Connecting.the.Dots

Johnny Cash Comes Back to Life

2008-07-20T18:29:00.004-04:00

A London gallery next week will show pictures of an American legend, some of them unseen for almost half a century. Taken by my friend Marvin Koner, they show, not the familiar man in black with a life-scarred face, but a smooth-skinned 27-year-old at the brink of a career that would sear his voice and music into America's memory.

Koner was one of the young men who came back from World War II to pioneer an era of available-light photography that transformed pictures in magazines from frozen images with studio lighting to exciting depictions of life in motion, just as movies were moving from Hollywood sound stages to the grainy reality of Italian Neorealism and the French Nouvelle Vague.

In their work, the 1950s and 1960s still live. A slide show on Koner's website brings back Martin Luther King, JFK, Robert Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Elizabeth Taylor and unremembered people of the era through the eyes of a man with a 35mm camera and an artist's sensibility,

The pictures of Johnny Cash, discovered in a closet after more than 40 years, are part of that lost-and-found-again world that a new generation can rediscover now and marvel at how young and alive historical figures once were.

Doing Afghanistan

2008-07-20T09:10:00.005-04:00

So endeth Day One. Barack Obama did Afghanistan yesterday, where more Americans are now dying than in Iraq--a photo op with President Hamid Karzai, bacon and eggs with the troops (hold the grits) and shooting hoops with them.

His comments were low-carb, too. "To see young people like this, who are doing such excellent work with so much dedication and pride, it makes you feel good about the country," he said. "You want to make sure that everybody back home understands how much pride people take in their work here and how much sacrifice people are making. It's outstanding."

If and when he visits the Middle East again as president, the atmosphere won't be as relaxed. If Obama keeps his campaigning word, the emphasis of the war on terror will shift to Afghanistan from Iraq, where Nouri al-Maliki is now waffling on endorsing Obama's withdrawal plan.

Nine US soldiers were killed last week fighting Taliban militants in eastern Afghanistan during the deadliest attack on American troops in Afghanistan in three years.

Obama won't be visiting Pakistan on this trip, but that's where the problem lies, getting the post-Musharraf government to stop tiptoeing around the tribes shielding al Qaeda there. If he can do something about that, Obama would lessen the "sacrifice people are making" of the troops he visited today.

Obama's Magical Mystery Tour

2008-07-19T09:35:00.004-04:00

He's in Afghanistan today and will go on to Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England on what his campaign hopes will be a 21st century reprise of the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour with its theme of "All You Need Is Love" but at the same time has the potential to be a gauntlet of political minefields and security nightmares.

Despite the advance secrecy, John McCain yesterday blurted out that Obama would be going "either today or tomorrow" and that "Sen. Obama is going to arrive in Baghdad in a much, much safer and secure environment than the one that he would've encountered before we started the surge." Maybe so, but someone might remind McCain of the old World War II slogan, "Loose Lips Sink Ships."

Physical security aside, Obama may get a warm reception in Baghdad if what Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has told the German magazine Der Spiegel about troop withdrawal is any indication:

"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right time frame for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

As he departed, Obama pointed out, "I’m more interested in listening than doing a lot of talking. And I think it is very important to recognize that I’m going over there as a U.S. senator. We have one president at a time, so it’s the president’s job to deliver those messages.”

That may be what the Democratic candidate is saying, but what will the world leaders along his route be hearing? Something alone the lines of "All You Need Is Tough Love"?

"Ich bin ein Berliner, Folks"

2008-07-18T15:25:00.005-04:00

The vacillation over a speech site for Barack Obama evokes memories of previous fusses raised by American presidents in post-World War II Germany.

The Obama campaign has been searching for a suitable venue since Chancellor Angela Merkel deemed the Brandenburg Gate unseemly for a speech by a political candidate, and now the Victory Column less than a mile away seems to be the choice.

In 1985, there was a flap over President Reagan's visit to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to lay a wreath at the graves of German soldiers, including SS troops, over the protests of Elie Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors.

