Two Close Calls

The kind of Christmas we almost had this year should have all of our security people back at work imagining the worst possible tragedies in order to prevent them. On Christmas Eve, as he was entering St. Peter's for Midnight Mass, the pope was assaulted and dragged to the floor. If the assailant had had a weapon the world would today be dealing with a murder that would be considered one of the most shocking in history. Who would believe that one "unbalanced" woman could have done this alone?

About twenty-four hours later a terrorist was able to set off a highly destructive powder on a plane near Detroit with almost 300 on board. If his plan had been completely successful, and with an assassinated pope lying in Rome, Christmas 2009 would be the start of another, and much darker, New Reality. No thanks to bodyguards and airport police two disasters were averted--this time; this kind of luck will not hold.

The security systems we rely on to stay alive and keep our world stable have been proven, in the past few days, to be Wizard of Oz trickery full of special effects and authoritative voices that do not deter the ones determined to hit us. The little dog has pulled back the curtain and we now can see how very vulnerable our sense of daily order and safety is.

Sit Down and Shut Up

It was a treat today to see Sen. Al Franken in the presiding chair in the Senate tell Sen. Lieberman that his time had expired and he would not get another minute's extension. "Oh really?," laughed the Traitor Joe. Yes, really; the senator from Minnesota informed the senator from John McCain's backyard that enough was quite enough and that he should return to his seat as any other coddled brat would be told to do.

There is justice in this world and not far away is the day when Democrats will settle the score with Sen. Lieberman. He has much to answer for and he deserves as much mercy as that smirk on his face affords the party that nominated him for vice-president not so long ago.

May We See Your Invitation?

The two NWA pilots who overshot Minnesota recently seem to have found new positions--working security at the White House for State Dinners. Two people without invitations or places on the guest list are allowed in by the pilots--sorry, Secret Service--shake hands with Obama, write about it that night on their website and are still--one week later--not in jail. Is there no law against this? Illegal entry at the White House?

That picture of the pretty,uninvited and unknown blonde shaking hands with President Obama in his house should be freeze-frozen into the mind of every Secret Service agent. If there had been a tragedy, who would believe it was not an inside conspiracy? Very important people would now be under suspicion of assassinating the president and the trust between the people and their government that our Republic rests on would be ruined. Why are these two interlopers not in jail? And why have no heads rolled at the Secret Service?

Live Man Walking

Russia--Russia!--has just permanently banned the death penalty. The country that gave the world the gulag archipelago, Stalinist purges, planned famines, mass slaughter of those deemed to be politically inconvenient, and God knows what other ways of killing people, has decided, as the first decade of the 21st Century winds down, that there has been quite enough killing in Mother Russia and it simply has to stop.
(Tell that to the journalists and truth-tellers who continue to be assassinated there.)

But maybe this is a sign of something truly new and good in Europe. They must all be exhausted into the ground by war, secret police, extermination policies, and violence as official policy. Even the Russians are now backing away from legally sanctioned killing--is a new spirit arising in Europe that will infect the world for good this time?

Representative Cao

Joseph Cao is a congressman representing a district in New Orleans that is mostly black, Democratic, and that was hit hard by Katrina. He is a Republican, a Vietnamese immigrant, and a former Catholic seminarian. Last Saturday he was the only member of his party to vote for the Democrats' health care bill in the House. He says he had to vote his conscience and vote for what the people of his district need and want.

Cao won his seat in a special election to replace the old Democratic black representative who was convicted of corruption after $90,000 in cash was discovered in his freezer by the FBI. Can Mr. Cao keep his seat in next year's election? Can he remain a Republican? Stay tuned, but right now Joseph Cao is the face of conscience in the U.S. Congress.

New York--27 & New York--23

The Yankees just won their 27th World Championship, beating the Phillies 7-3 in the new stadium. Of the seven Yankee runs six were driven in or scored by the Series MVP Hideki Matsui. The Core Four--players who all joined the Yanks together in 1995--Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Mariano Rivera were vital to this win and are part of the great Yankee Hall of Fame that Yankee fans carry with them at all times, especially in the winter when things freeze up. Well done, boys, and, as I look at my calendar, I see that April is not that far off. Hurry back.

New York's 23rd Congressional District has been held by Republicans since just after the Civil War. Yesterday a Democrat won the seat beating a Conservative Party candidate endorsed by Sarah Palin (no laughing!), Tim Pawlenty, and the usual miscreants on the Right gasosphere. These geniuses didn't like the Republican nominee and went for the third party guy, the Republican withdrew last weekend and endorsed the Democrat, and last night was the result. It takes some spectacular lack of political street smarts to lose a seat your party has held for about 140 years, but trust today's nut-Right to do it. If this goes on for a few more years the GOP will be a minor party confined to the South and rural midwest and will have no chance of a return to power.

I believe this country needs two political parties, each run by intelligent and rational people, a progressive party and a conservative party. They should each be a brake on the excesses of the other and at the same time mange to move the ball downfield on the issues that make life safer and more humane for the American people. If the Republican Party is to soon remove itself from the national scene serious people will have to get busy creating something better to take its place.

CNN Crashes and Burns

Ted Turner recently said that he wished that he was still running CNN, which he started in 1980. I wish he was too. New ratings show that the first cable news network is now in fourth--and last--place among cable news shows in prime time. And it is spot they richly deserve. Larry King has lost all pride of place and now gives his entire hour to minor players and freaks, I think he is channeling the spirit of Joe Pyne. He is followed by feather-weight Anderson Cooper who gets two hours of non-news delivered with the demeanor of a quasi-serious junior high schooler.
(CNN fired a real newsman, Aaron Brown, a few years ago in order to foist Cooper on an unsuspecting public.) And, to really rub it in, the second hour is a repeat of the first.

If CNN is satisfied to be whipped by the likes of Sean Hannity, Greta Van Sustern, Glenn Beck and all the rest, ad nauseum, then why not just shut the whole thing down and tell Rupert Murdoch that he has won? Watching the ghost of what used to be a very good network is no longer a reasonable use of one's time.

Turner says he would stop news-lite and give much more foreign news coverage. It may be too late for a rescue, Ted, but if you do pull it off please tell Wolf Blitzer to take some lessons from Fareed Zakaria on gravitas in the workplace.

Wake Up the Pilots, We're Here

On the NWA flight that missed Minneapolis: These guys didn't just overshoot the runway, they overshot an entire state. Their story about being so lost in a discussion of company policy that they lost all track of time and place is not credible; what they had lost was consciousness with 144 people on board. I don't know a thing about flying but I'm guessing that it is hard to miss a metropolitan area of more than 3 million people when you are over it. Retire these two Corrigans tonight.

Fascinatin' Vibrations

The George Gershwin Estate has entered into an agreement with Brian Wilson, genius of the Beach Boys, that will allow Wilson to finish some of the partially-written songs left by George when he died at age 38 in 1938.
The Gershwin Estate must be headed by baby-boomers who, typically, love the music of George and Ira and of Brian and his brothers and cousin. I look forward to hearing the final music, a blend of Manhattan verve and L.A. sun.

