Shame on Hillary for Not Discouraging NV Legal Suit

Yesterday the New York Times reported "Teachers Sue to Block Hotel Workers' Union Vote in Nevada Caucus," in pertinent part:

"The Nevada State Education Association has said it would not endorse any Democrat, but some of its top officials have endorsed Mrs. Clinton. The association’s deputy executive director, Debbie Cahill, for instance, was a founding member of Senator Clinton’s Nevada Women’s Leadership Council."

Clinton was asked about this matter this morning on Meet the Press, and she did not disavow the suit or say it was wrong. Shame on her.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo wrote yesterday that this move seemed "beyond the pale" and "deserves attention."

"But the 'tell' is the fact that the teachers' union apparently didn't think this was a problem until Sen. Obama bagged the key union endorsement. When asked why the union had never approached the state party about this issue until Friday, union president Lynne Warne, tellingly replied, 'We're approaching them now.' If there's one thing that's core to the modern Democratic party is that voter suppression tactics are always wrong. Much of the US Attorney purge scandal was at root about Republican voter suppression tactics. I suspect this is doubly wrong -- both in the sense that the suit is meritless on its face but certainly also in the sense that you don't decide how easy to make it for people to vote depending on who you think they're likely to vote for."

ABC's Political Punch blog posted a late update at about 8 pm last night on the matter.

What Obama's Endorsements Mean

Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo offers a good analysis on the significance of Obama's 7 endorsements.

Obama has been endorsed by

1. Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD),
2. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE),
3. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO),
   
4. Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ),
5. Rep. Miller (D-CA) - significant because of his closeness to Pelosi,
   
6. Sen. Kerry (D-MA) - significant because of his 3M email list & his stature as the former, nominee
   
7. Ned Lamont - D nominee in CT Senate race (lost to Lieberman)

Generally he makes 2 points -
1. that these endorsements are politically risky if you think Clinton has a real chance of recovery, ergo they signal a lack of confidence in Clinton's viability
2. that, as many of them are from conservative states (purple states), their endorsements signal that they feel Obama can win in those states (and incidentally help raise and elect other Democrats down the ticket).

Tom Edsall, of the Columbia School of Journalism, posts at The Huffington Post on his take on the meaning of these endorsements.

Question for Hillary - Does Gender Matter or Not?

I submitted this question for the Nevada debate Tuesday night:

“I don’t think either Senator Obama or myself want to see the injection of race or gender into this campaign,” Clinton continued. “We are each running as individuals.

(From New York Times, January 13 "Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Distorting Her Words")

Yet last Saturday at the New Hampshire debate Hillary Clinton said:

"I think I am an agent of change. I embody change. I think having the first woman president is a huge change -- (applause) -- with consequences across our country and the world."

Which is it? Does Clinton think her gender should be a factor voters consider?

Clinton Biographer on New Hampshire Win

Sam Stein of The Huffington Post interviews Sally Bendell Smith, author of "For Love of Politics -- Bill and Hillary Clinton: The White House Years." and revealed some interesting insights.

"The thing that surprised me the most were in the last few days of Iowa," said Smith. "It was the woefully subdued affect she had. She was lowering her voice, speaking slowly, trying to be presidential, I guess. That seemed out of character...Even at the weepy moment, when her eyes were filling were tears. What was most remarkable was that she stayed relentlessly on the attack," Smith added. "She got emotional up to a point and then just never deviated from her focus, which was to continue to throw the daggers at Obama and Edwards. She got in some deft points while she was apparently melting."

New Hampshire's Record Turn Out

Another record turn out, the Boston Globe reports.

With ballots from 12 percent of voting precincts still to be counted, about 453,000 residents had cast votes, breaking the previous primary turnout record of 396,385 ballots cast in 2000.

State officials predicted that when all ballots were counted, the total would surpass 500,000.

That's good for everybody. As Barack repeatedly points out.

Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?

Dowd's piece is, to me, again right on. Nixonian self-pity, indeed! Another liberal blog noted that some compared the wellling up to the William Hurt character in Broadcast News!

Dowd today is worth a read.

Obama - The Democrats' Demosthenes

EJ Dionne wrote an opinion piece with important historical political background for those of us who don't remember a campaign before 1972.

"In 1960, the articulate Adlai stevenson compared his own oratory unfavorably with John F. Kennedy's "Do you remember," Stevenson said, "that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, 'How well he spoke,' but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, the people said, 'Let us march.'" At this hour, Obama is the Democrats' Demosthenes."

To read all of Dionne, click here.

Obama's Melodies of Hope & Possibility

This is sort of fun. Boston.com has got the full list of songs that run during an Obama rally. They all "keep close" to his message of "hope and possibility."

I'm going to put together a new playlist for my ipod.

You can see the list for yourself here.

The Third Consequence of Smaller Government

The consequence of the beat up on government that began with Reagan, continued with Clinton ("the era of big government is over") and was taken to new heights under George Bush has had one central consequence: the outsourcing and privatizing of essential aspects of our civil society.

We all are aware of the outsourcing of our military. This article in Vanity Fair, which I wrote about last month, outlined how Indiana and Texas were privatizing the running our of roads, and now the New York Times Magazine cover story today, Can You Count on Voting Machines, states:

"In essence, elections now face a similiar outsourcing issue to that seen in the Iraq War, where the government has ceded so many core military responsibilities to firms like Halliburton and Blackwater that Washington can no longer fire the contractor."

Chantal, a friend since I was 9, picked me up at the airport yesterday. Despite a long delayed trip and the concomitant flare up of my illness, I could not stop smiling. As we waited for my luggage, I handed her the New York Times folded open to Embracing His Moment, Obama Preaches Hope in New Hampshire. She humored me, but after reading it still seemed defeated. I asked her why. She shrugged her shoulders and said she didn't believe her vote counted, was counted.

We were in Florida. And in 2004 she didn’t get a receipt for her vote, had no proof and waited 4 hours in line to vote.

I blame Bill Clinton's legacy - "big" was a euphemism for bad. He bought into and extended the Republican's government bashing and reduction. As a result, private companies now conduct our wars, maintain our roads, run our elections. So what? Private is more efficient - isn't it? Capitalism ensures the best succeeds.

Well so far as I can discern, private instead of public means -

• higher costs to taxpayers (no bid contracts, higher maintenance costs, impaired - if any - oversight by the Government Accounting Office),
• less quality (rape, killings, machines and printers that don't work)
  
• less accountability(trade secrets, Prince can't testify before Congress because he's not accountable to them, but to his stockholders)
• fewer options
  
• and low morale (voters in FL, soldiers making so much less than Blackwater employees).

We need a rhetorical genius to recast the paradigm. Go Obama.

Moyers Reveals Why Rhetorical (Words!) Skills Matter

This Bill Moyers' interview came recommended by my aunt and uncle. Kathleen Hall Jamieson offers perspective on the political skills of Obama and Huckabee. It's very interesting.

"But here's why both of those speeches were important. They were good speeches. They talked to the nation in the role of a candidate who is speaking as a president to a people. Giving people a chance to say how would you fit in that role. And we forget sometimes that speech making is a very important role in the presidency. There are times in the nation in which the president is the only one who can speak to us and for us. And whether it's the president we wanted elected or not, that person has to be able to play that role for all of us. Obama has that capacity, and I believe Huckabee does as well."

