A friend asked over dinner the other night, "What do you think of President Obama's declining poll numbers?"
"I don't think about them," I replied; "I don't even look at them. He's near rock-bottom on my personal rating system."
"Is that because he isn't liberal enough for you?"
With a sigh, I replied: "I suppose that's a fair, if not completely accurate, characterization."
In our political climate, espousing solutions that are self-evident usually is dismissed as being "liberal."
Obama's campaign rhetoric seemed to support many of those self-evident solutions to the horrors of the Bush era. As president, he failed to act in accord with his rhetoric on the most important of them.
It began with his cabinet and high-level government appointments. Summers and Geithner on the economy. Key members of the big bank cartel that caused our economic collapse, such appointees aren't likely to push policies needed to bring Too Big to Fail under government control. And they didn't. Nor did they seem even to think about the economic needs of people -- jobs, jobs, jobs; relief from toxic mortgages shamelessly marketed by bankers who knew better; better health care for less money.
The Obama team failed on the economy.
The president-to-be campaigned as an anti-war candidate, vowing to bring the troops home with honor. His appointment of Gates to head DOD wasn't the act of an anti-war president, nor have his policies done anything to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, he is even more committed than Bush to endless war.
The Obama team failed on war policy.
Ken Salazar, who promised to be a "sheriff" in Interior, looked the other way as the cozy oil, gas and coal company relationships with the people who were supposed to regulate them became even more blatant than they were under Bush. To paraphrase A.M. Rosenthal, "If you regulate the circus, you don't fuck the elephants."
The Obama team failed on environmental policy, public health, public lands and public trust.
Candidate Obama promised health care for every American. President Obama didn't even put single-payer health care on the table, and sold his soul to the pharmaceutical industry for less than a mess of pottage.
The Obama team failed on health care reform.
Candidate Obama decried government secrecy, torture, secret rendition and vowed to close Gitmo. President Obama fights for more secrecy in government, continues secret rendition, condones black prisons where people are tortured -- and Gitmo is still operating.
The Obama team failed the Bill of Rights.
The candidate of such great promise has been a failure in office. Not because he isn't "liberal" enough, although he isn't. Not because he didn't deliver on what he promised. But because he didn't even try.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Monday, June 28, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Caramba! It's the Killer Drones!
A word of caution to my friends in El Paso and the other border towns of the Southwest: Don't schedule any weddings, wakes or family fiestas within 10 miles or so of the border.
The Feds will soon be flying two Predator drones along the border and, by the measure of our heroic actions in Pakistan, these things have an annoying habit of falling on civilian men, women and children attending weddings and other celebrations.
For each group of civilians the drones kill, at least five times as many new terrorists are created. This ratio -- which may be underestimated -- guarantees that Bush's so-called "war on terror" will blossom under Obama into the endless war that keeps our economy going. The real economy, the one for the super-rich; not the one you and I live in, where working Americans have their homes foreclosed and millions more have no jobs.
The military-industrial complex loves the Predator. The "pilot" can be thousands of miles away -- in Nebraska, perhaps, or Germany -- and is at no risk. The drones cost $4.5 million each, so there's plenty of profit for everyone. Wisconsin, for example, just got $8 million to build a new Predator base. Next in line for new drone-control facilities are Whitemnan AFB in Missouri, and Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota. The Rapid City Journal is ecstatic: "Ellsworth and its supporters in Congress have done South Dakota proud," it editorialized.
Tell it to the Pakistanis.
How great a folly is the decision to put Predators in the air over the U.S. Mexico border? All you need to know is this: It was suggested by Texas Gov. Rick Parry, the wing-nut who, in one of his saner moments, seriously proposed that Texas secede from the Union.
The Feds say these things will help the Border Patrol prevent drug-cartel violence from spilling across the border into the U.S. London bookies are taking bets on how long it will be before a drunken bodyguard of a Mexican drug lord shoots one down.
This nation desperately needs a new, humane, sane immigration policy.
Instead it's got unconstitutional racial profiling in Arizona, tea-pot crazies stirring up racial hatred everywhere, Republicans sowing fear wherever they can drum up an audience, and now, killer drones buzzing overhead.
Is this a wonderful country or what?
