Short Bits...

Before anything else...

Paul Newman: A Great Man, A Great Humanitarian and a Great Actor

What a really wonderful human being! I was fortunate enough to work with him four times. He was a unbelievably kind, intellectually engaged and completely free of the Hollywood/star craziness. We shared another common interest: motor racing. I was with him and remember well his poignant reaction when he learned of Formula One driver Gilles Villeneuve's death at Zolder in 1982. He also did me some personal kindnesses for which I shall always be grateful. But most importantly he left a legacy of stellar work both in front of and behind the camera. And his generosity should be the standard, not the exception. I've had the good fortune to work with a lot of celebrities and he was by far the kindest.

The McCain Campaign...

I've been meaning to write on the Obama/McCain presidential race. I keep waiting for the McCain campaign to hits its nadir but, like the Energizer Bunny, it keeps going on and descending ever further into the abyss than even I could possibly imagine or hope for. I shall and probably soon but in the meantime...

Maverick? Hardly!

Someone needs to tell John McCain that if you call yourself a maverick, you are indeed NOT a maverick.

And their Lies...

You don't win friends and gain influence by lying about your opponent. Well at least not this year! McCain's disingenuous attacks are not playing well (or well enough) in the heartland. The dubious William Ayers connection reached no one but the overly caffeinated right-wing nut jobs.

McCain/Palin are suggesting Obama is a socialist...

Just because he wants to undo some of the income redistribution as exemplified by Shrub's tax cuts for the fabulously wealthy. There has been a monumental shift in wealth in this country where we are becoming more and more like Brazil every day (where four percent of the population controls 96 per cent of the GNP).

Here's Paul Krugman, the Nobel winning Economist who teaches at Princeton, writing in the NY Times in August 2006 (yes this is long but well worth it and yes he understood this WAY before most of us):

"I’ve been studying the long-term history of inequality in the United States. And it’s hard to avoid the sense that it matters a lot which political party, or more accurately, which political ideology rules Washington.

Since the 1920’s there have been four eras of American inequality:

• The Great Compression, 1929-1947: The birth of middle-class America. The real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans actually fell 17 percent.

• The Postwar Boom, 1947-1973: An era of widely shared growth. Real wages rose 81 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent rose 38 percent.

• Stagflation, 1973-1980: Everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent fell 4 percent.

• The New Gilded Age, 1980-?: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent — people with incomes of more than $277,000 in 2004 — rose 135 percent.

What’s noticeable is that except during stagflation, when virtually all Americans were hurt by a tenfold increase in oil prices, what happened in each era was what the dominant political tendency of that era wanted to happen.

Franklin Roosevelt favored the interests of workers while declaring of plutocrats who considered him a class traitor, “I welcome their hatred.” Sure enough, under the New Deal wages surged while the rich lost ground.

What followed was an era of bipartisanship and political moderation; Dwight Eisenhower said of those who wanted to roll back the New Deal, “Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.” Sure enough, it was also an era of equable growth.

Finally, since 1980 the U.S. political scene has been dominated by a conservative movement firmly committed to the view that what’s good for the rich is good for America. Sure enough, the rich have seen their incomes soar, while working Americans have seen few if any gains.

By the way: Yes, Bill Clinton was president for eight years. But for six of those years Congress was controlled by hard-line right-wingers. Moreover, in practice Mr. Clinton governed well to the right of both Eisenhower and Nixon.

...But it seems likely that government policies have played a big role in America’s growing economic polarization — not just easily measured policies like tax rates for the rich and the level of the minimum wage, but things like the shift in Labor Department policy from protection of worker rights to tacit support for union-busting.

And if that’s true, it matters a lot which party is in power — and more important, which ideology. For the last few decades, even Democrats have been afraid to make an issue out of inequality, fearing that they would be accused of practicing class warfare and lose the support of wealthy campaign contributors."

Back to me: A few other ancillary considerations for the academically challenged GOP ticket to consider:

These are the people who thought social security (or virtually anything from the New Deal), medicare and medicaid are the first steps the US is making in its march towards socialism.

Some inconvenient facts: the first US President to support a progressive tax? That would be the Republican Teddy Roosevelt.

And let's not forget the "earned income tax credit"? The one that gave federal money to the poor?

That would be the handiwork of Republican wunderkind, Ronald Reagan.

On the small but real silver lining of this economic crisis...

The current economic crisis is about greed and deregulation of the banking industry that started with the Actor-in-Chief Ronald Reagan ("Government IS the problem") and much to their discredit both Clinton and Bush Senior continued it. President Clinton and a Republican congress exacerbated the crisis when they repealed Glass Steagall in 1999. The bankers and financial markets have been running virtually unregulated ever since. Shrub turned a blind eye completely allowing the greed and malfeasance on Wall Street and in corporate America to run rampant. The Republicans got caught. They can pretend and point the finger.

The only good news in this mess is the complete debunking of the Ronald Reagan myth. Bush borrowed another page from Reagan's playbook: mortgage the future. The Iraq war funding will burden the next generation since none of it is being paid for at the moment. The Republicans can win elections but they sure can't govern.

Now McCain's problem is how to overcome 27 years of being on the wrong side of this issue. He has been a champion of deregulation since he arrived in Congress. He got caught up in the Keating 5 scandal and though he feigned humility, the fact is he has repeatedly sided with corporate interests. His recent conversion to regulation is as genuine as every other issue he has changed his position on: offshore drilling, torture, immigration and so forth. The straight talk express is a highway full of lies and self interest. Country first? My ass!

