It's 1984 All Over Again

After reading this NY Times piece, my desire to own a Kindle just got set back a few years:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

The rest is here.

Update: There's even more here.

Abused Monkeys

You've no doubt seen the news story about Canto and Owen, the rhesus monkeys shown above. One has been fed a restricted diet; the other eats pretty much what he pleases.

What can you read in their faces?

Roger Cohen, who just weeks ago was bravely reporting from the streets of Tehran, thinks he knows.

And speaking of monkeys, Gail Collins has the condensed version of the Sotomayor hearings. She does not confine her satire to the Republican Party death spiral, although she strangely let go Al Franken's ruminations on how cool it was that Sotomayor watched Perry Mason with her family, at the same time he watched Perry Mason with his family.

It's Time for Health Care Reform

Barack Obama's people have struggled mightily to keep the people who elected him President engaged in politics. After the election, his campaign morphed into Organizing for America, and if you ever gave a dime to the Obama campaign, you're getting very frequent emails from them – just as you got emails from the Obama campaign. In fact, their web address is BarackObama.com.

They're now coming out with what I believe is their first television ad:



This will run on cable television stations for a couple of weeks, and on networks in the states of Democratic and Republican senators who want to support health care reform but are getting push-back from their party (Republicans) or the health industry in their state (which regularly passes out money to politicians who vote "correctly").

It looks like a pretty effective ad from here. We'll see.

A week or so ago Andrew Tobias had a paragraph about a young woman who had health insurance, got sick, and the insurance company balked at paying. The woman was going to be responsible for a $100,000 medical bill. She fought the insurance company, and won. The insurance company then negotiated the bill down to $40,000.

Uninsured people pay $100,000. Insurance companies pay $40,000 on the same bill.

Something is seriously wrong here.

Judging Sotomayor II

[Please read Judging Sotomayor I before you read this. Thank you.]

In 1981, Ronald Reagan's political director, Lee Atwater (shown here), gave an interview in which he described the Southern Strategy:

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster...

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps...?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can't say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

Bolded emphasis is mine.

This was the birth of the modern Republican party, and the intellectual foundation of "The Conservative Movement."

A Palindrone!

The Washington Post is now printing op-eds ghost-written by lobbyists. Very impressive!

C'mon, folks. Palin did not write that, and we all know it.

And you have to wonder, as this reader of Kevin Drum's blog at Mother Jones did, how you can write a whole editorial about cap and trade without mentioning global warming even once. It's the kind of misdirection play we expect from "The Conservative Movement", but really, The Washington Post used to have editors knowledgeable enough about issues to catch things like that. What an embarrassment.

Judging Sotomayor I

Senator Jeff Sessions, a member of the Southern Strategy Republican "base", accuses Sonia Sotomayor of prejudice. That may play well in some parts of Alabama, but the comic irony of it is too much for the rest of us to ignore.

Update: Kevin Drum states it clearly.

The almost manic eagerness of the right to inject race into the Sotomayor nomination at every opportunity is enough to make you ill. It started within minutes of her nomination being announced, and it's continued ever since. Sen. Jeff Sessions took up the reins today.

There's never been any reason for it, of course. It was ostensibly based on one sentence in a speech and one court decision out of hundreds she's made. In reality, it's just because she's a Hispanic liberal and conservatives figure that a race-based attack is the one most likely to resonate with their base. And I suppose they're right, aren't they?

Don't Ask – Don't Tell

In 1993 Bill Clinton tried to fulfill a campaign promise to end discrimination against gays in the military. One thing he hadn't figured in his equation was the unwillingness of the military brass, including General Colin Powell, to accept that. The result was a law referred to as Don't Ask – Don't Tell (DADT) – a compromise that allowed gay men and women to serve as long as they kept their sexual orientation a secret.

And, as Andy Griffith used to say when describing the opera Carmen, "the curtain falls and time passes."

In the intervening years, public opinion about homosexuality continued to change. Because more gay people were brave enough to be open to others about their sexual orientation, more people who thought they didn't know any gay people found out they were wrong about that. And when the person being discriminated against is no longer some unknown person, but someone you happen to know is a fine human being, you start to see things in a different way.

Now the curtain has opened again, and we see that DADT is actually hurting us. More than 13,000 men and women have been discharged from the military under DADT, men and women who have had skills the services sorely need. The classic example of that is Arabic-speaking translators. DADT is a policy that dictates, "Unlock gun, fire at foot."

Pennsylvania Congressman Patrick Murphy, a bronze star veteran of the Iraq War, is co-sponsoring the Military Readiness Enhancement Act (H.R. 1283) to repeal the law that implemented DADT. So far he has lined up 153 co-sponsors for the bill. Congressman Murphy (who looks like he's about 20 years old) makes his case for the bill here.

Colin Powell says it's time to "review" DADT. It certainly is. President Obama has said he will sign H.R. 1283 if it reaches his desk.

Addendum: I forgot to acknowledge Andrew Tobias as the person who inspired me to make this post and gave me the link to Congressman Murphy's interview.

Musical Interlude –– Ben Sollee

There are all kinds of music in the world. Here's something unusual.

Click on the center after it starts to make it full-frame. Play to the 1-minute mark. If you don't like it by then, you're excused.



All of a sudden these You Tube videos are too large for my simple little blog. There's a logical explanation, but I'm to lazy to figure it out tonight.

Margaret and Helen II

Last year I linked to a blog called Margaret and Helen.