The Feds will soon be flying two Predator drones along the border and, by the measure of our heroic actions in Pakistan, these things have an annoying habit of falling on civilian men, women and children attending weddings and other celebrations.
For each group of civilians the drones kill, at least five times as many new terrorists are created. This ratio -- which may be underestimated -- guarantees that Bush's so-called "war on terror" will blossom under Obama into the endless war that keeps our economy going. The real economy, the one for the super-rich; not the one you and I live in, where working Americans have their homes foreclosed and millions more have no jobs.
The military-industrial complex loves the Predator. The "pilot" can be thousands of miles away -- in Nebraska, perhaps, or Germany -- and is at no risk. The drones cost $4.5 million each, so there's plenty of profit for everyone. Wisconsin, for example, just got $8 million to build a new Predator base. Next in line for new drone-control facilities are Whitemnan AFB in Missouri, and Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota. The Rapid City Journal is ecstatic: "Ellsworth and its supporters in Congress have done South Dakota proud," it editorialized.
Tell it to the Pakistanis.
How great a folly is the decision to put Predators in the air over the U.S. Mexico border? All you need to know is this: It was suggested by Texas Gov. Rick Parry, the wing-nut who, in one of his saner moments, seriously proposed that Texas secede from the Union.
The Feds say these things will help the Border Patrol prevent drug-cartel violence from spilling across the border into the U.S. London bookies are taking bets on how long it will be before a drunken bodyguard of a Mexican drug lord shoots one down.
This nation desperately needs a new, humane, sane immigration policy.
Instead it's got unconstitutional racial profiling in Arizona, tea-pot crazies stirring up racial hatred everywhere, Republicans sowing fear wherever they can drum up an audience, and now, killer drones buzzing overhead.
Is this a wonderful country or what?
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
A Pox -- No, Worse! -- on ESPN
I have been outraged many times before by the contempt American mainstream TV channels have for tennis.
But my disgust with ESPN goes beyond outrage. In the fifth set of perhaps the most remarkable contest in the history of sport -- all sport, not just tennis -- ESPN relegated its Wimbledon broadcast to a remote backwater of its broadcast empire.
I subscribe to Comcast's premium sports package in my area, but I can't get ESPN-U (whatever that is) and so missed history being made by John Isner of the United States and Nicolas Mahut of France.
Each player had won two sets in their epic first round match when it was suspended because of darkness on Day One. On Day Two, they played the longest set in the history of tennis -- and it still isn't over. They had tied at 59-all when play was suspended -- again.
Over two days they were on court for 10 hours. The fifth set alone lasted 7 hours 6 minutes -- longer than the previous record for a complete match, 6 hours 33 minutes at the French Open.
The two men held serve for 118 consecutive games. Only a tennis player, I suppose, can appreciate just how remarkable a feat that is. And this took place at Wimbledon, the most prestigious tournament in tennis.
Imagine this: 59 consecutive successful goal-line stands in the Super Bowl.
Or 59 consecutive perfect 1-2-3 innings by a baseball pitcher -- in the World Series.
Or 59 consecutive 3-point field goals made -- in the championship series of the NBA.
Or 59 consecutive birdies by a golfer -- in the Masters.
Now consider TWO teams or players accomplishing any of the above -- in the same competition.
ESPN deemed the historic Isner-Mahut competition unworthy of being shown on either of its main channels, ESPN or ESPN2, so that it might achieve a respectable fraction of the audience it deserved.
Roger Federer, who owns a considerable piece of tennis history in his own right, said:"I have almost no words anymore watching this. It's beyond anything I've ever seen and could imagine. I don't know how their bodies must feel . . . This is incredible tennis."
And this incredible tennis will go on for a third day. "Nothing like this will ever happen again," Isner said after today's play. "Ever."
But don't expect to see it on ESPN's main channels. They'll be broadcasting the movie "Heidi." Or a taped fishing show. Or something.
But my disgust with ESPN goes beyond outrage. In the fifth set of perhaps the most remarkable contest in the history of sport -- all sport, not just tennis -- ESPN relegated its Wimbledon broadcast to a remote backwater of its broadcast empire.
I subscribe to Comcast's premium sports package in my area, but I can't get ESPN-U (whatever that is) and so missed history being made by John Isner of the United States and Nicolas Mahut of France.
