It Is As Bad As The 1930s

So much for the Republican chant of “stimulus is bad” and “we need a balanced budget.”

Nobel Prize winning columnist Paul Krugman points out on his New York Times blog today that the world economy right now is more or less at the point John Maynard Keynes described in his essay The Great Slump of 1930.

Krugman goes on to warn that the only thing standing between us and Great Depression II is Barack Obama and Paul Bernanke understanding what made things so bad between the 1929 market crash and 1933: No economic stimulus to boost demand.

Somehow, the Republican Party still doesn’t grasp this and keeps yammering about cutting government spending to balance the budget. It’s what the party-s no budget budget called for last week. Uhm, that’s what Herbert Hoover did. Not only did he create a global economic, social and political disaster but resulted in GOP House and Senate candidates being all but unelectable for 50 years.

Oh, and besides this, Hoover’s Republican-endorsed policies not only created the Depression but also led directly to the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Second World War. Let’s live that all over again. Somebody ought to remind John "Man Tan" Boehner, Eric “Ralph Wiggum” Cantor, Mitch "Mumbles" McConnell and the so-called “ConservaDems” of this small yet seemingly meaningful historical fact.

Hey, Sen. Bayh: Are you reading Dr. Krugman?

Miseryville

Tent cities called “Bushville’s” are already cropping up all over America, a 21st century version of the Depression’s Hoovervilles. The cry from Miseryville is “I need work, not tax cuts.

For 15 years, I’ve raised money and volunteered at a Toronto food bank. Over the past six months, I’ve watched the lines on handout morning grow from 15 or 20 families at a time to lines that sometimes stretch out the door. Yet, so far, the full fury of the recession’s hurricane hasn’t hit Canada and I wanted a sense of what it is like in the eye of the storm. So, recently, I scooted across the border with a friend to spend time helping at a food pantry in a hard hit, mid-size town in upstate New York.

Crossing into the United States for the first time since the Supreme Court stole the presidency for George W. Bush in 2001 seemed odd.

As a small, private protest, I vowed not to enter the US until after he left town and that damnable lizard-lipped lying bastard of a semi-literate, incoherent freak show passing himself off as a drug store cowboy hung around until the last possible moment. Now that he’s back in Texas, my protest is over but my fervent hope is that he fears every knock on his door, worrying whether if he opens it a pair of hulking men in dark suits from the International Criminal Court is about to haul him off in irons to The Hague.

I have no idea what to expect as we pull into the booth just across the bridge.

From what others who enter the US regularly tell me, I could expect to be greeted with the same cold, unblinking suspicion as someone named bin Laden. But being white still counts for something at a border crossing: We’re less threatening to the granite faced ICE stazi on duty than people whose skin is of a darker hue. After asking where we came from, we answer “Toronto” but pronounce it “Tah-rahn’-ta” – something a retired customs inspector once told me is a cue for spotting a genuine Canadian except everyone I know here says “Tor-ohn-toh” – we are waved through. If I’d been asked, I had decided to pass myself off as Canadian so I wouldn’t be asked a lot of stupid questions about why I stayed away for so many years.

Some 30 minutes later, we arrive at the pantry.

Food Bank Crowds

Going inside and finding a coordinator – I knew she was in charge of something because she carried a clip board – we are put to work behind the front counter where people line up for their allotment. As the recession's victims approach meekly, it is heartbreakingly easy to see the embarrassment and fear on the faces of people asking for help – most for the first time in their life.

The men, women, even the children they bring along, look dazed and frightened as if they have no idea what happened to what was their American dream life only a few months ago. Their hollow, blank expressions tell stories of hope squashed, plans demolished, futures fogged.

"I used to donate money and time to help this place," Jennie, a mid-30s single mother with two children in tow, tells me sorrowfully. Like other people I speak with, she asks that her last name not be used. "This is embarrassing enough. I never thought I'd end up this side of a bread line.

"Three months ago, I was earning $72,000 and was proud of what I'd achieved with my life," she goes on as other volunteers fill her order. But she lost her job as a senior financial analyst at a bank 25 miles away in one of its many cutbacks. "Now, well, I don't know what to think any more. I don’t know what to do."

Her voice trails off sadly as she takes her three large bags of groceries and turns away.

GOP: Spend A Day Here

As I was helping another person who reaches the counter after a 90 minute wait in line, he grumbles, "I wish the Republicans who voted against the stimulus had to spend a day here watching this."

Ben is 46, married with three children and whose elderly mother lives with his family. His wife was laid off in July, 2008, and he was fired outright when his employer filed for bankruptcy and shut down just before Christmas when the company’s bank pulled a line of credit from the business.

“So much for the bailout,” Ben said dejectedly.

As he waits for his food, I ask about his former employer. It was family-owned and provided jobs for 43 people. It had made parts for small engines since World War II. He assumes it was profitable – “We got a nice Christmas bonus every year and they never missed paying into our 401(k) plan” – and was at a loss to understand why a bank would put it out of business overnight.

“I didn’t like the idea of helping banks to begin with but Bush and the bankers said it would open up credit. Bullshit,” he exclaimed.

"So then Obama takes office and the GOP starts screaming for tax cuts. How the fuck will a tax cut feed my family? I need work, man, not tax cuts. I don't have any income to tax," Ben says, his voice rising in anger.

"What fucking idiots!" Ben exclaims. He ruefully shakes his head as he shakes my hand while thanking me for helping him. I feel I should thank him for letting me witness the human results of the inhumanity of Congressional Republicans.

One after another the hapless hungry shuffle to the counter, figures frozen in what should be another time in another nation. How can the United States of America have so many people who need food handouts? When the stock room runs out of peanut butter, it also runs out of its major source of protein for the pantry’s clients. “We won’t get any more now until next week,” another volunteer tells me quietly. “Some folks are gonna go hungry.”

Bleaktown

It becomes so overwhelming I take a break and my friend Judy drives me around the once-prosperous industrial town. Half the store fronts along the main drag are dark and ubiquitous “for rent” signs tell a sorry tale of poverty. Last year at this time, there were three factories providing jobs, benefits and the promise of a future to thousands. Now, one plant has shuttered entirely, one cut back to a single shift and the third hopes workers will reduce their hours voluntarily so the company won’t have to lay people off.

We drive on.

On a residential street with 11 homes, three are for sale; four more have foreclosure signs in front and two look as if they was abandoned ages ago. Unshovelled snow and trash fill the adjoining front yards, and the first floor windows at both homes are boarded up. An old car sits in a driveway, stripped of everything but its frame and body. Even though the sun is shining, the street has a black-and-white feel to it and the scene reminds me of a Dorthea Lange WPA photograph from the 1930s.

“People lived there,” I remark as we drive slowly past the empty pair of houses. “People with kids who played in the yard, couples who fought and shared morning coffee and went bowling with friends and had sex. Wonder where they ended up?”

Judy shrugs and swings her eight year old Mazda around a corner, heading back to the pantry.

“Some moved in with relatives,” she says finally, lighting a cigarette while grinding through the gears. I try not to notice that she’s steering with her knees as we hit 35 miles an hour. “Some moved away. Some are in shelters and a lot of them are living over there.”

She points to a parking lot in front of an abandoned warehouse or factory. A decrepit array of pick-ups, sedans, a two door “sport coupe,” one mini-van, one tricked out SUV and even an ancient AirStream trailer are parked, none close to the others for some reason; it’s as if the people can’t stand sharing their shame of living this way. It’s a neighbourhood of throwaway people living on blacktop plots with rubber wheels creating makeshift foundations for rollaway homes.

“Why here?” I wonder aloud as our car slows to a crawl and then stops.

“No place else to go and no money for gas to get there,” comes Judy’s heart-rending reply. “When you’re living in a car in a parking lot, you’ve pretty much run out of options.”

It strikes me that as Pres. Obama goes around the country promoting the stimulus package, besides showing up at auditoriums with perfect sound systems, he should stop his motorcade unannounced at a place like this to talk directly with people most hurt by George Bush and the Republican Party. They’re easy enough to find; damn near every city in America has at least one or two. Back in 1967 or 1968, Bobby Kennedy made a spontaneous tour of tarpaper shacks in Appalachia and his mere presence not only spotlighted the shocking and largely hidden problem of poverty in America, but gave hope to tens of thousands of people. Obama could do the same thing because none of these people are likely to have little, if any, idea of what he’s trying to do to help.

Or how Congressional Republicans keep trying to bushwhack him – an intended play on words – with failed ideas, faulty economics, fried history and foolishly pompous prancing.

Sleeping In Cars

I think about walking over to talk to the people squatting in the lot. I want to know their stories but I don’t want to intrude, to be seen as a traveller from another planet staring down on their life in Miseryville USA. Yet our car is parked across the street and is noticed: We’re now getting suspicious looks from a few residents of Blacktop Flats. Two men start walking towards us and I get out of the car, telling Judy to stay where she is.

