Signs of Intelligent Life in the GOP?

An article in today's NY Times brought to mind one of the funniest stories so far this month: the story of how the Washington press corps has totally missed the boat in its reporting of the passage of the Stimulus Bill.

To hear the Beltway version of the story, President Obama failed miserably because he was unable to get the GOP to contribute in any meaningful way to this most important legislation in a generation. Obama tried to make the legislation bipartisan: he visited the Republicans on the Hill, invited them to a cocktail party, had his people sit down with their people. Nothing worked. The Republicans were determined that the bill should reflect their "values" (tee-hee), or the nation's economy be damned.

To the Beltway press, this was a failure of Obama's leadership. A good example is this short item from Crooks and Liars, in which NY Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg completely misses the point. You could be excused for thinking it's an audition tape for "Clueless."

Meanwhile, outside of I-495, we poor schmucks are praying the Stimulus Bill works, and works fast. We're not interested in Republican "philosophy," and we're scratching our heads wondering why the Congressional Republicans, with so much at stake for this country, refused to make a positive contribution to the Bill (and folks, "More tax cuts!" is not a positive contribution). Did they take their cue from their lord and master, Limbaugh, who has declared more than once that he wants the Stimulus Bill to fail? Offer another explanation.

So who won the week? Let's see — Obama gets the Stimulus Bill he wants and Congressional Republicans look like small-minded idiots. Hmmm. This is a tough one.

Frank Rich wrote about this on Sunday, in a very readable column I recommend highly. Here's a piece:

Less than a month into Obama’s term, we don’t (and can’t) know how he’ll fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithner’s uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulson’s first mate.

But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.

I started this little essay with a title that suggests there may be thinking people left in the Republican Party. Where could they be?

We can rule out Washington. But look at this! It turns out that outside the Beltway, elected Republicans who are actually held accountable for solving problems — state governors — are embracing bipartisanship and the Stimulus Bill.

Leaderless after losing the White House, the [Republican] party is mostly defined by its Congressional wing, which flaunted its anti-spending ideology in opposing the stimulus package. That militancy drew the mockery of late-night television comics, but the praise of conservative talk-show stars and the party faithful.

In the states, meanwhile, many Republican governors are practicing a pragmatic — their Congressional counterparts would say less-principled — conservatism.

Governors, unlike members of Congress, have to balance their budgets each year. And that requires compromise with state legislators, including Democrats, as well as more openness to the occasional state tax increase and to deficit-spending from Washington.

I love the smell of late-night television mockery in the morning!



But fear not. In the Republican party, the right hand never knows what the right hand is doing.

What Happened?

Tonight, Frontline is doing a show on the financial crisis, and it looks like it will be good. Here's the promo:



Go here for excerpts.

I love the narrator's voice. That guy can make Mary Had a Little Lamb sound ominous.

One television critic I read said the show was partisan, because it had two Democratic politicians but no Republican politicians. The critic knows nothing about economics, but you've got to write something, I guess.

So in fairness, I will now present the Republican position:

"This happened because we didn't give enough tax cuts to the bankers. We will solve this with more tax cuts. And tin foil hats."

There ya are. Don't ever say we're not even-handed here.

Addendum: If you have enough time on your hands, Simon Johnson has a daunting web site called Baseline Scenario, and it has a helpful page of links called Financial Crisis for Beginners. If you've got a year or two of your life to spare, you could get a real education there.

Oh, What a Mess We're In!

I've been trying to educate myself about the economy, so my head hurts. But I've come across some great stuff, and if you're brave enough, you might want to give it a look-see.

Bill Moyers interviews Simon Johnson, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund and professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, here. It's 20 minutes long, but the man is fascinating. At the time of the interview, he was worried Obama doesn't have the political will, or understanding, to nationalize any of the big banks, and that the banks will bleed us dry if he doesn't. Articles I've read subsequent to this interview suggest that Treasury Secretary Geithner's "stress test" for banks is effectively an assessment of whether they are solvent. If the answer is "no," they're under new ownership and management. We'll see.

I've read article after article about how disappointing Geithner's plan for the banks, announced last week, was. Conventional wisdom is that it was too vague. Most financial writers were looking for something more detailed. See Gretchen Morgenson's Sunday column in the NY Times, for example. The banks didn't like it, either, because it didn't bail them out. A notable exception was Stephen Pearlstein of the Washington Post:



Pearlstein's column about it is here.

We'll see. Maybe Geithner's plan was just vague enough.

I'll have more on this tomorrow. (Oh, boy!)

Update: I beat Andrew Tobias to the Simon Johnson interview by at least an hour and a half. You have no idea how smart this makes me feel. Anyway, Andrew Tobias says you should watch it, so now somebody who knows something is recommending it.

An Argument Against Intelligent Design

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings finds evidence against a benevolent deity in One More Reason Why I'm Glad I'm Not an Ant.

I am aware that some readers will find in this an argument for intelligent design, and I will just ask you to please keep your distance. Thank you.

Remembering Sarah

Remember that first week in September, right after McCain had introduced us to Sarah Palin, when her poll numbers were good, and it looked like McCain had done something exciting? Good people moaned that the Obama Campaign had to do something, and do it fast!

David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, puts that in perspective. Of Palin, he says:

"She was our best fundraiser and organizer in the fall."

That sure is right. I hope she decides to run in 2012.

