It's...... "doug's site's Quadrennial Presidential Inaugural Special"

I'd like to review some highlights of four American Presidents and their Inaugerations

This is footage from the March 4, 1897 Inaugural of William McKinley.  It's probably the earliest surviving footage of an American President coming into office. (The narrator obviously was added to the footage probably in the 1930''s. He's kind of a smart-aleck if you ask me.)

McKinley was Governor of Ohio, and the political "creature" of Ohio "Boss" Mark Hanna, a king-maker who matched up the money to the candidate---kind of like Karl Rove was the GW Bush.   In those days it was considered unseemly for a politician to openly go about the country campaigning for President.  So McKinley, after being nominated at the Republican Convention, campaigned from the "front porch" of his home in Canton, Ohio. Usually the only clue voters had to how a Presidential Candidate might run the country came from brief speeches and open "letters" that wound up  printed in newspapers. 

McKinley is best remembered for his role in promoting war with Spain over freeing Cuba, or making it an American sate-lite, take your pick.  This led to The Spanish-American War, in which the United States gained control of the Phillip-pines and  Guam in the Pacific (Hawaii had been annexed in Grover Cleveland's term in 1894). Also Porto Rico and Cuba fell to the American flag.  Cuba was granted a nominal independence in 1903 and American-soldiers fought against Philippines "Insurrectionists" and killed thousands of them in the course of making an outpost of Empire out of the archipelago that the Japanese tried to steal from us after we stole  it fair and square from the Spanish.  McKinley was assassinated a few months into his second  term by a self-proclaimed-anarchist named Leon Cogololz, at The Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York.  He died of his wounds from the assassin's bullet about ten days later.

Theodore Roosevelt became President after that.  "Teddy" was the leader of the-irregular "Rough-Riders" in Cuba, of course.  He charged up Kettle Hill, not San Juan Hill in Cuba, while his men crawled up. He became a national hero. It was a bloody war, but more Americans died in hospitals from disease in Cuba than Spanish bullets. The "Yellow Press" of William Randolph Hearst and his "New York Journal"  had exploited anti-Spanish feeling for years before so the public was ready to join the European nations in spreading war for national "honor" (i.e., getting richer off creating colonies). 

 Many historians cite Roosevelt as the man who had started the Spanish-American War in February of 1898 (as a then assistant Secretary of the Navy) by sending the American fleet from Hong Kong to Manila.  The Secretary of the Navy was out to lunch when Theodore sent the cable to Admiral Dewey.  Some might say Teddy was "out to lunch" himself, but perhaps it can be said he only lit the fuse and the dynamite had been planted already by others.

  Dewey's ships smashed the Spanish Naval forces in Manila Bay.  All that was left was to send the Marines and the Army in to capture Manila and then attack the  Philippine citizen army, who mistakenly thought they were going to be liberated.

  Three years later Roosevelt had gone from assistant secretary to Governor of New York to Vice President in March 1901 and on to President!   

Mark Hanna, the old king-maker, was quoted as privately saying, "Oh no, that damn cowboy is President!"                    

Here's an item that doesn't have to do directly with an Inaugural "per se" but does show how a President could use a new medium--recorded speech, probably on a cylinder--to get himself elected. This is a recording of  Woodrow Wilson making a speech against "The Trusts"-- those big business hounchos who held the American economy in their grip --during the 1912 Presidential Election.  (This is interesting to me because I had never heard Wilson's voice.) Wilson became only the second Democrat since the Civil War to each the Presidency, running as an economic reformer.It was Wilson who championed the creation of a Federal Reserve Agency to lend some government control to monetary affairs in 1913.  He's better remembered for leading America into World War I, the backlash of which turned many Americans off to its new role as a responsible world power and doomed his plans for US participation in the League of Nations.

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And here is some rare color footage of Theodore's fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Swearing-In Celebration for his third term as President in January in 1941. I'll bet those World War I-era tanks seen in the parade didn't exactly have the Germans real scared about America getting into the war.  

And here's an actual swearing-in ceremony, taken from the 1977 Inaugural of Jimmy Carter, the one-term governor of Georgia who was elected President.  Some might say this was the first of very few highlights to his presidential career. Well, he had a good 40 seconds to start off at least.  

"Sweet Caroline" for Senator: Spare Me the Kennedy Coronation!

The word in the media lately is that Caroline Kennedy is being seriously considered by the governor of New York State to replace Hillary Clinton when the latter assumes her duties as President-elect Obama's Secretary of State.

Despite my general admiration for the Kennedys in politics, I think this would send a bad signal to the country  and the rest of the world if Governor David Paterson makes this appointment.  As far as I can see Caroline's chief qualification to this high office would be her last name.  That's not enough.  I am also concerned because, until recently, the last of John and Jacqueline Kennedy's living children has been a virtual recluse from public life.  In her speeches she always appears ill at ease.  Her major qualification for public office  has been in giving out the JFK "Profile in Courage" Award once a year. Oh, she also has written one book--about privacy in public life.  Kind of a thin resume really.

As a person and as a mother and a professional at whatever philanthropic foundations she chairs I'm sure she is up to the tasks at hand.  But a shy and retiring type is not what the Senate needs right now.  Frankly, the whole business to me reeks of a type of nobility and privileged  preference that is odious to a republic.

Where  Ms. Kennedy to a actually run for the office and "canvas the hustings" (as her dad used to say) for votes, then I would likely change my mind were she "up to snuff" in the public arena of speeches, interviews and debates.  As it is, she is more like her mother than her father and probably should stay mainly in private life.  There are surely more qualified people among the 17 million of souls who reside in The Empire State.       

If she were about to be  appointed a US Senator  from my state I would have to write to the governor to strongly disagree.  And, lest you think I'm being sexist, I'm not.  Were John Kennedy Junior still alive--with the possibility of his being promoted from private to public life looming up in the future, I would be set against it as well.  Let an already seasoned elected official replace Senator Clinton I say.  And forget the anointing of quasi-royal families into positions of power and circumstance.     

Why Does the USA Still Have The Electoral College?

Here we go again.  Every four years.  All this talk of Swing States and States that are Hard-Democratic or Leaning Republican or red or blue or purple states. No one in the national media pays attention to the voters in the vast majority of America;  it all comes down to a few states and the "swing voters"  who play coy about who they will vote for.