Check the video or transcript.

Obama's Iowa Victory Speech

Man, can this guy give a speech.

OBAMA Wins!!!!!!

A thumping@! I am beside myself with relief.

To me, the biggest story - more even than Obama's win, which to me is HUGE - is the turn out numbers.

There are approximately 600,000 Democrats in Iowa. In 2004 - the turn out was a record, an increase of 45% percent over the year 2000. The total number was 125,000.

Tonight - tonight - 218,000. That's nearly 100,000 more. That's more than a tidal wave. That's more than a 70% INCREASE over 2004! It's pretty close to 75%! (70% would be 212,500 - 75% increase is 218,750)


That is UNBELIEVABLE. More than 70% increase! Probably more than a 75% increase.

GOD BLESS IOWA.

Late Update:
Again
2000-59,000
2004-125,000
2008-236,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!**@&#$!!(@*&#$^!@@****!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ansel Adams' Words About Photography

I also saw the Ansel Adams at the Corcoran, which closes January 27th. Not as moving as Leibovitz, but perhaps I was just drained.

On the wall, outside the exhibit is this statement from Adams: “No matter how sophisticated you may be, a large granite mountain can not be denied. It speaks in silence to the very core of your being.”

I learned that Adams began his photography when he was a teenager working in Yosemite park.

Adams on his photos – they are not “abstracts but extracts.”

Adams on Half Dome: “As soon as I saw the moon coming up by the Half Dome I had visualized the image…I have photographed Half Dome innumerable times, but it is never the same Half Dome, never the same light or the same mood.” 1960 To see or buy the image, click here. Do a search at the web site for Half Dome and see some of the many images of Half Dome Adams took.

“Famed curator John Sarkowski wrote that Adams undertook his photography as a form of private worship: ‘his great work was done under the stimulus of a profound and mystical experience of the natural world.’”

The exhibit concluded with this quote from Adams: “Both the grand and the intimate aspects of nature can be revealed in the expressive photograph. Both can stir enduring affirmations and discoveries, and can surely help the spectator in his search for identification with the vast world of natural beauty and the wonder surrounding him.”

Check out the official Ansel Adams website. Here was another favorite image, because it wasn't a landscape.

Annie Leibovitz at the Corcoran

Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer’s Life, 1990-2005 is at the Corcoran Gallery. It's been there since October. I was relieved to feel strong enough to go and see it yesterday. And I'm so very glad I did.

The images of her family intrigued me much more than the more well-known photographs of film stars and political figures. I subscribed to Vanity Fair. I'd seen them all. Even the ones of the Queen of England.

Perhaps because her companion, Susan Sontag, was a writer – I found myself looking closer at these images that captured a writer’s life - a library with bookshelves to the ceiling; Sontag, head close to another thinker, looking down together at something; two pads of paper and miscellaneous notes portrayed notes of thoughts – random but maybe not with connecting lines and boxes – on a desk; even a photograph from 1992 of an Apple SE, with words flickering on the screen. I'd not seen one of those in awhile and I thought of how that image already seem antique.

I fell in love with her mother – like me a former dancer, a lover of the ocean who grew up going to the Jersey shore. Her spirit leapt off the walls. There were lots of images of the family frolicking at the beach. Leibovitz decided to put several shots taken moments from each other together, so the effect was a slow moving film. Grandparents with grandchildren, aunts with cousins, children growing. These groups of still action were neat.

She spent time in Sarajevo and her photographs of that time, of the underground newspaper, of the streets, of men swimming and diving in a dam – showed life under siege, in war, going on. Most haunting of all was a bike, on its side on pavement, in a swirl of blood so that you could sense the bike’s movement as it fell. The liner notes said that the boy had been shot by a sniper, that she had taken him in her car to the hospital but that he had died on the way. You couldn’t not look again at the image and not be struck by sudden, random, unfair, wrong ends.

And then she captured the deteriorating bodies of her lover and her father. Sontag had cancer. These scenes of illness were too familiar to me. White sheets, machines, nakedness, plastic tubes, frightened or resigned eyes. Or a forced determination. To live, survive. You could read about their apartment in Paris and why they took it despite the fact that it was two stories up and Sontag could barely walk. You saw her being transported in a medical plane – outside in a windy cold – being wheeled in; the notes said it was a last effort, a trip to Seattle for a bone marrow transplant.

And then Sontag’s dead body – elaborately dressed but unmistakably dead. Leibovitz wrote of the process of illness, being in hospitals - “It’s humiliating . You lose yourself. And she loved to dress up.” And there she was.

That wall turned a corner to a series of images that recorded Leibovitz’s father’s death. He chose to die at home. The final image of living limbs in grief - twisted, tangled – the limbs apart from the faces as if the limbs lying there so expressed enough. They did.

I lifted my eyes from those small pictures on the wall and stepped to my right to head into the next room, the last room, and I felt stunned. This effect was clearly intentional, but no less powerful despite that self-consciousness. With the gray winter days, day after day – to see this gray – dark, deep and like a rich soil – moved me. And this background shade also provided sharp relief to the white walls of all the other previous galleries. And then there was the scale – massive. The photographs on the wall were printed and loomed large - at least 15 feet wide and 8 feet high, and they were all landscapes in shades of gray accented by a rosy light.

The emotional effect took me from the tiny details of the process of death to these earthly panoramas that offered such transcendent, heavenly beauty. This was not the romantic sentimentalism of a Turner painting, as beautiful as they are (and that I still hope to see at the National Gallery). The reality of these images made the sense that you were seeing God’s awesome beauty more potent. Japanese flowers floating, punchy in its pink and particularity. Two images of Venice portrayed water, shimmering and alive like ghosts.

And then - Monument Valley in Arizona – surely God’s granite playground. Leibovitz wrote about the weight of comparison she felt photographing this infamous locale: “I had booked a helicopter, but felt guilty because it seemed like cheating. And at the end of the very last day, I told myself that Ansel Adams would have rented a helicopter.”

I felt so small. My grief felt so small. I wept.

The exhibit closes on January 13th.

Dave Letterman and the WGA

Go Dave Letterman!~ He just let the WGA give a pitch for their cause. And it was a good one. Apparently Hillary was on, but I tuned in late.

AND AND - he let striking writers deliver the top ten list - the top 10 demands of the striking writers. Golly, they look like a motley crew. From Colbert Report (2), Daily Show (2), Law & Order, Law Order Criminal Intent, a soap opera, Late Night w/ Conan, and Nora Ephron. Yep. Nora Ephron. Check out the Top Ten Demands of the Striking Writers.

Wow, that was almost as cool as the Obama campaign. Letterman may be able to change the dynamic. After that, you can almost believe it. Only the Huffington Post has been covering the strike with any regularity. I have a friend who wrote the script for Autofocus (an ex-boyfriend, actually) and he wrote me that the strike would last until late spring or early summer. I hope not. I miss Mad Men. More importantly, the studios are wrong.

I LOVE Letterman and loved him even before he gave me my network debut in September 1985. Yes, I was on the Letterman Show, back when it was on NBC and I was working there for the summer. Long story. But fun.