They're All Madoffs

Shutterhand's comment about tasseled loafers on Raw Milk Prices, below, came to mind when I came across this gem in today's NY Times:

A provision buried deep inside the $787 billion economic stimulus bill would impose restrictions on executive bonuses at financial institutions that are much tougher than those proposed 10 days ago by the Treasury Department.

The provision, inserted by Senate Democrats over the objections of the Obama administration, is aimed at companies that have received financial bailout funds. It would prohibit cash bonuses and almost all other incentive compensation for the five most senior officers and the 20 highest-paid executives at large companies that receive money under the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

[snip]

The restriction with the most bite would bar top executives from receiving bonuses exceeding one-third of their annual pay. Any bonus would have to be in the form of long-term incentives, like restricted stock, which could not be cashed out until the TARP money was repaid in full.

The provision, written by Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, highlighted the growing wrath among lawmakers and voters over the lavish compensation that top Wall Street firms and big banks awarded to senior executives at the same time that many of the companies, teetering on the brink of insolvency, received taxpayer-paid bailouts.

[snip]

Top economic advisers to President Obama adamantly opposed the pay restrictions, according to Congressional officials, warning lawmakers behind closed doors that they went too far and would cause a brain drain in the financial industry during an acute crisis. Another worry is the tougher restrictions may encourage executives to more quickly pay back the government’s investments since, in a compromise with the financial industry, banks no longer have to replace federal funds with private capital. That could remove an extra capital cushion, further reducing lending.

[snip]

But some experts on executive compensation warned that the restrictions could unleash unintended consequences, like encouraging banks to increase salaries to make up for diminished incentive pay. Even then, they warned, banks were likely to lose top talent.

“These rules will not work,” James F. Reda, an independent compensation consultant, said on Friday. “Any smart executive will (a) pay back TARP money ASAP or (b) get another job.”

Like Shutterhand, I'm furious. Heck, I've been furious since we started down Ronald Reagan's Road to Ruin in 1980! I'm trying hard not to get emotional about it, because I usually regret that, but Mr. Reda's comment just makes me want to puke. These guys are not worth those salaries and bonuses. They don't know what they're doing. They have loyalty to nothing but their own bank account, and they've been robbing their depositors for decades. Let them leave. Let them get other jobs. Good riddance.

Update: A prof from Harvard Business School had a good article about how executive compensation has changed since the 1980's here.

Warning: Another Church Post

And now for something completely different.

Tonight we celebrated Darwin Day at our ridiculous little church:


Why Darwin Day? Well, Darwin was born 200 years ago yesterday, and Darwin was an Episcopalian. That's all the reason we need to party. Okay, so maybe he was an Anglican, but in America Anglicans are called Episcopalians. (So far, at least.)

Why today and not yesterday, his actual birthday? Maybe you can party on a work night!

A band called Overman played for about an hour, and they were very good! I hadn't heard of them before this week, but we were lucky to have them. They sang a song about evolution which I couldn't understand the words to (the acoustics of church basements being what they are, and my hearing being what it is), but which is supposed to be very popular on iTunes; viz., it has actually made them some money.

They did a song about Mother Theresa which I did understand, and which was fine, fine, fine. You will recall that after her death, and after beatification activities had begun, it was revealed that Mother Theresa had actually been struggling with "the faith thing" for most of her adult life. The songwriter said that made him like her even more. Me, too.


And there was food! They called it "Primordial Soup," but I cut through the kitchen and saw a lot of Progresso Soup cans in the garbage. Draw your own conclusions. Actually, we should be thankful it wasn't really primordial soup. Here's Tim dishing out some hopefully faux Primordial Soup:

And there was dancing! Overman played a great blues number that would not allow feet to remain in place on the floor.


The person in the blue jeans with the clerical collar is our rector, Kara. The guy leaning against the pole is her husband, John. Give some people a little Primordial Soup, and they lose all inhibitions. (Not John, though.) Hey! That girl's holding a beer! Where'd she get that beer? I didn't know there was beer!

Anyway things were finished off with a birthday cake, and everybody sat down to watch a showing of Jurassic Park.

Yeah, you heard right, a birthday cake.


Hope that cake went well with your beer.

Yep. We're pathetic.

Update: Cross-posted from above. Something I didn't mention in my post about Darwin Day is that (ahem) BBC radio was there.

You can find their report here. The St. John's Church part is at the very beginning (singing Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin), and beginning at about the 14 minute mark. You can slide the slider to that point, if you don't want to hear the whole 30-minute show.

Uh-oh.

I've received a report that there may be a coding error somewhere on my page that is causing computer freezes, with a message that there is an error on line 53.

If that's the case, I'm in trouble because 1) I know nothing about code, and 2) I can't count to 53.

If you would be so kind, please let me know if you're having this trouble, too. I'm using Firefox on a Macintosh, and have no trouble. The trouble reporter is using MS Internet Explorer on Windows XP. If you're having trouble, or not having trouble, I'd appreciate a note in comments with a yea or nay, the browser you use, and the system you use. Of course, if your screen freezes up, you might have trouble doing this. In that case, just holler.

Thanks.

Raw Milk Prices

A great thing about reading blogs is that I've "met" fascinating people who are doing interesting things. If, like me, you're a regular reader of Midlife by Farmlight, you've gotten a real education in what life is like on a dairy farm. And suddenly dairy farmers are real people I care about.

