Gallup reports today that "Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats or independents to rate their mental health as excellent."
File this under the "Alfred E. Neuman Effect." In his extensive research, Dr. Neuman has discovered a correlation of intellectual curiosity, empathy and compassion with anxiety and depression, resulting in prescription of "What, Me Worry?" medication for afflicted Democrats.
The therapy has worked so well that some patients have not only gone into remission as Independents but achieved total cures and experienced Republican bliss.
For some, however, there have been significant side effects from overdoses--blonde brassiness in women (Ann Coulter Syndrome) and porcine belligerence (Limbaugh Logorrhea)--which have failed to respond to all known treatments.
Researchers at the Rupert Murdoch Institute are studying such cases in hope of discovering a new state of mental health they have tentatively labeled "super-excellent."
Friday, November 30, 2007
Beyond Bush, No Exit From Iraq?
"Americans," a New York Times editorial says today, "need to ask themselves the questions Mr. Bush is refusing to answer: Is this country signing on to keep the peace in Iraq indefinitely? If so, how many American and Iraqi deaths a month are an acceptable price? If not, what’s the plan for getting out?"
The President gave a partial answer this week by joining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a declaration setting out principles for an agreement to be negotiated in the next year to guarantee a U.S. troop presence in Iraq for years.
Behind the "non-bonding" words, the plan is clear: permanent US bases established by a pact that the Decider can sign before he leaves office. "As far as Bush is concerned," Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson notes today, "he doesn't have to seek congressional ratification for such an enduring commitment of American force, treasure and lives."
Gen. Douglas Lute, White House deputy national security adviser, confirms this speculation: "We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress."
With a 30 percent approval rating from Americans who want to get out of Iraq, George Bush, a majority of one, has decided unilaterally to keeps us there even after he leaves office to hold down what the Times describes as "the lid on a pressure cooker. Iraq’s rival militias, the insurgents, the bitter sectarian resentments and the meddling neighbors haven’t gone anywhere.
"Consider this all too familiar horror: yesterday, police said they pulled six bodies from the Tigris River about 25 miles south of Baghdad. They were handcuffed and showed signs of having been tortured. And five, including a child, had been beheaded."
In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is angling to become president for life. Back here, on the subject of Iraq, George Bush has figured out how to manage that without any formalities.
The President gave a partial answer this week by joining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in a declaration setting out principles for an agreement to be negotiated in the next year to guarantee a U.S. troop presence in Iraq for years.
Behind the "non-bonding" words, the plan is clear: permanent US bases established by a pact that the Decider can sign before he leaves office. "As far as Bush is concerned," Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson notes today, "he doesn't have to seek congressional ratification for such an enduring commitment of American force, treasure and lives."
Gen. Douglas Lute, White House deputy national security adviser, confirms this speculation: "We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress."
With a 30 percent approval rating from Americans who want to get out of Iraq, George Bush, a majority of one, has decided unilaterally to keeps us there even after he leaves office to hold down what the Times describes as "the lid on a pressure cooker. Iraq’s rival militias, the insurgents, the bitter sectarian resentments and the meddling neighbors haven’t gone anywhere.
"Consider this all too familiar horror: yesterday, police said they pulled six bodies from the Tigris River about 25 miles south of Baghdad. They were handcuffed and showed signs of having been tortured. And five, including a child, had been beheaded."
In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez is angling to become president for life. Back here, on the subject of Iraq, George Bush has figured out how to manage that without any formalities.
Democratic Divas With a Difference
The names on the ballots are Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama but, in Iowa and New Hampshire, a perfect storm of celebrity is brewing with two forces of nature named Barbra and Oprah on a collision course.
Like hurricanes, Streisand and Winfrey need be identified only by their first names, and they are lending their clout to Hillary and Barack to help elevate one of them to the ultimate celebrity.
The two women are a contrast in personal histories and styles. Winfrey, surviving an abusive childhood and early adulthood, created herself through empathy with millions of women. In backing Obama, she is taking her first steps into politics. When she appears with him next month, it will be a new experience.
At a fund-raiser that brought in $3 million, she reportedly told friends, "I haven't been actively engaged before because there hasn't been anything to be actively engaged in. But I am engaged now to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States,"
Streisand, a decade older and now eligible for Social Security, is a self-made powerhouse with an ego that is outsized even by Hollywood standards. She has been involved in politics for decades.
After Bill Clinton was elected, she was omnipresent at his inaugural. When his mother died, Streisand arrived by private jet for the funeral and announced her $200,000 donation to start a breast cancer research fund in memory of the President's mother, who, Barbra solemnly noted, had spent the last weekend of her life at Streisand concerts in Las Vegas.
This week, she announced her support of Hillary with a historical flourish: "Another former first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote,‘In government, in business, and in the professions there may be a day when women will be looked upon as persons. We are, however, far from that day as yet.’ More than 50 years later 'that day' is now upon us…and Hillary Clinton is ready to shatter through that glass ceiling for all women."
Streisand will help Hillary with the Hollywood power structure, but Oprah will be giving Obama a unique advantage. Unlike 2000, when George Bush got a boost from appearing on her program, she won't be interviewing other candidates this time.
In light of her support for Obama, she has said, that would be "hypocritical," and nobody has ever accused Oprah of waffling about her feelings.
Like hurricanes, Streisand and Winfrey need be identified only by their first names, and they are lending their clout to Hillary and Barack to help elevate one of them to the ultimate celebrity.
The two women are a contrast in personal histories and styles. Winfrey, surviving an abusive childhood and early adulthood, created herself through empathy with millions of women. In backing Obama, she is taking her first steps into politics. When she appears with him next month, it will be a new experience.
At a fund-raiser that brought in $3 million, she reportedly told friends, "I haven't been actively engaged before because there hasn't been anything to be actively engaged in. But I am engaged now to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States,"
Streisand, a decade older and now eligible for Social Security, is a self-made powerhouse with an ego that is outsized even by Hollywood standards. She has been involved in politics for decades.
After Bill Clinton was elected, she was omnipresent at his inaugural. When his mother died, Streisand arrived by private jet for the funeral and announced her $200,000 donation to start a breast cancer research fund in memory of the President's mother, who, Barbra solemnly noted, had spent the last weekend of her life at Streisand concerts in Las Vegas.
This week, she announced her support of Hillary with a historical flourish: "Another former first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt once wrote,‘In government, in business, and in the professions there may be a day when women will be looked upon as persons. We are, however, far from that day as yet.’ More than 50 years later 'that day' is now upon us…and Hillary Clinton is ready to shatter through that glass ceiling for all women."
Streisand will help Hillary with the Hollywood power structure, but Oprah will be giving Obama a unique advantage. Unlike 2000, when George Bush got a boost from appearing on her program, she won't be interviewing other candidates this time.
In light of her support for Obama, she has said, that would be "hypocritical," and nobody has ever accused Oprah of waffling about her feelings.
America's Drinking Problem
Residents of a county that calls itself the American Riviera will start drinking sewage today. Recycled, refined and filtered through aquifers, but still...
The Orange County Water District in southern California will turn on the world’s largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water. The process, called by proponents “indirect potable water reuse” and “toilet to tap” by the dubious, will be getting close scrutiny from authorities elsewhere.
Water shortages have been making news this year, not only in California, but Florida, Georgia and across the country. The federal government projects that at least 36 states will face shortfalls within five years from a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl and waste.
The problem is universal. A UN report has predicted that more than half of humanity will be living with water shortages, depleted fisheries and polluted coastlines within 50 years.
New technology may ease the problem, but awareness and conservation will be required, even more so than with global warming, where changes in public behavior can do only so much to help. (For a start, we could re-think excessive lawn-watering, car-washing, etc. with tap water that might be used for drinking rather than environmentally damaging bottled water.)
"The need to reduce water waste and inefficiency is greater now than ever before," says Benjamin Grumbles of the Environmental Protection Agency. "Water efficiency is the wave of the future."
We had better all drink to that.
The Orange County Water District in southern California will turn on the world’s largest plant devoted to purifying sewer water. The process, called by proponents “indirect potable water reuse” and “toilet to tap” by the dubious, will be getting close scrutiny from authorities elsewhere.
Water shortages have been making news this year, not only in California, but Florida, Georgia and across the country. The federal government projects that at least 36 states will face shortfalls within five years from a combination of rising temperatures, drought, population growth, urban sprawl and waste.
The problem is universal. A UN report has predicted that more than half of humanity will be living with water shortages, depleted fisheries and polluted coastlines within 50 years.
New technology may ease the problem, but awareness and conservation will be required, even more so than with global warming, where changes in public behavior can do only so much to help. (For a start, we could re-think excessive lawn-watering, car-washing, etc. with tap water that might be used for drinking rather than environmentally damaging bottled water.)
"The need to reduce water waste and inefficiency is greater now than ever before," says Benjamin Grumbles of the Environmental Protection Agency. "Water efficiency is the wave of the future."
We had better all drink to that.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Geographic Long Shots
Deep in the bowels of some Las Vegas super-computer, what are the odds against a 2008 Presidential contest between a former Governor of Arkansas and a former First Lady of Arkansas? Or a three-way race involving a Mayor, a former Mayor and a Senator from New York?
New Clue to Lott's Leaving?
Another shoe may be dropping in the twisty tale of why Trent Lott surprisingly gave up his job as the second most powerful Republican in the US Senate.
Originally, there was speculation that Lott's motive was to beat the new two-year limitation on lobbying that goes into effect at year's end.
But a more provocative possibility surfaced today with the indictment of Lott's brother-in-law, Richard Scruggs, for trying to bribe a judge in a case involving a fee dispute with another lawyer following his negotiated settlements worth more than $100 million this year with insurers from damage by Hurricane Katrina.
Scruggs represented Sen. Lott in a settlement with State Farm after the insurer refused to pay a claim for loss of his home and Sen. Lott, according to the New York Times, "pushed through federal legislation to investigate the claims handling of State Farm and other insurers." The investigation is still going on.
All this may be coincidence, but Washington history suggests some cause and effect in looking for a possible answer to Lott's sudden departure from his powerful position. Stay tuned.
Originally, there was speculation that Lott's motive was to beat the new two-year limitation on lobbying that goes into effect at year's end.
But a more provocative possibility surfaced today with the indictment of Lott's brother-in-law, Richard Scruggs, for trying to bribe a judge in a case involving a fee dispute with another lawyer following his negotiated settlements worth more than $100 million this year with insurers from damage by Hurricane Katrina.
Scruggs represented Sen. Lott in a settlement with State Farm after the insurer refused to pay a claim for loss of his home and Sen. Lott, according to the New York Times, "pushed through federal legislation to investigate the claims handling of State Farm and other insurers." The investigation is still going on.
All this may be coincidence, but Washington history suggests some cause and effect in looking for a possible answer to Lott's sudden departure from his powerful position. Stay tuned.
Sparing the Rod
In Texas, a 19-year-old mother has told police her two-year-old daughter was beaten with leather belts, had her head held underwater in a bathtub and was thrown across a room, slamming into a tile floor, for failing to say "please" and "thank you" and otherwise displeasing her 24-year-old stepfather. The child's body was found in a plastic box in Galveston bay.
As authorities sort out details of the brief, brutalized life of Riley Ann Sawyers, also known as "Baby Grace," it is a haunting reminder of what childhood was like in America before parents of the Baby Boomers came home from World War II and one of them, Dr. Benjamin Spock, wrote a book for the first generation that would treat children as human beings to be loved and nurtured rather than creatures to be trained and restrained.
Before Spock, child-care experts advised “less sentimentality and more spanking” and discouraged playing with children or showing them affection. Babies were to be fed only on schedule, toilet-trained ready or not, and have their hands tied to prevent thumb-sucking.
In an era of postwar optimism, parents were persuaded instead to love their children without restraint and risk "spoiling" them.
Now, some critics find those children who were not drilled to say "please" and "thank you," as they near retirement age, a "me" generation, selfish, self-centered and the source of many of America's social ills.
But whatever the pathology in the case of Riley Ann Sawyers turns out to be, her story is a jolt to those who may have forgotten that the Baby Boomers also turned out to be one of the most sensitive and caring generations ever.
As authorities sort out details of the brief, brutalized life of Riley Ann Sawyers, also known as "Baby Grace," it is a haunting reminder of what childhood was like in America before parents of the Baby Boomers came home from World War II and one of them, Dr. Benjamin Spock, wrote a book for the first generation that would treat children as human beings to be loved and nurtured rather than creatures to be trained and restrained.
Before Spock, child-care experts advised “less sentimentality and more spanking” and discouraged playing with children or showing them affection. Babies were to be fed only on schedule, toilet-trained ready or not, and have their hands tied to prevent thumb-sucking.
In an era of postwar optimism, parents were persuaded instead to love their children without restraint and risk "spoiling" them.
Now, some critics find those children who were not drilled to say "please" and "thank you," as they near retirement age, a "me" generation, selfish, self-centered and the source of many of America's social ills.
But whatever the pathology in the case of Riley Ann Sawyers turns out to be, her story is a jolt to those who may have forgotten that the Baby Boomers also turned out to be one of the most sensitive and caring generations ever.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Party of Punishers
The Republicans talked a lot tonight about penalizing people--illegal immigrants, women and doctors who abort babies, gays in the military, Islamic extremists--anybody who makes them feel unsafe or uncomfortable or challenges their vision of a homogenous, God-fearing, heavily armed America.
Mitt Romney wouldn't say no to waterboarding but said yes to Guantanamo. Only John McCain and Mike Huckabee on the death penalty made passing references to human decency in any form, although Huckabee was ready to put Hillary Clinton on the first rocket to Mars.
There was no discussion of health insurance, education, the environment or any other issues that involve American society caring for the young, the weak and the helpless. The main Republican concern for members of future generations was about preserving them in utero and avoiding government spending that would create debt for them as taxpayers.
The '08 battle lines between the parties have been drawn. Republicans will play on voters' fears as opposed to their hopes, on shutting out Others rather than caring for them. Judging from tonight's performance, they have the right candidates to push their agenda.
Mitt Romney wouldn't say no to waterboarding but said yes to Guantanamo. Only John McCain and Mike Huckabee on the death penalty made passing references to human decency in any form, although Huckabee was ready to put Hillary Clinton on the first rocket to Mars.
There was no discussion of health insurance, education, the environment or any other issues that involve American society caring for the young, the weak and the helpless. The main Republican concern for members of future generations was about preserving them in utero and avoiding government spending that would create debt for them as taxpayers.
The '08 battle lines between the parties have been drawn. Republicans will play on voters' fears as opposed to their hopes, on shutting out Others rather than caring for them. Judging from tonight's performance, they have the right candidates to push their agenda.
The Prince of Dimness
That noise in the background is Robert Novak, the self-styled Prince of Darkness, doing what he always does--nipping at politicians while barking away to call attention to himself.
Instead of slinking off after his Valerie Plame dump on the national carpet, the old dog is still up to his ancient tricks, this time befouling Presidential candidates of both parties.
Weekend before last, he stirred up a Clinton-Obama spat by writing that "agents" of the Clinton campaign had been "spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent." After smearing both Democrats with anonymous dirt, Novak went on Fox News to stand by his "scoop," while admitting it came to him third-hand with no confirmation.
This week Novak is outing Mike Huckabee as a "false conservative" who is really "a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans."
After half a century of "reporting," Novak seems to get most of his dope over expense-account lunches these days and, judging from his past gushes over Fred Thompson, the Huckabee smear may be coming from that direction.
Come to think of it, the canine metaphor may be misplaced. Novak is more of a handy hydrant for political operatives' leaks.
Instead of slinking off after his Valerie Plame dump on the national carpet, the old dog is still up to his ancient tricks, this time befouling Presidential candidates of both parties.
Weekend before last, he stirred up a Clinton-Obama spat by writing that "agents" of the Clinton campaign had been "spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent." After smearing both Democrats with anonymous dirt, Novak went on Fox News to stand by his "scoop," while admitting it came to him third-hand with no confirmation.
This week Novak is outing Mike Huckabee as a "false conservative" who is really "a high-tax, protectionist, big-government advocate of a strong hand in the Oval Office directing the lives of Americans."
After half a century of "reporting," Novak seems to get most of his dope over expense-account lunches these days and, judging from his past gushes over Fred Thompson, the Huckabee smear may be coming from that direction.
Come to think of it, the canine metaphor may be misplaced. Novak is more of a handy hydrant for political operatives' leaks.
Iraq: Too Dangerous to Cover
The Surge may be making Iraq safer, but not for those reporting it. Eight out of ten journalists say the war is now harder to cover than it was when they started working there.
From an October survey of 111 journalists in 29 news organizations, the Project for Excellence in Journalism concludes: "They believe they have done a better job of covering the American military and the insurgency than they have the lives of ordinary Iraqis. And they do not believe the coverage of Iraq over time has been too negative. If anything, many believe the situation over the course of the war has been worse than the American public has perceived."
Outside of the heavily-fortified Green Zone, local staff do the face-to-face reporting, and they can't carry any equipment, not even notebooks, that might identify them as working for American media out of fear of being killed. Some don't even tell their families.
According to one print journalist, "The dangers can’t be overstated. It’s been an ambush--two staff killed, one wounded--various firefights, and our ‘home’ has been rocked and mortared (by accident, I’m pretty sure).”
A broadcast editor reported: "It's dangerous and frustrating. You want to go out and cover stories, but you can't because of the threat of kidnapping or worse. It's hard to hear commentators back home say, 'The media isn't covering the full story.' Well, there's a reason for that, and it's not bias. When journalists cannot cover a playground being rebuilt because it's too dangerous to travel around the city, then that playground is not the primary story."
Politicians, media critics and journalism students, take note.
From an October survey of 111 journalists in 29 news organizations, the Project for Excellence in Journalism concludes: "They believe they have done a better job of covering the American military and the insurgency than they have the lives of ordinary Iraqis. And they do not believe the coverage of Iraq over time has been too negative. If anything, many believe the situation over the course of the war has been worse than the American public has perceived."
Outside of the heavily-fortified Green Zone, local staff do the face-to-face reporting, and they can't carry any equipment, not even notebooks, that might identify them as working for American media out of fear of being killed. Some don't even tell their families.
According to one print journalist, "The dangers can’t be overstated. It’s been an ambush--two staff killed, one wounded--various firefights, and our ‘home’ has been rocked and mortared (by accident, I’m pretty sure).”
A broadcast editor reported: "It's dangerous and frustrating. You want to go out and cover stories, but you can't because of the threat of kidnapping or worse. It's hard to hear commentators back home say, 'The media isn't covering the full story.' Well, there's a reason for that, and it's not bias. When journalists cannot cover a playground being rebuilt because it's too dangerous to travel around the city, then that playground is not the primary story."
Politicians, media critics and journalism students, take note.
A Living Rebuke to Today's Politics
You might sum up what's wrong with this process of picking a president in two words: Joe Biden. Why is he stuck in single digits?
In an interview with Judy Woodruff on PBS' News Hour last night, Biden was a reminder of the kind of candidate that old-fashioned, smoke-filled-room politics of the past century would often produce: experienced, knowing, comfortable in his own skin, someone to be trusted without being idealized.
Not always. There was Nixon, of course, but there were also FDR, Jack Kennedy, Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson and even Truman, if you overlook the cronyism.
Biden is a throwback to those days in refusing to play the Hillary-Rudy-Romney game of pandering from the heart. In Iowa, he is running a tongue-in-cheek ad about the phrase often heard in Democratic debates, "Joe's right," and he has been--about Iraq (after trusting Bush in 2002) and most domestic issues based on more than half a lifetime in Congress.
Peace to those cynics who will pop up with "plagiarism" and "shoot from the hip," but Biden seems to have learned from past mistakes and personal losses to emerge not sadder but wiser and optimistic. He deserves a closer look.
The old pols who used to pick candidates were a nasty, often crooked, lot, but they were realists who didn't fall for sound bites, test-panel slogans and shifty commercials. Nobody wants them back, but there must be a better alternative than this.
Maybe the YouTubers tonight will show us the way.
In an interview with Judy Woodruff on PBS' News Hour last night, Biden was a reminder of the kind of candidate that old-fashioned, smoke-filled-room politics of the past century would often produce: experienced, knowing, comfortable in his own skin, someone to be trusted without being idealized.
Not always. There was Nixon, of course, but there were also FDR, Jack Kennedy, Eisenhower, Adlai Stevenson and even Truman, if you overlook the cronyism.
Biden is a throwback to those days in refusing to play the Hillary-Rudy-Romney game of pandering from the heart. In Iowa, he is running a tongue-in-cheek ad about the phrase often heard in Democratic debates, "Joe's right," and he has been--about Iraq (after trusting Bush in 2002) and most domestic issues based on more than half a lifetime in Congress.
Peace to those cynics who will pop up with "plagiarism" and "shoot from the hip," but Biden seems to have learned from past mistakes and personal losses to emerge not sadder but wiser and optimistic. He deserves a closer look.
The old pols who used to pick candidates were a nasty, often crooked, lot, but they were realists who didn't fall for sound bites, test-panel slogans and shifty commercials. Nobody wants them back, but there must be a better alternative than this.
Maybe the YouTubers tonight will show us the way.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Will Ted Kennedy Tell All?
The last survivor of the twentieth century's great brother act is writing his memoirs, fittingly for one of the largest advances of all time, north of $8 million.
"I've been fortunate in my life to grow up in an extraordinary family and to have a front row seat at many key events in our nation's history," Ted Kennedy said in a statement.
He will be the first of his generation to live long enough to tell the story of those lives that were marked by grandeur, scandal and grief.
The youngest of nine children, Edward Moore Kennedy was thrown out of Harvard for cheating but, with one brother as President and another Attorney General, he overcame adversity by winning Jack's former Senate seat, which had been kept warm for him by a family friend until he turned 30 in 1962 and was eligible to run for it.
In the 1960s, he was seen at TV funerals of both brothers, became the surrogate father of their 13 children and ended the decade, on the weekend of the first moon landing, driving a car into the waters off Chappaquiddick island, resulting in the drowning of the young woman who was with him.
That scandal would have ended any other political career but, in 1980, he was preparing to challenge unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Presidential nomination. I know because I published a 90th birthday reminiscence by his mother that summer, arranged by loyal JFK staffers as part of Ted Kennedy's public rehabilitation.
But his heart was not in it. In a CBS special just before announcing the candidacy, his answer to the question of why he wanted to be president was so vague, rambling and unsure that poll numbers plummeted and it was over.
When he looks back on all that and a remarkable 45-year career in the Senate that includes championing gun control, alternative energy and immigration reform as well as voting against invading Iraq in 2002, Ted Kennedy will have a lot to tell in his autobiography but, for better or worse, most potential readers will have strong opinions about him even before they turn the first page.
"I've been fortunate in my life to grow up in an extraordinary family and to have a front row seat at many key events in our nation's history," Ted Kennedy said in a statement.
He will be the first of his generation to live long enough to tell the story of those lives that were marked by grandeur, scandal and grief.
The youngest of nine children, Edward Moore Kennedy was thrown out of Harvard for cheating but, with one brother as President and another Attorney General, he overcame adversity by winning Jack's former Senate seat, which had been kept warm for him by a family friend until he turned 30 in 1962 and was eligible to run for it.
In the 1960s, he was seen at TV funerals of both brothers, became the surrogate father of their 13 children and ended the decade, on the weekend of the first moon landing, driving a car into the waters off Chappaquiddick island, resulting in the drowning of the young woman who was with him.
That scandal would have ended any other political career but, in 1980, he was preparing to challenge unpopular incumbent Jimmy Carter for the Democratic Presidential nomination. I know because I published a 90th birthday reminiscence by his mother that summer, arranged by loyal JFK staffers as part of Ted Kennedy's public rehabilitation.