Meanwhile, Huckabee is on the Tonight Show. He said he supported the striking writers and didn't realize perhaps that he'll have to cross the picket line (with signs that say Huck is a Scab) in order to be on the show.

See link, including the top ten list.
7 minutes to the 3rd!

Mom's Fav, Mantel, Reviews Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year

My mother and I both subscribed to the New York Review of Books and often talked of the pieces and ideas. Read this one, don't miss that, don't waste your time on that one. Golly, I miss that. I miss her. We both agreed that this periodical that comes out every two weeks was very uneven. Sometimes, every single page was worth the time. The writing can be dense and aren't light, quick reading. And other times, there was nothing of interest - at least to neither of us.

And this issue is one of those full ones. Hillary Mantel was one of my mother's favorite authors. Her novel, A Change of Climate was two of her all time favorites (the other is Stendahl's The Red and the Black). And in the current issue, Mantel reviews Coetzee's latest novel, Diary of a Bad Year.

The review includes some gems about why novelists write and why novels are important. (These excerpts really don't do the review justice)

• “To write a novel you have to be like Atlas, holding up a whole world on your shoulders and supporting it there for months and years while its affairs work themselves out.” (direct quote from Coetzee’s novel.)
  
• "He has an attraction, perhaps for this writer, always there to 'the way of quietism, of willed obscurity, of inner emigration.'" (Mantel, quoting Coetzee)
  
• "It is not only fear of death that disturbs the novelist; every time one sits down to write, a gap like the grave opens up between intention and effect. Taking it to be his proper daily task, an artist spends his life trying to narrow that gap, but for what? So that he can impose his 'strong opinions' on the world? So that his perhaps worthless personality is stamped all over everything he touches?...At heart he is not a novelist after all, they say, but a pendant who dabbles in fiction." (All Mantel, referring to Coetzee's protagonist, known as C)
  
• "C believes that Ivan's opinions are wrong. But he hears that his voice is true. 'It is the voice of Ivan, as realized by Dostoevsky, not his reasoning, that sweeps me along.'" (Mantel summarizing C's view of Ivan, the protagonist in The Brothers Karamazov and then quoting C)
  
• "The novel, as a form, justifies itself by being the arena where such intellectual and emotional battles can be fought...As Auden says, 'About suffering they were never wrong/The Old Masters.' The masters of the novel form - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky himself - show us the way. 'They annihilate one's impurer pretentions; they clear one's eyesight; they fortify one's arm.'" (Mantel citing Auden and Coetzee)
• "...in the negotiations performed in that [white] space, the power of this novel resides; not with the above-the-line argument, not with the rational and impersonal, but the human particularity through which the rational argument is meditated. This is the 'why' of the novel, of any novel. Polemics are not enough."

And this - this is really funny:
"In his essay on Robert Walser, Coetzee refers to the pleasure the writer got from 'damselling,' which he defines as 'experiencing a feminine life imaginatively from the inside.' We are probably safe in saying that Coetzee is not damselling as Anya appears to have the soul of a performer in a burlesque show: 'As I pass him, carrying the laundry basket, I make sure I waggle my behind, my delicious behind, sheathed in tight denim. If I were a man I would not be able to keep my eyes off me.'"

I really encourage the full read. Read here. Note: I'm pretty sure access is limited to subscribers - but this issue, in my humble view, is worth the price. Tomasky has an intriguing piece on the Republicans and Garry Wills, always good, writes about Romney and Religion.

And if any of you do read it, I'd love to talk about it with someone.

Pakistan Govt Changes Cause of Bhutto's Death, plus

Pakistan does a u-turn on the claimed cause of death. How could they not after that video that Britian's Channel 4 found and ran. It's irrefutable. And they apologized. Full report, including official government statements, can be found here.

And - Bhutto was about to hand a report to visiting US lawmakers that included proof of Musharaff's government poll-rigging. This news report doesn't say which one - but one of them is Sen. Arlene Spector. I remember reading that he was in Pakistan when she was assassinated.

What a mess George Bush has made.

Hillary is No Foreign Policy Expert

Hah.

So much for Hillary Clinton being the one with the Foreign Policy experience. This snafu doesn't fit her self-representation as someone who knows the world and is ready to hit the pavement on day one. It's unbelievable and she did it twice, so it wasn't a mix up of words.

See short piece at Politico.

Free Hugs Campaign

And this video of free hugs always makes me smile and even, sometimes, cry.

Women in Art

Okay, this video is another classic. I'd seen it before and was sent to me again by another friend and former teacher - Joan Turk.

It's really beautiful:

A Mom's Song to the William Tell Overture

Okay, let's start off the New Year with some funny, heartening videos.

First, my sister Eleanor first told me about this video months ago. And then a friend, Jen Donat, sent me the link just before Christmas.

It's about 3 minutes and really great. Check it out:

20 Years Ago This Moment

I was kissing a boy on the roof of the Plaza hotel. He'd successfully tracked me down in NYC because of my unique first name. A native of NYC, he knew how to get up to the catwalks. I was impressed. And had fun kissing him up there - it was our first kiss. I had thought it was a one night fluke - carried away by the romance of the night. But it turned out he was serious about me. I was thrill, and we got together for good, well for a while, by February - at a Valentine's party me and my housemates hosted.

I'm grateful for the memory, Scooter!

Obama Ahead Beyond the Margin of Error in New Des Moine Register Poll

Obama 32%; Hillary 25%; Edwards 24%. I'm not breathing easy, but that result is a nice gift at this hour. See details here.

CNN will have all the candidates on tomorrow.

Star Wars for New Years

On Friday December 21^st, I got to see the One-Man Star Wars Trilogy at the Woolly Mammoth Theater. Written and performed by Charles Ross, the one hour show amazes. I became amazed at how integrally and intimately I knew those movies.

I'd not seen them for years, maybe more than a decade, yet a gesture, a noise, a line, a few notes of melody, a series of robotic beeps - would evoke a wealth of memories. The stories are so well-worn and so well-known, so overworked and overwrought. And the performance was fresh and funny. I took a 14 year friend and we giggled and belly laughed until we ached. I'd forgotten parts - diving into the garbage bin in Star Wars, that smelly belly Han puts Luke in at the beginning of Empire, Jabba's dancing girl - but it was all right there, conjured fully with a few evocative moments. He makes Luke out to be a whiney sap. And I remember how, like most young girls, as I grew and the movies came out Luke heroics became less interesting than Han Solo's "depth."

I wasn't feeling well that night; I was glad it wasn't longer than an hour - so the night was perfect fun. To check out the official web site (he's going to be in London), click here.

I was a huge fan - 10, 13 and 17 when the films came out. And I vividly remember each theater, and the wonder. For years I kept a one page Time article that outline at Lucas' 9 movie plan. I couldn't wait for more. In high school, I choreographed a ballet to Princess Leia's theme, and the movies were the genesis of my soundtrack collection, much mocked by friends. My ballet teacher then choreographed a dance for me to the Ewok song (that'll teach me). And my first computer game was destroying the Death Star - on an Apple II computer. A black screen, with green lines, in a Tie Fighter trying to hit the transponder bulls-eye, just like Luke did in the climax of the movie.