A comment over at Midlife by Farmlight sent me back there, and it was a visit well worth making.

Go see what they have to say about Sarah Palin, and laugh your head off. Then read the one before that. And the one before that.

Home

Here's some beautiful, and educational, climate change propaganda. It's a 1½-hour video called Home. Very nicely produced.

Notice the new tools YouTube offers, like that little light bulb in the upper right. It's called "Turn Down the Lights".

Addendum: I'm afraid by calling this video "climate change propaganda" I may have given the impression it was not really worth watching. The fact that it's propaganda doesn't make it not true.

The photography will mesmerize you. It is fantastic.

Oh, yes, and the Earth is dying.

Congrats Al!

Via Andrew Tobias:

Congratulations, Al Franken!

A Man of His Word

Today I headed downtown to resolve a little matter with the City Clerk (successfully), then scooted over to Millennium Park.

Only problem: rain.


The place was pretty deserted, but I cleverly hid my reflection in this picture.


Music was coming from the Pritzker Pavillion, so I headed over there and caught the scene on video. Sorry for the rain on the lens.

In case you're worried about nobody showing up for the concert, this was a rehearsal. The actual concert was two hours off. I went to sit down for a while, which is how I discovered that security had roped off the first ten rows of seats – the seats that were under the bandshell overhang. The dry seats.

Another day in the big city. Ho hum.

The National Review, For What It's Worth (Not Much)

Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly is spot on in this post, included in its entirety:

THE BLURRED LINES.... Thomas Sowell, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a prominent conservative writer, has a new National Review piece that's ... how do I put this gently ... a little out there.

A quadrupling of the national debt in just one year and accepting a nuclear-armed sponsor of international terrorism such as Iran are not things from which any country is guaranteed to recover.

Just two nuclear bombs were enough to get Japan to surrender in World War II. It is hard to believe that it would take much more than that for the United States of America to surrender -- especially with people in control of both the White House and the Congress who were for turning tail and running in Iraq just a couple of years ago.

Perhaps people who are busy gushing over the Obama cult today might do well to stop and think about what it would mean for their granddaughters to live under sharia law.

Sowell goes on to insist that Republicans resist calls that the party reach out to a larger audience, and steer clear of "moderates."

Now, anyone who raises the specter of the United States surrendering to Iran, which would in turn impose sharia law on Americans, has a terrific imagination, but a rather tenuous connection to reality.

Reading Sowell's piece, though, my first thought wasn't, "Wow, this is nuts"; it was, "Wow, National Review published this on purpose."

Over the last couple of decades, the line between the GOP establishment/leadership and the unhinged GOP base has become blurred. At the same time, the line between the analysis offered by "serious" and "respectable" conservative voices and the unbalanced tirades put forward by the nutty conservative fringe has all but disappeared.

I'm Melting, I'm Melting

Is human activity causing the world to warm up?

I dunno.

Almost every scientist worthy of the name says so, but I'm used to taking the long view, and in the long view the earth heats up and it cools down; it heats up and it cools down. Are scientists playing Henny Penny?

But also in the long view, the scientific method – though it's only been around for a few centuries – looks like a pretty good way to find out what's going on. Looking at human history in the long view, we wasted quite a few millennia blaming things we didn't understand on the evil eye. Or God.

Using this relatively new method of looking at the world, we observe things and describe what we think is happening based on those observations. Then we observe some more, and measure some more, and that description either stands or falls based on evidence, not on what we wish were true.

This has worked pretty well for us. We had a lot more success treating smallpox as a disease caused by a virus, than by blaming it on sin. [Sin tried to make a come-back as an explanation for AIDS, but just didn't have the staying power it had in centuries gone by.]

Right now the evidence that's been gathered makes a strong case that human activity is causing the Earth to heat up. And projecting the charts and graphs over the next century, things look catastrophically bleak if we don't do something about that. Can this be true?

I dunno. Maybe not. But that's how the evidence is understood right now, and if we're understanding it correctly, we're in big trouble. With so much at stake, any rational person will have more confidence in scientific evidence than in Congressional gasbags. Paul Krugman spelled it out in his column today:

... [S]ometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong. And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on hard work and hard thinking — if they had carefully studied the issue, consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific consensus was misguided — they could at least claim to be acting responsibly.

But if you watched the debate [in the House of Representatives] on Friday, you didn’t see people who’ve thought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it — and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds their denial.

Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures to Arctic sea ice.

Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause.

Legislation to address climate change barely passed in the House. Things are not looking good in the Senate. Where do your Senators stand? (Or, in the case of Minnesota, your Senator.)

Michael Jackson

A phrase kept coming back to me; something I'd read years ago. Somehow it's stuck with me, to be pulled out when feeling slightly cynical about media reaction to the death of a noted person: "Our grief has gone to market."

It turns out to be a misquote of a poem by Oscar Mandel, found in a book my parents gave me for my birthday or Christmas in 1964, Of Poetry and Power: Poems Occasioned by the Presidency and by the Death of John F. Kennedy. My gosh, that was 45 years ago, and I've carried this book around through Pittsburgh, Ironton, Harrisburg, Racine, and Chicago.

The first two stanzas go like this:

1
First came the special issues of the magazines
With loyal photographs: the old rich times, the rocking chair,
The wife who knew who Dali is, the muscular war,
The politics retouched and smiling, the happy hammer
Of his power, the idiocy of death. Fifty cents.