On another note, Barbra Streisand's new album, Love Is the Answer, is the top-selling album in the country right now. Just when you think beauty has left the building forever it stages a comeback. Diana Krall produced it and plays killer piano as well.

Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome

The Twins played their last game tonight in the Metrodome and lost it to the Yankees in the American League Division Series. A brilliant win over Detroit last Tuesday was to be their last hurrah in Minneapolis before two losses in Yankee Stadium and tonight's end of the season. Next April they begin anew in an outdoor stadium that is also, blessedly, downtown.

The Metrodome is only 27 years old and is still home to the Vikings, though they are making threatening sounds about wanting their own new place. Anyway, it is over there for the Twins after two World Series wins--1987 and 1991, the last one one of the best Series ever played.

Thanks for the memories, Minnesota Twins.

On another note, I saw the Beach Boys perform at the Dome in 1984, and Bob Dylan with the Grateful Dead a few years later. They can't take that away from me.

The Prize

First thing this morning, Barack Obama would probably have preferred that the Nobel Peace Prize pass him by. He still may have to make decisions for war, and he is not exactly an ascetic in sackcloth, but the Commander-in-Chief of the deadliest military machine in all of history.
And he has taken an oath to use as much of that power as necessary to protect this country. This Oslo award could get in the way of conducting some vital business.

That was this morning; tonight he probably sees the bright side of a sitting president winning the Nobel Peace Prize only ten months into his term. His election itself last November as a black man, in a country that until the mid-nineteenth century bought and sold Africans, has electrified the world. Such an historic change for the good in a country this powerful seems like a move toward a more peaceful world to those outside our borders. (When I was in the Philippines in January there was only one name on the lips of women and children,--and they hear the truth first--Obama.) Can he change the way the world sees America? He already has.

Vikings 30 -- Packers 23; Twins 6 -- Tigers 5, in 12

The Metrodome is sports heaven this fall. Farve does not flinch before the Pack and Mauer & Co. are on their way to the Bronx to meet Jeter and his Yankees. There is nothing like autumn in downtown Minneapolis, she is a pretty city and so are her teams. We stayed at the new Hotel Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago and everything in town was especially vibrant and young. She knew this was coming.

Ruth Brin

A great lady of Minneapolis and St. Paul has passed away. Ruth Brin was a scholar of Jewish literature, a poet, liturgist, book reviewer, and novelist. My acquaintance with her came from responding to an announcement in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in the early 1970's. A several-week class on Jewish mysticism was to begin at the Jewish Community Center--right up my alley (the topic, not the actual Center). I enrolled and was fascinated by Mrs. Brin's teachings of the Kabbalah, false messiahs, and Jewish literature and culture. Over the years I always read her book reviews in the Sunday paper.

Twenty years later I saw her shopping in Brochin's, the excellent Jewish bookstore on Excelsior Boulevard in St. Louis Park, and introduced myself and said that I had been in her class on Jewish mysticism. I was looking for a Jewish prayer book and told her that I preferred the one with the more vivid colors on the spine over one that she thought was superior. "You are a mystic!" she said.

A great light has left the Twin Cities, Ruth Brin, of Blessed Memory.

Game Days

Things will be hopping at the Metrodome in Minneapolis for the next couple of days. About four hours from now the Vikings (3-0) led by Brett Favre will meet his old team from Green Bay (2-1) in the kind of delicious drama October can bring to sports. On Tuesday the Twins meet the Tigers there in a one-game playoff for their division title and the chance to be World Series bound. If the Twins lose this will have been their last game at the Dome, their new pad on the otherside of downtown opens next spring. Let them say goodbye to the dear old place with another World Series for the ages.

A Swing And A Miss

This was not Barack Obama's best day since being inaugurated last January. Tonight I'm trying to think of how many good--I mean substantive--days he has had. Quite obviously, this hare-brained trip to Copenhagen was a poor use of time; presidents arrive in foreign capitals when the deal is done, to sign the final documents. They don't go to implore. As someone wrote the other day, he needs to finally graduate from candidate to president. We have to see him doing something, ordering an outcome, making something lasting happen. Flying and speech-giving have dried up as revivifying wells of leadership.

Decision Making in the White House is the title of a book JFK's man, Ted Sorenson, wrote during that presidency and I wish Barack Obama would begin enacting its title. Time's a wastin', Mr. President. You won the election nearly a year ago. You are in charge, so take charge. Separate the wheat from the chaff, use your majorities in Congress (Pelosi and Reade couldn't lead ducklings across a country road) to get done what we who elected you want done. Now, this term.

The presidency is more than a starring role for a pop idol; it is an action part in the real world. Sparks must fly, friends be newly inspired, and foes sent reeling. Otherwise, there is no point in even running.

A Trip Home

Of course you can go home again, it's just that you will have a lot of questions when you do. Especially if home is Minneapolis and you are staying downtown at a hotel that in your 51 years there you never had heard of, because then it was a bank and only for the past year has been called the Hotel Minneapolis. You realize that in all your years there you have never slept over night downtown and had to leave a hotel in search of breakfast. They eat outside now in Minneapolis and here is a fine Irish pub called the Local on the Nicolette Mall that serves an excellent breakfast. New buildings all around but you're too proud to ask some young transplant waiting on your table what their names are.

Where exactly is the new main public library, how do we turn onto downtown streets that now have train tracks for the light rail, when you need lunch in the mid-afternoon what would be a good place to go, why are we so shocked by the new Guthrie Theater on Washington Ave. (nothing we've read has prepared us for this!)

Home looks better than ever; I'm glad I left and it is good to be back. On Thursday we fly back to the California desert and wait for the cooler weather to arrive and the license plates from Minnesota to begin to turn up in the parking lots. Minneapolis has a ghost on every corner for me while La Quinta has a palm tree with a mountain view. It is good to be back.

What Comes Naturally

Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina set a new record for boorishness in the House tonight when he shouted,"You lie!" at President Obama during his health care address. Wilson is--what else?--a Republican. John Dingle of Michigan is a Democrat and the longest-serving member in the House, he said that Wilson's infantile behavior was only natural for him since he was a Republican and the poor schlub couldn't help it. This child-man should be severely reprimanded by the House; better, he should grow some sense of dignity and resign his seat (and take bat-shit crazy Jean Schmidt of Ohio with him).

For their response to the President's speech the Republicans chose a congressman who is a birther, and who once fell for a scam that promised he could buy himself the English title of Lord! You truly can't make this stuff up. His Lordship gave Bobby Jindall a good run for his money in the numb-nuts-deer-in-the-headlights competition. Too bad Paula Abdul isn't around to judge this one.

Good presidents are lucky presidents, and Barack Obama has lucked into the craziest goddam bunch of political quacks since the Marx Brothers rampaged through Freedonia.

