Doth The Grey Bell Finally Toll For Dean?

January 31, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Watergate | 8 Comments 

My own thoughts here on the surprising New York Times article about John Dean and Stanley Kutler, as well as the counterfeit smoking guns proffered by Kutler and Rick Perlstein.

Ian McEwan on John Updike

January 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture, In Memoriam | Leave a Comment 

As the days go by, the void left by the passing of all-round man of letters John Updike on Tuesday seems to grow greater and greater. Americans, I think, tended to take him for granted, to assume that week after week into eternity he would continue to have a review or story or poem in The New Yorker, month after month there would be his lengthy assessment of some art exhibition in The New York Review Of Books, year after year he would publish a new book — and that decade after decade he would be hovering somewhere near the shortlist for the Nobel Prize for Literature, and time and again someone else would get it. (And being repeatedly passed over for the Nobel, indeed, could be said to have been his destiny as the premier writer of the rarely-spoken-of Silent Generation; I’ll devote a post to this next week.)

But Updike may have been more highly regarded abroad. Ever since the 1960s he has had a wide and admiring readership in Russia. In England this week, Ian McEwan said that in recent times Updike was “the greatest novelist writing in English” — something that more than a few readers would say of McEwan himself.

Today, McEwan assesses Updike’s achivement in a carefully reasoned and eloquent essay in the Guardian. Here’s a representative excerpt, about the Pulitzer-winning Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom tetralogy:

Like [Saul] Bellow, his only equal in this, Updike is a master of effortless motion – between third and first person, from the metaphorical density of literary prose to the demotic, from specific detail to wide generalisation, from the actual to the numinous, from the scary to the comic. For his own particular purposes, Updike devised for himself a style of narration, an intense, present tense, free indirect style, that can leap up, whenever it wants, to a God’s-eye view of Harry, or the view of his put-upon wife, Janice, or victimised son, Nelson. This carefully crafted artifice permits here assumptions about evolutionary theory, which are more Updike than Harry, and comically sweeping notions of Jewry, which are more Harry than Updike.

This is at the heart of the tetralogy’s achievement. Updike once said of the Rabbit books that they were an exercise in point of view. This was typically self-deprecating, but contains an important grain of truth. Harry’s education extends no further than high school, and his view is further limited by a range of prejudices and a stubborn, combative spirit, yet he is the vehicle for a half-million-word meditation on postwar American anxiety, failure and prosperity. A mode had to be devised to make this possible, and that involved pushing beyond the bounds of realism. In a novel like this, Updike insisted, you have to be generous and allow your characters eloquence, “and not chop them down to what you think is the right size”. He was clear, too, that we all sense more than we can ever put into words, and was mindful of the example of Joyce and his “great attempt to capture the way we move through life”.

“Abuse Of Power” Questioned

January 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Ethics, History, National Archives, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Watergate | 1 Comment 

The New York Times site has just posted a very thought-provoking article (to appear in tomorrow’s edition) about recent charges by several historians that Abuse Of Power, the 1997 volume of transcripts of White House tape conversations transcribed and edited by University of Wisconsin professor emeritus Stanley I. Kutler, presents a garbled and in some cases inaccurate version of what was said on the recordings, especially where John W. Dean’s role in Watergate is concerned.

The article includes quotes from an irritated Professor Kutler, who wants to know if his critics are waiting “for me to get in my sackcloth and my ashes,” and Dean, who dismisses as revisionism the arguments of historians such as Peter Klingman and Joan Hoff that Abuse Of Power misrepresents his role.

The most damning statements in the article are from Frederick J. Graboske, who once was the supervisory archivist at the National Archives in charge of processing the tapes, and who charges that Professor Kutler has “changed the original evidence”:

“I spent 12 years listening to the tapes,” [Graboski] said, contending that no one could mistake the evening and morning recordings [referring to two conversations between RN and Dean on March 16, 1973] as being part of the same conversation. “I don’t know why he did it, but what he did was deliberate.”

He added: “I did work with Stanley. I’m sorry that it has come to this.”