But his heart was not in it. In a CBS special just before announcing the candidacy, his answer to the question of why he wanted to be president was so vague, rambling and unsure that poll numbers plummeted and it was over.
When he looks back on all that and a remarkable 45-year career in the Senate that includes championing gun control, alternative energy and immigration reform as well as voting against invading Iraq in 2002, Ted Kennedy will have a lot to tell in his autobiography but, for better or worse, most potential readers will have strong opinions about him even before they turn the first page.
The Rumors About Trent Lott's Retirement
This could be a case study of the difference in news values between the Mainstream Media and blogs.
After Trent Lott's surprising announcement yesterday that he would retire from the Senate at the end of the year, there was puzzlement about his motives and timing. Why would the second most powerful Republican resign after two decades with five years left in his current term to "pursue something else"?
Then, lo and behold, a questionable D.C.-based blog last night offers a gay-sex scandal to explain it all. This morning, the young man involved denies it all and the whole story pulses through the blogosphere in a tizzy of titillation and disappointment.
Unless the arbiter of Washington sleaze, Larry Flynt, comes forward with evidence, file it under "Sex Scandals That Never Happened" with yesterday's Drudge Report of a British rumor about Hillary Clinton's affair with a female aide.
This post will self-destruct in 30 seconds.
After Trent Lott's surprising announcement yesterday that he would retire from the Senate at the end of the year, there was puzzlement about his motives and timing. Why would the second most powerful Republican resign after two decades with five years left in his current term to "pursue something else"?
Then, lo and behold, a questionable D.C.-based blog last night offers a gay-sex scandal to explain it all. This morning, the young man involved denies it all and the whole story pulses through the blogosphere in a tizzy of titillation and disappointment.
Unless the arbiter of Washington sleaze, Larry Flynt, comes forward with evidence, file it under "Sex Scandals That Never Happened" with yesterday's Drudge Report of a British rumor about Hillary Clinton's affair with a female aide.
This post will self-destruct in 30 seconds.
Poll-Axed
If the Presidential election were held today, it might end up in a worse muddle than Bush-Gore in 2000. Gallup tells us Hillary Clinton can beat any Republican, while Zogby reports she is trailing five of them in their polling.
With a year to go, it's safe to say Americans are undecided--safe but how useful? With a flood of statistics from all directions, nationally and in early primary states, are polls turning the process into a numbers game that obscures the issues?
If that sounds stuffy, or even Luddite, consider the checkered history of Presidential polls. In 1936, the Literary Digest famously predicted Alf Landon would beat FDR, but he lost every state except Maine and Vermont. The mistake was asking voters who had cars and telephones, not a fair cross-section of the whole population back then.
Sampling is more sophisticated now but on election night 2000, we were whipsawed by exit polls from the Voters News Service that reported Gore winning Florida and the White House and then maybe not.
What can we believe? Gallup polls by phone, Zogby "surveys individuals who have registered to take part in online polls," but does it make any difference?
What does matter is that politicians and public may be getting too mesmerized by the numbers and, based on their fallible evidence, making "electability" the main issue instead of substantive differences among the candidates.
Those who like horse races can get a better run for their money at the race track rather than the voting booth.
With a year to go, it's safe to say Americans are undecided--safe but how useful? With a flood of statistics from all directions, nationally and in early primary states, are polls turning the process into a numbers game that obscures the issues?
If that sounds stuffy, or even Luddite, consider the checkered history of Presidential polls. In 1936, the Literary Digest famously predicted Alf Landon would beat FDR, but he lost every state except Maine and Vermont. The mistake was asking voters who had cars and telephones, not a fair cross-section of the whole population back then.
Sampling is more sophisticated now but on election night 2000, we were whipsawed by exit polls from the Voters News Service that reported Gore winning Florida and the White House and then maybe not.
What can we believe? Gallup polls by phone, Zogby "surveys individuals who have registered to take part in online polls," but does it make any difference?
What does matter is that politicians and public may be getting too mesmerized by the numbers and, based on their fallible evidence, making "electability" the main issue instead of substantive differences among the candidates.
Those who like horse races can get a better run for their money at the race track rather than the voting booth.
Monday, November 26, 2007
CBS' Respect-Free Zone for Journalists
The network has come a long way since Edward R. Murrow. From the time William S. Paley backed his newspeople in unmasking Sen. Joe McCarthy to the present day when its lawyers are insulting Dan Rather in court filings for trying to nail George W. Bush's lies about his National Guard service, CBS has been in a downward spiral as steep as the ratings plunge of its nightly news.
In the new issue of New York Magazine, Rather vents his dismay over being blamed for an error in a story that was essentially right and booted out of a job he held with distinction for 24 years after being the network's lead reporter in exposing Nixon and Watergate.
Although legend rightly immortalizes Woodward and Bernstein for their Washington Post coverage leading to Nixon's downfall, CBS News was the only other media outlet that stayed with the story during a time when others held back, and it was Rather who did most of the reporting.
When he recently brought suit to vindicate himself from what Ted Koppel called the "travesty" of his firing for "a story that was much more correct than incorrect," CBS lawyers filed a contemptuous response in court papers, citing it as "a regrettable attempt" by him "to remain in the public eye, and to settle old scores and perceived slights."
At the risk of looking like the loony anchorman in "Network" shouting, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more," Rather is ending his public life with the signoff he used for his broadcasts: "Courage."
He has always had more than his share of that and deserves the respect that a now whorish network is trying to take away from him.
In the new issue of New York Magazine, Rather vents his dismay over being blamed for an error in a story that was essentially right and booted out of a job he held with distinction for 24 years after being the network's lead reporter in exposing Nixon and Watergate.
Although legend rightly immortalizes Woodward and Bernstein for their Washington Post coverage leading to Nixon's downfall, CBS News was the only other media outlet that stayed with the story during a time when others held back, and it was Rather who did most of the reporting.
When he recently brought suit to vindicate himself from what Ted Koppel called the "travesty" of his firing for "a story that was much more correct than incorrect," CBS lawyers filed a contemptuous response in court papers, citing it as "a regrettable attempt" by him "to remain in the public eye, and to settle old scores and perceived slights."
At the risk of looking like the loony anchorman in "Network" shouting, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more," Rather is ending his public life with the signoff he used for his broadcasts: "Courage."
He has always had more than his share of that and deserves the respect that a now whorish network is trying to take away from him.
Cheney vs. Rice, Fight to the Finish
With Karl Rove gone, the battle for Bush's brain is on between the remaining White House heavyweights, Vice-President Cheney and the Secretary of State, who is taking the offensive as the last round begins.
At Annapolis tomorrow, Condoleeza Rice will engage Mideast leaders in an attempt to stop the pounding she and her President have taken over Iraq and show some fancy footwork in moving toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
In today's New York Times, her biographer, Elisabeth Bumiller has two stories, one about Rice's "Turnabout on Mideast Peace Talks" and another on the "Personal Bond" between Bush and the woman he affectionately calls "Madame Rice."
This is heavy-duty book promotion and somewhat iffy journalism by a reporter with a vested interest in her subject, but more important, it kicks off Rice's campaign to burnish her legacy as well as Bush's.
Ms. Bumiller, after chronicling Rice's early opposition to involvement in the Isareli-Palestinian standoff, concludes: "Nearly seven tumultuous years later, Ms. Rice, as secretary of state, has led the Bush administration to a startling turnaround and is now thrusting the United States as forcefully as Mr. Clinton once did into the role of mediator between the Israelis and Palestinians. The culmination of her efforts occurs this week in Annapolis, Md., as Mr. Bush, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, meet to set the outlines of a final peace agreement before the end of Mr. Bush’s term."
All this, Bumiller reports in detail, is over the grim opposition of Dick Cheney, who is willing to bomb but not talk to anyone in the region.
The gossipy sidebar rehashes the Bush-Rice personal ties and explains how she used "her relationship with Mr. Bush to try to gain control over the national security process as well as two powerful men who drove much of the agenda in the first term," Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.
The gloves are off, Rice and Cheney are in the ring and, outside of their personal fight, there is not much at stake beyond peace in the Mideast and whether or not we invade Iran before Bush leaves office.
At Annapolis tomorrow, Condoleeza Rice will engage Mideast leaders in an attempt to stop the pounding she and her President have taken over Iraq and show some fancy footwork in moving toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
In today's New York Times, her biographer, Elisabeth Bumiller has two stories, one about Rice's "Turnabout on Mideast Peace Talks" and another on the "Personal Bond" between Bush and the woman he affectionately calls "Madame Rice."
This is heavy-duty book promotion and somewhat iffy journalism by a reporter with a vested interest in her subject, but more important, it kicks off Rice's campaign to burnish her legacy as well as Bush's.
Ms. Bumiller, after chronicling Rice's early opposition to involvement in the Isareli-Palestinian standoff, concludes: "Nearly seven tumultuous years later, Ms. Rice, as secretary of state, has led the Bush administration to a startling turnaround and is now thrusting the United States as forcefully as Mr. Clinton once did into the role of mediator between the Israelis and Palestinians. The culmination of her efforts occurs this week in Annapolis, Md., as Mr. Bush, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, meet to set the outlines of a final peace agreement before the end of Mr. Bush’s term."
All this, Bumiller reports in detail, is over the grim opposition of Dick Cheney, who is willing to bomb but not talk to anyone in the region.
The gossipy sidebar rehashes the Bush-Rice personal ties and explains how she used "her relationship with Mr. Bush to try to gain control over the national security process as well as two powerful men who drove much of the agenda in the first term," Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.
The gloves are off, Rice and Cheney are in the ring and, outside of their personal fight, there is not much at stake beyond peace in the Mideast and whether or not we invade Iran before Bush leaves office.
Hillary: The Case for Humility
The other day, Andrew Sullivan distilled his and America's '08 dilemma into a choice "between fear and loathing. I loathe Clinton; I fear Giuliani."
The Rudy side of the equation is easily quantified (see below), but the hatred of Hillary Clinton, not only Sullivan's, but that, if polls are to be believed, of close to half of all Americans, is more complicated.
A visitor from another planet might see her as a former First Lady of undoubted intelligence who stood by her husband in a pre-election sex scandal, was later victimized by another in the White House and then went on to an independent political career and the brink of nomination for president. As they used to say on Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
Critics call her cold, calculating and ruthless but, in some political circles, those are qualities deemed vital in a president. Among the less sophisticated, there is a resentment over exploiting her spousal status that overlooks George W. Bush's leveraging of his filial tie into the White House.
But underneath all that, I would suggest, is a vague rage at her sense of entitlement, the unquestioning attitude toward her right to be President, the confidence she projects of having somehow earned it by claiming her White House years as executive "experience."
That Achilles' heel has, in recent days, been exploited by her opposition, as in Barack Obama's observation, “My understanding was that she wasn’t Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, so I don’t know exactly what experiences she’s claiming.”
In some ways, Sen. Clinton may have damaged her own campaign narrative by framing the choice as experience vs. change. Some of those experiences are turnoffs for voters, who might be impressed by strong stands on issues that concern them but see her waffling only as reinforcement for the feeling that she takes her succession for granted.
Humility is not high on the list of qualities the electorate wants in a president, but modesty could go a long way in offsetting the arrogance Hillary Clinton projects and, in a general election, it might serve her well against Rudy Giuliani, who is over-endowed with it to the point of frightening Andrew Sullivan:
"His obsessive loyalty to aides, his reflexive defense of the security and police forces, his discomfort with any argument smacking of civil liberties, his mean streak, his desire to extend his own term of office as New York City mayor, his authoritarian, meddling instincts, and his frequent, hotheaded outbursts: all this make giving him the Cheney-style presidency a huge risk."
Hillary haters and supporters, take note.
The Rudy side of the equation is easily quantified (see below), but the hatred of Hillary Clinton, not only Sullivan's, but that, if polls are to be believed, of close to half of all Americans, is more complicated.
A visitor from another planet might see her as a former First Lady of undoubted intelligence who stood by her husband in a pre-election sex scandal, was later victimized by another in the White House and then went on to an independent political career and the brink of nomination for president. As they used to say on Seinfeld, "Not that there's anything wrong with that."
Critics call her cold, calculating and ruthless but, in some political circles, those are qualities deemed vital in a president. Among the less sophisticated, there is a resentment over exploiting her spousal status that overlooks George W. Bush's leveraging of his filial tie into the White House.
But underneath all that, I would suggest, is a vague rage at her sense of entitlement, the unquestioning attitude toward her right to be President, the confidence she projects of having somehow earned it by claiming her White House years as executive "experience."
That Achilles' heel has, in recent days, been exploited by her opposition, as in Barack Obama's observation, “My understanding was that she wasn’t Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, so I don’t know exactly what experiences she’s claiming.”
In some ways, Sen. Clinton may have damaged her own campaign narrative by framing the choice as experience vs. change. Some of those experiences are turnoffs for voters, who might be impressed by strong stands on issues that concern them but see her waffling only as reinforcement for the feeling that she takes her succession for granted.
Humility is not high on the list of qualities the electorate wants in a president, but modesty could go a long way in offsetting the arrogance Hillary Clinton projects and, in a general election, it might serve her well against Rudy Giuliani, who is over-endowed with it to the point of frightening Andrew Sullivan:
"His obsessive loyalty to aides, his reflexive defense of the security and police forces, his discomfort with any argument smacking of civil liberties, his mean streak, his desire to extend his own term of office as New York City mayor, his authoritarian, meddling instincts, and his frequent, hotheaded outbursts: all this make giving him the Cheney-style presidency a huge risk."
Hillary haters and supporters, take note.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
9/11 and Other American Plots
When fire breaks out in a mental hospital, the paranoids are the first to respond--they always expect someone to do terrible things.
That bit of apocryphal folklore comes to mind with news today that almost two-thirds of Americans think federal officials knew in advance of 9/11 but chose to ignore the warnings.
A similar survey last year showed one out of three thinks our government assisted in the attacks or took no action to stop them so the US could go to war in the Middle East.
These conspiracy beliefs come, not from residents of a mental hospital, but a study of Americans normal enough to answer their own phones.
In 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a book widely read because its thesis was then so new and startling: that a "sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy" was spreading from the lunatic fringes into the mainstream of our national life.
The political paranoid, he wrote, "does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician...Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated."
From then on, starting with President Kennedy's assassination, more and more Americans believed everything that happened had to be part of some evil design, rather than the result of human randomness. No one could be trusted and, during its tenure, the Bush Administration has provided much evidence to support such suspicions.
But, in large part, distrust goes back to changes in perception as well as politics. Before TV, news was what people in power said it was, and there was no way to see behind the official version of truth. But with events coming into our living rooms, we could start to make our own judgments about what was really going on.
Now, with 24/7 news everywhere, everyone is "in the know," and there is no reason to accept the official version of anything. As any blogger can tell you, the more devious the explanation for events, the more attention and, for some, credence it receives.
We are now free from getting only a whitewashed picture of the world, but are we closer to any truths by getting a flood of blackwashed analyses of everyone's actions and motives? Little wonder that some Americans now see everything as a conspiracy,
That bit of apocryphal folklore comes to mind with news today that almost two-thirds of Americans think federal officials knew in advance of 9/11 but chose to ignore the warnings.
A similar survey last year showed one out of three thinks our government assisted in the attacks or took no action to stop them so the US could go to war in the Middle East.
These conspiracy beliefs come, not from residents of a mental hospital, but a study of Americans normal enough to answer their own phones.
In 1964, historian Richard Hofstadter wrote "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," a book widely read because its thesis was then so new and startling: that a "sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy" was spreading from the lunatic fringes into the mainstream of our national life.
The political paranoid, he wrote, "does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician...Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated."
From then on, starting with President Kennedy's assassination, more and more Americans believed everything that happened had to be part of some evil design, rather than the result of human randomness. No one could be trusted and, during its tenure, the Bush Administration has provided much evidence to support such suspicions.
But, in large part, distrust goes back to changes in perception as well as politics. Before TV, news was what people in power said it was, and there was no way to see behind the official version of truth. But with events coming into our living rooms, we could start to make our own judgments about what was really going on.
Now, with 24/7 news everywhere, everyone is "in the know," and there is no reason to accept the official version of anything. As any blogger can tell you, the more devious the explanation for events, the more attention and, for some, credence it receives.
We are now free from getting only a whitewashed picture of the world, but are we closer to any truths by getting a flood of blackwashed analyses of everyone's actions and motives? Little wonder that some Americans now see everything as a conspiracy,
Can We Disinvent Nuclear Weapons?
There is an axiom about movie plots: If a gun is seen in an early scene, it will be fired before the final credits.
So it is now in the international movie of our lives after the unreeling of more than half a century with weapons that could bring total devastation. In today's New York Times Book Review, Martin Walker considers new histories of that period by writers who have chronicled it from the start, Jonathan Schell and Richard Rhodes.
"When the Soviet Union collapsed," Walker writes, "five declared nuclear powers and Israel constituted the nuclear club. Today India, Pakistan and North Korea have joined their number. Iraq under Saddam Hussein came within perhaps a year of doing so, and Iran is waiting in the wings. We are poised on the brink of a new age of multiple nuclear powers."
The Presidential candidates talk glibly about managing this volatile world--Republicans with more macho than realism, Democrats with more faith in muscular rationality than realism can support--but evade the basic issue: Is there any way to rid the world of weapons that endanger all of human civilization?
In "The Seventh Decade," Schell blames the Bush Administration, particularly Dick Cheney, for overturning all previous efforts toward nuclear controls by embracing
a first-strike policy to combat proliferation and pursuing new generations of WMDs.
To avoid a global calamity, Schell argues, disarmament is no longer an idealistic pipe dream but a practical bipartisan necessity, pointing to a call earlier this year by former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn for “a world free of nuclear weapons.”
Rhodes, in "Arsenal of Folly," cites a missed opportunity when, after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev started down that road at the Reykjavik summit of 1986 but stumbled over disagreement about testing of Stars Wars systems of defense against surprise attack.
Since then, generations have come of age with only hazy awareness of the ultimate threat, but they should be reminded of what it was like in the early scenes of civilization's nuclear movie during the Cold War, when schoolchildren were drilled in ducking under desks and every siren that sounded set off visceral fears that a mushroom cloud was coming.
So it is now in the international movie of our lives after the unreeling of more than half a century with weapons that could bring total devastation. In today's New York Times Book Review, Martin Walker considers new histories of that period by writers who have chronicled it from the start, Jonathan Schell and Richard Rhodes.
"When the Soviet Union collapsed," Walker writes, "five declared nuclear powers and Israel constituted the nuclear club. Today India, Pakistan and North Korea have joined their number. Iraq under Saddam Hussein came within perhaps a year of doing so, and Iran is waiting in the wings. We are poised on the brink of a new age of multiple nuclear powers."
The Presidential candidates talk glibly about managing this volatile world--Republicans with more macho than realism, Democrats with more faith in muscular rationality than realism can support--but evade the basic issue: Is there any way to rid the world of weapons that endanger all of human civilization?
In "The Seventh Decade," Schell blames the Bush Administration, particularly Dick Cheney, for overturning all previous efforts toward nuclear controls by embracing
a first-strike policy to combat proliferation and pursuing new generations of WMDs.
To avoid a global calamity, Schell argues, disarmament is no longer an idealistic pipe dream but a practical bipartisan necessity, pointing to a call earlier this year by former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defense Secretary William Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn for “a world free of nuclear weapons.”
Rhodes, in "Arsenal of Folly," cites a missed opportunity when, after the Chernobyl nuclear accident, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev started down that road at the Reykjavik summit of 1986 but stumbled over disagreement about testing of Stars Wars systems of defense against surprise attack.
Since then, generations have come of age with only hazy awareness of the ultimate threat, but they should be reminded of what it was like in the early scenes of civilization's nuclear movie during the Cold War, when schoolchildren were drilled in ducking under desks and every siren that sounded set off visceral fears that a mushroom cloud was coming.
Time to End Bloomberg's Ambivalence
With Election Day '08 less than a year away, the Hamlet act is wearing thin for New York's Mayor. Soon he will have to decide whether to be or not to be a candidate for President.
Lately he seems to be leaning toward it. Last weekend in New Orleans, the symbolic site for Washington inadequacy, Mike Bloomberg proclaimed his principles of governing "a challenge to candidates to move beyond photo-ops, to reject stage-managed town hall meetings, and to talk about how we're going to use real accountability to solve real problems and take real questions from our constituents and give them real answers.
"They're a challenge to a rotten political culture that rewards sellouts and sycophants, and I've just always thought that we can do better."
After blasting the campaign as "pandering in full throttle," Bloomberg toured the hurricane-ravaged lower Ninth Ward and got an endorsement from one of the residents, Fats Domino.
At the same time, the Mayor is taking a cram course on foreign policy with Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a Clinton Administration foreign policy adviser, and has had his chief political aide, Kevin Sheekey, meeting with officials of Britain's Independence Party to discuss how a third-party bid could be launched.
Earlier this fall, Bloomberg dined with retiring Sen. Chuck Hagel, whose Republican domestic credentials, opposition to the war in Iraq and Washington know-how would pair up nicely with the Mayor's executive experience on an Independent ticket.
This month, Newsweek's editor Jon Meacham wrote a long story about Bloomberg's "American odyssey," blurbed, "He has the money and message to upend 2008."
But Bloomberg will have to decide soon. Even with a billion dollars, it takes time to put together a campaign and get on the ballot in 50 states.
As the major parties seem ready to nominate two unusual New Yorkers--a woman and a multi-married Italian-American--will another, described by CNN's Jeff Greenfield as "a vertically challenged Jewish billionaire," have the legs to make it a three-way?
Lately he seems to be leaning toward it. Last weekend in New Orleans, the symbolic site for Washington inadequacy, Mike Bloomberg proclaimed his principles of governing "a challenge to candidates to move beyond photo-ops, to reject stage-managed town hall meetings, and to talk about how we're going to use real accountability to solve real problems and take real questions from our constituents and give them real answers.
"They're a challenge to a rotten political culture that rewards sellouts and sycophants, and I've just always thought that we can do better."
After blasting the campaign as "pandering in full throttle," Bloomberg toured the hurricane-ravaged lower Ninth Ward and got an endorsement from one of the residents, Fats Domino.
At the same time, the Mayor is taking a cram course on foreign policy with Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a Clinton Administration foreign policy adviser, and has had his chief political aide, Kevin Sheekey, meeting with officials of Britain's Independence Party to discuss how a third-party bid could be launched.
Earlier this fall, Bloomberg dined with retiring Sen. Chuck Hagel, whose Republican domestic credentials, opposition to the war in Iraq and Washington know-how would pair up nicely with the Mayor's executive experience on an Independent ticket.
This month, Newsweek's editor Jon Meacham wrote a long story about Bloomberg's "American odyssey," blurbed, "He has the money and message to upend 2008."
But Bloomberg will have to decide soon. Even with a billion dollars, it takes time to put together a campaign and get on the ballot in 50 states.
As the major parties seem ready to nominate two unusual New Yorkers--a woman and a multi-married Italian-American--will another, described by CNN's Jeff Greenfield as "a vertically challenged Jewish billionaire," have the legs to make it a three-way?
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Sex, Power and Aging in the Movies
This weekend, a fine actor named Frank Langella is being seen in a new film, "Starting Out in the Evening," which is getting good reviews in the New York Times, Rolling Stone and points between.
In it, Langella plays a writer and was directed by Andrew Wagner, a college classmate of one of my sons. Thirty years ago, Langella played a writer in "Diary of a Mad Housewife," directed by a friend of mine, Frank Perry, from a script by his wife, Eleanor.