Great job tonight, Mr. President. The haters and the nit-wits will present themselves to you like worms wriggling up from wet ground: thread them onto hooks and catch some fish with them!

Fired Up

Obama's Labor Day speech today in Cincinnati was a welcome reprise of the style we saw last year in the campaign. He said he was fired up and certainly seemed to be. This bodes well for Wednesday night when no one will be slurping beer and munching hot dogs, school will have started again, and the grim reality of another summer gone will have settled on us all. Today was good, two days from now will be vital.

Wednesday's Speech

President Obama has set up a rendezvous with Congress and the people for next week over the health care debate. The stakes are greater than the single bill that he will finally present, they are for the future of his presidency itself and the quality of our politics for years to come. The Republicans are represented by ignorant and increasingly dangerous extremists, and Democrats are starting to doubt the core of their champion. Where is he lately? And I am not referring to his current holiday. At Ted Kennedy's funeral he seemed to be in a distant place, only physically present at the basilica in Boston. He gave a eulogy that was little more noticeable than Bush, Clinton, and Carter were, silent in their pew. Is there a problem we don't know about yet? His passion and his presence are gone somewhere and it does not appear to be on vacation.

The Last Hurrah

Some scenes from Boston and Washington on the day of Teddy Kennedy's funeral:

* Teddy, Jr., not a public person, gave a riveting eulogy for his father centered on the day Teddy, Jr., with a prosthetic leg after cancer surgery, cries on the ice of their steep driveway after falling down. "Pretty much the end of the world," is how it feels for a 12-year old to lose a leg. He says he can't get up the hill; his father Teddy says, "I know you can do this" and they will try all day if necessary. They make it.

* The rain on the stones and pavement outside the Basilica in Boston as the funeral ended. Real weather in a true city for a man in full who has reached the end of the race in the highest esteem of his family and friends. It is good to be Irish today.

* Ethel Kennedy stopping to hug and kiss Joan Kennedy after the Mass had ended. It turns out that Joan had been present throughout these past days but had kept back.

* Two Irish operators waiting in the cemetery for the body to arrive: Vice President Joe Biden and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick in conversation near the newly dug grave, cardinal's hand on veep's shoulder--what are they talking about? The Red Sox?, Washington or Church politics?, what a darlin' man Teddy was?, and didn't Teddy, Jr. do himself right today? In a novel it might be too much, but we really are saying goodbye to the last of the four sons of Joe and Rose Kennedy today and Biden and McCarrick have nailed it-- Church and state, in the persons of two white-haired Irish guys, have come to bury a dear mutual friend.

* Teddy's letter to the Pope--hand delivered by the President of the United States, thank you very much--is read by Cardinal McCarrick. It is lovely but after a time one hears a Catholic boy explaining himself to his parish priest on report card day. (Been there, done that.)

* The glory of living in a democratic republic: the gates of Arlington open at 8:00 tomorrow morning, twelve hours after one of the greatest U. S. senators in our history is laid to rest there, and the American people can walk right up and pay their respects to him: thank you, Teddy, for being brave and out-witting the gunman, for making this a better country, and for teaching wild and imperfect people how to triumph over themselves.

* Rest now in the Lord's peace.

There Will Be Blood

The AP reports that there were at least twelve people publicly displaying guns--pistols and rifles--outside the building where Preisdent Obama was addressing the VFW today in Phoenix. At least one man's two guns were loaded. This is the second time in a week this kind of thing has happened. The first was in Portsmouth, NH where where a man had a loaded pistol strapped to his leg. Also in Portsmouth, a man snuck into the hall--eluding security--where Obama would address a meeting on health care in a few hours. This man had a knife on him and a pistol with a bullet in it in his truck.

Are some people saying in a manner that presents a clear and present danger that they wish great harm to come to the President of the U.S. Yes they are. Have they forgotten about 1963 and 1968? Perhaps they approved of those assassinations, who knows what is in their miserable minds?

The Secret Service should consider these gunmen to be making overt threats against the president and start files on them, visit them, quiz their families and friends, and watch them closely if Obama returns to their cities. One or more of these guns is going to go off and an innocent person will suffer--a local policeman, a Secret Service agent, an ordinary citizen. What shame these Obama-haters are calling down upon themselves!

Eunice

Maria Shriver said today that her mother "wore men's trousers, smoked Cuban cigars, and played tackle football." What's not to like about this lady? More than anyone else she changed--for the better--the way mentally handicapped people are seen in the world. Her work was great and she didn't misspend a moment of her 88 years. I'm sorry Eunice Kennedy Shriver has left this life.

Of Joe and Rose Kennedy's nine children only two are now left--Jean and Ted, and he was unable to attend his sister's funeral today. A page of American history is being turned on Cape Cod and it is fair to say that we won't see another family like this one again. Well done, Eunice, and all of you.

The Liar Grassley

I would like to see President Obama cut loose Sen. Grassley who has shamelessly backed Palin's lies about "death panels." So far the president seems commited to a bi-partisan approach on health care but all he gets in return are insults and recklessness. Cut the bastards loose! Sic Rahm Emanuel on them and then pass this thing with Democratic votes alone. It will lead to Democratic dominance for a generation. Mr. President, these Republican low-lifes aren't worth another minute of your time.

Required Immediately: Sane Americans

Mrs. Palin "writes" last weekend that President Obama's health reform plan calls for "death panels" to decide who lives or dies. Two days later she says civility is needed in public discourse. There can no longer be any doubt that this woman is insane or that her condition is getting worse. No doubt either that her madness is symptomatic of a large portion of the Republican Party today (a Republican senator from Georgia (!) called her comments on health care "nuts.") Ignorant people screaming at representatives and U.S. senators, calling Obama a Nazi, and provocatuers on Fox and nut-radio egging them on. What the hell is going on here?

If there is blood it will be on the hands of Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, O'Reilly, and the Republican leaders unwilling to stand and face the lunacy they helped to grow.

A New Go-To Guy?

I saw a poll yesterday that said the three least popular people in American public life were Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Republican Leader John Boehner, and Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary. Pelosi and Boehner don't really interest me but Geithner is of an entirely different order of being. He has been at the center of U.S. economic policy for most of his adult life and was a favorite of Bob Rubin and Larry Summers when all three were at Treasury in the Clinton years. And inconsequential people do not end up running the New York Fed, as Geithner did. The point I'm trying to make here is that Tim is showing signs of becoming the Bob McNamara of the Obama Administration. He seems to strike his superiors as the indispensable man whose brain power and energy mow down opponents just as Mac's calculator, cost-benefit analysis mind did in the '60's.

The Viet Nam War was the result of the best and brightest work of Bob McNamara and his genius colleagues and it haunted him the rest of his long life. Tim Geithner is about Mac's age when JFK chose him to run the Pentagon and I do hope that his old age will be serene and filled with the praise that follows wise and successful leadership. What he does now will determine the nature of his, and our, final years.

