Bloomberg columnist Albert R. Hunt makes the case for why Basil Paterson's son should appoint John F. Kennedy's daughter to replace Bill Clinton's wife in the Senate:
[Caroline Kennedy] has all the qualities--intellectual curiosity; a friendly, at times pointed, sense of humor, and a deferential manner (she hails her own cabs)--that are the stuff of a good legislator.
She hails her own cabs! This is what passes for a common touch these days? Lots of New Yorkers can't even afford cabs and ride the subway instead.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Friday, December 19, 2008
With economy in shambles, Congress gets a raise
By Jordy Yager
Posted: 12/17/08 05:41 PM [ET]
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.
Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.
“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”
However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.
Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.
“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”
Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.
Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.
“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.
Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill.
Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.
In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike.
In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.
Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.
Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.
“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”
By Jordy Yager
Posted: 12/17/08 05:41 PM [ET]
A crumbling economy, more than 2 million constituents who have lost their jobs this year, and congressional demands of CEOs to work for free did not convince lawmakers to freeze their own pay.
Instead, they will get a $4,700 pay increase, amounting to an additional $2.5 million that taxpayers will spend on congressional salaries, and watchdog groups are not happy about it.
“As lawmakers make a big show of forcing auto executives to accept just $1 a year in salary, they are quietly raiding the vault for their own personal gain,” said Daniel O’Connell, chairman of The Senior Citizens League (TSCL), a non-partisan group. “This money would be much better spent helping the millions of seniors who are living below the poverty line and struggling to keep their heat on this winter.”
However, at 2.8 percent, the automatic raise that lawmakers receive is only half as large as the 2009 cost of living adjustment of Social Security recipients.
Still, Steve Ellis, vice president of the budget watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense, said Congress should have taken the rare step of freezing its pay, as lawmakers did in 2000.
“Look at the way the economy is and how most people aren’t counting on a holiday bonus or a pay raise — they’re just happy to have gainful employment,” said Ellis. “But you have the lawmakers who are set up and ready to get their next installment of a pay raise and go happily along their way.”
Member raises are often characterized as examples of wasteful spending, especially when many constituents and businesses in members’ districts are in financial despair.
Rep. Harry Mitchell, a first-term Democrat from Arizona, sponsored legislation earlier this year that would have prevented the automatic pay adjustments from kicking in for members next year. But the bill, which attracted 34 cosponsors, failed to make it out of committee.
“They don’t even go through the front door. They have it set up so that it’s wired so that you actually have to undo the pay raise rather than vote for a pay raise,” Ellis said.
Freezing congressional salaries is hardly a new idea on Capitol Hill.
Lawmakers have floated similar proposals in every year dating back to 1995, and long before that. Though the concept of forgoing a raise has attracted some support from more senior members, it is most popular with freshman lawmakers, who are often most vulnerable.
In 2006, after the Republican-led Senate rejected an increase to the minimum wage, Democrats, who had just come to power in the House with a slew of freshmen, vowed to block their own pay raise until the wage increase was passed. The minimum wage was eventually increased and lawmakers received their automatic pay hike.
In the beginning days of 1789, Congress was paid only $6 a day, which would be about $75 daily by modern standards. But by 1965 members were receiving $30,000 a year, which is the modern equivalent of about $195,000.
Currently the average lawmaker makes $169,300 a year, with leadership making slightly more. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) makes $217,400, while the minority and majority leaders in the House and Senate make $188,100.
Ellis said that while freezing the pay increase would be a step in the right direction, it would be better to have it set up so that members would have to take action, and vote, for a pay raise and deal with the consequences, rather than get one automatically.
“It is probably never going to be politically popular to raise Congress’s salary,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to find taxpayers saying, ‘Yeah I think I should pay my congressman more’.”
Thursday, December 18, 2008
"Ask the Guangdong people: What else must they eat?"
China protest decries custom of eating cats
By GILLIAN WONG,Associated Press Writer AP - Friday, December 19
BEIJING - A southern Chinese province must stop the "shameful" and "cruel slaughter" of cats for food, a group of more than 40 animal lovers in Beijing said Thursday as they unfurled banners in a tearful protest. Thousands of cats across the country have been caught in the past week by traders and transported to Guangdong province to be killed for food, said the protesters gathered at the Guangdong government's office in Beijing.
"We are very angry because the cats are being skinned and then cooked alive. We must make them correct this uncivilized behavior," said Wang Hongyao, who represented the group in submitting a letter to the Guangdong office.
The protesters urged the provincial government to crack down on cat traders and restaurants that serve cat meat, although no law says it is illegal to eat cats. It has long been common for cats and dogs to be eaten in some parts of China and in some other Asian countries.
The demonstrators held up banners saying "Cooking cats alive! Shame on Guangdong!" and "Resolutely oppose cruel slaughter" as they met with a representative of the Guangdong office.
Calls to the Guangdong provincial office in Beijing rang unanswered, while the government news office in the province refused to comment.
The protest was apparently in response to Chinese media reports in recent days that carried pictures of furry felines peering out through bamboo crates and metal cages, apparently en route to Guangzhou, Guangdong's capital. Other pictures show cats being skinned in restaurant kitchens.
About 5,000 cats were sent from Nanjing to Guangzhou, while cats from Shanghai, Hangzhou and other places were also being rounded up, the Chengdu Business Daily reported last week. The paper said people in Guangdong eat 10,000 cats a day.
No reason was given for the increased media coverage, or if there has been an increase in cat meat consumption.
Many of the protesters in Beijing were retirees who said they have been caring for strays cats. The protesters said they believed that some street cats in Beijing, "especially the fat ones," have disappeared and were likely nabbed by cat meat dealers.
"These cats, they are like our children," said Cui Qingzhen, a 56-year-old woman who said she has been feeding street cats for six years. "We can't let these people do this to them."
The demonstrators also noted that a virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, is suspected to have been spread to humans by civet cats, mongoose-like animals considered a delicacy in southern China.
SARS was first reported in Guangdong in November 2002 and killed 774 people worldwide before subsiding in July 2003. In 2004, Guangdong banned the raising, selling, killing and eating of civet cats.
"Haven't they learned from SARS that some animals just shouldn't be eaten by humans?" Cui said. "Ask the Guangdong people: What else must they eat?"
___
Associated Press researcher Xi Yue contributed to the report.
By GILLIAN WONG,Associated Press Writer AP - Friday, December 19
BEIJING - A southern Chinese province must stop the "shameful" and "cruel slaughter" of cats for food, a group of more than 40 animal lovers in Beijing said Thursday as they unfurled banners in a tearful protest. Thousands of cats across the country have been caught in the past week by traders and transported to Guangdong province to be killed for food, said the protesters gathered at the Guangdong government's office in Beijing.
"We are very angry because the cats are being skinned and then cooked alive. We must make them correct this uncivilized behavior," said Wang Hongyao, who represented the group in submitting a letter to the Guangdong office.
The protesters urged the provincial government to crack down on cat traders and restaurants that serve cat meat, although no law says it is illegal to eat cats. It has long been common for cats and dogs to be eaten in some parts of China and in some other Asian countries.
The demonstrators held up banners saying "Cooking cats alive! Shame on Guangdong!" and "Resolutely oppose cruel slaughter" as they met with a representative of the Guangdong office.
Calls to the Guangdong provincial office in Beijing rang unanswered, while the government news office in the province refused to comment.
The protest was apparently in response to Chinese media reports in recent days that carried pictures of furry felines peering out through bamboo crates and metal cages, apparently en route to Guangzhou, Guangdong's capital. Other pictures show cats being skinned in restaurant kitchens.
About 5,000 cats were sent from Nanjing to Guangzhou, while cats from Shanghai, Hangzhou and other places were also being rounded up, the Chengdu Business Daily reported last week. The paper said people in Guangdong eat 10,000 cats a day.
No reason was given for the increased media coverage, or if there has been an increase in cat meat consumption.
Many of the protesters in Beijing were retirees who said they have been caring for strays cats. The protesters said they believed that some street cats in Beijing, "especially the fat ones," have disappeared and were likely nabbed by cat meat dealers.
"These cats, they are like our children," said Cui Qingzhen, a 56-year-old woman who said she has been feeding street cats for six years. "We can't let these people do this to them."
The demonstrators also noted that a virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS, is suspected to have been spread to humans by civet cats, mongoose-like animals considered a delicacy in southern China.
SARS was first reported in Guangdong in November 2002 and killed 774 people worldwide before subsiding in July 2003. In 2004, Guangdong banned the raising, selling, killing and eating of civet cats.
"Haven't they learned from SARS that some animals just shouldn't be eaten by humans?" Cui said. "Ask the Guangdong people: What else must they eat?"
___
Associated Press researcher Xi Yue contributed to the report.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Political Corruption Smackdown
Which state is the most crooked—Illinois or Louisiana?
By Jacob WeisbergPosted Saturday, Dec. 13, 2008, at 7:23 AM ET
With the unmasking of Gov. Rod Blagojevich as a kleptocrat of Paraguayan proportion, Illinois now has a real chance—its first in more than a generation—to defeat Louisiana in the NCAA finals of American political corruption.
Illinois boasts some impressive stats. According to data collected by Dick Simpson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, more than 1,000 public officials and business people from Illinois have been convicted in federal corruption cases since 1971. Of those, an astonishing 30 were Chicago aldermen; that's around 20 percent of those elected to the City Council during that period. If Blagojevich ultimately goes to prison, he will become the fourth out of the last eight governors to wear stripes, joining predecessors George Ryan (racketeering, conspiracy, obstruction), Dan Walker (bank fraud), and Otto Kerner (straight-up bribery). If he gets assigned to the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., Blagojevich could become the first governor to share a cell with a predecessor.
*
But don't count Louisiana out. According to statistics compiled by the Corporate Crime Reporter, it was No. 1 for the period between 1997 and 2006, with 326 federal corruption convictions. That's a rate of 7.67 per 100,000 residents. Illinois had 524 convictions in the same period, but with a larger population, its rate was only 4.68, which puts it an embarrassing sixth. And Louisiana can boast some impressive streaks. In 2001 Jim Brown became the third consecutive insurance commissioner to be convicted. New Orleans Rep. William Jefferson, who was just defeated for re-election, liked cold, hard cash so much he kept the bundles of bills supplied by a FBI sting operation in his freezer. His brother, sister, and niece recently joined him under indictment.
Illinois' corruption comes out of a tradition of patronage politics—not just the old Democratic machine in Chicago but also a Republican machine in the suburbs. Even as old-school politics have dwindled, however, Illinois scandals have retained their ward-boss flavor. They still tend to revolve around petty, methodical rake-offs from the quotidian operations of government—liquor licenses, elevator inspections, speeding tickets, and, above all, hiring.
The paradigmatic Illinois crook was the Paul Powell, who served as secretary of state in the 1960s. When Powell died, his executor found shoeboxes filled with $800,000 in cash (along with 49 cases of whiskey and two cases of creamed corn) in the Springfield hotel room where he lived. The money had been collected in $5 and $10 increments from applicants who wanted to make sure they passed their driving tests. Under the old Daley machine, city workers had to kick back around 5 percent of their salaries to the ward organization that guaranteed their jobs. When he insisted over a tapped phone line that "you don't just give it away for nothing," Blagojevich, the son-in-law of Alderman Richard Mell, was applying an old precept—though possibly for the first time at a senatorial level.
The Louisiana pathology is slightly different. Wayne Parent, a professor of political science at Louisiana State University, explains that with the discovery of oil and gas around 1912, politicians in the dirt-poor state suddenly controlled a gold mine in tax revenues. "They could spend this money virtually unsupervised," he says, "as long as they threw enough crumbs to the masses to satisfy them—direct, tangible goods like free textbooks and paved roads." This was the formula of populist governors Huey Long, his brother Earl Long, and Edwin Edwards. Louisiana politicians have always liked big bribes for big projects better than crooked little schemes. Edwards, for instance, is serving time for collecting a $400,000 gratuity in exchange for a casino license.
Illinois and Louisiana continue to have different styles of fraud—David Mamet vs. Walker Percy. Illinois' corruption culture tends to be mingy, pedestrian, and shameful. State legislators who sell their votes for $25 cash in an envelope (a scandal of the 1970s) do not tend toward braggadocio. When former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski was caught filching postage stamps from the House post office, he pleaded guilty and apologized for his crimes (and was pardoned by Bill Clinton).*
Louisiana's culture of corruption, by contrast, is flamboyant and shameless. Earl Long once said that Louisiana voters "don't want good government, they want good entertainment." He spent part of his last term in a mental hospital, where his wife had him committed after he took up with stripper Blaze Starr. When Sen. Allen Ellender died in office in 1972, Gov. Edwards didn't try to auction of his seat. He appointed his wife, Elaine, possibly to get her out of town. When Edwards ran for governor in 1983, he said of the incumbent, "If we don't get Dave Treen out of office, there won't be anything left to steal." (He also memorably said Treen was so slow it took him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes
.) Raised among figures like these, Louisianans tend to accept corruption as inevitable, to be somewhat proud of it, and to forgive it easily.