BASTA!!!    (I mean, well, "enough".)

 Every four years we have election for all the seats in the House of Representatives, one third of the Senate, and sundry other mayoral and state legislative races.  It's called the General Election Year.   (Not to be confused with the General Electric Year, which will come soon when we start naming years after corporations to get sponsorship money to defray the cost of the National Debt.)

In this election, which by the way I think is a lovely idea lest you think I'm just cranky about all the negative ads on television,  there is one and only one race that is not decided by the popular vote.  That is the most important race of them all.  The Presidency.

It seems that back in 1787 the majority of our Founding Fathers decided that the direct election of the Chief Executive was a bad idea.   A system was set-up whereby each state would have a number of Electors--set up by the number of Senators each state has (2) and the number of members of the Congressional Delegation of each state.  We also had a Constitution that said that the candidate who finished second in the Presidential Race would be Vice-President under the man who finished first.  But we got rid of that in the early 1800's because there appeared to be a good chance that the President and the "VP" might hate each other's guts.  We also had a system where each Senator was appointed by the state legislatures of the respective states (who were elected by "the people", AKA white guys).  But we got rid of that in 1913 during the Progressive Era thanks to the Amendment ot the Constitution. Now Senators are elected by a direct vote of the people.

Why can't we do this with the Presidency?  We are no longer a rural nation with isolated regions where there might be several "favorite son" candidates dividing up the vote. We are a major urban/suburban nation which sports two-national party system that draws votes  from all over the country.  The Electoral College isn't needed.  The idea of having "swing states" like Florida and Missouri having undue influence over the outcome of the most important position in the country is hopelessly passe.  Let each and every vote count whether its Point Barrow, Alaska or Bangor Maine or Key West or San Diego.

Four times in our  nation's history--most recently in the year 2000 with the famous "Bush v. Gore" case in the Supreme Court and the ballot imbroglio in Florida--the candidate who got the most votes lost the election.  (The other times were in 1824, 1876, and 1888.)  Does that make any sense?  Not to me.  Do we have to wait until the conservative GOP candidate loses the popular vote before we reform this antique layer of anonymous Electors planted between the people and the White House? 

I say 220 years of playing Russian Roulette with majority rule is enough.      Let's give the candidate who gets the most votes the Presidency; just like every other office in this nation.   

(below from www.howstuffworks.com )

Electoral College Results

In most presidential elections, a candidate who wins the popular vote will also receive the majority of the electoral votes, but this is not always the case. There have been four presidents who have won an election with fewer popular votes than their opponent but more electoral votes.

Here are the four elections when the candidate who led the popular vote did not win the office:

• 1824: John Quincy Adams, the son of former President John Adams, received more than 38,000 fewer votes than Andrew Jackson, but neither candidate won a majority of the Electoral College. Adams was awarded the presidency when the election was thrown to the House of Representatives.

• 1876: Nearly unanimous support from small states gave Rutherford B. Hayes a one-vote margin in the Electoral College, despite the fact that he lost the popular vote to Samuel J. Tilden by 264,000 votes. Hayes carried five out of the six smallest states (excluding Delaware). These five states plus Colorado gave Hayes 22 electoral votes with only 109,000 popular votes. At the time, Colorado had been just been admitted to the Union and decided to appoint electors instead of holding elections. So, Hayes won Colorado's three electoral votes with zero popular votes. It was the only time in U.S. history that small state support has decided an election.

• 1888: Benjamin Harrison lost the popular vote by 95,713 votes to Grover Cleveland, but won the electoral vote by 65. In this instance, some say the Electoral College worked the way it is designed to work by preventing a candidate from winning an election based on support from one region of the country. The South overwhelmingly supported Cleveland, and he won by more than 425,000 votes in six southern states. However, in the rest of the country he lost by more than 300,000 votes.

• In 2000, Al Gore received 50,992,335 votes nationwide and George W. Bush received 50,455,156 votes. After Bush was awarded the state of Florida, he had a total of 271 electoral votes, which beat Gore's 266 electoral votes.

Michael Palin for President 2008--Approved by the Silly Party, USA

The following is propaganda, bordering on treason or common sense:


Finally, a Palin for the rest of us! Mr. Michael Palin, formerly of "Monty Python's Flying Circus", "Ripping Yarns", the films "A Fish Called Wanda" and "A Private Function" should be Our Next President.

The facts speak for themselves. In addition to being a world figure and a reputed nice man, Palin is also an explorer in the tradition of Magellan, Drake, Lewis and Clark, et al, leading a series of television documentary crews on global excursions around and over the poles and such to prove that the earth is indeed not flat. A man so brave that he once led an expedition in Peru to cross the Andes using frogs. He is a man not afraid to slap another man with a large fish. He is a lumberjack (and that's okay). He is a closet "trainspotter". Can Senators Mc Cain or Obama make similar claims?
Commander Palin is head and shoulders above any of the national nominees for Chief Executive and Vice-Chief. I understand that, unlike the major candidates, he not only writes books as they do, but reads those written by others as well!

Some in the USA will say, "Dream on, dude! That's downright unAmerican. That English dude from England is not an American citizen. You gotta be born here, bubba, right here in this here country or our territories. You hear me! Born here and the like, junior. Don't make me tell you again! "


But thanks to Article Two, Section 9 of the American Constitution of 1787, there is an "nullification clause" to that--slipped in by the Founding Fathers out of fear that just such a situation could come to pass as we face now, to wit:

"Congress shall have the power to rejoin our late enemies government if this experiment in self-government by the free and independent states proves to be a bigger pain in the arse than it is worth. So, if this whole Enlightenment thing goes gunny-bags, disregard all this other stuff about a "more prefect union" and all. We really got too carried away. Sorry. Sorry."

Or, as James Madison ("The Father of the Constitution") said in Philadelphia's Independence Hall during the Constitutional Debates, "Why should we assume future generations will be able to maintain a republic? Is it not possible, my fellow delegates, that our government's Representatives can and indeed will one day be as corrupt and as bad as that pack of rum-swilling ineffectual card-playing whore-mongers those guys back in London, or whatever the place is called, are? Why should we as Americans be heavily taxed to support a local government as bad as anything the King's ministers' could offer us--and at a better rate?"