As we approach each other, I see that they both look like what Frank Rich described as “beefy, beer-drinking, deer-hunting white guys incessantly interviewed in bars and diners” during the campaign who pundits kept insisting would never vote for a skinny black man. I wave and stick a smile on my face as I shout “Hi!” across the lot.

“Hey” one calls back and returns my wave. “You a cop?”

“No, a writer,” I say.

Both stop and eye me with a mixture of disbelief and mistrust. “A writer?” the other one calls out. “What the hell are you doing here? Nothing to write about.”

I keep approaching the pair, slowly with what I hope is a nonchalant and non-threatening slouch, the smile still on my face. I stick out a hand to greet them. “I’m Charley James.”

“Dwayne,” the one on the right says, shaking my hand. “But they call me ‘Race.’”

“Tony,” the other man chimes in, also shaking my hand and adding with a smile, “They call me Tony.”

“So, like, what the fuck is there to write about here?” Race asks. “I mean, like this is no place.”

“That’s not true. This place is America,” I reply, hoping I don’t sound idiotic or worse. “I’m writing about how people are dealing with the recession.”

“Shit,” Tony snorts. “’Dealing with the recession?’ Me and my girlfriend are sleeping in a banged-up truck with no heat, it is winter and cold and you wanna know how we’re ‘dealing with the recession.’ How the fuck do you think we’re dealing with it?”

“That’s what I want to find out.” The sentence just sort of hangs in the air. After a long moment, I look around the lot and ask, “How many people live here?”

Race and Tony glance at each other. Tony sort of shrugs and tells me there are about 15, give or take. Race nods in agreement, chiming in with, “They come and go. Here for a few days then no one sees them again.”

Tony and his girlfriend has been here the longest: Nearly three months, since before Christmas. Citibank repossessed his house in early December. He crashed with friends for a few weeks but then they lost their place, too, so he tossed his clothes in the trunk and moved into his car.

Tony is stocky but solid-looking. I guess he’s somewhere around 40 but it’s hard to tell. His face and hands are caked with grime, a by-product of living rough and having limited access to basics such as showers. But his eyes are intense, a deep blue and they keep sweeping our surroundings as he speaks. Tony informs me that his girlfriend Sandy joined him right after New Years, two months after losing her job and right after being evicted from her apartment.

“When you work shift you don’t get much chance to save money,” he says, over-stating the obvious. “But we was getting by alright.”

“I used to see ads about building a nest, a cushion,” the quieter Race interjects. “Shit, even when I was working full-time the only cushion I had was on my sofa.”

Goodbye Blue Collars

Race says he’s 51 and is trained to work a lathe and a machine press. “The lathe job I had for six years got outsourced to some fucking place like Vietnam two years ago. I fought in goddamned ‘Nam and now someone I was shooting at has my job. Then the factory where I ran machine press laid me off. Some fucking life, huh?”

He has the hollow expression of a man whose adulthood is measured in terms of lay-offs and job hunts. Race says he thinks of himself as a skilled worker who keeps trying to improve his skills “and then I wake up one day sleeping in my car.”

Race is divorced and has two kids: A boy 14 and a girl 10 who live with their mother and her second husband near Baltimore. He hasn’t sent child support in several months and can’t afford to phone the children. “I can imagine what my ex is telling them about me,” he says. “A 10 year old girl can’t never figure out why dad doesn’t call anymore and a 14 year old boy needs his father.”

He turns away from Tony and me. I wonder if he’s fighting back tears or just remembering a very different place, a better time, long ago. Tony shoots me a “that’s how it goes” look and gives Race an affection punch on the arm.

I ask how everybody living here survives with no job, no home and no money.

“Sandy works 15 hours a week as a cashier at Wal-Mart,” Tony explains, “so we get a little money from that. Once in a while, a buddy at a Chevron station gives me a few hours stocking shelves in the convenience mart.”

Race collects himself enough to turn around to tell me he’d be dead if it weren’t for the night manager at a nearby fast food joint. He lets Race clean the toilets and floors for a few bucks and also feeds him, even on nights when he doesn’t work. “But don’t say which place,” Race begs me. “I don’t want the guy to get in trouble and I don’t want everybody showing up for a free dinner.”

“Is that how most people here eat?” I ask.

“Yeah, sort of,” Tony says. “Dumpster diving behind restaurants for food they tossed out, the food bank sometimes, sometimes a church comes round and brings us stuff to eat. When we’ve got some cash, we go to Wal-Mart and buy food that don’t need cooking. It’s cheap and Sandy has her employee discount. We get by.”

As we talk, we’re joined by a third person, a rail-thin woman who might be in her early 30s. She’s wearing jeans, running shoes and, as far as I can tell, three sweaters against the cold but no jacket or coat. Race and Tony nod a greeting and I introduce myself. The woman tells me her name is Sharon and she lives in the battered AirStream.

Jokingly, Race says Sharon is the “social service worker” in their temporary community. “She has heat so on really cold nights she invites us in to sleep on her floor.”

Sharon mugs, replying, “Yeah, I’m rich, sweetie. Got a Sterno heater! A radio, too.”

As I've been writing this piece, I keep thinking of an episode of CBS Reports from back in the 50s.

As a kid, it shocked me – or at least as much as a nine year old can be shocked by a documentary – because it showed large numbers of poor Americans who lived in shanty towns and went to schools with holes in the roof which meant kids had to move their chairs when it rained. I had no idea that everyone wasn't living the same kind of idyllic life that my family had in our GI-bill financed, two-storey home on Raymir Place in a Milwaukee suburb.

It is still the case. Welcome to the Republican Party’s gift to America.

The World According To Newt

Newt Gingrich was positively apoplectic on Fox News Sunday, bemoaning the shift in US foreign policy to one based on fantasy. No doubt, Gingrich had this specific declaration in mind when he prattled on to Chris Wallace:

“We are not just discussing limits on a further increase of nuclear weapons. We seek, instead, to reduce their number. We seek the total elimination … of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.”

But, wait. It wasn’t Barack Obama who uttered these words in Prague when he outlined a realignment of America’s nuclear weapons policy. It was none other than Newt’s hero, Ronald Reagan, and the words were spoken during his second inaugural address on Jan. 21, 1985.

Why didn’t we hear anything then?

And where was Newt The Coot when George W. Bush was promoting the fantasy of exporting democracy all over the Middle East at gunpoint? We get daily reminders of how well that flight of imagination worked out in Iraq; in the past week alone, more than 200 people were killed in suicide bombings, according to news reports.

Apparently, he was holding his water until Pres. Obama discussed the sensibility of a nuke-free globe to deride as goofy a policy first proposed by Reagan. He’s yet to speak out against the insane fantasy of invading Iraq.

Thundering Nothingness

Gingrich and his cohorts are thundering nothingness because they are hapless without an enemy like the Soviets to rail against. In blasting Obama, the former House Speaker-turned-lobbyist did not bother to come up with any alternative policy. Of course, that is the GOP mantra these days: Just Say No.

It was the same yesterday after Defence Secretary Robert Gates announced major cuts to DoD programs that spend billions fighting a 30-year old war that never happened. Within moments of his news conference, Republicans were shooting out e-mails decrying slashes to projects such as the F-22, a fighter so over-budget and so under-needed that even the Air Force is turning its back on it, and to the Star Wars anti-missile defence that has yet to hit the broadside of a barn even when the tests are rigged.

The once-proud party of Lincoln, the Taft’s, Eisenhower and Goldwater keeps displaying its intellectual bankruptcy. The party is so bereft of ideas and leadership that it should be allowed to die in peace, letting a new right-of-center party emerge in its place.

Beyond Gingrich

Examples of how the GOP has devolved into being just the lunatic fringe are all around us.

For example, its reigning Queen, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, was on KTLK radio in Minneapolis a few days ago decrying yet another lefty conspiracy. As an aside, KTLK once claimed that Magic Johnson was faking his HIV-positive status so you know how rational it is about anything.

Bachmann warns that the Obama administration is creating “re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.”

It turns out that Bachmann is referring to the expansion of the AmeriCorps volunteer program, a measure sponsored by that old Trotskyite himself, Orrin Hatch.

We know Bachmann has less shame and even fewer smarts than Sarah Palin. But how can she continue to act like such a goofball without a loud chorus of otherwise sensible Minnesotans standing up to shout, “Oh, go away, you foolish old harpy!”

Finally, in yet another living example of Christian fundamentalist hypocrisy, 42-year old Juan Ovalle was arrested for soliciting sex on the internet with a 15-year old. Turns out that Ovalle works for a Spanish-speaking arm of the Colorado Springs Christian group Focus on the Family and narrates Biblical text for CDs. He also created the group’s Spanish broadcasting arm.

Ovalle was arrested when he drove to Lakewood Colorado to meet the young girl – actually an undercover officer posing as a teen – to have sex, according to the Jefferson County district attorney's office.