The president was dead, tears fell and incomes rose.
Wait, brothers, wait,
My grief has gone to market too.

2
The picture books cost more but they were meant to last,
They used the most caressing words, like strong ideals
And dedicated heart and faith in our democracy.
And those who sold the plaster statuettes (one dollar each),
Their right hand mourned, their left rang up the cash.

The president was dead, laments and incomes rose.
Wait, brothers, wait,
My grief has gone to market too.

For a few hours it looked like Farrah Fawcett was going to be the cash cow this weekend.

Poor Farrah. Poor Michael.

Time Wastes Too Fast

You must read this. Artist Maira Kalman attempts to encapsulate the life of Thomas Jefferson.

And she almost does it.

Kodachrome

Last year a friend asked me to take slides of some artwork he had created. He was trying to get into a show, and the organizers required color slides of his work to determine whether it was up to their standards. (It was.) It was rather archaic of them, but those were their rules. I hadn't used slide film in at least 20 years, but was glad to give it a try.

One thing every photographer – at least, those of a certain age – knows about color slides: they're unforgiving. Photo processors routinely "improve" your photographs printed from negatives or digital files, but with slides: what you took is what you get. When I went to the shoot, I took a film camera I hadn't used in years, loaded with Kodachrome. But I also took a digital camera. I shot first with the digital camera, and used the resulting images to make sure I had the exposure just right and the flash didn't glare off the paintings. Only then did I pick up the film camera, and reproduce the settings.

What got me talking about that was the recent news that Kodak will discontinue production of Kodachrome later this year. They stopped making Kodachrome 25 in 2001, though you can still buy it on eBay (as I'm writing this, 8 rolls are going for $152.89, with 4 days left in the bidding). But now they're shutting down all Kodachrome production.

I'm a little sad about that, but as beautiful as a good Kodachrome slide can be, there are lots of good reasons why hardly anyone is shooting Kodachrome anymore.

My favorite (professional) photographer, Steve McCurry, has been selected to shoot the last, ceremonial roll of Kodachrome film. You know McCurry's work, even if you don't know his name. According to The Online Photographer, McCurry estimates he has shot 800,000 pictures on Kodachrome.

If you've got a few minutes, I can't recommend his web gallery enough.



Fade to black.

♬ Schadenfreude, Darling Schadenfreude ♬

You've probably asked yourself many times, "Which New York Times columnist would Sempringham most like to have over for dinner?"

This week it's Gail Collins.

An interesting exchange of points of view occurred in the Sempringham household when Mark Sanford appeared at yesterday's mea culpa news conference without his wife by his side (see Vitter, Ensign, Craig).

"Good for him!" I said, thinking he at least had the decency to not drag his innocent wife through the hell he made.

"Good for her!" Suellen answered.

Well, yeah. There's that, too.

Update: Talking Points Memo reads The Washington Times so we don't have to. So it's thanks to them that I can pass along this gem from that hotbed of conservative looniness:

Extramarital affairs, gambling, alcohol abuse, prostitution and sexual pursuit of minors have taken a toll on the GOP.

Among other things.

Later Update:

The New York Times says:

Questions were raised about whether Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina followed proper procedure when he left the state to meet a woman in Buenos Aires.

They have a proper procedure for that?

Summer in the City

Went to the doctor today for a physical, and as usual took along my G9. It is pretty warm in Chicago right now, which is always a good reason to go over to Millennium Park for pictures, and since it's just a four-block walk, I couldn't pass up the chance.

"The Bean," actually named Cloud Gate, which I think is a great name:

It's hard to take an uninteresting picture of Cloud Gate. If you've never seen it, you should definitely click on the picture for the bigger view. Can you find me in the reflection?

And the fountains:


The picture above is made of hundreds of TV screens. The eyes open and close. The mouth opens and closes. And when it starts opening, watch out, because it's about to spew that stream of water.

Meanwhile, kids are standing at the base, cooling off from the heat.

I hope to go down again in the next week or two, and spend some time there.

Barbara Boxer, Ma'am

Am I the only liberal who was offended by this exchange:



The right-wing blogosphere is frothing about it, and I was, too. I've recovered my equilibrium enough to scoff at notions that Boxer "has a problem with the military," as one person put it. But she definitely has a problem.

Health Care

Two good articles on health care: David Brooks and Paul Krugman. They approach it from two different places, of course.

Brooks concludes:

If this process goes as it has been going — with grand rhetoric and superficial cost containment — then we will be far better off killing this effort and starting over in a few years.

That would be a catastrophe not only for the Democrats, but for the millions of people who don't have access to health care.

Update: Steven Pearlstein had a third perspective a few days ago that's worth reading.

Meanwhile, in Iran

It's a little staggering how little information the nightly news gives you about what's going on in Iran. It's not like nobody is there.

Read Roger Cohen. A brave guy. Brave people.

And let me send you again to Andrew Sullivan.

Their Names are so Long!

You no longer have to go to your local bar to get commentary from people who have no idea what they're talking about. You can go to Faux! It's official: they're now funnier than Comedy Central.

This is 46 seconds long. Try to keep your jaw from going slack. You can't do it.

By George, I Think He's Got It!

David Brooks tells us how Obama is going to get us health care. Well worth the read.

Iran

The best coverage I've found of what's going on over there can be found on Andrew Sullivan's blog at the Atlantic Monthly.