To which the great elder statesman Benjamin Franklin replied: "Sounds good, Jimmy. Now can anyone remind me where to pee?"
So, it all could work out by a simple two thirds majority in the Congress. Our nation is in crisis. Let's us before it is too late put the right Palin in the White House!

http://www.michaelpalinforpresident.com/

Obama, Sarah Palin and the "Tyranny of Experience"

Tip O'Neill, the late Democratic Speaker of the House from Massachusetts and a classic "old pol" big-spender politician, once made  the observation "all politics is local."  This little 'bon mot"  was repeated about for a decade or so like it was one of the Five Noble Truths of Buddhism. 

 

Personally, I always thought it was a stretch. I mean, what was "local" about the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Vietnam War?  Is the abortion issue a "local" matter?

But I'm going to go in that direction today with my own catch phrase:

  "All politics is expedience".  That's right.  Four little words. Etch them in stone. Shout it from the rooftops. Let the good man teach it to his son, as Shakespeare would say.  

The important thing in elective politics is not experience, not preparedness, not competency. The important thing is "what will get me elected to the office I seek"?   This is the rule.  How else to explain that  one party is running Barak Obama for office with about two years of elective experience from the Senate on one side and the other party has produced a tyro governor of a small-populace state to step in if their frail 72-year old Presidential candidate takes a bad turn medically in the four years of his proposed term. 

The story (or "the narrative") of the candidate is more important than if he or she can actually handle the job.  We're not seriously picking someone to run the country and safeguard the interests of our public--we, as voters, want to vote for a good story.  First African-American Candidate.  Good story. First woman GOP nominee for VP.  Good story. All the more experienced  candidates have been winnowed out--the Democrats at least have had the chance to actually that this risky step in the "collective wisdom" of a primary process.  All those who were more experienced than Senator Obama have been kicked to the curb. 

 

The Republicans have had Sarah Palin--a half-vetted charisma pick from "America's Last Frontier" by John McCain or his handlers. IN neither case can one feel competent that either candidate can handle the job.  This is particularly  true of Palin who had zero coverage  in the mainstream media until about two weeks ago and somehow has never bothered to step outside the country to see how the rest of the 96 percent of the world actually lives first-hand.

When did experience become secondary in politics?  Well, actually, since about 1840 in the USA, when the Whig Party of the United States elected William Henry Harrison, an old general with one victory in the War of 1812, to the Presidency in 1840. Many generals followed and at least one, U.S. Grant, was a full-blown incompetent at the job.  Now we no longer nominate generals with no civilian experience--we are more prone to candidates with records so slender they are less likely to have any record to be attacked about. And they can overcome their lack of experience with charisma.  

Very expedient.   Good luck America..and the world. 

 

Since I "borrowed" this title from a columnist, I offer an excerpt from the column by Reg Henry in the Seattle P-I newspaper.     

 

Reg Henry in the "Seattle Post Intelligencier":

... by picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has liberated all of us from the tyranny of experience. He has picked someone who is not just inexperienced but spectacularly so, a privilege reserved for the good-looking.

But experience is so yesterday. In a more stuffy era, singers trained their voices for years in the conservatory; today they just pick up a guitar and get on with it. Stockbrokers, who needs them when babies can trade stocks online? Even journalists, who once spent years learning to drink and stay awake in council meetings, are now supplanted in the public affection by bloggers who don't know how to look rumpled.

Sure, experience still counts in some areas: Self-taught brain surgeons and proctologists are to be avoided, as is getting on a plane serviced by mechanics who took an online course. But in politics, a form of mass entertainment, experience is not required in our modern era. This is called progress.

Of course, before this announcement, the conservative talking point was that Barack Obama was not experienced enough for the White House. While some have desperately recalibrated the argument, now saying for the first time that executive experience is what is needed, that won't fly either. Palin doesn't have much of that, either.

The experience argument as used against Sen. Obama was always just a convenient way of saying: "Go away. Come back when you are experienced, by which time we will have another excuse and you will be too old to be exciting." Now his critics are reduced to not liking him because he doesn't shoot moose. This may not be progress but it is some wild and crazy fun.

Spanking Little Kids and Voting Tendencies, USA

To your left you see a map  of the 2004 Electoral College breakdown.  The states in blue went with the Democratic candidate for President, John Kerry.  The red states went for George W. Bush.  As you see most of Bush's electoral strength was in the South and the Midwest.  Now please take a look at the map below this one.

 

 

 

 

  This is a 2006 map showing the number of student spankings taking place in public-funded schools in the USA.  The darker the state is,  the more frequent is the number of spankings or "paddling" with a wooden board that a child received.  (You ca nrun your cursor over the state on the second map to see the number of spankings.) The darker states had more than a thousand recorded spankings; the lighter shaded states permit spanking but more a lower ratio of corporal punishment.  The light-shaded states are states that do not permit corporal punishment in the schools.  See any similarities?  It seems with the exception of the Virginias, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Nebraska, and the Dakotas,  George W Bush carried every state that lets teachers hit kids with impunity. Coincidence?   

Maybe if Barack Obama wants to win the election this year, he and Mrs. O should start whacking their kids with wood if they get out of line. 

I remember being paddled a few times in my school in California--until they stopped by my school district in 1968, when I was starting the third grade. The state of California banned corporal punishment state-wide in 1987.    

 Personally,I only remember being paddled twice, but one time it was very painful because a grown man--the principal--laid into me and starting whacking my hand with a ruler.  The reason for my punishment? I was wrestling with another kid just after recess.  Surely a six year old should have known better!   And surely an office smacking by a large, bald middle-aged adult was the only possible way I could learn not to fight with another six-year old.  

Later on, my school developed other ways of keeping us kids in line---missing recess by standing on the edge of a grassy lawn, at attention like a soldier, right by the principal's office,or  staying after school to write long sentences on the  chalkboard (a la Bart Simpson in a future time) , or getting put out of class into detention for a hour.

  Real thick-headed offenders were threatened with suspension from school.  Very few kids crossed that line in my day, and this worked very well with me because I couldn't imagine coming home and telling mom or dad I was out of school for a week. I'd be given a good verbal dressing down and then stuck in my room most of the time I was out!  No television and no transistor radio!  This potential state of affairs was more effective to me than taking any physical punishment.  