And the imagination of the films - Skywalker, Storm Trooper, Darth Vader. The two suns on Tatoonie. I remember my mother comparing Obi-Wan Kenobi to Jesus Christ. Yes, she did. How he was more powerful in death. And how R2-D2 and C3PO were like Abbot and Costello.

For my New Year's Eve, I am unwell and unable to socialize and partake in the several parties I've been invited to. Nor can I venture out to see a movie as two different girlfriends suggested. But, with that brilliant Star Wars performance on my mind, I'm going to hunker down and enjoy Star Wars - the original before it was renamed A New Hope.

I resolve to make resolutions tomorrow. My day went off, literally - with an explosion up the street and the loss of power until early afternoon. I took a bath to warm up and hunkered down under the covers again at 10 am to reread Ian McEwan's Atonement and continue to rest in hopes of securing some strength.

Good riddance to 2007! Did you see the New York Times Editorial, lamenting the unrecognizable state of our country? Their litany captures only about 1/3 of the horrors I perceive. 386 days left of Bush. I might have a party on January 20th, 2008 to begin the final year countdown. Go Obama! I'm on pins and needles about Thursday. Another Clinton campaign would destroy us. If she wins, I'll be voting for Bloomberg.

Special Forces in Pakistan

The Diane Rehm show on Friday did an hour on Pakistan which I listened to on Friday night. It's worth a listen. And interestingly to me the subject of US Special Forces in Pakistan came up because of questions about a. turning up the heat on Musharaff and b. the US going in if Pakistan becomes more unstable.

Some highlights

• Dr. Marvin Weinbaum, Afghanistan and Pakistan analyst and scholar at Middle East Institute – on turning up the heat on Musaraff – (at about 35:00) I want to stress that the US has to be very careful at this point. A very visible set of conditions on Pakistan might very well backfire. Any suggestion that the US may be violating the territorial sovereignty would be surely an explosive issue in Pakistan. At this stage, because of the low stock of the US, everything we do is misconstrued.
• Shuja Nawaz, Pakistani journalist and author of the forthcoming book, "Crossed Swords: Pakistan, its Army, and the Wars Within" – Assertion: Efforts to work with, prop up Musharaff, has not led to progress to any of the avenues the US is pursuing. He agreed. The emphasis was on military aid and giving money to the Pakistan army, without sitting down and determining benchmarks and objectives. To transform and increase the capacity of the frontier corp, who have trouble fighting their own people. In that area the key issue is not military – it’s political and economic. That’s where the solution is.
• Anthony Cordesman, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said in response to a question should “swat teams” be poised to go in, if the situation deteriorates and becomes more unstable? Cordesman answered it wouldn’t be a swat team, that is a specialized police force. Sending in Special Forces would be an absolute nightmare (40:45) First, there’s no way you can do this covertly…If the United States would do that, there’s no way to know how the military would react to an incursion that deep into Pakistan’s sovereignty. How would Pakistan react over the months and years to come, there's very little chance of last success. Re, Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal – he said people keep raising the issue because nuclear weapons are so dangerous, not because Pakistan has shown any negligence or failed to organize it’s forces to provide effective protection.
  

Okay - I just have to say the name A.Q. Kahn. See The Wrath of Kahn by William Langewiesche or this New York Times review of his book, The Atomic Bazaar.

And I guess they'd not seen the blog I'd seen last week. I wrote about it here. And on the Chris Matthews Show on Sunday, Joe Klein reported the same thing - in the segment at the end - out of the reporters notebook, "tell me something I don't know" - Klein said that Special Forces were primed to go in. The transcript is not yet available. When it is, I'll link it.

I was 16, going on 17

My big brother got a scanner for Christmas from his wife. And he's been entertaining me with photos of my past - from about 1982 and 1983, when I was 16 or 17. Here are just two.

The top one - is of my Grandfather with his dog, Lucky and my Dad, with our dog Montgomery. We had a lot of fun with those dogs.

And the bottom is a high school dance. My best friend (still is, and my oldest, I've known her since I was 9!), Chantal and I were invited to attend the prom at Christian Brothers Academy. I still remember the gold strappy shoes, my first "grown-up" shoes. My friends in college always were amazed that I'd arrived with out having ever kissed a boy. As you can see, my young virtue was pretty safe with these guys!

Thanks Matt!

What the Incarnation Means

I heard just a rotten sermon on Christmas Eve at the National Cathedral. The rest of the liturgy was stunning - the setting, the choir, the ribbon twirling. But the sermon was an atrocity - even more so to me when you've got folks there who rarely show up in Church - listening, a captive audience. It's a time to share the good news! And I had with me someone who needed to hear the joy of the Christmas miracle. I needed to hear of the joy of the Christmas miracle.

So what a relief to listen and absorb the Christmas message I got this morning. Before I describe it, I want to share a very personal exchange I had with my mother sometime in the weeks before she died.

She said to me, "If it wasn't blasphemy, I'd say I knew what it was like for Christ on the cross. " The week before, when I had arrived from Washington, I had given her an antique nail, evocative of the nails of the crucifixion I'd picked up on some pilgrimage somewhere. I don't remember where I got it and I don't know what happened to it - but I brought it to my mother at the hospital and gave it to her, a token of Christ's Passion.

So I was taken aback when she said that to me. I gently reminded her - and I consider it a reminder because she was the one who taught me this, as she taught me so much about my faith - that she had it backwards. That it wasn't about us putting ourselves in the place of Jesus on the cross, but rather that God put Himself in our place. God became Man, in Jesus - so that He would understand our suffering and so that we would know that He knew - not intellectually, but experientially - what we were going through. God knew what human suffering was, what it entailed, and cried with us. Jesus asked for the cup to pass from Him, asked not to be forsaken, and prayed for strength in the garden of Gethsemane. She nodded.

That conversation was disorienting for me. It told me that her suffering was so great that she lost sight of that perspective. My mother had suffered for so long with her body; for more than 20 years she struggled. So that she would not see that basic tenet of our faith informed me that this time, for her, was worse. I wish I knew what had happened to that nail in the confusion after her death.

So there I was today in Mass. I confess I still have a very hard time in church. I've yet to make it through without some tears. I so associate my religion with my mother, the love of God with the love of my mother, even the mystery of God with the mystery of my mother - that I can't be there without thinking of her and feeling a great sense of loss. And then the tears.

Today, the beautiful opening of John's Gospel was chanted -

In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. in him was lief, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it...And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.

My sermon notes read as follows - Do you believe Jesus is the Son of God and if so, what does it matter? Jesus gives us God - God wants to be known and wants to know us. Jesus shows us God. Jesus shows us what God is like. God is a God of desire, desires us, has eros for us. Do we see ourselves as desirable? In Jesus, divinity partakes of humanity so that humanity could partake of divinity. Ending poem - know this single truth - God was made man in Palestine, and lives today in bread and wine.

Divinity partakes of humanity so that I could remind my mother she wasn't alone in her suffering. And yeah, that mattered. That mattered a lot.