"That's the Way It Is"

Everyone remembers Walter Cronkite announcing JFK's death from the CBS newsroom, his Viet Nam and space program reporting and election nights. One of my favorite Cronkite moments came the night he reported the bombing of a black church in Alabama in the early sixties where several people died. The governor, George Wallace, was being defiant and obnoxious in a film clip, as he always was in those days. When the camera came back to Walter he was wincing in disgust at Wallace. Cronkite's expression said it all. The hooligans on Fox couldn't achieve such a moment to save their lives. Thanks, Walter, for getting us through the 60's and 70's. You are the gold standard.

It is 117 degrees here in the desert today so we are about to head off to L.A. where it will be 40 degrees cooler. Red wine in a cool room high above it all is my idea of a well-spent weekend.

Obama Meets the Pope: The Pope Meets Obama

A writer for the Catholic journal America quotes a correspondent for a U.S. publication who covers the Vatican as saying that all the American monsignors there are "Bush-loving, Fox-watching Republicans," but that all the Italian monsignori are ga-ga for Barack Obama. The wing-nut faction in the U.S. Catholic Church badly overplayed their hand in the run-up to Obama's May speech at Notre Dame and will pay the price for it. That price is a descent into irrelevance as the world, their country, and their church change before their very eyes and they are powerless to do anything but be stupid witnesses. Barack Obama is not Catholic but he is, to my mind, a better Catholic than this whole lot of churchist reactionaries.

McNamara

Robert McNamara died today. From 1961 to 1968 he was Defense Secretary for Kennedy and Johnson. Robert McNamara and the Vietnam War are inseparable, they are one, he believed in it, he sold it the way he sold cars as president of Ford Motor Co., he was--as today's headlines put it--the architect of the war. And he was as wrong as a powerful government official can be about the single greatest foreign policy issue of his day. In the '90's he wrote two books on Vietnam and said that he and his cohorts had been "wrong, terribly wrong" about the war from the start. That seemed rather too late to many Americans.

I heard him speak in San Francisco about ten years ago when he wrote his second book. At the end of the evening I shook hands with him--he had a bone-crushing handshake--and told him I appreciated his current work of atonement and truth-seeking. I was one to talk!--like most Americans , I believed him and Johnson until very late in the game. I was not drafted; McNamara's problems are the families and friends of those who were and did not come home alive.

C-SPAN has re-run a 1995 interview with him today and the old contradictions and bluster were still there. What was he like when he died?

One Crazy Chick

Mrs. Palin spoke nonsense for about 20 minutes in her Wassila back yard--addressing family and friends but looking into a camera--while the water fowl in the lake behind her heckled with Bronx cheers. She is quitting her job as governor for no discernible reason and, like her spiritual father Nixon, saying people are being really crummy to her but she has a way to rise above all that--(she really doesn't--just like Dick, she's making all this up as she goes along). Let's see: part-time mayor of a town of 5000 mushers, and half-term governor who walked out of the job and told the people of her state to go stick it. What can I say about her that Don Rickles wouldn't say so much better?

John McCain has a lot to answer for to the American people for foisting this K-Mart check-out girl on us and claiming she was serious stuff. He is not a responsible leader, but a reckless Top Gun in the game only for himself. Sanford, Ensign, Vitter, and all the others ad nauseum, and now Mrs. Palin's Fourth of July implosion: this Republican decay is really
starting to stink up the joint.

Senator Franken

Eight months after election day Minnesota finally has its second senator. Al Franken will no doubt bring great style and intelligence to the U.S. Senate and his contributions to the debates of the day will be refreshing and insightful. Norm Coleman can always revert to his old behavior--switching parties when he wants to run for a new office. It's time for a Democrat at the governor's desk and Norm may have it in him to, as Churchill put it, "re-rat."

Anyway, the Democrats now have 60 votes in the Senate and the Republicans can't stop anything by filibuster. The seat that is now Franken's has been held by Hubert Humphrey, Fritz Mondale and Paul Wellstone and Al will be keenly sensitive to their legacies. Had Paul Wellstone not died in that plane crash in 2002 Coleman would not have been in the Senate in the first place.

Rain Clouds

The Grand Supreme Most Excellent Poo-Bah of Iran is exposed as a corrupt and violent pol with the moral system of Luca Brazzi. The only possible symbol of this deranged regime is the young woman shot dead on the street in Tehran by some hiding coward, not the demented president in his London Fog zip-up windbreaker. I remember old Senator Sam Ervin at the Watergate hearings warning Nixon's goons in a line from Scripture, "God is not mocked!" he thundered, justice will be done. Today President Obama quoted again what he said are his favorite words of Martin Luther King, Jr., "The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." A sweet green justice is about to fall on Iran as a cleansing holy rain and all the world will witness.

Iran Weekend

CNN's coverage has devolved to nerd-talk about how great Twitter is and the B-Squad they've had on today don't seem to notice that there is a near total lack of real information about events in Iran. They could be doing the red carpet at the Grammys for all the heft they bring to this job. At the same time we read that Walter Cronkite is in "grave condition." In more ways than one.

I just finished reading Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, a history of the CIA. It was the CIA overthrow of a democratically elected prime minister in Iran in 1953 and the installation of the Shah that has Obama watching what he says right now. As someone said the other day, almost no American knows this history and almost no Iranian doesn't. You have to wonder what the boys and girls in Langely are up to tonight.

More

A late report from Nico Pitney says Ahmadinejad has landed in Yekaterinburg in Russia. What kind of president leaves his country during a crisis for a "previously scheduled regional meeting"? Has he fled? And why, of all places, to Yekaterinburg? That is where the Bolsheviks executed the Tsar and his family as the new Soviet Union was consolidating its power. Stay tuned.

Iran

Television and newspapers have not been a great help in understanding what is going on in Iran today. The authorities are resricticting reporters' movements and cancelling visas. The Internet and Twittering young Iranians have become the new Committees of Correspondence for this revolution. An election has been stolen by a Holocaust-denying freak and the corrupt religious powers that back him up. The Iranians want their country back and all of us who blog, comment, and follow their struggle can support them by simply posting our thoughts in the belief that we will be read on their screens in Iran. Pass it on. Yes they can.

Nico Pitney has been live-blogging for days on Huffington Post and is receiving minute-by-minute reports from Iran. I urge everyone to read him and to get on the web in a way that can help the brave young people in Tehran. If this disgusting regime is any where near the edge let's give them a strong shove.

Sonia To Join the Supremes

You have to admire the way Barack Obama plays the game of politics. He has put the Republicans in an impossible place with his nomination of Judge Sotomajor to the Supreme Court. If they go after her in a serious way they will complete the estrangement of Latinos begun by Pete Wilson as governor of California and boot away their votes for generations to come. Without significant Latino support the GOP is on course to become a whites only, Southern, and rural party. No one goes to the White House with a base like that. California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and other states across the country could be permanently out of reach. The elephant is behind the eight-ball and the side pocket is open.