Before that, in 1963, President Kennedy made a stirring speech with the memorable line "Ich bin ein Berliner," followed by a semantic fuss about its translation, indicating that JFK may have unintentionally proclaimed himself, not a citizen of Berlin, but a jelly doughnut.

Whatever Obama decides to say to his German audience, he would be well-advised not to refer to John McCain as a hero, risking the possibility he might be understood to be calling the Republican candidate a big, fat overstuffed sandwich.

In languages as well as politics, it's easy for much to be lost in translation.

VP for Saving the Planet?

2008-07-17T14:23:00.004-04:00

Al Gore's impassioned speech today urges Americans to give up fossil fuels within a decade or risk losing national security, raising again the question of how his presence on the Obama ticket would elevate the stakes for "change" in this election.

The once and possibly future Vice President cited military-intelligence studies warning of “dangerous national security implications” of climate change, including the possibility of “hundreds of millions of climate refugees” creating worldwide instability and converting US dependence on foreign oil into a threat to the nation's safety.

Barack Obama issued an immediate statement underscoring his agreement:

“For decades, Al Gore has challenged the skeptics in Washington on climate change and awakened the conscience of a nation to the urgency of this threat. I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels, and those are the investments I will make as President. It’s a strategy that will create millions of new jobs that pay well and cannot be outsourced, and one that will leave our children a world that is cleaner and safer.”

How better to advance these objectives--and bring Executive branch experience to an Obama White House--than persuading Gore to take up his former job with enhanced responsibilities?

Al Gore may have lost the legendary "fire in the belly" for higher office, but he might be persuaded to reenter the arena to forward what has become the cause of his life.

Senior Sex Makes News

2008-07-17T10:53:00.003-04:00

Cohabiting among older people increased 50 percent from 2000 to 2006, the McClatchy Newspapers report today:

"The total--1.8 million--counts only couples who live together full time and were willing to admit it to census interviewers. Part-time cohabiting--traveling together, sharing a summer house, spending weekends together--is up at least as sharply, according to seniors and people who work with them."

This news about the growth of "love expectancy" may come as a shock to younger generations, whose sophistication does not extend to the notion that parents and grandparents, despite all the evidence of Viagra commercials, may not be immune to a culture of supersex on TV and in the movies.

On a family weekend celebrating his 75th birthday, a friend of mine and his wife went to bed early. Their youngest son, staying in the spare room, came back from an evening out and heard what he later described as “this Godawful scream."

Afraid that his father was having a heart attack, he called through the closed door. “Dad, are you all right?” After a moment of silence, he heard laughter, muffled at first, then louder. “It’s OK,” his mother giggled, “we’re making love.”

Few septuagenarians shock their grown children this way, but any evidence of love-making can come as a surprise. A young married woman, seeing a bottle of baby oil on her parents’ nightstand, opened her eyes wide, startled, and then smiled knowingly at them.

For the solitary, the new report discloses, finding partners is much easier than it used to be. According to the Internet-dating industry, the number of seniors joining online dating services has risen at double-digit rates annually since 2003, the most of any age group.

If they do further research, anthropologists may discover that senior sex does not bear much resemblance to those Cinemax closeups of satiny skin in pneumatic moves that make Extreme Fighting look tame. But then again, younger people have always underrated the pleasures of closeness and companionship.

Obama in Iraq: Summer Blockbuster

2008-07-17T05:35:00.002-04:00

The Star is ready, the script written and the supporting cast assembled from the media A-list as the political extravaganza of the summer goes into production. With so much invested on the part of all concerned, can there be any surprises?

The plot of "Obama in Iraq" is foreordained: Scenes of breathless anticipation as the protagonist--young, idealistic but wise beyond his years--undertakes the critical journey, modestly protesting he is there to listen and learn not negotiate ("One president at a time," he says).

Intercut with scenes of Republican scoffers and doubters to heighten the tension. "If Barack Obama believes that visiting Iraq and meeting with commanders will not give him any new perspective," John McCain's spokesman says, "then we can only assume he's going just to smile for the cameras."