Why is it that so many right wing Republican fundamentalists get caught in sex crimes and scandals? And why aren’t the wing-nuts worrying as much about these mulyuks as they are about a happily married gay person teaching school?

The Post-Twitter World

Slate is breaking news of the next big thing: Flutter. Why? Because Twitter, with its 140 character limit on mini-blogs, takes too long to read.

Is Eric Cantor The GOP’s Ralph Wiggum?

Poor Ralph Wiggum.

The hapless, slow-witted, frequently annoying son of Chief Wiggum on The Simpson’s is always getting picked on by kids at Springfield Elementary because he keeps saying totally out-of-context things like “I use the poddy now!” and “I wear rubber underpants!”

Ever since Congress reconvened in January, I’ve been trying to figure out who Eric Cantor reminds me of and this morning it came to me: He’s Ralph Wiggum, all grown up.

I knew a kid just like Cantor when I was in grade school; I suspect a lot of us did. He was an annoying little runt no one liked because he wouldn’t trade sandwiches at lunch, cried if somebody looked at him cross-eyed and kept asking for answers during arithmetic tests.

As a result, that poor kid at Webster School – his name was Butch – spent at least one recess a week getting tipped upside down in the boy’s room before getting his head flushed in the urinal. And the more Cantor’s on television, the more I am convinced that Ralph, Butch and Eric are soul mates because they were always getting their heads flushed in the toilet in grade school.

It would explain a lot about Cantor.

No one who spends a good chunk of their early childhood being held upside down in a urinal comes out whole. It’s undoubtedly life-altering. For example, it affected Butch so much that, by middle school, not even the audio-visual club would let him in – and the A-V club was the last refuge for guys totally unsuited for life. Last I heard, he was driving a diaper delivery truck. ‘Nuff said?

OK, so Cantor managed to escape Butch’s fate entirely, ending up as minority whip in the US House although that’s kind of the GOP’s version of driving a truck full of other people’s dirty nappies around. But he still acts like the annoying, whiney kid who just knows that the big kids are waiting to dump him in the urinal.

But instead of proclaiming “I use the poddy now!” Cantor shouts “No one likes Obama! No one likes Obama!”

By the way, if Cantor is Ralph Wiggum, doesn't that make John Boehner Groundskeeper Willie and Michael Steele Nelson Mundt?

Anyway, little Eric is still whiney, still annoying and still saying things that, like Ralph Wiggum, have no connection whatsoever with the world around him. Ralph’s salvation is that he’s funny; Cantor has no value because he thinks, sadly, the non-policies he keeps mouthing make sense.

I wonder: If Eric Cantor asks nicely, will the House A-V club let him join?

Why No Pitchforks? Villagers Stop Google From Filming Their Homes

Shut your blinds! Close your doors! Look what Google is up to now. It is taking photos of everybody’s home!

Apparently, not everyone is happy about it. According to Agence Presse France, angry residents of a Buckinghamshire village blocked the driver of a Google Street View car today who was filming the neighbourhood, saying they feared he would encourage burglaries, a report said Friday.

One resident, Paul Jacobs, told the BBC that he had alerted his neighbours after spotting the car from his window in Broughton in southern England on Wednesday.

"I don't have a problem with Google wanting to promote villages. What I have a problem with is the invasion of privacy, taking pictures directly into the home," Jacobs said. "We've already had three burglaries locally in the past six weeks. If our houses are plastered all over Google it's an invitation for more criminals to strike. I was determined to make a stand, so I called the police."

After his call, a police car arrived in Broughton to reports of a dispute between a crowd of people and a Google Street View contractor.

The Google Street View project set up last month in Britain aims to provide detailed 360-degree views online of streets all over the country.

The project has already been strongly criticised by associations like Privacy International, a pressure group which has launched legal action against the Google.

I agree with the villagers. We have precious little privacy as it is anymore – and it is even worse in Britain where it seems every nook of every street is constantly watched by cameras. If Google shows up on my street, they will find me in front of my house holding a large sign “Indict Bush!” That should put a damper on their filming.

Goodness, An Adult Really Is In Charge!

While much of the MSM was huffing and puffing about “Hug Gate” – the supposed gaffe where Michelle Obama was seen with am arm around Queen Elizabeth, which Buckingham Palace dismissed as a “spontaneous show of mutual affection” – Barack Obama was actually busy doing what a global leader is supposed to do: Leading

It’s forgivable if we sort-of forgot over the past eight years what real leadership looks like.

Instead, we had The Decider and Shotgun Dick with their international bullying, “you’re with us or against us,” “the Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper” and trips to the dark side way of doing things. And when Dubya wasn’t busy grabbing Angela Merkel’s shoulders, praising the Philippines for providing the White House with so many good waiters or ensuring Cheney’s pals at Halliburton and KBR could rob the US Treasury of billions in no-bid contracts, he was busy lying to Congress and destroying 225 years of the American ethic and ethos.

So what does actual American leadership mean? Thursday afternoon in London, the G20 Summit was about to fall apart in shambles over finding a way to pull the world back from the precipice of another Great Depression because China’s president Hu Jintao and French president Nicholas Sarkozy squabbled over limiting tax havens. To resolve the issue, Pres. Obama first takes Hu into a corner of the room to discuss Chinese concerns, then walks Sarkozy into another corner to do the same thing, and then brings the two of them together to work out a compromise.

Huh! Seems like being a community organizer paid off, not just for Obama but now for the world.

Major Impact

In reading European and Asian newspapers today, Obama’s presence at the G20 was hailed as a major triumph because he single-handedly not only save the gathering from collapsing in disagreement, he renewed America’s standing in the world.

“Measures agreed after intervention from Obama” headlines The Guardian.

Crows The Independent: “Markets soar after President brokers 'historic' G20 deal between world leaders to bring end to recession.”

“US President Barack Obama broke a ‘logjam' inside tense G20 negotiations between France and China on Friday (HK time) over the crucial issue of tax havens,” declares The South China Morning Post.

In Paris, Le Monde praises Obama with a lead headline, “Sommets du G20 et de l'OTAN : la méthode Obama.”

Yet what does Friday’s New York Times e-mail summary of the day’s paper say? “Mr. Obama emerged Thursday from his first summit meeting with a handful of modest concrete commitments.”

Did Helene Cooper, the Times reporter at the G20, cover the same meeting? Apparently neither she nor Margaret Warner of PBS’ NewsHour were anywhere near the conference centre because, on Thursday night’s broadcast, Warner characterized Obama as having “an OK day.”

MSM Nonsense

As if to underscore journalism’s poor state, when the 2009 Peabody Awards were announced yesterday, both Saturday Night Live and the video version of The Onion were honoured.

The awards committee says of SNL, “The late-night legend stole the election-year thunder from its satirical competition on cable and may have swayed the race itself.” As for The Onion, “The satirical tabloid's online send-up of 24-hour cable-TV news was hilarious, trenchant and not infrequently hard to distinguish from the real thing.”

When so much of broadcast news is reduced to talking heads yelling at each other, Bill O’Reilly’s lies, out-of-context quotes and “terrorist journalism,” and Glenn Beck’s utter claptrap, it is both refreshing and stunning that so-called fake news sources such as SNL, The Onion, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert receive reporting awards.

Meanwhile, Beck continues to blather, blubber, distort and lie at his new Fox News home:



On To Europe

Having triumphed at the G20, Pres. Obama is now in Strasbourg for a NATO summit. He held a town hall meeting there this morning before the NATO gathering, speaking to a capacity crowd in an auditorium and taking questions as comfortably as if he were talking to folks in, oh, Omaha or Birmingham.

It is truly nice to have a real grown-up, an actual adult, running the United States.

UPDATE: Former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan was on one of the morning network shows saying what a relief it is to not have a president where, everytime he opens his mouth, we're sitting waiting for another gaffe to come out.

DoJ Recommending Bar Assn. Action Against At Least Five

The Justice Dept’s Office of Professional Responsibility will recommend state bar associations take disciplinary measures against at least five former Bush officials: John Yoo, Jay Bybee, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and Monica Goodling, according to a Senate staff member who saw a summary of the report’s most-recent version this week and was interviewed today.

If the DoJ’s recommendations are acted upon, the professional ethics and responsibility committees of state bars could do anything ranging from a wrist slap to a bitch slap: Sanctions, suspension or permanent disbarment.

Reportedly, Yoo, Bybee, Ashcroft and Gonzales are cited for their part in writing or approving the so-called “torture memos’” under which the Bush White House justified using waterboarding, putting detainees in stress positions for prolonged periods of time, sleep depravation, subjecting prisoners to temperature extremes and other inhumane methods that violate US law and international treaties which were signed by the nation.

Goodling is criticized harshly for her role in politicizing the Justice Dept. by gauging job seekers on whether they were “loyal Bushies,” even for career positions which, by law, are non-political.