In recent years, however, Illinois and Louisiana seem to be copying each other. With Rod Blagojevich and his wife, Patricia—Lady Macbeth of Milwaukee Avenue—Illinois' corruption has gone carnival. And since Katrina, Louisianans seem to have lost their zest for the big heist. There's been no sympathy for those caught siphoning disaster funds. It's going to be a close contest again this year, but I'm betting on the Fighting Illini to claim the national championship.
Which state is the most crooked—Illinois or Louisiana?
By Jacob WeisbergPosted Saturday, Dec. 13, 2008, at 7:23 AM ET
With the unmasking of Gov. Rod Blagojevich as a kleptocrat of Paraguayan proportion, Illinois now has a real chance—its first in more than a generation—to defeat Louisiana in the NCAA finals of American political corruption.
Illinois boasts some impressive stats. According to data collected by Dick Simpson, a political scientist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, more than 1,000 public officials and business people from Illinois have been convicted in federal corruption cases since 1971. Of those, an astonishing 30 were Chicago aldermen; that's around 20 percent of those elected to the City Council during that period. If Blagojevich ultimately goes to prison, he will become the fourth out of the last eight governors to wear stripes, joining predecessors George Ryan (racketeering, conspiracy, obstruction), Dan Walker (bank fraud), and Otto Kerner (straight-up bribery). If he gets assigned to the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., Blagojevich could become the first governor to share a cell with a predecessor.
*
But don't count Louisiana out. According to statistics compiled by the Corporate Crime Reporter, it was No. 1 for the period between 1997 and 2006, with 326 federal corruption convictions. That's a rate of 7.67 per 100,000 residents. Illinois had 524 convictions in the same period, but with a larger population, its rate was only 4.68, which puts it an embarrassing sixth. And Louisiana can boast some impressive streaks. In 2001 Jim Brown became the third consecutive insurance commissioner to be convicted. New Orleans Rep. William Jefferson, who was just defeated for re-election, liked cold, hard cash so much he kept the bundles of bills supplied by a FBI sting operation in his freezer. His brother, sister, and niece recently joined him under indictment.
Illinois' corruption comes out of a tradition of patronage politics—not just the old Democratic machine in Chicago but also a Republican machine in the suburbs. Even as old-school politics have dwindled, however, Illinois scandals have retained their ward-boss flavor. They still tend to revolve around petty, methodical rake-offs from the quotidian operations of government—liquor licenses, elevator inspections, speeding tickets, and, above all, hiring.
The paradigmatic Illinois crook was the Paul Powell, who served as secretary of state in the 1960s. When Powell died, his executor found shoeboxes filled with $800,000 in cash (along with 49 cases of whiskey and two cases of creamed corn) in the Springfield hotel room where he lived. The money had been collected in $5 and $10 increments from applicants who wanted to make sure they passed their driving tests. Under the old Daley machine, city workers had to kick back around 5 percent of their salaries to the ward organization that guaranteed their jobs. When he insisted over a tapped phone line that "you don't just give it away for nothing," Blagojevich, the son-in-law of Alderman Richard Mell, was applying an old precept—though possibly for the first time at a senatorial level.
The Louisiana pathology is slightly different. Wayne Parent, a professor of political science at Louisiana State University, explains that with the discovery of oil and gas around 1912, politicians in the dirt-poor state suddenly controlled a gold mine in tax revenues. "They could spend this money virtually unsupervised," he says, "as long as they threw enough crumbs to the masses to satisfy them—direct, tangible goods like free textbooks and paved roads." This was the formula of populist governors Huey Long, his brother Earl Long, and Edwin Edwards. Louisiana politicians have always liked big bribes for big projects better than crooked little schemes. Edwards, for instance, is serving time for collecting a $400,000 gratuity in exchange for a casino license.
Illinois and Louisiana continue to have different styles of fraud—David Mamet vs. Walker Percy. Illinois' corruption culture tends to be mingy, pedestrian, and shameful. State legislators who sell their votes for $25 cash in an envelope (a scandal of the 1970s) do not tend toward braggadocio. When former Rep. Dan Rostenkowski was caught filching postage stamps from the House post office, he pleaded guilty and apologized for his crimes (and was pardoned by Bill Clinton).*
Louisiana's culture of corruption, by contrast, is flamboyant and shameless. Earl Long once said that Louisiana voters "don't want good government, they want good entertainment." He spent part of his last term in a mental hospital, where his wife had him committed after he took up with stripper Blaze Starr. When Sen. Allen Ellender died in office in 1972, Gov. Edwards didn't try to auction of his seat. He appointed his wife, Elaine, possibly to get her out of town. When Edwards ran for governor in 1983, he said of the incumbent, "If we don't get Dave Treen out of office, there won't be anything left to steal." (He also memorably said Treen was so slow it took him an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes
.) Raised among figures like these, Louisianans tend to accept corruption as inevitable, to be somewhat proud of it, and to forgive it easily.
In recent years, however, Illinois and Louisiana seem to be copying each other. With Rod Blagojevich and his wife, Patricia—Lady Macbeth of Milwaukee Avenue—Illinois' corruption has gone carnival. And since Katrina, Louisianans seem to have lost their zest for the big heist. There's been no sympathy for those caught siphoning disaster funds. It's going to be a close contest again this year, but I'm betting on the Fighting Illini to claim the national championship.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Interesting take on the Blago scandal here in Chicago-
http://velvelonnationalaffairs.blogspot.com/2008/12/re-fitzgerald-and-blagojevich.html#comments
>
Involved here is a question which I have so far not seen mentioned or discussed anywhere, with the exception of one article in the NYT. (Have I missed such discussions?) Isn’t it true that politicians at every level -- local, state, national and, we have been finding out, international -- trade office for money every day, literally every day? For scores of years it has been a standing farce that ambassadorships are in effect sold to the rich for campaign contributions. Membership on state boards or commissions is traded for campaign contributions. It has for many decades been a standing practice for politicians to cast their votes in Congress in favor of positions desired by industries that give them money for their campaigns. (Elizabeth Warren tells a remarkable story about Saint Hillary and the banking industry in this regard.) Some Senators have been bought, paid for and owned by particular companies or industries. Wasn’t a guy named Nelson Aldrich known as the Senator from the New York Central 110 years ago? Was Robert Kerr, as a Senator, anti the oil industry in which he was a very wealthy man? Perhaps you’ve heard of Kerr Magee -- wasn’t that his company if I’m not mistaken? Why did Billy Tauzin land a multimillion dollar per year job when he left Congress? Why do lobbyists raise millions for politicians? And has everyone forgotten about the Lincoln Bedroom business in the Clinton Administration? What was the Lincoln Bedroom business all about, if not all-important access and proximity in return for campaign money.
From the time when railroads used to give stock to federal and state legislators in return for favorable laws until today, giving money and economic position in return for political favors from politicians has been the way of life in American politics, the crooked but permissible way of life. In the last few decades, the Supreme Court has generally called it free speech.As near as I can see, all or nearly all that Fitzgerald seems to have given us to date are quotations and paraphrases of Blagojevich and company planning to do what all or nearly all American politicians -- crooks, the lot of ’em -- have been doing for scores of years. They’ve caught Blagojevich discussing what should be received in return for a political favor, here the favor of appointment to the Senate. So, if this case goes to a trial, don’t be surprised to see a parade of defense witnesses, who are highly knowledgeable about history and current practice, who will say that what Blagojevich was caught doing is simply typical of how politics has been practiced in this country since at least the Gilded Age, if not the Age of Jackson. A trial, if there is one, thus has the potential to blow up the American political system. It is impossible to see how the pols can let a trial take place. It is equally impossible to see how they can stop one unless Blagojevich decides to cop a plea in return for a very light sentence and avoidance of any risk of a severe sentence. (And in return for a large under the table payment from pols? Or is this joke only a joke?)
http://velvelonnationalaffairs.blogspot.com/2008/12/re-fitzgerald-and-blagojevich.html#comments
>
Involved here is a question which I have so far not seen mentioned or discussed anywhere, with the exception of one article in the NYT. (Have I missed such discussions?) Isn’t it true that politicians at every level -- local, state, national and, we have been finding out, international -- trade office for money every day, literally every day? For scores of years it has been a standing farce that ambassadorships are in effect sold to the rich for campaign contributions. Membership on state boards or commissions is traded for campaign contributions. It has for many decades been a standing practice for politicians to cast their votes in Congress in favor of positions desired by industries that give them money for their campaigns. (Elizabeth Warren tells a remarkable story about Saint Hillary and the banking industry in this regard.) Some Senators have been bought, paid for and owned by particular companies or industries. Wasn’t a guy named Nelson Aldrich known as the Senator from the New York Central 110 years ago? Was Robert Kerr, as a Senator, anti the oil industry in which he was a very wealthy man? Perhaps you’ve heard of Kerr Magee -- wasn’t that his company if I’m not mistaken? Why did Billy Tauzin land a multimillion dollar per year job when he left Congress? Why do lobbyists raise millions for politicians? And has everyone forgotten about the Lincoln Bedroom business in the Clinton Administration? What was the Lincoln Bedroom business all about, if not all-important access and proximity in return for campaign money.
From the time when railroads used to give stock to federal and state legislators in return for favorable laws until today, giving money and economic position in return for political favors from politicians has been the way of life in American politics, the crooked but permissible way of life. In the last few decades, the Supreme Court has generally called it free speech.As near as I can see, all or nearly all that Fitzgerald seems to have given us to date are quotations and paraphrases of Blagojevich and company planning to do what all or nearly all American politicians -- crooks, the lot of ’em -- have been doing for scores of years. They’ve caught Blagojevich discussing what should be received in return for a political favor, here the favor of appointment to the Senate. So, if this case goes to a trial, don’t be surprised to see a parade of defense witnesses, who are highly knowledgeable about history and current practice, who will say that what Blagojevich was caught doing is simply typical of how politics has been practiced in this country since at least the Gilded Age, if not the Age of Jackson. A trial, if there is one, thus has the potential to blow up the American political system. It is impossible to see how the pols can let a trial take place. It is equally impossible to see how they can stop one unless Blagojevich decides to cop a plea in return for a very light sentence and avoidance of any risk of a severe sentence. (And in return for a large under the table payment from pols? Or is this joke only a joke?)
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Sure, Che Guevara was a Hero of the Revolution. But did he like to jack off a lot? Director Steven Soderbergh has done a lot of research on this issue:
Anthem mentioned Che Guevara’s established reputation as a lady’s man. “Yeah,” Soderbergh agreed. “But [Che] doesn’t strike me as a big masturbator, I have to say. That was an impression that I felt early on. All of my research confirms it. Not a big masturbator.”
Anthem mentioned Che Guevara’s established reputation as a lady’s man. “Yeah,” Soderbergh agreed. “But [Che] doesn’t strike me as a big masturbator, I have to say. That was an impression that I felt early on. All of my research confirms it. Not a big masturbator.”
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
fighting words
Inconvenient Truths
The media's disingenuous failure to state the obvious.By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Dec. 8, 2008, at 12:08 PM ET
The obvious is sometimes the most difficult thing to discern, and few things are more amusing than the efforts of our journals of record to keep "open" minds about the self-evident, and thus to create mysteries when the real task of reportage is to dispel them. An all-time achiever in this category is Fernanda Santos of the New York Times, who managed to write from Bombay on Nov. 27 that the Chabad Jewish center in that city was "an unlikely target of the terrorist gunmen who unleashed a series of bloody coordinated attacks at locations in and around Mumbai's commercial center." Continuing to keep her brow heavily furrowed with the wrinkles of doubt and uncertainty, Santos went on to say that "[i]t is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."
This same puzzled expression is currently being widely worn on the faces of all those who wonder if Pakistan is implicated in the "bloody coordinated" assault on the heart of Bombay. To get an additional if oblique perspective on this riddle that is an enigma wrapped inside a mystery, take a look at Joshua Hammer's excellent essay in the current Atlantic. The question in its title—"[Is Syria] Getting Away With Murder?"—is at least asked only at the beginning of the article and not at the end of it.
Here are the known facts: If you are a Lebanese politician or journalist or public figure, and you criticize the role played by the government of Syria in your country's internal affairs, your car will explode when you turn the ignition key, or you will be ambushed and shot or blown up by a bomb or land mine as you drive through the streets of Beirut or along the roads that lead to the mountains. The explosives and weapons used, and the skilled tactics employed, will often be reminiscent of the sort of resources available only to the secret police and army of a state machine. But I think in fairness I must stress that this is all that is known for sure. You criticize the Assad dictatorship, and either your vehicle detonates or your head is blown off. Over time, this has happened to a large and varied number of people, ranging from Sunni statesman Rafik Hariri to Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt to Communist spokesman George Hawi. One would not wish to be a "conspiracy theorist" and allege that there was any necessary connection between the criticisms in the first place and the deplorably terminal experiences in the second.
