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.