise the Administration enough is consistent with the recent Congressional testimony of former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona that he was “muzzled” on public health issues, ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches and discouraged from attending the Special Olympics for disabled people because of its ties to the Kennedy family.
The strange stuff the Chinese are putting into toothpaste and pet food is beginning to look innocuous compared to what Bush’s twits have been injecting into our political bloodstream.
The No-Win War Gets Worse
Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is a drowning man encircled by sharks, who is trying cut his only lifeline by feuding with Gen. David Petraeus and asking President Bush to replace him.
His action reflects intense pressure from fellow Shiites to keep Petraeus from arming Sunni tribesmen to fight Al Qaeda insurgents from Saudi Arabia who are car-bombing U.S. troops, exposes hopes for a power-sharing central government in Iraq as a Bush pipe dream and leaves both heads of state politically trapped.
Bush is now joined at the hip with Petraeus as his only defense against growing pressure to leave by using the General’s “progress” in pacifying Iraq to keep Republican Congressmen from breaking ranks. Dumping Petraeus is unthinkable.
But al-Maliki’s bind is just as tight. Reputedly tied to Shia militias responsible for sectarian violence, the Prime Minister is far from his own man.
The resulting frustration and anger have led to “shouting matches” with the U.S. Commander, refereed by Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who only concedes that "sometimes there are sporty exchanges." Petraeus puts it less diplomatically: "We have not pulled punches with each other."
The civil war that has been predicted if the U.S. leaves is under way. What are we accomplishing by staying, other than more American deaths and humiliation over our helplessness?
His action reflects intense pressure from fellow Shiites to keep Petraeus from arming Sunni tribesmen to fight Al Qaeda insurgents from Saudi Arabia who are car-bombing U.S. troops, exposes hopes for a power-sharing central government in Iraq as a Bush pipe dream and leaves both heads of state politically trapped.
Bush is now joined at the hip with Petraeus as his only defense against growing pressure to leave by using the General’s “progress” in pacifying Iraq to keep Republican Congressmen from breaking ranks. Dumping Petraeus is unthinkable.
But al-Maliki’s bind is just as tight. Reputedly tied to Shia militias responsible for sectarian violence, the Prime Minister is far from his own man.
The resulting frustration and anger have led to “shouting matches” with the U.S. Commander, refereed by Ambassador Ryan Crocker, who only concedes that "sometimes there are sporty exchanges." Petraeus puts it less diplomatically: "We have not pulled punches with each other."
The civil war that has been predicted if the U.S. leaves is under way. What are we accomplishing by staying, other than more American deaths and humiliation over our helplessness?
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Now for Something Completely Different...
It took almost a decade for a practical joke to pay off for Dr. Robert Woo, an oral surgeon in Auburn, Wash.
After preparing dental implants for his assistant, an ardent advocate of caring for abandoned pot-bellied pigs, Dr. Woo temporarily inserted two boar tusks in her mouth while she was under sedation and took pictures that everyone in the office found hilarious--except the implantee.
She sued and was awarded $250,000, which his insurance company refused to pay. Now the State Supreme Court has ruled for Dr. Woo in his suit against the company. He will get $750,000 in damages and attorney fees as well as reimbursement for the $250,000 he paid the employee, thus rewarding the good doctor with half a million yuks for his sense of fun.
No word of who got custody of the boar-tusk pictures, but it's good to know there is indemnity for being a jerk.
After preparing dental implants for his assistant, an ardent advocate of caring for abandoned pot-bellied pigs, Dr. Woo temporarily inserted two boar tusks in her mouth while she was under sedation and took pictures that everyone in the office found hilarious--except the implantee.
She sued and was awarded $250,000, which his insurance company refused to pay. Now the State Supreme Court has ruled for Dr. Woo in his suit against the company. He will get $750,000 in damages and attorney fees as well as reimbursement for the $250,000 he paid the employee, thus rewarding the good doctor with half a million yuks for his sense of fun.
No word of who got custody of the boar-tusk pictures, but it's good to know there is indemnity for being a jerk.
Liberal, Progressive, Whatever
In the YouTube debate, Hillary Clinton said she would rather be called “progressive” than “liberal.” As usual, her judgment is poll-perfect.
Later in the week, the Rasmussen Reports asked voters and found:
“Just 20% said they consider it a positive description to call a candidate politically liberal while 39% would view that description negatively. However, 35% would consider it a positive description to call a candidate politically progressive. Just 18% react negatively to that term.”
Irving Kristol, father of Bush’s best media friend William, famously described a neo-conservative as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality,” a snappy definition with a touch of sly racism. In today’s political atmosphere, a progressive might be defined as a liberal who has changed his (or her) name out of ambition.
Until the Ann Coulters of the world worked so hard to make it a synonym for godless and goofy, liberal was a badge of honor for those who valued people over property and, in the last century, helped create Social Security, unemployment insurance, civil rights for minorities and opposed the war in Vietnam on the same principles that they now oppose the war in Iraq.
Even today, the most-educated Americans, including college professors, describe themselves as liberal and (hold the snickering from the cheap seats) so do I.
It’s saddening that Hillary Clinton, as her husband did, feels compelled to change her political name.
Later in the week, the Rasmussen Reports asked voters and found:
“Just 20% said they consider it a positive description to call a candidate politically liberal while 39% would view that description negatively. However, 35% would consider it a positive description to call a candidate politically progressive. Just 18% react negatively to that term.”
Irving Kristol, father of Bush’s best media friend William, famously described a neo-conservative as “a liberal who has been mugged by reality,” a snappy definition with a touch of sly racism. In today’s political atmosphere, a progressive might be defined as a liberal who has changed his (or her) name out of ambition.
Until the Ann Coulters of the world worked so hard to make it a synonym for godless and goofy, liberal was a badge of honor for those who valued people over property and, in the last century, helped create Social Security, unemployment insurance, civil rights for minorities and opposed the war in Vietnam on the same principles that they now oppose the war in Iraq.
Even today, the most-educated Americans, including college professors, describe themselves as liberal and (hold the snickering from the cheap seats) so do I.
It’s saddening that Hillary Clinton, as her husband did, feels compelled to change her political name.
Not Doing It for the Money
For those who wonder if public service would attract better people if it paid more, there is sobering news from the economic journal TV Guide.
Last year Oprah Winfrey earned $260 million, more than twice as much as Bush, Cheney, Congress, the Supreme Court and governors of all 50 states combined. As public servants struggle along on their six-figure pittances, voters might give a thought to how poorly they are paid.
During the Presidential campaign, we learned that John Edwards earned $479,512 from his part-time job with a hedge fund, and yet here he is working so hard to get a position that pays less than that for long hours and much more stress.
Policy wonks who study the latest figures should look for an explanation for the fact that Simon Cowell ($45 million), Judge Judy ($30 million) and Katie Couric ($15 million) earn more than the headliners of all three Federal branches combined.
Meanwhile, taxpayers can take comfort in knowing that they are getting such good government at bargain prices.
Last year Oprah Winfrey earned $260 million, more than twice as much as Bush, Cheney, Congress, the Supreme Court and governors of all 50 states combined. As public servants struggle along on their six-figure pittances, voters might give a thought to how poorly they are paid.
During the Presidential campaign, we learned that John Edwards earned $479,512 from his part-time job with a hedge fund, and yet here he is working so hard to get a position that pays less than that for long hours and much more stress.
Policy wonks who study the latest figures should look for an explanation for the fact that Simon Cowell ($45 million), Judge Judy ($30 million) and Katie Couric ($15 million) earn more than the headliners of all three Federal branches combined.
Meanwhile, taxpayers can take comfort in knowing that they are getting such good government at bargain prices.
"Can't Anybody Here Play This Game?"
The immortal words of Casey Stengel come to mind for the Bush Administration’s latest moves in the Middle East. Casey’s incompetent Mets were only losing baseball games. This bunch is playing with our country’s future.
The most recent tragi-comedy of errors is reported in today’s New York Times:
“The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to total $20 billion over the next decade at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.”
Counterproductive is a euphemism for exporting radicals to car bomb our troops there while King Abdullah tells Arab heads of state that Americans in Iraq are “an illegal foreign occupation.”
Next week, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will go to Saudi Arabia to ask the Saudis, please, to “make clear to Sunnis engaged in violence in Iraq that such actions are ‘killing your future.’”
At the same time, to allay the fears of our most reliable ally, the Bush team is promising to increase military aid to Israel to $30.4 billion over the next decade. There is nothing like a little arms race to promote stability in a trigger-happy region.
There may be some devilishly clever, subtle master strategy in all this but, based on past performance, they might do well to consider Casey Stengel’s advice for managing tough situations: “The secret is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.”
The most recent tragi-comedy of errors is reported in today’s New York Times:
“The Bush administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its neighbors that is expected to total $20 billion over the next decade at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.”
Counterproductive is a euphemism for exporting radicals to car bomb our troops there while King Abdullah tells Arab heads of state that Americans in Iraq are “an illegal foreign occupation.”
Next week, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will go to Saudi Arabia to ask the Saudis, please, to “make clear to Sunnis engaged in violence in Iraq that such actions are ‘killing your future.’”
At the same time, to allay the fears of our most reliable ally, the Bush team is promising to increase military aid to Israel to $30.4 billion over the next decade. There is nothing like a little arms race to promote stability in a trigger-happy region.
There may be some devilishly clever, subtle master strategy in all this but, based on past performance, they might do well to consider Casey Stengel’s advice for managing tough situations: “The secret is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.”
Friday, July 27, 2007
The Hotness of Nancy Pelosi
Now that the D.C. Madam’s phone list has lost its charms for everyone except Larry Flynt and his moles, Washington’s libido has taken a turn toward the wholesome.
Today the political trade journal, The Hill, unveiled its choices for “the 50 most beautiful people on Capitol Hill.” Mirroring the power structure, as everything in Washington does, the top ten consists of six Democrats and four Republicans, three men and seven women, most of them in their twenties and thirties, except for No. 4, Nancy Pelosi.
The Hill admits “It is rather uncomfortable calling the 67-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), mother of five and grandmother of six, ‘hot’ but cites in defense that “There is a Facebook.com group called ‘I can’t say why, but I kinda think Nancy Pelosi is cute.’”
“With more beautiful people nominees than ever before,” the editors confide, “making choices was a wrenching and angst-filled process.” No word about how much lobbying was involved.
Today the political trade journal, The Hill, unveiled its choices for “the 50 most beautiful people on Capitol Hill.” Mirroring the power structure, as everything in Washington does, the top ten consists of six Democrats and four Republicans, three men and seven women, most of them in their twenties and thirties, except for No. 4, Nancy Pelosi.
The Hill admits “It is rather uncomfortable calling the 67-year-old House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), mother of five and grandmother of six, ‘hot’ but cites in defense that “There is a Facebook.com group called ‘I can’t say why, but I kinda think Nancy Pelosi is cute.’”
“With more beautiful people nominees than ever before,” the editors confide, “making choices was a wrenching and angst-filled process.” No word about how much lobbying was involved.
A Large-Hearted Woman
Hollywood activists are easy targets, often earnestly silly and self-congratulating, but a shining exception is Mia Farrow and her work to stop the genocide in Darfur. This week, her efforts provoked two world powers-—the People’s Republic of China and Steven Spielberg.
During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden was an angry exception) and exuded helplessness.
Not Mia Farrow. For three years, the 62-year-old waif-like actress has been devoting herself to traveling in Darfur, Chad and the Sudan, photographing and writing about the atrocities, running a web site about them and pressuring for activism to relieve the suffering.
One of her targets, Steven Spielberg, who is artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has now threatened to quit unless China, the Sudan’s largest oil customer, joins in the effort to stop the slaughter.
In the Wall Street Journal, Farrow and her son had written: "Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?"
A diminutive woman, Farrow is an emotional powerhouse. Married to Frank Sinatra at 21, then to composer Andre Previn and after that in an all-but-married relationship with Woody Allen for almost two decades, she has fifteen children, eleven of them adopted.
She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to the fight to eradicate polio, which she survived as a child, and the plight of suffering children everywhere.
If there is any such person as the mythical Earth Mother, Mia Farrow is that and more.
During the YouTube debate, Democratic candidates, including Hillary Clinton, hemmed and hawed about diplomacy to stop the killing, clearly uneasy about a complex humanitarian crisis in far-off Africa (only Joe Biden was an angry exception) and exuded helplessness.
Not Mia Farrow. For three years, the 62-year-old waif-like actress has been devoting herself to traveling in Darfur, Chad and the Sudan, photographing and writing about the atrocities, running a web site about them and pressuring for activism to relieve the suffering.
One of her targets, Steven Spielberg, who is artistic director for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, has now threatened to quit unless China, the Sudan’s largest oil customer, joins in the effort to stop the slaughter.
In the Wall Street Journal, Farrow and her son had written: "Is Mr. Spielberg, who in 1994 founded the Shoah Foundation to record the testimony of survivors of the holocaust, aware that China is bankrolling Darfur's genocide?"
A diminutive woman, Farrow is an emotional powerhouse. Married to Frank Sinatra at 21, then to composer Andre Previn and after that in an all-but-married relationship with Woody Allen for almost two decades, she has fifteen children, eleven of them adopted.
She is a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, drawing attention to the fight to eradicate polio, which she survived as a child, and the plight of suffering children everywhere.
If there is any such person as the mythical Earth Mother, Mia Farrow is that and more.
The Ghost Trial of Bush and Cheney
Sen. Patrick Leahy yesterday issued subpoenas to Karl Rove and his helper, Scott Jennings, to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee with what amounts to a prosecutor’s opening statement.
Whether or not the two Presidential aides take the stand, they will be tried as surrogates for the Bush-Cheney White House over the next months with the American public in the jury box.
Leahy, a former prosecutor, summed up the charges: “The veil of secrecy this Administration has pulled over the White House is unprecedented and damaging to the tradition of open government by and for the people that has been a hallmark of the Republic.”
Those who see the current Senate process as a counterpart of the 1970s Watergate hearings will find evidence in Leahy’s assertion, “Not since the darkest days of the Nixon Administration have we seen efforts to corrupt federal law enforcement for partisan political gain and such efforts to avoid accountability.”
Reviewing the case against Rove in the U.S. Attorney firings, Leahy claimed that “evidence points to his role and the role of those in his office in removing or trying to remove prosecutors not considered sufficiently loyal to Republican electoral prospects. Such manipulation shows corruption of federal law enforcement for partisan political purposes.”
To underscore Bush’s “stonewalling,” Leahy cited 74 instances of Presidential advisors testifying before Congress since World War II, adding that, during the Clinton years, White House aides were “routinely subpoenaed for documents or to appear before Congress.”
He broadened his case about the lawlessness of the current Administration by noting “political briefings at over 20 government agencies, including briefings attended by Justice Department officials” and the revelation this week that U.S. ambassadors were similarly drawn into domestic politics.
As Leahy launched the case against Bush and Cheney, the committee’s senior Republican, Arlen Specter, was hitching a ride on Air Force One and telling reporters that while he hoped “to reach an accommodation” with the White House on the subpoenas, “I don’t see it now.”
As in the time of Watergate, the American public will be listening and making up its mind about the innocence or guilt of its White House employees.
Whether or not the two Presidential aides take the stand, they will be tried as surrogates for the Bush-Cheney White House over the next months with the American public in the jury box.
Leahy, a former prosecutor, summed up the charges: “The veil of secrecy this Administration has pulled over the White House is unprecedented and damaging to the tradition of open government by and for the people that has been a hallmark of the Republic.”
Those who see the current Senate process as a counterpart of the 1970s Watergate hearings will find evidence in Leahy’s assertion, “Not since the darkest days of the Nixon Administration have we seen efforts to corrupt federal law enforcement for partisan political gain and such efforts to avoid accountability.”
Reviewing the case against Rove in the U.S. Attorney firings, Leahy claimed that “evidence points to his role and the role of those in his office in removing or trying to remove prosecutors not considered sufficiently loyal to Republican electoral prospects. Such manipulation shows corruption of federal law enforcement for partisan political purposes.”
To underscore Bush’s “stonewalling,” Leahy cited 74 instances of Presidential advisors testifying before Congress since World War II, adding that, during the Clinton years, White House aides were “routinely subpoenaed for documents or to appear before Congress.”
He broadened his case about the lawlessness of the current Administration by noting “political briefings at over 20 government agencies, including briefings attended by Justice Department officials” and the revelation this week that U.S. ambassadors were similarly drawn into domestic politics.
As Leahy launched the case against Bush and Cheney, the committee’s senior Republican, Arlen Specter, was hitching a ride on Air Force One and telling reporters that while he hoped “to reach an accommodation” with the White House on the subpoenas, “I don’t see it now.”
As in the time of Watergate, the American public will be listening and making up its mind about the innocence or guilt of its White House employees.
Obama's Wrong Turn?
From the start, the biggest hazard for Barack Obama has been the inevitable “professionalization” of his campaign.
Obama came on the scene last year as a phenomenon, a “rock star” in the dopey shorthand of jaded political observers. Authenticity was his biggest asset, offering candor and thoughtful responses rather than sound bites as well as an attitude of respectful disagreement, even with the Bush Administration, rather than pugnacity. Obama’s avowed aim was to reject "the smallness of our politics" and "scoring cheap political points."
Early in the year, in the brouhaha over David Geffen’s calling the Clintons liars, the Clinton and Obama staffs started to mix it up, but Obama shut down the shouting match.
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times chided him: “I know you want to run a high-minded campaign, but do you worry that you might be putting yourself on a pedestal too much? Because people also want to see you mix it up a little. That’s how they judge how you’d be with Putin.”
“When I get into a tussle,” he answered, “I want it to be over something real, not something manufactured. If someone wants to get in an argument with me, let’s argue about how we’re going to fix the health care system or where we need to go on Iraq.”
Five months later, Obama is in a “manufactured” brawl after Hillary Clinton scored a rhetorical point in this week’s debate by making him seem too eager to meet adversarial heads of state without adequate preparation.
Instead of shrugging off her comments as too obvious to require rebuttal, Obama took the bait and is now in free fall off his pedestal. Today he accused Clinton of wanting to continue the "Bush doctrine" of only speaking to leaders of rogue nations who first meet conditions laid out by the U. S. and suggesting that being "trapped by a lot of received wisdom" led Congress, including Clinton, to authorize the war in Iraq.
Maureen Dowd and his more rabid admirers may be happy to see Obama on the attack, but the question arises of whether he is squandering his erstwhile uniqueness over a non-issue.
If he gets too far into “the smallness of our politics” and “scoring cheap political points,” what may be left is just another politician, and a not very experienced one at that.
Obama came on the scene last year as a phenomenon, a “rock star” in the dopey shorthand of jaded political observers. Authenticity was his biggest asset, offering candor and thoughtful responses rather than sound bites as well as an attitude of respectful disagreement, even with the Bush Administration, rather than pugnacity. Obama’s avowed aim was to reject "the smallness of our politics" and "scoring cheap political points."
Early in the year, in the brouhaha over David Geffen’s calling the Clintons liars, the Clinton and Obama staffs started to mix it up, but Obama shut down the shouting match.
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times chided him: “I know you want to run a high-minded campaign, but do you worry that you might be putting yourself on a pedestal too much? Because people also want to see you mix it up a little. That’s how they judge how you’d be with Putin.”
“When I get into a tussle,” he answered, “I want it to be over something real, not something manufactured. If someone wants to get in an argument with me, let’s argue about how we’re going to fix the health care system or where we need to go on Iraq.”
Five months later, Obama is in a “manufactured” brawl after Hillary Clinton scored a rhetorical point in this week’s debate by making him seem too eager to meet adversarial heads of state without adequate preparation.
Instead of shrugging off her comments as too obvious to require rebuttal, Obama took the bait and is now in free fall off his pedestal. Today he accused Clinton of wanting to continue the "Bush doctrine" of only speaking to leaders of rogue nations who first meet conditions laid out by the U. S. and suggesting that being "trapped by a lot of received wisdom" led Congress, including Clinton, to authorize the war in Iraq.
Maureen Dowd and his more rabid admirers may be happy to see Obama on the attack, but the question arises of whether he is squandering his erstwhile uniqueness over a non-issue.
If he gets too far into “the smallness of our politics” and “scoring cheap political points,” what may be left is just another politician, and a not very experienced one at that.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Alberto Gonzales' Nose
Specialists at Walter Reed Medical Center have been treating the Attorney General, between rounds of Congressional testimony, for an advanced case of Pinocchio Syndrome, it was learned today.
Thus far, non-invasive therapy has controlled the symptoms, but Mr. Gonzales’ condition may require more aggressive measures for the tension produced by relentless questioning.
Meanwhile, at the White House, a spokesperson confirmed the President’s deep concern over the suffering of his long-time friend, especially after learning the Attorney General’s therapy may produce such side effects as the recall of suppressed traumatic memories and uncontrollable logorrhea.
Thus far, doctors have reassured the President that continuing as Attorney General is the best tonic for Mr. Gonzales’ future well-being.
Thus far, non-invasive therapy has controlled the symptoms, but Mr. Gonzales’ condition may require more aggressive measures for the tension produced by relentless questioning.
Meanwhile, at the White House, a spokesperson confirmed the President’s deep concern over the suffering of his long-time friend, especially after learning the Attorney General’s therapy may produce such side effects as the recall of suppressed traumatic memories and uncontrollable logorrhea.
Thus far, doctors have reassured the President that continuing as Attorney General is the best tonic for Mr. Gonzales’ future well-being.
Can Facebook Make You Fat?
If absence makes the heart grow fonder, proximity can make the whole body fatter.
The Harvard Medical School suggests obesity is a virus transmitted by friends and family. A study of more than 12,000 people over 32 years finds social networks are crucial to putting on weight.
The influence apparently goes well beyond getting together and ordering pizza. According to the researchers, when one spouse gets fat, the other is 37 percent more likely to, compared with other couples. Brothers of obese men have a 40 percent higher chance of blimping up, too.
The risk is even greater among friends, between 57 and 171 percent, even when they live far apart, leading to the conclusion that “new social norms can proliferate quickly.”
Nicholas A. Christakis of Harvard Medical School, who led the study, to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine, concluded, “We are finding evidence for a kind of social contagion."
So the answer to keeping weight down is obvious: Stay away from sumo wrestlers, and hang out with fashion models.
The Harvard Medical School suggests obesity is a virus transmitted by friends and family. A study of more than 12,000 people over 32 years finds social networks are crucial to putting on weight.
The influence apparently goes well beyond getting together and ordering pizza. According to the researchers, when one spouse gets fat, the other is 37 percent more likely to, compared with other couples. Brothers of obese men have a 40 percent higher chance of blimping up, too.
The risk is even greater among friends, between 57 and 171 percent, even when they live far apart, leading to the conclusion that “new social norms can proliferate quickly.”
Nicholas A. Christakis of Harvard Medical School, who led the study, to be published in the New England Journal of Medicine, concluded, “We are finding evidence for a kind of social contagion."
So the answer to keeping weight down is obvious: Stay away from sumo wrestlers, and hang out with fashion models.