So when I heard this NPR story about the downturn in milk prices (something that doesn't usually make the 10 o'clock news in Chicago), it meant something to me. I'm going out to buy some cheese. Wouldn't you like some extra cheese on your pizza?

Update: If you're planning to visit Midlife by Farmlight today, you'd better wear your goggles!

Idiot Watch

I know I'm supposed to be post-partisan and all that, but the Republicans did so much damage on their greedy binge, and they're so laughable now, that I just have to share a couple of snippets. From Krugman:

One might have expected Republicans to act at least slightly chastened in these early days of the Obama administration, given both their drubbing in the last two elections and the economic debacle of the past eight years.

But it’s now clear that the party’s commitment to deep voodoo — enforced, in part, by pressure groups that stand ready to run primary challengers against heretics — is as strong as ever. In both the House and the Senate, the vast majority of Republicans rallied behind the idea that the appropriate response to the abject failure of the Bush administration’s tax cuts is more Bush-style tax cuts.

And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan — which will, it’s worth bearing in mind, cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq — has bordered on the deranged.

It’s “generational theft,” said Senator John McCain, just a few days after voting for tax cuts that would, over the next decade, have cost about four times as much.

I tell ya, set your own government up as your enemy, or as the wonderful Ronald Reagan put it, "The Problem", and not paying taxes sounds downright patriotic, doesn't it? How convenient!

And this snippet from a commenter on Andrew Tobias's blog goes right to the heart of Republican absurdity:

My favorite Republican tax cut proposal is the one to lower the corporate tax rate to 25% from 35%. Boy, now there's a real job generator! Can’t you just hear the boardroom conversation? "People are losing jobs by the millions! Demand is in the toilet! But now we have a real chance to hire workers we don’t need to produce goods we can’t sell, all because of the lower taxes on the profits we won’t have!"

And just yesterday I heard Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty saying, with a straight face, that we needed more tax cuts to spur the recovery. These guys are pathetic.

Disclaimer: I've used a picture similar to the one above to illustrate a post before, and explained that they're not real Republicans, but are good people dressed as Republicans. In fairness to them, I think I need to repeat that disclaimer.

Uncovering Nature's Unhidden Secrets

Since you are a Renaissance man or woman, you have wide interests -- and this article about tracking the migration of birds will appeal to you.

Good-bye Dubai

I read somewhere that The New York Times declared Dubai to be 2008's must-see vacation spot. How things have changed in just the past few months.

With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.

The government says the real number is much lower. But the stories contain at least a grain of truth: jobless people here lose their work visas and then must leave the country within a month. That in turn reduces spending, creates housing vacancies and lowers real estate prices, in a downward spiral that has left parts of Dubai — once hailed as the economic superpower of the Middle East — looking like a ghost town.

Gee, maybe they need some tax cuts. [Yes, that was sarcasm.] Read the whole story, it's fascinating.

As I understand it, the towers pictured above are not completed yet. I wonder if they ever will be.

Energy Policy and the Stimulus Package

How refreshing.

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Your Love Keeps Lifting Me

Hiatus Interruptus

I interrupt this hiatus to bring you this picture, from Time Magazine:

For non-family members, that's Laura (wife of my brother, Chip) and someone else whose name escapes me. Cool that Laura got her picture in Time, no?

Hiatus

I need to take a break, so won't be posting for a while. Thanks for your kindness in dropping by these past months.

Blago's Final Hours

I have to admit to readers who don't live in Chicago -- yes, this place is full of little Rod Blagojeviches. To Chicago politicians, it's all about them; what's best for the city or state is a secondary consideration. There are exceptions, but that's the norm. Thus, we read this in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Until recent days, Blagojevich blocked his staff from offering [Lt. Gov.] Quinn [who will become governor when Blago is disposed of] any help on a transition by not providing him with budget figures or any other information, Quinn said.

"I think Gov. Blagojevich put a straitjacket on everyone under his command not to be cooperative or helpful, but when his own staff saw he took off for New York and went on TV predicting his own demise ... they've become much more helpful," Quinn said.

In good times, that "it's all about them" attitude can actually work to our advantage. Like they say, Chicago is the city that works. If you've got a complaint about a pothole or an abandoned car, you call your alderman and it's taken care of. Constituent services is how they get themselves reelected. But sometimes it just turns your stomach.

Anyway, this little episode is almost over:

The Bible is ready. The oath has been prepared. The lieutenant governor and his family are on their way to Springfield. And the current governor's belongings are boxed up and waiting to be picked up at the Executive Mansion.

Not that Blago has much besides a Gideon Bible to pick up at the Executive Mansion. He refused to move to Springfield when he was elected. Better to charge the taxpayers for roundtrip flights from Chicago. Because it's all about him.

Gigapan

Via Andrew Tobias, take a look at this photo. Find the dot that is Barack Obama. Then use the slider on the left to zoom in. The resolution is amazing.

Notice that Clarence Thomas is sleeping (nothing new). Find Al Gore. Who else do you recognize?

A Sign of Spring

This is hilarious. Don't miss it.

The Debt We All Owe Chief Justice Roberts

It occurred to me this morning, when I lovingly and, I thought, helpfully pointed out to Suellen that she had added an unnecessary "the" to a passage she had prepared to be read aloud from the church lectern this morning. Instead of saying "A reading from Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians" the passage read "A reading from the Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians."