If parents want to spank their kids, well, that's their decision.  Personally, I don't want a teacher or some principal like the chucklehead who whacked me so hard hitting a kid. I  still remember it forty years on.  Physical punishment by strangers inflicted on children is nothing I'd want any child in my care to receive. Back then, my parents could keep me in line just fine with only a limited amount of "rear end" warming.        

  Seems like most of my friends I kept in touch with from those days  did well as adults when they achieved maturity, despite only having the opportunity to be paddled at school after age 8, if at all.     And its interesting who gets paddled most often as you will see from the reports below, as well as the fact that all European nations---a total of 100 countries in all--don't do it anymore. Anyway, I thought this was interesting.    

The AP story below is by Libby Quaid:   

 

WASHINGTON - Paddlings, swats, licks. A quarter of a million schoolchildren got them in 2007 — and black children, American Indians and kids with disabilities got a disproportionate share of the punishment, according to a study by a human rights group.

Even little kids can be paddled. Heather Porter, who lives in Crockett, Texas, was startled to hear her little boy, then 3, say he'd been spanked at school. Porter was never told, despite a policy at the public preschool that parents be notified.

"We were pretty ticked off, to say the least. The reason he got paddled was because he was untying his shoes and playing with the air conditioner thermostat," Porter said. "He was being a 3-year-old."

 

In its study, which was being released Wednesday, the group Human Rights Watch used Education Department data to show that, while paddling has been declining, racial disparity persists. Researchers also interviewed students, parents and school personnel in Texas and Mississippi, states that account for 40 percent of kids who were paddled in the 2007 school year.

Porter could have filled out a form telling the school not to paddle her son, if only she had realized he might be paddled.

Yet many parents find that such forms are ignored, the study said.

Legal immunity
Widespread paddling can make it unlikely that forms will be checked. A teacher interviewed by Human Rights Watch, Tiffany Bartlett, said that in her Austin, Texas, school, the policy was to lock the classroom doors when the bell rang, leaving stragglers to be paddled by an administrator patrolling the hallways.

And even if schools make a mistake, they are unlikely to face lawsuits. In places where corporal punishment is allowed, teachers and principals generally have legal immunity from assault laws, the study said.

"One of the things we've seen over and over again is that parents have difficulty getting redress, if a child is paddled and severely injured, or paddled in violation of parents' wishes," said Alice Farmer, the study's author.

A majority of states have outlawed it, but corporal punishment remains widespread across the South. Behind Texas and Mississippi were Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Florida and Missouri.

 

Private Gains and Public Losses

Robert Reich is a former Labor Secretary in the Clinton Administration.  

 I don't often pay a great deal of attention to  former cabinet members of any administration--who often seem to be busy laying the blame for recent economic problems they helped bring along at someone else's door. But  I think Dr. Reich makes three very good points about the recent spate of Congressional bills coming down the pike to bail out the biggest mortgage companies in America, Freddie Mac and Fannnie Mae, which together have made 5 trillion dollars in loan guarantees to  promote home buying.    

Here's Reich touches on the central problem, a problem nobody in Washington, or out in the heartland, cares much about until some major institutions like the ones above get in to trouble. Along with the private mortgage lenders like Countrywide, the "casino" attitude toward home loans has helped weaken the economy. Just what we needed when gas prices have doubled in a year, right?

 *******Anyway, here's Dr. Reich on the matter (taken from a Newsweek article)  

"Their organizations are treated as if they're giant investor-driven private sector entities as long as they're healthy. But when they start to go down the tubes they become public entities with public responsibilities, and the rest of us have to bail them out.  Herewith a modest proposal: when taxpayers insure a giant entity against loss—Freddie, Fannie, Wall Street investment banks, whatever—the entities must agree that (1) for the duration of the bailout, their top executives cannot receive total annual compensation higher than that received by the president of the United States, and (2) the government gets 5 percent of their current valuation as shares of stock (roughly representing the benefit to their shareholders of the federal insurance). If and when the entities become profitable again, taxpayers are thereby compensated for the risk they've taken on.

**********************

Here's an interesting fact: the CEO's at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each made around fourteen million dollars  last year.  And the two companies will need an estimated 25 billion at least to stay afloat.  Gee, I thought  pay linked with performance was one of the things that made free enterprise work better than other alternatives.    

Of course you don't have to have a doctorate in economics like Reich to figure some new regulation plan out.   You do  have to be able to stop the problem from getting so bad in the first place, otherwise why do we pay these people so much and buy their books when they leave office?   Didn't  anybody in Washington remember the Savings and Loan Fiasco in the 1980's.  That financial meltdown in commercial property occurred because President Reagan and the Congress deregulated the S & L industry and then, a few years later , someone in the next administration and new Congress tried to clean up the mess to cost the taxpayer billions?  Then the Enron case went down in the 1990's, thanks to state and federal regulators called off by political cronies of Kenneth Lay, like GW Bush.  Of course, both parties are in on this game. 

My question is, when do we elect people who don't pretend that the "rainy days" of economic downturns will somehow never happen?   With billions in public money at stake, rigorous regulation is needed.   I don't know if its possible given the revolving door between the investor class and the politicians who appoint those who are, in theory,  supposed to be watching the investors.  (Foxes in the henhouse in many cases.)

  But I think it would be valuable to ask candidates if they have a plan similar to Reich's to at least try and hold executives with fat salaries accountable for their company practices, quarter by quarter and year by year, and not just when a whole major industry goes belly up.  

 

http://robertreich.blogspot.com/

Gasoline Blues

The show on NPR I was listening to driving home was about the umpteenth broadcast I've heard on the high price of fuel.  It's a sad situation which has affected all aspects of society. (obviously Europeans will not have much sympathy for us here, but the mass transit options aren't as good as in Europe so please allow me a bit of grousing.)

The blame gets tossed back and forth--too many dollars chasing too little gas, the rise of petrol use in China and India and so forth.  The one part of this story that irks me the most is the development of rampant oil speculation--Wall Street and the hedge fund crowd have taken advantage of  the deregulation of futures trading and have tied up vast amounts of oil commodities using only about 5 percent margins. And please realize many of these speculators have no use for storing or managing the barrels of oil they buy.  They are just "holding" them on paper in hopes that the price will be driven up.   Does this smack of what happened in the Enron Scandals a few years back to someone besides me? 