This quote from Steve Clemons, who has excellent sources, causes great concern:

The scariest point he made to me that I had not heard anywhere else is that this "coup by the right wing" has created pressures that cannot be solved or patted down by the normal institutional arrangements Iran has constructed. The Guardian Council and other power nodes of government can't deal with the current crisis and can't deal with the fact that a civil war has now broken out among Iran's revolutionaries.

My contact predicted serious violence at the highest levels. He said that Ahmadinejad is now genuinely scared of Iranian society and of Mousavi and Rafsanjani. The level of tension between them has gone beyond civil limits -- and my contact said that Ahmadinejad will try to have them imprisoned and killed.

On Vacation

Sorry for the slow posting.

We're headed to Minneapolis in the morning to visit family. Have a great week.

Update: Before shutting down I dropped by Bullied Pulpit to see what's new. And he sent me to this column by Steven Pearlstein, who is so on target it's breathtaking. When I saw Bank of America's CEO whining to Congress yesterday about the Merrill Lynch deal, the only thing I could think was, "Why, you little weasel!"

Pearlstein tells you why.

Bank of America is our bank, by the way. Not by choice, really. By merger, acquisition, and inertia. We started off at Talman Home. Which was acquired by LaSalle and became LaSalle Talman, then just LaSalle. Until it was acquired by ABN/AMRO, and became LaSalle ABN. Then it was acquired by Bank of America. The bank I hated in the 60's.

But that's ancient history. Read the column.

And have a great week.

Okay, I'm Impressed

This post is for brothers Mike and Chip, and for my friends Ethan and Jared, but it's okay if you watch it, too. You'll be glad you did.

Go here.

The Cairo Speech

I'm about half-way through listening to Obama's Cairo speech for the third time.

If you have not heard it yet, set aside an hour and watch it here. It could very well be yet another turning point in history. It is the most carefully constructed speech I have heard in my lifetime (and I've heard a lot of Obama speeches).

There have been criticisms of the speech. Some said Obama implied something called "a moral equivalency" between the Holocaust and the mistreatment of the Palestinians. People making this criticism weren't paying attention, or maybe hope you weren't.

Some said he should have said something nasty about the Mubarak government in Egypt, who provided him the Cairo venue for his speech. These people don't explain how being nasty to Mubarak would be helpful to the people of Egypt. An Egyptian TV journalist's reaction to the speech implicitly endorses Obama's approach:

... there were even greater emotions among Egyptians that went beyond "wow" and "pride." Maybe some of my more eloquent friends can give me a better word to describe the impact of the whole day. But let me try to describe the sense in the example of one very prominent TV journalist. She always plays her cards close to the chest and is a very tough interviewer with US officials. I usually consider her to be fair, but not "pro" U.S. Well, yesterday tears were streaming down her face. She was in a bit of panic, too, because she had to go live right after the speech and was frantically touching up her make up. Later I saw her and without me even asking what she thought, she started in. Her view was that never in her life had such a cross section of Egypt been together in one room. Egyptian government officials, opposition leaders, religious leaders, bloggers, journalists, activists, students, Muslim Brotherhood, the Israeli ambassador (he was invited with other regional ambassadors), intellectuals and artists. To her there was suddenly hope.

And inviting that cross-section was at Obama's insistence.

Finally, for comic relief, there were those who said the speech was "un-American". Like that icon of the Modern Republican Party, Oklahoma's senior Senator, Jim Inhofe.

So, by all means, listen to the speech, and note down all the nasty things he says about America.

Alas, Poor Meshie. I Knew Her Well, Horatio

Here's a fascinating story about a man who visits the Museum of Natural History in New York to see a chimpanzee that lived with his family 80 years ago.

The chimpanzee is stuffed.

I should tell you ahead of time it's not a particularly cheerful story.

Wackos Coming Out of the Woodwork

One of the biggest dangers of the government being a shareholder in GM and Chrysler (and there are many) is that it gives the lunatic fringe more opportunities for lunacy. To wit:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Tiananmen Square

It has been 20 years since the leadership of China decided it was a good idea to massacre hundreds of their unarmed citizens in and around Tiananmen Square. Do you remember the Goddess of Democracy?

The BBC has a short slide show, with audio, here.

Some very interesting pictures of an 18th anniversary Tiananmen commemoration by Hong Kong citizens are here.

Addendum: Don't expect to see visitors from China popping up to read this post, as they do for nearly any post that mentions China or anybody or anything in China. Tiananmen Square is different. Their internet filters don't allow the words.

Blasé About a Disaster

Helicopters are hovering over our house.

Time to put on the tin foil hat? Not yet. There's probably an accident over on the Kennedy Expressway.


Yep, there is is. We live (roughly) under the left-hand arrow. The red indicates traffic is backed up in both directions from a particular point – from just about where we live.

So those are traffic helicopters from the various local TV news shows. The tin foil hat can go back in the emergency kit, and life goes on. Hopefully for the people involved in the accident, too.

Sotomayor: The Smear is Underway

It's amazing how clearly some people see racism when they perceive it is directed at them, and how blind they are to it when it is directed at others.

Over at the Willie Horton Party, their resident experts on racism – Newt Gingrich, Tom Tancredo, Rush Limbaugh, and Faux News – have worked up a real race-baiting froth over a comment Sotomayor made 8 years ago:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

President Obama has said he thinks she would rephrase that, but here are the words she spoke immediately before and after that sentence:

Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Others simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

Do you think maybe that first sentence has taken out of context? She is saying we are the product of our experience. Well, duh!

