Kostya At Ya

Eulogy for Cooper

2011-08-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

We lost Cooper on Monday. A car hit him and within five to ten minutes it was over. The driver did not stop. Maybe the driver did not know he had hit a cat. Barbara rushed out, picked him up and wrapped him in a sheet. She said it looked like all his legs were broken. Some blood was coming out of his mouth. Jake had stood by Cooper as he lay dying in the street. Barb rushed out again and grabbed Jake to bring him in. He did not resist. She held Cooper as she desperately tried to call someone. Jake licked Cooper and cried. Cooper died as she held him against her breasts.

It was early in a glorious morning. I would normally have still been at home, but I left for New York City at five to take care of our post office box. The Sun was rising over The Bronx when Cooper died. Barbara did not tell me until I came home that evening.

Something did not click immediately. I felt as if Cooper was out, just roaming around Church Street. The gentle creature who loved me dearly, who snuzzled this stranger in the shelter the day we adopted him, and who acted at all times with dignity, and who loved to curl up in our bed with us is dead. We were five, then three, when we brought Jake and Lilly to the shelter. We were lucky to reclaim Jake and tried to regroup in Beacon, NY. Now, the sweetest member of our family is gone.

It is self-indulgent to wail for a loss so relatively small. I have blamed Beacon, Barbara and myself in a round-robin of grief-induced anger. Most of the anger was directed against the gods, who cannot, it seems, leave us be. There is famine in Somalia. Riots have broken out all over England. American families are facing much more disastrous than the loss of 16 pounds of fur. I can try to write away the pain, as if words can act as a salve. The crickets and the katydids chirped tonight as they do every night. Heavy rain came and went. Jake sleeps in one of the chairs. Barbara breathes steadily in the bed. And I put down words and wait for the cat with the elegant, long white gloves to come home.

There is nothing profound about death. We hate it partly because it is so reliable. Death never makes an unforced error. It always wins, so it is boring to watch, unless you have an interest in the player. Everyone takes the field with death and loses. There is nothing to do except bury the defeats and wait for our turn.

Cooper had been through so much with us. He lost his compatriots and his home, too, and endured a hellish ride (he shat himself) to end up in a strange new dwelling. Then a second long, scary ride to a place that took yet another adjustment. Reunited with one of his “siblings”, Cooper and the rest of us were finally feeling we had found a home, however temporary. It turned out to be very temporary for him: less than five months. On Saturday he will be placed in the soil of my mother’s garden. For now, he is in a cold, animal morgue, as unaware as a stone.

There is nothing new under this Hudson River community’s sky this early morning. I hear the train in the distance. A street lamp shines in the window less than 30 seconds of human steps away, but too far for Cooper; he never would have walked the distance to that utility pole. His territory was no more than a house or two in any direction, and too far across the street. If the accident left a mark in the street, the heavy rain that came at sunset would have washed it away. I do not know if it would be fair to the dead if something as simple as rain could wash away our pain. Wine and beer only help me to sleep. Words keep me awake. There is nothing new about any of this.

So here is a short a eulogy for a large, mostly grey and white tabby. Last words for a cat whose soul was as loving as any that I have known. He walked, he hunted and he purred up to our faces and rubbed against our ankles. When he shared our bed, he often stretched out his long white arms to me and his claws would lightly mimic a human squeeze. Barbara, Jake, Lilly, Elisabeth and I loved him without hesitation, and he loved us. That love will find new people and pets, in time, but we will never find a soul to match Cooper’s.

Hateful Expectations

2011-01-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

It did not take long for the wagons to form around the issues of politics, violence and guns. They always do whenever a very public display of the worst in human behavior catches our collective attention. With our computer skills, I would not be surprised if groups save argument templates that search-and-replace tools can efficiently update with the latest names, dates, places and wounds.

At least enough time should have been allowed to pass, to bury and mourn the victims of the Tucson killings, before we blathered on about who and what is to blame.

Nothing I can say here is new or enlightening. Then again, nothing anyone has said in the past several days is new or enlightening. From the very first public murder I remember, the assassination of John Kennedy, there has been little originality of thought or debate. So much finger pointing takes place after events similar to the latest killings, it makes me want to recommend limitations on the possession of these offending digits.

The fingers tapping out the words on this keyboard are not being used to point blame, but to record, as honestly as I can, my thoughts and feelings sans any pronouncements about how recent events should change politics or the law. I have the same low opinion of mine own plan, and plans nearly everyone has ever had, to save civilization.

By coincidence a cable television channel the night of the Tucson killings was showing the 1969 movie version of True Grit. It is a deceitful movie. I say this because it celebrates the killing of eight men, uninvolved in any crime we know was committed. None of the eight hombres can be mistaken for Mr. Rogers. One kills his partner before our eyes. Even in terms of frontier justice, however, the killing of eight people to get one murderer is grotesque.

I am not blaming movies or other story-telling media for inuring us to violence. I only note that the violence it depicts is plausible and accepted to a degree that made the movie very popular. We the audience delight in the violence it depicts and we desire these men to be killed. Such stories make sense only because of such hateful expectations.

I began worrying about the expectations of hate because of another movie, this one from Iran called The White Balloon. (The film is the first by Jafar Panahi who is now in trouble with Iranian authorities.) It involves a seven-year-old Teheran girl who is desperate for a goldfish. After much family tumult, she is given the only bill the family has at the moment, which is far too much for a goldfish and too big a burden for a little girl, who is sent alone on the city’s streets to buy the fish. The city is unusually alive since the New Year’s celebration is about to begin. Throughout the film, I anticipated violence, especially as the girl turned a corner or walked past an alleyway. At one point a young soldier on holiday leave joins her, and I thought to myself, here it comes. Nothing came. The young man just wanted to talk to the little girl, who reminded him of his sister at home.

There is plenty of tension in the film. First, a snake charmer artfully enlists the girl and her bill in his act. Then, the girl drops the bill, and it falls in a the grate of a closed store, where she can see, but not reach it. Her efforts to retrieve the bill and get the goldfish are as heroic as Jason’s search for the golden fleece. For whatever reason, I had an expectation of violence before walking into the movie theatre and this wonderful movie, whose sole purpose seemed only to give viewers an idea of what life is like in modern Teheran, frustrated that expectation, and I am grateful for this.

I do not wish for a world where all the films are as violence free as The White Balloon, or where True Grits are banned or censored. That will not happen by regulation, even if such laws could be enacted. The gritty truth is anger brings in listeners, viewers, readers and voters. Without our hateful expectations, True Grit could not have been remade. Violence sells because we buy it, or vote for it. Now, if someone can figure out how to extinguish the anger in our hearts, we might be in for some progress.

A reduction in our hateful expectations is needed, but I am as flummoxed about that as I could be suggesting how to achieve world peace. My only hope is to lower how much hate I can personally accept. That and trying to stay out of the line of fire is enough for anyone.

REPOST: The iZation of Afghanistan

2010-07-26T01:26:00.000-07:00

In light of the publishing of the war logs by Wikileaks, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, I am reposting this from December. It is hard to admit I have feelings of guilty pleasure about this. Easier to admit is that my heart aches for the people of Afghanistan and the brave members of our military who, again, have laid down their lives in a cause that exists only in the warped minds of our leaders.

Most days that summer, on our way to or from the town pool, we stopped in the library for an hour or so each day to read. We plopped down our swim wear, wrapped in towels, on chairs and tables and raced to the stacks, browsing for our individual interests. There was one book we read together that summer, and the librarian was far sighted enough to allow a group of seventh graders to do so: Dr. David Reuben’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). We boys were at the age of wanting to know everything about everything. It was 1969.

That was the year the Jets won Super Bowl III and The Beatles gave their last performance; when there was a summer of love in Bethel, NY and of hate orchestrated by Charles Manson in Los Angeles; the Mets became Amazin’ and John Lennon and Yoko Ono astonished us by staying in bed for a week; Chicago had four Days of Rage while the outrage from Mai Lai was first revealed. We first landed men on the moon in 1969, and it might have been the year AIDs first landed in the U.S.

That was some year, that 1969.

One more event: on November 3, 1969 President Richard Nixon announced the Nixon Doctrine, or the Vietnamization of our war on Vietnam. He also announced that by December 15, 1969, 60,000 men, including 20 percent of all America’s combat troops, would be withdrawn from Vietnam.

There was a catch. The war did not end until 1975, until after Nixon resigned, and more than a third of all Americans who died as a result of the war died after Nixon announced Vietnamization.

Today, President Obama is announcing another iZation of an American war, eight years after we entered Afghanistan in our decision to punish it for 9/11 and as we continue to ignore the failure of iZation in Iraq. Nixon pointed out that President Johnson had Americanized the war. What he failed to address in his policy was that the war in Vietnam already was, first last and always, a "Vietnamized" war. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all believed a country, especially one as small and “weak” as Vietnam, could not be viable without America. The excuse, then, was the communists. Now, Presidents Bush and Obama believe Afghanistan (will he include Pakistan?) cannot survive as a country without America. The excuse is terrorism. What excuse will the American President give to the next Richard Van De Geer?

“… I am somewhat fatalistic about believing that I shall never come to serious harm in the military ….” Air Force 2Lt. Richard Van De Geer spoke these words into a tape sent to his friend, who received it on May 15, 1975 (from Dear America, Letters Home From Vietnam, published by W.W. Norton and edited by Bernard Edelman). “I can envision a small cottage someplace, with a lot of writing paper, and a dog, and a fireplace and maybe enough money to give myself some Irish coffee now and then and entertain my two friends.”

Van De Geer was the last official American casualty of the war on Vietnam. He said his helicopter unit helped pull close to 2,000 people out of Vietnam.

President Obama has decided to add more lives to the list of useless dead America has compiled in dozens of wars. The simple truth is that Afghanistan will remain as it is and America will withdraw. Nothing we do between then and now will change those facts. No amount of soldiers or bombs dropping from drones will change Afghanistan. The Nixon, now Obama, Doctrine, can only deliver destruction and despair.

“I wish you peace, and I have a great deal of faith that the future has to be ours.”

“Adios, my friend.”

These are the last words Van De Geer spoke into the tape.

It is 40 years since President Nixon gave us details about his plan to end the war on Vietnam. President Obama should have heard those words by now. Given the announcement of his decision tonight, it is clear he cannot understand them. Nixon told future generations, and presidents, that if his Vietnamization policy fails, we aught to heed its critics.

“If it does succeed, what the critics say now won't matter. If it does not succeed, anything I say then won't matter,” said President Nixon on 11/3/1969.

I wanted to know everything about everything in the summer of 1969. Now, I would be happy to have wiped from my understanding these certainties: that whatever President Obama says tonight will not matter and that the Obama Doctrine will fail. For the sake of the people Obama will add to the path of destruction, I pray I am wrong and that I haven’t learned enough.

Sammy the Cartoon Cat

2010-04-29T06:28:00.000-07:00

I buried a large orange tabby in April. It was not Sammy. It helped me to think that it was Sammy since we could not bury him. A neighbor found the orange cat dead in his still-blooming forsythia. There was dried blood on the cat’s nose and mouth; my neighbor thought a car had hit the cat and it crawled in the bushes to die. There were no signs of his being feral or stray. All I could guess is that a large orange tabby had vanished from some family’s life.

Sammy was a semi-feral cat who came to us four years ago. The little orange guy was scrawny and scared, but mostly hungry. Babs fed him half and half. At first, he lapped the semi-cream so anxiously that much of it dotted his face and wet the ground around his bowl. He lost the chary, mean look of a stray and before long and became a round, happy fellow. He had muscular shoulders and looked a little bow-legged. When we called him for dinner, he trotted down the road on front paws that seemed curled, like Popeye’s fists. It is why we called him the cartoon cat. He was part of our life for seven months.

One cold day he went out and never came back.

FOUND A CAT
One, large, orange tabby on XXXX Road. We are sorry to tell you he is dead. It looks as if he had been hit by a car and was able to walk into a neighbor’s bushes. He looked like a well-cared for pet.