A small matter, no? Certainly not something to shoot the messenger about, wouldn't you say? Well, let's just say Suellen - the very embodiment of sweetness and charm - is not a morning person.

And that's when I had my epiphany. That's when I realized we are all released from ever again beating ourselves up about mistakes we have made while trying to do right. Why that typo in your book, lovingly and responsibly slaved over for more than a year, is not worthy of a thought. Why that memo you wrote, in which you extolled the importance of public service, but instead you wrote "pubic service" -- to your subordinates' endless delight -- is something you, too, can finally laugh about after all these years.


And the reason we are all released from these burdens is because the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a man who is supposed to be, by temperament and training, super careful about every word he says and writes, while performing one of the most important functions -- and one of the simplest functions -- he will perform in his entire lifetime, in front of an audience of hundreds of millions, nay, billions! -- the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court blew it!

Whatever it was you did, it just couldn't have been as publicly stupid as that. Yet he still managed to get out of bed the next morning.


Roberts got a do-over, and so do you. Now go enjoy your day.

The Inaugural Address

I knew if I procrastinated long enough, somebody else would write about the Inaugural Address for me. Frank Rich did it this morning.

I swear, the image of Dick Cheney as Mr. Potter was going to be part of my post all along. Rich did add one or two ideas of his own, though.

Metaphor

The Chicago Police arrested the highest priced hooker anyone can remember. And she's a Republican. The story here.

The World According to Faux

If you didn't catch this at TalkingPointsMemo, you're in for a treat. Faux News is in rare form.

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President Obama is trying to save the jobs of millions of Americans. Rush Limbaugh hopes he fails. Why? Because if Obama is successful, it would mean Limbaugh's ideology is wrong. And he would rather America has a disaster than that his ideology be wrong. Yet millions of people still listen to this blowhard.

Wistful Entertainment

Still thinking about the inaugural address. If you've got a few minutes, take a look at this little video.



I must say, when he finally figured out where the picture was taken from, I thought, "Well, duh!" But I hadn't thought of it until then.

You may now say, "Well, duh!"

Sweet, Blissful Innocence

While I'm sorting out my thoughts about Obama's Inaugural Address, I hope you'll pop over to Obsidian Wings to read this short essay.

Mission Accomplished

I don't have much to say about the inauguration. There have already been some snafus, but few people are dwelling on them. Except me. Suellen got the above invitation, but I got none. I guess that's something I'll have to take up with Barack.

The Inauguration Committee apparently sold exclusive rights to broadcasting Sunday's concert on The Mall to HBO. And HBO promptly censored the invocation by Bishop Gene Robinson (usually written as "gay Bishop Gene Robinson"). Two very bad ideas. How you can legally sell exclusive rights to something on The Mall is a mystery to me, and I hope some kind of legislative action is taken to keep that from ever happening again. Maybe after the economic crisis is solved and peace is brought to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. Then I hope they will get right on that.

History flows. Some say it's cyclical, seeing swings from conservative to liberal, and back to conservative again. Some say it's progressive, as ideas like democracy and human rights take hold, and standards of living rise; there are backwards steps, but the trend is toward the better. Some see history being created by unique men and women: the Thomas Jeffersons and Harriet Tubmans of the world. And some see history as the story of mass movements, like Christianity, Judaism, Islam, labor unions, and Nazism; in this view the role of individuals is less important.

I don't know, though I do think about it sometimes. Maybe "All of the above." Probably "None of the above." History flows. Or maybe it doesn't.

I was in the ninth grade when John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Now, 45 years later, there are still parts of that day I can recall clearly. They said it was the end of Camelot, and it certainly was. Within 5 years Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were dead, too. I walked with thousands of people in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in memory of King. On the night of the California primary I decided it was time to switch my allegiance from Eugene McCarthy to Robert Kennedy. I woke up the next morning to hear that another Kennedy had been murdered.

And America entered its Dark Ages. The war babies, the "love generation," who were supposed to be committed to ideas like justice and equality, turned out to be committed only to themselves. People promising "Morning in America," feeding on our divisions, turned us against one another; and while enjoying that show, they helped themselves.

We sure are ready for Barack Obama.

Tragedy in Gaza

I can't embed this video, so you'll need to go to the NY Times site.

Meanwhile, Israel is trying to get out of Gaza before Obama is sworn in.

If they have really managed, as they said they intended, to destroy Hamas, there might be some moral equation that says this was worth it. But my guess is they improved Hamas recruitment.

Lincoln on Obama

I've done enough reading about Abraham Lincoln to think Louis Gates and John Stauffer have it right in their op-ed piece in today's NY Times. Snippets:

It is difficult to say for sure, of course, but one thing we can be fairly certain about is that Lincoln would have been, um, surprised [by Obama's election]. Lincoln was thoroughly a man of his times, and while he staunchly opposed slavery — on moral grounds and because it made competition in the marketplace unfair for poor white men — for most of his life he harbored fixed and unfortunate ideas about race.

And they conclude:

Once Lincoln had recovered from his shock that a descendant of “amalgamation” (about which he once expressed reservations) had ascended to the presidency, one suspects their mutual embrace of economic independence and natural rights, their love and mastery of the English language, their shared desire to leave their mark on history, and their astonishing gift for pragmatic improvisation, would have drawn him to a man so fundamentally similar to himself.