Yoo is currently a guest lecturer at Chapman University in Orange County, California, and is on leave from a teaching position at the UC-Berkeley law school which he once described as filled with “weird people who dress funny.”

Since May 2005, Ashcroft has run a Washington lobbying firm.

Gonzales is unemployed but rumoured to be in line for a job at the Bush presidential library at Southern Methodist University.

It cannot be determined what Goodling has been doing since being forced to leave her position at Justice, other than getting married.

The most-problematic issue surrounds Bybee. As a Federal Appeals Court judge, he can be removed only if impeached by the House and tried by the Senate. Although a number of federal judges have been impeached over the years, typically it has been for graft or corruption; none was involved in bar association disciplinary proceedings prior to a guilty verdict in the Senate – especially for something as serious as approving torture.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are said to be pushing for an early release of the report, the result of a lengthy investigation.

An Odd, Totally Otherworldly, Experience

I had one of those otherworldly experiences this morning.

I’ve been sick for much of the week but finally felt well enough to drag myself out of bed to plop in front of the television. I switched on Bravo! and was sort of half-dozing when, through my fevered haze, I saw something that didn’t compute. So I pulled myself upright in the chair – causing the napping cat to flee my lap – unsure whether I was sleeping and this was a dream or I was awake.

Nope. I was awake, alright.

What so startled me was that whatever I was watching was a scene shot in front of my great uncle’s house in LA. Well, it was his house; Joe died 25 or 30 years ago. But it got me thinking, for the first time in decades, of Joe and his brother Norman, two of my family’s many characters.

During the Great Depression – the first one, back in the 1930s – there wasn’t any work for them in Milwaukee. Somehow, they scraped together enough to buy a car and head west. To earn gas money along the way, they’d spend a week or two working in brothels in towns on their route: Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Albuquerque, Bakersfield and probably a few other places. Joe could play piano and Norman, who was a pretty big guy, did everything from being a bouncer to cleaning up to running errands for the Madame and her ladies. Best of all, the jobs came with a place to sleep and they got fed three squares a day, both a rarity for guys on the road in the Thirties.

Eventually, they ended up in Los Angeles where there wasn't much more work. But being enterprising fellows, they figured out that entertainers were in demand at Hollywood parties. So they became swamis: Prince Oomba and Prince Boomba managed to get gigs at the Barrymore’s, the Chaplin’s, the various Brothers Marx and so on. They knew no more about fortune telling than I do but they each wrapped a towel around their head as turbans and eeked out a meagre living.

One night, Joe was walking home from one of the parties and saw a drunk stumble out of a bar on Hollywood Blvd. He watched the poor schlub try to get into his car without success so he want to the guy’s aid. He saw that the drunk couldn’t drive so Joe put him in the passenger seat, checked the registration to find where the fellow lived, and drove him home where a very sleepy and suspicious Mexican maid let him in. As he was leaving, Joe handed his Prince Oomba card to the housekeeper.

A few days later, the phone rang in the squalid little rooming house Joe and Norman called home. It was the secretary of the man Joe had aided, who wanted to take him to lunch. Thinking quickly, Joe told the assistant that his brother was with him at the time and wondered if Norman could come along. Hey: It was the depression and somebody was offering a free meal.

At lunch, the man thanked Joe and Norman profusely, confessing he was so drunk he probably would have killed himself had he tried driving home. Then, something came at them out of the blue.

It turned out that when the man wasn’t getting drunk, he was chief purchasing agent for Douglas Aircraft. He asked the pair if they were interested in giving up their swami shtick to go into the scrap metal business. He’d tell them what kind of metal he needed and would buy anything they could get that met his purchasing requirements.

So Joe and Norman became junk men, scouring the city for specific kind of scrap metal and then selling it to Douglas. They were doing alright – certainly better than telling Garbo her fortune – and settled into life as a 30s version of The Redd Foxx Show since they lived in the junk yard’s office.

Then, Dec. 7, 1941 arrived.

Suddenly, every aircraft manufacturer, ship builder, munitions maker and the War Dept. itself needed to buy tons and tons of scrap metal from the boys. They became wealthy during the war and prosperity continued after, boosted by both the Cold and the Korean Wars. They’d long since moved into real homes, Joe on Sunset a few blocks west of the Strip – the home in the programme that interrupted my flu-ish dozing.

By the way, the house warrants an asterisk in American political history.

During the run-up to the 1960 Democratic National Convention in LA, Jack Kennedy wanted to get away from his headquarters at the Ambassador Hotel so he moved into with Joe and his wife – early Kennedy supporters, contributors and fund-raisers – for a day or so. And, yes, Marilyn did show up for a couple of hours. No one said a thing.

The house on Sunset also is an asterisk in my own political history.

When my 9th grade class took the obligatory trip to Washington DC, Joe or Norman arranged for me to meet Kennedy. Somewhere in a dusty box of family photos down in the basement is a picture of an awe-struck, crew-cutted kid standing in the Oval Office with Pres. Kennedy resting his hand on my shoulder. I was in the room for maybe 90 seconds, politely but quickly ushered in and out by someone huge and hulking in a dark suit.

The Spanish Fly In Obama’s Ointment

When Barack Obama meets Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in London this week at the G20 summit, it will be perversely interesting to see if Zapatero is greeted with the famous Obama smile or a less-often-seen, steely-eyed stare.

Spanish investigating magistrate Baltazar Garzón – the man who arrested former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998 – sent a 98-page complaint to prosecutors asking that John Yoo, William Haynes, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee and Doug Feith plus two unnamed others be investigated for war crimes. One of the two unnamed individuals is said to be former CIA head George Tenet, under whose watch CIA operatives tortured captives. Spain claims jurisdiction because five of its citizens were held at Guantanamo and tortured.

As reported here Sunday, coupled with Canada quietly asking top Bushies including the former president and vice president, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales and several others to not enter the country, foreign travel is increasingly problematic for the men who authorized torture and other war crimes during the Bush years. If any of the eight try entering any of the 25 European Union nations, they will likely be arrested and shipped off to Madrid.

While the Canadian admonition was sent privately, the Spanish investigation is very public and adds to the growing pressure on Pres. Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to have the United States undertake its own investigation – something the president’s political advisors keep telling him to sidestep as long as possible.

Indeed, Garzón may well prove to be the Spanish fly in Obama’s ointment of trying to avoid naming an independent war crimes prosecutor.

Proactive Obligation

The fact is, under both US law and its treaty obligations, Obama has a legal requirement to proactively investigate what are now truly serious allegations of war crimes committed by high ranking Bush administration officials. Between Cheney’s repeated, public boasting of ordering torture and information contained in the Justice Dept. “torture memo’s” written by Yoo and Bybee, and approved by John Ashcroft and Gonzales, clearly there is a what lawyers call a prima facie case warranting a formal probe.

In other words, as constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley has said repeatedly on MSNBC, the White House has no viable legal alternative but to investigate, regardless of the possible political cost.

One informed observer believes that Obama is undoubtedly aware of this and may be trying to postpone the inevitable until after the 2010 elections when, he hopes, the Democratic majority in the Senate will increase enough so that his legislative agenda can be passed without scrambling for a handful of Republican votes.

“There’s a certain realpolitick about this,” I was told by a friend in Washington who knows both the Obama White House and how Congress works. “Obama knows what he has to do but he also knows that without 60 sure Senate votes, the GOP will tie up everything else he wants to accomplish in political knots.”

Bad Timing

Obviously, The White House would like the timing of the Spanish initiative to be different. But as Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said, the “investigation … (is) one that the Obama administration has to take very seriously. And it means that the pressure is increasing on this country to open its own criminal investigation.”

The G20 gathering is starting on a tense note anyway, with Britain and the US unhappy about the tepid response of many European governments about providing greater stimulus to their flailing economies. Spain is one of the nations that Washington and London wants to do more so it is uncertain how – or even if – Obama will raise the Garzon investigation with Zapatero at some over the next few days.

Chances are good that, whatever is said at the G20, the war crimes matter will not go quietly into that good night. Garzón has a long track record of successful prosecutions. In addition to the Pinochet matter, he has overseen human rights abuse investigations of the former military government in Argentina, Islamic terrorists operating in Spain, the armed Basque separatist group ETA, as well as major drug traffickers.

Canada To Bush: Y’all Don’t Come Back Soon.

A few weeks ago, George W. Bush slunk into Calgary, Alberta where he was paid a reported $50,000 to address a gathering of oil men; in Alberta, there’s no such thing as oil women even in the 21st century because the province still savours its rough-n’-ready cowboy mentality. It was his first post-presidency speech and Canadians weren’t happy about it.

In fact, so many protesters showed up at the auditorium that Bush had to be squirreled through a maze of tunnels and back alleys to get from The Pallister Hotel where he stayed the few blocks to the venue.