Then a montage of waiting Iraqis buzzing with ambivalent excitement: “Every time I see Obama I say: ‘He’s close to us. Maybe he’ll see us in a different way,'" says a government official. “I find Obama very close to my heart.”

But another expresses dread: “It’s a very big assumption that just because he wants to pull troops out, he’ll be able to do it. The American strategy in the region requires troops to remain in Iraq for a long time.”

From then on, the story line is clear. The president-to-be bonds with the troops, charms the commanders and promises to honor their valor while elevating their mission to a higher plane.

"As president," he promises, "I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq."

Finally, smiling scenes with Prime Minister al-Maliki, mingling reassurance with promised firmness about the future: “Iraq is not going to be a perfect place, and we don’t have the resources to try to make it one. True success will take place when we leave Iraq to a government that is taking responsibility for its future.”

Then, boarding the plane with smiles and waves, the President-to-Be leaves the mise en scene as the music swells, the credits roll and the audience tries to figure out if what they've seen will have any effect on reality whatsoever.

Going to School on McCain

2008-07-16T10:41:00.005-04:00

In the wake of Jesse Jackson's slashing remark about Barack Obama's emphasis on parental responsibility, John McCain is telling the NAACP today who is really hurting African-American children--the "entrenched bureaucracy" and unions that want to deny their parents the right to hand over tuition to private schools in addition to the taxes they pay for "failing" public education.

In McCain's alternate universe, the answer to a good start in life for children of families threatened by rampant inflation and home foreclosures is to find the money to buy something they have every right to expect government to provide.

"When a public system fails," McCain says, "parents ask only for a choice in the education of their children. Some parents may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private school. Many will choose a charter school. No entrenched bureaucracy or union should deny parents that choice and children that opportunity.”

Following that logic, those who live in blighted minority communities might want to raise the money for private police and fire departments as well as parks and playgrounds.

In a McCain presidency, if another Katrina strikes, residents of the next New Orleans should have a private FEMA at the ready to clean up after the disaster.

As a newly converted advocate of free-enterprise education, McCain might consider reimbursing taxpayers for his college years at the US Naval Academy, another institution that could no doubt benefit from being privatized.

Iraq in the Rear-View Mirror

2008-07-15T15:37:00.003-04:00

Barack Obama and John McCain are squaring off on foreign policy this week, but there is an oddly retrospective quality to the debate over Iraq. Both promise to end the war, albeit on differing timelines, but the main issue is whether we should have fought it at all.

In his foreign policy speech today, Obama's answer was a resounding no, claiming the effort should have gone into hunting down Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban and terrorists responsible for the attacks, and that the billions spent on the war could have been invested in alternative sources of energy to "end the tyranny of oil" and strengthening our position in the world.

"Instead," he said, "we have lost thousands of American lives, spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats--all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks,"

Meanwhile, McCain's foreign policy adviser is harrumphing that his candidate "would rather lose an election than lose a war and see the nation lose a war. Senator Obama seems to think losing a war will help him win an election."

New polls are reflecting uncertainty among voters on how to react to all this. In the coming weeks, after he travels to the Mideast, Obama is going to have to make an effort to persuade the public to sign on to his five foreign policy goals:

"(E)nding the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

Yankee Stadium

2008-07-15T11:36:00.003-04:00

It came to life only months before I did and, all through a Bronx childhood, the Stadium was my field of dreams.

Even before I was old enough to go there, it brought color and excitement into my life. A block from where I lived, there was a squat windowless structure built years earlier for making silent movies, but it was deserted, just another foul-line marker for stickball games on the street.

Then one afternoon in 1937, a crowd gathered at the entrance, two lines of policemen stretched their arms to open the way for people getting out of limos and a tall man in fitted yellow sports shirt and slacks with no expression on his tanned face got out, crossed the sidewalk and disappeared into the building.