The evangelicals? Forget it--even they now understand the extent of their delusion in believing that the Republican Party really believed all that sanctimony they peddled during the years of W. It was all a con, as even Karl Rove has said. The GOP belongs to Cheney and Limbaugh right now and they are as religious as a Michael Vick dog fight.

No obits quite yet for the Republican Party, but their congressional leaders are dismally incompetent and they are being outfoxed at every turn by a brilliant Democratic President with the people behind him.
Let them go after Sotomajor and dig their hole a little deeper.

Barack & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Reason won the day at Notre Dame this afternoon as President Obama and Fr. Hesburgh showed everyone how it is done. Ted Hesburgh is almost 92 years old and his simple presence at the graduation ceremony was as strong a rebuke of fanaticism as was the President's excellent address. You can't beat class; Barack and Ted have it and some others there today do not. Well done.

Countdown

I don't know what I would do without Keith Olbermann on TV every night. He's been on Cheney and torture all week and always shows the proper outrage when the laws and traditions of our democratic republic are breached by the powerful and ignorant. When I was in college I was a faithful reader of I.F. Stone's Weekly, a brilliant newsletter and commentary written and published--at his own expense--by the great journalist Izzy Stone. Year after year Stone demolished the Viet Nam policy of Johnson, MacNamara, Rostow, and all the rest. He was a shaft of sunlight in a very dark time. I wonder how many Americans read Izzy Stone in the 1960's and remember him today. A remnant of us do, and if Keith Olbermann can continue to stand up to the powerful and ignorant forces of today he may well brighten his time just as Izzy Stone did his.

Be Seated and Be Quiet, Bishop

As Catholic bishops continue to shriek and ruin their make-up over Notre Dame's invitation to the President of the U.S. to deliver Sunday's Commencement address it occurred to me today that I would never approach a Catholic priest or bishop for any kind of ethical guidance. And I've been a type of Catholic ever since I was baptized a few months after the end of WWII. I mean, their credibility is shot, for reasons known to all. Today on EWTN--the Catholic channel--some religious fanatic called President Obama a "pro death" President because he favors leaving Roe v. Wade the law of the land. Pro-death? And Bush wasn't? It is preposterous statements like this, and the hapless performance of Benedict XVI that have so many Catholics covering their heads and ducking under the pews as Cold War kids were taught to do. In this case it is reason itself that is being carpet-bombed. And the pilots say they really do love us all! Ha!

Dumb & Dumber

Watching Dick Cheney cavort around defending torture got me wondering--who does he remind me of? Someone else in the news lately, someone whose silly behavior belied the gravity of the charges against him, someone who plays up to the press, and then it came to me--it is Drew Peterson, the wacko ex-cop suspected of killing his last two wives. They are both hysterics in more trouble than they can handle who let off pressure by playing the buffoon in public. Now Cheney has gotten one of his daughters in the game, this is Liz, who said the other day that Dad's defense of torture was similar to Al Gore's campaign against global warming! What is it about living in a democratic republic with a Bill of Rights that the crazy Cheney's don't get? It's been clear for years that Big Time is off his rocker but who expected Daddy's little girl to start having sympathy delusions?

Indict this oaf for war crimes, it may shock him back to reality.

Welcome to the Club, Druglord

The editors of Time and Forbes magazines have apparently lost their minds. The former has its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world out this week. And on the list of Leaders & Revolutionaries, right there with Barack Obama, Ted Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton is a man named Joaquin Guzman, whom Henry Luce's first-born mag helpfully identifies as a "druglord" and "kingpin." We are not told which one he is--leader or revolutionary. Earlier in the year Forbes listed Guzman on its list of the world's billionaires. What a fun idea! List the mass murderers with the legit powerful when they reach a certain level of influence. Why not post-rehab Sam Giancana and John Gotti if sheer muscle can get you on the list of the elite?

We've watched Time disintegrate before our reading eyes over the last several years, but surely they have hit bottom with this issue. Ink-stained wretches they indeed are.

60 Votes

Welcome to Senator Arlen Specter who today joins the Democratic Party. Al Franken will be the 60th Democratic vote in the Senate in June and a new era will be truly underway. Can we say universal health care? Can we say rational Supreme Court? Find an empty lap for Brother Specter!

Sir Paul in the Backyard

The Coachella Music & Arts Festival is a very big deal in these parts and the 10th anniversary was celebrated last weekend. We live less than a mile from the site and when Paul McCartney took the stage Friday night we knew just what to do--head for the chairs on the patio and take in a free concert. The sound carried very well and, bundled in blankets, we sat back and let Paul takes us back to Beatle-land. He finished with Sgt. Pepper's and put The End from Abbey Road ("the love you take is equal to the love you make") on top. I saw the Beatles at Met Stadium in Minneapolis in 1965 and could never have imagined that the next time I would hear Paul McCartney live would be in 2009 in my California backyard. I must say that he and his band were the perfect guests and our welcome mat stays out for them.

Ratzinger Strikes Again

Word has come that Caroline Kennedy--life-long Catholic, daughter of America's only Catholic President--has been vetoed by the Vatican as U.S. Ambassador there because of her position on abortion, the same position that, polls repeatedly show, is shared by a majority of the American people. Apparently a Catholic must agree with Church policy to represent her country at the Vatican city-state. Suppose Obama appoints a Protestant or Jew who does not agree either, is the veto power still in effect? I don't recall that Soviet ambassadors to the U.S. were required to believe in our policies before they got through the door. The Vatican demands an exceptionality that cannot be sustained; the Church must begin to accept individual conscience in her own members.

Franken Wins

The three judges overseeing the Senate recount in Minnesota said today that Al Franken had the most votes. At most times--the 2000 Presidential election being an exception--the candidate with the most votes is referred to as the winner of the election and is duly sworn into office. If Norm Coleman has had only a mere glimpse of what the Minnesota ethos is all about he will know that now is the time to give up the ghost. Let us assume that the people doing the work over the past months do know how to count, that they have gone over the results 10,000 times--once for every lake--and that there is no reasonable case for appeal. Let it go, Norm, and start your new life.

Steve Cannon

The best radio man in Minnesota history--Steve Cannon--has died tonight in Minneapolis at age 81. The joy of hearing the Eveleth City Dogs in chorus bring Steve-o on the air at 3:00 pm every day will stay with me forever. His love of the U of M and Stadium Village, all Gopher sports, bouts with Sid Hartman, and his Mess buddies Morgan Mundane, Ma Linger, and Backlash La Rue are now part of the Minnesota genome and will enhance every walk around Lake of the Isles forevermore.

Steve Cannon was a reader and often mentioned on air what he was reading at the time. I remember one interview with Roy Smalley, a star player with the Minnesota Twins, which Cannon ended by asking Smalley what he was reading these days, and Smalley responded with a superb account of his current book. No other sports interview in the Twin Cities, other than Cannon's, would end that way. Not then and not now.

I saw him in person only once--in the mid-80's standing behind me in the check-out line at Lund's on West Lake St. Steve had a half-smile, clearly amused at all around him. He had a few items in his hands and I got the impression that he was going to a party.

