Category: Current Affairs

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Tuesday Notes

Speaking of new neighbors: The New York Times reports that wildlife biologists from Cornell are doing a study of the apparently large and relatively new population of coyotes moving into Westchester County, just north of the city. Coyotes have an apparent taste for small dogs of the dust-mop variety: “… a Mount Pleasant couple reported that a few years ago a coyote hopped a four-foot fence, snatched their Lhasa apso and jumped back over — in plain sight of the husband. In June 2006, a Croton-on-Hudson resident, Herbert Doran, was walking his bichon frisé at night when a coyote lunged at the dog. ‘He tried to muscle me out of the way with his body to get to her,” Mr. Doran said in a phone interview. “I came down on his head with a flashlight. He was stunned for a second and then he stepped back. We had a stare-down for four or five seconds and then he took off.’ ”

Places not to get lost: Oregon ranks high on the list. Two or three weeks ago, Bay Area papers were reporting on two locals who had gone missing while on a trip to the Portland area. Investigators and family members speculated that the pair, a Jesuit priest and a longtime friend, had run off the road somewhere while touring the region. Well, it turns out the speculation was right — the missing people were found dead in a car wreck off the side of a northwestern Oregon highway. But that’s not all. It turns out that another motorist witnessed the June 8 crash, took careful note of the location, and then left the scene to find a phone and call 911; he reached dispatchers just minutes after the accident but he had no information on the potential victims’ condition and didn’t return to the scene.

After some initial confusion about which jurisdiction should respond, police arrived at the reported location. They looked around for awhile, and after about an hour called off the search. As The Oregonian reports, the families of the dead tourists are pretty unhappy: “We want to find out what skill levels and communication go on in Oregon,” said Rosemary Mulligan, [driver David] Schwartz’s sister. “The individual who called 9-1-1 was so detailed that my 16-year-old daughter could have found the car. For adults not to find it is pretty inexcusable.”

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Book Review by a Non-Reader

First off, I admit I haven’t read either of the books I’m about to criticize; in fact, I’m not criticizing the books themselves but rather a journalistic and media prejudice I believe they convey, a belief born of hearing the authors on several talk shows. It could be that the authors are not accurately characterizing their own work or that I’m making flawed assumptions about the work based on my failure to understand the authors’ statements and apparent attitudes. Et cetera, et cetera. Enough for the caveat.

So, in the last couple of weeks, two critical journalistic biographies of Hillary Clinton have come out: “Her Way,” by Don Van Natta Jr. and Jeff Gerth, and “A Woman in Charge,” by Carl Bernstein. They may be the finest books ever written about any political figure; but not judging by the tone of the authors during interviews — Bernstein on KQED’s “Forum” program (broadcast from San Francisco) on Tuesday and Gerth and Van Natta on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” today. In both cases, there seemed to be an attitude that ran beyond reporting and criticism to reproach and condemnation. One of Bernstein’s theses is that Clinton is a phony; he deplores her for it. Van Natta and Gerth take her to task for failing to read the 92-page National Intelligence Estimate the Bush administration supplied to Congress before the vote to give Bush the authority to attack Iraq; only in passing do they mention that a) only six members of the Senate say they read that document, b) it was just one of myriad sources of information on the matter at hand, and c) Clinton, despite her vote, has struck an increasingly critical stance toward the war from the fall of 2003 (that last point is germane to Gerth/Van Natta’s claim that she reinvented her position last year).

The thing is: Yes, it’s good that journalists are looking hard at Clinton. One might be tempted to say they’ve learned from the free pass most of the media establishment gave our current president before he was elected. But looking again, it’s hard to believe that anything has been learned.

Sure, Hillary Clinton is an important candidate; aside from her gender, it’s fair to say we’ve never had one quite like her — someone with such close previous involvement with the presidency and such a long and complex track record in and near government. But the attention she’s getting now? It’s more than a little disproportionate. When”s someone going to track down 500 of John McCain’s closest friends and associates so we can get some insight into why he cozens up to the same people who smeared him in 2000? Or really get into John Edwards’s closets and turn them inside out? He’s a personal-injury lawyer, for Christ’s sake! How can there not be something there to get a reporter’s juices flowing?