Hammer's article is good for a laugh in that it shows just how much trouble the international community will go to precisely in order not to implicate the Assad family in this string of unfortunate events. After all, does Damascus not hold the keys to peace in the region? Might not young Bashar Assad, who managed to become president after the peaceful death by natural causes of his father, become annoyed and petulant and even uncooperative if he were found to have been commissioning assassinations? Could the fabled "process" suffer if a finger of indictment were pointed at him? At the offices of the long-established and by now almost historic United Nations inquiry into the Hariri murder, feet are evidently being dragged because of considerations like these, and Hammer describes the resulting atmosphere very well.
In rather the same way, the international community is deciding to be, shall we say, nonjudgmental in the matter of Pakistani involvement in the Bombay unpleasantness. Everything from the cell phones to the training appears to be traceable to the aboveground surrogates of an ostensibly banned group known as Lashkar-i-Taiba, which practices what it preaches and preaches holy war against Hindus, as well as Jews, Christians, atheists, and other elements of the "impure." Lashkar is well-known to be a bastard child—and by no means a disowned one, either—of the Pakistani security services. But how inconvenient if this self-evident and obvious fact should have to be faced.
How inconvenient, for one thing, for the government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, a new and untried politician who may not exactly be in charge of his own country or of its armed forces but who nonetheless knows how to jingle those same keys of peace. How inconvenient, too, for all those who assume that the Afghan war is the "good" war when they see Pakistani army units being withdrawn from the Afghan frontier and deployed against democratic India (which has always been Pakistan's "real" enemy).
The Syrian and Pakistani situations are a great deal more similar than most people have any interest in pointing out. In both cases, there is a state within the state that exerts the real parallel power and possesses the reserve strength. In both cases, official "secularism" is a mask (as it also was with the Iraqi Baathists) for the state sponsorship of theocratic and cross-border gangster groups like Lashkar and Hezbollah. In both cases, an unknown quantity of nuclear assets are at the disposal of the official and banana republic state and also very probably of elements within the unofficial and criminal and terrorist one. (It is of huge and unremarked significance that Syria did not take the recent Israeli bombing of its hidden reactor to the United Nations or make any other public complaint.) Given these grim and worsening states of affairs, perhaps it is only small wonder that we take consolation in our illusions and in comforting doubts—such as the childlike wonder about whether Jews are deliberately targeted or just unlucky with time and place. This would all be vaguely funny if it wasn't headed straight toward our own streets.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2206233/
Inconvenient Truths
The media's disingenuous failure to state the obvious.By Christopher HitchensPosted Monday, Dec. 8, 2008, at 12:08 PM ET
The obvious is sometimes the most difficult thing to discern, and few things are more amusing than the efforts of our journals of record to keep "open" minds about the self-evident, and thus to create mysteries when the real task of reportage is to dispel them. An all-time achiever in this category is Fernanda Santos of the New York Times, who managed to write from Bombay on Nov. 27 that the Chabad Jewish center in that city was "an unlikely target of the terrorist gunmen who unleashed a series of bloody coordinated attacks at locations in and around Mumbai's commercial center." Continuing to keep her brow heavily furrowed with the wrinkles of doubt and uncertainty, Santos went on to say that "[i]t is not known if the Jewish center was strategically chosen, or if it was an accidental hostage scene."
This same puzzled expression is currently being widely worn on the faces of all those who wonder if Pakistan is implicated in the "bloody coordinated" assault on the heart of Bombay. To get an additional if oblique perspective on this riddle that is an enigma wrapped inside a mystery, take a look at Joshua Hammer's excellent essay in the current Atlantic. The question in its title—"[Is Syria] Getting Away With Murder?"—is at least asked only at the beginning of the article and not at the end of it.
Here are the known facts: If you are a Lebanese politician or journalist or public figure, and you criticize the role played by the government of Syria in your country's internal affairs, your car will explode when you turn the ignition key, or you will be ambushed and shot or blown up by a bomb or land mine as you drive through the streets of Beirut or along the roads that lead to the mountains. The explosives and weapons used, and the skilled tactics employed, will often be reminiscent of the sort of resources available only to the secret police and army of a state machine. But I think in fairness I must stress that this is all that is known for sure. You criticize the Assad dictatorship, and either your vehicle detonates or your head is blown off. Over time, this has happened to a large and varied number of people, ranging from Sunni statesman Rafik Hariri to Druze leader Kamal Jumblatt to Communist spokesman George Hawi. One would not wish to be a "conspiracy theorist" and allege that there was any necessary connection between the criticisms in the first place and the deplorably terminal experiences in the second.
Hammer's article is good for a laugh in that it shows just how much trouble the international community will go to precisely in order not to implicate the Assad family in this string of unfortunate events. After all, does Damascus not hold the keys to peace in the region? Might not young Bashar Assad, who managed to become president after the peaceful death by natural causes of his father, become annoyed and petulant and even uncooperative if he were found to have been commissioning assassinations? Could the fabled "process" suffer if a finger of indictment were pointed at him? At the offices of the long-established and by now almost historic United Nations inquiry into the Hariri murder, feet are evidently being dragged because of considerations like these, and Hammer describes the resulting atmosphere very well.
In rather the same way, the international community is deciding to be, shall we say, nonjudgmental in the matter of Pakistani involvement in the Bombay unpleasantness. Everything from the cell phones to the training appears to be traceable to the aboveground surrogates of an ostensibly banned group known as Lashkar-i-Taiba, which practices what it preaches and preaches holy war against Hindus, as well as Jews, Christians, atheists, and other elements of the "impure." Lashkar is well-known to be a bastard child—and by no means a disowned one, either—of the Pakistani security services. But how inconvenient if this self-evident and obvious fact should have to be faced.
How inconvenient, for one thing, for the government of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, a new and untried politician who may not exactly be in charge of his own country or of its armed forces but who nonetheless knows how to jingle those same keys of peace. How inconvenient, too, for all those who assume that the Afghan war is the "good" war when they see Pakistani army units being withdrawn from the Afghan frontier and deployed against democratic India (which has always been Pakistan's "real" enemy).
The Syrian and Pakistani situations are a great deal more similar than most people have any interest in pointing out. In both cases, there is a state within the state that exerts the real parallel power and possesses the reserve strength. In both cases, official "secularism" is a mask (as it also was with the Iraqi Baathists) for the state sponsorship of theocratic and cross-border gangster groups like Lashkar and Hezbollah. In both cases, an unknown quantity of nuclear assets are at the disposal of the official and banana republic state and also very probably of elements within the unofficial and criminal and terrorist one. (It is of huge and unremarked significance that Syria did not take the recent Israeli bombing of its hidden reactor to the United Nations or make any other public complaint.) Given these grim and worsening states of affairs, perhaps it is only small wonder that we take consolation in our illusions and in comforting doubts—such as the childlike wonder about whether Jews are deliberately targeted or just unlucky with time and place. This would all be vaguely funny if it wasn't headed straight toward our own streets.
Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Roger S. Mertz media fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, Calif.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2206233/
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life
A report from the Tribune yesterday suggests that, in retrospect, ROD BLAGOJEVICH was tempting fate:Blagojevich responded today to the Chicago Tribune's report that he has been recorded by federal investigators, saying people should "feel free" to tape him because everything he says is lawful. . . .
"I should say if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly and notoriously, and those who feel like they want to sneakily and wear taping devices, I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate," Blagojevich said."But I don't care whether you tape me privately or publicly, I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful and the things I'm interested in are always lawful and if there are any things out there like that, what you'll hear is a governor who tirelessly and endlessly figures out ways to help average, ordinary working people," Blagojevich said."You might hear a couple of words that you might not hear publicly, but those are only adjectives to describe maybe some of you," he told reporters. . . .Blagojevich was asked if he felt there was a cloud over his efforts to pick a Senate replacement for President-elect Barack Obama."I don't believe there's any cloud that hangs over me, I think there's nothing but sunshine hanging over me," Blagojevich said.
A report from the Tribune yesterday suggests that, in retrospect, ROD BLAGOJEVICH was tempting fate:Blagojevich responded today to the Chicago Tribune's report that he has been recorded by federal investigators, saying people should "feel free" to tape him because everything he says is lawful. . . .
"I should say if anybody wants to tape my conversations, go right ahead, feel free to do it. I appreciate anybody who wants to tape me openly and notoriously, and those who feel like they want to sneakily and wear taping devices, I would remind them that it kind of smells like Nixon and Watergate," Blagojevich said."But I don't care whether you tape me privately or publicly, I can tell you that whatever I say is always lawful and the things I'm interested in are always lawful and if there are any things out there like that, what you'll hear is a governor who tirelessly and endlessly figures out ways to help average, ordinary working people," Blagojevich said."You might hear a couple of words that you might not hear publicly, but those are only adjectives to describe maybe some of you," he told reporters. . . .Blagojevich was asked if he felt there was a cloud over his efforts to pick a Senate replacement for President-elect Barack Obama."I don't believe there's any cloud that hangs over me, I think there's nothing but sunshine hanging over me," Blagojevich said.
Monday, December 08, 2008
MR. BROKAW: Finally, Mr. President-elect, the White House is a no-smoking zone, and when you were asked about this recently by Barbara Walters, I read it very carefully, you ducked.
Have you stopped smoking?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: You know, I have, but what I said was that, you know, there are times where I've fallen off the wagon. Well...
MR. BROKAW: Well, wait a minute.
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: ...what can I tell...
MR. BROKAW: Then that means you haven't stopped.
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, the--fair enough. What I would say is, is that I have done a terrific job under the circumstances of making myself much healthier, and I think that you will not see any violations of these rules in the White House.
MR. BROKAW: Mr. President-elect, thank you very much for being here
Have you stopped smoking?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: You know, I have, but what I said was that, you know, there are times where I've fallen off the wagon. Well...
MR. BROKAW: Well, wait a minute.
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: ...what can I tell...
MR. BROKAW: Then that means you haven't stopped.
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, the--fair enough. What I would say is, is that I have done a terrific job under the circumstances of making myself much healthier, and I think that you will not see any violations of these rules in the White House.
MR. BROKAW: Mr. President-elect, thank you very much for being here
Sinatra's Humiliating Godfather Tell-Off, Retold In $700 Book
By Ryan Tate, 3:30 AM on Mon Dec 8 2008, 3,523 views
Photographer Steve Schapiro needs a hook to sell his $700 special edition book about the Godfather movie. The behind-the-scenes pictures, 1,000-copy print run and author signatures might not be enough, and lord knows the economy isn't going to help matters. So he struck a deal to excerpt Mario Puzo's 1972 book on the making of the film. This excerpt was, in turn, excerpted in the Daily Mail this weekend, and the part where the late crooner Frank Sinatra screams at Puzo in a restaurant is the talk of the blogs, 35 years after it surfaced in Time. It's a worthy tale.
Puzo wrote into the Godfather a character named Johnny Fontane, whose career is assisted by the mob several times, most infamously in a scene where a Hollywood shot-caller awakens to find the head of his beloved horse in bed with him. Fontane was widely believed to be a stand-in for Sinatra.
Sinatra was not happy, and Puzo knew it: At Elaine's, the proprietress asks Sinatra is he would like an introduction to the author. He objects, as Puzo anticipated.
But the author was eventually dragged into an introduction, literally, by an apparently drunk millionaire buddy of the singer's who ignored Puzo's objections :
On the way out the millionaire started leading me toward a table. His right-hand man took me by the other hand... ‘I’d like you to meet my good friend, Mario Puzo,’ said the millionaire.‘I don’t think so,’ Sinatra said...I was trying to get past the right-hand man and get the hell out of there... The millionaire was actually in tears.‘Frank, I’m sorry, God, Frank, I didn’t know, Frank, I’m sorry…’I always run away from an argument and I have rarely in my life been disgusted by anything human beings do, but after that I said to Sinatra, ‘Listen, it wasn’t my idea.’...He said, and his voice was almost kind, ‘Who told you to put that in the book, your publisher?’...Finally I said, ‘I mean about being introduced to you.’ Time has mercifully dimmed the humiliation of what followed. Sinatra started to shout abuse. I remember that, contrary to his reputation, he did not use foul language at all. The worst thing he called me was a pimp. I do remember him saying that if it wasn’t that I was so much older than he, he would beat the hell out of me. What hurt was that here he was, a northern Italian, threatening me, a southern Italian, with physical violence. This was roughly equivalent to Einstein pulling a knife on Al Capone. It just wasn’t done.Sinatra kept up his abuse and I kept staring at him. He kept staring down at his plate. Yelling. He never looked up. Finally, I walked away and out of the restaurant.My humiliation must have showed because he yelled after me, ‘Choke. Go ahead and choke.’