You got the money, Steve.

Notre Dame

Let's give our moral support to Fr. Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame. His invitation to President Obama to speak at the May Commencement has rattled the cages of the rc (religiously correct), who object to Obama's views on abortion and stem cell research. Where were these rcRC's (religiously correct Roman Catholics) when W spoke in South Bend in 2001? As governor of Texas he proudly presided over his state's no. 1 ranking in prisoner executions. Was the Cardinal in Chicago embarassed then, did the new Archbishop of Mpls-St.Paul object? As I remember, W campaigned with a Catholic priest front and center in his entourage in 2000, what had got that guy's tongue?

Cheer, cheer for old Notre Dame and for President Obama when he speaks there next month.

Irving R. Levine

This great NBC newsman has died aged 86. As a boy I thought listening to his authoritative reporting was like hearing the voice of God, especially his famous sign-off, "Irving R. Levine, Rome." He had voice, presence, style, and brains like his contemporaries Sevareid, Collingswood, Kendrick and Burdette. And he became hip in the 80's when Johnny Carson regularly joked about his bearing and sober delivery. I thought Irving R. was one of the coolest guys who ever was and I'm sorry he's gone.

Catholics Today

In today's church bulletin the faithful will note the following:

1. Mr. Newt Gingrich, thrice married, who calls politics "war by other means," who had affair with a young employee while married to wife no. 2 and while working to impeach Bill Clinton for the Lewinsky affair, became, on Saturday, 28 March, 2009 a member of the Roman Catholic Church. He apparently did this because wife no. 3 (the above mentioned desk jockey) is Catholic and sings in some choir in Washington, D.C. Conversion makes Newt's life more rounded somehow. Who is the idiot-priest responsible for this travesty?

Can you picture fat Newt kneeling in a pew and making the sign of the cross? I can, just, and it makes me think of some cartoon elephant trying to swing on a trapeze as an audience watches in horror. Hello to Newt and goodbye to one more shard of respectability in Ratzinger's pathetic contemporary church.

2. Days before his conversion ceremony Newt attacked the administration at Notre Dame for inviting President Obama to speak at this year's commencement. The President has "anti-Catholic values," that is to say, he thinks abortion should be legal and safe for those who chose it and that stem cell research can proceed with federal funding. Get ready for future gaseous Newtonian emissions to have a patina of Catholic imprimatur about them (he will claim this as a new Defender of the Faith). As a life-long Catholic I ask again, who is the idiot-priest responsible for this travesty?

First Reviews

Tim Geithner's plan for toxic bank assets was revealed today and the stock market proceeded to jump nearly 500 points. It's still early, but this a very good sign that Wall Stret actually may be happy about something at long last. The Republicans are another matter, though: Eric Kantor quickly dismissed the the plan as nonsense. Those 500 points, however, out-weigh Mr. Kantor's petulance.

No Judging (Yet)

When Nixon visited China in his great breakthrough of 1972 he asked the elegant and sophisticated Foreign Minister, Chou En-lai, his opinion of the French Revolution (1789), Chou said it was too early to tell. Exactly the attitude President Obama and his Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, deserve from us. Two months in office doesn't ripple the surface of time. Even John McCain has come to Geithner's support saying, "Let him succeed." Obama says that if Tim wanted to resign today he would refuse to accept it.

I noticed how Barack Obama sat in the guest seat on Leno's show the other night: except for hand and arm gestures, his body was still and perfectly relaxed, as if he were in his own living room. If the President is calm in this storm, and believes Geithner is the right guy to be at his side, let's all pull back a bit and let them do their jobs. Are they on the right course? It's too soon to tell.

Bush 12, Nixon 6, U.S. 0

W will be paid $7 million for a book on his presidency and he wants to break from the convention of ex-presidents writing autobiographies (as if he could write one if his life depended on it) and instead concentrate on Decision Points--the working title--in his life. The L.A. Times says there are twelve of these and that he has already written 30,000 words about them. (Don't bother with the math of words-to-problem, there's no way of knowing how deeply into the dozen he may be by now.) All I can say about this is that I watched Will Farrell's You're Welcome, America the other night and if W gets anywhere near the truth of that, his book may be worth a read.

Nixon wrote his Six Crises the year after he lost to JFK and it was widely regarded as being little more than Tricky's self-centered view of his difficult life. And truth was the last thing on his mind--maybe Frank Langella in Nixon/Frost or Anthony Hopkins in Nixon are the better guides here.

Let's look up at our big tote board, shall we?: 2 presidents, 13 years in office, 18 reasons they each should have stayed home. Final score: Republican hacks 18, American people 0.

Lincoln-guilt

Lincoln-guilt has symptoms including the following: entering Barnes & Noble, spotting a huge new biography of Abe and, believing it is your civic duty to read it and somehow get closer to the great man, coughing up $30 or more. I have done this repeatedly since I was twelve years-old and now have many excellent Lincoln books partly read or unstarted but holding places of great honor in my book shelves. This year is the 200th anniversary of his birth and new books on every conceivable facet of his life have been appearing every other day. Book store visits have, therefore, become hell on earth as I try to make my life more manageable and be satisfied with the archive I've already got.

Salvation came yesterday in Abraham Lincoln, a 64-page brand new bio by James McPherson, an esteemed Civil War scholar who wanted to show that a very short but thorough book on Lincoln could be produced. I was impressed by all the blurbs on the back cover written by names with whom I am very familiar--they are the authors of all those big books at home--and by the price--thirteen bucks. This is a book to be read in one sitting, any day now.

Heresies On St. Pat's Day

What the hell--why not?

Heresy #1. The Pope is losing it. The air of rot and exhaustion we know well from the last Bush years now emanates from the Vatican. The Bishop Williamson affair (he is Holocaust-denying reactionary), the excommunication in Brazil of doctors and a mother for aborting the pregnancy for twins of a 9 year-old raped by her father (even a high ranking Vatican bishop has a problem with that; where was mercy, he asks), and today the Pope in Africa condemning condom use in a land where AIDS has long been an epidemic--all these show a Church without a clue as to what its own people want and will accept.

John Paul II was a great historical figure whose presence kept the lid on many pressure points, but this current Pope is no where near as strong and the band-aids placed on several major wounds over the years are
beginning to snap off. There will be more problems ahead, in fact they will be ceaseless until the Church finally shakes itself free from the dead hand of compromise and corruption.

Heresy #2. More of a question. Is Bernie Madoff in the secret employ of some county's intelligence agencies? Colonel Pat Lang, a retired U.S. Army intelligence pro, asked this the other day on his blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis. Madoff's silence and guilty plea to avert a trial have me relecting on the kinds of people who value--demand--that omerta: organized crime and spy agencies. I doubt that Bernie is mobbed-up but perhaps he is spooked-up. Where did all that money go? $65 billion--who might have a need for that kind of money and, at the same time, keep it off official books? Who runs Bernie? Mossad, CIA?