But protestors on the street weren’t the only group seeking to block Bush’s high-priced speech. They were joined by a group of Canadian human rights lawyers who filed suit, trying to prevent Bush from entering the country or to force the federal government to arrest him on charges of suspicion of war crimes.

Although the legal manoeuvre failed, mostly because it was filed to late, it indirectly resulted in the former president being asked by Ottawa to not return.

Stay Away

Three different sources in the minority Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper – an Albertan himself although he did not attend the Calgary event – confirmed to me that after the appearance, the Canadian government quietly sent word to Bush’s office in Texas saying it would be much happier if he didn’t try crossing the border again anytime soon.

In fact, the government reportedly slipped the same cautionary advice to Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld – who’s already been chased once through the streets of Paris by a French prosecutor who wanted to arrest and investigate him for car crimes – Fredo Gonzales, John Ashcroft and reportedly a few others, telling them that it would not be in their best interest to try entering Canada. Since none of the former administration officials are still protected by diplomatic immunity, they could be seized at the border like some aged former SS officer still on the lamb.

“The PM doesn’t need to be confronted by the Opposition asking why he’s letting potential war criminals into the country,” one of the three sources said in an interview this week. Because they are part of the government, none of the three was willing to be quoted by name.

Another of the three sources told me, “Even though Harper likes Bush personally, the country hates him so the PM is trying to avoid what could be an embarrassing cross-border diplomatic incident, doing something that could trigger an election or be seen by the public as coddling a possible war criminal.”

Harper’s razor thin margin of seats in Parliament means he stays in office only with the sufferance of the Liberals, New Democrats and the Bloc Quebecois, who will topple the government sometime in the next year when they decide the timing is right.

Canadian Law

Under Canadian law, the Attorney General in Ottawa can investigate anyone anywhere in the world for war crimes and crimes against humanity even if a Canadian citizen is not involved. However, three Canadian citizens were swept up by Bush war crimes: Two were held at Guantanamo – one is still there – and one was subjected to “extraordinary rendition” when he was stopped at Kennedy Airport and then sent to torture chambers in Syria.

If someone suspected of war crimes tries entering the country, the law says they must be detained at the border. Under the narrowest definition of war crimes in Canadian statutes, Bush and other high-ranking members of his administration committed war crimes on at least four different occasions: When he invaded Iraq without UN approval; when his invasion resulted in the deaths of Iraqi civilians; when he ordered torture to be used during interrogations; and when he denied the Red Cross access to prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the CIA black sites around the world.

While a significant number of people here, in the US and around the world would be positively gleeful at the sight of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld or others on a long list being clapped in irons at the border by the RCMP and hauled off to Kingston Prison while an investigation is undertaken, Ottawa has no interest in prompting a major row with Washington.

It is much easier to ask a handful of potential tourists to stay home.

Republicans Begin Devouring Their Own

It didn’t take the GOP long to begin devouring its own.

No sooner had the Senate passed The Stim yesterday but notorious right-wing funder-in-chief Richard Mellon Scaife’s front organiza- tion, “The National Republican Trust PAC,” sent an urgent e-mail to fellow travellers asking for money to defeat Senators Arlen Specter, Susan Collins and Olympia Snow – all of whom voted for the measure and two of them are up for re-election in 2010.

In large, bold faced type, the e-mail screamed:

We were close to defeating this outrageous plan.

But then three traitorous Republican senators broke ranks to back Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Harry Reid, and the Democrats.

Who are they? Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine.

These three senators have betrayed not only their colleagues but also the basic principles of the Republican Party.

Apparently, to Scaife and Scott Wheeler, executive director at NRTPac, it’s alright to let a coughing, wheezing nation sink into a death throe of unemployment, foreclosures and business failures that would make 1929 and 1930 seem like a garden party by comparison; hell, we’re already teetering on the edge of that particular precipice. Better that than betraying the Republican Party.

But nowhere does the e-mail mention that all of the other House and Senate Republicans – including Specter, Snow and Collins – were busy betraying their country for years while supporting “the basic principles” of their party. Apparently, these basic principles include rubber-stamping everything from the Cheney-engineered and oil industry-written “energy plan” to passing the (un)PATRIOT Act, blindly supporting Bush’s Iraq War folly, turning a blind eye to torture, ignoring Al Gonzales’ crimes at Justice, doubling the national debt and bungling the first half of the Wall St. bailout.

Yes, Mr. Scaife, it’s understandable why you are so determined to rid the party of its few remaining reasonable people and stuff it full of lead headed toadies. Clearly, what will bring the party out of the wilderness voters kicked it into the past two elections are more folks like Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Mitt Romney and Tim Pawlenty. Oh, and Richard Mellon Scaife.

Party First, Last, Always

The irrational harangue NRTPac’s Wheeler sent out continues:

Those of us who were forced to watch in pain as liberal Republicans defected to support Democrats now have an outlet for our frustrations.

The truth is that these three liberal Republicans are RINOS – Republicans in Name Only – who are notorious for siding with Democrats when important legislation comes up for a vote.

By supporting The National Republican Trust, you know your donation will be used to punish those RINOs who have sold us out time and time again.

Besides voting to save the Republic from economic catastrophe, exactly how did Specter, Snow and Collins sell out the Republican Party “time and time again”? For a week, Specter blocked the Senate Judiciary Committee from voting on Eric Holder’s Attorney General nomination. Collins pushed tons of tax breaks into The Stim while removing billions for upgrading schools and helping ease state budgets. Snow voted to send Sam Alito to the Supremes.

To Scaife and NRTPac, an elected official’s sole purpose is to support the Republican Party, the nation be damned. To them, the Senate isn’t really “the world’s greatest deliberative body” but a place where Republican Solons do what Rush Limbaugh says.

Really Goofy People

Naturally, NRTPac has its own program to stimulate the economy: More tax cuts for Richard Mellon Scaife and his friends. This despite the fact that economists on the right and left – including Nobel Prize winners – agree that tax cuts won’t get us out of this Republican-engineered economic morass.

But just in case people receiving the e-mail think The Stim might actually be a good idea, Wheeler tosses in the kitchen sink:

It is critically important that we do this, because Obama is planning to push through in the coming weeks for programs like socialized healthcare, reducing our military strength — even legalizing millions of illegal aliens.

Socialized healthcare? When did the president say anything about socialized healthcare? He does believe, like a majority of the country, that everyone should have health coverage but he never whispered a hint about “socializing” medicine.

As for reducing our military strength and legalizing “millions” of illegal aliens, what is Wheeler smoking? Not even socialist Senator Bernie Sanders talks about reducing an overblown military or unconditional amnesty for illegal aliens.

Scaife and Wheeler are really goofy people. What’s sad is there are equally goofy people who’ll read the e-mail and send money.

- With a h/t thanks to Jill Parlee. -

The GOP Floats Out To Sea, Alone On A Shrinking Iceberg

There isn’t much point showing the Republican Party that they’ve lost it completely and are floating out to sea, alone and abandoned on a shrinking iceberg like an aged bull walrus driven from the herd.

After all, new party chair Michael Steele doesn’t know that when you work, you have a job and vice versa; it doesn’t matter who signs the pay check.

House GOP members should split the cost of a dictionary with Steele because many of them harrumph the stimulus is “just a spending bill,” not grasping that stimulating the economy means government spending. I learned that in a Grade 5 unit on the Great Depression.

Even more preposterous, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell decried the stimulus as not being in Republican interests; I guess he forgot that his party spent 12 years enacting laws protecting “Republican interests.” It’s what heaved us into this nose-diving, sink-hole of an economy to begin with.

He also forgot that his party was routed in two straight elections because Americans had their fill of “Republican interests.”

The nonsense being spouted by the GOP might play well in red corners of the South and among well-heeled donors in Houston or San Diego. But when laid against the desperate faces of the unemployed in Elkhart, Indiana or Fort Myers Florida and Peoria Illinois – all cities in counties that voted for John McCain – who jammed civic centers this week to hear Pres. Obama answer questions about fixing their seemingly-hopeless plight, it is easy to see how divorced from reality the Grand Old Poopniks party has become.

Bury Reagan Already

Just as Democrats ran against Herbert Hoover until well into the Sixties, the Republicans have been trotting out Ronald Reagan for nearly three decades without any real reason except he was a kindly old man with hair dyed orange.

But while Hoover let the country slide deeper and deeper into the Depression, becoming the villain of multiple generations of Americans, Reagan did nearly as much harm as Hoover but pulled off creating a much better persona. Ever seen a picture of Hoover smiling or Reagan frowning? As Will Bunch pointedly documents in Tear Down This Myth, despite what Republicans claim today when invoking their hero, Reagan raised taxes, spending and the government’s size during every year of his two term presidency except the first.

In truth, the so-called Great Communicator was just the ultimate flim-flam artist of his time, slicker than P.T. Barnum but just as adept at remembering “there’s a sucker born every minute.”