Each player had won two sets in their epic first round match when it was suspended because of darkness on Day One. On Day Two, they played the longest set in the history of tennis -- and it still isn't over. They had tied at 59-all when play was suspended -- again.
Over two days they were on court for 10 hours. The fifth set alone lasted 7 hours 6 minutes -- longer than the previous record for a complete match, 6 hours 33 minutes at the French Open.
The two men held serve for 118 consecutive games. Only a tennis player, I suppose, can appreciate just how remarkable a feat that is. And this took place at Wimbledon, the most prestigious tournament in tennis.
Imagine this: 59 consecutive successful goal-line stands in the Super Bowl.
Or 59 consecutive perfect 1-2-3 innings by a baseball pitcher -- in the World Series.
Or 59 consecutive 3-point field goals made -- in the championship series of the NBA.
Or 59 consecutive birdies by a golfer -- in the Masters.
Now consider TWO teams or players accomplishing any of the above -- in the same competition.
ESPN deemed the historic Isner-Mahut competition unworthy of being shown on either of its main channels, ESPN or ESPN2, so that it might achieve a respectable fraction of the audience it deserved.
Roger Federer, who owns a considerable piece of tennis history in his own right, said:"I have almost no words anymore watching this. It's beyond anything I've ever seen and could imagine. I don't know how their bodies must feel . . . This is incredible tennis."
And this incredible tennis will go on for a third day. "Nothing like this will ever happen again," Isner said after today's play. "Ever."
But don't expect to see it on ESPN's main channels. They'll be broadcasting the movie "Heidi." Or a taped fishing show. Or something.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Death and Near Death in Sport
Rest in peace, Manute.
Manute Bol was 7 feet, 7 inches tall; the basket is only 10 feet above the court; the hoop is 18 inches in diameter and the ball only 9.39; but for most of his career including 10 seasons as an NBA professional, the league's tallest player had difficulty making the ball go through the hoop. He is the only player in NBA history who averaged more blocked shots per game (3.3) than points (2.6).
He tied the record for most blocks in a half (11) and twice set the record for blocks in a quarter (8).
Despite his reputation for futility as a shooter, he once made six of 12 three-point attempts in a single half.
But none of this is important in considering Manute Bol, who died at 47 last Saturday of acute kidney failure in a hospital in Charlottesville, VA.
This is what's important:
Born in Sudan, the son of a Dinka chief, Manute (it means "special blessing") spent virtually all of the small fortune he earned in the NBA building schools and financing efforts to end poverty and oppression in his homeland.
His goal was to build 164 schools. He was less than halfway there when he died.
The NBA should finish the job in his memory, as a tribute to a man whose humanitarianism towered far higher than 7 feet, 7 inches.
* * *
In the opening match at Wimbledon Monday, Falla won the first two sets against someone posing as the defending champion, Roger Federer. (No, silly, not the reincarnation of FDR's dog. FAH-ya, the Colombian left-hander who is ranked No. 60 in the world).
The scores were 7-5, 6-4. Falla, like Robin Soderling in the quarterfinals at Paris a few weeks ago, was eating Federer's second serve for lunch. Or was it the impostor's?
The real Federer began making a few token appearances in the third set, which Falla lost, 4-6. But the impostor returned to action in the fourth, with Falla serving for the match at 5-4. Then real Roger came back on court, forced a tiebreak, and won it easily.
There was no sign of the impostor in Set Five. Real Roger won, 6-0.
What doth this bode for Federer's quest to equal Pete Sampras's record of seven Wimbledon championships, and add yet another to his record set of 16 Grand Slam titles?
At 29, Roger seems to have lost something on a second serve that was once one of the strengths of his magnificent all-around game. And his backhand remains vulnerable against constant pounding. But the Roger Federer of incomparable grace and skill, the man with the most complete game in the history of tennis, refused to surrender his dignity to the number 60 player on the tour.
He acknowledged afterward that this was a match he probably should have lost. "But then," he added enigmatically, "I've lost some this year that I should have won."
It's a long fortnight, and neither Roger nor his principal adversary, the No. 1 player in the world, Rafael Nadal, has an easy road ahead.