I had never been to Yankee Stadium a mile away so I knew Joe DiMaggio only from grainy newspaper pictures, jumpy newsreels and the excited voices of radio sportscasters, but here he was. The sudden texture and color of his face and clothes shocked my senses into a sweet awareness that he actually lived in the same world I did. Beyond the baseball cards and box scores, Joe DiMaggio was suddenly real, only six feet away.

When I saw him next at the Stadium, I stepped out of a tunnel to be overwhelmed by an expanse of bright green framed by roaring white bleachers and dark stands. Suddenly, the whole world took on color, dimension and sound--thousands of people united in an overwhelming reality I had never know to exist.

From then until only a few weeks ago, my final visit to the place that will be torn down at the end of summer, Yankee Stadium and the heirs of Joe DiMaggio have been part of my life, as real as family, friends and neighbors.

One night in the early 1980s, an hour before game time, I was in George Steinbrenner’s private dining room for an evening sponsored by a Christian athletes’ association. A few days earlier, the son of Yankee pitcher Tommy John had fallen from a second-story window and was now in critical condition.

Before dinner, Norman Vincent Peale led us in prayer for little Travis John. I lowered my head and wished hard for the child’s recovery. Days later, the boy was out of danger, and the experience only confirmed what I had always known: The Stadium was a magical place where the hard realities of the world are kept out by a dream life shared by millions over the years of my lifetime.

This Bud's for You, Mrs. McCain

2008-07-15T08:33:00.003-04:00

The impending sale of Anheuser-Busch, brewer of Budweiser, to a Belgian conglomerate will make Cindy McCain much richer than she already is from her inherited distributorship, and the Wall Street Journal is busy toting up how much.

If her husband makes it to the White House, he won't be the first president with family money from the booze business. JFK's father, son of a Boston saloon keeper who went into politics, built his fortune on importing Scotch after Prohibition and, according to rumors, even during the period it was illegal.

Bluenoses who find such alcoholic connections objectionable may want to remember that all our current problems come from the fact that George W. Bush gave up drinking, found God and became intoxicated with presidential power.

In January, whether or not the McCains move into the White House, we can all raise a toast to his departure.

Obama Cover As a Museum Piece

2008-07-14T19:54:00.005-04:00

It's one thing to find the New Yorker Obama cover in questionable taste, but the yahoo-ish invective being aimed at the magazine is over the top. However flawed in the eyes of some, the cover is nevertheless in the best tradition of magazine journalism.

Doubters can check out the Museum of Modern Art exhibit showing 32 of the 92 George Lois covers designed for Esquire between 1962 and 1972.

Unlike the current New Yorker, with the Obamas imagined by an illustrator, Lois often had subjects pose for his satirical images--heavyweight champions Muhammed Ali as the Christian martyr St. Sebastian with arrows stuck in him and Sonny Liston, the "meanest man in the world," as Santa Claus, to name two featuring African-Americans.

After the JFK assassination, inspired by the article "Kennedy Without Tears," Lois superimposed a hand with a handkerchief dabbing at the eye of the slain president. "I caught hell from a lot of people," Lois recalls, for being 'insensitive.'"

In 1968, as a takeoff on the five o'clock shadow from the 1960 presidential debate, Lois had a number of hands applying makeup to Richard Nixon, one of them wielding a lipstick, which a campaign honcho complained was a slur on the candidate's masculinity.

Lipstick had previously figured in a cover of a college football player applying it to his face to illustrate a piece on "the gay way to beat the draft."

Equal-opportunity offenders, Lois and editor Harold Hayes showed Vice President Hubert Humphrey as a ventriloquist's dummy on LBJ's lap, Stalin's daughter who defected to the US with her father's mustache drawn above her upper lip and TV MC Ed Sullivan with a Beatles' wig on his head.

The Obama cover is not likely to end up with all those in the MOMA, but it would be heartening to be able to look back at the reaction to it some day as a museum piece reflecting the prejudices and stupidity of our unevolved era.