And neither am I. I am not alone either. I hung up every single one of my 56 Christmas and holiday cards to remind me of that. At Mass, I got loving nods and acknowledgment from friends there, who'd not seen me in a long while. I've taken to going to the Cathedral, where no one knows me and asks me how I'm doing. Because even if I'm not in tears that that moment, I'm so tender during and after Communion that the query alone can cause emotion to dwell in my throat.

And I've had the gift of revelation dreams - where she's told me she's right here next to me, that the line between where she is and where I am is porous. And at a particularly trying time this summer, in my dream, she called me up on the phone - three times to let me know she was crying too.

I was awash in tears after that sermon. Couldn't even sing my favorite Christmas Carol - Greensleeves. But I was glad I went. It was good to be reminded. Amid my sense of loss and abandonment, I remember the good news of the Incarnation. I remember that Christmas was her favorite holiday. And I remember why.

A Cinderella Story for the New Year

I bought last minute tickets to see My Fair Lady - nothing like a makeover, Cinderella story to usher in a new year. That aspect didn't hit me until the story started. I'd been wanting to go ever since I heard it was being staged at the Kennedy Center. I just love the songs. I did when I was a teenager, and I still will play the soundtrack when I'm cleaning my house (other favorite musicals to clean and sign along to include Pippin and Camelot). My health is too unreliable for such an expenditure, but I called last minute and got tickets to today's matinée. The tickets were awful (very front row) and Eliza Dolittle was played by the understudy - but I enjoyed every minute of the three hours. And I realized the theme of overhaul was perfectly timed.

In the first act, because of recent experiences with the men in my life - I really relished this:

Colonel Hugh Pickering: Are you a man of good character where women are concerned?
Professor Henry Higgins: Have you ever met a man of good character where women are concerned?

And then in the second act, the song Show Me really resonated. Did I find comfort in knowing that my frustration with the empty words uttered by men is not new? Not really - but check out the lyrics. I mean, I'm a writer - I put value in words. They signify. A lot. So though I'm middle aged, I can still be shocked like a teenager when again and again, I believe in the words only to find them empty. I wanted to stomp my foot just as hard as Eliza. I've wanted to slug those 'blighters,' who talk, talk, talk and never show and never do. (Shall I name names? no...there are two - I've got my Freddy and Prof. Higgins too - and they know who they are). And then check out the clip from the movie.

Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words! I get words all day through; First from him, now from you! Is that all you blighters can do?

Don't talk of stars burning above; If you're in love, Show me! Tell me no dreams filled with desire. If you're on fire, Show me!

Here we are together in the middle of the night! Don't talk of spring! Just hold me tight! Anyone who's ever been in love'll tell you that This is no time for a chat!

Haven't your lips longed for my touch? Don't say how much, Show me! Show me!
Don't talk of love lasting through time. Make me no undying vow. Show me now!

Sing me no song! Read me no rhyme! Don't waste my time, Show me!
Don't talk of June, Don't talk of fall! Don't talk at all! Show me!

Never do I ever want to hear another word. There isn't one I haven't heard.
Here we are together in what ought to be a dream; Say one more word and I'll scream!

Haven't your arms hungered for mine? Please don't "expl'ine," Show me! Show me!
Don't wait until wrinkles and lines Pop out all over my brow, Show me now!

Snow-Flakes by Longfellow

In the mail today I got a postcard from The Academy of American Poets, of which I am a member. (No qualification required, other than an appreciation of poetry and a fee). The card wished me Season's Greetings and included this poem from Henry Wadworth Longfellow, whose poems are resonating with me lately.

This one is called Snow-Flakes

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.

The Feast of Holy Innocents

My heart is also heavy because today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, the day Christians remember the babies King Herod killed in order to get rid of the new "King of the Jews" that had been prophesied. This very day would have been my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. My mother's absence is still breathtaking and acute.

I had also, once long ago, last summer, anticipated my own nuptials on this very day so there's that added sense of loss. I had wanted a Christmas wedding like hers. And I wanted to build a life with a man I felt so lucky to find despite my illness, whom I loved and who very nearly proposed one Saturday at lunch last July at Cafe Milano. But he did not love me enough and was not steady. I'm not yet at the point where I find that a relief. I feel want and defeated.

Surely, the rash I have on my arm, chest and face is not helping my sadness. It stings and throbs and has flattened me. The dermatologist this morning gave me something that seems finally to have helped the flare and red flaming pain. No known cause. She suggested a patch test once my skin calms down. Could be cause or exacerbated by stress. Funny@!

Sometimes I wished I lived in Wonderland.

"There is no use trying," said Alice; "one can't believe impossible things."
"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." - Lewis Carroll

Okay, I'm going to go off and try and believe in impossible things for at least 30 minutes.

More Myopic Plans from Bush re Pakistan

My heart is heavy today.

Yes, the news is beyond depressing.

Michael Sheehan, Former US Ambassador for Counterterrorism, on NBC cautioned that the idea of postponing the moves toward democracy in order to fight Al-Queda was "wrongheaded. The army and the military need the support of Pakistanis people in order to be effective over the long term."

Meanwhile - I kid you not - CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr reporting on the "War on Terror" noted that the Bush administration was cozying up to General Tariq Majid, Pakistan's Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Chairman just in case Musharraf should fall.

Sounds like a really brilliant Plan C.

Meanwhile I came across a report by William Arkin, who writes a blog called Early Warning for The Washington Post, and who wrote on Wednesday at 6 am - 24 hours before the assassination - of plans to send US troops back into Pakistan. US Special Forces will vastly expand their presence as "part of an effort to train and support indigenous counter-insurgency forces and clandestine counterterrorism units, according to defense officials involved with the planning." He provides the details of how this planning occurred and concludes, "If Pakistan actually follows through, perhaps 2008 will be a better year."

Her death will make it harder to follow through.

3 Essays to Read in Aftermath of Bhutto's Assassination

A very sad day.

And a scary day for any one with a familiarity with the complexity of Pakistan's politics. Note that Musharraf's approval is in the single digits (that would be under 10%). Bhutto was over 60%.

I recommend three brief articles

1. Benazir Bhutto's own statement - a blog entry - on September 1, 2007, entitled Why I'm Returning to Pakistan.
2. Steve Coll writing in The New Yorker a short piece entitled Miscalculations. (those would be Musharraf's miscalculations abetted by the Bush Administration). This piece gives a good overview of the crises facing Pakistan as of November 19th, 2007.
3. Finally Michael Hirsch, a Newsweek reporter wrote in November Dancing with the Dictator - How Bush's tight relationship with Pakistan's Musharraf has compromised the war on terror.

UPDATE: Here's Michael Hirsch today on the assassination.

UPDATED UPDATE: Here's a New York Times Op-Ed piece written by Aitzaz Ahsan and published 4 days ago, this past Sunday. Apparently he is mostly likely to replace Bhutto as head of the PPP (Pakistan's Peoples Party). He is less conciliatory to Musharraf than Bhutto was; he's been jailed by Musharaff.

Biden is my Second Choice

I do like Biden and there's this short piece from the New York Time's political blog on Biden in Iowa and getting good crowds. I'd love to see him come in third (Obama 1st, Edwards 2nd, Biden and Hillary at 4th or below!).

He's even polling at 8%.