DSPQ

January 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

This picture is worth any thousand words with which I could come up.

Act Stupidly, And Serve In The Cabinet

January 31, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Obama administration, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

Former Senator Tom Daschle, paid $2 million to help a fat cat, also got free use of a car and driver worth $128,000 over three years but didn’t tell the IRS until President Obama tapped him as secretary of health and human services. He also failed to declare $83,000 in consulting income and claimed too many charitable gifts. On TV last week, Watergate reporter Bob Woodward intimated that there was another tax scandal coming for Obama. Presumably this is it. Why didn’t Woodward just report it instead of teasing viewers? In any event, referring to the first one, the New York Times reports this morning:

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Daschle’s tax problems would derail his nomination. The confirmation of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner was held up only briefly after the disclosure that he had failed to pay more than $34,000 in taxes owed to the federal government.

Friends in the administration say Daschle made “a stupid mistake” but shouldn’t be penalized, since he told the Senate about it himself — the old “turn yourself in, son, it’ll go easier on you” rule. At least, that’s what they always say. However the word has gotten out, tax scandals are generally expected to be devastating for Republicans, not to mention for those such as you and me who are not needed in the Cabinet.

Tax scandals have inconvenienced Democrats as well, though in other ways. When an accountant stupidly backdated the deed of President Nixon’s tax-deductible gift of his pre-Presidential papers, it ended up wasting a lot of the House Judiciary Committee’s valuable time during the 1974 impeachment hearings. It was after the tax story broke that President Nixon, deeply wounded by the charge of personal financial impropriety, made the famous declaration of his innocence to a group of editors in Orlando, Florida in November 1973.

But in these anxious times, we don’t want hardworking politicians to have to say, “I am not a crook.” We want them to be able to say, “I am in the Cabinet.” My New Nixon colleague Frank Gannon sees it strictly in terms of the old partisan double standard and Democrats’ knack for raising taxes without, as in these notable cases, paying them. Hasn’t he heard that we’ve evolved beyond that kind of divisive rhetoric? We’re in a era of new thinking and ideas.

As a matter of fact, the Times is definitely onto something by suggesting the “Cabinet penalty box” approach. Geithner’s stupid mistake cost us $34,000, so his nomination was held up “only briefly.” What was it, a week? For riding around in a free car for three years stupidly failing to realize it was taxable income, Daschle boosted the deficit at almost four times’ Geithner’s rate, so he should sit out for at least a month. With the deficit already running over a trillion a year, it might be the best thing that could happen for health care policy. By the same token, since Obama appears to be flirting with protectionism, he may decide to delay choosing a trade representative for another two or three months, so he should find someone for that job who’s stupidly cheated us out of half a million or so.

Off Limits

January 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Obama administration | 4 Comments 

For at least the next four years, some stories should just be declared off limits as being irrelevant, unnecessary, unproductive, unhelpful, and, if that’s not enough, just plain not right.  Not many, but a few.  And this is one of them.

Why The Democrats Don’t Worry About Raising Taxes

January 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Obama administration | Leave a Comment 

An old question has at last been answered.

The question is: Why are Democrats  so willing to raise taxes?

And the answer is: They have no intention of paying them.

Despite  his failure to pay $40k+ in taxes (and his patent attempt to game the statute of limitations once he realized his “mistake”), the Senate confirmed Timothy Geithner last week largely based on the new President’s insistence that he was the only individual in the western hemisphere capable of leading Treasury during this time of crisis.

Now it turns out that Secretary of HHS-designate, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, has pulled a Geithner by suddenly paying, at the beginning of this month, $140k+ in taxes unpaid since 2005.  Senator Daschle’s National Taxpayer Union rating was  15% (which means that he supported 85% of tax raising proposals), only one point away from the lowest 1-14%  ”Big Spender” category.

As reported in today’s Los Angeles Times:

The bulk of the unpaid taxes — first reported Friday by ABC News — stems from a lucrative business relationship that Daschle began with a wealthy investor shortly after Daschle left the Senate in 2005.