Day-Late-and-Dollar-Short Government

2008-07-14T13:55:00.004-04:00

Trot out the clichés about closing the barn door for news today that the Federal Reserve is cracking down on shady lending practices to home buyers and President Bush is fighting high gas prices by lifting a ban on offshore drilling for oil.

As Americans drown in bad economic news, these daring rescue moves are the equivalent of throwing them concrete life preservers.

The Fed's new rules to protect the public against predatory lenders of subprime mortgages are too little for future home buyers and too late for the millions who are losing their homes at the highest rate in history.

The regulations, which take effect in October, will require more disclosure, but bank lobbyists have managed to make sure they contain "loopholes that would allow shady lending practices to continue" and reassure financial industry executives, "who feared increasing oversight would lead to less lending."

But the Fed's attempt to ease public fears is positively heroic when compared to the Presidential move, which has no meaning whatsoever unless Congress acts as well and, even after that, would have no effect on gas prices for years. But that didn't deter the White House from staging a White House signing for the evening news.

There may be a pony somewhere in one of those barns, but the public would be well-advised not to invest in riding clothes.

Sad Day for Satire

2008-07-14T06:47:00.004-04:00

Somewhere in editorial heaven, William Shawn is making a little note on the new New Yorker cover, scribbling in his tiny script, "What this?"

The cover of the July 21st issue is an artist's vision of the Oval Office with Michelle Obama with an AK 47 and Afro fist-bumping her husband in turban and Muslim dress to illustrate an article, "The Politics of Fear." The cover, the New Yorker explains, "satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama’s campaign.”

In the chaotic 1960s and beyond, the legendary Shawn made his magazine an oasis of sanity with the best reporting of the time on the political, social and cultural upheavals over race, the environment, art, poverty and the depredations of the Nixon White House.

He was trying, Shawn explained, "to hang on to sanity and reasonableness, no matter how turbulent or fevered or lunatic the world became...and, through it all we've considered humor indispensable, and we've searched for it, clung to it, and nourished it as if our life depended on it--and I think it did."

Today, the Obama campaign isn't laughing, finding the new cover "tasteless and offensive." Sadly, I'm sure Shawn would agree.

Trickle-Down in Iraq

2008-07-14T00:26:00.005-04:00

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been walking the streets of Baghdad doling out cash to passersby. Compared to the American millions that have been paid out to tribal leaders or stolen by Iraqi politicians, al-Maliki's largesse is small potatoes, more like the street money paid out by local American pols on election day.

But the irony is that all this free money over there is flowing as American taxpayers prepare to spend billions here to rescue mortgage lenders from defaults of homeowners whose equity has plunged and who can't afford or are unwilling to make their monthly payments.

For the free enterprise enthusiasts of the Bush Administration, there is the huge embarrassment of a government bailout of what private markets are supposed to handle so efficiently and, beyond that, the continuing commitment of billions needed here to a seemingly endless Iraq adventure.

Before he took office, George W. Bush promised voters he would not get involved in nation-building elsewhere, but who have imagined that he would do just that as the nation he is supposed to preserve is crumbling all around him?

Obama Beyond the Sound Bites

2008-07-13T20:47:00.005-04:00

After eight years of Bush-Cheney bluster and the promise of a regular-guy version from John McCain, the prospect of a president with more than a sound-bite view of American foreign policy was raised today in Fareed Zarakia's extended CNN interview with Barack Obama.

The Democratic candidate proposed to "bring back the kind of foreign policy that characterized the Truman administration with Marshall and Acheson and Kennan but also characterized to a large degree the first President Bush with people like Scowcroft and Powell and Baker...a fairly clear-eyed view of how the world works, and recognized that it is always in our interests to engage, to listen, to build alliances--to understand what our interests are, and to be fierce in protecting those interests, but to make sure that we understand it's very difficult for us to, as powerful as we are, to deal with all these issues by ourselves.

"We need to show leadership...through pulling people together wherever we can. There are going to be times where we have to act unilaterally to protect our interests. And I always reserve the right to do that, should I be commander in chief."