We carefully wrapped him in a clean blanket and buried him in a quiet spot on our property. If you think this was your cat, please feel free to call us at XXX-XXX-XXXX.

This is what I posted the old fashioned way, on the local supermarket bulletin board. Someone took down the sign, wrote the following, and moved my note to another part of the board.

Yes People drive way to fast on XXXX You know who you are This time a cat next time what Please use you heads!! [sic the whole note]

Nora and Paul had their weekend home in the upstate forest where I live. They retired there in the mid-1990s. Paul was an engaging, wry man who could twist an irony from nearly any casual conversation and played with words as delightfully as anyone I have ever known. Nora edited a book on the local flora and fauna of the area, had a sharp intellect and took great care of her husband, especially after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, a few years after we met them eight years ago. Nora was masterful in covering her husband’s lapses. Not until we visited Paul in the hospital, after the accident, was the disease clearly evident.

There are no speed signs posted on the forest road. The road is narrow, and even if the state speed limit is legally 55, going that fast down the road is risky business.

One part of the road has a deep dip. It is impossible to see a vehicle coming until it is nearly on top of you. Nora wanted Paul to keep up his driving skills in case something happened to her. They chose to turn around at the bottom of the dip. A hunter’s cabin is there; its parking space is not an ideal place to turn.

From the other direction came another vehicle. I do not know if it was traveling fast enough to break the “official” speed limit. It left long and dark skid marks that ended in broken glass and plastic by the time I surveyed the scene.

Nora and Paul’s car was turned so the passenger side faced the vehicle when it hit them. Paul was nearly unscathed. Nora had broken ribs, a pierced lung, horrible bruises on her face and upper body. She needed a machine to help her breath. The doctors did a tracheotomy. Paul was on a separate floor from the IC unit. His Alzheimer’s was worse. He spoke to us as if it was still WWII and he was just off the bomber on which he served. When they left the hospital, Nora and Paul went to different nursing facilities. One place could not manage their separate needs. Their house was sold and we lost touch with them.

It was a bad place to turn by a driver who should not have been behind the wheel under any circumstances and they were hit by a car going “to” fast.

I took the FOUND A CAT sign down after I saw the scrawled comment. I did not want its writer’s anger to make the situation worse than what it was. I had taken a dead cat from my neighbor’s bushes and buried it. That is all.

Raising One Hand and Another

2010-03-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

I was a small child, born in the last month of the year. The public school system transformed my life by allowing me to start school a year later. Instead of being the youngest, smallest kid in class, I became the oldest and one of the smallest kids in class.

My local Catholic church did not see it in the same way. When I attended catechism class for for the first time, I was put into the class of older children the public school administration decided I was not ready to join. So, I was thrust into a school room full of unfamiliar children who were all older and bigger than me. That in itself was a life-changing childhood experience and then I had to go to the bathroom.

I raised my hand and asked the nun if I could go to the bathroom. She said no. I wet my pants. When my mother picked me up and saw what had happened she would not allow me to go back to catechism. Thus, I became a lapsed Catholic at a very early age.

Though I continued to go to mass for several years, I never received Confirmation. The beauty of the Latin mass still rings in my head and I would have liked going to confession and to have been a part of the ornate ritual and ceremony of the Catholic church. Maybe it was all for the best. A friend of mine was a devout Catholic and after we saw The Exorcist together he told me he suffered from horrible nightmares; I experienced the movie as one would a roller coaster and nothing more. God works in mysterious ways.

There was one more thing about the Catholic church I learned when I was young. It was from my mother who told me her aunt, who brought up my mother in the Sudetenland of the 1930s, warned her about the priests. My mother’s aunt told her not to go anywhere alone with a priest. My mother passed along this little bit of wisdom.

So it is with mixed feelings I entered a Catholic hospital this week to visit a friend and neighbor who suddenly discovered he has lung cancer. About a week ago he was suffering from lung congestion, a nagging flu, or so he thought. It was pneumonia and in the x-ray of his chest the doctors saw a small tumor. The tumor is cancerous and was the cause of the pneumonia. He faces either an operation to remove the tumor, which may or may not be possible, or chemotherapy. He has no health insurance and not enough money to pay for an operation nor therapy. The hospital took him in, did the tests, put him in a private room (they feared the pneumonia would spread to other patients) and are working with him to apply for Medicaid. His survival might be in the hands of God, but because he is in a Catholic hospital, his prognosis might include seeing his two small children grow up.

There is no bitter language being spared by church critics to describe the comfort with which the Catholic church has abetted its pedophiles. The least persuasive way the Church defends itself is by pointing out sexual abuse of children is not exclusive to any large organization entrusted with the care of children.

That, of course, is malarkey. Because, as we now sadly realize, nobody, nowhere, no time, no way, no how knew the extent, depth, or horror of this scourge, nor how to adequately address it.

If my mom, a poor little girl, living with her aunt and uncle (who ran a small tobacco/candy/newspaper store), and who was not even 10 years old when WWII started, was warned about priests, it cannot be too "malarkish" to expect responsible adults, professionals, especially those who oversaw the clergy, to have known what was happening in their own institution. And yet the Catholic church certainly is not the only institution that harbored pedophiles; it is malarkey to believe in the exclusivity or near exclusivity of celibate priests engaged in pedophilia or even to blame the sexual abuse of children on celibacy. I imagine if we examined the juvenile justice system, for one, we would find similar institutional neglect on an even greater scale.

I said it was with mixed feelings I entered the hospital.

It is with similar mixed feelings I heard and watched the health care debate unfold. It will take years to discover if the recently passed health care reform will actually start our secular health care system on the road to universal coverage. I have my doubts. It will take a long time for all of us to receive the medical care that we all support with our taxes, but we do not all receive. My friend does not have years to wait. Meanwhile, despite the experience and doubts about the Catholic church, one of its hospitals is the only institution that stands in the way of my friend and lung cancer. God works in mysterious ways.

I would like to raise my hand and ask that the forces now bitterly engaged in fighting for and against universal health care, for and against the Catholic church and its behavior regarding pedophiles, respond with common decency. There is enough cruelty in life, acts of God we cannot control. Whatever suffering we can alleviate should be done without horribly angry rhetoric that serves neither man nor God.

While it is easy to be angry at the Catholic church, institutions like it are the only protection some of us have when facing illness.

The Two Davids

2010-03-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

In a wonderful Tour de Farce, Nicholas Confessore goes over the latest scandal regarding Gov. Paterson and the case of the gratis sports tickets in this morning’s New York Times. At first, I thought, like Casey Stengel: can’t anybody play this here game? Then I realized the problem is that everybody knows how to play this game all too well.

There is a Broadway comedy that can come out of all this, but we’ll have to wait until the whole story unravels. In the meantime, here is a suggestion for Act I of the play.

The cast of characters:
David Paterson: governor, state of New York, the accidental sports fan
David W. Johnson: aide to Gov. Paterson, a passive/aggressive testifier/ticket procurer
Michael G. Cherkasky: chairman of the Commission on Public Integrity, “Cherk”
Cato: Cherk's assistant; a wholly-fictional character made up for the purposes of this farce
Oscar Michelen: Johnson’s curiously incurious attorney
Jeffrey Pearlman: Gov. Paterson’s attorney, the incomplete messenger
Theodore V. Wells, Jr.: another Paterson attorney, the disturbed one
Nicholas Confessore: a New York Times reporter who gets caught up in the process
A large breasted waitress: another wholly-fictional, but visually interesting, character

Act I:

The Commission on Public Integrity (CPI) is trying to learn about the sports tickets Gov. David Paterson received gratis last fall. With Inspector Clouseau-like vigor, CPI Chairman Michael G. Cherkasky (Cherk) issues a subpoena for David W. Johnson, Paterson’s aide. Cherk gives the subpoena to his bumbling assistant Cato to deliver. Cato gets the two Davids mixed up and gives the subpoena for Johnson to Paterson’s attorney Jeffrey Pearlman.

Pearlman, realizing Cato’s mistake, gives the blank, unopened envelope to attorney Oscar Michelen, Johnson’s lawyer, during a lunch meeting. Pearlman tells Michelen the envelope is from Cherk, but Pearlman and Michelen are distracted by the large breasts of the waitress who has come to take their order, and before Pearlman can inform Michelen the envelope contains a subpoena.

Michelen is also distracted by the worry about how his client, who has just been suspended without pay, can afford his services, stuffs the envelope in his pocket, saying he will read it later.

When Michelen gets home his wife sends the suit to the cleaners, but not before, as usual, she goes through the pockets. She discovers a phone number (of the lunch waitress) and becomes so enraged, she neglects to search the rest of the pockets. The subpoena goes with the suit to the cleaners.

After making sure with Cato (who is beginning to realize his mistake, but does not want to get in trouble) that the subpoena was properly delivered, Cherk and the CPI issue a finding that David Paterson accepted the tickets and lied under oath about paying for them.

Then, Cherk gets a letter in a blank envelope from Theodore V. Wells, Jr., another Paterson attorney, complaining about the CPI's finding. Wells also noted in his letter that David Johnson never testified, which shows, Wells charges, that the CPI rushed its findings for political reasons. Cherk writes a reply, puts it in blank envelope in his out box. Rushing out to lunch (he is excited to see the new waitress with large breasts everyone is talking about) he calls Cato to pickup and deliver the letter. Cato comes in and takes the wrong letter: Wells’ letter.

Meanwhile, a reporter for the New York Times, Nicholas Confessore, is checking out the story. Confessore calls Wells’ office about the letter he heard Wells had sent. Wells, finding his original letter (the one Cato mistakenly delivered back to Wells) thinks he never sent it and tells the firm’s spokeswoman to deny any knowledge of such a letter. Next, Confessore calls Cherk, who can no longer find Wells’ letter, due to Cato’s mistake. He covers by telling Confessore the letter is confidential. Confessore calls Gov. Paterson’s office and Paterson’s spokeswoman, who knows nothing about anything, refers Confessore to Wells. The circle is complete.

Confessore is next seen interviewing the new CPI spokeswoman, the large breasted former waitress, at lunch. She tells Confessore that Cherk and Michelen are in discussion about David Johnson’s appearance before the Commission.

End Act I

The problem with producing this farce is that the audience will have to be asked to sit in its seats for four months, and that is just for Act I.

Quick Hit: Massa vs Ensign

2010-03-11T05:07:00.000-08:00

Senator John Ensign has been in the news for having an affair with the wife of an aide, Douglas Hampton. He is under investigation for steering lobbying work to Hampton, evidently in order to make up for Ensign's affair with Cynthia Hampton, Douglas' wife. The New York Times first reported on the affair and the alleged arrangement in October 2008. Ensign has been a Senator since January 2001 and served in the House from 1995 to 1999: about 15 years as a national political figure.

Representative Eric Massa resigned his seat on March 8 for allegations he groped male staff members. Massa asserts the charges were part of a White House effort to change his vote against its health insurance legislation. Massa has served in the House of Representatives from January 2009 to March 2010: about one year and two months and he has held no other political office.

Here are the Google search results:

Flipping over the bird some more

2010-03-06T09:01:00.000-08:00

I once was rushing to the subway, in NYC, after midnight. The train stood in the station, doors closed, and the train operator saw me. He could have opened the doors, but he didn’t. A few moments later, he did what he is supposed to do: start the train and try to keep on schedule. I flipped him the bird. I was angry. The next train was 20 minutes or more away.

As his car passed me, I heard him say: “Oh, that really hurts me.”

Too bad our police officers do not think the same way. For some reason, it really does hurt them if you blow off steam by raising your middle finger in anger.

One of the most recent, unfortunate angry flying fingers has fated an Oregon man to appear in court this month to see if his civil right lawsuit in Clackamas County will be dismissed.

Meanwhile, this must be the definitive work on middle finger madness: 83 pages by Ira P. Robbins.