Even if it has only a marginal effect, I think people should demand that this vital resource is re-regulated as it was before lax Reagan-Era decontrolling took place.  Some experts testified this semi-racketeering was adding 30-40 dollars to a barrel of  oil!!!

Obviously, we need to get ourselves off such dependence on oil, period.  But its going to take years.  Requiring higher margins and getting some of the most predatory speculators out of this vital market would at least ensure some measure of protection for consumers in the short run.         

For more info, here's a recent article:  

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/23/national/main4203863.shtml

Hillary Bows Out--Her Candicacy

This video was featured on Judith Warner's NY Times blog, "Domestic Disturbances". It lays out some less-than-inspiring remarks from male anchors and pundits about Hillary Clinton. I thought it appropriate given that, no matter what you think of the Senator from New York, sexism within the rareified air of the national media is still thriving.

Politics, American Style-- THE CANDIDATE (1972)-Robert Redford, Peter Boyle, Michael Ritchie, director

Her's another film from 1972 I enjoyed which might even be very relevant today in light of the endless campaign machinations of Senators Obama and Clinton. It's the trailer for the 1972 political drama, The Candidate, starring Robert Redford as Bill McKay. The actor plays a young offspring of a famous father who is talked into running for governor of California. The film is one I haven't seen in full in a while but I've seen it enough in the past to recall often how much the material in this film matches up well with the inside stories I've read on campaign manipulation of the voting public.

It's one of the smartest political films ever made--in part because its not an "us vs. them" story but raises questions about the very nature of "democracy" and how a inexperienced non-incumbent candidate would actually go about getting elected--and then the price he or now she could pay in personal compromise to his family and his core beliefs.

It's also very funny in parts, as some of this trailer shows. I love the scene where Redford is in the back of a limo and starts acting the fool--it has the ring of truth to it.

I always thought this film might have been inspired by "The Selling of A President", a 1969 or 70 book by Joe McGiness about the repackaging of Richard Nixon as "The New Nixon" in the turbulent 1968 campaign. The book and the film do have a similar philosophy

Redford, who also co-produced the film, has talked for years about a possible sequel to the film, with McKay as an old political warhorse. But this one tells you a lot about American politics even today I'll bet--only the media and the money amounts have changed.

Recession, USA

Ronald Reagan--not my favorite politician of all time, but a guy who knew how to reach an audience with a pithy and entertaining remark--once said:  "A recession is when your neighbor is out of work.  A depression is when you're out of work."  He repeated that "ad nauseum" all the way to the White House in 1980.

I recalled this whenever I hear some economist or pundit---such as George Will or anybody on Fox News who draws a regular paycheck from Rupert Murdoch--going on about how the United States  is NOT in an economic recession.  Technically, he/she might be right---you need to have two quarters of negative economic growth to say the national economy is in such trouble.  Our last quarter showed national growth at 0.6 percent.  We are just having a "rough patch" as George W. Bush put it yesterday in a press conference.  Of course, this overlooks how the Executive and Congressional branches of our government--Republican and Democratic--have changed the way Great Washington Worthies figure gross domestic product and unemployment stats.  All iin the name of making things look better than they are.     

I say we need a new way to determine we are in a recession, not just a "rough patch" or an "economic downturn".    In the Spirit of Reagan, I say  are in a recession when a firm majority of Americans feel insecure enough to say we are in a recession.

We are in a recession, folks, otherwise four out of five adult Americans are dense and they aint. Eighty-one percent of the Americans polled in a recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal believe that the US is in a recession. People know this because many of them are losing sleep worrying about higher and higher gas prices and see no end in sight--they know this when they see their neighbors unable to sell their homes in the ever-softening housing market and watch as foreclosures signs go up.  They know we are in a recession when they read about local layoffs online and in the newspapers. 

Just this morning, for example, one of southern Oregon's  biggest employers--Erickson Crane, a industrial helicopter manufacturer--announced that they were laying off  35 mechanics. Those are serious, highly-skilled jobs lost in a major company. 

Meanwhile, The Federal Reserve has taken the prime lending rate down to 2 percent to try and dig us out of the economic morass.  And news reports show that the number of people looking to sell household goods and expensive items  over on eBay and Graigslist and other online selling services is at an all-time high, as is the desperation people have in the ads they use to sell the items.

Of course, this has been a rough couple of years or so for a lot of people--like the entire middle-class as a whole.  A recent editorial by Cynthia Tucker in the Atlanta Journal- Constitution points out its been a while since we've seen things looking up for anybody on the whole but the highest income-earners and getters in the American economy.  

To quote Ms. Tucker:  

 "Here's what the new economy has done for the average American: precious little. In 2000, median yearly household income, in 2006 dollars, was $49,447, according to The Wall Street Journal, which crunched data from the Census Bureau. By 2006, median household income had fallen to $48,223.

"While the economy expanded significantly starting in 2001, those gains went disproportionately to the wealthiest households. The income of the top 1 percent grew at an annual rate of 11 percent from 2002 to 2006, while the incomes of the remaining 99 percent grew at less than 1 percent annually during those years, according to the Journal."

When you've been running in place and getting nowhere despite all your hard work for awhile, it's easier to notice when you and your neighbors are falling behind.

 What this means for the national elections coming up in November is that the economic fears that are stressing people out--coupled with an unpopular war--spell a lot of Republicans losing their seats this year. 

Luckily for the GOP, however, the two Democratic Presidential candidates are so busy tearing into each other and pointing out the dangers of the other person in the White House, that Obama and Clinton's camps may just bloody each other's reputation so well that it puts John McCain into the White House next January by default.  (Despite the fact that Mccain is tight with George W, and  Prez Bush's approval ratings are the lowest in recorded history accord to the Gallup Poll.)

I'm sure, if he were still around, Ronald Reagan would have something pithy and entertaining to say about that ironic development.

Video: Bill Clinton campaigns in Medford, Oregon

A week or so after Barack Obama came to town, Bill Clinton showed up yesterday in near-by Medford. Work constained me from going to see the ex-Prez , but I got off work in time to see most of his speech on local television. (The local paper estimated he had a crowd of 2,500 to see him at a high school. I doubt I was even missed.)