The trouble with the Republican Party today is three fold:
1. They actually believe the myth Michael Deaver and Nancy Reagan created about Reagan as a low tax, small government prophet.
2. They somehow believe that Reagan did a good job running the nation during his eight years, forgetting Iran-Contra, Star Wars and a tripling of the defence budget.
3. They think he was responsible for ending the Cold War and bringing the Soviet Union to heel even though it was crumbling economically and socially for at least 10 years before Reagan.

The faster Republicans realise that Reagan was the Wizard of Oz, the quicker they will be able to rehabilitate the party instead of remaining a bunch of braying obstructionists yowling at an eager but dwindling band of fellow travellers.

Recognizing Bankruptcy

There are two sure-fire signs the GOP is intellectually bankrupt: Since the election, it asked Joe the Plumber for advice and it touts Sarah Palin is its next Great White Hope. Between them, I’m not sure they have enough smarts to open a childproof aspirin bottle.

Yet the Democrats in Washington still think the Republicans are worth listening to and actually seem to be paying attention to what they say.

According to Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, every dollar of government spending on projects such as infrastructure returns $1.75 to the economy while every dollar of tax cuts returns only 75-cents to the economy. Even a kid running a lemonade stand in front of her home on a hot August afternoon can figure out which is a better deal. So why did Dems allow 42% of the stimulus package to get eaten up by tax cuts? Yes, some cuts will benefit the middle class but, in dollar terms, the biggest chunk goes to the rich and scandalous – meaning GOP contributors and large businesses.

It makes political sense for Pres. Obama to tell audiences that many who oppose his stimulus bill do so from “sincere conviction.” And there may be one or two people in the House and Senate who do have philosophical objections – but no more than that. And Democrats ought to stop molly-coddling them.

John McCain? He’s such a weathered old whore that, in the same speech this week in the Senate, he opposed and supported tax cuts in the bill. Mitch McConnell? Besides looking like he always smells something bad, he hasn’t stood for a principled idea since arriving in Washington. John Boehner? There’s a photo of Boehner next to the word "charlatan" in the dictionary.

Instead of making nice to vulnerable Senators such as Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, Democrats ought to let them know – using every Senatorial courtesy possible – that if they buck Obama on the stimulus, health care reform and other key measures, they won’t know what hit them in 2010 when they’re up for re-election.

It’s one thing to try fostering a spirit of bi-partisanship in Washington. It’s another to give away 45% of much needed stimulus dollars as tax cuts for the wealthy and for business. If this is a start, what will happen when health care finally reaches the Hill?

February Is A Poignant Month

February is a poignant month for it marks my parent’s wedding anniversary and mother’s birthday, and both come a few weeks after the 10th commemoration of her dying. Probably because Barack Obama’s inauguration is still fresh in my mind, and she was a lifelong progressive Democrat, I’ve been thinking a lot about Joyce lately: More than anyone else, even more than events or friends or causes, it was Joyce who gently nudged me further and further left during her lifetime.

It might seem like a long journey from being the youngest daughter in a family that escaped the worst effects of the Depression to a post-war, suburban wifey with two kids playing in the yard who made a mad dash inside when they smelled cookies coming out of the oven, to becoming a woman so vocally and actively incensed by the world around her that she ended up on one of Richard Nixon’s enemies list.

It might seem to be a long journey but it really wasn’t. Well, not for Joyce.

Raised in a family that managed to financially cling to some scrap of the middle-class through the Great Depression, she grew up in a home where her father ruled. Period. If her mother displeased my grandfather – the grandchildren all called him Papa – somehow, he simply refused to speak to anyone in the house. Sometimes, the silence went on for days.

Doing well in school was very important but so was setting the table properly and helping to get dinner ready on time. Evenings were spent doing homework lying on the floor in front of the humungous Stomberg-Carlson radio in the living room. Family vacations were annual, usually in August at a resort near Green Lake, Wisconsin, a small place with housekeeping cabins that barred Jews, Irish and – it goes without saying – blacks. Since my grandfather was Jewish, when they were very little Joyce and her sister needed a bit of coaching before the trip: “We’re Jewish at home but not on vacation.”

Outwardly, mother grew up an ordinary girl in an ordinary home with ordinary expectations and ordinary dreams. And Joyce was well on her way to living the kind of ordinary life her parent’s anticipated for their two daughters.

Until she hit the University of Wisconsin.

An Early Contrarian

Joyce had it in her head that she wanted to study architecture, a dream that lasted until her first meeting with an academic advisor. That’s when she heard, for the first time in her life, there were limits that come with being born female: “Don’t be silly,” she was told. “Girls can’t be architects. Have you thought about teaching or nursing?”

“Have you thought about encouraging students instead of making them feel like a fool?” was her tart response. She rose to her full five feet nothing tall and stomped from his office feeling as if she were a giant.

Thus was the first early budding of a trouble-making radical.

In fact, after her session with the advisor in 1939, she actually tried organizing a campus protest. Unfortunately for Joyce, she was the only girl at UW that year interested in studying architecture, let alone be willing to protest. The whole thing fizzled before it began. According to Joyce, the only protest her freshman year promoted staying out of the new European war, a rally she refused to attend even though her entire sorority went because she thought America would be in the war eventually and ought to start preparing rather than pretend it was an irritating inconvenience involving “foreigners.”

Without explanation or reason, my mind snaps to when my sister and I were kids.

One morning as we were eating a Rice Krispies breakfast, mother heard the garbage truck in the alley over the snap, crackle and pop in our bowls. She leapt from the table as if shot from the Quaker Oats cannon – cereal figured heavily in school day breakfasts – and ran out with a bag that Dad forgot to dump in the pail on his way to work. Wearing no makeup and one of those "lush, plush" Target robes made out of some synthetic fabric that squeaks when you rub it against itself, Joyce headed out the door before she had time to apply make-up. Besides the green robe, she wore a pair of faded, fluffy slippers, her hair was still in rollers. (Remember rollers? I still can't fathom how anyone slept with them in their head.)

Anyway, she dashed down the alley looking like the Mad Woman of Genza shouting, "Am I too late for the garbage?" The guy hanging off a step on the rear of the truck yelled back, "Plenty of room, lady, jump in."

She had a parallel haunting experience with the man who read the Minnegasco meter when I was about 11.

Joyce was carrying a load of laundry to the machine. I had left a bunch of toys around in the family room, through which she had to pass to get to the laundry area. One of the things not put away was my baseball batting helmet, which was supposed to be stored with my other equipment behind the Kenmore washer-dryer. Because her arms were filled, she put my batting helmet on her head.

Unbeknownst to mother, the meter reader had come in the house as he usually did if the door was open and walked downstairs. (Those were simpler, safer times and it was Minneapolis, after all.) Just as he entered the laundry room unnoticed, mother decided there was room to toss her bathrobe in the wash so he caught her standing in a bra and girdle – another bit of remarkable fashion yesteryear – with my batting helmet on her head.

The meter reader let out an embarrassed, “Oh, God, excuse me!” They stared at each other in dumbfounded surprise for a moment or two before the meter reader mumbled, "I hope your team wins, lady" as he ran quickly up the steps. That month, my parents received an estimated bill. And from then on, the meter reader always knocked - even if the door was open.

Now I’m back in 1968 and by the time Dick Nixon narrowly defeated our sort-of next door neighbor at the time, Hubert Humphrey, for president, it was a world where all around people were losing their heads while she kept hers.

Joyce had her first big political fight with dad over dinner one night when she called LBJ a liar over the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Phil, still stuck in a post-World War Two “my country right or wrong” mentality, was apoplectic that his wife, the mother of his children, the woman who kept the home fires burning while he was in the Navy during WW2, not only held an opinion different than his but dared to express it. Publicly. She wrote letters to our Congressman, both Minnesota senators and the local newspapers opposing the Vietnam War. Worse, as far as dad was concerned, she actually defied him and marched in an anti-war parade through downtown Minneapolis.

She knew she was right and history proved her so; eventually, she even convinced her husband.

Say what?

Phil, who spent his life convinced that he knew all there was to know and only god knew all the rest, actually came to see that Joyce was right about the war, if nothing else in their half-century marriage. He pushed through an anti-war resolution at a county Democratic Party convention and between his stand and mother’s letters, they so delighted Tricky Dick they got their mail opened regularly, their taxes audited repeatedly and their name on one of his countless enemy lists.

Tricky Dick And Mom

When the lists were released, finding her name on one was a highpoint of her life.

Joyce has been gone now for a decade. I'm glad I still carry around such vivid memories of her.

Bad Things Happen When Youngsters Write Ads

I know that it's typical in the advertising agency business for creative types to be about 14 years old but the trend seems to be slipping onto the client side, as well. Take the current commercials for the 2009 Lincoln Continental.