Unemployment on a snowflake

2010-03-05T08:34:00.000-08:00

Are we really debating how many jobs can dance on a snowflake? I can only weep.

Thanks for setting us straight

2010-03-05T05:37:00.000-08:00

From today's NYT:

"Seventeen years ago, the chiefs — all four of us, plus the chairman and vice chairman — concluded that allowing open homosexuality in the ranks would probably damage the cohesiveness of our combat units."

Well, that's it, then. If all six of these people say it's so, it must be so.

The Albany One

2010-03-03T07:01:00.000-08:00

When we say David Paterson was unelected or label him "accidental." we are technically wrong. Lieutenant governors and vice presidents are elected primarily to do just what Paterson did, take over if the governor resigns or cannot otherwise perform his duties. There is nothing unelected or accidental about it. (Though we do enjoy the snarky use of the adjective "accidental.")

It is with great sadness I look at what is happening to David Paterson. I remember the incident Jim Dwyer writes about in the NYT today. If you visit the Harlem park Paterson helped push politicians to build (as part of the "Sewage Seven") you will see an example of how government works best when it accommodates the many and the few.

If he has to go, I hope he takes some time off, then returns to his political roots and continues the journey he started a long time ago.

Flipping Over the Bird

2010-02-18T13:02:00.000-08:00

David Hackbart flipped Pittsburgh policeman Sgt. Brian Elledge the bird and presumably flashed the V for victory sign after he was awarded $50,000, reported onpointnews.com. Prosecutors dropped disorderly conduct charges, stemming from an altercation over a parking space with another motorists in 2006. Hackbart sued the city, arguing that Elledge retaliated against him. Hackbart said he was “engaging in constitutionally protected speech.” The judge agreed.

The city also agreed to provide training for its all its police officers on the Constitutional rights of hand gestures.

Rhetoric That You Can See

2010-02-18T06:26:00.001-08:00

Charles Franklin at Pollster.com posted two charts that show the same data in two dramatically different ways. While both charts are fundamentally true, both are misleading.

The chart above (from Organizing for America) leads us to believe that what we have lost in red is what we have gained in blue.

This second chart looks at the data in another way; Franklin's chart totals the job losses, adding the Obama losses to the Bush losses. Thus, as he admits because he wants to demonstrate how deceptive visual treatment of data can be, even though there were more losses in the last year of Bush's term than in Obama's first year, Obama's first year looks worse.

What the data actually mean is the amount of job loss has slowed under Obama.

"One can think of these two charts as data displays that reveal different aspects of data, but also as graphical political rhetoric," notes Franklin.

As Franklin notes, the first chart indeed shows improvement, while the second one reminds us of how steep a climb we have before we reach full job recovery.

The Upper Hump II

2010-02-17T09:48:00.000-08:00

Whenever I get sentimental about the U.S. Senate, I try to remember Sen. Charles Sumner, a Massachusetts Republican Senator, who called Illinois Democratic Sen. Stephen Douglas (widely remembered for his debating skills) a “noise-some, squat, and nameless animal . . . not a proper model for an American senator.” Sumner was beaten with a stick soon after by a member of the House, Preston Brooks, who was a South Carolina Democrat.

If the 1856 beating of the Senator could be used as a precedent, we could arm House members with the type of metal-tipped cane Brooks used to end the current filibustering paralysis. Unfortunately, our founders designed the federal legislature the other way around: they wanted the upper branch legislators to beat down their lower class colleagues in the House.

The proper model for a U.S. Senator was never really defined by the men who designed our bicameral legislature. They only required that people be able to reach the age of 30 in order to take the oath of a Senator. Originally, they hoped that indirect election of Senators would give us a pool of elite legislators, but that election method was supplanted by a direct, popular election.

The first step to fixing the Senate, if you think it is worth it (and I do not) is to first pass a minimum requirement for the upper hump’s legislators. I recommend that they have at least 10 years of legislative experience in their states’ legislatures or in the House, or a mix of both, before they can run for Senate. Then the distinction of serving in the upper branch of the legislature would be earned honestly.

The other problem is that Senators are no longer skilled in the art of making legislative sausage. Instead of creating this tasty treat, they would rather see us starve. Like legislators under a communist system, their law-making loyalties currently are to the party, not the people or to the institution. Just because the Republicans are better at it at the moment, keeping their Senators in line, does not mean the Democrats will not be energetic learners of this new control tool. I can imagine the day, and it is coming soon, where neither party can pass legislation.

My second suggestion to change the Senate is to alter how Senators are reelected. Instead of facing an opponent of the opposite party, voters should vote only yes or no to reelection of their incumbent Senator. If 75 percent of the people in the state vote yes, then the Senator is reelected. If no, then the Senator steps down at the end of the term and a new, election is held. The sitting, un-reelected Senator cannot run in the special election. The seat remains unfilled until a new election can be held. No temporary appointments should be allowed. If it takes a year to hold a new election, the new Senator will sit only five years. This last part is crucial. There must be some price to pay for voting against reelection.

Two things would be accomplished by such a reelection: loyalty to parties and narrow interests would be overcome with a broad, popular yes vote and Senators would become more adept at compromise by having to work toward getting a 75 percent affirmation. Big money in Senatorial reelections would be less important since there would no longer exist a direct opponent. Senators seeking reelection would have to work with many opposing groups in their state and not be so clearly defined in their support of any single faction. Party loyalty among sitting Senators would fade; few states, if any, have a party that consistently controls 75 percent of the voters. To achieve its goals, a party will need to support the compromises worked out by its own Senators if it wants to be in the game, at all.

By requiring reelection to be supported by 75 percent of the voters, every faction in the state would have to scale down what they hope to get from their Senator. If a right-to-life group uses a “nuclear option” to defeat a Senator’s reelection, another, unrelated faction, counting on the Senator’s help, say, to build a nuclear power plant, might want to tamp down the ardor of the anti-abortionists. One issue might convince 26 percent of voters to say no to the incumbent Senator, but that issue might not convince enough voters to support a new Senate candidate, who could even more strongly oppose your interest.

Pro- and anti-issue forces on any issue would have to work on a compromise if they expect to have adequate representation in the Senate at all. Electing a new freshman Senator every six years does nobody in any state any good. Under the reelection system I suggest, opposing factions who insist on our way or the highway will be spending a lot of time on the road every six years, and spending a lot of money, too.

No Senator, you might say, would be reelected under this plan. No one can get 75 percent of voters to agree on anything. That is true, under current election practices. Two or more people beating each other with opposing commercials, speeches and debates necessarily generate great opposition. You get the results you wish for. Put up a Senator who sole aim is to be reelected, and who really wants to serve the state as a whole, and the task of gaining such broad, popular support is not an impossible summit to reach.

Take away a half dozen to ten of our country’s most divisive issues and you will uncover the fact that most Americans agree on most of the issues. Even factions that have the bitterest differences could be persuaded to compromise if compromise is the only way they can reach their goals. Factions currently fight to the bitter end because our system tends to produce all or nothing results.

Would it be too easy for Senators to achieve reelection given they do not face an opponent every six years? If the percent of votes they need for reelection is less than 75 percent, it might be too easy. Maybe the magic number should be 2/3 of the voters and not ¾. That is arguable. At 66 percent, though, some parties or factions in some states may never hear from their Senator. Facing a hurdle of 75 percent means every Senator will have to speak with all parties, factions and special interests, and that all these groups would need to speak among themselves if they want their state to be sufficiently represented in Washington. Only the smallest groups will have no voice.

Right now, two-party elections are won by 50 percent plus one vote. Half a state, minus one, could be opposed in a two-party election to the winning candidate. If three people run, the “winner” needs the support of only 33 percent plus one vote; two-thirds of an electorate can oppose the “winner” of an election. This is the cause of the country’s bitter divisiveness.

If we can toughen the minimum qualifications needed before someone can run for Senate, and make incumbent Senators beholden to a broader majority in their states, the upper legislative branch may actually earn its elitist distinction and better serve their state and the country.

The Senate is acting like a group of fighting children who need to be forced to shake hands and work together. They need to act like adults, in other words. If my suggestions or some other approach is not soon adopted, we should all get our metal tipped canes ready to give the upper hump’s children a whooping they will not forget. Maybe then they will turn out to be proper Senators.

The Upper Hump I

2010-02-17T05:10:00.000-08:00

I have long hoped for a more polite public discourse. Maybe as the tumult of the 1960s faded, I thought, we would work more on issues that unite us instead of concentrating on our differences.

Unfortunately, this new century has proved coarser, and at least as divisive, than the last. In the last century, expletives were embarrassingly deleted. Today, we exult politicos who exhibit toughness with utterances like “fucking retards.” Such cursing, if imaginative or clever, would at least entertain. What has been actually uttered instead proves that the freeness of speech has not increased the value of words.

So, the veneer of politeness that has been a part of U.S. Senate’s practice and traditions has always appealed to me. The Senate exhibits the kind of verbal exchanges I imagine took place among the people living in the 19th century, at least those who populate novels set in that era. I admit these feelings about the upper legislative branch are sentimental. It is realistic to assume that the more politely Senator Jones talks about “my good friend Senator Smith” the deeper Jones’ knife rests in Senator Smith’s back. Politeness and disingenuousness often exist side by side.

Except for those within the orbit of the Senators themselves, I do not think there are too many people who believe the Senate is an institution fit for the 21st century. The faults most often cited are some of the rules and the traditions of the institution. I think this is a misunderstanding of the situation. It is the design of the Senate and the Senators themselves that are fault. And when I blame the Senators themselves, I do not mean willful wrongdoing on their part in the current legislative game of chicken being played.

Diogenesian searches in the U.S. Senate are as likely to turn up honest people as anywhere else. It is not that Senators are less honest than the rest of us, nor more venal, today or at any other time. (Though I would advise being as aware of one’s wallet while conversing in a quorum of Senators as while standing on a subway platform.) The Senators’ problems stem from something else. It is not the fault of the Senators, who are only playing by the rules we have allowed.

What we face in this century is something that has grown larger and more complex over the first two centuries, or so, since we enacted the Constitution. What plagues the Senate are an erosion of stature of its members and a moral dilemma of mixed loyalties that they face. Short of dissolving the legislative body entirely (which I think is the best solution) fixing the Senate involves selecting better individuals to serve there and finding a way to focus Senators’ loyalties on the institution and the performance of their sworn duties.

To fix this, we need to change two things about the Senate: the minimum requirements for serving in the Senate and how Senators are reelected. I will talk about a new way of reelecting Senators in my next post. Here, I go on to suggest a way of selecting a better quality of Senator.

The Senate was designed to have indirect election of Senators by their respective state legislatures. This selection method was discarded partly because party leaders had too much control over the process. So one way of populating the Senate with distinguished candidates, as our founders designed originally, has been eliminated. This leaves age being the only quality caveat we require of people who want to be a Senator.

I believe the quality of the Senate has been eroded because our pre-selection process is so inadequate. Nothing magical happens to a person between the ages of 25, the House minimum age, and 30, the Senate minimum age, to improve the quality of the person to serve as a Senator. Age helps, but being older, even significantly older, is not enough.

So the level of education, private or public achievement, social or class status, wealth, heredity or even experience have nothing to do with distinguishing a Senator from a Representative. Only a few, unremarkable years is the minimum requirement we use to select our most important legislators. This is a major design flaw in the construction of the Senate.

Our bicameral legislature is based on having a smaller, more select body of legislators to lord over the more pedestrian sort likely to occupy the chairs in the lower hump. Indirect election was originally thought to be one way to select people of quality to serve in the Senate. When that selection method proved faulty and Senators began being selected by popular vote, they lost the most important distinguishing feature they had over their lesser, more numerous House colleagues. We would not want a return to indirect selection, so we need to find other way is to improve the pool of people allowed to Constitutionally serve in the Senate.

A Constitutional amendment that would allow only people who have completed 10 years of service in their state legislature or in the House of Representatives, or a mix of both, is one way. This would at least give us Senators with more legislative experience than we have now.