Obama Campaigns in Medford

For those of you who don't get enough of this on the C-Span Network...here is some video coverage of Senator Barack Obama's campaign stop in Medford, Oregon, near where I live. The video coverage shows how much people were willing to go through to get into the Kids Unlimited Center, where the rally was held. The event needless to say was big, and I might have tried to go myself but I had to work. (All tickets for the gig had been passed out almost before the stop was announced.)
GW Bush has been here at the Jackson County Fairgrounds a couple times over the years (yawn), but this is the first major Democratic Candidate to stop here in predominately Republican southern Oregon in the 19 years I've lived here. In my opinion, its nice to see such a development.
The Clinton campaign announced they would campaign here, too, but no details were forthcoming.

Hillary Clinton versus Captain Marvelous

From the news wires tonight: COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The man who served as national manager of former President Clinton's 1992 campaign endorsed Sen. Barack Obama on Wednesday. David Wilhelm, who led the campaign and later became chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said Obama had the unique ability to encourage cooperation as a 65-percent president after the divisive years of a 51-percent majority.

As the great American author Kurt Vonnegut used to say, "So it goes."

Why is Senator Barack Obama, the Captain Marvelous of an ever hopeful American liberal/moderate electorate,  gaining advantage over HIllary Clinton in the Democratic Primary Battles?  I think a big part of this is  because he lacks experience--an asset in politics which is the one profession where being untested is a badge of honor among many. And somehow voters see his passion to be the second youngest elected President (after John Kennedy) not as a presumptive grasp for power.  Senator Clinton, on the other hand, can pursue the very same goal as her rival and be seen by many in her party (and her conservative enemies, who are legion) as a grasping old politico who will say anything to be President.   Hillary is the new Richard Nixon to Obama's John Kennedy.   This is ironic as all get out, of course, because back in 1974 Mrs. Clinton was a young lawyer on the staff of the Congressional committee that drew up the articles of impeachment against the canny, cunning but also self-destructive Dick Nixon.

So why does having more solid experience than her rival, and having a mate who was President for eight years, count AGAINST her in the primaries?  I would think voters would, if they were Democrats at least, want to elect a President with both experience in her resume and readily at hand.   We as a nation are after all electing the Leader of  a major country with more than its share of economic and military power.  And as I go over the points for and against these candidates in my head, I think I like experience over fuzzy promises of hope and change that are made with passion and eloquence but are unlikely to win over hearts and minds where it counts--in those corridors of Capitol Hill where bills become laws and matters of war and peace are settled.   

I suppose the thinking goes that Senator Obama is the "agent of change", "the new JF Kennedy", "the solution to the politics of old", etc.  But Obama is also a guy who has never had to run a tough race in his short political life. Nor has he yet been subject to scrutiny by the conservative media pundits.  Hillary Clinton has had such scrutiny in spades and she is still standing.  In that case I have to say advantage Hillary.      

  The difference between Hillary and Barack on major issues is negligible.  Those points being equal, having more experience in the corridors of power would make it more likely that Clinton could steer legislation on matters like health care and foreign policy goals through Congress. Again, advantage Hillary.

 

   But Obama is the person of the hour nonetheless.   How he will do when he faces a wily old survivor like Senator John McCain--who is maybe the ultimate survivor in more ways than one--is another matter.  I wouldn't be surprised if the new JFK looks like the second coming of John Kerry come November.  

      

    

  

Thoughts on Super Primary Tuesday

This is Super Tuesday...twenty-odd states are holding primaries, including big ones like California and New York and most Southeast and Southwest States. But there is no joy in my state of Oregon because we don't have a primary until the first Tuesday in May. By that time of course, the matter of who the Presidential candidates will be long settled. The best we can hope for is some kind of "virtual representation" from voters in other states. In 1960, there were only ten primaries and John Kennedy and Richard Nixon emerged from the field. Now almost all states have primaries. But are the candidates who emerge from the contest really the best leaders or are they the best cheerleaders and have the best organizations for money-raising in the big money states like Florida and California?

But perhaps, I've come to conclude, it doesn't matter if there are only a dozen states holding primaries or four dozen. Given the current almost universal bipartisan support for "stimulating the economy" by digging deeper into debt,I've recently concluded that what people generally want from the federal government is not so much "hope" or "freedom from the Washington DC Beltway" or border security or universal health insurance or military operations in far-off nations against terrorists: what people really want is "economic stimulation"-- money coming from Washington in the form of payouts to citizens.

The only problem is that we are so far in debt at the federal level that all we are doing is essentially borrowing money from our children when they grow up. We appear to be kicking a severe recession or worse, a depression, down the road.

Politicians like to avoid tough solutions like regulation of industy and fiscal frugaliy because they don't want to be thrown out of office for telling people that its time to take off the blinders and see the economy for what it is: overheated by two foreign wars and a raising deficit from domestic programs as well.

As Andrew W. Samwick in a Washington Post editorial summed it up, "Using the incomes of future taxpayers to purchase re-election today is irresponsible but common foreign policy."

Plus it has the added benefit of keeping Congressional incumbents in office, so they will not be subjected to the throes and ups and downs of that free market everybody loves so much. Working Americans may be losing their pensions right and left (or having them frozen) but you can be sure no retired Legislator will fear having to do without in his or her declining years as long as the Treasury boys can print the money.

This latest stimulus package was approved by both Republicans and Democrats in office right now, from Speaker Nancy Pelosi to George W Bush. We are told that the 150 billion dollar package is needed to stop the slide caused by the depressed housing market--which wouldn't have happened if there had been more regulation of the home loan industry. In effect, kids today are paying for the housing bubble of those outfits like Countrywide who give loans to high-risk borrowers. And when the adjustable-rates went up and these same people couldn't afford the monthly housing payment, the loan had often already gone to another loan outfit far, far away.


The President assures us that all he is doing is giving Americans back the money that belongs to them in the first place. That's an old line and it has a folksy ring to it. But it is also a misrepresentation of the realtionship between government and the citizenry. Taxes are collected to defend the nation, and fund the programs that have been signed into law as "promoting the general welfare" of said nation or locality or state, such as funding for roads, education, debt service, entitlementsfor the elderly and the mentally challenged, etc. Can we do all that and then have a President with a straight face tell us, in effect, that we as citizens don't need to give "our" money to any level of government?