That year Daschle was paid $83,333 a month — or $1 million a year — to advise a private equity fund, according to a confidential draft report prepared by Republican staffers on the Senate Finance Committee. The South Dakota Democrat was hired by Leo J. Hindery Jr., a longtime friend of Daschle’s, to consult for InterMedia Advisors. The private equity fund invests in media companies, including the Christian publishing house Thomas Nelson, the Gospel Music Channel, and Cine Latino, a leading Spanish-language movie channel. Hindery, a Democratic donor who made a fortune in cable television, also provided Daschle with a car and driver beginning in April 2005.                

Daschle estimated that 80% of his use of the car was for personal reasons. But he did not pay any taxes on the service until Jan. 2, 2009, when he filed amended returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007.

Daschle this month paid more than $100,000 in taxes and interest for the car service, according to Backus.

He paid an additional $32,491 to cover taxes and interest for a monthly payment that was not reported in 2007.

TNN Weekly Weekend Reward

January 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Weekly Weekend Reward | Leave a Comment 

I drove the five minutes over to the Birchmere yesterday and got my tickets for Rosanne Cash’s 7 July appearance at that excellent and bordering on venerable institution.  When I lived in New York I was a five minute walk from the Bottom Line (which, alas, is no more, having been swallowed up, like everything else in its path, by NYU); it’s an incredible luxury to have such venues in the neighborhood.

Like the Birchmere, Ms. Cash is excellent and bordering on venerable.  She is, of course, a superb and seasoned performer and an accomplished songwriter.  But she is also a

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, an author of short stories and children’s books, a New York Times columnist, blogger, and, as a bonus, a really nice person.

Here is one of her solid hits from back in the day (she had eleven #1 singles in the 1980s), and one of my own favorites (and not just because after a couple of pops I was almost convinced that probably the song was about me): 1981’s “Seven Year Ache.”  

It was widely rumored that Ms. Cash’s then-husband Rodney Crowell was the inspiration for this song (almost, if not quite, as much speculation as about the subject of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain”).  But, generous and straightforward,  she is on record ruling out Mr. Crowell (and myself), and giving credit where it was due: “The real inspiration came for me because Rickie Lee Jones’ first album came out, and I was so moved by it, and so inspired, I thought ‘There’s never been a country song about street life, about life on the streets.’” 

Rosanne Cash performed “Seven Year Ache” with singer-songwriter Radney Foster on one of BBC Scotland’s Transatlantic Sessions in 1998:

You act like you were just born tonight
Face down in a memory but feeling all right
So who does your past belong to today?
Baby, you don’t say nothing when you’re feeling this way

The girls in the bars thinking, “Who is this guy?”
But they don’t think nothing when they’re telling you lies
You look so careless when they’re shooting that bull
Don’t you know heartaches are heroes when their pockets are full?

Tell me you’re trying to cure a seven-year ache
See what else your old heart can take
Boys say, “When is he gonna give us some room?”
But girls say, “God I hope he comes back soon”

Everybody’s talking but you don’t hear a thing
You’re still uptown on your downhill swing
Boulevard’s empty, why don’t you come around?
Baby, what is so great about sleeping downtown?

There’s plenty of dives to be someone you’re not
You say you’re looking for something you might’ve forgot
Don’t bother calling to say you’re leaving alone
‘Cause there’s a fool on every corner when you’re trying to get home

Just tell ‘em you’re trying to cure a seven-year ache
See what else your old heart can take
Boys say, “When is he gonna give us some room?”
But girls say, “God I hope he comes back soon”

Tell me you’re trying to cure a seven-year ache
See what else your old heart can take
Boys say, “When is he gonna give us some room?”
But girls say, “God I hope he comes back soon”

If you have good speakers, treat yourself by listening to this stereo version of the album track (Emmylou Harris and Vince Gill on background vocals).   In fact, I hereby submit the eponymous disk to Fr. Taylor for consideration for a new category: Perfect Albums.