And they both understood that the perfect is an enemy of the good. Read the whole thing.

And Dangerous

Not only are they jerks; they are evil.

The Bush administration has issued a bevy of last-minute rules governing everything from commercial trucking to factory farming.

One rule makes it easier for companies to dump coal-mining waste into local waterways. Another allows factory farms to exceed air pollution limits.

I guess they're setting up their post-Administration employment.

Small, Small, Small

That's the only way to describe the outgoing administration. Just in case you were feeling sorry for the jerks, there's this:

Less than a week before it leaves office, the Bush administration has sparked anger across the Atlantic by tripling the import duty rate on roquefort cheese to 300%, a move which the US hopes will "shut down trade" in the sheep's milk product by making it prohibitively expensive.

The decision, part of Washington's attempts to force the EU into dropping its ban on hormone-treated beef, was greeted with disbelief by the French government and by farmers in the south-western Aveyron region who depend on the industry for their livelihoods.

"Maybe the Bush administration indulged itself by taking this decision just before it leaves," Robert Glandieres, president of the roquefort producers' group, told Reuters.

The tariff on roquefort, condemned as "incomprehensible and inadmissible" by the French government, will probably have a minimal effect, given exports to the US account for just 2% of annual sales. French farmers said it would mean "the end" for roquefort in the US and vowed to take "symbolic actions" in return.

Do the Bushies seriously believe that blocking a niche market (though a delicious one!) will convince the Europeans to eat our adulterated beef? The only word for it is delusional.

Not a Bad Start

A Gallup poll out today suggests Barack Obama is impressing folks who didn't vote for him.

PRINCETON, NJ -- President-elect Barack Obama receives a remarkably high 83% approval rating for the way in which he has handled the presidential transition, significantly higher than the approval level for either of his immediate predecessors just before they first took office.

Of course, 83% will never hold up. Even I will be angry with him some day. Maybe some day soon.

Kander's Obama's People

The NY Times commissioned photographer Nadav Kander to take photographs of members of the incoming Obama administration. The 52-photo portfolio will run in the Sunday Times Magazine, but it's online now.

Observations:

• There're all the same picture, just with different people in it.

• If you're going to have Kander take your picture, wear dark pants or get your suit pressed. If you're a woman, don't let Kander take your picture.

Update: The NY Times has been whining that Obama has not given them a special sit-down interview, as has been "traditional" with incoming Presidents. Looking at these pictures, I think we now know why.

Minneapolis Star Tribune Files Bankruptcy Petition

Can we really be living in the last days of newspapers? Is the internet really going to do it for us?

The Minneapolis Star Tribune filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition Thursday night.

The filing had been anticipated for several months. It follows missed payments to the paper’s lenders, and comes less than two years after a private equity group, Avista Capital Partners, purchased the paper for $530 million.

In its filing, the newspaper listed assets of $493.2 million and liabilities of $661.1 million. The company said it hopes to use bankruptcy to restructure its debt and lower its labor costs.

Like most newspapers, the Star Tribune has experienced a sharp decline in print advertising. Its earnings before interest, taxes and debt payments was about $26 million in 2008, down from about $59 million in 2007 and about $115 million in 2004.

1. Wow. That's some drop.

2. Earnings was?

How sad. I sure hope they pull out of this. They and all the other newspapers that are struggling so hard to survive.

Official Portrait

The web site of "The Office of the President-Elect" has released the first official Obama Presidential Portrait. And, as the web site says,

It was taken by Pete Souza, the newly-announced official White House photographer.

It is the first time that an official presidential portrait was taken with a digital camera. [My emphasis]

And what a digital camera it is, too. If you have a digital camera, you should know that (unless it is an incredibly cheap camera), it records not only the photo, but the type of camera that took the photo, along with the date, time, aperture, shutter speed, whether you used a flash, and gobs of other info. Some cameras even record your GPS coordinates. All this information is recorded in the file with the photo.

That's how I know this camera was taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. Which just happens to be the camera I've been lusting after ever since it was released. Could this be a sign? [Say "yes!"] Bad news, though: they're not cheap. I guess that's understating it, isn't it? They're expensive.

A Life

Do you sometimes think you've wasted your life?

It's the birthday of the author of 52 books and nearly 200 articles and short stories, Emily Hahn, born in St Louis, Missouri (1905).

She went to the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and she was the first woman in the university's history to graduate with a degree in Mining Engineering. Many of her peers and instructors disapproved and insisted that she would not be able to get a job. After college, she and another adventurous young woman disguised themselves as men and set out on a cross-country road trip, driving more than 2,400 miles.

She wrote: "Then followed several years of drifting, or as near drifting as a middle-class well-brought-up woman can achieve. … I needed money, and began to write in order to earn some." She taught geology at Hunter College in New York, and then she took off for Europe.

While she was in England, her first book was published in the United States: Seductio ad Absurdum: The Principles and Practices of Seduction — A Beginner's Handbook (1930). She traveled around Europe, then joined a Red Cross mission to the Belgian Congo. She spent nine months there with the mission, and then stayed in Africa another year, living with a pygmy tribe and traveling around central Africa on foot. Her experiences in Africa formed the basis for several of her books, fiction and nonfiction, including a travel memoir, Congo Solo: Misadventures Two Degrees North (1933), a novel, With Naked Foot (1934), and Africa to Me (1964), a collection of articles she wrote for The New Yorker on the subject of emerging African nationalism.