Our nation was founded in part on the principle of "No Taxation Without Representation". After 230 years, it has morphed into "all taxation is bad," or at least not necessary if we can find some central banks around the world to buy Treasury Bonds to keep us afloat. Perhaps we should change the name of our President to the "National Stimulator" and the Congress to the "Legislative Enablers" as they continue to run up bills they expect the next generation to pay or default on.

Over to You Chuck (or Chucks)

For years, starting in the 1990's and only recently less so, as I traveled the Interstates and state and county roads of the West, I often saw a certain bumper sticker on the back of vehicles passing me by or vice versa. The vehicles were usually driven by husky males dressed for a come-as-you-are-party (as long as you wear cammo gear). They mostly drove F-250 or Dodge ram pick-up trucks or an SUV with the low gas mileage that would make a Saudi sheik smile. And the bumper sticker would say:

"My President is Charlton Heston"

"Oh boy," I used to say to myself . I know they are talking about Ben-Hur's tenure as top dog in the National Rifle Association, but you got the idea it was about denial of electoral reality.

Now I like some of Charlton Heston's movies as much as the next guy. Sure the guy overacted a bit and added color to roles that were overlarge to begin with but he was usually playing guys a bit wacked out by something. But he ws the go-to guy for movies like "Planet of the Apes" (1968), "The Omega Man"(1971), "Soylent Green" (1973), et al. (I was hoping the recent version of the "I Am Legend" story with Will Smith" would have been called "Omega Dude". But no such luck.)
Who could forget the Chuckster pounding sand on the beach after the misanthropic Captain Taylor sees the great big you-know-what destroyed by some long-ago atomic war in "Planet of the Apes"? Who could forget his futuristic Detective Thorn, bloody and shot up and even weakened further by the loss of any hope for humanity, shouting at the finale: "You've got to warn them...Soylent Green is People!" as he is as carried out to certain demise from a church overcrowed with desperate victims of bad ecology and rampant population growth?

Who could forget King Chuck the First as Omega Guy, the last guy on earth--he thinks--watching a documentary on the Woodstock festival in a empty movie theater and saying sardonically, "they just don't make movies like that anymore."

Heston's roles as an actor in the 1970's often personified a warning cry for many of us who thought we just might be headed down a bad and narrow road as a civilization.

But then I came to discover that the guy who personified that angst about our overpopulated and war-weary world was in fact a reactionary political-celebrity. Despite what movies he was in, in public he actually despised enviromentalists, seemed to support an unnessasary war in Nicaragua in the 80's and even spoke out against laws protecting labor unions, even though he was once the president of the Screen Actors Guild. Go figure.

He did once march for Civil Rights a few times in the early 60's but I guess that was just a flirtation with equality.

Well, now there's a new Chuck in primary town. Not new in the public sense because he's 67 years old and has been around in B-movies and a long-running television show I've never watched. He's Chuck Norris, of course, and he's out in the hustings trying to sell voters in the next GOP primary that John McCain is too old to be President and that the affable but rigidly doctrinaire Mike Huckabee is the right guy for the job. (Good grief, Norris himself is only four years younger than McCain! Maybe he'ss too old to give advice using his own logic.)




I hope people take ALL celebrity endorsements with a large grain of salt, both on the left and the right. Norris is probably a nice guy, but he's a nice guy with just a high school education whose claim to fame is that he can simulate hurting people in front of a moving camera or for real at one time better than most people.

That shouldn't qualify him to be taken more seriously for a political philosophy than the guy who tightens your lug nuts at the local gas station.

Anyway, as the band The Who put it (sort of ) back in the day, "Meet the new Chuck, same as the old Chuck."

Anyway I guess I might be seeing "My Secretary of Defense is Walker-Texas Ranger" bumper stickers on our highways pretty soon.

Fear and Dishonesty On the Campaign Trail 2, All You Need is Fear

 

The scariest GOP candidate on foreign policy is Rudy Giuliani.  The reason I find him scary is because he touts himself as wanting to go "on the offensive" with terrorism or Islamofascism or whatever the term de jour is for the anti-Western militant groups in the Near and Middle East.  The Mayor proposes 100,000 more troops: how we are supposed to get them I'm not sure, but the only certain way is either a draft--which is the word that there not speak its name on the campaign--or by giving more money to companies like Blackwater to recruit mercenary soldiers to do the work. 

The other scary part about Rudy is that he has surrounded himself with the remaining neo-cons, Norman Podhortz and Daniel Pipes among them, who are heck-bent on starting a war with Iraq.  According to a Newsweek profile on His Honor, Mr. Podhortz--a 1960's  far-Left guy turned far-Right editor of Commentary, a position now held by his brother John-- has urged President Bush in a private meeting to bomb Iran.  Here is Podhortz in a recent op/ed:

"In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force."^["In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force."^[

 Nothing like a simple  "either/or fallacy" to create an easy, bloody and wrong-headed approach to foreign policy.  Podhortz's statement, to this humble blogger on this day, is wacked. We only recently have got the lid on in parts of Iraq and violence is increasing in Afghanistan.  We need an international and if possible peaceful  approach to nuclear proliferation. Playing Big Bad Bomber Boys over Iran will just about cement the image of our nation as a rouge superpower to avert and ignore whenever possible.   

 The assumption seems to be we are not already "on the offensive" even though we have already put half-a-trillion into Iraq, fighting a war that was based in more than part on poor intelligence estimates.  Iran is a potential enemy; bombing them will make them a very real enemy.  The wisdom of pre-emptive war is questionable, but making it into a primary tool of foreign policy is a recipe for folly.    

If guys like Podhortz and Professor Dan Pipes, whose nearly phobic anti-Muslim bent is well covered in his blog if you have the stomach for it, are the brain trust Giuliani is going to rely on in the White House then we'd be better off if Bush and Cheney just stay in office for an unconstitutional Third Term.   We've already done the Neo-Com school of response to the 9/11  attacks.  And, frankly, being Mayor of New York or a District Attorney doesn't give you a lot of foreign policy background in thefirst place.  (I think Queens has a Secretary of State but I'm not sure about Brooklyn.)