That last quote sounds exactly like what one would expect Sinatra to yell after someone he's just told off, actually. It's kind of perfect! Writers may not get the respect of singers or filmmakers (Sinatra was actually nice to Francis Ford Coppola, even though the Godfather film included the Fontane character), but they do tend to get the last word.
By Ryan Tate, 3:30 AM on Mon Dec 8 2008, 3,523 views
Photographer Steve Schapiro needs a hook to sell his $700 special edition book about the Godfather movie. The behind-the-scenes pictures, 1,000-copy print run and author signatures might not be enough, and lord knows the economy isn't going to help matters. So he struck a deal to excerpt Mario Puzo's 1972 book on the making of the film. This excerpt was, in turn, excerpted in the Daily Mail this weekend, and the part where the late crooner Frank Sinatra screams at Puzo in a restaurant is the talk of the blogs, 35 years after it surfaced in Time. It's a worthy tale.
Puzo wrote into the Godfather a character named Johnny Fontane, whose career is assisted by the mob several times, most infamously in a scene where a Hollywood shot-caller awakens to find the head of his beloved horse in bed with him. Fontane was widely believed to be a stand-in for Sinatra.
Sinatra was not happy, and Puzo knew it: At Elaine's, the proprietress asks Sinatra is he would like an introduction to the author. He objects, as Puzo anticipated.
But the author was eventually dragged into an introduction, literally, by an apparently drunk millionaire buddy of the singer's who ignored Puzo's objections :
On the way out the millionaire started leading me toward a table. His right-hand man took me by the other hand... ‘I’d like you to meet my good friend, Mario Puzo,’ said the millionaire.‘I don’t think so,’ Sinatra said...I was trying to get past the right-hand man and get the hell out of there... The millionaire was actually in tears.‘Frank, I’m sorry, God, Frank, I didn’t know, Frank, I’m sorry…’I always run away from an argument and I have rarely in my life been disgusted by anything human beings do, but after that I said to Sinatra, ‘Listen, it wasn’t my idea.’...He said, and his voice was almost kind, ‘Who told you to put that in the book, your publisher?’...Finally I said, ‘I mean about being introduced to you.’ Time has mercifully dimmed the humiliation of what followed. Sinatra started to shout abuse. I remember that, contrary to his reputation, he did not use foul language at all. The worst thing he called me was a pimp. I do remember him saying that if it wasn’t that I was so much older than he, he would beat the hell out of me. What hurt was that here he was, a northern Italian, threatening me, a southern Italian, with physical violence. This was roughly equivalent to Einstein pulling a knife on Al Capone. It just wasn’t done.Sinatra kept up his abuse and I kept staring at him. He kept staring down at his plate. Yelling. He never looked up. Finally, I walked away and out of the restaurant.My humiliation must have showed because he yelled after me, ‘Choke. Go ahead and choke.’
That last quote sounds exactly like what one would expect Sinatra to yell after someone he's just told off, actually. It's kind of perfect! Writers may not get the respect of singers or filmmakers (Sinatra was actually nice to Francis Ford Coppola, even though the Godfather film included the Fontane character), but they do tend to get the last word.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
Page
Great article in the Atlantic on Rampage Jackson. former Light Heavyweight UFC champ-
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/rampage
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200812/rampage
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
OPINION NOVEMBER 30, 2008, 11:53 P.M. ET
Deepak Blames America
The media look within to explain the sick delusions of the Mumbai killers.
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
If the Mumbai terror assault seemed exceptional, and shocking in its targets, it was clear from the Thanksgiving Day reports that we weren't going to be deprived of the familiar, either. Namely, ruminations, hints, charges of American culpability that regularly accompany catastrophes of this kind.
Soon enough, there was Deepak Chopra, healer, New Age philosopher and digestion guru, advocate of aromatherapy and regular enemas, holding forth on CNN on the meaning of the attacks.
How the ebullient Dr. Chopra had come to be chosen as an authority on terror remains something of a mystery, though the answer may have something to do with his emergence in the recent presidential campaign as a thinker of advanced political views. Also commending him, perhaps, is his well known capacity to cut through all sorts of complexities to make matters simple. No one can fail to grasp the wisdom of a man who has informed us that "If you have happy thoughts, then you make happy molecules."
In his CNN interview, he was no less clear. What happened in Mumbai, he told the interviewer, was a product of the U.S. war on terrorism, that "our policies, our foreign policies" had alienated the Muslim population, that we had "gone after the wrong people" and inflamed moderates. And "that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay."
All this was a bit too much, evidently, for CNN interviewer Jonathan Mann, who interrupted to note that there were other things going on -- matters like the ongoing bitter Pakistan-India struggle over Kashmir -- which had caused so much terror and so much violence. "That's not Washington's fault," he pointed out.
Given an argument, the guest, ever a conciliator, agreed: The Mumbai catastrophe was not Washington's fault, it was everybody's fault. Which didn't prevent Dr. Chopra from returning soon to his central theme -- the grave offense posed to Muslims by the United States' war on terror, a point accompanied by consistent emphatic reminders that Muslims are the world's fastest growing population -- 25% of the globe's inhabitants -- and that the U.S. had better heed that fact. In Dr. Chopra's moral universe, numbers are apparently central. It's tempting to imagine his view of offenses against a much smaller sliver of the world's inhabitants -- not so offensive, perhaps?
Two subsequent interviews with Larry King brought much of the same -- a litany of suggestions about the role the U.S. had played in fueling assaults by Muslim terrorists, reminders of the numbers of Muslims in the world and their grievances. A faithful adherent of the root-causes theory of crime -- mass murder, in the case at hand -- Dr. Chopra pointed out, quite unnecessarily, that most of the terrorism in the world came from Muslims. It was mandatory, then, to address their grievances -- "humiliation," "poverty," "lack of education." The U.S., he recommended, should undertake a Marshall Plan for Muslims.
Nowhere in this citation of the root causes of Muslim terrorism was there any mention of Islamic fundamentalism -- the religious fanaticism that has sent fevered mobs rioting, burning and killing over alleged slights to the Quran or the prophet. Not to mention the countless others enlisted to blow themselves and others up in the name of God.
Nor did we hear, in these media meditations, any particular expression of sorrow from the New Delhi-born Dr. Chopra for the anguish of Mumbai's victims: a striking lack, no doubt unintentional, but not surprising, either. For advocates of the root-causes theory of crime, the central story is, ever, the sorrows and grievances of the perpetrators. For those prone to the belief that most eruptions of evil in the world can be traced to American influence and power there is only one subject of consequence.
Accustomed as we are by now to this view of the U.S., it's impossible not to marvel at its varied guises -- its capacity to emerge even in journalism ostensibly concerning the absurd beliefs about the 9/11 attacks held by so many Muslims. It's conventional wisdom in the region -- according to a New York Times dispatch from Cairo, Egypt, last fall by Michael Slackman -- that the U.S. and Israel had to have been involved in the planning, if not the actual execution of the assaults. No news there. Neither was the information that there was virtually universal belief in the area that Jews, tipped off, didn't go to work at the World Trade Center that day. Or that the U.S. had organized the plot in order to attack Arab Muslims and gain access to their oil.
The noteworthy point here was the writer's conclusion that the U.S. itself was to blame for the power of these beliefs. "It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre," Mr. Slackman allowed. But that would miss the point that the persistence of these ideas represents the "first failure in the fight against terrorism." A U.S. failure? Nowhere in the extended list of root causes here was there any mention of the fanaticism and sheer mindless gullibility that is the prerequisite for the holding of such beliefs.
Its very ordinariness speaks volumes about this report. A piece written with evident serenity, the perversity of its conclusions notwithstanding, it's one emblem among many of the adversarial view of the nation that is today entrenched in the culture. So unworthy is the U.S. -- an attitude solidly established in our media culture long before the war on terror -- that only it can be held responsible for the deranged fantasies cherished in large quarters of the Arab world. So natural does it feel, now, to hold such views that their expression has become second nature.
Which is how it happens also that the U.S. is linked to the bloodletting in Mumbai, with scarcely anyone batting an eye, and Larry King -- awash perhaps, in happy molecules -- thanking guest Dr. Chopra for his extraordinary enlightenment.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
Deepak Blames America
The media look within to explain the sick delusions of the Mumbai killers.
By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
If the Mumbai terror assault seemed exceptional, and shocking in its targets, it was clear from the Thanksgiving Day reports that we weren't going to be deprived of the familiar, either. Namely, ruminations, hints, charges of American culpability that regularly accompany catastrophes of this kind.
Soon enough, there was Deepak Chopra, healer, New Age philosopher and digestion guru, advocate of aromatherapy and regular enemas, holding forth on CNN on the meaning of the attacks.
How the ebullient Dr. Chopra had come to be chosen as an authority on terror remains something of a mystery, though the answer may have something to do with his emergence in the recent presidential campaign as a thinker of advanced political views. Also commending him, perhaps, is his well known capacity to cut through all sorts of complexities to make matters simple. No one can fail to grasp the wisdom of a man who has informed us that "If you have happy thoughts, then you make happy molecules."
In his CNN interview, he was no less clear. What happened in Mumbai, he told the interviewer, was a product of the U.S. war on terrorism, that "our policies, our foreign policies" had alienated the Muslim population, that we had "gone after the wrong people" and inflamed moderates. And "that inflammation then gets organized and appears as this disaster in Bombay."
All this was a bit too much, evidently, for CNN interviewer Jonathan Mann, who interrupted to note that there were other things going on -- matters like the ongoing bitter Pakistan-India struggle over Kashmir -- which had caused so much terror and so much violence. "That's not Washington's fault," he pointed out.
Given an argument, the guest, ever a conciliator, agreed: The Mumbai catastrophe was not Washington's fault, it was everybody's fault. Which didn't prevent Dr. Chopra from returning soon to his central theme -- the grave offense posed to Muslims by the United States' war on terror, a point accompanied by consistent emphatic reminders that Muslims are the world's fastest growing population -- 25% of the globe's inhabitants -- and that the U.S. had better heed that fact. In Dr. Chopra's moral universe, numbers are apparently central. It's tempting to imagine his view of offenses against a much smaller sliver of the world's inhabitants -- not so offensive, perhaps?
Two subsequent interviews with Larry King brought much of the same -- a litany of suggestions about the role the U.S. had played in fueling assaults by Muslim terrorists, reminders of the numbers of Muslims in the world and their grievances. A faithful adherent of the root-causes theory of crime -- mass murder, in the case at hand -- Dr. Chopra pointed out, quite unnecessarily, that most of the terrorism in the world came from Muslims. It was mandatory, then, to address their grievances -- "humiliation," "poverty," "lack of education." The U.S., he recommended, should undertake a Marshall Plan for Muslims.
Nowhere in this citation of the root causes of Muslim terrorism was there any mention of Islamic fundamentalism -- the religious fanaticism that has sent fevered mobs rioting, burning and killing over alleged slights to the Quran or the prophet. Not to mention the countless others enlisted to blow themselves and others up in the name of God.
Nor did we hear, in these media meditations, any particular expression of sorrow from the New Delhi-born Dr. Chopra for the anguish of Mumbai's victims: a striking lack, no doubt unintentional, but not surprising, either. For advocates of the root-causes theory of crime, the central story is, ever, the sorrows and grievances of the perpetrators. For those prone to the belief that most eruptions of evil in the world can be traced to American influence and power there is only one subject of consequence.
Accustomed as we are by now to this view of the U.S., it's impossible not to marvel at its varied guises -- its capacity to emerge even in journalism ostensibly concerning the absurd beliefs about the 9/11 attacks held by so many Muslims. It's conventional wisdom in the region -- according to a New York Times dispatch from Cairo, Egypt, last fall by Michael Slackman -- that the U.S. and Israel had to have been involved in the planning, if not the actual execution of the assaults. No news there. Neither was the information that there was virtually universal belief in the area that Jews, tipped off, didn't go to work at the World Trade Center that day. Or that the U.S. had organized the plot in order to attack Arab Muslims and gain access to their oil.
The noteworthy point here was the writer's conclusion that the U.S. itself was to blame for the power of these beliefs. "It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre," Mr. Slackman allowed. But that would miss the point that the persistence of these ideas represents the "first failure in the fight against terrorism." A U.S. failure? Nowhere in the extended list of root causes here was there any mention of the fanaticism and sheer mindless gullibility that is the prerequisite for the holding of such beliefs.
Its very ordinariness speaks volumes about this report. A piece written with evident serenity, the perversity of its conclusions notwithstanding, it's one emblem among many of the adversarial view of the nation that is today entrenched in the culture. So unworthy is the U.S. -- an attitude solidly established in our media culture long before the war on terror -- that only it can be held responsible for the deranged fantasies cherished in large quarters of the Arab world. So natural does it feel, now, to hold such views that their expression has become second nature.