Charles Blow's column today gives some background on real racism – some of it sitting on the Supreme Court right now. It's well worth the read, and much better than this post.

West Side Story, Updated

Via my brother, Ted, here's West Side Story updated for 2009 (and no, Sonia Sotomayor plays no part in it).

Pakistan Tries Something New in War on Al Qaeda

My mother likes to turn on Closed Captioning when she watches something on the television.

She's a little hard of hearing, but I suspect the real reason she does it is for the unintended comedy provided by the person doing the transcription. She passes on the best examples.

The latest: Did you know that Pakistan plans "a tax on Al Qaeda"? Now there's something nobody's ever thought of doing before! Maybe it'll work, who knows?

Sotomayor: The First Hispanic Supreme Court Justice?

There's been a little chatter here and there on the Web about whether Sonia Sotomayor will really be the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.

What about Benjamin Cardozo, who served from 1932 until his death in 1938?

It turns out that Cardozo was of Portuguese descent, we're told, and Portuguese are not Hispanic (I knew that), they are Lusitanians (I did not know that!). So that settles the question, right?

Well, maybe. But let me add my little contribution to this issue, about which no sensible person cares a whit. And that contribution is from the 1870 Census, when Benjamin was 10 years old. The Census indicates that Cardozo's paternal grandmother was from Cuba. What does that mean? Nothing, really. But now you know.



[Click on the picture for a clearer view.]

This'll Take 20 Seconds or So

Via Andrew Tobias, here's another good argument against those irritating clock radio alarms (the first being that they start your day with a headache):

You might have to watch an awful Skittles ad first, but click here to see a funny little film.

Do Not Try This at Home!

I believe other nations have much to offer us, so I'm usually receptive to exploring their cultures for insights into the human condition that are not familiar to the pragmatic American ethos.

Which is why, two days ago, I decided to check out who won the Eurovision 2009 competition. If you're not familiar with Eurovision it is, as best as I can tell, a competition between the countries of Europe along the lines of American Idol. Each country submits its winner, and a United Europe chooses the year's champion. It is, I understand, a very big thing in Europe.

This year's winner was a Norwegian named Alexander Rybak. Here is the video, BUT BEFORE YOU WATCH IT, HEED THIS WARNING:

I'm not sure how much you can watch without going stark, raving mad. I can tell you I made it to the end, and by then it was too late. For two days I have had this tune pounding around in my head like a hundred ball bearings, and I have frightening dreams of Nordic men doing gymnastics. I have fantasies of stuffing Alexander Rybak into a burlap bag and throwing it off a bridge.

Do not watch this video with children you love in the room.



Maybe Dick Cheney and John Bolton are right, after all. Maybe we shouldn't care what the Europeans think about us.

Breaking New Ground, or Something Else

Here in Chicago, there's a hate conservative radio talk station. Here's how they advertised themselves last year on several of the gigantic, incredibly ugly billboards that deface the city's skyline:


Notice the station's call letters? They chose those call letters on purpose! I think they're breaking new ground in truth-telling at that station. Get it? Breaking? Get it?

They're so clueless I don't even have to make stuff up.

Paranoia as Policy

I had a new post written about the hilarity of the Guantanamo hysteria, but once again, Gail Collins stole my next column and got it published in the New York Times.

To judge from the salsa ads, no 10-gallon hat out there thinks much of New York City, so it is especially delicious to hear a New Yorker calling them wimps. Of course, the hats don't read the New York Times; but it'll get back to them.

And, hey, look at the bright side – it's another reason to buy more guns, to protect yourself from terrorists held in maximum security prisons.

Paranoia strikes deep.
Into your life it will creep.
It starts when you're always afraid.
Step out of line, the men come and take you away.

Addendum: I allowed myself to use several stereotypes in this post. I am not proud of myself for that.

It Was Worse Than We Thought

When the last book is written on the disastrous Bush years, it may be the man's naive religiosity that is blamed.

Exhibit A. GQ Magazine offers a slide show of the covers of 11 Defense Department intelligence briefings delivered to the President by Donald Rumsfeld.

Do you think maybe Rumsfeld was manipulating the boy, just a little?

Libertarian Paradise

A must-see video:

June 2, 2010 update: Welcome fellow fans of Andrew Tobias! If the video below does not work for you, it's because Blogger is not used to more than 3 people a week reading my blog. If that's the case, you can go directly to the YouTube site, and the video should run nicely there. Give it try here first, though. Enjoy! And thanks for dropping by.

GOP Dumps Elephant, Adopts New Symbol

WASHINGTON – In a surprise move, the Republican National Committee voted today to adopt the ostrich as the official symbol of the Republican Party. Beginning July 1, the ostrich will supplant the elephant, which has represented the party since a pachyderm labeled "The Republican Vote" appeared in an 1874 Thomas Nast cartoon in the magazine Harper's Weekly.

"The elephant is a socialistic animal," GOP Chairman Michael Steele told a press conference following the RNC meeting. "Herds have been observed protecting their young and assisting older members. There was a strong feeling among Committee members that this does not represent the values of the Republican Party."

There was some early sentiment to adopt the elephant bird as a compromise symbol, but after a several hours of debate, committee members learned the elephant bird has been extinct since the 1600's. The change in party symbol comes as part of a "rebranding" effort by a party seeking to recover from its overwhelming rejection in the 2008 election.