In both movies, the writer ends up in bed with complicated women, as a self-centered seducer in "Diary" and as the vulnerable seduced in "Starting Out."
In the three decades between, as age diminished Langella's sexual power on the screen, it transformed him into a powerhouse of an actor in roles from Dracula and Sherlock Holmes to the evil White House chief of staff in "Dave."
Along the way, in "Eddie," he played the owner of the New York Knicks who hires Whoopi Goldberg to coach the team and, in real life, they lived together for a time as a couple that conjures up marvelous visions of energy and elegance.
Next year, at 70, he will be seen as the famous Unindicted Co-conspirator in "Frost/Nixon," Ron Howard's film of the Broadway play for which Langella won a Tony.
Aging sucks, but it can have its compensations.
In it, Langella plays a writer and was directed by Andrew Wagner, a college classmate of one of my sons. Thirty years ago, Langella played a writer in "Diary of a Mad Housewife," directed by a friend of mine, Frank Perry, from a script by his wife, Eleanor.
In both movies, the writer ends up in bed with complicated women, as a self-centered seducer in "Diary" and as the vulnerable seduced in "Starting Out."
In the three decades between, as age diminished Langella's sexual power on the screen, it transformed him into a powerhouse of an actor in roles from Dracula and Sherlock Holmes to the evil White House chief of staff in "Dave."
Along the way, in "Eddie," he played the owner of the New York Knicks who hires Whoopi Goldberg to coach the team and, in real life, they lived together for a time as a couple that conjures up marvelous visions of energy and elegance.
Next year, at 70, he will be seen as the famous Unindicted Co-conspirator in "Frost/Nixon," Ron Howard's film of the Broadway play for which Langella won a Tony.
Aging sucks, but it can have its compensations.
Semi-Private Lives
The Hulk Hogans may be getting divorced, a devastating development in the life of a family that has been fascinating VH1 viewers for more than two years on a reality series in some other America than the one I inhabit.
But their public pain recalls another family, the Louds, whose disintegration was seen in the early 1970s in a series, "An American Family," a landmark in breaking down what's private and what's public in our society.
The similarities are eerie. Hogan, the celebrity wrestler-musician, apparently learned of the divorce yesterday from a reporter in Florida, where his family lives. "My wife has been in California for about three weeks," he responded. "Holy smokes. Wow, you just knocked the bottom out of me."
In the earlier series, Linda Loud told her husband of 20 years to move out of the house on camera, a scene 10 million viewers would watch later that week.
Like the Hogans, the Louds were not the people next door, living a life of luxury in Santa Barbara, California that was several American Dreams away from "The Waltons" and even "The Brady Brunch" of late twentieth-century TV. The Hogans occupy a 20,000-square-foot Florida estate with more than 30 pets.
Both series featured flamboyant teenagers--Lance Loud, who dyed his hair silver and his clothes purple, and in this century, Brooke Hogan, who signed a $1.3 million contract as a singer when she turned 18, and Nick, a professional car racer briefly jailed for underage drinking and reckless driving
Back then, the Louds were denounced as exhibitionists and praised for pioneering a new openness in an electronic society. Today, when celebrity lives are routinely played out in public, the Hogans are not that unusual.
American fame has come a long way in those three decades, but some killjoys may wonder if it was worth the trip.
But their public pain recalls another family, the Louds, whose disintegration was seen in the early 1970s in a series, "An American Family," a landmark in breaking down what's private and what's public in our society.
The similarities are eerie. Hogan, the celebrity wrestler-musician, apparently learned of the divorce yesterday from a reporter in Florida, where his family lives. "My wife has been in California for about three weeks," he responded. "Holy smokes. Wow, you just knocked the bottom out of me."
In the earlier series, Linda Loud told her husband of 20 years to move out of the house on camera, a scene 10 million viewers would watch later that week.
Like the Hogans, the Louds were not the people next door, living a life of luxury in Santa Barbara, California that was several American Dreams away from "The Waltons" and even "The Brady Brunch" of late twentieth-century TV. The Hogans occupy a 20,000-square-foot Florida estate with more than 30 pets.
Both series featured flamboyant teenagers--Lance Loud, who dyed his hair silver and his clothes purple, and in this century, Brooke Hogan, who signed a $1.3 million contract as a singer when she turned 18, and Nick, a professional car racer briefly jailed for underage drinking and reckless driving
Back then, the Louds were denounced as exhibitionists and praised for pioneering a new openness in an electronic society. Today, when celebrity lives are routinely played out in public, the Hogans are not that unusual.
American fame has come a long way in those three decades, but some killjoys may wonder if it was worth the trip.
In-Fighting by Innuendo
They're trying something new in this political campaign--subtlety. The '08 candidates are using this unlikely weapon out of fear that voters may be turned off by the customary sledgehammer attack ads.
So reports Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post, citing commercials that ooze with good feelings about themselves but hide embedded barbs for their rivals.
A Romney ad features his super-wholesome family, hoping to remind viewers that Giuliani has been married three times with a second divorce that has left him alienated from his children.
"It's just essential," Romney intones, "to have a home where faith, where love of country, where determination, where all these features that are so much a part of American culture are taught to our kids."
Giuliani stresses his record as a mayor and prosecutor while telling voters they "are not going to find perfection" and, on the stump, suggests that candidates like Romney who don't admit mistakes in their lives may make some big ones in the Oval Office.
In his commercial, Obama says the country needs "a real honest conversation" about Social Security. "I don't want to put my finger out to the wind and see what the polls say," he reminds us, an oblique reference to Hillary You-Know-Who.
John McCain attacks pork-barrel spending by citing Clinton's effort to obtain $1 million for a Woodstock museum, noting that he missed the 1969 music festival because he "was tied up at the time" while the screen shows him as a wounded prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Political strategists seem to have concluded that blatant Karl Rove attack ads and Swift Boat commercials may backfire this time, but there is no guarantee that snide will be better. After being fed red meat for so long, voters may not lap up pablum.
So reports Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post, citing commercials that ooze with good feelings about themselves but hide embedded barbs for their rivals.
A Romney ad features his super-wholesome family, hoping to remind viewers that Giuliani has been married three times with a second divorce that has left him alienated from his children.
"It's just essential," Romney intones, "to have a home where faith, where love of country, where determination, where all these features that are so much a part of American culture are taught to our kids."
Giuliani stresses his record as a mayor and prosecutor while telling voters they "are not going to find perfection" and, on the stump, suggests that candidates like Romney who don't admit mistakes in their lives may make some big ones in the Oval Office.
In his commercial, Obama says the country needs "a real honest conversation" about Social Security. "I don't want to put my finger out to the wind and see what the polls say," he reminds us, an oblique reference to Hillary You-Know-Who.
John McCain attacks pork-barrel spending by citing Clinton's effort to obtain $1 million for a Woodstock museum, noting that he missed the 1969 music festival because he "was tied up at the time" while the screen shows him as a wounded prisoner of war in Vietnam.
Political strategists seem to have concluded that blatant Karl Rove attack ads and Swift Boat commercials may backfire this time, but there is no guarantee that snide will be better. After being fed red meat for so long, voters may not lap up pablum.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Best Leftover Turkey Recipe Ever
A contribution to humanity: From years of editing women's magazines and tasting test-kitchen results thereof, herewith a way with leftover turkey that will keep you from cursing the oversized bird you bought.
TURKEY TETRAZZINI
Ingredients: 3/4 cup butter or margarine, 3/4 cup flour, salt, 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, 1 quart milk, 2 cups undiluted chicken broth, 4 egg yolks, 1 cup heavy cream, 1/2 cup sherry, 1 pound thin spaghetti, 6 cups leftover turkey cut into cubes, 1 cup fresh or canned sliced mushrooms, 8 oz sharp Cheddar grated (2 cups).
Sauce: Melt butter in large pan, remove from heat. Stir in flour, nutmeg and salt until smooth. Gradually add milk and broth, stirring constantly. Boil 2 minutes until slightly thick.
In small bowl, beat egg yolks and cream. Beat in a little of the sauce, pour back into pan over low heat, stirring until hot but not to a boil. Stir in sherry.
Boil spaghetti, drain and return to kettle. Add 2 cups sauce and toss together. Divide in half and put into two 12-by-8-by-2 baking dishes, push back toward edges. Add 2 cups sauce to turkey and mushrooms, mix well and spoon half into center of each dish.
Sprinkle grated cheese, cover with foil and refrigerate 1 hour or even overnight. Preheat oven to 350F and bake, covered, 45 minutes. Spoon reheated leftover sauce over each serving. You can refreeze and have leftover leftovers.
Somewhat calorific, but then again, so are the bread and mayonnaise for turkey sandwiches, which won't taste nearly this good.
TURKEY TETRAZZINI
Ingredients: 3/4 cup butter or margarine, 3/4 cup flour, salt, 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg, 1 quart milk, 2 cups undiluted chicken broth, 4 egg yolks, 1 cup heavy cream, 1/2 cup sherry, 1 pound thin spaghetti, 6 cups leftover turkey cut into cubes, 1 cup fresh or canned sliced mushrooms, 8 oz sharp Cheddar grated (2 cups).
Sauce: Melt butter in large pan, remove from heat. Stir in flour, nutmeg and salt until smooth. Gradually add milk and broth, stirring constantly. Boil 2 minutes until slightly thick.
In small bowl, beat egg yolks and cream. Beat in a little of the sauce, pour back into pan over low heat, stirring until hot but not to a boil. Stir in sherry.
Boil spaghetti, drain and return to kettle. Add 2 cups sauce and toss together. Divide in half and put into two 12-by-8-by-2 baking dishes, push back toward edges. Add 2 cups sauce to turkey and mushrooms, mix well and spoon half into center of each dish.
Sprinkle grated cheese, cover with foil and refrigerate 1 hour or even overnight. Preheat oven to 350F and bake, covered, 45 minutes. Spoon reheated leftover sauce over each serving. You can refreeze and have leftover leftovers.
Somewhat calorific, but then again, so are the bread and mayonnaise for turkey sandwiches, which won't taste nearly this good.
Sleepless Shopping
Turkey leftovers and Christmas shopping are the traditional order of the day, but this is ridiculous.
Fearful of a slow Christmas season, the Big Ones opened their doors today in the middle of the night, AP reports--Best Buy and Wal-Mart at 5 A.M., J.C. Penney at 4. It's Black Friday, literally.
Early Birding seems contagious this year, with states rushing to move up their primaries. Are we living in a new Age of Anxiety?
Hope you didn't have too much Turkey Melt for breakfast.
Fearful of a slow Christmas season, the Big Ones opened their doors today in the middle of the night, AP reports--Best Buy and Wal-Mart at 5 A.M., J.C. Penney at 4. It's Black Friday, literally.
Early Birding seems contagious this year, with states rushing to move up their primaries. Are we living in a new Age of Anxiety?
Hope you didn't have too much Turkey Melt for breakfast.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
A Friend in the White House
On The Nation's web site, Bill Moyers talks about his father who never made over $100 a week in his life and voted for Franklin Roosevelt in four elections "because the President's my friend."
As a Depression child a decade older than Moyers, I can top that--my father never made more than $55 and worked up to 60 hours a week for it.
Our paths, Moyers' and mine, crossed in the 1960s and 1970s when he worked in Lyndon Johnson's White House and afterward as a commentator for CBS and NBC before finding a home in public television. As the voice of Americans who work hard for what they get, he has always been his father's son.
"My father got it," Moyers says "when he heard his friend in the White House talk about how 'a small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor--other people's lives.' My father knew FDR was talking for him when he said life was no longer free, liberty no longer real, men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness--against economic tyranny."
Contrast this with Moyers' assessment of Karl Rove who "modeled the Bush presidency on that of William McKinley, who was in the White House from 1897 to 1901, and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Hanna had one consummate passion--to serve corporate and imperial power...that businessmen should run the government and run it for personal profit."
Whoever takes over the White House next will be somebody's friend. The questions won't be as simple as they were in the last century or the one before that, but voters might want to give a thought to Moyers' father and Rove's role model before they make their choice.
As a Depression child a decade older than Moyers, I can top that--my father never made more than $55 and worked up to 60 hours a week for it.
Our paths, Moyers' and mine, crossed in the 1960s and 1970s when he worked in Lyndon Johnson's White House and afterward as a commentator for CBS and NBC before finding a home in public television. As the voice of Americans who work hard for what they get, he has always been his father's son.
"My father got it," Moyers says "when he heard his friend in the White House talk about how 'a small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor--other people's lives.' My father knew FDR was talking for him when he said life was no longer free, liberty no longer real, men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness--against economic tyranny."
Contrast this with Moyers' assessment of Karl Rove who "modeled the Bush presidency on that of William McKinley, who was in the White House from 1897 to 1901, and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Hanna had one consummate passion--to serve corporate and imperial power...that businessmen should run the government and run it for personal profit."
Whoever takes over the White House next will be somebody's friend. The questions won't be as simple as they were in the last century or the one before that, but voters might want to give a thought to Moyers' father and Rove's role model before they make their choice.
Scott McClellan's Script Tease
Say this much for Dana Perino: She may not be the most scintillating White House press secretary in history but, after writing her memoirs, she won't be performing the verbal strip tease Scott McClellan did this week to get attention for his.
Earlier in this slow news week, his publisher posted 121 words from McClellan's oevre that won't be available until next April:
"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
"There was one problem. It was not true.
"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself."
Most journalists (silly people) took this to mean that George W. Bush was "involved" in lies about Rove and Libby to the press.
But after getting attention with this admission, McClellan's publisher now tells us it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Peter Osnos of Public Affairs Books explains that his author "did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him" but told him what "he thought to be the case" and "didn't know it was not true."
Oh. Sounds a lot like the kind of work McClellan used to do from behind the White House podium.
The history of the Bush Administration's downfall can be traced in the arc of attractiveness of its spokespeople. When they were riding high, the media were held at bay by boring dough-faced types like McClellan and Ari Fleischer. Later, when the going got tough, they were replaced by the smoother and better-looking Tony Snow and Perino.
At this rate, Bush and Cheney should scouring Hollywood casting officers for a communications closer.
Earlier in this slow news week, his publisher posted 121 words from McClellan's oevre that won't be available until next April:
"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.
"There was one problem. It was not true.
"I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the Vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the President himself."
Most journalists (silly people) took this to mean that George W. Bush was "involved" in lies about Rove and Libby to the press.
But after getting attention with this admission, McClellan's publisher now tells us it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is. Peter Osnos of Public Affairs Books explains that his author "did not intend to suggest Bush lied to him" but told him what "he thought to be the case" and "didn't know it was not true."
Oh. Sounds a lot like the kind of work McClellan used to do from behind the White House podium.
The history of the Bush Administration's downfall can be traced in the arc of attractiveness of its spokespeople. When they were riding high, the media were held at bay by boring dough-faced types like McClellan and Ari Fleischer. Later, when the going got tough, they were replaced by the smoother and better-looking Tony Snow and Perino.
At this rate, Bush and Cheney should scouring Hollywood casting officers for a communications closer.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Bush's Madame Curie Moment
It's hard to picture the President in a lab coat, but the White House today is giving him credit for the newest advance in stem cell research.
Reacting to the news that scientists have succeeded in reprogramming skin cells to mimic embryonic stem cells, a Presidential adviser tells us today,
“This is very much in accord with the president’s vision from the get-go. I don’t think there’s any doubt that the president’s drawing of lines on cloning and embryo use was a positive factor in making this come to fruition.”
If the way to encourage advances is to thwart scientists' work, Bush should take his place alongside Madame Curie in the annals of medical breakthroughs.
"My feeling is that the political controversy set the field back four or five years," says James Thomson, who led a team at the University of Wisconsin in discovering human embryonic stem cells in 1998.
“I really don’t think anybody ought to take credit in light of the six-year delay we’ve had,” says Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican sponsor of the bill Bush vetoed in July 2006. “My own view is that science ought to be unfettered and that every possible alternative ought to be explored.
“You’ve got a life-and-death situation here, and if we can find something which is certifiably equivalent to embryonic stem cells, fine. But we are not there yet.”
Americans like Nancy Reagan and Michael J. Fox will be elated to learn about the new research, they are not likely to be hailing George W. Bush as a benefactor of mankind.
Reacting to the news that scientists have succeeded in reprogramming skin cells to mimic embryonic stem cells, a Presidential adviser tells us today,
“This is very much in accord with the president’s vision from the get-go. I don’t think there’s any doubt that the president’s drawing of lines on cloning and embryo use was a positive factor in making this come to fruition.”
If the way to encourage advances is to thwart scientists' work, Bush should take his place alongside Madame Curie in the annals of medical breakthroughs.
"My feeling is that the political controversy set the field back four or five years," says James Thomson, who led a team at the University of Wisconsin in discovering human embryonic stem cells in 1998.
“I really don’t think anybody ought to take credit in light of the six-year delay we’ve had,” says Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican sponsor of the bill Bush vetoed in July 2006. “My own view is that science ought to be unfettered and that every possible alternative ought to be explored.
“You’ve got a life-and-death situation here, and if we can find something which is certifiably equivalent to embryonic stem cells, fine. But we are not there yet.”
Americans like Nancy Reagan and Michael J. Fox will be elated to learn about the new research, they are not likely to be hailing George W. Bush as a benefactor of mankind.
Giving Thanks for President Kennedy
For anyone over 50, tomorrow will be not only Thanksgiving but the day JFK died 44 years ago. He has been gone now for almost as long as he lived and, in these days of White House infamy, not nearly as much in the national mind as his antagonist, Richard Nixon, whose all-time low approval ratings have just been eclipsed by George W. Bush.
A few years after the assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy wistfully told me that her husband was being remembered too much for how he died rather than what he had lived for. She was right. It was too soon then for Americans to appreciate what they had lost.
In 1960, I had made an unintentional contribution to Kennedy’s election. After my magazine ran a piece by Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Advice to the Next First Lady,” the producers of the “Tonight” show called me to ask Mrs. Roosevelt if she would appear with Jack Paar. To my surprise, she agreed.
On the way to the studio, I asked Mrs. Roosevelt, who had supported Adlai Stevenson during the convention and been visibly cool to JFK, what made her decide to take part in a talk show. “I want to help elect Senator Kennedy,” she said.
On the “Tonight” show, she did just that, comparing Kennedy to FDR during his first campaign in 1932, inspiring voters and responding to their enthusiasm, and predicted he would make a fine President. In Kennedy’s hairline victory, her testimonial may well have been significant, and he didn't disappoint her.
John F. Kennedy was the last president in memory who was still learning while in office. He admitted mistakes and profited from them.
Despite misgivings, he went ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba after being told Americans would be greeted as liberators and withdrew when he realized he had been misled, accepting “sole responsibility” for the fiasco.
As the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he put that lesson to use by overruling “experts” who wanted to bomb or invade Cubs and trusting his own instincts to avoid disaster.
After November 22, 1963 I wrote an editorial attempting to define the deep grief over his shocking death-—that beyond his attractiveness and intelligence, there was the loss of a leader “who was still growing—-in understanding, in skill, in compassion, in commitment."
Today's leading contenders for the Presidency are, for the most part, as cool and rational as Kennedy was when he was running for the office. For all our sakes, we can only hope that whoever wins can attain the stature he did in the thousand days he spent in the White House.
A few years after the assassination, Jacqueline Kennedy wistfully told me that her husband was being remembered too much for how he died rather than what he had lived for. She was right. It was too soon then for Americans to appreciate what they had lost.
In 1960, I had made an unintentional contribution to Kennedy’s election. After my magazine ran a piece by Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Advice to the Next First Lady,” the producers of the “Tonight” show called me to ask Mrs. Roosevelt if she would appear with Jack Paar. To my surprise, she agreed.
On the way to the studio, I asked Mrs. Roosevelt, who had supported Adlai Stevenson during the convention and been visibly cool to JFK, what made her decide to take part in a talk show. “I want to help elect Senator Kennedy,” she said.
On the “Tonight” show, she did just that, comparing Kennedy to FDR during his first campaign in 1932, inspiring voters and responding to their enthusiasm, and predicted he would make a fine President. In Kennedy’s hairline victory, her testimonial may well have been significant, and he didn't disappoint her.
John F. Kennedy was the last president in memory who was still learning while in office. He admitted mistakes and profited from them.
Despite misgivings, he went ahead with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba after being told Americans would be greeted as liberators and withdrew when he realized he had been misled, accepting “sole responsibility” for the fiasco.
As the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, he put that lesson to use by overruling “experts” who wanted to bomb or invade Cubs and trusting his own instincts to avoid disaster.
After November 22, 1963 I wrote an editorial attempting to define the deep grief over his shocking death-—that beyond his attractiveness and intelligence, there was the loss of a leader “who was still growing—-in understanding, in skill, in compassion, in commitment."
Today's leading contenders for the Presidency are, for the most part, as cool and rational as Kennedy was when he was running for the office. For all our sakes, we can only hope that whoever wins can attain the stature he did in the thousand days he spent in the White House.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Obama Boomlet, Oprah to Come
As in Iowa, there are small signs of momentum for Barack Obama in New Hampshire.
In a new CNN poll today, he has narrowed the gap behind Hillary Clinton to 36-22 percent from 43-20, but more significantly, only 24 percent of likely voters tell pollsters they have made a choice. Another 29 percent are leaning toward one candidate, 47 percent are undecided.
Now the campaign is poised to bring out their big weapon. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, a close Obama watcher, reports his telling voters that Oprah is coming to New Hampshire and will probably stump for him in Iowa, too. One of his supporters points out, "Oprah can say to women ‘You don't have to vote for the first woman president. Vote for what you need.'”
Even Rudy Giuliani is pitching in (for his own obvious reasons). After Obama told high-school students today not to emulate his own experimentation with drugs and alcohol at their age, America's Mayor expressed admiration:
“I respect his honesty in doing that. One of the things we need from our people running for office is not this pretense of perfection. The reality is...we’re all human beings. If we haven’t made mistakes, don’t vote for us, because we’ve got some big ones that are going to happen in the future.”
After that validation, it would be churlish of Obama to point out that Giuliani has kept making some big mistakes long after high school. At the moment, however, they are both busy chipping away at Hillary Clinton's image of perfection.
In a new CNN poll today, he has narrowed the gap behind Hillary Clinton to 36-22 percent from 43-20, but more significantly, only 24 percent of likely voters tell pollsters they have made a choice. Another 29 percent are leaning toward one candidate, 47 percent are undecided.
Now the campaign is poised to bring out their big weapon. Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times, a close Obama watcher, reports his telling voters that Oprah is coming to New Hampshire and will probably stump for him in Iowa, too. One of his supporters points out, "Oprah can say to women ‘You don't have to vote for the first woman president. Vote for what you need.'”
Even Rudy Giuliani is pitching in (for his own obvious reasons). After Obama told high-school students today not to emulate his own experimentation with drugs and alcohol at their age, America's Mayor expressed admiration:
“I respect his honesty in doing that. One of the things we need from our people running for office is not this pretense of perfection. The reality is...we’re all human beings. If we haven’t made mistakes, don’t vote for us, because we’ve got some big ones that are going to happen in the future.”
After that validation, it would be churlish of Obama to point out that Giuliani has kept making some big mistakes long after high school. At the moment, however, they are both busy chipping away at Hillary Clinton's image of perfection.
New Sing-Along in Iowa
If you believe the polls, voters are changing their tune in the first bellwether state for '08, putting Barack Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton and reversing their desire for experience over change.
Fifty-five percent say that a "new direction and new ideas" are their top priority, compared with 33 percent who favor "strength and experience," a shift from July, when 49 percent wanted change and 39 percent experience.