She worked for a while in England at the British Museum Reading Room, and then moved to China, where she wrote for The New Yorker. She moved into an apartment in the red-light district of Shanghai, and she had a pet gibbon, which she brought to dinner parties. In Shanghai, she became romantically involved with prominent men in the city, including the poet and publisher Sinmay Zau. He taught her to smoke opium, and she became an addict.

She moved to Hong Kong, and became lovers with a British spy, Major Boxer. They had a daughter together a few weeks before Hong Kong was invaded by the Japanese. She recounted these experiences in her memoir China to Me (1944), which was a great literary success.

She and Boxer got married and moved to his estate in England, where they had another child. Hahn lived a domestic life in rural England for several years, but then escaped to New York, where she bought an apartment and wrote memoirs, articles, fiction, and nonfiction. She continued to go into her office at The New Yorker until a few months before she died at the age of 92.

Emily Hahn said, "Nobody said not to go."

This biography is from today's page in The Writer's Almanac.

Musical Interlude -- Arthur Lee

It has been a while since I've inflicted my musical tastes on you.

This is a video of the late, great Arthur Lee at the Glastonbury Festival in Glastonbury, England. Glastonbury is probably the most mystical place in England. It is where King Arthur is supposed to be buried, among other things. There's a beautiful, ruined cathedral there. Suellen and I were lucky and visited it when there weren't big crowds.

Arthur Lee was a great, fairly unsung rock musician. His 1967 album, Forever Changes, was ranked 40th by Rolling Stone magazine in it's Top 500 Albums of all Time. Not that that means anything, but you'd think you'd have at least heard of him, wouldn't you?

This piece doesn't really start rolling until 2-1/2 minutes into the song, so please hold on for the strings and brass. And toward the end, see if it reminds you of the bands Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and Chicago. Both of which were formed in (ahem) 1967.

In the Bleak Midwinter

Snow on snow.

It's not as cold as Readlyn, yet, but we're sure getting our share of snow in Chicago. And they say we'll have 58 hours of below zero, starting tonight. Below zero is when I cry if I have to start the car, because I'm sure I can hear the pistons scraping against the rings.

Shoveled this morning before heading for food pantry, and again this afternoon when I got home from my haircut.

Got this picture of Chicago winter life for you while I was out:


And while I was shoveling, I noticed a cardinal couple in a bush. I still had a camera in my pocket, so I tried to get closer. It was surprising how close they allowed me to get. But they wouldn't pose for a clear picture. If I went to the far side of the bush, they'd move back to the side I had been on. But they just sat in that bush. Cardinals are usually much too skittish to allow something like this.


It was when I took my glove off to take the picture, though, that I realized the temperature is falling -- 10 degrees and falling fast. Back to shoveling, then inside to warm up.

Inaugural Trivia

Here are a few fun facts, most of which I got here. Okay, maybe you have a different idea of "fun" than I do.

a. Who was the first President to be sworn in wearing long pants?


b. Calvin Coolidge was sworn in by the Chief Justice. Nothing unusual there. But the Chief Justice was a former President. Who was the swearing-iner?

c. The President who gave the longest inaugural address died a month later from pneumonia, said to be caught during his speech. Who was that?

d. Some people say David Rice Atchison should be included in the list of Presidents. Why?

e. Who was the only President not sworn in with his hand on a Bible?

Answers:

a. John Q. Adams (1825).

b. William Howard Taft.

c. William Henry Harrison.

d. Until it was changed during FDR's presidency, a President's term of office ended on March 4. In 1849, March 4 fell on a Sunday, and the incoming President, Zachary Taylor, refused to take the oath of office on the Sabbath -- even privately. He was sworn in the next day. Since Polk's term ended on the 4th, the argument goes, the president pro tempore of the Senate became President under the rules of succession as they were then. Of course, it's not that simple. Atchison is said to have slept through his entire term of office.

e. Teddy Roosevelt. When he was reelected, he had the Bible open to James 1:22-23. Actually, neither Franklin Pierce nor Herbert Hoover were "sworn" in; they "affirmed".

And yes, you're right. Things are a little slow around the house today.

Six Days Left

There are six days until we get a new President (unless you count Inauguration Day, in which case there are seven). It can't come soon enough, so let's call it six, like the countdown clock above.

Different people had different reactions to Bush's "farewell" press conference yesterday. Some felt sorry for him, like some tragic figure. To me it was just more of the same.

I know we've come to expect him and his administration to be dysfunctional, but this just left me slack-jawed:

WASHINGTON — In an unusually public rebuke, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel said Monday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had been forced to abstain from a United Nations resolution on Gaza that she helped draft, after Mr. Olmert placed a phone call to President Bush.

“I said, ‘Get me President Bush on the phone,’ ” Mr. Olmert said in a speech in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, according to The Associated Press. “They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn’t care: ‘I need to talk to him now,’ ” Mr. Olmert continued. “He got off the podium and spoke to me.”

Israel opposed the resolution, which called for a halt to the fighting in Gaza, because the government said it did not provide for Israel’s security. It passed 14 to 0, with the United States abstaining.