Asked what qualities of the ostrich attracted Republican committee members, Steele said, "The ostrich is a terrific runner, and we run for office. With this change, we will run faster."

In other action, the Republican National Committee voted to:

• Ignore the judgment of nearly all scientists that man-made greenhouse gases are contributing to global warming, because "carbon dioxide is in Coca-Cola."
• Blame Barack Obama for the banking crisis, the fall in property values, the recession, and federal failure to respond appropriately to Hurricane Katrina.
• Call for further deregulation of the banking industry.
• Call for further deregulation of securities markets.
• Call for deregulation of the meat packing industry.
• Denounce traffic lights as "unwarranted government intrusion" into citizens' lives.
• Elect Newt Gingrich and his third wife, Callista, as the meeting's "Cutest Couple."
  
• Denounce torture whenever and wherever it is done to American troops.
• Endorse enhanced interrogation techniques by American intelligence agencies.
• Amend the meetings' minutes to read "The Honorable Rush Limbaugh" wherever a member had used the word "godfather".
  
• Allow visitors to carry concealed, loaded weapons in national parks. A motion to allow visitors to carry concealed, loaded weapons in Congress was defeated.
  
• Ignore Presidential daily briefings with the title Osama bin Laden determined to strike in U.S. "It's always just some CIA agent trying to cover his ass," one committee member said.
  
• Call for an investigation of Nancy Pelosi for criticizing the CIA.

Another Appeal to Cowardice

I was at first dismayed to see Senate Democrats announcing that funds to close Guantanamo would be withheld "until there is a plan." I guess I still am, but I see the political necessity.

Our beloved GOP, now pretty much totally in the hands of the fruit loops, decided they should whip their dwindling constituency into a froth with specters of escaped terrorists running loose on American streets. It may have been our war, and they may be our prisoners, but that's no reason we can't shunt the responsibility of dealing with them onto some other country. If there's one thing the GOP is good at, it's avoiding responsibility.

Putting the funding on the back burner for a few months defuses the hysteria long enough to beat it down with some facts.

Movie Recommendation

Here's a movie to put on your Netflix list: Lars and the Real Girl.


It's a funny movie about a fellow who buys a life-size blow-up doll, and falls in love with it. It sounds creepy, but it turns out to be one of those heart-warming, life-affirming movies that we all need once in a while. I had never heard of it until it was recommended by a friend, so of course everybody else has probably seen it already.

HardArt groop

Last week we got an email from Kris, letting us know that John Elmquist's HardArt groop would be offering a concert at Ebenezer Lutheran Church. John is the music director at Ebenezer, and he is also a fairly brilliant composer and jazz artist. He might not call it jazz. He'd say:

I would mix some Brahms or Messiaen or whatever with improvised music, a little satire and maybe some spoken-word stuff or things that resemble rock and roll songs. After the first few years, I abandoned the idea of doing the music of other people as a part of this enterprise and now focus entirely on putting together programs of stuff that I write into single 90-minute events. This generally happens twice a year.

But me – if it's not Mozart or James Taylor, it's probably jazz. I am not a jazz afficionado, but I've been to several HardArt concerts, and they're always a delight. I'll never forget laughing my head off at the cleverness of a Christmas concert about 10 years ago.

John and his wife, Bev, have a special place in our hearts because they've volunteered at the Thanksgiving Dinner our (not Lutheran) church puts on for folks who are homeless, alone, or just can't afford a traditional holiday meal. The first year they volunteered, they got stuck washing dishes. We thought we'd never see them again. But they came back the next year! Suellen, who has been in charge of the dinner for almost 10 years, fondly referred to John and Bev as "my Lutherans." Here's a picture I took of their tribe in 2006.


"John usually does minimal advertising or lobbying for HardArt during choir," Kris wrote. "But for some reason, he keeps saying, 'I really think you guys are going to enjoy this one.'"

The concert was Tuesday night, and John wasn't exaggerating. The biggest surprise, for me, was the size of the ensemble – every time I counted I got a different number, until Suellen sweetly pointed out that their names were listed in the program. So I can authoritatively say there were 20 musicians.

Frankly, the pictures I took don't do them justice. I snuck this picture while the real photographer was taking a group shot. You might have figured that out.

Wait a minute! ... sixteen, seventeen, there are only eighteen people there! Well, they played like 20 people.

The backdrop was pretty awesome. It is the sun, with solar flares coming out on the sides. This picture gives you a better feel for it:

Now, I am not a music critic. So I can't make you feel like you're there just by describing it, and I can't say things like "an obvious disciple of Thelonious Monk," and know what the heck I'm talking about. I only listened to Thelonious Monk once.

But I can state authoritatively this was NOT Thelonious Monk!

John has a droll sense of humor that makes its way into his music. The program notes themselves are wonderful. Here's his description of the first piece, an 8-parter, called TripUp:

1. Michael's Dad -- a juvenile contemplates a friend's offer of money to kill the friend's father
2. Come On Kids -- introductory narrative
3. TripUp -- instrumental
4. Prickles -- Upon entering the apartment he meets a cat. They visit and discuss the afternoon's activities.
5. Prickles' Complaint -- the cat has his own issues with the victim
6. Jiggy Fiddle -- the boy and the cat dance
7. Dad Down -- success!
8. So You See -- concluding summary

Lest you be concerned, remember: John is the music director at a Lutheran church. The piece is not an invitation to patricide, but perhaps it is a comment on the banality of evil. Besides, the program notes don't tell you how it all turns out. Heh, heh.