Longfellow's Christmas Bells

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote this poem after his son Charles was wounded in the Civil War. This Christmas, amid war, the poem still resonates - as we wonder where peace on earth is possibly hiding. The poem encourages hope: "The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail."

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Till ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime,
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

What is the Wigilia - A Polish Christmas Eve

As my mother taught me, and her mother before her and my great-grandmother Monica Tillwack Bura taught her (we called our great-grandmother, Busha), I will host a Wigilia this evening.




Traditionally, the meal begins with the sighting of the first star. The Trifle dessert was in honor of the Syrian Christian whose Christmas was more English growing up. Besides George, my other guests included Ali, an Iranian whose mother was Christian and father Muslim; Maggie, a former Roman Catholic; and Juliana, a secular Australian, aggressively so. Made for quite a mix.

We had a lovely evening. Maggie made the mushroom soup and after some concern, the final mix enjoyed a multitude of flavors. The perogis from Sophie's Place in Baltimore was worth every minute of the hour on line. And my Christmas ham came out great - with pears and cranberries. I was a bit worried about that, as it was a new recipe and I had to make adjustments to the directions to accommodate time away from home to go to church. But my mom taught me her cooking instincts well. I also prepared the traditional cauliflower recipe and the cucumber salad.

And the evening favor's were in the mode of the city in which I live - a candy cane and an Obama bumper sticker!

Here's some more background on the Polish Wigilia that I shared with my guests.

The Wigilia (or Wilia)

- from the Latin word vigilare meaning "to watch" -

is the Polish meal on Christmas Eve.

Poles greet the evening with

such anticipation, such careful planning and such mystical symbolism,

that it is considered by many to be a greater holiday than Chrismas itself.

The meal is traditional and includes from the forest - mushrooms, wild berries and honey.

All await the the most significant moment of the entire Wigilia supper

- the breaking and sharing of the Oplatek.

Oplatek is taken from the Latin word Oblatum - meaning sacred bread.

In every house in Poland, family and friends break

the traditional wafer and exhange good wishes.

The Oplatek is a thin unleavened wafer, stamped with the figures of the

Holy Child, the Blessed Mary, the Holy Family or the Angels.

The Oplatek is known as the Bread of Love and wafers are sent to absent family members.

A small layer of hay is place under the tablecloth in memory of the Godchild

in the manager & to remind one and all of our humble beginnings.

Sweet Christmas hay, my Polish childhood knew,

You cradle in your tangled wisps the white

Unleaven bread and spread your fragrance through

the mystic silence of the sacred night...

While we remember how the Virgin smiled

Beside a hay filled manager on her child.

by Victoria Janda, Walls of Space 1945

"A Guest in the Home is God in the Home." - ancient Polish adage

Cheney's Funny Papers

Today Newsweek's Investigative Reporter Michael Isikoff writes Challenging Cheney: A National Archives official reveals what the veep wanted to keep classified--and how he tried to challenge the rules

It's pretty horrifying, especially if you care about history. David Addington, of course, had a hand in this. This archivist is the one whose work revealed that Cheney is neither part of the Executive branch or the Legislative Branch but in some uber-branch in between.

Hillary to Promote Bush-isn Fear

On Tuesday, I wrote of how the Clinton campaign has co-opted Obama's message of change. The Washington Post notes this co-option as well and writes of the changes in the messages of Hillary. These alterations seem perpetual, which to me reinforces the negative narrative that their world is nimble and various. Last week it was "The Hillary I Know." Next week it'll be "Time to pick a president."

And they're going to exploit fear just like Bush. (In September, I wrote of Hillary's personality traits that resemble Bush here). Boy, they are not pretty when they are desperate.

Also from the Post -

But the Clintons regard any discussion of the Nineties to be good for them, evoking memories of a booming economy and a time when the United States enjoyed greater popularity around the world.

They must have confidence in the ability of the American people to forget.

• Remember what they did to the employees of the Travel Office,
• remember the funny fund raising from China, (this one has not completely disappeared - see blog entry from October 19th.
  
• remember the selling of the Lincoln Bedroom,
• remember the disappearing/reappearing billing records,
• remember Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, Kathleen Wiley,
• remember how Bill was held to be in contempt of court and disbarred.

And they still believe they are just victims.

Giuliani the Crook

Okay - so perhaps didn't shift money around to hide his extra-marital trysts (see New Yorks Times report today; Chris Matthews made much hay of this.)

Just in case you're tempted to think that Guiliani is simply a persecuted victim of an unfair press (sounds like the Clintons) - but you've got to read this lengthy Vanity Fair article, A Tale of Two Giulianis from the January Issue.

Last year, when a binder full of confidential Giuliani campaign documents was either stolen or lost in Florida, and the contents found their way to reporters, a handwritten list of potential trouble spots in the candidate’s résumé seemed especially revealing. There, with the obvious sticky subjects—the messy divorce from Hanover, and subsequent wife Nathan—was a single word: business.

And this piece outlines all of that and it's very shady, very corrupt, very evil.

A revelation hit me in reading this piece. Since Reagan's election in 1980, the Republicans have run on a platform to shrink the government. In fact, given Clinton's presidency, they seem to have won the argument that small government is good governing. Clinton shrunk many governmental functions as well.

We already witness that antipathy toward government translates into incompetence. If you don't respect what government can do and don't believe government should do, then you get ineptitude and criminal neglect (Katrina).

But now the eggs have hatched, and we know another result of their small government platform.

Small government under the Republicans doesn't mean fewer government functions - it means outsourcing the jobs to private entities - a.k.a. private contractors. "Republican small government" results in higher costs, enriching private companies, outside law, no public accountability. We've privatized half of the armies' functions, including the security of visiting diplomats in Iraq. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about roads in America.

Why would an Australian colossus like Macquarie buy a money-losing U.S. investment bank? Perhaps because Macquarie is making inroads—literally—in the U.S., acquiring the leases on state highways and operating them as toll roads, in Indiana and Illinois, with more states to follow. The toll-road business is highly controversial and involves politics right up to the top. It can’t hurt to have helped out a man who might be the next president. (A Macquarie spokesperson says the only reason for the purchase of Giuliani Capital Advisors was “new sectors and new locations for us,” and that Giuliani “was not involved in discussions for acquisition of G.C.A. by Macquarie.”)

Even before the deal, there had been only one degree of separation between Macquarie and Giuliani. Macquarie’s partner in a $3.8 billion Indiana toll road is a Spanish company called Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A. Cintra, in turn, is represented by a Texas law firm once known as Bracewell & Patterson, now called Bracewell & Giuliani.

Read it and weep. And he shows no shame.

Two Items to Read in Aftermath of Bhutto's Assassination

A very sad day and a scary day for any one with a familiarity with the complexity of Pakistan's politics. Note that Musharraf's approval is in the single digits (that would be under 9%). Bhutto was over 60%.

I recommend three brief articles

Benazir Bhutto's own statement - a blog entry - on September 1, 2007, entitled Why I'm Returning to Pakistan.

Steve Coll writing in The New Yorker a short piece entitled Miscalculations. (those would be Musharraf's miscalculations abetted by the Bush Administration). This piece gives a good overview of the crises facing Pakistan as of November 19th, 2007.