But this is Wimbledon, the courts are grass and the real Roger is still here -- or was, at least, when he needed to be.
Manute Bol was 7 feet, 7 inches tall; the basket is only 10 feet above the court; the hoop is 18 inches in diameter and the ball only 9.39; but for most of his career including 10 seasons as an NBA professional, the league's tallest player had difficulty making the ball go through the hoop. He is the only player in NBA history who averaged more blocked shots per game (3.3) than points (2.6).
He tied the record for most blocks in a half (11) and twice set the record for blocks in a quarter (8).
Despite his reputation for futility as a shooter, he once made six of 12 three-point attempts in a single half.
But none of this is important in considering Manute Bol, who died at 47 last Saturday of acute kidney failure in a hospital in Charlottesville, VA.
This is what's important:
Born in Sudan, the son of a Dinka chief, Manute (it means "special blessing") spent virtually all of the small fortune he earned in the NBA building schools and financing efforts to end poverty and oppression in his homeland.
His goal was to build 164 schools. He was less than halfway there when he died.
The NBA should finish the job in his memory, as a tribute to a man whose humanitarianism towered far higher than 7 feet, 7 inches.
* * *
In the opening match at Wimbledon Monday, Falla won the first two sets against someone posing as the defending champion, Roger Federer. (No, silly, not the reincarnation of FDR's dog. FAH-ya, the Colombian left-hander who is ranked No. 60 in the world).
The scores were 7-5, 6-4. Falla, like Robin Soderling in the quarterfinals at Paris a few weeks ago, was eating Federer's second serve for lunch. Or was it the impostor's?
The real Federer began making a few token appearances in the third set, which Falla lost, 4-6. But the impostor returned to action in the fourth, with Falla serving for the match at 5-4. Then real Roger came back on court, forced a tiebreak, and won it easily.
There was no sign of the impostor in Set Five. Real Roger won, 6-0.
What doth this bode for Federer's quest to equal Pete Sampras's record of seven Wimbledon championships, and add yet another to his record set of 16 Grand Slam titles?
At 29, Roger seems to have lost something on a second serve that was once one of the strengths of his magnificent all-around game. And his backhand remains vulnerable against constant pounding. But the Roger Federer of incomparable grace and skill, the man with the most complete game in the history of tennis, refused to surrender his dignity to the number 60 player on the tour.
He acknowledged afterward that this was a match he probably should have lost. "But then," he added enigmatically, "I've lost some this year that I should have won."
It's a long fortnight, and neither Roger nor his principal adversary, the No. 1 player in the world, Rafael Nadal, has an easy road ahead.
But this is Wimbledon, the courts are grass and the real Roger is still here -- or was, at least, when he needed to be.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Beyond Bleak
"Stay upbeat!" the physical therapists keep telling me. That's why they took away my iPad. Constant monitoring of the news was so depressing me that my rehabilitation was lagging; the muscles that need to be re-educated to operate my new titanium hip were failing kindergarten.
Something like that.
The surgeon assures me I'll "be 100 per cent by November." Great. Just in time for the mid-term elections. Stay upbeat?
Rand Paul? Joe Barton? Sharron Angle? Stay upbeat?
You're risking death by commando attack if you board a ship to bring humanitarian relief to the suffering people of Gaza! Stay upbeat?
The raw petroleum gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, and the flood of toxic chemicals being used to disperse it, are lethal to every form of life in the sea, and the marshes that adjoin it. Nobody in government or the extraction industry -- comprising some of the fattest corporate fat cats in the history of money -- has the foggiest notion what to do about it. The top boss of BP, whose well is killing everything, appears before Congress playing the Billy Martin role in the old beer commercial: "I didn't punch that dogie." Then BP ships him off to its executive penal colony on a remote island -- which you can bet is somewhere in the Pacific. Stay upbeat?
Our greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression is met with great gifts of taxpayer cash to the very Too Big to Fail financial institutions whose idiocy caused the crisis. More and more Americans lose their jobs but the band aid of extended unemployment benefits is stricken by a corporate-owned Senate that can't bear to pay for public works by raising corporate taxes almost to the same level that is imposed on working Americans. More and more Americans lose their homes to foreclosure but we let financial industry lobbyists write the new "regulations" on lenders. Stay upbeat?