A piece called "I" had a line I wrote down to use myself in the future: "My mouth took off and my mind couldn't find it." I've been there once or twice! The program notes described the fifth ... er ... movement? ... called "Everybody's Larry Storch":

While he was working on F-Troop, Larry Storch thought the show was some diversion en route to his real acting destiny. He would realize that it was the capstone of his career only when it was too late to appreciate it. Moral: don't be dumb.

Indeed.

Speaking of sneaking pictures, I also snuck a short video to give you an idea of what it all sounded like. Unfortunately, the sound quality on a little camera is not too good. But you can make out the lyrics if you listen carefully. This is from TripUp, the cat story:



The singers here are Cheryl Wilson and Lexie Bloor. They, like all the musicians, seemed to be having a great time (just like the audience). Here's another clip, with better sound quality, I think:



But ignore this stuff. Go to the HardArt groop's web site and look around. You can listen to their music (professionally recorded), download their albums, and read all about them. And send them some dinero.

John was right; we really enjoyed this one.

Three Looks at Afghanistan

Just some links today.

The first two links describe the same ambush on a patrol in Afghanistan's Korangal Valley, but from different perspectives.

The Taliban attacked by detonating a bomb after part of the patrol had passed the position of the bomb, thus dividing the patrol in half. The first link is to a film of the patrol made by a video team that was in the rear.

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/05/13/world/asia/1194840189965/stalemate-in-korangal-valley.html

The second link is to photos made by a photographer (Tyler Hicks) who was in the forward part of the patrol.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/19/world/20090420-aliabad-ambush/index.html?scp=7&sq=Tyler%20Hicks&st=cse

Last year Tyler Hicks also took these pictures of Kabul.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/07/06/weekinreview/kabul-multimedia/index.html?scp=3&sq=Tyler%20Hicks&st=cse

It's Raining in Chicago

It has been a depressing day, and it's not even 9 a.m.

I went looking for a good picture of Satan to illustrate a post on Dick Cheney. I thought I found one, then went to read the blog I was stealing it from. The welcoming comment from the blogger was this:

As you read these words, more than 30 million Islamist men are dreaming up ways to murder you and your children. Don't you think it's about time we rolled up our sleeves to destroy them as quickly and decisively as possible?

Chew on that one for a while.

The caption of the associated Satan art suggested it was the image of Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., publisher of the New York Times. That sort of put me off using a picture of Satan to illustrate a post on Dick Cheney.

Instead, I recommend Maureen Dowd's column today.

The Pathological Weakness of the Financial Memory

Arianna's got a good one today.

Yesterday we were in the car and Suellen had a stock market program on the radio. I was amazed that two of their "stock market analysts" said we're now in a bull market. The economy is not in free-fall right now, and that's a major accomplishment. But the economy is still shedding jobs left and right.

Here, via dshort.com is your bull market (the dark blue line shows market performance since October 2007):


We're not out of the woods yet, folks. Not by a long shot.

The New GOP

Gail Collins

Have you noticed how frequently I've been linking to Gail Collins columns?

The woman agrees with me on everything. She is brilliant!

Internet Security

Came across this disturbing story:

Hackers last week broke into a Virginia state Web site used by pharmacists to track prescription drug abuse. They deleted records on more than 8 million patients and replaced the site's homepage with a ransom note demanding $10 million for the return of the records, according to a posting on Wikileaks.org, an online clearinghouse for leaked documents.

Reading the comments from people who sound like they know something about this sort of thing, it may be a hoax. But the web page was definitely "broken into".

As we come to rely more and more on the internet for everything from dating to banking and medical records, it's becoming more obvious that our laws have not kept up with the technology. I've read that 95% of internet traffic is spam. If the truth is one-twentieth of that, it's still ridiculous. There need to be very serious consequences for people involved in this sort of stuff.

An Evening with Leonard Cohen

Last night was our expedition to the gorgeous Chicago Theater in the Loop to see my all-time favorite, Leonard Cohen, in concert. I've spent some time trying to think of a way to explain Leonard Cohen to people who aren't familiar with him. I guess the best I can do is say you probably are familiar with him — you just don't know it. He has written many songs that other singers made lots of money with. I think the first was Judy Collins, singing Suzanne. His most recent "hit" is something called Hallelujah, which was covered by Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright (the better of the two). You heard Hallelujah in the movie Shrek. His music has been called a collaboration between Thomas Merton and Jacques Brel, and that sounds just right.

Leonard has been around for a while. His first album was released in 1967, and I'm pretty sure I was a fan before that. Seriously.

Leonard stopped touring during the 1990s and spent five years as a monk in a Buddhist monastery. He left that, he said, because "it was too hard." Besides, "cheerfulness kept breaking through." When he left the monastery, he discovered that his business manager had stolen his money. So much for cheerfulness, I guess.

Now in his 70s, he had to go back on tour. I really wanted to see this show, and so did Suellen, who became a Leonard fan in the 1970s when she met a strange guy she was later foolish enough to marry. The story of getting tickets is told here. Thanks again to our friend, Ted.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to get there. We could have driven, but finally decided we'd take the L downtown, and a cab home. The L is a couple of blocks from our house, and three blocks from the theater, which is about the outer limits of Suellen's mobility right now, but she wanted to do it this way. Riding downtown at 6:45 p.m. looks like this:


The train was pretty empty because most people were riding in the other direction. Once we got downtown, I took some pictures on the way, just to give non-Chicagoans a feel for the trip.