Apparently, no one on either the agency side or the account side is old enough to remember - let alone have lived through - the Vietnam War. I'm not sure they even read about the war or how it tore the US apart. But right now, Lincoln is running a spot where the music is an old Vietnam-era protest song, Ground Control to Major Tom. (And, yes, I used to think it was Major Tong, too.) It is an allegorical anti-war song about a pilot who becomes lost and trapped after being shot into space for a mission he doesn't understand.

OK, it's one thing when a major bank used a Bob Dylan song five years ago to attract accounts from then-increasingly wealthy (and now increasingly poor) boomers. But I hardly put The Times They Are A-Changin' in the same category as an anti-war protest song.

Since boomers are the only people who might be remotely interested in driving an overgrown, outsized tank like a Lincoln, why would the agency (or Ford, for that matter) want to dredge up all of those bad old memories of riots and draft cards and draft dodging and the generation gap? Why not something happy like a Beach Boys number (perhaps something like Little Duece Coupe) or even the Stones (maybe Brown Sugar) from the same era?

That the agency pitched the idea is one thing; agencies are always pitching lousy ideas to clients. But that the car company execs bought it is another matter altogether. And we're bailing out Detroit for this? No wonder the auto industry is in such bad shape.

Sadly, it’s becoming a widespread phenomenon not limited to Ford's Lincoln. The new Obama-fied Pepsi campaign is also using a lot of '60s tunes. And, anyway, the music belies Pepsi's current play-on-words tag line: Every generation refreshes itself.

I shouldn't think any of this speaks to the millenial generation. Or even the Pepsi generation, for that matter.

Dubya As Only David Could See Him

Yes, there are tons of 10 best and 10 worst lists around. But David Letterman came up with his own unique version of George Bush's Top 10 Presidential Moments.



We will never see the likes of George again. Hopefully.

Poor Leon Penatta Won’t Know What Hit Him When He Hits The CIA

Talk about setting up a bright, highly competent, loyal, nice guy for failure.

When Barack Obama named former Clinton chief of staff Leon Penatta to run the Central Intelligence Agency yesterday, he picked a man whose biggest plus is having loudly protested the agency’s use of torture including waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques.” He also chose a man who has deep government experience, a clear understanding of intelligence agency budgets, and skill at managing a bureaucracy.

What Panetta doesn’t have is the foggiest notion about the arcane inner workings and culture of The Company, which can be as complex, subtle, unfathomable and biting as the aristocratic society depicted in Brideshead Revisited.

“One of two things will happen,” an old friend replied this morning to an e-mail I sent after the announcement. The man spent more than 25 years at the CIA, sometimes travelling under false passports, sometimes analysing disparate bits of incoming intelligence behind a desk at headquarters, sometimes running a foreign station. “Either (Penatta) will figure things out quickly and adapt to the culture while he tries fixing it, or it will eat him alive. But, generally, outsiders don’t do well if they’re parachuted into top jobs at Langley.”

The Bush 41 Factor

Yesterday, in boosting Penatta’s likely chances for success, some commentators pointed to the tenure of George H. W. Bush as CIA director as an example of how an “amateur” can grasp the reins of the agency firmly and succeed. Indeed, Bush 41’s time at Langley was so well regarded by the nation’s intelligence community that the CIA’s sprawling, multi-building campus in suburban Virginia bears his name in tribute.

But Bush the Elder wasn’t exactly an amateur.

For one thing, both the Bush and Prescott families had long ties to the secret world, dating back before the days of the OSS in World War 2. For another, besides heading the CIA, Bush Senior was ambassador to Japan. The Tokyo embassy houses what traditionally is the largest CIA station in the Pacific, charged with monitoring China and North Korea. In his position, Poppy Bush worked closely with a wide range of agency types during his tenure in Tokyo, often involved in decisions about which bits of intelligence to pass on and how much local analysis should go in a report to headquarters.

In short, G. H. W. Bush knew the people, the operation and the culture.

Restoring Confidence

Working Penatta’s his favour is that career officers at the CIA know Panetta’s first task is to restore morale, which was devastated during the Bush years because intelligence was so heavily politicized.

His second job is to ensure everyone knows that the Obama White House wants their best work, unslanted and unbiased, and that the likelihood is nil that Vice President Joe Biden will be looking over their shoulders constantly as was Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby and David Addington’s practice.

If Panetta can accomplish these twin undertakings in the first year on the job, he’ll buy himself some room to learn – and manoeuvre his way through – the CIA’s Byzantine mores and culture.

“People will be very suspicious at first,” I am told by another intelligence community source.

“They won’t be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt," she adds "Hopefully, he’ll work fast on rebuilding confidence of officers in The White House and DNI (Director of National Intelligence) so he can get on with the real job ensuring the agency produces the best intelligence we can come up with.”

It's Time To Bring Cuba In From The Cold

At the end of the state funeral for Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau on October 3, 2000, official mourners were milling about in front of Montreal’s Notre-Dame Basilica. Cuban president Fidel Castro stepped over to Jimmy Carter to ask a serious political question:

What did Carter think of using the love of baseball shared by Cubans and Americans as a way to begin normalizing relations between the two nations? Castro even offered to send an airplane to bring Carter and anyone else the former president thought should accompany him to Havana for a meeting to begin the process.

Carter thought it a terrific idea and when he returned home, he called Paul Beeston, then Major League Baseball’s chief operating officer. Would Beeston travel to Havana with Carter to cut a deal with Castro? Beeston agreed and when Carter asked the White House for clearance, Bill Clinton green lighted the trip.

But before the meeting could be scheduled, the Supreme Court gave George Bush the presidency. Bush had campaigned hard on a vitriolic anti-Castro platform in South Florida, Between the old cold warriors and neo-cons surrounding him, Bush would never endorse a sensible Cuban policy so Carter and Beeston never met with Castro to work out "baseball diplomacy." The best chance since 1962 to co-exist with Cuba disappeared in a cloud of dust thicker than when David “Big Papi” Ortiz slides into second.

Obama’s Opportunity

David Erickson, a senior fellow at The InterAmerican Institute and author of The Cuba Wars told the PBS NewsHour’s Ray Suarez last week that Cubans in the US and on the island look at the incoming Obama administration with both hope and fear. “There’s hope there will be change in US-Cuba relations and fear it won’t come fast enough.”

Not since Allan Dulles sabotaged Pres. Dwight Eisenhower’s attempt to establish a rapport with the Cuban revolution in 1959 has there been as good an opportunity to put decades of failed American policy in the past. On the NewsHour, Erickson added, “Five decades of evidence shows that the US attempt to starve out the Castro regime hasn’t worked. The United States must take a far-ranging look at its relationship with Cuba.”

The fact is, Cuban-Americans – and Americans generally – simply ignore the countless bans on everything involving Cuba. Travel restrictions? Americans detour through Canada, Mexico or the Bahamas to holiday in Havana or Varadero. Ban sending cash to Cuban family members? Non-US organisations and even Canadians and Mexicans on holiday carry money to the Cuban relatives of Americans. Trade restrictions? Establish a complex web of arms-length, off-shore subsidiaries as difficult to unravel as Rubic's cube.

The policy is a charade.

Moreover, with first generation exiles who fled the revolution dying off, second and third generation Cuban-Americans see the folly in American policy.

“It’s crazy,” a dazzling Cuban-American woman living in Miami told a friend of mine who was sitting with her at the pool bar of a Varadero resort. “I have to fly to Nassau and wait three hours for a connecting Cubana flight just to get here. It doesn’t take you that long from Montréal.”

Priorities and Politics

Adjusting America’s Cuba policy will not be Obama’s top priority, not with needing to get his $800-billion economic recovery plan through Congress quickly, disengaging from Iraq, figuring out what will be workable in Afghanistan, undoing Bush’s damaging executive orders, closing GITMO, and a host of other pressing matters.

Moreover, attempts to change Washington’s relationship with Cuba will run into rear-guard attacks from right-wing Republicans, neo-cons and aging cold warriors. Using high voltage words like “henchmen," former Bush Latin America advisor Adolfo Franco said on the same NewsHour segment that Obama should take the advice of John McCain and not meet with Cuban officials. He didn’t explain why anyone in the White House should listen to McCain on anything.

“This is not the time to infuse the Cuban economy with foreign currency dollars,” Franco stated. “Instead, we should stand with those fighting Castro.”

Except the only people still fighting Castro are his fellow neo-cons and a handful of octagenarians sipping Café Cubana in Miami's Little Havana.

Indeed, to the vast majority of Cubans, the government in Havana is irrelevant to their daily lives. Also, Franco ignored a political reality: By shunning Raul Castro, Washington pushes Cuba closer to Venezuela and Bolivia. The US made the same mistake in 1959, practically shoving Fidel into the arms of Nikita Khrushchev and Mao Tse-Tung – and we know how well that worked out; just ask anyone who lived through the Cuban missile crisis.