Dow Jones Goes Down Under
The media melodrama is over. Apparently enough of the Bancroft family will accept Rupert Murdoch’s $5 billion Faustian bargain for the Wall Street Journal.
But give them credit for a struggle to save their souls. At a family meeting Monday night, the Journal reported, one of the matriarchs, 77-year-old Jane Cox MacElree, argued against making the deal with the Devil by invoking the martyrdom of Daniel Pearl.
"He put his life on the line for the paper," Ms. MacElree said, citing the reporter who was kidnapped and killed by Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Ms. MacElree was supported by daughter, Leslie Hill, a Dow Jones director and former airline pilot, who waved a quarter-inch-thick manila envelope filled with letters from Journal reporters and editors who protested a deal with News Corp.
“She said it was their voices that mattered.” the Journal reported. “In a halting speech, she was on the verge of tears as she talked about the reporters' dedication to their jobs, and told family members they owed it to the Journal's rank and file not to sell the paper, according to participants.”
What’s remarkable about this prolonged struggle is not that the various branches of the Bancroft family finally succumbed to Murdoch’s offer that doubled the market value of their holdings but that so many resisted for so long.
In the era of corporate journalism, it’s sad to witness the loss of another leading family-owned company with the principles expressed by Ms. MacElree and her daughter, but there is a kind of cold comfort in seeing that such sentiments still exist.
Their time may have passed, but Murdoch’s won’t last forever, either.
But give them credit for a struggle to save their souls. At a family meeting Monday night, the Journal reported, one of the matriarchs, 77-year-old Jane Cox MacElree, argued against making the deal with the Devil by invoking the martyrdom of Daniel Pearl.
"He put his life on the line for the paper," Ms. MacElree said, citing the reporter who was kidnapped and killed by Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Ms. MacElree was supported by daughter, Leslie Hill, a Dow Jones director and former airline pilot, who waved a quarter-inch-thick manila envelope filled with letters from Journal reporters and editors who protested a deal with News Corp.
“She said it was their voices that mattered.” the Journal reported. “In a halting speech, she was on the verge of tears as she talked about the reporters' dedication to their jobs, and told family members they owed it to the Journal's rank and file not to sell the paper, according to participants.”
What’s remarkable about this prolonged struggle is not that the various branches of the Bancroft family finally succumbed to Murdoch’s offer that doubled the market value of their holdings but that so many resisted for so long.
In the era of corporate journalism, it’s sad to witness the loss of another leading family-owned company with the principles expressed by Ms. MacElree and her daughter, but there is a kind of cold comfort in seeing that such sentiments still exist.
Their time may have passed, but Murdoch’s won’t last forever, either.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Hillary, Obama Splitting Hairs
If the two leading contenders for the Democratic nomination really want to get into it, they should stop playing ping-pong about when and how to negotiate with our adversaries.
Clinton scored a rhetorical point in the debate by pushing a distinction without a difference, and now Obama keeps making it worse by crying “foul.” Enough, putative leaders of the free world! If you want to get away from the also-rans and have a serious, substantive debate about real issues, just dip into those piles of money you’ve attracted, pay for an hour of TV or cable network time and go at it.
But, please spare us the schoolyard spats. We have a war to stop and a country to provide with a grownup government again.
Clinton scored a rhetorical point in the debate by pushing a distinction without a difference, and now Obama keeps making it worse by crying “foul.” Enough, putative leaders of the free world! If you want to get away from the also-rans and have a serious, substantive debate about real issues, just dip into those piles of money you’ve attracted, pay for an hour of TV or cable network time and go at it.
But, please spare us the schoolyard spats. We have a war to stop and a country to provide with a grownup government again.
Honoring the Dead, Conveniently
As Americans turn against the war in Iraq, the deaths of our young people there are getting harder to bear. At one Army base, Fort Lewis in Washington, the Commander has decided to honor the fallen, instead of with services for each soldier, a collective memorial once a month.
“If I lost my husband at the beginning of the month, what do you do, wait until the end of the month?” asks the wife of one soldier in Iraq. “I don’t know if it’s more convenient for them, or what, but that’s insane.”
From the Gettysburg Address on, Americans have been torn between gratitude and grief for the young men, and now women as well, sent to die for such abstractions as freedom and honor. But until the past half century, those words had weight and meaning.
Now on Memorial Day, when the President says “patriots from every corner of our Nation have taken up arms to uphold the ideals that make our country a beacon of hope and freedom for the entire world,” how many of us believe that?
Vietnam changed everything. In a movie 20 years ago, “Gardens of Stone,” about old soldiers who tend graves at Arlington National Cemetery, one of them says, "In this war, there is no front. It's not even a war. There's nothing to win and no way to win it."
Now Iraq makes that seem an understatement. But even in the most senseless and brutal of wars, dying is the same solemn reality it has always been. Politicians can debate whether our young men and women are giving up their lives “in vain,” but those deaths can’t be “disremembered.”
The Ft. Lewis Commander will probably feel too much pressure to go on with his wholesale remembrances once a month, and so he should. If we are to stop the deaths and prevent more in the future, we can’t conveniently avoid grieving over them one at a time.
“Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead,” Susan Sontag wrote. “Heartlessness and amnesia go together.”
“If I lost my husband at the beginning of the month, what do you do, wait until the end of the month?” asks the wife of one soldier in Iraq. “I don’t know if it’s more convenient for them, or what, but that’s insane.”
From the Gettysburg Address on, Americans have been torn between gratitude and grief for the young men, and now women as well, sent to die for such abstractions as freedom and honor. But until the past half century, those words had weight and meaning.
Now on Memorial Day, when the President says “patriots from every corner of our Nation have taken up arms to uphold the ideals that make our country a beacon of hope and freedom for the entire world,” how many of us believe that?
Vietnam changed everything. In a movie 20 years ago, “Gardens of Stone,” about old soldiers who tend graves at Arlington National Cemetery, one of them says, "In this war, there is no front. It's not even a war. There's nothing to win and no way to win it."
Now Iraq makes that seem an understatement. But even in the most senseless and brutal of wars, dying is the same solemn reality it has always been. Politicians can debate whether our young men and women are giving up their lives “in vain,” but those deaths can’t be “disremembered.”
The Ft. Lewis Commander will probably feel too much pressure to go on with his wholesale remembrances once a month, and so he should. If we are to stop the deaths and prevent more in the future, we can’t conveniently avoid grieving over them one at a time.
“Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead,” Susan Sontag wrote. “Heartlessness and amnesia go together.”
Fred Thompson's Conjugal Campaign
Does an unborn candidacy have a right to privacy? If so, Fred Thompson might complain about some of the recent unwelcome attention to his prepping for a run at the Presidency.
Even before announcing, there is news of high-level staff changes, some of which are attributed to the influence of his wife, Jeri.
In the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza reports the de-facto campaign manager has been “pushed aside due to clashes with Thompson's wife.”
Previously, another Post columnist, Mary Ann Akers, had written: “Her hands-on approach to her husband's political operation is rubbing some the wrong way.
"’She's running the campaign,’ grouses one veteran GOP political operative involved in the Draft Fred movement. ‘It's the No. 1 rule of politics: The wife can't be the campaign manager.’
“Playing a role is fine, says the unnamed operative, ‘but not calling all the day-to-day shots.’”
All this comes after gabble about Mrs. Thompson as a “trophy wife,” 24 years younger than the former Senator-actor. But, as a lawyer who worked in the Senate and at the Republican National Committee, Mrs. Thompson obviously intends to be more than ornamental.
When the Senator makes his long-awaited official entrance, Mrs. Thompson can pitch in and help him deal with mounting questions about his role as a lawyer during the Watergate hearings, his lobbying for an organization advocating abortion and all the other little housekeeping details that have accumulated during his non-candidacy.
Somewhere along the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton would undoubtedly be happy to advise the Thompsons about the pitfalls of a two-for-one presidency.
Even before announcing, there is news of high-level staff changes, some of which are attributed to the influence of his wife, Jeri.
In the Washington Post, Chris Cillizza reports the de-facto campaign manager has been “pushed aside due to clashes with Thompson's wife.”
Previously, another Post columnist, Mary Ann Akers, had written: “Her hands-on approach to her husband's political operation is rubbing some the wrong way.
"’She's running the campaign,’ grouses one veteran GOP political operative involved in the Draft Fred movement. ‘It's the No. 1 rule of politics: The wife can't be the campaign manager.’
“Playing a role is fine, says the unnamed operative, ‘but not calling all the day-to-day shots.’”
All this comes after gabble about Mrs. Thompson as a “trophy wife,” 24 years younger than the former Senator-actor. But, as a lawyer who worked in the Senate and at the Republican National Committee, Mrs. Thompson obviously intends to be more than ornamental.
When the Senator makes his long-awaited official entrance, Mrs. Thompson can pitch in and help him deal with mounting questions about his role as a lawyer during the Watergate hearings, his lobbying for an organization advocating abortion and all the other little housekeeping details that have accumulated during his non-candidacy.
Somewhere along the campaign trail, Hillary Clinton would undoubtedly be happy to advise the Thompsons about the pitfalls of a two-for-one presidency.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
White House Medical Emergency
Paging Dr. Bill Frist! The services of the nation’s foremost authority on brain-death are urgently required in the Oval Office.
Dr. Frist who, as Senate Majority Leader in 2005 diagnosed Terri Schiavo and detected signs of mental activity that had eluded all other physicians, should be called on to study George Bush’s apparent failure to recover from sedation for his colonoscopy last weekend.
What makes the condition dire is that, unlike Schiavo who lapsed into a seeming coma, the President is ostensibly awake but functioning in a trance-like condition that involves mindless repetition of automatic mantras.
The latest manifestation yesterday was particularly alarming as Mr. Bush sleep-spoke at the Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina.
“It’s hard to argue that Al Qaeda in Iraq,” the President intoned, “is separate from bin Laden’s Al Qaeda when the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq took an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden.”
This incantatory repetition of Al Qaeda and bin Laden is a classic symptom of a thinking disorder that should be examined by a specialist like Dr. Frist, who discovered hope for Ms. Schiavo by studying videos of her.
The nation can only pray the President’s condition does not deteriorate to the point that Vice President Cheney, suffering as he does from intermittent rage attacks, has to summon the strength to take over White House responsibilities on a continuing basis.
Dr. Frist who, as Senate Majority Leader in 2005 diagnosed Terri Schiavo and detected signs of mental activity that had eluded all other physicians, should be called on to study George Bush’s apparent failure to recover from sedation for his colonoscopy last weekend.
What makes the condition dire is that, unlike Schiavo who lapsed into a seeming coma, the President is ostensibly awake but functioning in a trance-like condition that involves mindless repetition of automatic mantras.
The latest manifestation yesterday was particularly alarming as Mr. Bush sleep-spoke at the Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina.
“It’s hard to argue that Al Qaeda in Iraq,” the President intoned, “is separate from bin Laden’s Al Qaeda when the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq took an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden.”
This incantatory repetition of Al Qaeda and bin Laden is a classic symptom of a thinking disorder that should be examined by a specialist like Dr. Frist, who discovered hope for Ms. Schiavo by studying videos of her.
The nation can only pray the President’s condition does not deteriorate to the point that Vice President Cheney, suffering as he does from intermittent rage attacks, has to summon the strength to take over White House responsibilities on a continuing basis.
Exposing Bad, Bad Joe Biden
In last night’s “debate,” the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was unmasked as the vain, insensitive person he really is, but TV watchers may have failed to notice until keener observers revealed it today.
The New York Sun blog blasts “Biden's obnoxious response when he insulted the gun owner toward the end as being nuts. It wasn't so much a personal gaffe as a moment that projected an ugly image of the Democratic Party as out of touch with rural voters and gun owners.”
On the blog of Reason Magazine, we learn that Biden hurt the feelings of “a libertarian-leaning voter who wants the government off his back.”
Biden’s inhumanity was in response to Jared Townsend of Michigan who asked “if our babies are safe” as he cradled his semi-automatic weapon, explaining, “This is my baby.”
“If that’s his baby,” Sen. Biden heartlessly jibed, “he needs help. I don’t know if he’s mentally qualified to own a gun.”
On Slate Mickey Kaus cites that as another of Biden’s “cringe-making, unhinged spontaneous reactions,” akin to a 1987 incident in New Hampshire when the Senator unfeelingly answered a question about his credentials by saying, "I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do."
Those who have been bamboozled into thinking Biden is a distinguished Senator with 34 years of service should be ashamed of themselves. How can they support the kind of insensitivity that led to the martyrdom of Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech and that has been visited on countless other Second-Amendment heroes?
The New York Sun blog blasts “Biden's obnoxious response when he insulted the gun owner toward the end as being nuts. It wasn't so much a personal gaffe as a moment that projected an ugly image of the Democratic Party as out of touch with rural voters and gun owners.”
On the blog of Reason Magazine, we learn that Biden hurt the feelings of “a libertarian-leaning voter who wants the government off his back.”
Biden’s inhumanity was in response to Jared Townsend of Michigan who asked “if our babies are safe” as he cradled his semi-automatic weapon, explaining, “This is my baby.”
“If that’s his baby,” Sen. Biden heartlessly jibed, “he needs help. I don’t know if he’s mentally qualified to own a gun.”
On Slate Mickey Kaus cites that as another of Biden’s “cringe-making, unhinged spontaneous reactions,” akin to a 1987 incident in New Hampshire when the Senator unfeelingly answered a question about his credentials by saying, "I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do."
Those who have been bamboozled into thinking Biden is a distinguished Senator with 34 years of service should be ashamed of themselves. How can they support the kind of insensitivity that led to the martyrdom of Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech and that has been visited on countless other Second-Amendment heroes?
Karl Rove's Campaign Against Ignorance
The Bush Administration has been championing education more than we knew. Today’s news is that American ambassadors have been attending seminars to enhance what a White House spokesman describes as “understanding of the political landscape.”
The briefings by Karl Rove's deputies began in early 2001 and included detailed analyses of “critical congressional and gubernatorial races,” according to documents obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Typically, State Department officials were briefed on “the 55 most critical House races for 2002 and the media markets most critical to battleground states for President Bush's reelection fight in 2004.”
Until this Administration, ambassadors sent to represent the U.S. in foreign countries may have been handicapped by total ignorance of our domestic politics.
Rove’s efforts to educate government employees have not been limited to the State Department. Previously, Congress learned that staff members of the General Services Administration, which oversees $56 billion a year of government contracts, received regular power-point lectures on ways to help Republican candidates.
The educational efforts for U.S. Attorneys, about which Rove has been typically modest, are still being studied by two Congressional committees.
Earlier this month, former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona testified before Congress about White House efforts to keep him abreast of correct information about stem cell research, contraception and second-hand smoke.
When all of this Administration’s educational undertakings are finally revealed, history will undoubtedly judge Karl Rove and his staff to be among the most ardent educators of all time.
The briefings by Karl Rove's deputies began in early 2001 and included detailed analyses of “critical congressional and gubernatorial races,” according to documents obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Typically, State Department officials were briefed on “the 55 most critical House races for 2002 and the media markets most critical to battleground states for President Bush's reelection fight in 2004.”
Until this Administration, ambassadors sent to represent the U.S. in foreign countries may have been handicapped by total ignorance of our domestic politics.
Rove’s efforts to educate government employees have not been limited to the State Department. Previously, Congress learned that staff members of the General Services Administration, which oversees $56 billion a year of government contracts, received regular power-point lectures on ways to help Republican candidates.
The educational efforts for U.S. Attorneys, about which Rove has been typically modest, are still being studied by two Congressional committees.
Earlier this month, former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona testified before Congress about White House efforts to keep him abreast of correct information about stem cell research, contraception and second-hand smoke.
When all of this Administration’s educational undertakings are finally revealed, history will undoubtedly judge Karl Rove and his staff to be among the most ardent educators of all time.
"American Idol" Debate
The YouTube questioners tonight were more inventive and at times funnier than the usual MSM suspects, but the candidates, egged on by an applauding audience, were even more preening and self-congratulating than usual.
Book-ended by Mike Gravel’s scolding and Denis Kucinich’s certainty about everything, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd were selling their hundred years of experience as Senators, Bill Richardson was pushing his claim that Governors were better bets, John Edwards was fervently sincere and uxorious, Barack Obama kept reminding everybody he was against the war in Iraq before it started and Hillary Clinton was oozing leadership by being firm while patronizingly patting the also-rans on the head for being good little Democrats instead of bad old Republicans.
With Anderson Cooper as the amiable M.C. of the variety show, detailed answers to substantive questions would have spoiled the fun. Next: The candidates trade one-liners with a panel of Leno, Letterman, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart.
Book-ended by Mike Gravel’s scolding and Denis Kucinich’s certainty about everything, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd were selling their hundred years of experience as Senators, Bill Richardson was pushing his claim that Governors were better bets, John Edwards was fervently sincere and uxorious, Barack Obama kept reminding everybody he was against the war in Iraq before it started and Hillary Clinton was oozing leadership by being firm while patronizingly patting the also-rans on the head for being good little Democrats instead of bad old Republicans.
With Anderson Cooper as the amiable M.C. of the variety show, detailed answers to substantive questions would have spoiled the fun. Next: The candidates trade one-liners with a panel of Leno, Letterman, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart.
Monday, July 23, 2007
The Grateful Dead
News today that the USDA has paid deceased farmers $1.1 billion over the past seven years should not come as a shock. The White House and Congress are almost entirely staffed by the brain-dead. If we purged them from the payroll, the cemeteries would fill up, but the seats of government would be vacant.
John Kerry, Stand-Up
He’s at it again. The 2004 Democratic nominee who took himself out of a possible ’08 re-run with a badly told joke is back going for the funny again. The reviews suggest he shouldn’t give up his day job.
At a Democratic fundraiser last week, Kerry had a limerick about his Senate colleague who got into trouble by being on the D.C. Madam’s phone list:
“There once was a man named Vitter/Who vowed that he wasn’t a quitter/But with stories of women/And all of his sinnin’/He knows his career’s in the — oh, never mind.”
Jon Stewart and Bill Maher are safe, but John Kerry shouldn’t despair. It won’t get any laughs but he is doing good work by joining Hillary Clinton in introducing a bill
requiring the Pentagon to brief Congress on contingency plans for withdrawing from Iraq.
There’s more than one way of being a stand-up guy.
At a Democratic fundraiser last week, Kerry had a limerick about his Senate colleague who got into trouble by being on the D.C. Madam’s phone list:
“There once was a man named Vitter/Who vowed that he wasn’t a quitter/But with stories of women/And all of his sinnin’/He knows his career’s in the — oh, never mind.”
Jon Stewart and Bill Maher are safe, but John Kerry shouldn’t despair. It won’t get any laughs but he is doing good work by joining Hillary Clinton in introducing a bill
requiring the Pentagon to brief Congress on contingency plans for withdrawing from Iraq.
There’s more than one way of being a stand-up guy.
Bush and bin Laden in Hiding
The melodrama is in its final act, and we still don’t know if it ends with a whimper or a bang. Dubya is in a bunker, beleaguered by the demons he set loose here and abroad. Osama is in hiding too, and for all we know, may be dead.
On Meet the Press, the director of national intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell points out “it’s been a year” since there was a confirmed sighting of bin Laden: “There are rumors about his illness...I believe he is in the tribal region of Pakistan, and...only speaking to a courier, staying completely removed from anything we could exploit to find him.”
Bush is more visible, literally, but he too is in hiding--from Congressional investigators closing in on his Administration’s criminality and the growing pressure to change course in Iraq.
The Bush bang, impeachment, is unlikely even though there is growing talk of it. Osama’s crisis is clearly coming as an American consensus builds for going into Pakistan to get him.
But even as Bush and bin Laden decline, the damage they have done is all over the political landscape. The next election and the next phase of terrorism won’t change the heightened fear and distrust they created.
We can’t board a plane, go to a stadium or walk a crowded street feeling as safe as we did because of bin Laden. But, instead of giving us back some of our pre-9/11 sense of security, Bush took away more of it--we can’t assume that whoever we elect won’t break the law, spy on us or send young people to die half a world away without our consent.
The next President will not only have to end the war in Iraq but find ways to rebuild the political system that worked for more than two centuries and use it to counter terrorism rather than just speechify about it to win elections.
With any luck, when they look back at Bush and bin Laden, future generations will wonder how bad actors could have held the stage so long.
On Meet the Press, the director of national intelligence, Admiral Mike McConnell points out “it’s been a year” since there was a confirmed sighting of bin Laden: “There are rumors about his illness...I believe he is in the tribal region of Pakistan, and...only speaking to a courier, staying completely removed from anything we could exploit to find him.”
Bush is more visible, literally, but he too is in hiding--from Congressional investigators closing in on his Administration’s criminality and the growing pressure to change course in Iraq.
The Bush bang, impeachment, is unlikely even though there is growing talk of it. Osama’s crisis is clearly coming as an American consensus builds for going into Pakistan to get him.
But even as Bush and bin Laden decline, the damage they have done is all over the political landscape. The next election and the next phase of terrorism won’t change the heightened fear and distrust they created.
We can’t board a plane, go to a stadium or walk a crowded street feeling as safe as we did because of bin Laden. But, instead of giving us back some of our pre-9/11 sense of security, Bush took away more of it--we can’t assume that whoever we elect won’t break the law, spy on us or send young people to die half a world away without our consent.
The next President will not only have to end the war in Iraq but find ways to rebuild the political system that worked for more than two centuries and use it to counter terrorism rather than just speechify about it to win elections.
With any luck, when they look back at Bush and bin Laden, future generations will wonder how bad actors could have held the stage so long.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
The World's Tallest Target
In the macho world of skyscrapers, size matters. The highest edifice, although unfinished, is now in Dubai, over 2275 feet, rising almost half a mile into the sky. It will outdo buildings in Taiwan and Malaysia, which previously held the record.
When finished at the end of next year, the Burj Dubai will have 160 floors, 56 elevators, luxury apartments, boutiques, swimming pools, spas, corporate suites and a 124th floor observation platform.
Giorgio Armani was involved in the design, but the actual work is being done by 4,000 Indian laborers who work around the clock in desert heat with no minimum wage.
It will be a source of great pride for Dubai, which is hardly ever mentioned without the qualifier of “oil-rich,” but in today’s terrifying world, the question arises: How long will it stand before attracting the attention of terrorists with grievances and airline boarding passes?
When finished at the end of next year, the Burj Dubai will have 160 floors, 56 elevators, luxury apartments, boutiques, swimming pools, spas, corporate suites and a 124th floor observation platform.
Giorgio Armani was involved in the design, but the actual work is being done by 4,000 Indian laborers who work around the clock in desert heat with no minimum wage.
It will be a source of great pride for Dubai, which is hardly ever mentioned without the qualifier of “oil-rich,” but in today’s terrifying world, the question arises: How long will it stand before attracting the attention of terrorists with grievances and airline boarding passes?
Bush's "Saturday Night Massacre"
The Nixon parallels keep coming. The latest Bush move to hide what happened in the firing of the U.S. Attorneys is a perfect match for the Watergate “Saturday Night Massacre.”