Mr. Olmert claimed that once he made his case to Mr. Bush, the president called Ms. Rice and told her to abstain. “She was left pretty embarrassed,” Mr. Olmert said, according to The A.P.

The State Department disputed Mr. Olmert’s account. “Her recommendation was to abstain; that was her recommendation all along,” said an official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the matter.

After the vote, Ms. Rice said the United States “fully supports” the resolution, which called for “an immediate, durable and fully respected cease-fire leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza,” but opted to abstain to see the outcome of an Egyptian-French peace initiative.

Ms. Rice did not respond to Mr. Olmert’s remarks, which were unusual even in the context of the secretary’s occasionally bumpy relationship with the prime minister, according to the official.

Privately, Mr. Olmert has said Ms. Rice sometimes had to be reined in for getting ahead of the president on policy. “They have a good relationship, but there have been some ups and downs,” the State Department official said.

Leave aside the question of whether Rice's resolution was the right thing to do at this time. The fact that Olmert is bragging about this in public shows an incredible lack of respect not only for Rice, but for Bush and, by extension, the American people who have supported his country. He has done Israel no favor.

Update: Another version of the story is here.

Six more days.

Update: My one and only Facebook friend, Steve Clemons (who has met Condi), feels even stronger about it. This was a monumental blunder on Olmert's part.

Update: Meanwhile, in Chicago, idiots take to vandalism. I loved the response of the rabbi of Young Israel Congregation in West Rogers Park:

Rabbi Elisha Prero said synagogue officials believe the "Jewish response" to the defacement of their building was to make something positive of it. They would use the bricks thrown into the window in the cornerstone of the synagogue's library.

Perfect.

Update: From Juan Cole:

Why did Olmert spill the beans on his backroom maneuvering against Rice? It is a very damaging thing that he said. As Daniel Levy, who had been a Labor Party adviser on peace negotiations, told The Los Angeles Times's Paul Richter:

' This is terrible for the United States . . . This confirms every assumption they have in the Arab world about the tail wagging the dog. . . . It's a story you're likely to hear quoted there for years to come." Levy also accused Olmert of "unparalleled arrogance.". . ."There are some things you don't say, even in Ashkelon, even in Hebrew . . . "

The Saddest Headline

As a person who's interested in things like politics, history, and religion, my online reading habits include a reasonably wide range of sites, including OneNewsNow.com, which is a product of the American Family News Network. It's a place where you can get a feel for which paranoid delusions are popular with the fundamentalist right-wing today. For example, they've been reporting the "Obama is not a U.S. citizen" hilarity like it was serious business.

Just scanning the stories this morning, I see they're worried that Obama will decriminalize marijuana, supporters of creationism in Texas are framing their beliefs as "academic freedom," and "Episcopal Church wins property, loses hearts of congregants." This is pretty standard fare, though most of the stories seem to be about abortion.

But the saddest headline I've ever seen there is this one:

Hate crimes bill - a threat to biblical teaching

Consider that.

A Good Move

After inviting Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inaugural, Obama tries to expand the middle of American politics in the other direction, too. Politico reports:

BREAKING: The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, who became the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop in 2003 and last year entered into a civil union with his gay partner, will deliver the invocation for Sunday’s kickoff inaugural event on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, with President-elect Obama in attendance. The event is free and open to the public. An Obama source: “Robinson was in the plans before the complaints about Rick Warren. Many skeptics will read this as a direct reaction to the Warren criticism – but it’s just not so.” Robinson has been referred to as “the most controversial Christian in the world.”

Good for Obama.

Chicago Snow

I'm not sure how much snow we've gotten since last night, but I'm sure it's enough. I've shoveled the walk at least three times, and my neighbors have been by with snow blowers at least as many times.

For some reason we're all taking care of each other this winter. If my neighbors have to go to work, I shovel their walk. If they think I'm not at home (because I'm hiding behind drawn blinds, hoping they'll think I'm out), they shovel mine. For most snows the hassle is getting out there, then getting back in, and out of snowy clothes. As long as you're out there, it doesn't take long to also shovel your neighbor's walk. Of course, as I get older this poem starts speaking to me:

"Snow" by George Bilgere

A heavy snow, and men my age
all over the city
are having heart attacks in their driveways,

dropping their nice new shovels
with the ergonomic handles
that finally did them no good.

Gray-headed men who meant no harm,
who abided by the rules and worked hard
for modest rewards, are slipping

softly from their mortgages,
falling out of their marriages.
How gracefully they swoon--

that lovely, old-fashioned word--
from dinner parties, grandkids,
vacations in Florida.

They should have known better
than to shovel snow at their age.
If only they'd heeded

the sensible advice of their wives
and hired a snow-removal service.
But there's more to life

than merely being sensible. Sometimes
a man must take up his shovel
and head out alone into the snow.

Suellen had a meeting to go to. I took one look at the depth of snow in the alley (the garage opens to the alley), then a look at my ergonomic shovel. I decided she should take the bus. And since getting out of the house is a good thing for all of us, I went along with her and delivered her to the door of her meeting. I took some pictures on my way home.

Getting on a bus on the Inner Drive.


This is looking east across Lake Shore Drive. Those trees are Lincoln Park, and beyond them is Lake Michigan.


Then I got on the bus to head home.


Passed a landmark on the way.


My morning was exactly that exciting.