Their lyrics may come straight from Bob Dylan's "Blowing' in the Wind" of the 1960s:
"Come writers and critics/Who prophesize with your pen/And keep your eyes wide/The chance won't come again/And don't speak too soon/For the wheel's still in spin/And there's no tellin' who/That it's namin'./For the loser now/Will be later to win/For the times they are a-changin'."
On the Republican side, the wheel is turning toward Mike Huckabee catching up to Mitt Romney, both of them well ahead of Rudy Giuliani fighting Fred Thompson for third place.
All this can be summed up by a still earlier song about the contrariness of Iowans from "The Music Man":
“And we're so by God stubborn/We can stand touchin' noses/For a week at a time/And never see eye-to-eye.”
Fifty-five percent say that a "new direction and new ideas" are their top priority, compared with 33 percent who favor "strength and experience," a shift from July, when 49 percent wanted change and 39 percent experience.
Their lyrics may come straight from Bob Dylan's "Blowing' in the Wind" of the 1960s:
"Come writers and critics/Who prophesize with your pen/And keep your eyes wide/The chance won't come again/And don't speak too soon/For the wheel's still in spin/And there's no tellin' who/That it's namin'./For the loser now/Will be later to win/For the times they are a-changin'."
On the Republican side, the wheel is turning toward Mike Huckabee catching up to Mitt Romney, both of them well ahead of Rudy Giuliani fighting Fred Thompson for third place.
All this can be summed up by a still earlier song about the contrariness of Iowans from "The Music Man":
“And we're so by God stubborn/We can stand touchin' noses/For a week at a time/And never see eye-to-eye.”
Monday, November 19, 2007
Exit White House Musharraf Critic
With Pakistan imploding, the only top Bush official who has been criticizing President Pervez Musharraf in public for some time now is leaving her position.
In July, Frances Fragos Townsend, the President's homeland security advisor, who resigned today, said that Musharraf's cease-fire with tribal leaders to drain support for Islamic extremism was a failure, acknowledging frustration that Al Qaeda had rebuilt its infrastructure and links to affiliates, while keeping Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since 9/11.
“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” she said. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”
At the same time, Townsend was suggesting that, if Musharraf wouldn't take action, the US would.
"Just because we don't speak about things publicly doesn't mean we're not doing things you talk about," Townsend told a TV interviewer who asked why the US does not conduct special operations and other measures to cripple Al Qaeda.
"Job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table,’" she said, "...no question that we will use any instrument at our disposal" to deal with Al Qaeda and bin Laden.
Townsend's unexplained departure now to "pursue some private-sector opportunities" comes at a time of crisis with Pakistan.
There is no way of knowing why the one-time official in the Clinton Justice Department, who was mentioned as a possible successor to Alberto Gonzales, is leaving now, but Bush fatigue, disappointment and disagreement over what to do in Pakistan are certainly among the possible reasons.
In July, Frances Fragos Townsend, the President's homeland security advisor, who resigned today, said that Musharraf's cease-fire with tribal leaders to drain support for Islamic extremism was a failure, acknowledging frustration that Al Qaeda had rebuilt its infrastructure and links to affiliates, while keeping Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants alive for nearly six years since 9/11.
“It hasn’t worked for Pakistan,” she said. “It hasn’t worked for the United States.”
At the same time, Townsend was suggesting that, if Musharraf wouldn't take action, the US would.
"Just because we don't speak about things publicly doesn't mean we're not doing things you talk about," Townsend told a TV interviewer who asked why the US does not conduct special operations and other measures to cripple Al Qaeda.
"Job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table,’" she said, "...no question that we will use any instrument at our disposal" to deal with Al Qaeda and bin Laden.
Townsend's unexplained departure now to "pursue some private-sector opportunities" comes at a time of crisis with Pakistan.
There is no way of knowing why the one-time official in the Clinton Justice Department, who was mentioned as a possible successor to Alberto Gonzales, is leaving now, but Bush fatigue, disappointment and disagreement over what to do in Pakistan are certainly among the possible reasons.
Mud and Milquetoast
For a contrast in styles of playing political catch-up, consider two candidates who have been getting Dear John letters from voters in the Presidential polls--Edwards and McCain.
Accused of “throwing mud...right out of the Republican playbook" by the Democratic front runner, John Edwards responded yesterday, “If anybody, including Senator Clinton, thinks this is mudslinging--this is milquetoast, compared to what we’re going to see next fall." On the TV talk shows, he defined his attacks as passion rather than anger.
Meanwhile, John McCain is making the case for civility. “If I’m your nominee and Senator Clinton is the nominee of the other party," he told a university audience in New Hampshire, "the country will face as clear a choice as any in recent memory.
“She will be a formidable candidate. And while our differences are many and profound, I intend this to be a respectful debate. She and I disagree over America’s direction, and it is a serious disagreement. But I don’t doubt her ability to lead this country where she thinks it should go.”
On his bus, McCain told reporters, obviously aiming at Rudy Giuliani, “I don’t think you should take shots at her, like imitating her voice. I don’t know what you gain by doing that.”
Observers of the differences in the candidates' approaches might be tempted to look for explanations in their combat experiences--McCain in the skies over Vietnam and prison camps below, Edwards (and Giuliani) arguing cases in courtrooms.
As Murray Kempton used to say, the less at stake, the more bitter the battles become.
Accused of “throwing mud...right out of the Republican playbook" by the Democratic front runner, John Edwards responded yesterday, “If anybody, including Senator Clinton, thinks this is mudslinging--this is milquetoast, compared to what we’re going to see next fall." On the TV talk shows, he defined his attacks as passion rather than anger.
Meanwhile, John McCain is making the case for civility. “If I’m your nominee and Senator Clinton is the nominee of the other party," he told a university audience in New Hampshire, "the country will face as clear a choice as any in recent memory.
“She will be a formidable candidate. And while our differences are many and profound, I intend this to be a respectful debate. She and I disagree over America’s direction, and it is a serious disagreement. But I don’t doubt her ability to lead this country where she thinks it should go.”
On his bus, McCain told reporters, obviously aiming at Rudy Giuliani, “I don’t think you should take shots at her, like imitating her voice. I don’t know what you gain by doing that.”
Observers of the differences in the candidates' approaches might be tempted to look for explanations in their combat experiences--McCain in the skies over Vietnam and prison camps below, Edwards (and Giuliani) arguing cases in courtrooms.
As Murray Kempton used to say, the less at stake, the more bitter the battles become.
Better Than Bombing: Photo-Op Diplomacy
Confusion is the prevailing mode over an Administration initiative for a 24-hour Mideast conference to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks before President Bush leaves office.
With a target date (maybe) less than two weeks away, there is no firm schedule and no agenda. No invitations have been sent for the meeting at Annapolis, but diplomats from countries hoping to attend have been booking hotel rooms all over Washington for late November and early December.
"No one seems to know what is happening," one senior Arab envoy tells the Washington Post, speaking anonymously to avoid appearing out of the loop. "I am completely lost."
"American officials," the New York Times reports, "are not sure that the negotiations...will succeed. Others worry that...the Bush administration has not done the diplomatic groundwork necessary to get the negotiations off to a rapid and serious start, or that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not be able to spend the time necessary to keep the parties moving ahead when the difficult issues of borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem surface in all their excruciating detail."
It sounds like something being arranged by those who planned for post-war Iraq, but the good news is that this time they are promoting the long-forgotten "road map" to Mideast peace, and there are no military operations involved.
With a target date (maybe) less than two weeks away, there is no firm schedule and no agenda. No invitations have been sent for the meeting at Annapolis, but diplomats from countries hoping to attend have been booking hotel rooms all over Washington for late November and early December.
"No one seems to know what is happening," one senior Arab envoy tells the Washington Post, speaking anonymously to avoid appearing out of the loop. "I am completely lost."
"American officials," the New York Times reports, "are not sure that the negotiations...will succeed. Others worry that...the Bush administration has not done the diplomatic groundwork necessary to get the negotiations off to a rapid and serious start, or that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will not be able to spend the time necessary to keep the parties moving ahead when the difficult issues of borders, security, refugees and Jerusalem surface in all their excruciating detail."
It sounds like something being arranged by those who planned for post-war Iraq, but the good news is that this time they are promoting the long-forgotten "road map" to Mideast peace, and there are no military operations involved.
Will Rudy Be as Bulletproof as Bill Clinton?
As the year began, the Giuliani campaign seemed doomed by its own lost playbook, which listed his liabilities in bullet form: his third marriage after publicly cheating on his second wife; his consulting business with a less-than-sterling partner, Bernard Kerik; his liberal positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control, to say nothing of a New York style that might not charm red-states residents.
Yet here he is at year's end leading in the polls, the cross-dresser darling of the Religious right, with even the redoubtable Frank Rich in his Sunday Times column reduced to citing Judith Regan as the "silver bullet" that might pierce the heart of his campaign.
Not likely. More and more, Rudy is resembling the Bill Clinton of 1992, who (with an assist from you-know-who) survived his Gennifer Flowers scandal and went on to overcome stories of smoking marijuana ("I didn't inhale") and dodging service in Vietnam.
Now, as Hillary Clinton takes flak for not making her First Lady papers public fast enough, Giuliani is skating past complaints about moving 2,100 boxes of documents from his tenure as mayor to his own tax-exempt foundation before turning them back to the city. Only the mildest of questions has been raised about the papers, which include 9/11 records, being "sanitized" for campaign purposes.
After a media makeover, the current Mrs. Giuliani has emerged to make her first political speech, to an audience of cancer advocates, describing her not-then husband's reaction to hearing the news about his own in 2000.
The campaign's Southern strategy has worked well enough to bring Pat Robertson on board, even after having to dump Louisiana Sen. David Vitter of D.C. Madam fame and a South Carolina chairman accused of dealing cocaine.
After all this and more mishaps, any Judith Regan revelations from her pillow talk with Kerik and about the Murdoch empire's attempts to protect America's Mayor from gossip seem unlikely to derail him.
Only Mitt Romney's money and Iowa voters' orneriness might slow Rudy down. But then again, he could take heart from Bill Clinton's 1992 pattern, when the "Comeback Kid" bypassed Iowa and lost in New Hampshire but still went on to run the table of later primaries and get the nomination.
If the Giuliani campaign needs money, they might want to consider auctioning off signed copies of that lost playbook to die-hard supporters who have faith Rudy will prove it wrong.
Yet here he is at year's end leading in the polls, the cross-dresser darling of the Religious right, with even the redoubtable Frank Rich in his Sunday Times column reduced to citing Judith Regan as the "silver bullet" that might pierce the heart of his campaign.
Not likely. More and more, Rudy is resembling the Bill Clinton of 1992, who (with an assist from you-know-who) survived his Gennifer Flowers scandal and went on to overcome stories of smoking marijuana ("I didn't inhale") and dodging service in Vietnam.
Now, as Hillary Clinton takes flak for not making her First Lady papers public fast enough, Giuliani is skating past complaints about moving 2,100 boxes of documents from his tenure as mayor to his own tax-exempt foundation before turning them back to the city. Only the mildest of questions has been raised about the papers, which include 9/11 records, being "sanitized" for campaign purposes.
After a media makeover, the current Mrs. Giuliani has emerged to make her first political speech, to an audience of cancer advocates, describing her not-then husband's reaction to hearing the news about his own in 2000.
The campaign's Southern strategy has worked well enough to bring Pat Robertson on board, even after having to dump Louisiana Sen. David Vitter of D.C. Madam fame and a South Carolina chairman accused of dealing cocaine.
After all this and more mishaps, any Judith Regan revelations from her pillow talk with Kerik and about the Murdoch empire's attempts to protect America's Mayor from gossip seem unlikely to derail him.
Only Mitt Romney's money and Iowa voters' orneriness might slow Rudy down. But then again, he could take heart from Bill Clinton's 1992 pattern, when the "Comeback Kid" bypassed Iowa and lost in New Hampshire but still went on to run the table of later primaries and get the nomination.
If the Giuliani campaign needs money, they might want to consider auctioning off signed copies of that lost playbook to die-hard supporters who have faith Rudy will prove it wrong.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Stealing from the Sick
Over the next year, Presidential candidates will prattle about health care, but none of them will talk about the elephant in the operating room--the massive fraud that bleeds the system.
Another piece of the picture emerges today in a whistle-blower lawsuit that, according to the New York Times, claims "improper sales practices, together with erroneous accounting, are invisibly draining millions of dollars out of vital public programs like Medicare through overcharges or unauthorized uses...systemic fraud across a whole network of companies and more than 7,000 health care institutions."
Cynthia Fitzgerald's sickening account of her experience in the medical supply business involves kickbacks, bribes and bid-rigging. For complaining about such illegalities, she was, of course, fired as a trouble-maker.
Now she is suing under the False Claims Act which, according to Taxpayers Against Fraud, has helped the government recover more than $20 billion from health care companies since 1986, $5 billion of it in the last two years.
But that may be small change compared to the blood money that is hemorrhaging everywhere. According to the FBI, health care crime by hospitals, doctors, pharmacists and other care providers is adding up to between $60 and $100 billion a year in the system that is saving us from socialized medicine.
If we could stop that, it would pay for almost six months of the war in Iraq.
Another piece of the picture emerges today in a whistle-blower lawsuit that, according to the New York Times, claims "improper sales practices, together with erroneous accounting, are invisibly draining millions of dollars out of vital public programs like Medicare through overcharges or unauthorized uses...systemic fraud across a whole network of companies and more than 7,000 health care institutions."
Cynthia Fitzgerald's sickening account of her experience in the medical supply business involves kickbacks, bribes and bid-rigging. For complaining about such illegalities, she was, of course, fired as a trouble-maker.
Now she is suing under the False Claims Act which, according to Taxpayers Against Fraud, has helped the government recover more than $20 billion from health care companies since 1986, $5 billion of it in the last two years.
But that may be small change compared to the blood money that is hemorrhaging everywhere. According to the FBI, health care crime by hospitals, doctors, pharmacists and other care providers is adding up to between $60 and $100 billion a year in the system that is saving us from socialized medicine.
If we could stop that, it would pay for almost six months of the war in Iraq.
Nuclear Hide-and-Seek
It keeps getting worse. Now we learn our government has given Pakistan $100 million and a "raft of equipment" to safeguard nuclear weapons since 9/11, but we have no idea whether any of it helped because they won't show us where or how what we gave them is being used.
Beleaguered President Musharraf says Pakistan's nuclear controls are "the best in the world" but won't reveal location of the weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel his country is now producing.
After six years of secrecy, the Bush Administration is now starting to worry that Musharraf's "Trust me" on the nukes may be no more reliable than his assurances about fighting terrorists on the Afghanistan border.
The New York Times now admits it "has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable," but delayed publication when the Bush Administration "argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons."
In retrospect, there might have been some value in going public with the internal debate that pitted atomic scientists who favored technical sharing against the State Department, which prevailed by ruling such transfers were illegal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, says reluctance to share warhead security technology was making the world more dangerous. “Lawyers say it’s classified,” he told the Times. “That’s nonsense...You want to make sure that the guys who have their hands on the weapons can’t use them without proper authorization.”
Now we are faced with the nightmare of nuclear weapons that are who-knows-where and protected who-knows-how in an unstable nation whose leading scientist was once selling its technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA who played a crucial role in stopping that proliferation, now says, “I am confident...the Pakistanis are very serious about securing this material, but also that someone in Pakistan is very intent on getting their hands on it.”
Beleaguered President Musharraf says Pakistan's nuclear controls are "the best in the world" but won't reveal location of the weapons or the amount or type of new bomb-grade fuel his country is now producing.
After six years of secrecy, the Bush Administration is now starting to worry that Musharraf's "Trust me" on the nukes may be no more reliable than his assurances about fighting terrorists on the Afghanistan border.
The New York Times now admits it "has known details of the secret program for more than three years, based on interviews with a range of American officials and nuclear experts, some of whom were concerned that Pakistan’s arsenal remained vulnerable," but delayed publication when the Bush Administration "argued that premature disclosure could hurt the effort to secure the weapons."
In retrospect, there might have been some value in going public with the internal debate that pitted atomic scientists who favored technical sharing against the State Department, which prevailed by ruling such transfers were illegal under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, says reluctance to share warhead security technology was making the world more dangerous. “Lawyers say it’s classified,” he told the Times. “That’s nonsense...You want to make sure that the guys who have their hands on the weapons can’t use them without proper authorization.”
Now we are faced with the nightmare of nuclear weapons that are who-knows-where and protected who-knows-how in an unstable nation whose leading scientist was once selling its technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea.
John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA who played a crucial role in stopping that proliferation, now says, “I am confident...the Pakistanis are very serious about securing this material, but also that someone in Pakistan is very intent on getting their hands on it.”
Saturday, November 17, 2007
All the Money You Could Want
Most of us go through life wishing for more money but are never faced with deciding what to do with endless amounts. A news story today suggests how much imagination it takes to deal with no limits.
After a tax scam that yielded millions, the FBI raided a modest home and garage in Washington to find a Mercedes, tons of designer shoes and luggage, silver-plated iguana figurines, 13 watches including a Rolex, 90 purses (47 from Chanel), flutes and goblets by Steuben, a Faberge egg and a silver bar cart as well as courtesy cards used by regular gamblers in half a dozen Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos, phone bills of $1500 a month and travel receipts from all over. They filled 25 boxes with clothes and listed 414 unidentified pieces in the inventory.
But all this is only a testament to the banality of greed, a kind of Home Shopping Network vision of huge wealth. Without imagination, the woman who apparently embezzled more than $20 million from the D.C. government used it to become a glorified bag lady.
How much more complicated is it for the Warren Buffets, Bill Gateses, and Oprahs of the world, trying to do good, a Mike Bloomberg, pondering whether to buy the White House, or a Rupert Murdoch, too busy trying to acquire more power and influence to spend much actual money in his own life?
For some, it can produce deprivation by surfeit, psychological chaos (pace Paris Hilton and her ilk). For box-office actors and superstar athletes, there are booby traps of hubris and self-importance.
For politicians controlling huge amounts of other people's money, see the President and Congress squabbling over which is acting more like the teenager with an unlimited credit card.
For the rest of us, there is the iffy consolation of believing it's too much money that may actually be the root of all evil.
After a tax scam that yielded millions, the FBI raided a modest home and garage in Washington to find a Mercedes, tons of designer shoes and luggage, silver-plated iguana figurines, 13 watches including a Rolex, 90 purses (47 from Chanel), flutes and goblets by Steuben, a Faberge egg and a silver bar cart as well as courtesy cards used by regular gamblers in half a dozen Las Vegas and Atlantic City casinos, phone bills of $1500 a month and travel receipts from all over. They filled 25 boxes with clothes and listed 414 unidentified pieces in the inventory.
But all this is only a testament to the banality of greed, a kind of Home Shopping Network vision of huge wealth. Without imagination, the woman who apparently embezzled more than $20 million from the D.C. government used it to become a glorified bag lady.
How much more complicated is it for the Warren Buffets, Bill Gateses, and Oprahs of the world, trying to do good, a Mike Bloomberg, pondering whether to buy the White House, or a Rupert Murdoch, too busy trying to acquire more power and influence to spend much actual money in his own life?
For some, it can produce deprivation by surfeit, psychological chaos (pace Paris Hilton and her ilk). For box-office actors and superstar athletes, there are booby traps of hubris and self-importance.
For politicians controlling huge amounts of other people's money, see the President and Congress squabbling over which is acting more like the teenager with an unlimited credit card.
For the rest of us, there is the iffy consolation of believing it's too much money that may actually be the root of all evil.
New Kind of Presidential Debate
Would you rather see the candidates grilled by Tim Russert and Wolf Blitzer or a snowman and a gun nut cradling his "baby," a semi-automatic weapon?
Close call, but isn't there an alternative? The question is prompted by Paul Krugman's column after this week's Democratic debate, claiming Barack Obama was "a sucker" for signing on to fears that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" that will go bankrupt before Baby Boomers can collect what's due them.
Most voters, it's fair to say, would like to know who's blowing smoke here--politicians or dueling economists--but we're not likely to find out from sound-bite answers to ignorant questions.
In our treasured but messy democracy, there is room for college girls to ask Hillary Clinton about diamonds and pearls but so far not for informed political scientists, historians and economists to ask knowledgeable questions that could show us who really understands the issues.
At the end of this month, CNN will give us Republican hopefuls being discomfited by cutesy YouTubers, a spectacle that will undoubtedly produce entertaining insights into how well the candidates handle social embarrassment.
But if we want to know what they know about issues that will affect our lives when one of them takes the oath, couldn't there be at least one debate in which they face those talking heads the networks trot out only on election night to give us perspective on what's been going on or at other times we only hear on PBS?
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, but total ignorance, as we know only too well from recent experience, can be disastrous. Along with the snowman and Chris Matthews, can't we have at least one debate with questions from Krugman and his academic peers of various political persuasions?
We should be willing to take the risk of being bored to death to try to avoid being governed by morons.
Close call, but isn't there an alternative? The question is prompted by Paul Krugman's column after this week's Democratic debate, claiming Barack Obama was "a sucker" for signing on to fears that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" that will go bankrupt before Baby Boomers can collect what's due them.
Most voters, it's fair to say, would like to know who's blowing smoke here--politicians or dueling economists--but we're not likely to find out from sound-bite answers to ignorant questions.
In our treasured but messy democracy, there is room for college girls to ask Hillary Clinton about diamonds and pearls but so far not for informed political scientists, historians and economists to ask knowledgeable questions that could show us who really understands the issues.
At the end of this month, CNN will give us Republican hopefuls being discomfited by cutesy YouTubers, a spectacle that will undoubtedly produce entertaining insights into how well the candidates handle social embarrassment.
But if we want to know what they know about issues that will affect our lives when one of them takes the oath, couldn't there be at least one debate in which they face those talking heads the networks trot out only on election night to give us perspective on what's been going on or at other times we only hear on PBS?
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, but total ignorance, as we know only too well from recent experience, can be disastrous. Along with the snowman and Chris Matthews, can't we have at least one debate with questions from Krugman and his academic peers of various political persuasions?
We should be willing to take the risk of being bored to death to try to avoid being governed by morons.
Friday, November 16, 2007
A Lou Dobbs Binge
Avert your eyes. This is going to be ugly, like a drunk falling off the wagon.
Over a year ago, I raised the question, "Is Lou Dobbs running for something?" Today we have the answer:
"Lou Dobbs for President?" John Fund writes in the Wall Street Journal. "Don’t' laugh...Friends of Mr. Dobbs say he is seriously considering a race..."
In a moment of blinding clarity a while back, I swore off writing about Dobbs. Dobbs-bashing was becoming addictive, and friends were threatening an intervention.
But today's news has me bellying up to the bar again for straight shots. So here's Dobbs in your eye.
And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here...
I think I'm beginning to slur my links. Somebody, please, call AA.
Over a year ago, I raised the question, "Is Lou Dobbs running for something?" Today we have the answer:
"Lou Dobbs for President?" John Fund writes in the Wall Street Journal. "Don’t' laugh...Friends of Mr. Dobbs say he is seriously considering a race..."
In a moment of blinding clarity a while back, I swore off writing about Dobbs. Dobbs-bashing was becoming addictive, and friends were threatening an intervention.
But today's news has me bellying up to the bar again for straight shots. So here's Dobbs in your eye.
And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here...
I think I'm beginning to slur my links. Somebody, please, call AA.
Kos and Karl Rove, Kolumnists
It's a little like watching your prim maiden aunt get sloshed at Thanksgiving dinner to see Newsweek hiring Markos Moulitsas and Karl Rove as contributors. Cutesy can be embarrassing.