It is fair to quibble with the length of legislative experience I suggest. Five years might be adequate. Or you can disagree with the idea that only legislative experience is required in this scheme. You might say people with a variety of backgrounds should populate the Senate. On that, I fervently disagree. Senators need to be the most experienced legislators available because they have so much more legislative responsibility than their House colleagues. Let the lesser legislatures be where people learn the trade; the Senate is too important to serve as a training school.

You might also think that the pool of eligible candidates is so restricted under this plan that there may not be enough qualified politicians available whenever a Senate seat opens. Given the normal amounts of ambition that animates our country, I doubt we will ever run into that situation. In fact, state houses and the House of Representatives may attract better people because these governing bodies would be the sole stepping stones to the Senate.

To argue no experience need apply makes little sense. Why should we not want skilled legislators to populate our most important legislative branch? In few other professions, except politics, do we select absolutely inexperienced, untested people to do the job. We don’t even require politicians to take a drug test. (Another idea for another day.)

It is not that our Senate is populated by “f’ing retards.” Far from it. They are simply not the kind of people, as a group, who should have been handed the responsibilities of an upper legislative chamber only because they became 30-years-old. If this democracy needs an elite upper chamber to check on the work of its more populist colleagues, then this distinction should at least be earned honestly.

If we can add a new, solid base of experience under the Senate’s traditional veneer of politeness, there might be hope for this century, yet.

Catch-41

2010-02-12T10:06:00.000-08:00

Minority Senator Yossarian decided that the majority’s new bill was the best solution to the problem that plagued the country. He wanted to stop blocking the bill.

“You’re wasting your time,” said the minority leader.

“Can’t you allow someone to vote for the bill?” Senator Yossarian asked.

“Oh, sure, I have to,” the minority leader explained. “Our rules say anyone who wants to vote yes can do so.”

“Then why don’t you let me vote yes,” said Senator Yossarian, “I believe this bill is the best approach to the problem. Ask any Senator from our party; they all think we should pass this bill.”

“They’re right.”

“Then why don’t you let them vote yes?”

“If they believe in the legislation, they should vote yes. They just have to ask me to allow them to vote yes.”

“That’s all they have to do to vote yes on the bill?”

“That’s all. Let them ask me.”

“And then you’ll let them vote for the bill?” Senator Yossarian asked.

“No, then I can’t let them vote for the bill,” the minority leader replied.

“You mean there’s a catch?”

“Sure there’s a catch. Anyone wanting to get out of voting no is not a sane member of the party and will lose in his next primary,” the minority leader said.

U.S. Senate Catch-41 specifies that sane minority Senators could transcend party loyalty if a bill proposed by the majority would be the best solution to a problem facing the nation. Any sane minority Senator could vote yes. All that Senator needs to do is ask. As soon as the Senator asks, he would be deemed insane, since voting yes would ruin his chances in the next party primary. If that Senator votes no, he could be crazy not to support the best solution for the country, but only the minority leader could determine if a minority Senator was insane. If the Senator asks the minority leader if he could vote yes, it proves the Senator is insane, and so the party could not possibly let him vote yes.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-41,” Senator Yossarian observed.

“It’s the best there is,” the minority leader agreed.

We want politicians to do their jobs. Politicians say they will do their jobs, as long as voters elect them. But once we elect them to do their jobs, politicians go back to politics as usual. A politician’s job is to do anything necessary to stay in office. A voter’s job is to complain as much as possible and reelect the politician. A politician’s enemy is any one or thing that will keep him from being reelected, including his own rational judgment about how the country should be run.

It should not surprise us that the Senate, coupled with the tool of the filibuster and other Senate rules and traditions, has become irrationally obstructionist. Under current election rules, the Republicans have forced Senators to be more loyal to the party than to the people. Hardball party politics has warped what was intended to be a more deliberative, better experienced set of legislators into the least representative group of legislators our republic has ever produced.

There are two solutions to these concerns.

First, by we need to raise the bar on qualifications. Senators today are no more experienced to legislate than Representatives. A 30-year-old without legislative experience is little better qualified than an 25-year-old without legislative experience. Second, the election system we have is too prone to special and narrow influences. Our Senators have proved to be more like legislators in a communist system whose first loyalty is to The Party. Changing Senate rules will not solve these problems. Changing how we elect and reelect Senators could make Senators more sensitive to the broader interests of their state and the nation.

Short of eliminating the Senate (which would be my choice) we could require our Senators to be more experienced in order to run for office and to face a reelection that forces them to be more broadly representative of their state, instead of being beholden to the special interests and the narrow party loyalty that controls them today.

To be elected, only candidates with at least ten years of legislative experience, in their state legislature and/or in the House of Representatives, could run. To be reelected, Senators need not face an opponent, but only a yes or no ballot. Here’s the catch: in order to be reelected, a Senator must earn a yes vote of at least 75 percent. Failing to reach the 75 percent level, a new election would be organized in which the Senator who lost reelection could not take part. No interim appointments would be allowed. Senators could only be chosen by election.

Catch-75 is more rational than the idiocy that now “governs” us. More about this in my next post.

Everybody Else Has to Take Tests

2010-02-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

I just posted "Smart Asses" below when I clicked over to Glenn Greenwald and read his piece on Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican and Maine's junior Senator. As useless as I believe the U.S. Senate to be, a clueless Senator in a useless office just boggles the mind.

More and more, as everyday, and maybe as every minute, goes by, I believe we need to test all office seekers about their knowledge of the U.S. Constitution, the constitutions and laws relevant to the offices they are seeking, plus reading ability, math skills and an essay. These tests would be administered by non-partisan proctors and taken in an open classroom without help of staff, computer or anything but a pencil and a rudimentary calculator. No cell phones, etc.

The tests would not restrict them from running for or holding office. The answer and scores would be for public information.

Speaking of tests, why do we not require every office holder to be subject to random drug tests? If it is important for our sports heroes to be drug-free, it is all the more vital for the people who we entrust to manage our government and represent us to be drug-free, too.

By all means read Glenn's piece linked below.

Most of what she said was just standard right-wing boilerplate, but there was one claim in particular that deserves serious attention, as it has become one of the most pervasive myths in our political discourse: namely, that the U.S. Constitution protects only American citizens, and not any dreaded foreigners

A complete physical and psychological workup should be required, too.

Senate and Filibusters for Smart Asses

2010-02-01T16:04:00.000-08:00

Most Americans have not read the document that governs us. So I started carrying copies of the U.S. Constitution that I had typeset myself. It was meant to be used as a gentle learning tool. Around the office water cooler, or waiting for my turn at the coffee machine, I’d casually broach something about the founding fathers, one of the amendments or a comment about a SCOTUS ruling from the previous day.

With that Constitution ready to whip out at a moment’s notice, I often found myself feeling superior, especially if the conversation became heated. “Here,” I might say, “maybe you should read this,” or “try reading this, first.” It was not my original intent. I was being a smart ass.

While “effecting change” by distributing the U.S. Constitution in this way, I noticed fewer colleagues joining me at the water cooler or coffee machine.

Nobody likes a smart ass.

A harder issue to win at the water cooler is about majority rule. We do not have a winner take all government. Most of us forget, especially those who have been elected or appointed to high office, that the U.S. Constitution was designed to limit power. We do not want our legislators, executives or judges to lord over us, at least our founders did not believe this. Nor did they want the majority to have unlimited power simply because they were the majority. These simple, grammar-school civics lessons are fading from our consciousness. Especially the elected and appointed, in their heart of hearts, believe that our constitution limits the rights of the people.

So I am glad that the Senate has a rule that can slow down a majority even with up to nine votes over the minority. On my most cynical days, I wish that both House and Senate would have rules that allowed not less than a 75 percent majority to pass any legislation. The fewer bills they can pass the less mischief they can cause. Yet the schoolboy in me remembers that the histories of the Senate and its filibuster are inexorably entwined with slavery and racial politics.

Our Senate, while it seems to have the British House of Lords as its model, has no real comparison to that house of heredity. Our Senate was crafted to ease the fears the small states had of being dominated by the states with larger populations. Had we been a confederation of states with roughly equal populations, America may have not created a bi-cameral legislature.

Our government could run more smoothly with only one legislative body. Fashioning two bills to address the same issue is a drag on efficiency. In both House and Senate, we have duplicative committees going over the same issues, duplicative hearings and two sets of staffers that have to do the same research and other grunt work for each legislative body (plus the extra parking spaces). Then two similar, but not exactly the same, bills must be reconciled. This is usually done in the most secret chambers of Congress.

As Alexander Hamilton predicted, we have not had any major points of contention between the small states and large. Of course there have been some differences, but none important enough to warrant the creation of an upper legislative house to lord over a republic. The Senators are theoretically no more capable by education or birth to legislate than their House peers. The House of Lords was a class apart; in the newly-created United States, that kind of class distinction did not exist, theoretically. It is only because of magical thinking and habit that the Senate remains. We should have eliminated it long ago.

The filibuster is only small potatoes. The issue is really the vestigial body called the Senate. But now I’m being a really super smart ass.

The Senate proved valuable to slave-holding interests, however. Slave states were eager to expand their number in order to equalize the power of slave states in the Senate. That tactic kept pro- and anti-slave proponents busy for several decades, until the Civil War.

The filibuster is not a constitutional issue, per se, since it is merely a Senate rule. Yet in an institution literally designed to hold back the tyranny of the large states (which never really materialized), the filibuster should have had an appropriate home. In practice, the filibuster has an awful record.

Southern states’ Senators kept segregation a going concern for decades with filibusters. That was devastating to the lives of blacks and made coarse our American life as a whole. The Senate could have changed that at any time. The filibuster is frustrating and meant to be thus.

What we have is a legislative body that has outlived its original function holding sway over a republic with a rule it keeps alive to throttle itself.

Pay no attention to this. I’m only a smart ass.

With no apologies

2010-01-31T07:22:00.000-08:00

Start spreading the news,
Were shirking today.
We want to have no part of it -
New York, New York.

These conservative beefs
Have forced us to say
We really want no part of it
New York, New York.

They’ll hold court in a city,
That’s so far away
So news crews and limos-ah
Won’t clog our streets.

Our al Queda blues
Have scared us today
We’ll put a halt to any hint of it,
In scared New York.
So you can’t hold it here,
Just hold court anywhere
Instead of in
New York, New York.

New York, New York!

They’ll hold court in a city,
That’s so far away
To show we’re lowly and mean,
Back of the class,
Masses of rats
Just dung in the heap.

Our al Queda blues
Have scared us today
We’re gonna make damn sure that trial ain’t held
In scared New York.
So you can’t hold it here,
Just hold court anywhere
Stay out means you,
New York, New York.

Your pants are on fire

2010-01-30T07:36:00.000-08:00

It was quite a show President Obama put on using congressional Republicans as a sounding board to amplify his plea for an end to needless obstruction.

There has never been anything like President Obama's performance yesterday in my lifetime. It might be a model for governing in the age of rancor. His opposition conference yesterday was far more enlightening than the press conferences under the last few presidents (President Kennedy's are still good theatre). And practical. Get the president and his opposition on camera and on record. Come the election, either side can then use clips to make their case before the constituents.

Obama held his ground, like when he noted the contribution to the economic mess made by a Republican president acting in concert with a Republican congress. One bipartisan comment he could have made at that point: about the guns and butter expenditures in the 1960s when the country was spending like, well, drunken Democrats.

If the country was truly being steered by rational human beings, I would applaud louder the call for less political bickering and the plea for reasoned discourse. President Obama has showed us a way to reduce the legislative stalemate that has developed over the years. Unfortunately, it comes at a time we are deaf to the call for reduced military spending. It is a serious flaw in the opposition conference model: what will it look like when both sides are equally disingenuous? In this case, it will look like nothing at all, since reduced military spending was not on the conference agenda.