A New York Times editorial today notes “that if Congress holds White House officials in contempt for withholding important evidence in the United States attorney scandal, the Justice Department simply will not pursue the charges. This stance tears at the fabric of the Constitution and upends the rule of law.”
Just as Bush is now ready to hide his Administration’s wrongdoing with a misuse of the Justice Department, Nixon in 1973 attempted to fire the Special Prosecutor who was getting too close to the truth about Watergate.
On that memorable Saturday night, the Attorney General and his assistant refused and resigned. Nixon reached down to the third in line, Robert Bork, who did the bloody deed. (Bork’s eagerness later helped deny him confirmation for the Supreme Court.)
That was the beginning of the end for Nixon, whose lawlessness was laid bare for the entire country to see. Less than a year later, in the face of impeachment, he left office.
George Bush won’t have to fire faithful Alberto Gonzales, who will never refuse an order, but their political perversion of the Justice Department is becoming clearer with every move they make to hide it.
Bush won’t be impeached or resign, but he is certain to go down in history with the same stain of misusing Executive Power as his role model, Richard Nixon.
A New York Times editorial today notes “that if Congress holds White House officials in contempt for withholding important evidence in the United States attorney scandal, the Justice Department simply will not pursue the charges. This stance tears at the fabric of the Constitution and upends the rule of law.”
Just as Bush is now ready to hide his Administration’s wrongdoing with a misuse of the Justice Department, Nixon in 1973 attempted to fire the Special Prosecutor who was getting too close to the truth about Watergate.
On that memorable Saturday night, the Attorney General and his assistant refused and resigned. Nixon reached down to the third in line, Robert Bork, who did the bloody deed. (Bork’s eagerness later helped deny him confirmation for the Supreme Court.)
That was the beginning of the end for Nixon, whose lawlessness was laid bare for the entire country to see. Less than a year later, in the face of impeachment, he left office.
George Bush won’t have to fire faithful Alberto Gonzales, who will never refuse an order, but their political perversion of the Justice Department is becoming clearer with every move they make to hide it.
Bush won’t be impeached or resign, but he is certain to go down in history with the same stain of misusing Executive Power as his role model, Richard Nixon.
The Case for Clobbering Candidates
Talk about “media bias” has a pornographic appeal for politicians and bloggers. Revealing MSM hypocrisy is as irresistible as finding Sen. Vitter on the D.C. Madam’s phone records.
Today’s “dirty little secret”: “America's political reporters don't like John Edwards, and have tried to destroy him,” according to Jamison Foser of Media Matters, quoting a piece from Atlantic Online by Marc Ambinder, one of the founders of ABC's The Note and a contributing editor to the National Journal's Hotline newsletter.
(Attribution nosebleed is a side effect of polemical reporting--anyone who agrees or quarrels with this post will be quoting me quoting Foser quoting Ambinder and will then be quoted until it all sounds like “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.”)
The main evidence for Edwards-bashing is the harping on his $400 haircut and working for a hedge fund while warring on poverty in his campaign, an assertion that leads to comparisons by another blogger to “the media's War Against Gore” that “gave us President Bush. It is why we are in Iraq today.”
Time out: Jokes about John Edwards’ haircut are unlikely to lead to another catastrophic war, but if the children will leave the room, we can talk graphically about “media bias.”
That journalists are human is not news and that they may, consciously or not, let their feelings color their reporting is indisputable. But from a lifetime of working, teaching and writing about that enterprise, another perspective:
It may very well be that reporters don’t like John Edwards. They may be put off by his over-acted sincerity, as I am (follow the links to my confession). But there is nothing new in letting that kind of reaction seep into their stories. In fact--and down comes the last veil in this stripping--that may have value for the public the media serves.
In the McCarthy era, we learned objectivity is not enough. If reporters who covered the Senator had done more probing about his methods and motives, it wouldn’t have taken Edward R. Murrow’s “biased” documentary to bring him down.
That kind of drama is rare--only Woodward and Bernstein’s Nixon takedown is comparable. But in subtler ways, the process goes on all the time.
Mitt Romney’s father comes to mind. In 1968, George Romney was the front runner for the Republican nomination. Reporters covering his campaign with a straight face were frustrated by not being able to communicate that the amiable car salesman-Governor was, to put it kindly, a lightweight. When he gaffed about being “brainwashed” in Vietnam, it unleashed headlines and commentary that ended his campaign.
His son and heir is following in that tradition. After his repeated fudging of issues, his defecating dog story and his pathetic swipe at Obama over sex education, yesterday this Governor Romney is pictured smiling over a sign reading “No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Moma.”
Are the media trying to tell us something? I hope so. A little more “bias” in showing Bush the boob in 2000 might have spared the country a lot of grief.
If this sounds arrogant, sorry. Journalists spend their lives trying to be fair and honest--they don’t start out looking for money and power. If they sometimes slip and slide along the way, cut them some slack.
It’s easy (and attention-getting) to carp from the grandstands while they try to do their work of letting us know what the politicians and power brokers are really doing.
John Edwards and Mitt Romney are grown men who made a lot of money and now want the most powerful job in the world. All this attention goes with the process of trying to get it.
Today’s “dirty little secret”: “America's political reporters don't like John Edwards, and have tried to destroy him,” according to Jamison Foser of Media Matters, quoting a piece from Atlantic Online by Marc Ambinder, one of the founders of ABC's The Note and a contributing editor to the National Journal's Hotline newsletter.
(Attribution nosebleed is a side effect of polemical reporting--anyone who agrees or quarrels with this post will be quoting me quoting Foser quoting Ambinder and will then be quoted until it all sounds like “A Partridge in a Pear Tree.”)
The main evidence for Edwards-bashing is the harping on his $400 haircut and working for a hedge fund while warring on poverty in his campaign, an assertion that leads to comparisons by another blogger to “the media's War Against Gore” that “gave us President Bush. It is why we are in Iraq today.”
Time out: Jokes about John Edwards’ haircut are unlikely to lead to another catastrophic war, but if the children will leave the room, we can talk graphically about “media bias.”
That journalists are human is not news and that they may, consciously or not, let their feelings color their reporting is indisputable. But from a lifetime of working, teaching and writing about that enterprise, another perspective:
It may very well be that reporters don’t like John Edwards. They may be put off by his over-acted sincerity, as I am (follow the links to my confession). But there is nothing new in letting that kind of reaction seep into their stories. In fact--and down comes the last veil in this stripping--that may have value for the public the media serves.
In the McCarthy era, we learned objectivity is not enough. If reporters who covered the Senator had done more probing about his methods and motives, it wouldn’t have taken Edward R. Murrow’s “biased” documentary to bring him down.
That kind of drama is rare--only Woodward and Bernstein’s Nixon takedown is comparable. But in subtler ways, the process goes on all the time.
Mitt Romney’s father comes to mind. In 1968, George Romney was the front runner for the Republican nomination. Reporters covering his campaign with a straight face were frustrated by not being able to communicate that the amiable car salesman-Governor was, to put it kindly, a lightweight. When he gaffed about being “brainwashed” in Vietnam, it unleashed headlines and commentary that ended his campaign.
His son and heir is following in that tradition. After his repeated fudging of issues, his defecating dog story and his pathetic swipe at Obama over sex education, yesterday this Governor Romney is pictured smiling over a sign reading “No to Obama, Osama and Chelsea’s Moma.”
Are the media trying to tell us something? I hope so. A little more “bias” in showing Bush the boob in 2000 might have spared the country a lot of grief.
If this sounds arrogant, sorry. Journalists spend their lives trying to be fair and honest--they don’t start out looking for money and power. If they sometimes slip and slide along the way, cut them some slack.
It’s easy (and attention-getting) to carp from the grandstands while they try to do their work of letting us know what the politicians and power brokers are really doing.
John Edwards and Mitt Romney are grown men who made a lot of money and now want the most powerful job in the world. All this attention goes with the process of trying to get it.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
Iraq Vacation Plans
The U.S. Congress, the Iraqi Parliament and every psychotherapist in America will be taking time off in August. But the folks, as George Bush might call them, who want to kill our troops in Baghdad will be busy.
According to a Guardian report from Damascus, “Seven of the most important Sunni-led insurgent organizations fighting the US occupation in Iraq have agreed to form a public political alliance with the aim of preparing for negotiations in advance of an American withdrawal” and they plan to “hold a congress to launch a united front within the next few weeks.”
While our politicians anguish over what will happen when U.S. troops leave, the Sunnis are quietly making their own plans to hasten the day with bloodshed and then nullify “political institutions set up under the occupation...and all decisions and agreements made by the US occupation and Iraqi government.”
On the Shiite side, Moktada al-Sadr is getting ready for our departure, too, and doesn’t seem too keen on retaining the democracy we brought his country.
The only folks who have no plans for Iraq are in Washington, D.C. or on vacation from their jobs there.
According to a Guardian report from Damascus, “Seven of the most important Sunni-led insurgent organizations fighting the US occupation in Iraq have agreed to form a public political alliance with the aim of preparing for negotiations in advance of an American withdrawal” and they plan to “hold a congress to launch a united front within the next few weeks.”
While our politicians anguish over what will happen when U.S. troops leave, the Sunnis are quietly making their own plans to hasten the day with bloodshed and then nullify “political institutions set up under the occupation...and all decisions and agreements made by the US occupation and Iraqi government.”
On the Shiite side, Moktada al-Sadr is getting ready for our departure, too, and doesn’t seem too keen on retaining the democracy we brought his country.
The only folks who have no plans for Iraq are in Washington, D.C. or on vacation from their jobs there.
Waste Removal
CNN reports: Doctors removed five small polyps from President Bush's colon on Saturday, and "none appeared worrisome," a White House spokesman said.
If only there were a medical procedure to excise worrisome growths on the body politic, like Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove... But the President would have be sedated for that, too, and there's no telling what Cheney would do then.
If only there were a medical procedure to excise worrisome growths on the body politic, like Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove... But the President would have be sedated for that, too, and there's no telling what Cheney would do then.
Stoning the Sinful Senator
The debate over whether or not David Vitter should go to jail reflects a sad tendency in our society across the political spectrum. When everybody is a social critic and it’s hard to be heard, humane voices are drowned out by scolds and prudes.
How about some muscular moderation? You don’t have to be an advocate for prostitution to feel that, among offenses to decency, the oldest profession is not at the top of the list (check cable TV and the yellow pages), and you don’t have to be an admirer of hypocrisy to observe that what people do is often at odds with what they profess.
That said, the outing of Vitter and those like him is a plus for honesty in politics and public discourse, but it reflects no credit on those who want to send him to prison or the guillotine for being a sad sack and a hypocrite.
Neither should the D.C. Madam be behind bars. In this society, she won’t be. More likely is that she will get a large advance for her memoirs.
When people are dying in a senseless war, there are better targets for moral indignation.
How about some muscular moderation? You don’t have to be an advocate for prostitution to feel that, among offenses to decency, the oldest profession is not at the top of the list (check cable TV and the yellow pages), and you don’t have to be an admirer of hypocrisy to observe that what people do is often at odds with what they profess.
That said, the outing of Vitter and those like him is a plus for honesty in politics and public discourse, but it reflects no credit on those who want to send him to prison or the guillotine for being a sad sack and a hypocrite.
Neither should the D.C. Madam be behind bars. In this society, she won’t be. More likely is that she will get a large advance for her memoirs.
When people are dying in a senseless war, there are better targets for moral indignation.
Harry Reid, the Un-Lyndon Johnson
Before he became President and lost a war, Lyndon Johnson was the most effective Senate majority leader in history. Today’s Democrats, trying to stop another war, could use his skills.
To put it kindly, Harry Reid is no LBJ. In six months as majority leader, he has consistently misspoken and mismanaged Democratic efforts to win over enough Republicans to change policy in Iraq, culminating in this week’s disastrous all-nighter.
It takes a unique set of mismanagement skills to help propel the Democratic-controlled Congress to lower approval ratings than Bush. To be fair, Reid has had to navigate differences about how to end the war in his own party and the ambivalence of Republicans who want to stay loyal to their President but fear for their electoral skins next November. Even so, his performance has been dismal.
In April, David Broder in the Washington Post called Reid “the Democrats’ Gonzales” for his gaffes, and liberal bloggers gang-tackled the venerable columnist. Three months later, Reid, looking more like Bush’s Brownie of FEMA fame, is turning out to be the polar opposite of Lyndon Johnson.
In 1966, Robert Novak of Valerie Plame fame was co-author of a book that described Johnson’s ways as a majority leader who worked with a Republican President, Eisenhower, to pass the first civil rights bill of the century. LBJ, knowing where every Senator stood on every issue and what it would take to win him over, would then go into action:
“The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours...Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint and the hint of threat...Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.”
No one expects Reid to be another LBJ, but some semblance of parliamentary and negotiating skills would go a long way toward building some real legislative pressure to end this miserable war. Then, if Democrats win next year, they will need effective leadership to start undoing the damage Bush has done. They can do better than Harry Reid.
To put it kindly, Harry Reid is no LBJ. In six months as majority leader, he has consistently misspoken and mismanaged Democratic efforts to win over enough Republicans to change policy in Iraq, culminating in this week’s disastrous all-nighter.
It takes a unique set of mismanagement skills to help propel the Democratic-controlled Congress to lower approval ratings than Bush. To be fair, Reid has had to navigate differences about how to end the war in his own party and the ambivalence of Republicans who want to stay loyal to their President but fear for their electoral skins next November. Even so, his performance has been dismal.
In April, David Broder in the Washington Post called Reid “the Democrats’ Gonzales” for his gaffes, and liberal bloggers gang-tackled the venerable columnist. Three months later, Reid, looking more like Bush’s Brownie of FEMA fame, is turning out to be the polar opposite of Lyndon Johnson.
In 1966, Robert Novak of Valerie Plame fame was co-author of a book that described Johnson’s ways as a majority leader who worked with a Republican President, Eisenhower, to pass the first civil rights bill of the century. LBJ, knowing where every Senator stood on every issue and what it would take to win him over, would then go into action:
“The Treatment could last ten minutes or four hours...Its tone could be supplication, accusation, cajolery, exuberance, scorn, tears, complaint and the hint of threat...Interjections from the target were rare. Johnson anticipated them before they could be spoken. He moved in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. From his pockets poured clippings, memos, statistics. Mimicry, humor, and the genius of analogy made The Treatment an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless.”
No one expects Reid to be another LBJ, but some semblance of parliamentary and negotiating skills would go a long way toward building some real legislative pressure to end this miserable war. Then, if Democrats win next year, they will need effective leadership to start undoing the damage Bush has done. They can do better than Harry Reid.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Illegal Laughing Matter
Warning: There is a little-known provision of the Patriot Act that makes it a federal crime to commit rectal jokes directed at the Chief Executive.
After reading the following dispatch from Reuters, bloggers should therefore proceed with utmost caution before attempting analogies of what doctors will do to the President this weekend with what he has been doing to the rest of the country for six years.
Likewise, anatomical references to what the Vice President may be covering for the President this weekend, as he always does, will be subject to prosecutorial scrutiny:
“President George W. Bush will undergo what aides described as a routine colonoscopy on Saturday at the Camp David presidential retreat.
“White House spokesman Tony Snow said that during the time that Bush is under anesthesia, he would delegate power to Vice President Dick Cheney.”
After reading the following dispatch from Reuters, bloggers should therefore proceed with utmost caution before attempting analogies of what doctors will do to the President this weekend with what he has been doing to the rest of the country for six years.
Likewise, anatomical references to what the Vice President may be covering for the President this weekend, as he always does, will be subject to prosecutorial scrutiny:
“President George W. Bush will undergo what aides described as a routine colonoscopy on Saturday at the Camp David presidential retreat.
“White House spokesman Tony Snow said that during the time that Bush is under anesthesia, he would delegate power to Vice President Dick Cheney.”
Roaring Twenties in Iraq
It’s beginning to look like those old gangster movies in Baghdad with Moktada al-Sadr playing Little Caesar.
Instead of selling bootleg booze, his machine gun-toting henchmen are distributing food, medicine and fuel to the locals while collecting protection money, about $4 a monthly, from residents.
Gang killings are routine, with Sunni bodies piled up at neighborhood boundaries to discourage incursions by rival outfits.
With the U.S.-backed central government as impotent as our 1920s Feds were to enforce Prohibition, outlaws are fighting it out while terrorizing the population.
Our gangster nightmare ended with the repeal of Prohibition when lawmakers realized they were engaged in a futile enterprise. Maybe Bush and Cheney should stop watching “High Noon” and study those Edward G. Robinson flicks.
Instead of selling bootleg booze, his machine gun-toting henchmen are distributing food, medicine and fuel to the locals while collecting protection money, about $4 a monthly, from residents.
Gang killings are routine, with Sunni bodies piled up at neighborhood boundaries to discourage incursions by rival outfits.
With the U.S.-backed central government as impotent as our 1920s Feds were to enforce Prohibition, outlaws are fighting it out while terrorizing the population.
Our gangster nightmare ended with the repeal of Prohibition when lawmakers realized they were engaged in a futile enterprise. Maybe Bush and Cheney should stop watching “High Noon” and study those Edward G. Robinson flicks.
Mismatch: Romney Tackles Obama
Now that his defecating dog has been laid to rest, Mitt Romney is on the offensive, trying to soil Barack Obama. He’s way out of his league.
Seizing on a bill Obama supported in the Illinois state Senate with a provision for age-appropriate sex education, Romney pounced.
"How much sex education is age appropriate for a 5-year-old? In my mind, zero is the right number," he said.
Obama swiveled to let Romney fall on his face.
"We have to deal with a coarsening of the culture and the over-sexualization of our young people,” he told a reporter. “Part of the coarsening of that culture is when politicians try to demagogue issues to score cheap political points.
"What we shouldn't do is to try to play political football with these issues.”
The wire-service story went on to report that in 2002 Romney told Planned Parenthood he supported “teaching of responsible, age-appropriate, factually accurate health and sexuality education” in public schools.
Obama’s football analogy is apt. In 1968, a Republican governor observed that “watching George Romney run for President is like watching a duck trying to make love to a football.”
It’s beginning to look like a family tradition.
Seizing on a bill Obama supported in the Illinois state Senate with a provision for age-appropriate sex education, Romney pounced.
"How much sex education is age appropriate for a 5-year-old? In my mind, zero is the right number," he said.
Obama swiveled to let Romney fall on his face.
"We have to deal with a coarsening of the culture and the over-sexualization of our young people,” he told a reporter. “Part of the coarsening of that culture is when politicians try to demagogue issues to score cheap political points.
"What we shouldn't do is to try to play political football with these issues.”
The wire-service story went on to report that in 2002 Romney told Planned Parenthood he supported “teaching of responsible, age-appropriate, factually accurate health and sexuality education” in public schools.
Obama’s football analogy is apt. In 1968, a Republican governor observed that “watching George Romney run for President is like watching a duck trying to make love to a football.”
It’s beginning to look like a family tradition.
Hillary's 1948 Wake-Up Call: Run Scared
The latest Presidential poll shows 63 percent of Americans think we will elect the first woman to be President next year. It’s time for Hillary Clinton to start worrying.
The stage could be set for a Republican to pull off what Harry Truman did in 1948 to the poll-anointed sure bet, Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York.
The parallels are there. With a big lead in the polls, Dewey ran an ultra-cautious campaign, making “The future lies ahead” speeches while awaiting coronation.
Truman took off on his “Give ‘em hell, Harry” whistle-stop tour, railing against a “do-nothing” Republican Congress and ended up the morning after election, grinning and holding up to the cameras a copy of the Chicago Tribune headlined, “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
Overconfidence can be a killer in American elections. Voters resent being taken for granted.
All this is brought up by the almost stately tone of the Clinton campaign thus far. It’s been gaffe-free, but will that be enough?
There is an outside chance that Obama may catch on with his new-generation appeal, but the greater danger for the former First Lady is appearing to be a too-cool Dewey (“the man on the wedding cake”) against a Republican underdog doing Harry Truman.
As an actor, Fred Thompson looks perfect for the part but any other nominee, including long-shot Mike Huckabee, could be prepped for the performance.
Sen. Clinton, while taking in the lessons of Truman, may also want to look at the campaign of the man from Arkansas who overcame the first George Bush with “the vision thing.” Give ‘em hell, Hillary.
The stage could be set for a Republican to pull off what Harry Truman did in 1948 to the poll-anointed sure bet, Gov. Thomas Dewey of New York.
The parallels are there. With a big lead in the polls, Dewey ran an ultra-cautious campaign, making “The future lies ahead” speeches while awaiting coronation.
Truman took off on his “Give ‘em hell, Harry” whistle-stop tour, railing against a “do-nothing” Republican Congress and ended up the morning after election, grinning and holding up to the cameras a copy of the Chicago Tribune headlined, “Dewey Defeats Truman.”
Overconfidence can be a killer in American elections. Voters resent being taken for granted.
All this is brought up by the almost stately tone of the Clinton campaign thus far. It’s been gaffe-free, but will that be enough?
There is an outside chance that Obama may catch on with his new-generation appeal, but the greater danger for the former First Lady is appearing to be a too-cool Dewey (“the man on the wedding cake”) against a Republican underdog doing Harry Truman.
As an actor, Fred Thompson looks perfect for the part but any other nominee, including long-shot Mike Huckabee, could be prepped for the performance.
Sen. Clinton, while taking in the lessons of Truman, may also want to look at the campaign of the man from Arkansas who overcame the first George Bush with “the vision thing.” Give ‘em hell, Hillary.
Second Dumbest Guy on the Planet
Most of the Cheney crew is gone--Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, famously described by Gen. Tommy Franks as “the dumbest guy on the planet.” But Feith’s replacement as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Eric S. Edelman, is still there to carry on the tradition.
Yesterday he did his mentors proud with a snippy response to Hillary Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had asked about Pentagon planning to bring troops home from Iraq.
In response, Edelman wrote, "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," adding that "such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."
Sen. Clinton, who was not thrilled to receive a political lecture in answer to a policy question, plans to take it up with Edelman’s boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The incident may help explain why in 2005 President Bush had to bypass the Senate and use a constitutional power to put Edelman in the job. Rumsfeld had called his predecessor Feith, who masterminded the policy of ignoring the Geneva Conventions that led to Abu Ghraib, "one of the most brilliant individuals in government."
Edelman is right in that mold.
Yesterday he did his mentors proud with a snippy response to Hillary Clinton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had asked about Pentagon planning to bring troops home from Iraq.
In response, Edelman wrote, "Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia," adding that "such talk understandably unnerves the very same Iraqi allies we are asking to assume enormous personal risks."
Sen. Clinton, who was not thrilled to receive a political lecture in answer to a policy question, plans to take it up with Edelman’s boss, Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The incident may help explain why in 2005 President Bush had to bypass the Senate and use a constitutional power to put Edelman in the job. Rumsfeld had called his predecessor Feith, who masterminded the policy of ignoring the Geneva Conventions that led to Abu Ghraib, "one of the most brilliant individuals in government."