For the Kos founder, the question of being co-opted comes up in much the way the MSM glommed on to the hippies in the 1960s and packaged their rebellion out of existence. Moulitsas will have to be careful to preserve his edge.
Rove is another kettle of stale fish. Instead of letting him slink away after poisoning American politics, here he comes as Elder Statesman to pontificate in a magazine owned by the heirs of Kay Graham, who backed Woodward and Bernstein in taking down Nixon's White House illegality.
What next? Is Time dickering to sign up Dick Cheney after January 2009?
For the Kos founder, the question of being co-opted comes up in much the way the MSM glommed on to the hippies in the 1960s and packaged their rebellion out of existence. Moulitsas will have to be careful to preserve his edge.
Rove is another kettle of stale fish. Instead of letting him slink away after poisoning American politics, here he comes as Elder Statesman to pontificate in a magazine owned by the heirs of Kay Graham, who backed Woodward and Bernstein in taking down Nixon's White House illegality.
What next? Is Time dickering to sign up Dick Cheney after January 2009?
Clinton-Clark vs. Giuliani-Huckabee?
It's getting to be crunch time.
After ten minutes as a food fight, the Democratic debate settled into an edgy pep rally after Hillary Clinton stopped John Edwards with the magic word, mud. The rest was more or less collegial self-puffery, not Obama's best medium--he needs more time to get on an inspirational roll.
Once again, Joe Biden made a good case for becoming Secretary of State in what's beginning to look more and more like another Clinton Administration, especially if the Republicans end up with a Giuliani-Huckabee ticket.
There are a multitude of good choices for running mate--Obama, if she dares, but more likely someone who has managerial experience, former Gen. Wesley Clark or an ex-governor like Tom Vilsack or Mark Warner, if he wants to preside over rather than become a member of the Senate.
Unless a few thousand voters in Iowa or New Hampshire say otherwise, inevitability is in the air.
After ten minutes as a food fight, the Democratic debate settled into an edgy pep rally after Hillary Clinton stopped John Edwards with the magic word, mud. The rest was more or less collegial self-puffery, not Obama's best medium--he needs more time to get on an inspirational roll.
Once again, Joe Biden made a good case for becoming Secretary of State in what's beginning to look more and more like another Clinton Administration, especially if the Republicans end up with a Giuliani-Huckabee ticket.
There are a multitude of good choices for running mate--Obama, if she dares, but more likely someone who has managerial experience, former Gen. Wesley Clark or an ex-governor like Tom Vilsack or Mark Warner, if he wants to preside over rather than become a member of the Senate.
Unless a few thousand voters in Iowa or New Hampshire say otherwise, inevitability is in the air.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Friends, Foes and Who Knows?
The Musharraf Mess should remind Presidential candidates and voters that we are not living in Bush World any more, where other countries are either allies or enemies, good or bad guys to whom we either send tons of money or bunker-busting bombs.
Belatedly, the Administration is leaking word that they have doubts that Musharraf "can survive in office and have begun discussing what might come next."
Lesson #1 for the next President: If your foreign-policy people take five years to discover a not-very-subtle military dictator has been blowing smoke about his dedication to democracy and playing us for saps about opposing Islamic extremists, you need a whole new State Department and CIA. Or if they have been doing their jobs and nobody around you has been listening, you are surrounded by the wrong people.
Lesson #2: When an iffy ally like Musharraf is sitting on a stockpile of nuclear weapons, you don't want to wait until he is on the way out to start finding out where those weapons are, who controls them and reaching out to those who do.
Lesson # 3: Have all the photo ops you want with the Saudis, Iraqi Sunnis and al-Maliki's mob, but keep a close eye on what they are doing when there are no lights and cameras.
In a world where foreign relations have morphed from checkers to three-dimensional chess, the next White House is going to need a new generation of policy makers and analysts who can see beyond the outdated clichés of the Kissingers, Brzezinskis and Podhoretzes.
Voters should be looking for clues about candidates who understand that.
Belatedly, the Administration is leaking word that they have doubts that Musharraf "can survive in office and have begun discussing what might come next."
Lesson #1 for the next President: If your foreign-policy people take five years to discover a not-very-subtle military dictator has been blowing smoke about his dedication to democracy and playing us for saps about opposing Islamic extremists, you need a whole new State Department and CIA. Or if they have been doing their jobs and nobody around you has been listening, you are surrounded by the wrong people.
Lesson #2: When an iffy ally like Musharraf is sitting on a stockpile of nuclear weapons, you don't want to wait until he is on the way out to start finding out where those weapons are, who controls them and reaching out to those who do.
Lesson # 3: Have all the photo ops you want with the Saudis, Iraqi Sunnis and al-Maliki's mob, but keep a close eye on what they are doing when there are no lights and cameras.
In a world where foreign relations have morphed from checkers to three-dimensional chess, the next White House is going to need a new generation of policy makers and analysts who can see beyond the outdated clichés of the Kissingers, Brzezinskis and Podhoretzes.
Voters should be looking for clues about candidates who understand that.
Candidate Zingers We Won't Hear
No need to watch the Democratic debate from Las Vegas tonight--all the best lines are already available from observers who don't have to exercise the caution that candidates do.
A professor of political science, if you can believe it, offers a below-the-belt zinger against Hillary. Says Ross K. Baker of Rutgers: “One absolutely devastating accusation...is that she is gullible--she bought into two false story lines, one from her husband about Monica Lewinsky and one from President Bush about Iraq.” Ugh.
In her New York Times column, Gail Collins has a lighter touch in scripting John Edwards' answer on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants: "The fact that I once voted yes should not be interpreted as anything but a no. And do not call this waffling. There is only one waffler in this pack, and I don’t even like the way she dresses."
Edwards, says Collins, was "cheerfulness incarnate four years ago...Then he morphed into a sorrowful populist who thought we should vote for him because he cared the most about the poor. Now he’s running around like a rabid gerbil, telling people he should be president because he’s the angriest. Soon, he’s going to run out of adjectives to embody."
Obama, Collins says, is having trouble coming off as a "mean unifier...the new post-millennial candidate who hates petty partisanship. (So ’90s!) That makes it a little tough to go out on debate day and try to kneecap his opponent."
By comparison, the candidates themselves are going to sound boring but at least the writers strike will spare them from having to go up against the punch lines of Jon Stewart, David Letterman and Bill Maher this week.
A professor of political science, if you can believe it, offers a below-the-belt zinger against Hillary. Says Ross K. Baker of Rutgers: “One absolutely devastating accusation...is that she is gullible--she bought into two false story lines, one from her husband about Monica Lewinsky and one from President Bush about Iraq.” Ugh.
In her New York Times column, Gail Collins has a lighter touch in scripting John Edwards' answer on driver's licenses for illegal immigrants: "The fact that I once voted yes should not be interpreted as anything but a no. And do not call this waffling. There is only one waffler in this pack, and I don’t even like the way she dresses."
Edwards, says Collins, was "cheerfulness incarnate four years ago...Then he morphed into a sorrowful populist who thought we should vote for him because he cared the most about the poor. Now he’s running around like a rabid gerbil, telling people he should be president because he’s the angriest. Soon, he’s going to run out of adjectives to embody."
Obama, Collins says, is having trouble coming off as a "mean unifier...the new post-millennial candidate who hates petty partisanship. (So ’90s!) That makes it a little tough to go out on debate day and try to kneecap his opponent."
By comparison, the candidates themselves are going to sound boring but at least the writers strike will spare them from having to go up against the punch lines of Jon Stewart, David Letterman and Bill Maher this week.
Pardoning the Turkey
The White House should cancel this year's annual event of sparing an awkward bird just before Thanksgiving because George Bush did that before the fourth of July when he freed Scooter Libby.
But the ceremony is still on. After the Rose Garden pardon, the turkey will be flown first class to Orlando to be grand marshal of “Disney’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.” After the parade, guests will be able to socialize with the bird in a backyard at Magic Kingdom Park.
No news about Libby's plans for the holidays, but it's safe to assume he won't be leading any parades or receiving visits from old friends of the Washington press corps at Disney World or anywhere else.
"The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted," Bush said on July 2nd. So far this year he has exercised it for Dick Cheney's former chief of staff and a 45-pound fowl.
But the ceremony is still on. After the Rose Garden pardon, the turkey will be flown first class to Orlando to be grand marshal of “Disney’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.” After the parade, guests will be able to socialize with the bird in a backyard at Magic Kingdom Park.
No news about Libby's plans for the holidays, but it's safe to assume he won't be leading any parades or receiving visits from old friends of the Washington press corps at Disney World or anywhere else.
"The Constitution gives the President the power of clemency to be used when he deems it to be warranted," Bush said on July 2nd. So far this year he has exercised it for Dick Cheney's former chief of staff and a 45-pound fowl.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Writers Strike: Not Just the Money
In the ideas-and-images industry, there has always been a gulf between labor and management. Seeing writers on picket lines now only confirms where, in our society, the money and power always goes.
On one of my first magazine jobs, the editor was Wade Nichols, a writer at heart, who created a family-like atmosphere where on Friday afternoons everyone on the payroll gathered in his office to drink and talk their way toward their weekend lives.
When the publisher died, Nichols took that that job too. "Do you really want to do all that business stuff?" I asked. "No," he answered," but I don't want to see some son-of-a-bitch do it and ruin what we have."
When I became editor, they put me on the company's board of directors, and I felt like an atheist in church, watching even the best people take on a quasi-religious fervor for maximizing profit. They seemed to be under the influence of a narcotic that suppresses conscience and brings out low cunning that might make a carnival pitchman blush.
Such zealotry may explain why the current strike, which is costing organizations millions, is now in its tenth day with no end in sight. What the writers are asking won't put a dent in their huge profits but, for the corporate true believers, it isn't the money, it's the principle that's at stake.
They have to keep their faith.
On one of my first magazine jobs, the editor was Wade Nichols, a writer at heart, who created a family-like atmosphere where on Friday afternoons everyone on the payroll gathered in his office to drink and talk their way toward their weekend lives.
When the publisher died, Nichols took that that job too. "Do you really want to do all that business stuff?" I asked. "No," he answered," but I don't want to see some son-of-a-bitch do it and ruin what we have."
When I became editor, they put me on the company's board of directors, and I felt like an atheist in church, watching even the best people take on a quasi-religious fervor for maximizing profit. They seemed to be under the influence of a narcotic that suppresses conscience and brings out low cunning that might make a carnival pitchman blush.
Such zealotry may explain why the current strike, which is costing organizations millions, is now in its tenth day with no end in sight. What the writers are asking won't put a dent in their huge profits but, for the corporate true believers, it isn't the money, it's the principle that's at stake.
They have to keep their faith.
The Presidency as Dating Game
In her New York Times columns, Maureen Dowd has two recurring themes--the White House and the romantic woes of modern women.
Today she brings all the clichés about both together in relating Hillary Clinton's campaign to a new study showing the same old stereotypes: Men like women who are smart and successful, but not more so than themselves, and preferably with hour-glass figures (because, another "scientific" study suggests, "hips plumped up by omega-3 fatty acids could mean smarter women bearing smarter kids.")
So women still have to play down their smarts and success "to bolster the egos of the men they date.”
In the Clinton-era movie, "The American President," which led to the TV series, "West Wing," a widower in the Oval Office falls hard for a sexy, super-smart lobbyist and finds his approval ratings in free fall as a result. But love conquers all when he comes to his senses and gets macho over saving the environment and outlawing hand guns.
All good clean fun, but Hillary Clinton is not running for calendar girl or movie star so it might be a good idea to stow all the talk about dating, pants suits and cleavage for a while to concentrate on slightly more relevant issues, like present and future wars, the economy, health care and such.
If Ms. Dowd thinks Hillary is pushy and Barack is a stud, maybe she should tell it to her diary, not the rest of us.
Today she brings all the clichés about both together in relating Hillary Clinton's campaign to a new study showing the same old stereotypes: Men like women who are smart and successful, but not more so than themselves, and preferably with hour-glass figures (because, another "scientific" study suggests, "hips plumped up by omega-3 fatty acids could mean smarter women bearing smarter kids.")
So women still have to play down their smarts and success "to bolster the egos of the men they date.”
In the Clinton-era movie, "The American President," which led to the TV series, "West Wing," a widower in the Oval Office falls hard for a sexy, super-smart lobbyist and finds his approval ratings in free fall as a result. But love conquers all when he comes to his senses and gets macho over saving the environment and outlawing hand guns.
All good clean fun, but Hillary Clinton is not running for calendar girl or movie star so it might be a good idea to stow all the talk about dating, pants suits and cleavage for a while to concentrate on slightly more relevant issues, like present and future wars, the economy, health care and such.
If Ms. Dowd thinks Hillary is pushy and Barack is a stud, maybe she should tell it to her diary, not the rest of us.
Giuliani, Murdoch and Judith Regan
She is making news again, this time claiming Rupert Murdoch's people asked her to cover up an affair with Bernard Kerik to protect Rudy Giuliani's presidential ambitions. It's vintage Judith Regan to tie her own interests, this time in a lawsuit against Murdoch, to the headlines.
The charge comes at the start of a 70-page filing for $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at Harper Collins and its parent company, News Corporation.
Before she was famous, Regan sounded me out about writing a book about fatherhood. When I started talking about the complexity of the subject, she cut me off.
"No, no," she said, alluding to her own experience. "It has to be about bastards abandoning their children. The title is 'DaddyWho?'"
After that brief encounter, Regan parlayed her colorful certainty into a notorious career as a book publisher and TV host, most of it under the aegis of Murdoch, a kindred spirit when it comes to eschewing ambivalence.
Now here they are, locked in combat, after Murdoch fired her over O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" book, which he had apparently approved but backed off when it provoked widespread outrage.
Regan, the New York Times reports, "had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, Regan Books, began work on his memoir, 'The Lost Son.' In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near ground zero that had been donated as a haven for rescue and recovery workers."
Regan has an unerring flair for getting attention and perfect pitch for bad taste. It's a wonder Murdoch ever let her go.
The charge comes at the start of a 70-page filing for $100 million in damages for what she says was a campaign to smear and discredit her by her bosses at Harper Collins and its parent company, News Corporation.
Before she was famous, Regan sounded me out about writing a book about fatherhood. When I started talking about the complexity of the subject, she cut me off.
"No, no," she said, alluding to her own experience. "It has to be about bastards abandoning their children. The title is 'DaddyWho?'"
After that brief encounter, Regan parlayed her colorful certainty into a notorious career as a book publisher and TV host, most of it under the aegis of Murdoch, a kindred spirit when it comes to eschewing ambivalence.
Now here they are, locked in combat, after Murdoch fired her over O.J. Simpson's "If I Did It" book, which he had apparently approved but backed off when it provoked widespread outrage.
Regan, the New York Times reports, "had an affair with Mr. Kerik, who is married, beginning in the spring of 2001, when her imprint, Regan Books, began work on his memoir, 'The Lost Son.' In December 2004, after the relationship had ended and shortly after Mr. Kerik’s homeland security nomination fell apart, newspapers reported that the two had carried on the affair at an apartment near ground zero that had been donated as a haven for rescue and recovery workers."
Regan has an unerring flair for getting attention and perfect pitch for bad taste. It's a wonder Murdoch ever let her go.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
How to Make a War Disappear
Iraq is fading from the minds of the American public, and politicians, pollsters and pundits are trying to figure out how it happened.
Although 2007 casualties have been the highest in five years of war, a combination of Congressional Democrats' ineffectual efforts to stop or slow it down along with Republican unwillingness to buck Bush in numbers large enough to override vetoes has created an Iraq fatigue in both the media and public.
Now, Politico reports, "Democrats plan to spend the December recess reviewing their strategy and determining if they missed opportunities to put limitations, even if they were smaller than war activists were demanding, on Bush’s war policies.
"Some Democratic strategists are warning that congressional leaders are 'muddling through' with a strategy that carries both political and military risks for the party."
"News about the Iraq war," the Pew Research Center reports, "does not dominate the public's consciousness nearly as much as it did last winter" and cites figures to support that contention.
There is enough blame for this to go around--divided Democrats, absence of Republican spine, Petraeus' flacking for the Surge, too little MSM courage coupled with too much posturing and puffing on the blogosphere--all adding up to impotence in resisting a pathologically stubborn Administration.
Now facing a new year, with the Presidential contest upstaging all else, where do the vast majority of Americans who want to end the most disastrous war in our history go from here?
Republicans, under the cover of electorate ennui, will try to ride it out behind their White House candidates' bluster. Democrats will keep promising to get us out but not just yet.
Like it or not, those who hate this war are faced with no better hope than the kind of incremental easing out that seemed unthinkable a year ago.
We can only hope they don't botch that, too.
Although 2007 casualties have been the highest in five years of war, a combination of Congressional Democrats' ineffectual efforts to stop or slow it down along with Republican unwillingness to buck Bush in numbers large enough to override vetoes has created an Iraq fatigue in both the media and public.
Now, Politico reports, "Democrats plan to spend the December recess reviewing their strategy and determining if they missed opportunities to put limitations, even if they were smaller than war activists were demanding, on Bush’s war policies.
"Some Democratic strategists are warning that congressional leaders are 'muddling through' with a strategy that carries both political and military risks for the party."
"News about the Iraq war," the Pew Research Center reports, "does not dominate the public's consciousness nearly as much as it did last winter" and cites figures to support that contention.
There is enough blame for this to go around--divided Democrats, absence of Republican spine, Petraeus' flacking for the Surge, too little MSM courage coupled with too much posturing and puffing on the blogosphere--all adding up to impotence in resisting a pathologically stubborn Administration.
Now facing a new year, with the Presidential contest upstaging all else, where do the vast majority of Americans who want to end the most disastrous war in our history go from here?
Republicans, under the cover of electorate ennui, will try to ride it out behind their White House candidates' bluster. Democrats will keep promising to get us out but not just yet.
Like it or not, those who hate this war are faced with no better hope than the kind of incremental easing out that seemed unthinkable a year ago.
We can only hope they don't botch that, too.
No Whitewater for Giuliani
Is the 9/11 sainthood of America's Mayor too radioactive for opponents to attack?
A headline in today's Washington Post says, "Giuliani Campaign Tries to Minimize Fallout From Kerik Indictment" but so far other Republican Presidential candidates have tiptoed around the subject. As contrast, imagine the reaction if Kerik had been one of Hillary Clinton's closest associates.
"Mitt Romney," the Post reports, "declined to comment on whether Kerik's legal woes might pose a political problem for Giuliani, but he called Kerik's indictment on tax fraud and other charges 'very sad and disappointing.'"
John McCain had former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge at his side when he alluded to Kerik. "Supposedly his mission was to help train Iraqi police. He stayed a couple of months, got up and left," McCain said. "That should have been part of anybody's judgment before they would recommend that individual to be head of the Department of Homeland Security."
Only his campaign manager went any further. "A president's judgment matters," he said in a memo, "and Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly placed personal loyalty over regard for the facts."
Even this tame criticism brought a reaction from Giuliani. “I'd be very surprised if John did that,” he said. “John is a very good friend. I probably have about 20 quotes from John since all of this became public...[describing] me as a hero.” He claimed that not vetting Kerik carefully enough was a "mistake."
Giuliani is talking about the former bodyguard and driver he appointed as Police Commissioner despite reports of mob links and over the objection of half his Mayoral Cabinet in 2000, kept at his side on 9/11 and afterward made a partner of his consulting firm with the slogan of "Integrity, Optimism, Courage, Preparedness, Communication, Accountability."
Giuliani is also the godfather of two of Kerik's children.
In "Leadership," the best-selling book the former mayor wrote in 2002, there is a chapter titled "Surround Yourself With Great People." If there is a sequel, it will have to include advice on "How to Dump and Distance Yourself From Great People Who Have Been Indicted for Corruption."
So far Giuliani has been masterful at that aspect of 21st century leadership.
A headline in today's Washington Post says, "Giuliani Campaign Tries to Minimize Fallout From Kerik Indictment" but so far other Republican Presidential candidates have tiptoed around the subject. As contrast, imagine the reaction if Kerik had been one of Hillary Clinton's closest associates.
"Mitt Romney," the Post reports, "declined to comment on whether Kerik's legal woes might pose a political problem for Giuliani, but he called Kerik's indictment on tax fraud and other charges 'very sad and disappointing.'"
John McCain had former Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge at his side when he alluded to Kerik. "Supposedly his mission was to help train Iraqi police. He stayed a couple of months, got up and left," McCain said. "That should have been part of anybody's judgment before they would recommend that individual to be head of the Department of Homeland Security."
Only his campaign manager went any further. "A president's judgment matters," he said in a memo, "and Rudy Giuliani has repeatedly placed personal loyalty over regard for the facts."
Even this tame criticism brought a reaction from Giuliani. “I'd be very surprised if John did that,” he said. “John is a very good friend. I probably have about 20 quotes from John since all of this became public...[describing] me as a hero.” He claimed that not vetting Kerik carefully enough was a "mistake."
Giuliani is talking about the former bodyguard and driver he appointed as Police Commissioner despite reports of mob links and over the objection of half his Mayoral Cabinet in 2000, kept at his side on 9/11 and afterward made a partner of his consulting firm with the slogan of "Integrity, Optimism, Courage, Preparedness, Communication, Accountability."
Giuliani is also the godfather of two of Kerik's children.
In "Leadership," the best-selling book the former mayor wrote in 2002, there is a chapter titled "Surround Yourself With Great People." If there is a sequel, it will have to include advice on "How to Dump and Distance Yourself From Great People Who Have Been Indicted for Corruption."
So far Giuliani has been masterful at that aspect of 21st century leadership.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Too Principled to Be President?
John McCain is the Anti-Giuliani of the Republican field. He doesn't equivocate, exaggerate or evade, qualities that might make a good President but a terrible candidate, particularly in a party whose leaders haven't told the truth since Bob Dole.
Now McCain is speaking out against soft-money ads in South Carolina ostensibly pushing for passage of Wounded Warriors legislation to improve veterans' health care, which has widespread bipartisan support, but are really a back-door pitch for his candidacy, among others.
The Senator who championed the McCain-Feingold bill to reform campaign finance is having none of it. “I have condemned those ads,” he said on Fox News yesterday.
His opponents insist McCain is demurring with a wink and a nod, but that has never been his style. If anything, he has hurt himself with an abundance of bluntness.
As a result of a recent Supreme Court decision, soft-money groups will be operating in this election with even less disclosure than in 2004, the glory days of the Swift Boat ads, which McCain criticized back then.
Both parties are gearing up for record amounts of this kind of public deception, a way for candidates to save their halos and their money by letting anonymous backers spend unlimited money to lie for them.
It may be a little complicated for sound bites but the candidates of both parties should be pressed about their positions on all this in the upcoming debates.
Now McCain is speaking out against soft-money ads in South Carolina ostensibly pushing for passage of Wounded Warriors legislation to improve veterans' health care, which has widespread bipartisan support, but are really a back-door pitch for his candidacy, among others.
The Senator who championed the McCain-Feingold bill to reform campaign finance is having none of it. “I have condemned those ads,” he said on Fox News yesterday.
His opponents insist McCain is demurring with a wink and a nod, but that has never been his style. If anything, he has hurt himself with an abundance of bluntness.
As a result of a recent Supreme Court decision, soft-money groups will be operating in this election with even less disclosure than in 2004, the glory days of the Swift Boat ads, which McCain criticized back then.
Both parties are gearing up for record amounts of this kind of public deception, a way for candidates to save their halos and their money by letting anonymous backers spend unlimited money to lie for them.
It may be a little complicated for sound bites but the candidates of both parties should be pressed about their positions on all this in the upcoming debates.