On "even-handed" journalism in this campaign...


As an ex-journalist, I don't want the MSM to be either pro-McCain or pro-Obama. I want them to tell the truth. The problem is that they are so easily played, mostly by Republicans who seem better attuned to the game. So when McCain unfairly criticizes Obama by making something up or twisting his words, the main stream media (MSM) feels compelled to say Obama does it too (and he does but just not to the degree or as often as McCain does it). So the "balance" achieved is exactly NOT balanced. The over-the-top cartoonish version of this is playing out on Fox where they have a the sufficiently neutered Allen Colmes representing the left side of the political spectrum while defending his ignorant co-horts.

Tom Brokaw is lobbying for substantial changes at MSNBC?:

I'm not surprised--only disappointed--that Brokaw sees a need to interfere with MSNBC. First of all, let's start with the most obvious: there's virtually no such thing as broadcast journalism. Brokaw comes from a long line of news readers masquerading as serious journalists. So how would he know? I'm just chagrined that he feels qualified to comment on anything. None of that news anchor generation (Brokaw, Rather or Jennings--who had only a high school education) was a serious journalist. Hell, even Murrow, the avowed god and dean of broadcast journalism, earned his credibility broadcasting RADIO from London and less so working for Paley and CBS. Secondly it is cable for gods sakes, not the network. MSNBC had built a line up of reasonably bright people who are wonderfully snarky and will not roll over for those in power. My guess is the Republicans are targets because they have effectively hijacked the government, run the country into the ground and now want to avoid responsibility. When the Democrats presumably take over, they will become the new targets. And let's be clear: what Olberman, Maddow and others do is no where as bad as what the Fox hacks do.

The Maverick is running a campaign full of lies...

Why don't we call it for what it is, a lie. The Republican lies of omission and commission are ubiquitous. From watching the convention, one would think everything is going well. They distorted Obama's record while lying about Palins. The Bridge to Nowhere? The plane that she sold for a loss AND not on Ebay. That she cultivated earmarks but now pretends to be against them? Progressives are not afraid of Sarah Palin. She is just another arrogant, ill-informed ugly American who thinks she knows more than she actually does. What we are afraid of is once again the media NOT doing its job. Put the information out there and let voters decide. Instead the media is following the "McCain suck up strategy" and letting them set the agenda. Why was McCain NOT called out on his VP selection when he preferred another? Or his posturing on alternative energy when he refuses to show up in the Senate to promote these ideas. He is purposefully--not accidentally--AWOL on these votes because he is so beholden to big energy/oil. Or his William Ayers fascination when he himself has real terrorist connections, not to mention those of running mate Sarah Palin's flirtations with the Alaska secessionist movement. Or the McCain campaign's Peter Feldman pushing of the faux campaign worker attack in Pennsylvania. If Rick Davis wants to make this an election on personality, then let's include character. As McCain's first wife found out before the rest of us, McCain has none.


Tucker Bounds and the McCain campaign...

Tucker Bounds saying "If he (Obama) was honest..." is just a bit too rich for me. The McCain campaign is anything but honest--lying about Obama's record, misrepresenting his own record on regulation, on veterans affairs (veterans do not know that McCain is there for them), on the war and so forth. And where is Governor Mooselini? McCain is cynically "protecting" her from the media. I'm wondering what those PUMAs are thinking now. Yeah they got their double X candidate but one wonders how far Caribou barbie will set the women's movement back? There is so much intellectual dishonesty on the Republican side that one really does start to wonder if Nov 4 will be more of an IQ test than anything else. Are you really that stupid to fall victim to these lies? McCain, Palin and the PUMAs are banking you are.


And MSNBC's Contessa Brewer Wins Latest Round Of "Stump Tucker Bounds"

Unfortunately Ms. Brewer did not call him on one of the McCain campaign's big lies: that he has never requested earmarks. Per Think Progress: in 2006, McCain and colleague Jon Kyl (R) teamed up to funnel $10 million toward the University of Arizona for an academic center named after the late Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. Even the National Taxpayers Union, a traditional McCain ally, questioned why the senator was making federal taxpayers foot the bill for the center. In 2003, McCain also slipped $14.3 million into a defense appropriations bill to create a buffer zone around Luke Air Force Base in Arizona. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), a notorious porker, was overjoyed that McCain had joined his side. “One man’s pork is another man’s alternate white meat,” said Stevens. “If he asked for it, we put it in.” McCain says he puts country first but we all now know that is as big a lie as anything else he says. Do we really want to elect an intellectually and morally bankrupt 72 year old with serious health issues?

PUMAs

Are these people still around and is there anyone else out there like me who thinks this is a Republican/Rove invention to sow the seeds of discontent in the fairly united Democratic Party?

But if not, here goes: Nothing like a bunch of narcissistic losers who think the world revolves around them and their so-called feminism curiously none of you seems too angry that Hillary's campaign was run by MEN). She lost. She ran a despicable campaign. Get over it already. If you are naive enough to think that electing McCain will further your agenda, then you deserve what you get. The rest of us who see the forest for the trees are frightened by that possibility, especially since there will be possibly two vacancies on an already right-wing Supreme Court.