Edelman is right in that mold.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
A Golden Age in Black and White
In the 1950s, we began to see the world differently. A new generation of photographers was transforming frozen posed pictures into available-light images of people and places as they really were.
Those golden days of black-and-white photography are recalled in a new web site by one of the best of them, my friend George Zimbel. A few clicks will take you to a Bourbon Street bar, an Irish dance hall, a Vermont quarry of that time.
A few more will show you the unguarded famous--Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Edward R. Murrow, Richard Nixon.
“Photographs,” Susan Sontag wrote, “alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.”
Now that we are flooded with pictures, it’s good to be reminded there once was not only an aesthetic but an ethics of seeing, when everyone did not feel entitled to observe everything. What photographers who were artists did show us was well worth seeing.
Those golden days of black-and-white photography are recalled in a new web site by one of the best of them, my friend George Zimbel. A few clicks will take you to a Bourbon Street bar, an Irish dance hall, a Vermont quarry of that time.
A few more will show you the unguarded famous--Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Edward R. Murrow, Richard Nixon.
“Photographs,” Susan Sontag wrote, “alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.”
Now that we are flooded with pictures, it’s good to be reminded there once was not only an aesthetic but an ethics of seeing, when everyone did not feel entitled to observe everything. What photographers who were artists did show us was well worth seeing.
Will Terrorists Pick Our Next President?
In the terrorism-expert business, there is no profit in forecasting there won’t be an attack on the Homeland “soon.” No one will remember a negative and give you credit, and, on the other hand, the definition of “soon” is expandable.
So it’s no surprise that not only do the N.I.E. researchers, Homeland Security Director Chertoff and other less sensitive-gutted authorities on the government payroll but the all rented experts on TV agree about the imminence of an attack in this country. Where’s the news in not predicting one?
The more interesting question is what the terrorists may be thinking. Assuming a modicum of brains to go with their mad hatred, if the object is to sow fear and confusion in our society, what political outcome in ’08 best suits their purposes? And what could they do to help bring it about?
Since 9/11, George W. Bush has been collaborating with Osama bin Laden in destroying the traditional trust Americans have had in their government and in one another. Would Al Qaeda like more of the same?
If so, Giuliani is their man. His campaign, based on images of Rudy in the rubble, is following Karl Rove’s game plan for 2004. Any attack that rekindles 9/11 fears would help America’s Mayor get to the White House.
But if terrorists prefer, for whatever reasons, to see Clinton or Obama in the Oval Office, holding off on homeland attacks would help. It may all depend on their reaction to the Republican gas bags. If they take them at all seriously, Al Qaeda leaders might prefer a Democratic President who wouldn’t break American laws to get at them.
On the other hand, if they find hard-line campaign rhetoric laughable, another Republican to extend Bush’s incompetence and impotence to hurt them might just be the ticket for bin Laden et al.
The terrorists no doubt will go about their business their own way for their own reasons, but what they do in the next year will nonetheless have a profound effect on our elections.
That may be the saddest commentary of all on our post-9/11 world.
So it’s no surprise that not only do the N.I.E. researchers, Homeland Security Director Chertoff and other less sensitive-gutted authorities on the government payroll but the all rented experts on TV agree about the imminence of an attack in this country. Where’s the news in not predicting one?
The more interesting question is what the terrorists may be thinking. Assuming a modicum of brains to go with their mad hatred, if the object is to sow fear and confusion in our society, what political outcome in ’08 best suits their purposes? And what could they do to help bring it about?
Since 9/11, George W. Bush has been collaborating with Osama bin Laden in destroying the traditional trust Americans have had in their government and in one another. Would Al Qaeda like more of the same?
If so, Giuliani is their man. His campaign, based on images of Rudy in the rubble, is following Karl Rove’s game plan for 2004. Any attack that rekindles 9/11 fears would help America’s Mayor get to the White House.
But if terrorists prefer, for whatever reasons, to see Clinton or Obama in the Oval Office, holding off on homeland attacks would help. It may all depend on their reaction to the Republican gas bags. If they take them at all seriously, Al Qaeda leaders might prefer a Democratic President who wouldn’t break American laws to get at them.
On the other hand, if they find hard-line campaign rhetoric laughable, another Republican to extend Bush’s incompetence and impotence to hurt them might just be the ticket for bin Laden et al.
The terrorists no doubt will go about their business their own way for their own reasons, but what they do in the next year will nonetheless have a profound effect on our elections.
That may be the saddest commentary of all on our post-9/11 world.
George W. Bush, Philosopher
The President is threatening to veto a bipartisan Senate proposal to increase the State Children's Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. His opposition is on “philosophical grounds.”
Bush’s philosophy, like everything else in his Administration, is dogma. In this case, the moral principal is that “when you expand eligibility...you're really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government."
At least he is consistent. While overseeing the worst-managed war in American history, he is defending to the death one of the worst health-care systems in the world.
The program in question, which costs the federal government $5 billion a year, helps provide health coverage to 6.6 million low-income children. Another 3.3 million would be covered under a proposal by Senate Finance Committee, which is supported by such Republican radicals as Sens. Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch, among others.
But the President is adamant. “I expect people to speak out,” he said in a Washington Post interview about the bill and health care. “I also have my own points of view and feel very strongly about a lot of issues."
His philosophy has deep traditional roots, perhaps best-expressed by one of Charles Dickens’ most memorable characters. Asked for money for the poor, his answer reflected the guiding Bush principle: “Are there no prisons...and workhouses?” If he were alive today, Scrooge might have added, “And no HMOs?”
Bush’s philosophy, like everything else in his Administration, is dogma. In this case, the moral principal is that “when you expand eligibility...you're really beginning to open up an avenue for people to switch from private insurance to the government."
At least he is consistent. While overseeing the worst-managed war in American history, he is defending to the death one of the worst health-care systems in the world.
The program in question, which costs the federal government $5 billion a year, helps provide health coverage to 6.6 million low-income children. Another 3.3 million would be covered under a proposal by Senate Finance Committee, which is supported by such Republican radicals as Sens. Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch, among others.
But the President is adamant. “I expect people to speak out,” he said in a Washington Post interview about the bill and health care. “I also have my own points of view and feel very strongly about a lot of issues."
His philosophy has deep traditional roots, perhaps best-expressed by one of Charles Dickens’ most memorable characters. Asked for money for the poor, his answer reflected the guiding Bush principle: “Are there no prisons...and workhouses?” If he were alive today, Scrooge might have added, “And no HMOs?”
Straight Talk About Taking Out Al-Qaeda
Finally someone says the glaringly obvious about what we have to do to prevent terrorist attacks here: Stop wringing our hands about Musharraf’s shaky situation in Pakistan and cross the Afghanistan border to take out bin Laden’s people who are dug in there.
Lee Hamilton, 76 years old with no political ambitions, said it straight out on CNN yesterday: "If there's anything we should have learned, it's that we must not let Al Qaeda have a sanctuary, which they certainly do in Pakistan today."
For years now, Pakistan’s President has been playing the Bush Administration like a violin, promising cooperation and doing just enough to placate us while keeping the militants in his own country at bay. But Musharraf’s political games have left the United States increasingly vulnerable.
Even Bush and Cheney see by now what has to be done. “In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence,” the New York Times reported yesterday, “intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an attempt to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.”
“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”
According to the Times, “Ms. Townsend...acknowledged frustration that Al Qaeda had succeeding in rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates, while keeping Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks.”
It will undoubtedly take a highly sophisticated combination of overt and covert operations to do what has to be done in Pakistan, but, as usual, it is taking someone like Lee Hamilton to say so out loud.
If Bush and Cheney are lusting to invade somewhere, they should forget Iran and do what has to be done in Pakistan. They won’t have to take over a whole country and stay, as they did in Iraq, just get in far enough to uproot Al Qaeda and get out.
Lee Hamilton, 76 years old with no political ambitions, said it straight out on CNN yesterday: "If there's anything we should have learned, it's that we must not let Al Qaeda have a sanctuary, which they certainly do in Pakistan today."
For years now, Pakistan’s President has been playing the Bush Administration like a violin, promising cooperation and doing just enough to placate us while keeping the militants in his own country at bay. But Musharraf’s political games have left the United States increasingly vulnerable.
Even Bush and Cheney see by now what has to be done. “In identifying the main reasons for Al Qaeda’s resurgence,” the New York Times reported yesterday, “intelligence officials and White House aides pointed the finger squarely at a hands-off approach toward the tribal areas by Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who last year brokered a cease-fire with tribal leaders in an attempt to drain support for Islamic extremism in the region.”
“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” said Frances Fragos Townsend, who heads the Homeland Security Council at the White House. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”
According to the Times, “Ms. Townsend...acknowledged frustration that Al Qaeda had succeeding in rebuilding its infrastructure and its links to affiliates, while keeping Mr. bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since the Sept. 11 attacks.”
It will undoubtedly take a highly sophisticated combination of overt and covert operations to do what has to be done in Pakistan, but, as usual, it is taking someone like Lee Hamilton to say so out loud.
If Bush and Cheney are lusting to invade somewhere, they should forget Iran and do what has to be done in Pakistan. They won’t have to take over a whole country and stay, as they did in Iraq, just get in far enough to uproot Al Qaeda and get out.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Edwards Pushes the Pity Envelope
From all evidence, Elizabeth Edwards is a courageous, highly intelligent woman whose devotion to her husband makes “admirable” seem like an inadequate adjective. But a new commercial now running in New Hampshire raises again nagging questions about her role in John Edwards' campaign for the Presidency.
In the TV spot, Mrs. Edwards lauds her husband’s “unbelievable toughness, particularly about other people, and...his ability to fight for them."
She goes on to say, "You're not going to outsmart him. He works harder than any human being that I know, always has. It's unbelievably important that, in our president, we have someone who can stare the worst in the face and not blink."
We are on the outskirts of exploitation here and possibly beyond the boundaries in suggesting that a man’s response to his wife’s cancer tells voters what they need to know about his character and courage in the Oval Office.
Edwards did something similar with his operatic apologies for voting to take us into Iraq in 2002, stressing the need for “honesty” in a president but overlooking the fact that telling the truth, George Bush notwithstanding, is only a minimal requisite but that good judgment over taking the country to war is a vital quality for a Commander-in-Chief.
The impression keeps recurring that John Edwards at heart is a smooth-talking lawyer who will do anything to make his case, and it is no discredit to her that his wife is doing everything she can to help him.
In the TV spot, Mrs. Edwards lauds her husband’s “unbelievable toughness, particularly about other people, and...his ability to fight for them."
She goes on to say, "You're not going to outsmart him. He works harder than any human being that I know, always has. It's unbelievably important that, in our president, we have someone who can stare the worst in the face and not blink."
We are on the outskirts of exploitation here and possibly beyond the boundaries in suggesting that a man’s response to his wife’s cancer tells voters what they need to know about his character and courage in the Oval Office.
Edwards did something similar with his operatic apologies for voting to take us into Iraq in 2002, stressing the need for “honesty” in a president but overlooking the fact that telling the truth, George Bush notwithstanding, is only a minimal requisite but that good judgment over taking the country to war is a vital quality for a Commander-in-Chief.
The impression keeps recurring that John Edwards at heart is a smooth-talking lawyer who will do anything to make his case, and it is no discredit to her that his wife is doing everything she can to help him.
Good Vibes From Wobblers' Woodstock
Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and a bunch of the gang got together for Nelson Mandela’s 89th birthday, Peter Gabriel and Richard Branson came and, before you knew it, the golden oldies of world leaders were having their own Woodstock.
There were tears and humming along as Gabriel sang his song "Biko" about the anti-apartheid activist who died in police custody in 1977. But most of the time, the aged attendees were looking ahead.
"We’re coming up to the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights," Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, reminded them, adding that “people feel alienated. The elders can make it a living document."
With Branson’s prodding, the formerly powerful decided to form a group of elderly flower children to "bring hope and wisdom back into the world."
"The elders,” Branson predicted, “will play a role in bringing us together to help unnecessary human suffering and to celebrate the wonderful world we are privileged to be part of.”
In 2003 Mandela was to see Saddam Hussein and urge him to take steps to avoid war, but the U.S. invasion began before he could get there. "An elder or a group of elders could have persuaded Hussein to leave and we would have avoided the war," Branson said.
Asked why they might be able do now what they failed to do in their prime, Jimmy Carter answered, "There were problems we did not solve because of a lack of time, or because of very intense pressures from our own constituencies, or because we were too bogged down with multiple, simultaneous questions to answer.
"But the elders ... have complete freedom to escape from the restrains of political niceties and be able to do as Nelson Mandela pointed out--we can talk to anyone and become involved in any issue."
George Bush and Dick Cheney would be a good start, but don’t mention Woodstock.
There were tears and humming along as Gabriel sang his song "Biko" about the anti-apartheid activist who died in police custody in 1977. But most of the time, the aged attendees were looking ahead.
"We’re coming up to the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights," Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, reminded them, adding that “people feel alienated. The elders can make it a living document."
With Branson’s prodding, the formerly powerful decided to form a group of elderly flower children to "bring hope and wisdom back into the world."
"The elders,” Branson predicted, “will play a role in bringing us together to help unnecessary human suffering and to celebrate the wonderful world we are privileged to be part of.”
In 2003 Mandela was to see Saddam Hussein and urge him to take steps to avoid war, but the U.S. invasion began before he could get there. "An elder or a group of elders could have persuaded Hussein to leave and we would have avoided the war," Branson said.
Asked why they might be able do now what they failed to do in their prime, Jimmy Carter answered, "There were problems we did not solve because of a lack of time, or because of very intense pressures from our own constituencies, or because we were too bogged down with multiple, simultaneous questions to answer.
"But the elders ... have complete freedom to escape from the restrains of political niceties and be able to do as Nelson Mandela pointed out--we can talk to anyone and become involved in any issue."
George Bush and Dick Cheney would be a good start, but don’t mention Woodstock.
New Kind of Washington Wake-Up Call
With their sleeping cots and general disarray, Senate Democrats are evoking images of protests past against an unresponsive government. Granted that demonstrations of old were not by elected officials, the symbolism is familiar.
In 1932, with World War I veterans starving during the Depression, more than 10,000 came to D.C. and camped out, demanding the bonus that had been promised them. They ended up being rousted by the Army under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur who ignored President Herbert Hoover’s order to go easy. Generals were feistier then.
In 1969, a quarter of a million peaceful protesters against the war in Vietnam converged on the nation’s capital, holding candlelight vigils until morning. “I do believe,” Sen. Ted Kennedy told them, “this nation is in danger of committing itself to goals and personalities that guarantee the war's continuance.”
The dramatic difference this time is that anger and frustration are directed, not against the government, but by one branch of the Washington power structure against another.
Only a President with the insensitivity and arrogance of George W. Bush could have driven the Congress of the United States to such expression of enraged impotence. Even Herbert Hoover was incapable of that.
In 1932, with World War I veterans starving during the Depression, more than 10,000 came to D.C. and camped out, demanding the bonus that had been promised them. They ended up being rousted by the Army under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur who ignored President Herbert Hoover’s order to go easy. Generals were feistier then.
In 1969, a quarter of a million peaceful protesters against the war in Vietnam converged on the nation’s capital, holding candlelight vigils until morning. “I do believe,” Sen. Ted Kennedy told them, “this nation is in danger of committing itself to goals and personalities that guarantee the war's continuance.”
The dramatic difference this time is that anger and frustration are directed, not against the government, but by one branch of the Washington power structure against another.
Only a President with the insensitivity and arrogance of George W. Bush could have driven the Congress of the United States to such expression of enraged impotence. Even Herbert Hoover was incapable of that.
Bill Clinton's Backside: Political Issue
The “Hillary Is 44” guerilla bloggers are giving her campaign a new dimension by attacking MSM. Their weapon of choice yesterday was the former President’s derriere.
Between Obama-bashing and enthusing over Joe Wilson’s endorsement is an item: “Big Media writers prove themselves to be numbskulls on the most basic of human levels.”
The object of ire is a passage from the New York Times account of the Clintons campaigning together in New Hampshire:
“Mr. Clinton seemed to struggle with the proper posture for him at his wife’s side, alternately sitting up straight on his stool or slouching slightly, crossing his legs or crossing his ankles, keeping his hands in his pocket or putting a hand on his chin.”
A “Hillary Is 44” media critic deconstructed this sabotage of the Clinton campaign:
“Why does such drivel make it onto a writer’s pad and through the filter of any conscious editor? Answer: because that silly drivel, not the news, is actually the center of the Big Media narrative. Notice, earlier in the article we learned that Bill Clinton ‘took a seat on a stool on stage’. Have you ever tried sitting on a wooden stool on a platform in summer heat?
“Ask any person the size of Bill Clinton how it feels to sit on a wooden stool?
“Padding foam does not help. ‘Natural’ padding does not help. The only thing to do is fidget. Move from one buttock to the other, hook shoe heels to foot rests, fold arms, unfold arms, elbows on knees, hands under buttocks, move head forward, move head back...Our plush padded princes of Big Media don’t know about plain wooden stools. They do know how to disguise the drivel as news to push their narrative.”
Now that this mainstream media villainy has been exposed, on to other serious issues: Bill’s hair styling? The war in Iraq? Hillary’s pants suits?
Between Obama-bashing and enthusing over Joe Wilson’s endorsement is an item: “Big Media writers prove themselves to be numbskulls on the most basic of human levels.”
The object of ire is a passage from the New York Times account of the Clintons campaigning together in New Hampshire:
“Mr. Clinton seemed to struggle with the proper posture for him at his wife’s side, alternately sitting up straight on his stool or slouching slightly, crossing his legs or crossing his ankles, keeping his hands in his pocket or putting a hand on his chin.”
A “Hillary Is 44” media critic deconstructed this sabotage of the Clinton campaign:
“Why does such drivel make it onto a writer’s pad and through the filter of any conscious editor? Answer: because that silly drivel, not the news, is actually the center of the Big Media narrative. Notice, earlier in the article we learned that Bill Clinton ‘took a seat on a stool on stage’. Have you ever tried sitting on a wooden stool on a platform in summer heat?
“Ask any person the size of Bill Clinton how it feels to sit on a wooden stool?
“Padding foam does not help. ‘Natural’ padding does not help. The only thing to do is fidget. Move from one buttock to the other, hook shoe heels to foot rests, fold arms, unfold arms, elbows on knees, hands under buttocks, move head forward, move head back...Our plush padded princes of Big Media don’t know about plain wooden stools. They do know how to disguise the drivel as news to push their narrative.”
Now that this mainstream media villainy has been exposed, on to other serious issues: Bill’s hair styling? The war in Iraq? Hillary’s pants suits?
Hide-and-Seek Republicans
The games go on in the United States Senate.
At a press conference yesterday, John Kerry pleaded with Republican colleagues to come out of hiding and go public with the opposition to the war they have been expressing in private. If they did, he predicted, more than 60 Senators would vote for a change in policy
“This is the time, this is the moment,” Sen. Kerry said at a press conference. Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe agreed. “We are at a crossroads between hope and reality,” she said.
White House marching orders were reflected, as they often are, on the Politico web site: “Republican leaders on Tuesday pounced on a newly released National Intelligence Estimate to argue that the increasingly powerful and ominous Al Qaeda presence justifies current troop levels in Iraq at least until September.”
Never mind that the Estimate was an exercise in vagueness, that it is the presence of American troops that brought Saudi suicide bombers to Iraq and that we are losing the hide-and-seek game of trying to uproot their increasing numbers. This White House uses the “kill your parents and ask for mercy because you’re an orphan” strategy without blinking.
It’s painful to see people sworn to serve the national interest keep playing political games with the lives of Americans in uniform.
At a press conference yesterday, John Kerry pleaded with Republican colleagues to come out of hiding and go public with the opposition to the war they have been expressing in private. If they did, he predicted, more than 60 Senators would vote for a change in policy
“This is the time, this is the moment,” Sen. Kerry said at a press conference. Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe agreed. “We are at a crossroads between hope and reality,” she said.
White House marching orders were reflected, as they often are, on the Politico web site: “Republican leaders on Tuesday pounced on a newly released National Intelligence Estimate to argue that the increasingly powerful and ominous Al Qaeda presence justifies current troop levels in Iraq at least until September.”
Never mind that the Estimate was an exercise in vagueness, that it is the presence of American troops that brought Saudi suicide bombers to Iraq and that we are losing the hide-and-seek game of trying to uproot their increasing numbers. This White House uses the “kill your parents and ask for mercy because you’re an orphan” strategy without blinking.
It’s painful to see people sworn to serve the national interest keep playing political games with the lives of Americans in uniform.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Senate Sleepover
After so much squabbling in the sandbox, it’s nice to see our Senators planning to spend the night together on a play date. There will be games, of course, including blogging and making videos, and someone will undoubtedly bring hot chocolate and cookies.
They may not be any more grownup in the morning, but picturing Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid in Dr. Dentons is worth it all.
They may not be any more grownup in the morning, but picturing Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid in Dr. Dentons is worth it all.
Ghostly Candidates, Guerilla Campaigns
In the new Gallup Poll, the front runners are unchanged, but each party has a candidate with a ghostly image that is slowly fading out.
The desperate situation of John Edwards and John McCain calls for a strategic change, and one of them has already started on his version of a guerilla campaign.
Edwards is on a “poverty tour” that may have been inspired by Robert Kennedy's trip in 1968 and, going even further back, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” the photographs and text that focused attention on tenant farmers in Alabama in 1936.
“By telling their stories to the rest of the nation,” Edwards’ campaign says of the impoverished he will be visiting, “the tour will attempt to shed light on the new faces of poverty in America.”
Ironically, both efforts to make the poor visible had their roots in great wealth. Walker Evans and James Agee were assigned by Fortune, Henry Luce’s magazine for business leaders. Edwards is try to putting behind him publicity about expensive haircuts, lavish homes and high net worth.
The other desperate candidate, John McCain, is soldiering on despite staff casualties and falling behind Ron Paul in campaign funds. Wounded himself, he is weighed down further by a comatose lame-duck president around his neck.
McCain has tried going to Iraq and strolling around. Perhaps his next move should be going back there, embedding himself with the troops and becoming their champion in the final days of the fiasco to dramatize that he has their welfare at heart and his contention that they would be in a better situation if Bush had listened to McCain earlier and managed the war properly.
In doing this, McCain could stop the hemorrhaging of cash, separate himself from Giuliani and Thompson, and keep the news spotlight on what brought him into public life, his image as a soldier-hero.
In 1952, retired Gen. Dwight Eisenhower clinched his election by announcing, “I will go to Korea.” It might not work, but McCain’s best bet could be to emulate him by going to Iraq and waging a guerrilla presidential campaign from there.
The desperate situation of John Edwards and John McCain calls for a strategic change, and one of them has already started on his version of a guerilla campaign.
Edwards is on a “poverty tour” that may have been inspired by Robert Kennedy's trip in 1968 and, going even further back, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” the photographs and text that focused attention on tenant farmers in Alabama in 1936.