FDR's Slogan

So many people are comparing the present economic crisis to the 1930's and wondering if Barack Obama's first 100 days will be at all like Franklin Roosevelt's. I like Obama's even keel and I think in the years ahead it may be vital to our well-being; his refusal to lose his head may be our ace in the hole while all around him others are losing their's. He balances the grim with a sense of play and detachment. He is a writer and a great orator and his love of language is obvious. I wonder what maxims and quotations give him the greatest solace. He could not go wrong remembering the slogan FDR, in a wheelchair facing the Great Depression and World War II, kept on his desk, "Let unconquerable gladness dwell."

AIG

AIG says it must pay huge bonuses to their highly talented money and investment people or these geniuses would be offended and go work for some other monster company. Aren't these the same guys who virtually destroyed AIG and left it begging for money belonging to the American people just to stay alive? These are the people the company is so desperate to keep? I say let them go now and hire a new crew, there will be no lack of aspirants for these jobs.

Can Obama use this moment to bash the big, dumb, and rich corporate world as JFK did in 1962 when he wrestled Big Steel to the ground over price increases? This is one of those moments a President can use to his own lasting advantage. Strike them now, Mr. President!

Race To the Bottom

Which will be the first to finally bottom out and begin to shed itself of the dreck and the dross of it's corruption--the Republican Party or the New York Stock Exchange? We follow their respective descents daily, measured in numbers, just as one scans football scores and division standings on autumn Sundays. The Limbaugh-Steele game seems to signal an approaching end to the GOP drama (or can it go lower?), but Wall Street is forever inscrutable--ups mixed with downs, while the Republicans have no ups whatsoever.

The Republican base are true believers and will go down with the ship if necessary, Big Money is wiley and has no scruples, it goes down with no one's ship and could hitch it's wagon to Obama's Democrats if they are the long term winners here. Eric Cantor and Adam Putnam are smart young guys and must know that they have to bump off Boehner in the GOP House leadership before any party rebuilding can start. As for smart young Republicans in the Senate, well, the last one was considered--by some--to be Rick Santorum, and he was soundly defeated by Democrat Bob Casey fours years ago. So the GOP Senate fall has no end in sight and they are no where near as clever as the Wall Street guys.

More on Tonight

I. Why did Jindal begin with "Happy Mardi Gras" and end with "God bless Louisiana and the United States (emphasis added)? No one outside of New Orleans tonight is in a party mood, and shouldn't the country be mentioned first in a prayer for blessing? I wonder if there was a hint of the Old South's state first mentality there.


II. As angry as some of us Democrats may get at cheap shots directed at Barack Obama, he does not play along. Tonight he had a warm and touchy greeting for Sen. Richard Shelby (R. Alabama) who only a few days ago questioned whether or not the President was an American citizen and thus eligible for the office, and later a hug for Joe Lieberman, whose every appearance brings to my mind several unsavory nouns almost never to be used in American public life. Our President has little interest in revenge and punishment; another of his good lessons for us.

An adult and a gentleman, let us learn while we can.

The Beginning

The Obama Presidency truly began tonight with his magnificent speech to Congress on the economic crisis. And we were once again shown that he is that rarest of beings in our present society--an adult who speaks to the American people in sentences and paragraphs, trusting that we can accept and understand serious thought. We have become a punkish and adolescent people and by his comportment and language President Obama shows us a way out and away from the trashed party room we've made of American life. I think he is several steps ahead of even his brightest cabinet members--Tim Geithner--and they are encouraged by that. (I have high hopes for Tim but he needs to study Obama.)

As for the Republican response, well, what can one say about Bobby Jindal tonight that won't be belabored by pundits and comedians for weeks to come? The screen said his "speech" was live so I must presume he had heard the President's address, but what he said bore no relation to the current crisis nor to the events of the evening. The Republican edition of Jimmy Carter has been born; if this is the best they can do we can only conclude that the vortex sucking that party down is still gaining suction .

Public Sins

1. Roland Burris knows better. He knows that when you swear to tell the truth, the whole and nothing but, it means you're going to tell it now, as opposed to revealing it bit by bit after you are safely sworn in as a U.S. Senator. He has to go. Illinois Senate appointment, take two.

2. Octo-Mom had a litter in California, having six kids at home already--two on state assistance--no husband, no job, but two parents whose small income and small home are inadequate to this menagerie. Somethings are terribly off the rails here: the mother, the fertility doctor, and the society that allows such a sociopath to commandeer science to her own fantastical ends. This is like an accident, we need to be wiser as a people or worse will occur in the future. Those eight little babies--what will become of them, how healthy can they be? There mother, in her zeal to produce babies, did not not consider what comes next--sane parenting.

Strange Pulse

What is the strange pulse that is bumping sane and competent people away from office in Washington over the past month? Caroline Kennedy, Tom Daschle, and now Judd Gregg all step back just as the door has opened. Daschle I get: you have to pay your taxes and it's just not credible that a guy with his years in the harness was innocently unaware of what he owed. For a humble Democrat from South Dakota he sure does like the big bucks. A free car and driver would be nice for all of us, Tom, who do you have to know?

We were leaving for the Philippines when the Caroline exit broke and I still haven't heard what the deal was with that other than a Letterman rant one day on cable in Dagupan that implied that she had been rail- roaded out. And Judd Gregg: he won $800,000 in a lottery a few years ago so maybe he feels entitled to barge in and out of other people's Administrations as he pleases. Judd, take a seat there next to Joaquin Phoenix and plot your next career move.

The other night, in Springfield, Illinois, honoring Lincoln on his 200th birthday anniversary, Barack Obama fantasized about Abe getting an offer to be Secretary of Commerce and how he might have responded. President Obama, the most sensitive and intelligent of men, was full of the majesty of Lincoln and the folly of Judd Gregg--a name that belongs to a rube in Oklahoma--but stayed with Lincoln and gave one of those lovely Obama speeches that makes you want to turn off the TV and read a book. I think President Obama has had enough of strange pulses and will stick to what he has learned in Springfield.

Under Today's Radar

Our news services seem to be only cable of reporting one story at a time; right now it is the economic crisis, but a few events of recent days are as important.

1. The Pope, for some reason, felt obliged to pardon--lift the excommunication of--a certain man named Williamson who had been made a bishop by the late renegade Bishop Marcel Lefebvre who detested Vatican II and anything that happened in the Catholic Church after 1962.
Williamson is a virulent anti-Semite and Holocaust denier and the cringing Pope says now that he had no idea of that when he welcomed him back. There is a test of wills going on here and Benedict is not winning it. Benedict, you have brought the poison back to the heart of the Church, expunge it now--cut the SOB loose or resign and be mercifully forgotten.

2. The Taliban have just attacked Kabul with ease and killed many people. President Obama has said repeatedly that Afghanistan is the center of our focus on terrorists and that this war cannot be lost. He will make a major effort there this year.