Featured Articles — January 31, 2009

January 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Can Larry Summers Save the Economy? By Michael Scherer and Massimo Calabresi
The walls are still bare in Larry Summers’ West Wing office, a cramped and cluttered perch overlooking the Rose Garden. The Bloomberg terminals have yet to be delivered, and the steam-powered White House e-mail system recently crashed. Add to all that the fact that much of Barack Obama’s economic team is still finding its way around the White House, and it’s somewhat remarkable that this economic wunderkind turned Obama adviser is moving at flank speed on the biggest restructuring of the U.S. economy since the New Deal.

Stimulated right into being another Europe By Mark Steyn
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) “stimulus.” “How,” asks the lady from CBS, “does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?”

Rush Limbaugh Now Runs the GOP By John Dickerson
US President Barack Obama.President Barack ObamaIn his first full week in office, Barack Obama spent his time pushing for his stimulus bill and continuing to break from the traditions and policies of his predecessor. Obama signed his first piece of legislation, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for people to sue for racial and gender discrimination at work, and he lifted the abortion gag rule, allowing nongovernmental groups overseas to receive U.S. funding even if they support abortion rights.

Searching for an Optimist at Davos By Daniel Gross
CNBC’s Jim Cramer likes to say that there’s always a bull market some­where. When one region is down, the theory goes, another is up. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, however, the only bull market was in pessimism. On the Promenade, Davos’s main drag, a woman accosted me, asked whether I knew what was in the Book of Revela­tion, and wondered whether I had been inscribed in the Book of Life.

Does The Ledbetter Law Benefit Workers, Or Lawyers? By Stuart Taylor Jr.
This has been a good week, and may be a good year, for lawyers, civil-rights groups and others who think that America needs many more lawsuits to combat what they portray as pervasive job discrimination against women, minorities, the elderly, and the disabled.

Will there be a thaw in US-Russian relations? By Cathy Young
EVEN BEFORE Barack Obama’s victory in November, many voiced hope that he could end the “new Cold War” between the United States and Russia. A week after the inauguration, the White House said that Obama and Russia’s president, Dmitry Medvedev, had discussed “stopping the drift in US-Russia relations.” Will the conciliatory rhetoric become reality?

Now Is No Time to Downplay North Korea By John Bolton
Yesterday, North Korea declared all its political and military agreements with the South “dead” — the latest in a string of confrontational moves taken by Pyongyang against Seoul and the U.S. In the past few weeks, the North confirmed it possessed enough plutonium for four to five nuclear warheads; threatened to retain its nuclear weapons until America withdraws its nuclear protection from the South; denounced the appointment of Seoul’s new unification minister as “an open provocation”; and proclaimed that a routine South Korean military exercise had so inflamed tensions that “a war may break out any time.”

Can Countries Really Go Bankrupt? By Spiegel Staff
“There’s a rumor going around that states cannot go bankrupt,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said recently at a private bank event in Frankfurt. “This rumor is not true.”

Border War By Noam Scheiber
Larry Summers has a cutting sense of humor. For example, when he thinks a proposal calls for government heavy-handedness, he will dismiss it as “Putinesque,” a reference to the statist Russian leader. So maybe it’s fitting that some of Summers’s administration colleagues view the intellectually fierce former Harvard president, now head of the National Economic Council, in similar terms. As a handful of administration insiders have told me, more in playfulness than bitterness, Summers has the strongman’s appetite for expanding his turf, plucking far-flung policy portfolios–health care, energy–and claiming them as his own.

Michael Steele’s Moment

January 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Election 2012, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Republican Party | 2 Comments 

“This is the moment,” President Obama was fond of saying many, many times on the campaign trail. (Although he would vary it from time to time by speaking, in vaguely Churchillian fashion, of a time when future generations would look back on the present and say that “this was the moment when we as a people” etc.)

Today, there came two moments of considerable importance to the United States. The first one was the announcement (in terms implying that he would accept the post if offered it) by Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a Republican, that he is under consideration for Secretary of Commerce.  This decision in itself is not that surprising; Gregg was elected to his first term by a whisker and won his second mainly because he was running against the 94-year-old activist “Granny D” Haddock, and New Hampshire has become more, not less, Democratic in recent years.