“By telling their stories to the rest of the nation,” Edwards’ campaign says of the impoverished he will be visiting, “the tour will attempt to shed light on the new faces of poverty in America.”
Ironically, both efforts to make the poor visible had their roots in great wealth. Walker Evans and James Agee were assigned by Fortune, Henry Luce’s magazine for business leaders. Edwards is try to putting behind him publicity about expensive haircuts, lavish homes and high net worth.
The other desperate candidate, John McCain, is soldiering on despite staff casualties and falling behind Ron Paul in campaign funds. Wounded himself, he is weighed down further by a comatose lame-duck president around his neck.
McCain has tried going to Iraq and strolling around. Perhaps his next move should be going back there, embedding himself with the troops and becoming their champion in the final days of the fiasco to dramatize that he has their welfare at heart and his contention that they would be in a better situation if Bush had listened to McCain earlier and managed the war properly.
In doing this, McCain could stop the hemorrhaging of cash, separate himself from Giuliani and Thompson, and keep the news spotlight on what brought him into public life, his image as a soldier-hero.
In 1952, retired Gen. Dwight Eisenhower clinched his election by announcing, “I will go to Korea.” It might not work, but McCain’s best bet could be to emulate him by going to Iraq and waging a guerrilla presidential campaign from there.
Bill Clinton Nemesis Gives Up on Bush
The billionaire who funded Bill Clinton’s impeachment has had enough of George W. Bush. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, owned by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, yesterday called continuing the war in Iraq a "prescription for American suicide."
The editorial also noted: "And quite frankly, during last Thursday's news conference, when George Bush started blathering about 'sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved,' we had to question his mental stability."
Scaife, who seems to take his politics personally, spent millions investigating Clinton’s sex life. Will he make the same investment in checking out Bush’s mental health?
The editorial also noted: "And quite frankly, during last Thursday's news conference, when George Bush started blathering about 'sometimes the decisions you make and the consequences don't enable you to be loved,' we had to question his mental stability."
Scaife, who seems to take his politics personally, spent millions investigating Clinton’s sex life. Will he make the same investment in checking out Bush’s mental health?
Killers in Iraq: The Saudi Connection
Almost half of the insurgents American troops are fighting in Iraq came from our staunch ally, Saudi Arabia.
According to U.S. military figures just published in the Los Angeles Times, “About 45 percent of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15 percent are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10 percent are from North Africa.”
The Saudi government knows that and says it is doing everything possible to prevent Sunni extremists from migrating to the killing fields of Iraq. But is it?
The signals are getting decidedly mixed. Until recently, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was ambassador to Washington until 2005, had Bush and Cheney eating out of his hand. But then last month, his uncle, King Abdullah told Arab heads of state that Americans in Iraq were “an illegal foreign occupation.”
“Saudi frustration,” the New York Times reported this weekend, “has mounted over the past four years, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated. King Abdullah was angry that the Bush administration ignored his advice against de-Baathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi military.”
Now questions arise: How hard are the Saudis trying to stem the tide of their Sunni jihadists into Iraq? To what extent is exporting troublemakers in their domestic interest and part of an unspoken policy? How much pressure are they putting on the Bush Administration to stay in Iraq by threatening to support Sunni fighters against Iran-backed Shiites if we leave? Behind it all, how much of American policy is driven by placating the Saudis to ensure the continuing flow of their oil to which we are addicted?
In the Middle East, keeping up with your friends can be as exhausting as fighting your enemies. Pakistan is another example. Stay tuned.
According to U.S. military figures just published in the Los Angeles Times, “About 45 percent of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15 percent are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10 percent are from North Africa.”
The Saudi government knows that and says it is doing everything possible to prevent Sunni extremists from migrating to the killing fields of Iraq. But is it?
The signals are getting decidedly mixed. Until recently, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was ambassador to Washington until 2005, had Bush and Cheney eating out of his hand. But then last month, his uncle, King Abdullah told Arab heads of state that Americans in Iraq were “an illegal foreign occupation.”
“Saudi frustration,” the New York Times reported this weekend, “has mounted over the past four years, as the situation in Iraq has deteriorated. King Abdullah was angry that the Bush administration ignored his advice against de-Baathification and the disbanding of the Iraqi military.”
Now questions arise: How hard are the Saudis trying to stem the tide of their Sunni jihadists into Iraq? To what extent is exporting troublemakers in their domestic interest and part of an unspoken policy? How much pressure are they putting on the Bush Administration to stay in Iraq by threatening to support Sunni fighters against Iran-backed Shiites if we leave? Behind it all, how much of American policy is driven by placating the Saudis to ensure the continuing flow of their oil to which we are addicted?
In the Middle East, keeping up with your friends can be as exhausting as fighting your enemies. Pakistan is another example. Stay tuned.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Lame Duck Surges On
Gen. Peter Pace, who is being replaced as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in September, answers a question today that nobody is asking: Should we put more troops into Iraq?
The military must "be prepared for whatever it's going to look like two months from now," Pace said in an interview with two reporters traveling with him to Iraq from Washington.
"That way, if we need to plus up or come down" in numbers of troops, we would be ready, according to an AP “Military Writer.”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced last month that he would not be re-appointing Pace in order to avoid a “contentious” confirmation process. Is the General giving Congressional Democrats a nose-thumbing salute with today’s statement, or has he really lost it?
The military must "be prepared for whatever it's going to look like two months from now," Pace said in an interview with two reporters traveling with him to Iraq from Washington.
"That way, if we need to plus up or come down" in numbers of troops, we would be ready, according to an AP “Military Writer.”
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced last month that he would not be re-appointing Pace in order to avoid a “contentious” confirmation process. Is the General giving Congressional Democrats a nose-thumbing salute with today’s statement, or has he really lost it?
The McCain Mutiny
With mass departures today from his campaign staff, it may be time to write John McCain’s political obituary. The captain of the Straight Talk Express deserves to go out on his shield like the honorable warrior he has always been.
In an eerie parallel to Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny,” the Senator from Arizona morphed from a lifelong by-the-book career serviceman to the unhinged Capt. Queeg of the popular 1950’s novel, play and movie.
In the anger over his support for an insane war, it would be an injustice if McCain’s service to his country were swept out with the Iraq wreckage. Unlike Bush, Cheney and, yes, Bill Clinton, he served and suffered through Vietnam, another unjust war not of his making.
Born in the Panama Canal Zone where his father, an Admiral, was stationed, John Sidney McCain III went to Annapolis, was wounded in Vietnam, and captured and tortured during his five and a half years as a prisoner, most of it in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.”
As a Senator, he has advocated gun control, campaign finance reform and a humane approach to immigration legislation.
McCain might have been a quirky President, but unlike Bush, an honorable one if he hadn’t been derailed by the Rove smear machine in 2000 and his own mistakes for 2008.
But the Republican field of candidates he leaves behind provides the best possible contrast to his integrity.
Ave et vale, Senator.
In an eerie parallel to Herman Wouk’s “The Caine Mutiny,” the Senator from Arizona morphed from a lifelong by-the-book career serviceman to the unhinged Capt. Queeg of the popular 1950’s novel, play and movie.
In the anger over his support for an insane war, it would be an injustice if McCain’s service to his country were swept out with the Iraq wreckage. Unlike Bush, Cheney and, yes, Bill Clinton, he served and suffered through Vietnam, another unjust war not of his making.
Born in the Panama Canal Zone where his father, an Admiral, was stationed, John Sidney McCain III went to Annapolis, was wounded in Vietnam, and captured and tortured during his five and a half years as a prisoner, most of it in the infamous “Hanoi Hilton.”
As a Senator, he has advocated gun control, campaign finance reform and a humane approach to immigration legislation.
McCain might have been a quirky President, but unlike Bush, an honorable one if he hadn’t been derailed by the Rove smear machine in 2000 and his own mistakes for 2008.
But the Republican field of candidates he leaves behind provides the best possible contrast to his integrity.
Ave et vale, Senator.
Ugly Obsession: Seeing Through the Stars
Celebrity journalism has always been the ultimate oxymoron. Journalism is about truth, celebrity is illusion. But now neo-fan magazines and web sites have pushed the contradiction to a new level, seeking what Virginia Heffernan calls “evidence of monstrosity.”
The TV critic of the New York Times writes: “Like so many other 20th-century American institutions, Hollywood beauty is now regularly treated as a fairy tale only for dreamers and chumps. Readers with any sense are supposed to recognize its strategic function but otherwise acknowledge it as a lie. The availability of plastic surgery and the widespread use of tooth bleach and self-tanners and finally the photo manipulation that any grandma can do to brighten up her Canon PowerShot photos has somehow made even transcendent beauty manifestly suspect.”
Debunking beauty is surely satisfying to the mean-spirited and ugly of soul, but is that what’s become of all of us?
I take an old man’s pleasure in looking at Michelle Pfeiffer. Diane Lane and Scarlett Johansson, and no voyeur with a magnifying glass is going to take that away from me.
Heffernan ends up being of two minds about “dismantling fantasy,” but her analysis is devastating. She has been one of my favorite critics ever since she described me as an “ashen-faced talking head.”
The TV critic of the New York Times writes: “Like so many other 20th-century American institutions, Hollywood beauty is now regularly treated as a fairy tale only for dreamers and chumps. Readers with any sense are supposed to recognize its strategic function but otherwise acknowledge it as a lie. The availability of plastic surgery and the widespread use of tooth bleach and self-tanners and finally the photo manipulation that any grandma can do to brighten up her Canon PowerShot photos has somehow made even transcendent beauty manifestly suspect.”
Debunking beauty is surely satisfying to the mean-spirited and ugly of soul, but is that what’s become of all of us?
I take an old man’s pleasure in looking at Michelle Pfeiffer. Diane Lane and Scarlett Johansson, and no voyeur with a magnifying glass is going to take that away from me.
Heffernan ends up being of two minds about “dismantling fantasy,” but her analysis is devastating. She has been one of my favorite critics ever since she described me as an “ashen-faced talking head.”
Republican President? Liar Luntz Has a Plan
Talk about die-hards: The GOP’s piss-on–the-public pollster/pundit Frank Lunz unveils his strategy to keep the White House in ’08. It gets a tad twisty, of course, so follow closely:
Play the “fed up with Washington” card: “Democrats blew into Washington in 2006 as a breath of fresh air in response to Republican scandal, Republican budget mismanagement and a Republican war. But in recent weeks, that freshness has turned stale.”
Sell the voters hope: Luntz says focus groups have been saying, "Don't tell us what George W. Bush did wrong. Tell us what you will do right. Don't talk about the past. Tell us about the future."
Be authentic, even if you have to fake it: Don’t try to “recapture a mood that has long since gone by...the Republican candidate should seek to lead like Reagan, not be Reagan.”
Win Ohio: Give them “a culturally conservative message fused with government accountability and economic opportunity specifically tailored to voters in the industrial heartland.”
Luntz, whose specialty is inverting the truth (“global warming” to “climate change”), is bamboozling himself now into forgetting that he has been discredited to the point that PBS last month, after hiring him as an analyst for a Democratic debate, had to pull back under fire.
A long-time liar for Rudy Giuliani, Luntz has no official place in this campaign. But he no doubt is in a closet somewhere, churning out truthful lies to make America’s Mayor look Reaganesque but not like Reagan, devising a culturally conservative message for his cross-dressing candidate and floating pipe-dream plans for how the Republicans can hold on to the White House with even bigger lies than Bush and Cheney could invent.
Play the “fed up with Washington” card: “Democrats blew into Washington in 2006 as a breath of fresh air in response to Republican scandal, Republican budget mismanagement and a Republican war. But in recent weeks, that freshness has turned stale.”
Sell the voters hope: Luntz says focus groups have been saying, "Don't tell us what George W. Bush did wrong. Tell us what you will do right. Don't talk about the past. Tell us about the future."
Be authentic, even if you have to fake it: Don’t try to “recapture a mood that has long since gone by...the Republican candidate should seek to lead like Reagan, not be Reagan.”
Win Ohio: Give them “a culturally conservative message fused with government accountability and economic opportunity specifically tailored to voters in the industrial heartland.”
Luntz, whose specialty is inverting the truth (“global warming” to “climate change”), is bamboozling himself now into forgetting that he has been discredited to the point that PBS last month, after hiring him as an analyst for a Democratic debate, had to pull back under fire.
A long-time liar for Rudy Giuliani, Luntz has no official place in this campaign. But he no doubt is in a closet somewhere, churning out truthful lies to make America’s Mayor look Reaganesque but not like Reagan, devising a culturally conservative message for his cross-dressing candidate and floating pipe-dream plans for how the Republicans can hold on to the White House with even bigger lies than Bush and Cheney could invent.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Obama Backers Are Too Educated
For those who have been wondering why the Illinois senator is trailing Hillary Clinton in the polls, even though he has raised tons of money, we finally have the answer--from no less an authority than the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.
The favorite among voters without a college education always wins, according to Peter Brown, who cites Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Paul Tsongas, Gary Hart and Ted Kennedy as those who appealed to educated Democrats and lost.
The bad news for Obama is that too many of those who back him went to college, but “That's not to minimize the magnetism of Obama and his ability to bring excitement to the campaign,” Brown generously concedes.
Maybe Obama can catch up by taking dumbing-down lessons from Fred Thompson, who is making an art of it. Or better yet, he might console himself with the $34 million he has on hand and disregard pollsters who have trouble with “post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” as the college-educated might say.
The favorite among voters without a college education always wins, according to Peter Brown, who cites Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Paul Tsongas, Gary Hart and Ted Kennedy as those who appealed to educated Democrats and lost.
The bad news for Obama is that too many of those who back him went to college, but “That's not to minimize the magnetism of Obama and his ability to bring excitement to the campaign,” Brown generously concedes.
Maybe Obama can catch up by taking dumbing-down lessons from Fred Thompson, who is making an art of it. Or better yet, he might console himself with the $34 million he has on hand and disregard pollsters who have trouble with “post hoc, ergo propter hoc,” as the college-educated might say.
The Dating Game
Rep. Christopher Shays, an Iraq war stalwart on the order of his Connecticut colleague, Sen. Joe Lieberman, has just had an epiphany: He wants all American troops out by December 2008.
Meanwhile, they can keep fighting or policing or whatever the hell it is they’re doing until Shays gets re-elected in November 2008. How many will die between now and then?
Meanwhile, they can keep fighting or policing or whatever the hell it is they’re doing until Shays gets re-elected in November 2008. How many will die between now and then?
Word War Won: Webb KOs Graham
In less than 20 minutes today on “Meet the Press,” the debate over Iraq came into clear focus.
Freshman Democratic Sen. Jim Webb cut through the Republican fog of obfuscation and called Iraq by its proper name--not a war but a “botched occupation.”
As Sen. Lindsey Graham, parroting the Bush line about fighting terrorism, kept ducking behind Gen. Patraeus, Webb pointed out that the occupation brought Al Qaeda to Iraq, that the Iraqis are telling us to get out and our troops have lost faith in the operation and want to come home.
Pitting pitiful Graham against Webb was a mismatch. The South Carolina Senator, whose military experience consists of doing legal paperwork, was up against a Vietnam veteran with the Navy Cross, whose family has served the country since the American Revolution and who has helped run the Defense Department.
If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, Webb was having none of Graham’s and the session led to verbal fisticuffs that, on the scorecard of a not-impartial judge, ended with a KO by Webb.
It was encouraging to watch the senator from Virginia have Graham for breakfast. Hillary Clinton backers have been touting him as a running mate, and it’s easy to see why.
Freshman Democratic Sen. Jim Webb cut through the Republican fog of obfuscation and called Iraq by its proper name--not a war but a “botched occupation.”
As Sen. Lindsey Graham, parroting the Bush line about fighting terrorism, kept ducking behind Gen. Patraeus, Webb pointed out that the occupation brought Al Qaeda to Iraq, that the Iraqis are telling us to get out and our troops have lost faith in the operation and want to come home.
Pitting pitiful Graham against Webb was a mismatch. The South Carolina Senator, whose military experience consists of doing legal paperwork, was up against a Vietnam veteran with the Navy Cross, whose family has served the country since the American Revolution and who has helped run the Defense Department.
If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, Webb was having none of Graham’s and the session led to verbal fisticuffs that, on the scorecard of a not-impartial judge, ended with a KO by Webb.
It was encouraging to watch the senator from Virginia have Graham for breakfast. Hillary Clinton backers have been touting him as a running mate, and it’s easy to see why.
Terrorists Get Old, Too
Time works its will on everyone, even fanatics. Those who don’t strap explosives to themselves and ascend to their 72 virgins are not immune to the coming of age.
Here is Osama bin Laden in the latest terrorist video, looking wan and grey, reduced to a 50-second cameo, waxing philosophical:
"So this whole broad life is summarized by him who was inspired by God, the Lord of the heavens and earth, praised and exalted is he. This glorious prophet who was inspired by God summarized this entire life by these words...Happy is the one who was chosen by God as a martyr."
That elegiac snippet of uncertain vintage suggests aging and the loss of fire in the belly. In Wordsworth’s words, “Whither is fled the visionary gleam?”
But compared to Carlos the Jackal, bin Laden is still in his prime. Venezuelan-born Vladimir Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who bombed his way to fame in the 1970s, in an interview from a French prison this week, called the current Islamic terrorists the Gallic equivalent of whippersnappers.
“They are not professionals,” Carlos scoffed. “They’re not organized. They don’t even know how to make proper explosives or proper detonators.”
In his day, Carlos pointed out, killing people at random was amateur night. He selected his targets to make a point.
Comforting as it is to know that terrorists get old and flabby, like the rest of us, it would be churlish not to wish them an early death to escape these mortal pangs.
Here is Osama bin Laden in the latest terrorist video, looking wan and grey, reduced to a 50-second cameo, waxing philosophical:
"So this whole broad life is summarized by him who was inspired by God, the Lord of the heavens and earth, praised and exalted is he. This glorious prophet who was inspired by God summarized this entire life by these words...Happy is the one who was chosen by God as a martyr."
That elegiac snippet of uncertain vintage suggests aging and the loss of fire in the belly. In Wordsworth’s words, “Whither is fled the visionary gleam?”
But compared to Carlos the Jackal, bin Laden is still in his prime. Venezuelan-born Vladimir Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, who bombed his way to fame in the 1970s, in an interview from a French prison this week, called the current Islamic terrorists the Gallic equivalent of whippersnappers.
“They are not professionals,” Carlos scoffed. “They’re not organized. They don’t even know how to make proper explosives or proper detonators.”
In his day, Carlos pointed out, killing people at random was amateur night. He selected his targets to make a point.
Comforting as it is to know that terrorists get old and flabby, like the rest of us, it would be churlish not to wish them an early death to escape these mortal pangs.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
George Bush's Groucho Moment
Now that Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has suggested we’ve overstayed our welcome, the President should take a look at Groucho Marx’s classic example of a graceful exit from an embarrassing situation:
Hello, I must be going/I cannot stay/I came to say/
I must be going/I'm glad I came/But just the same/I must be going... Ta-Ta!
Protocol requires a polite response to the PM’s statement that Americans can leave “any time they want” and his top aide’s saying we are treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory."
For the sake of diplomacy, as we go out the door, we should be deaf to the complaint that our military is committing human rights violations, embarrassing the Iraqi government and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in the campaign against al-Qaeda.
But no good guest should overlook his host’s heavy hints that the party’s over. Groucho never would have. Here are our hats, what’s our hurry?
Hello, I must be going/I cannot stay/I came to say/
I must be going/I'm glad I came/But just the same/I must be going... Ta-Ta!
Protocol requires a polite response to the PM’s statement that Americans can leave “any time they want” and his top aide’s saying we are treating Iraq like "an experiment in an American laboratory."
For the sake of diplomacy, as we go out the door, we should be deaf to the complaint that our military is committing human rights violations, embarrassing the Iraqi government and cooperating with "gangs of killers" in the campaign against al-Qaeda.
But no good guest should overlook his host’s heavy hints that the party’s over. Groucho never would have. Here are our hats, what’s our hurry?
ABC's Leaky Terrorist Coverage
Al Jazeera West is at it again. ABC TV’s doughty “investigative team,” which specializes in Al Qaeda handouts, is reporting the impending Mother of All Terrorist Attacks, as gleaned from an exclusive interview with Taliban military commander Mansour Dadullah.
"You will, God willing, be witness to more attacks," he told a Pakistani journalist, according to ABC.
“Just last month,” the network notes, “Dadullah presided over what was termed a terror training camp graduation ceremony in Pakistan, supposedly dispatching attack teams to the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany.”
The question arises: Why are Dadullah and his “Pakistani journalist” being so good to ABC? Last month, they gave the network an exclusive on the “graduation ceremony,” which was dutifully reported without qualification.
No one would want to dampen the investigative team’s zeal for terrorist coverage, but perhaps Brian Ross and his crew are cultivating their sources a bit too much.
Terrorists must have their Scooter Libbys, too, and it would be a shame if American journalists hadn’t learned to be more skeptical of all leakers bearing gifts.
"You will, God willing, be witness to more attacks," he told a Pakistani journalist, according to ABC.
“Just last month,” the network notes, “Dadullah presided over what was termed a terror training camp graduation ceremony in Pakistan, supposedly dispatching attack teams to the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany.”
The question arises: Why are Dadullah and his “Pakistani journalist” being so good to ABC? Last month, they gave the network an exclusive on the “graduation ceremony,” which was dutifully reported without qualification.
No one would want to dampen the investigative team’s zeal for terrorist coverage, but perhaps Brian Ross and his crew are cultivating their sources a bit too much.
Terrorists must have their Scooter Libbys, too, and it would be a shame if American journalists hadn’t learned to be more skeptical of all leakers bearing gifts.
Chertoff's Squirrel Spies
Now that the Iranians have blown their cover, the story of our rodent black ops can be told.
Last week, in a desperate last-ditch attempt to preserve their covert status, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff attributed information about imminent terrorist activities to his “gut feeling.”
Now it can be revealed that he was relying on the work of the Squirrel Intelligence Corps, whose existence was unknown until a number of agents were ferreted out and detained by the Islamic Republic’s Secret Police.
"In recent weeks, intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran's borders," the state-sponsored news agency IRNA reported. "The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services."
Our secret squirrels were trained by the Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which concealed its efforts by leaking data about allegedly jocular experiments in “squirrel fishing.”
A critical element of the Iranian operation was timing. According to the journal Scholarly Squirrel, although males of the species “are notorious for chasing females...between July and August, female squirrels are ready to mate only one day out of each season.” Islamic agents apparently took advantage of our operatives’ distraction in anticipating the crucial date.
In keeping with security procedures, Director Chertoff would not comment, but a spokesperson reflected Homeland Security’s disappointment by an off-the-record reference to the observation of Sarah Jessica Parker, “You can't be friends with a squirrel. A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit.”
Last week, in a desperate last-ditch attempt to preserve their covert status, Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff attributed information about imminent terrorist activities to his “gut feeling.”
Now it can be revealed that he was relying on the work of the Squirrel Intelligence Corps, whose existence was unknown until a number of agents were ferreted out and detained by the Islamic Republic’s Secret Police.