On the overriding issue of Islamic extremism, Obama said he would "hunt down those who would resort to violence to move their agenda, their ideology forward. We should be going after al Qaeda and those networks fiercely and effectively.

"But what we also want to do is to shrink the pool of potential recruits. And that involves engaging the Islamic world rather than vilifying it, and making sure that we understand that not only are those in Islam who would resort to violence a tiny fraction of the Islamic world, but that also, the Islamic world itself is diverse.

"And that lumping together Shia extremists with Sunni extremists, assuming that Persian culture is the same as Arab culture, that those kinds of errors...result in us not only being less effective in hunting down and isolating terrorists, but also in alienating what need to be our long-term allies on a whole host of issues."

The Republican spin machine will doubtlessly characterize that nuanced attitude toward American power in a complex and dangerous world as naïveté, weakness and vacillation. If voters believe that, we could be in for four more years of disastrous Neo-Con certainty, mock macho and isolation from the rest of the world.

An Answer to the Bill Clinton Problem

2008-07-13T07:59:00.005-04:00

Barack Obama has told a Hillary supporter he is considering her as a VP candidate but that the choice is "complicated" by her husband's status as a former president.

No problema. The week before the Democratic Convention in late August, Bill Clinton turns 62, one of the first Baby Boomers eligible for Social Security. As First Retiree, he would be an ideal choice for an unofficial portfolio as Ambassador to a new and growing segment of the population whose concerns will take on increasing significance during the Obama Administration.

Just as the US representative to the Holy See resides in Rome, Clinton could work best from a retirement community in southern Florida, where he would be surrounded by his new constituency.

One added benefit: When Vice President Hillary Clinton makes her run for the White House in 2016, her candidacy would get a jump start in a key state--if there were no sexagenarian scandals in the intervening years.

Debating Kennedy's Life-and-Death Decision

2008-07-12T20:24:00.003-04:00

His dramatic return this week to cast the deciding vote for a crucial Medicare bill brought tears and cheers in the US Senate, even as some medical ethicists question Ted Kennedy's decision to undergo life-prolonging (and expensive) surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.

On the New York Times Freakonomics blog, an internist involved in public health issues suggests Sen. Kennedy might have issued this statement instead:

“Because I am not a young man, the cancer in my brain will progress rapidly and is likely to incapacitate me in the near future. I trust that my doctors will do everything they can to prevent further seizures and to keep me in comfort. I will not endure extraordinary excess pain and suffering, while hundreds of thousand of dollars will not be spent on surgical debulking, radiation, and chemotherapeutic regimens which do not work.

"Modern medicine cannot cure my cancer, but it can keep me comfortable and free of pain. I have already contacted the Massachusetts General Hospital Hospice program.”

If such a suggestion seems heartless, it nonetheless reflects a crucial debate that has started about end-of-life care, which accounts for a significant percentage of Medicare expenditures.

Pointing to a study that shows only 37 percent of oncologists discuss such issues with their advanced-stage patients, PBS' News Hour did a segment this week about a woman choosing to forego heroic measures against her terminal cancer in favor of maintaining the quality of her life as long as she can.

In the face of constantly improving treatments and the amounts of money needed to provide them, the morality of choices about ending life may eventually engage as much emotion as the debate over when life begins.

Cost-benefit analysis will be pitted against such poetry as Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night,/Old age should burn and rave at close of day./Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Meanwhile, Ted Kennedy is showing us all how valuable a life can be in the face of all financial calculations.

Black Friday of Bushonomics

2008-07-11T23:28:00.005-04:00

Things fell apart, the center was barely holding today in the financial markets as oil went past $145 a barrel and the stocks of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae plunged by over 20 percent followed by late news of what could be the largest bank failure in history, sending most Americans home for a weekend of stiff drinks, pain killers and antacids.