What’s surprising is that President Obama’s transition team did not offer Gregg the job of, say, Secretary of the Interior when the Cabinet was being selected last month, and, at the same time, offer either of Maine’s Republican senators (Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe) high-ranking positions, thus making it possible for the Democratic governors of these states to name replacements and thus have a filibuster-proof majority in place before Obama’s inauguration.

Indeed, with Gregg in the Cabinet and a Democratic replacement in his old seat, if Al Franken wins his court battle, the filibuster-proof majority will be in place. But that’s still a big if. Are the Democrats really certain that Franken can prevail through all the court challenges to come? Is it desirable to have 59 Democrats in the upper chamber during at least the initial legislative battles to come, when bringing either Collins or Snowe into the Administration could bring the total to 60 and thus forestall all the trouble that could be stirred up when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid gets into a scrape like the one earlier this month, when he drew one line in the sand after another and Sen. Roland Burris kept crossing them?  This is a question that may be pondered in the West Wing over the weekend.

Later today, the GOP took a big step in the right direction when, after a long, drawn-out contest between a half-dozen candidates, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor Michael Steele emerged as the first African-American chairman in the history of the Republican National Committee.  During the last half-dozen years, Steele has emerged as not only the successor to former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts as the most prominent black Republican, but has consistently shown himself to be a forceful critic of his party’s complacency, and a strong voice for a more inclusive GOP.

The last election showed, once and for all, that the Republicans have to get on the right side of the immigration issue.  All over the world, people dream of coming to the United States.  And the life that they dream of making here is not one burdened with gigantic bureaucracies and oppressive taxes; that’s what many want to escape from in their own countries.

Last week I saw the acclaimed film Slumdog Millionaire and, as I watched the scenes of Indian life, thought to myself: Here are hundreds of millions of people who dream of a better life, a more abundant life.  If one-twentieth of them were ever to settle in the United States, the Republicans would win every election in the foreseeable future – providing they cast aside the anti-immigration rhetoric. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the son of Indian immigrants, exemplifies a generation of Americans from a multitude of different heritages and histories, all united by their readiness to embrace the economic and social vision that a Republican party under the guidance of Michael Steele could provide.

Many liberal commentators, last November, forecast the end of the GOP’s ascendancy, in terms almost as emphatic as were heard the morning after Election Day in 1964.  But as the months go by, and as the Democrats get to squabbling (as Democrats tend to do), we may see a different picture.  But that depends on the willingness of the Republican Party to reach out to those parts of the American electorate — including the newest Americans — most willing to hear its message.

Mad Skills

January 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama | Leave a Comment 

Andy McCarthy explains President Obama’s art of seduction.

Korean War Redux?

January 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs | 1 Comment 

Gordon Chang explains:

Today, North Korea declared it was repudiating agreements with South Korea, including the landmark 1991 reconciliation accord. “Relations between the north and south have worsened to the point where there is no way or hope of correcting them,” stated Pyongyang’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea. “They have reached the extreme point where the clash of fire against fire, steel against steel, has become inevitable.”

South Korea never signed the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War, so that document could not have been covered by the North’s announcement. Today, Pyongyang called the armistice a “useless peace of paper.” Yet it need not have bothered: in August 2006 North Korea issued a statement declaring it “null and void.”

Analysts assume that today’s statement is just a bid to get President Obama’s attention. But that may not be the case because Kim Jong Il looks as if he is getting a bit desperate. He is in bad health, the concept of a succession to a younger-generation Kim is in doubt, his economy has been shrinking since 2006, and there is another severe food shortage.

Mr. Kim and his father have a history of using violence to upset status quos they thought to be unacceptable, so continually ignoring Pyongyang may not be the best strategy for us, especially at this crucial moment. We have always let the Kim family pick the time and place for its next provocation, and that is what the current Kim could be doing now.

So if we want to keep the peace on the Korean peninsula, some nation needs to explain to Mr. Kim that his inflammatory words are unacceptable. Of course, there is no better party to do that than the guarantor of the geopolitical order, the United States of America.