But then, it’s a market driven type of inquiry. Writing something on her will generate an advance and a level of buzz that no other candidate can match.

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Walkers for Gravel

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It figures that in Berkeley, where people are most comfortable communicating with their fellow citizens by bumper sticker and placard, that someone is going through the neighborhood with hand-scrawled flyers urging local pedestrians (these things would be invisible to drivers unless they decide to motor down the sidewalk, which come to think of it is not out of the question here) to check out the Democratic candidate who makes Dennis Kucinich look like an Eisenhower Republican.

I did as the signs commanded and visited a few Mike Gravel-related sites. Well, listen, first of all it’s been jarring to hear his name. I’ve been thinking that the Mike Gravel (the last name is gruh-VELL, emphasis on the second syllable) seeking the Democratic nomination must be the son of the old Mike Gravel, the senator from Alaska first elected in the misty 1960s. But no, the old and new Mike Gravel are the same guy. So going online has already been educational.

Beyond that I’ve got mixed feelings. The guy advocates so much I think makes sense or at least ought to be discussed seriously: a reform of the federal tax system to spread the pain (hey, in my heart I’ll really hurt for Halliburton); a move to guaranteed national health care; an aggressive policy on climate change; and in the shorter term, a switch from the practice of shooting first and asking questions later the Bush regime has employed to such wonderful effect in Iraq and elsewhere.

I don’t care for one of his big initiatives, though: a proposal to create a system of national voter referendums similar to those that California and many other states use more and more to decide big policy and budget questions. I don’t like the proposal because I think it’s proving to be a practical, political and constitutional disaster in California.

Among other things: Each ballot is longer than the last; huge amounts of money are spent to sway the voters to one side or other on questions that the Legislature and governor have punted on; the elections are decided by a non-representative slice of the state’s people (the older, more affluent white folks who go to the polls in the largest numbers); and the results suck: thanks to the initiative process we have seen passage of Proposition 13, which limits property taxes and has led to the slow strangulation of public services across the state; Proposition 187, a cynical and heartless attempt to cut off social services to illegal immigrants; Proposition 209, a measure designed to kill affirmative action in public institutions. (Oh, gosh: Is my distaste for lunkhead conservatism showing?)

Take money out of the process and make participation universal, and I’m all for it.

Back to Gravel (who would try to take money out of the political campaign process, by the way): Probably the saddest thing about our system is that it’s so hard for someone like him, someone who has staked out positions away from the safe center, to get anything like a serious hearing. It’s as if even the people who might agree with some of what he says agree that it’s just too goofy to believe that anyone running on these issues could ever have a chance to govern. That’s what I find myself thinking, anyway. Where’s the hope or the heart in the system when you feel that the same old crap is the only “realistic” option for the future?

Gravel061007-1

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My Dinner with Barack: The Sweepstakes

A few months ago, I donated some money to Barack Obama’s campaign. It was an impulse, but a modest impulse. One result is that I get lots of Obama email updating me on the struggle and importuning me for more cash. Hey, that’s the way it works. When you give money to a political cause, you’ve identified yourself as a mark of sorts and you’re going to keep hearing from people who want to remind you of how valuable your past contributions have been — and by the way, where’s the next one?

So. Obama. Today I got an Obama email with a tantalizing offer. If I contribute something to the campaign in the next week — it doesn’t matter how much — I “could join Barack and three other supporters for an intimate dinner for five.” In short, it sounds like a sweepstakes or a raffle: You’re buying a chance to meet the celebrity up close and personal. You can’t win if you don’t play.

Thoughts and questions abound: Is this legal? (It’s got to be; I mean if the Lincoln Bedroom and intimate hunting trips with high officials have been on the auction block, how can this be wrong?) What sort of joint will host the dinner? (In-n-Out Burger gets kind of noisy.) Will Barack leave the table while I’m in the middle of relating my life story to go have a smoke? (Hey, man, I thought you were quitting.) Would it be gauche to ask Barack to autograph my menu? (Remember to bring a pen that will write on grease stains.) Will the Secret Service be involved in picking the sweepstakes winners, or at least in investigating their pasts? (What’s this about disorderly conduct?) Who’s going to pick up the tab? (Should I donate enough to cover the tip?)