Obama, Hot and Cold
On Meet the Press yesterday, Barack Obama seemed tentative, defensive and, of all things, wishy-washy. No one could have guessed that the night before, at the Democrats' Jefferson-Jackson dinner, he brought down the house.
"The passion he showed," political columnist David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register wrote, "should help him close the gap on Hillary Clinton...His oratory was moving, and he successfully contrasted himself with the others--especially Clinton--without being snide or nasty about it."
"When I am the nominee of this party," Obama told Democrats, "the Republican nominee will not be able to say I voted for the war in Iraq, or that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran, or that I support Bush-Cheney policies of not talking to leaders that we don't like...I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s...I don't want to pit red America against blue America."
He was the last to speak at 11 o'clock after four hours of oratory by others and apparently wowed the crowd, but the next morning with Tim Russert, he was defensively answering questions with "Look,..."
Walter Shapiro in Salon puts it just right: "The fiery Obama of Saturday night had been replaced on Sunday morning by a replicant, a tepid candidate mostly concerned with avoiding mistakes rather than winning converts."
It's getting to be too late in the campaign to be blowing hot and cold. Will the real Obama stand up and stop taking time for a nap on national TV?
"The passion he showed," political columnist David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register wrote, "should help him close the gap on Hillary Clinton...His oratory was moving, and he successfully contrasted himself with the others--especially Clinton--without being snide or nasty about it."
"When I am the nominee of this party," Obama told Democrats, "the Republican nominee will not be able to say I voted for the war in Iraq, or that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt on Iran, or that I support Bush-Cheney policies of not talking to leaders that we don't like...I don't want to spend the next year or the next four years re-fighting the same fights that we had in the 1990s...I don't want to pit red America against blue America."
He was the last to speak at 11 o'clock after four hours of oratory by others and apparently wowed the crowd, but the next morning with Tim Russert, he was defensively answering questions with "Look,..."
Walter Shapiro in Salon puts it just right: "The fiery Obama of Saturday night had been replaced on Sunday morning by a replicant, a tepid candidate mostly concerned with avoiding mistakes rather than winning converts."
It's getting to be too late in the campaign to be blowing hot and cold. Will the real Obama stand up and stop taking time for a nap on national TV?
Nuclear Shell Game
If we had a competent, open-minded and subtle Administration, the questions of what to do about Pakistan would still be dicey. As things stand, our clueless President, out-of-it Secretary of State and politically damaged diplomatic corps seem like rubes at the fair watching Musharraf run his games of repression and promises of free elections with no idea of where the nuclear pea is.
Nightmares that Pakistan might "lose control over a nuclear arsenal of uncertain size--estimated at from 55 to 115 weapons," the New York Times reports, are driving fears in Washington, London and Paris.
The Pakistan president has insisted his nuclear controls are "the best in the world," but, over the years, his assurances about everything have turned out to be full of empty bluster and, now that his control of the country is shaky, can we take the chance of believing him?
In a situation like this, it would be comforting to think that US intelligence assets have some answers but, even if they do, with our "What, me worry?" President and Vice President surrounded by Neo-Cons obsessed with Iran's nuclear potential, is anybody in charge of the titrating of carrots-and-sticks financial aid, covert actions and contingency planning that are needed?
"If General Musharraf is overthrown," the Times reports, "no one is quite sure what will happen to the team he has entrusted to safeguard the arsenal. There is some hope that the military as an institution could reliably keep things under control no matter who is in charge, but that is just a hope.
“'It’s a very professional military,'” said a senior American official who is trying to manage the crisis and insisted on anonymity because the White House has said this problem will not be discussed in public. “'But the truth is, we don’t know how many of the safeguards are institutionalized, and how many are dependent on Musharraf’s guys.'”
In a situation where "don't know" and "hope" could lead to disaster, the track record of this White House is not reassuring. From the outside, it looks as if regime change in Washington is more urgent than in Islamabad.
Nightmares that Pakistan might "lose control over a nuclear arsenal of uncertain size--estimated at from 55 to 115 weapons," the New York Times reports, are driving fears in Washington, London and Paris.
The Pakistan president has insisted his nuclear controls are "the best in the world," but, over the years, his assurances about everything have turned out to be full of empty bluster and, now that his control of the country is shaky, can we take the chance of believing him?
In a situation like this, it would be comforting to think that US intelligence assets have some answers but, even if they do, with our "What, me worry?" President and Vice President surrounded by Neo-Cons obsessed with Iran's nuclear potential, is anybody in charge of the titrating of carrots-and-sticks financial aid, covert actions and contingency planning that are needed?
"If General Musharraf is overthrown," the Times reports, "no one is quite sure what will happen to the team he has entrusted to safeguard the arsenal. There is some hope that the military as an institution could reliably keep things under control no matter who is in charge, but that is just a hope.
“'It’s a very professional military,'” said a senior American official who is trying to manage the crisis and insisted on anonymity because the White House has said this problem will not be discussed in public. “'But the truth is, we don’t know how many of the safeguards are institutionalized, and how many are dependent on Musharraf’s guys.'”
In a situation where "don't know" and "hope" could lead to disaster, the track record of this White House is not reassuring. From the outside, it looks as if regime change in Washington is more urgent than in Islamabad.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Sorriest Assassin of Them All
This week, when Arthur Bremer was released after 35 years in prison, it barely made the news, another irony in his long, fruitless search for fame by killing someone famous.
If he is of any interest at all, Bremer signifies what happened to insane fame in the television age. Before him, assassins of public figures, from John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald, had some political motive, however twisted.
Bremer, totally apolitical, wanted only to be seen on TV. In 1972, he dogged Richard Nixon for days, but the President was well-protected by the Secret Service and Vietnam war protesters got in Bremer's way when he tried to approach him at a rally.
So he settled for white supremacist George Wallace, a former Alabama governor who had run for president as an independent in 1968, even though he, as Bremer noted in his diary, would not be "worth more than 3 minutes on network news."
But even after lowering his sights, Bremer was so inept he was almost caught after accidentally firing a gun in his hotel room and somehow managing to wedge another weapon so deep into his car that it was only recovered after he shot Wallace four times on May 15, 1972, severing his spinal cord and paralyzing him.
As police arrested him, Bremer asked, "How much do you think I'll get for my memoirs?"
What the former busboy got was a sentence of 53 years and total obscurity. He missed one accidental chance for notoriety when Nixon's dirty tricksters tried but failed to plant campaign literature for the 1972 Democratic candidate George McGovern in Bremer's apartment.
Doomed to anonymity, he nonetheless paved the way for Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon, and John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan in 1980, as well as providing inspiration for the weird assassin, Travis Bickle, in the movie, "Taxi Driver."
Copycats got semi-famous for doing what he tried to do, and now Arthur Bremer is back out in the world once again, where nobody will know who he is.
If he is of any interest at all, Bremer signifies what happened to insane fame in the television age. Before him, assassins of public figures, from John Wilkes Booth to Lee Harvey Oswald, had some political motive, however twisted.
Bremer, totally apolitical, wanted only to be seen on TV. In 1972, he dogged Richard Nixon for days, but the President was well-protected by the Secret Service and Vietnam war protesters got in Bremer's way when he tried to approach him at a rally.
So he settled for white supremacist George Wallace, a former Alabama governor who had run for president as an independent in 1968, even though he, as Bremer noted in his diary, would not be "worth more than 3 minutes on network news."
But even after lowering his sights, Bremer was so inept he was almost caught after accidentally firing a gun in his hotel room and somehow managing to wedge another weapon so deep into his car that it was only recovered after he shot Wallace four times on May 15, 1972, severing his spinal cord and paralyzing him.
As police arrested him, Bremer asked, "How much do you think I'll get for my memoirs?"
What the former busboy got was a sentence of 53 years and total obscurity. He missed one accidental chance for notoriety when Nixon's dirty tricksters tried but failed to plant campaign literature for the 1972 Democratic candidate George McGovern in Bremer's apartment.
Doomed to anonymity, he nonetheless paved the way for Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon, and John Hinckley, who shot Ronald Reagan in 1980, as well as providing inspiration for the weird assassin, Travis Bickle, in the movie, "Taxi Driver."
Copycats got semi-famous for doing what he tried to do, and now Arthur Bremer is back out in the world once again, where nobody will know who he is.
The Nation as Head Case
Joe Lieberman and Frank Rich agree about something: America is mentally ill.
"We are a people in clinical depression," Rich writes in his New York Times column today. Sen. Lieberman dissents slightly, saying it is only Democrats who are “politically paranoid.”
Depressed or paranoid, according to the good doctors, we have to pull up our socks and get our heads straight.
But our mood disorder may be more like the "national malaise" Jimmy Carter diagnosed, which lifted as soon as he left the Oval Office.
After seven years of Bush-Cheney syndrome, who wouldn't be more than a little crazed? At Johns Hopkins University the other day, Dr. Lieberman presented “a case study in the distrust and partisan polarization that now poisons our body politic on even the most sensitive issues of national security.”
The Bush-Cheney quack cites "wild conspiracy theories" of left-winger bloggers that the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment was an excuse to attack Iran. After Iraq, he contends, only mad people could suspect that.
More evidence of political derangement, from the other direction, is Rich's equating the Democrats' confirmation of Martin Mukasey as Attorney General with what Pervez Musharraf is doing in Pakistan.
Rich, normally a voice of reason, goes off the rails today asserting that Sens. Schumer and Feinstein were "willing to sacrifice principles to head off the next ticking bomb" in approving Mukasey without his condemnation of waterboarding in a way somehow parallel to Musharraf's power grab in Pakistan.
Metaphors can stretch only so far without getting nutty. The Administration's madness should not become a contagion that keeps critics from making the distinction between the repression of a dictator and a political compromise over starting to undo some of Bush's damage to the US Justice Department.
That way lies madness.
"We are a people in clinical depression," Rich writes in his New York Times column today. Sen. Lieberman dissents slightly, saying it is only Democrats who are “politically paranoid.”
Depressed or paranoid, according to the good doctors, we have to pull up our socks and get our heads straight.
But our mood disorder may be more like the "national malaise" Jimmy Carter diagnosed, which lifted as soon as he left the Oval Office.
After seven years of Bush-Cheney syndrome, who wouldn't be more than a little crazed? At Johns Hopkins University the other day, Dr. Lieberman presented “a case study in the distrust and partisan polarization that now poisons our body politic on even the most sensitive issues of national security.”
The Bush-Cheney quack cites "wild conspiracy theories" of left-winger bloggers that the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment was an excuse to attack Iran. After Iraq, he contends, only mad people could suspect that.
More evidence of political derangement, from the other direction, is Rich's equating the Democrats' confirmation of Martin Mukasey as Attorney General with what Pervez Musharraf is doing in Pakistan.
Rich, normally a voice of reason, goes off the rails today asserting that Sens. Schumer and Feinstein were "willing to sacrifice principles to head off the next ticking bomb" in approving Mukasey without his condemnation of waterboarding in a way somehow parallel to Musharraf's power grab in Pakistan.
Metaphors can stretch only so far without getting nutty. The Administration's madness should not become a contagion that keeps critics from making the distinction between the repression of a dictator and a political compromise over starting to undo some of Bush's damage to the US Justice Department.
That way lies madness.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Mailer
He wanted to write The Great American Novel but changed the face of journalism instead. He died today at 84, leaving behind a torrent of words and an outsized public persona.
Norman Mailer was the opposite of shy. At a cocktail party, drink in hand, in front of a TV camera and, above all, on the printed page, he poured out opinions and indelible impressions for half a century. An early collection of essays was aptly titled, "Advertisements for Myself."
His World War II novel, "The Naked and the Dead," made him famous but he will be remembered, along with Tom Wolfe, for the New Journalism of the 1960s. Coming to it from opposite directions, Wolfe, a reporter by trade, and Mailer the novelist created something as different from traditional journalism as "Moby Dick" is from a tract on whaling.
In 1968, Harper's turned over a full issue to Mailer's account of the Vietnam protest march on the Pentagon, which later as a book titled "Armies of the Dead" won both a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
The next year, after a beery lunch and boozy dinner with a few New Journalist friends, Mailer decided to run for Mayor of New York and, in a put-on campaign, drew over 40,000 votes.
A decade later, he won another Pulitzer for "The Executioner's Song," about the last year in the life of Gary Gilmore, a remorseless killer. In between and afterward, he wrote ambitious novels, feuded with Feminists, stabbed one of his wives and fathered nine children.
A contemporary of mine, he was the ultimate opposite in temperament. A year ago, on a documentary about Marilyn Monroe, I was interviewed about my experiences in working with and getting to know her in the 1950s, but much more of PBS' time was devoted to Mailer who never met her but whose fantasies had filled a book and were vividly fascinating.
He never wrote The Great American Novel, but he did change the way several generations of us see the world.
Norman Mailer was the opposite of shy. At a cocktail party, drink in hand, in front of a TV camera and, above all, on the printed page, he poured out opinions and indelible impressions for half a century. An early collection of essays was aptly titled, "Advertisements for Myself."
His World War II novel, "The Naked and the Dead," made him famous but he will be remembered, along with Tom Wolfe, for the New Journalism of the 1960s. Coming to it from opposite directions, Wolfe, a reporter by trade, and Mailer the novelist created something as different from traditional journalism as "Moby Dick" is from a tract on whaling.
In 1968, Harper's turned over a full issue to Mailer's account of the Vietnam protest march on the Pentagon, which later as a book titled "Armies of the Dead" won both a Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.
The next year, after a beery lunch and boozy dinner with a few New Journalist friends, Mailer decided to run for Mayor of New York and, in a put-on campaign, drew over 40,000 votes.
A decade later, he won another Pulitzer for "The Executioner's Song," about the last year in the life of Gary Gilmore, a remorseless killer. In between and afterward, he wrote ambitious novels, feuded with Feminists, stabbed one of his wives and fathered nine children.
A contemporary of mine, he was the ultimate opposite in temperament. A year ago, on a documentary about Marilyn Monroe, I was interviewed about my experiences in working with and getting to know her in the 1950s, but much more of PBS' time was devoted to Mailer who never met her but whose fantasies had filled a book and were vividly fascinating.
He never wrote The Great American Novel, but he did change the way several generations of us see the world.
Front Runners Hear Footsteps
Weeks before primary voting in The Election That Looked Like It Would Never Come, front runners in both parties are losing some of their luster.
Yesterday's indictment of Bernard Kerik may finally slow down Giuliani's broken-field running toward the Republican nomination. He won't swivel-hip away as effortlessly from the corruption of his post-9/11 business partner as he has from abortion, gun control, gay rights and multiple marriages. Conservatives, burned by so many crooks in Congress, may balk at iffy integrity in the White House.
In Iowa, Rudy's woes give new hope to Mitt and his money, Fred Thompson's sleepy stumping, John ("I was right about Iraq") McCain, and there could a perfect storm brewing for Mike Huckabee, moving up in the polls and fund-raising, who's getting praise from Bush's former favorite speech writer and is about to reel in his first Religious Right whale, James Dobson.
To the left, Barack Obama has finally found his campaign voice, competitive if not combative, and Hillary Clinton's national lead is narrowing. New Hampshire polls next week will show a closer race and in Iowa, it's a tight three-way with John Edwards, who could now claim residence there, not far behind.
Signs of Clinton concern abound: being caught planting questions, setting up still another web site to counter attacks, the former President trying to deflect blame for the 1993 health fiasco away from his First Lady.
His emergence was prompted by Obama's needle that "part of the record she’s running on is having worked on health care" while also suggesting "that somehow she doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it didn’t work.”
Not exactly brass knuckles, but Obama is beginning to blend the politics of hope with some nimble in-fighting, pointing out that "to say there are no disagreements and that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have hasn’t been paying attention.”
Voters are beginning to pay attention. Stay tuned.
Yesterday's indictment of Bernard Kerik may finally slow down Giuliani's broken-field running toward the Republican nomination. He won't swivel-hip away as effortlessly from the corruption of his post-9/11 business partner as he has from abortion, gun control, gay rights and multiple marriages. Conservatives, burned by so many crooks in Congress, may balk at iffy integrity in the White House.
In Iowa, Rudy's woes give new hope to Mitt and his money, Fred Thompson's sleepy stumping, John ("I was right about Iraq") McCain, and there could a perfect storm brewing for Mike Huckabee, moving up in the polls and fund-raising, who's getting praise from Bush's former favorite speech writer and is about to reel in his first Religious Right whale, James Dobson.
To the left, Barack Obama has finally found his campaign voice, competitive if not combative, and Hillary Clinton's national lead is narrowing. New Hampshire polls next week will show a closer race and in Iowa, it's a tight three-way with John Edwards, who could now claim residence there, not far behind.
Signs of Clinton concern abound: being caught planting questions, setting up still another web site to counter attacks, the former President trying to deflect blame for the 1993 health fiasco away from his First Lady.
His emergence was prompted by Obama's needle that "part of the record she’s running on is having worked on health care" while also suggesting "that somehow she doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that it didn’t work.”
Not exactly brass knuckles, but Obama is beginning to blend the politics of hope with some nimble in-fighting, pointing out that "to say there are no disagreements and that we’re all holding hands and singing ‘Kumbaya’ is obviously not what I had in mind and not how I function. And anybody who thinks I have hasn’t been paying attention.”
Voters are beginning to pay attention. Stay tuned.
Friday, November 09, 2007
Rudy's Albatross
The indictment today of Bernard Kerik promises to be much more than a case of a politically incorrect crony that Rudy Giuliani can fob off as easily as he has shed so much of the past in his campaign.
America's Mayor has already admitted a "mistake" in recommending his old friend for the Bush Cabinet position of Director of Homeland Security, but there are booby traps galore in the history of their post-9/11 partnership, Giuliani-Kerik, which was paid millions of dollars for advising companies, doing federal work and consulting with clients overseas.
In 2006, Giuliani's former Police Commissioner pled guilty to ethics violations after an investigation by the Bronx District Attorney's Office and was ordered to pay $221,000. Today's announcement will be, according to the New York Times, that a grand jury has voted to indict Kerik "on conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and substantive counts of wire and mail fraud, under a statute often used in corruption cases, according to people briefed on the vote."
The unveiling of Kerik's history promises a pattern of corruption, and Giuliani is going to have to do a lot better than throwing his former partner and best friend off the bus with a political shrug.
It has opened a garbage can of worms about Giuliani's amassing of millions from his 9/11 aura with such intensity that he couldn't find time to serve on the Iraq Study Commission.
Voters are going to be asking who will protect them from the man who is promising to protect America from foreign terrorists.
America's Mayor has already admitted a "mistake" in recommending his old friend for the Bush Cabinet position of Director of Homeland Security, but there are booby traps galore in the history of their post-9/11 partnership, Giuliani-Kerik, which was paid millions of dollars for advising companies, doing federal work and consulting with clients overseas.
In 2006, Giuliani's former Police Commissioner pled guilty to ethics violations after an investigation by the Bronx District Attorney's Office and was ordered to pay $221,000. Today's announcement will be, according to the New York Times, that a grand jury has voted to indict Kerik "on conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, and substantive counts of wire and mail fraud, under a statute often used in corruption cases, according to people briefed on the vote."
The unveiling of Kerik's history promises a pattern of corruption, and Giuliani is going to have to do a lot better than throwing his former partner and best friend off the bus with a political shrug.
It has opened a garbage can of worms about Giuliani's amassing of millions from his 9/11 aura with such intensity that he couldn't find time to serve on the Iraq Study Commission.
Voters are going to be asking who will protect them from the man who is promising to protect America from foreign terrorists.
Mixed Feelings About the Sixties
Suddenly we are back in the 1960s with Hillary Clinton citing virtues for what she did back then, Barack Obama claiming he is of a new generation above the divisiveness of those days and Tom Brokaw, as usual, writing a book to explain it all.
At her alma mater, Wellesley, this week, Clinton said, "I need your help to make the calls and knock on the doors and talk to your friends and family. That's what I did back in 1968 when a group of my dear friends and I jumped in a car…and would drive from Wellesley to Manchester, New Hampshire, stuffing envelopes and walking precincts for Eugene McCarthy. He was running for president on a platform of ending the Vietnam War. I am running for president on part of a platform of ending the war in Iraq."
In Iowa, Obama is telling voters, "Senator Clinton and others have been fighting some of the same fights since the '60s. It makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done. And I think that's what people hunger for."
Politicians hype everything about themselves, including the accident of when they were born, but the 1960s were formative years for today's America, exposing fault lines in our national life that still divide us.
From my ancient perspective, what happened back then goes too deep for glib generalizations and political pandering.
On the one hand, the first generation of Americans not entirely driven to outdo their parents materially turned to moral superiority--about war, race, gender. In the 1950s movie, "The Wild One," biker Marlon Brando, asked what he's rebelling against, answers, "What have you got?"
There was awakening from complacency to challenge injustice and try to create a better society. But there was also self-righteous and self-serving acting out by draft-card burners, culminating in the chaos of the 1968 Democratic convention where anti-war protesters and delegates, including me, were tear-gassed.
We started the decade with JFK's "Ask what you can do for your country" and ended up with Richard Nixon and his dirty tricksters in the White House.
The culture wars began. People Nixon called "The Silent Majority" were appalled by privileged kids publicly trashing their traditional values at Woodstock and elsewhere, paving the way for Reagan's revival a decade later of the fictional feel-good America he lived in as an actor in 1940s movies.
In looking ahead to 2008, it would be a mistake to overuse the 1960s as a template. America was going through social and political growing pains back then that are not quite parallel to what we face now, but at the same time, there is no virtue in dismissing all that and assuming we can just turn to a blank new page in our history.
If Republicans are living in a nostalgic past, Democrats can't just push ahead to a fantasy future. There are enough questions to answer about what we do now in today's world.
At her alma mater, Wellesley, this week, Clinton said, "I need your help to make the calls and knock on the doors and talk to your friends and family. That's what I did back in 1968 when a group of my dear friends and I jumped in a car…and would drive from Wellesley to Manchester, New Hampshire, stuffing envelopes and walking precincts for Eugene McCarthy. He was running for president on a platform of ending the Vietnam War. I am running for president on part of a platform of ending the war in Iraq."
In Iowa, Obama is telling voters, "Senator Clinton and others have been fighting some of the same fights since the '60s. It makes it very difficult for them to bring the country together to get things done. And I think that's what people hunger for."
Politicians hype everything about themselves, including the accident of when they were born, but the 1960s were formative years for today's America, exposing fault lines in our national life that still divide us.
From my ancient perspective, what happened back then goes too deep for glib generalizations and political pandering.
On the one hand, the first generation of Americans not entirely driven to outdo their parents materially turned to moral superiority--about war, race, gender. In the 1950s movie, "The Wild One," biker Marlon Brando, asked what he's rebelling against, answers, "What have you got?"
There was awakening from complacency to challenge injustice and try to create a better society. But there was also self-righteous and self-serving acting out by draft-card burners, culminating in the chaos of the 1968 Democratic convention where anti-war protesters and delegates, including me, were tear-gassed.
We started the decade with JFK's "Ask what you can do for your country" and ended up with Richard Nixon and his dirty tricksters in the White House.
The culture wars began. People Nixon called "The Silent Majority" were appalled by privileged kids publicly trashing their traditional values at Woodstock and elsewhere, paving the way for Reagan's revival a decade later of the fictional feel-good America he lived in as an actor in 1940s movies.
In looking ahead to 2008, it would be a mistake to overuse the 1960s as a template. America was going through social and political growing pains back then that are not quite parallel to what we face now, but at the same time, there is no virtue in dismissing all that and assuming we can just turn to a blank new page in our history.
If Republicans are living in a nostalgic past, Democrats can't just push ahead to a fantasy future. There are enough questions to answer about what we do now in today's world.