Which is how it happens also that the U.S. is linked to the bloodletting in Mumbai, with scarcely anyone batting an eye, and Larry King -- awash perhaps, in happy molecules -- thanking guest Dr. Chopra for his extraordinary enlightenment.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
makes me smile. song great too.
http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/baby-ernie-has-that-attitude/
this guy makes Dan Savage look like Dear Abby-
http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/ask-blognigger-should-i-admit-to-my-wife-that-im-gay/#more-5532
http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/baby-ernie-has-that-attitude/
this guy makes Dan Savage look like Dear Abby-
http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/ask-blognigger-should-i-admit-to-my-wife-that-im-gay/#more-5532
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
A&E reality suits Steven Seagal
'Lawman' slated for late 2009 bow
By MIKE FLAHERTY
Action star Steven Seagal is heading to A&E in a reality skein that follows his life as a fully commissioned sheriff's deputy in New Orleans.
Seagal can now add "reality TV lead" to his resume, as A&E is in production on nonfiction skein "Steven Seagal: Lawman" in New Orleans.
According to the net, Seagal has been working on and off as a fully commissioned deputy with the Jefferson Parish County Sheriff's Office for nearly two decades. One of his stints found him assisting with recovery efforts during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"Lawman" also will document his life off the beat, including his musical and philanthropic activities in the Big Easy.
Seagal toplined a series of successful actioners in the '90s, most profitably in the "Under Siege" couplet. His Warner Bros. contract was not renewed in 1997; since then he has appeared mostly in straight-to-video projects and exclusively so since 2003. Most recently, he wrote and starred in "Kill Switch" for First Look Intl.; it bowed on Oct. 7.
The pickup occurs amid A&E's plan to resurrect another '90s stalwart, Patrick Swayze, in FBI drama "The Beast," which will bow in January.
"I decided to work with A&E on this series now because I believe it's important to show the nation all the positive work being accomplished here in Louisiana," Seagal said of the new venture.
Seagal "helps fight crime because he cares about the community," said Robert Sharenow, A&E's senior veep of nonfiction and alternative programming. "Lawman" is skedded for a late 2009 bow.
According to the net, Seagal has been working on and off as a fully commissioned deputy with the Jefferson Parish County Sheriff's Office for nearly two decades. One of his stints found him assisting with recovery efforts during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
"Lawman" also will document his life off the beat, including his musical and philanthropic activities in the Big Easy.
Seagal toplined a series of successful actioners in the '90s, most profitably in the "Under Siege" couplet. His Warner Bros. contract was not renewed in 1997; since then he has appeared mostly in straight-to-video projects and exclusively so since 2003. Most recently, he wrote and starred in "Kill Switch" for First Look Intl.; it bowed on Oct. 7.
The pickup occurs amid A&E's plan to resurrect another '90s stalwart, Patrick Swayze, in FBI drama "The Beast," which will bow in January.
"I decided to work with A&E on this series now because I believe it's important to show the nation all the positive work being accomplished here in Louisiana," Seagal said of the new venture.
Seagal "helps fight crime because he cares about the community," said Robert Sharenow, A&E's senior veep of nonfiction and alternative programming. "Lawman" is skedded for a late 2009 bow.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Conrad
November 23, 2008
From my cell I scent the reeking soul of US justice
Conrad Black
I write to you from a US federal prison. It is far from a country club or even a regimental health spa. I work quite hard but fulfillingly, teaching English and the history of the United States to some of my co-residents. There is practically unlimited access to e-mails and the media and plenty of time for visitors.
Many of the other co-residents are quite interesting and affable, often in a Damon Runyon way, and the regime is not uncivilised. In eight months here there has not been the slightest unpleasantness with anyone. It is a little like going back to boarding school, which I somewhat enjoyed nearly 50 years ago (before being expelled for insubordination) and is a sharp change of pace after 16 years as chairman of The Daily Telegraph. I can report that a change is not always as good as a rest.
However, apart from missing the constant companionship of my magnificent wife Barbara, who visits me once, twice or even three times each week and lives nearby in our Florida home with her splendid Hungarian dogs, I enjoy some aspects of my status as a victim of the American prosecutocracy.
My appeal continues. Given the putrefaction of the US justice system, it is an unsought but distinct honour to fight this out and already to have won 85% of the case and 99% of the financial case. The initial allegation against me of a “$500m corporate kleptocracy” has shrunk to a false finding against me - that even some of the jurors have already fled from in post-trial comments – of the underdocumented receipt of $2.9m. There is no evidence to support this charge.
It has been a grim pleasure to expose the hypocrisy of the corporate governance establishment, who have bankrupted our Canadian company and reduced the share price of the American one from $21, when I left, to a miraculous two cents (yes, two cents). They have vaporised $2 billion of public shareholder value; fine titles in several countries have deteriorated; and for their infamies, the protectors of the public interest have cheerfully trousered more than $200m.
US federal prosecutors, almost all of whom would be disbarred for their antics if they were in Britain or Canada, win more than 90% of their cases thanks to the withering of the constitutional guarantees of due process – that is, the grand jury as an assurance against capricious prosecution, no seizure of property without just compensation, access to counsel, an impartial jury, speedy justice and reasonable bail.
We did not know the grand jury was sitting, have never seen the transcript of its proceedings and I was denied counsel of choice by the ex parte seizure, which the jury later judged to be improper, of the proceeds of the sale of an apartment in New York that I was going to use as the retainer for trial counsel.
The system is based on the plea bargain: the barefaced exchange of incriminating testimony for immunity or a reduced sentence. It is intimidation and suborned or extorted perjury, an outright rape of any plausible definition of justice.
The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved.
I wish to advise Lord Hurd that when I return to the UK I would like to take up more energetically than I did initially his request for assistance in his custodial system reform activities.
Obviously, the bloom is off my long-notorious affection for America. But I note from recent comment in Britain and Europe that the habit of blaming anything that goes awry in the world on the US is alive and well. However, the United States has not disintegrated and American capitalism is not dead, nor even in failing health. The recent financial upheavals have exposed the folly of the US Congress and Federal Reserve and will aggravate a cyclical recession and take some time to shake out.
The United States has just retained the riveted interest of the whole world, most of which does not wish it well, in the billion-dollar vulgarity of its election process for an entire year. And it surely has earned the respect of the world in elevating a very capable leader as the first non-white man to head any western nation.
I would be distinctly consolable if the United States really was in decline and I have more legitimate grievances against that country than do The Guardian or the BBC, but it is still a country of incomparable vitality even as its moral, judicial soul atrophies and reeks.
This is an edited version of an article by the former Daily Telegraph proprietor that appears in the current edition of Spear’s Wealth Management Survey magazine
From my cell I scent the reeking soul of US justice
Conrad Black
I write to you from a US federal prison. It is far from a country club or even a regimental health spa. I work quite hard but fulfillingly, teaching English and the history of the United States to some of my co-residents. There is practically unlimited access to e-mails and the media and plenty of time for visitors.
Many of the other co-residents are quite interesting and affable, often in a Damon Runyon way, and the regime is not uncivilised. In eight months here there has not been the slightest unpleasantness with anyone. It is a little like going back to boarding school, which I somewhat enjoyed nearly 50 years ago (before being expelled for insubordination) and is a sharp change of pace after 16 years as chairman of The Daily Telegraph. I can report that a change is not always as good as a rest.
However, apart from missing the constant companionship of my magnificent wife Barbara, who visits me once, twice or even three times each week and lives nearby in our Florida home with her splendid Hungarian dogs, I enjoy some aspects of my status as a victim of the American prosecutocracy.
My appeal continues. Given the putrefaction of the US justice system, it is an unsought but distinct honour to fight this out and already to have won 85% of the case and 99% of the financial case. The initial allegation against me of a “$500m corporate kleptocracy” has shrunk to a false finding against me - that even some of the jurors have already fled from in post-trial comments – of the underdocumented receipt of $2.9m. There is no evidence to support this charge.
It has been a grim pleasure to expose the hypocrisy of the corporate governance establishment, who have bankrupted our Canadian company and reduced the share price of the American one from $21, when I left, to a miraculous two cents (yes, two cents). They have vaporised $2 billion of public shareholder value; fine titles in several countries have deteriorated; and for their infamies, the protectors of the public interest have cheerfully trousered more than $200m.
US federal prosecutors, almost all of whom would be disbarred for their antics if they were in Britain or Canada, win more than 90% of their cases thanks to the withering of the constitutional guarantees of due process – that is, the grand jury as an assurance against capricious prosecution, no seizure of property without just compensation, access to counsel, an impartial jury, speedy justice and reasonable bail.
We did not know the grand jury was sitting, have never seen the transcript of its proceedings and I was denied counsel of choice by the ex parte seizure, which the jury later judged to be improper, of the proceeds of the sale of an apartment in New York that I was going to use as the retainer for trial counsel.
The system is based on the plea bargain: the barefaced exchange of incriminating testimony for immunity or a reduced sentence. It is intimidation and suborned or extorted perjury, an outright rape of any plausible definition of justice.
The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved.
I wish to advise Lord Hurd that when I return to the UK I would like to take up more energetically than I did initially his request for assistance in his custodial system reform activities.
Obviously, the bloom is off my long-notorious affection for America. But I note from recent comment in Britain and Europe that the habit of blaming anything that goes awry in the world on the US is alive and well. However, the United States has not disintegrated and American capitalism is not dead, nor even in failing health. The recent financial upheavals have exposed the folly of the US Congress and Federal Reserve and will aggravate a cyclical recession and take some time to shake out.
The United States has just retained the riveted interest of the whole world, most of which does not wish it well, in the billion-dollar vulgarity of its election process for an entire year. And it surely has earned the respect of the world in elevating a very capable leader as the first non-white man to head any western nation.
I would be distinctly consolable if the United States really was in decline and I have more legitimate grievances against that country than do The Guardian or the BBC, but it is still a country of incomparable vitality even as its moral, judicial soul atrophies and reeks.
This is an edited version of an article by the former Daily Telegraph proprietor that appears in the current edition of Spear’s Wealth Management Survey magazine
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
A story for which Napier is famous involves a delegation of Hindu locals approaching him and complaining about prohibition of Sati, often referred to at the time as suttee, by British authorities. This was the custom of burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands. The exact wording of his response varies somewhat in different reports, but the following version captures its essence:
"You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."[3]
In 1796 George Washington wrote to Alexander Hamilton:
“The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”
“The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.”
Monday, November 17, 2008
Z
In real life, the prosecutor who prevailed in the face of official opposition, Christos Sartzetakis (played here by Jean-Louis Trintignant), was later arrested by the junta and imprisoned and tortured. Upon the restoration of democracy in 1974 he was honored for his service and appointed to the Greek Supreme Court in 1982. Eventually he was proposed by PASOK for the presidency of Greece. He served one term as president from 1985 to 1990.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Friday, November 07, 2008
'Chosen One' Rocks Paula!!!
Paula Abdul: Obama Victory Triggers Tears and Texting
By Mark Dagostino
With the election of Barack Obama, Paula Idol of American Idol will stay just that – an American. "I was crying!" she tells PEOPLE. "You feel such a sense of pride that you can't even articulate how good you feel. It's unbelievable! I have chills. I was just so excited. I was texting everyone: 'Peace has begun.' And then I was texting everyone, 'I don't have to move to Vancouver now!'" Abdul, 46, is in New York City hosting Paula Abdul's RAH Cheerleading Bowl, a high-energy cheerleading squad competition that will air New Year's Day on MTV.
S
eeing an African-American become President is something she never imagined would happen. "I prayed for it. But four years ago? Not even a thought. The only point of reference was Rev. Jesse Jackson's (campaign), which was just embarrassing. But there's a presence with this man."
While she was excited for the Clinton election back in the 1990s, it pales in comparison to Obama's election: "I just feel like the presence of this man is so calm, and so serene, and he is so confident and sure of himself. There's a calming effect that just feels so good. I feel like it's a universal shift towards kindness, towards patience, towards peace. That's the only way I can explain it.' She's also looking forward to seeing the Obama family in the White House. "I love his wife. And those little girls, I just want to squish 'em they're so beautiful!" she said. "I'll offer to baby sit anytime!"
By Mark Dagostino
With the election of Barack Obama, Paula Idol of American Idol will stay just that – an American. "I was crying!" she tells PEOPLE. "You feel such a sense of pride that you can't even articulate how good you feel. It's unbelievable! I have chills. I was just so excited. I was texting everyone: 'Peace has begun.' And then I was texting everyone, 'I don't have to move to Vancouver now!'" Abdul, 46, is in New York City hosting Paula Abdul's RAH Cheerleading Bowl, a high-energy cheerleading squad competition that will air New Year's Day on MTV.
S
eeing an African-American become President is something she never imagined would happen. "I prayed for it. But four years ago? Not even a thought. The only point of reference was Rev. Jesse Jackson's (campaign), which was just embarrassing. But there's a presence with this man."