"In recent weeks, intelligence operatives have arrested 14 squirrels within Iran's borders," the state-sponsored news agency IRNA reported. "The squirrels were carrying spy gear of foreign agencies, and were stopped before they could act, thanks to the alertness of our intelligence services."
Our secret squirrels were trained by the Harvard Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which concealed its efforts by leaking data about allegedly jocular experiments in “squirrel fishing.”
A critical element of the Iranian operation was timing. According to the journal Scholarly Squirrel, although males of the species “are notorious for chasing females...between July and August, female squirrels are ready to mate only one day out of each season.” Islamic agents apparently took advantage of our operatives’ distraction in anticipating the crucial date.
In keeping with security procedures, Director Chertoff would not comment, but a spokesperson reflected Homeland Security’s disappointment by an off-the-record reference to the observation of Sarah Jessica Parker, “You can't be friends with a squirrel. A squirrel is just a rat with a cuter outfit.”
Bush on Mt. Rushmore
The George W. Bush Afterlife Society will please come to order. First, the invocation from Rabbi Joe Lieberman:
“(H)e will be judged as a president who saw the threat, and in the midst of an unpopular war, he stuck with it...his ratings among the historians will be greater than his ratings in the polls today.”
The Reverend Rush Limbaugh rises to expand on this theme in today’s sermon:
“Long after we’re all dead and gone, when historians who are not yet born begin to write about this era, they’re going to place George Bush in the upper echelon of presidents who had a great vision for America.”
And then the featured speaker, the theologian and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute Michael Novak, who had a few words to say about the honoree:
"Faith is not enough by itself because there are a lot of people who have faith but weak hearts. But his faith is very strong. He seeks guidance, like every other president does, in prayer. And that means trying to be sure he's doing the right thing. And if you've got that set, all the criticism, it doesn't faze you very much. You're answering to God."
Amen. At this point, members will pray for the historians who answered a survey of the History News Network--338 heretics said they believed President Bush is failing, while 77 said he is succeeding. Fifty heathen thought he was the worst president ever, worse than Buchanan. We will pray for enlightment for these lost souls.
The final item on the agenda this evening will be a report from the Committee to Raise Funds for the George W. Bush Sculpture on Mt. Rushmore
“(H)e will be judged as a president who saw the threat, and in the midst of an unpopular war, he stuck with it...his ratings among the historians will be greater than his ratings in the polls today.”
The Reverend Rush Limbaugh rises to expand on this theme in today’s sermon:
“Long after we’re all dead and gone, when historians who are not yet born begin to write about this era, they’re going to place George Bush in the upper echelon of presidents who had a great vision for America.”
And then the featured speaker, the theologian and scholar at the American Enterprise Institute Michael Novak, who had a few words to say about the honoree:
"Faith is not enough by itself because there are a lot of people who have faith but weak hearts. But his faith is very strong. He seeks guidance, like every other president does, in prayer. And that means trying to be sure he's doing the right thing. And if you've got that set, all the criticism, it doesn't faze you very much. You're answering to God."
Amen. At this point, members will pray for the historians who answered a survey of the History News Network--338 heretics said they believed President Bush is failing, while 77 said he is succeeding. Fifty heathen thought he was the worst president ever, worse than Buchanan. We will pray for enlightment for these lost souls.
The final item on the agenda this evening will be a report from the Committee to Raise Funds for the George W. Bush Sculpture on Mt. Rushmore
Friday, July 13, 2007
Wiping Away Bush's Grin
Peggy Noonan, who used to write for George Bush’s father and now writes for the Wall Street Journal, has had enough. She wants to fire the President. One of the reasons is that he’s in too good a mood.
At yesterday’s press conference, she notes: “There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush?”
When Lincoln lost an election, he remarked that he “was too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh.” Not Bush, and his “What? Me Worry?” grins are driving former supporters like Noonan up the wall.
“President Bush,” she writes, “was hired to know more than the people, to be told all the deep inside intelligence, all the facts Americans are not told, and do the right and smart thing in response.
“That's the deal...If you are a mid-level Verizon executive who lives in New Jersey, this is what you do: You hire a president and tell him to take care of everything you can't take care of--the security of the nation, its well-being, its long-term interests. And you in turn do your part...You work, pay your taxes...become involved in local things--the boy's ball team, the library, the homeless shelter. You handle what you can...and give the big things to the president.
“And if he can't do it, or if he can't do it as well as you pay the mortgage and help the kid next door, you get mad. And you fire him.
“Americans can't fire the president right now, so they're waiting it out. They can tell a pollster how they feel, and they do, and they can tell friends, and they do that too. They also watch the news conference, and grit their teeth a bit.”
So do we all.
At yesterday’s press conference, she notes: “There was the usual teasing, the partly aggressive, partly joshing humor, the certitude. He doesn't seem to be suffering, which is jarring. Presidents in great enterprises that are going badly suffer: Lincoln, LBJ with his head in his hands. Why doesn't Mr. Bush?”
When Lincoln lost an election, he remarked that he “was too old to cry, but it hurts too much to laugh.” Not Bush, and his “What? Me Worry?” grins are driving former supporters like Noonan up the wall.
“President Bush,” she writes, “was hired to know more than the people, to be told all the deep inside intelligence, all the facts Americans are not told, and do the right and smart thing in response.
“That's the deal...If you are a mid-level Verizon executive who lives in New Jersey, this is what you do: You hire a president and tell him to take care of everything you can't take care of--the security of the nation, its well-being, its long-term interests. And you in turn do your part...You work, pay your taxes...become involved in local things--the boy's ball team, the library, the homeless shelter. You handle what you can...and give the big things to the president.
“And if he can't do it, or if he can't do it as well as you pay the mortgage and help the kid next door, you get mad. And you fire him.
“Americans can't fire the president right now, so they're waiting it out. They can tell a pollster how they feel, and they do, and they can tell friends, and they do that too. They also watch the news conference, and grit their teeth a bit.”
So do we all.
Giuliani, Thompson: Tainted New Friends
As America’s Mayor goes South and Fred Thompson comes North looking for support, they are not being too choosy about the company they keep.
This week Giuliani lost his Southern chairman to a sex scandal. Last month saw the departure of his South Carolina chairman Tom Ravenel, indicted for selling cocaine. Filling in is his father, a former Congressman who called the NAACP the "National Association of Retarded People" during a debate over the Confederate flag in 2000.
Meanwhile, Thompson is in Manhattan guided by his New York Chairman, former Sen. Alfonse d’Amato, an ethically challenged public figure whose other job these days is Chairman of the Poker Players Alliance lobbying to overturn a federal ban on internet gambling.
Fonzie arranged a breakfast yesterday for Thompson with Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy, who holds Giuliani responsible for the deaths of his members on 9/11. At an ensuing press conference, Thompson praised Cassidy’s union, saying “They've paid a terrible price. They sacrificed for all of us.”
As the two Republic front runners contest for the nomination, it may be a colorful campaign with no holds barred.
This week Giuliani lost his Southern chairman to a sex scandal. Last month saw the departure of his South Carolina chairman Tom Ravenel, indicted for selling cocaine. Filling in is his father, a former Congressman who called the NAACP the "National Association of Retarded People" during a debate over the Confederate flag in 2000.
Meanwhile, Thompson is in Manhattan guided by his New York Chairman, former Sen. Alfonse d’Amato, an ethically challenged public figure whose other job these days is Chairman of the Poker Players Alliance lobbying to overturn a federal ban on internet gambling.
Fonzie arranged a breakfast yesterday for Thompson with Uniformed Firefighters Association President Steve Cassidy, who holds Giuliani responsible for the deaths of his members on 9/11. At an ensuing press conference, Thompson praised Cassidy’s union, saying “They've paid a terrible price. They sacrificed for all of us.”
As the two Republic front runners contest for the nomination, it may be a colorful campaign with no holds barred.
Two Cheers for the Plan B Lifestyle
The surging sales of the morning-after pill evoke mixed feelings. While the new contraceptive certainly gives women (and men) more freedom of choice, its popularity raises qualms about how far we’ve gone toward becoming a Plan B society.
Marry the wrong person? No-fault divorce. Stuff your face for years? Try diet pills and, if they don’t work, surgery. Run up too many bills? Go bankrupt.
In a society that believes in second chances, it’s hard to argue against the right to correct mistakes, but whatever happened to pay as you go, look before you leap or plain old think twice?
More to the point, there is still no totally free lunch. Uproot your children’s lives, tamper with your body chemistry, lose your credit rating, the “delete” button won’t solve everything.
At the risk of sounding like an old scold, one thing more: Get into the wrong war and try to find a Plan B pill for that.
Maybe we should be taking a longer, harder look at the Plan A’s in our lives.
Marry the wrong person? No-fault divorce. Stuff your face for years? Try diet pills and, if they don’t work, surgery. Run up too many bills? Go bankrupt.
In a society that believes in second chances, it’s hard to argue against the right to correct mistakes, but whatever happened to pay as you go, look before you leap or plain old think twice?
More to the point, there is still no totally free lunch. Uproot your children’s lives, tamper with your body chemistry, lose your credit rating, the “delete” button won’t solve everything.
At the risk of sounding like an old scold, one thing more: Get into the wrong war and try to find a Plan B pill for that.
Maybe we should be taking a longer, harder look at the Plan A’s in our lives.
Political Theater of the Absurd
The tragic comedy in Washington is beginning to look like an Absurdist revival. George Bush is “Waiting for Godot” while Congress is doing “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.”
Godot is Gen. Petraeus and, as in Beckett’s play, he is unlikely to appear, at least not in the sense the President is expecting. In September, when Petraeus comes on stage, the best Bush can hope for is an ambiguous soliloquy that, as the General has already indicated, measures progress in terms of years, even decades.
Meanwhile, Congress wrestles with a script of declarations, non-sequiturs, evasions and pauses that seek the certainty of withdrawal but only demonstrate the futility of language.
In a prolonged final act of bitter, chaotic conflict, the actors keep milling around the stage, striking poses and making their speeches but is anyone listening?
What’s left of the audience, even those who applauded the first act, is heading for the exits while the carnage continues offstage.
Godot is Gen. Petraeus and, as in Beckett’s play, he is unlikely to appear, at least not in the sense the President is expecting. In September, when Petraeus comes on stage, the best Bush can hope for is an ambiguous soliloquy that, as the General has already indicated, measures progress in terms of years, even decades.
Meanwhile, Congress wrestles with a script of declarations, non-sequiturs, evasions and pauses that seek the certainty of withdrawal but only demonstrate the futility of language.
In a prolonged final act of bitter, chaotic conflict, the actors keep milling around the stage, striking poses and making their speeches but is anyone listening?
What’s left of the audience, even those who applauded the first act, is heading for the exits while the carnage continues offstage.
Thursday, July 12, 2007
"My Country, Right or Wrong"
John Boehner is a living metaphor for the political muddle in Washington over Iraq.
During a meeting of the Republican Congressional caucus yesterday, the House Minority Leader reportedly characterized Senate colleagues as “wimps” for backing away from unquestioning support of the Bush policy.
He was rebuked by Rep. Heather Wilson, a former Air Force officer, who expressed admiration for Sen. Richard Lugar’s speech about rethinking Middle East policy.
Boehner is an emotional man. In May, before debate about the Surge, he wept openly as Rep. Sam Johnson talked of his years as a POW in North Vietnam, describing how his captors would play tapes of antiwar protesters back home over prison loudspeakers.
The Minority Leader was strongly moved by Johnson’s analogy of his experience in hearing that opposition to any expression of Congressional disapproval of the policy in Iraq.
There is no reason to question Boehner’s sincerity or patriotism, but his judgment is another matter. He embodies a classic American debate.
In 1816, after a victory, Naval Commander Stephen Decatur proposed a toast: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.”
In 1872, Sen. Carl Schurz, a former General, amended that declaration: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
George Bush has complicated that difference by re-defining patriotism as support for a mindless, belligerent foreign policy that has alienated our country from almost all of the civilized world.
In Boehner’s heart, it may simply be a question of patriotism, yes or no. But someone should explain to him that Bush’s Neo-Cons have hijacked American patriotism and that some of those in both parties who truly love their country are fighting to get it back.
During a meeting of the Republican Congressional caucus yesterday, the House Minority Leader reportedly characterized Senate colleagues as “wimps” for backing away from unquestioning support of the Bush policy.
He was rebuked by Rep. Heather Wilson, a former Air Force officer, who expressed admiration for Sen. Richard Lugar’s speech about rethinking Middle East policy.
Boehner is an emotional man. In May, before debate about the Surge, he wept openly as Rep. Sam Johnson talked of his years as a POW in North Vietnam, describing how his captors would play tapes of antiwar protesters back home over prison loudspeakers.
The Minority Leader was strongly moved by Johnson’s analogy of his experience in hearing that opposition to any expression of Congressional disapproval of the policy in Iraq.
There is no reason to question Boehner’s sincerity or patriotism, but his judgment is another matter. He embodies a classic American debate.
In 1816, after a victory, Naval Commander Stephen Decatur proposed a toast: “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.”
In 1872, Sen. Carl Schurz, a former General, amended that declaration: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
George Bush has complicated that difference by re-defining patriotism as support for a mindless, belligerent foreign policy that has alienated our country from almost all of the civilized world.
In Boehner’s heart, it may simply be a question of patriotism, yes or no. But someone should explain to him that Bush’s Neo-Cons have hijacked American patriotism and that some of those in both parties who truly love their country are fighting to get it back.
Nice Guy Nixon, Longing to Belong
Even in the White House, he felt the whole world was a club that wouldn’t take him in as a member.
New documents and tapes released yesterday by custodians of the de-sanitized Nixon Library and Museum only add to the picture of an angry, isolated, paranoid President plotting to get everybody else before they got him and, at the same time, wanting to be perceived as a regular guy.
There is an 11-page memo from 1970 complaining that he never got credit for being “nicey-nice,” listing all his "good deeds"--calling sick people, writing to those who were experiencing hard times, giving parties for the poor. "There are innumerable examples of warm items," he wrote, echoing his exaggerated sense of being unappreciated.
Typically Nixon wanted to manipulate an outcome without getting caught doing it. "With regard to the whole warmth business, a very important point to underline is that we do not try to broker such items," he wrote, not wanting the White House to be seen as promoting them but letting them be "discovered."
Somewhere under all that insecurity and misplaced guile was the man Nixon wanted to be. I got a glimpse of him in 1966 when the former Vice President and failed candidate for Governor of California was practicing law in Manhattan.
When conversation at the dinner table turned to baseball, his calculating manner gave way to enthusiastic fan talk. That led me to suggest there was a perfect job opening for him--Commissioner of Baseball.
His eyes lit up. “Can you get it for me?” he asked.
If he had gotten that job, there would be no library and museum now, but he might have had a happier life, as would we all.
New documents and tapes released yesterday by custodians of the de-sanitized Nixon Library and Museum only add to the picture of an angry, isolated, paranoid President plotting to get everybody else before they got him and, at the same time, wanting to be perceived as a regular guy.
There is an 11-page memo from 1970 complaining that he never got credit for being “nicey-nice,” listing all his "good deeds"--calling sick people, writing to those who were experiencing hard times, giving parties for the poor. "There are innumerable examples of warm items," he wrote, echoing his exaggerated sense of being unappreciated.
Typically Nixon wanted to manipulate an outcome without getting caught doing it. "With regard to the whole warmth business, a very important point to underline is that we do not try to broker such items," he wrote, not wanting the White House to be seen as promoting them but letting them be "discovered."
Somewhere under all that insecurity and misplaced guile was the man Nixon wanted to be. I got a glimpse of him in 1966 when the former Vice President and failed candidate for Governor of California was practicing law in Manhattan.
When conversation at the dinner table turned to baseball, his calculating manner gave way to enthusiastic fan talk. That led me to suggest there was a perfect job opening for him--Commissioner of Baseball.
His eyes lit up. “Can you get it for me?” he asked.
If he had gotten that job, there would be no library and museum now, but he might have had a happier life, as would we all.
The Queen, Kramer and Other Celebs
Amid all the glum stuff, some major news has been, as they say on the Daily Show, falling through the cracks:
*In a shoot, celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz tells Queen Elizabeth to lose the crown--it would look better, “less dressy.” The Sovereign is not amused and asks with annoyance, ”Less dressy--what do you think this is?” In earlier times, a beheading might have ensued.
*Kramer is cooling it in Cambodia. After his comedy-club expletive outburst, Michael Richards is finding peace at daily spiritual seminars conducted by a Hindi monk known as Swami G., who is "on a mission to re-establish the science of inner bliss on planet Earth." Kramer, minus his slide step, will be touring temples and visiting Angkor Wat.
*It won’t be featured on the “Weddings” page of the Sunday New York Times, but Osama bin Laden’s fourth-eldest son Omar, 27, has married a 51-year-old British grandmother. They "met cute" while she was riding a horse near the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Jane Felix-Browne, who has had five previous husbands, is trying to get a visa for her newest, who is working as a scrap metal dealer in Saudi Arabia.
*Once home to William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davis, the most expensive U.S. residence is for sale in Beverly Hills. Asking price: $165 million. On 6.5 acres, it has 29 bedrooms, three swimming pools, tennis courts, a state-of-the-art movie theater and disco. The current owner, an attorney, is looking for a “lifestyle change.”
If there’s a theme here, it escapes me.
*In a shoot, celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz tells Queen Elizabeth to lose the crown--it would look better, “less dressy.” The Sovereign is not amused and asks with annoyance, ”Less dressy--what do you think this is?” In earlier times, a beheading might have ensued.
*Kramer is cooling it in Cambodia. After his comedy-club expletive outburst, Michael Richards is finding peace at daily spiritual seminars conducted by a Hindi monk known as Swami G., who is "on a mission to re-establish the science of inner bliss on planet Earth." Kramer, minus his slide step, will be touring temples and visiting Angkor Wat.
*It won’t be featured on the “Weddings” page of the Sunday New York Times, but Osama bin Laden’s fourth-eldest son Omar, 27, has married a 51-year-old British grandmother. They "met cute" while she was riding a horse near the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Jane Felix-Browne, who has had five previous husbands, is trying to get a visa for her newest, who is working as a scrap metal dealer in Saudi Arabia.
*Once home to William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davis, the most expensive U.S. residence is for sale in Beverly Hills. Asking price: $165 million. On 6.5 acres, it has 29 bedrooms, three swimming pools, tennis courts, a state-of-the-art movie theater and disco. The current owner, an attorney, is looking for a “lifestyle change.”
If there’s a theme here, it escapes me.
"The Civil War Nobody Voted For"
OpEds come and go, but there was an unusual one in the New York Daily News the other day. Titled “This Is Not Our Fight,” its subhead read, “Congress must end U.S. role in a civil war nobody voted for.” The byline: “Robert Byrd & Hillary Clinton.”
Its final paragraph: “As Bush admitted in his State of the Union address in January, ‘This is not the fight we entered in Iraq.’ We could not agree more. This is not the fight Congress authorized, Mr. President. If you want to continue to wage this fight, come to Congress and make your case. Otherwise, bring our troops home.”
This was a collaboration by one Senator who wrote an OpEd (in the New York Times) in October 2002 opposing the resolution to allow Bush to invade Iraq and another who, while expressing admiration for his warning, voted for it.
Its appearance signals the seriousness of an effort this month to introduce a resolution to withdraw the 2002 authorization.
Of the myriad of proposals for bills to bring home the troops, this one offers the best hope for a Congressional challenge that, if passed by a veto-proof two-thirds vote in each house, would provoke a Constitutional crisis that might end up in the Supreme Court and test whether or not Justice Anthony Kennedy has become a permanent member of a conservative majority.
The OpEd itself, appearing in a major newspaper that has been gung-ho for the war, is a sign of the times. If a tabloid can change its mind, why can’t Congress?
Its final paragraph: “As Bush admitted in his State of the Union address in January, ‘This is not the fight we entered in Iraq.’ We could not agree more. This is not the fight Congress authorized, Mr. President. If you want to continue to wage this fight, come to Congress and make your case. Otherwise, bring our troops home.”
This was a collaboration by one Senator who wrote an OpEd (in the New York Times) in October 2002 opposing the resolution to allow Bush to invade Iraq and another who, while expressing admiration for his warning, voted for it.
Its appearance signals the seriousness of an effort this month to introduce a resolution to withdraw the 2002 authorization.
Of the myriad of proposals for bills to bring home the troops, this one offers the best hope for a Congressional challenge that, if passed by a veto-proof two-thirds vote in each house, would provoke a Constitutional crisis that might end up in the Supreme Court and test whether or not Justice Anthony Kennedy has become a permanent member of a conservative majority.
The OpEd itself, appearing in a major newspaper that has been gung-ho for the war, is a sign of the times. If a tabloid can change its mind, why can’t Congress?
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Farewell to a Lady
"My mother," Lynda Bird Johnson once told me, "thinks well of everybody. She's even sure the Devil's been maligned. Just got a bad press.”
I got to know the First Lady during the time her daughter worked for me when I was editor of McCalls.
She was womanly in a way that has gone out of style. Without the chic of Jacqueline Kennedy or the country-club cool of Laura Bush, Claudia Taylor Johnson devoted most of her life to herding a bull-in-the-china-shop husband from the Texas panhandle to the White House.
When he had a massive heart attack in 1955, she slept for a month on a cot in his hospital room.
"I never turned over in the night," LBJ later recalled, "that I didn't hear Lady Bird's feet hit the floor coming to see what I needed." After that, she changed his diet, subdued his frantic schedule and kept him alive with her positive outlook.
She will be remembered for her dedication to beautifying America with wildflowers, but Lyndon Johnson was her life’s work. She never stopped.
Not long before he died, I spent a weekend at their ranch as she was managing his life down to the last millimeter to keep him from sliding into despair.
At dinner I watched Lady Bird covertly sliding serving dishes out of reach and subtly signaling the server to remove them before he could ask for more and keeping the conversation cheerful, making sure to focus on him so he would be forced to respond. She surrounded him with friends and grandchildren and, as always, kept him within bounds by softly saying, “Now, Lyndon...”
History will have mixed feelings about a President who changed race relations in America forever by pushing through Congress against all odds the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the rallying cry of the movement, “We shall overcome,” and then damaged the country with his stubborn refusal to end a disastrous war.
But whatever he achieved would never have been possible without the loving woman who died today at 94.
I got to know the First Lady during the time her daughter worked for me when I was editor of McCalls.
She was womanly in a way that has gone out of style. Without the chic of Jacqueline Kennedy or the country-club cool of Laura Bush, Claudia Taylor Johnson devoted most of her life to herding a bull-in-the-china-shop husband from the Texas panhandle to the White House.
When he had a massive heart attack in 1955, she slept for a month on a cot in his hospital room.
"I never turned over in the night," LBJ later recalled, "that I didn't hear Lady Bird's feet hit the floor coming to see what I needed." After that, she changed his diet, subdued his frantic schedule and kept him alive with her positive outlook.