That's the Loop L tracks over Lake Street on the right. Finally, we turn a corner, and voila!


Inside the theater, I had some time to take pictures. You may notice that most of the audience is about my age, which is to say, they have achieved their prime. Or, as Leonard says, "My friends are gone and my hair is grey. I ache in the places where I used to play."

Yes, we had front row balcony seats! And below are some of the poor chumps who didn't!


So here are some pictures of the 3-hour concert.


I said Leonard is in his 70's; he's 74, to be precise. People in the music business had to work on him for several years to get him to agree to tour again. He didn't think people would turn out. This concert was a sell-out the first day tickets were available, and a second night was quickly scheduled -- which also sold out. While talking to the audience, Leonard reflected that the last time he had been on stage in Chicago was 15 years ago, when he was "just a crazy kid with a dream."

He's quite dapper. The following verse got a big cheer from the women in the audience.

I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
You were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
But for me you would make an exception.

— From Chelsea Hotel, a song about Janis Joplin.

After several encores, at 11:30 the crowd poured onto State Street. Suellen was feeling okay and didn't want to take a cab. Too expensive.

So we took the L back home again. We had enough company to feel quite comfortable.


We walked in our front door at 12:30 a.m. We had a wonderful time, but I'm glad I don't do this every night.

It Was a Joke!

I've received several emails suggesting that the bird I identified as an emu probably isn't.

They're right. It is a rooster. I was kidding about the emu. So much for my humor.

Chicago Birds

Here are three pictures of birds taken within a couple of hundred yards of our house.

Long-time readers will recall that there's now a big empty lot across the street. The building that was there was razed in preparation for building 20 very nice houses, that the builder was looking to get $800,000 apiece for. Then something happened to the housing market. You may have heard about it.

So now we have a big empty lot, with two big holes in it that have filled with water. This attracts ducks and geese.


The male mallard hung around for a few days. I'm thinking he has a sad story to tell. Must be very lonely at this time of year.

This morning I was at the computer and heard a bird call I couldn't remember hearing in this neighborhood, so went out looking for what it the world it could be. Turned out to be a common killdeer, but they're not so common in this part of Chicago. My bird book says, "Not only is it abundant and conspicuous, but its loud call compels attention." Yup.


Finally, walking home from working at the food pantry last week I spotted a really unusual sight in the city ("♫ In the city .... ♫In the city♫" [just a sneaky way to send you to my nephews' band]). One neighbor has a garden that's sort of overgrown, in a lush, Garden of Eden sort of way. As I was walking by I saw, out of the corner of my eye, a largish bird walking around in the undergrowth. Luckily I had my camera.


It's actually not in my bird book. I'm pretty sure it's an emu, though. I have no idea how it got there.

Incidentally, there are a couple of really good examples here of why my kid brother, who actually knows something about taking pictures of fauna, always focuses manually, rather than letting the camera decide to focus on -- oh, a nearby stick, say.

There Will Always Be an England

Through a posting to an English mail list this morning, I learned of the March March March.

The March March march is a long, flat, pointless walk across the Fens from the town of March to Cambridge, a distance of about thirty miles. It takes place, of course, in March, often but not always on the last Saturday in March. It has no purpose other than to be called the March March march. It was invented by Jonathan Partington in 1979, apparently because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Participants keep good records, though.

There have been successful March March marches in 1979, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008 and 2009. There was an attempted March in 2002 but nobody completed it, and a March was planned in 2007 but nobody started it. The omission of 1980 is regretted but it is no longer possible to do anything about it. The March March march was on a Wednesday in 1979 and 1986 and on a Sunday in 1981 and 1989, but has otherwise always been on a Saturday. Two March March marches, in 1988 and 2005, went (intentionally) to Ely rather than Cambridge: one Marcher did this unintentionally in 1982.

Thirty years later, I can see this overtaking the Boston Marathon in popularity. Okay, maybe in a few more years. "The route has now become fairly canonical." Now that sounds like something I'd like to do.

Three Good Reads

Make sure you read Jodi Kantor's excellent article about who Obama the lawyer might choose for the Supreme Court. Obama has said he will seek Republican input (which is more respect than they deserve), and he seems to be serious about that. But watch, the Republicans will act like idiots anyway.

A favorite line from the article: "The University of Chicago was and is full of eminent theorizers who wrap up huge areas of the law by applying some magic key." Boy, is THAT ever the truth!

Maureen Dowd stops writing about who she saw at whose party, and writes about something important, for a change.

And Frank Rich sums it all up pretty well.

Two Weeks and Still No Pandemic

Gail Collins in today's NY Times:

If you interview a scientist about almost anything, they will tell you there is some level of risk. A while back, I talked to a prominent physicist who carefully explained that although the odds against all the oxygen molecules suddenly racing over to clump on one side of the room were really, really, really high, it could happen. And that if it did, it would be most unpleasant.

Anything might happen. The flu could suddenly become superlethal. Or, as we have learned from decades of movie-going, it could be innocuous on the surface but then turn its victims into zombies or giant walking cornstalks. And if any of that happens, I want you to remember that I said it was a serious concern.

Right now it's looking like this flu might not be quite so bad as the pandemic of 1918-19, which killed 25-100 million (depending on where you read it). Thank goodness for that. Governments were right to be concerned, though.