No rational plan to reduce spending in this country can completely exclude military spending. It is by far the greatest single part of our discretionary budget and making it sacrosanct dooms any long term economic reform. Our president and congressional leaders are understandably under no obligation to point this out; they are bought and paid for and under the complete control of the military/corporate sovereigns. The press is weak and partially beholden to the same set of rulers; almost none of the accredited journalists attending the presidential press conferences, at least the ones who are called on, question presidents on this point.

One day when we wake up from this empire induced spell, we will collectively slap our foreheads and moan about why we couldn't see the collapse coming, but not today. For now, let us marvel at the sun continuously shining on America's world.

Part of the enjoyment of watching President Obama is his obvious understanding of the issues at hand, his confidence and his eloquence. It is refreshing given the eight years previous to Obama's taking office. Again and again, answering Republican questions, Obama said he read this and that bill, knew the Republican positions and has consulted the best experts. Here's where the trousers start getting warm.

Obama made mention of the near 6 percent growth in the GDP that was just being reported yesterday. It was unmistakably the president crowing about how the economy is beginning to grow, and, it has to be taken as a corollary from this, he believes his policies warrant approval.

As Paul Krugman, back from his dalliance with Obamacare, reminds us today in his blog, the uptick is mostly an inventory blip. Scooped in this revelation by Calculated Risk, to which he graciously tips his journalistic fedora to, Krugman adds this enterprising note: we last saw such back slapping, economic mission accomplished joy about the first quarter of 2002. While the 5.8 percent GDP initially reported increase was later revised downward, what remained on the rise at that time was unemployment, which did not peak until 2003.

President Bush had an excuse; such trivial economic and policy details, the kind that President Obama revels in, was not his métier. President Obama knows better. Oh yes he does. Here is what Calculated Risk reported earlier this month:

San Francisco Fed President described the impact of inventory changes back in September: The Outlook for Recovery in the U.S. Economy:

I expect the biggest source of expansion in the second half of this year to come from a diminished pace of inventory liquidation by manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. Such a pattern is typical of business cycles. Inventory investment often is the catalyst for economic recoveries. True, the boost is usually fairly short-lived, but it can be quite important in getting things going.

The crow we heard yesterday should be on the White House menu today.

Playing footsie with the loyal opposition is good theatre, good politics and, yes, a good idea for our republic. The she said/he said reportorial model that is makes newspapers, news webs and blogs fun reading, is a brittle model for understanding. I hope Obama's opposition conference is soon repeated. We need more of this from current and future administrations and for American politics in general.

Behind the Teleprompters

2010-01-29T09:44:00.000-08:00

The only things transparent in the Obama Administration are the teleprompters.

As President Obama refreshed his promise to deliver transparent government in his SOTU address, the administration was busy preparing meetings pointedly opaque. On Tuesday, President Obama told the nation he wanted lobbyists to disclose all contacts with the White House or Congress. On Thursday, he wanted lobbyists invited to participate in conference calls with the administration not to disclose such contact.

Wouldn’t you like to have been a bug in the phones that senior administration officials used to speak with lobbyists yesterday? As reported by The Hill, the call schedule included job creation and economic growth, 11:30 am, government growth and transparency, 1:00 pm, education, climate change and health care reform; the schedule of the latter topics are unspecified by The Hill’s report.

A White House spokesman said in an email that the administration reaches out to the public and policymakers as part of a standard effort to inform those not in Washington during one of the President’s major speeches or after a major policy pronouncement. “These calls are targeted at a diverse group of community and government leaders including mayors, governors, faith groups, women's organizations, representatives from the African American and Latino communities to share as much information about the administration's agenda as possible.”

The Hill said it spoke to a handful of lobbyists who received invitations to these conferences and were planning to call in. One lobbyist said such teleconferences go on “all the time.”

President Obama said in his SOTU: “It's time to require lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with my administration or with Congress.”

Lobbying is out of control, but I don’t like bashing lobbyists. They are necessary to the efficient and rational running of a modern government. Much of the time, only lobbyists understand the complexities of legislation necessary to regulate their industries. We need their input. But trying to force them to disclose their day-to-day activities would be like trying to control the wind.

It is the government, which the people theoretically are the sovereigns of, that should be forced to disclose contacts. We the People are supposed to be in charge. That means we should have authority over our employees: elected officials, their staffs and all our bureaucrats. Like any other employer in this country, we have the right to oversee all the activities of our employees. Every one of our employees should be required to keep a record of each contact they have—that is every meeting, phone call, email, breakfast, lunch, dinner, etc.—and those records should be available to anyone who wants to scrutinize their activities.

The issue is not transparency. “Transparency” is, to use the kind of blogger-speak I usually avoid, bullshit. The issue is sovereignty and who should really be in charge.

With the kind of technology we have today and the efficient record-keeping it allows, such close management of our employees is within our ability and is intolerable only to people who would rather not work for the government. There are millions of qualified people who can take their place immediately, since they are out of work.

Let us not forget we also hire the referees. Supreme Court Justices are not management; the people, as the founders originally wrote in the Constitution, appoint these justices to call balls and strikes only. The referees do not rule the game. We allow them to have the ultimate in job security, but they serve as employees of the people, too. They do not have to tell us how they would theoretically decide an issue at the time we scrutinize their credentials; that is fair. But it is fair, too, for the people to require their employees to follow our management rules.

We have a government that has secretly sworn allegiance to the military/corporate structure, which tries as much as possible to be the invisible sovereign of our nation. Lobbyists are only their paid employees. The new sovereigns are not about to abdicate. We the People have a very tough struggle if we want to take back the country. It was easier with King George III; he only inherited his kingdom. Our current rulers believe they have stolen the country fair and square.

The Hill also noted the invitation is addressed to "Friends,” emphasizes in bold and italics that “this call is for background information only and not intended for press purposes.” That is what our government truly believes about transparency.

I guess we should be thankful that the administration needs to emphasize with bold italics that these calls are not subject to President Obama’s transparency rhetoric. My wish would be for a press that warranted stronger admonition. That would take BOLDFACE CAPS, an emphasis reserved for notes to lobbyists by politicians who are facing an election when they are running out of money.

Hecho en Cuba, Stolen in America

2009-12-18T09:16:00.000-08:00

Evidently, some people think the American embargo on Cuba is a license to steal.

General Cigar Holdings has been using the world famous cigar brand name and trademark, Cohiba, on a line of its cigars, mainly because Cuba cannot register its most luxurious line of cigars in the U.S., it was reported in courthousenews.com.

Cohiba is a very well known Cuban cigar; some say it is Cuba’s finest brand. The brand was developed for President Fidel Castro, under “top secret” conditions, in the El Laguito factory, and once seen outside of Cuba only in the hands of diplomats and visiting dignitaries who received them as gifts, according to Habanos, S.A. Habanos is the Cuban firm that promotes, distributes and exports tobacco products for Cubatabaco, that country’s tobacco monopoly.

The case is 12 years old and has complicated twists and turns. Courthousenews.com gives the details, but the latest news is that U.S. District Judge Robert W. Sweet ruled against General Cigar Holdings, although he allowed the American firm to continue marketing its “Cohiba” brand for General’s Dominican-made cigars, pending appeal.

OK. Maybe it’s a little tit for tat given the amount of property confiscated by the Cuban government from American and Cuban citizens when Fidel Castro and the communists took power. There are few angels in America, Cuba or any country, for that matter. Punishing Cuba with embargo was a Cold War tool. The embargo alone did not stop us from a military invasion of Cuba, obviously, but embargoes are often used by countries to forestall military action. One Bay of Pigs and one Missile Crises were enough.

Then again, the embargo has been ineffective enough to make the U.S. Cuba’s fifth largest trading partner.

I am not gloating over the evident failure of our Cuban embargo. It is a good thing that such blunt instruments of international diplomacy, like embargoes and non-negotiation policies, are almost never sacrosanct. Real human understanding between nations, particularly ones that hold massive means of destruction, forces nations to speak with each other. Our leaders can bluster in public about never negotiating with North Korea, say, but they ought to be speaking with that county or any other country via some back channel. Whether negotiating a hostage crises, nuclear weapon capabilities or trading for cigars, talking is almost always better than not talking.

Real and utter isolation of any country can lead only to disaster for everyone.

Just Asking

2009-12-13T10:25:00.000-08:00

A short thought on Afghanistan. If at any time we pulled out of Afghanistan and another terrorist attack came from that country, the strategy of leaving that country would be blamed. Yet, the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan has not eradicated al Qaeda and the potential for it to reemerge there, so why do we continue with that strategy? The failure of the first strategy would almost certainly lead to another invasion. The failure of invasion and occupation seems only to lead to continuing and increasing the occupation.

Just asking.

Blogging Into Hell

2009-12-13T09:41:00.000-08:00

The speed of the internet forces bloggers into being rushed. Wait a day or two before posting means falling deeper into the obscurity most of us write in. Many times, the events are only worth hasty comment, as with most of Sarah Palin’s actions and utterings. Other times, it pays to sit back, look around a bit, and slowly find a thread in the issues of the moment.

It has taken me several days to digest President Barack Obama’s remarks in Oslo this week. His speeches are masterfully written and edited. We have not heard from him a Gettysburg’s Address or a “the only thing we have to fear” phrase, but such speeches are as much due to the collisions of history as the skills of language and delivery. I give him credit for not hiding behind a barrage of obfuscations in speaking about the irony of an unembarrassed war leader being cited for peace. His direct, honest answers were the most chilling I have ever heard from an American head of state.

He describes war as natural, like outbreaks of influenza. Not much argument there. Human beings invented the idea of war as morally justified, said Obama, and it happened right at the time civilization was creating laws and other hindrances to the use of violence. Clever humans.

He said primitive humans were either wicked or ignorant and had no sense of a moral war. Now, it is impossible to say what discussions went on in the caves and tents of the earliest human beings. Yet I doubt the measure of morality in their souls was smaller than the amounts in our souls today. For what amount of morality justifies the continued aggressive sale of tobacco or the myriad of other poisons put into our bodies, food and environment for the sake of profit?

The oddest idea in Obama’s history of war is his concept regarding civilians, that modern warfare blurred the distinction between combatant and civilian. It is a romantic notion that war ever absented civilians from violence. Even if the women and children were not directly battling the Roman legions, say, once their men were slaughtered, the women and children were raped, beaten, forced into slavery or killed. And even if they were somehow spared, can any modern, moral human being believe that survivors are not victims? Women and children who suddenly lose husbands, fathers and brothers cannot be said to be distinct from the violence of war.

I am a world weary peacenik. I understand our urge to war will never end in my lifetime or in a hundred lifetimes. Human beings may end up in wars as long as the species exists. War negates the need for using the best defense we can ever have against irrational destruction, our power of reason. It is so much easier to bomb a terrorist than to figure out a way to stop him. For while bombing might stop a particular terrorist, it will never stop terrorism. The best we can do is end wars quickly with as little killing and damage as possible.

War is never justified, morally or otherwise. It is a failure in human reasoning and in the human spirit.

Human beings make war unavoidable in a variety of ways. Keep enough standing armies in place or stockpile enough weapons and war will come. Nations train and supply other countries with the means of war, then declare war if a client becomes belligerent. War is now even necessary if a neighbor, next door or halfway around the world, is perceived a threat.

How Obama defined war as necessary in his peace prize acceptance speech is chilling:

“For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world.”

It was not “when evil arises” or “when nations or people resort to evils means” that Obama put into his speech. He believes evil exists, like wind, rain and fire. If evil is a natural force, like gravity, and it is not attached to a concrete action or an abstract political idea, then we are in a perpetual war with that force. This is not a slip of the tongue. Evil does exist in Obama’s view of the world; he did not mean evil deeds or evil ideas.

This educated, sensitive, thoughtful and, above all, this civilized man, has reasonably articulated a scheme for America to never be at peace. The 9/11 attacks gave Bush an excuse to invade Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama no longer needs such an excuse. Evil exists and war is the tool Obama has chosen to meet this implacable foe. Given the right confluence of circumstances, America will be ready to follow this leader into the worst moral morass our national has ever known.