She will be remembered for her dedication to beautifying America with wildflowers, but Lyndon Johnson was her life’s work. She never stopped.
Not long before he died, I spent a weekend at their ranch as she was managing his life down to the last millimeter to keep him from sliding into despair.
At dinner I watched Lady Bird covertly sliding serving dishes out of reach and subtly signaling the server to remove them before he could ask for more and keeping the conversation cheerful, making sure to focus on him so he would be forced to respond. She surrounded him with friends and grandchildren and, as always, kept him within bounds by softly saying, “Now, Lyndon...”
History will have mixed feelings about a President who changed race relations in America forever by pushing through Congress against all odds the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with the rallying cry of the movement, “We shall overcome,” and then damaged the country with his stubborn refusal to end a disastrous war.
But whatever he achieved would never have been possible without the loving woman who died today at 94.
Blonde Loyalty to Bush
Is there something in the White House water that deprives young women of free will and at the same time lightens their hair color?
The question is raised by Senate testimony today of Sara Taylor, following on recent public performances by Monica Goodling and Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino.
In answering some and evading other questions by the Judiciary Committee, Ms. Taylor showed a familiar undeviating loyalty to the Bush Administration and its master political chemist Karl Rove while navigating the narrows between perjury and contempt of Congress.
Pressuring the former White House political director, Democrats have a perception problem of their own, the risk of old pols appearing to bully a sincere young woman into betraying her former bosses.
"Having worked most of her adult life for President Bush,” her attorney wrote to the committee beforehand, “she is unquestionably loyal to the president. If there is to be a clash, we urge the Senate to direct its sanction against the White House, not against a former staffer."
It appears that Sen. Leahy et al will get very little help from Ms. Taylor. If they want the truth about the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, it will take a legal battle about executive privilege to get Rove’s testimony under oath.
Meanwhile, watching Ms. Taylor today evokes speculation about how different Paris Hilton’s life might be today if she had applied for a White House internship.
The question is raised by Senate testimony today of Sara Taylor, following on recent public performances by Monica Goodling and Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino.
In answering some and evading other questions by the Judiciary Committee, Ms. Taylor showed a familiar undeviating loyalty to the Bush Administration and its master political chemist Karl Rove while navigating the narrows between perjury and contempt of Congress.
Pressuring the former White House political director, Democrats have a perception problem of their own, the risk of old pols appearing to bully a sincere young woman into betraying her former bosses.
"Having worked most of her adult life for President Bush,” her attorney wrote to the committee beforehand, “she is unquestionably loyal to the president. If there is to be a clash, we urge the Senate to direct its sanction against the White House, not against a former staffer."
It appears that Sen. Leahy et al will get very little help from Ms. Taylor. If they want the truth about the U.S. Attorney firing scandal, it will take a legal battle about executive privilege to get Rove’s testimony under oath.
Meanwhile, watching Ms. Taylor today evokes speculation about how different Paris Hilton’s life might be today if she had applied for a White House internship.
Color the Congressman Rage-Red
The Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security had a few words today for the Homeland Security Secretary. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson sent Michael Chertoff a letter about his gut-feeling forecast (see below) of terrorist attacks on the U.S. this summer. Here is part of what he wrote:
Words have power, Mr. Secretary. You must choose them wisely--especially when they relate to the lives and security of the American public. What color code in the Homeland Security Advisory System is associated with a “gut feeling?” What sectors should be on alert as a result of your “gut feeling?” What cities should be asking their law enforcement to work double shifts because of your “gut feeling?” Are the American people supposed to purchase duct tape and plastic sheeting because of your “gut feeling?”
The Committee on Homeland Security has repeatedly emphasized the importance of getting specific, actionable information to our first preventers in law enforcement and other emergency response providers. I urge you to follow up on your “gut feeling” and share whatever information our nation’s first preventers need to be on alert and prepared. Otherwise, we run the risk of communities taking it upon themselves to mobilize for every possible threat. This not only would result in communities depleting their scarce homeland security resources but runs contrary to your efforts to move toward a risk-based approach to homeland security.
This kind of rebuke may be devastating for a person of Mr. Chertoff’s sensitivity. One can only hope that he doesn’t take the Chairman’s reaction personally.
Words have power, Mr. Secretary. You must choose them wisely--especially when they relate to the lives and security of the American public. What color code in the Homeland Security Advisory System is associated with a “gut feeling?” What sectors should be on alert as a result of your “gut feeling?” What cities should be asking their law enforcement to work double shifts because of your “gut feeling?” Are the American people supposed to purchase duct tape and plastic sheeting because of your “gut feeling?”
The Committee on Homeland Security has repeatedly emphasized the importance of getting specific, actionable information to our first preventers in law enforcement and other emergency response providers. I urge you to follow up on your “gut feeling” and share whatever information our nation’s first preventers need to be on alert and prepared. Otherwise, we run the risk of communities taking it upon themselves to mobilize for every possible threat. This not only would result in communities depleting their scarce homeland security resources but runs contrary to your efforts to move toward a risk-based approach to homeland security.
This kind of rebuke may be devastating for a person of Mr. Chertoff’s sensitivity. One can only hope that he doesn’t take the Chairman’s reaction personally.
Chertoff's Gutsy Forecast
In addition to those color-coded threat levels, the nation now has a new indicator of the imminence of a terrorist attack--the intestinal state of U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff
Briefing the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, Chertoff reported a “gut feeling” that the U.S. would be attacked soon. "Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said, referring to Al Qaeda.
Chertoff’s stomach and keen insight into terrorist tastes should be enough to compensate for the fact that his Department has been politicized to the point of the lowest morale of all federal agencies with one-quarter of its top positions unfilled.
In this new era of vulnerability, we have to rely on non-traditional intelligence-gathering such as, perhaps, the Homeland Security head watching CNN coverage of the attempted attacks in Britain.
Chertoff is to be commended for his leadership daring but he may never reach the level of Sen. Joe Lieberman’s achievement in re-seating Democrats and Republicans of his Homeland Security Committee in boy-girl dinner party arrangement instead of opposite sides of the table to let citizens see them side by side as they “work together to make our nation more secure.”
In matters of such gravity, little things can be important. Chertoff’s guts and Lieberman’s sensitivity may help keep us safe.
Briefing the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune, Chertoff reported a “gut feeling” that the U.S. would be attacked soon. "Summertime seems to be appealing to them," he said, referring to Al Qaeda.
Chertoff’s stomach and keen insight into terrorist tastes should be enough to compensate for the fact that his Department has been politicized to the point of the lowest morale of all federal agencies with one-quarter of its top positions unfilled.
In this new era of vulnerability, we have to rely on non-traditional intelligence-gathering such as, perhaps, the Homeland Security head watching CNN coverage of the attempted attacks in Britain.
Chertoff is to be commended for his leadership daring but he may never reach the level of Sen. Joe Lieberman’s achievement in re-seating Democrats and Republicans of his Homeland Security Committee in boy-girl dinner party arrangement instead of opposite sides of the table to let citizens see them side by side as they “work together to make our nation more secure.”
In matters of such gravity, little things can be important. Chertoff’s guts and Lieberman’s sensitivity may help keep us safe.
Giuliani Strategy Going South
America’s Mayor wants to come off as what used to be known in the New York neighborhoods as a stand-up guy. His entire campaign is about character, and Giuliani keeps reminding voters that on 9/11 they saw he has plenty of it.
But as he pursues a “Southern strategy” to make the Hard Right forget he is a multiply married New York liberal who sometimes dresses in drag, Giuliani is finding bumps in the pickup-truck road and has to keep swerving to avoid them.
Yesterday he was backing away from Sen. David Vitter, his Southern chairman and wannabe running mate, just as quickly as the Mayor dumped his South Carolina chairman last month after he was accused of dealing cocaine.
Vitter’s prostitute problem, Giuliani said, was “a personal issue.” So it is. But then again, the candidate has been distancing himself from so many issues of personal preference--from abortion to flying the Confederate flag-—that it may be casting doubt on his don’t-tread-on-me image.
While puckering up to Pat Robertson last month in his leadership lecture at Regent University, Giuliani stressed the importance of optimism. If his new Southern friends keep tripping him up on the run to the White House, he’s going to need it.
But as he pursues a “Southern strategy” to make the Hard Right forget he is a multiply married New York liberal who sometimes dresses in drag, Giuliani is finding bumps in the pickup-truck road and has to keep swerving to avoid them.
Yesterday he was backing away from Sen. David Vitter, his Southern chairman and wannabe running mate, just as quickly as the Mayor dumped his South Carolina chairman last month after he was accused of dealing cocaine.
Vitter’s prostitute problem, Giuliani said, was “a personal issue.” So it is. But then again, the candidate has been distancing himself from so many issues of personal preference--from abortion to flying the Confederate flag-—that it may be casting doubt on his don’t-tread-on-me image.
While puckering up to Pat Robertson last month in his leadership lecture at Regent University, Giuliani stressed the importance of optimism. If his new Southern friends keep tripping him up on the run to the White House, he’s going to need it.
Out-of-Iraq Shell Games
After years of blundering, the proprietors and enablers of this misbegotten war seem determined to end it the way they began it and waged it--with lies, evasions and cowardice.
The opinion polls show growing public impatience, but the politicians keep playing the same old games.
President Bush is being bubbled around the country to puff out his chest for groups of businessmen and proclaim, "Troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C."
Faithful Sen. Chuck Grassley, who does not have to face voters next year, tells wavering Republican colleagues who do that they should wait to hear from Gen, Petraeus since they confirmed him by such an overwhelming margin.
But in Baghdad, Petraeus is telling reporters, "We're still at the harder-before-it-gets-easier point” and reiterating, as he has be doing from the start of the Surge, that any solution in Iraq has to be political, not military.
So, as we watch their hands carefully, we have no idea of what, if anything, is under which shell. Does the political have to get better before the military can? Or is it the other way around? Or do both have to improve at the same time? Or are they making it up as they go?
In the Senate, multiple shell games are being played, with Democrats devising different formulas to cut funding or withdraw troops or rescind the 2002 war resolution, while Republicans look for ways to be in favor of ending the war but not just yet or not in any way that might come back to haunt them.
Before the month is out, dozens more of our young people will have died in Iraq and billions of dollars more gone down the drain while, in Washington, they will still be playing these games.
How long do they think they can keep snookering us? Even at carnivals, they sometimes give the suckers an even break.
The opinion polls show growing public impatience, but the politicians keep playing the same old games.
President Bush is being bubbled around the country to puff out his chest for groups of businessmen and proclaim, "Troop levels will be decided by our commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, D.C."
Faithful Sen. Chuck Grassley, who does not have to face voters next year, tells wavering Republican colleagues who do that they should wait to hear from Gen, Petraeus since they confirmed him by such an overwhelming margin.
But in Baghdad, Petraeus is telling reporters, "We're still at the harder-before-it-gets-easier point” and reiterating, as he has be doing from the start of the Surge, that any solution in Iraq has to be political, not military.
So, as we watch their hands carefully, we have no idea of what, if anything, is under which shell. Does the political have to get better before the military can? Or is it the other way around? Or do both have to improve at the same time? Or are they making it up as they go?
In the Senate, multiple shell games are being played, with Democrats devising different formulas to cut funding or withdraw troops or rescind the 2002 war resolution, while Republicans look for ways to be in favor of ending the war but not just yet or not in any way that might come back to haunt them.
Before the month is out, dozens more of our young people will have died in Iraq and billions of dollars more gone down the drain while, in Washington, they will still be playing these games.
How long do they think they can keep snookering us? Even at carnivals, they sometimes give the suckers an even break.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Uh-Oh
All japing about the D. C. Madam must cease. Possibly dire consequences may arise from her disclosures.
Last night Sen. David Vitter, whose phone number was on her list, admitted “a very serious sin in my past.”
Today there is word of Mrs. Vitter’s response, when during the Clinton impeachment, she was asked if her husband were as unfaithful as Bill Clinton, would she be as forgiving as Hillary Clinton?
“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Mrs. Vitter answered. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”
“I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t put fear down.”
Last night Sen. David Vitter, whose phone number was on her list, admitted “a very serious sin in my past.”
Today there is word of Mrs. Vitter’s response, when during the Clinton impeachment, she was asked if her husband were as unfaithful as Bill Clinton, would she be as forgiving as Hillary Clinton?
“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Mrs. Vitter answered. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”
“I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t put fear down.”
Health Care, Seriously
“Sicko” aside, health care is moving front and center as the domestic issue for Democrats while Republicans still maunder about keeping us safe from terrorists.
A Washington Post headline today sums up their approach: “For Democrats, Pragmatism On Universal Health Care”
It’s a little like saying, “There are burglars in the house, but let’s be cautious about getting them out.”
The burglars are private insurers who take almost one out of every three dollars we spend and give us the most expensive and some of the worst care in the world. But no one wants to get them out, lock the doors and start over.
Whenever good sense enters the debate, lobbyists for the thieves yell “socialized medicine” and politicians duck for cover. But when the rest of America complains about anti-social medicine, they turn deaf.
The situation is neatly summed up by Jonathan Gruber of MIT, who has become, according to the Post, “possibly the party's most influential health-care expert and a voice of realism in its internal debates.” But even the realist knows better.
"Plans which minimize the disruption to the existing system are more likely to succeed than plans that rip up the existing system and start over," said Gruber, a consultant for the three leading Democrats. "It doesn't take a genius to see that. That's not to say that plans ripping it up wouldn't be better--I just think they're political non-starters."
The “non-starters” are variations of a single-payer system which, according to the more than 8,000 physicians who back it, would save $350 billion a year, “enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”
Opponents raise the terrible specter of a government bureaucracy that would replace the private one that spends so much time and effort finding ways to deny claims rather than facilitate them.
We get most of our mail through “a self-supporting postal corporation wholly owned by the federal government” while those who can afford it use FedEx and other private providers. Why not our medical care? We have the example of Medicare which is far from perfect but works reasonably well for older Americans.
As we gird ourselves for the headache-inducing health care plans of the Presidential candidates, someone should stand up for the “non-starter,” a potential cure that none of them has the courage to propose.
A Washington Post headline today sums up their approach: “For Democrats, Pragmatism On Universal Health Care”
It’s a little like saying, “There are burglars in the house, but let’s be cautious about getting them out.”
The burglars are private insurers who take almost one out of every three dollars we spend and give us the most expensive and some of the worst care in the world. But no one wants to get them out, lock the doors and start over.
Whenever good sense enters the debate, lobbyists for the thieves yell “socialized medicine” and politicians duck for cover. But when the rest of America complains about anti-social medicine, they turn deaf.
The situation is neatly summed up by Jonathan Gruber of MIT, who has become, according to the Post, “possibly the party's most influential health-care expert and a voice of realism in its internal debates.” But even the realist knows better.
"Plans which minimize the disruption to the existing system are more likely to succeed than plans that rip up the existing system and start over," said Gruber, a consultant for the three leading Democrats. "It doesn't take a genius to see that. That's not to say that plans ripping it up wouldn't be better--I just think they're political non-starters."
The “non-starters” are variations of a single-payer system which, according to the more than 8,000 physicians who back it, would save $350 billion a year, “enough to provide comprehensive, high-quality coverage for all Americans.”
Opponents raise the terrible specter of a government bureaucracy that would replace the private one that spends so much time and effort finding ways to deny claims rather than facilitate them.
We get most of our mail through “a self-supporting postal corporation wholly owned by the federal government” while those who can afford it use FedEx and other private providers. Why not our medical care? We have the example of Medicare which is far from perfect but works reasonably well for older Americans.
As we gird ourselves for the headache-inducing health care plans of the Presidential candidates, someone should stand up for the “non-starter,” a potential cure that none of them has the courage to propose.
Mighty Mouth Eats the Media
Michael Moore is like one of those huge cartoon creatures on Monty Python that would suddenly open its maw and swallow up the contents of city blocks. This week Wolf Blitzer, Sanjay Gupta and all of CNN are in the path of his giant jaws.
For a time, the Mouth with a baseball cap was funny and even marginally useful with his cutesy primers: Gun Control for Dummies, George Bush for Idiots and now Health Care for Those Who Haven’t Been Paying Attention.
His shtick of confronting the rich and powerful was amusing to a point but, now that he has expanded beyond a cottage industry, Moore is blurring the lines between self-promotion and being a total pain in America’s ass.
To promote “Sicko,” he has eaten his way through the State Department, Fred Thompson, Good Morning America and is now regurgitating CNN on his web site while chomping on “secret” memos from Blue Cross trembling in fear of his film.
Get it together, Michael. Others were against corporate greed, wanted gun control before you were born and tried to stop the war in Iraq, so get out of our faces and take it outside and start playing nice with the other rich kids. Being obnoxious while raking it in is not the only career choice.
For a time, the Mouth with a baseball cap was funny and even marginally useful with his cutesy primers: Gun Control for Dummies, George Bush for Idiots and now Health Care for Those Who Haven’t Been Paying Attention.
His shtick of confronting the rich and powerful was amusing to a point but, now that he has expanded beyond a cottage industry, Moore is blurring the lines between self-promotion and being a total pain in America’s ass.
To promote “Sicko,” he has eaten his way through the State Department, Fred Thompson, Good Morning America and is now regurgitating CNN on his web site while chomping on “secret” memos from Blue Cross trembling in fear of his film.
Get it together, Michael. Others were against corporate greed, wanted gun control before you were born and tried to stop the war in Iraq, so get out of our faces and take it outside and start playing nice with the other rich kids. Being obnoxious while raking it in is not the only career choice.
The Panic of the Least Political President
In my lifetime of observing 12 American Presidents, none has been as politically incompetent--or to be more accurate, uninvolved in the process--as George W. Bush. He is highly partisan, but not political.
So it comes as no surprise that insiders are admitting the White House “is in panic mode” over defections of Senate Republicans from their four years of unwavering support for the President’s Iraq policy.
On CNN last night David Gergen, who worked in several Administrations, expressed bewilderment at Bush’s failure to engage directly with legislative leaders of his party, instead sending his National Security Adviser on a “scouting trip” rather than attempting personally to keep his troops from breaking ranks.
From the extreme of Lyndon Johnson, who twisted arms, to Dwight Eisenhower, who believed in “reasoning” with legislators, every President has worked hard as an advocate, cheer-leader and horse trader to get Congress to do what he wanted.
Bush seems to disdain all that. Perhaps his life experience explains why. Unlike others who had to strive and struggle to get there, Bush came to the White House after a lifetime of getting what he wanted through family connections.
In 2000, he was practically anointed as the Republican nominee by name recognition and massive early fund-raising that came with it. When John McCain became a potential road block after winning in New Hampshire, Rove and his gang of Bush family retainers blasted him out of the way.
Now, perhaps for the first time in his life, the scion of the Bush line is facing a challenge that hired hands can’t handle for him. Will he have the instincts and the guts to meet it? Or will he become the lamest Lame Duck of all time?
So it comes as no surprise that insiders are admitting the White House “is in panic mode” over defections of Senate Republicans from their four years of unwavering support for the President’s Iraq policy.
On CNN last night David Gergen, who worked in several Administrations, expressed bewilderment at Bush’s failure to engage directly with legislative leaders of his party, instead sending his National Security Adviser on a “scouting trip” rather than attempting personally to keep his troops from breaking ranks.
From the extreme of Lyndon Johnson, who twisted arms, to Dwight Eisenhower, who believed in “reasoning” with legislators, every President has worked hard as an advocate, cheer-leader and horse trader to get Congress to do what he wanted.
Bush seems to disdain all that. Perhaps his life experience explains why. Unlike others who had to strive and struggle to get there, Bush came to the White House after a lifetime of getting what he wanted through family connections.
In 2000, he was practically anointed as the Republican nominee by name recognition and massive early fund-raising that came with it. When John McCain became a potential road block after winning in New Hampshire, Rove and his gang of Bush family retainers blasted him out of the way.
Now, perhaps for the first time in his life, the scion of the Bush line is facing a challenge that hired hands can’t handle for him. Will he have the instincts and the guts to meet it? Or will he become the lamest Lame Duck of all time?
D. C. Madam: More Discreet Than the Media
It’s easy to see now why Deborah Jeane Palfrey did so well in her chosen profession. She is a model of sensitivity.
When the so-called D. C. Madam decided to make her phone records available to journalists as a public service, Ms. Palfrey was too trusting and naïve to realize that media people don’t have the scruples of madams.
Sending out 54 discs to news organizations and bloggers, she insisted that the list not be published in its entirety. But Ms. Palfrey’s attorney says “we got calls and e-mails saying there wasn't any security on the coding and the numbers were going to be all over the place.”
Ms. Palfrey, “concerned about manipulation of the database with false and misleading information,” published the list on her own web site to maintain the integrity of her records.
Despite all her precautions, the repercussions have started. Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana issued a statement last night apologizing for "a very serious sin in my past" after his telephone number appeared.
Ms. Palfrey seems befuddled by all the commotion, since she insists she operated a "legal, high-end erotic fantasy service" and that women who worked for her signed contracts in which they promised not to have sex with clients.
You just can’t trust anybody these days.
When the so-called D. C. Madam decided to make her phone records available to journalists as a public service, Ms. Palfrey was too trusting and naïve to realize that media people don’t have the scruples of madams.
Sending out 54 discs to news organizations and bloggers, she insisted that the list not be published in its entirety. But Ms. Palfrey’s attorney says “we got calls and e-mails saying there wasn't any security on the coding and the numbers were going to be all over the place.”
Ms. Palfrey, “concerned about manipulation of the database with false and misleading information,” published the list on her own web site to maintain the integrity of her records.
Despite all her precautions, the repercussions have started. Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana issued a statement last night apologizing for "a very serious sin in my past" after his telephone number appeared.
Ms. Palfrey seems befuddled by all the commotion, since she insists she operated a "legal, high-end erotic fantasy service" and that women who worked for her signed contracts in which they promised not to have sex with clients.
You just can’t trust anybody these days.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Slight Glitch in Homeland Security
If we are going to be safe from terrorist attacks, Pat Robertson’s law school will have to expand.
According to a Congressional report released today, the Bush Administration “has failed to fill roughly a quarter of the top leadership posts at the Department of Homeland Security, creating a ‘gaping hole’ in the nation's preparedness for a terrorist attack or other threat.”
"One of the continuing problems appears to be the over politicization of the top rank of Department management," the report concludes.
In the Justice Department, as we learned from the case of Monica Goodling, the Administration’s preference has been for graduates of Regent University where professors “integrate biblical principles into areas of the law.”
This year’s student body at Regent was inspired by a lecture on leadership by America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who told them that terrorists “planned to kill us, and they want to do it again.”
But there won't be enough of such highly trained and motivated recruits to fill the Homeland Security void, which may be partly due to the fact that the Department’s employees reported the lowest job satisfaction among 36 federal agencies earlier this year.
But not to worry. The Senate’s Homeland Security Committee passed a bill in March based on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations that Chairman Joe Lieberman called “a critical step toward building a safer and more secure America for the generations to come."
That nobody is around to implement them is just a minor housekeeping detail.