Sen. Mitchell, Get Her A Future

January 30, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, Israel and Palestinians | Leave a Comment 

Read more here.

In Anaheim, No Honeymoon, At Least For Some

January 30, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Barack Obama, White House | Leave a Comment 

Why would a Barack Obama Room possibly be controversial at the White House? Read the answer here.

Steele Wins

January 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

It’s all about being an outsider:

The election of an outsider, however, was not the only respect in which the race was unconventional. Usually a low-profile, inside-the-Beltway affair, the chairman’s race took on an outsized importance for the GOP this year after the party lost the White House and suffered heavy defeats on the congressional level last November.

For a party seeking to define itself in the post-Bush era, the chairman’s election provided a first opportunity to chart a fresh course for the GOP. And throughout the day RNC members emphasized the potentially pivotal nature of the vote.

“This may be the most important decision we ever make as members of the RNC,” Oklahoma Republican Party Chair Gary Jones said in a nominating speech for Blackwell at the beginning of the day.

Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer was even more emphatic as he delivered a seconding speech for Steele.

“The eyes of the nation today are looking upon us,” he said. “This vote will be the greatest contribution you will have ever made to the Republican Party.”

Mary Chapin Carpenter’s Close Call

January 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, Entertainment, Music | Leave a Comment 

Crossover country superstar Mary Chapin Carpenter, now a columnist for the Washington Times, today describes her impressions of the January 18 concert/celebration at the Lincoln Memorial and also reminisces about her appearance at another gathering at the landmark for the first Clinton inaugural in 1993. The highlight of her cherished memories of that event:

As the end of the show approached, we were lined up on either side of the stage with live mikes. I was standing next to Aretha Franklin, who was wearing the largest fur I have ever seen outside of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Even allowing for my membership in PETA, this was beyond the beyond.

What was equally alarming was that as we stood there, I could see the mike cable that ran right beneath our feet start to curl and shorten. Whoever was onstage ahead of us was pulling too much cable their way. If I didn’t move fast, the Queen of Soul would get lassoed and fall down on top of me, and I was going to die of suffocation by a mink coat. I dropped down to my knees and grabbed the cable, pulled it away from her feet and started feeding it by hand toward the stage. Whew! Crisis averted.

I should mention here that in my earlier post about Ms. Carpenter’s columns for the Times, I made an error. She has recorded four albums since 2000 (Time Sex Love; Between Here And Gone; The Calling; and Come Darkness, Come Light), not two.

President Langella: Alone In The Dressing Room

January 30, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Frost/Nixon, Movies, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The most recent issue of Newsweek featured its annual Oscar Roundtable, moderated by the magazine’s David Ansen and Ramin Setoodeh. The participants this year included Anne Hathaway, Sally Hawkins, Robert Downey Jr., Brad Pitt, Mickey Rourke, and Frank Langella, the latter three competing for the Best Actor Academy Award this year. Langella, unfortunately, did not provide added detail to his earlier account of his conversations with the 37th President that helped him fill out his phenomenal portrayal in Frost/Nixon. But he did provide this description of how he worked on the set:

I like to sit around and eat doughnuts, and Kevin Bacon and I like to tell dirty stories. But the minute I opened the door, I told Ron Howard I should stay in character. Because the tension around me will be greater, and if I break character at all and start shooting the s–––, I won’t feel that intimidation people feel around a president. So I did for 32 days. It was very lonely and very right for the character. I just stayed the president.

The man who long ago laid claim to being the world’s sexiest Dracula also reveals that he broke into showbiz in the role of… an elf. True, he was seven at the time, and in a school Christmas play in beautiful downtown Bayonne, New Jersey, but it’s still just a little bit startling.

There Are Space Aliens In Yorba Linda…

January 30, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Nixon Library | Leave a Comment 

…or so some people claim.

Featured Articles — January 30, 2009

January 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting Takes From Home And Abroad:

Obama’s Unnecessary Apology By Charles Krauthammer
Every new president flatters himself that he, kinder and gentler, is beginning the world anew. Yet, when Barack Obama in his inaugural address reached out to Muslims with “to the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect,” his formulation was needlessly defensive and apologetic.