While she was excited for the Clinton election back in the 1990s, it pales in comparison to Obama's election: "I just feel like the presence of this man is so calm, and so serene, and he is so confident and sure of himself. There's a calming effect that just feels so good. I feel like it's a universal shift towards kindness, towards patience, towards peace. That's the only way I can explain it.' She's also looking forward to seeing the Obama family in the White House. "I love his wife. And those little girls, I just want to squish 'em they're so beautiful!" she said. "I'll offer to baby sit anytime!"
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
The Possibilities of President ObamaIn historic victory, he reaches out to the loyal opposition.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
For one night at least, it was all about possibilities. Possibilities that Barack Obama, America’s new president-elect, weaved in a tapestry of patriotism and change, with his trademark eloquence — in that effortless baritone that starts from someplace down here.For one night, a night of smashing victory unseen in American politics in nearly a generation, he exuded a confident humility that was beyond his years but seemed, in him, so natural and alluring. It was a night that invited haughtiness. And make no mistake about it: His core supporters yearn for payback — over the Clinton impeachment, over what their lore says was stolen from them in 2000, over the frenzy into which each Bush initiative seemed to drive them these eight long years. But on this night, to his great credit, our new president would have none of it.
Be under no illusions: The president-elect knows where he came from and who got him to this point. “Change” has come to America, he proclaimed to a waving sea of jubilant supporters. Exactly what that change will be is not yet clear, but it would be foolish not to feel the ground beneath us shifting. Change will lean leftward. It will be statist. The questions are how far and how fast — and with his sweeping coattails that solidified Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, how far and how fast will really be up to President Obama.It is here, though, that Obama, at least for one night, was at his most gracious. He addressed himself directly to us — to conservatives and other skeptical Americans who opposed him, often stridently. On a night of glorious triumph for him and his ravenous supporters, the message could easily have been: Time for you bitter clingers to get with the program. It wasn’t. Instead, the new president spoke humbly to those whose votes he said he had not yet “earned.” He promised to be our president too — to listen with a heightened attentiveness especially when we disagree, which, to be certain, will be often.Does he mean it? Here’s hoping so. What is so unnerving is that even now, after the longest presidential campaign in American history, in a country whose deep divisions should lend themselves to the media vetting of candidates from both sides, Obama remains an enigma. The mainstream press, with its Watergate-bred self-image, its Sixties-driven J-school mission of sculpting rather than reporting news, and its intoxication by the historic moment, became Obama’s palace guard — determined to get him to the palace. Basic information about him remains unexplored: the circumstances of his birth, his immersion in a radical environment, his affiliation with a socialist political party in the mid-Nineties, his fringe opposition to medical care for infants who survive attempted abortions, and so on.Is he the quietly effective radical strongly suggested by his hard-edged record and his confederation with anti-American revolutionaries? Or is he the centrist healer of his aspirational, inspirational rhetoric? We don’t know for sure. That’s why many of us opposed him, even against a deeply flawed (albeit personally heroic) Republican, the slim prospect of whose victory was as much a source of anxiety as enthusiasm. Is Obama a Leftist revolutionary? He denies ideological mooring, insisting he is a pragmatist. That should bring some comfort, but it doesn’t really. In his formative community-organizer days, our new president mastered the groundbreaking work of Saul Alinsky, who made pragmatism the clarion call of a systematized, disciplined radicalism. Alinsky, too, rejected ideological dogmatism. He taught that the successful radical is the wolf in sheep’s clothing: burrowing into the institutions of Western capitalism, altering their character from within, seducing the society with a high-minded summons to “social justice,” “participatory democracy,” and, yes, “change.” Is Obama following this stealthy roadmap? If that is his intention, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done so more perfectly.On the other hand, people I know and respect, including some who knew Obama when he initially made history as The Harvard Law Review’s first black editor, insist that he is most decidedly not a radical. They say he is just what he now purports to be: a consensus builder whose “progressive” leanings are undeniable but do not render him deaf to persuasive arguments from the other side. On this accounting, the Ayers, Klonskys and Khalidis in his closet are to be understood not as kindred spirits but merely as voices of the hard Left that a confident Obama can hear out, and occasionally even collaborate with, while maintaining his safe, pragmatic distance.Which is right? We don’t know, or at least I certainly don’t know. But I admit to worrying. A few days ago, as the contest wended toward the finish line with the outcome no longer much in doubt, Obama asserted that he sensed a “righteous wind” at his back. Some sloughed this off as campaign cant. Others among us, having studied Obama’s background, couldn’t help but hear Chairman Mao. Is that paranoia or well-informed dread? Alas, the jury is still out, and that shouldn’t be. We ought to know the manner of man we are installing in the world’s most powerful office before the installation takes place.
Yet for one night, I was impressed. Impressed most by the dignity with which he bore the weight of his historic achievement: satisfied but not gloating, victorious but magnanimous, gratified by what he has accomplished and what it so obviously means to African Americans, but mindful of the enormous burdens he has assumed and the duties he now owes to all Americans, including the loyal opposition.Emphasis here on loyal. President-Elect Obama correctly but no less honorably said he still needed to earn our support. For our part, we need to offer our support earnestly. He is our president now, the president of our beloved nation. Too many have given their lives for this union, and too many are risking their lives for America even now, for us to shrink from honoring their sacrifice. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight President Obama when we think he is wrong. In fact, it means we must fight him. Fighting him when he is wrong will make him a better president, which in turn will make our country stronger. That’s the opposition part, and the freedom to oppose is our nation’s greatest strength. Still, the loyal part means we must support our president when we think he is right. We must meet him when he reaches out to us. We must try to guide him toward what we believe is best for national security and prosperity. Just as we demand that President Obama put America first, we must be Americans first ourselves.Our country has had an election. Our side got trounced. We’ve strayed far from our principles. We’ve too often failed to make our case even when it was right there for the making. If the best we have to offer America is Democrat-lite, Americans can’t be blamed for deciding they’d just as soon have the real thing. If we operate in stealth and incoherence, abdicating our duty to convince our fellow citizens of the rightness of measures taken for our security, they can’t be blamed for suspecting we are in the wrong. It is on us to fix these things. They urgently need fixing if we are to offer the country something worthy.For the moment, however, let’s accept defeat with the same purposeful grace President Obama exhibited in victory. And as power once again shifts peacefully from one hand to the next, from one party to the other, let’s remember how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation in human history.
— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the FDD’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).
By Andrew C. McCarthy
For one night at least, it was all about possibilities. Possibilities that Barack Obama, America’s new president-elect, weaved in a tapestry of patriotism and change, with his trademark eloquence — in that effortless baritone that starts from someplace down here.For one night, a night of smashing victory unseen in American politics in nearly a generation, he exuded a confident humility that was beyond his years but seemed, in him, so natural and alluring. It was a night that invited haughtiness. And make no mistake about it: His core supporters yearn for payback — over the Clinton impeachment, over what their lore says was stolen from them in 2000, over the frenzy into which each Bush initiative seemed to drive them these eight long years. But on this night, to his great credit, our new president would have none of it.
Be under no illusions: The president-elect knows where he came from and who got him to this point. “Change” has come to America, he proclaimed to a waving sea of jubilant supporters. Exactly what that change will be is not yet clear, but it would be foolish not to feel the ground beneath us shifting. Change will lean leftward. It will be statist. The questions are how far and how fast — and with his sweeping coattails that solidified Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, how far and how fast will really be up to President Obama.It is here, though, that Obama, at least for one night, was at his most gracious. He addressed himself directly to us — to conservatives and other skeptical Americans who opposed him, often stridently. On a night of glorious triumph for him and his ravenous supporters, the message could easily have been: Time for you bitter clingers to get with the program. It wasn’t. Instead, the new president spoke humbly to those whose votes he said he had not yet “earned.” He promised to be our president too — to listen with a heightened attentiveness especially when we disagree, which, to be certain, will be often.Does he mean it? Here’s hoping so. What is so unnerving is that even now, after the longest presidential campaign in American history, in a country whose deep divisions should lend themselves to the media vetting of candidates from both sides, Obama remains an enigma. The mainstream press, with its Watergate-bred self-image, its Sixties-driven J-school mission of sculpting rather than reporting news, and its intoxication by the historic moment, became Obama’s palace guard — determined to get him to the palace. Basic information about him remains unexplored: the circumstances of his birth, his immersion in a radical environment, his affiliation with a socialist political party in the mid-Nineties, his fringe opposition to medical care for infants who survive attempted abortions, and so on.Is he the quietly effective radical strongly suggested by his hard-edged record and his confederation with anti-American revolutionaries? Or is he the centrist healer of his aspirational, inspirational rhetoric? We don’t know for sure. That’s why many of us opposed him, even against a deeply flawed (albeit personally heroic) Republican, the slim prospect of whose victory was as much a source of anxiety as enthusiasm. Is Obama a Leftist revolutionary? He denies ideological mooring, insisting he is a pragmatist. That should bring some comfort, but it doesn’t really. In his formative community-organizer days, our new president mastered the groundbreaking work of Saul Alinsky, who made pragmatism the clarion call of a systematized, disciplined radicalism. Alinsky, too, rejected ideological dogmatism. He taught that the successful radical is the wolf in sheep’s clothing: burrowing into the institutions of Western capitalism, altering their character from within, seducing the society with a high-minded summons to “social justice,” “participatory democracy,” and, yes, “change.” Is Obama following this stealthy roadmap? If that is his intention, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done so more perfectly.On the other hand, people I know and respect, including some who knew Obama when he initially made history as The Harvard Law Review’s first black editor, insist that he is most decidedly not a radical. They say he is just what he now purports to be: a consensus builder whose “progressive” leanings are undeniable but do not render him deaf to persuasive arguments from the other side. On this accounting, the Ayers, Klonskys and Khalidis in his closet are to be understood not as kindred spirits but merely as voices of the hard Left that a confident Obama can hear out, and occasionally even collaborate with, while maintaining his safe, pragmatic distance.Which is right? We don’t know, or at least I certainly don’t know. But I admit to worrying. A few days ago, as the contest wended toward the finish line with the outcome no longer much in doubt, Obama asserted that he sensed a “righteous wind” at his back. Some sloughed this off as campaign cant. Others among us, having studied Obama’s background, couldn’t help but hear Chairman Mao. Is that paranoia or well-informed dread? Alas, the jury is still out, and that shouldn’t be. We ought to know the manner of man we are installing in the world’s most powerful office before the installation takes place.
Yet for one night, I was impressed. Impressed most by the dignity with which he bore the weight of his historic achievement: satisfied but not gloating, victorious but magnanimous, gratified by what he has accomplished and what it so obviously means to African Americans, but mindful of the enormous burdens he has assumed and the duties he now owes to all Americans, including the loyal opposition.Emphasis here on loyal. President-Elect Obama correctly but no less honorably said he still needed to earn our support. For our part, we need to offer our support earnestly. He is our president now, the president of our beloved nation. Too many have given their lives for this union, and too many are risking their lives for America even now, for us to shrink from honoring their sacrifice. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight President Obama when we think he is wrong. In fact, it means we must fight him. Fighting him when he is wrong will make him a better president, which in turn will make our country stronger. That’s the opposition part, and the freedom to oppose is our nation’s greatest strength. Still, the loyal part means we must support our president when we think he is right. We must meet him when he reaches out to us. We must try to guide him toward what we believe is best for national security and prosperity. Just as we demand that President Obama put America first, we must be Americans first ourselves.Our country has had an election. Our side got trounced. We’ve strayed far from our principles. We’ve too often failed to make our case even when it was right there for the making. If the best we have to offer America is Democrat-lite, Americans can’t be blamed for deciding they’d just as soon have the real thing. If we operate in stealth and incoherence, abdicating our duty to convince our fellow citizens of the rightness of measures taken for our security, they can’t be blamed for suspecting we are in the wrong. It is on us to fix these things. They urgently need fixing if we are to offer the country something worthy.For the moment, however, let’s accept defeat with the same purposeful grace President Obama exhibited in victory. And as power once again shifts peacefully from one hand to the next, from one party to the other, let’s remember how blessed we are to live in the greatest nation in human history.
— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy chairs the FDD’s Center for Law & Counterterrorism and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books 2008).
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Monday, November 03, 2008
Treasury and Federal Reserve actions:
Mar. 16: J.P. Morgan Chase's (JPM: 40.56, -0.69, -1.67%) takeover of Bear Stearns approved, with $29 billion in Federal Reserve financing.
Mar. 18: Target for federal-funds rate cut by 75 basis points to 2.25%.
May 2: In conjunction with the Swiss National Bank and the European Central Bank, amounts eligible under biweekly Term Auction Facility expanded to $75 billion from $50 billion.
July 13: New York Federal Reserve authorized to lend directly to Fannie Mae (FNM: 0.91, -0.01, -1.08%) and Freddie Mac (FRE: 1.03, +0.00, +0.00%) should such lending prove necessary.