Even an old peacenik like me might find himself blogging into hell.

You Carolin' to Me?

2009-12-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

Yep: Mom, Dad, lil' sister Sondra, Bonkers and me would sit around the TV with egg nog, trimming the tree, while we'd watch that heartwarming tale of Travis Bickle trying to make it in the big city. Now Hulu is going to bring back all that Christmas nostalgia with its Hulu for the Holidays selection of Taxi Driver. I think I remember Peter Boyle playing Santa Claus in the movie.

A Plea for Politeness

2009-12-05T06:42:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning and wanted to take a dip into the global warming pool. It was after I had my first cup of coffee, so I don't think I was crabby, but the word denier has rubbed me the wrong way for awhile now. And since it is part of Clark Hoyt's actual, if not official, duties as The Public Editor for The Times to field the emails from cranks and crabs, I dumped this sober request into his digital mail box.

Dear Mr. Hoyt:

The New York Times did not invent the “denier” description of people who question the theories and predictions of many scientists regarding the effects of human beings on climate. Since it currently uses “denier” in this way, The Times should consider its expulsion when used as an epithet. As a general reader who has not solidly formed opinion one way or the other, and who genuinely wants to be informed about the subject, I find the characterization unhelpful and, frankly, despicable. Further, it is imprecise.

What set me off was Andrew C. Revkin’s Dot Earth piece, Copenhagen Climate Files, Hot Sharks. He used the phrase “skeptic-realist-denier types” in that piece. “Skeptics” and “realists” should not be lumped with “denier.” “Denier” has mostly lost its original meaning, like the word “gay,” and needs to be used carefully. Denier now means someone who refuses to believe the events of the Holocaust, as “gay” now is a sexual identity (without a negative context, I hope) and little used as a synonym for happiness. Even if you do not agree with me about the use of the word in general, it would be hard to dispute that the global warming community uses "denier" precisely to lump its skeptics with those who deny the Holocaust. This use is despicable and does not help the discussion.

Since Holocaust deniers refuse to accept historical fact, it is imprecise when characterizing skeptics as deniers since people who are skeptical about global warming mostly question the effects and predictions of global warming climatologists (although there are debates over the historical climate record). Denying established historical fact goes far beyond questioning the theories and practices of scientists.

Most of all, use of “denier” in this way demeans the events of the Holocaust. The snarky use of this word by Mr. Revkin and many others is sad.

Like the swastikas and toothbrush mustaches applied to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, pasting denier on global warming skeptics cheapens debate and the people who use the word in this context. I do not think Mr. Revkin or The Times are so callous. Dropping the use of the word in its name-calling context would not be a great loss for either.

Satan Loves You, Too

2009-12-03T16:22:00.000-08:00

I once rushed to my door thinking it was my new girlfriend who had rung the bell. Standing in the doorway that I flung wide open in wild expectation was a stout older woman and a young boy. I was thinking in the first moments standing there--dripping wet with the smallest of bath towels just making it around my hips (for I had sprung from the still running shower)--if I should invite them in.

My brain did not work fast enough to do what I came up with after drying myself off and putting on my robe: I should have let my towel accidently slip to the floor and say, “Madam, you must have the wrong address.” It turned out they were Jehovah Witnesses. Delivery people often slipped menus under everyone’s door after they had finished delivering to one of the apartments; none of them had the temerity to knock and make a pitch for their take-out’s superiority.

The Jehovah Witnesses had a building on the next block west, about as close to, but on the other side of, the avenue separating us. So I often saw them walking around the neighborhood. I do not remember being proselytized by that group again after one and a half of them knocked on my door. I was accosted in other places, never but that once in my neighborhood or building.

Because of laziness and cowardice (plus it would have been impolite), I did not go through with my plan to make up my own “literature” that I would hand back to the person who handed me a card or flyer extolling the virtues of God or Jesus. My hand out’s headline would have read “Satan Loves You, Too.” The text would try rehabilitating the reputation of the Prince of Darkness. Somebody had to rule the night, and if nobody else would take the job except Beelzebub, so be it.

Look, Satan is evil and all that, as bad as evil can get, so I find it curious how casual God speaks with Satan in the Book of Job. God starts the conversation, asking "Whence comest thou?" In a flighty tone, the devil says “From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it” (the King James version). Then, out of the blue, God brags about Job. Satan takes the bait and challenges God’s assertions; neither Satan nor God seem to have anything better to do. To settle a bet, then, God all but destroys Job and his family and more. Like in most movies, everything turns out alright in the end. However, Job takes a pretty good beating just so God can show off in front of Satan.

I understand God’s bluster. As a boy, I offered up a bit of bluster, too: heaven’s bland I and would prefer the excitement of hell. No one I tried to shock with that was shocked, as I well know now. Bland makes far more sense to me the closer I get to the other side of life. I would order the spiciest food available when I was young. Now, mild tastes better and avoids what we boys called “angry ass.”

There is a new court ruling out of the Fifth Circuit Federal Court regarding a school board in Texas (reported by CourtHouseNews.com). Seems some God types had packaged individual candy canes on a blister card with the message “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Some christian families challenged the school district’s rules regarding when and how such things could be given out. The school district changed its rules as the suit progressed, so, the challengers said, the case is moot. A district court agreed, but the Federal court said the original claims were not moot and ruled in favor of the school district’s original rules (that are no longer in effect). It was the original rules the christians challenged. Got that? Neither do I.

The school district wanted to facilitate movement of students between classes and reduce littering. The christians said it was a violation of their religious rights. My solution would have been for someone to make up alternate, pitchfork shaped candy canes, blister packed with the words, “Satan Has the Gumption for Consumption” and see how long the loyal opposition would want to hand out their sweet messages.

Proselytizers often have more temerity than the rest of us. They do not have special rights just because they see their message as something special. I did not feel very safe because someone could come to my front door when I did not buzz them into my building. It was the middle of the crack epidemic in New York, for God’s sake! The Jehovahs have enough latitude and proximity to hand me their pamphlets or sell me The Watchtower while they walk to and fro and up and down. Satan has those rights, too, to give or sell me things, and probably has done so.

There is no reason to be an angry ass about it.

A Rising Tide Lowers All Discussions

2009-12-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

After a night of torrential rain, the tiny island that survives in the stream bordering my property is nearly covered by the water rushing off the mountains and ridges this stream has spent hundreds of millions of years cutting through. As this water empties into the Ashokan Reservoir, the island is slowly revealed. The island survives because the roots of several large trees hold the earth. What is usually revealed are logs and branches and rocks that wash up, and, once, an old, rotted, gas tank (dumping trash in this forest has gone on for decades).

Whenever the rising, rushing water threatens the island I think, “that’s it. No more island.” Yet it hangs on. Will it remain forever? I doubt it. Water has extraordinary power to shape and reshape the landscape it runs through. It will eventually dissolve what is, for now, my island as water dissolves most of what it touches, given enough time.

Storms are great metaphors for writers, who have used them to describe the world as long as people have told stories. A storm's approach and decline works well with the way we have been taught to tell our stories, with a rise and fall in action. We have had this western model of storytelling so deeply embedded into our narrative brains it is impossible to tell if this is the actual apparatus of the world or if our storytelling minds reorder reality. It probably does not matter since we can only use the tools we have been given to observe and anything else is fantasy. Maybe that is why fantasy is so popular. It rushes us past the routine and rises over the humdrum.

I do not want to make the same mistake Senator Ted Stevens made trying describe the internet, earning him YouTube infamy. He was not wrong, really; “tubes” are no more absurd way to describe the internet than “highway.” Stevens was just clumsy. One thing the internet most certainly is is an amplifier. A big spill in one part of the planet (even a small runoff, for that matter) passes through the internet’s “series of tubes” and can grow into a rushing river. A young boy can dance awkwardly in front of his camcorder and that personal joy of the moment can rise to a torrent of laughter (as one poor young fellow found out via the pipe to YouTube).

Now comes the conflict (another convention of western story telling): blogger versus truth. An event causes a ripple in one part of the world and it enters the internet. The ripple might end there, but it also may begin making its way down and around the streams and rivers of the internet, its soggy chatter often rising high enough so we bloggers see only the water, not the reality underneath. The internet did not create this kind of human interaction. Most of us know about the trickle of infidelity that rose into the siege of Troy. The internet’s highway noise just rises faster and louder than a blind storyteller can speak.

A storm has broken out around Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and current Fox News celebrity. He is the most visible link in the chain of events that led to death of four police officers in Lakewood, WA. Within hours, a torrent of news and blogs rose around the former governor and his actions about nine years ago and is at the flood stage of pointlessness. I am no fan of Huckabee. That he is one of the darlings of Fox reduces to near zero any respect I may have had for him. Yet I am trying not to take joy in his predicament since his loss here will not be a gain for the island of truth in this horrendous event.

As the internet furor over Huckabee recedes, there are points of fact that we should bear in mind. In Hat Tip to the Old Man, on the PardonPower blog, Professor P.S. Ruckman points out what it was Huckabee faced in 1999. Now, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire is using the time-tested public relations weapon of shifting the blame, to Arkansas, declaring Washington will no longer accept that state's prisoners. Her state had its chance to take felon Maurice Clemmons off the streets. Clemmons was arrested and put in Washington’s Pierce County jail in May. He committed second-degree rape of a child within days of his release on $40,000 bail, for which he was not arrested until July 1. The details of this incident are bizarre, to say the least. The spiral of events and blame twist around and around this story. Huckabee seems to be the least at fault.

I do not know what will wash up as the water recedes. Huckabee’s sinking political ship already has an escapee. What would be most interesting is to see if Huckabee rode the Lee Atwater bandwagon that shamelessly dragged 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis into the slime. Time, and bloggers, will tell.

The iZation of Afghanistan

2009-12-01T09:03:00.000-08:00

Most days that summer, on our way to or from the town pool, we stopped in the library for an hour or so each day to read. We plopped down our swim wear, wrapped in towels, on chairs and tables and raced to the stacks, browsing for our individual interests. There was one book we read together that summer, and the librarian was far sighted enough to allow a group of seventh graders to do so: Dr. David Reuben’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). We boys were at the age of wanting to know everything about everything. It was 1969.

That was the year the Jets won Super Bowl III and The Beatles gave their last performance; when there was a summer of love in Bethel, NY and of hate orchestrated by Charles Manson in Los Angeles; the Mets became Amazin’ and John Lennon and Yoko Ono astonished us by staying in bed for a week; Chicago had four Days of Rage while the outrage from Mai Lai was first revealed. We first landed men on the moon in 1969, and it might have been the year AIDs first landed in the U.S.

That was some year, that 1969.

One more event: on November 3, 1969 President Richard Nixon announced the Nixon Doctrine, or the Vietnamization of our war on Vietnam. He also announced that by December 15, 1969, 60,000 men, including 20 percent of all America’s combat troops, would be withdrawn from Vietnam.

There was a catch. The war did not end until 1975, until after Nixon resigned, and more than a third of all Americans who died as a result of the war died after Nixon announced Vietnamization.

Today, President Obama is announcing another iZation of an American war, eight years after we entered Afghanistan in our decision to punish it for 9/11 and as we continue to ignore the failure of iZation in Iraq. Nixon’s pointed out that President Johnson had Americanized the war. What he failed to address in his policy was that the war in Vietnam already was, first last and always, a "Vietnamized" war. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all believed a country, especially one as small and “weak” as Vietnam, could not be viable without America. The excuse, then, was the communists. Now, Presidents Bush and Obama believe Afghanistan (will he include Pakistan?) cannot survive as a country without America. The excuse is terrorism. What excuse will the American President give to the next Richard Van De Geer?