Time to put middle class front and center By Joe Biden
For years, we had a White House that failed to put the middle class front and center in its economic policies. President Obama has made it clear that is going to change. And it’s why he has asked me to lead a task force on the middle class.

Cleaner and Faster By David Brooks
The Democrats have created a stimulus package that is a sprawling, undisciplined smorgasbord. By trying to do everything all it once, the bill does nothing well.

Shelve This Stimulus Plan By Lawrence Kudlow
Wednesday night’s House tally on the Democratic stimulus package, where not a single Republican voted in favor, was another shot across the bow for this incredibly unmanageable $900 billion behemoth of a program that truly will not stimulate the economy. Sure, the Democrats won on a party-line count. But Team Obama is now regrouping in the face of mounting criticism of this package.

Social Security on the First Date By Ramesh Ponnuru
Real cooperation between Democrats and Republicans on Social Security could pave the way for bipartisan bliss.

Democratic Stealth Care By Kimberley Strassel
Tom Daschle is still waiting to be confirmed as secretary of health and human services, not that he’s in any rush. Democrats are already enacting his and Barack Obama’s agenda of government-run health care — entirely on the QT.

Look at the Time By Peggy Noonan
The party-line vote in favor of the stimulus package could have been more, could have produced not only a more promising bill but marked the beginning of something new, not a postpartisan era (there will never be such a thing and never should be; the parties exist to fight through great political questions) but a more bipartisan one forced by crisis and marked by—well, let’s call it seriousness.

Iranian Revolution@30 By Clifford D. May
The 20th century was a time of great and terrible revolutions. The Russian Revolution of 1917 promised a communist utopia. It delivered man-made famines, the Gulag Archipelago, and at least 20 million murdered. The Chinese Revolution of 1949 brought the Great Leap Forward and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; estimates put the death toll as high as 65 million.

No Caudillismo For Uribe

January 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs | 1 Comment 

Colombian’s detest El Caudillismo, an autocratic tradition that spread itself through Latin America from the early days of clientism to the populism of Argentina’s Juan Perón,  and the quixotic and erratic whims of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. In 2002, President Álvaro Uribe ran on a platform of “democratic security” maintaining the long tradition of  democratic politics where historically violent and polarized remnants can still be seen in a barrage of bullet holes in Bogota’s Plaza de Bolivar. With the exception of President Uribe’s successful efforts to pacify the country by declaring all out war on the FARC (Revolutionary Forces of Colombia), Colombia has only matched a period of decreased violence when it fell under dictatorship during the brief four year reign of Gustavo Rojas who took power after a coup d’etat in 1955 following the partisan violence of El Bogotazo.

My recent visit to Colombia affirmed these assertions. National police swarming the streets of La Candelaria (Bogota’s historic district) reflected the common sentiment that Uribe is a man that will keep his people safe from left wing guerillas. Several Colombians told me that “he is the best President in the nation’s history.” Contrary to his opposition’s assertions, he won’t ride this popularity for successive terms or centralize power. The AP reports:

President Alvaro Uribe’s hometown newspaper reported Thursday that Colombia’s immensely popular leader will not seek a third consecutive term in 2010 elections.

“President Uribe is not running for a second re-election. El Colombiano is in a position to affirm that the president has already decided to step aside so new leaders can assume power,” the Medellin newspaper reported. El Colombiano did not reveal its sources.

Uribe, first elected in 2002, has been consistently cagey on whether he would seek another four years.

In Switzerland on Thursday for the World Economic Forum, he ducked a Colombian radio journalist’s question on whether he would try for re-election. “What else can I be thinking about but democratic security, investor confidence and social cohesion?” he said.

One of his closest advisers, Jose Obdulio Gaviria, would neither confirm nor deny the report when reached by The Associated Press. However, he said he believes Uribe should run.

To make that possible, Colombia’s constitution would have to be amended for a second time, and the change would have to be approved by the Constitutional Court and by voters in a referendum.

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