The insurance industry that has befouled health care in the United States, now among the worst in the industrialized world, writes the foundation of "health care reform" legislation with the result that the one part of the system that worked -- Medicare -- is at risk from the predations of the newly-empowered insurers. Stay upbeat?
Even as apocalypse envelopes the sea, the corporations that own Congress , now sanctified with Constitutional personhood by the Gang of Five on the Supreme Court, are pressing for more drilling, more mining, more mountaintop removal, more gouging, more criminal exploitation of public land, even if it defiles historical, aesthetic and cultural landmarks that can never be replaced or repaired. Stay upbeat?
Video made from a military helicopter shows criminal assassination of unarmed civilians by United States forces in Afghanistan. When it's made public by Wikileaks -- an online journal of truth that deserves a Nobel Prize -- the United States responds not with outrage about the crime, but by jailing the buck private who is alleged to have leaked the thing in an act of conscience. Stay upbeat?
A White House that promised transparency, reform and war on government by Beltway insiders has given us more secrecy, a worsening of the executive abuses of the previous administration, and endless war against people who are guilty only of hating us, with reason. Stay upbeat?
And the current occupant of the White House, Dr. Kidglove, gives us . . . words. There are words and there are words. Words that inspire action and determination (Lincoln, Churchill, King . . .). Words of deceit, denial, duplicity and compromise. Stay upbeat?
I wonder if that Utah firing squad moonlights for the terminally depressed.
Something like that.
The surgeon assures me I'll "be 100 per cent by November." Great. Just in time for the mid-term elections. Stay upbeat?
Rand Paul? Joe Barton? Sharron Angle? Stay upbeat?
You're risking death by commando attack if you board a ship to bring humanitarian relief to the suffering people of Gaza! Stay upbeat?
The raw petroleum gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, and the flood of toxic chemicals being used to disperse it, are lethal to every form of life in the sea, and the marshes that adjoin it. Nobody in government or the extraction industry -- comprising some of the fattest corporate fat cats in the history of money -- has the foggiest notion what to do about it. The top boss of BP, whose well is killing everything, appears before Congress playing the Billy Martin role in the old beer commercial: "I didn't punch that dogie." Then BP ships him off to its executive penal colony on a remote island -- which you can bet is somewhere in the Pacific. Stay upbeat?
Our greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression is met with great gifts of taxpayer cash to the very Too Big to Fail financial institutions whose idiocy caused the crisis. More and more Americans lose their jobs but the band aid of extended unemployment benefits is stricken by a corporate-owned Senate that can't bear to pay for public works by raising corporate taxes almost to the same level that is imposed on working Americans. More and more Americans lose their homes to foreclosure but we let financial industry lobbyists write the new "regulations" on lenders. Stay upbeat?
The insurance industry that has befouled health care in the United States, now among the worst in the industrialized world, writes the foundation of "health care reform" legislation with the result that the one part of the system that worked -- Medicare -- is at risk from the predations of the newly-empowered insurers. Stay upbeat?
Even as apocalypse envelopes the sea, the corporations that own Congress , now sanctified with Constitutional personhood by the Gang of Five on the Supreme Court, are pressing for more drilling, more mining, more mountaintop removal, more gouging, more criminal exploitation of public land, even if it defiles historical, aesthetic and cultural landmarks that can never be replaced or repaired. Stay upbeat?
Video made from a military helicopter shows criminal assassination of unarmed civilians by United States forces in Afghanistan. When it's made public by Wikileaks -- an online journal of truth that deserves a Nobel Prize -- the United States responds not with outrage about the crime, but by jailing the buck private who is alleged to have leaked the thing in an act of conscience. Stay upbeat?
A White House that promised transparency, reform and war on government by Beltway insiders has given us more secrecy, a worsening of the executive abuses of the previous administration, and endless war against people who are guilty only of hating us, with reason. Stay upbeat?
And the current occupant of the White House, Dr. Kidglove, gives us . . . words. There are words and there are words. Words that inspire action and determination (Lincoln, Churchill, King . . .). Words of deceit, denial, duplicity and compromise. Stay upbeat?
I wonder if that Utah firing squad moonlights for the terminally depressed.
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