 If you really want a Hawk to get your vote next November, vote for John McCain.  He's not my guy; but at least he earned the right to have an unhinged bunch of armchair commandos around him courtesy of  his extended stay at the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War. All Guliani wants to do is ride his stature  during 9/11 into the White House, and I fear, create a even bigger war in the Near East than most Americans would really want if they saw the details instead of just the jingoist rhetoric.  I think we can do better.  

Fear and Dishonesty on the Campaign Trail, Part One

From the New York Times tonight:

DES MOINES — In a bizarre bit of political theater, Mike Huckabee told news outlets on Monday that he was not going to broadcast a negative commercial against Mitt Romney, his chief rival in the Republican presidential caucuses in Iowa. Then he showed that advertisement to the news media, which in reporting the announcement went on to give his anti-Romney message free publicity while he claimed the moral high ground.

********

Of all the so-far calculated bits of viral political theater to take place so far in the too-early and too over hyped Iowa Caucus, Arkansas Gov Mike "Holier-than-Thou" Huckabee's attempt to appear above negative ads, and then airing the negative ad anyway is craven conduct of the first order. It recalls the 1950's when a young and on-the-make Richard Nixon, a master of the Red-baiting smear tactic, would play the Commie Fellow Traveler card against any liberal opponent in Congress by saying something like "I will not make an issue of my opponents' pro-Marxist voting record, even though..."

To be fair, the Democrats have their lower-than-limbo-dancers low moves, too. You can also add Hillary Clinton bringing up a grade school essay, written by a then six-year-old Senator Barack Obama, as fodder against her chief opponent. (Very low, that one!)

Coming soon: Rudy Guliani: All You Need Is Fear

The Vitter Truth

It appears that Senator David Vitter (R-LA), an admitted "sinner", has joined the list of prominent officials to be caught seeking female companionship with hookers and call-girl thanks to revelations coming from a woman charged with running a prostitution racket in our nations' capital. He was helped in his path to total transparency by slezebag publisher Larry Flynt of "Hustler" fame. Outed is the operative word here. Here's a bit of background and reaction from the main New Orleans newspaper:

http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-8/118430998363640...

The fact that Senator Vitter, a big "family-values" guy, also allegedly used the services of a New Orleans area brothel in a few years ago, puts further blows into the 46-year old Senator's chances of being a national political figure. He endorsed Rudie Giuliani for President and one could be forgiven for thinking he might have thought himself a possible Vice-President. Liberal blogs and "Salon" magazines are apparently jumping all over this guy, just as conservative operatives went into a full Saturnalia of moral pleasure at the news of the Clinton /Lewinsky affair.

This whole revisit of "the politics of personal destruction" reminds me of a brief passage in Philip Roth's excellent novel The Human Stain . At one point, the narrator of the story--which deals with an small-town academic who loses his professorship for a seemingly "racist" remark --comments on that near-endless scandal in Washington in the late 1990's by stating that a giant banner should be placed across the East portico of the White House. The phrase "A HUMAN BEING LIVES HERE!" would be emblazoned on the banner, to remind people that we do not elect perfect beings to high office.

Senator Vitter joins a group of powerful elected men caught with pants down, officials going back in my memory to the late Ways and Means Chairman, Rep. Wilbur Mills (D-Ohio), and his paramour, the stripper Fanny Fox, the lady who fell into the tide pool in front of the Washington Monument. I don't say the press shouldn't report these stories, but we have to maintain some perspective. We do elect human beings, yes, and ,no, they don't live up to their rhetoric very often.

So he's a sinner. Welcome to the rest of Washington's human race, Senator. Meet, among many others, President Clinton and all the others like Henry Hyde and Newt Gingrich and Robert Livingston. And we have theives like Dan Rostenkowski to go with the adulterers. Welcome, good sir, it's a list of men whose visages might have graced statues in a more discreet time. Now they are the stuff of late-night comedians to make light of and "the hypocrisy police" in the fourth estate to have fun with.

Coulterism Takes A Needed Rebuke

Journalist Ann Coulter has called John Edwards a vile term for a homosexual, mocked the fact that he ever mentions a son who died in a car crash, and just recently expressed the wish that he would die in a terrorist attack.

For the record, Edwards is a former Senator who is running for President. He is not Robert Mugabe or Kim Jung-Il or the late Cambodian madman, Pol Pot. His crime seems to be that he disagrees with Ann Coulter and her friends.

Well, Ms. Coulter I believe finally had her Joseph Welch moment on "Hardball" yesterday. She was on the show and Elizabeth Edwards called into the show and politely let her have it. About time somebody did.

Click here for a video clip of the MS NBC Edwards/Coulter encounter

Joseph Welch, by the way, was the Army lawyer who got a few words in edgewise against Joe McCarthy during the Army/Mc Carthy hearings back in 1954. "Have you no shame, Senator McCarthy?" he asked the soon to be censured red-baiter and demagogue. "At long last, have no you sense of decency?"

It wasn't the end of McCarthy as a fear monger and it wasn't the first attack against him--but it was the beginning of the end of a lot of his power base.

Ann Coulter has a nice little power base made up of readers of her charming books with titles like "Treason" and such, implying that liberals or anyone who can be tagged a liberal is somehow American. I haven't read any of her books, but I've heard her mouth running on news shows and she's got a bad case of Vile Tongue --one that makes most other biased commentators of both sides seem tame. As a matter of fact I think she's a bit disturbed.

Lest you think I'm just a left-wing crank--well, I am that, too--I think she belongs in a rare category with the likes of America's vile-tongued lefty, Bill Maher. Maher makes fun of dead people, too, and those who are left behind. He made fun of Warren Buffet losing his wife on his show "Real Life" a few years back. He made fun of people who died in an Air Egypt plane crash over the Atlantic, both when the events were topical. I'm not sure what Mr. Buffet or some Egyptians ever did to Mr. Maher. Death and loss might just be funny to the guy. I hope Maher doesn't have to find out personally anytime soon that such human losses are not funny to those who suffer them.

Both Maher and Coulter may be sharp with a quip and good on camera, but I believe both are missing an empathy gene in her genetic makeup.

BTW: I do NOT support John Edwards as a candidate for anything. I'm just glad to see Ann Coulter squirm and run her hands through her blond hair and try to change the subject and stretch Mrs. Edwards remarks out of context. Who knows, maybe that discomfort indicates she has some shred of decency, something her hero Joe McCarthy apparently lacked.