“… I am somewhat fatalistic about believing that I shall never come to serious harm in the military ….” Air Force 2Lt. Richard Van De Geer spoke these words into a tape sent to his friend, who received it on May 15, 1975 (from Dear America, Letters Home From Vietnam, published by W.W. Norton and edited by Bernard Edelman). “I can envision a small cottage someplace, with a lot of writing paper, and a dog, and a fireplace and maybe enough money to give myself some Irish coffee now and then and entertain my two friends.”

Van De Geer was the last official American casualty of the war on Vietnam. He said his helicopter unit helped pull close to 2,000 people out of Vietnam.

President Obama has decided to add more lives to the list of useless dead America has compiled in dozens of wars. The simple truth is that Afghanistan will remain as it is and America will withdraw. Nothing we do between then and now will change those facts. No amount of soldiers or bombs dropping from drones will change Afghanistan. The Nixon, now Obama Doctrine, can only deliver destruction and despair.

“I wish you peace, and I have a great deal of faith that the future has to be ours.”

“Adios, my friend.”

These are the last words Van De Geer spoke into the tape.

It is 40 years since President Nixon gave us details about his plan to end the war on Vietnam. President Obama should have heard those words by now. Given the announcement of his decision tonight, it is clear he cannot understand them. Nixon told future generations, and presidents, that if his Vietnamization policy fails, we aught to heed its critics.

“If it does succeed, what the critics say now won't matter. If it does not succeed, anything I say then won't matter,” said President Nixon on 11/3/1969.

I wanted to know everything about everything in the summer of 1969. Now, I would be happy to have wiped from my understanding these certainties: that whatever President Obama says tonight will not matter and that the Obama Doctrine will fail. For the sake of the people Obama will add to the path of destruction, I pray I am wrong and that I haven’t learned enough.

We Really Do Regret Having to Inform You

2009-12-01T08:21:00.000-08:00

Here is a form letter that I think would be appropriate for use by the Obama Administration. No apologies needed to be given to A. Lincoln as he is dead and because he had the courage to stand up against his generals.

The White House
Washington, DC. [fill in the date]

Dear Sir(s) and/or Madam(s):

I have been informed by the database of the War Department that you are the spouse, father or mother of a child or children, some other close relative, or the significant other of an opposite, same, or some other sex partner we have not been officially informed about, who have died, as they agreed to risk doing when they signed with any of the branches of our military, from an improvised explosive device, suicide bomber or an unfortunately targeted drone bomb. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the United States of America, and the Islamic Something of a Republic of Afghanistan, which they died to create, or to at least keep going until I can figure a way out of the region. I pray that our Heavenly Person may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of whatever it is we are trying to achieve over there.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

B. Obama

PS: The forgoing communication does not, in any way, constitute an admission of any negligence or wrongdoing on the part of the President, his cabinet or anyone in his administration other than from the normal consequences resulting from any aggressive engagement of any forces, foreign or domestic, that have been previously certified by the U.S. Congress or otherwise sanctioned under the U.S. Constitution, as understood at the time of the incident in question.

The Bumpy Ride in Iran

2009-11-30T14:39:00.000-08:00

It is leftover night, the Friday after Thanksgiving, and the stockpot of picked over turkey bones has been simmering on the woodstove most of the day. Except for red cabbage and some yams, the other side courses did not remain past this second day. There are sometimes loud pops from the wood in the stove, which is seasoned: dry enough to burn properly. The wood it is never absolutely without moisture. So, it pops occasionally.

The day has been very windy. It feels as if the wind has gotten stronger now it is dark. Of all the natural forces I have experienced, I am afraid of wind most of all. Since I never experienced earthquakes or erupting volcanoes, I will accept without personal confirmation that these natural catastrophes are worse than tornadoes or hurricanes.

The windstorm scenes in Buster Keaton’s Steamboat Bill Jr. have always filled me with fun and fright, as if I were watching the movie standing at the very top edge of a skyscraper. It is a fear that developed as I got older. I do not remember being afraid watching the twister as it engulfed Dorothy, Toto and Kansas.

My fear of wind comes from its invisibility. You can see the earth shake, watch waters rise, look at lava pouring down a mountain or see snow accumulate. A strong gust ripped off my shed roof a few years back. I saw what the wind deposited, intact, 30-40 feet away, the plywood, tarpaper and plastic, but not the winds roaring through my mountain hollow. The strength, direction and amount of air are invisible hence uncertain. You can see tornadoes, but not predict their formation or line of travel.

Unseen new forces may be shaping Iran. We saw the streets of Tehran clogged with protest earlier this year. What we cannot see is how Iran’s mix of religious men, questionably elected politicians and its military leadership can become a coherent governing force, especially one directing a nuclear industry that may produce weapons. Coping with presidents and clerics is one thing; threatening Iranian generals aroused enough to take control of their country, is as dangerous a policy as any we can devise.

“It is 30 years later, and we have arrived at another hinge moment in history. And the Obama administration has a serious problem, scarcely discussed but eerily familiar. How do you engage with Iran when there is no reliable address in Tehran?” This is from Gary Sick, one of our most knowledgeable observers on Iran. He served in the White House during Ford and Cater administrations and was working there when Iranian students took American hostages in 1979. “Part of the problem that Washington had in attempting to negotiate an end to [the hostage crises] was the absence of an address in Iran .”

Sick says the Revolutionary Guard is becoming the dominant force in Iranian politics and that this ruling class is opaque. We may never know who the real decision makers in Iran are. Secret leaders make direct negotiations frustrating, at best, or impossible. That is bad enough. There is a greater danger. As the frustration with diplomacy rises, the position of those who want to attack Iran and force it to bend to our desires becomes stronger. Our increasing reliance on drone warfare temps us to follow the advice of the whatever-it-takes crowd even more.

The winds that blow back and forth from America to Iran are particularly divisive today. It is hard to blame a country facing the very real threat of military intervention for wanting to develop weapons that will, now and into the near future, spoil such intrusions. It is unlikely Iran is developing a massive, offensive nuclear arsenal. Only a few nations, America among them, have enough money to spend on such a deadly stash. Iran has no allies that will help defend it against America. With the recent public statements by Russia and China, Iran must feel ever more alone in the world. Nuclear weapons are a relatively inexpensive, rational defense alternative many countries have adopted.

Our foreign policy, in general, seems to rely solely on the blunt tools of force against our opposition. Limiting ourselves to waving the stick at Iran is a dangerous policy, and a self defeating one. There exists enough flammable moisture in the dry memories in Iran, of its exploitation and overthrow, to set off a conflagration. We need more time to season our relationship with Iran to gain its trust.

The American people can no longer temper, even with votes, the passions of our leaders for war. We just hunker down, hear the fierce howling all around us, and wait to see the damaging results these political dervishes leave behind.

Like Margo Channing (Bette Davis) said in All About Eve, “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Just the Facts Checking, Ma'am

2009-11-27T06:34:00.000-08:00

I sometimes feign an air of urbane sophistication I do not fully possess. While I can correctly pronounce cabernet sauvignon or pinot noir, my refinement extends only far enough to order something specific into a glass. What I drink from that glass is beyond my ability to identify. This shortcoming never stopped me from pronouncing on the quality of the liquid I know nothing about. I knows what I like, in other words.

It is the most dangerous game of all to know only a little about something. A long time ago, I stood in line with a girl I was trying to impress to see a show of Alexander Calder’s work at the Whitney Museum. We were college freshman. On and on I spoke as if the great artist was still alive, even though he had died about a week previous. The man standing behind us was kind enough and loud enough to correct me so that six or seven rows forward and behind could hear. That ad hoc fact checker thrust his terrible swift correction into the middle of the spiel I had mostly gotten from The New York Times review of the show.

In truth, I just wanted to the girl to like me. That intention may or may not have been obvious to the “fact checker.” I always thought it was. He probably was fed up with the superior air of this young kid in line and was buoyed by a golden opportunity to deflate at least one of the many ignorant boors he has had to endure in his life. As a bonus, he could ruin the chances of this young guy obviously on the make. His weapon was a fact that undermined the speaker entirely, even though nearly everything I said echoed an article from the newspaper of record and was true enough. It was just that the article was published before Calder died.

Facts can be misused by those who intend to tell the truth as well as those who lie. Fact checking is a picadors’ weapon in its most common use, a multiple poking of holes in the hide of non-fiction narratives. At its best, fact checking, given the right timing, can be wielded with an estocada-like thrust to end the life of the lie. At its worst, fact checking can ruin a truthful argument when employed to puncture it with pedantic points. Fact checking protects a writer or speaker or, in treacherous hands, can be purposely brandished for deadly result.

Sarah Palin’s hide was repeatedly poked by the fact checking spears, if only after her book was published. Even if there are plenty of errors of fact in the book by Palin and Lynn Vincent, enough so Palin could support the careers of dozens of fact checkers, that does not excuse the use of fact checking as a weapon.

The Associated Press was the first picador in the ring since it had a purloined (Or was its copy supplied by a shrewd publishing marketer?) version of the book before publication. While many of the facts checked by AP are valid, some of its checks were corroboration rather than deflation. Palin correctly quoted candidate Barrack Obama who said electric rates will skyrocket under his cap and trade proposals. That Obama later amended his remarks claiming climate legislation will ameliorate the costs of retrofitting current coal burning plants to reduce carbon emissions is an Obama fact-checking task for AP.

One fact it checked is in dispute, AP admitted. Palin said a Vogue editor kept pivoting her interview by the fashion magazine to the subject of high fashion. Palin, said the Vogue editor, kept talking about drilling for oil. Who’s to say?

AP also fact checked something that is not subject to a checking of the facts at all. AP faulted her explanation for wanting to publish her book, saying she cited altruistic reasons. There is no “fact” here to check, just standard political blather that has enthralled all citizens of all republics throughout the history of civilization. A ho hum ending to this story correcting the "lies" of Sarah Palin.

I don’t know all of the facts used for and against Palin in the latest round of this very serious game. Like the wine poured into my glass, I only know if I like what I taste or not. I do not believe the taste we had of her last year will improve with age.

The girl and I in the line at the Whitney stayed together throughout our four years in school. She was not at all persuaded by the accidental fact checker’s interceding. She may have been more endeared to my young clumsiness, like one falls in love with a puppy, than the cold, imperfect facts of my “lecture.” Fact checking Sarah Palin has the same result, at least with her followers.

Still, Palin is playing what is a dangerous game for a politician, this knowing just a little about something. She may learn just enough to get herself into trouble. The picadors usually manage to stay on the winning side.

Break Up the Retrospective

2009-09-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

First Swiss bank accounts, now Roman Polanski. Can anyone feel secure in Switzerland?

Polanski was nabbed when attempting to attend a Zurich film festival offering a retrospective of his work. Instead of being thrown out of film school, he may be thrown out of Switzerland.

It should be called the Red Double Cross. Not only has Polanski been able to travel back and forth from his home in France to Switzerland, he owns a home there.

Another aspect of this story: Samantha Geimer(nee Gailey) asked that the charges against Polanski be dropped (her attitude was helped with a payment from Polanski, natch). She made this point in court papers filed in January (reported on CNN.com): "Every time this case is brought to the attention of the Court, great focus is made of me, my family, my mother and others. That attention is not pleasant to experience and is not worth maintaining over some irrelevant legal nicety, the continuation of the case."

Instead of what should have occurred (a long time ago), a reasonable settlement between Polanski, the US government and the Los Angeles authorities, we now have an international mess where none of the parties can be seen as backing down. This is a clear example of how a confrontational legal system, fueled by the political interests of the judges and prosecutors, falls short of justice.

If Polanski appears in court in LA, can it serve anyone except the scandal whores of the press?

What Would George Do?

2009-09-25T05:23:00.000-07:00

From yesterday's New York Times:

The Obama administration has decided not to seek new legislation from Congress authorizing the indefinite detention of about 50 terrorism suspects being held without charges at at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, officials said Wednesday.