July 15: Fannie and Freddie backstopped by feds.
July 30: Primary Dealer Credit Facility and Term Security Lending Facility extended to Jan. 30, 2009; auctions on options of $50 billion of draws on the Term Securities Lending Facility introduced; 84-day Term Auction Facility loans as complement to 28-day loans introduced; and swap line with European Central Bank increased to $55 billion from $50 billion.
Sept. 7: Fannie and Freddie placed into conservatorship.
Sept. 16: Agreed to lend AIG (AIG: 2.09, +0.18, +9.42%) up to $85 billion at a penalty rate to prevent the insurer from going bankrupt.
Sept. 19: Money-market
assets already on deposit guaranteed.
Sept. 29: Jointly announced a plan with central banks of Canada, U.K., Japan, Denmark, Norway, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland and the euro zone to provide liquidity for quarter-end reporting requirements.
Oct. 3: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 passed. The legislation authorized Treasury to acquire up to $700 billion in distressed securities.
Oct. 7: Commercial Paper Funding Facility created to provide liquidity to term funding markets.
Oct. 8: Target for federal-funds rate cut to 1.5% in an intermeeting move.
Oct. 13: Jointly announced a plan with central banks of U.K., Japan, Switzerland and Eurozone to provide unlimited liquidity to banking system and to effectively guarantee interbank loans.
Oct. 21: Money Market Investor Funding Facility created to provide liquidity to money-market investors. The New York Federal Reserve stood to provide funding for dollar-denominated certificates of deposit and highly rated commercial paper with maturities of 90 days or less; amounts can extend up to $540 billion.
Oct. 29: Target for federal-funds rate cut to 1%.
Oct. 29: A $120 billion swap line created with the central banks of Brazil, South Korea, Singapore and Mexico to ease the dollar-buying panic in those countries and elsewhere.
Mar. 16: J.P. Morgan Chase's (JPM: 40.56, -0.69, -1.67%) takeover of Bear Stearns approved, with $29 billion in Federal Reserve financing.
Mar. 18: Target for federal-funds rate cut by 75 basis points to 2.25%.
May 2: In conjunction with the Swiss National Bank and the European Central Bank, amounts eligible under biweekly Term Auction Facility expanded to $75 billion from $50 billion.
July 13: New York Federal Reserve authorized to lend directly to Fannie Mae (FNM: 0.91, -0.01, -1.08%) and Freddie Mac (FRE: 1.03, +0.00, +0.00%) should such lending prove necessary.
July 15: Fannie and Freddie backstopped by feds.
July 30: Primary Dealer Credit Facility and Term Security Lending Facility extended to Jan. 30, 2009; auctions on options of $50 billion of draws on the Term Securities Lending Facility introduced; 84-day Term Auction Facility loans as complement to 28-day loans introduced; and swap line with European Central Bank increased to $55 billion from $50 billion.
Sept. 7: Fannie and Freddie placed into conservatorship.
Sept. 16: Agreed to lend AIG (AIG: 2.09, +0.18, +9.42%) up to $85 billion at a penalty rate to prevent the insurer from going bankrupt.
Sept. 19: Money-market
assets already on deposit guaranteed.
Sept. 29: Jointly announced a plan with central banks of Canada, U.K., Japan, Denmark, Norway, Australia, Sweden, Switzerland and the euro zone to provide liquidity for quarter-end reporting requirements.
Oct. 3: Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 passed. The legislation authorized Treasury to acquire up to $700 billion in distressed securities.
Oct. 7: Commercial Paper Funding Facility created to provide liquidity to term funding markets.
Oct. 8: Target for federal-funds rate cut to 1.5% in an intermeeting move.
Oct. 13: Jointly announced a plan with central banks of U.K., Japan, Switzerland and Eurozone to provide unlimited liquidity to banking system and to effectively guarantee interbank loans.
Oct. 21: Money Market Investor Funding Facility created to provide liquidity to money-market investors. The New York Federal Reserve stood to provide funding for dollar-denominated certificates of deposit and highly rated commercial paper with maturities of 90 days or less; amounts can extend up to $540 billion.
Oct. 29: Target for federal-funds rate cut to 1%.
Oct. 29: A $120 billion swap line created with the central banks of Brazil, South Korea, Singapore and Mexico to ease the dollar-buying panic in those countries and elsewhere.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Newsweek's Howard Fineman observes:
"Much of the media coverage of Obama has been fawning to say the least, and with good reason. He is one of the most winsome, charismatic candidates to have appeared on the scene in decades."
That's just how they taught it in journalism school. A reporter's job is to comfort the winsome and afflict the uncharismatic.
"Much of the media coverage of Obama has been fawning to say the least, and with good reason. He is one of the most winsome, charismatic candidates to have appeared on the scene in decades."
That's just how they taught it in journalism school. A reporter's job is to comfort the winsome and afflict the uncharismatic.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Willeford
"NOT long after I met Charles Willeford, he told me the secret to writing. "Never allow yourself to take a leak in the morning," he said, "until you've written a page. That way you're guaranteed a page a day, and at the end of a year you have a novel."
Monday, October 27, 2008
Dieter
I feel like it may sound like hyperbole, but this movie was simply amazing. I can't stop thinking about it and would recommend it highly. I am not sure I have ever watched something with my mouth wide open in amazement like this...find it and watch.
Friday, October 24, 2008
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes...
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
With nary a hint of irony, Politico reports that the coverage of John McCain has been overwhelmingly negative.
The good news for John McCain? He’s now receiving as much attention from the national media as his Democratic rival. The bad news? It’s overwhelmingly negative.
Just 14 percent of the stories about John McCain, from the conventions through the final presidential debate, were positive in tone, according to a study released today, while nearly 60 percent were negative — the least favorable coverage of any of the four candidates on the two tickets.
The study, by The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan journalism watchdog organization, examined 2,412 stories from 43 newspapers and cable news shows in the six-week period beginning just after the conventions and ending with the final presidential debate.
The good news for John McCain? He’s now receiving as much attention from the national media as his Democratic rival. The bad news? It’s overwhelmingly negative.
Just 14 percent of the stories about John McCain, from the conventions through the final presidential debate, were positive in tone, according to a study released today, while nearly 60 percent were negative — the least favorable coverage of any of the four candidates on the two tickets.
The study, by The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan journalism watchdog organization, examined 2,412 stories from 43 newspapers and cable news shows in the six-week period beginning just after the conventions and ending with the final presidential debate.
Would the Last Honest Reporter Please Turn On the Lights?
by Orson Scott Card
October 20, 2008
An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.They end up worse off than before.This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.)Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" (http://snipurl.com/457to): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.And after Fred Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards' own adultery for many months.So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women (NOW) threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.That's where you are right now.It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe -- and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.
by Orson Scott Card
October 20, 2008
An open letter to the local daily paper -- almost every local daily paper in America:I remember reading All the President's Men and thinking: That's journalism. You do what it takes to get the truth and you lay it before the public, because the public has a right to know.This housing crisis didn't come out of nowhere. It was not a vague emanation of the evil Bush administration.It was a direct result of the political decision, back in the late 1990s, to loosen the rules of lending so that home loans would be more accessible to poor people. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were authorized to approve risky loans.What is a risky loan? It's a loan that the recipient is likely not to be able to repay.The goal of this rule change was to help the poor -- which especially would help members of minority groups. But how does it help these people to give them a loan that they can't repay? They get into a house, yes, but when they can't make the payments, they lose the house -- along with their credit rating.They end up worse off than before.This was completely foreseeable and in fact many people did foresee it. One political party, in Congress and in the executive branch, tried repeatedly to tighten up the rules. The other party blocked every such attempt and tried to loosen them.Furthermore, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were making political contributions to the very members of Congress who were allowing them to make irresponsible loans. (Though why quasi-federal agencies were allowed to do so baffles me. It's as if the Pentagon were allowed to contribute to the political campaigns of congressmen who support increasing their budget.)Isn't there a story here? Doesn't journalism require that you who produce our daily paper tell the truth about who brought us to a position where the only way to keep confidence in our economy was a $700 billion bailout? Aren't you supposed to follow the money and see which politicians were benefiting personally from the deregulation of mortgage lending?I have no doubt that if these facts had pointed to the Republican Party or to John McCain as the guilty parties, you would be treating it as a vast scandal. "Housing-gate," no doubt. Or "Fannie-gate."Instead, it was Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, both Democrats, who denied that there were any problems, who refused Bush administration requests to set up a regulatory agency to watch over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and who were still pushing for these agencies to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans almost up to the minute they failed.As Thomas Sowell points out in a TownHall.com essay entitled "Do Facts Matter?" (http://snipurl.com/457to): "Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury."These are facts. This financial crisis was completely preventable. The party that blocked any attempt to prevent it was ... the Democratic Party. The party that tried to prevent it was ... the Republican Party.Yet when Nancy Pelosi accused the Bush administration and Republican deregulation of causing the crisis, you in the press did not hold her to account for her lie. Instead, you criticized Republicans who took offense at this lie and refused to vote for the bailout!What? It's not the liar, but the victims of the lie who are to blame?Now let's follow the money ... right to the presidential candidate who is the number two recipient of campaign contributions from Fannie Mae.And after Fred Raines, the CEO of Fannie Mae who made $90 million while running it into the ground, was fired for his incompetence, one presidential candidate's campaign actually consulted him for advice on housing.If that presidential candidate had been John McCain, you would have called it a major scandal and we would be getting stories in your paper every day about how incompetent and corrupt he was.But instead, that candidate was Barack Obama, and so you have buried this story, and when the McCain campaign dared to call Raines an "adviser" to the Obama campaign -- because that campaign had sought his advice -- you actually let Obama's people get away with accusing McCain of lying, merely because Raines wasn't listed as an official adviser to the Obama campaign.You would never tolerate such weasely nit-picking from a Republican.If you who produce our local daily paper actually had any principles, you would be pounding this story, because the prosperity of all Americans was put at risk by the foolish, short-sighted, politically selfish and possibly corrupt actions of leading Democrats, including Obama.If you who produce our local daily paper had any personal honor, you would find it unbearable to let the American people believe that somehow Republicans were to blame for this crisis.There are precedents. Even though President Bush and his administration never said that Iraq sponsored or was linked to 9/11, you could not stand the fact that Americans had that misapprehension -- so you pounded us with the fact that there was no such link. (Along the way, you created the false impression that Bush had lied to them and said that there was a connection.)If you had any principles, then surely right now, when the American people are set to blame President Bush and John McCain for a crisis they tried to prevent, and are actually shifting to approve of Barack Obama because of a crisis he helped cause, you would be laboring at least as hard to correct that false impression.Your job, as journalists, is to tell the truth. That's what you claim you do, when you accept people's money to buy or subscribe to your paper.But right now, you are consenting to or actively promoting a big fat lie -- that the housing crisis should somehow be blamed on Bush, McCain and the Republicans. You have trained the American people to blame everything bad -- even bad weather -- on Bush, and they are responding as you have taught them to.If you had any personal honor, each reporter and editor would be insisting on telling the truth -- even if it hurts the election chances of your favorite candidate.Because that's what honorable people do. Honest people tell the truth even when they don't like the probable consequences. That's what honesty means. That's how trust is earned.Barack Obama is just another politician, and not a very wise one. He has revealed his ignorance and naivete time after time -- and you have swept it under the rug, treated it as nothing.Meanwhile, you have participated in the borking of Sarah Palin, reporting savage attacks on her for the pregnancy of her unmarried daughter -- while you ignored the story of John Edwards' own adultery for many months.So I ask you now: Do you have any standards at all? Do you even know what honesty means?Is getting people to vote for Barack Obama so important that you will throw away everything that journalism is supposed to stand for?You might want to remember the way the National Organization of Women (NOW) threw away their integrity by supporting Bill Clinton despite his well-known pattern of sexual exploitation of powerless women. Who listens to NOW anymore? We know they stand for nothing; they have no principles.That's where you are right now.It's not too late. You know that if the situation were reversed, and the truth would damage McCain and help Obama, you would be moving heaven and earth to get the true story out there.If you want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation's prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama's door.You will also tell the truth about John McCain: that he tried, as a senator, to do what it took to prevent this crisis. You will tell the truth about President Bush: that his administration tried more than once to get Congress to regulate lending in a responsible way.This was a Congress-caused crisis, beginning during the Clinton administration, with Democrats leading the way into the crisis and blocking every effort to get out of it in a timely fashion.If you at our local daily newspaper continue to let Americans believe -- and vote as if -- President Bush and the Republicans caused the crisis, then you are joining in that lie.If you do not tell the truth about the Democrats -- including Barack Obama -- and do so with the same energy you would use if the miscreants were Republicans -- then you are not journalists by any standard.You're just the public relations machine of the Democratic Party, and it's time you were all fired and real journalists brought in, so that we can actually have a daily newspaper in our city.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Saturday, October 18, 2008
- "In Wednesday night's debate, John McCain warned that a group called Acorn is 'on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history' and 'may be destroying the fabric of democracy.' Viewers may have been wondering what Mr. McCain was talking about. So were we."--editorial, New York Times, Oct. 17
- "Several F.B.I. offices are reviewing reports of fraudulent voter registrations submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or Acorn, a liberal community organizing group that has been under fire from Republicans."--news story, New York Times, Oct. 17
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Thursday, October 09, 2008
Narrator:
My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called "Max". To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed. Men like Max. The warrior Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything. And became a shell of a man, a burnt out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again...