Thursday, November 08, 2007
Good and Bad News About Iraq
Iraqis are going home in Baghdad, and veterans of the war are starting to live on the streets back here.
Another day of weird news dramatizes the Bush-Cheneying of America as the Commander of US forces in Baghdad tells a New York Times reporter over a Green Zone lunch of egg rolls and lo mein that hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced families are back in their homes.
“The Iraqi people have just decided that they’ve had it up to here with violence,” according to Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., noting that their demands for electricity, water and jobs have intensified.
From Washington comes another Times report: "More than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, and the Veterans Affairs Department and aid groups say they are bracing for a new surge in homeless veterans in the years ahead."
Former soldiers are ending up on the streets sooner than Vietnam vets did, and some of them are women. Roughly 40 percent of female veterans say they were sexually assaulted by American soldiers while in the military. “Sexual abuse is a risk factor for homelessness,” according to Pete Dougherty, the VA’s director of homeless programs.
As Congress ponders the Administration's request for $200 billion to pay for another year of promoting democracy in Iraq, they may want to consider setting some of that aside for the Surge of young men and women we sent there who are now psychologically and physically homeless back here.
Another day of weird news dramatizes the Bush-Cheneying of America as the Commander of US forces in Baghdad tells a New York Times reporter over a Green Zone lunch of egg rolls and lo mein that hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced families are back in their homes.
“The Iraqi people have just decided that they’ve had it up to here with violence,” according to Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr., noting that their demands for electricity, water and jobs have intensified.
From Washington comes another Times report: "More than 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, and the Veterans Affairs Department and aid groups say they are bracing for a new surge in homeless veterans in the years ahead."
Former soldiers are ending up on the streets sooner than Vietnam vets did, and some of them are women. Roughly 40 percent of female veterans say they were sexually assaulted by American soldiers while in the military. “Sexual abuse is a risk factor for homelessness,” according to Pete Dougherty, the VA’s director of homeless programs.
As Congress ponders the Administration's request for $200 billion to pay for another year of promoting democracy in Iraq, they may want to consider setting some of that aside for the Surge of young men and women we sent there who are now psychologically and physically homeless back here.
Haters for Hillary
Barack Obama is the devil. If you doubt it, there is a highly professional web site updated daily to provide chapter, verse and venom on the subject.
The spewings of "Hillary Is 44" (44th President, that is) make Bill Clinton's remarks about other Democrats ganging up to vilify his wife look a tad hypocritical. The deceptively mild-looking blog with a pink background makes Rove's raiders look like pussycats.
A few recent samples:
"After all the many lies and denials concerning internal struggles with chaos, confusion, and complaints, Obama is not to be believed."
"Like a common street hustler ripping off tourists in a streetside shell game, Obama skips from issue to issue."
"Barack Cheney Obama, fresh from his Slime Hillary Clinton gig on the Tonight Show, today proudly continues his Slime Hillary Clinton tour."
"Obama is convicted, using his own standards of behavior and leadership, of being unfit to be president."
"This is typical Obama behavior. When Obama does something dirty he tries to disguise the dirt with flowery language."
The latest: "Obama made sure (Stephen) Colbert would not get on the (South Carolina) ballot. Obama, of course, denied he had anything to do with the Colbert Chicago style drive-by shooting."
Recent headings include: "The Obama Delusion," "Obama the Clown," "Obama's Iran Lie(s)" and "Obama's Macaca Weekend."
The Clinton campaign has been reaching out to voters online in a big away, not only cultivating Matt Drudge but hosting a Drudgelike site of their own, HillaryHub. "Hillary Is 44" claims to have no affiliation with the campaign but is raising money by selling Hillary t-shirts and buttons.
Identity of the operators is a Washington mystery, but it is professionally put together by more than one person, and the tone, Peggy Noonan has written, is "very Tokyo Rose."
Complaints about ganging up on Clinton should be accompanied by a clarification about the activities of her own attack dogs. Their barking may not have much bite, but they undermine her claims of being victimized.
The spewings of "Hillary Is 44" (44th President, that is) make Bill Clinton's remarks about other Democrats ganging up to vilify his wife look a tad hypocritical. The deceptively mild-looking blog with a pink background makes Rove's raiders look like pussycats.
A few recent samples:
"After all the many lies and denials concerning internal struggles with chaos, confusion, and complaints, Obama is not to be believed."
"Like a common street hustler ripping off tourists in a streetside shell game, Obama skips from issue to issue."
"Barack Cheney Obama, fresh from his Slime Hillary Clinton gig on the Tonight Show, today proudly continues his Slime Hillary Clinton tour."
"Obama is convicted, using his own standards of behavior and leadership, of being unfit to be president."
"This is typical Obama behavior. When Obama does something dirty he tries to disguise the dirt with flowery language."
The latest: "Obama made sure (Stephen) Colbert would not get on the (South Carolina) ballot. Obama, of course, denied he had anything to do with the Colbert Chicago style drive-by shooting."
Recent headings include: "The Obama Delusion," "Obama the Clown," "Obama's Iran Lie(s)" and "Obama's Macaca Weekend."
The Clinton campaign has been reaching out to voters online in a big away, not only cultivating Matt Drudge but hosting a Drudgelike site of their own, HillaryHub. "Hillary Is 44" claims to have no affiliation with the campaign but is raising money by selling Hillary t-shirts and buttons.
Identity of the operators is a Washington mystery, but it is professionally put together by more than one person, and the tone, Peggy Noonan has written, is "very Tokyo Rose."
Complaints about ganging up on Clinton should be accompanied by a clarification about the activities of her own attack dogs. Their barking may not have much bite, but they undermine her claims of being victimized.
Fast Shuffle for Swift Boaters
Saving America is hard work, and the pay can be rotten, at least if you're doing it for the nation's leading conservative publisher.
In a lawsuit, authors of books that exposed Bill Clinton and John Kerry and extolled George Bush are claiming they were scammed and short-changed on their best sellers by Eagle Publishing, which owns the Regnery imprint.
The plaintiffs produced such epic works as “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” “Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America’s National Security” and “Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror” and received, they allege, only a fraction of the royalties due them.
If they had been paid by the word for their titles alone, they should have become wealthy, but their publisher sold or gave away copies of their books to self-owned book clubs, newsletters and other organizations “to avoid or substantially reduce royalty payments to authors.”
Instead of getting $4 or more a copy for books sold in a bookstore or through online retailers, they earned only 10 cents or so on sales through the Conservative Book Club and other such entities of the publisher.
“It suddenly occurred to us," one of them told reporters, "that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance." Why, he asked, are they "acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”
In a brief career as a book publisher, I found that authors are chronic malcontents who fail to understand the risks involved in underwriting freedom of expression, but these patriots seem to have a point.
In a lawsuit, authors of books that exposed Bill Clinton and John Kerry and extolled George Bush are claiming they were scammed and short-changed on their best sellers by Eagle Publishing, which owns the Regnery imprint.
The plaintiffs produced such epic works as “Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry,” “Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How Bill Clinton Compromised America’s National Security” and “Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush Is Winning the War on Terror” and received, they allege, only a fraction of the royalties due them.
If they had been paid by the word for their titles alone, they should have become wealthy, but their publisher sold or gave away copies of their books to self-owned book clubs, newsletters and other organizations “to avoid or substantially reduce royalty payments to authors.”
Instead of getting $4 or more a copy for books sold in a bookstore or through online retailers, they earned only 10 cents or so on sales through the Conservative Book Club and other such entities of the publisher.
“It suddenly occurred to us," one of them told reporters, "that Regnery is making collectively jillions of dollars off of us and paying us a pittance." Why, he asked, are they "acting like a Marxist cartoon of a capitalist company?”
In a brief career as a book publisher, I found that authors are chronic malcontents who fail to understand the risks involved in underwriting freedom of expression, but these patriots seem to have a point.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Racial Preferences: Obama/Thomas
In 1974, a future Supreme Court Justice graduated from Yale Law School. In 1991, a future US Senator and Presidential candidate received his law degree from Harvard.
But there is more than a generation gap between two men of color who went on to live out success stories in American public life. Aside from differences in temperament, there is a sharp contrast in how they overcame racial prejudice and at what emotional cost.
Reviewing Thomas' recent memoirs, Jeffrey Toobin notes in the New Yorker, "The young law student quickly came to resent the fact that he had benefitted from preferential admissions.'As much as it stung to be told that I’d done well in the seminary despite my race, it was far worse to feel that I was now at Yale because of it,' he writes...
"Thomas never explains what Yale did to him that was so terrible. When he didn’t receive the job offers he wanted from law firms, he interpreted the slight as reflecting what 'a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference...' Later, Thomas peeled a fifteen-cent sticker off a package of cigars and put it on the frame of his law degree. 'I never did change my mind about its value,' he writes."
There is a sharp contrast between Clarence Thomas' seething resentment and Barack Obama's law school experience, as described today by Dean Barnett in the conservative Daily Standard:
"Regardless of his classmates' politics, they all said pretty much the same thing. They adored him. The only thing that varied was the intensity with which they adored him. Some spoke like they were eager to bear his children. And those were the guys. Others merely professed a profound fondness and respect for their former classmate."
Barnett goes on to add: "Barack Obama graduated right near the top of his law school class. That fact, along with his presidency of the Law Review, makes his uniform popularity all the more impressive. Law schools are intensely competitive places. People who thrive to an unseemly extent, as Obama did, are usually subject to an array of resentments...
"The people that Obama so thoroughly charmed generally weren't the charm-prone types."
As newly minted lawyers, they took different paths, Thomas into Washington politics, Obama into working as a community organizer in Chicago. If he becomes the first African-American president, he is not likely to find a sympathetic racial compatriot on the Supreme Court.
But there is more than a generation gap between two men of color who went on to live out success stories in American public life. Aside from differences in temperament, there is a sharp contrast in how they overcame racial prejudice and at what emotional cost.
Reviewing Thomas' recent memoirs, Jeffrey Toobin notes in the New Yorker, "The young law student quickly came to resent the fact that he had benefitted from preferential admissions.'As much as it stung to be told that I’d done well in the seminary despite my race, it was far worse to feel that I was now at Yale because of it,' he writes...
"Thomas never explains what Yale did to him that was so terrible. When he didn’t receive the job offers he wanted from law firms, he interpreted the slight as reflecting what 'a law degree from Yale was worth when it bore the taint of racial preference...' Later, Thomas peeled a fifteen-cent sticker off a package of cigars and put it on the frame of his law degree. 'I never did change my mind about its value,' he writes."
There is a sharp contrast between Clarence Thomas' seething resentment and Barack Obama's law school experience, as described today by Dean Barnett in the conservative Daily Standard:
"Regardless of his classmates' politics, they all said pretty much the same thing. They adored him. The only thing that varied was the intensity with which they adored him. Some spoke like they were eager to bear his children. And those were the guys. Others merely professed a profound fondness and respect for their former classmate."
Barnett goes on to add: "Barack Obama graduated right near the top of his law school class. That fact, along with his presidency of the Law Review, makes his uniform popularity all the more impressive. Law schools are intensely competitive places. People who thrive to an unseemly extent, as Obama did, are usually subject to an array of resentments...
"The people that Obama so thoroughly charmed generally weren't the charm-prone types."
As newly minted lawyers, they took different paths, Thomas into Washington politics, Obama into working as a community organizer in Chicago. If he becomes the first African-American president, he is not likely to find a sympathetic racial compatriot on the Supreme Court.
Strangest Bedfellows
Pat Robertson, icon of the Religious Right, today endorsed a thrice-married, cross-dressing, pro-choice Catholic for President in 2008.
"I thought it was important for me to make it clear that Rudy Giuliani is more than acceptable to people of faith," said Robertson. "Given the fractured nature of the process, I thought it was time to solidify around one candidate."
The move was foreshadowed in June when Giuliani addressed a leadership conference at Robertson's Regent University and, according to its web site, the founder "reflected on the Mayor’s legendary performance after the tragic events of September 11th, citing the world’s recognition of his extraordinary leadership in a time of unthinkable crisis. With his trademark good humor, Dr. Robertson related the story of their shared prior cancer diagnoses, and his hospital-room call from the Mayor to offer words of encouragement."
The Robertson endorsement will go a long way to consummate Giuliani's courtship of the Religious Right and fend off the challenges on that front from Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
"I thought it was important for me to make it clear that Rudy Giuliani is more than acceptable to people of faith," said Robertson. "Given the fractured nature of the process, I thought it was time to solidify around one candidate."
The move was foreshadowed in June when Giuliani addressed a leadership conference at Robertson's Regent University and, according to its web site, the founder "reflected on the Mayor’s legendary performance after the tragic events of September 11th, citing the world’s recognition of his extraordinary leadership in a time of unthinkable crisis. With his trademark good humor, Dr. Robertson related the story of their shared prior cancer diagnoses, and his hospital-room call from the Mayor to offer words of encouragement."
The Robertson endorsement will go a long way to consummate Giuliani's courtship of the Religious Right and fend off the challenges on that front from Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
Ron Paul and Ross Perot
There is an eerie déjà vu to the sight of another Texan with the same initials crossing a Clinton's path to the White House as Ross Perot did in 1992.
News that Ron Paul raised more than $4million on the Internet the other day recalls Perot's surge in the polls back then, at one point running ahead of both the first George Bush and Bill Clinton.
Perot's erratic on-again off-again campaign as an Independent faltered but still drew over 19 million votes, reflecting unhappiness with the two major parties and politics as usual.
Four Presidential elections later, after Clinton and another Bush in the Oval Office, that disaffection has led to the odd sight of another maverick Texan drawing support, this time in the race for the Republican nomination.
Paul's surge reflects a mixed bag of discontent--with the plastic Republican front runners and their failure to call for getting out of Iraq, as he does; with politicians of both parties who hem, haw and hedge about issues, as he does not; with the linear nature of political discourse, which Paul's digital supporters have rejected and imaginatively left behind and, according to some, distorted.
All this makes good political theater to enliven the long, boring slog of an overheated campaign, but older observers may be put off by Paul's oversimplifications and nostalgia for an America-that-never was and troubled by his roots in the conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society.
Perot turned out to be an egotistical clown without staying power, but Ron Paul has been around for a long time and is not likely to fade away. It's time to stop finding him refreshing and take a closer look at what he is really offering.
News that Ron Paul raised more than $4million on the Internet the other day recalls Perot's surge in the polls back then, at one point running ahead of both the first George Bush and Bill Clinton.
Perot's erratic on-again off-again campaign as an Independent faltered but still drew over 19 million votes, reflecting unhappiness with the two major parties and politics as usual.
Four Presidential elections later, after Clinton and another Bush in the Oval Office, that disaffection has led to the odd sight of another maverick Texan drawing support, this time in the race for the Republican nomination.
Paul's surge reflects a mixed bag of discontent--with the plastic Republican front runners and their failure to call for getting out of Iraq, as he does; with politicians of both parties who hem, haw and hedge about issues, as he does not; with the linear nature of political discourse, which Paul's digital supporters have rejected and imaginatively left behind and, according to some, distorted.
All this makes good political theater to enliven the long, boring slog of an overheated campaign, but older observers may be put off by Paul's oversimplifications and nostalgia for an America-that-never was and troubled by his roots in the conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society.
Perot turned out to be an egotistical clown without staying power, but Ron Paul has been around for a long time and is not likely to fade away. It's time to stop finding him refreshing and take a closer look at what he is really offering.
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Making Do With Mukasey
An old saying, "The perfect is the worst enemy of the good enough," comes to mind in the Senate struggle over the nomination of Michael Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General.
As the best choice we are likely to get from the Bush thugs who trashed the Justice Department, his confirmation would make more sense than holding it up with a prolonged debate over the legality of torture. That question can be settled by a Congressional vote to ban it.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, in a New York Times Op Ed today, points out, "There is virtually universal agreement, even from those who oppose Judge Mukasey, that he would do a good job in turning the department around."
Schumer adds: "Judge Mukasey’s refusal to state that waterboarding is illegal was unsatisfactory to me and many other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Congress is now considering--and I hope we will soon pass-- a law that would explicitly ban the use of waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques. And I am confident that Judge Mukasey would enforce that law."
As compromises go, this is far from the worst in recent memory. At the risk of re-opening old wounds, we might recall the purists who voted for Ralph Nader over Al Gore in 2000 and gave us George Bush and this mess, among so many others.
As the best choice we are likely to get from the Bush thugs who trashed the Justice Department, his confirmation would make more sense than holding it up with a prolonged debate over the legality of torture. That question can be settled by a Congressional vote to ban it.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, in a New York Times Op Ed today, points out, "There is virtually universal agreement, even from those who oppose Judge Mukasey, that he would do a good job in turning the department around."
Schumer adds: "Judge Mukasey’s refusal to state that waterboarding is illegal was unsatisfactory to me and many other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Congress is now considering--and I hope we will soon pass-- a law that would explicitly ban the use of waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques. And I am confident that Judge Mukasey would enforce that law."
As compromises go, this is far from the worst in recent memory. At the risk of re-opening old wounds, we might recall the purists who voted for Ralph Nader over Al Gore in 2000 and gave us George Bush and this mess, among so many others.
Governing by Tantrum
"I veto, therefore I am" is the new theme of the Bush Administration.
In 1948, Harry Truman got to stay in the White House by railing against a Republican "do-nothing" Congress, and George W. Bush is now using the tactic in an effort to remain "relevant" as he prepares to leave the Oval Office.
"Congress has little to show for all the time that has gone by," he complained at his last press conference, a bizarre charge for a President who has vetoed Iraq appropriations bills, S-CHIP health insurance and this week is threatening to send back a water projects bill with enough bipartisan support to override his veto.
There is a kind of spoiled-rich-kid intransigence to the new Bush that is consistent with his behavior for six years when Republicans controlled both Houses and rubber-stamped whatever he wanted. Now, in the face of opposition, he is stamping his feet and threatening to hold his breath if he doesn't get his way.
"He may decide that all he wants to do is veto and stop progress," says Rep. Rahm Emanuel, head of the House Democratic Caucus. "But everybody will know who wants to change things, and who wants to keep them just the way they are."
But if Congressional Democrats are confident that voters will make that distinction next year, they should look closely at their approval ratings, which are lower than the President's.
To dramatize his claims about a do-nothing Congress, Harry Truman had called a special session on what was known as "Turnip Planting Day" in Missouri. His opponents obliged with inaction and made his point.
If today's Democrats want to avoid looking like turnips in '08, they had better start moving now.
In 1948, Harry Truman got to stay in the White House by railing against a Republican "do-nothing" Congress, and George W. Bush is now using the tactic in an effort to remain "relevant" as he prepares to leave the Oval Office.
"Congress has little to show for all the time that has gone by," he complained at his last press conference, a bizarre charge for a President who has vetoed Iraq appropriations bills, S-CHIP health insurance and this week is threatening to send back a water projects bill with enough bipartisan support to override his veto.
There is a kind of spoiled-rich-kid intransigence to the new Bush that is consistent with his behavior for six years when Republicans controlled both Houses and rubber-stamped whatever he wanted. Now, in the face of opposition, he is stamping his feet and threatening to hold his breath if he doesn't get his way.
"He may decide that all he wants to do is veto and stop progress," says Rep. Rahm Emanuel, head of the House Democratic Caucus. "But everybody will know who wants to change things, and who wants to keep them just the way they are."
But if Congressional Democrats are confident that voters will make that distinction next year, they should look closely at their approval ratings, which are lower than the President's.
To dramatize his claims about a do-nothing Congress, Harry Truman had called a special session on what was known as "Turnip Planting Day" in Missouri. His opponents obliged with inaction and made his point.
If today's Democrats want to avoid looking like turnips in '08, they had better start moving now.
Monday, November 05, 2007
"No Money, No Funny"
Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno and David Letterman won't be doing monologues about today's news tonight because their brains are on strike. More than 12,000 TV and movie writers are walking picket lines in New York and Los Angeles, carrying signs like "No Money, No Funny."
The Writers Guilds want a bigger share for their members of revenue from DVD and Internet sales of movies and TV shows, producers are balking and pickets are out chanting digital age slogans, "No downloads!"
But instead of hard hats and work boots, the New York Times reports, today's Norma Raes are sporting arty glasses and fancy scarves.
Ever since the early days of Hollywood, writers have had to fight for respect and money. Producers called them "gag men" back then and treated them like the flunkies who brought the doughnuts and coffee to the set.
The network series and movie distributors have a backlog of new offerings to keep them going but, for a generation that gets most of its news from the Daily Show and other late-night programs, it's going to be re-run city for a while.
MSM and bloggers will have to take up the slack.
The Writers Guilds want a bigger share for their members of revenue from DVD and Internet sales of movies and TV shows, producers are balking and pickets are out chanting digital age slogans, "No downloads!"
But instead of hard hats and work boots, the New York Times reports, today's Norma Raes are sporting arty glasses and fancy scarves.
Ever since the early days of Hollywood, writers have had to fight for respect and money. Producers called them "gag men" back then and treated them like the flunkies who brought the doughnuts and coffee to the set.
The network series and movie distributors have a backlog of new offerings to keep them going but, for a generation that gets most of its news from the Daily Show and other late-night programs, it's going to be re-run city for a while.
MSM and bloggers will have to take up the slack.
Media Sellouts
From right and left, critics accuse the nation's media of selling out the American people but, while the debate rages, the real selling is not by the media but of them.
On PBS last night, Bill Moyers highlighted the latest attempt to consolidate television, radio, newspapers and magazines even further into the hands of half a dozen conglomerates, Rupert Murdoch's among them.
This time the effort is being rushed along by FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, who as a 33-year-old lawyer worked on the Bush legal team for the 2000 Florida vote recount and, with no media background, was appointed to the commission less than six months later.
In 2003, an attempt to concentrate media ownership was beaten back after a public outcry by interest groups ranging from the National Organization for Women and Common Cause to the National Rifle Association and the pro-life Family Research Council.
Now, in the waning days of Bush's Administration, his 3-2 majority on the FCC is trying to rush through similar relaxing of cross-ownership rules by next month, but again the public and Congress are trying to head them off at the pass.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" was a slogan in the mid-nineteenth century when Americans were trying to abolish slavery. It's still applies now when a radical White House seems determined to enslave our minds.
On PBS last night, Bill Moyers highlighted the latest attempt to consolidate television, radio, newspapers and magazines even further into the hands of half a dozen conglomerates, Rupert Murdoch's among them.
This time the effort is being rushed along by FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, who as a 33-year-old lawyer worked on the Bush legal team for the 2000 Florida vote recount and, with no media background, was appointed to the commission less than six months later.
In 2003, an attempt to concentrate media ownership was beaten back after a public outcry by interest groups ranging from the National Organization for Women and Common Cause to the National Rifle Association and the pro-life Family Research Council.
Now, in the waning days of Bush's Administration, his 3-2 majority on the FCC is trying to rush through similar relaxing of cross-ownership rules by next month, but again the public and Congress are trying to head them off at the pass.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" was a slogan in the mid-nineteenth century when Americans were trying to abolish slavery. It's still applies now when a radical White House seems determined to enslave our minds.
From MAD to Madness
Pakistan could make Iran look like small potatoes. President Musharraf's move to seize emergency powers and crack down on opposition has opened a Pandora's box of potential nuclear threats in the Middle East too numerous and ugly to be covered by Joe Biden's characterization as "complicated stuff" in last week's Democratic debate.
"The United States has given Pakistan more than $10 billion in aid, mostly to the military, since 2001," the New York Times notes. "Now, if the state of emergency drags on, the administration will be faced with the difficult decision of whether to cut off that aid and risk undermining Pakistan’s efforts to pursue terrorists--a move the White House believes could endanger the security of the United States."