Instead, the administration will continue to hold the detainees without bringing them to trial based on the power it says it has under the Congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, authorizing the president to use force against forces of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

In concluding that it does not need specific permission from Congress to hold detainees without charges, the Obama administration is adopting one of the arguments advanced by the Bush administration in years of debates about detention policies.

The story goes on to note that the Obama Administration is not embracing the idea that presidents have inherent powers to order indefinite detentions and that their decision applies only to those already held at Guantánamo, not to suspects captured in the future.

So far, it is not what the administration is saying about previous administration policies, it is about what it is doing. Right now, what the Obama Administration is doing is pulling a Bush.

The administration is saying they don't agree with the Bush "inherent powers of the president" policies, it is just using them.

The Lessor Part of Valor

2009-09-24T05:21:00.000-07:00

US Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC)thinks the war on Afghanistan is more important than the reform of the health care.

"The problem is, the war in Afghanistan and our economy are our two biggest issues. But he’s working on other issues such as health care and he’s putting off the decision on Afghanistan which I think puts our troops at risk. So he needs to focus on priorities right now and not try to ram so many things down our throat here in Congress. He needs to address the issue of Afghanistan quickly."

First of all, what puts our troops at risk is sending them to war. Taking them out of harm's way protects them more than any misguided scheme to put more of them in harm's way.

What is really on the mind of DeMint is that the country will start a new spending stream that puts spending on the military at risk. The only place we can significantly cut our spending is in the military budget and military off-budget (remember we are funding the war on Iraq with emergency spending bills).

It is time we reorder our priorities. Wasting the lives of our soldiers in useless battles that are not winnable is about the worst way to spend our tax money I can think of.

The Better Part of Valor

2009-09-23T19:47:00.000-07:00

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is suing the smart young conservative activists (aka a pimp and a prostitute) who filmed two of its Baltimore office employees counseling the pair to defraud the government in some very skanky ways.

Of course, if Maryland law prohibits recording private conversations without the permission, a court should hear the case. Tonja Thompson and Shera Williams should have their day in court. I would like to be a fly on the wall of that jury room.

ACORN might garner some sympathy. The US Postal Service does not get defunded when one of its employees commits mail fraud.

As for the unwitting stars of the video: it would not occur to me to generate more publicity about my aiding and abetting some highly illegal activities in the hope a judge or jury would find me innocent enough to receive $500,000 in compensation, which is what they are asking. Recording their actions did not cause the damage to their reputations, their actions did.

In the meantime, not many people are coming to ACORN's defense. What else do you expect supporting Democrats? They are very experienced at the stab in the back trick.

See this for more details on Dems doing the right thing.

Justice delayed ...

2009-09-23T06:34:00.000-07:00

Once again, the Obama Administration pulled a Bush. They were granted a delay of the hearing against five prisoners in Guantánamo, who are alleged to be 9/11 conspirators. The administration wants more time to decide whether these men should be tried in military tribunals or in US federal courts. This is the third such delay.

Like with many of Obama's decisions, I have to ask: what would President George W. Bush have done? And: how much time is enough time?

They now have until November 16.

It's the Coverup

2009-09-23T06:23:00.000-07:00

A Phoenix man was nearly killed last year, shot six times in the back by the police who responded to his 911 call for help. His call to 911 was still live and recording when the responding officers decided to cover up the shooting. As the 911 call recorded: "That's all right. Don't worry about it. I got your back. ... We clear?"

In the rush of events, we cannot expect police officers to be perfect. They will sometimes point and shoot guns in the wrong direction. What they do afterward is another matter.

Details of the suit are here, from the Courthouse News Service.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

2009-09-23T04:24:00.001-07:00

In the vein of unintended consequences comes this piece from Ryan Grim on HuffPost. Seems in the wake of trying to attainder to ACORN, Congress may have accidentally put some mighty oaks on the newly-endangered specious list.

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to check its database for other contractors who might also run afoul of Congressional attempts to defund ACORN. In trying to save roughly $53 million paid out to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, the "Defund ACORN Act" may have cast a net wide enough to ensnare (last year's figures) Lockheed Martin ($35 billion) and Northrop Grumman ($18 billion) in federal contracts last year. They have collected, since 2000 according to POGO, $266 billion and $125 billion, for Lockheed and Northrop, respectively. The group has nearly 90 instances of contractor fraud in its database.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) says the ACORN act is a bill of attainder and therefore unconstitutional since it targets only one group.

Finally, as Glenn Greenwald noted, our guardians of the press have ignored this story.

Amid the Horrors ...

2009-09-18T08:28:00.000-07:00

Today, the smell of blood is once again in the streets of Iran and actual blood has been spilt by a bomb placed in a Pakastanian market. George Mitchell's latest effort in the Middle East has ended in failure. A Harvard Medical School study says 45,000 Americans die each year for want of health care (over 58,000 Americans died in the war on Vietnam). The study compared this number with the nearly 43,000 people who die each year from kidney disease.

But from suburbs of Virginia, some relief from the horror. An AP story published in Ha'aretz (I saw it thanks to the Middle East Institute) tells us about a northern Virginia synagogue that has opened its facilities to members of a nearby mosque to handle the overflow worshippers during Ramadan.

"You really only get to know someone when you invite them into your home ... you learn to recognize their faces. You learn the names of their children," [Rabbi Robert] Nosanchuk said. He is the leader of the approximately 500 member reform congregation.

One Muslim worshipper offered what, in our car-obsessed culture, could be one of the best reasons he goes to the synagogue, in speaking to his imam.

"It's cozy, it's nice. Your parking lot is overcrowded ... and I like to be there."

One Hand or the Other Hand?

2009-09-18T06:15:00.000-07:00

Pollster.com's Mark Blumenthal has an interesting take regarding the complexity of polling on the health insurance debate. He notes that the Kaiser Family Foundation's analysis of their data shows those who rate their health insurance coverage as "excellent" or "good" still have misgivings. "Significant proportions" of people with positive feelings about their coverage say they have problems with paying medical bills or are unsatisfied with aspects of their coverage.

The jist of his piece is that attitudes on health care coverage are complex and need to be carefully assessed before any conclusions can be reached. His on one hand/on the other hand conclusion notes that though many people prefer the status quo, considerable fear exists on what might happen without reform.

Points taken. Nevertheless, when he says "absence of reform" is he saying the current mix of bills represents "reform" to the people questioned in surveys?

Polls and surveys are far more complicated than the average nightly newscaster, or blogger, can easily parse. News outlets want to answer health care bill, yes or no? and quickly move on to Kenya West and Joe Wilson. Each survey question can easily generate a dozen more about the question and the circumstances surrounding the asking of the question.

Vote Smith or Jones? is a relatively easy answer to cull, if people are willing to tell you. The answer to Health care reform? depends on so many variables, the best thing to do is ignore those who are absolutely certain of what people think.

Paging Mr. Brooks

2009-09-18T05:20:00.000-07:00

From David Brook's column in this morning's New York Times:

"For example, for generations schoolchildren studied the long debate between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians."

From KWTV, News 9, Oklahoma City, posted on their website September 16 (the full list of questions and percentage of correct answers are below):

75 Percent of Oklahoma High School Students Can't Name the First President of the U.S.

These questions are taken from the basic civic knowledge test immigrants must pass to become US citizens, according to the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, the think tank that sponsored the survey.

I expect some part of this survey will be incorporated in Harper's Index sometime soon.

And when we say
Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We're only sayin'
You're doin' fine, Oklahoma!
Oklahoma O.K.
L - A - H - O - M - A
OKLAHOMA!
Yeeow!

From Oklahoma! the musical: music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics & book by Oscar Hammerstein II.

Questions and the percentage of Oklahoma high school students who answered correctly.

What is the supreme law of the land? 28
What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution? 26
What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress? 27
How many justices are there on the Supreme Court? 10
Who wrote the Declaration of Independence? 14
What ocean is on the east coast of the United States? 61
What are the two major political parities in the United States? 43
We elect a U.S. senator for how many years? 11
Who was the first President of the United States? 23
Who is in charge of the executive branch? 29

Hecho en Washington

2009-09-17T17:03:00.000-07:00

President Obama symbolically renewed America’s embargo on Cuba Monday. He did not need to renew, according to The New York Times. The Helm-Burton Act is the existing law and it needs to be repealed to drop the embargo.The Cuban embargo makes that country unique since restrictions on trade with North Korea were removed.

So how effective is American policy? It has managed to make the US Cuba’s fifth largest trading partner.

Juan Clark, a Miami Dade College sociology professor and Bay of Pigs veteran, tells us, via The Chronicle-Herald of Nova Scotia, that U.S. companies already send rice, chickens and light poles to Cuba. He goes on to say, “In 2008, exports of U.S. agricultural products reached a record high of $711 million.”

Food and medicines can be sent to Cuba and we also export fox furs, azalea bushes, truffles, chewing gum and cigars. Cigars.

When you think about President Obama’s symbolic signature, picture Cubans smoking American stogies while the finest Habanos products, hecho en Cuba, are lit by US citizens in our country’s most elegant smoking rooms.

I wonder what the North Koreans are smoking.

Snowed in September

2009-09-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under President Carter's administration, posted a scenario how Senator Olymbia Snowe (R-Maine) can vote against the health insurance bill that is the crowning achievement of Senator Max Baucus (D-Montana).

He thinks there is a chance Sen. Snowe can vote no and thereby open the floodgates for more progressive health insurance reform.

He is in a more informed position to judge then me. From what I can see, the Baucus bill is so far away from what can, by any stretch of the imagination, be called reform that I doubt a drastically different Senate bill will emerge. Sadly, I believe the Baucus bill is closer to what the Obama administration really wants. They have been insincere with the American people all along.

Very little of what can come out of Congress this time around warrants the support of voters.

We have been waiting, as President Obama says, since Teddy Roosevelt for a rational health care system in this country. It will be better if no legislation is passed this time around and a new president to be seated in 2013.

There is nothing in current health insurance legislation that helps us. We may as well wait a little longer.

My God! Obama's Black!

2009-09-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

From Michael Tomasky's blog today:

“It's Obama's opponents who want to remind white, middle-of-the-road voters that Obama is black and therefore not like them. Obama and his supporters would sooner leave these things undiscussed.”

This reminds me of Stephen Colbert’s continuing mock conceit, that he does not recognize people as black. We do not live in such a world today, nor will we live in such a world tomorrow and we probably won’t live in such a world ever. We are hard-wired to recognize skin color. That is not the problem.

Are there now going to be large groups of surprised voters slapping their foreheads crying, “My god! Jimmy Carter is right. Obama is black!”

Just because Obama and his supporters don’t like to bring it up, Obama cannot escape his skin color, which only hurts him among those who judge his abilities by the color of his skin. They did not vote for him and will never vote for him. Nothing Jimmy Carter or anyone else on earth can say will affect those people.

What is going to hurt Obama is not reminding people about the color of his skin, but the long list of promises he has made clear he will not keep, health insurance reform and ending the wars on Iraq, Iran and Pakistan are among them. He is quickly losing the support of people who would never judge him by the color of his skin. That’s Obama’s fault, not Carter’s.

Blaming Carter for reminding people Obama is black is as ludicrous as blaming him for reminding people Obama is human. That Tomasky went on to call Carter out on his popularity with American Jews is telling. What was that about except the fact Tomasky obviously doesn’t like Carter? If Carter is held in such low esteem by Jews, as Tomasky says, how can anything Carter say hurt Obama with Jews? It wasn’t worth noting and it was a gratuitous jab.

Obama won despite of the racism prevalent all around the country. Demographic trends favor the kind of coalition Obama put together. Many people are appalled by the kind of right wing nut-jobs Joe Wilson represents and voted for Obama partly because of the kind of extremists in Wilson's camp.

Tomasky also said: "...because Obama had no hard evidence at the time, [that convervatives injected race into the campaign] conservatives were able to say that it was Obama who'd injected race into the campaign."

Thank goodness the conservatives had that proof, or they would have lost the election.