3. General Jim Jones is the National Security Adviser in the Obama Administration, but who knows it? He is the silent and invisible man thus far, but he is too strong and talented for this to last: he and Obama are up to something--Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran. Something on the foreign policy front is brewing and will soon be served.

4. Obama's press conference this week showed once and for all that he is a serious man who thinks as he speaks and who speaks in sentences and paragraphs. Listening to him for an hour I realized how lazy I have become in paying attention to any words of government officials. For years we have heard tripe and were lulled into stupor. Now we have a President who respects ideas, language, and the people he speaks to. Time to sharpen our minds again, this new teacher knows what he's talking about.

President Obama and Travel

"Let it be told to the future world . . that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive . . . that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet (it)."

--President Obama in his Inaugural
Address quoting George Washington's
words of 1776.

I am off to the Philippines tomorrow for ten days, posts will resume in early February.

The Moment, The Torch

For many of us, tomorrow's inauguration of Barack Obama is the fulfillment of a promise implicitly made at the 2004 Democratic Convention. By the time Obama had completed the keynote address you just knew that he would be president someday. Tuesday is the day.

He is a writer who is also a politician and no Inaugural Address since JFK's has been awaited with such high expectations. It's like hearing that your favorite author's new book will be in the stores this week--you lay a strategy for purchase and all other things become secondary. Only those anticipated golden words matter right now. In a few hours Obama's Inaugural words will be in our ears and in our hands and we will decide, over some time, how much of them to mix into our lives and future. If his past is prologue, they will mean very much to us and to the world as the 21st Century unfolds.

The next few days will pop like champagne corks as President Obama
makes it emphatic that the sad sag of the last eight years is being powerfully resisted by a new generation of Americans. As a dear European lady I used to know would put it, we must "make attention,"
this is important.

A couple of years ago Barack Obama attended an event--a funeral, I think--and Ethel Kennedy was there. She said to him, "the torch is in your hands now," and he said to her, "I know."

Hudson River

That jet in the Hudson River looks so forlorn tonight, like a porpoise that has snuggled its nose up to the dock to be petted by the tourists. Earlier today, in the middle of the river, the ferries and tugboats surrounded it like like a herd of elephants around a stricken member. How strange to give life and feeling to these big machines; all the people survived too.

Barack's Sadness

One week is left for Barack Obama to have something like a private life. On Tuesday, January 20th he becomes president and will be President Obama to the world forever after. I've sensed some sadness in him as he sees parts of the life he has loved beginning to slip away. The trips with his kids, going out to a gym every morning, his beloved Blackberry, are his last holds on normal life and he struggles to keep them. He has had the most unique young life imaginable for an American President and he no doubt has had a strong sense of his own independence and freedom of movement, as they would naturally accompany the experiences of differentness and loss that he was fated to have. Now, he must lose both the freedom and some of the differentness.

Right after his election he referred to himself as "a mutt," which means that one is hard to classify by birth. By choice and hard work Barack Obama has transcended his origins to become a thoroughbred of his own making, but they are few indeed and fated again to loneliness.

And so his sadness.

A Weekend In Anaheim

A weekend in Anaheim, a change of scene, was the most I'd bargained for. It is a city built around Walt Disney's dream and baseball and hockey teams. If they do not suit you there are always hotels to gawk at and restaurants to attend where some very large people indeed are doing what they do best. "There's no there there," Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, California but she never saw modern-day Anaheim. Talk about your soul-less cities! It is a conglomeration of junk buildings and signs with no discernible center unless you want to count an area called "Downtown Disney," which is part of you know what.

California is a very great and beautiful state, today--January 11th, while many states freeze in their snow--it was 75 degrees and sunny in SoCal. The humidity is so low that, with strong winds, it is a fire danger.
Yet it is a place that proves that stunning geography and a climate that people in other states can only imagine are no insurance that its residents
will conduct themselves in appropriately beautiful and temperate ways.
What is it in Southern California that causes some people to create such ugliness and desolation?

Maybe the beauty frightens them, makes them feel small, and they can only respond by despoiling it.

Claiborne Pell, R.I.P.

Tonight C-SPAN showed the funeral of former Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island, who served in the Senate from 1961-1997. Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, and others spoke of the man's life and work. He was that disappearing form, a gentleman. They are melting away like polar ice. Biden told of a meeting of Democratic senators in the 90's who were being advised to run negative campaigns against Republican opponents, this style being the latest succcessful gimmick. Pell said he could not do it, "never speak critically of your adversary in a contest," he said. Old School, yes, but what are the great things about the new one?

He's Good Enough, He's Smart Enough . . .

The Minnesota State Canvassing Board will announce on Monday that Al Franken has been elected U.S. Senator--to the Paul Wellstone seat--by 225 votes. Nice number, anything more would have been gauche. The Coleman camp can start a court challenge but I'm predicting here that Norm won't bother with that. He's beaten, exhausted, and thinking of far happier work than being in the forlorn Senate minority while the country falls in love with Barack Obama.

Well done, Al. Keep a picture of Sen. Wellstone on your desk and you can't go wrong.

Show Me The Books

W is just about gone and there is a coming glut of books and articles on the grotesqueries of the past eight years, but something has come up recently that must be commented upon now. Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal that he and W had yearly contests to see who could read the most books and that, while Turd Blossom always won, W had read roughly 100 books per year since 2004. I'm sorry, but this is impossible to accept. If one is a reader it is soon apparent to an audience: book titles are mentioned, writers are quoted, vocabulary reflects experience with literacy and refined expression. None of these qualities are evident in W.
He does well if he speaks two or three coherent sentences in a row. Nothing about him suggests that he is a serious reader and this outrageous last-minute attempt by TB to to turn his life-long project into a thinking man is reminiscent of the scene in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein where the created slug comes out on stage in a tuxedo and sings Puttin' on the Ritz, with a hilarious mispronunciation of Ritz. The audience laughs, the monster reverts to type, and his rampage sends people screaming.

Who needs Oliver Stone? Mel Brooks nailed W and TB decades ago.

Another Opening, Another Show

We spent New Year's Eve at a dinner party that included a 92 year-old lady who had raised her three kids alone, worked a full time job, and came home at night to do the housework. These days she reads the LA Times "cover to cover" every day, watches MSNBC, attends lectures with her husband, argues powerfully in favor of the Democratic Party, and is trying to organize all of us to go to a local eatery that is "a little pricey," so she was hoping somebody had a birthday coming that would provide a good excuse to splurge. The lady loves good Mexican food but only attends those places that serve a good Margarita. She watched the Kennedy Center Honors the other night and her critique was biting: the rock band was terrible and there should have been more Streisand.

Dismiss her at your peril: she brought up Alan King's old comic routine about very old men who die, and according to their obits, are "survived by his wife." No matter how old these guys live to be their wives always last longer. She has been around the block more times than you can count and has recently taken up a new form of walking--twenty minutes a day on the treadmill.

Happy New Year, Ruth.