If past experience holds, markets should open Monday sharply down for a while and then start to recover as bargain hunters and steel-nerved investors move to cash in on the panic, followed by a Tuesday aftershock and the beginning of a return to normal later in the week.

But past experience may not hold. What's gripping Americans now may be more than the credit crunch and housing crisis, more than inflation fueled by gas price spikes exacerbated by an endless Mideast war, more than the unchecked greed of speculators and hedge funds.

What may be going on is not what Phil Gramm densely called a "mental recession" but much more than that--a cumulative public breakdown of confidence, a social depression from seven years of Bushonomics trashing of the economy, the environment and the safety nets of all but the richest Americans.

With six months to go, we may be seeing the last spasms of damage to a government controlled by people dedicated to destroying every scrap of security it was designed to provide.

Misreading Sexual Signals

2008-07-11T13:46:00.005-04:00

To an observer from another era, it comes as a mild shock that young men today have troubling discerning women's erotic interest in them.

But researchers at Indiana University and Yale find women are better at interpreting facial expressions and body language, according to a study published in the journal Psychological Science, and that a substantial percentage of young men are clueless in potentially sexual situations.

Reporting on the research, CNN describes the experience of college administrator at an academic conference in conversation with an attractive woman over a glass of wine, who undid the clasp holding her hair in a bun, let it fall and flipped it side to side. A sign of interest? No, he decided. "I told myself to get real." The woman went off to her room with a puzzled expression--to shampoo her hair, no doubt.

In an era when claims of sexual harassment can follow misreading, such caution is understandable, but it may reflect a difference in communication styles between the sexes, says a "dating coach" who suggests men pay less attention to what women say than how it's said--citing such positive signs as touching on the arm, maintaining eye contact and smiling while talking.

It wasn't simple back in my day either, when we somehow managed without academic researchers or dating coaches, but then again we may have been missing out on all the nuances in the fine art of flirting.

Toothpaste-Tube Terrorism

2008-07-11T07:11:00.007-04:00

Squeeze them out of Iraq, and they squirt into Afghanistan and Pakistan tribal areas. What's clear is that the Bush-McCain mantra of "fight them there [Iraq] so we don't have to fight them here" has turned out to be an oversimplification of the war on terror the US will be fighting through the next Administration and beyond.

This week, A US Marines commander reported his troops have killed 400 insurgents in southern Afghanistan since late April, and visiting Congressmen were told the Bush administration is "recalibrating operations in the region because of a 40 percent increase in violent attacks against US-led forces in Afghanistan that have pushed US casualties for the month of June beyond the monthly toll in Iraq."

Today's New York Times adds, "The swelling forces of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in Pakistan’s border region pose a grave threat to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan...More than a thousand Pakistanis have been killed in terrorist attacks in the past year, mostly in the border areas where radical Islamic fighters are strongest."

After being bilked out of $7 billion in military aid with no security gains to show for it by Pervez Musharraf, our post-Bush policy for Pakistan may be starting with proposed legislation by Senators Joseph Biden and Richard Lugar to provide up to $15 billion in aid over the next 10 years for economic development, health and education and strengthen the civilian government "to regain control over a military that has too often been a law unto itself and intelligence services that seem far more loyal to the extremists than their own government."

In any case, the new tenant of the White House next January will have to rethink the war on terror by bringing in the best brains available as opposed to the Bush-Cheney we-know-best approach that took four years to discover the man who wrote the book on counterinsurgency, Gen. David Petraeus, might have something useful to offer in Iraq.

McCain's Hoof-in-Mouth Casualties

2008-07-11T00:43:00.006-04:00

The attrition rate of potential VPs is running high, with Phil Gramm yesterday joining Carly Fiorina among the stricken as McCain had to repudiate his contention that America is "a nation of whiners" in a “mental recession.”

Earlier in the week, the candidate found himself flummoxed by Fiorina's frankness about health care. At a Washington political breakfast, the former Hewlitt-Packard chief said, "I've been hearing a lot from women. There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won't cover birth-control medication. Those women would like a choice."