It’s time to bring Cuba in from the cold. Barack Obama has a chance to fix a policy that’s been wrong – and ineffective – for 50 years.

A Big ‘Hoorah!’ To The NYT’s Dexter Filkins

In a devastatingly critical examination of the narco-state formerly known as Afghanistan, the New York Times’ Dexter Filkins today documents case after case of wide spread corruption on a massive scale in the Afghan government, including officials ranging from low-level, local bureaucrats right up to the brother of President Hamid Karzai. Filkins shows the difficult situation Pres. Obama will face in dislodging a surging Taliban, and the feudal war lords who’ve run the country for centuries, both of which are profiting from opium smuggling, and paying and receiving bribes.

It didn’t take years cultivating sources or meeting a “Deep Throat” in dangerous Kabul alleys for him to pen the piece. Filkins arrived in Kabul only about two months ago following several years covering Iraq, interrupted by a year in the US to write a book. In reading the article, it seems he did much of his reporting simply standing in front of government offices and court houses, talking to people coming out after they paid a bribe to judges and other officials, or refused to do so.

So, why did it take so long for any Western journalist to write this story? Moreover, why did the Bush administration allow the situation to get so out of hand?

Could-a, Should-a

The outstanding Filkins article highlights a major problem in newsrooms today. His article could have – and should have – been written a year or more ago; it’s not as if corruption showed up in Kabul at Halloween as a trick-and-treat handout.

Why has the news media been sleeping, especially since thousands more American troops will be re-routed to Afghanistan from Iraq after the Obama inauguration?

Part of the lack of coverage might be explained by the relatively few number of American, British and European reporters based permanently in Kabul. A perfect storm of tight budgets which means fewer reporters that leads to dwindling international coverage coupled with a lack of editorial interest and a preference for dramatic battlefield stories when reporters are loosed on the country leaves little room for what journalists call “enterprise stories” – those that take time to report and write.

To illustrate the issue, I’ve realised that the BBC has more reporters stationed permanently in Africa than most major US print and broadcast news outlets have in Europe and Asia combined. True, the broadcaster gets generous funding from the British government added to by a license fee levied on each TV set in the country along with ad revenue from some of its networks, but how it allocates its annual budget is very different than the way its American counterparts dole out cash to news operations.

No wonder Americans are so ill-informed about the world. Even if they want to know more, they have to really go out of their way to find key information.

Missed Opportunities

Meanwhile, after the American invasion in 2001, Afghanistan became poppy central, harvesting more plants than anywhere else on earth. While some Western media have covered this angle off-and-on, before Filkins’ story no major newspaper or network has documented in such detail the extent and pervasiveness of drugs-related corruption. Compared to what goes on daily throughout Afghanistan’s government, Rob Blagojevich is a clumsy amateur.

Under George Bush, the American and NATO strategy of dealing with poppy growing in Afghanistan has been to send troops across farmland destroying crops. This did two things: First, it alienated Afghan farmers whose land wouldn’t support any other agriculture. Second, it gave war lords, drug lords and the Taliban an opportunity to say to farmers, “Come join us. We’ll protect you and buy your harvest for cash.”

In yet one more mistake on a long list of foreign policy errors, the White House missed a chance to slow Afghanistan’s opium trade and deny insurgents a ready source of hard currency, which also propels corruption. Instead of burning fields, Bush could have followed the successful lead of earlier US efforts to control poppy growing and opium smuggling in Turkey. Using US money, the Turkish government buys up the annual harvest, handing it over to the Americans who, in turn, sell some to pharmaceutical companies – which uses an opium offshoot in many prescription drugs – and burn the rest.

The strategy works, and it's a lot cheaper than sending in the cavalry: Farmers are content, world opium supplies are cut, crime lords are cut out of the picture and pharmaceutical companies have a ready supply of a much-needed ingredient. Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld reportedly vetoed the proven Turkish approach in Afghanistan, just one more tragedy in the long list of Bush administration tragedies.

The way the US government, newspapers, cable and broadcasters have dealt with Afghanistan reminds me of a line from Paddy Chayefsky’s brilliant 1971 film, The Hospital. George C. Scott, playing an exhausted and frustrated suicidal physician, decides to quit medicine and run off to Arizona with Diana Rigg – well, she’s reason enough to quit any job and run off anywhere with her – because he realises patients are being “neglected to death.”

Between journalism’s indifference and US government missteps, Afghanistan is being “neglected to death.” Let's all give a very big “Hoorah!” to Dexter Filkins for showing the results.

Fanfare For A New Administration

A hat tip to the folks at the Editor & Publisher blog who thought this piece directed by the greatest maestro of the 20th century, Arturo Toscanini, would have been an appropriate way to mark the arrival of 2009, perhaps as the Times Square ball descended.

I may have a better idea. The music opens the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, to my mind the greatest fanfare ever written. I’d suggest using it to open Barack Obama’s Inaugural Concert at the Kennedy Center.



I used to have a recording of this performance; the boxed album set included Toscanini directing all nine Beethoven symphonies. They were on records and I wish I could find the same set on CD.

“Please Cry For Me, I’m Al Gonzales.”

Like tens of millions – and growing – of his increasingly desperate countrymen, he is out of work and cannot find a job; worse, nobody in his chosen profession will even interview him. His previously good friends don’t want to publish his story so he is reduced to keeping a journal for his sons. He wonders what went wrong with his carefully crafted, uniquely American, tale of the dirt poor boy, son of immigrants, who makes very good. He cannot grasp how his world fell apart, so completely and so quickly.

He actually wonders if he is simply another victim of the times.

At the end of his tether, the man finally goes to a support group luncheon meeting only blocks from the building that once housed his large office, where sympathetic ears listen to his tale of woe. Those gathered around the table nod sympathetically, shake their head in sadness and wish him well when they shake his hand as he leaves.

As the man walked out of the office, I wonder if he heard a twisted version of an Andrew Lloyd Weber song from Evita echoing in his head: “Please cry for me, I’m Al Gonzales.”

Completes The Trifecta

I almost hurled my breakfast when I read an article in the on-line Wall Street Journal about Alberto Gonzales’ meeting with the paper’s editorial board earlier this week. It’s clear that the selective memory of the man who “can’t recall” when testifying before Congressional committees hasn’t gotten any better with the time. He doesn’t even remember the reality – forget about specific facts – of his tenure as White House counsel and Attorney General.

Fredo's whining, coupled with Dick “Dare You To Indict Me” Cheney’s self-admitted war crimes and George “Who, Me Worry?” Bush’s total fogging of the past eight years completes the administration’s Trifecta of distortions, dissembling and dishonesty.

"What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?" he sniffed to the editors.

Uhm, let’s see.

There is the politicalisation of the Justice Dept., including widespread employment discrimination and the infamous US Attorney scandal. There was his racing to the hospital bed of an extremely ill John Ashcroft to get the man, still recovering from major surgery, to sign a re-authorization of secret wire tapping that the AG’s temporary fill-in, James Comey, wouldn’t sign. He signed torture memos. He destroyed the DoJ's Civil Rights Division. Things were so bad, Justice’s own Inspector General investigated him on charges of perjury and obstruction, not exactly exonerating Gonzales.

We can add warrantless-searches, the Military Commissions Act, GITMO torture, abandoning the Geneva Conventions and shocking tolerance for corruption of a department that, for the benefit of the nation and the rule of law, must maintain its independence, to the list.

Add in almost no redeeming qualities. As Adam Cohen, chief legal analyst for CBS News wrote not long ago, “He brought shame and disgrace to the Department because of his lack of independent judgment on some of the most vital legal issues of our time. And he brought chaos and confusion to the department because of his lack of respectable leadership over a cabinet-level department among the most important in the nation.

“He neither served the longstanding role as "the people's attorney" nor fully met and tamed his duties and responsibilities to the constitution. He was a man who got the job not because he was supremely qualified or notably well-respected among the leading legal lights of our time, but because he had faithfully and with blind obedience served President George W. Bush for years in Texas (where he botched clemency memos in death penalty cases) and then as White House counsel (where he botched the nation's legal policy on torture).”

The Worst Ever?

Along with John Mitchell, Dick Nixon’s felonious attorney general, Alberto Gonzales may well be among the worst AG’s the nation has had in the past 100 years. Yet, Fredo sees no connection between his lawlessness and why law firms won’t hire him or why publishers are scorning his memoir.

Frankly, he has proven to be such an inept lawyer, I would not let Alberto Gonzales draw up a simple will. And if I were a book editor, I wouldn't trust his memory.

And so, with deep apologies to Mr. Weber, Sarah Brightman and Madonna, let’s all sing in 2009 together:

Please cry for me, I’m Al Gonzales
The truth is I don’t remember
All those bad mem-ries
My lying existence
I kept my promise
To not remember
I kept my promise
Don’t keep your distance.