Finally Michael Hirsch, a Newsweek reporter writes Dancing with the Dictator - How Bush's tight relationship with Pakistan's Musharraf has compromised the war on terror.

What's Behind the Clinton-Bush Ambassadors To The World!

It did sound fishy - like Billy boy going off message again. But there's been a lot of ruminating about why he would suggest such a thing.

In case you've not heard - this was Bill yesterday:

Well, the first thing she intends to do, because you can do this without passing a bill, the first thing she intends to do is to send me and former President Bush and a number of other people around the world to tell them that America is open for business and cooperation again.

So everyone was sort of amazed by this assertion - both by the fact of it and the reason behind it.

This is what I think: just like the Clinton campaign has co-opted the change message, this is their attempt to embrace Obama's unity message. That's they'll be better able to deliver UNITY. Bill thinks, hmmm, I know Bush 41 pretty well, we've done this before. We Clintons can show unity with the other side; I have already! And so he puts it out there. His mouth ahead of his brain. (Yeah - no rolls of the dice with that team!)

Problem no. 1 - nobody wants unity with anyone named Bush - not even the Republicans running for the top job. The point is to get beyond Bush and Rove's scorched earth, running-to- the-base politics.

Problem no. 2 - he'd not run it by his good buddy Bush 41 who was none too pleased by the implication that he didn't approve of his son's job performance (never mind Brent Scowcroft)

Former President Bush wholeheartedly supports the President of the United States, including his foreign policy. He has never discussed an "around-the-world mission" with either former President Bill Clinton or Senator Clinton, nor does he think such a mission is warranted since he is proud of the role America continues to play around the world as the beacon of hope for freedom and democracy.

Yeah, and 41 won't be endorsing Hillary either:

President Bush is excited about several of the excellent Republican candidates running for President, and looks forward to supporting their candidacy once the Republican nominee is determined.

Both Clintons were in Iowa today, campaigning with Magic Johnson. Well, that was no slam dunk. It's inept - and surprising for its ineptness. But I think they see that the unity message is appealing and they want in on it.

Huffington on Huckabee

When she's good, she's very very good. Huffington writes about and compiles all the Republicans' angst and upset about Huckabee's surge. They are appalled that he is in the lead and she points out that they are reaping what they sowed. Republicans seems to be fine with exploiting and using the religious right, but are beside themselves now that one, who is a true populist and not a posing populist, a true compassionate conservative not a fake one, has a real shot at the Republican nomination.

Huffington summaries all the permutations of their knickers in a twist. And she points out that they are crippled in doing anything about it because they could be accused of being elitist -a charge usually slung at East Coast liberals.

There are a lot of terrific links (see Andrew Sullivan's). Start with Huffington here.

David Brook's The Obama-Clinton Issue

David Brooks writes on Obama today:

• There are reasons to think that, among Democrats, Obama is better prepared for this madness.
• Obama is an inner-directed man in a profession filled with insecure outer-directed ones.
• Like most of the rival campaigns, I’ve been poring over press clippings from Obama’s past, looking for inconsistencies and flip-flops. There are virtually none.
• Obama also has powers of observation that may mitigate his own inexperience and the isolating pressures of the White House.

He also refers to the "outstanding New Yorker profile" on Obama by Larissa MacFarquhar. In case you missed it (it's long, like most New Yorker profiles, but worth a read and really reassuring), click here.

Hillary's New Tone

There's been much ado about the new tone of the Hillary campaign - the softer touch, human, feminine. Even her web site has been relaunched. I've notice even the tone of her voice is different - she's speaking softer.

She no longer asserting, as she did to Katie Couric a month ago, that she WILL be the nominee and she's hasn't at all considered the possibility that she wouldn't be. She was not campaigning as much in Iowa,and now she's doing a helicopter tour.

This change in tone was the course chosen rather than a shake up, that was rumored to be considered late last week. A shake up of her campaign staff (a.k.a. firing Mark Penn) was seen as feeding the image of her being too tough and mean. So instead they've carted her out this way. She was on all six morning shows (that's better than a full Ginsberg) today.

I don't think this is going to work because it reinforces another negative narrative about her - which that she's slippery and capable of changing her personality (if not her positions) to fit the circumstances.

It was fun to read of Bill Clinton's agitation on Charlie Rose, so much so that his staff was trying to abort the interview before he did something regrettable (reported in the New York Times, see last paragraphs). Chris Matthews properly pointed out the big whopping lie of Bill's in that interview - that he didn't run in 1988 because he knew he wasn't yet ready (and that this is what Obama should do). Matthews correctly points out that the reason Bill didn't run in '88 was because he was told of all the "bimbo eruptions" that could derail his ambition. If only he'd listened and never ran.

I also think that when you try to co-opt the message of your opponent, that's a sign you're not the strategic, politically acute candidate you've been posing as. Hillary given up on the "experience" reason for electing her because Obama (with help from Oprah) has convinced voters that experience of her ilk (a.k.a. the old ways of partisan Washington politics) is NOT what we need. He won that argument, and hence his rise in the polls.

So now Hillary is admitting "change" is the important issue. There was a front page article in the New York Times about this new strategy. So now she is arguing - in her soft tone - that she is the one to deliver it - not by demanding it (Edwards) or hoping for it (Obama) but working for it (her!). I don't even trust her tone!

Here's another question. Who would want to be Hillary's VP, with Bill in the picture?

UPDATE: December 18th - E.J. Dionne "Clinton's Difficulties Deeper Than Strategy" assembles many of the points of difficulty - including that she wasn't running in Iowa until very recently because she was so focused on a general election. He also highlights Obama's November 10th speech (at the Jefferson Jackson dinner) and how good it was - good in itself and good for his campaign. And he notes that she argues that with her - there are no surprises, while Obama (according to Bill) is a "roll of the dice."

But that simply isn't true. As long as Hillary is married to Bill, one thing we know for sure - there will be surprises. He's volatile. And he is even now traveling with a press secretary to keep him on message.

Atonement and the Image of Water

I saw Atonement yesterday, the first film I've seen since Michael Clayton. And I liked it very much. The adaptation was the best of an Ian McEwan novel (which isn't saying much - Enduring Love with Daniel Craig was a huge disappointment).

I've been thinking a lot about the use of images ever since I attended a talk on revelation dreams by a writer. He spoke of how metaphors work or don't work. They don't work when they are superimposed on the words. Rather, for them to be effective and powerful, the words should attach to the image.

And this is easier to do with film.

In Atonement the image of water repeated over and over. A pot chip in a fountain, a girl in a fountain, a man in a tub, a hand on the surface of water as if to still it (or still the emotions within), a child recklessly jumping into a waterfall. And then there's the sea - as a means of escape from Dunkirk, the sea as a dream or a smell, the sea as a place of retreat. Then there's the powerful image of a mother washing her son's feet. Powerful to me because of its religious evocation and the message of redemption and humility and love. And the horrifying image of water rushing into a London tube station.

And then there's the tears - tears of longing, tears of horror, tears of fright, tears of guilt. So many emotions qualifying human tears.