Epiphany Pageant

Okay, I promise this is the last church-related post for a while, but the annual Epiphany Pageant is the real highlight of the year, and I wanted to give you a taste for why. Epiphany is the holiday (January 6) that celebrates the arrival of the Three Kings, or Magi, in Bethlehem.

Our ridiculous little church has about 140 members, of whom it seems about 190 are children. That makes things very lively, and you have to constantly watch where you're stepping. Each year the kids put on an Epiphany Pageant, and each year it's different. We are lucky to have a vast number (relatively speaking) of very talented people in the congregation: artists, playwrights, mechanics, it's amazing. And the adults chip in to make costumes, take out the "quire" pews to give the kids room for a stage, build sets, assist with direction, feed everybody during rehearsals, and keep the littlest ones from wandering off.

The actual Epiphany Pageant is tonight, but we have an important gathering with friends tonight so we went to the dress rehearsal last night, which might have been even better! Below are some pictures to give you the flavor.

The youngest children are assigned to be "angels," which is not always type-casting. They have a few lines but they say them in unison, so there's usually at least one that's paying enough attention to get the line out on cue. The adult here is Jason. He is a professional actor and has a lot of lines, but the most difficult thing he does is herding these cats.



I took about 10 shots of the angels, and each one is charming and hilarious in its own way.



This is the Annunciation scene. Notice that Jason has a wire going down the back of his neck to a battery pack. His "halo" had little lights in it. You can't say we don't have a sense of humor. Mary is showing an appropriate level of apprehension, I think.



There's no room at the inn.



Shepherds watching their flocks by night (sort of):


Joseph and Mary, with a doll. One year we used a real baby. The baby survived, but I'm not sure the mother did. And yes, Joseph wore glasses and a wristwatch. You don't know your Bible, do you?


The Magi arrive. And yes, Joseph and Mary had a Christmas tree.


The cast, mostly. I think some of the angels have wandered off.


The audience was totally charmed. Suellen looks positively enraptured.



Note to Chip: The white light pictures were shot with two strobe heads through white umbrellas. Notice how quickly the light falls off. That place eats light. The yellow light pictures were shot with available light with a 50 mm. 1.8 lens. We had posing before the rehearsal (strobes), and then I shot what I could with the 1.8. Still got a lot of blurred pictures, sad to say.

Food Pantry

Here's the line outside the food pantry yesterday, at about 9 a.m.

We were open for the first time in three weeks, so were expecting a good crowd, and we got one.

It's easy to tell the people who are there for the first time: they are so grateful. One guy was almost in tears and insisted on shaking my hand. That's actually an improvement on the old lady who kisses my hand every month. Then there are other people.

We get lots of donations of food from people who are making space in their cupboards for things they'll actually eat. These go into an odds-and-ends bin, and we used to let people take one item out of the bin, in addition to the bags of groceries we hand out.

A couple of months ago we passed out green recyclable shopping bags to everybody, and somebody thought it might be a good rule to only let people who bring those bags back take something out of the bin. It's turned out to be not such a good idea, but it's the rule right now.

Yesterday I had to deal with some guy who was incensed about the rule. Ignore the fact that I just handed him five bags of free groceries; we were all idiots for keeping him from picking out a 7-year-old can of mushrooms.

As Linus would say (or was it Charlie Brown?): I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.

By the way, isn't that a great house in the background?

The Morning Paper

Tom Friedberg, who understands the Middle East better than most, gives us the big picture of what's going on there. Read more than a few paragraphs into this Washington Post story for some historical background on how Hamas got where it is.

British atheists are advertising on buses.

And reading about what people do in the name of God might convince you they're right.

Lefties are getting all excited about the announced candidacy of Tom Geoghegan (pronounced Gay-gan) for Rahm Emanuel's Congressional seat (which just happens to be the district I live in). He sounds like a better choice than any of our aldermen, or aldermen's daughters, or aldermen's sons-in-law. As far as I know, he's the first to announce. [Update: Boy, was I wrong about that! Every sleazy Chicago pol who drives through the district is trying to get the job.]

The real case against Roland Burris is now being told. The press is beginning to pick up on it, just as the D.C. Village is finding it socially acceptable to seat him.

And last but not least, here's an excellent reason to support Leon Panetta's appointment to head the CIA. Last year he wrote a piece in the Washington Monthly that concluded:

We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.

Would that we were.

Sanjay Gupta

Paul Krugman (yes, again!) is what the Brits would call "spot on" with this:

So apparently Obama plans to appoint CNN’s Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General. I don’t have a problem with Gupta’s qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don’t have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore “fudged his facts”, when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.

What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he’s uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It’s sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less “serious” than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it’s a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.

Shock and Awe

One problem with overwhelming military force is that you own whatever happens. I wish we'd learn that lesson some day.

Why They Lost

Perhaps you heard the NPR report this morning about a meeting that included candidates for chair of the Republican National Committee.

Let's see, we have a recession that's seriously threatening to become a depression, we're engaged in two wars, and America hasn't been held in lower regard around the world in 200 years. What are the kinds of questions you'd expect to hear of these candidates?

How about: "How many guns do you own?"

I hope we got these clowns out of office in time. Their lack of seriousness about serious things has gotten us into a real hole. Let's just let them go down the drain by themselves.

Note: In fairness, the picture I have chosen to illustrate this post is not really of members of the RNC. These are good people who dress up as clowns for our amusement.