[Update 6/7/07: Yesterday’s invitation to break bread with Senator Obama, sent over a staffer’s name, was followed today by one signed by the candidate himself. Consider me cajoled!]

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Sunday Notes

What Iraq Needs: “In the history of Iraq, more than 7,000 years, there have always been strong leaders,” said [Sheik Muhammad Bakr Khamis al-Suhail, a respected Shiite neighborhood leader in Baghdad. “We need strong rulers or dictators like Franco, Hitler, even Mubarak. We need a strong dictator, and a fair one at the same time, to kill all extremists, Sunni and Shiite.”

–“A Thirst for Final, Crushing Victory,” Edward Wong, The New York Times

Hogwash (R.I.P. Fred): “Hogzilla,” the behemoth feral porker recently killed by an 11-year-old wielding a .50-caliber pistol — this is still a great country — turns out not to have been wild. And not to have been named Hogzilla. His former owner, who bought him as a present for his wife a few years back and sold him to the hunting plantation where he met his end, called him Fred.

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Inconceivable

“The devastation that would be caused had this plot succeeded is just unthinkable.”

–Roslyn Mauskopf, U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, announcing alleged conspiracy to attack jet-fuel facilities at Kennedy airport.

First: Let it be noted in passing that Mauskopf translates from German as Mousehead. That’s just for the record.

Second: Last summer, when British authorities announced they had uncovered a plot to bomb as many as nine transatlantic airliners with some sort of liquid explosives brought aboard in carry-on luggage, a police official said the plot “was intended to be mass murder on an unimaginable scale.”

“Unthinkable”? “Unimaginable”? What world are these people living in? Where I live, in the land of the National Threat Advisory, it’s much, much too easy to contemplate and imagine mass slaughter and devastation.

But back to the Kennedy airport plot: The cops and prosecutors paint a picture of a terrorist crew reducing JFK to a smoking hole in the ground. Sure, that’s the vision the alleged plotters had in mind. But how real was the threat? One anonymous law enforcement official quoted by The New York Times describes the plot’s leader as “a sad sack” and “not a Grade A terrorist.”

The sad sack knew all about facilities at JFK, but was apparently uninformed that blowing up a fuel tank or a section of fuel pipeline would not lead to a chain-reaction explosion. The sad sack was also under the impression that an attack on JFK would be especially devastating because we Americans are all so attached to the late president’s memory.The sad sack and his associates were looking for financial backing from a terrorist group in Trinidad whose greatest hit was 17 years ago.

None of which is to say that at some point, with just the right tumblers falling into place, the sad sack’s plan might have won support and led to something. Even if the guy and his pals are numbskulls, it’s good that someone has taken them by the necks and put them someplace where they can’t hurt anyone for the time being. And sure, maybe all these plots sound laughable at some point because they do contain elements of the unbelievable. If the FBI had picked up Mohammed Atta and company on September 10, 2001, I’m sure their plans for New York and Washington would have sounded a little outlandish.

But that gets to what’s unsettling about this. The prosecutors and cops put on a show in which they seem to make the most of what appears, from what they’ve made public, to be very little. Meantime, you wonder what’s stirring in the shadows — thinkable, imaginable — while the sad sack is at center stage.

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Guest Observation

“… The U.S. military announced that a total of 10 American soldiers were killed in roadside bombings and a helicopter crash on Memorial Day, making May [with 116 troops dead] the third deadliest month of the war [for the United States].” — An Associated Press Iraq war roundup



“… Patroclus fought like dreaming:

His head thrown back, his mouth–wide as a shrieking mask–

Sucked at the air to nourish his infuriated mind

And seemed to draw the Trojans onto him,

To lock them round his waist, red water, washed against his chest,

To lay their tired necks against his sword like birds.

–Is it a god? Divine? Needing no tenderness?–

Yet instantly they touch, he butts them,

Cuts them back:

–Kill them!

My sweet Patroclus,

–Kill them!

As many as you can,

For

Coming behind you through the dust you felt

–What was it?–felt creation part, and then

APOLLO!