A sensible enough statement but not the most winning argument for the Conservatives McCain is still wooing. "I certainly do not want to discuss that issue," the candidate huffed when a reporter asked him about it on the "Straight Talk Express."

When it comes to creating embarrassment, McCain doesn't need much help from a running mate. Asked about the increase in US exports of cigarettes to Iran the other day, he answered, "Maybe that's a way of killing them."

Somebody should check out the fumes from the campaign bus.

The Selective Reticence of Karl Rove

2008-07-10T13:28:00.005-04:00

He is refusing to testify before Congress about Bush crimes but he just won't shut up in the Wall Street Journal about how Barack Obama is using his political genius for the '08 election.

Citing a letter from the Bush Justice Department, Karl Rove's lawyer claims he is "constitutionally immune from compelled congressional testimony" but is willing to grant an "informal interview" or answer written questions about the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, whose ouster Bush's Brain is accused of arranging.

But Rove is showing no such reticence in today's Journal claiming that "the Obama for President effort has cribbed an awful lot from the Bush-Cheney playbooks of 2000 and 2004."

On closer inspection, the "awful lot" turns out to be the nuts and bolts of modern electioneering, although Rove insists that "by setting a world indoor record for jettisoning past positions, Mr. Obama may be risking his reputation for truthfulness. A candidate's credibility, once lost, is very hard to restore, regardless of how fine an organization he has built."

Lost credibility is a subject Rove knows inside out and, if the Judiciary Committee can make its subpoenas hold up in court, he will get ample opportunity to expatiate on it under oath, not for pay by Fox News and the Journal, but under penalty for perjury.

Meanwhile, Obama and the rest of us may be excused for not wanting to hear the brilliant insights of the man who made the White House a cesspool of lies and deception.

Paternal Politics

2008-07-10T08:08:00.003-04:00

Now that Jesse Jackson has reassured us about Barack Obama's genitals, it's time to consider what prompted the Reverend's rage--the candidate's criticism of African-American fathers for failing their children--as part of a larger subtext of this election.

On all sides, it involves issues about American manhood in the 21st century and the troubling rites of passage from one generation to the next.

Start with George W. Bush who was moved to take up a war left unfinished by paternal prudence and turned toward "a higher Father" for guidance.

Enter John McCain, son and grandson of Admirals who, after writing "Faith of My Fathers," is campaigning for the White House based on the premise that the Head of State in an age of terror should be a reassuring paterfamilias.

Then there is Obama, searching for a father he never knew in "Dreams from My Father" and, in his presidential campaign, calling out men who aren't there for their children and challenging them to take up their responsibilities.

Add to the oedipal mix the outraged reaction of Jesse Jackson's son at his attack on Obama for raising such questions, and there is an overarching issue about American manhood in our time.

Aside from all else, voters will be choosing between John McCain's macho approach and Barack Obama's nurturing, protective style at the head of the national table.

Hillary Clinton's candidacy would have raised the question of whether such gender stereotypes are the only choices, but the answer to that will have to wait for another time.

Jesse Jackson's Apologies

2008-07-09T22:32:00.002-04:00

In 1984, when he called Jews "Hymies" and New York "Hymietown" while talking to an African-American reporter for the Washington Post, Jesse Jackson denied that he did, and it took a month for him to admit it and apologize.

More than two decades later, the Rev. Jackson has learned to be quicker to own up to his hurtful mouthings, apologizing to Barack Obama before anyone heard it for being caught by a microphone on Fox News, of all places, saying, "Barack's been talking down to black people...I want to cut his nuts off."

Jackson's reflexes have improved, but his prejudices are as strong as ever and, in the case of Obama, his apparent resentment. In South Carolina, he had accused the Democratic candidate of "acting white."

As an African-American leader, you know you've stepped over the line when Al Sharpton calls what you said "most unfortunate" and your own son says he is "deeply outraged and disappointed."

It may be time for Jackson to join Jeremiah Wright Jr. in an ecclesiastical retreat involving vows of silence.