For me the image well mirrored the story. The child grows up to be a writer, and she rewrites her life; in her writing she atones for her sins and rewrites reality. She asks what good is honesty? What use is reality? We want kindness and happiness. Honesty and reality seem to be neither kind nor happy.

Water is there but unable to be grasped. Likewise, in the story, reality is there but unable to be grasped.

Some reviewers thought the movie too heavy handed with the images, referring to the images of horror and war. They argued that one picture conveys enough horror - that the viewer doesn't need as many as are offered. Perhaps that's a fair critique of the film. But the darkness, for me, matched theme of the story and of storytelling. And that storytelling improves that darkness.

I'm going to go back and read the book, which I admired but didn't engross me. If you've seen the film, let me know what you think.

Krugman Sets It Up Wrong.

Krugman set up the paradigm of options wrong in his op-ed today. Entitled Big Table Fantasies, Krugman sets forth the opposition and difference between Edwards and Obama and suggests that Obama is naive and implies this:

On Saturday Mr. Obama responded, this time criticizing Mr. Edwards by name. He declared that “We want to reduce the power of drug companies and insurance companies and so forth, but the notion that they will have no say-so at all in anything is just not realistic...Anyone who thinks that the next president can achieve real change without bitter confrontation is living in a fantasy world.

And then he called Obama unrealistic.

Krugman is being unrealistic. I watched Obama on Saturday (on CSPAN). And that's not all of what he said or stressed. His message was that people, the population, had to be informed and invested from the beginning to end in order to be able to dispel the myths of the insurance and drug companies when they take their profits and start running ads. Not just ads against any change. But Obama spoke of challenging their assertions that their profits went into development and research and showing instead that they are running ads to boost drug sales to increase their profits. He even made an ED joke.

I admire Krugman, but he just wasn't fairly portraying the choice. It's not between a naive compromiser (Obama) or a white fighting knight (Edwards). It's between a man who understands community organizing to get change or a lawyer who sues to get change. They are both effective in their ways. But whatever you may think on that, Krugman should at least have portrayed Obama's message accurately and he did not.

Here's what he said back in May as reported in the New Yorker:

"Take health care, for example. 'If you’re starting from scratch,” he says, “then a single-payer system'—a government-managed system like Canada’s, which disconnects health insurance from employment—'would probably make sense. But we’ve got all these legacy systems in place, and managing the transition, as well as adjusting the culture to a different system, would be difficult to pull off. So we may need a system that’s not so disruptive that people feel like suddenly what they’ve known for most of their lives is thrown by the wayside.'”

That makes sense to me. And he's not talking about coddling the drug and insurance companies; he's talking about the investment and buy in of the people.

Des Moines Register Endorses Wrong Candidate

Yep - they went for Clinton.

First they frame the criteria this way:

The choice, then, comes down to preparedness: Who is best prepared to confront the enormous challenges the nation faces — from ending the Iraq war to shoring up America’s middle class to confronting global climate change?

The job requires a president who not only understands the changes needed to move the country forward but also possesses the discipline and skill to navigate the reality of the resistant Washington power structure to get things done.

Well, if that's the criteria, then Biden is your man. Not Hillary who by comparison has half the experience and what judgments she has made have been deeply flawed. Even her answer in this week's Des Moines Register debate about what she learned from her health plan debacle was that she didn't have a communications strategy. That she didn't explain her plan properly not that she was WRONG to exclude the Congress. She alienated Bill Bradley and Daniel Moynihan.
Read here. Biden always the gentleman said that the Register was fair on Late Edition this morning. Last week Biden was on This Week - his best line was re the Bush Administration "They're like Nixon, but without the competence."

And actually, because Clinton is so divisive - she won't be able to get anything done to "confront the enormous challenges." And with her money raising she's a part and parcel of the "resistant Washington power structure."

Bad call. There must be a story behind this.

William Polk on Iraq

Okay, I am a C-SPAN geek. Even here in Florida, when the sun is shining - I'm too tired to be out of bed and I doze off listening to C-SPAN (or try to).

I've seen the testimony of William Polk before this weekend, but again I was struck by how intelligent his remarks were. He concluded by quoting Thomas Jefferson: "Let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty and safety."

To read the text of Polk's testimony to the US Democratic Caucus on September 17, 2007 (about a week after Petreus' report), click here.

William Polk is an honors grad of Harvard and Oxford; taught at Harvard and the Univ. of Chicago, and worked for the Kennedy White House (and was a participant in the “crisis management committee” during the Cuban Missile Crisis - that historical event that Dana Perino had never heard of, and believe me, she wasn't joking as she belatedly claims).

Adaptation Leads Golden Globe Nominations Plus Mad Men!

Mom and I often talked of Ian McEwan's books. She liked Atonement, admired it. I don't remember any specifics, but he was one author whose books we regularly read and discussed with each other.

This morning the Golden Globes were announced and Atonement leads. It's gotten mixed reviews - lukewarm from The New Yorker and the New York Times, favorable from the Wall Street Journal (only available to subscribers) and the Washington Post. The seven films nominated films in the best drama category. Aside from "Atonement," the other nominees are "American Gangster," "Eastern Promises," "The Great Debaters," "Michael Clayton," "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood."

I've not been able to go to the cinema lately, so the only ones of those I've seen is Michael Clayton, which I liked very very much. Last night, my aunt and uncle told me they very much liked American Gangster.

Jon Hamm was nominated for best actor and Mad Men nominated for best Drama!!! Yeah!

For more details, click here.

Dems Debate - Last Time Before Iowa Caucuses

So Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel are not participating in this afternoon's debate. Seems weird when Keyes was up there yesterday amid the Republicans. But the criteria are 1% in a specific Des Moines Register poll and an office in the state. Dennis Kucinich works out of his home, has no office and therefore can't participate. He does add spice but having Russert waste time asking him about UFOs was infuriating. Isn't there too much at stake in this election to be fooling around with that ridiculously with an improbable nominee.

Let's note that the Dems have debated 15 times while the Republicans have only 9. Weasels.

The debate will be broadcast on CNN at 2 pm today.

Dissent Within Clinton Campaign Amid Falling Polls

I heard an hour long interview with Mark Penn about his book Microtrends a few months ago, and thought his ideas were intellectually interesting but questioned the applicability. Subsequent to that I heard of his close involvement with the Hillary campaign.

And according to this New York Newsday piece, Mark Penn is getting grief the those on the "Bill" side of the campaign. They have different ideas about how to run her. Penn thinks she should run as an "incumbent" (which to me just reinforces the sense that she's arrogant) and that she should not go negative on Obama because doing so would raise her already high "negatives."

I agree with that. It's ugly to hear Hillary say (or anyone say), now the fun part starts, emphasis on fun - as she did last week. See for yourself:


Okay, so strategy may dictate the need for going negative. People understand that. It's like a necessary evil. But it is unsettling to hear someone say so convincingly that the necessary evil is "fun." Steve G. Brant, a blogger for the Huffington Post, captures well the problem with this attitude. Check out the home page of the Huffington Post

White House Spokesperson's Lack of Historical Knowledge

If you need evidence of the lack of knowledge in the White House, get a load of Dana Perino, White House Spokesperson, admitting she didn't know about the Cuban Missile Crisis. God preserve us!