My life fades. The vision dims. All that remains are memories. I remember a time of chaos. Ruined dreams. This wasted land. But most of all, I remember The Road Warrior. The man we called "Max". To understand who he was, you have to go back to another time. When the world was powered by the black fuel. And the desert sprouted great cities of pipe and steel. Gone now, swept away. For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel, they were nothing. They built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked. But nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed. Men like Max. The warrior Max. In the roar of an engine, he lost everything. And became a shell of a man, a burnt out, desolate man, a man haunted by the demons of his past, a man who wandered out into the wasteland. And it was here, in this blighted place, that he learned to live again...
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Ah Europe.Americans are all too eager to accept the cultural superiority of Europeans as gospel, particularly NorthEastern liberals. Europe has "free" health care! Europe didn't embroil itself in Iraq! It has culture!
Fucking bullshit. Europe's economies are a train wreck. Their socialist policies have failed to curb rampant unemployment and poor economic growth. They have been the model for the failure of long-term psuedo-socialist Keynesian policy.
6.1% unemployment in America is a crisis. That would be the lowest rate in France since, what, WWII? And that prick Sarkozy is wagging his finger at America about its policies?
But don't worry, Europe can keep up its pointless Schadenfreude party, because Germany and Ireland have guaranteed all bank deposits. Sure, their national debt would be something like 325% of GDP if that promise were ever tested, but hey! Europe's BETTER THAN AMERICA. They're superior culturally and ethically! Except they've made an infinitely more ridiculous promise to their citizens while staring down their noses at the bailout plan.
Hypocrites. In other news, the dollar is kicking the Euro's ass, because with those promises Berlin has effectively declared the currency worthless. The US may borrow big but at least we aren't giving up on fiat.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Monday, October 06, 2008
Members Of Twisted Sister Now Willing To Take It
September 29, 2008 Issue 44•40
NEW YORK—In a stunning reversal of their long-stated reluctance to take it, members of heavy-metal band Twisted Sister announced Monday that, after 24 years of fervent refusal, they are now willing to take it. "I acknowledge that we promised not to take it anymore, but things change. The world is a different place today, and with that in mind, we would like to go on record as saying that, starting right now, we are going to take it," read a statement released by the band's lead singer, Dee Snider. "To clarify, we would still prefer not to take it, but as of now, taking it is an option that we would be open to. That is all." Bassist Mark "the Animal" Mendoza also stated that, in regards to what he wants to do with his life, he no longer solely wants to rock, but would instead prefer doing other things, such as raising a family and working as a claims adjuster in Rye, NY.
September 29, 2008 Issue 44•40
NEW YORK—In a stunning reversal of their long-stated reluctance to take it, members of heavy-metal band Twisted Sister announced Monday that, after 24 years of fervent refusal, they are now willing to take it. "I acknowledge that we promised not to take it anymore, but things change. The world is a different place today, and with that in mind, we would like to go on record as saying that, starting right now, we are going to take it," read a statement released by the band's lead singer, Dee Snider. "To clarify, we would still prefer not to take it, but as of now, taking it is an option that we would be open to. That is all." Bassist Mark "the Animal" Mendoza also stated that, in regards to what he wants to do with his life, he no longer solely wants to rock, but would instead prefer doing other things, such as raising a family and working as a claims adjuster in Rye, NY.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Wenatchee teen accused of assaulting allergic victim with peanut butter
by The Associated Press
Friday October 03, 2008, 6:06 AM
A 19-year-old accused of smearing peanut butter on the forehead of a fellow high school student with a peanut allergy has been charged with assault, the Wenatchee World is reporting.
Joshua Hickson of Malaga was charged this week by a city prosecutor. If convicted of the gross misdemeanor, he could face a maximum year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Police Sgt. Cherie Smith says the targeted student had no allergic reaction.
According to a police report, Hickson was eating lunch Sept. 8 at Wenatchee High School when he heard a conversation that indicated a male student sitting next to him was allergic to peanuts. Officer Steve Evitt says that Hickson smeared his fingers with peanut butter from someone's sandwich and wiped it on the allergic student's forehead.
The officer says Hickson said he didn't think anything would happen.
Hickson was suspended from school; school administrators refused to comment on his current
status.--
The Associated Press
by The Associated Press
Friday October 03, 2008, 6:06 AM
A 19-year-old accused of smearing peanut butter on the forehead of a fellow high school student with a peanut allergy has been charged with assault, the Wenatchee World is reporting.
Joshua Hickson of Malaga was charged this week by a city prosecutor. If convicted of the gross misdemeanor, he could face a maximum year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Police Sgt. Cherie Smith says the targeted student had no allergic reaction.
According to a police report, Hickson was eating lunch Sept. 8 at Wenatchee High School when he heard a conversation that indicated a male student sitting next to him was allergic to peanuts. Officer Steve Evitt says that Hickson smeared his fingers with peanut butter from someone's sandwich and wiped it on the allergic student's forehead.
The officer says Hickson said he didn't think anything would happen.
Hickson was suspended from school; school administrators refused to comment on his current
status.--
The Associated Press
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Rescue Plan Hits Bull's-Eye for Kids' Arrow-Makers (Update2)
By Ryan J. Donmoyer
Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Rose City Archery Inc., an Oregon company that makes arrows used by children, hit a bull's-eye with the Senate's approval of a measure that would rescue Wall Street banks.
A provision repealing a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows designed for children was attached to an historic $700 billion financial-markets rescue that passed last night by a vote of 74- 25. The provision, reported earlier on the Web site Dealbreaker, was originally proposed by Oregon senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith. It will save manufacturers such as Rose City Archery in Myrtle Point, Oregon, about $200,000 a year.
It's one of dozens of tax breaks benefiting Hollywood producers, stock-car racetrack owners and Virgin Islands rum- makers included in the broader legislation in an effort to win support from House Republicans, whose defection contributed to a rejection of an earlier version of the legislation earlier this week on a 228-205 vote.
``This is how Washington works,'' said Keith Ashdown, chief investigator at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington research group. ``A big pot of pork is their recipe for final passage.''
Representatives for Wyden, a Democrat, and Smith, a Republican, didn't immediately return calls seeking comment. Wyden voted against the bailout measure last night and Smith voted for it. Jerry Dishion, president of Rose City Archery, was in meetings and unavailable to comment, a receptionist at the company said.
`Extenders'
Most of the provisions are part of a package of measures known as ``extenders'' because they are renewed for only a few years at a time.
Popular with lawmakers, the provisions include a research tax credit worth about $8.3 billion a year for companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Harley-Davidson Inc., and subsidies for the overseas financial services earnings of U.S.-based multinational corporations such as General Electric Co. and Citigroup Inc.
The tax package also would spare 24 million American households from a scheduled increase in the alternative minimum tax amounting to $62 billion this year and renew about $17 billion of incentives to promote energy production from renewable sources such as solar and wind.
Nascar Tracks
Other, smaller provisions, such as one that will save Nascar track builders $109 million this year, have been staples of the tax code since 2004 or earlier. They periodically expire and are renewed, and include hundreds of millions of dollars of tax incentives for companies that invest on Indian reservations, in the District of Columbia, and American Samoa. Other breaks would subsidize renovations of restaurant franchises and cut import duties on wool and wood.
Several others are new provisions, including two tax breaks worth $478 million over the next decade for movie and television producers who shoot films in the United States. The legislation would allow filmmakers to qualify for a 3 percentage-point reduction from the 35 percent top tax rate approved in 2004 for domestic manufacturers.
The package also renews a $33 million break for companies that invest in American Samoa, a benefit targeted at tuna canners such as Del Monte Foods Co., which owns the Star-Kist tuna brand, and is based in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district.
Boy Scout Arrows
The arrows provision seeks to reverse an anomaly in a 2004 law that created the 39 cent excise tax on the weapons. Intended for more expensive arrows, the tax also applies to arrows used by Boy Scouts and other youth organizations that cost about 30 cents a piece. Ten manufacturers in nine U.S. states stand to benefit from the change, according to a description of the legislation from Wyden's office.
Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner, said the inclusion of the tax breaks ``will increase the appeal of the package for our members.''
The Congressional Budget Office said yesterday the tax provisions will add about $112 billion to budget deficits over the next five years because the legislation doesn't contain enough offsetting revenue increases to keep the budget balanced.
The biggest revenue-raising provision in the bill would cost managers of hedge funds about $25 billion over the next decade by prohibiting an accounting technique they currently use to defer for as long as 10 years U.S. taxes on their income earned in foreign countries, usually tax havens such as the Cayman Islands.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ryan J. Donmoyer in Washington at rdonmoyer@bloomberg.net Last Updated: October 2, 2008 13:59 EDT
By Ryan J. Donmoyer
Oct. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Rose City Archery Inc., an Oregon company that makes arrows used by children, hit a bull's-eye with the Senate's approval of a measure that would rescue Wall Street banks.
A provision repealing a 39-cent excise tax on wooden arrows designed for children was attached to an historic $700 billion financial-markets rescue that passed last night by a vote of 74- 25. The provision, reported earlier on the Web site Dealbreaker, was originally proposed by Oregon senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith. It will save manufacturers such as Rose City Archery in Myrtle Point, Oregon, about $200,000 a year.
It's one of dozens of tax breaks benefiting Hollywood producers, stock-car racetrack owners and Virgin Islands rum- makers included in the broader legislation in an effort to win support from House Republicans, whose defection contributed to a rejection of an earlier version of the legislation earlier this week on a 228-205 vote.
``This is how Washington works,'' said Keith Ashdown, chief investigator at Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington research group. ``A big pot of pork is their recipe for final passage.''
Representatives for Wyden, a Democrat, and Smith, a Republican, didn't immediately return calls seeking comment. Wyden voted against the bailout measure last night and Smith voted for it. Jerry Dishion, president of Rose City Archery, was in meetings and unavailable to comment, a receptionist at the company said.
`Extenders'
Most of the provisions are part of a package of measures known as ``extenders'' because they are renewed for only a few years at a time.
Popular with lawmakers, the provisions include a research tax credit worth about $8.3 billion a year for companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Harley-Davidson Inc., and subsidies for the overseas financial services earnings of U.S.-based multinational corporations such as General Electric Co. and Citigroup Inc.
The tax package also would spare 24 million American households from a scheduled increase in the alternative minimum tax amounting to $62 billion this year and renew about $17 billion of incentives to promote energy production from renewable sources such as solar and wind.
Nascar Tracks
Other, smaller provisions, such as one that will save Nascar track builders $109 million this year, have been staples of the tax code since 2004 or earlier. They periodically expire and are renewed, and include hundreds of millions of dollars of tax incentives for companies that invest on Indian reservations, in the District of Columbia, and American Samoa. Other breaks would subsidize renovations of restaurant franchises and cut import duties on wool and wood.
Several others are new provisions, including two tax breaks worth $478 million over the next decade for movie and television producers who shoot films in the United States. The legislation would allow filmmakers to qualify for a 3 percentage-point reduction from the 35 percent top tax rate approved in 2004 for domestic manufacturers.
The package also renews a $33 million break for companies that invest in American Samoa, a benefit targeted at tuna canners such as Del Monte Foods Co., which owns the Star-Kist tuna brand, and is based in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district.
Boy Scout Arrows
The arrows provision seeks to reverse an anomaly in a 2004 law that created the 39 cent excise tax on the weapons. Intended for more expensive arrows, the tax also applies to arrows used by Boy Scouts and other youth organizations that cost about 30 cents a piece. Ten manufacturers in nine U.S. states stand to benefit from the change, according to a description of the legislation from Wyden's office.
Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner, said the inclusion of the tax breaks ``will increase the appeal of the package for our members.''
The Congressional Budget Office said yesterday the tax provisions will add about $112 billion to budget deficits over the next five years because the legislation doesn't contain enough offsetting revenue increases to keep the budget balanced.
The biggest revenue-raising provision in the bill would cost managers of hedge funds about $25 billion over the next decade by prohibiting an accounting technique they currently use to defer for as long as 10 years U.S. taxes on their income earned in foreign countries, usually tax havens such as the Cayman Islands.
To contact the reporters on this story: Ryan J. Donmoyer in Washington at rdonmoyer@bloomberg.net Last Updated: October 2, 2008 13:59 EDT
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