According to a Congressional report released today, the Bush Administration “has failed to fill roughly a quarter of the top leadership posts at the Department of Homeland Security, creating a ‘gaping hole’ in the nation's preparedness for a terrorist attack or other threat.”
"One of the continuing problems appears to be the over politicization of the top rank of Department management," the report concludes.
In the Justice Department, as we learned from the case of Monica Goodling, the Administration’s preference has been for graduates of Regent University where professors “integrate biblical principles into areas of the law.”
This year’s student body at Regent was inspired by a lecture on leadership by America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who told them that terrorists “planned to kill us, and they want to do it again.”
But there won't be enough of such highly trained and motivated recruits to fill the Homeland Security void, which may be partly due to the fact that the Department’s employees reported the lowest job satisfaction among 36 federal agencies earlier this year.
But not to worry. The Senate’s Homeland Security Committee passed a bill in March based on the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations that Chairman Joe Lieberman called “a critical step toward building a safer and more secure America for the generations to come."
That nobody is around to implement them is just a minor housekeeping detail.
Bush 41, Edwards, Dowd and Me
In her New York Times column today about John Edwards, Maureen Dowd takes a detour when the candidate tells her that, after praising a book about Socrates, he was “jumped on” because the author, I. F. Stone, was allegedly a Soviet agent.
In response, Dowd writes: “I tell the Democrat that Poppy Bush drolly told the story about his ’64 Texas Senate race, when a John Birch Society pamphlet suggested that Barbara Bush’s father, the president of McCall Publishing, put out a Communist manifesto called Redbook.”
That comes as news to me, and I was editor of Redbook at the time, working for Mrs. Bush’s father, who was as Republican as you can get but had Democrats like me editing his magazines because, as Henry Luce succinctly put it, “Those Republican bastards can’t write.”
Now, almost half a century later, here I am blogging away at the Bushes’ son for subverting American democracy. Maybe those John Birch Society nuts were onto something.
In response, Dowd writes: “I tell the Democrat that Poppy Bush drolly told the story about his ’64 Texas Senate race, when a John Birch Society pamphlet suggested that Barbara Bush’s father, the president of McCall Publishing, put out a Communist manifesto called Redbook.”
That comes as news to me, and I was editor of Redbook at the time, working for Mrs. Bush’s father, who was as Republican as you can get but had Democrats like me editing his magazines because, as Henry Luce succinctly put it, “Those Republican bastards can’t write.”
Now, almost half a century later, here I am blogging away at the Bushes’ son for subverting American democracy. Maybe those John Birch Society nuts were onto something.
Libby: Better Marc Rich Than a Dreyfus
As House Democrats talk of investigating and even censuring President Bush’s commutation of his sentence, Scooter Libby is being compared by Republicans to Marc Rich, the recipient of Bill Clinton’s pardoning largesse.
This debate promises to be more tonic for the state of public morality than the one that would have been followed Bush’s failure to do so.
Imagine the righteous fury of Rush Limbaugh and right-wing bloggers playing Zola to Libby’s Captain Dreyfus with photoshopped images of Cheney’s former chief of staff in prison stripes with numbers on his chest. Compare that to their muttering and bumbling defense of the commutation.
Libby as rescued loser serves the cause of exposing Bush-Cheney lawlessness much better than Libby the martyr would have.
"We're trying to examine the use and misuse of the clemency power and the commutation power," says John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee as Rep. Robert Wexler drafts a resolution to censure Bush for "an unconscionable abuse of authority."
With the coming Senate showdown over subpoenas of White House witnesses in the U.S. Attorneys scandal, this proposed examining and censuring, although it will lead nowhere, is a nice side show to the main attraction.
This debate promises to be more tonic for the state of public morality than the one that would have been followed Bush’s failure to do so.
Imagine the righteous fury of Rush Limbaugh and right-wing bloggers playing Zola to Libby’s Captain Dreyfus with photoshopped images of Cheney’s former chief of staff in prison stripes with numbers on his chest. Compare that to their muttering and bumbling defense of the commutation.
Libby as rescued loser serves the cause of exposing Bush-Cheney lawlessness much better than Libby the martyr would have.
"We're trying to examine the use and misuse of the clemency power and the commutation power," says John Conyers, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee as Rep. Robert Wexler drafts a resolution to censure Bush for "an unconscionable abuse of authority."
With the coming Senate showdown over subpoenas of White House witnesses in the U.S. Attorneys scandal, this proposed examining and censuring, although it will lead nowhere, is a nice side show to the main attraction.
Bulletin From the Bush Bunker
One of the few lines of communication into the besieged White House is Plame-thrower Robert Novak, who set off l’affaire Libby by naming Joe Wilson’s wife in print.
From the entrails of Novak’s recent columns, things do not go well for the Decider. Today he reports on the pre-holiday “scouting trip” of the President’s Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to check the mood of senior Senate Republicans.
“The tone set by Hadley,” Novak writes, “signaled that the White House did not understand that Lugar, in his fateful speech on the Senate floor the night of June 25, was sending a distress signal to Bush...that it is imperative he act now. Hadley was told that it is not too late to go back to the Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations, neglected since their release in December.”
Novak’s account suggests that Bush’s deafness continues: “Based on what Hadley said, one senator concluded that ‘they just do not recognize the depth of the difficulty they are in.’”
In his convoluted style, Novak goes around the barn with Democratic Sen. Carl Levin reporting on generals who turned down the war “czar” job because "hawks within the administration, including Vice President Cheney, remain more powerful than the pragmatists looking for an exit strategy in Iraq."
This month, with an appropriations bill and a House anti-war resolution coming up, Congressional Republicans are going to have to join Democrats in speaking louder and more clearly to be heard. All indicators, including their message through Novak today, are that they will.
From the entrails of Novak’s recent columns, things do not go well for the Decider. Today he reports on the pre-holiday “scouting trip” of the President’s Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to check the mood of senior Senate Republicans.
“The tone set by Hadley,” Novak writes, “signaled that the White House did not understand that Lugar, in his fateful speech on the Senate floor the night of June 25, was sending a distress signal to Bush...that it is imperative he act now. Hadley was told that it is not too late to go back to the Iraq Study Group's 79 recommendations, neglected since their release in December.”
Novak’s account suggests that Bush’s deafness continues: “Based on what Hadley said, one senator concluded that ‘they just do not recognize the depth of the difficulty they are in.’”
In his convoluted style, Novak goes around the barn with Democratic Sen. Carl Levin reporting on generals who turned down the war “czar” job because "hawks within the administration, including Vice President Cheney, remain more powerful than the pragmatists looking for an exit strategy in Iraq."
This month, with an appropriations bill and a House anti-war resolution coming up, Congressional Republicans are going to have to join Democrats in speaking louder and more clearly to be heard. All indicators, including their message through Novak today, are that they will.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
West Coast Social Note
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat supporting Hillary Clinton for ’08, is taking some heat off the Republican front runners.
Voters are being distracted from questions like the hotness of Fred Thompson’s wife and the serial marriages of Rudy Giuliani by the L.A. soap opera of the Mayor divorcing his wife and admitting to an affair with Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas.
"I don't believe that the details of my personal life are relevant to my job,” the Mayor said at a recent press conference. If he really meant that, he is not living in today’s LaLaland but in some Hollywood costume drama of the past century.
No word of Sen. Clinton’s reaction, but the news may be creating flashbacks for her.
Meanwhile, HBO should have Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones standing by for “Villaraigosa, the Movie.”
Voters are being distracted from questions like the hotness of Fred Thompson’s wife and the serial marriages of Rudy Giuliani by the L.A. soap opera of the Mayor divorcing his wife and admitting to an affair with Telemundo reporter Mirthala Salinas.
"I don't believe that the details of my personal life are relevant to my job,” the Mayor said at a recent press conference. If he really meant that, he is not living in today’s LaLaland but in some Hollywood costume drama of the past century.
No word of Sen. Clinton’s reaction, but the news may be creating flashbacks for her.
Meanwhile, HBO should have Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones standing by for “Villaraigosa, the Movie.”
Colin Powell: Shooting the Wounded
Murray Kempton, a great journalist of the century past, once wrote, “There is a certain kind of politician who stays safely in the hills during a battle and then comes down and shoots the wounded.”
It’s painful to apply this to Colin Powell. I admire him in so many ways, but there is no other way to describe what he is doing now. Long after his speaking out or resigning could have made a difference, he is now telling us how hard he tried to persuade George W. Bush not to invade Iraq.
“I tried to avoid this war,” Powell told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado this week. “I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.”
Now it’s too late. “The civil war will ultimately be resolved by a test of arms,” he said. “It’s not going to be pretty to watch, but I don’t know any way to avoid it. It is happening now.”
All that U.S. troops can do now, according to Powell, is put “a heavier lid on this pot of boiling sectarian stew.”
The time to have told us that was when Bush’s Neo-Cons were slicing and dicing the truth about Iraq and lighting the fire.
It’s painful to apply this to Colin Powell. I admire him in so many ways, but there is no other way to describe what he is doing now. Long after his speaking out or resigning could have made a difference, he is now telling us how hard he tried to persuade George W. Bush not to invade Iraq.
“I tried to avoid this war,” Powell told the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado this week. “I took him through the consequences of going into an Arab country and becoming the occupiers.”
Now it’s too late. “The civil war will ultimately be resolved by a test of arms,” he said. “It’s not going to be pretty to watch, but I don’t know any way to avoid it. It is happening now.”
All that U.S. troops can do now, according to Powell, is put “a heavier lid on this pot of boiling sectarian stew.”
The time to have told us that was when Bush’s Neo-Cons were slicing and dicing the truth about Iraq and lighting the fire.
What's Wrong With America's Newspapers?
If we had been fighting in Iraq 50 years ago, we might have never left. Back then, the morning printfest was the only game in town and, from the performance of American dailies today, there would have been no clamor to get out.
Today, some 51 months, 3600 military deaths and $441 billion after it started, a New York Times editorial finally says, “Enough.” Titled “The Road Home,” it begins: “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.”
The Times took its time deciding that, yet even so it is in the vanguard.
According to Editor & Publisher, “very few newspapers in the U.S. have endorsed a withdrawal from Iraq or even a timetable for that, despite the overwhelming shift in public opinion on that question. Momentum has started to shift in that direction, however, with a handful of papers --from the Los Angeles Times to, just this week, The Olympian in Washington--backing a pullout.”
Why has it taken so long? Have newspapers under corporate ownership lost touch with their communities and the pain this war has been inflicting on readers? Back when A.J. Liebling famously said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed to those who own one,” were benevolent publishers more empathic or more responsive?
Not in my long experience. Daily newspapers back then were just as out of touch with public sentiment, routinely endorsing Republican Presidential candidates in the overwhelmingly Democratic era of Roosevelt and Truman.
If there is an answer, it may be in the newspaper tradition of never getting too far ahead of, or in many cases, even abreast of its readers on controversial issues.
During the days of McCarthyism, Vietnam and even Watergate (with only Woodward and Bernstein the dazzling exception), magazines, book publishers and even network TV took the lead in delivering the bad news just as cable and bloggers have been doing about Iraq.
Marshall McLuhan said, “People don’t actually read newspapers. They get into them every morning like a hot bath.”
Finally the New York Times at least has decided it’s time for a cold shower.
Today, some 51 months, 3600 military deaths and $441 billion after it started, a New York Times editorial finally says, “Enough.” Titled “The Road Home,” it begins: “It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.”
The Times took its time deciding that, yet even so it is in the vanguard.
According to Editor & Publisher, “very few newspapers in the U.S. have endorsed a withdrawal from Iraq or even a timetable for that, despite the overwhelming shift in public opinion on that question. Momentum has started to shift in that direction, however, with a handful of papers --from the Los Angeles Times to, just this week, The Olympian in Washington--backing a pullout.”
Why has it taken so long? Have newspapers under corporate ownership lost touch with their communities and the pain this war has been inflicting on readers? Back when A.J. Liebling famously said, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed to those who own one,” were benevolent publishers more empathic or more responsive?
Not in my long experience. Daily newspapers back then were just as out of touch with public sentiment, routinely endorsing Republican Presidential candidates in the overwhelmingly Democratic era of Roosevelt and Truman.
If there is an answer, it may be in the newspaper tradition of never getting too far ahead of, or in many cases, even abreast of its readers on controversial issues.
During the days of McCarthyism, Vietnam and even Watergate (with only Woodward and Bernstein the dazzling exception), magazines, book publishers and even network TV took the lead in delivering the bad news just as cable and bloggers have been doing about Iraq.
Marshall McLuhan said, “People don’t actually read newspapers. They get into them every morning like a hot bath.”
Finally the New York Times at least has decided it’s time for a cold shower.
Reality Check for Nixon's Lying Library
Congressmen who are frustrated by current White House stonewalling may want to look at how long it has taken to get out the truth about our 37th President.
This Wednesday, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum will re-open after being closed for months to tear out the Watergate Gallery, which for 17 years has been giving visitors a fictionalized version of events that led to his resignation--a “coup” led by his enemies with Woodward and Bernstein “offering bribes” to help distort their coverage.
In March, workers roped off the exhibits and began to destroy the cabinets and plexiglass-sandwiched documents with hammers, crowbars and electric saws.
In 1990, the Library had opened with ceremonies attended by three Republican presidents--Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush. What nobody seemed to notice was that Nixon had rewritten Watergate history, edited the crucial Oval Office tapes and omitted any mention of the dirty tricks, break-ins and other illegal activities that led to his impeachment and resignation.
This Alice-in-Wonderland version of Watergate was seen by almost three million visitors before the library, museum and Nixon’s birthplace in Yorba Linda, California were transferred to the National Archives this year, presumably for taxpayers to take over expenses that had previously been underwritten by private donors.
The new federal director ordered demolition of what one Nixon scholar called "another Southern California theme park" with “a level of reality only slightly better than Disneyland" and replace it with what he tactfully describes as less of “a shrine.”
The library will now have 78,000 pages of previously withheld papers and 800 hours of tapes as well as copies of “All the President’s Men” by Woodward and Bernstein in the book store.
One thing that won’t change is that the reproduced White House East Room will still be available “for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events.”
This Wednesday, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum will re-open after being closed for months to tear out the Watergate Gallery, which for 17 years has been giving visitors a fictionalized version of events that led to his resignation--a “coup” led by his enemies with Woodward and Bernstein “offering bribes” to help distort their coverage.
In March, workers roped off the exhibits and began to destroy the cabinets and plexiglass-sandwiched documents with hammers, crowbars and electric saws.
In 1990, the Library had opened with ceremonies attended by three Republican presidents--Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush. What nobody seemed to notice was that Nixon had rewritten Watergate history, edited the crucial Oval Office tapes and omitted any mention of the dirty tricks, break-ins and other illegal activities that led to his impeachment and resignation.
This Alice-in-Wonderland version of Watergate was seen by almost three million visitors before the library, museum and Nixon’s birthplace in Yorba Linda, California were transferred to the National Archives this year, presumably for taxpayers to take over expenses that had previously been underwritten by private donors.
The new federal director ordered demolition of what one Nixon scholar called "another Southern California theme park" with “a level of reality only slightly better than Disneyland" and replace it with what he tactfully describes as less of “a shrine.”
The library will now have 78,000 pages of previously withheld papers and 800 hours of tapes as well as copies of “All the President’s Men” by Woodward and Bernstein in the book store.
One thing that won’t change is that the reproduced White House East Room will still be available “for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events.”
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Lindsey Graham Soldiers On
One thing about the senior Senator from South Carolina: He’s tenacious. As the prospective running mate of John McCain, he is resolutely optimistic about two apparently lost causes--his Arizona colleague’s candidacy and the war in Iraq.
But here is Graham, back from another trip to Baghdad with McCain and, as other fearful Republican Senators break ranks, practically breaking into song: “The military part of the surge is working beyond my expectations. We literally have the enemy on the run.”
On this trip, McCain and Graham bypassed the chance to go shopping in Baghdad again, but they did have lunch in Ramadi and attend an Independence Day ceremony at which 161 U.S. troops became naturalized citizens. McCain made a speech, and Graham led the new citizens in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
"Morale was very high," Graham said. "It was something to see."
Back home, his support of the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill has infuriated some constituents as well as Rush Limbaugh who has dubbed him Senator "Grahamnesty," which could lead to a challenge in next year’s Republican primary.
If McCain should turn into Rocky Balboa and win, that would be academic. If not, Graham won’t go down. Ever since he rode Bill Clinton’s impeachment to national recognition as a member of the House Judiciary Committee to replace Strom Thurmond in the Senate in 2000, he has always managed to survive.
But here is Graham, back from another trip to Baghdad with McCain and, as other fearful Republican Senators break ranks, practically breaking into song: “The military part of the surge is working beyond my expectations. We literally have the enemy on the run.”
On this trip, McCain and Graham bypassed the chance to go shopping in Baghdad again, but they did have lunch in Ramadi and attend an Independence Day ceremony at which 161 U.S. troops became naturalized citizens. McCain made a speech, and Graham led the new citizens in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
"Morale was very high," Graham said. "It was something to see."
Back home, his support of the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill has infuriated some constituents as well as Rush Limbaugh who has dubbed him Senator "Grahamnesty," which could lead to a challenge in next year’s Republican primary.
If McCain should turn into Rocky Balboa and win, that would be academic. If not, Graham won’t go down. Ever since he rode Bill Clinton’s impeachment to national recognition as a member of the House Judiciary Committee to replace Strom Thurmond in the Senate in 2000, he has always managed to survive.
Fred Thompson's Brief Honeymoon
Media cycles are getting shorter. After weeks of blowing kisses at the unannounced candidate who is front-running in Republican polls, reporters are piling on.
Last week’s sighing over his track record with the ladies as a bachelor has turned into clucking over the drawbacks of having a “trophy wife.”
On one coast, the New York Times reports that Thompson’s supporters “have been wrestling with the public reaction to Jeri Kehn Thompson, whose youthfulness, permanent tan and bleached blond hair present a contrast to the 64-year-old man who hopes to win the hearts of the conservative core of the Republican party. Will the so-called values voters accept this union?”
On the other coast, the Los Angeles Times reveals that the former Senator-actor “accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction.”
Suddenly, the earthy, straight-shooting country-boy candidate is being re-cast as a dirty old man who talks out of both sides of his mouth about the sacredness of unborn life.
Welcome to 21st century Presidential politics, Senator. After they love you to death, the harpies will turn on you. Ask John McCain about “media payback.”
But don’t be discouraged. The next cycle will undoubtedly be devoted to debunking some of the debunking.
Last week’s sighing over his track record with the ladies as a bachelor has turned into clucking over the drawbacks of having a “trophy wife.”
On one coast, the New York Times reports that Thompson’s supporters “have been wrestling with the public reaction to Jeri Kehn Thompson, whose youthfulness, permanent tan and bleached blond hair present a contrast to the 64-year-old man who hopes to win the hearts of the conservative core of the Republican party. Will the so-called values voters accept this union?”
On the other coast, the Los Angeles Times reveals that the former Senator-actor “accepted an assignment from a family-planning group to lobby the first Bush White House to ease a controversial abortion restriction.”
Suddenly, the earthy, straight-shooting country-boy candidate is being re-cast as a dirty old man who talks out of both sides of his mouth about the sacredness of unborn life.
Welcome to 21st century Presidential politics, Senator. After they love you to death, the harpies will turn on you. Ask John McCain about “media payback.”
But don’t be discouraged. The next cycle will undoubtedly be devoted to debunking some of the debunking.
Clinton-Obama: They I-They Divide
Opinion polls are revealing in the difference between what people say about themselves and an anonymous “they.” Today’s figures from Newsweek show that dramatically.
While 92 percent of respondents would vote for an African American candidate, only 59 percent believe the U.S. is ready. Although 86 percent say they would vote for a woman, only 58 percent believe the country would accept the idea.
That divide, which has been shrinking over the past year, seems to reflect the common tendency to claim “correct” attitudes for one’s self and project ambivalence onto others “out there.”
If so, Sens. Clinton and Obama can take heart that their newness is gradually being accepted.
In this uncharted political terrain, time is helping the former First Lady. When expressing their “comfort level,” more than two-thirds of voters feel Clinton has enough experience in government to be a good president. For Obama, the number is 40 percent.
Whichever of them becomes the Democratic nominee will benefit from this long season of persuading Americans to bridge the gap between themselves and the anonymous “they” toward a confident “we.”
While 92 percent of respondents would vote for an African American candidate, only 59 percent believe the U.S. is ready. Although 86 percent say they would vote for a woman, only 58 percent believe the country would accept the idea.
That divide, which has been shrinking over the past year, seems to reflect the common tendency to claim “correct” attitudes for one’s self and project ambivalence onto others “out there.”
If so, Sens. Clinton and Obama can take heart that their newness is gradually being accepted.
In this uncharted political terrain, time is helping the former First Lady. When expressing their “comfort level,” more than two-thirds of voters feel Clinton has enough experience in government to be a good president. For Obama, the number is 40 percent.
Whichever of them becomes the Democratic nominee will benefit from this long season of persuading Americans to bridge the gap between themselves and the anonymous “they” toward a confident “we.”
Friday, July 06, 2007
All the Votes Money Can Buy
Despite the clamor over his defecating dog, Mitt Romney is in clover for the early primary races. Polls show him ahead in Iowa and New Hampshire after starting the year in single digits.
But that was $32 million and 4,500 commercials ago. While McCain, struggling to raise money, lays off staffers and Giuliani keeps repeating his mantra, 9/11, Romney has been selling his blandness like soap or toothpaste, boosting his brand share seven to nine percentage points above them in those early states.
Nationally, the man who has spent $0 million, still undeclared Fred Thompson seems to be proving that absence makes voters hearts grow fonder by taking a 27-24 percent lead over Giuliani.
But Romney can’t keep spending at that pace and Thompson can’t hide forever. Will charisma trump cash? But then again, New York billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg, now a former Republican, may come in to run as an Independent.
If he does, the question becomes moot.
But that was $32 million and 4,500 commercials ago. While McCain, struggling to raise money, lays off staffers and Giuliani keeps repeating his mantra, 9/11, Romney has been selling his blandness like soap or toothpaste, boosting his brand share seven to nine percentage points above them in those early states.
Nationally, the man who has spent $0 million, still undeclared Fred Thompson seems to be proving that absence makes voters hearts grow fonder by taking a 27-24 percent lead over Giuliani.
But Romney can’t keep spending at that pace and Thompson can’t hide forever. Will charisma trump cash? But then again, New York billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg, now a former Republican, may come in to run as an Independent.
If he does, the question becomes moot.
Sound Study of Sexual Differences
Results of new research published in Science show that, contrary to popular belief, women don’t talk more than men—-at least, not much.
From microphones on 396 college students for up to 10 days, researchers found only a slight difference in the amount of verbiage: women, 16,215. men, 15,669.
You don’t say.
From microphones on 396 college students for up to 10 days, researchers found only a slight difference in the amount of verbiage: women, 16,215. men, 15,669.
You don’t say.