Even worse is the prospect, however remote, of Pakistan imploding from the dueling corruption and incompetence of Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to be replaced by Muslim extremists who would then control the nation's nuclear weapons. Is that something the US, India or Israel could live with?
We never got a straight story about Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientist selling technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya even while Musharraf's hold on power was firm. Can we be sure that terrorists won't be able to get what they want in a shaky Pakistan?
In the last century, nuclear conflict was averted by the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) Doctrine that deterred two superpowers from using such weapons without annihilating each other. But in a world where they may become available to groups of suicidal zealots who believe they will be rewarded in an afterlife for destroying those who don't share their beliefs, MAD could rapidly give way to madness.
In World War III or IV, depending on which Neo-Con is doing the numbering, what do we do about that?
"The United States has given Pakistan more than $10 billion in aid, mostly to the military, since 2001," the New York Times notes. "Now, if the state of emergency drags on, the administration will be faced with the difficult decision of whether to cut off that aid and risk undermining Pakistan’s efforts to pursue terrorists--a move the White House believes could endanger the security of the United States."
Even worse is the prospect, however remote, of Pakistan imploding from the dueling corruption and incompetence of Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto to be replaced by Muslim extremists who would then control the nation's nuclear weapons. Is that something the US, India or Israel could live with?
We never got a straight story about Pakistan’s leading nuclear scientist selling technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya even while Musharraf's hold on power was firm. Can we be sure that terrorists won't be able to get what they want in a shaky Pakistan?
In the last century, nuclear conflict was averted by the MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) Doctrine that deterred two superpowers from using such weapons without annihilating each other. But in a world where they may become available to groups of suicidal zealots who believe they will be rewarded in an afterlife for destroying those who don't share their beliefs, MAD could rapidly give way to madness.
In World War III or IV, depending on which Neo-Con is doing the numbering, what do we do about that?
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Conservative Crush on Obama
If upscale Republicans and Independents decide the '08 election, Barack Obama might well be our next President, judging from new love letters to the candidate from Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic and Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal.
Sullivan argues that Obama is beyond the toxic quarrels of the Baby Boomers over Vietnam, Nixon and cultural issues, an alternative to a Giuliani-Clinton contest that would be "a classic intra-generational struggle--with two deeply divisive and ruthless personalities ready to go to the brink."
Obama, according to Sullivan, opposed the Iraq war "for the right reasons" and is therefore "the potential president with the most flexibility in dealing with it." His face would be "a re-branding of the United States" to the rest of the world, particularly Muslims. He might even, Sullivan argues, bridge the religious divide in America:
"(H)e is not born-again. His faith...lives at the center of the American religious experience. It is a modern, intellectual Christianity. 'I didn’t have an epiphany,' he explained to me. 'What I really did was to take a set of values and ideals that were first instilled in me from my mother, who was, as I have called her in my book, the last of the secular humanists—you know, belief in kindness and empathy and discipline, responsibility—those kinds of values. And I found in the Church a vessel or a repository for those values and a way to connect those values to a larger community and a belief in God and a belief in redemption and mercy and justice … I guess the point is, it continues to be both a spiritual, but also intellectual, journey for me, this issue of faith.'"
Peggy Noonan's crush on Obama is less global but just as clear. In a column on Hillary-bashing in last week's debate, she writes:
"Barack Obama, with his elegance and verbal fluency really did seem like that great and famous political figure from his home state of Illinois--Adlai Stevenson, who was not at all hungry, not at all mean, and operated at a step removed from the grubby game."
Last month Noonan observed: “Barack Obama has a great thinking look. I mean the look he gets on his face when he's thinking, not the look he presents in debate, where they all control their faces knowing they may be in the reaction shot and fearing they'll look shrewd and clever, as opposed to open and strong...
“You get the impression Mr. Obama trusts himself to think, as if something good might happen if he does. What a concept. Anyway, I've started to lean forward a little when he talks.”
Compare this to her take on John Edwards' attack on Clinton "like a furry animal on a wheel, trying so hard, to the point he's getting a facial tic, and getting nowhere, failing to get his little furry paws on his prey, not knowing you have to get off the wheel to get to the prey. You have to stop the rounded, rote, bromidic phrases, and use a normal language that cannot be ignored."
Andrew Sullivan and Peggy Noonan may not represent much of a constituency but, if the Democratic nomination becomes a battle over electability, their attitudes may foreshadow Obama's advantage on that issue.
Sullivan argues that Obama is beyond the toxic quarrels of the Baby Boomers over Vietnam, Nixon and cultural issues, an alternative to a Giuliani-Clinton contest that would be "a classic intra-generational struggle--with two deeply divisive and ruthless personalities ready to go to the brink."
Obama, according to Sullivan, opposed the Iraq war "for the right reasons" and is therefore "the potential president with the most flexibility in dealing with it." His face would be "a re-branding of the United States" to the rest of the world, particularly Muslims. He might even, Sullivan argues, bridge the religious divide in America:
"(H)e is not born-again. His faith...lives at the center of the American religious experience. It is a modern, intellectual Christianity. 'I didn’t have an epiphany,' he explained to me. 'What I really did was to take a set of values and ideals that were first instilled in me from my mother, who was, as I have called her in my book, the last of the secular humanists—you know, belief in kindness and empathy and discipline, responsibility—those kinds of values. And I found in the Church a vessel or a repository for those values and a way to connect those values to a larger community and a belief in God and a belief in redemption and mercy and justice … I guess the point is, it continues to be both a spiritual, but also intellectual, journey for me, this issue of faith.'"
Peggy Noonan's crush on Obama is less global but just as clear. In a column on Hillary-bashing in last week's debate, she writes:
"Barack Obama, with his elegance and verbal fluency really did seem like that great and famous political figure from his home state of Illinois--Adlai Stevenson, who was not at all hungry, not at all mean, and operated at a step removed from the grubby game."
Last month Noonan observed: “Barack Obama has a great thinking look. I mean the look he gets on his face when he's thinking, not the look he presents in debate, where they all control their faces knowing they may be in the reaction shot and fearing they'll look shrewd and clever, as opposed to open and strong...
“You get the impression Mr. Obama trusts himself to think, as if something good might happen if he does. What a concept. Anyway, I've started to lean forward a little when he talks.”
Compare this to her take on John Edwards' attack on Clinton "like a furry animal on a wheel, trying so hard, to the point he's getting a facial tic, and getting nowhere, failing to get his little furry paws on his prey, not knowing you have to get off the wheel to get to the prey. You have to stop the rounded, rote, bromidic phrases, and use a normal language that cannot be ignored."
Andrew Sullivan and Peggy Noonan may not represent much of a constituency but, if the Democratic nomination becomes a battle over electability, their attitudes may foreshadow Obama's advantage on that issue.
Marathons
In the 1977 New York City Marathon, a friend and former colleague of mine was disappointed by his worst performance in five years. But there was an excuse. He had spent a sedentary year gaining stomach flab and losing cardiovascular fitness, writing a book that was to be published that day.
His name was James Fixx, and the book, "The Complete Book of Running," was to become one of the best sellers of all time. Less than seven years later, he would die at age 52 of a massive heart attack after his daily run on a rural road in Vermont.
The pang that comes with each year's running of that race is more acute today after news of the collapse and death of a 28-year-old marathoner, Ryan Hall, during the Olympic Trials in New York's Central Park yesterday.
When Jim Fixx and I were atop the McCall's Magazine masthead in 1967, he was an easy-going man who weighed 214 pounds and smoked two packs a day. A decade later and 60 pounds lighter, he became rich and famous for The Book that, along with its sequel, sold more than a million copies.
One of the smartest people I ever knew (a Mensa member who had written books of games for the "super-intelligent"), Jim was also far from being or becoming a driven type-A. After the running books, he wrote a memoir mocking his sudden success and fame.
But in an age that insists of an explanation for everything, deaths such as those of Jim Fixx and Ryan Hall are jolting reminders of how thin the crust of earth on which we walk, or run, every day really is and how easily any of us, even the most highly conditioned, can fall through and disappear.
As we admire the winners and marvel at the grit of all those who run the course, the Marathon can be a moment for forgetting differences and savoring our fragile common humanity.
His name was James Fixx, and the book, "The Complete Book of Running," was to become one of the best sellers of all time. Less than seven years later, he would die at age 52 of a massive heart attack after his daily run on a rural road in Vermont.
The pang that comes with each year's running of that race is more acute today after news of the collapse and death of a 28-year-old marathoner, Ryan Hall, during the Olympic Trials in New York's Central Park yesterday.
When Jim Fixx and I were atop the McCall's Magazine masthead in 1967, he was an easy-going man who weighed 214 pounds and smoked two packs a day. A decade later and 60 pounds lighter, he became rich and famous for The Book that, along with its sequel, sold more than a million copies.
One of the smartest people I ever knew (a Mensa member who had written books of games for the "super-intelligent"), Jim was also far from being or becoming a driven type-A. After the running books, he wrote a memoir mocking his sudden success and fame.
But in an age that insists of an explanation for everything, deaths such as those of Jim Fixx and Ryan Hall are jolting reminders of how thin the crust of earth on which we walk, or run, every day really is and how easily any of us, even the most highly conditioned, can fall through and disappear.
As we admire the winners and marvel at the grit of all those who run the course, the Marathon can be a moment for forgetting differences and savoring our fragile common humanity.
Friday, November 02, 2007
The Unhealthy Body Politic
While Rudy Giuliani peddles fake survival statistics about his prostate cancer to lambaste "socialized medicine," George Bush and his Congressional loyalists are still blocking health insurance for children.
For those who care about Giuliani's glitch, Paul Krugman explains it in his New York Times column today, but that's only a minor symptom of the GOP war on health care compared to the ongoing epidemic of SCHIP-bashing by the Bush Administration.
Senate Democrats and Republican allies were working on a House-passed compromise yesterday of the bill Bush vetoed when faithful Mitch McConnell, whose office savaged 12-year-old Graeme Frost for advocating coverage for other kids, stepped in to stop it by forcing a vote on the bill.
But the issue is far from dead, as evidenced by an editorial in Maine's Bangor Daily News:
"The president’s arguments against SCHIP have put him in a corner. He opposes the program, he says, because he doesn’t want the government making decisions for doctors and customers. Patients don't have their medical decisions made by government under SCHIP; they use private insurers and private doctors, who presumably make their decisions based on their medical expertise. He has also painted the program as a Democratic scheme.
"To get out of that corner, he should consult with 'Democrats' like Sens. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley to understand why they are such strong supporters of the program.
"Maybe if they explain the program allows 'customers'-— children, in this case--who now have no relationship with a doctor because they have no insurance, to start one, he'll better understand and support the program."
Meanwhile, advocates are running up to $2.5 million worth of ads against House members supporting the White House to help them understand the threat to their political well-being if they persist in such unhealthy behavior.
For those who care about Giuliani's glitch, Paul Krugman explains it in his New York Times column today, but that's only a minor symptom of the GOP war on health care compared to the ongoing epidemic of SCHIP-bashing by the Bush Administration.
Senate Democrats and Republican allies were working on a House-passed compromise yesterday of the bill Bush vetoed when faithful Mitch McConnell, whose office savaged 12-year-old Graeme Frost for advocating coverage for other kids, stepped in to stop it by forcing a vote on the bill.
But the issue is far from dead, as evidenced by an editorial in Maine's Bangor Daily News:
"The president’s arguments against SCHIP have put him in a corner. He opposes the program, he says, because he doesn’t want the government making decisions for doctors and customers. Patients don't have their medical decisions made by government under SCHIP; they use private insurers and private doctors, who presumably make their decisions based on their medical expertise. He has also painted the program as a Democratic scheme.
"To get out of that corner, he should consult with 'Democrats' like Sens. Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley to understand why they are such strong supporters of the program.
"Maybe if they explain the program allows 'customers'-— children, in this case--who now have no relationship with a doctor because they have no insurance, to start one, he'll better understand and support the program."
Meanwhile, advocates are running up to $2.5 million worth of ads against House members supporting the White House to help them understand the threat to their political well-being if they persist in such unhealthy behavior.
Memo to Meryl Streep, Re: Julia Child
The news from Hollywood is that Meryl Streep will be playing Julia Child in a new movie to be written and directed by Nora Ephron, which seems fair enough since Streep played Ephron in "Heartburn," an autobiographical account of a food writer's disastrous marriage.
I can horn in on this inbred arrangement with advice to Streep and Ephron, who wrote for me when we were both magazine people, about my decade of working with the woman who lifted American cooking above burgers and fries: Play her big but modest.
One morning in the 1970s, Julia burned my breakfast toast. Her husband Paul and I were in their Cambridge kitchen talking politics while she tended the broiler, leaning over to hear what we are saying. When smoke started pouring from the oven, she pulled out a tray and dumped the charred contents into a sink. "Ah, well," she said smiling, just like the French Chef dropping a chicken on TV, brushing it off and grinning at her viewers: "Don't forget, if you're alone in the kitchen, no one will know."
Eating out with Julia was like being in Restaurant Heaven--no scowling maitre d's, no long waits to be seated, no sloppy service or mediocre food at high prices. In Boston, a restaurateur came to the table, imploring her to taste his latest creations. As a stream of plates went by, he studied her face as she took a bite from each. At the end of the meal, the check for what we actually ordered was less than if we had gone to Burger King.
At one of New York's snootier French restaurants, it was like turning up with God as your dinner companion. She told the hovering captain "the remoulade was quite good," and a parade of beaming people came out of the kitchen, from the head chef to the apprentice who chopped the celeriac, to hear her repeat the compliment.
Julia Child was the antithesis of the magazine editor diva Streep played in "The Devil Wears Prada," but I'm sure America's most honored actress and Ephron will do her justice.
I can horn in on this inbred arrangement with advice to Streep and Ephron, who wrote for me when we were both magazine people, about my decade of working with the woman who lifted American cooking above burgers and fries: Play her big but modest.
One morning in the 1970s, Julia burned my breakfast toast. Her husband Paul and I were in their Cambridge kitchen talking politics while she tended the broiler, leaning over to hear what we are saying. When smoke started pouring from the oven, she pulled out a tray and dumped the charred contents into a sink. "Ah, well," she said smiling, just like the French Chef dropping a chicken on TV, brushing it off and grinning at her viewers: "Don't forget, if you're alone in the kitchen, no one will know."
Eating out with Julia was like being in Restaurant Heaven--no scowling maitre d's, no long waits to be seated, no sloppy service or mediocre food at high prices. In Boston, a restaurateur came to the table, imploring her to taste his latest creations. As a stream of plates went by, he studied her face as she took a bite from each. At the end of the meal, the check for what we actually ordered was less than if we had gone to Burger King.
At one of New York's snootier French restaurants, it was like turning up with God as your dinner companion. She told the hovering captain "the remoulade was quite good," and a parade of beaming people came out of the kitchen, from the head chef to the apprentice who chopped the celeriac, to hear her repeat the compliment.
Julia Child was the antithesis of the magazine editor diva Streep played in "The Devil Wears Prada," but I'm sure America's most honored actress and Ephron will do her justice.
Fear of the Year
Gays, pro-choicers and the liberal elite can relax. The Republicans have found their domestic target for '08 and, from all indications in New Hampshire, it is now illegal immigrants who are threatening the very fabric of American society.
"It's becoming a litmus test of how conservative you are," according to a professor of political science quoted by the McClatchy newspapers. "Absolutely an important issue," confirms the director of the University of New Hampshire's Granite State Poll.
Following the Karl Rove playbook, GOP contenders are reaching a consensus on this election's objects of fear and loathing for their Base. Rudy Giuliani, Mr. 9/11, has the franchise on external threats--terrorists and, coming up strong on the outside rail, Iran.
But fear-mongering the domestic dangers is up for grabs. Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson want to withhold federal money from cities and states that don't report illegal aliens, toughen border security and speed up the process of deporting them. Duncan Hunter wants to double the fence to keep them out, and Tom Tancredo may soon up the ante with a proposal to nuke them.
Only John McCain, who made the mistake of straight talk on the issue, is not benefiting from the wave of Lou Dobbsian outrage over the threat from people who mow America's lawns and wash dishes in restaurants.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of such strangers?
"It's becoming a litmus test of how conservative you are," according to a professor of political science quoted by the McClatchy newspapers. "Absolutely an important issue," confirms the director of the University of New Hampshire's Granite State Poll.
Following the Karl Rove playbook, GOP contenders are reaching a consensus on this election's objects of fear and loathing for their Base. Rudy Giuliani, Mr. 9/11, has the franchise on external threats--terrorists and, coming up strong on the outside rail, Iran.
But fear-mongering the domestic dangers is up for grabs. Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson want to withhold federal money from cities and states that don't report illegal aliens, toughen border security and speed up the process of deporting them. Duncan Hunter wants to double the fence to keep them out, and Tom Tancredo may soon up the ante with a proposal to nuke them.
Only John McCain, who made the mistake of straight talk on the issue, is not benefiting from the wave of Lou Dobbsian outrage over the threat from people who mow America's lawns and wash dishes in restaurants.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of such strangers?
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Requiem for the Candy Man
Paul W. Tibbets Jr. died yesterday at the age of 92. He will go down in history as the pilot of the plane that dropped the first atomic bomb in history ultimately killing more than 100,000 people.
I was in uniform in Europe then, waiting to be sent off for the invasion of Japan, and what Tibbets did may very well have saved my life. Afterward, he insisted his bombing of Hiroshima "saved more lives than we took" and that it would have been "morally wrong if we'd have had that weapon and not used it."
But the question of whether mass murder of civilian populations can ever be moral is far from settled. For more than six decades, after the second atomic bombing in history, of Nagasaki, there has been no use of nuclear weapons. But given the irrational hatred that exists in today's world, how long will that moratorium last?
In Tibbets' first flight as a teenager, he dropped candy bars with tiny parachutes on a beach to promote his father's confectionary store. It was a long way from there to dropping death on women and children.
In interviews late in life, Tibbets said he didn't want a funeral or headstone to attract protesters to his burial site. But he deserves better than that. He was a soldier doing his duty, not a head of state with the moral responsibility for sending him to do what he did.
I was in uniform in Europe then, waiting to be sent off for the invasion of Japan, and what Tibbets did may very well have saved my life. Afterward, he insisted his bombing of Hiroshima "saved more lives than we took" and that it would have been "morally wrong if we'd have had that weapon and not used it."
But the question of whether mass murder of civilian populations can ever be moral is far from settled. For more than six decades, after the second atomic bombing in history, of Nagasaki, there has been no use of nuclear weapons. But given the irrational hatred that exists in today's world, how long will that moratorium last?
In Tibbets' first flight as a teenager, he dropped candy bars with tiny parachutes on a beach to promote his father's confectionary store. It was a long way from there to dropping death on women and children.
In interviews late in life, Tibbets said he didn't want a funeral or headstone to attract protesters to his burial site. But he deserves better than that. He was a soldier doing his duty, not a head of state with the moral responsibility for sending him to do what he did.
Pornography for Progressives
Spoiler alert for any rabid right-wingers who may have wandered in here: What follows could be bad for your blood pressure.
Amid all of today's babble and bluster, it's like a short stay at a sanity spa to listen to former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who might have been President, talking to Paul Krugman, the Princeton professor/New York Times columnist, about politics past and present. They were brought together by the British paper, the Guardian, to discuss Krugman's new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal."
Along the way, they touched on Aristotle, Keynes, Lincoln, health care, Iraq and the 2008 elections. For those who want to remember what public discourse could be, a small sample:
Cuomo: You said we're going to have a lot of rich people who inherited wealth and power...Then you're going to have a lot of miserably poor people who want to kill the rich people because of jealousy and so you need to have that buffer between the two of them that aspires to a better life by figuring out ways to get themselves more property and more wages, and...the first real middle class for a democracy was ours, the first real middle class that worked.
Krugman: (I)n the 18th century, you could say America was the first truly middle class society and then we lost it for a while there, during industrialization. Then we got it back because we had the political movement that made getting it back its goal, and now we've lost it largely again because we had a political movement that made getting rid of it its goal.
You can read or see/hear the rest of it here.
Amid all of today's babble and bluster, it's like a short stay at a sanity spa to listen to former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who might have been President, talking to Paul Krugman, the Princeton professor/New York Times columnist, about politics past and present. They were brought together by the British paper, the Guardian, to discuss Krugman's new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal."
Along the way, they touched on Aristotle, Keynes, Lincoln, health care, Iraq and the 2008 elections. For those who want to remember what public discourse could be, a small sample:
Cuomo: You said we're going to have a lot of rich people who inherited wealth and power...Then you're going to have a lot of miserably poor people who want to kill the rich people because of jealousy and so you need to have that buffer between the two of them that aspires to a better life by figuring out ways to get themselves more property and more wages, and...the first real middle class for a democracy was ours, the first real middle class that worked.
Krugman: (I)n the 18th century, you could say America was the first truly middle class society and then we lost it for a while there, during industrialization. Then we got it back because we had the political movement that made getting it back its goal, and now we've lost it largely again because we had a political movement that made getting rid of it its goal.
You can read or see/hear the rest of it here.
Hillary and Rummy: That Certain Feeling
The blogs are alive with the sound of musing about Tuesday night's Hillary Clinton scrum as we learn this morning that Donald Rumsfeld, when he was not patronizing the media at press conferences, was writing 20 to 40 memos a day telling everybody else in the Defense Department how to do it.
As the war in Iraq went south, the former Secretary of Defense added insult to injury by maintaining his maddening certainty about everything. As Hillary Clinton comes under attack, her antagonists are belaboring her, at least in part, for not displaying Rumsfeldian certainty on every subject.
When she paid voters the compliment of thinking out loud about driver's licenses for immigrants, a subject that has no easy yes-or-not answer, the other candidates jumped her. John Edwards, as always, was the most shameless:
"Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes...I think this is a real issue for the country. I mean, America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them. Because what we've had for seven years is double-talk from Bush and from Cheney, and I think America deserves us to be straight."
Clinton may have been too flummoxed to point out that saying the same thing is the Bush-Cheney hallmark, that a human being with an open mind is exactly what's needed in the Oval Office rather than a priss who keeps reminding us how "straight" and honest he is.
There was much of substance with which to confront the front runner, particularly her vote on the Kyle-Lieberman Amendment, but her challengers can't have it both ways--portraying her as cold and calculating, and then piling on when she shows ambivalence about a complicated question.
Rumsfeld gave us enough certainty to last a lifetime, and Bush and Cheney are still dishing out more.
As the war in Iraq went south, the former Secretary of Defense added insult to injury by maintaining his maddening certainty about everything. As Hillary Clinton comes under attack, her antagonists are belaboring her, at least in part, for not displaying Rumsfeldian certainty on every subject.
When she paid voters the compliment of thinking out loud about driver's licenses for immigrants, a subject that has no easy yes-or-not answer, the other candidates jumped her. John Edwards, as always, was the most shameless:
"Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes...I think this is a real issue for the country. I mean, America is looking for a president who will say the same thing, who will be consistent, who will be straight with them. Because what we've had for seven years is double-talk from Bush and from Cheney, and I think America deserves us to be straight."
Clinton may have been too flummoxed to point out that saying the same thing is the Bush-Cheney hallmark, that a human being with an open mind is exactly what's needed in the Oval Office rather than a priss who keeps reminding us how "straight" and honest he is.
There was much of substance with which to confront the front runner, particularly her vote on the Kyle-Lieberman Amendment, but her challengers can't have it both ways--portraying her as cold and calculating, and then piling on when she shows ambivalence about a complicated question.
Rumsfeld gave us enough certainty to last a lifetime, and Bush and Cheney are still dishing out more.
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