Who had been patient with you

Struck.

His hand came from the east,

And in his wrist lay all eternity;

And every atom of his mythic weight

Was poised between his fist and bent left leg.

Your eyes lurched out. Achilles’ helmet rang

Far and away beneath the cannon-bones of Trojan horses,

And you were footless … staggering … amazed …

Between the clumps of dying, dying yourself,

Dazed by the brilliance in your eyes,

The noise–like weirs heard far away–

Dabbling your astounded fingers

In the vomit on your chest.

And all the Trojans lay and stared at you;

Propped themselves up and stared at you;

Feeling themselves as blest as you felt cursed. …”

–From “War Music: An Account of Books 16 to 19 of Homer’s Iliad”

By Christopher Logue, Copyright 1981

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‘Is It Nothing to You?’

N.Y. Times: Silence Speaks Volumes at Intersection of Views on Iraq War

“LEWES, Del. — No one talks, but a lot is said at the intersection of Savannah Road and Kings Highway. Peace demonstrators hung strips of cloth bearing the names of soldiers killed in Iraq as part of their demonstration. Small cities and towns, like Lewes, Del., left, are suffering a large portion of the deaths in the fighting in Iraq. …”

Salon.com: Memorial Day

“For me, like most other Americans, Memorial Day is a time for barbecuing, playing Frisbee, loading up coolers with iced beer, and getting out of town. I usually don’t think about America’s war dead on the last weekend of May any more than I think about our nation’s independence on the Fourth of July, or about the birth of Jesus on Christmas.

“No, my memorial days are scattered and irregular. It is monuments that have most often triggered reveries about fallen soldiers. The words ‘Is it nothing to you?’ inscribed on the great gray World War I obelisk in downtown Vancouver, Canada, stopped me in my tracks late on a summer afternoon many years ago. I had not known this biblical phrase from Lamentations, never seen it on a war memorial before. Maybe it’s a British thing. But for whatever reason, it arrested me, and those long-vanished men who died in fields in France or Germany suddenly appeared, a ghostly company waiting for the simple tribute of memory. …”

Chicago Tribune: Lessons from the Great War

“Frank Buckles, 106, lied about his age to get into the Army when he was 16. He served in England and France, but he never was close to the fighting in World War I. He lives on a 330-acre cattle farm in West Virginia.”

[Later: The full King James Version of the Lamentations verse cited above is: “Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger.”

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Your Tax Dollars at Work

The PBS NewsHour aired a nicely done report yesterday on the much publicized estimate by two noted economists that the Iraq war may ultimately cost the United States up to $2 trillion. The segment did a good job breaking down and explaining the estimate, published by Columbia’s Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard’s Linda Bilmes in 2005 and 2006. Where the report was lacking, perhaps, is discussing what the cost might mean down the road, though it did point out that the money we’ve spent already on Iraq, nearly $430 billion as of this moment, would have paid several times over for rebuilding every school in the United States or would have made a nice down payment on the “unsolvable” problems with the Social Security system.

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Surrender Date

Opponents of the congressional effort to attach an operational timetable to new funding for our Iraq War and World Improvement Project (IWWIP — trademark pending) have long since adopted a catchy label for the proposed troop withdrawal schedule. Led by the likes of John McCain, the critics condemn timetables as setting a “surrender date” in the war.

McCain and the critics have one thing right: It’s messy for Congress to step into managing the war this way. But there’s nothing unconstitutional or unprecedented about it — in fact, the Constitution gives Congress the power and responsibility, by way of its control of funding, to participate in warmaking decisions on the people’s behalf. The “no surrender” types apparently would continue to cede their power and responsibility to an executive who has proven careless and arrogant in its exercise. The timetable critics’ alternative — to continue writing blank checks and waiting for the executive’s current plan, or the next, or the one after that, to work — is an extension of the same plan that’s killed thousands of U.S. troops, tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and laid waste to a place that was supposed to turn into the Eden of Mideast democracy.

The “no surrender” types speak of the awful consequences of leaving Iraq “before our work is done.” What I’d like to hear someone in Congress talk about is the awful consequences of surrendering again and again to a president who ignores both the lessons of experience and the clear voice of his people.

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